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<DIV><FONT size=2 face=Arial><FONT face="Times New Roman"><FONT
style="FONT-SIZE: 16pt" size=4>The Stealth Destabilizer</FONT><BR><FONT
style="FONT-SIZE: 20pt" size=5><B>The National Endowment for Democracy in
Venezuela</B></FONT><BR></FONT><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman">by KIM
SCIPES<BR><BR>As protests have been taking place in Venezuela the last couple of
weeks, it is always good to check on the National Endowment for Democracy (NED),
the US Empire’s "stealth" destabilizer. What has the NED been up to in
Venezuela?<BR><BR>Before going into details, it is important to note what NED is
and is not. First of all, it has NOTHING to do with the democracy we are
taught in civics classes, concerning one person-one vote, with everyone affected
having a say in the decision, etc. (This is commonly known as "popular" or
grassroots democracy.) The NED opposes this kind of democracy.<BR><BR>The
NED promotes top-down, elite, constrained (or "polyarchal")
democracy. This is the democracy where the elites get to decide the
candidates or questions suitable to go before the people—and always limiting the
choices to what the elites are comfortable with. Then, once the elites
have made their decision, THEN the people are presented with the "choice" that
the elites approve. And then NED prattles on with its nonsense about
how it is "promoting democracy around the world."<BR><BR>This is one of the most
cynical uses of democracy there is. It’s notable even in what my friend
Dave Lippmann calls "Washington Deceit."<BR><BR>The other thing to note about
NED is that it is NOT independent as it claims, ad nauseum. It was created
by the US Congress, signed into US law by President Ronald Reagan (that staunch
defender of democracy), and it operates from funds provided annually by the US
Government.<BR><BR>However, its Board of Directors is drawn from among the
elites in the US Government’s foreign policy making realm. Past Board
members have included Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Frank Carlucci, General Wesley K. Clark, and Paul Wolfowitz. Today’s board
can be found at http://www.ned.org/about/board; most notable is Elliot Abrams of
Reagan Administration fame.<BR><BR>In reality, NED is part of the US Empire’s
tools, and "independent" only in the sense that no elected presidential
administration can directly alter its composition or activities, even if it
wanted to. It’s initial project director, Professor Allen Weinstein of
Georgetown University, admitted in the Washington Post of September 22, 1991,
that "a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the
CIA."<BR><BR>In other words, according to Professor William Robinson in his 1996
book, Promoting Polyarchy, NED is a product of US Government foreign policy
shift from "earlier strategies to contain social and political mobilization
through a focus on control of the state and governmental apparatus" to a process
of "democracy promotion," whereby "the United States and local elites thoroughly
penetrate civil society, and from therein, assure control over popular
mobilization and mass movements." What this means, as I note in my 2010
book, AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or
Sabotage?, "is that instead of waiting for a client government to be threatened
by its people and then responding, US foreign policy shifted to intervening in
the civil society of a country ‘of interest’ (as defined by US foreign policy
goals) before popular mobilization could become significant, and by supporting
certain groups and certain politicians, then channel any potential mobilization
in the direction desired by the US Government."<BR><BR>Obviously, this also
means that these "civil society" organizations can be used offensively as well,
against any government the US opposes. NED funding, for example, was used
in all of the "color revolutions" in Eastern Europe and, I expect, currently in
the Ukraine as well as elsewhere.<BR><BR>How do they operate? They have
four "institutes" through which they work: the International Republican
Institute (currently headed by US Senator John McCain), the National Democratic
Institute for International Affairs (currently headed by former US Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright), the Center for International Private Enterprise (the
international wing of the US Chamber of Commerce), and the American Center for
International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), the foreign policy operation of the
AFL-CIO, with Richard Trumka the head of its Board of Directors.<BR><BR>As I
documented in my book, ACILS had been indirectly involved in the 2002 coup
attempt in Venezuela by participating in meetings with leaders later involved in
the coup beforehand, and then denying afterwards the involvement of the leaders
of the right-wing labor organization (CTV) in the coup, leaders of an
organization long affiliated with the AFL-CIO. We also know NED overall
had been active in Venezuela since 1997.<BR><BR>The NED and its institutes
continue to actively fund projects in Venezuela today. From the 2012 NED
Annual Report (the latest available), we see they have provided $1,338,331 to
organizations and projects in Venezuela that year alone: $120,125 for
projects for "accountability"; $470,870 for "civic education"; $96,400 for
"democratic ideas and values"; $105,000 for "freedom of information"; $92,265
for "human rights"; $216,063 for "political processes"; $34,962 for "rule of
law"; $45,000 for "strengthening political institutions"; and $153,646 for
Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).<BR><BR>Additionally,
however, as found on the NED "Latin American and Caribbean" regional page, NED
has granted $465,000 to ACILS to advance NED objectives of "freedom of
association" in the region, with another $380,000 to take place in Venezuela and
Colombia. This is in addition to another $645,000 to the International
Republican Institute, and $750,000 to the National Democratic Institute for
International Affairs.<BR><BR>The irony of these pious claims for "freedom of
association," etc., is that Venezuela is has developed public participation to
one of the highest levels in the world, and has one of the most free media in
the world. Even with massive private TV media involvement in the 2002
coup, the government did not take away their right to broadcast
afterward.<BR><BR>In other words, NED and its institutes are not active in
Venezuela to help promote democracy, as they claim, but in fact, to act against
popular democracy in an effort to restore the rule of the elite, top-down
democracy. They want to take popular democracy away from those nasty
Chavistas, and show who is boss in the US Empire. This author bets they
fail.<BR><BR>Kim Scipes, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Purdue
University North Central in Westville, IN, and is author of AFL-CIO’s Secret War
against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage?, and
KMU: Building Genuine Trade Unionism in the Philippines, 1980-1994.
He can be reached through his web site at
http://faculty.pnc.edu/kscipes.</FONT><BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>