Trump's buddy Sater in the news again

As The Washington Post reported on Sunday, the Trump Organization was actively pursuing real-estate opportunities in Russia in late 2015 and early 2016 to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The project was spearheaded by Russian-born developer and longtime Trump associate Felix Sater (who helped build Trump SoHo) and Michael Cohen, an executive vice president at the Trump Organization and the president’s longtime personal attorney.

[...]

On Monday, The New York Times followed up on the Post report, releasing portions of the e-mail exchanges between Sater and Cohen, which the Trump Organization turned over to Congressional investigators . “I arranged for Ivanka [Trump] to sit in Putin’s private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin. I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater wrote in an e-mail to Cohen on November 3, 2015, the Times reports. “I know how to play it and we will get this done. Buddy our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this,” he continued.

[...]

There is no evidence that Sater fulfilled the promises he outlined in his correspondence. “He has sometimes used colorful language,” Cohen said in a statement to the Times, describing Sater as “prone to ‘salesmanship.’” Cohen added that he “ultimately determined that the proposal was not feasible and never agreed to make a trip to Russia.”

[...]

Earlier this month, Sater confirmed the deal to Talking Points Memo, but said Trump’s candidacy derailed the Moscow plans. “Once the campaign was really going-going, it was obvious there were going to be no deals internationally,” Sater said. “We were still working on it, doing something with it, November-December.”

[...]

In a subsequent article on Monday, the Post reported that Cohen e-mailed Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s personal assistant, in an attempt to reboot the stalled development deal, according to e-mails provided to congressional investigators.

[...]

In a statement to the Post, Cohen downplayed the importance of the deal as “simply one of many development opportunities that the Trump Organization considered and ultimately rejected.” He also dismissed the idea that it was in any way tied to Trump’s presidential bid.

  Vanity Fair

As you would. And hope the FBI doesn't ask you directly. Never mind you're telling it to Congress. They're a bunch of worthless twits and can't hurt you. And won't even try as long as they're led by Republicans.

He added that he only sent the e-mail to Peskov at the urging of Sater and does not remember receiving a response.

I've got a feeling there's an agent in some FBI office who could tell him whether he did or not.

But he did also note that he discussed the Trump Tower Moscow deal with Trump on three occasions and said the president signed the letter of intent in 2015, according to an ABC News report.

The revelation that the Trump Organization reportedly sought a massive commercial real-estate deal in Moscow during the campaign may help explain why Trump was so passionate about thawing relations between the United States and Russia.

[...]

The e-mails also belie repeated denials by both Trump and his legal team that he had any business interests in Russia.

[...]

Cohen and Sater have been recurring figures in the Russian melodrama currently roiling Capitol Hill. In February, The New York Times reported that Cohen and Sater met with Andrii Artemenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, to discuss a proposal outlining how Trump could lift U.S. sanctions against Moscow. According to the Times, Cohen told the outlet that he hand-delivered the “peace plan” to then National Security Adviser Mike Flynn. (Cohen later denied that he delivered it to the former general.)

Has he talked to the special prosecutor's team yet?

Sater, who pleaded guilty for his involvement in a Mafia-related stock manipulation scheme in 1998, has also worked closely with Trump on a number of real-estate deals in the past, including the controversial Trump SoHo development.

And Sater won't be a bit shy about telling the FBI everything he knows. This is why, I believe, Trump was so "passionate" about keeping the FBI out of his real estate business.

“The next three years of hearings about Trump and Russia will yield absolutely nothing. I know the man, they didn’t collude,” he told New York magazine in an interview earlier this month. “Did a bunch of meetings happen? Absolutely. The people on the Trump team who had any access to the Russians wanted to be first in and be the guys that ran the whole détente thing. Michael Flynn wanted to be the détente guy, and then [Paul] Manafort, I’m sure, wanted to be the détente guy. Shit, I wanted to be the détente guy, why not? But was it really a conspiracy between Putin and Donald to get him elected? A little bit of a stretch.”

That was for public consumption. Has he talked to Mueller yet?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Pakistan further responds to Trump's tweet

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A legend in his own mind

Which has nothing to do with sanctions and everything to do with their having achieved nuclear weapons ability.  

Jesus, he'll take credit for ANYthing.

Jesus, he missed a chance to take credit for something!

I guess he sort of pulled it out.  Maybe didn't take credit for the "failing" of the NYT (which is in no way happening), but he did mention his big win.

He's gonna build a big beautiful wall, but they're gonna fall in love with him anyway.  Riiiiiight.

No matter.  In HIS mind they will.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Couldn't agree more

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The most socially advanced country on earth?

Yeah, it's not us.

A new law in Iceland that makes it illegal to pay men more than women has come into effect from Monday, 1 January. One of the key reasons the Nordic island has pushed through the law is that nearly half of its parliamentarians are female lawmakers.

[...]

This is part of Iceland's earlier announcement that the island intends to eradicate the gender pay gap by 2022. According to the World Economic Forum's 2017 Global Gender Gap report, Iceland already has the most gender equity than any other country in the world, a position it has held for nine consecutive years. In the rankings, Iceland is followed by fellow Nordic nations Norway, Finland and Sweden.

  IB Times

Don't fuck with Viking women.

An economy mostly driven by soaring tourism and thriving fisheries, the legislation has found little to no opposition from any corner of the Nordic nation, which already has a law requiring private companies to have at least 40% women on their boards.

Go ahead and make it 50.

Yet, there have also been concerns that Iceland's reputation being at the forefront of gender equality does not fully translate into equal rights for women since the country faces a high number of cases of sexual assault against women. According to the figures of Eurostat, Iceland has one of Europe's highest per-capita levels of reported rapes.

Get on that, Iceland.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Pakistan responds to Trump tweet

Pakistan has summoned the US ambassador in a rare public rebuke after Donald Trump lashed out at Islamabad with threats to cut aid over “lies” about militancy.

Pakistan’s foreign office summoned David Hale on Monday to explain the US president’s comments, media said. A spokesperson for the US embassy in Islamabad confirmed that the meeting took place.

[...]

On Tuesday, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, will chair a cabinet meeting that will focus on Trump’s tweet, while on Wednesday the country’s top civilian and military chiefs will meet to discuss deteriorating US ties.

[...]

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Khawaja Asif, dismissed Trump’s comments as a political stunt borne out of frustration over US failures in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has been gaining territory and carrying out major attacks.

“He has tweeted against us [Pakistan] and Iran for his domestic consumption,” Asif told Geo TV on Monday. “He is again and again displacing his frustrations on Pakistan over failures in Afghanistan as they are trapped in a dead-end street in Afghanistan.”

He said Pakistan did not need US aid.

  Guardian

Which is true, and sadly, Trump seems beligerently unaware that all the countries he threatens with getting cut off from American aid can get it from Russia, Iran, or China.

A US national security council official on Monday said the White House did not plan to send $255m in aid to Pakistan “at this time” and said “the administration continues to review Pakistan’s level of cooperation”. In August, the administration said it was delaying the payment.

I'm pretty sure Trump is our nation's number one threat to national security.

Meanwhile, also in Pakistan:

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

The foreign minister replies with his own tweet:

Facebook's censoring policy

IN SEPTEMBER OF last year, we noted that Facebook representatives were meeting with the Israeli government to determine which Facebook accounts of Palestinians should be deleted on the ground that they constituted “incitement.” The meetings — called for and presided over by one of the most extremist and authoritarian Israeli officials, pro-settlement Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked — came after Israel threatened Facebook that its failure to voluntarily comply with Israeli deletion orders would result in the enactment of laws requiring Facebook to do so, upon pain of being severely fined or even blocked in the country.

  Glenn Greenwald

Considering that Mark Zuckerberg is a businessman, even if he weren't pro-Israel or right wing, of course he would cooperate under that threat. I can't imagine many businessmen wouldn't.

The submission to Israeli dictates is hard to overstate: As the New York Times put it in December of last year, “Israeli security agencies monitor Facebook and send the company posts they consider incitement. Facebook has responded by removing most of them.”

[...]

In the weeks following those Facebook-Israel meetings, reported The Independent, “the activist collective Palestinian Information Center reported that at least 10 of their administrators’ accounts for their Arabic and English Facebook pages — followed by more than 2 million people — have been suspended.

[...]

Last March, Facebook briefly shut down the Facebook page of the political party, Fatah, followed by millions, “because of an old photo posted of former leader Yasser Arafat holding a rifle.”

[...]

What makes this censorship particularly consequential is that “96 percent of Palestinians said their primary use of Facebook was for following news.” That means that Israeli officials have virtually unfettered control over a key communications forum of Palestinians.

That was the point, I'm sure.

Calls by Israelis for the killing of Palestinians are commonplace on Facebook, and largely remain undisturbed.

[...]

One study found that “122,000 users directly called for violence with words like ‘murder,’ ‘kill,’ or ‘burn.’ Arabs were the No. 1 recipients of hateful comments.” Yet there appears to be little effort by Facebook to censor any of that.

I have the same objection to Facebook censoring with Twitter censoring. Actually threatening murder and violence should probably get you censored at the least, but otherwise, I think even hateful and untruthful speech are guaranteed rights under our constitution, and for good reason.

This morning, following a Twitter thread, I had to click on a link that warned me the tweets I was about to reveal might be profane. That seemed like a fair exchange. The only issue was that I'd have to take Facebook's word for it.

Of course, hiding tweets behind a "protective" link may just be more tempting for people. I understand Twitter decided their similar attempts to label tweets as fake news just made people more likely to look at them. Still, I don't think that's necessarily a problem. People should probably know what's going around that isn't true. The problem I have is that someone hired by Facebook is making these decisions. Even at that, it's up to the reader to be discerning and check things out. You can neither legislate or dictate common sense - or truth. And if you're going to try to do that, then why is Fox News not censored?

Okay, rant over. For now.

Indeed, as Al Jazeera concisely put it, “Facebook hasn’t met Palestinian leaders to discuss their concern.”

And Palestinian leaders are no threat to Facebook's bank account.

FACEBOOK NOW SEEMS to be explicitly admitting that it also intends to follow the censorship orders of the U.S. government. Earlier this week, the company deleted the Facebook and Instagram accounts of Ramzan Kadyrov, the repressive, brutal, and authoritarian leader of the Chechen Republic.

[...]

A Facebook spokesperson told the New York Times that the company deleted these accounts not because Kadyrov is a mass murderer and tyrant, but that “Mr. Kadyrov’s accounts were deactivated because he had just been added to a United States sanctions list and that the company was legally obligated to act.”

[...]

As the Times notes, this rationale appears dubious or at least inconsistently applied: Others who are on the same sanctions list, such as Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, remain active on both Facebook and Instagram. But just consider the incredibly menacing implications of Facebook’s claims.

What this means is obvious: that the U.S. government — meaning, at the moment, the Trump administration — has the unilateral and unchecked power to force the removal of anyone it wants from Facebook and Instagram by simply including them on a sanctions list. Does anyone think this is a good outcome?

When this article appeared a few days ago, I passed it by for inclusion in a post (I didn't even read it), because who doesn't already know how much control the US wields over our communications? Finally, today, after seeing yet another post about how incredible and scary this development is, I decided to comment. Obviously, that last scary statement contradicts one just in the preceding paragraph. The government has the power to force the removal of any account by putting them on the sanctions list, but President Maduro, whose country is on the sanctions list, hasn't been removed. Come on, Glenn. I expect better from you.

What other countries might be on the sanctions list whose leader's account hasn't been removed?  All of them?  If there are others whose accounts have been removed, why aren't they mentioned in this article?  Too little information here.

Does Facebook’s policy of blocking people from its platform who are sanctioned apply to all governments? Obviously not. It goes without saying that if, say, Iran decided to impose sanctions on Chuck Schumer for his support of Trump’s policy of recognizing Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, Facebook would never delete the accounts of the Democratic Party Senate minority leader — just as Facebook would never delete the accounts of Israeli officials who incite violence against Palestinians or who are sanctioned by Palestinian officials.

Wow. I REALLY expect better than that. Glenn is one of the last holdouts from accusing Russia of working with the Trump campaign to get him elected, rightfully demanding actual proof and evidence (which I have finally come to believe has already been provided). And yet here he's deciding, free of evidence that Facebook would never delete accounts of Israeli or US reps. He may well be right, but he has no proof of that. No evidence. At least he's offering none.

Just last month, Russia announced retaliatory sanctions against various Canadian officials and executives, but needless to say, Facebook took no action to censor them or block their accounts.

Nor, as far as we know, has Russia threatened to block Facebook in that country if they don't.

I have very rarely taken issue with Glenn Greenwald, but this is one instance where I have to.

As is always true of censorship, there is one, and only one, principle driving all of this: power. Facebook will submit to and obey the censorship demands of governments and officials who actually wield power over it, while ignoring those who do not.

Now THAT's something that "goes without saying." And it's certainly not just true of Facebook.

Calls for state censorship may often be well-intentioned — a desire to protect marginalized groups from damaging “hate speech” — yet, predictably, they are far more often used against marginalized groups: to censor them rather than protect them. One need merely look at how hate speech laws are used in Europe, or on U.S. college campuses, to see that the censorship victims are often critics of European wars, or activists against Israeli occupation, or advocates for minority rights.

Indeed. Now we're back on the same track.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

I think that's a mistake.  Clarke is a beligerent blowhard and routinely says ignorant and ugly shit.  But now, he'll have a case for claiming that he's being unfairly treated, and he'll get even more attention.

Hell, I didn't know we had one

Our decline into a third world country is heading to completion

North Carolina leads the way.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 1/9:

UPDATE 1/19:

The Supreme Court has blocked a lower court's order requiring North Carolina's legislature to redraw the state's congressional district boundaries for this year's elections.

The justices appear to have split, 7-2, in deciding to put on hold the ruling that tossed out the state's map as "an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander" in favor of Republicans. The map will likely remain in effect for the 2018 midterm elections.

  Politico

Will we be in the era of democracy deconstruction until at least seven Supreme Court judges die?

Somebody woke up grumpy

Is that any way to start a new year?












"The great Iranian people" who aren't allowed into this country because they're nothing but terrorist Muslims.  Along with human rights, the wealth of America is being looted.  People thought they were going to get change here, and look what happened.

Only if your flight goes over the Bermuda Triangle.

That was a long vacation, wasn't it?  Didn't improve the mood, though.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 8:30
From the Pakistan foreign minister:

UPDATE 1/2/18:

Pakistan has summoned the US ambassador in a rare public rebuke after Donald Trump lashed out at Islamabad with threats to cut aid over “lies” about militancy.

Pakistan’s foreign office summoned David Hale on Monday to explain the US president’s comments, media said. A spokesperson for the US embassy in Islamabad confirmed that the meeting took place.

[...]

On Tuesday, Pakistan’s prime minister, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, will chair a cabinet meeting that will focus on Trump’s tweet, while on Wednesday the country’s top civilian and military chiefs will meet to discuss deteriorating US ties.

[...]

Pakistan’s foreign minister, Khawaja Asif, dismissed Trump’s comments as a political stunt borne out of frustration over US failures in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has been gaining territory and carrying out major attacks.

“He has tweeted against us [Pakistan] and Iran for his domestic consumption,” Asif told Geo TV on Monday. “He is again and again displacing his frustrations on Pakistan over failures in Afghanistan as they are trapped in a dead-end street in Afghanistan.”

He said Pakistan did not need US aid.

  Guardian

Which is true, and sadly, Trump seems beligerently unaware that all the countries he threatens with getting cut off from American aid can get it from Russia, Iran, or China.

A US national security council official on Monday said the White House did not plan to send $255m in aid to Pakistan “at this time” and said “the administration continues to review Pakistan’s level of cooperation”. In August, the administration said it was delaying the payment.

Im' pretty sure Trump is our nation's number one threat to national security.

FURTHER UPDATE 1/2/18: