長州藩と９人の内閣総理大臣

吉田松陰、高杉晋作、伊藤博文、山県有朋、乃木希典、岸信介、安倍晋三 .

岸、佐藤、安倍首相の人脈は親戚同士の関係

 岸家、佐藤家、安倍家のトライアングルの要、岸信介をめぐる人脈　岸信介の祖父、岸要蔵は大陸からの渡来系海賊を祖とする？　長州閥の要「佐藤家近代の始祖」佐藤信寛の曾孫、佐藤栄作首相をめぐる人脈　同じ田布施町出身の佐藤家は松岡家との繋がりが深い

 長州出身の著名政治家の特徴は極右人脈とのつながりが深いこと

長州は自民党、民主党からも大臣を輩出し、両院議長、共産党幹部も輩出　

The Pandora Paper about Ukranian Oligarch and Hero

 https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-oligarch-ukrainian-president-offshore-connections-volodymyr-zelenskiy

  It was a storyline that in earlier times would have seemed impossible. For four years, the actor and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy entertained TV audiences in Ukraine with his starring role in the sitcom Servant of the People. Zelenskiy played a teacher who, outraged by his country’s chronic corruption, successfully runs for president. In 2019, Zelenskiy made fiction real when he contested Ukraine’s actual presidential election and won.

On the campaign trail, Zelenskiy pledged to clean up Ukraine’s oligarch-dominated ruling system. And he railed against politicians such as the wealthy incumbent Petro Poroshenko who hid their assets offshore. The message worked. Zelenskiy won 73% of the vote and now sits in a cavernous office in the capital, Kyiv, decorated with gilded stucco ceilings. Last month, he held talks with Joe Biden in the Oval Office.

The Pandora papers, leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and shared with the Guardian as part of a global investigation however, suggest Zelenskiy is rather similar to his predecessors.

The leaked documents suggest he had – or has – a previously undisclosed stake in an offshore company, which he appears to have secretly transferred to a friend weeks before winning the presidential vote.

Zelenskiy has not commented on the claim despite extensive attempts by the Guardian and its media partners to reach him. His spokesperson Sergiy Nikiforov messaged: “Won’t be an answer.”

The files reveal Zelenskiy participated in a sprawling network of offshore companies, co-owned with his longtime friends and TV business partners. They include Serhiy Shefir, who produced Zelensky’s hit shows, and Shefir’s older brother, Borys, who wrote the scripts. Another member of the consortium is Ivan Bakanov, a childhood friend. Bakanov was general director of Zelenskiy’s production studio, Kvartal 95.

Still from Servant of the People, the satirical comedy show starring Volodymyr Zelenskiy in the lead as the Ukrainian president. Photograph: Kvartal 95

All are associated with Zelenskiy’s home town in southern Ukraine, Kryvyi Rih. After winning power, Zelenskiy brought these close allies into government. Bakanov became head of Ukraine’s SBU security agency. Zelenskiy made Serhiy Shefir his first assistant, an unpaid role that involves handling the president’s daily schedule. A fourth member of this close-knit group, Andriy Yakovlev, is a film director and Kvartal 95 producer.

Zelenskiy has said these appointments were about personal trust rather than financial cronyism. “I have a few people who work with me who have been my friends for a long time … They have no relation to business, or to the budget,” he told the Guardian in 2020.

A secret transfer

Before becoming president, Zelenskiy declared some of his private assets. They included cars, property and three of the co-owned offshore companies. One, Film Heritage, which he held jointly with his wife, Olena, a former Kvartal 95 writer, is registered in Belize.

But the Pandora papers show further offshore assets that Zelenskiy appears not to have revealed. Film Heritage had a 25% stake in Davegra, a Cyprus holding company. Davegra in turn owns Maltex Multicapital Corp, a previously unknown entity registered in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands (BVI). Zelenskiy, the Shefir brothers, and Yakovlev each held a 25% stake in Maltex.

On 13 March 2019, two weeks before the first round of voting in Ukraine’s election, Zelenskiy gave his quarter stake in Maltex to Serhiy Shefir, documents show. It is unclear if Shefir paid Zelenskiy. Bakanov witnessed this secret transfer and signed the offshore papers.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy and his wife, Olena, at a polling station during a parliamentary election in Kyiv, Ukraine, in July 2019. Photograph: Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters/Alamy

Roughly six weeks later, after Zelenskiy’s landslide victory, a lawyer acting for the Kvartal 95 group signed another document. It stipulated that Maltex would continue to pay dividends to Zelenskiy’s Film Heritage, even though it no longer owned any stake in the company. Its main revenue comes from activity in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, according to a Maltex client profile.

The Pandora papers do not indicate whether any dividends were ever paid or their size. Nor do they reveal how many payments might have been made. Zelenskiy’s wife, Olena, is now the declared beneficial owner of Film Heritage, meaning any payments since 2019 would have flowed to her.

The key document – dated 24 April 2019 – says Maltex holds shares in companies that produce and distribute TV films. One reason for setting up Maltex was “tax-efficient accumulation of business profits”; another, it states, was “legal protection”. Borys Sheifir said Bakanov had mostly set up these offshore “financial schemes” in order to protect the company from “authorities and bandits”.

“Speaking honestly, I’m not ready to respond to you. It could be that I’m an owner [of Maltex],” Shefir told the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), one of the Pandora papers’ media partners. He said he was trying to divest himself of his offshore interests, but said this was a slow and difficult process. Serhiy Shefir, Bakanov and Yakovlev declined to comment, as did their lawyer.

The Maltex revelation is embarrassing for Zelenskiy given his pledge to crack down on those sending wealth overseas. Last month, Ukraine’s parliament passed an anti-oligarch bill. The vote took place a day after unknown assassins tried to kill Shefir. A gunman had opened fire on his car outside Kyiv. He was unharmed, but his driver was wounded. The attempt may have been motivated by opposition to the bill.

In a recent opinion piece for the Atlantic Council, Zelenskiy said his ultimate goal as president was to destroy “the traditional oligarchic order” and to replace it with a “fairer system”. Critics, however, say Zelenskiy has failed to reform the state and embraced the same shadowy ways as his predecessors. EU auditors warned last month that “grand corruption and state capture” remained widespread in Ukraine.

Since entering politics Zelenskiy has been dogged by claims he is under the influence of Igor Kolomoisky, a billionaire whose TV channel screened Zelenskiy’s show. During the campaign Zelenskiy’s opponents alleged $41m from Kolomoisky entities found its way between 2012 and 2016 into offshore firms belonging to Zelenskiy and his circle, including Film Heritage.

Russian connection

The Pandora papers show that at least some of the details in the scheme alleged by Poroshenko’s party correspond to reality. They show that part of the Kvartal 95 network was managed with help from Fidelity Corporate Services, an offshore consultancy and one of 14 firms whose documents make up the leak. The files show that Zelenskiy and his business partners used companies based in the BVI, Belize and Cyprus.

The assets held via these offshore companies are wide-ranging. They include real estate in London. Shefir owns two top-end properties – a three-bedroom apartment in an Edwardian mansion block in Regent’s Park bought in 2016 for £1.575m, and another three-bedroom flat in nearby Baker Street, opposite the Sherlock Holmes Museum, and purchased for £2.2m, according to Land Registry records.

Meanwhile, Yakovlev’s BVI company Candlewood Investments owns a luxury flat in a Victorian mansion block in Artillery Row, Westminster. The properties were acquired around the time Zelenskiy’s show was turned into a feature film and recommissioned for a second series. It is unclear if the three flats are let out or used on an occasional basis. A Russian company that bills itself as an “individual service for high status clients” manages them.

Zelenskiy’s apparent business connections to Russia via Maltex are likely to prove controversial. Poroshenko faced criticism for owning a chocolate factory in Russia at a time when Ukraine was fighting a war against Russian troops and their proxies following the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. The conflict, in which 14,000 people have died, continues in the east of the country and in the Moscow-backed rebel territories of Donetsk and Luhansk. Russia was previously a major market for Kvartal 95, with Russian TV screening its comedy shows.

Carrier Strike Group 5

The formidable CSG5 is made from DESRON15, 10 Navy aircraft squadrons and other ships. 

The flagship is CVN76 Ronald Reagan.

Destroyer Squadron 15 consists of 9 ships.

                     and      USS Milius ( DDG69)

Other ships as follows

10 Navy aircraft squadrons are
          

 

Destroyer Squardon 15

This  squadron is permanently assigned to Carrier Strike Group 5 and unlike other DESRONs which are basically formed from 6-7 destroyers, this DESRON 15 consists of the following nine ships:
USS Curtis Wilbur (DDG-54)
USS John S. McCain (DDG-56)
USS Fitzgerald (DDG-62)
USS Stethem (DDG-63)
USS McCampbell (DDG-85)
USS Mustin (DDG-89)
USS Milius (DDG-59)
USS Barry (DDG-52)
USS Benfold (DDG-65)

 Among these ships, Benfold., Barry, Milius are equipped with the latest version of BMD 5.0 Aegis system.

USS Milius at Yokosuka

The USS Milius (DDG 69),  a state of the art BMD-capable guided missile destroyer, arrived at Yokosuka.   The ship was initially planned to arrive last summer, but NSF, Pacific Fleet delayed the ship’s arrival to ensure completion of the ship’s the Aegis Baseline 9 combat system before joining the 7th Fleet.

The emblem of DESRON 21 still can be seen but soon it will be replaced with DESRON 15.

Ronald Reagan ( CVN76 ) on Test Voyage.

This morning around 11am, CVN76 departed Yokosuka for her test voyage after the maintenance. She'll be returning in several days then will be peforming CQ with her aircrafts.

Gender Neutralism on steroid

                                                  Person Personson probably.

D.I.U

This afternoon on the way home, we followed a driver all the way from East Tamaki to Mission Bay because we thought they were demonstrating the classic driving style of the inebriated, i.e. braking whenever an oncoming car approaches, hugging the centre line and crossing it on blind corners and indicating on a bend.

Trolls and Bots on Steroid

I think some news which wisely shared on SNS sites could have been confirmed as Russian bots. Yeah right.

Being Libertarian in NZ

I think it would be awesome if we could take some more refugees and give up Ben, Cathy, George and Haydn? Yeah right.

Once there's a wall

A short history of the rise and fall of the formidable Berlin Wall.

Wearable Slogan?

               I think Labour slogan's attempting to infiltrate girls' clothing. Yeah right.

Best and Last Generation

I think a generation is the creation of shared experiences, the things that happened, the things you all did and listened to and read and went through and, as important, the things that did not happen. We are the last generation to grow up with crappy video games, with actual arcades instead of quality home consoles. If we wanted to play, we had to leave the house and mix it up with the ruffians. That is, we are the last generation to have the old-time childhood, wherein we were assigned a bully along with a homeroom teacher. Our childhood was closer to those of the 1950s than to whatever they’re doing today. It was coherent, hands-on, dirty, and fun. We are the last civilized human beings to have the old-time childhood.

Just think of all the things that have come and gone in our lifetimes, all the would-be futures we watched age into obsolescence—CD, DVD, answering machine, Walkman, MTV, video store, even internet. mall. There were still some rotary phones around in our childhood—now it’s nothing but virtual buttons.

I believe it's up to our generation that "the last ones schooled in the old manner, the last generation that know how to fold a newspaper, take a joke, and listen to a dirty story without losing their minds" to save this world in these dark new days.

That's Lovely

                                  Old wine advertisement on steroids. Charming.

Gloomy Future Displayed?

 National up in the air but has lost support, although standing upright with one stay on the ground, Labour is on firm ground, Winston is on the left with the Greens lagging behind. The signs as well as cloud obscuring our political future? Yeah right.

Propaganda Campaign

The NRA vows to fight a coming US civil war with the 'clenched fist' of truth...no mention of guns. Charming.

Unpleasant Ads

It seems to be a trend where corporate environmental vandals such as dairy giants are advertising their supposed environmental virtues on TV with 'butter wouldn't melt' adverts. The latest of these is the NZ seafood industry, who despite photographic evidence of large-scale illegal dumping, are trying to paint a picture of sustainability across their industry. Who is next, I wonder? Giant multinational weed spray companies or even petroleum giants? Yeah right.

Senseless Joykill

  I think the committed feminists are largely influencing washing labels now.

Forthcoming General Election

                                               Oh well, it is an election year.

Good Catch

      Brilliant placard at protest against Donald Trump's dismissal of science.