“Maria Butina, Suspected Secret Agent, Used Sex in Covert Plan, Prosecutors Say” (nytimes) describes how a 29-year-old student pilot in a Piper Warrior (see the video on the page at 2:11) managed to subvert the $4.4 trillion/year Federal government:
Apparently hoping for a work visa that would grant her a longer stay, she offered one American sex in exchange for a job. She moved in with a Republican political operative nearly twice her age, describing him as her boyfriend. But she privately expressed “disdain” for him and had him do her homework, prosecutors said.
In other words, a young person was having sex with an older person who had something to offer in terms of career advancement.
When this happens between two Americans, the young person is described as a helpless victim, suffering from what might be a year of forced sexual encounters, utterly trapped and with no thought of what was being obtained in exchange. When the young person is Russian, however, the same newspaper describes the young person as a cunning aggressor, in control of the situation.
Also in anti-Russian hysteria:
- “NRA ADMITS ACCEPTING MONEY FROM 23 RUSSIA-LINKED DONORS” (Newsweek), in which we learn that it is front-page news for Americans that, over the past 3 years, $2,500 was received, mostly in subscription or membership fees, from 23 people ($100 each!) who “may include U.S. citizens living in Russia.”
Well, the way i would think about it is this: the primary author of the article is a woman and women biologically are competitors not cooperators so the author is concerned that the boyfriend’s earnings and assets will end up in the pockets of some Russkiya zhenchina rather than an Americanitza, of which she is a subset. She is also concerned that Russian women are unfair competitors for American women (her) because they are way more alluring and cunning. Based on experience, I think that is a reasonable point of view.
Compare to this NY Times story, where a young man has a homosexual affair with an older priest, according to the accusation. The affair ended when the young man was age 31. It was described as abused by the older priest.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/nyregion/mccarrick-cardinal-sexual-abuse.html
Dear Penthouse,
I never thought these letters were real, and then I met Maria B.. My job was my whole life; wining and dining millionaires for political donations. I feed the moneybags some chicken salad, march the political-hack-of-the-hour upon a podium, and sell political influence to good, solid American citizens.
It was at a fundraiser for a bunch of gun nuts where I met her. She was a redhead with the athletic body of a ballerina and a big rack. She was young, smart and Russian. She wasn’t shy like American women, who feel embarassed about being sexy. Before the night was over, I was her willing slave…
If you are Elizabeth Holmes, another possibility arises which is that she is a feminist hero (though described here as anti-hero)
https://www.wired.com/story/elizabeth-holmes-downfall-has-been-explained-deeplyby-men/
Kira Bindrim at Quartz has nominated Holmes as “our first true feminist antihero” and has even risked admiring Holmes for her deep dark arts. “There is something spectacular about watching her ignore, override, or shout down dozens of male voices,” Bindrim writes. “Her chutzpah does command a certain dumbfounded respect.”
…
Is this how Holmes felt, too, old Holmes from Houston, indentured to her would-be partners—Walmart, Walgreens, the US military—and her intimidating investors? Maybe she became a woman in the Scheherazade mode, dazzling her captor with her intelligence lest she stop and be killed. That female archetype is where Madoff evidently sees himself. But Holmes, if you listen to her, does not seem to see herself as servile so much as preternaturally suspicious—particularly of anyone who would doubt her.
This is hard to tell from the reporting alone. In Bad Blood, Holmes is almost always filtered through a man’s apprehension of her. As man after man reports it in the book, her signature misdeed was seduction and betrayal. She’s described as “hypnotic,” and men repeatedly regard her as an enchantress, a blond cipher who spun a mesmeric tale about a world-historical blood-sucking widget. But in these stories the flip side of Holmes is—brace yourself—a bitch who crushed the men who questioned her.
“She had these older men in her life whom she manipulated,” Carreyrou said recently on This Week in Startups.
“Two thousand dollars” – puts pinky to mouth Austin Powers style.
Thank God the United States has never spent a cent to influence foreign elections or other nations might think of us as being totally hypocritical about this.
The reason that Trump is being so obstinate in denying that the Russians tried to help elect him (despite the clear evidence that there were in fact some minor efforts made by the Russians) is that it is literally impossible to prove that the Russian interference was not the straw that broke the back of the camel named Hillary. Yes, the Russians may have spent less than the latte budget at Hillary’s Brooklyn HQ, but how do we know that this $2,500 was not the $2,500 that tipped the election? And if it did, then Trump’s election is therefore illegitimate – he is not “really” our President.
The only way to negate this argument is to say that the Russians didn’t help AT ALL, so that is what Trump keeps insisting upon. He is not going to give the Democrats the satisfaction of saying, “Yes, the Russian interfered” because the moment he says that, the Democrats say “gotcha”! This only drives the Democrats even more nuts because they think they have Trump one step away from a perfect trap and he just refuses to step into it.
Is a “republican political operative” anyone who voted for trump?
“To see what is front of one’s nose is a constant struggle.” -Orwell
Tribal politics have become so severe that even when there is probable cause to bring indictments against a Russian honeypot with ties to the GRU infiltrates a major right-wing U.S. political organization, the reflexive response by 40% of the country is to deny the obvious, and rather lamely mock the FBI.
You remind me of the head-in-the-sand leftists who said Hiss and the Rosenbergs were innocents caught up in a “red scare” by the loutish FBI…. not hostile agents for the Russian government.
Babe: Alger Hiss was a State Department official so he could have, in theory, communicated U.S. government secrets to the Soviets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_and_Ethel_Rosenberg says “They provided top-secret information about radar, sonar, and jet propulsion engines to the USSR and were accused of transmitting nuclear weapon designs to the Soviet Union”
How does Maria Butina get to join this club? She told her purported Russian superiors that (a) Americans like guns, and (b) Americans like to have sex with younger partners? These are things that the Russians couldn’t have figured out from a desk in Moscow by watching Duck Dynasty and reading American sex gossip rags (e.g., nytimes.com)?
To be considered a “spy,” don’t you need to know something that is secret?
Philg: You’re full of nonsequitors… or should i say red herrings?
1. You can’t seriously believe that the Russians wanted to learn the political positions of the NRA, so I assume the Duck thing was more rhetoric.
2. Butina wasn’t charged with being a spy– she was charged with being an unregistered foreign agent for Russia, and infiltrating right-wing organizations with political influence in this white house.
3. She had some success: meeting with a Treasury Undersecretary in the Obama admin. in 2015; bizarrely getting candidate-Trump to publicly commit to ending Russian sanctions; feting NRA President David Keane during trips to Moscow; and having her boyfriend/target NRA activist Paul Erickson offer Trump aide Rick Dearborn a “Kremlin connection” (his e-mail subject line).
https://www.wsj.com/articles/bad-debts-fraud-claims-trail-boyfriend-of-alleged-russian-agent-1532121204
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/362980-nra-member-offered-kremlin-connection-to-trump-aide-report
4. Re: the Rosenbergs, so you think the FBI should do nothing until a Russian agent becomes a spy and manages to pass along nuclear secrets? Absurd counterintelligence plan.
5. Read your Hiss bio closer: he started off as a law student with connections in the Democratic Party and then a New Deal administrator. They all start small.
6. But perhaps the better analogy would be a Elizabeth Bentley, or as Torshin said “the next Anna Chapman.”
Maybe if Butina gets pregnant, you can dismiss the indictments, and weave in another red herring post about me too or child support law.
So, you think the FBI should do nothing about a Russian agent until they pass along nuclear secrets?
Read your wiki sites closer: Hiss started out as a
Babe, the reference to Anna Chapman was obviously ironic. Butina is not a trained operative. Her English is bad. She communicated with Torshin via Twitter. This was just a clumsy attempt by a mid-level Russian pol to establish a connection with American pols who might be sympathetic to him. To think that such a ham-fisted gesture would ultimately get his assets unfrozen would be a typical misunderstanding for Russian politicians of his age. I guarantee that neither Butina nor Torshin thought they were doing anything illegal, hence their utter transparency in doing so. Lobbying of this type occurs every single day by hundreds of “unregistered agents” all over this country. She broke the law, yes, but all your “infiltrator” and “GRU” talk is pure dramatics.
Also, it’s funny how presumed counterintelligence experts in our media mix up GRU and FSB (nee KGB) in the same paragraph. Those are two independent intelligence entities and have different objectives, just like DIA and CIA.
Here is how to remember which is which: if our top cable-news analysts were hired by Putin, Brennan would lead FSB and Clapper would be the head of GRU.