Faced with dwindling church congregations in Germany, spiritual leaders are getting creative in their efforts to attract young people. The numbers of people leaving both the Catholic and Protestant Churches have been on the rise for years, reaching a new high in 2022: about 900,000 people turned their backs on their church - over half a million of whom were Catholics.

So, the top clergy are putting their heads together and coming up with new ways to become more attractive. Creative and original church services are intended to make going to church cool again. Euromaxx reporter Meggin Leigh's report looks at pop-media worshipping in times of Harry Potter, Star Wars and techno music.

https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-churches-get-creative-about-new-ways-to-worship/video-72000783

Gus: This would be a funny light-hearted item of news but it underlines one of the tactics by the POWERS of beliefs to control people's mind. As Australians are going to the ballot box soon, probably May 3rd 2025, understanding the manipulations of information is going to be crucial. Pearls and Irritations tells us: 

Australian voters heading to the polls need to be aware there’s little standing between them and potential manipulation of information by vested interests.

The loss of Australia’s go-to political fact-checker and the rise of AI tools has created a crisis for political accountability just as the nation’s voters prepare to go to the polls.

Professional fact-checkers have never been under more pressure and social media users face a complex and fast-evolving misinformation landscape.

It’s crucial voters understand the situation in the lead-up to the vote.

This federal election will be the first without ABC RMIT Fact Check, which completed its first fact check during the Rudd-Abbott election of 2013.

It will also be Australia’s first federal election since the release of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools that have heralded a new normal of AI-generated political advertising and propaganda.

The risk to accountability is a win for vested interests in Australia’s political and media systems. It means there is even more potential for those vested interests to manipulate information for their own benefit rather than the public good.

Australia needs political parties to commit to ethical use of AI in their campaigning and bipartisan support for improved human-AI detection tools created by fact-checkers and for fact-checkers and journalists, to improve media information integrity systems.

What happened to political fact-checking

Independent fact-checking has faced a public legitimacy crisis in the past few years, mirroring similar crises of trust in news.

The crisis is driven in part by politicians’ denigrations of online investigative research activities, which is related to distrust of the fact-checking movement by far-right politicians and their allies around the world.

In Australia, the end of fact-checking arrangements between the ABC and RMIT University happened in 2024 amid a media furore in the lead-up to the Voice to Parliament referendum. Conservative media depicted RMIT Fact Lab, another entity under RMIT’s professional fact-checking wing, as grossly biased.

Claims of fact-checkers’ political bias hinge on observations that right-leaning voices tend to share news content that diverges from established consensus more often, resulting in a relatively high proportion of their claims being fact-checked.

The suspension of RMIT Fact Lab’s membership of Meta’s third-party fact-checking program cast a long shadow over the credibility of fact-checking, reflecting similar questions to those recently posed in the United States about the role of truth in politics.

Australia still has two locally-owned fact-checking units – ABC’s in-house fact-checker ABC News Verify and Australian Associated Press fact-checking service – as well as AFP Australia, the local division of Agence France-Presse’s fact-checking operation.

Australian fact-checkers have been part of a push for political accountability and depolarisation, responding to the concerns of Australians about the interplay between private interests in politics and media organisations and the public interest, including the roles of big tech in moderating information online.

There have been calls for greater accountability and transparency in news reporting, but fact-checkers worldwide have experienced setbacks.

At the start of the year, Meta announced that it was ending its third-party fact-checking program in the United States and making changes to its content-moderation policies. The changes would amplify political content and allow content targeting vulnerable minorities that it previously considered contentious and divisive.

This move signalled a crisis for professional fact-checkers, journalists and misinformation researchers.

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, under pressure from Donald Trump and other conservative critics of Meta’s third-party fact-checking program, claimed US fact-checking was akin to censorship. That echoed accusations of partisan censorship in Europe, the Philippines and Australia.

Alternatives to independent fact-checking

Zuckerberg claims the answers to Meta’s controversial information integrity problems will be found in a Community Notes-style program, modelled on the program developed on Twitter and used on Elon Musk’s X.

While such an approach could provide some value in terms of contextualising misleading content, it does little to address complex online harms.

Recent studies have found independent fact-checkers are frequently cited in Community Notes, and that successful community moderation relies on professional fact-checking.

Human-AI approaches are also increasing, with X’s Community Notes employing a bridging algorithm that assesses contributors before posting a correction to content.

However, there are flaws in that system.

Professional fact-checking has been notoriously challenging to scale so fact-checkers have also been experimenting with AI-based approaches. However, they are limited by time and resources.

What this means for Australia

There are already signs of problematic AI use in political communication, including politicians being edited using AI to engage audiences, often at the expense of other candidates or parties.

This is done through carrying unsanctioned or uncharacteristic messaging to attack or cause confusion around certain policies or politicians, through parody as well as deception.

While Meta recently committed to labelling content that it identifies as being generated with AI, evidence suggests that labelling content as generated does little to reduce its perceived credibility. In other words, the power of AI for political communication is not just its ability to deceive, but to persuade – both cheaply and at scale.

These practices could deceive or manipulate voters and even lead to a loss of faith in institutional systems or authentic evidence being discredited.

The defunding and delegitimisation of professional fact-checkers threatens their ability to provide context and explanation and impedes their investigative abilities to better understand the problematic media landscape.

The end of platform-supported fact-checking in the United States also sets a precedent for digital platforms to enter into covert agreements with elected officials, furthering individual political or economic agendas, instead of creating policies that serve the public interest.

In Australia, there is the potential for future political dealmaking between influencers or power brokers, platform owners like Musk and Zuckerberg and segments of the Australian elite, which would cause more public confusion and disillusionment.

Republished from 360info, 24 March 2025

https://johnmenadue.com/why-voting-in-a-fact-checking-void-should-worry-you/

THE NEW EDITOR OF PEARLS AND IRRITATIONS ALSO TELLS US:

With the news that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will make the trip to Government House early today, and the election will be called for May 3, Pearls and Irritations begins its election coverage.

Over the 5 weeks of the campaign, leading up to the poll, we will bring you nuanced pieces, with a view to the important issues, election related and not. We will not ignore the theatrics that are a part of any campaign but will also focus on important matters that are not being talked about, and the seismic global issues that continue to swirl around us.

Declining trust in politics and parliamentary process, and what communities are doing to counter this and provide solutions, will be a focus.

We will be calling on our powerful network of authors to harness their hard-earned understanding of the Australian system, to help us intelligently navigate the choices that await us at the ballot box.

Our first story, reminds us that this is the only federal election since 2013 that will be without the ABC RMIT Fact Check unit. The rapid rise of artificial intelligence, and deep fakes, mean that the potential for carefully curated misinformation is bigger than ever. You can be assured that Pearls and Irritations will bring you the best, reliable, evidence-informed stories.

Catriona Jackson
Editor, Pearls and Irritations

---------------------------------------

WHAT HAS ALL THIS TO DO WITH THE NED — THE National Endowment for Democracy?

DEMOCRACY IS A FRAGILE CONCEPT IN WHICH WE, VOTERS, ARE ALLOWED TO CHOSE OUR POISON... OUR DEMOCRACIES ARE RUN BY MOSTLY DECEITFUL CHARACTERS WITH UNSETTLING IDEOLOGIES... WE ARE LUCKY THAT THE "PUBLIC SERVICE", THE TOOL OF IMPLEMENTATION OF DEMOCRATIC CHOICES HAS INERTIA — MEANING IT IS SLOW IN REACTING TO CHANGE. BUT EVEN THE "PUBLIC SERVICE" CAN FALL TO CORRUPT PRACTICES, WITHIN A COUNTRY OR DESIGNED TO INFLUENCE OTHER COUNTRIES — UNDER THE DECEPTION OF FREEDOM AND OTHER DUBIOUS DEVICES. 

THE DOGE IN AMERICA IS PUSHING HARD TO DEMOLISH THIS BASTION OF RESISTANCE. SOME GOOD THINGS ARE BEING DEMOLISHED, BUT SOME BAD INFLUENCES ARE BEING EXPOSED AND ALSO TAKEN OUT. 

THE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY BEING A CASE OF "GOOD MAKING DEALS WITH THE DEVIL", WE SHALL STUDY IN DETAILS...

The role that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) play in facilitating the progressive policy agenda has garnered significant attention over the last several years. These NGOs, which utilize so-called “soft power” to enforce progressive orthodoxy in the increasingly corrupt institutions of the administrative state, receive significant taxpayer-funded resources through federal grants and appropriations. These resources are then utilized to empower a constellation of entities that create a “whole of society” approach to reinforce the prerogatives of a woke and weaponized federal bureaucracy at the expense of the American people’s well-being and interests.

Some Members of Congress have correctly begun targeting these entities for their prominent role in facilitating the Biden administration’s border crisis under the guise of providing “humanitarian aid.”1 The scope of NGO activities, however, is far more encompassing than merely providing manufactured emotional cover for the border invasion ravaging America’s communities. Indeed, NGOs are at the forefront of efforts to export woke ideology abroad, drag the United States into unending military conflicts, and censor disfavored political movements both overseas and at home.

Defunding these harmful organizations should be a top priority for both the 119th Congress and the incoming Trump administration.

In Focus: The National Endowment for Democracy

The NGO that has arguably received the most public scrutiny—both historically and recently—is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Created in 1983 at the height of the Cold War, NED was conceived by former CIA Director William Casey and former CIA operative Walter Raymond Jr.2 The entity is a “quasi-independent” non-governmental organization designed to take what were once covert CIA practices and put an overt sheen on them beneath the stated aim to grow and strengthen democratic institutions around the world.3 NED accomplishes this through the dispersal of grant monies to favored and well-connected interests abroad. This dynamic purportedly allows activities to maintain an air of independence from official U.S. government actions.

Some of NED’s early activities in the 1980s included bankrolling dissident groups in Soviet bloc states as well as funding anti-communist organizations in strategic geopolitical locations throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa. These efforts saw some success at foiling communist Soviet influences abroad while simultaneously reinforcing anti-communist narratives out of Washington, D.C. For example, grant resources from NED were used to grow the Solidarity movement in Poland and help that nation transition toward a free-market democracy after the collapse of the Soviet Union.4 

President Ronald Reagan once described the concept of NED in a speech to the British Parliament as an operation designed to “foster the infrastructure of democracy—the system of free press, unions, political parties, universities.”5 As a tool to combat communism, one can argue that NED achieved its designated objectives in 1991 following the Soviet Union’s collapse. However, as is the case with most government-affiliated entities, NED metastasized into something else entirely in order to justify its continued existence. The fall of the Berlin Wall began the organization’s steady evolution into an actively harmful and increasingly opaque entity hostile to the interests of the American people.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a memo in 1991 that suggested NED provide specific rationales for its ongoing operations following the Soviet collapse. This turned into a strategic plan released by NED’s board the following year, which reoriented the organization toward more deliberate efforts to “expand its programs in those countries and regions where democratic breakthroughs have yet to occur.”6 Among the locations listed for future intervention were China, Vietnam, Cuba, Africa, and the Middle East.7

It is little surprise then that in the following decades, NED became a leading tool for neoconservative nation-building exercises both before and after the 9/11 attacks. This includes training and financing key political movements in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, and other nations that sparked the so-called “Arab Spring” in 2011, directly contributing to the geopolitical turmoil that has engulfed the Middle East over the last 13 years.8 Among the groups unintentionally empowered by NED’s “pro-democracy” meddling in the Middle East are radical jihadists like the Houthis in Yemen, the Al-Nusra Front in Syria, and the Islamic State (otherwise known as ISIS) in Syria and Iraq. 

Further, NED served as the tip of the proverbial spear for heightened CIA and State Department efforts to foster political revolution in Ukraine. A steady stream of NED grants to myriad Ukrainian political entities and movements advanced both the ‘Orange Revolution’ and ‘Maidan Revolution’ that paved the way for the current Ukraine-Russia war.9 Among the hundreds of grants to Ukrainian political entities going back to 2014 are payments to judicial organizations and judges, grants to NATO-adjacent political entities like the European Institute for Democracy, and funding for the Media Development Foundation to train Ukrainians to develop effective anti-Russian propaganda.

Before NED turned off its searchable grants feature in 2022, data showed the organization had funneled tens of millions in U.S. dollars to Ukrainian entities and anti-Russian interests in Ukraine with more than 330 unique grants.10 During the height of the Orange Revolution in 2005, NED infused more than $2.3 million directly into anti-Russian institutions and activists—including the activist arms of Ukrainian political parties and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations—in support of preferred candidate Viktor Yushchenko.11 NED’s funding streams for anti-Russian activists and institutions increased by 52 percent the following year to more than $3.5 million following the end of the Orange Revolution.12 

In 2022, one of NED’s special projects, called the “Center for International Media Assistance,” outlined the role that international NGOs played in helping facilitate both the 2004-05 Orange Revolution and the 2014 Maidan Revolution in Ukraine.13 It is imperative to note that among the results of NED’s activity in Ukraine was the ouster of pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych, followed by the outbreak of war in eastern Ukraine that resulted in the Russian annexation of Crimea. At the time of the Maidan Revolution in 2014, foreign policy scholar John Mearsheimer laid the blame for the outbreak of war in Crimea at the feet of the West, with particular emphasis on NED’s meddling in the country. Mearsheimer quoted then-president, Carl Gershman, characterizing Ukraine as “the biggest prize.”14 Yet, it was populist political movements in the United States and other Western nations that pushed NED from being merely harmful to America’s national interests to engaging in outright hostility. What began as an NGO designed to deter communist aggression transformed into a fully partisan political weapon aimed at delegitimizing popular democratic movements at odds with modern progressive orthodoxy.

Background: A Growing Record of Weaponization and Radicalism

The rise in populism and nationalist political movements in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere over the last decade sparked a significant internal shift within NED and like-minded NGOs. The culmination of paradigm-shattering election results in the United Kingdom with Brexit, the first election of President Donald Trump in the United States, and the rise of nationalist movements in India and Brazil presented direct threats to the established transatlantic consensus of globalist elites.

In 2016, NED’s long-standing bipartisan approach was abandoned in an overt effort to stop and then stymie President Trump. The former president of NED, Carl Gershman, published an op-ed one month before the election pushing the now-debunked Russia hoax that President Trump was working with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to win the election.15 Board member Jendaya Frazer stated in 2016 that she was a Republican, but said she would “rather my country not go down the fascist route” when referencing Donald Trump’s nomination.16 Writing for the globalist Atlantic Council in 2019, NED board member and current president Damon Wilson claimed that President Trump had “an uncanny ability to divide both Americans and the United States from its democratic allies.”17 

These efforts to delegitimize domestic political movements and leaders as “threats to democracy” have not abated. Robert Kagan, who sits on the editorial board of NED’s Journal of Democracy, penned an op-ed in 2023 arguing that Trump voters were akin to Germans who supported Adolf Hitler.18 Rachel Kleinfeld, who sits on NED’s board, offered only slightly less extreme rhetoric when she claimed that the Republican Party is an antidemocratic operation under Trump.19 

Another NED board member, Anne Applebaum, published a recent book characterizing President Trump as an authoritarian in the same mold as Vladimir Putin and Nicolas Maduro.20She then doubled down before November’s election, arguing that the populist America First movement led by President Trump “dehumanizes” people, allegedly by utilizing similar language as Hiter, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Mussolini.21 As a sitting NED board member, Applebaum compared the former and soon-to-be future President of the United States to the most evil despots in history, who murdered or were responsible for the deaths of more than 100 million human beings.

Similar attacks have been levied by NED staffers against other prominent populist leaders: Narendra Modi in India,22 Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil,23 and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador.24 This new strategy comports with NED’s brazen progressive shift over the last decade, with the organization transitioning from promoting democracy abroad to countering disfavored democratic movements that threaten the CIA and State Department’s ability to control narratives and maintain power in nation-states.

This shift has been adopted by NED staffers as de facto doctrine through a clever sleight of hand to alter the meaning of democracy. As characterized by former State Department official Mike Benz, “There’s been a redefinition of democracy from meaning the consensus of individuals to meaning the consensus of institutions.”25 Under that definition, any political movement or politician that opposes the agenda of these globalist institutions is, by way of this new standard, a “threat to democracy.” Or as Benz puts it, “What they are doing to populism is what they used to do to communism.”26

Perhaps the most disturbing evolution in NED’s increasingly weaponized posture toward the American people is its role in promulgating censorship campaigns abroad and at home against American citizens. The current NED president, Damon Wilson, helped develop the Digital Forensic Research Laboratory (DFRLab). This entity was one of four founding members of the Election Integrity Partnership, which worked hand-in-glove with Big Tech entities and the Department of Homeland Security to censor Americans during the 2020 presidential election.27In fact, a bombshell report revealed that NED was one of the key facilitators of the “censorship industrial complex” through the funneling of grant dollars to a British anti-speech organization called the Global Disinformation Index (GDI).28

The report showed that GDI had taken significant grant funding from both NED and the State Department’s Global Engagement Center—another weaponized entity in need of permanent dissolution. With that funding, GDI had labeled the top ten “riskiest” news outlets in the United States as the American Spectator, Newsmax, The Federalist, The American Conservative, One America News, The Blaze, The Daily Wire, RealClearPolitics, Reason, and The New York Post.29GDI then flagged these conservative and right-leaning publications as bastions of disinformation to corporate publications in an attempt to dry up advertising dollars and blacklist them.

Following the release of the report linking NED to domestic censorship efforts, NED severed ties with GDI. Nevertheless, the damage to NED’s legitimacy is permanent and its lengthy track record of outright hostility toward half the American citizenry cannot be denied. The anti-democratic authoritarians running NED have come full circle: “strengthening democracy” by waging war on the Constitution and the very foundations of American free speech and political freedom.

It is a sickening twist of irony that the very entity once created to allegedly “foster the infrastructure of democracy” has instead become one of the bleeding edge tools to undermine it. 

Policy Approach: An Entity Ripe for Removal

Funded almost entirely by congressional appropriations to the State Department, NED disperses grants to entities in places where traditional U.S. diplomatic infrastructure is limited or constrained by local considerations. NED funding is not considered a line item, as the appropriations go to the Department of State, which operates a grant agreement with NED codified in the National Endowment for Democracy Act of 1983. The State Department is also authorized to provide discretionary grants as needed to NED beyond the existing funding arrangement. Annual appropriations have spiked since NED’s inception, growing from roughly $15 million during the Cold War to more than $362 million in FY2023.30 In fact, NED has received over $1 billion in federal grants over the last four years. 

During the Cold War, the locales that received most of NED’s attention included eastern Europe, and other Soviet bloc states. Unsurprisingly, the post-Cold War era has seen the footprint and mission profile of NED significantly expand to now incorporate activities in roughly 130 nations. 

Through these funds, NED operates the Journal of Democracy, a publication aimed at reinforcing the globalist consensus among political elites to ensure continued alignment with the organization’s new mission to thwart populist political movements. Funding is also used to funnel grant money to entities that promulgate the established ideological consensus within the State Department and CIA—whether its support for perpetuating the Ukraine-Russia war, advancing woke ideology on abortion and LGBT issues, or dogmatically demonizing political leaders skeptical of the failed uniparty foreign policy establishment.

NED grantees have historically spanned the gamut of political and socioeconomic leanings—with longstanding ties to organizations like the International Republican Institute (IRI) and National Democratic Institute (NDI) as well as the international affiliates for the Chamber of Commerce and AFL-CIO. These entities have historically received a large share of NED’s annual funding and comprise the “core four” components of NED’s engagement arm as representatives of the two major political parties, corporate America, and labor.31 

Just prior to the outbreak of war in Ukraine and following its culpability in the censorship of American citizens during the 2020 election cycle, NED curiously ended its longstanding transparency practice of publishing the list of its grant recipients. This year, the organization labeled nearly the entirety of its State Department-funneled appropriation as “sensitive” in order to justify hiding its grantees from the public.32 This sudden opacity has not gone unnoticed, with independent audits determining that NED has remained out of compliance for the last several years regarding its statutory obligations to report grantees of their federal dollars.33 Simply put, the organization is out of control and behaving in a manner that suggests a belief among its leadership that it is accountable to no one.

In 2018, President Trump released his budget proposal, which slashed NED’s funding by 60 percent. A full-scale counterattack was launched by NED and its allies in the corporate press and elite D.C. political circles that temporarily blunted efforts to cut the organization’s funding.34 Six years later, it is abundantly clear that the tide has turned, and there is now a political mandate for aggressively defunding weaponized entities like NED, which have advanced priorities antithetical to America’s national interests and declared war on significant swaths of the citizenry.

The reasons for defunding NED are as numerous as they are imperative. Among the most clear and pressing rationales include:

1. 1. Ukraine Warmongering: NED has been at the forefront of fomenting political revolution in Ukraine for two decades through tens of millions of dollars in grants to Ukrainian political, security, and socioeconomic entities. NED has helped drag the United States into a war that is not in the U.S. national interest.

1. 2. Middle East Meddling: NED actively facilitated dissident political groups throughout the Arab world that directly led to the “Arab Spring” and the subsequent turmoil that has engulfed much of the Middle East. These actions have empowered deadly jihadist groups from Libya to Iraq.

1. 3. Partisan Weaponization: NED’s leadership has abandoned any pretense of bipartisan comity and unity of purpose through the bombastically partisan activities of its board members. Unapologetic efforts to delegitimize President Donald Trump and the American political right underscore the organization as yet another weaponized entity.

1. 4. Increased Opacity: NED has abandoned its transparent grantmaking process and, for the last three years, has mostly obfuscated its grant recipients from the American public. It is a curiosity that this occurred after its role in censoring Americans and in the lead-up to the outbreak of war in Ukraine. This sudden divestment from transparency has only increased concerns that NED is funneling taxpayer resources to entities that are dragging Americans into conflicts abroad and that seek to censor the very citizens who fund the organization.

1. 5. Tyrannical Domestic Censorship Efforts: NED is complicit in utilizing taxpayer resources to fund campaigns aimed at censoring American citizens and blacklisting conservative media organizations in order to tilt elections in favor of progressive outcomes.

Bottom Line: NED is actively participating in the censorship of American citizens who hold “undesirable” opinions in a wholesale attack on the First Amendment and the very idea of America in the absurd name of “promoting democracy.” It is operating a rogue foreign policy independent of the Executive Branch (i.e. President) that is fomenting wars in Eastern Europe and the Middle East that are not in America’s national security interests and threaten the well-being of the American people. 

The United States Congress must defund all appropriations to NED in the 119th Congress and enact statutory provisions that prohibit State Department funding from flowing into NED. If the organization wants to operate as a “quasi-independent” agency, then as a fully partisan entity advancing anti-American globalist policies it can attempt to survive through donations. An NGO actively at war with at least half the American public that continues to advocate for policies contrary to those espoused by the soon-to-be sitting President of the United States is simply not one that should continue to receive hundreds of millions in annual taxpayer funds.

The time to defund NED has arrived. It is also imperative for policymakers to realize that NED is but one of many “quasi-independent” entities operating on behalf of the consent of the ruling institutional elite instead of the consent of the governed. To that end, NED must be the first of many dominoes to ensure that unelected bureaucrats and radical ideologues no longer possess the ability to thwart the will of the American people.

Other entities that should be considered as hostile toward an America First policy agenda that should have their taxpayer funding eliminated or blocked include:

• The Center for an Informed Public, which is led by radical progressive professor Kate Starbird and is complicit in domestic censorship campaigns, received over $2 million in funding from the National Science Foundation.35
• The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, which provides services and transportation to illegal immigrants entering the United States, received roughly 80 percent of its funding from taxpayers in 2021.36 
• Meedan, an emerging nonprofit that is developing technologies to censor “misinformation,” received $5.7 million in funding from the National Science Foundation.37
• Digital Forensic Research Lab, a brainchild of the Atlantic Council and Damon Wilson, actively participated in efforts to censor American citizens during the 2020 elections.

Concluding Assessment

NGOs have become the vanguards of progressive orthodoxy. Many of these quasi-independent organizations fuel woke and weaponized ideologies and a whole-of-society approach that steers government resources toward radical progressive priorities. Further, the ostensible veil of independence that NGOs claim to possess with regard to the official activities of federal agencies is often little more than a technicality.

The National Endowment for Democracy remains the soft power arm of both the CIA and the U.S. State Department. It is an entity that advances a policy agenda designed to protect the institutions at war with the American people and to assail domestic political movements that dare to prioritize the interests of American citizens over global elites. The time to permanently defund this rogue and actively harmful NGO has arrived.

https://americarenewing.com/primer-the-national-endowment-for-democracy-and-an-ngo-ecosystem-actively-undermining-america/

ONE OF THE COMMENTS IN ONE RT ARTICLE (Zelensky speaks of ‘hatred of Russians’) TELLS US:

The Kagans clan has been on the best terms with banderites [UKRAINIAN NAZIS] since at least 1997
(see PNAC).
The very jewish NED (prez Karl Gershman, a jew) was heavily involved in the Nazification of Ukraine.
When the piggish jewish warmonger Nuland-Kagan came to Kiev (with money and cookies in 2014, she was greeted by the Ukrainian Nazi Party «Svoboda,» its leader Parubyj became a commandant of the Zionist-Nazi regime change in Kiev. The prez of the jewish community of Ukraine, Kolomojsky, formed and financed four Nazi battalions to protect his properties in Donbas (see the Wall Street Journal article about the «fiesty» Kolomojsky).
The Nazi Azov battalion is particularly loved by Israeli (who invited and celebrated the Azovites in Israel) and by US jews, who celebrated Azovites in the Disney World, Florida. Banderites and zionists joined together in their hatred of Russia. In this Judea War on Russia, ordered by bankers who need to loot Russian resources to maintain the criminal banking Ponzi scheme, Ukrainians were used by the bankers as cannon fodder. Currently, the banderite idiots send Ukrainian teenagers to die for the glory of Nuland-Kagan and Bandera, and for Zelensky’, Yermak’, Melnyk’, Reznikov’, Kuleba’ plump offshore accounts.

WE SHALL TAKE IT FROM HERE.... from the KYIV INDEPENDENT: 

Ukraine's Bureau of Economic Security reported on Aug. 21 that it had concluded a pre-trial investigation against Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky.

Kolomoisky, one of Ukraine's most infamous business tycoons, was arrested on Sept. 2, 2023, for alleged fraud, illegal acquisition of property, and money laundering related to his oil and gas holdings. He is the wealthiest businessman to have landed behind bars in Ukraine's independent history.

Kolomoisky's defense now has access to the pre-trial investigation materials for review, the Bureau of Economic Security said. Meanwhile, the investigation against other members of the group allegedly organized and managed by the oligarch is ongoing, according to the statement.

The completed investigation concerns the alleged illegal actions with bank documents when the suspect failed to deposit Hr 5.8 billion (around $140 million) into the bank's cash desk and the embezzlement of over Hr 5.3 billion (around $129 million).

The prosecutors said that part of the money Kolomoisky allegedly embezzled and transferred to his account, some Hr 2 billion ($48 million), was obtained at the expense of loans from PrivatBank, a Ukrainian bank formerly owned by Kolomoisky.

The bureau also said its detectives proved that Kolomoisky had organized the illegal seizure of more than Hr 3.3 billion ($ 80 million) from Ukrnafta, Ukraine's largest oil producer previously affiliated with the oligarch.

The Prosecutor General's Office announced on May 8 that Kolomoisky was also suspected of ordering the murder of the head of a law firm more than 20 years ago in Crimea.

Kolomoisky, together with five associates, was charged by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) with embezzling Hr 9.2 billion ($223 million) from PrivatBank, the NABU announced on Sept. 7, 2024.

In 2016, the Ukrainian government nationalized PrivatBank, the country's largest bank - when Kolomoisky co-owned it, the bank's fraudulent activities left a $5.5 billion hole in its ledger.

https://kyivindependent.com/ukraines-bureau-of-economic-security-completes-investigation-against-oligarch-kolomoisky/

The billionaire who has holdings in metal, petroleum, and the media sector, is not only tied to the Bidens and Zelensky but has funded neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine, reports say.

In March of 2022, the Kanekoa News blog on Substack.com had noted: “The real person who was the benefactor to, and the boss of, Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, at the Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings, was not the CEO of Burisma Holdings, Mykola Zlochevsky. Instead, it was Ihor Kolomoysky, who was part of the newly installed Ukrainian government, which the Obama Administration itself had just installed in Ukraine, in what the head of the ‘private CIA’ firm Stratfor correctly called ‘the most blatant coup in history.’ ”

Ties between Kolomoysky and the Biden family were first reported by the New York Post and the British press in 2020. According to the NY Post report of Oct. 31, 2020:

He is not the type of ‘businessman’ the Bidens would want to be associated with, said one Ukraine expert. In August, the U.S. Justice Department accused Kolomoisky of robbing billions from the PrivatGroup bank he owned and using the many companies he has all over the world, including the U.S., to launder it.

The Bond villain-like Kolomoisky, 57, reportedly kept a live shark in a huge tank in his office to intimidate visitors, and once called the 5-foot-7 Russian President Vladimir Putin a ‘schizophrenic dwarf.’

A 2012 study of Burisma Holdings done in Ukraine by the AntiCorruption Action Centre (ANTAC), an investigative nonprofit co-funded by American billionaire George Soros and the U.S. State Department, found the valid owner of Burisma Holdings was Kolomoysky.

The study, which was funded in order to dig up dirt on Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, found that Kolomoysky “managed to seize the largest reserves of natural gas in Ukraine.”

Kanekoa News noted that Burisma Holdings changed owners in 2011 when it was taken over by an off-shore Cyprus enterprise called Brociti Investments Ltd, and subsequently, moved addresses under the same roof as Ukrnaftoburinnya and Esko-Pivnich, two Ukrainian gas companies which happened to be also owned by Kolomoysky through off-shore entities in the British Virgin Islands.

https://www.worldtribune.com/who-is-ihor-kolomoysky-billionaires-funds-went-to-biden-zelensky-murderous-militias/

KOLOMOYSKY IS THE BILLIONAIRE WHO FINANCED ZELENSKY RISE TO POWER...

THE ALLIANCE OF MI6, THE NAZIS AND OF THE JEWISH CABAL HAS BEEN DESIGNED TO DESTROY RUSSIA. RUSSIA'S NON-DICTATOR VLADIMIR PUTIN KNOWS ALL THIS, BUT HE CANNOT EXPOSE THIS "DIPLOMATICALLY", EXCEPT IN "DISCREET UNDERTONES" WHILE RUSSIA DISCUSS A DEAL WITH TRUMP'S AMERICA...

VOTE FOR ALBO, PLEASE...

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