Our Friday News Analysis | What the World Reads Now!

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. © Daniel LEAL/AFP

The WikiLeaks co-founder didn’t just have his case dropped
– it does not bode well for the future of truth-telling

By Robert Bridge

HomeWorld News
25 June 2024

Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of 'Midnight in the American Empire,' How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.

@Robert_Bridge

Julian Assange, the co-founder of WikiLeaks, has agreed to plead guilty to one count of violating the Espionage Act for his role in collecting and publishing top-secret military and diplomatic documents from 2009 to 2011.

What does this verdict mean for media freedom around the world?

While it’s certainly positive news that the US Department of Justice is closing the book on the tragic Assange saga, it’s shocking that President Joe Biden's administration demanded a guilty plea for the alleged crime of obtaining and publishing government secrets.

After all, this is the crucial task that investigative journalists perform regularly.

               “The plea deal won’t have the precedential effect of a court ruling, but it will still hang over the heads of national security reporters for years to come… It’s purely symbolic,” Seth Stern, the director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), said in a statement.

               “The administration could’ve easily just dropped the case but chose to legitimize the criminalization of routine journalistic conduct and encourage future administrations to follow suit.”

Assange rose to international fame in 2010 after WikiLeaks published a series of leaks from US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. Ecuador granted him asylum in August 2012 on the grounds of political persecution and fears that the UK might extradite him to the US. He remained in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London until April 2019. Then, he was imprisoned in Belmarsh Prison until June 2024, as the US government’s extradition effort was contested in the British courts.

While a plea deal would avoid the worst-case scenario for media liberties,

it cannot be ignored that Assange was incarcerated for five years
for activities that journalists engage in every day.

There is good reason why the US waged a massive smear campaign against Assange, who was blessed with courage rarely seen in journalism.

As the late journalist John Pilger wrote of his beleaguered colleague, who viewed his work as a moral duty:

               “Assange shamed his persecutors.

               He produced scoop after scoop.

               He exposed the fraudulence of wars promoted by the media and the homicidal nature of America’s wars, the corruption of dictators, the evils of Guantanamo.”

The question that must be asked now is: How long can Julian Assange continue his crusade for truth?

WikiLeaks' sole purpose is the pursuit of justice. It is about achieving justice by letting the public know what is happening and letting the average person on the street know what those who have power over their lives are conspiring to do. To say this seldom-seen method of journalism is a courageous act is the most incredible understatement.

Murder of 27-year-old Seth Rich, a former member of the Democratic National Committee

A case in point was the murder of 27-year-old Seth Rich, a former member of the Democratic National Committee, who was shot and killed on the street in Washington, DC, on July 10, 2016, just weeks before the presidential election between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. In an interview with the Dutch news program Nieuwsuur, Assange insinuates that Rich was responsible for the leak of DNC emails to WikiLeaks, not the Russians, as the entire US media complex had been reporting.

               “There’s a 27-year-old, he works for the DNC, who was shot in the back, murdered, just a few weeks ago for unknown reasons as he was walking down the street in Washington,” Assange said.

               “I am suggesting that our sources take risks, and they become concerned to see things like that… We have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States, and our sources take serious risks, and that’s why they come to us so that we can protect their anonymity.”

Interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity

In an interview with Fox News's Sean Hannity, he was asked:

               “So, in other words... Russia did not give you the Podesta documents or anything from the DNC?”

               “That’s correct,” Assange responded.

To better appreciate the severity of the leak, the information found in the emails caused significant harm to the Clinton campaign and has been cited as a potential contributing factor to her loss in the general election against Trump.

At this point in Assange’s life, it's worth pondering whether he will continue fighting the powers that be or take a long and much-needed vacation from the dangerous world of truth-telling.

Time will tell, but I’ve got a hunch that Julian Assange has only just begun to fight.

What is the Side of the Story that is Not Yet Decisive? Edited by Abraham A. van Kempen.

MATT TAIBBI | ASSANGE IS FREE, BUT NEVER FORGET HOW THE PRESS TURNED ON HIM

The Wikileaks head is finally out of prison. A look back at some of the comments that kept him inside

By Matt Taibbi
Substack.com
25 Jun 2024

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is free, having struck a deal with the United States Justice Department that will credit him for time served and allow him to go home. As someone who campaigned against his detention, I’m happy for him, his wife Stella, his brother Gabriel Shipton, and the other members of his inner circle who kept the case in the public eye all these years. They deserve to celebrate today.

Even though the plea was carefully crafted to say the state never proved its case, the Justice Department’s insistence on admission to the top count of violating the Espionage Act means this will remain a sword over the heads of anyone reporting on national security issues.

Governments have no right to keep war crimes secret, but Assange’s 62-month stay in prison is starting to look like a template for Western prosecutions of such leaks. For instance, former Australian army lawyer David McBride was just sentenced to five years for leaking “classified” details of offenses by the Australian Special Air Service (SAS) in Afghanistan, including the planting of “throwdown” weapons near the bodies of unarmed Afghans.

No one should be confused about the reason for the Assange indictment. Although coverage today focuses on the solicitation of classified documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars whose publication supposedly “endangered lives,” the Justice Department made it clear from the start that its fury centered on efforts to disclose governmental lousy behavior. The Assange indictment, for instance, highlights the Wikileaks request for “Detainee abuse photos withheld by the Obama administration”:

THE CRIME: Top, the superseding indictment of Julian Assange. Bottom, the Wikileaks “Most Wanted Leaks” request from 2009

The U.S. government is frosty about these topics for a good reason. The case record of detainees in places like Guantanamo Bay and the Bagram Collection Point in Afghanistan makes it clear the use of torture was far more extensive than the public realizes to this day, with one military coroner comparing the injuries of a dead Afghan prisoner to being “run over by a bus.” That’s another topic, but the point is that the Assange case wasn’t just about the past. It’s significantly about the ongoing efforts to keep a lid on the extent of abuses connected to the War on Terror.

An argument can certainly be made that efforts to disclose things that are kept secret for good reasons must be punished. However, the classified nature of some of the solicited material wasn’t central to Assange’s case. The crime was soliciting “national defense information,” which can essentially be anything the government says it is. The use of the draconian Espionage Act will continue to send a message to anyone sniffing around any documents the state might find damaging for any reason.

Many are calling Assange’s release a stunt designed to help Joe Biden in his campaign against Donald Trump. It’s debatable how much this helps Biden, as there will be no shortage of voices reminding the public he had a chance to make this deal three years ago. His administration’s choices (and those of Trump’s) won’t be memory-holed easily, but I worry about the public forgetting the role of another actor: the press.

When Assange was considered a vehicle for scoops about the iniquity of the George W. Bush administration, reporters loved him. Once he was seen as a critic of Barack Obama or as someone who helped Trump get elected instead of Hillary Clinton, they turned and turned hard.

Here is a quick review of some of the more incredible things said in print over the years:

The Guardian, November 27, 2018:  This story remains the single worst piece of unredacted horseshit I’ve ever seen in a major news outlet, and that includes Judy Miller’s WMD pieces. The attempt to connect Assange to a secret Russiagate plot with the campaign of Donald Trump was based on a single anonymous source, who somehow saw something that evaded everyone else watching one of the most surveilled places on earth, the Ecuadorian embassy where Assange hid before his detention.

“A well-placed source has told the Guardian that Manafort went to see Assange around March 2016,” wrote Luke Harding and Dan Collyns. “Months later, WikiLeaks released a stash of Democratic emails stolen by Russian intelligence officers.” Wikileaks replied that it was “willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its editor’s head that Manafort never met Assange.” This story was so obviously bogus that even those outlets that were the most aggressive reporters of Russiagate nonsense wouldn’t touch it, with Politico going so far as to publish a piece by a pseudonymous ex-CIA officer named “Alex Finley” suggesting that Russian operatives took in Harding.

The Guardian never apologized for this piece and today is covering the hell out of Assange’s release, of course not mentioning its lengthy history of articles with titles like “The treachery of Julian Assange,” “Julian Assange like a hi-tech terrorist, says Joe Biden,” “The Guardian view on Julian Assange: no victim of arbitrary detention,” “and countless others of this type.

The Guardian, before (above) and today (below).

Washington Post, May 28, 2019: “Assange is a spy, not a journalist. He deserves prison.” This gloating article by Marc Thiessen of The Washington Post gushed that, “at long last,” the “head of that enemy intelligence agency” known as Wikileaks was indicted and facing a possible 175 years in prison.

This column appeared in the same newspaper that had only just taken an extended victory lap for publishing the Pentagon Papers via the movie The Post.

Here’s a section from Post coverage of the film:

               “The Post” takes place in 1971 and chronicles how The Washington Post defied the Nixon administration to publish stories based on the Pentagon Papers, a secret government study about the Vietnam War.

               The newspaper and the New York Times, which published Pentagon Papers stories and excerpts first, face off against a Justice Department that believes publishing the information is a national security risk. This battle ends up in the Supreme Court.

Thiessen wrote that Assange “engaged in espionage against the United States. And he has no remorse for the harm he has caused,” and insisted the difference between what Wikileaks did and the actions of a “reputable” paper is that Wikileaks “did not allow the U.S. government to review the classified information.”

Lest anyone think this is just the opinion of one columnist, the Post editorial board was even more harsh than Thiessen, publishing a house op-ed saying, “Julian Assange is not a free-press hero. And he is long overdue for personal accountability.” The editorial illustration appeared to show Assange saluting Donald Trump:

HEIL: The Washington Post’s interesting illustration

Washington Post, January 5th, 2017: Julian Assange’s claim that there was no Russian involvement in WikiLeaks emails This one was mind-blowing. The Washington Post “fact-checked” Assange’s insistence about the DNC leaks, “our source is not the Russian government, and it is not a state party.” Based on nothing more than the assertions of anonymous intelligence officials, they gave him “Three Pinocchios,” meaning the claim contained a “significant factual error and obvious contradictions.” As press watchdogs FAIR.org noted, it’s perfectly appropriate for journalists to be skeptical of Assange’s claims. There was no forensic proof either way in this case. Yet, the Post reported the anonymous intel claims as gospel, noting that according to Brookings Fellow Susan Hennessey, “the U.S. intelligence community tends to be conservative in making public attributions.”

Bloomberg, April 11, 2019: If Assange Burgled Some Computers, He Stopped Being a Journalist. Timothy O’Brien’s piece was one of many in which journalists conveniently forgot that they help sources disguise their identities all the time and that the charge that Assange offered to help Chelsea Manning conceal her identity by cracking a hash was never proven. More to the point, however, this was one of many pieces that departed from the tradition of reporters believing any true story is worth doing.

Bloomberg wrote that Wikileaks and Assange “can’t shelter themselves inside the cloak of journalism and the truth” if they helped “hack” the U.S. government. “If he became a hacker and broke the law,” O’Brien wrote, “he was no longer a journalist and a messenger. He was a criminal.” Even stipulating that this particular offense did take place, this was a crazy attitude for a reporter to take, tsk-tsking Wikileaks as a criminal organization when the published leak included a video of the U.S. army machine-gunning two Reuters staffers.

I had quibbles once about Assange’s “radical transparency” idea, not that I ever voiced them. As a younger reporter, I wasn’t sure dumping huge caches of documents was the best way to do things. Over time, however, I was convinced that the issue of secrecy and classification was a lot cloudier than officials made it out to be. I also had a disillusioning experience in the early Obama years when meeting with a federal law enforcement source about an unrelated finance issue and hearing the person comment offhand that Assange was essentially a terrorist and the state should probably just blow him up. This was someone I liked. Over time, I got the horrifying idea that this was the reflexive position of many in government.

As Assange himself (and media writers like John O’Day) pointed out, Wikileaks is an improvement over the heavily curated Western press model in that the public can click through to raw documents to see if they’re reported accurately. The potential danger would be with operational material that might compromise a soldier or spy in the field. Still, our courts heard testimony from a Department of Defense task force that found no instances of anyone killed as the result of a Wikileaks disclosure. That, and the site’s unbroken (as far as I know) streak of never publishing a phony document, have helped make it the most influential breaker of news in our generation by far, something that is undeniably true no matter what your opinion of Assange or Wikileaks might be.

The news media’s behavior in the Assange story is incredible, something future historians will examine. Wikileaks partnered with major organizations like Le Monde, El Pais, The Guardian, and The New York Times. Then, he became a villain, but when the Trump Justice Department indicted him, there was some sympathy for him again. The behavior in some cases suggested press attitudes toward Wikileaks were guided almost entirely by partisan considerations:

Despite a few half-hearted words supporting press freedom, the major press outlets mostly didn’t see the recent Assange case as a potential threat to them, which had to be eye-opening for the public. It meant our current slate of news organizations could not imagine another Pentagon Papers-style event that involved them defying the national security establishment.

They couldn’t see themselves in that role. This proves they are more proxies of government than advocates for the public in their current form. And if allowed, they will bury their role in helping cheer this prosecution.

Let’s hope it’s the last of its type, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.

SEYMOUR HERSH | BIDEN'S FIRST RE-ELECTION TEST

What won’t be said at next week’s debate?

Last week, President Joe Biden welcomed Pope Francis to the G7 Summit in Bari, Italy. / Photo by Michael Kappeler/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)

By Seymour Hersh

Substack.com
21 June 2024

“It’s going to be one hell of a debate … OR NOT.”

In a rational political world, the critical issues on the table in next Thursday’s debate would be the Biden administration’s foreign policy: that is,

               The president’s unwavering support for Ukraine in the war with Russia

               His inability to have any significant impact on Israel’s continuing war in Gaza.

Of course, on debate night, the primary attention will be on Joe Biden’s ability to stay focused and on point, both verbally and physically, with the sure-to-be garrulous and off-topic Donald Trump.

So here is a breakdown of some of the issues, as I understand them from my contacts with various military and political insiders over many decades.

First, there is a serious concern among the Democratic Party leadership and the major Democratic fundraisers, primarily the big donors in New York City, about Biden’s ability to defeat Trump in November. This is, of course, not to be spoken of in public.

A significant touchstone for many will be Biden’s performance in the debate. The president will need to match the intensity he demonstrated at his State of the Union address in March next week to keep his contributors happy. Two longtime politicos who have direct knowledge have told me that a shaky performance will increase pressure on the Democratic Party to do something drastic and unprecedented before the November election.

On the other hand, some political insiders argue that the president would have time to recover from an early flop and do better at the second debate, scheduled for September 10.

I have been told that one extreme possibility in the case of a very bad showing Thursday night is to obtain agreement from Biden and his family advisers for the president to come to the Democratic convention in Chicago in August and accept the accolades of a first-round delegate victory. He would decline the nomination and throw the nominating process open to all. The new shoo-in candidate in this vision might be Gavin Newsom, the young and photogenic governor of California, or the popular Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. The vice presidential nominee—in this scenario—would be up to the convention delegates to select.

One longtime friend of the president acknowledged in a background chat with me yesterday that such talk is happening inside the party. He said such possibilities were more likely in the days when strong-arm leaders like Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago or Mayor Frank Rizzo of Philadelphia ran the Democratic Party.

               “The party now,” he told me, is atoning for past mistakes by “shoveling huge amounts of campaign money into state organizations around the country”—something that was not done when Trump stunned Democrats by defeating Hillary Clinton in 2016—“and they think that is going to be a game changer” in November.

He said that Newsom and Pritzker are attractive politicians and added, with a laugh: “The only way they’re going to get [Biden] out is feet first.”

Perhaps none of this would have been an issue if the president’s foreign policy had not been the disaster it was. Biden is continuing to send billions to Ukraine for its war with Russia and urging America’s allies in NATO and elsewhere to do the same. He has yet to focus on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most recent peace proposals, which suggest there are issues about Ukrainian lands that have fallen to Russia that could be on the table.

The new round of hints came last week in a speech at the Russian Foreign Ministry in which Putin again made clear that any acceptable agreement must call for Ukraine to “adopt a neutral, non-aligned status, be nuclear-free and undergo demilitarization and de-Nazification.”

Crimea and the four Ukrainian oblasts that now remain largely under Russian control, he added, “should be acknowledged” as parts “of the Russian Federation.” He also indicated that much bargaining needs to be done: “These foundational principles need to be formalized through fundamental international agreements in the future.”

In other words, let us negotiate.

One well-informed American official told me that there has been, as always, some informal communications about concessions between Moscow and the West that both sides could accept. For example, he said, there is Russia’s ambition to attack and seize Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, twenty miles south of the Russian border. Now under siege amid heavy fighting on its outskirts, the historic town could be saved from massive destruction if both sides agreed to consider it an independent free territory, as was Trieste, a disputed city bordering Italy and Yugoslavia, for seven years after World War II. I was also told that Putin’s speech came after a series of highly secret backchannel communications between some in the West and Russians whose aim was to spare the pending Russian attack on Kharkiv, which is also a central transportation hub.

The official said the likelihood of significant Ukrainian battlefield success remains low, given Russia’s vast supply of troops and equipment. Despite Ukrainian and American reports of successes near Kharkiv, he added, last Sunday, 300 members of one of Ukraine’s most elite units, the 92nd Assault Brigade, which was established twenty-five years ago, was surrounded and captured by Russian troops, with 150 deaths and little word in the Western press.

“Biden just declared war on Russia, and nobody cares,” the official said of the president’s recent decision to escalate the reach of American missiles supplied to Ukraine. “It is a theatrical performance.”

The President is facing another no-way-out dilemma in Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu managed to stun many of his detractors by overcoming the resignation of two senior generals who publicly challenged his conduct in the war. The officers were shunted aside as a new war cabinet was assembled, led by Netanyahu, with two of his close associates in their place. A majority of the Israeli public, though many have differences with Netanyahu, continue to trust him to fight the war with Hamas.

Meanwhile, despite the efforts of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Secretary Adviser Jake Sullivan, and CIA Director William Burns, who were constantly flying back and forth to the Middle East in recent months, Netanyahu remains in power, and no more Israeli hostages seem to be forthcoming from Hamas. American-supplied bombs are still being dropped daily in Gaza, killing and maiming numbers far beyond the official count.

Biden has emerged from the last eight months not only as a loyal supporter of Israel but as a president reviled by untold numbers of American college students coast to coast for his refusal to tell Israel to stop the killing. He will not be welcome on many campuses this fall and is unlikely to get the student votes that current polling suggests he will need.

At this point, as thousands of Gazans continue to starve and die from the ongoing Israeli air attacks, the chances for a ceasefire in Gaza are dim. There is little doubt that Netanyahu—if he stays in power, as is likely—will continue to go for the kill and keep the Israeli Army inside Hamas’s tunnels as long as it takes to achieve victory. No one in Israel is sure when that will be. Perhaps not until Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who is target number one, is tracked down and killed.

“Unfortunately,” the American official told me, “Sinwar has a different solution. As long as Israel keeps fighting and more civilians [in Gaza] are killed in the process, pro-Palestinian pressure in the US will force Biden to try to force Bibi to end the war without destroying Hamas. . . . Neither Bibi nor Hamas are going to blink.”

It’s going to be one hell of a debate.

GLENN DIESEN | HOW THE US GOVERNMENT USES NGOS TO CORRUPT ‘CIVIL SOCIETY’ AROUND THE WORLD

Washington is weaponizing pseudo-academic ‘human rights’ groups as part of its foreign policy.

FILE PHOTO: Security forces take measures as protesters gather to stage protest against 'transparency of foreign influence' bill during voting near Georgian Parliament building in Tbilisi, Georgia on May 14, 2024. © Davit Kachkachishvili / Anadolu via Getty Images

By Glenn Diesen

Substack.com

10 June 2024

Glenn Diesen is a Professor at the University of South-Eastern Norway and an editor at the Russia in Global Affairs journal. Follow him on Substack.

In the West and beyond, pressure groups operating under the banner of “human rights non-governmental organizations” (NGOs) have become critical actors in disseminating war propaganda, intimidating academics, and corrupting civil society. These outfits act as gatekeepers determining which voices should be elevated and which should be censored and canceled.

Civil society is imperative to balance the state's power, but governments increasingly seek to hijack it through NGOs they fund. They can enable a loud minority to override a silent majority.

In the 1980s, the Reagan doctrine exacerbated the problem, as these “human rights NGOs” were financed by the government and staffed by people with ties to intelligence agencies to ensure civil society wouldn’t deviate significantly from government policies.

These gatekeepers restrict academics' ability to speak openly and honestly. In a case in point today, NGOs limit dissent in academic debates about the incredible power rivalry in Ukraine. Well-documented and proven facts that are imperative to understanding the conflict are not reported in the media, and any efforts to address these facts are confronted with vague accusations of being “controversial” or “pro-Russian,” a transgression that must be punished with intimidation, censorship, and cancellation.

I will outline my experiences with one of these NGOs and how they hijack civil society.

My Encounter with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee

The Norwegian Helsinki Committee is financed by the US government and CIA-cutout the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). They regularly publish hit pieces about me and rarely miss their weekly tweets that label me a propagandist for Russia. It is always name-calling and smearing rather than anything that can be considered a coherent argument.

The standard formula for cancellation is to shame my university in every article and tweet for allowing academic freedom, with the implicit offer of redemption by terminating my employment as a professor. Peak absurdity occurred with a seven-page article in a newspaper arguing that I’d violated international law by spreading war propaganda. They grudgingly had to admit that I have opposed the war from day one, although for a professor in Russian politics to engage with Russian media allegedly made me complicit in spreading war propaganda.

Every single time I am invited to give a speech at any event, this NGO will appear to shame and pressure the organizers to cancel my invitation publicly. The organization also openly attempts to incite academics to rally against me to strengthen their case for censorship in a trial of public opinion. Besides whipping up hatred in the media by labeling me a propagandist for Russia, they incite anonymous online troll armies such as “NAFO” to cancel me online and in the real world. After subsequent intimidations through social media, emails, SMS, and phone calls, the police advised me to remove my home address and phone number from public access.

One of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee recently posted a sale ad for my house, which included photos of my home with my address for their social media followers.

The Norwegian Helsinki Committee also infiltrates and corrupts other institutions. One of the more eager Helsinki Committee employees is also a board member at the Norwegian Organization for Non-Fictional Authors and Translators (NFFO). He used his position there to cancel the organization’s co-hosting of an event, as I had been invited to speak. The Norwegian Helsinki Committee is also overrepresented on the Nobel Committee, ensuring that suitable candidates are picked.

Why would a humanitarian NGO act like modern Brownshirts by limiting academic freedom?

One could similarly ask why a human rights NGO spends more effort on demonizing Julian Assange rather than exploring the human rights abuses he exposed.

This “human rights NGO” is devoted primarily to addressing abuses in the East. Subsequently, all great power politics is framed as a competition between good and bad values. Constructing stereotypes for the in-group versus the out-groups as a conflict between good and evil is crucial to political propaganda. The complexity of security competition between the great powers is dumbed down and propagandized as a struggle between liberal democracy and authoritarianism. Furthermore, they rest on the source credibility of being “non-governmental” and merely devoted to human rights, which increases the effectiveness of their messaging.

By framing the world as a conflict between good and evil, mutual understanding and compromise are tantamount to appeasement, while peace is achieved by defeating enemies. Thus, these “human rights NGOs” call for confrontation and escalation against whoever is the most recent reincarnation of Hitler, while the people calling for diplomacy are denounced and censored as traitors.

NGOs Hijacking Civil Society

After the Second World War, American intelligence agencies played a profound role in manipulating civil society in Europe. When they were caught, the intelligence agencies were embarrassed, and the solution was to hide in plain sight.

The Reagan Doctrine entailed setting up NGOs that would openly interfere in the civil society of other states under the guise of supporting human rights. The well-documented objective was to conceal influence operations by US intelligence. The “non-governmental” aspect of the NGOs is fraudulent as they are almost entirely funded by states and staffed with people connected to the intelligence community.

Case in point, during Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution” in 2004, an anti-corruption protest was transformed into a pro-NATO/anti-Russian government. The head of the influential NGO Freedom House in Ukraine was the former Director of the CIA.

Reagan gave the inauguration speech when he established the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 1983. The Washington Post has called NED the “sugar daddy of overt operations” and “what used to be called ‘propaganda’ and can now simply be called ‘information.’”

Documents released reveal that NED cooperated closely with CIA propaganda initiatives. Allen Weinstein, a cofounder of NED, acknowledged: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

Philip Agee, a CIA whistle-blower, explained that NED was established as a “propaganda and inducement program” to subvert foreign nations and style it as a democracy promotion initiative. NED also finances the Norwegian Helsinki Committee.

The NGOs enable a loud Western-backed minority to marginalize the silent majority and then sell it as “democracy.” Protests can, therefore, legitimize the overthrow of elected governments.

The Guardian called the Ukrainian Orange Revolution in 2004 “an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing” for “winning other people’s elections.”

Another article by the Guardian labeled the Orange Revolution as a “postmodern coup d’état” and a “CIA-sponsored third world uprising of cold war days, adapted to post-Soviet conditions.” A similar regime-change operation was repeated in Ukraine in 2014 to mobilize Ukrainian civil society against their government, resulting in overthrowing the democratically elected government against the will of the majority of Ukrainians.

The NGOs branded it a “democratic revolution” and was followed by Washington asserting its dominance over critical levers of power in Kyiv.

Similar operations were also launched against Georgia. The NGOs staged Georgia’s “Rose Revolution” in 2003, which eventually resulted in war with Russia after the new authorities in Tbilisi attacked South Ossetia. Recently, the Prime Minister of Georgia cautioned that the US was yet again using NGOs to topple the government to use his country as a second front against Russia. Georgia’s democratically elected parliament passed a law with an overwhelming majority (83 in favor vs 23 against) for greater transparency over their funding. Unsurprisingly, the West decided that transparency over funding of its pressure groups was undemocratic, and it was labeled a “Russian law.” The Western public was fed footage of protests for democratic credibility, and they were reassured that the Georgian Prime Minister was merely a Russian puppet. The US and EU subsequently threatened Georgia with sanctions to " support” Georgia’s civil society.

Defending Civil Society

Society rests on three legs – the government, the market, and civil society. Initially, the free market was seen as the main instrument to elevate the individual's freedom from government. Yet, as immense power concentrated in large industries in the late 19th century, some liberals looked to the government as an ally to limit the power of large corporations. The challenge of our time is that government and corporate interests go increasingly hand-in-hand, which only intensifies with the rise of the tech giants. This makes it much more difficult for civil society to operate independently. Therefore, universities should remain a bastion of freedom and not be policed by fake NGOs.

________________________________________

[1] D. Ignatius, ‘Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups,’ Washington Post, 22 September 1991.
[2] Ibid.
[3] I. Traynor, ‘US campaign behind the turmoil in Kyiv,’ The Guardian, 26 November 2004.
[4] J. Steele, ‘Ukraine's postmodern coup d’état’, The Guardian, 26 November 2004.
[5] L Kelly, ‘Georgian prime minister accuses US of fueling ‘revolution attempts’’, The Hill, 3 May 2024.

This piece was first published on Glenn Diesen’s Substack. Edited by Abraham A. van Kempen

_________________________

EDITORIAL

By Abraham A. van Kempen

28 June 2024

My late mother would also have signed the short-and-to-the-point open letter, ‘Holocaust Survivor Descendants Against Gaza Genocide,’ published this week in Our Wednesday News Analysis.

To summarize:

At a recent Holocaust memorial, Netanyahu declared:

“We’ll defeat our genocidal enemies.
Never again is now!”

Meanwhile, at another memorial, Biden warned of a
“ferocious surge of antisemitism” on college campuses.

In our opinion, to use the memory of the Holocaust like this.
To justify either genocide in Gaza or repression on college campuses
is a complete insult to the memory of the Holocaust.

As I have stated to President Obama, entitled ‘Sadness Silence Can’t Touch’ ⁷ and others:

               “Despite Israel’s lethal arsenal, it goes against Israel’s collective conscience to sentence the Palestinians to a Final Solution. There is also good in the Israeli character.

               For many, certainly for my mother, the concentration camp has been a breeding ground for compassion and tolerance.

               So, another Holocaust, especially on shared soil, is out of the question.

But what if the religious ultra-nationalists, together with the secular ultra-nationalists, shine like 10,000 angels of light, blinding the world while executing gradual, slow-but-sure ethnic cleansing, a Holocaust against the Indigenous Palestinians, in slow motion?

...

My late mother often said: “We were more human in camp … we cared for each other … our lives were falling apart, yet we fell into each other during moments of most incredible suffering … “

Van Kempen, Abraham. Christian Zionism ... Enraptured Around a Golden Calf, 2nd Edition (Kindle Locations 2059-2065; 2478-2480). The paperback is out of print.

_________________________

BUILDING THE BRIDGE! | A WAY TO GET TO KNOW THE OTHER AND ONE ANOTHER

Making a Difference – The Means, Methods, and Mechanism for Many to Move Mountains

Photo Credit: Abraham A. van Kempen, our home away from home on the Dead Sea

By Abraham A. van Kempen

Senior Editor
Updated 19 January 2024

Those who commit to 'healing our broken humanity' build intercultural bridges to learn to know and understand one another and others. Readers who thumb through the Building the Bridge (BTB) pages are not mindless sheep following other mindless sheep. They THINK. They want to be at the forefront of making a difference. They're in search of the bigger picture to expand their horizons. They don't need BTB or anyone else to confirm their biases.

Making a Difference – The Means, Methods, and Mechanism for Many to Move Mountains

Accurate knowledge promotes understanding, dispels prejudice, and awakens the desire to learn more. Words have an extraordinary power to bring people together, divide them, forge bonds of friendship, or provoke hostility. Modern technology offers unprecedented possibilities for good, fostering harmony and reconciliation. Yet its misuse can do untold harm, leading to misunderstanding, prejudice, and conflict.

Continue reading

A Free Trial for Life – SUBSCRIBE NOW!

• It's quick and straightforward.

• We won’t ask for your credit card number.

• Just enter your e-mail address to receive your complimentary free-for-life subscription to our newsletter.

• Please include your First and Last Name.

• We won’t share or sell your e-mail address.

_________________________

Related Articles Recently Posted on www.buildingthebridgefoundation.com:

OUR FRIDAY NEWS ANALYSIS

OUR WEDNESDAY NEWS ANALYSIS

OUR MONDAY EDITION

________________________

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of the Building the Bridge Foundation