{"id":200275,"date":"2021-05-22T20:24:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-23T01:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/05\/22\/so-not-a-surprise-43\/"},"modified":"2021-05-22T20:24:00","modified_gmt":"2021-05-23T01:24:00","slug":"so-not-a-surprise-43","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/05\/22\/so-not-a-surprise-43\/","title":{"rendered":"So Not a Surprise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Members of the National Endowment for Democracy were <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rt.com\/russia\/523956-regime-change-belarus-prank\/\">caught on tape claiming credit for the Belarus protests<\/a>, which have generally been represented as internally driven.<\/p>\n<p>So not a surprise.&nbsp; The NED was created by William Casey to allow elements of the US State Security Apparatus to engege in regime change activities without supervision by civilian authorities.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I know, RT is the source, but they have it on tape:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">A pair of notorious Russian pranksters posing as leading  Belarusian opposition figures have duped the National Endowment for  Democracy (NED) into revealing the extent of US involvement in Eastern  European political movements.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">In a video call posted on  the online channel of pranksters Vovan and Lexus, senior representatives  of the American agency disclosed that they have actively financed and  supported anti-government campaigns in the region. The officials from  the NED, which is funded by Congress and describes its role as <i>\u201csupporting freedom around the world,\u201d<\/i> also revealed that they are coordinating efforts with prominent political activists in a range of countries, including Russia.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">During  the call, Nina Ognianova, who oversees the NED&#8217;s work with local groups  in Belarus, outlined the wide-ranging programs the agency bankrolls in  the country, insisting that <i>\u201ca lot of the people who have been  trained by these hubs, who have been in touch with them and being  educated, being involved in their work, have now taken the flag and  started to lead in community organizing.<\/i>\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">Ognianova claimed that, through this work, the NED played a role in igniting the colossal street protests that rocked Belarus after long-time leader Alexander Lukashenko declared victory in the country\u2019s presidential election last August. The opposition and many international observers say the vote was rigged in his favor, and tens of thousands took to the streets for demonstrations each weekend after the election. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #2b00fe;\">The comments are likely to add fuel to Lukashenko\u2019s previous controversial claims that the widespread domestic opposition to his government is being stoked from abroad.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Gee, you think?&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>On a more serious note, allowing jokers from the CIA and other <span title=\"Three Letter Acronym\">TLA acronym organizations to dictate US foreign policy without any civilian oversight is worse than a crime, it is a mistake. <\/span><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Members of the National Endowment for Democracy were caught on tape claiming credit for the Belarus protests, which have generally been represented as internally driven. So not a surprise.&nbsp; The NED was created by William Casey to allow elements of the US State Security Apparatus to engege in regime change activities without supervision by civilian &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[970,987,1040,1039,1049],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200275","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corruption","category-fail","category-former-soviet-union","category-incompetence","category-protests"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200275"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200275\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}