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Why risk nuclear war when political weapons are more effective? Printer friendly page Print This
By Mike Vail, Blacklisted News
Blacklisted News
Tuesday, Dec 9, 2014

Across the spectrum, citizens were shocked and caught off guard to see nations fall like dominoes in the midst of the so-called Arab Spring. On every television channel, we witnessed masses of countrymen and women standing up to the most oppressive regimes on Earth. In numbers there is strength; but what about discipline, tactics and organization? It is easy enough to get a flash mob to show up somewhere using Facebook or Twitter but how do you overcome decades of oppression and violence to somehow find your collective backbone and stand up to vicious systems like in Tunisia or Egypt? Where there is smoke there is fire and beneath the surface there is a smoldering fire that is waiting to be unleashed upon nations of their choosing. But who are they?

The Club of Rome declares in their 1992 document, “The First Global Revolution” that democracies are not the cure for the world's problems. Non-governmental agencies will step in and use the power of the masses:
“Democracy is not a panacea. It cannot organize everything and It is unaware of its own limits...Not only have we to find better means of governance at national and international levels, but we also have to determine the characteristics of the capacity to govern...they are reaching a consensus by practical procedures rather than by the formal voting of governmental representatives....The success of grassroots NGO initiatives no longer needs to be demonstrated. Very often, these movements are sparked off by individual men and women. “
The influential Malthusian group, The Club of Rome, saw in the 1990s that non-state actors or non-official actors would fill the void where governments could not act. Today the number of NGO's are in the tens of millions and many of them we are very familiar with like: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Oxfam International; Amnesty International; and Greenpeace. You will see how revolutions are 'sparked off' by NGO's but also by governmental organizations that appear aboveboard and benign.

The Washington Post exposes the “The New World of Spyless Coups”:
“[Allen] Weinstein's career as an overt operator dates back to 1980, when he joined Soviet dissidents in organizing a citizens' committee to monitor the Helsinki Accords on Human Rights. He quickly became connected with the network of pro-democracy activists who were then beginning to challenge anti-democratic regimes around the world. Soon he was sponsoring conferences for dissidents, arranging visits for them to the United States and otherwise making trouble.

Weinstein founded the Center for Democracy in 1984 as an umbrella for his global meddling. He dispatched election-monitoring teams to the Philippines, Panama and Nicaragua that are credited with having helped topple undemocratic regimes in those countries through the ballot box. By 1990, he was hosting meetings for newly elected Polish parliamentarians; for legislative clerks from Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland; and for constitution-drafters from those three countries.

A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA," agrees Weinstein.The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection.

Allen Weinstein is just one of many overt operatives who helped prepare the way for the political miracles of the past two years by sponsoring exchanges and other contacts with liberal reformers from the East. It's worth naming a few more of them, to show the breadth of this movement for democracy: William Miller of the American Committee on U.S.-Soviet Relations; financier George Soros of the Soros Foundation; John Mroz of the Center for East-West Security Studies; John Baker of the Atlantic Council; and Harriett Crosby of the Institute for Soviet-American Relations. This has truly been a revolution by committee.”
Covert political war has been privatized and now it is not so easy to point the finger at the United States because it is difficult to find out who is funding these organizations. The nebulous connections between oil barons, bankers, hedge fund managers, and other public sources of funding gives these groups a lot of cover. Paid agitators and Twitter is not enough to overturn Egypt or the Ukraine. You have to have very good communication at a grass roots level or there is no organization. Groups like these must mold the average citizen into one gigantic spear and it most be thrown with deadly aim. All of that does not guarantee success which is why past attempts in Russia have failed.

The Institute for Policy Studies shows how NED and USAID overturn select countries to convert them to free-market friendly countries. Democracy is not even in their thought process:
“The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created by the Reagan administration in the early 1980s to push democratic reforms and roll back Soviet influence in various parts of the globe. In his 1983 speech inaugurating NED, President Ronald Reagan said: "I just decided that this nation, with its heritage of Yankee traders, ought to do a little selling of the principles of democracy."[1]

The private, congressionally funded NED has been a controversial tool in U.S. foreign policy because of its support of efforts to overthrow foreign governments. As the writers Jonah Gindin and Kirsten Weld remarked in the January/February 2007 NACLA Report on the Americas: "Since [1983], the NED and other democracy-promoting governmental and nongovernmental institutions have intervened successfully on behalf of 'democracy'—actually a very particular form of low-intensity democracy chained to pro-market economics—in countries from Nicaragua to the Philippines, Ukraine to Haiti, overturning unfriendly 'authoritarian' governments (many of which the United States had previously supported) and replacing them with handpicked pro-market allies."

Inter Press Service contributor Emad Mekay argued that NED-backed groups in Egypt were supporting a “small circle of sloganeering politicians on the take from the U.S. government who are unpopular and discredited among their own people.” He added, “When these U.S.-funded politicians ran for office in Egypt's first real and democratic elections last month, they lost, leaving Washington with no leverage in the new Egypt. If Washington delivers on its threats to cut aid to Egypt, it is undermining whatever remains of U.S. influence.”

Under NED's elaborate structure, designed to veil U.S. government funding, U.S. Information Agency (USIA) and USAID funding did not flow directly to foreign political parties, unions, business associations, and civic groups, but was instead routed through the AFL-CIO, the International Chamber of Commerce, and the IRI and NDIIA. NED's origins go back to a bipartisan commission called the American Political Foundation established by the State Department that began to address the problem of having U.S.-funded "soft-side" overseas operations perceived as CIA fronts.”

The Washington Post unveils a nasty bit of history involving USAID using school books to propagandize a generation of Afghani kids to go fight the Soviets for god:

“In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.

The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.

Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university's education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994.”
For all of the rhetoric about Democracy coming from the United States, it is very rare if any democracy emerges from these revolutions. I'll give you two examples of recent US 'actions' and why:
  • Libya: Mu'ammar Qaddafi was going to nationalize the oil fields and dump the US petrodollar and establish a Gold-backed Libyan currency. The US rushed to war, rushed towards a kinetic military action to topple Qaddafi. Also don't forget that Libya is one of the largest African oil producers.
  • Iraq: Saddam Hussein, he had planned to drop the petrodollar and switch to Euros. The propaganda used to remove Saddam from power was easy enough based on his own vicious actions. The Rendon Group and Hill and Knowlton weaved a patriotic tale in which America stopped a dictator for the best of reasons. America loves a hero and Jessica Lynch was pushed to the fore until what really happened spilled out on television.
Project Censored gives us the perfect example how the revolutions in Egypt and Ukraine are connected. An information sheet for protesters was given out by a US-linked NGO in both countries with the exact same contents in different languages:
“Close analysis of documents related to the recent protests in Ukraine culminating in the ouster of the Viktor Yanukovych-led government suggest probable foreign-orchestration, according to historian and geopolitical analyst F. William Engdahl. The US has vigorously advocated for Ukraine-European Union integration, much as it backed the 2004 failed “Orange Revolution” to split Ukraine from Russia in an effort to weaken Russia. Yanukovych opposed such amalgamation.

In December 2013 Ukrainians presented evidence suggesting direct involvement of the Belgrade-based, US-financed training group, CANVAS, as a key player behind the Kiev protests–an information sheet distributed to opposition protestors in Kiev that “is a word-for-word and picture-for-picture translation of the pamphlet used by US-financed Canvas organizers in the 2011 Cairo Tahrir Square protests that toppled Hosni Mubarak and opened the door to the US-backed Muslim Brotherhood.”
Revolutions springing from entrenched regimes do not come from thin air. No government is omniscient or omnipresent, so it is impossible for them to know how everything will shake out. Take a good look at Libya; Qaddafi was overthrown and immediately after the rebels began killing other tribes and now it is a full blown civil war. And I am 100% sure that the Egyptian people did not wish to be taken over by a military dictatorship; now their wealth is being taken by military leaders in high positions. Look at Thailand, I don't know which country is worse, but the military is ruling both countries and cracking down on the mainstream and alternative media.

Regime change has become a science but it is far from perfect. You can see the theory in action, whether some poor fools are taken in and taken over or a charismatic military leader is provided money and training. There is no such thing as reform any longer and people will begin to revolt independently. Some political animals are used as a steam valve to talk the talk and give the unwashed masses a figure they can rely on. If they are legitimate their character will be assaulted and they will be quietly bought off or disposed of.

Why use bombs and bullets that risk a larger outbreak when it is easier to manipulate the minds of men and put a couple million dollars in someones coffers and pick a resource rich nation. Some use color revolutions and others use soft power while threatening violence. These governmental and non-governmental organizations need lots of daylight applied to their operations. We the people need to be more shrewd in who we put our trust in. Give some serious thought where you spend your dollars - you might think that they are feeding Africans when they are really arming them.


Mike Vail is a US-based investigative journalist, geopolitical analyst, and publisher of STRATRISKS.COM. 

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