america-is-not-fucking-great

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

DONALD TRUMP: MOBBED UP AF - A RETROSPECTIVE

(by @saradannerdukic)

1970s & 1980s: wave of Russian criminals arrive in New York and begin interfacing with established American organized crime networks (La Cosa Nostra/The Five Families aka Bonanno, Genovese, Colombo, Lucchese, Gambino) (source)

1977: KGB reportedly opens file on Donald Trump (source).

1979: Construction begins on Trump Tower.  Trump purchases overpriced concrete from mafia bosses Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno and Paul Castellano of the Genovese and Gambino crime families (respectively). (source)

1980: Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn, introduces Donald to Roger Stone. (source)

1982: New York City Housing Commissioner Anthony Gliedman received what he described as an “abusive and profane” call from someone angry that Gliedman had opposed Trump’s request for a $20 million tax abatement. Gliedman reported the call to the FBI, saying the caller was “threatening his life.” (source)

June 3, 1983: Rudy Giuliani becomes US attorney for SDNY

January, 1984: Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov, First Chief Directorate of the KGB arm responsible for gathering foreign intelligence, urges his officers to be more creative with agent recruitment - and to use money and flattery vs. alignment with Soviet ideology.  Additionally, he gives the directive to find “U.S. targets to cultivate or, at the very least, official contacts…The main effort must be concentrated on acquiring valuable agents.” (source)

1984: Russian émigré David Bogatin pays cash for five apartments in Trump Tower. (source).  Bogatin’s brother ran a $150 million stock scam with Russian mafia boss Semion Mogilevich (source)

1985: Trump reportedly “apoplectic” when he loses bid to re-develop the Coliseum at Columbus Circle to Salomon Brothers-backed Mort Zuckerman. (source)  More on Trump’s proposal here.

October 1985: Trump’s helicopter pilot indicted on drug trafficking charges. Trump doesn’t fire him.  Instead, he leases his personally-owned unit in Trump Plaza Apartments to him with an agreement of half the rent is to be paid in cash, the other half in unspecified helicopter services.  Trump also writes a letter on behalf of his pilot (Weichselbaum), calling him “a credit to the community.”  Who does the case end up with?  Federal judge Maryanne Trump, Donald’s sister. (source)

Autumn, 1986: Trump meets Soviet ambassador Yuri Dubinin.  And per Trump’s own account in Art of the Deal, “One thing led to another, and now I’m talking about building a large luxury hotel, across the street from the Kremlin, in partnership with the Soviet government.” (source)

1986: Trump makes the rounds in the news offering to negotiate with the Russians (source), and also angles for a Soviet posting in the Reagan administration (source)

March 16, 1987: Bogatin (who had purchased multiple apartments in Trump Tower for cash) pleads guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. The government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, because he’d used them to “launder money, to shelter and hide assets.” A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York. (from New Republic)

April 3, 1987: Trump excluded from bidding on Australian casino deal because of mafia connections (per Australian police) (source)

July 4, 1987: Trump flies to the USSR for the first time after being personally invited - the trip is arranged by the Soviet government (source).

1987: Trump talks extensively in an interview about nuclear bombs, and states that his pilot used to work for Qaddafi.  In the same interview, Trump describes the type of bomb he thinks will be possible in the future: "Carry it in your briefcase, right. I’m not even talking about airplanes and missiles. You’ll walk in with your damn tape recorder,” he says, pointing to my innocent Sony, “and you’ll say it’s a tape recorder and nobody will be able to tell the difference. I mean, that’s where it’s going to be in 20 years.” (source)

1988: Trump starts talking about running for president on Oprah (source).

1988: Trump purchases a yacht from Adnan Khashoggi, the uncle of Jamal Khashoggi (source) (source)

1988: American Media Inc. (AMI) comes into being after Enquirer owner Generoso Pope dies. (source)  Among the interested parties are Robert Maxwell (source), the father of Ghislaine Maxwell - Jeffrey Epstein’s partner. (source).  Among the trustees of the Pope estate are Peter G. Peterson, a partner in the Blackstone Group (source) - a private equity firm founded by Steven Schwarzman (source). (More on Schwarzman and his relation to Trump here).  According to Pope’s son, Paul, The Enquirer was started with a $75,000 loan from the mafia (source).

October 11, 1989: helicopter crashes with 3 Trump casino execs aboard (source).  Trump claimed he was supposed to be on it, but then changed his mind at the last minute. (source)  After their deaths, he blamed them for the failure of his Atlantic City casino (source) The helicopter’s pilot was identified by the state police as Robert Kent of Ronkonkoma, L.I., and its co-pilot as Lawrence Diener of Westbury, L.I.  b/b

1990: Wall Street bond house Salomon Brothers advises institutional clients to sell bonds issue from Trump’s Castle Casino in Atlantic City, due to debt and performance concerns. (source)

1991: Trump declares bankruptcy (source)

1991: Trump sells his yacht to Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal (source) (source)

December 17, 1991: Fred Trump gives Donald an interest-free loan by purchasing $3.5 million worth of casino chips at Trump Castle casino, circumventing bankruptcy rules and enabling Donald to make the interest payment due on his bonds. (source)

1992: Trump declares bankruptcy an additional 3 times stemming from various properties he’s over-leveraged. (source)

1994: Trump allegedly rapes and beats a 13-year-old girl at a party with Jeffrey Epstein, multiple times.  In the filed complaint, the 13-year-old was threatened to be "disappeared” like another young girl had been if she told anyone. (source)

October 20, 1994: Christine Seymour, Roy Cohn’s secretary (Cohn was Trump’s mentor), who was set to publish a tell-all book, dies in head-on collision with tractor trailer (source)

1995: Trump reportedly in Moscow to discuss matters related to Okhotny Ryad underground mall on Manezh Square. (source)

The trip is also reference in this article: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/05/19/trump-solo

1995: Trump sells Plaza Hotel to Alwaleed bin Talal (source) Barbara Corcoran brokers the deal (source)

June 8, 1995: Vyacheslav Ivankov arrested (source).  Ivankov was known to be a notoriously brutal gangster in the upper echelon of the Russian mafia. (source) After having difficulty finding him, the FBI picked up his trail at Trump Taj Mahal, and then discovered that Ivankov had a luxury condo in Trump Tower. (source)  According to Robert Friedman in his book, Red Mafiya, Friedman viewed Ivankov’s personal phone book containing “a working number for the Trump Organization’s Trump Tower Residence, and a Trump Organization office fax machine.” (this is listed as a citation at the end of the book).  Ivankov is also mentioned in this 2003 DOJ paper on organized crime, with a forward by Bruce Ohr (pp 49).

1996: Trump goes to Russia with Howard Lorber (source).  Lorber later donated to the Trump inaugural fund (source).

1998: Trump Taj Mahal fined for currency transaction reporting violations (source)

February 1999: Evercore Capital Partners L.L.C., headed by former Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger C. Altman, acquires American Media, Inc. and places David Pecker at the helm. (source)

1999: Trump’s first run for president (source)

2000/2001: Mark Burnett in negotiations with Putin for a show called “Destination Mir.” (source)

October 2001: AMI offices in Boca Raton are attacked with anthrax (source).  Later, in 2004, a cleaning company owned by Rudy Giuliani is contracted to clean up the anthrax, with his company, Bio-One, slated to rent/occupy the building after cleanup. (source)  The contract later ended in a feud. (source)

2002: Mark Burnett begins talks with Trump regarding The Apprentice. (source)

2002 - 2011: The Bayrock Group partners with the Trump Organization on developments including the Trump SoHo hotel (source).  Principals in the group include Felix Sater - believed to be connected with Semion Mogilevich (source) - and Tevfik Arif (source).

2004: Trump declares bankruptcy again. (source)

Spring 2004: The Apprentice debuts (source)

May 2004: Diamond dealer and former Trump Tower tenant (1 year prior he’d lived right below Kellyanne Conway) Eduard Nektalov is shot on 6th Avenue (source).  He was reportedly cooperating with federal authorities on a money laundering investigation (source)  More on money laundering and Trump properties here.

2005: at the same time Trump is unable to get a 25 million pound loan from Bank of Scotland due to being a credit risk (source), Deutsche Bank (who later is hit with massive fines for money laundering) loans Trump nearly one billion dollars. Trump’s banker at Deutsche Bank is Justice Kennedy’s son. (source).

2006: Felix Sater escorts the Trump children during their trip to Russia (according to Sater) (source).  Later, in emails to Michael Cohen, Sater says that he’d arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin’s chair. (source).

2006: Paul Manafort buys unit in Trump Tower (source).

2006 - 2009: Trump makes multiple attempts (and fails) to get a loan from the Bank of Scotland to purchase Hamilton Hall.  The bank executive “expressed concern that Trump would hold the bank to ‘future ransom'” (source)

2007 - 2016: Buyers tied to Russia make 86 cash purchases at Trump properties. (source)

2008: Soviet-born (Moldovia) Orly Taitz helps bring suit regarding Obama’s citizenship/birth certificate. (source)

2008: Junior brags that they’re getting a lot of money from Russia. (source)

2008: Russian oligarch buys a Palm Beach mansion from Trump, paying twice the value (source).

August 27, 2008: a small-time scam artist transfers a Beverly Hills, California, mansion to Donald Trump for $0. (source)

November 2008: Unable to meet his obligations for the nearly 1 billion dollar loan they gave him, Trump sues Deutsche Bank saying he shouldn’t have to make good on his promise because of the economic crash. (source)

2009: Trump declares bankruptcy again. (source)

2009: a lawyer representing Trump Atlantic City casino creditors says he got threatening phone calls. The FBI traced one of them to a payphone outside the “Late Show With David Letterman,” where Trump was appearing.

“My name is Carmine,” the caller told the lawyer, Kristopher Hansen. “I don’t know why you’re fucking with Mr. Trump but if you keep fucking with Mr. Trump, we know where you live and we’re going to your house for your wife and kids.” (source)

July 23, 2009: Stormy Daniels’ political advisor’s car explodes (source).  This was approximately 3 years after her affair with Trump (source).

August 2009: After multiple tries dating back to 2006, Trump denied a final time for loan for 25 million pounds from Bank of Scotland because the bank considered it "too risky.” (source)

2010: Tevfik Arif, a principal of the Bayrock Group - which at this time is partnering with the Trump organization on a variety of projects - is arrested in a Turkish prostitution sting. (source).  Charges were later dropped by Turkish authorities.

July 25, 2011: President Obama issues executive order declaring organized crime a national security emergency. (source)

2011 - 2015: Deutsche Bank, who 5 years previous had given Donald Trump nearly 1 billion dollars when Bank of Scotland wouldn’t loan him 25 million pounds, is laundering billions of dollars with the help of Russians. (source)

2011: Eric Trump brags that they have access to millions of dollars from Russians. (source)

2011 - 2015: Donald Trump begins paying for his properties with hundreds of millions of dollars in cash. (source)

January 1, 2012: former Trump bodyguard dies from apparent overdose (source).

2013: Trump walks out of a BBC Panorama interview when asked about his connections with Felix Sater. (source)

April 16, 2013: Preet Bharara, then US attorney for SDNY, announces charges against massive Russian organized crime ring operating out of Trump Tower. (source)

June 16, 2013: Trump announces Miss Universe pageant will be in Moscow. (source)

November 9, 2013: Miss Universe pageant (source).  One of the fugitives indicted in the Trump Tower organized crime ring in April, ALIMZHAN TOKHTAKHOUNOV, is a guest of honor there. (source)

2014: Steve Bannon, while at Cambridge Analytica, orders testing on Putin messaging with Americans. (source)

February 10, 2014: Trump praises Putin on Fox & Friends. (source)

March 6, 2015: Trump Taj Mahal fined for money laundering. (source)

2015: Michael Cohen threatens a reporter covering Trump’s divorce with Ivana.  “I’m warning you, tread very fucking lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be fucking disgusting,” the Daily Beast’s Tim Mak, recalled Cohen telling him. “You write a story that has Mr. Trump’s name in it, with the word ‘rape,’ and I’m going to mess your life up … for as long as you’re on this frickin’ planet.” (source) (source)

April 18, 2015: Trump’s former pilot dies in head-on collision (source).

Keep reading

#politics #donald trump #republicans #russia #money laundering #mobbed up #russian mafia #russian mob

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

“I’m not a Christian, but I do find value in some of the teachings of Jesus. I read this parable again, and it is not only fitting for this situation, it is very powerful. In reply Jesus said: “A man was going from Guatamala, fleeing a drug cartel that wanted to kill him and seize his daughters as sex slaves, when he found himself on the brink of starvation, having crossed a desert, a river, and another desert with limited supplies and no money. He went to a prosperity gospel preacher for help, but they had just had the carpets cleaned so the preacher refused him shelter. He went to the Christian governor for help, but the governor shipped him to Martha’s Vineyard with no support or direction so he could own the libs. But a pinko, commie libtard saw him and took pity on him. He clothed him, and fed him, and sheltered him. He brought him to an immigration lawyer and said ‘Look after him. When I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell victim to drug cartels and gangs?” The expert in the law replied, “The bleeding heart, pinko commie libtard who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.””

—

umbrabates comments on wild stuff treating people like humans

This update to the Parable of the Good Samaritan was in a thread about this tweet:

#us politics

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

#capitalism #universal income #hustle culture

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

Abled Person: Hey man, can you hold this wad of $2,000 and this one penny for me while I open my wallet?

Disabled Person: YOU COMPLETE AND UTTER FOOL!

The United States Government:

(Watch how many people don’t get this.)

#signal boost #able account #ssi

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

so can we start hunting down white liberals now or what

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

#signal boost #nestle is evil #ethically source cocoa

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

I really resent the way that the Overton window has shifted for online privacy, so that I sound like a hysteric when I say that I don’t want Facebook and Google to know everything about my life.

‘I don’t mind Facebook showing me pretty dresses.’

Cool! That’s the absolute least of what they do, though! They’ve experimented on inducing depression in their users! They actively interfere with elections! And they spy on everyone – not just their users, but all internet users. And they’re capable of working out who non-users are based on information their users feed them! Pardon me for thinking that’s not okay!

‘Advertisers don’t listen into your phone as much as everyone thinks.’

Cool! But they do fucking do it! And the amount I would like them to listen in on my conversations is none! I would like none spying! Zero tracking of my internet activity! Especially by companies who want to sell me shit!

Remember how in the 80s, ad companies would listen in to your private conversations in your house, and then send different catalogues to your mailbox as a result? No! Because they didn’t, and couldn’t. And people would have – quite rightly – considered that a massive invasion of privacy.

Remember how in the 90s, ad companies opened and read all of your personal mail, making copies to keep on microfiche, before allowing the re-sealed envelopes to reach your house? Because they didn’t, but it’s what Google does with your email! So they can serve you ‘more relevant ads’ in your inbox!

Why am I the outrageous radical for thinking that I should be able to at least partly control my own data? My own likes and dislikes? I’m not even proposing leaving the internet entirely! I didn’t even stop using Facebook because they’re shitlords, but because using it made me miserable. And I’m considering switching from Gmail to something else like Protonmail. I already use Firefox, and have an add-on installed that reduces Facebook’s ability to track me from site to site.

Why am I so strange for wanting to return to an internet where the people who serve me ads can’t name my age, postcode, eye colour, purchasing history, dietary preferences, and half-dozen closest friends without having to try to do it?

#big tech #is tracking you #the government doesnt need to

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

Good news: if you’re currently laying around and not producing anything, you are a credit to your species.

#you know what started around the same time as the industrial revolution? #capitalism #the myth of productivity #capitalist hell

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

Imperialism kills.

They stole the land and killed the children.

#think of the children #native people #where was the argument when they were killing them #imperialism #colonialism

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#some progress is better than none #president joe biden #us politics #imigration

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honest to god can't stop thinking about this song about jeff bezos by philip labes (link takes you to his spotify). it's such a good example of politically driven folk music.

#jeff bezos #capitalism

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

@goodmorningbadnews

#october strike #us politics #capitalist hell #tax the rich #$20 minimum wage #living wage #tiktok #goodmorningbadnews

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

Join the General Strike this October 15th!

This is a multi-day strike that goes until our needs are met.

Here's the list of demands:

$20 minimum wage

Free healthcare for all

Paid maternity and fraternity leave

4 day work week

Environmental regulation

25% corporate tax

octoberstrike.com

#octoberstrike #october strike #general strike #worker's rights #universal healthcare #capitalism

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

I honestly don’t understand why there aren’t more people who, when given the platform to discuss minimum wage, don’t simply distill it to the simplest of facts:

A forty hour work week is considered full time.

It’s considered as such because it takes up the amount of time we as a society have agreed should be considered the maximum work schedule required of an employee. (this, of course, does not always bear out practically, but just follow me here)

A person working the maximum amount of time required should earn enough for that labor to be able to survive. Phrased this way, I doubt even most conservatives could effectively argue against it, and out of the mouth of someone verbally deft enough to dance around the pathos-based jabs conservative pundits like to use to avoid actually debating, it could actually get opps thinking.

Therefore, if an employee is being paid less than [number of dollars needed for the post-tax total to pay for the basic necessities in a given area divided by forty] per hour, they are being ripped off and essentially having their labor, productivity, and profit generation value stolen by their employer.

Wages are a business expense, and if a company cannot afford to pay for its labor, it is by definition a failing business. A company stealing labor to stay afloat (without even touching those that do so simply to increase profit margins and/or management/executive pay/bonuses) is no more ethical than a failing construction company breaking into a lumber yard and stealing wood.

Our goal as a society should be to protect each other, especially those that most need protection, not to subsidize failing businesses whose owners could quite well subsidize them on their own.

#capitalist hell #capitalism #living wage

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

#jeff bezos #richard branson #elon mask #capitalist hell #space race

[america-is-not-fucking-great]

Conservatives are always talking about military sacrifice. They'll watch D-Day movies and be so moved by the sacrifice. A soldier will die and they'll thank them for their sacrifice.

It seems like they believe sacrifice is a noble and honorable thing that we should all be willing to do for our country.

When the virus hit, we weren't asked to give up our freedoms. We were asked to make sacrifices for our communities. We weren't asked to storm a beach. We weren't asked to put our lives in great peril. We were asked to take on some inconveniences like wearing masks. And we were asked to temporarily sacrifice our social lives to keep the most vulnerable among us safe.

It was too much of an ask I guess. They are fine with 18 year olds with no options going to the desert to get their limbs blown off. But staying inside and wearing a mask was just too inconvenient.

And the irony of all of this, if they hadn't half-assed the COVID mitigation strategies, all of the freedoms they felt they lost would have been available to them much sooner.

#conservatives #us politics #usa #republicans