The Crisis In Ukraine

The Crisis In Ukraine - Paul Craig Roberts

In 2004 Hungary joined the EU, expecting streets of gold. Instead, four years later in 2008 Hungary became indebted to the IMF. The rock video by the Hungarian group, Mouksa Underground sums up the result in Hungary today of falling into the hands of the EU and IMF.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jg8h526sB7w&feature=youtu.be

The song is about the disappointing results of leaving socialism for capitalism, and in Hungary the results are certainly not encouraging. The title is “Disappointment with the System Change.” Here are the lyrics:

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Perhaps if the Kiev students had listened to the Hungarian rock group instead of to Washington’s NGOs, they would understand what it means to be looted by the West, and Ukraine would not be in turmoil and headed toward destruction.

As Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland made clear in her speech last December and in the leaked recording of her telephone conversation with the US ambassador in Kiev, Washington spent $5 billion of US taxpayer dollars engineering a coup in Ukraine that overthrew the elected democratic government.

That it was a coup is also underlined by the obvious public lies that Obama has told about the situation, blaming, of course, the overthrown government, and by the total misrepresentation of Ukrainian developments by the US and European presstitute media. The only reason to misrepresent the events is to support the coup and to cover up Washington’s hand.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/02/25/crisis-ukraine-paul-craig-roberts/

 

Ukrainian Neo-Nazis Declare that Power Comes Out of the Barrels of their Guns

Paul Craig Roberts

Reality on the ground in Ukraine contradicts the incompetent and immoral Obama regime’s portrait of Ukrainian democracy on the march.

To the extent that government exists in post-coup Ukraine, it is laws dictated by gun and threat wielding thugs of the neo-Nazi, Russophobic, ultra-nationalist, right-wing parties. Watch the video of the armed thug, Aleksandr Muzychko, who boosts of killing Russian soldiers in Chechnya, dictating to the Rovno regional parliament a grant of apartments to families of protesters. http://rt.com/news/radical-opposition-intimidating-techniques-882/

Read about the neo-nazis intimidating the Central Election Commission in order to secure rule and personnel changes in order to favor the ultra-right in the forthcoming elections. Thug Aleksandr Shevchenko informed the CEC that armed activists will remain in CEC offices in order to make certain that the election is not rigged against the neo-nazis. What he means, of course, is the armed thugs will make sure the neo-nazis win. If the neo-nazis don’t win, the chances are high that they will take power regardless.

Members of President Yanukovich’s ruling party, the Party of Regions, have been shot, had arrest warrants issued for them, have experienced home invasions and physical threats, and are resigning in droves in hopes of saving the lives of themselves and their families. The prosecutor’s office in the Volyn region (western Ukraine) has been ordered by ultra-nationalists to resign en masse .

Jewish synagogs and Eastern Orthodox Christian churches are being attacked.

To toot my own horn, I might have been the first and only to predict that Washington’s organization of pro-EU Ukrainian politicians into a coup against the elected government of Ukraine would destroy democracy and establish the precedent that force prevails over elections, thereby empowering the organized and armed extreme right-wing.

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/02/26/ukrainian-neo-nazis-declare-power-comes-barrels-guns/

 

Exposed: Ukrainian ‘Protesters’ Backed by Kony 2012-Style Scam

Viral video produced by company linked to ‘regime change’ NGO

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
February 20, 2014

As they seize weapons, take over government buildings and fire on media outlets, the US-backed Ukrainian protesters are being afforded legitimacy with the aid of a Kony 2012-style viral video which triumphs the grass roots nature of the demonstrations yet is linked to shadowy NGOs that have been directly involved in staging phony ‘color revolutions’ in the past.

The video, entitled I am a Ukrainian, already has over 3 million views. It features an attractive woman insistently claiming that the Ukrainian uprising is solely about freedom and democracy.

The video is typically glib and simplified emotional propaganda which purports to explain that “there is only one reason” behind the protests in Ukraine, a bald faced lie which ignores the multi-faceted geopolitical factors behind the uprising, which center on the tug of war between the United States, the EU and Russia.

The woman encourages viewers to “help us only by telling this story….only by sharing this video,” thereby framing the debate around the naive narrative that the crisis is solely about Ukrainians wanting “freedom,” and in essence blacklisting the real reasons behind the western-instigated revolt, which focus on the geopolitical isolation of Russia.

The origins of the video are not quite as ‘grass roots’ as is portrayed. The clip was produced by the team behind A Whisper to a Roar, a documentary about the “fight for democracy” all over the world, which was funded by Prince Moulay Hicham of Morocco. The “inspiration” behind the documentary was none other than Larry Diamond, a Council on Foreign Relations member. The Council on Foreign Relations is considered to be America’s “most influential foreign-policy think tank” and has deep connections with the U.S. State Department.

Diamond has also worked closely with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). The National Endowment for Democracy is considered to be the CIA’s “civilian arm” and has been deeply embroiled in innumerable instigated uprisings, attempted coups and acts of neo-colonial regime change since its creation in 1983, including the contrived 2004 “Orange Revolution” that brought US puppet Viktor Yushchenko to power in Ukraine.

Larry Diamond also played an instrumental role in the Arab Spring under the auspices of the NED, a series of supposedly grass roots revolts that were in fact organized and managed by some of the most powerful western institutions on the planet.

Diamond’s connection to the viral “I am a Ukrainian” video clearly suggests that the clip is a crude effort to convince an unthinking public that the Ukrainian uprising is completely organic and is not being instigated by western powers, when the opposite is in fact the case. The clip is reminiscent of the Kony 2012 scam, where a viral video utilized simplified propaganda and emotional manipulation to convince millions of people of the necessity of U.S. military involvement in Africa.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/exposed-ukrainian-protesters-backed-by-kony-2012-style-scam.html

 

Coup Government in Kyiv Demands U.S., Britain Mount Military Response in Crimea

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
February 28, 2014

The new government of Ukraine, installed after a violent coup last week and headed up by former central banker Arseniy Yatsenyuk, is calling on the United States and Britain to intervene militarily after unidentified armed men seized government buildings and airports in the semi-autonomous Crimea.

The corporate media in the United States identify the armed men as Russian soldiers, although it was reported on Thursday they “were wearing uniforms without any insignia, refused to talk to journalists, and it was not immediately clear who they were,” according to ABC News.

Ukraine’s scandal plagued speaker of Parliament, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, who is now the acting president of Ukraine, convened a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council to discuss the situation in Crimea. “Terrorists with automatic weapons, judged by our special services to be professional soldiers, tried to take control of the airport in Crimea,” he said.

Arsen Avakov, the newly installed interior minister and member of Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna party, said the incidents in Crimea amount to “military invasion and occupation.”

“It is a direct provocation of armed bloodshed in the territory of a sovereign State,” he wrote on Facebook.

In response to the activity by unidentified forces in the Crimea, the coup government in Kyiv demands the United States live up to an agreement signed in 1994.

http://www.infowars.com/coup-government-in-kyiv-demands-u-s-britain-mount-military-response-in-crimea/

 

Ukraine’s Sickness …and Europe’s Cure

The situation in Ukraine is evolving by the hour. Right wing ultranationalists and their “liberal” collaborators have taken control of the Rada (Ukrainian parliament) and deposed the democratically elected, though utterly corrupt and incompetent, President Yanukovich.

Former Prime Minister, and convicted criminal, Yulia Tymoshenko has been freed, and is now making common cause with Right Sector, Svoboda, and the other fascist elements, while the opposition’s nominal leaders such as Arseny Yatsenyuk and Vitali Klitschko begin to fade into the background.

In Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin undoubtedly watches with anxiousness. In Washington, Victoria Nuland and the Obama administration rejoice. However, perhaps the most critical development of all is soon to emerge in Europe, as the forces of Western finance capital prepare to welcome Ukraine into the fold. They will come bearing the usual neoliberal gifts: austerity and “economic liberalization.”

With the overthrow of the Yanukovich government, the $15 billion of promised Russian financial assistance to Ukraine is in doubt. According to Moody’s rating agency, “Ukraine will require $24 billion to cover a budget deficit, debt repayments, natural gas bills and pension support just in 2014.” Without Moscow’s continued bond purchasing and other forms of financial aid, and with pro-EU forces taking control of the country’s economic and foreign policy, the outcome is not hard to predict: a rescue package from Europe with all the usual austerity conditions attached.

In exchange for European “aid”, Ukraine will be forced to accept the driving down of wages, significant cuts to the public sector and social services, in addition to a rise in taxes on the working class and slashing of pensions. Moreover, the country will be compelled to accede to a liberalization program that will allow Europe to dump goods into the Ukrainian market, deregulation and the further opening up the country’s financial sector to predatory speculation and privatization.

It doesn’t take psychic powers to predict these developments. One merely has to look at the wave of austerity in European countries such as Greece and Cyprus. Furthermore, Eastern European countries with similar economic and historical conditions to Ukraine – Latvia and Slovenia specifically – provide a roadmap for what Ukraine should expect.

The Model of “Success”

Read More At: http://landdestroyer.blogspot.com/2014/02/ukraines-sickness-and-europes-cure.html

 

Central Banker PM Says Ukraine Ready for IMF Auction Block

Expect more separatist and ethnic violence after IMF victimizes Ukraine

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
March 3, 2014

Arseniy Yatseniuk, the central bankster PM of post-coup Ukraine, has signaled IMF-inspired fire sales are on schedule.

On Monday Yats, as the U.S. State Department fondly calls him, said Naftogaz Ukrainy, the national oil and gas company of Ukraine, will be put on the auction block.

Ukrtransgaz, a Naftogaz Ukrainy subsidiary, operates the natural gas pipelines in Ukraine. The pipelines are used to transit Russian natural gas to eighteen European countries, including France and Italy. Naftogaz is the sole importer of Russian natural gas provided by Gazprom, the largest extractor of natural gas and one of the largest companies in the world.

Yats is also ready to impose IMF austerity on Ukraine, already one of the poorest nations in Europe. “Yatsenyuk is the kind of technocrat you want if you want austerity, with the veneer of professionalism,” Vladimir Signorelli, president of boutique investment research firm Bretton Woods Research LLC in New Jersey, told Forbes last month. “He’s the type of guy who can hobnob with the European elite. A Mario Monti type: unelected and willing to do the IMFs bidding.”

Mario Monti, also known as Super Mario, the former EU commissioner and Italian prime minister, pushed “emergency austerity” measures on the Italians in a bid to stave off the collapse of the EU’s fiat currency. Super Mario targeted pensions and imposed “a radical and ambitious package of spending cuts and tax increases,” according to The New York Times. Although the draconian measures restored “international credibility” – in other words, the measures were favored by the international financial elite –they resulted in a fierce backlash in Italy. A similar backlash will undoubtedly occur in Ukraine after Yats and the IMF impose austerity measures at the behest of Brussels and Wall Street. The nationalists now in control of the country will scapegoat ethnic minorities and Russia.

http://www.infowars.com/central-banker-pm-says-ukraine-ready-for-imf-auction-block/

The Soviet Union was already on the brink of collapse when Reagan got it involved in an arms race it couldn't afford. If Reagan did nothing the USSR would have collapsed under it's own weight eventually anyway. Reagan just sped the process up a little.