Ukraine’s Unelected Government Imposes IMF Austerity

I loved Parry’s article. His point about Obama keeping all the false narrative people like Robert Gates, and putting in more people at the top who are reliable narrative-followers like Clinton and Kerry is well taken. Kerry, for all his stentorian droning, is such an interesting character – no one else, save John McCain, has given up so much for his chance at the brass rings of President or Sec of State.

Anyway. In an earlier post you mentioned how all this antagonizing of Russia will deliver it securely to China’s arms as a vassal resource state, and how this is ultimately a better deal than any we will give it, much to our loss. In another you showed how Ukraine’s way out would be to use that agricultural sector in the West to sell to China – hence why in Parry’s article those rich lands will be allowed to be bought up by private interests and so captured by us. After Piketty’s capital classification, do you have any idea of the true, Marxian power of those agricultural lands? Is that breadbasket worth all those billions thrown around to roust Neo-Nazis and turn a portion of Ukraine’s elite into simpering neo-liberal Harold Ford clones?

I keep trying to figure out the (for lack of a better analogy) real Risk power of all the pieces. Piketty seems to be a conscious muddying of those waters, by his own delusion that finance/stock market stuff is all that matters (which is what the Western elite believe, b/c it’s the rigged game they worship above all us and what enriches them). So when I hear that some amount of billions are dropped in a country, and then they hear later that, say, Ukraine’s agri sector is possibly less in real $, I get confused. I know that prime farmland is clearly better in our age of scarcity than a $16 billion unsecure WhatsApp messaging service, but is there a metric that can tell me by how much?

So if Ukraine is taking the screws to its people, what is it doing with the billions it will get in Western money? How do these funds benefit the Ukrainian people?

This situation is getting dangerous. The Ukraine people will soon find out what’s in store for them- the IMF riot. Reduced pensions, reduced government services and higher gas prices. They are getting the Greece treatment through and through. The US has instigated a coup d’etat, an overthrow of a corrupt, but duly elected government. The neo-Nazis were used as the catalyst for the coup, but now the government is to be handed over to the “technocrats” who will oversee the asset stripping of Ukraine’s economy.
The west is hoping they can eliminate or payoff enough of the neo-Nazi leadership to let the banker supplicants run the government without interference. That may not be as easy as it sounds.
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin watches and waits. Not only is Putin not dumb, he’s much brighter than western leaders, less arrogant and knows he has the high ground in this instance. Before long, I suspect ethnic Russians in Ukraine will ask Russia to liberate them from the harsh IMF sanctions enforced by the coup government. If NATO attempts to install ABMs or offensive rockets in Ukraine, Putin will invade, knowing the US is incapable of stopping it. He may invade anyway, as a preemptive measure , figuring the US won’t risk nuclear escalation for the Ukraine.

I read this article from a link given by a commenter on the Parry article. Lots of detail:
http://www.thepolemicist.net/2014/03/charge-of-right-brigade-ukraine-and.html

I agree that this is a dangerous situation. Parry, for reasons known only to him, sees Obama as a reluctant player in all of this. That he “must now join in denouncing the Russian president and demanding sanctions.” Who cares whether he is forced to or not. Who cares the reasons? If he’s surrounded by mediocre and incompetent or crazy people or he believes it himself, what difference will it make if we are all blown to smithereens?

to Pelham re western money

this from Michael Hudson, professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City:

” the [IMF] has told the kleptocrats, the ten or 12 billionaires that run the country, we will make you very, very rich if you join us. We will give you a lot of IMF money, you can transfer it into your banks and your bank accounts, you can then send it abroad to your offshore banking centers, and the Ukrainian people will owe it. So you can do the Ukraine what the Irish government did to the Irish: you can take the public money, you can give it all to the private bankers, and then you can tax your people and make them pay…
But as soon as the IMF gives the loan to the Ukraine…Russia says that Ukraine owes $20 billion, dating back to the Soviet Union era in exchange for, in addition, to about $5 billion or $6 billion for the oil subsidies that it’s been given. Russia said it is going to charge Ukraine the normal oil price, not the subsidized price. So all the money that the IMF and the U.S. gives Russia says is immediately owed to it itself.
Whatever happens, either the Russian government will get the IMF money for gas and imports or the kleptocrats will. None of the money–and I think Jeff agrees–none of this money’s going to go to the Ukrainian economy any more than the IMF money went to the Irish economy or the Greek economy or the other economies that are there. IMF money doesn’t go to the country and it doesn’t go to the people. It goes to the billionaires who run them to take the money and immediately send it back to the West so it’s a circular flow, and it goes in and out of Ukraine in about 20 minutes.”

michael hudson, http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11614

I just posted your article on a Ukranian website and got slammed – hard – when the links failed and
just none of it could be verified more than rumor. I took a beating for linking your article. Some of the foreign language links from the quoted articles were 404 dead.

In the future, kindly vet your sources better before you post stuff. What a fricking embarrassment.

Feeling really frustrated at the moment.
A humiliated reader who will never link one of your posts again. Ugh.

Uhplatypus

(Ian — I’ve checked, and so have others — all the links work.)

Every single link above works for me…

I think LibbyLiberal has a pretty good wrap-up of the US foreign policy as it relates Obama’s coup in Ukraine to his other acts that comprise a litany of “wars of aggression” in Libya, Syria, Venezuela:

http://www.correntewire.com/always_look_on_the_bright_side_of_war_part_2_of_2#more

One thing that really rings clearly is that Obama [& his supporters] are really murderous thugs that match Bush step for step forming a singular administration of 16 years. In fact, Obama now supports the Iraq invasion….just listen:

In order to cover the incredidably hypocritical statements eminating from Obama, his Brussels speech defended George Bush’s invasion of Iraq by saying:

“We did not grab its resources for our own gain. Instead, we ended our war and left Iraq to its people in a fully sovereign Iraqi state that can make decisions about its own future.” – Obama

This is an outright lie by Obama. Anybody who has rudimentary knowledge of the conflict remembers Paul Bremer’s Laws which distributed the publically held Iraqi oil rights to American & invasion countries private oil industries. We were able to steal Iraqi oil after conquering the place by paying/arming Shiites to engage in a genocide of Sunni.

Another outright lie in defense of the Bush administration by Obama:

“But even in Iraq, America sought to work within the international system.”

“What President Obama said is false,” said Caputi. “The U.S. did not attempt to work within the international system. We acted unilaterally, without the approval of the UN Security Council.”

-Ross Caputi, member of the Iraq Veterans Against the War

@ S Brennan

Bremer’s 100 Orders in 2004 were a whole bunch of ways we grabbed Iraqi resources. One of the worst for me was Order #81 which demanded that Iraqi farmers buy Monsanto seed and not be allowed to save their seed from year to year. More on the 100 Orders at http://www.fictionpost.com/f5/bremers-100-orders-rape-iraq-11538/

Yes, i thought Libby Liberal’s links on Ukraine were especially good. Oh, and as always, Glen Ford weighs in with a great article. http://blackagendareport.com/content/obama-putin-baiter-and-preventive-detainer
And Paul Craig Roberts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=LLR6zpzPSu_1mf48ckC8odAw&v=re807ZpwiKg

And yes they all work for me too and yes I did double check by going first through a VPN whose address is in the range:

5.104.32.0 to 5.104.63.255

and then through another one whose address is in the range:

109.254.0.0 to 109.254.255.255

‘Nuff said.

mfi

For those of you who read German Jens Jessen has a good article in Die Zeit, Teufelspakt für die Ukraine.

For those who don’t read German:

Jessen’s article deals with German attempts to pry Ukraine loose from Russia first during the First World War and then again during the Second World War. He points out certain realities ignored in the West particularly by ‘Liberals’ and ‘Progressives’.

1: Crimea was never an integral part of Ukraine (Die Krim war nie integraler Bestandteil der Ukraine).

2: But neither Ukraine nor Belarus, nor any of the newly created entities had ever been thought of as sovereign states (He means by the Soviets – mfi). That they exist and are accepted as such today is one thing: (But it is – mfi) a misunderstanding of the former Soviet nationality policy. (Aber weder die Ukraine noch Weißrussland, noch irgendeine der neu geschaffenen Entitäten waren jemals als souveräne Staaten gedacht worden. Dass sie heute als solche auftreten und akzeptiert werden, ist vor allem eines: ein Missverständnis der ehemaligen sowjetischen Nationalitätenpolitik. ).

3: The first heroes of Ukrainian independence hailed by the ‘Orange Revolution’ were German stooges. (Die ersten Helden einer ukrainischen Unabhängigkeit, die noch heute von Angehörigen der Orangenen Revolution verehrt werden, waren nämlich Helden von deutschen Gnaden).

4: See from a Russian perspective the West has consistentlyinterfered (he means with hostile intent – mfi) in the Ukraine – in the form of German and Polish meddling in the 20th Century and now in the form of EU and USA. And is that perspective so wrong? (In russischer Perspektive hat sich der Westen immer an der Ukraine vergangen – in Gestalt von Deutschen und Polen im 20. Jahrhundert, in Gestalt von EU und USA heute. Und ist die Perspektive so falsch?)

What I have found disgraceful but utterly unsurprising is the depth of Russophobia in America, including – especially, amongst those who describe themselves as ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’.

mfi

@ Ian:

However, if NATO membership is on the table, and it seems to be, Putin may feel he has no choice to invade.

What you’re either missing or not giving sufficient weight to here is that even to give up the predominantly Russian areas around Kiev is going to be seen amongst a large part of the Russian establishment as a disgrace. Putin has to keep his constituency happy. If he doesn’t invade he’ll have to pay a political price. Quite a high one too if the various contacts, comrades, and colleagues I’ve been speaking to since this American and Polish manufactured crisis blew up are to be believed and they’ve always proved truthful in the past.

mfi

Great piece Ian

Thanks MontanaMaven, I missed your comment on my read through.

@SBrennan: While I agree that some of the print media over there is really bad (especially the Washington Post) most people commenting on the issue have access to the Internet, where reporters and eyewitnesses from both sides have been posting their impressions. I’m in Australia where the reporting is almost as bad, but have been able to read up on the history of the region online, as well as hearing from bloggers with a variety of viewpoints.

It’s not so much about access to information, but the fact that that information contradicts pre-existing filters.