28 April 2014. Here’s What REALLY On Offer in the Ukraine

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1,000 gryvnia is 87 bucks (3,140 Roubles. 96 CAD. 94 AUD. 63 Euros. 57 UK Pounds). That ain’t much for a monthly pension… now, the junta wants people to live on HALF of that. What’s that, you say? What’re Yatsenyuk, Timoshenko, Poroshenko, Turchinov, Avakov, and the Klichkos giving up? Why, nothing at all, you silly wabbit! They’re successful people, and according to the canons of unregulated libertarian crapitalism, that gives them the right to shit all over everyone else with impunity. They don’t have to give up ANYTHING. By the way, the Western press is trumpeting Yanukovich’s boodle… why, his haul wasn’t a tithe of what the above named thieves hauled in, and they’re still doing so (they stole American MREs for the army and sold ’em on the internet!). However, don’t be too harsh on the Ukie oligarchs and their shitbird politco pals… they’re only following the sterling example set by Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Sarah Palin, and Wet Willy Romney. Why, you’d think that there was something WRONG with corruption and whoring for bucks! After all, they’re only following in the footsteps of the US Congress (read your Mark Twain… the rot on the Hill goes WAY back).

The people, not only of the Ukraine, but of the West, too, have a choice. “Do you want to be heroes or do you want to be consumers?” Yes, what do YOU want? Choose well…

BMD

By the way, I took two Russian demotivationals… and put a new text to the top one, and basically translated the text of the second. 

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A View from Moscow by Valentin Zorin… Senseless and Dangerous Address to the Nation: Why Does Obama Consider America Exceptional?

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The US President violated a tacit, but indispensable, rule of diplomacy and politics, namely that “the greatest use of language is to hide our thoughts”. In his recent address to the nation, Barack Obama said that America was an exceptional nation, and, therefore, had exceptional rights. That wasn’t a slip of the tongue in the ardour of eloquence Obama is so fond of shining upon his audience, nor was it a figure of speech. Obama’s statement wasn’t an accidental gaffe. No, the American President said what he meant and what the American political élite think, yet, until now, they’ve avoided saying it aloud. One reason why they avoided doing that may be that, in modern history, at least so far, only one political figure proclaimed the exceptionalism and superiority of one nation. His name was Adolf Hitler. I’m not drawing any direct analogies here. However, the greatest tragedy of the Second World War proved the extreme danger of claims of exceptionalism. Therefore, to pretend not to notice the escapades of the American Head of State would be inexcusable. Even more so as it comes from a country little more than two centuries old, which is a very short time historically… why, it has no grounds whatsoever for such claims.

Those whom the Americans themselves call “robber barons” amassed the accumulated wealth in America. The famous American writer Mark Twain brilliantly expressed their timeless creed… “To get rich… dishonestly if we can, honestly if we must”. Couldn’t help themselves, indeed! Separated by two oceans from the centres of world politics with their endless and bloody wars, the remote young republic stepped out into the forefront after World War I, having grown fabulously rich on that war. Its geographic location saved it from Hitler’s invasion, which left many Old World countries devastated and ravaged. Again, this war showered down gold on America. Such ill-gotten fortunes became the basis of America’s post-war might. The chance to monopolise atomic weapons, secretly produced with allied help, made the heads of the US political establishment go dizzy, bringing on dreams of a Pax Americana. However, subsequent events quickly dashed those hopes to pieces.

Subsequent failures in the post-war military-political strategy devised by Washington sages dealt tangible blows to the self-instilled idea of American exceptionalism. A series of fiascos and defeats… the painful military defeat in Vietnam, the loss of the “backyard” south of the US border, the humiliating failure of the Iraq adventure, the increasingly uncontrollable Middle East, the 2008 downfall of Wall Street giants triggering a global economic crisis, an astronomical national debt of 17 trillion USD (548 trillion Roubles. 17.7 trillion CAD. 18 trillion AUD. 12.6 trillion Euros. 10.7 trillion UK Pounds)… “American Exceptionalism”… where are you? In this awkward situation, there’s nothing else for the Americans to do but to try to not only convince the world, but also themselves, that they are, indeed, exceptional.

That’s senseless and dangerous!

28 September 2013

Valentin Zorin

Voice of Russia World Service

http://rus.ruvr.ru/2013_09_25/Opasnoe-i-besperspektivnoe-zajavlenie-Obami-5739/

 http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_09_28/Futile-and-dangerous-address-to-the-nation-Why-does-Obama-call-America-exclusive-9627/

Russia to Respond to Magnitsky Act

This smells like the same ol’, same ol’… plenty of muck in all the byres, I say…

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RF Gosduma Deputy Aleksei Pushkov, the heads of the Gosduma Committee on Foreign Affairs, declared that if the US Congress approved the so-called Justice for Sergei Magnitsky Act, Russia would respond accordingly. Yesterday, one of the committees of the US House of Representatives approved the draft bill. The Act stipulates visa-issuing and financial sanctions against Russian officials who, in the authors’ opinion, were privy to the death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. Experts interviewed by VOR believed that both chambers of the US Congress would approve the Act.

On 7 June, the majority of Congressmen in the US House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs approved the so-called Magnitsky Act. The initiator of this bill is Senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) {he’s one of the most virulent and biased members of the Israel Lobby… so this is no surprise, along with being one of the most pro-Corporate and anti-transparency whores out there (he’s no leftist, by any measure): editor}. He’s made a list of people who’re, in his opinion, involved in the death of Magnitsky and responsible for violations associated with his arrest {note well that it ISN’T the fruit of an objective formal investigation… it’s just a pol’s unhinged and unfounded speculations and suspicions: editor}. To recap, Sergei Magnitsky died in a Moscow isolation ward in 2009 whilst under investigation on tax charges. Cardin drew up the Magnitsky Act on the basis of a list of officials’ names. The Act would freeze their assets in US banks and deny them US visas.

According to official procedure, after passing the Committee on Foreign Affairs, two other committees must approve the Act. Then, it goes before the entire House of Representatives for a vote. Then, a similar procedure would occur in the US Senate. Political scientist Yuri Korguniuk said, “Considering that elections for the US Congress are to be held in November, it’s obvious that both parties will use the bill to score political points. I can’t see any obstacles to the Congress accepting this Act. In the election campaign, the Democrats want to demonstrate that they’re not encouraging Russia to violate human rights. Some lobbyists could be against the Act stressing that it’d be better not to aggravate relations with Russia. Anyway, I don’t think anyone will listen to them in the heat of the election campaign.”

In March this year, several US Senators with Republican John McCain at the head, spoke in favour of cancelling the Jackson-Vanik Amendment in exchange for the approval of the Magnitsky Act by Congress. Jackson-Vanik, adopted in the 1970s, introduced restrictions on trade with the USSR, and, later, with Russia. The Obama Administration declared that this doesn’t solve anything, and is now negotiating with Cardin and other Senators. Many US businessmen are against the notorious bill, amongst them the President of the influential National Foreign Trade Council, William Reinsch.

Valery Garbuzov, an expert in American studies, said, “However, when one man’s tragedy is used for political purposes, it’s unlikely that the Congress will listen to reason. Obama’s promoting a ‘reset’ of relations, but the Congress has a strong influence on US domestic and foreign policy. Dozens of congressmen have Russophobic views, and they won’t change them in the near future. We should consider this as reality. Actually, one could predict such a response from the USA”.

Yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasised that it could consider the approval of the Magnitsky Act by the US Congress as interference in Russia’s internal affairs. For example, Deputy Pushkov said that Russia could take equivalent measures, such as make lists of Americans who violate the rights of Russian citizens, and refuse them Russian visas {this is a not-so-veiled reference to Viktor Bout and others illegally nicked by the Americans outside of the USA: editor}. At the same time, experts pointed up that it’s too early to forecast the aggravation of Russian-American relations if the Congress approves the Magnitsky Act. Political experts noted that Russia and the USA have common interests on a whole range of topics, such as the preservation of the strategic armaments balance, non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, and providing global security.

8 June 2012

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_06_08/77530131/

Editor’s Note:

Magnitsky was involved with a Langley-affiliated front, “Hermitage Capital Management”. In short, he was a Langley asset in all but name (much like Potapov, when he was at the BBG). That is, America believes that it has the right to place its agents in any country, and that it has the right to interfere in those countries, as it wills. Most states take umbrage at that, quite properly. Could you imagine the brouhaha if the Russian Ambassador to the USA did a tenth of what the USA attempts to pull in Russia? Why, there’d be pandemonium in Congress. If we wouldn’t like it if it were done to us, we shouldn’t be doing it to others, full stop.

Very conveniently, Hermitage Capitol has an incorporation in Guernsey and the Cayman Islands, which means that it’s immune from US government oversight. It sees one of its main functions as exposing political/corporate corruption in Russia. Hell, they don’t have to go that far… just dig around in the District; you’d find beaucoup instances of corporate/political fraud. They’d come up with more corruption on one block of K Street than they’d ever find in the entire Kremlin. Oh, I forgot… all the pols are on K Street’s payroll, so, the lobbyists have a “Get Out of Jail Free” card signed by Cardin and Darrell Issa… bipartisan from both houses, dontcha know! Judged by the standards of the District, the Russian government are a bunch of pikers compared to the US Congress (Mark Twain had a thing or two to say on that score) when it comes to featherbedding, corruption, earmarking, and general raking in of the boodle.

In short, this is typical DC Sturm und Drang… it’s the usual hypocritical posturing and bloviating. Let’s see… how many Congressmen AREN’T millionaires? There’s not many of those, are there? Cardin had best keep his mouth zipped or his manifest ties to Corporate America might become better known. He certainly DOES know corruption (could one say from the inside?)…

BMD

Appendix:

Mark Twain had something to say about the US Congress:

It’s defended official criminals, on party pretexts, until it’s created a US Senate whose members are incapable of determining what crime against law and the dignity of their own body is… they’re so morally blind… and it’s made light of dishonesty till we have, as a result, a Congress which contracts to work for a certain sum and then deliberately steals additional wages out of the public pocket and is pained and surprised that anybody should worry about a little thing like that.

He also said:

Who’re the oppressors? The few… the King, the capitalist, and a handful of other overseers and superintendents. Who’re the oppressed? The many… the nations of the earth; the valuable personages; the workers; they that make the bread that the soft-handed and idle eat.

There… Mark Twain’s verdict on the Benjamin Cardins and John McCains of this world (along with their corporate paymasters)… it’s none too flattering, is it? America dares to “judge” the world… and does worse in its own precincts. They need to muck out their own byre before passing judgement on others. I seem to smell it from here… pass me the jug…

BMD

Late “Epiphany” For Financial Elites

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It seems that Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Economic Forum, learnt some basic tenets of Karl Marx’s economic theory. In particular, he learnt about the widening gap between the rich and the poor. In an interview with Financial Times Deutschland he said, “In its current form, capitalism no longer fits the world around us”. At the same time, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) happened to make the same discovery, the growing gap between the “cream” of society and ordinary people proved to be an unpleasant shock. Many times, analysts warned that there was a stark imbalance in the distribution of wealth. The rich and powerful tried to stay silent on the issue, but now it looks like “the levee has broken”. Today, even currency dealer and billionaire George Soros has joined the critics haunted by apocalyptic nightmares, which he confessed in an interview with Newsweek magazine. Chaos grips Europe, and there are protests in the USA. Furthermore, there’s a spectre of a repressive governmental actions as a reaction of the rich and mighty to the attempts of the impoverished to deprive them of their fortunes.

The explosive contemporary situation, which is terrifying the world’s “powers that be”, didn’t come about yesterday or even the day before yesterday. It has built up for decades. So, why did the élites wake up so late? We asked Ruslan Grinberg, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the head of the Institute for Economic Studies, who told us, “In the period of 1950-70, the Western world adopted ‘capitalism with a human face’, thanks to its standoff with its rival, i.e. the Communist bloc. For the first time, the struggle was on to make life better for everyone. When our system collapsed, it turned out that we had gone back to Adam Smith’s theory of market self-regulation. However, as Karl Marx once said, market forces bring about a situation when the poor find themselves on one end and rich people on the other. Today, Obama speaks out against the rich. In the US, they worked out that the very rich pay only 15 percent of their income in taxes. That’s atrocious. I recall Kennedy’s statement, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”. All these warnings made by Soros and the OECD are symptomatic. Either you start sharing your affluence with others or you’ll get what Soros has warned you about, i.e. street revolts, and, then, dictatorship. That’ll be bad for everyone; there are too many discontented and completely unhappy people. In the last 25 years, credit policy hid the imbalance in the distribution of income, but, now, all of a sudden, all this has come to the fore”.

There’s an ancient saying, “Fate leads the willing and drags along the reluctant”. Maybe, some will find comfort in Mark Twain’s aphorism, “Not everybody gets rich, but most people remain human”. Yet, given there are one billion people on Earth who are struggling to survive on 2 dollars a day (61 Roubles. 1.50 Euros. 1.25 UK Pounds), according to a report by the OECD, and the hundreds of millions of those who find themselves in a dead-end situation, there’s little comfort in it. Besides, Soros admits that the financiers who triggered the crisis weren’t merely mistaken; they did evil.

25 January 2012

Sergei Guk

Voice of Russia World Service

http://english.ruvr.ru/2012/01/25/64623783.html