Eric Zuesse<\/p>\n
On Saturday, December 13th, Russian media reported that U.S. President Obama evidently can\u2019t wait to sign the congressional authorization for war against Russia (which has already been passed in draft form by 98% of U.S. House members and 100% of U.S. Senate members<\/a>), and that he is already shipping military supplies into Ukraine for use against Ukraine\u2019s ethnic Russians that the Ukrainian Government is trying to eliminate.<\/p>\n Mikhail Emelyanov<\/a>, a leading Russian parliamentarian, was quoted as saying<\/a> on Saturday, Russia \u201ccannot calmly watch as the US arms Ukraine with the most modern lethal weapons. In this regard, we should not appear weak. The situation is very alarming. Judging by US intentions, they want to turn Ukraine into a fighting platform against Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n The popular Russian website \u201cColonel Cassad\u201d reports<\/a> that the reason why Ukraine\u2019s airports in Zaporozyhe, Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk mysteriously shut down for other traffic on Saturday was to unload weapons-shipments from the U.S. Specifically, it said that, at Zaporozyhe, \u201cone of the airport workers replied that the airport has to be prepared to accept military aircraft with equipment, including Kharkov and Dnepropetrovsk. The equipment is expected from the United States.\u201d For the time being, civilian traffic at all three of those airports is being reduced during the next few days, in order to unload that U.S. freight.<\/p>\n Also reported Saturday at fortruss.blogspot<\/a> was that, “Right now at Zaporozhye airport they are unloading two transport planes from USA. Cargo is in boxes. According to additional information two more planes are expected to arrive.\u201d<\/p>\n Just one day prior, Foreign Policy<\/em> had bannered on Friday, \u201cWho Will Foot the Bill in Ukraine?\u201d<\/a> and their reporter naively claimed that, \u201clittle aid is forthcoming for Ukraine as its government faces a shortfall.\u201d<\/p>\n The \u201caid\u201d is actually already coming, in the form of U.S. military cargo shipments, gratis from U.S. taxpayers (though hardly gratis from the U.S. armaments-makers, whose business is booming from this). And the Ukraine \u201cgovernment faces a shortfall\u201d thing is actually far worse than that: as Forbes\u2019s<\/em> Mark Adomanis headlined on April 15th, \u201cUkraine’s Economy Is Nearing Collapse.\u201d<\/a> He reported, \u201cThe central bank was forced to take such desperate measures because the currency has been in free fall, losing more than 35% of its value against the dollar this year. The Hryvnia has been the world\u2019s worst performing currency in 2014.\u201d And: \u201cThe only reason that things haven\u2019t totally imploded is because of the $18 billion package of assistance from the IMF and the $9 billion in additional assistance pledged by the United States and the European Union. This financial assistance is desperately needed and will obviously help the Ukrainian government keep the lights on. The problem is that Ukraine\u2019s funding needs aren\u2019t a static target but are directly influenced by changes in its economic outlook. Since that economic outlook is darkening, Ukraine\u2019s already large funding needs have grown commensurately.\u201d<\/p>\n Forbes\u2019s<\/em> Kenneth Rapoza then noted<\/a> on November 12th, \u201cThe nation\u2019s currency, the hryvnia, has lost 91.5% of its value so far this year.\u201d<\/p>\n On December 11th, Ukraine\u2019s new Minister of Economic Development admitted<\/a>, \u201cBy and large, the state is bankrupt.\u201d<\/p>\n So: U.S. and European taxpayers will be funding all of those \u2018loans,\u2019 which will never be paid back, they\u2019re actually donations instead of loans, because Ukraine was already tens of billions of dollars in debt even before the West took over; and none of these additional \u2018debts\u2019 will be able to be paid back one cent unless and until those earlier debts are, which will never be possible in that spiraling-downward country, which is now designing a military graveyard with a capacity for 250,000 fresh corpses of Ukrainian soldiers<\/a>, and that\u2019s not a very productive \u201cinvestment\u201d for any country to be making. America\u2019s \u2018investment\u2019 in Ukraine is an \u2018investment\u2019 in corpses; and far more of those will be of the millions of residents in the targeted region<\/a> than of the soldiers on either side of the conflict.<\/p>\n One of Russia\u2019s loans to Ukraine has a provision saying that if Ukraine\u2019s ratio of debt to GDP exceeds 60%, then Russia can demand and Ukraine must pay in cash the full due amount. The ratio has already exceeded that, but the official figure won\u2019t be announced until March 2015, and, as Britain\u2019s Economist<\/em> noted<\/a>, \u201cThat could trigger a default on all Ukraine\u2019s other international bonds (which are worth about $16 billion up to 2023).\u201d So: all of the money that is being \u2018loaned\u2019 to Ukraine now is purely a donation, since Russia will certainly pull the plug and flush Ukraine down the toilet this coming Spring. Then, all of a sudden, that $16 billion in cash will need to be put up by the Ukrainian Government, and whatever there is to put up, practically all of it will have to be paid to Ukraine\u2019s old chief lender: Russia. The West will get little or nothing of it.<\/p>\n Washington isn\u2019t out to help the Ukrainian people; it\u2019s solely using Ukraine as a launching-pad for WW III against Russia. That\u2019s all it\u2019s \u201cgood for\u201d now. And that\u2019s what Obama is using it for: to slaughter, first, the residents in the parts of Ukraine that refuse to be ruled by the regime that Obama put in place<\/a>; and, then, everybody else<\/a>.<\/p>\n If this sounds crazy (and of course it does), then please ask your two Senators and your one Representative in the House: \u201cWhy did you vote to approve sending weapons to the Ukrainian Government?\u201d (Mine refuses to answer.)<\/p>\n Please then report back here, in the reader-comments below, what the answer to that question is. Everyone who reads this article here will be interested to know what the answer to that question is.<\/p>\n Here is the list of the only 10 members of Congress who voted no<\/em> on that bill, and all of them are in the House:<\/p>\n California\u2019s George Miller (D)<\/p>\n California\u2019s Dana Rohrabacher (R)<\/p>\n Florida\u2019s Alan Grayson (D)<\/p>\n Florida\u2019s Alcee Hastings (D)<\/p>\n Kentucky\u2019s Thomas Massie (R)<\/p>\n Michigan\u2019s Justin Amash (R)<\/p>\n North Carolina\u2019s Walter Jones (R)<\/p>\n Tennessee\u2019s John Duncan (R)<\/p>\n Texas\u2019s Beto O\u2019Rourke (D)<\/p>\n Washington\u2019s Jim McDermott (D)<\/p>\n If any of those Representatives happens to be yours, then don\u2019t ask him why he voted for the bill; he voted against<\/em> it.<\/p>\n \u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> and of \u00a0CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Zuesse On Saturday, December 13th, Russian media reported that U.S. President Obama evidently can\u2019t wait to sign the congressional authorization for war against Russia (which has already been passed in draft form by 98% of U.S. House members and 100% of U.S. Senate members), and that he is already shipping military supplies into Ukraine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":142647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,30,32,96,535,527,524,523,49,76,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-142664","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-big-brother","11":"tag-cia","12":"tag-cover-up","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-nuclear-war","15":"tag-russia","16":"tag-ukraine","17":"tag-usa-news","18":"tag-warfare","19":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}