Canada home to certain Oligarchs?

NetsDaily: Mikhail Prokhorov instructs Stephen Colbert on how to live like an oligarch
Oligarch: A very rich person, particularly with political power


Canada Home to Certain Oligarchs?
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That's rich! Oligarchs are at home anywhere!

It seems that when there is nothing dramatic happening in Canada to create big headlines, the media haul out old intrigue files and try to make them seem current. The following rabble-rouser about Boris Birshtein (who?) is an example:

Globe&Mail: Searching for Boris Birshtein

• Boris Birshtein has made powerful friends and millions of dollars as a middleman between the West and the fractured former USSR. But who is he really, and who does he work for? Mark MacKinnon followed his trail – and ended up in a maze of geopolitics

Never does MacKinnon definitively answer his own question: "who does he work for?" (Bad grammar, by the way -- should be "whom" and more precisely: "for whom does he work?").

He works for Boris Birshtein.  Just as George Soros works for George Soros, and is as comfortable in PM Trudeau's office as in his own living room.

From ChronicalsMagazine:

• [Soros] is, in himself, a separate nation, a transnational corporate and political entity that has no borders but only tentacles. As such, he owes no loyalty to any particular state, but only to the good of mankind—which generally seems to coincide with the good of George Soros.

Still, when it's a so-called "Russian oligarch", and NATO needs a bogeyman to justify its members' military expenditures, then Putin is automatically implicated whether or not he's directly involved.

Yet when it comes to Canada's PM, his own long family history of oligarchical affiliations are extra feathers in his cap. Go figure. And don't think the Aga Khan doesn't qualify as an oligarch, though he is lauded as an "honorary Canadian":

CBC: Who are the honorary Canadians? [2007]

Like the Aga Khan, Soros, too, can point to many instances of using his massive wealth for what he deems to be worthy causes  -- and which may also happen to influence world events.

Canada needs to be a little less naive when naming honorary Canadians (in fact, perhaps wonder why it's being done at all), especially considering the situation now in Burma/Myanmar:

CBC: Senate votes to strip Aung San Suu Kyi of honorary Canadian citizenship (2018)

Nevermind that Putin has strongly chastised and taxed Russia's oligarchs -- many of whom have Israeli connections as well. There are plenty of YouTube videos on the subject.

It does seem that seeking Israeli citizenship is not necessarily a Jewish thing for an oligarch, but a good business move, and hey, if you're Jewish, why not, eh?

See, the problem these guys have to live with -- and it's virtually always guys (just try a search for "female oligarchs") -- is that they don't have many local friends the way the average business person would through cultivating customers and compatriots among locals.

The people with whom they have the most in common are always plane rides away. It looks suspicious to point out that Birshtein does business with international entities, but it doesn't necessarily indicate a state partnership, more likely a money-making scheme between like-minded wealthy citizens of said country.

Rest assured, it's lonely being someone like Roman Abramovich, for instance.  (Take a look at his private jet flights between Feb and May, 2018.) Especially if you happen to find yourself stranded on your yacht in the Caribbean because the UK is playing the Skripal case for everything it may possibly be worth.

But if you can call up Paul McCartney of lonely Beatles' fame, he might, and did, jump at the chance for some wealthy-minded companionship.

Abramovich is now an Israel citizen, as are a number of other "Russian oligarchs" (though London tries hard to appear to ignore that) which is something else to keep in mind when trying to stir up an international cold war.  One wouldn't want to distract from whence cometh a possible hot war.

In the words of someone with the moniker "Doktor Zed" on this page of posts about the evils of the Trump administration and a list that includes Boris Birshtein and compatriots, about whom the Globe&Mail wants us to get all worked up: "Trump is just the gaudy, gold-leafed tip of an iceberg of international corruption." [bolding mine]

It's not Russian corruption, it's international corruption. And Canada, as we have seen, is not squeaky clean.

Hands up all you Canadians who'd rather be an oligarch than a street cleaner. TV didn't make it big with the show "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" without at least some public envy. Funny, I never bothered to watch that show, so I must be more fortunate than some.

I suspect, and so do some psychiatrists, that personal oligarchy is a result of unmet childhood needs having nothing to do with present circumstances.

​The Telegraph: The US is an oligarchy, study concludes

• Report by researchers from Princeton and Northwestern universities suggests that US political system serves special interest organisations, instead of voters

Popular Wisdom: Why We Suffer: Peter Michaelson, author, psychotherapist on "the Great Gatsby Syndrome or ... Wealth Accumulation Disorder".

Worth reading:
German sociologist Robert Michels 1911 book, Political Parties:
The iron law of oligarchy... all complex organizations, regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop into oligarchies. Download. (PDF)

Other YYC posts re Canada and George Soros