This really IS the day for shy posters! LOL! FReeQanon has come up with a link and story about McCain’s Kremlin Ties. With Montenegro in the news, it is quite an interesting find indeed. Following is a carved up version of the story to give a person some high points in the ties that McCain has to the Kremlin, but also how the DS Thugs go about carving up territory and resources. The whole article is worthwhile, and I do hope you will forgive the violence I do to it.
The article in question is from the Nation, October 20, 2008. McCain had just suspended his campaign for President on September 24, 2008, in favor of the so called bail out talks.
https://www.thenation.com/article/mccains-kremlin-ties/
McCain’s Kremlin Ties
He may talk tough about Russia, but John McCain’s political advisors have advanced Putin’s imperial ambitions.
By Mark Ames and Ari Berman
“Over the course of the presidential campaign, John McCain has repeatedly emphasized his willingness to stand up to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as proof that only he possesses the fortitude and judgment to become the next leader of the free world. …”
“…. Yet despite McCain’s tough talk, behind the scenes his top advisers have cultivated deep ties with Russia’s oligarchy—indeed, they have promoted the Kremlin’s geopolitical and economic interests, as well as some of its most unsavory business figures, through greedy cynicism and geopolitical stupor. The most notable example is the tale of how McCain and his campaign manager, Rick Davis, advanced what became a key victory for the Kremlin: gaining control over the small but strategically important country of Montenegro….”
top Montenegrin officials told the US diplomats that [lobbying firm Davis Manafort’s] work was underwritten by powerful Russian business interests connected to the Kremlin and operating in Montenegro. Neither Davis nor the McCain campaign responded to repeated requests for comment. (Davis’s extensive lobbying work, especially on behalf of collapsed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has already attracted critical media scrutiny.)
At the time, Putin wanted to establish a Russian outpost in the Mediterranean, and Montenegro–a coastal republic across the Adriatic from Italy—was seen as his best hope. McCain also lobbied for Montenegro’s independence from Serbia, calling it “the greatest European democracy project since the end of the cold war.” For McCain, the simplistic notion of “independence” from a country America had gone to war with in the late 1990s was all that mattered. What Montenegro looked like after independence seemed not to interest him…”
…”.In mid-September The Nation’s website published a photo of McCain celebrating his seventieth birthday in Montenegro in August 2006 at a yacht party hosted by convicted Italian felon Raffaello Follieri and his movie-star girlfriend Anne Hathaway. On the same day one of the largest mega-yachts in the world, the Queen K, was moored in the same bay of Kotor. This was where the real party was. The owner of the Queen K was known as “Putin’s oligarch”: Oleg Deripaska, controlling shareholder of the Russian aluminum giant RusAl, currently listed as the ninth-richest man in the world, with a rap sheet as abundant as his wealth. By mid-2005 Deripaska had already virtually taken control of Montenegro’s economy by snapping up its aluminum plant, KAP—…”
[Didn’t Q tell us to pay attention to Aluminum?]
“…Russia’s virtual takeover of Montenegro was well under way by January 2006, when Rick Davis introduced Deripaska to McCain at a villa in Davos, Switzerland. They met again seven months later, at a reception in Montenegro celebrating McCain’s birthday, as reported in The Washington Post.
The story of how Oleg Deripaska, 40, rose from a Cossack village to become a Putin-blessed aluminum tycoon with an estimated $40 billion fortune does not begin with a lemonade stand and old-fashioned elbow grease. Like most post-Soviet success stories, Deripaska’s rise began abruptly and violently, during the chaotic reign of Boris Yeltsin. Among all the battles for control of valuable state assets in the 1990s, none were as bloody as the “aluminum wars,” in which organized-crime gangs hired by competing interests assassinated dozens of executives, shareholders and bankers. During a visit to the United States in 1995, Deripaska threatened the lives of two aluminum rivals, Yuri and Mikhail Zhivilo, according to a RICO lawsuit filed against Deripaska in New York district court in 2000….”
“…In 2001, about a year after Putin signed a decree granting legal immunity to Yeltsin’s family, Deripaska married Yeltsin’s granddaughter, thereby cementing his own immunity and power. Throughout Putin’s reign, Deripaska has adhered to an unwritten understanding between Putin and the oligarchs: as long as they support the Kremlin, they can operate with impunity. Deripaska has thus taken on numerous projects dear to Putin, such as building a new airport in Sochi for the 2014 Olympics and buying out Tajikistan’s aluminum plant to help Putin reassert control over that key ex-Soviet republic. Deripaska openly admits that his RusAl holdings are subservient to the Kremlin’s wishes, telling the Financial Times last year, “If the state says we need to give it up, we’ll give it up.”…”
[texokie is possibly smelling who at least one of Putin’s DS albatross might be. But Deripaska’s access to US had been denied because of legal accusations.]
“…. Despite rampant Russophobia among Republicans, Deripaska turned to powerful GOP figures to solve his problem—especially to Republicans connected with McCain. In 2003 Deripaska hired former presidential candidate Bob Dole, who had nearly picked McCain as his running mate, and Dole’s lobbying partner Bruce Jackson (also a McCain aide) to lobby the State Department to overturn the visa ban, according to Glenn Simpson and Mary Jacoby of The Wall Street Journal. Over the next few years Dole’s firm, Alston & Bird, was paid more than $500,000 to push for Deripaska’s visa.
Deripaska also reached out to a Washington-based intelligence firm, Diligence, chaired by GOP foreign policy hand Richard Burt, McCain’s top foreign policy adviser in 2000 and an adviser in ’08 (Burt left Diligence in 2007 to join Henry Kissinger’s consulting firm). Deripaska’s business partner in London, Nathaniel Rothschild, an heir to the English Rothschild fortune, bought a stake in Diligence, according to the New York Times and confirmed by a Rothschild spokesman….”
[AHAAAAAA! A ROTHSCHILD REARS ITS UGLY HEAD!]
“…. So Diligence, now partly owned by Rothschild, provided a “due diligence” report to the World Bank, which the Bank then used to approve its loan to Deripaska.
Not surprisingly, the lobbying worked: in December 2005 Deripaska was issued a multientry US visa, according to the State Department. …”
[Deripaska was hot after key 3rd world bauxite mines. Yet he managed to compromise his US Visa status again. ]
“….Once again Deripaska turned to powerful Republicans—this time, to McCain and campaign manager Davis, who arranged the January 2006 Davos introduction. The McCain campaign later claimed that “any contact between Mr. Deripaska and the senator was social and incidental,” but afterward Deripaska thanked Davis for arranging “such an intimate setting.” The Washington Post reported that Davis was “seeking to do business with the billionaire.” Indeed, Deripaska’s subsequent thank-you letter mentioned his possible investment in a metals company Davis represented through a hedge-fund client….”
[It turns out that Deripaska got acquainted with Davis and Co in the Ukraine. Something called the Orange Revolution occured. Victor Yushchenko was poisoned and almost died. Rinat Akhmetov was under investigation for the attack, and fled the country.]
“…In exile in Monaco, he turned to Davis’s business partner, Paul Manafort–the second name in the lobbying firm Davis Manafort. An old GOP hand, Manafort, like Davis, had played a key role in Dole’s failed 1996 presidential run and had worked for dictators like Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines and Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire. Akhmetov initially hired Manafort to improve the image of his beleaguered conglomerate, SCM, but soon Manafort’s role shifted to helping Yanukovich….”
“…. In 2005 McCain had nominated Orange Revolution hero Yushchenko for the Nobel Prize, and that spring he’d honored Yushchenko in the headquarters of the International Republican Institute, whose board McCain has chaired since 1993. But behind the scenes the former head of IRI’s Moscow office, Philip Griffin, was recruited by Manafort to work on Yanukovich’s campaign against Yushchenko. Davis Manafort’s work was considered so detrimental to US interests that a National Security Council official called McCain’s office to complain, according to the New York Times. The McCain campaign denies receiving the NSC complaint….”
“…. Russia surprised everyone by dropping its objections to Montenegrin independence, which Russia’s historic ally Serbia vigorously opposed. “There seemed to be a belief that Deripaska and the Russians wanted to gain control of the aluminum plant as part of a Russian move for greater influence throughout Montenegro,” says former ambassador Sklar.
Meanwhile, Rick Davis was also eager for a piece of Montenegro’s independence, lobbying hard for Davis Manafort to run the referendum campaign. Bob Dole, who has been paid $1.38 million by the Montenegrin government since 2001 to lobby for it in Washington, urged his Montenegrin friends to hire Davis. Whether it was because of Dole or, as some speculate, the Russians, Davis got his deal.
Though Davis has claimed no connection to his partner Manafort’s controversial activities in Ukraine, he nevertheless hired at least three specialists recommended by Manafort, from the same team Manafort used for Yanukovich’s victory, to work on Montenegro’s independence referendum. They included Russian political operative Andrei Ryabchuk, an elections specialist who had previously worked on pro-Putin campaigns in Russia….”
[The scheme is quite convoluted, and many players are mentioned. Nathaniel Rothschild appears again, as does Deripaska and Montenegro.]
“…. In April 2006 McCain announced that Montenegro’s independence was the “greatest European democracy project since the end of the cold war.” Despite opposition cries of vote rigging, the United States and other major powers accepted the results—and Putin’s Russia recognized newly independent Montenegro before the EU did.
A few months after the vote, McCain and a contingent of GOP senators visited Montenegro. The day before they arrived, Djukanovic had flown to Putin’s dacha on the Black Sea. “Your government made it possible for large-scale Russian investments,” Putin told the Montenegrin leader. Djukanovic then returned to Montenegro and warmly received McCain, who also met with the Montenegrin president, speaker of Parliament and opposition leader Predrag Bulatovic. Bulatovic told McCain about how Russian capital was taking over the country and of his concern that “this investment can have a negative impact on the democratic process.” McCain listened but kept criticism of Russia to himself….”
“…. Soon after the referendum, the powerful figures behind Montenegro’s independence were carving up the country. That summer Rothschild started discussions with top Montenegrin officials about gaining control of the valuable shoreline, including the half-billion-dollar Porto Montenegro project, which aims to become the world’s top mega-yacht marina, complete with luxury hotels, shopping and the country’s first eighteen-hole golf course. The property was handed to the Munk-Rothschild-fronted offshore consortium for a pittance,…”
Aside from a little campaign dough, what has McCain gotten out of all this? It’s hard to tell–either he was utterly clueless while his top advisers and political allies ran around the former Soviet domain promoting the Kremlin’s interests for cash, or he was aware of it and didn’t care. McCain was reportedly so angry about Davis Manafort’s role in stifling Ukraine’s Orange Revolution that he almost removed Davis as campaign manager. But in the case of Montenegro, he should have known what Davis & Co. were up to. After all, McCain lent a helping hand. And by the time he visited the country, the Russian takeover was plain to see.
The story of how McCain’s closest aides and employees have been undermining his vociferously expressed opposition to Putin and Russia’s oligarchs offers a highly disturbing preview of what a McCain administration might look like. When McCain’s campaign proclaims “country first,” one has to wonder, Which country? The one with the highest bidder?
Great find! Thank you, TEXOKIE and FReeQAnon!
Did anyone notice that No Name put out a statement yesterday?
Has there ever been, in the ENTIRE history of the United States, a politician who became invisible like No Name has? EVER?????
This is one more thing that No Name has in common with dictators around the world. Arafat and the Soviet leaders in particular come to mind. They pretend everything is normal when no one has seen them. They pretend to be fine when they are sick. They pretend to be fine when they are DEAD.
:: Deripaska’s business partner in London, Nathaniel Rothschild ::
!!! ex-Husband of a recently “red-scarfed” celebrity. Interesting...
Picking myself up off the floor after reading this. Montenegro, Deripaska, Manafort etc and all this goes back so far and so many players...is this part of the 40% that does not come out or the 60% that does. I wish I were going to be alive when the truth comes out. It is beyond my comprehension that people are this evil. Just wow. Praying for President Trump. I know he has a plan and I cannot wait to see it. I think most of the sheep will not be able to understand what is really going on.
Trump mentioned the people of Montenegro in his Carlson interview and I wondered why. He said they were very aggressive people.
This information on McCain is so interesting. Thanks!
When you’re not writing informative posts, you are sharing others’ informative posts! ThankQ!
Montenegro