Privatized Ebola Stricken America Explodes as Cuba Takes the Lead

Billion Dollar Junk Program Replaces NASA

When President John Fitzgerald Kennedy called on America to “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” I don’ think he envisioned an America fully privatized for Wall Street profits. 

Kennedy had warned what would happen if these billionaire secret societies ever gained complete control over America’s government and it’s worse than he could have imagined.  Everything JFK envisioned and America has realized is gone.  JFK’s America no longer exists and the privatization of America’s space exploration was the knife through the heart of the nation.    

Pouring billions of taxpayers’ dollars into private contractors instead of funding NASA had its predictable outcome with the explosion of the Antares rocket on Tuesday.  According to the Washington Post:

Excerpt:

Trying to go to space on the cheap has had disastrous consequences in the past

When reporters asked the first U.S. man in space, Alan Shepard, what he thought about as he sat atop a Mercury launch vehicle, he's said to have responded, "The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder."…

The cause of the failure remain unknown. But Orbital has marketed the Antares as a "cost effective" way to launch payloads, due at least in part on its reliance on recycled Soviet-era rocket engines — a move that has drawn criticism from some, including competitor SpaceX's founder, Elon Musk. Here's what he told Wired in a 2012 interview:

One of our competitors, Orbital Sciences, has a contract to resupply the International Space Station, and their rocket honestly sounds like the punch line to a joke. It uses Russian rocket engines that were made in the ’60s. I don’t mean their design is from the ’60s — I mean they start with engines that were literally made in the ’60s and, like, packed away in Siberia somewhere.

So, we turned our nation’s multi-billion dollar a year space program over to a private contractor who’s using fifty year old used parts from Russia to save money.    

The American government has been drilling into the American psyche through the corporately controlled press that Russia is the “Great Satan” for some time with a degree of success.  After all, Americans are so dumbed down that their fear of Russia as an aggressor and threat to democracy borders on nuts.  Just look at this Gallop Poll,

Excerpt: 

Americans' Views of Russia, Putin Are Worst in Years

Clear majority view the Russian president and his nation unfavorably

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As host nation Russia dominates the world stage at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Americans clearly do not think highly of the country or its president, Vladimir Putin. Putin and Russia score the highest unfavorable ratings -- 63% and 60%, respectively -- that Gallup has recorded for them in the past two decades.

Yes, good old America, a nation of disinterested idiots.

These results align with Gallup's findings last fall when Americans, for the first time in 14 years of Gallup polling on the topic, said they consider Russia an enemy, not an ally. In the past year, Russia has faced scrutiny for granting former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden asylum, involving itself in the Syrian civil war, and restricting gay and lesbian civil rights….

Isn’t it crazy how Americans' opinions as shown in the polls are so different from the opinions of rest of the world’s people when it comes to Edward Snowden.  Snowden had support across the world.

More than six in 10 Americans currently have an unfavorable opinion of Putin, the highest negative rating in the four times Gallup has asked about him since he became president for the first time in 1999.

Putin's op-ed criticizing the U.S. in the New York Times last September may have contributed to this low opinion. In the op-ed, he claimed that President Barack Obama's statement about American exceptionalism was "extremely dangerous." Obama had said that the ability of the U.S. to intervene in geopolitical conflict when needed is "what makes us exceptional" Just after the publishing of the op-ed, Gallup found that 54% of Americans viewed Putin unfavorably.

Yeah, OK so Americans have this fear and loathing of Russia, so how do Russian people feel about America and Americans?  Not so good according to Reason Magazine, they fear the US more than ISIS:   

Excerpt:

A poll published last week from the Russian Public Opinion Research Center indicates that because of this worsening relationship, more Russians believe the U.S. poses a terror threat to them than radical Islamists like ISIS do.

The center reports that 22 percent of Russians consider the U.S. to be "the main source of terrorist threats" to their nation. This is a dramatic spike from one year ago, when only 4 percent believed the U.S. was such a threat. Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a harshly anti-American speech on Friday, accusing the West of sponsoring terrorism in Russia. The polling data was gathered well-before the speech, but the nation's media is largely government-controlled, and the government has been raising a specter of U.S. meddling for months.

Well, that’s pretty revealing.  I suppose the truth lies somewhere in the middle, so I had to laugh when I read this poll from Science2.0: 

Excerpt:

What Americans Fear Most Isn't Ebola Or Terrorism, It's...

What makes Americans afraid is the topic of the first comprehensive nationwide study by Chapman University. According to the Chapman poll, the number one fear in America today is not Muslim terrorists or Russian imperialism or Ebola, it's...walking alone at night.

The Chapman Survey on American Fears included 1,500 nationally representative participants. The top five things Americans fear the most are:

·       Walking alone at night

·       Becoming the victim of identity theft

·       Safety on the internet

·       Being the victim of a mass/random shooting

·       Public speaking

Yep, that’s the Americans I know.  What else do Americans fear?

The top five things Americans worry or are concerned about are:

·       Having identity stolen on the internet

·       Corporate surveillance of internet activity

·       Running out of money in the future

·       Government surveillance of internet activity

·       Becoming ill/sick

So that’s what America has gotten in return for our crown jewel NASA, a privatized space program brought to you by the Democratic Obama/Biden Administration who completed privatization of NASA in 2011.  

  

Seeing how well our new privatized space program is going, let’s see how America’s privatized healthcare system is dealing with the Ebola crisis.  According to the Christian Science Monitor, the Republican Governor of Maine is trying to quarantine a nurse, who has no signs of Ebola.

 Excerpt:

Negotiations have broken down between Maine officials and a nurse who refuses to submit to a three-week quarantine following her return from treating Ebola patients in West Africa.

Gov. Paul LePage announced the breakdown on Thursday and pledged to use the “full extent” of his legal authority to safeguard public health.

The announcement sets the stage for what could become a showdown in the courts over the power of individual states to enforce tougher quarantine requirements than are called for by the national Centers for Disease Control.

In an apparent act of defiance, the nurse, Kaci Hickox, left her home on Thursday morning to take a bike ride with her boyfriend. To do so, they passed Maine State Police officers who were assigned to monitor their house and their movements.

Hmmm, that reminds me of this Twilight Zone parody:  

But while privatized America is unable to provide even the smallest amount of competency in dealing with the Ebola crisis, one nation has stepped forward, not waiting for rich, superpower nations owned and controlled by billionaires to help.  Cuba, the other great Satan has taken the world lead. 

From the Black Agenda Report: 

Excerpt:

For Moment, the World Embraces the Cuba Model – and Slaps the Empire

“For Cuba, service to oppressed and exploited peoples is a revolutionary act of the highest moral caliber.”

Revolutionary Cuba has always been a miracle and gift to all humankind. This week, the nations of the world – with two savage exceptions – instructed their emissaries at the UN General Assembly to tell the world’s self-designated “indispensable” country to end its 54-year-long trade embargo against Cuba. The virtually unanimous global rebuke to the American superpower, in combination with the extraordinary breadth and depth of acclamation accorded Havana, tells us that it is Cuba, not the U.S., that is the truly “exceptional” nation on the planet.

It was the 23rd time that the United Nations has rejected the embargo. The outcome was identical to last year’s tally, with only the United States and Israel voting against the non-binding resolution.

God, how did we end up with such knuckle draggers running this country? 

Despite having suffered cumulative economic damages of more than $1 trillion at U.S. hands over the last half-century, the island nation of 11 million people has made itself a medical superpower that shares its life-saving resources with the world. No country or combination of nations and NGOs comes close to the speed, size and quality of Cuba’s response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa.

With 461 doctors, nurses and other health professionals either already on site or soon to be sent to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, Cuba sets the standard for international first-response. The Cuban contingent of medical professionals providing direct treatment to sick people outnumbers that of the African Union and all individual countries and private organizations, including the Red Cross.

God Almighty does anyone believe the private sector can do anything better than a government of, by and for the people?  Good thing Cuba is picking up the slack in training doctors, because the oligarch’s in America are wringing every tax paying dollar out of our public schools for shareholder profits. 


Charter schools are hedge fund heavens.  From Washington Post:

 Excerpt:

Why hedge funds love charter schools

One of the features of corporate school reform is the interest that Wall Street has shown in supporting charter schools. Why?  No doubt hedge fund managers would say they want to support education and help young people have educational choices. But here’s another part of the answer,…

The 2001 Consolidated Appropriations Act, passed by Congress and signed into law by President  Clinton, included provisions from the Community Renewal Tax Relief Act of 2000. The law provided tax incentives for seven years to businesses that locate and hire residents in economically depressed urban and rural areas. The tax credits were reauthorized for 2008-2009, 2010-2011, and 2012-2013.

Sounds reasonable enough, in 2000 before the 2000 election Clinton signed into law tax incentives to businesses that locate and hire in depressed urban and rural areas.  So what’s that got to do with charter schools?

As a result of this change to the tax code, banks and equity funds that invest in charter schools in underserved areas can take advantage of a very generous tax credit. They are permitted to combine this tax credit with other tax breaks while they also collect interest on any money they lend out. According to one analyst, the credit allows them to double the money they invested in seven years.

Well what a sweetheart deal, I wonder how many of our congressmen and their staff have doubled their money in seven years investing in charter schools.

Another interesting side note is that foreign investors who put a minimum of $500,000 in charter school companies are eligible to purchase immigration visas for themselves and family members under a federal program called EB-5.

Caaaaching!!

The real estate industry, which already receives huge tax breaks as it gentrifies communities, also stands to benefit by promoting charter schools and helping them buy up property, or rent, in inner city communities. One real estate company, Eminent Properties Trust, boasts on its website:

 “Our investment portfolio of nearly $3 billion includes megaplex movie theatres and adjacent retail, public charter schools, and other destination recreational and specialty investments. This portfolio includes over 160 locations spread across 34 states with over 200 tenants.”

The Charter management group Charter Schools USA recommends that rental costs should not exceed 20 percent of a school’s budget. However the Miami Herald reported that in 2011, 19 charter schools in Miami-Dade and Broward exceeded this figure and one in Miami Gardens paid 43 percent.

Boy, the private sector is so much more efficient and cost effective than an accountable governmental education system.  One billionaire has gotten worried the gravy train of “charter schools” could end so he has sued the California public school system and won!  From the California Federation of Teachers:  

  

Excerpt:

Teacher rights overturned by court decision

Earlier today a Superior court Judge in Los Angeles declared five Education code protections unconstitutional...

"It would be very scary to me, if this lawsuit succeeds, to think that I might not have a job next year, not for anything I'd done in the classroom, but because my principal didn't like me, or my clothing, or something I'd said." —Laura Lacar, Gahr High School, ABC Unified School District

Last year a group calling itself “Students Matter,” funded by David Welch, a conservative Silicon Valley millionaire, filed a lawsuit, Vergara v. the State of California. The lawsuit challenges a number of constitutional rights for California’s teachers, including “tenure,” due process rights, and seniority rights during layoffs. The suit, hiding behind a group of students, alleges that these teacher workplace rights infringe the constitutional right of students to an equal education.

While public school teachers are fighting for survival, for-profit charter schools are flush in taxpayer dollars.    From Wall Street Journal: 

Excerpt:

A small New York City charter school opened five years ago with an attention-grabbing premise: Paying teachers $125,000 salaries would lure ace faculty and help poor children learn.

A new study of the middle school, called The Equity Project, suggests that the experiment is working. The report to be released Friday by Mathematica Policy Research said the school’s students made more progress than similar children attending traditional city schools…

I wonder what they mean by “similar children” attending traditional city schools.  Are they saying similar race?

The Equity Project made headlines in 2008 when it announced it would pay nearly double the average salary of teachers in the city’s district schools. Joshua Furgeson, one of the report’s authors, said it shows that a “school that focuses its resources and attention on hiring and developing the best teachers can substantially improve student achievement.”

The charter’s 480 students, who are mostly Hispanic, squeeze into a cluster of red trailers near 193rd Street in Washington Heights. They walk to class through alleys outdoors named “Achievement Avenue” and “Creativity Court.” The founder and principal, Zeke Vanderhoek, is a 38-year-old Yale University graduate who taught in a nearby district school and launched a tutoring company….

New York Equity Project

I wondered what happened to those toxic FEMA trailers.

The report said the charter has a lean administrative staff and slightly larger classes—31 students compared with an average of about 26 or 27 in district schools—so it can pour resources into teacher pay and training.

Charters get $13,777 per pupil in public funding. One of Mr. Vanderhoek’s missions is proving that the aid allotted to charters suffices to pay teachers well. Teachers can get bonuses, so the highest-paid faculty made almost $140,000 last year.

Privatization in all of its glory. So a little, impoverished country like Cuba who has been the victim of America’s imperialism is leading the world’s response to the Ebola crisis.  I guess there’s no money to be made in the private sector.

It goes without saying that the Cubans are committed for the duration of the Ebola crisis; they have been at Africa’s service since the first years of the revolution. President Raul Castro reports that 76,000 Cuban medical specialists have served in 39 African countries over the years. Four thousand were stationed in 32 African countries when the current Ebola epidemic broke out. (Worldwide, Cuba’s “white-robed army” of care-givers numbers more than 50,000, in 66 countries – amid constant U.S. pressures on host countries to expel them.)…

Cuba has been selfless in defense of others, whether against marauding microbes or imperial aggression. “We never took any natural resources,” said Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez, Cuba’s ambassador to the United Nations and a veteran of the war against white-ruled South Africa’s army in Angola. “We never took any salary, because in no way were we to be perceived to be mercenaries or on any kind of military adventure.”

For the United States, military adventure and the imperative to seize other countries’ natural resources or strangle their economies, are defining national characteristics – in complete contrast to Cuba.

Thank God for Cuba, they are now the real world power.  Not nuclear power, not military might, not financial devastation power but the utmost power, their compassion for people of the world power.

As privatized Ebola stricken America explodes, Cuba takes the lead.

By Patricia Baeten

 

Ukraine: Made in America Sham Elections

America’s biggest export since December 12, 2000 has been sham elections.  The neocons and Zionists that overthrew the United States government on December 12, 2000 have used the CIA to overthrow governments around the world and replaced them with elections of preselected candidates and by government approved voters.  The new American foreign policy of “give us your money or else America will bomb you into the Stone Age” was launched. 

The neocons have believed there should be no constraints on America’s military might and they reviled the United Nations as a constraint on American might.  From the Third World Traveler:  

Excerpt:

In 1997, a small group of potentially powerful people, just twenty five of them, announced the formation of a new organization dedicated to building up the power of the United States to unparalleled levels. They were clearly looking forward to the presidential election of 2000 and the beginning of a new millennium, because they called their organization "The Project for the New American Century" (PNAC)….

The rest of the document outlined most of the detailed program that Bush presented two years later in the fall of 2002. "The National Security of the United States" was the Bush Gang's plan for nothing less than a total change in the declared foreign policy of the United States. Whereas in the past the U.S. had claimed to be resisting hostile regimes such as the Soviet Union through containment and pledged itself to work within a variety of global organizations and treaties that promoted peace, the new policy was clearly imperial in tone.

It stated that the United State would not be constrained by membership in multinational peacekeeping organizations - "we will be prepared to act apart when our interests and unique responsibilities require" - and when necessary would construct "coalitions of the willing" to follow its bidding.

The new National Security Doctrine suggested that the U.S. had the right to discourage others nations from building up their military power and could act "to dissuade potential adversaries from pursuing a military buildup in hopes of surpassing, or equaling, the power of the United States." This included the new explicit policy of "pre-emptive" war whenever the U.S. feels threatened: "America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed."

What is more, the new American edict told other nations that the conservative economic objectives of the Republican Party were policies that should be implemented throughout the whole world…

That must be the austerity plan that has been enacted across the world due to the world’s wealth being consolidated into the hands of the few.  According to David Cay Johnston, the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, the Bush tax cuts alone cost the American economy $6.6 trillion dollars. 

This new foreign policy was the basis for the speech that Bush made to the United Nations in September of 2002. He told them that the United States was ready to go it alone in the world if the U.N. did not join his preemptive war. The U.S. would take any action that it deemed necessary, against Iraq or anyone else. His administration was making preparations to act quickly and decisively by shedding its various multilateral constraints.

That was the groundwork for the coup that would take place on December 12, 2000.  With the complicity of the United States Senate, five corrupt Republican members of the US Supreme Court condemned the world to the most horrific cabal’s vision of an imperial United States.  Not only was the will of the American people overturned, but corrupt elections were codified into law through HAVA (Help America Vote “the right way” Act).  From Censure the Five:  

Excerpt:

Why Censure?

When Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified fellow Republican George W. Bush the winner by 537 votes over Democrat Al Gore in Florida's 2000 presidential election, at least 175,000 ballots remained uncounted. These had been slightly misexecuted by voters and excluded from the state's official machine tabulation….

On December 9, 2000, five members of the U.S. Supreme Court stunned the nation by halting the Florida manual recount. Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor, and Kennedy claimed they wished to review its constitutional validity.

With two rounds of Florida election litigation behind them and the presidency hanging in the balance, Americans of all political stripes trusted the U.S. Supreme Court to provide for a satisfactory means of assessing the will of Florida's voters.

When night fell on December 12, that faith was betrayed.

There would be no accurate and complete count of votes in Florida.

December 12, 2000 was the day Democracy in the world died.  No longer would America be the beacon of hope for the world, the innovator, a country where the only limitation to what you could achieve was you.  The country my father and all our fathers fought wars to preserve was gone, the PNAC gang now controlled of all levers of the United States government. 

Thomas Jefferson, in hisFirst Inaugural Address, enumerated what he called 'the essential principles ofour government ... which ought to shape its Administration.' He then stated:

"These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civil instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."

The Civil Rights Commission, founded in 1957 and the U.S. courts were the first victims of the illegitimate PNAC government.  From Media Matters:

Excerpt:

Media figures have emphasized the fact that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is technically "bipartisan" to hype its investigation of the Justice Department's actions in the New Black Panther Party case. In reality, the commission's chair has acknowledged that conservatives "gam[ed] the system" and packed the panel with conservative activists, and the commission's two Democrats, as well as one Republican, have criticized the investigation…

Bush reportedly "used a controversial maneuver to put the agency under conservative control." In a November 6, 2007, Boston Globe article, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Charlie Savage reported that the "Bush administration used a controversial maneuver to put the [U.S. Commission on Civil Rights] under conservative control." Savage reported that "[c]ritics say 

Bush in effect installed a fifth and sixth Republican on the panel in December 2004, after two commissioners, both Republicans when appointed, reregistered as independents" and that the appointments "have had a sweeping effect, shifting the commission's emphasis from investigating claims of civil rights violations to questioning programs designed to offset the historic effects of discrimination."

The destruction of the Civil Rights Commission was just the beginning.  Bush fired all the judges, even ones he put on the bench, and replaced them with extremists.  The Supreme Court that ushered in the PNAC Government has been replaced with the Roberts Court.  The Roberts Court or as I call them the PNAC Court, is even more corrupt than the Rehnquist Court before them.   According to Reader Supported News the actions of the court amount to treason.    

Excerpt:

The Treason of the U.S. Supreme Court

Written by Robert L Vogel   

Wednesday, 16 July 2014 10:39

Don't ever claim that Republican Supreme Court judges are not activists. Selecting Bush President resulted in two wars at a cost estimated at $4 trillion accompanied by tax breaks for the wealthiest, a full-scale assault on civil liberties, an invasive, ineffective 'homeland security' bureaucracy, criminal acts including torture, rendition, warrantless wiretapping, secret government, and an agenda that will make us a fascist, militarized empire. In selecting Bush, the Court assured the wreck of our republic. His legacy lives on in the Supreme Court.

The Court has sided with corporate interests consistently for a long time: In its 'wisdom', it decided that corporations are people, some with religious beliefs, whose only motive is profit, and that money is speech. The Citizens United and McKutcheon rulings will complete our transition to an oligarchy. Elections clearly are for sale now.

A corporate person, motivated only by profit, is a sociopath. He doesn't care if the planet is destroyed by his pollution. He has no loyalty to community. He is no patriot for he has no binds of citizenship and will move to the lowest wage, least regulated country, avoid all taxes by keeping profits offshore, and will buy as many politicians as necessary to mold policy in his favor. Corporations have set us on a (geologically) fast path to destruction. Maybe that's why the police are being militarized….

Well the militarization of our police is in part, to ensure the profits of the war industry.

In its 2012-2013 term The Court ruled against journalists and other civil liberties advocates who tried to oppose surveillance….

We have the world's largest military policing the empire, the largest prison population, rotting infrastructure, the worst income disparity, financially devastating education, weak social programs, and universal surveillance. All of the economic gains for the last three decades have gone to the very top.

The Court has committed a treasonous crime in its complicity in taking the US government from the people and giving it to corporations. A country run by corporations is, by definition, fascist.

The PNAC crowd has brought the new PNAC-style Democracy show on the road right after taking control of the American government.  The U.S. State Department has been reshaped with neocons like Victoria Nuland, who served under Cheney and now Biden.  Their crown jewel was to be Ukraine.  Ukraine, a former Soviet Republic is resource rich and cash poor and right on Russia’s border. 

The government in Ukraine was overthrown in a CIA coup after their elected President Yanukovych rejected a PNAC-American and EU trade deal that would have destroyed the country.  From Global Research:

Excerpt:

Despite the heightened state of tension between Russia and the West on the international stage, the Prime Minister of Ukraine – Arseny Yatsenyuk – recently called for Ukraine to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). If Ukraine was to join the alliance in the near future it would signify a further escalation in a situation that is already beginning to spiral out of control, as it would directly threaten Russia’s strategic security…

U.S. stooge Yatsenyuk, or “Yats” to his close friends at the U.S. State Department, was installed as Prime Minister at the end of February following the staged revolution which led to the overthrow of Yanukovych. In a leaked phone conversation between the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland, and the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, the two American diplomats revealed their intentions to install “Yats” to lead the new puppet government in Kiev…

Since Yatsenyuk was ‘appointed’ Prime Minister in February, Ukraine has become increasingly polarised into Eastern and Western Ukraine, with Lugansk and Donetsk in the East declaring independence from the corrupt and criminal government in Kiev. Western Ukraine has all but been absorbed into the European sphere of influence, along with the puppet leaders allowing private and corporate jackals to exploit the countries resources.

Since the colour revolution in February Ukraine has agreed a $17bn loan from the economic arm of U.S. imperialism – the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – as well as receiving 11 billion Euros in funding from the European Commission. The new government has also opened up its “rich agriculture to Monsanto, DuPont and the GMO agribusiness cartel”.

Prior to the PNAC overthrow of the government of Ukraine, Monsanto’s GMO Frankenstein corn was illegal in Ukraine, the world’s largest corn producer.  Also Monsanto has its own army, they bought Blackwater.  

In addition to this, Western elites have been installed in key positions of the energy sector in Ukraine, with the son of US Vice President Joe Biden joining the board of Ukraine’s biggest gas producer in May.  Hunter Biden will sit beside three other corporate heavyweights on the Board of Directors, including Aleksander Kwaśniewski, who was appointed Director of the company (Burisma Holdings) in January 2014.

Gee, I hope Burisma Holdings doesn’t drug test, poor old Hunter Biden just got his privileged ass kicked out of the Navy when he was busted for cocaine.

So anyway, the PNAC crowd staged a sham election in Ukraine and billionaire Poroshenko was “elected” president.  Poroshenko has scheduled parliamentary elections for October 26^th.   Everybody cheer, it’s another PNAC-American made election sham.  From Time:

Excerpt:

By leaving millions of pro-Russian voters out of the electoral process, the ballot will only deepen the rifts that lie beneath the war in eastern Ukraine.

The lynch mob caught up with Nestor Shufrich on Sept. 30, when he was campaigning for re-election to Ukraine’s parliament. Outside the press conference he was due to give that day in the port city of Odessa, a gang of activists and right wing thugs were waiting for him with a garbage dumpster, into which they had planned to stuff the lawmaker in front of the assembled journalists.

The ambush, part of a broader purge of politicians who are seen as sympathetic toward Russia, did not work out; Shufrich heard about it and cancelled the appearance. But the mob soon tracked him down inside the local government headquarters, tore his clothes off and beat him until his eyes swelled, his head concussed and blood poured from his nose….

In an address to the nation two weeks before the vote, Poroshenko admitted that the peace process he initiated in September, including a shaky ceasefire agreed with the pro-Russian rebels, “is constantly attacked by the gung-ho patriots,” an oblique reference to nationalist groups like the Radical Party and its loudmouthed leader Oleh Lyashko….

The most radical among them have been the paramilitary commanders leading the fight against the rebels on the front lines and, more recently, campaigning for places in parliament.

 

This fascist coup leader, now deputy defense minister of Ukraine

That’s a PNAC-American election alright. So, let’s see some of the new politicians in Ukraine.    This is from the Wall Street Journal:

Excerpt:

Ukraine's Secret Weapon: Feisty Oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky

Funny, what the Wall Street Journal calls “feisty” most people call mass murderer.

DNIPROPETROVSK, Ukraine—Leaning over a map of eastern Ukraine on his desk, Gennady Korban gripped a ballpoint pen and drew a squiggling blue line down its center.

The border, he said, marked the battlefront in his country's war with pro-Russia separatists. One side was stable, rid of "troublemakers," he said. On the other are "maniacs," he said. "Men without families, who don't want families, they just like war." If they cross over the line, he said, "we'll just have to kill them."

He called the border "Kolomoisky's line"—after his billionaire boss, who is emerging as one of the more unlikely protagonists to emerge from Ukraine's fight for survival.

When its high-profile conflict with Russia began, the fledgling government in Kiev was caught flat-footed, with an army with little fighting experience or funding. Enter Ihor Kolomoisky, a 51-year-old outspoken banking tycoon. Now recently appointed by the country's president as governor of Dnipropetrovsk region in eastern Ukraine, he has decided to dip into his fortune to bolster that army and defend the homeland.

Hmmmm, I wonder what happened to the “troublemakers” that were purged.  Hey, I think I found them, or their graves.  From Russia Times

Excerpt:

One more mass grave has been found in a village in eastern Ukraine, say self-defense forces. The site was located days after OSCE mission confirmed the discovery of three mass burial sites in areas recently abandoned by Kiev forces.

The new site of the suspected murders is near Nyzhnia Krynka village, not far from the town of Makeevka, self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Purgin told ITAR-TASS. The number of bodies and their identities have yet to be determined.

Taped hands, gun wounds’: RT witnesses exhumation of mass graves in E. Ukraine

“Another grave discovered ... How many bodies and how these people died will be established during the exhumation,” Purgin said.

In the meantime, a group of international experts have already arrived at the area of mass burials in the village, a source from the DPR told RIA Novosti.

“About 10 international observers are currently working at the site of mass graves near the village of Nyzhnia Krynka,” said the source, adding that the group includes experts from Russia and France.

Recently at a UN Conference, the foreign ministers of Russia and Cuba excoriated the PNAC-American illegal actions in Ukraine.  From USA Today:

Excerpt:

UNITED NATIONS -- The foreign ministers of Russia and Cuba Saturday delivered scathing critiques of U.S. support for the Ukrainian government and U.S. military action against radical Islamist terrorists in Syria.

"The U.S.-led Western alliance that portrays itself as a champion of democracy, rule of law and human rights within individual countries, acts from directly the opposite positions in the international arena," said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The West rejects "the sovereign equality of states" and is "trying to decide for everyone what is good or evil."

His comments before the U.N. General Assembly came at the end of a week where leader after leader spoke of the danger that Russia's annexing of Ukrainian territory and support for pro-Russian separatists in east Ukraine pose to a global system of rules and principles that are the basis of the United Nations.

Jeebus, if we had a free press we would see the irony of that.  I’m really feeling a lot of respect for Putin, at least he doesn’t cower at the presence of PNAC-America.  He really laid into the PNAC crowd and their “New World Order” in this article from The Guardian. 

Excerpt:

Vladimir Putin used a meeting with foreign journalists and Russia experts to rail against the United States and the current world order, blaming Washington for many current global problems, including unrest in Ukraine and Islamic terrorism….

Putin said that over the past two decades, the US had behaved as if it were someone “nouveau riche who had suddenly received a lot of wealth – in this case, global leadership”. Instead of using its powers wisely, said Putin, the US had created a unilateral and unfair system…

In a terse opening statement before taking questions for nearly three hours, Putin said: “The exceptionalism of the United States, the way they implement their leadership, is it really a benefit? And their worldwide intervention brings peace and stability, progress and peak of democracy? Maybe we should relax and enjoy this splendour? No!”

Man, I love the way he always beats the shit out of the PNAC gang, and ends with a joke.  And, he took questions for nearly three hours.  Putin calls them as he sees them, From Truthdig:

Excerpt:

Finance in today’s world has become war by non-military means. Its object is the same as that of military conquest: appropriation of land and basic infrastructure, and the rents that can be extracted as tribute. In today’s world this is taken mainly in the form of debt service and privatization.

That is how neoliberalism works, subduing economies by indebting their governments and using unpayably high debts as a lever to pry away the public domain at distress prices. It is what today’s New Cold War is all about. Backed by the IMF and European Central Bank (ECB) as knee-breakers in what has become in effect a financial extension of NATO, the aim is for U.S. and allied investors to appropriate the plums that kleptocrats have taken from the public domain of Russia, Ukraine and other post-Soviet economies in these countries, as well as whatever assets remain.

In a recent interview in The New York Review of Books, George Soros outlines what he thinks should be done for the Ukraine. It should “encourage its companies to improve their management by finding European partners.” [2]

This means that kleptocrats should sell major ownership shares in their companies to Westerners. This would give the West a stake in protecting them, pressuring their government to tax labor rather than the wealthy, and helping them cash out and keep their takings in London and New York to finance Western economies, not that of Ukraine….

U.S. bankers, officials and academics went to Russia and other former Soviet republics to explain that the most practical path was to create joint-stock companies and sell shares to Western buyers to bid up the price. Western banks helped kleptocrats keep the proceeds from these sales abroad so that they didn’t have to reinvest it at home (or pay taxes). The tax burden was placed on labor and consumers, not on the windfall gains and natural resource rents, land rent or monopoly rent being siphoned off.

So here we are election time again.  I can remember when people from Europe would visit America and buy Levi jeans, Red Wing Boots and all the things you could only get from America.  They were things that were American made, and that meant quality.  Now, PNAC America’s number one export is “made in America, sham elections.”

By Patricia Baeten