Businessman Paints Terrifying And Complex Picture Of Putin's Russia - Polidicks

[QUOTE]William Browder knows Vladimir Putin's Russia all too well. Browder made a fortune in Russia, in the process uncovering, he says, incredible amounts of fraud and corruption. When he tried to report it to authorities, the government kicked him out of the country and, he alleges, tortured and killed the lawyer he was working with. In what one senator called one of the Senate Judiciary Committee's "most important" hearings, Browder, a wealthy businessman-turned-activist-turned Putin-adversary shed a chilling new light on a Russian system of government that operates ruthlessly in the shadows — as Browder described it for lawmakers: a "kleptocracy" sustained by corruption, blackmail, torture and murder with Putin at its center. "Effectively the moment that you enter into their world," Browder told senators investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, "you become theirs." "No good guys" Browder's story — how he ended up living in London, after almost a decade of vast success as a businessman in Moscow, is arguably a case study in how Putin's government works: a system of intermediary influential businessmen who aren't directly employed by the Russian government, but who benefit financially from Putin's regime. Browder founded and ran one of the largest investment firms in Russia, Hermitage Capital Management, from 1996-2005. When he and his lawyer Sergei Magnitsky discovered a massive corruption scheme, they went to the authorities. "And we waited for the good guys to get the bad guys," he told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "It turned out that in Putin's Russia, there are no good guys."[/QUOTE] [QUOTE]Browder's testimony also touched on one of the more perplexing aspects of Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election — how Putin and the Russian government view now-President Trump given evidence Russia was gathering incriminating information about both Trump and Clinton at the same time. Sen. Lindsey Graham's almost entire line of questioning on Thursday focused on the seeming contradiction in the fact that Russia allegedly has ties to a company behind the controversial and unverified dossier on Trump while Russia was also rooting for Trump to win on Election Day, according to to the emails exchanges with Trump Jr. prior to the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. "What you need to understand about the Russians is there is no ideology at all," Browder said. "Vladimir Putin is in the business of trying to create chaos everywhere." President Trump has, at times, seemed to accept that Russia interfered in last year's election and, at other times, seemed to doubt that Russia was behind things like hacking emails systems and strategically releasing Democratic emails at key points in the 2016 campaign. The U.S. intelligence community has concluded that Russian intelligence services, acting at Putin's direction, were responsible. President Putin has repeatedly denied that the Russian government played any role in interfering in last year's election; he did so most recently during an in-person meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Germany. Trump has also repeatedly denied that he or anyone associated with his campaign colluded with the Russians. On Thursday, the White House used the hearing as further proof President Trump wasn't colluding with the Russians to get himself elected. "We learned that the firm that produced (the dossier) was also being paid by the Russians," said White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. "This is yet the latest piece of evidence that vindicates what the President has said, that this is a witch hunt and a hoax." Browder explained to lawmakers, however, that it's not really a contradiction or a disconnect at all for Russia to be gathering potentially compromising information on Trump while also reaching out to his campaign to provide assistance and incriminating information about Clinton. That's because Putin's activities always seem to be designed to find leverage over his targets. In some cases, Russia will engage in an illegal activity to help a target and then hold the threat of exposure of that activity over the target's head. "They've got you both ways: with the carrot of continued bribery, and the stick of exposure and blackmail if you defect?" asked Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. "That is how every single one of their relationships work," Browder confirmed. "That's how they grab people and keep them. "And once you get stuck in with them, you can never leave."[/QUOTE] So, 1. This testimony happened during the Days, Mooch went berserk. 2. Firm that compiled the Dossier has Russian Ties, so Trump supporters are using it as an excuse that Trump family was victims of Russia Hacking, without hearing what the rest of the guy has to say, That this kompromat Material [URL="http://www.npr.org/2017/07/28/539802914/businessman-paints-a-terrifying-and-complex-picture-of-putins-russia"]http://www.npr.org/2017/07/28/539802914/businessman-paints-a-terrifying-and-complex-picture-of-putins-russia[/URL] Edit: added Source, and now going to mentioned Trump FAILED at his objective.

is he using oil-based paints? [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Snipe" - Big Dumb American))[/highlight]

There was an excellent episode of planet money on this. [url]http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2017/07/14/537304186/episode-784-meeting-the-russians[/url]

[QUOTE=DiscoInferno;52520384]is he using oil-based paints?[/QUOTE] As much as I appreciate the first reply being a pun, this situation is incredibly serious. This testimony lays out in no uncertain terms that Russia is essentially a mafia running a country, all headed by Putin. Enemies of Putin, politicians or not, are taken out of the equation. Either through torture, character assassination, or plain assassination. As of recently the US is, in theory, an oligarchy muddled by bureaucracy. Russia is an oligarchy bending to the will of Putin, who rests at nothing to keep and slowly expand his empire. And Putin put an incompetent yes-man in control of the White House.

For anyone who wants to read about Putin, the people he's murdered, and the spiderweb of stealing from investors into the Russian economy (stealing their assets and putting them in state-owned corporations that his friends run), I suggest you read [url=https://www.amazon.com/New-Tsar-Reign-Vladimir-Putin/dp/0345802799]The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin[/url] by Steven Lee Meyers. While he was writing the book, one of his contacts and friends in Russia, [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Nemtsov]an opposition politician named Boris Nemtsov[/url], was [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Boris_Nemtsov]assassinated[/url]. [editline]29th July 2017[/editline] It also talks about this guy, Browder, and a bunch of other billionaires in Russia such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Boris Berezofsky, and Vladimir Gusinsky - All Yeltsin-era oligarchs that believed that their money would protect them from Putin (and were wrong).

[QUOTE=Flicky;52520538]As much as I appreciate the first reply being a pun, this situation is incredibly serious. This testimony lays out in no uncertain terms that Russia is essentially a mafia running a country, all headed by Putin. Enemies of Putin, politicians or not, are taken out of the equation. Either through torture, character assassination, or plain assassination. As of recently the US is, in theory, an oligarchy muddled by bureaucracy. Russia is an oligarchy bending to the will of Putin, who rests at nothing to keep and slowly expand his empire. And Putin put an incompetent yes-man in control of the White House.[/QUOTE] It's a goddamn putrid mess. One that will take one hell of a cleaning up, possibly with copious amounts of fire.

Is there a place to listen to the guy speaking in full, i'd quite like to hear it unedited and distilled down into an article. I feel quite sorry for the russian soul. The pre communist era gave us some of the best thinkers of the modern era, Dostoyevski, Tolstoy and such. Horrible to think what other genius was consumed by the soviet goverment, and what great potential as a people it's shadow damned. I really hope some day Russia will sort itself out. Both to end the tyrannical degeneracy and to let the Russians explore their own worth again. Maybe some day.

[QUOTE=Flicky;52520538] This testimony lays out in no uncertain terms that Russia is essentially a mafia running a country.[/QUOTE] Anybody who knows shit about Russia is aware of that since early 2000s. Its not even an exaggeration.

What's funny is that Russian state TV has been calling Browder a CIA plant for the past couple of years, desperately linking any possible opposition candidates to "State Department" money through him. To be fair, he is a little off on the "no ideology" bit. After the color revolution movement took the reins in Georgia and Ukraine, we had this: [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_democracy[/url] After Putin came back to power in 2012, we got this [url]https://www.amazon.com/Black-Wind-White-Snow-Nationalism/dp/0300120702[/url]

[QUOTE=Demeschik;52521861]What's funny is that Russian state TV has been calling Browder a CIA plant for the past couple of years, desperately linking any possible opposition candidates to "State Department" money through him. To be fair, he is a little off on the "no ideology" bit. After the color revolution movement took the reins in Georgia and Ukraine, we had this: [url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_democracy[/url] After Putin came back to power in 2012, we got this [url]https://www.amazon.com/Black-Wind-White-Snow-Nationalism/dp/0300120702[/url][/QUOTE] I'm pretty sure that Browder meant that Putin and his [i]bratva[/i] operate under no ideological paradigm. We, the population, are still fed bollocks in large quantities, religious, ideological, revisionist and otherwise by state media, but it's all entirely hollow.

[QUOTE=Flicky;52520538]As much as I appreciate the first reply being a pun, this situation is incredibly serious. This testimony lays out in no uncertain terms that Russia is essentially a mafia running a country, all headed by Putin. Enemies of Putin, politicians or not, are taken out of the equation. Either through torture, character assassination, or plain assassination. As of recently the US is, in theory, an oligarchy muddled by bureaucracy. Russia is an oligarchy bending to the will of Putin, who rests at nothing to keep and slowly expand his empire. And Putin put an incompetent yes-man in control of the White House.[/QUOTE] When does the uhh rebel militia start to happen?

[QUOTE=MedicWine;52522720]When does the uhh rebel militia start to happen?[/QUOTE] Whenever this gets as many views as all of the other threads in this section combined, as it deserves. This is need-to-know information that's being buried by other stories.

[QUOTE=MedicWine;52522720]When does the uhh rebel militia start to happen?[/QUOTE] Your funny

[QUOTE=MedicWine;52522720]When does the uhh rebel militia start to happen?[/QUOTE] With WW3. The Bolshevik revolution as it stands was only possible because of a shortsighted idea in the Central Powers to encourage, fund and arm Communists in Russia to take Russia down from the inside so they could focus on the western front, before returning to mop up the Bolsheviks and Anschlussing Russia. Likewise, the only way the establishment that's cemented itself in Russia over the past 80 years is being taken down is with an outside hand getting involved.

[QUOTE=MedicWine;52522720]When does the uhh rebel militia start to happen?[/QUOTE] Oct 25