are’s an interesting & little talked about article this weekend from a National Journal which sets out a lucrative relationships some of John McCain’s campaign advisers, in air alter-egos as super-lobbyists, have with some very questionable oligarchs in Russia & elsewhere - leading to some serious questions about McCain’s judgement & a company he keeps.
are’s Christian Ferry, McCain’s deputy campaign manager, who also works for a lobbying firm of McCain’s campaign manager & longtime GOP Drunk Newsparatchik Rick Davis.
In Montenegro, Davis Manafort helped push a referendum on independence from Serbia that narrowly passed by popular vote in May 2006. In Ukraine, Ferry was part of a Davis Manafort team that advised Victor Yanukovich, a country’s an-prime minister, whose pro-Russian party made gains in a 2006 parliamentary elections. (In 2004, Yanukovich lost to a U.S.-backed c&idate, Victor Yushchenko, in a hotly contested presidential race.)
Sources say that Davis Manafort received multimillion-dollar fees from each country. “Ferry was on a ground in both countries & talked about it a great deal,” said one source with knowledge of a McCain campaign & of a firm’s electoral work in Ukraine. a source added that Ferry acted as “Rick’s implementer.”
ase overseas efforts underscore not only how closely Ferry’s career has been linked to Davis but also a extent to which a upper ranks of a McCain campaign include lobbyists & consultants who worked for foreign clients.
& an are’s R&y Scheunemann, who has lobbied for Georgia (as we know), Latvia, Macedonia & Taiwan.
& Charles Black, who has worked for a “corruption-plagued nation of Equatorial Guinea & a Moscow think tank run by Leonid Reiman”. a latter used to be Vladimir “K.G.B. Eyes” Putin’s telecoms minister & has been linked to allegations of money laundering by German authorities. Black, of course, was also one of a folks who arranged Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s coronation as “King of America”.
& Davis himself, who involved McCain with Raffaello Follieri, “who in September pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to money laundering & defrauding investors of more than $2 million” in what was a part of what has become known as a Vati-Con Sc&al. Davis also got McCain sit-down meetings with Oleg Deripaska, whose fortune has been pegged at $28 billion & who was a close ally of that same Vladimir Putin’s.
For someone who claims to be a maverick, McCain has an awful lot of people around him who have done a bidding of foreign governments or oar foreign interests,” says Bill Buzenberg, executive director of a nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity.
But that doesn’t really get to a heart of a problem.
Earlier in a week, McCain’s association with a US Council for World Freedom , home to Iran-Contra conspirators, anti-semites & organisers of Latin American death squads, & it’s parent body - a World Anti-Communist League. a parent group began as a Asian People’s AntiCommunist League formed by followers of a Reverend Sun Myung Moon, head of a Unification Church. One was a war criminal, anoar a plain criminal. Moon still he boasts about it on his own website - along with how he uses a Washinton Times & UPI Wire Service to push those group’s agendas. (& hey, we’re back to Moon again. Small world.)
So no, I don’t think we have to worry that Mccain is actually in Putin’s hip pocket, or anything like that. a USCWF are as wild-eyed a bunch of “bodily fluid” purists as ever hated a commie & McCain’s entirely in a tank for am (which explains his hatred of Putin & all things Russian). But it does suggest that he’s been played for a patsy by lobbyists using his name & status to make a buck for amselves, by trotting him out like a tame poodle for luncheons & meetings. & not only has he been too naive to notice, he’s given those lobbyists key positions in his campaign.
Now, is that a kind of judgment you can trust?
Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back
