Punk in Finland

selkäydinreaktori wrote: ↑

12 Oct 2019, 09:15

Nahkanuijan nuupauttaja wrote: ↑

12 Oct 2019, 11:21

Politics
October 11, 2019 / 11:44 PM / Updated 7 hours ago
U.S. House committee chief says will 'accelerate' impeachment probe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The chairman of one of the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives committees leading the impeachment probe of President Donald Trump said on Friday the committee would continue and “accelerate” its efforts.

“We expect to announce additional testimony from relevant witnesses in the coming days and remain prepared to compel testimony through duly authorized subpoenas as appropriate,” Representative Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a letter to fellow House members on Friday.

White House accidentally sends Ukraine talking points to Democrats again

The White House accidentally sent Democrats a list of talking points related to ex-Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch’s Friday House deposition, two sources with knowledge of the email told The Hill, the second time in a month the administration has sent its Ukraine talking points to Democrats.

The email included guidance for Republicans seeking to defend the president from potentially damaging witness testimony from an ambassador who was removed from her post in May under controversial circumstances.

“We are not concerned with any information Yovanovitch might share, because the President did nothing wrong,” the White House email meant for Republicans said. “But we are concerned that Schiff is putting her a precarious position by having her testify in secret without State Department lawyers be present.”

"It raises serious questions about why Schiff is willing to put career officials in such risky situations while bullying them with legally unfounded threats of obstruction charges," the email continued.

It added that Schiff "is willing to ride roughshod over fair process and to use career officials to further a baseless political objective."

Lusku wrote: ↑

12 Oct 2019, 12:23

kerta voi olla vielä vahinko mutta että toistamiseen?

Politics
October 11, 2019 / 9:48 PM / Updated 2 hours ago
Indicted Giuliani associate worked on behalf of Ukrainian oligarch Firtash
Aram Roston, Karen Freifeld, Polina Ivanova

Spoiler:

6 Min Read

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - One of the two Florida businessmen who helped U.S. President Donald Trump’s personal attorney investigate his political rival, Democrat Joe Biden, also has been working for the legal team of a Ukrainian oligarch who faces bribery charges in the United States, according to attorneys for the businessmen and the oligarch.
FILE PHOTO: Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash arrives at court in Vienna, Austria, February 21, 2017. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader/File Photo

Lev Parnas, one of the two associates of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, served as a translator for lawyers representing oligarch Dmytro Firtash. Parnas was arrested on Thursday along with the other Florida businessman, Igor Fruman, on unrelated charges that included illegally funneling $325,000 to a political action committee supporting pro-Trump candidates.

Both men had worked in an unspecified capacity for Firtash before Parnas joined the Ukrainian’s legal team, according to a person familiar with the Florida men’s business dealings with Firtash.

The Floridians’ connection to indicted oligarch Firtash injects an intriguing new character into the rapidly unfolding drama surrounding the effort to impeach Trump.

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives launched the impeachment inquiry, the first step in unseating a U.S. president, over allegations that Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to help investigate Biden, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Giuliani was probing discredited allegations that Biden, when he was vice president, sought the firing of Ukraine’s chief prosecutor to halt the investigation of a gas company on which his son, Hunter Biden, was a board member. The Bidens have denied the claims, and the Trump camp has produced no evidence to support the assertions.

Firtash, one of Ukraine’s wealthiest businessmen, is battling extradition by U.S. authorities on bribery charges from Vienna, where he has lived for five years.

Federal prosecutors in Illinois said in court papers in 2017 that Firtash was an “upper-echelon” associate of Russian organized crime. He was indicted in 2013 and charged with bribing Indian officials for access to titanium mines. Firtash has denied any wrongdoing.

Firtash was “financing” the activities of Parnas and Fruman, the source familiar with their business dealings said. The source did not detail their specific work for the oligarch or how much money he had paid them and over what period.

U.S. lawmakers have sought to question the pair about their involvement in Giuliani’s investigation as part of the impeachment inquiry. Giuliani told Reuters in an interview that Parnas and Fruman - U.S. citizens who were born in Ukraine and Belarus, respectively - had helped “find people for me in Ukraine.”

In recent months, Parnas was working for Firtash’s legal team, Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing. The firm worked on Firtash’s criminal and extradition cases.

“Mr. Parnas was retained by DiGenova & Toensing, LLP as an interpreter in order to communicate with their client Mr. Firtash, who does not speak English,” the Washington-based firm said in a statement.

A spokesman for the firm said Fruman was not retained in any capacity. DiGenova and Toensing did not comment further on Firtash’s business dealings with the two men in response to questions from Reuters.

John Dowd, the lawyer representing Parnas and Fruman, confirmed to Reuters that Parnas had worked for Firtash’s legal team as an interpreter. But Dowd also told the U.S. Congress that both men worked for DiGenova and Toensing.

On Oct. 3, Dowd wrote Congress to say the two men could not provide certain information about Ukraine because they were partially covered by attorney-client and other legal privileges. Dowd based the privilege claim on the fact that the two men assisted lawyers DiGenova and Toensing; that they had worked for Giuliani; and that Giuliani had previously represented them in their personal and business affairs.

Dowd’s letter did not mention Firtash. He declined to respond to a request to clarify whether one or both of his clients worked for Firtash’s legal team.
Slideshow (2 Images)

Parnas’s role as an interpreter for DiGenova and Toensing was reported on Thursday by the Wall Street Journal.
FLIGHTS TO VIENNA

The person familiar with Parnas and Fruman’s business affairs told Reuters that both men had been working for Firtash for several months before Parnas joined the Ukrainian mogul’s legal team, and that Firtash has paid their expenses in the past. Their costs include private jet charters in the United States and foreign travel to Vienna, according to the source, who is familiar with their finances.

Giuliani told Reuters the two men had been to Vienna - where Firtash lives - three to six times in the last two months. Giuliani declined to comment on the reasons for their travels. He said he did not know about any business relationship between Firtash and the two men that helped him investigate Biden.

“They could be involved in business with each other,” Giuliani said. “It’s possible. I don’t know. They may be involved in his defense.”

Firtash is a former supporter of Ukraine’s ousted pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovich. He made a fortune selling Russian gas to the Kiev government. An Austrian court in June cleared the way for his extradition to the United States, but Firtash’s legal team continues to fight it.

In an interview with Reuters last month, well before his arrest, Parnas said Firtash had been framed by U.S. prosecutors and diplomats.

“They took an innocent man like Dmytro Firtash and they painted him out to be  this bad old Mafia  guy,  which he’s obviously not. He’s one of the most honest businessmen out there.  Incredible businessman.”

Parnas told Reuters that Firtash was the victim of a cabal that he alleges was involved in suppressing corruption by Joe Biden and his son in Ukraine. “Same people involved,” he said. “Same characters.”

Parnas declined to comment on the specific work he performed for Firtash, referring questions to the oligarch’s lawyers, Toensing and DiGenova.

According to documents uncovered during the United States diplomatic cables leak in 2010, Firtash told U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor of needing permission from alleged Russian crime boss Semyon Mogilevich to do business in Ukraine during the lawless 1990s

In 2014, a special report by Reuters documented the Gazprom sold more than 20 billion cubic metres of gas at below market price enabling Firtash to make up to $3 billion during the deal. The report also notes the release of documents that prove Putin extended credit lines to Firtash of up to $11 billion which helped Firtash extend influence during the 2010 presidential election in Ukraine

In 2008, Firtash was involved with a firm owned by Paul Manafort in a $895 million project to redevelop the Drake Hotel in New York City into a spa and luxury mall to be called Bulgari Tower. According to court records, Firtash's firm had planned to invest $100 million in the project.[10] The deal was never finalized.[11

In 2010, Firtash was involved in financing Viktor Yanukovych's presidential campaign.[33] Firtash stated that he sincerely believed that Yanukovych would learn from the events of 2003–2004 and adopt different policies. Since 2011, they have been at odds on questions of public policy. In 2011, Firtash said that Yushchenko had planned good reforms, but Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko had not allowed him to implement them.[34]

In March 2014, on behalf of the business circles of Ukraine, Firtash addressed Aleksandr Shokhin, the Head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, and the wider business community concerning the situation in the political arena and urged Russian businessmen to stop the war between Russia and Ukraine.[35]

useita varabooleja piilossa wrote: ↑

12 Oct 2019, 09:29

selkäydinreaktori wrote: ↑

12 Oct 2019, 09:15

Hemmetti, kun naurattaa vastaukset tohon!

The Guardian wrote:Hunter Biden is a reminder: Democrats are morally corrupt, too
I don’t want to hear Democrats pretending that the fact that Biden’s son got a do-nothing $600k per year corporate handout is unremarkable. It is wrong

One of the peculiar stupidities of the American political mind is its resolute refusal to hold two separate ideas at once. Our dominant political narrative is like a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book for morons, offering only a conservative red storyline or a liberal blue storyline, with nothing in between or outside those primary color bounds. Politicians themselves, out of self-interest, adhere to this narrative, which makes the political press adhere to the narrative, and before you know it you have an entire country that thinks about the ethical complexities of political economy with all the nuance of a Florida Gators fan hollering about why the Georgia Bulldogs are bad.

We are presented with politics as sports, even though sports are a terrible model for politics. A population that chooses a political party and sticks to it out of team loyalty is a good thing for political power brokers, but a bad thing for the population of people. Every hypocritical, lying, self-serving greedhead who uses politics for the most cynical possible purposes leans on the fact that, as long as they are wearing their team colors, voters will forgive them for anything. The decrepit, oligarchal state of democracy can be attributed in part to the fact that – as any sleight-of-hand magician can tell you – it is easy to pick people’s pockets when they are so easily distracted by shiny symbols. Sometimes the symbol is a Bible, or an American flag, or a shotgun and orange vest wielded by a congressman to show you that despite the fact that he went to Yale and spent his career as an oil and gas lobbyist, he shares your affinity for duck hunting. And sometimes, the distracting symbol that makes you dumb is the blue flag of the Democratic party.

The son of a longtime US senator gets his start as a lawyer with one of the biggest corporate donors to his dad’s campaigns; a friend of his dad’s gets him a job in the Clinton administration, and then as a lobbyist; later, while his father is vice president, he is given a $50,000 per month seat on the board of a Ukrainian energy firm, despite lacking any clear energy expertise. How does this all happen? It happened the same way that Chelsea Clinton became a “special correspondent” for NBC News, and Jenna Bush got a job as a Today show host, and the Trump children got jobs overseeing a real estate empire. It happened the same way, for that matter, that George W Bush – objectively, a flailing dumbass – became the governor of Texas and then the president of the United States.

When you are the son of a famous and powerful politician, you are showered with opportunity, whether you deserve it or not. This is nepotism, but it is also, if we are being direct, a form of corruption. Moral corruption. Not only because these prestigious positions are not earned, and because these celebukids are taking something that rightly should have gone to someone more deserving; but also because, even though there is rarely anything so crude as a direct quid pro quo, this undeserved largesse is always motivated to some extent by a desire by some powerful interest to take advantage of the halo of influence cast by the parents. That influence should properly accrue to the public, who their parents work for. The lavish lives afforded to famous kids are, in effect, stolen from the American people. Each coveted job handed to a president’s kid represents a small quantity of subversion of the spirit of the democratic process.

This particular form of injustice is often waved off as just be the way of the world. Seven-foot-tall people get to be in the NBA, and the children of presidents and vice-presidents get sweet, lucrative gigs whether they’re qualified for them or not. We shouldn’t take this so lightly. We should, in fact, be enraged by it. Politics is not just another way to get rich. It is a public service field, and the more important the position, the more stringent the ethical requirements it should carry.

The next three generations of a president’s family should have to work the checkout line at Family Dollar. What better way to stay in touch with the pulse of America? What better way to demonstrate how much they value hard work, and the gargantuan struggle to join the middle class? This simple rule would prevent political dynasties, which are always and everywhere antithetical to a well functioning democracy. We don’t need more Bushes in the White House, nor more Kennedys in Congress, nor more of the few good media jobs taken up by people who attended Sidwell Friends school while escorted by armed guards. An absurd share of life’s rewards are not a birthright for the spawn of public servants. Give the rest of the world a chance, you greedy little cloistered aristocrats.

Hunter Biden and his unearned riches are a moral failure. The same moral failure infects Democrats and Republicans alike. (This is a simple demonstration of the fact that “class war” is a much more accurate lens on politics than “red versus blue”.) Yes, the Republican party exists to perpetuate rather than destroy this inequality-generating system, and yes, the Trump family has taken nepotism, corruption, and cartoonish greed to previously unseen levels. These are reasons for Democrats not to do the same things. I don’t want to hear Democrats – members of the party that ostensibly stands for more equality and purer democracy – pretending that the fact that the VP’s son got a do-nothing $600k per year corporate handout is unremarkable. I want Democrats to demonstrate that we live our values. I want Democrats to send their kids to public school, unionize their workplaces and give money to the poor.

Send Hunter Biden and his peers right down to Family Dollar with name tags and a training manual. Lead by example. If the Trump kids refuse to join them, don’t worry – we’ll have the moral high ground. Surely that’s what matters to “Middle Class Joe.”

karkkipiispa wrote: ↑

12 Oct 2019, 13:12

Välikevennys. Trump rallyssa tällä viikolla: "We're going to defeat socialism and put a man on the face of the Moon."