...In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands" http://www.alternet.org/video/donal...igarchs-and-mobsters-detailed-new-documentary "By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet May 12, 2017 "The documentary shows how Trump not only helped hide the identity of his mobster business partner, prompting an ongoing lawsuit accusing Trump of criminal racketeering, but also how Trump used that internal company crisis to demand more money. It goes on to show how Russian oligarchs saw Trump's properties as a way to get their money out of Russia, and describes the international financial networks that are akin to a pyramid scheme for money laundering. It also notes how the law firm of Trump's political adviser, former New York City mayor Rudy Guiliani, helped set up a money-laundering account in the Netherlands used by Bayrock. " ...So. from a Progressive platform comes a refresher course in the creative ways our President managed to stay afloat financially during the hard times caused by our financial elite. Alternet very kindly provides a same-date article explaining this as well: The Financial Crisis That Spawned Austerity, Corporatized the Democratic Party and Gave the World Donald Trump New York City's near-default in 1975 altered the course of American politics, explains "Fear City" author Kim Phillips-Fein. By Jacob Sugarman / AlterNet May 12, 2017 "...n 1975, New York was teetering on the brink of collapse, as deindustrialization, an exodus of affluent taxpayers and a worldwide recession left it unable to pay for the robust social services it had carefully grown and developed since World War II. The big banks, including Chase and First National City Bank (now Citibank), were eager to lend the city money until they weren't. At the behest of New York's creditors, the state established an Emergency Financial Control Board, effectively removing power over the city's budget from then-Mayor Abe Beame. As journalist and historian Kim Phillips-Fein argues in her new book, Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics, this presaged a government-wide capitulation to big business and a transformation of what it means to be not just a New Yorker but an American. "The crisis," she writes, "saw a group of almost universally white elites remake life in a city that was becoming increasingly black and brown." "... The problems of New York in the '70s were the same problems facing cities across the country: deindustrialization, suburbanization and white flight. They came to bear on New York with special force partly because it had developed an unusually generous welfare state after World War II. The public sector expanded considerably, with a network of more than 20 public hospitals, free tuition at City University, an extensive set of programs in the public schools for art, music and athletics, and the largest mass transit system in the country, among other services. New York increased Medicaid and welfare spending at the same time its population and employment were decreasing. This continued into the 1960s during the War on Poverty. But toward the end of that decade, federal funding began to dry up and that laid the foundation for a fiscal crisis." "...KPF: The fiscal crisis caused the layoffs of tens of thousands of city workers and shrunk New York's workforce by as much as one-fifth. Transit fees rose. City University began charging tuition. Hospitals and clinics were closed. Daycares lost their funding. Drug treatment programs were shuttered. A host of extracurricular school programs were radically diminished or shut down. What made these cuts so destructive was that they were enacted very quickly in a very haphazard way. There were people being laid off, and then rehired, and then laid off again. It was very chaotic, and part of the underlying message was that the public sector was weak, unreliable and unsustainable. You should not look to the city government to actually build institutions that could make a meaningful difference in your life. ..." "... KPF: Trump was a young man in 1976, but he was already a wealthy guy interested in getting into Manhattan real estate and breaking out of his father's empire of tens of thousands of outer borough apartments. He accomplished that with the Commodore Hotel deal. The Commodore Hotel was near Grand Central Terminal, and it had been owned by the Penn Central Railroad, which itself went bankrupt in 1970. The hotel was becoming decrepit and dilapidated, and it was going to be closed down. Trump proposed a deal whereby he would purchase it, sell it to a state agency and then lease it back with the Hyatt Regency on the condition he paid a reduced property tax. The New York Times actually did a story on this last fall and found that Trump and Hyatt have cost the city upwards of $350 million since the mid-'70s. In a very literal way, his career in Manhattan real estate was launched by the fiscal crisis and its aftermath. Trump was a canny operator taking advantage of a desperate city, but it's also important to acknowledge the city actively pursued him. These kinds of deals were supposed to be the wave of the future. Officials really thought they would send a signal to the whole business community. Of course they did not generate the kind of good jobs or steady economic development that people thought they would. What they did was divide New York between the extremely rich and the public sector. JS: Trump speaks often of the 'carnage' in the inner city. It's almost like he's describing the worlds of Escape from New York (1981) and Death Wish (1974). How much is his understanding of urban life a product of that time? KPF: I think it's still shaping his sense of things. He seems to believe cities are violent, lawless places, and the role of business people and executives is to impose order upon them. Given the pivotal nature of that moment in his own life, maybe that makes sense, but he is channeling that sensibility about the city's dangers, with all of the racism implicit in those ideas, from the '70s and '80s. These weren't fringe ideas at the time, they were embraced by the liberal establishment. Mayor Abe Beame was praised for bringing business executives into his administration. The business sector was supposed to be strong because it wasn't democratically accountable. ..." http://www.alternet.org/economy/fin...-democratic-party-and-gave-world-donald-trump You can also check out this thread (I tried to copy the title for you but something then "happened" to my computer and almost wiped out this whole post): http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/will-mob-connected-hustler-be-first-person-spill-beans-trump
The deep silence here certainly demonstrates how much the "Left" really cares about "the Russian Connection".
This has been rumoured from day one. Plenty on the net about it and it is one of the reasons why everyone, who is not a Trump supporter, is calling for him to release his tax returns
I need to read the article carefully, but in general, from what I understand, Trump's connections are mainly to a web of mafia like interests in Russia (many controlled by folks who have Israeli citizenship as well), with connections in the US, who (aside from their financial interests) - in terms of substantive policy issues - are also quite keen on pushing to forge a foreign policy alliance between the US and Russia that basically takes its cues from whatever is cooked up in Israel.
Interesting. They seem to be closer to getting their way.... I suppose the bad press for Iran from all the "Death to America" chanting in Iran hasn't helped.... So, all this strife is because some countries in the Mideast can't get along with Israel? Or is Israel just using the strife to get what it wants?
Israel started out with limited ambitions, which at most involved so-called Greater Israel, but ever since PNAC, it has been working on being the party who pulls the strings of an America doing its bidding to establish a hegemony in the region which, absent such hegemony, will naturally be hostile to Israel. That they decided they can get the Russians on board their plans is what is interesting and what makes me concerned, with the PNAC label no longer even formally applicable given what they have in mind.
I suppose they decided if all that fighting was going to go on anyway they might as well put it to their advantage.
OK now this a serious reach. Seriously? Your stating here that Israel knows there are always going to be detractors in the region SO they actually want a hegemony over the region? What region? Your implying the entire Arab Peninsula. That's the definition of unsourced, ridiculous propaganda. Quite disappointing I M. You actually posted something stupid.
I think you might have misread my post, or perhaps I didn't make my point clear, or maybe we just disagree. But this is my view: 1- Israel, as a state imposed based on an ideology that basically is racist in that it says that Jews have a right to land that is inhabited by non-Jews for (fill in the blank pseudo justification), will naturally and obviously never have genuine support in the region from any government that is even remotely cognizant or representative of the sentiments of its populace on this issue. 2- In the past, Israel's main focus initially was to get its project (establishment of Israel) on the ground and, hence, the main focus of its policies and lobbying was basically against the front line Arab states (along with the PLO) which fought against Israel from its establishment until Camp David and then Oslo. That made Israel's main focus rather confined to either Israel proper, or alternatively among the more ultra Zionists, on the occupied territories as part of "Greater Israel". 3- Once the Israeli's essentially neutralized the challenged from the Arab front line states and the PLO, they embarked on a project that was now a lot more dangerous and alarming. Basically, to neutralize the entire region and even beyond, namely the Islamic world. This is no longer about wars focused on boundaries and the like. It goes far beyond that and is far more dangerous as a result. And to achieve their objectives, the Israelis not only enlisted the US military industrial complex through the neocons, but have also been working on certain Russians and Russian groups. The objective here is not for Israel to actually rule over the entire region, but instead to have someone (a superpower or both) neutralize the region in a way that would be safe for them. Which is actually the underlying idea behind the neocon Project for a New American Century.
