WHO HAS BUILT THIS MONSTER PUTIN?
JUST FOLLOW THE BILLIONS THEY MADE DOING IT!
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2022/03/will-putins-court-of-looting.html
New sanctions targeting Putin's oligarchs ramp up l GMA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOvR_ViUGNU
The Madness of Vladimir Putin
Throughout history, political leaders have acted in strange fashion, with symptoms of neurosis, trauma, and anxiety. The list is long of those exhibiting some indication of insanity. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon 604-562 B.C., made no secret of his ambition to conquer the world, and saw himself as a deity. Caligula, Emperor of Rome, attempted to appoint his horse to the office of consul. Ivan the Terrible expanded the territory of Russia, created the secret police, and murdered his own son. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin vie for leading personification of hatred, evil, and madness.
Russia this week may remember that madness since it is the anniversary of a speech denouncing a regime of suspicion, fear, and terror. On February 25, 1956, Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, delivered a speech at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party denouncing his predecessor Joseph Stalin as a brutal despot. He revealed the cruelties of the regime, the trials of members of the Politburo, the assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934, and the execution of innocent political rivals for that assassination. Khrushchev indicated that in 1937-1938, 98 of the 139 members of the Central Committee of the party were killed on Stalin’s orders.
Madness has often been depicted in fiction. James Bond has confronted Blofeld, Goldfinger, Scaramanga, and other madmen equipped with a white cat and pool of piranhas, seeking the destruction of the world. Perhaps the most well-known and entertaining presentation of derangement is Don Quixote, seeking adventures and attempting to perform deeds of heroism, mistaking a field of windmills for giants and attacking them, and battling a herd of sheep with an aim to exemplify the idea of chivalry. But this middle-aged protagonist mistakes people and places, confusing real and imaginary in his illustration of former glory, inventing problems where they do not exist and unilaterally challenging an innocent party.
The parallel of the lovable Don with the unlovable president of Russia is clear. Vladimir Putin, KGB agent for 16 years, ambitious, ruthless, and vain, is dramatically illustrating questionable behavior by his desire to obliterate an entire country and people, an objective similar to that of Nazi Germany. Western political leaders may have misread Putin, always well dressed with suits with expensive labels, musically talented, proud of displaying physical strength, and with an expensive Black Sea estate.
Because of his previous limited military interventions, the West underestimated his ambition and willingness to use greater force and naked aggression to obtain his goals. His unprovoked war on Ukraine leaves no room for miscalculation about his objectives and the ideology and emotions that drive him. He is an imperialist, backed by violence and toxic aggression, threatening those nations he considers hindering Russia’s actions. The question is whether Putin is completely sane.
“We are not dealing with a sane person” said Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former Russian oil tycoon. Khodorkovsky, once believed to be the wealthiest man in Russia, had spent ten years in prison, 2003- 2013, after a show trial, before fleeing to London. Putin, he says, wants to make Russia great again, and wants the future to remember him as a great ruler of Russia. Putin may see himself as the reincarnation of Vladimir the Great, ruler of Kiev who converted ancient Rus in 988.
This view of mental problems is also suggested in different ways by both politicians and medical authorities. One assertion is by the British defense minister Ben Wallace, who warned that Putin was not in his right mind, and what he is doing is deeply irrational. That accusation of irrationality may be justified in view of Putin’s unprovoked aggression against a sovereign nation, his fantasy of conspiracies, accusations of Ukraine planning genocide and seeking nuclear weapons and his absurd accounts of history. Whether Putin intends to seize the whole of Ukraine or to limit his control to Eastern Ukraine and the capital is unclear, but he has displayed himself as an imperialist with fabricated stories of his de-Nazification of Ukraine, and caricaturing its leader as a terrorist.
These false charges are particularly meaningful for three reasons. One is that Zelensky is Jewish and his grandfather was a Soviet officer in World War II. A second is that Putin speaks of one people, Ukrainians and Russians, “one single whole,” akin to Nazi emphasis on “ein volk.” In fact, Zelensky is a native Russian speaker who grew up in the Russified southeastern region of Ukraine, and who won 72% of the vote in the presidential election of April 2019. Once a comic actor with no experience of politics, Zelensky, now 44, has rapidly matured to lead the fight for his country, displaying striking rhetoric and personal bravery and dignified courage, even symbolically appearing in public in olive green military style T shirt.
Zelensky, in a speech in Israel on December 14, 2021, was prophetic, “we know what it’s like not to have our own state, we know what it means to defend our own state, our land with the weapons at hand, at the cost of our own lives.” He defied Putin, “when you attack us you will see our faces not our backs.”
A third factor is a Goebbels-like spread of disinformation as well as aggression with a coup in Montenegro, assassinations in London and in Bulgaria, attacks in Chechnya, Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and south Ossetia.
Questions about Putin’s state of mind have been raised in the medical world, though there is no conclusive evidence. Is Putin suffering the effects of Long Covid which can affect mental health and may impact his ability to consider risk in policy, which may entail loss of contact with reality, recklessness, inability to make accurate decisions and to experience a fuzzy mind or mental fog? Some doctors suggest the pandemic and physical isolation may have led not only to detachment from reality, but also to hubris, in which the personal and national are identical.
Putin’s actions may also be seen in light of fact that he apparently has a small circle of pollical and military advisers, most of whom are from the KGB of the 1980s, with little military or diplomatic experience. None of them is prepared to dispute Putin’s arrogant view of his policy on Ukraine and ambition to regain it. Mistrustful of everyone, his security has been so tight that people scheduled to meet him spend several days in guarded isolation, and then pass through a tunnel with disinfectants.
But there is now official and general understanding of the real Putin, the man who as a youth ran with street gangs in Leningrad and was eager to join the KGB when he was a schoolboy. It is heartening to witness the increasing response from western organizations to Putin’s loss of touch with reality. Russia is banned from May 2022 Eurovision song contest in Turin, one of the world’s largest televised events, and Russian residents will be blocked from voting in the competition. The soccer Champion League has been moved from St. Petersburg to Paris. The formula One Grand Prix has been moved from Sochi. Roman Abramovich, owner of Chelsea football club, has handed over the running of the club to an independent organization. For Western leaders the ship of fools is still a useful allegory to represent the problem caused by a political ruler who is not in sound mind.
Image: Russian Presidential Press and Information Office
Putin’s Plutocrat Pals Have a Friend in New York City Hall
edwardmermelstein.com
Karl Salzmann
One of New York City mayor Eric Adams's (D.) top advisers made his living as a consultant to Russian oligarchs with close ties to President Vladimir Putin, Politico reported Wednesday.
New York commissioner of international affairs Ed Mermelstein, who oversees the city's dealings with the United Nations, worked for decades as a foreign investment attorney and real estate consultant for plutocrats.
Mermelstein, also an Adams campaign donor, described himself on his website as "Russian-American." But after Politico on Tuesday reached out for comment following Putin's bloodthirsty invasion of Ukraine, Mermelstein changed the description to "Ukrainian-born."
Mermelstein said in a 2015 article that he was working for Russian clients who seek "to protect their wealth from both volatility in their home countries and potential government sanctions." He was also the director of a foundation owned by Russian businessman Viktor Vekselberg, who has close ties to the Kremlin. The Trump administration froze $1.5 billion of Vekselberg's assets in 2018.
The revelations about Mermelstein come as officials, including Manhattan borough president Mark Levine (D.), call for the federal government to seize ritzy apartments owned by Putin associates.
Adams has not joined those calls. He has also said that Russians in New York City should not be blamed for Putin's actions.
NO?????????? SPOKEN LIKE A TRUE GAMER LAWYER WHO SERVES PUTIN’S EARLS.
Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World
A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year • An Economist Book of the Year
“A must-read for anyone wanting to better understand what has already happened here in America and what lies ahead if Trump is reelected in November…. A magisterial account of the money and violence behind the world’s most powerful dictatorships.” –Washington Post
In this shocking, meticulously reported work of narrative nonfiction, an award-winning investigative journalist exposes “capitalism’s monster”—global kleptocracy—and reveals how it is corrupting the world around us.
They are everywhere, the thieves and their people. Masters of secrecy. Until now we have detected their presence only by what they leave behind. A body in a burned-out Audi. Workers riddled with bullets in the Kazakh Desert. A rigged election in Zimbabwe. A British banker silenced and humiliated for trying to expose the truth about the City of London.
They have amassed more money than most countries. But what they are really stealing is power.
In this real-life thriller packed with jaw-dropping revelations, award-winning investigative journalist Tom Burgis weaves together four stories that reveal a terrifying global web of corruption: the troublemaker from Basingstoke who stumbles on the secrets of a Swiss bank, the ex-Soviet billionaire constructing a private empire, the righteous Canadian lawyer with a mysterious client, and the Brooklyn crook protected by the CIA.
Glimpses of this shadowy world have emerged over the years. In Kleptopia, Burgis connects the dots. He follows the dirty money that is flooding the global economy, emboldening dictators, and poisoning democracies. From the Kremlin to Beijing, Harare to Riyadh, Paris to the White House, the trail shows something even more sinister: the thieves are uniting. And the human cost will be great.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“Burgis is a strong storyteller. We can visualize diamonds smuggled in a toothpaste tube for Swiss banking clients. We see a lawyer taking SIM cards with important contacts from her oligarch client and concealing them in a candy wrapper as he fled one snowy night on a private plane. . . . Meticulously reported. . . . A must-read for anyone wanting to better understand what has already happened here in America. ”
-- Washington Post
“Simultaneously clear, elegant and engaging, Kleptopia pulls together several seemingly disparate strands in an assured, daring piece of story-telling. In the process, Tom Burgis reveals exactly how in the last thirty years organized crime and financial capitalism have fused to create a force of such power that no government or leader is free from the pressure it is able to apply. This is Jane Mayer's Dark Money on a global scale. When you pick this book up, you won't be able to put it down.”
-- Misha Glenny, author of McMafia
“Compelling. . . . The many strands in this complex global story are elegantly woven together and delivered in a form that makes the technicalities of finance accessible to the non-expert. . . . Kleptopia illuminates the legalised secrecy around the hubs of big money and how integral dirty money is to political power.” -- Financial Times
"It is hard to write about international corruption in an accessible and colourful way, while retaining an urgent sense of moral condemnation. This book beautifully captures both the murkiness and turpitude involved. Its ultimate theme—the intersection of politics and personal enrichment—is one of the most important stories of the age." -- Economist Best Books of the Year citation
“A meticulously reported piece of investigative journalism … written in the style of a fast-paced thriller. . . . A page-turner that lifts the lid on the murky world in which power is turned into money and money into power.” -- The Times (London)
“Corruption on a grand scale is fantastically complicated and tough to write about… Kleptopia does the job brilliantly. Burgis spins his tale of global corruption from the ground up, [beginning] with a hero straight out of a John le CarrĂ© novel…Kleptopia is wonderfully if grimly entertaining.” -- The Economist
“Depicts an unsavory coalition of corrupt strongmen, artful criminals, and rapacious Ă©lites who, abetted by a network of accountants, lawyers, and other professional facilitators, have managed to pillage money on a grand scale and hide it abroad….The monetization of public office, Burgis believes, is no longer an aberration but often the very “purpose of seeking that office.” The techniques of financial obfuscation have grown so sophisticated that theft is easy, and, for the thief who hires the right advisers, impunity is all but assured.” -- New Yorker
“Burgis’s study of dark global realities casts a wide net, from Washington to Moscow, Kazakhstan and the Congo . . . [Burgis is] an impressive investigator. . . . A ghastly and very important story.” -- The Guardian
“Kleptopia is a powerful, appalling, and stunningly-reported expose of the global corruption that runs like an underground river from the world's darkest and dirtiest dictatorships through some of the planet's richest banks and governments. It reads like fiction, but unfortunately is all too true: Burgis names names, and follows the money, right into the Trump White House, among other high places. His narrative shows how dark money has grown from a national problem into an international scourge.” -- Jane Mayer, author of Dark Money
“Read Kleptopia now. There is no time to lose. Read it now to understand that the struggle between dirty money and clean money has been won by dirty money. Tom Burgis demonstrates that money does indeed stink — and shows in Kleptopia how to follow its scent.” -- Roberto Saviano, author of Gomorrah
About the Author
Tom Burgis is an investigations correspondent at the Financial Times. He has reported from more than forty countries, won major journalism awards in the US and Asia and been shortlisted for eight others, including twice at the British Press Awards. His critically acclaimed book The Looting Machine, about the modern plundering of Africa, won an Overseas Press Club of America award.
Product details
· Publisher : Harper (September 8, 2020)
· Language : English
· Hardcover : 464 pages
· ISBN-10 : 0062883658
· ISBN-13 : 978-0062883650
Putin hides family in ‘secret Siberian underground bunker’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRVNyRm7BVY
Vladimir Putin's Alleged Girlfriend Reportedly 'Missing' After Giving Birth To Twins
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCW03W46dV4
The life of Putin's ex-wife, who hated being Russia's first lady
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE2xhTEr_o8
Who are Putin's secret daughters?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsYr5__9XN4
Putin's Palace
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2P154dMR_c
Navalny reveals investigation into ‘Putin's Palace’ | DW News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8J2dW-QYQY
Putin's palace. History of world's largest bribe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipAnwilMncI
Inside Putin's Secret $1 Billion Mansion
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Alusg5KG714&list=WL&index=8
A Russian oligarch whose $120 million superyacht was seized in France reportedly told the captain to sail to Turkey as fast as possible after being sanctioned
- A Russian oligarch told the captain of his yacht to sail from France to Turkey ASAP, per the WSJ.
- Igor Sechin's yacht was docked in France when he was sanctioned after Russia invaded Ukraine.
- French authorities tied the yacht down so it couldn't leave, a customs officer told The Journal.
Igor Sechin, a Russian billionaire and oligarch, told the captain of his now-seized superyacht to leave a French port and sail to Turkey as fast as possible after he was hit with sanctions, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
The US and the European Union put Sechin, who is said to be a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, on their sanctions lists shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine. Sechin is also known as Russia's "Darth Vader."
The report on Sechin's orders offers a glimpse into how the wealthiest Russians who were targeted by sanctions sought to move their yachts and private jets across the world after the invasion of Ukraine in order to protect their assets.
Eric Salles, a lead officer on the seizure operation, said in an interview with The Journal that French customs officers found out last week that the yacht was preparing to leave the French town of La Ciotat despite having repair work scheduled.
Customs officers also heard the yacht was owned by Sechin, CEO of Russian state-controlled oil giant Rosneft, Salles added.
Video: Wealthy oligarchs close to Putin under pressure (TODAY)
The customs officers went to the yacht and questioned the captain, Salles said in the interview.
The captain told officers that he had orders to leave the French port and "sail to Turkey as quickly as possible," Salles told The Journal.
After hearing this information, French authorities tied the yacht to the quay with steel-rope slings so it couldn't leave, Salles told The Journal. Officers proceeded to check documents, further question the captain and crew, and surveil the vessel 24/7, Salles added.
Sechin's yacht was officially seized by the authorities on Wednesday night, according to a press release tweeted by French finance minister Bruno Le Maire. The yacht's captain — still on board the vessel with other crew members — wasn't arrested, Salles told The Journal.
Sechin is among several high-profile Russian business executives who have been sanctioned by the EU, US, UK, and others because of their ties to Putin.
Gennady Timchenko, a Putin confidant, and Alexei Mordashov, reportedly the wealthiest man in Russia, had their superyachts seized by officials in Italy, The Associated Press reported on Friday.
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