Russians and the American Right Started Plotting in 1995. We Have the Notes From the First Meeting.

By Casey Michel, ThinkProgress

20 June 18


New documents obtained by ThinkProgress show how Russian and American fundamentalists first began their collaboration.

"In a congressional hearing last fall, Glenn Simpson, the man whose research helped lead to the now-infamous dossier on Russia and President Donald Trump, let slip a bombshell revelation about Russian infiltration in the United States.

“I would say broadly speaking, it appears that the Russian operation was designed to infiltrate conservative organizations,” Simpson said. “They targeted various conservative organizations, religious and otherwise, and they seem to have made a very concerted effort to get in with the [National Rifle Association].”

While Simpson’s comments drove ongoing investigations into relations between the National Rife Association (NRA) and now-sanctioned Russian officials, another aspect of the Russian strategy has received far less attention: Which conservative religious organizations were targeted by Russian operatives? And who within those organizations proved susceptible to Russian infiltration — or even helped further the Kremlin’s aims?

A series of interviews and never-before-seen documents, including testimonials and diaries obtained by ThinkProgress, sheds new light on how the relationship between the Religious Right and Russia first began, and how it led to several collaborative efforts in the years to come.

In examining both the individuals and organizations involved, it’s evident that as the 2016 presidential election was heating up, those same Religious Right figures — some affiliated with groups that were reportedly funded by sanctioned Russian officials — went out of their way to defend the Russian regime. Now, with Trump in the White House, relations between Russia and American social conservatives have waned, but they’ve hardly disappeared.

Gathering the world’s congress

Allan Carlson never expected a call from anyone in Russia.

“I was contacted out of the blue,” he told ThinkProgress. It was the early 1990s, and Carlson had just finished a stint with the Reagan administration’s National Commission on Children when he was contacted by Anatoly Antonov, then a sociology professor at the Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Carlson, a historian known for his work on family policy and a staunch social conservative, faced a sudden, unexpected question: Would he like to visit Russia, and maybe speak with scholars and policy-makers about his work on the so-called “natural family”?

Carlson didn’t hesitate. “Family life [in Russia] just was in shambles,” he said. “They’re coming out of communism, and communism had done its damage to family life, to social life. But then on top of that, rushing in in the 1990s was the Western sexual revolution, and the two kind of combined in a whirlwind.” So he packed his bags and set off.

In time, Carlson’s partnership with Antonov and Victor Medkov, another Russian sociologist, would grow into the World Congress of Families (WCF) — the most prominent Russian-American anti-LGBTQ collaboration to date, and the foremost international anti-LGBTQ organization in the world.

But little has been reported about that first visit to Russia in 1995, when Carlson, Antonov, and Medkov originally began laying the groundwork for WCF. Carlson shared the diary he kept with ThinkProgress — written observations that help illuminate the earliest days of their partnership, and the emergence of what would become a Russian-American collaboration to unwind efforts at equality and acceptance.

Writing for God

Much of the diary is filled with minutiae: bags not appearing on the runway, the lack of potable water, “bad soup.” Carlson details his travels in Moscow, which included meeting with a raft of academics and members of Russia’s Duma, and a visit to the embalmed body of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.

In one entry, though — dated January 16, 1995 — Carlson describes the meeting that eventually opened the door for collaboration between American social conservatives and those close to Russian President Vladimir Putin..."

https://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/50738-russians-and-the-american-right-started-plotting-in-1995-we-have-the-notes-from-the-first-meeting

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Cool... a Soros conspiracy thread... lol. Anything goes after that... right?

https://www.infowars.com/was-russian-lawyer-who-met-don-jnr-a-dem-plant/

WAS RUSSIAN LAWYER WHO MET DON JNR. A DEM PLANT?

Questions are swirling over Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya after a picture of her with Obama’s ambassador to Russia emerged that was taken just eight days after she met with Donald Trump Jnr.

Veselnitskaya first met with Don Jr. after promising him political dirt on Hillary Clinton, although the meeting, during which Veselnitskaya mainly talked about Russian adoptions, was a complete waste of time.

Eight days after the meeting, Veselnitskaya was pictured sitting behind Obama’s Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul during a Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on June 14, 2016.

Emin Agalarov, who helped set up the meeting with Don Jr., is also pictured sititng next to Veselnitskaya.

“So why was Veselnitskaya hanging out with Obama officials just days after her meeting with Donald Trump Jr.? And why was Veselnitskaya given a privileged seat up front during the Congressional hearing?” asks Gateway Pundit.

Was Veselnitskaya part of a ruse to entrap Don Jr. in an embarrassing situation that could later be used to implicate him as having colluded with Russia?

The theory would be tenuous if not for the fact that Veselnitskaya is directly linked to the group behind the infamous ‘pissgate’ dossier.

“Specifically, we have learned that the person who sought the meeting is associated with Fusion GPS, a firm which according to public reports, was retained by Democratic operatives to develop opposition research on the President and which commissioned the phony Steele dossier,” said Mark Corallo, a spokesman for the President Trump’s legal team.

Fusion GPS hired British intelligence agent Christopher Steele shortly after Veselnitskaya’s meeting with Trump Jr. His dossier later claimed that President Trump had been compromised during a trip to Moscow in 2013 during which Russian prostitutes had defiled a bed previously slept in by the Obamas.

The dossier was swiftly debunked and cited as evidence that the deep state and the Democratic Party were trying to de-lelgitimize and possibly impeach Trump with false claims to tie into the Russian collusion narrative.

Could Natalia Veselnitskaya have been another servant of that very same deep state?

Alex Jones...Hahahahaha.

This man, a frequent Jones contributor, has been detained and questioned by the FBI:

FBI questions Ted Malloch, Trump campaign figure and Farage ally

American once touted as possible ambassador to EU tells of being detained at Boston airport and subpoenaed by Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia inquiry




Ted Malloch, once touted as a potential US ambassador to the EU, was detained by the FBI upon arrival in Boston on a flight from London. Photograph: Frank Augstein/AP

"A controversial London-based academic with close ties to Nigel Farage has been detained by the FBI upon arrival in the US and issued a subpoena to testify before Robert Mueller, the special counsel who is investigating possible collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Ted Malloch, an American touted last year as a possible candidate to serve as US ambassador to the EU, said he was interrogated by the FBI at Boston’s Logan airport on Wednesday following a flight from London and questioned about his involvement in the Trump campaign.

In a statement sent to the Guardian, Malloch, who described himself as a policy wonk and defender of Trump, said the FBI also asked him about his relationship with Roger Stone, the Republican strategist, and whether he had ever visited the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has resided for nearly six years.

In a detailed statement about the experience, which he described as bewildering and intimidating at times, Malloch said the federal agents who stopped him and separated him from his wife “seemed to know everything about me” and warned him that lying to the FBI was a felony. In the statement Malloch denied having any Russia contacts.

Malloch said he had agreed with the special counsel’s office that he would appear before Mueller’s grand jury in Washington DC on 13 April.

Malloch became a source of controversy in 2016 when he was floated in media reports as a possible US ambassador to the EU, following an aggressive campaign in which, according to several reports at the time, he promoted himself as a strong candidate. European officials, alarmed by the possible pick and his lack of diplomatic credentials, openly criticised Malloch, particularly after he compared the EU to the Soviet Union.

Malloch’s campaign for the diplomatic post came to an end after a report in the Financial Times detailed several apparently misleading claims made in Malloch’s autobiography, including that he was a fellow at Wolfson and Pembroke colleges at Oxford, that he had once been called a “genius” by Margaret Thatcher, and that he was the “first” to coin the phrase “thought leadership”..."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/mar/30/fbi-questions-ted-malloch-trump-campaign-figure-and-farage-ally

But soros is reputable... LMAO.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/06/leading-mexican-presidential-candidate-obrador-calls-for-mass-exodus-to-united-states-when-he-wins-election/

Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) called for mass immigration to the United States during a speech Tuesday declaring it a “human right” for all North Americans.

“And soon, very soon — after the victory of our movement — we will defend all the migrants in the American continent and all the migrants in the world,” Obrador said, adding that immigrants “must leave their towns and find a life in the United States.”

PkrBum wrote:https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/06/leading-mexican-presidential-candidate-obrador-calls-for-mass-exodus-to-united-states-when-he-wins-election/

Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) called for mass immigration to the United States during a speech Tuesday declaring it a “human right” for all North Americans.

“And soon, very soon — after the victory of our movement — we will defend all the migrants in the American continent and all the migrants in the world,” Obrador said, adding that immigrants “must leave their towns and find a life in the United States.”

Great! That's an excellent idea, considering that we stole the American Southwest from you in the first place. Welcome home, you guys, you'll make wonderful Americans in a generation or two Just watch out for the racist assholes, they'll try to make your life hell.

And all you Central Americans, we're sorry for interfering in your countries for the last hundred years--that School of the Americas where we trained your dictators and death-squads was a real mistake--so, come on in, we'll be glad to have you.

Right wing useful idiots. Republican National COMRADES.



Richard Engel, NBC News chief foreign correspondent, and NBC's Kelly Cobiella look at how members of the American political right are building an appreciation for Vladimir Putin through guns and Evangelical Christianity.


http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/russia-makes-inroads-with-american-right-via-guns-religion-986677827557?playlist=associated

This explains the selection of Mike Pence as VP, who, it's said, was Manafort's choice. These people aren't Christians; they're pseudo-Christians...theocrats and hypocrites.

PkrBum wrote:https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/06/leading-mexican-presidential-candidate-obrador-calls-for-mass-exodus-to-united-states-when-he-wins-election/

Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) called for mass immigration to the United States during a speech Tuesday declaring it a “human right” for all North Americans.

“And soon, very soon — after the victory of our movement — we will defend all the migrants in the American continent and all the migrants in the world,” Obrador said, adding that immigrants “must leave their towns and find a life in the United States.”

No, Mexico’s presidential candidate didn't call for mass migration to the United States

A hoax is making the rounds on Facebook that Mexico’s leading presidential candidate is calling for a massive surge of immigration to the United States. That’s not true.

"Mexico’s next president calls for an invasion of the U.S.," said a headline by WeSupportDonaldTrump.com. The website, which lacks original reporting, has a hodgepodge of articles about politics with a pro-President Donald Trump slant.

Facebook flagged this story as part of its efforts to combat false news and misinformation on Facebook's News Feed. Read more about our partnership with Facebook.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2018/jun/25/blog-posting/mexico-presidential-candidate-call-immigration/



What's the name of that website? Oh, yeah, WeSupportDonaldTrump.com. Imagine that!

Further evidence that Trump supporters are all gullible dolts...           as if any further evidence was needed.

It doesn't even speak to obama announcing Hillary's innocence during the investigation. Dirty... rigged.

http://www.timesrepublican.com/opinion/columnists/2018/06/obamas-silky-lie/

Of all the silky lies being told in Washington over the findings of the FBI’s inspector general on the biased culture of those investigating Hillary Clinton’s email server, one lie seems to be ignored:

It’s the silky lie told by then-President Barack Obama.

It may have set the tone for the smarmy intrigue detailed in the FBI inspector general’s damning 500-page report on the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.

And Washington is revealed once again as our modern Versailles, a place of courtiers and lickspittles who’d use the Ministry of Justice to serve their ambitions.

Obama told his silky lie when his chosen successor was Hillary Clinton.

Clinton had endangered top-secret information by using an unsecured, home-brew email server when she was U.S. secretary of state. Any other American who dared risk top government secrets on a basement server would have faced federal prosecution and prison.

Obama’s lie was told in 2015, when Obama was asked by Bill Plante of CBS when he learned Clinton had used an unsecured email server.

“The same time everybody else learned it, through news reports,” Obama said. He was so silky that you couldn’t even hear his tongue rustling along his teeth.

He waxed on about how his administration was all about “transparency.”

But Obama did not learn about Clinton’s home-brew server like “everybody else.”

According to the inspector general’s report, Obama was in fact one of 13 top government officials communicating with Clinton on her private email server, even as Clinton’s server was targeted by foreign intelligence services.

According to the IG report, before former (and fired) FBI Director James Comey took it upon himself to publicly criticize Clinton (and exonerate her from a criminal charge), a draft of his public address was heavily edited.

It was edited for Hillary Clinton’s benefit, to buttress the case that what she did wasn’t prosecutable.

But Comey’s comments were also edited to protect someone else. The IG report discusses a key paragraph in Comey’s statement summarizing the FBI’s thinking that “hostile actors” had accessed Clinton’s server.

The paragraph, the report said, “referenced Clinton’s use of her private email for an exchange with then President Obama while in the territory of a foreign adversary. This reference was later changed to ‘another senior government official,’ and ultimately was omitted.”

Obama cut his political teeth in Chicago. And Chicago Democrats are asking taxpayers to help build a great Temple of Love and Fealty to honor that “senior government official.”

And they’ll honor him by name.

Just chew on this apiece: How could Hillary Clinton ever be prosecuted without implicating Obama, who emailed her using a pseudonym?

Obama might have been portrayed as a victim of her use of a private server. She used that server to hide her dealings with the controversial Clinton Foundation from congressional inquiry. She should have been prosecuted.

But then, two things would have happened.

Her campaign would have fallen apart immediately, and along with it, Obama’s legacy.

The Obama White House, the senior pro-Obama bosses of the FBI and just about all the political suits thought Clinton would be our next president.

And who wants to anger the next ruler? Careers were at stake, promotions, perks, power, just as it was back in the day, in old Versailles.

You should read the report for yourself. Ignore the spin that there was no bias found at Obama’s DOJ and FBI.

It crawls with bias. Deals were cut. Then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch met on the tarmac with Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton was shielded from a federal grand jury. Witnesses were allowed to sit with her during questioning. Comey had already decided to clear her before the investigation was complete.

Pro-Clinton FBI investigator Peter Strzok was warned by his lover, pro-Clinton FBI lawyer Lisa Page, that since Clinton would surely win, it wouldn’t be wise to anger the new boss.

When Page panicked, worrying that Trump might actually win the White House in 2016, Strzok told her not to worry.

“No. No, he won’t,” Strzok texted her on an FBI phone. “We’ll stop it.”

By then, he was helping lead a new FBI investigation, the one investigating Trump for possible collusion with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.

Special counsel Robert Mueller, to his credit, dumped Strzok from the probe when Strzok’s anti-Trump passions became clear. But the Mueller probe has been damaged by the IG report.

The Mueller investigation should continue. So should the congressional inquiry into the DOJ and FBI. Americans need sunshine on all of this.

But one thing should be understood here: The Clinton investigation went wrong when it was taken away from capable field agents and handed to the political suits and intriguers. Bias is their coin. Comey was their boss. His reputation has been hurt by the report.

And Trump, vulgar and boastful, was overjoyed to see Comey, a likely witness against him, take such a big public hit.

Trump is no angel. He’s famous for lies. Mueller may indeed be closing in with the Friday jailing of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, who’s accused of witness tampering.

But Trump’s lies are obvious and blustery, like those told by a bad carny hustler.

Trump is no Obama.

Obama was the silky one.

https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/john-kass-worst/Content?oid=37063757

John Kass is a real chumbolone

The Tribune's beer-can-chicken-obsessed columnist has managed to find ways to be ever more reactionary.
By John Greenfield @greenfieldjohn



One of the saddest things about John Kass's present status as a right-wing blowhard is that he previously played a role in Chicago's media landscape as a government watchdog, reporting for the Chicago Tribune on shady dealings at City Hall under Richard M. Daley. But following the death of legendary newspaperman Mike Royko in 1997, it was determined that Kass would be more of an asset to the Republican-leaning daily as a columnist.

The Trib has a right to throw red meat to its aging, suburban readership, but in recent years Kass has managed to find ways to be ever more reactionary, such as attacking so-called liberal responses to horrific tragedies. For instance, in an October 3 column in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre, Kass painted renewed calls for sensible gun laws by Democrats as vulturelike behavior: "The dead weren't even finished dying before the left swooped down to feed on gun control politics."

Exactly how long does Kass think it's necessary to wait before bringing up the obvious? Until the next heartbreaking incident in which dozens of innocent people are killed? In this case it was the Sutherland Springs church shooting, about a month later.

In that October 3 column, Kass acknowledged that the U.S. has more guns and gun crimes than any other country, and claimed he's open to more debate on the issue. But he also argued that blaming the National Rifle Association for mass shootings is like blaming airplanes for 9/11. He went so far as to imply that a more important factor in U.S. gun massacres is the nation's drop in church attendance.

When weighing in on the gun control debate, Kass—like President Donald Trump and other right-wingers—never misses an opportunity to bring up the homicide epidemic in Chicago and the failure of Democratic leaders to solve it. "Most killings aren't committed by some lone sniper without apparent motive," Kass wrote. "Street gangs continue their slaughter and City Hall is powerless to stop them."

Kass continued that theme in an October 13 column after longtime Waldorf School math teacher Cynthia Trevillion, 64, was shot and killed in gang crossfire near the Morse el stop in Rogers Park. "Chicago politicians want you to think of it as gun violence because that gives them political cover," he wrote.

Instead, the columnist suggested, the chief reason why murders are more common in the city than the suburbs, where he resides, is poor home training. He quotes a resident who asks, "Where are the parents of these kids? . . . Even at a young age, you can teach the difference between good and bad. But these boys who killed the teacher didn't learn that." Largely ignored in Kass's self-righteous moralizing are the root causes of violence in Chicago's lower-income communities: the legacies of segregation, neighborhood disinvestment, and redlining, as well as a host of continuing issues—addiction, mass incarceration, unemployment, lack of access to affordable housing and high-quality education and health care. A moutza to him.   v

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How do you find the most reactionary crapola "journalism" on the internet?  With such regularity?  What a steaming pile.

BTW, here's a comment:

This is an accurate write-up but far too kind. You needed to go full-out, both-barrels, Ed-Gold-on-Bob-Greene on Kass's loutish ass. Here are some of the topics you missed:

-Kass is an absolutely awful writer, but he fancies himself a thick-fisted poet with Royko's voice. He's not. He once wrote this sentence about Hillary Clinton: "She paused, then blinked and her face began to move toward him on the end of her neck." I mean, good god.

-He's the worst of dog-whistle racists, constantly referring to the "slaughter" on Chicago's streets -- written from his undoubtedly cozy digs in Western Springs (WESTERN EFFING SPRINGS!).

-He think his diatribes against cyclists ("little bike people," he calls us) are... I don't know... funny? Cute? Cast him as a true blue-collar against us bike-pedaling yuppies? It's appalling.

-Related: He is incredibly un-funny. "The Rahmfather"? Good god.

-He's obsessed with Hillary Clinton, constantly referencing her and dropping stupid, snide little jabs everywhere he can. We're watching an unfettered looting of our government by a dull-witted con man and some of the worst people we've ever seen holding high-powered jobs (Steve Bannon? Stephen Miller?), but there's nary a word about it unless it's to also poke at Hillary.

There's a start.

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You started it. When you channel soros... anything goes... lol.

PkrBum wrote:You started it. When you channel soros... anything goes... lol.

But...but...but...Hillary...but Obama...but...but...but Soros.