Tag Archives: Foreign elections

US Meddling in Foreign Elections: A CIA Tradition Since 1948, by Wayne Madsen

Posted on March 5, 2018 | 1 comment

Wayne Madsen explores a long and dishonorable tradition. From Madsen at strategic-culture.org:

In a shocking display of relative independence from the post-Operation Mockingbird control of the media by the Central Intelligence Agency, a recent article in The New York Times broke with current conventional pack journalism and covered the long history of CIA meddling in foreign elections. A February 17, 2018, article, titled, “Russia Isn’t the Only One Meddling in Elections. We Do It, Too,” authored by Scott Shane – who covered the perestroika and glasnost for The Baltimore Sun in Moscow from 1988 to 1991 during the final few years of the Soviet Union – reported the US has interfered in foreign elections for decades. However, a couple of old US intelligence hands were quoted in the article as saying the US meddling was for altruistic purposes. The CIA veterans charged that Russia interferes in foreign elections for purely malevolent purposes. The belief that American interference in global elections was to promote liberal democracy could not be further from the truth.

The CIA never meddled in foreign elections for purposes of extending democratic traditions to other nations. The chief purpose was to disenfranchise leftist and progressive voters and political parties, ensure the veneer of “democracy” in totalitarian countries, and protect the interests of the US military bases and US multinational corporations.

In double-talk that is reminiscent of the Cold War years, the CIA considers its election interference to fall under the category of “influence operations,” while the same agency accuses Russia of “election meddling.” In truth, there is no difference between the two categories. Election interference represents intelligence service “tradecraft” and it has been practiced by many intelligence agencies, including those of Israel, France, Britain, China, India, and others.

On the rare occasions when the CIA’s efforts to rig an election failed – as they did in Guatemala in 1950 and Chile in 1970 – the agency simply organized bloody military coups to replace with military juntas the democratically-elected presidents who defeated CIA-supported candidates at the polls.

To continue reading: US Meddling in Foreign Elections: A CIA Tradition Since 1948

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Let’s Acknowledge US Interference in Foreign Elections, by Brian Saady

Posted on February 23, 2018 | 1 comment

It’s the height of hypocrisy for the US government to complain about foreign countries interfering in US elections. From Brian Saady at antiwar.com:

Last week, the Mueller investigative team indicted 13 Russian nationals for charges related to interference in the 2016 election. One of the individuals is a Russian billionaire, Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is allegedly the financier of the “troll farm.” This company that is solely dedicated to sowing political discord via fake news and false online identities is known as Internet Research Agency.

Meduza, a Latvia-based news organization that is critical of the Russian government, reported last October that Internet Research Agency has roughly 250 employees, with 90 focused on U.S. politics. In fact, the company hired 100 American activists, who were unaware of the origin of the funding, to lead rallies throughout the US

Americans certainly have a right to be upset about the organized dissemination of disinformation from a foreign nation. However, we also need to acknowledge the actions of our own government to fully understand this subject.

The Guardian reported in 2011 about the Pentagon’s psychological warfare program involving “sock puppets.” In other words, our military also hires private contractors to use fake Internet identities to spin online debate toward pro-American talking-points on non-English language or U.S.-based websites.

This is all part of a much larger battle of information warfare conducted by both countries. For instance, the US government spent $748 million last year on foreign broadcasting with programs, such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Conversely, Russia spent slightly less than $400 million last year to fund Russia Today and Sputnik News.

As for the much more nefarious issue of election meddling, the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations released a report last month concluding that Russia interfered in the elections of at least 19 nations over the last two decades.

On the other hand, US officials are active in the same capacity. Last week during an interview on Fox News, former CIA Director, James Woolsey, acknowledged the historical fact that the US has interfered in other countries’ elections.

Albeit, Woolsey countered that US interference was for the benefit of those countries to prevent communists from taking over. However, the non-answer by Woolsey when he was questioned if the US still interferes in elections is priceless.

To continue reading: Let’s Acknowledge US Interference in Foreign Elections

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Germany Heading for Four More Years of Pro-EU, Open-Door Migration Policies, by Soeren Kern

Posted on September 8, 2017 | 5 comments

Evidently Germans aren’t that bothered by Islamic immigration. From Soeren Kern at gatestoneinstitute.org:

  • The policy positions of Merkel and Schulz on key issues are virtually identical: Both candidates are committed to strengthening the European Union, maintaining open-door immigration policies, pursuing multiculturalism and quashing dissent from the so-called far right.
  • Merkel and Schulz both agree that there should be no upper limit on the number of migrants entering Germany.
  • Merkel’s grand coalition backed a law that would penalize social media giants, including Facebook, Google and Twitter, with fines of €50 million ($60 million) if they fail to remove offending content from their platforms within 24 hours. Observers say the law is aimed at silencing critics of Merkel’s open-door migration policy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), is on track win a fourth term in office after polls confirmed she won the first and only televised debate with her main election opponent, Martin Schulz, leader of the Social Democratic Union Party (SDP).

A survey for the public broadcaster ARD showed that 55% of viewers thought Merkel was the “more convincing” candidate during the debate, which took place on September 3; only 35% said Schulz came out ahead.

Many observers agreed that Schulz failed to leverage the debate to revive his flagging campaign, while others noted that Schulz’s positions on many issues are virtually indistinguishable from those held by Merkel.

Rainald Becker, an ARD commentator, described the debate as, “More a duet than a duel.”

“Merkel came out as sure, Schulz was hardly able to land a punch,” wrote Heribert Prantl, a commentator at Süddeutsche Zeitung. “The candidate is an honorable man. But being honorable alone will not make him chancellor.”

Christian Lindner, leader of the classical liberal Free Democrats, compared the debate to “scenes from a long marriage, where there is the occasional quarrel, but both sides know that they have to stick together in the future, too.”

Television presenter Günther Jauch, writing in Bild, said he had hoped to “at least understand what differentiates Merkel and Schulz in political terms. Instead, it was just a conversation between two political professionals who you suspect could both work pretty seamlessly in the same government.”

To continue reading: Germany Heading for Four More Years of Pro-EU, Open-Door Migration Policies

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Winners are Losers and Left is Right, by Raúl Ilargi Meijer

Posted on March 18, 2017 | Leave a comment

The European establishment are so worried about right wing insurgencies that electoral victory for the mainstream means they didn’t do quite as badly as expected, and electoral defeat for the right wing means they didn’t do quite as well as they might have. From Raúl Ilargi Meijer at automaticearth.com:

The Dutch elections on Wednesday have provided a whole bunch of Orwellian narratives. PM Mark Rutte’s right wing VVD party, actually the ‘business’ -or should we say ‘rent-seekers’ in 2017- party, who lost some 20% of the seats they had obtained in the previous parliamentary election in November 2012, down from 41 to 33 seats, is declared the big winner. While Geert Wilders’ very right wing party, PVV, won 25% more seats -it went from 16 to 20- and is the big loser.

Moreover, Rutte’s coalition partner, labor PvdA, gave up 29 out of 38 seats to end up with just 9. That’s a loss of over 75%. Together, the coalition partners went from 79 seats in the 2012 election to 42 in 2017. That’s an almost 50% less. Not that it could prevent Rutte from proudly declaring: “We want to stick to the course we have – safe and stable and prosperous..” Makes you wonder who the ‘we’ are that he’s talking about.

That course he wants to stick to had a finance minister named Dijsselbloem, and his party just lost by over 75%. So he won’t be back. But perhaps the EU can pull another ‘Tusk’, and leave him in place in Brussels as chairman of the Eurogroup no matter what voters in his own country think of him. Still, declaring your intention to ‘stick to the course’ when your coalition has just been sawed in half, it’s quite something.

The only reasons Rutte’s VVD ended up being the biggest party all have to do with Wilders. The anxiety over the election all had to do with polls. Wilders is a one man party and a a one trick pony. If he would leave, his party would dissolve. And his sole ‘message’ is that Islam is bad and should vanish from first Holland and then Europe. He doesn’t really have any other political program points. Ok, there’s Brussels. Doesn’t like that either.

To continue reading: Winners are Losers and Left is Right

 

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The U.S. Interfered in Foreign Presidential Elections 81 Times from 1946-2000, by Michael Krieger

Posted on December 22, 2016 | Leave a comment

This story is from the pot-calling-the-kettle-black department. From Michael Krieger at libertyblitzkrieg.com:

Something we should all be aware of.

From the LA Times:

The CIA has accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by hacking into Democratic and Republican computer networks and selectively releasing emails. But critics might point out the U.S. has done similar things.

The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University.

That number doesn’t include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn’t like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. Nor does it include general assistance with the electoral process, such as election monitoring.
Levin defines intervention as “a costly act which is designed to determine the election results [in favor of] one of the two sides.” These acts, carried out in secret two-thirds of the time, include funding the election campaigns of specific parties, disseminating misinformation or propaganda, training locals of only one side in various campaigning or get-out-the-vote techniques, helping one side design their campaign materials, making public pronouncements or threats in favor of or against a candidate, and providing or withdrawing foreign aid.

The U.S. hasn’t been the only one trying to interfere in other countries’ elections, according to Levin’s data. Russia attempted to sway 36 foreign elections from the end of World War II to the turn of the century – meaning that, in total, at least one of the two great powers of the 20th century intervened in about 1 of every 9 competitive, national-level executive elections in that time period.

In the 1990 Nicaragua elections, the CIA leaked damaging information on alleged corruption by the Marxist Sandinistas to German newspapers, according to Levin. The opposition used those reports against the Sandinista candidate, Daniel Ortega. He lost to opposition candidate Violeta Chamorro.

To continue reading: The U.S. Interfered in Foreign Presidential Elections 81 Times from 1946-2000

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