#national endowment for democracy ned

[rhk111sblog]

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is now trying to interfere with the upcoming Elections in Indonesia in February 2024 to install Pro-United States (US) Politicians in the Government there

[theculturedmarxist]

The Grayzone’s publication of an embarrassing phone call with a National Endowment for Democracy VP triggered an institution-wide meltdown at the US government’s regime change laboratory. Following the call, the group’s founding president privately admitted the “fiasco” exposed major “problems beneath the polished surface.”

Now, leaked emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal the organization has since descended into chaos, with two senior officials fired due to the fiasco, and remaining staff engaged in civil war between the neocon old guard and the “woke” new generation hired to replace them.

– Senior NED management is currently in complete disarray, with two high-ranking staffers fired due to their handling of The Grayzone’s phone call, and founding president Carl Gershman isolated and marginalized by those who took his place.

– What began as a bitter dispute over the decision to engage with The Grayzone ultimately devolved into a full-fledged culture war that pitted the group’s neoconservative founders against its more liberal recent hires, derided by the neocon old guard as “woke flakes” obsessed with “microaggressions” and compulsory DEI trainings.

– One of the fired NED staffers, neocon Michael Allen, accused his progressive boss of a “clear campaign of harassment, marginalization and victimization,” and fretted over her allowing NED staff to attend pro-Palestine rallies. He was so incensed by his dismissal that he threatened to reveal the details of his firing to the “many mailing lists of key decision-makers and opinion-formers that I have built and retained over the years” if he did not receive a substantial settlement.

[alanshemper]

"Haiti's Jimmy "Barbecue" Chérizier: Gang leader or revolutionary? | The Chris Hedges Report"

[xtruss]

Anti-China Institutions Spin ‘Forced Labor’ Lies to Undermine China’s Competitiveness in Renewables

— James Smith | December 04, 2023

Slandering Xinjiang! The New Normal of the Empire of Lies. Illustration: Vitaly Podvitski

Over the weekend, an article in the BBC accused the British Army of using firms linked to "Uygur Forced Labor" in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region to invest in over £200 million of solar panels in order to meet its renewable energy targets. The article, citing a report from Sheffield Hallam University's "Helena Kennedy Centre," argued in favor of supply chain diversification by cutting reliance on China, which dominates the global Solar Panel supply chain.

The report didn't substantiate its findings, only using the term "'very high' exposure" in an ambiguous fashion, yet the article repeated its claims as though they're facts. The British government at large has avoided confronting China on solar panels, recognizing that the UK has limited industrial capacity and is under tremendous pressure to meet its net zero targets. On the other hand, such documentation was used readily to ban their import in the United States under a blanket assumption of guilt, which speaks volumes about the true motivations of this research.

The "Uygur forced labor" issue is a ruse, exclusively driven by the US government. It's designed to promote anti-China supply chain diversifications and commercially motivated protectionism, targeting goods which the US deems "strategic." Starting in 2021, the Biden administration U-turned on the Trump administration's neglect of environmentalism and declared that its fundamental policy goal was to dominate the "technologies of the future," which in turn constitutes renewable energy goods - solar panels, electric batteries, cars and similar technologies.

In doing so, a number of "Studies" quickly materialized from US-funded and linked institutions which, lacking direct evidence, accused China of utilizing forced labor from the Uygur minority in the Xinjiang autonomous region in order to make solar panels. This has never been proven, yet the allegations were repeated by the mainstream media and quickly led up to several US policy decisions including a ban on Chinese made solar panels, as well as all goods from the Xinjiang region, all of which were meted on a "guilty until proven innocent" premise which asked companies to "prove a negative," all of which were in deliberate bad faith.

Beyond Santa’s Ability! Global Times, December 06, 2023, Illustration: Liu Rui

The Helena Kennedy Centre in the United Kingdom is but one particular example of how such "Research" institutes are used to co-opt and market America's commercial, economic and strategic goals. The head of the center, Baroness Helena Kennedy, is a hardline anti-China figure who is the founder of the Sinophobic "Interparliamentary Alliance on China" (IPAC) organization. IPAC is, by its own public admission, funded by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and also the Taiwan island authorities. Similarly, the primary researcher in the Helena Kennedy Centre who created this solar panel "Forced Labor" report, Laura Murphy, is an employee of the US Department of Homeland Security.

What becomes visible is a "web" of anti-China institutions which works to create this content, which is then amplified by the media with its claims taken at face value, and whose aim is to undermine China's commercial competitiveness. The real problem is that China is a world leader in solar panel manufacturing and renewable energy goods, and the United States seeks to undermine this for its own economic gain. Thus, to do this, it resorts to bad faith tactics designed at promoting market exclusion that weaponizes the rhetoric of human rights. The real US policy thinking is explicitly reflected in the Inflation Reduction Act which seeks to weaponize tariffs on a wide range of Chinese renewable goods, irrespectively, without any façade of intention.

It becomes even more telling in this respect that minimal resources, media attention or interest are given towards legitimate reports of real human slavery or forced labor practices around the world, especially those committed in countries allied to the United States. Instead, it is used as a ruse to discredit products they disapprove of or seek to sanction. For instance, if it is not feasible to accuse products of being made with "forced labor," it usually instead emerges in the form of baseless accusations of "espionage" or being a "national security threat" such as the attacks on Huawei or Hikvision.

All in all, it is evident that to try and forcibly exclude China from the global solar panel supply chain, who provides 80 percent of the world's total, will be economically, commercially, and thus environmentally devastating. Such bans would forcibly narrow the market, drive up prices and set the world back decades. Given this, the UK is really not in any capacity to actually act on the propaganda which is being laundered, hence the government only says it will keep an eye and audit its suppliers accordingly.

— The author is a Political and Hstorical Relations Analyst.

[darkmaga-retard]

The Fifth Amendment, it seems, is something Victoria Nuland is unaware of. The former undersecretary of state for political affairs just keeps incriminating herself. But her statements—both intercepted and public—have done more than incriminate herself: They have incriminated the United States. Nuland’s statements have acted as some of the most important sources for U.S. involvement in Ukraine from the roots of the war, the growth of the war, and the decision not to cut down the war and stop it.

The war in Ukraine is a tangled web woven from three separate, but related, conflicts: the conflict within Ukraine, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and the conflict between NATO and Ukraine. Nuland has had a hand in all of them.

The conflict within Ukraine goes back long before the war with Russia, but the proximate cause is the 2014 coup that removed Viktor Yanukovych from power and replaced him with the Western-leaning Petro Poroshenko. Nuland was a force in that coup, and her comments are among the most important sources of proof of U.S. involvement.

The “Maidan Revolution” received American financial backing. The U.S.-government funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) funded a staggering 65 pro-Maidan projects inside Ukraine. Nuland revealed that there was much more U.S. money flowing into Ukraine than the money provided by the NED. In December 2013, she told an audience at the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation Conference that the U.S. had “invested over $5 billion” to secure a “democratic Ukraine.”

But Nuland did more than disclose U.S.-financed meddling in Ukraine. Nuland, who ran the Obama State Department’s Ukraine policy, revealed the deep involvement of the U.S. in the coup itself. Nuland was caught plotting who the Americans wanted to be the winner of the regime change. She can be heard on an intercepted call telling the American ambassador in Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, that Arseniy Yatsenyuk is America’s choice to replace Yanukovych. Most importantly, Pyatt refers to the West needing to “midwife this thing,” an admission of America’s role in the coup. At one point, Nuland even seems to say that then Vice President Joe Biden himself would be willing to do the midwifery.

[curiositasmundi]

[...]

A beneficiare della morte di Navalny, infatti, non è certo il Cremlino, sebbene, a essere obiettivi, il tema è a dir poco spinoso e la responsabilità della sorte di Navalny, in attesa di prove, può essere comunque riconducibile al regime russo e alle condizioni di prigionia in cui versava il dissidente nel carcere siberiano di Kharp, nella Siberia del Nord. A complicare le cose ci si mette Bild che rivela che sarebbe morto «forse poco prima di una sua possibile liberazione», nell’ambito di uno scambio di detenuti tra USA, Russia e Germania.

Mentre la stampa allineata acclama Navalny come un martire, descrivendolo erroneamente come “il leader dell’opposizione” e il nemico numero uno di Putin (che non era), gli stessi media mainstream evitano accuratamente di riportarne le origini e la formazione, ignorando in maniera selettiva le sue storiche inclinazioni nazionaliste, i legami con gruppi neonazisti, i ripetuti commenti xenofobi e le estreme opinioni anti-immigrazione. Finendo per dipingere la sua biografia come quella di un liberale di centrodestra. 

Che Navalny sia stato, almeno per una parte cospicua della propria storia politica, un razzista e un suprematista è noto e lo scriveva, del resto, proprio La Stampa in un articolo dal titolo inequivocabile, pubblicato nel 2012: «Il blogger xenofobo che unisce la piazza contro lo zar Putin». Dodici anni fa, il quotidiano torinese si poteva permettere di svelare il «lato oscuro dell’Assange russo», definendo senza mezzi termini Navalny un «blogger-star», xenofoba e di estrema destra. Nell’articolo si descrivevano le sue simpatie nazionaliste e le sue «tendenze giustizialiste», sottolineando che a novembre 2006 Navalny era in prima fila alla Marcia Russa dei “rivoluzionari bianchi”, tra neonazisti e slogan anti-Caucaso.

Nato nel 1976 in una cittadina della provincia di Mosca, fin da giovanissimo Alexei Navalny è attivo nell’opposizione russa, finché nel 2008 viene cacciato dal partito Narod (Popolo), che aveva contribuito a fondare, per affermazioni xenofobe, dopo che in un comizio aveva paragonato i caucasici a degli «scarafaggi scuri di pelle» suggerendo di adoperare «le pistole» contro di loro, visto che non sarebbe bastata la paletta per schiacciarli. Non ritrattò mai queste frasi: nel 2017, in un’intervista al The Guardian, aveva ammesso di non avere rimpianti per le sue dichiarazioni passate e giustificò il suo paragone tra migranti e scarafaggi come una «licenza artistica». Nel febbraio 2021 Amnesty International ritirò a Navalny la designazione di “prigioniero di coscienza”, per via delle sue dichiarazioni nazionaliste, ripristinandola a maggio dello stesso anno.

Riconosciuti il carisma e le innegabili qualità di leader, Washington decide di puntare su di lui, “formandolo”, in modo da renderlo più presentabile. È così che Navalny finisce nell’incubatore a stelle e a strisce e diventa un prodotto mediatico. Parte per gli USA, per un periodo di formazione all’Università di Yale, come invitato nell’esclusivo Greenberg World Fellows Program, un programma creato nel 2002 per il quale vengono selezionati ogni anno su scala mondiale appena 16 persone con caratteristiche tali da farne dei “leader globali”.

Dopo la formazione, Navalny torna in Russia profondamente cambiato: niente più comizi nazionalistici e xenofobi, inizia la lotta contro la corruzione, per i diritti umani e contro il potere di Putin. Fonda il movimento Alternativa Democratica, uno dei beneficiari, come confermato da Wikileaks, della National Endowment for Democracy (NED), un’agenzia statunitense fondata nel 1983 con l’obiettivo dichiarato di promuovere la “democrazia” all’estero. In particolare, la NED è stata fortemente attiva in Ucraina, dove ha sostenuto il colpo di Stato di piazza Maidan. La tecnica, ormai consolidata, è quella delle “rivoluzioni colorate” per fomentare una ribellione anti-governativa, in modo da indebolire lo Stato dall’interno, mentre dall’esterno cresce su di esso la pressione militare, politica ed economica. Il progetto degli aiuti internazionali in questa forma risale, infatti, all’ex presidente americano Ronald Reagan: grazie alla costituzione di una rete di associazioni non governative, il governo americano controlla attivamente dal 1981 la politica estera, senza dovere più ricorrere ai fondi neri della CIA. 

Non sono nemmeno un mistero i rapporti di Navalny con i servizi segreti occidentali: in un video del 2012, ripreso dagli agenti russi del controspionaggio, Vladimir Ashurkov, il braccio destro dell’attivista, incontra in un ristorante di Mosca William Thomas Ford, agente dell’MI6 inglese, chiedendo apertamente finanziamenti per la sua campagna politica, impegnandosi a stabilire contatti con gli oligarchi al fine di rassicurarli sulla preservazione dei loro privilegi.

Da evidenziare, anche, come i media mainstream abbiano accuratamente evitato di ricordare le condanne di Navalny per frode e appropriazione indebita, facendo passare l’idea che sia stato arrestato esclusivamente per motivi “politici”. L’attivista era stato giudicato colpevole di appropriazione indebita nel 2014 su denuncia della casa di cosmetici francese, la Yves Rocher, di cui era il referente russo. Già allora La Repubblica evocava l’esistenza di una «trama oscura», una «trappola del regime per neutralizzare un oppositore politico». All’arresto per frode seguì un lungo tira e molla di arresti domiciliari, un sospetto avvelenamento, violazioni degli arresti e di nuovo la prigione per queste violazioni. Sebbene non sia da escludere che le accuse siano state amplificate o strumentalizzate, è curioso notare come i media occidentali abbraccino, in maniera ipocrita, la pista dei complotti a corrente alternata, proponendo, nel caso di Navalny una rappresentazione unilaterale e tutt’altro che realist

[...]

[crystalis]

"China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has released quite the explosive report on the US's National Endowment for Democracy (NED), explaining how under the cover of "promoting democracy", it has "long engaged in subverting state power in other countries, meddling in other countries’ internal affairs, inciting division and confrontation, misleading public opinion, and conducting ideological infiltration".

In short, it's subverting democracy, the exact contrary of what it says it's doing...

This is the link to the report:

The NED has long been infamous for doing this kind of stuff but there are a few things in the report that are really explosive:

1) Meddling on an enormous scale in Ukraine

The report claims that the NED "provided $65 million to the Ukrainian opposition during the 2004 Orange Revolution". They also write that "during the 2013-2014 Euromaidan, NED financed the Mass Media Institute to spread inflammatory information. NED also spent tens of millions of dollars in the use of such social media platforms as Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and Instagram to spread disinformation, heighten ethnic tensions in Ukraine, and stir up ethnic antagonism in eastern Ukraine."

2) "Taking Mexico as a major target country for infiltration"

As the report details, the NED has financially supported numerous organizations like "Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) and the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness (IMCO), and obstructed the electricity reform in Mexico". They also write that "in 2021, the Mexican government sent a note to the US government condemning NED’s funding of anti-government organizations in Mexico as 'an act of interventionism' 'promoting a coup.'"

3) Interference in Serbia's elections

They write that "in April 2022 and December 2023, Serbia held its presidential, National Assembly and local elections. NED interfered in the entire election process, and went all out to root for pro-US opposition candidates in the run-up to the elections. In May 2023, after two consecutive shooting incidents in Serbia, NED-sponsored human rights groups and pro-US opposition organizations staged mass demonstrations to demand the resignation of the Serbian government."

4) Instigating the recent protests in Georgia against the government for its foreign agents bill

They write that the "NED funded the establishment of three local NGO groupings in Georgia at the beginning of the 21st century to organize demonstrations in capital Tbilisi. In May 2024, NED rallied support for and instigated protests in Georgia against the foreign agents bill."

5) Supporting "Taiwan independence" separatist forces

They write that the NED co-hosted events with Taiwan's separatist Democratic Progressive Party, "tried to mobilize 'democratic forces' to open up the 'frontline of democratic struggle in the East' and hype up the false narrative of 'Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow'".

Needless to say, all of this is a complete violation of the UN Charter: they violate both the principle of sovereign equality that guarantees each state's right to freely choose and develop its own political, social, economic, and cultural systems; as well as the principle of non-intervention in the domestic matters of other states. And I'm not even mentioning the violation of the victim states' domestic jurisdictions..."

[workersolidarity]

Google's true origin partly lies in CIA and NSA research grants for mass surveillance

https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance

I thought I'd remind people of this old article from 2017 on the CIA/NSA origins of Google and how it was specifically designed to make the tracking and surveiling of internet users as easy as possible.

From its very inception, the programs and capabilities that make Google such a powerful search engine were created using CIA/NSA research funds passed along through unclassified NSF (National Science Foundation) grants to develop the technologies necessary to closely track American citizens and foreign users of the internet. Even the internet itself was created as part of a DARPA research program.

So should it come as a surprise to anyone that Google is filled with US and NATO propaganda today? Now I know that's not what this article is specifically referring to, however I think it's a continuation of the same kind of processes for surveillance and information space control between tech giants like Google and the CIA.

An example of what I mean would be any attempts search Google about its record of displaying Western propaganda. You can make the search as specific as possible, specifically referencing US and NATO propaganda or even specific incidents, but your search results will always display endless articles about how Google is supposedly filled with Chinese and Russian propaganda. No mention at all of US or NATO propaganda, even though I can name probably a dozen or so articles I've read over the years about just that. None of them show. Just the articles about how Chinese and Russian propaganda are proliferating online.

Yet, when I search for any kind of contested incidents where it's generally accepted that no one knows whether the incident was caused by Russia or the US, only the articles with the US Govt narrative will show. Again, even though I know of at least a few specific English-language articles about the issue from the Russian perspective. Those articles cannot be found in a simple search and I must go to the source site to find the articles. Only the US government narrative shows on Google.

And you can repeat this pattern for various contentious issues where the US Govt's propaganda dominates search engines like Google and alternative views must be sought directly from their source sites.

So it should come as no surprise that Google itself was created thanks to CIA/NSA grants passed along through the NSF. Similar to how the CIA/NSA passes along grants to promote Western Propaganda outlets in foreign countries using the National Endowment For Democracy or the NED.

[theculturedmarxist]

INNOCENCE ABROAD: THE NEW WORLD OF SPYLESS COUPS

By David Ignatius

September 22, 1991

NOBODY WAS rude enough to say so during last week's confirmation hearings for Robert M. Gates to head the CIA, but the old era of covert action is dead. The world doesn't run in secret anymore. We are now living in the Age of Overt Action.

The great democratic revolution that has swept the globe over the past few years has been a triumph of overt action. The CIA old boys spent a generation fantasizing about this sort of global anti-communist putsch. But when it finally happened, it was in the open. There were no secret paramilitary armies, and there was almost no bloodshed. The key operatives in the conspiracy turned out to be telephones, televisions and fax machines.

Working in broad daylight, the United States and its allies were able to do things that would have been unthinkably dangerous had they been done in the shadows. Consider:

When Boris Yeltsin's aides were trying to rally support for their resistance in Moscow on Aug. 19, the first day of the coup, they needed to broadcast their defiant message to Russia and the world. One of them sent a fax to Allen Weinstein, a pro-democracy activist who heads a think tank in Washington.

"Did Mr. Bush make any comments upon the situation in this country?" implored the handwritten fax message. "If he did, make it known by all means of communication to the people of this country. The Russian government has no NO ways to address the people. All radio stations are under control. The following is {Boris Yeltsin's} address to the Army. Submit it to USIA. Broadcast it over the country. Maybe 'Voice of America.' Do it! Urgent!"

And it was done, in the open.

Next, it was time for the leader of the free world to contact the Kremlin rebel who was seeking to dismantle the Soviet empire and destroy the Communist Party. And how was this contact, arguably the most sensitive and delicate in the history of the Cold War, handled? George Bush called Boris Yeltsin on the telephone. And then he went on television and described his conversation.

We didn't need the CIA to support Yeltsin's countercoup. We just needed a telephone operator.

Preparing the ground for last month's triumph of overt action was a network of overt operatives who during the last 10 years have quietly been changing the rules of international politics. They have been doing in public what the CIA used to do in private -- providing money and moral support for pro-democracy groups, training resistance fighters, working to subvert communist rule. And, in contrast to many of the CIA's superannuated Cold Warriors, who tended to get tangled in their webs of secrecy, these overt operatives have been immensely successful.

There's an obvious lesson here for Gates, or whoever ends up heading the CIA. The old concept of covert action, which has gotten the agency into such trouble during the past 40 years, may be obsolete. Nowadays, sensible activities to support America's friends abroad (or undermine its enemies) are probably best done openly. That includes paramilitary operations such as supporting freedom fighters, which can be managed overtly by the Pentagon. And it includes political-support operations for pro-democracy activists, which may be best left to the new network of overt operators.

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) thus has it half-right when he urges that the CIA be abolished. The main problem, contrary to what Moynihan says, is not with intelligence collection -- "spying," in its purest form. That part of the CIA needs to be strengthened, not cut.

What may need abolishing is the covert-action role that was awkwardly grafted onto the CIA's basic spying mission when the agency was created in 1947. The covert-action boys were known back then as the Office of Policy Coordination. It may be time, at last, to bid them adieu. They're obsolete. They've been privatized.

That's especially true in the realm of what used to be called "propaganda" and can now simply be called information. The CIA worked hard in the old days to draw foreign newspapers and magazines into its web, so as to counter Soviet disinformation. Frank Wisner, the head of CIA covert operations during the mid-1950s, once remarked that he could play his media assets like a "mighty Wurlitzer."

Today the mighty Wurlitzer actually exists. It's called CNN. But it doesn't need playing by anybody but the independent journalists who work there. CNN's objective, omnipresent, real-time coverage of the news helps America's interests more than all the besotted Third World "media assets" of old could ever have imagined. And the bar bills are less.

Allen Weinstein, the recipient of Yeltsin's faxes, is probably the dean of the new overt operatives. Like many of the people running the new nations of Eastern Europe, he's an ex-professor. He taught history at Smith College for 15 years and even worked for several months writing editorials for The Washington Post.

Weinstein's career as an overt operator dates back to 1980, when he joined Soviet dissidents in organizing a citizens' committee to monitor the Helsinki Accords on Human Rights. He quickly became connected with the network of pro-democracy activists who were then beginning to challenge anti-democratic regimes around the world. Soon he was sponsoring conferences for dissidents, arranging visits for them to the United States and otherwise making trouble.

"The networking phenomenon is one of the things we've specialized in," explains Weinstein. His visitors in those early days included some of the insurgents who were later to lead protest movements across Eastern Europe in 1989.

"People wander through your office," he says. "They become family."

Weinstein founded the Center for Democracy in 1984 as an umbrella for his global meddling. He dispatched election-monitoring teams to the Philippines, Panama and Nicaragua that are credited with having helped topple undemocratic regimes in those countries through the ballot box. By 1990, he was hosting meetings for newly elected Polish parliamentarians; for legislative clerks from Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland; and for constitution-drafters from those three countries.

Trenchcoats and tradecraft were irrelevant to these gatherings. The key man in Weinstein's overt operation was the rapporteur.

Boris Yeltsin and his aides were soon drawn into this transatlantic hospitality suite. They attended Weinstein's conferences, including one on environmental problems held in Moscow in early August, which was co-sponsored by Weinstein's center and the Russian republic. When the hard-liners launched their putsch a few days later, the Yeltsin aides naturally enough began sending faxes to their friend, Weinstein. The first one read simply: "It is military coup. Tanks are everywhere."

Now, with the KGB in retreat from Prague to Vladivostok, Weinstein has scheduled a conference in Sofia, Bulgaria on the topic: "The Proper Role of Intelligence Agencies in a Democracy." That may be rubbing it in.

Amazingly enough, these simple pro-democracy activities were once the exclusive province of the CIA. Back in the heyday of the Cold War, the wizards of Langley seemed to think it necessary to "recruit" the world's democrats and give them code names.

The covert mentality penetrated nearly every aspect of American life. The mandarins decided that American students should attend international conferences and youth festivals to counteract Soviet propaganda. So the CIA secretly began funding the National Student Association. Anti-communist intellectuals in Europe were deemed worthy of aid, so the CIA subsidized the Congress for Cultural Freedom and Encounter magazine. It was decided that we should help democratic parties in Europe resist communist pressure. The CIA did it covertly.

No activity was so innocent that the CIA didn't think it could be improved by secrecy.

Even Gloria Steinem, now a feminist leader, was drawn into the CIA covert web. According to CIA historian John Ranelagh, she was involved in a CIA operation to send American students to World Youth festivals in Vienna in 1959 and Helsinki in 1962.

When these covert activities surfaced (as they inevitably did), the fallout was devastating. The CIA connection, intended to protect people and organizations from public embarrassment, had precisely the opposite effect.

"A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA," agrees Weinstein. The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection.

Allen Weinstein is just one of many overt operatives who helped prepare the way for the political miracles of the past two years by sponsoring exchanges and other contacts with liberal reformers from the East. It's worth naming a few more of them, to show the breadth of this movement for democracy: William Miller of the American Committee on U.S.-Soviet Relations; financier George Soros of the Soros Foundation; John Mroz of the Center for East-West Security Studies; John Baker of the Atlantic Council; and Harriett Crosby of the Institute for Soviet-American Relations. This has truly been a revolution by committee.

The AFL-CIO also deserves a healthy pat on the back. Working mostly in the open, it helped keep the Polish trade union Solidarity alive in the dark days of martial law during the early 1980s. As the AFL-CIO's Adrian Karatnycky wrote in these pages two years ago, American trade unions and the U.S. Congress provided millions of dollars to the Solidarity underground.

"The money underwrote shipments of scores of printing presses, dozens of computers, hundreds of mimeograph machines, thousands of gallons of printers' ink, hundreds of thousands of stencils, video cameras and radio broadcasting equipment," according to Karatnycky.

The sugar daddy of overt operations has been the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-private group headed by Carl Gershman that is funded by the U.S. Congress. Through the late 1980s, it did openly what had once been unspeakably covert -- dispensing money to anti-communist forces behind the Iron Curtain.

To read through the NED's grant list (a public document) is to take a stroll down the democracy movement's memory lane: In Czechoslovakia, the endowment began aiding democratic forces in 1984, including support for Civic Forum; in Hungary, the aid began in 1986 and included election help and funding for Hungary's first independent public-opinion survey; in Romania and Bulgaria, the endowment has supported new intellectual journals and other tools of democracy. Among its many activities in Poland, the endowment has backed the Gdansk Video Center, which helped produce and distribute pro-democracy videos throughout Eastern Europe during the 1980s. And through the Free Trade Union Institute and the Center for International Private Enterprise, the endowment helped support new unions and employers' associations across Eastern Europe -- building the infrastructure of a free economy.

The endowment has also been active inside the Soviet Union. It has given money to Soviet trade unions; to the liberal "Interregional Group" in the Congress of Peoples Deputies; to a foundation headed by Russian activist Ilya Zaslavsky; to an Oral History Project headed by Soviet historian Yuri Afanasyev; to the Ukrainian independence movement known as Rukh, and to many other projects.

Covert funding for these groups would have been the kiss of death, if discovered. Overt funding, it would seem, has been a kiss of life.

David Ignatius is foreign editor of The Washington Post and author of "Siro," a spy novel.

[alanshemper]

[xtruss]

US’ NED ‘Mastermind’ Behind Global Separatist Riots, Color Revolutions, Political Crises: Chinese FM Report

— Global Times | May 07, 2022

US Democracy. Illustration: Liu Rui/Global Times

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), as one of the US government's main "foot soldiers," "white gloves" and "democracy crusaders," has become the mastermind behind separatist riots, color revolutions and political crises around the world, subverting lawful governments and cultivating pro-US puppet forces under the pretext of promoting democracy, said a fact sheet released by Chinese Foreign Ministry on Saturday.

[darkmaga-retard]

The United States has continually worked to provoke and contain China, identifying Indonesia as a threat to its global hegemony and interests in Southeast Asia and using the Philippines to provoke and, perhaps eventually, even challenge China in the South China Sea over contested islands.

“Jakarta has been engulfed in fiery unrest in recent days, as thousands of protesters attempted to storm parliament in response to controversial changes to election laws,” notes the Orinoco Tribune, commenting on the massive demonstrations that have taken place in the Indonesian capital recently.

The online newspaper published a year-old analysis by investigative reporter Kit Klarenberg documenting an “extensive network of political, media, and civil society infrastructure in Indonesia aimed at facilitating regime change” and established by the CIA-linked National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to provoke regime change in the country of 275 million people. “After years of fostering insurrectionary fervour in the country, has the NED’s influence finally reached a boiling point?” the website questions.

Washington is frustrated with Indonesian President Joko Widodo. They sometimes use the term “aggressive neutrality” in the sense that the Southeast Asian country has been balancing between China and the US. Due to this, the White House did not want Widodo in power, and it can be expected that there will be more actions to try to depose him.

[kneedeepincynade]

Look,it's the CIA! Who could have expected to find it in a colour revolution? Everyone, you say?

The post is machine translated

Translation is at the bottom

The collective is on telegram

⚠️ IL RUOLO DELLA CIA, DEL "NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY", DI SOROS E DI GENE SHARP NEL TENTATIVO DI RIVOLUZIONE COLORATA IN CINA DEL 1989 ⚠️

🤔 Quindi cosa è successo esattamente a Pechino nel 1989? 🤔

✍️ Come scrive World Affairs, sono due le figure più importanti che hanno portato agli eventi di Pechino del 1989:

一 Hu Yaobang, Segretario Generale del Partito Comunista Cinese dal 1982 al 1987, che era mancato da poco, nel 1989 🇨🇳

二 James Lilley, Veterano della CIA, misteriosamente nominato Ambasciatore degli USA in Cina dopo soli 5 giorni dalla morte di Hu Yaobang 🇺🇸

💕 La figura di Hu Yaobang, molto aperta, piaceva molto ai giovani Cinesi, che si riunirono - in centinaia di migliaia - a Pechino, per piangere la sua morte e celebrare i suoi successi nella Riforma e Apertura 😭

🇺🇸 Resasi conto che centinaia di migliaia di persone si sarebbero presto riunite a Pechino, la CIA - tramite Lilley - iniziò a preparare il 20/05 del 1989 un colpo di stato anti-CPC, atto a far crollare il Governo Socialista in Cina ❗️❗️❗️

📰 In un articolo del Vancouvern Sun del 17/09 del 1992, che trovate QUI, venne descritto il ruolo della CIA negli Eventi del 04/06: «La CIA aveva fonti tra i manifestanti della Piazza, [...] per mesi aveva aiutato gli studenti attivisti a formare un movimento anti-governativo» 🤮

🤢 Ad aiutare la CIA, vi erano tre figure:

一 George Soros, figura chiave delle rivoluzioni colorate anti-Comuniste, tramite l'utilizzo dell'Open Society Foundations e del NED 🤮

二 Zhao Ziyang, figura pro-US e traditore in seno al Partito Comunista Cinese, l'unico sostenitore del tentativo di rivoluzione colorata 🤡

😡 Nel 1986, Soros iniziò a foraggiare le figure anti-CPC e pro-Liberalismo in Cina, e il National Endowment for Democracy aprì un suo ufficio nel 1988, per poter preparare un golpe ❗️

🤔 Uno potrebbe chiedersi: come mai il CPC permise ad alcune ONG Occidentali (NED) di entrare in Cina? Ad accettare il loro insediamento fu Zhao Ziyang, vero "cavallo di Troia" nel CPC, che - da dentro il Partito - stava cercando di promuovere la privatizzazione in favore degli USA 😡

三 Gene Sharp, autore del libro "Color Revolution", il Padre della rivoluzione colorata, che pubblicò il documentario "How to Start a Revolution", si recò a Pechino durante il periodo della "protesta", e lavorò a stretto contatto con la CIA, il NED, Zhao Ziyang e il Pentagono per fomentare il rovesciamento del Partito Comunista Cinese 😡

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⚠️ THE ROLE OF THE CIA, THE "NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY", SOROS AND GENE SHARP IN THE 1989 COLOR REVOLUTION ATTEMPT IN CHINA ⚠️

🤔 So what exactly happened in Beijing in 1989? 🤔

✍️ As World Affairs writes, there are two most important figures that led to the events in Beijing in 1989:

一 Hu Yaobang, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China from 1982 to 1987, who had just passed away in 1989 🇨🇳

二James Lilley, CIA Veteran, Mysteriously Appointed US Ambassador to China Just 5 Days After Hu Yaobang's Death 🇺🇸

💕 The very open figure of Hu Yaobang was greatly appreciated by young Chinese, who gathered - hundreds of thousands - in Beijing, to mourn his death and celebrate his successes in Reform and Opening up 😭

🇺🇸 Realizing that hundreds of thousands of people would soon gather in Beijing, the CIA - through Lilley - began preparing an anti-CPC coup on 20/05/1989, capable of bringing down the Socialist Government in China ❗️ ❗️❗️

📰 In an article of the Vancouvern Sun of 17/09 of 1992, which you can find HERE, the role of the CIA in the Events of 04/06 was described: «The CIA had sources among the protesters in the Square, [...] for months it had helped student activists form an anti-government movement» 🤮

🤢 To help the CIA, there were three figures:

一 George Soros, key figure in anti-Communist color revolutions, using the Open Society Foundations and the NED 🤮

二 Zhao Ziyang, pro-US figure and traitor in the Communist Party of China, sole supporter of attempted color revolution 🤡

😡 In 1986, Soros started to bankroll anti-CPC and pro-liberalism figures in China, and the National Endowment for Democracy opened its office in 1988, in order to prepare a coup ❗️

🤔 One might wonder: How come the CPC allowed some Western NGOs (NED) to enter China? To accept their settlement was Zhao Ziyang, a true "Trojan horse" in the CPC, who - from within the Party - was trying to promote privatization in favor of the USA 😡

三 Gene Sharp, author of the book "Color Revolution", the Father of the Color Revolution, who released the documentary "How to Start a Revolution", went to Beijing during the "protest" period, and worked closely with the CIA , the NED, Zhao Ziyang and the Pentagon to foment the overthrow of the Communist Party of China 😡

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[christinamac1]

The US empire is hidden in plain sight

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was ‘created… to do in the open what the Central Intelligence Agency has done surreptitiously for decades,’ The UK appears to have very little control over what happens on the USAF-operated bases or the missions that are flown from them. these agreements ‘ultimately reserve jurisdiction of US personnel to the US’. Most of the American bases are called…