By Robert Parry, Global Research, March 25, 2015, Consortium News
In the never-never land of how the mainstream U.S. press covers the Ukraine crisis, the appointment last year of thuggish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky to govern one of the country’s eastern provinces was pitched as a democratic “reform” because he was supposedly too rich to bribe, without noting that his wealth had come from plundering the country’s economy.
In other words, the new U.S.-backed “democratic” regime, after overthrowing democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych because he was “corrupt,” was rewarding one of Ukraine’s top thieves by letting him lord over his own province, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, with the help of his personal army.
Last year, Kolomoisky’s brutal militias, which include neo-Nazi brigades, were praised for their fierce fighting against ethnic Russians from the east who were resisting the removal of their president. But now Kolomoisky, whose financial empire is crumbling as Ukraine’s economy founders, has turned his hired guns against the Ukrainian government led by another oligarch, President Petro Poroshenko.
Last Thursday night, Kolomoisky and his armed men went to Kiev after the government tried to wrest control of the state-owned energy company UkrTransNafta from one of his associates. Kolomoisky and his men raided the company offices to seize and apparently destroy records. As he left the building, he cursed out journalists who had arrived to ask what was going on. He ranted about “Russian saboteurs.”
It was a revealing display of how the corrupt Ukrainian political-economic system works and the nature of the “reformers” whom the U.S. State Department has pushed into positions of power. According to BusinessInsider, the Kiev government tried to smooth Kolomoisky’s ruffled feathers by announcing “that the new company chairman [at UkrTransNafta] would not be carrying out any investigations of its finances.”
Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky confronting journalists after he led an armed team in a raid at the government-owned energy company in Kiev on March 19, 2015. (Screen shot from YouTube)
On Monday, Valentyn Nalyvaychenko, chief of the State Security Service, accused Dnipropetrovsk officials of financing armed gangs and threatening investigators, Bloomberg News reported, while noting that Ukraine has sunk to 142nd place out of 175 countries in Transparency International’s Corruptions Perception Index, the worst in Europe.
The see-no-evil approach to how the current Ukrainian authorities do business relates as well to Ukraine’s new Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko, who appears to have enriched herself at the expense of a $150 million U.S.-taxpayer-financed investment fund for Ukraine.
Jaresko, a former U.S. diplomat who received overnight Ukrainian citizenship in December to become Finance Minister, had been in charge of the Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF), which became the center of insider-dealing and conflicts of interest, although the U.S. Agency for International Development showed little desire to examine the ethical problems – even after Jaresko’s ex-husband tried to blow the whistle. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Ukraine Finance Minister’s American ‘Values.’”]
Passing Out the Billions
Jaresko will be in charge of dispensing the $17.5 billion that the International Monetary Fund is allocating to Ukraine, along with billions of dollars more expected from U.S. and European governments.
Regarding Kolomoisky’s claim about “Russian saboteurs,” the government said that was not the case, explaining that the clash resulted from the parliament’s vote last week to reduce Kolomoisky’s authority to run the company from his position as a minority owner. As part of the shakeup, Kolomoisky’s protégé Oleksandr Lazorko was fired as chairman, but he refused to leave and barricaded himself in his office, setting the stage for Kolomoisky’s arrival with armed men.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported on the dispute but also flashed back to its earlier propagandistic praise of the 52-year-old oligarch, recalling that “Mr. Kolomoisky was one of several oligarchs, considered too rich to bribe, who were appointed to leadership positions in a bid to stabilize Ukraine.”
Kolomoisky also is believed to have purchased influence inside the U.S. government through his behind-the-scenes manipulation of Ukraine’s largest private gas firm, Burisma Holdings. Last year, the shadowy Cyprus-based company appointed Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to its board of directors. Burisma also lined up well-connected lobbyists, some with ties to Secretary of State John Kerry, including Kerry’s former Senate chief of staff David Leiter, according to lobbying disclosures.
As Time magazine reported,
“Leiter’s involvement in the firm rounds out a power-packed team of politically-connected Americans that also includes a second new board member, Devon Archer, a Democratic bundler and former adviser to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. Both Archer and Hunter Biden have worked as business partners with Kerry’s son-in-law, Christopher Heinz, the founding partner of Rosemont Capital, a private-equity company.”
According to investigative journalism in Ukraine, the ownership of Burisma has been traced to Privat Bank, which is controlled by Kolomoisky.
So, it appears that Ukraine’s oligarchs who continue to wield enormous power inside the corrupt country are now circling each other over what’s left of the economic spoils and positioning themselves for a share of the international bailouts to come.
As for “democratic reform,” only in the upside-down world of the State Department’s Orwellian “information war” against Russia over Ukraine would imposing a corrupt and brutal oligarch like Kolomoisky as the unelected governor of a defenseless population be considered a positive.
(Early Wednesday morning, President Poroshenko dismissed Kolomoisky from his post as Dnipropetrovsk regional governor.)
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The Downing of MH17 – Is Israel Involved?
He [Pinhas Lavon] inspired and cultivated the negative adventuristic trend in the army and preached the doctrine that not the Arab countries but the Western Powers are the enemy, and the only way to deter them from their plots is through direct actions that will terrorize them.
[Shimon] Peres shares the same ideology [as Lavon]: he wants to frighten the West into supporting Israel’s aims.
– Moshe Sharett, Israel’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, 1955
We know that members of the Israeli military led the violent overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine in February 2014, and we know that Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down while flying through the air traffic control region of Dnepropetrovsk, where the governor, Igor Kolomoisky, happens to be an Israeli billionaire involved in aviation companies. Furthermore, Yaron Mofaz, a relative of Shaul Mofaz, former chief of staff of the Israeli military, oddly took a photograph of the ill-fated Malaysian plane at the airport in Amsterdam shortly before it was shot down, which he then provided to Reuters.
A “false-flag operation with a twist” is meant to convey the idea that the downing of MH17 may be a kind of double false-flag operation, i.e. a false-flag within a false-flag. As we know, the United States and its western allies accuse the separatist pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine of downing the passenger airliner with a surface-to-air missile near Donetsk. To this date, however, no evidence has been provided to support this accusation although the United States had a spy satellite over the area where the plane was shot down when it happened. If they have evidence to support their allegation why have they not presented it?
The Russians, on the other hand, have presented evidence to support the scenario that the plane was shot down by a Ukrainian fighter jet, allegedly a Sukhoi SU-25. The SU-25 is a Soviet-era ground-support aircraft which the Israelis have modified and upgraded. The Israeli-modified SU-25 is called the “Scorpion” (the SU-25KM), and features advanced avionics with a modern “glass cockpit”. The “Scorpion” was produced in an Israeli-Georgian joint venture with the Tbilisi Aircraft Manufacturing (TAM) factory that produced the original SU-25. This joint venture project would suggest that the Israelis have a number of the modified SU-25KM planes that could be deployed in a false-flag operation.
ESSENTIAL EVIDENCE – Ukrainian SU-25 Fighter Detected in Close Approach to MH17
Video Link – youtu.be/pEvX1CYdwXE
The Israelis would have several motives to shoot down MH17. Firstly, they may want to punish Malaysia for having set up the Kuala Lampur War Crimes Commission, which found the state of Israel guilty of genocide of the Palestinian people in November 2013. Secondly, they may be seeking to punish Holland for the fact that the largest pension fund in The Netherlands decided earlier this year to withdraw all its investments from Israel’s five largest banks because they have branches in the West Bank and are involved in financing the construction of illegal Jewish settlements on occupied territory.
There are some who might find this line of reasoning to be unfair to Israel, “the Jewish state” and “America’s best friend in the region.” To them, I would simply say: You do not understand the true nature of the Zionist beast. Israel operates like a gangster state that uses murder and intimidation to force nations to submit to its will. The Israelis would think that the downing of MH17 should be considered a message to the governments of Malaysia and The Netherlands and that other nations would be wise to take note of what happens to countries that challenge Israel.
If Israel were a person it would be a psychopathic serial killer on the loose. The psychopath who is a serial killer might appear to be a nice, intelligent, and civilized person – but that is only how he appears. When no one is looking he murders people in cold blood and gets away with it, time after time. The fundamental problem with his worldview is that he believes that he is superior to other people and that their lives are worth nothing. This is exactly how the Jewish supremacists who rule Israel view non-Jews. This is what is taught in Jewish yeshivas where the anti-Christian Talmud is the doctrine and source of all knowledge.
The Zionist state of Israel engages in wars of aggression and commits genocidal war crimes and massacres in plain sight and gets away with it, time after time, decade after decade. Anyone who has studied the history of Zionism and followed the actions of the state of Israel over the decades knows this very well. The historical record is quite clear: the Zionist state was created by terrorism and deception and that is how it operates to this day. Israel’s latest aggression against Gaza in which family homes, schools, hospitals, and mosques have been targeted shows that the Zionist state uses terrorism on a daily basis and has absolutely no respect for the lives of non-Jews.
Zionists have exploited “the Holocaust” myth to gain political power. Using “the Holocaust” as their shield, the Zionists have forced the international community to give Israel a free pass for its flagrant crimes. As a result, Israel has a permanent “Get Out of Jail” card. The failure to hold Israel accountable for its many egregious crimes, however, has facilitated the creation of a Frankenstein state that has now turned on those who fostered it. The so-called “Jewish state” has become a monster that commits atrocities in full view of the world – with impunity. Individual states and leaders are now afraid to criticize Israel because they don’t want to endanger their positions – or their nations.
In looking as the possibility of Israeli involvement in the downing of MH17 let’s start with the first question that should be asked about any such atrocity: Do any of the given explanations make sense?
It is quite obvious that it makes no sense whatsoever for the pro-Russian rebels to intentionally shoot down a Malaysian passenger plane. Furthermore, it doesn’t make any sense for the Ukrainians to shoot down the plane either. It is hard to believe that a Ukrainian military pilot would knowingly shoot down a passenger plane and commit an act of mass murder, especially with the awareness that their actions would be seen by radar on the ground in Russia and by satellites above them.
So, who might have shot MH17 down? To answer this question we need to ask another: Who benefits from the atrocity? While it is quite clear that the United States and the western allies are trying to put the blame on the pro-Russia rebels, and by extension on Russia and Vladimir Putin, simply blaming the rebels and Russia without providing any evidence to prove their case suggests that they have no proof.
The anti-Russia faction in the United States and Europe is clearly trying to smear Russia and Putin with the blame. This faction is led by the Zionist Neo-Cons in the Obama administration, people like Victoria Nuland (Kagan), the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State who managed the violent putsch in Kiev in February. It should be noted that Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the person Nuland chose to be prime minister of the unelected government in Ukraine, abruptly resigned on July 24, 2014, one week after the downing of MH17. Was the shooting down of the airliner a bridge too far for Yatsenyuk? It certainly would appear so.
The anti-Russia faction in Washington is the Zionist war agenda gang that dominates the Obama administration, the governments of Britain, Canada, and the European member states of NATO. The supposed leaders of these nations are really just Zionist “administrators” serving the masters who put them in power. This is why these weak national “leaders” speak in unison to defend Israel’s genocidal aggression against Gaza – as Israel’s right to self-defense – while condemning Russia and applying sanctions for offenses it has not even committed. This is the group, completely controlled by Zionists, which clearly seeks to advance its agenda of war and conquest from the MH17 atrocity.
While we cannot say with certainty that Israel was involved in the downing of MH17, we can say that it had both the motive and the capability to do so, which is more than we can say for the pro-Russian rebels who have neither the motive nor the capability but who have been wrongly blamed by the Zionist faction for the crime.
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