New York-Tel Aviv-Moscow Triangle
New York - Tel Aviv - Moscow Triangle
This section contains the materials that document the background of Trump - Russia. From the banking houses of New York, to the Bolshevik Revolution. From the New School to the Neo-Cons. From the arming of Irgun to the creation of the Zionist state of Israel. From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the mafia state that rose out of the USSR. The development of international criminal networks, think tanks, governments, oligarchy and multinational corporate control of our politics, interests, technology, freedoms and even our minds.
Jack Bernstein
The Soviets would institute a pro-Arab policy solely as a camouflage for its true intention, which was to furnish aid to the Arabs, but never enough to enable the Arabs to destroy Israel.
The Soviets would open the gates of Soviet satellite countries to Jewish immigration to Israel. Should this be insufficient, Soviet Russia then would open its own gates to immigration.
<strong>The Soviets would absolutely guarantee the security of Israel.
Both the Soviet Union and Israel would share intelligence reports.
The latest scientific developments that the US provides Israel are channeled on to the Soviet Union. The main center through which this scientific information passes is Israel's Weizman Institute in the town of Rehoovot about 40 kilometers south of Tel Aviv.
Jon Swinn
This infographic details the links each Israeli Prime Minister has to the USSR/Russian Empire.
David Livingstone
A vital read detailing the history that has led to the present day situation we face.
Zarina Zabrisky
The Center for the National Interest, former Nixon Center, a hosting institution for Trump’s first foreign policy speech and the adviser who helped writing the speech have multiple long-term ties to the Kremlin.
Gordon Thomas
Gordon Thomas is interviewed on TruNews about his book Robert Maxwell Israel's Superspy.
Gil Stern
Watching the group of mega-wealthy interact, one cannot help but wonder how so many affluent businessmen in the former Soviet Union are Jewish.
Phillip Reeves
"I was [politically] on the left, and I thought it was possible to reach an agreement with the Arabs. But after 20 years, I no longer think an accord is possible," he says.
Most of Israel's Russian-speaking community, including Esterman, is on the right these days. Since they now make up about 15 percent of Israel's 8 million people, they wield considerable political clout and have played a significant role in the general rightward shift of the Israeli electorate.
Russian-speaking immigrants form the base of the influential right-wing nationalist party Yisrael Beiteinu. The party has teamed up with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud to form a bloc that is leading the polls ahead of this month's elections.
Galili argues that immigrants from the former Soviet Union have made a considerable impact on the politics of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — not least because of their resistance to the idea of giving up territory.
Arkadi Mazin
Since the beginning of the large-scale immigration to Israel from the former Soviet Union in the 1990s, Israel’s community of Russian speakers has played an dominant role in Israeli politics. Some maintain that it has tipped the balance and decided the final outcome in all the elections since then, perhaps with the exception of the most recent ones.
Nevertheless, as will be shown, the Russian-speaking community’s vote played a major role in these elections, too.
From this, it may be concluded that the electoral behavior of the Russian-speaking community in Israel differs from that of the majority of the Israeli population. And indeed, as has been observed in various areas of life, such as consumer behavior, media and entertainment, as well as from the political-electoral perspective, the Russian-speaking community in Israel is commonly viewed as a separate sector, alongside two other important minority sectors – the ultra-Orthodox and Arab
– and the “general Israeli population.”
Robert Zapesochny
The core of this growing alliance is the more than one million Israeli citizens who were born in the former Soviet Union. Between 1970 and 1988, only 291,000 Jews, and their non-Jewish relatives, were allowed to leave the Soviet Union (165,000 went to Israel, and 126,000 went to the United States).
In 1989, Mikhail Gorbachev ended restrictions on Jewish emigration, in part for better relations with the United States. From 1989 to 2006, 1.6 million Soviet Jews, and their family members, left the former Soviet Union (979,000 went to Israel, 325,000 to the U.S. and 219,000 to Germany).
Earlier this year, President Putin said, “Russia and Israel have developed a special relationship primarily because 1.5 million Israeli citizens come from the former Soviet Union, they speak the Russian language, are the bearers of Russian culture, Russian mentality. They maintain relations with their relatives and friends in Russia, and this make the interstate relations very special.”
Israel also needs Russia, as well. Israel’s Start-Up Nation has been fueled by one million Russian-speaking Israelis. For this economic miracle to continue, the Israelis will need more engineers from the former Soviet Union. The Russian-speaking Israelis will have plenty of talent to choose from in the former Soviet Union. According the World Economic Forum, in 2015, Russia graduated 454,000 engineers and Ukraine graduated 130,000 engineers.
Shilomo Maital
Israel has gained immensely from the brain gain of one million immigrants from the former Soviet Union during the years 1990-1999. According to a study by Sarit Cohen of Bar-Ilan University and Chang-Tai Hsieh from Princeton University, 60 percent of the Russian-speaking immigrants who arrived in Israel between 1989 and 1990 were college educated, twice the proportion of college-educated Israelis. From 1990 to 1993, their study notes, “57,000 [Russian immigrants] had worked as engineers and 12,000 as medical doctors; in contrast, there were only 30,000 engineers and 15,000 medical doctors in Israel in 1989.”
That brain gain was a one-time stroke of luck. Many of the brain-gain Russian-speaking engineers and doctors are now retiring, and many of the educated Israelis who could replace them are going abroad.
Harriet Sherwood
The million-plus citizens of the former Soviet Union who migrated to Israel in the past 20 years have not only made new lives of their own but they have transformed their adopted country. They have influenced the culture, hi-tech industry, language, education and, perhaps most significantly, Israeli politics.
Jews in the former Soviet Union were largely banned from making aliya – migrating to Israel – before the collapse of the empire. But from 1990 onwards they came in their thousands, and they now constitute around 15% of Israel's 7.7 million population.
Strictly speaking not all of them are Jewish. In traditional Judaism only someone whose mother is Jewish or who has undergone a formal conversion to Judaism is a Jew. But from 1990 anyone from the former Soviet Union who had a Jewish father or grandparent, or who was married to someone meeting those criteria, was granted Israeli citizenship under the country's law of return.
Masha Zur Glozman
The authors begin their story toward the end of the 1980s, after Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir realized that Mikhail Gorbachev was prepared to release those Jews who longed to leave the Soviet Union, because he wished to obtain American loan guarantees for the far-reaching reforms he had planned.
Bronfman and Galili describe the clandestine and open channels through which the State of Israel acted to advance this immigration, and the various interests involved, such as the desire to bolster the "demographic data" (a euphemism for increasing Israel's Jewish population ).
Aluf Benn
According to Meridor, Shamir's most important contribution was convincing the U.S. administration under President George Bush Sr. to desist from issuing refugee visas to Soviet Jews.
Up to 1989, Jews leaving the USSR could choose to immigrate either to the United States or to Israel, with many choosing the U.S. Shamir was opposed to this "defection," as it was termed at the time. He believed Jews ought to settle in Israel, whether they were from a Russian gulag or Brooklyn. He persuaded the American government and U.S. Jewish organizations that the Soviet Jews weren't refugees, that they had a homeland in Israel. Then the floodgates of the collapsing Soviet Empire opened wide, and a million Jews along with their relatives immigrated to Israel. Had Shamir not insisted, today, many of them would have been living on the shores of the Hudson River.
The so-called "dropout" rate among Jews who leave the Soviet Union has reached as high as 80% in recent years. "Dropouts" are Jews who claim political refugee status from the United States when they reach Vienna rather than fly to Israel.
Roman Borisovich
Wealthy [Jewish] oligarchs have become a fixture of the British landscape during the past 20 years. But what do they offer to the country's culture?
Alisher Usmanov and Roman Abramovich are joined in the capital by a host of lesser-known wealthy compatriots
This video includes excerpts from the speeches of Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, Attorney Alan Dershowitz, and footage of the legendary Chabad Lubavitch "Roll Call" at the 2006 International Conference of Shluchim.
"My call to fame is actually being Mr. Rothschild’s friend and it is a pleasure to honour Mr. Rothschild and David Slager for what they have done here in Oxford for the Oxford University Chabad Society." -Chief Rabbi Lazar
Ronen Bergman
In 1992, Vasili Mitrokhin, a KGB archivist, defected to the West with a trove of top secret documents from the Soviet intelligence agency, which helped expose many Russian agents and assets in Israel and elsewhere. This series of articles explores these documents and brings to light the secrets they revealed.
Ruti Levy
Fifty Israeli students – most of them computer science graduates or veterans of army technology units – will begin a program in October to learn the ins and outs of some of the hottest fields in Israeli high-tech, such as data science and machine learning.
he classes will meet at Tel Aviv University, but no Israeli academic institution is involved. The syllabus was written and the lecturers hired and paid for by the Russian company Yandex.
Ben Schreckinger
Chabad of Port Washington, a Jewish community center on Long Island’s Manhasset Bay, sits in a squat brick edifice across from a Shell gas station and a strip mall. The center is an unexceptional building on an unexceptional street, save for one thing: Some of the shortest routes between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin run straight through it.
Ron Kampeas
Of 10 billionaires with Kremlin ties who funneled political contributions to Donald Trump and a number of top Republican leaders, at least five are Jewish
Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar secretly visited Iran almost six months ago as part of a diplomatic trip organized by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Israeli media reported over the weekend.
The Islamic Republic opposed the rabbi's arrival, but Putin himself insisted on Lazar's participation in the diplomatic mission, the website Ynetnews reported. The trip was reportedly headed by the chairman of Russia's State Duma and included talks in the Iranian parliament.
Lazar, who heads the Chabad movement in Russia, is considered close to Putin and is often accused of supporting the president unconditionally in exchange for his regime’s seal of approval for Chabad.
Israel has argued for months that Iran needs to withdraw its forces from the war-torn country. In recent weeks, senior U.S. officials have stated that while both Russia and the U.S. agree with Israel that Iran needs to exit Syria, it is currently unrealistic for Russia to force Iran out of the country.
Despite his alignment with the racist right, Trump has professed ultra-right views on Israel. His connections with Israel also extend to his broad ties with the Russian mafia, many of whom hold dual citizenship in Israel. The Russian mafia is closely associated with Chabad-Lubavitch, a Hasidic movement that derived originally from Sabbateanism.
Chaim Lev, Ari Yashar
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday met with a delegation of rabbis, led by Sephardic Chief Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, Chief Rabbi of Russia Berel Lazar, and rabbis of the Rabbinical Center of Europe (RCE).
"I follow closely what's going on in Israel," said Putin during the long meeting, which was held in Moscow.
"I support the struggle of Israel as it attempts to protect its citizens. I also heard about the shocking murder of the three youths. It is an act that cannot be allowed, and I ask you to transmit my condolences to the families," added the Russian president, in referring to the abduction and murder of three teens in June by Hamas terrorists.
Erica Mills
Israeli foreign affairs analyst, Ehud Yaari, says Russian President Vladimir Putin & Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu want to strike a deal on the Leviathan field
“At a time when global terrorism singles out Jews around the world, at a time when we see the impact of intolerance and hate on every continent, here in Russia, the Jewish community is thriving. Jewish kindergartens and Jewish schools are filled to capacity, synagogues are crowded on Shabbat. But Jews in Western Europe are seriously thinking of leaving,” Lauder said.
“President [Vladimir] Putin has made Russia a country where Jews are welcome. And that’s not just a good thing for Jews. It is good for Russia as well,” Lauder said. “It is because of this unprecedented change that the World Jewish Congress looks to continue to work with Russia. We want to be able to count on Russia as a solid friend.”
Israel and Russia agreed to strengthen their regional military cooperation, when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Russian President Vladimir Putin met face-to-face in the Kremlin on Tuesday.
The two leaders agreed to tightened their cooperation in the fight against terrorism and stressed the importance of ending regional violence such as in Syria. They also reiterated the importance of Israel ending its short-term conflict with Turkey and its long-standing one with the Palestinians.
“We discussed the continued coordination between our two militaries in the region, which already works quite well,” Netanyahu told reporters at a joint press conference in the Kremlin with Putin after their meeting.
It is their fourth meeting in the last year, and their third in Moscow.
Chemi Shalev
The Israeli media usually takes scant interest in Robert Mueller’s investigations. It prefers to dwell on Donald Trump’s supposedly pro-Israeli policies. Last week’s report in the New York Times about the participation of Joel Zamel, the Australian-born “Israeli specialist in social media manipulation,” in an August 3, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in New York was an exception to the rule. The FBI, the Times reported, had even come to Israel to search the offices of Zamel’s company. Here was a direct Israeli link to the scandal that has bewitched much of America since Trump was first elected.
Geoff Earle
Special Counsel Robert Mueller's report sketches out yet another effort to arrange a meeting between Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin – this time from a man touting a connection to the Chief Rabbi of Russia.
The Trump-Putin meeting never occurred, but Rabbi Berel Lazar, known as 'Putin's Rabbi,' did attend a Trump Tower meeting in 2016 with the man who pitched it.
Tana Ganeva
In the latest bizarre twist in the Paul Manafort saga, the Guardian reports that Manafort may have conspired with an Israeli official to manipulate members of the Obama administration into supporting Viktor Yanukovych over Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine, and link the latter to anti-Semitism. Yanukovych was Russia’s chosen candidate.
1. As Bashar al-Assad moves to consolidate power in Syria, the US, Russia and Israel seem united in their efforts to throw Hezbollah, a proxy of Iran, out of the conflict. In mid-August, Secretary of State John Bolton told ABC that the three countries are united in this goal.
3. During the President's much derided one-on-one talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump assured the world that the security of Israel is a priority for both Russia and the United States.
4. House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia, the writer Craig Unger writes about how up to 59 Russian oligarchs have been cultivating Donald Trump and his associates for years, through such means as New York's unregulated real estate industry.
As the Times of Israel has pointed out, many of these wealthy Russian business-people also have ties to Israel.
5. So far, the President has made good on his promise to prioritize the interests of the current Israeli government.
It's not a surprise when Trump flouts international norms. But his decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem sparked furor around the world and led to deadly protests by Palestinians.
The administration dismissed the demonstrations, in which multiple civilians were killed, as 'unfortunate propaganda'.
Jon Swaine
Manafort may have conspired with an Israeli official to manipulate members of the Obama administration into supporting Viktor Yanukovych over Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine, and link the latter to anti-Semitism. Yanukovych was Russia's chosen candidate.
Manafort allegedly orchestrated a plan to smear a Yanukovych domestic rival, Yulia Tymoshenko, by disseminating “with no fingerprints” allegations that Tymoshenko had paid for the murder of a Ukrainian official. “My goal is to plant some stink on Tymo,” Manafort wrote in a message.
He also allegedly schemed to have “Obama Jews” exert pressure on Barack Obama’s administration to support Yanukovych and disavow Tymoshenko, and conspired with an Israeli government official to spread allegations linking Tymoshenko to antisemitism. Manafort allegedly wrote in one message to an unidentified associate: “I have someone pushing it on the NY Post. Bada bing bada boom.
Israeli Industry Center for R&D (MATIMOP) and Russia’s Skolkovo Foundation will shortly announce a call for papers for joint R&D project by Israeli and Russian start-ups to obtain support from Office of the Chief Scientist in Israel and the Skolkovo Foundation. Skolkovo Foundation VP Stanislav Naumov said, “The difference between Russia and Israel’s entrepreneurial system required thinking together to find a formula for cooperation. The formula we reached enables us to move forward to the stage of extensive collaboration by ventures of the two countries. The special call for papers that we are publishing is another important stage in developing cooperation between Russia and Israel, which began a year ago with the fostering of innovation and the commercialization of advanced technologies.”
Israel-Skolkovo Center co-managing director Alexander Zinigrad said, “This is the first time that special binational collaboration for start-ups has been declared in Israel. This is an important measure, which gives a great boost to the cooperation that began in the summer of 2011 between the start-up industry in Israel and the Skolkovo Foundation. Since the establishment of the Israel-Skolkovo Center, we have received scores of inquiries from Israeli start-up companies every month. Within less than a year, we have assisted six Israeli start-up companies at Skolkovo."
"Artificial intelligence is not only the future of Russia, but the future of all mankind. It holds both tremendous opportunities and is fraught with scarcely predictable dangers. Whoever takes the lead in this sphere will become Lord of the World," President Putin told Russian schoolchildren during an open lesson on their first day of the new school year.
John Schindler
Exactly how Clinton profited off deals with Skolkovo is something the American public has a right to know before November 8.
Then there’s the matter of what Skolkovo actually is. In truth, it’s nothing like Silicon Valley except in outward appearance. It’s a fully state-driven enterprise—funded largely by the Kremlin and acting on its orders. It does the bidding of the Russian government, and President Putin has taken intense interest in his high-tech complex, understanding its value to the country’s defense and security sector.
Amarella Wenkert
The Russian technology company will launch the Yandex Machine Learning Initiative, offering courses in artificial intelligence and financial support to students and faculty
Modeled after Yeshiva University in the United States, The Jewish University of Moscow is a private institution with a student body of 200 whose budget comes mostly from donors and the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, dean Alexander Lebedev told JTA earlier this week.
The university — whose faculties include economics, law, humanities and Jewish studies – comprises two existing Jewish community colleges: Institute XXI century for men and Institute Machon CHaMeSH for women. Their reconstitution as campuses of a single, state-recognized university is a first in Russian history, according to Lebedev.
Abigail Klein Leichman
Titanium Investments unveils its $50 million venture capital fund geared mainly to Israeli companies such as Feedvisor, Any.do and MUV Interactive.
The US has expressed support for an Israeli plan to revive a historic railroad network linking the Jewish state to Gulf countries.
Jason Greenblatt, US President Donald Trump's peace envoy, hailed the proposal on Monday as an Israeli minister visits Oman to present the "Tracks for Regional Peace" project.
Olga Gershenson
The museum project was initiated by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia — the umbrella organization for Chabad-Lubavitch in Russia — supported by the Kremlin and financed by a handful of Russian Jewish oligarchs at a cost of $50 million. The journey to museum from garage began in 2001, when Moscow City Hall donated the dilapidated building to the Hasidic Jewish Community Center. The idea was that the building would house a cultural center, including an exhibition on Jewish culture and an art gallery. While this site is neither central nor easily accessible to tourists, it is part of an entire campus of Jewish religious and cultural organizations that sprouted in the post-Soviet era in the traditionally Jewish neighborhood (to the extent that Moscow has Jewish neighborhoods) of Maryina Roshcha. The museum building shares its territory with a Jewish day school, a yeshiva, a medical center and several Jewish charity organizations.
Several years of faltering attempts to renovate the garage building ended in 2007, when Roman Abramovich, a federation board member, restored it. In 2008 it opened its doors to the public as the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture, managed by Dasha Zhukova, Abramovich’s girlfriend at the time.
Toi Staff
KGB files reportedly revealed the existence of an extensive Soviet spy ring in Israel, encompassing Knesset members, senior IDF officers, engineers, members of the Israeli intelligence community, and others who worked on classified projects.
Top-secret KGB documents reported on by the Hebrew-language daily Yedioth Ahronoth Wednesday detailed the extent of the network of agents run by the Soviet secret service.
The documents were copied over a period of 20 years by Vasili Mitrokhin, a senior KGB archivist who defected to the UK in 1992. His edited notes on various KGB operations were released in 2014 and are stored in Churchill College in Cambridge; his handwritten notes remain classified by MI5.
Tamar Pileggi
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was a Soviet spy in Damascus in the 1980s, Israel’s Channel 1 television reported Wednesday, citing information it said was included in an archive smuggled out of the USSR.
According to Channel 1’s foreign news editor Oren Nahari, the famed Mitrokhin archive, kept by KGB defector Vasily Mitrokhin, revealed that Abbas was a Soviet mole in Damascus in 1983.
The documents — obtained by Israeli researchers Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez — purportedly show that Abbas, code-named Krotov (mole), was involved with the Soviets while Mikhail Bogdanov, today Vladimir Putin’s envoy to the Middle East. was stationed in Damascus.
Richard Silverstein
The Israeli military censor compelled Bergman to suppress the names of the most damaging of the KGB spies working in Israel in a three-part series published in recent weeks by Ynet. In part four of his series, Bergman secured the cooperation of an Israeli triple agent who worked for the CIA, KGB and Shabak. The ex-spy agreed to be interviewed and for his identity to be exposed. But the IDF censor, Col. Ariella Ben Avraham, so eviscerated the proposed article that it could not be published. As a result, it will be some time before we learn this individual’s identity. Given that the former spy agreed to be identified and the incident presumably occurred decades ago, one wonders what the censor is protecting…except her own power and prerogative to render secret what should be known in any other democratic society.
Richard Silverstein
Bergman, who is compelled by the military censor to suppress the names of almost all of the spies, tells (Nana recounts the story at 3:05 of this news report) of a Soviet Jew born in south-central Russia in the mid-1950s. He studied engineering and was considered quite proficient in his field of study. The spy, whose code-name was Bejan, was recruited to an elite Soviet espionage school, where he was trained in the field of spycraft. He made aliyah to Israel and was inducted into the IDF shortly thereafter. He joined the officer training school and from there rose quickly in the ranks until he was appointed the chief of one of the army’s most critical infrastructure ventures. He was privy to a multitude of highly secret material including the location of bases, infrastructure facilities, data on the order of battle, and preparations for future wars.
After retiring from the IDF, he turned to various jobs in private industry. Later, he was appointed by Avigdor Lieberman, who himself has often been rumored to be a Russian intelligence asset, to a senior post. Then suddenly, Bejan disappeared in 2005. He has not been heard from since.
He is not the first person in Lieberman’s circle to suffer a strange, mysterious fate. News1 detailed the circumstances in which several key witnesses in the last Lieberman investigation who either committed suicide, disappeared, or “forgot” key elements of their previous testimony. Among them are Michael Falkov, a Lieberman communications advisor who disappeared in 2014. Yosef Shuldiner was found shot to death in an Israeli cemetery in 2006. Artium Borovik, a senior Russian journalist close to the Kremlin, whom Lieberman used to lobby on behalf of his business ventures, died in a mysterious plane crash in 2008. Daniella Mourtzi was the corporate accountant for five Cyprus-based Lieberman companies which were fronts. She was to testify as part of the government investigation into Lieberman’s shady business dealings about his ownership of the companies. But before her time came to testify, she suddenly developed amnesia and couldn’t recall a thing. Another witness in Moldova (where Lieberman was born) was interrogated and shortly afterward had a fatal stroke.
Richard Sale
Soviet infiltration of Israel's spy agency, Mossad, is the most serious blow to Israeli intelligence since the 1970s and U.S. intelligence also was breached as a result, U.S. sources reveal.
Mossad has been penetrated by 'highly placed' Soviet moles and a full-scale internal counterintelligence investigation is under way, the intelligence sources said.
A Justice Department source said U.S. counterintelligence agents became aware of the Israeli-Soviet espionage pipeline when data stolen by Jonathan Jay Pollard, a U.S. Navy analyst convicted of spying for Israel, was 'traced to the Eastern bloc.'
Intelligence sources said data reaching the Soviets via this route included sensitive U.S. weapons technology and strategic information about the defense forces of Turkey, Pakistan and moderate Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia.
U.S. intelligence analysts said the Pollard data was traded to the Soviets in return for promises to increase emigration of Soviet Jews to Israel.
One analyst said Israel's 'right-wing' Jews are involved with spying for the Soviets and called it 'ironic,' noting that left-wing elements were responsible for similar scandals in the past.
Yossi Melman
"There is a paradoxical situation," says the chief rabbi of Moscow. "The Jews in Russia have power, money and influence, as never before; yet at the same time the situation of the Jewish community is at an all-time low." A guide to the wars of the Jewish oligarchs in Russia.
Jacob Maslow
Yandex, the “Google of Russia,” is going to expand into Israel. The tech firm, the largest in Russia, will be launching a few services in Israel. The firm will be launching Yandex Music in just a few weeks, and then there are additional plans for Israel.
Times of Israel broke the news that Yandex is still thinking about opening a taxi venture in Israel and also plans to offer an eight-month course in data science. Yandex plans to introduce their Y-Data initiative in Israel, a course that will be very similar to what is already running in Russia.
John Schindler
[Note: This is an unusually controversial piece, even for my blog, for reasons that will quickly become obvious. Linkages between Al-Qa'ida and Russian intelligence have been discussed in hushed tones among spies in many countries, for years, and this matter has been a "hobby file" of mine for some time. Here is a think-piece on it, in the hope of spurring additional discussion and research into this important yet murky matter. This is particularly necessary given rising tensions between Moscow and the West at present.
Tom Segev
In fact, it is of interest to recall - incredible as it may seem - that Stalin's Soviet Union was once at the center of Israeli identity. In the first Knesset, the left-wing Mapam (United Workers Party ) was the second-largest faction, with 19 seats. During the debate over the makeup of the government that was held in the Knesset on March 10, 1949, one of Mapam's two leaders, Ya'akov Hazan of Kibbutz Mishmar Ha'emek, said: "For us, the Soviet Union is the fortress of world socialism, it is our second homeland, the socialist one." That comment could go down as one of the 10 most-quoted sentences in the history of Israeli politics.
Ofri Ilany
While Ze’ev Jabotinsky has in recent years been lionized as the picture of a faultless liberal standout, there is no justification for describing Likud as a movement that was once liberal and has deteriorated into fascism.
David Ben-Gurion visited the Soviet Union in 1923, and drew inspiration from the Leninist form of organization and use of power. He described Lenin admiringly as “an iron-willed man who would not spare human life or the blood of the innocent on behalf of the revolution.” In the wake of that visit, Ben-Gurion built his political party into a power-centric revolutionary organization that was not squeamish about using whatever means possible to realize its objectives.
Jonathan Adelman
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has in the last three years gone nine times to a Russia that has promoted dozens of Russian Jews to become oligarchs in the new Russia.
Amiram Barkat and Yossi Melman
Zvi Magen did what few Israelis would dare to do: He rejected a tempting, well-paying job offer from Arcadi Gaydamak, the Israeli-Russian oligarch, whom the State Prosecutor's office is considering putting on trial for money laundering, and who is wanted in France on suspicion of illegal arms trading with Angola. Gaydamak wanted Magen to head the Congress of Jewish Religious Communities and Organizations in Russia (KEROOR). This is an off-the-shelf organization that came to life about 18 months ago under the aegis of Gaydamak, who contributes money to it and acts as its president.
Magen received the generous offer a few months ago, while he was still head of Nativ, but preferred to join the Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya as head of a new Euro-Asia institute that will conduct "studies from the Balkans to Mongolia."
Magen, a lieutenant colonel in the Israel Defense Forces reserves and a former ambassador to Ukraine and Russia, has headed Nativ for almost seven years. He concluded his term of office at the beginning of last month, but his successor has only just been named. Last week, Naomi Ben Ami, Israel's ambassador to Ukraine, was chosen to head Nativ. This is the first time in the history of the Israeli intelligence community that a woman has been named to head one of its agencies - although Nativ in fact is no longer involved in intelligence.
'September, 1998: Kremlin Insider Predicts ‘Massive Unrest’ to Journalist'
March 19, 1999: Bombing in Russian Market Near Chechnya Kills Fifty.
June 6, 1999: Kremlin False Flag Terror Plot Rumors Surface in Swedish Newspaper
July 22, 1999: Russian Journalist Alleges Destabilization Plot by Kremlin Insiders
September 9, 1999: Apartment Blast in Moscow Kills 94; Chechen Rebels Blamed
September 13, 1999: Second Moscow Apartment Bombing Kills 118; Chechen Rebels Blamed
September 22-24, 1999: FSB Agents Plant Large Bomb in Ryazan: ‘Security Exercise’ or Terror Plot?
Thierry Lalevee and Joseph Brewda
On Dec. 23, 1987, Israeli businessman Shabtai Kalmanowich was arrested by Israeli authorities on charges of being "a spy for the Soviet Union." Since his emigration from Lithuania in 1971, Kalmanowich had become a leading figure in the Israeli political and business establishment, directing a far-flung diamond, gold, gambling, prostitution, and armstrafficking empire, based in Africa, West Germany, and New York City. When Israeli authorities announced Kalmanowich's arrest on Jan. 10, however, they failed to mention the fact that millionaire Kalmanowich was also an officer in the Israeli foreign intelligence service, the Mossad. Kalmanowich was something of the late CIA director Bill Casey's ideal intelligence officer: He made a fortune as he carried out espionage.
Kalmanowich is certainly not the first Soviet Jewish emigre caught as a spy; there have been four or five over recent years. Analyzing this phenomenon, a former head of Israeli military intelligence reported on Israeli television that there are two kinds of spies among the emigres: those who are blackmailed because their families have remained behind, and those who are ideologically committed to Soviet communism. Kalmanowich belonged to the second category.
Jon Swinn
This infographic displays the connections and people known collectively as the 'Chicago School'. The strong links to the elites are identified.
The neoconservative as well as Thatcherism and the false opposition libertarian movement find their roots in the 'Chicago School'.
This is essential background information into understanding the next infographic 'Rise of the Neo-Cons / Wohlstetter Network'.
Jon Swinn
This infographic displays the links between some of the important players behind the creation of the neoconservative movement, 9/11 and resulting War on Terror.
Jackson organized the political movement to link trade and emigration in America's relations with the Soviet Union in concert with Jewish activists, but he soon took matters into his own hands. Jackson drafted what would become the Jackson–Vanik amendment in the summer of 1972 and introduced it to the Ninety-second Congress on October 4, 1972. Jackson's efforts, rooted in his own domestic political calculations and ideological distrust of and antipathy toward the Soviet Union, complicated the Nixon White House's pursuit of Detente, which it had worked on since 1969. However, three-quarters of the Senate co-sponsored the amendment, neutralizing opposition from President Nixon.
Jackson's staffer Richard Perle said in an interview that the idea belonged to Jackson, who believed that the right to emigrate was the most powerful among the human rights in certain respects: "if people could vote with their feet, governments would have to acknowledge that and governments would have to make for their citizens a life that would keep them there." While there was some opposition, the American Jewish establishment on the whole and Soviet Jewry activists (particularly the Washington Committee for Soviet Jewry and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry) supported the amendment...
Soviet Union
At first the Jackson–Vanik amendment did little to help free Soviet Jewry. The number of exit visas declined after the passing of the amendment. However, in the late 1980s Mikhail Gorbachev agreed to comply with the protocols of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. Lazin (2005) states that scholars differ on how effective the amendment was in helping Soviet Jews. Some argue that it helped bring the plight of Soviet Jews to the world's attention, while others believe it hindered emigration and decreased America's diplomatic bargaining power.
Since 1975 more than 500,000 refugees, large numbers of whom were Jews, evangelical Christians, and Catholics from the former Soviet Union, have been resettled in the United States. An estimated one million Soviet Jews have immigrated to Israel in that time.
Jackson-Vanik also led to great changes within the Soviet Union. Other ethnic groups subsequently demanded the right to emigrate, and the ruling Communist Party had to face the fact that there was widespread dissatisfaction with its governance
Russia
In 2003, Vladimir Putin pursued an economic agenda for Russia to begin normalized trade relations with the West which included Russia joining the European Union and the repeal of the Jackson-Vannik amendment. Putin tried to use his relationships with both the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was the head of the European Union's Council in 2003, to gain Russia's membership in the European Union, and also Hank Greenberg, who was the chairman and CEO of the American International Group (AIG), to repeal the Jackson-Vannik provisions in the United States.[20] Putin wished for Greenberg to support through Greenberg's AIG greater development of the nascent Russian home-mortgage market.
On November 16, 2012 the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would repeal the Jackson–Vanik amendment for Russia and Moldova. After approval by the Senate, the law repealing the effects of the Jackson–Vanik amendment on Russia and Moldova was signed together with Magnitsky bill by President Barack Obama on December 14, 2012.
Excerpt from Robert Friedman's Red Mafiya -
America's gates were opened to Jewish mobsters by the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, which withheld most-favored-nation status from Marxist countries that restricted Jewish emigration. According to Mr. Friedman, the Soviets were happy to oblige during the 1970s by "emptying their jails of thousands of hard-core criminals, dumping vast numbers of undesirables" on an unsuspecting United States. More than 40,000 Soviet Jews settled in Brighton Beach which soon became the seat of the "Organisatsiya," the new Jewish mob. Initially assisted by the Genovese crime family and the politically astute and well-connected Jewish rabbi Ronald Greenwald, the Jewish mobsters, some of whom have Ph.D.s in mathematics, physics and engineering, as well as MBAs, quickly expanded their operations to include bank fraud, money laundering, Medicare and insurance fraud, counterfeiting, drug dealing, natural gas bootlegging - scams which netted billions of dollars. The mob has even infiltrated the National Hockey League through its intimidation of Russian and Ukrainian players.
At the very beginning of 1988, a purported "official CIA evaluation" of the Jonathan Jay Pollard spy case surfaced among senior French intelligence officers. The essential conclusion of the dossier, according to French officials who directly reviewed it, was that the Pollard case showed only that "one or two" KGB agents had infiltrated Israeli intelligence. No higher-level problems were shown to exist within the Mossad. The purported document went on to say, that while senior Israeli officials, including Ariel Sharon and Rafael "Dirty Rafi" Eytan, would be cut off from continued
collaboration with their American counterparts, there was no evidence suggesting that the pair were either Soviet "moles" or involved in any witting perfidy with Moscow.
Whether or not the document was a bona fide CIA damage assessment, the evaluation, as reported, is a fraud. Not only was Jonathan Jay Pollard merely one small fish in an extensive Soviet "false flag" espionage ring run through the highest
levels of Israeli intelligence; the same ring, operating principally through Israeli and social democratic channels, has successfully penetrated the inner sanctums of the Reagan administration's counterintelligence apparatus.
The "CIA document" bears mentioning, because it perhaps provides a clue to the identities of some of the "bigger fish"-American and Israeli-who are still in place, attempting to "damage control" the continuing search for "other Pollards. "
Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz
The Nascent Sanhedrin is calling on Russian President Vladmir Putin and US president-elect Donald Trump to join forces and fulfill their Biblically-mandated roles by rebuilding the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem.
Rabbi Hillel Weiss, spokesman for the Sanhedrin, contacted Breaking Israel News to announce that the election of Trump, who has promised to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, coupled with Putin’s expressed desire for the Temple to be rebuilt, prompted the Jewish court to send a letter offering the two the opportunity to act as modern-day Cyrus figures: non-Jewish kings who recognize the importance of Israel and the Temple.
Grant Stern
Grant Stern's 10 part series on the Grand Old Putin Party.
Part 1 - Prologue
The Communist Child Movement, according to figures published here, includes 7,000 organized Jewish children in the Ukraine and 2,000 in White Russia. The work among the Jewish “pioneers”, as they are called, is conducted exclusively in the Yiddish language. There are five detachments of Jewish “pioneers” in Witebsk, three in Homel, a Jewish “pioneer” base in Minsk, and scores of detachments in Odessa and Kiev. “Pioneer” clubs are attached to the schools, children’s homes and workshops. A proposal is now made for the publication of a special Yiddish magazine for the Communist Child Movement.
Nov 9, 1930
Calling upon the Jewish workers to desert the Zionist cause and to fight for Soviet Russia and Communism, an editorial in Friday’s Freiheit, New York Yiddish Communist organ, enumerates what it alleges to be Jewish failures in Palestine with regard to land settlement, and contrasts this with what it regards as the great success of Jewish land settlement in Russia within recent years.
“During the past five years the Soviet Union has settled three hundred thousand Jews on the land,” says the editorial. “During the coming five years it will build a large new settlement in Bira-Bidjan. Wherever Jews live in compact masses the whole governmental apparatus is conducted in Yiddish. If great Jewish masses will come to Bira-Bidjan a Soviet Republic will be organized there.
“All this is being done by the Soviet Republic without noise, without trumpeting; it is part of the general work of building up the country. The Jews in the Soviet Union have equal rights together with all citizens. Jewish books and periodicals are being issued at the expense of the government. Anti-Semitism is being uprooted with an iron hand.
“In Palestine it is just the opposite. There during the past fifty years hundreds of millions of dollars have poured in, nevertheless only about twenty thousand Jews are settled upon the land. There everything is kept up by philanthropy, and there is no room for a large Jewish population. There the ruler is the British imperialistic power which has encouraged pogroms and which now declares openly that it will give the Jews no governmental power in Palestine. There Jews are being settled upon alien soil from which the peasants are being driven off by force, although they have been living there scores and hundreds of years. There a poisonous hatred on the part of the local population towards the aliens who come with the bayonet and the dollar exists, and the masses have already revolted against the alien oppressors.”
“Down with Zionism! Long live the Soviet Union!”
Elizabeth Dilling
Very few people are aware of the extent to which Jews were responsible for the Communization of Russia, first through organizing of the unsuccessful revolution of 1905, and then the later and successful Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Both were heavily financed by outside Jewish financial and banking houses, and ultimately resulted in Jews assuming control of what had become the Russian Soviet Government. Concurrently, Jewish machinations in the United States, Germany and elsewhere helped set the stage for the take-over.
“You must understand. The leading Bolsheviks who took over Russia were not Russians. They hated Russians. They hated Christians. Driven by ethnic hatred they tortured and slaughtered millions of Russians without a shred of human remorse. The October Revolution was not what you call in America the “Russian Revolution.” It was an invasion and conquest over the Russian people. More of my countrymen suffered horrific crimes at their bloodstained hands than any people or nation ever suffered in the entirety of human history. It cannot be understated. Bolshevism was the greatest human slaughter of all time. The fact that most of the world is ignorant of this reality is proof that the global media itself is in the hands of the perpetrators.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008), Nobel-Prize-winning novelist, historian and victim of Jewish Bolshevism (Marxism).
Infographic highlighting the Zionist influence surrounding Woodrow Wilson, his rise to power and historical events during his presidency and the role of the Zionist powers in the creation of WW1, WW2, creation of the Federal Reserve system, Bolshevik Revolution, Great Depression etc.
Comte de Saint-Aulaire
Comte de Saint-Aulaire, French Ambassador to Great Britain in the 1920s, discussed his meetings with Kuhn, Loeb, & Co. financiers. They had discussions regarding why they [the Kuhn, Loeb, &; Co. bankers] financed the Bolshevik Revolution. One of them said (p. 80):
"You say that Marxism is the very antithesis of capitalism, which is equally sacred to us. It is precisely for this reason that they are direct opposites to one another, that they put into our hands the two poles of this planet and allow us to be its axis. These two contraries, like Bolshevism and ourselves, find their identity in the International. These opposites, which are at the antipodes to one another in society and in their doctrines meet again in the identity of their purpose and end, the remaking of the world from above by the control of riches, and from below by revolution.
Our mission consists in promulgating the new law and in creating a God, that is to say in purifying the idea of God and realizing it, when the time shall come.
We shall purify the idea by identifying it with the nation of Israel, which has become its own Messiah. The advent of it will be facilitated by the final triumph of Israel, which has become it's own Messiah."
This same financier also said (pp. 83-84):
"our essential dynamism makes use of the forces of destruction and forces of creation, but uses the first to nourish the second. Our organization for revolution is evidenced by destructive Bolshevism and for construction by the League of Nations which is also our work. Bolshevism is the accelerator and the League is the brake on the mechanism of which we supply both the motive force and the guiding power.
What is the end? It is already determined by our mission. It is formed of elements scattered throughout the whole world, but cast in the flame of our faith in ourselves. We are a League of Nations which contains the elements of all others."
Sean Jobst
Eurasianists and Nazbols link Ukraine with Israel, ignoring Putin's close alliance with Israel and the central involvement of hardcore Zionists like Avigdor Eskin in Dugin's networks. They rewrite this narrative to deceive Western dissidents opposed to Zionism and Jewish power, into signing off on their own anti-Ukrainian subversion. Their efforts to enlist support for separatists who openly proclaim themselves a Communist "People's Republic", include bizarre claims that have been refuted by no less a figure as Donetsk leader Denis Pushilin, who openly touts himself as "Chairman of the Soviet" while his fighters brandish Soviet flags and include many foreign Communists.
Lincoln Mitchell
FOR MOST OF LAST YEAR, THE WEST STRUGGLED TO find an appropriate response to Russia’s incursions into Crimea and eastern and southern Ukraine. Many European and North American governments strongly condemned Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, but Israel has been noticeably silent.
In the past, Israel has been similarly mum on Russian aggression—or worse. In 2008, when the Russia-Georgia war began, Israel cut its previously substantial military support for Georgia and withdrew its military advisors.
Why has Israel declined to slap Russia? Because the Jewish state may someday need Russia as a powerful ally if relations with the U.S. wither—something that’s not an immediate risk but not necessarily unthinkable .
Alex Grobman
Given the Soviet Union’s avowed hostility to Zionism, the Soviet vote “came as a great surprise, as a bombshell,” recounted Moshe Sharett, then head of the Jewish Agency’s political department.
Armin Rosen
It wasn’t just that Stalin’s Red Army had liberated Auschwitz, or that “the Soviets had shipped Czech weapons to the IDF in 1948” and supported Jewish statehood at a crucial moment, including in the United Nations partition vote in 1947. The ties went deeper than any political alliance: For many, Zionism was an avowedly secular pro-labor movement with the same utopian aims as Communism itself. As Halevi writes, the logo of the newspaper for the Hashomer Hatzair Marxist Zionist movement translated to “For Zionism—For Socialism—For the Fraternity of Nations.”
May Day was a major event for some Israeli communities, outranking most of the Jewish holidays in importance.
Sever Plocker
We mustn't forget that some of greatest murderers of modern times were Jewish
David Horovitz
Chabad’s chief rabbi
The Jewish leader closest to Putin is Chabad’s Berel Lazar, one of Russia’s two chief rabbis, a Milan-born, New York-ordained emissary, who first came here in the late 1980s on several trips to teach Judaism to refuseniks and was then appointed by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, to help revive and strengthen the Jewish community as the Soviet Union entered its death throes in 1990.
A father of 12 aged 49, with a graying beard and the trademark Chabad warmth — he immediately invites me for Shabbat dinner when we meet — Lazar works from a book-lined sixth-floor office in the Moscow Jewish Community Center building that houses his now-thriving Maryina Roshcha District synagogue.
When he arrived, Lazar recalls, there was “an underground” of people leading a return to Judaism. By 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev had granted “unofficial permission to open a school and a yeshiva.” And when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, most everyone whose Judaism was important to them was leaving. “The place was emptying out. The Israeli embassy was sure there’d be no Jews left,” says Lazar. “They laughed at us as we tried to fix up synagogues. It was a conveyor belt: come to shul, learn Hebrew, go to Israel. No one thought there’d be a future here.”
Ellen Berry
Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin will meet Friday with former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger to discuss world affairs, including elections in Russia and the United States, said Mr. Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri S. Peskov.
Mr. Peskov said Mr. Kissinger requested the meeting in late November or early December. The two men are “old friends” who have met 8 or 10 times over the years, once dining at Mr. Kissinger’s home in New York, he said. Mr. Peskov said Mr. Putin was interested in Mr. Kissinger’s counsel about domestic politics, among other subjects.
“He values everyone’s point of view, and especially such a wise man as Henry Kissinger,” Mr. Peskov said.
Henry Meyer, Onur Ant
Dugin, who’s been described as everything from an occult fascist to a mystical imperialist, lost his prestigious job running the sociology department at Moscow State University in 2014 after activists accused him of encouraging genocide. Thousands of people signed a petition calling for his removal after a rant in support of separatists in Ukraine in which he said, “kill, kill, kill.”
Sean Jobst
The volume was part of an effort to strengthen ties between the Eurasianist movement and Chabad and far-right-wing Zionist movements, approvingly quoting one of Bromberg's contemporaries (Lev Karsavin, who greeted the Soviet regime) about the "primordial tie between the Jewish people and Russia". Dugin has praised the predominant Jewish role in Bolshevism as representing a continued "positive" Jewry, that can now contribute to "the general struggle against Western culture" and to the founding of the "Great Eurasian Empire". He extolled "messianic national-bolshevism" as "the spiritual union of Jewish and Russian eurasianists".
ussian President Vladimir Putin signed a law on Monday making the denial of Nazi crimes and distortion of the Soviet Union’s role in the World War Two a criminal offence punishable by up to five years in jail.
The law, described by critics as an attempt to curb freedom of expression to appease conservative Russians, the ex-KGB spy’s main support base, also criminalises the public desecration of war memorials.
The Kremlin has used World War Two as a pillar to unite a society that Putin has said lost its moral bearings following the 1991 Soviet collapse.
It has become increasingly risky for Russians to dispute an official line that glorifies the wartime achievements of the Soviet leadership and plays down its errors.
The new law would ban “wittingly spreading false information about the activity of the USSR during the years of World War Two”.
Fiona Zublin
The putative son-in-law is the son of Nikolay Shamalov, one of Putin’s longtime friends and hockey buddies. “Putin made Shamalov Jr. a billionaire and effected a transfer of wealth to the next generation,” Dawisha says. Nikolay is also a shareholder in Rossiya Bank — described by the BBC as the “personal bank” of Russian oligarchs — and was sanctioned by the U.S. and EU after tensions mounted over the annexation of Crimea in 2014, along with several other Russian banks and businessmen.
Andrew Osborn in Moscow and Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem
Shabtai Kalmanovich, a former Israeli double agent who penetrated Golda Meir's government on behalf of the KGB, has been shot dead in Moscow.
Kalmanovich, who later became a prominent businessman and allegedly had links with the Russian mafia, died after an unidentified gunman fired at least 20 shots into his chauffeur-driven Mercedes Benz. Mr Kalmanovich's driver was seriously wounded in the incident.
"Kalmanovich had practically no chance of surviving," a police official was quoted as saying by Russia's Interfax news agency. "He died on the spot from numerous gun wounds." A figure with a colourful if chequered past, Kalmanovich and his Jewish family immigrated to Israel from Lithuania in 1971.
After becoming an Israeli citizen, he joined the Israeli Labour Party, was appointed to a position in the government press office and became a mole for the KGB.
Nicholas Shakespeare
n February 1953, two weeks before Stalin's death, Ivan Maisky, Soviet ambassador to London from 1932 to 1943, was arrested and accused of being a British spy. Interrogated 36 times in his Lubyanka cell, the stocky exdiplomat was detained for two years without books, pen or paper.
Rehabilitated in 1960 and desperate to write his memoirs, he was granted one year of limited access to his personal archive, which included the 1,500-page diary Maisky had kept while in London, when he enjoyed automatic access to the chief personalities of the day.
Published in the Sixties and written under the twin clouds of purges and censorship, his memoirs were apologetic, misleading and selective - and not terribly interesting. Then, in 1993, the historian Gabriel Gorodetsky discovered Maisky's original diary in the Russian Foreign Ministry. "Spiced with anecdotes and gossip", this differed radically from the official version. Its candid depictions of the British political and social scene reminded Gorodetsky of Samuel Pepys.
But there are still many people alive who can remember when the chief confidant of President Franklin Roosevelt was a man named Harry Hopkins. And they will be understandably astonished to learn that in a message dated May 29, 1943, Iskhak Akhmerov, the chief Soviet "illegal" agent in the United States at the time, referred to an Agent 19 who had reported on discussions between Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in Washington at which the agent had been present. Only Harry Hopkins meets the requirements for this agent's identity. Small wonder that Akhmerov, in a lecture in Moscow in the early 1960s, identified Hopkins by name as "the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States."
It took 50 years to bludgeon Alger Hiss' defenders into admitting that this suave bureaucrat, who rose to be chief of the State Department's Office of Special Political Affairs, had actually been a Soviet agent all along. And it will probably take another 50 to force Franklin Roosevelt's admirers to concede that their hero's closest confidant and adviser was yet another Soviet agent.
But the documents and the testimony are now on the public record, and they make it plain that those of us who sounded the warning about Soviet espionage and policy subversion 50 years ago didn't know the half of it.
Andrew Korybko
No, Russian-“Israeli” ties aren’t in a state of “crisis” after the latter bombed Syria earlier this month, but are actually enjoying an unprecedented flourishment that won’t be offset by whatever happens in the Arab Republic, and Moscow might even tie Tel Aviv into the same multilateral free trade area that has recently expanded to include Iran.
“Israel’s” bombing of Syria earlier this month predictably prompted many in the Alt-Media to declare that this time Russia will surely ‘teach its ally a lesson’ by openly turning into the ‘anti-Zionist crusader state’ that their dogma has indoctrinated them into imagining that it’s been this entire time. They were, as is becoming the norm, totally wrong, and three specific events prove that ties between the two sides aren’t in a state of “crisis” but are rather flourishing, with the latest milestone in their relationship being the resumption of free trade talks.
Andrew Korybko
The alternative media community, especially its social media iteration, is experiencing collective psychosis in hallucinating that “Israel” and Russia are on the verge of war with one another.
The prevailing narrative is that Israeli “Defense Minister” Lieberman’s threat to destroy Syria’s air defense systems is tantamount to a declaration of war against Russia, with the assumption being that Moscow is on a crusade against Zionism and has thus become Tel Aviv’s worst enemy.
There’s no diplomatic way to say this, but the presumptions on which such a crazy conclusion has been reached are absolutely and utterly wrong.
Far from being Israel’s hated nemesis like many in the alternative media community wishfully pretend that it is, Moscow is one of Tel Aviv’s closest allies, and this is entirely due to President Putin’s deliberate policies. Not only does he enjoy a very strong personal friendship with Netanyahu, but President Putin also sees a lot of opportunity to advance his country’s interests in Israel through the large Russian diaspora there.
Russia’s state-owned oil company Rosneft has begun to expand its operations in the Middle East with deals in Libya and Iraq, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday.
Rosneft, which is run by Putin ally Igor Sechin, struck a deal to purchase an undisclosed amount of crude oil from the Libyan National Oil Corp on Monday. The deal will also allow the Russian company to invest in exploration and production in the volatile North African country.
The chairman of National Oil Corp welcomed the deal, saying it would help to stabilize the warring country’s economy.
“We need the assistance and investment of major international oil companies to reach our production goals and stabilize our economy,” NOC Chairman Mustafa Sanalla said in a statement.
Rosneft announced on the same day it had struck a deal with authorities of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq to purchase oil until 2019. The deal with Kurdish authorities will also allow the Russian company to invest in exploration and production.
Sharon Udasin
On Sunday night, The Financial Times reported that Israel had imported as much as 77 percent of its oil supply from Kurdistan in recent months, bringing in some 19 million barrels between the beginning of May and August 11. During that period, more than a third of all northern Iraqi exports, shipped through Turkey’s Ceyhan port, went to Israel, with transactions amounting to almost $1b., the report said, citing “shipping data, trading sources and satellite tanker tracking.”
Nonetheless, Dr. Amit Mor, CEO of the Eco Energy Financial and Strategic Consulting firm, confirmed to The Jerusalem Post that “for some time, Kurdish oil [has been arriving] to the Ashkelon petroleum port.” In all likelihood, he explained, the oil was being stored at the Eilat-Ashkelon Pipeline Company facilities for commercial reasons, by international trading firms and investors. Israel’s refineries may then be purchasing the oil from the international companies, he added.
Importing Kurdish oil could be beneficial to Israel from both geostrategic and economic perspectives, according to Mor.
“Although I don’t think the Kurds are having major difficulties in exporting their oil these days, it is very sensible for the Israeli refineries to purchase Kurdish oil via Turkey’s Ceyhan petroleum port, as it takes only one day of sailing for oil tankers to reach the Ashkelon petroleum port. Such is also the case for [Azerbaijani] oil,” he said.
Gary Vogler
The oil agenda I discovered and experienced was to supply Iraq oil to Israel. The players were the neoconservatives in the Bush Administration, their favorite Iraqi – Dr Ahmed Chalabi and the Israeli government. One of the motives was because Israel was paying a huge premium for its oil imports and this premium had just started in the late1990s. The agenda called for the reopening of the old Kirkuk to Haifa pipeline and its significant expansion. When this pipeline plan became unattainable in the 2nd half of 2003 then Chalabi took other actions to get inexpensive Iraqi oil to Israel.
A much more credible explanation for intentionally destroying the Syrian export pipeline than what Secretary Rumsfeld told the NY Times was found in the British press. The Guardian, a London newspaper, quoted a retired CIA agent just after the Syria pipeline attack. “It has long been a dream of a powerful section of the people now driving the Bush administration and the war in Iraq to safeguard Israel’s energy supply.
“Vladimir Putin wants to make the war-torn North African country ‘his new Syria.’” Citing sources in British intelligence, the tabloid claimed that Russia has already embedded “dozens” of GRU agents and Spetsnaz troops in eastern Libya, and established two military bases in the coastal towns of Tobruk and Benghazi, supposedly using the Wagner private military group as “cover.” Russian Kalibr anti-ship missiles and S-300 air-defense systems are also reportedly on the ground in Libya. The tabloid’s sources claimed that the Kremlin has sided with the warlord General Khalifa Haftar in an effort to “seize control of the country’s coastline.” This would allegedly give Russia the power to unleash a “fresh tidal wave of migrants” across the Mediterranean “like a tap.”
note - Khalifa Belqasim Haftar studied in Egypt and the Soviet Union, also at the M.V. Frunze Military Academy. He is a fluent Russian speaker. In 1969, Haftar took part in the coup that brought Muammar Gaddafi to power and overthrew the monarchy.
9/11 inside job “impossible to conceal,” says Vladimir Putin
"Claims that the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 were orchestrated by US intelligence agencies are "complete nonsense," Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told attendees of a youth forum"
Simon Shuster
"Putin, who had been the first to call Bush with his sympathy after learning of the 9/11 attacks, graciously offered to help with the invasion of Afghanistan"
"Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country warned the United States several times that Saddam Hussein's regime was planning terror attacks on the United States and its overseas interests"
Yasser Okbi, Maariv Hashavua
According to the source, Damascus and Tehran "were shocked" every time the Russian-made air defense system did not work to defend Syria's airspace, or even give notification that the air space had been penetrated in order to evacuate outposts prior to the airstrike. The systems are supposed to identify the takeoff of Israeli Air Force jets from their bases because of the small distance between the countries and is even supposed to attempt to target the planes and any missiles that are fired from them.
According to the source, three weeks ago, during Iranian military maneuvers, Iranian engineers hacked into the codes of the S-300, but when the Bavar-373 was not working in conjunction with the Russian air defense system the experiment was suspended.
The source said further that the Iranian Defense Ministry sent several engineers to Syria to change the codes of the air defense system that was under the control of the Syrian army, without Moscow's knowledge. "They succeeded in changing some of the codes last month and therefore when the Israel fighter jets took off from their bases - the air defense system succeeded in identifying them and firing interceptor missiles at them and at the missiles they had launched."
Ron Friedman
Despite official statements to the contrary, Russia will not transfer a shipment of advanced anti-aircraft missiles to Syria, an unnamed senior Russian official has told London’s Sunday Times.
According to Sunday’s report, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu managed to convince Russian President Vladimir Putin of the risk such a deal posed to regional stability and Israeli civilians, during a meeting in the Black Sea resort of Sochi earlier this month, leading to the cancelation of the planned sale of six S-300 batteries to Bashar Assad’s regime.
In their meeting, Netanyahu reportedly warned Putin that Moscow’s sale of the sophisticated missile defense system to Assad could push the Middle East into war, and argued that the S-300 had no relevance to Assad’s civil-war battles against rebel groups.
Rory McCarthy
Russia and Israel were both facing domestic embarrassment today after it emerged that the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, had taken a secret trip to Moscow to persuade the Russians not to sell anti-aircraft missiles to Iran.
Officials in Moscow and Jerusalem were left backtracking after they initially denied media reports that Netanyahu flew by private jet to Russia to discourage the Kremlin from giving the Iranians Russia's advanced S-300 system
Sean Jobst
Assorted Assad groupies and Putin cultists use as "evidence" of Putin's alleged chess-playing hidden "maneuvering" against Israel, his support for the Syrian government side in Syria's war. They simply ignore all evidence to the contrary, not least of which they're at a complete loss to explain why the Russian air force never engages with Israeli planes attacking their alleged "allies" in Syria, including this very week. Why is Putin always silent even in token criticism?
Much can be said about the Kremlin's role in setting the stage for what later became ISIS, by exporting thousands of extremists from its occupied territories in the Caucasus in 2013 and 2014, knowing full well they'd go to Syria. The flow of Russian-speaking fighters has continued to ISIS and other armed Wahhabist groups in Syria, yet we're supposed to believe this large number couldn't leave the Russian borders without complicity from the security services?
Boroda’s Federation is among several Russian Jewish organizations that credit Putin for facilitating efforts to re-consolidate Russia’s Jewish community of 350,000 after decades of communist repression.
Under Putin, dozens of synagogues have been renovated with government support and a massive Jewish museum was opened in Moscow with state funding.
“In Russia, there is virtually unlimited freedom of religion and the Jewish community must ensure this situation continues,” Boroda said. “The support for religious institutions is wider than in the United States and defense of Jews against manifestations of anti-Semitism is greater than in other European countries. We do not have the privilege of losing what we have achieved and the support of the government for the community.”
Lev Stesin
An alarming number of Jews who fled authoritarian Soviet Russia for America are now admirers of Mr. Putin, a peculiar show of intellectual sclerosis and utter ethical failure
President Donald Trump is one more factor in these shifting attitudes. Many Russian-speaking Jews have flocked en masse to support him. His direct tone and ‘toughness’ fell on fertile ground. Many abhor the Democratic Party in general and the radical tendencies of its extreme left wing in particular. They tend to think of liberalism as a modern-day reincarnation of Communism, and of Islam as a modern-day Nazism and the biggest threat facing the world. Grey is not a color they know: you’re either with or against them.
Phil Butler
It was Litvinenko the UK government and the mainstream media said was “probably” ordered killed by Vladimir Putin. But the other side of the story tells of two who were intricately involved in the steeping criminal activity Boris Yeltsin essentially resigned over, and the literal theft of the heritage of the Russian people from the instant of perestroika onward. In a poisonous bit of irony, a slew of Russian mafia outcasts and New World Order captains have now fallen into the same game of blackmail and murderous betrayal, or something my Dutch colleague Holger Eekhof refers to as “The Berezovsky Trap”.
Phil Butler
The Russian mafia we’ve seen on TV is also known as the “Red Octopus”, but this organization is really the Jewish mafia in disguise. The story you are reading comes full circle when you research how the Jewish mafia has links to Mossad, the Rothschild family, the Federal Reserve Bank, and to powerful Jewish organizations such as AIPAC and the ADL. Like I mentioned, the Chuck Schumer-Komorov-Ivankov association is one clue to how deep and intricate this organization’s “screws” go into the American system. Laura Radanko, in her book “The Superpower of Crime”, gives up the goods on Russian Jews as instruments for Israeli aims:
“During the detente days of the early 1970s, when Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev had agreed to allow the limited emigration of Soviet Jews, thousands of hard-core criminals, many of them released from Soviet Gulags by the KGB, took advantage of their nominal Jewish status to swarm into the United States….”
https://journal-neo.org/2017/05/08/the-berezovsky-trap-revisited-the-israel-connection/
Jon Schwartz
“Berezovsky also had another brilliant idea, which to his regret Putin did not grasp: creating a fake two-party system, with Putin at the head of a socialist-democrat sort of party and Berezovsky leading a neoconservative one, or the other way around.”
Here are Berezovsky’s exact words, in an interview with Gessen from 2008:
When Putin became president, I was for a long time in a state of profound naiveté. Well, I went to him … I told him: “Listen, Volodya, what happened: we destroyed the entire political space. Devoured, not destroyed, but devoured it. We absolutely dominated … Look, I’ll suggest that we can not have effective political system, if there’s a tough competition. So I suggest we create an artificial two-party system. So, let’s say, the left and right. A Socially Oriented party and neo-conservatives liberal party. Choose any. And I’ll make another party. At the same time, my own heart is closer to neoconservatives, and I think so, you [Putin] are socially oriented. ” I earnestly believed then that he understood it. But I think that even then he looked at me like I was crazy.
Peter Pomerantsev
There is no mention of holy wars in Surkov’s vision, none of the cabaret used to provoke and tease the West. But there is a darkling vision of globalization, in which instead of everyone rising together, interconnection means multiple contests between movements and corporations and city-states—where the old alliances, the EUs and NATOs and “the West,” have all worn out, and where the Kremlin can play the new, fluctuating lines of loyalty and interest, the flows of oil and money, splitting Europe from America, pitting one Western company against another and against both their governments so no one knows whose interests are what and where they’re headed.
Adam Curtis
We live in a time of great uncertainty and confusion. Events keep happening that seem inexplicable and out of control. Donald Trump, Brexit, the War in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, random bomb attacks. And those who are supposed to be in power are paralysed - they have no idea what to do.
This film is the epic story of how we got to this strange place. It explains not only why these chaotic events are happening - but also why we, and our politicians, cannot understand them.
It shows that what has happened is that all of us in the West - not just the politicians and the journalists and the experts, but we ourselves - have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. But because it is all around us we accept it as normal.
But there is another world outside. Forces that politicians tried to forget and bury forty years ago - that then festered and mutated - but which are now turning on us with a vengeful fury. Piercing though the wall of our fake world.
Alternative links
Zarina Zabrisky
translation of excerpts from a blog Putinism As Is by a Radio Svoboda analyst and blogger Artem Kruglov. In the light of Helsinki Summit 2018 and Trump/Putin relationship, it is important to know these facts of Putin’s background.
“The group around Putin today is the same as the one that brought him to power from St. Petersburg in the 1990s,” wrote celebrated author Karen Dawisha in her book Putin’s Kleptocracy. In today’s political climate it is critical for the EU and US analysts, journalists and general audience to understand the true origin and background of the Russian mafia state. “In the 90s, gangsters and the KGB fused into one structure,” said Olga Litvinenko... This structure is what we now call a mafia state. “Putin was never in business and he does not have ‘business associates,’” noted Nikita Kulachenkov, a forensic accountant and political activist fighting against corruption in the Russian government, has also served as a principal investigator at the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Moscow and founded by Alexei Navalny. “Russian oligarchs do not own their fortunes. They can’t hide their money. They need the status quo and will fight for it, using the mafia methods” — even if it requires taking these mafia methods to the West.
Read the profiles of Putin’s allies. The incomplete list of their achievements includes cocaine and heroin trade, illegal arms trafficking, running prostitution rings, using child labor for diamond mining, smuggling, extortion, assassinations, dismemberment, blackmail, racketeering, theft, money-laundering and much more.
Simona Weinglass
Some 25% of the revenue of Israel’s lauded high-tech sector comes from shady or fraudulent industries; three-quarters of MKs are said to be in thrall to special interest groups.
Israel has become one of the world’s leading exporters of investment scams, stealing an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion per year from victims worldwide.
Despite the fact that Israeli police recently announced that these investment scams are largely run by organized crime, which has grown to “monstrous proportions” as a consequence of little to no law enforcement for years, the Israeli government, parliament and authorities have to date proved unwilling or unable to shut them down, in part because these fraudulent industries have a powerful lobby in the Knesset.
Billions invested in Israel
Former police chief Asaf Hefetz says £2.5bn ($4bn) of organised crime money from the former Soviet Union has been invested in Israeli real estate, businesses and banks in the past seven years.
Youtube video featuring Jewish 'tough guy' Myron Sugerman, the "Last Jewish Gangster," running his mouth for an hour complaining about antisemitism while bragging about their criminal history. The deluded Sugerman spills the beans on how the Jewish mob played in arming Jewish terrorists in the Middle-East.
Jake Pearson
New York’s most notorious living Russian (Jewish) mobster just wants to go back to the motherland.
Once flush from heroin trafficking, tax fraud schemes and other criminal enterprises, Boris Nayfeld is now 70, fresh out of prison for the third time, divorced and broke. And he is left with few job prospects in his adopted country, at least those in line with his experiences.
“I can’t do nothing,” Nayfeld griped in a thick Russian accent between shots of vodka at a restaurant a few blocks north of Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood, which has been a haven for immigrants from the former Soviet Union since the 1970s. “Give me a chance to start a new life.”
The illegal trafficking of human beings is a growing international crime. Criminal groups have developed a brisk trade selling tens of thousands of women into prostitution. The result is virtual enslavement, as Attorney General John Ashcroft emphasized in announcing new regulations for dealing with traffickers and their victims. Russian mafia, and its connections in Israel, provide an example of how the trade works.
The newspaper ad is hard to resist: a high paying job as a waitress or secretary or model, and it helps to be young and pretty.
For desperate women in the shrunken economies of Russia, Ukraine, and other states of the former Soviet Union, the offer from abroad is too good to be true, and of course it is not. But they do not know that as they make their first contact with the elaborate traffic in prostitution.
Or Kashti
Justice Ministry official says criminals are bringing in women from Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Russia and Georgia on three-month tourist visas.
Esther Hertzog and Erella Shadmi
Eric Silver
"On the third night I was desperate," she says. "I tried to break out. I shouted for help. But it was no use. Two men, who spoke Russian with a Georgian accent, carted me off to a massage parlour. When I refused to work there, they beat me up. They raped me, punched my body, slapped my face. I agreed."
Toi Staff
Fourteen Israelis are suspected by Colombian authorities of running a child sex trafficking ring which marketed tour packages from Israel to the Latin American country aimed at businessmen and recently discharged soldiers, according to reports on Monday..
An ex-Israeli soldier wanted in Colombia for heading a child prostitution ring and sex trafficking offences has been arrested in Portugal.
Forty-five-year-old Assi Ben-Mosh – also known as Assi Moosh – was arrested near the Portuguese capital Lisbon on Wednesday during an operation by Spain’s Guardia Civil police force. The Guardia Civil said in a statement that Ben-Mosh is thought to have been hiding on the Spanish island of Ibiza, and then in Barcelona, before eventually being arrested in Portugal this week. It added that Ben-Mosh had been using a fake Israeli ID, the Times of Israel reported yesterday.
Ben-Mosh is wanted by Colombian authorities for running a child prostitution ring in the small fishing village of Taganga, located on the South American country’s Caribbean coast. He, along with a group of ex-Israeli soldiers, reportedly turned the luxury Benjamin Hostel into a “sex and drug den” in which more than 250 underage girls were subjected to sexual exploitation.
Jonathan Cook
His biological parents - recent immigrants to Israel from Tunisia - were told their child had died during delivery. They were sent home without a death certificate and denied the chance to see their baby's body or a grave.
Assaf Gur
Exploring an underworld of gambling, drug trafficking, arms dealing, extortion, assassination, and corruption
Gidi Weitz and Maya Zinshtein
Immigrant Absorption Minister Sofa Landver pursued business ties with serial criminal Gregory Lerner. Her former chief of staff had links to Alexei Zakharenko, a Russian tycoon who disappeared two years ago. New facts from police files, published here for the first time.
He also admitted to receiving $37 million fraudulently from Mostroy, a Russian bank, establishing a series of straw companies that he controlled, and committing numberless forgeries. He admitted to having defrauded Semion Mogilevich, who holds Russian and Israeli citizenship and is high on the FBI's most-wanted list.
NEW YORK - An Israeli, once reputedly the world's most active ecstasy dealer, was extradited from Spain and charged in a U.S. court Wednesday with recruiting women nightclub strippers as couriers and laundering millions of dollars in cash.
Known as "The Fat Man," Oded Tuito was designated as a drug kingpin by the U.S. government a year ago. He pleaded not guilty in a U.S. District Court in Brooklyn to charges of supervising the trafficking of millions of ecstasy pills to New York from Paris, Brussels and Frankfurt.
Prosecutors accused Tuito, a 41-year-old Israeli citizen who lived in New York, California and France before his arrest in May 2001 in Barcelona of operating the international trafficking scheme since 1997.
Ukrainian police have smashed an Israeli-run organ-trafficking network illegally recruiting organ donors to send their body parts to Israel.
Ukrainian authorities said on Friday that twelve people, most of them Israelis, were arrested for taking part in a scheme to recruit organ donors from Ukraine and other former Soviet countries via internet and transplant the organs into Israelis who had ordered them in advance.
The network, which sought mostly kidneys, offered as much as USD 10,000 per body part and according to Ukraine’s interior ministry most of the organ donors were impoverished young women.
The head of the ministry’s department on human trafficking, Yuriy Kucher, said the transplant surgeries, which cost up to USD 200,000 an operation, were performed in Kiev, Azerbaijan and Ecuador.
Alison Weir
The fact is, however, that Israeli organ harvesting – sometimes with Israeli governmental funding and the participation of high Israeli officials, prominent Israeli physicians, and Israeli ministries – has been documented for many years. Among the victims have been Palestinians.
Nancy Scheper-Hughes is Chancellor’s Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley, the founder of Organ Watch, and the author of scholarly books and articles on organ trafficking. She is the pundit mainstream media call upon when they need expert commentary on the topic.5
While Scheper-Hughes emphasizes that traffickers and procurers come from numerous nations and ethnicities, including Americans and Arabs, she is unflinchingly honest in speaking about the Israeli connection:
“Israel is at the top,” she states. “It has tentacles reaching out worldwide.”
Robert Maxwell
Organ Trafficking: Anatomy of a network. Israeli nexus #1
An Israeli man convicted of international human organ trafficking walked free on Tuesday, after Russian authorities failed to challenge a Larnaca judge who dismissed an extradition request.
Seb Rotella
In hundreds of telephone calls intercepted during the year before Petrov’s arrest in 2008, Spanish investigators listened as the mob boss chatted with powerful businessmen, notorious criminals and high-level officials in the government of Vladimir Putin. During one trip to Russia, Petrov called his son to say he had just met with a man who turned out to be the Russian defense minister—and to report that they had sorted out a land deal, the sale of some airplanes, and a scheme to invest in Russian energy companies.
Tom Embury-Dennis
Britain’s contribution to fighting Russian organised crime is “less than negative”, one of Europe’s leading prosecutors has said.
Jose Grinda, hailed as the man who "brought down the Russian mafia in Spain”, condemned the UK’s lack of cooperation in a fight which has gone increasingly global.
“We have a wonderful relationship with the United States,” the Spanish prosecutor told The American Interest magazine. “However we have a very serious problem in fighting organised crime with the UK.
Robert Verkaik
“Unfortunately, London has become the global centre for laundering the money and reputations of Russian organised criminals. McMafia brings that realisation into the living rooms of people all over the country. Hopefully, this will actually lead to some political change and tougher rules in the future.”
Henry McDonald
Russian mafia hitmen shot dead Dublin gangland member Paddy Doyle on the Costa del Sol, senior gardai claimed this weekend
Doyle, the survivor of a vicious criminal turf war in south Dublin which has claimed at least 10 lives, was gunned down in Estepona last Monday. Veteran detectives with the Garda Siochana's 'Operation Anvil', the drive against Dublin's crime gangs, said the 27-year-old had beaten up a close relative of a Russian mafia leader based on the southern Spanish coastline.
'From what our Spanish colleagues have told us, this was a professional Russian hit. There were 13 shots and we don't think they wasted a bullet. It has a military-trained assassin written all over it, possibly ex-special forces,' a senior detective told The Observer. 'The intelligence coming back from the Costa del Sol is that Paddy Doyle crossed the Russian mafia, which is something you do there at your peril.'
Owen Conlon and Stephen Breen
THIS is the moment the Kinahans’ main enforcer met his end at the hands of Russian gangsters — with the blessing of his old boss Christy.
Luke Madeira
One of the leaders is said to be third-in-command of the mafia and was arrested as the group held a meeting in which they were said to be planning the assassination of a rival gang leader.
According to El Correo, the planned assassination of a rival gang leader was to warn other clans of their strength in Europe.
The suspects were also thought to have been trying to restructure the organisation after Policia Nacional arrested 129 members of the clan in June, including seven highly ranked members.
The investigation was then reopened in July after a former leader of a criminal gang in Lithuania was spotted in Marbella.
June 15, 2014 | According to reports by the “Wall Street Journal” Russian billionaire and Chelsea Football Club owner Roman Abramovich invested $10 million in StoreDot. StoreDot is an Israeli startup producing electronics using bio-organic materials and recently made a splash in the headlines when it revealed a method for charging a Samsung smartphone in 30 seconds. The investment was carried out through Abramovich’s asset management company Millhouse LLC, making this is the second investment of the firm in Israel.
March 25, 2015 | Israeli crowd-funding company iAngels has raised $2.25 million in a seed round led by investment firm Millhouse Capital, which is owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich. iAngels enables private investments in early-stage startups. It was founded in 2013 by Mor Assia and Shelly Hod Moyal.
October 26, 2015 | Millhouse Capital, the investment fund owned by Roman Abramovich is investing an undisclosed amount in AltaIR, the venture capital firm led by Russian-Austrian investor Igor Ryabenkiy. AltaIR has already invested in almost 80 companies from Israel, the US, Europe and Australia. Among its early stage investments in Israel are Gbooking, Crowdx, Klear, and Correlor.
Inbal Orpaz
Russian-British billionaire Roman Abramovich is deepening his presence in Israeli high-tech, leading a $21 million investment round in the start-up AnyClip Media.
Inbal Orpaz
Yandex, a Russian Internet company that operates the country’s most popular search engine, said on Tuesday that it was acquiring Israel’s KitLocate and plans to turn the startup into the basis a research and development center for an undisclosed price.
Israeli startup Klear, formerly known as Twtrland, has raised $1.5 million in new funding from Altair and TMT Investments, two international venture funds with Russian backers.
The company defines its product as “a social intelligence platform that helps you do smarter marketing.” It has rebranded to Klear, since the platform now looks at data from Facebook and Instagram in addition to Twitter, and plans to integrate other social networks, including Pinterest, Google Plus, and LinkedIn, TechCrunch notes.
Sergey Sukhankin
The recent decision by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to ban popular Russian social networks VKontakte (VK) and Odnoklassniki, on May 15 (see EDM, June 7), provoked serious debate both inside Ukraine and abroad. Now that the initial anxiety over that ban has somewhat subsided, it is worth analyzing other, less commented-on but no less important, elements of the decree.
Aside from social networks, Poroshenko’s May 15 decree bans Russian Internet search engine giant Yandex, some information technology (IT) programs, as well as anti-virus software (including Kaspersky and Doctor Web) that have allegedly been undermining Ukrainian information and cyber security. According to Colonel Oleksandr Tkachuk, from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), approximately 300 of the largest Ukrainian companies and corporations use Russian IT programs “directly controlled by the Russian Federal Security Service [FSB]” (Espreso.tv, April 27). Moreover, the Ukrainian side has suffered huge financial losses as a direct result of using Russian products. In his interview, the head of the information security division of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Valentin Petrov, noted that Ukraine annually spends approximately one billion hryvnas (roughly $39 million) on Russian IT and software products (Ukrinform.ua, May 17).
USM Holdings owned by Russia’s business magnate Alisher Usmanov and his partners is one of investors of the popular Uber taxi service, a source close to the company told TASS on Sunday.
The official representatives of USM and Uber in Russia have declined to comment on the reports.
Uber is an international transportation network company that develops mobile app for requesting trips with personal drivers. The company provides services in 360 cities in 64 countries of the world.
In Russia, the company began operations in 2013. In October 2015, Uber said it planned to launch services in all Russian million-strong cities this year. The value of the car-booking company is estimated at $62.5 billion, CNBC reported earlier this month citing sources.
USM Holdings Ltd. is an international company that has assets in metals and mining industry, telecommunications, the Internet and mass media. USM’s main shareholders are Alisher Usmanov, Vladimir Skoch and Farhad Moshiri. Usmanov has earlier invested in Apple, Facebook, Alibaba, JD.com and other high-technology companies.
Durov started VKontakte, later known as VK, in 2006, which was initially influenced by Facebook.[16] During the time when he and his brother Nikolai built upon the VKontakte website, the company grew to a value of $3 billion.[5]
In 2011, he was involved in a standoff with police in St. Petersburg when the government demanded the removal of opposition politicians' pages after the 2011 election to the Duma; Durov posted a picture of a dog with his tongue out wearing a hoodie and the police left after an hour when he did not answer the door.[15][16]
In 2012, Durov publicly posted a picture of himself extending his middle finger and calling it his official response to Mail.ru's efforts to buy VK.[15] In December 2013, Durov was pressured[vague] into selling his 12% of VK stock to Ivan Tavrin, the owner of the major Russian internet company Mail.ru,[5] who subsequently sold it to Mail.ru, giving it 52% majority ownership of VK. In 2014, Mail.ru bought all remaining shares and became the sole owner of VK.[17][18]
Durov then claimed the company had been effectively taken over by Vladimir Putin's allies,[23][24] suggesting his ouster was the result of both his refusal to hand over personal details of users to federal law enforcement and his refusal to hand over the personal details of people who were members of a VKontakte group dedicated to the Euromaidan protest movement.[23][24] Durov then left Russia and stated that he had "no plans to go back"[24] and that "the country is incompatible with Internet business at the moment".[3]
Mossad is known for being a very secretive spy agency responsible for intelligence collection, covert operations and counterterrorism. Its director reports directly to the Prime Minister.
A new group called “Mossad” has appeared on Vkontakte. According to information on the group’s page anyone who wants to “say something” should click on the link provided below.
Usmanov's Mail.ru Israeli technology connections.
Magisto, an Israeli cloud-based mobile video platform, announced on Friday a $2 million investment from Mail.Ru Group, the LSE-listed Russian Internet giant. The investment is designed to fuel further growth and customer acquisition.
In addition, Magisto has integrated its offering into Odnoklassniki.ru, a subsidiary of Mail.Ru Group and the second largest social network in Russia with 33 million daily unique visitors.
Now the startup will have backing from Mail.Ru, which has a major presence in the Russian-speaking markets. Mail.Ru Group claims that its sites reach 86 percent of Russian-speaking Internet users every month. It operates top Russian email service Mail.Ru, two of the largest IM services (Mail.Ru Agent and ICQ), and two of the three largest Russian social networking sites (My World and Odnoklassniki.ru). Additionally, it owns a minority equity stake in top Russian social network Vkontakte.
“We are really excited to work with Mail.Ru Group,” Cortica CEO and co-founder Igal Raichelgauz said in a statement. “Mail.ru shares our vision for leveraging Image2Text technology for visual search and contextual advertising and taking users’ web surfing experience to a whole new level.”
Cortica was founded in 2007 and has employess in New York City, Sunnyvale, Calif. and Israel.
https://www.cortica.com/
- The first AI capable of human-level image understanding.
a big data search engine for specialized medical facilities around the world, is announcing a partnership with Mail.Ru Group, the largest internet company in Russia. Mail.Ru Group will integrate ARCHIMEDICX onto its platform on Health Mail.Ru (the most popular health portal in Russia), allowing any user who searches for medical problems to use the ARCHIMEDICX search engine. Together, they will provide millions of users with vast information about the top treatment facilities in the world.
Russian oligarchs are making difficult decisions in the face of possible new sanctions. Some are trying to do everything to distance themselves from those in the Kremlin. While others are doing the exact opposite and getting as close to the authorities as they can. The best example of the latter is Alisher Usmanov, who — on his 65th birthday no less — announced a deal fully in line with the government’s aim to build economic ties with China. On September 11, telecommunications giant Megafon (partially owned by Usmanov), internet group Mail.ru Group (Usmanov owns 15% via Megafon), and the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) announced the creation of a joint venture with Alibaba Group.
Usmanov publicly supports the “digital transformation” announced by Putin, a key part of the president’s election campaign. Together with state conglomerate Rostec and Gazprombank, Usmanov in May announced the creation of a new digital company, MF Technology. Usmanov has also talked about a joint investment fund. All of this, of course, makes Usmanov very vulnerable to sanctions. But the billionaire has likely earned what he was probably fighting for in the first place: the Kremlin’s loyalty. On his last birthday, Usmanov received a personal telegram from Putin.
Rakishev is the lead investor of Fastlane Ventures, a Russian tech development company, he held a major stake in the Israeli visual media platform Mobli, and invested in the Russian bank card and loyalty program company IQcard. Rakishev is Chairman of Net Element International, a global technology group based in the US that specializes in value-added transaction services and mobile payments.
Rakishev and Imangal Tasmagambetov
It is believed that in part Kenes Rakishev is a nominal figure. In reality, all the assets and billions that he allegedly owns belong to the higher elite of Kazakhstan, which uses Kenes as a screen. It's about the test of Rakishev Imangale Tasmagambetov,
Timur Kulibayev (the head of Kazakhstan's Nursultan Nazarbayev), the head of the KNB Karime Massimov. Rakishev himself categorically denies such statements, assuring himself that he has achieved everything himself, thanks to his talents. And here is that he says under oath about his test Tasmagambetov. .
Moshe Hogeg, Singulariteam partners (Rakishev) sued for $50m
"Embezzlement of tens of millions of shekels"
"Forbes Magazine" named Rakishev as one of the 50 most influential people in Kazakhstan, with wealth in excess of $2 billion. According to the statement of claim, Chen, a director in IDC Holdings, was a consultant in enterprises led by Singulariteam, including stox.com.
The manager of Singulariteam in 2014 was Adi Sheleg, a former shares trader who turned state's witness in the IDB share offering case, in which Nochi Dankner was later convicted of share manipulation. Singulariteam's chairperson in 2014 was former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who was convicted of accepting a bribe in the Hazera Genetic case in 2015. Olmert served 18 months in prison in 2016-2017 for this conviction. Singulariteam's current chairperson is Hogeg.
In this article we give an entertaining conversation Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich, the current billionaire, and then "key holder" from the Treasury of WOMEN. Abramovich says that yesterday, when they were at Chernomyrdin, Polezhaev showed him (Berezovsky) a letter addressed to Yeltsin. Polezhaev spoke by A. Korabelshikov, he said that to meet the President now impossible, but he'll talk to Livshits, who must give this letter. Abramovich asked whether Berezovsky to deliver the letter to Livshits, he replies in the affirmative. Abramovich reports that yesterday he met Levayev. Levayev said that he is great friends with Netanyahu and if it is necessary that Netanyahu spoke in support of Yeltsin, he (Levayev) can organize. Levayev also said that of the 18 members of the Israeli government, he personally appoints 8, including the Minister of energy. So they will have plans there
If analysts immediately suspected in this contract murder the political underpinnings, the investigation initially stubbornly clung to only the version of the connection of the crime with the commercial activities of the retired general. The son of the murdered, Boris Trofimov, then also suggested that his father's involvement in the conflict between the owners of the company, Vladimir Slutsker and Ambartsum Safaryan, who at that time was very tense, divided.
Criminal list of Mikhail Fridman (Alfa Bank, Genesis Prize, CFR)
"Mikhail Fridman - Friend of Bibi, Putin and linked to Trump, allegedly. Dual citizen of Israel and Russia." - Jon Swinn
Larry Cohler-Esses
Is a Russian Jewish oligarch with Israeli citizenship and close ties to both Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu running a secret cyber-communications channel between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russian authorities?
That question, about billionaire Mikhail Fridman, is at the heart of a new and detailed investigative report by Franklin Foer, the former editor of The New Republic, published Tuesday on the news website Slate.
According to a story published in The New York Times just hours after Foer’s report went live, FBI investigators looked into — and ultimately came to doubt — evidence that a mysterious server registered to the Trump Organization was receiving regular covert email communiqués from two servers registered to Fridman’s Alfa Bank, the largest commercial bank in Russia.
Tea Pain - Alfa Bank server connection to Trump Tower
Jared Kushner is currently taking a victory lap, crowin’ about his “Stealth Data Machine” that put Donald Trump over the top in the 2016 race. Let’s pry off the lid and peer into the inner-workings of this “Data Machine.”
The funny thing about mysteries is sometime the answer is starin’ you right in the face so intently you can’t see it. A year ago, Tea Pain saw a signal in the noise that got him lookin’ into the mystery of the Trump Tower/Alfa Bank server scandal.
Trump Tower’s “Stealth Russian Data Machine”
Tara Palmeri
Fridman’s Alfa Bank provided financing throughout the 2000s to Atomstroyexport, the state-owned Russian nuclear vendor that installed the reactors at Bushehr, according to reports.
Zarina Zabrisky
In 2008, a self-pronounced Putin’s friend, USSR-born Israeli Lev Leviev sold $710 million in Manhattan real estate to a subsidiary of the infamous 88 Queensway Group.
In 2011, Blackstone bought 51% of one of three properties, the old New York Times Building. In 2015, Jared Kushner’s company bought the remaining 49%.
Peter Dale Scott
As the Guardian reported in 2002, Alfa’s 1990s clout in Washington was demonstrated when its oil company, Tyumen,
was loaned $489m in credits by the US Export-Import Bank after lobbying by Halliburton…. The [Clinton] White House and State Department tried to veto the Russian deal. But after intense lobbying by Halliburton the objections were overruled on Capitol Hill [which then was Republican controlled]…. The State Department’s concerns were based on the fact that Tyumen was controlled by a holding conglomerate, the Alfa Group, that had been investigated in Russia for mafia connections.
List of potential donors prepared by then-opposition leader in 2007 provides peek into his fundraising industry in US. Officials include extreme rightists, people who got in trouble with law.
Included in the list of prominently Jewish millionaires and billionaires appears the name 'Donald Trump'.
Richard Silerstein
Among the oligarchs are Mikhail Fridman (net worth, $18-billion and 46th on Forbes list of the richest people in the world and second richest Russian) and some of his cronies, Petr Aven (chairman of Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest commercial bank) and Stan Polovets (who made his billions in Russian energy). Here’s a Foreign Policy article from way back in 2000, detailing how these crooks stripped assets and stole billions.
"…Asset-stripping has also victimized major international oil companies. In a highly publicized case, [Mikhail] Fridman’s Tyumen Oil Company (TNK) allegedly stole Sidanko’s most valuable assets by manipulatinig the bankruptcy process. According to defrauded Sidanko shareholders (who include BP Amoco), the theft was carried out through the corrupt appointment of a TNK-friendly receiver, the unlawful reduction of the claims of major creditors such as the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (in which the United States holds shares), and a rigged bankruptcy “auction” in which only TNK-affiliated companies could bid."
Scott Stedman
A month-long investigation into the corporate structure of the private intelligence company that met with Donald Trump Jr., Erik Prince, and George Nader in the middle of the 2016 election campaign has revealed that a sister company of Psy Group is controlled by a Russian billionaire.
Justin Hendrix
New Knowledge also looks closely at “Kris Crawford,” another Facebook account PSY-Group used in the pitch material obtained by the Wall Street Journal.
While he appears to be an American man, Crawford’s URL suggests his Facebook page used to belong to a “Martina Jakimovska.” “Looking through the ‘Kris Crawford’s’ account history it’s still possible to see when Martina updated her profile photo and used Facebook to check in at a location in Macedonia,” New Knowledge notes.
Veles used to make porcelain for the whole of Yugoslavia. Now it makes fake news.
This sleepy riverside town in Macedonia is home to dozens of website operators who churn out bogus stories designed to attract the attention of Americans. Each click adds cash to their bank accounts.
The scale is industrial: Over 100 websites were tracked here during the final weeks of the 2016 U.S. election campaign, producing fake news that mostly favored Republican candidate for President Donald Trump.
Zack Beauchamp
Yevgeny Prigozhin, the man widely referred to as “Putin’s chef,” doesn’t actually prepare food. Instead, he cooks up international plots — like Russia’s campaign to use social media to undermine Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and promote Donald Trump’s.
Prigozhin was among the 13 Russian nationals indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller in February and is by far the most well-known. His ties to Putin go back to at least 2001: He’s worked on everything from election interference to setting up pro-Putin newspapers to sending Russian mercenaries to Syria to fight on behalf of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
A recent Washington Post report says that he personally approved a Russian mercenary attack on US forces stationed in eastern Syria in early February; US intelligence, per the Post, intercepted a conversation where he promoted the idea.
“Putin’s chef” would be better described as Putin’s fixer: someone who does the Russian leader’s dirty work, while giving Putin plausible deniability if things go wrong
Jon Swinn
Utkin became the CEO of Concord Management and Consulting LLC, which belongs to the Concord company group and is co-owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin.[8]
Prigozhin, or “Putin’s chef” as he is also known, is among the 13 Russian nationals indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for his connections to troll farms involved in an operation to assist U.S. President Donald Trump win the 2016 Presidential election. According to the indictment , Mueller accuses troll farm company Internet Research Agency employees of “posing as U.S. persons and creating false U.S. personas, operating social media pages and groups designed to attract U.S. audiences.”[9]
Prigozhin’s Concord Management is directly involved with the administration of troll farm Internet Research Agency, according to documents published by hackers from Anonymous International.[10]
Understanding Krysha
The Putin-Prigozhin relation is great example of the “Krysha” concept. Krysha means roof and is a slang word for protection. In exchange for contracts with the Kremlin, oligarchs such as Prigozhin work on behalf of the Mafiya State.[11]
Len Blavatnik, who made his fortune in the former Soviet Union in the oil business, appears on a legal defense fund list uncovered by the Wall St. Journal
A Soviet-born billionaire who is considered close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu donated to a private legal defense fund for U.S. President Donald Trump, the Wall Street Journal revealed.
Israeli police are to fly to London today to question billionaire businessman Len Blavatnik in relation to corruption charges facing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to Haaretz.
The Soviet-born media investor will primarily be questioned as to whether Netanyahu was involved in the sale of a television channel in 2015 to Arnon Mozes, publisher of Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, as part of “Case 2000”. It is alleged that Netanyahu tried to negotiate a deal with Mozes, offering legislation that would impede the activities of Mozes’ rival paper, Israel Hayom, in return for more favourable media coverage of the prime minister and his policies.
Blavatnik's ties to the Bronfmans.
Every kvetching New Yorker wants more space. But only a Russian-born, Harvard-trained oil tycoon would want more legroom than a 14-room Fifth Avenue co-op (bought just this year for $27.5 million) and an East 63rd Street palace (bought two years ago for $31.25 million).
Those properties didn’t content Len Blavatnik. According to two sources, he’s the buyer for Seagram heir Edgar Bronfman Jr.’s 31-foot-wide townhouse at 15 East 64th.
Edgar Bronfman Jr. and billionaire investors reportedly offered $18 a share for Time.
Shares of Time Inc. were soaring as much as 20 percent ahead of the closing bell on Monday after the New York Post reported that the parent of magazines like People, Sports Illustrated and Time had turned down an acquisition offer from Edgar Bronfman Jr., Leonard Blavatnik and Ynon Kreiz.
Mikhail Fridman
The oligarchs behind Alfa-Access-Renova (AAR) include Fridman.At 47, he has an estimated wealth of $15.1bn, making him Russia's seventh richest man.
Fridman and Peter Aven founded the Alfa Group Consortium – a holding company which controls Alfa Bank, Alfa Capital, Tyumen Oil, several construction material firms and a supermarket chain.
Len Blavatnik
The multibillionaire recently agreed to pay $3.3bn for Warner Music via his industrial holding company Access Industries. Blavatnik is a major petrochemicals investor, but has occasionally bought media assets. Access has a controlling stake in Top Up TV, the pay-TV business.
Born in the Soviet Union in 1957, he emigrated with his family to the US in 1978. He lives in New York and London, where he has a home in Kensington Palace Gardens.
Viktor Vekselberg
Ukraine-born oil and metals baron Vekselberg is overseeing a turnaround at aluminium giant UC Rusal, which he formed with fellow billionaire, Oleg Deripaska. Made first million selling scrap copper from old cables. In the 1990s together with fellow billionaire Leonard Blavatnik bought aluminum smelters to form a company called Sual. Consummate dealmaker also has interests in chemicals, utilities and telecoms.
Owns Fabergé egg collection.
German Khan
A native of Kiev, graduated from the Moscow Institute of Steel and Alloys in 1988. The next year, with former classmate Fridman, co-founded Alfa-Eco, a commodities trader and predecessor of Alfa Group. Heads Alfa Group's oil business as executive director and board member of oil company TNK-BP. He enjoys hunting and has a large collection of sporting guns and rifles.
Russia and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa have agreed to a joint venture that will launch a satellite into space in 1995.
After a five-member delegation arrived here to finalize details of the venture, the agreement was signed Monday between the Technion and the Russian STC Complex. The Russian firm was established in 1991 to convert Soviet military technology into Russian civilian enterprises.
The Gurwinl-TechSat communications satellite was designed and built over a period of three years at a cost of $3.5 million. The satellite is scheduled to be launched into space in March, along with two other satellites from a site about 560 miles from Moscow.
The Variant
Short video series on Soviet Zionism by The Variant on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5K7T52ZGin8SlH6cd46AvdF_YBCASmiw
