(There are lies, and damned lies….” -Mark Twain)
I’m absolutely delirious in my dislike for the Associated Press.
And it’s all about honesty and dishonesty.
Now, personally I’ve never known Mr Manafort to lie, but I suppose he has uttered an untruth here and there, especially in his term as (unpaid) campaign manager for Donald Trump (March-August) in 2016. Why we know this is because all of Trump’s campaign staff lied during those months.
How do we know this?
Just ask the Associated Press. Or CNN. Or the New York Times, etc, etc.
I know you’re thinking, in this day and age, there are many sides to the truth. But in fact there is usually only one in any given set of circumstances. Courts of law and the Rules of Evidence, while allowing many versions of the truth to be sworn to, provide rules that a jury can only find one to be the superior truth, and that all must abide by that finding.
In many parts of the world, for centuries, this rule of law has defined civilization. In America, as well as other free societies, the media has always been (sort of) exempt from this rule, while still subject to certain natural laws and punishments that just natural follow when they step too far out of line with the truth in trying to mold public opinion.
Next to corrupt politicians, card sharks and drummers of whiskey cut with kerosene, I think local editors were the most likely liars to find themselves tied to the front end of a cow-catcher, or being tarred and feathered with hot oil. Like the ancient biblical tradition of throwing prophets who turned out to be wrong over a cliff, I think being honey-dipped, at least the cuffs of one’s fine $500 Armani, is a tradition worth recapturing.
But rather than go down that road again, I simply want to point out that whether you believe in the God of Abraham or just good old common-sense frontier justice, there is always a higher truth, a fixed star in the heavens, that rules over most men’s dealings in the world. And merely acting like that star isn’t there, or deluding oneself into believing that a truth can be contorted into a pretzel one day, and then another shape the next, cannot provide enough of a protective shield to make that fixed star disappear.
Or that along the way, there may be pain in finding out otherwise.
Against any scale of fact or truth, try as I might, I can’t find anyone who comes close to the scale of untruths as does CNN, the Associate Press, the New York Times, Washington Post and their assorted brethren in fabrication.
It’s in this vein that I briefly examine the insinuated criminal role of Paul Manafort in “doing business with, or for, the Russians” by the Associated Press “exclusive revelations” in working directly for Russian millionaires and the mysterious movement of money into Manafort’s accounts through banks in Cyprus.
(Every time Donald Trump utters a ‘lie”, on closer investigation it always seems to turn out to be at least 75%-90% true, much to the egg on the face of folks at CNN and the AP. Witness the current HOT STORY, still to be delineated, of the no-evidence, non-existent “wiretaps” of Trump Tower during the transition period, November-January, which are now turning out to be true. Keep watching, this can be big.)
A little background about doing business in Russia:
I was in the Russia when it was still called the Soviet Union. That was when the USSR was still officially an enemy of the United States. And unofficially a friend of the American Democrat Party…even if the Russians did not necessarily acknowledge it. (Personally, I think the love affair only ran one way.)
The Soviet Union officially fell in 1992, and Boris Yeltsin replaced Mikhail Gorbachev as new boss in the newly named “Russian Federation”, and sometime between 1992 and 2000 the Russians were no longer our official enemy.
To be honest, I’m not sure how the Democrat Party handled this shift, as Yeltsin and Bill Clinton became pals and all sorts of aid programs were set up, and billions in American dollars were run through Russian banks, where the money simply disappeared, promptly siphoned out to, you guessed it, off-shore bank accounts in Cyprus. (I was in the development business at the time.)
Whether deliberately or through sheer aw-shucks incompetence, America was the greatest seed capitalist for much of Russia’s nascent entrepreneur class in the 1990s. And the Clinton name was regarded as either the softest-touch or best friend greedy Russians could ever have.
Most of that money ended up in Cyprus, which was the Russian wealthy class’s Bahamas off-shore banking. The Associated Press called Cyprus a central site for “money laundering”, which in the strictest sense it probably is, inasmuch as from the earliest times Russia imposed very high taxes for businesses in Russia, making it absolutely necessary for profits to be exported to avoid seizure by the state, especially 1992-2001. Putin is still trying to recapture billions that were sent abroad during those early years, largely by the eventual losers in the Russian contest to determine who would be the cartel kingpins running Russia. (Hint: Putin’s gang won.)
Americans have always had a bad taste in their mouths for cartelists, especially once they became political, as had been the case in Russia. But of late it has been learned that the Obama regime was itself making similar “fascist” overures (when cartels turn political, they behave as fascists, “if it walks like one, and talks like one….” ) with some American corporations and certain international FOS’s (Friends of Soros).
Now I’ve never asked Donald Trump what he thinks of these types of people, but it’s clear their biggest political spender, Soros, has spent hundreds of millions to defeat Donald Trump. You don’t have to be Nietzsche to connect the dots.
In this the American media are either simpatico with the enemies of Donald Trump under “the enemy of my enemy” rule of politics, or they are just out-and-out pimping for the George Soros one-world credo.
In any case, for any Russian intent on doing any international business, Cyprus banking is considered “normal”. No one kept money in Russian banks, who were (are) considered the most leaky in the world.
So then, we deep-six one insinuation by the AP. The use of Cyprus banking is not and never has been a sine qua non of criminal activity of any kind. Any one who wants to do business with Russians on any scale will avail themselves of the Russians’ preferred banking venues.
Next question, then.
When did Russia actually become America’s enemy? Well, officially, they aren’t, only don’t ask any Democrat. But when?
That’s hard to say, as well. For one, there was that moment in the 2012 presidential debate when Mitt Romney said that Russia was America’s greatest threat, and Obama vehemently shushed Mitt down; that the Russians were no such thing, best friends in fact. And then later in the campaign Obama was caught in that open-mic moment with Dmitri Medvedev, Putin’s temporary fill-in until he could run again. “Tell Vlad…”
So, yes, in 2012 America and Russia were still sweethearts. As was Russia with Hillary Clinton, who as Secretary of State cleared the way for a deal for America’s stake in Canadian uranium, to be sold to Russia, a deal brokered by her husband.
About the companies Paul Manafort has done business with in Russia, although the FBI is “allegedly investigating” them, which means nothing actually, the FBI is also allegedly investigating the Clinton Foundation and their Russian ties. There is some interest in which list the FBI will reveal first.
If we could wrap our arms around an open window about the decline of US-Russian relations, I’d say 2012-2014 would be a good bet, in both Iraq and Syria.
In 2012 Obama pulled US troops out of Iraq, creating a vacuum which ISIS quickly filled, requiring Obama to then re-direct military power, to try to regain that lost ground. No slander has ever accused his effort at being robust. He wanted Assad out of Syria much more than he did ISIS.
Think of Iraq as America’s zone of influence while Syria is Russia’s. Obama created a vacuum in Syria as well, largely at the behest of the Muslim Brotherhood, who for reasons still not known, simply had to see Bashar al Assad removed from power to be replaced by the Brotherhood, who were quickly renamed, “moderate Arab rebels”, even though their totalitarian ideas of religious sharia government had been well known.
In many respects Russia filled the Syria vacuum, reacquiring territory (navy base, airfields) it had once occupied with Assad’s father, before George W Bush designated Syria one of the state sponsors of terror, causing Russia to be expelled from the region.
Obama gave all that back.
But I am still unable to determine just when Russia became an official enemy of the Democrat Party, and by extension, the American media. They seemed unconcerned when Russia re-occupied the Crimea, or set off a guerilla war with Ukraine, both in 2014, and Obama never moved to squelch either.
So, it’s impossible to say when Paul Manafort became an agent for an enemy state, since it couldn’t have been in 2006, when the Russian oligarchists were still pals with America..
Therefore, the best I can estimate is that it was not until the early hours of November 9th, 2016 that Russia became the enemy of the Democrat Party.
If you can fix a better date, let me know.
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VASSAR BUSHMILLS
Contact: vbushmills@yahoo.com
Publications: Famous Common People I Have Known and Other Essays
Donald Trump, the Common Man and the American Theology of Liberty
(Both books in Kindle format only, Publishers and agents welcome, as both need to revised)
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