Feb. 21, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
17:54
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| Hi everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedom Main Radio. | |
| Hope you're doing well. | |
| These are some relevant facts about the violent protests going on in the Ukraine at the moment, a battle between East and West, reality and illusion, politics and cronyism, the remnants of the free market and potential future fascism. | |
| The stakes in many ways could not be higher. | |
| the United States is playing a desperate game of brinksmanship, destabilizing the regime, paying protesters to go out and protest the government, sinking $5 billion into the destabilization of the Ukrainian government in the hopes of driving them into the arms sinking $5 billion into the destabilization of the Ukrainian government in the hopes of driving them into the arms of the EU, in the hopes of, as US diplomats have openly said, replacing the existing | |
| government with something replacing the existing government with something more akin to US tastes and interests, and with the hopes, of course, of pursuing the neoconservative agenda of US So let's go into some facts. | |
| The fact that the Ukraine has interest either in Russia or in Europe is a little bit horrifying, but they are, of course, caused between the rock and the hard places of the Cold Cold War or the attempt to stimulate conflict in order to stimulate the military-industrial complex. | |
| The establishment of the Ukrainian People's Republic Under the USSR was particularly brutal throughout the 1930s. | |
| Millions of Ukrainians starved to death as a result of Stalin imposing socialist or communist collectivized farming methods on the population. | |
| The Ukraine, which had been called the breadbasket of Europe, because its soil was so fertile, its agricultural productivity was so enormous, became a land of gaunt and haunted starvation under the Soviets. | |
| They perhaps hoped for some liberation. | |
| In the Second World War, instead, they were brutally occupied by the Nazis and then even more brutally occupied by the Russians at the end of the Second World War, and then stayed in the Russian orbit, let's say, in the Eastern Bloc as a result of pretty much communist spies advising Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the later stages of negotiations at the end of the Second World War. | |
| Now, the Ukraine, since the fall of the Soviet Union, there's sort of two blocks to it, right? | |
| So there's an Eastern Bloc, which is largely composed of people who identify with Russia, who speak Russian, who follow Russian politics, who watch Russian television. | |
| Then, of course, there's a Western part, which speaks Ukrainian and focuses more or identifies more with the European Union or Europe, particularly the younger people. | |
| The usual kleptocracy took place, and President Yanukovych and his bankster cronies plundered the country, setting up massive estates and resorts that they could live in, particularly outside the cities. | |
| And then, of course, when they had crony capitalized or crapitalized the country's economy into the ground, We're good | |
| to go. | |
| In these situations, and then the IMF said, well, we're not really going to give you any more because you didn't do any of the economic reforms that we wanted. | |
| To give you sort of an example, so Poland's GDP in constant national currency in 1989 was 16,632. | |
| In 2012, it was 33,879. | |
| Not too shabby. | |
| The gross national income per capita in the Ukraine is about... | |
| $3,500. | |
| They took a massive contraction after the economic crash in 2008, 20% contraction in the economy, and that is, of course, pretty catastrophic. | |
| So naturally, they've seen a net outflux of people. | |
| It has one of the fastest aging populations in Europe. | |
| By 2035, it's estimated that the labor force is going to shrink in the Ukraine by more than 15%. | |
| So low birth rates, as generally happens under a bad economy, kleptocracy. | |
| Intelligent people don't breed very well in captivity. | |
| They're sort of the great white sharks of the mammalian world. | |
| And so a low birth rate combined with high immigration means that the bottom is sort of falling out of the economy. | |
| And so the country is hovering on the brink of financial collapse. | |
| They have all of the usual signs of late kleptocracy situations, which is massively inefficient businesses, particularly in the East, a fear of opening their The IMF was suggesting a devaluation of the currency and an opening of the borders and so | |
| on, which would be massive economic pain as the inefficient state-protected industries began to reform to some vague remnants of the free market. | |
| And Russia, on the other hand, did not want American involvement or EU involvement in the Ukraine for fear of military bases being set up in the Ukraine right next to Russia. | |
| So Russia offered the Ukraine $15 billion to purchase bonds, which, of course, Putin doesn't have. | |
| He just steals it from the Russian population. | |
| So he bribes them with the stolen money in order to help them steal more money. | |
| And they also offered them a significant, about 30% reduction in the price of natural gas, which is essential, of course, for the Ukraine to heat in this endless, god-awful cold winters. | |
| And so while the IMF was saying you have to raise the price of natural gas by 40%, Russia was saying we'll drop it by 30%. | |
| The head of the government in the Ukraine said, well, we're not going to go with the EU. We're going to go east and we're going to start trading with Russia, which is, you know, they bribed more and threatened less. | |
| So Paul Craig Roberts, I did an interview, which we'll post in a sec, has written about... | |
| Because you may notice it's a little surprising when people just up and protest out of nowhere for what? | |
| A trade agreement? | |
| Are you kidding me? | |
| That's not what people protest for. | |
| Much like the Arab Spring, which started because the price of wheat doubled and people were starving to death, there is a massive amount of desperation in the dying death throes of the semi-socialist Ukrainian economy. | |
| So Paul Craig Roberts has written, a number of confirmations have come in from readers that Washington is fueling the violent protests in the Ukraine with our taxpayer dollars. | |
| Washington has no money, he writes, for food stamps or to prevent home foreclosures, but it has plenty of money with which to subvert Ukraine. | |
| One reader wrote, my wife, who is of Ukrainian nationality, has weekly contact with her parents and friends in northwest Ukraine. | |
| According to them, most protesters get an average payment of 200 to 300 grivna. | |
| Doesn't... | |
| Maybe it's just me. | |
| Eastern European currency always sounds like hamster skulls or something. | |
| Grievna. | |
| Corresponding to about 15 to 25 euros. | |
| As I additionally heard, one of the most active agencies and payment outlets on the EU side is the German Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, being closely connected to the CDU, i.e. | |
| Angela Merkel's party as the leader of Germany. | |
| And Johannes Lowe of the internet site eletetria.net writes, I'm just back from the Ukraine. | |
| I live in Munich in Germany and I was a lot at the Medan. | |
| Most of these people get only 100 grivna, 300 is for students. | |
| So the EU and the American governments are paying the protesters to go out and protest. | |
| The Ukrainian government has also been reported by Western media to be paying... | |
| The pro-government protesters. | |
| So it's all just a bunch of well-paid theater. | |
| They might as well be extras in a movie set. | |
| And there's nothing to do with, ooh, spontaneous demonstrations. | |
| You know, just follow the Benjamins and find out what's going on. | |
| Of course, the Western media has clearly pointed out that the Ukrainian government is paying the pro-government protesters. | |
| It has, as these prostitutes want to do, it is... | |
| Unfortunately, neglected to point out that the anti-government protesters are also being paid by Western governments. | |
| So, what else is occurring there? | |
| Well... | |
| The government on the 21st of November last year, 2013, ceased all association talks with the EU and began taking steps towards the pro-Russian trade alliance, as I mentioned. | |
| In January 16th, 2014, as what is now known in the Ukraine as Black Thursday, the government passed laws prohibiting any and all forms of public protest, assembly, and restricting heavily the Ukrainians' freedom of speech. | |
| These laws have taken on the name the dictatorship laws. | |
| Now, This is obviously, would work if the US weren't paying and perhaps even, I don't know, but the protesters are getting their weapons from somewhere and perhaps it's coming through the US or the EU. Another thing that's occurring is Victoria Nuland, | |
| who is the US Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, has said, since the declaration of Ukrainian independence in 1991, the United States supported the Ukrainians in the development of Of democratic institutions and skills in promoting civil society and a good form of government, all that is necessary to achieve the objectives of Ukraine's European goals. | |
| We have invested more than $5 billion to help Ukraine to achieve these and other goals. | |
| Nuland said the United States will continue to promote Ukraine to the future it deserves. | |
| Oh, truer words have rarely been spoken. | |
| She is, of course, a rabid Russophobe and a neoconservative warmonger married to a historian who is of the same ilk. | |
| And she told the National Press Club last December that the U.S. has invested $5 billion in organizing the network to achieve U.S. goals in the Ukraine. | |
| Now, she is an Obama regime official who tragically, or perhaps So what she means by Ukraine's future under the EU overlordship is for Ukraine to be looted, | |
| pretty much like Latvia and Greece, and to be used by Washington as a staging ground for US missile bases. | |
| Against Russia, she made an obscene reference, and it's rare that I agree with a politician, but I will go so far as to agree with her on these two words. | |
| She made an obscene reference to the European Union, which caused a diplomatic scandal when her January 28, 2014 telephone conversation with U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine, Jeffrey Pyatt, was broadcast on YouTube. | |
| Nuland was discussing with Pyatt the role of the Ukrainian opposition leaders in the country's government and the crisis in the Ukraine. | |
| Nuland insulted Vitaly Klitschko and said he should not be allowed into the government because he was too inexperienced. | |
| Subsequently, Nuland stated that she preferred the United Nations as mediator instead of the European Union, adding, Fuck the EU! And Pyatt responded, Oh, exactly. | |
| So yes, fuck the EU. | |
| That is important. | |
| Now, of course, a lot of the protesters have been fairly violent. | |
| There are some arguments that the police have been somewhat restrained. | |
| They certainly have been more restrained in many ways than, say, the U.S. police when getting the wrong house for a drug arrest or when dealing with the nonviolent protesters at the Occupy Wall Street movement. | |
| And, of course, the U.S. is fueling and paying for and potentially arming the protesters in the Ukraine. | |
| In order to turn the protests into a revolt that allows Washington to install a puppet government in the Ukraine. | |
| Okay. | |
| So, just recently, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution threatening sanctions against the Ukraine should the violent protests be put down by the police. | |
| If the Ukrainian police behave even remotely towards violent protesters in the way that the U.S. police have behaved towards nonviolent protesters, then the Washington should interfere in the internal policies and affairs of the Ukraine. | |
| You know, in the same way that when America was violently putting down some of the Occupy Wall Street So, | |
| on February 7th of the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, The head of the Ukraine met with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to discuss the crisis. | |
| And although the results of these talks were not made public, the Ukrainian leader has since ceased his earlier policy of appeasing the protesters and begun preparing for a standoff. | |
| In other words, for him to do the deal with Russia, it means he's got to stay in power. | |
| and it could be that Putin has demanded that he put down the protests because he knows the protests are coming and fueled by U.S. money. | |
| The riot police moved in hours after Moscow gave the Ukraine $2 billion in aid for its crippled economy, part of a larger aid package, which it had been holding back to demand decisive action to crush the protests. | |
| If you're going to invest in a government, you sure as hell don't want that government to be overthrown. | |
| Kind of tough to collect from people facing trial or banished. | |
| Now, the Ukrainian protesters, let's just take money out of the equation for the moment, the Ukrainian protesters are concerned about corruption in the Ukrainian government, and I guess they should be. | |
| Corruption and government, pretty much the same word. | |
| Government is the initiation of force, government is a monopoly on violence, which always leads to inevitable corruption. | |
| And how is that going to work out if they feel that the European Union is the place to go to avoid corruption? | |
| Well, a recent report on European Union corruption, issued February 3rd by the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, said that a business political nexus of corruption affects all 28 EU member countries and costs the EU economies – oh, are you ready? | |
| Brace yourself – 162 $162.2 billion per annum. | |
| That is the cost of corruption estimated by an EU commissioner. | |
| Probably far higher. | |
| That is cost of corruption inside the European Union. | |
| $162.2 billion. | |
| That's almost the size of the entire Ukrainian economy. | |
| And I don't really think that going west is the place to go if you really want to start avoiding corruption. | |
| Joining the EU to avoid corruption is like joining the mafia to achieve zen-like peace of mind. | |
| Not going to happen very well. | |
| Um... | |
| Now, Moldovia, which is one of the poorest countries in Europe, is expected to move forward with the Union with the West, even though Russia has now banned imports of Moldovian wine. | |
| Really does sound like something from Star Trek, doesn't it? | |
| And that's, of course, one of the country's most important exports and has threatened other repercussions, including an immigration crackdown on more than 100,000 Moldovans working in Russia. | |
| These are the kind of things that can happen. | |
| I mean, there's always a carrot and there's always a stick, right? | |
| And the Ukraine right now needs like $15 billion just to get through the next little while. | |
| And there has been some movement towards the resolution of this crisis. | |
| So the Ukrainian parliament, I think just today, has restricted the power of the prime minister and has also offered amnesty for all of the Protesters. | |
| But, boy, wouldn't it be nice if instead of clamoring for better masters, instead of saying, we don't like our current master, let's team up with the masters in Russia! | |
| Let's team up with the masters in the European Union! | |
| Let's take American money! | |
| How about, instead of bleating around like sheep, looking for nicer masters, we question whether masters are appropriate for the survival and flourishing of the species at all. | |
| We do not want America starting to place missiles right on the Russian border. | |
| Last time that happened was in 1962, and what happened was America put a bunch of missiles in Turkey, which of course is very close to Russia as well, and the Russians responded By shipping or attempting to install missiles in Cuba, | |
| provoking the very closest that we've come to nuclear war in the history of the species, it seems not really worth the risk, and I would urge the Ukrainian people to question the need for rulers at all. |
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