Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words, continuing in the footsteps of daprice82. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
• PREVIOUS •
1987
FUTURE YEARS ARCHIVE:
The Complete Observer Rewind Archive by daprice82

1-4-1988	1-11-1988	1-18-1988	1-25-1988
2-1-1988	2-8-1988	2-15-1988	2-22-1988
2-29-1988	3-7-1988	3-14-1988	3-21-1988
3-28-1988	4-4-1988	4-11-1988	4-18-1988
4-25-1988	5-2-1988	5-9-1988	5-16-1988
5-23-1988	5-30-1988	6-6-1988	6-13-1988
6-20-1988	6-27-1988	7-4-1988	*

• Some major news to get through before we reach the Great American Bash and Summerslam. WWF has announced their July 31 card in Milwaukee, which will see Hogan return to face Andre. This looks like it’s going to be a tester for a whole series of matches in the fall. Savage vs. DiBiase for the world title, Honkytonk Man vs. Duggan for the IC title, and Demolition vs. the Bulldogs for the tag titles round out the major matches. In what is surely a total coincidence, this show comes one day before the NWA’s debut show in Milwaukee with one of their big Bash shows.
  
• As for the Great American Bash ppv, Dave’s fairly certain it’s on track to be the fourth biggest grossing pro wrestling event in history. No real news on the card, but they have attempted to explain the tower of doom match and it’s pretty confusing, but they also haven’t clarified who’s going to be in it. Dave says they’ve made improvements to their promotion of the event, but he has some critiques. “The Price for Freedom” is a goofy tagline to stick on it. The fact that they haven’t really given a top-to-bottom accounting of the card is a bit more concerning, though. Dave also worries that they might be trying to cram too much into their 3 hours, given that the typical NWA match requires more time to do what it needs to do than the typical WWF match, and that could cut into the Luger Flair match and make them rush it.
  
• Dave noticed a difference in how WWF and NWA promotion in the local Cable Guide works. Cable Guide is sent directly to people with cable, so that’s your potential audience when you’re selling ppv and having direct access to them through advertising in the magazine seems like a no-brainer. When WWF has a ppv, there’s usually a full-page ad with all the matches and photos of the big stars, usually at the front of the issue. Dave found the Bash advertisement on page 30, and it was just a paragraph of text that reads: ‘The Great American Bash ($15) Each year, the National Wrestling Alliance streaks across the country holding grudge matches, settling old rivalries and initiating new ones. This year, you’re invited to watch as the Bash presents for the first time ever the triple-cage “Tower of Doom,” matching Ric Flair and Lex Luger.’ He then found another paragraph on page 164: ‘Gill Cable presents The Great American Bash from Baltimore on Sunday July 10 at 4:00 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. See Ric Flair, Lex Luger, The Midnight Rider, Tully Blanchard, “Gorgeous” Jimmy Garvin and Precious, The Midnight Express and other top stars from the NWA.’ Dave’s just baffled. The card’s been set for months, the ads don’t mention any championships or try to hype FlaiLuger at all, and the one time there is mention of a match, you’ve got two matches conflated. So for some viewers, they’re going to see the show and say that they got something they weren’t advertised. This is some real crappy promoting work.
  
• We finally have an answer to the most-asked question of the past month: Owen Hart is starting with WWF by the time this issue reaches readers. He’ll be under a mask on the third-string tour and will probably make his tv debut along with Terry Taylor on the upcoming tapings on July 13-14. On the one hand, it’s a given that Owen’s match quality will suffer because he won’t be able to work with the same level of worker he had in Japan or Canada. And yet, if they market him well, he could become a big deal for WWF. They don’t have another like him. Dave compares him to Snuka, who was small and yet was one of the most over guys of the past decade all for one move, and Satoru Sayama, who was smaller than Owen but still one of the biggest names in the business in the early part of the 80s. But Sayama needed a Dynamite Kid or a Bret Hart or a Black Tiger to play off of. Hart’s going to look small in WWF, but it’s possible to avoid accentuating that to the point the fans disinvest.
  
• WWF’s ppv records are dust, because Mike Tyson vs. Michael Spinks drew a 15 buyrate and grossed $30 million, demolishing Wrestlemania 3’s ppv numbers. This is mostly boxing stuff and we’re here for wrestling, but really interestingly Dave thinks that if Tyson and Hogan were to do a thing together, it’d be bigger than anything either could do against another opponent (and to think, a decade later the WWF did get Tyson in for an angle with their top guy). Obviously, this will never happen because WWF is in a secure position where they don’t feel the need to put their wrestlers in situations they can’t control. The other lesson from this fight that Dave hopes the Crocketts are paying attention to is that closed circuit is a dead end - this fight got next to nothing in closed-circuit, despite having far more hype than Wrestlemania behind it.
  

Apparently they even had the same venue as Wrestlemania this year. Here’s Spinks vs. Tyson

• The Great American Bash tour has begun, and the early shows have drawn well and that’s as expected. With all the gimmick matches and something like 11 War Games set for the tour, they’ll be drawing well, but not so well that we see multiple shows with gates in excess of $250,000 as we have in the past.
  
• Dave’s not clear on the details, but new developments have emerged in the Turner buyout of the NWA. It looks like the JCP stockholders aren’t all in agreement about selling the company. Jim Crockett wants to sell, David Crockett doesn’t, and Ole Anderson is trying to become a key player and sway wrestlers into leaving to start their own company or maybe partner with Turner themselves, which feels like a bit of a long shot. Anyway, Dave promises updates as he gets them.
  
• Some discontent among the NWA roster as they’ve learned that the payoffs for the Bash ppv won’t be arriving for several months. The date they’ve been told is October 1.
  
• [Memphis] The Lawler vs. Von Erich title for title match on June 27 drew 4,000 fans. The match had interference, and after they ran off the heels, Von Erich requested to continue the match and it ended in a double count out.
  
• Jimmy Valiant is back in Memphis for a bit and seems to have finally left the NWA. It seems the only reason he was in the NWA as long as he was was because he was waiting for that big payday that they’d intended to have happen in May and which will now be in October once the company gets the money from the Bash ppv. Just tired of waiting.
  
• [Stampede] Joshi wrestlers Mika Komatsu and Yumi Ogura are coming in for a three week tour. Unfortunately, they won’t be on tv because their dates coincide with the time frame in which Stampede isn’t doing new tv tapings.
  
• Last week there was that weird finish with the Stampede North American Title match between Chris Benoit and Johnny Smith, and it has finally been clarified. They’ve announced that rather than a reversal of the decision, the belt has been held up, and the two had a match under English rules on June 24 (five minute rounds to a finish), with Smith superplexing Benoit to regain the title. On the same show they did some kind of tournament for the tv title, but rather than having advancing rounds of the tournament, they had a panel of judges award to the winners of the matches, and Steve Blackman got the most points and was awarded the title.
  
• Jerry Lawler still has conflicting bookings for July 16. AWA has him facing Curt Hennig in Las Vegas, while WCCW has him facing Kerry Von Erich in Kansas City with both titles on the line. It’s unclear which he’ll do.
  
• Billy Jack Haynes’ OWF appears to be on the verge of death. Several wrestlers have left and a bunch of shows have been canceled. At some point before the June 24 show, Haynes dropped the title to Kevin Kelly, meaning they’ve had the title hot potato between guys five times in the past month. A young Vince Russo is surely eyeing this promotion closely and taking notes on how to book title changes.
  
• The June 24 issue of Tokyo Sports reported a rumor that Inoki is selling New Japan to Ted Turner to be part of a new international NWA. Dave doesn’t give credence to the story, but he does think it would make a lot of sense for one party to own promotions in both the U.S. and Japan because it would facilitate talent flow very easily to keep things from getting stale. Dave thinks this is just Inoki trying to start some rumors to get attention back on himself. There’s still talk of him wrestling Hogan on August 8, but yet again Dave just doesn’t think this is going to happen (it’s not going to happen).
  
• Speaking of New Japan, Tatsumi Fujinami is getting the rocket strapped to his ass. He pinned Riki Choshu to regain the IWGP title on June 24 and handed Vader his first pinfall loss in Japan in his first title defense two days later. They’re scheduled for another rematch on the next tour, so Dave thinks they might put the belt on Vader since he’s lost to Fujinami three times in a row now, and Vader will drop the belt to Inoki on August 8. Not quite, but we’ll get there. Also on the June 24 show, Owen Hart dropped the jr. title to Shiro Koshinaka.
  
• The June 19 New Japan tv show had a very interesting match. Choshu beat Yoshiaki Fujiwara in a 12-minute match in front of a crowd that was decidedly pro-Fujiwara. It’s highly likely Fujiwara will be joining UWF when his contract expires in April, so no surprise in Choshu winning. What was interesting is that Fujiwara made Choshu work a more mat-based style, which Choshu is really quite good at when you can get him to actually do it. Anyway, the fans seem to have out smart-marked themselves, because as Dave puts it “when Choshu gained the pinfall with the lariat, the place went totally silent because the fans who were there ‘believed’ that Choshu couldn’t legitimately beat Fujiwara and thus the pinfall was for the political reasons we spoke of earlier and the good match became a sham in their eyes.”
  
• In All Japan Women, Bull Nakano earned a title shot against Chigusa Nagayo for the world title on June 26. She won it in a tournament, and the match took place on July 2, though Dave hasn’t got a result yet.
  
• In JWP, they’re going full hype train for Shinobu Kandori vs. Devil Masami, and this report gets kind of weird. Masami is coming out of retirement and has gained some weight, and Dave compares her thighs to those of Doug Furnas, saying she now has the biggest thighs he’s ever seen in wrestling. Really, Dave?
  
• Hulk Hogan will be returning to his WWF tour schedule after he wraps taping for No Holds Barred on July 30. He’s only going to be doing the A-show house shows and tv, so Dave thinks the smart move is not to put the title on him any time soon, especially if he still draws well without the belt. Next Wrestlemania is the earliest Dave would consider putting the belt back on him. Looks like his first major feud is going to be with the Big Bossman.
  
• Dave got a chance to watch the DiBiase vs. Savage cage match from the last Madison Square Garden show and gives it 4.5 stars. He says it’s the best match in the garden in years (the last one of that quality he can remember is Slaughter vs. Sheik in a boot camp match in the summer of 1984). Dave’s not generally a fan of WWF cage matches and thinks they spent too much time trying to escape, but says you can’t deny they went all out. DiBiase and Savage have been tearing it up so much it’s got some people wondering if WWF is going back to a more traditional style, but Dave notes that it only looks that way if you only watch the main events of the MSG shows. The undercard is awful, and the other big matches like Andre/Duggan and Beefcake/Honkytonk aren’t good at all. So no, they’re not putting a renewed emphasis on match quality or workrate.
  

Watch: Savage vs. DiBiase

• USA Network has scheduled a three hour WWF special for July 18. That’s going to be a special Prime Time Wrestling.
  
• Jerry Lawler’s AWA title defense against Austin Idol in Continental had an interesting twist. Paul E. Dangerously came down with an injunction and said that he was allowed at ringside because his previous contract with Idol stated that Dangerously would serve as Idol’s manager should he ever get a world title match. Then Dangerously worked on Lawler’s behalf against Idol, even though Lawler acted like he didn’t want anything to do with Dangerously. The finish had Idol get Lawler in the figure four, but Dangerously pulled the referee out and hit him with his phone. Meanwhile Eddie Gilbert came out and threw fire in Idol’s face (and missed, but they went with it anyway).
  
• GLOW is looking for new investors to film a new season in the fall. That means they’re in pretty bad shape.
  
• Roddy Piper will be filming a sequel to Hell Comes to Frogtown. It’s going to be called Frog Wars. Well, they do eventually put out a sequel (Return to Frogtown), but they recast Piper’s role. So, I guess we’ll see how this doesn’t work out.
  
• In the latest news on Bruno Sammartino and his beef with the WWF, WWF has decided they’re going to call Billy Graham the “Living Legend” now. We’ll see how long that lasts until Billy’s next beef with the company.
  
• AWA still has bookings where Curt Hennig is listed as AWA champion. It’s been two months since he lost the belt. They also still have the Rock & Roll Express listed on some cards. If you’re ever wondering why Dave has such little to say about AWA that’s nice, it’s this stuff.
  
• In the pointless trivia department, Miss Elizabeth’s maiden name is Hewitt. Now you can stump your friends.
  
• Bob Backlund was interviewed by a Japanese magazine and indicated some level of openness to wrestling in Japan. He said the NWA was out because he wouldn’t make the money their top guys get. He said both UWF and New Japan have contacted him, so we’ll see if that goes anywhere (wait until December, we’ve got something).
  
• Bruiser Brody was scheduled to wrestle Otto Wanz for Wanz’s version of the world title later this week. Something seems to have gone down and the deal might not be working out, though.
  
• Back before the Powers of Pain jumped to WWF, the Road Warriors gave an interview published in the July 5 issue of Weekly Pro Wrestling. Let’s read what they said:
  

That’s right. We’re going to work for the WWF. But we can’t say when for sure. New York wants the Road Warriors really bad. It’s not that we don’t like their style. We don’t give a damn about what they do in the ring or how they promote the card. The bottom line is what they can offer. Sure we’ve got a lot to offer, too. We are happy with All Japan. They take care of us really good. If we can’t come back to Japan, we won’t go to the WWF. Nobody can tell us what to do. Nobody and we mean nobody can boss us around. Right now, we are under contract with the NWA. This is the official commitment and we are not about to break it. Thena gain, anything is a gamble to a certain degree. You just have to leave all your options open.

• Koji Kitao was televised doing training with Larry Sharpe and Joe Frazier in wrestling and boxing. This drew an 11.5 rating in Japan, which is more than wrestling currently gets. Unspoken conclusion: whoever gets Kitao will be getting a boost in viewers.
  
• As of the latest show in the Texas Sportatorium, here’s who holds the belts in World Class. Kerry holds the world title. Kevin holds the Texas title. Kevin and Kerry hold the tag titles. Kevin and Kerry and Michael Hayes hold the six man tag titles. Guess that theory that Ken Mantell’s booking wouldn’t be pure Von Erich ego stroking was wrong.
  
• The Crocketts had been heavily plugging July 5 as the first day of ticket sales for the Seattle Bash show on August 3. Well, fans lined up that morning to buy tickets and found there were no tickets on sale. Turns out they hadn’t gotten the Washington State commission to approve the date, nor even gotten their wrestlers to apply for Washington wrestling licenses or any of the other work that goes into actually promoting a show.
  
• The letters section this week is all over the place. One guy talks about how fans seem to pay more attention to the moves themselves rather than the context in which they occur and the stories they serve. He talks about a 15-minute headlock Ray McClarity had Verne Gagne in at some point in the 50s and how exciting it was because it was McClarity trying to hold onto his lead in the second fall of the match. Most of it is without major substance, though. There is one letter that is quite lengthy and basically responds to every letter about Bruno Sammartino from the past two months or so, but nothing really interesting in there either.
  
• Just before press time, Dave got word of the tragic deaths of Adrian Adonis, Canadian Wildman David McKigney, and Pat Kelly. On July 4, they had a gruesome van wreck in Newfoundland. They were traveling with fellow wrestler Mike Kelly, who survived, to a match in Lewisporte, Newfoundland, when they crashed their van and went into a brook. Pat Kelly (real name Victor Arko) and David McKigney were declared dead at the site of the crash, while Adonis died in the hospital. Dave gives brief obituaries for Adonis and McKigney. Adonis was only 34 years old and one of the most talented wrestlers anywhere in the early part of the decade. McKigney was a central figure in Jim Freedman’s book Drawing Heat, and was a wrestler and promoter in Northern Ontario who made his name training wrestling bears in the 60s, which led to the death of his wife when one of the bears escaped and mauled them. Dave promises more information next week.
  

Watch: an interview with Adrian Adonis’s daughter about her father
NEXT WEEK: More on the Adonis, Kelly, and McKigney deaths; UWF’s June show; The Great American Bash ppv, and more

Welcome to Lost in the Sauce, keeping you caught up on political and legal news that often gets buried in distractions and theater… or a global health crisis.
Housekeeping:

• HOW TO SUPPORT: I know we are all facing unprecedented financial hardships right now. If you are in the position to support my work, I have a patreon, venmo, and a paypal set up. No pressure though, I will keep posting these pieces publicly no matter what - paywalls suck.
  
• NOTIFICATIONS: You can signup to receive notifications when these posts are done.
  

Trump’s Russian laundromat

The Trump administration has been using conservative outlets like Fox News to launder unverified Russian intelligence intended to denigrate Democratic officials and candidates. In the latest instance last week, DNI John Ratcliffe declassified handwritten notes from 2016 by then-CIA Director John Brennan stating that he had briefed President Obama on Russian activities, including a reference to Hillary Clinton’s campaign attempting to “vilify Donald Trump.” Fox News was the first to publish the notes.
Brennan accused Ratcliffe of selectively declassifying documents in order to "advance the political interests" of Trump ahead of the election:

"These were my notes from the 2016 period when I briefed President Obama and the rest of the national security council team about what the Russians were up to and I was giving examples of the type of access that the US intelligence community had to Russian information and what the Russians were talking about and alleging," he added.

Ratcliffe has approved the release of even more information meant to assist Trump, including “a large binder full of documents” he gave to the Justice Department. "At my direction, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has provided almost 1,000 pages of materials to the Department of Justice in response to Mr. Durham's document request,” Ratcliffe confirmed.
There is nothing illegal about the actions allegedly taken by the Clinton campaign, as detailed in the released documents. As Lawfare explains, the declassified memo originated from the CIA’s Counterintelligence Mission Center:

Importantly, it is not a crimes report. Rather, as the name suggests, the purpose of a CIOL is to pass operational leads to the FBI for counterintelligence purposes. In this case, the CIA had information indicating that a hostile foreign intelligence service may have spied on a U.S. presidential campaign. Even if the intelligence was questionable, it still presented a significant counterintelligence risk—which is why, as Ratcliffe’s letter says, it was reported to the FBI...

Meanwhile, Trump tweeted that he has authorized the release of every document related to the “Russian Hoax” and the “Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. Tweet. He then added:

All Russia Hoax Scandal information was Declassified by me long ago. Unfortunately for our Country, people have acted very slowly, especially since it is perhaps the biggest political crime in the history of our Country. Act!!!

• In an interview on Fox News a couple of days later, Trump expressed displeasure that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had not yet released the emails deleted from Clinton's private server: "She said she had 33,000 e-mails...They're in the State Department, but Mike Pompeo has been unable to get them out, which is very sad actually. I'm -- I'm not happy about him for that, that reason. He was unable to get -- I don't know why. You're running the State Department and you get them out.” (clip)
  
• The very next day, Pompeo appeared on Fox News to assert: "We've got the emails, we're getting them out." Asked if they would be released before the election, he said, "I certainly think there'll be more to see before the election." (clip)
  

Buzzfeed News took Trump’s tweets to a judge to gain the release of the entire unredacted Mueller report before Election Day. US District Judge Reggie Walton directed the Justice Department to “confer with the White House” and report back to the court the “official position regarding the declassification and release to the public of information related to the Russia investigation.”

Durham probe

For the second straight week, the media is reporting the Durham investigation will not produce a report prior to the election. Last week, AG Bill Barr reportedly told top Republicans that they should not expect any further indictments or a comprehensive report before Nov. 3.
Trump publicly attacked Barr for what he sees as the slow progress of the Durham probe. “I think it’s a terrible thing. And I’ll say it to [Barr’s] face...See, this is what I mean with the Republicans. They don’t play the tough game,” Trump told Rush Limbaugh on Friday.

• Earlier in the week, Trump sent an all-caps tweet calling for the arrests of his political rivals: “DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN - GOT CAUGHT!!!” Trump tweeted.

Court cases

A three-judge Appellate Court panel ruled that Manhattan D.A. Vance can enforce a subpoena seeking President Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns. The panel was made up of two Clinton-appointees and an Obama-appointee. Trump’s attorneys are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court.

They concluded that the president did not show that Mr. Vance had been driven by politics. “None of the president’s allegations, taken together or separately, are sufficient to raise a plausible inference that the subpoena was issued out of malice or an intent to harass,” they wrote.

Prominent Trump and GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy was charged with conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Prosecutors say Broidy accepted $6 million from a foreign client to lobby administration officials to end a federal investigation related to the looting of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad fund, known as 1MDB. The court filing also accuses Mr. Broidy of seeking the extradition of a Chinese citizen from the United States.

• Note that Barr received a waiver to participate in the investigation of 1MDB despite his former law firm’s involvement in the case. Steve Bannon was arrested earlier this year on a yacht belonging to one of the individuals tied up in the case, as well.

Trump appeals order to continue Census count to the Supreme Court. A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit upheld a lower court order allowing the 2020 count to continue through October. The administration has asked SCOTUS to put an immediate hold on the injunction while it appeals.
The Supreme Court punted a decision on access to abortion, keeping open the option of revisiting the case at a later date. The Trump administration asked the high court to require women seeking the drugs for medication abortions to visit a doctor’s office or clinic. The order was unsigned but Justices Alito and Thomas declared their approval of the administration’s request in a separate filing.

“While COVID-19 has provided the ground for restrictions on First Amendment rights, the District Court saw the pandemic as a ground for expanding the abortion right recognized in Roe v. Wade,” wrote Alito and Thomas.

Other court cases to note:

• Lawyers for E. Jean Carroll asked a judge to block the DOJ from intervening to represent Trump in her defamation lawsuit against the president. Her lawyers say the law in question, the Federal Tort Claims Act, does not apply to Trump — or to any other president. They also said that Trump, in any case, was not acting in his official role when he denied Carroll’s claims. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for Oct. 21.
  
• The DOJ admitted to “inadvertently” producing altered versions of notes from former FBI officials McCabe and Strzok that were turned over to Michael Flynn’s defense team and filed to the court as potentially exculpatory evidence. As Marcy Wheeler explains, this explanation doesn’t match all the evidence.
  
• Court-appointed adviser John Gleeson, a retired judge, urged District Judge Emmet Sullivan to take the president’s comments about the case into account when making a decision about whether or not to grant the Flynn-DOJ joint effort to permanently end the prosecution. Gleeson notes that Trump’s tweets provide evidence of political pressure to drop the case against Flynn: Trump successfully pressured the DOJ to “create a new set of rules that only apply to Michael Flynn and will never apply to anyone else.”
  
• A federal judge in California has ordered that Twitter reveal the identity of an anonymous user who allegedly fabricated an FBI document to spread a conspiracy theory about the killing of Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staffer who died in 2016.
  

Administration

Voice of America: Five suspended officials at the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) are suing the agency, its new CEO and several of his most senior aides, alleging they are breaking the law — routinely — in pursuing a pro-Trump agenda for the Voice of America news service.

David Kligerman, who has been suspended from his position as general counsel of the agency by Pack, told NPR that the case was necessary to get the courts to enforce the firewall. (He is not a party to the case, though he is cited in it as a whistleblower harmed by Pack's actions.) Kligerman and the five plaintiffs jointly filed a whistleblower complaint late last month, alleging Pack sought to oust them under a pretext of "security concerns" because they challenged his intrusion into journalistic decision-making.

• Reminder: CEO Michael Pack, an ally of Steve Bannon, started his tenure by firing the heads of four organizations under USAGM. He then refused to renew the U.S. visas of more than 70 foreign journalists who work for VOA, vaguely accusing some of them of being spies. Pack tried to fire the board of the Open Technology Fund, an organization that supports Internet freedom initiatives, but a court blocked the terminations. Nevertheless, Pack succeeded in cutting off a large portion of its funding, forcing the non-profit to suspend over 80% of its projects. Finally, Pack ordered two political operatives he installed as his aides to investigate Steve Herman, the VOA White House bureau chief who reported on Pence’s disregard for masks, for anti-Trump bias.

Bureau of Land Management: William Perry Pendley, head of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), is refusing to leave his position after a judge ruled he is illegally serving as chief. “I have the support of the president,” he told the Wyoming Powell Tribune. “I have the support of the secretary of the interior and my job is to get out and get things done to accomplish what the president wants to do.”
CIA appointment: Bert Mizusawa, a retired major general who served as an advisor to Trump’s 2016 campaign, was quietly installed in a senior advisory role at the CIA earlier this year. The move is spurring discussion among some former agency officials, who say the arrangement is highly unusual.

“An outsider with no internal sponsorship?” said one of the former officials. “That never happens.”
...Trump allies outside the administration have signaled frustration with Haspel in recent weeks, accusing the CIA chief of blocking the declassification of documents relevant to the investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia that they view as exculpatory.

Trump has appointed Justin Peterson to the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, sparking conflict of interest allegations. Peterson previously represented hedge fund bondholders pushing the board to pay them billions of dollars. Rep. Nydia Valazquez (D-NY): “As a member of the Board, Peterson would have a critical say in how to restructure the Island’s debt, but his coziness with bondholders is a serious red flag and a clear conflict of interest.”
A hate group employee is now leading diversity & inclusion efforts in the Department of Education. Weeks ago, Sarah Parshall Perry was defending J.K. Rowling on the Family Research Council podcasts. Now, Betsy Devos has bought Perry aboard to oversee inclusivity within the DOE.

Trump money

NYT revealed that Trump “engineered a sudden windfall” in 2016, moving over $21 million from a Vegas hotel Trump owns with billionaire Phil Ruffin, through other Trump companies, to his campaign.

“If Trump took out a bank loan in the LLC’s name for the purpose of financing his election, then the Trump campaign violated its legal reporting requirements by failing to disclose the loan, and failing to disclose that Trump’s Vegas property was used as collateral.”
The Times also reported that the LLC in question–Trump Las Vegas Sales and Marketing–claimed a deduction on the payment made to Trump in 2016. If the $30 million loan was, in fact, used to finance the president’s then-money-starved campaign, the potential criminality would be amplified.

In an apparent quid pro quo, Ruffin asked Trump for a favor after his inauguration: revive the high speed train project to bring gamblers from California to the Vegas strip. The Obama administration considered but turned down a $5.5 billion loan for the train. This past March, the Trump administration approved the project.

Among the train’s chief beneficiaries will be Mr. Ruffin and the other grandees of gambling who became a vital font of political money for Mr. Trump when he needed it most. And, of course, Donald Trump himself.

Another NYT report showed that Trump “reinvented” the swamp after he took office, setting up an extensive quid pro quo network with private businesses and special interests. Over 200 companies, special-interest groups, and foreign governments patronized Trump’s properties while reaping benefits from him and his administration.

Just 60 customers with interests at stake before the administration brought the Trump Organization nearly $12 million during the first two years of Mr. Trump’s presidency, The Times found. Almost all saw their interests advanced, in some fashion, by the president or his government.
...During Mr. Trump’s campaign and the months leading up to his inauguration, the in-house magazine at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida announced nearly 100 new members, a number of whom had significant business interests in Washington. The tax records show that in 2016 alone, the club’s initiation fees delivered close to $6 million in revenue.
...More than 70 advocacy groups, businesses and foreign governments threw events at the properties that had previously been held elsewhere, or created new events that drove dollars into Mr. Trump’s business.
Donors also paid for the privilege of giving money to his campaign and super PAC. Mr. Trump attended 34 fund-raisers held at his hotels and resorts, events that brought them another $3 million in revenue. Sometimes, he lined up his donors to ask what they needed from the government.

Trump claimed a $21 million tax break for leaving the woodland surrounding his New York mansion undeveloped, a figure inflated by what appears to be a fraudulent appraisal. The value of the 212-acre estate was based on the premise that Trump could build and sell 24 manions on the land. However, building anything on that property was impossible, due largely to objections by neighbors. Trump was paid by the government not to build mansions that he never could have built, in other words.

In addition to the conservation easement tax break, Trump in 2014 also classified Seven Springs as an investment property, rather than a personal residence, and wrote off $2.2 million in property taxes as a business expense, the New York Times recently reported.
Trump’s family members have described the home as a family retreat in the past, and the Trump Organization’s website still characterizes Seven Springs that way. “Today, Seven Springs is used as a retreat for the Trump family,” the website says.

Trump’s adult children have brough at least $238,000 of taxpayer money into the Trump Organization by traveling to their family properties with Secret Service. “The president’s company billed the U.S. government hundreds, or thousands, of dollars for rooms agents used on each trip, as the agency sometimes booked multiple rooms or a multiroom rental cottage on the property,” WaPo reports.

The records also show about $29,000 in federal payments to Trump properties that related to travel by Donald Trump Jr. Trump Jr. stayed repeatedly at the Trump hotel in Washington — just blocks from his father’s residence at the White House...
In the records obtained by The Post, travel by Ivanka Trump and her family accounted for more than $42,000 in federal payments to Trump properties. Much of that total came this spring, after Ivanka Trump had urged other Americans not to travel.

US taxpayers picked up the tab for billionaire US ambassador's stay at Donald Trump’s Scottish resort. The billionaire US ambassador to the UK, Woody Johnson, ran up a bill to US taxpayers totalling more than £1,000 in a single day while staying at Donald Trump’s flagship Scottish hotel and golf resort.

American Oversight, a non-partisan, non-profit ethics watchdog: “That Donald Trump uses his office and American tax dollars to prop up his failing businesses is widely known and shameful. That the US ambassador to the UK would use taxpayer money to play golf is simply embarrassing.”

Immigration

Border wall: The Ninth Circuit on Friday ruled that President Donald Trump’s allocation of military funds for construction of his border wall was illegal. In a 2-1 ruling, the three-judge panel lifted a stay on a lower court order, thus putting an immediate stop to all border wall construction. The one dissenting judge was Daniel Collins, a Trump appointee.
Family separation 1.0: Former AG Jeff Sessions and Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein led the push to prosecute all undocumented immigrants even if it meant separating children from their parents.

[Rosenstein told] the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He said that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants.

Family separation 2.0: Customs and Border Protection touted agents’ “rescue” of a Honduran woman who just gave birth. What border officials didn’t mention was that, hours after their purported rescue, they separated the Honduran immigrant from her newborn and detained her pending possible removal.

• “They told her she was going to be sent back to Mexico without her baby,” said Amy Maldonado, who is legally representing the mother.

Detention: Inside the US Marshals’ Secretive, Deadly Detention Empire: Due in large part to Trump’s aggressive immigration policies, the Marshals population is approaching historic highs. About two-thirds of all prosecutions between October 2018 and April 2019 were related to immigration crimes.
Deportation: ICE officials have started to implement a policy that allows officers to arrest and rapidly deport undocumented immigrants who have been in the US for less than two years - all without a hearing in front of a judge.

Further reading

Eric Trump has canceled a Michigan based campaign event scheduled to take place Tuesday at Huron Valley Guns in New Hudson after one of its former employees was linked to the domestic terror plot against the state's governor.
The Justice Department has suspended all diversity and inclusion training in every division, including for immigration judges that regularly hear cases of persecution based on religion, LGBT status, and gender.
Wisconsin Judge Upholds Statewide Mask Mandate
Michigan High Court Strikes Down Governor’s Covid Emergency Orders
A U.S. government watchdog agency is faulting the Trump administration’s handling of a COVID-19 relief effort that awarded energy companies breaks on payments for oil and gas extracted from public lands in Western states in more than 500 cases2
The California Secretary of State and Department of Justice have sent a cease and desist order to the California Republican Party to remove unofficial ballot drop boxes placed in at least three counties.
In a ruling issued late Monday night, a federal appeals court upheld Gov. Greg Abbott’s order that limited counties to one mail-in ballot drop-off location. All three judges on the 5th Circuit panel were appointed by Trump.

Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.
► Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.
► In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)
► Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.
► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.
► In July 2008, the height of the housing bust, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.
► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years. Many of them owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties. They were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel.
► From Craig Unger's AMA: "Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence."
► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower
► According to a Bloomberg investigation (3/16/2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”
► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
► The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. That is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.
► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive. Now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties to the Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.
► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnell got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Craig Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.
► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Donald Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."
► Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
► Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche bank loans.
Trump now gleefully takes cues from Putin:
► At the end of 2018, Putin and his allies started making a strong push for a resolution that would justify their country’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and reverse an 1989 vote backed by Mikhail Gorbachev that condemned it. The Putinists’ goal was to pass the resolution by Feb. There is no one on this side of the Atlantic who thinks the USSR was justified in invading Afghanistan. And out of nowhere, on January 2nd, Trump came out strongly supporting Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
► Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn't believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. “I don't care, I believe Putin"
► Trump met in secret with Putin at the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria. As a note, Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.
► Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.
► He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin's version of events.
► Trump pulled out of the INF treaty with no explanation, which allows Putin to create long-range hypersonic missiles that threaten Europe with impunity. The US already has all the weaponry that the INF would ban the development of, so this offers us literally nothing, while allowing Russia to develop powerful new weapons to challenge our allies.
► Demanded Russia get invited back into G7
► Pushed the CIA to give American intelligence to the Kremlin.
► Withdrew from the Open Skies treaty
► Received intelligence in 2019 that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers, and hasn't done anything about it by the time of this writing.
► Announced troop withdrawal from Germany (America's missile defense from Russia and forward operating base against Russian aggression)
► And of course, Trump continues to threaten to pull out of NATO, a move so catastrophically stupid, so inconceivably cosmically myopic, I truly can't express the profundity of the idiocy. Suffice to say, pulling out of NATO would be like the only guy in a prison yard with a shotgun just throwing it over the fence for absolutely no reason, suddenly giving the people with crude homemade shivs complete power.
► Trump commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, a former advisor convicted several charges, including lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a congressional committee proceeding, as part of former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.
Edit: thanks for the awards, credit should also go to u/victorvictor1 who originally composed this list. Also, please share so that more people can see this

My name is Jay. Not that you would know if I was telling the truth or not, but you can call me Jay.
I work as a chef for rich people. Essentially, they pick out the meals they want and I go shopping, prepare the dishes, freeze them, and deliver them to their homes. That’s my main gig. Pays pretty well, and I don’t even have to find my own customers. It’s all word of mouth. They recommend me to their friends, and I get new clients until I’m at capacity.
The point when I turn away new clients is lower than it could be, because I have a side-gig. A side-gig that I see as beneficial to society, so even though it pays less than taking on more clients, I make time for both. It’s a type of community service.
I’m really only “working” as a chef 4 days a week. I can shop, prep, cook, freeze, and deliver meals for enough clients to get by every month in the span of 4 days. The rest of the time, I’m either travelling for my side-gig or taking time off.
Alright, enough suspense and drum rolling. I’ll tell you what my side-gig is. Though you should already know from the title.
I warn people that they are darkweb hit targets.
Most of those darkweb “hitmen for hire” are scams. Everyone knows that. But I don’t have to spend the time figuring out which are real and which are fraud. Someone else, my employer, does that for me.
Whenever they have someone who is in need of saving, they get a signal to me through a previously decided code and method (which I’m not planning to reveal publicly). From that, I can deduce who they are and where they live. The rest is up to me.
It’s funny, when this first started, I thought none of the threats were real. I thought they were paying me to go and scare some folks into believing they were being hunted by a hitman-for-hire. I wasn’t sure of the motive, but that’s what I first thought.
That was until I literally ran into the hitman on his way to the target’s house. But that’s a story for another time. That’s not the tale I came here to tell.
So, down to the real meat and bones here.
I got a message with the name and address of a target. I was checking for a message after delivering my last batch of meals for the week. My employer has impeccable timing.
The target lived a couple hours away, across state lines. I jotted down the address in a notepad in a coded language that looks like a grocery list. The code is in case I ever get stopped by the cops. I don’t want them finding an address of a murder victim on me if I can’t save the target.
I grabbed my go-bag full of road trip supplies and headed out. During pit stops to gas up, I tried looking them up on Facebook or Instagram or anywhere else. This guy was married with 2 little girls and a wife who, let’s be honest, was past her prime. Yeah, I know, I’m a prick.
He was on the chubby side, and it looked like he worked in construction from his bio. He had lots of friends from the community, and lots of social photos of him at bars with a bunch of dudes. Very social.
Here’s the thing about darkweb targets: they never scream “I’m neck deep in the underworld and someone is mad enough to get me killed.” They always, always look normal. I can’t look at a target and know what it is they did. Hell, even after I warn them, I don’t find out most of the time.
Sometimes a target’s name will show up with an arrest record online for dealing drugs or other criminal activities, which is why I keep tabs on targets in the future. But sometimes my curiosity just isn’t satiated.
But, because I don’t throw a fit, ask questions, or miss my objectives, my employer keeps hiring me.
I’m a professional.
Or, I thought I was, until this target.
It took me a few hours, but once I arrived on the street, I shot my employer a brief message to update them. It was dusk by then, which was fine by me. Hiding out in my car in the dark was preferable to the middle of the day when people would be looking outside.
As is my usual procedure, I parked several houses away to observe, in front of an empty lot.
The house was a two-story building in a nice neighborhood with a fenced-in backyard, rose bushes in the front, and green lawn. The typical 1950’s American Dream. Construction must pay well.
You can guess that my job is delicate. Delicate to the point that it has to be discreet and secretive. I can’t just go knock on the front door, tell them their life is in danger, and then walk away. Believe me, I’ve tried that once. And only once.
I have to do some recon, decide the best way to not only inform the target, but convince them that they are a target.
It’s the most essential part of the gig.
Like I said, I’m a professional, and I have to make them believe that.
From my go-bag, I produced a small tube with a wire protruding out of it. I set that on the dashboard and pointed it at the target’s home. The other end of the wire was a USB, and I stuck that into a laptop. The tube contained a signal amplifier, which basically lets me turn their weak WiFi signal into one I can use from a distance.
It’s the first thing I try, because if I can get into their wifi, I can learn a lot about them before I engage.
I opened a couple programs on my laptop that were written to brute-force their way into common wifi signals. Most households aren’t savvy enough to change their router’s default settings, and those that are often don’t check the more advanced settings like weak signal encryption.
Their wifi password was their last name with “1234” added at the end. Once I was allowed into the wifi network, another program checked the router for default login credentials. They never changed that password, so I was in control of their router in a measly 3 minutes. It wasn’t a record for the types of intrusions I’ve done, but it was still fast.
I was relieved that I could get control of the network. That makes the recon a thousand times easier.
With yet another program (these are all free and widely available, by the way. I’m not paying anyone for this shit), I put my computer between all the other devices on the network and the router. Every device would now send all requests to my laptop, since they thought my laptop was the router. My laptop would then trick the devices into thinking I was the website they were trying to connect to. Since they thought I was that website, they would hand me the keys to decrypt what they were sending. I would then read the contents and forward their request to the real server and just show them the results.
In essence, I was hiding in the backroom of their digital post office, opening envelopes to read the contents and then resealing before sending it off to its destination.
Encryption is no match for a man-in-the-middle attack.
It was really delicate to set this up the first time, but once I had it running, it was easy to deploy again for new networks, like this one.
A van and a truck were in the driveway: everyone was home for the night. The internet traffic was heavy, because they were all home and using the internet. They would notice the slowdown at some point and potentially restart their router, booting me out of the network. I was vulnerable just sitting outside their house, so I had to hope I could collect what I needed before someone wondered what I was doing.
For almost 2 hours, I collected their internet traffic. It was well past sunset, dark outside, and late in the evening when I saw a police car casually cruise by.
I froze when they passed. My laptop screen was on, they would have seen the light in my car. I was parked in front of an empty lot and far enough from the target house to not be noticed, I thought. But maybe another neighbor had said something.
I didn’t want to risk being followed and pulled over by leaving just as the cop goes by. Instead, from my glove box, I pulled out a clipboard and rearranged the parts of my cover.
Luckily, the police car rounded a corner and disappeared from view.
On my screen, a device in the house went to a domain I had set to alert me on. It was a porn site, and one of the seedier ones to boot. I have it set up to alert me of seedy websites that get visited.
Sitting up straighter, I paid attention to the traffic going through that site, and noticed something interesting.
The device wasn’t watching anything. Instead, they had signed in and began doing something else. Uploading.
I was looking at the screen, porn site open, trying to make sure I was capturing what was getting uploaded. I was so focused that I didn’t see the officer approach my car door.
I visibly jumped when the police officer knocked on my window. I hit a hotkey on reflex that hid what was on my screen, but I knew he’d seen what I had up. He would have seen the porn site. He had probably been sitting there for a few seconds, just checking what I was doing.
I was caught. And it didn’t look good.
I rolled my window down partially.
“Hello, Officer,” I greeted, keeping my voice steady despite my beating heart.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck.
“Whatcha doin’ out here?” The officer asked, turning on a flashlight and pointing it into the car. He eyed my setup with interest.
“I’m logging cloud data,” I answered. “Gloomy night and all.”
“Cloud… data?” He asked, confused.
“Oh, yes! I’m a contractor with the National Weather Service. Out with an infrared cloud density depicker to measure local cloud composition,” I shittalked my way through a pseudo-technical explanation, pointing to the signal amplifier on my dashboard.
I presented my “work badge” with a phony company I had built specially for a cover like this. My shirt had a nametag with the same cover on it.
The officer listened, and when I stopped explaining, he considered it all.
“Then why were you watching porn when I walked up?” He grilled.
My embarrassed expression wasn’t fake, but it helped sell the story. I painted myself as an “employee stuck out pulling long hours with nothing to do but watch weather data roll in.” What else was an employee supposed to do to pass the time?
It was a gamble. He could try arresting me on public indecency or something and then he’d find my real wallet in my pocket. My name would be in a police database somewhere, which was really not ideal.
“Listen, I know you’re working here, but pick a different street that isn’t residential to take your measurements. And don’t watch that shit in public,” the officer chastised. Again, my embarrassment wasn’t an act.
With that, he let me go. Relief bloomed across my face. I’d talked my way out, which had been a gamble. I did notice, watching the officer get back in his car through my mirror, that he paused to glance at the target’s house on his way back to his car.
Interesting.
The police were watching the house. But why? Did they know the types of shit he was into that had brought me here? Maybe my job wasn’t necessary and the police would nab him before a hitman had the chance. If he was doing criminal shit and the police had caught onto it, I could see how he could make an enemy that wanted him dead before he could squeal on them.
But, if the police weren’t going to raid tonight, the hitman might still have time. Whether or not they decided to risk it with police checking the house was up to them.
I packed up my stuff, disconnected from their network, and drove away.
Across town, in a Walmart parking lot, I settled in. In my browser, I tuned into the local police radio. Yeah, they just broadcast that shit. I wanted to hear if a raid was starting so I could stay informed on my target.
With that running in the background, I sifted through the traffic I had collected. The guy had logged into his Facebook account, and with my man-in-the-middle attack, I had captured his credentials. I checked there first. It always gave good background information.
It was in his messages that I found a conversation with that exact officer. His wife was trying to take the kids, he claimed. He said she might try to run in the middle of the night and asked the officer to patrol his neighborhood and give a strong police presence to scare her into staying and not “kidnapping the kids”.
What the fuck.
This guy was a regular abuser. It was apparent. But the officer had been a buddy in high school, and they regularly got beers with several other members of the community, including police. So they covered each other’s backs. Even if the officer didn’t know everything, he had to know there was abuse, right?
It was obvious to me.
After checking his Facebook, I went back to the porn site he’d visited. My man-in-the-middle attack had picked up those credentials too, so I could log in as this guy and investigate. With a virtual machine running Tor, I logged into the site with the sniffed credentials. Since he had been uploading, I went to his account and checked his uploads.
My stomach caught in my throat.
Well over seventy uploaded videos. The titles ranged across several themes, mainly involving rape. Rape and… kids.
The kid videos were marked as private, and I now understand that this porn site was doing something under the table with those videos, selling them off to even seedier sites that could afford to be shut down by police while the main site operated “above-board”.
From a single thumbnail, I knew.
His wife. And one of his kids.
He was filming it… and selling it.
My mouth soured.
It became obvious to me that I wasn’t going to, in good conscience, give this guy a heads up about the hitman. Not a chance.
While considering my options, I kept perusing the data. His wife had been using the internet as well. As it turned out, she was a little technically savvy. I know that, because she started running Tor while I talked to the officer. She used it for a simple, small message on a board that supplied me with a lot of my targets.
It was an address. Sent to another member on the board.
The entire puzzle clicked into place.
And I found myself rooting for the “bad guy.”
She’d be caught, of course. I could see a few mistakes where the police would find out it was her and arrest her. But there wasn’t anything I could do. I could warn her of her mistakes, but then she would be back to square one.
It was a type of trolley problem. Do you pull the lever to continue the abuse of this woman and her kids? Or do you leave the lever alone and let her ruin her own life by getting arrested and sending kids off to CPS while the piece of shit target gets what’s coming to him?
In the end, I left the lever alone.
And from the news, I was right. He died. She was arrested. His “side-income” was discovered. The kids went into the system. They were safe from him, at least. That’s the only comfort I can give myself. It was an impossible situation, is what I tell myself.
But now that it’s past, I see the things I could and should have done. I could have brought down the FBI on this little midwestern house. But in the thick of it all, I didn’t see that option. It just felt impossible. I still lose sleep over the decision, but it’s made.
I assumed that my employer didn’t know why this guy was being targeted, just that he was a target. I was hired to blindly stop any and all murders from darkweb hired hitmen.
There’s no way they could know the details of every hitman transaction, right?
Right?

((Enjoy! EDIT: Formating fixed!))
((EDIT II: Updated as of 6/5/2020. It's already past the 40,000 character limit so I had to take this to a pdf / Google Doc, but I'll update them as well too. I'm keeping this up as a teaser and you can find the rest here: OAG Doc / OAG pdf)) ((EDIT III: Updated as of 6/6/20. Ya boi went from 561 entries to 750 so he's as busy as ever. The Doc link above has been updated and I'll post the new pdf after I get home from work. Here ya go: OAG 2 pdf (pardon for the wait. had complications)))((EDIT IV: Updated as of 6/7/20. He's gone from 750 to 834 entries. This thing is 21 pages long my dudes. Anyway, Doc has been updated and here's the pdf: OAG 3 pdf)) ((EDIT V: Updated as of 6/8/20. He's gone from 834 to 951. Boi's about to crest 1,000. You dudes know the drill by now tho. Pdf: OAG 4)) ((EDIT VI: Updated as of 6/9/20. He's gone from 951 to 971 so I'm actually kinda hoping he's running out of steam. His site is bad and I don't wanna keep going back. Pdf: OAG 5))
Traitors of America
A number of individuals, companies, outlets, and media institutions have stepped forward to announce that they support the groups enabling riots, violence, vandalism, theft, assault, and murder taking place at the hands of vandals and thugs across the United States of America. Anyone looking to find out which companies, brands, and content creators have betrayed the trust of the American people by aligning with groups that support the deconstruction of Western values, this list will enlighten you as to who the traitors are so you can stay informed.
[Note:] Some of the people/brands/companies on this list are not headquartered in America. However, they still cater to and influence the American (consumer) audience, and in light of their influence to help sway the views of American citizens, they have been added to the list.
((Ya boi made a list so long he had to add an index))
Corporations/Brands by alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z
Celebrities/E-celebs by alphabet: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z
Corporations/Brands

1. 100 Thieves (E-sports organization) – Traitor
2. 20th Century Studios – Traitor
3. 2K Games – Traitor
4. 343 Industries (Halo developer) – Traitor
5. 500 Women Scientists – Traitor
6. ABC Network – Traitor
7. Abelton (Audio company) – Probation
8. Academy Awards – Traitor (Obviously)
9. Acer America – Traitor
10. ActBlue – Traitor
11. ACLU – Traitor
12. Activision Blizzard (Winnie The Flu’s minion) – Traitor
13. Adidas – Traitor
14. Adobe – Traitor
15. Adult Swim – Traitor
16. AIGA Design – Traitor
17. AirBnB – Traitor
18. AltPress (Music News) – Traitor
19. Amazon – Double Traitor
20. AMD – Traitor
21. American Airlines – Traitor
22. American Express – Traitor
23. American Institutes For Research – Probation
24. Americans For The Arts – Traitor
25. Amplitude Studios – Traitor
26. Anastasia Beverly Hills (Cosmetic company) – Traitor
27. Ancestry (Genealogy database) – Traitor
28. Anime Expo (Convention) – Traitor
29. Aniplex (Anime production) – Traitor
30. Annapurna Interactive (Indie publisher) – Traitor
31. ANR (Americans For Nonsmokers’ Rights) – Traitor
32. AOL (From the 1990s) – Traitor
33. Apollo Theater – Traitor
34. Apple – Traitor
35. Arab American Institute – Traitor
36. Arc System Works (Developer) – Traitor
37. Armani – Probation
38. Asobo Studio (A Plague Tale developers) – Traitor
39. ASTRO Gaming – Traitor
40. AT&T (Held iPhones hostage for five years) – Traitor
41. Atari (Impostors) – Traitor
42. Atlanta Records (Record company) – Traitor
43. Audible (Audio book company) – Traitor
44. Autodesk (Development software) – Traitor
45. Avalanche Studios – Traitor
46. Avid – Traitor
47. AVN Media Network – Traitor
48. AXE Body Spray (Keeping women at bay) – Traitor
49. Bad Robot Entertainment – Traitor
50. Bandai Namco Entertainment – Traitor
51. Bandcamp – Traitor
52. Bang Zoom! Entertainment – Traitor
53. Bank of America (Allowed to steal $45 billion from the U.S. Treasury) – Traitor
54. Barnes & Noble – Traitor
55. Bayer (Science organization) – Probation
56. Beamdog (Developer) – Traitor
57. Behaviour Interactive (Dead By Daylight developer) – Traitor
58. Believe Global (Music promoter) – Traitor
59. Ben and Jerry’s (Ice cream) – Traitor
60. Benefit Cosmetics – Traitor
61. Be Quiet! (PC parts supplier) – Traitor
62. Bergdorf Goodman – Traitor
63. Best Buy – Traitor
64. Bethesda (Doesn’t pay modders for fixing their games) – Double Traitor
65. BioWare (A company with a tired face) – Traitor
66. Blabber Mouth (Rock music news site) – Traitor
67. Black Metal & Brews (Music review site) – Traitor
68. Blackstar Amps (Guitar amp supplier) – Probation
69. Bleacher Report – Traitor
70. Blueberry (Designer fashion) – Traitor
71. Bluehost – Probation
72. BMW USA – Traitor
73. Booking.com – Traitor
74. Boomerang (Cartoon streaming) – Traitor
75. Boost Mobile – Traitor
76. Bossa Studios (Surgeon Simulator developer) – Traitor
77. Bratz (Toys for thots-in-training) – Traitor
78. Brazzers – Traitor
79. Brookefield Zoo – Probation
80. Budweiser – Traitor
81. Bungie (Destiny developer) – Traitor
82. Burberry – Traitor
83. Burger King – Traitor
84. Call of Duty (War propaganda) – Traitor
85. Campbell’s Soup – Traitor
86. Capcom USA (Game publisher) – Traitor
87. Capital Records – Traitor
88. Cartoon Network – Traitor
89. Cash App – Traitor
90. CBS – Traitor
91. CD Baby (Music distributor) – Traitor
92. Center For American Progress (Think tank) – Traitor
93. Certain Affinity – Traitor
94. Chaosium – Probation
95. Cheap Ass Gamer (Game sales) – Traitor
96. Chevron – Traitor
97. Chick-fil-A (Christian food) – Traitor
98. Chip Theory Games (Board game maker) – Traitor
99. Chucklefish (Game maker) – Traitor
100. Chili’s Bar & Grill – Traitor
101. Cinemablend – Traitor
102. Cisco (Tech company) – Traitor
103. Citibank – Traitor
104. Cloak (Clothing brand) – Traitor
105. Cloudflare – Traitor
106. Cloud Imperium Games (Star Citizen developers) – Traitor
107. CNET – Traitor
108. Coloured Raine Cosmetics (Cosmetic company) – Traitor
109. Coca-Cola – Traitor
110. Color of Change – Traitor
111. Columbus City Council – Traitor
112. Comedy Central – Traitor
113. Conde Nast (Parent company for a Communist hive) – Traitor
114. Corsair (Component maker) – Traitor
115. Covergirl – Traitor
116. Crackle TV – Probation
117. Creative Assembly – Traitor
118. Creative Review – Traitor
119. Crucial Memory (Tech company) – Traitor
120. Crunchyroll (Producers of High Guardian Spice) – Traitor
121. CryEngine (Software development tool) – Traitor
122. Curve Digital (Game publisher) – Traitor
123. CW Network – Traitor
124. Cyberpunk 2077 (Video game) – Traitor
125. D’Addario (Guitar strings) – Traitor
126. DC Comics – Traitor
127. Death Wish Coffee – Probation
128. Deep Silver (Game publisher) – Traitor
129. Dell (Cheap PC maker) – Traitor
130. Derpibooru (Imageboard) – Traitor
131. Design Milk (Home decor) – Traitor
132. DeviantArt (Furry breeding ground) – Traitor
133. Devolver Digital (Game publisher that insincerely tries to be edgy) – Traitor
134. Dickies – Traitor
135. Discord (Another furry breeding ground) – Traitor
136. Digital Extremes (Warframe developer) – Double Traitor
137. DigiXArt (Game developer) – Traitor
138. Dimension Ink Games (Developer) – Traitor
139. Dior (Designer fashion) – Traitor
140. Discovery (TV network) – Traitor
141. Disney (Ruining childhoods) – Double Traitor
142. DistroKid – Traitor
143. Dollar General – Traitor
144. Dollar Tree – Traitor
145. Dolby – Traitor
146. Door Dash (Delivery company) – Traitor
147. Doritos (Gamer fuel) – Traitor
148. Double Fine Productions (Failed at sock-puppet math) – Double Traitor
149. Dreamworks (Discount Pixar) – Traitor
150. Dr. Martens Footwear – Traitor
151. Dropbox – Outrageous Triple Traitor
152. Drug Policy Alliance – Traitor
153. Drum Workshop – Virtue-Signaling Traitor
154. DualShockers (Gaming news outlet) – Traitor
155. Dungeons & Dragons (The original Christian nightmare) – Traitor
156. EA Sports – Traitor
157. eBay – Traitor
158. Eddie Bauer – Traitor
159. EFF – Traitor
160. Eidos Montreal (Deux Ex developer) – Traitor
161. Electronic Arts (Gambling enthusiasts) – Double Traitor
162. Elektra Music Group (Music distributors) – Traitor
163. Eleven Arts – Traitor
164. Elevation Church – Probation
165. Elgato Gaming (Streaming solutions) – Traitor
166. E-Line Media (Game publisher) – Traitor
167. EMILY’s List (Pro-choice PAC) – Traitor
168. Entertainment Software Association (Guardians of loot boxes) – Traitor
169. Epic Games Store (CCP training tool) – Traitor
170. Epiphone (Guitar maker) – Probation
171. Ernie Ball (Guitar maker) – Traitor
172. Etsy – Traitor
173. Eurogamer – Traitor
174. EVO (Core values) – Traitor
175. Extra Credits – Traitor
176. F1 (Racing organization) – Traitor
177. Family Dollar – Traitor
178. Fanatical (Software distributor) – Traitor
179. Fandango (Ticket sales) – Traitor
180. Fandom (Fan-ran wiki) – Traitor
181. Fender (Guitar maker) – Traitor
182. Field Museum – Traitor
183. Fight For The Future – Traitor
184. Fine Brothers (Content creation brand) – Traitor
185. Firework TV – Traitor
186. Focusrite (Audio interface production) – Traitor
187. Forever 21 (Fashion outlet) – Traitor
188. Fox TV – Traitor
189. Freeform TV – Traitor
190. Funimation – Traitor
191. Funko (Toy maker) – Traitor
192. Fur Affinity (You don’t want to know) – Traitor
193. Game Informer (GameStop’s b*tch) – Traitor
194. Game Revolution (Gaming news site) – Traitor
195. GamesIndustry.biz – Traitor
196. Gamespot – Traitor
197. GameStop (Essential during COVID-19) – Traitor
198. Games Workshop (Warhammer licensor) – Traitor
199. GameZone – Traitor
200. Garfield Eats – Traitor
201. GaymerX (Gay gamers) – Traitor
202. Gearbox Software (Borderlands creators and destroyers) – Traitor
203. General Assembly (Business educators) – Traitor
204. General Mills – Probation
205. General Motors – Traitor
206. Gematsu (Gaming news) – Traitor
207. Ghost Adventures (TV show) – Traitor
208. Gibson (Guitar maker) – Traitor
209. GKIDS Films – Traitor
210. GLAAD – Traitor
211. GNOME Foundation (Non-profit software distro) – Traitor
212. GoFundMe – Double Traitor
213. Goldman Sachs – Traitor
214. Google (Evil) – Double Traitor
215. Goose Island Beer – Traitor
216. Gorilla Glue (Glue company) – Traitor
217. Goto.Game (Gaming resource) – Traitor
218. Greenpeace – Traitor
219. Grindr – Traitor
220. Gucci – Traitor
221. Guerrilla Collective (Games festival) – Traitor
222. Guerilla Games (KillZone developers) – Traitor
223. Guitar Center – Traitor
224. Gumroad (E-commerce company) – Traitor
225. Gundam Planet (Official Gundam product retailer) – Traitor
226. Häagen-Dazs (Obesity’s best friend) – Traitor
227. Half-Price Books (Bookstore chain) – Traitor
228. Hallmark – Probation
229. Harebrained Schemes (Game developer) – Traitor
230. Hardsuit Labs (Game developer) – Traitor
231. Harley-Davidson – Traitor
232. Harmonix – Traitor
233. Hasbro – Probation
234. HBO Max – Traitor
235. Hershey’s – Probation
236. Hinterland Games (Game developer) – Traitor
237. Hi-Rez Studios (Game developer) – Traitor
238. History Channel – Traitor
239. Hitachi U.S.A. – Probation
240. Hollywood Records – Traitor
241. Home Depot – Traitor
242. Honda – Traitor
243. Hootsuite (Social media news management) – Traitor
244. HostGator – Probation
245. House House (Untitled Goose Game developers) – Traitor
246. HP – Probation
247. Hulu – Traitor
248. Human Rights Campaign – Traitor
249. Humble Bundle – Traitor
250. HyperX (Peripheral maker) – Traitor
251. IAFFE (NGO) – Traitor
252. Ibanez Guitars – Traitor
253. IBM – Traitor
254. Idea Factory International (Game localizer) – Traitor
255. IGN (6/10) – Traitor
256. IGN Australia – Traitor
257. iHeartRadio (Music broadcaster) – Traitor
258. IKEA USA (LEGOS for adults) – Traitor
259. Indeed.com (Job search) – Traitor
260. Indiegogo (Crowdfunding service) – Traitor
261. IndyCar Series – Probation
262. Infinity Ward (Game developer) – Double Traitor
263. Insomniac Games – Traitor
264. Instagram – Traitor
265. Intel – Double Traitor
266. Island Records – Traitor
267. Itch.io (Indie gaming store) – Double Traitor
268. iZotope – Traitor
269. Jagex (Runescape developer) – Traitor
270. JAKKS Pacific (Toy maker) – Traitor
271. JCPenny – Traitor
272. Jet Blue (Travel agency) – Traitor
273. Jim Dunlop (Guitar picks) – Probation
274. Johnson & Johnson – Traitor
275. Kellogg Copmany – Traitor
276. Kerrang! Magazine (Rock magazine) – Traitor
277. KFC – Traitor
278. Kindle (E-reader) – Traitor
279. Kink.com – Traitor
280. Kitfox Games (Indie developers) – Traitor
281. Kodansha Comics (Manga publisher) – Traitor
282. Kohl’s (If you can’t afford designer fashion) – Traitor
283. Kotaku (Blogging activists) – Traitor
284. Last.fm – Traitor
285. Lawyer’s Committee For Civil Rights – Traitor
286. LEGO – Traitor
287. Level 99 Games (Board game maker) – Traitor
288. Lexus – Probation
289. Lifetime TV (Channel for lonely cat ladies) – Traitor
290. Limited Run Games – Traitor
291. LinkedIn – Traitor
292. Little Orbit (Developer) – Traitor
293. Logitech – Traitor
294. L’Oréal Paris – Traitor
295. Lowe’s – Probation
296. Luminosity Gaming (E-sports organization) – Traitor
297. Lush Cosmetics – Traitor
298. Lyrical Lemonade – Traitor
299. Lyft (Taxi service) – Traitor
300. Maybelline – Traitor
301. Macy’s (Martha Stewart’s personal playground) – Traitor
302. Magic: The Gathering (Trading card game) – Traitor
303. Make-A-Wish Foundation – Traitor
304. Manga Entertainment – Traitor
305. Mapex Drums – Probation
306. Marc Jacobs (Designer fashion) – Probation
307. Marijuana Policy Project – Traitor
308. Marvel Entertainment – Traitor
309. Martin Guitar – Traitor
310. Materia Collective (Music producers) – Traitor
311. Mattel (Toy company) – Traitor
312. McCormick * Company – Probation
313. McDonald’s – Traitor
314. MediaJustice – Traitor
315. Metal Blade Records – Probation
316. Metal Hammer Records – Traitor
317. MetalSucks (Leftist news site) – Traitor
318. Michael Kors (Designer fashion) – Traitor
319. Microsoft – Traitor
320. Minecraft – Traitor
321. Moog Synthesizers – Traitor
322. Mondelēz Intl – Traitor
323. MoveOn Organization – Traitor
324. Mozilla – Traitor
325. MSI Gaming (Peripheral maker) – Traitor
326. MTV – Traitor
327. Mythical Entertainment – Traitor
328. Napalm Records – Traitor
329. NARAL (Abortion specialists) – Ironic Traitor
330. Native Instruments (Audio company) – Traitor
331. National Women’s Law Center – Traitor
332. NBC Entertainment – Traitor
333. NBC Universal – Traitor
334. NCSoft (MMO publisher) – Traitor
335. Neiman Marcus – Traitor
336. Nerdist – Traitor
337. Netflix (Left-wing propaganda) – Traitor
338. New Democrat Coalition – Traitor
339. Newgrounds (Edgelord’s first baby-step) – Traitor
340. NewRetroWave (Retro music promoter) – Probation
341. Nextdoor – Traitor
342. NFL – Traitor
343. Niantic Labs (Pokemon Go developer) – Traitor
344. Nickelodeon – Filthy Triple Traitor
345. NightDocs (YouTuber) – Traitor
346. Nike – Traitor
347. Nintendo of America (But NOT Japan) – Traitor
348. Nissan – Probation
349. NodeJS (Javascipt library) – Traitor
350. Noisy Pixel (Gaming news outlet) – Traitor
351. Nokia – Probation
352. No More Robots (Not Tonight developers) – Traitor
353. Nordstrom – Traitor
354. NORML Canada (Marijuana advocacy organization) – Traitor
355. Norvina (Cosmetic brand) – Traitor
356. Novation (Audio software) – Traitor
357. NYAV Post (Recording studio) – Traitor
358. NZXT (PC component supplier) – Traitor
359. Obsidian Entertainment (Game developer) – Traitor
360. Offworld Industries (Squad developer) – Traitor
361. Olay – Traitor
362. Olympus – Traitor
363. Oprah Winfrey Network – Traitor
364. Orangeamps (Guitar amps) – Traitor
365. O’Reilly Media (Entrepreneurial advisors) – Traitor
366. OriginPC (PC maker) – Traitor
367. Otakon (East coast weeb convention) – Traitor
368. Outer Loop Games (Indie developers) – Traitor
369. Paiste Nation (Cymbal maker) – Traitor
370. Pandora Music – Traitor
371. Panera Bread – Traitor
372. Paradox Interactive (Publisher & developer) – Traitor
373. Patreon (Hipster welfare) – Traitor
374. Paypal (Legal money laundering) – Traitor
375. PC Master Race (Official PCMR org) – Traitor
376. PETA (Pokemon’s greatest nemesis) – Traitor
377. PC Gamer – Traitor
378. Pearl Drums (Drum maker) – Traitor
379. Peavey Electronics – Probation
380. Penguin Books USA – Traitor
381. Pepsico – Traitor
382. Philips – Probation
383. Pinterest – Traitor
384. Pixar – Traitor
385. Planet Peebles (Arts and crafts) – Traitor
386. Planned Parenthood (All lives matter… except for fetusus) – Traitor
387. Playboy – Traitor
388. PlayStation – Double Traitor
389. PlayStation Japan – Traitor
390. PlayStation Lifestyle (PlayStation news site) – Traitor
391. Plugin Boutique – Traitor
392. Pokemon – Traitor
393. Poly – Traitor
394. Popeyes Chicken – Traitor
395. Pop-Tarts – Probation
396. Porsche – Probation
397. Pornhub (Subversion) – Traitor
398. Power Rangers – Probation
399. PPI (Progressive policy) – Traitor
400. PQube Games (Localization publisher) – Traitor
401. PreSonus (Audio software) – Traitor
402. Print Magazine – Traitor
403. Procter & Gamble (Mega corporation) – Traitor
404. Promark Drumsticks – Traitor
405. PRSGuitars (Guitar maker) – Traitor
406. Public Citizen (NGO) – Traitor
407. Puma – Traitor
408. Pusheen The Cat (E-tailer) – Traitor
409. Rare Ltd (Game developer) – Traitor
410. Raw Fury (Game publisher) – Traitor

((And it goes for another 561 entries. Check the links above for more))

There's a lot of disinformation out there spread by foreign trolls and domestic militants. Qanon is nonsense but it serves a purpose of blunting the facts. "You say Trump was helped by the Russians? What about Hillary eating babies?"
A poster named Tobert420 put together a comprehensive list that worth reviewing before voting in the coming election. Since the goal of those spreading disinformation is to muddy the waters, I thought I would share his work. Knowledge is power.

An Overview of Donald Trump’s numerous ties to Russia, with sources!

📷
Trump was over a billion in debt and the Russians bailed him out.
► Trump was first compromised by the Russians in the 80s. In 1984, the Russian Mafia began to use Trump real estate to launder money. In 1987, the Soviet ambassador to the United Nations, Yuri Dubinin, arranged for Trump and his then-wife, Ivana, to enjoy an all-expense-paid trip to Moscow to consider possible business prospects. Only seven weeks after his trip, Trump ran full-page ads in the Boston Globe, the NYT and WaPO calling for, in effect, the dismantling of the postwar Western foreign policy alliance. The whole Trump/Russian connection started out as laundering money for the Russian mob through Trump's real estate, but evolved into something far bigger.
► In 1984, David Bogatin — a convicted Russian mobster and close ally of Semion Mogilevich, a major Russian mob boss — met with Trump in Trump Tower right after it opened. Bogatin bought five condos from Trump at that meeting. Those condos were later seized by the government, which claimed they were used to launder money for the Russian mob. (NY Times, Apr 30, 1992)
► Felix Sater is a Russian-born former mobster, and former managing director of NY real estate conglomerate Bayrock Group LLC located on the 24th floor of Trump Tower. He is a convict who became a govt cooperator for the FBI and other agencies. He grew up with Michael Cohen--Trump's former "fixer" attorney. Cohen's family owned El Caribe, which was a mob hangout for the Russian Mafia in Brooklyn. Cohen had ties to Ukrainian oligarchs through his in-laws and his brother's in-laws. Felix Sater's father had ties to the Russian mob. This goes back more than 30 years.
► Trump was $4 billion in debt after his Atlantic City casinos went bankrupt. No U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in through Bayrock (mentioned above). Bayrock was run by two investors: Tevfik Arif, a Kazakhstan-born former Soviet official who drew on bottomless sources of money from the former Soviet republic; and Felix Sater, a Russian-born businessman who had pleaded guilty in the 1990s to a huge stock-fraud scheme involving the Russian mafia. Bayrock partnered with Trump in 2005 and poured money into the Trump organization under the legal guise of licensing his name and property management.
► In July 2008, the height of the housing bust, Trump sold a mansion in Palm Beach for $95 million to Dmitry Rybolovlev, a Russian oligarch. Trump had purchased it four years earlier for $41.35 million. The sale price was nearly $54 million more than Trump had paid for the property. Again, this was the height of the recession when all other property had plummeted in value.
► Semion Mogilevich was the brains behind the Russian Mafia. Mogilevich operatives have been using Trump real estate for decades to launder money. That means Russian Mafia operatives have been part of his fortune for years. Many of them owned condos in Trump Towers and other properties. They were running operations out of Trump's crown jewel.
► From Craig Unger's AMA: "Early on, a source told me that all this was tied to Semion Mogilevich, the powerful Russian mobster. I had never even heard of him, but I immediately went to a database that listed the owners of all properties in NY state and looked up all the Trump properties. Every time I found a Russian sounding name, I would Google, and add Mogilevich. When you do investigative reporting, you anticipate drilling a number of dry holes, but almost everyone I googled turned out to be a Russian mobster. Again and again. If you know New York you don't expect Trump Tower to be a high crime neighborhood, but there were far too many Russian mobsters in Trump properties for it to be a coincidence."
► So many Russians bought Trump apartments at his developments in Florida that the area became known as Little Moscow. The developers of two of his hotels were Russians with significant links to the Russian mob. The late leader of that mob in the United States, Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, was living at Trump Tower
► According to a Bloomberg investigation (3/16/2017) into Trump World Tower, “a third of units sold on floors 76 through 83 by 2004 involved people or limited liability companies connected to Russia and neighboring states.”
► In 2013, Federal agents busted an “ultraexclusive, high-stakes, illegal poker ring” run by Russian gangsters out of Trump Tower. They operated card games, illegal gambling websites, and a global sports book and laundered more than $100 million. A condo directly below one owned by Trump reportedly served as HQ for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” connected to Semion Mogilevich.
► The Russia Mafia is part and parcel of Russian intelligence. Russia is a mafia state. That is not a metaphor. Putin is head of the Mafia. So the fact that they have been operating out of the home of the president of the United States is deeply disturbing.
► Rudy Giuliani famously prosecuted the Italian mob while he was a federal prosecutor, yet the Russian mob was allowed to thrive. Now he's deeply entwined in the business of Trump and Russian oligarchs. Giuiani appointed Semyon Kislin to the NYC Economic Development Council in 1990, and the FBI described Kislin as having ties to the Russian mob. Of course, it made good political sense for Giuliani to get headlines for smashing the Italian mob.
► A lot of Republicans in Washington are implicated. Boatloads of Russian money went to the GOP--often in legal ways. The NRA got as much as $70M from Russia, then funneled it to the GOP. The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee lead by McConnell got millions from Leonard Blavatnik. In the 90s, the Russians began sending money to top GOP leaders, like Speaker of the House Tom Delay. Craig Unger's book alleges that most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by RU money.
► At the Cityscape USA’s Bridging US and the Emerging Real Estate Markets Conference held in Manhattan, on September 9, 10, and 11, 2008, Donald Trump Jr. was frank about the tide of Russian money supporting the family business, saying "...And in terms of high-end product influx into the US, Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets."
► Eric Trump told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the Trump Organization was able to expand during the financial crisis because “We don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”
► Russian oligarchs co-signed Trump’s Deutsche bank loans.
Trump now gleefully takes cues from Putin:
► At the end of 2018, Putin and his allies started making a strong push for a resolution that would justify their country’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan and reverse an 1989 vote backed by Mikhail Gorbachev that condemned it. The Putinists’ goal was to pass the resolution by Feb. There is no one on this side of the Atlantic who thinks the USSR was justified in invading Afghanistan. And out of nowhere, on January 2nd, Trump came out strongly supporting Russia's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan.
► Trump went against American intelligence on North Korean missiles. He told the FBI he didn't believe their intelligence because Putin told him otherwise. “I don't care, I believe Putin"
► Trump met in secret with Putin at the G20 summit in November 2018, without note takers. 19 days later, he announced a withdrawal from Syria. As a note, Trump conducted FIVE completely private meetings and conferences with Putin, and has gone to great lengths to prevent literally anyone, even people in his administration, from learning what was discussed.
► Trump refused to enforce sanctions legally codified into law - and in some cases reversed standing sanctions on Russian companies.
► He has denounced his own intelligence agencies in a press conference with Putin on election meddling - and publicly endorsed Putin's version of events.
► Trump pulled out of the INF treaty with no explanation, which allows Putin to create long-range hypersonic missiles that threaten Europe with impunity. The US already has all the weaponry that the INF would ban the development of, so this offers us literally nothing, while allowing Russia to develop powerful new weapons to challenge our allies.
► Demanded Russia get invited back into G7
► Pushed the CIA to give American intelligence to the Kremlin.
► Withdrew from the Open Skies treaty
► Received intelligence in 2019 that Russia was paying bounties for dead American soldiers, and hasn't done anything about it by the time of this writing.
► Announced troop withdrawal from Germany (America's missile defense from Russia and forward operating base against Russian aggression)
► And of course, Trump continues to threaten to pull out of NATO, a move so catastrophically stupid, so inconceivably cosmically myopic, I truly can't express the profundity of the idiocy. Suffice to say, pulling out of NATO would be like the only guy in a prison yard with a shotgun just throwing it over the fence for absolutely no reason, suddenly giving the people with crude homemade shivs complete power.
► Trump commuted the sentence of Robert Stone, a former advisor convicted several charges, including lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing a congressional committee proceeding, as part of former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

The issue of representation for unorthodox viewpoints in Islam is a difficult one, due to the fact that Sunnis have a whopping 80% majority in Islam, which is a larger majority than any sect of Christianity could even come close to. So I see that in a lot of general Islamic communities, even ones that try to forego sectarianism, their discussions of Islam are still overwhelmingly reliant on a lot of Sunni frameworks such as the 5 pillars of Islam, the four madhhabs, the six authentic Hadith collections, etc. More often than not, this seems to be what's considered the "norm" for Muslims, and all other expressions of Islam have their validity judged based on how closely they align with Sunni orthodoxy.
So the ideas and practices of different "unorthodox" branches of Islam, and how they've impacted the history of the religion, seem to go totally overlooked and their contributions are downplayed by scholars because they're "not really Muslims". This belief in Sunni Islam being the most "pure" form of Islam is also what often catalyzes a lot of sectarian conflict among Shi'as.
But it's in accepting this framework, consciously or not, that our study of Islam is severely restricted to only one expression, when there are still hundreds if not thousands of expressions out there.
For example, a lot of people seem to accept the "five pillars" as one of the most essential parts of defining someone as a Muslim, but the Nizari Isma'ilis instead follow seven pillars for their faith. And instead of praying 5 times a day, they pray 3 times, which is also what some Shi'a and Qur'anists practice as well. They're also known for being the only branch of Shi'ism with a currently living imam, His Highness the Aga Khan IV.
The Ibadis are considered a sort of "third branch" of Islam alongside Sunnis and Shi'as, and they completely de-emphasize the importance of a caliph or an imam governing the entire Muslim world, instead believing Muslim communities are capable of governing themselves. They're severely understudied by the rest of the Islamic world, and have often had to fight against being dismissed as "Kharijites" due to their heritage from that movement. They make up a majority of Muslims in Oman, and there are large communities of Ibadis in Zanzibar and North Africa as well.
Zaidis are another group of Shi'as that split over the succession of the imamate. Of all branches of Shi'ism, their views align the closest to Sunnis and some compare their theology to the Mu'tazilites. They place a lot of emphasis on the duty of Muslims to rise up and fight corrupt leaders, stemming from Imam Zayd's rebellion against the Umayyad Caliphate. They make up about 50% of Muslims in Yemen today.
Alevis are a group which practice a very mystical and syncretic blend of Shi'ism, Sufism, and some Turkish folk practices. They see God, the Prophet, and Imam Ali as part of something they call "Haqq-Muhammad-Ali", which is either seen as one whole being or a triad comprising one being depending on who you ask. They recognize the revealed scriptures and the Qur'an as their source of guidance, but also uphold some of their own writings such as the Buyruks. They share a lot of key Shi'a practices, like commemorating the Battle of Karbala, but they reject others such as taqlid. Instead of mosques, their religious ceremonies take place in "cemevis", and their rituals involve a lot of music, singing and dancing with both men and women participating. They make up about 11% of Muslims in Turkey, and they're the 2nd largest denomination of Islam in the country behind Hanafi Sunnism. Their place in Islam is a contentious one though, and it's debated both outside and among Alevis whether they're a branch of Islam or a distinct religious movement. The Bektashi Order is a very similar group, but while Alevis constitute a somewhat distinct ethno-religious identity, Bektashis function more as a Sufi tariqa.
Another famous group with a similarly controversial place in Islam are the Alawites. Like the Alevis, Alawites take their heritage from Shi'a Islam and their name stems from their reverence for Imam Ali. However, they broke off from mainstream Shi'a practice and began syncretizing their beliefs with local Christian and Gnostic traditions as well. They keep a lot of their beliefs closed off to outsiders due to historical persecution, but it's said that they revere Imam Ali as a sort of incarnation of God. They also believe in a form of reincarnation, celebrate Christmas, consecrate bread and wine in a ceremony similar to the Eucharist (but instead in a devotion to Ali), and are even encouraging of drinking alcohol in moderation. They're a prominent religious minority in Turkey, Lebanon, and especially Syria, where they're most well-known due to the ruling Al-Assad family being Alawites. Their place in Islam is also subject to a lot of intense debate, but many prominent Alawites like the Al-Assad family have fought to bring themselves into the fold of mainstream Islam, even going as far as giving up some of their more syncretic practices.
The Ahmadis are one of the most controversial branches of Islam, and one of the most targeted Muslim communities in recent times. They get targeted heavily because it's believed that Mirza Ghulam Ahmad being declared the Mahdi challenges the idea that Muhammad is the last prophet sent by God. But the idea of Ahmad as a prophet is a contentious one, and many Ahmadis have differing ideas on his prophethood. But many say that even if he is a prophet, his importance is still subjected primarily to being a renewer of Muhammad's message. Some of their other distinct beliefs also include recognizing figures like the Buddha, Krishna, Zoroaster, and Confucius as prophets. They also believe that evolution is compatible with the Qur'an, and even believe that Adam wasn't actually the first human created but instead was the first prophet given knowledge of God. Mahershala Ali, the first Muslim to win an Academy Award, is an Ahmadi.
In terms of Sufism, when most Muslims talk about it now, it seems like they mostly refer to the most dominant expressions of it like the Mevlevi, Qadiri, and Naqshbandi tariqas. But there are many, many others, and some have such fringe practices that other more orthodox Sufis will try to dissociate themselves from them. Some of the most (in)famous of these are the Qalandars. Qalandars are a group of wandering Sufi dervishes that often tend to all follow distinct and separate tariqas, but are united in having very individual and non-hierarchical beliefs, and also for their participation in gambling, drinking and consuming hashish as part of a sort of antinomial spiritual outlook. In Senegal, where a staggering 95% of Muslims belong to Sufi orders, the Mouride Brotherhood is one of the most prominent. They have very significant influence, both spiritually and politically, and it's because of their order that the city of Touba is now considered a holy site for pilgrimage. The famous Sufi musician Youssou N'Dour is a member of the Mourides. Hurufism is a mystical practice that influences a ton of different Sufi orders, including the Naqshbandis. Hurufism places a special emphasis on the mysticism of letters, with the Arabic and Persian alphabets serving as a sort of "key" to unlocking the hidden inner meaning of the Qur'an. Uwaisi is another really interesting tradition. It's a practice where an individual is able to gain initiation into a Sufi chain of transmission without needing to physically make a pact with a living Sufi, but by making contact with the spirits of Sufi masters. Then there's also the Inayati Order, which was one of the first Sufi orders to gain prominence in the Western world and was hugely influential on spreading Sufism in the United States.
Speaking of the U.S., some of the most prominent branches of Islam in America have also been some of the most unorthodox. The Moorish Science Temple was one of the first and largest Muslim groups in the U.S., and they gained a lot of popularity among black communities by combining Islam with a belief that Africans in America are descendants of the "Moorish" people of the Moroccan Empire, and they sought to establish their identities as Moorish people rather than as "black" or African-American. They became really popular because they allowed black Americans to forge a distinct cultural identity for themselves, which is an important thing to have considering how the slave trade completely wiped out the cultural ties of the people they enslaved. The popularity of Moorish Science would also set the groundwork for the much much more controversial Nation of Islam. Despite the reputation they have now, it was one of the most important groups among the early Black Liberation movement, it helped to serve communities that had been completely scorned by white Americans, and it spread Islam to countless people in America including the beloved Malcolm X. Even if they've gained quite a bit of (deserved) criticism for uplifting Elijah Muhammad as a prophet, assassinating Malcolm X, anti-semitism, adoption of Scientology and Dianetics, etc. it would be flat out historical revisionism to deny the impact they had on Islam in America.
Anyways, this post is getting extremely unwieldy. There's a lot of other groups I wanna talk about that exist even more on the fringes of what's considered Islam, like Druze, Yazidism, Yarsanism, Kebatinan, and others but I don't want to take up too much space writing this out.
So I guess for my TL;DR / overall question, what criteria should be used to define whether or not someone is a Muslim? Where is the line that someone needs to cross that they're no longer considered a Muslim? This is a topic of huge interest to me, so I'm curious what other people think.
Thank you!

Going through old issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and posting highlights in my own words. For anyone interested, I highly recommend signing up for the actual site at f4wonline and checking out the full archives.
PREVIOUSLY:

• Observer Rewind - 1987 by SaintRidley
  
• The Complete Wrestling Observer Rewind 1991-2001
  

1-7-2002	1-14-2002	1-21-2002	1-28-2002
2-4-2002	2-11-2002	2-18-2002	2-25-2002
3-4-2002	3-11-2002	3-18-2002	3-25-2002
4-1-2002	4-8-2002	4-15-2002	4-22-2002
4-29-2002	5-6-2002	5-13-2002	5-20-2002
5-27-2002	6-3-2002	6-10-2002	6-17-2002
6-24-2002	7-1-2002

• Dave opens with a brief history of the cursed Hart family before going into the latest story, that Bret Hart has suffered a stroke. Hart suffered a blood clot on the right side of his brain, causing temporary paralysis on the left side of his body after hitting the back of his head on a rock following a bicycle accident. Hart was going down a hill and not wearing a helmet when he hit a hole on the bike path and flew over the handlebars. He distinctly remembers the accident, hitting the ground, and being unable to get up. He was able to call his ex-wife Julie on his cell phone and help was summoned. At the hospital 12 hours later, doctors determined he had suffered a stroke. His back is still in great pain but as of press time, he's made a lot of progress and is able to use his left leg again. At one point, that went away and he wasn't even able to wiggle his toes, but the feeling has since come back. He still has no control over his left arm however. But doctors are optimistic that he'll be able to walk out of the hospital on his own power eventually. Doctors are saying they don't believe the stroke was related to his concussion history at the moment, but more tests are being done. He does have a family history of strokes, as Helen Hart suffered several in her final days. He's currently bedridden or using a wheelchair and will have to re-learn how to walk again. While they do expect him to walk again, a full 100% recovery from something like this is a bit more rare, so he may have lifelong lingering effects. On WWE's website, Jim Ross wished him well and even Vince McMahon chimed in, giving a comment to the Calgary Sun saying, "Despite our differences of opinions, I respect him. Bret's contributions to the WWE are enormous and everyone thinks very highly of him" and wished Hart well.
  
• WWE's latest business reports are out and shows that, despite the downturn in business, WWE is still doing just fine financially. Even though they're facing 5-year lows when it comes to attendance and TV ratings, the previous quarter was the largest grossing quarter in company history (due to the success of Wrestlemania and a lot of international touring). Even though the popularity of the product is down, between merchandise, licensing deals, etc. WWE has figured out how to milk more money out of a smaller fanbase via other avenues. Plus, every time business in the U.S. goes down, they're able to tour more overseas to make up for it. During the bad mid-90s years, as terrible as things got in the U.S., they were still doing huge business overseas and those tours were vital in sustaining the company during those times. There was a lot of talk about international expansion this week, which means that's probably the plan again. And even with declining ratings, WWE is still the top rated show for TNN and UPN, but despite the high ratings, neither shows are strong moneymakers for the networks because wrestling still has a negative reputation among sponsors. So it will need to sustain higher ratings than most shows would in order to stave off cancellation, but there's no danger of that yet. Ratings haven't gotten that bad.
  
• During the investors call, Linda McMahon blamed competition from shows such as The Osbournes, Fear Factor, Spongebob, and Survivor as contributing to the falling ratings. All of those shows do higher ratings than WWE, but for those keeping track, Survivor is the only one that even airs head-to-head against WWE. The other 3 are on different days at different times and have zero bearing on WWE's ratings. Linda McMahon also blamed video games for the declining ratings, as if those are a new phenomenon that didn't exist last year. The departure of Steve Austin was completely avoided until someone outright asked about it, at which Linda said that Austin is currently suspended for conduct reasons and said it would only have a short-term impact and noted that new stars like RVD, Chris Jericho, Booker T, and Brock Lesnar are being pushed to take his place. She noted that WWE made a flat $2 million from Rock's involvement in Scorpion King because he's under WWE contract and they will also make a portion of the profits on the back-end. Anyway, the rest of this is "blah blah blah revenue is down such-and-such % from last year." So just imagine a bunch of big numbers in 2001 and then imagine all those same numbers, but smaller, in 2002. See, easy peasy!
  
• XWF has just about thrown in the towel. After a lengthy meeting this week, the powers that be pretty much realized that it's going to be all but impossible to get this promotion off the ground. After shooting 10 episodes last year, they've spent much of this year trying to secure a television deal without success. In the TV industry, despite the success of WWE, wrestling is seen as a fad that was hot for a while but has since died out. XWF's last-ditch effort was with WGN in Chicago, a local station that does have some national coverage. But it would have cost them $300,000+ just to pay for 5 episodes to air. Buying TV time is what has killed other promotions in the past and XWF wasn't making enough on live shows to pay that cost. Plus, WWE's success has changed what a national promotion is expected to look like. If networks are going to put you on their TV, they want you to have big budget production, pyro, effects, etc. Nobody other than WWE can afford to do that and everyone else looks minor league in comparison because of it. Bottom line, it's pretty much impossible to run a profitable wrestling company on a national level without a strong TV deal to off-set the costs. And it's impossible to get that TV deal without having the money to put together a big budget product that can attract them. Officially, XWF isn't folding completely just yet, though all the wrestlers have been released from contracts and most of the employees have been cut as well. The plan for now still seems to be to sell the original tapings overseas and try to follow up by running a tour over there with many of those same stars. But those tapes are a year old. Hogan and Lawler are back in WWE, and a lot of the footage already feels dated. And they obviously won't be able to bring Hogan on the tour. European fans can just wait for WWE to come if they want that. So needless to say, this is pretty much the end of the road for XWF.
  
• The second NWA-TNA show is in the books and was highlighted by an incredible 4-way main event of Low-Ki vs. Jerry Lynn vs. AJ Styles vs. Psicosis that Dave says was every bit of 4.5 stars. But the rest of the show was an embarrassment. Don West is enthusiastic but adds nothing else as a commentator and Ed Ferrara is obnoxious enough to make you want to change the channel on a show you paid for. Furthermore, the response Dave heard from readers on this show was about half as much as the first show, which isn't a good sign for potential PPV buys, but it was also expected. No one knows the actual numbers for the first show yet. Dave has heard estimates anywhere from 25,000 to 80,000 buys. Regardless, just from anecdotal research, the second episode is probably looking at around a 50% drop from whatever the debut did. Jarrett vs. Scott Hall was passable, but everything else was terrible until the main event. Bad production, no graphics, bad camerawork, half the stars are no-names to all but the most hardcore fans...it's becoming very apparent how much of a stranglehold WWE has on American wrestling and how difficult it's going to be for anyone else to gain a foothold. The atmosphere was awful (remember, this was taped after the first show, so the half empty building had already sat through several hours of this already). The lingerie battle royal, on PPV, was less risque than what WWE does on network TV every week, with women who don't have a fraction of the star power. Dave desperately wants to see an alternative company make it, but this is 2 weeks in a row of a show that felt like WCW Thunder: dead crowd, bad show, with only one redeeming Lucha-style match to save it. That being said, the match was as good as any match he's seen this year and for that reason alone, Dave can't give the show a complete thumbs down. But they've got a steep mountain to climb if they want to survive.
  

WATCH: Low-Ki vs. Jerry Lynn vs. AJ Styles vs. Psicosis (TNA Weekly PPV #2)

• Taping for the 3rd season of Tough Enough has been postponed due to Kelsey Grammer. Yup. The plan was to film the show over a 9-week period from July-September at a home in Malibu, in the neighborhood Grammer lives in. Grammer, along with several other neighbors, expressed concern about disruptions in the usually quiet neighborhood and found a municipal code that restricts filming in the area, noting that any filming can only take place during a 14-day period. Grammer and his neighbors went to the city council who voted 5-0 to enforce the code. WWE had already spent more than $100,000 on pre-production in the area but now may be forced to find a new location to film. If they can't find a similar beachfront location, they may just move it back to Stamford like they did before.
  
• Diamond Dallas Page's in-ring career is officially over, after his insurance company and WWE management all decided to listen to the doctors because his back is a mess. Lloyd's of London informed DDP this week that if he wrestled again, they would terminate his insurance policy. Vince McMahon and Jim Ross agreed, after receiving letters from DDP's doctors recommending retirement. He still has 2 years remaining on his contract and is expected to stay with the company in a different role, perhaps announcing, though DDP has said he would be interested in a public relations role. From here, Dave recaps DDP's career as if he died, full obituary style. It's a long piece on every major storyline and angle DDP was ever involved in, but it's not particularly newsworthy. Great read though.
  
• Dave has seen the recent PRIDE show that was headlined by Don Frye vs. NOAH star Yoshihiro Takayama and hoooooly shit. Original reports of this fight were that it was one of the best in MMA history. Now that Dave has seen it....yeah. "You could have said the first two minutes of the match were the greatest two minutes in the history of MMA, boxing, kickboxing, pro wrestling and just about anything short of sex, and not have been disappointed, because it was," Dave writes. He says it was the fight of the year but he also hopes we've seen the last of these two men in PRIDE. Takayama took a merciless beating because he's all offense and no defense but he can take a punch. It makes for exciting fights, but he's going to get seriously hurt fighting like that some day. And Frye, who has been doing this for years, also needs to face reality at 36 years old after the beating he took in this fight and against Shamrock a few months back. Basically, both men are the type of guys who will go in there and die in the ring before they give up and that's not good. And stepping away from the sport after this, arguably one of the greatest fights in MMA history, would be the perfect time to escape with their health still relatively intact (I posted this in last week's Rewind, but it deserves to be seen again).
  

WATCH: Don Frye vs. Yoshihiro Takayama - PRIDE 2002

• Ratings news: Raw was the lowest rated show in over 4 years, so that's not good. And Smackdown didn't fare much better. And in fact, the Jeff Hardy vs. Undertaker ladder match (more on that in a bit) was an outright disaster, with viewers tuning out in droves, despite how well the match seems to have gotten over with fans. Overall, more than 1.1 million viewers tuned out during that particular match, a staggering loss, to the point where Dave actually wonders if there was a clerical error from the Neilsen ratings people or something. It also shows how little people care about the Hardyz right now and Dave thinks Jeff in particular needs to go away for awhile.
  
• The wrestling war in the U.S. may be finished but it's still boiling over in Puerto Rico. In noting the TV ratings for both WWC and IWA, Dave mentions that for the first time since it was founded in 1973, Carlos Colon's WWC promotion is solidly in 2nd place. IWA is on fire right now in Puerto Rico, outdrawing WWC in both TV ratings and live crowds.
  
• Eric Bischoff had meetings this week with Keiji Muto and Motoko Baba of AJPW, but it appears that the meetings didn't lead anywhere. Dave talks about how a lot of Japanese companies like to try and work out deals with the U.S. promotions and promoters because it gets good coverage in the magazines and newspapers and makes them appear like a major, international brand. But ultimately, the deals never seem to go anywhere. Muto and Ms. Baba were in Hawaii a few weeks ago meeting with people in WWE for the exact same reason. Bischoff does have interest in any idea that comes along if it's viable, but he's told friends he doesn't see anything viable coming along because TV networks aren't interested in wrestling right now. In order to get a real product off the ground, Bischoff estimates you'd need a $75 million commitment from a TV network and even then, it's not guaranteed to succeed and if it fails, whoever approved it at the network would probably be looking for a new career. So it's a huge gamble that none of the networks want to take, which means there's nothing viable in the wrestling world right now for Bischoff to get involved with (oh, I suspect he'll find something new to do in a few weeks...)
  
• Hayabusa announced plans to start his own promotion called WMF (Wrestling's Marvelous Future), or FMW backwards. He will appear in public as Hayabusa for the first time since his career-ending injury last year that left him paralyzed.
  
• Women's indie wrestler Ms.Chif is a genetic research scientist by day and was featured on a news show discussing her work on the Human Genome Project. Dave goes into what this is and how groundbreaking the project is and how it could change sports forever due to the way they've been able to engineer muscle mass in lab rats and things like that. Click for example
  
• A couple weeks ago, Road Warrior Animal and Keiji Muto put together an indie show in Atlantic City featuring a bunch of washed up 80s names from the past. I didn't mention it because it didn't seem like a big deal but some fun news coming out of it: everybody's check bounced. Even Road Warrior Animal's check, because he was working with some other guy who was acting as the promoter. Needless to say, a bunch of wrestlers are pretty pissed off, in particular at Animal who they all know and trust and thought he wouldn't allow everybody to get fucked over like this by some snake promoter.
  

WATCH: full show of this big indie show Animal put together

• Dave saw a tape of the latest Ring of Honor show and says it was as good a show from top-to-bottom as he's seen from any promotion in the world all year. Several 4-star level matches. AJ Styles, Low-Ki, Bryan Danielson, Spanky, Amazing Red, Doug Williams.....Dave sees star potential in all of them and thinks Low-Ki and Danielson in particular could be cult superstars in Japan (especially if Danielson puts a mask back on)
  
• Deathmatch wrestler Necro Butcher nearly had to have his arm amputated after a match with Mad Man Pondo left his arm punctured with a light bulb tube. Here's the spot. NSFL, obviously.
  

WATCH: ouch.

• NWA president Jim Miller is expected to get involved with TNA in an on-screen role. Miller is currently a huge heel for Zero-1 in Japan but for now, the plans are not for him to do the same in TNA. Reportedly, they want to avoid doing the heel commissioner gimmick that WWE does constantly and that everyone else has been copying ever since.
  
• Terry Taylor had talks with TNA about coming in but they only wanted to pay him $500 per week to work the gorilla position at the shows, and he turned it down.
  
• TNA has signed a new wrestler named Monty Brown, who has been wrestling on the indies in Michigan under the name Alpha Male (god I wish that guy had gotten the chance to live up to his full potential).
  
• AJ Styles was on Observer Live this week and talked about why he chose not to sign with WWE. He said the offer they gave him was for only $500-per-week and he couldn't justify uprooting his family from Atlanta and moving to Cincinnati for so little money. His wife is currently in college in Georgia and that also played a role in wanting to stay where they are. Aside from wrestling, Styles is currently working full-time as a landscaper because even at the level he's at, as one of the hottest stars in the indies, there's very little money in pro wrestling outside of WWE.
  
• Lots of news on Vince Russo. For starters, his lawsuit with Hulk Hogan has not been settled yet, although Russo has said he would be agreeable to working with Hogan. As for Hogan, just like everybody else, he was blindsided by Russo being re-hired by WWE and, just like everybody else, his reaction was pretty much, "WTF? No. Fuck that guy." There also appears to be no truth to the rumor that WWE rehired him in an effort to quash a potential tell-all book. Dave doesn't buy any of those conspiracy theories. He thinks the answer is as simple as it looks: Vince McMahon realizes the writing is in a rut, he's panicking, and he's going back to what worked in the past. And most recently, that was Vince Russo. So there ya go. In an interview on WWE.com, Undertaker was asked about it and was also negative and said if he was McMahon, he wouldn't be so forgiving on people who walked out on the company like Russo did, and compared it to Austin walking out. So seems like Taker isn't too keen on Austin right now either. Triple H was more diplomatic and just said basically, "Hey, whatever is good for the company." But his girlfriend, Stephanie McMahon, is the current head of the writing team and she's made NO secret about how pissed she is over Russo's return, so you gotta figure Triple H is just trying to play it cool. Jim Ross also commented on it, admitting he doesn't have much personal respect for Russo, especially after the way they mocked him in WCW, but also said he's okay with whatever is best for WWE. So that's where it stands: Russo is still basically a consultant who may or may not be taking over as head of creative if/when Vince finally decides to make a change. And in the meantime, fuckin' nobody likes him or wants him around.
  
• WWE seems to have finally realized that building Raw so heavily around Ric Flair in 2002 probably isn't the way to keep your product feeling hot and fresh. Flair has basically been positioned as the focal point of Raw, as both heel and babyface, for the last few months. And he was even scheduled to work main events on all upcoming house shows (4 nights per week). As much as Dave loves him, even he realizes that, at 53 years old, building around Flair as your top full-time babyface headlining all the house shows isn't an ideal solution. So he wasn't used on Raw last week and was only used this week in a brief segment to help get Lesnar over, and his house show schedule has been cut back as well.
  
• Notes from Raw: the show opened with Lesnar issuing an open challenge, mocking the Kurt Angle/John Cena open challenge match from Smackdown a few days earlier (more on that in a moment). Dave thinks this is a tease for an inevitable Lesnar vs. Angle feud (indeed, Wrestlemania 19 is on the horizon). Ended up being answered by Flair, who got beat by Lesnar. More of Trish Stratus (and Jackie Gayda this week, for whatever reason) humiliating Molly Holly for being "fat" and pulling her pants down to reveal her wearing granny panties. This fuckin' company, man. They announced Chris Benoit is now a member of the Raw roster, without even bothering to try and give an explanation for why or how. The last year of WWE has shown a staggering level of complacency since WCW folded. No competition, so no need to put any effort into telling stories that make sense. Because what else are you gonna watch? Fuck you, that's what. X-Pac was shown knocked unconscious backstage, causing the rest of the NWO members to freak out and leading Dave to joke that Scott Hall used to be unconscious backstage all the time and no one seemed to care then so what's the big deal? Then the UndertakeJeff Hardy match which Dave really liked and says built to the finish well and the live crowd was super into it. But man, the TV ratings fell right off a cliff during this match. It ended with Undertaker winning and then shaking Jeff's hand to show he respected him and to help Taker's babyface turn. Dave thinks it was a great angle, but on the flip side, they just had Undertaker do the same thing on Smackdown last week, shaking John Cena's hands and endorsing the new rookie, and having Taker do this for 2 young guys in the same week kinda lessens the impact of the moment the second time. Also, as great an angle as it was, Jeff Hardy isn't salvageable right now. He needs to go away for awhile and come back with a fresh character. The Hardyz in general have had almost negative momentum lately and an Undertaker handshake ain't fixing that (yeah, Jeff was so mentally checked out at this point. He needed help, not an endorsement.)
  
• Notes from next week's Smackdown: this show hasn't aired yet but Dave has reports about an UndertakeKurt Angle match where the finish was totally botched. After the show was over and all the fans had left, they sent Angle and Undertaker back out there and had them redo the finish. They put a bunch of employees and people in the front row and then filmed the end of the match using mostly closeups so you couldn't see that the rest of the arena was completely empty. Gonna be interesting to see how it looks after editing (I just watched it on the network and they end up using the original ending that Dave describes. Didn't look particularly botched to me. Doesn't appear any of the close-up later shots were ever used that I can see EDIT scratch that). Also, Hogan and Edge won the tag titles. More on all that next week.
  
• Notes from THIS week's Smackdown: one of the best WWE shows in a long time because it showed an actual focus on pushing new talent, with Dave saying this is the first time in a long time that he's seen light at the end of this dark tunnel WWE is in. The show was mostly built around the debut of OVW wrestler Prototype, using his real name John Cena. He was brought in to answer Angle's open challenge, and you'd expect a squash, but instead they had a hell of a competitive match and Dave says Angle is the best wrestler in the business today because he carried Cena to what was easily the best match of his young career. Afterwards, everyone congratulated Cena, with Undertaker giving him the big endorsement. Rico was out next and he and Cena were actually a great tag team in OVW, with a ton of chemistry. But Cena is now being groomed to possibly become a big star, while Rico is basically dead in the water with this hair stylist gimmick. Batista also finally got a chance to look good without this stupid Deacon gimmick hampering him. Chris Jericho vs. Hogan was the best match Hogan has had since his WCW days when he was still a babyface feuding with Flair.
  

WATCH: John Cena debuts against Kurt Angle - Smackdown 2002

• X-Pac and Kevin Nash are at it again, getting a finish changed to a match on Raw last week. The Booker T & Goldust vs. X-Pac and Big Show match was supposed to end with Booker T pinning X-Pac. But Pac and Nash went and complained again and the finish got changed to Big Show pinning Goldust. It was a little bit of a bigger deal this time than the last time because WWE is making an actual attempt to push new stars and Booker T is one of the ones they're focusing on building. He needs big wins, and having the finish changed on this one directly hurts Booker.
  
• John Cena didn't receive word that he would be debuting on Smackdown until about 3 hours before the show began. He had been on the road doing house shows with the Smackdown crew, so he was already there and they made the call to throw him on TV (and, while they were at it, base half the show around his big debut). Having him use his real name was also a last minute decision, with programs printed up for the following week still advertising him as "Prototype."
  
• WWE's Divas Undressed special was canceled by TNN at the last minute and did not air as scheduled. TNN determined that it was full of "gratuitous sexual innuendo and was exploitive of women," leading Dave to wonder who TNN thinks they've been working with all this time? "Gratuitous sexual innuendo and was exploitive of women" is what TNN paid all that money for when they stole them away from USA. What'd they think they were getting with a spin-off called "Divas Undressed?" (I think this did eventually air somewhere, it's out there online if you look for it).
  
• Chris Benoit has been fully cleared as of the beginning of this month and should be back in the ring wrestling again any day now. He's been told he'll have to adjust his style some because he can no longer take bumps on his head and neck like he used to.
  
• Hulk Hogan did an interview with a Virginia newspaper and it was hilarious. He pretty much framed his return to WWE as Rock leaving to go make movies and so Vince called Hogan to come save the company in Rock's absence. Oh that's how it went, is it? I see. When asked about Rock's Hollywood success eclipsing his own, Hogan had a response for that too. Basically, Hogan claimed he was competing with Stallone and Schwarzeneggar when he was making movies, whereas Rock has an open field with no real competition in the action movie star department (this is around the same time Vin Diesel and Jason Statham were becoming household action star names so I dunno about all that).
  
• WWE sued a small New Hampshire record label called Stone Cold Records for obvious reasons, arguing that the name creates confusion in the marketplace and interferes with WWE's own Stone Cold marketing. Dave thinks this is funny just because this is the EXACT scenario that led to the WWF/WWE name lawsuit. In that case, of course, WWE was arguing the complete opposite. Anyway, the owner of the record label (which was formed in 1999) says he'd never heard of Stone Cold Steve Austin until a WWE lawyer called and that he doesn't watch wrestling (this lawsuit drags on for months).
  
• Construction is underway at WWE Niagra Falls, a new entertainment complex being built there which will have a restaurant, rides, indoor laser tag, etc. They hope to have it open in the summer (this ends up lasting for almost 10 years before it finally closed in 2011).
  

NEXT WEDNESDAY: Vince Russo joins NWA-TNA, Kevin Nash tears his quad, WWE spanks the PTC in court, Vader arrested, and more...