John McCain to Foreign Allies: Despite Trump's Actions, America Is Still Committed to You by r4816 in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The world faces many threats and problems that we must work together to solve, the misanthropic among Russia's special services being one of them.

People in different countries might have their differences, but I'm confident that just about all of us are committed to the continued survival and prosperity of the human race. We should not lose sight of this priority.

Trump prepares withdrawal from South Korea trade deal: report by oldbrokenrecord in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776 8 points9 points  (0 children)

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/29/us-south-korea-trade-deal-trumps-drive-against-horrible-korus-may-break-down.html

President Donald Trump during an April interview with the Washington Post called the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement, known as Korus, a "horrible deal" that has "destroyed" his country, and he threatened to terminate it.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer had sought a special meeting with South Korea on the deal in a bid to address the administration's concerns about the U.S. goods trade deficit with the North Asian country.

That meeting ended last week with the USTR issuing a statement reiterating concerns that the U.S. goods deficit with South Korea had more than doubled from the 2012 implementation of the deal through 2016.

The USTR didn't respond to CNBC's request for comment.

...The U.S. goods trade deficit with South Korea has certainly risen since the deal took effect. It's gone from $13.2 billion in 2011, the last full year before implementation, to $27.6 billion in 2016, according to USTR figures. But it's neither clear that Korus is to blame for that change, nor does that figure include the services component of trade, in which the U.S. has a surplus with South Korea.

...Deborah Elms, executive director at the Asian Trade Centre, pointed to one big problem with the USTR's claim that Korus was causing a goods trade deficit: The sectors that were responsible for it, which were electronics and autos.

"Korus didn't touch electronics. It didn't touch electronics because electronics were already tariff free," she said in an interview last week, noting that was due to an existing agreement with the World Trade Organization.

Additionally, "if we have a trade deficit in autos, it's really hard to blame Korus for that because the timeline for Korus hasn't done anything to autos yet," she said.

Others also noted that it would be difficult for the USTR to pin specific issues on the deal.

"The trade agreement came into effect five years ago and under normal kind of conditions you would not be making a decision at this early stage of the success of the FTA," Joshua Meltzer, senior fellow in global economy and development at think tank Brookings Institution, told CNBC's "Street Signs" last week. "A lot of the provisions are phased in over a number of years and are only coming into effect now."

Meltzer also noted that the rise in the goods trade deficit might be simply macroeconomic, with South Korea entering a recession shortly after the deal was completed in 2011.

"Korea naturally was going to be importing less than the U.S. and the U.S. was growing quite strongly and so it was sucking in more imports from Korea," he said. "It's not clear, fundamentally, what is the problem with the trade agreement and certainly what could be done to address the bilateral deficit."

Others noted that it wasn't entirely clear who was being hurt by the deal.

"Our companies tell us that it is a good deal as written," Tami Overby, the senior vice president for Asia at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told CNBC last week.

She noted that around 95 percent of the tariffs U.S. companies had faced on products going into South Korea had been reduced to zero, and once the deal was fully implemented, that would go to as high as 99 percent.

"Those are huge tax cuts for American companies," she said.

Overby added that terminating the deal would put U.S. firms at a "very significant disadvantage," particularly the agriculture industry, as South Korea has aggressively negotiated trade deals with competitors including the European Union, Canada, Australia, India and China.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/02/trump-plans-withdrawal-from-south-korea-trade-deal/

President Trump has instructed advisers to prepare a withdrawal from the United States’ free-trade agreement with South Korea, several people close to the process said, a move that would stoke economic tensions with the U.S. ally at a time both countries confront a crisis over North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

...One reason top White House advisers are trying to stop Trump from withdrawing from the South Korea free trade agreement is because they do not want to isolate the government in Seoul at a time when North Korea has become increasingly adversarial with its missile program, testing nuclear weapons and firing missiles over Japan in a way that has alarmed the international community.

Why does he keep doing things like this?

Free trade, fair trade, keep the U.S. competitive. Is that so hard?

Instead he keeps trying to economically isolate the U.S. and antagonize our allies. If the U.S. pulls out of all our free trade agreements while the rest of the world keeps trading, the biggest loser is the U.S.

I ran Congress’ 9/11 investigation. The intelligence committees today can’t handle Russia. by Usawasfun in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776 5 points6 points  (0 children)

This is a great article, and Bob Graham can back up his recommendations with experience. People should read them.

That said, just about all of what he said should be obvious to anybody in Congress who takes investigating Russia's election interference seriously. Which raises the question: why doesn't Congress take investigating Russia's election interference seriously? Are they going to slow-roll an investigation into the worst attack on our elections in U.S. history right through the 2018 elections? The 2020 elections? Americans shouldn't tolerate a government that sabotages their own national security.

To be blunt: anybody who's been keeping pace can guess why Congress, particularly the Senate Intelligence Committee, might not want to investigate Russian meddling. If Russia has thousands of spies in the United States trying to infiltrate policy-making circles, and Russia keeps interfering in our elections, well, what kind of people does that put in Congress?

‘Art of the Deal’ co-author: Mueller will find Trump is worth much 'less than he says' by goyabean in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Perhaps, the deal-maker Mr. Trump ran into financial trouble, but some friends in Russia's intelligence services found a "mutually beneficial" way to help him out. But traces of such a deal would appear in Donald Trump's tax returns. According to their records, the Soviets were interested in Mr. Trump and his tax returns (as well as his being "pressured" to run for President in 1988).

But this is a problem, since if Trump's tax returns showed illicit activity, and somebody else has them, he could be blackmailed.

It does look like somebody else has a copy of Donald Trump's tax returns:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/03/insider/the-time-i-found-donald-trumps-tax-records-in-my-mailbox.html

The Time I Found Donald Trump’s Tax Records in My Mailbox

By SUSANNE CRAIG OCT. 2, 2016

My colleagues make fun of my old-fashioned devotion to my mailbox.

It’s about 30 feet from my desk — among all the other third-floor employees’ mailboxes — and I check it constantly, always hoping a tipster will have sent me some revealing letter or secret document.

In Metro, we get a lot of junk mail and are regularly flooded with correspondence from prisoners in New York’s penitentiaries.

But Friday, Sept. 23, was different.

I walked to my mailbox and spotted a manila envelope, postmarked New York, NY, with a return address of The Trump Organization. My heart skipped a beat.

I have been on the hunt for Donald J. Trump’s tax returns. Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has broken with decades-long tradition and refused to make his returns public. I have written extensively about his finances, but like almost every other reporter, I was eager to see his actual returns.

The envelope looked legitimate. I opened it, anxiously, and was astonished.

Inside were what appeared to be pages from Mr. Trump’s 1995 tax records, containing detailed figures that revealed his tax strategies. Almost immediately, I walked over to the desk of David Barstow — a three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and my teammate in the quest for Mr. Trump’s tax returns.

...People were fascinated not only by the story, but also with how we had gotten it. Why did the tipster send the documents to me, of all the reporters out there? Probably because I wrote an exhaustive examination of Mr. Trump’s $650 million of debt in August that drew millions of readers.

The whole experience has left me eager to share a bit of advice with my fellow reporters: Check your mailboxes. Especially nowadays, when people are worried that anything sent by email will leave forensic fingerprints, “snail mail” is a great way to communicate with us anonymously.

We can only guess who:

http://www.mediaite.com/online/roger-stone-thinks-there-might-be-a-snitch-in-the-trump-campaign/

Roger Stone Thinks There Might Be a Snitch in the Trump Campaign October 4th, 2016

Trump ally Roger Stone suspects that the candidate’s campaign is out of joint, and someone in the tent might be responsible for leaking Trump’s 1995 tax returns.

Speaking Tuesday on Boston Herald Radio, Stone, the former Trump campaign advisor, explained his theories about the provenance of the leaked returns, which ended up in mailboxes belonging to reporters at the New York Times and New York Daily News.

Stone said the leak might have come from “Somebody who worked at The Trump Organization, perhaps. Or perhaps a former employee. But I would just be speculating.”

http://nypost.com/1999/11/10/trump-bares-naked-ambition-prez-hopeful-stuns-reform-party-with-raunchy-stern-talk/

TRUMP BARES NAKED AMBITION – PREZ HOPEFUL STUNS REFORM PARTY WITH RAUNCHY STERN TALK November 10, 1999

...Trump’s political adviser, Roger Stone, said it’s unlikely Trump would release his tax returns – as many presidential candidates do in the spirit of full disclosure – to verify Trump’s worth.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/roger-stone-thinks-there-might-be-a-snitch-in-the-trump-campaign/

It should be noted that Stone is an enthusiastic advocate of exposing stolen documents when they come from the other side. He trumpeted the much hyped Wikileaks revelations

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/823212055322853382

Trump Counselor Kellyanne Conway stated today that Trump will not release his tax returns. Send them to: https://wikileaks.org/#submit so we can. 8:53 AM - 22 Jan 2017

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/10/politics/roger-stone-wikileaks-russia/index.html

As Russia probe looms, Roger Stone touts relationship to WikiLeaks

As questions swirl around possible connections to President Donald Trump's campaign and Russia, his friend, Roger Stone, has retraced the line between himself and WikiLeaks.

Over the weekend, the longtime Trump confidant tweeted that he had a "back channel" to WikiLeaks during the presidential campaign -- only to later delete it.

...Last weekend's Twitter flare-up raised questions anew about Stone, who worked for the Trump campaign in 2015 and claims to have a connection to WikiLeaks and its leader, Julian Assange.

..."I do have a back-channel communication with Assange because we have a good mutual friend," he said in the October interview.

..."I have no Russian clients. I have no Russian contacts, I have no Russian money. I have no Russian influences. I do like Russian vodka," Stone told Time in an interview published early February.

Stone has known Trump for decades, dating back to when he said the two connected through attorney Roy Cohn -- who gained notoriety as an ally of Sen. Joseph McCarthy -- before establishing a business relationship. He was initially part of Trump's campaign before the two split ways amid disputed circumstances in August 2015. Later on in the campaign, Stone went on to start a super PAC in support of Trump as well as keep a line of communication open.

https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2017/03/14/cbs-evening-news-trump-ally-roger-stone-contacted-russian-hacker-least-16-times-during-2016-campaign/215681

CBS Evening News: Trump Ally Roger Stone Contacted Russian Hacker "At Least 16 Times During The 2016 Campaign"

Roger Stone: "That's Called Networking"

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/21/us/roger-stone-donald-trump-russia.html

Roger Stone, the ‘Trickster’ on Trump’s Side, Is Under F.B.I. Scrutiny

By MAGGIE HABERMAN MARCH 21, 2017

In President Trump’s oft-changing world order, Roger J. Stone Jr., the onetime political consultant and full-time provocateur, has been one of the few constants — a loyalist and self-proclaimed “dirty trickster” who nurtured the dream of a presidential run by the developer-turned-television-star for 30 years.

...Mr. Stone, 64, is the best known of the Trump associates under scrutiny as part of an F.B.I. investigation into Russian interference in the election.

It really looks like Russia's intelligence services have a copy of Donald Trump's tax returns. And that means they can blackmail him with his tax returns:

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/03/politics/mueller-investigation-russia-trump-one-year-financial-ties/index.html

In some cases, the FBI was pursuing others who did business with the Trump organization, including alleged mobsters who controlled key contractors used by many real estate developers in New York during the 1980s. The flow of Russian money in real estate -- and concerns that some buyers were making the purchases to illegally launder money -- had also drawn some attention by US authorities to the Trump business.

The international real estate business is a part of the global economy where foreigners can still use cash with fewer questions asked about the sources of money. Terrorism financing concerns long ago put more stringent rules on banking and other businesses. But the rules are looser in the business of buying and selling high-end real estate, US officials say.

Investigators are looking both at whether financial laws were broken and whether there are any dealings that could put the President or his associates in a compromising position.

"There's always been a concern about his exposure to blackmail in his financial dealings," says the person briefed on the investigation.

Which brings us to the mess we're in now. All you had to do was release your tax returns, Donald...

‘Art of the Deal’ co-author: Mueller will find Trump is worth much 'less than he says' by goyabean in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776 4 points5 points  (0 children)

...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_mafia#1992.E2.80.932000:_Growth_and_internationalization

Russian mafia

...1992–2000: Growth and internationalization

When the USSR collapsed and a free market economy emerged, organized criminal groups began to take over Russia's economy, with many ex-KGB soldiers and veterans of the Afghan war offering their skills to the crime bosses.

http://articles.latimes.com/1988-02-16/news/mn-42975_1_russian-mafia

'Russian Mafia' : KGB Steers Criminals to U.S. Careers February 16, 1988

WASHINGTON — During his years of imprisonment, Soviet dissident Anatoly Sharansky chanced to meet a Russian criminal, a professional con artist who was pursuing a bizarre goal: Despite the rigors of prison life, he was diligently studying English in hopes of emigrating to America--to ply his trade as a swindler.

America, he declared, was a land of easy pickings. Three of his friends were already there.

"But how will you get there?" asked the astonished Sharansky, who knew first-hand how hard it is for Russians to get permission to leave their homeland. "You aren't Jewish."

"The KGB will help me," the confident swindler replied. The Soviet secret police had helped his friends get to the United States by obtaining exit visas to Israel, he said, and he expected the same.

Practical Reasons

Sharansky's encounter, described in a recent interview, reflects growing evidence that the KGB has systematically helped criminals leave the Soviet Union. And U.S. officials say the Kremlin appears to have, from its point of view, two eminently practical reasons for doing so:

  • First, to be rid of the criminals--much as President Fidel Castro did when he opened Cuban jails during the Mariel boatlift a decade ago.

  • Second, to create a network in the West for their agents.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-21/trump-russia-and-those-shadowy-sater-deals-at-bayrock

...About a year after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Sater joined Bayrock, a company that marketed itself as a property developer and had opened Manhattan offices on the 24th floor of a well-known building at 725 Fifth Avenue: Trump Tower.

In late 2002, Sater phoned Kriss and invited him to consult at Bayrock, bragging about a deep-pocketed investor, Tevfik Arif, who was partnering with him in search of bigger deals.

Arif, born in Kazakhstan, was a former Soviet official who had relocated to Turkey to make his fortune. He ran several upscale, seaside hotels there that catered almost exclusively to Russians, according to Kriss

...Bayrock was initially funded, in part, with a $10 million investment transferred to the firm by Arif's brother in Russia, who, according to Kriss's lawsuit, was able to tap into the cash reserves of a Kazakh chromium refinery.

...Bayrock never seemed to be short of money, however. According to Kriss’s lawsuit, the team running the little development firm in Trump Tower could locate funds "month after month, for two years, in fact more frequently, whenever Bayrock ran out of cash." If times got tight, Bayrock's owners would "magically show up with a wire from 'somewhere' just large enough to keep the company going."

...It was Sater who initially developed the relationship with Trump, according to Kriss and court records from Trump's lawsuit against me. Sater had made the acquaintance of three Trump Organization executives who then introduced him to their boss. When the Bayrock team met Trump in 2002, the future president was enduring a long stretch in the financial wilderness, having narrowly escaped personal bankruptcy in the early 1990s.

He eventually emerged from that mess as a pariah among big banks. He was also a determined survivor and tireless self-promoter and he parlayed those skills into recreating himself as a branding machine and golf course developer in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Kriss says that it was Arif and Sater who pitched the future president on the idea of launching an international chain of Trump-branded, mixed-use hotels and condominiums. And Bayrock got to Trump at a time when his “brand” could help get a little extra attention for a condo project, but didn’t amount to much more than that.

“Trump was trying to build his brand and Bayrock was trying to market it,” Kriss recalls. “It wasn’t clear who needed each other more. This was before the show, remember.”

The “show,” of course, was “The Apprentice” ...a sensation that vaulted Trump into reality TV stardom. In the real world, Trump's casinos were faltering. But on reality TV, Trump posed as a successful leader and dealmaker who embodied a certain kind of entrepreneurial flair and over-the-top billionairedom — an impression that stuck with tens of millions of TV viewers.

The popularity of "The Apprentice" also gave the Bayrock-Trump partnership added zing.

“That put Bayrock in a great position once the show debuted,” Kriss says. “The show did it for Trump, man. Nobody was interested in licensing his name before that.”

The hook at Bayrock, for Trump, was an 18 percent equity stake in what became the Trump Soho hotel, a steady stream of management fees on all Bayrock projects and the ability to plaster his name on properties without having to invest a single dollar of his own.

It’s not clear how carefully Trump vetted his Bayrock partners. But his lack of concern about their backgrounds — and the potential risk to his own reputation from dealing with them — was part of a pattern. In Atlantic City, he had partnered with men with organized crime ties. Later, he and his children struck deals in Brazil and Azerbaijan with partners who had murky backgrounds or unusual legal entanglements.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/trump-dealt-with-a-series-of-people-who-had-mob-ties/ar-AAinc5y

In 1981, a young and ambitious Donald Trump sat down with federal agents and discussed his calculation in entering the mob-infested world of Atlantic City casinos.

He acknowledged it might tarnish the reputation his family built through traditional real-estate development in New York. He was aware a business partner in the New Jersey beach town knew people who might be unsavory. A Federal Bureau of Investigation agent advised Mr. Trump there were easier ways he could invest, said an FBI memo recounting the discussion.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-21/trump-russia-and-those-shadowy-sater-deals-at-bayrock

While Trump’s kids were involved in the back-and-forth with Bayrock, it was Trump himself who always had the final say.

“Donald was always in charge,” says Kriss. “Donald had to agree to every term of every deal and had to sign off on everything. Nothing happened unless he said it was okay to do it. Even if Donald Jr., shook your hand on a deal, he came back downstairs to renegotiate if his father told him to.”

The Trumps, Kriss says, saw Sater "frequently" and valued the relationship because “Felix demonstrated that he was loyal to them.” He says that at one point Sater was meeting with the future president in his Trump Tower office multiple times a week. Sater, according to a later court deposition, said that his business conversations with Trump in that office were wide-ranging and frequent — “on a constant basis."

..."Have you previously associated with people you knew were members of organized crime?" one of my lawyers asked.

"No, I haven't," Trump responded.

..."I don't know him very well," Trump added, saying that he hadn't conversed very often with Sater. "If he were sitting in the room right now I really wouldn't know what he looked like."

Trump also said that he didn't think that questions about Sater’s background meant that he should have ended his business partnership with him: “Somebody said that he is in the Mafia. What am I going to do?”

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/03/28/trump-business-past-ties-russian-mobsters-organized-crime/98321252/

To expand his real estate developments over the years, Donald Trump, his company and partners repeatedly turned to wealthy Russians and oligarchs from former Soviet republics — several allegedly connected to organized crime, according to a USA TODAY review of court cases, government and legal documents and an interview with a former federal prosecutor.

...Trump told reporters in February: "I have no dealings with Russia. I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia. I have no loans with Russia at all."

Yet in 2013, after Trump addressed potential investors in Moscow, he bragged to Real Estate Weekly about his access to Russia's rich and powerful. “I have a great relationship with many Russians, and almost all of the oligarchs were in the room,” Trump said, referring to Russians who made fortunes when former Soviet state enterprises were sold to private investors.

...However, the deals, and the large number of Russians who have bought condos in Trump buildings, raise questions about the secrecy he has maintained around his real estate empire. Trump is the first president in 40 years to refuse to turn over his tax returns, which could shed light on his business dealings.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-lawyers-detail-immaterial-earnings-russian-sources/story?id=47372423

President Trump’s tax returns for the past decade show little income from Russian sources and no debt owed to Russian lenders, his lawyers said.

..."Over the years, it is likely that [The Trump Organization] or third-party entities engaged in ordinary course sales of goods or services to Russians or Russian entities, such as sales / rentals / fees for condominiums, hotel rooms, rounds of golf, books or Trump-licensed products (e.g., ties, mattresses, wines, etc.) that could have produced income attributable to Russian sources,” according to the letter.

"The amounts are immaterial," it added.

‘Art of the Deal’ co-author: Mueller will find Trump is worth much 'less than he says' by goyabean in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776 3 points4 points  (0 children)

...

http://money.howstuffworks.com/money-laundering2.htm

How Money Laundering Works

Investing in legitimate businesses Launderers sometimes place dirty money in otherwise legitimate businesses to clean it. They may use large businesses like brokerage firms or casinos that deal in so much money it's easy for the dirty stuff to blend in

...The variety of tools available to launderers makes this a difficult crime to stop, but authorities do catch the bad guys every now and then.

https://taxcontroversy.foxrothschild.com/2017/02/crackdown-money-laundering-luxury-real-estate-sector-extended-another-six-months/

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) announced today that its aggressive efforts to combat money laundering in the luxury real estate market have been extended for an additional six months. Confirming his agency’s concerns about illicit funds flowing through the U.S. real estate industry, FinCEN Acting Director Jamal El-Hindi said today that this initiative is “producing valuable data that is assisting law enforcement and is serving to inform our future efforts to address money laundering in the real estate sector.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-21/trump-russia-and-those-shadowy-sater-deals-at-bayrock

...the Justice Department inquiry led by Mueller now has added flavors. The Post noted that the investigation also includes "suspicious financial activity" involving "Russian operatives." The New York Times was more specific in its account, saying that Mueller is looking at whether Trump associates laundered financial payoffs from Russian officials by channeling them through offshore accounts.

Trump has repeatedly labeled Comey's and Mueller's investigations "witch hunts," and his lawyers have said that the last decade of his tax returns (which the president has declined to release) would show that he had no income or loans from Russian sources. In May, Trump told NBC that he has no property or investments in Russia. "I am not involved in Russia," he said.

But that doesn't address national security and other problems that might arise for the president if Russia is involved in Trump, either through potentially compromising U.S. business relationships or through funds that flowed into his wallet years ago. In that context, a troubling history of Trump's dealings with Russians exists outside of Russia: in a dormant real-estate development firm, the Bayrock Group, which once operated just two floors beneath the president's own office in Trump Tower.

Bayrock partnered with the future president and his two eldest children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, on a series of real-estate deals between 2002 and about 2011, the most prominent being the troubled Trump Soho hotel and condominium in Manhattan.

 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/03/28/trump-business-past-ties-russian-mobsters-organized-crime/98321252/

Felix Sater

Sater spent a year in prison for stabbing a man in the face with a broken margarita glass at the Rio Grande restaurant and bar in New York in 1991.

A federal criminal complaint in New York in 1998 accused Sater of money laundering and stock manipulation but was kept secret by prosecutors because the Russian immigrant was working as a CIA informant, according to numerous published reports.

...Kriss, a former finance director for the developers, accused Sater, Lauria and Bayrock partners in a 2010 federal lawsuit of diverting millions of dollars to shell companies to avoid U.S. taxes. He also claimed they kept secret Sater's criminal past and his guilty plea to racketeering charges while “he was aiding the prosecution of his Mafia and Russian organized crime confederates.”

...Sater's criminal past came to light in 2007. That year, Trump testified in a deposition in a defamation lawsuit that he didn't think Sater was a principal at Bayrock and that he was considering not doing business with him anymore. But Sater subsequently traveled to Russia carrying business cards identifying him as a senior adviser to Trump with a Trump Organization phone number and email address ...Trump said in another deposition that he didn't think Sater was connected to the Mafia, that Sater mostly dealt "with my company, not me" and that "if he was sitting in the room right now I really wouldn't know what he looked like."

Sater told The Washington Post last year that he met one-on-one numerous times with Trump.

...Trump's lawyer, in interviews with The New York Times and the Post, downplayed the relationship between the two men, saying Trump met and spoke with lots of people but his relationship was with Bayrock, not Sater.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-21/trump-russia-and-those-shadowy-sater-deals-at-bayrock

...Trump testified under oath in a 2007 deposition that Bayrock brought Russian investors to his Trump Tower office to discuss deals in Moscow, and said he was pondering investing there.

"It's ridiculous that I wouldn't be investing in Russia," Trump said in that deposition. "Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment.

http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-trump-lawyers-push-back-against-russia-1494604065-htmlstory.html

"I have no investments in Russia, none whatsoever," Trump said Thursday in an interview with NBC News.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-21/trump-russia-and-those-shadowy-sater-deals-at-bayrock

...In a series of interviews and a lawsuit, a former Bayrock insider, Jody Kriss, claims that he eventually departed from the firm because he became convinced that Bayrock was actually a front for money laundering.

...But Kriss's assertion that Bayrock was a criminal operation during the years it partnered with Trump has been deemed plausible enough to earn him a court victory: In December, a federal judge in New York said Kriss's lawsuit against Bayrock, which he first filed nine years ago, could proceed as a racketeering case.

...When Sater emerged from prison 15 months later, he found his way back into trouble. With a group that included Lauria (who admits to having had ties to organized crime figures and grew up in New York as a close friend of a prominent Mafia boss), Sater opened an investment firm on the penthouse floor of 40 Wall Street

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/07/business/40-wall-street-is-sold-to-trump.html

40 Wall Street Is Sold to Trump Published: December 7, 1995

The real estate developer Donald J. Trump completed his purchase of 40 Wall Street yesterday, buying the distinguished 70-story office building, across the street from the New York Stock Exchange, for a price estimated at less than $8 million.

Mr. Trump in July had disclosed an agreement to buy the building, which contains 1.1 million square feet of space, from Kinson Properties of Hong Kong. Kinson paid $8 million for it in 1993.

While representatives of Mr. Trump declined to disclose the price he had paid, published reports said it was less than $8 million.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-21/trump-russia-and-those-shadowy-sater-deals-at-bayrock

From there, according to federal prosecutors, Sater and his team set about laundering money for the mob and fleecing about $40 million from unwitting and largely elderly investors, a number of whom were Holocaust survivors.

By the time law enforcement authorities eventually caught on to the 40 Wall Street operation, Sater had fled to Russia. Lauria visited him there.

Sater "was always hustling and scheming, and his contacts in Russia were the same kind of contacts he had in the United States," Lauria wrote in a 2003 memoir, "The Scorpion and the Frog." "The difference was that in Russia his crooked contacts were links between Russian organized crime, the Russian military, the KGB, and operatives who played both ways, or sometimes three ways."

‘Art of the Deal’ co-author: Mueller will find Trump is worth much 'less than he says' by goyabean in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776 2 points3 points  (0 children)

...

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/10/25/nyregion/crowning-the-comeback-king.html

Crowning the Comeback King

October 25, 1995

Though there are still four years to go in the 90's, business and government leaders in New York honored Donald J. Trump yesterday for pulling off what they called "the comeback of the decade."

Mr. Trump, the developer who came to epitomize opulent wealth during the 80's before tumbling into deep financial trouble, has managed to erase much of his debt and is moving ahead with major projects at a time other developers are idling.

...After the collapse of the real estate market of the 1980's, Mr. Trump's company was left holding some $8.8 billion in debt, causing his personal net worth to drop to a low of about $1 billion in the red by 1991.

But since then, his fortunes have changed. He continues to pursue the trademark trophy-style projects he is known for, such as a hotel and condominium project on the southwest corner of Central Park that is expected to open by late 1996.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/week-transcript-donald-trump-vice-president-joe-biden/story?id=41020870

STEPHANOPOULOS: You said that...

TRUMP: And we'll do better and yet we'll have a better relationship with Russia.

And having a good relationship -- maybe. and having a good relationship with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You said you have no investments in Russia.

But do you owe any money to Russian individuals and institutions?

TRUMP: No. Not.

STEPHANOPOULOS: No?

TRUMP: The primary thing I did what Russia -- I bought a house in Palm Beach at a bankruptcy. It was a bankrupt, you know, person. I bought it from the banks. I bought it for about $40 million. I sold it for $100 million to a Russian.

That was probably five years ago. And that was primarily it.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You partner now with...

TRUMP: Now, well I sell...

STEPHANOPOULOS: (INAUDIBLE) Grand...

TRUMP: Will I sell -- many years ago. I don't think they're Russian. I think there were other people, but there were various partners.

Will I sell condos to Russians on occasion?

Probably.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/03/28/trump-business-past-ties-russian-mobsters-organized-crime/98321252/

Viktor Khrapunov

Khrapunov, a former Kazakhstan energy minister and mayor of Almaty, owns three units in the Trump SoHo through shell companies, according to lawyers for the Kazakh city who filed a 2014 federal lawsuit against him in Los Angeles. Almaty's lawyers alleged in the lawsuit that Khrapunov used real estate in California, New York, Europe and the Middle East to hide hundreds of millions of dollars looted by selling state-owned assets.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/03/28/trump-business-past-ties-russian-mobsters-organized-crime/98321252/

Peter Kiritchenko

Kiritchenko, a Ukrainian businessman who owned two condominiums with his daughter at Trump International Beach Resort in Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., was named in a money-laundering scheme involving former Ukraine prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko.

According to federal prosecutors in San Francisco in 2009, Kiritchenko helped Lazarenko launder millions of dollars obtained through extortion by purchasing luxury real estate in the United States and other countries.

http://www.nytimes.com/1998/06/29/nyregion/businessman-of-mystery-arts-patron-dogged-by-fbi-claim-of-russian-mob-ties.html

Businessman of Mystery; Arts Patron Dogged by F.B.I. Claim of Russian Mob Ties

...In an affidavit in support of a wiretap application in the Ivankov investigation in 1995, Lester R. McNulty, an F.B.I. agent in a squad formed to combat Russian organized crime, quoted German law enforcement officials and unnamed informers as stating that Mr. Komarov was laundering money for Mr. Ivankov and that Mr. Ivankov and two associates owned three-quarters of the Moscow Rolls-Royce dealership as a front to launder criminal proceeds.

...After two visits to scout business opportunities in New York and Los Angeles in 1990, he said, he came for good in 1992, leaving his wife and their grown son, Roman, in Moscow. With a nest egg of $300,000 and a $150,000 advance payment against future clothing shipments to trading partners in Russia, he said, he bought a $400,000 co-op apartment on the 31st floor of the Trump Plaza on Third Avenue and 61st Street, and later bought a $450,000 apartment in Miami.

http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2013/04/feds_russian_mob_ran_celebrity.html

Feds: Russian mob ran celebrity poker games; Trump Tower apartment raided, 34 charged

...The money-laundering investigation led to arrests Tuesday in New York, Los Angeles, Miami and elsewhere around the country. There also were FBI raids at a $6 million apartment in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue and a prestigious Madison Avenue art gallery owned by two of the defendants.

...Prosecutors alleged proceeds were laundered through shell companies in Cyprus and in the United States by a criminal enterprise with strong ties to Russia and Ukraine.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Harris Fischman told a U.S. magistrate judge in Manhattan that Vadim Trincher, 52, directed much of the international racketeering enterprise from his $5 million apartment at Trump Tower.

"From his apartment he oversaw what must have been the world's largest sports book," Fischman said in a successful argument to have Trincher held for trial without bail. "He catered to millionaires and billionaires."

Trincher's apartment is located directly below one owned by Donald Trump, authorities said.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/03/28/trump-business-past-ties-russian-mobsters-organized-crime/98321252/

Anatoly Golubchik, Vadim Trincher and Michael Sall

Three Trump condo owners — Golubchik, Trincher and Sall — were convicted in 2013 in federal court in New York of participating in an illegal high-stakes sports betting ring for a Russian-American organized crime group. The betting ring operated illegal gambling websites and catered almost exclusively to wealthy oligarchs from the former Soviet Union, according to prosecutors.

Golubchik and Sall own Trump condos in Sunny Isles Beach. And professional poker player Trincher owns a condo in Trump Tower in New York City.

Golubchik and Trincher were principal leaders of the enterprise, which included money laundering and extortion, prosecutors charged in the indictment.

The godfather of the operation was identified as Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, who federal prosecutors said was a Vor, “a powerful figure in former Soviet Union organized crime” who never left Russia because he was under indictment in the U.S. for his role in allegedly bribing officials at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Sall helped launder tens of millions of dollars from the gambling enterprise, prosecutors said when they announced that all three condo owners pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Sall pleaded guilty to interstate travel in aid of an unlawful activity — illegal gambling.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/22/politics/trump-taj-mahal/index.html

Trump's Taj Mahal casino broke anti-money laundering rules in the 1990s

It was the preferred spot for Russian mobsters to gamble

...The Trump Taj Mahal casino broke anti-money laundering rules 106 times in its first year and a half of operation in the early 1990s, according to the IRS in a 1998 settlement agreement.

It's a bit of forgotten history that's buried in federal records held by an investigative unit of the Treasury Department, records that congressional committees investigating Trump's ties to Russia have obtained access to, CNN has learned.

The casino repeatedly failed to properly report gamblers who cashed out $10,000 or more in a single day, the government said.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/03/28/trump-business-past-ties-russian-mobsters-organized-crime/98321252/

Money laundering was an issue for Trump's Taj Mahal Casino in Atlantic City, which was fined $10 million in 2015 for failing to report suspicious transactions. Federal rules are designed to protect the U.S. financial system from being used as a safe haven for dirty money and transnational crimes, Jennifer Shasky Calvery, then-director of the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen), said at the time. It was the largest penalty the agency ever levied against a casino since reporting requirements began in 2003, according to The Wall Street Journal.

"The Trump Organization admitted that it failed to implement and maintain an effective (anti-money laundering) program; failed to report suspicious transactions; failed to properly file required currency transaction reports; and failed to keep appropriate records as required by (the Bank Secrecy Act)," FinCen said in a statement.

‘Art of the Deal’ co-author: Mueller will find Trump is worth much 'less than he says' by goyabean in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The co-author of President Trump's 1987 best-selling book, "The Art of the Deal," says special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation will find that the president is worth a lot less than he claims.

One thing Mueller will likely find: Trump is worth VASTLY less than he says. More debt, less cash. He's desperate not to have that exposed.

Hmmm.

Is he sure that's what President Trump is worried about?

Because it looks like there might be something fishy in Donald Trump's tax returns:

https://apnews.com/38bd4abbb6d54133ac865c45a74acb43/secret-police-file-trump-sure-presidential-win-1996

Secret police file: Trump sure of presidential win -- in 1996 Jan. 12, 2017

PRAGUE (AP) — Nearly 30 years ago, Donald Trump was confident he would win the U.S. presidential election — as an independent in 1996, according to recently uncovered files from Czechoslovakia’s Communist-era secret police.

...Trump’s first wife was born Ivana Zelnickova in 1949 in the Czechoslovak city of Gottwaldov, the former city of Zlin that just had been renamed by the Communists, who took over the country in 1948. She married Trump, her second husband, in 1977. As she kept traveling home across the Iron Curtain on a regular basis, Ivana became a tempting target for the powerful, deeply feared Czechoslovak secret police agency known as the StB.

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~oaces/conference/papers/Pavel_Zacek.pdf

Shortly after August 1968, even some StB chiefs, who had been formerly involved in talks with top KGB officials, found themselves on the other side of the barricade, which resulted in their internment, dismissal from the political police, and even in subsequent imprisonment of some of them. However, their successors established fully-fledged cooperation with the KGB as early as fourteen days after the occupation, and this cooperation continued until the fall of the communist regime in Czechoslovakia at the close of 1989.

https://apnews.com/38bd4abbb6d54133ac865c45a74acb43/secret-police-file-trump-sure-presidential-win-1996

...A year before the 1989 collapse of communism in many parts of Europe, details about Ivana Trump’s 1988 visit back to her homeland were recorded in a classified police report. The Oct. 22, 1988 report claimed that Trump refused to run for president in 1988 — despite alleged pressure to do so — because he felt, at 42, he was too young. But the secret report said he intended to run in the 1996 U.S. presidential race as an independent, when he would be 50.

“Even though it looks like a utopia, D. TRUMP is confident he will succeed,” the police report said, based on information from an unspecified source who talked to Ivana Trump’s father, Milos Zelnicek, about her visit.

http://www.businessinsider.com/czech-secret-agents-spied-on-donald-trump-he-is-tax-exempt-for-30-years-2016-12

...Ivana’s father was registered as a confidant of the StB...

https://apnews.com/38bd4abbb6d54133ac865c45a74acb43/secret-police-file-trump-sure-presidential-win-1996

It was unclear where the alleged “pressure” was coming from.

...the secret police reports contain detailed information about Ivana Trump’s trips to Czechoslovakia, including dates, telephone numbers she called, people she met, what they discussed and other details about her life with her husband.

...The 1988 secret police report in particular suggested that Ivana Trump was nervous, “which is not common for her” after her father picked her up at Prague’s international airport after traveling in from Paris, where she visited a fashion house. Trump did not join her on this trip.

Only after she and her father arrived in her hometown did Ivana Trump reveal that the U.S. ambassador to Prague at the time, Julian Martin Niemczyk, twice invited her to visit the embassy, which she declined to accept, according to a police source that met with her father on Oct. 11, 1988. Ivana Trump allegedly said she believed U.S. embassy staffers were following her. The fact that she was supposed to meet with a Czechoslovak security official during the trip added to her nervousness, the police file stated.

She didn’t give any details about that meeting, the report said. But it added that she said “as a wife of D. TRUMP she receives constant attention because he is pressured to run for the office of U.S. president ... and any mistake she would make could have immense consequences for him.”

Born in 1946, Trump planned to make history in 1996 as an independent candidate despite the fact that both the Democrats and the Republicans were allegedly wooing him to join them, the report said. A note at the end suggested that Ivana Trump’s trips home could be possibly used to reveal agents among the U.S. embassy’s staffers.

...After Trump’s presidential win in November, Ivana Trump expressed interest in becoming the new U.S. ambassador to Prague — a possibility heartily welcomed by Czech President Milos Zeman.

http://www.businessinsider.com/czech-secret-agents-spied-on-donald-trump-he-is-tax-exempt-for-30-years-2016-12

In June 1977, an informant with the cover name “Lubos” reported that Ivana had married a man in Austria in 1968 and had worked there at a petrol station. After that, the informant claimed, she emigrated to Canada and married the American Donald Trump.

The spy writes that Trump’s company is absolutely safe, economically speaking, since it receives commissions from the state. One other juicy detail: “Another advantage is the personal relationship with the American President and the fact that he is completely tax-exempt for the next 30 years.”

 

http://chipjacobs.com/articles/business-defence/the-full-employment-act-for-spies/

The Full-Employment Act For Spies

July 9, 1990

...The same global changes that have accelerated prospects for world peace have spurred espionage opportunities between former adversaries.

“The biggest problem is all the openness that comes from peace breaking out,” the FBI’s Lawler said. “One might say `We are all friends and don’t worry about spying,’ when in fact additional information allows them to spy even more. Added to that are the defense layoffs here. The Soviets could try to get to a disgruntled employee or somebody that needs money.

...“In Southern California, we have seen the Soviets use three espionage methods,” explained the FBI’s Lawler. “They collect information from trade shows and conventions and peruse annual reports and brochures. Sometimes they’ll wait for a greedy American to contact them, like the did with Boyce and Bell, or they’ll study organization charts and look for people with weakenesses or financial troubles.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1992/11/29/trump-went-broke-but-stayed-on-top/e1685555-1de7-400c-99a8-9cd9c0bca9fe/

TRUMP WENT BROKE, BUT STAYED ON TOP

November 29, 1992

One day in 1990, as Donald Trump tells it, he and model Marla Maples were strolling along New York's Fifth Avenue when they passed a beggar.

"You see that man? Right now he's worth $900 million more than me. ... Right now I'm worth minus $900 million," Trump told Maples.

After a decade of profligate borrowing, Trump lacked the cash to make his loan payments. Although he owned hotels, skyscrapers, casinos and an airline, his debts exceeded the value of his properties by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Trump's lenders could have forced him into personal bankruptcy and stripped him of almost everything. But that didn't happen.

Instead, the bankers and investors to whom Trump owed money made a series of deals that left him wealthy. They let him keep some properties and took control of others, and they reduced Trump's personal debt by about $750 million, more than four-fifths of the total.

They didn't do it out of charity. Rather, the lenders were reluctant to confront Trump in bankruptcy court, where they would face years of delay and massive legal expenses. In the end, lenders said, they feared they would recover less money in bankruptcy than they could get by striking compromises with Trump.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2016/11/01/the-art-of-the-dodge-trumps-916-million-of-net-operating-losses/

Today, The New York Times dissected the $916 million of Net Operating Losses (NOLs) that Donald Trump claimed on his 1995 tax return, which The Times disclosed last month. Basically, Trump borrowed, and lost, a large amount of money in a series of failed ventures, mainly casinos. While the losses were mostly borne by his creditors, Trump took tax deductions for large amounts of interest, depreciation, and operating expenses. As a result, he was potentially able to avoid paying federal income taxes for nearly two decades.

We have no evidence that Trump broke any laws but, at a minimum, he seems to have aggressively stretched the law to avoid reporting taxable income of hundreds of millions of dollars from restructured loans.

...In the early 1990s, Trump was in deep financial trouble and pressed his lenders to restructure his debt. But, based on documents filed in bankruptcy court, Trump did not report the income from restructuring his large public borrowings. He excluded the income despite reservations expressed by his own lawyers. We do not know whether the IRS ever challenged his position.

http://www.oregonlive.com/today/index.ssf/2017/05/donald_trump_closely_tied_to_r.html

Henry says that because of Trump's 1990s bankruptcies, which were mostly related to his involvement in the casino business, "none of the major New York banks would lend to him. Trump was pretty much unfinance-able."

For Trump, Opioids Are Still Not a Crisis by sleepy_batman1776 in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/police-find-fentanyl-worth-millions-in-raid-near-upper-west-side-central-park/

Police find fentanyl worth millions in New York's Upper West Side

..."Twenty pounds of fentanyl in its purest form is potent enough to kill half the population of New York City," Hunt said. "So it's not good to have in a residential building, obviously. You know, if somebody spills it coming out of the building, it could pose a danger to the public."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/national/fentanyl-overdoses/

In 24 of the nation’s largest cities and the counties that surround them, fentanyl-related overdose deaths increased nearly 600 percent from 2014 to 2016, according to county health departments nationwide. According to overdose records in those cities reviewed by The Washington Post, there were 582 fatal overdoses linked to fentanyl in 2014, a number that soared to 3,946 last year. Officials estimate there will be a much higher number of fatal fentanyl-related overdoses in 2017.

...Philadelphia’s Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said the city is averaging 100 overdose deaths per month in 2017, noting that fentanyl “has thrown gasoline onto a fire that was already raging.”

“This is a health crisis that’s worse than we’ve ever seen,” Farley said. “This will kill more people than the AIDS epidemic. You’d have to go back to the influenza pandemic of 1918 if you even wanted to start making comparisons.”

...Miami’s fentanyl problem came into stark view in July, when authorities released preliminary toxicology results showing that 10-year-old Alton Banks died in June from a combination of heroin and fentanyl. The state attorney there raised the possibility that Alton came into contact with the drugs at a community pool or on his walk home through a neighborhood known to be an illicit drug marketplace. Because any contact with fentanyl can be deadly, some police departments send doctors with police on raids so they can treat officers if necessary. An officer in East Liverpool, Ohio, said he accidentally overdosed in May after a traffic stop when he used his hand to brush powdered fentanyl off his uniform.

...While many of those overdosing on fentanyl specifically sought to use the drug, health providers and police officials say overdoses also occur among users who don’t know the powerful opioid was cut into their heroin — or even their cocaine.

Amber Snyder, 29, recalled a change in her father’s behavior during the last months of his life. Ray Snyder’s speech was slow and slurred, he wanted to sleep all day, his memory was shaky. Her father had been a substance abuser for as long as she could remember: alcohol, crack cocaine, heroin. But something this time was different.

The last night she saw him, she and her parents had ordered takeout from a Chicago Mediterranean restaurant, their Friday tradition. After dinner, Ray Snyder retreated to the basement, where he would often go to use drugs. He was found dead several hours later.

An autopsy report from the Cook County medical examiner’s office revealed the truth to her: Ray Snyder, 46, died on Jan. 17, 2016, with cocaine and possibly heroin in his system. Also present: fentanyl.

...A hospital in New Haven, Conn., treated 12 overdoses, three of them fatal, in just an eight-hour period in June 2016 among people who thought they were using cocaine they purchased on the city’s streets. The white powder turned out to be fentanyl. Overdose records in Philadelphia show that at least 162 people died there last year from a combination of fentanyl and cocaine, one such death almost every other day. In New York, which recorded more than 600 fentanyl-related fatal overdoses last year, at least 115 were due to cocaine and fentanyl combinations.

...“Fentanyl ending up in a lot of the cocaine supply and reaching relatively naive users would be a super dangerous thing,” Raymond said.

...Cocaine users often aren’t aware they could encounter a dangerous opioid when they use.

...Tyrone Tavasci kicked his 18-year-old daughter Emma out of his Orange County, Calif., home after finding out that she was using drugs, sending the teen to live with her boyfriend.

“I just said I was scared for her and didn’t want to see her going down the same path I went down,” said Tavasci, 45, who works in recovery services after his own battle with substance use. Just a month later, his daughter was begging him for help, and he got her into a rehabilitation center.

It didn’t work. Six months later, on July 22, 2016, the teenager was pronounced dead, her autopsy citing a cocktail of substances including cocaine, chemical traces of marijuana, two prescription drugs and fentanyl.

“She was aware of the risk of opiates,” he said. “She very much had an ‘I’m indestructible’ point of view, and when it comes to that stuff, it doesn’t discriminate.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/americas-heroin-epidemic/opioid-crisis-awful-arithmetic-america-s-overdoses-may-have-gotten-n790361

Opioid Crisis: The Awful Arithmetic of America’s Overdoses May Have Gotten Worse

...Ruhm estimated how many of those deaths could be blamed on heroin and how many on opioids.

His results? The national rate of fatal opioid overdoses jumped in 2014 from 9 per 100,000 people to 11.2 — and rate of fatal heroin overdoses climbed form 3.3 per 100,00 to 4.

Based on Ruhm’s research, the drug problem in Pennsylvania is a lot worse than the CDC figures indicate.

The Keystone state was ranked 32nd by the CDC for opioid deaths for 2014, with 8.5 per 100,000. But Ruhm concluded the Keystone State actually has the seventh highest rate of opioid deaths that year with 17.8 per 100,000. And, based on Ruhm’s calculations, it went from being the state with the 20th highest fatal heroin overdose rate to fourth.

https://www.statnews.com/2017/06/27/opioid-deaths-forecast/

There are now nearly 100 deaths a day from opioids, a swath of destruction that runs from tony New England suburbs to the farm country of California, from the beach towns of Florida to the Appalachian foothills.

In the worst-case scenario put forth by STAT’s expert panel, that toll could spike to 250 deaths a day, if potent synthetic opioids like fentanyl and carfentanil continue to spread rapidly and the waits for treatment continue to stretch weeks in hard-hit states like West Virginia and New Hampshire.

...Even the more middle-of-the-road forecasts suggest that by 2027, the annual U.S. death toll from opioids alone will likely surpass the worst year of gun deaths on record, and may top the worst year of AIDS deaths at the peak of that epidemic in the 1990s, when nearly 50,000 people were dying each year. The average toll across all 10 forecasts: nearly 500,000 deaths over the next decade.

http://trib.com/opinion/columns/micek-no-action-on-opioid-epidemic/article_c6301c24-9cc2-541a-a136-cfb061702436.html

Recently, at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., President Donald Trump looked solemnly into the camera and declared that America’s opioid epidemic was a “national emergency” and a “serious problem the likes of which we’ve never seen.”

“The opioid crisis is an emergency, and I’m saying officially, right now, it is an emergency,” Trump said, adding, “We’re going to draw it up and we’re going to make it a national emergency.”

Weeks after that headline-grabbing declaration, Trump’s words remain just that: words.

They're handing out poison. They're giving it to kids, to people who don't know any better. Does he want them to die?

For Trump, Opioids Are Still Not a Crisis by sleepy_batman1776 in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

http://time.com/4921620/trump-opioid-epidemic-emergency/

During his recent “working vacation,” amidst a whirlwind of controversial and divisive statements, President Donald Trump made one statement that should have been a unifying one. Speaking at his New Jersey golf course on August 10, he said: “The opioid crisis is an emergency. And I'm saying officially right now it is an emergency. It's a national emergency.”

Unfortunately, the President has failed to act with the speed and force required by a national emergency that claims 142 lives each day. The chaotic start to the Trump Administration has left unfulfilled many of his campaign promises, including his pledge that the government will “not only stop the drugs from pouring in, but we will help all of those people so seriously addicted get the assistance they need to unchain themselves.” Also left unused for now are the broad powers of the federal government to address this epidemic.

It’s not as if the President is lacking for solutions to this problem. In July, Trump received the interim findings of a presidential commission he created to examine federal resources to fight opioids and the availability of treatment services. Yet, so far, the Administration has failed to prepare the proper paperwork for a formal emergency declaration, nor has it explained what resources or authority would come with a declaration.

...The Trump Administration also has pushed policies that would exacerbate the opioid problem.

The President has contradicted the recommendations of his own opioid commission by supporting proposals that would make it more difficult to obtain drug treatment. The Trump-backed bill to repeal Obamacare would have slashed almost $800 billion from Medicaid, which Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown called “the number one tool we have in the fight against opioids.” Last year, Ohio spent $939 million to fight substance abuse addiction, of which 70% was covered by Medicaid. In Pennsylvania, Medicaid helped provide drug or alcohol addiction services to 124,000 people.

To make matters worse, the Trump Administration initially considered eliminating the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which coordinates federal drug activities, including Trump’s own opioid commission. Following a bipartisan outcry from Congress, the Administration backed off this idea, proposing instead to slash $374 million from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, which funds critical prevention and treatment programs.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/ondcp/commission-interim-report.pdf

The first and most urgent recommendation of this Commission is direct and completely within your control. Declare a national emergency under either the Public Health Service Act or the Stafford Act. With approximately 142 Americans dying every day, America is enduring a death toll equal to September 11th every three weeks. After September 11th, our President and our nation banded together to use every tool at our disposal to prevent any further American deaths. Your declaration would empower your cabinet to take bold steps and would force Congress to focus on funding and empowering the Executive Branch even further to deal with this loss of life.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/03/upshot/opioid-drug-overdose-epidemic.html

How bad is it?

It’s the deadliest drug crisis in American history.

Drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for Americans under 50, and deaths are rising faster than ever, primarily because of opioids.

Overdoses killed more people last year than guns or car accidents, and are doing so at a pace faster than the H.I.V. epidemic at its peak. In 2015, roughly 2 percent of deaths — one in 50 — in the United States were drug-related.

Overdoses are merely the most visible and easily counted symptom of the problem. Over two million Americans are estimated to have a problem with opioids. According to the latest survey data, over 97 million people took prescription painkillers in 2015; of these, 12 million did so without being directed by a doctor.

...

So is this crisis abut prescription painkillers or heroin?

Both.

The crisis has its roots in the overprescription of opioid painkillers, but since 2011 overdose deaths from prescription opioids have leveled off. Deaths from heroin and fentanyl, on the other hand, are rising fast. In several states where the drug crisis is particularly severe, including Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, fentanyl is now involved in over half of all overdose fatalities.

While heroin and fentanyl are the primary killers now, experts agree that the epidemic will not stop without halting the flow of prescription opioids that got people hooked in the first place.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/opioid-crisis-ohio-lawmakers-first-responders-overdose-calls/

The opioid crisis sweeping the country is putting a growing financial and emotional strain on many communities. More than 4,000 people died from unintentional drug overdoses last year in Ohio alone.

Many coroners in the state say the death toll will be higher this year.

CBS News correspondent Tony Dokoupil visited Middletown, Ohio, where the sheriff is refusing to allow deputies to carry the opioid antidote naloxone because of safety concerns.

According to one estimate, opioids could kill nearly half a million people over the next decade. That's like losing the entire population of Atlanta.

Middletown has already seen more overdose calls this year than in all of 2016. CBS News got a first-hand look at the problem overwhelming the city, prompting some to propose extreme solutions.

Dokoupil was along for the ride as first responders in Middletown made their way to a fifth overdose call in just over an hour.

"It seems that, you know, the dealer may have made his rounds," EMS Capt. David Von Bargen said. "And various people are startin' to fall out now.

On this call, he saw a woman turning blue on the ground outside her friend's house. Medics worked quickly and were able to save her -- at least for now.

"It's breakin' my heart," said Adonia Martin, a friend of the patient. "She just, they just told me she just overdosed two nights ago. I mean, how many times -- how many more times is she gonna, not gonna make it?"

Calls like this have risen dramatically in recent months. Last year, Middletown EMS made 532 runs for opioid overdoses. This year, they've already had more than 600 runs through June. And they're using more naloxone to counter the effects of stronger synthetic drugs.

City leaders say they've surpassed the $11,000 they spent on the treatment's last year, and are on pace to spend more than $100,000 this year.

"My issue is that we're gonna run out of money," Middletown City Councilman Dan Picard said.

https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/college-game-plan/opioid-crisis-how-america-s-colleges-are-reacting-epidemic-n797696

Opioid abuse has skyrocketed in the United States, killing more than 30,000 Americans between 2002 and 2015, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. At highest risk are young adults between the ages of 18 and 25.

The overdose rate among teens has doubled between 1999 and 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2015 alone, there were 772 deaths among those aged 15 to 19.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/opioid-crisis-tennessee-judge-neonatal-abstinence-syndrome-birth-control-inmate/

America's opioid crisis is expanding to a new class of victims—unborn children.

Infants are being born with symptoms of withdrawal, also known as Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, or NAS. In the last decade, states like Tennessee have seen a ten-fold rise in the number of babies born with NAS.

Mueller teams up with IRS in Russia probe: report by taeppa in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776 15 points16 points  (0 children)

http://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-mueller-enlists-the-irs-for-his-trump-russia-investigation

Special counsel Bob Mueller has teamed up with the IRS. According to sources familiar with his investigation into alleged Russian election interference, his probe has enlisted the help of agents from the IRS’ Criminal Investigations unit.

This unit—known as CI—is one of the federal government’s most tight-knit, specialized, and secretive investigative entities. Its 2,500 agents focus exclusively on financial crime, including tax evasion and money laundering. A former colleague of Mueller’s said he always liked working with IRS’ special agents, especially when he was a U.S. Attorney.

And it goes without saying that the IRS has access to Trump’s tax returns—documents that the president has long resisted releasing to the public.

It does sound like it.

Comey drafted Clinton Exoneration before Finishing Investigation by Jadehelm522 in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Former FBI Director James Comey drafted a statement exonerating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for running her government emails through a private email server before completing the investigation, according to two Republican senators.

Comey prepared the draft exoneration for Clinton before conducting interviews with top Clinton aides who were offered immunity for their cooperation, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley and Sen. Lindsey Graham said Thursday in a joint statement, citing transcripts of interviews with former Comey aides obtained by the Senate judiciary committee.

...The transcripts released to the Senate judiciary committee come from interviews of FBI aides to Comey, conducted as part of a personnel investigation of him by the Office of Special Counsel (which is unrelated to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.)

In one exchange from the redacted transcripts, an unidentified FBI aide says that Comey first wrote a draft of the July statement in May 2016.

"There were many iterations, at some point, there were many iterations of the draft that circulated," the unidentified aide said.

There were a lot of weird things going on with Comey. For one, he didn't review Clinton's public statements before making his announcement, even though those could be used to show intent (which the law didn't require anyway):

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1607/07/ath.01.html

MEADOWS: All right.

So let me in the last little portion of this, in your three and a half-hour interview on Saturday, did she contradict some of these public statements in private? Because you said she didn’t lie to the FBI, but it’s apparent that she lied to the American people. So did she change her statements in that sworn testimony with you last Saturday?

COMEY: I haven’t gone through that to parse that…

...WALKER: ...can you help me understand why didn’t it rise to your investigation or someone bringing that to your knowledge as far as saying this is a problem, here she is, again, Secretary Clinton lying under oath specifically about our investigation?

COMEY: We out of respect for the legislative branch being a separate branch, we do not commence investigations that focus on activities before Congress without Congress asking us...

...CHAFFETZ: You did not look at testimony that Hillary Clinton gave in the United State Congress, both the House and the Senate.

...Did you review and look at those transcripts as to the intent of your recommendation.

COMEY: I’m sure my folks did. I did not.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1607/07/ath.01.html

GOWDY: False exculpatory statements, they are used for what?

COMEY: Either for the — a substantive prosecution or for evidence of intent in a criminal prosecution.

GOWDY: Exactly. Intent and consciousness of guilt, right? Is that right?

COMEY: Right.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1607/07/ath.01.html

BUCK: And there is no doubt about those two elements. Now I don’t know whether the next element is one element or two, but it talks about knowingly removed such materials without authority and with the intent to retain such material at an unauthorized location.

So I’m going to treat those as two separate parts of the intent element. First of all, do you see the word “willfully” anywhere in this statute?

COMEY: I don’t.

BUCK: And that would indicate to you that there is a lower threshold for intent?

COMEY: No, it wouldn’t.

BUCK: Why?

COMEY: Because we often — as I understand, the Justice Department’s practice and judicial practice will impute to any criminal statute at that level with a knowingly also requirement that you know that you’re involved in criminal activity of some sort. A general mens rea requirement.

He didn't meet with all of his team either:

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1607/07/ath.01.html

MICA: ...But all of the agents, did they meet with you and then is that the group that said that we all vote to not recommend prosecution?

COMEY: I did not meet with all of the agents. I’ve met with — I guess I’ve — I’ve met with all of them…

Comey's handling of the Clinton case made the election much more polarizing, as many voters felt she was a criminal who was allowed to escape justice without a trial. It played into the Trump and Sander's campaign rhetoric of a "rigged system," rhetoric you can also find in Russian propaganda.

Comey's decisions also helped Trump get elected, including his decision not to indict on shaky grounds, his subsequent release of FBI records on Clinton, and his fateful October letter that raised the specter of the email investigation in the final days of the campaign. It can also be argued that if Comey had decided to indict, we would have been more likely to see Clinton drop-out of the race, and a more capable challenger to Trump in her place.

The results of this investigation should be interesting. Comey reminds me of former CIA director William Colby:

https://books.google.com/books?id=oM8u2198DcsC&pg=PT144

On the other hand, water-cooler gossip at the agency held that the new director himself might be a Soviet agent planted into the intelligence community's heart at its very inception. To some people in the agency, Colby's performances before Congress were at best designed to cripple the intelligence community. At worst, as hallway murmurings attested, Colby's testimony was tantamount to treason.

2,000 rescued from cars, homes in Houston; 6 drown in van swept away by flood by sleepy_batman1776 in news

[–]sleepy_batman1776[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Rita#Mass_evacuation

...Evacuation deaths

As an estimated 2.5 – 3.7 million people evacuated the Texas coastline, a significant heat wave affected the region. The combination of severe gridlock and excessive heat led to between 90 and 118 deaths even before the storm arrived. Reports from the Houston Chronicle indicated 107 evacuation-related fatalities. Texas Representative Garnet Coleman criticized the downplay of the deaths in the evacuation and questioned whether the storm would be deadlier than the preparations. According to local officials, the traffic reached a point where residents felt safer riding out the storm at home rather than being stuck in traffic when Rita struck. Many evacuees periodically turned off their air conditioning to reduce fuel consumption as well as drank less water to limit the number of "restroom stops." According to a post-storm study, which reported 90 evacuation-related deaths, nine people perished solely as a result of hyperthermia. However, it was suspected that most of the 67 deaths attributed to heat stress were a combination of hyperthermia and chronic health conditions. In addition to the heat-related deaths, 23 nursing home evacuees were killed after a bus caught fire on Interstate 45 near Wilmer.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Abbott-advises-Houstonians-to-evacuate-local-11959607.php

Ed Emmett, the Harris County judge, said Friday afternoon that the area will likely miss the dangerous winds and storm surge. Instead, this will be an extreme rain event with severe flooding. But that's only life-threatening if residents venture into high water outside.

"The safest thing is to stay where you are and ride out the storm," Emmett said.

"We don't anticipate any kind of massive evacuation," he added, saying that residents should not drive if they're not told to evacuate because it would clog roadways for those who do need to leave their homes, including a few towns along Galveston Bay.

Mayor Sylvester Turner also cautioned against evacuations.

"There are a number of people who are in Hurricane Harvey's direct path, and evacuation orders have been given to them," Turner said. But for the Houston area, "This is a rainmaker for us. There's no need for people to be thinking about putting themselves in greater danger."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/08/27/harvey-is-causing-epic-catastrophic-flooding-in-houston-why-wasnt-the-city-evacuated/

Emmett, Harris County’s chief executive, echoed Turner’s thoughts Sunday, telling reporters there was “absolutely no reason” to evacuate the city before the storm.

“You cannot put, in the city of Houston, 2.3 million people on the road. … That is dangerous,” the judge said, according to CNN. “If you think the situation right now is bad — you give an order to evacuate, you create a nightmare.”

And during a record breaking flood, one expert said, inside a car is one of the most dangerous places to be, which complicates the decision to evacuate.

“People disproportionately die in cars from floods, so evacuation is not as straightforward a call as seems,” Marshall Shepherd, a program director in atmospheric sciences at the University of Georgia, tweeted Sunday.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-texas-flooding-rain-houston-austin-20150526-story.html

Even in flood-prone Houston, 11 inches of rain catches many unprepared

...Abbott, who traveled to Houston on Tuesday after touring flooded areas of central Texas by air on Monday, has declared disasters in 40 counties, including Harris County, which includes Houston.

At a briefing, Abbott said family members of one of his staffers were swept away during the “tsunami-style rise” of the Blanco River and remained missing.

“As far as flooding is concerned, this ranks right up there with Allison,” said Abbott, referring to Tropical Storm Allison, which caused 22 deaths in the Houston region in 2001.

At least 750 flooded cars were towed to city impound lots.

Two of the dead were found in their cars, while the other two were washed into Brays Bayou.

A day before the Harvery hit, he called for a mass evacuation of Houston ("think of your life first"). But Texans surely remember that last time Houston evacuated this way, millions were stuck on the road for days, and 108 people died. And Abbot knew what flooding from even 11 inches of rain can do when you're trapped in a vehicle.

So what was Abbot thinking? Did he want people to drown in their cars?

http://i.imgur.com/z4hgEBF.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/YhG1KZp.jpg

2,000 rescued from cars, homes in Houston; 6 drown in van swept away by flood by sleepy_batman1776 in news

[–]sleepy_batman1776[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

HOUSTON — Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo said his officers have received 6,000 emergency calls and rescued 2,000 people trapped in cars and homes by flooding in the past day by relentless rain from Tropical Storm Harvey. Houston news outlets are reporting that a family of six died Sunday when their van was swept away by floodwaters.

Their deaths bring the storm's death toll to at least eight so far.

The family was attempting to escape flooding in the Greens Bayou area of Houston, KHOU-TV reported, when their van entered water and was swept off by the current. The driver crawled out and told the children inside to escape through the back door. They could not get it open. The driver survived by hanging onto a tree limb, but the six people inside died. They were a husband and wife, ages 84 and 81, and four great-grandchildren: a 16-year-old girl, 14-year-old boy, 8-year-old boy, and 6-year-old girl.

This is awful. It's can be really dangerous to be in a car with this kind of flooding. Which is why I'm puzzled by this:

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/texas/article/Abbott-advises-Houstonians-to-evacuate-local-11959607.php

AUSTIN — Amid a long day preparing for Hurricane Harvey, Houston's elected leaders spent Friday afternoon countering an unexpected message from Gov. Greg Abbott.

"Even if an evacuation order has not been issued by your local official, if you are in areas between Corpus Christi and Houston ... you need to strongly consider evacuating," Abbott said mid-day Friday in a basement bunker at the state emergency operations center in Austin.

"If I were living in the Houston region, as I once did, I would decide to head to areas north of there," he added. "Think of your life first."

"A lot of people are going to go a long time without basic necessities," he said, warning of catastrophic and record-breaking floods. "If you have the ability to evacuate and go someplace else for a little while, that would be good."

Abbott's off-the-cuff advice came despite local leaders' repeated messages that residents will be more safe hunkering down at home.

Francisco Sanchez, spokesman for the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, tweeted soon after the governor's comments, "Local officials know best. Houston has no evacuation order. In Harris County: very limited to select communities. LOCAL LEADERS KNOW BEST."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Rita#Mass_evacuation

Just three weeks after Hurricane Katrina devastated the northern Gulf Coast, the threat of yet another major hurricane prompted mass evacuations in coastal Texas. An estimated 2.5 – 3.7 million people fled prior to Rita's landfall, making it one of the largest evacuations in United States' history.

Officials in Galveston County (which includes the city of Galveston), which was devastated by the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, ordered mandatory evacuations, effective September 21 at 6 p.m., in a staggered sequence. Officials designated geographical zones in the area to facilitate an orderly evacuation. People were scheduled to leave at different times over a 24-hour period depending on the zone in which the people were located. The scheduled times were set well in advance of the storm's possible landfall later in the week, but not soon enough to ensure that all residents could evacuate safely in advance of the storm.

...Officials of Harris County hoped that the designation of zones A, B, and C would help prevent bottlenecks in traffic leaving the area similar to those seen at New Orleans prior to Katrina and Hurricane Dennis earlier that year. Also, people in certain zones were to be forced to go to certain cities in Texas and were not allowed to exit their designated routes except for food and gas — another feature of the evacuation plan which officials hoped would keep traffic flow orderly.

The evacuation-destination cities included Austin, College Station, San Antonio, Dallas, Huntsville, and Lufkin, Texas. Evacuees were asked to try hotels in the Midland/Odessa area when hotels began to sell out in other areas.

On Wednesday, Houston mayor Bill White urged residents to evacuate the city, telling residents, "Don't wait; the time for waiting is over," reminding residents of the disaster in New Orleans. After heavy traffic snarled roads leading out of town and gas shortages left numerous vehicles stranded, Mayor White backed off his earlier statement with, "If you're not in the evacuation zone, follow the news," advising people to use common sense. However, by 3:00 p.m. that afternoon, the freeway system in Houston was at a stand-still.

To the east of Houston, officials had set up evacuation routes in response to the slow evacuation of residents prior to Hurricane Lili. During the Rita evacuation, these preparations and their execution were overwhelmed by the enormous and unprecedented number of people fleeing from the Houston area prior to the departure of local residents. By the time Jefferson County began their mandatory evacuation, local roads were already full of Houstonians. Traffic on designated evacuation routes was forced to go far slower than the speeds experienced with any previous hurricane.

By late Thursday (22nd) morning, the contraflow lanes had been ordered opened after officials determined that the state's highway system had become gridlocked. The Texas Department of Transportation was unprepared to execute such a large-scale evacuation. Coordination and implementation of the contraflow plan took 8 to 10 hours as inbound traffic was forced to exit. Police were stationed to assist with traffic flow. Evacuees fought traffic Wednesday afternoon through mid-day Friday, moving only a fraction of the normal distance expected. Average travel times to Dallas were 24–36 hours, travel times to Austin were 12–18 hours and travel times to San Antonio were 10–16 hours, depending on the point of departure in Houston. Many motorists ran out of gas or experienced breakdowns in temperatures that neared 100 °F (38 °C). ...Traffic volumes did not ease for nearly 48 hours as more than three million residents evacuated the area in advance of the storm.

Texas Accepts Mexico's Offer of Harvey Relief by Anti_Markovnikov in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Wednesday the state is accepting Mexico's offer to provide assistance in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, including vehicles, boats and food.

Mexico, in a diplomatic note Tuesday, provided a long list of items to help Texas get back on its feet following devastating historic flooding.

I wish he'd done it sooner, but I'm happy to see this. The President might try to undermine U.S.-Mexico relations for selfish reasons, but I think the people of the U.S. and Mexico know better:

"Texas and Mexico share more than half the border," Sada said. "There are families, marriages, businesses that bind our two sides. This is about being good neighbors."

Ahead of Hurricane Harvey, officials send Texans mixed messages on evacuations by sleepy_batman1776 in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

As a result of these factors, year over year grain production dropped in China. The harvest was down by 15% in 1959. By 1960, it was at 70% of its 1958 level. There was no recovery until 1962, after the Great Leap Forward ended.

...Yu Dehong, the secretary of a party official in Xinyang in 1959 and 1960, stated,

I went to one village and saw 100 corpses, then another village and another 100 corpses. No one paid attention to them. People said that dogs were eating the bodies. Not true, I said. The dogs had long ago been eaten by the people.

It is widely believed that the government seriously under-reported death tolls: Lu Baoguo, a Xinhua reporter in Xinyang, told Yang Jisheng of why he never reported on his experience:

In the second half of 1959, I took a long-distance bus from Xinyang to Luoshan and Gushi. Out of the window, I saw one corpse after another in the ditches. On the bus, no one dared to mention the dead. In one county, Guangshan, one-third of the people had died. Although there were dead people everywhere, the local leaders enjoyed good meals and fine liquor. ... I had seen people who had told the truth being destroyed. Did I dare to write it?

...Unofficial estimates vary, but scholars have estimated the number of famine victims to be between 20 and 43 million. Historian Frank Dikötter, having been granted special access to Chinese archival materials, estimates that there were at least 45 million premature deaths from 1958 to 1962

https://books.google.com/books?id=1fSy7tFlTycC

The horror of mass destruction was first encountered by the party leadership in Xinyang: it reduced Li Xiannian, a tough veteran of the Red Army, to tears.

...There are, indeed, vast numbers of villages where death claimed more than 30 per cent of the population in a single year – in some cases entire hamlets were wiped out. But counties are much larger political entities, their populations typically ranging from 120,000 to 350,000. A death rate of 10 per cent in one year across an entire county, composed of many hundreds of villages

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/01/china-great-famine-book-tombstone

...the greatest manmade disaster in history stalks an already impoverished land. In an unremarkable city in central Henan province, more than a million people – one in eight – are wiped out by starvation and brutality over three short years. In one area, officials commandeer more grain than the farmers have actually grown. In barely nine months, more than 12,000 people – a third of the inhabitants – die in a single commune; a tenth of its households are wiped out. Thirteen children beg officials for food and are dragged deep into the mountains, where they die from exposure and starvation. A teenage orphan kills and eats her four-year-old brother. Forty-four of a village's 45 inhabitants die; the last remaining resident, a woman in her 60s, goes insane. Others are tortured, beaten or buried alive for declaring realistic harvests, refusing to hand over what little food they have, stealing scraps or simply angering officials.

...Page after page – even in the drastically edited English translation, there are 500 of them – his book, Tombstone, piles improbability upon terrible improbability. But Yang did not imagine these scenes. Perhaps no one could. Instead, he devoted 15 years to painstakingly documenting the catastrophe that claimed at least 36 million lives across the country, including that of his father.

...He had little idea of what he would find when he started work: "I didn't think it would be so serious and so brutal and so bloody. I didn't know that there were thousands of cases of cannibalism. I didn't know about farmers who were beaten to death.

"People died in the family and they didn't bury the person because they could still collect their food rations; they kept the bodies in bed and covered them up and the corpses were eaten by mice. People ate corpses and fought for the bodies. In Gansu they killed outsiders; people told me strangers passed through and they killed and ate them. And they ate their own children. Terrible. Too terrible."

For a moment he stops speaking.

"To start with, I felt terribly depressed when I was reading these documents," he adds. "But after a while I became numbed – because otherwise I couldn't carry on."

https://rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/05/the-enduring-legacy-of-chinas-great-famine/

‘‘When I was doing research I realized how taboo this subject still is,” she said. “It was so difficult to access materials. I didn’t want to give up. I wanted to find out what really happened.”

Importantly, for all the horror she discovered in her trek through dozens of archives, many very hard to get into, she also found something else: extraordinary courage among ordinary Chinese.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jan/01/china-great-famine-book-tombstone

He is, she points out, part of a generation of quietly committed scholars. Despite its apparently quaint title, Annals of the Yellow Emperor is a bold liberal journal that has repeatedly tackled sensitive issues. But writing Tombstone was also a personal mission. Yang was determined to "erect a tombstone for my father", the other victims and the system that killed them.

...It was, he says, a gradual awakening. He continued to work for Xinhua, a task made easier by the country's reform and opening process and his own evolution; by the third decade of his career, he says, "I had my independent thinking and was telling the truth." That was when his work on Tombstone began: "I just had a very strong desire to find out the facts. I was cheated and I don't want to be cheated again."

..."The textbooks don't mention this part of history at all," says Yang. "At every festival they have propaganda about the party's achievements and glory and greatness and correctness. People's ideology has been formed over many years. So right now it's very necessary to write this book; otherwise nobody has this history."

...Some hope that the new generation of leaders taking power may be willing to revisit the country's history and acknowledge the mistakes that have been made. Others think it will be easy for them to continue smoothing over the past. "Because the party has been improving and society has improved and everything is better, it's hard for people to believe the brutality of that time," Yang notes.

...He is, says Lusby, a true patriot; his diligent and risky work is not just for his father and himself, but for his country: "The Chinese people were cheated. They need real history."

 

The Tsarist Okhrana, from which the Checka, NKVD, and KGB can trace their culture and tactics, were known for recruiting the criminally minded:

http://www.ecfr.eu/publications/summary/crimintern_how_the_kremlin_uses_russias_criminal_networks_in_europe

It was perhaps inevitable that an especially strong connection between the security agencies and organised crime would arise in Russia. This is nothing new. For a start, from the tsarist Okhrana to the various Soviet agencies, the political police looked to the underworld for sources and recruits. The prevailing culture of Russian officialdom – in which political authority is there to be monetised – combined with the powers and impunity of the security apparatus, led to endemic corruption. On the whole, officers from the security and intelligence services did not join gangs or even necessarily form them, even though there were a few so-called ‘werewolves in epaulettes’. Rather, they usually conspired with organised crime networks or provided services for money − primarily protection or information.

http://uselessdissident.blogspot.com/2008/11/interview-with-yuri-bezmenov-part-three.html

Bezmenov: ...This was my instruction: try to get into large-circulation, established conservative media; reach filthy-rich movie makers; intellectuals, so-called ‘academic’ circles; cynical, egocentric people who can look into your eyes with angelic expression and tell you a lie. These are the most recruitable people: people who lack moral principles, who are either too greedy or too much suffer from self importance. They feel that they matter a lot. These are the people who KGB wanted very much to recruit.

https://etd.ohiolink.edu/!etd.send_file?accession=ohiou1398772391

Studying the changes between the Tsarist Okhrana and the Soviet Cheka is significant as well, as it accurately highlights the major difference between Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union. Under the latter regime, the secret police force, and the state’s use of it for political subjugation, changed drastically in both scale and intent. The brutal police repression seen during the Bolshevik’s first few years surpassed the most violent days of Russian autocracy. The state justified every action the Cheka took as necessity to protect the revolution. For the Bolsheviks, the end justified the means – but the means used were barbaric. Lenin did not see the implementation of terror in terms of morality; in a speech given in February 1920, he stated bluntly, “for us this question is one of expediency.

The same type of people who don't have a conscience, or any qualms killing millions and betraying their country, excel at manipulating and influencing others. These are the people Russia's special services go out of their way to recruit. If their motives and methods seem alien to us, it's because their members don't think the way most people do.

Some hope that if members of Russia's special services were shown the great cost of their activities to the human race and ordinary people's lives, they would stop or defect. But a mind that lacks empathy doesn't work that way. For them, their reasons might be simply: why should I stop killing if I enjoy it?

Ahead of Hurricane Harvey, officials send Texans mixed messages on evacuations by sleepy_batman1776 in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

...

https://books.google.com/books?id=5NsMWCHDStQC&pg=PA63

But deliveries of grain to the state had to be made according to yields that local cadres had officially declared. ...Punitive extractions based on entirely fictitious figures could only create fear and anger in the villages. The stage was set for a war on the people in which requisitions would plunge the country into the worst famine recorded in human history. Tan Zhenlin was blunt, addressing some of the leaders of South China in October 1958: ‘You need to fight against the peasants . . . There is something ideologically wrong with you if you are afraid of coercion.’

https://books.google.com/books?id=9pPxwn6EvR4C&pg=PA142

At about the same time (10-29 September), Deng Xioping, Li Fuchun, and other top leaders inspected the Northeastern provinces (Lianing, Jilin, and Heilongjiang) which were said to be lagging behind ...According to Deng's diagnosis, these provinces had fallen behind because their leaders had not implemented Mao's 'eight-point charter'; instead they were said to have followed the 'same old stuff' of 'wide spacing and shallow ploughing' ...Deng urged that a 'revolutionary campaign' be launched in agriculture.

At the Happiness and Rising Sun communes, Deng went a step further and instructed that they should experiment with high yields, and reduce the present cultivated areas so that all efforts could be concentrated on close planting and raising the output/mu. This, he maintained, would increase grain production

https://books.google.com/books?id=sR6BAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT160

Thee actual result of deep ploughing was often to bury the topsoil and bring to the surface worthless clay and sand. The Party also ordered that seeds were to planted more closely ...The result almost always was that the growing plants died or were stunted due to overcrowding.

https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1959/PR1959-01.pdf

Peking Review January 6, 1959

How They Did It

The reasons for the record crops in 1958, Liao Lu-yen, Minister of Agriculture, told the conference, may be summed up in three points.

First, putting politics in command. This, in essence, means strengthening leadership by the Communist Party. Only with politics in command, can the general line for building socialism be correctly carried out and the communist spirit of bold thinking, speech and action be developed.

Secondly, the mass line. ...the participation of functionaries in manual work...

...Thirdly, the "Eight-Point Charter of Agriculture"

...Speakers at the conference told how, by following these principles, a number of provinces doubled or even trebled their grain output last year and achieved similar increases with other crops.

https://books.google.com/books?id=5NsMWCHDStQC&pg=PA310

Baozi, a commune of 15,000 people known as ‘Fuling’s grain storage’, produced such abundant harvests that it usually sent half of its produce as tribute to the state. Along the main road up to 400 people could be found on any one day, busy bringing grain, vegetables and pigs to market. But by 1961 grain output had plummeted by some 87 per cent. The fields were overgrown with weeds, and half of the population had vanished.

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=9pPxwn6EvR4C&pg=PA142

Meanwhile, another disastrous decision--the 'three-three' system--illustrates the impulsive and haphazard manner by which a general idea and a long-term aspiration of Mao's could be snowballed into a major national policy. Many zealots, in particular Mao's lieutenant, Tan, vied eagerly in giving it substance. There was little planning or consideration of alternatives, fervour and intuition alone guiding all the decisions. In October and early November, a series of regional conferences were convened to discuss the plans for 1959 agricultural production, leading to a far-reaching decision to reduce the cultivated acreage for 1959 summer crops, which contributed greatly to the serious food shortages and famine in 1959.

...Mao had single-handedly imposed the communes by following his instincts. ...As previously mentioned, only by October/November did Mao begin to realize the full effects of the 'communist winds' and the universal concealment of grain and slaughter of livestock among the peasants. Coercive grass-roots cadres who exaggerated reports of yields had led to high procurement, which in turn deprived the peasants of grain, leading to deaths. Mao's confidence began to be shaken, but he still cherished the utopian ideal.

...According to reports by certain central ministries, as early as April 1959, 25 million people in fifteen provinces did not have enough to eat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Chinese_Famine

Yang Jisheng would summarize the effect of the focus on production targets in 2008:

In Xinyang, people starved at the doors of the grain warehouses. As they died, they shouted, "Communist Party, Chairman Mao, save us". If the granaries of Henan and Hebei had been opened, no one need have died. As people were dying in large numbers around them, officials did not think to save them. Their only concern was how to fulfill the delivery of grain.

https://books.google.com/books?id=5vgBaLfd9XsC&pg=PA170

Lysenkoism did not multiply China's harvests, it destroyed them. At the very time when a bewildered peasantry were struggling to come to terms with the disruption of collectivisation, they were made victims of an imposed pseudo-science that caused their crops to wither in the field.

Ahead of Hurricane Harvey, officials send Texans mixed messages on evacuations by sleepy_batman1776 in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

...

https://books.google.com/books?id=3VeLKJyRzuQC&pg=PA68

Mao became greatly taken with the theories of Williams, Lysenko, and Michurin. He read Williams' book on soil while still in Yanan and later frequently quoted both him and Lysenko. Mao, too, wanted the Chinese to plant seeds close together because, as he told colleagues, 'with company they grow easily, when they grow together they will be comfortable'. Lysenko's theories meshed perfectly with Mao's obsession with class struggle. He readily believed that plants from the same 'class' would never compete against each other for light or food.

http://alphahistory.com/chineserevolution/trofim-lysenko/

Mao’s ‘Eight Point Charter of Agriculture’ (1958) was strongly influenced by the theories of Lysenko. Chinese peasant farmers were ordered to embrace ‘Lysenkoism’ and to abandon techniques they had used for centuries. Farmers were ordered to ‘close plant’ seeds and seedlings, being assured by government officials that plants of the same species would not compete for water or nutrients. Lysenkoist theory claimed that deep ploughing the soil would encourage faster, deeper root growth.

https://books.google.com/books?id=dl4TRDxqexMC&pg=PA88

The agricultural techniques [Mao] endorsed at Beidaihe--a mix of Tan Zhenlin's indigenous methods, Lysenko's deep plowing and close planting, and so forth--made him euphoric about a plentiful future.

http://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/03/obituaries/tan-zhenlin-is-dead-in-china-held-high-positions-in-party.html

[Tan Zhenlin], a longtime political commissar with the Communists' guerrilla army before they took power in 1949, "made major contributions to the development and growth of the revolutionary armed forces, the victory of the Chinese people's revolution and the prosperity and powerfulness of the socialist motherland," the press agency said.

He was purged and denounced in the Cultural Revolution, a decade of civil strife inspired by the radical directives of Mao Zedong. Leftist radicals accused Mr. Tan, along with other prominent leaders, of plotting a coup and having "illicit relations with foreign countries."

https://books.google.com/books?id=dl4TRDxqexMC&pg=PA88

...Grain production would increase 69 percent and cotton 100 percent over 1957, the Beidaihe Communiqué claimed. The Chairman marveled: "In the future we'll destablish a global committee, [and] make plans on global unification. Then wherever grain is short, we will supply it as a gift."

...at the first day of the Beidaihe Conference, Mao particularly emphasized deep ploughing, which, he said, was the principal direction for agriculture, as without it large quantities of fertilizer could not be added. ...After three year's hard work, Mao maintained, two thirds of all farmland could be sufficient to support the population, and one-third could be used for afforestation.

https://books.google.com/books?id=14A1qPQOgQMC&pg=PA133

Pushing villagers to work around the clock, the party leaders organized Da Fo's school-age children to march and demonstrate in the streets, shouting slogans: "We will work during the day, we will work during the night; we will work all day and all night!" By late 1959 many villagers barely had the energy to walk or hold their heads up, and yet in the months to follow they were ordered to dig half mu of and in the day and half mu at night, as part of the deep plowing campaign, which was undertaken in the mistaken belief that the deeper the farmers plowed, the larger the root systems of their crops would be. The result was predictable: only those who cheated survived. Pang Renjing was not one of them. Zheng Jintian recounts the story:

Pang Renjing died during the Great Leap Forward. He died of exhaustion, not starvation. He was sixteen years old at the time. The Liangmen People's Commune leaders selected young and capable people to do the deep digging of the soil. Everybody tried to cheat. Instead of deep digging, most villagers would simply dig up part of the soil and then cover up the rest with dirt to make it look like they had done the deep digging. Pang Renjing was not smart enough to do that. He was honest, and he dug earnestly. As a result, he fell behind others. He worked harder and harder. In the end, he suffered from overexhaustion and an intestinal disorder. People tried to send him to Dongle County hospital, but he died on the way there.

https://books.google.com/books?id=9pPxwn6EvR4C&pg=PA142

Mao's idea was that ALL farmland should be deep ploughed once within two to three years, and then the cycle would be repeated again. ...This directive, apart from the decision to double steel output in 1958 and to form communes, was perhaps the most influential, and it was to quickly set in motion a massive campaign involving hundreds of millions of people in the winter/spring of 1958/9.

https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1959/PR1959-01.pdf

Peking Review January 6, 1959

Temporary shortages of some non-staple foods is a problem now claiming considerable attention. The shortages have arisen notwithstanding a 49 percent increase in live pigs and the doubling of aquatic products. A recent Renmin Ribao editorial (December 28, 1958) gave the following analysis: On the supply side, considerable manpower has been concentrated in recent months on steel production, the harvesting of the tremendous crops, deep ploughing the land and extending irrigation works. This has had some effect on the production of raw materials for some non-staple foods.

...With the establishment of community dining-rooms in the people's communes, the peasants are eating more and better food than ever before. As a result, demand is running ahead of supply.

https://books.google.com/books?id=sR6BAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT160

Some rural cadres, in their determination to achieve total compliance with directives from Beijing, even required peasants to plough under crops that had already been planted in the traditional fashion, in order to plant again using the methods of deep ploughing and close planting. These crops, planted too late in the season, did not have time to mature before the following winter arrived.

https://books.google.com/books?id=9pPxwn6EvR4C&pg=PA142

By winter 1958, some mess halls in the communes had run out of food, leading to outward migration oedema, and abnormal deaths. Peasants were fleeing, begging, and battling for food. By early 1958, spring famine had already occurred

...Mao thought that the food shortage problem was restricted to only a few provinces, and transfers from the centre or from other provinces would take care of the problem.

...At the initial stage of communization in early September, Tan Zhenlin reassured Mao with a rosy report that claimed that communes had been formed rapidly and smoothly, and that only in a minority of places had the peasants resorted to slaughtering and selling of livestock, felling trees, and grain concealment.

https://www.marxists.org/subject/china/peking-review/1959/PR1959-01.pdf

Peking Review January 6, 1959

Liu Shao-chi, greeting the conference on behalf of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, gave the meaning of last year's victory. "In agriculture," he said, "we have found the way to develop production at high speed, begun to to change its backward condition and doubled the output of grain, cotton and some other crops. It must be considered a great achievement that the annual output of grain reached about 1,200 jin per capita in a country as big and populous as ours."

https://books.google.com/books?id=NrOKDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA490

They were urged to eat their fill as China would soon by overflowing with food. Minister of Agriculture Tan Zhenlin asked, 'After all, what does Communism mean? ...First, taking good food and not merely eating one's fill. At each meal one enjoys a meat diet, eating chicken, pork, fish, eggs.'

https://books.google.com/books?id=9pPxwn6EvR4C&pg=PA142

However, an anonymous letter dated 5 September reached Mao in early October informing him that food shortages at several xiang in Anhui had killed over 500 people, and that many had become ill. The food shortages were attributed to natural calamities, false-reporting, and administrative commands which forced the conversion of dry land into rice paddies.

Ahead of Hurricane Harvey, officials send Texans mixed messages on evacuations by sleepy_batman1776 in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

...

https://books.google.com/books?id=eswo_SMNwzAC&pg=PA49

As early as October 1949, Lysenko's representatives were in China, helping Luo Tianyu's campaign.

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=Ul5THCLL6roC&pg=PA286

Luo Tianyu (1900-1948). Lysenkoite. CCP cadre. Promoter of Yan'an "rectification" program in biology, 1944-1945. Dean of Beijing Agriculture University and leading promotor of Soviet Lysenkoism in China, 1949-1952.

https://books.google.com/books?id=LY4YDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT257

In the charged atmosphere of cheng-feng, the study of theory and the quest for basic knowledge were held up for ridicule, while those who pursued such objects were scorned. ...by June Mao's supporters were in fully cry, and the unfortunate targets of their anger sought shelter.

...the first attack came from within, in an article in the July 23 issue of Liberation Daily by the chairman of the biology department, Lo T'ien-yu. Lo charged that his comrades at the NSI had failed to place practical application ahead of abstract theory. They had clung to a "dogmatic" reliance on foreign textbooks, rather than going "up the mountain to collect specimens or into the factory to do work." From these books students learned meaningless abstractions like the "size of the universe," "four or five dimensional space," and the "electron" and "atomic" theories, none of which served any useful purpose. "In some courses," Lo charged, students "simply recite the Classics"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_mathematics

In the third century Liu Hui wrote his commentary on the Nine Chapters and also wrote Haidao Suanjing which dealt with using Pythagorean theorem (already known by the 9 chapters), and triple, quadruple triangulation for surveying; his accomplishment in the mathematical surveying exceeded those accomplished in the west by a millennium. He was the first Chinese mathematician to calculate π=3.1416 with his π algorithm. He discovered the usage of Cavalieri's principle to find an accurate formula for the volume of a cylinder, and also developed elements of the integral and the differential calculus during the 3rd century CE.

https://books.google.com/books?id=eswo_SMNwzAC&pg=PA53

...the Soviet pattern planned S&T research in coordination with production goals. This contributed to a Chinese preoccupation with immediate and demonstrable production applications to justify research. Often, basic research was denigrated.

https://books.google.com/books?id=eswo_SMNwzAC&pg=PA49

[Luo] had written that "the fields are a laboratory; nature is a classroom." Moreover, he set mass science above that of the intellectuals, saying that the People are genuine materialists, who grasp the answers to things directly, because, if they do not understand and live by the laws of nature, they die. Since scholars do not operate this way, they are idealists.

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=eswo_SMNwzAC&pg=PA49

...First came V.N Stoletov, Minister of Higher Education and Chair of the Department of Genetics at Moscow University. He lectured at Luo's University, and was soon followed by other Lysenkoist luminaries, such as N. I. Nuzhdin and A. P. Ivanov. These visiting experts traveled extensively throughout China, giving introductory lectures which were rapidly transformed into college textbooks in the Chinese language. The Russians also preached to key scientists about Lysenkoism's scientific validity and effectiveness.

https://books.google.com/books?id=Ul5THCLL6roC&pg=PA127

Zhu Xi became perhaps the earliest example of a Chinese biologist directly criticized by a Soviet Lysenkoite. In response to his recently published article on variation in the evolutionary process, Zhu was paid a visit by I.E. Glushchenko, who was lecturing and consulting in China. Glushchenko, the director of the Soviet Academy of Sciences Institute of Genetics, took offense at the "Morganist" implications in this piece ...Glushchenko faulted Zhu for failing to express an awareness of Michurin fundamentals, and warned him that no matter how good Chinese experimental technique might be, conclusions would continue to be lacking unless Chinese studied the dialectical materialism of Engels, Stalin, and Chairman Mao (especially Mao's essay "On Contradiction")

...Zhu Xi's piece is among the earliest examples of...lightly veiled criticism of Soviet arrogance and the CCP's "learn from the Soviets" policy.

...Tan Jiazhen reports that when Nuzhdin's tour took him south, he visited Zhejiang University, specifically to convince Tan of the merits of Michurin biology and to ask Tan to convert. At this time, Luo Tianyu's campaign was largely confined to the northeast and to agricultural science institutions. ...He was therefore quite comfortable telling Nuzhidin politely to go peddle his papers elsewhere. When Tan moved to his new position at Shanghai's Fudan University, in 1952, Lysenkoism had moved into the south and was there to greet him with a vengeance.

https://books.google.com/books?id=ne31X9gDmIYC&pg=PA331

...a national campaign to make Lysnkoism immediately the exclusive orthodox of agricultural biology, and eventually all biological science. To implement this ambitious plan, the Party appointed Luo Tianyu (1900-1986)

...Luo added mandatory study of Michurin biology. Furthermore, he required that all faculty formally renounce classical genetics and embrace Michurinism. The university's three distinguished program heads, however, refused to follow this requirement ...Not only did they challenge Luo's authority, they also denied him distinguished converts who could serve as models for the rest of the faculty and the forthcoming national pro-Soviet campaign to "learn from the advanced experience of the Soviet Union." The fate of these three is instructive.

...Li became so intimidated by Luo that he and his family soon fled China

...Wu Zhongxian...protected himself by not expressing his dissent publicly and by shifting his teaching and research out of genetics

...After Luo removed him from his co-directorship, he subjected Tang to a humiliating public "thought remolding" session before the entire school ...Tang was then ostracized from the school for criticizing and resisting the Party's policy of learning from the Soviets.

...The Lysenkoist campaign was almost impossible to assail from any solid institutional base. There were not yet any centralized science-planning agencies nor any science plan to which anti-Lysenkoists could appeal. Leaders of the Ministry of Agriculture, while not necessarily themselves Lysenkoists, nevertheless were strongly attracted to the doctrine because of their empirical and pragmatic bias. ...The leadership of the CAS was sufficiently subservient to the CCP to accept the Lysenkoist juggernaut as one more element of the pro-Soviet policy.

https://books.google.com/books?id=Ul5THCLL6roC&pg=PA127

Meanwhile, Nuzhdin's lectures were translated into Chinese, anthologized, and distributed widely, making it one of the earliest textbooks in Michurin biology. Many more Lysenkoite visitors would follow him, and many more such textbooks would be published.

https://books.google.com/books?id=eswo_SMNwzAC&pg=PA49&lpg=PA49

...on the eve of Russia's massive assistance with China's 1st Five-year Plan, the putative success of Soviet science, including Lysenkoism, seemed to be the surest guide.

...By the mid-1950's, thousands of advanced Chinese students were studying in a variety of disciplines in various Soviet universities. Hundreds of Soviet scientists came to Chinese universities to offer introductory courses in their specialties and to give state-of-the-art colloquia to research in the institutes.

Throughout the 1st Five-Year-Plan period, as Soviet-inspired S&T reforms were being implemented, the "Michurin line" flourished. A constant stream of Soviet experts shaped the biology curricula of colleges and universities. In cytlology, the crackpot work of Olga Lepeshenskaya was used to support Lysenko's transformist beliefs by supposedly showing that living cells could be created out of non-living organic material. A. V. Dubrovina lectured to huge audiences on Lysenko's version of Darwin, and introduced that there was neither rivalry nor "mutual aid" among organisms within a specious. I. E. Glushchenko, leader of Lysenko's international program, and other agricultural experts gave extensive lectures explaining the relationship between Lysenko's "New Darwinism" and plant cultivation programs.

Except as the target of nasty epithets, classical genetics disappeared from podium and print.

Ahead of Hurricane Harvey, officials send Texans mixed messages on evacuations by sleepy_batman1776 in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://books.google.com/books?id=vTswH3fLLdgC&pg=PA188

...Soviet authorities also used various international gatherings to propagate Michurinist biology all over the world. At the 1949 World Congress for Peace in New York, a prominent Soviet biologist, Aleksandr Oparin, took the stand to express his Michurinist convictions. In summer 1950 one of the most ardent Lysenkoists, Glushchenko, passionately glorified his master and his ideas at the International Botanical Congress in Stockholm.

...All possible means of propaganda were deployed in the Michurinist campaign. In December 1948 the Soviet film industry produced a new color film, Michurin. The author of the screenplay and director of the film was one of the country's most famous directors, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, the music was composed by Dimitrii Shostakovich, and the starring role was played by one of the most popular actors of the time, Grigorii Belov. ...As one might expect, this film was shown not only in the Soviet Union but also abroad.

...The propaganda of Michurinism, then, occupied a considerable place in Soviet activities in the international scene in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80R01426R010400040001-5.pdf

...A tendency to revise a serious of principles of contemporary genetics in the light of Michurin's teaching has been observed in foreign science. The teaching on the independence of heredity from external conditions and the problem of hereditary transmission of acquired characteristics are becoming increasingly subjects of doubt. Thus, the basic principles of Michurin's genetics increasingly attract the attention of and exert their influence upon West-European science.

https://books.google.com/books?id=vTswH3fLLdgC&pg=PA188

...There are some indications that, as in the Soviet Union, the leadership of local scientific communities in Eastern Europe was deeply involved in spreading the Michurinist campaign and in the import of Michurinist biology.

https://books.google.com/books?id=9Lq2DAAAQBAJ&pg=PT46

The Canadian wheat pool", Williams writes, "sent on of its most promising officials, Andrew Cairns, on a serious of trips through European and other areas of Russian, in 1930 and 1932. His brief mission was to examine the state of the Russian wheat crop, which he was able to do with an expert eye. The results of these visits give a fascinating insight into the disastrous polices, not only of collectivization, with its liquidation of the 'Kulaks', but also of the effects of Soviet agronomist Lysenko's crackpot agricultural techniques. The second visit, during May 1932, organized under the auspices of the British embassy in Moscow, produced three reports of quite unprecedented detail on the decline of Russian agriculture, and especially on the massive destruction of cereal crops in Ukraine."

https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/The-famine-of-1932-33#ref404577

The result of Stalin’s policies was the Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932–33—a man-made demographic catastrophe unprecedented in peacetime. Of the estimated six to eight million people who died in the Soviet Union, about four to five million were Ukrainians. ...its deliberate nature is underscored by the fact that no physical basis for famine existed in Ukraine. The Ukrainian grain harvest of 1932 had resulted in below-average yields (in part because of the chaos wreaked by the collectivization campaign), but it was more than sufficient to sustain the population. Nevertheless, Soviet authorities set requisition quotas for Ukraine at an impossibly high level. Brigades of special agents were dispatched to Ukraine to assist in procurement, and homes were routinely searched and foodstuffs confiscated.

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80R01426R010400040001-5.pdf

...The estimate of losses that individual Michurinite scientists and, in particular, Academican T.D. Lysenko had, allegedly, caused the State are completely inaccurate and unrealistic, which has been justly described in the editorial in the newspaper "Pravda".

 

https://books.google.com/books?id=vTswH3fLLdgC&pg=PA188

...Such propaganda was focused on Bulgaria, East Germany, Czechoslovokia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania, but was not limited to the "fraternal" socialist countries.

...In late 1948 and early 1949 the Michurinist campaign quickly spread not only over Europe but also, to some extent, the Middle East, Eastern and Southern Asia, and South America. The results of the campaign in East European countries most resembled those in the Soviet Union: Lysenko's doctrine replaced formal genetics in curricula of agricultural schools and universities, existing genetics laboratories were closed or reorganized, and textbooks on Michurinist biology were published.

https://books.google.com/books?id=ne31X9gDmIYC&pg=PA331

In 1949, few Chinese biologists were familiar with Lysenko's work before it was incorporated into a full-blown ideology. Thus, the Chinese science community in general was quite unprepared to deal with the militant promotion of Michurin biology by Chinese and then Russian Lysenkoites within months of the CCP's formal accession to power on October 1, 1949.

https://books.google.com/books?id=eswo_SMNwzAC&pg=PA49

Even though the CCP did not issue any policy statement on Lysenkoism until 1952, Lysenkoism's quest for monopoly and the status of orthodoxy had already been achieved, de facto, with the license and encouragement afford by the CCP's comprehensive pro-Soviet policy of "learning from the advanced experience of the Soviet Union."

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong#Quotes

Stalin is our greatest father and teacher. In the name of Chinese people and Chinese Communist Party, we celebrate comrade Stalin's seventy birthday. May he be in the best health and live a long life! Leader of both the world's working class and Communist Internationale — Ten thousand years of life to Stalin! --Speech on the seventieth birthday of Stalin (21 December 1949)

https://books.google.com/books?id=y3PGCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT110

...so strong was the influence of the USSR in the early years of the PRC that Chinese agricultural researchers were taught that Lysenko was infallible. A Beijing doctor recorded: "We were told that the Soviets had discovered and invented everything; we had to change textbooks and rename things in Lysenko's honour.'

Ahead of Hurricane Harvey, officials send Texans mixed messages on evacuations by sleepy_batman1776 in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

...

http://bookfi.net/dl/1026321/4847c5

Another fiasco that drained the peasants' energy and brought disaster, was an order from Mao that the entire nation had to "make steel." The Superpower Programme needed a lot of steel-and steel was also Mao's yardstick for superpower status. When he boasted to Communist leaders in Moscow in 1957 that China would "overtake Britain in fifteen years" (which he later shortened to three) and when he told the Chinese he was fully confident that China could "overtake America" in ten years, steel output was what he had in mind. Mao set the 1958 target at 10.7 million tons. How this came about illustrates his broad-brush approach to economics. Sitting by his swimming pool in Zhongnanhai on 19 June he said to the metallurgy minister: "Last year, steel output was 5.3 million tons. Can you double it this year?" The yes-man said: "All right." And that was that. Steel mills and related industries like coal mines were ordered to go flat out to speed up production. Rules, and common sense, were cast aside. Equipment was overworked to the point of breakdown, and over 30,000 workers were killed in serious accidents alone within a few months. Experts who tried to talk sense were persecuted. Mao set the tone for discrediting rationality by saying that "bourgeois professors' knowledge should be treated as dogs' fart, worth nothing, deserving only disdain," scorn, contempt. . .

https://books.google.com/books?id=5vgBaLfd9XsC&pg=PA170&lpg=PA170

Mao's blind faith in the communes was match by his adherence to false science. He gave his imprimatur to the ideas of Trofim Lysenko, a Soviet agronomist and protege of Stalin, who claimed to have discovered ways of developing 'super-crops', which would grow in any soil in any season and provide a yield anything up to sixteen times greater than the harvests produced by traditional methods. Mao accepted all this, declaring 'in company grain grows fast; seeds are happiest when growing together.' He had convinced himself there was such a thing as 'socialist science', which could be used to reshape nature and produce abundance. In his attack attack on the intellectuals during the Hundred Flowers campaign he had demanded the dismissal of those scholars who still clung to the bourgeois notion that scientific research was a matter of objective observation rather than socialist enlightenment. He seemed not to appreciate that this demand contradicted his earlier and oft-repeated admonition that the comrades should 'seek truth from facts'.

In 1958, Mao gave instructions that Lysenkoism was to be strictly followed in the planning of agriculture. An eight-point programme modelled on Lysenko's theories and covering all aspects of crop production was made mandatory in the countryside.

 

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Trofim-Lysenko

Trofim Lysenko, in full Trofim Denisovich Lysenko, Soviet biologist and agronomist, the controversial “dictator” of Communistic biology during Stalin’s regime. He rejected orthodox genetics in favour of “Michurinism” (named for the Russian horticulturist I.V. Michurin), which was begun by an uneducated plant breeder fashioning explanations for his hybrid creations. After Michurin’s death in 1935, Lysenko led the movement and transformed it into an assault on orthodox genetics.

...The Soviet chiefs began to support Lysenko during the agricultural crisis of the 1930s. On the basis of rather crude and unsubstantiated experiments, Lysenko promised greater, more rapid, and less costly increases in crop yields than other biologists believed possible.

...Between 1948 and 1953, when he was the total autocrat of Soviet biology, he claimed that wheat plants raised in the appropriate environment produce seeds of rye, which is equivalent to saying that dogs living in the wild give birth to foxes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

...On August 7, 1948, the V.I. Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences announced that from that point on Lysenkoism would be taught as "the only correct theory". Soviet scientists were forced to denounce any work that contradicted Lysenko's research. Criticism of Lysenko was denounced as "bourgeois" or "fascist", and analogous "non-bourgeois" theories also flourished in other fields in the Soviet academy at this time. Interestingly, perhaps the only opponents of Lysenkoism during Stalin's lifetime to escape liquidation came from the small community of Soviet nuclear physicists: as Tony Judt has observed, "It is significant that Stalin left his nuclear physicists alone and never presumed to second guess their calculations. Stalin may well have been mad but he was not stupid."

https://books.google.com/books?id=Ul5THCLL6roC&pg=PA119

...though [I. I. Prezent] began his career as a partisan of Mendelian and Morganist theories of heredity and speciation, he had reversed that position by the time he established a power base in a variety of academic positions. He aided Lysenko's rise to dominance in Soviet biology and provided him with the trappings of ideological legitimacy--a dialectical materialist and properlry socialist rationale for attacking and rejecting classical genetics.

http://ludus-vitalis.org/ojs/index.php/ludus/article/viewFile/4/4

Paradoxically, only five years earlier, Prezent and Lysenko had actively supported the very concepts of genetics against which they later battled so vigorously, asserting the affinities between Marxism and Morganism (Medvedev, 1969).

http://www.encyclopedia.com/people/science-and-technology/botany-biographies/ivan-vladimirovich-michurin

Michurin died in 1935, when Lysenko was beginning his campaign against genetics. Very quickly Michurin was transformed into the patron saint of that campaign, and “Michurinism” became the official name of Lysenko’s doctrine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Vladimirovich_Michurin

On September 11, 1922, Mikhail Kalinin visited Michurin at Lenin's personal request.

https://books.google.com/books?id=m4kJDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA147

There were also, inevitably, images such as Michurin and Kalinin, 1949 (Fig 6). Mikhail Kalinin, nominal Soviet head of state 1919-1946 and the only "old Bolshevik" no to be "purged" by Stalin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prague_Conference

...Kalinin was suspected of being an Okhrana agent

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Lepeshinskaya_%28biologist%29

Olga Borisovna Lepeshinskaya born as Protopopova (August 18, 1871 – October 2, 1963), was a Soviet biologist, a personal protegée of Vladimir Lenin, later Joseph Stalin, Trofim Lysenko and Alexander Oparin. She rejected genetics and was an advocate of spontaneous generation of life from inanimate matter.

...Lepeshinskaya was a participant in the October Revolution.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Zhores-Aleksandrovich-Medvedev#ref275700

In the 1960s Medvedev wrote a history of Soviet science with the aim of discrediting the doctrines of T.D. Lysenko, the charlatan who dominated Soviet biology during the reign of Joseph Stalin ...The Soviet authorities refused to publish Medvedev’s book ...The Soviet government denied Medvedev opportunities to attend scientific conferences abroad despite his growing reputation as a scientist, and he underwent constant harassment from the KGB from the mid-1960s on.

https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80R01426R010400040001-5.pdf

The reply of N.S. Khrushchev: "The staff must be looked over. Evidently, people who were selected as editors are against Michurin's science. As long as they remain there nothing will change. They must be replaced, others, real Michurinites, must be appointed. Therein lies the radical solution of the problem." The wrong direction taken by the editorial board of the "Botanical Journal" [Botanicheekii Zhurnal] has been voiced in a number of articles. They do not bear the character of an occasional, isolated incident, but characterize a position that pursued the objective of censuring the fundamental propositions in the works of Academician Lysenko.

Ahead of Hurricane Harvey, officials send Texans mixed messages on evacuations by sleepy_batman1776 in politics

[–]sleepy_batman1776[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/28/opinion/harvey-flooding-mayor-evacuation.html

As the rains from Tropical Storm Harvey continue to pound Houston, stranding thousands of people in their homes, a question has emerged: Should local officials, particularly Mayor Sylvester Turner, have ordered mandatory evacuations?

The answer is absolutely not.

It is logistically impossible to evacuate millions of people from low-lying coastal areas ahead of a major hurricane. The disastrous evacuation in preparation for Hurricane Rita in 2005 proved the case.

Hours before the hurricane hit 2.5 million Texans fled town at the same time, according to The Houston Chronicle. This caused enormous, daylong traffic jams. While stranded on highways, people were injured or killed from heat stroke. Others got in fights. And a bus that was transporting elderly people from a nursing home exploded, killing 23 people.

In total, some 130 people died in that evacuation, more than have ever perished in a hurricane in the state’s history, with the exception of the 1900 Galveston storm. Of those deaths, about half occurred before the storm hit Texas.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2017/08/29/harvey-takes-aim-at-louisiana-as-trump-plans-to-survey-stricken-texas/

Authorities added that there had been reports of people impersonating law enforcement officers in communities such as Kingwood, falsely telling people they needed to evacuate.

People should pay attention to things like this. There are limits to the adage "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

We're told that Russian spies have been infiltrating our schools, media, and government in order to influence our policy and public opinion:

http://wunc.org/post/former-spymaster-three-decades-cia

Jul 1, 2013

A central theme in his books is that spies have often been successful in the U.S. because Americans are consistently loath to believe their countrymen would betray them. "You certainly see in the first hundred years or so [of American history], they are totally blind to this," Sulick told host Frank Stasio on The State of Things. "But even on into the 20th century, in the 1930s and 1940s when the Soviets basically riddle the FDR administration and the Manhattan Project with - now they're estimating - about 500 spies."

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/14/obama-russia-election-interference-241547

As early as 2014, the administration received a report that quoted a well-connected Russian source as saying that the Kremlin was building a disinformation arm that could be used to interfere in Western democracies. The report, according to an official familiar with it, included a quote from the Russian source telling U.S. officials in Moscow, "You have no idea how extensive these networks are in Europe ... and in the U.S., Russia has penetrated media organizations, lobbying firms, political parties, governments and militaries in all of these places."

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/a/andrew-sword.html

THE MITROKHIN ARCHIVE

...The facts, however, are far more sensational even than the story dismissed as impossible by the SVR. The KGB defector had brought with him to Britain details not of a few hundred but of thousands of Soviet agents and intelligence officers in all parts of the globe, some of them "illegals" living under deep cover abroad, disguised as foreign citizens.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/operation-ghost-stories-inside-the-russian-spy-case

October 31, 2011

The arrests of 10 Russian spies last year provided a chilling reminder that espionage on U.S. soil did not disappear when the Cold War ended.

...The deep-cover Russian spies may not have achieved their objective, but they were not idle. They collected information and transmitted it back to Russia, and they were actively engaged in what is known in the spy business as “spotting and assessing.”

They identified colleagues, friends, and others who might be vulnerable targets, and it is possible they were seeking to co-opt people they encountered in the academic environment who might one day hold positions of power and influence.

Perhaps the most famous example of this tactic—the Cambridge Five—took place in Great Britain. Soviet intelligence “talent spotters” were able to recruit Cambridge University students in the 1930s—including future spy Kim Philby—who would later rise to power in the British government and become Soviet operatives during World War II and into the 1950s.

“We believe the SVR illegals may well have hoped to do the same thing here,” said a counterintelligence agent.

http://uselessdissident.blogspot.com/2008/11/interview-with-yuri-bezmenov-part-three.html

Bezmenov: ...Most of the activity of the department was to compile huge amount of information on individuals who were instrumental in creating public opinion: publishers, editors, journalists, actors, educationalists, professors of political science, members of parliament, representatives of business circles. Most of these people were divided roughly in two groups. Those who would toe the Soviet foreign policy, they would be promoted to the positions of power through media and public opinion manipulation.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/russian-spies-eye-golden-prize-white-house-source/story?id=45531117

“They always targeted political figures,” David Major, a retired FBI counterintelligence agent explained to ABC News. “They want to know who is a mover and shaker in our society, who affects it.”

...U.S. intelligence officials say the Russians are engaged in a massive campaign to infiltrate and disrupt American politics.

https://archive.org/stream/YuriBezmenovBlackIsBeautifulCommunismIsNot/YuriBezmenovBlackIsBeautiful_djvu.txt

I describe the process in which I took part, the process of ideological subversion, which has nothing to do with espionage. It has something to do with your perception of reality. Why does the KGB want to mess up your minds? Very simple. Soviet or international communists realize perfectly well they cannot defeat United States economically or militarily.

...The principle of subversion was formulated by a Chinese philosopher 2,500 years ago. Sun Tzu said, "All warfare is based primarily on deception of your enemy. To fight on the battlefield to achieve your goals is the most primitive and barbaric to achieve your goals. The highest art of war is not to fight at all, but to subvert anything of value in your enemy's country." Which includes religion, moral principles, traditions, and natural established relationships between people, families, groups, classes, races. Turn the blacks against the whites; turn the teachers against students; turn Ralph Nader against the government; labor unions against business; homosexuals against heterosexuals; and keep on fighting, my dear friends, until you demoralize and destabilize yourself and then you flop like a rotten apple and the enemy will take you over. You will invite the enemy.

This is the essence of subversion, and it is not new.

https://archive.org/stream/BezmenovLoveLetterToAmerica/YuriBezmenov-LoveLetterToAmerica_djvu.txt

The main principle of ideological subversion is TURNING A STRONGER FORCE AGAINST ITSELF. Just like in the Japanese martial arts: you do not stop the blow of a heavier more powerful enemy with an equally forceful blow. You may simply hurt your hand. Instead you catch the striking fist with your hand and PULL the enemy in the direction of his blow until he crashes into a wall or any other heavy object in his way.

But, with the exception of defectors like Bezmenov, few tell us how these spies might try to use their influence, and toward what end. And knowing this is very important: it's much harder to stop a Russian influence operation if you don't know what a Russian influence operation looks like.

If the FBI or the media can't or won't tell us how these operations work, we can still learn from history. Probably the best exmple of a Russian influence operation is the campaign to spread Lysenkoism (combined with other operations targeting agriculture policy) in the early to mid 20th century, especially the operations targeting Ukraine and China. The episode shows how influencing policy and public opinion to "turn a stronger force against itself" can work, and that the goals of at least some Russian influence operations are far different than most might have imagined: