The first thing that struck me about his article was all the references to the word "democracy". I counted 19 such words in this article of moderate length. Why is that, when the title doesn't really imply that it is about the subject of democracy?
"Democracy" promotion is a covert way that the US-led capitalist Empire uses to gain support for its imperial interest of dominating all politically and economically important areas of the world. "Democracy" promotion conceals the real agenda of spreading its market oriented propaganda machine to deceive and manipulate working people in various countries.
"Democracy" promotion has historically been the theme of choice informing the propaganda efforts of capitalists. Democracy has been the dream of people all over the world since the American and French Revolutions which overthrew the rule of the aristocracies and monarchies which, unfortunately, were only replaced by the new class of capitalists. The latter used democratic propaganda when it suited them to enlist the support of working people in the revolutions. Once accomplished, the capitalist classes quickly consolidated their rule and secured the franchise only for their class, and created all the political and economic institutions to serve their interests of wealth and power accumulation.
Ruling classes have always insured that their points of view are conveyed to the underclasses. In earlier times religious institutions and their authorities have often been used to divert and deflect any criticism of the authorities and to generally support the dominant class. In more recent times the development of "public relations" methods has greatly enhanced the control of elites over the underclass by providing techniques to shape the perceptions and thoughts of the underclass.
Such notable figures as Walter Lippmann, Edward Bernays and Joseph Goebbels pioneered these techniques and applied them to the new mass media of radio. An Australian sociologist and psychologist, Alex Carey, wrote an excellent book on the subject entitled, Taking the Risk Out of Democracy. For a quickie introduction I suggest you listen to at least part 1 and part 2 of 5 videos that provide narrations from his book. Each video is approximately 10 minutes.
During the past five decades this propaganda phenomenon evolved into the widespread use of media and public relations consulting firms and right-wing funded think tanks to shape mainstream media's coverage of world events according to the interests of the capitalist ruling class.
From this important function these institutions moved outward to engineer uprisings and revolutions in other countries, referred to as the colored revolutions. These were initially used by the CIA for smaller scale projects after WWII, but it appears that well funded NGOs (the Brookings Institution is a very prominent one) and foundations are increasingly operating in such countries more like independent agents of regime change, although likely in collaboration with the CIA. Zionist influence has figured very prominently in these institutions. See also this, this, and this.
They not only influence media in those countries where regime change is desired, but they pay for targeted groups to come to the US for training seminars, and fund benign sounding opposition groups within the countries.
The author of this article raises some important questions regarding the extent to which such operations were behind or shaped the recent uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East.