The World War II Veterans at The White House a few days ago are now all in danger.
At the gathering of WWII veterans, with men in their 90's in attendance, no one was wearing a mask. According to reports, The Coronavirus is now "running rampant through The White House" and people are in a panic.
The selfishness, vanity, and psychopathy of Donald Trump is responsible for this. He put these old men in danger of contracting a disease they most likely would not be able to survive. He put government employees and even his own family in danger.
For what purpose? Because He lives in a world of magical thinking where he thinks his thoughts control reality.
I can't take it anymore. I honestly do not think I can live in this country if he wins reelection.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Putin just continued the plundering. During the 1996 Federal elections, Yeltsin was buried in the polls, hated due to the rampant corruption and looting of the state wealth. almost in single digits in some, but an American team stepped in and helped him rig/win the election. Time Magazine openly bragged about it, and Hollywood even made a Jeff Goldblum movie about it, Spinning Boris. When he resigned on December 31st, 1999, and put Putin into power some of his polls were as low as 2%.
Spinning Boris
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324619/
vimeo.com/382940668 <<< full movie
Rescuing Boris
The Secret Story of How Four U.S. Advisers Used Polls, Focus Groups, Negative Ads and All the Other Techniques of American Campaigning to Help Boris Yeltsin Win.
By Michael Kramer/Moscow Monday, July 15, 1996
http://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19960715,00.html
Privatization and the rise of "the oligarchs"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Yeltsin#Privatization_and_the_rise_of_%22the_oligarchs%22
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Yeltsin promoted privatisation as a way of spreading ownership of shares in former state enterprises as widely as possible to create political support for his economic reforms. In the West, privatisation was viewed as the key to the transition from Communism in Eastern Europe, ensuring a quick dismantling of the Soviet-era command economy to make way for "free market reforms". In the early-1990s, Anatoly Chubais, Yeltsin's deputy for economic policy, emerged as a leading advocate of privatisation in Russia.
In late 1992, Yeltsin launched a programme of free vouchers as a way to give mass privatisation a jump-start. Under the programme, all Russian citizens were issued vouchers, each with a nominal value of around 10,000 roubles, for the purchase of shares of select state enterprises. Although each citizen initially received a voucher of equal face value, within months the majority of them converged in the hands of intermediaries who were ready to buy them for cash right away.
In 1995, as Yeltsin struggled to finance Russia's growing foreign debt and gain support from the Russian business elite for his bid in the 1996 presidential elections, the Russian president prepared for a new wave of privatisation offering stock shares in some of Russia's most valuable state enterprises in exchange for bank loans. The programme was promoted as a way of simultaneously speeding up privatisation and ensuring the government a cash infusion to cover its operating needs.'
However, the deals were effectively giveaways of valuable state assets to a small group of tycoons in finance, industry, energy, telecommunications, and the media who came to be known as "oligarchs" in the mid-1990s. This was due to the fact that ordinary people sold their vouchers for cash. The vouchers were bought by a small group of investors. By mid-1996, substantial ownership shares over major firms were acquired at very low prices by a handful of people. Boris Berezovsky, who controlled major stakes in several banks and the national media, emerged as one of Yeltsin's most prominent supporters. Along with Berezovsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Potanin, Vladimir Bogdanov, Rem Viakhirev, Vagit Alekperov, Alexander Smolensky, Viktor Vekselberg, Mikhail Fridman and a few years later Roman Abramovich, were habitually mentioned in the media as Russia's oligarchs.
A Trump insider got a board position right after the US lifted sanctions on a Russian company
https://qz.com/1535650/trump-insider-got-board-spot-after-us-lifted-sanctions-on-russian-company/
The US Treasury Department announced yesterday (Jan. 27) that it had ended sanctions on three companies controlled by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of president Vladimir Putin. Sanctions on Russian energy giant EuroSibEnergo, aluminum producer UC Rusal, and Rusal’s parent company, En+ Group, were lifted after just 10 months, despite strong objections from members of both parties in Congress.
Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, told Quartz the move is a “sordid deal,” adding “the Trump Administration is working seven days a week with favoritism for Russia.”
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Look who’s on board now
According to bios released by En+, they include Nicholas Jordan, former co-CEO of Goldman Sachs’s Russia business; Carl Hughes, ex-vice chairman of Deloitte’s global energy and resources division; Joan McNaughton, who served as the UK’s director general of energy; and Christopher Bancroft Burnham, chairman and CEO of Cambridge Global Capital LLC, a private investment advisory firm with offices in San Francisco, Chicago, and Washington, DC.
“Mr. Burnham is a globally recognised expert in the implementation of accountability and transparency, and the implementation of best practice in government, corporations, and inter-governmental organisations, having served as Under Secretary General for Management of the United Nations [where he worked alongside Trump’s current national security adviser John Bolton] and Under Secretary of State for Management (acting),” the En+ release says. “Mr. Burnham is a former Vice Chairman at Deutsche Bank Asset Management and co-founded and led Deutsche Bank’s direct private equity group, RREEF Capital Partners. Mr. Burnham is also a former Assistant Secretary of State for Resource Management and Chief Financial Officer of the US Department of State.”
The En+ release makes no mention of one other notable position Burnham also held: member of Donald Trump’s presidential transition team.
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GREAT article
MITCH MCCONNELL, RUSSIA SANCTIONS, AND RUSAL’S INVESTMENT IN KENTUCKY
https://themoscowproject.org/dispatch/mitch-mcconnell-russia-sanctions-and-rusals-investment-in-kentucky/
In December 2018, the Trump administration announced it would lift sanctions from three companies linked to Russian oligarch and longtime Manafort business partner Oleg Deripaska. The sanctions were originally put in place to respond to Russia’s malicious cyber activities and attempts to subvert Western democracies. Instead of punishing Deripaska, however, the deal negotiated by the Treasury Department freed him from hundreds of millions of dollars in debt—and allowed him and his allies to keep majority ownership of his most important companies. When a bipartisan group of Senators sought to block this deal, Mitch McConnell and the majority of his Republican colleagues voted it down. Then, just three months later, one of these companies announced a $200 million investment into an aluminum mill in Mitch McConnell’s backyard. That’s what a quid pro quo looks like.
Background: Oleg Deripaska is a Kremlin-linked oligarch who was sanctioned for his links to the Kremlin’s malign activities abroad. Deripaska, whose holdings are valued at more than $14 billion, rose to prominence through Russia’s infamous “Aluminum Wars” during the 1990s. He emerged as the unrivaled leader of the Russian aluminum world.
Deripaska is closely linked to the Kremlin, and has been described in U.S. diplomatic cables as “among the 2-3 oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis.” He is also allegedly linked to the Russian intelligence through his right-hand man, Valery Pechenkin, a former high-ranking KGB and FSB officer. Deripaska is not simply a businessman, but admittedly operates as part of the Russian government. He has acknowledged possessing a Russian diplomatic passport and claims to have represented the Russian government in other countries. In April 2018, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned Deripaska, noting that he “has said that he does not separate himself from the Russian state.” Deripaska is linked specifically to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.
Deripaska has a lengthy business relationship with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. He reportedly began financing Manafort’s work promoting the Kremlin’s agenda abroad as early as 2005. In 2006, Manafort signed a $10 million annual contract with Deripaska for work that would “greatly benefit the Putin government.” Over the course of a decade, Manafort and Deripaska’s business relationship totaled at least $60 million. The relationship soured, however, leaving Manafort at least $19 million in debt to Deripaska, according to a court complaint filed by the oligarch. As he began working for Trump, Manafort reportedly hoped to use his access to the campaign to “get whole” with Deripaska, even going as far as to suggest private briefings to keep him updated on the campaign (Both Manafort and Deripaska have denied these allegations). On April 6, 2018, former National Security Advisor HR McMaster’s last day in office, he pushed through the only strong bout of economic sanctions during the Trump administration. And they hit Deripaska hard.
The Treasury Department sanctioned seven companies that were “owned or controlled by, directly or indirectly,” Deripaska. These companies included, per descriptions in the press release: EN+ Group, a “leading international vertically integrated aluminum and power producer;” EuroSibEnergo, “one of the largest independent power companies in Russia, operating power plants across Russia and producing around nine percent of Russia’s total electricity;” and Company RUSAL PLC (Rusal), “one of the world’s largest aluminum producers, responsible for seven percent of global aluminum production.” Deripaska and Russia lobbied the Trump administration and Capitol Hill hard to weaken the sanctions. It worked. The intense lobbying campaign reportedly involved “law firms, public relations experts, a former United States senator, and a former Trump campaign official.” This team pushed the idea that sanctions on Deripaska and his businesses would cripple the global aluminum market, and proposed that Deripaska would drastically decrease his ownership stakes to free his companies from sanctions.
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In a rare bipartisan moment, Democrats were joined by eleven Republicans in an effort to block the deal and to enforce sanctions against Deripaska’s companies. However, McConnell came out forcefully for lifting the sanctions, making a floor speech “accusing Democrats of politicizing the sanctions.” McConnell and the remaining Senate Republicans prevented the bipartisan group from reaching the 60 vote threshold. The Trump administration officially lifted the sanctions in January 2019. McConnell soon reaped his reward. Shortly after the sanctions were lifted, Rusal announced a massive investment in Kentucky, giving McConnell a political boost in a re-election year. Merely three months after the sanctions were lifted (April 2019), Rusal announced it would be investing $200 million into a Kentucky aluminum mill run by Braidy Industries, becoming a 40% stakeholder in the project. According to The Wall Street Journal, this mill would be “the largest new aluminum plant built in the U.S. in nearly four decades.” The deal was hardly a coincidence – the investment was made possible because former top McConnell staffers lobbied on behalf of Braidy Industries for the project.
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VIKTOR VEKSELBERG
https://themoscowproject.org/players/viktorvekselberg/
ABOUT THE MOSCOW PROJECT
