Trump To Ukraine- Your Rare Earth Minerals Or Your Life

On February 28, 2025, Career Extortionist Donald John Trump got unexpected resistance from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump had summoned Zelensky to the White House to sign an agreement to hand over to the U.S. (presumably U.S. corporations in favor with Trump) half the revenues from Ukraine's natural resources- the minerals, oil, natural gas. In return for- basically nothing. No guarantee of military aid, intelligence aid, nothing. Just a typical Trump move, vague rhetoric, nothing enforceable. Nothing Trump has any intention of enforcing. [1]

Trump's shakedown attempt failed, so far. Zelensky was describing his view of the history of the war with Russia. Trump didn't want to hear it. He laid into Zelensky, saying he doesn't have "the cards," meaning he's playing with a weak hand, while Trump held the, well, trump card of U.S. war support. (Recall that Trump in his previous go at being president, briefly delayed delivering military supplies to Ukraine in a clumsy effort to get information on the corrupt Biden family doings in Ukraine, which pro-Democratic Party media dismissed as "dirt" without mentioning the outrageous, openly corrupt deal that Biden son Hunter got from Ukrainian gas company Burisma- a seat on the corporate board for $50,000 a MONTH, for several years. That's a multi-million dollar not very well disguised bribe to the Biden family. Incredibly dishonest hiding of the facts by Democratic Party politicians and their media allies. Oh, and Trump was actually impeached by the Democrats for that delay. Needless to say, the Republicans, who have memories as long as their party symbol, the elephant, never forgot or forgave.)

In yesterday's meeting, Trump rebuked Zelensky for being "very disrespectful," and "you're not being thankful, and that's not a nice thing." (Trump always accuses people who stand up to him of being "not nice," and worse.) Trump's vice president, the slippery opportunist J.D. Vance, jumped on Zelensky, with an accusatory rhetorical question, "have you said thank you once," and then revealed a festering grudge, denouncing Zelensky for "campaigning for the opposition" (that is, Biden) last October. (Of course "campaigning for" is a matter of interpretation. Don't trust Vance's.)

Trump bellowed at Zelensky that he was losing the war, and using the fact that the Ukrainian military is dependent on U.S. weapons and ordnance, armaments that Europe cannot manufacture as leverage, his ranting made clear that Ukraine had no choice but to give in to Trump's extortion.

Or so Trump thought, and evidently had previously calculated.

Zelensky didn't back down, however, so he was effectively thrown out of the White House in front of the assembled media. The schedule joint lunch didn't happen.

Conveniently on hand outside the White House to verbally excoriate Zelensky was Trump's number one Senate stooge, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He rabidly attacked Zelensky, and insisted Zelensky would have to go unless he changed his attitude. (Graham often thinks he has the right to choose the heads of other nations' governments, a consistent imperialist impulse.) Among the things Trump's barking dog Graham said about Zelensky was "The way he confronted the President was over the top." All Zelensky did was try to talk back to Trump, a major offense when dealing with an Emperor-King.

 

Meanwhile USAID had cut off an infrastructure program in Ukraine, all USAID programs having been cancelled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the reactionary Florida Cuban Trump plucked from the Senate for a cabinet post, and Elon Musk and the fake "Department" Trump created, DOGE, for "Department Of Government Efficiency." A deceptive name for what should be called Artificial Department Of Government Dismantling Or Destruction, ADOGOD.

After leaving the meeting where he was dressed down by Trump and Vance, Zelensky posted Thank-Yous to Trump, America, and the American people, on Trump hitman Elon Musk's propaganda site, X (formerly Twitter). Zelensky has thanked the U.S. and Europe innumerable times during the war.

On Ukraine, Trump is right that it cannot win the war. However the way he wants to end it mirrors what he did in Afghanistan, when he negotiated with the Taliban, cutting the Afghan government completely out of the process, and leaving it to his successor, Biden, to pull the rug out from under the client regime that depended on the U.S. for its survival. That regime collapsed as soon as the U.S. hastily retreated, or "cut and ran," an oft-used expression in U.S. discourse by war mongers but was strangely absent in the Afghan case, when it perfectly applied in a very literal sense. The result of handing over that country to the medieval and deranged Taliban has been awful for the Afghan people, and especially horrendous for Afghan women, who are now banned from employment and education and virtually imprisoned as housework and breeding slaves in their homes. 

But Trump cannot totally cut the Ukrainian government out of the picture as it is much stronger than the Afghan regime and unlike that regime, has the support of its population which supports the war effort except in the eastern portions of the country, which seceded after the U.S. coup and was bombed and shelled by the Kyiv regime, which waged war on it, Russia supporting the secessionists. Europe also support Kyiv, although it will not be able to manufacture weapons and ordnance of the type and in the quantities the U.S. has been supplying. Hence Trump's arm-twisting of the Ukrainians.

Unfortunately the U.S. put Ukraine in this difficult position. Just a few days after the Russian invasion in February 2022, Putin initiated negotiations with Zelensky about an agreement to end the war, which at that point Russia's thrust to Kyiv was grinding to a halt. The U.S. immediately stopped that. British prime minister at the time Boris "Bojo The Clown" Johnson" immediately rushed to Kyiv to pull Zelensky away from the negotiation path. The talks with Russia were promising. 

Then Ukraine went on  to achieve victories in the war. In the fall of 2022 Ukraine was at its high point of military success. This isn't mere hindsight. The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest U.S. military officer,  general Mark Milley, said at that time that it wouldn't get better for Ukraine and this was the time to seek an end to the war. [2]

However, then-president Joe Biden was always an aggressive war monger in Ukraine for years. He rejected that option. So he doomed Ukraine to ultimate defeat. (As Obama's vice president, he pushed for weapons to be sent to Ukraine, but Obama demurred, opting for just training missions.)

There are larger ways in which the U.S. painted Ukraine into this corner. There was the U.S.-instigated fascist led coup of 2014, ordered by Obama, with high U.S. officials on the ground in Kyiv agitating, most notoriously Victoria Nuland of the State Department, and people like (now dead) U.S. Senator and rabid militarist John McCain.

And then there's the original sin. President George "Bush The Younger" Bush in 2008 strong-armed NATO, over objections from Germany and France, into declaring that Georgia and Ukraine would be brought into NATO. Russia immediately howled that this was intolerable. (The German chancellor at the time, Angela Merkel, says she knew this would never fly with Russia, but being a U.S. lapdog, as are all bourgeois European "leaders," she went along with the U.S. diktat.)

Most of the U.S. imperialist elite, being drunk on its power as usual, thought they could just shove it down Russia's throat, just as they had shoved down two earlier NATO expansions after the collapse of the Soviet Union down Russia's throat, betraying a promise made to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last, ill-fated head of the U.S.S.R., that NATO would not expand "one inch to the east" in return for the Soviets not to stand in the way of the absorption of East Germany by West Germany. (So-called "reunification," although by that time East Germany was a very different country from West Germany, just as Austria is different from Germany, regardless of the fact that all speak German. Hell, the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a bunch of other places all speak English. They're far from identical places.) William "Bill" Clinton expanded NATO in 1999, followed by another expansion by Bush and the notorious declaration at that 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, NATO having already planted its flag that far east. NATO was created as an anti-Soviet military alliance by the U.S., with the obligation on the U.S. to go to war with the U.S.S.R. if that nation attacked any NATO member.

Why is bringing Ukraine into NATO a red line for Russia? Because the U.S. could put nuclear ballistic missiles in that country, as it has nuclear weapons all over Europe, which could annihilate the Russian government and key targets in a few minutes. No one enjoys having a loaded gun pointed at one's head, even if the person holding the gun purrs that it's strictly for self-defense! That is a form of coercive leverage. Moreover, imagine if China overthrew the government of Canada and Mexico, and brought one of those countries into an anti-U.S. military bloc. The U.S. wouldn't wait 8 years to invade, as Russia did after the 2014 U.S. coup. It would invade in 8 days!

UK prime minister tried to make up for the Trump gang's brutal treatment of Zelensky the next day, March 1st, warmly welcoming him with a crowd to provide cheers. The U.S. move to abandon Ukraine also go the backs up of people in Ukraine.

The fact is, in various ways, Trump is effectively forcing Europe to move towards independence from the U.S., finally, 80 year after the end of World War II in 1945. Not that that's Trump's intent, just a positive byproduct of his hostile and economically destructive actions. (Did someone say, "Tariffs"?) So while the Democratic Party and the U.S. imperialist elite are aghast at Trump's baseball bat whacks at the U.S. alliance system, which the U.S. has totally dominated, I think it's about time that system broke down. I'm an anti-imperialist, you see. Because all empires are in fact criminal enterprises that use violence, the threat of violence, and various forms of coercion to subjugate other peoples and economically exploit them and their resources, often to extreme degrees. Empires are not "glorious," contrary to their propagandists, including many so-called historians.
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CODA AND FOOTNOTE 

In a sense, Trump's bullying of Ukraine is far from unique in U.S. imperialist history. It's just a throwback to 19th century type imperialism, which was cruder than what we've come to expect, at least in appearance. We did have the unprovoked invasion of Iraq by George Bush, and thousands of assassinations (including of Americans, some in the U.S.) by Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama.

But with Trump, you have a person who is a bully, with the power of the most powerful position on earth. That is not a happy combination. Oh, and he's currently using that power to deconstruct pieces of the U.S. government, including the IRS. That alone with make the Federal deficit worse. The pretend deficit hawks of the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) are onboard with that. The Trump-Musk regime has already fired several thousand IRS employees, including some in enforcement.

Every dollar spent on the IRS brings in more than a dollar in revenue. Every dollar spent auditing the rich brings in $6 in revenue. Those audits are now being virtually eliminated.

This is just greedy rich people cutting their taxes. While doing this, they and the lying corporate media pretend that the deficit is caused by Social Security and Medicare. That is one gigantic BIG LIE. Social Security and Medicare run annual SURPLUSES. Yes, by 2035 Social Security is expected to take in less in payroll tax contributions than it pays out. So it will make up the difference by tapping into its gigantic multi-trillion dollar trust fund. Big deal. That is not "bankruptcy," as demagogic politicians and dishonest media propagandists call it. And here's an easy fix: remove the cap on income subject to FICA tax so people who make millions a year in income (even a billion in some cases!) pay the tax on their full income. Right now poor people pay FICA starting on the first dollar of wages. (Unlike the income tax, there is no standard deduction under FICA.)

Those annual Social Security trust fund surpluses are spent by the government on other activities to reduce the annual deficit. Treasury bonds are placed in the trust fund in return. Of course those bonds then have to be paid off eventually, with interest, with other Federal revenue- income taxes, fees, tariffs, asset seizures ("forfeitures"), whatever.

This years-long attack on Social Security as the cause of deficits indicates that the rich oligarchs won't be satisfied until their taxes are set at zero, and they get even more hundreds of billions in government welfare than they already do every year. (Notice "welfare" is a dirty word in the U.S., and is only applied to the pittances grudgingly allotted to the very poor, mostly women with children, who are painted as undeserving parasites.)

Alright, this went off on some tangents, but they are connected and important to be aware of. I share my knowledge for free.

1] Speaking of Trump extortion, he recently extorted $15 million from the cowards running Disney Corporation, which owns ABC, a major pillar of the corporate propaganda system. ABC paid Trump to settle a completely meritless suit Trump brought for "libel," because on-air host George Stephanopoulos (a former Clinton regime figure) said Trump had committed rape. In the civil suit that one of Trump's rape victim's brought and won against Trump, the jury found that a sexual assault occurred, which the judge said was tantamount to rape. So this was an eminently defensible case for ABC. 

This is on the cowardly corporate execs. Or maybe cowardly misses the point. Disney, like all giant corporations, needs the goodwill of the Federal government to avoid friction in its obsessive drive for maximum profits lest that government throw sand in the corporate gears. Many regulations affect corporations. And these large corporations are rapacious in buying other corporations- which the U.S. Department of Justice can oppose by filing anti-trust suits to block the intended mergers. As in fact the Trump DOJ is doing right now to stop Hewlett-Packard Enterprises from buying Juniper Networks.

I guess the execs at those companies forgot to bribe Trump with campaign donations and/or gifts to his "Inauguration Fund." Or maybe Trump just didn't notice what the DOJ is doing. The Biden regime DOJ started objecting to the proposed merger in November 2024, a full 10 months after the merger was announced in January 2024, with an anticipated completion date in a year. Seems like a long time to wait to raise an objection. But the DOJ didn't file suit in court until January 30 of 2025, the eleventh day of Trump's latest term as president. Idiosyncratic for Trump, who makes a point of doing the opposite of whatever his Democratic predecessors did.

2] "U.S. scrambles to reassure Ukraine after Milley comments on negotiations," Politico, Nov. 14, 2022, for example.
 

 

 

 

 

What Is A "Crisis?"

It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Iraq.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Haiti (again).
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Haiti (again).
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Panama.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Grenada.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Cambodia.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Vietnam.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Cuba (again).
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Lebanon.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Haiti.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Cuba.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Mexico (four or five times).
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded the Philippines.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded the British colony that became Canada.
It's a crisis when Russia invades Ukraine.

Understand?

File under "Hyper-Hypocrisy."
And by the way, I've missed some.

Countries have been invading countries for as long as they have existed. War and conquest are thousands of years old.

Ukraine is over 6,000 airmiles from the U.S. at the closest points. Ukraine is right next to Russia. Seems that Russia would naturally have a much greater interest in Ukraine than the U.S. should. Yet the U.S. insisted on making Ukraine a U.S. vassal state with the 2014 violent coup.
Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine- morally and politically. To quote Tallyrand,in strategic terms it's worse than a crime, it's a blunder. But the U.S. created the situation, both with its hostile takeover of Ukraine, and it's treachery towards Russia by breaking its promise not to expand NATO, instead relentlessly pushing it right up to Russia's borders and vowing to bring in Ukraine and Georgia as NATO nations. Russia has said scores of times that this is unaccepotable to them. The U.S. answer is the same as what U.S. apparatchik had to say about the EU in her infamous phone calll to U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Jeffrey Pyass- "Fuck the EU." It's "Fuck You Russia. You're too weak to stop us."

The biggest loser from U.S. arrogance and aggressiveness is Ukraine.

The Irrefutable Proof That Calling Nicolas Maduro a "Dictator" is a Damned Lie: Juan Guaido Is a Free Man IN Venezuela!

Maduro is the elected president and head of state. Juan Guaido is the puppet of a hostile foreign power, who was instructed by the vice president of that power (Michael Pence of the U.S.A.) to declare himself president, and the next morning did so, self-administering a bogus oath of office to himself. Now he's running around pretending to be the president, usurping all the power he can, and that hostile foreign power has transferred control over Venezuelan government assets to Guaido.

Under what "dictatorship" would Guaido not now be undergoing severe torture in a secret dungeon?

Whatever Maduro is, he's not a dictator. And Venezuela is no dictatorship.

Unlike the U.S.' Great Friend, Saudi Arabia.

Guaido openly holds rallies. He calls on the armed forces to overthrow the government. The violent street thugs who are the tip of the spear of the opposition Guaido leads attack police, and are NOT shot dead. (Imagine if Occupy Movement participants or Black Lives Matter protesters had thrown rocks and molotov cocktails at police! There would have been a bloodbath, and the U.S. corporate media would have celebrated the massacres.) If anything, Maduro has for years been far too tolerant towards the reactionary violence, which has blockaded roads and burned people alive who were identified as government supporters.

We saw the exact same thing in Ukraine, where the neo-Nazi terrorists set police on fire (watch the youtube videos if you don't believe it!) and false flag snipers sent in by the U.S. murdered police as well as protesters. There as in Venezuela, the state failed to protect the people from terrorists, the nation from subversion by a foreign power, and itself from being overthrown because it failed to suppress terrorist violence. In both cases, the U.S. threatened the government if it cracked down on the U.S.-backed terrorists. (Obama in the case of the Ukraine, Trump and the imperialist thugs he's appointed in regard to Venezuela.)

And when I say "terrorists," I'm using the U.S. power establishment's definition of terrorism: politically motivated violence by non-state actors. They exclude state terrorism by definition. They have to, since the U.S. is the world's greatest sponsor of state terrorism, such as in Guatemala (250,000 murdered), Argentina (30,000 "disappeared"), Indonesia (one million "communists" exterminated in 1965), and numerous other places. (Sometimes the U.S. does the dirty work even more directly than merely "advising," such as the CIA's Phoenix Program in Vietnam, in which they murdered 50,000 Vietnamese or more.)

Let's take another look at Saudi Arabia, one of many repressive tyrannies the U.S. backs to the hilt. In Saudi Arabia, there are no elections for the rulers of the country, and anyone who criticizes or protests is arrested, tortured, and some are beheaded, even crucified.

No complaints from the U.S. Government or establishment media about THAT!

The "Crown Prince," a nasty piece of word named Mohammed bin Salman, imprisoned scores of rich Saudis and forced them to turn over billions of dollars. One or two died in the process.

But Maduro is "corrupt," don't you know! And he's "stealing the assets" of Venezuela. Like the oil money.

The oil money which John Bolton announced on January 24 will be turned over to U.S. oil corporations. He said this on Fox Business tv program. He absurdly added that this would benefit the American and Venezuelan people.

How so, John? Will the U.S. oil corps fund programs for the Venezuelan people? Will they provide cut-rate heating oil to poor people in Boston, as Hugo Chavez, Maduro's predecessor, did?

I don't think so, asshole.

U.S. propagandists aren't satisfied with branding Maduro a "dictator," which they apparently think justifies overthrowing him (never mind the scores of dictators the U.S. has supported, many of which could never have achieved power without U.S. help, and are reliant on the U.S. for staying in power), but these propagandists demand that everyone call Maduro "dictator." 

Just this morning, on the U.S. Government created and funded NPR national radio network, the host of the morning "news" show, the reactionary Scott Simon, started by griping that Senator Bernie Sanders "doesn't call himself a democrat, he refuses to call Maduro a dictator!" The fact that Sanders has been spewing anti-Venezuela propaganda mirroring that of the U.S. government and media apparently isn't good enough.

What nerve that Sanders has! Who does he think he is, to go against the political line of the U.S. Imperialist establishment! Does he think this is a free country or something? (OOPS!)

Smarmy unctuous reactionary dweeb Scott Simon, of NPR infamy

Bernie Sanders better get in line!

U.S. "friend and ally," the sinister Saudi "Crown Prince," Mohammed bin Salman. 

If you criticize him, he might cut you to pieces! (Think Jamal Khashoggi.) 

There's a dagger in that hand...

Clinton's Media Allies Used Blatant Double Standard to Force Trump to Jettison Paul Manafort

Paul Manafort is one of those types referred to variously as a "lobbyist" or a "political strategist" or a "consultant." Whatever you call them, this class of creatures are parasitic leeches embedded in the corrupt U.S. political system of corporate oligarchic rule, a system manifested domestically in repression and exploitation, and abroad in imperialism, war, and various crimes against humanity, and recognizes no rights anywhere, just excessive privileges for those in the elite in-crowd. They basically function as fixers, shills, and influence-peddlers for clients, whether corporate or governmental, seeking advantages within the U.S. power structure. Sometimes they give political advice to foreign rulers about handling their affairs in their home country. This is what Manafort apparently did for the former president of Ukraine.

Manafort was attacked by much of the U.S. establishment media for selling his services in years past to the U.S.-ousted former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yauokovych, whom he helped elect. The fact that Yanukovych was the legal and democratically-elected president was irrelevant. The crime is he was "Russian-backed." (Not quite. The Russians had to pressure him to opt out of a trade pact with the EU that deliberately excluded Russia. And they didn't intervene to save him from having to flee for his life from the violent fascist rabble that the U.S. egged on to overthrow him, similarly to what they did in Iran in 1953.) [1]

Those of Manafort's ilk typically sell their services to various foreign governments, including despotic and tyrannical ones. No one raises an eyebrow over American shills promoting Saudi Arabia here, one of the most repressive and medieval regimes on earth. And Manafort couldn't gaze into the future to see that the U.S. would decide to overthrow his client and retroactively label that client an official Bad Guy. (We don't know if the U.S. was even then covertly moving against Yanukovych. Maybe someday WikiLeaks can tell us. The U.S. government certainly will never voluntarily tell. That's called "transparency" in the Orwellian language of U.S. political elites.)

But the successful assault on Manafort was more than just a case of singling out someone who is typically treated with discretion and respect by the establishment propaganda system. In fact it's the height of chutzpah. Because this was done on behalf of Hillary Clinton, and it just so happens that another member of Manafort's class of hustler, Lanny Davis, is a moral leper, propagandist for tyrants, P.R. man for the Honduran coup supported by Clinton and Obama, and a close associate of the Clintons, former special counsel to the last president Clinton. So where do the media allies of Clinton and those merely desperate to Stop Trump At All Costs get off with such a blatant double standard?

Davis charged a cool $100,000 a month to defend Ivory Coast dictator Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to leave office at the end of his term and murdered people to cling to power. (Unlike Yanukovych who offered to step down early to try and mollify the fascist mob that was setting cars, buildings, and policemen on fire in the streets. (Go watch the youtube videos- they literally lit policemen ablaze.) He also sold his services to the dictator of Equatorial Guinea. And there was his assiduous shilling for the Honduran coup. For pay, of course .[2]

One useful conclusion we can draw about Trump from his willingness to throw Manafort overboard is this: contrary to the image he tries to project as a fearless tough guy who never backs down, we see that he is indeed susceptible to pressure, and willing to reverse course. More evidence of that are his verbal about-faces and two-steps when he gets a certain amount of heat for his statements. I predict that if he becomes president, the very powerful "national security" state- that is, the military-secret police combine- will be able to twist him like to pretzel to serve their goals.

After all, Trump has no real interest in foreign policy, no principles, and no goals except his own increased self-aggrandizement. So no impediments will be placed in the way of the Pentagon or the massive, multi-tentacled secret police apparatus (euphemistically called "the intelligence community").

But then, there are barely any limits placed on them now. And with all the rich blackmail material the secret police must have on Hillary, there won't be limits under a restoration of the Clinton reign either.

  Paul Manafort gets tripped up.

 Lanny Davis. "Money is my God. You got a problem with that?"

 

1] Not that Manafort has democratic scruples. He also worked for U.S.-backed Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos, and CIA-supported Angolan terrorist leader Jonas Savimbi. But maybe his worst crime was working for Reagan. For background on Manafort from an establishment media viewpoint, see. "Paul Manafort has guided dictators and strongmen, but can he manage Donald Trump?," Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2016. Notice how precipitately was Manafort's fall, coming soon after this piece.

For Manafort defrauding a Russian businessman out of $19 million, plus more on Trump and links to articles, see Swindler Trump's Presidential Campaign Run By a Swindler- U.S. Media Acts As Accomplices
July 27, 2016.

2] You can watch Davis speciously justifying his propaganda work for Honduran anti-democrats on Democracy Now! For the charge sheet against Davis see" Loathsome Lanny Davis Has More Blood On His Hands," December 28, 2010.

Obama Threatens Britons Over Leaving the European Union

U.S. emperor Obama has weighed in yet again on the upcoming British referendum two months hence, on leaving or remaining in the European Union (EU). Butting into other people's business is an old habit with the imperialist U.S., so no surprise there.

In typical fashion, Obama spoke out of both sides of his mouth, saying it was up to Britons to decide, while telling them how they should vote if they knew what was good for them. He told them brusquely that they'd be at the back of the line if they wanted to make a trade treaty with the U.S. if they voted to exit the EU, the so-called "Brexit" (short for British exit). Pretty rude.

Obama said, in coded language, that Britain will have the most pull if it continues to be the U.S.' stooge within the EU. Speaking as a "friend," Obama hinted that Britain's usefulness to the U.S. would be significantly diminished if it were to drop out of the EU, where it can act as a agent of U.S. interests inside that would-be superstate.

British prime minister David "Big Toff" Cameron chimed in, saying people should listen to their "friends," a reference to the U.S. nation-state. Cameron was forced against his will, after years of stalling and broken promises, to finally allow some democracy in Britain and let the people vote on continuing to be absorbed into the EU.

British elites are themselves divided on the issue- hence the referendum. Cameron's own party, the Conservatives, is split. And the self-promoting, showboating mayor of London, Boris Johnson, like Cameron a Tory, has come out for Brexit. Miffed at Obama's interference British internal affairs, he penned an irate piece in response, carping that Obama removed a bust of the glorious British imperialist Winston Churchill from the Oval Office, or somewhere in the White House. Obama replied that he passed by another Churchill head every day. So there.

It seems to me that there will neither be catastrophe nor great advantage to Britain if it exits the EU. There will be additional hoops to jump through for Brits wishing to work in Europe. Britain will have increased sovereignty in terms of domestic law. It will be free to deny social benefits to foreign workers, as well as limit their numbers. Trade might become a bit more cumbersome. As Britain never jettisoned its own currency, the pound, for the euro, nothing changes monetarily. The need to exchange currencies for trade and travel that already existed will be the same. The idea that Britain somehow swings greater weight on the global stage within the EU is based on the fallacy that the EU is something more than a U.S. appendage in international affairs, or else a passive body that cannot agree among its constituent nations on any decisive action. In the Ukraine matter, the U.S. has put Europe in the position of making sacrifices to punish Russia. The U.S. made the policy ("and fuck the EU," in the immortal words of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in her infamous, unguarded phone call to U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt) and the EU suffered the economic consequences by imposing trade sanctions on Russia as per U.S. diktat. (The ever-dutiful and obedient German chancellor Angela "The Iron Mouse" Merkel, the actual boss of the EU, carried out her Master Obama's instructions.)

The End.

U.S. Media Focus Mainly on Putin In Panama Papers Theft, Though He Isn't Named In Them, Lets Western Stooges Off Easy

The massive document theft from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca doesn't name Putin. But it names an alleged friend of his, a cellist. That fact has been enough for the U.S. media to take the ball and run with it. Putin is Culprit Number One in the U.S. media's coverage of the stolen documents. [1]

Meriting mostly mere mentions, or no mention at all, are two other "world leaders" (country bosses) who actually have hidden accounts themselves as revealed in the documents: Petro Poroshenko, the president-by-violent-street-riots of Ukraine, and Mauricio Macri of Argentina, who just ripped off his own country for billions of dollars handed over to U.S. hedge fund extortionists. Poroshenko is the U.S.-EU-approved successor to the ousted Yanukovych, said to deserve being violently ousted because he was "corrupt." (But the referendum by which the people in Crimea voted by over 90% to reunite with Russia was dismissed by Western imperialists as "illegitimate," "illegal," "invalid," even "fake"- by Joseph Nye, a career U.S. imperialist apparatchik. What a luxury it is to write your own rules and the rules for everyone else also!) The "King" of Saudi Arabia has also been discreetly unmentioned prominently (or at all) in the U.S. media.

British prime minister David Cameron also got a pass in U.S. media. The most said about him was when he finally stopped stonewalling on Day 6 of the furor and announced that all taxes had been paid on the account in question, which he inherited from his father and which was closed prior to Cameron attaining the premiership. His family successfully avoided a lot of taxes that way. That didn't stop the BBC (the UK government's propaganda network) from putting on a reactionary propagandist from the rightwing British rag the Telegraph to insist that Cameron did nothing wrong and it would all blow over. (In fact it hasn't blown over, even though the BBC has been doing its best to effect that outcome.)

For the first few days, the insignificant nation of Iceland also was useful as a way to virtually ignore the U.S. collaborators Poroshenko and Macri. The Icelandic president was forced out of office as a result of trying to hide his money. You'd think Iceland was a major nation from the play it got, again especially on the BBC. (Bullshit Broadcasting Corporation. Or is it Bombastic Blather Corruption? I forget.)

It probably escaped most people's attention, even though there have been pro forma acknowlegments in passing in the deluge of media shaming, is the fact that "hidden" and "secret" doesn't equal illegal, and that it is unknown how many of those whose financial privacy has been stripped away evaded taxes. In the public mind, offshore has been equated with tax evasion. (As we know from the example of Mitt Romney, and the U.S. corporations that have $2 trillion socked outside the U.S. to avoid paying taxes- legally.)

1] And not just U.S. media. Here's who the leftish Guardian (UK) shines the spotlight on in its central story on the Panama Papers:

Even the left-leaning Guardian (UK) put Putin front-and-center in its coverage of the Panama Papers. Note implication: It's all Putin's money. That's unlikely.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists
https://panamapapers.icij.org/

Guide To Ukraine “Crisis” Vocabulary

First, “crisis.” That means, the U.S. isn't getting its way 100%.

“Ukraine.” Can mean the actual country. Often it means the satraps the U.S. installed in power in Kiev. As in “Ukraine asked for Western help against the Russian invasion [sic],” or, “the American government supports Ukraine.”

“International law.” The rules the U.S. insists on imposing, which boil down to, the U.S. does whatever it wants, and other nations do what the U.S. wants. If the U.S. does it, it's legal. So arranging the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government by a neo-Nazi led mob and installing people in power handpicked by the U.S. State Department is perfectly legal, whereas Russia protecting its naval base in the Crimea and letting people vote in a referendum to choose to secede from western Ukraine or not is “a violation of international law.” And of the Ukrainian Constitution, too, which apparently has a provision allowing for neo-Nazi hoodlums to overthrow the government and its replacement by U.S.-approved puppets.

“The international community.” All the lackey and stooge nations that line up behind the U.S.

“The rights of all the Ukrainian people.” The U.S. decrees there shall be no partition and the entirely of Ukraine shall henceforth be in the U.S. domain. Self-determination for the populace of eastern Ukraine is not allowed. Controlled elections next year will ratify U.S. and neo-Nazi dominance of Ukraine.

“The territorial integrity of Ukraine.” No self-determination by the people of eastern Ukraine shall be allowed. A secession referendum is intolerable to the U.S. bloc, aka “the West.”

“Legitimate government.” The government of the U.S' choosing. See Obama statement of March 6th.

“Democratic leaders.” See “legitimate government.”

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“Democracy.” A regime obedient to U.S. wishes. This is what that word always means.