Michael Hudson: EU Association Agreement with Ukraine Is a Gift to Kleptocrats

Written on July 3rd, 2014 in politics Comments Off

Published on naked capitalism, inclusive video, 10.59 min, by Yves Smith, July 1, 2014 (also on YouTube).

This video is a great, accessible discussion by Michael Hudson on the Real News Network about how the widely-touted EU deal with the Ukraine is actually an exercise in looting by kleptocrats. Hudson explains that unlike earlier pacts, the EU is making no investment in Ukraine, nor is it allowing Ukraine, which has an agricultural producing region, to have the benefits of the CAP that French farmers enjoy. Hudson point out that the supposed benefit of Ukraine having access to the EU for exports is a smokescreen, since Ukraine is going to lose its main export market, Russia, and the Europeans don’t want to buy Ukraine’s products. Hudson contends that this deal is a de facto takeover, with kleptocrats to be installed in key governmental positions. He anticipates that the result will be mass unemployment and unrest.

This portion of the transcript caught my eye:

HUDSON: Well, I’m going to begin by putting it in the big picture, and then I’ll get to the details. The big picture is that this is a form of colonialism almost identical to what Europe did in Africa and Latin America and the Near East. What it did in the 19th century in Africa, where property was owned communally, was it would go to the chieftains of a given tribe, as it did to the Saudi Arabian chieftains, and it would say, well, to make an agreement, you have to register all this oil of your country, but you register it in your own name. And once they registered it in their own name, then Britain or France or the other European powers could make a deal that the chieftains could then sell this property or make contracts on behalf of oil or minerals with the European colonial powers. And that’s how the colonial powers pried away all of this property from what had been tribal possession or communal possession.

Well, as you know, what happened in the Ukraine and the rest of Central Europe after 1991 was all of this public property that was the legacy of the Soviet domination was simply registered in the names of the factory managers. So Ukraine has been called the Nigeria of the North for a good reason. The factory managers and all the leading kleptocrats simply registered their factories in their own name and took it over. And now it’s time for stage two of the process, and stage two is basically the agreement that was signed last Friday.

And stage two: … //

… (full text).

More at The Real News.

Links:

Trolling among tactics used by US State Dept against ISIS, on Russia Today RT, July 2, 2014;

French Bank BNP Has Enough Cash to Pay Record $9 Billion Fine, on TruthDig, by Peter Z. Scheer, July 1, 2014;

Putin to West: Stop turning world into ‘global barracks, dictating rules to others, on Russia Today RT, July 1, 2014;

Can economists explain much? on Real-World Economics Review Blog, by Peter Radford, July 1, 2014;

Video: SCOTUS Reinterprets Religious Liberty to Justify Corporate Discrimination, 9.28 min, on The Real News, July 1, 2014: Patricia Miller and Tarso Luis Ramos say the decision reinterprets religious liberty in order to justify discriminatory practices of corporations, and privileges religious freedom of corporations over individuals;
SCOTUS Supreme Court of the United States on en.wikipedia, incl. See also and External Links;

Meet Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the new Caliph of Islam, on Left Foot Forward, by Saif Rahman, July 1, 2014 (Saif Rahman is a strategic consultant, founder of Humanist and Cultural Muslim Assoc HCMA, and author of the Book: The Islamist Delusion – From Islamist to Cultural Muslim Humanist, by Saif Rahman, on amazon);

Human Rights: Transit Benches To Shelter The Homeless, on Axis of Logic, by Lisa McBride, June 30, 2014;

Happy Independence Day From the Supreme Court: Unions and Women Lose, Koch Brothers Win, on TruthDig, by Bill Blum, June 30, 2014;

BRICS’ Economic Power: China Makes Strides in Latin America, on News Junkie Post;

Demand the Impossible 2014, on New Left Project, by Ed, June 6, 2014;

The Crushing Force of Capitalism: Back to the Dark Ages of Feudalism, on CounterPunch (first on News Junkie Post), by Gilbert Mercier, June 2, 2014: … The feudal system of the Dark Ages was the social and economic exploitation of peasants by lords. This led to an economy always marked by poverty, sometimes famine, extreme exploitation and wide gaps between rich and poor. The feudal era relation of a serf to his lord is essentially identical to the relation of a so-called WalMart associate to a heir of the Walton family. If one looks objectively at the power stratum in the US circa 2013, and the one of, let’s say, France circa 1750, it is hard to ignore the startling similarity. For example, attendance at Ivy-League schools in the US is principally an inherited privilege; the same can be said for elected positions in Congress. The concept of dynasties rules, not personal merit …;

Engineering Failed States: The Strategy of Global Corporate Imperialism, on News Junkie Post, by Gilbert Mercier, Feb 18, 2014;

And this:

uploaded by Priscilla P. Wood,

Priscilla P. Wood’s Blog.

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