Paris Charlie: The “Shock Doctrine” par Excellence

by Peter Koenig

On 12 January the French Parliament approved with almost unanimity – with one abstention only – the budget for France’s continuous and enlarged involvement in the new war on Iraq, a new war engagement led by Washington and supported by its vassals, UK, Canada, Australia and France. Aircraft carriers and troops were immediately mobilized, not even losing a day. Doesn’t that conspicuously smell of an earlier preparation, just waiting for that crucial and appropriate event, prompting parliamentary approval?

At the same time France lawmakers agreed to display 10,000 troops throughout the country to protect ‘vulnerable places’; spying on citizens, for their protection takes on new forms and formats. A direct reaction to the attack on Charlie Hebdo on January 7 and the assault on a kosher supermarket on January 9? – Killing 17 people in all? Is that it?

French Ministers of the Interior and of Defense have advanced their wish of substantially increased respective police and defense budgets, when the 2016-2017 allocations are being discussed later this year. No doubt they will get their way.

And – no doubt, this is the shock doctrine at its best. People are in awe and shock after the assault on the satirical and Moslem insulting Charlie Hebdo. A million and a half took to the streets in Paris this past weekend, the largest manifestation since the liberation of Paris after WWII in 1945. Some media report more than 6 million people marching throughout Europe. Almost all waving signs “I am Charlie” – Solidarity or stupidity? Hard to say. Most likely just sheer ignorance.

It’s ignorance that kills our democracies, our human values; public ignorance allows leaders (sic) to wage wars, to aggress nations that refuse to submit, to fall to their knees. It’s ignorance perpetuated daily by our mainstream media and swallowed without question, day-in-day-out like breakfast coffee.

Neocon leaders, all over Europe, the new patsies of Washington that we, the people, have voted into office, under shrewd but hardly perceptible Washington-funded propaganda, through NED (National Endowment for Democracy) and other well-endowed CIA sponsored so-called think-tanks, meddling in local politics, sowing subtle threats or acts of destabilization. Europe’s new masters that a majority of the people doesn’t really like, but who are in office anyway – these spineless stooges constitute Europe in Brussels, the EU itself having become a miserable colony of Washington.

Complete story at - Paris Charlie: The “Shock Doctrine” par Excellence

Ukraine Can't Afford the IMF's 'Shock Therapy'

The war in eastern Ukraine continues to rage on, despite efforts by separatist and national forces to reach a cease-fire. But even if the warring sides reach a long-term truce, the government in Kiev is simultaneously fighting another, perhaps equally important battle: the economy. Unfortunately, President Petro Poroshenko is shooting himself in the foot.

Ukraine's government is in the middle of implementing a set of stringent economic reforms agreed to in April with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in exchange for a $17 billion bailout. Although Kiev has been commended by the IMF for a "bold economic program," the loan's terms, combined with Ukraine's political and economic crisis, are a recipe for disaster.

We have seen this story before. During the 1990s, when I worked at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the office charged with managing economic reform projects in the former Soviet Union, I observed that the type of austerity now being required of Ukraine was the standard prescription for countries in economic crisis. The leading Washington financial institutions, such as the IMF, World Bank, and U.S. Treasury Department, were passing out this one-size-fits-all solution. And it almost never worked.

Russia was the classic case. In the midst of the political shock caused by the breakup of the Soviet Union, neoliberal reformers supported by the West instituted a policy of so-called "shock therapy" involving an end to price controls and large cuts in government spending and subsidies. The result was a plunge in Russia's GDP and inflation rates averaging 20 percent per month. As the poverty rate climbed to a full 55 percent of the population, there was a widespread political backlash against austerity led by Russian Vice President Alexander Rutskoy, who termed the reforms "genocide" and led a failed attempt to overthrow President Boris Yeltsin in 1993.

Complete story at - Ukraine Can't Afford the IMF's 'Shock Therapy'

​A recovery the West has never forgiven Russia — RT Op-Edge

Though the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 may have been regarded as a positive event by Western historians and ideologues, a victory for and validation of liberal democracy, its impact on the lives of Russian people was devastating.

In her superb book – The Shock Doctrine (2007) – Canadian writer and journalist, Naomi Klein, sets out in forensic detail the way in which the Russia that emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s was used as a laboratory by American free market think-tanks, gurus, and economists. They descended on the country while it was still reeling from the shock of the implosion with the objective of setting up a pure market economy shorn of any and all state intervention, wherein the market would decide who worked and who did not, who could heat themselves and who could not, who ate and who starved – ultimately who lived and who died.

The record shows that many did starve, did go cold, and did indeed die.

The beating heart of the shock doctrine methodology and ideology applied to Russia in 1991-92 was from the economics department of Chicago University, commonly referred to as the Chicago School. The major influence within the Chicago School was the late Milton Friedman, the man credited with devising the architecture of neoliberal economics based on monetarism. This is an economic model which places a focus on controlling the money supply as a way to anchor inflation, which he and his co-thinkers viewed, and still view, as the enemy of economic growth.

The human factor was relegated in order of importance by comparison, which meant ending any pretension of an economic system serving the interests of society. Now, under Milton Friedman’s theory, society existed to serve the economic system. The challenge, given the severe impact such an extreme economic model would have on the lives of millions, was how to implement it successfully with minimal resistance from the people it was harming. The solution was encapsulated in his statement: “Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change.”

Complete story at - ​A recovery the West has never forgiven Russia — RT Op-Edge

Stop forcing Ukraine into a narrative of Moscow versus Washington | Oliver Bullough | Comment is free | The Guardian

Damn, this article starts off well, but it's conclusions are well off the mark. :-(

Anyone who tells you Ukraine is a battle between Russia and the west is wrong. It is a lazy narrative told by ignorant people, but is helping create a genuine tragedy that we should all be concerned about.

The history of Ukraine's crisis began not in February, with Viktor Yanukovych's flight, but in 1991, with independence. Desperate to break communism, privatisers sold state assets as quickly as they could. They didn't care who got them; they just wanted private property to exist. They thought the new owners would insist on their rights, and thus build a stable society, governed by the rule of law.

It was the west that killed that dream. By moving their wealth offshore – to Austria, the Caribbean or the various UK-owned tax havens – Ukraine's property owners could enjoy western property rights, while benefiting from chaos at home. That turned the privatisers' calculations on their head.

Insiders snatched Ukraine's industries, with particularly powerful business clans in the cities of Donetsk and Dnepropetrovsk. They fought for control of the government in Kiev, but all had the same basic interest: to perpetuate chaos. The longer Ukraine was a mess, the richer they got.

This was not Russia against the west; everyone piled in. Just look at the needless intermediary company created by Dmitry Firtash in 2004 to buy gas from Russia and sell it to Ukraine, making more than $600m a year. RosUkrEnergo was a west-east joint venture: half owned by Russia's Gazprom, half owned via an Austrian bank. Every dollar it earned was a dollar less for ordinary Ukrainians.

Complete story at - Stop forcing Ukraine into a narrative of Moscow versus Washington | Oliver Bullough | Comment is free | The Guardian

The IMF goes to war in Ukraine — RT Op-Edge

The IMF has approved a $17 billion loan to Ukraine. The first $3.2 billion tranche has arrived on Wednesday.

It’s essential to identify the conditions attached to this Mafia-style “loan.” Nothing remotely similar to reviving the Ukrainian economy is in play. The scheme is inextricably linked to the IMF’s notorious, one-size-fits-all “structural adjustment” policy, known to hundreds of millions from Latin America and Southeast Asia to Southern Europe.

The regime changers in Kiev have duly complied, launching the inevitable austerity package – from tax hikes and frozen pensions to a stiff, over 50 percent rise on the price of natural gas heating Ukrainian homes. The “Ukrainian people” won’t be able to pay their utility bills this coming winter.

Predictably, the massive loan is not for the benefit of “the Ukrainian people.” Kiev is essentially bankrupt. Creditors range from Western banks to Gazprom – which is owed no less than $2.7 billion. The “loan” will pay back these creditors; not to mention that $5 billion of the total is earmarked for payments of – what else – previous IMF loans. It goes without saying that a lot of the funds will be duly pocketed – Afghanistan-style – by the current bunch of oligarchs aligned with the “Yats” government in Kiev.

The IMF has already warned that Ukraine is in recession and may need an extension of the $17 billion loan. IMF newspeak qualifies it as “a significant recalibration of the program.” This will happen, according to the IMF, if Kiev loses control of Eastern and Southern Ukraine – something already in progress.

Complete story at - The IMF goes to war in Ukraine — RT Op-Edge

Why US fracking companies are licking their lips over Ukraine | Naomi Klein | Comment is free | The Guardian

The way to beat Vladimir Putin is to flood the European market with fracked-in-the-USA natural gas, or so the industry would have us believe. As part of escalating anti-Russian hysteria, two bills have been introduced into the US Congress – one in the House of Representatives (H.R. 6), one in the Senate (S. 2083) – that attempt to fast-track liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, all in the name of helping Europe to wean itself from Putin's fossil fuels, and enhancing US national security.

According to Cory Gardner, the Republican congressman who introduced the House bill, "opposing this legislation is like hanging up on a 911 call from our friends and allies". And that might be true – as long as your friends and allies work at Chevron and Shell, and the emergency is the need to keep profits up amid dwindling supplies of conventional oil and gas.

For this ploy to work, it's important not to look too closely at details. Like the fact that much of the gas probably won't make it to Europe – because what the bills allow is for gas to be sold on the world market to any country belonging to the World Trade Organisation.

Or the fact that for years the industry has been selling the message that Americans must accept the risks to their land, water and air that come with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in order to help their country achieve "energy independence". And now, suddenly and slyly, the goal has been switched to "energy security", which apparently means selling a temporary glut of fracked gas on the world market, thereby creating energy dependencies abroad.

Complete story at - Why US fracking companies are licking their lips over Ukraine | Naomi Klein | Comment is free | The Guardian