I feel like a real chump about this National Endowment for Democracy. They were active during our year of demos and riots here in Hong Kong in 2019. But I assumed they were any old NGO. People told me they were CIA but I was dubious. I thought the riots would have taken place even without funding and training from outside. Which may well have been true. But they were most assuredly providing money and they most assuredly were training the young rioters. We had news of that at the time.
But the also most assuredly are not just any old NGO, as I naively thought. They are the CIA. In the lingo, they are CIA “cutouts”. That is the separate and public face, but funded by the CIA.
Max Blumenthal of the Grayzone, gives chapter and verse here (~24 mins) he schools a NED staff member who doesn’t know as much about the outfit she works for as he does!
NED comments about Hong Kong after Beijing brought in the National Security Law, here. Looking at a few years down the line, it’s amazing arrogance.
ADDED: The article by NED mentions Jimmy Lai. Founder and owner of Apple Media. Now in jail for subversion, the Apple Daily closed down. Bad news for press freedom, right? Well, yes, but…. At the height of the riots — which, by the way, Apple Daily stirred and stoked — Lai went to Taiwan and called for the United States to intervene, to come to the aid of Hong Kong. This was truly shocking. For Jing and me, at least. It was calling for another country, the United States no less, to intervene in the sovereignty of China. It left us breathless with its … what?… well, it’s stupidity, really. Stupidy, stupidy, stupidy. But it’s also treason, is it not?
ADDED: the NED article says “..."East Turkistan, which the CCP refers to as Xinjiang...”, the equivalent of saying “Coahuila y Tejas, aka North Mexico, which the United States refers to as Texas”. Isn’t it?
I used to get the Apple Daily, sometimes, not daily. When I had a business here and was trying to change legislation on private schools, I wanted to write an op-ed, or letter to the editor, but found they don’t do that. It was a pretty lurid paper, tabloid, colour, with photos of the latest car crash on the front page, close-ups of bleeding bodies, and canto-pop chics on p.3. Pretty much ambulance chasing and flesh. So, not lamented, by me anyway. Though I do lament its closing, for impact on free speech and freedom of the press issues. What I say above about Jimmy Lai, is that he played a dangerous game. And one with a predictable outcome.
