Category Archives: Trump Administration

3 More Russian Locations in U.S. Shuttered

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Putin promises retaliation in growing diplomatic feud with US

Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to retaliate against the State Department’s latest rebuke of his policies, his spokesman warned.

“We regret the unconstructive stance taken by our counterparts in the United States and, of course, we cannot afford to leave unfriendly, and sometimes hostile steps towards us without retaliation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday, according to state-run media.

That statement suggests that the diplomatic feud will escalate following the State Department’s decision to close three Russian facilities in the United States. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s team justified that move as a response to Putin’s requirement that the United States cut hundreds of personnel operating in Russia. But the State Department called for an end to the tit-for-tat, saying that the two sides had reached “parity” in the fight.

Tillerson ordered the closure of Russia’s consulate general in San Francisco, as well as two other facilities in New York and Washington, D.C., respectively.

“While there will continue to be a disparity in the number of diplomatic and consular annexes, we have chosen to allow the Russian government to maintain some of its annexes in an effort to arrest the downward spiral of our relationship,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Thursday.

The State Department said it had implemented the Putin team’s order to remove hundreds of U.S. personnel from Russia. Putin issued that requirement in response to Congress passing legislation that sanctions Russia on three fronts: the cyberattacks against the Democratic party and state election systems in 2016; the invasion of Ukraine; and Russia’s support for Syrian President Bashar Assad.

“The United States hopes that, having moved toward the Russian Federation’s desire for parity, we can avoid further retaliatory actions by both sides and move forward to achieve the stated down of both of our presidents: improved relations between our two countries and increased cooperation on areas of mutual concern,” Nauert said.

Russian diplomats maintain that the United States is to blame for the strained ties between the former Cold War rivals. “By tradition we are for good-natured relations with the United States,” Peskov said. “Moreover, we believe that these relations must be advanced in the interests of peace and global stability and in the interests of settling crucial world and regional problems.”

*** Meanwhile, this Dmitry Peskov cat is well know to the Trump orbit and described below.

Moscow (CNN) Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed Wednesday he got an email from Michael Cohen, US President Donald Trump’s lawyer, asking for help moving a Moscow real estate deal forward, but said he did not respond and did not pass it to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Peskov was responding to a question from CNN on a conference call with reporters.
Cohen — who was executive vice president of the Trump Organization at the time he sent the email — said Monday that he had contacted the Kremlin for assistance in mid-January 2016 about building a Trump Tower in Moscow when the mogul was running for president, but denied that the project was related to Trump’s campaign. But the revelation appears to contradict Trump’s vehement denials of any such business connections to Russia in the past.
Cohen told CNN on Monday his message to Peskov was “an email that went unanswered that was solely regarding a real estate deal and nothing more.”
Peskov confirmed that his office had located a copy of the email, which said the development deal wasn’t moving forward and requested support.

 

Goodbye Columbus, History, the Arts and Math

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World history is ugly, but it is real and American history is no different. Learning about it and how it affects life today is a must, yet politics and special interest is interfering to the demise of culture and future generations.

Do you wonder why we still have CommonCore and actually what the Department of Education is doing? So do I. Take a look at the congressional committee title with education legislative responsibilities:

Committee on Education and the Workforce

No wonder there is limited education choice….

When math in public schools is being twisted in teaching methodology for social justice:

Initiative 3: Equity and Social Justice in Mathematics Education The Equity and Social Justice in Mathematics Education Initiative was established to promote, develop and support a just, equitable, and sustainable system of mathematics education that serves each and every child.

Why is this happening? Beyond political correctness and special interests, education systems are making judgments without parental input. Then local government officials take matters into the legislative realm.

A 2014 report by the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that an abysmal 18 percent of American high school kids were proficient in US history. When colleges such as Stanford decline to require Western Civilization classes or high schools propose changing their curriculum so that history is taught only from 1877 onward (this happened in North Carolina), it’s merely a blip in our news cycle.

A 2012 story in Perspectives on History magazine by University of North Carolina professor Bruce VanSledright found that 88 percent of elementary school teachers considered teaching history a low priority.

Los Angeles votes to rename Columbus Day ‘Indigenous Peoples’ Day’

The Los Angeles city council on Wednesday voted to rename Columbus Day “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

Over the years, many Native Americans groups and activists have decried the holiday as celebrating genocide, prompting numerous cities throughout the U.S. to change its name and emphasis. Columbus Day is celebrated nationally on the second Monday of October.

In Los Angeles, Italian-American groups voiced their opposition to changing the holiday, saying it would erase part of their heritage, the Los Angeles Times reported. Christopher Columbus was Italian.

South Dakota, as well as cities like Seattle, Albuquerque, and Denver, have already replaced the holiday with Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

The vote comes as New York has faced pressure to remove statues of Columbus in the wake of Charlottesville and the removal of Civil War statues. A beheaded statue of Columbus was found in Yonkers, N.Y., on Wednesday.

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. — “Gone With the Wind” will be gone from The Orpheum’s summer movie series, the theater’s board said Friday.

The Orpheum Theatre Group decided not to include the 1939 movie about a plantation in the Civil War-era South in its 2018 Summer Movie Series after feedback from patrons following the last screening Aug. 11.

“As an organization whose stated mission is to ‘entertain, educate and enlighten the communities it serves’, the Orpheum cannot show a film that is insensitive to a large segment of its local population,” the theater’s operators said in a statement.

Memphis’ population is about 64 percent African-American.

The historic theater in Downtown Memphis has shown the movie for decades, but this year’s event “generated numerous comments,” leading to the decision.

“While title selections for the series are typically made in the spring of each year, the Orpheum has made this determination early in response to specific inquiries from patrons,” the Orpheum group said.

The theater’s 2018 movie series will be announced in the spring and will contain classic films and more recent blockbusters.

World’s Wealthiest Saying No to Jared

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It could be that the Forbes list of the richest in the world is on the top of Kushner’s desk and others are working the phones. When payments are due in the billion dollar range comes due within months, panic sets in when there are no prospects to meet that demand.

Some of these foreign trips made by Kushner have dual purposes such that they are labeled and envoys where they are contrary to State Department diplomatic operations and Secretary of State Tillerson is working to terminate on the fly envoys that are not coordinated with the agency’s personnel.

‘Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser, wakes up each morning to a growing problem that will not go away. His family’s real estate business, Kushner Cos., owes hundreds of millions of dollars on a 41-story office building on Fifth Avenue. It has failed to secure foreign investors, despite an extensive search, and its resources are more limited than generally understood. As a result, the company faces significant challenges.

Over the past two years, executives and family members have sought substantial overseas investment from previously undisclosed places: South Korea’s sovereign-wealth fund, France’s richest man, Israeli banks and insurance companies, and exploratory talks with a Saudi developer, according to former and current executives. These were in addition to previously reported attempts to raise money in China and Qatar.

Jared Kushner
Photographer: Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg via Getty Images

The family, once one of the largest landlords on the East Coast, sold thousands of apartments to finance its purchase of the tower in 2007 and has borrowed extensively for other purchases. They are walking away from a Brooklyn hotel once considered central to their plans for an office hub. From other properties, they are extracting cash, including tens of millions in borrowed funds from the recently acquired former New York Times building. What’s more, their partner in the Fifth Avenue building, Vornado Realty Trust, headed by Steve Roth, has stood aside, allowing the Kushners to pursue financing on their own.

Kushner Cos. says it will prevail. Laurent Morali, the president, said the company has a variety of contingency plans for the building and its broader portfolio will allow it to sustain any setback. He said he is encouraged by the interest of several potential investors, but declined to name them.

“Reports that portray it as a distressed situation are just not accurate for the building or for the company,” Morali said in an interview on the 15th floor of the building, 666 Fifth Avenue.

But there are challenges all around. The mortgage on their tower is due in 18 months. This has led to concerns that Kushner could use—or has perhaps already used—his official position to prop up the family business despite having divested to close relatives his ownership in many projects to conform with government ethics requirements. Federal investigators are examining Kushner’s finances and business dealings, along with those of other Trump associates, as they probe possible collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. Kushner has already testified twice before closed congressional committees and denies mixing family business with his official role.

This article, which describes new details of the company’s troubled finances and its overseas fundraising efforts, is based on a review of thousands of pages of financial documents and interviews with more than two dozen executives, business partners, real estate agents, deal participants and analysts. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private deals. Some feared legal reprisals or other retaliation from one of the country’s most powerful families.

The portrait that emerges is that of a real estate company established by a pair of penniless Holocaust survivors, its extraordinary expansion by their children, the rise of a grandson to a top White House role and a big bet that has complicated its financial future.

It was 2006—the height of the real-estate market boom—when Kushner Cos. agreed to buy 666 Fifth Avenue for $1.8 billion, then a record for a Manhattan building. All of it was borrowed except for $50 million. The company still holds half of a $1.2 billion mortgage, on which it hasn’t paid a cent. The full amount is due in February 2019.

The strain has become increasingly evident across their holdings. One person familiar with the company’s finances describes the tower, with its low ceilings and outdated floor plan, as the Jenga puzzle piece that could set the empire teetering.

Continue the long read here with graphics to understand the names, the travels, this history and why Robert Mueller is investigating some of the connective tissue going beyond the Russian bank(s) and where some criminal activity is being investigated.’

Location of N Korea Missile Launch over Japan, What we Know

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Why no country shot it down?

In part: While the US and Japan have conducted ballistic missile defense exercises and both have Aegis-equipped ships capable of shooting down some ballistic missiles, it would be extremely difficult for the US or Japan to intercept a North Korean intermediate or intercontinental ballistic missile in flight over Japan toward a target such as Guam. The Aegis system is capable of intercepting shorter-range missiles in mid-course with the SM-3 missile, and it also provides “terminal phase” defense with the SM-2 missile closer to the ballistic missile’s target. But it’s uncertain whether either system would be successful against a “pop up” attack with an ICBM.

The SM-3 Block IIA has an operational range of about 1,350 miles. But range isn’t the issue as much as the speed required to intercept. If a North Korean missile were fired to an altitude of over 500 kilometers, success in a shoot-down would depend greatly on how quickly the missile was tracked and the timing of an interceptor launch. Based on the time/distance envelopes for SM-2 and SM-3 missile intercepts calculated from Joan Johnson-Freese (a professor at the Naval War College and a lecturer at Harvard University) and Ralph Savelsberg (an assistant professor at the Netherlands Defence Academy), an Aegis defender would only have a few minutes to get off a shot at an ICBM launch from North Korea. Aegis-equipped destroyers and cruisers would have to be dangerously close to the North Korean coast to get a chance to strike an ICBM in “boost” phase as it rose and could be vulnerable to North Korean submarines if an actual attack were planned. Read more here.

***

North Korea has taken steps in recent months to disguise their missile-related activities, including fueling rockets inside structures, outside of aerial view.

There are three basic ways the U.S. gathers most of its foreign intelligence: collecting information from human spies; intercepting electronic communications; and observing what’s happening on the ground, mainly with satellites.

The National Security Agency, which hacks computers and intercepts email, has had some success pulling bits and bytes out of North Korea, former officials say, but North Korea is much less forgiving than most of its targets. That’s because most of the country is not connected to the internet and few people have cellphones. To the extent that the regime communicates electronically, it has made increasing use of encryption, experts say.

“If you look at that satellite picture [of Asia] of the lights at night from the satellite, there is one dark area with no lights on, and that is North Korea,” Coats told Congress. “Their broadband is extremely limited. So using that as an access to collection — we get very limited results.” More here.

N. Korea must be met with stronger action: U.S. experts

WASHINGTON, Aug. 29 (Yonhap) — North Korea must be met with stronger action if it is to be stopped from triggering a catastrophe on the Korean Peninsula, U.S. experts said Tuesday.

The firing of an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan earlier in the day was a rare hostile act that increased the chances of a military confrontation in the volatile region.

The United States and South Korea must take decisive action to demonstrate that the regime in Pyongyang will not be allowed to get away with any more provocations, and China, they noted, will have to play a key role in that effort.

KCNA has released photos of the HS-12 launch that overflew Japan

“China has the power to increase the pressure on North Korea and must take steps towards doing so,” said Donald Manzullo, president of the Korea Economic Institute of America. “The longer China continues to refrain from using all of the leverage at its disposal to convince North Korea to return to talks, the more likely North Korea is to miscalculate.”

Beijing is Pyongyang’s only major ally and key benefactor. U.S. President Donald Trump and others have urged China to do more to rein in its wayward neighbor, but Beijing has refused to bear responsibility for the North Korean nuclear problem.

Bruce Bennett, a senior researcher at RAND Corp., said the latest launch could have resulted in part from a lack of action by the U.S. and South Korea against what was seen as a low-intensity provocation Saturday. North Korea launched three short-range ballistic missiles then.

“If the (U.S. and South Korea) fail to act seriously against (Tuesday’s) test, the North may feel that it can commit an even more serious provocation, while the exercises are ongoing, perhaps even another intercontinental ballistic missile test or a nuclear weapon test,” he said in an email.

Bennett was referring to the Ulchi Freedom Guardian military exercise currently under way between South Korea and the U.S. Analysts have said the back-to-back provocations were staged in response to the annual drills, which Pyongyang views as rehearsals for an invasion.

North Korea may also believe it has China’s backing because Beijing recently proposed the allies cancel their drills in exchange for a halt to North Korea’s missile and nuclear testing, he noted.

Robert Manning, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said the U.N. Security Council is likely to adopt tougher sanctions against Pyongyang.

“There may be other steps Trump is considering to take unilaterally, whether cyber or kinetic. The key question is: How far is China prepared to go?” he said in a separate email. “But even if effective, sanctions will take time to have an impact — nine to 12 to 15 months. The danger is that this cycle of tensions rises to the point where the U.S. seeks more immediate results. That could be catastrophic.”

Media preview

The North Korean single stage Hwasong-12 is a liquid fueled IRBM of estimated 4500 km range.

The Hwasong-2 appears to be a stretched improved version of the Hwasong-10 IRBM and appears to be single staged.

The missile was first shown in the 2017 military parade and has conducted its first successful flight after three failures in May 2017 from a site near Kuosong, likely Panghyon Air Base, on a lofted short range trajectory of 787 km range and 2111 km apogee height, which hints to a maximum range of about 4500 km.

For more information regarding the DPRK airfields and what is underground at those airfields across the country, go here.

Sater, Cohen, Trump and Moscow

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Felix Sater pled guilty, 2002.

Page 4, item A.

  Photo

Forbes: Felix Sater is not a name that has come up much during the presidential campaign. That he has a colorful past is an understatement: The Russian-born Sater served a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a margarita glass during a bar fight, pleaded guilty to racketeering as part of a mafia-driven “pump-and-dump” stock fraud and then escaped jail time by becoming a highly valued government informant.

He was also an important figure at Bayrock, a development company and key Trump real estate partner during the 2000s, notably with the Trump SoHo hotel-condominium in New York City, and has said under oath that he represented Trump in Russia and subsequently billed himself as a senior Trump advisor, with an office in Trump Tower.

Seems now some emails are leaking and have been seen by the New York Times:

TheHill: A business associate of President Trump in 2015 told Trump’s longtime lawyer that he would enlist Russian President Vladimir Putin in a proposed real estate deal that he boasted would help Trump win the presidency, according to emails obtained by The New York Times.

In a series of emails to Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, the business associate, Felix Sater, argued that building a Trump Tower in Moscow would benefit the businessman’s candidacy.

“I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater wrote on Nov. 3, 2015, almost exactly a year before Election Day. “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”

The Justice Department is now investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Moscow, under the authority of special counsel Robert Mueller, as part of the federal investigation into Russian interference in the election.

There is no evidence in the emails that Sater, a Russian immigrant who was then acting as a broker for the Trump Organization, delivered on his promises, according to The Times. The plan for a Trump Tower in Moscow never materialized, and negotiations ended before Trump’s business ties to Russia had become a major campaign issue.

Cohen suggested that the emails were braggadocio.

“He has sometimes used colorful language and has been prone to ‘salesmanship,'” Cohen said in a statement to The Times. “I ultimately determined that the proposal was not feasible and never agreed to make a trip to Russia.”

Sater also claimed to have helped organize a 2006 trip to Moscow for Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son Donald Trump Jr.

“I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin’s private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin,” Sater wrote.

Ivanka Trump told the Times in a statement that she took “a brief tour of Red Square and the Kremlin but I have never met President Vladimir Putin.” Alan Garten, the general counsel of the Trump Organization, said that Sater only happened to be in Moscow at the same time as the two Trump children.

“There was no accompanying them to Moscow,” Garten said.

Trump has long downplayed his relationship to Sater, suggesting under oath in 2013 that he would not recognize him if they were sitting in the same room.

Sater served time in jail after stabbing a man in the face with the stem of a margarita glass during a 1991 bar fight; in 1998, he pleaded guilty to his role in a Mafia-orchestrated stock fraud scheme.

But his sentencing was delayed for years in the latter case while he cooperated with federal law enforcement on other investigations, according to The Washington Post. During that time, he worked in a real estate firm with offices in Trump Tower and in 2010 went to work for Trump directly, carrying a Trump Organization card that identified him as a “senior advisor to Donald Trump.”

After Sater made an August 2016 visit to Trump Tower, Garten told Politico that Sater was not advising the Trump Organization and that the Trump Organization was not seeking business in Russia.

President Trump has repeatedly said that he has no business ties to Russia. In May, the White House released a letter from two of his lawyers saying that his income tax returns do not show income from or debt owed to Russian sources — with the exception of $95 million paid by a Russian billionaire for a Trump-owned estate in Florida and $12.2 million in payments related to holding the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013.

The Trump Organization on Monday turned over emails to the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian interference in the election and whether any Trump associates were involved.