A Great Country or What? Biden's Son Cashes in On Ukraine Chaos

"War is a Racket"

- General Smedley D. Butler

The story broke a few months back that one Hunter Biden, whose father Joseph Biden just happens to be the sitting  vice president managed to land a plum position with Ukraine's largest gas company Burisma Holdings. The ghastly announcement came scant weeks after his daddy paid a visit to Obama' and Kerrys neo-Nazi infested coup government in Kiev which was then presided over by the golden boy of the the corrupt US establishment Arseniy "Yats" Yatsenyuk who suddenly resigned this week. One would think that such an appointment, especially of the son of a top US political figure to a private corporation in a war torn country in which the administration that the same political figure is backing a puppet regime would stink to high heaven in being that it is at the least a bit of sleazy nepotism that represents a serious conflict of interest and at worst one of the ongoing acts of a government that has gone totally gangster and no longer even bothers with hiding brazen acts of the abuse of power and the peddling of influence for blood money.

Forget all about the lies of the Obama regime and the ongoing media propaganda saturation bombing to turn Russian leader Vladimir Putin as the mortal enemy of America by blaming him for the shootdown of MH17  as a pretext for the next illegal war launched without even the most remote consent of the governed. A sheeplike American public with the attention span of gnats and fleas has a problem recalling the lies about Saddam's WMD. The entire imbroglio in Ukraine is all about throwing open the country to exploitation by corporations and the global finance mafia or for those who are able to purchase access and political clout. Assistant Deputy Secretary of State Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland admitted so much when she bragged to the well-heeled parasites about the $5 billion in US taxpayer money that has been bilked out of hard-working Americans to undermine the democratically elected leader in Kiev Viktor Yanukovych. Sure he was a corrupt bastard but is he any less corrupt than the current US backed stooge Petro Porshenko aka "the Chocolate King"? The root of all blame for the unrest in Ukraine can all be laid squarely at the foot of the throne of Emperor Barack Obama (including the deaths of the 298 unlucky people onboard MH17 who never would have been shot down were it not for the unrest triggered by the initial coup) and his cretinous nest of warmongers at the State Department. As the old Greek proverb goes - "a fish rots from the head down". 

Now in a calculated move of  pure cynical monstrosity, Vice President Biden's son is cashing in as the calamitous on the ground situation in eastern Ukraine in the aftermath of that mysterious shoot down of a civilian jetliner. The collection of the corpses as well as the mass military attack on civilian areas ordered immediately after the shoot down by Porshenko has allowed for the vultures to move in to set up their energy extraction equipment. According to the libertarian financial blog Zero Hedge in a piece entitled "Company In Which Joe Biden's Son Is Director Prepares To Drill Shale Gas In East Ukraine":

Recall what we said earlier today: the proxy Ukraine war just like that in Syria preceding it, "is all about energy."

Recall also the following chart showing Ukraine's shale gas deposits, keeping in mind that the Dnieper-Donets basin which lies in the hotly contested eastern part of the nation and where as everyone knows by now a bloody civil war is raging, is the major oil and gas producing region of Ukraine accounting for approximately 90 per cent of Ukrainian production and according to EIA may have 42 tcf of shale gas resources technically recoverable from 197 tcf of risked shale gas in place.

-AND-

In a nutshell Ukraine (or rather its puppetmasters) has decided to let no crisis (staged or otherwise) or rather civil war, go to waste, and while the fighting rages all around, Ukrainian troopers are helping to install shale gas production equipment near the east Ukrainian town of Slavyansk, which was bombed and shelled for the three preceding months, according to local residents cited by Itar Tass. The reason for the scramble? Under peacetime, the process was expected to take many years, during which Europe would be under the energy dictatorship of Putin. But throw in some civil war and few will notice let alone care that a process which was expected to take nearly a decade if not longer while dealing with broad popular objections to fracking, may instead be completed in months!

“Civilians protected by Ukrainian army are getting ready to install drilling rigs. More equipment is being brought in,” they said, adding that the military are encircling the future extraction area.

The people of Slavyansk, which is located in the heart of the Yzovka shale gas field, staged numerous protest actions in the past against its development. They even wanted to call in a referendum on that subject. Environmentalists are particularly concerned with the consequences of hydrofracing, a method used for shale gas extraction, because it implies the use of extremely toxic chemical agents which can poison not only subsoil waters but also the atmosphere. Experts claim that not a single country in the world has invented a method of utilization of harmful toxic agents in the process of development of shale gas deposits.

Countries like the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and France have given up plans to develop shale gas deposits in their territories.

Not only them but also all-important Germany, which two weeks ago announced it would halt shale-gas drilling for the next seven years over groundwater pollution concerns.

Which clearly makes Ukraine, potentially the last place with massive shale gas deposits and no drilling ban, quite valuable to those who want to develop a major source of shale gas, one which reduces Europe's reliance on Russian gas even more, yet one whose future depends on one simple question: who controls East Ukraine?

Because what better way to accelerate "next steps" than to start drilling for gas in the middle of the Donetsk republic as a civil war is waging in all directions, and where public mood has shifted decidedly against the local "separatists" in the aftermath of the MH-17 tragedy.

The punchline: who will develop the gas field in conjunction with Shell (jointly owned by the Netherlands and the UK: the two countries that loathe Putin the most in the aftermath of the MH-17 disaster) which in May 2012 announced a tender for the right to develop the Yuzovka shale gas deposit?

Burisma, Ukraine’s oil and gas production holdings, also has the right to develop the shale gas fields in the Dnieper-Donetsk basin of Eastern Ukraine. The same Burisma where R. Hunter Biden, Joseph's son, was appointed a director two months ago.

This is the way that business is done in American now. We were lied into Iraq - an unnecessary, ruinous, costly (in terms of both US taxpayer dollars and squandered morality) and regionally destabilizing war in which only the big boys like corporations Haliburton, Blackwater and the energy giants were the winners and the rest of Americans were the losers and are still losing ground with each passing day . Now with the chickens (or buzzards) coming home to roost in Mesopotamia due to the disastrous foreign policy decisions of both the Bush and Obama regimes the latter is doubling down by provoking a war with Russia. The narcissist in chief never could get over the twin humiliations inflicted upon his fragile ego by Putin's Russia first saving former US government contractor turned NSA whistleblower from a US torture dungeon and then intervening to piss in the punchbowl of that glorious attack on Syria based on lies about the gassing of Syrian civilians. The neocons as well as Obama and his babbling, blundering Secretary of State John "Skull and Bones" Kerry never forgave Putin for that and springing the coup d'etat in the midst of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics showed that it was personal.

Obama has definitely delivered on his promises of change - everything has changed for the worst.

But that is just the way that we roll anymore, when voters are easily duped, misinformed idiots who only read the headlines to form their "opinions"  the big chunks always rise to the top.

American Oligarchy: Biden's Son Hired by Ukraine Gas Company

“All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others”

 George Orwell – Animal Farm

What may be the ugliest secret of all in 21st Century America there no longer is such a thing as democracy, stick a fork in it's ass because it is done. The truth is that this place was long ago sold out to the highest bidder, not that it was ever noticed by millions of sheep who went down not only without a fight, not only without a whimper but without even noticing that they have been had by a corrupt, entrenched elite. The insane drive to capture Ukraine for western imperialists hiding behind the shield of blanket propaganda to prop up a non-elected coup of pirates, neo-Nazis and fascists in Kiev and provoking a nuclear armed Russia just does not make sense at face value. Now with another piece of the puzzle being revealed - and a key one at that the view of why this path of lunacy has been embarked upon becomes clearer.

In an interesting bit of news one R. Hunter Biden has just joined the board of Burisma Holdings, Ukraine's largest private gas producer. This is particularly notable in that this Mr. Biden happens to be the son of sitting US Vice President Joseph Biden, a man who last month made an appearance in Kiev to schmooze with "Yats" and company right before the murderous neo-Nazi militias were unleashed. The story initially appeared on RT and alternative media sites such as Zero Hedge but then was widely disseminated throughout the state-corporate media, probably to provide the sanitizing effect of 'sunlight' to this latest illustration of how America has disintegrated into nothing more than an upscale version of a banana republic ruled by a corrupt oligarchy and the police state that it needs to keep the peasants and rabble at bay. Excerpting from business site CNBC on the Biden hiring:

Ukraine's largest private gas producer announced on Tuesday that it added R. Hunter Biden—the son of U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden—to its board of directors.

In a statement on its website, Burisma Holdings said the younger Biden will be in charge of the company's legal unit, while providing support "among international organizations."

The release quoted Hunter Biden as saying that "my assistance in consulting the Company on matters of transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion and other priorities will contribute to the economy and benefit the people of Ukraine."

Large corporations frequently appoint well-connected marquee names of both major U.S. political parties as directors. Yet corporate governance experts are critical of the process, which can be fraught with conflicts of interests and the appearance of favoritism.

The arrangement raised questions about the propriety of his appointment, given the tense political standoff between Russia and the West over the future status of Ukraine, where fighting has resulted in the deaths of dozens of soldiers and civilians. Natural gas has factored heavily in tensions between Russia and Ukraine, both of which have political leadership that's intertwined with their respective energy industries.

Nepotism and oligarchic secession are both aspects of a corrupt – or criminal as in mafia – system in that the sons/daughters or brothers/sisters are installed within the power structure not only reinforcing the corruption but institutionalizing it. Just think of the Bush family, a multi-generational clan of American gangsters that has spawned two US Presidents with one more on the way. Then there are the Clintons, while not as generationally woven into the elite establishment as the Bu$h family a second presidency is looming – with the only serious opposition being Jeb Bush. There is also the incestuous melding of power couples with US Ambassador to the United Nations and humanitarian warmonger Samantha Power being wed to the slimy apparatchik Cass Sunstein, NBC top correspondent Andrea Mitchell and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and the infamous Victoria “Fuck the EU” Nuland to PNAC founder Robert Kagen. Hunter Biden is only the latest example of a parasitical political class grown rich and powerful from feeding upon everyone else like vampires.

While there is no secret that the imperial assimilation of Ukraine has been largely enabled by the presence of US corporations drooling at having a new land of exploitation thrown open to their greed by the US-EU-NATO axis of aggression and the accompanying hard and soft power including military might the Biden appointment stinks of conflict of interest. It is indicative of how far that the American political system has deteriorated that this is so open and that so much of the pocket media rushed to make the announcement after it broke in the alternative media. By this morning not only CNBC but CBS, USA Today, ABC, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, The Hill, Politico and others rushed to carry the water for the establishment over this latest travesty. Rumblings of the impropriety and crony capitalism were also addressed by the Obama administration to the extend that the White House had to issue a statement which I excerpt the following from Reuters citing top flack and paid liar Jay Carney:

Natural gas has been a central issue in recent tensions between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine depends on Russia for most of its natural gas, and has accused Moscow of hiking natural gas prices as punishment for moving closer to the European Union.

In April, the vice president traveled to Kiev and discussed how the United States could help provide technical expertise for expanding domestic production of natural gas.

Asked by a reporter whether Hunter Biden's appointment to the company presented a conflict, White House spokesman Jay Carney said it did not.

"Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family are obviously private citizens, and where they work does not reflect an endorsement by the administration or by the vice president or president," Carney said during a briefing.

Kendra Barkoff, a spokeswoman for Vice President Biden, said he "does not endorse any particular company and has no involvement with this company."

But that is horseshit and none of Carney's official White House statements can eliminate the stench. Some very serious questions should be asked of how the son of Vice President Biden just happens to end up being hired by the top gas company in Ukraine at the same time that the Empire is engaged in a hostile takeover and that the desire of American energy corporations eating high on the hog due to the fracking boom is not exactly a secret. Hunter Biden is hardly the first nor will he be the last but why even bother with the pretense of a legitimate system anymore? Sure this is going to be spun for partisan political gain but when the entire two party con game amounts to nothing more than competing criminal entities dueling for control over the spoils system only suckers will be buying but no worry to the political elite because we have no shortage of them in USA, USA, USA.

The only real difference in our shining city on the hill, flag-draped, god-kissed, exceptional "democracy" anymore is who gets to yoke the slaves and deliver them to the man.