Romania: Democracy is a scam...

Editor's note:  ...with nobody knowing what the hell it is and what it means anymore. It is the most abused word in public discourse when discussing governments and politics. Take Romania for example. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) goes into Romania as an NGO seeking to "bring democracy to that country." The Romanian people themselves are very patriotic, anti-war and love their country and language. They do not want to go to war with Russia being on the fringes of Europe. As such, Romania isn't a particularly wealthy country but they are doing fairly well overall. The mainstream media are portraying George Simion, who won the first round of elections, as a "hard right politician." Watch what will happen. Simion will be dragged through the courts, he will be scandalized in some way and will be made out to be a villain to be investigated. What the US and the EU fear is that Romania under George Simion will break from Europe. The EU, NATO, the NED and other NGOs operating in Romania will do everything they can to prevent George Simion from becoming Romania's president. Romania is the lynch pin for NATO's project in Ukraine with the US military having major operations there that most Romanians resent being there.

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National Endowment for Democracy goes dark

The overt replacement for the CIA's foreign political action funding has transitioned back to covert funding, using 'duty of care' as a rationale.

May 2, 2025 | By Jack Poulson and Lee Fang

The National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S.-government backed nonprofit designed to influence the domestic politics of countries across the globe, says its efforts are part of a campaign to promote "open and transparent government."

The group, funded by Congress and working in tandem with the State Department, has backed activists and civil society groups across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa to push for greater disclosure among government entities. For instance, a recent NED report argues that "enhancing transparency" is vital for building trust in institutions and democratic governance, and urges the adoption of new disclosure laws for countries in the Balkans.

Despite the altruistic goals of disclosure for the developing world, NED is now going dark. In a new "duty of care" policy published this week, NED quietly announced a new rule to conceal the names of recipients of its programs from the public. Its 2024 grant list, attached to the policy, features dollar figures and one sentence summaries for over 1,700 grants. All of the external recipient names and identities have been wiped.

The move amounts to a fundamental shift in NED programming. For decades, the group, in accordance with its public demands for transparency, has published annual lists disclosing its grant recipients.

Formed in the early years of the Reagan administration in response to increasing controversy surrounding the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency, NED set out to engage in pro-American foreign influence initiatives that were once the domain of covert operations. "This program will not be hidden in the shadows. It will stand proudly in the spotlight, and that's where it belongs," stated Reagan in 1983.

"A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA," stated former acting NED president Allen Weinstein in a widely quoted 1991 interview with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. "The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection," summarized Ignatius.

The primary U.S. funder of overt operations has been the NED, the quasi-private group originally headed by Carl Gershman that is controlled by the U.S. Congress, Ignatius explained. Through the late 1980s, it did openly what had once been covert -- such as dispensing money to anti-communist forces behind the Iron Curtain and funding dissident media known as 'samizdat'.

The endowment was initially active inside the Soviet Union. It gave money to Soviet trade unions; to a foundation headed by Russian activist Ilya Zaslavsky; to an oral history project headed by Soviet historian Yuri Afanasyev; to the Ukrainian independence movement known as Rukh, and to many other projects. Avoiding the scandal of journalists and governments uncovering covert political action funding has been the raison d'être.

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