In the olden days, leaders of warrior-states would at least give the appearance of waiting for the peace treaty niceties to be completed before proceeding to their final, more leisurely phase, of plunder. Think about the Marshall Plan's reconstruction of Germany after World War Two. The bankers and investors waited until after V.E. Day before they occupied and rebuilt the place with the American military and the nascent CIA to perpetually in place to guard all the loot.
But with so many corrupt officials and arms dealers and rag-tag mercenaries already on a rampage of raping and pillaging in Ukraine, it's never too soon for the elite investor class to personally step in and cash in on the investments which the US and European publics have made on their behalf, even in the midst of bloodshed.
If the bribe-taking and bribe-making can start right now, and at the very highest levels, then the wealthy investors in the military-industrial complex can only grow richer that much sooner.
To that end, President Biden is simply being proactive He is appointing Penny Pritzker, one of the world's richest women and one of the Democratic Party's wealthiest donors, to oversee the entire economic plunder rebuilding of Ukraine, even as the US proxy war with Russia waged on valuable Ukraine real estate is still grinding on with no end in sight.
No end that has been announced publicly, at any rate. So even as they continue to send our billions of dollars and their outdated depleted uranium and cluster bombs, maybe they know something we're not supposed to know. Ukraine, and its US puppet master, are losing to Russia. Team Biden wants to beat the Kremlin to the punch while the getting's still good.
Therefore, former Obama Commerce Secretary and Hyatt Hotel heiress Penny Pritzker has been outlandishly awarded the allegedly sovereign state of Ukraine, to control as she sees fit. Or in euphemistic New York Times headline-speak: "Biden Taps Penny Pritzker to Drive Ukraine's Economic Revival."
It's the new definition of the Pritzker Prize for outstanding achievement by an architect.
The proof that Ukraine is currently naught but an American rump state whose residents are being needlessly killed and maimed in the hundreds of thousands, is right here in the curdled journalistic pudding:
Ms Pritzker, 64, will encourage pro-investment strategies in Ukraine while also drumming up public and private investment from other nations, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the appointment was not yet official. She plans to travel to the country in the coming weeks to begin assessing the state of its economy and to meet with political and business leaders. The White House will announce the appointment on Thursday. Ms. Pritzker will work from the State Department, reporting to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken.
She apparently will not be meeting with everyday struggling and oppressed Ukrainians. This is purely a matter of elites talking to other elites. It's a matter of the Times blandly discussing the joy of oligarchic greed with its own elite target audience.
It's pretty much the same way that written discourse functioned in the Middle Ages. The late philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre pithily described the medieval scribes as mere parasites of the similarly parasitic nobility that they wrote for. If the peasantry was discussed at all, the narrative was not to them but about them. Therefore, the Times would never dream of either castigating Biden or evoking images of Pritzker in $600 Manolo heels, so gruesomely sidestepping Ukrainian corpses in her pursuit of war booty.
The oligarchs running the world don't even bother to hide their psychopathic greed any more, even shamelessly trumpeting it all over the front pages with their anonymous sources. Th Times article about Biden presumptuously bestowing one of his main political funders with a veritable country of her very own is emblematic of how the corporate sponsored media operates today. Neo-feudalism is a big part of neoliberalism.
Even so, why announce Penny Pritzker's new role as Queen of Ukraine now?
Let's put on our speculative hats. Biden's poll numbers are still plummeting, and Donald Trump could very well put the kibosh on both war and further liberal plunder of Ukraine if he is re-elected. Better for Joe Biden to get in now while the getting's still good, especially with liberal pundits now openly calling for him to drop out of the race.
Rumor has it that Barack Obama is the real power behind the scenes. And since Penny Pritzker was perhaps the main financial force behind his own rise to power and his current status as a centa-millionaire celebrity and media mogul. maybe Obama made Biden an offer he couldn't refuse. It might have gone something like this: "I'll keep quiet about your failing re-election campaign, as long as you do me one little favor. Give my sugar mama Penny financial control of a whole foreign country. Nobody can ever have enough power, prestige and pennies."
For more info on Pritzker and her dynasty, you're invited to take a stroll down the seamy side of memory lane, and read the piece I wrote about Barack and Penny way back in 2013.
Plus ca change. Ka-ching goes the beat of their hearts.
18 comments:
To Barry and Penny - Get a frickin' room already!
Well this is certainly weird. This back-assward scheme means the vulture capitalists would be swooping into Ukraine while bodies are still piling up. Risky enough for ya, Penny? I'm recalling another Commerce Secretary who led investors abroad.
Ron Brown, former DNC chair promoted by Clinton to Commerce Secretary, was flying to Croatia on an official 'trade mission' accompanied by a dozen businessmen when they crashed and all 35 aboard were killed. The Military jet didn't have a flight data recorder nor a cockpit voice recorder so who knows why that happened. That was after the war in Croatia had ended and assumed to be a safe hunting grounds for business investors.
What haunts me is that desperate, frustrated Zelensky already has a habit of blaming Russia for Ukrainian actions so as to lure the USA into direct hot war with Russia - unsuccessfully so far but not yet involving an American oligarch. If anything untoward were to happen to Pritzger and her entourage of course 'PUTIN DID IT!". The USA would have to respond forcefully.
The fact is, Zelensky is frustrated and angry because he knows he's losing the war and support from allies is starting to wane. He desperately wants the US to become directly involved and desperate men do desperate things. A Penny for his thoughts! (Or maybe they're just my thoughts.)
Whatever may or may not happen to Pritzger et.al., if they're going to Ukraine on a shopping spree, wouldn't the USA need to increase military presence in advance to ensure safe shopping and to protect our new 'National Interest$' there?
Hmmm, what would Biden's puppetmaster Obama do? Send in the clowns, I mean the drones!
Editor’s note:
"The 17 million hectares quoted was an error and its 1.7 million. Note the alleged companies don’t hold the land in their names but via investment funds."
Sorry - I neglected to include the Editor's Note:
"Editor’s note:
The 17 million hectares quoted was an error and its 1.7 million. Note the alleged companies don’t hold the land in their names but via investment funds."
Isn't it enough that we dragged the Ukrainian people into this disgusting war and convinced them to fight it for us? No, now we have to steal what little wealth the country has left. I hope this is a lesson to other countries who "get in bed with the U.S." We are the scorpion in the fable, The Scorpion and the Frog. Has it always been this bad and I just didn't know about it? Or is it worse? It is all so heartbreaking.
I found the above quote in the Australian National Review.
As members of Congress keep shamelessly bragging, "Ukraine is the best investment we've ever made!" assumed to be referring to arming Ukrainians to fight the Russians for die for us but now it appears they meant it quite literally.
There's even MORE money to be made in taxpayer funded reconstruction than in war according to Glenn Greenwald on Rumble yesterday - over a TRILLION dollars just for reconstruction alone depending on how much more damage is done and how long the war goes on. There goes every social program we ever had down the 'we can't afford it' drain.
It's a win-win for the war profiteers already making billions and the vulture capitalist investors who will easily make trillions. They don't want a war to end unless they have another one lined up and ready to go. So the steady transfer of wealth from our hard-working taxpayers and our crumbling United States of America, aka 'Homeland', to oligarchs and their global Empire continues. A house divided cannot stand and we all know which part is falling and it isn't the Empire.
I've been foolishly hoping that Zelensky would get fed up with his people being used as cannon fodder to fight Russia on behalf of the Empire and see the light. Then I remembered that he's listed in the Pandora Papers for hiding his millions in offshore accounts. He also has a billionaire sugar daddy (don't they all? even Supreme Court justices) who, as with Pritzker and Obama, helped him win the Presidency in the first place. Plus Z owns multiple mansions here (Florida), there, and everywhere, the latest addition being in Egypt hidden under his mother-in-law's name. So reality strikes my hopes down once again.
Zelensky has a similar family racket going as the Bidens only Z has a smaller extended family. Bank records already reveal that close to a dozen Bidens, down to grandchildren, have bank accounts with deposits coming from foreign entities and there are numerous Biden-associated obscure corporations as well. Is any of it illegal or impeachable? The House impeachment inquiry will tell.
Small potatoes though. The real racket, as in RICO, is the American Empire. It's a system of organized criminal corruption writ large with state-sponsored mass-murdering wars conducted throughout the world for profits while masquerading as a freedom-spreading democracy. It's owned and run by oligarch masters through their bought and paid for political servants.
Gangsters for Capitalism indeed.
"In the olden days, leaders of warrior-states would at least give the appearance of waiting for the peace treaty niceties to be completed before proceeding to their final, more leisurely phase, of plunder."
Not exactly, but that only makes the comparison more apt.
Caesar's Commentaries make clear that he gathered slaves as he went, in vast numbers, and took everything he could cart off.
Likewise, in Medieval times the various armies roamed the lands of their enemies, burning everything they could not carry off as their deliberate strategy of imposing a cost of war on the opponent they could not reach behind his fortifications.
Likewise, Sherman's March to the Sea.
So those are the fair comparisons to our present leaders and their wars.
Also, remember Hillary paraphrasing Caesar as she cackled about her attack on Libya and the death of Gaddafi.
They know this about themselves.
Is there no end to what the United States is going to do to the poor Ukrainians? This Diia portal sounds absolutely creepy. But how else are these people supposed to get the services they need to live in a destroyed environment? They are the guinea pigs of the latest technology. With friends like the U.S., does Ukraine need enemies? Surely, many of those in the Ukraine who understand that they and their countrymen are being sold down the river must look at Russia and Putin and think, are they really worse?
Anyone else watch 60 Minutes on Sunday about U.S. non-military aid to Ukraine?
It was reported that we're paying the salaries of 57,000 Ukrainian first responders (fire, police, emergency rescue) along with salaries for employees of small businesses. What they forgot to mention is that we're also paying Ukrainian Gov't pensions. Also, according to USAID director Samantha Powers speaking at the recent 'DIIA in DC' summit, we're paying salaries for their teachers and health care workers. The price tag for all this is well into the billions and in CASH.
Powers admits Ukraine had and still has a problem with corruption but there's good news! The cash we're sending is being disbursed by Ukraine digitally directly into recipients' accounts through their award-winning, ground-breaking everything app/portal DIIA. So if Congress ever decides to monitor where our taxpayer money goes in Ukraine, there's a digital trail they can try to follow. Easy peasy since it's only billions and growing. Powers says that she doubts Congress would have sent such an enormous sum of cash to Ukraine if it wasn't for DIIA.
DIIA conveniently launched in Feb 2022. Search DIIA, or 'DIIA in DC' for more info about the Summit, or go to the USAID site.
Also fertilizer and seeds for their farmers.
This is off topic but Chris Hedges just interviewed Jeffrey Sachs about JFK and his desire to work for peace with Russia. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wqm9Yl1gGEY Really good.
So glad you all are here. I think I just alienated my last Democratic friend for speaking the truth about Biden's stellar record.
I just heard another good interview about the state of the economy (surprise! the U.S. and the Western countries are not OK). One of the guys commenting said he felt like he was on the Truman Show with all the disinformation contradicting what to him, was patently true.
What came immediately to my mind was Allen Dulles in 1943--in Switzerland recruiting Nazi scientists for the nascent CIA. Even FDR's administration was infested with Notsies, the Messianic USians who saved the Jews at Auschwitz from Stalin.
Today from the President of Ukraine's Twitter account:
"We held the first Defense Industries Forum in Ukraine gathering 252 leading defense companies from over 30 countries in Europe, North America, Asia, and Australia."
"Right now, the most powerful military-industrial complexes are being determined, as are their priorities and the global standard of defense. All of this is being determined in Ukraine."
"We are creating such a defense potential for Ukraine - and therefore the entire free world - that will reflect our strength."
He sounds like he's high on his own supply, but granted he's being very well $upplied. Ka-ching!
@Thought Criminal,
Such evil!
If you are so inclined, the interview by Chris Hedges with Jeffrey Sachs that I mentioned in my aforementioned comment will make Zelensky's comments sound even worse in contrast.
Sachs notes, more than once, it is the arrogance of these clowns, so carelessly playing with people's lives.
Nice one, Karen. Things are getting worse by the day. By education, experience, etc. I know just how nasty a zoonosis can be. But this one showed me how really screwed up we've become - or always were, for that matter. I should have known. But all things considered, Fauci did reasonably well. Hope is a narcotic, useful at times but dangerous.
@Valerie
RFKjr has a big announcement speech set for Oct 9th in Philadelphia, likely resonant with JFK's speech about peace plus a real kicker for the anti-Democratic Party.
The Democracy defying and denying DNC has effectively banned RFK, a Kennedy mind you, from campaigning in NH, IA, and GA, effectively knee-capping him a year before the first primary. That's almost unbelievable but suggests something or someone big is involved. Let's recall what Margot Kidder discovered in Montana during the 2016 primary - the system is rigged by and for monied interests.
Remember the DNC and the Hillary Victory Fund? Bernie should.
"Collusion between the Clinton campaign and the DNC allowed Hillary Clinton to buy the loyalty of 33 state Democratic parties last summer. Montana was one of those states. It sold itself for $64,100.
The Super Delegates now defying democracy with their insistent refusal to change their votes to Sanders in spite of a handful of overwhelming Clinton primary losses in their own states, were arguably part of that deal.
In August 2015, at the Democratic Party convention in Minneapolis, 33 democratic state parties made deals with the Hillary Clinton campaign and a joint fundraising entity called The Hillary Victory Fund. The deal allowed many of her core billionaire and inner circle individual donors to run the maximum amounts of money allowed through those state parties to the Hillary Victory Fund in New York and the DNC in Washington."
"Not only did Hillary’s multi-millionaire and billionaire supporters get to bypass individual campaign donation limits to state parties by using several state parties apparatus, but the Clinton campaign got the added bonus of buying that state’s Super Delegates with the promise of contributions to that Democratic organization’s re-election fund."
There's more in this article but Kidder's conclusion in regard to this legalized corruption was/is prescient:
"Look, we know the deck is stacked, that Hillary and the DNC get all the face cards and that we’re dealing from the bottom of the deck. But just give us an ace from time to time, or maybe even a small straight. DON'T RUB OUR HOPELESSNESS IN OUR FACES AS IF WE ARE TOO DUMB TO KNOW. YOU WILL PAY FOR YOUR CONTEMPT. IF NOT THIS YEAR THEN NEXT." (capitalization mine). The year? 2016.
Let them pay for their contempt in 2024. We've got our ace.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/04/01/how-hillary-clinton-bought-the-loyalty-of-33-state-democratic-parties/
Huge investments propping up Ukraine gov't, military, and even businesses; massive financial aid for reconstruction led by billionaire Pritzger; defense industry leaders from around the world gathering to consolidate their manufacturing in Ukraine; Diia for payments, biometrics, tracking, and God knows what else. What more do they need to transform Ukraine into NATO Defense Central? How about a thriving new Robotics industry. Ka-ching!
There's just too much profit to be made from war to leave the upcoming selection of the U.S.President/Global Emperor to ignorant voters. By hook or by crook, if the oligarchs, plutocrats, kleptocrats, and Democratic Party leaders get their way, our next President will be someone who guarantees that war$ continue.
[Insert Peace Sign emoji here]
@Thought Criminal,
I think it is absolutely breathtaking how openly and shamelessly corrupt the Democratic Party has become. I am further amazed how the Party Faithful (which include a lot of my good friends, unfortunately) supports everything they come up with around the Ukraine War and the Democratic Primary. I can't figure out whether they just want RFK out of the Primary, thinking no Independent has ever won an election, or if they want him running as an Independent and have a nefarious plan to team up with the establishment Republicans (assuming they manage to jail Trump - or at least, put him out of action) to discredit RFK Jr at a later date. This changing the order of which states vote first in the Primary and then making up all these new rules to prevent votes RFK would get to count in the Primary remind me of Gerrymandering. The whole think stinks to high Heaven - I guess they don't expect enough Democratic voters to hear about it, understand the ramifications, or care.
I find myself extremely disappointed in Bernie - who knows exactly what is going on and how it feels to be outright cheated of a fair election. - Actually, he has lost most of his credibility with me. I remember Chris Hedges not being overly impressed with Sanders. I guess CH saw BS had feet of clay.
As for Trump, I don't like the guy but honestly, the lack of democratic due process is so blatant a little part of me feels sorry for the Narcissistic fool. I have wondered - why I do not know because to wonder attributes Trump with empathy and the ability to regret past decisions - but I HAVE wondered if Trump has the ability to compare the manipulations of the Justice System toward him to what Julian Assange experienced – and Donald ignored. I mean, it is clear that they are making an example of Trump - just as they did with Ralph Nader and Assange, because they all have been unapologetic fighters who refuse to back down. I can see why the Trump supporters remain faithful. He is so obviously being unfairly treated and this resonates with a good portion of the voting public.
On a side note, I have been listening to the doom-sayers in regard to the crashing of the world economy. Perhaps, the whole thing will collapse, as they seem to think it will, in the not-so-distant future and that will take care of the Democrats. I also heard somewhere (I think it was Kim Iversen) that if it is basically a three-way tie with the Democrats, Republicans and RFK Jr and none have enough votes to outright win, that Biden could win by default. I don’t quite understand the process but think that if it happens, that it might be an appropriate time for the voting public to rid themselves of the Electoral College altogether.
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