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To: koan who wrote (784046)5/9/2014 12:27:10 PM
From: koan  Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 1576398
 
Frank Rich on the National Circus: Why the GOP Still Denies Climate Change

By Frank Rich

The exhaustive and ominous new White House report won't break the political gridlock.

Every week,New York Magazine writer-at-large Frank Rich talks with contributor Eric Benson about the biggest stories in politics and culture. This week: the GOP continues to deny climate change, White House report be damned; and Monica Lewinsky writes about her infamous affair with Bill Clinton.

The White House released an exhaustive and ominous report on climate change this week that attributed a host of destructive weather patterns to rising temperatures and stated “climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present." Meanwhile, House Science Committee Chair Lamar Smith dubbed the report "a political document intended to frighten Americans.” What do you make of the report? And what would it take for most in the Republican Party to accept the reality and urgency of climate change?

The report confirms in no uncertain terms what sentient Americans already knew, but that doesn’t mean it will break the political gridlock that has doomed any serious national mobilization to address the crisis. Of all the crazy things in our politics, few are more self-immolating than the persistence of climate change as a partisan issue. A founding father of modern environmental activism was a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt, but his legacy is no more honored in today’s GOP than Lincoln’s. You’d think that the speed and perils of global warming would be settled fact, given all the catastrophic signs that Americans can see with their own eyes. But on the right, climate-change denial has become a proxy for a whole smorgasbord of powerful ideological imperatives: opposition to governmental regulation; resistance to taxation (especially of such Republican sugar daddies as the coal, oil, and gas industries); class resentment of intellectual elites in academia and Prius-driving Hollywood; and, in some quarters, rejection of any kind of science that dares undermine the supremacy of God as the primary actor in all Earthly activity.

It’s a pipe dream to think the Republican Party is going to shift on this any time soon. This week there has been a lot of talk about how the establishment candidate in the GOP senatorial primary in North Carolina beat back more radical tea party opponents — but all four candidates in that race, including the more “moderate” victor, were climate-change deniers. As the Times reported today, few areas are more immediately endangered by coastal flooding than Florida, yet the state’s three most prominent Republicans, Senator Marco Rubio, Governor Rick Scott, and Jeb Bush — two of them possible 2016 presidential candidates — are too fearful of their party’s base to acknowledge the peril or call for action. Even the high end of conservative thought leaders are in denial. George Will thinks global warming is merely “weather” and that any alarms have been manufactured by conformist tenure-track professors and writers in The New Yorker.His own personal scientific research, based on observations from the home he owns on an island in South Carolina, tells him that hurricane activity is down post-Katrina, so what’s the problem? Charles Krauthammer has declared that “any scientific theory that explains everything explains nothing” — just the kind of argument that was made to resist the theories of Galileo, Newton, and Darwin. So what will change their thinking? A realization that the younger voters the GOP needs for survival feel as strongly about climate change as they do about gay marriage. Or perhaps further environmental catastrophe that hits red states across the southern half of the country.

nymag.com



To: koan who wrote (784046)5/9/2014 12:34:20 PM
From: i-node  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1576398
 
>> The rich push charity because they want to supplant taxes with charity like they did before the new deal.

Who are you to question the motivations of people who contribute money to charity?

>> Mostly Romney gives to his church and he uses gimmicks to avoid paying taxes.

He does contribute a lot to his church, which is fine if that's what he chooses to do. He does not use "gimmicks" to avoid paying taxes. He abides by the law.

>> Are you forgetting his comments about the 47%, or do you think he didn't say that?

Hell no. I've been saying the same thing for years. It was the most absolute truth of the entire campaign.



To: koan who wrote (784046)5/9/2014 12:43:05 PM
From: Broken_Clock  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1576398
 
Bullies in Blue
Call the Cops at Your Own Peril
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
“Live free or die” is the motto of the state of New Hampshire. I hope the residents are prepared to die, because living free is not what they do. NH is merely a cog within the Amerikan Stasi State, but I am referring to what goes on within NH itself, not the police state existence imposed by Washington. On May 5 attorney William Baer was arrested at a school board meeting at which he went over a 2-minute speaking rule while trying to get some explanation from the Gilford, NH, school board for assigning sexually explicit reading material to his 14-year old daughter’s English class. The evasiveness of the school board angered Mr. Baer, and he spoke out again in support of another parents protests, and was promptly arrested by a goon thug cop

The school board chairman, Sue Allen, who has no legislative power nevertheless managed to create a law backed by police violence. After all if Bush and Obama can create laws by edict, why not a school board chairman? Under Allen’s edict, if a parent violates the 2-minute rule that Allen imposed, she has the parent arrested. The goon thug cop wasn’t embarrassed to arrest a parent for making a legitimate complaint during the public comment period of a school board meeting.

Remember, we “freedom and democracy” ‘mericans have free speech and protest rights. Actually, don’t remember that, because you no longer have any such rights.These rights are dangerous. They enable terrorists and extremists such as those dangerous people who don’t believe The Government.

This is Amerika today. Mr Baer offered no resistance, but nevertheless was lucky that the goon thug cop did not taser him, pepper spray him, and call for a backup SWAT team to beat him senseless or even murder him.

Last month wedding guests at at the San Luis Hotel in Galveston, Texas, were set upon without reason by 34 crazed goon thug cops. The guests, including the father of the bride and the bride’s brother were brutally beaten and maced along with many guests including 13 who were arrested for asking, “what is going on?” The brother was so badly injured by the goon thugs that he had to be rushed via helicopter to a hospital.

The mayhem resulted from an off-duty goon thug witnessing a guest walk outside with an alcoholic beverage, thus violating the city’s “open container” law. Instead of advising the guest of the open container law and recommending that he step back inside, the goon thug called the cops who arrived on the scene in mass and enjoyed themselves by beating up the wedding party.


No charges have been filed against the goon thugs for gratuitously beating up wedding guests. The right of cops to beat and murder the citizens who pay their salaries is now a perk of the job. It is necessary in order to keep us safe from criminals and terrorists, descriptions that are ever expanding.

Don’t expect courts to put any restraint on police and prosecutors. Dave Lindorff and Molly Knefel have given accurate accounts of the frame-up of Cecily McMillan by a corrupt prosecutor and a corrupt goon thug. McMillan was convicted on the false charge of assaulting a police office when the goon thug seized her breasts from behind. The judge, Ronald Zwiebel, enabled the conviction by preventing the defense from showing the evidence. The gullible and very stupid jurors made certain that injustice was perpetrated. Now a young woman who was sexually assaulted faces a seven-year prison sentence for “assaulting” a goon

This is Stasi Amerika today. And it gets worse. In Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, Eileen Battisti, a 53-year old widow, had her $280,000 home seized by Beaver County officials and sold at auction for $116,000 because of an unpaid $6.30 interest fee on the late payment of her school district taxes. A corrupt judge did not insist upon justice for the widow but instead upheld the robbery that benefitted both the county and the purchaser at auction of her home, S.P. Lewis. Lewis offered to sell the widow her home back for $250,000.


To see what cops are really like, read this.

Whatever you do, never call the cops. However bad you might think the situation is, it will be much worse once the goon thugs arrive.

And do not show any compassion for animals. Showing compassion for animals is proof that you are an animal-rights extremist which lumps you in with terrorists. In Albion, Michigan, extremists who feed a stray cat are fined and locked away for three months. Mary Musselman, an 81-year old Alzheimer sufferer was locked away for 90 days for feeding stray cats on her own property. When you see a starving animal, turn your back and walk away. Your inhumanity will be rewarded but your humanity will be severely punished.


Just keep in mind that “we have freedom and democracy” and we are “the exceptional and indispensable people.” Our president told us so. This designation removes you from any responsibility to other humans, much less animals. Don’t lose sight of the fact that Amerikans are so exceptional and indispensable that we have murdered seven entire countries in the new 21st century, and we are just getting started. As it is perfectly acceptable for Amerika to murder countries, how can it possibly matter if a goon thug cop murders you, your pet or your wife or husband or daughter or son?

What is so discouraging is that this article could be hundreds of thousands of pages long. I could sit here writing this article for the rest of my life, adding one incident after another, and not get beyond the tip of the iceberg.

The inhumanity of which Americans are capable and indulge in every day must scare Satan himself.

Parents arrested for protesting the assignment of pornographic reading material to 14-year olds by school boards, elderly and ill people imprisoned for feeding starving animals, pets murdered by police who are supposed to protect the citizens but instead mace them, beat them, body slam them, and shoot them and their pets gratuitously for the thrill of committing violence against life are the reason the public sector is in disrepute.

The worst people in the country are in our public institutions. This is why there is so little sympathy for the public sector unions now under attack by the Republicans. Americans look at their county commissions, their city councils, their criminal justice (sic) system, their governors, state legislatures, Congress, and the White House, and all that they see is evil and corruption.

There is nothing else there.

Americans who trust the criminal justice (sic) system are completely stupid. A case of mass wrongful conviction that I wrote about years ago finally came to trial last November. Annie Dookham, a Massachusetts state chemist who falsified drug tests, thus sentencing thousands of innocent people to years in prison, destroying their lives and the lives of their families, was sentenced to 3 to 5 years in prison. Dookhan sent thousands of innocents to prison in order to aid prosecutors in attaining high conviction rates and in order to achieve her own rise as a highly productive state employee. The judge noted that Dookham had cost the state millions of dollars in settling wrongful convictions and had shaken to the core the integrity of the criminal justice (sic) system.


State officials say that Dookhan’s fake evidence could have tainted 40,000 cases. Ask
yourself, what kind of person would destroy so many people in order to advance herself? And progressives think that the public sector is the answer.

You can ask the same question about the New York State Police and the Texas police who dropped little bags of ground up wallboard in cars stopped at random, conducted illegal searches, and arrested the occupants for drugs. Hundreds of innocents were convicted until finally one brave public defender demanded presentation of the alleged drugs and had the evidence tested. It came back: wallboard. All other public defenders had accommodated the conviction scheme and arranged plea bargains for their clients. You can read about these and other atrocities in my book, coauthored with Larry Stratton: The Tyranny of Good Intentions.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is How America Was Lost.



To: koan who wrote (784046)5/9/2014 12:51:20 PM
From: Broken_Clock  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1576398
 
You want Hillary in to continue Obama's war crimes?
+++

Why It Was Done
Videos and Photos of the Odessan Massacre
by ERIC ZUESSE
For the first time in history, an organized massacre of civilians has been filmed by many people from many different angles and perspectives while it was happening, and is documented in extraordinary detail in “real time,” the perpetrators having no fear of any negative consequences from their endeavor, and even cheering and celebrating the tortures and deaths as they were being imposed upon the helpless victims. The perpetrators were unconcerned, because what they were doing was what the government (which the U.S. had imposed upon their country and which U.S. taxpayers had spent more than 5 billion dollars to bring about there) had wanted them to do, and had helped to organize them to carry out. These people were just having fun, like a party to them, nothing really serious at all. Sort of like Stanley Kubrick’s movie A Clockwork Orange, more than, say Auschwitz (such a bore!). But, if so, a hundredfold more. And none of these people (tragically including the victims) were actors!

Background: On May 2nd, the Ukrainian Government in Kiev, located in the west, ordered local governments in the country’s east to take over the buildings that were being occupied by Russian-speaking Ukrainians who didn’t recognize the legitimacy of that newly installed and U.S.-supported Ukrainian government. There was violence in many cities, one being Odessa, where Russian-speaking Ukrainians were taken into the Trade Unions Building (viewed as leftist by the conservative political parties) and were massacred by burning, gunshots, and other means.

This video from George Eliason, an American living in Ukraine, shows the Trade Unions Building starting to be firebombed; then at 2:28 a big firebomb is blasted into the building and there are cheers, but by the end of the video the flames are strong and the sky can hardly be seen because of the dense smoke from the burning building:

youtube.com

The next video shows the firebombs (Molotov cocktails) being thrown into the Odessa Trade Unions Building, and occupants escaping to the roof:

youtube.com – t=10

This next, very brief, video shows the burning building from the street, with someone (who is identified on other videos as “Mykola”) firing a gun in the direction of the burning building:

youtube.com

This next video shows a crowd of anti Russian-speaking men from the neo-Nazi Pravy Sector (or “Right Sector,” paramilitary racist anti-Russian nationalist Ukrainian party) herding Russian-speaking Ukrainians into the burning building:

youtube.com – t=114

This video from Eliason shows members of Pravy Sector throwing stones and firing rifles into the building:

youtube.com

This brief video from Eliason shows people jumping out of windows from the burning building:

youtube.com

This video from Eliason shows people with clubs beating to death to finish off several people who had just jumped from the windows:

youtube.com

This brief (2:06) video, which was uploaded to youtube on 6 May 2014,

youtube.com

shows an Odessan who is in a street-crowd right after the massacres had occurred on May 2nd, and he’s being asked questions about what had happened. A passerby with a cellphone recorded this brief interview, and the questions came from members of the crowd, who wanted his account.

Here’s my transcript of the video’s printed subscript’s English translation, retaining its typos exactly as they were shown in the film-clip (except that the curse-words aren’t shown letter-for-letter), and with clarifications added by me in red:

Those who were collecting the bodies said: we were walking on the dead bodies … [How many people got killed there?] If we take the whole day, 116. … They are burying them secretly. They were collecting the bodies and finished off the wounded. [Did they poison them with some gas?] Not only with gas. They used stan granades, guns, traumatic guns, pump-action rifles. They chased the people into the building and finished them there. Two guys were clubbed to death with sticks. Is it normal? Is it a f–king united country? They burned a woman with two children alive. In the first floor this woman and two children were killed. … And the Media called us … I’m sorry but I will talk [to the media]! The Ukrainian [Kiev] Media call us terrorists. But the Right Sector [a Western-oriented neo-Nazi party, prominent in the new Kiev government], the wankers, chased us up to the roof of the builing. They threw Molotov Cocktails at us and cried ‘Death to enemies’. To what enemies [he asked them]? And then they cried [out in support of] ‘United Ukraine’. [He replied] F–k the United Ukraine. F–k this countrry [the newly installed government in Kiev]. [How all this was going chronologically?] Chronologically? They came … [Were there any children killed?] There were many children, women and old people murdered. They finished off the wounded. With headshots. They jumped on their heads. The police couldn’t do anything, they only cordoned off the building. The police tried to come up, a grenade burst among them, and they jumped on the dead bodies. [Where are the rest of the bodies?] The rest of the bodies are six kilometers from Odessa. We need to go there and take them. [unclear question] My name is Vania. [He turns to go.]

This news report by Eliason,

opednews.com–the-First-Pogrom-by-George-Eliason-Activism-Anti-War_Civil-Disobedience_Class-War_Obama-Warmonger-140507-595.html

includes photos from the event while it was happening, and also links to videos. Among the still photos in it are these

opednews.com–the-First-Pogrom-by-George-Eliason-Activism-Anti-War_Civil-Disobedience_Class-War_Obama-Warmonger-140507-595.html

showing (as he titles them) “Pregant woman strangled with cord,” “Torture- Gasoline poured over his head,” and “Rape and torture victim.”

This next item is a picture of the burning building, and a list of the first 36 identified corpses:

unian.net

This group of photos includes both the photo of the strangled pregnant woman and the video recorded from the ground below while she was screaming for help:

ersieesist.livejournal.com

The following 59-second video taken right before the operation shows local Odessa police forces en-masse refusing to participate in it, dropping their shields and walking off, instead of following their instructions from the central government in Kiev:

users.livejournal.com

The Ukrainian title right below that video translates as “Part of the Odessa Police refused to stand in the cordon.”

Next is a photo of two Right Sector girls smiling into the camera while carrying Molotov cocktails to the building to join in the massacre:

facebook.com

The following 9-minute video was taken by a Right Sector person wandering through the wrecked burnt-out building on the night of May 2nd after the job was done, to inspect the corpses and record with pride and satisfaction the results of a day’s work:

youtube.com

The last two mentioned items are linked to on May 2nd, the very day of the events, at this informative blogpost:

moonofalabama.org

where the 9-minute video is described thusly: “The people either suffocated to death or/and were beaten to death. The fascists are searching the corpses for their identification and names and contacts of their friends … apparently to put them on the list of further fascist terror.” Wallets are taken, etc., for that investigative purpose. So, the victims’ families might now also be in danger.

Also linked-to there is a photo of a coterie of about 6 girls pouring from a gasoline can into beer-bottles to make the Molotov cocktails. They looked like a group of friends simply enjoying a street-party:

politnavigator.net

Here is the ultimate group of videos:

scgnews.com

Here are key parts translated from the transcript of the lengthiest video there:

0.43-47 “Let us burn those motherf–kers right in the building, f–king faggots”

1.08 Everything around is already burning. Injured people are lying on the ground.

1.18 1.20 Maidan activist Mykola is running and shooting at people, who are trying to escape from the window.

5.40-5.50 attackers throw more fire to the window and then are shouting “GOAL!!!”

6.25 – 7.13 Mykola … is shooting at people who are trying to catch air and are seen from the window.

8.10 Maidan activists are telling each other to go to the backyard, because people are trying to escape from there

8.26 Crowd is shouting “They are escaping! Run to the backyard!”

14.15 People, who are still alive are shouting “Police, you have been bought as scums and all of you will go to prison afterwards!”

14.41 Man from the window is shouting “Citizens of Odessa city, rise up!”

16.40 People start to jump from the window. 2, 3, 4 dead bodies. [Not shown, but only mentioned in the conversation.]

21.00 Still alive girls are shouting from the second and third floor.

23.00 Burning man has fallen from the window. Crowd is happy.

23.20 Anti-nationalist man is lying on the roof. Maidan nazzis are shouting to him “Jump! Glory to the Ukraine!”

Another of the videos there is “Ukraine Crisis – What You’re Not Being Told,” and it includes the tapped phone-call on which Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet informed EU Foreign Policy Chief Cathy Ashton, regarding the results of Paet’s investigation into who was behind the snipers who on 20 February 2013 had fired on protesters in Kiev and murdered 21 people, which Obama blamed on Yanukovych and which was used as the chief legal pretext for his ouster. “There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.” The snipers firing both at the Maidan protesters and at Yanukovych’s police were hired by the people that Victoria Nuland placed into power to replace the democratically elected President, Yanukovych. He was corrupt, but he didn’t do this: “our” people did it, but Obama and his team hid it, and they still hide it.

And here are still-shots of the burnt corpses:

fishki.net

The reason why the Kiev government is ousting Russian-speaking Ukrainians from government buildings in the east is to retain control of the east. CNBC had headlined on May 1st, just the day before these massacres, “IMF warns Ukraine on bailout if it loses east” and reported: “‘This is something of a leap of faith for the IMF and is politically driven by key IMF shareholders [the international aristocracy in the U.S and Europe] to support the (interim prime minister Arseniy) Yatseniuk “kamikaze” administration in its reform efforts,’ according to Tim Ash, head of emerging markets research at Standard Bank.”

That “kamikaze” term there was referring to the following: Euronews on February 27th bannered “Ukraine’s New Premier Suggests Sacrifices Are Unavoidable,” and presented the hard-right Victoria Nuland, wife of the co-founder, along with Bill Kristol, of the Project for a New American Century. PNAC had famously championed Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. Obama had appointed Nuland U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia. In the subsequently infamous leaked phone-conversation (reported by the BBC on February 7th, “Ukraine crisis: Transcript of leaked Nuland-Pyatt call”), she dictated to America’s Ukrainian Ambassador that Arseniy Yatsenyuk or “Yats” must run Ukraine. Yatsenyuk was dedicated to the West’s austerity measures, so as to burden ordinary Ukrainians with the enormous debts that had been piled up and socked away by Ukraine’e’s aristocrats, the former corrupt Ukrainian leaders who had stashed billions abroad. Nuland said, “I don’t see Klitchko in the government. I don’t think it’s necessary. I don’t think it’s a good idea. I think Yats is the guy. He’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the guy you know.” She didn’t want someone she didn’t know; only known corrupt insiders should be rulers. In gangland, you deal only with people you know. And now, the far-right economist “Yats” became the appointed leader, and he immediately said: “We need to form a responsible government — and it’s not about personalities, this is about responsibility. You know, to be in this government is to commit political suicide. And we need to be very frank and open. This is the political suiciders.” He was looking to impress the lenders, so that when he’d retire from government, he’d be able to cash in for his having served not Ukrainians, but the corrupt lenders to the corrupt former Ukrainian political leaders.

The Obama plan was for Ukraine to become another Greece, only more so. A taped speech by Nuland to a hard-right corporate forum, the U.S.-Ukrainian Foundation, on 13 December 2013 was posted under the headline “Victoria Nuland Admits: US Has Invested $5 Billion In The Development of Ukrainian ‘Democratic Institutions’.” She said there that the anti-Russia elements in Ukraine represented “the principles and values that are the cornerstones for all free democracies.” The concept there of “democracy” was as versus communism, the polarity that had been central for her husband, Robert Kagan, co-founder with Bill Kristol of PNAC. And now, under the imposed Ukrainian leader “Yats,” Obama would extract repayment for the $5 billion, from the Ukrainian public. During George W. Bush’s Administration, Nuland had served as the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, but when John Kerry became Secretary of State, Kerry chose her to run Europe and Asia. Hillary Clinton had earlier made her the State Department’s official Spokesperson. The entire Obama Administration consisted of Republican “Democrats.” The people in the Democratic Party who financed the political campaigns of the top Democratic office-holders were the “Democratic” aristocrats. Republican aristocrats financed the political campaigns of all Republican office-holders: that Party was 100% corrupt, but only at the very top level was the Democratic Party 100% corrupt. Most congressional Democrats, for example, are not corrupt. They’re not populists, but they take into account not only the interests of their big financial donors: they care somewhat about the public, too.

The transcript of Nuland’s speech was posted 16 December 2013 at the Department of State, “Assistant Secretary Nuland at U.S.-Ukraine Foundation Conference”. Her exact words there were: “Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We’ve invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.” Very funny, that reference to “a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.”

Chris Ernesto at AntiWar.com headlined on 15 March 2014, “Brzezinski Mapped Out the Battle for Ukraine in 1997: It’s all about maintaining the US position as the world’s sole superpower.” The plan was to squelch Russia in order to retain the existing mono-polar world: control of all the world’s resources by America’s aristocracy, as the dominant player everywhere. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s decades-long patronage by David Rockefeller was now becoming understandable in a stark light.

The BBC’s “Newsnight” featured a segment on the Ukrainian situation, which was posted 28 February 2014 to youtube as “Neo-Nazi threat in new Ukraine: NEWSNIGHT,” and it interviewed some of the activists who had taken over as armed and organized gangs, and many of whom were unapologetically “National Socialist,” some even overtly pro-Hitler. The U.S. had indirectly (if not directly) placed them in control, after we forced Viktor Yanukovych out.

On 5 March 2014, Russia Today TV, Russia’s English-language news service, issued a tapped phone-conversation between the EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton and the Estonian foreign affairs minister Urmas Paet, in which the latter said that the massacre on 18 February 2014 that Western news media had reported to have been perpetrated by troops for the ousted Ukrainian President Yanukovych and that had sparked his overthrow had actually been perpetrated instead by agents of the pro-Western leaders who were now in power. However, en.wikipedia.org goes beyond this, to document that when Paet’s phone-conversation with Ashton became public, he walked back his degree of certainty that Yanukovych had been framed on this matter.

That wikipedia article is extraordinarily thorough.

On 6 March 2014, Paul Craig Roberts bannered, “The Looting of Ukraine Has Begun,” and he wasn’t referring to the long history of kleptocracy in Ukraine, but only to the Obama Administration’s part in that history. “According to a report in Kommersant-Ukraine, the finance ministry of Washington’s stooges in Kiev who are pretending to be a government has prepared an economic austerity plan that will cut Ukrainian pensions from $160 to $80 so that Western bankers who lent money to Ukraine can be repaid at the expense of Ukraine’s poor. kommersant.ua It is Greece all over again. … The austerity plan will cut social services, funds for education, layoff government workers, devalue the currency, thus raising the prices of imports which include Russian gas, thus electricity, and open Ukrainian assets to takeover by Western corporations. Ukraine’s agriculture lands will pass into the hands of American agribusiness.”

Something highly important occurred at that very moment: Iskra News in Russian, and also the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee, reported, on 7 March 2014, that “At 2 a.m. this morning … an unmarked transport plane was on the runway at Borosipol Airport” near Kiev in the west, and that, “According to airport staff, before the plane came to the airport, four trucks and two Volkswagen minibuses arrived, all the truck license plates missing.” This was as translated by Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research headlining on 14 March, “Ukraine’s Gold Reserves Secretly Flown Out and Confiscated by the New York Federal Reserve?” in which he noted that, when asked, “A spokesman for the New York Fed said simply, ‘Any inquiry regarding gold accounts should be directed to the account holder.” The load was said to be “more than 40 heavy boxes.” Chossudovsky noted that, “The National Bank of Ukraine (Central Bank) estimated Ukraine’s gold reserves in February to be worth $1.8 billion dollars.” It was 36 tons. The U.S., according to Nuland had invested aroud $5 billion in the coup. Was Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk cleaning out the nation’s gold reserves in order to strip the nation so that the nation’s steep indebtedness for Russian gas would never be able to be repaid to Russia’s oligarchs? Or was he doing it as a payoff for Nuland’s having installed him? Or both? In any case: Russia was being squeezed by this fascist Ukrainian-U.S. ploy.

Metal.com, the Shanghai Metals Market, headlined on March 14th, “Ukraine Gold Reserves Reported To Be Hastily Aircrafted To U.S.” Nobody would say anything about it, and U.S. “news” media blacked out the matter. However, U.S. sources said that it was done in order to protect Ukraine’s gold in the event that Russia were to invade and steal it.

Raul Illargi headlined at The Automatic Earth, “Debt Rattle Mar 9 2014: Big Oil and Gas Wars,” and linked to recent news reports about international oil companies’ efforts to push Russia’s state oil company Gazprom out of Ukraine and replace Russian with Western oil companies’ production. Headlines included: “EU leaders draw up plans to send gas to Ukraine if Russia cuts off supply,” “Ukraine crisis is about Great Power oil, gas pipeline rivalry,” “Ukraine Plans to Cut Russian Gas Imports, Raise EU Supply,” and “Ukraine’s Naftogaz slashes Russian gas imports in February.” The machinations by rightist politicians to shove aside Gazprom were already at a fever-pitch throughout the weeks leading up to the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Victor Yanukovych, especially the last week of February in 2014, when he was replaced by Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

So: that’s why the Russian-speakers who live in Ukraine are terrified and are hoping for Russia’s protection of them, and why Ukraine’s neo-Nazis are being unleashed against them. It’s just one gang of aristocrats trying to muscle another gang of aristocrats off to the side. And we’ll see who wins. But, clearly, the public, throughout Ukraine, will lose, big-time: “collateral damage” from the struggle between two rival gangs of aristocrats.

It’s just history repeating itself, for the millionth time.

Eric Zuesse is an investigative historian and the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.



To: koan who wrote (784046)5/9/2014 4:49:56 PM
From: Brumar89  Respond to of 1576398
 
That's why all the liberal billionaires give to foundations they set up.