rec

I keep hearing it's about democracy and a better way of life that includes great things like the 50% pension cuts “Kommersant-Ukraine" just wrote about today based on a draft publication by the Ministry of Finance to meet the EU Austerity demands.

those are the kind of details that make the whole thing look like a put up job.

Of course not which is why this put up job isn't going to go as smoothly as our media pretends.

Here are few pictures of the first time they cut SOME pensions in 2011 as dictated by the IMF.

Thousands protest pension and benefits cuts in Ukraine
Tuesday Sep 20, 2011 8:32 AM



Protesters clash with police in front of Ukrainian parliament in Kiev, Ukraine, September 20. More than 10,000 people, among them Afghanistan war veterans, demonstrated in the Ukrainian capital Kiev to protest proposed benefit cuts, with some of the marchers attempting to break police cordons around the national parliament building. Veterans of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power accident also participated in the street protests. Like Afghanistan war veterans, Ukraine's Chernobyl victims face reduced pensions and medical payments if parliament passes a cost-cutting bill currently under debate. Protesters shouted ‘Shame’ along with insults, as police struggled to keep demonstrators from overturning barriers. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials have said cash-strapped Ukraine must reduce numbers of people receiving social payments and the size of those payments, to obtain further IMF financing.




Protesters stand in front of Ukrainian parliament after their clash with police in Kiev, Ukraine, on September 20. Veterans of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear power accident also participated in the street protests. Like Afghanistan war veterans, Ukraine's Chernobyl victims face reduced pensions and medical payments if parliament passes a cost-cutting bill currently under debate. Protesters shouted ‘Shame’ along with insults, as police struggled to keep demonstrators from overturning barriers.



Relatives of the 1979-89 Soviet Afghan war victims react as they take part in a protest rally against Ukrainian authorities' initiative to cut social benefits near the Parliament headquarters in Kiev on September 20. Hundreds of Ukrainians, mostly veterans of the 1979-89 Soviet Afghan war protesting against plans to cut their payouts and subsidies, tried to storm into the parliament building and scuffled with police on Tuesday.

http://photoblog.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/09/20/7857736-thousands-protest-pension-and-benefits-cuts-in-ukraine

Nord Stream and South Stream. Currently about 1/3 of Russia's NG exports go through Ukraine.

Nord Stream bypasses land and goes through the Baltic to provide a northern supply of natural gas. It accounts for a large portion of the NG supply in the north.

South Stream should be on-line in a couple of years and will go under the Black Sea, not through Ukraine. At that point, you'll see that percentage going through Ukraine drop by half, at least. The country's infrastructure's ageing badly and Russia simply doesn't trust Ukraine.

Unless Europe's population explodes and its carbon efficiency declines precipitously, Ukraine's natural gas pipelines won't be all that essential. Since Europe is working on increasing carbon efficiency and using renewable energy and its population is stable or declining, that seems unlikely--and will make Ukraine's infrastructure even less important.


That's what happens when you base your desired results on the state of affairs more than a decade old. At the time, Nord and South Stream weren't even a glimmer in Gazprom's eye. Mostly because Putin hadn't consolidated economic power in the Russian state, between outright claiming it or merely controlling the oligarchs that helped bring him to power. (This is a common enough occurrence: It happened in Germany in the '30s when there was a kind of Nazi/industrial consortium, but while big business never lost all authority within a decade the industrialists were basically puppets.)

People do the same with some sort of pipeline that was proposed 20 or 30 years ago through Afghanistan. They still argue it's a crucial bit of information and the real reason for the war there. The project was abandoned, an alternative proposed, and the alternative built in that time--making the Afghan pipeline unnecessary, unwanted, unfunded, de-proposed. Yet the meme lives on.

However NG is playing a role in the Russian/Ukrainian affair. Because of the furor over the Russian occupation of Krym what you get is a blocking of work on South Stream. It's a joint project and right now Europe is basically preventing work for reasons of geopolitics. In a nutshell: Ukraine. The short-term stoppage isn't mucking with the schedule very much, but other sticking points are looming larger as the two sides move further apart on resolution of the issues. Russia's assuming that Europe's dependence on Russia will break the standoff so there's no real need to compromise. They can strong-arm Ukraine *and* Europe because the best way to defend yourself is to get an opponent down and keep on kicking. Tak delal Stalin, i ego predok Groznyi tsar'. I Zolotoe igo, ikh obshchii uchitel'.

Oddly, about the time that deal came together with Pakistan and Iran, our government was suddenly shocked, SHOCKED to finally notice that Pakistan supported al Qaeda.