Regime change in the Russian Federation? Why Washington wants to end Vladimir Putin (“Global Research”, Canada)
Washington obviously wants a "finito" (finish - ital.) With Russian Putin, as is the case with basta! or, as they said in Egypt last spring - Kefaya - "enough is enough!". Hillary Clinton and her friends seem to have decided that the possible next president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, is the main obstacle to their plans. However, few understand why. Today, Russia in tandem with China and to a large extent with Iran form the basis, albeit fragile, of the only effective global axis of resistance to world domination of the only superpower.
8 December, a few days after the results of the Russian parliamentary elections were announced, which showed a sharp decline in the popularity of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia, Putin accused the United States and especially Secretary of State Hilary Clinton of helping the protesters from the Russian opposition and their protests against the election. Putin said that "the Secretary of State (USA) quickly assessed the elections, saying that they were dishonest and unfair before she received materials from the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (international OSCE election observers)." [1]
Putin then stated that Clinton’s hasty remarks were a necessary signal to the waiting opposition groups that the US government would support their protests. Clinton's remarks, said an experienced Russian intelligence professional, became "a signal to our activists who began to work actively together with the US State Department." [2]
Major Western media outlets have chosen either to downplay the meaning of Putin’s statement, or to concentrate almost entirely on allegations of a growing Russian opposition movement. A small investigation reveals that Putin, rather the opposite, downplayed the degree of insolent intervention by the US government in the political processes in his country. In this case, it is not Tunisia or Yemen, and not even Egypt. It is the second nuclear superpower in the world, even though it may still be a lesser economic power. Hilary plays with thermonuclear fire.
Democracy or something else?
Undoubtedly, Putin is not the world champion of practicing what most people consider a democracy. His announcement a few months ago that he and today's President Medvedev agreed to swap posts after the presidential election in Russia on March 4, struck even many Russians as a crude policy from a position of strength and making backstage deals. And yet, what Washington is doing to intervene in this regime change is more than brazen intervention. The same Obama administration, which has just passed a law on measures that essentially tear to shreds the Bill of Rights, constitutional norms guaranteeing the rights of US citizens [3], stands in the position of the world supreme judge, who judges others ’commitment to characterize as democracy.
Let's check the accusations from Putin that the United States is interfering in the electoral process. If we look, we will see open statements in the annual report of August 2011 of a Washington-based NGO with the innocuous name of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) that this organization’s presence is noticeable everywhere in Russia.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funds the International Press Center in Moscow, where around 80 international NGOs can hold their own press conferences on any issue. They sponsor numerous workshops on “youth advocacy work” and workshops for activists to “help young people engage in political activism.” In fact, they officially spent more than 2 783 000 dollars in 2010 on dozens of such programs throughout Russia. Expenditures in 2011 will only be published later in 2012. [4]
The NED also funds key organizations of Russian "independent" public opinion polls and election observers - a crucial element for claiming election fraud. They partially finance the GOLOS regional civil organization in defense of democratic rights and freedoms. According to the NED annual report, funds went to "conducting a detailed analysis of electoral cycles in the fall of 2010 and in the spring of 2011 in Russia, which will include monitoring the press, monitoring political agitation, the activities of election commissions and other parties to applying electoral legislation in the long-term preparation for election. " [5]
In September, 2011, a few weeks before the December elections, the NED sponsored a conference in Washington, which was held by invitation only, with the participation of the Russian “independent” research organization Levada Center. According to NFD’s own website, Levada Center, another recipient of money from NED, [6] conducted a series of opinion polls - which is the standard method used in the West to analyze citizens' attitudes. Surveys presented in terms of "the electorate's mood in the preparatory period for elections to the Duma and for presidential elections, the perception of candidates and parties, as well as voters' confidence in the system of" managed democracy "that was created in the last ten years."
One of the participants who spoke at this Washington conference was Vladimir Kara-Murza, a member of the Federal Council for Solidarity, the democratic opposition movement in Russia. He is also "an adviser to the Duma opposition leader Nemtsov," according to the NED. Another speaker was a representative of the right-wing neoconservative Hudson Institute. [7]
Nemtsov, one of the most well-known people in the anti-Putin opposition today, is also a co-chairman of Solidarity - the name of which, it should be noted, was copied from the Cold War, when the CIA financed the Polish opposition represented by Solidarity’s worker Lech Walesa. Nemtsov will be discussed further below.
And December 15 2011, again in Washington, just when the US-supported protests against Putin, led by Solidarity and other organizations, were launched by the NED held another conference called Youth Activism in Russia: Can the new generation change the situation? ". The speaker was Tamirlan Kurbanov, who, according to the NED, "most recently served as a program coordinator at the Moscow office of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, where he worked on developing and expanding opportunities for political and civic organizations; promoting citizen participation in public life, especially youth involvement." [8] The National Democratic Institute is a branch of the NED.
The dark past of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
Helping young people to become involved in political activism is exactly what NED has been doing in Egypt for the past few years in preparing for the overthrow of Mubarak. This same NED has played an important role, according to informed reports, in the US-supported “color revolutions” in the 2003-2004. in Ukraine and Georgia, which brought pro-NATO surrogates to US-backed power. This same NED was active in supporting "human rights" in Myanmar, Tibet and in the oil-rich Chinese province of Xinjiang. [9]
As a thorough analysis of the Orange Revolution in 2004 in Ukraine and numerous other US-funded color revolutions, voting control and ability to influence the opinions of the international media, especially such major TV channels as CNN or BBC, is a very important component of Washington's destabilization plans. There is reason to believe that the Levada Center occupies an extremely important position in this regard, publishing polls showing dissatisfaction with the regime.
According to their own description, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a “private, non-profit foundation focused on the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. Each year, with funding from the US Congress, the National Endowment for Democracy supports more than 1000 non-governmental group projects abroad working for democratic purposes in more than 90 countries. " [10]
It sounds noble and sublime. However, they prefer not to mention their real stories. At the start of 1980, CIA Director Bill Casey convinced President Ronald Reagan to create a plausibly private NGO, the National Endowment for Democracy, to promote Washington’s global plans with other means than direct CIA action. It was part of the "privatization" of American intelligence to make their work more "effective." Allen Weinstein, who helped develop the NED bill, said in an interview for the Washington Post in 1991 that "Much of what we are doing today was done secretly by the Central Intelligence Agency 25 years ago." [11] How interesting. Most of the funding for NED comes from US taxpayers through the US Congress. NED in all respects, types and forms is the resource of the intelligence community of the US government.
The NED was created during the Reagan administration to function as a de facto CIA, privatized in order to give the Office more freedom of action. NED board members are usually recruited from the Pentagon and the US intelligence community. They included NATO Retired General Wesley Clark - the man who commanded the Serbian bombings in 1999. The key persons involved in the covert CIA operations that were part of the NED administration were Otto Reich, John Negroponte, Henry Sisneros and Elliot Abrams. The chairman of the board of directors of NED in 2008 was Vin Weber, founder of the ultra-conservative organization "Empower America" and a fundraiser for the election campaign of George W. Bush. The current chairman of the NED is John Bon, the former president of the scandalous rating agency Moody's, which played a vile role in the still-unfolding collapse of US mortgage-backed securities. Also in today's NDP rule is the neoconservative former ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan during Bush’s time, an American of Afghan origin, Zalmay Khalilzad. [12]
Well-trained anti-Putin opposition
It is also useful to consider the leading oppositionists, who seem to have come to the fore in Russia recently. Russian blogger Alexei Navalny, whose blog is called LiveJournal, is the favorite embodiment of the Russian youth for the current opposition and especially the Western media. Navalny plays a significant role of the pseudo-martyr of the protest movement after spending 15 days in Putin’s prison for participating in a banned demonstration. At a big protest demonstration on Christmas 25 December (in the text - approx. Transl.) In Moscow Navalny, probably drunk watching too many of Sergei Eisenstein’s romantic films about the Russian revolution 1917, told the crowd: "I see enough people here, to go to the Kremlin and the White House right now (residence of the Russian president) ... "[13]
Western media leaders are blinded by Navalny. The English Air Force television channel called Navalny "perhaps the only serious opposition person who has appeared in Russia over the past five years," and the American Time magazine called him "Russian Erin Brockovich" - this is a strange reference to a Hollywood film with Julia Roberts starring as a researcher and activists from a law firm. However, more significant is the fact that Navalny visited the elite American Yale University on the East Coast, which is also home to the Bush family, where he became a Fellow of the Yale University World Scholarship Program. [14]
But the charismatic Navalny also receives or receives funds from the Washington destabilizing regimes of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). According to a post on Navalny’s own blog, LiveJournal, he received in 2007-2008. NFD support. [15] [16]
Together with Navalny, key actors in the anti-Putin protest movement are concentrated around Solidarity, which was created in December 2008 by Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov and others. Nemtsov is hardly a person who can protest against corruption. According to the Russian edition of Business Week of 27 in September of 2007, Nemtsov introduced Russian banker Boris Brevnov to Gretchen Wilson, an American citizen and employee of the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank’s financial department. Wilson and Brevnov got married. With the help of Nemtsov, Wilson was able to privatize Balakhna Pulp and Paper Mill at a bargain price - for just 7 million dollars. The company was gutted and then sold to an Wall Street investment bank - CS First Boston. The annual turnover of the plant was reportedly 250 million dollars. [17]
Bank CS First Boston also paid Nemtsov’s trips to the very expensive World Economic Forum in Davos. When Nemtsov became a member of the cabinet of ministers, his protege Brevnov was appointed chairman of the Unified Energy System of Russia, the EEC. Two years later, in 2009, Boris Nemtsov, the current “anti-corruption”, used his influence, reportedly, to “otmazat” Brevnova from the charges of plundering billions of UES assets. [18]
Nemtsov also took money from imprisoned Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 1999, when the latter used his billions to bribe the Russian parliament, the Duma. In 2004, the town of Nemtsov met with billionaire oligarch Boris Berezovsky, in exile, in a secret meeting with other Russian oligarchs in exile. When the Russian authorities decided to question Nemtsov regarding the charges of foreign funding for his new political party, “For Russia Without Lawlessness and Corruption,” US senators John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Mike Hammer from the Obama National Security Council supported Nemtsov. [19]
Nemtsov’s close friend, Vladimir Ryzhkov from Solidarity, is also closely associated with the Swiss Davos circles, he even founded the Siberian Davos. According to Russian press reports of April 2005, Ryzhkov created the 2003 Committee at 2008 to “attract” financial resources of the imprisoned Khodorkovsky prison and at the same time request funds from such runaway oligarchs like Boris Berezovsky and Western funds like the Soros Foundation. The stated goal of these efforts was to unite the "democratic" forces against Putin. 23 in May 2011. Ryzhkov, Nemtsov and several other people submitted an application to register a new Party of People’s Freedom, ostensibly to nominate a presidential candidate against Putin in 2012. [20]
Another well-known face in recent anti-Putin demonstrations is the former world chess champion who has become a right-wing politician, Garry Kasparov, another founder of Solidarity. Several years ago, it became clear that Kasparov is a board member of a Washington neoconservative think tank. In April, 2007, Mr. Kasparov, admitted that he was a member of the National Security Advisory Council of the Center for Security Policy - "a nonprofit, non-partisan national security organization that specializes in recognizing the necessary policy measures, actions and resources vital to American security." In Russia itself, Kasparov is more scandalously known for his financial ties earlier with Leonid Nevzlin, the former vice-president of Yukos and partner Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Nevzlin fled to Israel when he was charged in Russia with the murder and the hiring of murderers under the contract to eliminate "inconvenient people" when he was the vice president of Yukos. [21]
In 2009, Mr. Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov met with Barack Obama to discuss the Russian anti-Putin opposition, at the personal invitation of the American president, at the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington. Nemtsov urged Obama to meet with opposition forces in Russia: "If the White House agrees with Putin’s proposal to talk only with pro-Putin organizations ... then this will mean that Putin won, but not only that: Putin will be convinced that Obama is weak," he said. During the same trip to the US in 2009, Mr. Nemtsov was invited to speak at the New York Council on Foreign Relations, possibly the most influential US think tank on foreign policy. Most importantly, the US State Department and US-backed political NGOs like NED not only poured millions into building the anti-Putin coalition inside Russia, but the president himself personally intervened in this process. [22] Ryzhkov, Nemtsov, Navalny, and Putin’s former finance minister, Alexei Kudrin, all participated in organizing an anti-Putin demonstration at Christmas on December 25 in Moscow, to which, according to estimates, 120000 people came. [23]
Why is Putin?
The essential question is why Putin at the moment? We do not need to go far for an answer.
Washington and especially the administration of Barack Obama spit on whether Russia is democratic or not. Their concern is the impediment to Washington’s plans for a full spectrum of dominance on the planet, which will be the Putin presidency. According to the Russian Constitution, the President of the Russian Federation is the head of state, supreme commander and occupies the highest position in the Russian Federation. He will fully control defense and foreign policy.
We have to ask - what policy? It is obvious that serious countermeasures to the blatant encirclement of Russia by the dangerous bases of Washington with ballistic missiles will be on Putin’s agenda. "Reboot" Hillary Clinton will be in a landfill if she is not already there. We can also expect more aggressive use of the energy map by Russia through pipeline diplomacy in order to deepen economic ties with such European members of NATO as Germany, France and Italy, in the long term, weakening the EU’s support of aggressive NATO measures against Russia. We can expect Russia to increase its turn to Eurasia, especially with China, Iran and, possibly, India, in order to strengthen the fragile basis of resistance to the plans of the New World Order of Washington.
In order to derail Russia, it will take more than a few demonstrations in the cold in Moscow and St. Petersburg, consisting of crowds of such corrupt and dubious opposition figures as Nemtsov or Kasparov. But it is obvious that Washington is putting pressure on all fronts - in Iran and Syria, where Russia has a vital naval port, at China, now at Russia, and at the countries of the "eurozone" headed by Germany. It looks like the last attempt in the endgame of a superpower declining to decline.
Today, the United States is a de facto bankrupt nuclear superpower. The role of the dollar as a reserve currency is questioned as never before since the Bretton Woods 1944 agreements. This role, together with maintaining the status of the United States as the undisputed world military power, was the basis of the American hegemony of 1945.
Weakening the role of the dollar in international trade and ultimately as a reserve currency, China is now calculated when trading with Japan in bilateral currencies, bypassing the dollar. Russia is taking similar steps with its main trading partners. The main reason that Washington launched a full-scale war against the euro in 2009 was to prevent the growing threat that China and other countries would abandon the dollar in favor of the euro as a reserve currency. This is serious. In fact, Washington is financing its wars abroad in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, and other places through the fact that China and other countries with a positive trade balance are investing their dollars from the trade surplus in US government treasuries. If this situation changes significantly, then the size of the US interest rate will increase significantly, and the financial pressure on Washington will be enormous.
Faced with the threat of undermining its unquestionable global status as the sole superpower, Washington, by all accounts, is now increasingly using brute military force to keep it. In order for this to succeed, Russia must be neutralized, as are China and Iran.
This will be the most important agenda for any next US president.
F. William Engdal is the author of the book "The Centenary of War: Anglo-American Petroleum Policy and the New World Order." He can be contacted through his website www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.
Notes
[1] Alexei Druzhinin, Putin says US encouraging the Russian opposition, RIA Novosti, Moscow, December 8, 2011
[2] Ibid.
[3] Jonathan Turley, The NDAA's Assassin's Office, American 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 you make a new generation of a difference ?, December 15, 2011, accessed in http://ned.org/events/youth-activism-in-russia-can-a-new- generation-make-a-difference.
[9] F. Total Democratic Democracy in the New World Order, 2010, edition. Engdahl press. The book describes in detail the origins of NFD and various US-sponsored "human rights" NGOs and how they were used to overthrow regimes unfriendly to broader US geopolitical plans.
[10] National Endowment for Democracy, About Us, accessed in www.ned.org.
[11] David Ignatius, X-NUMX, X-NUMX-30.
[12] F. William Engdahl, op. cit., p. xnumx.
[13] Yulia Ponomareva, Navalny and Kudrin, 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, electronic correspondence between Navalny and Conatser, in Russian (a summary in English provided by the author at www.warandpeace.ru) at http://alansalbiev.livejournal.com/28124.html.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Business Week Russia, Boris Nemtsov: Co-Chairman of the 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 Ryfkov: Co-chairman of the Freedom, accessed in http://www.rumafia.com/person.php?id=1713.
[21] Russian Civil Front, Garry Kasparov: accessed in http://www.rumafia.com/person.php?id=1518.
22, 3, accessed in http://www.theotherrussia.org/2009/2009/07/obama-will-meet-with-russian-opposition/.
[23] Yulia Ponomareva, op. cit.
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