EU Buys Journalists, Same As USAID

German, Romanian elections in the spotlight

Feb 12, 2025

Has democracy had its day?
EU fact checkers already warning that Germany's Feb 23 election may be invalid
Romania's EU-backed coup gets more sinister, vote cancelled, re-run in May
This is not about party but the making of political sausage

Series:
USAID Files Expose Knot In West's Throat - Graham Greene killed the do-gooder in Vietnam (Feb 08, 2025)
USAID's Fist In A Velvet Glove - Cass Sunstein's malevolent hand (Feb 09, 2025)
What Is This EU That Georgia Would Join? - Europe lost its way in the ‘90s – Georgia-EU part 3 (May 07, 2024)

Feb 12, 2025

The European Commission is using the same tactics that promoted the Covid response and the war in Ukraine, but now to influence upcoming elections.

Its rapid response units identify thoughtcrime and trigger a network of fact checkers and pliant journalists who "correct the record."

The EC funnelled €132 million to buy influence in last year's elections across the Union. It paid media to publish EU-friendly articles, while trashing those the Brussels Directoire does not like.

EC president Ursula von der Leyen used a non-competitive, secret mechanism that avoided public scrutiny or tenders. It was similar to the contract she signed with Pfizer for Covid shots, and which the EC has struggled to keep private.

See Vaccine Scandal A Case Study In Great Reset - Corporations set the price, create a market and regulators get out of the way (Oct 18, 2022)

Intriguingly, von der Leyen signed off on the "buying of political media" while she herself was running for a second term as president.

The scheme has parallels to that of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) which poured hundreds of millions into favoured outlets like Politico and the BBC. It also funnelled half a billion dollars to a secretive global news propaganda matrix.

WikiLeaks published a report on the "Internews Network" with offices in over 30 countries, including London, Paris and regional HQs in Kiev, Bangkok and Nairobi.

See USAID's Fist In A Velvet Glove - Cass Sunstein's malevolent hand (Feb 09, 2025)

The Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano discovered more than €132 million in funds was transferred to advertising agency Havas Media France, which is part of the Vivendi Group.

The grant was made without disclosing the beneficiaries or the criteria for allocation

By using a standardised "framework contract" it is not subject to competitive tender and is not listed on Ted.europa.eu, the register of tenders. Because it uses an intermediary, there is no information on recipients, amounts, conditions and results.

One of the bodies supported with European taxpayers' money is the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN).

The European Federation of Journalists, instead of protecting journalists, participates in EFCSN conferences, co-funded by the European Union, with titles like "fact-checkers under attack - how to deal with threats and harassment."

The EFCSN has also launched ClimateFactsEurope, a public database for debunking and identifying trends in climate disinformation.

‘Democracy’ network

One target was the Romanian elections. The country's intelligence service claimed that TikTok had been used to aid the top contender Calin Georgescu, leading the country's top court to annul the election, disenfranchising nine million voters in a country of 20 million people..

See Romania Coup Is Your Western Warning - Has the EU become a dictatorship? (Dec 07, 2024)

The network of "democracy promotion" is vast. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the U.S. State Department has teamed up with George Soros and his Open Society Foundation (OSF). Sometimes USAID provides grants directly but more often to "partner" organisations. [1]

For example the U.S. has granted over $270 million to the East-West Management Institute, an organization partnered with George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, in the last 15 years. [2]

A particular strategy of Soros is to influence judicial appointments. This is seen in the U.S. through OSF donations to progressive candidates in district attorney elections. [3]

Another Soros strategy is to fund so-called anticorruption NGOs, like the controversial AntAc in Ukraine.

In Ukraine Anti-Corruption Action, or AntAC, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy and George Soros, led the resistance to a law in 2018 that would have forced them to disclose financial accounts. Western diplomats and NGOs defeated that legislation. The irony of anti-corruption activists fighting against financial disclosure was presumably lost on these agents of Western influence. [4]

Romanian journalist Iosefina Pascal says the judges on the Romanian constitutional court have links to financier George Soros. In particular judge Simina Tănăsescu sits on the board of a Soros NGO. Two other judges, Livia Stanciu and Bogdan Licu, participated in training seminars at Freedom House Romania.

One judge was forced by then-president Klaus Iohannis to resign over a dispute with the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA). Petre Lăzăroiu was replaced by Simina Tanasescu.

These were the judges who overturned the November 24 in which Calin Georgescu won the first round convincingly.

Paradoxically Georgescu is a globalist — a former senior United Nations official and member of the Club of Rome — however he has questioned NATO building what may be its largest European base near the Black Sea port city of Constanta, 130 km from Ukraine's border and around 300 km from the port city of Odessa, to control the Black Sea region,

TikTok boogey

It turned out that the TikTok campaign used as the excuse to cancel the elections was paid for by the ruling National Liberal Party — which then supported cancelling the elections!

The globalist outlet Politico stretched credibility, suggesting the National Liberal Party's campaign may have been "hijacked to benefit far-right candidate." Not surprisingly it turns out that Politico is on the payroll of the U.S. government.

The evidence showed that Politico lied. An investigation by Snoop Ro found that Kensington Communication's influencers complied with their contract and did not switch sides in the way that Politico suggested. [5]

PNL had hired Kensington Communications to coordinate 130 influencers, spending a total of $200,000.

Either the intel services did not know PNL had financed the campaign, or it did know and was complicit in the coup.

Although he was the front runner, Georgescu was not getting the most exposure online: he ranked third or fourth on TikTok.

Russiagate redux

Like Russiagate in 2016, the social media posts could have been a mix of electioneering, regular engagement farming by influencers eager to amass followers, clicks and thus ad revenue but there was scant evidence of political intent to interfere, — as there was not in the 2016 Trump campaign.

Another similarity to Russiagate 2016 is the relatively small number of influencer accounts involved. Could 130 TikTok accounts have swung the election given that Georgescu ranked third or fourth in engagement?

As for campaign finance violations, some payments may have been made outside the campaign period, whether this was intentional or incompetence the number of payments was not statistically significant.

Despite the failure to prove Russia or TikTok even tried to influence the previous election, EFCSN called on TikTok to "take action against disinformation on their platform... labelling all misinfo instead of only removing harmful content.

This week Romania's president Klaus Iohannis finally resigned under threat of impeachment for the cancellation of elections. He had refused to step down in December when his mandate expired. He followed the identical script to Georgia's president Salome Zourabichvili who refused to recognise that country's October election.

Vote again!

Romania's elections are to be re-run on May 4 and 18.

USAID spent more than $41 million on Georgian elections - which on a per capital basis would be equivalent to $3.7 billion if injected into U.S. elections.

Slovakia's prime minister Robert Fico, who survived an assassination attempt in May 2024 has written an open letter to Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency team (DOGE) asking for information on all grants from USAID to Slovak journalists and NGOs who may have interfered in the country's politics.

Hungary's prime minister Victor Orban posted on Twitter that the "globalist liberal elite used US taxpayers’ money to force their own progressive political agenda down the throats of people around the world."

Broad interference

It's not only countries on NATO's periphery like Romania and Georgia that experience election interference. Voters in much of Europe but particularly France, eastern Germany and Austria have been denied their voice.

The same deeply unpopular policies of war and austerity have politicians polling at record lows, while ruling coalitions are struggling to make the financial numbers work.

The German government of chancellor Olaf Scholz collapsed over the inability to pass a budget. Elections have been brought forward from September to February 23.

See Governments Fall As War Drive Exposes Rifts - 'Centrists' face moment of truth over social services (Dec 20, 2024)

EFCSN is already warning about interference in Germany's elections. It cites one of its own "members" Corectiv Faktencheck as publishing a report "that shows a Russian influence operation has created about 100 websites that will probably be used to spread disinformation soon."

French prime minister François Bayrou pushed through a 2025 budget without a vote. The government does not have enough support to pass the budget, so it's been delayed - and that was Bayrou's excuse for imposing it by diktat, using Article 49.3 of the constitution.

Earlier he survived a no-confidence vote by France Unbowed which the National Rally and Socialists failed to back.

Havas mafia

Havas has eight offices in Brussels. One of them is a public affairs practice dedicated to the EU.

It helped shape voters' outlooks during the previous EU elections in 2019 when it launched the We Europeans project. This is not purely informational but has a strong political bent, and was active in the 2024 elections as well:

The European 2024 – They have been characterized by a notable rise in populist political parties across the continent,
Argumentation training – Do you know situations that leave speechless when confronted with populist statements? Get prepared and train yourself.
The EU and its achievements – Let’s take a look at a few of the EU’s achievements that have changed our lives and which are quite normal for us today. [6]

The commission also directly finances journalists:

Under the Creative Europe project the Commission in October 2024 €16 million available to support journalism and media literacy across Europe "aimed at organisations that can set up and distribute funds to news media entities in sectors of particular relevance to democracy."

The EC also wants to extend its rapid response system "that will systematically and comprehensively monitor violations of press and media freedom across the EU."
Under EU Digital Reporting, if funds platforms to ensure free access, discoverability and sorting, user-friendliness and dissemination of content in a minimum of 6 EU languages

Multimedia Actions funds general EU information, news and programmes for the public from European perspectives [7]

Havas Media launches scheme to fund start-ups founded by BAME and minority people. While the plan is ultimately to focus on business owners from across all under represented groups, Havas Boost will initially concentrate on black, Asian, and minority ethnic-owned businesses.

Direct support

The EC already funds establishment media. For example in Italy the Agnelli-Elkann family, who own La Repubblica and La Stampa entered in to a partnership with the European Parliament and the Commission to run paid article. The family also jointly own The Economist with the Rothschilds.

As Oliver Janich writes on Substack, Havas is behind Agence France-Presse and was for many years part of a news cartel including Reuters and later Associated Press.

Today Reuters is part of the ultra-private Thompson family of Canada. Havas comprises AFP and the advertising arm, Havas Media. [8]

We will coup

Ironies never end in the USAID story. We described in the last article its involvement in regime change and coups.

“We will coup whoever we want," Musk wrote on Twitter/X after a U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia in 2019 that unseated its first indigenous president Evo Morales.

The Bolivian’s Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) would have been a classic target of the Central Intelligence Agency, seeking to redistribute land and water rights to the 80 per cent indigenous population.

Business classes have long competed for control of water (see Maui, Hawaii) but it was the discovery of lithium deposits that attracteda the attention of Musk.

See Maui's Fire Hydrants Ran Dry; The Politics Of Water - H20 is being rationed in an attack on humanity (Sep 18, 2023)

Land and water rights have been the driving force behind coups across the world, especially in Latin America and Central America. Guatemalan president Jacobo Arbenz in 1952 and Chilean president Salvador Allende in 1973 are well-known to this day when the focus is on countries like Venezuela.

The meddling is unlikely to end. USAID has been reshuffled into Marco Rubio's State Department, and Musk's top influencers are going along with the Trump administration's charade.

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