Last Friday, Dec. 19, the longstanding radio show, Voces del Periodistas [Journalists’ Voices] led by Celeste Sáenz, Secretary General of the Journalists’ Club of Mexico, was abruptly taken off the air in Mexico. For 22 years, three times a week, Sáenz and an accompanying panel of journalists had discussed on the air key national and international events. In recent years, Schiller Institute organizer and journalist Gerardo Castilleja has been a frequent participant in those discussions.
While there was reportedly a hostile takeover of the ownership of the station, leading to the cancellation of all existing programs at the same time, the timing and antecedents of the action point to more specific political targeting by forces outside Mexico—specifically to the NATO war party global censorship apparatus which is on a crazed international flight forward against opponents in numerous countries of war on Russia—including the scandalous case of Switzerland’s Jacques Baud. As EIR has reported, in recent weeks the Journalists’ Club has been the target of a vicious international campaign slandering it as a “Putin laundromat,” and demanding that it be silenced.
Ongoing EIR investigations into that campaign have quickly corroborated that the attack is coming from the same NATO-centered censorship apparatus that set up, and still directs, Ukraine’s infamous Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD)—which has fingered numerous prominent Americans and others (J.D. Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, Sen. Rand Paul, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, etc.) for “action” by their sister hit squad, Myrotvorets. No surprise, British intelligence’s hand is at the center of it.
Here are some initial investigative leads:
The campaign to silence the Journalists’ Club was launched Nov. 23, 2025 with the publication of an article entitled “Borrowed ‘Voces’: How a Mexican Journalism Club Became a Mouthpiece for Russia and Cuba,” produced and published by the Alliance for Securing Democracy (ASD), operating at the time out of the German Marshall Fund’s office in Washington, D.C. The very next day (Nov. 24), the New York Times ran a front-page article titled “Russian Disinformation Comes to Mexico, Seeking To Rupture U.S. Ties,” citing that ASD report; and the U.S.-based, Spanish-language “fact checker,” Factchequeado (and its Mexican buddies at “Animal Político”), published seven articles under the heading, “Putin’s Laundromat Series,” all but one focused on the Journalists’ Club, regurgitating the ASD report—produced, Factchequeado claims, at its request.
Who or what is the ASD? On Dec. 4, the ASD announced that it is merging its capabilities with the London-headquartered Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), and will operate out of the ISD’s Washington, D.C office. The release reports: “The two organizations already share a strong legacy of partnership, having co-developed an innovative tool mapping Russian state propaganda networks…. Together they combine an extensive track record in countering Russian, Chinese, and Iranian state-sponsored information and cyber operations, as well as in tracking the intersection of state and non-state actor hybrid threats.” It specifies, in fact, that research by the ISD and ASD “has informed recent reporting by the New York Times on the laundering of Russian state propaganda through Spanish-language media outlets in Latin America.”
The ISD is where things get interesting.
Founded in 2006, it describes itself as “the leading organization powering solutions to extremism, hate and authoritarianism globally.” One of the ISD’s proudest claims to fame is the creation of a “Transatlantic Initiative to Prevent a Nuclear-Armed Iran” in 2012 with the high-level anti-Iran hit squad, United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), with the aim of strangling the Iranian economy and forcing regime-change. The initiative was given an organizational structure, consisting of a chair, a senior advisor, and eight “extraordinary individuals.” The first of the eight was Sir Richard Dearlove, then based out of Cambridge University, his deployment as Chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS, MI6), having ended in July 2004. Tony “Iraq War” Blair’s senior advisor Jonathan Powell was another.
While the ISD is not formally part of NATO’s Centre for Excellence in Hybrid Warfare, its people participated extensively in their symposiums and events, and it is a proud member organization of “FIMI-ISAC"—the European Union’s Foreign Information Manipulation (FIMI) and Interference Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) created in February 2023.
The ISD claims to be independent. Really?
Among the governments listed under the ISD’s “partners and funders” are:
• Seven U.K. government departments and agencies: HMG Government Information Cell, Ofcom, Home Office, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology, and the RUSI think tank (the latter is de facto part of the government).
• The U.S. Departments of State and Homeland Security.
• Government agencies of the three other ‘Five Eyes’—Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.
• Various state agencies of Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany (multiple agencies), and Sweden.
Among the multitude of other non-governmental “funders and partners,” we single out two here: the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and George Soros’s Open Society Foundation.
The Trump administration would be wise to take note: The ISD’s campaigns against “extremism” include targeting President Donald Trump and his allies, including establishing a special webpage for their six-part “January 6th series,” dated February 2023, which “explores notable themes following the Capitol riot, including accountability for big tech, extremists’ digital footprints, and the landscape of election denialism going forward.”
