| Author | Message | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon May 30, 2005 7:30 am Post subject: Get Out of Putin's Face |
| http://amconmag.com/2005_06_06/buchanan.html
June 6, 2005 Issue
Get Out of Putin's Face
by Patrick J. Buchanan
“The greatest geostrategic disaster of the 20th century,” Vladimir Putin has called the collapse of the Soviet Empire. His statement shook Western elites, for we see that collapse as miraculous deliverance, the welcome death of an evil empire built on the denial of God-given rights, an empire with the blood of scores of millions of innocents on its hands.
As President Bush said in Riga, Central and Eastern Europe were not liberated in 1945 by the Red Army. They were liberated in 1989 by the collapse of Soviet Communism:
V-E Day marked the end of fascism, but it did not end oppression. The agreement at Yalta followed in the unjust tradition of Munich and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Once again, when powerful governments negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable. ... The captivity of millions in Central and Eastern Europe will be remembered as one of the greatest wrongs of history.
What Bush did not say was that the men responsible for the sellout of those nations were Churchill and FDR, whose groveling to Stalin at Yalta made Neville Chamberlain look like Davy Crockett at the Alamo.
But if we wish to befriend Russia—and America has no more vital interest —we must try to see the world as Putin sees it. We must try to see Russia from the vantage point of a patriot son who joined his nation's secret service at the apogee of its power, only to see his country collapse, crumble, and fall to pieces in two years.
Before the Reagan era, it was America in retreat all over the world. Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia had fallen to Leninism, as had Ethiopia, Angola, and Mozambique in Africa, Grenada in the Caribbean, Nicaragua in Central America. Eurocommunism was the rage in Europe.
The Red Army, for the first time since World War II, had invaded a nation outside the Soviet bloc: Afghanistan. Iran had overthrown the pro-American Shah. The United States seemed leaderless, paralyzed, unable to effect the release of its diplomats held hostage in Tehran. For a young KGB officer, it must have been a proud and heady moment to be an officer of a world-girdling empire on the march.
But a decade later, not only had the Soviet Empire collapsed, his country had fallen apart. In 1989, the Red Army was ordered out of Afghanistan. A Soviet surface and submarine navy Admiral Gorchakov had created to challenge the U.S. Navy was now rusting and rotting in dry-dock, being sold off for scrap.
Soviet citizens were stranded and isolated in the outposts of Cuba, Africa, and Southeast Asia. In Germany and every nation east, the cry went up: “Russians, Go Home!”
The Russia they went home to was a truncated nation. The Baltic republics had seceded, as had Ukraine. Ten republics from the Caucasus to Central Asia were gone, among them Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Russia no longer had a common border with Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, or Iran.
The defecting republics were soon turning their backs on Moscow and turning to Washington to join NATO. Comecon, the Soviets’ common market, fell apart, and, after a decade of looting by oligarchs and criminals, Russia's economy was roughly the size of Holland's.
Let us ask ourselves: if the Confederate states had won their war of independence, and New England followed them out of the Union, and British troops were now stationed in both breakaway nations—to insure their independence from Washington—how would patriotic Americans have responded in 1865?
Putin's Russia has suffered a strategic disaster like that of Germany at Versailles. Germany, too, was dismembered, divided, stripped of colonies, bankrupted by war reparations, forced to confess full moral guilt for the war. Allied refusal to rectify these injustices led to the fall of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Hitler.
Putin today leads a nation with a horrific history to confront—the truth of 70 years of Leninism and Stalinism—as his nation undergoes an existential crisis. At a time like this, why are we meddling in the internal affairs of neighboring states to dump over Putin's allies? Why are we building bases in former Soviet republics? Is there some threat there to the United States? Why are we in Putin's face about Russia's failure to measure up to Iowa's standards of democracy?
Making Russia a friend was Reagan's great legacy. But you do not keep a friend by constantly reminding him and incessantly rebuking him for the sins he committed while under the influence of some terrible drug.
Let us pray that Mr. Bush will not let his neoconservatives—whose expertise lies in starting wars on countries that have not attacked us and making enemies of countries that wish to befriend us—kick it away.
June 6, 2005 Issue
Whose War?
http://www.amconmag.com/03_24_03/cover.html
Are the Israelis Ready to Start WW 3?
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2004/11/28/are-the-israelis-ready-to-start-ww-3.php
Israeli Origins of Bush II's Iraq War:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/04/26/the-israeli-origins-of-bush-ii-s-war.php
Yukos ex-chief jailed for 9 years
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/4595289.stm
Bush (via his JINSA/CSP/PNAC) Neocon cabal planned Iraq regime change before he became President:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/middle-east-and-asia/2002/12/31/bush-planned-iraq-regime-change-before-becoming-president.php
JINSA Israel firsters: 'IRAQ DOWN, IRAN LEFT TO GO'
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/04/06/jinsa-israel-firsters-iraq-down-iran-left-to-go.php
JINSA ZIONIST OPERATIVE JOHN BOLTON JUST NAMED AS US AMBASSADOR:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/03/07/jinsa-israel-firster-john-bolton-named-as-us-ambassador.php
BREAKING NEWS: IRAN TO RESUME ENRICHMENT/RETURN OF MILITARY DRAFT:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/05/28/breaking-news-iran-to-resume-enrichment-return-of-draft.php
Los Angeles Times: US support of Israel main motivation for 9/11:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/02/19/la-times-u-s-policy-on-israel-key-motive-for-911-attack.php
ISRAEL HAS INFILTRATED THE NSA:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/05/24/the-neocon-power-grab-at-nsa-and-an-attempt-to-stifle-press.php
NANCY (ISRAEL FIRST) PELOSI GIVES A PEP TALK TO AIPAC:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/05/28/nancy-pelosi-gives-a-pep-talk-to-aipac.php
http://nomorewarforisrael.blogspot.com
http://gorillaintheroom.blogspot.com
Last edited by Alpha on Tue May 31, 2005 4:13 pm; edited 2 times in total | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon May 30, 2005 7:54 am Post subject: Soros, Oligarchs and Trotskyites |
| From: "Kevin MacDonald"
Date: Sun May 29, 2005 6:35 am
Subject: Re: Soros, Oligarchs and Trotskyites
It is worth pointing out that the National Endowment for Democracy mentioned for its role in Ukraine is a fiefdom of the neocon left tracing its roots to Max Schachtman. From my article on neocons: Carl Gershman [a Jew] remains head of the NED which supports the U.S.-led invasion and nation-building effort in Iraq.[i] The general line of the NED is that Arab countries should “get over” the Arab-Israeli conflict and embrace democracy, Israel, and the United States. In reporting on talks with representatives of the Jewish community in Turkey, Gershman frames the issues in terms of ending anti-Semitism in Turkey by destroying Al Queda; there is no criticism of Israel its policies in producing hatred throughout the region.[ii] During the 1980s, the NED supported non-violent strategies to end apartheid in South Africa in association with the A. Philip Randolph Institute headed by longtime civil rights activist and SD/USA neocon Bayard Rustin.[iii] Critics of the NED, such as Rep. Ron Paul (R. Tex) have complained that the NED “ is nothing more than a costly program that takes US taxpayer funds to promote favored politicians and political parties abroad.”[iv] KM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[i] C. Gershman, “A democracy strategy for the Middle East.” http://www.ned.org/about/carl/dec1203.html ; Dec. 12, 2003.
[ii] C. Gershman, “After the bombings: My visit to Turkey and Istanbul’s Jewish community.” http://www.ned.org/about/carl/dec2703.html Dec. 27, 2003.
[iii] Massing, 1987.
[iv]Paul 2003.
----- Original Message -----
From: james sanchez
Sent: Saturday, May 28, 2005 10:17 PM
Subject: [jacobandesau] Soros, Oligarchs and Trotskyites
(Here is the full text of an article from the Workers World, the
newspaper of the Trotskyite Workers World Newspaper. The article has a
lot of good information about Soros, the Oligarchs and the coup in
Ukraine.)
==========
(abstract)
Fred Goldstein. "Subversion in Name of 'Free and Fair Elections': Stage
Set for New Crisis in Ukraine", in Workers World, December 16, 2004. p.
8.
The US and European imperialists and their stooges inside Ukraine have
won a political victory, gaining the opportunity for their favored
candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, to win in a new election. Washington, the
European Union and hordes of imperialist-sponsored NGO operatives have
been working feverishly to overturn the election of Viktor Yanukovich on
the grounds of "widespread fraud."
Whatever fraud may have occurred in the presidential election runoff on
11/21/2004, freedom and fairness have nothing to do with why the
imperialist world is unanimously calling for new elections. If their
object were free elections, they would raise a world outcry against the
fraudulent elections being prepared by the Bush administration in Iraq.
where the people are being ordered to participate in a US-staged
election under the gun of 150000 occupation troops - an event so outside
all international law that everyone connected with it, including the UN
staff, should be prosecuted. And what about when US Marines nullified a
free and fair election in Haiti by kidnapping and overthrowing Pres.
Jean-Bertrand Aristide? What about Saudi Arabia, guardian of Western oil
interests, where there are no elections at all? Where is the outcry?
The political crisis in Ukraine is about US and European finance capital
taking over the country and tightening a cordon sanitaire around Russia.
Campaign an 'American Creation'
In a polemic against Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister
Sergey Lavrov about Western interference in Ukraine, Secretary of State
Colin Powell declared, "What we have seen isn't interfering in
democracy. What we have seen is the international community coming
together to support democracy."
In fact, Washington has played a major role in manipulating the
political process and institutions in an attempt to attain the election
result it wants. It pressured the Ukrainian Supreme Court to declare the
election invalid and it got the parliament to go along with a new
election. This pressure comes as a climax to widespread and protracted
imperialist preparation for a political and economic takeover.
Ian Tailor wrote in the London Guardian on 11/26/2004 that "the campaign
is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived
exercise in Western branding and mass marketing.... Funded by and
organized by the US government, deploying US consultancies, pollsters,
diplomats, the two big American parties and US non-government
organizations, the campaign was first used in Europe in Belgrade in 2000
to beat Slobodan Milosevic at the ballot box. Richard Miles, the US
ambassador in Belgrade, played a key role. And by last year, as US
ambassador in Tbilisi, he repeated the trick in Georgia, coaching
Mikhail Saakashvili in how to bring down Eduard Shevardnadze."
In Minsk, the capital of Belarus, US Amb. Michael Kozak, a former Latin
American operative who worked on subversion in Nicaragua, ran a similar
operation in an unsuccessful attempt to oust the government of Alexander
Lukashenko.
When the television screen flashes pictures of crowds around government
buildings in Kiev, Ukraine's capital, it is vital to know that these
crowds, many of them made up of the middle classes that have benefited
or want to benefit from privatization and the formation of thousands of
small businesses, have been organized by political operatives in
Washington, Wall Street and the capitals of Europe.
CIA, NED, USAID and Soros
Institutions funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, aptly
described by Michel Chossudovsky as "the civilian arm of the CIA," have
virtually overrun Ukraine in the past decade. "In Venezuela," he adds,
"the NED was also behind the failed coup against Pres. Chavez and in
Haiti it funded the opposition parties and NGOs in the US-sponsored coup
d'etat and deportation of Pres. Aristide." (www.globalresearch.ca)
This electoral overturn has been long in the making. The NED and US
Agency for International Development fund an NGO called the National
Democratic Institute (NDI) that has been in Ukraine since 1993, two
years after the bourgeois government in Kiev declared its independence
following the collapse and breakup of the Soviet Union - a historic
setback for socialism under the pressure of imperialism.
For the first election in 1994, the NDI organized a group called the
Committee of Voters of the Ukraine (CVU). This coalition of bourgeois
forces fielded 4000 election monitors in the parliamentary and
presidential election. After the elections, in 1995, it went around the
country promoting privatization. By 1997 it had 17000 election monitors
ready. Now it has 18000 volunteers and 160 branches throughout Ukraine.
Albright and Woolsey, Too
And who heads this organization? Madeleine Albright, former US secretary
of state under Bill Clinton - a fierce advocate of he destruction of
Yugoslavia, architect of the takeover of Serbia, and defender of the
genocidal sanctions against Iraq.
Another principal institution operating in Ukraine is Freedom House.
Along with NDI, it has organized election monitors and trained campaign
operatives. Heading its board of trustees is James Woolsey, a former
director of the CIA. Woolsey is a hawk on Iraq and part of the
Cheney-Rumsfeld faction that tried to link al-Qaeda and 9/11/2001 to
Saddam Hussein. Freedom House is partly funded by George Soros's Open
Society. Soros, whose wealth is estimated at around $10 billion, has
played a key role in Ukraine. In 1992 he made a billion dollars and
became persona non grata in Britain when his speculation caused the
collapse of the pound. He has a vast corporate empire and played a
personal role in consolidating the capitalist counter-revolution in the
former socialist countries of Eastern Europe.
Ask in an interview on 3/3/2004, "Could you name the sum allocated for
your programs in Ukraine in 2004?" he replied, "The budget is $5
million. Another million is supposed to be allocated for grants.... It's
quite possible that in the end we will spend about $8 million."
(www.civicua.org/soros/en/index.html)
Another key institution funding programs in Ukraine is the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. It is endowed by Boeing, Citigroup,
the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, General Electric and
the Andrew Mellon Foundation, among others. It is also endowed by Yukos,
the Russian oil company whose billionaire owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
tried to sell a huge chunk of it to US oil companies and is now in jail.
Jonathan Steele pointed out in the London Guardian of 11/26/2004: "In
Ukraine, Yushchenko got the western nod, and floods of money poured in
to groups which support him, ranging from the youth organization Pora to
various opposition websites.... Intervening in foreign elections under
the guise of an impartial interest in helping civil society, has become
the run-up to the postmodern coup d'etat, the CIA sponsored third world
uprising of Cold War days adapted to the post-Soviet conditions...."
Steele puts his finger on the essential factor in the present crisis.
"Ukraine has been turned into a geostrategic matter not by Moscow but by
the US, which refuses to abandon its cold war policy of encircling
Russia and seeking to pull every former Soviet republic to its side. The
EU should have none of this."
It is clear that the foundations and the NGOs are basically an extension
of the US capitalist state, but they allow corporations and former
government officials to carry on subversion in open relationships that
would be more difficult to execute within the formal framework of the
government. Different factions of the ruling class get to promote their
policies outside of, but in tandem with, the government. The State
Department and the CIA have been working on the subversion of the
Ukraine since long before the USSR broke up. The present campaign is
just a continuation of that policy.
It is a delicate matter, because US imperialism needs Russia's support
or acquiescence in the war in Iraq, pressuring North Korea, and in
keeping military bases and an oil presence in Central Asia and the
Caucasus. But at the same time, it wants to reduce Russia to complete
dependency, fomenting pro-Wall Street factions inside Russia to
challenge the bourgeois grouping of Pres. Vladimir Putin and nationalist
elements. The ultimate goal is a takeover of Russia.
Not the Old Cold War
The term Cold War has been used to describe the present crisis. This
term has to be analyzed from a Marxist point of view. When the USSR
collapsed, the Cold War, in its fundamental meaning, was over. It had
been a class war between two irreconcilable social systems. The USSR was
based upon the nationalized means of production, a planned economy and a
monopoly on foreign trade. It was a socialist system based on production
for social use, not for profit.
For a variety of reasons, all of which can ultimately be traced to its
protracted isolation as a socialist state, war, and the poverty of its
economic foundation, it was defeated by imperialism. The first and most
crucial phase of that defeat was the destruction of socialist property
relations and the establishment of capitalist relations, wage slavery,
exploitation and private property - together with national oppression,
poverty, unemployment and all the attendant evils that workers suffer
under capitalism.
But for imperialism, simply overturning property relations and
establishing a capitalist class in Russia and the former republics of
the USSR is hardly the end of the process. After overturning the
economic foundation, the ultimate goal of the giant monopolies is to
seize control of the superstructure, that is, to completely take over
the political systems in order to open the doors to thoroughgoing
imperialist exploitation.
That is what is behind the crisis in Ukraine and is their goal with
respect to Russia. Wall Street and Washington want to go back completely
to the days before the working class, led by Lenin and the Bolshevik
Party, seized power in Russia. Tsarist Russia had been both an
imperialist country, with respect to its colonies, and a colony of
Western imperialism: French, German, British and, to a lesser extent at
that time, US capital.
In the struggle over turning back the clock, Ukraine is a vital element.
The Russian government, representing the new gangster capitalist class
there, which enriched itself by seizing the wealth built up under
socialism by the workers and peasants, has been struggling to hold back
the invasion of Western imperialism - as have sections of the Ukrainian
bourgeoisie. In 9/2003 they came together to form the Common Economic
space, composed of Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan. With a
combined population of 225 million, it is intended as a counterweight to
the European Union and US corporations.
Yushchenko and his group, Our Ukraine, declared their intention to
destroy the CES should they be elected. This is a major factor behind
the anti-Yanukovich agitation of the Western imperialists. The CES is an
attempt to reconstitute, on a bourgeois basis, a Russian-centered
economic bloc that would ultimately reduce and eliminate tariffs,
develop a common tax policy and work towards economic coordination. This
is anathema to the imperialists, both economically and in terms of the
geopolitical struggle. Their solution is to make Ukraine "European" -
that is, a slave of Western capital. That would open the door to forcing
russia down the same path, back to the days of being a neocolony.
Right now, the Ukrainian oligarchs and bourgeois groupings around Pres.
Kuchma and Yanukovich are retreating, as is Putin of Russia. They are
selling out the interests of not just the domestic bourgeoisie, but of
the working class and peasantry, who will suffer most under a complete
imperialist takeover.
The only way Russia and the republics were able to fight back against
world capital was to organize a socialist republic with the working
class in power. The Ukrainian workers of the Donetz basin and the
industrial regions have every right to oppose the bourgeois and petty
bourgeois crowds and politicians in Kiev, who want to sell the country
to the West. But the answer does not lie in Yanukovich, who is a tool of
the oligarchs, nor does it lie in Putin. The only way Ukrainian workers
can stave off the further encroachment of Western capital is to fight
their own capitalists and reestablish a socialist Ukraine.
========== | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Mon May 30, 2005 7:35 pm Post subject: a kleptocracy - looting the country with the support of US |
| http://www.russians.org/ann_wndr.htm
The Wanderer Interviews Anne Williamson
"Russian" criminal class - a kleptocracy - looting the country with the support of the US Gov.
PAUL LIKOUDIS
Journalist Anne Williamson, an authority on both Russia and international finance, testified before the House Banking Committee Sept. 21st, and provided a disturbing picture of how American taxpayers have funded and empowered a new "Russian" criminal class - a kleptocracy - that is looting the country with the support of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.
Her testimony raised so many intriguing questions, The Wanderer sought her out for an interview, which was conducted by telephone with the journalist from her New York City home.
+ + +
Q. Would you introduce yourself to the Wanderer's readers? What is your academic background? How long have you worked as a journalist in Russia? How is that you became interested in what we might call "the money question"?
A. I am a native Coloradan who grew up on a cattle ranch, and because my brothers didn't have much to do with me, I read.
My parents had a wonderful library and I began a wonderful romance with Russian literature. I determined I would eventually read the literature in the original language, but I did not have an opportunity to do that until I attended college.
I am not an academic. I have a B.A. in history from Northwestern University, where my interest in literature expanded to history and other matters. I actually visited the Soviet Union the first time in 1971 and I hated it. I dropped the subject, and did other things in life.
For some reason, I again became interested in Russia in the '80s, and so I got out the language books and started reading. Lo and behold, a fellow named Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, and for once I was 15 seconds ahead of my times.
When the Soviet Union opened up, American journalism was not ready to cover the story. There was a very small contingent of American correspondents in Moscow, living in the insular communities of foreign embassies, and relying on translations of the news passed on by official sources.
As a profession, there was a group of people - journalists - unprepared to deal with this large country that was just starting to open up. And so, I had a real opportunity to start as a journalist with The Wall Street Journal.
Initially, I would go over with the Journal on three-month stints, and wrote about theater, art, and film, and I also did some work for the editorial page. Then I began to write for many other publications. There was a demand for information, so I worked for everybody from Art and Antiques to Spy magazine, and The New York Times.
Then, when the story began to change from a cultural story to an economic story, my focus changed too.
When I first encountered people from the World Bank in the autumn of 1991 at the swank newly opened Metropol Hotel in Moscow, I realized there was going to be a disaster. These people were totally wrong, had totally incorrect ideas they were going to apply to this country.
Here, we had what is probably the most naturally wealthy country on earth, center of the last world empire, collapsing. History tells us that all empires are looted when they collapse, and that was a reasonable expectation for the Soviet Union as well; but what was different was that, to my knowledge, this was the first time in history that the alleged victor, the U.S., decided to fund the looters, as led by [Boris] Yeltsin, who is and was a usurper, not a democrat.
Q. Why were you invited to give testimony to the House Banking Committee, and who invited you?
A. I was invited by the chairman, Jim Leach. Oddly enough, I am one of the few people who knows the entire story - at least as much as can be known by one person - from the beginning up to now, because we have suffered a lot of propaganda on this story.
I was a person who knew the names, the deals, and the scandals.
Q. Describe for Wanderer readers what it was like for you to give your testimony to the committee, and to listen to the other expert witnesses describing how the Harvard Institute for International Development and the U.S. government set up a Russian kleptocracy.
A. Just the experience of testifying is interesting. Most people would be appalled if they knew how disorganized hearings are. This is not reflective of the chairman, but of how large our government has grown. You have the problem of this big beast that can't keep its eye on every pie it has its finger in, so it is a mad scramble for them to prepare for the hearings.
I was invited to prepare a number of questions for other witnesses, and I spent a lot of time doing that. Unfortunately, not all these questions were asked, because congressmen are not prepared to follow up - again, a reflection of the size of our government and the number of subjects these people have to be familiar with.
Q. When you and the other experts were testifying, did you perceive any interest or outrage among the banking committee members at the catalog of crimes recited, or was it just a ho-hum, routine affair?
A. No. It wasn't routine. On the Democratic side, we had a lot of simple-minded questions. After my panel, which included former KGB agent Yuri Shvets, who was sitting to my right, and who had been stationed in Washington in the late '80s, one of the Democratic congressmen from Texas asked, "Well, Mr. Shvets, did you ever expect in all your life that would be testifying to the United States Congress?"
It was time to get out the democracy violins. The Democrats are trying to save the administration with the lines, "Russia didn't blow up," "We have elections," "There has been progress," "It is not all a failure," "What else could we have done?"
This is the mythology they are trying to put over on the administration's policies.
On the Republican side, you did have some good questioning, a sense of outrage, but these men do not have enough of the details to press the case. Additionally, I wonder if they even had the details, they would pursue it. This imperial Washington is jealous of its power and both parties want to keep in place the institutions and funding to pursue empire.
Q. Are you surprised the press did not publicize your testimony or that of the other critics of US/IMF financial policies in Russia?
A. Not at all. The press has misled the public throughout this decade about our policies and their results. If any institution is most culpable, it's not the politicians who are just doing what we'd expect, it's the media.
The press has badly let down American liberties because citizens can only respond to the information they have. The media in the '90s have become far more concerned with the protection of power than with citizens' rights and liberties.
Q. You said in your testimony that the affairs of the Harvard Institute for International Development are now being probed by a grand jury in Boston. What's the story there?
A. The Harvard Institute for International Development [HIID] succeeded at one thing: privatizing our bilateral aid program.
This was done by a group of Harvard-connected political appointees within the Clinton administration in late 1992, early 1993. Larry Summers was at the heart of that, along with other appointees: Carlos Tasqual, from the National Security Agency; Thomas Dines, at USAID; and various other figures who formed something called the Steering Committee.
This committee recommended, and AID [the Agency for International Development] quickly agreed, to give HIID the contract to manage our aid program. AID agreed because they had never dealt before with an industrial country, didn't have Russian experts or the appropriate personnel mix to determine the program with confidence.
Without competition for this AID contract, which is contrary to government rules for public grants, HIID got control of hundreds of millions of dollars of our money. HIID itself received $55 million for their operations; but they controlled the delivery of hundreds of millions to Western contractors on Russian programs.
Jonathan Hay, head of HIID in Moscow, and Andre Schliefer, a protege of Larry Summers, in Cambridge, were in charge of the whole project.
Hay had been working closely with various individuals presented as "eager young reformers" to the American public. American policy became the bribing and support policy for preselected figures in Russian society. American taxpayer money made these people significant, and by targeting the money at them and them alone, our policy silenced and frustrated other voices for reform, other legitimate actors.
Over the life of this arrangement, HIID got into voucher privatization, the development of the equities market, legal reform, and other matters. To do this, they set up artificial institutions - the Russian Privatization Center, the Resource Secretariat, the Institute for a Law-Based Economy, etc. The Russian SEC and these institutions had as their heads those Russians we had targeted to be the new ruling class we hoped to create.
These institutions were funded by foreign aid, some of which was USAID, World Bank, individual governments (Sweden, et al.). The important point is those loans are the obligation of the Russian people to pay back, but the money went to individuals to control and spend, and they misspent it.
For instance: A fund was set up by the World Bank called Pallada, which was to manage a percentage of funds that was shaved from each privatization and pooled. These funds were to compensate Russian victims of security fraud. A $5 million grant was given to Pallada to manage these funds, and to deal with redemptions. The American and Russian management simply consumed those funds on salaries, benefits, bonuses, and never paid a single claim. When this came to the attention of the Russian Duma, they then began paying claims.
But the upshot was that this Pallada was sold to State Street Financial in Boston, but the American taxpayers did not receive the sale price. Instead, individual players in Moscow got money, people like Jonathan Hays' girlfriend, Beth Hebert.
Also, through another institution, the First Russian Depository, these Americans and their Russian allies profited personally. Andre Schliefer's wife, Nancy Zimmerman, a former employee of Goldman Sachs, who operated a firm called the New Era Fund, was utilizing the Institute for Law-Based Economy (ILBE) for her private business regarding Russian bonds.
In a word, all these artificial institutions were set up as personal fiefdoms for the HIID people and their Russian allies.
The Boston grand jury is investigating the conversion of taxpayer assets into the personal property of these Harvard-connected people, along with their dealings in the Russian bond market.
This investigation has been going on for two years, and I have been told by one lawyer in the Department of Justice, that the Clintons understood very well what they were doing when they fired all U.S. attorneys after the first inauguration: Every U.S. attorney understood they are political appointees and they are never to bring a case against the Clintons.
The main point to keep in mind about this grand jury is the length of time it has been seated and that no indictments have been filed, even though we know, for example, that Pallada was sold to State Street for between $2 and $10 million.
Q. Can you give a brief picture of what life is like for ordinary Russians today, after nearly a decade of U.S. financial aid? What are the dominant features of Russian economic, political, and moral life?
A. Essentially, whatever stability the IMF has claimed it brought to Russia, prior to August 1998, such as a "stable ruble," was done at the expense of the wages and pensions of the Russian people, which went unpaid.
That's how the Russian government met IMF guidelines. The IMF says it was trying to create free markets; but in free markets, labor receives its compensation. This puts the lie to the IMF's claim that that is the purpose of their work: to create open, free, and stable markets.
People are very poor, and totally alone. All their institutions have been eliminated or ruined. There is nowhere the Russian people can look for succor. The legal system does not work; the political actors are unaccountable; the police are considered a threat; you see large groups of young women turning to prostitution in the villages, which was never seen before.
All finance, money, cash, and benefits are flowing to Moscow, and are not being redistributed back to the communities. Wealth of every kind is going abroad, leaving the people totally destitute. This is how the system of plunder is designed in Russia today.
Q. In your testimony, you lament that, under the Clinton administration, the U.S. Treasury Department has usurped the role of the State Department in setting foreign policy. In your opinion, what is wrong with this, and why should Americans care?
A. Our foreign policy since the founding of the Federal Reserve System is best understood as a function of the dollar. Our money today is a government-funded pyramid scheme, which survives only as long as the base expands. Therefore, our foreign policy at its very heart is tied to the foreign expansion of the dollar.
The dollar has to retain integrity as a paper fiat currency because that is the source of our federal government's power and control over us in the most vibrant economy on earth.
Our foreign policy is succeeding only by killing Eastern European Christians, wars in Iraq and Sudan....
Throughout the '90s, broad money has increased 11% per annum. We have been exporting that excess liquidity to emerging markets. We collapsed many of these economies because these countries didn't have the cultural and legal framework for the volumes of money they were receiving from the United States and the West.
They collapsed from the economic irrationality of all this; this threw hundreds of millions of people back into poverty; then we began to export this excess liquidity through IMF bailouts, which enabled the IMF to intrude even more deeply into these national governments. The IMF takes power in the central banks, where it acts as GOSPLAN, or central planner.
Now, our policy is to export inflation through war. We have over $50 billion in Serbia. How much have we spent in Iraq? What has happened as a result of all this? Commodity prices have collapsed around the world, beginning in Asia; this rolled Russia, which is so dependent on exports of its natural resources; Brazil has to have a bailout; Mexico will need another; China will devalue; Japan has not been cured.
The point is, these nations are trying to export their way back to health. We're receiving the exports, and our manufacturers cannot compete on price with these goods. This is deflation. Deflation is slowly moving toward us and it will arrive. We've seen the first signals, the sell-off of foreign holdings.
Q. Also in your testimony, you speak of the damage caused by the Federal Reserve to this country in language seldom heard since the 1930s, blaming it for the social, cultural, political, and moral decline of the nation. What is your inspiration for this analysis, and why do you raise this issue at the risk of endangering your career and credibility?
A. First, I raise this issue because I believe it is the truth and it is not difficult to build a strong argument in favor of my statement.
Money goes so deep to the core of a country's culture and economy. The Federal Reserve System, by getting control of that, has really gotten control of the United States through the creation of booms and busts. With a boom like the one that is going on now, the Fed fools the population. It can quiet the population's natural suspicions; and when the bust comes, the people look to government for respite, which is happy to respond because that means more debt and more profits for the Fed.
Americans are so poorly educated in schools, especially in economics, that the American people are successfully manipulated by the government. So, of course, a person like myself discussing the nature and role of money and the hijacking of our money by the Fed must be ostracized. You can't have truth tellers on this issue highlighted.
So I shouldn't be surprised that you never heard of me before I gave my testimony in Congress.
There is one person on the banking committee, Cong. Ron Paul, who understands these issues perfectly. He is a very strong advocate on sound money; yet he is considered a fringe person by the other committee members.
Q. In your opinion, what is the most important thing Americans should know about their money and the way the national and global economies are managed?
A. Americans' money is not a reflection of value or true economic worth, but rather a reflection of the interests of political and financial elite who are the creators of the money. And it is in the interest of this group of people - politicians and bankers - to create public debt.
The dollar today is a debt instrument, not a unit of enduring economic value.
Q. Patrick Buchanan is taking a drubbing for his new book, A Republic, Not an Empire, for saying Americans should question the way the international financial elites are tying America down "like Gulliver" with foreign alliances and military agreements, and this will inevitably lead to war.
Have you read Pat's book, and if so, do you agree or disagree with his analysis?
A. I have not read Mr. Buchanan's book, but his argument is one with which I am familiar, and it is a legitimate argument to make. What's interesting to me is that the commentary regarding the book does not address his argument, but Buchanan personally, and is composed mostly of ad hominem attacks.
I observed at the Banking Committee hearings inadvertent support for Buchanan's ideas, that is, that by essentially allowing the Yeltsin government to loot Russia and plunder our aid money, NATO's expansion was ensured; and this was a fortunate tradeoff.
I am at a loss to understand how the expansion of NATO serves American interests or liberties.
In Russia and Eastern Europe, the view of America is of a power bent on world domination. This notion of American domination is frightening to the rest of the world.
Q. You have a new book coming out soon on Russia. Can you tell us about it?
A. The book is Contagion: The Betrayal of Liberty, Russia, and the United States in the 1990s. This book can be read in two ways, either as a discussion of the international financial system as it exists today, with Russia as the latest demonstration project; or as a history of Russian reform under Boris Yeltsin.
The book was contracted to Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, a prominent New York literary house, in the winter of 1993. I could not complete the book on time, because it's hard to write about a moving target. The publisher took advantage of this to break the contract. When the book was completed in the autumn of 1997, the publisher refused to read the completed manuscript.
That manuscript said, stated outright, that the Russian bond market would collapse before December 1998. It collapsed in August. I point this out because the book could have been on the market before the collapse, and the publisher and I could have done very well.
Yet, the publisher maintains there is no market for this book.
Since 1997, I have simply updated the book with new evidence, and this evidence sustains my analysis and my arguments.
The book has gone from publisher to publisher, some of whom have sat on it for five months, then they back out. My own agent has concluded the book is too threatening to the interests of publishers. I have even been told by one editor of the most prominent academic publishing house, and I'm quoting, "Your book is critical of government policy. This house does not publish books critical of government policy."
That letter was signed by Herb Addison of Oxford Publishing.
I have been told that [international financial wizard] George Soros purchased my contract from Farrar Strauss, since I trace many of his activities in Russia; and I can tell you those activities were not philanthropic. Also, I know an editor at The New York Times who copied my manuscript without permission.
The New York Times editor then leaked information from the book to at least one of the book's subjects. I know this to be true because that subject then contacted an associate whom the subject believed mistakenly was the source of the information that the subject found so upsetting and threatened this associate with legal action! It was quite outrageous as this person never was a source for anything in my book.
No matter what publishers decide, this book will be available to the public before Christmas. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2005 6:53 pm Post subject: Khodorkovsky gets 9 years |
| Forwarded:
It's interesting that the only US government official quoted in the BBC report is Holocaust activist Tom Lantos. Here's a letter to the editor of the NY Post from Alison Weir of If Americans Knew on the convictions:
To the Editor:
The Post used to be one of the best sources on Russia’s “Oligarchs,” the men whose insider trading, ostentatious corruption, and ruthless armies led to ordinary Russians’ life savings disappearing in weeks and widespread misery throughout the country. While these men have often been compared to America’s robber barons, this appellation actually gives them more credit than they deserve, since the robber barons at least created companies, while these men only stole them.
It is disturbing, therefore, to see the Post, rather than reporting itself on this topic, instead carrying an Associated Press report,“Russian Oil Tycoon Sentenced to Nine Years," that is so breathtakingly blatant in its bias. The article contains 15 paragraphs on "tycoon" Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s defense and one paragraph on his criminality. While there have been massive demonstrations against Khodorkovsky representing the vast majority of Russians, AP devotes three paragraphs to small “gatherings” in his favor.
It is easy to empathize with journalists’ difficulties in writing about Khodorkovsky – after all, Forbes Moscow editor Paul Klebnikov was killed last summer following his series of exposes on the oligarchs. Nevertheless, it is important for Post readers to be accurately and fully informed on the complex struggle over control of Russia’s oil. Rather than providing some of the many important facts on this struggle – for example, that Henry Kissinger has been a prime lobbyist for Khodorkovsky and that Khodorkovsky’s oil shares are now in the hands of renowned banker Lord Jacob Rothschild – the Post gave us Khodorkovsky’s defense brief. We need more.
Sincerely,
Alison Weir
Executive Director
If Americans Knew
914 Westwood Blvd. #235
----- Original Message -----
Subject: Khodorkovsky gets 9 years
Yukos ex-chief jailed for 9 years
Former Yukos chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky has been jailed for nine
years after being found guilty of six charges including tax evasion.
But his ordeal may not be at an end as Russian prosecutors have said
they will soon bring fresh charges against him.
The news came as Mr Khodorkovsky was found guilty of six of the seven
charges of tax evasion, fraud and embezzlement he had faced.
Meanwhile, his lawyers said he would take his appeal to Europe.
As well as appealing against the ruling at Russia's Supreme Court, Mr
Khordokovsky will take the case to the European Court of Human
Rights, they added.
US President George W Bush said that he had expressed concerns to
Moscow that Mr Khodorkovsky was judged guilty before even standing
trial.
He added that the US would watch the case as it continued.
Hard time
Mr Khodorkovsky is actually expected to serve seven-and-a-half years
in jail as the court said his prison term should be reduced because
of the amount of time served on remand since his arrest in 2003.
He will serve his time at a medium security prison camp.
But in a statement read out by his lawyer he pledged to continue his
public activities behind bars.
It added he would set up "charitable foundations" to support Russian
poetry and philosophy and set up a union for Russian inmates.
It seems that this political trial before a kangaroo court has come
to a shameful conclusion
Tom Lantos, US Congressman
During the 11-month trial, the court did drop one charge against Mr
Khodorkovsky - relating to his 1994 acquisition of fertiliser company
Apatit - as it fell outside the Russian justice system's 10-year
statute of limitations.
His business partner Platon Lebedev was also jailed for nine years on
the same charges; a third co-defendant, Andrei Krainov, was given a
five-and-a-half year suspended sentence.
'Harsh' sentence
Mr Khodorkovsky and Mr Lebedev were also ordered to pay 17bn roubles
(£330m; $600m) in taxes and penalties.
"I think [the sentence] is a testament to Basmanny justice," Mr
Khodorkovsky told the court. Basmanny, the name of the court where
the Yukos hearings began, has become a byword among his supporters
for corrupt justice.
MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY
1963 - Born in Moscow to factory-working parents
1980s - Sets up computer and software business with fellow students
at Mendeleeva Chemical Technical Institute
1987 - Founds Menatep bank
1994 - Buys fertiliser company Apatit at auction
1995 - Buys oil company Yukos for $300m, with Menatep assuming $2bn
in debt
October 2003 - Arrested on charges of embezzlement, tax evasion and
fraud
June 2004 - Court case begins
May 2005 - Found guilty of six of seven charges and sentenced to nine
years in jail
Commentators said that the sentence - just one year lower than the
maximum that could be imposed - was a harsh one.
Outside the court, US Democrat congressman Tom Lantos said: "It seems
that this political trial before a kangaroo court has come to a
shameful conclusion.
"It is obvious that the conclusion of the trial was pre-determined
politically and Mr Khodorkovsky could have been left at home and the
trial could have been conducted without the prison circus."
Politically motivated
Mr Khodorkovsky's supporters have claimed that the trial was
politically motivated punishment from the Kremlin in response to his
financing of pro-Western opposition political parties.
"The sentence had to be long enough so Khodorkovsky was in jail in
2008, at the next presidential elections," political analyst Marsha
Lipman at the Carnegie Moscow Centre added.
"There will be a lot of criticism in the West, no question about it."
However the Russian prosecutor's office "categorically denied" that
the case was politically motivated.
"Specific serious crimes were committed and have been proved.
Astronomical sums were stolen," spokeswoman Natalia Vishnyakova said.
Countersuit
The charges against him go back to Russia's hasty privatisation
programme in the 1990s under which Mr Khodorkovsky was able to form
Yukos, formerly Russia's largest oil company.
Since Mr Khodorkovsky has been behind bars, Russian authorities have
broken up Yukos after hitting it with a bill for $28bn in back taxes.
Yukos, meanwhile, has sued the Russian government for 324bn roubles,
arguing that it is due compensation for the break-up, which saw its
main production unit sold off to a competitor.
The company says the break-up will eventually ruin it.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/4595289.stm | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
