The Nation has a cracking, snarky and sharply reported, story out about Rick Davies (John McCain’s campaign manager) and his role in the run-up to Montenegrin independence. Read the whole thing, as they say. What struck me about it was first that AFOE had a damn good little controversy of its own about the same issue, and secondly that the slightly larger controversy – whether Montenegrin independence was at all legitimate, or part of a devious anti-Russian plot orchestrated by the liberal hegemony – now looks very silly. After all, our own dear trolls were very keen to denounce it as a CIA plot against all that was holy, cos of Kosovo and stuff; but it turns out that Davies, in his role as spin doctor for Milo Djukanovic’s campaign, was being lavishly funded by….Russia.

You know, that Russia – big place, with bears, space rockets, birch trees, vodka, pan-Slavic brotherhood, yes? Hilariously, it looks like Davies had the support of Henry Kissinger and at least one Rothschild in this exercise, to say nothing of the aluminium king Oleg Deripaska, new owner of Montenegro’s huge lossmaking bauxite smelter, which you’ll have met in these pages before. It’s as if all the far-left stereotypes about the Balkans were true; but just on the other side. Of course, there’s something of a history of dodgy Russian money and rightwing Republicans when it comes to the Balkans, but that was far more closely associated with Tom DeLay.

As a bonus, the Nation piece is the answer to the question “What is Mark Ames doing with himself these days after The Exile?”