Cheering on the new Cold War

Shilling for Wall Street

By Mike Krauss

Bucks County Courier Times

Paul Craig Roberts is a former senior member of the Reagan administration and former editor of the Wall Street Journal who fearlessly exposes the continuing corruption of the government in Washington. He coined a phrase to describe the U.S. corporate dominated media: “presstitute media.”

A recent New York Times column by Thomas Friedman and a CNN news report just days ago provide good examples of what Roberts is talking about.

In his column, Friedman explained the crisis in the Ukraine as the failure of the “West” to confront “Putanisn” – meaning those Russian “bullies” who Washington says decided to invade and annex parts of the Ukraine when the former and thoroughly corrupt Ukrainian president was, as Friedman put it, “overthrown.”

The implication is that the Ukrainian people were making progress to freedom and democracy which Russia wanted to prevent.

That is a total distortion.  Respected journalists such as Robert Parry and Thierry Meyssan, writing in the Canadian Journal, Global Research, as well as Roberts  and others have documented what FriEdman ignores, not the least of which is, there was no invasion.

The former Ukrainian president was no more corrupt that his opposition. He had been bought by Washington to sign up with the European Union, backed out of the deal,  and because of that, our “freedom loving” government in Washington organized and financed the coup that overthrew him.

It’s all on tape. Turns out the U.S.  isn’t the only government that spies, and European spies published the conversation of the U.S. “diplomats” who were helping to organize the coup. You can even hear it on You Tube !

Why did the corrupt Ukrainian president back out of his deal with the U.S. and the E.U.? Because a lot of Ukrainians did the math:  Washington equals Wall Street, equals austerity, equals pension grabs and fire sale asset sell-offs,  equals Iceland, Ireland, the U.S., the U.K., Spain, Italy and most famously Greece, equals government of by and for Wall Street and the one percent.

So while the U.S. was busy organizing a coup that put another corrupt president in power in the Ukraine, who immediately signed off on a Western “aide” package – meaning expensive loans to be paid back in austerity – those Ukrainians with ties to Russia ran back to Mother Russia, or in this case, daddy – that nasty Putin.

And what Friedman also ignores is that Putin didn’t even have to ask. Ukrainian politicians organized a referendum in that part of the Ukraine that had always been Russian, got the vote they expected and turned up on Putin’s door step with a done deal.

This made Wall Street very unhappy. Mind you, looting the Ukrainians is not going to produce the really big bucks looted from Americans and Western Europeans. But a billion here and a billion there – it adds up.

So Washington immediately turned up the heat, moving fighter jets from Italy to Poland (yesterday it was paratroopers) and taking other aggressive moves, all the while complaining of Russian aggression that never happened.

It was the same on CNN. The anchor was talking with two ex U.S. military talking heads who kept referencing the Russian “invasion” of Ukraine. The anchor never asked, for example, on what date the invasion began, and which units and how many troops of the Russian military crossed the border.

To which there would have been an interesting response, because it never happened.

Meanwhile, back in the Ukraine, the guy Washington put in power turns out to be not only as corrupt as his predecessor, but fronting Nazi thugs who French media report were trained (and photographed) in Poland, in how to incite civil violence.

But, hey, you work with the freedom lovers you have, and Ukraine’s central bank dutifully raised interest rates almost fifty percent. Why? Economic reform? Oh, please.

This gave Wall Street another place to invest, as opposed to the low interest American market, which the Fed keeps at low interest to protect Wall Street’s income from municipal swaps. Now Wall Street has another puppet state to loot by lending some part of the almost interest free trillions it got from the Fed.

Here’s the math. Washington equals Wall Street and the Western banking cartel, equals the looting of any nation they can get their hands on, any way they can. Freedom and democracy do not enter into the equation.