iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 16/02/2025

In my mental landscape of allies and leaders in the cause of peace in Europe, Wolfgang Sporrer was a mountain. He passed away unexpectedly this week. I tried to summarize his work and ideas in this eulogy. responsiblestatecraft.org/wolfgang-spo...

responsiblestatecraft.org

'People-centered peace' lost a major advocate this week

RIP: Wolfgang Sporrer was a friend, co-author, and one of the most persuasive proponents of inclusive diplomacy in Europe

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Reposted by Almut Rochowanski

Jacobin Magazin @jacobinmagazin.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

Wir trauern um unseren Autor und Freund, Wolfgang Sporrer. Sein Leben und Wirken waren geleitet von der Maxime, dass Frieden die Grundlage ist, auf der eine bessere Welt erst möglich wird. jacobin.de/autoren/wolf...

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 15/02/2025

"These numbers are so remarkable that anyone serious about making peace cannot afford to ignore them." About inclusive, people-centered peacemaking, Ukraine and Wolfgang Sporrer, an outstanding diplomat and peace activist, who passed away this week. responsiblestatecraft.org/wolfgang-spo...

responsiblestatecraft.org

'People-centered peace' lost a major advocate this week

RIP: Wolfgang Sporrer was a friend, co-author, and one of the most persuasive proponents of inclusive diplomacy in Europe

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Reposted by Almut Rochowanski

SeTh @economicethics.bsky.social · 14/02/2025

"Peace has to deliver for the people who suffered from war. [...] Ordinary people at the table and bread-and-butter issues on the agenda make the atmosphere calmer and more constructive overall." @almutrochowanski.bsky.social ⬇️ responsiblestatecraft.org/wolfgang-spo...

responsiblestatecraft.org

'People-centered peace' lost a major advocate this week

RIP: Wolfgang Sporrer was a friend, co-author, and one of the most persuasive proponents of inclusive diplomacy in Europe

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Late-night grant proposal editing with Ukrainian activists: "You know why this next project will be about violence against women? This is hard to say: very soon, all the veterans will return home. We remember from 2015 what will happen in those families, the horror of it."

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

I ran it through auto-translate for the quotes and I recommend you do, too. @meduza.io publishes a selection of their articles in English, but not this interview (yet).

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

The #USAID story is opening the flood gates. Mikhail Benyash, once a leading Russian human rights lawyer, now a plumber in Lithuania, gives voice to the revulsion, dysfunction and toxicity plaguing foreign-funded NGOs in this epic, caustic interview with @meduzaproject.bsky.social. ⬇️

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

Rarely taught media literacy lesson: if a news website has no advertising, no paywall and maybe just an unobtrusive "donate here" button, it is funded (to a large extent, if not exclusively) by grants from powerful institutions (governments, foundations, corporations).

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

In post-Cold War CEE/Eurasia, there hasn't been a popular protest movement as important as the current one in Serbia that wasn't cultivated and coopted by outside powers. Which explains why the latter are literally speechless about it. By @lilylynch.bsky.social newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

newleftreview.org

Lily Lynch, Sense of an Ending — Sidecar

Serbia’s unrest.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

"In reality, deploying NGOs for explicitly political action has long been viewed as the pinnacle of foreign grant-making — the most exalted discipline for the most eminent players, yielding the biggest bang for their buck." jacobin.com/2025/02/west...

jacobin.com

Western-Backed NGOs: A Hollow Version of Civil Society

Donald Trump’s moves to dismantle USAID clearly aren’t driven by fears of infringing on other nations’ sovereignty. Still, we should recognize that Global South NGOs’ reliance on Western donors hinder...

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Reposted by Almut Rochowanski

Brian Finucane @bcfinucane.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

Some of my early experiences in this line of work were in eastern Bosnia—investigating mass graves and interviewing the survivors of massacres perpetrated during ethnic cleansing. Did not expect to hear in 2025 a US official extolling the benefits of ethnic cleansing.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 05/02/2025

If you're interested not in the lurid hype around #USAID (coups, Russiagate, rainbow flags etc), but the much greater and much more complicated story of how and why foreign aid fails or succeeds, this, by @jakobjohnston.bsky.social for @ceprdc.bsky.social, is a must-read. cepr.net/publications...

cepr.net

Where Does the Money Go? A Look at USAID Spending in Haiti

Discover the significance of USAID spending in Haiti and its implications for US foreign policy. Get expert analysis from Jake Johnston.

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Reposted by Almut Rochowanski

Judd Legum @juddlegum.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Very serious Democratic strategists advise the party to allow Trump to illegally dismantle USAID -- a decision that will result in the unnecessary deaths of people around the world. www.politico.com/news/magazin...

When I asked veteran strategist David Axelrod whether Democrats were “walking into a trap” on defending foreign aid, he literally finished my sentence.

“My heart is with the people out on the street outside USAID, but my head tells me: ‘Man, Trump will be well satisfied to have this fight,’” he said. “When you talk about cuts, the first thing people say is: Cut foreign aid.”

Rahm Emanuel — the former House leader, Chicago mayor and diplomat — told me much the same: “You don’t fight every fight. You don’t swing at every pitch. And my view is — while I care about the USAID as a former ambassador — that’s not the hill I’m going to die on,” he said.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 04/02/2025

Young white men who strut around newly freed from DEI, using the R-word, celebrating the return of the meritocracy then ask for extra time at exams because they have anxiety, turn their homework in late because their parents are mean to them and take plenty of mental health days

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Ukraine's populist-dissident (and very successful) streamers express disdain for the 90% of Ukrainian media who had USAID funding: "they call us sell-outs, but it turns out they cannot find an audience that would support them, so they have to depend on foreigners".

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Seeing a lot of "USAID's money - shock! horror! - causes corruption in poor countries and is wasteful" swirling about. Calm down. This happens with all foreign aid agencies, from any donor country. It's no secret. They've been teaching that in "foreign aid 101" for decades.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

Weekend chat with Ukrainian activist: "there are soldiers at the front who have been fighting since the beginning of the war. Many of them are from the territories that are now occupied. They have nowhere to go home to. They will be demobilized into homelessness." ⬇️

discomfortzone.substack.com

Nowhere to go home to

Conversation with Ukrainian activists

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

22 days before Germany's elections, there's sudden panic/hope that the party leading in the polls will have to switch its candidate for chancellor. Not because he was discovered to be senile, but because he couldn't help reveal himself for the awful person and politician he is.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

#Poltava If I have memories of encounters with people and places burnt into my heart, so deeply I will never forget them, after spending a just a few days there years ago, how infinitely more painful must today's attack feel for the people of the city. I can't even imagine it.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

I've lived through several iterations of Trump-style mass firings (for the sin of holding a job under a previous govt). In Ukraine, Georgia etc. We called it "lustrations" and applauded when bright-eyed activists said it was imperative to rid their country of the ancien régime.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

If Trump's freeze of US foreign aid spending has got you interested in what our money does in other countries' civil societies and whether there is a better way (better than Trump's and the default foreign aid industry's), here's my writing since 2012: discomfortzone.substack.com/p/list-of-pu...

discomfortzone.substack.com

List of publications on foreign funding for civil society and foreign agent laws

The issue all my work as an activist and analyst has always boiled down to

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

I don't even know if settling on one description is the key here. I feel our entire discourse and awareness needs to change. In order to adequately assess the rule media play in any society, we need to know their business model, ownership, place in the political economy. Eg Bezos owning the WP.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

I'm for objective/descriptive language. No more vague euphemisms. Avoid "independent". Use regime-critic, opposition, exile-based media etc. Eg the term "externally-led civil society development" is common in academic/industry terminology for funding (non-media) NGOs. Something equivalent to that.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 31/01/2025

You mean an alternative to calling them "independent" media? Or an alternative to this entire foreign aid political economy? I have ideas on both (experiments, too, on the latter), but it takes more space to explain than I have here.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

Finally, let's stop using "independent civil society" for reasons of cognitive hygiene. By definition, if any country's civil society can't exist without any one bilateral donor, it's not "independent" in any meaningful sense of the word. Even if a DC-based source says so. 6/7

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

Seems insane that NGOs would take grants w/o knowing where the money actually comes from, but trust me, this is a widespread phenomenon in the sector. For years, I ran an exercise for NGOs: ask your donors where they get their money. Many NGOs hyperventilated and refused. 5/7

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

Ironically, I was that year in initial negotiations with one of these foundations for funding for a pilot project: the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The pilot project? Helping Russian NGOs wean themselves off foreign funding and start raising money at home, from Russians. 4/7

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

The solipsism of these "DC-based sources" is really something. I was grant-writing and -lobbying for Russian civil society in 2015 and none of the NGOs I worked with had ever even heard of that tiny number of foundations or ever stood a chance of being funded by them. 3/7

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

So in the eyes of some (NGOs, grant-makers, Russia watchers?) the "greatest challenge to Russian civil society" since 2012 (when that law was enacted) is another incident that is also about foreign money. Not anything else that might have happened in Russia in 13 years. 2/7

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

@macktubs.bsky.social has written what looks like, on the surface, a straight reported piece on the impact of Trump's foreign aid freeze on Russian and Ukrainian civil society and media, but he's a sly one and has packed it with poignant and revealing observations. Like this (1/7)

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

An elderly Chechen woman, fleeing Chechnya after publicly decrying Russia's war against Ukraine and facing persecution for it, has been denied asylum in the EU. Reason given by the asylum officer: "nobody in Chechnya cares about what 1. old and 2. women say"

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

Biggest putsch against the rule of law as such I've ever lived through (and I've been around for a lot of color revolutions etc). Really makes you wonder where these people draw their ideological inspiration from.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

My point being: this isn't over, men. It hasn't even begun.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

When DEI first became a thing, I was deep into feminist activist/philanthropic circles and there was this hiring frenzy for "DEI consultants" and guess what, none of the women who had been fighting the patriarchy for real applied for those lucrative jobs. They all went to hacks.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

The sense of panic and existential threat reverberating through US charities after the Trump freeze on domestic grants reminds me of the mood among Russian NGOs in winter 2012/13, when Russia had passed its first foreign agent law. Except this feels so much bigger, and worse.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

A spectacular account by @leonidragozin.bsky.social. Decades from now, when the history of how the post-Cold War era ended in the nadir of the Russia-Ukraine war will be written, it will follow the bold outlines Leonid sketches here, I have no doubt. Powerful. www.theideasletter.org/essay/darkne...

theideasletter.org

Darkness on the Edge of Ukraine - The Ideas Letter

In late September, while President Volodymyr Zelensky was presenting his “victory plan” for Ukraine in Washington, 53-year-old Serhiy Kanalosh was dying in a hospital after four days spent at a…

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Reposted by Almut Rochowanski

Elizabeth Jacobs, PhD @elizabethjacobs.bsky.social · 28/01/2025

A very smart colleague just pointed out the grim truth that the U.S. leaving the WHO may ultimately be a win for the rest of the world. Why? Because without a vote, “the US can't block WHO actions like vaccine programs, disease surveillance, contraception, etc”. Man, that is daaaark, but accurate.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

The worst thing that could happen to the EU's reputation in Georgia is actual EU membership right now. Not throwing shade at the EU (that's a different conversation). The EU is what it is, but that is a very different thing from what so many Georgians think it is and can do for them.

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Almut Rochowanski @almutrochowanski.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

About #Georgia: the protests and the unusually violent turn they are taking are symptoms of a protracted political crisis with its origins in the "geopolitization" of Georgia's domestic political arrangements. A crisis of our own making. responsiblestatecraft.org/georgia-eu-p...

responsiblestatecraft.org

Streets on fire: Is Georgia opposition forming up a coup?

Protests unusually violent after ruling govt. delays EU membership talks and critics continue to deny election results

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