Scott Horton Show - Just the Interviews - 7/24/26 Patrick Pillow on the State of USAID and the Rest of Washington’s Regime Change Apparatus

Episode Date: August 1, 2026

Scott interviews Patrick Pillow about several articles he’s written about recent and ongoing color revolutions emanating from the various agencies and NGOs that Washington uses to overthrow governments it doesn’t like. Discussed on the show: “The Making of Albania’s Flamingo Revolution” (Libertarian Institute) “Musk v. USAID: The Complicated Legacy of America’s Aid Agency” (Libertarian Institute) “Anatomy of a Regime Change: Top Stories of the "Color Revolutions" 2000-2009” (Libertarian Overwatch) Patrick Pillow is an independent researcher and writer focused on protest movements, foreign policy, and regime-change case studies. He also writes at Libertarian Overwatch on Substack.  Sign up for the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom at scotthortonacademy.com For more on Scott's work: Check out The Libertarian Institute: https://www.libertarianinstitute.org Check out Scott's other show, Provoked, with Darryl Cooper https://youtube.com/@Provoked_Show Read Scott's books: Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine https://amzn.to/43D82oY (The audiobook of Provoked is being published in sections at https://scotthortonshow.com) Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism: https://amzn.to/4eMQblu Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan https://amzn.to/4a5fKvx Follow Scott on X @scotthortonshow And check out Scott’s full interview archives: https://scotthorton.org/all-interviews This episode of the Scott Horton Show is sponsored by: Tax Attorney Matt Sercely https://agoristtaxadvice.com; Moon Does Artisan Coffee https://scotthorton.org/coffee; Tom Woods’ Liberty Classroom https://www.libertyclassroom.com/dap/a/?a=1616 and Dissident Media https://dissidentmedia.com; Expat Money https://expatmoney.com/scott; and Crowdhealth https://www.joincrowdhealth.com/ (use promocode Horton) You can also support Scott’s work by making a one-time or recurring donation at https://scotthorton.org/donate/https://scotthortonshow.com or https://patreon.com/scotthortonshow Audio cleaned up with the Podsworth app: https://podsworth.com Use code HORTON50 for 50% off your first order at Podsworth.com to clean up your voice recordings, sound like a pro, and also support the Scott Horton Show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right, guys, let me take a second to tell you about expat money at expatmoney.com slash Scott. It's a guy named Mikkel Thorup. He's a great guy. I've met him. And he's been an expat for many years and knows the rules and regulations all around the world about buying property and or other investments, how to protect your neck, even get citizenships and passports from other countries and everything you need to know

to be an expat, whether you're afraid of the coming collapse or just fighting. modern day price inflation, find out what you need to know about how to protect your neck at expatmoney.com slash Scott. Ladies and gentlemen of the press have been less than honest, reporting to the American people, what's going on in this country? Because the babies are making it. We're dealing with Hitler revisited. This is the Scott Horton show, libertarian foreign policy, mostly.

When the president doesn't, that means that it is not only... We're going to take out seven countries. They don't know what the fuck. Stay a doing. Negotiate now. End this war. And now here's your host, Scott Horton. All right, kids.

Welcome back to the show. Introducing Patrick Pillow. He is also known as Libertarian Overwatch. That's interesting. In a second, I'm going to ask you about where he came up with that name. But you should know him actually as our latest. newest addition to the Libertarian Institute. I need to get this logo fixed so you can see it in dark mode.

I swear that says Libertarian Institute right there. Anyway, this is the Institute website, and here's my guy. Patrick Pillow, Musk versus USA, the complicated legacy of America's aid agency, and then the making of Albania's Flamingo Revolution, crucial stuff. And here's his great substack, which you ought to become a bang subscriber to, where he also writes, anatomy of regime change top stories of the color revolutions 2000 or 2009.

And you guys might have seen me talking about Patrick on Twitter because I keep explaining, trying to you that there is a new foremost expert in the world on the color revolutions, and it's him. And move over Mark McKinnon, who wrote a whole book about him. And I think I did a pretty good job and provoked.

talking about the color revolutions. But Patrick has taken an interest in this subject and is just diving in and blowing my mind and naming color revolutions that I never even heard of. W. Bush overthrowing the government in Madagascar. And then they're always mucking around in the Philippines. I don't know. But anyway, Burma or Myanmar or whatever,

all these things all over the place, man. And of course, the big ones, Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, failed attempts in Belarus and all of these things. But there's so much interesting stuff. And, you know, like, okay, so I was Rommando's editor at that time, just Ramos editor at that time at Anti-War.com. And so we're covering the Iraq War mostly, right? Iraq and Afghanistan and then all the doings around.

But then the whole time kind of in the background is the rest of W. Bush's, you know, know, I guess softer power compared to invading Iraq, but this whole kind of thing going on in the background. Of course, it started under the Clinton government and it continued after W. Bush, but all the big ones, well, most of the biggest ones were under him. So this has kind of all been going on in the background during the terror wars is one way to look at it. So it's just great to have someone, Patrick, with your focus, going back and revising the stories here and lining them all up for us. So thank you again for joining the show. Welcome. How are you?

Doing good. Doing good. Thank you for that. That was a great intro and I get started. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I'm learning so much. And sometimes I'm like, man, I don't have time to read this right now.

Like there's so much stuff about color revolutions that is like overwhelming even to me. And this is, you know, something I'm extremely interested in. Let's start with this. Well, let's start with the Flamingo Revolution. That's probably what people are most interested in. here. Jared Kushner and his wife. I read a story I don't remember where that said that they went on vacation to the Adriatic and the wife said, oh, what a nice island with lots of pretty flamingos. You know, what we should do is we should build a giant resort here and take over the thing. And

Jared Kushner said, why, that's a wonderful idea. Let's do that. And then the good people of Albania have freaked out and held some protests. But, you know, that sounds overly simple, and especially when we're talking about the Balkans. I know that America is already there. So do tell. Yeah, absolutely. So the way I kind of got onto the story, actually,

was through Dropside Daily, which is their daily one where they put out, like a 20, 25-minute-long read, where it's just tons of stuff covering domestic, international, whatnot. And I saw in a little blurb. It mentioned in Albania, there's this flamingo revolution. And I go, huh, well, I've heard of bulldozer revolutions.

I've heard of rose revolutions and tulip ones and saffron. And so let me kind of dive in and see what we got going on here. And kind of as you mentioned, that was kind of like the starting point was, oh, we're protesting against this development in this area linked to like the Kushner Business Foundation and things like that. And there's also been denials of it, even as we have these billion-dollar plans and 10,000 rooms, you know, for a hotel and things like that there. So it was one where I initially, I was like,

I kind of want to dive more into this and figure out whether it's, you know, the general things I like to look at for some of these revolutions. You know, what is social media saying? What is papers in the area in Albania? What are they saying? Things like that. And that's where I found some of my more interesting stuff, I would say. One of them is through the Balkan investigative research network,

which is B-I-R-N. So this is established around 2014. and this is where you see the Open Society's Foundation in Albania, you see the National Endowment for Democracy funding this organization, and it's got a bunch of different, there's like reporter.al, citizens.a.l, all these different kind of independent journalism, which you really see a lot in Burma is like a big one in 2007, where a lot of their funding for independent journalism comes through,

you know, your NEDs and things like that. And so one of the more interesting ones was on that, I can remember people was the citizens, or a reporter, but they have an article, which, as I've already mentioned, you know, funded by Open Society's funded by NED. And the articles are just very blunt. It's called How to Hold a Successful Protest,

and it specifically talks about Auport, it specifically talks about the Arab Spring and things like that. And like, hey, if you want to hold a successful protest, here are some of the methods to go about it and things like that, you know. I'm surprised there wasn't a link to Gene Sharp's work right on the article there. But, yeah, I think that's what's kind of turning on to the story. Other things is just kind of the people or the way it's kind of been promoted. There was an associated press article which points to three kind of lead figures that are behind the protests and things like that.

And then there was also an Instagram post where one of those people who was highlighted in that APA article, he was being interviewed and they asked him about, you know, how did this go about and things like that. And basically he said, you know, there's only really like five people, but there's hundreds, you know, kind of in charge of it all, which. A lot of it is really going back to that decentralized kind of networks that you see for op for, you know, all of our different revolutions that we've seen throughout the years. And I think in a lot of ways, it's kind of shifted where instead of seeing the youth groups that we saw in the 2000s, that just kind of continued on until right around the end of, you know, like 2008, 2009-ish. Now it's more so kind of appearing through like NGOs or civil society kind of groups. Kit Clarenberg has done really great about this in Nepal with Hammy and Nepal, which is, their group there. This one, I'm not even going to try to pronounce it, but it's QQ and similar kind of things where they even have on their annual report from last year, it breaks down in percentage

their funding. And so you're looking at tons of funding from European, from British sources, some German sources, and also National Endowment for Democracy and things like that. They're also engaging in things like polling election kind of related material, which, I mean, that, especially you're seeing that when in Georgia in 2003 at the Rose Revolution with the exit the polling there and things like that. So those kind of things all adding up together made me very interested in the story. It is still going on just yesterday.

We were seeing people outside of parliament and they're throwing eggs, throwing tomatoes and things like that. So it's a story definitely still going on. And in fact, today I actually just posted an article about one of their journals in Albania. And it's a really interesting one because the prime minister keeps sharing some of their reporting for it.

And the prime minister has like 360s, some thousand followers. This newspaper publication, which it started in March of 2026, it has 50 some followers on Twitter, which is interesting. And when I was diving into some of their articles, it's kind of presenting, I guess, you would say, like a counter narrative to it and things like that. You know, they have an article that I just kind of went through some of their claims and things like that.

And I was saying the 10 reasons the Flamingo Revolution died out and things like that. And it was highlighting certain things that I think was overestimating it, I guess you would say. it was saying things like this funeral kind of imagery is really damaging to the movement and things like that. And I just go back and highlight, well, you know, in Georgia, you actually saw exactly that where they had mock funerals, you know,

throughout the streets and things like that. And then also one of the other claims was that because it started to turn violent, people were turned away from it. And I was like, well, that's not necessarily the case where, you know, in Serbia we have the ransacking of parliament and things like that. And that was a successful revolution. You also had Iran where just continuously in the green movement.

I mean, they kept cracking down on these protests, but it kept happening for months and months and months and months and months, you know. So it's just been a very interesting story to keep an eye on and seeing how it develops in time. And I think it's, especially I'm grateful to be able to be present in this moment, you know, and being able to document it because with how expansive the internet is with Substack and, you know, Reddit and Twitter and all these kind of things,

I feel like having the benefit of being able to capture it at this time has been very helpful as well. Yeah. Hey guys, look, I own LibertyStickers.com again. Yeah, that was my business a long time ago, but I sold it to Rick McGuinness, but then he gave it back to me for a song. And now it's mine again.

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who are on the run from the revenues, and his job is making sure that you don't have to pay those sons of bitches one penny more than you absolutely have to. That's Matt Sersley, your new tax lawyer. He's at agoristtaxadvice.com. Wow, so many questions. I mean, first of all, I'm interested in what the government of Albania did

to make America so angry. But also, I'm interested in, well, I mean, I think what you're saying in your article and you kind of made reference to this in your statement was that you have this ongoing protest movement, NGO, NED-centered, pseudo-color revolution going on already. And then this story broke about the evil, greedy, Ivanka Trump. And that protest movement got one more thing to protest about. So that's been huge.

And obviously, that's horrible what they're trying to do there. But that's why they've been able to turn out this giant protest movement about that is because they already had it. And so now it's like George Soros' sock puppets versus Netanyahu's sock puppets, fighting over who controls the coast of Albania. Is that what we're talking about here? I would say actually it's, I think that the Kushner kind of project, I would say that was actually kind of the starting point.

But of course, as with most of these, it evolves into something, you know, much greater. It's kind of like, I'm sorry, what was that? When was that? It was around May is when we started to see this, when the plans and things like that. I think right now... In your article, you described these vast networks of people

and these very popular personalities with all these demands about all these other issues and all that. That all started in May? Those, I would say like the civil society kind of organization, that kind of stuff has been going on for a while because one that I've also been researching is kind of some of the environmental groups that are involved as well. In other words, where I overstated it was I was saying

This was already a protest movement, but that's not so much right, but what it is is these networks were already being developed And then this is where they went and activated on this issue. Yes, that's definitely how I'm reading it. And it was interesting because it's called PNEA. They were actually one of the first ones to have the protests And that's an environmental NGO along with bird life. And these two NGOs, you know, as opposed to most of the cases

where it's like the youth groups and things like that starting the protest. When they first started, it was very, very quick to go from, you know, oh, this is about protecting the environment. And kind of like you mentioned, I mean, I'm in the same boat. I'm like, this is terrible. It's like, you know, a beautiful area and things like that to just, you know, throw in some buildings and things like that for profit. But it was interesting to see that they started it,

that they were one of the first ones to have the protests. And then also how quickly it evolved to, oh, we're talking about our relationship with the EU and things like. that and already in like some of the very first moments it's very quickly transitioning from you know Kushner developments and things like that into a much larger you know against the government kind of revolution and things like that well and that goes back to the first part of my question which is what exactly has the national government done there to piss off the Americans before this

yeah that that is a great question that I don't even know that I could fully answer for you I I don't know what the basis is exactly for it But I know that seeing it evolve has been interesting, and especially just as we keep going, it becomes quickly clear that it's way more than just an environmental one. I mean, even recently, it's expanded into Kanye was performing Albania, and so a bunch of people were on the streets that night and protesting it and throwing a bunch of banners and things out.

So it's been more so against the Albanian government rather than anything else. In terms of like modos and things like that, at this point, I'm not sure that I have a, clear full answer for it. And then, you know, in some cases in the earlier revolutions that we've seen as well, I think that would be like comparable to a Madagascar where we may have not seen the impact at the time, but then after the fact, it's kind of like, oh, now that this revolution has occurred, a lot of this aid is going to be flowing your way because we have, you know,

whoever we prefer essentially in office at this time. Are you in contact with George Zamuli at all not a piece? I wonder, I bet you he has an opinion about that. Maybe Daniel McAdams as well from the Liberty Report. Ron Paul's right handman. He's extremely experienced in Balkan and other Eastern European politics. Yeah. He might be his answer offhand.

Yeah, this all goes back to six years ago when somebody did something or whatever, you know. Yeah, during my Moldova research, I found, it took me a little bit to find it because it wasn't readily available, but I did find one of his opinion pieces on New Rockwell for the Madola protests and things like that. And so I've always found his writings on the revolution is very interesting. You know, he was in Belarus during the denim revolution in 2005 and debunking the Western media's lies in real time

for AntioWare.com. It's really great stuff. Yeah, yeah. I remember reading that one and kind of, I think that was a good article to capture like how when the revolution started, we had thousands in the streets, but as it went on, I mean,

it was not able to sustain, you know, that momentum at all and things like that. Yeah, he's reporting like three days into it. And he's like, where is everybody? Maybe it was longer than that, but not much. All right. So, and now let's bring up Alex Soros here too, because old George is old.

And he has handed off his NGO philanthropy empire to his son. And now so, what's he like? Is he have, are there any kind of discrepancies in their policies in any way? Or he's just picking up right where the old man left off?

It's a good question. That's a good question. I don't know if at this point he's, we have like a full, clear picture of, you know, some of his moves and things like that. The one that I did point out in the article for the Libergenit Institute

was when this kind of relationship that he does have with people in Albania and things like that. And I forget the exact quote, but it was essentially like, oh, he's, you know, they're back and forth, they're saying, this is one of the greatest men and things like that. And so there's definitely kind of that relationship with individuals in Albania for sure.

At this point, I don't know if we have a full, clear picture. And especially because it's not as readily available nowadays as it was back in the 2000s, where every single year, if you go to the OSF website, you can find this is exactly where, you know, the money is being sent and things like that. And then, you know, as the years went on, we definitely had a lot less publications and things like that. And of course, that just goes across all kind of sectors. You know, USAID, obviously, with, you know, recent moves with USAID. You really have to rely on the Internet Archive to find some of this material and things like that.

So I don't know if we have this full clear picture of it yet. I'm sure as time goes on and in retrospect, we may have more information regarding this. But that's kind of where we're at right now. Yeah, you're going to want to, you know, try to scrape those databases as best as you can because especially the NED. I mean, the employees at NED know that their job is cover up. Like how many emails must they have to each other saying, hey, delete that page about that stuff that we did? Because they do that. They absolutely do that.

You know, Kit has shown that. Kit Clarenberg has shown, for example, where, you know, he had pages and pages of stuff on Ukraine that they had deleted. Well, you can still find it, though. You know what I mean? If you look hard enough, you could still find it in some places or through the web archive stuff. But it goes to show their guilty conscience. But they're like, uh-oh, this doesn't look good. Now they've backfired or whatever, you know.

All right. Now, so let's talk about this one here. Musk versus USAID, the complicated legacy of America's aid agency. And you're reporting on this Lancet study. How much did USAID give Lance? It, no, I'm just kidding. Landfitted study that said that 100 zillion people are going to die. Sorry, in my reading glasses, was 14 million people are going to die because of USAID cuts.

Maybe we need to go ahead and fully funded again. Patrick, what do you say? Yep. So kind of going into the history of USAID, I think that's an important kind of starting point, too, is because when it was first created, you know, in 1960s. 51 by JFK, there's a very clear indication of like what the purpose of it was and it was to fight Soviet influence. And I think that's important to note because also, you know, some organizations like Radio Free Europe, that's also how they were kind of branding themselves initially. Yet and still, we're still funding some of these things with Radio Free Europe continuing to get millions and millions of funding.

And so basically what I break into in this article here is kind of talking about in taking it from a Ron Paul perspective, you know. Is it because Ron Paul says that we shouldn't have FEMA? Is he a bad guy and wants people to die? No, not at all. He's just saying that there are other ways to go about it, you know. These organizations are, you know, very prone for corruption and things like that and for Bises and whatnot.

And so he's all laid out his plan. And I mean, this is for anything, really. Like, do you really trust the government to handle some of these things? You know, I don't. And so I take it from that perspective. of, and also kind of looking at Cuba right now, for example, you know, we're limiting those oil shipments to Cuba. And Ryan Grimm had like really great reporting when he was in Cuba

talking about just like some of the horrible things that you're seeing there where, you know, there are babies who have to have these hand-pumped incubators and things like that. And yet, and still we're sending $100 million in aid just a few days ago, you know. The contradiction between those doesn't really add up to me, you know. So I take it from that perspective of, you know, is there a much, more effective way to do it. If you look at the plans for our 1.5 trillion in military spending, you know, if we instead allocated some of that to things like famine or to hunger or schools

and things like that, I think that even libertarians, I know, you know, most of us just want it all to go away, but I think people would be like, hey, I can kind of get more on board on that, you know, but also kind of dive into just some of the spending from USAID that's been going through the revolutions that I've been covering, the 41 million that we saw in Serbia. military aid for the Philippines in 2001 that went up over 2,000 percent, you know, in Georgia, 20 million in Kyrgyzstan between 94 and then in the Tulip Revolution, seeing 68 million being spent there. And one of the more recent ones that I've been researching is because we're revisiting Kyrgyzstan for 2010 since, yeah, just five years after the Tulip Revolution. A lot of the same issues are still present in the country, corruption, you know, being primary. but there is this USAID program that they established around 2008

and it's 12 million that is being spent in Kyrgyzstan and one of the more interesting ones is they have this cartoon which is translated to the five I believe is called Beshtintech but it is this series and it's really focused on anti-corruption and things like that and it's an animated cartoon you can find this on the US embassy for Kyrgyzstan I'm trying to translate some of it and doing like reviews of it because it's It's been very entertaining to watch. But it's not just a cartoon.

Let it be clear. It is also a game, like a board game. It is being taught in schools in Kyrgyzstan. There were text messages that were sent in both Kyrgyz and Russian speaking languages. And this all comes around March, like the revolution is in April of 2010. In March 2010, the U.S. ambassador is saying that making an important contribution to the fight against corruption, you know. And that's what we're doing here. And even after this threshold program is stopped,

they're still like, hey, we need to put $150,000 for the next year. So we have to keep this going, you know. And there's something very strange about it where I saw, there's this video on YouTube of this cartoon, and they had like a theme song and things like that. And it's just a bunch of students in like, I guess, like a cured school. And they're all just singing along to like the theme song and things like that as like a puppet show is going along.

And I'm like, there's something just very weird, very dystopian about this. I feel like a lot of people in the U.S. would feel the same way if, you know, it was on the other shoe where there is this Kiergs funded anti-U.S. corruption, you know, puppet show and kids are singing along be like, that's kind kind of strange. I don't know what to make of all this. So, yeah. And even more so going past that, you know, going back to some of these revolutions I've already covered, it's just crazy how much information there is about all these revolutions. I do want to highlight there's a substack called Lies Are Becoming, and they pointed me in this direction for Ukraine 2004,

where there was this initiative, or this marketing group, I would say, called Rock Creek Creative. And so it's this firm from Bethesda, Maryland, and they were founded in 1987, and they were working with NATO. They're working with the CIA. And in February 2005, so after we have the Orange Revolution, they claimed a role in marketing of this website, which was UkraineinEurope.com. And so the website strategy just said,

we want to make sure it's not seen as a vehicle for U.S. driven political messaging. So they even hosted it with European servers. And the firm's principal said, we've never been so directly involved in a campaign that's so strengthened democracy in a country. And after the fact, oh, they also supported Ukraine and Europe conference,

which was in Kiev in February 2004, where we had both Ushanko and Albright present. And then after the fact, I guess because it did get a lot of that, PR. It was in the Washington Post and also in Russian media. They quickly backtracked and they were saying, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, you know. And even still, going back to USAID, this Rock Creek Creative is eventually kind of becomes a part of this other organization called Chief. And as of 2017, they still got a USAID, a $100,000 grant. So even going all the way back from 2004, we're still seeing some of these organizations being funded by USAID. what is this for exactly? I'm not 100% sure. But just seeing that evolution of USAID and where some of these funding mechanisms are going to

has been interesting to kind of capture. Expanddesigns.com. They run my websites. Maybe you got some websites and you need someone competent to run them. Someone who does what they say, when they say they're going to do it and does it right the first time. Expanddesigns.com. All right, guys, let me take a second to tell you about expat money at expat, money.com slash Scott. It's a guy named Mikkel Thorup. He's a great guy. I've met him.

And he's been an expat for many years and knows the rules and regulations all around the world about buying property and or other investments, how to protect your neck, even get citizenships and passports from other countries and everything you need to know to be an expat, whether you're afraid of the coming collapse or just fighting modern day price inflation. find out what you need to know about how to protect your neck at expatmoney.com slash Scott. All right, you guys, let's talk about crowdhealth at join crowdhealth. com slash Horton and or use the promo code Horton there to join crowdhealth, join crowdhealth.

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insurance. Look at join crowdhealth.com slash Horton. Yeah. And you know, I don't know if it's actually, you know, this cynical where they sat in a room and talked about it this way, but in effect, it's basically this cynical hoax where they hide all their regime change activity behind you know, medicine for AIDS victims and stuff like that. And, oh, how can you take away the help for the poorest, dyingest, helplessest people in the whole world when that's not what this is about? You know what I mean? This is the regime trying to save its regime change operations and techniques.

It's amazing that this stuff still works. But I guess money can do lots of things, you know, especially in these poorer countries where, you know, Brad Pierce had a great piece on Georgia and about how the NGO industry is your ticket to the middle class. Like if you're an educated person and you want to have a good job, you go work for a Western NGO. There's nothing else going on in Georgia. So you have, right, and like, and I think he says, especially for women, you just have an

entire section of the economy, of the population of the country, just completely. dependent on this stuff. And so, yeah, no wonder they riot when you threaten to take their stuff away. And then they always hide it behind, oh, I can't believe you want to take away medicine from the babies. But, you know, and as you say in here,

I mean, there's some truth to that, right? But it's just, well, you're going to have to figure out something else then because we shouldn't have to tolerate this, you know, regime change engine as part of our world empire just so that people can get anti-malaria medicine in sub-Saharan Africa. or whatever it is.

Those are totally separate concepts. So it's ridiculous to insist that somehow we all have to put up with this just so that somebody else can get a helping hands somewhere else. And I'm like you. I'm against all four and a anyway. But just all other things being equal and zooming in, I also don't like being lied to and manipulated in this kind of way. You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah. All right. Now, let me ask you about. this because you have this whole section. In fact, I meant to have because I guess your last one, you had the whole forest of links to all the different ones that you've had so far here. And you just took them off.

You mentioned Nepal in there. I know Kate Clarenberg did some great work on that, as you mentioned. The Philippines, Burma, which is now Myanmar, Of course, all the famous ones. Madagascar, that was one that I hadn't heard up until this morning, I don't think. Maybe I had forgotten. But can you just give us like a quick rundown of some of the more obscure NED-backed Soros-back-type revolutions here? Yeah, sure.

I'll go over some of like the more recent ones I've been working on too. So the 2007 and Burma that you mentioned there, I think with that one, that was another one, kind of like Iran in 2009, where it was one that went on. for months and months and months. And the biggest kind of funding mechanism, I would say, for that one, is for independent journalism. And it comes from both the U.S. and the U.K.

The U.K. laid it out perfectly for me. You know, I always like it when my job was made easier. But the U.K., they just broke it down. Like, here's how much went to funding from the IRA, which was in the $300,000 range. Here's how, and that was for what was the, I'm trying to think of the exact terminology there.

But I think it was like nonviolent strategies, you know, 300,000 for that. I don't know what non-violent strategies cost that much money, but, you know, that's just me. But then we also talked about some of them were specifically for training of monks and things like that from the UK. And I said, a lot of it goes into the independent journalism in Burma. And some of the first being able to like expand the Internet and things like that came through a Open Society's $3,000 grant, which, as you may say, you know, if I set a $3,000 grant in the U.S., that is like nothing. But if we're thinking about kind of like you mentioned, like in Burma in the year 2007, that goes a lot further, you know, than it would now. And that one was one where it was very violent and things like that.

And one of the things I've been doing recently, which has, I think, just added like some good framing for it is looking at what the state or government aligned to media is saying, you know. So there's this one newspaper, which is called the New Light of Myanmar. And they, this one journalist, he was very, you know, explicit with his framing or, Noting of this article, but it's a three-part series, and it says the influence of U.S. and Britain in, you know, Myanmar. And so it breaks it all down. And believe me, I am not saying that what is being said in there is accurate at all. This paper has also written some things about the monks and made some pretty outrageous claims about the monks, about things that they found in the monastery when they were raiding them. I'll keep the PG here, but about finding toys and things like that.

So just some pretty claims that I think are very hard to come to terms with. And they're so specific that I think they're trying to avoid it being not accurate. But I do think it's important to look at the framing of like how are people in the government viewing, you know, U.S. and, you know, British influence in the country. And of course, if you're not having your Serbia's, if you're not having your Georgia's words very obvious, then maybe that perception is not even there in the first place, you know. And then going on from there, in 2008, we have it in Egypt. And so this one I wrote, because 2008 was a little bit hard to find kind of a revolution going on there. But it's a good predecessor to the Arab Spring and things like that. And this is another one very, very Op.

For focused, the April 6th movement, where they have like the fists of Op. ore. And, you know, as you could see that for multiple different groups. So they have just the exact same fist and things like that. But this one is actually like, I guess kind of similar to Albania, where it starts with a, genuine kind of protest where this is like the labor at a textile mill. But then as we see throughout the years, it's starting to evolve. By the time we get to the Arab Spring, it becomes something that's much different

than it was back in the time there. Do you have one on the Tunisia right before Egypt? I haven't got there yet because I haven't got to like Tunisia, Egypt, once I get to like the 2010s and things like that is, you know. Oh, right. You're going through in chronological order there. Yeah, yeah. So I'm planning on getting to some of those ones, which I'm sure. You can wait for your takes on the Arab Spring because there's so much

going on there. But anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's at the point now where I feel like I'm like Seymour Hirsch writing for the London review of books where the most recent pieces are like, I think the Iran one ended up being 11,000 words. So they're definitely spanning about it. But yeah, that one was Iran was also a very interesting one. And mostly that, you know, Iran and Burma took a long time to write because the protests you went so long. So it's almost like you're checking in every day or every kind of movement that they haven't going on and things like that. Iran one was interesting, too, because, you know, my perception before I even read it, or before I had done my research in it, was that Iran was going to be in league with Georgia,

with Ukraine, and things like that in terms of, like, U.S. influence. Actually, they ended up a lot lower than I expected. And mostly in the fact that I think with Obama just coming into term at that time, it seemed like it was just kind of continuing on Bush policies and things like that instead of being able to implement, you know, new strategies and things like that. You know, I know that there was a Newsmax article about it by Ken Timmerman. And I kind of interpret that one because he just briefly mentions like any need was involved in things like that, but without mentioning like the specifics funding and things like that. My read is that it's more so of a hawkish approach to Iran. And also in the article he specifically says, you know,

it was for pro-mosive elements. And then in another article, he talks about, you know, kind of propping up a Reza-Palavi. So I think it was more so we're not backing my preferred kind of individual in this case in the Green Revolution and things like that. And then recently the one we've been working on is Moldova. Another one, this one was a lot more brief. It was a couple of NGOs.

There was Thank Moldova and there was Hyde Park. And there was a really great breakdown that I was able to find where it took kind of observations from like video recording, from just being able to observe everything when they were like ransacking the parliament and things like that. and kind of breaking down

when the provocation kind of happened and things like that. And also, this one's been really good because we have two separate documentaries. There was one that was called Attack of Moldova,

and there was also one called The Truth About April 7th. So both of them are coming from clearly partisan framing, and being able to balance that has been interesting as well, where the attack on Moldova said these individuals

were present in this movement, and then a few years later, intelligence services, like they were not present here. and then the truth about April 7th movement says they ransacked the Capitol but look at this the office where he is it's perfectly fine they do an interview from the next time as if like doing like a

I gotcha kind of thing so being able to contrast those I think has been interesting and going back briefly to I ran in 2009 kind of what I talked about with framing in Burma being able to look at like press TV what was press TV at the time saying as well considering framing and things like that similarly I'm not necessarily trusting some of the things they were saying,

you know, one of the protesters who was shot and killed in Iran, they were saying that, like, she was a CIA asset. I don't think there's any real basis for that at all. But once again, kind of looking at that framing, because I think if you just present it as, you know, one-sided, you're not going to get the full picture. And that's why I think it's also important to look at things like blogs. You know, they have, like, the live journals and things like that,

which when I was covering Russia in 2007, we had some live journals that showed, like, what the experience was like in the Nashi summer camp that, you know, people were engaged. and, you know, what kind of things were happening on the ground there. You know, these are not necessarily... That's the pro-Pooten, pro-regime. Yes, yes, which was like directly contrasted from Oberana,

which was the hot-pore movement type one, you know, once again, same kind of logo, the Fis logo, and things like that. And I also think the one in Russia was one of the more interesting ones in the fact that you actually had like that counterbalance of, like, a youth group where the Nashi youth group, I mean, there were tons and tons of people. think some of the rallies they're having 30,000 or some, and it was just Nashi, to contrast with Obrana, which did have some momentum and things like that. And you were seeing so many of the

same kind of tactics and things like that. They had outside of one government building, they had like an inflatable bat, and it was the prosecutor's bat and things like that. So like that theatrical kind of performance. And then after the elections happened, you see them, some were riding motorcycles to like a funeral or to a graveyard, you know, in the death of democracy, or there are people wearing shrouds of black, you know, to very theatrical kind of uppore lineage there as well. But, yeah, I mean, putting them all together has just been good to see the evolution, you know,

throughout the years too. You know, going in this chronological order and seeing how, you know, early on, you're not seeing, you know, the influence of the Internet as much. By the time you get to 2009, you're seeing the Facebook revolution, the Twitter revolution, you know, is how some of the people are naming it and things like that

and how you're able to convey some of those messages. When we were talking about Internet Archive earlier, That has been my absolute best friend to find some of these, you know, kind of framings throughout the times since a lot of it is now, like, not present on the internet. Oh, yeah, Link Rot is a real thing, man. You know, I especially on the Balkan War stuff that I was researching for provoked. I went ahead of reprinted a lot of that stuff on my website because it's like there's one place left in the entire world where you can find this reprinted article. You know what I mean? Kind of thing.

And then I can't, some of them I went back trying to find. I could link back to where I got it from. I couldn't even find him anymore. I don't even know where I got this stuff. Like a lot of it was Googling little parts of links that somebody else cited in their book that came out 15 years ago. You know what I mean?

So they're like very old outdated links, but then you got to find some other web page that link to the whole thing. And then you at least have the link to put in the web archive. And it took me two years to write that book for a reason, man. Man, I can't tell you, how stoked I am about the great research that you're doing here. And especially I agree with what you just said about how interesting it is to go through

kind of chronologically and see how it evolves from like Slovakia 98 through like all the way through. You know, there's so much. And so yeah, thank you for doing what you're doing. And thank you especially for joining us at the Libertarian Institute. We're really happy to have you. Absolutely. I really appreciate it. It's been a lot of fun.

at any given time I'm working on like five different articles either you know working on some new stuff at the Libertarian Institute I'm actually working on for the Institute I'm being sent over pretty soon about Cuba and some of the recent things I've been going on were there but yeah awesome all right well thank you again Patrick all right thank you the Scott Horton show is brought to you by the Scott Horton Academy of Foreign Policy and Freedom Roberts and Roberts Brokerage Inc., Moondos artisan coffee Tom Woods Liberty Classes and APS Radio News. Subscribe in all the usual places and check out my books, Fools Air and Enough Already, and my latest, Provoked, how Washington started the new Cold War

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