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Ukraine is Turning into Liberia: “The love of liberty brought us here”
by Andrey Fomine / March 25th, 2016

Earlier this month while delivering a public lecture in Kiev, “The Challenges of an Ever-Changing World,” former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made an inspiring remark for anyone who might have been thinking that life in Ukraine was bad:

You should go to Liberia where the standard of living is much lower, and then you will be thankful.

Ironically, Forbes Ukraine reacted to this with a slightly perplexed analysis that nonetheless led to a conclusion of flawless logic: “Although Liberia has one of the weakest economies in the world, it lags only slightly behind Ukraine with respect to a number of macroeconomic parameters,” and the magazine supported its argument with some anemic statistics (failing, however, to mention that Liberia’s 85% unemployment rate is far worse than Ukraine’s, even today).

The rapid deterioration of the Ukrainian economy over the past two post-Maidan years is no longer a taboo topic in the international press (the prominent US academic and former diplomat Nicolai Petro’s recent article in the Guardian made that crystal clear). But to make a long story short, the full picture looks even more depressing:

People are scrambling to get out of Ukraine

A Kiev-based headhunting agency claims that according to their polls, 70% of the population does not see any future in Ukraine. Ten out of eleven (!!!) Ukrainians are ready to leave the country if offered a job abroad. Forty percent of Kiev’s white-collar workers do not see a secure future for themselves nowadays. Another opinion poll shows compared to the pre-Maidan period, public pessimism is on the rise. Only 19% of the respondents expected 2016 to bring positive changes for Ukraine (down from 42% in 2013).

These sentiments are quite understandable if we look at average incomes in Ukraine. According to official data from the finance ministry (as of March 2, 2016), the average salary in Ukraine is only 4,362 hryvnas per month (approximately 145 Euros). The minimum monthly wage is currently set at 1,378 hryvnas (46 Euros). Therefore, the vast majority of working people in Ukraine have to get by on a salary of 2,000-3,000 hryvnas (70-100 Euros) each month. And the number of employed is declining every day. In September 2015, Ukrainian Minister of Social Politics Valery Yaroshenko acknowledged that the unemployment rate had reached its highest point in the history of Ukraine as an independent country, with 23% of young Ukrainians unable to find work (in the parts of the Donetsk region that are controlled by Kiev the jobless rate does approach that of Liberia – 50%!).

Low wages and high unemployment are not the only challenges an ordinary Ukrainian has to cope with. To meet the requirements of the IMF, the Ukrainian government must increase the rates it charges for housing and public utility services at least twice per year. As a result, in January 2016 the average bill per household jumped to 1,250 hryvnas – an 80% increase from 695 hryvnas a year ago. Thus, theoretically (and often factually) a family supported by only one working member and living in a modest apartment might need to survive on the beggarly 128 hryvnas – barely more than 4 Euros (!) – that is left each month after housing and utility costs have been paid! Indeed, taking into account some difference in its latitude (and climate) today’s Ukraine might rightly be called a Northern Liberia!

Meanwhile the index of commodities prices in Ukraine rose 40.3% in 2015. And since this crisis coincided with a 15% cut in the pensions of retirees who work a side job (this “cost-saving measure” was announced by PM Yatsenyuk in January 2015), clearly the majority of elderly Ukrainians are now facing a disaster. So far they have managed to survive thanks to their personal savings, but that resource is drying up: according to the National Bank, in 2015 Ukrainians sold 2,233 billion USD and bought only 0.684 billion USD. Local experts estimate that Ukrainian citizens will exhaust their personal savings by the end of 2016.

So it’s no wonder that Ukrainians are leaving their country en masse for Europe, mostly headed to Poland (around 400,000 crossed that border last year), in a desperate attempt to find any paid job. There they are cheated, abused, and cynically exploited, but they prefer to stomach such treatment rather than trying to eke out a miserable existence at home:



Ukraine’s rapid deindustrialization is picking up speed

The abrupt severing of the traditional ties between Russian and Ukrainian businesses, due to suicidal Kiev-imposed regulations, resulted in a 10.7% decline in GDP in 2014 and another 13.4% drop in 2015. Foreign trade, both imports and exports, decreased by one-third. The naive expectations of the incumbent government in Kiev – that Ukrainian products could obtain access to European markets – have been torn to shreds (Nicolai Petro offers one anecdotal fact: Kiev’s biggest European export, under the agricultural quotas established by the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, is honey).

This situation of social and economic degeneration, along with the ready availability of weapons smuggled out of what is known as the “ATO Zone,” has led to an unprecedented tsunami of criminal activity in Ukraine. In the two years since Maidan, the number of recorded criminal offenses has doubled there. In reality, marauding crowds, armed robberies, and street killings are becoming an everyday event and many incidents go unreported. According to the latest findings from the Hague Institute of Innovating Justice, 44% of Ukrainians do not trust their national judicial system or law-enforcement agencies. A number of nationalist gangs (volunteer battalions) seem to operate out of reach of the law and ignore any attempts by the public authorities to rein them in. The most recent scandals (amber-smuggling in the Rovno region, the blockade of Crimea, and the barriers set up to bar Russian transit trucks) are just the tip of the iceberg of the criminal activities of radical groups in Ukraine that have received media attention. Most criminal incidents do not make the headlines. For example there are around 100 cases currently languishing within the legal system against members of the Aidar battalion who have committed criminal offenses, including charges of serious war crimes in the Donbass, all of which are gathering dust in Ukrainian courts.

Dutch football fans who used to visit Euro-2012 in Ukraine and now thoughtlessly sharing #TakIsJa hashtag, should understand that the country they saw 4 years ago does not exist anymore.

There is effectively no state in Ukraine

The authorities are busy ingratiating themselves with every available power figure — the US Embassy, local oligarchs, Right Sector, and various Mafia groups — seeing in those the only keys to the government’s own legitimacy and ability to hold on to power. But one point that they apparently do not understand is that any government lacking public support on the ground and dependent on exterior agents is more vulnerable than they could ever imagine. Did the Liberian dictator Samuel Doe, who took power as a result of a US-backed coup d’etat in 1980, ever dream that in ten years he would be forced to eat his own ear and then be publicly executed by a rival tribe? The leaders of “Northern Liberia” may have their own political tracks, but not the final destiny…

• “The love of liberty brought us here” is the national motto of Liberia.

Condoleezza rice gave a lecture in Kiev, rejoice that you are not Liberia
In Kiev came to the 66th U.S. Secretary of state and the most powerful woman in the world according to «Forbes» for 2004-2005 Condoleezza rice, who arrived at the invitation of billionaire Victor Pinchuk. It is reported Strenia.

As is known, settled ex-Secretary of state in a five star hotel Intercontinental. In the event the charitable Foundation that was held at the Diplomatic Academy, rice with a delegation of 15 people came on foot. And at the end it was expecting a tuple Pinchuk.

Businessman seated guest in his armored BMW 7-series c today, the highest protection level B6/B7, which corresponds to EU standards. By the way, on the same car for 9.5 million USD goes another Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky.

Note that the lecture of Condalisa rice were seen by the Minister of agrarian policy Alex Pavlenko and the head of national Bank Valeria Gontareva. After the speech of American women they kissed goodbye.

Condoleezza rice delivered a public lecture on the theme «the Challenges of a changing world». In a speech former US Secretary of state talked about the development of Ukraine, in particular on the reforms.

ЛІГА.net selected key points from the speech of former Secretary of state of the United States.

Mutual responsibility of politicians and people

Your leaders daily needs to gain the trust of those they lead — it’s the nature of democracy. John F. Kennedy once said, «don’t ask the state, what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country». Yes, your power may disappoint you, and you will think that they can’t do anything. It is important to remember that politicians should work, but you can help build democracy in Ukraine.

On civil society

Civil society is primarily the responsibility of the strong to the weak. The willingness to help. Only then is born a democracy. Because democracy is so strong in the state, how strong the most unprotected member of society.

The compromises in politics

You cannot compromise your principles. It is impossible to negotiate and to compromise with those who is hostile to democracy in your country. But policy is often called the fundamental things that are actually merely a subject of political dialogue. For example, the question of taxation is not one of those who should be considered the principal.

About leadership

A leader is not a profession, and the ability to organize processes and to take responsibility for its participants. A true leader must set ourselves the goal of finding and nurturing new leaders — must find and develop the strengths in those for whom he became a leader.

About the future of global politics

I believe in the United Nations, however, there are very many States and too complex a decision-making mechanism. The future of effective regional groups and unions of States. The only caveat that they have to be consolidated on a voluntary basis.

About the future of the European Union

Recent financial crises have considerably weakened the EU, identified the problem areas — its members are too heterogeneous in their capacity. But despite all the problems, predict that the EU will avoid collapse, although the new United States of Europe it will not be never. I hope that the EU will remain the UK, since then the EU will be over the Atlantic, and, hence, more effective. The EU, despite internal contradictions, it is critical to retain a unified position on Russia

About the U.S. role in world politics

President George W. Bush did a great job for the sake of freedom and democracy in different countries around the world. I believe that the United States should continue to determine the political agenda in the world. And not because we are the best — it’s not, just look at our electoral debates, and due to the fact that the States are better at it objectively. Because as soon as the change of power in the White House under public pressure, the U.S. weakened its position in the middle East, weakened the military presence in Afganistane, the world quickly got Russia as an international aggressor, breaking the boundaries of independent States.

About the risks for the world if he wins Donald trump on the election of the President of the United States and his sympathy for Putin

The election campaign in the USA, as well as you do, often outrageous, but after coming to the Oval office the presidents of the United States forget about their sharp loud statements and promises in the elections. Because then the security services give a real picture of global risks, and there is no rhetoric. I assure you, whatever may be said trump, in case of its victory, the U.S. will maintain tense relations with Russia. Russia should remember that they do not have license to intimidate neighboring States, the revision of borders at its own discretion and the seizure of territory, as happened in Crimea.

In Crimea we received another long-term frozen conflict. Like Abkhazia, South Ossetia or Transnistria. Maybe someday we will solve them, you need to stay positive. Let me remind you, if the U.S. Secretary of state in the late 1940s, said that after 50 years the collapse of the Soviet Union, they would have been considered crazy. In politics impossible.

Sanctions

Due to economic sanctions and falling oil prices, the world community can effectively influence on Russia. I assure you that the U.S. sanctions with the Russians not taking off, as for the EU, I hope it too.

About the level of life in Ukraine

Anyone who believes that in Ukraine life is bad, you should go to Liberia where the level of living is much lower, and since everyone will be glad that he is Ukrainian.

On The Constitution

Real democracy is hard to create. It does not appear suddenly, but is built through a long and painstaking work. Institutional changes should be carried out in the framework of the Constitution. Frequent changes of the Constitution do not benefit development. The Constitution should be changed only when it becomes obvious bias towards one of the branches of government.

About the granting of arms of Ukraine

From the first days of the conflict in Ukraine I thought that you should assist with lethal weapons, however, our government has decided otherwise. In any case, we will strengthen the military power of NATO, which is an effective counterweight to Russian aggression. You should force to work the government in Ukraine for 25 years was three revolutions. Maybe it’s time to learn how to run the country?

Europe and Ukraine: Much Depends on the Dutch

by John Feffer

The future of Europe is being decided this week in the Netherlands.

Perhaps you thought that the European Union’s fate would be voted up or down in June, when the United Kingdom holds its referendum on continued membership. The “leave now” constituency in the UK currently holds a four-point lead, though much depends on whether younger British voters who are more EU-friendly will actually make it to the polls. The stakes are indeed high in the UK, and Brexit quite naturally commands much of the world’s attention.

But this week, the Dutch held a referendum on a trade agreement with Ukraine that has already been approved by the Dutch parliament and by all the other members of the EU. Indeed, the agreement has already been partially in effect for much of 2015. The organizers of the referendum, only the second one in modern Dutch history, don’t actually care much about Ukraine. They simply wanted a way to rally Dutch public opinion against the EU. The association agreement, because of its European connection, served as a nice fat target.

According to the initial results, the anti-agreement forces won a clear victory, by nearly two to one. And it looks as though just enough voters turned out to achieve the 30 percent required to validate the results.

The result of the Dutch referendum is not the only storm cloud on the horizon.

NATO recently announced that it’s sending 4,200 additional troops and 200 tanks to Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, and the three Baltic states in order to counter an “aggressive Russia,”according to Philip Breedlove, the top U.S. commander in Europe. NATO is also assembling a 40,000 strong rapid-response force to deploy if one of its most easternmost members gets attacked.

It’s not exactly a high-noon moment in Europe. The European Union is distracted by the continuing impact of the refugee crisis. Russia has been focusing on events in Syria. Ukraine itself is struggling to establish a measure of political stability and deal with endemic corruption. A tenuous ceasefire holds in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine.

But events this week may nevertheless determine the future of Ukraine, the trajectory of the EU, and whether armed conflict will return to Eastern Europe.

Much depends on the Dutch.

The Referendum

The Ukrainian economy has taken a beating in the last couple years. In 2014, according to the World Bank, the economy shrank by nearly 7 percent. Last year, it contracted by an astonishing 12 percent. In this context, projected growth of 1 percent in 2016 is cause for celebration. But at that rate, Ukraine won’t even get back to pre-Euromaidan levels for some time.

One major reason for the economic tailspin is the loss of the Russian market. Gone the cheap Russian energy flowing to Ukraine; gone the aviation exports going the other way to Russia. According to Ukrainian government statistics, Ukrainian exports to Russia dropped by a third in 2014. In the first half of 2015, trade fell by another 59.4 percent. The same sources indicate that Ukraine has now become, basically, an exporter of raw materials: corn, iron, sunflower oil. That’s not exactly a recipe for rapid economic growth.

The association agreement with the EU — the same association agreement proposed in 2014 that sparked the Euromaidan protests — might ordinarily be a lifesaver for Ukraine. As Russia steps away, the EU steps in. And boy, what a economic plum the EU is! Through this agreement, Ukraine gains preferential access to a market of 500 million customers.

But it’s not clear whether Ukraine is selling anything that these customers want to buy — or are even allowed to buy. As Nicolai Petro writes in The Guardian:

EU rules restrict Ukraine’s exports to Europe, which fell 23 percent in 2015 despite the preferential tariff regime that was in place for most of last year. For example, only 72 Ukrainian companies are allowed to export food of animal origin to the EU: 39 of the licenses are for honey. While that may sound like a lot of honey, Ukraine exported its yearly quota for honey in the first six weeks of 2016. A similar story holds for other commodities.
Also, the association agreement goes both ways. As the EU removes tariff walls against Ukrainian products, so Ukraine takes away barriers to EU products. During the 1990s, Eastern European countries discovered to their dismay what happens when West European products suddenly become available much more cheaply: a hollowing out of domestic industries and agriculture.

You’d think, perhaps, that the Dutch pored over all of these statistics to determine whether or not to support the association agreement. But the Dutch referendum, as I said, was not about Ukraine.

The opponents of the association agreement — an odd combination of Euroskeptics, right-wing populists like Geert Wilders, the left-wing Socialist Party, and even an animal-rights group — made any number of absurd objections to the agreement: that it will cause Ukrainian workers to flood the EU (they won’t), that fascists are in control of Ukraine (they aren’t), or that the agreement is the first step for Ukraine to join the EU (in another 50 years, if the Ukrainians are lucky and the EU still exists).

The supporters of the agreement are not much better. They tried to turn the vote into a referendum on Vladimir Putin. As Politico reports:

Supporters of the Ukraine agreement see the Russian leader as a bully who has to be taught a lesson. In their view, rejecting the accord would betray Ukrainians, boost the Kremlin, and reward Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. A digitally manipulated poster created by Yes backers and displayed in the Amsterdam subway shows a passionate kiss between populist Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who opposes the treaty, and the Russian president.
Sure, Putin is a bully, but the referendum was not about Russia. It was not about pulling Ukraine apart. It was about following through on a commitment that the EU made in the aftermath of the changes that took place in Ukraine in 2014.

On the basis of the trade figures mentioned above, a good argument could be made both for and against the agreement. But the Dutch did not debate the finer points of trade. Larger issues were at stake. A “yes” vote represented a measure of hope — in the continued viability of the European Union and its potential to help countries on its borders. “No,” meanwhile, suggested that the EU is a spent force and the “European idea” no longer has any capacity to inspire the better angels of our nature.

Dutch rejection of the agreement could significantly buoy the hopes of Euroskeptics in the UK and elsewhere in the EU. And it would be yet another misfortune for Ukraine to suffer in a year of hard knocks.

The Trouble with Ukraine

Ukrainians are not just suffering economically.

The political situation in the country is tenuous, to say the least. The government of Petro Poroshenko has been trying to pull together a new ruling coalition that could support its choice for a new prime minister, Volodymyr Groysman. Groysman, in turn, has signaled that he would appoint Slovak politician Ivan Miklos as the country’s finance minister. Miklos presided over Slovakia’s economic about-turn in the 2000s.

But earlier this month, former prime minister and the head of the Fatherland Party Yulia Tymoshenko pulled out of negotiations over the creation of a new ruling coalition. Tymoshenko is, quite sensibly, outraged at how the economic reforms so far have plunged Ukrainians into misery. But she’s also taking a chance that she and her party would benefit the most from early elections.

Poroshenko — whose disapproval rate hovered around 70 percent back in January — has been reeling from a succession of corruption allegations. The latest ties him to the Panama-Gate revelations — the huge investigative journalism undertaking that has implicated politicians across the globe in off-shore schemes to enrich themselves and their cronies. Poroshenko, required to sell his cake and candy company Roshen, allegedly transferred the concern overseas in order to reap tax-free profits from the sale. The head of the country is supposed to be encouraging the citizens to pay the taxes that the state needs so desperately. He should not be misleading by example.

Poroshenko, up until the Panama-Gate scandal broke, was actually one of the more popular government figures. Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and the parliament as a whole have approval ratings in the very low teens. A pervasive stink of corruption hangs over the country. Even after the Ukrainian government finally dismissed the notoriously unscrupulous prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin,The New York Times lambasted the leadership’s cronyism:

Poroshenko seems to have accepted continuing corruption as the price to pay for a modicum of maneuvering room. But the president, the prime minister, and the Parliament must be made to understand that the International Monetary Fund and donor nations, including the United States, cannot continue to shovel money into a corrupt swamp unless the government starts shaping the democratic rule that Ukrainians demanded in their protests.
Given that the economy has bottomed out, the political system is fragile, and corruption is widespread, the situation in the Donbass would seem to be the least of Kiev’s worries at the moment. After all, the situation in eastern Ukraine is relatively quiet, emphasis on “relatively.” Ceasefire violations continue sporadically, according to the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and there have been casualties. Elections have not yet taken place in the Donbass region, though Poroshenko insists that more of an armed OSCE presence is necessary before any such election can proceed. But at least all is mostly quiet on the eastern front.

The last thing Ukraine needs right now is a resumption of hostilities in the Donbass. Given the punishing impact that low energy prices are having on its economy, Russia can also ill afford a hot war on its periphery and even more stringent sanctions. By sending more troops to its eastern borders, NATO is reassuring its newest members. By providing Ukraine with over $300 million in non-lethal security assistance, the United States is reassuring the Poroshenko government. But the West should be putting much more attention and resources into ensuring that the Minsk process succeeds. Signals that are reassuring to one side are very often threatening to the other.

The best way for Ukraine to guarantee its territorial integrity — and not lose any more acreage to an opportunistic Russia — is to be successful, politically and economically. Ukraine desperately needs a cohort of clean politicians at the helm. It needs an economic package of support that doesn’t require the most vulnerable portions of the population to shoulder most of the burden of economic reform. Economic and political success will more effectively secure the support of the residents of Donbass than force of arms.

Meanwhile, the EU has to get its own act together. It has to reimagine itself as something more than just austerity economics sung to the tune of Ode to Joy.

Brussels faces the same challenge as Kiev: how to command the loyalties of a diverse population. The Dutch, the British, the Greeks — they can’t be forced to stay inside the Union. The rewards of membership must be made visible and fast. The EU can still help Ukraine move forward. But it can do so only if it somehow masters its own centrifugal forces.

Dutch Voters Reject Ukraine Deal
April 7, 2016

Dutch voters struck a blow against the E.U.’s Ukrainian association agreement – and the incessant Russia-bashing that has surrounded it – creating hope for less belligerence in Europe, writes Gilbert Doctorow.

By Gilbert Doctorow

On this overcast Thursday morning in Brussels, the political capital of Europe, rays of bright sunshine are breaking through from the east as the latest results of vote counting in neighboring Netherlands suggest that Wednesday’s referendum against the European Union’s Association Agreement with Ukraine won two out of every three votes and passed the 30 percent participation requirement of all eligible voters to be considered valid.

If those results are confirmed by the official results – to be released on April 12 – this referendum marks a resounding defeat for the Brussels-led conspiracy to pursue Russia-bashing policies of sanctions and information warfare without consulting public opinion at home.

To change metaphors and speak in terms of Dutch folklore, it is the first crack in the dam that many of us have been waiting for, the opportunity for common sense to prevail over the illogic, hubris and plain pigheadedness of those who control the E.U. institutions in Brussels, and afar from Berlin and Washington.

While the referendum was formally just “advisory,” both the public statements of parliamentarians and the acknowledgements of the Dutch government ahead of the voting indicated that it will force a new vote in parliament on ratification and likely send Prime Minister Mark Rutte to Brussels. hat in hand, requesting a renegotiation of the Association Agreement.

As such, it may bring the E.U. foreign policy machinery to a shuddering halt and open the illogic of all its policies towards its eastern borderlands over the past several years to public scrutiny and, possibly, to revision.

However, whether this was the decisive moment when the E.U. is brought to its senses or just the first of a series of knock-out blows directed at the political correctness and group think that have been driving policy ever since the coup d’etat in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, its importance cannot be overstated.

We have been hearing for more than a year that the Russia-bashing policies – the sanctions in particular – were opposed by a growing minority of E.U. member states. Among the dissenters named at one point or other have been Italy, Hungary and Slovakia. Then came Bavaria, within Germany, whose minister-president Horst Seehofer just months ago flouted the policies of Chancellor Merkel and paid court to Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. On Wednesday, the president of Austria did the same.

And yet, despite all the fine words to reporters about how the sanctions violate the basic economic interests of their countries and of Europe as a whole, none of these statesmen broke ranks when the sanctions repeatedly came up for renewal. The significance of Wednesday’s vote in The Netherlands was that this time the people spoke, not their elected or appointed officials. This was a consultation to remember.

In effect, the referendum played out at two levels. At the domestic level, it was a power struggle between the mainstream centrist parties in The Netherlands who stand for a “go with the flow” approach on E.U. decisions and decision-making, versus the Euroskeptic extremes on the left and especially on the right.

On the right, Geerd Wilders and his Freedom Party want to put a stick in the gears of the E.U. machinery and halt the slow-motion, seemingly unstoppable move towards greater union, indeed towards federalism that have gained momentum ever since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008. In that sense, the vote foreshadows the campaign fight of the parliamentary elections that will take place in The Netherlands in 2017.

At the same time, the referendum had a geopolitical dimension going way beyond the spoils of office, as a proxy battle in The Netherlands between those who favor a pro-U.S./pro-NATO approach versus those seeking improved relations with Moscow.

In both dimensions, the particulars of the E.U.’s Association Agreement with Ukraine that runs several hundred pages were not the real issue on the ballot. All of which begs the question of what exactly Prime Minister Rutte will eventually be asking the E.U. Commission to renegotiate.

The signs are multiplying that the E.U. consensus on foreign policy driven by German Chancellor Angela Merkel is nearing collapse. Within Germany itself, her detractors are becoming ever bolder. Earlier this week, the German newspapers were carrying on their front pages news of former Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s invitation to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to visit him at his home next week.

This move is seen as a direct rebuke to Merkel and her policy of open-arms to refugees from Syria and the Middle East, a policy that Orban led a number of new Member States in opposing.

The next big test for the European Union, and the next opportunity to deal a severe blow to its complacent leadership in Brussels will be the Brexit referendum in the U.K. at the end of June.

NB: the issues in the referendum were the featured topic in RT’s Cross Talk show released on 6 April during which I expanded on these points and on the criminal folly of EU policy on Ukraine:

Fear and Loathing in Ukraine
April 4, 2016

Despite favorable – even fawning – propaganda in Western media, the U.S./E.U.-backed regime in Ukraine tramples on traditional liberal values of tolerance and pluralism, notes James W Carden.

By James W Carden

The overnight train from Kiev to Slavyansk gives a passenger, if nothing else, ample time to read and think. On a return trip to war-torn eastern Ukraine in March, I took the opportunity the 13-hour journey afforded to re-read Judith Shklar’s seminal essay, The Liberalism of Fear.

Written in 1989, at the time of what in retrospect looks like an era of unhinged, to say nothing of embarrassing, American triumphalism, Shklar, unlike many of her contemporaries in the academy (particularly Francis Fukuyama who published The End of History? in the National Interest that year), took a sober accounting of her time. Shklar warned, quite presciently, as it turns out, that “anyone who thinks that fascism in one guise or another is dead and gone ought to think again.”

The Liberalism of Fear essentially seeks to answer the question: What is the baseline requirement for a good society? What is the absolute precursor it must achieve without which it would be impossible to achieve democratic norms, pluralism, cultural freedom, and a market economy (be it democratic-capitalist or democratic-socialist) to develop?

In a biographical essay on Shklar, written after her untimely death in 1992, the philosopher Seyla Benhabib wrote that for Shklar, cruelty “was the chief vice, the summum malum, that liberalism must avoid.” In singling out the corrosive effect cruelty has on society Shklar was, according to Benhabib, “calling attention to the accompanying sentiments of fear, degradation, and humiliation that would ultimately make a liberal polity impossible.”

Shklar’s liberalism of fear has no positive program, it is essentially negative; as she herself notes, her liberalism resembles “Isiah Berlin’s ‘negative liberty’” though “it is not exactly the same.” What the liberalism of fear is also not, as she makes clear, is utopian. Then what is it?

According to Shklar, the liberalism of fear is a liberalism that is grounded “in the conviction of the earliest defenders of toleration, born in horror, that cruelty is an absolute evil an offense against God or humanity. “

The liberalism of fear is resolutely anti-fascist: It must, according to Shklar, reject political doctrines which “do not recognize any difference between the spheres of the personal and the public … it requires [that] every public policy be considered with this separation in mind and must be consciously defended,” she continues by noting that, “the limits of coercion begin, though they do not end – with a prohibition upon invading the private realm.”

The reason for Shklar’s emphasis on the dangers posed by the erasure between the public and private surely has something to do with her biography. As she recounted in the 1989 Charles Homer Haskins lecture, she was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1928 during the inter-war years but had to flee with her family when the war came:

“[J]ust before the Russians arrived, my uncle put us on a plane to Sweden, where we remained far too long, until well after the German invasion of Norway. By then there was only one route out of Europe, the Trans-Siberian railroad, which slowly took us to Japan. It was not an easy trip, but miraculously we escaped.”

Shklar, according to Benhabib, “carried into her political thought the indelible marks of disbelief in the face of a world gone insane.” Hence her desire to help build liberalism a sturdy enough intellectual edifice which would not succumb to the barbarity that racked Europe between 1914 and 1945. Are we in danger of a repeat performance today? I wonder.

Shklar also tackles the tricky topic of political spirituality. We are told, in the U.S. anyway, that the EuroMaidan in Ukraine was a “Revolution of Dignity” and that the sacrifices of the “Heavenly Hundred” who died on the Square should not be in vain. The implicit instruction is for the West to gloss over and ignore the violent nature of the revolution, which saw a democratically elected president flee in the face of violence.

It is reasonable to infer that Shklar would have taken a dim view of all this claptrap. “The consequences of political spirituality,” she wrote, “are far less elevating than it might seem. Politically it has usual served as an excuse for orgies of destruction.”

How do we apply Shklar’s criteria to the situation in Ukraine as it obtains today? In Shklar’s vision of liberalism, there are absolute minimums which societies need to meet. From what I saw, Kiev is not meeting them.

The Ukraine crisis poses some very tough questions on the nature of statehood and nationality within the modern European nation-state. As the British political scientist Richard Sakwa has noted, the outcome of the crisis will likely determine which of two paths Ukraine will chose: will it go the route of a monist, in many ways, exclusionary society where Ukrainian is the sole official or even acceptable language or will Ukraine choose the model that Western countries aspire to, that of a pluralistic society in which there is toleration for differences in language, religion, culture and even historical narratives?

I can tell you the path on which it is currently embarked. Kiev’s decommunization policy seems, at first glance, somewhat reasonable, especially to Western ears, which too easily associates communism with the monstrous criminality of the early Bolsheviks, of Stalin, of Pol Pot.

However, in its rush to purge itself of its communist past – in renaming street signs, toppling statues of Lenin, and banning the current iteration of the communist party – the government in Kiev is driving dissent underground, shaming and alienating millions of Russian speakers in the Donbas, and driving a stake through the heart of pluralism.


Shklar warned against such campaigns, warning that any “theory that gives public authorities the unconditional right to impose beliefs and even a vocabulary as they may see fit upon the citizenry can be described as even remotely liberal.”

In the eastern Ukrainian city of Severodonetsk locals are afraid to express even a modicum of sympathy with the Soviet past lest they draw the unwanted attention of the SBU (Security Service of Ukraine), so dissent manifests itself here and there – usually at night – in what one local described as a “graffiti war” in which painted slogans of the Azov battalion and other Ukrainian armed forces groups are defaced with red paint.

The push to decommunization might reasonably be said to encourage hooliganism. In Kiev in late March, a group of young thugs physically attacked elderly pensioners who were marching with Soviet flags. The concerted effort to erase the Soviet past isn’t the only attack on pluralism. A gay rights parade was brutally attacked in Lviv in late March.

The question which then arises is this: why are these incidents met with complete silence or, at best, utter indifference by the European Union and the rest of the international community?

https://www.facebook.com/groups/IOUCO/?ref=bookmarks


Chris Harrison shared Алексей Журавко's post.
3 hrs
8th April 2016, Kherson region, fascist state Ukraine
Alexey Zhuravko, indepedent public and political figure from Kherson region, reported today that 2 antiaircraft complex S-300 were located near border with Crimea in order to commit next bloody provocation against Russia as with MH-17 at July 2014.
He wrote in his wall;
"It comes to me sad information from the Genicheskiy area in which were established 2 of S-300, allegedly to protect the territory of Ukraine on the border with Crimea. Residents, as well as the military reported that these complexes are on alert, and brought up everything necessary to ensure the smooth operation of these SAM.
I want to tell you that the whole situation with the advent of SAM in the Kherson region reminds me of the preparations for the implementation of the script following the example of the shot down over Donbass the Boeing 777 MH-17 flight. According to a source of the highest-ranking military officers, that these SAM will be under manage of military from another area of the Ukraine.
These SAM were installed not to protect the territory of Ukraine, but to commit acts of provocation against the Russian Federation"
https://www.facebook.com/avzhuravko/pos ... 2349543285
In third picture you can see map of Kherson region and of Crimea, Genicheskiy area of Kherson region is marked by red color.
https://www.google.com/…/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x40e9df270f1f4c87…
S-300 able to shoot down airplane which be fly at distance about 250 km. Lenght of Crimea in any direction is about 200 - 250 km So, Kiev junta be able to shoot down any civil plane which be fly over Crimea.

April 08, 2016
U.S. Delivers 3,000 Tons Of Weapons And Ammo To Al-Qaeda & Co in Syria

The United States via its Central Intelligence Agency is still delivering thousands of tons of additional weapons to al-Qaeda and others in Syria.

The British military information service Janes found the transport solicitation for the shipment on the U.S. government website FedBizOps.gov. Janes writes:

The FBO has released two solicitations in recent months looking for shipping companies to transport explosive material from Eastern Europe to the Jordanian port of Aqaba on behalf of the US Navy's Military Sealift Command.
Released on 3 November 2015, the first solicitation sought a contractor to ship 81 containers of cargo that included explosive material from Constanta in Bulgaria to Aqaba.
...
The cargo listed in the document included AK-47 rifles, PKM general-purpose machine guns, DShK heavy machine guns, RPG-7 rocket launchers, and 9K111M Faktoria anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) systems. The Faktoria is an improved version of the 9K111 Fagot ATGW, the primary difference being that its missile has a tandem warhead for defeating explosive reactive armour (ERA) fitted to some tanks.

The Janes author tweeted the full article (copy here).

One ship with nearly one thousand tons of weapons and ammo left Constanta in Romania on December 5. The weapons are from Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania. It sailed to Agalar in Turkey which is a military pier and then to Aqaba in Jordan. Another ship with more than two-thousand tons of weapons and ammo left in late March, followed the same route and was last recorded on its way to Aqaba on April 4.

We already knew that the "rebels" in Syria received plenty of weapons during the official ceasefire. We also know that these "rebels" regularly deliver half of their weapon hauls from Turkey and Jordan to al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al-Nusra):

Hard-core Islamists in the Nusra Front have long outgunned the more secular, nationalist, Western-supported rebels. According to FSA officers, Nusra routinely harvests up to half the weapons supplied by the Friends of Syria, a collection of countries opposed to Assad, ..
U.S. and Turkey supported "rebels" took part in the recent attack on Tal al-Eis against Syrian government forces which was launched with three suicide bombs by al-Qaeda in Syria. This was an indisputable breaking of the ceasefire agreement negotiated between Russia and the U.S. It is very likely that some of the weapons and ammunition the U.S. delivered in December were used in this attack.

Millions of rifle, machine-gun and mortar shots, thousands of new light and heavy weapons and hundreds of new anti-tank missiles were delivered by the U.S.. Neither Turkey nor Jordan use such weapons of Soviet provenience. These weapons are going to Syria where, as has been reported for years by multiple independent sources, half of them go directly to al-Qaeda.

From historic experience we can be sure that the consequence of this weaponizing of takfiris will be not only be the death of "brown people" in the Middle East, but also attacks on "western" people and interests.

Skyscrapers falling in New York and hundreds of random people getting killed in Paris, Brussels, London and (likely soon) Berlin seem not enough to deter the politicians and "experts" that actively support this criminal war on Syria and its people.

Infantry Weapons
US arms shipment to Syrian rebels detailed

Jeremy Binnie, London and Neil Gibson, London - IHS Jane's Defence Weekly
07 April 2016

A still from a video released by the Syrian rebel group Jaish al-Izzah on 16 December 2015 shows one of its fighters preparing to fire an ATGW that could be either a 9K111 Fagot or a 9K111M Faktoria, the two being externally identical. Jaish al-Izzah also uses US-made TOW ATGWs. Source: Jaish al-Izzah
Simplified packing list for December 2015 arms shipment

Type

Weight (kg)

Aqaba

Agalar

Total

7.62x39 mm 85,190 48,998 134,188
7.62x54 mm 58,752 8,652 67,404
12.7 mm 81,468.40 36,713 118,181
14.5 mm 196,233.76 173,447 369,681
82 mm 53,885.34 53,885
PG-7VM 0.00 68,600 68,600
PG-7VT 36,795 88,224.00 125,019
9M111M 13,540 8,153 21,693
AK-47 & DShK* 12,250 12,250
AK-47 & PKM* 6,540 6,540
PKM 6,340 6,340
DShK & RPG-7* 3,585 3,585
RPG-7 4,120 4,120
Faktoria launchers 2,421.60 298 2,720
Total 550,996 443,210 994,206
* The packing list merged some categories
Documents released by the US government's Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) website have provided an indication of the types and numbers of Eastern European weapons and ammunition the United States is providing to Syrian rebel groups as part of a programme that continues despite the widely respected ceasefire in that country.

The FBO has released two solicitations in recent months looking for shipping companies to transport explosive material from Eastern Europe to the Jordanian port of Aqaba on behalf of the US Navy's Military Sealift Command.

Released on 3 November 2015, the first solicitation sought a contractor to ship 81 containers of cargo that included explosive material from Constanta in Bulgaria to Aqaba.

The solicitation was subsequently updated with a detailed packing list that showed the cargo had a total weight of 994 tonnes, a little under half of which was to be unloaded at Agalar, a military pier near the Turkish town of Tasucu, the other half at Aqaba.

The cargo listed in the document included AK-47 rifles, PKM general-purpose machine guns, DShK heavy machine guns, RPG-7 rocket launchers, and 9K111M Faktoria anti-tank guided weapon (ATGW) systems. The Faktoria is an improved version of the 9K111 Fagot ATGW, the primary difference being that its missile has a tandem warhead for defeating explosive reactive armour (ERA) fitted to some tanks.

One ship with nearly one thousand tons of weapons and ammo left Constanta in Romania on December 5. The weapons are from Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania. It sailed to Agalar in Turkey which is a military pier and then to Aqaba in Jordan. Another ship with more than two-thousand tons of weapons and ammo left in late March, followed the same route and was last recorded on its way to Aqaba on April 4.

We already knew that the "rebels" in Syria received plenty of weapons during the official ceasefire. We also know that these "rebels" regularly deliver half of their weapon hauls from Turkey and Jordan to al-Qaeda in Syria (aka Jabhat al-Nusra):

Ukraine’s embattled prime minister resigns



FILE - In this Tuesday, Feb. 16, 2016 file photo Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk speaks during an annual report in Parliament in Kiev, Ukraine. Ukraine’s embattled Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk says he is resigning, opening the way for the formation of a new government to end a drawn-out political crisis. In his televised address on Sunday, April 10, 2016 Yatsenyuk said his resignation would be formally submitted to parliament on Tuesday. (Sergei Chuzavkov, file/Associated Press)
By Yuras Karmanau | AP April 10 at 10:06 AM
MINSK, Belarus — Ukraine’s embattled prime minister announced Sunday that he is resigning, opening the way for the formation of a new government to end a drawn-out political crisis.

In his weekly televised address, Arseniy Yatsenyuk said his resignation would be formally submitted to parliament on Tuesday.

Yatsenyuk’s Cabinet survived a no-confidence vote in February, but two parties left the governing coalition to protest the failure to oust the prime minister, who is under fire over the worsening economy and slow pace of reforms.

The withdrawal deprived the coalition of its majority in the Ukrainian parliament. If lawmakers fail to form a new coalition and unite behind a new prime minister, that may lead to early elections, which President Petro Poroshenko has sought to avoid for fear of further destabilizing the situation in the country.

“From today I see my goals as broader than the powers of the head of the government,” Yatsenyuk said. He said he would focus on passing a new electoral law, enacting constitutional and judicial reform, and ensuring “the coalition’s control over the course of a new government.”

Regime Change in Kiev

Victoria Nuland Admits: US Has Invested $5 Billion In The Development of Ukrainian, "Democratic Institutions"

'Yats’ Is No Longer the Guy
April 11, 2016

Exclusive: Several weeks before Ukraine’s 2014 coup, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Nuland had already picked Arseniy Yatsenyuk to be the future leader, but now “Yats” is no longer the guy, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

In reporting on the resignation of Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the major U.S. newspapers either ignored or distorted Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s infamous intercepted phone call before the 2014 coup in which she declared “Yats is the guy!”

Though Nuland’s phone call introduced many Americans to the previously obscure Yatsenyuk, its timing – a few weeks before the ouster of elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych – was never helpful to Washington’s desired narrative of the Ukrainian people rising up on their own to oust a corrupt leader.

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, who pushed for the Ukraine coup and helped pick the post-coup leaders.
Instead, the conversation between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt sounded like two proconsuls picking which Ukrainian politicians would lead the new government. Nuland also disparaged the less aggressive approach of the European Union with the pithy put-down: “Fuck the E.U.!”

More importantly, the intercepted call, released onto YouTube in early February 2014, represented powerful evidence that these senior U.S. officials were plotting – or at least collaborating in – a coup d’etat against Ukraine’s democratically elected president. So, the U.S. government and the mainstream U.S. media have since consigned this revealing discussion to the Great Memory Hole.

On Monday, in reporting on Yatsenyuk’s Sunday speech in which he announced that he is stepping down, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal didn’t mention the Nuland-Pyatt conversation at all.

The New York Times did mention the call but misled its readers regarding its timing, making it appear as if the call followed rather than preceded the coup. That way the call sounded like two American officials routinely appraising Ukraine’s future leaders, not plotting to oust one government and install another.

The Times article by Andrew E. Kramer said: “Before Mr. Yatsenyuk’s appointment as prime minister in 2014, a leaked recording of a telephone conversation between Victoria J. Nuland, a United States assistant secretary of state, and the American ambassador in Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, seemed to underscore the West’s support for his candidacy. ‘Yats is the guy,’ Ms. Nuland had said.”

Notice, however, that if you didn’t know that the conversation occurred in late January or early February 2014, you wouldn’t know that it preceded the Feb. 22, 2014 coup. You might have thought that it was just a supportive chat before Yatsenyuk got his new job.

You also wouldn’t know that much of the Nuland-Pyatt conversation focused on how they were going to “glue this thing” or “midwife this thing,” comments sounding like prima facie evidence that the U.S. government was engaged in “regime change” in Ukraine, on Russia’s border.

The ‘No Coup’ Conclusion

But Kramer’s lack of specificity about the timing and substance of the call fits with a long pattern of New York Times’ bias in its coverage of the Ukraine crisis. On Jan. 4, 2015, nearly a year after the U.S.-backed coup, the Times published an “investigation” article declaring that there never had been a coup. It was just a case of President Yanukovych deciding to leave and not coming back.

That article reached its conclusion, in part, by ignoring the evidence of a coup, including the Nuland-Pyatt phone call. The story was co-written by Kramer and so it is interesting to know that he was at least aware of the “Yats is the guy” reference although it was ignored in last year’s long-form article.

Instead, Kramer and his co-author Andrew Higgins took pains to mock anyone who actually looked at the evidence and dared reach the disfavored conclusion about a coup. If you did, you were some rube deluded by Russian propaganda.

“Russia has attributed Mr. Yanukovych’s ouster to what it portrays as a violent, ‘neo-fascist’ coup supported and even choreographed by the West and dressed up as a popular uprising,” Higgins and Kramer wrote. “Few outside the Russian propaganda bubble ever seriously entertained the Kremlin’s line. But almost a year after the fall of Mr. Yanukovych’s government, questions remain about how and why it collapsed so quickly and completely.”

The Times’ article concluded that Yanukovych “was not so much overthrown as cast adrift by his own allies, and that Western officials were just as surprised by the meltdown as anyone else. The allies’ desertion, fueled in large part by fear, was accelerated by the seizing by protesters of a large stock of weapons in the west of the country. But just as important, the review of the final hours shows, was the panic in government ranks created by Mr. Yanukovych’s own efforts to make peace.”


Yet, one might wonder what the Times thinks a coup looks like. Indeed, the Ukrainian coup had many of the same earmarks as such classics as the CIA-engineered regime changes in Iran in 1953 and in Guatemala in 1954.

The way those coups played out is now historically well known. Secret U.S. government operatives planted nasty propaganda about the targeted leader, stirred up political and economic chaos, conspired with rival political leaders, spread rumors of worse violence to come and then – as political institutions collapsed – watched as the scared but duly elected leader made a hasty departure.

In Iran, the coup reinstalled the autocratic Shah who then ruled with a heavy hand for the next quarter century; in Guatemala, the coup led to more than three decades of brutal military regimes and the killing of some 200,000 Guatemalans.

Coups don’t have to involve army tanks occupying the public squares, although that is an alternative model which follows many of the same initial steps except that the military is brought in at the end. The military coup was a common approach especially in Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s.

‘Color Revolutions’

But the preferred method in more recent years has been the “color revolution,” which operates behind the façade of a “peaceful” popular uprising and international pressure on the targeted leader to show restraint until it’s too late to stop the coup. Despite the restraint, the leader is still accused of gross human rights violations, all the better to justify his removal.

Later, the ousted leader may get an image makeover; instead of a cruel bully, he is ridiculed for not showing sufficient resolve and letting his base of support melt away, as happened with Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran and Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala.

But the reality of what happened in Ukraine was never hard to figure out. Nor did you have to be inside “the Russian propaganda bubble” to recognize it. George Friedman, the founder of the global intelligence firm Stratfor, called Yanukovych’s overthrow “the most blatant coup in history.”

Which is what it appears if you consider the evidence. The first step in the process was to create tensions around the issue of pulling Ukraine out of Russia’s economic orbit and capturing it in the European Union’s gravity, a plan defined by influential American neocons in 2013.

On Sept. 26, 2013, National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, who has been a major neocon paymaster for decades, took to the op-ed page of the neocon Washington Post and called Ukraine “the biggest prize” and an important interim step toward toppling Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At the time, Gershman, whose NED is funded by the U.S. Congress to the tune of about $100 million a year, was financing scores of projects inside Ukraine training activists, paying for journalists and organizing business groups.

As for the even bigger prize — Putin — Gershman wrote: “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents. Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

At that time, in early fall 2013, Ukraine’s President Yanukovych was exploring the idea of reaching out to Europe with an association agreement. But he got cold feet in November 2013 when economic experts in Kiev advised him that the Ukrainian economy would suffer a $160 billion hit if it separated from Russia, its eastern neighbor and major trading partner. There was also the West’s demand that Ukraine accept a harsh austerity plan from the International Monetary Fund.

Yanukovych wanted more time for the E.U. negotiations, but his decision angered many western Ukrainians who saw their future more attached to Europe than Russia. Tens of thousands of protesters began camping out at Maidan Square in Kiev, with Yanukovych ordering the police to show restraint.

Meanwhile, with Yanukovych shifting back toward Russia, which was offering a more generous $15 billion loan and discounted natural gas, he soon became the target of American neocons and the U.S. media, which portrayed Ukraine’s political unrest as a black-and-white case of a brutal and corrupt Yanukovych opposed by a saintly “pro-democracy” movement.

Cheering an Uprising

The Maidan uprising was urged on by American neocons, including Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Nuland, who passed out cookies at the Maidan and reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the United States had invested $5 billion in their “European aspirations.”

A screen shot of U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland speaking to U.S. and Ukrainian business leaders on Dec. 13, 2013, at an event sponsored by Chevron, with its logo to Nuland’s left.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, also showed up, standing on stage with right-wing extremists from the Svoboda Party and telling the crowd that the United States was with them in their challenge to the Ukrainian government.

As the winter progressed, the protests grew more violent. Neo-Nazi and other extremist elements from Lviv and other western Ukrainian cities began arriving in well-organized brigades or “sotins” of 100 trained street fighters. Police were attacked with firebombs and other weapons as the violent protesters began seizing government buildings and unfurling Nazi banners and even a Confederate flag.

Though Yanukovych continued to order his police to show restraint, he was still depicted in the major U.S. news media as a brutal thug who was callously murdering his own people. The chaos reached a climax on Feb. 20 when mysterious snipers opened fire, killing both police and protesters. As the police retreated, the militants advanced brandishing firearms and other weapons. The confrontation led to significant loss of life, pushing the death toll to around 80 including more than a dozen police.

U.S. diplomats and the mainstream U.S. press immediately blamed Yanukovych for the sniper attack, though the circumstances remain murky to this day and some investigations have suggested that the lethal sniper fire came from buildings controlled by Right Sektor extremists.

To tamp down the worsening violence, a shaken Yanukovych signed a European-brokered deal on Feb. 21, in which he accepted reduced powers and an early election so he could be voted out of office. He also agreed to requests from Vice President Joe Biden to pull back the police.

The precipitous police withdrawal opened the path for the neo-Nazis and other street fighters to seize presidential offices and force Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their lives. The new coup regime was immediately declared “legitimate” by the U.S. State Department with Yanukovych sought on murder charges. Nuland’s favorite, Yatsenyuk, became the new prime minister.

Throughout the crisis, the mainstream U.S. press hammered home the theme of white-hatted protesters versus a black-hatted president. The police were portrayed as brutal killers who fired on unarmed supporters of “democracy.” The good-guy/bad-guy narrative was all the American people heard from the major media.

The New York Times went so far as to delete the slain policemen from the narrative and simply report that the police had killed all those who died in the Maidan. A typical Times report on March 5, 2014, summed up the storyline: “More than 80 protesters were shot to death by the police as an uprising spiraled out of control in mid-February.”

The mainstream U.S. media also sought to discredit anyone who observed the obvious fact that an unconstitutional coup had just occurred. A new theme emerged that portrayed Yanukovych as simply deciding to abandon his government because of the moral pressure from the noble and peaceful Maidan protests.

Any reference to a “coup” was dismissed as “Russian propaganda.” There was a parallel determination in the U.S. media to discredit or ignore evidence that neo-Nazi militias had played an important role in ousting Yanukovych and in the subsequent suppression of anti-coup resistance in eastern and southern Ukraine. That opposition among ethnic-Russian Ukrainians simply became “Russian aggression.”


This refusal to notice what was actually a remarkable story – the willful unleashing of Nazi storm troopers on a European population for the first time since World War II – reached absurd levels as The New York Times and The Washington Post buried references to the neo-Nazis at the end of stories, almost as afterthoughts.

The Washington Post went to the extreme of rationalizing Swastikas and other Nazi symbols by quoting one militia commander as calling them “romantic” gestures by impressionable young men. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine’s ‘Romantic’ Neo-Nazi Storm Troopers.”]

But today – more than two years after what U.S. and Ukrainian officials like to call “the Revolution of Dignity” – the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government is sinking into dysfunction, reliant on handouts from the IMF and Western governments.

And, in a move perhaps now more symbolic than substantive, Prime Minister Yatsenyuk is stepping down. Yats is no longer the guy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu8JolUBNfg

Ukrainian Squillionare Victor Pinchuk and His Clinton, Brookings, and Peterson Connections
Posted on September 28, 2014 by Lambert Strether
Lambert here: This is gloriously seamy. The true greatness of the American political class is that they’ll all take money from anybody, so you get stories like this one, where the Clintons, Brookings, and Pete Peterson’s talking shop all cheerfully rake in the dough from an innocent Ukrainian pipemaker and art collector whose $700 million new plant produces steel for seamless pipes used in a wide range of products sold in 80 countries, including pipelines. So one can only wonder what he thought he was buying with his money. I mean, besides art.

By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

What do Hillary, Bill and Chelsea Clinton, Anders Aslund, Steven Pifer, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and the Brookings Institution have in common? Answer: they drink unpasteurised milk from the Ukraine. Lots of it.

How damaging this may be for the health depends on how Victor Pinchuk (image left, right), the Ukrainian pipemaker, responds to filings in the Moscow Arbitrazh Court. Reported publicly this week, the court papers suggest that through companies registered in Cyprus, Pinchuk milked about $200 million from the Rossiya Insurance Company in Moscow. For the time being, the Russian court action is a civil one, and seeks repayment by Pinchuk’s East One holding and related companies. If Pinchuk doesn’t repay, Cyprus, European Union, and US court action, alleging conspiracy to defraud, is likely to follow. Pinchuk’s innocence should be assumed in the meantime. Drinking raw milk, however, carries a contamination risk.

Audited public records reveal that the Clinton family consumed at least $13 million from Pinchuk between 2006 and the end of 2012. Pinchuk’s foundation hasn’t released its accounts for 2013 or the first half of 2014, so the Clinton (right) total is likely to have grown. The Clinton Foundation will not explain the multi-million dollar discrepancy between what Pinchuk says he’s been paying, and what the Clintons claim to have been receiving, so there’s no telling how much extra has been taken by the Clintons in expense-paid trips and speaking fees.

The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) in Washington claims it is “an independent, private, nonprofit institution for rigorous, intellectually honest study and open discussion of international economic policy. Its work is made possible by financial support from a highly diverse group of philanthropic foundations, private corporations, and interested individuals.” The institute also claims that the “sources of financial support for the Institute have been listed annually on the PIIE website since June 2013. All Institute books, Policy Briefs, and working papers acknowledge any direct funding sources, and web pages for these publications provide links to underlying data files to demonstrate the independence of analysis.”

In fact, the institute’s list of its donors doesn’t identify Pinchuk. The record of the institute’s employment of Aslund (below) to write on Ukraine is lengthy too, but there is no mention that Pinchuk has been footing the bill. Aslund’s tribute to Pinchuk’s father-in-law, ex-president Leonid Kuchma, identifies the Peterson Institute as owner of the copyright. “Whatever happened under [Kuchma’s] rule,” Aslund and the institute have declared, “he created a functioning democracy. One reflection of Ukraine’s democratic strength is that both Kuchma and his predecessor, Leonid Kravchuk, remain public personalities. Kuchma’s 70th birthday is an opportunity to celebrate his contributions. Few people have done so much for their country.”

Pinchuk is listed as a current director of the PIIE board. This suggests that he continues to transfer money to the institute’s budget. A spokesman for the institute said that in 2013 Pinchuk gave $100,000. For this year, the spokesman added, “we release information on the funding for 2014 at the end of the year. We therefore cannot say what or if the Pinchuk Foundation donated to the Institute in 2014.”

As for Aslund, PIIE says: “Salaries of all Institute senior fellows come out of our general revenues. No senior or permanent research staff member’s position is financed by any specific contributor. This applies to Dr. Aslund.”

Also in Washington, Pinchuk’s foundation (page 65) has been paying the Brookings Institution $200,000 per annum to employ Steven Pifer, a former US Ambassador to Ukraine. According to the Brookings website, “our mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research.” Funding, says Brookings, comes from “generous individuals, foundations, leading corporations, and U.S. and foreign government agencies that share our commitment to quality, independence, and impact in public policy research and analysis.”

A report on fund sources for Brookings, dated May 2013, didn’t mention Pinchuk. A New York report this month on foreign government and corporate lobbying through donations to US think-tanks, including Brookings, failed to mention Ukraine.

The Brookings annual report for 2013 identifies Pinchuk as a member of its “international advisory council”, but doesn’t disclose that Pinchuk paid for his seat. According to the Brookings disclosure, the council members “provide invaluable advice and diverse perspectives on developments in their own regions, along with candid insights into how the U.S. and its policies are received abroad.” In what Brookings calls its “Honor Roll of Contributors” for the period July 1, 2012, to June 30, 2013, the Pinchuk foundation is listed in the category of payors of between $100,000 and $249,999.

The Pinchuk foundation’s annual statement of its income refers to “contributions and charitable donations from legal entities and individuals”. These are channelled through a UK entity called “The UK Office of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation”. The foundation report claims the foundation took in $14.3 million in 2011; $16.9 million in 2012. Through what entities Pinchuk delivered this cashflow is not disclosed.

Pifer was asked to say if he is receiving his Brookings income from Pinchuk, and if so, how much that will be for this year. He and the Brookings spokesman did not reply.

The source of the cash on which Pinchuk has been drawing to make such payments has been unclear since the financial collapse of Interpipe, the east Ukrainian pipemaker which is Pinchuk’s principal production company; it began defaulting on its international bank and Eurobond debts in 2011. Fresh defaults began last November. According to Pinchuk’s agreements with Interpipe’s lenders, he is forbidden to draw cash or dividends out of Interpipe.

According to court papers disclosed in Moscow on September 18, cash amounting to Rb7.6 billion (about $210 million) has been taken through Svatozar Enterprises Limited of Cyprus from OCAO Rossiya, the insurance company, when Pinchuk owned them both through his EastOne Group. The court paper demands repayment of this amount. A hearing on the claim has been set for November 11.

The detailed case evidence is not yet available in the Arbitrazh Court’s digital files. The scheme alleged is that as Rossiya generated large volumes of cash from the sale of insurance for compulsory third-party motorist liability, Rossiya was obliged to pay the money out, and receive in return bills of exchange from Svatozar. Subsequently, without access to its premium income, Rossiya was unable to meet insurance claims and other obligations. In November 2013 its insurance licence was revoked by the Central Bank of Russia. It has subsequently been ordered into bankruptcy by the Moscow court, and is now being restructured and sold. The Russian insurance regulator was obliged to cover Rossiya’s default to its customers of almost Rb2.3 billion, the largest such payout in Russian insurance history.

A Fitch Ratings report on the problems at Rossiya, issued just weeks before the collapse, failed to detect the internal problems. “Fitch sees Rossiya’s current business model as unviable given the significant deterioration of the operating environment in the local compulsory motor third party liability (MTPL) insurance segment. For Rossiya, the impact is exacerbated by the company’s lack of success from its efforts to achieve a healthier portfolio structure with less weighting to MTPL business. In Fitch’s opinion, there might be a heightened risk of regulatory preventive actions as a result.”

The arbitrazh court was first told of the cash-stripping scheme in January of this year by the court-ordered administrator for Rossiya, Evgeny Zhelnin. At the time, the speculation in Russian and European insurance circles was that Pinchuk had been taking Rossiya’s premium revenues through offshore reinsurance schemes. On September 24, however, fresh details were reported in the Moscow press. The scheme now alleged to have been used was the issue to Rossiya of bills of exchange by Svatozar. What Svatozar’s capacity to repay this debt was registered at the time, and what collateral was pledged by Svatozar, or EastOne behind it, have yet to be disclosed.

At the time of its collapse, the chief executive of Rossiya was Andrei Dudnik. According to the website of EastOne, Dudnik is currently chief financial officer of EastOne. He has also served in the same role at Interpipe, and before that at Ernst & Young, Interpipe’s auditor.

In earlier reporting of the case, spokesmen for Pinchuk at Interpipe, the Pinchuk Foundation, and EastOne did not respond to questions. The Pinchuk Fund and EastOne share offices at the same building on Mechnikova Street in Kiev. Messages for Dudnik were relayed by the Pinchuk Foundation. Both were asked whether funds from the Svatozar-Rossiya transaction reached the Pinchuk fund. They did not reply.

“An insurance company entering into this sort of related-party transaction,” said a lawyer familiar with the proceedings, “should have had it vetted. Most likely this did not happen. The old Rossiya board members may therefore be personally liable, and also to have committed a criminal breach of trust. These potential criminal aspects ought to permit Russian prosecutors to seek cooperation from their Cyprus counterparts.”

As for what American recipients of Pinchuk cash know, or ought to know of the provenance of Pinchuk’s donations to themselves, and of the evidence in the Rossiya case, the Peterson Institute said: “We are pleased and proud to receive support from the Pinchuk Foundation. We make no representation and have no comment with respect to the business activities of Mr. Pinchuk or any donor to a foundation supporting the Institute.”

Brookings refused to comment.

Ukrainian General: "Ukraine is Under Zionist Occupation....Specifically Names Pinchuk Who Has Funded Hillary Clinton.

Pinchuk, who the General mentions, is the Ukrainian oligarch that has been funding Hillary Clintons organizations. Naked Capitalism has the complete story with all the links:


Ukrainian Squillionare Victor Pinchuk and His Clinton, Brookings, and Peterson Connections

Posted on September 28, 2014 by Lambert StretherLambert here: This is gloriously seamy. The true greatness of the American political class is that they’ll all take money from anybody, so you get stories like this one, where the Clintons, Brookings, and Pete Peterson’s talking shop all cheerfully rake in the dough from an innocent Ukrainian pipemaker and art collector whose $700 million new plantproduces steel for seamless pipes used in a wide range of products sold in 80 countries, including pipelines. So one can only wonder what he thought he was buying with his money. I mean, besides art.

By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

What do Hillary, Bill and Chelsea Clinton, Anders Aslund, Steven Pifer, the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and the Brookings Institution have in common? Answer: they drink unpasteurised milk from the Ukraine. Lots of it.

Audited public records reveal that the Clinton family consumed at least $13 million from Pinchuk between 2006 and the end of 2012. Pinchuk’s foundation hasn’t released its accounts for 2013 or the first half of 2014, so the Clinton (right) total is likely to have grown. The Clinton Foundation will not explain the multi-million dollar discrepancy between what Pinchuk says he’s been paying, and what the Clintons claim to have been receiving, so there’s no telling how much extra has been taken by the Clintons in expense-paid trips and speaking fees.

How The New Yorker Mis-Reports Syria
April 20, 2016

Exclusive: The New Yorker and editor David Remnick were catastrophically wrong about the Iraq War, but they continue publishing the same one-sided propaganda on the Syrian conflict, as Jonathan Marshall describes.

By Jonathan Marshall

Only 6 percent of Americans surveyed in a new national poll say they have a lot of confidence in the media — a result driven by a widespread perception that news stories are one-sided or downright inaccurate. That finding came to mind as I heard New Yorker editor David Remnick introduce an April 17 segment on Syria on the New Yorker Radio Hour.

“For the last five years Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has framed the revolution in his country as a conspiracy fueled entirely by foreign powers,” Remnick claimed. “His security agencies have . . . killed hundreds of thousands and displaced possibly half of the entire country.”

The New Yorker is famous for its fact checkers, but Remnick evidently failed to consult them. Even a casual listener might have questioned his remarkable attribution of Syria’s entire death toll and refugee crisis to Assad’s security agencies, as if ISIS, Al Qaeda, and other rebel forces were mere innocent bystanders.

In fact, the dead include somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 pro-government forces, comparable to the number of opposition fighters killed, and human rights organizations report that “Opposition armed groups in Syria have indiscriminately attacked civilians in government-held territory with car bombs, mortars, and rockets.”

But what about Remnick’s claim that Assad’s crackdown was driven by paranoia about foreign conspiracies? Like a feature article in his magazine’s April 18 issue, Remnick’s shorthand attempt to portray Assad as insane as well as ruthless fails the test of good journalism.

The article by Ben Taub, which describes efforts by international rights activists to smuggle government documents out of Syria for future war crimes trials, says that Assad “declared his intention to suppress dissent in the brutal tradition of his father” during an address to the Syrian nation on March 30, 2011, shortly after the outbreak of anti-government demonstrations in several cities.

Taub makes his point with a few choice quotes from the speech: “Syria is facing a great conspiracy, whose tentacles extend” to foreign powers that were plotting to destroy the country, [Assad] said. “There is no conspiracy theory,” he added. “There is a conspiracy.” He closed with an ominous directive: “Burying sedition is a national, moral, and religious duty, and all those who can contribute to burying it and do not are part of it.” He emphasized, “There is no compromise or middle way in this.”

Forgotten History

The quotes are accurate, but the missing context tells us important facts both about the origins of Syria’s violent conflict and what’s wrong with much advocacy journalism today. Assad certainly did see foreign conspiracies at work in Syria, but he was not paranoid. Unlike most of Taub’s readers, Assad knew that the first military coup in Syria’s modern history was instigated in 1949 by agents of the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency.

That was not the last foreign covert intervention in Syria. In 1957, according to official papers summarized by The Guardian, “[Prime Minister] Harold Macmillan and President Dwight Eisenhower approved a CIA-MI6 plan to stage fake border incidents as an excuse for an invasion by Syria’s pro-western neighbours, and then to ‘eliminate’ the most influential triumvirate in Damascus. . .

“Although historians know that intelligence services had sought to topple the Syrian regime in the autumn of 1957, this is the first time any document has been found showing that the assassination of three leading figures was at the heart of the scheme.”

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
In 2005-6, as I documented previously in ConsortiumNews, Washington and Saudi Arabia began secretly backing Syria’s Islamist Muslim Brotherhood with the goal of ousting Assad. Further details of that covert operation emerged just weeks after Assad’s March 30 speech, when the Washington Post reported that “The State Department has secretly financed Syrian political opposition groups and related projects, including a satellite TV channel that beams anti-government programming into the country.”

The recipients were described in State Department cables as “moderate Islamists” and former members of the Muslim Brotherhood. The paper continued:

“The London-based satellite channel, Barada TV, began broadcasting in April 2009 but has ramped up operations to cover the mass protests in Syria as part of a long-standing campaign to overthrow the country’s autocratic leader, Bashar al-Assad . . .

“The U.S. money for Syrian opposition figures began flowing under President George W. Bush after he effectively froze political ties with Damascus in 2005. The financial backing has continued under President Obama, even as his administration sought to rebuild relations with Assad. . . .

“Syrian authorities ‘would undoubtedly view any U.S. funds going to illegal political groups as tantamount to supporting regime change,’ read an April 2009 cable signed by the top-ranking U.S. diplomat in Damascus at the time.”

Barack Obama and George W. Bush at the White House.
Barack Obama and George W. Bush at the White House.
In his March 30, 2011 address, Assad referred explicitly to the challenges his regime faced in 2005 and to recent anti-government violence incited by “satellite TV stations” — an obvious reference to Barada TV. So when Assad complained in his speech that “our enemies work every day in an organized, systematic and scientific manner in order to undermine Syria’s stability,” he was not merely delusional.

Acknowledging Fault

But Assad also took care to acknowledge Syria’s genuine internal problems and overdue reforms, “so that satellite T.V. stations will not say that the Syrian president considered all that has happened a foreign conspiracy.” Toward the end of his speech, Assad reiterated, “Since some people have short memory, I will refresh their memory once again by saying that not all of what is happening is a conspiracy, because I know that they are on the ready in their studios to comment.”

Despite Assad’s best efforts, Taub and Remnick evidently never got the message.

“We all discuss, criticize, and have our disagreements because we have not met many of the needs of the Syrian people,” Assad further conceded. “That is why it was easy to mislead many people who demonstrated in the beginning with good intensions. We cannot say that all those who demonstrated are conspirators. This is not true, and we want to be clear and realistic.”

Assad devoted much of his speech to explaining why reforms had moved so slowly since he took office in 2000. His message disappointed many Syrians, especially political critics living abroad. But, to the applause of other Syrians, he promised over the course of the following month to “identify the measures that need to be taken” for reform.

Unmentioned by Taub, Assad followed through with some significant steps. He fired unpopular governors of two provinces, named a new prime minister and cabinet, dismantled his unpopular National Security Court, and lifted the emergency law.

On April 16, Assad spoke to ministers of his new government, telling them that the most effective way for Syria to resist regime change was to carry out reforms and attend “to the needs of the Syrian population.”

Sounding not at all like a ruthless dictator, he also decried the loss of life during recent anti-government demonstrations, saying “the blood which has been spilled in Syria has pained us all. . . . We are sad for the loss of every Syrian and for all those who have been injured. We pray to God to provide solace to their families and friends.”

Assad discussed plans to lift the country’s state of emergency. He called for better training of police to help them “cope with the new reforms” and “protect demonstrators” while still preventing “sabotage.” He cited detailed proposals for improving the fight against public corruption. And he stressed the need for economic reforms to reduce unemployment and the despair felt by young people with no prospects.

Said Joshua Landis, a leading U.S. academic authority on Syria, Assad’s speech “was about as good” as he could have made it, and a big improvement on his March 30 address. “For those who continue to believe in the possibility of reform and not regime-change, this speech was reassuring.”

Photo from Wikipedia: Syrian women and children refugees at Budapest railway station
Syrian women and children refugees at Budapest railway station/ (Photo from Wikipedia)
But anti-government demonstrators took Assad’s limited reforms as a challenge, not an opening. As I recounted previously, protesters declared one major city a “liberated zone,” prompting a massive crackdown by Assad’s security forces and gun battles between soldiers and armed opponents. Key opposition leaders also rebuffed national dialogue meetings sponsored by the Assad government in June and July of 2011, when the death toll was still low.

As Landis later commented, “Western press and analysts did not want to recognize that armed elements were becoming active. They preferred to tell a simple story of good people fighting bad people. There is no doubt that the vast majority of the opposition was peaceful and was being met with deadly government force and snipers. One only wonders why that story could not have been told without also covering the reality that armed elements, whose agenda was not peaceful, were also playing a role.”

The New Yorker, like much of the Western media, still prefers telling simple stories of good and evil when it comes to Syria. But quality journalism requires more than story-telling. It requires factual accuracy, context, and nuance, professional attributes needed more than ever during passionate times.

A less biased look at Assad’s words and actions would not absolve him of repression and war crimes, but might suggest that Syria’s opposition had peaceful alternatives to civil war.

We’ll never know, of course. But we do know for certain that by demanding nothing less than “regime change,” Assad’s opponents and their foreign backers contributed along with Assad’s own actions to one of the great humanitarian catastrophes of our time.