Has anyone else noted the triple irony of the presence of the word “crime” in the name “Crimea?”
[Now read on…]

In their eagerness to please their German masters during WW2 it is well known that Ukrainian fascist groups in Ukraine regularly out-Nazied even the Nazis in the murderous onslaught they inflicted on their own native Jews,  Poles and gypsies. So it comes as no surprise that this innate ability to greatly excel at doing dirty-work is reflected in some of the modern Ukrainian’s politician’s ability to exceed even the Russians in their zeal when it comes to swindling their own people.

An outstanding example is that paradigm of virtue, the disarmingly sweet oligarch ex-Prime Minister Julia Tymoshenko, who is known for being particularly adept at fleecing her own people. So much that, when piously addressing the crowd in Maidan Square after the revolution she was unable to stand up, I suspect, not because of acute back pain, but because of the weight of all the gold bullion bars she had stuffed in her pockets.
And there is issue of the ousted criminal Viktor Yanukovich’s son, a dentist, who became one of the richest people in Ukraine supposedly through imposing his own particular brand of misery (dentistry) on Ukrainians. Nothing to do with the criminal wealth squirreled away by his dad, though.

Now a new event is likely to really set the cat amongst the pigeons.
The arrest in Austria yesterday, after a long FBI corruption investigation, of the highly-respected Ukrainian energy magnate, Dmitry Firtash. This must make for unpleasant reading amongst the West’s rich and powerful. For Firtash is not only a staunchly pro-Russian oligarch, but he has extensive and extremely close ties with senior and very powerful British Conservative parliamentarians. That is, the cream of the British political establishment. As a result, the fall-out from his arrest promises to reach seismic proportions. (Let’s hope.)
Dmitry Firtash’s highly pro-Russian leanings notwithstanding, his arrest is nevertheless likely to raise another smirk on Putin’s poisonous little face. For the breath-taking hypocrisy of the British is about to be exposed yet again.

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“Consequences, Scmonsequences – So Long As I’m Rich.”*
With so much money being at risk on both sides of the Crimean conundrum, it’s difficult to know exactly which bunch of criminals has the most to lose in the event of real, genuine sanctions being applied.  The City of London financial and banking criminals which gave us the GFC? Or the  criminal oligarchs who raped and plundered the resources of the Russian and Ukrainian people after 1991?

So it must have been that the alarm bells would have started to ring loudly in The City of London immediately Obama and Cameron publicly uttered the dirty ‘sanction’ word.  One could almost hear, deep down in the vast and putrid sewers of Western financial power, wherein live those who really run the world, the sound of financiers slamming down the shutters, locking the doors and windows and pulling-up the drawbridge pretty damn quick. For there is one thing the rich and powerful in the West cannot allow to be threatened and that is the enormous flow of money  pouring in from the East to fill the linings of their already filthy-rich pockets. Dirty money, enabling them to become stinking rich – and to continue to become even more stinking rich – without a care about where it came from. (“Provenance, schmovenance – so long as I’m rich.”)*

Let’s face it, London is awash in the slush of vast amounts of dirty money from Putin’s Russia and it sees no alternative but to keep it coming. The financial services (a.k.a. legalised money laundering services) that The City of London  has generously provided the Russian government (a.k.a. the Russian Mafia) over the past 2 decades to help conceal the Russkie’s ill-gotten gains, must remain in place.  Otherwise, how else can they make a living?

And while Marx tosses and turns, and writhes and seethes in the narrow confines of his grave in Highgate, London, Putin’s ex-KGB cronies continue to laugh all the way to the banks nearby.

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* Daffy Duck, circa 1957