. . . two greater-than-civilizational stories run through the history of the region: 1) who were the Vikings, really, as defined both by the character of their leadership and the makeup of their complement? And 2) the condition of Russian soil (not so good) and the desirability of one of the world’s great crossroads and agricultural centers. The drive for Ukraine has been always south from today’s St. Petersburg. Boredom, corruption, criminality, greed have indeed enriched Ukraine’s soil over centuries. The inhabitants of the land in the early Byzantine Era had been Turkish (“Turkic”) tribes who chose to declare themselves Jews and probably so in defiance of expanding Christian and Muslim power.
The source I generally cite for Russian history from before the Rus has been Pipes, Richard. Russia Under the Old Regime: The History of Civilization. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1974, but I have reached an age where re-reading seems in order while the taking of voluminous notes defies the contemporary zeitgeist, however enamored one may be of 19th and 20th Century methods in scholarship. Informal conversation serves the note as well, and one may indeed “fly” south from St. Petersburg via Google Maps and practically hit Kiev as is being done today but primarily for want of unobtainable pride.
Either Donald Trump’s associates and followers aren’t readers, or at least not discerning ones, or they’re as greedy and lusting for power as he has been, or, rather like him, they’re equally damaged narcissists with Narcissistic Personality Disorder’s (NPD’s) standard “messianic delusions of grandeur”. Also, I suppose one might suggest that some have been compromised (and blackmailed) or leveraged for want of some aspiration or dream that the Don might make come true through his legion of intimidating and obfuscating lawyers.
Approach the followers (carefully) in any manner that suits, but “missing data” upstairs–alternatively brazen disinformation, innuendo, and rumor–would seem a part of that now benighted bought or weakening, small, and violent constellation of Americans too easily led astray.
America’s moderate Democrats and Republicans have turned against Donald Trump as a candidate for the 2024 elections and beyond as they have perceived his character issues as deep and lifelong, which they are, but what remains with avaricious associates, lesser politicians perhaps hooked on his indulgence with “endorsements” (kiss of death from the inside out for those with integrity) and funding, would seem a profound denial as regards not only the common wisdom but also wisdom questioned and repeatedly corroborated. What follows in addition to telling quotations is a short list of reference associated with the former American president’s autocratic, vicious, and unscrupulous character.
More than 18 months into his presidency, Donald Trump’s modus operandi – and the danger it represents – is clear. His working method is that of the mafia boss and gangland chieftain, daily wielding his power to settle scores, teach lessons and crush dissent. Anyone who’s seen The Sopranos will know the routine: the casual intimidation, the obsession with loyalty, the brutal ostracism meted out to those who dare defy the man at the top.
“My name is Carmine. I don’t know why you’re fucking with Mr. Trump but if you keep fucking with Mr. Trump, we know where you live and we’re going to your house for your wife and kids,” the caller said, according to the account that the attorney, Kristopher Hansen, gave to the Holmdel police department in New Jersey. Hansen speculated that the caller was Trump’s bodyguard.
Many of those who bought the condos, it turns out, did so not to live there but allegedly to launder illicit money – Russian gangster money, drug cartel money, people-smuggling money.
A joint Reuters-NBC News investigation published on Friday alongside a report by the non-profit Global Witness said the skyscraper with Trump’s name had ties to international organised crime.
The reports detailed how the future president gave the project to his daughter Ivanka as a “baby” effort to gain real estate experience, and said it ended up drawing a cast of characters accused of fraud, corruption and kidnapping.
The meeting came just days after Kilimnik met in Moscow with Oleg Deripaska, a powerful oligarch and close ally of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Deripaska had been a major client of Manafort but had sued him over a failed business deal in Ukraine and was seeking to recoup almost $25m.
The Trump administration announced late last year it intended to lift sanctions on Deripaska’s companies, despite strong opposition from Democrats and some Republicans in Congress. The treasury department had imposed the sanctions on Deripaska and several of his companies in tandem with seven Russian oligarchs, 12 companies they owned or controlled, and 17 Russian government officials, for “malign activity” which included “attempting to subvert western democracies, and malicious cyber-activities”.
I’ve added to the above reference section articles published before the publication date of this post, Oct. 10, 2022, but thought here to add #DJT pieces bearing down on about the same themes involving the former American President, foremost treason abetted by questionable character and an altogether malign narcissistic psychology.
But her father was wrong. In the end, Trump spent plenty of time with Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein. In fact, he fit in quite well with them. Arrivistes all—be it Epstein’s Coney Island, Trump’s Queens, or Robert Maxwell’s Eastern European shtetl—they had all come from the wrong side of the tracks. And at some point in their lives, Robert Maxwell, Trump, and Epstein all had ties to foreign intelligence agencies, arms dealers, and the sex trade.
Paul Manafort Allen Weisselberg Michael Flynn Steve Bannon Rick Gates George Papadopoulos Roger Stone George Nader At least Michael Cohen turned around 180-degrees, served his time, and has regained his integrity.
I know this blog seldom presents first-hand (primary) reporting and that the reference lists I create (drudgery!) hardly represent “writing”, but having gone to the very minor bother of looking up and thinking up names as well as coming up with related articles, what’s an old blogger to do?
Chris Zillizza’s piece for The Point (July 21, 2021) provided some helpful reminders, but I didn’t simply copy and list for not recognizing the names Tom Barrack or Elliott Broidy. I’ve added reference for each. I was also sorry about having to list Michael Cohen in the gallery of rogues although as Trump’s fixer I’m sure he was no picnic either. Nonetheless, as an instantly transformed witness and apparently recovered Trump goon, mention feels like throwing a perfectly good carrot back into a festering stew of rotten vegetables.
If the “festering stew” of Don’s rogues were to take hold and one were to ask about the gelatinous substance holding all of them in the same pot, there might be just the two ingredients: greed and a most American vainglory that would bring all back to the here familiar “Malignant Narcissism“.
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I’ve remained loose with BackChannels as regards discipline and style . . . perhaps it’s been an old hippy’s blog…. Nonetheless, the entries are alpha but from time tot time I present one or two (or more) as a quotation with reference. Among the enduring themes to be associated with Donald John Trump in history will be those pertaining to character, criminality, errant political psychology, integrity, loyalty, and trust both in relation to himself and in relation to his country and America’s national character.
Defendants PAUL J. MANAFORT, JR., (MANAFORT) and RICHARD W. GATES Ill (GA TES) served for years as political consultants and lobbyist’i. Between at least 2006 and 2015,MANAFORT and GATES acted as unregistered agents of the Government of Ukraine, the Party of Regions (a Ukrainian political party whose leader Victor Yanukovych was President from 2010 to 2014), Yanukovych, and the Opposition Bloc (a successor to the Party of Regions that formed in 2014 when Yanukovych fled to Russia). MANAFORT and GATES generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a result of their Ukraine work. 111 order to hide Ukraine payments from United States authorities, from approximately 2006 through at least 2016, MANAFORT and GATES laundered the money through scores of United States and foreign corporations, partnerships, and bank accounts.
Nader has had several run-ins with the law over the years related to sexual abuse of children. He was convicted in the 1990s of transporting child pornography publications, and imprisoned in 2003 for sexually abusing ten boys in the Czech Republic.[6] He pleaded guilty in early 2020 to flying a 14-year-old boy from Europe to the US for sex, and transporting pornography depicting child sexual abuse and bestiality.
David Arakhamia, the head of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky’s party in parliament and a member of Kyiv’s negotiating team with Russia released a Telegram statement about the incident, saying: “Russian illegal construction is starting to collapse and catch fire. The reason is simple: if you build something explosive, sooner or later, it will explode. And this is just the beginning.”
Mykhailo Podoliak, who serves as an adviser to Zelensky echoed the sentiment. “Crimea, the bridge, the beginning. Everything illegal must be destroyed, everything stolen must be returned to Ukraine, everything occupied by Russia must be expelled,” Podoliak said.
Ukraine, perhaps, has announced its full intention to divorce Russia from its sovereign territory without exception. Today’s explosion and fire on Kerch Strait Bridge, the lengthy causeway linking Russia to Crimea by road and rail, will slow Russian resupply to Russian-speaking Ukrainians, Russians, and Russian soldiery recently delivered to Crimea for training.
Given Ukrainian President Zelensky’s determination to remove the last Russian armed presence from Ukraine’s sovereign territory, the contest is bound to lead to the elimination of Russian Naval Base in Sevastopol. The base had been started in 1772, finished eleven years later, fought over in the 19th Century, abandoned by Russia in 1855, occupied by the German Imperial Army in 1918, again lost to Nazi Germany in 1942, and leased by Russia for its Black Sea Fleet since the end of the Cold War.
As noted in a France24 video in 2019, a tour guide says to the reporter, “It’s a fleet that was armed two years ago. Everything we see in this bay is weaponry that appeared over the past five years” (1:55).
Times Radio analysis, posted to YouTube, October 8, 2022.
BackChannels concurs with perhaps less subtlety: Russia has clearly overplayed its position, and in the say of “soft power”, it has sacrificed any cultural or peaceful benefits it may have brought with its presence in exchange for bullying willful destruction and terror and nothing else. Russia has nothing to offer Europe or Ukraine at this time, and with Putin’s criminal enterprise–that’s all it has been since the early-mid 1990s–it has no place to go in history and has only sealed its fate in Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin has never been a rational state actor but always a piratical “malignant narcissist” engaged in the cover of a projection of an heroic self with impression enforced by the many methods of perceptual control. As his fear of being “found out” becomes realized, he doubles-down in defense of image and becomes more surreal by the day. As he has never authentically served Russia but plundered her by developing his mafia-style monopoly on power, one may only hope that his own “tire” of him post-haste and with ambition to return to modernity, which some have quite enjoyed, will take the reins in the direction of reform.
For the time being, the world surrounding Putin’s Imperial Russian Kleptocracy would seem stuck with containment, defense, and deterrence. For Russians who would be modern and well dressed with a Modern Political Mentality: despair, flight, lethargic cooperation, passive resistance; and for some close in with the little monster grown fat, one might hope for treachery.
The end-state desired would seem a modern responsible-responsive Russian state, not Putin’s criminal feudal-medieval monstrosity loaded up with 2,000 tactical nukes (advanced hypersonic missiles and stealthy submarines) x hate, ignorance, and fear to match, not to mention the leader’s criminal — and politically criminal — narcissism.
Some of us are just waiting to see Robert Kraft’s Superbowl ring returned to him. And all of this over that? Could be as that ring is symbolic of the criminal, piratical, and unhinged nature of Putin’s increasingly naked regime.
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Anderson, Hans Christian. “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”
Chances are Putin will “slow walk” on repairs, forcing Europe to intercede in stopping the leak while investigating it.
Russian President Vladimir Putin neither advances Russia’s conventional interests nor defends them: what he does is indulge in his own “messianic delusions of grandeur”, which ties to his malignant narcissistic psychosis, to project and sustain his own heroic image, cover and fend off personal humiliation, and in the end obtain unlimited “narcissistic supply”, i.e., the adoration of a mob too ignorant to comprehend either his evil or his sickness (essentially Narcissistic Personality Disorder).
Addressing the Helsinki Security Forum on Friday, 30 September 2022, the NATO Deputy Secretary Mircea Geoană said that the damage to two pipelines in the Baltic Sea this week are of “deep concern” and noted that all “currently available information indicates that this is the result of deliberate, reckless, and irresponsible acts of sabotage”. He said that NATO supports the investigations underway to determine the origin of the damage; and that “allies have been exchanging information including with Finland and Sweden in this sense”.
Possibly, from Donald Trump’s perspective, he only loses or takes other people’s money (without return), and rather like the feudal-medieval king he’d like to be in the still revolutionary and evolving modern United States of America, he expects the ginormous junkyard of disappointments left to others to just go away.
I tweet this page from time to time to underscore Donald Trump’s character and personality issues in a way that proves helpful to authentic patriotic and traditional Americans as opposed to his generally easily manipulated or emotionally unhinged base of greedy and power hungry monsters or just plain innocent (generally white Christian) zealots. Sadly for America, neither the action, attention, and coverage linked to “#DJT” seems to diminish–I don’t think the base is growing but may be transforming into a vacuous American cult with legitimate gripes turned into off-the-wall explanations and conspiracies that never end.
#Russia on 🔥: Novokuznetsk Iron and Steel Plant owned by Putin's mafioso Roman #Abramovich caught fire in the evening of September 24th. The plant employed 11,500 people in Siberia. "Leading manufacturer of rail products in Russia and the only manufacturer of tram rails." pic.twitter.com/3tkSnO9qaH
“This is cool that we have all gathered here today because we came here not on party or state orders, which is also sometimes necessary, but because we all wanted to be together, here and today,” Putin told the crowd, calling them “brothers”.
He ended by shouting “long live Russia, long live Ukraine” and “long live bike” in Ukrainian before heading off to a meeting with President Viktor Yanukovich.
Well, doesn’t that make plain what all the chaos, death, destruction, and suffering come down to?
Posted to YouTube, August 30, 2011.
Now the deluded, deranged, and tyrannical Vladimir Putin wants to restore his biker party no matter how many Ukrainians and Russians prove themselves willing to die for him without their cooperation or consent.
The clip appears to have come from the 2011 Sevastopol Bike Show, and it would appear to show how much Putin loves the Russians and Ukrainians that were his to plunder with impunity before Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity that had the corrupt Viktor Yanukovych skedaddling north to Mothering Russia (as Putin would have her) for reassurance, a kind of “That’s alright, my blubberous little buddy. We’ll get it all back the way it was. Or we’ll destroy it.”
Probably, Putin has been always a malignantly narcissistic, petulant, and posturing little boy.
BackChannels 