Why did Republicans fund ‘transgender dance’ in Bangladesh?
An IRI-sponsored ‘transgender dance performance’ on December 9, 2020 in Dhaka’s National Theater
By Wyatt Reed – The Grayzone – February 7, 2025
As Trump attacks foreign spending on “woke” initiatives, a GOP-aligned outfit has largely escaped scrutiny, despite using taxpayer funds to sponsor “transgender dance performances” and what it called the “largest published survey of LGBTI people in Bangladesh.”
According to documents obtained by The Grayzone, the US-funded International Republican Institute sees gay and transgender people as uniquely disruptive actors who can be deployed to manipulate political realities overseas, stating, “LGBTI people tend to participate in social change activities to eventually bring changes to politics.”
Read part one of The Grayzone’s investigation into International Republican Institute’s activities in Bangladesh here.
For years, the Republican Party-aligned International Republican Institute’s (IRI) agenda in Bangladesh has been dominated by ethnic minority and transgender issues, with leaked documents revealing the Institute sponsored “the largest published survey of LGBTI people in Bangladesh” and that a full 24% of the 1,868 Bangladeshis who participated in IRI programs in 2019 and 2020 were transgender.
The IRI’s cultural activities were conducted with explicitly subversive objectives, aiming to recruit socially excluded groups as regime change activists. They mirrored the US government’s machinations in Cuba, where, as The Grayzone reported, USAID funded rappers, artists, and “desocialized and marginalized youth” to undermine the country’s socialist government.
Since its founding in 1983, the congressionally-funded IRI has been run by Republican politicians and operatives dedicated to the cause of “democracy promotion” abroad. IRI’s Chairman, Sen. Dan Sullivan, is a vehement opponent of same sex marriage who signed on to a GOP letter calling to restrict the participation of transgender youth in sports. While many of the institute’s board members are Never Trump Republicans like Sen. Mitt Romney, the board also includes Sen. Tom Cotton, a top Trump ally who strongly opposes transgender medical interventions for youth.
The IRI’s eyebrow-raising statistics on trans participation in regime change activities were included in an internal report on its PAIRS (“Promoting Accountability, Inclusivity, and Resiliency Support”) Program, which was obtained by The Grayzone in 2024. The report boasts that “IRI issued 11 advocacy grants to artists, musicians, performers or organizations that created 225 art products addressing political and social issues that were viewed nearly 400,000 times [and] supported three civil society organizations from LGBTI, Bihari and ethnic communities to train 77 activists and engage 326 citizens to develop 43 specific policy demands, which were proposed before 65 government officials.”
All told, between March 1, 2019 and December 31, 2020, the Republican group sponsored 160 photographs, 30 paintings, 21 theatrical shows, five short films, three “transgender dance performances,” three documentaries, two rap songs and accompanying music videos, and one book. Meanwhile, IRI staff had “identified over 170 democratic activists who would cooperate with IRI to destabilize Bangladesh’s politics,” they wrote.
The activities were frequently attended by American diplomats, with the US ambassador to Bangladesh at the time, Earl Miller, even providing the welcome speech for a seven-day art exhibit titled “The Power of Art.” When the IRI held an “invitation-only book launch event… for a book that documents the lives of LGBTI people in Bangladesh” featuring “a panel discussion with LGBTI activists,” a political officer and a consular officer from the US embassy were on hand as well. At the IRI’s third transgender dance performance in December of 2020, “guests from the US embassy were the deputy consul general and deputy director of the Office for Democracy, Rights, and Governance.”
Discussions that would guide the Institute’s actions were similarly dominated by transgender voices, with 136 of the 308 community members the IRI interviewed when generating policy proposals listed as “transgender/nonbinary.” According to the documents, these meetings generated 60 policy proposals, of which 17 related specifically to “LGBTI” issues.
So why did transgender people make up a quarter of the IRI program’s participants, in a country of 173 million where a 2022 census found they comprise just 0.007% of the population? The IRI documents suggest it’s because the Institute views gay and transgender people as uniquely disruptive actors who can be deployed to manipulate political realities overseas: “Facing discrimination and prejudice, LGBTI people tend to participate in social change activities to eventually bring changes to politics.” [Editor’s note: the IRI has claimed that this phrase did not appear in their original report.]
Apparently, the IRI were slowly but surely achieving their desired changes, with the report’s authors bragging that they’d successfully “capacitated new and under-utilized activists from marginalized communities to advocate for change with policymakers,” but concluding that “although IRI’s beneficiaries made important strides in raising public awareness and advocating for change, more time, resources and skills are needed to capitalize on this preliminary success to formalize changes in public attitudes and policy.” The campaign appeared to take root in 2019, when IRI conducted a “baseline assessment” which concluded that “modern forms of cultural activism are underutilized” and “advocacy campaigns should target national-level officials to maximize impact.”
While the emphasis on transgender issues may fly in the face of the GOP’s publicly-professed values, it doesn’t necessarily indicate that Republican leaders have secretly shifted their attitude towards the immutability of gender. As Mike Benz, the former State Department official who helped spearhead the ongoing push to defund USAID, recently noted, “I don’t think that the Republicans at IRI are woke — I think you have tactical wokeness in service of statecraft.”
Describing The Grayzone’s previous investigation into the IRI’s efforts to fund aggrieved Bangladeshis to destabilize their country, Benz explained: “these DEl wokeness programs are part of the ethnic balkanization and human rights predicates that are laid by the state in order to topple and control governments.”
That’s exactly what happened in 2024 when Bangladesh’s elected prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, was deposed in a Western-backed coup which legacy media hailed as a revolutionary uprising over an autocratic dictator. Within weeks, Hasina had been replaced as head of state by Muhammad Yunus, a Clinton Global Initiative fellow awarded a Nobel Prize for popularizing the concept of micro-lending, a recent financial innovation which finally gave hundreds of millions of impoverished people across the planet the opportunity to access crippling debt.
It’s not clear exactly how much taxpayer money has been expended on capacity-building transgender and ethnic minority Bangladeshis, but for the time being, the funding mechanisms are still in place. While the Trump administration has ordered a 90-day freeze on non-Israeli foreign spending and slashed USAID’s employees from over 14,000 to just 294, the IRI’s parent organization, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), remains untouched.
The NED was founded in 1983 by President Reagan as the CIA sought to offload its funding responsibilities after the Church Committee exposed dozens of its highly illegal operations, including the MKULTRA mind control program, various efforts to assassinate international leaders, and Operation Mockingbird, which saw Langley come to exercise so much control over American newsrooms that the agency’s covert operations chief, Frank Wisner, famously compared the press to a “mighty Wurlitzer” which would play any song he liked. For dedicated Cold Warriors, the disappearance of that propaganda network in light of its exposure in the ‘70s was inarguably a major loss.
With the advent of the NED, the Cold Warriors gained a new channel through which they could subsidize regime change activists and amplify their message. In 1991, NED cofounder Allen Weinstein admitted in an interview with the Washington Post that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
Much like USAID, the NED, which recently welcomed veteran neocon coup plotter Victoria Nuland to its board of directors, also oversees the annual disbursement of hundreds of millions for various activities likely to foment coups d’etat across the globe. That money continues to be split down the middle and funneled through one of two partisan organizations: the National Democratic Institute and the IRI.
Unfortunately for Bangladesh’s community of US-funded culture warriors, that may not be the case for much longer. Elon Musk, the head of the newly-established Department of Government Efficiency, recently put NED on notice, linking to a list of indicators of corruption at the agency and writing on X: “NED is a SCAM.”
USAID or SorosAid? How US Tax Dollars Fund Chaos Worldwide
By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 07.02.2025
Soros’ vast NGO network has spent over $20 billion since 2000 on radical liberal causes across the world. Tens of millions or even billions of US taxpayer dollars were funneled through USAID, observers suspect.
- The Soros-linked East-West Management Institute received over $260 million from USAID to influence foreign affairs in Georgia, Uganda, Albania, and Serbia.
- Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, backed by Soros, began receiving USAID grants in 2014 – the same year the US-backed Euromaidan coup ousted elected President Viktor Yanukovych with neo-Nazi support. Over $1 million has been funneled by USAID to the center.
- In August 2024, a coup against Bangladeshi PM Sheikh Hasina was allegedly fomented by USAID, IRI, and Soros-linked groups. Her successor, Muhammad Yunus, is a known Clinton and Soros ally. According to The Grayzone, US taxpayer money funded rappers, transgender activists, and LGBT initiatives to create a “power shift.”
- Soros and USAID have long sought to unseat Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán, who has actively opposed the globalist billionaire since 2017. During the 2022 elections, the Soros-linked NGO Action for Democracy funneled $7.6 million to his opposition.
Election Meddling at Home?
- Soros-linked groups, backed by USAID, led resistance efforts against Donald Trump during his presidency, influenced the 2020 election through Black Lives Matter protests, and worked to flip battleground states in 2020–2021.
- Soros funded the Electoral Justice Project, Black Lives Matter’s voter mobilization effort, and gave $22 million to Tides Advocacy, which supported the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s pre-election nationwide protests aimed against Trump in 2020.
- USAID and Soros allegedly spent $27 million on anti-Trump prosecutions, claims journalist Mike Benz. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg was also accused of being “bought” by Soros.
Serbia will revisit foreign agents law – deputy PM
RT | February 7, 2025
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin has vowed to keep pushing for a law which would brand foreign-funded NGOs as ‘foreign agents,’ amid Belgrade’s claims that protests rocking Serbia are being funded from abroad.
Vulin’s Movement of Socialists (PS) party, a junior member of the ruling coalition led by the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), proposed the legislation in November. The same month, the country was hit with a wave of protests, apparently sparked by the collapse of a concrete canopy at a railway station in Novi Sad which killed 15 people.
The demonstrations, primarily involving students, have since spread to the capital Belgrade, leading Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to claim that foreign agitators were behind the unrest.
“PS will not give up its intention to pass the law on foreign agents. Color revolutions cannot be carried out without a lot of money, and it is allocated and distributed through NGOs,” Deputy PM Vulin told Izvestia in an interview published on Thursday.
“There is the experience of Russia, China, Belarus and other countries that have defeated the West’s attempts to destroy them in the streets,” he said, adding that he will continue pushing for the law, despite the current lack of support from the ruling coalition.
Vulin added that he “will not stop opposing Soros and the Western intelligence services that are destroying us.”
Hungarian-American investor and billionaire George Soros is well known for financing liberal movements and political candidates across the Western world, including in Serbia.
According to a January 2001 article in the Los Angeles Times, “his Soros Foundations Network helped finance several pro-democracy groups, including the student organization Otpor, which spearheaded grass-roots resistance to the authoritarian Yugoslav leader” Slobodan Milosevic.
The proposed legislation would require NGOs receiving over half their funding from abroad and engaging in political activities to register as foreign agents.
In December 2024, the Serbian President said that he would not support the bill. “My answer is no,” Vucic told reporters when asked if he would endorse the draft, but added that parts of it based on its US, European and Russian counterparts could be accepted.
Brussels has expressed deep concern over the bill, stressing that as an EU candidate, Serbia is expected to uphold the bloc’s principles.
The European Economic and Social Committee has stressed that such legislation is incompatible with “the fundamental values of the European Union,” comparing such a development to the divisive foreign agents law in Georgia.
Washington sanctioned officials from the ruling party in Tbilisi and froze around $95 million of aid in response, while the EU suspended Georgia’s membership application process. Tbilisi has accused Western countries of interfering in its home affairs, and trying to start a color revolution.
UK trying to prevent peace – Ukrainian MP
RT | February 7, 2025
UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy’s recent visit to Kiev was an attempt to disrupt potential peace negotiations with Russia on the settlement of the Ukraine conflict, according to jailed Ukrainian MP Aleksandr Dubinsky.
Britain’s foreign secretary visited Kiev on Wednesday and announced a further 55 million pounds ($68.7 million) in financial aid.
Dubinsky, an opposition lawmaker who has been held in custody since November 2023 on a litany of charges, including high treason, claimed on his Telegram channel on Thursday that the actual purpose of Lammy’s trip was to disrupt a nascent peace process.
According to him, Lammy’s “urgent” visit to Kiev as well as Vladimir Zelensky’s “urgent” interview with British media “were necessary to prevent a peaceful settlement” and to “discredit” a US-backed push for a ceasefire being led by President Donald Trump’s envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg.
“What is needed for this? An urgent counteroffensive. I believe Zelensky has been brought his plan,” Dubinsky stated.
Kellogg is expected to present a peace plan at next week’s Munich Security Conference, Bloomberg reported earlier this week, citing insiders. However, in an interview with Newsmax on Wednesday, the envoy clarified that while he will be holding discussions with EU leaders in Germany, he will not publicly unveil any proposition.
Any deal would instead be presented by Trump himself.
Last Friday, Trump said that communication is ongoing between his administration and the Russian government and reiterated his goal of putting a swift end to nearly three years of hostilities.
During his Kiev visit Lammy also met with his Ukrainian counterpart, Andrey Sybiga, who urged the UK to scale up investment in Ukraine’s weapons industry. London has already beefed up its backing for Ukraine. Last month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a £4.5 billion package which includes the procurement of hundreds of air defense systems and drones.
The so-called Istanbul round of peace talks between Russia and Ukraine was scrapped in April 2022, despite having reached a draft agreement, following then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s surprise visit during which he pledged continuous military support and urged Kiev to keep fighting.
David Arakhamia, then head of the Ukrainian delegation at the negotiations, later acknowledged Moscow’s claims that Johnson had played an influential role in scuppering a peace deal that would have seen Kiev retain territories it has since lost.
While the controversial British politician denied the claims, former US undersecretary of state Victoria Nuland later confirmed that the negotiations fell apart due to US and UK pressure on Kiev to continue with warfare and reject the Istanbul deal.
Which left-wing NGOs does Brussels fund in Hungary with taxpayer money to go after Orbán?
By Liz Heflin | Remix News | February 5, 2025
The European Commission is essentially manipulating NGOs to achieve its own goals in exchange for financial support. A Dutch newspaper has exposed part of this process, writes Magyar Nemzet, which then shows how Brussels does this and who the biggest domestic beneficiaries are.
On Jan. 22, De Telegraaf reported on secret contracts that the European Commission had signed with green NGOs to conduct alleged covert lobbying activities. According to the newspaper, the lobbying organizations, commissioned by Brussels with EU money, were tasked with persuading MEPs and member states to support the commission’s ambitious green policy initiatives.
For example, the European Environment Bureau (EEB), an umbrella organization for green groups, was tasked with providing at least 16 examples of how the European Parliament had tightened green legislation thanks to its lobbying. According to documents reviewed by the newspaper, the EEB was also tasked with supporting the controversial nature restoration bill initiated by former Commissioner Frans Timmermans.
In addition, they could use around €700,000 in support to steer the debate on agricultural activity in a more environmentally friendly direction.
In Hungary, the EU provides funding to certain organizations, which then use their activities to serve Brussels’ political goals. Here are some examples.
The Hungarian Helsinki Committee is heavily dependent on international funding. According to their latest available financial report for 2023, more than 61 percent of their annual income came from private foundations, including George Soros’s organization. They received a total of 48.85 million forints from the European Commission, which accounted for 6.1 percent of their income. Helsinki has received funding for various projects serving legal protection purposes, typically for several years.
In recent years, the organization has often criticized the Hungarian government’s immigration policy, especially the measures related to border closures and the operation of transit zones, and has also undertaken the legal representation of migrants, for example, at the European Court of Human Rights.
One of the “results” of Helsinki’s operation is that in June 2024, the European Court of Justice imposed a migration fine of €200 million on Hungary and ordered our country to pay an additional €1 million per day until we change the relevant regulations.
Helsinki has actively contributed to the European Commission’s 2023 Rule of Law Report, which contains a number of criticisms of Hungary, including problems and recommendations in the areas of justice, the fight against corruption, and institutional checks and balances. The Helsinki Committee, together with other NGOs, including Transparency International Hungary, has submitted a nearly 100-page submission to the European Commission, which is withholding billions of euros from Hungary.
Transparency International Hungary (TI Hungary) has regularly attacked the Hungarian government in recent years, primarily on issues related to corruption, lack of transparency, and the management of public funds.
The organization also receives significant foreign funding, including funds from Soros’ Open Society Foundations, but their supporters also include the European Commission, from which they received a total of 13.7 million forints in revenue, according to their 2023 report.
Transparency International produces its Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) every year, which is used to calculate which countries are the most and least corrupt in the world. Tamás Lánczi, president of the Office for the Protection of Sovereignty, has already held the organization accountable for the bias experienced in determining the CPI.
All of this is significant because the index serves as a reference point for the withholding of EU funds due to Hungary.
The 2023 report from Amnesty International Hungary shows that the organization is significantly dependent on foreign sources.
Their revenues from the European Union budget, as well as other states and international organizations, exceeded 170 million forints, which represented 42 percent of their total revenue in that year.
They received almost 53 million forints in funding from the European Commission in 2023, which is almost 13 percent of their total annual income. They received the money as the winner of a call for proposals under the Citizens, Equality, Rights and Value (CERV) program to promote gender equality. Amnesty has been working against Hungary’s interests on several fronts, as shown below.
The organization reports that it prepared its analysis related to the European Commission’s annual rule of law assessment, which examined, among other things, the Hungarian justice system, corruption, the press, civil society organizations, and the legislature. It says: “The success of our work, which has been carried out for four years, together with our civil society friends, is also demonstrated by the fact that many of our recommendations are reflected in the report published in July.”
In other words, they are explicitly proud of having put Hungary at a disadvantage.
The annual report also mentions that in March 2023, in addition to the European Parliament, 15 EU member states joined the European Commission v. Hungary lawsuit filed on the side of the commission over the child protection law adopted in 2021. Amnesty boasts that the actions of many member states are due to their work.
The Hungarian Digital Media Observatory (Lakmusz–HDMO) was established in January 2023 as the Hungarian center of the European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO), established by the European Commission in 2020. Six organizations work together within the framework of the project: Political Capital, Mérték Médiaelemző Műhely, AFP news agency, Lakmusz, Idea Foundation and Epresspack. According to their own admission, their activities include fact-checking and related research and analysis, and they also provide training for journalists and teachers on the topic of fact-checking and conscious media consumption.
The HDMO Project is being implemented with the partial support of the European Commission, and the consortium forming the HDMO was selected by the Commission through an open tender. Lakmusz, which participated in the project, has also previously attacked the Hungarian government. For example, they have tried to discredit the institution of the national consultation on several occasions. Political Capital, Mérték, and Lakmusz can also be directly or indirectly linked to the foundations of George Soros.
“Seek them out and destroy them where they live”
Remembering Merck’s Australian doctor hit list
By John Leake | Courageous Discourse | February 3, 2025
This evening I pondered the news of Caroline Kennedy’s hit letter against her cousin, RFK, Jr., and the fact that she was the Biden Administration’s Ambassador to Australia, and the fact that she has served as a powerful ambassador for Merck’s Gardasil vaccine.
The association of Australia and Merck reminded me of the company’s “seek out and destroy” campaign against Australian doctors who expressed concern that the company’s blockbuster Vioxx seemed to be causing heart attacks and strokes. As was reported by CBS in May 2009:
Merck made a “hit list” of doctors who criticized Vioxx, according to testimony in a Vioxx class action case in Australia. The list, emailed between Merck employees, contained doctors’ names with the labels “neutralise,” “neutralised” or “discredit” next to them.
According to The Australian, Merck emails from 1999 showed company execs complaining about doctors who disliked using Vioxx. One email said:
“We may need to seek them out and destroy them where they live …”
During this same period in the United States, Merck was accused of concealing negative results of clinical Vioxx trials from the FDA and paying reputable doctors to put their names on research they did not conduct or write up. The company also published a fake journal, paying Elsevier to create a phony publication to serve as a marketing tool titled the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine.
Ultimately the company was found guilty of knowingly concealing data about the elevated risk of stroke and heart attack from Vioxx and agreed to pay a class action settlement to stroke and heart attack victims totaling $4.85 billion.
I wonder if the nice folks at Merck would ever yield to the temptation to overstate the benefits of the HPV vaccine and downplay its risks, as some plaintiffs have alleged. I also wonder if the company’s PR department might yield to the temptation to smear RFK, Jr. during his Senate confirmation process.
Or am I just being cynical?
RFK Jr. Wins Crucial Vote, Moves One Step Closer to Top HHS Post
By Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D. | The Defender | February 4, 2025
The Senate Finance Committee today narrowly advanced Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the full Senate for a confirmation vote.
The 14-13 vote along party lines came after Kennedy secured the vote of Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee that oversees HHS. Cassidy was the lone Republican considered to be a possible hold-out.
The Senate is expected to vote on Kennedy’s confirmation later this week or early next week, ABC News reported. The nomination “is likely to succeed absent any last-minute vote switches,” The Associated Press reported.
Kennedy, founder and former chairman of Children’s Health Defense (CHD), can be confirmed even if up to three Republican senators and all Democrats vote against him in the full Senate.
If confirmed, Kennedy will oversee a $1.7 trillion budget and 90,000 employees. HHS oversees 13 public health agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
During today’s committee meeting, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said, “It is time to put a disruptor” like Kennedy at the helm of the HHS. “I hope he goes wild,” Tillis said.
Shares of vaccine manufacturers and packaged food companies, including Pfizer, Moderna, BioNTech, Novavax, Kraft Heinz, General Mills, Mondelez and Hershey, dropped after today’s vote, Reuters reported.
CHD CEO Mary Holland welcomed today’s outcome. She said:
“CHD is delighted that the Finance Committee is sending RFK Jr.’s nomination to the full Senate. Given the 2024 presidential results, this seems only fitting. ‘Make America Healthy Again’ has become a worldwide rallying cry, and CHD is proud to be a foundational part of this movement.”
In a statement, Dr. Joseph Varon, president and chief medical officer of the Independent Medical Alliance, also welcomed today’s vote. He said:
“Americans demand a frank conversation about the state of our government healthcare agencies, and we’re very grateful for the Senators who responded by voting to move RFK Jr.’s nomination to the full Senate.
“RFK Jr. has been asking the tough questions, and he’s been unmoved in the face of big-corporate money campaigns against him.”
In a statement before the vote, Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), chair of the committee, said that if confirmed, Kennedy “will have the opportunity to deliver much-needed change to our nation’s healthcare system.”
Cassidy, Kennedy agree to ‘unprecedently close collaborative relationship’
During last week’s hearing in the Senate Finance Committee, Cassidy said he was “struggling” with some of Kennedy’s positions regarding vaccines.
“I’ve had very intense conversations with Bobby and the White House over the weekend and even this morning,” Cassidy posted on X earlier today. “I want to thank VP JD [Vance] specifically for his honest counsel. With the serious commitments I’ve received from the administration and the opportunity to make progress on the issues we agree on like healthy foods and a pro-American agenda, I will vote yes.”
Following today’s vote, Cassidy delivered remarks on the Senate floor, revealing the content of those discussions and the agreement he made with Kennedy to secure his vote.
He said Kennedy committed to a strong public health role for Congress and to meeting or speaking with Cassidy multiple times per month. They also agreed that Cassidy will participate in the hiring process for HHS and the public health agencies it oversees.
“He and I will have an unprecedently close collaborative relationship,” Cassidy said, noting that the hiring decisions that will follow “will allow us to represent all sides of those folks who have contacted me over this past weekend.”
Kennedy also agreed to maintain statements on the CDC website that vaccines do not cause autism and to maintain the recommendations of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Cassidy said he would also reject any attempt to remove the public’s access to “life-saving vaccines” without “iron-clad, causational scientific evidence” indicating otherwise. He also said he would carefully monitor any attempt to “wrongfully sow public confusion” about vaccines.
Cassidy conceded that “many mothers do need reassurance that the vaccine their child is receiving is necessary, effective, and most of all, safe” and expressed his support for Kennedy’s positions on toxic foods and reforming the NIH.
“These commitments, and my expectation that we can have a great working relationship to Make America Healthy Again, is the basis of my support,” Cassidy said, noting that institutions like NIH and FDA require “reform.”
During last week’s confirmation hearings, Kennedy emphasized his “Make America Healthy Again” agenda and said he would work to tackle the chronic disease epidemic in the U.S.
Kennedy also said he would implement “radical transparency” in HHS. He also voiced support for vaccines — if backed by “good science.”
Related articles in The Defender
- Kennedy Calls for ‘Radical Transparency’ at Government Health Agencies, as Sanders Demands CHD Stop Selling Onesies
- RFK Jr. Pushes Back on Chronic Disease, Autism and Agency Corruption
- ‘True Corruption’: Agency Capture Responsible for Chronic Disease Epidemic in U.S.
- ‘An Act of War’: Big Food Intentionally Addicting Kids to Toxic Foods
- Breaking: RFK Jr. Suspends Presidential Campaign, Will Join Forces With Trump to ‘Save Millions of Children’
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
“Human Rights NGOs” and the Corruption of Civil Society
By Glenn Diesen | February 4, 2025
Organisations operating under the banner of “human rights non-governmental organisations” (NGOs) have become key actors in disseminating war propaganda, intimidating academics, and corrupting civil society. These NGOs act as gatekeepers determining which voices should be elevated and which should be censored and cancelled.
Civil society is imperative to balance the power of the state, yet the state is increasingly seeking to hijack the representation of civil society through NGOs. NGOs can be problematic on their own as they can enable a loud minority to override a silent majority. Yet, 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 does not deviate significantly from government policies.
The ability of academics to speak openly and honestly is restricted by these gatekeepers. Case in point, the NGOs limit dissent in academic debates about the great power rivalry in Ukraine. Well-documented and proven facts that are imperative to understanding the conflict are simply 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 first outline my personal experiences with one of these NGOs, and second how the NGOs are hijacking civil society.
My Encounter with the Norwegian Helsinki Committee
The Norwegian Helsinki Committee is one of these “NGOs” financed by the government and the CIA-cutout 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 7-page article in a newspaper in which it was argued I 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 publicly shame and pressure the organisers to cancel my invitation. The NGO also openly attempt 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 labelling me a propagandist for Russia, they incite 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 responded by posting 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 organisation for non-fictional authors and translators (NFFO) and used his position there to cancel the organisation’s co-hosting of an event as I had been invited to speak. The Norwegian Helsinki Committee is also overrepresented in the Nobel Committee to ensure the right 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 spend more effort to demonise Julian Assange rather than exploring the human rights abuses he exposed.
This “human rights NGO” is devoted primarily to addressing human rights abuses in the East. Subsequently, all great power politics is framed as a competition between good values versus bad values. Constructing stereotypes for the in-group versus the out-groups as a conflict between good and evil is a key component of political propaganda. The complexity of security competition between the great powers is dumbed down and propagandised as a mere struggle between liberal democracy versus 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 took on a profound role in manipulating civil society in Europe. The intelligence agencies were embarrassed when they were caught, 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 as work on democracy and human rights. The “non-governmental” aspect of the NGOs is fraudulent as they are almost completely funded by the government 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 himself gave the inauguration speech when he established the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in 1983. Washington Post wrote that NED has been the “sugar daddy of overt operations” and “what used to be called ‘propaganda’ and can now simply be called ‘information'”.[1] 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”.[2] 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 marginalise a silent majority, and then sell it as “democracy”. Protests can therefore legitimise the overthrow of elected governments. The Guardian referred to the Ukrainian Orange Revolution in 2004 as “an American creation, a sophisticated and brilliantly conceived exercise in Western branding and mass marketing” for the purpose of “winning other people’s elections”.[3] Another article by the Guardian labelled 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”.[4] A similar regime change operation was repeated in Ukraine in 2014 to mobilise 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 it was followed by Washington asserting its dominance over key levers of power in Kiev.
Similar NGO 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 Georgia attacked South Ossetia. Recently, the Prime Minister of Georgia cautioned that the US was yet again using NGOs in an effort to topple the government to use his country as a second front against Russia.[5] Georgia’s democratically elected parliament passed a law with an overwhelming majority (83 in favour vs 23 against), for greater transparency over the funding of NGOs. Unsurprisingly, the Western NGOs decided that transparency over funding of NGOs was undemocratic, and it was labelled 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 responded by threatening Georgia with sanctions in the name of “supporting” Georgia’s civil society.
Civil Society Corrupted
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 freedom of the individual 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 businesses. 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. The universities should be a bastion of freedom and not 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 Kiev’, 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.
Forty Years Bashing the National Endowment for Democracy
By Jim Bovard | The Libertarian Institute | February 4, 2025
In a November 29, 1985 piece in the Oakland Tribune, I hailed NED as “one of the newest, most prestigious boondoggles on the Potomac.” But there were plenty of scoffers early on: “NED has been called many things—an International Political Action Committee, the Taxpayer Funding of Foreign Elections Program, and a slush fund for political hacks who like to travel to warm climates in cold weather. In less than two years, NED has lived up to all these epithets.” My op-ed concluded, “The sooner NED is abolished, the cleaner our foreign policy will be.”
The following year, after fresh NED scandals, Senator Ernest Hollings (D-SC) howled, “This thing is not the National Endowment for Democracy but the National Endowment for Embarrassment.” Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) complained, “From its very inception, the National Endowment for Democracy has been riddled with scandal and impropriety.”
But it was a “jobs for the boys” program that enabled politicians to launder money to plenty of their aides and donors, so it survived one pratfall after another.
In 2006, in “Defining Democracy Down” in The American Conservative, I wrote:
“In 2001, NED quadrupled its aid to Venezuelan opponents of elected president Hugo Chavez, and NED heavily funded some organizations involved in a bloody military coup that temporarily removed Chavez from power in April 2002. After Chavez retook control, NED and the State Department responded by pouring even more money into groups seeking his ouster.
The International Republican Institute, one of the largest NED grant recipients, played a key role both in the Chavez coup and also in the overthrow of Haiti’s elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In February 2004, an array of NED-aided groups and individuals helped spur an uprising that left 100 people dead and toppled Aristide. Brian Dean Curran, the U.S. ambassador to Haiti, warned Washington that the International Republican Institute’s actions ‘risked us being accused of attempting to destabilize the government.’
The U.S. pulled out all the stops to help our favored candidate win a ‘free and fair’ election in 2004 in the Ukraine. In the two years prior to the election, the United States spent over $65 million ‘to aid political organizations in Ukraine, paying to bring opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko to meet U.S. leaders and helping to underwrite exit polls indicating he won a disputed runoff election,’ according to the Associated Press. Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) complained that “much of that money was targeted to assist one particular candidate, and… millions of dollars ended up in support of the presidential candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.’ Yet with boundless hypocrisy, Bush had proclaimed that “any [Ukrainian] election… ought to be free from any foreign influence.”
In a 2009 piece for the Future of Freedom Foundation, I wrote, “NED is based on the notion that its meddling in foreign elections is automatically pro-democracy because the U.S. government is the incarnation of democracy. NED has always operated on the principle that ‘what’s good for the U.S. government is good for democracy.’”
In 2017, Donald Trump’s first administration dropped “democracy promotion” from the list of official goals of U.S. foreign policy. In a USA Today op-ed with the headline, “End Democracy Promotion Balderdash,” I wrote that the reform “could sharply reduce America’s piety exports… It is time to recognize the carnage the U.S. has sown abroad in the name of democracy.” I warned:
“Democracy promotion gives U.S. policymakers a license to meddle almost anywhere on Earth. The National Endowment for Democracy, created in 1983, has been caught interfering in elections in France, Panama, Costa Rica, Ukraine, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Russia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Haiti and many other nations… Rather than delivering political salvation, U.S. interventions abroad more often produce ‘no-fault carnage’ (no one in Washington is ever held liable).”
In a 2018 op-ed headlined “Time for the US to end democracy promotion flim-flams” in The Hill, I wrote:
“Democracy promotion has long been one of the U.S. government’s favorite foreign charades. The Trump administration’s proposal to slash funding for democratic evangelism is being denounced as if it were the dawn of a new Dark Age. But this is a welcome step to draining a noxious swath of the Washington swamp…
Unfortunately, many Washingtonians are blinded by self-serving sanctimony. National Democratic Institute president Kenneth Wollack claims that equating U.S. and Russian interventions in foreign elections is like ‘comparing someone who delivers lifesaving medicine to someone who brings deadly poison.’ But the opiate crisis illustrates how easily therapeutic concoctions can produce vast carnage…
Democracy often provides a vast improvement in governance in foreign lands but bribery, finagling, and bombing are poor ways to export freedom. Can Washington politicians and policy wonks explain why the U.S. government deserves veto power over elections everywhere else on Earth?”
Since that 2018 op-ed, NED became a top funder of the worldwide Censorship Industrial Complex. It has also continued trying to rig foreign elections. NED tacitly justifies itself because “God wants democracy to win.” The U.S. government is simply doing God’s work—or doing what God would do if he knew as much as U.S. government agencies.
In 1984, Congressman Hank Brown (R-CO) provided a single sentence that should have nullified NED’s right to exist: “It is a contradiction to try to promote free elections by interfering in them.” But contradictions never stopped the growth of Leviathan. NED’s continued existence is a testament to the perpetual perfidy of U.S. foreign policy. With pressure from Musk and from the Trump administration, Americans may soon learn of far more NED scandals.
USAID closes headquarters – media
RT | February 3, 2025
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has closed its main office in Washington DC, with most personnel told to stay away from the building, multiple US media outlets reported on Monday. The development comes after US President Donald Trump accused the agency’s leadership of being “radical lunatics” and proposed major changes to the organization.
Established in 1961, USAID is responsible for administering foreign aid and development programs abroad to promote American interests.
According to an email obtained and shared by CNN, USAID leadership directed that the “headquarters at the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, D.C. be closed to Agency personnel on Monday, February 3, 2025.”
“Agency personnel normally assigned to work at USAID headquarters will work remotely tomorrow, with the exception of personnel with essential on-site and building maintenance functions individually contacted by senior leadership,” the letter said.
AP has confirmed the email, adding that more than 600 employees discovered overnight that they had been locked out of USAID’s computer systems.
The development comes after Trump blasted the agency, arguing that “it’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics.” “We’re getting them out, and then we’ll make a decision,” he said.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and a close ally of the US president, has also been a fierce critic of USAID. He described it as a “criminal organization” which he believes was financing bioweapon research, including projects that allegedly led to the emergence of Covid-19.
“It became apparent that it’s not an apple with a worm in it. What we have is just a ball of worms. You’ve got to basically get rid of the whole thing. It’s beyond repair,” Musk said.
He also revealed that he had spoken with Trump, claiming that the president had “agreed” that USAID should be shut down.
The crackdown on USAID comes after the Trump administration suspended foreign assistance, with a few exceptions. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the US would carry out a program-by-program review to determine which projects make “America safer, stronger or more prosperous.” He claimed that shutting down US-funded programs during the 90-day review had resulted in “a lot more cooperation” from recipients of various assistance.
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From the Archives
Fourteen Incredible Facts About 9/11
By Kevin Ryan | Dig Within | August 8, 2015
… What is known about 9/11 is that there are many incredible facts that continue to be ignored by the government and the mainstream media. Here are fourteen.
- An outline of what was to become the 9/11 Commission Report was produced before the investigation began. The outline was kept secret from the Commission’s staff and appears to have determined the outcome of the investigation.
- The 9/11 Commission claimed sixty-three (63) times in its Report that it could find “no evidence” related to important aspects of the crimes.
- One person, Shayna Steiger, issued 12 visas to the alleged hijackers in Saudi Arabia. Steiger issued some of the visas without interviewing the applicants and fought with another employee at the embassy who tried to prevent her lax approach.
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