A pair of bills granting the U.S. Justice Department additional tools to go after Russian oligarchs and alleged war criminals appeared poised to become law, after a last-minute push by a bipartisan group of lawmakers this week.
U.S. Congress advances bills targeting war criminals, Russian oligarchs
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Jeffrey Sachs Discusses The War in Ukraine, ‘Shock Therapy,’ and More
Perhaps the most stunning bit of information in the interview comes from Sachs’s disclosure of the reason for the failure of “Shock therapy” in Russia. “Shock therapy” is the name given to the abrupt transition from the Soviet-style command economy to a market-oriented economy. It was a success in Poland, but a failure in Russia where it led to a depression deeper and more costly than our own Great Depression. Why? Sachs was an advisor to Poland and then Russia for the “therapy.” So he had witnessed a “controlled experiment,” as he put it elsewhere. At a certain point it the process, financial help from the outside was needed to revive the economy on a new basis. It was provided to Poland; but when Sachs called for the same help in Russia, it was refused by the West, specifically by the White House. This happened despite Sachs’s direct pleas to the White House. The depression that followed was neither accidental nor a surprise. Far from it. This was the first time that the US attempted to “weaken” post-Cold War Russia, an attempt that was eventually reversed under Putin.
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With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funded a project by the HIID to help rebuild the Russian economy on the basis of western concepts of ethics, democracy and free markets. Jeffrey Sachs was said to have “packaged HIID as an AID consultant”. USAID were glad to accept help from Harvard, since they lacked expertise for such a project. The HIID oversaw and guided disbursement of $300 million of US aid to Russia with little oversight by USAID. HIID advisers worked closely with representatives from Russia, notably Anatoly Chubais and his associates. Once USAID accepted help from the HIID, HIID was in a position to recommend U.S. aid policies while being a recipient of that aid. It also put the HIID in a position of power overseeing some of their competitors. The project, which ran from 1992 to 1997, was headed by economist Andrei Shleifer and lawyer Jonathan Hay. HIID received $40.4 million in return for its activities in Russia, awarded without the normal competitive bidding approach.
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Guo Wengui has been trailed by scandals involving corruption and espionage. What is he really after?
How a Tycoon Linked to Chinese Intelligence Became a Darling of Trump Republicans
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In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.
Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand
The FBI Paid Twitter $3.4 Million for Processing Requests
There’s been ample insinuation that these agencies were politically motivated. But all of this was happening at a time when President Donald Trump was in power and his people were running DHS and the FBI. Rather than agencies intent on swaying the 2020 election for Biden, their actions seem like run-of-the-mill paranoia and attempts at control.
This brings us back to the money the FBI gave Twitter for “time spent processing requests.” In the last installment of the Twitter Files, Matt Taibbi reported on some of those requests, many of which were related to potential election misinformation. Twitter looked into the flagged tweets and accounts, sometimes complying with the FBI and sometimes not.
…
Twitter’s “Guidelines for law enforcement” does state under a section titled “Cost reimbursement” that “Twitter may seek reimbursement for costs associated with information produced pursuant to legal process and as permitted by law (e.g., under 18 U.S.C. §2706).” But the fact that this garnered millions from the FBI was not, as far as I can tell, known until now.
Related:
No, The FBI Is NOT ‘Paying Twitter To Censor’
But this is a misreading/misunderstanding of how things work. This had nothing to do with any “influence campaign.” The law already says that if the FBI is legally requesting information for an investigation under a number of different legal authorities, the companies receiving those requests can be reimbursed for fulfilling them.
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I do think it remains a scandal the way that 2703(d) orders work, and the inability of users to push back on them. But that is the law. And it has literally nothing whatsoever to do with “censorship” requests. It is entirely about investigations by the FBI into Twitter users based on evidence of a crime. If you want, you can read the DOJ’s own guidelines regarding what they can request under 2703(d).
Under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, law enforcement must obtain a court order under 18 U.S.C. §2703(d) (2703(d) order) to compel a provider to disclose more detailed records about a customer’s or subscriber’s use of services, such as the following
Forget cannabis. Here are 2 banking provisions that did make the NDAA.
Some banks have instituted policies making it easier for second-chance workers to get hired. JPMorgan Chase years ago removed all questions about criminal backgrounds from job applications and established a policy center to help former criminals find jobs.
It expanded its effort to help ex-offenders return to the workforce last year, partnering with nonprofits to connect people with arrest or conviction histories to in-demand jobs. CEO Jamie Dimon also agreed to co-chair the Second Chance Business Coalition encompassing 29 member companies.
The bank hired 4,300 people with criminal records last year, Nan Gibson, executive director for public policy and corporate responsibility at the JPMorgan Chase Policy Center, told American Banker. That’s more than double the bank’s 2,100 second-chance hires from 2020.
H/ T: Judge Napolitano
Related:
Sam Bankman-Fried was set to testify before Congress on Tuesday, but before he could appear, he was arrested in the Bahamas. Not surprisingly, most of the charges he’s facing involve allegations of fraud related to the collapse of FTX, his crypto-trading platform. But a federal indictment unveiled Tuesday also accuses SBF—a prolific political donor who cultivated relationships with politicians and policymakers—of campaign finance violations.
The FTX Collapse Is Also a Huge Campaign Finance Scandal
The US Ambassador to Georgia recently commented on the postponement of Mikheil Saakashvili’s court hearing.
U.S. hatchet woman, EU threaten Georgia over their operative Saakashvili
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STATEMENT OF THE PROSECUTION SERVICE OF GEORGIA
Read More »Nov 30, 2022 – Malaysia’s new prime minister Anwar Ibrahim has spent decades in the service of US interests, chairing the IMF in the 1990s and working with the US National Endowment for Democracy ever since.
His opposition party, a street front he has helped lead, and media networks promoting him across Malaysia’s information space have all received funding from the US government through the NED.
What impact has Anwar Ibrahim already had on Malaysia’s sovereignty and development and what impact will his premiership have on Malaysia’s future?
References:
Malaysia’s New Prime Minister: The Impact on US-China Tensions in Asia (Odysee) via The New Atlas
On November 17, Sheila Bair, the former Chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) during the financial crisis of 2008, went on CNBC to lament the lack of controls leading to the collapse of the crypto currency exchange, FTX. During the interview, Bair used the phrase “nobody looking behind the curtain.”
Sheila Bair, Former Chair of the FDIC, Is Now an “Organizer/Director” of a Cayman Islands Crypto Company that Got a U.S. National Bank Charter Last Year
Related (why no one was prosecuted for the financial crisis of 2007–2008 + another comment):
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Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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