WikiLeaks Lives!
This 'blockbuster report' reveals USAID worked to censor billions of people world-wide.
WikiLeaks (remember this watchdog organization started by Julian Assange?) just published a “blockbuster” report showing that:
USAID Funded Massive 'News' Platform, Extending 'Censorship Industrial Complex' To Billions Worldwide
Wikilieaks’ reporting was summarized in a story published at Zero Hedge yesterday. According to the writers of Zero Hedge (dubbed “Tylers’) …
“… Elon Musk summed up the whole f**king farce succinctly:
“USAID pressured advertisers to boycott any media that was not left-wing!”
Added one of the Tylers: “We wonder how the American taxpayer feels about their hard-earned cash being taken away from them and used for this purpose…”
More excerpts from ZH’s account (emphasis added):
WikiLeaks published the bombshell report in the overnight hours that shows the massive taxpayer-funded state propaganda network - operating as a shady NGO - called "Internews Network":
“USAID has pushed nearly half a billion dollars ($472.6m) through a secretive US government financed NGO, "Internews Network" (IN), which has "worked with" 4,291 media outlets, producing in one year 4,799 hours of broadcasts reaching up to 778 million people and "training" over 9000 journalists (2023 figures). IN has also supported social media censorship initiatives.
The operation claims "offices" in over 30 countries, including main offices in US, London, Paris and regional HQs in Kiev, Bangkok and Nairobi. It is headed up by Jeanne Bourgault, who pays herself $451k a year. Bourgault worked out of the US embassy in Moscow during the early 1990s, where she was in charge of a $250m budget, and in other revolts or conflicts at critical times, before formally rotating out of six years at USAID to IN.
Bourgault's IN bio and those of its other key people and board members have been recently scrubbed from its website but remain accessible at http://archive.org.
Records show the board being co-chaired by Democrat securocrat Richard J. Kessler and Simone Otus Coxe, wife of NVIDIA billionaire Trench Coxe, both major Democratic donors.
In 2023, supported by Hillary Clinton, Bourgault launched a $10m IN fund at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). The IN page showing a picture of Bourgault at the CGI has also been deleted.
IN has at least six captive subsidiaries under unrelated names including one based out of the Cayman Islands. Since 2008, when electronic records begin, more than 95% of IN's budget has been supplied by the US government …
… The bio for IN CEO Jeanne Bourgault shows past jobs at Wired, Guardian, and other corporate media outlets.
… Speaking at the globalist Davos event last year, IN's CEO argued that global advertisers should prioritize spending ad dollars on "good news."
In other words, this would pressure companies to spend exclusively on far-left corporate media outlets while ensuring they slash ad spending on alternative media websites that do not promote state propaganda.
*** (As always, the Share Button is very important to “our” side with stories like this.) ***
Zero Hedge concluded its account with this question:
“How does it feel to know that your tax dollars are funding a state propaganda media matrix around the world?”
My answer: It feels awful, maddening and is, in fact, as scary as hell.
Alas, most clear-thinking citizens knew programs like this have been on-going for years.
As this story confirms, the Deep State does not play or fight fair (and its members know they don’t have to play fair … because the “trusted” media is 100-percent captured).
In the opinion of this “dissident” Substack author, the companies and dissident writers who were blocked from receiving advertising (or subscription revenue we otherwise would have received) should strongly consider filing individual and class action lawsuits seeking compensatory and punitive damages relating to violation of free trade and free speech.
The USAID/IN program exposed by WikiLeaks and others in recent days would qualify as an intentionally discriminatory initiative designed to cause financial harm to journalists who do NOT accept the official narratives.
In short, this should be a massive scandal.
It will be interesting to see if prosecutors in President Trump’s Department of Justice (and/or state or local prosecutors) open criminal and civil investigations and begin indicting and prosecuting thousands of accomplices who perpetrated major crimes.
These (likely) crimes caused harm and distress to individual writers and “alternative” media organizations but, also, harmed billions of world citizens by ensuring the journalism and speech of dissident writers did not reach the mass population.
Question for readers: If powerful individuals and organizations could coordinate and implement the above-outlined reach-suppression program across the world, would the same actors also, perhaps, turn their focus to Substack, an independent writers’ platform which, arguably, poses the gravest threat that could expose myriad bogus or dubious narratives?
My answer: Yes … of course they would.
The full story at ZH is highly-recommended and very important.
Oops. I again forgot to add the all-important "Share Button" inside the text of this dispatch. I've now gone back and added it for anyone who wants to share this article with others.
I appreciate the "shares" as they double my readership.
It's interesting that the bios and pics of these folks are being taken down at their websites. It's as if they are aware that "anything they say may be used against them."