Tag Archives: Vladimir Putin

Putin: Negative Reflection in Western Eyes

23 Wednesday May 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Russia

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Putin: leader of nationalist Russia, master of “realpolitik” — leverage, punishment, reward — the Boss of bosses, capricious and absolute.

Whatever the game, why play one side or the other when you can own the whole board?

Medieval Political Absolutism v Modern Democratic Societies

KGB Colonel, President, Emperor Putin has taken Russia back the one giant step to an authoritarian system reinforced by secret police — today’s FSB supports more staff per capita than ever did the KGB — capable of presenting events for public political perceptual control as with the Moscow Apartment Bombings and the Russian Army’s after-hours (deeply unofficial) brutalizing of Chechen villages in such a way as to drive the men into the waiting camps of Chechen rebels.  He has succeeded in abetting greater chaos and conflict in the world, especially in Syria, while balancing the tension between adversaries that may stall change but keep all of the businesses, licit and perhaps illicit, running.

BackChannels credits Putin with turning Erdogan’s pretty little head back toward the feudal glory of the sultanate — or something like it — with the help of Turkish Stream, encouraging the family business in Hungary, and aiding with the election of the formerly more autocratic President (“Fake News”!) Trump in the United States (the French, better knowing what they’re about, didn’t quite go for his Marine Le Pen; Trump, BC presumes, has been tempered by having gotten himself into a job involving personalities as large as himself and powers greater than known in his organization — America’s democracy has not been overwhelmingly wowed or easily walked over).   The popular perception of Putin may respond opposite the viewer’s interests: for old lefties, he’s the world’s greatest reactionary and using revived militarism and the Russian Orthodox Church to assuage bad feelings attending the insult of expanding financial hardship associated with related ambitions in Syria and Ukraine and, ultimately, the way the guy at the top gets his hooks into the best performing businesses.

Why not?

In Russia, there’s protest and resistance to Putin, but there is no competition for the power he has amassed and his ability to . . . rearrange the world along feudal lines.

And for “righties”, he’s still the go-to for “socialist” dictatorships like Assad’s.

Never mind that Assad via the KGB-style political theatrical “Assad v The Terrorists” has been building Syria down, enough so, and so desperately so, for Putin to permanently expand Russia’s military footprint in Hafez’s old sandbox.

After the one step backward into 19th Century and earlier Russian paternal authoritarianism, aristocracy, imperialism, and resurgent nationalism, one may wonder what may be the “two steps forward” if any are ever taken as needs must be: whether Putin likes it or not, the Russian Federation is, alas, multicultural and perhaps yearning — as Navalny might have it — for the liberal devilishness that are “rule of law” and “responsive and responsible governance”.

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Statement Regarding a “Military Parade”

08 Thursday Feb 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, FTAC - From The Awesome Conversation, Political Psychology, Russia

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 American holidays and strong community interaction with the military honor the military. Related concerts and parades are today legend for binding the nation into a coherent and cohesive entity worth defense and worthy of respect all around.

There are ancillaries in air shows and show components, e.g., Blue Angels, in other events.

The parading of missiles and tanks has been for most who produce that spectacle a boast and a threat associated with lesser power, not greater.

The Vietnam generation of military cannot be compensated nor, perhaps, repaired adequately, but all have been permanently honored, memorialized, remembered on the Mall and beyond that in America’s communities. If and where long-term disservice has been done, perhaps that conversation is the one that should be led by an American President.

“A Needle in the Rain”


(c)1996 J. S. Oppenheim & DRB Productions

Brief History Lesson Regarding the Vietnam Era and the Present

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_measures
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Peace_Council

Hey, old college kids, remember the fatigue jackets, the grass, the Mobilization on the Mall, and the whole trippy deep ecology and far out peace thing?

Know that the Soviet Union invested $1 billion in the environmental and peace movements of the day (perhaps labor was already under way), and it got its money’s worth in the sabotaging of domestic will for that war.  It would also come to lose influence with the hip when it demonstrated its true methods in “realpolitik” as it drove tanks into the Soviet satellite states that it had completely demoralized with its own narcissistic claptrap and thuggery.

I was young at the time — the last of the babies of the baby boomers — and on the draft rolls only briefly before our troops were brought home.

The “Active Measures” part of the Vietnam War is active today on Moscow’s part: disinformation, election meddling, war by proxy in support of kleptocratic dictatorships.  If you approve of such methods and ends — much including the ownership of other humans as mere property and as well demonstrated by Moscow-aligned Bashar al-Assad and Iranian Grand Ayatollah Ali (“Hang ‘Em High”) Khamenei — do nothing, say nothing.  If that’s not the world in which you wish the next generations to live, look back, get caught up on Orwell — or Hitchens on Orwell — for a start — and look forward to engaging in this now really different kind of war.

BackChannels reminds: Putin appears to have bombed Moscow apartments with interest in blaming Chechen rebels for the deeds (“false-flag operations”) and then gone on to brutalize Chechen villages into pushing their men into the ranks of experienced and ready Chechen rebels.

Big Deal

The Soviet Union dissolved in bankruptcy with official finality on December 25, 1991.

The moment had a backstory, one well worth the reading.

The west may have been too quick to believe Russia would then evolve into a capitalist democracy, free and vibrant.  Instead, and much as scholar Karen Dawisha has unearthed, it became by design an elitist’s kleptocracy and one that now apparently revolves around its own “Vertical of Power”.

BackChannels believes the strong have cause to celebrate through national holidays and shared American events, but it is the weak that needs must put their muscle on display in parades.

The strong?

End Note

When one works a few ideas around to a compressed or distilled state, one hates to lose them in cascades of commentary published through the social networks.  Blogging helps preserve such thoughts and keep them available via keyword searches.  This passage comes from an earlier take on the same theme:

With President Trump, the American public faces three deep challenges:

1) how do deal with disinformation in the long term — “Active Measures” from Russia’s machinery, deflection and related strategies involving information and (“Fake News!”) rhetoric;

2) how to resist our own deepening divisions to return to quintessential American ideals, principles, and values, starting with the valuing of integrity in business and government and consequent distaste for corruption; 

3) how to address enemies that have found ways to blend and practice war indirectly, not only by proxy but with “frozen conflicts” aiding the movement of arms and narcotics worldwide and ability to deeply manipulate terrorism (e.g., see “Moscow Apartment Bombings”; read Anna Politkovskaya’s observations on the brutalizing of Chechen villages).

We may be in a little bit of trouble because the Cold War didn’t end quite where we thought it had and not much has prepared EU / NATO constituencies for its apparent phantoms and their still medieval political ambitions and views.

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Yuri Dmitriev Goes Home, But Trial Remains Open

30 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Psychology, Russia

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Dmitriev2007ByMediafond-522x-2President Vladimir Putin’s paranoid and punitive Russian state had taken Soviet Era type action against the fellow to the left, Yuri Dmitriev, in apparent retaliation for Dmitriev’s investigations of Stalin Era mass graves, the final evidence of the mass murdering that must have filled them.  The manner of action taken: “kompromat” — pictures of his undressed daughter framed by the regime as illicit for a show trial and consignment, for a while, to a psychiatric facility for evaluation.

Excerpt from the latest press release circulated by human rights advocate Elizabeth Childs:

His attorney, Victor Anufriev, says that Dmitriev is not out of danger yet. The date of the next hearing in the trial has not been announced, and it is not known if the Serbsky Institute also assessed whether nine photographs of Dmitriev’s daughter submitted in evidence should be considered pornographic in nature — a sticking point in the trial, as the prosecution has failed in several attempts to have expert analysts deem them as such. “I am sure that the prosecutor’s office will continue to pursue its goal of imprisoning Dmitriev at any cost and find some grubby organization that will give them the results they want,” Anufriev told the 7×7 news site.

Husband and Father Yuri Dmitriev at Home

DmitrievAtHome

Included with the Childs’ press release: Anna Artemyeva’s photo for Novaya Gazeta, January 27, 2018.

Previously in BackChannels

Dangerous History: Russia Slides Backward: A Note on Yuri Dmitriev and Moscow’s Return to Politically Directed “Punitive Psychiatry” (Jan. 11, 2018).

Additional Background and Update

Nechepurenko, Ivan.  “Gulag Historian Ordered to Undergo Psychiatric Testing in Russia.”  The New York Times, January 11, 2018:

At the end of December, an expert group found no pornographic content in the pictures, and the court, in Karelia, a region in northwestern Russia, refused to extend his detention beyond Jan. 28.

But at the same time, the court took a chapter from the Stalinist past, ordering that Mr. Dmitriev be sent to Moscow for psychiatric tests while also asking for a new review of the photographs by other experts.

Reuters.  “Russian Stalin-era Great Terror exposer freed from jail pending trial.”  January 27, 2018.

Memorial Human Rights Center (Old Web):

The Human Rights Center “Memorial” is a self-governed noncommercial civil organization, whose members are united by humanistic and moral principles and the aspiration to assist the defense of human rights and the formation of people’s civil dignity.

Foundation date: April 1st , 1993.

European Network: Remembrance and Solidarity.  “Russian society “Memorial”.  October 16, 2014.

Further Reference Ongoing

English language updates: The Dmitriev Affair 

Faceook: Free Yuri Dmitriev (English)

Twitter: @FreeYuDmitriev

MEMORIAL: An International Historical, Educational, Human Rights And Charitable Society

Related on site: “Yuri Dmitriyev Released from Detention.”  January 1, 2018.

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Dangerous History: Russia Slides Backward: A Note on Yuri Dmitriev and Moscow’s Return to Politically Directed “Punitive Psychiatry”

11 Thursday Jan 2018

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Free Speech, Journalism, Philosophy, Political Psychology, Politics, Psychology, Russia

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Dmitriev2007ByMediafond-522x

Yuri Dmitriev by Mediafond (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons.

ManuPsy-1974-App-VI-524

Bukovsky, Vladimir and Semyon Gluzman.  A Manual on Psychiatry for Dissenters. (URL is to PDF). 1974.

The BackChannels editor has to wear “readers” too, but to spare some squinting here’s the most critical pull from the small print in the above image:

Dissenters, as a rule, have enough legal grounding so as not to make mistakes during their investigation and trial, but when confronted by a qualified psychiatrist with a directive from above to have them declared non-responsible, they have found themselves absolutely powerless.

Kafka comes to mind.

So does Milan Kundera’s famous statement: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

President Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship has chosen for Russians the erasure of their memory and gone after the culturally healing human rights organization Memorial.

While Yuri Dimitriev’s dark adventure into Putin’s Hell gains traction in the western human rights community, another Memorial notable has been apparently framed (here relayed in shortest form):

Oyub Titiev

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/01/russia-rights-defender-arbitrarily-arrested-in-chechnya/ – 1/11/2018
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https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2018/01/276951.htm – 1/11/2018
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/10/chechnya-under-fire-after-human-rights-activist-held-for-drugs-possession – 1/10/2018

BackChannels wishes not to dilute the singular and stunning insult to the world that is the “Dmitriev Affair”, but it’s evident the Phantom of the Soviet has in mind the planting and rooting of Old Totalitarian Poison even with the world’s entire New Intelligentsia taking notice.

A Loose Note on Related Poli-Psy

Expressed as a personal trope: “Absolute Power” becomes inevitably the power to visit suffering on others with impunity.

Expressed as a personal trope: according to Richard Pipes (and now I shall have to relocate the reference), as the power of the Mongols receded, Russian princes had nonetheless internalized the idea that property and person could be (and should be) treated as the same thing, and proof of sovereignty was to be found in the permit to destroy either at will and without consequence.

For the malignant among narcissists, it would seem the suffering of another should have no consequence other than to affirm the power of the narcissist’s own blind will.  All the techniques of theater — for controlling family, if small; for controlling nations, if large — may apply to the artifice of presenting “reality” with the intention of framing and creating popular — and a neither too bright nor curious nor politically empowered — perception.

Reference Related to Yuri Dmitriev

ABC News.  “Fears Russian historian who exposed Stalin’s crimes may be falsely declared insane.”  January 10, 2018:

Some of Russia’s leading cultural figures say Mr Dmitriev was framed because his focus on Stalin’s crimes — he found a mass grave with up to 9,000 bodies dating from the Soviet dictator’s Great Terror in the 1930s — conflicts with the latter-day Kremlin narrative that Russia must not be ashamed of its past.

The narrative has taken on added importance ahead of a March presidential election, with polls showing incumbent Vladimir Putin, who uses his country’s World War II victory when Stalin was in charge to bolster national pride, is on track to win.

Mr Putin asserted last year that what he called an “excessive demonisation of Stalin” was being used to undermine Russia.

Activatica.  “The Arrest of Karelian ‘Memorial” Head Yuri Dmitriev: What is Known.”  March 22, 2017:

In general, the situation in Karelia is complex. On one hand, Karelia is a region where many exiles are left, the whole region was filled with camps and exiles, and the memory of this is alive at the personal level. And the authorities of Karelia have, for a rather long time, supported the activities of “Memorial” and various structures for perpetuating memory. When Dmitriev discovered the Sandarmokh burial site, the Karelian authorities cooperated and held a contest to landscape this place. But at the same time, there were efforts to conceal and obstruct the receipt of information on the side of the secret services. They also tried to pressure Dmitriev six years ago. On one side the authorities helped, but on the other side, some power structures interfered. And in the past couple years, pressure on Dmitriev has intensified, as an independent historian.

Ayres, Sabra.  “An outspoken research of Stalin’s crimes fights for his own fate and freedom in Russia.”  Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2017:

A small clearing in a dense northwestern Russian forest marks the site where, 20 years ago, Yuri Dmitriev discovered a group of mass graves containing victims of Josef Stalin’s Great Terror.

Using detailed documents uncovered in KGB archives, Dmitriev was able to piece together the location where Stalin’s execution squads killed and buried more than 9,500 people from 1937 to 1938. The documents contained the dates and names of those killed, as well as the executioners’ names. During the next two decades, Dmitriev worked meticulously to document every victim’s story.

Bukovsky, Vladimir.  “Punitive Psychiatry (1977).”  The Bukovsky Archives.  Vladimir Bukovsky’s foreward to Russia’s political hospitals (1977) by Sidney Bloch and Peter Reddaway.

Luhn, Alec.  “Gulag grave hunter unearths uncomfortable truths in Russia.”  The Guardian, August 3, 2017:

“For our government to become … accountable, we need to educate the people,” Dmitriyev said of his efforts to uncover details of Soviet repression.

But not everyone wants to remember this forgotten history, especially amid Russia’s current patriotic fervour. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, said in June that “excessive demonisation” of Stalin has been a “means of attacking the Soviet Union and Russia”, and several branches of Memorial have been declared “foreign agents” in recent years.

U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Russia.  “U.S. Mission to Russia Concerned with Charges Against Yury Dmitriev.”  May 31, 2017:

The U.S. Mission to Russia is concerned by what appear to be politically-motivated criminal charges against prominent human rights activist and historian Yury Dmitriev. Mr. Dmitriev is a respected historian whose work has been instrumental in uncovering mass burial sites and founding the Sandarmokh Memorial Complex in Karelia. We call on Russia to transparently uphold the rule of law and respect human rights and fundamental freedoms enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We also call on Russia to respect its international human rights obligations, including those related to the prohibition on arbitrary arrest or detention and respect for fair trial guarantees.

Osborn, Andrew.  “Russian historian who exposed Stalin’s crimes faces enforced psychiatric testing.”  Reuters, January 9, 2018:

A previous psychiatric evaluation declared him to be of sound mind and a court-sanctioned expert group found no pornographic content in nine photographs of his daughter that are at the center of the case against him, overturning the earlier findings of other experts commissioned by prosecutors.

Yarovaya, Anna.  “The Yuri Dmitriev Affair”.  The Independent Barents Observer.  March 11, 2017:

What always struck me about Dmitriev was his enthusiasm, which materialized less in the help he gave me and more in his attitude to history, to events that had occurred many years ago. For example, in the same cemetery where I shot the film, he found the remains of a POW. None of the local authorities was in a hurry to bury the exhumed “youth,” as Dmitriev called him. So Dmitriev put the bones in his garage. A while later, he secured a spot in Peski Cemetery, found a sponsor to help him buy a gravestone, and asked the philologist Valentina Dvinskaya to translate the phrase “To the victims of war, disappeared but not forgotten” into German so that it could be engraved on the headstone. He did all this for an unknown man who had been killed over sixty years ago.

It was only later I realized that Yuri Dmitriev was the same Yuri Dmitriev who had founded the Sandarmokh Memorial Cemetery, who was involved in investigating the Krasny Bor Forest NKVD execution site in Karelia, who had catalogued over 13,000 names of victims of the Great Terror of 1937–1938 in Karelia and published them in The Book of Remembrance, which runs to thousands of pages.

Wikipedia.  “Memorial”.

The Dmitriev Affair (Website)

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Also in Media: Mark Galeotti on “How Russia Manages Its Political War in Europe”

02 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Also in Media, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Notes On Reading BackChannels, Political Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics

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ECFR218-Graphic-PSA

Source and Recommended Reading

http://www.ecfr.eu/page/-/ECFR228_-_CONTROLLING_CHAOS1.pdf

“Listen: we engage in foreign policy the way we engage in war, with every means, every weapon, every drop of blood. But like in war, we depend on both the strategy of the general in the High Command, and the bravery and initiative of the soldier in the trench.”

Russian former diplomat, 2017

Russia sees ‘active measures’ (aktivnye meropriyatiya) – from supporting populist parties through disinformation and espionage campaigns, all the way to incidents such as the attempted coup in Montenegro – as an essential part of its efforts to influence Europe.  Along with the usual instruments of foreign influence, such as diplomacy and economic levers, Russia is especially active in using covert and non-traditional means, from intelligence operations to military pressure and even organised crime, all of which have been the foci of recent policy briefs for ECFR.3 This final publication in an informal series seeks instead to consider the extent to which these campaigns are carefully planned and coordinated – and, if so, by whom.

Approximate date of publication: September 2017.

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Also in Media: “When The Left Longed For Russian Political Interference” – The Daily Beast – January 29, 2017

29 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by in Also in Media

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Today, tweets from the President of the United States Donald J. Trump seem to suggest both trust of and a growing friendship for today’s Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Of course, Putin was himself a former KGB agent, who obviously learned well the methods of disinformation and propaganda taught him in KGB school decades ago. Now he used these techniques to, as the CIA report put it, to order “an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the US presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.”

Source: When The Left Longed For Russian Political Interference – The Daily Beast

–33–

Address: Christopher Steele’s 2016 Report Involving President Elect Donald J. Trump

17 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics

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Mark Schoofs, Investigations and Projects Editor at Buzzfeed (Twitter page), appears to have uploaded to “Document Cloud” the Christopher Steele report on President Elect Trump:

Company Intelligence Report 2016/080: US Presidential Election: Republican Candidate Donald Trump’s Activities in Russia and Compromising Relationship with the Kremlin

Of note cogent to the ever philosophical BackChannels: this wrap in the first point:

Source C, a senior Russian financial official said the TRUMP operation should be seen in terms of PUTIN’s desire to return to Nineteenth Century ‘Great Power’ politics anchored upon countries interests rather than the ideals-based international order established after World War Two.  S/he had overheard PUTIN talking in this way to close associates on several occasions.

The “Great Power politics” noted would seem to jive with BackChannels assertions about “Medieval Political Absolutism” vs “Modern Democratic and Checked Distributions of Political Power.”

Additional Reference

The US intelligence community has made no determination as of yet on the contents, but has deemed the documents sufficiently credible to warrant further investigation and included a summary of the dossier in briefing materials for both President Obama and President-elect Trump. It is worth noting that these leaders are all career professionals, including two non-political appointees, FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Mike Rogers, who have zero incentive to pick a fight with their future boss.

The author, former British intelligence Russia expert Chris Steele, is a highly regarded and experienced professional known for his integrity and professionalism; not the kind of guy to invent stuff out of thin air.

Dowling, Nick.  “Is the Christopher Steele dossier fake news?”  CNN, January 17, 2017.

Updated Reference – From January 25, 2017

The assertion that he was the source of the document’s unsubstantiated (and refuted) claims about a Russian government videotape of Trump in a compromising position was first reported online Tuesday by The Wall Street Journal. The Journal quoted Millian saying in an email that the information in the dossier was “fake news (created by sick minds)” and was “an attempt to distract the future president from real work.”

Ross, Brian and Matthew Mosk.  “US-Russian Businessman Said to Be Source of Key Trump Dossier Claims.”  ABC News, January 24, 2017.

Related on BackChannels

Note: datelines appear embedded in the URLs cited.

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/01/19/ftac-america-the-robust-democracy/

https://conflict-backchannels.com/2017/01/18/trust-putin/

Additional Comment

Americans have been told that there are such things as “Alternative Facts” or that we are living in a “Post-Fact World”.

Neither claim is true.

While there are limits to what journalists may discover — especially online! — there are in the foundations of our political and social realities such things as plain facts.  We may dress up the same observed and measured as “factual data”.  However, where disingenuous and partisan communications fill media and public memory, it becomes the reader’s responsibility, in part, to challenge information with what critical research skills may be mustered for the task.

On the topic of throwback Soviet-style “kompromat”, BackChannels has chosen to present sources that are themselves querying the topic.  Ultimately, Americans must rely on the integrity and investigating prowess of their intelligence services.

I believe the following block presents the oath taken by those who have chosen to engage directly in the defense of the United States of America.

The wordings of the current oath of enlistment and oath for commissioned officers are as follows:

“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.” (Title 10, US Code; Act of 5 May 1960 replacing the wording first adopted in 1789, with amendment effective 5 October 1962).

“I, _____ (SSAN), having been appointed an officer in the Army of the United States, as indicated above in the grade of _____ do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God.” (DA Form 71, 1 August 1959, for officers.)

http://www.history.army.mil/html/faq/oaths.html

The above represents all that may stand between the existence of America’s classically liberal democracy and the many predictably capricious, willful, and violent forms of politically absolute autocracy.

–33–

Putin – Yanukovych – Manafort – Trump

27 Friday May 2016

Posted by in 21st Century Feudal, American Domestic Affairs, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, North America, United States of America

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The hint came through a review in the New York Review of Books:

On February 22, Yanukovych fled to Russia. (Two years later, his political strategist, Paul Manafort, would resurface in the US, playing the same role for Donald Trump.)

Snyder, Timothy.  “The Wars of Vladimir Putin.”  Reviews of books by Paweł Pieniążek, Karl Schlögel, Peter Pomerantsev.  The New York Review of Books, June 9, 2016 Issue.

Why lookee here at this beautiful lede:

Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s palace, is impressive by the standards of Palm Beach—less so when judged against the abodes of the world’s autocrats. It doesn’t, for instance, quite compare with Mezhyhirya, the gilded estate of deposed Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych. Trump may have 33 bathrooms and three bomb shelters, but his mansion lacks a herd of ostrich, a galleon parked in a pond, and a set of golden golf clubs. Yet the two properties are linked, not just in ostentatious spirit, but by the presence of one man. Trump and Yanukovych have shared the same political brain, an operative named Paul Manafort.

Foer, Franklin.  “The Quiet American: Paul Manafort made a career out of stealthily reinventing the world’s nastiest tyrants as noble defenders of freedom.  Getting Donald Trump elected will be a cinch.”  Slate, April 28, 2016.

And here at this disclosure:

Manafort was a principal at the lobbying firm Black, Manafort, Stone, and Kelly (along with another top Trump ally, Nixon alum Roger Stone), a K Street powerhouse with close ties to the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, as well as top Republicans on Capitol Hill.

But over the years, they made millions by representing a rogue’s gallery of clients far away from D.C.’s genteel corridors of power: dictators, guerilla groups, and despots with no regard for human rights—including one man responsible for mass amputations, and another who oversaw state-sanctioned rape.

Woodruff, Betsy and Tim Mak.  “Top Trump Aide led the ‘Torturers’ Lobby’: Paul Manafort and the partners at his firm made a fortune repping some of the most despicable dictators of the 20th century.”  The Daily Beast, April 13, 2016.

Welcome to the Age of Image.

Who is that precious vote going to — the candidate or the candidate’s handler and stage manager?

The Woodruff and Mak piece rolls around to this from Yanukovych’s election in Ukraine:

At the time of the election, Manafort had spun that Yanukovych was merely misunderstood, and that “the West has not been willing to move beyond the cold war mentality and to see this man and the outreach that he has extended.”

Recall the web site Yanukovych Leaks.

Ukrainians had developed cause for pique at the potential for the endless validation of corruption had they not risen to revolution for the rule of law.

Another gem —

That Trump would choose the Center for the National Interest as the place to premier his new seriousness on foreign policy has Manafort’s fingerprints all over it. For Manafort and the Center have something very important in common: both have ties to the Russian regime of President Vladimir Putin, (whose ambassador to the United States sat in the front row for Trump’s address).

Kirchick, James.  “Donald Trump’s Russia connections: Realists with Moscow ties are lining up behind Republican frontrunner.”  Politico, April 28, 2016.

BackChannels had gotten the sense that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump appreciated one another as strong men but had no idea how close that molecular bond might be through the agency of a quiet but major political operator in the figure of Paul J. Manafort.

Addendum – October 24, 2016

According to The New York Post, former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and ex-”core” aide Rick Gates have financial ties to a biometric security company that lobbied the Putin administration on behalf of technology that would help it spy on its own citizens.

Manafort was a major early investor for EyeLock — and owned up to 10 percent in the company, the Post reported — while Gates was an independent contractor hired to build business for them in Middle Eastern countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Rozsa, Matthew.  “Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was lobbying Vladimir Putin through a company he owned.”  Salon, October 24, 2016.

 

Additional Reference

Ames, Mark, Ari Berman.  “Kremlin Whores: How McCain’s Staff Served Putin’s Empire.”  The Exiled Online, October 1, 2008.

Burns, Alexander, Maggie Haberman.  “Mystery Man: Ukraine’s U.S. fixer.”  Politico, March 5, 2014.

Gingerich, Jon.  “Trump Hires Manafort for Delegate Push.”  O’Dwyer’s, March 29, 2016.

Ho, Catherine.  “From Ukraine to Trump Tower, Paul Manafort unafraid to take on controversial jobs.”  The Washington Post, April 17 2016.

Kincaid, Cliff and Mark Musser.  “Trump Hires ‘Fixer’ With Soviet Connections.”  Accuracy in Media, April 20, 2016.

Lake, Eli.  “Trump Just Hired His Next Scandal.”  Bloomberg View, April 13, 2016.

Sourcewatch. “Davis, Manafort & Freedman, Inc.”

Wikipedia.  “Paul Manafort” (as viewed August 14, 2016):

 

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