Trump supporters sprayed tear gas and trampled police officers when they stormed the US Capitol in Washington, DC on 6 Jan 2021. (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)
Tom Vournas (63) of Bradenton, FL, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers using a dangerous weapon and inflicting bodily injury. Leonard Lobianco (53) of North Port, FL, pleaded guilty on 23 Sep 2024 to a single felony charge of civil disorder.
The Honorable US District Judge Royce C. Lamberth will sentence Vournas on 17 Jan 2025 and Lobianco on 28 Jan 2025.
On 6 Jan 2021, Vournas and Lobianco, members of the “Zone 5” Proud Boys joined in an attack against a police barricade. Members of this mob violently trampled the metal barriers, moved the barriers aside, and surged past officers to advance toward the Capitol. For the next hour, police struggled to contain the mob, while certain members of the Proud Boys assaulted and engaged with police. Vournas sprayed pepper gel, a dangerous weapon, twice toward a line of police officers, hitting a USCP officer in the face and causing bodily injury. After penetrating police lines, Vournas and Lobianco blithely took pictures together in the “Crypt” before leaving through the Senate Wing Door at approximately 2:25 PM.
The FBI arrested the two men on 4 Jan 2024 in Florida.
Leonard Lobianco (L), Tom Vournas (R). These two runamoks represent America’s Fedayeen Saddam (FS), white supremacist dead-enders clinging on to the last vestiges of white privilege in the US.
MAGA supporters and white supremacists heeded the call of Donald Trump, but the Proud Boys have since turned on him. “Trump will go down as a total failure,” one member of the Proud Boys said in a chat on Telegram; another called Trump a “shill.” Imagery: SITE Intelligence Group
In the 44 months since 6 Jan 2021, more than 1,504 suspects have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to attacking the US Capitol, including more than 560 seditionists charged with feloniously assaulting or impeding law enforcement. The FBI investigation remains ongoing.
Anyone with tips can call 1-800-CALL-FBI (800-225-5324) or visit tips.fbi.gov.
Sources:
Two Russian Nationals Charged in Connection with Operating Billion Dollar Money Laundering Services
The US imposed sanctions on an alleged Russian money-laundering operation that caters to cybercriminals around the world and unsealed indictments against two Russian nationals for their alleged involvement in the operation.
The US and the Netherlands shut down the “prolific” money-laundering operation known as Cryptex and recovered millions of dollars in cryptocurrency.
The two Russians named in the indictment, Sergei Ivanov and Timur Shakhmametov, remain at large. They are charged with conspiracy to commit bank fraud, money laundering using stolen credit and debit card information, and other charges. The State Department announced rewards of up to $10 million each for information leading to the arrest or conviction of Ivanov or Shakhmametov.
Ivanov’s services have been used by cybercrime marketplaces, ransomware groups, and hackers responsible for significant data breaches of major US companies.
Cryptex advertises its virtual currency services in Russian and has received over $51.2 million in funds derived from ransomware attacks.
Ivanov also allegedly created and operated Russian payment and exchange services UAPS, PinPays, and PM2BTC, which provided money-transfer and -laundering services directly to criminals.
For nearly two decades, Ivanov operated as a professional cyber-money-launderer, advertising his services to other cybercriminals on exclusive Russian-speaking criminal forums.
The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Ivanov and Cryptex, which is based in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines but operates in Russia.
The Treasury Department also identified PM2BTC as a “primary money-laundering concern” in connection with Russian illicit finance. PM2BTC has long-standing ties to Russian or Russian-affiliated financial institutions that are under U.S. sanctions or other restrictions.
Individuals visiting the sites now see a message indicating that the site has been seized by the federal government. The seizure prevents the owners and third parties from using the sites for money laundering.
Law enforcement authorities in the Netherlands seized the servers hosting PM2BTC and Cryptex. Those servers have been taken offline, and the Dutch have seized cryptocurrency from those servers worth more than $7 million.
The State Department is also offering rewards of up to $1 million each for information identifying the leaders of PM2BTC and stolen credit-card marketplaces PinPays and Joker’s Stash.
Sources:
Imposition of Special Measure Prohibiting the Transmittal of Funds Involving PM2BTC | FinCEN.gov
U.S. Moves To Break Up Cyber-Money-Laundering Operation Allegedly Run By Russians (rferl.org)
US Offers $20M for Details About Iranian Allegedly Behind Plot to Kill John Bolton
The US State Department announced a $20 million reward for information leading to the arrest of the alleged Iranian mastermind behind a plot to assassinate former Republican White House official John Bolton.
In Aug 2022, US officials uncovered a plot by Shahram Poursafi, a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), to kill Bolton, who served as national security adviser to former President Donald Trump. The announcement came as Donald Trump (78) claimed there were “big threats” on his life by Iran.
Bolton, considered a foreign policy hawk, is a fierce critic of Iran and advocated that Trump unilaterally and recklessly withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018.
Poursafi allegedly offered an unidentified person inside the US $300,000 to kill Bolton in the capital area. The plan was likely set in motion after the US killing of top IRGC commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq on 3 Jan 2020 by a US drone strike outside Baghdad Int’l Airport (BIAP). But the reprisal plot never made headway because the ostensible assassin became an informant of the FBI. Iranian authorities have dismissed the allegations as “fiction.”
General Qasem Soleimani was a popular figure and hero in Iran, as well as an effective combat leader against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. When the US invaded Afghanistan in Oct 2001 after the 11 Sep 2001 attacks, General Soleimani’s Quds Force collaborated with the US and led the 2001 uprising in Herat against the Taliban. Ethnic Hazaras, the Northern Alliance, and the Quds Force liberated the city before US forces entered. Undated image: Wikimedia
The United States designated the entire IRGC a “foreign terrorist organization” in 2019, after previously designating its external operation wing, the Quds Force.
On 4 Dec 1981, President Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order 12333. Part 2.11 of E.O. 12333 reiterates a proscription on US intelligence agencies sponsoring or carrying out an assassination. It reads:
No person employed by or acting on behalf of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, assassination.
Sources:
US offers $20M for details about Iranian allegedly behind plot to kill official (voanews.com)
Federal Register :: Executive Order
Bashkirs, Tatars Bear Brunt of Putin’s War Against Ukraine
Tatarstan soldier Ruslan Sadykov was killed near Ukraine’s Mariupol in 2022.
According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, more soldiers from the central Russian regions of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan have died than any other region in the country. The burden of the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine is disproportionately falling on more distant regions of Russia, further away from the wealthy population centers of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The reason for the recent increase in minority casualties is unclear, but it comes two years after President Vladimir Putin stunned the country by announcing a “partial” mobilization that called up some 300,000 men to fight.
Overall, Russian casualties — killed or wounded in action — are believed to exceed 500,000 according to Western estimates, with more men killed over the past 30 months than in an entire decade of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The last official casualty announcement from the Kremlin came in September 2022, with 5,937 Russian soldiers reported killed. At the time, Ukraine was reporting Russian losses at nearly ten times that figure. Analysis reveals that nonethnic Russians, like Bashkirs and Tatars, have been disproportionately represented among the country’s military casualties.
Bashkortostan, a mid-Volga republic with a population a little over four million, had 3,026 confirmed deaths as of 26 Sep according to open-source analysis. In Tatarstan, which has a similar population, 2,740 deaths were registered.
Recent analysis by BBC Russian/Mediazona, which used a similar methodology, listed 2,705 confirmed deaths in Bashkortostan and 2,259 in Tatarstan.
Russia’s Bashkortostan region has borne more fatalities in the Ukraine invasion than any other region of Russia.
In Jan 2024, Bashkortostan saw a wave of nonviolent protests over the sentencing of Fail Alsynov, a popular activist longtime advocate for minority rights and the Bashkir language and culture, to four years in prison for purportedly stoking interethnic enmity. The protests were fueled in part by simmering discontent about the costs of the Ukraine war for the region. Map: kickassfacts.com
In addition to mobilized soldiers sent to fight in Ukraine, other fighters include prison inmates and private military company mercenaries, as well as “kontraktniki”— men who voluntarily sign contracts to fight, induced by extraordinarily high wages and veterans benefits for widows and survivors. Among kontraktniki, Bashkortostan leads Russia in the number of confirmed deaths: 965, according to the RFE/RL tally. Tatarstan ranked second, with 557 volunteer deaths.
By comparison, only 135 volunteers from Moscow — with an official population of more than 13 million — have been confirmed killed. Over the last four weeks, RFE/RL’s Tatar-Bashkir Service has added 575 names to its list of dead soldiers from the two regions, nearly 20 per day.
The confirmed figures are assumed to be a major undercount given the difficulty in identifying deaths amid official secrecy. The exact number of men, kontraktniki, prison inmates, or mobilized troops sent from Bashkortostan and Tatarstan to fight in Ukraine is unclear.
Moscow is paying “special attention” to the Volga region, Tatar political analyst Ruslan Aysin said, as part of what he said was a deliberate Kremlin attempt to “confuse the political status” of the so-called ethnic republics, as the regions of Russia with large nonethnic-Russian populations are called.
Putin’s government, he said, is trying to bolster support for the war — or at least temper discontent — among ethnic Russians in large cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg by minimizing their casualty burden.
Aysin said that for the Russian authorities, each military death is “just a statistic. But for the republic, for the ethnic group, for the individual family, this is a great tragedy. There is a big gap between the leadership and the average citizen.”
Bashkortostan region head Radiy Khabirov (L) meets with volunteer soldiers near the front line in Ukraine earlier this month. In July 2022, Khabirov was sanctioned by the British government for openly supporting the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. He is a member of the ruling United Russia party.
As pro-Ukraine Chechens have been fighting against pro-Kremlin Chechens (Kadyrovtsies), Kazan Tatars have been battling pro-Ukrainian Crimean Tatars. During the American Civil War, approximately 7,000 Jewish soldiers fought for the Union and 3,000 for the Confederacy; some 600 of them were killed in combat. Irishmen fought for both the Union (150,000) and the Confederacy (30-40,000; including six rebel generals). They fought each other fiercely during the day, but at night argued with each other across the picket lines about whose cause was right. The Northern Irish contended the Southern Irish were betraying the country that adopted them. The Southern Irish countered the Confederacy was like Ireland, seeking independence from an oppressor (Great Britain). You wonder what discussions today’s combatants would have with each other if circumstances allowed.
Our immense gratitude to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, designated by the Kremlin as an ‘Undesirable Organization” in Feb 2024, for their comprehensive analysis.
Source:
RFE/RL Reveals Spike In War Deaths From Russia’s Ethnic Regions (rferl.org)
Military history of Jewish Americans – Wikipedia
‘The Violence is Getting Out of Hand’: Crime Grips Cuba’s Streets
19-year-old Jan Franco (L) was stabbed to death in Havana. “So many young people have been killed this year… The violence is getting out of hand,” said his sister, Samantha Gonzalez.
Few could deny that Cuba’s streets have traditionally been among the safest in the Americas. But this is changing. Samantha González will be the first to tell you. Her younger brother, an aspiring music producer named Jan Franco, was murdered two months ago in an apparent gang-related dispute. From the low-income Havana neighborhood of Cayo Hueso and just 19 years old when he was killed, Jan Franco was stabbed twice in the chest outside a recording studio. He was caught in the middle of an argument when someone pulled a knife. Cuba has a growing drug and gang problem where disputes are settled with knives, machetes, or sometimes guns.
The situation has been worsened by a new drug in Cuba called “quimico” – a cheap chemical high with a cannabis base. Samantha says that it’s increasingly popular among Cuban youth in the parks and on the streets.
The Cuban authorities have always been fiercely protective of their island’s reputation as crime-free and quick to point out that the streets are demonstrably safer than those of most cities in the US. Anything that highlights Cuba’s social problems is generally painted as biased criticism of their socialist system or as anti-revolutionary fabrications originating from Miami or Washington.
In August, an edition of nightly talk program Mesa Redonda – in which Communist Party officials are invited on air to deliver the party line – was titled Cuba Against Drugs. During the broadcast, Colonel Juan Carlos Poey Guerra, the head of the interior ministry’s anti-drug unit, acknowledged the existence, production, and distribution of the new drug, químico, and its impact on Cuba’s youth. He insisted the authorities were tackling the issue.
“Quimico” is allegedly prepared with epilepsy pills, formaldehyde, and animal anesthesia, and smoked in cigarettes like marijuana. Michael Fischer /Pexels/ Getty Images
For its part, the government largely blames the old enemy, the US, for both the existence of synthetic opioids in Cuba and for the decades-long US economic embargo on the island which they say is the reason some Cubans have resorted to crime.
According to http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com, 82 people died in Cuba from drug use in 2020. By contrast, drug use killed 3,686 people in Canada.
Sources:
Cuba’s crime rate soars, fuelled by gang crime and drugs (bbc.com)
Drug Use in Cuba (worldlifeexpectancy.com)
People Exposed to Pigs at Minnesota State Fair Contract Variant Flu Strain
A pig is guided through a showing during the closing weekend of the Minnesota State Fair. Nicole Neri for MPR News 2024
The Minnesota Department of Health has reported two human cases of H3N2v, a strain of influenza A, after people were exposed to pigs at the State Fair. The CDC said the two fairgoers are under the age of 18 and sought health care in early September.
One patient is said to have had direct contact with pigs while the other had indirect contact. Neither of them had been in contact with one another at the fair.
The Minnesota Department of Health does not anticipate further spread. A spokesman said that “typically, humans don’t pass it to another human in the way that they would a normal human flu strain.” She added infection can occur in cases where people who are not typically exposed to pigs come in close contact and are exposed to respiratory droplets, but it does not always happen.
“It’s not a very severe illness in humans, it’s like the regular flu. It can be mild to severe, but it’s not symptomatically, or in terms of severity, all that different from human flu.”
The Minnesota Department of Health encourage people to wash their hands after visiting agricultural farms or events and to maintain distance from the animals.
Both fairgoers have recovered from their symptoms and were not hospitalized.
The CDC reported that nine other variants of influenza have been reported during the 2023-2024 season.
Sources:
People exposed to pigs at the Minnesota State Fair contract variant flu strain | MPR News
ROK Intelligence: North Korea May Conduct Nuclear Test After US Election
Getty Images / STR / Contributor; iStock / KREMLL
North Korea may conduct its seventh nuclear test after the US presidential vote in November, according to the NIS (formerly known as KCIA).
This would be North Korea’s first nuclear test since 2017. North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. All six have been underground.
The NIS also reported that the North possesses about 70 kgs of plutonium and a significant amount of highly enriched uranium (HEU), enough to build dozens of nuclear weapons.
Regarding the North’s disclosure of an HEU facility for the first time this month, the NIS said Pyongyang appeared to have the US election in mind, but it could be also trying to “instill confidence” in the domestic audience struggling with a crippled economy and food insecurity.
North Korea unveiled details of its uranium enrichment facility for the first time this month, with leader Kim Jong Un calling for increasing the number of centrifuges for uranium enrichment so it can build up its nuclear arsenal for self-defense.
The South Korean intelligence agency said the North’s test launch of new tactical ballistic missiles on 18 Sept was aimed at verifying its precision strike capability.
Calling it a “slight improvement from the past,” the NIS said one of the two missiles fired successfully reached the target, adding that the agency recognized it as a “grave threat” to South Korean security.
The NIS also said that North Korea-Russia relations were “improving and strengthening considerably and continuously” and that it was “watching closely with concerns about Russia’s economic support to North Korea, including the supply of refined oil and technical cooperation such as reconnaissance satellites, as a compensation for North Korea’s weapons supply.”
On Sino-North Korea relations, the NIS reported that they had “deteriorated over the crackdown on North Korean foreign currency earners operating in China.”
This undated photo released from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency via KNS on 13 Sep 2024 shows North Korean supremo Kim Jong Un inspecting the Nuclear Weapons Institute and the production base of weapon-grade nuclear materials, at an undisclosed location in North Korea. STR/KCNA via KNS/AFP
North Korean supremo Kim Jong-Un keeps holding his neighbors hostage with his growing nuclear prowess while his people starve. The US, South Korea, and Japan will continue their policy to contain and deter North Korea, as the alternatives are grim, including catastrophic radioactive fallout. Beijing disapproves of Pyongyang’s nuclear progress, but is also concerned about the massive instability if North Korea collapses.
Sources:
National Intelligence Service (nis.go.kr)
Bear Charges at British Columbia Man Inside His Garage
A British Columbia man came face-to-face with a bear inside his garage and the startling encounter was caught on camera.
Coquitlam resident Alex Gold posted a security camera footage to Instagram showing what happened when he was recently unloading groceries from his vehicle in front of his garage.
The video shows Gold’s extremely close encounter with a bear that wandered in through the open garage door.
“I came back to my car and I bumped into the bear,” Gold told CTV News. “She was kind of hissing.”
The video shows the bear charging at Gold multiple times as he claps his hands, makes loud sounds and slowly backs away.
Gold was able to get back into his SUV and honk the horn, which finally scared the mother bear — and her nearby cub — away from his property.
Lisa Lopez of the non-profit WildSafeBC praised Gold’s behavior during the tense encounter.
“The important thing to always remember is to not run,” Lopez said. “Because then it could become a predator-prey kind of situation.”
Source:
Watch: Bear charges at British Columbia man inside his garage – UPI.com
Coriolanus 