Mike Benz

Where does this all come from?

Well, there's a peculiar government program that's called the... Again, this is all intermediate through the interagency, right?

So there's going to be some National Security Council vision for what to do in the Western Hemisphere.

and what to do in Brazil in particular, because you have all these different elements.

You have the Pentagon elements, you have the State Department elements, you have the USAID elements.

All these are different permanent seats on the National Security Council.

They need to be coordinated through the NSC process.

So technically, I would say it's the NSC Western Hemisphere, folks.

But

To make this sort of really simple, there's a formal government program.

It's called the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening.

Say that again.

The Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening.

How nice, how quaint, how understated.

And this has been a US government state department program, which is co-funded and largely funded by USAID, in order to help foreign countries

develop more robust election infrastructure, and to make sure their own internal political systems are strengthened democratically, which effectively means to make sure they're more of a vassal of the US State Department so that anything that happens in that country's internal politics do not undermine the State Department's vision for the development of that region.

Now, starting in 2021, CEPS, the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening, began to really, really add this censorship disinformation component to its international diplomacy toolkit.

This idea that where we previously said,

Democracy and political process strengthening meant providing voice to minority factions in that country's government who were underrepresented by the will of the majority or protections for the press.

Now, of course, all these things are quite cynical.