[Daily Caller] Every one of the 44 House Democrats who hired Pakistan-born IT aides who later allegedly made "unauthorized access" to congressional data appears to have chosen to exempt them from background checks, according to congressional documents.
All of them appear to have waived background checks on Imran Awan and his family members, even though the family of server administrators could collectively read all the emails and files of 1 in 5 House Democrats, and despite background checks being recommended for such positions, according to an inspector general’s report. The House security policy requires offices to fill out a form attesting that they’ve initiated background checks, but it also includes a loophole allowing them to simply say that another member vouched for them.
Among the red flags in Abid’s background were a $1.1 million bankruptcy; six lawsuits against him or a company he owned; and at least three misdemeanor convictions including for DUI and driving on a suspended license, according to Virginia court records. Public court records show that Imran and Abid operated a car dealership referred to as CIA that took $100,000 from an Iraqi government official who is a fugitive from U.S. authorities. Numerous members of the family were tied to cryptic LLCs such as New Dawn 2001, operated out of Imran’s residence, Virginia corporation records show. Imran was the subject of repeated calls to police by multiple women and had multiple misdemeanor convictions for driving offenses, according to court records.
#5
I'm wondering why these guys didn't come under the ultimate purview of the GOPe leadership.
If they had access to everything (not just Dem systems) then McConnell/Ryan bear responsibility as well. Not that Whinerman-Schnozz shouldn't be roasted.
#7
Um, since when do Congress critters get to decide who needs a background check to access information provided by Executive branch agencies?
Posted by: Boss Ghibelline1171 ||
04/02/2018 8:17 Comments ||
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#8
Criminals providing employment to other criminals. Little Debbie probably did her own background check and found the Awans had the street creds she was looking for.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/02/2018 10:27 Comments ||
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#9
Xavier Becerra, now attorney general of California, ran the House Democratic Caucus, and his server was physically stolen shortly after the IG report named it as evidence in a hacking probe, three senior government officials said
Strange how that conveniently happens to Dems. Some might suspect such a theft is getting rid of evidence.
Magomedov detention: Magomedov owns Novorossisk Port, which is vital for Russian oil exports. Sechin has long wanted it. Next Sechin can seize control of state pipeline company Transneft & then Lukoil & Surgut, controlling the whole of Russia's oil industry.
[TheBarrentsObserver] Only ships built in Russia will be allowed to carry oil, natural gas and coal along the Northern Sea Route, a new bill proposes. But there will be exceptions, government officials say.
The Putin equivalent of the US Jones Act. Exceptions will be probably handled by the appropriate fee.
The new bill follows up a law adopted in late December 2017, which bans Russian Arctic shipping under foreign flag. That legislation came after President Putin called for measures to protect the Russian shipbuilding industry.
The new bill, now elaborated by the Ministry of Industry and Trade, says that the ships will not only have to carry a Russian flag, but also be built in Russia.
The bill will shortly be submitted to government and ultimately come into force in early 2019, newspaper Kommersant reports. It will apply to ships carrying oil, natural gas and coal on the Northern Sea Route.
Posted by: 3dc ||
04/02/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
Is there a lot of shipping crossing through the arctic circle?
Click on the title link for lots of tweets with article links to major news networks like FT
[Reuters] Russian authorities on Saturday arrested billionaire Ziyavudin Magomedov on charges of embezzling more than $35 million, in one of the highest-profile prosecutions of a Russian tycoon in years.
Discussion in the tweets about how this might be related to the above arrest:
[GRI] Ramazan Abdulatipov seems ready to close a sale of Dagestan’s state-owned port of Makhachkala to an Iranian-led group. The sale exposes the difficult balancing act elites are playing in the region.
Everybody’s fighting over a spoonful
The port of Makhachkala, the capital of the North Caucasian Republic of Dagestan, is home to Russia’s only ice-free Caspian port. As of 2014, the physical turnover of the port’s transshipments of oil and gas products, bulk cargos, car ferry service, and small grain shipments was optimistically expected to more than double to 15 million tons a year in a few years. This was welcome news to oligarchs interested in the region’s trade flows. Makhachkala’s facilities, Russia’s last state-owned commercial port, have been an ongoing prize for privatization as Makhachkala is Russia’s closest port to Iran and the two countries are set to deepen trade ties. As is normally the case in Russia, privatization is a smokescreen for personal and state-driven motives.
Dagestan is one of the poorest regions in Russia, struggling with endemic corruption, an Islamist insurgency, a large and untaxed shadow economy, and a long legacy of state-mandated economic underdevelopment. The region possesses considerable oil and gas reserves but is stuck paying Gazprom for natural gas from elsewhere, racking up non-payment fines for which Gazprom had the former CEO of local gas firm Dagestanregiongaz Magomedgusen Nasrutdinov imprisoned, and suspended further investment in gas infrastructure in the North Caucasus republics.
Lacking access to oil and gas rents, small-scale initiatives to increase trade contacts with Azerbaijan and Iran have been key to Dagestani leaders’ hunt for trade and growth. The current rush of infrastructure investment into Trans-Eurasian trade routes has opened up a new challenge for the Kremlin as it has long relied on economic isolation to keep Dagestani elites dependent on rents and budgets distributed from Moscow.
Dagestan’s location is vital to the growth of the North-South Transport Corridor between Russia and India as well as Russia’s ability to extract, export, or else transship Caspian oil supplies. Iran is front and center in this unfolding shift as it attempts to seize a greater share of Caspian trade and prevent Azerbaijan from dominating East-West transit of goods through the Caucasus and on towards Europe.
Abdulatipov’s appointment was linked to Dagestani oligarch Suleiman Kerimov, a Dagestani representative on Russia’s Federation Council and billionaire who sought ownership of Makhachkala’s airport and seaport from Abdulatipov’s predecessor. Kerimov, who successfully acquired the airport, has courted Chechnya’s strongman Ramzan Kadyrov as an ally. Kadyrov is seeking means of playing a role in Russia’s Caspian trade to further Chechnya’s contacts, exposure, and linkages with international actors in an ongoing attempt to improve his power base in order to gain more leverage with Putin and the elites in Moscow.
Most recently, he agreed to send battalions of elite Chechen troops loyal to him to Syria in his campaign to model Chechnya as a state within a state exempt from Russia’s governing structures.
Opposing Kerimov and Kadyrov within Dagestan is Ziyavudin Magomedov, the main owner of the investment firm Summa Group. Magomedov has sought buy-ins into logistical infrastructure across Russia and is most famous in the west for his vocal support of Elon Musk’s Hyperloop project. Much of last year’s drama revolved around who sat as the port’s CEO. A Kerimov-friendly appointee was replaced at the behest of Magomedov by his protégé Andrei Gormakh. In a rather pathetic slight, Kerimov denied Gormakh’s plane the right to land in Makhachkala in early June as several hundred armed seaport workers and supporters of both men faced off.
Despite the threat of violence and high tensions, Abdulatipov seems to have thread the needle, as reports surfaced at the end of December that Iran had beaten out interests from China, Azerbaijan, Vietnam, as well as rival oligarchs for potential majority control of the port.
It appears this story got wilder and now everything shows "404"s.
That means China is disappearing it from the net.
The arrest of Duan Weihong is tied to former premier Wen Jiabao
interesting diagram from caixin of some of duan's holdings. the beijing airport/shunyi stuff sun zhengcai-related. but sun had a patron named wen jiabao, and that patron's family also obtained lots of beijing airport/shunyi related interests. really going to stop at Sun? pic.twitter.com/eYifnuQOSJ
[Radio Free Asia] Chinese Businesswoman Allied to Former Premier Wen Jiabao Detained: Report
Chinese authorities have detained a wealthy businesswoman with strong financial ties to the country’s former premier, Wen Jiabao, The New York Times reported, with political analysts saying her detention, if confirmed, could be the next move in a power struggle among the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s elite families.
Previous reports have indicated that Duan Weihong, who uses the English name Whitney Duan, is a key figure in the finances of the Wen family, with The New York Times reporting in 2012 that his relatives controlled assets worth at least U.S.$2.7 billion.
The paper cited business associates of Duan’s as saying that she was detained by unknown agencies ahead of the 19th Party Congress last October.
“It is not clear who detained her, why and whether she is still being held,” the paper said.
An employee who answered the phone at the Huadu Hotel in Beijing, one of Duan’s businesses, said she wasn't there.
Meanwhile a member of staff who answered the phone at her Beijing Taihong Holdings Co. said she wasn’t there, either.
“I haven’t seen her for really quite a while now,” the second employee said, suggesting that she may have “left the country.”
Beijing-based constitutional scholar and political commentator Zhang Lifan said Duan, as an entrepreneur with close ties to the ruling party elite, could bear the brunt of any corruption probe if Wen’s family becomes a target of President Xi Jinping's anti-corruption drive.
“Wen [Jiabao] put a lot of effort into the fall of Bo Xilai, and it’s hard to say whether or not he is now being investigated,” Zhang said. “Unless it’s a power struggle. These sorts of detentions are often a way of threatening an opponent with evidence, as leverage.”
“Duan Hongwei is sure to be in possession of huge amounts of evidence, and that fact that they have brought her in will be enough to intimidate the people she is acting for,” he said.
“These ‘arms length’ entrepreneurs are in a pretty vulnerable position, because they can be bandied around as a bargaining chip in a power struggle at any time.”
Politics and business intertwined
According to Bao Tong, former aide to China’s late, ousted premier Zhao Ziyang, China’s richest business-people are inextricably entwined with the country’s ruling political class.
“These entrepreneurs have an extremely close relationship with the Chinese government, or officials within it,” Bao told RFA. “The entrepreneurs are basically the government’s sidekicks.”
“We can see the links in the chain, and so the companies must do what the leaders say; then they will last for as long as the leaders do,” he said.
“They could be a billionaire today and a prisoner tomorrow, a conspirator, a criminal,” he said.
Pin Ho, editor of New York-based Chinese news magazine Mingjing News, said Wen’s family may have been given an easier time by graft investigators in return for their close cooperation on the case of former Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai.
“Wen Jiabao put a lot of effort into the cases against Bo Xilai and [former security czar] Zhou Yongkang, and so the corruption case against Wen’s family was shelved,” Ho told RFA. “Crisis was averted, because Wen’s son was at the helm of Ping An Insurance.”
“Wen’s family made several billion U.S. dollars out of Ping An Insurance during Wen Jiabao’s term as premier,” he said.
Xia Ming, a political science professor at the The City University of New York, said Duan is also a link between the more recently fallen former Chongqing party chief Sun Zhengcai, who is under investigation for corruption, and Wen’s family.
“After Beijing won the bid for the 2008 Olympic Games, Sun Zhengcai was the most powerful man in Shunyi county, Beijing,” Xia said. “He controlled all of the rights to the land near Beijing International Airport.”
“Duan Weihong and her ex-husband Shen Dong were running a business that acquired the land nearby that was needed for the widening of the airport expressway,” he said. “A lot of the shares in Duan’s property company were held by members of Wen’s family.”
“The investigation into Sun Zhengcai has become a massive case, although it’s as yet unclear how much of an impact this will have on Wen Jiabao personally,” he said. “But his two grown children are deeply involved, and they will definitely feel the impact.”
A "No controlling authority" donation tour?
[FoxNews] Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren is in China for Easter weekend, speaking with dignitaries in Beijing about her reservations regarding President Trump's actions on the world stage and collective concerns about Sino-American trade relations.
Warren, a Democrat whose name has been floated as a 2020 Trump opponent, talked trade policy with Vice Premier Liu He, Defense Minister Wei Fenghe and another Chinese official named Yang Jiechi, according to Reuters.
"This has been a chaotic foreign policy in the region, and that makes it hard to keep the allies that we need to accomplish our objectives closely stitched in," Warren said.
She reportedly accused Trump of trying to "take the legs out from underneath [the American] diplomatic corps," which "Fox & Friends" discussed may have been a reference to the president's firing of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Posted by: Frank G ||
04/02/2018 00:00 ||
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Students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School return to class Monday, their first day back since organizing one of the largest youth-led protests in US history.
But these teenagers won't be returning to a normal high school experience. Instead, they'll be met with strict security measures which are intended to protect them from another mass shooting but have some students feeling as if they'll be learning in a prison.
"Going to school is really so hard, and now it's going to be so much worse," said Isabelle Robinson, a senior. "A lot of the people I've talked to are dreading going back."
Constitutional issues are simple - geometry is complicated.
#4
I've mentioned it before. I drove past Columbine a few months after the shooting there. I looked like ADX Florence but without the fence and towers. The whole vibe had to contribute to what went down there. It's not practical, I know, but smaller, more manageable schools are something that should be getting a look. In the age of Amazon and social media, the brick n mortar school is probably obsolete.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/02/2018 13:30 Comments ||
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#5
If only they got those few little gun law changes, they wouldn't need all these security measures that make them feel confined. Poor dears.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/02/2018 14:04 Comments ||
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[RT] Donald Trump has said there will be no deal to give legal status to migrants who came to the US as minors. In a series of tweets on Sunday, he also told Republicans to take the “nuclear option” and eliminate the Senate filibuster.
The US president began his tirade by claiming that catch-and-release laws are hindering efforts at border protection. Trump then attacked Mexico, saying the country was doing “very little, if not nothing” to stop migrants from other Central American countries from crossing its southern border on their way to the US. As punishment for their perceived inaction, Trump threatened to dismantle the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
Posted by: Fred ||
04/02/2018 00:00 ||
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#1
So, was that the game plan from the beginnings - or is the Don incredibly good at taking advantage of opportunities?
#4
They won't fund his wall so he won't give them DACA. He tried to make a deal but the donks blew it. Now he gets the wall and the donks get nothing. Works out pretty well as far as I'm concerned. Mexico won't fund the wall so they're gonna lose NAFTA. So when the wall is there and NAFTA is history it'll be win-win for the USA.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/02/2018 10:40 Comments ||
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#5
Can't wait to hear how CNN / MSNBC spin this.
He gave them every opportunity to fix it - now he's going to (gasp!) enforce existing law...
Henry County abuts Clayton and Dekalb counties, which abut Fulton County and the City of Atlanta. Henry, Douglas, Fayette, and other counties surrounding Fulton have historically been conservative, republican enclaves. That is all changing.
#9
Any bets on who gets punished here - the teacher or the student ( for an 'illegal recording')? I got $5 on the student getting at least a five day suspension.
#10
...on that thought, if cops gotta wear cams with sound, then its long time past each classroom have the same. Like the copcams subject to Freedom of Information release.
#12
Parental supervision -- each schoolkid to wear a bodycam that parents may (if they wish) monitor during the kid's time at school. Might be a remedy for bullying too.
#14
Parental supervision -- each schoolkid to wear a bodycam that parents may (if they wish) monitor during the kid's time at school. Might be a remedy for bullying too.
#15
its long time past each classroom have the same
Many school buses have em. They are mostly to capture student passenger misbehavior but I believe in a couple instances bus drivers have been punished as a result of security cam footage (shouldn't it be bittage in the digital era?) Off course, just like cop cams, if you have classroom cams, they will conveniently mysteriously "cut out" at the strangest times. And if they don't, there will be many, many school district personnel rules and union shop rules that will still prevent use of the footage.
All that said, yes. Cams everywhere the taxpayer dime is being spent (I'm looking at you, FBI)
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
04/02/2018 12:24 Comments ||
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#16
Daughter and her husband are both teachers; they are not allowed to video/audio the class as it violates the students' privacy. Says nothing about protecting them against ramped-up charges.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[RT] Donald Trump has said there will be no deal to give legal status to migrants who came to the US as minors. In a series of tweets on Sunday, he also told Republicans to take the “nuclear option” and eliminate the Senate filibuster.
