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<\/a><\/p>\nTo [Omidyar] it\u2019s \u2026 about \u2026 integrating things together to give technocrats, business executives and government officials a God\u2019s-eye view of the world \u2014 to manage and control society more efficiently.\u201d \u2014 Yasha Levine, author of \u201cSurveillance Valley: The Military History of the Internet\u201d<\/h3>\n
by Alexander Rubinstein and Max Blumenthal<\/p>\n
As we have seen in\u00a0part one of this investigation<\/a>, billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar has partnered closely with many of the U.S.-funded outfits that fulfill the role the CIA used to play during the Cold War in backing opposition media and civil society in countries targeted for regime change.\u00a0However, Omidyar has also sought state-of-the-art design solutions from a shady U.S. government national security consulting firm with a myriad of ties to the hawkish D.C. foreign policy establishment.<\/p>\n In February of last year, USAID\u2019s Global Development Lab published a series of reports furnished for it by a small, Arlington, Virginia-based company focused on design solutions for national security problems, with a mere 10 employees listed on its website and eight on its LinkedIn page. Those reports caught the attention of journalist Michael Igoe at\u00a0Devex<\/a>\u00a0on Tuesday.<\/p>\n The company, Frontier Design Group, analyzed the feasibility of essentially militarizing USAID. The report proposals like \u201cRapid Expeditionary Development\u201d (RED) teams. Those teams would be embedded with U.S. Special Forces, the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration outside of typical USAID areas of operation.<\/p>\n <\/span>They would be \u201ctrained and authorized to conduct themselves as a force-multiplier able to contribute a full suite of security skills as needed,\u201d the documents suggested. RED team officers would also be trained for \u201csurvival, evasion, resistance, and escape,\u201d negotiations, civil reconnaissance, \u201cand weapons qualification courses.\u201d<\/p>\n The report also analyzed the possibility of creating a \u201cCivilian Response Groups\u201d \u2014 an organization that sounds like the White Helmets if they were directly controlled by Washington.<\/p>\n Frontier interviewed 36 experts for its report, including a 15-year USAID veteran who told them, \u201cwe have to be involved in national security or USAID will not be relevant.\u201d The issue identified by many in the report was that USAID was losing its cutting edge and was hamstrung because it was not allowed to operate in conflict zones.<\/p>\n USAID told Devex that it is \u201cstill working on the details in formulating the Rapid Expeditionary Development Teams initiative.\u201d<\/p>\n Another Frontier Design Group\u00a0client<\/a>\u00a0is the Omidyar Group, further demonstrating the eBay founder\u2019s proximity to shady government contractors.<\/p>\n Frontier Design Group\u2019s Karen Grattan (untagged) and the Omidyar Group\u2019s Robert Ricigliano on a\u00a0business hiking trip<\/a>\u00a0in October.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Frontier Design Group touts its work with the Omidyar Group on a number of its posts on Instagram. It also lists Omidyar Group second in its portfolio. Other Frontier Design Group clients include the Council on Foreign Relations think tank and U.S. Army Special Forces.<\/p>\n Karen Grattan \u2014 a senior advisor at Frontier Design Group, with a background in \u201cconduct[ing] study and analysis within the Operations Analysis Division of the Marine Corps Combat Development Command\u201d \u2014 has even more extensive ties to Omidyar. She is the founder and CEO of Engaging Inquiry, a Fairfax, Virginia-based firm that has enjoyed the Omidyar Group as a client\u00a0since 2015<\/a>.\u00a0Also<\/a>\u00a0on its client roster are Omidyar\u2019s Democracy Fund and Humanity United, as well as USAID and the Department of Defense.<\/p>\n The Omidyar Group\u2019s liaison to Frontier Design Solutions appears to be Systems Complexity Coach Robert Ricigliano, a founder of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. This network has previously\u00a0hosted<\/a>\u00a0Grattan for a panel that tackled issues such as \u201ccan online bots build peace?\u201d<\/p>\n While quietly partnering with USAID and a firm at the forefront of the fight to keep the agency \u201crelevant,\u201d Omidyar,\u00a0along with a select group of fellow billionaires, is also performing a critical service by providing a private funding channel for cultural vehicles that advance the agenda of Western foreign policy.<\/p>\n At the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, a short buddy comedy called\u00a0The Climb<\/i>\u00a0generated a minor buzz. Weeks later, it was snapped up by a studio called Topic through its \u201cdigital storytelling platform.\u201d The studio turned out to be a for-profit arm of Omidyar\u2019s First Look Media, which invests heavily in filmmaking and documentary production. The film festival also happened to be a beneficiary of Omidyar\u2019s spending, with Luminate donating to the Sundance Institute for\u00a0creation of films<\/a>\u00a0\u201cused strategically to articulate pressing public issues and movement-building campaigns.\u201d<\/p>\n Among the films cited by Omidyar\u2019s Luminate as a strategic success was\u00a0The Last Men in Aleppo<\/i>, an Oscar-nominated propaganda vehicle for the Syrian White Helmets that was produced by the Sundance Institute.\u00a0The White Helmets<\/a>\u00a0are a\u00a0Syrian insurgent-aligned \u201ccivil rescue\u201d group founded in Turkey by a British former military intelligence officer. Operating exclusively in rebel-held territory, including in the al Qaeda-controlled Idlib province, the White Helmets have been funded by USAID, the U.K. Foreign Office and the Qatari monarchy.<\/p>\n Through its U.K.-based public-relations arm,\u00a0the Syria Campaign<\/a>, the White Helmets were at the forefront of a public-relations push for U.S. airstrikes and sanctions against the state of Syria. Omidyar\u2019s\u00a0The Intercept\u00a0<\/i>served as a vehicle for that PR campaign, featuring a\u00a0piece<\/a>\u00a0by staff writer Murtaza Hussain that read like a press release for the White Helmets.<\/p>\n Through Topic and another film studio that Omidyar funds \u2013 First Look\u2019s Field of Vision \u201cdocumentary unit\u201d \u2013 the billionaire has overseen two productions on the Panama Papers, named after the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, whose internal documents were leaked to a German newspaper. The document\u00a0trove exposed the internal data of 214,000 offshore companies, revealing financial corruption on a global scale.<\/p>\n Alongside Topic\u2019s forthcoming\u00a0\u201cThe Laundromat,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0a thriller starring Meryl Streep and Antonio Banderas, First Look produced the 2018 \u201cPanama Papers\u201d documentary. The latter film starred Luke Harding, the longtime Moscow correspondent for the\u00a0Guardian<\/i>, a liberal British newspaper that Omidyar also funds through his Humanity United. \u201cIf you find money tied to Bashar al-Assad and to Putin, maybe it\u2019s not such a good idea that only I know,\u201d one journalist featured in the\u00a0documentary trailer<\/a>\u00a0intoned.<\/p>\n In 2017, the year after the Panama Papers were leaked, and the same year a similar document trove called the Paradise Papers was released, Omidyar ponied up $100 million to\u00a0fund<\/a>\u00a0media groups like the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). According to an Omidyar Group press release, the massive injection of funding to ICIJ was aimed at \u201caddress[ing the] trust deficit\u201d by helping the group host the Panama and Paradise Papers.<\/p>\n A quick browse through the ICIJ\u2019s Offshore Leaks Database reveals that Omidyar himself is named in the documents; the billionaire had apparently\u00a0directed finances<\/a>\u00a0from his Omidyar Network Fund LLC into an \u201cOffgrid Electric Ltd\u201d in Seychelles \u2013 an island that the ICIJ itself\u00a0called<\/a>\u00a0\u201ca haven for dirty money.\u201d<\/p>\n When ICIJ began disseminating its files to the media, activities like those of its major funders were overlooked. In the\u00a0New Yorker<\/i>, John Cassidy\u00a0wondered<\/a>\u00a0why so few American elites were being scrutinized in the coverage of the Panama Papers. Craig Murray, a former British ambassador to Uzbekistan,\u00a0noticed<\/a>\u00a0that the investigation instead focused on countries seeking to break Western sanctions: \u201crogue states\u201d like Zimbabwe, North Korea, Syria and Russia. Murray wrote:<\/p>\n The filtering of this Mossack Fonseca information by the corporate media follows a direct western governmental agenda. There is no mention\u00a0at all\u00a0of use of Mossack Fonseca by massive western corporations or western billionaires \u2013 the main customers.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In fact, the ICIJ had turned to the\u00a0Guardian\u2019s\u00a0<\/i>Harding, one of the most Russia-obsessed journalists in Western media, as its lead reporter covering the Panama and Paradise Papers. \u201cHe was a good person to have on the team, as an aggressive digger, an experienced and informed reporter on Russia,\u201d said ICIJ\u2019s senior editor, Mike Hudson.<\/p>\n With the Paradise Papers in hand, Harding co-authored a\u00a0highly suspect story<\/a>\u00a0citing the California-based, Russian-American mega-investor Yuri Milner\u2019s investments in Facebook and Twitter as evidence of a Kremlin plot to influence social media.<\/p>\n The story came in for harsh criticism from Oleg Kashin, a famed Russian journalist who is known in his country as one of the most outspoken critics of Vladimir Putin. In a\u00a0scathing review<\/a>, Kashin wrote that Harding\u2019s piece on Milner \u201cdemonstrated convincingly that anything [he and his Western colleagues] publish about Russia is, as a general rule, total garbage.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet when Harding\u2019s Paradise Papers reporting first appeared in 2017, Poynter \u2014 supposedly the world\u2019s premier fact-checking organization \u2014\u00a0puffed<\/a> Harding as \u201ca great reporter for\u00a0The Guardian,<\/i>\u201d who was leading the way with his coverage of Milner\u00a0and Russia.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be the perfect journalist, you need the skill of a top forensic accountant charging $1,000 an hour, the detective skills of Sherlock Holmes, and the reporting skills of Woodward and Bernstein,\u201d Harding humbly proclaimed to Poynter.<\/p>\n Harding has since been exposed for\u00a0fabricating<\/a>\u00a0a\u00a0Guardian\u00a0<\/i>story<\/a>\u00a0claiming that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and former Trump advisor Paul Manafort held several meetings at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. It was one of many\u00a0stories<\/a>\u00a0Harding has published about WikiLeaks that appeared to be at least partly false. After the independent online-news site,\u00a0Exiled,\u00a0<\/i>accused<\/a>\u00a0Harding of plagiarizing its reporting, the\u00a0Guardian\u00a0<\/i>was forced to\u00a0issue a lengthy apology<\/a>. He has proven\u00a0unable to defend the central thesis<\/a>\u00a0of his bestselling book\u00a0Collusion<\/i>, which claims that Trump and Putin conspired to fix the 2016 presidential election. Even\u00a0New York Times<\/i>\u00a0media critic Jim Rutenberg\u00a0acknowledged<\/a>\u00a0listing Harding among a growing cast of reporters in \u201climbo land\u201d for publishing fake stories on the Russiagate drama.<\/p>\n In November 2017, at around the same time that Poynter was pumping up Harding and the Omidyar-funded ICIJ,\u00a0the Omidyar Network announced that it was\u00a0contributing one million dollars<\/a>\u00a0to help establish an International Fact-Checking Network through Poynter.<\/p>\n The objective, according to the Omidyar Group, was \u201cto increase [Poynter\u2019s] work as the premier advocate, convener and trainer of fact-checkers worldwide.\u201d But Poynter had already demonstrated biases of its own by hyping up Omidyar\u2019s ventures, including by\u00a0promoting<\/a>\u00a0the dubious Hamilton 68 Russian bot-tracker, which functioned under Bill Kristol\u2019s Omidyar-funded Alliance for Securing Democracy. Poynter has also routinely\u00a0pumped up<\/a>Omidyar\u2019s\u00a0The Intercept<\/i>,\u00a0hailing its staff<\/a>\u00a0as the modern version of (guess who?) Woodward and Bernstein.<\/p>\n Below is an infographic detailing Pierre Omidyar\u2019s network of ties to civil society organizations, media outlets, film and cultural ventures and the wider U.S. soft-power network he partners with and supports. Omidyar\u2019s fortune emanates from the Omidyar Group, quietly propelling leading organizations at the forefront of information warfare and data gathering through satellite fronts such as Luminate and Democracy Fund.<\/b><\/p>\n The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), a group that claims to defend press freedom on behalf of media around the world, has also been a\u00a0major beneficiary<\/a>\u00a0of Omidyar\u2019s fortune.<\/p>\n At this year\u2019s CPJ International Press Freedom Awards, the Filipina journalist Maria Ressa\u00a0received<\/a>\u00a0the Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award. Ressa happens to be the editor of a newspaper,\u00a0Rappler<\/i>, that is\u00a0heavily funded<\/a>\u00a0by Omidyar. It was another case of logrolling between two members of the billionaire\u2019s media empire.<\/p>\n In the Philippines,\u00a0Rappler\u00a0<\/i>has dedicated itself to ousting President Rodrigo Duterte, a demagogic politician whose inflammatory rhetoric and occasional entreaties to Russia and China have spawned anxiety in Washington. Duterte\u2019s allies have struck back at the outlet,\u00a0accusing it<\/a>\u00a0in court of violating the Philippine constitution with its foreign support. On February 12, Ressa was\u00a0arrested<\/a>\u00a0and accused of \u201ccyber-libel\u201d for a 2012 article, which was later corrected, accusing a Duterte ally of human trafficking and drug smuggling.\u00a0\u201cThese legal acrobatics show how far the government will go to silence journalists, including the pettiness of forcing me to spend the night in jail,\u201d Ressa said in a press release.<\/p>\n Educated at Princeton, Ressa maintains powerful American allies. Just hours after her arrest and release, the Omidyar Network and the Omidyar-funded CPJ\u00a0rustled up<\/a>\u00a0a $500,000 legal defense fund for Ressa.<\/p>\n Last October, Ressa\u00a0appeared<\/a>\u00a0at the NATO-backed Atlantic Council\u2019s Stratcom conference in Washington to detail what she described as a concerted campaign of legal intimidation and online trolling by supporters of Duterte. The Atlantic Council was hired by Facebook last year to purge its platform of so-called foreign interference and \u201cfake news,\u201d\u00a0leading to allegations<\/a>\u00a0that it had presided over the removal of numerous popular alternative news sites. Before the think-tank audience, Ressa\u00a0demanded<\/a>\u00a0that social media platforms like Facebook impose new algorithms that prioritize what she calls \u201ctraditional media\u201d \u2014 referring presumably to outlets like her own.<\/p>\n Maria Ressa at the NATO-backed Atlantic Council\u2019s 2018 Stratcom conference<\/p>\n<\/div>\n At\u00a0Rappler<\/i>, Ressa has\u00a0hosted<\/a>\u00a0a discussion about the perils of social media \u201cdisinformation\u201d with Peter Pomerantsev, a neoconservative media operative whose\u00a02015 manifesto<\/a>\u00a0co-authored by Michael Weiss, \u201cThe Menace of Unreality,\u201d was a post-modern blueprint for media censorship. The paper essentially equated all Russian-backed media with \u201cdisinformation\u201d and called for \u201cpublic information campaigns\u201d and the imposition of an internationally-recognized media rating system to combat it. Pomerantsev is named in internal Integrity Initiative documents as a member of its U.K. \u201ccluster.\u201d<\/p>\n In May 2017,\u00a0The Intercept<\/i>\u00a0partnered with\u00a0Rappler<\/i><\/a>\u00a0to publish a series of signals intelligence leaks that revealed the contents of a chummy phone conversation between President Donald Trump and Duterte. How these leaks were obtained (NSA SIGINTs?) was left unexplained. But the Omidyar connection \u2014 he was a key backer of both outlets \u2014 was undeniable. Thus, the journalistic logrolling continued.<\/p>\n While\u00a0The Intercept<\/i>\u00a0has established a reputation for exposing the abuses of the security state in the U.S.,\u00a0Rappler\u2019s\u00a0<\/i>mission in the Philippines appears to have an ulterior and entirely opposite agenda. In\u00a0announcing<\/a>\u00a0Omidyar\u2019s investment in the digital media site,\u00a0Rappler\u00a0<\/i>touted its one-of-a-kind and arguably extremely creepy business model.<\/p>\n Rappler\u2019s description of its digital toolkit hints at why Omidyar \u2014 a mogul who has relied on high-tech innovations and national security state connections to build his business empire \u2014 might have been so eager to add this seemingly random website to his extensive portfolio.<\/p>\n The details are so unsettling they are worth quoting in their entirety:<\/p>\n Using a patented user engagement model and a community mapping data analytics tool, Rappler tracks how\u00a0stories and emotions move through its community. It starts with a mood meter on every story, an effort to capture non-rational reactions. Developed with psychologists and sociologists<\/b>, the mood meter is based on research that shows up to 80% of how people make decisions in their lives is not about what they think but how they feel.<\/p>\n Every vote on the\u00a0mood meter<\/b>\u00a0is aggregated by the mood navigator in the middle of the home page, a novel way of navigating a news site. It\u2019s the simplest of Rappler\u2019s crowdsourcing initiatives, which include\u00a0a collaborative platform for disaster risk reduction and management\u2026<\/b>\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Rappler\u2019s \u201cpatented user engagement model\u201d and \u201ccommunity mapping data analytics tool\u201d evoke the kind of corporate surveillance apparatus a privacy-obsessed introvert like Omidyar might oppose. But for high-tech titans like him, the benefits of honing this model clearly outweigh the social costs.<\/p>\n As Yasha Levine, the author of\u00a0Surveillance Valley<\/i><\/a>: The Military History of the Internet<\/i>, told\u00a0MintPress:<\/i><\/p>\n This kind of multi-level approach \u2014\u00a0combining a journalism startup on the front-end with a behavior profiling risk management system on the back-end \u2014\u00a0is very much inline with Omidyar\u2019s vision for how to use technology to manage society \u2014\u00a0and make money in the process.<\/p>\n Central to most of his investments is the use of user profiling and behavioral tracking to manage and run all areas of modern life: journalism, transportation, banking and finance, and government administration. To him it\u2019s not just about running a single service, but integrating things together to give technocrats, business executives and government officials a God\u2019s-eye view of the world \u2014 to manage and control society more efficiently.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The eBay founder is not the only notable elite whose interest piqued upon learning of\u00a0Rappler\u2019s\u00a0<\/i>disturbing user-tracking model.\u00a0Rappler\u00a0<\/i>boasted just months before Omidyar\u2019s investment that a group called North Base Media (NBM) had also decided to shovel money into the self-described \u201csocial news network.\u201d<\/p>\n NBM, according to\u00a0Rappler<\/i>, was founded by \u201ca triumvirate of top journalists\u201d consisting of Marcus Brauchli, a former top editor at\u00a0The Washington Post<\/i>and\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/i>, and \u201cveteran journalists Sasa Vucinic and Stuart Karle.\u201d The latter once served as chief operating officer at Reuters, while the former\u2019s claim to fame, says\u00a0Rappler<\/i>, is that he \u201cwas thrown out of the former Yugoslavia by then Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.\u201d<\/p>\n Three years after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, Vucinic would\u00a0establish<\/a>\u00a0the Media Development Investment Fund with\u00a0seed money<\/a>\u00a0from billionaire George Soros. Considering Soros\u2019 well-documented appetite for regime change and Vucinic\u2019s involvement with the investor, NBM\u2019s interest in a media company that openly brags about its ability to track not only the movements but the \u201cmoods\u201d of its readers starts to make sense.<\/p>\n When insurrection and instability falls on the doorstep of U.S. enemies, Soros\u2019 Open Society Institute is often caught ringing the bell.\u00a0The Guardian\u2019s<\/i>\u00a0Ian Traynor\u00a0documented<\/a>\u00a0Soros\u2019 role in fomenting Ukraine\u2019s 2004 \u201cOrange Revolution,\u201d which he describes as \u201can American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in western branding and mass marketing that, in four countries in four years, has been used to try to salvage rigged elections and topple unsavoury regimes.\u201d<\/p>\n Traynor reports:<\/p>\n The Democratic Party\u2019s National Democratic Institute, the Republican Party\u2019s International Republican Institute, the U.S. state department and USAID are the main agencies involved in these grassroots campaigns, as well as the Freedom House NGO and billionaire George Soros\u2019s Open Society Institute.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n With this history in mind, it\u2019s easy to understand why Soros\u2019 old pal Sasa Vucinic might view\u00a0Rappler\u2019s\u00a0<\/i>user-monitoring tools as a worthwhile investment. In June of 2018,\u00a0Rappler\u00a0<\/i>launched its \u201ccivil engagement arm,\u201d MovePH, which it describes as \u201can ecosystem of civic action enablers and doers collaborating towards sustainable progress and nation-building.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDo you want to be part of a bigger movement?\u201d\u00a0Rappler\u00a0<\/i>asks. \u201cDo you have an event or activity that needs an extra social media boost? Do you want to harness the power of social media to amplify your group\u2019s advocacy?\u201d<\/p>\n MovePH, claims\u00a0Rappler<\/i>, is here to guide you \u201cwhether you\u2019re an individual or a member of a non-governmental organization or student organization.\u201d Potential movers and shakers are invited to attend a meeting at\u00a0Rappler\u2019s\u00a0<\/i>headquarters.<\/p>\n Omidyar\u2019s wish to spark \u201cbigger\u201d social movements is not confined to the Philippines, nor to the world of media either. His Omidyar Network coordinates openly with U.S. State Department and intelligence cut-outs, acting as a private fund arm, much like the Ford Foundation did during the Cold War. Across the globe, he is creating new opportunities for himself by assisting the U.S. drive for regime change under cover of \u201cdemocracy promotion.\u201d<\/p>\n From an Omidyar Network-sponsored\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0on \u201cPeople-Powered Media Innovation in West Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In November 2017, two weeks before the resignation of Zimbabwe\u2019s longtime leader Robert Mugabe, the country\u2019s government arrested a young American woman named Martha O\u2019Donovan and charged her with attempting to interfere in the country\u2019s politics. According to prosecutors, O\u2019Donovan had\u00a0\u201csystematically sought to incite political unrest through the expansion, development and use of a sophisticated network of social media platforms as well as running some Twitter accounts.\u201d<\/p>\n O\u2019Donovan, who was immediately granted bail and had her charges dropped months later, was not a lone actor. She was, in fact, an employee at the Magamba Cultural Activist Network, a Harare-based NGO that operated thanks to a\u00a0$280,000 grant<\/a>\u00a0from the Omidyar Network. Claiming to \u201cuse<\/a>creative forms of youth activism to open up democratic space in Zimbabwe,\u201d the group served as an incubator for an array of initiatives, from hip-hop festivals to satire to digital media, stirring up anti-establishment youth activism.<\/p>\n Kalabash<\/a>, one of the media outlets spun out of Omidyar\u2019s Magamba, boasts \u201ca style that is youthful, urban and purposely disrespectful of authority!\u201d A quick visit to the site will turn up a stream of incendiary commentary, mostly by a single writer, against Mugabe\u2019s successor from the ZANU-PF party, Emanuel Mnangagwa, along with an overview of a U.S. sanctions bill against Zimbabwe.<\/p>\n Open Parly, another online activism hub generated by the Magamba network boasts several successful\u00a0hashtag campaigns<\/a>\u00a0that turned up the heat on the government last year. In 2016, Zimbabwe saw protests erupt after a deluge of activism around a single hashtag, #ThisFlag, which\u00a0The Guardian<\/i>depicted as<\/a>\u00a0an \u201caccidental movement for change.\u201d<\/p>\n At the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative event, Omidyar\u2019s Humanity United announced a partnership with Richard Branson\u2019s Virgin Unite called \u201cEnterprise Zimbabwe.\u201d The initiative aimed to \u201ccatalyse investments from philanthropic and commercial donors to fund small and medium-size businesses and social development initiatives.\u201d Today, the\u00a0website<\/a>\u00a0for the initiative is inaccessible and Virgin has also\u00a0scrubbed<\/a>\u00a0its page on it.<\/p>\n For this effort, then-President Mugabe\u00a0dubbed<\/a>\u00a0Branson a \u201cvulture disguised as an angel\u201d while a ruling party-linked columnist denounced Branson\u2019s attempts to \u201cre-colonise Zimbabwe.\u201d The \u201cEnterprise Zimbabwe\u201d initiative and its failure offer a fairly clear indication of the motives behind Omidyar\u2019s backing of the historic opposition to Mugabe.<\/p>\n While there is no denying the deepening wellspring of popular opposition to Zimbabwe\u2019s elected government, it is also clear that Omidyar\u2019s strategic grants have bolstered its impact. His meddling complements the historic role of British government, which has long sought to unravel the ZANU-PF\u2019s lock on power, and the U.S., which has supported Zimbabwe\u2019s opposition over the years through USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).<\/p>\n Over the years, Omidyar has invested alongside the NED as well as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) in strategic locations around the globe. In fact, the NED\u2019s media arm, the Center for International Media Assistance (CIMA), lists the Omidyar Network as a partner organization that is \u201ctackl[ing] the root causes of the global trust deficit\u201d in mainstream media.<\/p>\n The NED was founded in 1983 following a series of scandals that exposed the CIA\u2019s blood-soaked covert actions against foreign governments. \u201cIt would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,\u201d NED President Carl Gershman\u00a0told the\u00a0New York Times<\/i><\/a>\u00a0in 1986. \u201cWe saw that in the Sixties, and that\u2019s why it has been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that\u2019s why the endowment was created.\u201d<\/p>\n Another NED founder, Allen Weinstein,\u00a0conceded<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0Washington Post\u2019s<\/i>\u00a0David Ignatius, \u201cA lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.\u201d<\/p>\n Since its foundation, both the NED and USAID have\u00a0played a pivotal role in regime-change operations<\/a>. The NED funded groups behind the coup attempt against Venezuela\u2019s President Hugo Chavez in 2002; it helped drive another coup in Haiti two years later, and planted fake news in major publications like the\u00a0Associated Press<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0New York Times<\/i>. Meanwhile, USAID was exposed for creating a fake social-media platform in Cuba called Zunzuneo that aimed to spark a color revolution.<\/p>\n Both U.S. government outfits have played a seminal role in keeping Ukraine in the Western sphere of influence. And Omidyar has been right by their side, supplementing their work with cash infusions into pro-NATO civil society groups.<\/p>\n https:\/\/twitter.com\/pierre\/status\/825818527386841090?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E825818527386841090&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.mintpressnews.com%2Fpierre-omidyar-funding-of-pro-regime-change-networks-and-partnerships-with-cia-cutouts%2F255337%2F<\/p>\n In 2012, the State Department\u2019s USAID pumped money into a network of Ukrainian NGOs called Center UA, contributing over half of its budget. Most of the remaining funding these NGOs received was from Omidyar, who delivered nearly $200,000 in 2012.<\/p>\n Just a year earlier, Omidyar invested $335,000 into Center UA, claiming the donation was merely designed \u201cto amplify the voices of Ukrainian citizens.\u201d The group is affiliated with Oleh Rybachuk, one of the main architects of Ukraine\u2019s so-called Orange Revolution, which swung the government in support of the West in 2004. In 2014, this group \u201cplayed a big role in getting the [Maidan] protest up and running,\u201d according to the\u00a0Financial Times<\/i>. Just a year earlier, Omidyar\u2019s investments in the outfit\u00a0surpassed a million dollars<\/a>\u00a0in total.<\/p>\n In the months leading up to Euromaidan, Omidyar partnered with the U.S. Embassy in Kiev to\u00a0found\u00a0Hromadske<\/i><\/a>, a Ukrainian broadcast news channel that carried the message of regime change day after day. Recently,\u00a0Hromadske\u00a0<\/i>hosted<\/a>\u00a0a radio program that formed part of the Omidyar-funded International Fact-Checking Network.<\/p>\n At the 2018 awards ceremony of the Committee to Protect Journalists, another Omidyar-backed organization, Ukrainian journalist Anastasiya Stanko was\u00a0handed the International Press Freedom Award<\/a>. Stanko happened to be a founder of the Omidyar-backed\u00a0Hromadske<\/i>. Thus the logrolling continued, unabated and unacknowledged by the journalists celebrated for supposedly holding powerful interests accountable.<\/p>\n An outlet funded by tech billionaire Pierre Omidyar announces an award for an employee of an outlet funded by Omidyar at the gala of an organization funded by Omidyar. #IPFA<\/a> exhibits the intersection of journalism, oligarchy, and soft American power. https:\/\/t.co\/lS8bagtcB9<\/a> https:\/\/t.co\/8cXJKtZx7a<\/a><\/p>\n — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) November 21, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/p>\n
\nOmidyar\u2019s cultural Cold War<\/h2>\n
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\nShaping media to gain \u201ca God\u2019s eye view of the world\u201d<\/h2>\n
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\nDriving a regime-change youth network in Zimbabwe<\/h2>\n
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\nPartnering with\u00a0the CIA\u2019s regime change cut-outs<\/h2>\n
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