We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Ukraine’s Sickness & Europe’s Cure

Click here to access article by Eric Draitser from Boiling Frogs Post.
...with pro-EU forces taking control of the country’s economic and foreign policy, the outcome is not hard to predict: a rescue package from Europe with all the usual austerity conditions attached.

In exchange for European “aid”, Ukraine will be forced to accept the driving down of wages, significant cuts to the public sector and social services, in addition to a rise in taxes on the working class and slashing of pensions.  Moreover, the country will be compelled to accede to a liberalization program that will allow Europe to dump goods into the Ukrainian market, deregulation and the further opening up the country’s financial sector to predatory speculation and privatization. 
Two articles from RT appear to confirm what Draitser is forecasting for Ukraine, but they point more to Western banks that are, and will be, the driving force behind the neoliberal policies that Ukraine can expect from the West. 

'EU doesn't know what it's doing in Ukraine' [former British diplomat William Mallinson remarks in interview]
...Ukraine is in a far weaker position [than Greece] because the Ukrainian politicians do not have an experience of how to deal and negotiate with the European Central Bank, with the European Commission, with the Americans. So they will be in a very weak position.... Most of the people are themselves not fully aware of the economic implications of what they are doing because this is really the banks and Germany and the US trying to get as much control as they can over as much of the country as they can.
‘Ukrainians to pay extreme price for regime change through austerity’ [Professor of Political Science Jeffrey Sommers remarks in interview]
...the issue is whether or not they are going to have enough to pay their foreign bond holders. It is in the US’s interest to see that those bond holders get paid off. So my guess is that there will be an IMF-ECB standard stabilization program that will put in place the usual structural adjustment, or what is now called more fashionably austerity. And that there will be sufficient funds to pay off those foreign bond holders. But it is going to come with a rather extreme price for the people of Ukraine. 
...I see a kind of triage measure just designed to ensure that bond holders are paid off and nothing is done to develop Ukraine.
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