Cantor joins Wall Street bank
TGP sez: One of the biggest scumbags to disgrace the US Congress calmly collects his reward in the private sector, for which he loyally whored. The best democracy that money can buy.
[F]ormer House Majority Leader Eric Cantor is joining the Wall Street firm Moelis & Co., the firm announced on Tuesday.
“Eric has proven himself to be a pro-business advocate and one who will enhance our boardroom discussions with CEOs and senior management as we help them navigate their most important strategic decisions,” the firm’s founder, Ken Moelis, said in a statement.
Cantor is signing on with the boutique investment bank as a vice chairman and managing director, the company said. He will also be elected to its board of directors.
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| Jack Revolutionist sez | 2 September 16:46 |
The firm said Cantor will “provide strategic counsel to the firm’s corporate and institutional clients on key issues. He will play a leading role in client development and advise clients on strategic matters.”
“When I considered options for the next chapter of my career, I knew I wanted to join a firm with a great entrepreneurial spirit that focused on its clients,” Cantor said.
(Earlier on POLITICO: Why Cantor really resigned)
Cantor unexpectedly lost the GOP primary for his Virginia congressional seat in June. He resigned from Congress last month.
Cantor will continue to live in Virginia and will open an office for the investment bank in Washington, The Wall Street Journal reported. He will also have an office in New York.
Talks between Cantor and Moelis about the former lawmaker joining the firm began “shortly before July Fourth” over brunch in Los Angeles and grew by the end of the month, the paper said.
First elected in 2000, Cantor was seen as a major ally for Wall Street on Capitol Hill. He was a top recipient from the private equity and investment industry during 2013 and 2014, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
In its statement, Moelis & Co. praised Cantor’s work, including his efforts to lower taxes and “eliminate excessive regulation.”
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/09/eric-cantor-wall-street-moelis-110503.html#ixzz3CCJVydiE
Chronicles of Inequality (TOO MUCH, Sept. 1, 2014)
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September 1, 2014 |
| THIS WEEK | |
| [I]n the United States today, you almost have to have some gray hairs on your head to remember a time when the American labor movement really felt like celebrating on Labor Day. But celebrate, once upon a time, labor did indeed do.Back in 1959, for instance, a New York Labor Day parade started up Fifth Avenue at just after 10 in the morning, and the last of the 144,699 marchers didn’t pass the reviewing stand until over eight hours later. Onlookers saw unionized stagehands and actors — in full costume — from My Fair Lady. They saw 200 bands and 57 floats and workers carrying banners from over 500 union locals. A good time would be had by all. And why not? Labor had plenty to celebrate in 1959. In those decades right after World War II, real wages were doubling. America’s working people were marching straight into the middle class.These days, by contrast, average Americans are marching only in place, working ever harder and seeing precious little for their labor. More in this week’s Too Muchon just how little. But more also on how the tide may be turning. |
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| GREED AT A GLANCE | |
If you had a grand fortune, what would you fear more, a home invasion or Armageddon? Today’s super rich, the London Evening Standard reports, are actually pondering that question. Luxury home builders are asking them whether they prefer simple anti-intruder “panic room” hideaways for their abodes or bunkers fortified against biological, chemical, and even nuclear attack. In London, the well-heeled seem to be leaning toward panic spaces that can keep their wealthy occupants safe until the police arrive. In New York, contractors are installing more bunkers, at a unit cost that can top $3 million. Either way, business is booming for safe room contractors. The Panic Room Company has sales up 60 percent since December alone. The wealthier people get, says company founder Paul Weldon, the “more paranoid” they become . . . Apple CEO Tim Cook will be taking his bows next week in Silicon Valley as his tech giant unveils the latest iPhones. Cook, of course, takes more than bows for his labor. Last year he took home $74 million. The secret to his success? No one may be better at corporate tax avoidance. Apple is pioneering the practice of “synthetic cash repatriation,” accountant-speak for using corporate profits stashed in offshore tax havens to fund back-home expenditures — like stock buybacks that boost the value of executive pay packages. Why can’t lawmakers in get their act together and shut down these shenanigans? ExplainsJared Bernstein, the former chief economic adviser for Vice President Joe Biden: “Concentrated wealth is buying the policy agenda it likes.”The last thing the proud owner of a newly delivered special-edition Bugatti wants to see? That would have to be a scratch. Bugatti’s latest special-edition motorcar, the Veyron Grand Sport Vitesse, carries a $3 million price-tag, and the carmaker is sparing no expense to get each of these super cars safely from Europe to buyers. One Grand Sport, Wired reports, just arrived in San Diego, totally wrapped in protective sheathing. How carefully did the good folks at Bugatti do their wrapping? They wrapped each spoke on the wheel rims individually — in cloth, just “what you would expect of a $3 million car,” says Rick Ahumada, the sales manager at the San Diego car dealership that handled the delivery. |
Quote of the Week “Most remedies for inequality include calls for progressive tax reform, for investment in education and training. The more insightful advocate balancing our trade and ending perverse incentives that reward CEOs for plundering their own companies. But none of these reforms is likely without a strong mobilization of workers — a strong union movement — to elect leaders and drive the debate.” |
| PETULANT PLUTOCRAT OF THE WEEK | |
 Next time you see Bruce Rauner, the GOP 2014 gubernatorial candidate in Illinois, don’t call him a 1 percenter. That label seems to peeve him. Rauner, a near-billionaire, resides in much more rarefied air than the mere 1 percent. He owns nine homes. Says Rauner: “I’m probably .01 percent.” Don’t call Rauner the “Mitt Romney of Illinois” either. That label reallyperturbs him. Insists Rauner: “I drink beer. I smoke a cigar. I use a gun.” But Rauner and Romney do have shared interests. Both made fortunes in private equity and both have a fondnessfor Cayman Islands tax havens. Rauner reported $108 million of income on his 2010-2012 returns. His tax rate on that income: under 20 percent. The then top federal tax rate: 35 percent. Rauner has so far spent $10 million of his own cash on his campaign. He’s leading in the polls. |
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| IMAGES OF INEQUALITY | |
Anybody see Spartacus in the neighborhood? No, you’re actually not looking at a slave-holding estate in ancient Roman days. You’re looking at a “hilltop Italianatepalazzo” that realtors have been hawking all this summer in California’s Laguna Beach. The seven-bedroom manse sits on three acres overlooking the blue Pacific, and the new owners, unlike their Roman Empire counterparts, won’t have to worry about beating back slave revolts. The asking price: $38,888,888. |
Web Gem What should you be making?/ Or, to rephrase the question, what would you be making today if America’s corporate elite were not siphoning off the lion’s share of the gains from the nation’s increased economic productivity? This interactive Economic Policy InstituteLabor Day site can help you see what inequality is costing you at paycheck time. NOTE: For a real experience of what this type of excess means, click here to take the tour of the palazzo. |
| ANTIDOTES TO INEQUITY | |
| Consumers the nation over have been protesting all this summer against CEOs who’ve been plotting “tax inversions,” deals that have U.S. companies acquire foreign firms and then re-emerge headquartered in that foreign country — to avoid U.S. taxes. These protests have so far forced Walgreens CEO Greg Wasson to back off an inversion plan. Now activists are targeting Burger King. But consumer campaigns can only work against firms that sell directly to consumers. What about those that don’t? Lawmakers Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut and Lloyd Doggett of Texas are trying to leverage the power of the public purse. They want Congress to deny federal contracts to firms that invert. A step in that direction, a DeLauro-Doggett amendment that denies federal contracts to U.S. firms that reincorporate in Caribbean tax havens last month won a House floor vote. |
Take Action Tell Burger King CEO Daniel Schwartz you’ll dine elsewhere if the fast-food giant completes a pending tax-avoidance deal with Canada’s Tim Hortons. |
| INEQUALITY BY THE NUMBERS | |
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Stat of the Week How adept at avoiding taxes have America’s CEOs become? This adept: In 2013, corporate profits jumped $93 billion, says the Commerce Department, but the taxes U.S. corporationspaid on those profitsdropped by over $15 billion. |
| IN FOCUS | |
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Finally Revealed: Obamacare’s Hidden Gem An obscure provision in the Affordable Care Act, a new report details, raises taxes on firms that overpay their top execs. The only problem: The provision so far only applies to corporations in one industry. The Institute for Policy Studies has been releasing annual reports on CEO pay for 20 years now, and these Executive Excess studies have built up quite a following. One reason: The studies offer what few other CEO pay reports do: context. Anyone with the patience to plow through annual corporate filings can, after all, show that CEO paychecks are keeping America’s top execs on the fast track to fortune. The Executive Excess series shows just how. America’s most lavish corporate rewards, past editions have detailed, are going to CEOs who downsize jobs, pocket bailouts, profiteer off defense contracts, cook their corporate books, contribute big to pols, and stiff Uncle Sam at tax time. All this context can make for engaging — and enraging — reading. America’s CEOs aren’t just grabbing way more than their fair share, Executive Excess documents. They’re poisoning our economic and political life in the process. The latest annual Executive Excess, released last week, has no shortage of new enraging stats. One stands out: The health insurance industry’s top 57 executives — the top five execs of the industry’s top 10 companies, plus their mid-year replacements — last year snared $300 million in total personal compensation. But the new Executive Excess 2014, despite numbers like these, will likely leave readers feeling more invigorated than infuriated. We now have, the new study makes clear, a concrete reason to feel hopeful about reining in executive excess. And that new reason for hope sits in the unlikeliest of places: Obamacare, the controversial Affordable Care Act enacted back in 2010. What does Obamacare have to do with executive pay? A virtually unknown provision in the legislation ends — for health insurers — the free ride on executive compensation the federal tax code hands Corporate America. Until last year, all U.S. corporations could deduct off their corporate income taxes almost everything they pay their top execs. The new Obamacare tax provision ends this subsidy in the health insurance industry. Health insurers now only get to deduct off their taxes the first $500,000 they pay each executive. What does losing this deduction mean in real corporate life? The 2014 edition ofExecutive Excess, The Obamacare Prescription for Bloated CEO Pay, has probed the pay records of the nation’s 10 largest health insurers for an answer. These 10 insurers lost $207 million in deductions, thanks to Obamacare, on the compensation that went to their 57 top-paid executives. The loss of these deductions upped their tax bill by $72 million. But that $72 million, notes Executive Excess lead author Sarah Anderson, only hints at the revenue the Obamacare executive pay provision will raise over coming years. Many more than 57 executives in the health insurance industry overall made more than $500,000 last year. Obamacare will likely raise the industry’s total tax bill over $50 billion over the next 10 years. A significant sum, to be sure. Still, says Anderson, the Obamacare executive pay provision’s real significance doesn’t come from those billions. That significance comes from the precedent the new deductibility standard for health insurers sets. “All corporations,” says Anderson, “should get the same medicine.” Outside the health insurance industry, current law has since 1993 limited the tax deductions corporations can claim on executive pay to $1 million per executive. But that limit comes with a huge loophole: Corporations can deduct “incentive pay” over $1 million that they define as “performance-based.” Obamacare ends this “performance” loophole, drops the $1 million limit to $500,000, and applies that $500,000 limit to all health insurer executives. All other corporations only have their five highest-paid officers under pay scrutiny. The health insurance industry, predictably, now feels picked upon. “Requiring plans to pay higher taxes does nothing to make coverage more affordable or accessible,” groused Brendan Buck of America’s Health Insurance Plans, the top industry trade group, after last week’s Executive Excess release. So the health insurance industry is looking for ways to make health insurance “more affordable”? How about, for starters, not shelling out $300 million a year for just 57 executives? |
New Wisdom Harold Meyerson, In corporations, it’s owner-take-all, Washington Post, August 26, 2014. Companies are devoting nearly all their profits to executives and other shareholders, leaving next to nothing for employees. Robert Kuttner, The Snake in the Market Basket,American Prospect, August 28, 2014. The CEO loved by this New England supermarket chain’s employees for worker fairness had to partner with a private equity firm to win back his place. Kenneth Thomas,Understanding Piketty,Angry Bear, August 29, 2014. An engrossing analysis of what Capital in the Twenty-First Century offers on taxing the rich.
Learn more about Too Mucheditor Sam Pizzigati’sgripping history of the triumph over America’s original plutocracy. Read theintro chapter online. |
| NEW READS | |
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Concentrated Wealth, Concentrated Influence
To what extent do wealthy people run the world’s most unequal developed nations? This new study has an answer for the only major industrial nation that rivals the United States on the inequality front. Britain’s Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has analyzed who holds the jobs that most directly influence the UK’s political process and public opinion. In all, Elitist Britain?examines the backgrounds of over 4,000 influentials, paying particular attention to where they attended school. Those students who attend private schools in the UK, the report points out, “tend to have parents with a high income or wealth.” And these private school students, the commission found, dominate the UK’s political life. Private school grads make up only 7 percent of the British public as a whole, for instance, but 71 percent of senior judges and 43 percent of newspaper columnists. And grads of the UK’s two elite universities, Oxford and Cambridge, make up less than 1 percent of the public but 59 percent of cabinet ministers. The UK, says commission chair Alan Milburn, risks becoming a society run by “a small few” exceedingly “familiar with each other but far less familiar with the day-to-day challenges facing ordinary people.” That can never be, he adds, “a recipe for a healthy democratic society.” |
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| ABOUT TOO MUCH | |
| Too Much, an online weekly publication of the Institute for Policy Studies | 1112 16th Street NW, Suite 600, Washington, DC 20036 | (202) 234-9382 | Editor: Sam Pizzigati. | E-mail: editor@toomuchonline.org | Unsubscribe. | |
Continuing media silence on the fate of flight MH17
ANNOTATED NEWS
(July 28, 2014)
By Stefan Steinberg, wsws.org
[W]ith a handful of exceptions, a shroud of silence has been drawn by the international media regarding the fate of Malaysian Airlines MH17, which crashed over Ukraine nearly six weeks ago.
Immediately after the plane crash on July 17, leading US officials, with Secretary of State John Kerry at the fore along with sections of the US and European media, alleged that the passenger jet had been shot down by a Russian missile fired by pro-Russian separatists operating in eastern Ukraine. The completely unfounded allegations were then used to create a frenzied political climate to justify the imposition of wide-ranging sanctions by the US and the European Union against Russia.
Since the crash there has been deliberate stalling on the part of Western authorities in releasing relevant information. At the start of this month Dutch investigators leading the inquiries announced they would release a preliminary report “in a few weeks.” Now, with only days before the end of the month, no such report has been issued. This is despite the fact that the Dutch co-ordinator for the struggle against terrorism admitted in parliament that the Dutch authorities already have extensive data from the black boxes and other sources in their possession.
One article which has raised questions regarding the silence surrounding the crash appeared recently in the German magazine Der Spiegel.
The magazine has played a particularly vile role in the US-led propaganda campaign to blame Russia for the crash. On the cover of its July 28 edition Der Spiegel featured photos of MH17 victims with the prominent red lettered text “Stop Putin Now!”. In its latest edition, the magazine again raises the banner of German militarism in a lead article deploring the state of the German army and arguing for a massive increase in military sending.
However, in one article on the crash, headlined “The strange silence of the investigators”, the magazine attempts to backtrack somewhat and at least intimate there are good reasons to doubt the official line put out by Washington and Brussels. The article refers to a letter sent to Barack Obama at the end of July by a group of former US intelligence officers. In their letter the group, known as VIPS, accused Secretary of State Kerry of attempting to use the crash to blacken Russia, recalling other blatant provocations by the Obama administration, such as the claim that Syria was responsible for chemical weapon attacks. The Obama administration has never responded to the allegations made in the VIPS letter.
The Spiegel article then goes on to quote reports in the Malaysian newspaper New Straits Times, which charge Ukraine with responsibility for the crash, citing one journalist who writes: “It is farcical that the country known for overseeing the world’s most sophisticated and far-reaching surveillance capabilities has sunk to citing grainy YouTube videos to justify its policy decisions.”
Noting that Dutch authorities already have considerable information about the details of the crash which they have undoubtedly shared with their German counterparts, the Spiegel article warns that it is unlikely that the black box recordings will ever be released in full. The Dutch investigation team recently announced that there were alleged legal grounds for withholding evidence from the boxes.
The failure of the media to raise the issue of the fate of MH17 prompted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to query on Monday why the plane’s black box recordings had not been released publicly. It appears, Lavrov said, that apart from Russia, “everyone else has lost interest in the investigation.”
Lavrov also asked why Ukraine had not yet provided recordings of conversations between air traffic controllers in the nearby airport of Dnepropetrovsk. Kiev has up until now persistently refused to publish the recordings of the conversations between the MH17 pilot and Ukrainian air traffic controllers.
Lavrov noted that Russia had contacted the International Civil Aviation Organisation, the United Nations aviation agency, and offered to provide its own information on the crash, but noted that “so far there is nothing transparent to be seen there either.”
Lavrov concluded: “We must not allow the investigation of the MH17 crash to be manipulated into oblivion as already happened to investigations of many Ukrainian tragedies, including the sniper assault against civilians in Kiev in February, massacres in Odessa and Mariupol in May, and others.”
Bearing in mind the leading role played by the US in utilizing the crash of MH17 to create the conditions for a confrontation with Russia, there can be no doubt that the administration in Washington and US intelligence services are in close contact with the Dutch authorities and are complicit in the efforts to bury the truth about what really took place on July 17.
The author also recommends:
Former US intelligence personnel challenge Obama to present evidence of Russian complicity in MH17 crash
[31 July 2014]
Malaysian press charges Ukraine government shot down MH17
[9 August 2014]
Why have the media and Obama administration gone silent on MH17?
[18 August 2014]
Obama’s “Catastrophic Defeat” in Ukraine
Alexander Borodai the former Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic shakes hands with Alexander Zakharchenko, the new appointed PM, who heads a heavily armed rebel unit called Oplot during their news conference in Donetsk, Ukraine. (Sergei Karpukhin / Reuters)
“We are currently witnessing an epic and historic event. The Ukrainian regular army and the “punitive battalions” are suffering a catastrophic defeat to the south of Donetsk…..It still is not quite clear how the Junta intends to avoid a complete defeat here…. By squandering the most combat-capable brigades in systematic offensive operations, the Junta sustained enormous losses and at the same time suffered a crushing, purely military defeat. The southern front has collapsed.” – The Southern Front Catastrophe– August 27, 2014″, Colonel Cassad, Military Briefing, Novorossiya, Ukraine
“The reports out of Novorussia (New Russia) are nothing short of incredible… sources are reporting that Novorussian forces have bypassed Mariupol from the north and have entered the Zaporozhie region!” – News from the Front, Vineyard of the Saker
[B]arack Obama has pushed Ukraine to the brink of political, economic and social collapse. Now he wants to blame Russia for the damage he’s done. It’s absurd. Moscow is in no way responsible for Ukraine’s descent into anarchy. That’s all Washington’s doing, just as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and now Syria were Washington’s doing. If you want to blame someone, blame Obama.
Ukraine’s troubles began when the US State Department toppled the elected president in February and replaced him with a compliant stooge who agreed to follow Washington’s directives. The new “junta” government quickly launched a full-blown war against Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east which split the civilian population and drove the country to ruin. The plan “pacify” the East was concocted in Washington, not Kiev and certainly not Moscow.
Moscow has repeatedly called for an end to the violence and a resumption of negotiations, but each request has been rebuffed by Obama’s puppet in Kiev leading to another round of hostilities. Washington doesn’t want peace. Washington wants the same solution it imposed on Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, that is, a chaotic failed state where ethnic and sectarian animosities are kept at a boiling point so forward-operating bases can be established without resistance, so resources can be extracted at will, and so a formally-independent nation can be reduced to a “permanent state of colonial dependency.” (Chomsky) That’s the basic gameplan wherever Washington goes. The same rule applies to Ukraine. The only choice the people have is to arm themselves and fight back. Which is what they’ve done.
Donetsk peoples’ volunteer corps ride a light tank.
Donetsk and Lugansk have formed militias and taken the war to the enemy. They’ve engaged Obama’s proxy-army on the battlefield and pounded it into mincemeat. That’s why Obama deployed his propagandists to lie about the fictitious “Russian invasion”. The administration needs a diversion because the Novorussia forces (aka-the “pro Russia separatists”) are kicking the holy crap out of Obama’s legions. That’s why Washington and Kiev are in full panic-mode, because none of this was supposed to happen. Obama figured the army would put down the insurrection, crush the resistance, and move him one step closer to his goal of establishing NATO bases and missile defense systems on Russia’s western flank.
Well, guess what? It’s not playing out that way and it probably never will. The Novorussia fighters are too tough, too smart and too motivated to be one-upped by Obama’s feckless troopers. (Check out this short video and you’ll see why the rebels are winning: Vineyard of the Saker)
Putin hasn’t sent tanks and artillery into Ukraine. He doesn’t need to. The militias are loaded with battle-hardened veterans who know how to fight and who are quite good at it. Just ask Poroshenko whose army has been taking it in the shorts for the last couple of weeks. Check out this blurb in Thursday’s Itar Tass:
“Over the week of August 16-23, the self-defense fighters of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics seized 14 T-64 tanks, 25 infantry fighting vehicles, 18 armored personnel carriers, one armored reconnaissance and patrol vehicle, one Uragan multiple launch rocket system, two Gvozdika self-propelled artillery guns, four D-30 howitzers, four mortars, one ZU-23-2 air defense system and 33 vehicles.” (East Ukraine militias seize large amount of Ukrainian armor, Itar Tass)
Get the picture? The Ukrainian army is getting beaten to a pulp, which means that Obama’s glorious “pivot strategy” just slammed into a brick wall.
Bottom line: Russia has not invaded Ukraine. The propagandists in the media are just trying to hide the fact that the Novorussia Army Forces (NAF; aka-the pro Russia separatists) are kicking ass and taking names. That’s what’s really going on. That’s why Obama and his gaggle of miscreant neocons are in a furor. It’s because they don’t know what to do next, so they’ve returned to their default position on every issue; lie like hell until they settle on a plan.
Demonstrators wave revolutionary flags at a major pro-Russia rally in Lenin Square in central Donetsk.
Naturally, they’re going to blame Putin for the mess they’re in. What else can they do? They’re getting their heads handed to them by a superior army. How do you explain that to the folks at home? Check out this excerpt from the New York Times Number One fiction writer, Michael “aluminum tubes” Gordon (who, not surprisingly, co-authored pieces with infamous Judy Miller in the lead up to the Iraq War):
“Determined to preserve the pro-Russian revolt in eastern Ukraine, Russia reinforced what Western and Ukrainian officials described as a stealth invasion on Wednesday, sending armored troops across the border as it expanded the conflict to a new section of Ukrainian territory.
The latest incursion, which Ukraine’s military said included five armored personnel carriers, was at least the third movement of troops and weapons from Russia across the southeast part of the border this week, further blunting the momentum Ukrainian forces have made in weakening the insurgents in their redoubts of Donetsk and Luhansk farther north. Evidence of a possible turn was seen in the panicky retreat of Ukrainian soldiers on Tuesday from a force they said had come over the Russian border.” (Ukraine Reports Russian Invasion on a New Front, New York Times)
“Stealth invasion”? In other words, Gordon has settled on a substitute for WMD. What a surprise.
This isn’t even good fiction; it’s more like Grimm’s Fairy Tales. And where are the photos? If you have evidence, Gordon, let’s see it. But, please, make sure it’s better than the last time, you know, those fake photos of Russian soldiers that were supposedly operating in Ukraine. That was another deceit, wasn’t it? (See: Another NYT-Michael Gordon Special?, Robert Parry, Consortium News)
This is like the Malaysia airlines crash, isn’t it? Remember how Kerry went on a five-TV-talk-show blitz the day after the crash, making all kinds of spurious accusations, about surface-to-air missiles and phantom Russian convoys, without a shred of evidence, and then— the very next day– Russian military experts calmly produced hard evidence, from radar and satellite data, that a Ukrainian fighter plane was seen closing in on MH17 just moments before it was downed. (BBC also interviewed eyewitnesses who saw the SU 25 approaching the passenger plane.)
So, who do you believe; Kerry or the facts? And who are you going to believe this time; “Aluminum tubes” Gordie or Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitor Andrey Kelin who said yesterday:
“We have said that no Russian involvement has been spotted, there are no soldiers or equipment present.”
“Accusations relating to convoys of armored personnel carriers have been heard during the past week and the week before that. All of them were proven false back then, and are being proven false again now.” (RT)
Repeat: “No Russian involvement”. All the accusations “were proven false.” “False” as in fake, phony, propaganda, bunkum, lies which, by the way, appears to be Gordon’s area of expertise.
Yekaterina Gubareva, the 29 year old foreign minister of the new republic.
Anyone who has been following the conflict knows that the Washington-backed junta in Kiev has waged a war against its own people in the East, and that they’ve been bombing hospitals, schools, libraries, apartments, public buildings, residential areas, etc, all in an effort to drag Putin into a war that will sabotage EU-Moscow economic integration and further US interests in the area. It’s all geopolitics, every bit of it. Remember the pivot to Asia? This is what it looks like in real time. A lot of people get butchered so the big money guys in Washington can maintain their grip on global power for another century or so.
Well, you can put that pipedream to rest now, mainly because a group of scrappy ex-military types in east Ukraine gathered themselves into an effective and lethal militia which has turned things around pronto. If you follow developments on blogs that chronicle the daily events, you’ll know that what I’m saying is true. The disorganized and demoralized rabble they call the Ukrainian Army has been routed in nearly every dust up they have with the Novorussia militia. Here’s how blogger Moon of Alabama summed it up on a post on Thursday:
“Their moral is bad, their equipment old, ammunition is low and the entire aim of their campaign is dubious. Now even a few weak counterattacks, the “counteroffensive”, have them on the run.”
The only thing he could’ve added to the litany is the fact that they are led by the biggest moron to ever hold high office, Petro Poroshenko, the overstuffed buffoon who thinks he’s Heinz Guderian deploying his Panzers through the Ardennes and on to Paris. What a joke!
The Times even admits that the Ukrainian army is badly demoralized. Take a look at this:
“Some of the Ukrainian soldiers appeared unwilling to fight. The commander of their unit, part of the Ninth Brigade from Vinnytsia, in western Ukraine, barked at the men to turn around, to no effect. “All right,” the commander said. “Anybody who refuses to fight, sit apart from the others.” Eleven men did, while the others returned to the city.
Some troops were in full retreat: A city busload of them careened past on the highway headed west, and purple curtains flapped through windows shot out by gunfire.” (New York Times)
Donetsk’s people’s army members.
Have you ever heard of a commanding officer asking his men whether they want to fight or not? It’s ludicrous. This is a defeated army, that much is clear. And it’s easy to understand how the average grunt feels, too. The average working guy doesn’t have the stomach for killing his own people. That’s not something he’s going to feel good about. He just wants to see the war end and go home, which is why they’re getting whooped so bad. It’s because their hearts aren’t in it. In contrast, the farmers, shopkeepers and miners who make up the militia are highly-motivated, after all, this isn’t some geopolitical game for them. Most of these people have lived in these cities their entire lives. Now they’re watching neighbors get gunned down in the streets or pulling friends out of the wreckage of bombed out buildings. For these people, the war is real and it’s personal. They’re defending their towns, their families, and their way of life. That tends to build resolve and focus the mind. Here’s more from the NY Times:
“The United States has photographs that show the Russian artillery moved into Ukraine, American officials say. One photo dated last Thursday, shown to a New York Times reporter, shows Russian military units moving self-propelled artillery into Ukraine. Another photo, dated Saturday, shows the artillery in firing positions in Ukraine.
Advanced air defenses, including systems not known to be in the Ukrainian arsenal, have also been used to blunt the Ukrainian military’s air power, American officials say. In addition, they said, the Russian military routinely flies drones over Ukraine and shares the intelligence with the separatists.” (Ukraine Reports Russian Invasion on a New Front, New York Times)
Photos? What photos? Gordon doesn’t have any photos. Ah, but he has heard about a New York Times reporter who saw a photo.
The DPR’s people’s army: the people in arms.
This is ridiculous, but, then again, isn’t that what you’d expect from a journalist who helped craft the pretext for invading Iraq?
Here’s how Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov responded to the claims of a Russian invasion. He said:
“It’s not the first time we’ve heard wild guesses, though, so far, the facts have never been presented…
There have been reports about satellite imagery exposing Russian troop movements. They turned out to be images from videogames. The latest accusations happen to be much the same quality…
We’ll react by persisting in our effort to reduce the bloodshed and to support negotiations about the future of Ukraine, with participation of all Ukrainian regions and political forces, something that was agreed upon back in April in Geneva, but which is now being deliberately avoided by our Western partners.” (RT)
There you have it; there is no Russian invasion anymore than there were WMD, mobile weapons labs, aluminum tubes, Sarin gas etc, etc, etc. It’s all BS concocted by a servile media pursuing the agenda of a warmongering political establishment that wants to escalate the conflagration in east Ukraine at all cost. Even if it leads to a Third World War.
MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion (AK Press). Hopeless is also available in a Kindle edition. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com.
Shes’s a US Senator… and they are all owned by the Zionists… if she so much as says anything critical and she never wins another election!
Yes America, 2% of your population runs your government and there’s not a thing you can do about it… now back to fear mongering about a few thousand kids crossing the border!
The N.S.A. has stalked this 74 year old nobody for 3.5 years and nobody knows why. This government has poured Billions into other parts of the world and nobody knows why. This government can’t afford DENTAL in it’s medicare program and nobody knows why. John Bertotto