Soros as Kiev’s Central Banker and Ridiculous US Laws

[ Editor’s note: If not for the death and destruction in Ukraine due to Western aggression, it could be used for a knockoff comedy showcasing what happens when you put the three stooges — the US, EU, and NATO — working together on a regime change.

Innocent Europeans have been used as financial cannon fodder to absorb the sanctions-hits somewhat equally, without the Euro going down. But the blowback has wiped out any optimistic economic improvements.

This does not include the “phone boost” added by the craze now to add drug dealing and prostitution into their respective GNPs. I am waiting to hear about all the other criminal activity folks that were not similarly honored.

My Ukraine sources tell me there is some blowback in Ukraine on Mr. Engdahl’s comments below of Poroshenko’s holding a secret session of his Parliament to make four ministries open for automatic citizenship, so that “esteemed foreigners” can get the jobs. Puppet governments will get a shot of B-12 if this becomes another contracted-out item. Will the office of the president eventually make the list?

As part of the justification for this unusual move, Poroshenko claimed that certain ministries had to be protected from looting by corrupt Ukrainians, who have to make good on giving their campaign supporters ministry jobs to get their hands on government money.

The coalition partners are unhappy about having these bundles of graft taken away from them. Anyone with half a brain will understand that the chance of Ukraine’s economy imploding is high, and they will be stealing all that they can.

Yatsenyuk is cranking up an anti-Poroshenko media campaign, joined by “let’s nuke all the Russians” Julia Tymoshenko, who really wants to be president, but seems not to remember that her receiving under 10% of the vote presents a problem to that end.

And moving in on Poroshenko’s flanks is Ihor Kolomoisky. Although he is governor of Dnepropetrovsk, with his business headquarters in Switzerland, we hear he is “moving his operations” to Western Ukraine where all the Banderist rednecks are from.

Ihor has managed to organize (buy off) 79 Rada members with the help of his loyal aide Boris Filatov, and this could give him veto control over legislation, allowing him to get whatever he wants. The term “Oligarch Warlord” pops into my head for some reason. This looks like divide and conquers on steroids to me, folks. Someone, tell me I am wrong… Jim W. Dean ]

First published  …  December 28, 2014 –

by  F. William Engdahl,  …  with New Eastern Outlook,  Moscow

If it comes to pass, and it cannot, unfortunately, be ruled out, recent media rumors say that naturalized US billionaire hedge fund speculator and philosopher, George Soros, a very weary-looking 84-year-old who continues to try to weaken the Russian economy as he did back in 1998, might become the head of the Ukrainian National Bank in Kyiv.

Soros as head of any central bank in my view is putting the old fox to guard the hen-house. That would complete a quartet of foreign technocrats that clearly would do no good to the shattered real economy of Ukraine nor to peace in the world.

So far it is a report carried only by APA, the Azeri press agency in Baku. They cite a report carried on Ukraine’s Channel 112. That report cited sources in the Ukraine parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, and people around Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko.

Billionaire speculator Soros is no stranger to Ukraine. In a personal interview with US TV propaganda channel CNN. Soros declared, “I set up a foundation in Ukraine before Ukraine became independent of Russia.

And the foundation has been functioning ever since and played an important part in events now.” That interview was made after the US State Department February 21, 2014 coup d’Etat.

Soros, via his network of “tax-free charitable” foundations has worked with US Government-funded NGOs such as USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy (now doing work formerly assigned to the CIA), the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the Freedom House, and the Albert Einstein Institute for training in “nonviolence as a weapon of warfare.”

Whether the good Mr. Soros will bring his financial alchemy to Kiev and try to earn the new Finance Minister billions of euros for their strained budget is not at all clear. There is reportedly a list of five candidates including Soros. It reportedly includes former IMF head Dominique Straus-Kahn and at least one person from the US Federal Reserve.

_______________________________

Ukraine: Washington’s New Colony

The naming of Soros or another foreign banker to head the central bank of Ukraine at this point would fit nicely into what emerges as Washington’s strategy to simply run the country – into the ground at that — by proxies.

Earlier this month, US State Department favorite Ukraine President Petr Poroschenko engaged in constitutionally dubious manipulations, holding a secret ceremony hours before a Ukraine Parliament vote, to make three current Kiev government ministers from foreign countries into Ukrainian citizens.

The three were Finance Minister Natalia A. Jaresko, a then-US citizen who worked for the US State Department in Ukraine and recently as investment banker for funds of USAID. As Economics Minister sits a Lithuanian investment banker who managed a Swedish investment fund for Ukraine, Aivras Abromavicius. And the new Health Minister is US-tied national of neighboring Georgia, Alexander Kvitashvili whose wife reportedly worked with the CIA.

And New US Sanctions…

US President Obama just signed into law a new round of economic sanctions against Russia. The US President December 18 signed into law HR 5859, euphemistically titled, Ukraine Freedom Support Act of 2014 113th Congress. A more honest title would be, An Act of 2014 to Provoke War with Russia.

The new law calls for “economic sanctions, diplomacy, assistance for the people of Ukraine, and the provision of military capabilities to the Government of Ukraine that will enhance the ability of that Government to defend itself and to restore its sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of unlawful actions by the Government of the Russian Federation.”

The new US law gives the US President a dangerous new weapon. If he deems Gazprom, the Russian state gas giant that supplies much of the EU as well as Ukraine, is “withholding” significant natural gas from NATO countries, or from Ukraine, Georgia, or Moldova, he can order draconian new sanctions on Gazprom, something carefully avoided by Washington until now. That means all the CIA or neo-cons running US State Department Ukraine policy need do is convince Kiev to claim Russia is withholding gas or refuse to pay Gazprom, a sword of Damocles over the Russian gas supplier.

Then the new US law, HR 5859, SEC. 9. SUPPORT FOR RUSSIAN DEMOCRACY AND CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS, specifies that the Secretary of State shall, “directly or through non-governmental or international organizations, such as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the National Endowment for Democracy, and related organizations–(1) improve democratic governance, transparency, accountability, rule of law, and anti-corruption efforts in the Russian Federation; strengthen democratic institutions and political and civil society organizations in the Russian Federation; (3) expand uncensored Internet access in the Russian Federation…”

This remarkable part of the new law gives open support to a new attempt at a CIA-State Department Color Revolution to topple Putin, using the US Congress and Soros Foundation-financed National Endowment for Democracy, the same cast of suspects who ran the Euro-Maidan Color Revolution a year ago in Kiev.

If it reads like a brazen attempt to trample Russian sovereignty and impose a Washington version of “democracy” in another country, one might ask, what bloody right do Washington Congressmen and Presidents have to impose anything on anyone, let alone its own citizens?

To underscore the absurdity of Washington Neocons and their moral arrogance in deciding where and how they can impose “democracy,” some in the Russian Duma, with characteristic Russian droll humor, apparently made a tit-for-tat mirror image of HR5859. Imagine, as a normal American citizen, how you would feel if the following were to become operational:

United States of America Freedom Support Act of 2014

Sixth Duma of the Russian Federation

AT THE TWENTY-FIRST SESSION

An Act:

To provide assistance for the democratic development of the United States of America and for other purposes. Be it enacted by the Representatives of the State Duma and the Federation Council of the Russian Federation assembled in the Federation Assembly…

Sec. 9. SUPPORT FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS.

(a) In General.–The Minister of Foreign Affairs, directly or through nongovernmental or international organizations, such as the Organization of American States (OAS), the EURASIA HERITAGE FOUNDATION, and related organizations—

(1) improve democratic governance, transparency, accountability, rule of law, and anti-corruption efforts in the United States;

(2) strengthen democratic institutions and political and civil society organizations in the United States;

(3) expand free and unmonitored Internet access in the United States; and

(4) expand free and unfettered access to independent media of all kinds in the United States, including through increasing Russian Government-supported broadcasting activities.

The Russian spoof merely underscores how ridiculous US foreign policy has become. Little wonder that the USA today enjoys so little respect around the world, since its elected politicians are simply ridiculous.

F. William Engdahl is a strategic risk consultant and lecturer, holding a degree in politics from Princeton University, and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics; exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

F. William Engdahl

Frederick William Engdahl (born August 9, 1944) is an American writer, economics researcher, historian, and freelance journalist.

He is the author of the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. It has been published as well in French, German, Chinese, Russian, Czech, Korean, Turkish, Croatian, Slovenian, and Arabic. In 2010 he published Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century, completing his trilogy on the power of oil, food, and money control.

Mr. Engdahl is one of the more widely discussed analysts of current political and economic developments, and his provocative articles and analyses have appeared in numerous newspapers and magazines and well-known international websites. In addition to discussing oil geopolitics and energy issues, he has written on issues of agriculture, GATT, WTO, IMF, energy, politics, and economics for more than 30 years, beginning the first oil shock and world grain crisis in the early 1970s. His book, ‘Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation has been translated into eight languages. A new book, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order describes the American military power projection in terms of geopolitical strategy. He won a ‘Project Censored Award’ for Top Censored Stories for 2007-08.

Mr. Engdahl has lectured in economics at the Rhein-Main University in Germany and is a Visiting Professor in Economics at Beijing University of Chemical Technology.

After a degree in politics from Princeton University (USA), and graduate study in comparative economics at the University of Stockholm, he worked as an independent economist and research journalist in New York and later in Europe, covering subjects including the politics of energy policy in the USA and worldwide; GATT Uruguay Round trade talks, EU food policies, the grain trade monopoly, IMF policy, Third World debt issues, hedge funds, and the Asia crisis.

Engdahl contributes regularly to a number of international publications on economics and political affairs including Asia Times, FinancialSense.com, 321.gold.com, The Real News, Russia Today TV, Asia Inc., GlobalResearch.com, Japan’s Nihon Keizai Shimbun, Foresight magazine. He has been a frequent contributor to the New York Grant’sInvestor.com, European Banker and Business Banker International and Freitag and ZeitFragen in Germany, Globus in Croatia. He has been interviewed on various geopolitical topics on numerous international TV and radio programs including Al Jazeera, CCTV and Sina.com (China), CCTV (China) Korea Broadcasting System (KBS), and RT Russian TV. He is a Research Associate of Michel Chossudovsky’s well-respected Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal, Canada, and a member of the editorial board of Eurasia magazine.

Mr. Engdahl has been a featured speaker at numerous international conferences on geopolitical, GMO, economic, and energy subjects. Among them is the Ministry of Science and Technology Conference on Alternative Energy, Beijing; London Centre for Energy Policy Studies of Hon. Sheikh Zaki Yamani; Turkish-Eurasian Business Council of Istanbul, Global Investors’ Forum (GIF) Montreaux Switzerland; Bank Negara Indonesia; the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies; the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Croatian Chamber of Commerce and Economics.

He currently lives in Germany and, in addition to teaching and writing regularly on issues of international political economy and geopolitics, food security, economics, energy, and international affairs, is active as a consulting political risk economist for major European banks and private investors.  A sample of his writings is available at Oil Geopolitics.net