Ukraine was replaced with "Euromaidan Republic", "Neo-Khazaria" and the "Union of Donbass Republics" - Fort Russ

"Sunday Night with Vladimir Solovyev" on Russia 1
Translated by Kristina Rus

Semen Uralov (Ukrainian Political Scientist):

Kuchma is first of all the Godfather of the oligarchic model which brought Ukraine to this crisis. This is why he is sent to Minsk, although he doesn't have any power.

There are two factors to this crisis. There is the intra-political factor. The power was seized by raiders just as they raided their factories in the 90's, built their empires, like Kolomoisky with his Privat Group. Now they can apply these methods at the framework of the entire country.

The task is to bankrupt the assets, so that people wouldn't even as for salaries. Same model worked with companies in Russia. This is the intra-Ukrainian factor. The raiders are using those methods which they had perfected in the 90's.

And then there is the outside factor.

The ultimate goal is the free trade zone between the EU and the USA. Ukraine is the working material, is the motor oil, which has to be utilized, then burned down and disposed of.

Therefore there is a congruence of two interests - of the American party which is playing for the free trade zone, and a break up of the relationship between Russia and EU, and - the raiders who are on the inside and are given carte blanche for any actions.

And for peace talks you need the correct number of entities.

Complete story at - Ukraine was replaced with "Euromaidan Republic", "Neo-Khazaria" and the "Union of Donbass Republics" - Fort Russ

Greece At The Crossroads: The Oligarchs Blew It | Zero Hedge

Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

Once one oligarchy falls, it will threaten to topple a long line of oligarch dominoes.

A great many narratives invoking Greece are being tossed around, but only one really encapsulates the unvarnished truth: the Oligarchs blew it. The oligarchs in both Greece and the European Union/ECB had the opportunity a few years ago to trade some of their outsized wealth and political power for stability and sustainable expansion.

Instead, they chose to not just cling to every shred of their outsized wealth and power but to actively increase it. Their greed and hubris has now put their entire system of parasitic wealth extraction at risk of collapse. Their political stranglehold on power has been weakened, and there's no going back: they blew it, and now it's too late. The debt-serfs have finally had enough.

If you enter Greece in the custom search box on this site, six pages of blog entries come up. I have addressed the situation in Greece many times; this summarizes my conclusion:

Greece, Please Do The Right Thing: Default Now (June 1, 2011)

Thankfully, many in Greece have reached the same conclusion, for the same reasons:

Greece's New FinMin Warns "We Are Going To Destroy The Greek Oligarchy System"

The basic problem is that Greece Is a Kleptocracy (June 28, 2011). Greece has shown the world how oligarchies can expand their wealth and power even as their populace slides deeper into poverty. A recent article, Misrule of the Few: How the Oligarchs Ruined Greece, lays out the key dynamics.

Writer Pavlos Eleftheriadis pulls no punches:

"Greece has failed to address (rising wealth/income inequality) because the country’s elites have a vested interest in keeping things as they are. Since the early 1990s, a handful of wealthy families -- an oligarchy in all but name -- has dominated Greek politics. These elites have preserved their positions through control of the media and through old-fashioned favoritism, sharing the spoils of power with the country’s politicians. Greek legislators, in turn, have held on to power by rewarding a small number of professional associations and public-sector unions that support the status quo. Even as European lenders have put the country’s finances under a microscope, this arrangement has held."

The vested interests have obscured the cold reality of rising inequality by focusing obsessively on "growth" as the fix-all to inequality.

Complete story at - Greece At The Crossroads: The Oligarchs Blew It | Zero Hedge

The Day After: Say Good Bye To What Was Posing as American Democracy | Opinion | teleSUR

New York, New York: In North America, we call these election “cycles” as the two main parties battle each other, not by mobilizing voters or building political movements but mostly through desperate fund raising pitches and sloganizing.

The Democrats go after small change while the Republicans rely on billionaire funders and their political action committees. Politics is seen as an investment, a way to control the resources of the state and the lucrative appropriations process. It’s about money as much as mission.

The Republicans have been waging a NO campaign over at least seven cycles characterized not by offering a program for change or better policies but systematic denigration, holding President Obama personally responsible for every problem, flaw and error. It's gang-up politics driven by simple message points to undermine trust. The message: its all his fault, and frankly some of it is.

In many ways this approach mirrors the 60 year campaign of trying to demonize Fidel Castro in Cuba or Hugo Chavez in Venezuela over years. Find a “bad guy,” give him no credit and heap every every bit of sarcasm and conspiracy theory that you can “credibly” deploy to discredit him. Truth is never a criteria.

This year, as Tom Engelhart writes, "Escalation" or amping up minor threats to public safety, is the new toy of the political class for manipulating voters. Making these small threats loom large in the public eye also conveniently diverts attention from bigger issues, like inequality, high unemployment, and the rise of McJobs.”

Complete story at - The Day After: Say Good Bye To What Was Posing as American Democracy | Opinion | teleSUR

Dmitry Minin – Ukraine Turf Wars, Kolomoisky vs. Poroshenko - Strategic Culture Foundation

The civil war in Ukraine is in full swing. The strong and influential ones start serious turf wars trying to cook a hare before catching him. Donbass and the control over Ukraine are at stake. Petro Poroshenko and his team believe the position of President paves the way for full control over Ukraine. But Igor Kolomoisky, a tycoon to have great ambitions and is hardly immune to greed, may think otherwise.

The third richest man in Ukraine (Poroshenko tops the first ten) the governor of Dnepropetrovsk region funded private armed formations known for waging a tough fight against the self-defense forces – they are battalions Dnepr, Azov, Aidar, Donbass. He compensated the expenditure by providing regular logistics to the regular army. With the thugs joining his formations, Kolomoisky hopes to be able to call the shots in Ukraine. His main interest is property. He wants to own the riches of the leading tycoon Rinat Akhmetov ($15 billion in comparison with only $3, 9 billion in case of Kolomoisky). The way to do it is to confiscate the companies that belong to Akhmetov and transfer them to someone reliable (probably meaning himself). At one of the meetings Kolomoisky said the state had to confiscate the property: factories and shares, of those who took the side of separatists and who is involved in funding terrorism in the country. According to Kolomoisky, dozens of industrial facilities have been appropriated without competition, now Yanukovych and his team uses the profits for killing their own compatriots.

Predominantly residing in Switzerland, Kolomoisky finds ways to control the Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa and Kharkov regions. At the moment his influence is getting spread around the regions of Donetsk, Zaporozhye, and Nikolaev. He puts forward the idea of dividing the Donetsk region by making separate the Priazov region with Mariupol as its capital… His ambitions go as far as to become the provincial governor of the whole south-east of Ukraine with its two thirds of national GDP. It’ll make President Poroshenko a ‘lame duck” with no leverage to rule the country.

Actually Kolomoisky does not care much about Ukraine, but he does really care about his Jewish compatriots living in Israel. Ukrainian national news - UNN information agency published the revelations of the well-known expert, the veteran of Israeli Shin Bet ("Shabak"), the organization responsible for internal security, Alex Groissman who believes that the recent events in the Middle East make more Israelis consider the possibility of moving to Ukraine. They pin their hopes on Kolomoisky to save them from Islamic militants. They believe their job is done; they pushed the Soviet Union and then China from the Middle East and controlled the restive Arab neighbors. Now as Washington uses the controlled chaos to clean the way for the emergence of new quasi-states under its control capturing new oil and gas deposits on the way, Israel with its special vision of the Middle East becomes expendable there.

Complete story at - Dmitry Minin – Ukraine Turf Wars, Kolomoisky vs. Poroshenko - Strategic Culture Foundation

Disastrous Effects of the Restoration of Capitalism - Ukraine

(Original Title) - Theses on Ukraine

The root cause of the crisis in Ukraine is to be found in the disastrous effects of the restoration of capitalism. The destruction of the planned economy was a tremendous setback not only from the point of view of the economy, but also from a social point of view.

From the ashes of the planned economy emerged a brutal capitalist regime, based on the large scale theft of state property by different gangs of crooks and Mafiosi, the oligarchs, which came to control the economy and as a result, the political system.

Mafia-style capitalism resulted in endemic instability with western imperialism taking advantage of the crisis in Russia to exert their influence over the Ukraine, unsettling the balance of power in the region for a whole period, thus creating the conditions for the present crisis.

Some of the oligarchs thought their interests were better served with an alliance with the West, others were aligned with Russia, but their overriding motivation was the maximisation of profit at any cost, through legal and, mostly, illegal means. On this basis it was impossible to establish even the semblance of a functioning bourgeois democracy. One corrupt and authoritarian bourgeois regime followed another.

At the end of 2013 the then president Yanukovich decided to suspend, at the last minute, the signing of an association agreement with the EU, and decided instead to sign a deal with Russia. Up until that point he had ruled in the interest of the oligarchs and followed an IMF inspired programme of further privatisation and austerity cuts, alienating popular support for his rule even in the South-East of Ukraine where most of his electoral base was.

The only reason he broke with the West was because he thought he could get a better deal from Russia. After the collapse of Stalinism, German capitalism followed a policy of expanding eastwards and was prepared to spend large sums of money to ensure its domination in the region. But in 2013, in the middle of the most severe crisis of capitalism in Europe, it was no longer so keen to spend the amount of money that would have been required to absorb into the EU Ukraine (which was facing a deep economic recession). Yanukovich tried to play the West against Russia and vice-versa in order to get the best deal.

His decision not to sign the treaty with the EU was the spark for the movement which became known as Euromaidan. The movement had a certain degree of mass support amongst those sections of the population (mainly the West and Centre of the country) which looked towards the West, with the illusion that somehow by linking up to the EU their living standards would rise or they would experience a repetition of the Polish “miracle”. This was a reactionary illusion, but one which was able to mobilise a section of society in protests against Yanukovich.

Complete story at - Theses on Ukraine

A class analysis of the Ukrainian crisis | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

By Viktor Shapinov, translated from the Ukrainian website Liva (The Left), translated by Renfrey Clarke for Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

June 13, 2014 -- The social and class origins of the Ukrainian crisis have not been well researched. Attention has been focused mainly on the political side of events, and their socio-economic basis has been allowed to drop from sight. What were the class forces behind the overthrow of the Yanukovich regime, the installing of a new regime in Kiev, and the rise of the anti-Maidan and of the movement in the south-east?

The crisis of Ukrainian capitalism

The Ukrainian crisis is not a unique national phenomenon. For a number of reasons, Ukraine has been a “weak link” and has become the first victim of the collapse of the economic model based on the rule of the dollar as the world reserve currency and on the stimulation through credit of consumer demand as a mechanism of economic growth.[1] Ukraine’s economy has been among the most vulnerable in the context of the global crisis, and this has resulted in a split within the ruling class and in a fierce political struggle that has been visible now for several months.

The economy of Ukrainian capitalism acquired its form in the course of the collapse of the Soviet economic complex, the privatisation of socially owned property, and integration into the world market. These processes had the effect of degrading the economic structure of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which in terms of economic development had ranked 10th in the world. Ukraine in Soviet times had a complex, developed economy in which a leading role was played by machine building and the production of goods with a high degree of added value.

Integration into the world market led to the collapse of the high-technology sectors. “While the economy of the USSR was oriented toward satisfying the needs of production and personal consumption within the country, and developed in a more or less complex and rounded fashion, Ukraine’s capitalist economy is ‘formatted’ in line with the demands of the world division of labour. The main victim of this process has been knowledge-intensive production – machine building, light industry, output of machine tools, instruments and radio-electronics, and the production of turbines, aircraft and automobiles.”[2]

Once complex production had been destroyed, the role played by the export-oriented raw materials sector and by sectors with a low degree of added value took on a catastrophically high level of importance. The owners of enterprises in these sectors formed a layer within the oligarchy that has controlled the bulk of the country’s economy throughout almost the entire period of “independence”. This layer, oriented toward the production of raw materials for export, has ruthlessly exploited the productive potential inherited from the USSR. As a result of its economic position, the Ukrainian oligarchy has not only been uninterested in developing the country’s internal market, but in many cases has also taken a predatory attitude to its own productive assets, preferring to export capital to offshore havens instead of using it to develop production. A total of more than $165 billion has been taken out of Ukraine and invested offshore.[3]

The model of the peripheral export economy had a “cannibal” character, and was based on consuming the inheritance from the Soviet Union. Even before the onset of the global economic crisis, ferrous metallurgy – the “locomotive” of Ukraine’s peripheral economy, providing 40-50 per cent of exports – showed “obvious structural weaknesses: outmoded technologies, high labour intensity (producing a ton of steel in Ukraine required 52.8 work hours, compared with 38.1 in Russia and 16.8 in Germany), high energy consumption and dependence on foreign (mainly Russian) energy sources. So long as prices were high these weaknesses were not of decisive importance, but any worsening of the conjuncture made them a serious threat.

Complete story at - A class analysis of the Ukrainian crisis | Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

The Fall of the American Empire… And What We Can do About It | Global Research

Goodbye to the America we once loved. Since it has been taken over, hijacked by oligarchs dancing to the tune of global hegemony, the US as the beacon light of Western civilization, has already crested having run its course. In all its glory, it had its run. Now operating from the shadowy, secret cabal of the World’s central Banks and billionaire mansions around the world, the New World Order descends upon a poisoned, with a permanent era of austerity and impoverishment.

Living in the most powerful and richest country on earth, Americans are lamenting and mourning what once was in their sentimental nostalgia for the onetime greatness they now have lost. But then they are suddenly jarred back to the real world reality they face, worrying over an uncertain future where the only certainty is the American Empire has seen better days in its angst-ridden spiral downward into despair and oblivion. While Isaac Newton looks down from above and reminds us, “What goes up, must come down,” a faint, far off sound can be heard, “Bye, bye Miss American pie…”

In a way the more rational and logical nature within us may be saying good riddance to the only world superpower that abused its privilege and authority, choosing to flex its military muscle in bloodthirsty lust and hollowed out glory. Its unquenchable thirst for more power and control over its earthly dominions have come at a heavy cost to both the American people and a severely exploited and victimized Third World. Two decades ago when the US was the only superpower left standing after the shattered demise of the Soviet Union, rather than continue to be the beacon of light and liberty for the rest of the world, like in Rome a millennium ago, an overreaching military Empire won out.

When no other nation on earth was left to compete with America as its enemy, from Reagan and George Bush senior through Clinton to George junior and finally to Obama, the US government has consistently elected to place its highest priority on out-of-control military spending, choosing to overextend its military might on multiple defeated warfronts while bleeding its middle class dry as its sacrificial lamb. And now what are we left with – by design a Middle East and North Africa comprised of hopelessly failed states, compliments of US Empire’s King Midas touch-in-reverse. “Destabilize, Will Travel, Inc.,” sadly that is what American Empire does and stands for. And now its clutches are spreading, digging its fatal claws deep into the heart of sub-Saharan Africa, in the form of Special Ops boots on the ground, busily militarizing the entire world into death squads, more night raids, more civil wars, more sovereign nations destabilized and destroyed.

Obama’s desperate false bravado claim clinging to his notion of America’s exceptionalism heard last week at West Point, proclaims that the US is too good to have to live by the rules that the rest of the world must comply with. The psychopath is truly showing his mental illness living in his own delusional world. It’s time for him to wake up and smell the rot he has brought not only to America but the entire world.

Complete story at - The Fall of the American Empire… And What We Can do About It | Global Research

Eurozine - Ukraine's puppet masters - Sergii Leshchenko - A typology of oligarchs

It'll be a long haul, but it can be done. Having systematically charted the careers of the people who drove Ukraine to the brink of destruction, Sergii Leshchenko grapples with the question of how to shake Ukraine free of the oligarchs' grip.

For nearly 20 years, oligarchic clans have contributed significantly to building contemporary Ukrainian society. They emerged as Soviet state property was transferred to new ownership, and replaced the traditional "red directors". Different groups of oligarchs have alternated in achieving positions of power, and must be held responsible for the disintegration of Ukrainian politics, leading to the bloodbath in Kyiv in the winter of 2014. Yet without the clans opposing Viktor Yanukovich, public protest would probably not have stood so much chance of success.

In Ukraine oligarchs are characterized by a heterogeneous variety of attributes that define their status and influence. These consist, among other things, of parliamentary mandates and assets in the media as well as in the form of football clubs, church connections, private jets and art collections. Combined with considerable financial resources, all this allows them to exert influence on the politics of the country and thereafter to earn money through politics, creating a closed circle for the acquisition of personal wealth.

Oligarchs prefer litigation in London because they do not trust the judicial system in their own country, even though they themselves have corrupted it over the course of many years. They send their children to the Institut Le Rosey in Switzerland and the London School of Economics in the British capital, because they do not trust the education system in Ukraine. They surround themselves with dozens of bodyguards because they do not trust security in a society that they have corrupted and destroyed. They spend their summers on yachts in the Mediterranean, in Sardinia or on the Cote d'Azur, and their winters in Courchevel in France. Stars of the Soviet stage or yesterday's western idols perform for them on their birthdays. As the former US ambassador in Kyiv, John Herbst, put it so well in a conversation with me: "The best place to enjoy the wealth you have stolen from your compatriots is not in Ukraine, but in Paris, London or New York."

Perhaps the most prominent Ukrainian oligarch is Oleksandr Volkov, who helped forge the victory of Ukraine's second president Leonid Kuchma in the 1994 elections. At the time, Kuchma was an opposition candidate with no loyal media of his own. Volkov owns Gravis, one of the first private television channels in Ukraine, and offered this platform to Kuchma – subsequently to be rewarded with the post of presidential advisor. As he later boasted, he came to the presidential administration in a Mercedes 600, wearing a Rolex watch on his wrist.

Volkov's reputation was ambivalent. He had been indicted under Soviet rule and, after the fall of the USSR, went into various kinds of business. A criminal case was opened against him in Belgium. Although, in time, Volkov lost his job as presidential advisor, he continued to be involved in politics for many years. In 2004 he mediated between Boris Berezovsky and Yulia Tymoshenko, and helped to finance the Orange Revolution. Even now, 20 years after Kuchma's election, he remains a Ukrainian parliamentary deputy, and is vice-chairman of the budget committee.

Complete story at - Eurozine - Ukraine's puppet masters - Sergii Leshchenko A typology of oligarchs

That “Iron Law” Of Oligarchy Is Back To Haunt Us | The Smirking Chimp

The word Oligarchy has finally come home.

For years, it was a term only used in connection with those big bad and sleazy Mafioso-type businessmen in Russia.

Russia had Oligarchs; we didn’t. That became a big difference between the official narrative of what separated our land of the free and the home of the brave from THEM, the snakes in the shades and private planes, in the post-Soviet period.

Actually, I first heard the term oligarchy when I was studying labor history at Cornell a half a lifetime ago. We were taught about something called the “Iron Law of Oligarchy.”

It was a concept coined by Robert Michels, a friend of sociology guru Max Weber, way back in 1911. Here’s how it was defined in that relic of another age: The Encyclopedia Brittannica:

“Michels came to the conclusion that the formal organization of bureaucracies inevitably leads to oligarchy, under which organizations originally idealistic and democratic eventually come to be dominated by a small, self-serving group of people who achieved positions of power and responsibility. This can occur in large organizations because it becomes physically impossible for everyone to get together every time a decision has to be made.”

Complete story at - That “Iron Law” Of Oligarchy Is Back To Haunt Us | The Smirking Chimp

Ukraine coal miners on strike, refuse to pay Kiev coup damages bill — RT News

Over 2,000 coal miners in Lugansk region have been on strike for the second day running, demanding higher wages and refusing to accept a pay cut to fund the restoration of Kiev, which suffered damage during the coup that overthrew the government.

Some 80 percent of miners from five coal mines belonging to "Krasnodonugol" enterprise in the city of Krasnodon have not shown up to work. The mines are all owned by one of Ukraine's richest man, Rinat Akhmetov of the mining and metallurgical "Metinvest" corporation.

Angry miners are pressing for wage increases to match region's average pay, better social and living conditions and higher social bonuses. According to the strikers they get an average of 6,000 hryvnas ($520), while the average salary in the coal industry in the region is up to 10,000 hryvnia ($860).

Miners are also refusing to pay a 10 percent tax on their salaries, imposed by the post-coup authorities to restore the Maidan square in Kiev. The square and nearby buildings suffered significant damage during months of rallies and the violent standoff that led to a coup in February.

According to local media reports miners have seen around a 10 percent cut in their paychecks to restore the Ukrainian capital.

“I don't understand why are we involved!” one of the protesting miners, Stanislav Denisenko told Itar-tass. “It was not us who dismantled the stones and burned the houses down. I get about 900 hryvna a month, that is around 9,000 rubles ($260). I don't understand why they are taking away my salary.”

Complete story at - Ukraine coal miners on strike, refuse to pay Kiev coup damages bill — RT News



CC Photo by Flickr User albertof Subject is Coal Miner.

US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study | Common Dreams

A study, to appear in the Fall 2014 issue of the academic journal Perspectives on Politics, finds that the U.S. is no democracy, but instead an oligarchy, meaning profoundly corrupt, so that the answer to the study’s opening question, "Who governs? Who really rules?" in this country, is:

"Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But, ..." and then they go on to say, it's not true, and that, "America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened" by the findings in this, the first-ever comprehensive scientific study of the subject, which shows that there is instead "the nearly total failure of 'median voter' and other Majoritarian Electoral Democracy theories [of America]. When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy."

To put it short: The United States is no democracy, but actually an oligarchy.

Complete story at - US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study | Common Dreams