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

To endorse this statement:  Español | English | Português | Français

WATCH: President Morales Speaks to Imperialism

Also read:

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

How the CIA Operates Through Non-Governmental Agencies

April 2012

Source: Class Warfare Exists

Everyone knows that the CIA funds various covert operations throughout the world.  They do this through various front organizations including known CIA operations groups which funnel funds to “various non-governmental agencies” (NGOs) which then use those funds to achieve objectives both foreign and domestic.  There is a tremendous history of this funneling to quasi-private organizations … but it’s also interesting how overt some of it is.  Much of how the CIA operates has bubbled up due to failures and successes around the world in countries like Venezuela, Egypt, Pakistan and thanks to some American whistle-blowers.

The #1 thing you have to understand about this…all of this taxpayer money (your money) that is being spent to further geopolitical and corporate goals is not just money spent to overthrow foreign governments…a good amount of that money is being spent to influence the hearts and minds in America too.

America is a case study of how to successfully let the tail wag the dog; there are a LOT of journalists, editors and influential people on the take (propaganda assets).  And they’re is always a concerted effort to punish those of us who share any semblance of truth.

The video below is an investigative report by the great Mike Wallace in 1967 exposing how the CIA used NGO’s over the 50?s and 60?s.  The investigation took place 45 years ago but that doesn’t make it any less relevant to today. The explanation of how the CIA operates begins at 5:23…

 Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

A list of purported CIA front groups HERE.

Who can forget the news last year that various CIA linked NGO’s conducted a fake polio drive in Pakistan to gain intelligence information in the lead up to the assassination of Osama bin-Laden.  More HERE.

The CIA used to fund the NGO “National Student Association” for many years until a bombshell whistle blower account brought light to that particular organization.  More HERE.

The Telegraph explains how the U.S. planned the Egypt uprising since 2008 HERE.

A GREAT documentary of how the U.S. attempted a coup of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002 HERE.

A video from RT showing how America used NGOs to take down Libyan President Gaddafi HERE.

Here is just a small list of various NGOs that are either known or are broadly accepted as CIA front operations.  These organizations funnel money directly from their budget into various unknown and foundations, humanitarian groups, and private companies to further CIA priorities:

• National Democratic Institute for International Affairs
• National Endowment for Democracy
• Freedom House
• Millennium Challenge Corporation
• International Center for Journalists
• Center for International Private Enterprise
• USAID

National Endowment for Democracy

The NY Times writes about the National Endowment for Democracy:

The National Endowment for Democracy is a quasi-governmental foundation created by the Reagan Administration in 1983 to channel millions of Federal dollars into anti-Communist ”private diplomacy.” Its bylaws require ”openness” and ”public accountability” in its stewardship of millions of dollars a year in taxpayer funds, which are distributed to labor, business, education and other groups and organizations overseas to promote democratic ideas. Today, however, for the second time in its brief existence, the endowment finds itself in trouble with Congress. Some of its ”private diplomacy,” it turns out, has been more than private; it has been secret.

And the NED is still around; you can see their website HERE.  Reagan created it.  A former CIA case officer – Philip Agee – explains how the money moves from the NED through various conduits to influence international affairs – video HERE.

The NED website lists their mission as:

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world. Each year, with funding from the US Congress, NED supports more than 1,000 projects of non-governmental groups abroad who are working for democratic goals in more than 90 countries.

The most recent budget for the National Endowment for Democracy (page 7):

Foundations, National Endowment for Democracy, and Independent Exchange Programs
FY11 Budget Request:                                       $ 134 million
FY10 Enacted:                                                      $ 162 million
Change from FY10 to FY11:                            $ 28 million decrease (-17.3%)
Asia Foundation reduced from $19 million to $15.7 million
East-West Center reduced from $23 million to $11.4 million
National Endowment for Democracy reduced from $118 million to $105 million

Michael Barker writes about NED – more HERE:

So although the CIA still carries out most of its activities under a veil of secrecy, a lot of their former work is now carried out overtly by the National Endowment for Democracy and an assortment of other related groups. This apparent openness has in turn ensured that there has been next to no critical reporting on the democracy-manipulating activities undertaken by government agencies and private philanthropists. However, as Agee noted in 2003, the CIA still remains a key player in the democracy-manipulating field, especially given the “CIA’s long experience and huge stable of agents and contacts in the civil societies of countries around the world.” Agee adds that: “By joining with the CIA, NED and [US]AID would come on board an on-going complex of operations whose funding they could take over while leaving the secret day-to-day direction on the ground to CIA officers.” Moreover, the CIA has “ample funds of its own to pass quietly when conditions required,” while the CIA officers themselves play a critical role in monitoring and reporting on the effectiveness of democracy-manipulating activities.

Millennium Challenge Corporation

The most recent budget for the Millennium Challenge Corporation (page 5):

Millennium Challenge Corporation
FY11 Budget Request:                                      $ 1.28 billion
FY10 Enacted:                                                     $ 1.11 billion
Change from FY10 to FY11:                           $ 170 million increase (+15.3%)
Request assumes four possible compacts for Zambia, Indonesia, Malawi, and Cape Verde

A Wikileaks cable shows the involvement of the Millennium Challenge Corporation in Uganda – a country we have been very active in as of late:

Uganda (ACCU), Jasper Tumuhimbise, went into hiding in late December after publishing a “Fame and Shame” booklet on government corruption. Funded by the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s (MCC) anti-corruption threshold program, ACCU’s booklet is a public perception survey in which Security Minister and National Resistance Movement (NRM) Secretary General Amama Mbabazi was perceived as Uganda’s most corrupt public official. Tumuhimbise went into hiding after he and ACCU staff received threatening telephone calls and a visit from security personnel seeking information on the ACCU’s international donors. On December 24, Tumuhimbise told PolOff that security forces followed him from the eastern town of Soroti to Kampala. He blames Mbabazi for the intimidation of ACCU staff.

Steve Dobransky writes an analysis about MCC’s official reason for being – MCC does exactly the same thing as USAID and utilizes information from Freedom House (a purported CIA front group):

The MCC was intended to make up for USAID’s apparent gap in political and economic “morality.”  The MCC was portrayed as America’s conscience and will to enact a new world order and not just talk about it.  The MCC conditioned all its aid on recipients’ nature and intentions in terms of democracy and free markets.  The MCC would use data from Freedom House, the World Bank, and other outside institutions.  Never before has a U.S. bureaucracy outsourced its primary judgment and decision-making authority to external organizations. The creation of the MCC also reflected a sizeable distaste for past U.S. policies and their apparent amorality.

National Democratic Institute for International Affairs

The Daily Beast writes about the recent crackdown of U.S. NGO’s in Egypt:

Freedom House

People’s World talks about Freedom House in Egypt – read HERE:

Among those facing trial in Egypt are representatives of Freedom House, a U.S. organization with a worldwide reach receiving 80 percent of its funding through the NED. Allegations have repeatedly surfaced of Freedom House ties to the CIA and involvement with clandestine anti-government activities in foreign countries. Between 1997 and 2009, Freedom House gathered in $10.6 million for democracy-promotion work in Cuba.

The Permanent Representative of Cuba to the UN says Freedom House is an appendage of the CIA – read HERE:

With regard to Freedom House, a United States-based NGO enjoying consultative status, the Permanent Representative of Cuba went on to say that the Committee had been dealing with that “so-called NGO” for several sessions after having received complaints from many delegations.  He had submitted proof of the politically motivated, interventionist activities the NGO carried out against his Government.  The NGO’s links with terrorist groups in Cuba as well as the fact that it was an instrument of the special services of the United States were no secret.

He said he was fully aware of the close and proven links between Freedom House and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), under which the NGO carried out destabilization missions against legitimately-established governments.  Freedom House tried to sell the image of an NGO promoting democratic values while concealing the fact that it was a tool of subversion.  While he supported the positive and constructive contributions made by NGOs, he could not allow their image to be tarnished by a tiny minority of groups such as Freedom House.

As he had several questions to pose to the organization, he regretted that its representative was not present at the meeting, even though the NGO had been informed that its case would be discussed today.  That, he noted, represented a new lack of respect by the “so-called NGO” to the Committee.  He informed delegates that information on the links between the NGO and the CIA had been placed at the back of the conference room.

The Monthly Review Foundation says Freedom House is still filled with neo-cons and details their history with CIA involvement – more HERE:

Today, Freedom House continues to serve as both a think tank and a “civil society” funder as part of the State Department’s modern “democracy promotion” complex.  Frequently cited in the press and academic works, the reports and studies produced by Freedom House and its affiliates promote the neoconservative ideology of its trustees and government sponsors.  Although some names and affiliations have changed, the group is still dominated by neocons.  Brzezinski, Kirkpatrick, and Forbes are still on the trustees list, as well as Liasson, O’Rourke, and Noonan.

Trustee Ken Adelman is a contributor to the Project for a New American Century, along with former CIA director R. James Woolsey, who joined Freedom House in 2000.  Adelman was an assistant to Rumsfeld from 1975-1977, U.N. ambassador and arms control director under Reagan, and is currently a member of the Defense Policy Board.  He wrote an article for The Washington Postin 2002 titled, “Cakewalk in Iraq”²⁸ in which he said: “I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk.”  Another trustee, Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington, is the U.S. author of the Trilateral Commission report, The Crisis of Democracy and The Clash of Civilizations and Remaking of World Order (1996).

The Santos Republic details the involvement of various NGO’s in Egypt – including Freedom House…more HERE.

In 2009 sixteen young Egyptian activists completed a two-month Freedom House ‘New Generation Fellowship’ in Washington. The activists received training in advocacy and met with U.S. government officials, members of Congress, media outlets and think tanks. As far back as 2008, members of the April 6th Movement attended the inaugural summit of the Association of Youth Movements (AYM) in New York, where they networked with other movements, attended workshops on the use of new and social media and learned about technical upgrades, such as consistently alternating computer simcards, which help to evade state internet surveillance. AYM is sponsored by Pepsi, YouTube and MTV and amongst the luminaries who participated in the 2008 Summit, which focused on training activists in the use of Facebook and Twitter, were James Glassman of the State Department, Sherif Mansour of Freedom House, National Security Advisor Shaarik Zafar and Larry Diamond of the NED.

International Center for Journalists

From their website:

ICFJ does more than train citizen and professional journalists. We launch news organizations, media associations, journalism schools and news products. We help journalists develop stories that lead to better public policies such as improved access to health care and cleaner environments. Our trainees expose corruption, increase transparency and hold officials accountable to their citizens.

The L.A. Times reports that the ICFJ receives money from the CIA arm NED – more HERE:

In Egypt, the four U.S. organizations under attack for fomenting unrest with illegal foreign funding were all connected to the endowment. Two — the GOP’s International Republican Institute and the Democratic Party’s National Democratic Institute — are among the groups that make up the endowment’s core constituents. The two other indicted groups, Freedom House and the International Center for Journalists, receive funds from the endowment.

The history of the National Endowment for Democracy would not be unknown to Fayza Aboul Naga, the minister of planning and international cooperation who has been leading the attack against the American organizations. Aboul Naga, a career diplomat, spent five years in New York in the 1990s as an advisor to a fellow Egyptian, U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. It was not a good time and place for her to watch American democracy in action.

Center for International Private Enterprise

The Alliance for Global Justice is not a fan:

The boards of the NED and its core organizations are full of Spin Doctors from public relations firms, big advertisers, corporate headquarters; political analysts and advisors; and ex-CIA and military personnel. Vin Weber, NED Board Chair, works for a public relations firm that is part of the Omnicom Group, the world’s 3rd largest advertising agency. The Center for International Private Enterprise, an NED core institute, includes an executive from Google and a major contractor with Google. The International Republican Institute, another NED core institute, includes a former Senior Advisor to the CIA and various representatives from the military-industrial complex. These are just a few examples. Through well-placed contributions to political parties and other organizations, and through its web of corporate PR, military-industrial, and intelligence connections, the NED is able to coordinate campaigns of misinformation and bring together a diverse coalition in order to intervene in and control foreign elections. If that fails, the NED empowers that coalition to overthrow elected governments—like it did in Haiti and like it is trying to do in Venezuela.

CIPE is publicly known to have attempted and failed at a coup of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in 2002 – more HERE:

One memorandum between the State Department and the NED reveals a supplemental $1,000,000 awarded in April 2002, right after the failed coup d’etat against President Chávez, that was slighted for NED’s Venezuelan benefactors. The primary grant recipients include the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity and the Center for International Private Enterprise. Smaller grant recipients include Acción Campesina, Asociación Civil Asamblea de Educación, Fundación Momento de la Gente, Instituto Prensa y Sociedad, Asociación Civil Liderazgo y Visión and Asociación Civil Consorcio Justicia, amongst others.

Other NED major award recipients, such as the Center for International Private Enterprise, which received over $200,000 last year for Venezuela activities and the International Republican Institute, which was awarded almost $300,000 for its work during the past two years in Venezuela, have poured their financial aid into support for Fedecámaras, the radicalized business association at the forefront of the opposition movement and into the development and strengthening of political parties to successfully oppose Chávez in future elections.

CIPE was involved in Egypt’s uprising as well – Jenny O’Connor explains HERE:

According to the NED’s 2009 Annual Report, $1,419,426 worth of grants was doled out to civil society organisations in Egypt that year. In 2010, the year preceding the January – February 2011 revolution, this funding massively increased to $2,497,457.¹¹ Nearly half of this sum, $1,146,903, was allocated to the Center for International Private Enterprise for activates such as conducting workshops at governate level “to promote corporate citizenship” and engaging civil society organizations “to participate in the democratic process by strengthening their capacity to advo­cate for free market legislative reform on behalf of their members”. Freedom House also received $89,000 to “strengthen cooperation among a network of local activists and bloggers”.

Solidarity Center

The Solidarity Center is run by the AFL-CIO which receives the majority of funding from the NED.  It could be very beneficial to America to destabilize countries with an appeal to workers for better pay, better working conditions and who better to create that internal resistance and resentment to a country’s leaders than those who run unions for a living.

You can read a history on the Solidarity Center HERE.  The American Prospect writes about the relationship between the AFL-CIO and the CIA as of 2001 HERE.  You can find their website HERE.

Michael Barker writes about the very current situation with the Solidarity Center’s involvement in Egypt:

There is no question that union organizing against oppressive laws is fantastic, but one can understand the Egyptian government’s repressive response in light of foreign-run NGOs — and especially those partnering with the US government — channeling considerable monies to Egyptian organizations that might not have the Egyptian government’s best interest in mind.

These corporate connections are intriguing, and just a little more research on Beinin’s part would have revealed that the chairman of Suez Cement Company is Omar Mohanna. This is worth acknowledging because Mohanna is the president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, which indicates that the US government, if it chose to, could exert significant indirect pressure on reforming the ETUF through their good friend Mohanna. One would expect, however, that such pressure is already being applied given that Mohanna is involved with numerous groups that work closely with the NED’s “democracy-promoting” apparatus.

For example, Mohanna is the vice chairman of the Egyptian Center for Economic Studies (a group that has received aid from the NED in 1995 and 1997 via the Center for International Private Enterprise), and his work as a board member of the NED-connected New Civic Forum. (20)In fact, as mentioned earlier, the NED has already given the Solidarity Center grants to work with the ETUF, and Beinin himself even explains how the ETUF “received funding and technical assistance from the Solidarity Center to establish child labor programs in the rural governorates (provinces) of Sharqiyyya, Minufiyya, Buhayra, Fayyum, and Kafral-Shaykh, and in Alexandria.” Then, remaining on his theme of uncritical support for the US government, Beinin continues by adding that: “These programs were positively evaluated in reports prepared for USAID…” (21) Now there is a surprise!

Owning the Media

Carl Bernstein writes in “the CIA and the Media“:

“Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty?five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence gathering to serving as go?betweens with spies in Communist countries. Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without?portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring?do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full?time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations…”

The Church Committee uncovered how the CIA funded journalists abroad …where those stories were picked up in the U.S. as truthful and factual.

The NY Times came across an old CIA cable during the time of the Warren commission.  The goal was to discredit critics of the Commission and to use “propaganda assets” i.e. journalists to do so.  You can find a source HERE.

To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein’s theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher [?] article and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane’s book is much less convincing that Epstein’s and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)

The CIA went after Iraq war critic Professor Juan Cole during the Bush administration – story HERE.

Alternet explains what you can do:

Combined with current events factoids, Wikipedia and Sourcewatch, anyone with basic internet competence [ability to follow links and do key word searches such as ‘African Wildlife Foundation, MI6, CIA’ or ‘Fossey Foundation, arms trafficking’] and is able to make and organize notes while sifting out blatantly misinformed or amateur articles, can learn to overcome disinformation, do their own analysis, map the corporate activities, identify the rip-offs and peoples exploited by these schemes, all while identifying the actual players and motives behind the New York Times propaganda.

Apply the preceding method and the result is quite clear; the New York Times is but one arm of a mechanism to deceive on behalf of a corporate centered sociopath get-mega-rich[er]-quick scheme of the 1%, exploiting Americans belief in their institutions, any consequence to the USA and actual democracy be damned in process

Dr. Francisco Dominguez says U.S. based NGO Human Rights Watch published propaganda on Venezuela – more HERE.

FLASHBACK: Venezuela: Human Rights Watch Versus Democracy

by Francisco Domínguez / September 27, 2008

21st Century Socialism

The US-based NGO Human Rights Watch has issued a new report on Venezuela. The report blatantly distorts the truth in order to promote the regime-change agenda of the United States administration.

On Sept 18th 2008, Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a report entitled ‘Venezuela: Rights Suffer Under Chavez’. The report has been characterised by the Venezuelan government as biased and inaccurate.

The HRW report comes in the wake of an intensification of attacks on Venezuela by various branches of the US administration. These include:

• the re-establishment of the Fourth Fleet – previously decommissioned in 1952, the Fourth Fleet is reportedly made up of 25 warships, deployed around South America; and about which, several Latin American countries, Brazil, Argentina and Venezuela, amongst them, have expressed deep concerns;

• John Walters, the US drug Czar, has accused Venezuela of inaction in the war on drugs;

• the US State Department recently discussed the possibility of adding Venezuela to the list of nations that sponsor terrorism;

• the allegation that the Venezuelan government was behind the suitcase stuffed with US$800,000 brought into Argentina by Venezuelan-American citizen, Antonini Wilson, but, which, in reality, was denounced by Chavez and Argentine President Cristina Fernandez, as a dirty operation, about which nothing has been conclusively demonstrated, but which has become the focus of intense media attention. Despite repeated requests by both Argentina and Venezuela, US authorities have refused to extradite Antonini to face questions;

• sanctions by the US Treasury of several Venezuelan officials over unproven allegations that they aided the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) of Colombia.

Most recently, following the expulsion of the US Ambassador from Bolivia over his relations with right wing extremists, Venezuela expelled its US Ambassador in solidarity, and the US responded by expelling the Venezuelan Ambassador from the USA.

On 10th September 2008, a plot to assassinate President Chavez and carry out a military coup was exposed. The plot was led by high level retired and serving military officers.

This is the context, one of of acute tensions between Venezuela and the US, for the publication on 18th September of the Human Rights Watch report on Venezuela. Its key theme, as outlined by José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at HRW, is as follows:

“Ten years ago, Chávez promoted a new constitution that could have significantly improved human rights in Venezuela. But rather than advancing rights protections, his government has since moved in the opposite direction, sacrificing basic guarantees in pursuit of its own political agenda.”

The 230-page Report makes the charge that “Discrimination on political grounds has been a defining feature of the Chavez presidency.” Although Venezuela under President Chavez is by no means perfect, it bears no relation to the country depicted in HRW’s 2008 Report.

The key allegation, that discrimination on political grounds has been a defining feature of the Chavez presidency, looks absurd when it is understood that the civil service remains largely full of supporters of the old regime, some of whom have allegedly engaged in criminal actions, such as the destruction of key operational facilities of the national oil company PDVSA during the oil lock-out that brought the country’s economy to near collapse.

The lock-out took place almost immediately after the short-lived overthrow of President Chavez in a military coup in April 2002. The coup was backed by the military high command, the main private media, the national employers’ organisation and the old discredited trade union federation CTV.

Following the coup, there was a campaign to oust Chavez through a recall referendum in 2004. When that failed, the opposition boycotted the 2005 parliamentary election in order to try to question the legitimacy of the government. Throughout these tense events, opposition politicians and private media talked openly of violently overthrowing the government and adopted an intensely confrontational attitude.

The recently revealed plot for another coup attempt and plans to assassinate President Chavez, just before regional and local elections in November, are in line with the stance taken by the opposition at crucial moments.

Expanding democracy

Contrary to HRW’s allegations that the Venezuelan government practices ‘political discrimination’ against the opposition, the government’s attitude to the opposition’s persistent efforts to use violent and unconstitutional means to overthrow it, has been one of tolerance and magnanimity. Last year, President Chávez pardoned political opponents who backed the failed 2002 coup against his democratically-elected government. “It’s a matter of turning the page,” Chávez said. “We want there to be a strong ideological and political debate – but in peace.”

In this spirit, the government has often welcomed input from the opposition, for example, inviting the leaders of student protests to address the National Assembly. Not a common occurrence anywhere else in the world.

All political parties in Venezuela operate without any constraints. The majority of these parties are in the opposition; their difficulty is that they do not enjoy the high levels of support of the fewer pro-government political parties.

Opposition parties in Venezuela can and do organise public meetings, rallies, demonstrations, street marches; their spokespersons speak regularly on TV and radio – and they never moderate their language, their criticism, or their opposition to the government. They stand candidates for elections, hold national party events, issue proclamations, statements, hold press conferences, publish books, pamphlets, disseminate anti-government propaganda – in the streets and through the media, without any governmental sanctions whatsoever.

The great majority of private newspapers and television stations in the country support the Opposition and they face no restrictions other than the normal ones that exist in any democratic country, such as those governing libel and defamation. No Venezuelan newspaper has ever been subjected to any censorship by the Chavez administration. There are no political prisoners of any kind in Venezuela.

With regard to the judiciary, contrary to the 2008 HRW report’s contention, under Chavez the independence and probity of the judiciary has been significantly strengthened by dealing with the corruption with which it was previously riddled. HRW’s own 2004 report recognized this:

“When President Chávez became president in 1999, he inherited a judiciary that had been plagued for years by influence-peddling, political interference, and, above all, corruption…In terms of public credibility, the system was bankrupt.”

At the same time, all democratic institutions have been strengthened in Venezuela, exemplified by the internationally verified efficiency and scrupulous fairness of the National Electoral Council, which has had no hesitation in upholding electoral results unfavourable to the government such as the defeat of the 2007 constitutional referendum – a result accepted immediately by President Chavez and his government.

HRW’s assertion that the Venezuelan media balance is shifting in favour of Chavez is misleading. In fact, the opposition media enjoy unrestricted freedom but they are increasingly seen as grossly biased and as having lost the political argument. The reality remains that the private media, which largely supports the opposition, controls the largest share of the airwaves, and there are no major pro-government
national daily newspapers.

HRW’s allegation that the government “has sought to remake the country’s labor movement in ways that violate basic principles of freedom of association,” also bears no relation to reality.

There are six national trade union federations in Venezuela (CTV, CUTV, UNT, CODESA, CGT, and CST), all of which function with total freedom and without the kind of draconian anti-trade union legislation which disfigures the USA and many of its allies.

Industrial relations are evolving positively. Furthermore, the level of trade union membership is rising – before Chávez came to office in 1999, 11% of workers were in unions; the figure now is estimated to be over 20%. Thus, HRW’s allegation that the government violates basic principles of union association is not borne out by the facts.

The charge of the HRW 2008 report that the Chávez government has an “aggressively adversarial approach to local rights advocates and civil society organizations” is equally false. With varying degrees of success, the government has been empowering millions of hitherto excluded people through an array of social organizations, such as – tens of thousands of – communal councils, which aim to democratize local government.

There are also 200,000 cooperatives, women’s organizations, indigenous organizations, Afro-descendants organizations, organizations of gays and lesbians, and so forth. The numbers of these organizations have mushroomed because their rights have, for the first time ever, been either enshrined in the 1999 constitution or are being actively promoted and the government has been keen to assist them.

Additionally, as part of the implementation of the principles of participatory democracy enshrined in the 1999 Constitution, the government has made successful efforts to enfranchise ever larger layers of the traditionally excluded.

In terms of the traditional electoral process, the number of registered voters has increased phenomenonally. When Chávez was first elected President in 1998 the number of registered voters was 11,013,020. This has increased to 16,109,664 (a staggering 60% increase) by the time of the 2007 Constitutional Referendum.

At the same time, Venezuela has held more internationally recognized democratic elections than virtually any other country in the world in the decade Chávez has been in office.

To argue, as does the HRW, that this situation corresponds in any way to stifling civil society is to deny reality.

US-funded opposition

The government, however, has had serious concerns about illegal activity by a relatively small number of NGO-type bodies funded by the USA, which engage in campaigns to subvert the constitutional order. The US funded SUMATE ‘NGO’, for example, centralized the collection of signatures to unseat Chavez in 2004, and its leader, Corina Machado, endorsed the 2002 coup.

The publicly acknowledged funding of such so-called NGOs comes from US government sources including the infamous National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, the International Republican Institute (IRI), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the American Centre for International Labour Solidarity and the Centre for International Private Enterprise. The government of Venezuela charges that these organisations are channels for the covert funding of opposition groups to seek to undermine democratic institutions and the elected government.

This charge is amply confirmed by international experience. One example illustrates this. On hearing of the ousting of Chávez in April 2002, International Republican Institute President, George A. Folsom, issued the following statement:

“Last night, led by every sector of civil society, the Venezuelan people rose up to defend democracy in their country. Venezuelans were provoked into action as a result of systematic repression by the Government of Hugo Chavez. Several hundred thousand people filled the streets of Caracas to demand the resignation of Lt. Col. Chavez.”

The chairman of the IRI since 1993 has been the current Republican presidential candidate John McCain, who has made no bones about his intense antagonism to progressive governments in Latin America, especially, Chavez. His campaign website even featured an online petition calling for support in his quest to “stop the dictators of Latin America.” The petition called for the removal of Chávez “in the name of democracy and freedom throughout our hemisphere.” Although the petition was taken down, it is an indication of his thinking, as leader of this NGO funder and a possible future president of the USA.

In a similar vein, several months after the failed 2002 coup, the US State Dept established an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Caracas, with money from USAID and which operates out of the US Embassy with, among other stated objectives: “to provide fast, flexible, short-term assistance targeted at key transition needs.” ‘Transition’ has to be seen in the context of the US administration’s doctrine of its right to seek to externally promote ‘regime change’ in countries which it perceives as pursuing policies against the interests of the sections of the US it represents.

The Chávez government has been expanding democracy and social progress to unprecedented levels. And in truth, there is no serious evidence of any systematic effort or policy aimed at attacking human rights; in fact, all evidence points in the opposite direction. Therefore, it is difficult not to conclude that HRW’s 2008 report, as on previous occasions, does not have the purpose of constructive criticism of shortcomings or possible flaws in the process of social progress and democratization underway in Venezuela – which would be welcome – but that it distorts reality to depict a country on the verge of becoming a nasty dictatorship.

The imbalance in the  HRW report is evident in that, for example, it does not even mention the substantial progress that has been made in improving the human rights of the immense majority of the population by such means as:

• the reduction of poverty (by 34%);

• the eradication of illiteracy;

• the expansion of education from 6 million people participating in education in 1998 to more than 12 million in 2008;

• the access to free health care increased to the great majority of the population, about 20 million people, by 2008;

• the provision of subsidized food benefiting 12-14 million people in 2008;

• the reduction in unemployment to historic low levels of around 7% in
2008;

• the promotion of a far greater role of women in society and the economy; and

• the dramatic increase in social spending that has taken place in Venezuela since the election of Chavez.

The unbalanced and plain misleading character of HRW’s reports on Venezuela has been consistent and has coincided uncannily with the run-up to important electoral contests such as the forthcoming November elections this year. It issued a communiqué on Venezuela with similar unsubstantiated themes in June 2004, just two months before the recall referendum against Chavez. In October 2007, it published a statement expressing similar preoccupations just two months before the constitutional referendum. And HRW published its 2008 report on 18th September, just two months away from regional and local authority elections in Venezuela in November 2008.

All these reports have echoed US anti-Chavez propaganda: ‘a dictatorship is in the making in Venezuela’. Back in June, John McCain said in a speech to the Florida Association of Broadcasters: “Hugo Chavez has used the cloak of electoral legitimacy to establish a one party dictatorship in Venezuela.”

The question presents itself: who stands to gain from Human Rights Watch activity in Venezuela – the population of the country or the Washington administration seeking to undermine an elected government seen as breaking free of its traditional economic and political domination?

Dr Francisco Domínguez is head of the Centre for Brazilian and Latin American Studies at Middlesex University, UK.

 

What the “Professional Left” Refuses to Share With Their “Followers”: 2011-The Year of the Dupe

WKOG editor: This article contains a mountain of factual information/evidence. Acknowledging such evidence is critical if we are to see the light through veils and illusions. As only then does the possibility for a real influence and positive outcome arise from orchestrated events which are being engineered with a false exterior to serve corporate and Imperialist interests. The very forces we claim to oppose continue to successfully reabsorb us into the very system destroying us – the very system we must starve, struggle against and ultimately dismantle. This is where we fail. If we continue to deny these truths, rather than confront them, our collective denial will serve as the instrument to our own annihilation. [About WKOG]

A timeline & history: One year into the engineered “Arab Spring,” one step closer to global hegemony

by Tony Cartalucci

Editor’s Note: The title, “Year of the Dupe,” was inspired, and indeed coined by Dr. Webster Tarpley of Tarpley.net, who is noted below as giving the initial tip-off regarding Egypt’s unrest back in January 2011.

dupe (dp, dyp)

tr.v. duped, dup·ing, dupes To deceive (an unwary person).

December 24, 2011 – In January of 2011, we were told that “spontaneous,” “indigenous” uprising had begun sweeping North Africa and the Middle East in what was hailed as the “Arab Spring.” It would be almost four months before the corporate-media would admit that the US had been behind the uprisings and that they were anything but “spontaneous,” or “indigenous.” In an April 2011 article published by the New York Times titled, “U.S. Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprisings,” it was stated:

“A number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the region, including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a nonprofit human rights organization based in Washington.”

The article would also add, regarding the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED):

“The Republican and Democratic institutes are loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties. They were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations. The National Endowment receives about $100 million annually from Congress. Freedom House also gets the bulk of its money from the American government, mainly from the State Department. “

It is hardly a speculative theory then, that the uprisings were part of an immense geopolitical campaign conceived in the West and carried out through its proxies with the assistance of disingenuous foundations, organizations, and the stable of NGOs they maintain throughout the world. As we will see, preparations for the “Arab Spring” and the global campaign that is now encroaching on both Russia and China, as predicted in February 2011’s “The Middle East & then the World,” began not as unrest had already begun, but years before the first “fist” was raised, and within seminar rooms in D.C. and New York, US-funded training facilities in Serbia, and camps held in neighboring countries, not within the Arab World itself.

The Timeline – 2008-2010 Preparing the Battlefield

December 3-5, 2008: Egyptian activists from the now infamous April 6 movement were in New York City for the inaugural Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) summit, also known as Movements.org. There, they received training, networking opportunities, and support from AYM’s various corporate and US governmental sponsors, including the US State Department itself. The AYM 2008 summit report (page 3 of .pdf) states that the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James Glassman attended, as did Jared C0hen who sits on the policy planning staff of the Office of the Secretary of State. Six other State Department staff members and advisers would also attend the summit along with an immense list of corporate, media, and institutional representatives.

Shortly afterward, April 6 would travel to Serbia to train under US-funded CANVAS, formally the US-funded NGO “Otpor” who helped overthrow the government of Serbia in 2000. Otpor, the New York Times would report, was a “well-oiled movement backed by several million dollars from the United States.” After its success it would change its name to CANVAS and begin training activists to be used in other US-backed regime change operations.

Photo: Serbia’s “Otpor,” a model for future US-backed color revolutions.

Foreign Policy Magazine would report in their article, “Revoluton U,” that CANVAS assisted protesters in the “Rose Revolution” of Georgia, the “Orange Revolution” of the Ukraine, and is currently working with networks from Belarus, Myanmar (Burma), all across the Middle East and North Africa, as well as with activists in North Korea, and 50 other countries.

2009: In a US State Department funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Libery (RFE/RL) article titled, “Exporting Nonviolent Revolution, From Eastern Europe to The Middle East,” it was stated, “Popovic then exported his nonviolent methods, helping train the activists who spearheaded Georgia’s Rose Revolution in 2003 and Ukraine’s Orange Revolution in 2004. And now, Popovic is deploying his new organization, called Canvas, even farther afield — assisting the pro-democracy activists who recently brought down despotic regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.”

Activists from Iran, Belarus, and North Korea were also confirmed by RFE/RL as having received training from CANVAS. The RFE/RL article places the activists’ meeting with CANVAS sometime during 2009.

February 2010: The April 6 Movement, after training with CANVAS, would return to Egypt in 2010, along with UN IAEA Chief Mohammed ElBaradei. April 6 members would even be arrested while awaiting for ElBaradei’s arrival at Cairo’s airport in mid-February. Already, ElBaradei, as early as 2010, announced his intentions of running for president in the 2011 elections. Together with April 6, Wael Ghonim of Google, and a coalition of other opposition parties, ElBaradei assembled his “National Front for Change” and began preparing for the coming “Arab Spring.”

Clearly then, unrest was long planned, with activists from Tunisia and Egypt on record receiving training and support from abroad, so that they could return to their home nations and sow unrest in a region-wide coordinated campaign.

An April 2011 AFP report would confirm this, when US State Department’s Michael Posner stated that the “US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.” The report went on to explain that the US “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.” Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.” That ripple effect of course, is the “Arab Spring.”

The Timeline – 2011 Year of the Dupe

January 16, 2011: Al Arabiya News reported in their article, “Tunisian exiled reformist to head back home,” that Moncef Marzouki was returning to Tunisia (from Paris) amidst the chaos sown by US State Department trained, supported, and equipped mobs who were “triggered” by the convenient release of US State Department cables via Wikileaks. Quite clearly, considering the training Tunisian opposition groups received long before the cables were released, the Wikileaks cables were merely used as a planned rhetorical justification for long ago premeditated foreign-funded sedition. Since then, Wikileaks has been employed in an identical manner everywhere from Egypt to Libya, and even as far flung as Thailand.

Moncef Marzouki, it would turn out, was founder and head of the Arab Commission for Human Rights, a collaborating institution with the US NED World Movement for Democracy (WMD) including for a “Conference on Human Rights Activists in Exile” and a participant in the WMD “third assembly” alongside Marzouki’s Tunisian League for Human Rights, sponsored by NED, Soros’ Open Society, and USAID.

A “call for solidarity” by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) mentions by name each and every group constituting the Tunisian opposition during the “uprising” in January 2011 as “FIDH member organisations.” These include Marzouki’s “Tunisian League for Human Rights,” the “Tunisian Association of Democratic Women,” and the “National Council for Liberties in Tunisia,” or CNLT. FIDH, acting as an international nexus for various foreign-funded organizations carrying out sedition worldwide under the guise of “human rights,” is itself fully funded by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy, Soros’ Open Society, and many others with clearly compromised affiliations.

January 28, 2011: After a warning by journalist/activist Dr. Webster Tarpley of World Crisis Radio, the alternative media began looking closer at the unrest in Egypt which began shortly after Tunisia’s growing crisis. In “All is not what it seems in Egyptian Clashes,” it was noted that protest leader Mohammed ElBaradei was in fact a devoted agent of the West, with a long standing membership within the Wall Street/London funded International Crisis Group (ICG) along side “senior Israeli officials” including the current Israeli President Shimon Peres, the current Governor of the Bank of Israel, Stanley Fischer, and former Israeli Foreign Minister, Shlomo Ben-Ami. The ICG also includes senior American bankers and geopolitical manipulators including George Soros, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Armitage, Samuel Berger, and Wesley Clark.

Ironically, Western media outlets insisted ElBaradei was both anti-American and strongly anti-Israeli in a rouse best described a year earlier in March 2010 in the Council On Foreign Relations’ paper, Foreign Affairs’ article “Is ElBaradei Egypt’s Hero?”:

“Further, Egypt’s close relationship with the United States has become a critical and negative factor in Egyptian politics. The opposition has used these ties to delegitimize the regime, while the government has engaged in its own displays of anti-Americanism to insulate itself from such charges. If ElBaradei actually has a reasonable chance of fostering political reform in Egypt, then U.S. policymakers would best serve his cause by not acting strongly. Somewhat paradoxically, ElBaradei’s chilly relationship with the United States as IAEA chief only advances U.S. interests now. “

The most recent manifestation of this came when Israel farcically called ElBaradei an “Iranian agent.” This latest performance further illustrates the immense level of duplicity with which world events are being manipulated.

February 17, 2011: The London-based National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) calls for a Libyan “Day of Rage” to match the US-destabilization rhetoric used in Tunisia and Egypt. The NFSL has been backed by the CIA-MI6 since the 80’s and had made multiple attempts to overthrow Qaddafi’s government with both terrorist attacks and armed insurrection.

Photo: Please note the “EnoughGaddafi.com” signs. EnoughGaddafi.com’s webmaster is listed on the US State Department’s Movements.org as the “Twitter” to follow.

February 18, 2011: In the wake of Honsi Mubarak’s ousting, billionaire bankster George Soros’ Open Society Institute was found to be behind NGOs drafting Egypt’s new constitution. These “civil society” groups include the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information openly funded by George Soros’ Open Society Institute and the Neo-Con lined NED funded Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. It appears that while the International Crisis Group was turning out the strategy, and their trustee ElBaradei leading the mobs into the streets, it is the vast array of NGOs their membership, including Soros, fund that were working out and implementing the details on the ground.

February 21, 2011: An interview with Ibrahim Sahad of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) on ABC Australia, featured every talking point covered by the mainstream corporate media from previous weeks regarding Libya, all with the White House and Washington Monument looming over him in the background. He made calls for a no-fly zone in reaction to unsubstantiated accusations Qaddafi was strafing “unarmed protesters” with warplanes.

March 2011’s “US Libyan Policy: Zero Legitimacy,” noted the clearly heavily armed, western-backed insurgency that was still being disingenuously portrayed by Western media as “peaceful protests.”

February 28, 2011: “Destroying Libya” stated:

While Libyan opposition leader Ibrahim Sahad leads the rhetorical charge from Washington D.C., his National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL) on the ground is armed to the teeth, as it has been throughout its 20 year history of attempted CIA backed rebellions against Qaddafi. In 1984, the NFSL tried to overthrow Qaddafi in a failed armed coup. The Daily Globe and Mail also recently confirmed that the NFSL along with the Libyan National Army, both under Sahad’s new National Conference of Libyan Opposition (NCLO), had both “attempted coups and assassinations against Col. Gadhafi in the 1980s.”

Already at this point, both British and US representatives were admitting Libyan rebels were indeed heavily armed, and instead of condemning the violence, openly called for additional weapons and military support to be provided.

March 17, 2011: The UN decided to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya to save the globalist-backed rebellion sputtering in failure and bordering on a “Bay of Pigs” disaster. Canadian, US, French, Arab, and UK jets were already reported to be preparing for the operation.

March 24, 2011: Unrest had already begun in Syria, as NATO began bombing Libya while Egypt and Tunisia had already fallen into political and economic chaos. In “Globalists Hit in Syria,” the opposition is closely examined and documented to be once again a creation of Western-backed opposition groups.

Much of the “evidence” of Syria’s unrest was being filtered through organizations such as the London-based Syrian Human-Rights Committee whose hearsay statements posted on its website were cited by corporate news media in outlandish reports of violence that also include “activists say” after each allegation. The “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights,” also London-based, is now the exclusive source cited by corporate-media reports regarding Syria.

March 26, 2011: In Egypt, signs of a counterrevolution and the first signs of weakness in ElBaradei’s chances to be installed as president began to show. Mobs pelted ElBaradei with rocks calling him “an American agent.” Wikileaks would again come to the aid of US interests and try to reintroduce the “anti-Western” image ElBaradei had been hamfisted in portraying.

Photo: The “barrier of legitimacy” is broken: a mob shouts “American agent” as they hurl rocks at ElBaradei who most certainly is an American agent – a trustee of the US International Crisis Group alongside George Soros.

March 28, 2011: Fortune-500 funded Brookings Institution’s “Libya’s Test of the New International Order” is reported on – exposing the war as not one of a “humanitarian” nature, but one aimed explicitly at establishing an international order and the primacy of international law.

April 17, 2011: Syria’s unrest yields widespread arson as well as reports of gunmen targeting both protesters and state security forces in a bid to escalate violence. In, “Globalist War Machine Fixates on Syria,” the “Libyan Precedent” is already being cited by US and French politicians as justification to use force against Syria. A later article, “Color Revolution’s Mystery Gunmen,” establishes a historical context within which to view the current violence in Syria and the fact that it is provocateurs sowing much of the violence.

April 21, 2011: Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko announces that his nation is now also under covert attack by Western forces to foster an “Arab Spring-style” insurrection. In, “Besieging Belarus,” documented ties between Belarus opposition members and the same Western organizations and institutions fueling the Arab Spring are illustrated.

April 22, 2011: John McCain touches down in Benghazi, Libya and consorts with verified terrorists who were fresh back from Iraq and Afghanistan, killing US troops. A West Point report would later confirm (.pdf from West Point’s CTC can be found here) with absolute certainty that the region from which the Libyan rebellion began was also the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group’s (LIFG) center of operations. It would also expose the fact that LIFG were in fact long-time affiliates of Al Qaeda with LIFG members occupying the highest levels of leadership within the terrorist organization.

Photo: Ultimate act of treason: McCain calls for recognition and extra-legal support for the very men who had killed US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. By denying “Al-Qaeda” a base in Iraq, but handing them the entire nation of Libya, he has brought American foreign policy
to a new level of surrealism.

May, 2011: In “Libya at Any Cost,” the conflict in Libya was reported to be escalating, including NATO attempts to assassinate Qaddafi and the targeted killings of several of his family members including several of his grandchildren.

“America’s Arab Deception” attempted to review the past several months of engineered chaos blowing through Northern Africa and the Middle East, while it was noted in, “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up,” that the National Endowment for Democracy already began its first round of self-aggrandizing, and passing out awards to several of the dupes and collaborators that made its campaign of carnage throughout the Arab World a reality.

June, 2011: In “Arab Spring brings Corporate Locust,” the true agenda behind Egypt’s, and indeed the entire “Arab Spring’s” unrest became apparent as US representatives gave Fortune 500 executives a tour of destabilized Egypt and Tunisia in an effort to promote economic liberaliztion and privatization. John McCain and John Kerry led the tour and had co-sponsored bills to promote what would essentially be the meshing of Egypt and Tunisia’s economy into the Wall Street/London international order.

Photo: McCain (left) and Kerry (right) gesticulate as they explain their paymaster’s agenda within the confines of an Egyptian Coca-Cola factory. This is part of their latest trip surveying the effects of their US-funded opposition overthrowing Hosni Mubarak’s government.

In late June, France would admit to violating the terms of UN resolution 1973, and arming Libyan rebels.

July, 2011: The African Union would wholly reject the International Criminal Court’s mandate against Libya, exposing the severe illegitimacy with which it operates. Ties to corporate-financier funded organizations are revealed in “It’s Official: International Criminal Court has ZERO Mandate,” as well as the tenuous nature of the ICC’s claims against Libya’s Qaddafi. It would later be confirmed by members of Libya’s “human rights” community that indeed they, in collaboration with the rebel leaders, fabricated the numbers supplied to both the UN and the ICC, and that no verified or documented evidence of Qaddafi’s “atrocities” were produced.

In Thailand, another long-running US-backed color revolution finally yielded results and saw the return of Wall Street proxy, Thaksin Shinawatra’s political party to power. Various mouthpieces of the global elite, including the Council on Foreign Relations itself, gave stern warnings to Thailand’s establishment to accept the tenuous results of the July election or face isolation and other consequences. Another Southeast Asian country, Malaysia would also see color revolution take to their streets – this time in Malaysia by the yellow-clad, NED-funded Bersih movement.

Photo: Thaksin Shinawatra, a long time servant of the global elite, since before even becoming Thailand’s prime minister in 2001, reports to the CFR in New York City on the eve of the 2006 military coup that ousted him from power. He has now returned to power in Thailand via a proxy political party led by his own sister, Yingluck Shinawatra. Securing the votes of only 35% of eligible voters puts on full display how tenuous his support really is within a nation he claims stands entirely behind him.

August, 2011: By August, even the corporate-media began admitting that Syria’s opposition was “mostly unarmed,” or in other words, armed. The opposition was starting to be more clearly defined as armed ethnic groups and armed militants of the Muslim Brotherhood.

By late August, NATO began a coordinated attack on Tripoli, Libya, involving an elaborate psychological-operation that claimed to have eliminated or captured the entire Qaddafi family in a single day. The following day, Saif Al-Qaddafi would turn up alive and well, and free, while leading fierce fighting that would carry on until October and result in NATO leveling the cities of Bani Walid and Sirte in particular, into piles of rubble. It had become entirely clear that NATO was providing air support not for democracy-loving freedom fighters, but for hardcore terrorists who were carrying out a systematic campaign of genocide and reprisals throughout the country.

Photo: Libya’s rebels are far from motivated by democratic aspirations. Their grievances lie along ethnic, not political divides. “Gaddafi supporters” is the euphemism being used by the global corporate-media in describing the generally darker skinned and African tribes that form the majority of Western Libya’s demographics and who are bearing the brunt of NATO-backed rebel atrocities.

September, 2011: Sensing victory in Libya, corporate-financier funded think-tanks began preparing for the rebuilding and despoiling of the Libyan economy. In “Globalists to Rebuild Libya,” NATO’s Atlantic Council wrote a report detailing just how they would go about doing this.

Also as Libya’s violence spiraled out of control and atrocities carried out by the rebels and their NATO backers became more obscene, it became clear how fraudulent the “War on Terror” was. In “Libyan Rebels Listed by US State Department as Terrorists,” it is illustrated how NATO members were guilty of anti-terrorist laws for providing material support for listed terrorist organizations.

Image: A screenshot taken directly from the US State Department website showing the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) clearly listed as a foreign terrorist organization. This is important, as US Code prohibits providing material support to listed terrorist organizations. With revelations of Al Qaeda and LIFG fighters leading the Libyan rebellion with NATO-members’ full military, financial, and diplomatic support, attempts are being made to plea ignorance as to the true nature of the rebels. Listed below LIFG, is MEK, an Iraqi/Iranian group also being armed and supported by the US. (click on image to enlarge)

September also saw real humanitarian catastrophe unfold in Uganda, where a British corporation sanctioned genocide to clear land they had “leased” from the Ugandan government. Thus illustrates how the cause of “humanitarian concerns” is called on only when it serves Wall Street and London’s interests, and otherwise ignored when it involves verifiable genocide carried out in the pursuit of furthering their wealth and power.

Photo: Robert Devereux, a long time investor, a long time con-artist spinning his company’s despoiling of Africa as some sort of cutting-edge investment strategy that makes money and “helps” people. Even as Devereux made his disingenuous statements in 2010 regarding New Forests, the villagers in Uganda he was “helping” had already filed a court case a year earlier protesting the British company’s encroachment on their land. These villagers would be forcibly displaced, many of them killed by Ugandan troops acting on behalf of Devereux.
….

John McCain would land once again in Libya, this time in Tripoli to celebrate the destruction of the country and shake hands once again with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group that delivered Qaddafi’s Libya into the hands of the Wall Street/London elite.

Photo: It’s all smiles and laughs in Tripoli as McCain, a chief proponent and driving force behind the US intervention in Libya, literally glorifies Al Qaeda’s exploits in the now ruined nation. Miles away, the very rebels he was praising are purposefully starving the civilian population of Sirte in an effort to break their will, while they and NATO indiscriminately use heavy weapons aimed at crowded city centers.

October 2011: While Tunisia and Egypt had fallen, and Libya too being seized by proxy forces fueled by the West, the Obama administration began withdrawing troops from Iraq. This suspicious withdrawal when otherwise the rest of the Middle East was under US proxy assault raised serious suspicions that an escalation, not retreat was to follow.

Rhetoric for war with Iran had been steadily increasing and the beginning of what looked like a covert war was being fought inside and along Iran’s borders. A disastrous ploy of framing Iran for the alleged planned assassination of a Saudi ambassador in Washington D.C. fell apart when Iranians linked the plot to US-backed terrorist organization Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

Image: MEK. Admittedly a terrorist organization, listed by the US State Department as being such, it is fully funded, armed, and backed by the United States, based in France and US-occupied Iraq, and allowed to conduct terrorist operations against the Iranian people. The “War on Terror” is a fraud.

It is more than likely that the withdrawal of troops from Iraq would simply provide the US “plausible deniability” for an Israeli airstrike on Iran.

November 2011: Syria’s “peaceful protesters” who had been all along fully armed and attempting to stoke a Libyan-style civil war, were finally acknowledge as such by the corporate-media and more importantly by the corporate-funded think-tanks that supply them with their talking points. In “IISS: Syria’s Opposition is Armed,” it is states that a report out of the International Institute for Strategic Studies by Senior Fellow for Regional Security at IISS-Middle East, Emile Hokayem openly admitted that Syria’s opposition was armed and prepared to drag Syria’s violence into even bloodier depths.

Also in November, Wall Street and London’s assault on Libya came full circle with the installation of Abdurrahim el-Keib as prime minister. El-Keib who spent decades in exile in the US, was formally employed by the Petroleum Institute, based in Abu Dhabi, UAE and sponsored by British Petroleum (BP), Shell, France’s Total, the Japan Oil Development Company, and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

Photo: And so begins the farce that is Western “democracy.” One corporate-fascist puppet Mahmoud Jibril , steps down, another, Abdurrahim el-Keib, takes his place. In reality, it is NATO-states and their corporate sponsors that now determine Libya’s fate. Pictured above, el-Keib poses with Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, chairman of the unelected, NATO-backed “National Transitional Council.”
….

In Egypt, in late November, a second “revolution” began unfolding on the streets. In reality it was the same Western-backed forces led by ElBaradei and the emerging Mamdouh Hamza, against Egyptian military forces that seemed to have gone back on whatever arrangements they made with the West after the fall of Mubarak.

The UN, in another attempt to escalate foreign intervention in Syria, would release a UN Human Rights Council report regarding Syrian “crimes against humanity” which was actually co-authored by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the US Washington-based corporate think-tank, Middle East Policy Council, that includes Exxon men, CIA agents, US military and government representatives, and even the president of the US-Qatar Business Council, which includes amongst its membership, AlJazeera, Chevron, Exxon, munitions manufacturer Raytheon (who supplied the opening salvos during NATO’s operations against Libya), and Boeing.

The report itself contained no verifiable evidence, but rather hearsay accounts recorded in Geneva by alleged “victims” “witnesses,” and “defectors,” put forth by “all interested persons and organizations.” In other words, it was an open invitation for Syria’s enemies to paint whatever image of the ruling government they pleased.

December 2011: With Tunisia and Libya fully run by Western proxies, Egypt and Syria still mired in chaos, and with globalists calling for war on Iran, the “Arab Spring” was nearly complete. However, the “Arab Spring” was only the first leg of a grander strategy to encircle Russia and China. In December, the campaigns to move in on Russia and China would begin in earnest.

Image: The “String of Pearls:” China’s oil lifeline is to be cut by the destabilization and regimes changes being made throughout Africa and the Middle East. Along the “String” the US has been destabilizing nations from Pakistan to Myanmar, from Malaysia to Thailand, to disrupt and contain China’s emergence as a regional power.

Hillary Clinton, in Foreign Policy Magazine would pen, “America’s Pacific Century,” a Hitlerian declaration of imperial intent for American “leadership” in Asia for the next 100 years. From “Hillary Clinton and the New American (Pacific) Century:

“Upon reading Clinton’s declaration of intent for American leadership into the next century, readers may recall the similarly named, ranting “Project for a New American Century” signed off on by some of America’s most notorious Neo-Conservatives, which almost verbatim made the same case now made by Clinton. In fact, America’s evolving confrontation with China, marked acutely by Obama’s announcement of a permanent US military presence in Australia just this week, is torn directly from the pages of decades old blueprints drawn up by corporate-financier funded think-tanks that truly rule America and its destiny.

 

As reported in June, 2011’s “Collapsing China,” as far back as 1997 there was talk about developing an effective containment strategy coupled with the baited hook of luring China into its place amongst the “international order.” Just as in these 1997 talking-points where author and notorious Neo-Con policy maker Robert Kagan described the necessity of using America’s Asian “allies” as part of this containment strategy, Clinton goes through a list of regional relationships the US is trying to cultivate to maintain “American leadership” in Asia.

 

For example, the recently reinstalled Wall Street proxy regime in Thailand led by Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck, has received reassurances by Clinton herself just this week stating that, “it is in the national security and political interest of the United States to have this government succeed.” As reported in-depth in “CONFIRMED: Thailand’s “Pro-Democracy” Movement Working for US,” Thaksin Shinawatra and his political regime have had long standing, well documented ties to Wall Street and London. The US backing of puppet-regimes like Thaksin, installing them into power, and keeping them there is central to projecting power throughout Asia and keeping China subordinate, or as Kagan put it in his 1997 report, these proxy regimes will have China “play Gulliver to Southeast Asia’s Lilliputians, with the United States supplying the rope and stakes.””

In Myanmar (Burma) “democracy icon” Aung San Suu Kyi, whose entire movement is a creation of Wall Street and London, received Hillary Clinton as well as Thailand’s proxy-PM Yingluck Shinawatra in a globalist show of support designating her as the defacto leader and point of contact within the Southeast Asian country. Clinton’s visit coincided with a successful campaign led by US NGOs to oust Chinese interests in the nation that resulted in the halting of a dam that was to provide electricity, revenue, flood control and irrigation for the people of Myanmar.

Image: The Myitsone Dam, on its way to being the 15th largest in the world until construction was halted in September by a campaign led by Wall Street-puppet Aung San Suu Kyi, a stable of US-funded NGOs, and a terrorist campaign executed by armed groups operating in Kachin State, Myanmar.

Meanwhile in Russia, Wall Street and London attacked more directly, attempting to interfere with Russian elections in December and resulting in several street protests led by overtly linked NED, Soros, and Rothschild operatives. NED-funded NGO “Golos” played a key role in portraying the elections as “rigged” and constituted America’s extraterritorial meddling in Russia’s sovereign affairs.

Image: NATO’s creeping encirclement of Russia has now been combined with another round of “color revolution” destabilizations in Belarus and now in Russia itself.

A concerted effort by the corporate-media to misrepresent the unrest in Russia was pointed out in, “Russian Protests: Western Media Lies ,” illustrating just how coordinated the overarching global destabilization being carried out actually is. In “Wall Street Vs. Russia,” it was concluded:

“It is quite clear that the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, the Foreign Policy Initiative, and even the US State Department whose new foreign affairs advisory board is full of think-tanks representing overt corporate-financier interests, are not interested in “democracy,” “human rights,” or “freedom” in Russia, but rather removing the Kremlin out of the way, and reestablishing the parasitic feeding on the Russian people and its economy they enjoyed after the fall of the Soviet Union.”

In late December it would be confirmed that the same Al Qaeda militants that ravaged Libya with NATO’s aid, were on their way to Syria to help overthrow the Assad government. LIFG leader Abdel Hakim Belhaj was confirmed to be on the Syrian border preparing troops of the so-called “Free Syrian Army.”

This wasn’t the only recent example of the West operating in tandem with listed terrorist groups. It was also reported in, “EXPOSED: US Troops Guarded Terrorist Camp in Iraq,” that the US has been guarding a terrorist Mujahedin-e Khalq training camp inside Iraq with US troops and is planning to relocated them, possibly in a freshly abandoned US military base in Iraq while D.C. lobbyists work feverishly to have them de-listed, armed, and sent to conduct terrorist operations in Iran. Shocking comments are made in the Brookings Institution’s report, “Which Path to Persia?” where US policy experts conspire to use the terrorist organization against the government of Iran. In essence, corporate-funded policy makers have transformed the US into a state-sponsor of terror.

Conclusion

The year 2011 was surely the year of the dupe. Youth enamored with lofty, naive notions of “freedom” sold to them by corporate-fascist funded NGOs were brought into the streets to create chaos and division which was then capitalized on by covert political and even military maneuvering by the West and its proxy forces. In Egypt the nation is teetering on the edge of being fully integrated into the Wall Street/London international order, while a big-oil representative is enjoying his new position as prime minister of Libya. In Tunisia a life-long stooge of Western machinations is now president, and an alarming campaign of NATO-backed violence and terrorism is gripping Syria.

With the encirclement of Russia and China, these dupes have witlessly brought the world to the edge of World War III, and clearly done nothing at all to improve their own state of being. As their nations fall under the control of increasing Western influence, the resources once used to placate them and defend their nationalism will now be diverted into the bottomless maw of the parasitic banking combines that are currently destroying both North America and Europe.

February’s “The Middle East & then the World” is well worth reading again – to see how far we’ve come over the last year since it was written, and what is left for the globalists to do. As the globalists come ever closer to China and Russia’s doorsteps the stakes will continue to rise and the placid spectating Americans and Europeans have enjoyed this year will forever be lost.

Finally, consider what was written in one of the last articles of this year, “The End Game Approaches:”

“Complacency will kill, apathy is complicity: as the elitist-engineered “Arab Spring” reaches its conclusion, we stand on the precipice of being meshed into an inescapable, corporate-fascist, scientific planetary regime…. the End Game approaches.

 

Now more than ever, “we the people” must steel ourselves against this immense corporate-fascist empire as it sprawls death, destruction, and domination, militarily and economically, across the planet. We must, our very survival depends on it, boycott and replace entirely the corporate-financier interests that drive this dark, expansive agenda. It has been literally spawned of our apathy, complicity, and ignorance, fueled by us – the very source of corporate fascism’s power – and it must be our activism, resistance, and intellect that brings it to an end.

 

As far fetched as it may sound, every Pepsi we swig, every day we decide to drink beer and tune into our corporate-sponsored bread and circus, be it the modern day chariot races of NASCAR or the gladiatorial contests of the NFL, we bring inescapable eternal servitude to a corporate-fascist scientific dictatorship one step closer.

 

It is now “do or die” – unlike in the past, mankind now possesses the technology to render the vast majority of the population intellectually inferior through mass medication, food poisoning, GMO crops that rot our bodies and minds from the inside-out, and the martial means of eliminating vast swaths of the population permanently. Not only is this a possibility, it is a reality the global elite have conspired over at great length through texts like Ecoscience penned by current White House science adviser John Holdren and former White House science adviser Paul Ehrlich who openly talk about mass, involuntary medication to forcibly sterilize the population, reduce our numbers and confine us within what they literally call a “planetary regime.” The End Game approaches.”

Let us not “hope” next year fairs better for free humanity. Let us with our two hands, our will, and our capable intellects ensure that it is better. The decision is not that of our “leaders” or “representatives,” it is the decision of each and every one of us and what it is we do with our time, our money, our resources, our energy, and to where we pay our attention – each and every day. Let us define where it is we want our destiny to take us, and start taking one step at a time to get there.

Let us wait no longer for “saviors,” but rather look in the mirror and realize, God, the Universe, or whatever higher power you believe in, has already endowed you with everything you need, in your heart, your mind, and within your hands to prevail in whatever noble pursuit you, or “we the people” choose.

Source: Land Destroyer

Published December 24, 2011

 

WATCH: How the U.S. Government and Nonprofits Found Each Other: USAID

“the American foreign policy objectives are these things and if you want to bid on them submit your proposal but you’re gonna do what we want done and we’re gonna pay for it”

This lecture, uploaded Feb. 5,  2009, by the Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies titled “Have International NGOs Gotten out of Hand?” (Part 4) provides the following description: “A panel discussion with Professor Richard Falk, Professor Helmut Anheier, President and CEO of Direct Relief International Thomas Tighe, Executive Director of the Santa Barbara Foundation Chuck Slosser, and Dean Melvin Oliver discusses the nuances of globalization and civil society actors’ role in shaping world order.”

During  the panel discussion Thomas Tighe, President and CEO of Direct Relief International states the following in reference to foreign aid (video below):

 

“If I can just say one thing, that in terms of International NGOs, I think there are those who, I think the source of the funding is important too. There’s a lot of, the way the Us government, foreign assistance program has evolved, they don’t have the capacity to actually do anything except fund and oversee those funded. So I think that the United States Agency for International Development is a funder itself and I think they basically put out a tender, the American foreign policy objectives are these things and if you want to bid on them submit your proposal but you’re gonna do what we want done and we’re gonna pay for it”

Tighe goes on to say:

 “I think it’s really been a kind of papered over compromise that’s gone on for 30 years as the U.S. government lost the ability to have access and the nonprofits needed access for funds, they found each other and backing out of that dynamic where most of the US foreign aid is administered through either contract services or non-profit organizations I get frustrated because with some of the big boys, and I used to, you know, run the Peace Corps, and we were a government agency with all that that meant, but there are private groups that receive more federal money than the Peace Corps does & no one knows it …

 

So I think that dilemma of the source of the funding dictating how it is going to be described and the accountability channel that’s going to flow from it is a really hugely unresolved issue in this country, particularly in the realm of foreign aid.”

 

http://youtu.be/_ctbVfLuuXw

The full video can be viewed in it’s entirety, here.

The Destabilization of Bolivia – USAID

Note: In late 2011, the Democracy Centre, Avaaz and Amazon Watch, three international NGOs heavily influenced/funded by U.S. interests (Rockefellers, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Ford Foundation and Soros to name a few), led an International campaign in which they denounced and demonized Bolivian Indigenous leader Evo Morales and his government. This destabilization campaign focused on the TIPNIS protests. A violent confrontation between TIPNIS protestors (influenced/funded by U.S. NGOs/USAID/CIDOB) and the police was the vital opportunity needed in order to execute a destabilization campaign that the U.S. has been strategically planning for decades. This most recent attempt failed. Unlike westerners, Bolivians are today, far advanced in their intellectual understanding of global politics and carefully orchestrated propaganda, having been on the receiving end of Imperialism/colonialism and the capitalist economic system itself, for what surely must feel like an eternity.

Read: Declassified Documents Revealed More than $97 Million from USAID to Separatist Projects in Bolivia.

Read: Evo Morales Through the Prism of Wikileaks – Democracy in Danger.

 

The Morales Government: Neoliberalism in Disguise?

International Socialism

27 March 12

Federico Fuentes

For more than a decade Bolivia has been rocked by mass upsurges and mobilisations that have posed the necessity and possibility of fundamental political and social transformation.¹ In 2005 the social movements that led the country’s water and gas wars managed to elect a government that since then has presided over a process of change that has brought major advances.

Among these are: the adoption of a plurinational state structure that for the first time recognises the country’s indigenous majority; regaining sovereign control over vital natural resources and initial steps towards endogenous industrialisation; an ongoing agrarian reform; and the development of social programmes that have substantially improved the lives of ordinary Bolivians. Democratic rights have been reinforced; forms of self-government by indigenous communities established; and electoral processes expanded to include popular election even of the judiciary. Not least in importance, Bolivia has also become a prime participant in the movement for Latin American anti-imperialist unification and sovereignty and emerged as a major leader in the international fight against capitalist-induced climate change.

In his recent article in this journal, “Revolution against ‘Progress’”,² Jeffery Webber offers a harsh critique of the MAS government, illustrating it by reference to recent conflicts between the government and some indigenous groups involving environmental and development issues. His conclusion: the government remains committed to a neoliberal programme based on “fiscal austerity”, “low inflationary growth”, “inconsequential agrarian reform”, “low social spending” and “alliances with transnational capital”, among other policies. As such, it shares “more continuity than change with the inherited neoliberal model”.

These are sweeping assertions, and many are questionable. Webber criticises the government’s supposed “fiscal austerity”, yet omits the fact that budget spending has increased almost fourfold between 2004 and 2012. He attacks the government for seeking “low inflation” and “macroeconomic stability”, but what is his alternative: high inflation and macroeconomic instability? These were certainly traits of previous neoliberal governments. Furthermore, is it “inconsequential” that in its first five years the Morales government presided over the redistribution or titling of 41 million hectares of land to over 900,000 members of indigenous peasant communities?³ And if the government’s policy can be simply defined as one of forming alliances to benefit foreign transnationals, why is the Bolivian state currently facing 12 legal challenges in international courts initiated by these same companies?

Profile of neoliberalism

Simply put, Webber ignores the real progress made by the Morales government in rolling back the neoliberal project in Bolivia. Neoliberalism is best understood as a class project that sought to reassert capital’s dominance internationally in the wake of the 1970s economic crisis. Neoliberalism, as Webber himself previously noted, was “set in motion on an international scale largely under the tutelage of the US imperial state” and had as its fundamental strategy not only the “privatisation of formerly state or public resources but their acquisition by transnational capital in the US and other core economies”.⁴

Furthermore, current Bolivian vice-president Álvaro García Linera has noted that neoliberalism rested on three additional “pillars”: “the fragmentation of the labouring sectors and worker organisations…the diminished state, and impediments to people’s decision making”.⁵

The impact of neoliberalism in Bolivia includes:⁶

l The sell-off or dismantling of Bolivia’s largest state-owned companies. In the hydrocarbon sector, which accounted for 50 percent of government revenue, privatisation was accompanied by a drop in royalties companies had to pay from 50 percent to 18 percent. The workforce of YPBF (Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales Bolivianos) was reduced from more than 9,000 in 1985 to 600 by 2002.

l The state’s dependency on foreign imperialist governments, transnational corporations and their institutions was deepened. International loans and aid covered “roughly half of Bolivia’s public investment”, with each budget deficit bringing further IMF-imposed structural adjustment programmes.

l The removal of state subsidies sent Bolivia’s small industrial sector into crisis. Some 35,000 jobs disappeared in the manufacturing sector alone.

l By 1988 the informal sector had ballooned to 70 percent of Bolivia’s urban workforce, and the few jobs created in the formal sector were subject to labour flexibilisation practices.

l The establishment of power-sharing pacts among traditional parties and restrictions on electoral registration for alternative parties consolidated the grip that neoliberal politicians had on political decision making.

Compare this disastrous record with that of the Morales government. While Bolivia’s state continues to be capitalist, “and the government functions within the framework of deeply entrenched capitalist culture and social relations”, it is equally true that through a combination of successful electoral and insurrectional battles, indigenous-popular forces today are in control of important positions of power within the state.⁷ From these positions, they have used the increased state revenue, generated through nationalisations undertaken across various strategic sectors, to begin breaking its dependency on foreign governments. This strong economic position has allowed those running the Bolivian state to dictate their own domestic and foreign policy, free from any impositions placed by imperialist governments and international financial institutions in return for loans. Ties of the US military to the Bolivian army have been cut.

A constituent assembly wrote a new constitution that for the first time recognises the previously excluded indigenous majority and has recuperated
state control over natural resources. Since the referendum ratifying the new constitution the process of “decolonising” the state has continued, most recently in October 2010, with the holding of Bolivia’s first popular elections to elect judicial authorities. The result was a record number of women and indigenous people flooding into the judicial branch of the state.

The Morales government also initiated a significant shift in Bolivia’s foreign policy, leaving behind the traditional subservient stance towards the US. Instead Bolivia has spearheaded initiatives in the direction of seeking unity with anti-imperialist forces—both at the level of governments and social movements—within the context of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America (Alba), and increasing regional collaboration, through institutions such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR). Another key focus has been the construction of an international alliance to fight for real solutions to the climate crisis, as evidenced by the World Peoples’ Summit on Climate Change held in Cochabamba in April 2010.

An alternative model

Webber ignores most of these achievements and instead focuses on the MAS industrial strategy and the social tensions that have been expressed around this. But he misrepresents the strategy. Let us look first, then, at what this strategy comprises, as it is a central component in the government’s economic vision. A succinct presentation may be found in a recent article on Bolivia’s economic model by Luis Alberto Arce Catacora, the minister of economy and public finance.

For Arce, “the New Economic, Social, Communitarian and Productive Model” that the government is implementing “does not pretend to immediately change the capitalist mode of production, but instead to lay the foundations for the transition towards a new socialist mode of production”.⁸

Unlike neoliberalism, in which surplus value and rents are appropriated by transnational capital, this new model, as the introduction to his article notes, has taken steps towards:

stimulating the internal market and reducing dependency on the external markets. Similarly, it has given the state a watching brief, endowing it with functions such as planning the economy, administering public enterprises, investing in the productive sector, taking on the role of a banker and regulator and, among other things, redistributing the surplus, with preference to those sectors that were not beneficiaries under previous governments.

The priority, Arce says, is promoting communitarian, cooperative and family-based enterprises (together with increasing social spending). Such a strategy is vital to rebuilding the strength of the working class and communitarian forces, pulverised by two decades of neoliberalism.

In summary: reassert state sovereignty in the economy and over natural resources; break out of Bolivia’s traditional position of primary materials exporter through industrialisation and promoting other productive sectors such as manufacturing and agriculture; redistribute the nation’s wealth in order to tackle poverty; and strengthen the organisational capacity of proletarian and communitarian forces as the two vital pillars of any possible transition to socialism in Bolivia today. Such a perspective, which seeks to advance the interest of Bolivia’s labouring classes at the expense of transnational capital, may be decried by some as mere reforms, but it is certainly not neoliberalism. →

FLASHBACK: The Missionary Position – NGOs and Development in Africa

 

Firoze Manji
Fahamu – learning for change
14 Standingford House, Oxford OX4 1BA
Carl O’Coill

Hull School of Architecture, University
of Lincoln, George Street, Hull HU1 3BW
Published in International Affairs 78 3 (2002) 567-83

 

NGOs face a stark choice. If they stand in favour of the emancipation of humankind (whether at home or abroad), then the focus of their work has inevitably to be in the political domain, supporting those social movements that seek to challenge a social system that benefits a few and impoverishes the many. The closing years of apartheid in Africa were illustrative of the choice that NGOs face today: either they supported the emerging popular movements (in South Africa and internationally) that supported the overthrow of a brutal system of exploitation, or they stayed silent and continued their philanthropic work, and became thereby complicit in the crimes of the system of apartheid.

 

Africa in the closing years of the 20th Century will be remembered for two historic events. One was the rise of the popular movements that led to the end of the colonial empire and the downfall of apartheid; the other, a human catastrophe of immense proportions involving the massacre of nearly a million people in Rwanda. If the one was achieved through the mobilisation of the majority for the goal of emancipation, the other was fuelled by pressures to comply with an externally defined agenda for social development. These events represent the
extremes of hope and despair that came to characterise much of the continent in the closing years of the millennium. Every country in the region contains, albeit to varying degrees, the mixture of factors that can lead to either outcome – a future built on respect for human dignity, or one torn apart by conflicts such as those seen in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola and in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Development, it seems, has failed. In many post-colonial countries real per capita GDP has fallen and welfare gains achieved since independence in areas like food consumption health and education have been reversed. The statistics are
disturbing. In Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole per-capita incomes dropped by 21% in real terms between 1981 and 1989.1 Madagascar and Mali now have per capita incomes of $799 and $753 down from $1,258 and $898 25 years ago. In 16 other Sub-Saharan countries per capita incomes were also lower in 1999 than in 1975.2 Nearly one quarter of the world’s population, but nearly 42% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, live on less than $1 a day. Levels of inequality have also increased dramatically but worldwide. In 1960 the average income of the top 20% of the world’s population was 30 times that of the bottom 20%. By 1990 it was 60 times, and by 1997, 74 times that of the lowest fifth. Today “the assets of the top three billionaires are more than the combined GNP of all least developed countries and their 600 million people”.3

This has been the context in which there has been an explosive growth in the presence of Western as well as local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Africa. NGOs today form a prominent part of the “development machine”, a vast institutional and disciplinary nexus of official agencies, practitioners, consultants, scholars, and other miscellaneous experts producing and consuming knowledge about the “developing world”.4 According to recent estimates, there are as many as three thousand development NGOs in OECD countries as a whole.5 In Britain alone, there are well over one hundred voluntary groups claiming some specialism in the field. →

NGOs: The Missionaries of Empire

by Devon DB

Global Research | March 3, 2012

The Purpose of U.S. Soft Power Themed Revolutions: Disunity and Power Projection

14.02.2012
Wayne MADSEN
Strategic-Culture.org

A U.S. “alphabet soup” agency-sponsored themed revolution in the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean comprising twenty-six atolls, stands to plunge the nation, heretofore considered a tropical paradise for tourists, into the same kind of chaos and civil unrest now seen on the streets of Libya, Egypt, and Syria. Maldives is smaller in comparison to the nations of the Middle East where the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute (NDI), and George Soros’s Open Society Institute (OSI) have sponsored themed revolutions that have all resulted in civil unrest and a entrance of extremist Wahhabi Salafists into political power. However, the small size of Maldives provides a much clearer picture of how the aforementioned Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-sponsored “soft power” aggressors managed to turn paradise into another center of unrest in the Muslim world.

In the case of the Maldives, the road to civil strife began in 2005 when USAID- and OSI-sponsored democracy” manipulation groups took root in the country upon the legalization of opposition political parties by the government of President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom. Serving as president for thirty years, Gayoom was seen by the international human rights network of non-governmental organizations as a dictator ripe for removal. The Western-sponsored NGOs settled on Mohamed Nasheed, a Maldivian opposition leader who had lived in exile in Britain – with the support of the British government — and Sri Lanka and who returned to Maldives in 2005, as their favorite candidate for president.

In preparation for the first direct presidential election for president in 2008, outside “democracy manipulators” descended on Maldives, a country that had become popular with the Soros network because of global climate change. Maldives, which is threatened by rising sea levels, became a cause célèbre for the carbon tax and carbon cap-and-trade advocates.

Nasheed was the 2008 presidential candidate of the Maldivian Democratic Party against President Gayoom’s Dhivehi Rayyithunge Party. In the first round of voting, Gayoom received a little over 40 percent of the vote in the first round to the 24 percent of Nasheed’s and his vice presidential running mate, Mohammed Waheed Hassan. To defeat Gayoom in the second round, Nasheed, obviously with the encouragement of his foreign “democracy” advisers, sought and received the endorsement of four other opposition parties, including the Saudi- and United Arab Emirates-financed Salafist Adhaalath (Justice) Party. Adhaalath is an ideological partner of the Muslim Brotherhoods of Egypt and Syria. In the second round of the election, Nasheed, with the support of the other four opposition presidential candidates, defeated Gayoom 54 percent to 46 percent.

Nasheed was immediately embraced by the world’s glitterati community of NGOs and celebrities, including carbon tax-and-trade advocate Bill McKibben of 350.org and the crowd who gathered at the Sundance Film Festival to view a sycophantic film about Nasheed called The Island President. Nasheed was called the “Mandela of the Maldives” by those celebrities whose knowledge of Maldives did not extend beyond the nation’s Wikipedia entry. In October 2009, Nasheed and his Cabinet pulled off a pre-Copenhagen climate change conference publicity stunt by holding the world’s first underwater Cabinet meeting. Nasheed and eleven of his ministers, wearing scuba gear, convened the meeting twenty feet under the surface of the Indian Ocean. Nasheed was a huge hit among the celebrity contingent at the December 2009 Copenhagen summit.

Nasheed was selected by Time magazine at the top of their “Leaders & Visionaries” list of “Heroes of the Environment.” The United Nations awarded Nasheed its “Champions of the Earth” award. Foreign Policy magazine, co-founded by the late Samuel Huntington, a chief ideologist for the neo-conservative pabulum of a “Clash of Civilizations” between the West and Islam, named Nasheed as one of its top global thinkers.

Nasheed took on as his close adviser and communications assistant Paul Roberts, a British national. In what alienated his Salafist supporters, Nasheed also opened diplomatic relations with Israel, invited Israeli surgeons to Maldives amid fears they would begin harvesting human organs for Israeli clients, met with Israeli government officials, agreed to allow direct air links between Israel and Maldives, invited Israeli trainers into Maldives to advise Maldivian security forces, and failed to ensure that Maldives voted for Palestine’s full admission to the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) during the organization’s general assembly meeting in Paris on October 31, 2011. Maldives was absent from the vote.

Maldivian opposition parties, particularly the Salafist Adhaalath Party which left Nasheed’s coalition, did not buy Nasheed’s government’s weak explanation about the Palestine vote. By the end of 2010, the four other political parties in Nasheed’s Cabinet had left and Nasheed’s government was accused by the opposition of lacking transparency. The trademark yellow neckties and shirts worn by Nasheed and his supporters and the yellow Maldivian Democratic Party flags waved by Nasheed’s supporters were yet another indication that Nasheed’s “revolution” was another “themed revolution” concocted by the Soros/NED network of NGOs and think tanks in Washington, London, and New York.

Just as other Soros / NED-installed regimes began to violate the constitutions of their respective nations, including Georgia and Ukraine, Nasheed was no different. On December 10, 2010, the Maldivian Supreme Court ruled that Nasheed’s cabinet ministers could not serve without the approval of parliament. Nasheed responded by declaring the Maldivian courts were controlled by supporters of ex-president Gayoom and on January 16, 2012, Nasheed ordered the military to arrest Abdulla Mohammed, the Chief Justice of the Criminal Court.

Counter-protests were organized by Maldives opposition parties and were backed by the police. After the military clashed with the opposition protesters and police, several military members defected and joined the protesters.

Faced with the opposition and police/military uprising, Nasheed resigned the presidency on February 7. Later, Nasheed and his British adviser Roberts claimed that Nasheed was ousted in a coup d’etat. The U.S. State Department demanded that Vice President Mohammed Waheed Hassan, who assumed the presidency and opposed the arrest order of the Chief Justice, form a government of national unity with Nasheed’s supporters. Hassan refused and India, which, in the past, has intervened militarily in Maldives to put down attempted coups, remained silent. The Soros/NED global glitterati, including the Soros-funded “Democracy Now” program hosted by Amy Goodman and partly-funded by Soros, featured Roberts on an interview in which Gayoom was described as a thug and who was trying to re-assume power. Of course, the Soros propaganda program made no mention of Nasheed’s repeated violations of the Maldivian constitution.

As with the destabilization of Iraq, Egypt, and Libya, the first target for alleged Islamist radicals after the ouster of Nasheed was the destruction of priceless museum artifacts. Unknown men broke into the Chinese-built Maldives National Museum in Male, the capital, and smashed the delicate coral and limestone pre–Islamic Maldivian Buddhist statues on display.

The yellow flag of Nasheed’s political party.

The rise of Salafists and Muslim Brotherhood adherents in the new Maldivian government parallels what occurred in Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Tunisia after their themed revolutions.

The Maldives were destabilized by the West at the same time that the Egyptian government charged 43 CIA-linked NGO personnel, including Americans, Britons, Serbs, and others working for IRI, NDI, and NED, with possessing a secret plan, including maps, to divide Egypt into an Israeli-dominated Sinai state, a Coptic state extending from Alexandria in the north to Asyut in the South, a Berber-dominated Islamic state based in Cairo, and a black African Nubian state in the south.

There now may be an attempt by the West to split up Maldives. In 1957, the British established the Gan airbase on the southernmost atoll of Addu and insisted on 100-year base rights on Seenu Atoll. After Maldives Prime Minister and President Ibrahim Nasir adopted a nationalist foreign policy, the British backed a secessionist movement in the southern atolls where the British bases were located that declared the short-lived United Suvadive Republic in 1959. After the collapse of the secessionist republic in 1965, the British bought the southernmost atoll in the Chagos-Laccadive chain of atolls from Mauritius and established the British Indian Ocean Territory. The inhabitants of the Chagos Archipelago island of Diego Garcia were forcibly removed to Mauritius and other Chagos islands and the United States established its strategic military base on the island of Diego Garcia. Maldives never recognized Mauritian claims over the Chagos atolls or the British Indian Ocean Territory. With neo-con interference in Maldives now coming to fruition, secessionist movements in the southern atolls may, once again, gain ground to ensure unfettered U.S. and British control over Diego Garcia and expansion of U.S. and British military facilities to the Addu atoll and, perhaps, further north in the Maldives chain.

Source: Strategic Culture Foundation on-line journal www.strategic-culture.org.

US Subverting Latin America: Bolivia and Venezuela Top Targets of Financially Backed Myriad of NGOs

Map Source: http://combatingglobalization.com/

November 6, 2011
Nil NIKANDROV
Strategic-Culture.org

US President John Kennedy Established USAID – the United States Agency for International Development – in November, 1962as an organization charged with an essentially humanitarian mission of providing economic and other support to struggling countries around the world. The agency’s stated goals therefore include conflict prevention, the expansion of democracy, humanitarian assistance, and human resources training, but the truth which is not deeply hidden is that the USAID activities tend to be tightly interwoven with those of the US Department of State, the CIA, and the Pentagon.

In Latin America, any illusions concerning the agenda behind USAID interventions proved to be short-living. A string of unmaskings of FBI and CIA agents who operated under the USAID cover were so fabulous that the actual character of the agency became impossible to conceal.Nevertheless, the USAID activity clearly got a boost over the first decade of the XXI century… In Haiti, for example, CIA operatives hosted by USAID coordinated and backed financially myriads of NGOs that in 2003-2004 were instrumental in toppling president Jean-Bertrand Aristide. For several days protesters in Haiti vandalized city streets, attacked government institutions, and showered Aristide with allegations of corruption and complicity in the drug business. A curious brand of rebels dressed in US military uniforms entered the stage shortly thereafter and occupied most of the country, eventually laying siege to its capital and the presidential palace. Aristide was arrested by US marines, taken to the airport, and – with no formalities like a court procedure – flown to South Africa. The warning issued to the displaced country leader in the process was that attempts to escape would earn him yet bigger trouble.

USAID also played the key role in organizing the June, 2009 coup in Honduras, where CIA agents under the USAID guise similarly guided and sponsored puppet NGO escapades, spread the myth of Honduran president M. Zelaya’s and Venezuelan leader H. Chavez’s joint communist conspiracy, and commanded the country’s army officers. The coup culminated in the arrest of Zelaya who, like Aristide, was forcibly taken to another country – Costa Rica in this case – and threatened that re-entering his home country would be lethal. As a result, Washington was happy about the resulting termination of Honduras’ drift towards the Latin American populist camp, the media pretended to stay unaware of the terrorist war on Zelaya’s supporters unleashed by the butchers marshaled by Honduran “de facto” new president R. Micheletti, and the USAID/CIA operatives who engineered the coup got their bonuses and promotions.

There is ample evidence that USAID is used extensively as a tool for inciting color revolutions and revolts in defiant countries across the Western hemisphere, especially in Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Nicaragua…As for Cuba, USAID has been pulling off secret operations there for decades, but most of the agencies efforts aimed at planting in the country “independent” media and “alternative” political organizations in the form of trade unions or protest groups were remarkably unsuccessful. Cuba’s counter-espionage agency must be credited with enviable efficiency, while infighting occasionally erupts in the ranks of the opponents of the Cuban regime over the money poured in by the US. The permanent impression is that a considerable portion of the US funding supposed to help bring “democracy” to Cuba simply ends up in the pockets of CIA operatives and their local protégées. When leader of the Cuban opposition movement known as Ladies in White Laura Pollan died of natural causes recently, her co-workers initiated an inquiry into the group’s finances and discovered the disappearance of tens of thousands of dollars. USAID promptly hushed up the scandal, which was just one in a series of likewise incidents. The tendency for millions of dollars contributed by Washington to the anti-regime cause in Cuba to evaporate is widely attributed to the Cuban counter-espionage agency’s ability to cunningly divert USAID funds to its own needs. →