Pierre Omidyar Co-funded Ukraine Revolution Groups With US Government, Documents Show

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

EXCERPT the American government – in the form of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) – played a major role in funding opposition groups prior to the revolution. Moreover, a large percentage of the rest of the funding to those same groups came from a US billionaire who has previously worked closely with US government agencies to further his own business interests. This was by no means a US-backed “coup,” but clear evidence shows that US investment was a force multiplier for many of the groups involved in overthrowing Yanukovych.

2014 Article - Archived on the WayBackMachine

http://web.archive.org/web/20190228052058/http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article37800.htm

Pierre Omidyar Co-funded Ukraine Revolution Groups With US Government, Documents Show

By Mark Ames

February 28, 2014 "Pando" -

http://web.archive.org/web/20190228052058im_/http://pandodaily.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/centeruatop.png?w=1290&h=221
Just hours after last weekend’s ouster of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, one of Pierre Omidyar’s newest hires at national security blog “The Intercept,” was already digging for the truth.

Marcy Wheeler, who is the new site’s “senior policy analyst,” speculated that the Ukraine revolution was likely a “coup” engineered by “deep forces” on behalf of “Pax Americana”:

“There’s quite a bit of evidence of coup-ness. Q is how many levels deep interference from both sides is.”

These are serious claims. So serious that I decided to investigate them. And what I found was shocking.

Wheeler is partly correct. Pando has confirmed that the American government – in the form of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) – played a major role in funding opposition groups prior to the revolution. Moreover, a large percentage of the rest of the funding to those same groups came from a US billionaire who has previously worked closely with US government agencies to further his own business interests. This was by no means a US-backed “coup,” but clear evidence shows that US investment was a force multiplier for many of the groups involved in overthrowing Yanukovych.

But that’s not the shocking part.

What’s shocking is the name of the billionaire who co-invested with the US government (or as Wheeler put it: the “dark force” acting on behalf of “Pax Americana”).

Step out of the shadows…. Wheeler’s boss, Pierre Omidyar.

Yes, in the annals of independent media, this might be the strangest twist ever: According to financial disclosures and reports seen by Pando, the founder and publisher of Glenn Greenwald’s government-bashing blog,“The Intercept,” co-invested with the US government to help fund regime change in Ukraine.

[Update: Wheeler has responded on Twitter to say that her Tweets were taken out of context, but would not give specifics. Adam Colligan, with whom Wheeler was debating, commented on Pando that "while Wheeler did raise the issue of external interference in relation to a discussion about a coup, it was not really at all in the manner that you have portrayed." Further "[Pax Americana] appeared after the conversation had shifted from the idea of whether a coup had been staged by the Ukrainian Parliament to a question about the larger powers’ willingness to weaken underlying economic conditions in a state.” Neither Wheeler or Colligan has commented on the main subject of the story: Pierre Omidyar’s co-investment in Ukrainian opposition groups with the US government.]

* * * *

When the revolution came to Ukraine, neo-fascists played a front-center role in overthrowing the country’s president. But the real political power rests with Ukraine’s pro-western neoliberals. Political figures like Oleh Rybachuk, long a favorite of the State Department, DC neocons, EU, and NATO—and the right-hand man to Orange Revolution leader Viktor Yushchenko.

Last December, the Financial Times wrote that Rybachuk’s “New Citizen” NGO campaign “played a big role in getting the protest up and running.”

New Citizen, along with the rest of Rybachuk’s interlocking network of western-backed NGOs and campaigns— “Center UA” (also spelled “Centre UA”), “Chesno,” and “Stop Censorship” to name a few — grew their power by targeting pro-Yanukovych politicians with a well-coordinated anti-corruption campaign that built its strength in Ukraine’s regions, before massing in Kiev last autumn.

The efforts of the NGOs were so successful that the Ukraine government was accused of employing dirty tricks to shut them down. In early February, the groups were the subject of a massive money laundering investigation by the economics division of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry in what many denounced as a politically motivated move.

Fortunately the groups had the strength – which is to say, money – to survive those attacks and continue pushing for regime change in Ukraine. The source of that money?

According to the Kyiv Post, Pierrie Omidyar’s Omidyar Network (part of the Omidyar Group which owns First Look Media and the Intercept) provided 36% of “Center UA”’s $500,000 budget in 2012— nearly $200,000. USAID provided 54% of “Center UA”’s budget for 2012. Other funders included the US government-backed National Endowment for Democracy.

In 2011, Omidyar Network gave $335,000 to “New Citizen,” one of the anti-Yanukovych “projects” managed through the Rybachuk-chaired NGO “Center UA.” At the time, Omidyar Network boasted that its investment in “New Citizen” would help “shape public policy” in Ukraine:

“Using technology and media, New Citizen coordinates the efforts of concerned members of society, reinforcing their ability to shape public policy.

“… With support from Omidyar Network, New Citizen will strengthen its advocacy efforts in order to drive greater transparency and engage citizens on issues of importance to them.”

In March 2012, Rybachuk — the operator behind the 2004 Orange Revolution scenes, the Anatoly Chubais of Ukraine — boasted that he was preparing a new Orange Revolution:

“People are not afraid. We now have 150 NGOs in all the major cities in our ‘clean up Parliament campaign’ to elect and find better parliamentarians….The Orange Revolution was a miracle, a massive peaceful protest that worked. We want to do that again and we think we will.”

Detailed financial records reviewed by Pando (and embedded below) also show Omidyar Network covered costs for the expansion of Rybachuk’s anti-Yanukovych campaign, “Chesno” (“Honestly”), into regional cities including Poltava, Vinnytsia, Zhytomyr, Ternopil, Sumy, and elsewhere, mostly in the Ukrainian-speaking west and center.

* * * *

To understand what it means for Omidyar to fund Oleh Rybachuk, some brief history is necessary. Rybachuk’s background follows a familiar pattern in post-Soviet opportunism: From well-connected KGB intelligence ties, to post-Soviet neoliberal networker.

In the Soviet era, Rybachuk studied in a military languages program half of whose graduates went on to work for the KGB. Rybachuk’s murky overseas posting in India in the late Soviet era further strengthens many suspicions about his Soviet intelligence ties; whatever the case, by Rybachuk’s own account, his close ties to top intelligence figures in the Ukrainian SBU served him well during the Orange Revolution of 2004, when the SBU passed along secret information about vote fraud and assassination plots.

In 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Rybachuk moved to the newly-formed Ukraine Central Bank, heading the foreign relations department under Central Bank chief and future Orange Revolution leader Viktor Yushchenko. In his central bank post, Rybachuk established close friendly ties with western government and financial aid institutions, as well as proto-Omidyar figures like George Soros, who funded many of the NGOs involved in “color revolutions” including small donations to the same Ukraine NGOs that Omidyar backed. (Like Omidyar Network does today, Soros’ charity arms—Open Society and Renaissance Foundation—publicly preached transparency and good government in places like Russia during the Yeltsin years, while Soros’ financial arm speculated on Russian debt and participated in scandal-plagued auctions of state assets.)

In early 2005, Orange Revolution leader Yushchenko became Ukraine’s president, and he appointed Rybachuk deputy prime minister in charge of integrating Ukraine into the EU, NATO, and other western institutions. Rybachuk also pushed for the mass-privatization of Ukraine’s remaining state holdings.

Over the next several years, Rybachuk was shifted around President Yushchenko’s embattled administration, torn by internal divisions. In 2010, Yushchenko lost the presidency to recently-overthrown Viktor Yanukovych, and a year later, Rybachuk was on Omidyar’s and USAID’s payroll, preparing for the next Orange Revolution. As Rybachuk told the Financial Times two years ago:

“We want to do [the Orange Revolution] again and we think we will.”

Some of Omidyar’s funds were specifically earmarked for covering the costs of setting up Rybachuk’s “clean up parliament” NGOs in Ukraine’s regional centers. Shortly after the Euromaidan demonstrations erupted last November, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry opened up a money laundering investigation into Rybachuk’s NGOs, dragging Omidyar’s name into the high-stakes political struggle.

According to a Kyiv Post article on February 10 titled, “Rybachuk: Democracy-promoting nongovernmental organization faces ‘ridiculous’ investigation”:

“Police are investigating Center UA, a public-sector watchdog funded by Western donors, on suspicion of money laundering, the group said. The group’s leader, Oleh Rybachuk, said it appears that authorities, with the probe, are trying to warn other nongovernmental organizations that seek to promote democracy, transparency, free speech and human rights in Ukraine.

“According to Center UA, the Kyiv economic crimes unit of the Interior Ministry started the investigation on Dec. 11. Recently, however, investigators stepped up their efforts, questioning some 200 witnesses.

“… Center UA received more than $500,000 in 2012, according to its annual report for that year, 54 percent of which came from Pact Inc., a project funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Nearly 36 percent came from Omidyar Network, a foundation established by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and his wife. Other donors include the International Renaissance Foundation, whose key funder is billionaire George Soros, and National Endowment for Democracy, funded largely by the U.S. Congress.”

* * * *

What all this adds up to is a journalistic conflict-of-interest of the worst kind: Omidyar working hand-in-glove with US foreign policy agencies to interfere in foreign governments, co-financing regime change with well-known arms of the American empire — while at the same time hiring a growing team of soi-disant ”independent journalists” which vows to investigate the behavior of the US government at home and overseas, and boasts of its uniquely “adversarial” relationship towards these  government institutions.

As First Look staffer Jeremy Scahill told the Daily Beast…

We had a long discussion about this internally; about what our position would be if the White House asked us to not publish something…. With us, because we want to be adversarial, they won’t know what bat phone to call. They know who to call at The Times, they know who to call at The Post. With us, who are they going to call? Pierre? Glenn?

Of the many problems that poses, none is more serious than the fact that Omidyar now has the only two people with exclusive access to the complete Snowden NSA cache, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. Somehow, the same billionaire who co-financed the “coup” in Ukraine with USAID, also has exclusive access to the NSA secrets—and very few in the independent media dare voice a skeptical word about it.

In the larger sense, this is a problem of 21st century American inequality, of life in a billionaire-dominated era. It is a problem we all have to contend with—PandoDaily’s 18-plus investors include a gaggle of Silicon Valley billionaires like Marc Andreessen (who serves on the board of eBay, chaired by Pierre Omidyar) and Peter Thiel (whose politics I’ve investigated, and described as repugnant.)

But what is more immediately alarming is what makes Omidyar different. Unlike other billionaires, Omidyar has garnered nothing but uncritical, fawning press coverage, particularly from those he has hired. By acquiring a “dream team” of what remains of independent media — Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, Wheeler, my former partner Matt Taibbi — not to mention press “critics” like Jay Rosen — he buys both silence and fawning press.

Both are incredibly useful: Silence, an absence of journalistic curiosity about Omidyar’s activities overseas and at home, has been purchased for the price of whatever his current all-star indie cast currently costs him. As an added bonus, that same investment buys silence from exponentially larger numbers of desperately underpaid independent journalists hoping to someday be on his payroll, and the underfunded media watchdogs that survive on Omidyar Network grants.

And it also buys laughable fluff from the likes of Scahill who also boasted to the Daily Beast of his boss’ close involvement in the day to day running of First Look.

“[Omidyar] strikes me as always sort of political, but I think that the NSA story and the expanding wars put politics for him into a much more prominent place in his existence. This is not a side project that he is doing. Pierre writes more on our internal messaging than anyone else. And he is not micromanaging. This guy has a vision. And his vision is to confront what he sees as an assault on the privacy of Americans.”

Now Wheeler has her answer — that, yes, the revolutionary groups were part-funded by Uncle Sam, but also by her boss — one assumes awkward follow up questions will be asked on that First Look internal messaging system.

Whether Wheeler, Scahill and their colleagues go on to share their concerns publicly will speak volumes about First Look’s much-trumpeted independence, both from Omidyar’s other business interests and from Omidyar’s co-investors in Ukraine: the US government.

Editor’s note: Pando contacted Omidyar Networks for comment prior to publication but had not received a response by press time. We will update this post if they do respond.

* * * *

Chesno document showing total funding from USAID and Omidyar Network to “Centre UA”:

 

 

[Meredith Poor + 898]

7 minutes ago, Tom Nolan said:

This was by no means a US-backed “coup,” but clear evidence shows that US investment was a force multiplier for many of the groups involved in overthrowing Yanukovych.

So you ARE trolling for the Russian security services. Most westerners would consider the documented support to be a good thing. You, however, seem far more sympathetic with the dick taters.

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

15 minutes ago, Meredith Poor said:

So you ARE trolling for the Russian security services. Most westerners would consider the documented support to be a good thing. You, however, seem far more sympathetic with the dick taters.

Who pays you you to be a troll and sockpuppet?

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

EXCERPTS

...When CIA realized how useful could the Albert Einstein Institution be, it brought Colonel Robert Helvey into play. An expert in clandestine actions and former dean of the Embassies’s Military Attachés Training School, "Bob" took Gene Sharp to Burma to educate the opposition on the non violent strategy for criticizing the cruelest military junta of the world without questioning the system. By doing this, Helvey could identify the "good" and the "bad" opponents in a critical moment for Washington: the true opposition, led by Mrs. Suu Kyi, was labeled as a threat to the pro-American regimen....

...Gene Sharp failed in Belarus and Zimbabwe for he could not recruit and train in the proper time the necessary amount of demonstrators. During the orange «revolution» in November 2004, [10] we met again with Colonel Robert Helvey in Kiev....

https://www.voltairenet.org/article30032.html

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

https://consortiumnews.com/2015/07/30/why-russia-shut-down-ned-fronts/

NED = NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY

There are the so-called "colour revolutions," for instance; synthetic protest movements that are fostered, supported or created out of whole cloth by groups like the National Endowment for Democracy

Why Russia Shut Down NED Fronts

July 30, 2015

 

Exclusive: The neocon-flagship Washington Post fired a propaganda broadside at President Putin for shutting down the Russian activities of the National Endowment for Democracy, but left out key facts like NED’s U.S. government funding, its quasi-CIA role, and its plans for regime change in Moscow, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

The Washington Post’s descent into the depths of neoconservative propaganda willfully misleading its readers on matters of grave importance apparently knows no bounds as was demonstrated with two deceptive articles regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin and why his government is cracking down on “foreign agents.”

If you read the Post’s editorial on Wednesday and a companion op-ed by National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman, you would have been led to believe that Putin is delusional, paranoid and “power mad” in his concern that outside money funneled into non-governmental organizations represents a threat to Russian sovereignty.

Russian President Vladimir Putin laying a wreath at Russia’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on May 8, 2014, as part of the observance of the World War II Victory over Germany.

The Post and Gershman were especially outraged that the Russians have enacted laws requiring NGOs financed from abroad and seeking to influence Russian policies to register as “foreign agents” and that one of the first funding operations to fall prey to these tightened rules was Gershman’s NED.

The Post’s editors wrote that Putin’s “latest move, announced Tuesday, is to declare the NED an ‘undesirable’ organization under the terms of a law that Mr. Putin signed in May. The law bans groups from abroad who are deemed a ‘threat to the foundations of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation, its defense capabilities and its national security.’

“The charge against the NED is patently ridiculous. The NED’s grantees in Russia last year ran the gamut of civil society. They advocated transparency in public affairs, fought corruption and promoted human rights, freedom of information and freedom of association, among other things. All these activities make for a healthy democracy but are seen as threatening from the Kremlin’s ramparts.

“The new law on ‘undesirables’ comes in addition to one signed in 2012 that gave authorities the power to declare organizations ‘foreign agents’ if they engaged in any kind of politics and receive money from abroad. The designation, from the Stalin era, implies espionage.”

But there are several salient facts that the Post’s editors surely know but don’t want you to know. The first is that NED is a U.S. government-funded organization created in 1983 to do what the Central Intelligence Agency previously had done in financing organizations inside target countries to advance U.S. policy interests and, if needed, help in “regime change.”

The secret hand behind NED’s creation was CIA Director William J. Casey who worked with senior CIA covert operation specialist Walter Raymond Jr. to establish NED in 1983. Casey from the CIA and Raymond from his assignment inside President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council focused on creating a funding mechanism to support groups inside foreign countries that would engage in propaganda and political action that the CIA had historically organized and paid for covertly. To partially replace that CIA role, the idea emerged for a congressionally funded entity that would serve as a conduit for this money.

But Casey recognized the need to hide the strings being pulled by the CIA. “Obviously we here [at CIA] should not get out front in the development of such an organization, nor should we appear to be a sponsor or advocate,” Casey said in one undated letter to then-White House counselor Edwin Meese III as Casey urged creation of a “National Endowment.”

NED Is Born

The National Endowment for Democracy took shape in late 1983 as Congress decided to also set aside pots of money, within NED, for the Republican and Democratic parties and for organized labor, creating enough bipartisan largesse that passage was assured. But some in Congress thought it was important to wall the NED off from any association with the CIA, so a provision was included to bar the participation of any current or former CIA official, according to one congressional aide who helped write the legislation.

This aide told me that one night late in the 1983 session, as the bill was about to go to the House floor, the CIA’s congressional liaison came pounding at the door to the office of Rep. Dante Fascell, a senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and a chief sponsor of the bill. The frantic CIA official conveyed a single message from CIA Director Casey: the language barring the participation of CIA personnel must be struck from the bill, the aide recalled, noting that Fascell consented, not fully recognizing the significance of the demand.

The aide said Fascell also consented to the Reagan administration’s choice of Carl Gershman to head the National Endowment for Democracy, again not recognizing how this decision would affect the future of the new entity and American foreign policy. Gershman, who had followed the classic neoconservative path from youthful socialism to fierce anticommunism, became NED’s first (and, to this day, only) president.

Though NED is technically independent of U.S. foreign policy, Gershman in the early years coordinated decisions on grants with Raymond at the NSC. For instance, on Jan. 2, 1985, Raymond wrote to two NSC Asian experts that “Carl Gershman has called concerning a possible grant to the Chinese Alliance for Democracy (CAD). I am concerned about the political dimension to this request. We should not find ourselves in a position where we have to respond to pressure, but this request poses a real problem to Carl.”

Currently, Gershman’s NED dispenses more than $100 million a year in U.S. government funds to various NGOs, media outlets and activists around the world. The NED also has found itself in the middle of political destabilization campaigns against governments that have gotten on the wrong side of U.S. foreign policy. For instance, prior to the February 2014 coup in Ukraine, overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych and installing an anti-Russian regime in Kiev, NED was funding scores of projects.

A second point left out of the Post’s editorial was the fact that Gershman took a personal hand in the Ukraine crisis and recognized it as an interim step toward regime change in Moscow. On Sept. 26, 2013, Gershman published an op-ed in the Washington Post that called Ukraine “the biggest prize” and explained how pulling it into the Western camp could contribute to the ultimate defeat of Russian President Putin.

“Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents,” Gershman wrote. “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.” In other words, NED is a U.S. government-financed entity that has set its sights on ousting Russia’s current government.

A third point that the Post ignored is that the Russian law requiring outside-funded political organizations to register as “foreign agents” was modeled on a U.S. law, the Foreign Agent Registration Act. In other words, the U.S. government also requires individuals and entities working for foreign interests and seeking to influence U.S. policies to disclose those relationships with the U.S. Justice Department or face prison.

If the Post’s editors had included any or all of these three relevant factors, you would have come away with a more balanced understanding of why Russia is acting as it is. You might still object but at least you would be aware of the full story. By concealing all three points, the Post’s editors were tricking you and other readers into accepting a propagandistic viewpoint that the Russian actions were crazy and that Putin was, according to the Post’s headline, “power mad.”

Gershman’s Op-Ed

But you might think that Gershman would at least acknowledge some of these points in his Post op-ed, surely admitting that NED is financed by the U.S. government. But Gershman didn’t. He simply portrayed Russia’s actions as despicable and desperate.

“Russia’s newest anti-NGO law, under which the National Endowment for Democracy on Tuesday was declared an “undesirable organization” prohibited from operating in Russia, is the latest evidence that the regime of President Vladimir Putin faces a worsening crisis of political legitimacy,” Gershman wrote, adding:

“This is the context in which Russia has passed the law prohibiting Russian democrats from getting any international assistance to promote freedom of expression, the rule of law and a democratic political system. Significantly, democrats have not backed down. They have not been deterred by the criminal penalties contained in the ‘foreign agents’ law and other repressive laws. They know that these laws contradict international law, which allows for such aid, and that the laws are meant to block a better future for Russia.”

The reference to how a “foreign agents” registration law conflicts with international law might have been a good place for Gershman to explain why what is good for the goose in the United States isn’t good for the gander in Russia. But hypocrisy is a hard thing to rationalize and would have undermined the propagandistic impact of the op-ed.

So would an acknowledgement of where NED’s money comes from. How many governments would allow a hostile foreign power to sponsor politicians and civic organizations whose mission is to undermine and overthrow the existing government and put in someone who would be compliant to that foreign power?

Not surprisingly, Gershman couldn’t find the space to include any balance in his op-ed and the Post’s editors didn’t insist on any.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 13, 2022 by Tom Nolan

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

https://www.corbettreport.com/foreign-intervention-and-the-ukraine-crisis/

Foreign Intervention and the Ukraine Crisis

by James Corbett
GRTV.ca
March 5, 2014

In late 2004, protests erupted after Viktor Yanukovych won the 2004 Ukrainian Presidential election, with protestors claiming that the vote had been rigged. The protests forced a revote, in which Yanukovych’s rival, Viktor Yuschenko, was elected president. This movement, dubbed the Orange Revolution for the orange ribbons and clothing sported by its members, was one of a series of so-called colour revolutions which swept the former Soviet Republics in the last decade.

The two events are not unrelated. As The Guardian noted at the time of the protests:

“[...]the campaign [Orange Revolution] is an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.[...]The Democratic parrty’s National Democratic Institute, the Republican party’s International Republican Institute, the US state department and USAid are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns.”

So it is not without reason that seasoned political observers looked for outside connections to the recent protests in Ukraine that has, in an almost exact repeat of the 2004 protests, sought to overthrow the elected government of Viktor Yanukovych in order to install Viktor Yuschenko’s political allies. Those connections have not been difficult to find.

Audio of Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland apparently dictating who the US wanted “in” and “out” of the supposedly grassroots-supported interim government only came as a surprise to those who did not believe Washington or its allies in the Washington Consensus were actively involved with the ongoing protests in the country. As did the revelation of her admission last December that the US had already pumped $5 billion into the funding of the Ukrainian opposition.

As did the appearance of confirmed terrorist supporter John McCain at a rally with the leader of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Svoboda party leader. As did the appointment of a central banker as the interim Prime Minister and his immediate announcement that the country was in talks with the US, EU, and IMF for emergency loans. As did the appearance of a slick new viral propaganda video in English promoting the supposedly grassroots uprising which was immediately exposed as finding its “inspiration” in Council on Foreign Relations member Larry Diamond, who has worked closely with the same N.E.D. and USAid that were linked to the 2004 Orange Revolution.

In the latest startling revelation, Pando.com has published documents implicating the Omidyar Network in the funding of the current Ukrainian protest movement. The Omidyar Network is the NGO of billionaire Ebay co-founder Pierre Omidyar, who recently set up “First Look” as an outlet for (among others) Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras to selectively publish some of the Snowden document archive, 99% of which continues to be withheld from the public.

As geopolitical analysts from across the board explain, the Ukrainian coup has been deliberately provoked by outside agents to promote a combination of US, EU, NATO and IMF interests.

Perhaps more worrying than the interference itself are its potential implications. As Russia’s every move is now being scrutinized for a possible military response to the ongoing crisis, the specter of a larger military operation now hangs over Eastern Europe. Part of the decade-long encirclement of Russia by NATO and deliberate provocations on Russia’s doorstep, this process of brinksmanship now threatens to plunge the region into a war the consequences of which cannot be foreseen, let alone contained.

As supposedly “progressive” outlets once again scramble to throw their support behind the billionaire oligarchs and NGOs that have helped to destabilize the country, and as neocons unite with neoliberals in their agenda to carve up Ukraine for western interests, it remains to be seen what genuine alternative outlets will stand up against this blatant interference and stand up for the principle that it is up to the Ukrainian people, and no one else, to decide what happens in their country.

 

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

Then there are the engineered crises where, for example, snipers are sent into otherwise peaceful protests to shoot at both sides, creating chaos and undermining the ruling government's legitimacy in the court of public opinion (as happened in both Ukraine and Syria).

https://www.corbettreport.com/crisis/

For an example, we need look no further than the Euromaidan protest in Ukraine in 2014. The Maidan protests, too, involved a mass uprising against a government targeted by the Western powers, and they turned deadly when snipers began firing into the crowds, killing both police and civilians. That both sides were targeted in the shootings makes no sense from a strategic perspective, unless the purpose of the shooting was actually to escalate the violence and drive the protests to their eventual conclusion: the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovich. Nevertheless, mainstream media in the west immediately blamed the sniper fire on the Ukrainian police.

But from the beginning, the evidence contradicted this account. Shortly after the deadly sniper incident, Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet discussed his own findings on the attack with an audibly shocked Catherine Ashton, foreign affairs chief of the European Union.

Urmas Paet: All the evidence shows that the people were killed by snipers from both sides - among policemen and people from the streets - that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides.

Catherine Ashton: Oh that's...yeah.

Paet: And then she also showed me some photos. She said that [she's a] medical doctor, she can, you know, say that it is the same same handwriting, the same type of bullets, and it's really disturbing that now the new coalition that don't want to investigate what exactly happened. So there is now a stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition.

Ashton: I think we do want to investigate. I didn't pick that up. Interesting. Gosh.

SOURCE: Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and Catherine Ashton discuss Ukraine over the phone  

An extensive study of eyewitness reports, ballistic trajectories, radio intercepts, photos and videos of the attacks by Ivan Katchanovski of the University of Ottawa concluded that the sniper fire was in fact conducted by elements linked to the opposition.

But late last year, a Ukrainian courtroom became the stage for the most startling confirmation of this version of events.

News anchor: Three years ago, mercenary snipers from Georgia fired on protesters on Maidan Square. Today, their guilt has been proven in court in Kiev. The attorney of ex-president Yanukovych revealed the story of the people who got paid for mass murder. There is footage of the massacre among the evidence. The mercenaries even agreed to testify in court.

[...]

Alexander Goroshinsky: Their goal was to instigate a conflict between the protesters and law enforcement using firearms. Witness Koba Negadze was at the Ukrayina Hotel and saw snipers firing at both protesters as well as law enforcement officers.

SOURCE: Court in Kiev. Georgian Mercenary Snipers Skype In Shocking Testimony

The plan is as devilish as it is simple. Use indiscriminate murder and violence as a way to escalate a conflict and drive an agenda. In this case, the atrocity on the Maidan Square made negotiations between the protesters and the Yanukovych government impossible.

But Maidan Square was by no means the first time that this strategy had been employed to generate such a crisis. The Syrian government, like the government of President Yanukovych in Ukraine, found itself in the crosshairs of the Pentagon. In a program reminiscent of Operation Ajax, the Bush administration began funneling millions of dollars to opposition groups in Syria in 2006, and, just like in Iran in 1953, these funds eventually paid off in the form of a "spontaneous" protest movement in the city of Daraa in March 2011....

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

EXCERPT

...And the US government knew it, charges Stiglitz, at least in the case of the biggest ‘briberization' of all, the 1995 Russian sell-off. "The US Treasury view was this was great as we wanted Yeltsin re-elected. We don't care if it's a corrupt election. We want the money to go to Yeltzin" via kick-backs for his campaign.

Stiglitz is no conspiracy nutter ranting about Black Helicopters. The man was inside the game, a member of Bill Clinton's cabinet as Chairman of the President's council of economic advisors.

Most ill-making for Stiglitz is that the US-backed oligarchs stripped Russia's industrial assets, with the effect that the corruption scheme cut national output nearly in half causing depression and starvation...

https://archive.globalpolicy.org/socecon/bwi-wto/critics/2001/1011stiglitz.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 

There's the "IMF riot," of course; a four-step plan to economically cripple a country so that the IMF and/or World Bank can swoop in and "save" it (for the benefit of foreign investors).

And don't forget the debt trap diplomacy described by John Perkins, where corrupt dictators are bribed into selling off their nation's resources and infrastructure to foreign investors and plunging their country into debt, thus giving the Western financial interests political leverage over future governments.

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

EXCERPT

...As the founder of Africa’s Econet empire, self-exiled Zimbabwean telecom tycoon and new Gates board member Strive Masiyiwa has used his wealth to advance the cause of neoliberalism across southern Africa. 

Masiyiwa is a close ally of British billionaire and “green” capitalist Richard Branson of Virgin, having collaborated with him on several projects, including the “Carbon War Room” that was founded as “a mission to stimulate business-led market interventions that advance a low-carbon economy.” 

As Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal and this writer have documented, Branson sought to launch “Enterprise Zimbabwe” in partnership with fellow billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s Humanity United at the Clinton Global Initiative...

...Bridgespan is not only funded by the Gates Foundation, it provides the foundation with “philanthropy consulting” services. And it does the same for some of the most prominent institutions guiding the global pandemic response, from the CDC Foundation to the Ford Foundation to the Omidyar Network to The Rockefeller Foundation and the United Nations Foundation.

Additional clients under the category of “strategy consulting” include the Omidyar-funded pro-Israel pressure group known as the Anti-Defamation League, the Inter-American Development Bank, the CIA-linked International Rescue Committee, and the United Nations Foundation (again).

As the pandemic moves into its third year, and Gates racks up record profits, his new board of trustees will provide him the patina of racial and international diversity his foundation needs to push back on negative PR. But with their records of neocolonial plotting and technocratic zealotry, Gates’ board members are all but certain to stay the course of profiteering in the name of public health....

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/01/31/gates-foundation-trustee-overthrow-zimbabwean-covert-us-uk-govt/

January 2022

New Gates Foundation trustee led plot to overthrow Zimbabwean leader alongside US gov’t

https://i0.wp.com/thegrayzone.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/STRIVE-AND-MELINDA.jpg?resize=768%2C512&ssl=1

Richard Branson 

Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson is a British entrepreneur and business magnate. In the 1970s he founded the Virgin Group, which today controls more than 400 companies in various fields.

As Alexander Rubenstein explains in a recent piece for The Grayzone:

In 2007, as the Zimbabwean economy sank into crisis under the weight of British and US sanctions, Branson offered to bankroll an “Elders” initiative to “convince Zimbabwean President Mugabe to step down,” according to a cable sent from the US embassy in Pretoria, South Africa to a number of governments and government agencies, including the CIA.

Edited February 13, 2022 by Tom Nolan

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

How to Survive Regime Change

https://www.corbettreport.com/how-to-survive-regime-change/

...Although it sounds like some fictional gang of supervillains from a trashy James Bond novel, "The Elders" is in fact a very real organization (with a website, even!), which purports to "engage with global leaders and civil society at all levels to resolve conflict and address its root causes, to challenge injustice, and to promote ethical leadership and good governance."

Hmmm, let's see. "Engage with global leaders and civil society" in order to "promote ethical leadership and good governance," hey? Let me run that through the Globalese translator.

*beep beep boop*

Yes, just as I thought. It's a regime change organization. (Just check out their leadership council and their advisory council.)

So what was The Elders' plan for effecting regime change in Zimbabwe? They joined forces with Strive Masiyiwa, a Zimbabwean billionaire and arch-globalist whose résumé includes collaborating with Branson on the formation of the "Carbon War Room" and his brand new position as a trustee of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

So what did Masiyiwa do? According to leaked US diplomatic cables (which identified him as "strictly protect," indicating he was an asset of or a confidential source for US intelligence) he began "quietly floating an idea to shift executive power from President Mugabe to a 'technocratic' Prime Minister" and working on "plans for Zimbabwe's economic recovery" (read: plans to sell off Zimbabwe's resources for pennies on the dollar to foreign investors) once the globalists' hand-picked technocrat was installed in power.

And how did he go about doing this? He worked as an "unofficial advisor" to a group called the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), an opposition party that was formed out of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. But you'll never be able to guess who helped fund the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions...

Oh wait, you totally will. It's the NED.

OK, so far, so perfectly expected. Rich and powerful businessmen colluded with other rich and powerful businessman to use NED-funded political opposition parties to bring about regime change in a target country. Nothing new here, right?

Well, here's the rub: As you may or may not know, Mugabe was not overthrown in 2007. Or 2008. Or 2009. In fact, he wasn't ousted until 2017 in an internal party coup that had nothing to do with the Elders.

So what went wrong?

Well, as Arthur Gwagwa of the Zimbabwe Human Rights NGO Forum told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2013:

Policies that are formulated on the basis of a Western conception that sanctions would work in predominantly agrarian countries such as Zimbabwe in the same way they would work in East Europe is misplaced. Unlike in urbanized societies, where sanctions might cajole people to protest and push for reforms, conditions are different in a country such as Zimbabwe where rural based populations have other livelihood means aside from bread, therefore the absence of bread in the shops will not prompt them to stage street protests. This was the MDC's original plan that they are now backtracking on as they have realized that it doesn't work.

Yes, you read that right. The galaxy-brained billionaires of the World Controlling Globalist Jet Set didn't even understand that their "IMF riot" playbook doesn't work in an agrarian society.

You can just imagine Branson and his cronies furrowing their brows in confusion: "What? These farmers aren't dependent on their government for their survival? So how do we get them!?"

What It Means

Now, full credit for this little anecdote goes to Alexander Rubenstein, who lays all the pieces of this story out (along with many, many other interesting tidbits) in his article on the newly appointed Gates Foundation trustees, which is well worth your time and attention.

But let me draw out the significance of this story for the hard of thinking.

Firstly, the technocratic planners of the New World Order are not omniscient, omnipotent, or even necessarily competent. They are bumbling boobs who often know little about the actual lived reality of the people whose lives they presume to be able to run.

Secondly, this is not a story about governments and regime change and 2D geopolitical chess. This is a story that reaffirms an incredibly important point: A free people who are not dependent on their government don't care who is pretending to rule over them at any given time, and they don't worry about what international sanctions are being imposed on "their" government by the financial oligarchs. They'll just continue going on with the real work of putting food on their table and providing for themselves.

People who are interested in pursuing this line of thought further are highly encouraged to check out my Film, Literature and the New World Order podcast on Eric Frank Russell's 1951 story "...And Then There Were None"

But now that you know the story, spread the word: the global cabal are a bunch of incompetent boobs who don't understand anything outside of their (extremely limited) range of experience. They couldn't organize a way out of a wet paper bag and the people of Zimbabwe overcame the machinations of the global world control gang without lifting a finger!

Remember that the next time some low-level imbecile tells you that the New World Order is inevitable and there's no use in fighting back.

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

On 2/13/2022 at 4:48 PM, Meredith Poor said:

So you ARE trolling for the Russian security services. Most westerners would consider the documented support to be a good thing. You, however, seem far more sympathetic with the dick taters.

Most Westerners have double standards. I kindly wish somebody sponsors a bloody unconstitutional coup wherever you live.

Edited February 17, 2022 by Andrei Moutchkine

[notsonice + 1,266]

47 minutes ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

Most Westerner have double standards. I kindly wish somebody sponsors a bloody unconstitutional coup wherever you live.

Putin Troll, how much do you get paid to post your garbage??? 

[notsonice + 1,266]

On 2/13/2022 at 9:04 AM, Tom Nolan said:

Who pays you you to be a troll and sockpuppet?

same question to you??? you obviously are posting pro Putin garbage. No one I know would post such garbage in the US unless they are on Putins Payroll.

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

2 hours ago, notsonice said:

Putin Troll, how much do you get paid to post your garbage??? 

Try a regular Russian defending his country next time, troll.

USA bankrolled a bloody and unconstitutional coup in Ukraine, which even involved burning people alive. Isn't it time for you to experience something like that first hand? Turnabout is fair play, after all.

Edited February 17, 2022 by Andrei Moutchkine

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

42 minutes ago, notsonice said:

same question to you??? you obviously are posting pro Putin garbage. No one I know would post such garbage in the US unless they are on Putins Payroll.

Oh, a whole lot of people in US would post such "garbage." Pretty much anybody with a heart and soul. Which excludes you, who did smear his good name by being an employee of the Imperial military. Absolutely not trustworthy and potentially even a war criminal.

[Meredith Poor + 898]

7 hours ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

Most Westerners have double standards. I kindly wish somebody sponsors a bloody unconstitutional coup wherever you live.

"Double"? Probably more like triple or quadruple. The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

"...sponsors a bloody unconstitutional coup..." I've lost count. Where I live, this seems to be an on-going and perpetual process.

BLM... Is this "Black Lives Matter" or "Bureau of Land Management"? Which one of them is staging an unconstitutional coup? Does this depend on who you ask?

[Andrei Moutchkine + 828]

4 minutes ago, Meredith Poor said:

"Double"? Probably more like triple or quadruple. The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.

"...sponsors a bloody unconstitutional coup..." I've lost count. Where I live, this seems to be an on-going and perpetual process.

BLM... Is this "Black Lives Matter" or "Bureau of Land Management"? Which one of them is staging an unconstitutional coup? Does this depend on who you ask?

I don't think either BLM has yet burned anyone alive, like they did in Ukraine?

[QuarterCenturyVet + 312]

5 minutes ago, Andrei Moutchkine said:

I don't think either BLM has yet burned anyone alive, like they did in Ukraine?

Yeah. They did. A small business owner in a shop that they burnt to the ground. https://www.wsj.com/articles/body-found-in-minneapolis-building-burned-during-george-floyd-riots-11595382153

[specinho + 475]

On 2/14/2022 at 1:18 AM, Tom Nolan said:

How to Survive Regime Change

https://www.corbettreport.com/how-to-survive-regime-change/

 

 

A free people who are not dependent on their government don't care who is pretending to rule over them at any given time, and they don't worry about what international sanctions are being imposed on "their" government by the financial oligarchs. They'll just continue going on with the real work of putting food on their table and providing for themselves.

mmm… They must care who is ruling and what they are doing.........

If the constant provocation of NATO (hearsay led by Germany) i.e. Biden and alliances bring bombardment to their own countries by frustrated Ukrainian extremists.......... like those frustrated middle easterners had done in the past...........

If, not only ordinary folks who are going to be hit hard but also the rich........ the bomb can never recognize the status of anyone........

how far would you allow your representatives to behave so blatantly before you gang up and say "Enough".............like the truck drivers across a few countries?