TBR News August 19, 2017

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., August 19, 2017:”We will be out of the office until August 20. Ed”

 

Table of Contents

• Charlottesville Observations
• Two Former Wasserman Schultz IT Aides Indicted For Conspiracy Against US
• Persona Non Grata: Would-Be Reformer Saakashvili Cast Out of Ukraine
• Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault
• The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin
• Who Funds the Radical Left In America?

 

Charlottesville Observations

August 19, 2017

by Michael Suslov

 

I was having a latte with a lady friend on the night of the rioting in Charlottesville and I observed a number of happenings that might be of general interest.

There was a great deal of noise being made by the left wing agitators. They were chanting old communist and modern ultra-liberal slogans while waving pre-printed signs (indicating careful preparations) while the right wing were marching down the mall in formation.

There were no police present.

Then, the left wing began throwing stones, cans, bottles and curses at the marchers and when the left began to attack the right, the right responded in force and kicked and punched them.

The left wingers ran away.

Later, while I was having my latte, we heard what sounded like an early American patriotic song sung by many voices and then down the street came a crowd of students from the University, singing.

My lady friend, a rampant liberal, was horrified when instead of ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ we heard the marchers singing ‘Nigger Doodle Dandy.’

This was a very unkind racist song I am told was popular with the early Democratic party rallies.

Then, the liberals, all out-of-towners bussed there for the trouble, rushed out on the sidewalk, screaming like turpentined tom cats and throwing paper cups of beverage at the marchers.

This did not seem to bother the students at all and they went on down the street.

Later, when we were walking down the street to find my parked car, we passed a city utility space that had a sign: ‘The Rosa Luxemburg Honor Park.’

A red flag and another early communist one were tied to the fence.

There were three large pictures on easels with guttering candles in front of them.

One was a picture of Lenin and flanking this were big pictures of Hillary Clinton and George Soros.

I drove back down the street, past the pathetic ‘honor park’ and saw a  big  group of laughing students standing in front of it.

They had torn up the pictures and were taking turns urinating on them.

So much for demonstrations of support for the left wingers, all of whom were bussed down to Charlottesville from New York City.

And some very strange young lady, who owned a dog called ‘Purple’ was out in the street and got run over.

I think they are going to put a statue of her and her dog up instead of General Lee.

The local mayor thinks this would be a wonderful idea.

Most of the people I have talked to do not agree and I doubt if he will get reelected.

A stuffed purple Mexican dog might look interesting hung in a tree, however.

A Charolettesville wind chime?

Two Former Wasserman Schultz IT Aides Indicted For Conspiracy Against US

August 17, 2017

by Luke Rosiak

dailycaller

A federal grand jury Thursday indicted two former information technology (IT) aides of Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz — Pakistani-born Imran Awan and his wife Hina Alvi — on four counts of conspiracy in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The FBI arrested Awan at Dulles International Airport July 24 as he was preparing to board a flight to Pakistan. When his wife Alvi left the U.S. for Pakistan in March, federal authorities found more than $12,000 in cash hidden in a suitcase. She had withdrawn the couple’s three children from local schools and does not intend to return to the U.S., according to the FBI.

“Defendants AWAN and ALVI did unlawfully, willfully, and knowingly conspire, combine, confederate, and agree with each other to commit offenses against the United States,” including bank fraud, false statements, and unlawful monetary transactions, the indictment said.

An arraignment date has not yet been set, and a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia did not immediately respond to The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group’s question about when Hina Alvi would become a fugitive if she does not return to the U.S. voluntarily, or whether officials would seek to extradite her from Pakistan.

In addition to lying on multiple mortgage disclosures, as an affidavit alleged at the time of Imran’s arrest, the indictment claims Hina lied by claiming medical hardship in order to withdraw hundreds of thousands of dollars from a retirement program.

The Awans, three of their relatives and a close friend are the targets of an FBI and U.S. Capitol Police criminal investigation into allegations they committed congressional cybersecurity violations and large-scale theft of congressional property in a scheme that may have begun more than a decade ago.

The crew worked as shared IT aides for dozens of House Democrats, including many who were members of the intelligence, foreign affairs and homeland security committees. Most of the Democrats fired them when the Capitol Police investigation became public in February, and their access to the congressional IT system was terminated.

However, Wasserman Schultz kept Alvi on her payroll until March and Awan until the day after his arrest. Authorities arrested Awan on the bank fraud charges in order to take his passport and prevent his leaving the U.S. as the investigation into their Capitol Hill activities continues.

Awan retained Chris Gowen, a longtime aide to former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to represent him shortly after his arrest. Gowen has claimed in media interviews that Alvi left the country with the children only because of lost jobs and the high cost of living in the nation’s capital. Gowen told the Associated Press that the family lives “in squalor” in Pakistan.

Gowen also told The New York Times that the Awans wired series of large sums of U.S. dollars to Pakistan as part of a long-time plan to buy property there. The couple had a combined income of $360,000 a year and owned four properties in the Washington, D.C. area, public records show.

In January, Imran — while impersonating his wife, according to the FBI — wired $283,000 from the Wright Patman Congressional Federal Credit Union.

“The wire transfer specialist asked AWAN for the reason for the wire transfer, and AWAN stated that it was for ‘funeral arrangements,’” the arrest indictment said. “The wire transfer specialist questioned whether ‘funeral arrangements’ was a sufficient reason for such a large transfer. AWAN then changed his reason to ‘purchasing property.’ The wire transfer specialist then initiated the $283,000 wire from the United States to two individuals in Faisalabad, Pakistan.”

Even after Awan’s arrest in July, it is possible more money flowed to Pakistan. On Aug. 3, he sold a home for $617,000, according to public records. Gowen declined to say if the proceeds were wired to Pakistan.

Politico reported that the Awan couple has a “friendly personal relationship” with Wasserman Schultz, who is a Florida Democrat, and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). They are also reportedly close to another Democrat, Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York.

Wasserman Schultz resigned from the DNC in July 2016 when Wikileaks released hacked committee emails. She has defended keeping Awan on her payroll even after she was aware he was suspected of, as she described it, “data transfer violations.” She claimed she had “racial and ethnic profiling concerns” and “would do it [keep Awan] again.”

In addition to allegations of fraud and the criminal investigation, other family members have been accused of fraud and worse by Muslim acquaintances and relatives in civil court.

Awan is currently involved in a civil case against his stepmother, Samina Gilani. Awan wanted his stepmother to sign a power of attorney document giving him access to money in Pakistan that was stored in his recently-deceased father’s name. Their stepmother has become homeless while the children — with a combined income of hundreds of thousands per year — are fighting her over a $50,000 life insurance policy.

She claims that Awan used his IT skills to wiretap her and his government connections to intimidate her. Gilani also said Awan told her he had the power to have people kidnapped.

Imran Awan’s brothers Jamal and Abid also were on the House payroll at chief-of-staff level salaries, and Jamal filed a death certificate for his father that falsely said he was divorced. Abid changed the beneficiary of their father’s life insurance policy from the wife to himself after his death, Gilani’s lawyer said.

“Imran Awan threatened that he is very powerful and if I ever call the police again, [he] will … kidnap my family members back in Pakistan,” Gilani claimed in the documents filed in Fairfax County, Va.

Thursday’s indictment, along with court documents in other cases, are viewable at the Court Docs link below. A list of members who employed the family follows.

 Persona Non Grata: Would-Be Reformer Saakashvili Cast Out of Ukraine

Two years ago, Petro Poroshenko hired former Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili to promote reforms and tackle corruption. Now, though, the Ukrainian president has thrown Saakashvili out of the country. What went wrong?

August 18, 2017

by Christian Esch

Spiegel

For someone who has had the door slammed in his face, Mikheil Saakashvili is filled with confidence. But has he ever behaved differently in public? On a recent Sunday evening, Europe’s best-known stateless statesman walked smilingly into a narrow assembly room in southern Warsaw. He shook hands as he walked through the crowd before stepping onto the podium, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out a small blue booklet.”This passport,” he said in Ukrainian, “is not the plaything of individual oligarchs, who issue it and then retract it, declare it invalid or use it to blackmail you.” And because he is not the only one who thinks so, he went on, he was able to use this passport to travel from the United States to Poland, despite the bullying from the Ukrainian leadership.

Mikheil Saakashvili, a former citizen of both Georgia and Ukraine, can thank Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for his current statelessness. Two years ago, Poroshenko awarded Ukrainian citizenship to the former Georgian president and appointed him governor of the Odessa region. It was an act full of symbolism: In the wake of Ukraine’s Maidan revolution, the man who had successfully modernized his native Georgia, the most radical reformer in the entire post-Soviet region, was being brought in to clean up the corrupt port city.

It sounded like a good plan, but now Poroshenko has apparently reconsidered. In late July, he revoked Saakashvili’s Ukrainian citizenship. And because Saakashvili also lost his Georgian citizenship, he now has none at all.

The acrimony between the two men comes at a time when questions once again surround Ukraine. In what kind of a country does a president simply terminate someone’s citizenship, as though it were a club membership? And what are the prospects of reform under a government that is locking out reformers?

Three years after the overthrow of former President Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine is in a deplorable state. The fight against corruption has not only not been won, but has in fact not even truly begun. Not a single senior government official or politician has been convicted on corruption charges to date. The reform process has also stalled. If anything happens at all, it invariably comes in response to pressure from the West. The war in the Donbass region against pro-Russian separatists and their Russian allies continues, despite a ceasefire, and no one in Kiev appears to have a strategy for changing the situation. Young Ukrainians are leaving the country to look for work abroad, while President Poroshenko is accumulating more and more power. Saakashvili’s expatriation is only a single episode in this miserable situation – just another instructive tale of shattered illusions.

Based on Money

“Mikheil is my friend from my university days. I remember him as a strong-willed and decisive person, and I have good reason to trust him,” Poroshenko said in 2015, when he granted Saakashvili Ukrainian citizenship and appointed him governor. The two were both students in Kiev during the Perestroika period.

Today, Saakashvili says: “Poroshenko chose his friends based on who had money. I had none. As such, I cannot say that we were friends.” His comments came at around noon on that Sunday in Warsaw, in the courtyard of a luxury hotel over white wine and salted nuts. There were still a few hours before his evening appearance in front of the Ukrainian diaspora. Saakashvili comes across differently in person than he does on stage. One wants to believe everything he says. He speaks very quickly, concisely and to the point – and he says everything with a slight smile, as if he had no problems, or at least none that could rattle him. But it is important to realize that the world that Saakashvili sees is not the world others see.

Saakashvili is extremely critical when speaking of Poroshenko. Yet he was more than happy to accept Ukrainian citizenship and the position in Odessa two years ago. It was a step down, from being president of his own country, even if it is small, to being a regional official in a foreign country. But Saakashvili’s political career was over in Georgia. Following two terms full of radical reforms and major projects implemented with authoritarian means, most Georgians had had enough of him.

A broad alliance formed by billionaire Bidsina Ivanishvili captured a parliamentary majority in Georgia in 2012 and then the presidency one year later. Some of Saakashvili’s allies went to prison while Saakashvili himself went to New York in 2013 and delivered lectures at Tufts University in Massachusetts as a “Senior Statesman.” But he was terribly bored. Besides, he says, he found life to be expensive in New York and thought Americans were superficial. As such, the Maidan revolution came at just the right time. Dozens of senior Georgian officials whose careers had come to an abrupt end at home suddenly had new jobs in Kiev.

A Product of the Oligarchy

It seemed an ideal combination. The Georgians had experience with reforms, after having successfully conducted their Rose Revolution a decade earlier. The Ukrainians, meanwhile, wanted to live like Europeans, under the rule of law and free of corruption. That is why they had taken to the streets. And both sides were united by the notion of standing up to Moscow. That, at least, was the plan. Saakashvili had hopes of becoming attorney general or head of the new anti-corruption office.

It soon became apparent, however, that political will in Ukraine wasn’t quite so black and white. The new president was no rose revolutionary or staunch reformist, and he wasn’t elected with 96 percent of the vote as Saakashvili had been in 2004. Poroshenko was a politician and businessman, a classic product of Ukraine’s oligarchic system, in which every major business leader is also involved in politics.

“If I had known then what I know today, I would not have accepted the position,” says Saakashvili. “I failed to recognize that money is the only thing that counts for Poroshenko. He sees reforms as PR, to make him look good to the West. Money is real. If he can combine the two, he is happy to do so. If he can’t, money is the decisive factor for him.” Poroshenko, Saakashvili says, even told him which officials in Odessa he was not to remove from office under any circumstances. The list included the police chief of an important district of the city.

Saakashvili built a new, transparent customs terminal (which never went into operation), established a citizens’ office (which had to close again temporarily) and tore down fences that had been illegally set up on beaches (they were put up again). He reduced the size of the civil service and sent armed investigators to the state-owned chemical plant OPZ.

The success of his policies was moderate at best. But he did earn himself a modicum of popularity due to his battles with powerful adversaries. In December 2015, for example, during a meeting of the National Reform Council, he engaged in a heated verbal battle with the business-minded interior minister, Arsen Avakov. “Thief!” Saakashvili shouted at him, “you’ll go to prison!” Avakov threw a water glass at him in response, followed by curses and the words: “Get out of my country!” “I’m Ukrainian! This is my country!” Saakashvili shouted back with his Georgian accent.

“Saakashvili wanted to capture Odessa at a gallop, but it doesn’t work that way,” says Ukrainian political scientist Volodymyr Fessenko. He describes politics in Ukraine as a swamp, where abrupt movements are not possible. But Saakashvili is not adept at patiently building alliances. Instead, he began to withdraw from his position. He preferred to be in familiar Kiev than Odessa, while his heart remained in his native Georgia.

Openly Hostile

In May 2016, he announced that he was returning to Georgian politics, but without withdrawing from Ukrainian politics. He submitted his resignation as governor in November 2016 and formed his own party in Ukraine. In his farewell remarks, he said that the president himself supported the worst clans in Odessa, including bandits, murderers and corrupt officials. The friendship had turned into an openly hostile relationship.

Poroshenko’s official reason for revoking Saakashvili’s citizenship was absurd. He claimed that when Saakashvili applied for Ukrainian citizenship, he had failed to mention that he was the subject of criminal proceedings in Georgia. “I couldn’t have done so, because I had not yet been officially notified,” says Saakashvili. “I only knew about it from the media, just like Poroshenko.”

The real reason for the rift remains unclear. Saakashvili says that he had a long argument with Poroshenko during a March meeting in Malta. According to Saakashvili, Poroshenko demanded that he behave himself and stick to the rules, insisting that he criticize others and not just Poroshenko himself – and that if he did so, he could continue his career in Ukrainian politics and would get a seat in parliament. If he did not, though, according to Saakashvili’s account, Poroshenko said “individual measures” would be taken, though he failed to elaborate.

Saakashvili did not abide by Poroshenko’s instructions. A few months later, a guest on a talk show he was hosting sang an insulting ditty about Poroshenko, in which the president was referred to as “Chocolate Ass,” a reference to Poroshenko’s confectionery empire.

Now Saakashvili has a problem, and his only comfort is that Poroshenko has one too. Revoking Saakashvili’s citizenship doesn’t look good, particularly in the West, on which Ukraine currently depends. And if anyone can attract attention in the West, it is Saakashvili. Hillary Clinton even nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006.

Slamming the Door

The decision to revoke Saakashvili’s passport was announced when he was in the United States visiting his uncle, who lives in the Bronx. That was part of Poroshenko’s plan: to slam the door in the troublemaker’s face when he was out of the country. Saakashvili was unable to speak with President Donald Trump or Republican Senator John McCain, both personal acquaintances, but he did meet with the new U.S. special envoy for Ukraine.

In Poland, Saakashvili has a good relationship with the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, with the late Polish President Lech Kaczynski having been his strongest supporter in the 2008 Caucasus war. In an interview on Polish television, Saakashvili reinforced the PiS conspiracy theory that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind Kaczynski’s death in a plane crash near Smolensk. “The Russians wanted to punish Lech Kaczynski for flying to Georgia at the time and speaking in Tbilisi.” These are unfounded conjectures, but Saakashvili is not the type to draw a clear line between wishful thinking and reality – certainly not when it comes to Russia.

He now hopes that the West will exert pressure on Poroshenko, so that he can challenge the revocation of his citizenship. “Even if I don’t get a fair trial, at least I want to be heard.”

Ukrainian border guards are currently doing everything they can to ensure that Saakashvili does not enter the country. During his appearance in Warsaw, Saakashvili said that border guards had even searched the trunk of a car belonging to a Ukrainian member of parliament recently, fearing that he could be smuggling Saakashvili to Kiev.

It was one of the few lighthearted moments of the evening. Otherwise, Saakashvili spoke extensively about the prospects of Ukraine, its talented citizens and the especially talented Ukrainian diaspora. He issued warnings, flattery, promises and, most than anything, embellishments. Russia? It will attack Ukraine soon, which was the purpose of the military exercises in Belarus in the fall. Crimea? We’ll get it back. Growth? Needs to be at least 11 percent. The Ukrainian émigrés in the room? The best. He is, though, largely silent about concrete political measures.

Dim Prospects

Saakashvili’s Ukrainian teacher is sitting in the front row. He has spent the entire evening speaking Ukrainian, which is still significantly more difficult for him than speaking Russian. But now that he is fighting for his Ukrainian citizenship, the language has become more important. He ends his speech with a “glory to Ukraine” before going outside where people are waiting to take selfies with him. Saakashvili smiles patiently.

Back in Kiev, the headquarters of his party, Movement of New Forces, is deserted. The offices are on Hrushevsky Street, precisely where the barricades were burning in the winter of 2013/2014. Although Saakashvili is the party leader, it is currently being run by David Sakwarelidse, another of the young Georgian reformers who came to Ukraine after Euromaidan. He was deputy attorney general in Ukraine, but he was held back by his superior, a man with a legendarily bad reputation.

“At least we managed to shake up the system,” says Sakwarelidse. “If you want reforms, you have to come from a different world. Poroshenko comes from the inside. To this day, he doesn’t actually know what reforms are.” Sakwarelidse also has a Ukrainian passport now, and has likewise lost his Georgian citizenship. It is an irony of fate that a man who came to Ukraine to apply his legal expertise is now a party bureaucrat in charge of shaping a political platform. That was not the plan when Saakashvili and the other Georgians came to Ukraine.

Without Saakashvili, the party’s only star, the Movement of New Forces doesn’t have a chance. But even with him, prospects would be dim. A rally called to protest the revocation of Saakashvili’s citizenship was attended by just 100 people. Saakashvili’s relationship with the Western elite, it would seem, is stronger than his ties to Ukrainian society.

For Petro Poroshenko, that is good news. The troublemaker from Georgia, it would seem, will soon fade into the past.

Translated from the English by Christopher Sultan

 

The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin

by John J. Mearsheimer

Foreign Affairs

According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine.

But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine — beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004 — were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president — which he rightly labeled a “coup” — was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West.

Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly. Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics. They tend to believe that the logic of realism holds little relevance in the twenty-first century and that Europe can be kept whole and free on the basis of such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy.

But this grand scheme went awry in Ukraine. The crisis there shows that realpolitik remains relevant — and states that ignore it do so at their own peril. U.S. and European leaders blundered in attempting to turn Ukraine into a Western stronghold on Russia’s border. Now that the consequences have been laid bare, it would be an even greater mistake to continue this misbegotten policy.

THE WESTERN AFFRONT

As the Cold War came to a close, Soviet leaders preferred that U.S. forces remain in Europe and NATO stay intact, an arrangement they thought would keep a reunified Germany pacified. But they and their Russian successors did not want NATO to grow any larger and assumed that Western diplomats understood their concerns. The Clinton administration evidently thought otherwise, and in the mid-1990s, it began pushing for NATO to expand.

The first round of enlargement took place in 1999 and brought in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. The second occurred in 2004; it included Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Moscow complained bitterly from the start. During NATO’s 1995 bombing campaign against the Bosnian Serbs, for example, Russian President Boris Yeltsin said, “This is the first sign of what could happen when NATO comes right up to the Russian Federation’s borders. … The flame of war could burst out across the whole of Europe.” But the Russians were too weak at the time to derail NATO’s eastward movement — which, at any rate, did not look so threatening, since none of the new members shared a border with Russia, save for the tiny Baltic countries.

Then NATO began looking further east. At its April 2008 summit in Bucharest, the alliance considered admitting Georgia and Ukraine. The George W. Bush administration supported doing so, but France and Germany opposed the move for fear that it would unduly antagonize Russia. In the end, NATO’s members reached a compromise: the alliance did not begin the formal process leading to membership, but it issued a statement endorsing the aspirations of Georgia and Ukraine and boldly declaring, “These countries will become members of NATO.”

Moscow, however, did not see the outcome as much of a compromise. Alexander Grushko, then Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said, “Georgia’s and Ukraine’s membership in the alliance is a huge strategic mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European security.” Putin maintained that admitting those two countries to NATO would represent a “direct threat” to Russia. One Russian newspaper reported that Putin, while speaking with Bush, “very transparently hinted that if Ukraine was accepted into NATO, it would cease to exist.”

Russia’s invasion of Georgia in August 2008 should have dispelled any remaining doubts about Putin’s determination to prevent Georgia and Ukraine from joining NATO. Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, who was deeply committed to bringing his country into NATO, had decided in the summer of 2008 to reincorporate two separatist regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. But Putin sought to keep Georgia weak and divided — and out of NATO. After fighting broke out between the Georgian government and South Ossetian separatists, Russian forces took control of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Moscow had made its point. Yet despite this clear warning, NATO never publicly abandoned its goal of bringing Georgia and Ukraine into the alliance. And NATO expansion continued marching forward, with Albania and Croatia becoming members in 2009.

The EU, too, has been marching eastward. In May 2008, it unveiled its Eastern Partnership initiative, a program to foster prosperity in such countries as Ukraine and integrate them into the EU economy. Not surprisingly, Russian leaders view the plan as hostile to their country’s interests. This past February, before Yanukovych was forced from office, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the EU of trying to create a “sphere of influence” in eastern Europe. In the eyes of Russian leaders, EU expansion is a stalking horse for NATO expansion.

The West’s final tool for peeling Kiev away from Moscow has been its efforts to spread Western values and promote democracy in Ukraine and other post-Soviet states, a plan that often entails funding pro-Western individuals and organizations. Victoria Nuland, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, estimated in December 2013 that the United States had invested more than $5 billion since 1991 to help Ukraine achieve “the future it deserves.” As part of that effort, the U.S. government has bankrolled the National Endowment for Democracy. The nonprofit foundation has funded more than 60 projects aimed at promoting civil society in Ukraine, and the NED’s president, Carl Gershman, has called that country “the biggest prize.” After Yanukovych won Ukraine’s presidential election in February 2010, the NED decided he was undermining its goals, and so it stepped up its efforts to support the opposition and strengthen the country’s democratic institutions.

When Russian leaders look at Western social engineering in Ukraine, they worry that their country might be next. And such fears are hardly groundless. In September 2013, Gershman wrote in The Washington Post, “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents.” He added: “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

CREATING A CRISIS

The West’s triple package of policies — NATO enlargement, EU expansion, and democracy promotion — added fuel to a fire waiting to ignite. The spark came in November 2013, when Yanukovych rejected a major economic deal he had been negotiating with the EU and decided to accept a $15 billion Russian counteroffer instead. That decision gave rise to antigovernment demonstrations that escalated over the following three months and that by mid-February had led to the deaths of some one hundred protesters. Western emissaries hurriedly flew to Kiev to resolve the crisis. On February 21, the government and the opposition struck a deal that allowed Yanukovych to stay in power until new elections were held. But it immediately fell apart, and Yanukovych fled to Russia the next day. The new government in Kiev was pro-Western and anti-Russian to the core, and it contained four high-ranking members who could legitimately be labeled neofascists.

Although the full extent of U.S. involvement has not yet come to light, it is clear that Washington backed the coup. Nuland and Republican Senator John McCain participated in antigovernment demonstrations, and Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, proclaimed after Yanukovych’s toppling that it was “a day for the history books.” As a leaked telephone recording revealed, Nuland had advocated regime change and wanted the Ukrainian politician Arseniy Yatsenyuk to become prime minister in the new government, which he did. No wonder Russians of all persuasions think the West played a role in Yanukovych’s ouster.

For Putin, the time to act against Ukraine and the West had arrived. Shortly after February 22, he ordered Russian forces to take Crimea from Ukraine, and soon after that, he incorporated it into Russia. The task proved relatively easy, thanks to the thousands of Russian troops already stationed at a naval base in the Crimean port of Sevastopol. Crimea also made for an easy target since ethnic Russians compose roughly 60 percent of its population. Most of them wanted out of Ukraine.

Next, Putin put massive pressure on the new government in Kiev to discourage it from siding with the West against Moscow, making it clear that he would wreck Ukraine as a functioning state before he would allow it to become a Western stronghold on Russia’s doorstep. Toward that end, he has provided advisers, arms, and diplomatic support to the Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, who are pushing the country toward civil war. He has massed a large army on the Ukrainian border, threatening to invade if the government cracks down on the rebels. And he has sharply raised the price of the natural gas Russia sells to Ukraine and demanded payment for past exports. Putin is playing hardball.

THE DIAGNOSIS

Putin’s actions should be easy to comprehend. A huge expanse of flat land that Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself, Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Russia. No Russian leader would tolerate a military alliance that was Moscow’s mortal enemy until recently moving into Ukraine. Nor would any Russian leader stand idly by while the West helped install a government there that was determined to integrate Ukraine into the West.

Washington may not like Moscow’s position, but it should understand the logic behind it. This is Geopolitics 101: great powers are always sensitive to potential threats near their home territory. After all, the United States does not tolerate distant great powers deploying military forces anywhere in the Western Hemisphere, much less on its borders. Imagine the outrage in Washington if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico in it. Logic aside, Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn those countries against Russia — a message that the 2008 Russian-Georgian war also made crystal clear.

Officials from the United States and its European allies contend that they tried hard to assuage Russian fears and that Moscow should understand that NATO has no designs on Russia. In addition to continually denying that its expansion was aimed at containing Russia, the alliance has never permanently deployed military forces in its new member states. In 2002, it even created a body called the NATO-Russia Council in an effort to foster cooperation. To further mollify Russia, the United States announced in 2009 that it would deploy its new missile defense system on warships in European waters, at least initially, rather than on Czech or Polish territory. But none of these measures worked; the Russians remained steadfastly opposed to NATO enlargement, especially into Georgia and Ukraine. And it is the Russians, not the West, who ultimately get to decide what counts as a threat to them.

To understand why the West, especially the United States, failed to understand that its Ukraine policy was laying the groundwork for a major clash with Russia, one must go back to the mid-1990s, when the Clinton administration began advocating NATO expansion. Pundits advanced a variety of arguments for and against enlargement, but there was no consensus on what to do. Most eastern European émigrés in the United States and their relatives, for example, strongly supported expansion, because they wanted NATO to protect such countries as Hungary and Poland. A few realists also favored the policy because they thought Russia still needed to be contained.

But most realists opposed expansion, in the belief that a declining great power with an aging population and a one-dimensional economy did not in fact need to be contained. And they feared that enlargement would only give Moscow an incentive to cause trouble in eastern Europe. The U.S. diplomat George Kennan articulated this perspective in a 1998 interview, shortly after the U.S. Senate approved the first round of NATO expansion. “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies,” he said. “I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anyone else.”

Most liberals, on the other hand, favored enlargement, including many key members of the Clinton administration. They believed that the end of the Cold War had fundamentally transformed international politics and that a new, postnational order had replaced the realist logic that used to govern Europe. The United States was not only the “indispensable nation,” as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put it; it was also a benign hegemon and thus unlikely to be viewed as a threat in Moscow. The aim, in essence, was to make the entire continent look like western Europe.

And so the United States and its allies sought to promote democracy in the countries of eastern Europe, increase economic interdependence among them, and embed them in international institutions. Having won the debate in the United States, liberals had little difficulty convincing their European allies to support NATO enlargement. After all, given the EU’s past achievements, Europeans were even more wedded than Americans to the idea that geopolitics no longer mattered and that an all-inclusive liberal order could maintain peace in Europe.

So thoroughly did liberals come to dominate the discourse about European security during the first decade of this century that even as the alliance adopted an open-door policy of growth, NATO expansion faced little realist opposition. The liberal worldview is now accepted dogma among U.S. officials. In March, for example, President Barack Obama delivered a speech about Ukraine in which he talked repeatedly about “the ideals” that motivate Western policy and how those ideals “have often been threatened by an older, more traditional view of power.” Secretary of State John Kerry’s response to the Crimea crisis reflected this same perspective: “You just don’t in the twenty-first century behave in nineteenth-century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped-up pretext.”

In essence, the two sides have been operating with different playbooks: Putin and his compatriots have been thinking and acting according to realist dictates, whereas their Western counterparts have been adhering to liberal ideas about international politics. The result is that the United States and its allies unknowingly provoked a major crisis over Ukraine.

BLAME GAME

In that same 1998 interview, Kennan predicted that NATO expansion would provoke a crisis, after which the proponents of expansion would “say that we always told you that is how the Russians are.” As if on cue, most Western officials have portrayed Putin as the real culprit in the Ukraine predicament. In March, according to The New York Times, German Chancellor Angela Merkel implied that Putin was irrational, telling Obama that he was “in another world.” Although Putin no doubt has autocratic tendencies, no evidence supports the charge that he is mentally unbalanced. On the contrary: he is a first-class strategist who should be feared and respected by anyone challenging him on foreign policy.

Other analysts allege, more plausibly, that Putin regrets the demise of the Soviet Union and is determined to reverse it by expanding Russia’s borders. According to this interpretation, Putin, having taken Crimea, is now testing the waters to see if the time is right to conquer Ukraine, or at least its eastern part, and he will eventually behave aggressively toward other countries in Russia’s neighborhood. For some in this camp, Putin represents a modern-day Adolf Hitler, and striking any kind of deal with him would repeat the mistake of Munich. Thus, NATO must admit Georgia and Ukraine to contain Russia before it dominates its neighbors and threatens western Europe.

This argument falls apart on close inspection. If Putin were committed to creating a greater Russia, signs of his intentions would almost certainly have arisen before February 22. But there is virtually no evidence that he was bent on taking Crimea, much less any other territory in Ukraine, before that date. Even Western leaders who supported NATO expansion were not doing so out of a fear that Russia was about to use military force. Putin’s actions in Crimea took them by complete surprise and appear to have been a spontaneous reaction to Yanukovych’s ouster. Right afterward, even Putin said he opposed Crimean secession, before quickly changing his mind.

Besides, even if it wanted to, Russia lacks the capability to easily conquer and annex eastern Ukraine, much less the entire country. Roughly 15 million people — one-third of Ukraine’s population — live between the Dnieper River, which bisects the country, and the Russian border. An overwhelming majority of those people want to remain part of Ukraine and would surely resist a Russian occupation. Furthermore, Russia’s mediocre army, which shows few signs of turning into a modern Wehrmacht, would have little chance of pacifying all of Ukraine. Moscow is also poorly positioned to pay for a costly occupation; its weak economy would suffer even more in the face of the resulting sanctions.

But even if Russia did boast a powerful military machine and an impressive economy, it would still probably prove unable to successfully occupy Ukraine. One need only consider the Soviet and U.S. experiences in Afghanistan, the U.S. experiences in Vietnam and Iraq, and the Russian experience in Chechnya to be reminded that military occupations usually end badly. Putin surely understands that trying to subdue Ukraine would be like swallowing a porcupine. His response to events there has been defensive, not offensive.

A WAY OUT

Given that most Western leaders continue to deny that Putin’s behavior might be motivated by legitimate security concerns, it is unsurprising that they have tried to modify it by doubling down on their existing policies and have punished Russia to deter further aggression. Although Kerry has maintained that “all options are on the table,” neither the United States nor its NATO allies are prepared to use force to defend Ukraine. The West is relying instead on economic sanctions to coerce Russia into ending its support for the insurrection in eastern Ukraine. In July, the United States and the EU put in place their third round of limited sanctions, targeting mainly high-level individuals closely tied to the Russian government and some high-profile banks, energy companies, and defense firms. They also threatened to unleash another, tougher round of sanctions, aimed at whole sectors of the Russian economy.

Such measures will have little effect. Harsh sanctions are likely off the table anyway; western European countries, especially Germany, have resisted imposing them for fear that Russia might retaliate and cause serious economic damage within the EU. But even if the United States could convince its allies to enact tough measures, Putin would probably not alter his decision-making. History shows that countries will absorb enormous amounts of punishment in order to protect their core strategic interests. There is no reason to think Russia represents an exception to this rule.

Western leaders have also clung to the provocative policies that precipitated the crisis in the first place. In April, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden met with Ukrainian legislators and told them, “This is a second opportunity to make good on the original promise made by the Orange Revolution.” John Brennan, the director of the CIA, did not help things when, that same month, he visited Kiev on a trip the White House said was aimed at improving security cooperation with the Ukrainian government.

The EU, meanwhile, has continued to push its Eastern Partnership. In March, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, summarized EU thinking on Ukraine, saying, “We have a debt, a duty of solidarity with that country, and we will work to have them as close as possible to us.” And sure enough, on June 27, the EU and Ukraine signed the economic agreement that Yanukovych had fatefully rejected seven months earlier. Also in June, at a meeting of NATO members’ foreign ministers, it was agreed that the alliance would remain open to new members, although the foreign ministers refrained from mentioning Ukraine by name. “No third country has a veto over NATO enlargement,” announced Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO’s secretary-general. The foreign ministers also agreed to support various measures to improve Ukraine’s military capabilities in such areas as command and control, logistics, and cyberdefense. Russian leaders have naturally recoiled at these actions; the West’s response to the crisis will only make a bad situation worse.

There is a solution to the crisis in Ukraine, however — although it would require the West to think about the country in a fundamentally new way. The United States and its allies should abandon their plan to westernize Ukraine and instead aim to make it a neutral buffer between NATO and Russia, akin to Austria’s position during the Cold War. Western leaders should acknowledge that Ukraine matters so much to Putin that they cannot support an anti-Russian regime there. This would not mean that a future Ukrainian government would have to be pro-Russian or anti-NATO. On the contrary, the goal should be a sovereign Ukraine that falls in neither the Russian nor the Western camp.

To achieve this end, the United States and its allies should publicly rule out NATO’s expansion into both Georgia and Ukraine. The West should also help fashion an economic rescue plan for Ukraine funded jointly by the EU, the International Monetary Fund, Russia, and the United States — a proposal that Moscow should welcome, given its interest in having a prosperous and stable Ukraine on its western flank. And the West should considerably limit its social-engineering efforts inside Ukraine. It is time to put an end to Western support for another Orange Revolution. Nevertheless, U.S. and European leaders should encourage Ukraine to respect minority rights, especially the language rights of its Russian speakers.

Some may argue that changing policy toward Ukraine at this late date would seriously damage U.S. credibility around the world. There would undoubtedly be certain costs, but the costs of continuing a misguided strategy would be much greater. Furthermore, other countries are likely to respect a state that learns from its mistakes and ultimately devises a policy that deals effectively with the problem at hand. That option is clearly open to the United States.

One also hears the claim that Ukraine has the right to determine whom it wants to ally with and the Russians have no right to prevent Kiev from joining the West. This is a dangerous way for Ukraine to think about its foreign policy choices. The sad truth is that might often makes right when great-power politics are at play. Abstract rights such as self-determination are largely meaningless when powerful states get into brawls with weaker states. Did Cuba have the right to form a military alliance with the Soviet Union during the Cold War? The United States certainly did not think so, and the Russians think the same way about Ukraine joining the West. It is in Ukraine’s interest to understand these facts of life and tread carefully when dealing with its more powerful neighbor.

Even if one rejects this analysis, however, and believes that Ukraine has the right to petition to join the EU and NATO, the fact remains that the United States and its European allies have the right to reject these requests. There is no reason that the West has to accommodate Ukraine if it is bent on pursuing a wrong-headed foreign policy, especially if its defense is not a vital interest. Indulging the dreams of some Ukrainians is not worth the animosity and strife it will cause, especially for the Ukrainian people.

Of course, some analysts might concede that NATO handled relations with Ukraine poorly and yet still maintain that Russia constitutes an enemy that will only grow more formidable over time — and that the West therefore has no choice but to continue its present policy. But this viewpoint is badly mistaken. Russia is a declining power, and it will only get weaker with time. Even if Russia were a rising power, moreover, it would still make no sense to incorporate Ukraine into NATO. The reason is simple: the United States and its European allies do not consider Ukraine to be a core strategic interest, as their unwillingness to use military force to come to its aid has proved. It would therefore be the height of folly to create a new NATO member that the other members have no intention of defending. NATO has expanded in the past because liberals assumed the alliance would never have to honor its new security guarantees, but Russia’s recent power play shows that granting Ukraine NATO membership could put Russia and the West on a collision course.

Sticking with the current policy would also complicate Western relations with Moscow on other issues. The United States needs Russia’s assistance to withdraw U.S. equipment from Afghanistan through Russian territory, reach a nuclear agreement with Iran, and stabilize the situation in Syria. In fact, Moscow has helped Washington on all three of these issues in the past; in the summer of 2013, it was Putin who pulled Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire by forging the deal under which Syria agreed to relinquish its chemical weapons, thereby avoiding the U.S. military strike that Obama had threatened. The United States will also someday need Russia’s help containing a rising China. Current U.S. policy, however, is only driving Moscow and Beijing closer together.

The United States and its European allies now face a choice on Ukraine. They can continue their current policy, which will exacerbate hostilities with Russia and devastate Ukraine in the process — a scenario in which everyone would come out a loser. Or they can switch gears and work to create a prosperous but neutral Ukraine, one that does not threaten Russia and allows the West to repair its relations with Moscow. With that approach, all sides would win.

 

Who Funds the Radical Left In America?

by Steve Baldwin,

Western Center for Journalism

Very few Americans realize there exists a large network of far left philanthropists and foundations in America dedicated to destroying the American way of life, our Christian-based culture and our free enterprise system.  They seek to remove America from its constitutional foundations and move it toward a European-style socialism.  Much of this effort is coordinated by a little known group called the Tides Foundation and its related group, the Tides Center.

Over the course of its 33 year history, the Tides network has given hundreds of millions of dollars to anti-free enterprise groups, gun control groups, anti-private property groups, abortion rights groups, homosexual groups, groups engaged in voter fraud, anti-military groups, and organizations that seek to destroy America’s constitutional basis. All told, over 100 leftist organizations have received funding from one of the two Tides groups.

Not surprisingly, this network of anti-American groups played a key role in electing Barack Obama by using classic propaganda techniques in making false allegations about Bush (he lied regarding WMDs, he stole the election in Florida, he knew in advance about 9/11, etc, etc.) and created the impression that Bush and by extension, the GOP, was corrupt.  Obama, of course, was portrayed as the reformer who would save America from this corruption.

Millions of Americans fell for this mythology and so without being openly partisan, this vast network of far left groups, along with its media allies, was able to manipulate American public opinion during the last election cycle.  Meanwhile, anyone who tried to reveal Obama’s real agenda, his role in the corrupt Chicago political machine, his socialist political associations, or his soft spot for Middle Eastern terrorists was labeled a kook by this same network.

The amount of funding the Tides Foundation and Tides Center provides the hard left is unprecedented. Indeed, its financial disclosures show that the Tides Center has raised between $48 and $71 million each year since 1998 and the bulk of this revenue is contributed back to far left groups. The closely-aligned Tides Foundation has reported revenues of between $59 and $77 million every year since 2002.  The two tax exempt groups are supposed to be non-partisan, but they are certainly extremely political and they push the envelope regarding what non-profit groups are allowed to do politically.  All together, both Tides groups have contributed over $500 million to the organized left.

The list of hard-left causes is long and there is not enough space to review them all.  But here’s a brief review of a few of them:

Environmental Extremist groups

Members of the Ruckus Society

The Ruckus Society is a group of environmental anarchists dedicated to the violent overthrow of America.  One of its projects is to train people to disrupt events such as political party conventions using street blockades and other violent techniques.  Its director has publicly stated that, “you can use vandalism strategically.” They received $200,000 from the Tides Foundation.

The California Wildlands Project received Tides funding and it is dedicated to placing millions of acres of land off limits to humans.  The Natural Resources Defense Council received support from Tides and is notorious for defending the rights of animals and plants over the rights of humans.  If they had their way, civilization would be returned to a primitive state.  The NRDC ran ads attacking President Bush during his last presidential campaign.  Another Tides recipient is Greenpeace which, despite its friendly-sounding name, is best known for its illegal actions at sea that often endanger humans. Greenpeace received $250,000 from Tides.

Anti-Anti-Terrorist groups

The Tides entities fund the Iraq Peace Fund and the Peace Strategies Fund, which in turn have funded much of the anti-war movement and led to the creation of the hysterical anti-war group MoveOn.org and the radical website Indymedia. The later group has coordinated radical activists worldwide to fight American foreign policy interests.

The Tides Foundation also funded the anti-war group United for Peace and Justice, headed by longtime Communist Party member and pro-Castro apologist Leslie Cagan. Indeed, when UFPJ co-founder Medea Benjamin visited Cuba, she stated that the contrast between Cuba and America “made it seem like I died and went to heaven.” Tides has announced that it supports “nonviolent responses to terrorism,” as if that will have any effect whatsoever on the agenda of the terrorists.  This attitude is dangerously naïve.

Islamic groups

Apparently, the Tides Foundation does not consider any Islamic group to be a threat, even if they have been implicated in terrorist activities by the government.  It has funded the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), probably the leading front group for Islamic radicals in America.  Indeed, three of CAIR’s leaders have been arrested for pro-jihadist activities and CAIR spends much of its time attacking American efforts to track, monitor, and arrest domestic terrorists.  They have opposed, for example, virtually every effort by the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to monitor Islamic radicals known to be engaged in pro-jihadist activity.

But rather than be concerned with Islamic terrorism after 9/11, the Tides Foundation poured half of a million dollars into an effort to protect the rights of homosexual Arabs.  Another Tides recipient, the Democratic Justice Fund, works to east restrictions on Muslim immigration to the United States from countries designated as “terrorist nations.”

The Tides groups also funds other groups who work against the creation of internal security measures such as the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee.

Radical Legal groups

William Kuntsler

The National Lawyers Guild receives support from the Tides foundation.  The NLG began as the legal arm of the U.S. Communist Party and still functions today as a legal support arm for terrorists, spies, and other anti-American scum.   Conventions of the NLG sound ridiculously like a politburo meeting or a cheering section for worldwide jihad with speakers praising terrorists worldwide.   Also receiving Tides funding via the Peace Strategies Fund is the Center for Constitutional Rights, headed by long-time Marxist psychopath William Kunstler.  CCR opposed every effort by the Bush Administration to make it difficult for terrorists to operate in America.  One Tides press statement announced that CCR was educating people “about the dangers posed by government anti-terrorism activities.”  In other words, the U.S. government is the threat, not Islamic jihadists.  Finally, the Tides also funds the ACLU which spends much of its time fighting for the “rights” of non-citizen terrorists.

Voter Fraud groups

When the story broke last year about how ACORN founder Wade Rathke was caught embezzling a million dollars from ACORN, it was Tides founder Drummond Pike who reimbursed ACORN for the missing money.  Pike did not want an investigation of ACORN that would force it to open its books.  With ongoing investigations in at least a dozen states involving ACORN and voter fraud, you can understand Pike’s concern.  Not only that, but Rathke sits on the board of both the Tides Center and Tides Foundation.

With the Tides Foundation and Tides Center now the largest funder of the left in America today, Drummond Pike may be one of the most powerful men in America.  This scruffy, California-based, anti-war activist, founded the Tides Foundation in 1976 and has managed to raise millions of dollars from America’s leading foundations.  What he promises them is anonymity since they are able to claim they are simply contributing to a foundation self-described as being “committed to a society based on fairness, equal justice and equally shared economic opportunities…”  That sounds fairly innocuous.  The contributors therefore have some “deniability” about how their money is used but Pike then directs this money to a massive network of hard-left groups.  Indeed, Pike even states, “Anonymity is very important to most of the people we work with.”

But that scam needs to come to an end and these donors need to be held accountable for their actions.  It is extremely hypocritical for individuals and foundations whose wealth is due to America’s free enterprise system to support causes that seek to destroy our way of life.

If you’ve ever heard the clique “Limousine Liberal,” this is a perfect description for these people.

Four of its largest supporters are as follows:

The Heinz Endowment.

Led by John Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, this group has contributed at least $8.1 million to the Tides entities since 1994.  This is the endowment created by the Heinz food empire which Teresa Heinz still has ownership interest in.

George Soros.

Soros is an eccentric billionaire who has been funding anti-American groups and causes for a decade. He was convicted of insider trading in France in 2005 and is the leading force behind the effort to legalize all drugs. While he is the founder of the Open Society organization, he hides a great deal of his wealth in offshore banks considered havens for money laundering.  He has given more than $7 million to the Tides Foundation.  Tides founder Drummond Pike serves as the treasurer for Soros’s Democracy Alliance, a major funder of ACORN.

Ford Foundation. This foundation consistently supports causes Henry Ford would never have supported and has become one of the largest donors to Tides, giving them millions of dollars since 1997. Not only that, but the Ford Motor company itself also gives to Tides.

Rockefeller Foundation:  They have been funding the left in America for 40 years, so this is no surprise.

Other large Tides donors include: the Pew Charitable Trust, the James Irvine Foundation, Citigroup Foundation,  Kellogg Foundation, Hearst Foundation, Fannie Mae Foundation, JP Morgan Foundation, Bank America Foundation, Chase Manhattan Foundation, Verizon Foundation, David & Lucile Packard Foundation, AT & T Foundation, Bell Atlantic Foundation, Citicorp Foundation, ARCO Foundation, US West Foundation, John D. MacArthur Foundation, ALCOA Foundation, Richard King Mellon Foundation, and the Carnegie Foundation.

What’s sad is that many of these foundations were originally endowed by America’s first generation of great capitalists but have decided to spit on the legacy created by these captains of industry. It is very doubtful William Randolph Hearst, J.P. Morgan, John D. MacArthur, Andrew Carnegie, Richard Mellon, Henry Ford, John D. Rockefeller, or W. K. Kellogg, would support efforts to move America toward socialism or assist terrorists who desire to destroy America. These foundations have been captured by the left and now use the money created by free enterprise to attack the very system which created such wealth.

But the Tides organizations have also successfully raised millions from fairly new foundations as well, such as foundations created by: Hewlett Packard, Verizon, ARCO, Citigroup, and AT& T.  This potent combination of old and new wealth is posed to radically change America due not only to how Tides Center and Foundation has combined this wealth to create and fund the hard-left infrastructure in America, but also due to how the Media has unabashedly bought into all the themes perpetrated by this network of groups.

But Americans need to realize that this is how the hard left in America is now funded. Indeed, this is the same network used by the Obama campaign machine to manipulate public opinion.  This coalition of left wing groups and hijacked foundations will destroy America unless Americans wake up and quit funding the corporations linked to these foundations.

The impact this group is having was evident just recently in the debate on the Stimulus legislation and the Cap and Trade initiative. A project of the Tides Center is the Apollo Alliance, a group “designed to bring together the elements of organized labor with the community organizers with the green groups, the environmental groups, and to access all of the big foundation money that’s been supportive of those causes in the past,” according to Phil Kerpen, director of policy for Americans for Prosperity.

A former board member of the Apollo Alliance is Van Jones, a self-described communist now serving as President Obama’s new “green jobs” czar.   Apollo Alliance leaders claim to have written both the stimulus bill and the Cap and Trade bill.  It is shocking to realize that unelected radicals now appear to have more power than our elected members of Congress.

Van Jones

One way to reduce the power of this alliance would be to boycott the products and services these organizations are involved with such as Ford automobiles, Heinz food products, Bank of America, Kellogg cereals, HP computers, etc. While these foundations usually no longer have any financial association with the corporations that originally endowed them, you can be sure the people from both entities still travel in the same circles. If thousands of Americans, for example, told Ford dealers they will no longer buy Ford cars as long as the Ford Foundation funds anti-American causes, the Foundation will quickly get the message.  If thousands of Americans wrote the Hewlett Packard Company and informed them they will cease to purchase HP computer products as long as its foundation funds the left, you can be sure HP will pressure its foundation to back off its agenda.