Olena Lytvynenko, the Kyiv Region judge who tried to ground Ukraine’s low-cost airline SkyUp last May, has been fired by the High Council of Justice. Lytvynenko tried to ground the airline based on the complaint of a local woman, Oksana Pasenko. RFE’s Scheme reporters soon discovered the flight did not exist, that Pasenko did not have a passport, and that she had never flown on an airplane. It is not clear if a bribe was made to the judge.
For more great news, see https://www.ubn.news/
Robert Powell, the husband of Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, D-Fla., reportedly took $700,000 from a Ukrainian oligarch named Igor Kolomoisky. Mucarsel-Powell sits on the House Judiciary Committee, the committee that drafted two articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump for his alleged abuse of power with regards to Ukraine.
In 2018, the Daily Beast reported that a number of businesses linked to Kolomoisky hired Powell as an attorney. One of those firms paid Powell at least $700,000 over two years, according to public records.
The Miami Herald reported Powell was working for companies tied to Kolomoisky for 10 years. Powell made most of his money in the two years leading up to his wife’s election in 2018.
Kolomoisky has been accused of contract killings and embezzlement in the past. Yet, in 2018 when Mucarsel-Powell was running for her seat, she did not see her husband’s work as relevant to her campaign.
Soviet mobile Gas Chambers were vehicles which would execute their passengers by making them breathe deadly exhaust fumes.
Wikipedia has recently been heavily edited, removing the Soviet Union completely from the Introduction, which now portrays these mobile gas chambers as an exclusively Nazi thing.
It seems that there’s still a section on the Soviet Union’s use. I wonder whether the multiple spellings of the alleged inventor’s name is an intentional obfuscation:
Isai Berg
Isaj Berg
Isay Berg
ccording to testimony given by NKVD officer Nikolai Kharitonov in 1956, Isai Berg had been instrumental in the production of gas vans.[19] Berg had become chief of the administrative economic department in Moscow’s NKVD in the summer of 1937.[20] In October 1937 he was charged with the supervision of the Butovo firing range.[19] Berg had to prepare Butovo for the mass execution of people from greater Moscow and to ensure that these executions would take place smoothly.[21] According to testimony given by Fjodor Tschesnokov, a member of Berg’s execution team, in 1956, trucks were used, which were equipped with valves through which the gas could be directed inside the vehicles. The interrogations revealed that the prisoners were stripped naked, tied up, gagged and thrown into the trucks. Their property was stolen.[19] Berg was arrested on 3 August 1938.[22] sentenced to death for participating in a “counter-revolutionary conspiracy within the NKVD” and executed on 3 March 1939.[19]
The scale at which these trucks were used is unknown. Author Tomas Kizny assumes that they were in use while Berg oversaw the executions (October 1937 to 4 August 1938). He points to archaeological excavations conducted in 1997. Then 59 corpses were exhumed who most likely had been killed during Berg’s tenure. Only four of these victims had been shot in the head, which leads Kizny to conclude that at least some of them had been gassed.[19]
Journalist Yevgenia Albats maintains that gas vans were a “Soviet invention”.[23] Kizny names Berg as the “inventor”.[19] Historians of the Holocaust like Henry Friedlander argue that the mobile gas chambers were invented in 1940.
(click for high resolution image)
The Ukrainian passenger jet that crashed after takeoff from Tehran was downed due to “human error” after it flew too close to a military site and triggered a missile launch amid a standoff with the US, the Iranian Army said.
The Army General Staff stressed that the tragic mistake was made amid the flare-up of tensions with Washington. The nation’s air defenses were placed on alert and ready to “respond to possible threats of the highest level,” after US President Donald Trump warned that the Pentagon would strike targets on Iranian soil if US citizens or assets were attacked by Iran.
On Wednesday, the Iranian Army fired a volley of ballistic missiles at two bases in Iraq that house American troops. It was a retaliation in response to a US drone strike, which killed top Iranian military chief Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad’s airport.
For several hours after the missile attacks, the army was detecting increased activity of US warplanes around the country and received alerts of possible airstrikes on “strategic sites” across Iran, the General Staff said.
Marxism is a jealous God. It must infiltrate absolutely everything. This was true of economic Marxism a hundred years ago. It is true of cultural Marxism today.
The antics of Ukrainian boxer and world champion Usyk:
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Vadym Prystaiko, tweeted that the victims included 82 Iranians, 63 Canadians, 11 Ukrainians (including the 9 crew members), 10 passengers from Sweden, four Afghans, three Germans and three from the United Kingdom.
Memorial at Borispol Airport in Kyiv:
never underestimate the capacity of the media to distort. At some of their stupid protests from 2019, they handed out texts of songs written about Trump and Russia.
Zaxid.net exposes political commentator Olena Jyvko as having a fake law degree, and once running a Visa scam with a Polish consul with whom she was having an affair.
As I understand, she is a fixture on Ukrainian television and presumes to support many pro-Ukraine movements.
The persistence of her scams strongly suggest that she has some anti-social personality disorder. It’s hard for us normies to appreciate, but there are people who lie as easily as others breath.
Journalists Marta Kohut and Andri Drozda are living with police protection after receiving credible threats. They’ve been reporting on Lviv oligarchs and the hooligan organizations which they deploy.
The most interesting points include speculation about why Ukrainian President Zelenski fired some Lviv-based representative. He seems to be limiting the power of Lviv oligarchs including Kryvetski.
Andri mocks the intensity of debates about whether to celebrate Christmas in December or January.
Lastly, he ridicules the fake astro-turf protests against customs reforms. This is part of President Zelenski’s reforms which are upsetting Lviv’s oligarchs.
With 316 votes on December 17, Ukraine’s Parliament backed a law on the state recognition of Plast – National Scout Organization of Ukraine. This is the second affirmative vote on the legislation. On May 30, 2019, members of the previous convocation of the Verkhovna Rada had voted in favor of the earlier edition of this bill. But then, after more than three months, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rejected the law and returned it to the Verkhovna Rada with his remarks.
Now, after the Verkhovna Rada’s Youth Committee backed the second edition with Mr. Zelenskyy’s remarks and the Rada voted to approve the law, it is up to the president to sign and enact the law on state support of Plast. . . .
The 316 votes cast in favor of the Plast law are far beyond the minimum 226 needed for a bill to pass. The Parliament’s major faction, Servant of the People, gave 215 votes for the legislation with only one against. Five other factions, European Solidarity, Batkivshchyna, For Future, Voice and Trust, voted for approval, while the pro-Russian Opposition Platform voted against. One of the Opposition Platform’s national deputies, Yuriy Pavlenko, ex-Minister of Youth and Sport, voted in favor of the new law on recognition of Plast. . . .
“As a result of the revision, this law has even changed its name. It is now called: ‘On the recognition of the Plast movement and the principles of state support for Plast, scout movement.” Just as in the title, there were changes throughout the text of the bill,” explained Yurko Yuzych, head of Ukraine’s Plast Board.
“The law now does not mention ‘the Plast organization,’ or any other organization. Instead, the new definition, ‘Plast movement (Plast),’ which is a Ukrainian scout movement, was introduced. And next to it is the definition of ‘Scout Movement (Scouting).’ Instead of the wording ‘Ukrainian Plast (scout) movement’ proposed by the president, there appeared to be some confusion throughout the text – at first glance, the expression: ‘Plast, scout movement’ (using commas, not the word ‘and’). The president’s proposal was quite satisfying to Plast because it was the wording of dozens of independent Plast organizations operating around the world – from Sydney to Edmonton, and from Avdiyivka to Berehove,” Mr. Yuzych noted.
The official reason for the law’s rejection four months ago was that the legislative preference for an NGO (in this case, Plast – National Scout Organization of Ukraine) would violate the Constitution of Ukraine. Therefore, changing the wording to “Plast movement (Plast)” would make it constitutionally acceptable.
http://www.ukrweekly.com/uwwp/verkhovna-rada-again-votes-for-state-support-of-plast/
We were at my in-laws, and we’d bought an assortment of chocolate covered nuts in a nice box as a small gift. My wife asked our three-and-a-half year old to gift it to his grandparents.
“I want these,” he said.
“This is a gift for grandma and grandpa,” my wife explained.
They went back and forth once or twice and she convinced him. He took the box, walked into the next room and handed it to his grandmother. “These are for everybody,” he said, as he handed it over.
