About That Bailout for Ukraine?

We've been hearing rumblings since before the overthrow of Yanukovych last February that the IMF/EU would be delighted to refinance Ukraine's debts on favorable terms -- provided Ukraine adopts severe austerity measures like those of Greece -- or even twice as harsh as the terms imposed on Greece.

Yanukovych was overthrown in large measure because he refused to accommodate those terms -- once he fully understood what those terms meant. The problem with negotiating EU/IMF bailout terms is that the actual terms are not disclosed until the moment comes for signing the documents. And then, oh my goodness. The terms are much harsher, the consequences for not abiding with them are much more severe, and the determination of the EU/IMF negotiators to have their way, no matter what, is shocking.

Yanukovych was expected to sign away Ukraine's patrimony and sovereignty at the Vilnius conference last November, but he balked, said "No!" and turned to Russia for aid. Russia offered a much better deal on terms that did not unduly interfere with either Ukraine's sovereignty or the welfare of its people. Compared to IMF/EU demands for harsh and immediate austerity measures on the people of Ukraine in exchange for a "bailout" that required extremely harmful and unpopular economic "reforms," (reforms that potentially included some "good" measures along with the bad) the Russian deal allowed a much more moderate economic transition and the integration of Ukraine's economy with those of the Russian led Eurasian Economic Union -- apparently as well as that of the EU, but on terms that would protect Ukraine's people from the abuses so customary from the EU toward the Periphery.

The anti-Yanukovych demonstrations in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine began immediately when Yanukovych refused to sign in Vilnius, as if they had been organized prior to the conference. What struck me about the research I did into New Citizen and Center UA, the NGOs Pierre Omidyar funded in Ukraine, was the fact that the dozens of orgs under them, some of which, in turn, were umbrellas for dozens or even hundreds of other NGOs and individuals, like Russian matryoshka dolls, was their obsessive focus on EU integration and 'education' (propaganda) on behalf of Europe. This was a long term project. Some of the orgs and NGOs had been promoting the EU cause in Ukraine for decades, since independence from the Soviet Union. Many of the orgs were focused on youth, which meant that over the decades, Ukrainians grew up knowing little or nothing besides pro-EU propaganda.

Many of the NGOs under New Citizen and Center UA's wing (New Citizen is a "project" of Center UA, which appears to be the master org) were also funded by NED (National Endowment for Democracy) and USAID (US Agency for International Development), both of which are considered CIA fronts, though NED has so far been able to abjure the label and claim independence from CIA control.

My point has never been that the US precipitated the revolt in Ukraine against Yanukovych. If it had, I don't think the rightists in this country would be parading around screaming about "weakness." Instead, it looks like there was a coalition of pro-EU interests in Ukraine who were prepared to go to the streets should the Yanukovych regime balk at EU/IMF demands for austerity and other "reform" measures. Up to the point of the Vilnius conference, the Yanukovych government had been working closely with the EU and IMF toward the goal of European integration. There was very little indication prior to Vilnius that Yanukovych would balk and take the Russian offer.

For its part, the US seems to have been most concerned with the US corporate sector and its interests in exploiting the resources of Ukraine. I haven't written much about that, but there were and are major US corporate interests involved in the Ukrainian issue, some of which are highlighted in the triumphal Vicky Nuland-Kagan video posted previously. But there are many more. A number of people have looked into the corporate interests involved in Ukraine's current unpleasantness, and they read like a who's who of American corporate greed. While their corporate interests are being protected and fostered by the US government, they do not appear to be the ones who precipitated the revolt. The revolt seems to have arisen locally if not spontaneously, driven by the many EU integration currents fostered by the multiplicity of NGOs -- hundreds and hundreds of them -- which had been promoting EU interests in Ukraine for many years.

Now that the interim "government" of Yatsenyuk has signed onto the IMF/EU "reform" demands, some of the details of just what is being provided and required are coming out, and it is becoming clear what a duplicitous two-step has been underway all along.

According to the UK Telegraph, what the deal amounts to is paying off Russian banks and Western hedge fund creditors at 100% while forcing increasingly dire levels of austerity on the Ukrainian people, austerity measures that will lead to misery and despair, death and depopulation, much as happened in Latvia, and much more severe than the measures imposed on Greece. The fact that Russian banks and US and European hedge funds are being paid off at the expense of Ukraine's people is interesting and gives a clue to the thinking behind the various maneuvers that have taken place.

The claim is made that Yanukovych absconded with tens of billions (up to $70 billion) in his flight from Kiev, and that's why such severe measures are "necessary" to prevent Ukraine's economic collapse. Yet prior to the overthrow of Yanukovych -- and his alleged theft of funds -- the same measures were being demanded.

In other words, the issue of how much has been "stolen" by the Ukrainian oligarchs and the Yanukovych government is beside the point. The money which is being offered by IMF and EU (which includes a little bit from the US) has nothing to do with that issue. It's propaganda to say it does, propaganda that is supposed to make Ukrainians more compliant with their suffering now by blaming Yanukovych for it.

It seems to me that Yatsenyuk's belligerence during this period is also part of a propaganda campaign to ensure popular submission to these highly destructive measures being imposed by the IMF and EU, and to ensure that the resource exploitation by American and EU companies is not interfered with. 

And if I'm reading the beads right, Russia has no problem with any of this as long as their interests and oligarchs get paid. Jesus, what a cockup.

Quite a show when you think about it.

Divorcing the Finance Economy From the Will of the People

"Democracy" has always been a fiction in the developed world, of course, despite what we are propagandized to believe. The idealized form of representative government, whether on the anachronistic and increasingly nonfunctional model of the United States or on the more usual (but also dysfunctional) European parliamentary model, was never meant to be particularly democratic, and in the case of the American model, it was never meant to "represent" everyone. In fact, it is purpose-designed to exclude vast swaths of the population and their interests from representation, even as it undergoes centuries of modification to expand representation.

For some time now, we've been in a situation in which a certain privileged segment of the population has quite consciously and successfully placed itself outside the confines of responsibility, accountability and law, while it has more and more successfully taken economic -- and in some aspects, political -- control of  nation after nation.

The latest being Cyprus.

If the financiers who are pulling off these deals were half as smart as they think they are, they would know full well that continuing to foul their nests as they have been doing is not going to end well. For them.

On the other hand, they really seem to relish the suffering of the People under their austerity lash, so there is that.

A moment's pleasure before the fall.

Likely Outcome of The Greek Thing

Alexis Tspiras, head of the (leftist) SYRIZA coalition which may win a majority in the next Greek election More about Tspiras  
I'm in a somewhat predictive mood today, so let's deal with The Greek Thing.

The new election is something like two weeks away, and the polls seem to be all over the place, with first the "bailout" parties commanding a sufficient lead to form a government after the election and then the "leftists" having the lead, and so on. The horserace, of course, is all that interests the media in any case; substantive issues like policy and whatnot are of no interest.

The bailouts of Greece and everywhere else in the Periphery of Europe (oh how I would just adore being a Peripheral if I were in Ireland...not) have nothing to do with bailing out the People or keeping the economy afloat; the bailouts are entirely devoted to paying off the banks' gambling debts just like here and squeezing the Greek People for every lousy dime -- and then some. 

So, the leftists come into the second round of elections with a program that goes something like this:

• Nationalize the banks, the ports, the telecoms, the energy sectors;
  
  
• Set up a tax system based on Social Justice
  
  
• Improve the minimum wage -- which has been cut drastically due to the demands of the Troika
  
  
• Renegotiate -- or something -- the extractive Memorandum

All of which sounds pretty straightforward and good until you realize that the likely outcome is a German-backed rightist coup, probably installing a military junta yet again to rule on behalf of the Germans.

The Greeks have lived this tragedy before; they know the plot very well. The last time they were ruled by a military junta though, at least the Colonels were smart enough to buy off certain key sectors of the population, specifically an emergent middle class, so that resistance was kept to a minimum -- for a while anyway. Of course torture and murder and what not had their usual salutary effects on the rabble as well.

It is, after all, the way these things are done.

But today's rulers in Germany and apparently throughout Europe, let alone the U S of A, care not a whit about "buying off" anyone. They don't care about the pathetic "resistance" of the People. They don't care about anything when it comes to Greece or the rest of the Peripherals except imposing their authority and extracting their tons of flesh; the pathetic People be damned. All of them. To hell.

Though their actions haven't -- yet -- been quite as cruel as those of the Nazis toward the Greeks, the attitude and public statements of today's Euro-goons is if anything harsher than that of the ever-so-diplomatic Nazis. The Nazis could at least pretend to consider the interests and well being of their conquered peoples, but not the Euro-goons and their banker owners.

I've never seen anything quite like it in my long life, and I'm not sure anyone in Europe has either, at least not for much longer than I've been alive.

Christine LaGarde encapsulated the Euro-goon attitude toward Peripherals, specifically the Greeks, when she declares:

it is payback time for Greece and makes it clear that the IMF has no intention of softening the terms of the country's austerity package.

Using some of the bluntest language of the two-and-a-half-year debt crisis, she says Greek parents have to take responsibility if their children are being affected by spending cuts. "Parents have to pay their tax," she says.

Greece, which has seen its economy shrink by a fifth since the recession began, has been told to cut wages, pensions and public spending in return for financial help from the IMF, the European Union and the European Central Bank.

Asked whether she is able to block out of her mind the mothers unable to get access to midwives or patients unable to obtain life-saving drugs, Lagarde replies: "I think more of the little kids from a school in a little village in Niger who get teaching two hours a day, sharing one chair for three of them, and who are very keen to get an education. I have them in my mind all the time. Because I think they need even more help than the people in Athens."

Neither wise nor helpful, she was lambasted far and wide, and not solely in Greece, for the atrocious and unrelenting cruelty of her remarks, and later her flack at the IMF issued a sternly worded "apology" for her comments. But really, all she was doing was honestly expressing the way the community she serves views the Little People. All of them -- ie: all of us.

As is widely known, the IMF's "concern" for the poor children in Africa pretty much matches its concern for the plight of the Greeks. Ie: none at all.

Given the complete contempt expressed for Greece and the rest of the Euro Periphery by the goons who are running things over there, it would be surprising if there weren't a coup on behalf of  the Memorandum of Endless Exploitation.

This is the basic pattern set during the Imperial hey-day.

Which, as some of us recall, didn't turn out well.