Saturday 22nd & Sunday 23rd February 2025

[refitman]

Morning all

[Frog222]

Morning !
The sight of that handful of billionaires having prominent seats at the Trump inauguration was quite something ?

[Frog222]

"Comrade Krasnov" is , or 'was' , trending on Xitter ....

fast-moving , I wonder why

[Frog222]

"" President Donald Trump was recruited by the Soviet Union's KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti) back in 1987 and was also given a codename, a former intelligence officer alleged in a social media post. Alnur Mussayev, 71, revealed that he served in the 6th Directorate of the KGB in Moscow. His department was responsible for counter-intelligence support within the economy. ""

https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/u ... -118458645

https://archive.ph/0Ni7J

[Frog222]

This NBC article is from 2017 . I remember similar stories from the time when it was obvious that Russian shady characters obviously 'intermediaries' in extensive money-laundering were buying apartments for crazy prices ..

Ivanka Trump is featured in a promotional video for the Trump Ocean Club, made in 2011, in which she praises “the beautiful pool decks” and “our 10,000-square-foot spa.”

“Buenos días,” she says in the video. “Hello, I'm Ivanka Trump. Welcome to Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower, Panama, rising 70 stories above the glistening Panama Bay. We've taken inspiration from the beauty that surrounds us to create a new landmark for Panama.” She goes on to discuss such details as the “tropical color palette” and the carvings on the guestroom headboards.

“The Trump Organization has to approve everything because of his name on the project,” Ventura said, describing the project as Ivanka Trump’s “baby.”

According to the Trump Ocean Club’s bondholder prospectus, Donald Trump was projected to make $74.2 million from the project by the end of 2010. The disclosure forms Trump filed with the Office of Government Ethics show that he continues to earn management fees and royalties from the Trump Ocean Club. In the last three years, the documents show, he was paid as much as $13.9 million. ""
.........................................

""“ In the mid-2000s Panama was known as a money laundering hotspot,” said Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness. “At that time the Trump companies were in dire trouble. He changed his business model to license his name and his brand to other people’s developments, and very often they would be inexperienced developers, low-profile people who needed a name to sell their developments. So Trump would go into a licensing deal, which meant he invested nothing, but could make a profit from it.” ""
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investigat ... me-n821706

----------------------------------

Often now empty just like so many in London, Paris, all over !

[Frog222]

That most recent instalment came out on Thursday

Love this bit --

" The White House and Alnur Mussayev were both contacted for comment ."

https://bsky.app/profile/321asymptote.b ... qasvbnm22u

[AnatolyKasparov]

"" President Donald Trump was recruited by the Soviet Union's KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti) back in 1987 and was also given a codename, a former intelligence officer alleged in a social media post. Alnur Mussayev, 71, revealed that he served in the 6th Directorate of the KGB in Moscow. His department was responsible for counter-intelligence support within the economy. ""

https://www.timesnownews.com/world/us/u ... -118458645

https://archive.ph/0Ni7J

Let's face it, this would hardly be a total shock would it.

[gilsey]

I agree with Jonn.

[Frog222]

I agree with Jonn.

Ouf gilsey, I was wondering where/how you were !

Worthwhile comments too, eg -- ‪Captain Haddock‬ ‪@realcaptainhaddock.bsky.social‬
Also, why does the US need the UK as an offshore AI hub? It’s a nonsense from start to finish

I've looked for the cadwaladr one on the Guardian actually firing 'people' to replace them with AI, but only found this so far --

[Frog222]

https://bsky.app/profile/daughterdudusk ... fplp2r2s2w

[Frog222]

Good stuff in this from Shippers, examples --

"When Sir Keir Starmer sits down opposite Donald Trump in the White House on Thursday he may remember the advice of Fiona Hill, one of the West’s leading Russia experts and a former national security council official in Trump’s first presidency. “She says that in every meeting with Trump there is an imaginary line,” said a Labour veteran. “On one side of it Donald Trump is a winner and on the other side Donald Trump is a loser. All he wants is to emerge from the meeting as a winner. On Ukraine and everything else the trick will be to persuade him that what you want will make him a winner.”
..... ....

" Britain and France will try to persuade Trump that Putin still has expansionist designs and is not a sincere partner. Also playing a leading role is Georgia Meloni, the populist Italian prime minister with whom Trump has a bond. “Meloni called Trump this week,” a European diplomat revealed. “She’s telling him: ‘Vladimir Putin is not your equal. Only [Chinese leader] Xi [Jinping] is your equal.’ He listened to that.”"

https://archive.ph/m5Omd

[RogerOThornhill]

Dear Elon, we'll evaluate our own staff thank you...

[Frog222]

Dear Elon, we'll evaluate our own staff thank you...

Similar reply from the horrible Kash Patel at the FBI .

[Frog222]

None of that Equalities stuff in Trump's friend's Russia --

[AnatolyKasparov]

Exit polls in Germany put AfD at the lower end of expectations. If only the SPD had replaced Scholz with Pistorius......

[Frog222]

Exit polls in Germany put AfD at the lower end of expectations. If only the SPD had replaced Scholz with Pistorius......

OUF ,, that's good news AK . I had First Daughter here so wasn't following 'affairs' , for once !

[Frog222]

Scheiße ?

[Frog222]

[Frog222]

We're all Gaullists now

[Sky'sGoneOut]

I was supposed to be dog sledding with my dad and brother near Blairgowrie in Scotland this weekend but the organisers decided otherwise and cancelled due to the rain and high winds. To be fair they did kinda have a point, here's what the river looked like before the rain really got going.





It's a lovely part of the world though so it wasn't a wasted trip and I got some awesome venison and haggis sausages from the farmers market. I also managed to burn my socks after they got soaked due to a boot malfunction and I put them on a log burner in a pub to dry. It was so hot they were smoking after about a minute and basically disintegrated. Much to everyone's amusement.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

It was also nice to get away from the news. My dad banned us from turning it on or even mentioning Trump while we were away.

It's good to see 80% of Germans seem to have been of a similar view, at least in ignoring the meddling of the mango Mussolini.

If there was one single positive thing Labour could do with the freak majority they're currently intent on squandering it would be to bring in some form of PR as a bulwark against the far right but we know they won't do it because they couldn't give a fuck about doing anything which doesn't benefit themselves.

I had some interesting conversations while up in Perthshire, especially with never SNP unionists, all but one of them had voted Labour at the last GE (the exception being the proprietor of a gun shop who was an out and proud Tory*) and each and every one of them said they were regretting it, which does rather mirror Labour's disastrous tanking in the polls North of the border.

*This is the shop. He was an older gent in an immaculate tweed suit with a dry wit so sharp I couldn't tell if he was being genuinely friendly or was mocking me to my face. I thought he was great.

https://www.jamescrockartandson.co.uk/

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Curiously there seems to be little mention this evening that the 'far left' BSW came a mere 4% of the vote behind the AFD.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Curiously there seems to be little mention this evening that the 'far left' BSW came a mere 4% of the vote behind the AFD.

Sorry, what?

AfD scored just over 20%, BSW look like they will fall short of the 5% threshold by a literal few thousand votes.

[Sky'sGoneOut]

Sorry, what?

Yeah I kinda fucked that one up.

[AnatolyKasparov]

Never mind