At JSOC, Flynn was tasked with dismantling insurgent networks in Iraq and Afghanistan — an experience that seems to have informed his later view of of jihadists as the greatest and most significant threat America faces.
.. Flynn was often accused of being disruptive, and not in the good Silicon Valley sense of the term. According to the Washington Post, he frequently butted heads with the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Michael Vickers. Vickers wanted the DIA to focus on doing analysis and traditional gathering; Flynn wanted its operatives out in hot spots supporting soldiers on the ground.
.. Implying that the US should level the entire city of Raqqa because ISIS controls it: “If we know that their headquarters exist in a place called Raqqa, Syria, we should eliminate, we should destroy Raqqa, Syria.” (Hugh Hewitt Show)
.. The book, according to Flynn, will highlight the “world war” nature of the flight with radical Islam. It’s coauthored with Michael Ledeen, a conservative writer who said in 2002 that “every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.”
.. On December 10 of last year, Flynn attended a dinner celebrating the tenth anniversary of RT, the cable network formerly called Russia Today. He sat at the head table, with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and had delivered a talk on his view of foreign affairs today beforehand.
.. “Flynn now makes semi-regular appearances on RT as an analyst, in which he often argues that the U.S. and Russia should be working more closely together on issues like fighting [ISIS] and ending Syria’s civil war,”
.. Flynn’s argument takes Russia’s claim that it is fighting “terrorists” in Syria at face value, when in reality Russia’s intervention is aimed at propping up dictator Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
.. But it’s possible that Flynn genuinely doesn’t care that Russia’s real aim is propping up Assad, because he thinks that anyone who’s against ISIS — as Assad is, at least nominally — is worth supporting.
.. And that, I think, would be the ultimate significance of a Flynn pick. Trump would be telling the world what his priorities are — and that they aren’t promoting democracy or opposing an increasingly aggressive Russia.
Instead, Trump would be signaling that he believes he needs to 1) project strength/toughness and 2) take a strong stance against jihadist groups. These objectives would be so important, in his eyes, that he’s willing to embrace someone with questionable ties to a hostile power in order to further them.
The controversial clients Manafort has represented have paid him and his firms millions of dollars and form a who’s who of authoritarian leaders and scandal-plagued businessmen in Ukraine, Russia, the Philippines and more.
.. In 1985, Manafort and his first lobbying firm, Black Manafort Stone & Kelly, signed a $1m contract with a Philippine business group to promote dictator Ferdinand Marcos just a few months before his regime was overthrown and he fled the country.
.. And in 2010, Manafort helped pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych remake his tarnished image and win a presidential election in Ukraine.
.. The financial dividends that the globetrotting 67-year-old Manafort reaped from these clients and others are palpable: he has homes in Alexandria, Virginia, Palm Beach, Florida, and the Hamptons, in New York, where his house is valued at almost $5.3m, according to property records. For good measure, Manafort has a condo in Trump Tower.
.. Similar issues about Manafort have arisen before: his work in Ukraine sparked a decision not to bring him on board as John McCain’s convention manager in 2008, according to people close to the McCain campaign.
.. Ed Rollins, who managed Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign, told the Guardian that Manafort did a “good job” working for him as convention manager. “He’s a good operative and will help Trump.”
.. “Paul has become the public face of the campaign in addition to Trump and has the authority to speak for Trump, which nobody has really had before,” said Charlie Black, his lobbying partner for almost 15 years at Black Manafort Stone & Kelly.
.. irritated Trump, whom Manafort likes to call the “boss”, GOP sources say.
.. Eyebrows have also been raised over several new hires on Manafort’s brief watch, which include a few ex-lobbyists and consultants – such as Rick Gates, who handled some Ukraine-related projects for Manafort in largely administrative functions – who have little campaign experience.
.. Manafort’s ties with Trump stretch back a long way: Trump turned to Manafort’s first lobbying firm in Washington in the late 80s for lobbying help for the Trump Organization. Trump forged close ties with Manafort’s then partner Roger Stone, who became a confidante of the billionaire and is now an informal campaign adviser who had a role in promoting Manafort’s hiring.
.. But Manafort’s work in Ukraine and his links to some scandal-plagued business figures, such as the oligarchs Firtash and Deripaska, and the arms dealer Abdul Rahman el-Assir, could wind up embarrassing the Trump campaign
.. Manafort has been credited with helping to reshape Yanukovych’s image to make him a more appealing candidate in 2010 by, among other things, getting him to speak Ukrainian instead of Russian, which he had done in past campaigns.
.. sources say that Manafort would meet periodically with high-level officials in the US embassy in Kiev and often tout Yanukovych’s pro-free market and pro-business views with an eye to buffing his image. Manafort’s job wasn’t easy, say people familiar with Yanukovych. “His client was somebody who had a very troubled reputation,” said former Bush State Department official David Kramer.
.. In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, he defended his work for Yanukovych: “The role I played in that administration was to help bring Ukraine into Europe and we did.”
Since that time a sort of asteroid has hit the safe world of Russian literature in English translation. A couple named Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky have established an industry of taking everything they can get their hands on written in Russian and putting it into flat, awkward English. Surprisingly, these translations, far from being rejected by the critical establishment, have been embraced by it and have all but replaced Garnett, Maude, and other of the older translations. When you go to a bookstore to buy a work by Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, or Chekhov, most of what you find is in translation by Pevear and Volokhonsky.
.. I’ve always maintained that Tolstoy was unruinable, because he’s such a simple writer, words piled like bricks, that it couldn’t matter; that he’s a transparent writer, so you can’t really get the flavor wrong, because in many ways he tries to have none. But they have, they’ve added some bad flavor, whereas even when Garnett makes sentences like “Vronsky eschewed farinaceous foods” it does no harm…. I imagine Pevear thinking he’s CORRECTINGTolstoy; that he’s really the much better writer.
.. Another argument for putting Tolstoy into awkward contemporary-sounding English has been advanced by Pevear and Volokhonsky, and, more recently, by Marian Schwartz,4 namely that Tolstoy himself wrote in awkward Russian and that when we read Garnett or Maude we are not reading the true Tolstoy.
Analysts thought that a way could be found to allow for the Iranian increases, but Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who has become the crucial power broker in the country, appears to have reduced the room to maneuver with statements making Saudi participation contingent on full compliance.
What puzzles analysts is how Saudi Arabia and other countries could have scheduled this meeting if they knew it was doomed to failure. After all, the idea was to calm the markets, not roil them.
.. The Saudis, analysts say, increasingly seem to accept that oil prices are no longer something they can control. Prince Mohammed, who has authority over the Saudi oil industry, warned that the kingdom could increase production by a million barrels per day in the coming months if it chose.
.. With low production costs, estimated at $3.50 to $5 per barrel, Saudi Arabia can compete on price with any producer. So can Russia, which can produce oil for about $4 per barrel, according to IHS.
.. For instance, he has said he plans a public listing of the national oil company, Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil-producing company. A public listing might require the company to pay more attention to the requirements of outside investors than to other OPEC members.
.. Russia has plenty of reason to go along with a freeze. Russia’s economy, which depends heavily on oil revenues, is in recession. The Kremlin’s desperation for higher prices is palpable, with the country committed to two wars, in Ukraine and Syria. At home, wages are being cut, bringing early signs of social unrest ahead of a parliamentary election in September.
.. Since the Soviet period, OPEC has looked on Russia as a freeloader on price-boosting production cuts: Russia benefited but never joined in, citing technical problems of closing wells bored into permafrost and high capital outlays for pipelines in Eurasia. But Russia may not have to make any sacrifice to go along with a freeze. Oil production is at a post-Soviet high and is not expected to go much higher in the short term.