Weird for the US government to be calling the entire plot of Top Gun: Maverick "bullshit" in real time.
Israel Turns Gaza Aid Distribution Sites Into Open Killing Fields As global attention turns to Iran, Israeli attacks on starving Palestinians seeking aid have dramatically increased. Hamza M.Salha and Sharif Abdel Kouddous Jun 20 Palestinians seeking aid west of Gaza City scramble for cover as Israeli forces open fire on the crowd. June 2025. (Screenshot of video by Abdel Qader Sabbah) DEIR AL-BALAH, GAZA—With the world’s attention on Iran, Israel’s extermination campaign in Gaza has reached new and horrifying depths. Every single day, starving Palestinians are forced to journey to remote areas to try and get food and attacked en masse, turning so-called aid distribution sites into open killing fields. The attacks on Palestinians seeking food have dramatically increased over the past week, with dozens of people being shot and shelled on a daily basis. The death toll from the past few days alone is shocking: at least 38 people were killed on Monday, 59 on Tuesday, 22 on Thursday, and 35 on Friday. Over 400 have been killed and more than 3,000 wounded since late May in what the Gaza health ministry calls “aid massacres”—a new term added to the Gaza genocide lexicon. Ahmed Nejm, a 28-year-old currently displaced with his family of 10 in Deir al-Balah, is in a wheelchair, unable to walk after he was wounded in an Israeli attack on a gathering of Palestinians seeking aid near Wadi Gaza (the Netzarim Corridor) on June 11. He went to the site fully aware of the risks. “We are trying to manage during this famine,” Nejm told Drop Site. “There’s no bread and no flour. This is what made us go to try and find aid.” He said he arrived with his cousins and neighbors to the site before dawn to wait alongside hundreds of others. Hours later, the Israelis attacked without warning, opening fire with live ammunition and quadcopters. Dozens were killed, including Nejm’s 15-year-old cousin Abdulrahman. Covered in blood, Nejm managed to crawl away as the bullets kept coming. Ambulances were unable to reach the area and he was eventually carried to Al-Aqsa hospital. “We were in an area [the Israelis] had marked as green on the map. I don’t know why they started firing,” he said. Ahmed Nejm was wounded in an Israeli attack on an aid distribution site in Wadi Gaza on June 11. (Photo by Hamza Salha) The worst aid massacre came on June 17, when at least 59 Palestinians were killed and over 200 wounded as they gathered to receive flour rations in Khan Younis. Nasser hospital was overwhelmed with casualties. “The medical team responding to the influx of patients had to clear the maternity ward to make space for the wounded, turning delivery rooms into emergency operating theaters. Many of the injuries required amputations to save the patients' lives,” Doctors Without Borders, which was operating in Nasser, said in a statement. “Every day Palestinians are met with carnage in their attempts to receive supplies from the insufficient amount of aid trickling into Gaza.” “Palestinian lives have been so devalued. It is now the routine to shoot & kill desperate & starving people while they try to collect little food from a company made of mercenaries,” UNRWA’s Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said in a social media post on Wednesday. “Inviting starving people to their death is a war crime. Those responsible [for] this system must be held accountable. This is a disgrace & a stain on our collective consciousness.” The trickle of supplies that the Israelis have allowed to enter has done almost nothing to alleviate the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Between March 2 and May 27, Israel imposed a full spectrum blockade, allowing no food or supplies to enter. On May 27, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a group backed by the U.S. and Israel, set up a few militarized distribution hubs in the south. The project was condemned by the UN and international organizations as a weaponization of aid. Israel has also allowed a very limited number of UN aid trucks to enter Gaza through the Zikim crossing in the north. Since the end of April, the number of meals prepared by community kitchens in Gaza has reduced by 83%. Between March and May, the rates of acute malnutrition across Gaza have more than doubled and the entire population is hungry and on the brink of an all out famine, according to the UN. “Gaza is the hungriest place on Earth,” Jens Laerke, a spokesperson for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in televised remarks in May. ”It’s the only defined area—a country or defined territory within a country—where you have the entire population at risk of famine.” Israel, he said, is intentionally preventing the delivery of aid, using food as a weapon of war. “The aid operation that we have ready to roll is being put in an operational straitjacket that makes it one of the most obstructed aid operations, not only in the world today, but in recent history of global humanitarian response anywhere. The blockade and the tight control of the operation is imposed by a party to the conflict—the occupying power, Israel in Gaza.” Drop Site News is reader-supported. Consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Upgrade to paid The escalating attacks have come amid severe disruptions to internet and telecommunications networks. Israeli attacks in June severed fiber optic cables, causing complete internet connectivity outages with only limited service restored and increasing the risk of a total communications collapse across Gaza. In addition to fewer images and reports emerging from the enclave, humanitarian coordination inside has been severely affected and Palestinians are increasingly struggling to access life-saving information and emergency services or reach friends and family. “The situation is really difficult at the moment,” Dr. Yahya al-Agha, a physician at Nasser hospital wrote to Drop Site in a message on Friday. “Communications are down in Khan Younis and we are struggling to access the internet,” he said, explaining that he is only able to send messages from certain locations using an eSIM to connect to Israeli cell networks. UNICEF spokesperson James Elder, who was recently in Gaza, said in a statement the communications blackout is directly contributing to the massacres. “There have been instances where information [was] shared that a [distribution] site is open, but then it’s communicated on social media that they’re closed, but that information was shared when Gaza’s internet was down and people had no access to it,” he said. Meanwhile no fuel has entered Gaza for more than 100 days, threatening a complete shutdown of field hospitals, supply deliveries, and critical medical equipment, with the UN warning that care units essential for births and medical emergencies will shut down and newborns dependent on ICU machines will suffocate. The Israeli military continues to issue mass displacement orders and expand so-called combat zones, including one announcement on June 13 that covered vast segments of all five governorates in the Gaza Strip and one today covering large swathes of Gaza City. Over 82% of the Gaza Strip has been designated a red zone since March 18, when Israel resumed its full scale genocidal assault and more than 680,000 people have been newly displaced over the past three months. The confirmed health ministry death toll since the start of the genocide now stands at over 55,700—5,400 of them killed since March 18—numbers acknowledged to be vast undercounts, with many thousands missing under the rubble. Israeli attacks on civilians trying to access food have occurred both at GHF aid distribution points and in non-GHF areas where thousands have gathered to wait for the trickle of UN aid trucks that have been allowed into Gaza. Ahmed Matar, a 20-year-old former information technology student at Al-Aqsa University, was killed on June 10, as he waited to receive aid near the Netzarim Corridor on Rashid street, a coastal road. Desperate for food, he arrived there at 4:30 in the morning after hearing trucks carrying aid would arrive early that morning, according to his cousin Nayfah Matar, 20. At 6:00 a.m, the Israeli military opened fire and bombed the crowd of thousands that had gathered in the area. Matar was struck in the leg and abdomen and died. A neighbor recognized him and carried him to Al-Quds hospital. “When his father arrived to see him, he collapsed on the spot from the horror of the scene and the shock of seeing his son killed, soaked in his own blood,” Nayfah said. “To this day, his father has not fully comprehended his death.” Martyr poster of Ahmed Matar, 20, who was killed on June 10 as he was trying to get aid near the Netzarim Corridor in Gaza. (Photo courtesy of Hamza Salha) “Ahmed is one of thousands who lost their lives due to the war and the Zionist occupation. Their hopes and dreams were destroyed, and they lived the most difficult days of their lives: displacement, oppression, humiliation, and famine,” she added. “The occupation continues to commit endless massacres against Palestinians without pause.”
Curious to see post-strike BDAs. I’m not thrilled about this so I hope we at least destroyed those sites.
Allgededlly Bashar's brother Maher in Mosow is in Moscow, video few days ago. He's the most likely direcg culpit for Ghouta chemica attack 10+ years ago. He's an absolute nutjob in Uday Hussein sense.
“A New Line Crossed”: The U.S. Provokes Iran With Attacks on Nuclear Sites Iran has now been forced to decide how to respond to U.S. attacks on its sovereignty. Murtaza Hussain Jun 22 Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine discusses the mission details of a strike on Iran during a news conference at the Pentagon on June 22, 2025 in Arlington, Virginia. U.S. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images) Spoiler On Saturday night, U.S. warplanes attacked three Iranian nuclear sites, marking the first time the U.S. has attacked on Iranian soil in the decades-long cold war between the two countries. President Trump’s announcement, posted on Truth Social, stated that the U.S. had attacked the nuclear facilities at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan in a bombardment dubbed “Operation Midnight Hammer.” The escalation was met with jubilation from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had relentlessly pushed for the operation. Likewise, Trump’s hardline supporters praised the act of war, while across the spectrum in the U.S., many officials and segments of the public have expressed condemnation—whether on constitutional grounds, or because of opposition to the US entering a potential forever war with a country of 90 million people. Watch and subscribe: Ryan Grim and Murtaza Hussain discuss the U.S. attacks on Saturday night. Although the attacks have been sold by the Trump administration to a war-weary U.S. public as a one-off solution to the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program, the maneuver is more likely to inflame the conflict. The facilities attacked were already known to the international community and subject to oversight. Iran had agreed to controls on uranium enrichment in the context of a diplomatic deal to settle the conflict. Yet the prospects of such a deal look uncertain in the immediate aftermath of this attack. Initial satellite photos show crater impacts at the site of Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. As yet, it is unclear how much damage has been done, including at Fordow, which is the most heavily fortified of the Iranian nuclear sites and designed for the purpose of resisting aerial bombardment. In a press briefing, the Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Dan Caine said that “all three sites sustained extremely severe damage,” but he stated that a final assessment would take more time. Israeli officials, according to the New York Times, have said that Fordow had sustained serious damage but had “not been completely destroyed in the American attack.” On Sunday, Vice President J.D. Vance indicated to ABC News that Iran’s stockpiles have remained intact despite the U.S. operation. Iran has not given detailed indication of their own assessment of the damage and, instead, downplayed the severity of the impacts. Prior to the attack, expecting to be bombed, Iranian officials claimed on several occasions that sensitive equipment and materials had been moved out of the targeted sites. On the night of the attack, Mehdi Mohammadi, a senior adviser to the speaker of Iran’s parliament, responded by stating: “From Iran’s perspective, nothing particularly surprising has happened. Iran has been expecting an attack on Fordow for several nights. The site was evacuated long ago and has not sustained any irreversible damage in the strike.” Mohammadi added, “Two things are certain: First, knowledge cannot be bombed. Second, this time, the gambler will lose.” A day prior to Israel’s attacks on Iran, Iranian officials stated they had already built and prepared another secure nuclear facility for enriching uranium inside the country. Top International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials said previously that they are “not so sure” about the location of Iran’s existing enriched uranium stockpiles, and whether they had been moved out of the targeted locations before the attacks took place. “At a time of war, all nuclear sites are closed,” IAEA director Rafael Grossi said, adding that “all our inspectors who are still in Iran… are not inspecting—no normal activity can take place.” In the wake of the attack, Trump has said that he had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program. But that certainty is not shared by former senior defense officials. “The extent of damage to the targeted facilities is totally unknown. There is no real way to tell without boots on the ground. It's not clear if Trump himself understands this, but everyone else around him knows that they did not verifiably destroy the nuclear program last night,” said Harrison Mann, a former U.S. army major and executive officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for the Middle East/Africa Regional Center. “You can look at this event and say that Trump did something in order to say that he did something. But we did not touch Iran’s conventional military capabilities, and we don’t know if we’ve destroyed their ability to enrich uranium, or build a nuclear weapon if they choose.” What Trump has verifiably accomplished, however, is putting the U.S. into direct conflict with Iran, escalating a confrontation that had previously taken place via proxies and economic warfare. “In terms of actually impacting Iran’s capabilities, the strike was largely symbolic. But in terms of starting an undeclared war, it’s anything but symbolic,” Mann continued. “This is a new line crossed—it's the first time we're bombing a state that has the capacity to inflict serious harm on Americans in the region.” The Aftermath Following the U.S. attack, U.S. officials have threatened further escalation and demanded that Iran return to dialogue about their nuclear program. "The Iranians can go down the path of peace, or they can go down the path of this ridiculous brinkmanship,” Vice President JD Vance said on Sunday morning. Secretary of State Marco Rubio made similar comments, saying that "If they choose the path of diplomacy, we're ready. We can do a deal that's good for them, the Iranian people, and good for the world. If they choose another route, then there will be consequences for that." Though U.S. officials have sought to reassure the public that the attacks are not a prelude to a larger war, they have signaled that more extreme plans may be in store. When pressed on the subject of how Iran may respond to being attacked, Rubio seemed to endorse the possibility of regime change to prevent Iran from now developing a nuclear weapon. “Look, at the end of the day, if Iran is committed to becoming a nuclear weapons power, I do think it puts the regime at risk. I really do. I think it would be the end of the regime if they tried to do that,” Rubio told Fox News. On Sunday afternoon, Trump himself seemed to warm up to the idea of a broader war, posting, “It’s not politically correct to use the term, “Regime Change,” but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn’t there be a Regime change??? MIGA!!!” The Iranian government now faces a choice between potentially accepting the “unconditional surrender” demanded by Trump, or resisting U.S. and Israeli attempts at disarming the country and potentially destroying its government. In response to the attacks and threats, Iranian foreign minister Abbas Aragchi responded on X, “Last week, we were in negotiations with the US when Israel decided to blow up that diplomacy. This week, we held talks with the E3/EU when the US decided to blow up that diplomacy. What conclusion would you draw?” Later, in a speech at an emergency meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Istanbul, Aragchi said, “I don’t know how much space is left for diplomacy. We are now assessing the damage but my country has been attacked—and we will respond.” The Iranian government has already retaliated against the U.S.’s primary ally: Israel. Immediately following the attacks, Iran fired a massive ballistic missile salvo at targets in the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa. In keeping with Iran’s typical method of retaliation since Israel’s unprovoked attack on Iran, several of the missiles made impact on Israel’s densely populated urban areas. So far, the Iranians have not retaliated directly against U.S. bases in the region that are in range of Iranian missiles, nor have they closed the Strait of Hormuz—a naval choke point critical to global energy flows, as well as Iran’s own oil and gas exports. Reports in the Israeli press have indicated that Israeli officials are now seeking an end to the current conflict with Iran following the U.S. attacks against its nuclear sites. For now, the attacks appear to have completely sabotaged the global nuclear non-proliferation agreement, while setting the stage for a larger and more dangerous confrontation between Iran and the U.S. In response to the attack, Russian ex-president Dmitriy Medvedev claimed that a “number of countries” are ready to provide Iran with nuclear warheads after the attack, adding that “enrichment of nuclear material—and, now we can say it outright, the future production of nuclear weapons—will continue.” It is unclear how much Medvedev speaks for Russia’s official stance, but his statements echo comments made by other prominent Russian ultranationalists in the wake of the attack, and Aragchi is expected in Moscow for a previously expected meeting with Putin today. Depending on how Iran now chooses to react, a new phase of the war between Iran and Israel—and its allies—may have officially commenced. The diplomatic path is now viewed by the Iranian side as untrustworthy given repeated attacks that have already taken place in the midst of talks. The likelihood that the Trump administration will engage in escalated violence and military attacks in an effort to achieve its stated goals—even if that means a major long-term war with Iran aiming at regime change—now looks very strong. “If I was in Iran’s position, I would be maintaining a pretense of negotiation, but trying to build a nuclear weapon. If Iran can credibly threaten that it can use a nuclear weapon against Israel, the U.S. will either have to launch a massive invasion of Iran, or hold off and negotiate out of fear that they will use such a weapon against Israel,” said Mann. “Another administration would probably be deterred by an Iranian nuclear weapon, but we cannot say the same with confidence about Trump.”
Russia: Other nations ready to supply Iran with nukes after U.S. strike https://twp.ai/4iodmF— #TuckFrump (@realtuckfrumper.bsky.social) 2025-06-22T15:34:37.000Z Russia, China and Pakistan coming to Iran's aide. Good job your Orange piece of shit
Wow so you’re telling me everyone who cheered on the Iraq war is on board with this now too? And so are the people who opposed the Iran nuclear deal and killed it? You’re kidding.— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@aoc.bsky.social) 2025-06-22T23:48:24.693Z
Who could’ve ever seen this happening if you bombed Iran. Only the dumbest egotistical narcissists on the planet apparently. Mr No more wars has indeed started another war. Captain Orange small dick to the rescue
im hoping this is like when they killed solemani. Iran shot some missiles and everyone so ok that’s enough
I’m kinda rolling with TrustyPatches. This ridiculous double talk is hard to read. I do t follow enough to say new thread, but this is bad.
Israel’s War Is Florida’s New Investment. Florida is poised to eliminate long-standing guardrails limiting local investment in increasingly risky Israel bonds that help finance the country’s war efforts.
Mary Trump suggested that her uncle, President Donald Trump, ordered a missile attack on Iran in part because he was still smarting from being called “TACO” by critics. The acronym for “Trump Always Chickens Out” had been applied by opponents over his brinkmanship on tariff threats. But the president’s niece, a psychologist who’s one of his fiercest critics, said he hasn’t gotten over it. Spoiler wrote Sunday in her “The Good in Us” newsletter that her uncle’s attention-starved “fragile ego” was devastated by the name-calling ― enough so to pull the trigger on a military operation that could plunge the United States into war. Accusing him of illegally ordering the assault on Iran’s nuclear sites, Mary Trump wrote: It is long past time that we stop imputing some deeper or reasonable motives to Donald Trump. Despite being depraved and cruel, much like his cohort Benjamin Netanyahu, he is driven by the most primitive impulses that center almost solely around protecting his fragile ego from humiliation (about which he has a pathological terror) and himself from the reality that he is a complete fraud. Donald is still no doubt stinging from the acronym recently coined to mock his inability to follow through on anything—TACO: Trump Always Chickens Out. In the wake of Israeli strikes against Iran, Donald spent a few days saber-rattling only to back off (chicken out, if you will) in the wake of searing criticism by some of the most reliably sycophantic members of his cult—e.g. Rep. Marjorie Green (R-GA), Alex Jones, and Steve Bannon. He announced at a bizarre press conference that his decision to address the ostensibly urgent crisis regarding Iran would be put off for two weeks. Only two days later, he ordered the attack on Iran. His allies would have us believe that Donald, a brilliant strategist, was faking us out. Sure. An infinitely more plausible explanation is that, on the one hand, he hates being challenged or contradicted, especially from those who almost always fall in line; therefore, he felt the need to double-down on his threats by carrying them out. On the other hand, Donald is a desperate black hole of need—by changing the narrative, he could make sure the spotlight turned back on him.
Oh great, we're going to get into more wars over the next 3 years because Libs think it's an incredibly hilarious own to call him TACO
I am surprised that Illinihockey took the Time to show us the iran attacks but he was probably sleeping when Israel was bombing
there’s not a lot of video of Iranian air defenses going off. Partially because Iran is throttling internet there are partially because their AA apparently doesn’t work
Had an Egyptian uber driver home from the bar (very nice guy), I asked if he came here before/after Murbarak and he was shocked I even knew the name. Guy doesn't mind Sisi as long as stability and security, specifically mentioned instability in neighboring countries. Can only go so far with stability if no placation on economic improvement. We'll see what happens despite fucktard Elon, we need a stable Egypt.
Seems like a natural part of integrating those areas into the new Syria, are you talking about guards potential sympathies with ISIS? If so yes I agree it's worrisome. Outside of that not sure what else they can really do since we're cutting funding. It's immoral, unethical, goes against everything we talk about, etc and not advocating it but the world would be a better place if specifically the former ISIS fighters were disappeared. Literally no idea what the plan is for those types 5-10 years down the road (obviously not talking about the people there who never made that choice). Stil weird thinking "al-Sharaa" instead of "al-Jolani" but in a pragmatic sense he is the best we're gonna get. Navigating to the top of HTS and maintaining control while taking a moderate line on terrorism in the US/Europe is a helluva tightrope, guy obviously knows to how play politics.
For Iran Casualty Counts, Western Media Leaned Heavily on U.S.-Funded Iranian Rights Groups Ryan Grim During the 12-day war between the U.S., Israel, and Iran, Western media relied heavily upon a U.S.-based “human rights organization” when it came to counting the dead from Israeli strikes, and classifying them as either civilian or military casualties. That organization, according to a disclosure published on its own website, is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, which was created by Congress and is funded annually to be an arm of American foreign policy. (NED itself is now suing the Trump administration, which is attempting to block funds Congress appropriated for the organization.) The organization is called Human Rights Activists in Iran but is based in suburban Virginia. During the conflict, the group published civilian-to-military casualty ratios that consistently suggested impressive precision by Israeli forces, a precision called into question by emerging videos of Israeli strikes on civilian areas. Spoiler Yet Drop Site could not find a single Western news outlet that disclosed the source of funding. In contrast, of course, those same outlets routinely refer to the “Hamas-run Ministry of Health” in Gaza, a transparent attempt to cast doubt on the death toll. The effort is all the more egregious given that it is incorrect: the Ministry of Health is a civilian agency jointly run by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, but including that in the description could lend weight to the ministry’s numbers, given the PA’s collaboration with the Israeli government. Support Drop Site’s reporting by becoming a free or paid subscriber. The AP referred to the group simply as “the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists,” while the BBC called them “a Washington-based human rights organisation that has long tracked Iran.” Time, France 24, the Wall Street Journal, Politico, the Washington Post, and dozens of other outlets relied on HRAI without disclosing its link to the US government. On July 4, the New York Times ran on op-ed calling for new sanctions on Iran authored by Karen Kramer, whom the Times described simply as “the deputy director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran.” The center is not in Iran, but rather in New York, and is also funded by the NED, a detail the Times did not disclose. On its website, HRAI contextualizes the U.S. funding as “non-governmental” because NED is a private nonprofit organization, a legal designation that obscures the reality that it was established by and is almost exclusively funded by the U.S. government. “Because the organization seeks to remain independent, it doesn’t accept financial aid from either political groups nor governments,” reads the disclosure on HRAI’s site. “These limitations are essential to maintaining our autonomy. Before March 2011, the organization received donations only from members and partners. But since then, HRAI has also been accepting donations from National Endowment for Democracy, a non-profit, non-governmental organization in the United States of America.” NED was created by a Cold-War Act of Congress in 1983, the National Endowment for Democracy Act, after being proposed by President Ronald Reagan. The intelligence community had some cleaning up to do. The late 1970s were a brutal period for the CIA in particular, which, after Watergate, saw investigative journalists and both chambers of Congress kicking over the logs of its clandestine activity. The Church Committee in the Senate and the Pike Committee in the House dug into assassinations, coups, and a previously unknown level of intervention in the internal affairs of both allies and adversaries. The purpose of NED was to move those covert propaganda activities into an arms-length private organization, though one still overseen by the U.S. government. John Richardson was named the first full-time chair of the organization; he had previously run the CIA-backed Radio Free Europe and other intel-linked groups such as Freedom House. “In some respects, the program resembles the aid given by the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1950's, 60's and 70's to bolster pro-American political groups,” reported the New York Times in 1986 in an article headlined “Missionaries For Democracy.” “But that aid was clandestine and, subsequent Congressional investigations found, often used planted newspaper articles and other forms of intentionally misleading information.” Carl Gershman, an aide to neoconservative Jeane Kirkpatrick who served on Reagan’s national security council, was tapped to run the organization as president. “We should not have to do this kind of work covertly,” Gershman told the Times. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the C.I.A. We saw that in the 60’s, and that’s why it has been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that’s why the endowment was created.” In a subsequent paragraph attempting to draw a line between the CIA and NED, the Times confirmed that the CIA was meanwhile continuing to covertly fund similar organizations, and that potential grantees are vetted by the CIA: “Mr. Gershman says that there is no contact between the C.I.A. and the endowment and that before grants are made, a list of the potential recipients is sent by the endowment through the State Department to the C.I.A. to be sure none of them are getting covert funds. No such case has been reported, Mr. Gershman said.” Gershman’s admission is one that NED no doubt wishes had never been printed, but there are plenty of others to source. “The sugar daddy of overt operations has been the National Endowment for Democracy, a quasi-private group headed by Carl Gershman that is funded by the U.S. Congress. Through the late 1980s, it did openly what had once been unspeakably covert,” wrote David Ignatius in the Washington Post in 1991. “The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection.” He quoted longtime intel operative Allen Weinstein as telling him, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” The media’s approach to the U.S.-based Iranian organization shows how little downside there is to such openness, especially now, as HRAI can include the disclosure publicly on its website and yet the reading public will still be left in the dark. As Ignatius observed in the same remarkable column, covert action was becoming obsolete: That's especially true in the realm of what used to be called "propaganda" and can now simply be called information. The CIA worked hard in the old days to draw foreign newspapers and magazines into its web, so as to counter Soviet disinformation. Frank Wisner, the head of CIA covert operations during the mid-1950s, once remarked that he could play his media assets like a "mighty Wurlitzer." Today the mighty Wurlitzer actually exists. It's called CNN. But it doesn't need playing by anybody but the independent journalists who work there. CNN's objective, omnipresent, real-time coverage of the news helps America's interests more than all the besotted Third World "media assets" of old could ever have imagined. And the bar bills are less. HRAI played a public role in the Green Movement in 2009, which unsuccessfully contested the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but generated a wave of protests and the government’s subsequent crackdown. It was after those protests that NED began funding HRAI. NED has also been a major funder of overseas news organizations that describe themselves as independent. HRAI’s latest assessment has found casualties higher than those reported by the Iranian government, which reported just 610 deaths and 4,746 injuries. HRAI suggested the government was undercounting the toll, having identified 1,190 killed and 4,475 wounded. Of those killed, HRAI claimed that 436 were civilians, 435 were military, and 319 remain to be identified. HRAI’s listed phone number is invalid and other attempts to reach the group were unsuccessful.