The Duran Podcast - Soft power corruption

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

Soft power corruptionThe Duran: Episode 2138

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the USAID, USAID, actually USAID story that is unfolding. Every day we get new, amazing revelations of all the money, the funding, the corruption in and around USAID. And I imagine this is happening across all of these entities and these organizations similar to USAID, for example, the NED. the National Endowment for Democracy. I'm sure whatever's happening in USAID is probably, probably going on over there as well. But this is big. This is big because we're seeing the media landscape corrupted by this around the world, not just in the United States, the protests, the color revolutions, the NGOs, the oligarchs.

Everybody was on the take. and this is all coming out there. From what I understand, by the way, Alex, I understand, this stuff was on various websites as well, but no one ever talked about it, which I find interesting. Yeah, absolutely. What are your thoughts on all this?

I think these have been astonishing revelations in the sense that absolutely, I mean, you have, you had snippets of this, A lot of this, you know, was out there, but nobody put it all together. I'm going to give one example for me, personally, which is the organized crime and corruption for putting project. It was an enormously clunky name. But it was all represented as an independent agency backed by various big media outlets,

DeS Schiegel in Germany, the Washington Post and the United States, the Guardian in Britain. They were the people who would go out and, you know, prove that there was corruption being carried. mainly by Putin, it often targeted Putin, but all kinds of other people. Then last year, we got the first revelations that actually it was getting some funding from USAID. And now we learned that it's entirely funded, essentially, by USAID. In other words, it was run by USAID and the people who ran USAID. in other words, the neocons.

So a lot of people took all of that information by this so-called organized crime corruption reporting project seriously. And now we know who was really producing all this information and who was doing it. And, you know, we now have information about how the protests in Bangladesh just a few months ago were organized. We've now learned so much about, you know, how 90% of the media, landscape in Ukraine was being about what was really going on in all sorts of places. And the fascinating thing and the really disturbing thing in some ways is the way in which all of these things start to intersect and interconnect with each other. So it now turns out that the first Trump impeachment, the Vindman impeachment,

if I can call it that, was based on a report that was put together by the organized crime and reporting project. And we now know who exactly was behind that. Everything connects together. And because it was a kind of next step agency, it was outside the formal structures of the US government. It was resisting apparently providing information to Congress. He was hardly under the control of the president.

It didn't require authorization from the president himself to do all sorts of things. And of course, it could operate in the United States itself. And it did indirectly. And it played a major role over the last couple of years in US politics. And we're now finding out how it was doing that. It's astonishing. It appears to have been. have been, I mean, the way I would describe it is a gigantic slash fund by the deep state

and various people connected to it. A giant money and information laundering scheme, if you can call it that? Absolutely. Entity, yeah. Well, somebody I know has, a friend of mine compared it with speculating. You know what I'm referring to. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually quite, yeah, it's quite correct. Is the United States the most correct country in the world, given all these revelations?

Well, no. And I'll tell you why, because we've had these revelations. Utterly corrupt countries. Before these revelations then. Before these revelations, yes, it was because, I mean, there is no other country in the world where money is being used on this kind of scale in that kind of way. And of course, it was corrupting academic. academics, journalists, it was distorting science, it was involved in everything.

Going forward, how does this affect the United States' soft power? Its information power where it's so dominant in the information space around the globe. How does it affect its soft power? How does it affect its power to create the dynamics for protests and for color revolutions and for regime change? How does all of this get affected now going forward? Because USAID is going to get scaled down. It's pretty much not existed.

Yes. From 15,000 employees to like 270 employees now. And it's going to be folded underneath the State Department. Look, people rebrand. folded under the State Department, whatever. It's gone. It's gone. It's gone. But it doesn't mean that the information power goes away.

It doesn't mean that the soft power goes away. It doesn't mean that the ideas and the initiatives from the deep state, whatever is going to remain for regime changes is going to go away. I mean, how is all of this going to be affected now? Well, provided this remains forever, provided USA, really the US AID really is closed down, which I think it will, I mean, it effectively has been. And my own personal view, by the way, is that eventually we will get an executive order closing it down. And I think that it will survive any legal challenges. That's my own assessment.

So I think it will eventually be closed down. Provided nothing is put in its place that ends up doing the same sort of things, provided these. kind of operations end, then we will get a sharp change in the way in which US soft power operates around the world. Because this extraordinary covert activity that it has been engaged in, this manufacturing of narratives and all of that, that will stop, or at least it will not be continued in the same way. Now, that will be an entirely good thing and it will be an entirely good thing for the United States because what we have seen over the last 15, 20 years is the way in which these

narrative, which then are created and are then imposed. And we've seen how they've been imposed, by the way. I mean, including, it turns out pressure on, you know, the big internet company. all of that. Once that ceases, once we don't have not only narrative construction, but narrative enforcement, then the United States might start returning to a more reality-based, more grounded foreign policy than we have seen. Because what has happened is that all of this narrative construction, All of this manipulation of information, all that it has done is that it has meant that U.S. policy has increasingly become unmoored from reality. And we saw that with the forever wars in the Middle East, and we've seen this with the Ukraine crisis.

How does the world react to all of this? Because an outside of the collective Western, the EU, which are vassals and vassals, are going to act like vassals, but I'm talking about the rest of the world, the global south. How do they react as they watch on as they look at all of this being revealed? Because the United States, over the years, especially over the last four years under Biden, they would lecture a lot. They would actually have summits and events about how they were the beacon of democracy and free speech and freedom of the press, and all of these things.

And then the journalists were of the highest integrity and their publications were of the highest standard. And you guys in Russia, you guys are state media, propaganda, Kremlin state media. And in China, you're Beijing. Propaganda state media. And all over the global south. Everyone is state media and propaganda,

but us, but us, we have the journalists that are the most fair, that are the most objective, the publications that are the most fair. How does this affect how the world looks at the US now? Well, bear in mind that outside the collective West, everybody in the world, I literally mean everybody in the world has known the truth about this for a very, very long time. But now they've been given proof and evidence of this from the United States itself. So if a future secretary Blinken rocks up and starts lecturing in any country, they can always come back and say, well, you know, you're talking to us about free and independent media, but you don't practice it. We now see that you actually run the media in the United States. You run the media outside the United States across the West.

you are exposed by the revelations that have happened in the United States itself as hypocrites. And that obviously is going to put the United States in the future if it tries to revert to these kind of practices at a disadvantage. Now, I think the mood in the global south, the mood around the world, as they see all of this, is firstly surprise that, this is happening. I think that many people, nobody thought that it would happen to this degree, that Dodge and Trump and all of that would expose this cesspit, because that's what it is, to the extent that it has been. And I think that has come as a surprise. I think, nonetheless, they are still saying to themselves, and this is true, I suspect, in every world capital, in Brasilia, in Johannesburg, wherever, in Moscow, obviously.

They say to themselves, well, is this for real? I mean, will this stick, or is this just a campaign? Will it go on beyond Trump? Is this really a big, big shift in America? policy or is it just something that is a pushback by some people, but it will eventually lose momentum, that the deep state forces in America will be assert themselves and things will go back to the way they are. So there is a degree of caution at the moment.

But if it does lead to a fundamental big change, then actually, I think it will improve relationships. between the United States and the rest of the world. Because if people think that finally, the United States generally is out of the regime change game, which is, I don't think anybody at the moment assumes. But if they ever get to the point of thinking that, then people will be able to say, well, we can now interconnect with the Americans.

We can relate to the Americans in a completely different way, to the way that we have done in the past. We can start to make deals with them. It's tough to agree things with them without having to worry all the time that the NGOs that they're backing in our country are trying to overthrow us. So it would make a radical change in international relations and one which over time would work to America's advantage. But we'll have to see because that's my view.

And I have no doubt of it, by the way, I'm absolutely sure that this is the case that All of these activities, regime changes, color revolutions, narrative creations, bankrolling media outlets, launching bogus corruption investigations. None of that has worked to America's actual objective benefit in any way. Ending it is the best thing the United States could do to itself. I've no doubt of this. But there are all sorts of people. in Washington, we can name some of them who are going to push back and argue other words. Yeah, because the money's really good. Because the money is really good.

We know that now as well. We know that now as well. But you know, I was thinking about this, even if the regime change business continues in the United States, at least we're not going to have any of these debates like we used to have with, for example, a protest in Hong Kong or the Maidan. where you do have a part of the media and the population who says, no, these are real protests. It's grassroots, real protests from people who really want democracy

and all of this, this nonsense. At least now we'll be able to say, okay, this is 100% sponsored, not only by the United States, but by the U.S. State Department because effectively they own it now. So, I mean, we're not going to get into any of these debates, this confusion about what's going on here with these 300. people camped out on some square and some country calling for the government to be removed. Everyone's going to know that this is a regime change.

Even, and this is what I want to get to, even if the EU continues the regime change operation, this damages them as well. This carries over to them as well. Absolutely. I think an important thing to say about all of this, all of these activities, is that they drive a coaching horses through international law. I mean, this massive, absolutely unembarrassed interference in the internal affairs of every country, everywhere, all the time, is completely contrary to the entire ethos and doctrine of the UN Charter of International Law and all of that kind of thing. So it's been exposed.

People can now see it. And as you absolutely rightly say, we could talk about these things without any kind of a. embarrassment any longer. Yeah, or any doubt. Or any doubt. Exactly. One final question. The media organizations outside of the United States that have been getting money

from USAID, for example, it's been revealed, allegedly, I'll say allegedly, but anyway, that the BBC is one of the media companies that was getting money directly or indirectly funneled to it via the USAID. Shouldn't have they disclosed this? Well, of course they should have done. I mean, as far as the British people are concerned, even since we're talking about the allegations, and we're using the word allegations about the BBC. The BBC is supposed to be a public broadcaster.

As far as the British people are concerned, it's funded by the British population through the licence fee, which is a kind of tax we all pay. So, of course, the BBC should have disclosed it. And it's a clear conflict of interest. And we're talking about the BBC, but every single means, media outlet in the world that receives money in this kind of way should have disclosed. Ukraine. Ukraine, absolutely.

I mean, but of course none of them have. None of them will because as you rightly say, la Dolce vita, the sweet life, the money, all of that. There are certain news organizations in Europe, which I remember were in very, very considerable financial difficulties. just 20, 15 years ago and suddenly everything changed and everything seemed to sort itself out. But then one noticed that they were taking a particular line. I can think of all kinds. And you know, one wonders now where that money came from. Yeah, but they should have put in their stories in their byline, for example, the Ukraine

media. Yeah. And this might have really changed the trajectory of the escalation of the conflict in Ukraine. And who knows how many tens of thousands of lives would have been saved if all of the articles that were coming out of Ukraine or all the articles that were ridded by Western media outlets had some sort of disclaimer or byline which said, we are being funded or 8% or 10% of our operations are funded by USAID, as we're reporting on the United States and Ukraine. I think there is an ethical obligation to do that. I think any media outlet that receives money from an organization like USAID, which is connected with the U.S. government, has an obligation to disclose the fact that it is receiving that money. To the reader.

To the reader. Yeah. But as we know, when governments have asked of sort to pass laws asking for that required. that kind of disclosure as the Georgian government has recently done, it has been fiercely, even hysterically opposed. Now we know why. And now we know why. All right.

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