(Trump’s data firm suspended: Suspending Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group from Facebook

Suspending Cambridge Analytica and SCL Group from Facebook
By Paul Grewal, VP & Deputy General Counsel

*

We Maintain Strict Standards and Policies

Protecting people’s information is at the heart of everything we do, and we require the same from people who operate apps on Facebook. In 2015, we learned that a psychology professor at the University of Cambridge named Dr. Aleksandr Kogan lied to us and violated our Platform Policies by passing data from an app that was using Facebook Login to SCL/Cambridge Analytica, a firm that does political, government and military work around the globe. He also passed that data to Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, Inc.

Like all app developers, Kogan requested and gained access to information from people after they chose to download his app. His app, “thisisyourdigitallife,” offered a personality prediction, and billed itself on Facebook as “a research app used by psychologists.” Approximately 270,000 people downloaded the app. In so doing, they gave their consent for Kogan to access information such as the city they set on their profile, or content they had liked, as well as more limited information about friends who had their privacy settings set to allow it.

Although Kogan gained access to this information in a legitimate way and through the proper channels that governed all developers on Facebook at that time, he did not subsequently abide by our rules. By passing information on to a third party, including SCL/Cambridge Analytica and Christopher Wylie of Eunoia Technologies, he violated our platform policies. When we learned of this violation in 2015, we removed his app from Facebook and demanded certifications from Kogan and all parties he had given data to that the information had been destroyed. Cambridge Analytica, Kogan and Wylie all certified to us that they destroyed the data.

Breaking the Rules Leads to Suspension

Several days ago, we received reports that, contrary to the certifications we were given, not all data was deleted. We are moving aggressively to determine the accuracy of these claims. If true, this is another unacceptable violation of trust and the commitments they made. We are suspending SCL/Cambridge Analytica, Wylie and Kogan from Facebook, pending further information.

https://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/suspending-cambridge-analytica/

Farcebiok had standards? Bwahahaha!!!! Since when? Are all Brock’s little data miners still members in good standing or are they still posting pirn on certain sites to get them shut down?

Bernie Sanders Facebook Pages Shut Down After Porn Cyber Attack

Several Facebook pages supporting Bernie Sanders were quickly shut down late Monday night after self-proclaimed Hillary Clinton supporters flooded some of the pages with pornographic images.

The pro-Sanders pages, including Bernie or Bust, Bernie Believers and Bernie Sanders is my HERO, had a combined 250,000 followers.

https://www.thewrap.com/bernie-sanders-facebook-pages-shut-down-after-po...

Now this is sadly funny!

EDIT: what do ya think?

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

Bisbonian's picture

with the waitress, the way I always do
How was I to know, she was with the Russians, too?

up
0 users have voted.

"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

snoopydawg's picture

Bernie of sexual assault? Maybe that's what the messing with his website was.

This is interesting. I'm thinking that he has a good chance of getting his retirement anyway because of the way Trump fired him. He was twauntering on Twitter and saying that he wondered if he would make it to his retirement date.

Andrew McCabe, ex-FBI deputy and Trump target, fired days before retiring

The attorney general, Jeff Sessions, confirmed McCabe’s dismissal in a statement late Friday, bringing to a close two decades of service at the nation’s top law enforcement agency.

In a statement, Sessions said he was terminating McCabe’s employment immediately upon a recommendation from the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). Sessions said the review found McCabe allegedly “made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor” during a review of the FBI and justice department’s handling of an investigation into the Clinton Foundation.

This is the first I heard acknowledgement of the foundation being investigated. I've heard rumors that Sessions had hired someone not from the Justice department was going to do that, but they were keeping it under wraps. The foundation is nothing but a money laundering scheme and while it may have had some charitable acts, most of the money went to the Clinton's lifestyle. Travel, private jets and some very nice hotels.

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg the Klingdon Foundation taken down AND its malfeasance made public.

Denying McCabe a pension does seem unnecessarily cruel. If the guy committed crimes, charge him with them.

up
0 users have voted.

Mary Bennett

The Aspie Corner's picture

@Nastarana And they can take the Clowngress and the bought judges of the Supreme Court with them to the Hague. I'm sick of all of them.

up
0 users have voted.

Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

@Nastarana
a functional justice system? If we have to wait for the courts to prosecute all government employee miscreants for their abuses of investigative or prosecutorial responsibilities or their illegal "color of law" involvement in drug, weapons and fissile material trading, we might just as well hand out the Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free cards to all and dispense with the pretense that all are equal under the law in this country.

Denying McCabe a pension does seem unnecessarily cruel. If the guy committed crimes, charge him with them.

It's very difficult to find prosecutors who will bring charges, or federal judges who will hear cases for high ranking Federal employees. Biting the hand that feeds you by prosecuting a minion of one of those who gave you your job, will make you very unpopular in DC, as in terminally unpopular.

I feel no compassion for Andrew McCabe's predicament, and hope that he is treated to a full measure of justice, not the wrist slap that insiders normally receive in our two tiered joke of a justice system.

up
0 users have voted.

Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

Alligator Ed's picture

@Nastarana after instructing underlings to suppress the treasonous Clinton email scandal? And so many more.

I think I'll go home, shedding crocodile tears.

up
0 users have voted.

*cough*

up
0 users have voted.

The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

and selling it, so that Facebook can't profit from selling it themselves because the market's already filled? No wonder they're pissed...

up
0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

is mentioned a lot in a documentary about the Trump campaign's use of data, a documentary that I heard parts of on my car radio one day. It was infused with dark scary music for every scene in which the Trump campaign was alleged to have tried to manipulate voters into voting for him. I came into the middle of it and can't find it online right now, but I thought it was about Russia until it became clear it was about Trump's American and British consultants.

Anyway, here is some commentary from last fall:

https://www.ft.com/content/e66232e4-a30e-11e7-9e4f-7f5e6a7c98a2

Opinion FT Magazine - FINANCIAL TIMES
Trump, Cambridge Analytica and how big data is reshaping politics
‘The team amassed, on average, 5,000 data points about the behavioural trends of American citizens’
GILLIAN TETT - SEPTEMBER 29, 2017

… In the months since Donald Trump’s victory, CA’s brand of highly personalised political research has attracted criticism from those who believe it oversteps the line between persuading voters and manipulating them. The company even faced allegations that its data was used by Russia to “influence” people with fake news (Cambridge Analytica and the Trump team vehemently deny this, and no evidence of that has emerged).

Plenty of question marks remain. Should such “micro-targeting” techniques be banned in politics? (Some Democrats believe they should but the route is not obvious since these approaches are legal and widely used in the private sector world.) Should the Democrats copy this approach? (Opinions are wildly divided.) And what does this all mean for “democracy”? (It is not clear, but most seem to agree it’s probably not good.)

But as the rows bubble on, the one thing that is clear is that nobody will put this genie back in the bottle soon. Yes, we might hate the idea of politics being marketed like toothpaste; but for better or worse, we live in a world of consumerism and customisation, where our digital footprint now defines us. Cambridge Analytica simply spotted this earlier than most of us.

up
0 users have voted.

@Linda Wood @Linda Wood
It's a French documentary that was playing during a fundraiser on my local, non-corporate radio station.
[video:http://cinemalibrestudio.com/trumpingdemocracy/index.html]
Trumping Democracy

up
0 users have voted.

Beware the bullshit factories.

@Timmethy2.0

Here's the trailer. Thank you for finding it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmOlX0KbT4A

up
0 users have voted.

@Timmethy2.0

about this is that the dark scary music is applied to a conservative American mogul instead of to Putin. The documentary was made quite a while ago and received, I'm thinking, little or no coverage by the Democratic Party affiliated media. Why? Wrong villain?

http://cinemalibrestudio.com/clsblog/2017/11/15/trumpingdemocracy/

TRUMPING DEMOCRACY

How Robert Mercer hijacked the election for Trump using Facebook ‘Dark Posts’

Los Angeles, CA (November 15, 2017) — TRUMPING DEMOCRACY, the explosive new documentary directed by Thomas Huchon... follows the money behind the ultra-conservative faction that quietly engineered itself to power, via the campaign of Donald J. Trump.

… 77,000 votes in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan won Trump the Electoral College vote, despite his 2.8 million popular vote loss. TRUMPING DEMOCRACY proves this was not chance, luck, or a free and open democratic victory.

This was a hijacking of the Electoral College, by a puppet master named Robert Mercer who manipulated the 2016 election by influencing voters using their personal data, fears, and vulnerabilities, while targeting them right down to the zip code level.

... This explosive documentary follows the money to the reclusive multi-billionaire Robert Mercer, who bought Breitbart News and funded the effort... Using the data of millions of Americans acquired from Facebook, Google, banks, credit companies, social security and more, Cambridge Analytica, another Mercer-owned company, used tactics honed during the UK’s Brexit campaign to identify voters deemed “most neurotic or worried,” whom they believed could swing for Trump. In the darkness of the web, democracy was trumped by data.

up
0 users have voted.

@Linda Wood
Mercer is an MIT trained and noted computer scientist who made an algorithm that got him billions with a hedge fund.

up
0 users have voted.

Beware the bullshit factories.

@Timmethy2.0

It looks, though looks can be deceiving, like the Dems wanted to blame a ruthless mastermind for their stupid loss, but somehow, this guy Mercer has the potential to be useful to them going forward, or is so powerful and connected they can't oppose him or disclose him, so they put Putin in his place because Putin is worth his weight in plutonium.

To be clear, I don't think these algorithms had anything to do with the election. I really don't, even if Mercer did what the documentary describes. I think there are enough angry voters in this country to reject Clinton and vote for Trump to explain the loss. Puppy ads and gun ads were not going to change what is now generations of problems the American people have been living with. But what's interesting here is the amazing assertion that such data usage did change the election and that it was done by an American cabal, not a Russian one. No doubt the mainstream media will find a connection between Mercer and Putin and that the world of deception is all Putin's handiwork.

up
0 users have voted.

@Linda Wood @Linda Wood
the real issue that will unite the country: money in politics. That issue would roll over any distracting, wedge issue that was put in it's way.

It looks, though looks can be deceiving, like the Dems wanted to blame a ruthless mastermind for their stupid loss, but somehow, this guy Mercer has the potential to be useful to them going forward, or is so powerful and connected they can't oppose him or disclose him, so they put Putin in his place because Putin is worth his weight in plutonium.

up
0 users have voted.

Beware the bullshit factories.

snoopydawg's picture

@Linda Wood

Plenty of question marks remain. Should such “micro-targeting” techniques be banned in politics?

If this and other 'micro targeting techniques' need to be banned, then shouldn't the Correct the Record tactic also be banned? After all, it was done to change people's minds about what was written about Her in the comments. Correct the Record? I'm not sure that is what CTR was doing. I have seen this being question on whether or not it was legal or ethical. This seems to me to be the same type of collusion that Russia is being accused of even though none of the ads mentioned either candidate.

up
0 users have voted.

Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg

What countries were used in the outsourcing of Clinton trolls?

India especially rings a bell for troll-farms they used, think mainly for FB likes/followers - intended to influence the nomination (s)election. Hard finding stuff as search terms referencing variations on Clinton campaign troll farms have evidently been 'adjusted' to produce floods of RUSSIA!!! nonsense - and no idea what may have been removed/made inaccessible, not to mention being older info now and with a hell of a lot of Russiagate pumped out since. And of course, using the sort of criteria apparently in fashion with the Clinton faction, that'd make Clinton colluding with India to influence the election.

Where a video recently posted here showed her bitching all over India about how the failure of American voters too stupid to vote for The Right One of Their Betters lost her Her turn - and after all of her bragging about having won the popular vote by several million but then losing the the Electoral College lobbyists and others, something which she'd previously had in the bag...

But over 6 million was paid to Correct The Record and I'll bet at least some of that was outsourced to starving trolls in impoverished countries to save money on wages.

Dammit, they're supposed to Control The Messaging! Globally!

http://yournewswire.com/clinton-campaign-admit-they-pay-an-army-of-trolls/

Clinton Campaign Admit They Pay An Army Of Online Trolls

August 3, 2016 Baxter Dmitry News, US

... Correct the Record, which has received $6.3 million this campaign season and has spent almost $6 million of it, according to OpenSecrets.org, outlined its strategy against “swarms of anonymous attackers” in a press release. ...

The claims were that they were hiring professional PR people - to engage in what amounted to attempt to silence the free speech and information-sharing of voters regarding what was, to understate considerably, a catastrophically bad and pathetically venal candidate.

One publicly claiming herself to not be criminal in - at best - hazarding National Security in the process of enriching the family slushfund with, apparently, billions* while in public office (big donors only incidentally profiting madly as a result of big donations made before and/or after having positive decisions where her office would have held influence/veto power/decision-making ability,) merely to have been utterly incapable of understanding and following basic security protocol as Secretary of State and therefore The Best Possible Presidential Choice Or Else.

And whose destructive pathology has been self-revealed by her record and typified in her public laughter and excited enjoyment of memories of the appalling and agonizing death by anal rape (with what I seem to recall may have been a bayonet?) of a Head of State she'd played a role in the overthrow of in order to install a likely corporate puppet over a sovereign country.

But that obviously would have bothered nobody if it hadn't been for those pesky Russians not even saying this sort of thing out loud, merely implying it with cute puppy-pics everyone automatically contrasted with the Clintons...

http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-trolling-20160506-...

Be nice to Hillary Clinton online — or risk a confrontation with her super PAC
By Evan Halper
May 09, 2016

...Some experts on digital campaigns think the idea of launching a paid army of “former reporters, bloggers, public affairs specialists, designers” and others to produce online counterattacks is unlikely to prove successful. Others, however, say Clinton has little choice but to try, given the ubiquity of online assaults and the difficulty of squelching even provably untrue narratives once they have taken hold.

At the same time, however, using a super PAC to create a counterweight to movements that have sprung up organically is another reflection of the campaign’s awkwardness with engaging online, digital pros said.

“It is meant to appear to be coming organically from people and their social media networks in a groundswell of activism, when in fact it is highly paid and highly tactical,” said Brian Donahue, chief executive of the consulting firm Craft Media/Digital.

“That is what the Clinton campaign has always been about," he said. "It runs the risk of being exactly what their opponents accuse them of being: a campaign that appears to be populist but is a smokescreen that is paid and brought to you by lifetime political operatives and high-level consultants.”

The task force designed to stop the spread of online misinformation and misogyny is the brainchild of David Brock, a Clinton confidant who once made a career of spreading such misinformation and misogynistic attacks against her and Bill Clinton. His critics say he kept his taste for dirty tricks when he switched sides to become one of the Clintons’ most valued operatives.

The mere mention of Correct the Record makes some critics seethe. Super PACs are typically prohibited from working in tandem with candidates, but Correct the Record is doing just that by exploiting a loophole in campaign finance law that it says permits such coordination with digital campaigns. ...

Why the hell don't these guys hire those Russian trolls? There were certainly less than 13, since some of those indicted hadn't worked there since 2014, (so I guess they're going after everyone who ever promoted click-bait ads there) and whoever was actually at least working there to produce these (the preponderance having been posted after the election/seen by nobody/seen by very few people) is obviously amazing to have had such a retroactive effect, not only regarding the ads themselves, typically cleverly not even referencing the election, but to have so many people revolted by the Clinton's lie, abuses, venality and damaging policies sacrificing the public interest to, and draining public coffers for, outside self-interests, going back decades and with these... precognitive? effects only invariably growing with exposure and further disgusting examples mysteriously appearing wherever the Clintons did.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/state-department-troll-farm-receive...

February 26, 2018
State Department Troll Farm Receives Huge Cash Infusion

The U.S. State Department will increase its online trolling capabilities and up its support for meddling in other countries. The Hill reports:

The State Department is launching a $40 million initiative to crack down on foreign propaganda and disinformation amid widespread concerns about future Russian efforts to interfere in elections.

The department announced Monday that it signed a deal with the Pentagon to transfer $40 million from the Defense Department’s coffers to bolster the Global Engagement Center, an office set up at State during the Obama years to expose and counter foreign propaganda and disinformation.

The professed reason for the new funding is the alleged but unproven "Russian meddling" in the U.S. election campaign. U.S. Special Counsel Mueller indicted 13 Russians for what is claimed to be interference but which is likely mere commercial activity.

The announcement by the State Department explains that this new money will not only be used for measures against foreign trolling but to actively meddle in countries abroad:

Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs Steve Goldstein said the transfer of funds announced today reiterates the United States’ commitment to the fight.

“This funding is critical to ensuring that we continue an aggressive response to malign influence and disinformation and that we can leverage deeper partnerships with our allies, Silicon Valley, and other partners in this fight,” said Under Secretary Goldstein. “It is not merely a defensive posture that we should take, we also need to be on the offensive.”

The mentioning of Silicon Valley is of interest. The big Silicon Valley companies Google, Facebook and Twitter were heavily involved in the U.S. election campaign. The companies embedded people within the campaigns to advise them how to reach a maximum trolling effect:

While the companies call it standard practice to work hand-in-hand with high-spending advertisers like political campaigns, the new research details how the staffers assigned to the 2016 candidates frequently acted more like political operatives, doing things like suggesting methods to target difficult-to-reach voters online, helping to tee up responses to likely lines of attack during debates, and scanning candidate calendars to recommend ad pushes around upcoming speeches.

In May 2016 the Hillary Clinton campaign even set up her own troll farm:

Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton's campaign, is spending some $1 million to find and confront social media users who post unflattering messages about the Democratic front-runner.

In effect, the effort aims to spend a large sum of money to increase the amount of trolling that already exists online.

Clinton is quite experienced in such issues. In 2009, during protests in Iran, then Secretary of State Clinton pushed Twitter to defer maintenance of its system to "help" the protesters. In 2010 USAid, under the State Department set up a Twitter-like service to meddle in Cuba.

The foreign policy advisor of Hillery Clinton's campaign, Laura Rosenberger, initiated and runs the Hamilton68 project which falsely explains any mentioning of issues disliked by its neo-conservative backers as the result of nefarious "Russian meddling".

The State Department can build on that and other experience.

Since at least 2011 the U.S. military is manipulating social media via sock puppets and trolls: ...

... Israel is long known for such information operations in which its paid trolls not only comment on issues on social media but actively manipulate Wikipedia entries. Such astroturfing has since become a common tool in commercial marketing campaigns.

With the new money the State Department will expand its Global Engagement Center (GEC) which is running "public diplomacy", aka propaganda, abroad:

The Fund will be a key part of the GEC’s partnerships with local civil society organizations, NGOs, media providers, and content creators to counter propaganda and disinformation. The Fund will also drive the use of innovative messaging and data science techniques.

Separately, the GEC will initiate a series of pilot projects developed with the Department of Defense that are designed to counter propaganda and disinformation. Those projects will be supported by Department of Defense funding.

This money will be in addition to the large funds the CIA traditionally spends on manipulating foreign media:

“We’ve been doing this kind of thing since the C.I.A. was created in 1947,” said Mr. Johnson, now at the University of Georgia. “We’ve used posters, pamphlets, mailers, banners — you name it. We’ve planted false information in foreign newspapers. We’ve used what the British call ‘King George’s cavalry’: suitcases of cash.”
...
C.I.A. officials told Mr. Johnson in the late 1980s that “insertions” of information into foreign news media, mostly accurate but sometimes false, were running at 70 to 80 a day.

Part of the new State Department money will be used to provide grants. If online trolling or sock puppetry is your thing, you may want to apply now.

Posted by b on February 26, 2018 ...

And yet all this, over and above what amounts to apparently the hundreds of billions invested in such as corporate-media electoral advertising, was so easily overcome by the clever RUSSIAN!!! use of a few people in a small commercial company running a relative few and apparently typically rarely spotted puppy-pics, BLM mentions and the like on FB and Twitter among the best and/or far more highly financed efforts of FB and Twitter themselves, the State Department, the Clinton campaign and billionaire/corporate supporters/SuperPacs and companies.

They were all merely as dust beneath Super-Putin's Sun-chariot wheels.

All claiming to be hopelessly out-classed by the mythical Super-Putin, apparently because they'd rather frame admitting their stupidity (and cupidity) in this astoundingly stupid manner so that they can use it as an excuse to eradicate all witnesses with a nuclear barrage. History can't show them as a bad example if there are no survivors.

Hey, it's a theory that actually covers a lot of ground, right? Probably not radiation or blast-proof, though, unfortunately, so no substitute for a publicly-provided or privately purchased luxury bunker, as those pushing Russiagate all likely have...(I'd like to think this is snark, but some of these people/groups are on record as being apparently quite willing, even eager, to sacrifice large portions of the population as long as they can figure that it works out OK for them. Even if on faulty information they'd rather ignore reality to believe...)

* (Bearing in mind that the Clinton Foundation chronically had trouble in declaring what was actually donated and made a lot of 'mistakes' trying. And that, among other things, even ginormous political contributions from foreign sources can be easily and anonymously managed in Biden's home stomping grounds, Delaware.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/clintons-raised-nearly-2-billion...

Clintons’ foundation has raised nearly $2 billion — and some key questions

By Rosalind S. Helderman, Tom Hamburger and Steven Rich February 18, 2015 Email the author

Since its creation in 2001, the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation has raised close to $2 billion from a vast global network that includes corporate titans, political donors, foreign governments and other wealthy interests, according to a Washington Post review of public records and newly released contribution data.

The total, representing cash and pledges reported in tax filings, includes $262 million that was raised in 2013 — the year Hillary Rodham Clinton stepped down as secretary of state and began to devote her energies to the foundation and to a likely second run for president.

The financial success of the foundation, which funds charitable work around the world, underscores the highly unusual nature of another Clinton candidacy. The organization has given contributors entree, outside the traditional political arena, to a possible president. Foreign donors and countries that are likely to have interests before a potential Clinton administration — and yet are ineligible to give to U.S. political campaigns — have affirmed their support for the family’s work through the charitable giving.

The Post review of foundation data, updated this month on the group’s Web site to reflect giving through 2014, found substantial overlap between the Clinton political machinery and the foundation. ...

... The Clintons have relied heavily on their close ties to Wall Street, with donations from the financial services sector representing the largest share of corporate donors.

And many of the foundation’s biggest donors are foreigners who are legally barred from giving to U.S. political candidates. A third of foundation donors who have given more than $1 million are foreign governments or other entities based outside the United States, and foreign donors make up more than half of those who have given more than $5 million.

The prevalence of financial institutions, both foreign and domestic, as major donors is likely to stir more unease in the Democratic Party’s liberal base, which is pushing Hillary Clinton to adopt a more populist and less Wall Street-focused economic agenda. The role of interests located in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Argentina may spur questions about the independence of a potential commander in chief who has solicited money from foreign donors with a stake in the actions of the U.S. government. ...

... The foundation has won accolades from philanthropy experts and has drawn bipartisan support, with members of the George W. Bush administration often participating in its programs. ...

... The donor list shows that the foundation has relied most heavily on seven donors that have each given more than $25 million, including a foundation established by a Canadian mining magnate, Frank Giustra; the national lottery of Holland; and Chicago-based Democratic donor Fred Eychaner.

Other major donors giving at lower levels run the gamut of industries and interests, such as the investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, beverage giant Coca-Cola, and the governments of Oman, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. ...

... The foundation identifies its donors within broad ranges — $1 million to $5 million and greater than $25 million, for instance. And the foundation tallies the giving of each donor only cumulatively, making it difficult to track trends in giving over time.

As a result, it is not possible to determine how much particular donors contributed in the months since Hillary Clinton joined the foundation in 2013. ...

... The newly updated foundation donor list shows that, despite the restrictions on foreign-government support imposed during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state, the foundation continued to rely heavily on non-U.S. sources. The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that the foundation has now lifted the foreign-government restrictions.

The data shows that some major donors represent international interests that have faced scrutiny from the U.S. government.

All three Clintons, for instance, have attended meetings and private events with Victor Pinchuk, a Ukrainian steel magnate who has faced formal complaints in the United States for unfair trade practices. Spokesmen for the Clintons and Pinchuk waved away any suggestion of a conflict between the donor’s regulatory concerns and the charitable contributions to the foundation.

“No assistance with any business issues has now or ever been sought from the Clinton Foundation or its principals,” said Thomas Weihe, a spokesman for the Kiev-based Pinchuk Foundation.

He said Pinchuk supported the Clinton effort because of the foundation’s record and the “unique capacity of its principals to promote the modernization of Ukraine.”

(If enough foreign money changes hands to a Clinton expecting to win the Presidency, it's not collusion, right? And naturally a charity would be eager to '...promote the modernization of Ukraine' for a big enough donation. Guessing that the US-installed Neo-Nazi government there is big on modernization?)

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/jun/21/clinton-foundation-give...

Clinton Foundation shuns veterans groups for foreign causes that allow less transparency

By Rowan Scarborough - The Washington Times - Tuesday, June 21, 2016

The Clinton Foundation has collected more than $2 billion in revenue since it formed — but has given only the tiniest fraction to veterans groups, instead preferring to focus on international causes and in-house operations that provide far more control and less transparency.

Meanwhile, a separate private charity, the Clinton Family Foundation, has donated about $100,000 to veterans groups, according to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. ...

... An examination of the foundation’s 990s, the IRS form that tax-exempt 501(c)3 charities must file annually, do not show any direct grants to veterans groups since 1998, when President Bill Clinton established the organization. ...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/clinton-money/

Two Clintons. 41 years. $3 billion.

A Washington Post investigation reveals how Bill and Hillary Clinton have methodically cultivated donors over 40 years, from Little Rock to Washington and then across the globe. Their fundraising methods have created a new blueprint for politicians and their donors.

By Matea Gold, Tom Hamburger and Anu Narayanswamy

Published on Nov. 19, 2015

Everybody's doing it, doing it, doing it. At least, within a certain circle now beginning to cannibalize its own lower ranks.

Why do TPTB need, apparently, all of the money and power in the world concentrated within their own, relatively few, pathologically greedy little hands, while evidently detesting the fact that anyone else still retains anything, money, property, health, medical care or rights? That's an important question which nobody seems to be asking, perhaps because the answer can seemingly be found in such as a continuous collection of US industrialist psychopaths trying first for a global takeover using Germany, then continuing using America and multiple other countries in such as Operation Gladio, under the pretext of forever 'stay-behind terrorist armies' in case any attempt at, through much of this specifically and only Russian, (they having beaten off the first Nazi invasion and effectively won that war against fascism,) Communist invasion ever occurred. And look at what's been done to Greece by international financiers in light of the following. And perhaps we can finally have a better understanding of why 'the left' - the humanists - and all countries seeking democracy have been so comprehensively attacked, fragmented and crushed every time human nature, again and again, obeys the survival imperative for a sustainable society of equals

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Operation_Gladio

Operation Gladio is a NATO-backed paramilitary network established after WW2, originally inspired by fear of the USSR. It was also called the "Stay behind network", since if the Red Army invaded Europe, its members would 'stay behind' enemy lines and disrupt Soviet control. Officially non-existant, secrecy was such that these networks were hard for NATO/MI6/Deep state officials to control. Gladio was responsible for bombings, kidnappings and assassinations to such an extent that the network was publicly exposed in Italy in the 1980s and was the subject of a BBC documentary by Alan Francovich some years later.[1] The project was adapted in the mid 1990s as "Gladio B", using "Moslem terrorists" as a substitute enemy image for communists. ...

... The Strategy of Tension

Full article: Strategy of Tension

During his trial, Vincenzo Vinciguerra revealed that, in addition to discrediting left wing political groups, there had been a second aim behind the bombings - to inculcate a climate of fear among the general populace. This was known as the 'strategy of tension'
which was intended to generate a pervasive sense of fear which would encourage the population to appeal to the state for protection. As Vincenzo Vinciguerra summarized during his trial:

‘You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public to turn to the State to ask for greater security.’

In Francovich's documentary on Gladio, he described the aim as to ‘destabilise in order to stabilise’… ‘To create tension within the country to promote conservative, reactionary social and political tendencies.’ ...

...The Scandal Spreads

Fortuitously for the powers-that-be Andreotti’s revelations coincided with Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and as a result did not garner the publicity they almost certainly otherwise would have. Even so, the scandal began to spread. In October Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou confirmed there had been a Gladio network in Greece. In Germany a TV programme shocked the nation by revealing how former members of Hitler’s Special Forces SS had been part of a German stay-behind network. The Belgian Parliament appointed a special committee to investigate the existence – confirmed by the defence minister – of a Belgian Gladio network.

Most sensitively the Belgian parliamentarians discovered that the secret NATO army was still active. They found that a secret meeting of Generals directing the secret stay-behind armies in the numerous countries in Western Europe had been held in the secret NATO-linked Gladio headquarters ACC as recently as October 23 and 24, 1990. The meeting of the ACC had taken place in Brussels under the chairmanship of General Raymond Van Calster, chief of the Belgian military secret service SGR (Service General de Renseignement).[5]

In France President Mitterand claimed that the French Gladio network had been dissolved long ago but to his enormous embarrassment Andreotti then claimed the French had taken part in the recent meeting in Brussels. And so it went on. British defence officials refused to comment. In Portugal, contrary to official denials, a retired general confirmed there had been such a network in Portugal, while in Spain former defence minister Alberto Oliart claimed it was childish to "ask whether also under dictator Franco a secret right-wing army had existed in the country because 'here Gladio was the government'."[6]

In Turkey former prime minister Bulent Ecevit went even further and admitted that a secret army had been involved in torture, massacres, assassinations and coups d'etat, prompting the serving defence minister Giray to retort "Ecevit had better keep his fucking mouth shut!"[7]

The EU Debate

In all, 12 EU countries were affected and on November 22 1990 the European Parliament debated the issue.

The tone was set by Greek parliamentarian Ephremidis:

'Mr. President, the Gladio system has operated for four decades under various names. It has operated clandestinely, and we are entitled to attribute to it all the destabilization, all the provocation and all the terrorism that have occurred in our countries over these four decades, and to say that, actively or passively, it must have had an involvement.' Ephremidis sharply criticised the entire stay-behind network: 'The fact that it was set up by the CIA and NATO which, while purporting to defend democracy were actually undermining it and using it for their own nefarious purposes.'

(DG p.21) ...

... Silence from NATO, CIA & MI6

NATO reacted to these revelations in November 1990 with confusion. Against a background of newspaper headlines typified by the Guardian’s ‘Bombs Used at Bologna came from NATO unit’, spokesmen first denied the stories and then denied the denials by saying it was a subject which couldn’t be discussed on grounds of military secrecy.

The Portuguese press reported on November 7 a confirmation, NATO secretary General Manfred Woerner was quoted as telling in secret 16 ambassadors of NATO countries, Worner confirmed that the military command of the allied forces - Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) - coordinated the activities of the

"Gladio Network", which had been erected by the secret services in various countries of NATO, through a committee created in 1952.
(DG p.27)German press confirmed that the so-called Secret Armies were co-ordinated in a special secure wing of NATO HQ in Casteau. Access was via a bank vault type door and papers were circulated with the stamp ‘American Eyes Only.’

The revelations began to mount and a picture emerged of a NATO Clandestine Planning Committee, responsible for the Gladio armies; of protocols which actively protected right-wing extremists from pursuit since they would be useful in anti-Communist activities. The CPC was run by the US with the UK and France as junior partners, with CIA members present at their meetings. Despite numerous revelations from those who took part, the official NATO position was (and is) one of denial. Official CIA response to information requests has been to neither confirm nor deny. In the UK, MI6 was even more cagey, prompting John Simpson on BBC 2’s Newsnight programme in April 1991 to say

'Britain's role in setting up stay-behinds throughout Europe was absolutely fundamental... it has emerged that other European countries had their own stay-behind armies - Belgium, France, Holland, Spain, Greece, Turkey. Even in neutral Sweden and Switzerland there has been public debate. And in some cases enquiries have been set up. Yet in Britain, there is nothing. Save the customary comment of the ministry of defence that they don't discuss matters of national security.'

(DG p.36)

Paradoxically, despite the secrecy, an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum tacitly admitted the existence of the stay behind networks, and subsequent to this, two former Royal Marine officers admitted to having spent time at Fort Monckton near Portsmouth where MI6 and members of the SAS trained foreign gladiators.
Precursors

The original models for the secret armies had been set up in the UK during WW2 by Section D of MI6. Arms caches were buried in anticipation of a German invasion. Initially, this was a purely domestic affair, but in 1940 with the inception of Special Operations Executive (SOE) the same tactics were taken behind enemy lines throughout occupied Europe. Officially SOE was closed down in 1946 and gave way to a successor - Special Operation (SO) - created under the auspices of MI6 to translate the same networks into resistance in countries overrun by the Soviets. Surviving secret units of the Axis powers were targeted and members of the defeated were sometimes recruited for the new anti-Soviet stay-behind networks. ...

... Allan Francovich's 1992 Expose

Full article: Operation Gladio (film)

Operation Gladio (film).jpg

John Major's government continued to peddle the line of not commenting on matters of national security but headlines continued. Newsnight in April 1991 highlighted the evidence that the Gladio networks had operated politically with subversion of the Left. This was reinforced a year later in three ground-breaking documentaries for the BBC by Allan Francovich. Francovich made extensive use of primary sources, focusing almost exclusively on Gladio in Italy and in Belgium, where he looked at the Brabant Massacres and attempted to connect them to the Gladioesque anti-communist group, Westland New Post. His documentary interviews key figures in Gladio such as Licio Gelli, head of the P2, Italian right-wing activist Vincenzo Vinciguerra, Venetian judge and Gladio discoverer Felice Casson, Italian Gladio commander General Gerardo Serravalle, Senator Roger Lallemand, head of the Belgian Parliamentary inquiry into Gladio, Decimo Garau, former Italian instructor at the Sardinian Gladio base, William Colby, former Director of CIA and Martial Lekeu, former member of the Belgian Gendarmerie to name but a few. ...

... Prudent precaution or Source of Terror?

At the end of his book, Ganser asks this question in an attempt to draw out the historical lessons. The answer is of course both. The strategic need for the stay-behind armies was reasonable in the light of what was known at the time, but the excesses directed against the people and democratic institutions of the host countries amounted to a wholly unacceptable assault on the sovereignty of these countries, of a sort that was familiar in Warsaw Pact countries but which was assumed to be absent from NATO countries. The terrorist bombings proved to be a means by which Pentagon planners were able to take their own (imaginary or delusional) fears about the rise of the Left and turn them into very real and concrete fears for the populace. The swiftness with which the fear of Communism has since been transmuted following the end of the Cold War into a fear of Islamic terrorism, along with the arrival of the whole security-military-industrial-complex paraphernalia of the "War on Terror" illustrates that this is almost a modus operandi of military planners. It’s as if they can’t help themselves. In light of this information, there is now a vast army of people around the world who reject the official government narrative of what happened on 9/11 and suspect there may have been US government complicity in the attacks. Opponents cry out that such a thing is unthinkable and that ‘they’ would never do such a thing. But as Ganser’s meticulously footnoted history of the Gladio armies makes clear: it may be unthinkable but it certainly isn’t unprecedented.

Ganser’s Conclusion in full: ...

... Based on the fear of a potential invasion after the Second World War highly placed officials in the national European governments, in the European military secret services, in NATO as well as in the CIA and the MI6 therefore decided that a secret resistance network had to be set up already during peacetime. On a lower level in the hierarchy citizens and military officers in numerous countries of Western Europe shared this assessment, joined the conspiracy and secretly trained for the emergency. These preparations were not limited to the 16 NATO member countries, but included also the four neutral countries in Western Europe, namely Austria, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland, on which the author is preparing a second publication. In retrospect it has become obvious that the fear was without reason and the training had been futile for the invasion of the Red Army never came. Yet such a certainty was not available at the time. And it is telling that the cover of the network, despite repeated exposures in many countries during the entire Cold War, was only blown completely at exactly the same moment when the Cold War ended and the Soviet Union collapsed.

The secret stay-behind armies of NATO, however, were also a source of terror, as the evidence available now shows. It has been this second feature of the secret war that has attracted a lot of attention and criticism in the last decade, and which in the future will need more investigation and research. As of now the evidence indicates that the governments of the United States and Great Britain after the end of the Second World War feared not only a Soviet invasion, but also the Communist Parties, and to a lesser degree the Socialist Parties. The White House and Downing Street feared that in several countries of Western Europe, and above all in Italy, France, Belgium, Finland and Greece, the Communists might reach positions of influence in the executive and destroy the military alliance NATO from within by betraying military secrets to the Soviet Union. It was in this sense that the Pentagon in Washington together with the CIA, MI6 and NATO in a secret war set up and operated the stay-behind armies as an instrument to manipulate and control the democracies of Western Europe from within, unknown to both European populations and parliaments. This strategy lead to terror and fear, as well as to "humiliation and maltreatment of democratic institutions', as the European press correctly criticised.

Experts of the Cold War will note that Operation Gladio and NATO's stay-behind armies cast a new light on the question of sovereignty in Western Europe. It is now clear that as the Cold War divided Europe, brutality and terror was employed to control populations on both sides of the Iron Curtain. As far as Eastern Europe is concerned, this fact has long been recognised, long before it had been openly declared. After the Red Army had in 1968 mercilessly crushed the social reforms in Prague, Soviet leader Leonid Breschnew in Moscow with his infamous 'Breschnew doctrine' had openly declared that the countries of Eastern Europe were only allowed to enjoy 'limited sovereignty'. As far as Western Europe is concerned the conviction of being sovereign and independent was shattered more recently. The data from Operation Gladio and NATO's stay-behind armies indicates a more subtle and hidden strategy to manipulate and limit the sovereignty, with great differences from country to country. Yet a limitation of sovereignty it was. And in each case where the stay-behind network in the absence of a Soviet invasion functioned as a straightjacket for the democracies of Western Europe, Operation Gladio was the Breschnew doctrine of Washington. The strategic rationale to protect NATO from within cannot be brushed aside lightly. But the manipulation of the democracies of Western Europe by Washington and London on a level which many in the European Union still today find difficult to believe clearly violated the rule of law and will require further debate and investigation. In some operations the secret stay-behind soldiers together with the secret military services monitored and filed left-wing politicians and spread anti-Communist propaganda. In more violent operations the secret war led to bloodshed. Tragically the secret warriors linked up with right-wing terrorists, a combination that led - in some countries including at least Belgium, Italy, France, Portugal, Spain, Greece and Turkey - to massacres, torture, coup d'etats and other violent acts. Most of these state-sponsored terrorist operations, as the subsequent cover-ups and fake trials suggest, enjoyed the encouragement and protection of selected highly placed governmental and military officials in Europe and in the United States. Members of the security apparatus and the government on both sides of the Atlantic who themselves despise being linked up with right-wing terrorism must in the future bring more clarity nd understanding into these tragic dimensions of the secret Cold War in Western Europe.

If Cold War experts will derive new data from NATO's stay-behind network for their discourse on limited sovereignty during the Cold War, then international legal experts and analysts of dysfunctions of democracies will find data on the breakdown of checks and balances within each nation. The Gladio data indicates that the legislative was unable to control the more hidden branches of the executive, and that parliamentary control of secret services is often non-existing or dysfunctional in democracies on both sides of the Atlantic. Totalitarian states have long been known to have operated a great variety of largely uncontrolled and unaccountable secret services and secret armies. Yet to discover such serious dysfunctions also in numerous democracies comes as a great surprise, to say the least. Within this debate of checks and balances military officials have been correct to point out after the discovery of Operation Gladio and NATO's stay-behind network that there can never be such a thing as a 'transparent stay-behind army', for such a network would be exposed immediately in case of invasion and its members would be killed by the invasion force. Parliamentarians and constitutional lawyers meanwhile have been equally correct to emphasise that both the armed forces and the secret services of a democracy must at all times be transparent, accountable, controlled and supervised closely by civilian representatives of the people as they represent the most powerful instruments of the state.

This clash between mandatory secrecy and mandatory transparency, which lies at the heart of the Gladio phenomenon, directly points to the more general question of how much secrecy should be granted to the executive branch of a democracy. Judged from the Gladio evidence, where a lack of transparency and accountability has lead to corruption, abuse and terror, the answer is clear: The executive should be granted no secrecy and should at all times be controlled by the legislative. For a secret government, as it manifested itself in the United States and parts of Western Europe, can lead to abuse and even state terrorism. The growth of Intelligence abuses reflects a more general failure of our basic institutions', US Senator Frank Church had wisely noted after a detailed investigation of CIA covert operations already in the 1970s. Gladio repeats this warning with a vengance.

It can hardly be overemphasised that running a secret army and funding an unaccountable intelligence service entails grave risks every democracy should seek to avoid. For the risks do not only include uncontrolled violence against groups of citizens, but mass manipulation of entire countries or continents. Among the most far-reaching findings on the secret war, as seen in the analysis, ranges the fact that the stay-behind network had served as a tool to spread fear amongst the population also in the absence of an invasion. The secret armies in some cases functioned as an almost perfect manipulation system that transported the fears of high-ranking military officers in the Pentagon and NATO to the populations in Western Europe. European citizens, as the strategists in the Pentagon saw it, due to their limited vision were unable to perceive the real and present danger of Communism, and therefore they had to be manipulated. By killing innocent citizens on market squares or in supermarkets and blaming the crime on the Communists the secret armies together with convinced right-wing terrorists effectively translated the fears of Pentagon strategists into very real fears of European citizens.

The destructive spiral of manipulation, fear and violence did not end with the fall of the Soviet Union and the discovery of the secret armies in 1990, but on the contrary gained momentum. Ever since the vicious terrorist attacks on the population of the United States on September 11, 2001 and the beginning of the 'War on Terrorism' fear and violence dominate not only the headlines across the globe but also the consciousness of millions. In the West the 'evil Communist' of the Cold War era has swiftly been replaced with the 'evil Islamist' of the war on terrorism era. With almost 3,000 civilians killed on September 11, and several thousands killed in the US-led war on terrorism so far with no end in sight, a new level of brutality has been reached.

Such an environment of fear, as the Gladio evidence shows, is ideally suited to manipulate the masses on both sides into more radical positions. Osama Bin Laden and his Al Qaida terror network manipulated millions of Muslims, above all young male adults, to take up a radical position and believe in violence. On the other side also the White House and the administration of George Bush junior has fuelled the spiral of violence and fear and lead millions of Christians and seculars in the United States and in Europe to believe in the necessity and justice of killing other human beings in order to enhance their own security. Yet human security is not being advanced, but on the contrary decays, as the atmosphere is drenched with manipulation, violence and fear. Where the manipulation and the violence originate from and where they lead to, is at times very difficult to dissect. Hitler and the Nazis had profited greatly from manipulation and the fear in the wake of the mysterious Reichstagsbrand in Berlin in 1933, whereupon the Third Reich and Second World War followed. In 2001 the war on terrorism began, and once again radical critics have argued that the White House had manipulated 9/11, the largest terrorist attack in history, for geostrategic purposes. ...

Dead thread by now, I know, but dumping this which I started working on a couple of days ago now, I guess, anyway, 'as is', as the house-hold/personal care chemicals of some visitors staying here for an undetermined period have been making me too freaking sick, tired and ill to sometimes breathe properly or even see or think straight and some bits in here may come in useful to anyone happening to notice and bothering to read it. Dunno how much longer we'll be able to speak out... but we need to while we can.

up
0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.

to connect to the American mogul, Robert Mercer, co-owner of Cambridge Analytica, who did this work for Trump, and so here it is.

The article at Medium last August by q502 is worth reading because it does focus on criminal activity on the part of U.S. and Russian money launderers and the suggestion that all investor criminals in Russia are closely connected to Putin, which is as substantial as the assertion that all investor criminals in the U.S. are connected to Clinton and Trump. The final paragraph establishes that in fact, by noting Mercer's company donated exactly the same amount to the Clinton campaign as to the Trump campaign in 2016.

But the point made by writers here at caucus99percent is that Putin has raised the standard of living in Russia for the average person. That is the war we're in. Can a politician surrounded by money launderers and kleptocrats, capitalist killers, work on behalf of the people? I think Putin is saying he can. And I believe that is why our capitalist killers want him dead or to identify him as everything bad. Yet they can't destroy him for the moment because he is sitting on top of a mountain of plunderable resources.

https://medium.com/@q502/robert-mercer-money-launderer-for-vladimir-putin-8c596cd3d930

MEDIUM - ROBERT MERCER — MONEY LAUNDERER FOR VLADIMIR PUTIN
q502Follow
Aug 21, 2017

Renaissance Technologies (RENTEC) is the second largest hedge fund in the US, managing $45 billion in assets. It has a reputation for being the most successful hedge fund in history, for using quantitative trading strategies designed by top scientists, and for being extremely secretive.
Publicly available information on RENTEC implies that the firm is a massive money laundering tool disguised as a hedge fund, operating on behalf of Vladimir PUTIN.

A significant degree of sophistication is required to launder money in plain sight via financial markets. Due to this sophistication, it’s unlikely direct evidence will come to light without access to internal records. However, by using other cases as a guide, the following mosaic of indirect evidence will likely be found:

• SOURCE Key people are connected to criminal organizations via one or more intermediaries.

• TRANSACT An abnormally high rate of return that allows significant amounts of money to be laundered in a short amount of time. Evidence of buying and selling the same securities in different markets.

• COVER UP History of using financial engineering to hide the nature of transactions and a reputation for extreme secrecy.

SOURCE
Russia is controlled by a vast organization comprised of the intelligence services, organized crime and big business. This organization is led by Vladimir PUTIN and control is maintained through corruption, blackmail and assassination.

Because of the high degree of control PUTIN has over Russian centers of power, all Russians in positions of influence should be assumed to have at least PUTIN’s blessing. Any persons significantly connected with these Russians are likely contributing to PUTIN’s goals either witting or otherwise.

Robert MERCER is co-CEO of RENTEC. MERCER is the largest financial backer of Donald TRUMP’s presidential campaign, and an influential funder of Republicans and conservatives causes including Citizens United. (2)

… For this scheme to be successful, all senior RENTEC leadership would have been involved including MERCER and SIMONS. In the 2016 election cycle MERCER spent $15 million on Republican candidates with the majority going towards supporting Donald TRUMP. In the same year SIMONS also spent $15 million, but on Democratic candidates, much of it going towards Hillary CLINTON. Regardless of the election result, PUTIN was guaranteed to have an agent with significant influence on the President of the United States.

up
0 users have voted.

@Linda Wood

Their projector light shines on... although has anyone heard anything else about this from the corporate media in all of the 'RUSSIA!!! Did Everything' That TPTB Do Themselves propagandist hysteria - or might this line have been dropped due to a protected group among the various PTB being involved?

Speaking As One Who Knows Nothing, my speculators are on again, so...

In the following, sounds, at least to me, almost as though political cash is being pumped from Wall St insiders - '...wealthy clients of UBS Group AG, Citigroup Inc. and others...' and making those facilitating this very wealthy indeed very quickly, so that they can play kingmaker and exert perhaps a proxy control for Wall St/other interests?

3 decades of working with data failed to bring the firm notable results, and only began, very suddenly, to work when this group from multiple of the biggest and most notorious Wall St. firms, (possibly with inside info from both government and finance industry?) all brought in a massive amount of investment money to this firm which had been failing and was down billions, to suddenly produce market-beating results for investors even as others were suffering severe downturns, (market manipulations they aren't in on?) Mercer seemingly becoming a billionaire just in time for election year, described in an interview as once-middle-class (or at least previously not insanely wealthy) by his daughter, yet immediately beginning to make enormous political contributions, gaining credit for Trump winning the Presidency (prior to the Putin Did It! craze) supplying political appointments such as Bannon and Kellyanne Conway (Mercer's daughter, self-described in an interview as previously in a group buying/running a bakery being shut down, being on a board of Trump's advisors) and guidance to a US President which could, in this scenario, conceivably be in actuality relayed from representatives of various Wall St. or other interests.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/renaissance-technologies-hedge-fund-on-a-7-...

Renaissance Technologies: Hedge Fund on a $7 Billion Winning Streak
Hedge-fund firm Renaissance Technologies has attracted more than $7 billion in new investor money over the past year even as peers have struggled

By Gregory Zuckerman
Updated Oct. 11, 2016 9:00 a.m. ET
4 COMMENTS

Many hedge funds and mutual funds are slashing fees, laying off employees and losing customers following years of subpar performance.

Then there is Renaissance Technologies LLC.

The hedge-fund firm, which relies on closely held computer models and algorithms, has staged a comeback after an uneven spell, with its funds posting market-beating gains for more than the past year.

Now they are getting a cash influx, even as rivals suffer withdrawals. Renaissance attracted more than $7 billion in new investor money over the past year from wealthy clients of UBS Group AG, Citigroup Inc. and others, according to people close to the matter. Renaissance now manages more than $36 billion, up from $27 billion a year ago, even after returning about $1 billion from its signature Medallion fund, which is closed to investors. ...

...Renaissance began combing enormous troves of data for patterns over three decades ago, well before rivals and unrelated businesses embraced such strategies. ...

...That recipe hasn’t always worked for Renaissance, which Mr. Simons founded in 1982. The firm opened two hedge funds to outside investors in 2005 and 2007 but experienced mediocre early results.

In 2010, when Mr. Simons stepped back from running the East Setauket, N.Y., firm, new leadership considered closing the two hedge funds open to outside investors. By then, assets had fallen to $5 billion from over $20 billion a few years earlier. Last year, Renaissance closed a $1 billion futures fund due to poor interest.

Renaissance’s recent rebound comes as the company’s executives are playing larger roles in politics. Co-Chief Executive Robert Mercer has been among the largest political donors of the 2016 election cycle, spending more than $13 million to back Texas Sen. Ted Cruz through a super PAC while also funding Breitbart News, the conservative media outlet.

He and his daughter, Rebekah, played a role in the August shake-up of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, recommending Breitbart Chairman Stephen Bannon and Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway for top posts. Mr. Simons has given millions to a Hillary Clinton super PAC. ...

Dunno, but all I have is that there 2 cents-worth that I'm playing with right now...

up
0 users have voted.

Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.

A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.