Syrian Regime Change - Humanitarian Aid

ꕤ Article SOURCE https://fts.unocha.org/pageloader.aspx?page=search-reporting_display&CQ=cq260115191009dOLEaWyOry 2012-2015 Syria Total:   USD $14,343,463,267 (committed)    + USD$  743,800,39 (Pledged) USD Committed USD Pledged Australia 149,082,851 15,725,518 Canada 517,298,762 EU Comm 1,573,770,779 Finland 61,083,566 France 106,524,427 Germany 969,788,332 Kuwait 938,412,017 219,390,000 Qatar 235,579,649 3,803,270 Saudi Arabia 586,481,638 Sweden 170,721,978 Switzerland 175,307,558 1,142,037 UAE 417,971,494 126,192,450 UK 1,393,325,651 USA 4,226,880,211 13,320,001 ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT Regime change and eradicating 'moderate rebels' defected to 'death cult' militants is expensive. Check out what the US, UK and EU have spent.  Yes, I know this is allocated as 'humanitarian aid' -- but the 'humanitarian crisis' is the result of Western intervention in pursuit of regime change in more than one target location, including Syria. Above is only some of the funds committed by various governments. Jordan and Israel are not on the list. Expect that this isn't a complete list of everything. The British domestic population is subjected to 'austerity' measures, but Britain has allocated this substantial expenditure  towards what amounts to one of the incidental costs of regime change. Money's also found for other countries -- so this isn't the only overseas location that funds are allocated to.   Global Humanitarian Contributions in 2014, top donors: United States European Commission United Kingdom Germany Japan Sweden US is right up there, just as it is in terms of military spending.  The top spenders also form part of the US alliance, which I think is interesting.  The respective economies may also factor in somehow (not sure re Sweden) -- banking interests/investors - invested? There's a reason US is on top of that list, and it's not generosity -- look what's happening with water shut-downs in the US and the fight for minimum wage that is still on. Countries that 'cannot' find adequate money for their pensioners, unemployed, care homes, public housing, education, and so on, and  countries that are selling off public property, healthcare, and shutting off water to domestic communities; countries that begrudge their domestic population minimum wage etc etc, find money for mid-intervention and post intervention humanitarian 'mop-ups' overseas. Grand total of USD$23,276,994,829 in 2014 (plus some) -- all contributors worldwide- here. But this isn't everything.  It's just what they classify as 'humanitarian aid' ... and it may not even be all 'humanitarian aid'. At USD$267,063,481, Australia contributes more in the 2014 overall totals than France, more than World Bank and more than Qatar (which probably owns Europe). Meanwhile in Australia (as an example): ‘Devastating’ Social Service Funding Cuts Slammed Posted: Friday, September 18, 2015 - 11:00 Author: Xavier Smerdon A Senate Inquiry has slammed the Department of Social Service funding process which saw cuts of $270 million and has recommended that five-year contracts be awarded to service providers to ensure stability. http://www.probonoaustralia.com.au/news/2015/09/%E2%80%98devastating%E2%80%99-social-service-funding-cuts-slammed# I'm not up on all the Liberal government's social welfare reforms (ie punishment of the vulnerable), so I've just plucked the above as an example. While welfare is getting cut, the military spending looks sizeable (from the random examples). Australia has invested approximately AU$1billion in Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS)  -- which is some kind of military satellite communications gadgetry from US supplier -- here. Australia is spending $50 billion on a submarine-building program -- here. Australia is carrying out airstrikes in Syria and Iraq -- here.  No mention of what these cost, but I'm pretty sure this doesn't come cheaply. Australia:  Boeing (USA) $1.49 billion 13 Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft contract - here. Australia -  $11.9 million Orbital ATK Inc. (USA) - Advanced Anti-Radiation Guided Missile conversion service - here. Australia - new defence planning blueprint seeks to fortify seas defences with highest priority to Navy - drones & subs - $70 billion boost - here. Anyway, that some of what money was found for.  Yes, defence is important, but surely a government spending colossal amounts on military can shop around or drive a hard enough bargain with suppliers (who want their money), so as to ensure that the people at the very bottom socially and economically do not become victims of government spending cut-backs. How is punishing the domestic population -- the vulnerable, at the very bottom of the social and economic ladder -- the right thing to do? Well, it looks like the domestic population -- especially the socially and economically disadvantaged -- are of the least concern to politicians. It's private profits first.  Working classes (and even nations) last. Look at European politicians selling out their nations. ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- Spend Theory (so far) War: Sanitisation & Maintenance of Illusions Link  |  here Assange Transnational Security Elite, Carving Up the World Using Your Tax Money London  OCT8 Antiwar Mass Assembly (2011) Link  |  here ꕤ

Refugee Crisis | How Neocons Destabilise Europe

ꕤ Article SOURCE Robert Parry American investigative journalist breaking Iran-Contra affair for Associated Press (AP) & Newsweek breaking Psychological Ops in Guerrilla Warfare (CIA manual provided to the Nicaraguan contras) breaking CIA & Contras cocaine trafficking in the US scandal (1985) http://newcoldwar.org/refugee-crisis-how-neocons-destabilized-europe/ Refugee crisis: How neocons destabilized Europe By Robert Parry, Consortium News, September 7, 2015 Introduction by New Cold War.org: The neocon prescription of endless “regime change” is spreading chaos across the Middle East and now into Europe, yet the neocons still control the mainstream U.S. narrative and thus have diagnosed the problem as not enough “regime change,” as Robert Parry reports. Amidst the righteous humanitarian concern over the fate of millions of refugees in the Middle East seeking to flee the devastation of their homelands, Parry provides a needed reminder of the source of the crisis which mainstream news reporting and many analysts are ignoring, namely, the military interventions and austerity policies of the U.S., European Union and NATO military alliance into the region. Importantly, Parry explains the disastrous consequences of the extension of that intervention into Ukraine, leading to ‘regime change’ there in late 2013/early 2014. * * * The refugee chaos that is now pushing deep into Europe – dramatized by gut-wrenching photos of Syrian toddler Aylan Kurdi whose body washed up on a beach in Turkey – started with the cavalier ambitions of American neocons and their liberal-interventionist sidekicks who planned to remake the Middle East and other parts of the world through “regime change”. On Aug 30, 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry claims to have proof that the Syrian gov't was responsible for a chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21, but evidence failed to materialize or was later discredited [State Department photo] Instead of the promised wonders of “democracy promotion” and “human rights,” what these “anti-realists” have accomplished is to spread death, destruction and destabilization across the Middle East and parts of Africa and now into Ukraine and the heart of Europe. Yet, since these neocon forces still control the Official Narrative, their explanations get top billing – such as that there hasn’t been enough “regime change”. For instance, The Washington Post’s neocon editorial page editor Fred Hiatt on Monday blamed “realists” for the cascading catastrophes. Hiatt castigated them and President Barack Obama for not intervening more aggressively in Syria to depose President Bashar al-Assad, a longtime neocon target for “regime change.” But the truth is that this accelerating spread of human suffering can be traced back directly to the unchecked influence of the neocons and their liberal fellow-travelers who have resisted political compromise and, in the case of Syria, blocked any realistic efforts to work out a power-sharing agreement between Assad and his political opponents, those who are not terrorists. In early 2014, the neocons and liberal hawks sabotaged Syrian peace talks in Geneva by blocking Iran’s participation and turning the peace conference into a one-sided shouting match where U.S.-funded opposition leaders yelled at Assad’s representatives who then went home. All the while, the Post’s editors and their friends kept egging Obama to start bombing Assad’s forces. The madness of this neocon approach grew more obvious in the summer of 2014 when the Islamic State, an Al Qaeda spinoff which had been slaughtering suspected pro-government people in Syria, expanded its bloody campaign of beheadings back into Iraq where this hyper-brutal movement first emerged as “Al Qaeda in Iraq” in response to the 2003 U.S. invasion. It should have been clear by mid-2014 that if the neocons had gotten their way and Obama had conducted a massive U.S. bombing campaign to devastate Assad’s military, the black flag of Sunni terrorism might well be flying above the Syrian capital of Damascus while its streets would run red with blood. But now a year later, the likes of Hiatt still have not absorbed that lesson and the spreading chaos from neocon strategies is destabilizing Europe. As shocking and disturbing as that is, none of it should have come as much of a surprise, since the neocons have always brought chaos and dislocations in their wake. When I first encountered the neocons in the 1980s, they had been given Central America to play with. President Ronald Reagan had credentialed many of them, bringing into the U.S. government neocon luminaries such as Elliott Abrams and Robert Kagan. But Reagan mostly kept them out of the big-power realms: the Mideast and Europe. Those strategic areas went to the “adults,” people like James Baker, George Shultz, Philip Habib and Brent Scowcroft. The poor Central Americans, as they tried to shed generations of repression and backwardness imposed by brutal right-wing oligarchies, faced U.S. neocon ideologues who unleashed death squads and even genocide against peasants, students and workers. The result – not surprisingly – was a flood of refugees, especially from El Salvador and Guatemala, northward to the United States. The neocon “success” in the 1980s, crushing progressive social movements and reinforcing the oligarchic controls, left most countries of Central America in the grip of corrupt regimes and crime syndicates, periodically driving more waves of what Reagan called “feet people” through Mexico to the southern U.S. border. Messing up the Mideast But the neocons weren’t satisfied sitting at the kids’ table. Even during the Reagan administration, they tried to squeeze themselves among the “adults” at the grown-ups’ table. For instance, neocons, such as Robert McFarlane and Paul Wolfowitz, pushed Israel-friendly policies toward Iran, which the Israelis then saw as a counterweight to Iraq. That strategy led eventually to the Iran-Contra Affair, the worst scandal of the Reagan administration. [See Consortiumnews.com’s When Israel /Neocons Favored Iran.] However, the right-wing and mainstream U.S. media never liked the complex Iran-Contra story and thus exposure of the many levels of the scandal’s criminality was avoided. Democrats also preferred compromise to confrontation. So, most of the key neocons survived the Iran-Contra fallout, leaving their ranks still firmly in place for the next phase of their rise to power. In the 1990s, the neocons built up a well-funded infrastructure of think tanks and media outlets, benefiting from both the largesse of military contractors donating to think tanks and government-funded operations like the National Endowment for Democracy, headed by neocon Carl Gershman. The neocons gained more political momentum from the U.S. military might displayed during the Persian Gulf War of 1990-91. Many Americans began to see war as fun, almost like a video game in which “enemy” forces get obliterated from afar. On TV news shows, tough-talking pundits were all the rage. If you wanted to be taken seriously, you couldn’t go wrong taking the most macho position, what I sometimes call the “er-er-er” growling effect. Combined with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the notion that U.S. military supremacy was unmatched and unchallengeable gave rise to neocon theories about turning “diplomacy” into nothing more than the delivery of U.S. ultimatums. In the Middle East, that was a view shared by Israeli hardliners, who had grown tired of negotiating with the Palestinians and other Arabs. Instead of talk, there would be “regime change” for any government that would not fall into line. This strategy was articulated in 1996 when a group of American neocons, including Richard Perle and Douglas Feith, went to work for Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign in Israel and compiled a strategy paper, called “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” Iraq was first on the neocon hit list, but next came Syria and Iran. The overriding idea was that once the regimes assisting the Palestinians and Hezbollah were removed or neutralized, then Israel could dictate peace terms to the Palestinians who would have no choice but to accept what was on the table. In 1998, the neocon Project for the New American Century, founded by neocons Robert Kagan and William Kristol, called for a U.S. invasion of Iraq, but President Bill Clinton balked at something that extreme. The situation changed, however, when President George W. Bush took office and the 9/11 attacks terrified and infuriated the American public. Suddenly, the neocons had a Commander-in-Chief who agreed with the need to eliminate Iraq’s Saddam Hussein – and Americans were easily persuaded although Iraq and Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11. [See Consortiumnews.com’s The Mysterious Why of the Iraq War.] The death of ‘realism’ The 2003 Iraq invasion sounded the death knell for foreign policy “realism” in Official Washington. Aging or dead, the old adult voices were silent or ignored. From Congress and the Executive Branch to the think tanks and the mainstream news media, almost all the “opinion leaders” were neocons and many liberals fell into line behind Bush’s case for war. And, even though the Iraq War “group think” was almost entirely wrong, both on the WMD justifications for war and the “cakewalk” expectations for remaking Iraq, almost no one who promoted the fiasco suffered punishment for either the illegality of the invasion or the absence of sanity in promoting such a harebrained scheme. Instead of negative repercussions, the Iraq War backers – the neocons and their liberal-hawk accomplices – essentially solidified their control over U.S. foreign policy and the major news media. From The New York Times and The Washington Post to the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, the “regime change” agenda continued to hold sway. It didn’t even matter when the sectarian warfare unleashed in Iraq left hundreds of thousands dead, displaced millions and gave rise to Al Qaeda’s ruthless Iraq affiliate. Not even the 2008 election of Barack Obama, an Iraq War opponent, changed this overall dynamic. Rather than standing up to this new foreign policy establishment, Obama bowed to it, retaining key players from President Bush’s national security team, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and General David Petraeus, and by hiring hawkish Democrats, including Sen. Hillary Clinton, who became Secretary of State, and Samantha Power at the National Security Council. Thus, the cult of “regime change” did not just survive the Iraq disaster; it thrived. Whenever a difficult foreign problem emerged, the go-to solution was still “regime change,” accompanied by the usual demonizing of a targeted leader, support for the “democratic opposition” and calls for military intervention. President Obama, arguably a “closet realist,” found himself as the foot-dragger-in-chief as he reluctantly was pulled along on one “regime change” crusade after another. In 2011, for instance, Secretary of State Clinton and National Security Council aide Power persuaded Obama to join with some hot-for-war European leaders to achieve “regime change” in Libya, where Muammar Gaddafi had gone on the offensive against groups in eastern Libya that he identified as Islamic terrorists. But Clinton and Power saw the case as a test for their theories of “humanitarian warfare” – or “regime change” to remove a “bad guy” like Gaddafi from power. Obama soon signed on and, with the U.S. military providing crucial technological support, a devastating bombing campaign destroyed Gaddafi’s army, drove him from Tripoli, and ultimately led to his torture-murder. ‘We came, we saw, he died’ Secretary Clinton scurried to secure credit for this “regime change.” According to one email chain in August 2011, her longtime friend and personal adviser Sidney Blumenthal praised the bombing campaign to destroy Gaddafi’s army and hailed the dictator’s impending ouster. “First, brava! This is a historic moment and you will be credited for realizing it,” Blumenthal wrote on Aug. 22, 2011. “When Qaddafi himself is finally removed, you should of course make a public statement before the cameras wherever you are, even in the driveway of your vacation home. … You must go on camera. You must establish yourself in the historical record at this moment. … The most important phrase is: ‘successful strategy.’” Clinton forwarded Blumenthal’s advice to Jake Sullivan, a close State Department aide. “Pls read below,” she wrote. “Sid makes a good case for what I should say, but it’s premised on being said after Q[addafi] goes, which will make it more dramatic. That’s my hesitancy, since I’m not sure how many chances I’ll get.” Sullivan responded, saying “it might make sense for you to do an op-ed to run right after he falls, making this point. … You can reinforce the op-ed in all your appearances, but it makes sense to lay down something definitive, almost like the Clinton Doctrine.” However, when Gaddafi abandoned Tripoli that day, President Obama seized the moment to make a triumphant announcement. Clinton’s opportunity to highlight her joy at the Libyan “regime change” had to wait until Oct. 20, 2011, when Gaddafi was captured, tortured and murdered. In a TV interview, Clinton celebrated the news when it appeared on her cell phone and paraphrased Julius Caesar’s famous line after Roman forces achieved a resounding victory in 46 B.C. and he declared, “veni, vidi, vici” – “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Clinton’s reprise of Caesar’s boast went: “We came; we saw; he died.” She then laughed and clapped her hands. Killary Clinton Gaddafi was captured, tortured & murdered Presumably, the “Clinton Doctrine” would have been a policy of “liberal interventionism” to achieve “regime change” in countries where there is some crisis in which the leader seeks to put down an internal security threat and where the United States objects to the action.  [TokyRose Note:  similar scenario - done by Clinton No. 1:  Yugoslavia] But the problem with Clinton’s boasting about the “Clinton Doctrine” was that the Libyan adventure quickly turned sour with the Islamic terrorists, whom Gaddafi had warned about, seizing wide swaths of territory and turning it into another Iraq-like badlands. On Sept. 11, 2012, this reality hit home when the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was overrun and U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other American diplomatic personnel were killed. It turned out that Gaddafi wasn’t entirely wrong about the nature of his opposition. Eventually, the extremist violence in Libya grew so out of control that the United States and European countries abandoned their embassies in Tripoli. Since then, Islamic State terrorists have begun decapitating Coptic Christians on Libyan beaches and slaughtering other “heretics.” Amid the anarchy, Libya has become a route for desperate migrants seeking passage across the Mediterranean to Europe. A war on Assad Parallel to the “regime change” in Libya was a similar enterprise in Syria in which the neocons and liberal interventionists pressed for the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad, whose government in 2011 cracked down on what had quickly become a violent rebellion led by extremist elements, though the Western propaganda portrayed the opposition as “moderate” and “peaceful.” For the first years of the Syrian civil war, the pretense remained that these “moderate” rebels were facing unjustified repression and the only answer was “regime change” in Damascus. Assad’s claim that the opposition included many Islamic extremists was largely dismissed as were Gaddafi’s alarms in Libya.  On Aug. 21, 2013, a sarin gas attack outside Damascus killed hundreds of civilians and the U.S. State Department and the mainstream news media immediately blamed Assad’s forces amid demands for military retaliation against the Syrian army. On Aug 30, 2013, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry claims to have proof that the Syrian gov't was responsible for a chemical weapons attack on Aug. 21, but evidence failed to materialize or was later discredited  [State Department photo] Despite doubts within the U.S. intelligence community about Assad’s responsibility for the sarin attack, which some analysts saw instead as a provocation by anti-Assad terrorists, the clamor from Official Washington’s neocons and liberal interventionists for war was intense and any doubts were brushed aside. But President Obama, aware of the uncertainty within the U.S. intelligence community, held back from a military strike and eventually worked out a deal, brokered by Russian President Vladimir Putin, in which Assad agreed to surrender his entire chemical-weapons arsenal while still denying any role in the sarin attack. Though the case pinning the sarin attack on the Syrian government eventually fell apart – with evidence pointing to a “false flag” operation by Sunni radicals to trick the United States into intervening on their side – Official Washington’s “group think” refused to reconsider the initial rush to judgment. In Monday’s column, Hiatt still references Assad’s “savagery of chemical weapons.” Any suggestion that the only realistic option in Syria is a power-sharing compromise that would include Assad – who is viewed as the protector of Syria’s Christian, Shiite and Alawite minorities – is rejected out of hand with the slogan, “Assad must go!” The neocons have created a conventional wisdom which holds that the Syrian crisis would have been prevented if only Obama had followed the neocons’ 2011 prescription of another U.S. intervention to force another “regime change.” Yet, the far more likely outcome would have been either another indefinite and bloody U.S. military occupation of Syria or the black flag of Islamic terrorism flying over Damascus. Get Putin Another villain who emerged from the 2013 failure to bomb Syria was Russian President Putin, who infuriated the neocons by his work with Obama on Syria’s surrender of its chemical weapons and who further annoyed the neocons by helping to get the Iranians to negotiate seriously on constraining their nuclear program. Despite the “regime change” disasters in Iraq and Libya, the neocons wanted to wave the “regime change” wand again over Syria and Iran. Putin got his comeuppance when U.S. neocons, including NED President Carl Gershman and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland (Robert Kagan’s wife), helped orchestrate a “regime change” in Ukraine on Feb. 22, 2014, overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych and putting in a fiercely anti-Russian regime on Russia’s border. F*ck the EU CIA Ukraine Coup   Victoria Nuland As thrilled as the neocons were with their “victory” in Kiev and their success in demonizing Putin in the mainstream U.S. news media, Ukraine followed the now-predictable post-regime-change descent into a vicious civil war. Western Ukrainians waged a brutal “anti-terrorist operation” against ethnic Russians in the east who resisted the U.S.-backed coup.   Thousands of Ukrainians died and millions were displaced as Ukraine’s national economy teetered toward collapse. Yet, the neocons and their liberal-hawk friends again showed their propaganda skills by pinning the blame for everything on “Russian aggression” and Putin. Though Obama was apparently caught off-guard by the Ukrainian “regime change,” he soon joined in denouncing Putin and Russia. The European Union also got behind U.S.-demanded sanctions against Russia despite the harm those sanctions also inflicted on Europe’s already shaky economy. Europe’s stability is now under additional strain because of the flows of refugees from the war zones of the Middle East. A dozen years of chaos So, we can now look at the consequences and costs of the past dozen years under the spell of neocon/liberal-hawk “regime change” strategies. According to many estimates, the death toll in Iraq, Syria and Libya has exceeded one million with several million more refugees flooding into – and stretching the resources – of fragile Mideast countries. Hundreds of thousands of other refugees and migrants have fled to Europe, putting major strains on the Continent’s social structures already stressed by the severe recession that followed the 2008 Wall Street crash. Even without the refugee crisis, Greece and other southern European countries would be struggling to meet their citizens’ needs. Stepping back for a moment and assessing the full impact of neoconservative policies, you might be amazed at how widely they have spread chaos across a large swath of the globe. Who would have thought that the neocons would have succeeded in destabilizing not only the Mideast but Europe as well. And, as Europe struggles, the export markets of China are squeezed, spreading economic instability to that crucial economy and, with its market shocks, the reverberations rumbling back to the United States, too. We now see the human tragedies of neocon/liberal-hawk ideologies captured in the suffering of the Syrians and other refugees flooding Europe and the death of children drowning as their desperate families flee the chaos created by “regime change.” But will the neocon/liberal-hawk grip on Official Washington finally be broken? Will a debate even be allowed about the dangers of “regime change” prescriptions in the future? Not if the likes of The Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt have anything to say about it. The truth is that Hiatt and other neocons retain their dominance of the mainstream U.S. news media, so all that one can expect from the various MSM outlets is more neocon propaganda, blaming the chaos not on their policy of “regime change” but on the failure to undertake even more “regime change. The one hope is that many Americans will not be fooled this time and that a belated “realism” will finally return to U.S. geopolitical strategies that will look for obtainable compromises to restore some political order to places such as Syria, Libya and Ukraine. Rather than more and more tough-guy/gal confrontations, maybe there will finally be some serious efforts at reconciliation. But the other reality is that the interventionist forces have rooted themselves deeply in Official Washington, inside NATO, within the mainstream news media and even in European institutions. It will not be easy to rid the world of the grave dangers created by neocon policies. http://newcoldwar.org/refugee-crisis-how-neocons-destabilized-europe/  ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT Ran into a problem formatting above copy article.   Best to go to original for easy read:  this copy's for me.  lol Lost my paragraph formatting while editing layout after highlighting (long story), not far off being ready to publish post.   Having spent ages highlighting, I've had to recreate the paragraphs.  Hopefully I've not put in too many additional paragraphs. The videos didn't appear in the linked-to article source. I really love this article.   I think Parry's being too kind to Obama.  Obama's on the same plutocratic / Wall Street team as everybody else: so the Ukraine coup came as no surprise to Obama. Those horrible women using 'humanitarianism' to destroy countries (and people), have never had anything to do with humanitarian concerns; that's just the cover and an excuse for destruction.  And these same neocon animals are now destroying Europe - with the cooperation of neocon swine European politicians who don't care about the future of their own people or nations. The proposed 'Clinton doctrine' goes way back to the early 1990s Balkans under Bill 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman' Clinton (and probably earlier than that).  So, this is not that new. We're all screwed. What we see in the United States is pretty much what controls the entire West, via the US neocon foreign policy that is backed by various toady politicians in US-allied countries, who are replicas acting on behalf of the same monied interests (rather than national interests). The 'opposition' are just more replicas of these neocons and are their accomplices, no matter what they publicly pay lip-service to. Now I need to go away and digest all of this.  lol This means that Western governments don't care about us or our societies, and that they routinely lie to us. It also means that Western media routinely lies to us, as well. Assange Transnational Security Elite, Carving Up the World Using Your Tax Money London  OCT8 Antiwar Mass Assembly (2011) Link  |  here ꕤ

Koch Whores - Wikileaks Expose: Kochs, Neocons & Covert Regime Change Ops (By Yasha Levine)

Koch Whores / October 17, 2011 Wikileaks Expose: Kochs, Neocons and Covert Regime Change Ops By Yasha Levine http://exiledonline.com/wikileaks-expose-kochs-neocons-and-covert-regime-change-ops/ Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. ................................................................ 'Anti-interventionalist' Kochs 'democracy building' in downtown Dushambe and former Soviet surrounds? ................................................................ Dushanbe Capital Tajikistan Largest city. Dushanbe means "Monday" - from market town on Mondays Saturday, 7 Mar - 3:20 pm, 5°C Sunni Islam / Secular Among others: Achaemenid, 1st Persian Empire Hephthalite, Iranian/Turkic  Samanid, Sunni Persian Mongol Timurid dynasty, Sunni Persianate Russia Empire Lang: Tajik = dialect of Modern Persian 'Stan' = 'place' {Persian} Tajikistan = Land of Tajik Islamisation = 7thC ................................................................ ROUGH SUMMARY - LEVINE ARTICLE CHARLES KOCH 'libertarian' think tank:  FREEDOM HOUSE one of the most notorious CIA / US State Dept front groups for American Empire Funding pro-Western opposition movements & seeding regime change across former Soviet Union[2] INSTITUTE OF HUMANE STUDIES (IHS) 'Libertarian recruitment & educational' organisation 2005 - Takes over Tajikistan running and funding of evicted FREEDOM HOUSE NGO IHS - ensconced in Tajikistan & controlled by Charles Koch New NGO - FREEDOM - founded to continue to meddle in local 'human rights community'[2] INSTITUTE FOR HUMAN STUDIES keen to fund >Tajik think tank to facilitate journalists and academics looking at domestic problems & solutions >Tajik think tank focused on 'economic & legal rights' and intellectual debate[2] FREEDOM HOUSE[2] Not charity, feeding starving third-world children or educating them Founded by Eleanor Roosevelt. Part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt domestic propaganda initiative. WWII propaganda to enthuse Americans to fight Nazis. Evolved into semi-covert ops arm of CIA / State Dept. Staff run by intelligence personnel. Funded almost exclusively by US federal govt. Mission:  "to challenge regimes hostile to US interests and values". By way of trojan:  "promoting the cause of political and economic freedom outside the US" FREEDOM HOUSE[2] Provided covert support to: >Afghanistan mujahadeen (jihadists)  >Contras in Nicaragua (various rebel groups, contra revolution / counter-revolutionaries) >Highly in Cube, aiming to subvert Castro govt. Cuba UN Rep:  "[FREEDOM HOUSE]  ... a machinery of subversion, closer to an intelligence service than an NGO."  >Brief coup - President Hugo Chavez 2002 >Main focus (Bush years):  Russia & former Soviet Union. FREEDOM HOUSE - FORMER SOVIET UNION - 2000-04[2] Three Musketeers of regime change & US corporate colonisation: Freedom House Open Society Institute (Soros) National Endowment for Democracy manipulated political opposition movements that brought down remnants of Soviet-era leadership in: >Serbia >Georgia >Ukraine Reformers, hand-picked by US business interests, were installed.[2] [Hey, this is very much what is happening before our eyes in Ukraine and also what appears to have also gone down to some extent in Romania, by the look of the politics, the players, the reforms and the European Union / Western interests overreach in Romania, right down to a Eurocentric reformer politician recently arguing that Romania's head of intelligence ought to be approved by NATO, before his appointment. Monica Macovei  Romania - argues appointment of Romania security head without NATO consultation unacceptable. "I understand that our NATO partners have not been consulted on this appointment and I consider this unacceptable ..." Romania parliament to vote on new intel head: Eduard Hellvig for Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI)  http://www.ziare.com/monica-macovei/stiri-monica-macovei/macovei-propunerea-lui-hellvig-la-sefia-sri-fara-consultarea-nato-inacceptabila-1350600  ] American NGO Musketeers' MO: Installing US corporate interests hand-picked reformers. Funding & establishment of political groups, NGOs & media organisations that chorus freemarket ideas & promote Western-friendly politicians. Training of activists and organisers. Broadcasting of catchy slogans & logos. By tapping into: (a) genuine desire for reform; (b) naive trust in West; channelling votes to politicians who took "marching orders directly from the IMF".[2] FREEDOM HOUSE Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research. Helped elect[2]: > Georgia - Mikheil Saakashvili,  groomed by State Dept to play role of Washington stooge > Ukraine - Viktor Yushchenko  Ukraine Central Bank (UCB) head [ * Yushchenko = married to State Dept. spook & former Reagan admin. member [2]] ................................................................ Mrs. Yushchenko by Peter Robinson    December 6, 2004 12:16 PM “Do you know who Yushchenko’s wife is?” John Podhoretz just asked in an email. “Turns out he’s married to Kathy Chumachenko, who worked in public liaison when we were at the White House!” Kathy Chumachenko, now Kathy Yushchenko, was one of the most completely delightful people in the Reagan White House, a Reaganite’s Reaganite. From Reagan staffer to first lady of Ukraine. How the Gipper would have loved it. http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/91560/mrs-yushchenko-peter-robinson ................................................................ Viktor Yushchenko Former President of Ukraine Third President of Ukraine from 2005 to 2010 Career in Ukrainian politics Head National Bank Ukraine 1999 to 2001 =  Prime Minister Dismissal as PM 2004 Ukrainian presidential election =  repeat (two-round / runoff) election (vs PM Viktor Yanukovych) Ukrainian Supreme Court called for the runoff election to be repeated allegations of widespread electoral fraud in favour of Viktor Yanukovych in original vote Public protests over alleged electoral fraud played major role in presidential election & led to:  Ukraine's Orange Revolution.[1] Assassination attempt in late 2004 during election campaign Yushchenko ingested hazardous amounts of TCDD (a contaminant in Agent Orange) = suffered disfigurement as a result of the poisoning -  slowly recovering. SLOGANS Yushchenko went into opposition to President Leonid Kuchma Founded the Our Ukraine bloc 2002 parliamentary election = Ukraine's most popular political force (on just short of 25% votes) "Yushchenko had slightly modernized his political platform, adding social partnership and other liberal slogans to older ideas of European integration, including Ukraine's joining NATO and fighting corruption. Supporters of Yushchenko were organized in the "Syla Narodu" ("Power to the People") electoral coalition, which he and his political allies led, with the Our Ukraine coalition as the main constituent force." [1] [Going by Levine's article, that sure looks like something CIA NGOs would have arranged in Ukraine, right down to the 'liberal slogans'.] INSTITUTE FOR HUMANE STUDIES[2] 'Home' of Kochite Reaganites (eg Nick Gillespie, Radley Balko) est. over 40 years primo liberatarian org & homebase for Friedrich Von Hayek, economist / libertarian thought proponent (and presumably devotee of bad news neo-classical economics - see Four Horsemen doco) Libertarian = anti-state intervention Kochs / Cato Institute >seen to be 'staunch anti-interventionists' (even by Glenn Greenwald)[2] INSTITUTE FOR HUMANE STUDIES[2] + Koch libertarian orgs (eg CATO INSTITUTE) may have history of smuggling banned libertarian literature into Soviet Union However:  FREEDOM HOUSE stands apart Not merely spreading ideas; it is about: "taking over for a CIA arm designed for foreign intervention and regime change."[2] Tajikistan involvement = "Just the fact that they were on the scene, buddying up with war-crazed neocons, CIA goons and State Department bureaucrats famed for their covert regime change ops tells us all we need to know: the anti-interventionist/anti-empire position of libertarianism is just another Koch con meant to give libertarians credibility, and bowl over gullible lefties and progressives into supporting the Kochs’ brutal 19th century economic policies." [2] COMMENT The key information contained in Yasha Levine article (which I really enjoyed), has been summarised above.  Best to read the article, in case my understanding's off.  And it's an enjoyable read.  Must be so nice being clever. Tinkered a bit with the notes by putting in some info from Wikipedia, as I did quickie look-ups. The thing about 'three musketeers' wasn't in the article; it's my way of trying to remember the NGOs. Hoping this note taking will help my recall, but I've got a memory like a sieve.  By next week, I'll probably forget most of what I've learned.  As those discussing Wikipedia on Reddit may attest, Wikipedia should be known as as 'Sneakipedia'  because of the preposterous spin and editing of entries by PR types and various people with political agendas doing the edits. Relied on some information regarding the Libyan army the other day, accepting without question what was before me: Libyan National Army  = newly assembled  by National Transitional Council (transit. govt)  fm rebel forces that defeated Gaddafi 2011  #Libya Somebody corrected me by pointing out that it wasn't a LNA win rebel win; Libya was bombed by the US and NATO. And so it was.  But the entry I was looking on the LNA itself, described it as 'forces aligned' to the Transitional National Council 'win' (the entry for which indicates a 'rebel forces' overthrow), which I just regurgitated without thinking (even though I vaguely know about Western intervention). I'm bashing this out quickly, so I'm not going to take the time to check whether the entry maintains it was an rebel win (despite intervention) or take the time to read about the intervention itself.  Intervention looks very one sided:  NATO forces are MASSIVE versus Libya.  Does that seem fair?  And look what it's produced; it's 2015 and Libya is still in chaos. Putin was right. Couldn't help myself.  Checked the Libyan National Army entry (quickly) to see what it said.  Was at first horrified, thinking I'd misunderstood the entry and had presented something that wasn't in the entry.  As I scanned further down, it looks like LNA has been credited with the Gaddafi defeat, so I didn't make I didn't make it up: The Libyan National Army was founded in 2011 by the National Transitional Council, after forces aligned to it defeated the previous Libyan Army and overthrew Muammar Gaddafi's regime.   ... Transitional National Council,[3] was the de facto government of Libya for a period during and after the Libyan Civil War, in which rebel forces overthrew the regime of Muammar Gaddafi.  No time to check the rest of the entries properly.  For all I know, I'm at fault because I'm just jumping on the first information I see.  But 'rebel forces which overthrew the regime of Muammar Gaddafi' is arguable, I suppose, if you consider the role of NATO. Somebody recently suggested I check out 'cultural Marxism'.  So I did.  During my travels, I found the entries on Reddit pointing out the bias etc, regarding Wikipedia entries.  Thought it was interesting reading in relation to the Sneakipedia failings as well as cultural Marxism, which I think I'm opposed to because I'm not huge on being told what to think.  But I've got a bit more reading to do on that before I know what the deal is; that's just my initial impression. Someone suggested a counter Wikipedia, I think.  A counter internet would also be good.  The internet as we know it doesn't accommodate truth.  It's censored like crazy.  Not too big on that. Also not big on the prospect of Google being the 'Ministry of Truth' of the internet.  Proposal to index searches based on the 'accuracy' of information rather than popularity of hits.  That is just WRONG and totalitarian. We should all bail and start using other platforms, avoiding Google like the plague. Google Gives New Meaning to “Orwellian” – Becomes Ministry of Truth http://www.globalresearch.ca/google-gives-new-meaning-to-orwellian-becomes-ministry-of-truth/5434333 [Excuse any typos.  In a mad rush.  Too tired to stay up and edit.]