On top of Ukraine's horrific death toll, the country's economy has largely collapsed, but Nuland, Yatsenyuk and other free-marketeers have devised a solution, in line with the wishes of the Washington-based International Monetary Fund: Austerity for the average Ukrainian.
Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday, Nuland hailed "reforms" to turn Ukraine into a "free-market state," including decisions "to reduce and cap pension benefits, increase work requirements and phase in a higher retirement age; " [and] cutting wasteful gas subsidies."
In other words, these "reforms" are designed to make the hard lives of average Ukrainians even harder -- by slashing pensions, removing work protections, forcing people to work into their old age and making them pay more for heat during the winter.
"Sharing" the Wealth
In exchange for those "reforms," the IMF approved $17.5 billion in aid that will be handled by Ukraine's Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who until last December was a former U.S. diplomat responsible for a U.S. taxpayer-financed $150 million investment fund for Ukraine that was drained of money as she engaged in lucrative insider deals -- deals that she has fought to keep secret. Now, Ms. Jaresko and her cronies will get a chance to be the caretakers of more than 100 times more money. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Ukraine's Finance Minister's American 'Values.'"]
Other prominent Americans have been circling around Ukraine's "democratic" opportunities. For instance, Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter was named to the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, Ukraine's largest private gas firm, a shadowy Cyprus-based company linked to Privat Bank.
Privat Bank is controlled by the thuggish billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, who was appointed by the Kiev regime to be governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a south-central province of Ukraine. In this tribute to "democracy," the U.S.-backed Ukrainian authorities gave an oligarch his own province to rule. Kolomoysky also has helped finance paramilitary forces killing ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.
Burisma has been lining up well-connected American lobbyists, too, some with ties to Secretary of State John Kerry, including Kerry's former Senate chief of staff David Leiter, according to lobbying disclosures.
As Time magazine reported, "Leiter's involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry's son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity company." [See Consortiumnews.com's "The Whys Behind the Ukraine Crisis."]
So, it seems even this modern form of "democracy" has some "sharing the wealth" aspects.
Which brings us to the worsening crisis in Venezuela, a South American country which has been ruled over the past decade or so by leftist leaders who -- with broad public support -- have sought to spread the nation's oil wealth around more broadly than ever before, including paying for ambitious social programs to address problems of illiteracy, disease and poverty.
While there were surely missteps and mistakes by the late President Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro, the Chavista government has made progress in addressing some of Venezuela's enduring social ills, which had been coolly ignored by previous U.S.-backed rulers, such as President Carlos Andres Perez, who collaborated with the CIA and hobnobbed with the great and powerful.
I was once told by an Andres Perez assistant that the Venezuelan president shared his villa outside Caracas with the likes of David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, bringing in beauty pageant contestants for their entertainment.
Chavez and Maduro at least have tried to improve the lot of the average Venezuelan. However, facing a deepening economic crisis made worse by the drop in world oil prices, Maduro has found himself under increasing political pressure, some of it financed or inspired by Washington and supported by the rightist government in neighboring Colombia.
Allegations of a Coup
Maduro has reacted to these moves against his government by accusing some opponents of plotting a coup, a claim that is mocked by the U.S. State Department and by the U.S. mainstream media, which apparently doesn't believe that the United States would ever think of staging a coup in Latin America.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
1
