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Confirmed: Omidyar's NGOs Clearly Partner in Regime Change

by Oui Sat Mar 1st, 2014 at 07:14:50 PM EST

Unwittingly, the saga of the faked black-ops sniper video published by RFERL on 20 February 2014, is connected with the publication by Mark Ames and response of Marcy Wheeler to the NGOs and media outlets under responsiblility of billionaire Omidyar. My previous diaries ...

○ Embarrassment to GG, MW of The Intercept: Omidyar Co-funded Ukraine Revolt
○ Who Were Snipers In Kiev Massacre - A CIA-Svoboda False Flag Op?

Marcy Wheeler's response: Of Neo-Fascists and Smiley-Face Neoliberals

Pando has not shown that these donations were linked in any way, though it's definitely possible: here's what Pact, the non-profit, says about partnerships:

Website PACT

Pact can't do it all. So Pact also partners with other international NGOs that may have particular expertise, relationships or resources Pact needs to better help more people. In different places around the world, Pact partners with ChildFund, FHI360, Marie Stopes International and Population Services International, for example.

Much of Pact's work is supported by national aid agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Great Britain's Department for International Development (DFID), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) and the Australian Government Overseas Aid Program (AusAID) fund much of Pact's work.

Criminal case against NGO "Centre UA"

(Euromaidan Wache Berlin) Feb. 11, 2014 - Ministry of Internal Affairs conducts criminal proceedings against non-governmental organization "Centre UA" under article "laundering of criminally obtained money". It became known after the police started to come to the employees and partners of the organization with the invitation to provide evidence or come to the investigator.

Continued below the fold ...

Personnel of Centre UA claim that it considers this criminal proceeding as continuation of systematic repression of authorities against civil society. Oleh Rybachuk. Chairman of the organization, noticed that "dictatorial laws were abolished but authorities' dictatorial intentions to dismiss active civil society organizations were embodied in other form". He suggested that similar cases will be brought against other organizations in the near future.

Centre UA is an initiator of CHESNO movement and scandal movie about controversial Presidential residence Mezhyhirya - "Open Access", its members took an active part in Euromaidan events. Organization members are co-founders of such important initiatives as "New Citizen" partnership, "Stop Censorship" movement, coalition "For Fair Referendum" and others.  Besides, Centre UA along with journalists of Slidstvo.info and "Svidomo" bureau has recently launched a large-scale project on investigation of corruption activity of all members of the government, including personally interior minister Zakharchenko, for the leading Ukrainian news web-site "Ukrajinska Pravda" (Ukrainian Truth).

Svitlana Zalishchuk, Executive Director of "Centre UA", noted that "Centre UA regularly runs an independent audit, including the one on the compliance of financial activities with Ukrainian legislation, and is proud of its transparency. We consider the criminal case as pressure and intimidation in connection with our activity. "

Movement CHESNO brings 5 criteria for a new government  

I already came across the leading Ukrainian news web-site "Ukrajinska Pravda" (Ukrainian Truth) and found an article this was a fake organization. The "corruption" article about Zakharchenko was written by Валерій Дротенко or translated Valery Drotenko. This ties in the billionaire's NGOs to the faked The Guardian video where the rferl black militia snipers were spliced to the video with victims of the massacre in Instytutska Street on 20 February 2014.

Statement on Ukraine by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Thomas O. Melia to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee

KYIV, Ukraine (US Embassy) Jan. 15, 2014 - Since Ukraine's independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they developed democratic skills and institutions, strengthened the rule of law, and promoted civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We have invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure, prosperous and democratic Ukraine. Of that amount well over $815 million was for democracy and exchange programs. Much of this is being implemented through a range of technical assistance programs and working with nongovernmental actors in Ukraine.

Since 2009 when President Obama took office, the U.S. Government has provided over $184 million in Governing Justly and Democratically (GJD) assistance to Ukraine. This includes democracy programs managed by USAID and the State Department, and exchange programs managed by the State Department and the Open World Leadership Center.

Inclusive in its approach, the Working Group -- which I co-chair together with a senior Ukrainian counterpart -- welcomes input from civil society and nongovernmental representatives from both countries. To date we have met formally six times in Kyiv and Washington since 2009. Our last meeting was in October in Kyiv, and the next meeting is planned for this March in Washington.

Within the working group, we held frank discussions about the increase in harassment of journalists and civil society that has taken place in recent years. This harassment galvanized civil society. Together they formed new coalitions to stand up and push back, such as the "Stop Censorship!" movement and the "New Citizen" campaign, which sought to mobilize and inform citizens about the problems and their basic rights under the Ukraine's laws and constitution.

Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)

The successful "orange" revolution in 2004 that was built on popular protests, has strengthened Ukraine's multi-party system and the country's efforts towards democratic and economic reforms. But the hopes that were raised back then have not been fulfilled, and recent years' development has rather gone towards a more authoritarian government.

The goal for Ukraine's reform policy is European integration, based on an action plan drawn up jointly with the EU. This has been the fundamental basis for the Swedish cooperation.

Power struggle delays reforms

The power struggle between the president, prime minister and opposition has hampered the reform efforts. The state administration is centralized, inefficient and corrupt, and the legal system is unsatisfactory. The level of corruption and the media climate have deteriorated in recent years. The country ended up in 144th place among 174 countries on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2013. Independent media are subjected to harassment and individual journalists risk threats and beatings.

After many years of hardship, the economic growth and living conditions in Ukraine improved in the 2000s. Increasing salaries and direct financial support contributed to reducing poverty. The positive trend was broken in 2008, when the global financial crisis hit the country very hard.

Assistance an important stimulus

The single largest donor to Ukraine is USA. The World Bank is also supporting the country's investments and reform work. The largest cooperation programme is with the EU, and Sweden is one of the major European donors. International aid amounts to just one per cent of Ukraine's GDP, but is nevertheless important in order to implement the reforms that are necessary for the country's progress towards the EU.

An Independent Integrity Assessment of the CHESNO Movement, Ukraine [pdf]

A research team from the European Research Centre for Anti-Corruption and State-Building (ERCAS) in Berlin was contracted by Pact's USAID-supported UNITER project for conducting an independent assessment into the political integrity campaign of CHESNO in Ukraine (2012).

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Putin, Oligarchs and the Neo-Liberal Agenda (none / 0)
h/t seabe Oligarchs Triumphant: Ukraine, Omidyar and the Neo-Liberal Agenda

Oligarchs Triumphant: Ukraine, Omidyar and the Neo-Liberal Agenda  by Chris Floyd @EmpireBurlesque

The Western intervention in Ukraine has now led the region to the brink of war. Political opposition to government of President Viktor Yanukovych -- a corrupt and thuggish regime, but as with so many corrupt and thuggish regimes one sees these days, a democratically elected one -- was funded in substantial part by organizations of or affiliated with the U.S. government, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (a longtime vehicle for Washington-friendly coups), and USAID. It also received substantial financial backing from Western oligarchs, such as billionaire Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay and sole bankroller of the new venue for "adversarial" journalism, First Look, as Pando Daily reports.

Yanukovych sparked massive protests late last year when he turned down a financial deal from the European Union and chose a $15 billion aid package from Russia instead. The EU deal would have put cash-strapped Ukraine in a financial straitjacket, much like Greece, without actually promising any path for eventually joining the EU. There was one other stipulation in the EU's proffered agreement that was almost never reported: it would have also forbidden Ukraine to "accept further assistance from the Russians," as Patrick Smith notes in an important piece in Salon.com.  It was a ruthless take-it-or-leave-it deal, and would have left Ukraine without any leverage, unable to parlay its unique position between East and West to its own advantage in the future, or conduct its foreign and economic policies as it saw fit. Yanukovych took the Russian deal, which would have given Ukraine cash in hand immediately and did not come with the same draconian restrictions. Smith adds:

    [U.S.] foreign policy cliques remain wholly committed to the spread of the neo-liberal order on a global scale, admitting of no exceptions. This is American policy in the 21st century. No one can entertain any illusion (as this columnist confesses to have done) that America's conduct abroad stands any chance of changing of its own in response to an intelligent reading of the emerging post-Cold War order. Imposing "democracy," the American kind, was the American story from the start, of course, and has been the mission since Wilson codified it even before he entered the White House. When the Cold War ended we began a decade of triumphalist bullying -- economic warfare waged as "the Washington Consensus" -- which came to the same thing.

American policy is based upon -- dependent upon -- a raging, willful, arrogant ignorance of other peoples, other cultures, history in general, and even the recent history of U.S. policy itself. The historical and cultural relationships between Ukraine and Russia are highly complex. Russia takes its national identity from the culture that grew up around what is now Kyiv; indeed, in many respects, Kyiv is where "Russia" was born.  Yet one of the first acts of the Western-backed revolutionaries was to pass a law declaring Ukrainian as the sole state language, although most of the country speaks Russian or Surzhyk, "a motley mix of Ukrainian and Russian (sometimes with bits of Hungarian, Romanian and Polish)," as the LRB's Peter Pomerantsev details in an excellent piece on Ukraine's rich cultural and linguistic complexity.  

See my new diary - Putin Orders Troops Back to Base; East-West Détente.

Amnesia and Gaza Genocide

by Oui (Oui) on Tue Mar 4th, 2014 at 09:43:00 AM EST
Confirmed: Omidyar's NGOs Clearly Partner in Regime Change | 1 comment (1 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)


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