Eric Zuesse

On Saturday, August 8th, Ukraine’s Interfax News Service announced that the Security Bureau of Ukraine had just issued, on Friday, a list of 14 ‘artists’ (mainly Russian actors) who ‘pose a threat to Ukraine’s national security.’ The Ukrainian State Film Agency is, under Ukrainian law, now prohibited from authorizing or allowing distribution of their films or other works. These artists are thus officially banned.

The list also includes French actor Gerard Depardieu, and even Russian economist Mikhail Khazin.

Khazin claims that the gold price has been manipulated downward, and that gold is therefore way undervalued. In 2004, he published a book, The Decline of the Dollar Empire and the End of the Pax Americana.

One of the first things that the United States did after its coup that installed the present Ukrainian regime in February 2014 was to ship all or almost all of the Ukrainian central bank’s gold to the U.S. Federal Reserve vault in the Wall Street area. The Ukrainian government has remained silent on the matter, other than to say “there is almost no gold left in the Central Bank vault.” So, this economist, Khazin, isn’t only Russian; he alleges that the 36 tons of gold that was transferred to the United States will some day soar in value. The Ukrainian government isn’t saying that the gold is in NYC only temporarily; they refuse to answer any questions about it, not even whether it left Ukraine at all.

As I had reported about the gold matter on 12 July 2014: “Immediately [after the coup], the U.S. received a big payoff from [the coup]. A Right Sector official Stepan Kubiv was appointed on February 24th as Chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine, Ukraine’s Ben Bernanke. As I have reported on several occasions (here with links to multiple sources), ‘more than 40 heavy boxes’ of gold were reported to have been secretly flown from the National Bank of Ukraine to the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank’s sub-basement at 33 Liberty Street off Wall Street, in the early morning hours of March 7th. This happened within less than two weeks of the coup. This gold would constitute about $2 billion being paid to the U.S.”

The French actor Depardieu was included on the list because Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, had granted him Russian citizenship after Depardieu left France for Belgium when France raised its total tax-rate on him to 87% (according to Depardieu), and because the actor had said, in expressing appreciation of this citizenship, that Putin “has done a lot for Russian culture.” Depardieu said that he felt better about handling the matter this way than if he had taken the more normal path: stashing his money in a foreign tax-haven bank account. According to Britain’s Telegraph, “‘I don’t need to hide,’ he said.” But, as a consequence, his films now won’t be able to be seen in Ukraine.

So, a government that has been installed by the United States is banning ‘artists.’ It’s not the sort of thing the U.S. government pumped to the public before its coup. Here is Victoria Nuland of the U.S. State Department on 13 December 2013 talking about the U.S. government’s efforts to establish ‘democracy’ in Ukraine. Here she is, two months later, on 4 February 2014, in private, telling America’s Ambassador in Kiev whom to install to lead the ‘interim’ government after the coup, which occurred 18 days later. (She called her appointee “Yats.” He’s still in the same post to which she had him become appointed.) In Brussels on 26 March 2014, a month after Obama’s coup in Ukraine, which had overthrown Ukraine’s actually democratically elected and legal government, Obama praised “the university student, wrapped in the Ukrainian flag, expressing her hope that ‘every country should live by the law’,” and he said (with links added here by me, to his statement):

“Yes, we believe in democracy — with elections that are free and fair; and independent judiciaries and opposition parties; civil society and uncensored information so that individuals can make their own choices. Yes, we believe in open economies based on free markets and innovation, and individual initiative and entrepreneurship, and trade and investment that creates a broader prosperity. And, yes, we believe in human dignity — that every person is created equal, no matter who you are, or what you look like, or who you love, or where you come from. That is what we believe. That’s what makes us strong.”

The 14 people who were banned by Obama’s government in Ukraine, supposedly do not support the values that he holds (even though they do support the values that he expresses).

Officials of the European Union didn’t know that the overthrow was a coup, until right after it had happened; they first learned that it had been a coup, on 26 February 2014. They have, however, consistently stated, and continued to state, that, “The EU is committed to supporting Ukraine in its path towards a modern European democracy.”

The new Ukrainian government is doing all they can to achieve U.S. President Obama’s objectives. That’s why they have banned those 14 ‘artists,’ as being ‘a threat to Ukraine’s national security.’ This is what the U.S. government is now referring to when it espouses ‘democracy.’ And, apparently, it’s now also what the European Union holds as its ideal. Or, if not as its ideal, then, as its goal. It’s where the world is heading, anyway. Or, if not the world, then its aristocracy. This is their ideal, and it’s also their actual goal. Their goal-and-ideal is being realized today, in Ukraine, by banning 14 ‘artists.’

Furthermore, those ‘artists’ are lucky they’re not regular individuals inside Ukraine, who can be simply seized, and eliminated at night. Or bombed, or shelled. No banning of them is necessary. Sometimes, it’s even done to terrorize potential ‘terrorists,’ or anyone else who rejects Obama’s coup. Some survivors of the massacre of Crimeans who were escaping from Ukraine right before the coup were able to tell their accounts on video.

These 14 ‘artists’ have it easy.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.