Fall of the Emigre: A Second Look at the Mysterious Death of Mikhail Lesin

by Nomad

For those who appreciate a conspiracy theory, the baffling death of Mikhail Lesin is straight out of a John le Carré spy novel. Officially, it was ruled as an accident and yet, given current events, Lesin's demise becomes even more suspicious.

Blunt Force Trauma

When the doors of the luxurious suite at the Doyle Dupont Circle Hotel were opened on the Thursday morning of November 5, 2015, Russian emigre, Mikhail Yuriyevich Lesin was found dead and alone. He was found without any identification in a hotel room that was under his name. Police detected no obvious signs of forced entry.
After some delay, a member from the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., confirmed the identity as that of 57-year old Lesin.

Traveling from Los Angeles, Lesin had been invited to attend a fund-raising dinner for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in the city’s West End two nights before.

However, he had not appeared at the event and had failed to respond to phone calls or text messages from the fellow Russian who had invited him, a banker and philanthropist who was honored at that dinner.
Lesin's failure to attend must have seemed peculiar. He had recently confirmed he would be there and was flying into Washington specifically for the ceremony.

In fact, Lesin had been listed among other numerous guests. It meant, as one investigator points out, that "his potential presence could have been known to a large number of people, not all of whom were necessarily his well-wishers."

The Document that Rocked Washington: A Second Look at the Steele Dossier

 by Nomad

Since its release by Buzzfeed last January, the so-called Steele dossier has more than earned the descriptive adjectives "infamous" and "explosive." In light of subsequent revelations, it might be a good time to review the file again.

The Origins of the Document

Firstly, let's examine how the Steele Dossier came into existence.

Last June, 52-year-old Christopher Steele, ex-Cambridge Union president, ex-M.I.6 Moscow field agent and ex-head of M.I.6’s Russia desk, ex-adviser to British Special Forces on capture-or-kill ops in Afghanistan, was offered an assignment through his private British intelligence firm, Orbis Business Intelligence. Suffice to say, with a CV like that, his work should not be taken lightly. Or to put it another way, Steele was not a tabloid scribbler, hunter for celebrity scandals.

Donald's Dust: Asbestos, the World Trade Center and The Dangerously Wrong Opinions of Trump

by Nomad

Trump's love for the cancer-causing material asbestos goes back for decades. Trump has boasted of its effectiveness and safety before the Senate. Tell that to the firefighters, cleanup crews, and first responders who were exposed to the 400 tons of asbestos that blanketed the streets of Manhattan on September 11. 

The Conspiracy Theory that Trump Doesn't Talk About

For a man who enjoys his conspiracy theories, Donald Trump seems pretty ignorant of some of the most interesting ones. One 9/11 conspiracy theory that made the rounds involved the suspicion of an inside job and billion dollar insurance fraud. 

For what it's worth, the theory runs something like this:

Six months prior to the attack, the WTC was privatized and, after drawn-out negotiations, finally leased to a private developer. On July 24, 2001, just six weeks before 911, that $3.2 billion bid by the Silverstein Group- made up of property developer Larry Silverstein and investors Lloyd Goldman and Joseph Cayre- was accepted.
A noteworthy milestone. It was the first time in the building's 31-year history that the complex had changed management, the first time it had been leased to a private entity.

According to the theory, the WTC wasn't exactly the prize catch that the developer had been lead to believe. on the other hand, the problem was not exactly a secret.
The Port Authority, according to some sources, considered the WTC a headache. The city had attempted on several occasions to get permits to demolish the Twin Towers but was turned down due the known asbestos problem.

The conspiracy theorists will tell you that

it was well-known the only reason the building was still standing until 9/11 was because it was too costly to disassemble the twin towers floor by floor since the Port Authority was prohibited legally from demolishing the buildings.

The owners of the towers were looking at a hefty bill ($200 million) for mandated "renovations and improvements, most of which related to removal and replacement of building materials declared to be health hazards in the years since the towers were built." 

We are talking primarily about asbestos. 

That figure for clean up would have reportedly represented an entire year's worth of revenue from the WTC.

Fascism Made in the USA: The Night Nazis Fought on the Streets of New York City

by Nomad

The United States has had its share of fascist groups that have come and gone. One of those was the American Nazi Party, the Bund Party. Here's the story of its 1939 rally and how it led to its collapse. 

A "Pro-American" Rally

On The night of 20 February 1939, something occurred that became an interesting footnote in American history. Today it is mostly a forgotten bit of the history of New York City. And for many, it could be a period they would rather not recall.

That evening, Madison Square Garden was the venue for the American- German Bund party Washington's Day celebration, hosted by American-German Bund party. 

You may not be familiar with the Bund party, it was better known as the American Nazi party. 

Advertised as a "Pro-American Rally" it was attended by somewhere between 17,000 and 22,000. It was one of the largest gatherings of American Nazis of its time.

From the photographs of the event, there were the usual Nazi rally fixtures, flags, the swastikas, and uniforms. In order to establish its brand as true blue American, a forty-foot portrait of George Washington graced the stage. That was more than just window dressing. The organization had declared that Washington was "the first Fascist" who did not believe democracy would work. 

The meeting opened with a salute to the flag and the playing of the "Star-Spangled Banner." (It was to end with the Nazi anthem, however.)

Swiss Bank Pleads Guilty to Felony Conspiracy with American Tax Dodgers

Syndicated news with introduction by Nomad 

Swiss banking giant Credit Suisse has admitted that it conspired to help some US clients avoid paying taxes. It has agreed to pay over $2.5 billion and to cooperate with investigations. 

This would make the Swiss company the largest bank in 20 years to plead guilty to criminal charges.

  

As much as I think this is a good- and long overdue- step, imposing a fine on Swiss banks for helping Americans hide their wealth is a little like punishing dogs for peeing on fire hydrants. It's what they do. There's nothing very "brazen" about either case. 

Perhaps the only surprising aspect of this news is that the US government found the wherewithal to actually do anything about it. As Forbes describes the news, the IRS took on Swiss banking and it won. According to that article, IRS is the big winner in this plea bargain arrangement.

Plus, the IRS earns dividends in the form of account holders applying for amnesty. And for the IRS, it isn’t just Switzerland, but everywhere now that FATCA has expanded U.S. tentacles almost worldwide. Attorney General Eric Holder wins big too, getting the benefit of a guilty plea. He can’t be accused of letting another big bank off the hook for being too big to fail.

The U.S. Treasury and New York State both make out well. Credit Suisse will pay nearly $1.8 billion to the Justice Department, $100 to the Federal Reserve, and a whopping $715 million to New York’s Department of Financial Services.

With FATCA approaching its launching date, some would see this in a little less cheery light. The US, they'd say, is simply attempting to assert its control over all international banks. 

Amid all this back slapping, and at a time when Putin is threatening to renew a Cold War, what is left unsaid is that the long-term consequences may be hard to calculate.

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Credit Suisse guilty on US felony charge, pays $2.6 bn (via AFP)

Credit Suisse pleaded guilty and was fined $2.6 billion for helping Americans avoid taxes, the first time in 20 years a major bank has been punished on US criminal charges. US authorities said the "brazen" Swiss bank, one of the world's largest wealth…

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The Conspiracy Theory, 9-11, and Susan Lindauer

Susan Lindauer

by Nomad
Each of us has a personal limit as to what we are prepared to believe or not. Every religion, every news report and documentary and every conspiracy theory continually probes those limits of our capacity to believe.

The Theory of Conspiracy

The term, conspiracy theory, is nowadays used as a pejorative or dismissive term. 

Without any further discussion, a State Department official or a reporter might say with a smirk, "Well, you know what conspiracy theorists are going to say..."

Because aren't people who believe in conspiracy theories unbalanced or gullible or just plain ignorant? 

But the idea that there could be an alternative version of history is not something that strikes me as strictly incredible. Call it a conspiracy theory, if you will, but giving it that title doesn't make it any more or less invalid. As any scientist will tell you, not all theories are equal but then that's what makes them theories. Each of us has to weigh the evidence in our own minds, to measure it against our own personal sense of reality, and to accept or reject the unconventional hypothesis. 

The fact that the term, conspiracy theory, is used in this way, some would see, is a sign of the closing down of rational thought or the triumph of orthodoxy and dogma. After all, conspiracies do exist and the only way to determine their veracity is, of course, to speculate upon them. 

"Nobody Could Have Predicted it": Bush Administration's Shocking 911 Lie

                Condoleezza Rice

by Nomad
One of the more glaring discrepancies of the terrorist attacks on September 2001 has gone virtually unreported. Not only were authorities well aware that hijacked planes could be used by terrorists as weapons, the information had been widely available to the public since 1993.

During a May 16, 2002 press briefing, speaking about the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters:

"I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon; that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile. All of this reporting about hijacking was about traditional hijacking."

This defense was used repeatedly by the administration and few reporters never seemed to bother to question it.
According to one source,

White House spokesman Tony Fratto showed that Rice's talking point had legs. Spoon-fed last month by Fox News anchor Jon Scott's suggestion that "nobody was thinking that there’d be terrorists flying 767s into buildings at that point," Fratto reliably coughed up the laughably discredited sound bite:

"That’s true. I mean, no one could have anticipated that kind of attack - or very few people."