By Mike Krauss
What is at stake in the Ukraine?
The barricades outside the Donetsk regional administration building are plastered with anti-fascist posters. Not everybody swallows Western propaganda. Meanwhile Kiev calls pro-Russia occupiers “terrorists” to justify lethal assaults on the entrenched demonstrators. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images
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Paul Craig Roberts is a former senior member of the Reagan administration and former editor of the Wall Street Journal who fearlessly exposes the continuing corruption of the government in Washington. He coined a phrase to describe the U.S. corporate dominated media: “presstitute media.” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently provided a good example of what Roberts is talking about.
In his column, Friedman explained the crisis in the Ukraine as the failure of the “West” (the U.S. and its European allies) to confront “Putanism” — meaning those Russian “bullies” who Washington says decided to invade and annex parts of the Ukraine when the former and thoroughly corrupt Ukrainian president was, as Friedman put it, “overthrown.”
The implication is that the Ukrainian people were making progress to freedom and democracy which Russia wanted to prevent.
That is a total distortion. And Friedman knows it. He must, because I know it. And all I had to do to know it was read something other than the Washington briefings put out to the national network of talking heads.
With a little reading, Friedman would have known that the former Ukrainian president was no more corrupt that his opposition; that he had been bought by Washington to sign up with the European Union, that he backed out of the deal and that because of that, our “freedom loving” government in Washington organized and financed the coup that overthrew him.
It’s all on tape. Turns out the U.S. isn’t the only government that spies, and European spies published the conversation of the U.S. “diplomats” who were helping to organize the coup.
Why did the corrupt Ukrainian president back out of his deal with the U.S. and the E.U.? Because a lot of Ukrainians did the math: Washington equals Wall Street, equals austerity, equals pension grabs and fire sale asset sell-offs, equals Iceland, Ireland, the U.S., the U.K., Spain, Italy and most famously Greece, equals government of by and for Wall Street and the one percent.
So while the U.S. was busy organizing a coup that put another corrupt president in power in the Ukraine, who immediately signed off on a Western “aide” package — meaning expensive loans to be paid back in austerity — those Ukrainians with ties to Russia ran back to Mother Russia, or in this case, daddy — that nasty Putin.
And what Friedman also knows is that Putin didn’t even have to ask. Ukrainian politicians organized a referendum in that part of the Ukraine that had always been Russian, got the vote they expected and turned up on Putin’s door step with a done deal.
This made Wall Street very unhappy. Mind you, looting the Ukrainians is not going to produce the really big bucks looted from Americans and Western Europeans. But a billion here and a billion there — it adds up.
So Washington immediately turned up the heat, moving fighter jets from Italy to Poland (minutes from Moscow, you understand) and taking other aggressive moves, all the while complaining of Russian aggression that never happened.
Meanwhile, back in the Ukraine, the guy Washington put in power turns out to be not only as corrupt as his predecessor, but also a Nazi thug. But, hey, you work with what you have, and Ukraine’s central bank dutifully raised interest rates almost fifty percent. Why? Economic reform? Oh, please.
This gave Wall Street another place to invest, as opposed to the low interest American market, which the Fed keeps at low interest to protect Wall Street’s income from municipal swaps. Now Wall Street has another puppet state to loot by lending some part of the almost interest free trillions it got from the Fed.
This is the kind of information that a reasonably able reader can come across, except perhaps in the New York Times.
It gets better. Those freedom loving Ukrainians that Washington bought for Wall Street are in line for another $1 billion and even more “economic reform.” Lucky them. While those that went back to Russia just had their pensions — Social Security — increased.
Let’s simplify the math for the reading challenged pundits like Friedman: Washington equals Wall Street and the Western banking cartel, equals the looting of any nation they can get their hands on, any way they can.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mike Krauss is a thirty-year veteran of international logistics and distribution and is a director of the Public Banking Institute:www.publicbankinginstitute.org .
Author of the forthcoming novel “Pursuits of Happiness,” a director of the Public Banking Institute and chairman of the Pennsylvania Project. Mike is an international transportation and logisics executive with broad experience in U.S. government and politics. Mike has lived in the first world and the third world, traveled widely and done business on five continents.
Author’s Website: www.papublicbankproject.org
