Musk, JD Vance and some NGO Ivana Stradner, on RT Balkan

Nević Nenad

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Just found this on RT Balkan.

Text translated by Google.


Ivana Stradner from Serbia and Ivana Stradner from the USA: Life between facts and slogans


She criticized America from Serbia, and today she criticizes Serbia and Russia from America - what some would call opportunism, the associate of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies calls the American-British way of thinking.


The Washington swamp, the Brussels empire, Zelensky, CNN, the World Health Organization, NATO... are anxiously awaiting January 20th and Donald Trump. Non-governmental organizations have no more reason to celebrate the New Year, either, because they are also on the blacklist of the new head of the White House.

Future US Vice President J.D. Vance made sure that the NGO world did not relax in the pre-holiday atmosphere . In one sentence on the social network "X", he reminded them that the new Trump administration will not give up on reviewing the funding of NGOs.

And it all started with Elon Musk, the AfD, and Germany. Musk's tweet that only " the AfD can save Germany " was a red flag for Ivana Stradner , a researcher at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies :




"This is so dangerous. If this is not clear enough, this is what he also wants to do in the US. If the AfD wins in Germany, we will have a completely different world. The AfD is not only dangerous for Europe, but also for the US," Stradner reacted, also on "X".

But then, by chasing Musk away, she drove out the wolf - she received a response from JD Vance, who first mockingly wrote that "it's so dangerous for people to protect their borders," and then came back and added:

"I wonder how much money this person's employer gets from American taxpayers?"

JD Vance probably doesn't know who, in the forest of NGOs, the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies is, much less who Ivana Stradner is. But behind the flood of phrases, he recognized activists and organizations that don't have to put in the effort to make money in the market. And he recognized those who don't live in a world of facts but in a world of slogans.


The website of this NGO , which likes to think of itself as an objective organization but does not like to reveal its funders , states that Stradner's specialty is "studying Russian security strategies and military doctrines to understand how Russia uses information operations for strategic communication." And not just the technical aspects, but also the psychological ones .

She regularly demonstrates her knowledge of psychology, which is more like motivational speeches, on Twitter. Thus, two years ago, Stradnerova, otherwise a special correspondent for the "Kyiv Post", revealed Russia's Achilles heel:

"One of the biggest Russian weaknesses is their inability to control emotions, and with their Slavic, emotional attitude, they often make mistakes. That's why Americans and British, with their rational way of thinking, can drive the Kremlin crazy."

American journalist Glenn Greenwald, who published articles in The Guardian about spying on citizens using Edward Snowden's data and won a Pulitzer Prize for it, called this tweet "a kind of Mein Kampf of racism."

"Will the Americans and British with their superior-rational brains triumph over the inferior-emotional Russian-Slavic brains?" Greenwald was ironic.

Serbia saw Ivana Stradner long before the Twitter audience. And before the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, she was discovered by another foundation - Delta . Namely, this thirty-nine-year-old went to America ten years ago, after receiving a scholarship from the Miroslav Mišković Foundation .

After seven years of studying at the Belgrade Faculty of Law and with an average of 8.58, which is the lower limit for receiving scholarships, luck smiled on Ivana Stradner when the Delta Foundation decided to finance her education at the University of California, Berkeley . Ivana then saw America through a different lens:

"Even during my undergraduate studies, I had a great desire to continue studying international law in America . I know, it seems paradoxical that I went to the country that violates international law the most to improve my skills in that area, but that was the point – to study international law as it is, not as it should be," she told a Serbian portal as a first-year doctoral student at the University of Berkeley.

And then she had a strong desire to return to Serbia and become a judge of the Constitutional Court. But it seems that everything changed when she touched American soil. Or Ivana, as a newly graduated student, realized that she would reach her goal if she said what her employers wanted to hear. Because today this Ivana Stradner from the USA and that Ivana Stradner from Serbia probably only have one social security number in common.

After receiving the scholarship, she explained to the Americans that she came to the promised land "because of her experience with communism ". And because of the dreary life under socialism . And if she had stayed in Serbia, she would have had experience with dictatorship . This democratically unaware government annoys her from afar, because not only does it not want to impose sanctions on Russia, but it also looks at Beijing through the eyes of a friend. Instead of through a scope. Because Beijing pushes the "most perfidious propaganda" through Confucius Institutes.

Serbia's stubborn refusal to join NATO makes Ivana's hair stand on end. Especially from those who would like to convince her that the bombing in 1999 was aggression. If she remembers life under socialism as a five-year-old and if she learned about communism even before she was born, then she must have been able to distinguish intervention from aggression as a senior elementary school student. That's why she resisted the very thought of Russia asking the UN Security Council to discuss this topic.

"This will trigger another round of Russian disinformation about NATO's alleged aggression against Serbia, Moscow's closest ally in the Balkans. This is part of the Kremlin's effort to portray NATO and the United States as hostile actors, thereby justifying Russia's own aggression against Ukraine and other European countries," Stradner said, once again demonstrating Western pragmatism through personal example.

Or opportunism?
 
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