Manufacturing Consent in Montenegro

How U.S. and EU Manipulate Public Consciousness: Montenegro

by Ion Todescu

Off-Guardian,

13 December, 2015

I’ve been working on this post for a long time, meticulously collecting scraps of information piece by piece to give you a comprehensive picture.

It is well known that the U.S. employs a sophisticated network of non-governmental organizations to manipulate public consciousness in multiple countries across the world. NGOs also play a key role in preparing color revolutions.

These last months I’ve been closely following the events in Montenegro, a small country anxious about the efforts of its NATO ‘partners’ doing the best to integrate that Balkan state in the alliance. Well, you’ll be greatly surprised to find out the scale of those efforts.

It would be an understatement to say that a network of foreign controlled organizations is active in Montenegro. It’s not just a network, it is a system of its own, a ‘network of networks’.

This scheme illustrates the structural ties between the agents of influence which attempt to manipulate and brainwash the minds of Montenegro citizens:

As you can see, governmental structures, NGOs, media as well as commercial entities are involved in the unnatural process of pulling Montenegro into NATO.

The process is coordinated by the U.S. Congress and the State Department via USAID, NED, NDI, Open Society Foundation, Orion Strategies and RIF Group consulting companies, while NATO uses its Public Diplomacy Division; the European countries act via their embassies.

The coordinating body on the ground is represented by the Council for NATO Membership in Montenegro Parliament with Prime Minister’s Counselor for Foreign Affairs Vesko Garčević as National Coordinator for NATO.

The Council established a communication group of 12 members directly responsible for creating public support of Montenegro accession to NATO. Key members are as follows:

• Olivera Đukanović, media relations coordinator
• Ana Dragić, NGO sector manager
• Valentina Radulović Šćepanović, political parties and local administration manager

The communication group signed a memorandum with more than 60 Montenegrin NGOs to propel its initiatives and create tools for manipulating public opinion. Thus, it created a large-scale, constantly developing network. It continues to draw new members and form units to impact the minds of the Montenegrin public from multiple angles under the cover of social activities. This resulted in a complex hierarchical structure with large NGOs distributing tasks among smaller organizations.

Here are the largest NGOs in Montenegro:

• Network for Affirmation of the NGO Sector (MANS), executive director Vanja Ćalović
• Atlantic Council of Montenegro, president Savo Kentera
• Youth Atlantic Treaty Assosiation (YATA) in Montenegro, president Vladan Balaban
• Center for Democratic Transition, executive director Dragan Koprivica
• Center for Monitoring and Research
• Alfa Center
• Foundation for the Development of Northern Montenegro

Naturally, no information campaign can succeed without media. Every single day the Montenegrins are thoroughly brainwashed with talk shows, promo videos, newspaper articles and posts on the net advocating the idea of joining NATO.

Public opinion is juggled by

• national TV channels TVCG 1 and TVCG 2, Pink Media Group, TV Vijesti, Prva crnogorska televizija, MBC, RTV Atlas, NTV Montena;
• newspapers Dan, Vijesti, Pobjeda, Dnevne Novine, Blic Montenegro, Informer;
• news sites Cafe Del Montenegro, Vijesti, Radio and Television of Montenegro, etc.

Every TV channel’s monthly coverage features from 15 to 25 shows supporting NATO, and every periodical publishes no less than 40-50 editorials per month.

The money comes from the embassies of the U.S. and the European countries (specifically from the UK, Netherlands and Norway), USAID, NED, NDI, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Marshall Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Balkan Trust for Democracy, global NGOs such as Transparency International, etc.

Accession of Montenegro to NATO is also deemed beneficial by multinational corporations. This is the reason why Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Diners Club, T-mobile and Media Development Loan Fund are aggressively financing the country’s non-governmental sector and NATO advertising campaigns.

To understand the role of foreign investments in the propaganda of NATO membership one can have a look at the scale of foreign financing of one of the Montenegrin NGOs, e.g. Center for Democratic Transition. I have obtained the data for 2009. Only 8 thousand euro from the total of 160 thousand were allocated by the governmental structures of Montenegro.

You can read the full text here.