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HOW THE US FUNDS DISSENT AGAINST LATIN AMERICAN GOVERNMENTS
[ Part 2.2: "Attached Text" ]
Could this also be happening in Armenia?
12 marzo 2015 - 06:36 AM
Analysis
Comentarios
"A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."
NED Latin America Director Miriam Kornblith was recently in Venezuela
meeting with opposition groups.
NED founding father, Allen Weinstein
The U.S. government and military have a long history of interfering in
the affairs of numerous countries in Latin American and the Caribbean.
By the end of the 19th century, there had been at least 10 U.S.
military interventions across the hemisphere including Argentina
(1890), Chile (1891), Haiti (1891), Panama (1895), Cuba (1898),
Puerto Rico (1898) and Nicaragua (1894, 1896, 1898 and 1899).
>From this time onward, successive U.S. administrations applied
different strategies and tactics for involvement in the region as a
means to secure and protect its geopolitical and economic interests.
However, only recently has there been wider acknowledgement about
the role that U.S. funding to nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs,
particularly from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID), plays
in furthering U.S. foreign policy. For example, in 2012 governments
of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA)
collectively signed a resolution to expel USAID from each of the
signing countries. Those countries included Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador,
Dominica, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
Created by the administration of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan
in 1983, the NED operates as a foundation that provides grants for
“democracy promotion.” The foundation is structured
as an umbrella with an almost corporatist flavor, housing four
other organizations reflecting U.S. sectoral and party interest:
the U.S. labor affiliated American Center for International Labor
Solidarity (ACILS) and Chamber of Commerce linked Center for
International Private Enterprise (CIPE), along with the National
Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and the
International Republican Institute (IRI), both of which reflect
Democrat and Republican affiliations, respectively.
In many ways the NED resembles previous CIA efforts in the 1950s, 60s
and 70s to provide mostly public money for secret operations aimed to
bolster pro-U.S. governments and movements abroad. In South America
for example, between 1975 and 1978 the U.S. helped with the creation
and implementation of Operation Condor. The U.S. provided right-wing
dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay,
Uruguay, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela and Ecuador with technical and
military support for the goal of hunting down and killing political
opponents. Some estimate that Operation Condor killed between 60,000
and 80,000 people.
In 1986, then president of the NED Carl Gershman explained to the New
York Times, “We should not have to do this kind of work covertly
… 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 60s, 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.”
U.S. citizens unknowingly fund the NED with public money. The U.S.
government allocates part the budget of the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) under the U.S. State Department to
the NED - which is most of the NED’s funding source. Although
it receives practically all of its funding from the U.S. government,
the NED is itself an NGO headed by a Board of Directors. The current
board includes:
*
Political economist, author and free market universalist Francis
Fukuyama,
*
Elliott Abrams, former deputy assistant and deputy national security
adviser on Middle East policy in the administration of President
George W. Bush,
*
Moises Naim, Venezuelan Minister of Trade and Industry during the
turbulent early 1990s and former Executive Director of the World
Bank, and
*
Former Deputy Secretary of State under George W. Bush (2005 - 2006)
and Vice Chairmanship at Goldman Sachs Group, Robert B.
Zoellick.
The scope of activity of the NED is truly impressive. According to
the NED website, it supports more than 1,000 NGO projects in more
than 90 countries.
At its inception in the early 1980s, its funding allocation was set
at US$18 million and reached its peak in the late 1990s and early
2000s. Allocations for 2014 and 2015 have been approved for US$103.5
million, while over US$7 million was directed primarily to opposition
organizations in Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba in 2013.
Within the U.S. State Department Justification of Request documents
which outline the reasons for funding requests, it is clear that
funding priorities in Latin America and the Caribbean reflect the
NED’s modern strategy of overtly carrying out old covert
objectives.
Michel Chossudovsky, a professor emeritus of economics at the
University of Ottawa in Canada, sees this funding as an element in
“manufacturing dissent” against governments that the
U.S. government dislikes. However, these funders do not work alone.
“The NED (and USAID) are entities linked with the U.S. state
department, but they operate in tandem with a whole of other
organizations,” said Chossudovsky.
In May 2010 the Foundation for International Relations and Foreign
Dialogue released their report Assessing Democracy Assistance in
Venezuela which revealed that in addition to NED and USAID funding,
a broad range of private and European based foundations funded
opposition-aligned NGOs in the country with between US$40-50 million
annually.
According to Dan Beeton, International Communications Director at the
Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, D.C.,
NED funds in Latin American have been directed at “a lot of
what are kind of the old guard political entities that are now kind of
discredited,” such as the Trade Union Confederation of Venezuela
(CTV), which was instrumental in the 2002 coup in Venezuela, as well
as older political parties that are now marginal forces in their
country’s political landscapes in spite of their considerable
outside funding.
The United States Agency for International Development
Created in 1961 as a foreign assistance program under President
John F. Kennedy, USAID commands a much larger budget and broader
scope than NED. While U.S. diplomats continue to stress that USAID
funding does not have a political basis, USAID documents nonetheless
acknowledge its role in “furthering America's interests”
while carrying out “U.S. foreign policy by promoting broad-scale
human progress at the same time it expands stable, free societies,
creates markets and trade partners for the United States.”
But critics are skeptical of USAID’s missionary work, noting
how their strategy has changed over time.
“(USAID’s) mandate is to provide development aid
and historically it has provided development aid, tied into debt
negotiations and so on. Subsequently with the evolution of the
development aid program it has redirected its endeavours on funding
NGOs,” said Chossudovsky.
While the range of activities undertaken by NGOs can be broad and
some of these programs may not have political intentions, Beeton
nonetheless argues that this funding “ultimately can and often
does serve a political end when the U.S. wants these grantees to help
it fulfill its goals in these countries.”
The extent of U.S. political ambitions recently came into the
international spotlight with the revelation that USAID had secretly
spent US$1.6 million to fund a social messaging network in Cuba called
ZunZuneo, with the stated purpose of "renegotiat(ing) the balance of
power between the state and society." The project was headed up by
Joe McSpedon of the USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI).
Other USAID officials accused of active political meddling in the
affairs of sovereign countries include regional head Mark Feierstein.
According to Venezuelan investigative journalist Eva Golinger, in 2013
Feierstein met Venezuelan opposition figures including right-wing
politicians Maria Corina Machado, Julio Borges and Ramon Guillermo
Avelado as well as political strategist Juan Jose Rendon to devise
a plan to undermine the Venezuelan government.
At the State Department budgetary hearing, Feierstein also confirmed
“a long-standing program in place to support those who are
advocating and fighting on behalf of democracy and human rights in
Venezuela … and we are prepared to continue those under any
scenario.”
State Department cables revealed by WikiLeaks also brought to
light previous activities by USAID/OTI in Venezuela, including the
development of a five point, anti-government strategy for U.S. embassy
activities, as well as the confirmation that grantees had been active
in promoting street demonstrations in 2009.
Machado, a former anti-Chavista National Assembly member, was among
the signatories of the Carmona decree following the Venezuelan coup in
2002, which abolished the legislative and judiciary powers, as well
as the constitution. She was also among the most prominent promoters
of last year’s opposition violence that claimed the lives of
43 people.
In Bolivia, local rural workers’ groups and the government
expelled the U.S.-based Chemonics International Inc. after their US$2.7
million USAID-funded "Strengthening Democracy" program was accused of
financing destabilization attempts against the government. Chemonics
operates in approximately 150 countries, offering various technical
services and “consulting.”
The Bolivian government publicly outlined what they argued was
proof of USAID-funded programs to mobilize the indigenous population
against the government, in particular an indigenous march protesting
the construction of a highway. USAID funded programs were active in
these areas, and had funded some of the leading organizations such as
the Eastern Bolivia Indigenous Peoples and Communities Confederation
(CIDOB).
“USAID refused to reveal who it was funding and the Bolivian
government had strong reasons to believe that it had ties and
coordination with opposition groups in the country which at the time
was involved in violence and destructive activities aimed at toppling
the Morales government,” said Beeton. “Now we know through
WikiLeaks that that’s what really was going on.”
President Evo Morales also revealed transcripts of phone calls between
the anti-highway march organizers and U.S. embassy officials. The
U.S. embassy confirmed the calls, but explained that they were merely
trying to familiarize themselves with the country’s political
and social situation.
Officials also denounced the lack of accountability to the Bolivian
government or to the recipient constituencies of USAID funds.
The head of the Eastern Bolivia Indigenous Peoples and Communities
Confederation (CIDOB), Lazaro Taco, confirmed that they had received
“external support for our workshops," but would not identify
the source.
These and other USAID activities led Bolivian President Evo Morales
to claim that the agency was conspiring against his government. The
government expelled USAID from the country in May 2013, while USAID
denied any wrongdoing.
In June of 2012, an Ecuadorian daily revealed that 4 NGOs based in
Ecuador were recipients of over US$1.8 million for a project called
Active Citizens, whose political bend was critical of the Correa
government.
Shortly afterwards, the Technical Secretariat for International
Cooperation (Seteci) of Ecuador announced it would also investigate
the “Costas y Bosques” (Coasts and Forests) conservation
project, which received US$13.3 million in funding from USAID. The
project, based in the provinces of Esmeraldas, Guayas and Manabí,
was also being undertaken by the Chemonics International Inc, the
same organization expelled from Bolivia.
Mireya Cardenas, National Secretary of Peoples, Social Movements and
Citizen Participation, said that "there is every reason to consider
USAID a factor of disturbance that threatens the sovereignty and
political stability (of Ecuador)". While the U.S. Ambassador in Ecuador
Adam Namm tried to reassert that USAID did not fund political parties,
he did confirm that certain opposition groups such as Fundamedios
was funded “indirectly.”
In November 2013 the Ecuadorean government sent a letter to the U.S.
embassy in the country’s capital Quito, ordering that
“USAID must not execute any new activity” in Ecuador.
USAID canceled its aid shortly after.
For Beeton, “lack of transparency is probably the biggest problem
(with USAID) in that it really prevents the governments in the host
countries from finding something objectionable, or even coordinating
better”. This was in large part the principle concern from
the Ecuadorian Seteci, who questioned the extent of expenditures on
certain project and the lack of coordination.
In the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake, CEPR conducted
an extensive evaluation of USAID funding to Haiti, including the
history of funding, and found transparency and coordination with
local government to be a significant problem, especially when the
local government experienced tensions with U.S. foreign policy.
“The U.S. government has been perfectly happy to not coordinate
with governments, and that has a lot to do with politics…
it was under [former Haitian President] Aristide really saw a lot
of assistance bypass the Haitian government and go to NGO, including
violent opposition groups and so called democratic opposition groups
much like what you are seeing recently in Venezuela and Bolivia,”
said Beeton.
For 2013, the combined NED and USAID allocations for Cuba, Venezuela,
Ecuador and Bolivia alone totaled over US$60 million, with the bulk
of these funds destined to Cuba and Ecuador. For the government and
progressive social movements of these countries, there is a growing
concern that these funds could be used to undertake what Chossudovsky
qualified as a “consistent process of destabilizing government
as part of non-conventional warfare, meaning you don’t send
in the troops but you destabilize the government through so called
colored revolutions or infiltrations.”
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/How-the-US-Funds-Dissent-against-L
atin-American-Governments-20150312-0006.html
[ Part 2.2: "Attached Text" ]
Could this also be happening in Armenia?
12 marzo 2015 - 06:36 AM
Analysis
Comentarios
"A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA."
NED Latin America Director Miriam Kornblith was recently in Venezuela
meeting with opposition groups.
NED founding father, Allen Weinstein
The U.S. government and military have a long history of interfering in
the affairs of numerous countries in Latin American and the Caribbean.
By the end of the 19th century, there had been at least 10 U.S.
military interventions across the hemisphere including Argentina
(1890), Chile (1891), Haiti (1891), Panama (1895), Cuba (1898),
Puerto Rico (1898) and Nicaragua (1894, 1896, 1898 and 1899).
>From this time onward, successive U.S. administrations applied
different strategies and tactics for involvement in the region as a
means to secure and protect its geopolitical and economic interests.
However, only recently has there been wider acknowledgement about
the role that U.S. funding to nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs,
particularly from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the
United States Agency for International Development (USAID), plays
in furthering U.S. foreign policy. For example, in 2012 governments
of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA)
collectively signed a resolution to expel USAID from each of the
signing countries. Those countries included Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador,
Dominica, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
Created by the administration of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan
in 1983, the NED operates as a foundation that provides grants for
“democracy promotion.” The foundation is structured
as an umbrella with an almost corporatist flavor, housing four
other organizations reflecting U.S. sectoral and party interest:
the U.S. labor affiliated American Center for International Labor
Solidarity (ACILS) and Chamber of Commerce linked Center for
International Private Enterprise (CIPE), along with the National
Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and the
International Republican Institute (IRI), both of which reflect
Democrat and Republican affiliations, respectively.
In many ways the NED resembles previous CIA efforts in the 1950s, 60s
and 70s to provide mostly public money for secret operations aimed to
bolster pro-U.S. governments and movements abroad. In South America
for example, between 1975 and 1978 the U.S. helped with the creation
and implementation of Operation Condor. The U.S. provided right-wing
dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay,
Uruguay, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela and Ecuador with technical and
military support for the goal of hunting down and killing political
opponents. Some estimate that Operation Condor killed between 60,000
and 80,000 people.
In 1986, then president of the NED Carl Gershman explained to the New
York Times, “We should not have to do this kind of work covertly
… 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 60s, 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.”
U.S. citizens unknowingly fund the NED with public money. The U.S.
government allocates part the budget of the United States Agency for
International Development (USAID) under the U.S. State Department to
the NED - which is most of the NED’s funding source. Although
it receives practically all of its funding from the U.S. government,
the NED is itself an NGO headed by a Board of Directors. The current
board includes:
*
Political economist, author and free market universalist Francis
Fukuyama,
*
Elliott Abrams, former deputy assistant and deputy national security
adviser on Middle East policy in the administration of President
George W. Bush,
*
Moises Naim, Venezuelan Minister of Trade and Industry during the
turbulent early 1990s and former Executive Director of the World
Bank, and
*
Former Deputy Secretary of State under George W. Bush (2005 - 2006)
and Vice Chairmanship at Goldman Sachs Group, Robert B.
Zoellick.
The scope of activity of the NED is truly impressive. According to
the NED website, it supports more than 1,000 NGO projects in more
than 90 countries.
At its inception in the early 1980s, its funding allocation was set
at US$18 million and reached its peak in the late 1990s and early
2000s. Allocations for 2014 and 2015 have been approved for US$103.5
million, while over US$7 million was directed primarily to opposition
organizations in Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and Cuba in 2013.
Within the U.S. State Department Justification of Request documents
which outline the reasons for funding requests, it is clear that
funding priorities in Latin America and the Caribbean reflect the
NED’s modern strategy of overtly carrying out old covert
objectives.
Michel Chossudovsky, a professor emeritus of economics at the
University of Ottawa in Canada, sees this funding as an element in
“manufacturing dissent” against governments that the
U.S. government dislikes. However, these funders do not work alone.
“The NED (and USAID) are entities linked with the U.S. state
department, but they operate in tandem with a whole of other
organizations,” said Chossudovsky.
In May 2010 the Foundation for International Relations and Foreign
Dialogue released their report Assessing Democracy Assistance in
Venezuela which revealed that in addition to NED and USAID funding,
a broad range of private and European based foundations funded
opposition-aligned NGOs in the country with between US$40-50 million
annually.
According to Dan Beeton, International Communications Director at the
Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington, D.C.,
NED funds in Latin American have been directed at “a lot of
what are kind of the old guard political entities that are now kind of
discredited,” such as the Trade Union Confederation of Venezuela
(CTV), which was instrumental in the 2002 coup in Venezuela, as well
as older political parties that are now marginal forces in their
country’s political landscapes in spite of their considerable
outside funding.
The United States Agency for International Development
Created in 1961 as a foreign assistance program under President
John F. Kennedy, USAID commands a much larger budget and broader
scope than NED. While U.S. diplomats continue to stress that USAID
funding does not have a political basis, USAID documents nonetheless
acknowledge its role in “furthering America's interests”
while carrying out “U.S. foreign policy by promoting broad-scale
human progress at the same time it expands stable, free societies,
creates markets and trade partners for the United States.”
But critics are skeptical of USAID’s missionary work, noting
how their strategy has changed over time.
“(USAID’s) mandate is to provide development aid
and historically it has provided development aid, tied into debt
negotiations and so on. Subsequently with the evolution of the
development aid program it has redirected its endeavours on funding
NGOs,” said Chossudovsky.
While the range of activities undertaken by NGOs can be broad and
some of these programs may not have political intentions, Beeton
nonetheless argues that this funding “ultimately can and often
does serve a political end when the U.S. wants these grantees to help
it fulfill its goals in these countries.”
The extent of U.S. political ambitions recently came into the
international spotlight with the revelation that USAID had secretly
spent US$1.6 million to fund a social messaging network in Cuba called
ZunZuneo, with the stated purpose of "renegotiat(ing) the balance of
power between the state and society." The project was headed up by
Joe McSpedon of the USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI).
Other USAID officials accused of active political meddling in the
affairs of sovereign countries include regional head Mark Feierstein.
According to Venezuelan investigative journalist Eva Golinger, in 2013
Feierstein met Venezuelan opposition figures including right-wing
politicians Maria Corina Machado, Julio Borges and Ramon Guillermo
Avelado as well as political strategist Juan Jose Rendon to devise
a plan to undermine the Venezuelan government.
At the State Department budgetary hearing, Feierstein also confirmed
“a long-standing program in place to support those who are
advocating and fighting on behalf of democracy and human rights in
Venezuela … and we are prepared to continue those under any
scenario.”
State Department cables revealed by WikiLeaks also brought to
light previous activities by USAID/OTI in Venezuela, including the
development of a five point, anti-government strategy for U.S. embassy
activities, as well as the confirmation that grantees had been active
in promoting street demonstrations in 2009.
Machado, a former anti-Chavista National Assembly member, was among
the signatories of the Carmona decree following the Venezuelan coup in
2002, which abolished the legislative and judiciary powers, as well
as the constitution. She was also among the most prominent promoters
of last year’s opposition violence that claimed the lives of
43 people.
In Bolivia, local rural workers’ groups and the government
expelled the U.S.-based Chemonics International Inc. after their US$2.7
million USAID-funded "Strengthening Democracy" program was accused of
financing destabilization attempts against the government. Chemonics
operates in approximately 150 countries, offering various technical
services and “consulting.”
The Bolivian government publicly outlined what they argued was
proof of USAID-funded programs to mobilize the indigenous population
against the government, in particular an indigenous march protesting
the construction of a highway. USAID funded programs were active in
these areas, and had funded some of the leading organizations such as
the Eastern Bolivia Indigenous Peoples and Communities Confederation
(CIDOB).
“USAID refused to reveal who it was funding and the Bolivian
government had strong reasons to believe that it had ties and
coordination with opposition groups in the country which at the time
was involved in violence and destructive activities aimed at toppling
the Morales government,” said Beeton. “Now we know through
WikiLeaks that that’s what really was going on.”
President Evo Morales also revealed transcripts of phone calls between
the anti-highway march organizers and U.S. embassy officials. The
U.S. embassy confirmed the calls, but explained that they were merely
trying to familiarize themselves with the country’s political
and social situation.
Officials also denounced the lack of accountability to the Bolivian
government or to the recipient constituencies of USAID funds.
The head of the Eastern Bolivia Indigenous Peoples and Communities
Confederation (CIDOB), Lazaro Taco, confirmed that they had received
“external support for our workshops," but would not identify
the source.
These and other USAID activities led Bolivian President Evo Morales
to claim that the agency was conspiring against his government. The
government expelled USAID from the country in May 2013, while USAID
denied any wrongdoing.
In June of 2012, an Ecuadorian daily revealed that 4 NGOs based in
Ecuador were recipients of over US$1.8 million for a project called
Active Citizens, whose political bend was critical of the Correa
government.
Shortly afterwards, the Technical Secretariat for International
Cooperation (Seteci) of Ecuador announced it would also investigate
the “Costas y Bosques” (Coasts and Forests) conservation
project, which received US$13.3 million in funding from USAID. The
project, based in the provinces of Esmeraldas, Guayas and Manabí,
was also being undertaken by the Chemonics International Inc, the
same organization expelled from Bolivia.
Mireya Cardenas, National Secretary of Peoples, Social Movements and
Citizen Participation, said that "there is every reason to consider
USAID a factor of disturbance that threatens the sovereignty and
political stability (of Ecuador)". While the U.S. Ambassador in Ecuador
Adam Namm tried to reassert that USAID did not fund political parties,
he did confirm that certain opposition groups such as Fundamedios
was funded “indirectly.”
In November 2013 the Ecuadorean government sent a letter to the U.S.
embassy in the country’s capital Quito, ordering that
“USAID must not execute any new activity” in Ecuador.
USAID canceled its aid shortly after.
For Beeton, “lack of transparency is probably the biggest problem
(with USAID) in that it really prevents the governments in the host
countries from finding something objectionable, or even coordinating
better”. This was in large part the principle concern from
the Ecuadorian Seteci, who questioned the extent of expenditures on
certain project and the lack of coordination.
In the wake of the devastating 2010 earthquake, CEPR conducted
an extensive evaluation of USAID funding to Haiti, including the
history of funding, and found transparency and coordination with
local government to be a significant problem, especially when the
local government experienced tensions with U.S. foreign policy.
“The U.S. government has been perfectly happy to not coordinate
with governments, and that has a lot to do with politics…
it was under [former Haitian President] Aristide really saw a lot
of assistance bypass the Haitian government and go to NGO, including
violent opposition groups and so called democratic opposition groups
much like what you are seeing recently in Venezuela and Bolivia,”
said Beeton.
For 2013, the combined NED and USAID allocations for Cuba, Venezuela,
Ecuador and Bolivia alone totaled over US$60 million, with the bulk
of these funds destined to Cuba and Ecuador. For the government and
progressive social movements of these countries, there is a growing
concern that these funds could be used to undertake what Chossudovsky
qualified as a “consistent process of destabilizing government
as part of non-conventional warfare, meaning you don’t send
in the troops but you destabilize the government through so called
colored revolutions or infiltrations.”
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/How-the-US-Funds-Dissent-against-L
atin-American-Governments-20150312-0006.html