Ukraine Crushed in $1.1bn Fake Gas Deal

Jen Alic | Thu, 29 November 2012
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Ukraine-Crushed-in-1.1bn-Fake-Gas-Deal.html

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Certainly the folks at Gazprom are having a good snicker, reveling in the mockery that has been made of what should have been a landmark Ukraine-Spain gas deal that would have loosened Russia’s gas grip on Kiev.

Everyone wondered how Russia would respond to Ukraine’s attempt at gas independence. But this is what happens when you mess with Gazprom.

It was a horrible moment for Ukraine on Monday—all the more horrible because the whole event was televised—when the historical $1.1 billion deal it was about to sign with Spain’s Gas Natural Fenosa turned out to be fake.

Why was the deal historical? It would have secured $1.1 billion in investment for the construction of Ukraine’s first liquid natural gas (LNG) terminal on the Black Sea and a pipeline connecting the country’s vast gas network to the terminal.  

More to the point, this would enable Ukraine to import by tanker up to 10 billion cubic meters of European gas at a price 20% cheaper than Gazprom. Even more to the point, it would be a major first step toward reducing Ukraine’s dependence on Russia.

The deal was that investors had apparently signed agreements through a newly formed consortium for the construction of the $1.1 billion LNG terminal.

Here’s how the ill-fated signing ceremony went down:

While Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and Energy Minister Yuriy Boyko were cutting the ribbon on the construction of the terminal in a live televised ceremony, the country’s investment chief, Vladislav Kaskiv, was attending the official investment signing ceremony elsewhere, also via live video feed. This is where walls caved in very suddenly.  

Signing on behalf of Fenosa was one Jordi Sarda Bonvehi. At the 11th hour, Fenosa let it be known that they have no idea who Bonvehi is and that he certainly does not represent the company in any way. Fenosa apparently had no idea it was signing a landmark agreement with Ukraine.

Kiev was necessarily taken aback, and Bonvehi remained conveniently silent at the signing ceremony once the news broke out.

Of course, what no one knows is how Ukrainian authorities were led to believe—during multiple rounds of negotiations—that Bonvehi was a Fenosa representative.

The story being bandied about by authorities in Kiev is now that Bonvehi was under the impression that Fenosa would sign the deal with Ukraine and that he would be given the authority to sign the deal retroactively.

But Fenosa denies it has ever considered such a deal and continues to deny any relationship at all with Bonvehi.

So where does that leave us? It leaves Ukraine in the lurch. There is no way it can fund this terminal on its own, despite its claims to the contrary. We probably don’t have to look much further than Gazprom and the Ukrainian oligarchy to find where this beautifully crafted charade was hatched.

In the meantime, Bonvehi—if such a person of that name even exists—remains elusive. No one knows who he really is or who he really works for.

More than anything, it’s an advertisement for due diligence.

But Jailing DSK Was Okay...

From the London Guardian:
The European Union has protested against the jailing of the Ukrainian opposition leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, by calling off high-level talks with the country's president, Viktor Yanukovych.

Yanukovych was due to meet the European commission's president, José Manuel Barroso, and the European council president, Herman Van Rompuy, in Brussels on Thursday for final stage negotiations on a free trade treaty and an association agreement that would bind the ex-Soviet country to Europe.

EU officials cancelled the talks on Tuesday, saying the timing wasn't right. The move came one week after Tymoshenko, a former prime minister, was sentenced to seven years in prison in a trial she and her supporters say was motivated by revenge.

"The meeting is postponed to a later occasion when the conditions will be more conducive to making progress in bilateral relations," a spokeswoman for Lady Ashton, the EU's foreign policy chief, said. A spokesman for Van Rompuy said Ukraine had to make improvements on key issues.

The EU had repeatedly warned Yanukovych that it viewed the trial as politically motivated, and that it would closely watch its results for signs that Ukraine had adopted "European values" such as an independent judiciary. It condemned the verdict last week. Tymoshenko was found guilty of abusing her power while signing a gas deal with Russia as prime minister in 2009...

Ukraine president faces EU protests over jailing of opposition leader
Miriam Elder and David Gow
Tuesday 18 October 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/18/ukraine-eu-protests-opposition-leader

Ukraine's future wasn't orange

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/08/ukraine-post-communist-orange-future

Ukraine's future wasn't orange
The pro-western 'revolutions' that were supposed to mark post-communist politics have failed to materialise
Colin Graham
Monday 8 February 2010

The future for Ukraine used to be orange in 2004 and now it is a lot more grey, or, according to a lot of commentators, white, blue and red – the colours of the Russian flag. Now that voters have almost certainly backed Viktor Yanukovich, the country's apparently pro-western stance that was supposed to have gripped the nation in 2004, with its hyped-up "orange revolution", doesn't seem to have occurred at all.

In 2004, Yanukovich was deemed to be history but now he is back, and with a vengeance, having won the presidential election against the charismatic but suspect figurehead, Yulia Tymoshenko.

Five years ago, we were told Ukraine was in thrall to a new dawn represented by Viktor Yushchenko, the leader who was facially disfigured by an alleged Russian-backed security service attempt to poison him. That didn't work, but Yushchenko hasn't done much to enhance his reputation since being in office. He has just been humiliatingly ejected after garnering just 5% of the vote, with his first term marked by a spate of corruption cases, political failures and a broken economy. No new dawn then.

A particularly tiresome event has occurred again and again ever since the Berlin wall came down. Leaders feted by the west as representing a radical fresh outlook for their post-communist, eastern European countries have generally turned out to be little different to their predecessors. In 2004, it was often conveniently forgotten that Yushchenko had at one stage been an integral part of the political establishment he was then seemingly trying to oust. The departing president at the time was the much-denounced Leonid Kuchma who had appointed Yushchenko as his prime minister five years before the "orange revolution".

In the background to all this, it is of course Russia that looms largest, and again a major western assumption is that the big bear is about to become some kind of malign beneficiary of the vote in Ukraine, rather than it being the people themselves who have just made an informed choice.

There looks to have been less interference from the US this time than happened in 2004, when a number of Washington-backed NGOs took an active part in events in Kiev. I met some of them when in Warsaw. They had just returned from Ukraine as election observers and I saw just how objective they had been. One office was bedecked with dozens of orange banners, flags and scarves. But with a US president now in power who is less belligerent towards Russia than George Bush was, US interest in matters happening on Moscow's doorstep has been more subdued – not that we can assume Washington is exactly indifferent.

A good illustration of what is really at work in the west's dealings with the former communist bloc might be to look at Ukraine's neighbour, Belarus. Still ruled by hard man Alexander Lukashenko, he has nonetheless fallen out with the likes of Vladimir Putin over energy and other issues and, as a result, has become less "Europe's last dictator" than a man the European Union, for one, can deal with. Brussels' policy is now one of encouraging "change through engagement" – a dubious position given that Lukashenko has shown very few signs of lessening his grip on power.

This is the man who said that his state would "wring the necks" of protesters during the run-up to the 2006 presidential election if they took to the streets. And it wasn't an idle threat. Back then, I recall, over the border in Poland, the same NGOs that had backed Yushchenko mobilised themselves to protest Lukashenko's outrages against democracy. It will be interesting to see how active they are during the next election in Minsk. Meanwhile, the Belarussian president is free to move around Europe after an EU travel ban was lifted as thanks for his refusal to back Russia's recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia's independence.

At this rate, Lukashenko could indeed become the new darling of the west in the former Soviet Union, replacing Georgia's somewhat tarnished Mikheil Saakashvili after his assault on South Ossetia in 2008. His record on upholding democratic rights has also come under fire within his own country and elsewhere.

And it was the Georgian president who got the ball rolling with these western-backed upheavals in the last decade. His "rose revolution" in 2003 was celebrated in Washington and other like-minded capitals as a huge victory for freedom, which it hasn't proved to be. The next year they were saying the same thing about events in Ukraine.

Ukraine Poll Leaders Set Sights on Swing Voters

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704541004575010390901914042.html

JANUARY 19, 2010
Ukraine Poll Leaders Set Sights on Swing Voters
JAMES MARSON

KIEV — Opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, bitter foes since Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution, began a three-week scramble for new support Monday after first-round voting in the country's presidential election thrust them into a runoff.

Near-complete returns from the Central Election Commission gave 35.3% of Sunday's vote to Mr. Yanukovych, the dour but resilient politician whose tainted victory in the 2004 race was overturned after massive street protests against alleged fraud.

His margin over Ms. Tymo shenko, who polled 25%, wasn't wide enough to make him the runoff's clear favorite, political analysts said. Ms. Tymoshenko, a former natural-gas tycoon known for her sharp tongue and crown of braided hair, is considered the more charismatic and aggressive campaigner.

But she shares the burden of the political and economic turmoil that has stymied the country under the pro-Western Orange Revolution and its principal leader, President Viktor Yushchenko, who finished fifth among 18 contenders with 5.5% of Sunday's vote.

With 40% of the first-round vote up for grabs, the question is whether Ms. Tymoshenko can persuade swing voters who are ideologically closer to her to overlook her part in the leadership's failures and support her in the Feb. 7 runoff.

Staking out her battle line, she assailed her opponent, a former prime minister, as a tool of corrupt oligarchs. She called on "democratic forces" to help her keep Ukraine on a path toward integration with Europe.

"To vote for Yanukovych is to choose the Stone Age," she said in televised remarks late Sunday.

Mr. Yanukovych declared Monday that Ukrainians had turned against their leaders. His rival, he said, "has not learned to accept her mistakes and correct them. People sense that, and don't trust her."

Ms. Tymoshenko got most of her support in the nationally minded, pro-European west and center of Ukraine. Mr. Yanukovych polled heavily in the eastern and southern regions culturally close to Russia.

The geopolitical tone of the 2004 race, in which Russia backed Mr. Yanukovych and was humiliated by the outcome, is largely absent this time. Both major candidates have vowed to repair ties with Russia while pursuing European Union membership. The economy and corruption mattered more to voters.

Nor did allegations of fraud and voter intimidation weigh on Sunday's results as they did in 2004. Western electionobservers reported that the voting generally met international standards, despite some confusion over who was eligible to vote from home.

Supporters of banking millionaire Serhiy Tihipko and former parliament speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk could hold the key to the runoff outcome. They finished third and fourth, respectively, polling about 20% between them on similar reform messages branding Ukraine's traditional politicians as ineffective and corrupt. Messrs. Tihipko and Yatsenyuk said they will support neither candidate in the runoff.

"Tymoshenko needs to convince voters for Tihipko and Yatsenyuk to come out, and she needs to persuade them ...that the alternative represented by Yanukovych is much worse," said David J. Kramer, a Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Washington, who observed the election. "That's going to be hard...A lot of Ukrainians voted for those candidates because they are not Tymo shenko."

Mr. Yanukovych hopes to pick up votes from Mr. Tihipko, who scored well in the front-runner's strongholds. But some who voted for Mr. Tihipko said they couldn't abide Mr. Yanukovych, a former factory manager who served jail time for assault and robbery in his youth and gained attention for declaring himself a "proffesor"—misspelling the word in Ukrainian—in his 2004 presidential declaration.

"I will never vote for an illiterate leader. I would be embarrassed to have him as president," said Olha Kovalchuk of Kiev, who voted for Mr. Tihipko in the first round and now supports Ms. Tymoshenko.

Both candidates sprang into action Monday after an explosion caused by oxygen tanks killed at least seven people at a hospital in the eastern town of Luhansk. Ms. Tymoshenko rushed there in her capacity as prime minister. Mr. Yanukovych promised his Party of Regions party would give $3,000 to the families of each victim.

Whoever wins the runoff will inherit an economy that shrank 15% last year, according to the World Bank. The new president will have to persuade the International Monetary Fund to resume a $16.4 billion bailout program, suspended after Mr. Yushchenko signed wage and pension increases into law in October.

Getting parliament to pass the required austerity measures will be difficult. Mr. Yanukovych has said that if he wins he might call parliamentary elections this year to secure a legislative majority.

2009 Heralds “A New Age Of Rebellion”

http://www.prisonplanet.com/2009-heralds-a-new-age-of-rebellion.html

2009 Heralds “A New Age Of Rebellion”
Riots over economic crisis to escalate from March-May as Icelandic government teeters on brink of collapse
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Wednesday, January 21, 2009

2009 heralds the start of a “new age of rebellion” according to an editorial in the highly influential London Times newspaper, and the year in which masses of people will take to the streets to riot in response to drastically falling standards of living.

Riot police were again deployed to combat demonstrators in Iceland last night after protesters all but stormed the parliament building in Reykjavik during its first session of chamber after the Christmas holiday. Icelandic Prime Minister Geir Haarde also became the target of an angry mob today who pelted his car with eggs.

According to a London Guardian report, the Icelandic government is now on the verge of collapse as “the first revolution in the history of the republic” unfolds.

Similar scenes have unfolded in Bulgaria and Latvia, where rapid growth has been replaced by large GDP contractions, wage cuts and unemployment. Greece was also recently gripped by some of the worst riots in its turbulent history in response to both police brutality and the economic downturn.

According to Times columnist Roger Boyes, this is merely a “sign of things to come: a new age of rebellion”.

Boyes notes that Iceland, Bulgaria, and Latvia are not natural protest cultures and that something is worryingly amiss.

He cites the warning of respected LSE economist Robert Wade, who recently told a protest meeting in Reykjavik that the world was approaching a tipping point and that March to May would be marked by widespread global civil unrest.

“It will be caused by the rise of general awareness throughout Europe, America and Asia that hundreds of millions of people in rich and poor countries are experiencing rapidly falling consumption standards; that the crisis is getting worse not better; and that it has escaped the control of public authorities, national and international,” said Wade.

He’s not alone in his foreboding prediction. Trends forecaster Gerald Celente has echoed similar sentiments, predicting revolution in America, food riots and tax rebellions - all within four years. Celente says that by 2012 America will become an undeveloped nation, that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches, and that holidays will be more about obtaining food, not gifts.

Boyes forecasts that Ukraine and Russia could be the next to see widespread rioting as the crisis deepens.

Ukraine and Georgia

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_4124.shtml

Ukraine and Georgia: Entry into NATO put off indefinitely
By F. William Engdahl
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Dec 12, 2008

NATO ministers in Brussels have decided to ignore US wishes and to delay the admission of Ukraine and of Georgia in effect indefinitely in what the Washington administration is sheepishly trying to claim is a positive ‘compromise.’

The decision, following EU member state alarm last August over the prospect of European states having to go to war at some point against Russia over an incalculable despot in the Caucasus or in Kiev who decided to provoke Moscow to react, was simply too much.

The Germans have a far too deep and painful collective memory of the last war with Russia to be willing to treat such a prospect as lightly as Condi Rice or Washington seems willing to do. The decision deepens growing tectonic fault lines across the Atlantic, as the ‘Made in USA’ financial crisis deepens and the dollar looks more and more vulnerable once hedge fund repatriation effects by yearend wind down. The year 2009 will be clearly more turbulent even than 2008 in world geopolitics.

The Brussels decision is the more remarkable as an indication of the slipping power of Washington over European NATO members. The December 3 NATO Foreign Ministers Brussels meeting issued what to the naïve observer might appear a masterpiece of diplomacy. They unanimously agreed to sidestep the usual Membership Action Plan vote for Georgia and Ukraine, the first concrete step towards NATO full membership. Instead, NATO will expand the activities of two existing bodies -- the Nato-Georgia Commission and the Nato-Ukraine Commission -- basically to oversee the same reforms as would have been contained in the action plan. As well, NATO ministers agreed in their communique to renew ties with Russia ‘in a conditional and graduated manner.’

Translated into real political language, Washington has undergone a stunning setback in its agenda of encircling Russia with NATO. Despite the fact President-elect Obama retained Bush administration Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and named a person to be Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, who is strongly on record for bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO, key European NATO members, led by Germany and France, blocked what must be a unanimous membership decision.

The real reasons

The real reason for the refusal is the growing realization within European officialdom that it was Georgia’s incalculable president, Mikhail Saakashvili, and not Moscow who initiated the adventure of sending Georgian troops to try to occupy the breakaway province of South Ossetia, that on evident encouragement of Washington.

On November 28 in Georgian official Parliamentary Commission testimony, on the background to the August events, which saw Russian troops march into parts of Georgia to repel the attack on Ossetians, Saakashvili made the surprising announcement that he had indeed initiated the war.

According to Saakashvili, the attack on the South Ossetian capital, which involved night shelling of residential areas with multiple rocket launcher systems, was aimed at protecting Georgian citizens. He said it was a response to Russia’s “intervention” in the region. “We did start military action to take control of Tskhinvali and other unruly areas. But we took this difficult decision to fend off our territory from intervention and save the people who were dying. It was inevitable,” Saakavili said.

The Georgian president claims Russia moved tanks into South Ossetian territory before Georgia launched its attack. He said: “The issue is not about why Georgia started military action -– we admit we started it. The issue is about whether there was another chance when our citizens were being killed? We tried to prevent the intervention and fought on our own territory.”

Saakashvili’s surprising admission came only hours after the testimony of Georgia’s former ambassador to Moscow, Erosi Kitsmarishvili, who testified for three hours before he was shouted down by pro-Saakashvili members of Parliament.

A former confidant of President Saakashvili, Kitsmarishvili said Georgian officials told him in April that they planned to start a war in Abkhazia, one of two breakaway regions at issue in the war, and had received a green light from the United States government to do so. He said the Georgian government later decided to start the war in South Ossetia, the other region, and continue into Abkhazia.

He refused to name the officials who he said had told him about planned actions in Abkhazia, saying that identifying them would endanger their lives. The official US line has been that they had ‘warned’ Mr. Saakashvili against taking action in the two enclaves, where Russian peacekeepers were stationed.

Kitsmarishvili’s testimony in front of the parliamentary commission, was shown live on Georgian television. The chairman of the commission, Paata Davitaia, said he would initiate a criminal case against Kitsmarishvili for “professional negligence.” Deputy Foreign Minister Giga Bokeria, who was called on short notice to comment on Kitsmarishvili’s testimony, called the allegations “irresponsible and shameless fabrication,” and said they were “either the result of a lack of information or the personal resentment of a man who has lost his job and wants to get involved in politics.” Mr. Kitsmarishvili was fired in September by the president.

Mr. Kitsmarishvili walked out amid the furor on December 2. “They don’t want to listen to the truth,” he told reporters. Two days later, Saakashvili proved Kitsmarishvili right.

Full Spectrum Dominance

As I detail at some length in my book, due out in January 2009, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order, the strategy of bringing Georgia and Ukraine into NATO is part of a far larger and more dangerous strategic long-term plan of Washington to ultimately encircle, confront and dismember Russia as a functioning state. Russia, even more than China, is the most formidable obstacle to a Washington-centered sole Superpower Pax Americana.

Russia’s understandable refusal to abandon its nuclear strike force in the face of US violations of agreements made in 1989 between the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev and then-US Secretary of State James Baker III, namely that NATO would not expand east to the former states of the Warsaw Pact or USSR, presents a dilemma for any planned sole US superpower domination.

The Bush presidency was a raw attempt to remedy this by brute military force. The militarization of Iraq and the Middle East oilfields was but one step. The creation of a US ‘missile shield’ in Poland and the Czech Republic, was another, a major step.

The misnamed ‘missile defense shield’ would be in reality an offensive capability that, when installed by perhaps 2012, will put the world, especially Western Europe, on a hair-trigger to nuclear war, and combined with entry of Russian border states Georgia and Ukraine would simply present Moscow with de facto defeat. This is not about Russia returning to old Soviet-style rule under Putin or Medvedev. It’s about the ultimate survival of Russia as a nation, as Moscow rightly sees it, not about the fine points of democracy.

No one in either Berlin, Paris, London or Brussels, and certainly not in Washington, is ignorant of that reality. European NATO members are increasingly nervous about the prospect of a military confrontation with Russia. Last August’s swift Russian response to act in aid of South Ossetians against the Georgian invasion sent a reality shock through Europe. Neither Germany nor France wish to admit unstable states like Georgia or Ukraine only to be forced to act militarily in their defense in event of a repeat of the madness of last August.

That, simply stated, is the real, unspoken reason that Washington on December 3 in Brussels was forced to accept a face-saving compromise. The NATO membership of Georgia and Ukraine to all intent and purposes is dead. As one NATO military official stated, ‘Nato has lost the glue that once held it together.’

The statement of Rice following the NATO meeting was telling. She was forced to tell the press, ‘ . . . there is a long road ahead for both Georgia and Ukraine to reach those standards. The United States stands resolutely for those standards, meaning that there should be no shortcuts to membership of NATO.’

Polish motorcade shoot was ‘Georgia stunt’

Further adding to the atmosphere of an almost Laurel & Hardy comic farce around Georgia’s erratic president, who was filmed shortly after the Russian invasion in August by the BBC actually swallowing and chewing on his tie, it has now emerged that an alleged shooting incident a week before the Brussels NATO meeting, involving the motorcade of the Georgian and Polish presidents was a staged ‘stunt.’

Special services in Warsaw say the alleged attack near the South Ossetian border was a provocation staged by the Georgians. A report by Poland’s Internal Security Agency (Agencja Bezpieczenstwa Wewnetrznego -- ABW), published by the Dziennik newspaper, claims Georgia staged the incident for propaganda purposes.

The incident took place on Sunday evening when Georgian President Saakasvili was showing his Polish counterpart Lech Kaczynski the area near the border with South Ossetia. After the convoy stopped at a checkpoint, there was gunfire, which the Georgians claimed was an ‘attack by Russian troops.’

Lech Kaczynski’s personal security chief was dismissed. Colonel Krzysztof Olszowiec was accused of failing to ensure proper security for the Polish president during his trip to Georgia. Olszowiec was dismissed despite objections from Kaczynski, according to the Polish media.

The trip to the border area with Russian-backed South Ossetia was the result of a last-minute invitation from Saakashvili, according to Polish Foreign Ministry spoke spokesman Piotr Paskowski.

Initially, Warsaw blamed Russia for the incident. But now Polish security forces say it was staged by Tbilisi. Russia strongly denied the allegations, saying Tbilisi was behind it. President Kaczynski confirmed that shooting had taken place but stopped short of blaming anyone. Russia’s position has now been supported by Poland’s ABW, who said “the shots fired near the cars of Georgian and Polish president were a Georgian provocation.” The Polish document points out that Saakashvili kept on smiling after the first shots and his bodyguards didn’t react. The report also highlights another suspicious fact, namely, that the bus carrying journalists was instructed to travel in front of the motorcade, while the car with Kaczynski’s own bodyguards was pushed back by Georgian soldiers. The result was that they were not in a position to witness the alleged shooting.

All in all it might be that Saakashvili’s tenure as president faces major internal challenges for his bent to undertake such reckless stunts.

The Obama White House will inherit a plateful of geopolitical problems in Europe next January 20.

F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press), and Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (www.globalresearch.ca). This essay is adapted from a book he has just completed, titled Full Spectrum Dominance: The Geopolitical Agenda Behind Washington’s Global Military Buildup (release date estimated Autumn 2008). He may be contacted through his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

Saakashvili’s “democracy” in Georgia

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3677.shtml

Saakashvili’s “democracy” in Georgia
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Aug 28, 2008

(WMR) -- While the neocon media and the George Soros-funded “progressive left” defends the Georgian government of Mikheil Saakashvili against so-called Russian “aggression,” it should be recalled that Saakashvili is anything but a paragon of democracy.

Shalva Natelashvili would agree with those in Russia and the United States who question Saakashvili’s foreign entanglements and political and economic agenda. Natelashvili, as the leader of Georgia’s opposition Labor Party, has experienced Saakashvili’s dictatorship first-hand.

Natelashvili is no friend of Saakashvili’s patrons in the United States, backers that span the political aisle from Barack Obama’s financial backer George Soros and chief foreign policy adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to John McCain’s top foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann. For that reason, Natelashvili favors closer ties between Georgia and Russia. Natelashvili has called Soros the “real president of Georgia,” suggesting that Saakashvili is merely Soros’ puppet. Natelashvili has also called Matthew Bryza, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs and her special envoy to Georgia, a tool of the Soros-backed Georgian government. Natelashvili has called for Bryza’s resignation.

Natelashvili’s program of restoring free natural gas and electricity to Georgia for three years as a way to lighten the financial burden of utility bills on poor Georgian households did not earn him any points with Saakashvili or Soros, a person who preys on the poor and unemployed through his vulture capitalist practices. And to earn him greater wrath from the Soros crowd, Natelashvili opposes the privatization of state-owned industries and wants them returned to state control, as well as reducing the power of Georgia’s neocon “unitary executive” presidency.

The pseudo-democrat Saakashvili responded to Natelashvili by accusing him of espionage prior to the presidential election last January, an election which Saakashvili won amid charges by the opposition of election fraud. Natelashvili was accused by the neocon government in Tbilisi of meeting with Russian intelligence agents and planning to overthrow the government. Earlier, Saakashvili’s government had arrested opposition leader Irakli Okruashvili and issued charges against wealthy businessman and opposition leader Badri Patarkatsishvili and Konstantine Gamsakhurdia, the son of the first Georgian president. Patarkatsishvili, the co-owner of Georgia’s Imedi TV network, died suddenly outside of London last February at the age of 53. He was a bitter opponent of Saakashvili and many Georgians and some British police suspected foul play in his death, ruled later as a heart attack.

The convergence of Soros and the Obama campaign on one side and Scheunemann and the McCain campaign on the other illustrates the lack of difference between the Democrats and Republicans when it comes to revanchist Cold War politics. Scheunemann was a member of the neocon Project for the New American Century (PNAC) and favors expansion of NATO. Obama’s foreign policy team of Brzezinski and Wesley Clark are in agreement with Scheunemann whose Orion Strategies has made a fortune in lobbying for NATO expansion and awarding countries like Latvia lucrative contracts in U.S.-occupied Iraq. Scheunemann is close to Iraq National Congress leader Ahmad Chalabi whose bogus intelligence helped launch the U.S. misadventure in Iraq.

The Soros network has funded a series of democracy manipulation revolutions around the world, including the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon, the Olive Tree Revolution in Palestine (that saw Hamas come to power), the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, the Purple Revolution in Iraq (that saw a Shi’a-dominated government friendly to Iran come to power), and the Saffron Revolution in Burma (one that was crushed by the military). There were also abortive themed revolutions in Moldova and Belarus. Not to be omitted is the Orange Democratic Movement’s uprising in Kenya, one that saw thousands murdered before the Orange movement’s leader Raila Odinga became Prime Minister in a power-sharing government. Odinga’s father Oginga Odinga was a close friend of Barack Obama’s father, Barack Obama, Sr.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2008 WayneMadenReport.com

Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).