Regime Change and Continuity of Agenda: Trump Adviser Now Chairs NED

Friday, 3 March 2017

Regime Change and Continuity of Agenda: Trump Adviser Now Chairs NED

March 1, 2017 (Joseph Thomas – NEO) – While supporters of recently elected US President Donald Trump believe steadfastly that among other things, his administration will role back what has been essentially a century of American expansionism worldwide through overt wars and more “covert” methods toward achieving “regime change,” by all metrics it appears such methods will only expand.

Image: Dr. Judy Shelton, now Chairperson of the NED and Trump adviser, presides over an award ceremony in 2010 for US CIA asset, the Dali Lama, a decades-long integral component of American policy to encircle, contain and divide China.

Not only do observers note continued subversive activities coordinated through local US embassies around the world since Trump’s presidency began, including across Southeast Asia as part of America’s continued attempts to isolate and contain China, but also movement within US agencies charged with organising and financing this subversion, such as the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Recently, NED announced its new chairperson, Dr. Judy Shelton. The announcement, published on NED’s website includes the following background information on Dr. Shelton:

Dr. Judy Shelton was elected the new Chairman of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) by NED’s Board of Directors at its January 10, 2017 meeting. An economist who has written widely on issues of international finance and monetary policy, she has also been consulted on international economic and financial issues by the Congress, the White House, and the Pentagon. Shelton previously served on the NED Board from 2005-2014, and was Vice Chairman from 2010-2014.

In other words, not only is Dr. Shelton now the new chairperson of NED, she has been directly involved with NED since at least 2005, long before, and all during NED’s role in training, funding and backing the armies of regime change that swept the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) beginning in 2011. She also served on NED’s board during the US-backed coup in Ukraine between 2013-2014.

Before that, between 2009-2010, NED-backed mobs took to the streets in Bangkok, Thailand in attempts to overthrow both the sitting government at the time, and also the Thai military and Thailand’s head of state.

While these events have been assigned to the Obama administration for political convenience and compartmentalisation, it is actually organisations like NED that serve as the working mechanics that make such events possible.

In other words, Dr. Judy Shelton has been directly involved in NED through the entirety of America’s most recent chapters of expansionism and regime change worldwide. She has also served on the board of directors for Hilton Hotels and Atlantic Coast Airlines, providing another example within NED of corporate and financial special interests driving the organisation’s agenda rather than actual “democracy promotion.”

An example of Dr. Shelton’s activities within NED can be gleamed from a 2012 NED news letter under a headline titled, “Democracy Service Medal Presented in Cuba,” in which it claims:

NED Vice-Chair Judy Shelton (second from right) presented it in person to Berta Soler, the leader of the Damas de Blanco movement founded by Laura Pollán; Héctor Maseda Guitiérrez, Pollán’s widower and a journalist who spent eight years imprisoned by the Cuban government; and Laura Labrada Pollán, Pollán’s daughter and a member of the Damas de Blanco.

Here, Dr. Shelton is directly involved in lending legitimacy to US-backed subversion in Cuba as part of a decades-long attempt to overthrow the government in Havana and expand US hegemony over the Caribbean.

Dr. Shelton also regularly oversees NED’s system of self-aggrandising, the lending of legitimacy to its own members through self-awarded recognition. In 2010 in a Star Tribune article titled, “Vin Weber honored for his work with the National Endowment for Democracy,” it’s stated:

In Capitol Hill ceremony, Former Minnesota Congressman Vin Weber Tuesday was slated to receive the Democracy Service Medal for his work with the National Endowment for Democracy…

…Honorary co-chairs of the event are Madeleine Albright, the former Secretary of State, Richard Gephardt, the NED chair and a former Democratic leader of the House, and Judy Shelton, the NED vice chair.

Previous award recipients include Lech Walesa, former president of Poland, the Dalai Lama, of Tibet and Francis Fukuyama, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies professor.

Vin Weber is one of several prominent, so-called Neo-Conservatives and a signatory to various pro-war letters and policy papers that preceded the conflicts waged by the United States under US presidents Bush, Obama and now continuing under Trump.

Dr. Shelton’s long-time association in an organisation created specifically as a mechanism for regime change, associating with Neo-Conservatives (including not only Weber, but also the above mentioned Francis Fukuyama and Richard Gephardt) and notorious personalities like Madeline Albright who hsa repeatedly justified sanctions against Iraq that starved hundreds of thousands of children to death is particularly troubling.