Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Part 197, some of Russian meddling, and related, material from F6 big ones. These from a post Saturday, 05/05/18 , covering March
30, 2018, and headed, David Shulkin’s Firing at the VA Is Latest Step in Trump-Koch Push to Privatize Veterans’ Healthcare
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=140556768

Twenty-seventh, eighth and ninth

Why the Stormy Daniels lawsuit matters

Published on Mar 30, 2018 by Vox [ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLXo7UDZvByw2ixzpQCufnA / https://www.youtube.com/user/voxdotcom , https://www.youtube.com/user/voxdotcom/videos ]
Trump’s presidency may be in jeopardy even if the women are unsuccessful in court.
Donald Trump has had many allegations of scandal and sexual misconduct made against him
and has made it through them with little consequence. But now, two lawsuits might change that.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3F07R2-zW4 [with comments]

--

Cambridge whistleblower reveals 'concerning' link to Russia

The Beat with Ari Melber
3/30/18
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wiley talks to Ari Melber ahead of his testimony before Congress. Wiley says he hopes to urge congress
that the scandal is beyond the Facebook “a data leak” and could impact “national security”. Wiley reveals work the Trump data firm did for a Russian
oil company with ties to Kremlin intelligence, was “concerning” and that they could be aware of a “massive data set being harvested on Americans”.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari-melber/watch/cambridge-whistleblower-reveals-concerning-link-to-russia-1199152195687 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKrUfiOQIks [with comments]

*

World Exclusive: Whistleblower blasts Facebook 'exploitation'

The Beat with Ari Melber
3/30/18
In her first TV interview, a former top executive at Trump data firm Cambridge Analytica, Brittany Kaiser, blasts Facebook for exploiting private user
data and calls the company “incredibly irresponsible” for not checking that Cambridge and other firms had deleted the harvested data. Kaiser reveals
that no-oneat Cambridge Analytica was aware CEO Alexander Nix and board member Rebekah Mercer attempted to reach Julian Assange.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari-melber/watch/world-exclusive-whistleblower-blasts-facebook-exploitation-1199152195803 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-1mTd8td18 [with comments]

The thirty-first

How Truth Lost Its Meaning In Trump's America: VICE on HBO, Full Episode

Published on Mar 30, 2018 by VICE News [ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZaT_X_mc0BI-djXOlfhqWQ / https://www.youtube.com/user/vicenews , https://www.youtube.com/user/vicenews/videos ]
In Trump’s America, half the population lives in a world where the “crooked media” tells “fake news” made
up of “alternative facts,” while the other half fights to maintain public trust in traditional media.
Much of this stems from the parallel online universe that led up to the 2016 election. Clinton and Trump supporters really don't listen
to each other on Twitter, according to an analysis from the Electome project at the MIT Media Lab provided exclusively to VICE News.
“At least on Twitter, we see that there is a separation of where the journalists, and who the journalists are following, and no
one is really listening or plugged into this Trump supporter graph.” Eugene Yi, a data-scientists at the lab told VICE News.
Formerly fringe bloggers, like Milo Yiannopolus and Mike Cernovich, seized the golden
opportunity to speak directly to Trump supporters and flooded the internet with false information.
The now-infamous data targeting company Cambridge Analytica allegedly used mass amounts of personal information on the internet
to manipulate voters, spreading pro-Trump news, no matter the factual evidence, which may have helped win the election for him.
With Trump in office, conservative new media and the mainstream are now at war over who is “fake news,” and a record low of 32 percent
of Americans trust the press. And President Trump's personal crusade against the traditional press has only deepened the public divide.
But, "the president doesn't get to decide what the truth is," CNN's Jim Acosta, a common target of Trump's
criticisms, told VICE News. VICE's Isobel Yeung meets the people on the frontlines in the battle for truth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dB_W38mCRM [with comments] [and see also in particular (linked in) https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=26706638 and preceding and following, https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=27485225 and preceding and following, https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=140008885 and preceding and following]

Thirty-third

Trump's cabinet keeps on filling the swamp
All In with Chris Hayes
3/30/18
Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt isn't just undermining his own department. He also appears to be taking bribes from lobbyists.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/trump-s-cabinet-keeps-on-filling-the-swamp-1199185475841

Thirty-seventh

Russian ex-spy says he was on Kremlin 'hit list'
On Assignment with Richard Engel
3/30/18
"Something is probably going to happen," Boris Karpichkov says his old friend told him. "It's very serious, and you are not alone."
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/russian-ex-spy-says-he-was-on-kremlin-hit-list-1199206979581

Fortieth

A look at Russia’s recent meddling in geopolitics
On Assignment with Richard Engel
3/30/18
The U.S. election, Ukraine, Syria and now Skripal: How Russia has intervened subtly and not-
so-subtly abroad, in what some see as an attempt to destabilize domestic affairs elsewhere.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/a-look-at-russia-s-recent-meddling-in-geopolitics-1199213123941

Forty-third

Lawrence: Trump may become 'more unleashed'

The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell
3/30/18
Amid reports that the White House is worried President Donald Trump will become unleashed with the departure
of Hope Hicks, Lawrence O’Donnell explains why Trump's "madness" grows no matter who is on his staff.
©2018 NBCNews.com
http://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/watch/lawrence-trump-may-become-more-unleashed-1199245891962 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FORhPFjq-ug [with comments]

Add here
With Hope Hicks out, 5 people have done 6 stints as Trump’s communications director that lasted an average of 70 days
By Callum Borchers February 28 Email the author
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/07/31/4-men-have-done-5-stints-as-trumps-communications-director-that-lasted-an-average-of-44-days/?utm_term=.052620b640de

Forty-sixth

Feds detain & subpoena Mueller witness at Boston airport

The 11th Hour with Brian Williams
3/31/18
In a scene reminiscent of a spy thriller, the feds met, detained, questioned, & subpoenaed a new
witness in the Mueller probe at the airport. So who is Ted Malloch? Our panel breaks it down.
©2018 NBCNews.com
[originally aired March 30, 2018]
http://www.msnbc.com/brian-williams/watch/feds-detain-subpoena-mueller-witness-at-boston-airport-1199272003558 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGLRP2DeMTQ [with comments]

And .. lolol .. going on 94 .. wow, look at that smile! .. good vibes for us all!

President Jimmy Carter Is Still Praying For Donald Trump

Published on Mar 31, 2018 by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert
The 39th President of the United States and 'Faith' author Jimmy Carter tells Stephen he
prays for Donald Trump. Whether those prayers are being answered is another question.
[originally aired March 30, 2018]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQR5G3kvfNQ [with comments]

To "stashed March 30, 2018:"

Mark Zuckerberg disavows controversial Facebook memo
Mark Zuckerberg has disavowed an internal memo written by a top Facebook executive in 2016 that argued growth should be prioritized even if users were harmed.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/30/technology/facebook-zuckerberg-ugly-memo/index.html

Russia releases 'Satan 2' missile test footage
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/30/europe/russia-missile-test-sarmat-intl/index.html

Russian missile test launch stokes fears of new arms race
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/russian-missile-test-launch-stokes-fears-arms-race/story?id=54123375

New heavy ICBM Sarmat undergoes test at Plesetsk Cosmodrome
http://eng.mil.ru/en/news_page/country/more.htm?id=12169081@egNews

Why Is Trump Turning Against Russia Now?
The president’s lingering insecurity about his legitimacy might explain his willingness to punish the Kremlin for a poisoning in London but not for meddling in the 2016 election.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/why-is-trump-turning-against-russia-now/556970/

Putin's Imperial Rule Spurs Wave of Trash Protests Around Moscow
Residents of suburbs rally against overflowing landfills
Problem traces to Putin’s 2017 order to close major trash dump
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-30/putin-s-imperial-rule-spurs-wave-of-trash-protests-around-moscow

more: https://news.google.com/news/story/dJfCMwYB_QetopMIEuBDTqBc73oeM?ned=us&gl=US&hl=en

Behind the chaos: Office that vets Trump appointees plagued by inexperience
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/behind-the-chaos-office-that-vets-trump-appointees-plagued-by-inexperience/2018/03/30/cde31a1a-28a3-11e8-ab19-06a445a08c94_story.html

Trump's very small (and shrinking) inner circle
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/politics/trumps-circle-ronny-jackson-hope-hicks-keith-schiller/index.html

West Wing surprised by Trump's unscripted Syria comment
President Donald Trump surprised even the most senior members of his Cabinet when he announced Thursday during a speech in Ohio that the U.S. military would be "coming out of Syria, like, very soon," according to a senior administration official familiar with the matter.
[...]
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/west-wing-surprised-trumps-unscripted-syria-comment/story?id=54132268

more: https://news.google.com/news/story/dRFIXKTvfQ0cr4MTr1bCr-wB92t2M?ned=us&gl=US&hl=en

Saudi Crown Prince Says U.S. Troops Should Stay In Syria
http://time.com/5222746/saudi-crown-prince-donald-trump-syria/

Federal investigators question Ted Malloch in special counsel probe
(CNN) - The FBI this week detained and questioned Ted Malloch -- who says he was an informal Trump campaign adviser in 2016 who was rumored last year to be a candidate for US ambassador to the European Union -- as part of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, Malloch said.
Malloch issued a written statement saying he was detained by the FBI on Tuesday after he arrived on an international flight to Boston, where federal investigators took his cell phone and questioned him about Republican operative Roger Stone and WikiLeaks. Malloch, who has authored a not-yet-published book accusing a so-called "deep state" within the US government of fabricating the opposition research dossier on President Donald Trump and Russia to try to destroy Trump, said he was served with a subpoena before he was released to appear before Mueller's grand jury in Washington, which he's expected to do next month.
"The questions got more detailed about my involvement in the Trump campaign (which was informal and unpaid); whom I communicated with; whom I knew and how well -- they had a long list of names," Malloch said. "They seemed to then focus more attention on Roger Stone (whom I have met a grand total of three times and with groups of people); Jerome Corsi, a journalist who edited a memoir I had written some years ago; and about WikiLeaks, which I knew nothing."
He said was asked specifically if he had visited the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been holed up for nearly six years. He had not, he said.
Malloch's statement shines another light into the workings of Mueller's probe into potential collusion between Trump's campaign team and Russia, which has also investigated potential financial crimes and other matters.
Malloch is not the first witness to say he was asked about Stone, a longtime Trump associate. Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg said the special counsel's team pressed him about Stone and WikiLeaks, too.
The special counsel's office declined to comment.
Malloch was a professor in London who now runs a consulting firm. At one point early in the Trump administration, Malloch was rumored to be in line to become US ambassador to the EU, but questions were raised about inaccuracies in his biography and EU officials expressed alarm at his views, and he was not selected for the post.
Malloch has ties to Nigel Farage, the British politician who was a key driver of Brexit, according to the Guardian, which first reported Malloch was questioned by the FBI.
Glenn Simpson, whose firm Fusion GPS hired ex-British intelligence agent Christopher Steele to compile the dossier on Trump and Russia, mentioned Malloch in testimony to the House Intelligence Committee last year, calling him a "significant figure" in the Brexit campaign with ties to former Trump campaign chief and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon as well as Stone.
In his statement Thursday, Malloch suggested that his upcoming book, "The Plot to Destroy Trump," was the reason he was questioned by federal investigators.
"What could they want from me -- a policy wonk and philosophical defender of Trump? I am not an operative, have no Russia contacts, and -- aside from appearing on air and in print often to defend and congratulate our President -- have done nothing wrong," Malloch said.
He is scheduled to appear before Mueller's grand jury on April 13, he said.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/30/politics/fbi-malloch-questions-mueller/index.html

FBI questions Ted Malloch, Trump campaign figure and Farage ally
American once touted as possible ambassador to EU tells of being detained at Boston airport and subpoenaed by Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia inquiry
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/30/fbi-questions-ted-malloch-trump-campaign-figure-and-farage-ally

more: https://news.google.com/news/story/dvgmUTlxOwlG0WMoLxq6lfCwOddcM?ned=us&gl=US&hl=en

Trump Supporter Says He Will Testify Before Grand Jury In Mueller Probe - Reuters
Theodore Malloch, the author of a forthcoming pro-Trump book, said he was served with a subpoena this week.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-supporter-malloch-mueller_us_5abeaa58e4b0f112dc9c4a05
original https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-malloch/trump-supporter-malloch-says-he-will-testify-to-mueller-grand-jury-idUSKBN1H61PW

rump ally detained, served with Mueller subpoena at Boston airport
Ted Malloch said FBI agents asked him about Roger Stone and WikiLeaks.
A professor and author who once presented himself as a possible Trump administration ambassador to the European Union was detained and questioned by the FBI at Boston Logan airport and served a subpoena from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is probing possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.
Ted Malloch said in an emailed statement to NBC News that he was flying from his home in the U.K. via Boston to Cleveland, Ohio to celebrate Easter when he was stopped Wednesday, an incident first reported by the Guardian.
NBC News has independently confirmed that Malloch was detained and questioned at the airport, but not the details of the encounter.
According to Malloch, when he exited his flight from London he was taken aside by a TSA official and an FBI agent, and separated from his wife.
Malloch said two FBI agents then told him he was being detained to answer questions related to the special counsel's investigation.
He said they told him it was a felony to lie to the FBI and he told them he would "gladly" cooperate with them. According to Malloch, the agents also produced a document allowing them to seize and search his cellphone.
At first, said Malloch, the agents questioned him about his career, showed him a color photograph of himself, and asked about his affection for the Philadelphia Eagles.
Then, said Malloch, "The questions got more detailed about my involvement in the Trump campaign (which was informal and unpaid); whom I communicated with; whom I knew and how well — they had a long list of names."
He said they asked him about former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone, author Jerome Corsi and WikiLeaks. Malloch said he told them he met Stone a total of three times and always with groups of people, and that Corsi had helped edit one of his books years ago.
He said he was asked if he had ever visited the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been living since 2012, and he replied no.
Malloch also said the agents served him a subpoena from Mueller's team that had been issued that day, March 28, and that he later arranged with the Special Counsel's Office to appear for questioning on April 13.
"What could they want from me — a policy wonk and philosophical defender of Trump?" said Malloch. "I am not an operative, have no Russia contacts, and—aside from appearing on air and in print often to defend and congratulate our President — have done nothing wrong. What message does this send?"
A spokesperson for the Special Counsel's Office would not comment on Malloch's statement or whether or not Malloch was questioned.
In November 2016, after Trump's upset victory in the presidential election, Malloch told the BBC he had been consulted by Trump throughout the campaign. He told reporters in early 2017 that he had interviewed for the position of U.S. ambassador to the EU twice. That position was vacated in January 2017 and is still vacant.
The Trump administration told reporters that Malloch had never been considered for the position.
Malloch has described the EU as having "evil" origins and compared it to the Soviet Union.
A former professor at the University of Reading in the U.K. and the author of several books, he has a book coming out in May called "The Plot to Destroy Trump: How the Deep State Fabricated the Russian Dossier to Subvert the President."
Roger Stone wrote the forward. Infowars host Alex Jones and Brexiteer Nigel Farage have written blurbs for the book cover, according to Malloch's publisher.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-ally-detained-served-mueller-subpoena-boston-airport-n861456

more: https://www.google.com/search?q=trump+ally+detained+served

Finding Your Name on Russia’s Hit List
The nerve-gas poisoning of a former KGB agent in the U.K. has Moscow’s foes spooked.
It was just before 10 p.m. on Feb. 12, Boris Karpichkov’s 59th birthday, when the former KGB agent got an unexpected call at his home in the U.K. It was a Russian secret service friend phoning covertly from mainland Europe to warn him of a hit list with eight names on it. Karpichkov, who’d defected to Britain in 1998, was on the list. So was Sergei Skripal, another ex-Russian double agent.
Karpichkov initially dismissed the warning—he’d faced death threats before. Three weeks later, he changed his mind. On March 4, Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were rushed to a hospital after collapsing in a crowded shopping mall in the sleepy cathedral city of Salisbury in southwestern England. British officials determined the two—who remain hospitalized and may never fully recover—were poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent in what the U.K. says is the first offensive use of a chemical weapon in Europe since World War II. A local policeman was also hospitalized, and as many as 130 other people in Salisbury may have been exposed.
The attack, which London and its allies blamed on Vladimir Putin’s government, led the U.K. to expel dozens of Russian diplomats. The U.S., along with NATO and 25 other allies of the U.K., followed on March 26 and 27, kicking out about 130 Russian diplomats. Britain is facing calls to crack down on illicit Russian money. Russia, which denies responsibility in the Skripal attack, has vowed to retaliate in kind for the expulsions.
The Skripal case disturbingly echoes the 2006 death of ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who was killed with radioactive polonium slipped into his tea in London. A week after Skripal’s poisoning, a second Russian exile and Putin critic was murdered at his London home. Police are reexamining 14 suspicious deaths in the U.K., dating to 2003, of opponents of Moscow and others with links to Russia.
Karpichkov arrives for a secret meeting with Bloomberg Businessweek in London in a black hat and dark glasses, clearly anxious. He says he’s suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because he’s living in constant fear and gets only four hours of sleep a night. He’s installed closed-circuit surveillance cameras around his home at his own expense. “How long is it going to go on? Who is going to be next?” Karpichkov demands to know from the British authorities. “I can ask to be removed to Mars or to the moon. What will it change? Nothing.”
While Prime Minister Theresa May scored a diplomatic coup by persuading many other nations to expel Russian diplomats, the trail of corpses raises the question: Why have British authorities been so slow to act? Billions of dollars of Russian money have rushed into the U.K. since the 1990s, but billionaire oligarchs with ties to Putin have been allowed to remain. Britain said on March 28 that it would review visas for 700 wealthy Russians. When she was minister in charge of interior affairs, May “fought like a tiger” to stop a public inquiry into the Litvinenko murder for fear of causing a total rupture with Russia, says Jeff Rooker, an opposition Labour member in the Upper House of Parliament. “London is the capital of money laundering,” he says. May at the time said “international relations” were a factor in the decision not to allow a public inquiry into Litvinenko’s death.
The 14 suspicious deaths have been attributed to suicides, natural causes, and accidents and not treated as murders. A British lawyer with links to Russia died in a mysterious helicopter crash in 2004. The badly decomposed body of another man, a British spy, was found in 2010 in a locked sports bag in the bathroom of his London apartment. In 2013, Boris Berezovsky, a Putin foe, was found hanged in his bathroom. In 2016 a U.K. scientist who helped detect the amount of polonium in Litvinenko’s body was found dead in his kitchen from stab wounds.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, declined to comment on whether Russia was involved in the deaths, saying only that Moscow is ready to consider helping in the investigation if London asks. The Foreign Ministry on March 28 accused Britain of “systematically” failing to protect Russian citizens.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former billionaire and Kremlin opponent who was freed after 10 years in prison and now lives in exile in London, believes there’s worse to come. “A nuclear weapon has already been used, a chemical one, too, which leaves just a biological one in the arsenal, and this time no one will be able to do anything,” he says.
Now living in an undisclosed U.K. location under an assumed name, Karpichkov already survived two attacks in New Zealand. After a beggar threw dust in his face in central Auckland in November 2006—a few weeks after Litvinenko was poisoned—Karpichkov lost 30 kilograms, one-third of his body weight, in two months. Four months later he fell ill again after finding mysterious amethyst-colored crystals on the carpet in his home.
In the 1980s, Karpichkov rose to the rank of major in the KGB; he kept working for Russian intelligence in his home country of Latvia after it gained independence in 1991. He later was a CIA informant and defected to the West with boxes of secret documents. He says the British should offer him better protection. Chris Phillips, who from 2005 to 2011 headed the U.K.’s National Counter Terrorism Security Office, wants the police to ensure Karpichkov’s safety. He says of the hit list given to the ex-spy, “I would certainly be concerned if I were them.”
On the list are several other Russian defectors, as well as Bill Browder, a U.S.-born British financier who’s become public enemy No.?1 for Russia’s government since he started campaigning for sanctions against Russian officials over the death of Sergei Magnitsky, the tax lawyer for Browder’s Hermitage Capital Management Ltd. investment fund. Magnitsky died in a Moscow prison in 2009 after uncovering an alleged $230 million tax fraud. Three years later, a Russian whistleblower who provided information to Swiss authorities about the same fraud died near his U.K. home. In one of the 14 suspicious deaths, he collapsed while jogging after ingesting a rare toxic Chinese plant that triggers cardiac arrest.
“My life has been at risk for years,” says Browder, whose London office is accessible only to people escorted by security. He called for action to rein in illegal Russian money flows from corrupt officials and oligarchs into the U.K. The Skripal attack should be a “wake-up call for Britain,” Browder says.
Complicating the task of the British police are the close links between organized crime and the Russian intelligence agencies. Five Berezovsky business associates died in mysterious circumstances from 2008 to 2014, one suffering a heart attack, two jumping under subway trains, one falling off the roof of a department store, and the last plunging to his death from an apartment to be impaled on railings.
Russian secret services can use all kinds of drugs to stage murders that don’t appear to be homicides, according to former counterterrorism chief Phillips. “Any trained assassin knows there is more than one way to kill someone,” he says.
Marina Litvinenko, the widow of the dead spy, who succeeded only after a lengthy legal battle to get a public inquiry that pointed the finger at Putin for the assassination, also urges a crackdown on dirty Russian money. “Do you want another incident like this? Or do you want British citizens to decide that their government can’t protect them?” she asks.
Karpichkov, who was trained as a KGB assassin though he says he never killed, echoes that sentiment. “If it was me tasked to take someone out in this country, it is doable—not only in the United Kingdom, basically anywhere in the world,” he says, before pulling on his hat and sunglasses and vanishing.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-29/finding-your-name-on-russia-s-hit-list

Richard Engel: Kremlin hit list includes Christopher Steele

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=up_7Qv0kKOU )
NBC News reports that the poisoned former spy was allegedly on a Kremlin hit list, along with 7 other targets.
https://www.msnbc.com/hardball/watch/richard-engel-kremlin-hit-list-includes-christopher-steele-1199128643505

more: https://www.google.com/search?q=kremlin+hit+list