Category Archives: Geopolitics/War

Geopolitics/War, Privacy

Pentagon report shows no evidence Snowden put US personnel at risk

No evidence has surfaced to support persistent claims from pundits and lawmakers that Snowden has provided any of the NSA documents he obtained to a “foreign adversary”. The DIA report has been cited numerous times by lawmakers who claimed Snowden’s leaks have put US personnel at risk. But details to back up such claims are not included in the declassified material.

Pentagon report: scope of intelligence compromised by Snowden ‘staggering’

Jason Leopold
The Guardian: May 22, 2014

A top-secret Pentagon report to assess the damage to national security from the leak of classified National Security Agency documents by Edward Snowden concluded that “the scope of the compromised knowledge related to US intelligence capabilities is staggering”.

The Guardian has obtained a copy of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s classified damage assessment in response to a Freedom of Information Act (Foia) lawsuit filed against the Defense Department earlier this year. The heavily redacted 39-page report was prepared in December and is titled “DoD Information Review Task Force-2: Initial Assessment, Impacts Resulting from the Compromise of Classified Material by a Former NSA Contractor.”

But while the DIA report describes the damage to US intelligence capabilities as “grave”, the government still refuses to release any specific details to support this conclusion. The entire impact assessment was redacted from the material released to the Guardian under a presidential order that protects classified information and several other Foia exemptions.

Only 12 pages of the report were declassified by DIA and released. A Justice Department attorney said DIA would continue to process other internal documents that refer to the DIA report for possible release later this year.

Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, questioned the decision to withhold specific details.

“The essence of the report is contained in the statement that ‘the scope of the compromised knowledge related to US intelligence capabilities is staggering’. But all elaboration of what this striking statement means has been withheld,” he said.

The assessment excluded NSA-related information and dealt exclusively with non-NSA defense materials. The report was distributed to multiple US military commands around the world and all four military branches.

“This report presents the Information Review Task Force-2’s (IRTF-2s’) initial assessment of impact to the Department of Defense (DoD) from the compromise of [redacted] classified files by a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor,” the report’s executive summary states.

“The IRTF-2 and Defense component partners continue triaging and reviewing compromised information for Defense equities and will update this report as additional assessments are completed. Combatant Commands (CCMDs) and Services have produced separate reports that provide greater details concerning the potential impact of the compromise on their respective equities … It should be noted that SIGINT [Signals Intelligence]-specific equities are not addressed in this report; NSA is reviewing those separately.”

The classified damage assessment was first cited in a news report published by Foreign Policy on January 9. The Foreign Policy report attributed details of the DIA assessment to House intelligence committee chairman Mike Rogers and its ranking Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger. The lawmakers said the White House had authorized them to discuss the document in order to undercut the narrative of Snowden being portrayed as a heroic whistleblower.

The DIA report has been cited numerous times by Rogers and Rusppersberger and other lawmakers who claimed Snowden’s leaks have put US personnel at risk.
[…]
But details to back up Rogers’ claims are not included in the declassified material released to the Guardian.

Neither he nor any other lawmaker has disclosed specific details from the DIA report but they have continued to push the “damage” narrative in interviews with journalists and during appearances on Sunday talk shows.

The declassified portion of the report obtained by the Guardian says only that DIA “assesses with high confidence that the information compromise by a former NSA contractor [redacted] and will have a GRAVE impact on US national defense”.

The declassified material does not state the number of documents Snowden is alleged to have taken, which Rogers and Ruppersberger have claimed, again citing the DIA’s assessment, was 1.7m. Nor does the declassified portion of the report identify Snowden by name.

“[Redacted] a former NSA contractor compromised [redacted] from NSA Net and the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS),” the report says. “On 6 June 2013, media groups published the first stories based on this material, and on 9 June 2013 they identified the source as an NSA contractor who had worked in Hawaii.”

JWICS is identified as a “24 hour a day network designed to meet the requirements for secure [top-secret/sensitive compartmented information] multi-media intelligence communications worldwide. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has directed that all Special Security Offices (SSOs) will install the JWICS.”

The Washington Post, quoting anonymous sources, reported last October that Snowden “lifted the documents from a top-secret network run by the Defense Intelligence Agency and used by intelligence arms of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines.” The Post further claimed that Snowden “took 30,000 documents that involve the intelligence work of one of the services” and that he gained access to the documents through JWICS.

The report says that on 11 July 2013, about a month after the Guardian’s first report on the NSA’s metadata program was published, DIA chief Lieutenant General Michael Flynn “directed establishment of the Information Review Task Force 2 (IRTF-2) to acquire, triage, analyze, and assess all DIA and DoD compromised information”.

“Since 11 July 2013, IRTF-2 has led a coordinated DoD effort to discover, triage, and assess the impact of non-NSA Defense material from NSA holdings of compromised data,” according to the DIA report. “As of 18 December 2013, the federated IRTF-2 assessment includes: [redacted]”

Flynn was recently forced out of his position at DIA as part of a “leadership shakeup,” according to a report published in the Washington Post.

A partially declassified annex of the report contains various “terms of reference” that provide some clues as to what the impact assessment contains. For example, the report defines “compromised” as “out of government control”, while “disclosed” is defined as “made available to the public via the media, or to a foreign adversary”.

No evidence has surfaced to support persistent claims from pundits and lawmakers that Snowden has provided any of the NSA documents he obtained to a “foreign adversary”.

Ben Wizner, Snowden’s attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, said: “This report, which makes unsubstantiated claims about alleged harm to national security, is from December of 2013. Just this month, Keith Alexander admitted in an interview that he doesn’t ‘think anybody really knows what he [Snowden] actually took with him, because the way he did it, we don’t have an accurate way of counting’. In other words, the government’s so-called damage assessment is based entirely on guesses, not on facts or evidence.”

(read the full article and read the full declassified report at The Guardian)

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Geopolitics/War, Tyranny

White House hosts senators for ‘bizarre’ secret foreign policy meeting

Olivier Knox
Yahoo News: May 21, 2014

White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and National Security Adviser Susan Rice met with a bipartisan delegation of senators late Tuesday for secret talks focused on foreign policy, several sources with knowledge of the discussion told Yahoo News.

Sen. Bob Corker, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, alluded to the meeting on Wednesday, as the panel held a hearing on whether and how to overhaul the signature law of the global war on terrorism.

“I know we both attended sort of a discussion last night that I found to be one of the most bizarre I’ve attended on Foreign Relations on foreign policy in our country,” Corker said at one point, referring to himself and Sen. Bob Menendez (D.-New Jersey), the committee’s chairman.

“I know several of us were involved in a very bizarre discussion last night. This continues a very bizarre discussion,” Corker said at another point.

The Tennessee Republican did not say where or with whom the meeting took place (or why it was bizarre).

The White House later confirmed the meeting. National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said McDonough hosted “an informal discussion on national security issues,” and that Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Tony Blinken attended.

“This session was part of our ongoing efforts to consult with the Congress on issues important to the president,” she said.

In addition to Corker and Menendez, Senators Susan Collins (R.-Maine), Carl Levin (D-Michigan), Jon Tester (D.-Montana) and John Walsh (D.-Montana) also attended the meeting, according to the sources, who requested anonymity.

Aides to most of those senators declined to discuss the meeting on the record. The lone exception was Tester. His communications director, Marnee Banks, confirmed the meeting and directed Yahoo News to the senator’s public schedule, which lists the meeting.

The White House had not announced the gathering before it happened.

The secret meeting came at a time of increasing bipartisan frustration with the White House over the 2001 law that authorized the war in Afghanistan and underpins policies like indefinite detention without charge and drone strikes.

In a speech almost exactly one year ago, President Obama declared that it was time to overhaul the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), and “determine how we can continue to fight terrorism without keeping America on a perpetual wartime footing.”
[…]

But one year later, the administration has yet to provide Congress with suggested specific changes to the law, much less with legislative language for rewriting it.

Senators including Corker let their frustration bubble over at Wednesday’s hearing.

“Has the administration proposed any refinement or any redefinition of the AUMF? I mean, have they provided us language in terms of what they think they need to handle the current situation?” Senator Ron Johnson (R.-Wisconsin) asked the State Department’s principal deputy legal adviser, Mary McLeod.

“No, senator, we have not, “ she replied.

(read the full article at Yahoo)

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Geopolitics/War, Privacy

U.S. Charges China With Cyber-Spying on American Firms

Pete Williams
NBC News: May 19, 2014

The Justice Department filed criminal charges against five hackers in the Chinese military Monday, accusing them of stealing American trade secrets through cyber-espionage.

The efforts were directed at six American victim companies in the nuclear power, metals and solar products industries: Westinghouse Electric, U.S. subsidiaries of SolarWorld AG, U.S. Steel, Allegheny Technologies and Alcoa. The United Steel Workers union was also targeted.

“This is a case alleging economic espionage by members of the Chinese military and represents the first-ever charges against a state actor for this type of hacking,” Attorney General Eric Holder said.
[…]
The FBI tracked the computer attacks to Unit 61398 of the Third Department of the People’s Liberation Army, headquartered in a building in Shanghai, officials said.

Authorities said what amounted to “21st century burglary” benefited the Chinese competitors of the U.S. victims, including state-run enterprises, and led to the loss of American jobs.

As one example, the hackers stole cost, pricing and strategy information from SolarWorld at the very time the company was losing market share to Chinese rivals, officials said.

“These victims are tired of being raided,” said Assistant Attorney General John Carlin.

He said that in the past, when the U.S. has complained about the hacking to China, “they repsonded by publicly challenging us to provide hard evidence of their hacking that could cstand up in court.

“Well, today we are,” Carlin said.

It’s unclear how the hackers would be brought to justice in the United States. The feds also have charged the makers of the malicious software the Chinese allegedly used to steal information from the American firms.

(read the full article at NBC News)

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Geopolitics/War, Privacy

Israeli Spying on USA; Snowden Document Confirms

The Latest Document From the Snowden Trove Highlights Israeli Spying

By Jeff Stein
May 16, 2014

Israel had a few triumphs, this week, in its campaign to rebut charges that it spies in the U.S. It got a hearing with the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, it saw the removal of a roadblock to long-delayed legislation that would strengthen strategic cooperation between Israel and the U.S., and at a press conference in Tel Aviv, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said he was “not aware of any facts that would substantiate” Newsweek’s reports on Israeli spying against the United States.

But as always the case in the complex relationship between the two, closely allied nations, Israel did not get everything it wanted. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Intelligence Committee, stopped short of dismissing allegations of Israeli espionage, a charge buttressed by the publication Wednesday of yet another highly classified National Security Agency document from the vast archive stolen by fugitive whistle-blower Edward Snowden that says Israel has been spying on the United States. And while a Senate bill to lower Israeli visa restrictions was toughened to satisfy critics, some U.S. national security officials still oppose loosening restrictions on Israeli citizens who want to visit the U.S. Some of the concerns not yet addressed: regular reporting by Israel of stolen or lost passports, a faster conversion to biometric passports, and less Israeli hassling of Arab- and Muslim-Americans landing at Tel Aviv’s Ben-Gurion airport.

The latest NSA document, revealed by journalist Glenn Greenwald in concert with the publication of his memoir, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA and the U.S. Surveillance State, sums up the complicated security relationship between Israel and Washington in a single paragraph.

“The Israelis are extraordinarily good [Signals Intelligence] partners for us,” the NSA observed, referencing joint electronic spying programs against foreign targets, “but on the other [hand], they target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems.” It added that a CIA-led National Intelligence Estimate on cyberthreats in 2013 “ranked Israel the third most aggressive intelligence service against the U.S.,” behind only China and Russia.

(read the full article at Newsweek)

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Geopolitics/War

What Does The US Government Want in Ukraine?

Ron Paul : May 11, 2014

In several eastern Ukrainian towns over the past week, the military opened fire on its own citizens. Dozens may have been killed in the violence. Although the US government generally condemns a country’s use of military force against its own population, especially if they are unarmed protesters, this time the US administration blamed the victims. After as many as 20 unarmed protesters were killed on the May 9th holiday in Ukraine, the State Department spokesman said “we condemn the outbreak of violence caused by pro-Russia separatists.”

Why are people protesting in eastern Ukraine? Because they do not believe the government that came to power after the US-backed uprising in February is legitimate. They do not recognize the authority of an unelected president and prime minister. The US sees this as a Russian-sponsored destabilization effort, but is it so hard to understand that the people in Ukraine may be annoyed with the US and EU for their involvement in regime change in their country? Would we be so willing to accept an unelected government in Washington put in place with the backing of the Chinese and Iranians?

The US State Department provided much assistance earlier this year to those involved in the effort to overthrow the Ukrainian government. The US warned the Ukrainian government at the time not to take any action against those in the streets, even as they engaged in violence and occupied government buildings. But now that those former protesters have come to power, the US takes a different view of protest. Now they give full support to the bloody crackdown against protesters in the east. The State Department spokesperson said last week: “We continue to call for groups who have jeopardized public order by taking up arms and seizing public buildings in violation of Ukrainian law to disarm and leave the buildings they have seized.” This is the opposite of what they said in February. Do they think the rest of the world does not see this hypocrisy?

The residents of eastern Ukraine have long been closer to Russia than to the US and EU. In fact, that part of Ukraine had been a part of Russia. After February’s regime change, officials in the east announced that they would hold referendums to see whether the population wanted autonomy from the US-backed government in Kiev. The US demanded that Russian President Putin stop eastern Ukraine from voting on autonomy, and last week the Russian president did just that: he said that the vote should not be held as scheduled. The eastern Ukrainians ignored him and said they would hold the vote anyway. So much for the US claims that Russia controls the opposition in Ukraine.

Even though the Russian president followed US demands and urged the eastern Ukrainians to hold off on the vote, the US State Department announced that the US would apply additional sanctions on Russia if the vote is held! Does this make any sense?

The real question is why the US government is involved in Ukraine in the first place. We are broke. We cannot even afford to fix our own economy. Yet we want to run Ukraine? Does it really matter who Ukrainians elect to represent them? Is it really a national security matter worth risking a nuclear war with Russia whether Ukraine votes for more regional autonomy and a weaker central government? Isn’t that how the United States was originally conceived?

(Read the full article at Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity )

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Banksters, Corporate Welfare, Geopolitics/War

“War is Peace, it Makes Us Rich and Safe”… or So Says the Mainstream Media

Julie Lévesque
Global Research: April 29, 2014

War is Peace. What was known as a famous quote from George Orwell’s fiction 1984 has become a reality. Or maybe it is still fiction if you consider that the mainstream media is making up reality on a daily basis.

On April 28, 2014, the homepage of The Washington Post web site featured the picture of a nuclear explosion with the following title: “War is brutal. The alternative is worse.”

Peace is worse than war? Diplomacy worse than a nuclear explosion? I wonder if people in war torn Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and the likes agree.

The subtitle is probably the apex of nonsense: “War may be the worst way imaginable to create peaceful societies, but this professor argues that it’s the only way.” Professor? How can you be a professor and say something so illogical? And how can a newspaper be taken seriously when it publishes such absurdities?

But it gets worse, if that’s even possible. Clicking on the article, you get this:

“Wars make us safer and richer”.

Wow. Really?

Who’s “us”? Certainly not the American people:

The decade-long American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would end up costing as much as $6 trillion, the equivalent of $75,000 for every American household, calculates the prestigious Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government…

It is also imperative to recall that the Bush administration had claimed at the very outset that the Iraq war would finance itself out of Iraqi oil revenues, but Washington DC had instead ended up borrowing some $2 trillion to finance the two wars, the bulk of it from foreign lenders.

According to the Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government 2013 report, this accounted for roughly 20 per cent of the total amount added to the US national debt between 2001 and 2012.

According to the report, the US “has already paid $260 billion in interest on the war debt,” and future interest payments would amount to trillions of dollars. (Sabir Shah, US Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq to Cost $6 trillion)

So, who’s “us” getting richer? The bankers maybe? Because if war makes some people rich, it’s the bankers:

Bankers are often the driving force behind war.

After all, the banking system is founded upon the counter-intuitive but indisputable fact that banks create loans first, and then create deposits later.

In other words, virtually all money is actually created as debt…

Debt (from the borrower’s perspective) owed to banks is profit and income from the bank’s perspective. In other words, banks are in the business of creating more debt … i.e. finding more people who want to borrow larger sums…

What does this have to do with war?

War is the most efficient debt-creation machine…

War is also good for banks because a lot of material, equipment, buildings and infrastructure get destroyed in war. So countries go into massive debt to finance war, and then borrow a ton more to rebuild. (Washington’s Blog, War Creates Massive Debt and Makes the Banks Rich)

“Us” is probably also the military industrial complex, for which peace is enemy number one:

The fact that military activities may become a profitable enterprise leads to the realization that peace is the main enemy of the military-industrial complex. A simple metaphor can illustrate this problem. Grape growers, the wine industry and wine marketers would be completely out of business if people stopped drinking wine. In a similar way, the military-industrial complex would be put out of business by lasting peaceful conditions because the development, production, marketing and use of military equipment would be not needed.

To stay in business, this complex needed the wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, the “cold war” with the Soviet Union, war on terrorism and various other wars. And it needs to be involved in new conflicts, such as in Ukraine at this time. (Vashek Cervinka, Peace is the Enemy of the US Military Industrial Complex)

WE, the people of the world, don’t want wars and WE are not getting “richer” and “safer” with wars. It’s actually quite the contrary. Wars ruin economies and guess what? Wars kill people! How are mass killings and massive debts making “us safer and richer”?

(read the full article at Global Research)

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Geopolitics/War, Tyranny

Show Us the Drone Memos

Rand Paul
New York Times: May 11, 2014

WASHINGTON — I BELIEVE that killing an American citizen without a trial is an extraordinary concept and deserves serious debate. I can’t imagine appointing someone to the federal bench, one level below the Supreme Court, without fully understanding that person’s views concerning the extrajudicial killing of American citizens.

But President Obama is seeking to do just that. He has nominated David J. Barron, a Harvard law professor and a former acting assistant attorney general, to a seat on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.

While he was an official in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Mr. Barron wrote at least two legal memos justifying the execution without a trial of an American citizen abroad. Now Mr. Obama is refusing to share that legal argument with the American people.

On April 30, I wrote to the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, urging him to delay this nomination, pending a court-ordered disclosure of the first memo I knew about. Since that letter, I have learned more. The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to all senators on May 6, noting that in the view of the Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein, “there are at least eleven OLC opinions on the targeted killing or drone program.” It has not been established whether Mr. Barron wrote all those memos, but we do know that his controversial classified opinions provided the president with a legal argument and justification to target an American citizen for execution without a trial by jury or due process.

I believe that all senators should have access to all of these opinions. Furthermore, the American people deserve to see redacted versions of these memos so that they can understand the Obama administration’s legal justification for this extraordinary exercise of executive power. The White House may invoke national security against disclosure, but legal arguments that affect the rights of every American should not have the privilege of secrecy.

I agree with the A.C.L.U. that “no senator can meaningfully carry out his or her constitutional obligation to provide ‘advice and consent’ on this nomination to a lifetime position as a federal appellate judge without being able to read Mr. Barron’s most important and consequential legal writing.” The A.C.L.U. cites the fact that in modern history, a presidential order to kill an American citizen away from a battlefield is unprecedented.

The Bill of Rights is clear. The Fifth Amendment provides that no one can be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The Sixth Amendment provides that “the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury,” as well as the right to be informed of all charges and have access to legal counsel. These are fundamental rights that cannot be waived with a presidential pen.

In battle, combatants engaged in war against America get no due process and may lawfully be killed. But citizens not in a battlefield, however despicable, are guaranteed a trial by our Constitution.

No one argues that Americans who commit treason shouldn’t be punished. The maximum penalty for treason is death. But the Constitution specifies the process necessary to convict.

Anwar al-Awlaki was an American citizen who was subject to a kill order from Mr. Obama, and was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a missile fired from a drone. I don’t doubt that Mr. Awlaki committed treason and deserved the most severe punishment. Under our Constitution, he should have been tried — in absentia, if necessary — and allowed a legal defense. If he had been convicted and sentenced to death, then the execution of that sentence, whether by drone or by injection, would not have been an issue.

But this new legal standard does not apply merely to a despicable human being who wanted to harm the United States. The Obama administration has established a legal justification that applies to every American citizen, whether in Yemen, Germany or Canada.

Defending the rights of all American citizens to a trial by jury is a core value of our Constitution. Those who would make exceptions for killing accused American citizens without trial should give thought to the times in our history when either prejudice or fear allowed us to forget due process. During World War I, our nation convicted and imprisoned Americans who voiced opposition to the war. During World War II, the government interned Japanese-Americans.

(read the full article at New York Times

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Geopolitics/War

China plans high-speed train to USA & Canada

China is considering building a high-speed railway across the Siberia and Bering Strait to Alaska, across Canada to the US. In not so distant future, people can take the train from China to the US, according to Beijing Times Thursday citing Wang Mengshu, a railway expert and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

The proposed journey will start from China’s northeast region, cross Siberia to Bering Strait, and run across the Pacific Ocean by undersea tunnel to reach Alaska, from Alaska to Canada, then on to its final destination, the US.

(read the full article at China Daily)

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Geopolitics/War, Health/Environment, Original, Tyranny

US Government’s 9/11 Lies Have Now Officially Killed More Police Officers Than The 9/11 Attacks

AlternativeFreePress.com

The number of police officers who died from ground zero-related illnesses now outnumber the 60 killed in the 9/11 attacks.

In August 2003 it was revealed that the government ordered the EPA to give the public misleading information, telling the public on September 12 that it was safe to breathe when reliable information on air quality was not available and Asbestos levels were known to be three times higher than national standards.

On September 16, 2001, the then head of the Environmental Protection Agency, Christie Todd Whitman, told reporters: “The good news continues to be that air samples we have taken have all been at levels that cause no concern.”

“Whitman’s deliberate and misleading statements to the press, where she reassured the public that the air was safe to breathe around lower Manhattan and Brooklyn, and that there would be no health risk presented to those returning to those areas, shocks the conscience,” Manhattan Federal Judge Deborah Batts wrote in February 2006.

In 2007 documents revealed that Lower Manhattan was reopened just weeks following the attack despite the fact that the air was not safe.

Thousands of police officers, firefighters and construction workers filed lawsuits the City of New York, claiming they had been sent to ground zero without proper protective equipment and a $650 settlement was awarded.

The number of police officers killed by the US government’s lies about the air quality after the 9/11 attacks is now at least 71.

Written by Alternative Free Press
Creative Commons License
US Government’s 9/11 Lies Have Now Officially Killed More Police Officers Than The 9/11 Attacks by AlternativeFreePress.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Sources:

Cops dead from 9/11 illnesses outnumber officers who died in attacks (CBS News)

Judge hot over 9-11 air. Rips EPA’s all-clear, OKs suit (New York Daily News)

9/11 tentative deal for rescue workers reached (CBC News)

$650 Million Payout Proves Government Conspired To Lie About 9/11 (Prison Planet)

EPA Misled Public on 9/11 Pollution (Common Dreams)

Banksters, Geopolitics/War

Ukraine Using IMF Loan To Buy Gold

And The First Thing Ukraine Will Buy With IMF Money Is…

by Zero Hedge: May 6, 2014

A month ago, it was alleged, that Ukraine – under cover of night – loaded its gold reserves onto a plane and shipped them off (for safekeeping) in the US, as the potential price of ‘liberation’. So how ironic that, given the massive gas debts that Ukraine owes to Russia (and prepayments pending), and sizable bond maturities pending, the first thing that Ukraine’s National Bank governor will be buying with his freshly minted loan from the IMF is… buy a billion dollars of gold.

We presume Gazprom still gets its payment and bondholders get paid off – because that seriously impair ‘investor confidence’ which is, as they note below, is what is crucial to stabilize the nation’s economy… but it seems the Central bank has other priorities…

 

As ITAR-TASS reports,

Kiev will use the first portion of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan for augmenting its gold and currency reserves in order to stabilize the financial situation in the country, National Bank Chairman Stepan Kubiv said on Monday, May 5.

 

“Over $1 billion from the first portion of the loan will go into the gold and currency reserves of Ukraine, which will strengthen the financial system of the country. The remainder will go to the budget to stabilize the macroeconomic and financial situation in Ukraine,” he said.

 

Kubiv believes that the IMF loan “will send a positive signal to foreign investors and domestic entrepreneurs, improve the investment climate in the country and stabilize the hryvnia”.

 

On April 30, the IMF Board of Governors approved a two-year standby credit facility of $17 billion for Ukraine. The first portion will amount to around $3.2 billion.

 

What is odd is that Ukraine’s gold reserves have been soaring in recent years – so it’s hardly been a confidence-inspiring move for Ukrainian entrepreneurs and foreign investors so far?

So the big question we are left wondering is – whether all the IMF is doing is “giving” Ukraine money so it can buy gold as proxy for the NY Fed…
with that next batch of gold also set to be confiscated by the Fed and shipped off to Germany (and maybe even Switzerland) to cover their growing repatriation demands.

(read the full article at Zero Hedge)

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