Kerry: Congress MUST include IMF Reforms in Ukraine Aid Package (to screw the working class)
Argues IMF reforms sought by administration must be included.
By Stacy Kaper. March 13, 2014
...
"We must have IMF reform," he said at a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing on the State Department and Foreign Operations budget. "It would be a terrible message to the Ukraine not be able to follow through," on boosting the fund's lending capacity.
Vermont Democrat Sen. Patrick Leahy, who chaired the hearing, argued it was important for the Senate to understand which version of Ukraine aid the president wanted to sign--the House-passed bill that authorizes $1 billion in loan guarantees, or the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's version, which would include IMF reform and sanctions against Russia.
...
Kerry argued the IMF piece is critical.
"The IMF is the tool that helps to bring countries into alignment on their transparency, accountability in their reforms, their market economy, all of the things that are in our interests," he said. "I could not underscore more Sen. Graham, the importance of what you are saying and the importance of following through."
...
http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/kerry-congress-risks-sending-wrong-message-to-ukraine-20140313
There's that transparency again!
Economy in doldrums, the Kiev junta is urgently reviving cooperation with the International Monetary Fund. On March 4 a team from the IMF was in Kiev to study the books and consider a loan. Kiev hopes to get the first $3 billion in a month. Yatsenyuk rushed to assure the West that Ukraine is ready to meet all the conditions put forward by the Fund. One can imagine how badly it is going to hurt common people.
* * *
Some conditions are already known: to raise the male retirement age by two years and make it three years more for women, to eliminate special pension benefits for scholars, state employees, heads of state enterprises, to limit pensions for those who continue to work having reached the retirement age and the military commissioned officers will retire at 60. The IMF wants the government to do away with child care, things like a baby bonus (a government payment to parents of a newborn baby), gratuitous lunches and free textbooks. Unemployment benefits will be paid out only after six months of uninterrupted work, sick-list benefit will go down to 70% of salary with the compensation counted only from the third day of sick absence. Minimum living wage hikes will be frozen. Municipal enterprises will have to pay 50% more for gas while the price will be increased twofold for private consumers. There will be a 40% rise of electricity costs while utilities payments will go up along with the gas hikes.
Ukraine is to do away with benefits and raise transport taxes by 50% increasing the petrol excise by 60 euros. The simplified taxation system for entrepreneurs will be curtailed, probably to make businessmen happy, while pensioners will be done a favor by having value-added taxes raised for pharmacies pushing up medicine prices by 20 %.
The IMF conditions are going to strike agriculture. Western creditors demand to rescind the moratorium on the sale of agricultural land, the value-added tax easing law for those who reside in rural areas and also subsidies for pork and chicken meat producers. Besides, the International Monetary Fund wants Ukraine to privatize all coal mines and completely abrogate state subsidies for them. Transport, as well as housing and communal services benefits are to be revoked.
...
http://williambowles.info/2014/03/09/the-west-tightens-noose-around-ukraines-economy-by-olga-shedrova/
The retirement age in Ukraine was 60 for men and 55 for women. In 2011, they raised it to 60 for women (raised by six months every year for the next 10 years) and 62 for men.
The most significant modifications are the following: within five years (in intervals of six months each year, starting from 1 September 2011) to raise the retirement age for women from 55 to 60 and within four years (in intervals of six months each year, starting from 1 January 2013) to raise the retirement age for men working as civil servants – from 60 to 62. Moreover, the law increases the number of years worked required to obtain a minimal pension from 20 to 30 years for women and from 25 to 35 years for men. Also the maximum value of the pension was limited to ten times the equivalent of the subsistence minimum and the value of the pension for civil servants was reduced. Salaries from the last three years of work were designated as the basis for calculating pensions, not from the final year as it had been previously. The increase in the years of work required to entitle somebody to a pension and the broadening of the basis for calculating pensions will lead to a lower value of the newly established pensions.
http://www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2011-07-13/a-cosmetic-pension-system-reform-ukraine
Read that part closely because the same things have been happening in the US for years except that we're not putting 2+2 together and understanding that this is a global attack on the working class and huge transfer of OUR money into THEIR pockets.
The IMF wants that retirement age raised to 65 for both now.
Here's what happened when Yanukovich increased the retirement age in 2011. The people said NO. They rebelled against the cuts Yanukovich was making for the IMF deal and that's when Yanukovich turned to the much more generous package Russia offered and that didn't meddle in Ukraine's internal affairs or come off the backs of the poor.
Tuesday Sep 20, 2011
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.
http://photoblog.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/09/20/7857736-thousands-protest-pension-and-benefits-cuts-in-ukraine
And that was just the beginning because the IMF wants those pensions privatized, it wants for-profit reforms in medical care and education, and social support programs, you know, like free daycare.
SOUND FAMILIAR? Recognize any global patterns?
Here's our new foreign policy:
Step 1: Destroy a country economically and if necessary militarily or by coup.
Step 2: Send in the vultures to *reconstruct* what was destroyed in the first step, with loans to put the entire population of that country in debt for generations
Step 3: Rinse and repeat with every country you can intimidate at the barrel of a gun
And who's subsidizing this? We are. WE who are having our own benefits cut so our government can write checks to a putsch government in Ukraine to hand over to the IMF that's making them cut their people's pensions and social services too.
What a scam.
It's all going to the same banking cartel that's squeezing our country dry and the same little people who are being squeezed dry here are having the money from our pensions and social services stolen to pay these banks to squeeze little people in other countries dry.
Democracy pffffft. This has nothing to do with democracy or human rights.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Indeed. "This is Shock Doctrine and Disaster Capitalism on steroids". You can tell by the increased, panicked vehemence of the people defending it.
Ranting with Chunky Mark right now 
I enjoyed every second of that. 
113,000 posts of State Department talking points is bound to take a toll on anyone.
Out of charity, I won't tire you out any further so I'll be putting you on ignore. Again. It pains me to see you twisting yourself into such painful knots to defend every single thing this administration does.
I hope you get some rest.
"I've noticed a steep drop in the "quality" of the posts lately too.
....just going barely through the Cut & Paste Spam motions now.
Sad."
...blue linky: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024658478#post26
They are evil dictators who kill their own people !
If you're not FOR the WAR in
Vietnam
Afghanistan
Iraq
Libya
Syria,
[font size=5]The Ukraine
you're WITH [/font]
The Communists
AlQaeda
The Terrorists
Saddam
Qaddafi
Assad
[font size=5]PUTIN![/font]
Hasn't that deceitful, right wing, divisive, warmongering, adolescent binary rhetoric caused enough Death and Destruction?
When will YOU say "ENOUGH!"
Do you STAND for anything?
I do.
All we really care about is rooting for our president because he told us the new government in the Ukraine is A-OK!!
1984
But, for all of us, "If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next"
The song's theme is taken from the Spanish Civil War, and the idealism of Welsh volunteers who joined the left-wing International Brigades fighting for the Spanish Republic against Francisco Franco's military rebels. The song takes its name from a Republican poster of the time, displaying a photograph of a young child killed by the Nationalists under a sky of bombers with the stark warning "If you tolerate this, your children will be next" written at the bottom.
Various works on the Spanish Civil War were the inspiration for this song, and certain lyrics pertain directly to these works. For example, the line "If I can shoot rabbits/then I can shoot fascists" is attributed to a remark made by a man who signed up with the Republican fighters to his brother in an interview years later. This was originally quoted in the book Miners Against Fascism by Hywel Francis. Another work George Orwell's first-hand account, "Homage to Catalonia". "I've walked Las Ramblas/but not with real intent" brings to mind the account in Orwell's book of fighting on the Ramblas, with the various factions seemingly getting nowhere, with the fighting and often a sense of camaraderie overriding the vaunted principles each side was supposed to be fighting for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_You_Tolerate_This_Your_Children_Will_Be_Next
Response to Catherina (Original post)
Victoria Nuland admitted recently that we poured $5 Billion into creating the mess we now have in Ukraine.
Detroit can just wait in line. Detroit's a test case anyway, expect to see more Detroits soon while we send billions overseas and subsidize our new fracking ventures to make more profits for the 1%.
Wife of PNAC co-counder, Victoria Nuland, says US invested $5 Billion in 'The Development of Ukrainian "Democratic Institutions"'
“Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has ... invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.... The reforms that the IMF insists on are necessary for the long-term economic health of the country. A new deal with the IMF would also send a positive signal to private markets ... it would be a huge shame to see five years’ worth of work and preparation go to waste if the AA is not signed in the near future. So it is time to finish the job.” Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the State Department, wife of PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan
In other words, welcome to the EU Austerity club – and get in line behind Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy for a strong dose of IMF shock therapy.
This is the same woman who was running back and forth to Ukraine passing out cookies to the violent protesters and egging them in in the finest Florida Bush-mob tradition. This picture was snapped before the intercepted phone call on unsecure cell phone between her and the US Ambassador in Ukraine discussing which of their rent-a-mob leaders should take the reins later and "fuck the EU" if they didn't like it because we'll get the UN to glue it all together for us.)
Victoria Nuland handing out cookies to protesters in Kiev
Her remarks were made at an even sponsored by Chevron and ExxonMobil and stacked with Freedom House, NED types.
DUer Koko tried to sound the bell about Nuland.
The strange appointment of Victoria Nuland as State Department Spokesperson
By Patricia H. Kushlis
Update: 7/12/2013 - Toria grilled about Benghazi role at Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing today for her next high level position: Assistant Secretary of State for Europe
.
Is Hillary asleep at the switch? What is going on here?
Earlier this week, Josh Rogin at FP and Eric Martin at Progressive Realist both flagged the curious appointment of Victoria Nuland as the next State Department Spokesperson to fill P.J. Crowley’s shoes.
Martin questions whether this has foreign policy implications, in particular the replacement of an anti-torture appointee with someone who served as Principal Deputy National Security Advisor to Vice President Cheney.
Rogin doesn’t directly raise potential administration policy shifts but does point out that once upon a time Nuland was Strobe Talbott’s Chief of Staff when he was Deputy Secretary of State during the Clinton Administration and that Talbott had thought very highly of her at the time and still does. In fact, he, according to Rogin, praised her to the hilt in an interview about the pending appointment. So the seemingly amoral Nuland, we’re led to believe, can and will do anyone’s bidding and do it well – in short, a consummate career diplomat.
Why?
But why would Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration agree to appoint to this politically sensitive position someone who willingly served such a controversial figure in suppporting and implementing the “war on terror” and all the baggage that comes with it? Furthermore, how reliable is a Talbott reference anyway? After all, I understand that he just helped his friend Robert Kagan, Nuland’s neocon husband, get a job at Brookings and Talbott is also a friend of neocon writer Marc Gerecht, the husband of Diane Zeleny who also just latched onto a likely sweetheart deal sort of appointment as Head of External Relations and Congressional Affairs at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG). Whether Zeleny deserves or is qualified for the position or not.
From what I know about the Department, an FSO doesn’t just get detailed to the staff of a highly charged and ideological Vice President unless that detailee agrees to follow the boss’s dictates. Cheney’s were all too often forceful and odious. Furthermore, does anyone really think that Cheney –with his penchant for super loyalty and secrecy - would have ever accepted Nuland (or anyone else) for the position without some kind of loyalty test?
Surely the State Department under Hillary Clinton could have found equally (or likely even better) qualified career candidates who do not carry Nuland’s political baggage.
Behind the scenes trade off?
......Continued at the Link.....
http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2011/05/the-strange-appointment-of-victoria-nuland-as-states-spokesperson.html
Taken from http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024461021#post2
and expecting no one to notice.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Venezuela, Syria, Pakistan, Russia again ..... Starting to feel a bit claustrophobic and isolated here. 
I seriously can't. Can you?
And thanks for your support and great posts. The work you and MadFloridian do is crucial to getting future generations out of this mess
with rhetoric reminiscent of his Syria Diatribes.
WHO IS KERRY? these days?
Not the person our household walked the streets to get elected in our Repug District where we had hard time...but we did it ...because getting a Democatic Candidate into the Presidency was so Important.
Who is this GUY?
I don't even know....