The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was up to its old tricks at its awards banquet on September 10th, which took place at the estate of George Washington in Mount Vernon, Virginia, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the writing of the U.S. Declaration of Independence.
The honorees at the banquet included two Cuban rappers, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Pérez, who are part of the San Isidro Movement, which has received millions of dollars from the NED and USAID to try to turn Black Cubans against the Cuban government.[1]
The San Isidro rappers drape themselves in American flags during their shows while promoting hostility toward Cuba’s socialist system and denying the impact on Cuba from the U.S. blockade.
In July 2021, they helped inspire violent anti-government protests that were covertly backed by the Biden administration.
In particularly off-putting displays, Mr. Alcántara took photographs of himself wrapping the Cuban flag around his naked torso on the toilet and of himself in his underwear bearing the U.S. flag. Additionally, he once gathered children to run through his neighborhood waving a giant American flag, triggering an immediate police response and his own detention for four days.[2]
Alcántara’s crudeness is reminiscent of another NED favorite, Pussy Riot, a punk rock group that disrupted a Russian Orthodox Church service with an obscenity-laced song, had sex orgies in a zoological museum near Red Square, and urinated on photos of Russian President Vladimir Putin on stage.[3]
The NED awards banquet concluded with a live performance by two other members of the San Isidro Movement, Yotuel, a Spain-based Grammy Award-winning hip-hop artist, and “El Funky,” who sang “Patria y Vida,” an anti-communist anthem of Cuba’s 2021 uprising.[4]
The video for “Patria y Vida” opens with the image of anti-colonial Cuban hero José Marti merging into that of George Washington. The song’s name is a twist on Cuba’s revolutionary motto, “Patria o Muerte” (Homeland or Death), which was first pronounced by Fidel Castro at a memorial for dockworkers killed by the CIA’s deadly sabotage of the French freighter La Coubre in Havana Harbor on March 4, 1960.[5]
The NED’s support for the San Isidro Movement is part of its strategy of trying to upend the racially progressive image Cuba’s revolutionary government earned through its historic military campaign against apartheid South Africa and the asylum it offered to Black American dissidents.
A 2009 paper in the NED’s Journal of Democracy co-authored by former NED Director Carl Gershman (1983-2024) provided a blueprint for cultivating Cuba’s post-Cold War underclass as an anti-government vanguard by using rap musicians who were part of the San Isidro Movement.[6]
The same musicians were used to turn Black and liberal intellectuals against Cuba’s revolution. Many signed an open letter to Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel appearing in The New York Review of Books demanding Alcántara’s release from prison.[7]
Yotuel and El Funky’s rendition of “Patria y Vida” at the NED banquet was introduced by former Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL, 1989-2019), a darling of the anti-Castro Miami mafia and super-hawk who is a former NED board member and current board member of the International Republican Institute (IRI), which is affiliated with the NED (its purpose is to support political parties in foreign countries that resemble the Republican Party).
The NED Democracy Award for Freedom of Speech that was given to Alcántara and Castillo Pérez along with Félix Navarro, another Cuban dissident, was presented by former Senator Mel Martínez (2005-2009), another anti-Castro regime-change zealot based in Florida who is a member of the NED’s Board of Directors.
Since Castillo Pérez is currently imprisoned, José Daniel Ferrer accepted the award on his behalf. Ferrer was imprisoned for eight years after leading a U.S.-backed uprising against the Cuban government in 2003 and was imprisoned again in 2021 for leading more anti-government protests. He says he supports a “Venezuela-style operation” in Cuba modeled on the illegal U.S. kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Paying Tribute to the Hawks
Delaware Senator Chris Coons (D) was another honoree at the NED’s awards banquet, receiving the Champion of Freedom Democracy Award, which was presented by U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), an honorary member of NED’s Board.
Recipient of a fortune in Wall Street money like his old Senate colleague Joe Biden, Coons is a leading Ukraine hawk and anti-China hawk in Congress who paid tribute to warmonger Lindsey Graham after his death and claims—delusionally—that Ukraine is winning the war with Russia.
On his website, Coons boasts about his commitment to American global military supremacy and “ensuring that U.S. warfighters are equipped to win the wars of the future,” resulting in his focus on “developing and manufacturing cutting-edge defense systems” while building more navy ships in the region around Delaware, which hosts Dover Air Force Base.
Coons aligns with the NED approach to human rights in his capacity as co-chair of the U.S. Senate’s Human Rights caucus, which broadcasts the alleged human rights crimes of U.S. government enemies like Iran and China as well as the Rwandan Hutu who were actually victims of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) whom Coons and his colleagues support.
After accepting the NED award, Coons said: “Let us rededicate ourselves to the ferocity, the determination, the passion of the fight for freedom that we see today in Burma, in Ethiopia, in Cuba, and Ukraine.” These comments point to Coons’ support for regime-change operations and other imperialistic policies that are framed under the veneer of advancing human rights—much like with the British Empire.
The NED also granted a democracy award to Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL), another anti-Cuba hardliner allied with the Miami mafia whose meetings with Colombian right-wing political heavyweights, including ex-President Álvaro Uribe Velez, led to accusations that he was involved in a coup plot against left-leaning Colombian President Gustavo Petro (2022-2026).[8]
Fittingly, the NED’s awards banquet opened with a tribute to Ukrainians defending their “freedom” and who support democratic future against Russia’s full-scale war. That the current Ukrainian government has indefinitely delayed elections and harbors an estimated 20,000 political prisoners and has murdered former members of parliament in exile escapes notice.
NED Board Vice Chair Ambassador Eileen Donahoe—a trustee of Dartmouth College[9]—stated that “it is important to recognize that people across every sector of Ukrainian society are responding to destruction and brutality with extraordinary courage and ingenuity. Ukrainians are finding novel ways to use technology to document abuses, counter Russian propaganda, and build platforms for citizens to organize and participate. Their ingenuity is a perfect manifestation of what we aim to support at NED.”
Ms. Donahoe’s remarks obscure, among other things, how the CIA helped to provoke the conflict in Ukraine that began in February 2014 when the U.S. triggered a false-flag sniper attack and coup d’états, and that Ukrainian society is now on the brink of complete ruin as a result of it being used as a pawn by the U.S. to attack Russia and try to destabilize it.[10]
During the reception, Ukrainian bandura music brought Ukraine’s cultural heritage to the awards banquet. The NED has generally been a staunch supporter of color revolutions and war in Ukraine, repeatedly honoring right-wing propagandists who obscure their own country’s war crimes.
More Anti-Russia Propaganda
Continuing with the anti-Russia theme, the NED gave a Democracy Service Medal to 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, founder of the Viasna Human Rights Center, which aims to document the human rights abuses of Belarus’s socialist leader Alexander Lukashenko (1992-present), a close ally of Vladimir Putin, and help political prisoners.
After receiving the award from U.S. Special Envoy for Belarus John Coale, Bialiatski said: “This repression must be stopped once and for all. The prospect of restoring peace, freedom, and justice in our region depends on the strength of the Ukrainian spirit, the unity of the free world, and the future of Belarus. Belarus must not become a prize for Putin.”
These latter comments show Bialiatski to be an instrument of U.S. war and anti-Russian propaganda. Bialiatski was imprisoned for three years starting in 2022 for “financing group actions that disrupted public order,” having helped lead an NED-USAID-backed uprising when Lukashenko won elections in 2020.
Lukashenko is popular among many Belarusians because he saved the country from the ravages of neo-liberalism. Lukashenko also refused to collaborate with the West in its dirty war in Ukraine and has supported strengthening the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), an alliance of Eurasian countries promoting trade in national currencies instead of the U.S. dollar and regional economic integration as a means of presenting a strong united front against U.S. imperialism.
Significantly, Bialiatski was a panelist at a 2014 NED forum where he spoke alongside long-time NED Director and neo-conservative ideologue Carl Gershman. (See photo below.) This indicates probable NED funding for Viasna.[11]
The anti-Putin, anti-Russia theme at the NED awards banquet was further apparent with the granting of a Democracy Award for Freedom of Religion to Father Andrey Kordochkin and Father Valerian Dunin-Barkovsky, co-founders of Peace Unto All/Mir Vsem, which supports clergy facing alleged persecution for opposing Russia’s war in Ukraine.[12]
Their award was given by Ambassador (and former Senator and Governor) Sam Brownback, an NED Board member and former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom.[13]
Brownback hosted an event on Capitol Hill the week before the NED banquet that aimed to publicize the alleged plight of Chinese dissidents and that was designed to vilify Chinese Premier Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) with the intent of pushing the Trump administration to adopt more hard-line policies.[14]
The NED’s strategy with regards to Russia is the same, with the NED showing its hypocrisy by failing to honor any Ukrainian clergymen facing persecution for opposing Volodymyr Zelensky’s war policies or for being tied to the Russian Orthodox Church, which has been banned in Ukraine.
Honoring an Ethiopian Newspaper Devoted to Regime Change
The main African honoree at the banquet was an Ethiopian newspaper, Addis Standard, which supports the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and argues for expanded Western involvement in the Horn of Africa.
In 2021, Ethiopian authorities suspended the license of Addis Standard because they claimed that it supported the agenda of a terrorist group—the OLF and presumably the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which triggered a war in November 2020 when it mounted an uprising against the government.
The founder of Addis Standard, Tsedale Lemma, received the NED’s Democracy Award from Alice Albright, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s daughter, a board member of the National Democratic Institute (NDI), an NED offshoot, who worked for Citicorp, J. P. Morgan and the Carlyle Group, a mainstay of the U.S. military-intelligence complex, and was appointed by Joe Biden as head of the Millennium Challenge Corporation, an adjunct to USAID.
Ms. Lemma wrote several op-eds in The New York Times blaming Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed for starting the 2020 war by attacking the people of Tigray, obscuring that the war started after the U.S.-backed TPLF mounted an uprising that aimed to restore their rule over Ethiopia (they had ruled quite brutally from 1991 to 2018). Ms. Lemma additionally accused the Ethiopian Defense Forces of atrocities that were not verifiable, serving a U.S. political agenda.[15]
In a September 2026 article, the Addis Standard argues that growing power projection by the Houthi in the Bab al-Mandab Strait necessitates a recalibration of what it calls “Western defense strategy” in the Horn of Africa and Western recognition of Somaliland, a secessionist republic that Somalians consider to be part of Somalia, so it can potentially station military bases there.
So far, the only country to recognize Somaliland is Israel, which the article characterizes as “a milestone, demonstrating that Somaliland’s legal status is an active diplomatic reality that Western powers can build upon.”[16]
The author, Adam Daud Ahmed,[17] earlier complains that Western military bases in the Horn are confined to Djibouti, and presents the U.S., Israel, the UAE and Somaliland as a “stabilizing coalition” and rival power bloc consisting of China, Turkey, Egypt and the Houthi as being “disruptive”—hence reinforces binary U.S. and NED narratives that are used to validate imperialistic foreign policies.[18]
The U.S. is intent on removing Abiy Ahmed from power in Ethiopia because of his attempts to secure regional cooperation with Eritrea and Somalia to strengthen the Horn of Africa and prevent foreign predatory powers from destabilizing and exploiting it.
The NED’s support for Addis Standard is part of a larger U.S. foreign policy strategy of trying to incite rebellion among ethnic groups like the Omoro.
Many articles in Addis Standard vilify the Ahmed government under the guise of muckraking with the aim of turning public opinion against it.[19]
The OLF is now coordinating with the TPLF to topple Ahmed. The goal for the U.S. is the restoration of TPLF rule, or at a minimum balkanization of the Horn region as part of a plan to divide and conquer.
Weaponization of Human Rights
Unfortunately, while human rights abuses occur in countries throughout the world, including the U.S., the NED selects only a narrow range of them for political purposes and decontextualizes them.
The NED banquet characteristically included a live art demonstration by ArtLords, a collective founded in Kabul in 2014, which painted murals that were destroyed by the Taliban.
However oppressive they may be, the Taliban are being singled out because they humiliated the U.S. after it fought a dirty war in Afghanistan for 20 years. Under Taliban rule, at least Afghans have their national sovereignty, as compared with venal U.S. puppets like Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani whom the NED supported.
Effective propaganda is often most notable for its omissions. When focused on Cuba, the NED fails to address the human rights implications of the U.S. embargo and 65 years of subversion campaigns, just as it leaves out the crimes of neo-Nazi militias in eastern Ukraine and Ukrainian bombing there using U.S. weapons.
At its banquet, the NED did not try to spotlight any Gazans courageously resisting Israel’s genocidal onslaught, human rights groups defending Palestinians being tortured in Israeli jails, Congolese who have bravely fought back against Ugandan and Rwandan invaders backed by the U.S., or Rwandan or Ugandan dissidents and families of those killed.
Additionally, the NED made no effort to honor a) defenders of the rights of prisoners in a notorious jail in El Salvador run by a close U.S. ally, Nayib Bukele; b) supporters of the families of school-girls murdered by U.S. air strikes in Iran; c) groups that have tried to help political prisoners in U.S.-backed monarchies in Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia or Oman; or d) the families of victims of Kenyan President William Ruto’s violent crackdown on popular protests.
The NED chose to single out Burma as one of the “bad” countries because it is allied with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). A Democracy Award was given to Nan Lin, who accepted it on behalf of the organizers of Burma’s 2021 Spring revolution against a Chinese-backed junta.
Brian Berletic uncovered that the Burma Spring movement was similar to the Arab Spring and U.S.-backed color revolutions in Eastern Europe in that it received financing from the NED and other U.S. government agencies, adopted terroristic attacks and violence, was supported by people driven by ethnic identity, and aimed ultimately to sell out its country and its resources to a foreign power, the U.S., along with big corporations.
This fall, the NED will be traveling to Damascus to honor the Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression, which was given the 2026 Democracy Award for Freedom of Petition.
The Syrian Center for Media and Freedom Expression was established in the early 2000s by Mazen Darwish to help demonize and trigger an uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad (2000-2024), who resisted U.S. overtures to build an oil pipeline and was seen as a barrier to U.S.-Israeli domination of the Middle East.[20]
While Assad engaged in authoritarian practices, governments under siege will inevitably become suspicious and react harshly toward dissenters. Furthermore, human rights atrocities have skyrocketed under Assad’s successor, former al-Qaeda leader Mohammed al-Jolani, though there are no groups chronicling this being supported by the NED or given any awards by them.
The NED’s double standard with respect to Syria, like with so many other countries, exemplifies its use of human rights and democratization rhetoric as a political weapon whose aim is to vilify governments targeted by the U.S. for regime change and to stir opposition and rebellion.
While some of the people honored by the NED have faced unwarranted personal hardship and documented real governmental abuses, their association with the NED taints them irreversibly given the underlying political agenda behind the NED’s work.
San Isidro’s leadership previously accepted an award from the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a right-wing Republican think tank in Washington that includes Nazi German soldiers in its count of historic deaths at the hands of communism. ↑
After his detention, Alcántara carried out a hunger strike at his home that turned into a media spectacle (as was intended) and received supportive statements from Jake Sullivan, the Biden administration’s soon-to-be National Security Adviser, and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. ↑
For more on this off-putting group, see Jeremy Kuzmarov, “Woody Guthrie Prize Given to Punk Rock Group that Supports Escalation of Ukraine War and Overthrow of Russian Government,” CovertAction Magazine, May 15, 2023. The NED sponsored an event promoting Pussy Riot. Journalist Tony Cartalucci found that Pussy Riot members associated with Alexei Navalny, an agent of U.S.-funded sedition who formed a political organization, Democratic Alternative, that received NED funding. Cartalucci also found that a woman heading Pussy Riot’s support campaign in Finland, Oksana Chelysheva, was a board member of the Russian-Finnish Civic Forum, which was also funded by the NED, and George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, which is linked to the CIA. Additionally, Chelysheva was a member of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, which was funded by the U.S. State Department to promote anti-Russia Chechen terrorist propaganda. ↑
Yotuel previously appeared at an EU Parliament event convened by right-wing legislators with Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaidó and held a Zoom call with State Department officials to discuss “Patria y Vida.” ↑
Journalist Max Blumenthal wrote: “By reversing Castro’s vow to defend Cuba’s sovereignty with his life, the song’s authors take aim at the anti-imperialist political culture instilled in Cubans throughout the course of six decades.”
Gershman and his co-author, Orlando Gutierrez, national secretary of the USAID- and NED-funded Cuban Democratic Directorate, wrote: “Using the principles of democracy and human rights to unite and mobilize this vast, dispossessed majority in the face of a highly repressive regime is the key to peaceful change.” Journalist Max Blumenthal points out that when the Obama administration agreed to open up U.S. relations with Cuba in 2014, it insisted on Cuba’s opening its internet accessibility as part of a plan to expand access to the pro-regime change rappers which disaffected Cuban youth could access widely online. NED also funded magazines to help publicize their subversive songs and celebrity image. ↑
Signatories to the letter included Black and Afro-Latin cultural figures such as Henry Louis Gates, Edwidge Danticat, and Junot Diaz. Max Blumenthal wrote that “the missive illustrated the success San Isidro was enjoying in eroding the support of Black American intelligentsia for Cuba’s revolution…with access to the leading liberal organs of US media and support in Latin American studies departments across the country, the cultural collective was breaking Cuba’s anti-communist opposition out of its traditional right-wing Miami base.”
In a characteristic op-ed, Díaz-Balart accused the Cuban government of supporting terrorism around the world and fomenting the conflict in Ukraine by allegedly supplying Russia with mercenaries. ↑
On the NED’s deep involvement in U.S. universities, see Jeremy Kuzmarov, “Large Number of Faculty at Elite U.S. Universities Linked to National Endowment for Democracy, a CIA Cut-Out Specializing in Propaganda,” CovertAction Magazine, August 26, 2026. Married to a Big Tech executive, Donahoe served in the Biden administration as U.S. Special Envoy for Digital Freedom at the Department of State, and in the Obama administration as the first U.S. Ambassador to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Donahoe co-founded a digital security program at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute, which is infested with NED propagandists. She and her husband gave $20 million to Dartmouth, which led to her appointment to its Board of Trustees. ↑
On the false-flag sniper attack, see Ivan Katchanovski, The Maidan Massacre in Ukraine: The Mass Killing that Changed the World (London: Springer Nature, 2024). ↑
In 2021, the NED provided more than $2.5 million in grants to civil society groups in Belarus, including those focused on human rights and documenting the alleged abuses of the Lukashenko government for political purposes. ↑
Kordochkin and Dunin-Barkovsky claim they faced pressure from the Russian Orthodox Church for opposing the war (from the Russian side) while serving congregations in Spain and Germany. ↑
- For more on Brownback’s background, see Jeremy Kuzmarov, “New NED Board Member Is Reactionary Kansas Governor Who Left His State in “Carnage and Destruction,” CovertAction Magazine, February 23, 2026.
The Brownback event, predictably, falsely accused the Chinese of committing genocide against the Uyghur. ↑
See Ann Garrison, “Tigrayans Speak Out in Support of Ethiopia and Prime Minister Abiy, Not the TPLF,” Black Agenda Report, August 18, 2021; Abebe Gellaw, “An open note to Ms. Tsedale Lemma,” Borkena, November 12, 2020. Gellaw, a journalist and activist, wrote: “You are entitled to your opinion, but not to your own facts. If what you are saying is true, the TPLF is a victim of Mr. Abiy’s machinations. Far from it, we the people of Ethiopia, have been victims of TPLF’s misrule, domination, exploitation, discrimination, gross human rights violations, and massive corruption, to say the least, for nearly three decades. Even if this glaring fact is the very reason why we needed a radical change in the first place, you claimed that the TPLF was sidelined. Contrary to your claims, TPLF has been throwing every spanner at its disposal to undermine and reverse the reform and wreak havoc across Ethiopia in its futile bid to retake the power and privilege it has lost. You presented the TPLF as a blameless victim and portrayed the Prime Minister as guilty of waging a war of ‘overreaction’ and acting more like ‘a commander in chief than a prime minister.’ What else did you expect him to be when the army under his command came under attack by enemy forces? The tragedy is that the enemy did not come from afar. It came from your fictional victim called the TPLF, a formidable terrorist group whose history is checkered with betrayal, brutality, destruction and greed. Did you expect the Prime Minister to kneel down under the feet of the TPLF and beg for mercy on behalf of the army and the nation? It seems downright naïve to make such a preposterous claim.” ↑
Somaliland had been a British colony whereas most of Somalia was colonized by Italy. U.S. recognition of Somaliland is a neo-conservative cause supported by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and arch-reactionaries like Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz. For more insights on this topic, see Ann Garrison, “Somaliland and Sovereignty in the Horn and the Red Sea Region,” Black Agenda Report, September 9, 2026; Ann Garrison, “Somalia: On the Front Lines with Somaliland,” Black Agenda Report, August 4, 2026; and Markus V. Hoehne, “Why the U.S. should not recognize Somaliland,” Africa Is a Country, September 2026. Hoehne argues that the push for Somaliland independence by outside forces against the will of most Somalis will trigger inter-clan conflict and war. He also notes that many proponents of Somaliland independence like CFR fellow Steven Cook embrace neo-colonialist stereotypes. The U.S. has worked to destabilize Somalia over years probably with the aim of weakening it so the U.S. and its Israeli puppet can split off Somaliland and establish control there and use it as a base for trying to control the Horn of Africa. ↑
Ahmed is listed as a political and security analyst specializing in democracy and counterterrorism. ↑
The author considers Somaliland as a potential “frontline democratic anchor capable of countering Iranian proxy aggression and balancing Chinese expansionism.” ↑
Addis Standard, in this respect, bears comparison with other NED supported newspapers such as Bangladesh’s Netra News, which was founded as part of a regime-change operation designed to oust Sheikh Hasina, who had established strong relations with China and resisted U.S. efforts to establish a military base on a strategic island off the coast of Bangladesh, and to allow use of its ports by the U.S. military. ↑
See Jeremy Kuzmarov and Dan Kovalik, Syria: Anatomy of Regime Change (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2025). ↑
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About the Author
Jeremy Kuzmarov holds a Ph.D. in American history from Brandeis University and has taught at numerous colleges across the United States. He is regularly sought out as an expert on U.S. history and politics and co-hosts a radio show on New York Public Radio and on Progressive Radio News Network called “Uncontrolled Opposition.”
He is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine and is the author of eight books, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019), The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018), Warmonger. How Clinton’s Malign Foreign Policy Launched the U.S. Trajectory From Bush II to Biden (Clarity Press, 2023); with Dan Kovalik, Syria: Anatomy of Regime Change (Baraka Books, 2025), and Political Assassinations in America: The Intricate Nexus of Deep State Crime (Clarity Press, 2026).
Besides these books, Kuzmarov has published hundreds of articles and contributed to numerous edited volumes, including one in the prestigious Oxford History of Counterinsurgency .
He can be reached at jkuzmarov2@gmail.com and found on substack here.
This article accurately names the 2026 NED honorees but filters them through state-approved propaganda from Havana, Minsk, and Moscow. Framing grassroots democratic protests as “U.S.-backed coups” erases genuine domestic grievances. Furthermore, dismissing independent champions like Ales Bialiatski and Mazen Darwish as mere foreign tools ignores their documented sacrifices and years of state-sponsored torture for defending free speech. While the NED’s geopolitical selectivity is a valid target for critique, doing so by validating authoritarian regimes compromises journalistic integrity and misrepresents the factual history of these movements.