Geopolitics

A new law, introduced in May, requires every man aged between 25 and 60 to log their details on an electronic database so they can be called up. Conscription officers are on the hunt for those avoiding the register, pushing more men who do not want to serve into hiding.

Enter the Territorial Recruitment Centers, tasked with enforcing conscription laws that, in April 2024, lowered the draft age from 27 to 25 (Reuters, April 3, 2024). Reports and footage—some verified, some contested—show recruiters detaining men in public spaces: marketplaces, transit hubs, even cultural events (BBC, October 25, 2024).

The idea, he explained, came after a series of “scandalous revelations” that came out in 1967 showing that the CIA was covertly funding “foundations” in order to “channel money into overseas organizations”. The revelations showed that the CIA was giving “money and instructions” to foreign groups in order to advance American foreign policy goals.

The idea, he explained, came after a series of “scandalous revelations” that came out in 1967 showing that the CIA was covertly funding “foundations” in order to “channel money into overseas organizations”. The revelations showed that the CIA was giving “money and instructions” to foreign groups in order to advance American foreign policy goals. After this scandal, Agee explained, Florida congressman Dante Fascell proposed “an open system to finance these overseas organizations” such as “government organizations, political parties, media organizations, youth organizations, and student organizations” that were in reality “taking money and instructions from the CIA”. This idea eventually materialized into the Ronald Regan-created NED in 1983. Agee exposed that the creation of it was used as a “mega conduit” for the “tens of millions of dollars set aside for the meddling in the internal affairs of foreign countries” to go to.

Foreign Policy Magazine wrote in 2014 that “Foreign governments have long accused the U.S. Agency for International Development of being a front for the CIA or other groups dedicated to their collapse. In the case of Cuba, they appear to have been right.”

USAID also funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to think tanks such as “New Citizen” which spurred the original 2014 protests in Ukraine that eventually led to a coup against the country’s democratically elected leader Viktor Yanukovych.

USAID also funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to think tanks such as “New Citizen” which spurred the original 2014 protests in Ukraine that eventually led to a coup against the country’s democratically elected leader Viktor Yanukovych. These USAID-funded protests were eventually taken over by far-right groups such as the Svoboda party and the Right Sector. Right Sector committed a sniper massacre that killed 51 protests which they then blamed on Yanukovych in order to overthrow him in a violent coup. This allowed the U.S. to install Arseniy Yatseniuk as the interim prime minister of Ukraine who Forbes Magazine described as “Washington's Man” because he was “willing to do the IMF bidding” and implement the “International Monetary Fund's demand to raise taxes and devalue the currency” which “Yanukovych resisted”. USAID has also given millions of dollars to the Syrian rescue group “the White Helmets”. While at face value giving money to a rescue group may seem innocent a closer look shows something more nefarious. For one, the group only worked in rebel-controlled areas and had an unconformably close relationship with extremist Syrian rebels who at the time were backed by the CIA. As the UK’s Channel 4 news reported the group is on video “assisting” with a public execution, by taking a man’s body away from the scene straight after he was shot dead” and was “filmed handling mutilated corpses, and helping armed militants to dispose of the dead bodies of pro-Assad fighters.”

The Trump administration is almost certainly going to continue these operations under a different name but nevertheless, these organizations should not be defended.

Notably here, Nkrumah’s key text – Neo-colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism – was published in 1965. It provoked immediate political reaction from the USA at the height of the Cold War. Less than a year after it was released, President Nkrumah was overthrown in a military coup abetted by Washington.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that if Russia was responsible for listening to, recording and publishing a private diplomatic telephone conversation, it would be "a new low in Russian tradecraft". When asked if the call was authentic, Ms Psaki would not directly confirm it was Ms Nuland's voice but said: "I didn't say it was inauthentic." She said Mrs Nuland "has been in contact with her EU counterparts and of course has apologised for these reported comments".

The Russian and Ukrainian people are still paying the price for the mistakes made by men the West considers economic luminaries—Larry Summers and Jeffrey Sachs among them.

I saw the poverty that shock therapy unleashed during my own time living in Russia during the 1990s. As an idealistic college student with a grandfather who had fled the Bolsheviks in 1917 (but who later got to meet Mikhail Gorbachev, bringing his experience with the USSR full circle), I was eager to help Russia become a country of capitalism and democracy. With one year of physics under my belt, I got a job with the U.S. Department of Defense—through Sandia National Labs—to work with Russia’s top scientists. I saw brilliant men and women making just $40 a month, their whole life savings now worthless. At night, I would hail a $5 illegal cab from professionals who needed extra income to make ends meet—and then spend more in a night at Rosie O’Grady’s bar than my scientist colleagues made in a month. I befriended a babushka who was now reduced to cleaning my dormitory after her savings and pension evaporated.  Despite the evident ruin, the Yeltsin administration—with the support of the Clinton administration—stuck to its guns. At the core of the shock therapy effort was the International Monetary Fund and the Harvard Institute for International Development, to which the U.S. Agency for International Development subcontracted its Russia file. Professors like Sachs and Andrei Schleifer teamed up with former Harvard professors Larry Summers and David Lipton, both senior officials at the Department of the Treasury at the time, to advise Gaidar and Chubais. Unlike under the Marshall Plan, the architects of Russia’s transformation refused to give monetary relief while Russia underwent the reforms which the West advised. The result was economic ruin.