Het volgende artikel vond ik op het blog van Stan van Houcke en is geschreven door Robert Parry. Het betreft een analyse over de situatie in Oekraïne en hoe e.e.a. zover heeft kunnen komen. Zoals op deze plek al vaker betoogt, het westen heeft o.l.v. de VS de boel op scherp gezet in Oekraïne…..

Parry schrijft dat Oekraïne weleens de volgende ‘failed state’, of ‘mislukte staat’ staat kan worden, m.i. is Oekraïne dat al. Parry beschrijft zelfs de voorwaarden daarvoor. Voorts stelt Parry, dat Putin daar vervolgens de schuld voor zal krijgen, echter ik heb al politici horen zeggen, dat de chaos en enorme corruptie in Oekraïne, te danken is aan de Russen en Putin in het bijzonder………

Uiteraard wordt daar door de afhankelijke reguliere media in één adem bij vertelt, dat Rusland aan de kant van de ‘pro-Russische opstandelingen’ vecht in Oost-Oekraïne, terwijl daar geen splinter bewijs voor is…..

Trouwens een belachelijk verhaal, dat laatste, immers als het Russische leger echt had gevochten in Oost-Oekraïne, was niet alleen Oost-Oekraïne allang gezuiverd van de neonazi’s*, maar was ook Kiev allang bevrijd. Op dat moment zou Porosjenko allang in het buitenland hebben gezeten, waar hij van ‘zijn’ enorme kapitalen zou hebben genoten, kapitalen die hij via corruptie en fraude het Oekraïense volk heeft ontstolen……

Mensen lezen, een uitstekend artikel!!

Reality
Peeks Through in Ukraine

January 6, 2016

Robert
Parry

Exclusive: With
corruption rampant and living standards falling, Ukraine may become
the next failed state that “benefited” from a
neoconservative-driven “regime change,” though the blame will
always be placed elsewhere in this case, on the demonized
Russian President Putin, writes Robert Parry.

Nearly
two years since U.S. officials helped foment a coup in Ukraine partly
justified by corruption allegations the country continues to wallow
in graft and cronyism as the living standards for average Ukrainians
plummet, according to economic data and polls of public attitudes.

Even
the neocon-oriented Wall Street Journal took note of the worsening
corruption in a Jan. 1, 2016 article observing
that “most Ukrainians say the revolution’s promise to replace
rule by thieves with the rule of law has fallen short and the
government acknowledges that there is still much to be done.”

Actually,
the numbers suggest something even worse. More and more Ukrainians
rate corruption as a major problem facing the nation, including a
majority of 53 percent last September, up from 48 percent last June
and 28 percent in September 2014, according to polls by International
Foundation for Electoral Systems.

Meanwhile,
Ukraine’s GDP has fallen in every quarter since the Feb. 22, 2014
putsch that overthrew elected President Viktor Yanukovych. Since
then, the average Ukrainian also has faced economic “reforms” to
slash pensions, energy subsidies and other social programs, as
demanded by the International Monetary Fund.

In
other words, the hard lives of most Ukrainians have gotten
significantly harder while the elites continue to skim off whatever
cream is left, including access to billions of dollars in the West’s
foreign assistance that is keeping the economy afloat.

Part
of the problem appears to be that people supposedly responsible for
the corruption fight are themselves dogged by allegations of
corruption. The Journal cited Ukrainian lawmaker Volodymyr Parasyuk
who claimed to be so outraged by graft that he expressed his fury “by
kicking in the face an official he says owns luxury properties worth
much more than a state salary could provide.”

However,
the Journal also noted that “parliament is the site of frequent
mass brawls [and] it is hard to untangle all the overlapping
corruption allegations and squabbling over who is to blame. Mr.
Parasyuk himself was named this week as receiving money from an
organized crime suspect, a claim he denies.”

Then,
there is the case of Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who is
regarded by top American columnists as the face of Ukraine’s
reform. Indeed, a Wall Street Journal op-ed last
month by Stephen

Sestanovich, a senior fellow at the Council on
Foreign Relations, hailed Jaresko as “a tough reformer” whose
painful plans include imposing a 20 percent “flat tax” on
Ukrainians (a favorite nostrum of the American Right which despises a
progressive tax structure that charges the rich at a higher rate).

Sestanovich
noted that hedge-fund billionaire George Soros, who has made a
fortune by speculating in foreign currencies, has endorsed Jaresko’s
plan but that it is opposed by some key parliamentarians who favor a
“populist” alternative that Sestanovich says “will cut rates,
explode the deficit, and kiss IMF money good-bye.”

Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko.

Ukrainian
Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko.

Yet,
Jaresko is hardly a paragon of reform. Prior to getting instant
Ukrainian citizenship and becoming Finance Minister in December 2014,
she was a former U.S. diplomat who had been entrusted to run a $150
million U.S.-taxpayer-funded program to help jump-start an investment
economy in Ukraine and Moldova.

Jaresko’s
compensation was capped at $150,000 a year, a salary that many
Americans would envy, but it was not enough for her. So, she engaged
in a variety of maneuvers to evade the cap and enrich herself by
claiming millions of dollars in bonuses and fees.

Ultimately,
Jaresko was collecting more than $2 million a year after she shifted
management of the Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF) to her own
private company, Horizon Capital, and arranged to get lucrative
bonuses when selling off investments, even as the overall WNISEF fund
was losing money, according to official records.

For
instance, Jaresko collected $1.77 million in bonuses in 2013,
according to WNISEF’s latest available
filing with
the Internal Revenue Service. In her financial disclosure forms with
the Ukrainian government, she reported earning $2.66 million in 2013
and $2.05 million in 2014, thus amassing a sizeable personal fortune
while investing U.S. taxpayers’ money supposedly to benefit the
Ukrainian people.

It
didn’t matter that WNISEF continued to hemorrhage money, shrinking
from its original $150 million to $89.8 million in the 2013 tax year,
according to the IRS filing. WNISEF reported that the bonuses to
Jaresko and other corporate officers were based on “successful”
exits from some investments even if the overall fund was losing
money. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “How
Ukraine’s Finance Minister Got Rich.”]

Though
Jaresko’s enrichment schemes are documented by IRS and other
official filings, the mainstream U.S. media has turned a blind eye to
this history, all the better to pretend that Ukraine’s “reform”
process is in good hands. (It also turns out that Jaresko did not
comply with Ukrainian law that permits only single citizenship; she
has kept her U.S. passport exploiting a loophole that
gives her two years to show that she has renounced her U.S.
citizenship.)

Propaganda
over Reality

Yet,
as good as propaganda can be especially when the U.S. government and
mainstream media are moving in lockstep reality is not always easily
managed. Ukraine’s continuing and some say worsening corruption
prompted last month’s trip to Ukraine by Vice President Joe Biden
who gave a combination lecture and pep talk to Ukraine’s
parliament.

Vice President Joe Biden.

Vice
President Joe Biden.

Of
course, Biden has his own Ukraine cronyism problem because three
months after the U.S.-backed overthrow of the Yanukovych government, Ukraine’s largest private gas firm, Burisma Holdings, appointed his
son, Hunter Biden, to its board of directors.

Burisma a shadowy Cyprus-based company also lined up well-connected lobbyists, some with ties to Secretary of State John Kerry, including Kerry’s former Senate chief of staff David Leiter, according to lobbying disclosures.

As
Time magazine reported,
“Leiter’s involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team
of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new
board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser
to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter
Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry’s son-in-law,
Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a
private-equity company.”

According to
investigative journalism inside
Ukraine, the ownership of Burisma has been traced to Privat Bank,
which is controlled by the thuggish billionaire oligarch Ihor
Kolomoysky, who was appointed by the U.S.-backed “reform”
regime to be governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, a south-central
province of Ukraine (though Kolomoisky was
eventually ousted from
that post in a power struggle over control of UkrTransNafta,
Ukraine’s state-owned oil pipeline operator).

In his
December speech,
Biden lauded the sacrifice of the 100 or so protesters who died
during the Maidan clashes in February 2014, referring to them by
their laudatory name “The Heavenly Hundred.” But Biden made no
heavenly references to the estimated 10,000 people, mostly ethnic
Russians, who have been slaughtered in the U.S.-encouraged
“Anti-Terror Operation” waged by the coup regime against eastern
Ukrainians who objected to the violent ouster of President
Yanukovych, who had won large majorities in those areas.

Apparently,
heaven is not as eager to welcome ethnic Russian victims of
U.S.-inspired political violence. Nor did Biden take note that some
of the Heavenly Hundred were street fighters for neo-Nazi and other
far-right nationalist organizations.

But
after making his sugary references to The Heavenly Hundred Biden
delivered his bitter medicine, an appeal for the parliament to
continue implementing IMF “reforms,” including demands that old
people work longer into their old age.

Biden
said, “For Ukraine to continue to make progress and to keep the
support of the international community you have to do more, as
well. The big part of moving forward with your IMF program —
it requires difficult reforms. And they are difficult.

“Let
me say parenthetically here, all the experts from our State
Department and all the think tanks, and they come and tell you, that
you know what you should do is you should deal with pensions. You
should deal with — as if it’s easy to do. Hell, we’re
having trouble in America dealing with it. We’re having trouble. To
vote to raise the pension age is to write your political obituary in
many places.

“Don’t
misunderstand that those of us who serve in other democratic
institutions don’t understand how hard the conditions are, how
difficult it is to cast some of the votes to meet the obligations
committed to under the IMF. It requires sacrifices that might
not be politically expedient or popular. But they’re critical
to putting Ukraine on the path to a future that is economically
secure. And I urge you to stay the course as hard as it
is. Ukraine needs a budget that’s consistent with your IMF
commitments.”

Eroding
Support

But
more and more Ukrainians appear to see through the charade in Kiev,
as the poll numbers on the corruption crisis soar. Meanwhile,
European officials seem to be growing impatient with the Ukraine
crisis which has added to the drag on the Continent’s economies
because the Obama administration strong-armed the E.U. into painful
economic sanctions against Russia, which had come to the defense of
the embattled ethnic Russians in the east.

“Many
E.U. officials are fed up with Ukraine,” said one Western official
quoted by the Journal, which added that “accusations of graft by
anticorruption activists, journalists and diplomats have followed to
the new government.”

The
Journal said those implicated include some early U.S. favorites, such
as Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, “whose ratings have plummeted
to single digits amid allegations in the media and among
anticorruption activists of his associates’ corrupt dealings. Mr.
Yatsenyuk has denied any involvement in corruption and his
associates, one of whom resigned from parliament over the controversy
this month, deny wrongdoing.”

Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. (Photo credit: Ybilyk)

Ukraine’s
Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. (Photo credit: Ybilyk)

The
controversy over Yatsenyuk’s alleged cronyism led to an
embarrassing moment in December 2015 when an anti-Yatsenyuk lawmaker
approached the podium with a bouquet of roses, which the slightly
built Yatsenyuk accepted only to have the lawmaker lift him up and
try to carry him from the podium.

In
many ways, the Ukraine crisis represents just another failure of
neocon-driven “regime change,” which has also spread chaos across
the Middle East and northern Africa. But the neocons appear to have
even a bigger target in their sites, another “regime change” in
Moscow, with Ukraine just a preliminary move. Of course, that scheme
could put in play nuclear war.

Taking
Aim

The
Ukraine “regime change” took shape in 2013 after Russian
President Putin and President Barack Obama collaborated to tamp down
crises in Syria and Iran, two other prime targets for neocon “regime
changes.” American neocons were furious that those hopes were
dashed. Ukraine became Putin’s payback.

In
fall 2013, the neocons took aim at Ukraine, recognizing its extreme
sensitivity to Russia which had seen previous invasions, including by
the Nazis in World War II, pass through the plains of Ukraine and
into Russia. Carl Gershman, neocon president of the U.S.-funded
National Endowment for Democracy, cited Ukraine as the “biggest
prize” and a key step toward unseating Putin in Moscow. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “What
the Neocons Want from Ukraine Crisis.”]

Initially,
the hope was that Yanukovych would lead Ukraine into an economic
collaboration with Europe while cutting ties to Russia. But
Yanukovych received a warning from top Ukrainian economists that a
hasty split with neighboring Russia would cost the country a
staggering $160 billion in lost income.

So,
Yanukovych sought to slow down the process, prompting angry protests
especially from western Ukrainians who descended on Maidan square.
Though initially peaceful, neo-Nazi and other nationalist militias
soon infiltrated the protests and began ratcheting up the violence,
including burning police with Molotov cocktails.

Meanwhile,
U.S.-funded non-governmental organizations, such as the Organized
Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (which receives money from
USAID and hedge-fund billionaire George Soros’s Open Society),
hammered away at alleged corruption in the Yanukovych government.

In
December 2013, Nuland reminded Ukrainian business leaders that the
United States had invested $5 billion in their “European
aspirations,” and in an intercepted phone call in early February
2014 she discussed with U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt who Ukraine’s
new leaders would be.

“Yats
is the guy,” Nuland said of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, as she also
disparaged a less aggressive approach by the European Union with the
pithy phrase: “Fuck the E.U.” (Nuland, a former aide to ex-Vice
President Dick Cheney, is the wife of arch-neoconservative ideologue
Robert Kagan.)

Sen.
John McCain also urged on the protests, telling one group of
right-wing Ukrainian nationalists that they had America’s backing.
And, the West’s mainstream media fell in love with the Maidan
protesters as innocent white hats and thus blamed the worsening
violence on Yanukovych. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “NYT
Still Pretends No Coup in Ukraine.”]

Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, speaking to Ukrainian and other business leaders at the National Press Club in Washington on Dec. 13, 2013, at a meeting sponsored by Chevron.

Assistant
Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland, speaking to
Ukrainian and other business leaders at the National Press Club in
Washington on Dec. 13, 2013, at a meeting sponsored by Chevron.

Urging
Restraint

In
Biden’s December 2015 speech to the parliament, he confirmed that
he personally pressed on President Yanukovych the need to avoid
violence. “I was literally on the phone with your former President
urging restraint,” Biden said.

However,
on Feb. 20, 2014, mysterious snipers apparently from buildings
controlled by the far right fired on and killed policemen as well as
some protesters. The bloodshed sparked other violent clashes as armed
rioters battled with retreating police.

Although
the dead included some dozen police officers, the violence was blamed
on Yanukovych, who insisted that he had ordered the police not to use
lethal force in line with Biden’s appeal. But the State Department
and the West’s mainstream media made Yanukovych the black-hatted
villain.

The
next day, Feb. 21, Yanukovych signed an accord negotiated and
guaranteed by three European nations to accept reduced powers and
early elections so he could be voted out of office if that was the
public’s will. However, as police withdrew from the Maidan, the
rioters, led by neo-Nazi militias called sotins, stormed government
buildings on Feb. 22, forcing Yanukovych and other officials to flee
for their lives.

In
the West’s mainstream media, these developments were widely hailed
as a noble “revolution” and with lumps in their throats many
journalists averted their misty eyes from the key role played by
unsavory neo-Nazis, so as not to dampen the happy narrative
(although BBC
was among the few MSM outlets that touched on this inconvenient
reality).

Ever
since, the major U.S. news media has stayed fully on board, ignoring
evidence that what happened was a U.S.-sponsored coup. The MSM simply
explains all the trouble as a case of naked “Russian aggression.

There
were kudos, too, when “reformer” Natalie Jaresko was made Finance
Minister along with other foreign “technocrats.” There was no
attention paid to evidence about the dark underside of the Ukrainian
“revolution of dignity,” as Biden called it.

Though
the neo-Nazis sometimes even
teamed up with Islamic jihadists were
the tip of the spear slashing through eastern Ukraine, their
existence was either buried deep inside stories or dismissed as
“Russian propaganda.”

That
was, in effect, American propaganda and, as clever as it was, it
could only control reality for so long.

Even
though the fuller truth about Ukraine has never reached the American
people, there comes a point when even the best propagandists have to
start modifying their rosy depictions. Ukraine appears to have
reached that moment.

Investigative
reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The
Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest
book, America’s
Stolen Narrative, either
in print
here or
as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).