source:
"Freedom"'s Just Another Word For
Fascism
The Putin regime's moves to tighten controls over foreign
NGOs is being portrayed in the West as yet another example of Russia's
savage authoritarianism and anti-Western paranoia. While only a drunken
apologist could deny Putin's authoritarianism, the real question is
whether or not the crackdown on NGOs is a symptom of classic
tyrant-paranoia, or if it has a valid basis.
If the Putin regime is being paranoid, then the case of blue-chip
NGO Freedom House - an American NGO whose name seems to pop up more
than any other in this part of the world, particularly when it comes to
the push for democracy - provides a clear example of Henry Kissinger's
dictum that "even a paranoid has some real enemies."
Freedom House was founded innocuously enough in 1941 by Eleanor
Roosevelt, wife of the President and one of the great modern champions
of human rights, and Wendell Willkie, the Republican candidate for
president in 1940, uniting the mainstream American political spectrum
to ensure that it would not be accused of being ideological. It was
founded, according to its website, out of concern "with the mounting
threats to peace and democracy...[and has been] a vigorous proponent of
democratic values and a steadfast opponent of dictatorships of the far
left and the far right."
Who today is the far-left/right dictatorship that Freedom House
steadfastly opposes?
James Woolsey, who chaired Freedom House for the past three years
and only recently stepped aside, told Radio Free Europe in an interview
in October that Russia was one of, if not the, main target.
"We are really quite honored that President Putin, who is increasingly
coming to head a government that is edging towards fascism in Russia,
would be critical of what the NGOs, including Freedom House, were doing
to help bring about a movement toward democracy in Ukraine," he said.
He described Russia as "fascist" several times in the interview. "We
had a period of time in the early 1990s when we were working
cooperatively with the Russian security services, but now apparently
they have decided to try and blame the security services in the West
for their own movement toward fascism," he said. "Mr. Putin and his
movement toward fascism in Russia are on the wrong side of history.
They are not going to succeed... ultimately they will lose."
All of this warlike talk might be excusable, even laudable, if it
came from a genuine human rights activist who paid for these words. But
this is James Woolsey - one of the closest things America has to a
Blackshirt (if we're going to abuse this over-abused word as he does).
Indeed it's almost comical - in the way that so many
insane-rightwing-plots are pure applied black comedy in the Bush Era -
that a seemingly-heroic, do-good NGO like Freedom House could be led by
one of the most nefarious vertebrates ever to befoul the halls of
American power. You'd think that Woolsey, the notorious neocon goon and
ex-CIA head, would have better things to do than to front organizations
which would seem, on the surface, better suited for the likes of a
Jimmy Carter. But then again, it's even scarier to consider that his
role there is no accident.
A little background: Woolsey, among other things, was one of the
original founding members of the Project for the New American
Century, the neocon vanguard which, in 1997, called for: a massive
rearming of America to ensure that it had full spectrum dominance;
aggressive use of American power, including military, to implement and
secure American global domination; and the invasion, occupation, and
democratization of Iraq. As most anti-Bush watchers know, the PNAC
group famously bemoaned the fact that its imperial policies would meet
resistance with the American public: "[T]he process of transformation,
even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one,
absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl
Harbor." Like, as in, a 9/11. What luck!
Two of its key goals explain the nexus between Freedom House and
Russia: "[T]o challenge regimes hostile to U.S. interests and values;
Promoting the cause of political and economic freedom outside the U.S."
Woolsey's resume of evil is impressive. He helped found the
notorious Iraqi National Congress, which provided "proof" about Iraqi
WMDs. And he also serves on the Center for Security Policy,
headed by fellow goon Frank Gaffney, who in 2004 publicly advised
President Bush to level Fallujah (which Bush did), invade Iran and
North Korea (which Bush can't but yet may try), and adopt
"''appropriate strategies for contending with China's increasingly
fascistic trade and military policies, Vladimir Putin's accelerating
authoritarianism at home and aggressiveness toward the former Soviet
republics, the worldwide spread of Islamofascism." Note how Gaffney,
like Woolsey, equates "Islamofascism" with Putin's Russia, making
Russia a mortal enemy bent on destroying the US.
And speaking of fascism, Woolsey is also the co-chair of the Committee
on the Present Danger, a far-right group (they love that word
"committee," like the Bolsheviks they are) famous for launching a
three-month network TV scare-campaign in the early 1950s about the
"present danger" that the US faced against the Soviet Union before the
committee eventually dissovled. After the CPD was revived in 2004, its
managing director, Peter Hannaford, was forced to resign when it was
revealed that his firm had lobbied on behalf of Austrian fascist Joerg
Haider.
Woolsey also boasted in the Wall Street Journal that the
National Security Agency used its international eavesdropping network,
ECHELON, to spy on European companies in order to give major US
corporations a competitive advantage. His reasoning? "We have spied on
you because you bribe." As with Freedom House, Woolsey operates by
abusing American power in ways once thought unimaginable, and then
blaming the other side for uncivilized behavior which naturally
provokes us.
This brief dossier is important because it casts the appointment of
Woolsey as the chairman of Freedom House as not merely strange or
comically sinister, but intentional. Freedom House is just one of the
many effective tools used to implement the policies outlined in the
Project for the New American Century, and that is why the
cross-pollination, in which goons like Woolsey simultaneously head up
"human rights" NGOs and far-right think-tanks, makes perfect sense.
Under Woolsey's term, Freedom House played a crucial role in the
pro-US revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan - drawing on its
experience covertly supporting the first "color" revolution in Serbia
in 1999. According to a Washington Post article, "US Advice
Guided Milosevic Opposition" (Dec 11, 2000), "U.S.-funded consultants
played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the
anti-Milosevic drive, running tracking polls, training thousands of
opposition activists and helping to organize a vitally important
parallel vote count. U.S. taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint
used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milosevic graffiti on walls
across Serbia, and 2.5 million stickers with the slogan 'He's
Finished,' which became the revolution's catchphrase.
"...The lead role was taken by the State Department and the U.S.
Agency for International Development, the government's foreign
assistance agency, which channeled the funds through commercial
contractors and nonprofit groups such as NDI and its Republican
counterpart, the International Republican Institute (IRI)."
Freedom House's role included mass-printing Gene Sharp's book From
Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation,
which was used as the guidebook for the Serbian student opposition
group "Otpor." Otpor became the model for student opposition movements
in every color-revolution since, including Ukraine's Pora and Georgia's
Kmera.
In Ukraine, Freedom House helped organize the "largest civil
regional election monitoring effort" in Ukraine, involving more than
1,000 trained observers. They also organized crucial exit polls showing
that Yuschenko had actually won, which gave the Revolution its moral
energy - as did their carefully-organized exit polls in Serbia and
Georgia.
In Kyrgyzstan, Freedom House provided the printing press for the
opposition newspaper My Capital News, which printed damning
stories about then-President Akayev's corrupt family. When the Kyrgyz
authorities cut off electricity to MCN's offices, Freedom House
delivered emergency generators to keep it running - generators provided
by the US Embassy.
The moral algebra in this tale of intrigue gets confusing because
Freedom House happened to be on the side of the Good Guys in many of
these fights. On the other hand, considering the way the revolutions in
Kyrgyzstan and Ukraine have soured, it's hard to say what has been won
and lost - unless of course you're measuring the spread of American
power and influence.
Indeed, Freedom House is not always on the side of the good guys, as
evidenced by its choice in chairmen, as well as in the makeup of its
board members - a cast of cartoon-villains which includes such
prime-time ogres as Jeanne Kirkpatrick and Kenneth Adelman - the same
Adelman who had famously predicted that the war in Iraq would be a
"cakewalk." Freedom House's sponsors include the Lynde and Harry
Bradley Foundation, a far-right pro-big business foundation which,
among other things, took a strong stand in the 60s against affirmative
action, and once supported academics who pushed the Bell Curve
theory arguing that blacks were genetically less intelligent than
whites. During the early years of the Vietnam War, Freedom House argued
that American intervention was justified because - yup, you guessed
right - it helped the spread of democracy. Why'd they do that? Becuase
that's what Freedom House does. It agitates for right-wing America's
interests, cynically deploying appeals for democracy and human rights
at properly chosen times to to serve the right's global mission.
More recently, Freedom House sided with the far-right in argueing against
America joining the International Criminal Court (ironically using the
exact same bogus argument that the Defense Department used, citing the
possibility that rogue nations like North Korea could bring cases
against American "peacekeepers" for crimes against humanity). Today, it
still refuses to condemn, let alone even cite, the illegal detention
camp in Guantanamo Bay, using the same rationale as the Bush
Administration (the inmates are "illegal combatants" rather than POWs
and therefore are not entitled to Geneva Convention protections).
One of the most suspect gigs that Freedom House helped kickstart, in
1999, is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, a pro-Chechen
"charity" group chaired by notorious Cold War Russophobe Zbigniew
Brzezinski. Freedom House has not launched any other pro-Muslim
separatist causes except for this one. Among its committee members are,
again, James Woolsey, the famous crusader against Islamofascism, as
well as "Cakewalk" Adelman, William "Weekly Standard" Kristol, and Max
Kampelman, who is also Chairman Emeritus of Freedom House and another
OG on the Project for a New American Century. Why would Woolsey,
Brzezinski and the rest of the far-right supergoon squad choose, among
all oppressed Muslims around the world, to heart-bleed over just the
Chechens and only the Chechens? Are you starting to see why the Putin
regime is "paranoid"?
Freedom House also developed a soft spot for Hizb-ut-Tahrir, the
radical Islamist opposition group in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan before
their respective revolutions. Freedom House's work with HuT was one
reason cited by Uzbek authorities for throwing Freedom House out of the
country.
Since 2002, Freedom House's annual "freedom reports" have been used
as the basis by the White House to determine international aid,
primarily through the Millennium Challenge Corporation. The reports are
also regularly cited by both the American media and Congress. Since
2004, Russia has been demoted to the very bottom ranking - "Not Free" -
along with genuinely tyrannical regimes like North Korea and Libya. To
those of us who live here, even those of us who oppose the direction
Putin has taken, this is not only surprising but nauseating, an example
of the worst type of "moral relativism" that these same right-wingers
constantly denounce.
Interestingly, a feudal monarchy like Kuwait gets a higher "freedom"
rating than Russia, while pro-American Egypt, whose dictator-for-life
Mubarak recently won another "election" with 89 percent of the vote,
and then subsequently jailed his rival for five years, was praised and
upgraded on the freedom scale for apparently assisting in the formation
of a few women's groups. What is the difference between Kuwait and
Russia? Go back to the Project for a New American Century: one
"promotes" American interests, and the other "opposes" American
interests. Therefore, the other, Russia, is "Not Free" and "fascist."
In light of this story, it's hard to listen to all of the Bush
Administration's Orwellian bleating about "civil society" and
"democracy" in the fight to keep foreign-funded NGOs operating in
Russia as they have since Yelstin's time. In fact, Russian authorities
would have to be suicidal not to tighten control. Woolsey himself
outlined the role he saw them play: "I think what is important is to
help build up civil society, the student organizations, the NGOs and
the others that the FSB and President Putin hate so much." This isn't
about civil society; it's about fighting for America.
In September of 2005, Woolsey gave up his post as chairman of
Freedom House. The new chairman is Peter Ackerman. And, not
surprisingly, Ackerman is also the chairman of the International
Center on Nonviolent Conflict, an organization which helps train
and supply color-coded revolutions. Its website says that the ICNC
"develops and encourages the use of civilian-based, nonmilitary
strategies to establish and defend democracy...provides assistance in
the training and deployment of field advisors, to deepen the conceptual
knowledge and practical skills of applying nonviolent strategies in
conflicts throughout the world where progress toward democracy and
human rights is possible."
So the McDonald's of NGOs is run by avowed US imperialists and who
repeatedly and aggressively attack Russia as "fascist" and push to
challenge and isolate Russia, which they see as much of a threat to
American hegemony as Islamofascism. And then they whine about human
rights when the Russian government moves to curb their activities on
Russian soil.
The real tragedy in this is that genuinely admirable, courageous
NGOs, like Memorial and Soldiers' Mothers of Russia, will suffer from
the aftershocks of Woolsey and Co.'s abuse of NGOs. In the end, civil
society, democracy and human rights will deteriorate, allowing the Bush
goons to cite it as a reason to step up the battle against Russia. And
as always the Russian people will be caught in the crossfire in a cruel
and savage game, where words like "freedom" and "sovereignty" are mere
Trojan Horse weapons used by one elite battling for power against
another.