© Facebook/CC BY-SA 3.0 / w/User/Coolcaesar/United States Department of Justice/KJN
Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova • US Department of Justice
The US Justice Department announced, commenting on the charges, they believed that the conspiracy sought to conduct what they called "information warfare against the United States."
The Justice Department stated that
Russian national Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova had been charged with alleged interference in US elections, including the upcoming midterms. According to the department, she had acted through a vast
social media effort that was aimed at trying to influence American public opinion.
US President Donald Trump has commented on the situation saying that the Russian national had "nothing to do" with his campaign.
According to the Justice Department, Khusyaynova, 44, from St. Petersburg, Russia,
helped control the funds and allegedly aimed to use fake social media posts to influence the American voters.
However, the criminal compliant
did not include any allegation that the Russian national or a broader conspiracy had any effect on the election outcome.
Comment: The US wants bigger fish to fry than Khusyaynova. Whether she or those she worked for are criminals, remains to be proven. Meanwhile, accusations are cheap and the parameters of 'wrong-doing' seem to be morphing to suit a particular outcome.
More from
The Telegraph, Oct. 19, 2018:
US government on Friday charged a Russian woman with being part of a Kremlin-backed plot to interfere with next month's midterm elections.
Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, became the first foreigner to be charged in connection with the upcoming elections, rather than the 2016 presidential race.
She was accused of having being, since 2014, the chief accountant for "Project Lakhta", a $35 million operation linked to the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, which led Russian social media disruption in 2016. She is accused of conducting "information warfare" against the United States.
Khusyaynova continued to file detailed multi-million dollar budgets through 2017, and into 2018, including expenses for placing disruptive adverts on Facebook, promoting social media posts, registering domain names, and paying activists.
The operation was said to have been funded by Russian oligarch Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, who is a friend of Vladimir Putin, and two companies he controls. ...
The latest charge, against Khusyaynova, was not brought by Mr Mueller as he is only looking into the 2016 campaign, not 2018.
Prigozhin, who has been sanctioned by the US government, has been nicknamed "Putin's chef" because he has organised banquets for the Russian president.
And a brief mention from
Facebook:
Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, 44, of St. Petersburg, Russia, is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States for managing the financing of the social media troll operation that included the Internet Research Agency.
RTSat, 20 Oct 2018 15:00 UTC
© Mohamad Torokman/Reuters
Palestinian resident throws stone at Israeli military vehicles in West Bank.
It will take mere months to strike a deal with Palestinians if Israel returns to its 2008 two-state proposal, and the only ones opposing the plan are
Benjamin Netanyahu and his circle, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said.
"There is no question in my mind that Netanyahu's time is over. He's gone," Olmert
told TV channel i24NEWS on Friday, explaining that the current PM lacks "moral courage" to introduce a settlement, similar to the one the government laid out ten years ago.
Olmert, who governed Israel from 2006 to 2009,
offered nearly complete withdrawal of the Israeli forces from the West Bank and the Arab-populated East Jerusalem, with placing its Old City under international trusteeship. He also proposed the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to allow Israel to keep a small portion of the Palestinian land, containing major Jewish settlements. In return, Tel Aviv was to cede roughly the same amount of land to the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian leadership rejected the plan back then, but Olmert believes that if such a deal would reappear of the table today, things would be completely different.
He is "certain" that the Palestinians will sign off to the same model now.
"I know Palestinians. Many of them think that their failure to sign an agreement with me towards the end of 2008 was a historic mistake," the former Kadima party leader said. He added that the only ones opposing such a deal would be "extremists" like Netanyahu and his allies who reject the two-state solution.
Comment: Olmert calls for a reprise of his plan - perhaps worth a second review.
© Al Jazeera/KJN
The West Bank
More that 600,000 Israeli Jews live in illegal settlements on Palestinian land.
A Malaysian NGO has become the first organisation in the world to file a lawsuit against Israel at the
International Criminal Court (ICC),
claiming that the state has violated United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334.
The resolution, which was passed in 2016, reaffirmed that
Israeli settlements on Palestinian land since 1967 have no legal validity and constitute a violation of international law.
The Malaysia-based MyAqsa Foundation said Israel's continued settlement activity in the occupied territories
is an insult to the UN's authority.
"This resolution requires Israel to immediately stop all illegal activities in the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem and the West Bank," MyAqsa chief executive Noorazman Mohamed Samsuddin was quoted by
Free Malaysia Today as saying. "MyAqsa is convinced that the violation of Resolution 2334 will cause chaos and security instability not only in West Asia but also throughout the world," he added.
MyAqsa's CEO said that the group formalised the claims against Israel on Wednesday. He added that studies by his NGO had shown that
Israel has violated at least 28 Security Council resolutions.
Comment: Unfortunately, the United Nations is impotent when it comes to loggerheads with Israel, nor does Resolution 2334 have any teeth. Commendations to the Malaysian organization for the attention-getting lawsuit and setting an example in making a stand for Palestinian justice.
© AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi
Iranian C-130 plane
Iran has been supplying Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group
with components required to turn its rockets into precision-guided missiles, US media reported Friday.
According to Fox News, flight data suggested a delivery was made earlier this week by a cargo plane which left Tehran on Tuesday and flew back Thursday, with stops in Syria, Lebanon and Qatar.
Intelligence sources told the news channel the plane carried GPS devices and other components needed to build precision weapons at Iranian factories in Lebanon, in addition to plants in Syria and Yemen.
Western powers and Israel have repeatedly accused Iran of arming Hezbollah, including by operating factories in densely populated Beirut.
The militant group said it would not respond to every allegation coming from Israel.
RTSat, 20 Oct 2018 19:05 UTC
© Reuters / Edgard Garrido
Reacting to reports that a caravan of over 4,000 Central American migrants had breached the southern Mexican border, President Trump slammed the "hardened criminals" and lamented "incompetent" US immigration policy.
Echoing the criticism of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who called out the migrants for using their women and children as "
shields" during clashes with Mexican police, Trump mocked the "
bad hombres" streaming northward as he addressed a defense industry roundtable:
"To show you how brave they are - they put all the women and children up front."
After initially breaching the fence at a checkpoint earlier today, migrants clashed with a group of about fifty police armed with riot gear and pepper spray. Four officers were reportedly injured in the melee. Others used improvised rafts and ropes to cross the river that forms much of the Guatemala-Mexico border. Mexico has dispatched 500
federales to its southern border in the hope of stemming the migrant flow.
Tyler Durden
ZeroHedgeSat, 20 Oct 2018 18:39 UTC
© Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
Mohammed bin Salman's ‘2030 Vision’ finally put in real doubt by one man's probable murder?
So many Wall Street CEOs and other titans of investing and industry have pulled out of next week's "Davos in the Desert" conference that even the Ritz-Carlton, owner of the Riyadh venue hosting the conference (as it did last year), has been slammed by human rights groups over its continued support for Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and his brutal regime. In perhaps the biggest blow to the conference's clout, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has opted not to attend, eve as President Trump has insisted that Saudi Arabia's story about the circumstances surrounding the (now confirmed) death of critical journalist (and former government insider) Jamal Khashoggi is "credible".
To deflect blame away from MbS, the Saudi leadership has orchestrated a purge of the country's senior intelligence apparatus and arrested 18 other Saudi nationals for their "involvement" in orchestrating and carrying out the killing. And in the mother of all ironies, the royal family has tasked MbS with running a ministerial committee responsible for restructuring the Saudis foreign intelligence service.
Though Silicon Valley and Wall Street would probably have you believe that they aren't simply ready to "forget" about Khashoggi, the reality is slightly more nuanced.
But the simple fact is that both industries have become too reliant on Saudi money to simply walk away, as Bloomberg and the New York Times laid bare in a batch of stories that exposed this corporate indignation as little more than posturing.
RTSat, 20 Oct 2018 14:57 UTC
© Wikimedia Commons / U.S. Navy
USS Harry S. Truman
A US aircraft carrier strike group has entered the Arctic to join a massive NATO naval drill close to Russian border for the first time since the end of the Cold War.
Nuclear-powered carrier USS 'Harry S. Truman' will operate in the Norwegian Sea to display "the flexibility and toughness"of US forces, the Navy
stated on Friday. A ship of its type hasn't conducted voyages into Arctic waters since 1991, and hasn't shown up near Norwegian shores since 1987.
The carrier group will perform a wide array of training exercises, including takeoffs and landings in severe northern weather conditions, the carrier's commanding officer, Captain Nick Dienna, explained.
"It has been over three decades since carrier aviation has been tested by this environment."
RTFri, 19 Oct 2018 16:50 UTC
© Reuters / Kevin Lamarque
Journalist Jamal Khashoggi died in a "fight" with individuals inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey, Saudi authorities said after nearly two weeks of speculation. A senior Saudi intelligence official was fired over the incident.
Khashoggi lived in Turkey and was last seen entering the consulate in Istanbul two weeks ago. The Turkish government almost immediately accused the Saudi authorities of killing the journalist, which Riyadh denied.
On Saturday, however, a Saudi prosecutor announced on state television that an investigation into Khashoggi's disappearance
confirmed he was dead. An argument between Khashoggi and men who met him inside the consulate on October 2
escalated into "a fistfight that led to his death," the prosecutor said, adding that the men then tried to cover it up.
"The Kingdom expresses its deep regret at the painful developments that have taken place," the prosecutor's statement adds.
Comment: See also:
Here's a more detailed
version of events:
In a statement issued early Saturday morning in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, the Saudis claimed that some number of unnamed "suspects" had traveled to the consulate to meet with Khashoggi, "as there were indications of the possibility of his returning" to Saudi Arabia. ...
"The discussions that took place . . . did not go as required and developed in a negative way," the statement continued, leading to a "fight and a quarrel" and a "brawl" that led to Khashoggi's death. The unnamed suspects then attempted "to conceal and cover what happened," the Saudi government claimed, without elaborating.
As
Moon of Alabama sardonically translates: "Khashoggi started a tussle with the fifteen men we sent to kindly ask him to come home. Unfortunately he stumbled, fell onto the chainsaw and severed his head."
So far, Trump has
said he finds the Saudis' version of events "credible":
"It is a good first step. It is a big step," Trump said, admitting, though, that "some questions" do remain and that he will be dealing with Congress on how to proceed to address the issue. "Saudi Arabia has been a great ally but what happened is unacceptable," Trump emphasized.
"I would prefer if there is going to be some form of sanction, or what we may determine to do if anything," the president said. "But I would prefer that we don't use as retribution, canceling the $110 billion-worth of work, which means 600,000 jobs."
"They have been a great ally in the Middle East. We need them as a counter-balance to Iran. So it's not the simplest solution. It's not the simplest situation to be in," Trump reiterated, expressing hope that "it will get solved, it will get solved."
Just like the U.S. needed/needs al-Qaeda and ISIS as a counter-balance to Syria, as a counter-balance to Iran...
Not everyone is
buying the Saudis somewhat ridiculous sounding explanation, however:
"It does not add up! I mean who did they have at the consulate - Mike Tyson?" Richard Becker from the anti-war ANSWER Coalition noted ...
"The idea that he was killed in a fistfight and then his body was disappeared ... makes no sense. The idea that the order did not come from the top makes no sense either," Becker added. ...
"I think President Trump opened the door to this kind of thing when he used that it could be a 'rogue operation' remark," Jatras told RT. "The Saudis were not willing to walk through that a few days ago, but now I think they are getting desperate that the noose is tightening around Mohamad bin Salman."
"The story is a story meant, I think, for Donald Trump, so he can say, 'Okay, there is an explanation, and now we can go on with our money grabbing relationship with Saudi Arabia," Becker added.
Lawmakers and journalists are
also skeptical, including Lindsey Graham WaPo editor Karen Attiah, among others:
But the Saudis' MidEast allies are
voicing support, including the (illegitimate) Yemeni government, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt.
Pompeo
denied an ABC News report that the Turks had played the alleged audio tape of the murder for him, but all the Turkish FM could muster was to
deny sharing the tape with him. So it's at least possible that Pompeo heard the tape, which probably does not sound like a fist-fight resulting in accidental death. Regardless, the ruling Turkish party has
vowed to reveal what happened - eventually.
Erdogan and the Saudi King have reportedly agreed on the importance of
cooperating on the case. And MBS
denies any involvement:
"There were no orders for them to kill him or even specifically kidnap him," said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity and adding that there was a standing order to bring critics of the kingdom back to the country.
"MbS had no knowledge of this specific operation and certainly did not order a kidnapping or murder of anybody. He will have been aware of the general instruction to tell people to come back," the source said, using the initials of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The source said the whereabouts of Khashoggi's body were unclear after it was handed over to a "local cooperator" but there was no sign of it at the consulate.
The Saudis are clearly lying, but that does not mean that MBS or the King were responsible. They can't really admit that it was a torture or kidnap operation gone wrong - or that some high-ranking and closely-connected operatives engaged on this mission without proper orders (either on their own initiative thinking it would please their superiors, or as a result of intrigue aimed at making MBS look bad). That would make the Saudis look incompetent or divided (never mind the fact that they're both). The best solution in this case: copy the Israelis with their self-defense defense. Well, we'll see how the Turks react. Maybe they'll get something they want and let the Saudis get away with this version. Or maybe they'll release the tapes (presuming they actually exist) and make a further fool of MBS?
Phil Weiss and Donald Johnson
MondoweissThu, 18 Oct 2018 17:04 UTC
© Official White House Photo by Pete Souza
President Barack Obama talks with national security staff in the Oval Office after being notified of the nuclear agreement with Iran. From left, Chief of Staff Denis McDonough; Jeffrey Prescott, NSC Senior Director for Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the Gulf States; National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice; Avril Haines, Deputy National Security Advisor for Counterterrorism and Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications, July 13, 2015.
Ben Rhodes, the foreign policy wunderkind under President Obama, recently published a book on foreign policy with the bracing-realist title,
The World As It Is and
hardly mentioned U.S. support for the war on Yemen, leaving out mass starvation, war crimes, even Saudi Arabia. Rhodes's three Yemen references were all to al Qaeda's presence.
Then two weeks ago the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, and is now presumed murdered, and like so many others in the foreign policy establishment, Rhodes has taken the opportunity to attack Donald Trump's embrace of Saudi Arabia in a piece in the
Atlantic titled, "
The Abandonment of American Leadership," (October 12).
Mexico sent federal police to its southern border Wednesday with a warning that they will detain and deport any members of a highly publicized migrant caravan who try to enter the country without a visa.
The police officers arrived in two planes in Tapachula, a border city that is a popular waypoint for migrants coming up through Central America to cross into Mexico. Local media reports showed hundreds of agents deplaning, some carrying riot gear.
In a
statement released Wednesday evening,
the Mexican foreign ministry said any of the caravan migrants entering the country "in an irregular manner" will be arrested and administratively deported if appropriate. Migrants who claim they are fleeing violence and want to petition for asylum must do so at the border, while remaining in a government-run camp for up to 45 days, the statement also said.
The caravan, dubbed "March of the Migrant," formed in the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula on Friday, numbering about 150 migrants. It has since swelled to more than 2,000 people and has already crossed into neighboring Guatemala en route to the Mexican border.
Comment: The US wants bigger fish to fry than Khusyaynova. Whether she or those she worked for are criminals, remains to be proven. Meanwhile, accusations are cheap and the parameters of 'wrong-doing' seem to be morphing to suit a particular outcome.
More from The Telegraph, Oct. 19, 2018: And a brief mention from Facebook: