The Tymoshenko Cabinet: A Hydra in Your Pocket

Serhiy Leshchenko of Ukrayinska Pravda has written a short guide to the wheeling and dealing in the Tymoshenko cabinet.

For a better idea of Ukraine’s cost of government, try asking this question: How many deputies/undersecretaries do Ukrainian cabinet ministers have?

Here’s your answer:

Heorhiy Filipchuk, Minister of Health Care: 10
Yuriy Melnyk, Minister of Agriculture: 10
Yuriy Lutsenko, Minister of Internal Affairs: 9
Mykola Onishchuk, Minister of Justice: 8
Lyudmyla Denysova, Minister of Labor: 8
Yuriy Pavlenko, Minister of Youth Affairs: 8
Vasyl Vovkun, Minister of Culture, 7
Serhiy Buryak, Head of the State Tax Administration: 10
Viktor Ivchenko, Head of the State Innovation and Investment Agency: 6
Serhiy Lytvyn, Head of the State Border Guard Administration: 6
Oleh Dubyna, Chairman of Naftogaz: 8
Oleksandr Medvedko, Prosecutor General: 8
Valeriy Heletey, Head of the State Security Directorate: 7

"The Tymoshenko School of Management. Where every minister counts."

Sources: http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2009/4/15/93272.htm

Kuzhel on Death & Pensions for Zarobitchany

She confuses discounts with bribes. She wears a $40K watch. She’s such a fair lady.

Oleksandra Kuzhel: We’ll give them [migrant workers] their own right to legalize the money they earned so that they can safely repatriate, and, by the same token, they’ll have their years of work [abroad] count toward their pensions, which is...I believe, a fair policy. Besides, they’ll also have the opportunity to be insured. Now what does that mean? If a person comes to Ukraine and becomes ill, they have the right to a sick leave, they have the right to maternity benefits, and they have the right to have money for their burial.

How about they have the right to throw out the corrupt officials out of the country? How about they exercise that right before those officials depopulate and bury this country?

Kuzhel wants to lure back a few million Ukrainian zarobitchany (migrant workers) with a very interesting concept of fairness: Rob Peter to pay Paul. (So that Viktor can stage another Paul McCartney concert or show us some more of those lovely dead animals?)

I digress. Suppose I spent 10 years working hard and paying taxes as a live-in maid in Italy because I couldn't find a decent job in my corrupt country.

So if and when I go back to Ukraine, the poor folks there who don’t wear $40K watches should pay me for those 10 years when I retire? Is that fair?

How does that square with our defined benefit pension system?

Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/119392.html
Original source: http://inter.ua

Rich Lawless Kids Attack, Police Make No Arrests (Updated)

A group of four twenty-something men, two of them from an SUV, attacks two other men at a gas station at night for no particular reason. The attackers flash police badges and even Anti-corruption Committee IDs.



Not only do they attack the victims, but they also rob them.

A highway patrol arrives at the scene but, instead of arresting the attackers or requesting backup, simply tries to calm the situation.

On the day after, police reprimand the officers and promise to find the attackers. At the same time, police chiefs meet with the victims in private, promising to punish the officers, not the attackers, in exchange for the surveillance video.

As the story finds its way to Channel 1+1, the victims start getting calls from people who offer them money for refusal to press charges. The attackers hail from “noble families,” they add.

Later, the attackers, whom Ukrainians often refer to as mazhory (rich lawless kids), do the calling themselves. They issue threats of further violence and reassurances of zero jail time.

Channel 1+1 vows to assist the investigation.

P.S. A portrait of Yushchenko can be seen hanging on the police office wall, evoking memories of “The rich will help the poor” and “The bandits will sit in jail,” Yushchenko's 2004 campaign promises.

That's not to mention his party's 2007 parliamentary campaign slogan: “One law for all.”

Is it any coincidence that The Hon. Ihor Zvarych was having sex with a subordinate, one of the many victims of his sexual harassment, during a televised address by President Yushchenko?

So how long before Kyiv has its own gang of Dnipropetrovsk Maniacs?

UPDATE
Now that the whole country, including President Yushchenko, has seen that Channel 1+1 report, police have arrested two of the four attackers: “a student and a loader.”



The other two attackers, the ones who arrived in an SUV, remain at large.

The attackers' stories sound fishy. Attacker 1 says they wanted a “man-to-man fight” but “went a little too far.” Once the highway patrol arrived, they showed them gag-gift “Agent 007” IDs.

Attacker 2 says they wanted to protect a woman from being verbally abused, even though no woman can be seen on the surveillance video.

If convicted, the attackers face up to 5 years in prison. The big question is: Will they be convicted?


Videos uploaded from:
http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/119154.html
http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/119517.html
Original source: http://tsn.ua

Meat Mismanagement, Paid With Taxpayer Money

They buy meat and let it spoil. They buy cars and let them shine. Taxpayer money pays for both.



Enjoy another report on how Derzhkomrezerv operates.

In 2008, the Tymoshenko government imported various kinds of meat to push the overblown local prices down. To promote the policy, Mykhailo Pozhyvanov, then chief of Derzhkomrezerv, posed in front of the cameras, choking on fried chickens.

For some reason, some of that meat never made it to retail stores.

An STB crew pays a visit to a Derzhkomrezerv partner business that stores minced poultry imports in its refrigerator warehouse. The shipment stored there, worth about $250,000 in 2008 prices, had reached its expiry date last summer. Derzhkomrezerv then tried to resell it to a Donetsk company, despite a ruling by the center for disease control that the meat be destroyed.

Volodymyr Zakharenko, owner of the warehouse, notified the prosecutor's office. And guess what? Police and Derzhkomrezerv raided the warehouse looking for pork. Zakharenko confirmed storing a shipment of pork and even produced some unsavory pictures of it. Yet the man agreed to release the shipment based on an invoice, not a search warrant.

Derzhkomrezerv did not immediately respond to STB’s request for comment.

Videos uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/118985.html
Original source: http://stb.ua

Kyiv Sewage System on the Brink of Collapse

Half of Kyiv’s water supply system does not meet safety requirements. Roughly the same applies to the sewage system.



An Inter reporter descends to a collection point, built in 1976, whose reinforced concrete has been largely eroded and corroded by the methane from the sewage.

With funding at its historic lows, the whole thing is a disaster waiting to happen.

Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/118742.html
Original source: http://inter.ua

Shuster to Tymoshenko: ‘One Should Have You From Morning Till Night’

Enjoy a memorable moment from Tymoshenko’s political talk show-shopping last Friday night.

Savik Shuster, host: I, together with my colleagues, friends, decided, in July, that I no longer wanted any owners. And…do you like this studio?
PM Yulia Tymoshenko: You did it, but you…

Shuster: I did it all! Now, let me tell you…
Tymoshenko: We don’t have a lot of Saviks.

Shuster: No, no, no, no, no! Yulia Vladimirovna,* we took out loans in August…well, at the end of July, we took out loans, we invited the French — using Ukrainian know-how, French know-how — we built it, we did it, at the shortest time possible, we took pride it, and then…it crashed. We now have all our salaries slashed by 50 percent. We’re not firing anyone because we…then we’d have to turn off the lighting, turn off the cameras. You know we can’t do this, right? Nobody’s willing to lend, that’s it, right? And if they are willing, they charge such interest rates that, I don’t know, one should have you from morning till night — all the time, you understand, all the time — to have a high rating.

Tymoshenko [turns the linguistic lapse into laughter]: Who should do what? Hahaha!
Shuster [senses his faux pas]: Yes, that’s what I’m saying. What should we do?

Tymoshenko: Hahaha! What should you do, Savik?
Shuster: Yes.

Tymoshenko: You should make honest “Svoboda Slova” broadcasts, even for free, if that’s what the country needs.

*Patronymic transliterated from Russian

By the way, she took her shoes off during one of the commercial breaks.








She makes me wanna play these songs:






Video uploaded from: http://censor.net.ua/go/offer/ResourceID/118465.html
Original source: http://kanalukraina.tv/
Photos courtesy of: http://tabloid.pravda.com.ua/focus/49ddda01cafe9/

Obama: ‘I Don't Know What the Term Is in Austrian’

U.S. President Barack Obama continues making statements that raise questions about his foreign policy credentials.

While touring Europe, Obama, a former chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on European Affairs, had the misfortune of saying this:

It was also interesting to see that political interaction in Europe is not that different from the United States Senate. There's a lot of -- I don't know what the term is in Austrian -- wheeling and dealing -- and, you know, people are pursuing their interests, and everybody has their own particular issues and their own particular politics. [1:17-2:16]

Perhaps President Obama should appoint Arnold “The Governator” Schwarzenegger as his advisor on Sports and Austrian Affairs.

In the meantime, how about a “Sprechen Sie Austrian?” bumper sticker?

Sources:
http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/04/07/europe-obamas-visit/
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/04/barack-obama-in-prague.html
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/04/news_conference_by_president_obama.php

Yanukovych, Party of Regions Hold Antigovt Rally

The economy is in a worse shape than during WW II; the Oranges wrecked the economy and must go.

Opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych said this at an antigovernment rally at Maidan last Friday.

While the first claim blows things out of proportion, there is some merit to the second claim. Whatever the merit, I wouldn’t trust Yanukovych to fix the cheap labor/commodity-cursed McDonbas economy that he had built with his mentor Kuchma.

A distinguished ProFFessor of Kuchamanomics, Yanukovych would be the last person to cure the economy that Yushchenko and Tymoshenko left without reform as they fought their turf wars.

Cautious and curious. That’s how I would describe Yanukovych supporters, be they students or seniors. Thousands of them travelled to Kyiv by bus or train as political tourists from eastern Ukraine, on a daily allowance of $10-20, in a throwback to spring 2007 pro-Yanukovych protests.

Some things have changed, though. In spring 2007, the Party of Regions travel agency educated its masses on how stabilnist (stability) brings dobrobut (prosperity), and how early elections ruin both.

Today, Yanukovych argues quite the opposite: that the only way to achieve stabilnist and dobrobut is to hold early parliamentary and presidential elections.

He gave the government until April 14 to work out an anticrisis strategy, or face stronger protests.












Approaching Maidan...




"Government, you're responsible for the crisis!"












Occasional Ukrainian banners spotted: an “I, too, am Ukraine” innovation at otherwise pro-Russian Party of Regions rallies






“Yulya, get out! We're all in the opposition!”
Note: Ironically, “Мы все в опозиции” (“We're all in the opposition!”) sounds rather uncommon in Russian, evoking cliches like “Мы все в жопе/дерьме!” (“We're all screwed!”)
















"Lyubi druzi (cronies) must go!"






Yanuk likes 'em young and old





Sign reads “Severodonetsk,” the city where the Party of Regions held a separatist convention in late 2004, amid the Orange Revolution.



Orthodox ladies, officers and gentlemen


Nice rally outfit!





Berezivsky rayon, Odesa oblast

















"Glory to the Party of Regions! Glory to the people of Ukraine!"





A family reunion...

Speaker, addressing Tmoshenko: "You're merely the mother-in-law of an Englishman, and not the Queen of England. And you should behave like you live in Ukraine, instead of flying around somewhere in the Europes and God knows where. Who would have believed that the price of gas would rise tenfold. When Viktor Fyodorovich Yanukovich* ran the government, we almost got it for free. And what do we have now?
[*Name and patronymic transliterated from Russian]

And I see your true colors shining through...