US client Yushchenko to assume Ukraine presidency

[IndianaGreen]

Once again the capitalist press succeeds in selling us snake oil. Read it and weep, and then do your research into Viktor Yuschenko and his neocon American wife.

US client Yushchenko to assume Ukraine presidency

By Justus Leicht
6 January 2005

The whole economy, as well as the parliament and Yushchenko’s own movement, are dominated by oligarchic interests. Yushchenko’s main source of finance is controversial big businessman Petro Poroshenko, who owns numerous companies and a television station, and is regarded as a potential candidate for the post of prime minister. Most of the oligarchs who supported the defeated candidate Yanukovich during the campaign are also making plans to fall in line with the new president.

Yushchenko has advocated that in the future the oligarchs should also be forced to pay taxes. His opposition movement has estimated that half of the Ukrainian economy belongs to the so-called “shadow economy.” In light of the extremely low tax rates and the huge fortunes made by the oligarchs, it should be possible for them to pay such taxes.

However, this point of his programme should not be taken too literally. Yushchenko has also announced plans to abolish the enforcement staff of the revenue office and will reduce tax examinations for enterprises. Under Kuchma such examinations by tax officials were often a means of regulating competition between different cliques of oligarchs or simply as a means of extortion. Yushchenko’s election programme puts the matter rather ingenuously and declares: “If taxes are fair, then all citizens will pay them.”

In return, Yushchenko guarantees that the oligarchs can retain their property. Although it is well known that the privatisation of large state enterprises in the 1990s usually took place through criminal means, Yushchenko expressly excludes any “redistribution of property.”

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jan2005/ukra-j06.shtml

[HawkerHurricane]

1. Some choice:

The Fascist or the Stalinist.

[IndianaGreen]

2. It is the same choice the US is planning for post-Castro Cuba

Turn the clock back to the Batista regime, without the Mafia.

[HawkerHurricane]

3. At the risk of being flamed...

it's damn near the same choice in today's Venezuala.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

4. A US Client?

You wish. Yushchenko has more integrity in his little pinky than the entire Whitehouse and Congress put together.

But oh, wait, he's obviously not a Socialist candidate. So that makes him bad.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[IndianaGreen]

5. Kateryna (Kathy) Yushchenko is a neocon that worked for Ronald Reagan

and she still has ties to her PNAC friends at the Pentagon and State Department. But don't let that fact stop you from drinking the DLC Kool-Aid.

[ElectroPrincess]

6. What's the deal? Is a DLCer's day incomplete without equating

"socialism" to the viewpoints of USA's Democratic liberals?

[sandnsea]

7. wsws.org

It is an article from a socialist web site. Some leftists really are socialists and leftists and they should quit pretending they're liberal Democrats. And some liberal Democrats should learn the difference for themselves. There are worse political regimes than Ronald Reagan, bad as he was.

[IndianaGreen]

8. WSWS opposed the war in Iraq while the DLC cheered for it

It is time some of you snap out of the anti-socialist indoctrination you have been getting since kindergarten and start smelling the red roses! Just as the word "liberal" became a dirty word through rightwing propaganda, the word "socialist" became a dirty word during the McCarthy era.

"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the
manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words,
you can control the people who must use the words."

(Philip K.Dick)

[sandnsea]

9. Socialists were never Democrats

People who are socialists need to quit pretending they're Democrats, liberal, progressive or otherwise. Be a leftist, a socialist, whatever, loud and proud. That's all I'm saying. Sometimes socialists are accurate in what they say, sometimes they're completely nuts. Like with this article on Yuschenko. There's worse things than being a Republican or US official; except to a socialist. Just because Yuschenko won, doesn't mean it's the next PNAC plot. Regardless, when socialists or leftists say these kinds of thing, say it as a socialist or leftist so Democrats can say "uh, that's not us".

[IndianaGreen]

10. You need to read your history

You will be shocked to see how many socialists were part of the New Deal. Of course, that was way back when the Roosevelt Democrats were in power, long before the evil DLC tried to Republicanize the Democratic Party.

As to your glorious capitalism, I will quote W.E.B. Dubois:

Capitalism cannot reform itself … No universal selfishness can bring social good to all

[sandnsea]

11. "glorious capitalism"

See there, if you're a socialist, just say so.

Socialists were part of the New Deal? Well duh, I just said sometimes socialists are right and on many issues of labor they are. But sometimes they're wrong and go too far. Which was part of the purpose of the ADA, to create a strong Democratic Part organization and begin to define the difference between Democrats and Socialists and Communists. We need to do it again I guess. Maybe you need to go read some history.

[IndianaGreen]

12. I have a better suggestion

Sit down and write on a piece of paper your vision of the sort of society you want America to be, for you and for your descendants. After you do that, then determine what is the best way to achieve such a society. Forget the political labels while you labor at this.

Let's compare notes later...

[sandnsea]

13. Here

I've been working on it since the election. Not every page is finished, but enough is that you ought to get the gist.

www.lightupthedarkness.org