{"id":13156,"date":"2014-02-25T15:49:48","date_gmt":"2014-02-25T15:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=13156"},"modified":"2014-02-25T15:49:48","modified_gmt":"2014-02-25T15:49:48","slug":"who-is-behind-regime-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=13156","title":{"rendered":"Who is behind regime change?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Srdja<\/a>
Srdja Popovic<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Serbia\u2019s Srdja Popovic is known by many as a leading architect of regime changes in Eastern Europe and elsewhere since the late-1990s, and as one of the co-founders of Otpor!, the U.S.-funded Serbian activist group which overthrew Slobodan Milo\u0161evi\u0107 in 2000.<\/p>\n

Lesser known, an exclusive Occupy.com investigation reveals that Popovic and the Otpor! offshoot CANVAS (Centre for Applied Nonviolent Action and Strategies) have also maintained close ties with a Goldman Sachs executive and the private intelligence firm Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting, Inc.), as well as the U.S. government. Popovic\u2019s wife also worked at Stratfor for a year.<\/p>\n

These revelations come in the aftermath of thousands of new emails released by Wikileaks\u2019 \u201cGlobal Intelligence Files.\u201d The emails reveal Popovic worked closely with Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based private firm that gathers intelligence on geopolitical events and activists for clients ranging from the American Petroleum Institute and Archer Daniels Midland to Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, Northrop Grumman, Intel and Coca-Cola.<\/p>\n

Referred to in emails under the moniker \u201cSR501,\u201d Popovic was first approached by Stratfor in 2007 to give a lecture in the firm\u2019s office about events transpiring in Eastern Europe, according to a Stratfor source who asked to remain confidential for this story.<\/p>\n

In one of the emails, Popovic forwarded information about activists harmed or killed by the U.S.-armed Bahraini government, obtained from the Bahrain Center for Human Rights during the regime\u2019s crackdown on pro-democracy activists in fall 2011. Popovic also penned a blueprint for Stratfor on how to unseat the now-deceased Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in September 2010.<\/p>\n

Stratfor\u2019s Global Activist Connector<\/p>\n

Using his celebrated activist status, Popovic opened many doors for Stratfor to meet with activists globally. In turn, the information Stratfor intended to gain from Popovic\u2019s contacts would serve as \u201cactionable intelligence\u201d\u2014the firm billed itself as a \u201cShadow CIA\u201d\u2014for its corporate clients.<\/p>\n

Popovic passed information to Stratfor about on-the-ground activist events in countries around the world, ranging from the Philippines, Libya, Tunisia, Vietnam, Iran, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Tibet, Zimbabwe, Poland and Belarus, Georgia, Bahrain, Venezuela and Malaysia. Often, the emails reveal, Popovic passed on the information to Stratfor without the consent of the activists and likely without the activists ever knowing that their emails were being shuttled to the private security firm.<\/p>\n

In the U.S., this investigation\u2019s co-author, Carl Gibson (representing US Uncut), and the Yes Men\u2019s Andy Bichlbaum had a meeting with Popovic shortly after their two respective groups used a media hoax to play a prank on General Electric, ridiculing the company over its non-payment of U.S. taxes.<\/p>\n

The pair gave Popovic information about both groups\u2019 plans for the coming year and news later came out that Stratfor closely monitored the Yes Men\u2019s activities.<\/p>\n

During the Arab Spring, in Egypt in January 2011, Popovic received an interview invitation for an appearance on CNN. The first people he turned to for talking points were Stratfor employees, who provided him with five talking points to lead with.<\/p>\n

Stratfor said Popovic\u2019s main use for the firm was his vast array of grassroots activist contacts around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cA little reminder that the main utility in this contact is his ability to connect us to the troublemakers around the world that he is in touch with. His own ability to discern situation on the ground may be limited, he mainly has initial contact with an asset and then lets them do their own thing,\u201d reads a May 2010 email written by former Stratfor Eurasia Analyst Marko Papic. \u201cHe does himself have information that may be useful from time to time. But, the idea is to gather a network of contacts through CANVAS, contacts that we can then contact independently.\u201d<\/p>\n

Popovic was so well-received by Stratfor that he even got his wife, Marijah, a job there. She worked for a year from March 2010 through March 2011 as the weekend open source intelligence analyst at Stratfor. The other candidate for the job, Jelena Tancic, also worked for CANVAS.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Canvas guy [Popovic] is a friend\/source [for Stratfor], and recommended her to us,\u201d Stratfor\u2019s Vice President of Analysis Scott Stewart said in a March 2010 email, leaving out that the two were dating at the time.<\/p>\n

Popovic and his wife grew so close to Stratfor, in fact, that Popovic invited numerous members of the Stratfor staff to their wedding in Belgrade, Serbia.<\/p>\n

Helping Stratfor Manufacture Revolutions<\/p>\n

Stratfor saw Popovic\u2019s main value not only as a source for intelligence on global revolutionary and activist movements, but also as someone who, if needed, could help overthrow leaders of countries hostile to U.S. geopolitical and financial interests. So useful was Popovic to Stratfor that the firm gave him a free subscription, dubbed \u201clegit sources we use all the time as a company\u201d by Papic.<\/p>\n

In a June 2011 email, Papic referred to Popovic as a \u201cgreat friend\u201d of his and described him as a \u201cSerb activist who travels the world fomenting revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2026basically go around the world trying to topple dictators and autocratic governments (ones that U.S. does not like \ud83d\ude09 ,\u201d Papic says in one email. Replying to a follow up to that email, he states, \u201cThey just go and set up shop in a country and try to bring the government down. When used properly, more powerful than an aircraft carrier battle group.\u201d<\/p>\n

In response to the \u201caircraft battle group\u201d email, Stratfor Vice President of Intelligence Fred Burton sardonically said that perhaps they could be sent into Iran. Emails also reveal Popovic served as an information source intermediary for on-the-ground activists in Iran, also informing Stratfor of the funding struggle for \u201cdemocracy programs\u201d there, as the U.S. government pushed a \u201csoft power\u201d agenda.<\/p>\n

Another March 2010 email from Stewart to Burton said that CANVAS was \u201ctrying to get rid of Chavez,\u201d referring to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. In 2007, CANVAS trained activists to overthrow Chavez.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I remember correctly, we use hushmail communication to contact him regarding Venezuela due to the sensitivity of using a revolutionary NGO as a source considering we have clients who operate in country,\u201d Papic said in a January 2011 email of Popovic.<\/p>\n

Stratfor grew so enamored of CANVAS\u2019s ability to foment regime change abroad that it invited Popovic to its Austin headquarters in 2010 to give seminars on the subject, and paid for his trip there.<\/p>\n

CANVAS\u2019s Goldman Sachs Cash<\/p>\n

One of CANVAS\u2019s major funders is Muneer Satter, a former Goldman Sachs executive who stepped down from that position in June 2012and now owns Satter Investment Management LLC. Stratfor CEO Shea Morenz worked for ten years at Goldman Sachs as well, where he served as Managing Director in the Investment Management Division and Region Head for Private Wealth Management for the Southwest Region.<\/p>\n

Satter is meanwhile a major funder of the Republican Party, giving over $300,000 to Karl Rove\u2019s Super PAC Crossroads GPS before the 2012 election, and another $100,000 to the Republican Governors Association in the first half of 2013 prior to the 2014 mid-term elections.<\/p>\n

Living in a massive, $9.5 million mansion in Chicago\u2019s North Shore suburb of Lake Michigan, Muneer also gave $50,000 toward President Obama\u2019s inaugural fund in 2009.<\/p>\n

When it came time to connect Muneer with the global intelligence firm, Popovic served as the middle man introducing Satter to Stratfor Chairman George Friedman.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever I want to understand the details behind world events, I turn to Stratfor,\u201d reads an endorsement from Satter on Stratfor\u2019s website. \u201cThey have the most detailed and insightful analysis of world affairs and are miles ahead of mainstream media.\u201d<\/p>\n

Otpor!: A Counter-History<\/p>\n

To understand how Popovic came to aide Stratfor in its intelligence-gathering efforts, it\u2019s crucial to examine Otpor! and CANVAS critically. A close examination demonstrates that Popovic was a natural choice to be a Stratfor informant and close advisor.<\/p>\n

Often valorized by grassroots activists and Western media, there was far more to the \u201cBulldozer Revolution\u201d that led to the overthrow of Milo\u0161evi\u0107 and subsequent Eastern European regimes than meets the eye.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn principle, [Serbia] was an overt operation, funded by congressional appropriations of around $10 million for fiscal 1999 and $31 million for 2000. Some Americans involved in the anti-Milosevic effort said they were aware of CIA activity at the fringes of the campaign, but had trouble finding out what the agency was up to,\u201d explained a 2000 investigative piece appearing in The Washington Post.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lead role was taken by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the government\u2019s foreign assistance agency, which channeled the funds through commercial contractors and nonprofit groups such as NDI and its Republican counterpart, the International Republican Institute (IRI).\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fact between 1997 and 2000 the National Endowment for Democracy and US government may have accomplished what NATO\u2019s 37,000 bombing sorties had been unable to do: oust Milosevic, replace him with their favoured candidate Vojislav Kostunica and promote a neoliberal vision for Serbia,\u201d independent scholar Michael Barker wrote for Z Magazine. \u201cIn much the same way as corporate front groups and astroturf groups recruit genuinely committed supporters, strategically useful social movements can potentially dominate civil society when provided with the right resources (massive financial and professional backing).\u201d<\/p>\n

Otpor! was so successful that it was ushered into Ukraine to help manufacture regime change there in 2004, using the template applied originally in Serbia with $65 million in cash from the U.S. government.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe trained them in how to set up an organization, how to open local chapters, how to create a \u2018brand,\u2019 how to create a logo, symbols, and key messages,\u201d an Otpor! activist told U.S.-funded media outlet Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty. \u201cWe trained them in how to identify the key weaknesses in society and what people\u2019s most pressing problems were\u2014what might be a motivating factor for people, and above all young people, to go to the ballot box and in this way shape their own destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n

The overthrow of Milo\u0161evi\u0107 was accompanied by U.S.-funding for the creation of a robust media apparatus in Serbia, and Popovic\u2019s wife worked at one of the U.S.-funded radio and TV outlets as a journalist and anchor B92 from 2004-2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy helping Radio B92 and linking it with a network of radio stations (ANEM), international assistance undermined the regime\u2019s direct and indirect control over news and information,\u201d a January 2004 policy paper released by USAID explained. \u201cIn Serbia, independent media supported by USAID and other international donors facilitated the regime change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics point out that what happened in Eastern Europe was regime change, not revolution in any real sense of the term.<\/p>\n

\u201c[They] were not revolutions at all; actually, they were little more than intra-elite power transfers,\u2019\u201d Portland State University Professor of Urban Studies and Planning, Gerald Sussman, explained in his book, \u201cBranded Democracy: U.S. Regime Change in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cModern tactics of electioneering were employed to cast regime change as populist, which took advantage of the unstable and vulnerable situations in those regions following the breakup of the Soviet Union,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Given Otpor!\u2019s ties to powerful factions in the U.S. government, perhaps it\u2019s unsurprising that Popovic felt comfortable giving a lecture to the Air Force Academy in May 2010, and attending a National Security Council meeting in December 2009.<\/p>\n

A powerful individual who lobbied the U.S. government to give money to CANVAS early on was Michael McFaul, the current U.S. Ambassador to Russia for the State Department and someone who \u201cworked closely with\u201d Popovic while serving as a Senior Fellow at theright-wing Hoover Institution at Stanford University.<\/p>\n

Critics Chime In, Popovic Responds<\/p>\n

Maryam Alkhawaja, director of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, said she had known Popovic for several years as an activist and had no knowledge of his outside relationships before the Wikileaks release of Stratfor emails.<\/p>\n

\u201cSrdja is someone I\u2019ve met more than once. He was very supportive of the Bahrain revolution, supportive of the human rights fight,\u201d Alkhawaja said in a phone interview. \u201cWhen he gave me their information, that\u2019s what surprised me the most.\u201d<\/p>\n

Alkhawaja said that at the time she wasn\u2019t aware of what kind of firm Stratfor was, but she became immediately suspicious after reading Stratfor\u2019s questions to her. She never corresponded with Stratfor due to what she felt was the suspicious nature of the emails coming from the firm.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a series of really weird intelligence agency-like questions, given that they knew I was working in a human rights group. They were asking questions like, who\u2019s funding the party coalition, how many members do they have, questions that even I didn\u2019t know the answers to,\u201d she said. \u201cThe fact that they asked questions like that, made me question the motive behind the email I received. That\u2019s why I never responded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhenever we get emails like that or were contacted by people who seemed very interested in asking intelligence agency-like questions, we usually block them, because we know they probably work for the government,\u201d Alkhawaja continued. \u201cJournalists know the kind of work we do so they wouldn\u2019t ask those questions in the first place. I just found the email very weird and thats why I actually never responded.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a Skype interview, one of Otpor!\u2019s co-founders, who left the movement and asked to maintain his confidentiality, said his primary concern from the Wikileaks emails was that Popovic was giving out activists\u2019 information to a third party without their prior consent.<\/p>\n

An interview with Popovic sang a different tune about CANVAS. He stated, \u201cWe definitely wouldn\u2019t jeopardize any of our activists\u2019 safety, so we always follow their lead and never expose them to anybody without their consent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Popovic also said CANVAS would speak to anyone and everyone\u2014without any discrimination\u2014about nonviolent direct action.<\/p>\n

\u201cCANVAS will present anywhere \u2014 to those committed to activism and nonviolent struggle, but also to those who still live in the Cold War era and think that tanks and planes and nukes shape the world, not the common people leading popular movements,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can persuade any decision maker in the world, in Washington, Kremlin, Tel Aviv or Damascus that it is nonviolent struggle that they should embrace and respect \u2013 not foreign military intervention, or oppression over own population \u2013 we would do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, given Popovic\u2019s track-record\u2014and specifically, who buttered his bread during the long professional career he pursued in activism\u2014critics say Popovic fit like a glove at Stratfor.<\/p>\n

\u201cA group of Serbs cannot lead a protest movement anywhere outside Serbia, but his techniques are nonetheless instrumental in helping achieve certain political aims,\u201d Professor Sussman said in an interview. \u201cHe also serves as an intelligence gatherer in the process\u2014of use to private and state intelligence agencies. That\u2019s what Stratfor saw as his use.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: Nation of change<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Serbia\u2019s Srdja Popovic is known by many as a leading architect of regime changes in Eastern Europe and elsewhere since the late-1990s, and as one of the co-founders of Otpor!, the U.S.-funded Serbian activist group which overthrew Slobodan Milo\u0161evi\u0107 in 2000. Lesser known, an exclusive Occupy.com investigation reveals that Popovic and the Otpor! offshoot CANVAS … Continue reading “Who is behind regime change?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[782,1295],"tags":[8477,8476,3721,5054,8475],"class_list":["post-13156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-in-depth-coverage","tag-canvas-centre-for-applied-nonviolent-action-and-strategies","tag-planning-revolutions","tag-regime-change","tag-serbian","tag-srdja-popovic"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/popovic.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13156"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13158,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13156\/revisions\/13158"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}