POSTED BY @NSANZO ⋅ 04/19/2023
As element of shockpolitical and economic, the war shows what the state of international relations is at a given moment. Although it is not the only active war conflict at the moment, the war between Russia and Ukraine is setting the international agenda and is also a thermometer to assess its status and future prospects in the short and medium term. To this day, each international forum is marked by the demand from Western countries that each country publicly show its position on the conflict, no matter how far removed it is from its day-to-day reality. Even before the Russian troops crossed the borders of Ukraine, the United States and its allies were already presenting the idea of unity that continues to be the basis of their discourse. Already then there was a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism in which each country had to side with Ukraine. That discourse has only increased as the war has entrenched, becoming increasingly harsh, intense and cruel to the civilian population on both sides of the front.
However, contrary to the original idea and the official discourse of the United States and its partners in the European Union, this division of the world between an isolated Russia and the rest of the world has not occurred. What's more, this very week, an article published in Foreign Policy stated that "as a result of diplomatic, economic and security work following its invasion of Ukraine, Russia is now far less isolated than the United States and the West would like." . Instead of the idea of Russia against the rest of the world, united in its support for Ukraine, the reality shows that, beyond the European countries or staunch allies of the United States, the rest of the world, a majority in number and population, it has remained neutral, with no interest in getting involved in a war of others and far away.
The West has spent time and effort downplaying Xi Jinping's visit to Moscow, oscillating between highlighting the lack of a grand deal being signed and threats about possible Chinese intentions, possibly existing only in the minds of the architects of the Western narrative, of supplying Russia with weapons. The visit of the president of China, the second world power and an indispensable commercial and diplomatic partner for Russia now that it seeks to redirect its economic and political relations beyond the European Union, is the clearest example that the discourse of Russian isolation clashes with reality , but he's not the only one.
The role of India has also been especially important in these months, a country that has significantly increased its imports of Russian energy products. If the objective of the European Union sanctions was to reduce Moscow's income from the sale of oil and gas, the import data from India helps to show that it has failed. For the moment, the objective of expelling Russia from the European Union energy market would not have been achieved either: in addition to the increase in imports of liquefied natural gas before the start of sanctions, EU countries continue to purchase Russian products through third countries that, like India, act as intermediaries, of course, making the product more expensive.
The few successes that Ukraine is achieving beyond what we could classify as the Western bloc when it comes to achieving explicit support and, above all, sending arms, are moving in the same direction. Even in the first weeks of the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, when the Ukrainian president was the most sought after figure when it came to making appearances in all kinds of political forums, the failure to get the attention of African countries was resounding, for example, with the failed attempt to convene the African Union. Since then, Ukrainian diplomacy has continued to invest efforts in seeking to recruit more countries, especially those considered to be on the pro-Russian side.-or neutral, since both terms are being used interchangeably-, as could be seen with Dmitro Kuleba's visit to several African countries, something that a Ukrainian foreign minister had never done. Its success was limited and only Morocco has actively supported Ukraine, helping to send not Western tanks as kyiv demanded, but Russian-made tanks. The scant success of Zelensky and Kuleba in Africa contrasts with the visits by Sergey Lavrov, of which Josep Borrell complained so bitterly, alleging that there are “easy countries” like Mali on the continent.
The case of Latin America is even clearer. With the exception of Gabriel Boric, the leader who has most openly supported Zelensky's speech, and Guillermo Lasso, who according to the Pentagon leak is willing to send weapons to Kiev, the position of a large part of the countries has been to distance themselves from the military action, but also stay away from getting involved in the war. In a public and clear manner, the leaders of the large Latin American countries -Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico- have shown themselves against the shipment of arms and have positioned themselves in favor of the demand for negotiation. Especially relevant is the position of the recently returned Lula da Silva, who, even before his electoral victory, had shown his rejection of the way in which Ukraine had managed the situation in the first months of the Russian invasion.
Since his return to the presidency, the Brazilian leader has insisted on rejecting the German request to send weapons and ammunition, but also on the need for the conflict to return to diplomatic channels. And that is where Lula's words have caused the anger of the United States. Annoyed on every occasion that a relevant country deviates from the path expected of them -as happened to Emmanuel Macron with his comment on the need for "strategic autonomy" of the European Union-, Washington has publicly shown its disappointment with the role that the Brazilian president is currently trying to play. Lula, who had already shown his interest in acting as a mediating country between Russia and Ukraine, took advantage of his recent visit to Beijing to insist on that path. Lula,
To this idea, which he has repeated on numerous occasions, the Brazilian president added a comment that has caused the ire of Washington. From China, Lula da Silva stated that "the United States needs to stop encouraging war and start talking about peace", provoking the outrage of the United States, which accused him of "parroting Russian propaganda". Lula also pointed to Brussels. "It is necessary for the European Union to start talking about peace so that we can convince Putin and Zelensky that peace is in everyone's interest and that war, for the moment, only interests both of them," he stated with a sentence that it could hardly be considered a repetition of Russian propaganda. However, as the pride with which the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, announces the use of Funds for Peace to send ammunition to Ukraine shows,
In recent weeks, there has been a perceptible increase in articles that doubt Ukraine's ability to achieve this great victory or that advocate the need, not immediately but in the medium term, for negotiations between the two countries, an option that Kiev has openly and repeatedly rejected. The intentions are clear and it is not to be expected that any of the international peace initiatives, despite the good intentions of leaders such as Lula da Silva, can yield results. This is demonstrated by the two visits that Zelensky and Putin have made to the front and that they met yesterday. With the certainty of knowing that his security is guaranteed -despite the statements, Russia has never tried to attack Zelensky-, the Ukrainian president visited areas near Avdeevka, one of the hot areas of the Donetsk front. On his second visit to the war zone, Putin visited troops on the Kherson front - possibly Genichesk, where administrative duties have been relocated - and Lugansk, where generals plan military operations. The front marks the current reality and Russia is aware that it has to wait for a Ukrainian attack. The places of Vladimir Putin's visit, Kherson, one of the places that will be attacked, and Lugansk, where the defense is being prepared, prove it. According to Pentagon leaks, the Ukrainian offensive should start on April 30.
https://slavyangrad.es/2023/04/19/27093/#more-27093
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U.S.-NATO Involvement in the 2014 Ukraine Coup and Maidan Massacre: The Soft Power Ecosystem and Beyond
By Jim Cole - April 16, 2023 1
[Source: youtube.com]
[This is Part II in a four-part series analyzing the 2014 Maidan coup. Part I is here. It discusses the psycho-social aspects of color revolutions; some of the thousands of think tank/NGO change agents which received billions in U.S. and EU funding since 1989 in Ukraine; outlines some of the regime-change techniques of weaponized aid and political, diplomatic and economic methods; the novel use of tech and social media operations employed in Ukraine during the Obama years; and, lastly, the shift from soft power to dark power, the point at which violence is required to achieve regime change.—Editors]
The Psychology of Color Revolutions
Color revolutions are U.S.-funded regime-change operations utilizing a sophisticated understanding of psychology, sociology and political organizing to foment and precipitate an “electoral revolution” resulting in a U.S. client state or one that meets other geopolitical purposes. They require a large ecosystem of change agents, including military, intelligence and diplomatic government actors, foundations, NGOs, PR companies and other contractors and corporate co-conspirators and media, developed over years with millions or billions in investment.
They have been successful in Serbia (2000), in Georgia’s Rose Revolution (2003), in Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (2004), in Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution (2005), Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution (2005), Kuwait’s Blue Revolution (2005), Iraq’s Purple Revolution (2005), and in Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution (1989). Othe
uch as Ukraine 2014, were ultimately more characterized by violence but featured the same change-agent organizations; still others, such as Venezuela (2018) and Belarus’s Slipper Revolution (2020), failed, likely as the target regime is too entrenched and/or the soft-power ecosystem is too inhibited.
[Source: europereloaded.com]
Although on the surface they utilize civic group energy and genuine discontent, particularly “creative non-violence resistance” of student and youth, their main power is in the control of the interpretation of unfolding events by both local and foreign audiences. This might make them “post-modern coups” in that they reflect a shift of regime-change operations from military hard power to civilian soft power, from reality to perception of reality, where the power of propaganda is much more insidious, yet the managers remain those connected to state and corporate power.
As with all propaganda, the control of the narratives in color revolutions is rooted in manipulation through fear and desire; a false promise of dissipating this fear through a desired candidate or policy, to channel the population against their current regime and pursue a direction in harmony with imperial interests.
Fear is also induced by some change agents (chaos agents such as saboteurs, snipers or terrorists) whose aim is to destabilize society and citizens’ sense of security, to provoke a desire for security internally (counterinsurgency) or for regime change in a foreign target (insurgency).
Insurgency/regime-change operations have become a sophisticated science of mass manipulation, researched by government, academic and foundation scientists for decades, involving the work of political and behavioral scientists, PR firms, social media experts, intelligence agents, local and foreign professional activists, and strategists and tacticians employed through governmental agencies, foundations and a plethora of NGOs.
“Collectively, their job is to make a palace coup (of their sponsorship) seem like a social revolution; to help fill the streets with fearless demonstrators advocating on behalf of a government of their choosing, which then legitimizes the sham governments with the authenticity of popular democracy and revolutionary fervor.
Because the operatives perform much of their craft in the open, their effectiveness is heavily predicated upon their ability to veil the influence backing them, and the long-term intentions guiding their work.
Their effectiveness is predicated on their ability to deceive, targeting both local populations and foreign audiences with highly-misleading interpretations of the underlying causes provoking these events.”[1]
Mass manipulation is as old as power, but for the modern era we might start, a century ago with Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd and the work of Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays as the originator of consumer propaganda (aka “PR”), the linchpin of our globalized and falsified non-culture.
As the military and intelligence agencies became more interested in soft power, funding increased for think tanks such as the deceptively named Albert Einstein Institution, an offshoot of Harvard University where political scientist Gene Sharp evolved a sophisticated—but very accessible—understanding of how to foment revolution in target countries.
His work had such a convenient overlap in appearance and terminology with civil rights campaigning and ostensibly non-violent and anti-war ideals, it escaped many people’s attention for decades that he was central to neo-imperial expansion “by other means” and that many of these worked in tandem with other soft-power techniques as well as covert-action operations with no façade of humanitarianism.
Gene Sharp [Source: manskligsakerhet.se]
Two fundamental influences on the psychology of color revolutions are the cultural bias that comes from 80 years of American Century cultural imperialism with which the world has been bombarded and the endlessly exploitable genuine grievances citizens have against their own leaders, who may be separate from U.S. spheres of influence but can be just as immoral and vile.
Cultural bias, via entertainment, such as cartoons, as propaganda and by deep cultural bias and ties to the Homeland that prove very useful, for example, in how the U.S. pressures UN voting by threatening diplomats’ bank accounts and other ties to the U.S. or U.S. organizations and companies. Like the political, civic and media narratives of soft power, these have a profound effect on world view, values, critical thinking and perception of causes of events and possibilities for political progress, i.e., what is perceived as possible and desirable.
Legitimate dissent, oppression and foreign interference, of course, are not mutually exclusive. Indeed, they are synergistic in escalating the tension for regime change, and genuine discontent or ethno-religious tension, for example, are an Achilles heal for an imperial force to target and exacerbate with divide-and-conquer, destabilization and other strategies of domination and regime change.
It is an intentional strategy of U.S. imperialism to impoverish, destabilize and neutralize non-client countries over decades, by sanctions, sabotage, propaganda, war, terror and other strategies, so that manufactured discontent becomes legitimized, certain sectors are energized while others are disenfranchised, and the hidden hand of imperialism is largely to blame.
Soft Power Imperial Apparatus: USAID, NED, Embassies, Soros, Omidyar, et al.
The purpose of soft power is to pressure governments, persuade people (propaganda) and co-opt future leaders. Much of this is done through political, labor and civic groups, other NGOs and media, media, media.
If you can look past the oligarch-level PR, the aim of U.S. empire is to instill free-market reform for multinational market penetration and control of global political economy.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED, a CIA offshoot founded in the 1980s) currently funds about 1600 different NGOs (negating the “non” part of their title), and hundreds have been funded in Ukraine since the 1990s. The two main NED arms, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and the International Republican Institute (IRI) have both had Kyiv offices since 1992, running what then-regional NDI head Nelson C. Ledsky termed the “Ukraine experiment” in an update statement to the House of Representatives in 2005.[2]
In Serbia 2000, for example, the NDI focused on the opposition parties, while IRI focused on the young protesters and “paid for two dozen Otpor leaders to attend a seminar on nonviolent resistance at the Hilton Hotel in Budapest, a few hundred yards along the Danube from the NDI-favored Marriott.”[3] This mild division of taste and labor is about the extent of the difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to foreign policy.
Protesters waving Otpor flag in NED-backed color revolution in Serbia. [Source: dgrnewsservice.org]
About 40 NED-funded organizations are named in the NED’s 2004 Annual Report as operating in Ukraine, by far the most of any country that year.[4] But this is not a complete picture, even of the NED’s involvement, let alone the other soft-power agencies, many of which seem allergic to the spotlight; as Ron Paul said in a December 2004 speech before the U.S. House International Relations Committee, “That is what I find so disturbing: There are so many cut-out organizations and sub-grantees that we have no idea how much U.S. government money was really spent on Ukraine, and most importantly how it was spent.”[5] Twenty years later, you can amplify everything by about the same number.
By their own admission—thoroughly flooded across the millions of documents, websites, articles, press releases and media flowing from this industry that puts U.S. taxpayer money into oligarch accounts and aims to destroy any (potential) competition—all of this money is spent in a near religious faith in U.S. supremacy, manifest destiny and free market imperialism.[6] The misdirection underlying this is that it is for benevolent reasons, when it is clearly for ruling elite greed and has caused an inconceivable amount of destruction since the dawn of colonialism and the genocide of indigeneity.
But the Ukrainian cut-outs just grew and grew because, as NED President Carl Gershman said in 2013, “Ukraine is the biggest prize” in Europe.[7] And since late February 2022, the aid floodgates opened completely to fuel the proxy war to the last Ukrainian.
Carl Gershman [Source: thepolicebackend.org]
The NED board always tellingly includes some national security leaders, such as current CIA Director William J Burns, who was head of the NED-associated Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. After all, they have taken on the main burden of political, psychological, and social action jobs the CIA did covertly before the 1970s scandals led to the foundation of the NED. Only they do it mostly in plain sight—much less stressful!
Don’t forget the USAID and State Department, its embassies and those of wealthy client-states, also fund soft power with billions. Oh, and don’t forget the para-State Department oligarchs like Soros, whose International Renaissance Foundation spent $181 million in Ukraine from 1990 to 2015. Although that pales next to Victoria Nuland’s jubilant admission that the United States government had spent $5 billion on political change in Ukraine. According to memos leaked in DCLeaks in 2016, after his quarter-century of investing in Ukrainian neo-liberalization, Soros was nearly dictating elements of post-coup policy, including how to market the Ukrainian coup to potential Russian allies like Greece. His massive donations to the Democrats over recent decades—including $25 million to the Hilary shitshow in 2016—obviously confer heavy geopolitical influence, such as directly advising Secretary of State Clinton via email on how to respond to the Albanian situation in 2011.
The Omidyar Network—founders of the controlled opposition/whistleblower-capturing The Intercept—also got in on the soft power, according to the Kyiv Post, at least to the tune of $200,000 in 2012—funding the “Center UA” in 2012 with USAID and NED.[8] They also gave $335,000 to “New Citizen” to one of the Center UA projects. Center UA is one of many weaponized anti-corruption NGOs particularly targeting anti-U.S. politicians, i.e., Yanukovych at the time.
Pierre Omidyar [Source: businessinsider.com]
It is blatant that the concerted aim of all these countless interrelated departments, organizations and corporations is neo-liberalization for elite U.S. interests—by pressuring, forcing and demanding shock therapy IMF/World Bank privatization reforms and nurturing a generation of a political class with the same outlook to serve their masters. U.S. elites used to be fine with a friendly dictator, but I think they realized in the 1980s that soft power—weaponized aid, diplomacy, sanctions and humanitarianism—is more profitable and maintains the spic-and-span humanitarian façade of modern imperialism.
A key think tank behind political action in opposition countries has been the Albert Einstein Institution under the direction of the political change specialist Dr. Gene Sharp, a specialist and best-selling author in “nonviolence as a form of warfare.”
A key AEI operative, and friend of Sharp’s with decades of political action experience in Southeast Asia, was Colonel Robert Helvey. Michael Dobbs gleefully described in a December 11, 2000, Washington Post article, how at an IRI sponsored seminar at the Hilton hotel in Budapest:
“[T]he Serbian students received training in such matters as how to organize a strike, how to communicate with symbols, how to overcome fear and how to undermine the authority of a dictatorial regime. The principal lecturer was retired U.S. Army Col. Robert Helvey, who has made a study of nonviolent resistance methods around the world, including those used in modern-day Burma and the civil rights struggle in the American South.
Colonel Robert Helvey [Source: axisoflogic.com]
Helvey, who served two tours in Vietnam, introduced the Otpor activists to the ideas of American theoretician Gene Sharpe [sic], whom he describes as ‘the Clausewitz of the nonviolence movement,’ referring to the renowned Prussian military strategist.”[9]
It is crazy: People read the word “non-violence” (and “pro-democracy,” “Einstein” and, if they are really hoodwinked, “Harvard”) and the references to civil rights, etc., and some sort of virtue switch is triggered that presumes the motives are not only benign, but benevolent and noble. It is a sickness of living in this false-liberal wilderness of mirrors, drunk on this manifest-destiny poison that saturates America and the Western world under its spell.
And so it is interesting that Gene Sharp has only recently been identified and analyzed as an arm of U.S. imperialism, for example, in a comprehensive set of articles by Marcie Smith. Many still harbor vague thoughts of him as a supporter of national liberation movements—the exact opposite of the AEIs true intentions: anti-sovereignty and pro-imperialist. It is as if many fell for the whitewashing of “for freedom and democracy” and propaganda of weaponized humanitarianism/white man’s burden and forgot to look behind the neo-liberal curtain as to what was driving the multi-billion-dollar machine. Whoops. Again, it is hard not to get caught up in such massive, slick, trillion-dollar PR that has been flowing continuously since the dawn of the American century in 1898.
Any organization of dissent that truly tries to expose and counter the establishment’s machinations, once it crosses a threshold of influence, will be targeted: first, with monitoring and surveillance; followed by infiltration, co-optation and smearing; and, ultimately, by outright capture or sabotage. But when a voice comes from within the belly of the beast, no matter how noble and grand its professed nature and ideologies, do not let its sweet whispers in your ear for a moment.
Soft Power: Political, Diplomatic and Economic Pressure
As well as co-opting, training and funding the young street-level protesters and NGO puppets, it is necessary to unite, co-opt, train and fund the official political opposition, directly and indirectly. For example, building up to the Serbian election of 2000, more than 20 opposition leaders met with U.S. officials and “private democracy experts,” mostly in Budapest, to coordinate the $41 million campaign of 2000.[10]
And these astronomical NGO interference budgets mentioned above do not include private contractors brought in through other funding routes, sometimes elicit, and the involvement of the EU, the World Bank and the IMF, the latter that the U.S. will often control, like a tap, to remind locals who’s the boss. As in Biden’s threat to withhold a $1 billion IMF loan if his lapdog Petro Poroshenko did not fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, investigating the gas embezzlement scam, by Mykola Zlochevsky’s (now Zelensky and Azov Battalion funder Kolomoisky’s) Burisma Holdings Ltd. Yes, the same Burisma that paid Hunter Biden $83,333.33 a month for simply being on the board.[11]
Left to right: Hunter Biden, Ihor Kholomoisky, Volodymyr Zelensky. [Source: letsgobrandonnews.com]
Although this is after the coup, it perfectly reflects the reasons for it. Biden recounted the tale with warmth and humor, as if around a cowboy’s campfire, at a talk at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2018, “On Defending Democracy:”
“‘We’re not gonna give you the billion dollars….If the prosecutor [Shokin] is not fired, you are not getting the money.’ Well, son-of-a-bitch….He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid…”
To be clear: Here is a U.S. vice president and future president bragging about blackmailing the “leaders” of a foreign country that his own government implanted, to fire someone who, before he crossed Biden, seemed a rare example of an uncorrupted Ukrainian politician (Viktor Shokin—who has, since Nuland, Pyatt and Biden turned against him in late 2015, been in fear of his life)—in order, seemingly, to cover up his own apparent association with millions in tax fraud.
Viktor Shokin [Source: ukrinform.net]
The gentleman he refers to as “solid” as future prosecutor general was not only not a lawyer, he was a recently released prisoner, Yuriy Lutsenko—described by Daria Kaleniuk, director of the (U.S., EU and “private international” funded) Anti-Corruption Action Center Ukraine, as “a crook” who “abused office for self-enrichment” and did not solve a single case in more than three years.[12] (It is an interesting theatrical short-circuit irony where you have a Western-funded NGO/individual criticizing a Western-installed puppet. Of course, theater, like circuses, delivered in constant and endless news-cycle drama stories, distracts from larger agendas and accumulates to provoke a numb, hypnotized and amnesic public.)
Yuriy Lutsenko [Source: goodmorningamerica.com]
There is a unique, deep but shrill sycophancy heard in Poroshenko’s voice when he regularly talked with Biden. The chocolate king, despite his already disgusting wealth, has a palpable slavering greed for the further enrichment and power being a Biden/U.S. proxy elite entails. Is it a warped form of love, the worship of such power? It is a degenerate addiction.
Not just Biden held such close constant interest in Ukraine: It is interesting to note the parade of senior U.S. and EU politicians and influencers who spoke to crowds at Maidan during the protest. Portrayed as a sort of echo of the “Winds of Change” of 1989, as if bricks of the Berlin Wall were still hitting the ground—when in fact, it was to become more like the random slaughter of Romania 1989 than drunken hope of Berlin 1989—the list tellingly includes:
*Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs
*Geoffrey Pyatt, Ambassador
*Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief
*Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Chris Murphy (D-CT), threatening sanctions if there were any violence against protesters, spoke on stage with Oleh “Sieg Heil” Tyahnybok on December 13, 2013
*Bernard-Henri Lévy (February 2014)—who also met with Poroshenko twice and Vitali Klitschko in February and subsequently described the massacred victims as “European, indeed…because in the Maidan, for the first time in history, young people would die clutching the starry flag of Europe.” This is deep-level, trauma-based PsyOps BHL is delivering. (Don’t forget, as well, his starring role in the Libyan regime change of 2011.)
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December 15, 2013: Republican U.S. Senator John McCain, center, speaks as Democratic Senator Chris Murphy and Opposition leader Oleh Tyahnybok stand beside him during a pro-European Union rally in Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine. [Source: foxnews.com]
What sort of a neutered state allows a foreign state to parade its leaders through its capital inciting regime change? But the figureheads are only the front of the show, soft imperial power saturates a target like a rising tide.
Soft Power Tech: Civil Society 2.0
If the Gene Sharp-style color revolutions of the 2000s embraced youthful energy, symbols, slogans, top-level PR strategy and new media, those of the 2010s were influenced further by Silicon Valley’s advances in the awesome and terrifying political potential of social media, not least in surveillance and propaganda in the service of imperialism.
Don’t forget the military and intelligence roots of the internet, mobile phones and software. The interlinkage is seen not just by analyzing Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Stanford Labs and the many patents in your tech now spying on you owned by the Department of Defense, or the investments of the CIA’s In-Q-Tel in Silicon Valley startups and companies; it is also clear by seeing how often State Department, military and intelligence organizations partner with tech companies in different projects and by the interchange of personnel, particularly since the Obama administration.
Core to this are Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, a bridge between Google and the State department. As Julian Assange, who met both of them secretly in 2011, described in his review of their 2013 book The New Digital Age:
“[It] is a startlingly clear and provocative blueprint for technocratic imperialism, from two of its leading witch doctors, Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen, who construct a new idiom for United States global power in the 21st century. This idiom reflects the ever closer union between the State Department and Silicon Valley, as personified by Mr. Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, and Mr. Cohen, a former adviser to Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton who is now director of Google Ideas.
The book proselytizes the role of technology in reshaping the world’s people and nations into likenesses of the world’s dominant superpower, whether they want to be reshaped or not.” [13]
The policy influence of Cohen is clear during and after his (official) State Department Policy Planning tenure of 2004–2010 that earned him a seat at the Council on Foreign Relations, with the introduction of zeitgeist (and already dated) terms like “21st century statecraft,” “diplomacy 2.0” and “civil society 2.0” to U.S. government foreign policy projects and documents.
Color revolution strategies have always focused on media narratives and co-opted youth as agents of change—as in Otpor in Serbia 2000—but as social media came to dominate, this became a new weapon in imperialism for insurgency and regime change.
An interesting innovation in Ukraine in 2012, TechCamps were first organized through the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv. The project was developed initially by Katie Dowd and Angela Baker, both Advisers for Innovation at the U.S. Institute of Peace (should it be War?) in Washington.[14]
Katie Dowd [Source: linkedin.com]
The conferences were run at the embassy from 2012 to 2014 by Luke Schtele, an Assistant Press Attaché in the Obama administration, and funded by public and private grants. According to his bio at Fulbright conferences in 2014 and 2015, Schtele “led the implementation of the U.S. Department of State’s Civil Society 2.0 initiative in Ukraine” and “organized a series of TechCamps and media forums in Ukraine from 2012–2014, training more than 350 activists and journalists in the use of digital technology and communications.” [15]
Soon after the fifth TechCamp on November 14-15, 2014, at the embassy, and just before the start of the Maidan protests, Deputy Oleg Tsarov had the audacity to complain in parliament that the U.S. Embassy TechCamp projects and funding were illegal intervention in Ukrainian sovereignty, information warfare and manipulation of public opinion to sow dissent by the United States, against the UN Resolution 2131 (XX) of December 21, 1965, entitled Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention in the Domestic Affairs of States and the Protection of Their Independence and Sovereignty.
Oleg Tsarov [Source: wikipedia.org]
He may have been drowned out by the boos of the opposition, defending their gravy train, but he was right. An early TechCamp project included mobilizing youth in internet-poor areas, particularly the poorer and more Russian-speaking east, to share messages via SMS, called “SMS Like” and “SMS-President,” developed by Vadim Georgienko at TechCamp 2012, after speaking to Trevor Knoblich who developed the similar FrontlineSMS. Other projects included initiating the “journalism without borders” project, using online games for social causes. TechCamps in Ukraine were funded by the State Department as well as private support, including from Coca-Cola and Microsoft.
After the coup, Schtele and some of his team proudly presented the achievements of TechCamp Ukraine at Fulbright conferences in 2014 and 2015, along with some interesting social media soft-power change agents. They included Professor Josephine Dorado of The New School, a “Trainer, State Department,”; Olena Sadovnik [Media Development Officer, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe]; and Vadim Georgienko [Developer, Creator of SMS-President and Dobrochyn crowdfunding platform]. The summary of the TechCamp project is identical for both and worth repeating in full: [16]
“Igniting Citizen Action in Ukraine through Mobile Storytelling
This session will highlight work being done by Fulbrighters and other agents of change at TechCamps, an initiative under the U.S. State Department and U.S. Institute of Peace which aids civil society organizations in developing countries by building their digital capacities. We will look at TechCamps through the lens of Ukraine and focus on how building skills around mobile story telling galvanized citizen actions and continues to address the challenge of communicating in conflict regions.”
Social media was the main driver of the Maidan protests, which “unexpectedly erupted outside the election cycle, on a random Thursday evening,” beginning with a Facebook post by a U.S. astroturfed journalist.[17]
When Soft Power Fails, Coercive Violence Follows
And so soft power and its main tool, propaganda, multiply exponentially in the endlessly nourishing flow of money. The “ugly truth” if you speak to an old school military realist, or get an ex-CIA agent drunk enough, or infiltrate a group of defense contractors and their stooge senators as they ride waves of euphoria at the call of any military escalation, is that, geopolitically, “they” will sometimes also be content with chaos and destabilization of a target country, no matter the death and refugee toll.
This Plan B works as it also prevents and weakens competition and gives the military-industrial complex a good cash stream for a few years or decades. An endless war is more profitable than a successful one and still has geopolitical advantages. Being the last country left standing is as solid a path to “full spectrum dominance” as any other.
Although some NGOs proudly display the logos of embassies, USAID, NED, etc., a regular occurrence is the defense of some agencies attempting to hide the foreign source of their funding. Their argument is that this is used as a strategy to attack them. This farcical logic does somewhat limit anti-corruption efforts, though.
And how did all these billions of investments, this political and economic macro and micromanaging and the two “color revolutions” improve Ukraine? Bloated oligarchic corruption to previously unimaginable levels;[18] empowered, armed, funded and normalized neo-fascists;[19] and started a civil war that claimed 14,000 lives even before the Russian invasion of 2022 and more than 200,000 wounded in the first year since the invasion, not to mention millions of refugees.
Because the soft power so ceaselessly targeted at Ukraine, the “prize of Europe,” was inevitably going to turn ugly and dark, the U.S. had to turn to hard power to achieve its aim of breaking Russia from Europe, at least so the U.S. can shift its imperial aggression to China while Ukrainians die.
Ultimately, all the methods of regime change, of empire, are a continuum, a selection of tools that escalate in violence and—safe in their Washington, New York, Houston and San Francisco mansions; or Swiss, Belgian, French or German chateaus; or English Home Counties Manors—the oligarchs don’t care about violence, death and chaos they create, as long as the income stream flows and the profits of missiles, minerals, oil and gas, and finance black magic continue to rise. The ugliest truth is that one creates the other.
As John McCain described the Arab Spring—very much the fruits of U.S. soft-power funding via NED and dozens of other tentacles—it is a crafted weapon intended to weaken Russia and China, despite overtures of cooperation; it is “a virus that will attack Moscow and Beijing” and collateral damage, or fear of all-out war, is irrelevant to these power-deranged psychos.[20] If you don’t understand what these different crafted weapons of imperialism are, and how they work, you will have zero ability to interpret geopolitical events, and will likely go insane trying to understand history or reality as you are manipulated in a web of lies.
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/0 ... nd-beyond/
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President Putin Meets Military Leaders In Kherson & Lugansk
Russian President Vladimir Putin (R) visits a military headquarters in Luhansk, April 18, 2023. | Photo: Twitter/ @NucleoNoticias
Published 18 April 2023
"I do not want to distract them from their direct obligations, but it is important that I listen to their opinion about how the military operation is developing," he stated.
On Tuesday, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin visited Kherson and Lugansk regions to talk to Russian military leaders and learn the status of the military operation in Ukraine.
"I do not want to distract them from their direct obligations, but it is important that I listen to their opinion and exchange information with them about how the situation is developing," Putin told the Tass news agency.
In the Kherson region, he met Oleg Makarevich, the commander of the troops of the southern sector, and Mikhail Teplinski, the commander of the Airborne Forces.
"Teplinski was quite long on the front line and made a very detailed report of the march of the military campaign," the Russian president stressed, and denied rumors by British intelligence which alleged that Teplinski had recently returned to command after being replaced in January .
In Kherson, Putin also visited the headquarters of Makarevich’s troops. A few hours later, he flew by helicopter to the National Guard headquarters in Luhansk province, where Colonel-General Alexandr Lapin received him.
In this region, Putin asked military commanders to brief him on the situation in Zaporizhia City, located on the Dnieper River. A video broadcast by the Kremlin showed Putin congratulating the military on the Russian Easter and giving them a copy of a religious icon that belonged to defense ministers of tsarist Russia.
In mid-March, Putin visited the Crimean peninsula and Mariupol City in the Donetsk region, half of which the Russian forces control. The Kremlin did not prepare in advance Putin’s visit to Kherson or Lugansk, which Russian troops almost entirely command.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Pre ... -0008.html
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Ukraine: There is No Peace in Sight
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on APRIL 17, 2023
Yevgeny Primakov and Dragan Vujicic
I cannot guess the dates when the “old peace” will return and when the colonial leadership of the golden billion will end. I am not even sure that we will live to see that new world.
I am afraid that even more difficult times are coming because the so-called golden billion will fight to the end and by all means to maintain his hegemony. This is how Yevgeny Primakov, one of the youngest and most forward-looking Russian politicians of today, answered the question of “Novosti” about the time when he expects the return of “the world to the old way”.
Primakov “the younger” is today the head of Rosotrudnichestvo, the Russian Federal Agency for CIS Affairs, compatriots abroad and international humanitarian cooperation. He came to Belgrade with the occasion of marking the anniversary of the Russian House in the Serbian metropolis. As before, he was happy to speak for Večernje Novosti.
Dragan Vujicic (DV): How do you see the chances of peace in Moscow today?
Yevgeni Primakov (YP): First of all, I would like to see the peace coming into effect immediately, and I don’t know anyone in the leadership of Russia who is in favor of war. At the beginning of the Special Military Operation, our president stated its goals: among others, the denazification of Ukraine for the sake of peace. And that is why our troops are fighting for peace today. Unfortunately, the chances of peace reigning soon are not too high. Our victory on the battlefield will increase the chances.
DV: Has the world fundamentally changed in these over 400 days of war?
YP: First, I wouldn’t say that these 400 days changed the world. That change happened earlier. We warned the West for at least 16 years about what was happening and about the change in the entire logic of international relations. We told “the West” and the USA to read and understand the words of our president. Vladmir Vladmirovich clearly pointed out that the constant expansion of NATO is a danger to Russia’s national security, and in Munich he described Russia’s interests in the field of security to everyone.
DV: And what happened then?
YP: The Americans simply declared that speech to be the most aggressive and dangerous rhetoric up to that point. Years later, in December 2021, Russia proposed a set of conditions for our coexistence in relations with the Western powers. Among other things, they talked about legally binding guarantees between the two sides and the withdrawal of NATO weapons from our borders. The West told us No – on all counts!
DV: The war started in February 2022.
YP: Even after December 2021, Russia continued to behave in accordance with fundamental Christian and so-called European values and up to this day Russia adheres to the most valuable ones. Unfortunately, there is no more Europe in Europe today. Until Europe recovers, we have nothing to discuss with them because it is a matter of value system and irreconcilable differences.
DV: What is the difference between the “Western” rules-based International Order and the International Law order that Moscow is in favor of?
YP: As for the “order of rules”, it essentially means that there is a group of countries that decides on all key matters in international relations, and when they need it, they change the same rules. To say more than a theory, Great Britain, USA and Germany now claim to support the territorial integrity of all countries, but not for Serbia, Libya or Iraq. For example, the head of UNESCO, an organization whose international obligation is the preservation of cultural heritage and language, came to Ukraine. But this organization shows no interest in Russian language and in Russian cultural heritage in Ukraine.
DV: President Putin and SI spoke about the reform of the UN and its bodies in February 2002, right before the conflict?
YP: I am not an expert in international law, but from a civilizational point of view, in the context of an international conflict, we need to emphasize the need for UN reform. So far, there are no real conditions. Finally, Russia also wants new members to be admitted to the SC, but not those of the West, but we think it is necessary to include large countries from Asia, Africa, Latin America, which Washington does not want at all. To be clear, the UN is a bad and dysfunctional institution, but for now we have no replacement.
DV: French President Macron has just presented himself again in Beijing as a peacemaker. How credible is he for Moscow?
YP: I remember Macron’s performance at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum when he quoted Dostoyevsky to us and when we all got excited thinking that he knows and loves Russian culture and the Russian soul. In St. Petersburg, he said that we should build new relationships and new friendships. And when he returned to Paris, he explained how it is necessary to “suppress” Russia and how he is the one to lead the matter!
DV: So, he is not a man for a peace mediator?
YP: I will be careful here. In Moscow, Macron as a politician is not considered by many managers to be a reliable partner. They see him as some kind of pop politician or pop figure.
DV: Russia is once again the target of terrorists and it seems that it is not doing so well. The murder of Daria Dugin and journalist Vladlen Tatarski?
YP: Russia protects its citizens and a huge effort is being made in that direction, one that is not public. Our intelligence services have prevented numerous tentative of terrorist attacks. A year ago, for example, the FSB prevented attempts to attack journalists Vladimir Soloviev and Margarita Simonyan. But we cannot have 100 percent guarantees that the terrorists will not be successful somewhere. Those who are attacking the Russian people today are the same as us, they share or have shared language and culture with us. What is worst is that part of the political opposition and part of their followers have gone into extremism. We really do not have 100 percent security guarantees for everyone, but still our services quickly locate and arrest those responsible.
DV: We harbored illusions that Nazism is dead?
YP: The events in Ukraine show that it is not without reason that we in Russia take care and preserve the memory of the Second World War. It is not only our historical memory, but this “memory” refers to the Russian identity and the present time. The nazis are at war in Ukraine – they must all be destroyed!
DV: Kiev Pechar monastery?
YP: We should not reduce this to the Russian people, but we must talk about the entire Orthodox world. To forgive or not, that is a question of Christianity. But I am afraid of things that have an eschatological dimension. These are huge efforts to start a religious war in Ukraine, as if this has not happened so far. We recently watched in Kiev a terrible scene when a girl from the church choir is praying to God on her knees, and around her are supposedly demons playing some kind of demonic game. That frolicking sounded like witches’ dances from Middle Age Europe.
DV: About de-dollarization of the world?
YP: There are more and more countries that realize the real role of the dollar as a world currency, and they insist now on trading with each other in their currencies. This is the strongest medicine and tool against the dominance of the golden billion.
DV: Russian and Ukrainian offensives are coming. What’s next?
YP: I know about that as much as you people from Novosti, I only know about it what I see on the news or in the newspaper.
DV: The British brag that they are training “Ukrainian partisans” or rather terrorists, while at the same time pretending to have Churchill’s “wisdom”?
YP: I would not go into the innermost diplomatic spheres. But Russia has many centuries of experience with the British and their political elites – we still remember the great tensions with them in the 19th century in Asia. And when it comes to Churchill, we did not forget that as soon as the Second World War ended, even while we were alleged allies, this Englishman asked the Americans for atomic strikes in the cities and facilities of Russia. It was called the “Antitankbl” operation (unimaginable, unthinkable). No one in Russia has any illusions about the Englishman.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2023/04/ ... -in-sight/
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From Cassad's telegram account:
Colonelcassad
Situation as of 15:00 April 18, 2023
in Vuhledarsky sector Yesterday, Ukrainian formations attempted to storm Russian positions south of Vuhledar . One sabotage group of the 72nd brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine carried out reconnaissance in combat near the forest belt north of Nikolsky .
Another assault detachment in light armored vehicles, up to a platoon from the 3rd battalion of the 68th opebr of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, attacked the positions of Russian military personnel near Pavlovka .
Before these calculations of M777 howitzers, artillery preparation was carried out, and reconnaissance UAVs and copters were actively operating in the air, delivered in large numbers to the Donetsk direction as part of individual UAV companies.
Both enemy attacks were repulsed by the joint efforts of infantry units and army aviation. Forces of 68 opebr and 72 ombr of the Armed Forces of Ukraine retreated to their original positions.
Now the situation is stable. In the area of Novoukrainka, the 68th brigade is under staffing. And in Bogatyr, in the northwest of Ugledar, a large number of people and equipment are concentrated at the training ground.
At the moment, it is unclear what kind of unit arrived in Bogatyr. Most recently, the training of the 23rd brigade in Novomoskovsk was completed , and the brigade itself, according to the plan, should be involved either in the Zaporozhye or in the Donetsk directions .
https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin
Google Translator
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"Leopard" without a tower
April 18, 18:54
The Leopard 2A4, which lost its turret, fell victim to a collision between two tanks at the training ground.
Now the car is being repaired at the expense of Poland. The mechanic driver was from Ukraine. Apparently one of those who are caught in the streets.
A certain number of "Leopards" are already operating in Ukraine, have not yet been destroyed. Active use can be expected in May-June.
https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/8300987.html
Google Translator
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From Europe to the Indo-Pacific, Italy at Arms
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on APRIL 18, 2023
Manlio Dinucci
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (left) walking throughout the White House next to US President Joe Biden (right) on February 10, 2023. Photo: Adam Schultz/White House.
On Saturday, US officials interviewed by the Brazilian outlet Folha reported on the Biden administration’s views regarding statements made by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during his visit to China, calling the statements “outrageous.”
“Despite declaring itself neutral in the geopolitical dispute between the United States and China, Brazil seems to have clearly aligned itself with China and Russia,” they stated.
Lula told reporters in Beijing on Saturday, April 15, that the US should stop inciting war in Ukraine. “America needs to stop fomenting war and start talking about peace; the European Union needs to start talking about peace so that we can convince [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and [Ukrainian President Volodimir] Zelensky that peace is in everyone’s interest, and that war is only in their own interest for now,” he said.
This statement made by the Brazilian president attributes the responsibility for the war between Russia and Ukraine to the United States, according to the aforementioned US officials. Furthermore, the officials expressed that “the most problematic thing” is Lula’s vision of the US as an obstacle to ending the conflict, as shown by his indication of China and Russia as the main countries capable of bringing about peace.
US: Brazilians do not value balance in their positions
According to the officials interviewed by Folha, Brazilians have “not only failed to value balance in their positions, but have adopted a clear opposition to Washington.”
Going even further, the US officials accused the Minister of Foreign Affairs Mauro Vieira and Lula’s Chief Advisor of the Presidency Celso Amorim of adopting “a tone of antagonism against the United States.”
Why is Lula visiting China?
The Asian giant has been Brazil’s largest trading partner for 14 years. Although trade in agricultural products, minerals, and oil remains stable, Chinese investment in the South American country continues to grow in infrastructure and public welfare projects.
In order to facilitate investment, both countries have recently agreed to continue transactions in their own currencies, from Brazilian reais to Chinese yuan and vice versa, without requiring the dollar in their bilateral trade.
https://orinocotribune.com/washington-o ... n-ukraine/
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In Bakhmut, the assault detachments of the PMC "Wagner" completely cleared the territory of the hotel "Transit" , thereby pushing the Ukrainian formations away from the positions at the railway station along the railway. Attempts of unsuccessful counterattacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were noted to the west of the elevator.
To the north, the "Wagnerites" are moving along the streets of Levanevsky , Oborona and Pobedy . Now the fighting is going on for the area of garages located from Levanevsky Street to Chaikovsky to the south. The territory is equipped with a serious system of engineering barriers, which complicates its assault.
Across Artyomovsk on the morning of April 26.
