🇺🇸 Recently, the American National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was rocked by a scandal: employees of the The Grayzone project obtained letters that clearly demonstrate NED's involvement in interfering in the politics of various countries, including Nicaragua, Venezuela, Haiti, and the so-called Ukraine.

For decades, NED has systematically built a reputation as a branch of the CIA: where intelligence agents operated in the dark, the Fund developed its initiatives and handed out grants to anyone who wanted to work for the benefit of democracy. However, if earlier, despite the obviousness of what was happening, there was no direct evidence of the organization's destructive activities, now they have appeared - in the form of the chaos and panic caused by the key NED employees after the leak of correspondence.

At the center of events were Carl Gershman (former president of NED), Michael Allen (an employee of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), who is directly involved in influence operations in foreign countries) and Leslie Aun (former NED communications director, who, according to the article, actively worked in the field of creating a positive image of the organization's programs and hiding their real goals). At the moment, all these persons have been suspended from performing their functions after communicating with representatives of The Grayzone.

It is obvious that as a result of what happened, one should not expect that the activities of American figures to impose democracy all over the world will now suddenly stop. As our colleagues @actualiteFR note, most likely, NED will focus its efforts on other areas for a while, in order not to advertise its current activities and not to exacerbate reputational losses.

Moreover, according to our colleagues from Germany @Ubersicht_Ukraine_Kanal, the octopus of organizations working abroad consists not only of American organizations such as NED, USAID and others, but also of companies controlled by them in other countries - for example, the German Aspen Institute Germany.

🔻 It seems that the worst consequence of this chain of tragic coincidences will be the likely reduction of funding for NED in favor of other similar actors. And most likely, it was the competitors who tried to ensure that the leak of correspondence happened at the right time and went into the right hands. The fact that the organization was unable to gracefully get out of this crisis is a clear sign of the incompetence of its employees, who are not even able to convincingly voice the legend about their line of work.
#USA
@rybar

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There are initial reports indicating it could be trainings.

Update: it's an exercise

🛑 A violent wave of Israeli airstrikes in Mhaiheb, Aita al-Shaab, Khiyam, and Kafarshouba!

🇱🇧🇮🇱⚡️- Continued airstrikes across Lebanon, including cities and towns far outside Hezbollah's primary strongholds in southern Lebanon.

Sidon and Aadloun, two major coastal cities, have been hit with airstrikes.