2012 Message from Condoleezza Rice to Ukraine: 'The World is Watching You'

[Octafish]

A great article from Katya Soldak of Forbes from two years' back.

Message from Condoleezza Rice to Ukraine:

"The World is Watching You"

Katya Soldak
Forbes, 9/19/2012

Recently, Condoleezza Rice, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Gordon Brown, Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan congregated at Livadia Palace in Southern Ukraine, the summer retreat of the last Russian tsar, Nicolas II—a Renaissance style building on the top of a hill, with the Black Sea rolling below. The same place as where Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin met at their famed Yalta conference of 1945.

The difference is that back then the rulers of the powerful countries met to make real decisions about the world’s future. This past weekend, Rice, and other guests of the 9th annual Yalta European Strategy meeting came to share their thoughts about the world’s challenges. Discussions today could influence policymakers and lead to making tomorrow’s decisions.

Among the matters discussed were the economic future of Europe and the role of the United States in dealing with economic and political issues of today. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian theme continued throughout the two-day conference. The government imprisoned former prime minister and opposition leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, and this has drawn criticism by the West; Ukraine tightens conditions for independent media and freedom of speech; the parliamentary elections coming up this October have already caused concerns among democratic observers on the subject of fairness and transparency.

Condoleezza Rice made it clear in her speech that the world is interested in Ukraine and is carefully watching all its developments: “Country like Ukraine with consolidation of democracy is watched carefully,” she said. Rice emphasized the importance of freedom of speech and free elections. “If Ukraine speaks in one voice, this voice would be heard.”

SNIP...

Indeed, the 9th annual Yalta conference – by many opinions, one of the best international platforms for discussions among high-profile politicians and innovative thinkers – is organized by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk’s foundation and is taking place in Ukraine at a time when European leaders have recently boycotted the Euro 2012 soccer championship over Tymoshenko’s arrest and detainment. The fact that American politicians like Condoleezza Rice and Britain’s Gordon Brown attended, can’t be attributed to good relationships between Ukrainian and Western governments.

CONTINUED...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/katyasoldak/2012/09/19/message-from-condoleezza-rice-to-ukraine-the-world-is-watching-you/

In retrospect, it appears the Neocons -- the axis of Wall Street and Secret Government -- have stayed on top the entire time. And, like their ilk did to Iran in 1953, the Ukraine Operation will not benefit the American people as a whole. It will benefit the owners of Big Oil and Condoleeza Rice.

[sadoldgirl]

1. I doubt very much that Putin will be impressed by this. n/t

[Dreamer Tatum]

2. Putin? Rice could say the sky is blue and she'd be savaged here. nt

[Octafish]

3. Yeah. She only helped lie America into war, killing a million innocent people.

Not to mention how she lied her eyes out about 9/11.

Other than that, Condescenda's the bomb.

[Dreamer Tatum]

9. As if on cue.

Thanks for proving my point. I don't care for her either, but she stated a fact about Ukraine. That's all.

[Octafish]

5. No, but I'd bet he's jealous of this guy who hosted the Ukrainian shindig...

“(I)n all the world, rich people are very unpopular.” -- Viktor Pinchuk

http://www.economist.com/node/3499656

Guy was the second richest guy in Ukraine when he said that. Now, FWIU, he's the richest.

[malaise]

4. Nothing changes with these scumbags

K & R

[Octafish]

6. That is the I and I Truth, malaise.

Lawrence Summers is the reason our problem is Buy-Partisan.

Corporate corruption and academia: The Bush-Harvard-Enron connection

By Joseph Kay
wsws.org, 19 October 2002

EXCERPT...

One of these connections was to Harvard University, where Bush had received his MBA degree. Some months after Harken bought Spectrum 7, Harvard, together with the billionaire financier George Soros, poured money into Harken, which at the time was struggling to pay off loans to its main creditors, Bank of Boston and First City Bankcorp. First City agreed to refinance the loans, and, according to an article published in the Wall Street Journal on October 9, a key factor in the decision was the financial support provided by Harvard Management Corporation (HMC). HMC controls the university’s assets, valued at $20 billion.

Harvard quickly acquired a third of Harken’s stock. Between 1987 and 2000, representatives of the university held positions on the company’s board of directors, with seats on the executive and compensation committees. The university’s representatives were both heavily invested in the company personally, owning 10,000 shares of Harken each.

Harvard’s heavy investment in Harken is inexplicable except for the presence of Bush, who retained his position at Harken until 1993, when he became governor of Texas. Harken never sustained profitable operations, though it hoped to use Bush’s connections to improve its financial state. Over the next five years, HMC had to bail out Harken in order forestall a number of severe crises. HMC was controlled at the time by Robert Stone, an oil man and long-time supporter of the Republican Party and Bush’s father.

SNIP...

The deal has many similarities with the sort of “structured finance” arrangements that were made at Enron. The basic idea is to shift debt off of a company’s balance sheet in order to improve reported earnings and elevate share values. Such partnerships were an important component of the accounting gimmicks widely used by American corporations during the stock market boom of the 1990s.

SNIP...

Finally, there is Lawrence Summers, who replaced Rubin as treasury secretary in 1999. Kenneth Lay sent a gushing congratulatory note to Summers, who responded with a promise that “I'll keep my eye on power deregulation and energy-market infrastructure issues.” When Bush came to office, Summers left government to become president of Harvard University.

CONTINUED...

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/10/hark-o19.html

That made me sad to learn, as he's the guy who was supposed to have become Secretary of the Treasury. Thankfully, we got Penny "Iceberg in Switzerland" Pritzker.

[leftstreet]

7. Maybe she'll get another tanker named after her

Or at least enough to get some new designer shoes

[Octafish]

10. She deserves it.

Ukraine, Chevron, Condi Rice and shale gas ... join the dots

High principles dominate the rhetoric on freedom-loving Ukraine, writes JP Sottile. But more mundane realities - like the interests of US oil corporations and Ukraine's vast shale gas capacity - might just be part of the volatile equation.

JP Sottile
TheEcologist.org, 18th March 2014

In Ukraine, Chevron's deal continues a long tradition of intermarriage between 'national' and corporate interests under the guise of national security.

Some say it's about freedom and the right to self-determination. Some say it's about standing up to aggression and halting a dictator's march.

Some say it's about the future of everything-from Syria to North Korea to Iran's nuclear program - and, according to Sen. Lindsey Graham, it all stems from Obama's failure to kill the people who killed Americans at Benghazi.

But the most-revealing voice in the chorus is Condi Rice. She penned a tension-filled op-ed on Ukraine for the Washington Post - the newspaper of broken records.

Her nostalgic, "Baby, It's a Cold War Outside" ditty on the "Ukrainian Problem" came just two days after a Teflon-coated Henry Kissinger opined about the "art of establishing priorities" in his own Ukraine-themed op-ed for the Post.

Why should we care about Condi?

As the world learned through painful experience, Condi Rice, much like Henry Kissinger, was all about establishing priorities. But now that she's out of power, why should anyone waste any time considering Ms. Rice's opinion about anything, much less about the 'crisis' in Ukraine?

Why? Because it's telling. Like most American Exceptionalists, her bluster and posturing can be reverse-engineered to find the banal truth about US foreign policy.

For example, her steadfast belief that Ukraine "should not be a pawn in a great-power conflict but rather an independent nation" might have something to do with Chevron's 50-year lease to develop Ukraine's shale gas reserves.

CONTINUED...

http://www.theecologist.org/blogs_and_comments/commentators/2325091/ukraine_chevron_condi_rice_and_shale_gas_join_the_dots.html

[GeorgeGist]

8. Condoleeza Rice belongs in prison.

[Octafish]

11. She deserves it.

Condoleezza Rice Is All Wrong on Ukraine Crisis

By Contributor
Progressive.org, April 16, 2014

By Clarence Lusane

EXCERPT...

Obama has been right to try not to turn the crisis in Ukraine into a military confrontation with Russia.

But Rice, who is the director of the Global Center for Business and the Economy at Stanford University, keeps egging the administration on.

Speaking to the California Republican Party in March, she said, “America has to lead.” She acknowledged that the American people “are tired . . . after more than 10 years of war and terrorism and engagement abroad.”

But Rice and the other leaders of the Bush administration are the ones who are responsible for getting us tired of war and terrorism and military engagements abroad.

As National Security Adviser, she was the main person responsible in the period leading up to September 11 for identifying and responding to terrorist threats. She ignored warnings that an Al Qaeda attack was coming, most infamously on August 6, 2001, in the Presidential Daily Brief titled, “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US,” which Rice and Bush ignored.

Rice was also one of the chief propagandists for the disastrous war against Iraq. She was the one who first used the phrase that “the smoking gun could turn into a mushroom cloud.” And she insisted in an op-ed for the New York Times in January 2003 that Saddam Hussein was lying about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

Of course, it was Rice and Bush and Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld who weren’t telling the American people the truth about these weapons. The Iraq War, which they launched on a false pretense, ended up costing almost 4,500 U.S. soldiers their lives. It also killed between 100,000 and one million Iraqis, and drained the U.S. Treasury of more than a trillion dollars.

Rice and her neoconservative colleagues in the Bush administration are in no position to be criticizing Obama’s handling of the crisis in Ukraine.

That they are taken seriously is the only surprise, since they never have apologized for, or even acknowledged, the fundamentally wrong and misleading role they played when they were in power.

Disregarding the disaster they created in Iraq, they once again seek to brandish the military might of the United States to send the message that Washington is still the big dog on the world stage.

“Leaders can’t afford to get tired,” she said last month. “Leaders can’t afford to be weary.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.progressive.org/news/2014/04/187640/condoleezza-rice-all-wrong-ukraine-crisis