Another Big Win For Putin!!!
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Putin Faces ‘Information Attack’ on Wealth, Friends, Russia Says - Bloomberg Business
The Kremlin accused a group of international journalists of preparing an “information attack” on President Vladimir Putin’s wealth and his ties to billionaire oligarchs in Russia.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is seeking comment on dozens of questions concerning “Putin personally” as well as “information about his family, childhood friends,” and business allies including Yuri Kovalchuk and Arkady Rotenberg, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call Monday. There are also “questions about some sort of offshore companies,” he said.
Other “amusing” requests include whether Putin has more than $40 billion and if he owns yachts, Peskov said. Russia has “available the full arsenal of legal means in the national and international arena to protect the honor and dignity of our president,” he said.
Peskov’s statements about the ICIJ follow his criticism of a BBC documentary in January in which U.S. Treasury official Adam Szubin said that Putin was corrupt and that the U.S. government had known about it for many years. Peskov called the statements lies. White House spokesman Josh Earnest echoed the allegations two days later, telling reporters that the Treasury’s assessment “best reflects the administration view.”
The ICIJ, founded in 1997, is a global network of investigative journalists who collaborate on in-depth investigations on issues including cross-border crime, corruption and the accountability of power, according to its website. It didn’t immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
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Kovalchuk is founding partner and the largest shareholder in Bank Rossiya, described as “the personal bank for senior officials of the Russian Federation” by the U.S. Treasury in a 2014 statement that imposed sanctions against him and the bank over Russia’s involvement in the Ukraine crisis. The Treasury called Kovalchuk one of the president’s “cashiers” and said he’s “the personal banker for senior officials of the Russian Federation including Putin.”
Rotenberg and his brother Boris, who were Putin’s childhood friends and judo partners, were also put under U.S. sanctions as members of the president’s “inner circle.” They’ve “amassed enormous amounts of wealth during the years of Putin’s rule,” the U.S Treasury said.
Putin in 2008 denied that he has a $40 billion fortune as the wealthiest man in Europe, saying that journalists had picked the allegation “out of their noses and smeared it on their pieces of paper” at his annual news conference.
Peskov sought to pre-empt similar inquiries into Putin in May last year when he disclosed that unnamed U.S. and U.K. media had sent the Kremlin a series of questions about the president’s ties to businessman Gennady Timchenko.
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The Kremlin accused a group of international journalists of preparing an “information attack” on President Vladimir Putin’s wealth and his ties to billionaire oligarchs in Russia.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists is seeking comment on dozens of questions concerning “Putin personally” as well as “information about his family, childhood friends,” and business allies including Yuri Kovalchuk and Arkady Rotenberg, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call Monday. There are also “questions about some sort of offshore companies,” he said.
Other “amusing” requests include whether Putin has more than $40 billion and if he owns yachts, Peskov said. Russia has “available the full arsenal of legal means in the national and international arena to protect the honor and dignity of our president,” he said.
Peskov’s statements about the ICIJ follow his criticism of a BBC documentary in January in which U.S. Treasury official Adam Szubin said that Putin was corrupt and that the U.S. government had known about it for many years. Peskov called the statements lies. White House spokesman Josh Earnest echoed the allegations two days later, telling reporters that the Treasury’s assessment “best reflects the administration view.”
The ICIJ, founded in 1997, is a global network of investigative journalists who collaborate on in-depth investigations on issues including cross-border crime, corruption and the accountability of power, according to its website. It didn’t immediately respond to an e-mailed request for comment.
Judo Partners
Kovalchuk is founding partner and the largest shareholder in Bank Rossiya, described as “the personal bank for senior officials of the Russian Federation” by the U.S. Treasury in a 2014 statement that imposed sanctions against him and the bank over Russia’s involvement in the Ukraine crisis. The Treasury called Kovalchuk one of the president’s “cashiers” and said he’s “the personal banker for senior officials of the Russian Federation including Putin.”
Rotenberg and his brother Boris, who were Putin’s childhood friends and judo partners, were also put under U.S. sanctions as members of the president’s “inner circle.” They’ve “amassed enormous amounts of wealth during the years of Putin’s rule,” the U.S Treasury said.
Putin in 2008 denied that he has a $40 billion fortune as the wealthiest man in Europe, saying that journalists had picked the allegation “out of their noses and smeared it on their pieces of paper” at his annual news conference.
Peskov sought to pre-empt similar inquiries into Putin in May last year when he disclosed that unnamed U.S. and U.K. media had sent the Kremlin a series of questions about the president’s ties to businessman Gennady Timchenko.
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88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
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Of course China and Russia are going to become friendly
The west views them as inferior, treats them as consistent threats and makes almost no attempt to better relations
BBC Says Russia’s ‘Troll Factory’ Faked a Video Showing a US Soldier Shooting at a Quran · Global Voices
BBC Says Russia's ‘Troll Factory’ Faked a Video Showing a US Soldier Shooting at a Quran
“Saiga 410K review.” Image: Mayaese Johnson / YouTube
The video seems to show a man dressed as a US soldier firing three shots into a copy of the Quran. It appeared online in September 2015, generating unusual interest in Russia, prompting strong criticism from the country’s Muslim community. According to an investigative report by the BBC’s Russian-language service, the footage was actually staged by St. Petersburg’s infamous “troll factory,” the Agency for Internet Studies.
In the controversial video, a dark-skinned man wearing a US military uniform tests a Russian-made Saiga 401K semi-automatic rifle by firing ten shots at a blue book written in Arabic, resembling the Quran. When only three bullets hit the target, the man behind the camera, using highly obscene language and speaking with an accent that does not sound American, says the weapon is inaccurate. The video, which is interspersed with grammatically incorrect captions, concludes with the statement, “This is one more prove that only American weapons are the best ever [sic].”
The same day that the video appeared on YouTube, it was also shared on the National Gun Forum, which hosts “discussion for proud gun owners.” There, a user named “Derr86” claimed that his friend was trying to dissuade him from buying a Saiga 410K because the weapon is “just a piece of crap.” Derr86 said his friend, “who’s a marine btw, Oorah!” also sent him the YouTube video featuring the man dressed as a US soldier testing the rifle on the Arabic book. Derr86 registered on the forum just ten days before this post, and he hasn’t been active since.
No one on the forum seemed to notice (or care) that the man in the video was dressed in US desert camouflage, which is widely available at specialty stores. The BBC also notes that the man wears an Ops-Core FAST Base Jump helmet, instead of a US military helmet. (The helmet, moreover, bears a patch reading, “INFIDEL STRONG.”) The YouTube account that posted the video is registered under the unusual name “Mayaese Johnson,” who on Google Plus claims to be employed at a high school in Moscow.
Elsewhere on Google Plus, the BBC reports, there are roughly another 50 accountswith the first name “Mayaese,” and many of those individuals also say they work at high schools in Moscow. Their Google Plus accounts are blank, created (it seems) to add “likes” to videos on YouTube, the BBC speculates.
On September 11, 2015, several still images from the video appeared on the anonymous Twitter account @ComradZampolit (which has more than 33,000 followers), and then on another even more popular account, @NovostiSPb (which has more than 81,000 followers). Both these accounts claimed that the soldier was shooting at the Quran, though the video never states this explicitly.
Found a video where an American shoots up a Quran. Have they and all their 9/11 tears really not learned that you can't play around with Islam?
The NovostiSPb Twitter account frequently shares links to the news site Nevskie Novosti, which newspaper reports and hacker leaks say is the creation of people tied to businessman Evgeny Prigozhin, who's believed to have launched St. Petersburg’s “troll factory,” the Agency for Internet Studies. Within hours of these Twitter accounts drawing attention to the video, social communities on Facebook and Vkontakte shared the footage, too.
Three days later, the video started appearing on forums “popular among Internet trolls,” the BBC says, referring to websites like Maxpark, Dirty.ru, and YaPlakal, and on certain pro-Kremlin news sites, like Politonline.ru.
The first media outlet to draw attention to the video, the BBC says, was a website called People’s News, which is registered at 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg—the same address as the Agency for Internet Studies, Russia’s infamous “troll factory.” According to the BBC’s sources, the agency rents several virtual servers in order to mask its online behavior. The BBC says it has a list of some of the IP addresses the agency uses, and the first IP address on the list, it so happens, was used to promote the Quran-shooter video on a forum based in Saratov.
The BBC even says it’s found a man who resembles the gunman in the video, having discovered his photograph by searching on Instagram for photos geotagged near 55 Savushkina Street. British journalists say the man, who works as a bartender in St. Petersburg, is friends with a woman who’s known to be employed by the “troll factory.”
He—and everyone else thought to work for the trolls—refused to speak to the BBC.
BBC Says Russia's ‘Troll Factory’ Faked a Video Showing a US Soldier Shooting at a Quran
“Saiga 410K review.” Image: Mayaese Johnson / YouTube
The video seems to show a man dressed as a US soldier firing three shots into a copy of the Quran. It appeared online in September 2015, generating unusual interest in Russia, prompting strong criticism from the country’s Muslim community. According to an investigative report by the BBC’s Russian-language service, the footage was actually staged by St. Petersburg’s infamous “troll factory,” the Agency for Internet Studies.
In the controversial video, a dark-skinned man wearing a US military uniform tests a Russian-made Saiga 401K semi-automatic rifle by firing ten shots at a blue book written in Arabic, resembling the Quran. When only three bullets hit the target, the man behind the camera, using highly obscene language and speaking with an accent that does not sound American, says the weapon is inaccurate. The video, which is interspersed with grammatically incorrect captions, concludes with the statement, “This is one more prove that only American weapons are the best ever [sic].”
The same day that the video appeared on YouTube, it was also shared on the National Gun Forum, which hosts “discussion for proud gun owners.” There, a user named “Derr86” claimed that his friend was trying to dissuade him from buying a Saiga 410K because the weapon is “just a piece of crap.” Derr86 said his friend, “who’s a marine btw, Oorah!” also sent him the YouTube video featuring the man dressed as a US soldier testing the rifle on the Arabic book. Derr86 registered on the forum just ten days before this post, and he hasn’t been active since.
No one on the forum seemed to notice (or care) that the man in the video was dressed in US desert camouflage, which is widely available at specialty stores. The BBC also notes that the man wears an Ops-Core FAST Base Jump helmet, instead of a US military helmet. (The helmet, moreover, bears a patch reading, “INFIDEL STRONG.”) The YouTube account that posted the video is registered under the unusual name “Mayaese Johnson,” who on Google Plus claims to be employed at a high school in Moscow.
Elsewhere on Google Plus, the BBC reports, there are roughly another 50 accountswith the first name “Mayaese,” and many of those individuals also say they work at high schools in Moscow. Their Google Plus accounts are blank, created (it seems) to add “likes” to videos on YouTube, the BBC speculates.
On September 11, 2015, several still images from the video appeared on the anonymous Twitter account @ComradZampolit (which has more than 33,000 followers), and then on another even more popular account, @NovostiSPb (which has more than 81,000 followers). Both these accounts claimed that the soldier was shooting at the Quran, though the video never states this explicitly.
Found a video where an American shoots up a Quran. Have they and all their 9/11 tears really not learned that you can't play around with Islam?
The NovostiSPb Twitter account frequently shares links to the news site Nevskie Novosti, which newspaper reports and hacker leaks say is the creation of people tied to businessman Evgeny Prigozhin, who's believed to have launched St. Petersburg’s “troll factory,” the Agency for Internet Studies. Within hours of these Twitter accounts drawing attention to the video, social communities on Facebook and Vkontakte shared the footage, too.
Three days later, the video started appearing on forums “popular among Internet trolls,” the BBC says, referring to websites like Maxpark, Dirty.ru, and YaPlakal, and on certain pro-Kremlin news sites, like Politonline.ru.
The first media outlet to draw attention to the video, the BBC says, was a website called People’s News, which is registered at 55 Savushkina Street in St. Petersburg—the same address as the Agency for Internet Studies, Russia’s infamous “troll factory.” According to the BBC’s sources, the agency rents several virtual servers in order to mask its online behavior. The BBC says it has a list of some of the IP addresses the agency uses, and the first IP address on the list, it so happens, was used to promote the Quran-shooter video on a forum based in Saratov.
The BBC even says it’s found a man who resembles the gunman in the video, having discovered his photograph by searching on Instagram for photos geotagged near 55 Savushkina Street. British journalists say the man, who works as a bartender in St. Petersburg, is friends with a woman who’s known to be employed by the “troll factory.”
He—and everyone else thought to work for the trolls—refused to speak to the BBC.
bwwwwwwwwwwhahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa 
Yessuh massa' Putin! You'sa gud basse
Yessuh massa' Putin! You'sa gud basse
88m3
Fast Money & Foreign Objects
RUSSIA
Massive Blaze Tears Through Russia's Ministry of Defense in Moscow
By VICE News
April 3, 2016 | 12:10 pm
Russia's Ministry of Defense went up in flames on Sunday, sending clouds of smoke billowing over Moscow. The cause of fire is still under investigation, but initial reports in Russian media have suggested it was accidental.
Major-General Igor Konashenkov told Russia's Interfax news agency that parts of the building in the Russian capital were still smoldering hours after the fire was extinguished. The building was evacuated of about 50 people, and no injuries were reported.
Russia's Ministry of Emergency Situations reported that the fire covered an area of at least 50 square meters. Video and photos taken at the scene earlier in the day showed firefighters climbing ladders up the building's exterior to reach the upper floors. Russia's Sputnik news agency said the building's roof had caved in.
Interfax, quoting a source, reported that the fire might have started due to an electrical malfunction, likely a short circuit involving old wiring.
The Defense Ministry told Interfax the fire would not hamper its operations.
The Ministry building was constructed in the 1940's and later renovated in the 1980s. The National Defense Management Center oversees operations in the building, which is the highest command center for Russian armed forces. The current Minister of Defense is Sergey Shoygu.
Related: A Putin-Loving Alien Cult Wants to Build Its 'Extraterrestrial Embassy' in Russia
Massive Blaze Tears Through Russia's Ministry of Defense in Moscow | VICE News
Putin working on damage control
