'We Stand With Ukraine', Norwegian Style, Pt. 2: 'Germany-Gate', or: False Flags in Norway Abound, co-sponsored by the EU, most notably by Germany

But fear not, all parties, the EU, Soros and his ilk, as well as (likely) Western intelligence swamp creatures are in the piece, too!

In yesterday’s post, we explored the foreign policy dimensions of the ‘we stand with Ukraine’ trope so farcically prevalent in Norwegian society right now.

Today, we shall further go down that particular rabbit-hole by looking at the tentacles of EU, in particular German, influence-peddling in non-EU member-state Norway—as well as its quite likely foreign intelligence components.

‘We march to show our gratitude to Norway’

As our point of departure, we shall first take a close look at the bespoke article in Bergens Tidende, which appeared on 17 May 2022. The piece was composed by Pål Andreas Mæland and it contains a wealth of, shall we say, quite interesting bits and pieces of information (my emphases):

In the main procession, the Ukrainians’ Association in Bergen was among the formations that received the most applause along the route…

‘This is the first time we participated in the May 17 festivities. It is fantastic’, says Volodymyr Novosad, the chairman of the Association.

‘I used to call myself Valdemar in Norway, but now Norwegians have learned that I share the same first name as President Zelenskyj’, he adds.

[Mr. Novosad] has lived in Norway for 20 years, and the Association has always been too small for there to be any point in participating in the 17 May festivities.

‘But now there are many more Ukrainians in Bergen, which is however unfortunate, one has to add, considering the reason for this to happen’, says Novosad.

Well over 1,000 Ukrainians have come to Bergen as refugees after the Russian invasion on 24 February.

Some of these refugees were put up in the 4-star Thon Hotel Bergen Brygge whose rooms are available at the below rates (divide by 10 to convert Norwegian Crowns into US$ or €):

Nice deal, all things considered, and certainly not the worst way to spend my tax NOK, still, I recall what the mother of one of my daughter’s kindergarten buddies told me last week: working as a clinical psychiatrist at the University Hospital and being of Russian extraction (her parents had emigrated to Norway as white-collar professionals in the 1990s), I learned that

‘most refugees from Ukraine here in Bergen are actually asking for information and counselling in Russian’

While I don’t doubt that the local bureaucrats were sincere in their desire to help the Ukrainian refuges, they also prepared leaflets, brochures, and all kinds of services in the Ukrainian language.

So, with my fellow parent being of Russian extraction and, as is quite common, with family and friends who find themselves uncomfortably between a rock (Russia’s military operation) and a hard place (attachments to their inner Ukrainians), the unquestioning mantra of ‘we stand with Ukraine’, peddled by spineless politicians and amplified by the equally amoral camp followers masquerading as journalists, conveniently overlooks the distinction between ‘the people of Ukraine’ vs. the Kyiv régime.

The main problem here is that, in my opinion, it’s one thing to ‘stand with the people of Ukraine’ irrespective of their linguistic and/or ethnic background (which I firmly do)—but it’s a very different thing to simply ‘stand with Ukraine’, i.e., the criminal Kyiv régime.

That said, here’s more from the Bergens Tidende on the occasion (again, my emphases):

The members of the Ukrainians’ Association are both Ukrainians who have lived here for a long time and newcomers. They carried both Norwegian and Ukrainian flags.

‘We march to show our gratitude to Norway for all the help from the municipality and the Norwegian people’, says Oleksandr Aleksandrovskyy, who joined Novosad in the procession…

The war in Ukraine was the evident background of this year’s 17 May festivities. And unlike in Oslo, there has been no debate about the use of Ukrainian or other foreign flags. Along the route there were many Ukrainian flags to be seen, in addition to the Norwegian ones.

‘17 May in Bergen is for everyone, and people can come with the flag they want. We paid particular attention to integrating the Ukrainian refugees who have come here, and we hope we have succeeded’, says [Cecilie] Lycke [chairwoman of the 17 May Organization Committee].

Note, by the way, the same conflation of the Norwegian government with the Norwegian people (and note that—without public debate—the former had shipped heavy guns to Ukraine less than two weeks earlier).

Then there’s the mentioning of Oslo and the larger issues of ‘antifascism’ and the anti-Russian sentiment that was openly peddled. Here’s the remainder of Bergen Tidende’s piece (my emphases, followed by a comment below):

In the speeches at Festplassen [Bergen’s main square where the official part took place], Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was mentioned frequently…

‘We send a thank you to everyone in Ukraine who fights not only for their own country, but for the whole world. A new fascist regime threatens the world’, said the commandant of Bergenhus fortress, Commander Erik Alf Bøe, in his speech in memory of the fallen.

He drew parallels between the current Putin regime and Hitler’s Germany, which invaded its neighbours 84 years ago.

[Bergen] Mayor Rune Bakervik also devoted much of his speech to Ukraine: ‘Ukraine's honor and freedom are not dead yet’, reads the Ukrainian national anthem. If you read the text, you understand that Ukraine cannot lose the war they are in now’, he said, among other things.

You see, this is about as dishonest as it gets: the military commandant of the Bergenshus—which is to say: one of the key pillars of the Norwegian state—calls Putin ‘Hitler’ and the leader of ‘a new fascist regime’ that ‘threatens the world’. This is BS on a number of levels, but before we take this apart, let’s all keep in mind that…

Conflating Fake Hitler (and Stalin) with Putin is Stupid

Mr. Bøe does so, certainly with the consent, if not having been ordered to do so, of his superiors, i.e., the Norwegian military and/or government. This fact alone is quite telling, and it should serve as a reminder of the usefulness of the distinction between a government vs. the people; in other words: even Joseph Stalin, in the aftermath of WW2, insisted on this differentiation at the Nuremberg Trials—today’s collective West doesn’t.

Lest you accuse me of false equivalence of ‘whataboutism’, do keep in your mind that until around 2016/17, western legacy media routinely, and quite accurately, reported on the pervasive nature of Neo-Nazi/ultra-nationalist sentiments, paramilitary groups, and armed formations (mainly the Azov Regiment). Please see here for an earlier piece from early March as an example.

From 2016/17 onwards, though, this began to change: Azov and the Ukrainian far-right paramilitaries became ‘freedom fighters’, supplied with western equipment, and trained by NATO officers.

Any inconvenient facts quickly disappeared right before the commencement of Russia’s ‘special military operation’. What facts are we talking about, by the way? Well…

• Please read the Minsk 1 and 2 agreements (see here, via the UN Security Council) and note that the common trope of Russian violation of said agreements is—bonkers: Moscow wasn’t a signatory, for the agreements pertained to the Kyiv régime and the Donbass republics.

• There were virtually no Russian troops in Donbass before February 2022, which was reported—factually quite accurately, by the way, by the Kyiv Post and the WaPo, among others (yes, there were some, 56 Russians, according to the former, which is about in the range of, say, Swiss mercenaries in Syria fighting on behalf of ISIS, as per the Kyiv Post piece published in 2015).

• Then there’s the dramatic rise of paramilitary formations, esp. the incorporation of the Azov formations into the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), as shown in the below graph from a Reuters piece that was published on 26 Jan. 2022. Note that these paramilitaries are under the command of the Ministry of the Interior (which is also why the Russian Supreme Court recently announced that members of the Azov formations will not be tried as members of the military, but as terrorists; the first hearing is scheduled for Thursday, 26 May 2022, by the way).

• Speaking of these paramilitaries, it’s well-known and acknowledged by a wide variety of governmental institutions and media outlets that the Azov formations consist of far-right extremists, as reported by, e.g., USA Today. These facts be damned, Western legacy media considers any mentioning of this ‘Russian propaganda’ (e.g., Le Monde), yet the widespread presence of Neo-Nazis is confirmed by, e.g., the Times of Israel, members of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, and the US Army’s Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Military Academy.

• Furthermore, you may also check this piece from April 2022, which documents the contortions of German legacy media to obscure just this fact.

• Then there’s my 8/9 May 2022 column, which brings more of this madness to light, including the renaming of the Russian-German Museum in Berlin (they dropped the ‘Russian’), although the museum is dedicated to the remembrance of Hitler’s attack on the USSR during WW2—while the Ukrainian ambassador to Germany calls out the German government to ‘‘to take this war more seriously…which means going beyond merely symbolic gestures, but to undertake all that is possible… to ensure that Ukraine doesn’t lose this war’.

For insights into the recently vacated Azov HQ outside Mariupol, we may turn to exiled American former marine and police officer-turned-journalist John Mark Dougan. Please check out these two brief videos (15:22 minutes and 5:47 minutes) Mr. Dougan recently posted on EvilTube.

Please watch these videos and tell me you don’t see any Neo-Nazi or other far-right materials; note further that there’s clear evidence of US-supplied ammunition, which again indicates the usefulness, if not outright necessity, of the above-mentioned distinction between ‘the people’ (both individually and collectively) of any state vs. the government of said state.

Sidenote: if you haven’t heard of John Mark Dougan, he’s served with the US Marines and later became a police officer in Florida. In the latter capacity, Dougan unearthed rampant corruption, including the shenanigans known as ‘Russiagate’ (which was about as ‘true’ as the claims that ‘we in the West’ are supporting the ‘freedom fighters of the Azov formation’). Dougan posted the material online after he couldn’t get the authorities interested in these activities—only to have his residence raided by the FBI. Dougan was then placed on a no-fly list, escaped the US to Canada in 2016, and emigrated—forced into exile—to Russia where he applied for asylum (because the US attorneys are threatening Dougan with 95 years in prison).

Click here to learn how John Mark Dougan told his story, and then you may click here to learn what Western legacy media speaks about the same story—you be the judge. (Note that I replaced the original link to the DailyBeast story with a Wayback Machine link because the original doesn’t work anymore, at least for me; it worked fine two days ago when I started writing this piece.)

Ukrainian and Russian NGOs in Norway—and their Funders

Yet, I promised to take you down a very particular rabbit-hole, so, here’s why how all of the above 17 May festivities, the Azov formations, the Kyiv régime, and the shenanigans of Western governments and intelligence services intersect.

Here’s a link to another piece that appeared in Bergens Tidende on 15 Feb. 2022. It reveals a number of issues that warrant attention.

The Ukrainians’ Association in Bergen holds that Norwegians don’t understand that Ukraine has been at war for eight years: ‘People die every day’, says Volodymir Novosad.

Curious, isn’t it, that this piece appeared literally the day before the Ukrainian army and paramilitary began firing into the Donbass across the line of contact, which, as is known, precipitated the Russian ‘special military operation’. This information derives from the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, as per their report dated 21 Feb. 2022, which you can download directly here (the below graphs are from pp. 2-3, respectively):

Note further that more a whooping 81.4% of all conflict-related civilian casualties in Ukraine from 2018 up to 31 Dec. 2021 occurred on the territory held by the Donbass ‘separatists’. This means that 4 out of 5 of these casualties were most likely due to fire originating from the Kyiv régime-held side of the line of contact, according the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (as the below table, found on p. 2, clearly shows):

Back to the above-cited Bergens Tidende piece from 15 Feb. 2022, which cites Hanna Veits (28), a native of Lugansk in the Donbass who fled to Bergen where she’s now a musical student (she plays the violin; my emphasis):

‘For eight years, no one thought that Russia would invade, but now we know better and think one must be prepared for everything. Suitcases are packed and she works hard to get travel documents for the cat. The hope is that if something happens, she can quickly apply for asylum in Norway’, says Veits.

Then there’s this quote by Mr. Novosad:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that he did not want war. He has also stated that Russia has started a partial withdrawal.

‘It is difficult to believe what he says. He speaks with many tongues’, says Volodymir Novosad (52).

Mind you, this piece appeared on 15 Feb. 2022, i.e., one day before the Ukrainian side began to shell the Donbass.

It’s perhaps not surprising at this point—that the clear anti-Russian bias was present 11 days before the beginning of the Russian operations in eastern Ukraine.

Equally unsurprising is the fact that there was a ‘spontaneous’ anti-Russian demonstration outside the embassy in Oslo, which was reported by Norwegian state broadcaster NRK on 24 Feb. 2022 (the first day of the Russian ‘special military operation’) as early as 9:53 a.m. Norwegian time:

Translation of the last two sentences: ‘This is one of many protests in Norwegian cities today. The organisation SmåRådina: For Democracy in Russia organises a protest outside the Russian embassy in Oslo at 11 a.m. on Thursday’

There’s Mr. Novosad (see here for the Ukrainians’ Association website) and the reference to anti-war protests in many Norwegian cities, alright (see here for an English-language news item), but what I found even more interesting is that ‘organisation SmåRådina’ (Little Motherland): who are they?

Click here to check out SmåRådina’s website.

They are a ‘pro-democracy in Russia’ NGO based in Norway (see here for contact details) that also run the website stopvoina.no (stop the war), but if you’re looking for, say, SmåRådina’s funders, there’s no information on the website.

They do have a big project—entitled #freenavalny—that kinda gives away where they may get part of their funding: from other western ‘NGOs’ and/or intelligence services.

And then there’s Ms. Eugenia Khoroltseva, a member of SmåRådina’s steering board, who piqued my interest.

For whatever reason, Ms. Khoroltseva is also a member of the steering board of DARE, which was reported by the Norwegian Human Rights Academy, which is yet another NGO that doesn’t disclose its funding. In the picture below, which you can access by clicking on the link in this paragraph, we learn that Ms. Khoroltseva is standing next to fellow DARE board members Matia Losego, Eugenia Khoroltseva, Frank Elbers, Georg Pirker, Zuzka Schreiberova, Agnese Balode, and Marco Oberosler (from left to right):

Helpfully, there’s a link entitled ‘about the DARE network’, which leads us to their website:

The Democracy and Human Rights Education in Europe (DARE) Network is a Europe-wide network of primarily NGOs, academic institutions and training providers devoted to promote active democratic citizenship and human rights through formal education, non-formal and informal education, and life-long learning.

Wonderful, but guess what: they also don’t disclose their funding streams, but they at least have a sub-page entitled ‘partners’, which provide some insight into their backers, incl. the Council of Europe, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights [which doesn’t have anything on ‘assange’], the Lifelong Learning Platform, and NECE, which stands for the Networking European Citizenship Education NGO.

All Roads Lead to the EU and—the German Government

At least, I found that DARE and NECE are supported by the Arbeitskreis deutscher Bildungsstätten e.V., the Association of German Educational Organizations, or AdB (homepage here). AdB is

an association made up of approximately 170 continuing education centres throughout Germany with various profiles—youth education centres, adult education centres, academies, Europe centres, educational centres of party-related foundations and international encounter centres. As a whole these independent educational organisations represent a wide spectrum of various training offers as well as organisational structures…

We aim to preserve and promote civic education as an important element of democracy. Democracy is not only a form of government, but needs to be experienced and promulgated in the daily lives of citizens. Civic education is a training field for democracy. Through their training offers, the member organisations of the association strive to motivate and enable citizens to recognize the relationship between political framework conditions and their own lives, play an active role in public affairs and participate in the making of society and political processes. The member organisations see themselves as places of encounter between people of different cultures, demographic groups and worlds. As a specialised organisation of civic education we foster an exchange of information and experience, training and a joint representation of interests in the area of civic education. We actively contribute to specialised discussions on civic education. We advocate a European Educational Network for Human Rights and Democracy and commit ourselves to the realisation of equal opportunities between men and women in all our fields of work (my emphases, but their agit-prop)

Did you spot NECE here?

Excellent, for on their German website, there’s a quite extensive, if not really concise, ‘mindmap’ that shows who the AdB works with:

Look: DARE and NECE, again—but also an institution called ‘TEVIP’ of which I’ve never heard before. TEVIP is a front organisation with a very weird web presence (see here) that proclaims to offer ‘Education on (European) Values), by which is meant that TEVIP

offers concepts and materials for educational activities to trainers, multipliers, and teachers on the topic of values. The aim is to enable and promote an open debate on this sensitive issue, and particularly on its European dimension.

Curiously, they are very open about their ‘target group’, which are defined as

multipliers working with young people (aged under 25) who have had no or only little contact with Europe-related topics before. Most activities have been developed for use in non-formal education but may also be used by teachers in formal education. They can also be used by international youth groups at European youth events, camps etc. (emphasis in the original)

TEVIP itself is funded via the Erasmus+ program, i.e., by EU contributions that flow into educational and research projects, at least from 2017 through 2020. Its partners include the following (note DARE again):

The contact address, however, is given as planpolitik GbR, Ms. Charlotte Wiesenthal, Friedelstrasse 16, 12047 Berlin, Germany, incl. a phone number and email address.

What is Planpolitik GbR?

Well, here’s the (preliminary) endpoint of this piece as planpolitik was founded by Simon Raiser and Björn Warkalla, both students of Political Science at the Free University (FU) of Berlin in the mid-1990s. They claim to perform ‘political simulation games’ and the like, and while the start appears to have been quite a bumpy ride, they are a quite unknown, if very interesting, fixture in the netherlands of influence peddling that must not immediately be identified.

If you venture on to their ‘partners’, you can find out who stands behind planpolitik. For a organization founded by two students, their list of sponsors is really impressive, in particular since the NGO only got off the ground in late 2004. Their ‘partners’ include:

• Various German state governments (Berlin, Northrhine-Westphalia, Thuringia)

• Many universities, such as the FU, the Europa University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), the Universities of Magdeburg, Marburg and Duisburg Essen, among others, incl. outside Germany

• Various religious institutions, most notably a number of Lutheran academies (Berlin, Frankfurt am Main) as well as the Junge Islam Konferenz (Young Islam Conference).

• A host of NGOs, incl. DARE (again), the partners we encountered on the TEVIP website, the Aga Khan Foundation (Portugal), the Bertelsmann and Joachim Hertz Foundations, as well as all the major party-affiliated foundations of the SPD (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung), the Greens (Heinrich Böll Stiftung), and the CDU/CSU (Konrad Adenauer Stiftung)—talk about ‘spreading the risk’

• And then there are virtually all institutions of the German state: the Bundestag, the Chancellery, the Federal Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Education and Research, Nutrition and Agriculture, the Federal Press Office—as well as a host of by now quite expectable institutions, such as the EU Council, UNESCO, and a host of other German state and regional actors.

• There’s also another of higher education players, ranging from ETH Zurich in Switzerland to the French École Nationale d’Administration (Macron’s alma mater), the Soros-funded CEU, the American University in Cairo, Egypt, the Fudan University in Shanghai, China, the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, and many, many more.

• At the bottom of this long listing, there’s another host of foundations—from the Körber and Zeit foundations to the German Marshall Fund, the Greens, and the Amadeu Antonio Stiftung.

Not bad for two virtually unknown poli-sci graduates, eh?

Note that I shall stop at this point to try to summarise this extra-long post.

Bottom Lines

As regards the Ukrainian diaspora in Norway, everyone was open about both the Neo-Nazis among the Azov formations, and no-one really believed in a Russian attack—until mid-February 2022.

Then the sentiment shifted, curiously enough literally one day before the Ukrainian formations began the shelling of the Donbass on 16 Feb. 2022, which precipitated the Russian ‘special military operation’ on 24 Feb.

On that very same day, as early as 9:53 a.m. (which would be 10:53 a.m. Moscow time), Norwegian media reported on a planned anti-war protest outside the Russian embassy in Oslo, organised ‘on short notice’ by both the Ukrainians’ Association of Norway and an obscure NGO ‘for democracy in Russia’ called SmåRådina.

On SmåRådina’s board sits one Eugenia Khoraltseva, who’s also connected to the Oslo-based Human Rights Academy (another NGO that remains mum about its funding, much like SmåRådina).

Ms. Khoraltseva is also a member of the steering board of the DARE Network, which appears to be a front organisation for ‘democracy education’, which DARE conducts in cahoots with TEVIP, another EU-funded front organization that’s actually carried out by planpolitik.

Planpolitik is a German ‘NGO’ that, while as mum about its funding streams as the DARE Network, is linked to both the Association of German Educational Organizations and virtually all the other ‘usual suspects’: EU and esp. German state institutions on all levels, a plethora of universities, and foundations.

What does this mean?

I don’t mean to imply that the Ukrainians’ Association in Norway or the other ‘NGOs’ we’ve encountered here are all bought and paid for by the usual globalist suspects (even though I readily admit it certainly looks like it).

I don’t wish to intimate that the likes of Mr. Novosad or Ms. Koraltseva actually know of many of these connections and/or funding streams.

What I do want to state is the following: how many Norwegians (and other Europeans, for that matter) know—or care enough—about their body politic being systematically influenced by foreign governments and transnational institutions, such as the Council of Europe, the EU Commission, or the German Government?

This isn’t to say that these are eo ipso malign influences, yet if we consider a democratic régime to mean that these organisations should (must) transparently reveal their funding streams to make it possible for citizens to make informed decisions about who to cheer and trust, uncomfortable questions about the health of ‘our democracy’ and ‘our values’ emerge.

Yet, they remain obscured, perhaps unintentionally so by the courtiers masquerading as journalists (it took me about a week of ‘research’ to systematise these connections, and my results, however absurd, remain both very shallow and preliminary), but it’s certainly a call for suspicion every time you see any of these institutions, their funders, and or articles that speak highly of them.

Buyer Beware!