Comment by secondary_op | Hacker News Reader

Comment by secondary_op | Hacker News Reader

US CIA and US State Department Behind Serbia's "Student List" Media N1 and Nova S (United Group) [video]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50300051

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5lwZU7Q5U0

    US government-funded pro-opposition outlet BIRN through its Media Ownership Monitor Serbia project admits the central Student List media channels - N1 and Nova S - were created by former US director of the CIA David Petraeus via KKR and former US Ambassador to Serbia Cameron Munter; 

    The parent United Group was acquired and the media platforms built up from 2013-2014 onward as the center of opposition media in Serbia opposing Serbia’s existing leadership and institutions, and playing a central role in both “student protests” last year and the “Student List” movement this year; 

    United Group was only recently (earlier this year) acquired by Alpac Capital, but KKR still maintains an undisclosed amount of shares

with the move a likely an attempt to distance US involvement in the media network;

    When “leaderless” and “decentralized” protests are praised in the Western media, scroll down in the article where they eventually admit who the leaders and organizations are behind them, perform a simple internet search to identify the key people and investments making them possible to determine whether a movement is indigenous or the product of foreign interference;

Those two channels with limited cable availability had 0 to do with the extremely horizontal and leaderless Student List, that openly stated will do fuck all on the foreign front apart from stopping manufacturing of Israel’s drones. Btw since you’re “doing your own research” see who supported and even better who installed the former ruling party.

This is false, these channels all over social media, and activist feeds,

"leaderless" is propaganda framing, you have been brainwashed

and there is follow up video

https://youtu.be/P2JKKvKX99c

Seems a very reliable and impartial YouTube channel...

This channel is literally full of pro-Russian propaganda by a random guy in Bangkok. Show us a substantial source, if there is one.

Or are you simply reproducing a regime’s narrative on here?

All substantial sources are literally right there with links in video description, and he literally points at them in video.

It is doubtful he is pro-Russian, but he is surely anti-US.

    Brian Berletic - an American industrial designer based in Bangkok, Thailand who has written under the pen name Tony Cartalucci

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNL4xoD5uMY

On the one hand, I have no doubt that the US and everyone else able would push their agenda in uncertain times. On the other, imagining that it is all CIA/FSB and so on denies agency to thousands of people who have put in the effort to change thier country.

Exactly. My fellow countrymen fucked my country (Brexit). Foreign meddling didn't help, but it also didn't hinder to the point of changing the outcome.

It was my fellow countrymen, and their long held Eurosceptic views, that fucked us. Russia posting divisive pish in 2016 has nothing on our decades of native politicians and newspapers blaming Brussels for everything bad (often its their own policies being policywashed) and pretending everything good came from them.

Well, it sure added some serious percentage to the leave

According to the government's own report, it did not. The meddling was insubstantial

Do you wonder why there even was a referendum?

Compare 1997: Sir Jammy Fishpaste hates Europe, spends millions of his own money promoting his Referendum Party, gets nowhere. Because it's "cool Britannia" and the common man is doing well for himself. People think he's a nutter and all he achieves is keeping 4-11 Tories out of power by sapping their votes

But the 2008 crash wrecks the country. UKIP builds a voter base over years, and gets an enormous share of the vote. That's a warning shot for the Tories, whose voters UKIP are sapping. They only just squeaked through a hung parliament with a Libdem coalition. Hence Gambling Dave offers a referendum to bring Europe haters back to his party so he can remain in power.

Those percentage points were already in place before Russia even got going.

Yep, working class people's lives have sucked after 2008, though it was a continuation of a longer trend and is still continuing. (And COVID made it worse. All us tech people sitting comfortable in our home office while mass wealth transfer happened out of blue collar pockets...)

Worth remembering... Anti-globalization and anti-liberalization were slogans and policies of the socialist left in the late 90s and 2000s. Battle of Seattle, Occupy, etc. Voices marginalized and mocked by the neo-liberal centrist "left" (not left) in the Democratic party, Labour party, mainstream European govt's, Canadian Liberal party, etc. Manufacturing jobs were dumped overseas, union membership declined, middle class incomes plummeted, 2008 drained people's financial well being, while housing prices skyrocketed etc. And same "moderate" forces also went to war in the middle east, etc. etc.

Obama ran on left populist slogans but actually governed from the neo-liberal centrist right.

Actual socialist left voices and formerly moderate social democratic policies generally had no voice or power in government anywhere, Corbyn was run out of the room, Bernie isolated, etc.

So it's no surprise that the right and far right saw the vacancy and exploited it. The rise of Trump, of UK Reform, etc. ties directly into this sense of hopelessness and anger people had.

Now the "conservative" right -- which was formerly pushing liberalization the strongest -- talks in angry tones about "globalism" instead of "globalization", and it's caught up with anti-Semitic dog whistles, national chauvinism, etc. etc. That shit sells.

The Russia report? It says that they didn't seek to assess Russia's impact?

Farage was basically a Putin asset, for years; I don't doubt that a lot of the sentiment was there before any influence, but to my recollection the influence was obvious and very heavy

> imagining that it is all CIA/FSB and so on denies agency to thousands of people who have put in the effort to change thier country

You're looking at it from a very narrow minded point of view. Those agencies push their agenda in very meticulous ways through many channels. While it may seem that the people are merely exercising their agency and pushing for change, the _direction_ they're pushing towards is what's decided by the agencies, at the very least.

Sure jan, the country with an all time low in trust for institutions and academia ruled by an strongman-loving, education-bashing fascist is secretly funding meritocracies around the world…

Conspiracy drivel.

The US is famous for never intervening into other countries' politics. Other famous examples of no intervention in the area is their total non-involvement in Ukraine with Euromaidan protests for example!

Conspiracy would be saying that the US orchestrated the existence of the Student's list and created protests from thin air. Realism is that the US is very happy about any political destabilization that could favor their interest and will provide unofficial support wherever it's convenient for them.

This conspiracy is certainly true anyway. It's not like we never saw real conspiracies, especially coming from the US.

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