As the World Burns, All Roads Lead to Putin
As the World Burns, All Roads Lead to Putin
Find me a conflict zone, and I’ll find you a Kremlin operative with a blowtorch.
GREG OLEAR
WhoWhatWhy.org, 10/12/23
Taken together, the momentous events of the past month — the Russian “scorched earth” tactics in Ukraine, the Azeri offensive in Nagorno-Karabakh, the abominable Hamas terrorist attack in Israel, and, yes, the GOP dysfunction in Congress that has hamstrung the U.S. government at this critical moment — represent “an existential threat to the post-Westphalian world order,” as former British diplomat Arthur Snell characterized the war in Ukraine.
SNIP…
As president, Trump allowed Sergei Lavrov and Sergei Kislyak, high-level Kremlin officials, access to the Oval Office. He joked around with them. And he shared with them top secret intelligence from Israel, regarding Iran. For all we know, the piece of intelligence Trump gave the Russians that day was subsequently shared with the Iranians, who gave it to Hamas, which used it in planning its attacks on Israel over the weekend.
SNIP…
The Kremlin contagion has only spread. Republicans in Congress seek to obstruct, to weaken, to starve funds for aid to Ukraine, to leave vacant ambassadorships and key military appointments.
I don’t know if “Putin pays” the likes of Sens. Rand Paul (R-KY), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA); or if Moscow has enough kompromat on them to pull their marionette strings; or if they are just dumb fascists who sincerely hate democracy and have a hard-on for weirdo strongmen; but, by behaving the way they are, they are actively helping the Kremlin.
SNIP…
Curious, is it not, that tensions escalated in Ukraine, and Armenia/Azerbaijan, and Israel/Palestine right after McCarthy was ousted, during an interregnum where the speaker’s chair is vacant, and Congress therefore cannot function? The primary reason the Republicans tried to shut down the government, remember, is that they objected to sending aid to Ukraine. Gee, I wonder who benefits from that?
CONTINUES…
https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/international/as-the-world-burns-all-roads-lead-to-putin/
FTR, excellent analysis and context of who’s who, what’s what and why on planet Earth.
“All roads seem to lead to Putin with the president,” then-Speaker Pelosi said.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Who’d a thunk it?
In the Oval Office in the merry month of May 2017
President Trump gestures to Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak, as he speaks to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the Oval Office on Wednesday, May 10, 2017. (Alexander Shcherbak/TASS/Getty Images)
“I just fired the head of the FBI. He was crazy, a real nut job," Trump said, according to The Times. "I faced great pressure because of Russia. That's taken off.”
"I'm not under investigation," he added.
Sources:
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/05/10/527755991/trump-meets-with-russias-lavrov-at-the-white-house-today
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-nut-job-james-comey-russia-2017-5
KGB Col. Putin picked Trump to put in high office. I wonder who introduced them?
A: The Carlyle Group and Friends.
Who’s Enabling Putin’s Enablers?
BY SAM PIZZIGATI
CounterPunch, March 29, 2022
Where would Vladimir Putin be without the Russian oligarchy? Without Russia’s oligarchs, political leaders of the Western world have concluded, Putin would be tottering. Western leaders have made squeezing Russia’s richest a central piece of their strategy to end Putin’s Ukraine cross-border assault.
These same Western leaders, unfortunately, have failed to take seriously what ought to be an equally pressing question: Where would Russia’s oligarchs be without the West, without the Wall Streeters, wealth managers, and assorted other high-finance riff-raff “paid millions,” as Institute for Policy Studies analyst Chuck Collins puts it, “to help billionaires sequester trillions”?
Western leaders have essentially been ignoring this question almost ever since the old Soviet Union collapsed. And now we’re paying the price. Those Ukraine sanctions against Russia’s oligarchs? They come with a huge loophole. The Western world’s opaque web of tax havens and anonymous corporations is essentially rendering much of those sanctions ineffective.
Snippe…
The U.S. wealth defense industry, we need to remember, hasn’t just been helping Russian oligarchs hide their fortunes. America’s money-handlers have for years been helping them pile up ever grander fortunes. They’ve steered the illicit funds of Russian oligarchs into U.S. real estate, investment funds, and “even factories,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Bernstein, a senior reporter on the 2016 bombshell “Panama Papers” tax avoidance exposé.
The Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has used “a network of banks, law firms and advisers in multiple countries,” the New York Times just reported, to invest “billions in American hedge funds.” Along the way, he tapped the expertise and contacts of U.S. high-finance giants ranging from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to BlackRock and the Carlyle Group.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/03/29/whos-enabling-putins-enablers/
Gotta have an enemy — the scarier the better. Weird so many bank together not.
Thanks 
The sooner he rids the world of his evil existence the better. 
