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Russia Tag

Posted by Mary Chastain on April 15, 2017 5 Comments
Earlier this month, Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that at least 100 gay men disappeared in Chechnya due to "their non-traditional sexual orientation, or suspicion of such." Chechnya and Russia immediately denied these claims, but outlets have started to reach out to those who had been detained, thus giving support to the report. From The Guardian:
At least once a day, Adam’s captors attached metal clamps to his fingers and toes. One of the men then cranked a handle on a machine to which the clamps were linked with wires, and sent powerful electric shocks through his body. If he managed not to scream, others would join in, beating him with wooden sticks or metal rods.

Posted by Mary Chastain on April 12, 2017 19 Comments
The best part of President Donald Trump's presidency? The way it makes the media go crazy. This time the media has gone insane because Secretary of State Rex Tillerson dropped his press pool for an unscheduled meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on his trip to Moscow. Can you blame him, though? After all, the media treat members of this administration fairly and without any bias. *cough*Jeff Sessions*cough*

Posted by Mary Chastain on April 07, 2017 33 Comments
On Thursday night, President Donald Trump ordered an airstrike against Syria near an airfield where President Bashar al-Assad's regime allegedly launched a chemical attack that killed over 60 people. The U.S. military attacked the Shayrat air base near Homs with 59 Tomahawk missiles from the Mediterranean Sea, which caused immense damage "to airfields, planes and fueling facilities allegedly used by the Assad regime."

Posted by Mary Chastain on April 03, 2017 7 Comments
Sources now say that only one explosion occurred between two stations at a St. Petersburg, Russia, underground train station. Ten people have died:
"There was one blast in one site in between (stations) as the train arrived at the Technology Institute station from Sennaya (Ploshchad) station," the source told Reuters.
President Vladimir Putin was scheduled to meet with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko in the city today.

Posted by William A. Jacobson on April 01, 2017 8 Comments
Russian Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko has died at age 84. He was resident at the University of Tulsa, and died in a hospital in Oklahoma City. I think it's hard for Americans to understand the celebrated role that poets occupy in Russian history, including the dissident movement that began to develop in the 1950s and 1960s. I experienced some of that when studying Russian language and literature in the 1970s and early 1980s, and studying in Moscow in 1980. The vast sweep of Yevtushenko life work was somewhat overwhelmed by the power and stature of Yevtushenko’s 1961 poem about the Nazi massacre of over 33,000 Jews in just two days on September 29-30, 1941, at Babi Yar, a ravine near Kiev in the Ukraine. I provided extensive background and material about the Babi Yar massacre in my May 7, 2016, post, Israeli flag burned at Babi Yar on Holocaust Remembrance Day:

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on March 31, 2017 17 Comments
On today's Morning Joe, Joe Scarborough argued that the MSM is failing to cover the story of the Obama admin "unmasking"and leaking the names of Trump campaign people caught up in the intercepts of Russians. According to Scarborough, 95% of the story is the attempt by the Russians to influence the election. But that still leaves the 5% that the MSM is ignoring because the people unmasked were disliked, and in the case of Michael Flynn, "loathed" by the media. In contrast, said Scarborough, the improper activity was "by people who, let's face it, most of the people in the media like and admire."

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 30, 2017 9 Comments
The Senate Intelligence Committee held its first hearing on possible Russian interference during the 2016 presidential election and its "information warfare." It was revealed that hackers targeted Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) during his presidential campaign:
"Former members of my presidential campaign team who had access to the internal information of my presidential campaign were targeted by IP addresses with an unknown location within Russia," Rubio said Thursday. "That effort was unsuccessful. I would also inform the committee within the last 24 hours, at 10:45 a.m. yesterday, a second attempt was made, again, against former members of my presidential campaign team who had access to our internal information -- again targeted from an IP address from an unknown location in Russia. And that effort was also unsuccessful."

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 29, 2017 12 Comments
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike recently revised a report from December that insisted that the group "Fancy Bear," which has ties to Russian intelligence, used malware to hack into Ukrainian artillery. In the same report, the firm said "Fancy Bear" used the same malware to "hack" into the American election. Well, British think tank International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) found that CrowdStrike "erroneously used IISS data as proof of the intrusion." This also calls into question its findings of meddling in our election.

Posted by Kemberlee Kaye on March 28, 2017 20 Comments
Tuesday, American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent, April Ryan, asked White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer how the administration was working to "revamp their image" after two and a half months of bad press. The exchange quickly became a heated one. "With all these investigations, questions of what is is, how does this administration try to revamp its image? Two and a half months in -- you've got this Yates story today, you've got other things going on, you've got Russia, you've got wiretapping..." began Ryan.

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 23, 2017 4 Comments
A shooter assassinated former Russian lawmaker Denis Voronenkov, who was also a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, outside of a hotel in Kiev, Ukraine. Voronenkov, former member of the Communist Party, fled to Ukraine last fall with his wife when he found out he would face fraud charges "over the alleged misappropriation of a Moscow building in 2011." The Ukrainian government granted him citizenship and he provided evidence against former Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovych, who ran to Russia after parliament ousted him on February 22, 2014.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on March 23, 2017 25 Comments
Did the Trump White House use the House intel committee chairman to divert attention from the committee's investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russians? That's what Joe Scarborough suggested on today's Morning Joe.  Scarborough said that his reporting suggests that the White House "shoved" committee chairman Devin Nunes in front of the cameras to reveal that communications of President Trump and associates may have been intercepted after the election by intelligence agencies conducting surveillance of foreign targets. Scarborough: "it just looked like, and sounded like from some reporting I did yesterday, that you had the White House desperate to do anything to change headlines this morning, because, again, from the reporting I did yesterday, talking to people in the White House, they were so desperate to change the narrative that it looks like they shoved him out with this information—just any information, anything—to change the headlines. And to blow up the investigation in the House. And it looks like that's exactly what they did."

Posted by Mary Chastain on March 22, 2017 6 Comments
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson received massive backlash when the media reported he planned to skip a formal NATO meeting on April 5-6, but kept his Moscow trip in mid-April. A Secretary of State has only missed a formal meeting twice in the past 21 years. However, the media has buried the fact that Tillerson planned to skip the meeting because he scheduled to meet with Chinese President Xi Jingping in Florida with President Donald Trump on April 6-7. They also casually mention that he will travel to a G7 meeting in Italy between his weekend with Xi and the trip to Russia.

Posted by Mike LaChance on March 22, 2017 17 Comments
Conservative author and broadcaster Mark Steyn was on the Tucker Carlson show this week and was asked for his thoughts on the Democratic Party's current obsession with Russia. Steyn explained it quite simply suggesting that Democrats can't accept the fact that they lost the election. It's easier for them to believe it was stolen from them. From the FOX News Insider:
Steyn: Dems Turned Putin Into 'Bond Villain' With 'Drumbeat' Against Russia Author and commentator Mark Steyn said Democrats in Congress effectively made Russian President Vladimir Putin a "Bond villain" by continuing to accuse them of interference and spying.

Posted by Mark Finkelstein on March 21, 2017 9 Comments
As the rest of the Morning Joe panel remained in three-alarm, apocalyptic mode this morning, there was one lonely voice bringing some balance to the discussion. MSNBC analyst Mark Halperin said it was "completely improper" of FBI Director James Comey to have revealed the existence of an ongoing investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. Rejecting Mika Brzezinski's suggestion that Comey was "compelled" to make the revelation, Halperin added that Comey "says the standard is, if the public is interested in something, I'll reveal an ongoing probe. I've never heard of this standard. I think it's a dangerous one to set."
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