Russia Shows USAID the Door

19 September, 2012

http://rt.com/

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has announced it will close its offices in Russia.

After 20 years of working in Russia, USAID officials said they were informed by the Russian government that their services were no longer required.

According to the Foreign Ministry, USAID was attempting to manipulate the election processes in the country.

“The character of the agency’s work…did not always comply with the declared aims of cooperation in bilateral humanitarian cooperation,” the Foreign Ministry said on its website. “We are talking about issuing grants in an attempt to affect the course of the political processes in the country, including elections at different levels and institutions in civil society.”

Russian civil society has become fully mature, the Foreign Ministry said, and did not need any “external direction.” Moscow is read to work with USAID in third-party countries, it said.

In an interview to Kommersant, Dmitry Peskov, President Putin’s press-secretary, suggested that the US agency was not abiding by the rules regulating their work with NGOs.

“As all foreign agencies that provide financial support for Russian NGOs, USAID should abide by Russia’s legal regulations,” Peskov said. “As long as the Americans abide by these norms, we obviously couldn’t make a decision to terminate their activities on Russian territory.”

Moscow‘s decision to halt USAID programs comes after Putin in July signed legislation that requires nongovernmental organizations that receive funds from abroad to register as “foreign agents.”

The law requires that Russian-based NGOs provide information as to how funds received from abroad are being used in Russia.

The United States has denied that USAID programs are aimed at interfering in Russia’s domestic affairs.

US State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland announced the termination of USAID’s operations in Russia on Tuesday. The Kremlin notified US officials they have until October 1 to close the mission.

Washington began its USAID operations in Moscow following the unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union. At that time, Russia was a basket case, dependent on IMF loan transfusions just to keep its head above water. USAID spent more than $2.6 billion in Russia on various projects, like cleaning up the environment and fighting against infectious diseases.

Russia’s domestic situation began to turn around, however, when the presidency passed from Boris Yeltsin to Vladimir Putin. Today, Russia has not only returned its debts, but is now a lender of last resort for countries hammered by the 2008 financial crisis.

Although Russia’s reversal of fortunes is often explained by its vast natural resources, political will also played a significant role in the progress.

Since Russia no longer sees itself as a charity case, USAID activities were increasingly viewed as not only redundant, but even a little humiliating.

Aside from the growing irrelevance of such foreign-sponsored activities, there was the nagging suspicion inside Russia that these agencies served as fronts for purely political motives.

This year, for example, USAID was allotted $50 million to finance its Russia activities. Approximately 60 per cent of the budget was to be used for promoting democracy and human rights. This represents a dramatic increase compared with the former Bush administration.

 

US SYRIAN POLICY, BROOKINGS [INSTITUTE] MEMO #21, MOVING TO “PLAN B”

 

Brookings’ “Middle East Memo #21” quoted almost verbatim as US begins ‘plan B’ for regime change in Syria

Tony Cartalucci

July 24, 2012

 

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today regarding the ongoing violence in Syria:

“We have to work closely with the opposition, because more and more territory is being taken and it will eventually result in a safe haven inside Syria that will then provide a base for further actions by the opposition.”

–Reuters, July 24, 2012 

Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution’s Assessing Options for Regime Change” (.pdf) report (emphasis added): (emphasis added):

“An alternative is for diplomatic efforts to focus first on how to end the violence and how to gain humanitarian access, as is being done under Annan’s leadership. This may lead to the creation of safe-havens and humanitarian corridors, which would have to be backed by limited military power. This would, of course, fall short of U.S. goals for Syria and could preserve Asad in power. From that starting point, however, it is possible that a broad coalition with the appropriate international mandate could add further coercive action to its efforts.”

–page 4, Assessing Options for Regime Change (.pdf), Brookings Institution, March 2012.

Image: Brookings Institution’s, Middle East Memo #21 “Assessing Options for Regime Change (.pdf),” makes no secret that the humanitarian “responsibility to protect” is but a pretext for long-planned regime change.

Quite clearly the Syrian government is not teetering as the West has claimed. What’s also clear is, US foreign policy is not created or shaped by the American people, nor their elected representatives. But aside from the United States’ belligerent and floundering foreign policy being dictated by unelected policy wonks, funded by the corporate-financier interests of Wall Street and London, Clinton’s parroting of Brookings’ report indicates that Syria’s current crisis is about to be compounded, not resolved, and as a direct result of further Western meddling.

Image: Some of the corporate sponsors behind the Brookings Institution, from whose playbook US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is reading. (click image to enlarge)

The script Secretary Clinton is reading from, “Assessing Options for Regime Change” published in March 2012, also made mention of supplying weapons to militants fighting the Syrian government to “bleed” the nation, perpetually keeping a “regional adversary” weak: →

Convincing Proof Against USAID

Juan Carlos Zambrana Marchetti

Newspaper Cambio

July 28,2012

As hard as we try to expose all of the mechanisms of interventionism, these are so diverse that some of them slip through our fingers after we have had the evidence in hand. This is the curious story of how, after more than a year, I was able to tie down the loose end that had escaped me when I denounced the event called Danger in the Andes: The Threats to Democracy, Human Rights, and Inter-American security.

A few days ago I was interviewed by the renowned journalist Jorge Gestoso for his program, De Frente. With a sharpness of thought perfected through his years of experience, he had made a connection that escaped me. Attempting to give me the opportunity to correct the oversight, he read the following fragment from my article: “During the second panel, on terrorism, the panelists demonized Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador as anti-American, and they described the end of the world caused by those three countries with nuclear arms built with the support of Iran. Obviously, they did not allow me to ask any more questions because Jose Cardenas, the moderator of the first panel, had already passed on the information about me to Otto Reich, the moderator of the second.” After explaining that Otto Reich was the former Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs during the government of George W. Bush, Gestoso raised his head and asked me, point-blank: “Who is Jose Cardenas?”

I was dumfounded, not knowing what to answer, because it had not even crossed my mind that the name could be as relevant as that of the other big shots on whom I had concentrated more that afternoon at the Capitol, when I found myself surrounded by the most radical of the Republican hounds who were preparing the invasion of Latin America. I did not remember the name, because in my article I had mentioned him only as the moderator of the first panel, and had bypassed the details of who Jose Cardenas might have been in his professional life. In order to finesse the predicament, I answered with what I had thought when I was writing the article: he is just another politician, of Latin American origin and rightist. I saw the disappointment in Jorge’s face, but, with the professionalism that characterizes him, he let the awkward moment pass. From then on, the interview was somewhat uncomfortable for me, because I could not stop thinking about why the name of Jose Cardenas had not led me to recall anything of relevance.

When I got home, I retrieved the recording of the event and paid attention to the introduction made on behalf of the sponsors –the Hudson Institute, a committee of experts (think tank) in Washington dedicated to “global security, prosperity, and freedom.” It was explained that the event was divided into two panels. The first of these would focus on the internal dangers for three Latin American countries: Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. The second would focus on the external threats to democracy for those same countries, dangers that, according to them, derived from links with the radical Islamism of Iran, drug trafficking, and terrorism.

Jose Cárdenas was the moderator of the first panel, for whom the internal threats to democracy in the mentioned countries were, supposedly, violations of the freedom of the press, violations of human rights, and the concentration of power in the hands of the president. Cardenas explained it this way:  “let me start by saying that we really want to recognize the courage of many of the speakers here today, who actually live in the countries they will be talking about… because many of this speakers that we reached out to have expressed to us a concern, a fear of  speaking out in public for fear of retribution when  they return to their countries. And, just keep that in mind as a backdrop as to why we are here to discuss the internal situation in those countries. Think of it as ostensibly (ph) a democracy where citizens have an overt fear of speaking out in public, for fear of retribution.”

I was surprised at the immense capacity for manipulation shown by the gentleman, and the shamelessness of using such a grotesque lie to influence from the start the receptivity of the audience. In retrospect, his falsity can be demonstrated by the fact that none of the panelists, despite their open campaigns of slander against the mentioned leftist governments, has been persecuted, and far less have there been any attempts against their lives.

The panelists whom Mr. Cardenas presented to prove the internal threat of the democracies in “the Andes” were the following. Guillermo Zuluaga spoke in the name of freedom of the press, and denied his political campaign of media manipulation against President Chávez. The supposed violations of human rights were denounced by Javier El-Hage, speaking for the Human Rights Foundation, an NGO that was involved with the separatism of Santa Cruz through his support for Cruzan rightists in their campaign for autonomy. The accusation of concentration of power was handled by Luis Nunez, President of the Civic Committee for Santa Cruz, an institution opposed to President Morales and linked not only to the dictatorships of the past but also to the right-wing governments and to the secret societies that controlled power in Santa Cruz. The said Civic Committee was also linked to the same movement for autonomy that resulted in the attempted coup d’etat, the planned assassination of President Morales, to the case of terrorism, and the separatism of the eastern departments.

All of these “dignitaries,” who created a Dantesque vision of reality, were being praised, defended, justified, and even portrayed as victims by the moderator of the panel, Mr. Jose Cardenas. It was time, then, to turn to the official document of the event and look for the professional past that I had failed to notice. Jose Cardenas was USAID’s sub-regional director for Latin America during the administration of George W. Bush, but also a member of the National Security Council at the White House during that same administration that made history by adopting the policy of “preemptive strike,” which can be interpreted as the right to attack, without warning or provocation, any country that develops weapons or mechanisms perceived by Washington as dangerous for its “national security.”

How to explain such diversity in the talents of José Cardenas? On one hand, at USAID he carried out the “humanitarian” functions of helping our countries to conquer poverty, but, at the same time, he was part of the National Security Council that granted itself the power of attacking the whole world? We know, according to the same event at the Capitol, that national security is simply another of the excuses with which the United States intends to invade Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia. But that’s no surprise, because that has been the Trojan horse of the wars of the United States. What is new in this case is for those plans to be connected openly with USAID, which supposedly carries out only humanitarian functions.

Perhaps the organizers of the event intended to keep hidden USAID’s political-military goal of facilitating in Latin America the dark projects of the “national security” of the United States. But resorting to dividing the panel into two parts and to leave Cardenas in charge of only the first part, was not enough to hide forever the evidence that USAID, unquestionably, functions as one more of the mechanisms for intervention of the United States. Further, it coordinates everything that it does with the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the governmental agency that promotes a democracy complacent with U.S. interests, and with the NGOs through which it channels ample resources for the same purposes. Those three mechanisms for intervention acted in unison in the incessant campaign of destabilization against the process of change in Bolivia, and they continue to do it in the sister nations that advance similar processes.

The regional decision to expel USAID definitively must materialize as soon as possible, because this agency of the U.S. government serves as a Trojan horse designed to destroy from the inside the governments of its former area of influence, which now resist its policies. Its mask of humanitarianism allows it to draw close to its victims, and to gain the trust of the most humble sectors, in order to make way for the invasion of those same peoples. The case of Jose Cardenas, providing services in two organizations with goals officially so opposed, is also proof of the notorious system of the revolving door, by means of which are rotated in their different organizations the representatives of the different power groups that defend the status quo, which defends by any and all means the interests of capital against the interests of the peoples. USAID must be expelled as soon as possible from Latin America.

 

BOLIVIA | ¿Por qué se defiende el tipnis?

Uploaded June 28, 2012

Jorge Capelán, Lizzie Phelan and Toni Solo Discuss USAID and Western NGOs in Latin America

“Plan Tipnis” Seeks to Further Destabilize & Create the Conditions for a Coup in Bolivia

GOBIERNO Denuncia Plan Tipnis Para Afectar Estado de Derecho

Cambio, LA PAZ 

MARTES, 26 DE JUNIO DE 2012

Política

El vicepresidente Álvaro García Linera dijo que la estrategia usa la demanda legítima de la tropa policial y la vincula con la llegada de la marcha de la Cidob.

El Gobierno, ante el desconocimiento del acuerdo por parte de un sector de policías de base y la proximidad a La Paz de la marcha de la Cidob, confirma la aplicación de una estrategia subversiva denominada Plan Tipnis, que busca desestabilizar y crear las condiciones de un golpe de Estado en el país.

Citando reportes de Inteligencia y de prensa, el Gobierno, a través de un boletín del Ministerio de Comunicación, señala que el plan arrancó el 21 de junio con el motín de la Asociación Nacional de Suboficiales, Sargentos, Clases y Policías (Anssclapol) por demanda salarial, la que no se desactivó con el acuerdo de nueve puntos firmado la madrugada del domingo.

“La estrategia continuaba bloqueando y boicoteando la solución del conflicto policial con la posición intransigente de exigir como salario básico Bs 3.000, para luego convocar a maestros, trabajadores afiliados a la COB y activistas que marchan a La Paz con el apoyo del Gobierno Municipal paceño y funcionarios ediles”, señala parte de la denuncia gubernamental.

En rueda de prensa, el vicepresidente Álvaro García Linera confirmó que el Plan Tipnis tiene dos fases golpistas.

“Está en la fase inicial de apresto golpista, y en la segunda etapa buscan muertos (…) Hay comunicaciones radiales que vinculan (el conflicto policial) con el Plan Tipnis. Eso no es reivindicación, uno dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, diez veces hablan de bombas molotov, asesinar a militares, quemar unidades militares, de limpiar (matar) al ministro (de Gobierno) Carlos Romero y hacer golpe a Evo”, dijo García.

Los ideólogos del Plan Tipnis, a los que llamó “fuerzas oscuras”, se aprovechan de una demanda legítima de los policías y los manipulan. Denunció, por ejemplo, que el ex candidato político de Unidad Nacional, de Samuel Doria Medina, sacó armas de la UTOP el día del motín policial. El domingo, la ministra de Comunicación, Amanda Dávila, confirmó la circulación de comunicados públicos que señalan atacar con bombas molotov a ‘los plomos’ que custodian el Palacio de Gobierno.

La vinculación con el Tipnis tiene que ver con la coincidencia del arribo a La Paz, este miércoles, de la marcha de la Confederación de Indígenas del Oriente Boliviano (Cidob), liderada por el suspendido dirigente Adolfo Chávez. El domingo, el presidente Evo Morales, desde el centro minero Coro Coro, culpó a un grupo de policías de afanes de desestabilización que buscan su derrocamiento.

El dirigente de la Central Obrera Boliviana (COB) Simeón Jaliri denunció que el Plan Tipnis es la “sorpresa” de la que habló en pasados días Adolfo Chávez a su llegada a La Paz. “Este dirigente (Chávez), ha tenido varias reuniones con el ex asesor de Juan Del Granado, (Javier) Zárate y el ex candidato de UN Juan Carlos Soraide para coordinar”, dijo Jaliri.

Los analistas políticos Marcos Domich y Hugo Moldiz coinciden en que se trata de una estrategia de la derecha para gestar un golpe de Estado.

DATOS

• La opositora Unidad Nacional (UN), a través del diputado Jaime Navarro, según radio Fides, confirmó la estrategia de ese partido para llegar al Gobierno, pero “por votos y no un golpe”.

• El Gobierno denunció que en el motín de un sector de la tropa policial, que comenzó el jueves, se incrustaron actores políticos, como el ex mayor de policías David Vargas y el ex policía militante de Unidad Nacional Juan Carlos Soraide, entre otros.

Domich apunta a la derecha y al imperio

El analista político Marcos Domich considera que los aprestos subversivos contra el Gobierno y la democracia boliviana se gestan desde hace tiempo y detrás de éstos está el imperio a través de sus operadores de la derecha boliviana, como Unidad Nacional (UN) y el Movimiento Sin Miedo (MSM).

“Hemos afirmado antes el plan golpista que se liga con la marcha de la Cidob contra la consulta en el Tipnis”, dijo.  En su análisis, el objetivo final de estos afanes políticos es tomar el Palacio de Gobierno y en su opinión eso sería “grave”.

“Sin embargo, el pueblo no debe amedrentarse en salir a defender el proceso revolucionario que tuvo un elevado costo recuperarlo”, afirmó. “No hay duda de que es parte de la ofensiva imperialista de carácter global”, agregó. →

Avaaz’s war on Syria: Soros Sponsored Sorrow Pleads for Foreign Intervention

June 14, 2012

By Quoriana

World Mathaba

Global civic organization Avaaz is playing the pity card again. A false pity card again also. Last year the e-activist organisation convinced over 800,000 people to sign up for a no-fly zone in Libya culminating in the NATO destruction of the country; nowadays Avaaz uses the recent Houla massacre to let people demand the United Nations (U.N.) to “immediately commit to sending at least 3,000 international monitors to Syria with a mandate to protect civilians and to move fast to define a political transition plan” through a petition. →

FLASHBACK: Obama Continuing to Spend $20 Million on USAID Subversion in Cuba

Granma

Havana, Cuba, June 16, 2011

by Jean-Guy Allard

WHILE the economic crisis is sentencing hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens to poverty, the Washington government continues channeling tens of millions of dollars into plans of interference whose ineffectiveness is well known.

This is the case with USAID subversion plots in Cuba which, according to analysts, have merely served to prompt the arrest and sentencing of one of the employee’s of this State Department body.

The U.S. administration’s obsession for programs costing $20 million to “promote democracy in Cuba” and which are a front for intelligence and destabilization activities, has come up against the decision taken by Senator John Kerry, head of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, to suspend funds for these programs on April 1.

The USAID programs aimed at Cuba and comprising “investments” in anti-government groups and intelligence have ineffectively cost $150 million from the 90s. →

SUPPORT BOLIVIAN PRESIDENT EVO MORALES AGAINST ESCALATING DESTABILIZATION CAMPAIGNS

Image: 2010. Note that Morales greets his Indigenous sisters and brothers freely, without need of intense security /body guards.

“As the United States Departments of State and Defense gear up for a new round of destabilization campaigns in South America in 2013 and 2014, the second generation of democratic renewal under leaders like Evo Morales faces a grave threat. Unlike the crude coups and dictatorships of the Cold War and earlier banana republics, this anti-democratic offensive makes exaggerated use of ephemeral pseudo activism in the form of color revolutions used so extensively by the CIA in North Africa and Eastern Europe. Recent snubbing of the US and Canada by South American governments at the Organization of American States may signal a resistance to returning to the days of old, but until they reject neoliberalism and its corrupting influence, they are still susceptible to international markets opening the door to US military control.” – Jay Taber, Center for World Indigenous Studies Website

May 7th, 2012

 

Our friend and comrade Evo Morales Ayma, President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is currently facing growing destabilization attempts, seeking to weaken his government, which was democratically reelected, and thus to truncate the Cultural and Democratic Revolutionary process that he has been heading since 2006.

 

Evo Morales Ayma, as a Latin American leader formed in the heat of the struggles of the indigenous peoples to change neocolonialist and capitalist relations, has been able to guiding a process of historical transformations that has been a contribution not only to his country, but to the region and the world.

 

He has set up the basis for the new Plurinational State of Bolivia, with a long-term perspective orientated by the philosophy of Vivir Bien (Living Well), for the construction of which a whole series of State policies are being put in place, focusing on decolonization, depatriarchalization, strengthening sovereignty and in depth socio-economic change.

 

He has been able to introduce fundamental aspects of the worldviews of our peoples in the most recent global debates, putting forward concrete initiatives to defend the rights of Mother Earth, and with an active participation in integration initiatives from and for the peoples, such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC).

 

These enormous steps of progress have been possible due to the leading role played by the Bolivian people, following the principle of ‘ruling by obeying’ in the exercise of government.  This popular support has been crucial for facing the tenacious opposition engaging national and international interests and forces, which has resorted to all sorts of means of disrupting this process of change: from direct violence to symbolic racist violence, from coup conspiracies to the manipulation of popular causes.

 

From the indigenous peoples of Abya Yala, and from all those of us who feel part of the historic changes that the region is going through, we express our unconditional support for President Evo Morales Ayma, as well as our commitment to the defense and advancement of the Cultural and Democratic Revolution in Bolivia.

 

Masi, Mashi, Ir?, Comrade, we support you!

 

Rigoberta Menchú Tum, Peace Nobel Prize, Guatemala

Ricardo Ulcuango Farinango, Ambassador of Ecuador to Bolivia

Irene León, Sociologist, Ecuador

Magdalena León T., Economist, Ecuador

Manuel Imbaquingo, Indigenous Leader, Ecuador

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WATCH: President Morales Speaks to Imperialism

Also read:

U.S. Orchestrated Color Revolutions to Sweep Across Latin America in 2013-2014

Eight US NGOs Denied Legal Status in Egypt as the US State Department Denies It

Apr 23, 2012 21:47 Moscow Time

© Collage: The Voice of Russia

 

A Cairo court has denied 8 American NGOs, including the Carter Center, official accreditation in Egypt.

The judges are examining evidence that in the period between 2005 and 2011 foreign-led NGOs operating in Egypt received $175mn in foreign funds. Forty three people, including 19 Americans, are facing charges of illegal interference in Egypt’s internal affairs.

In early March, Egypt lifted an entry ban on 17 foreigners in exchange for financial aid.

WKOG admin: Meanwhile, The Egypt Independent reports on April 27, 2012 that the US State Dept denies Egypt made a decision on licenses of 8 NGOs:

US State Dept says Egypt made no decision on licenses of 8 NGOs