Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, who attended a mysterious 2016 meeting between Russians and Donald Trump associates at Trump Tower, said Tuesday the Mueller investigation had taken a "very heavy toll" on him and his family but he nonetheless thought it was "thorough and fair."


"The Special Counsel investigation has taken a very heavy toll on me and my family. It hit me hard financially and has led to baseless personal attacks. As a result, my ability to earn a living has been impaired, my professional standing has been undermined, and my personal relationships have suffered," he told Fox News in a statement. "To say nothing of the emotional toll on my family."

Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged Russian interference during the 2016 presidential contest ended Friday and a summary said it concluded there was "no collusion" between Trump and Moscow, but did not determine whether or not there had been obstruction of justice.


Even though the report itself has not been made public, there is much speculation as to what might be exposed about the much-hyped Trump Tower meeting, which came after music manager Rob Goldstone reached out to Donald Trump Jr. to set up the closed-door gathering, reportedly pledging damaging information on Hillary Clinton, along with discussions regarding the Magnitsky Act, which imposes sanctions on individuals and businesses accused of violating human rights.

The recycling crisis in Australia is set to worsen after the country lost the fourth-largest destination for its rubbish. India has announced a complete ban of plastic waste imports this month.

Recycling is "greatly under threat," the Australian Council of Recycling has warned, pointing to the closure of Asian markets. Last December India imported 13 percent of Australia's total waste exports.

"We are back to where we started with the China crisis, but worse because we have fewer alternative markets," the council's chief executive Peter Shmigel said, as cited by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Nations across the globe have been suffering from waste build-up after China stopped importing recyclable garbage last year. The country's ban on imports of 24 types of solid waste materials has led to a severe recycling industry overload.

Statistics showed Australia's waste exports to China declined by 41 percent in the last financial year. Meanwhile, overall waste exports by Australia increased by five percent since then.

An incredulous Anti-Spiegel reader inquired why Reporters without Borders placed Russia 148th in the world in Freedom of the Press. We translate Thomas Roemer's article on who funds RWB from the German...

I'd never gotten involved with Reporters Without Borders (RWB), so I wanted to reply at first that I can not comment. Then I researched only a few minutes and found that this is a very exciting topic.

Whenever I want to find out about an organization, I always look first at who finances it. And if that has been your habit, over time, you know the most interesting financiers. And so, after just a minute of research, I found out that the Reporters Without Borders are funded by Soros, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the French state, and other state sponsors. It was clear to me right then how to classify the RWB. And that's what I want to show:

Who finances it?

How do they work?

How and by what criteria do they create their ranking of press freedom, in which, for example, Germany is at the top and Russia at the bottom?

They rate themselves. IN RWB's own words: "Reporters Without Borders has sent a comprehensive questionnaire to hundreds of experts on every continent, including its own network of correspondents, representatives of partner organizations and journalists, academics, lawyers and human rights activists. However, this is not a representative survey based on scientific criteria.

The hardest question is the question of funding. The word "transparency" is incredibly often found on the RWG site, but the organization is completely non-transparent, especially when it comes to who finances it. The annual report of the German section of the RWB lists the income on page 28. Of a total of 1.5 million, 632,000 came from donations. But you can not see who donated how much. In addition, there are 600,000 from the German state (Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation) and 180,000 from membership fees, although it is not clear who paid how much. This means that 40% of the funding is from the German state and another 55% of the money is from you don't know who. There is an indication on page 31 of the annual report, where the supporters for projects are mentioned and that is a Who's Who list of German media companies.
With the umbrella organization of the RWB in France, the transparency does not look any better. Here it is also concealed about who paid how much.

In the annual report on page 26, there are at least the sponsors' logos. These include the EU, a fund set up by the French government, the Swedish Development Cooperation Agency, a fund owned by the Ebay founder or the Adessium fund. About Adessium there is little to learn, the fund is committed in its own words for an "open society" (i.e, Soros) and seems to receive half of its money from the Dutch state and half from other EU countries. Obviously, the Reporters Without Borders are living massively on the subject of state support from various channels and not donations.

That has always seemed like that, because the few reports of their funding that can be found always showed the same picture. Interestingly, their funding does show up at all in the mainstream media, but some alternative media have reported on it from time to time, in which the NED has been repeatedly cited as a sponsor. The NED, for those who do not know it, was founded under Ronald Reagan and since then has been doing "what the CIA used to do," as founder Weinstein once said in an interview. The NED is funded by the US Department of State and is designed to bring "democracy" into the world by promoting forces in other countries to make a US-friendly policy.

One year ago Thursday, Ecuador's government under President Lenin Moreno silenced Julian Assange.

WikiLeaks wrote on Twitter Wednesday: "... March 28, marks one year that WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange has been illegally gagged from doing journalism - any writing that expresses a 'political opinion' - even on his own treatment, after pressure from the U.S. on Ecuador."

On this date in 2018 Moreno imposed on Assange what Human Rights Watch's legal counsel Dinah Pokempner described as looking "more and more like solitary confinement." Moreno cut off Assange's online access and restricted visitors to the Ecuador embassy in London where Assange has had legal political asylum since 2012.

Moreno cited Assange's critical social media remarks about Ecuador's allies, the U.S. and Spain. Assange's near-total isolation, with the exception of visits from legal counsel during week days, has been augmented by the Ecuadorian government's imposition of a complex "protocol," which, although eased slightly in recent months in respect of visits allowed, has not improved Assange's overall status over the last 12 months. In some respects, it seems to have worsened.

Russia is not seeking to erect a Chinese-style "great firewall" with new legislation on the 'sovereign internet' or otherwise regulate the web, Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev has said.

The bill, introduced to the State Duma in December, envisions a set of measures to allow the 'Runet' - the Russian part of the internet - to operate autonomously in case of a global web shutdown or a cut-off of Russian IP addresses from it.

The legislation prompted speculation that the Russian government was seeking to regulate and censor the web - or even create a secluded one of its own. Such fears are unsubstantiated and the goal of the bill is entirely different, Medvedev said on Friday while speaking to users of Vkontakte online.

When Brexiteers wake up tomorrow, the ghastly reality that Britain is still a member of the EU will sink in. Those empty promises made by Theresa May that we would leave the bloc at 11pm this evening - deal or no deal - will doubtless echo in their minds. The sense of betrayal will be palpable.

I have never known such levels of anger and disgust at our political class as exist now. Remain-backing MPs seizing control of the House of Commons agenda this week marked a new low. And yet even after hijacking Parliament in that horribly arrogant way, these anti-democrats could not find a majority for anything! I don't know whether to laugh or to cry.

The irony is that since June 23 2016 there has been a clear majority for something in this country, if only MPs would remove their heads from the sand. Brexit voters are more resolute now than they were 33 months ago.

Some say there is light at the end of the tunnel regarding the catastrophic premiership of Mrs May. In a desperate attempt to get a new European treaty through the Commons, she has offered to quit in return for MPs' votes. But what is the use of that? Her "deal" is the modern-day equivalent of the Treaty of Versailles: a bad peace after a great victory. It even involves a reparations payment of £39 billion and proposes the annexation of UK sovereign territory in Northern Ireland. Not only is it the worst deal in history, it will guarantee years of acrimony.

Imagine you spent two years completely screwing up at your job, I mean not merely getting every single thing wrong but loudly, proudly getting in everyone else's face about how right you are. You'd get fired, terminated, 86'd, and Schiff-canned. But not the mainstream media. The media hacks failed for two years-plus, nonstop and without equivocation, but are they ever going to be held to account? No, they're just going to gather in a big circle and Pulitzer each other.

Imagine you committed a racial hate crime where you falsely accused people who didn't look or think like you of a horrible atrocity, and that you'd have gladly picked some poor saps with the wrong skin tone out of a line-up and sent them to prison for decades given the chance. Now imagine the two half-wits you hired to help you managed to get caught on video buying their stereotype get-up and spilled it all to the fuzz, though the fact you paid them with a check - because you're a criminal mastermind - was already enough to get a grand jury to indict your sorry AOC. Now, what are the chances the DA is going to transform your 16 felony counts into a $10K fine and a couple days community servicing? Your chances of said outcome are poor. They are poor because your pals are neither Mrs. Obama or Willie Brown's gal pal.

Now imagine that you studied really hard while the rich kids partied and smoked dope and splattered water on you by running their BMWs through puddles as you walked home from high school. Imagine your last name is "Chang," or that your dad is a soldier and not a hedge fund manager, or that your mom is a waitress and not a TV bimbo. Now imagine how you feel when Durwood Richguy IV gets admitted to Harvard when he can't count past 10 with his Gucci loafers on and you get slotted on a waiting list for Gumbo State.

Imagine you handled classified information and you took it home and put it on your iPad. Do you think the FBI would be super-concerned with your feels about it and give you a pass, like Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit got from Jim Comey, or would you be bunking with Michael Cohen? And speaking of that Looming Doofus, if you lied under oath in front of Congress, do you think you'd be free to wander the country, posting stupid tweets of yourself staring at trees and beaches?

Yeah, sure, that would totally happen.

How do you stop those pesky Ruskies from meddling in the world's greatest democracy, prevent your dodgy emails from leaking and tame unruly social media platforms? Ex-Moscow envoy Michael McFaul has offered this five-point plan.

Ambassador McFaul has frequently been called upon by media over the last two years to give his 'expert' analysis on all things Russia-related - and he was no less adamant about the need to combat the country's nefarious "influence" on Americans during his Thursday testimony to the House Intelligence Committee. This is how the experienced diplomat (and now a distinguished Russiagater) wants to ward off unwanted Russian influence.

After Border Control Commissioner announced "crisis levels" of detentions had been reached in El Paso, Texas leading to hundreds of migrants being held under a bridge, politicians are finally stepping in... to point fingers.

Border Control Commissioner Kevin McAleenan announced Wednesday that 13,400 migrants are currently in custody, which is well above the "crisis level" of 6,000. He expects 100,000 will be taken in by the end of March if steps are not taken.

One of the biggest issues for border agents is the dramatic increase in entire families attempting to enter the US, including a large number of children. As opposed to 20 years ago, many of the migrants attempting to cross the US border are from Central America, making them much more difficult to repatriate than Mexicans. The numbers have even forced the agency to risk some "direct release of migrants."

As pictures of the huddled migrants stuffed into the makeshift detention center began to spread across social media, US politicians began to do what they do best: mobilize the issue for personal political gain.

A new alarming report claims American Christian conservative groups funneled millions to fund "shocking" meddling in European politics. Seems like a big scoop, or just a ploy to sway European Parliament elections?

The report released by the UK-based political website openDemocracy this week spares no black paint to produce a picture of gross interference in European affairs. The perpetrators are conservative Christian charities, which, the records show, pumped at least $50 million into European countries.

All the right names that can scare a left-leaning reader are duly mentioned. Donald Trump? Check. Vladimir Putin? Check. Steve Bannon? Check, three times. Also listed are billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, the DeVos family, including Blackwater founder Erik Prince, and the evangelical preacher Franklin Graham - who notably travelled to Russia earlier this month, the report stressed for some arcane reason.

Of course the US public records over the past decade, which openDemocracy used as the source for the figure, don't identify the recipients. But the readers may well assume that they had the most nefarious goals in mind.