Scope of planned research
Respective rationales of both institutions, their agendas, priorities, funding sources (direct and, above all, indirect).
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
The exposed activities of the US National Endowment for Democracy projects across the world
According to William Blum, a famous analyst of US foreign policy [1]: “The National Endowment for Democracy, an agency created by the Reagan administration in 1983 to promote political action and psychological warfare against states not in love with US foreign policy, is Washington’s foremost non-military tool for effecting regime change. The NED website lists 65 projects that it has supported financially in recent years in Ukraine. The descriptions NED gives to the projects don’t reveal the fact that generally their programs impart the basic philosophy that working people and other citizens are best served under a system of free enterprise, class cooperation, collective bargaining, minimal government intervention in the economy, and opposition to socialism in any shape or form. A free-market economy is equated with democracy, reform, and growth; and the merits of foreign investment in their economy are emphasized.
The idea was that the NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades, and thus, hopefully, eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities. Allen Weinstein, who helped draft the legislation establishing NED, declared in 1991: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”
NED, receives virtually all its financing from the US government ($5 billion in total since 1991 ), but it likes to refer to itself as an NGO (Non-governmental organization) because this helps to maintain a certain credibility abroad that an official US government agency might not have. But NGO is the wrong category. NED is a GO. Its long-time intervention in Ukraine is as supra-legal as the Russian military deployment there. Journalist Robert Parry has observed:
For NED and American neocons, Yanukovych’s electoral legitimacy lasted only as long as he accepted European demands for new “trade agreements” and stern economic “reforms” required by the International Monetary Fund. When Yanukovych was negotiating those pacts, he won praise, but when he judged the price too high for Ukraine and opted for a more generous deal from Russia, he immediately became a target for “regime change.”
Thus, we have to ask, as Mr. Putin asked – “Why?” Why has NED been funding 65 projects in one foreign country? Why were Washington officials grooming a replacement for President Yanukovych, legally and democratically elected in 2010, who, in the face of protests, moved elections up so he could have been voted out of office – not thrown out by a mob? Yanukovych made repeated important concessions, including amnesty for those arrested and offering, on January 25, to make two of his adversaries prime minister and deputy prime minister; all to no avail; key elements of the protestors, and those behind them, wanted their putsch.
Carl Gershman, president of NED, wrote last September that “Ukraine is the biggest prize”. The man knows whereof he speaks. He has presided over NED since its beginning, overseeing the Rose Revolution in Georgia (2003), the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2004), the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon (2005), the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (2005), the Green Revolution in Iran (2009), and now Ukraine once again. It’s as if the Cold War never ended.”
The US-American University of Beirut (US-AUB)
Let us see how this amazingly compares with the US-American University of Beirut and its activities, not in the “civil society” field but in the medical and public health one, in the light of so-called “global epidemics” and the not less global war on neighbouring Syria (“humanitarian assistance” and humanitarian wars…).
Thanks to generous (sic) funding (we are talking of millions of dollars), the untouchable US-American University of Beirut has, in the wake of 9/11 events, been the spearhead of the antismoking global hysteria related to the so-called “”global epidemic”” of Middle East Peace Pipe use [2]. However, some researchers dared “touch” it to expose how its so-called scientific activities in relation with a commonplace material artefact are on the same wavelength as those of the “Greater Middle East” project. The latter was summarised as follows in a previous article:
Independent Syrian experts are likely right to say that the ongoing pseudo-revolution there (17 months now) is meant, not only to achieve macro objectives in the region but, also, in the end, a certain lifestyle (all independent travellers knowing Syria will understand): the simplicity of daily life, its low cost, Middle East sociability best expressed by Syrian coffee-houses and patios with their gurgling narghiles, etc… What is at stake is the repeated intent, begun in Iraq, to implement the US Greater/New Middle East Project at all levels: from the political hyper-structure to the socio-cultural aspects. In the view of their designers and their men in the region, the “Arab way of life” must be shattered thanks to the emergence of a consumerist society essentially based on competition [3].
This section will be stuffed in the light of recent developments reflected in articles published on this site [4-12].
[UPCOMING]
Conclusion
We will show in this section how the suspect activities of the US-American University of Beirut extend to almost all fields of public health in the Arab world, also known, in its highly connoted “official” jargon, as “Middle East and North Africa”…
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Bibliographical references:
[1] William Blum. Ukraine. 7 March 2014.
http://williamblum.org/aer/read/126
William Blum invites to “send comments, typos found, money, love notes, hate mail, death threats, letter bombs, and anthrax to bblum6@aol.com“…
[2] Ten Post-11/9 Great Myths about Hookah (Shisha, Narghile) Smoking & Public Health. Mathaba News Agency, 12 May 2012
[3] Syrian Waterpipegate. Our Man in Aleppo, Head of US Masterminded Screen “Syrian Center for Tobacco Studies”. 19 August 2012
[4] Polio False-Flag in Syria: “Opposition” Scholars at War against both the Syrian Government and the Middle East Peace Pipe (The Lancet). 7 Feb 2014
[5] Geoff Brumfiel. Fake vaccination campaign raises real fears. Alleged CIA ruse riles Pakistani researchers. 14 July 2011
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110714/full/news.2011.418.html
[6] How the CIA’s Fake Vaccination Campaign Endangers Us All. The U.S. was wrong to use health workers to target Osama bin Laden. Apr 16, 2013
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-cia-fake-vaccination-campaign-endangers-us-all/
[7] Open Letter to Wasim Maziak, Syrian Political Opponent and Head of the US-Syrian «Research» Centre in Aleppo (US-SCTS) [Lettre ouverte à Wasim Maziak, opposant politique syrien et directeur du centre « de recherche » USA-Syrie à Alep (US-SCTS)]. Tunisie-Secret, 7 Sep 2013
A selected article commented by Editors on: http://tortillaconsal.com/albared/node/2370
[8] First Prohibitionist International Conference on ««Waterpipe»» (Emirates, 20-23 Oct 2013). To Celebrate One Decade of Big Pharma Pseudo-Science on the Middle East Peace Pipe. 05 Sep 2013
[9] The US-American University of Beirut and the Juicy Business of Systematically Flawed ““Systematic Reviews”” on ««Waterpipe»». 20 July 2013
[10] One Decade of Tricks & Scientific Misconduct on Behalf of «Waterpipe»» «Tobacco Control» Researchers. 26 April 2013
[11] The Lebanese Ban on Smoking in Hospitality Venues (Cafes, etc.). .US Interventionism and Prohibition in the Name of the FCTC (Framework Convention on Tobacco Control). April 15, 2010
https://hookahhealth.wordpress.com/article/the-lebanese-ban-on-smoking-in-534k6mvefph-16/
[12] URGENT: Palestinians in Great Danger, New US-Canadian Study Reveals… 21 March 2014
The Middle East Peace Pipe (Scientific & Ethical Issues) 
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