John Helmer: Convicted Fraudster Jonathan Hay, Harvard's Man Who Wrecked Russia, Resurfaces in Ukraine | naked capitalism

Yves here. You cannot make this stuff up. One of the sorriest chapters in recent American history was how we allowed an unprecedented opportunity to assist Russia in managing the end of its Communist era to turn into a looting exercise by well-placed insiders, including advisors under contract to Harvard.

If you are unfamiliar with this fiasco, which was also the true proximate cause of Larry Summers’ ouster from Harvard, you must read an extraordinary expose, How Harvard Lost Russia, from Institutional Investor. I am told copies of this article were stuffed in every Harvard faculty member’s inbox the day Summers got a vote of no confidence and resigned shortly thereafter.

Jonathan Hay ran the day-to-day operations of the Russia Project. He was found guilty of violating three counts of the False Claims Act and was debarred from serving in USAID. But he’s managed to resurface in Ukraine, working in the local operations of a Polish think tank. Nicely played.

By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

There are about 450 think-tanks in Europe and the US currently focusing on international relations, war, peace, and economic security. Of these, about one hundred regularly analyse Russian affairs. And of these, less than ten aren’t committed antagonists of Russia. That’s barely two percent of the intellectual materiel which can be counted as non-partisan or neutral in the infowar now underway between the NATO alliance and Russia. In this balance of forces, think-tanks behave like tanks – that’s the weapon, not the cistern.

The Centre for Social and Economic Research (CASE) has been based in Warsaw since 1991. It claims on its website to be “an independent non-profit economic and public policy research institution founded on the idea that evidence-based policy making is vital to the economic welfare of societies.” In its 2013 annual report, declares: “we seek to maintain a strict sense of non-partisanship in all of our research, advisory and educational activities.” Three-quarters of CASE’s annual revenues come from the European Commission; another 9% from American and other international organizations. According to CASE, that’s “an indication of progressive diversification of CASE revenue sources.”

CASE Ukraine is a branch of this Polish think-tank, and at the same time a descendant, it claims, of a Harvard University-funded group which was active between 1996 and 1999. Registered since 1999 as CASE Ukraine, this calls itself “an independent Ukrainian NGO specializing in economic research, macroeconomic policy analysis and forecasting.” According to parent CASE in Warsaw, one of the group’s goals is “promoting cooperation and integration with the neighboring partners of Europe”. This means, not only CASE Ukraine, but CASE Kyrgyzstan, CASE Moldova, CASE Georgia, and in Russia, the Gaidar Institute for Economic Policy.

Independent is what CASE swears; independent isn’t what CASE represents. Investigate the names, the associations, the sources of money, the secret service engagements, and what you have is a family, a front, a cover, a closed shop, a mafia. Founders of CASE Ukraine like the American Jonathan Hay and operators of CASE Poland like the Balcerowiz family reveal a well-known anti-Russian alliance. So what are a director of the Gazprom board, Vladimir Mau; a professor of the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Marek Dabrowski; and Simeon Djankov, Rector of the New Economic School in Moscow, and a protégé of First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, doing on the CASE side?

The latest US survey of the think-tanks in the world counted 6,826 in all as of August 2013. One-quarter (1,828) of those is located in the US; 426 in China; 287 in the UK; 194 in Germany; and 122 in Russia. In a perverse ranking, the only Russian think-tank, so called, to make it to the top 20 of the non-American batch, according to a panel of experts employed by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP) of the University of Pennsylvania, isn’t Russian at all. It’s the US-funded and directed Carnegie Moscow Centre (ranking 18th).

At the 46th rank is the first genuine Russian think-tank – the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) in Moscow. When US think-tanks are counted, along with the non-American ones, Carnegie Moscow slips to 28th; IMEMO rises to 32nd.

Complete story at - John Helmer: Convicted Fraudster Jonathan Hay, Harvard's Man Who Wrecked Russia, Resurfaces in Ukraine | naked capitalism

Land Destroyer: US Propaganda Accidentally Exposes Nazi Crimes in Ukraine

June 20, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - The Interpreter Magazine is a "special project" of the Institute of Modern Russia. By "Modern Russia," its creators mean, Russia as imagined by Wall Street and London. The "institute" is run by disgraced Russian billionaire oligarch, convicted criminal, and long-time Western proxy Mikhail Khodorkovsky, his son, and Washington lobbyists. It includes contributors such as Catherine A. Fitzpatrick who literally worked for the US State Department's propaganda arm, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and convicted financial criminal George Soros' faux-rights advocate Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Soros' Open Society Institute itself.

The Interpreter is overtly a clearinghouse for anti-Russian propaganda and ceaselessly promoted by corporate-funded and directed faux-rights advocates like the Neo-Con lined National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Freedom House - both of which are funded and perpetuated by the US State Department itself.

In an entry titled, "Russian Defense Ministry Apologizes For Lying About White Phosphorus," we discover the degree to which The Interpreter is propaganda. Upon reading the entry, we find out that the Russian Defense Ministry did no such thing as "apologize." Instead, what is described is a war crime committed by Neo-Nazi Right Sector militants working on behalf of Kiev's "Security Service of Ukraine" (SBU). Right Sector captured the journalists, interrogated them, and coerced a confession from them. Right Sector then simply claimed they worked for the Defense Ministry and their coerced confession constituted a formal apology for "lying," before handing the captured journalists over to Kiev's SBU.

The entry claims:

"Then a video of one of the detained reporters, Evgeny Davydov, appeared on pro-Kiev media, showing him confessing while he was still in captivity that he was forced to put in false information by editors in Moscow, and that in fact he wasn’t even in Slavyansk when the broadcast was edited and had obtained no footage from the town."

The entry then admits:

"The two correspondents from Zvezda, a TV channel of the Russian Defense Ministry, Davydov and Nikita Konashenkov had been detained 14 June outside Slavyansk, reportedly by Right Sector militants who transferred them to the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) where they were investigated on suspicion of espionage."

Complete story at - Land Destroyer: US Propaganda Accidentally Exposes Nazi Crimes in Ukraine

The Truthseeker: NGO documents plan Ukraine war (E35)

NGOs caught forging documents for war, insider warns all NGOs infiltrated; 'Independent military observers' for EU-based group OSCE again turned away in Crimea, OSCE branded one more 'vulgar instrument' for foreign interests; and CNN buys the latest State Department hoax.

Seek truth from facts with Illinois University Professor of International Law and former Amnesty board member Francis Boyle; Infowars Editor Paul Joseph Watson; Eric Draitser of Boiling Frogs Post; Ron Paul Institute Executive Director Daniel McAdams; Ukraine protest organizers; Sliman Bouchuiguir, whose NGO fabricated the claims against Libya; and Asst. Secretary of State Vic Nuland.

READ FULL SCRIPT: http://on.rt.com/s4z7cf




Complete story at - The Truthseeker: NGO documents plan Ukraine war (E35)

Geopolitics and Oligarchy at Work in Ukraine Crisis | Foreign Policy Journal

The situation in the Ukraine follows the same scenario as sundry other states that have been brought into the globalist fold. The riots on the streets of Kiev and elsewhere amount to a “color revolution” of the sought that went like a dose of salts through the states of the former USSR, and recently through North Africa in the so-called “Arab Spring.”[1] Interestingly, there are presently globalist sponsored revolts in three states simultaneously: Venezuela,[2] Syria[3] and Ukraine; all associated with Russian interests.

Ukraine: Target of Globalists

The “Cold War” against Russia as a world power since 1945, after Stalin scotched globalist plans for a world state under United Nations auspices,[4] only had a brief respite during the Gorbachev and Yeltsin years, Gorbachev having since shown his true colors as a globalist.[5] Hence the present crisis over the Ukraine does not represent a “return to the Cold War,” as foreign policy pundits have been claiming; the “Cold War” hardly stopped. The U.S. policy makers have stated plainly that post-Yeltsin Russia remains an enemy and that anyone who aims to reassert Russia as a world power – as Putin has – is a legitimate target of the USA.[6]

As we might expect, the Ukraine has been one of the states that is of much interest to the National Endowment for Democracy. One might see from NED’s financial program that here again NED has been avidly sponsoring young cadres in various sectors of society, including “educating” electorates on how to vote in the October 2012 elections. This is flagrant interference in the political processes of what the globalists are now ranting in regard to the Ukraine sovereignty being under threat from Russia. The 2012 NED financial report (the latest published) lists the NGO’s in the Ukraine that received $3,380,834 during that year.[7] The amount represents the upper end of funds sent by NED throughout the world.

Ukraine was among the states targeted for a “color revolution” in 2004; the “Orange Revolution.” Hence, ever since it has not been regarded as sufficiently “democratic,” a euphemism for not being sufficiently under the influence of US/globalist hegemony. A symposium on the Ukraine held by the NED-linked International Forum for Democratic Studies laments that “following its failure to consolidate the democratic gains of the much-celebrated 2004 ‘Orange Revolution,’ Ukraine under the rule of authoritarian President Viktor Yanukovych has suffered numerous setbacks in its struggle to achieve a more democratic system.”[8]

Complete story at - Geopolitics and Oligarchy at Work in Ukraine Crisis | Foreign Policy Journal