3.27.2014

The IMF's Structural Adjustment Noose Tightens Around the Throats of Old and Poor Ukrainians

Yats is now taking an $18B 'loan' from IMF that will turn Ukraine into Greece

Today's news that the IMF is 'loaning' Ukraine $18B to forestall a sovereign debt bankruptcy is, as usual, being touted a 'good thing' in the compliant western media. In reality it's exactly the opposite. The IMF's structural adjustment requirements, the same requirements that have strangled Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and many others and are the focus of Naomi Klein's 'The Shock Doctrine' require that certain initial conditions are met before a 'loan' is granted and that should the borrower not be able to repay, other, increasingly inhumane, adjustments will be adhered to.

Ukraine has had IMF loans upon loans going back to their independence in '91 and then more when the Orange Revolution happened in 2004. The Orange folks, being pink on the inside like the rest of us, wanted to believe in the IMF's miracles and almost immediately steered one of the globe's richest natural resource areas into a nosedive. Which of course they 'corrected' by taking out more loans. Much of the actual money went to the corrupt leaders and their cronies, just as it almost always does,

The IMF and World Bank are really a conglomerate of the big western banks. Banks are corporations, they serve only one master - shareholder profits and dividends. The big banks use terms like structural adjustments instead of the seizure through privatization of common assets because it sounds better, but the reality is that our boy Yats has already announced that as of April 1st pensions will be cut in half as part of the pre-conditions and that on May1st the price of natural gas will double. Of course the 'adjustments' you'll never hear announced are an increase in taxes on the rich or the confiscation of the assets of the oligarchs who stole the money they borrowed earlier.

Ukraine is bankrupt, it owes Russia over $20B in unpaid energy bills alone. Ukraine couldn't or wouldn't pay their bills even as over the years Russia has charged them roughly half of what they've charged EU countries like Germany. That's over, Russia has already said Ukraine will pay world prices from now on. So even if Yats were to pay Russia what it owes they'd just go backwards in the coming months.

But have no fear, Yats has no intentions of using the money to pay the bills other than the interest Ukraine owes on existing IMF loans [another of the pre-conditions]. Instead Yats will use the money to buy arms for his uber-right wing dominated National Guard. This is the worst thing Yats could do and it's exactly what the US and NATO put him in power to do. It's a huge mistake that in the end will cost Ukraine its independence and is 'real' wealth, while along the way further impoverishing those in need.

Anyone with a brain knew this kind of 'austerity' was coming. The EU is going to pillage Ukraine, the Ukrainians, already under the kind of pressure that creates scapegoat type divisions like we're seeing everywhere there will react with more ethnic violence and the US is going to use this turmoil to start a conflict with Russia (nothing solves money-printing issues like a war.) Don't get me wrong, not all Americans support the neo-con line, the hawks have almost zero credibility with Americans except a very small hardcore, and of course the rich to whom they pander.

Similarly, Yats has almost no credibility in Ukraine. The people there understand Yats is a puppet put in place by Washington that has lost what little control he ever had to organized and armed neo-nazis, who are attacking Jews, Russians, and intimidating Ukrainian politicians. Fascist gangs now patrol the streets. But they are also in Kiev's corridors of power. The far right Svoboda party, whose leader has denounced the "criminal activities" of "organised Jewry" and which was condemned by the European parliament for its "racist and antisemitic views", has five ministerial posts in the new government, including deputy prime minister and prosecutor general. The leader of the even more extreme Right Sector, at the heart of the street violence, is now Ukraine's deputy national security chief."

It's time for calm realism and common sense on Ukraine from our western leaders. Instead frustrated cold warriors filling armchairs in the outdated “strategic” think tanks that litter Washington will continue to howl at the moon and flap their chickenhawk wings. Instead of realism we have neo-con evangelical bible thumpers who think Russia is the 'evil empire' wanting to act out Ezekiel 27 and 28 and initiate their beloved Rapture.

Please watch this short, well documented, video [in full screen if possible] that explains what you’re not being told about Yats and Ukraine's neo-nazi leaders.