Money, Money, Money...

NSM remarks:
How the world of politics and money is intertwined.... Happy reading if you like stories about political whores... :)

But do not think I am quick to condemn Russian moves or Russian politicians, among them hard playing Mr Putin. He's plaing hard but in the interest of His country - Russian Federation. He's a real leader, not a lame duck like his counterpart from over the Pond..., you know who I have in mind, or the one described here coming from the old breed of US D.C. (corrupted) politicians.

McCain's Kremlin Ties
The Nation, By Mark Ames & Ari Berman
October 1, 2008

Picture (click to enlarge): From [>]. Russian President Vladimir Putin and metals oligarch Oleg Deripaska, 2006 (DMITRY ASTAKHOV/AP).

Introduction: (quotes)
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. In his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, McCain lashed out at Putin and the Russian oligarchs, who, "rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power...[are] reassembling the old Russian Empire." McCain rushed to publicly support the Georgian republic during its recent conflict with Russia and amplified his threat to expel Moscow from the G-8 club of major powers. His running mate, Sarah Palin, suggested in her first major interview that the United States might have to go to war with Russia one day in order to protect Georgia - the kind of apocalyptic scenario the United States avoided during the cold war.

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.

Main themes: (quotes)
According to two former senior US diplomats who served in the Balkans, Davis and his lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, received several million dollars to help run Montenegro's independence referendum campaign of 2006. The terms of the agreement were never disclosed to the public, but top Montenegrin officials told the US diplomats that Davis'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. This suited Putin just fine. Russia had generally sided with Serbia against the West during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, but for the Kremlin, cutting Montenegro free from Serbia meant dealing with a Montenegro that could be more easily controlled. Indeed, today, after its "independence," Montenegro is nicknamed "Moscow by the Mediterranean." Russian oligarchs control huge chunks of the country's industry and prized coastline--and Russians exert a powerful influence over the country's political culture. "Montenegro is almost a new Russian colony, as rubles flow in to buy property and business in the tiny state," Denis MacShane, Tony Blair's former Europe minister, wrote in Newsweek in June. The takeover of Montenegro has been a Russian geostrategic victory--quietly accomplished, paradoxically enough, with the help of McCain and his top aides.

Other excerpts:
By mid-2005 Deripaska had already virtually taken control of Montenegro's economy by snapping up its aluminum plant, KAP--which accounts for up to 40 percent of the country's GDP and some 80 percent of its export earnings

(...) 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.

(...) 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. The firm offered Deripaska many useful services: corporate intelligence gathering, visa lobbying through considerable GOP connections and, crucially, help in obtaining a $150 million World Bank/European Bank for Reconstruction and Development loan for a Deripaska subsidiary, the Komi Aluminum Project. Getting the loan was useful in providing a layer of comfort to Western investors skittish about RusAl. 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. During his brief stay he signed his World Bank loan, spoke at a Carnegie Endowment meeting and attended a dinner for Harvard University's Belfer Center, where, thanks to a generous donation, he became a member of its international council.

(...) When he left the country, the visa ban was reinstated. 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.

(...)


Picture (click to enlarge): From www.expat.ru [>]. Oleg Deripaska has both "Air" and the 2m longer "Tatoosh",


Picture (click to enlarge): From The McCain-Follieri Love Boat [>]. Con man Rafaello Follieri and actress Anne Hathaway greet John McCain and his entourage in 2006.


Picture (click to enlarge): From The McCain-Follieri Bang Boat [>]. Arthritic old celebrity-whore McCain, wearing his “Real People” baseball-cap disguise, shuffles up the ramp towards the Follieri-Hathaway Bang Yacht birthday party. A quote - "It must not have seemed that way to Follieri. According to the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, in January 2007 Follieri sent Rick Davis a packet of information on his companies Follieri Capital and Follieri Media, apparently hoping to get financing from Pegasus Capital Advisors, a hedge fund in Connecticut that Davis represented. “Follieri’s proposal to Davis had two dimensions to it–first, as an investment opportunity for Davis’s fund; but secondly, there was the political dimension, in which Follieri offered to help deliver Catholic votes to McCain,” said Claudio Gatti, a reporter for Il Sole 24 Ore, who investigated Follieri for eighteen months.".

John Mc-AIG-n: Insurance Industry Bitch
By Mark Ames
September 19th, 2008

Picture (click to enlarge):

Introduction: (quotes)
John McCain is making a big show of criticizing the government “bailout” of insurance giant AIG. But it turns out that AIG, which received $85 billion in US tax dollars earlier this week, is one of the largest donors to McCain’s pet think tank, the comically named “Reform Institute,” which he co-founded in 2001 “in direct response to the millions of Americans who, during the 2000 presidential campaign, expressed profound disillusionment with corrupt fundraising activities.” Indeed.

Apparently, AIG was so troubled over the issue of corrupt fundraising activities that they loaded in as one of the top VIP donors in McCain’s nonprofit think-tank, whose website lists AIG in the “over $50,000″ donor category–although exactly how much over that $50,000 is still unclear. Why the hell an insurance company like AIG was doing pouring money into think tank whose state goal had no connection to insurance whatsoever–unless, of course, that money was just meant to gain access to McCain. Perish the thought.

Main themes: (quotes)
So when McCain declared this week that “The government was forced to commit $85 billion” to his mega-donor AIG, the question becomes, “What forced you to do it?” The American taxpayers never got a red cent in donations from AIG–but now, they’re being forced by people like McCain, whose career profited from AIG donations, to buy his backer’s massively indebted trash heap in what can only be described as the worst business deal in this nation’s history, or the worst example of crony nationalization. AIG isn’t just funding McCain’s policy think tank, it’s also quite literally thinking for the presidential hopeful. Martin Feldstein, who serves on the board of AIG, is one of McCain’s top economic advisers. Earlier this month, Feldstein gushed in the Wall Street Journal over McCain’s plans to cut taxes even further, and to shift healthcare costs from employers to employees in a “tax credit” scheme that many believe will solely benefit insurance companies, at the expense of workers. Since AIG is–or was–the world’s largest insurance company, it stood to gain from McCain’s policies.


Picture (click to enlarge): From Kremlin Whores: How McCain’s Staff Served Putin’s Empire [>]. Size doesn’t matter: McCain sells Montenegro out to Putin


Picture (click to enlarge): From Kremlin Whores: How McCain’s Staff Served Putin’s Empire [>]. Deripaska and Putin confer in Sochi.