(The astonishing video above shows what happened to a Ukrainian member of parliament who criticized the ruling nationalist junta.)
I thought the previous post would go over like gangbusters. Maybe that particular bit of business is of interest mainly to Brits...
All right, then. Let's talk Russia. And let's talk Ukraine.
Many of you can recall a time when a guy could lose teeth if he walked into a bar and announced in a loud voice: "Russia never did anything to us." I hope I can speak the truth now without fear of fisticuffs.
Russia never punked us. However, we punked Russia. Boy, did we ever.
When the USSR fell, America installed Yeltsin and Anatoly Chubais, who in turn inflicted the harshest forms of laissez faire capitalism imaginable on the country. This occurred despite the wishes of the Russian people -- who, in polls conducted at the time, announced a strong preference for Scandinavian-style democratic socialism.
Result: Life expectancy plummeted, the economy tanked, millions fell into the worst sort of poverty, prostitution flourished, and many women became sex slaves. Meanwhile, a tiny number of oligarchs plundered all national assets.
It was the greatest robbery in history. If you count the people who died early due to the lowered life expectancy, it may also have been the greatest mass-murder in history -- perhaps worse than the Holocaust.
Stalin was not the worst thing to happen to Russia. Hitler was not the worst thing to happen to Russia. USAID (the employer of our current president's mother) was the worst thing to happen to Russia.
And now we have engineered a fascist coup in Ukraine. Yes, a coup it was, even though our Stalin-esque media has blasted us with relentless propaganda designed to convince us that Putin is the bad guy. The Russian-speaking eastern part of Ukraine now wants to escape the American-made madness that has overtaken Kiev. Robert Parry has an excellent report on that.
There's a lot of talk now about civil war in Ukraine. In a sense, it's already happening. But I'm not sure that the rest of Ukraine really has the stomach for an all-out war.
Why do I say that? Because even the Maidan protesters are starting to wake up to the fact that we screwed them.
This eye-opening piece by Ben Judah describes the growing realization that American and European powers have been raping Ukraine. The article quotes Daria Kaleniuk of Kiev’s Anti-Corruption Action Centre:
What we found was that the money stolen in Ukraine was heading into British and European tax havens and hidden using shell companies inside the European Union.
What you need to understand is that Western tax havens have resulted in Ukrainian deaths. Take for example the theft of Ukraine’s HIV budget. The national budget for fighting HIV was stolen and hidden in tax havens and in Great Britain. But this has consequences—we are now approaching a 2 percent HIV infection rate in Ukraine, which is near the no-return point of pandemic.Judah adds:
Behind the scenes, many in the new government feel the same way. But because they are financially dependent on the West when it comes to staving off economic collapse, few American and European diplomats have picked up on what’s really going on. Talking to revolutionary minister Dmytro Bulatov, it comes up quickly enough: “Ukrainian money was stolen and taken to Austria and Switzerland and British tax havens. But we want that money back.”Now that we have made ourselves thoroughly hated, it's time for the Blackwater boys to show up. That's their job: When ueber-capitalists plunder a country, Blackwater (or Xe or Academi or whatever the hell they are calling themselves now) comes in to kill whoever has the temerity to say "But we want that money back."
So, if there is a civil war going on right now, it's being fought by Blackwater.
Incidentally, some of the hard truths we are learning about Ukraine are coming from the German BND. I think that some people in Europe have had a bellyful of our antics. From Moon of Alabama...
A week ago I sensed that there is resistance in Europe and especially in offical Germany against the U.S. led aggressive campaign against Russia:The Powers-That-Be in Germany -- and elsewhere in Europe -- are starting to understand that the US is following a self-destructive path. The United States, having forgotten how to manufacture, has become dependent on robbery. Or rather: We have allowed ourselves to be ruled ideologically by a class that would rather enrich itself through stealing than through the creation of goods and services.
Even the most staunch transatlantic tabloid in Germany, Bild, today reports (original here) that the CIA and FBI with dozens of agents are running the show in Kiev. The report is based on "German security sources" which lets me believe that the German government is looking for ways to counter Washington's moves.More intentional "leaks" were published today in the same media, the high circulation Bild am Sonntag print edition. According to this online summary (in German by the Bild sister paper Welt ) two different issues were revealed:
According to the German secret service BND some 400 U.S. mercenaries from the company Academi, previously Blackwater, are leading and coordinating with the Ukrainian army and police in operations against "guerrilla" in east Ukraine.Both claims are sourced to BND security briefings in the German chancellery.
According to NSA sniffing on Russian military communication, released to the BND, Russian pilots were ordered to violate Ukrainian airspace.
Our European allies won't put up with that shit for much longer.
5 comments:
Academi is just the visible portion of the iceberg. IMF austerity is the bitter pill made for the little people enabling the oligarchs to retain their ill-gotten gains.
Both Putin and Obama wanted to delay the vote on referendum, because civil war would interrupt the cash flow for Russia and the West, but that's the only point of agreement. For the masses, groping for less corrupt government, we have aided and abetted a Fourth Reich in the ukraine.
Ben
It is a false belief on the part of many in the West that Putin controls paramilitary and protest groups in Eastern Ukraine, either militarily or politically. It is a convenient fiction that may lead the West into a needless war with Russia. The New York Times sent two journalists to Eastern Ukraine to find evidence of Russian support for paramilitary or Russian political interference and couldn't find any. That was the NYT, not some left wing media agency.
The reality is quite simple. This is not a Russian aggression problem. It is a Ukrainian internal problem with a government that is perceived as hostile not only to the 17% ethnic Russians who make up the country but large swathes of non-Russians who don't like their fascist overlords.
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has warned, "We are reaching the point of no return — a moment when the escalation cannot be stopped anymore and we literally are on the threshold of a war in Eastern Europe."
People should read Mike Whitney's account of the massacre at Odessa. Make absolutely no mistake, this was a barbarous, planned exercise in naked terror that was run with a political sanction from sources tied to the current Kiev government, either directly authorized by them, or as a product of Right Sector forces with foreign intelligence backing. It is simply not possible for the Kiev, US or other Western governments, via their intelligence agencies, to have failed to properly identify this as a barbarous massacre in which women were raped and people had flammable liquids poured over them and were set on fire before being shot in the face. All of these governments have publicly supported the official lies regarding the Odessa massacre: that the fire was accidental, that the deaths (mostly ethnic Russian separatists) occurred as a result of a local conflict beyond the control of local police and civil authorities. Lies, all lies. The message to even peaceful democracy protestors in the East was unequivocal -- "Do not even think about seeking to change your government or this is how you will finish up."
The same message was sent out at Mariupol. Government forces sent from Kiev had ordered local police to fire on peaceful protestors and they had refused. The police retreated to their headquarters where they were attacked by those same government forces. Outraged locals then attacked the Kiev government forces in order to assist the police. 20 people died.
"Our European allies won't put up with that shit for much longer."
More importantly, Russia won't put up with that shit for much longer.
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Haruhi damn those evil sumbitches John McCain and Mitt Romney for their imperial foreign policy! If only that nice Barack Obama had won either of those presidential elections instead...
Oh, wait...
Excellent post.
About that looting: we can count on Joe's boy Hunter Biden to bring us all back a few pieces of silver now that HE'S on the board of that Ukrainian gas pipeline operation. Here's what he brings to the table:
... “my assistance in consulting the Company on matters of transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities will contribute to the economy and benefit the people of Ukraine.” Hunter Biden
But wait...Hunters says he's there to contribute to the economy and benefit of the people of Ukraine! So long, American suckas!
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