03/20/14 – J.P. Sottile – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show here.
I'm Scott Horton and on the phone, I got the news vandal, JP Sotili, whose name I've been saying wrong.
I didn't say it that much, but anyway, uh, hey, welcome to the show.
How are you doing?
That's okay.
I, you know, you're not from Sicily, so the pronunciation trips a lot of people up.
I'm really glad to be with you.
It gave me an excuse to break away from CNN's perpetual coverage of the missing airline.
What the hell is with that, man?
I'm starting to think it's some kind of psychological experiment or something.
I don't know what it is, though.
Maybe they're just trying to sell me dish soap.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, the funniest thing I saw was the theory that CNN is actually behind the missing plane.
Right.
Cue Bono, man.
Exactly.
All right, well, yeah, I can't stand it no more.
Tell me when you find the bodies till then.
I'm not interested whatsoever, but that's kind of my take on everything.
They want me to be interested in this.
I'll decide myself whether to be.
You mean you're not interested in the rebranding of Wolf Blitzen Show simply as Wolf?
Oh, God, is that what happened?
Yeah, they've actually rebranded, and he's now a one-name franchise.
It's just called Wolf.
You're bumming me out, dude.
Yeah, I know.
I'm sorry.
Listen, let me tell the people about you for a second here.
JP, he's the News Vandal.
That's his website, newsvandal.com, and he writes really great articles.
We run them all the time at antiwar.com, and here he's got two about Ukraine, one of them at BuzzFlash, the business of America is giving countries like Ukraine the business, which is quite interesting, and then another one along the same lines but different is running at Consortium News, Corporate Interests Behind Ukraine Putsch.
I'm interested.
What do you think?
Oh, and I should say one more thing.
You guys, if you go to newsvandal.com, you can sign up for his morning email, the story rundown, which I think you will find quite useful.
It's right there at newsvandal.com.
Now I'm going to ask an overly broad question and give the floor to you.
This Ukraine thing, tell me about it.
What do you think?
Well, is it about freedom?
Is it about the European aspirations of the Ukrainians?
You know, I did see John McCain waxing poetic about how the Ukrainians like to sing European songs and how they just want to be part of Europe.
The question is, is that really what's going on?
And when you dig beneath the surface, I think what you find is, not surprisingly, shale gas, which is why Chevron is involved heavily there, but also what was surprising to me was the extent to which American agribusinesses are integrated into the U.S. foreign policymaking establishment to try and exploit what may be the hottest agricultural market in the world.
You know, it's interesting that, I guess when I think of agribusiness in American foreign policy, I mean, it's not something I know a lot about, but I would tend to think it's like you talk about, you call it in there, refer back to the late 19th century so-called open door policy that you better let us export to you.
That way we can keep all our guys in business and they won't have to compete in a free market, that kind of thing.
We're going to force your doors open with bombs if necessary, battleship guns pointed at your head kind of thing.
But in this case, it sounds like they're wanting to develop as much of Ukraine's cropland as they can and then export it to, well, I don't know, I guess still export it, but just with Ukraine as America's breadbasket instead of America.
Is that about it?
Well, you know, it's interesting.
You're talking about John Hay and the open door policy in China.
That's the turn from the 19th to the 20th century, and it was at that time about this dream.
If we could, we as American business, could sell a widget to everybody in China, we would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
But after World War II, it flipped, and opening the door meant opening the door to resources in other countries to be exploited by American corporations, often with the assistance of the CIA.
The analogies I'm thinking of regarding Ukraine would be the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala in 1953, with the assistance of the CIA helping the United Fruit Company, which turned bananas.
I believe United Fruit essentially gives birth to Chiquita Banana, Chiquita Banana involved in a lot of death squads and other malfeasance in Colombia, among other places.
And then you also have the most famous example, which all of your listeners are aware of, and that would be exploiting the oil resources of Iran and eliminating Mozadek so that you U.S. and British oil interests could get in there and keep those oil resources at the ready so that they could exploit those.
And I think the same thing is happening here in Ukraine.
It is interesting to note that on the day that 50,000 protesters flooded Independence Square in Kiev, on that same day, Financial Times announced a major buy-in by Cargill into Irkland Farming.
That's the largest farming business, agricultural business in Ukraine.
Ukraine is the eighth largest land cultivator in the world.
And in buying into this Irkland Farming, they bought the second largest egg producer in the world.
And you mentioned the breadbasket.
Just to bring it back to the Cold War, there was a time when Ukraine was known as the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, providing 25 percent of basically all the food that the Soviet Union consumed.
And now there's an opportunity to turn it into the breadbasket for Europe.
Of course, who would be making money off of selling from this breadbasket into Europe?
It would be American agribusiness like Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, and Monsanto.
All right, now, it sounds like from your article you talk about, and I'll let you get into the specifics of these organizations and the specific companies and the influence they're buying.
But overall, it does kind of seem like they don't really care who's in power over there.
You know, they want stability.
But otherwise, it doesn't, I mean, it sounds like, for example, you say that Chevron made their deal back in November.
That was when Yanukovych was still in power.
Or you think that their plan then, they were making that investment under the understanding that his days were numbered already?
Well, that's, I mean, this is obviously where we get into a little bit of speculation.
But that deal was signed on November 5th.
Now, after that deal was signed, there was some pressure applied by Putin and by Moscow upon Yanukovych to not sign the deal with the European Union.
In a sense, one wonders if the deal that was signed at the time actually caused the blowback, which led to him, Yanukovych, not signing the deal, turning away from the deal, turning away from the West, as it's often portrayed in U.S. media.
Isn't it interesting how you have two people?
Like, he could have signed one or the other, but not both of them, because of the pressure he was under from the Russians, you're saying?
Because Russia had a lot of money owed to it by Ukraine for gas exports as it stood.
Also, the Ukraine is a transit point for the gas sales from Russia to Europe.
And Ambassador Jeffrey Pyatt actually said upon the announcing of the deal that this deal, which the State Department did help shepherd through, was part of the United States national security strategy to help Europe achieve energy independence, which I'm thinking, when you look at the Russian economy, is in a sense a declaration of economic warfare against Russia, which then leads to the blowback, which then you have a cascading of events.
And then we could, of course, get to Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, who has often had a colorful thing or two to say about Europe, as we all are familiar with.
She goes on to a dais at the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation on December 13th to tout U.S. spending $5 billion to help Ukraine achieve its European aspirations.
Oh, and by the way, when she was on the dais, behind her was the moniker, the logo of Chevron.
Yeah, everybody can see that at Information Clearinghouse.
They have the video for you there if you want to look at it.
And now, you know, it's interesting about Pyatt and Nuland both, I guess, that they're both so arrogant.
Of course, you know, they had their famous phone call on an open line.
It doesn't sound like they were being nefarious and deliberately leaking that phone call or anything.
They were just, you know, full of arrogance and hubris.
And here to hear Jeffrey Pyatt talk, he sounds exactly like my accusations all the time.
Well, you know, they're doing this because of all the pipeline routes, and they want to freeze Russia out and take as much oil from the Caspian Basin as they can without those pipelines having to go through Russia so they can, you know, just have their, you know, keep Europe in line with us and to prevent exactly what we're seeing right now.
For example, with the Germans a little bit hesitant to go to economic war with Russia over the Crimea, the way the Americans seem to want to keep pushing for harder sanctions, and the Germans are a little bit hesitant because they've got business.
And we're trying, the American side is trying to preclude that.
And here Pyatt is saying, yeah, that's what we're trying to do.
Give Europe, guarantee European energy independence from Russia at all costs.
Well, and he called it part of a national security strategy.
You know, this is one of the things that I found interesting in looking at this.
It really started with the 50-year lease that Chevron signed, $10 billion potentially in shale gas exploitation there in Ukraine.
Then I saw Condi Rice write her op-ed about how, you know, the United States is losing its influence and power, blah, blah, blah, same thing we always hear.
And then when I see Condi Rice, what do I think?
Well, I think board of directors of Chevron for 10 years had a 192,000-ton tanker named after her.
Yes, a tanker sailing the seas called the Condoleezza Rice.
And then at the end of that article, she tacks on, you know, a wish list of things, and one of the parts of the wish list is that the United States leaves 10,000 troops permanently in Afghanistan.
Then I think, oh, well, that's interesting, because right now there's a thing called TAPI.
It's slated to be built.
It just got funding by the Asian Development Bank, TAPI, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India pipeline, and that pipeline, right, is going to deliver oil and gas from the Caspian Sea down through to the Indian Ocean, and guess who is involved in running it?
Chevron.
All right, hold it right there.
It's J.P. Sotili from NewsVandal.com.
We'll be right back after this.
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All right, you guys, welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is my show, The Scott Horton Show.
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All right, I'm talking with JP Sotile and he's writing here at Consortium News and at BuzzFlash and at NewsVandal.com.
We're talking about the business interests involved in near Eastern American imperialism, something like that.
And where we left off, well, I guess this would be Central Asian imperialism.
The real Middle East there in Afghanistan, you're talking about this TAPI pipeline.
But this has always been a ridiculous pipe dream.
Sorry about this stupid pun.
I didn't mean it.
But there is no security in Afghanistan.
You can't have a pipeline across Afghanistan.
There's not going to be security in Afghanistan.
Not now, especially not if Condoleezza Rice gets to keep troops there longer like she wants.
Like Carlotta Gall says in the New York Times today, oh, the mission isn't quite complete yet.
As though it's completable.
That's the lesson we've learned this whole time is forget it.
You can't have it your way.
Who the hell, what private investor is going to put money into building a pipeline across Afghanistan of all places?
It's ridiculous.
Well, but Chevron is bidding on this, I believe it's like a $7 billion pipeline, and they want to run it and manage it.
And I guess you could deploy your own private security forces, of course.
Chevron famously or infamously deploying private security forces on an offshore rig in Nigeria a few years ago.
A helicopter came in and killed Nigerians who had occupied the oil rig in protest of Chevron's role in Nigeria.
But you know, the larger point, you know, I sent you that, we sent some emails back and forth on that really wonderful op-ed, not an op-ed, it's actually an editorial in the Washington Post about Obama not understanding Putin's Eurasian aspirations.
I think all we've seen for the last 15 years are America's Eurasian aspirations playing out there in Central Asia, in places like Kazakhstan, I just bring up Kazakhstan because Nursultan Nazarbayev is one of the most repressive dictators in Asia, right, or Eurasia.
And Chevron is heavily invested there, but we never hear a word about the freedom and democracy aspirations of the people of Kazakhstan, of course, because Chevron is there and because Chevron is so heavily invested in the Caspian Sea oil and gas reserves, and actually the United States is heavily invested all throughout what are called the former Soviet stones, all that buffer zone around Russia that Russia once had as its bailiwick has now been turned to the United States, much like the United States has extended NATO onto the doorstep of Russia.
Well, yeah, I mean, that's why Nick Turse calls it the complex, because there's too many things to hyphenate there, there's so many interests in on it now, not least of which, of course, is the Pentagon itself, the National Security Establishment itself, all those people got to have jobs, they got to come up with something to do, and so if that means keeping the Russians out of Russia, I guess they got their work cut out for them, but they're not going to give up and go get a real job, you know, it comes to that.
Well, this is the interesting thing about this research that led to these pieces.
We know about the oil and gas industry, and that's one of the most heavily subsidized industries in the United States, and we know about the defense industry, that's one of the most heavily subsidized industries in the United States.
What I thought was interesting when I poked around and I stumbled upon something called the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council, and you know, Scott, when you see one of these things, foundations or councils, you're like, okay, who is funding this and who is on it?
And when I looked at the executive committee, I saw an executive from Cargill, an executive from Monsanto, an executive from John Deere, an executive from CNH International, they make agricultural equipment, like tractors, and an executive, who else was on it, Eli Lilly.
And what did Eli Lilly make?
And they make feed supplements for pigs and cows.
And once I looked at it, I said, well, this is kind of interesting, because here, again, is one of the most heavily subsidized industries in the United States, the agriculture industry, and why are they so interested in U.S.-Ukraine relationship?
And when I pulled on that thread, well, guess what?
It leads back to a guy at Freedom House named David Kramer.
Well, David Kramer used to be on the Project for a New American Century, and the co-founder of the Project for a New American Century is Robert Kagan, and Robert Kagan's wife is Victoria Nuland.
There you go.
And so George Soros and his Freedom House, that's the key to this.
That's the link between the neocons and these corporate interests is through them.
Yeah, and well, and then you have the U.S.-Ukraine foundation, where Victoria Nuland spoke in front of the Chevron logo, and when I looked at the people funding that foundation, one of the primary funders is the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council.
So they're all, they all travel in the same circles, and now the guy who runs the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council, not the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation, is a guy named Morgan Williams, and he works for a private equity firm named Sigma Belzer, and he has been, and they tout that he has basically worked with dozens of people in the government, in foreign policy establishment, in business over the last 15 to 20 years, trying to nursemaid or help catalyze business investment in the Ukraine.
Well, he's now connected with this guy at Cargill, he's connected with David Kramer at Freedom House, they are together on the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council, it's all one sort of happy family.
And now I'm interested too in what these companies do with their, not just their, we see what they do with their American state power, what do they do with their Ukrainian state power?
For example, you know, are they just going around, do they bother to call it eminent domain as they seize people's land over there, or what is it that they're up to?
Are they just buying land and investing in it, tilling the soil like a yeoman?
Yeah, they're in the buy-in phase.
Cargill has been investing for the last decade, they have been buying grain elevators.
Archer Daniels Midland has been buying grain elevators.
On the very day that Victoria Nuland, December 13th, gave her speech to the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation in front of the Chevron logo, that was the same day that Cargill bought a 25% interest at a Black Sea port at Novorossilisk.
Archer Daniels Midland has been buying into ports on the Ukrainian side of the Black Sea.
In buying the Ukraland Farming, it's a tongue twister, it should actually just call it ULF Farming, they bought the eighth-largest land cultivator in the world.
They bought the second-largest egg producer.
They bought into an animal feed company.
They're in this sort of asset-buying phase right now, which I think is in no small part why they're integrated into this foreign policy establishment that has been working for the switchover from Yanukovych's government to a more pro-Western government, I guess they like to call it.
I don't know what this pro-Western really means, but they're buying up these assets.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
They're buying up these assets, and the Ukrainian agricultural sector is hot.
I mean, it's really hot.
While all of Europe was in the doldrums, the Ukrainian agricultural sector grew at 13% in 2012.
Their exports have gone from about $4 billion in 2005 to $17 billion in 2012.
That's a massive increase, and they want to get in on this hot market.
Well, and you know, all things, all other things being equal, a company going in there and making investments and buying things from willing sellers, you know, isn't problematic.
What's problematic is them using the American empire to make sure that they have a compliant government in there that's going to allow them to do that.
And for all I know worse, I mean, and I would assume worse than what you describe, because that's all anybody ever says about Ukraine, is about how everything is completely corrupt.
You think America's corrupt.
Ukraine's like Afghanistan over there, where it's pure kleptocracy in every way.
Well, and this is what I think is interesting, is that...
So, I mean, I kind of expected you to say, yeah, what they did was they force-marched all these people off their land and turned it over to ADM or something like that, like the battle days under Stalin or something.
Well, you know, who knows what's to come.
But I think a part of that is that Ambassador Pyatt said about two weeks after Yanukovych fled Kiev, made this great announcement, this huge announcement, really, I think it's a huge announcement.
He said that the United States is now actively helping the new Ukrainian government root out corruption.
So what does that really mean?
Does that mean that the much-criticized oligarch culture, right, this corruption culture that is there, by rooting out corruption, does that mean that assets are going to be confiscated and reallocated?
Are they going to be confiscated and reallocated in the interest of connected individuals, like these folks on the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council?
Scott, you remember what happened immediately after the so-called Battle of Baghdad, after shock and awe, what happened?
Did the U.S. occupation, I don't know what you'd call it, occupation administration, went in there and rewrote all of the laws, rewrote all of the business laws, all the business relationships, so that U.S. businesses could get in on those resources?
And I think that that's what is happening here, and eventually could happen in Russia if Putin were to fall.
Well, that's the name of the game.
Full-spectrum dominance.
All of Asia is America's engine country to be conquered.
It's the long war.
That's why they call it that.
It's supposed to take a while, but I guess it's going to.
Thank you very much, J.P.
I sure appreciate it.
All right, man.
Take care.
All right.
That's J.P. Sotili.
Sorry, I just kind of cut you off there.
NewsVandal.com and also BuzzFlash and ConsortiumNews.com.
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