by Hugo Dionísio for the Saker blog

A feeling of complete justice is what I felt when I attended the presentation of the Sakharov prize to comedian Zelinsky. Rarely does an award embody, so substantially, the deep connection between the institution that promotes it, the great European political families that approved it, and the recipient himself. I give a standing ovation! Yes, sir! I fully approve!

The bank account that inexplicably appeared in Switzerland, disclosed through the Pandora papers, stuffed with almost a billion Euros, in the name of the prize winner, explains more than one can imagine. It explains everything!

Take Eva Kaili, for example. A rising star in international politics, transformed into a runway that shows, on the outside, what she is not on the inside. To assume that Eva and her cronies are an exception, who, for the money, fame, and glamour it provides, have agreed to publicly defend what they previously claimed to despise…. It is not paying attention to 21st century European politics.

In the 21st century, being of the centrist political parties (mainly the social democrats and popular, liberal and moderate conservatives) means a lot…it means everything! It means not being an “extremist”, of course, “left-wing” or “right-wing”, reducing the whole spectrum to two camps – the acceptable, the “mainstream”, the “balanced”; and, the “unacceptable”, the “radical” and “sectarian”; belonging to an “extreme” is the same, whatever side you are on. Being in the middle, that’s all, and that’s not up for discussion anymore. It’s not even worth to throw any argument, because classification in these terms is mainly aimed at not discussing anything.

Not that one can generalize and run everything by the same measure; that is neither serious nor even advisable, and it is precisely what wants the ones that determines that any analysis should be done in the terms I have mentioned. But this is, above all, the story of the political mainstream. Saying one thing… and doing the other.

Take the sakharov prize itself: awarding this prize to a guy whose government has outlawed more than a dozen political parties, confiscating their property; to the leader of a government that confiscates property of the Orthodox Church and persecutes its clerics for defending the “Holy Russ” composed of the three sister countries of the Slavic East, of which Kiev is the mother city; who has banned the use of the native language of nearly half of the country’s population, burning books, destroying statues and films depicting the culture in that language; persecutes journalists for reporting what he does not intend; detains political activists who oppose him, and lied in the elections he won, promising what he did not intend to do… Every attentive citizen was able to witness firsthand what the sakharov prize actually means, what it was created for, and what goals it pursues. As with Eva Kaili, the prize is everything it says it is not!

And if Eva Kaili accepted, for 250,000.00 euros (which, being money, doesn’t make anyone rich), to defend everything that she told her voters she wasn’t defending, the question we must ask is the following: if Eva accepts such a thing coming from a country like Qatar, with the reservations that such an origin raises in the ordinary Europeans (and Americans), what won’t all the Evas of the European Parliament, Commission, Council and Governments accept, when the origins of such “support” come from a more, geographically speaking, reliable source? When, for example, they come from the other side of the Atlantic, from the USA?

What I mean is: if they are willing to sell themselves to Qatar, for a majority of reasons, their willingness to sell themselves to the Atlanticist axis is unlimited! Coming this request from any Atlantic Council, Clinton or Gates Foundation, and the whole interest of the peoples they claim to represent becomes instrumental to the interests of their perceivers, suddenly transformed into guardians. The truth is that, in the end, the imposed system works like a mafia: Once you get in, you’re not getting out… And if you get out, they decree your political, social and, even more important (for these people), economic death. You become “extreme” and then…

You don’t even need money! All it takes are invitations to teach, to write articles in top journals, to speak at international conferences, and to get into the political spin, which, sooner or later, will lead to an anticipated golden retirement, paid in kind, through a brutal retainer or a corporate position in any Golden Sachs board (let’s see Durão Barroso who was behaving as a cheerleader for the Iraq WMD’s war), in some Foundation or, at least, in some NGO funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, structure used by the owners of all this people to intervene in the most diverse areas of “civil society”, covertly molding and instrumentalizing the political, economic and social system, in order to respond exclusively to their needs.

The hundreds of millions of dollars that every year, the congress approves – which we don’t vote for, but which is very much in charge of all of us Europeans – for the purpose of producing “information campaigns” about countries that are adverse to American “ideals” and “values”, feed a whole web of interests that range from the corporate press of the North Atlantic, to NGOs such as the International Association of Cartoonists for Democracy (cartoonists! they know very well the power of humor!). Everyone who lives for this high interest wheel ends up directly or indirectly, being funded by this, or by one of the countless lines provided in the same budget for “democracy and human rights” campaigns.

These lines, which anyone can check on the respective website, devote billions of dollars paid by taxpayers for the state department to use one of its armies (soft: diplomacy, press and NGOs; hard: intelligence and armed forces) in the countries provided there (Venezuela, Cuba or Bolivia in LA; Malaysia, Thailand or China in Asia; Turkey, Moldova or Serbia in Europe; Algeria, Egypt or Angola in Africa).

Let’s look at an Ana Gomes, a Portuguese European parliament member, for example. Not because in 2014 she walked in Victoria Nuland’s company in Maidan Square handing out snacks to C14 youth (neo-Nazi youth, equivalent to Hitler Youth), although Nuland’s company says more than one might imagine about Ana Gomes’ real – but unacknowledged – role. Just a random search, for example on the Atlantic Council’s (NED-related) website, and we soon discover an article by this MEP (it was not by chance that I invoked her) on Libya. The same Libya that her Atlantic alliance has destroyed, taking it from being the country with the highest per capita income in Africa, straight into the middle ages.

Without losing a night’s sleep for having contributed to destroying the lives of tens of millions of people, we see the epilogue of this activity in her “collaboration” with the World Movement For Democracy (also NED related), in which Ana Gomes appears as “Steering Committee Member – Spearheads Nicaragua Advocacy in European Parliament”, on behalf of an organization… American, from Washington, Pennsylvania Avenue, like NED. Why do you think she appears so much on Tv screens?

The “defense of Nicaragua” that she promotes, is the same “defense” that “advocates” sanctions on the people because they elected who Washington didn’t want, for wanting to integrate the country into the new silk routes, and for having privileged relations with Moscow. After countless subversive campaigns and attempts at a color revolution that people resisted, accompanied by an international campaign of malicious slander and blatant lies, here are the usual famous sanctions, aimed at starving the people to overthrow the government. People like her call all this “defending Nicaragua”.

But the farce would not be complete without the awarding of the 2022 Nobel peace prize, at least 1/3 of it, to the CCL (Center for Civil Liberties), formed in 2007 and according to them, very much focused on the establishment of democracy and the rule of law in Ukraine. This is another organization funded by Freedom House, the Freedom Fund (no need to say where it comes from, right?), by the French, Belgian and all Western European governments, and, of course, by the European Union. A gem of a national organization from Ukraine! Not a penny comes from that country. And there is no doubt that it has done a job worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize: the formation of a Nazi militia like the Azov and Haidar battalion, or the C14, a coup d’état in 2014, the formation of the second largest NATO army after that of the USA, the extinction of parties, persecution of opponents and, cherry on top of the cake, one of the most corrupt countries in the world. This is reason to say: Congratulations CCL. You really deserve the Nobel Peace Prize! The rest of the 2/3 of the prize is not even worth talking about, because it reveals to the full extent what the Nobel Peace Prize is. A political weapon in the service of the white house!

Everything works the other way around. If you want to know how the EU thinks you need look no further than, as an example, to CEPA (Center for European Policy Analyses), also funded by the NED, invariably located on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, which analyzes, studies and proposes policies for Europe ranging from energy to security. Reading the reports and communiqués and noting their close connection to the “democratic” and “transparent” European policies that decisively influence our countries and our living conditions is a brilliant exercise. 90% of European voters would eventually discover the original uselessness of their vote. They vote here, but it is decided there! I know it hurts… But just go and see!

This network made up of thousands of organizations that at a global level live from the central connection with the NED, the “social” arm of the CIA (also based in the same place) constitutes one of the most important pillars of the neo-liberal empire. It is through this intersection of organizations, where the words “freedom,” “democracy,” “transparency,” “human rights,” “humanitarian aid,” “environment,” and “sustainable” abound as their own identifying lexicon, that the political proposals that flow directly into the mainstream’s brain and find a home in the corporate press of the North Atlantic circulate. After being repeated on google, at school, at university or on TV, most of them even think that they were the ones who adopted them when, in fact, they are nothing more than mere recording and reproduction tools. Sorry to disappoint those of you belong to the mainstream parties, but your brains are no other than the CIA’s. You are mere terminals.

And this is another farce that should win you a big prize! Maybe give to the European peoples the prize for intelligence, political conscience and determination!

It would be in line with the previous ones!

Hugo Dionísio is a lawyer, policy adviser, analyst and researcher at the Portuguese workers trade union confederation (CGTP-IN).