The Shady National
Endowment for Democracy
&The Prime Agenda of ‘Whoever’
is Next US President
By
F. William Engdahl
Boiling
Frogs
January 10, 2012
January 10, 2012
Washington clearly wants ‘finito’ with Russia’s Putin as in basta! Or as they said in Egypt last spring, Kefaya–enough!
Hillary Clinton and
friends have apparently decided Russia’s prospective next president, Vladimir
Putin, is a major obstacle to their plans.
Few however understand why. Russia today, in tandem with China and to a significant degree Iran, form the spine, however shaky, of the only effective global axis of resistance to a world dominated by one sole superpower.
On December 8 several
days after election results for Russia’s parliamentary elections were
announced, showing a sharp drop in popularity for Prime Minister Putin’s United
Russia party, Putin accused the United States and specifically Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton of fuelling the Russian opposition protesters and their
election protests. Putin stated,
“The (US) Secretary of State was quick to evaluate the elections, saying that they are unfair and unjust even before she received materials from the Office of Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (the OSCE international election monitors-w.e.) observers.”[1]
Putin went on to claim
that Clinton’s premature comments were the necessary signal to the waiting
opposition groups that the US Government would back their protests. Clinton’s
comments, the seasoned Russian intelligence pro stated,
became a “signal for our activists who began active work with the US Department of State.” [2]
Major western media chose
either to downplay the Putin statement or to focus almost entirely on the
claims of an emerging Russian opposition movement.
A little research shows that, if anything, Putin was downplaying the degree of brazen US Government interference into the political processes of his country.
In this case the country
is not Tunisia or Yemen or even Egypt. It is the world’s second nuclear
superpower, even if it might still be an economic lesser power. Hillary is
playing with thermonuclear fire.
DEMOCRACY
OR SOMETHING ELSE?
No mistake, Putin is not
a world champion practitioner of what most consider democracy. His announcement
some months back that he and current President Medvedev had agreed to switch
jobs after Russia’s March 4 Presidential vote struck even many Russians as
crass power politics and backroom deal-making.
That being said, what
Washington is doing to interfere with that regime change is more than brazen
and interventionist. The same Obama Administration which just signed into law
measures effectively ripping to shreds the Bill of Rights of the US
Constitution for American citizens [3] is
posing as world supreme judge of others’ adherence to what they define as
democracy.
Let’s examine closely
Putin’s charge of US interference in the election process. If we look, we find
openly stated in their August 2011 Annual Report that a Washington-based NGO
with the innocuous name, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), is all over
the place inside Russia.
The NED is financing an
International Press Center in Moscow where some 80 international NGOs can hold
press briefings on whatever they choose. They fund numerous “youth advocacy”
and leadership workshops to “help youth engage in political activism.” In fact,
officially they spent more than $2,783,000 in 2010 on dozens of such programs
across Russia. Spending for 2011 won’t be published until later in 2012. [4]
The NED is also financing
key parts of the Russian “independent” polling and election monitoring, a
crucial part of being able to claim election fraud. They finance in part the
Regional Civic Organization in Defense of Democratic Rights and Liberties
“GOLOS.” According to the NED Annual Report the funds went
“to carry out a detailed analysis of the autumn 2010 and spring 2011 election cycles in Russia, which will include press monitoring, monitoring of political agitation, activity of electoral commissions, and other aspects of the application of electoral legislation in the long-term run-up to the elections.”[5]
In September, 2011, a few
weeks before the December elections the NED financed a Washington
invitation-only conference featuring the Russian “independent” polling
organization, the Levada Center.
According to NED’s own
website Levada, another recipient of NED money, [6] had
done a series of opinion polls, a standard method used in the West to analyze
the feelings of citizens. The polls profiled “the mood of the electorate in the
run up to the Duma and presidential elections, perceptions of candidates and
parties, and voter confidence in the system of ‘managed democracy’ that has
been established over the last decade.”
One of the featured
speakers at that Washington conference was Vladimir Kara-Murza, member of the
federal council of Solidarnost (“Solidarity”), Russia’s democratic opposition
movement. He is also “advisor to Duma opposition leader Boris Nemtsov”
according to NED. Another speaker came from the right-wing neo-conservative
Hudson Institute. [7]
Nemtsov, one of the most
prominent of the Putin opposition today is also co-chairman of Solidarnost, a
name curiously enough imitated from the Cold War days when the CIA financed the
Polish Solidarnosc workers’ opposition of Lech Walesa. More on Nemtsov later.
And on December 15, 2011,
again in Washington, just as the series of US-supported protests were being
launched against Putin, led by Solidarnost and other organizations, the NED
held another conference titled, Youth Activism in Russia: Can a New Generation
Make a Difference? The featured speaker was Tamirlan Kurbanov, who according to
the NED, “most recently served as a program officer at the Moscow office of the
National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, where he was involved
in developing and expanding the capacities of political and civic
organizations; promoting citizen participation in public life, youth engagement
in particular.” [8]
The National Democratic
Institute is an arm of the NED.
THE
SHADY HISTORY OF NED
Helping youth engage in
political activism is precisely what the same NED did in Egypt over the past
several years in the lead up to the toppling of Mubarak. The same NED was
instrumental by informed accounts in the US-backed “Color Revolutions” in
2003-2004 in Ukraine and Georgia that brought US-backed pro-NATO surrogates to
power. The same NED has been active in promoting “human rights” in Myanmar, in
Tibet, and China’s oil-rich Xinjiang province. [9]
As careful analysts of the 2004 Ukraine “Orange revolution” and the numerous other US-financed color revolutions discovered, control of polling and ability to dominate international media perceptions, especially major TV such as CNN or BBC is an essential component of the Washington destabilization agenda. The Levada Center would likely be in a crucial position in this regard to issue polls showing discontent with the regime.
By their description, the
National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a “private, nonprofit foundation
dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the
world. Each year, with funding from the US Congress, NED supports more than
1,000 projects of non-governmental groups abroad who are working for democratic
goals in more than 90 countries.”[10]
It couldn’t sound more
noble or high-minded. However, they prefer to leave out their own true history.
In the early 1980’s CIA director Bill Casey convinced President Ronald Reagan
to create a plausibly private NGO, the NED, to advance Washington’s global
agenda via other means than direct CIA action. It was a part of the process of
“privatizing” US intelligence to make their work more “effective.” Allen
Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, said in a Washington
Post interview in 1991,
“A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”[11]
Interesting. The majority
of funds for NED come from US taxpayers through Congress. It is in every way,
shape and form a US Government intelligence community asset.
The NED was created
during the Reagan Administration to function as a de facto CIA,
privatized so as to allow it more freedom of action. NED board members are
typically drawn from the Pentagon and US intelligence community. It has
included retired NATO General Wesley Clark, the man who led the US bombing of
Serbia in 1999.
Key figures linked to
clandestine CIA actions who served on NED’s board have included Otto Reich,
John Negroponte, Henry Cisneros and Elliot Abrams. The Chairman of the NED
Board of Directors in 2008 was Vin Weber, founder of the ultraconservative
organization, Empower America, and campaign fundraiser for George W. Bush.
Current NED chairman is John Bohn, former CEO of the controversial Moody’s
rating agency which played a nefarious role in the still-unraveling US mortgage
securities collapse. As well today’s NED board includes neo-conservative Bush-era
ambassador to Iraq and to Afghanistan, Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad.[12]
PUTIN’S WELL-REHEARSED OPPOSITION
It’s also instructive to
look at the leading opposition figures who seem to have stepped forward in
Russia in recent days. The current opposition “poster boy” favorite of Russian
youth and especially western media is Russian blogger Alexei Navalny whose blog
is titled LiveJournal. Navalny has featured prominently as a quasi-martyr of
the protest movement after spending 15 days in Putin’s jail for partaking in a
banned protest. At a large protest rally on Christmas Day December 25 in
Moscow, Navalny, perhaps intoxicated by seeing too many romantic Sergei
Eisenstein films of the 1917 Russian Revolution, told the crowd,
“I see enough people here to take the Kremlin and the White House (Russia’s Presidential home-w.e.) right now…”[13]
Western establishment
media is infatuated with Navalny. England’s BBC described Navalny as “arguably
the only major opposition figure to emerge in Russia in the past five years,”
and US Time magazine called him “Russia’s Erin Brockovich,” a curious
reference to the Hollywood film starring Julie Roberts as a trade union
organizer. However, more relevant is the fact that Navalny went to the elite
American East Coast Yale University, also home to the Bush family, where he was
a “Yale World Fellow.” [14]
The charismatic Navalny
however is also or has been on the payroll of Washington’s regime-destabilizing
National Endowment for Democracy (NED). According to a posting on Navalny’s own
blog, LiveJournal, he was financed in 2007-2008 by the NED. His Washington NED
contact person was Frank Conatser. [15]
A facsimile of an email
exchange between Navalny and Conatser fronm November 17, 2007 is partially
reproduced here.
ГРАНТЫ
From: Frank Conatser [mailto:frankc@NED.ORG]
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2007 12:12 AM
To: Navalny Alexey; Aleksey Navalny
Cc: John Squier; Marc Schleifer
Subject: NED Agreements No. 2006-576 & No. 2007-688
From: Frank Conatser [mailto:frankc@NED.ORG]
Sent: Saturday, November 17, 2007 12:12 AM
To: Navalny Alexey; Aleksey Navalny
Cc: John Squier; Marc Schleifer
Subject: NED Agreements No. 2006-576 & No. 2007-688
Frank
Conatser
Grants Administrator for Eurasia
National Endowment for Democracy
1025 F St, NW, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20004
202-378-9660 (phone)
202-378-9860 (fax)
Grants Administrator for Eurasia
National Endowment for Democracy
1025 F St, NW, Suite 800
Washington, DC 20004
202-378-9660 (phone)
202-378-9860 (fax)
(Excerpt
from email exchange between Alexey Navalty and NED)[16]
Along with Navalny, key
actors in the anti-Putin protest movement are centered around Solidarnost which
was created in December 2008 by Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov and others.
Nemtsov is hardly one to protest corruption. According to Business Week
Russia of September 23, 2007, Nemtsov introduced Russian banker Boris
Brevnov to Gretchen Wilson, a US citizen and an employee of the International Finance
Corporation, a financing arm of the World Bank. Wilson and Brevnov married.
With the help of Nemtsov
Wilson managed to privatize Balakhna Pulp and Paper mill at the giveaway price
of just $7 million. The enterprise was sucked dry and then sold to the Wall
Street-Swiss investment bank, CS First Boston bank. The annual turnover of the
mill was reportedly $250 million. [17]
CS First Boston bank also
paid for Nemtsov’s trips to the very expensive Davos World Economic Forum. When
Nemtsov became a member of the cabinet, his protégé Brevnov was appointed the
chairman of the Unified Energy System of Russia JSC. Two years later in 2009
Boris Nemtsov, today’s “Mr. anti-corruption,” used his influence reportedly to
get Brevnov off the hook for charges of embezzling billions from assets of
Unified Energy System. [18]
Nemtsov also took money
from jailed Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 1999 when the latter was
using his billions to try to buy the Russian parliament or Duma. In 2004 Nemtsov
met with exiled billionaire oligarch Boris Berezovsky in a secret gathering
with other exiled Russian tycoons.
When Nemtsov was detailed
by Russian authorities for allegations of foreign funding of his new political
party, “For Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption,” US Senators John McCain
and Joe Liberman and Mike Hammer of the Obama National Security Council came to
support of Nemtsov. [19]
Nemtsov’s close crony,
Vladimir Ryzhkov of Solidarnost is also closely tied to the Swiss Davos
circles, even founding a Siberian Davos. According to Russian press accounts
from April 2005, Ryzhkov formed a Committee 2008 in 2003 to “draw” funds of the
imprisoned Khodorkovsky along with soliciting funds from fugitive oligarchs
such as Boris Berezovsky and western foundations such as the Soros Foundation.
The stated aim of the effort was to rally “democratic” forces against Putin. On
May 23, 2011 Ryzhkov, Nemtzov and several others filed to register a new Party
of Peoples’ Freedom to ostensibly field a presidential candidate against Putin
in 2012.[20]
Another prominent face in
the recent anti-Putin rallies is former world chess champion turned right-wing
politician, Garry Kasparov, another founder of Solidarnost. Kasparov was
identified several years ago as being a board member of a Washington
neo-conservative military think-tank. In April 2007, Kasparov admitted he was a
board member of the National Security Advisory Council of Center for Security
Policy, a “non-profit, non-partisan national security organization that
specializes in identifying policies, actions, and resource needs that are vital
to American security.”
Inside Russia Kasparov is
more infamous for his earlier financial ties to Leonid Nevzlin, former Yukos
vice-president and partner of Michael Khodorokvsky. Nevzlin fled to Israel on
being charged in Russia on charges of murder and hiring contract killers to
eliminate “objectionable people” while Yukos vice-president. [21]
In 2009 Kasparov and
Boris Nemtsov met with no less than Barack Obama to discuss Russia’s opposition
to Putin at the US President’s personal invitation at Washington’s Ritz Carlton
Hotel. Nemtsov had called for Obama to meet with opposition forces in Russia:
“If the White House agrees to Putin’s suggestion to speak only with pro-Putin organizations… this will mean that Putin has won, but not only that: Putin will become be assured that Obama is weak,” he said.
During the same 2009 US
trip Nemtsov was invited to speak at the New York Council on Foreign Relations,
perhaps the most influential US foreign policy think-tank. Significantly, not
only has the US State Department and US-backed political NGOs such as NED
poured millions into building an anti-Putin coalition inside Russia. The
President personally has intervened into the process.[22]
Ryzhkov, Nemtzov, Navalty
and Putin’s former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin were all involved in
organizing the December 25th Moscow Christmas anti-Putin rally which
drew an estimated 120,000.[23]
Washington's dream for Putin but it ain't quite this bad, much to Hillary's dismay.
WHY PUTIN?
The salient question is
why Putin at this point?
We need not look far for the answer. Washington and especially Barack Obama’s Administration don’t give a hoot about whether Russia is democratic or not.Their concern is the obstacle to Washington’s plans for Full Spectrum Dominance of the planet that a Putin Presidency will represent.
According to the Russian
Constitution, the President of the Russian Federation head of state, supreme
commander-in-chief and holder of the highest office in the Russian Federation.
He will take direct control of defense and foreign policy.
We must ask what policy?
Clearly strong
countermeasures against the blatant NATO encirclement of Russia with
Washington’s dangerous ballistic missile installations around Russia will be
high on Putin’s agenda.
Hillary Clinton’s “reset” will be in the dustbin if it is not already. We can also expect a more aggressive use of Russia’s energy card with pipeline diplomacy to deepen economic ties between European NATO members such as Germany, France and Italy, ultimately weakening the EU support for aggressive NATO measures against Russia.We can expect a deepening of Russia’s turn towards Eurasia, especially with China, Iran and perhaps India to firm up the shaky spine of resistance to Washington’s New World Order plans.
It will take more than a
few demonstrations in sub-freezing weather in Moscow and St. Petersburg by a
gaggle of corrupt or shady opposition figures such as Nemtsov or Kasparov to
derail Russia.
What is clear is that Washington is pushing on all fronts ~ Iran and Syria, where Russia has a vital naval port, on China, now on Russia, and on the Eurozone countries led by Germany. It has the smell of an end-game attempt by a declining superpower.
THE UNITED STATES TODAY
IS
A DE FACTO BANKRUPT NUCLEAR SUPERPOWER.
The reserve currency role
of the dollar is being challenged as never since Bretton Woods in 1944. That
role along with maintaining the United States as the world’s unchallenged
military power have been the basis of the American Century hegemony since 1945.
Weakening the role of the dollar in international trade and ultimately as reserve currency, China is now settling trade with Japan in bilateral currencies, side-stepping the dollar.Russia is implementing similar steps with her major trade partners.The primary reason Washington launched a full-scale currency war against the Euro in late 2009 was to preempt a growing threat that China and others would turn away from the dollar to the Euro as reserve currency. That is no small matter.In effect Washington finances its foreign wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and elsewhere through the fact that China and other trade surplus nations invest their surplus trade dollars in US governmentTreasury debt. Were that to shift significantly, US interest rates would rise substantially and the financial pressures on Washington would become immense.
Faced with growing
erosion of her unchallenged global status as sole superpower, Washington
appears now to be turning increasingly to raw military force to hold that. For
that to succeed Russia must be neutralized along with China and Iran. This will
be the prime agenda of whoever is next US President.
ENDNOTES:
[1] Alexei Druzhinin, Putin says US encouraging Russian
opposition, RIA Novosti, Moscow, December 8, 2011
[2] Ibid.
[3] Jonathan
Turley, The NDAA’s historic assault on American liberty, guardian.co.uk,
2 January 2012, accessed in http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/jan/02/ndaa-historic-assault-american-liberty.
[4] National Endowment for Democracy, Russia,
from NED Annual Report 2010, Washington, DC, published in August 2011, accessed
in http://www.ned.org/where-we-work/eurasia/russia.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] NED,
Elections in Russia: Polling and Perspectives, September 14, 2011,
accessed in http://ned.org/events/elections-in-russia-polling-and-perspectives.
[8] NED, Youth Activism in Russia: Can a New Generation
Make a Difference?, December 15, 2011, accessed in
[9] F.
William Engdahl, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New
World Order, 2010, edition.engdahl press. The book describes in detail the
origins of the NED and various US-sponsored “human rights” NGOs and how they
have been used to topple regimes not friendly to a larger USA geopolitical
agenda.
[11] David Ignatius, Openness is the Secret to
Democracy, Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 30 September-6 October,
1991, 24-25.
[12] F.
William Engdahl, Op. Cit., p.50.
[13] Yulia Ponomareva, Navalny and Kudrin boost giant
opposition rally, RIA Novosti, Moscow, December 25, 2011.
[14] Yale University, Yale World Fellows: Alexey
Navalny, 2010, accessed in http://www.yale.edu/worldfellows/fellows/navalny.html.
[15] Alexey Navalny, emails between Navalny and
Conatser, accessed in Russian (English summary provided to the author by
www.warandpeace.ru) on http://alansalbiev.livejournal.com/28124.html.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Business Week Russia, Boris Nemtsov: Co-chairman
of Solidarnost political movement, Business Week Russia, September 23,
2007, accessed in http://www.rumafia.com/person.php?id=1648.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Russian Mafia.ru, Vladimir Ryzhkov: Co-chairman
of the Party of People’s Freedom, accessed in http://www.rumafia.com/person.php?id=1713.
[21] Russian
Mafia.ru, Garry Kasparov: The leader of United Civil Front, accessed in http://www.rumafia.com/person.php?id=1518.
[22] The OtherRussia, Obama Will Meet With Russian
Opposition, July 3, 2009, accessed in http://www.theotherrussia.org/2009/07/03/obama-will-meet-with-russian-opposition/.
[23] Yulia Ponomareva, op. Cit.
F. William Engdahl is author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics in the New
World Order. He may be contacted through his
website at www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net where this article was originally published.
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