N.E.D.

"The richest country in the world can afford whatever it needs for defense."

Scoop Jackson in 1960, campaigning for Kennedy

Last night my friend Sean told me about the CIA's adaptation into a non-governmental organization called National Endowment for Democracy, which might be responsible for essentially all the democratic revolutions over the past twenty years. Short form: The CIA became an NGO called NED and kept doing what they love to do.

What is that they love to do? Best to start on the right and move left, as this seems to be the trend of the future.

Loose Cannon: The National Endowment for Democracy
by Barbara Conry, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.
This article's from 1993, but it's from the Cato Institute thus providing an interesting conservative take. The take: expensive meddling in countries we don't care about.

Wikipedia - National Endowment for Democracy

Current and former directors of the Endowment's Board include
Lee Hamilton of the 9/11 Commission,
former Congressman Richard Gephardt,
Richard Holbrooke,
U.S. Senator and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist,
Frank Carlucci of the Carlyle Group,
General Wesley Clark,
Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research,
Dr. Francis Fukuyama of Johns Hopkins SAIS, and
U.S. Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, former chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council.

SourceWatch
A new site for me, it's operated by The Center for Media and Democracy which describes

"a collaborative project to produce a directory of public relations firms, think tanks, industry-funded organizations and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests."

So this is my reading list. I need to really sit down sometime and read it all and follow all the threads, but do I even want to? According to SourceWatch:

NED was created with a view to creating a broad base of political support for the organization. NED received funds from the U.S. government and distributes funds to four other organizations - one created by the Republican Party, another by the Democratic Party, one created by the business community and one by the "labor" movement.

The AFL-CIO is very much involve in all this, so are some Democrats, so are some Republicans, so is big business. When I was into the Skull & Bones (and who wouldn't be after seeing this) I first realized how scary the CIA is. Presidents come and go and people watch them, but these appointees and their damn secrets. It's really terrifying. To see what they have done, and what they are doing now, ignoring all our national discussions, guided by values unknown, intimately involved with all the parties of power, well, it kind of makes our democracy look pathetic. These men and their secrets make chumps of us all.

The Bridge to the 21st Century should have come with a gate. Why couldn't Bill have built a gate to keep these bastards out? Why did he ask Congress for more NED funding than they were willing to give him? Is anyone ever going to really stop these guys? Turn on the lights and the roaches just hid, then there always back later. John McLaughlin says 2008 will signal a massive shift of the nation to the radical left. Here's hoping.