windywave wrote:
I would say modern Russia is more fascist than anything
This, with too many economic ties to the west that singling out Trump and team is silly. There are numerous articles of team Clinton and Podesta specifically making millions working with the Russians. I told the story of members of the Exxon-Mobile audit team I worked on doing a lot of consulting work in post soviet Russia, it was like a capitalist free for all until the Russians realized the west was basically paying off a few former soviet bureaucrats making them billionaire oligarchs overnight in order to get access to Russian assets for pennies on the dollar. Putin exploited this common sentiment in Russia to become a hero to his people.
So in short, communism fell, Yeltzin was a self serving western puppet that allowed foreign interest to come in and rape and pillage Russian assets the detriment of average Russians, Russians caught on as former party bosses and bureaucrats became billionaires while the average Russian froze to death or starved, so they democratically elected a strong man who promised to reclaim what was they felt was theirs by force if necessary, improve the lives of Russians, and bring back former Russian glory not seen since the USSR. And while I don't think he has fulfilled promises, the lives of Russians have improved since yetlzin left. They aren't freezing to death and starving like they were.
Meanwhile, the bush administration was a very good time for the former Clinton officials. The contacts made while in the administration and no longer being shackled by restrictions that being a gov't employee imposes mean millions could be made, and it was. This was the same during the Clinton years with many republicans. But make no mistake, it is Clinton administration officials who are much closer to Russian business interest than Donald Trump. They were the ones in power with exclusive access to bureaucrats who became billionaire oligarchs post fall. They were the ones who enabled US corporations to surmount the red tape and obstacles that were inherent in dealing with former cold war adversaries. Not Bush. And these same people further facilitated business relationships under Obama with Clinton the State Dept.
Its all interrelated, go to davos. Who were the biggest obstacles to imposing economic sanctions on Russia? Europeans, especially in Europe's financial centers where billions in Russian Oligarch money flowed and propped up the economies. Buying property in London is expensive. If not impossible. The Grosvenors as a family are one of the largest landowners of the few landowners in London, they own the plot that US embassy is on, and that remains the only leased land for a US embassy to my knowledge. Yet Russians oligarchs have found a way to break into this exclusive club.
http://citywire.co.uk/...perty-bubble/a748658 I bet AndrewMC knows more about the Grosvenors and how Russian money coursing through the veins of Europe and the UK in particular have insulated a lot of shady Russian oligarchs from any sort of punitive sanctions.
"In the world I see you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Towers. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying stripes of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway." T Durden