The US and Russia: beware of Neocons and liberals preaching democracy promotion

 By Thomas Palley (guest blogger)

Every week my e-mail box receives a steady stream of articles aimed at cultivating public animus to Russia. The articles are always wrapped in a narrative in which Russia is a threat to democracy in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. The effect is to create public support for hardline action (economic and/or military) against Russia.

The insidious underside of this campaign is it paves the way for a scenario in which Ukraine provokes Russia, thereby drawing a Russian response that is then used as a pretext for US engagement. In such circumstances, the public would have been primed for action and would almost certainly fail to disentangle the truth.

What is terrifying is the scope of the stream, which spans the spectrum from far-right to center-left.

Read rest here.

Resource Curse - Natural Gas is What Detonated the Ukraine Crisis

Very few, if none at all, in the West are willing to address what really triggered the latest geopolitical ‘crisis’ in the Ukraine.

From Global Research Canada

Defending Moscow’s December 18, 2013 agreement to provide Ukraine with an aid package estimated at about $15 billion, and cheaper natural gas through discounts and “gas debt forgiveness” estimated as able to save Ukraine $7 bn in one year, Vladimir Putin said the decision to invest $15 bn in ‘brotherly slavic’ Ukraine, and grant the gas discount was “pragmatic and based on economic facts”. At the time, the “investment” in Ukraine was already conditional – not only on the political issue of Ukrainian loyalty to Moscow – but on Ukraine complying with previous longstanding, often revoked, modified or extended commitments to repay gas debts dating from as far back as the early 1990s.  In December, Russia’s Finance minister Anton Siluanov said payment of the “aid or investment” funds to Ukraine, in tranches of about $2 bn each, would need Ukraine making a serious response to end-2013 estimates, by Russia, of the minimum “monetized gas debt” Ukraine has to pay. Siluanov’s ministry said this was about $2.7 bn, itself a large downward revision on other published figures from Russian sources, extending well above $5 bn. His ministry also published statements suggesting that Ukraine’s non-payment of gas taken and consumed by the country, since 2010, ran at a yearly average as high as $2 – $2.25 bn. To be sure, events starting in February as the “Maidan movement” drew massive public support in the capital and western Ukraine to overthrowing the government-in-place. This was a repeat of Egypt’s anti-Morsi flash mob street revolution, followed by the Saudi-financed military coup against elected president Morsi. In Ukraine, however, the street magic stopped in the east, and especially in Crimea where 75%-85% of votes cast in the 2010 election were for Viktor Yanukovych. To be sure, this blood-colored version of the Orange Revolution aimed at aligning Ukraine with the European Union may have scarpered further bail out payments by Moscow. Any upping of the ante, as enacted and supplied by NATO and John Kerry, could lead to Russia also making a total shutdown of gas supply to Ukraine – Kiev’s Independence Square flash mob could hope that Global Warming will shorten the winter, ease heating needs, and give Ukraine a head start for becoming a debt wracked European Union associated country – but this is far from a sure thing. The national gas debt will surely feature in the round of proposals for “Ukraine bailout” being developed by the IMF, European Commission, EU member states on a bilateral basis, the US and potentially other actors, including the ECB and the UN ECE (the UN’s European economic agency), as well as private banks and energy companies. One thing is sure and certain, much higher gas prices for Ukraine are inevitable, under any scenario.

Read rest here. 

Mark Weisbrot on Venezuela’s Struggle - Widely Misrepresented, Remains a Classic Conflict Between Right and Left

By Mark Weisbrot

The current protests in Venezuela are reminiscent of another historical moment when street protests were used by right-wing politicians as a tactic to overthrow the elected government. It was December of 2002, and I was struck by the images on U.S. television of what was reported as a “general strike,” with shops closed and streets empty. So I went there to see for myself, and it was one of the most Orwellian experiences of my life. Only in the richer neighborhoods, in eastern Caracas, was there evidence of a strike, by business owners (not workers). In the western and poorer parts of the city, everything was normal and people were doing their Christmas shopping – images unseen in the U.S. media. I wrote an article about it for the Washington Post, and received hundreds of emails from right-wing Venezuelans horrified that the Post had printed a factual and analytical account that breathed air outside of their bubble. They didn’t have to worry about it happening again. The spread of cell-phone videos and social media in the past decade has made it more difficult to misrepresent things that can be easily captured on camera. But Venezuela is still grossly distorted in the major media. The New York Times had to run a correction last week for an article that began with a statement about “The only television station that regularly broadcast voices critical of the government …” As it turns out, all of the private TV stations “regularly broadcast voices critical of the government.” And private media has more than 90 percent of the TV-viewing audience in Venezuela. A study by the Carter Center of the presidential election campaign period last April showed a 57 to 34 percent advantage in TV coverage for President Maduro over challenger Henrique Capriles in the April election, but that advantage is greatly reduced or eliminated when audience shares are taken into account. Although there are abuses of power and problems with the rule of law in Venezuela – as there are throughout the hemisphere– it is far from the authoritarian state that most consumers of western media are led to believe. Opposition leaders currently aim to topple the democratically elected government – their stated goal – by portraying it as a repressive dictatorship that is cracking down on peaceful protest. This is a standard "regime change" strategy, which often includes violent demonstrations in order to provoke state violence.

Read rest here.