The grants are part of a broader shift that has caused dismay among veterans of the state department. In interviews, five former officials suggested that there has been a months-long effort by Trump-aligned individuals in the state department to subvert normal funding procedures and allocate US taxpayer money to conservative and Maga-aligned causes in the UK and Europe.
They’d prefer all the money continue to go to the usual NGO types, obviously. But, you know, when you concentrate so much power into government and then you have an election that power does become available to your enemies, no?
This is a mostly made up story.
The State Department has grants available for NGOs who support free speech and expression abroad and has done so for years.
The FSU has applied for one
Er… thats it.
Toby Young sets it out quite well on X in his response to the Guardian’s hit piece.
https://x.com/toadmeister/status/2078157821376336016?s=61&t=VX5cJ0-osgn_JSz7j-uowQ
There is also an allocation of $3m to the Jobs Foundation, for a program called “Countering Overregulation to Advance American Investment.” The Jobs Foundation is a UK charity that “champions the role of business as a force for good” and appears to have fewer than 10 employees.
You can see what’s got up the Guardian’s nose right here. Insufficient sinecures for lanyards.
As has been said before, you really cannot hate journalists enough.
This presumptuous little bitch’s approach amounted to ‘kindly reply to my vague smears within the next few hours or I’ll publish my vague smears and tell the world you didn’t reply’.
There are still a few real journalists left. But none of them work at the Guardian.
That’s exactly why we need laws to stop the wrong people getting into power. Failing that, we need judges who can make up law to render the wrong politicians powerless, hence umanriteslawyers v Albanian drug dealers and other assorted worthy imports…
A lot of blather in the article but the simple truth is that the Graun hates free speech.
Interesting that since Trump turned off the USAID spigot, every election in South America has returned a non left government. Strange that isn’t it?
And they never moan about all the EU money funnelled into groups in non EU countries to support EU friendly candidates and activist groups……
“veterans of the State department” eh? Show us the campaign medals.
Cry more, swamp creatures. Find out who they are and fire them.
Alleged. Why is it that Guardian references have no names?
Wut? A crime against humanity?
Gamecock would like to see 50,000 former officials. ‘Veterans of the state department’ should approach double-ought zero.
The hypocrisy ought to be surprising, but isn’t.
The woman who wrote this story, Aisha Down, ‘is an investigative journalist based in London, covering artificial intelligence for The Guardian‘.
She’s been deep-fried in condescension, by the way.
But this isn’t an AI story, and neither is this one she produced about similar grants in Germany – Germany warns US against election interference with Maga-aligned grants scheme.
But OK, she’s interested in election interference.
She doesn’t seem to have reported on Trump’s speech this week, in which he detailed very serious interference in US elections, principally in 2020, by China, with receipts.
It got next to no coverage in any western media, and what it did get was disingenuous at best. Jeff Childers is well worth reading on this.
Again, it seems likely (to me, at least) that there is some sort of coordination going on in the media in respect of this, because the China interference stuff is real and sourced and seems serious, unlike the Russian interference stuff which filled the papers for years.
Meanwhile, on the subject of funding: giving money to the Free Speech Union is bad, but ‘effective altruist’ billionaires paying for reporters to be installed in the Guardian newsroom is good.
They don’t seem to be paying for reporters to be installed in any right-leaning newsrooms, not that there are many, but that’s all good.
Hmmm.
As BiND points out above, Toby Young’s response is very good, and not to include it renders this story almost defamatory in my view.
Finally, The Guardian effectively attacks free speech while offering readers three ways to contact Down, two of them anonymous:
Another MSM hack funded by foreign billionaires, like the Terriblegraph’s global health propaganda team.
The dishonesty and hypocrisy is off the charts, even for the Graun.Every time I go to the site there’s a screed about how they’re independent journalists, fighting for truth against the evil rich.
The hypocrisy ought to be surprising, but isn’t.
The woman who wrote this story, Aisha Down, ‘is an investigative journalist based in London, covering artificial intelligence for The Guardian‘.
She’s been deep-fried in condescension, by the way.
But this isn’t an AI story, and neither is this one she produced about similar grants in Germany – Germany warns US against election interference with Maga-aligned grants scheme.
But okay, she’s interested in election interference.
She doesn’t seem to have reported on Trump’s speech this week, in which he detailed very serious interference in US elections, principally in 2020, by China, with receipts.
It got next to no coverage in any western media, and what it did get was disingenuous at best. Jeff Childers is well worth reading on this.
Again, it seems likely (to me, at least) that there is some sort of coordination going on in the media in respect of this, because the China interference stuff is real and sourced and seems serious, unlike the Russian interference stuff which filled the papers for years.
Meanwhile, on the subject of funding: giving money to the Free Speech Union is bad, but ‘effective altruist’ billionaires paying for reporters to be installed in the Guardian newsroom is good.
They don’t seem to be paying for reporters to be installed in any right-leaning newsrooms, not that there are many, but that’s all good.
Hmmm.
As BiND points out above, Toby Young’s response is very good, and not to include it renders this story almost defamatory in my view.
Finally, The Guardian effectively attacks free speech while offering readers three ways to contact Down, two of them anonymous…