The Stealth Destabilizer: The National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela

[Judi Lynn]

Weekend Edition Feb 28-Mar 02, 2014
The Stealth Destabilizer

The National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela

by KIM SCIPES


As protests have been taking place in Venezuela the last couple of weeks, it is always good to check on the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Empire’s “stealth” destabilizer. What has the NED been up to in Venezuela?

Before going into details, it is important to note what NED is and is not. First of all, it has NOTHING to do with the democracy we are taught in civics classes, concerning one person-one vote, with everyone affected having a say in the decision, etc. (This is commonly known as “popular” or grassroots democracy.) The NED opposes this kind of democracy.

The NED promotes top-down, elite, constrained (or “polyarchal”) democracy. This is the democracy where the elites get to decide the candidates or questions suitable to go before the people—and always limiting the choices to what the elites are comfortable with. Then, once the elites have made their decision, THEN the people are presented with the “choice” that the elites approve. And then NED prattles on with its nonsense about how it is “promoting democracy around the world.”This is one of the most cynical uses of democracy there is. It’s notable even in what my friend Dave Lippmann calls “Washington Deceit.”

The other thing to note about NED is that it is NOT independent as it claims, ad nauseum. It was created by the US Congress, signed into US law by President Ronald Reagan (that staunch defender of democracy), and it operates from funds provided annually by the US Government.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/02/28/the-national-endowment-for-democracy-in-venezuela/

[Judi Lynn]

1. Trojan Horse: The National Endowment for Democracy

Trojan Horse:
The National Endowment for Democracy

By William Blum

How many Americans could identify the National Endowment for Democracy? An organization which often does exactly the opposite of what its name implies. The NED was set up in the early 1980s under President Reagan in the wake of all the negative revelations about the CIA in the second half of the 1970s. The latter was a remarkable period. Spurred by Watergate—the Church committee of the Senate, the Pike committee of the House, and the Rockefeller Commission, created by the president, were all busy investigating the CIA. Seemingly every other day there was a new headline about the discovery of some awful thing, even criminal conduct, the CIA had been mixed up in for years. The Agency was getting an exceedingly bad name, and it was causing the powers-that-be much embarrassment.

Something had to be done. What was done was not to stop doing these awful things. Of course not. What was done was to shift many of these awful things to a new organization, with a nice sounding name—The National Endowment for Democracy. The idea was that the NED would do somewhat overtly what the CIA had been doing covertly for decades, and thus, hopefully, eliminate the stigma associated with CIA covert activities.

It was a masterpiece. Of politics, of public relations, and of cynicism.

~snip~

The Endowment has four principal initial recipients of funds: the International Republican Institute; the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs; an affiliate of the AFL-CIO (such as the American Center for International Labor Solidarity); and an affiliate of the Chamber of Commerce (such as the Center for International Private Enterprise). These institutions then disburse funds to other institutions in the US and all over the world, which then often disburse funds to yet other organizations.

In a multitude of ways, NED meddles in the internal affairs of numerous foreign countries by supplying funds, technical know-how, training, educational materials, computers, faxes, copiers, automobiles, and so on, to selected political groups, civic organizations, labor unions, dissident movements, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, other media, etc. NED typically refers to the media it supports as "independent" despite the fact that these media are on the US payroll.

More:
http://www.iefd.org/articles/trojan_horse.php

[polly7]

4. Thank you for posting this.

The NED has been busy in Ukraine recently as well.

[SamKnause]

2. There is very little honesty in the U.S. government.

There is very little transparency in the U.S. government.

There is very much classified material in the U.S. government.

There is unlimited spying by the U.S. government.

There is little communication between the branches and organizations of government in the U.S.

There is too much power given to lobbyists in the U.S. government.

The U.S. Supreme Court lifetime appointments are a travesty.

The U.S. justice system is two tier.

The U.S. legal system is two tier.

The attacks on unions is a traitorous action by our elected officials.

The U.S. economy would collapse without wars, invasions, drone attacks, weapons manufacturing, weapons exporting, and all things military.

Many citizens in the U.S. know little or nothing about what is happening in the U.S. or the world.

The U.S. will stop at nothing to get control of the Venezuelan government. They ramped up their actions when Hugo Chavez was elected. Their illegal destructive interference is non stop.

The U.S. does not believe in democracy or fair elections.

The U.S. believes in its model of democracy and its definition of fair elections.

[Judi Lynn]

3. You can say all of this again, and you'd be so right again.

The U.S. has written new definitions for "democracy" and "fair elections," no doubt about it.

[Enthusiast]

5. Kicked and recommended a whole bunch!

[DeSwiss]

6. Here's what I don't understand.....

...why did anyone ever think they stopped?

- K&R

[center]

They kept trying to tell us. Ike. Then JFK. And Senators Frank Church and Daniel Inouye. Then the revelations seemed to just stop. Maybe they were in control now. It all sounds so absurd, doesn't it? No one wants to even consider it. And if you repeat it, you're just another crazy CT.

That's the beauty of it. TPTB have created a self-correcting system of oversight integrity which relies principally upon its victims to protect its existence through their own ignorance and incredulity. And through the constant use of ridicule against those able to see things more objectively and realistically, they maintain a consistent hard outer shell made of incredulous, unknowing people.

Because it is understood in our society that being accused of being stupid is the one thing an truly ignorant person hates to be accused of the most.

[/center]

[Judi Lynn]

8. Operation Mockingbird! That's right. So few people seem to know, sadly.

It carries so incredibly much weight. Huge. And that was revealed so long before they had as much control as they do now.

You really should save this post for your journal. People need a chance to see it, as many as possible.

Thank you for taking the time. The Mark Twain quote is outstanding. I can't believe I never knew about it before seeing your post. So perfectly true.

[Peace Patriot]

7. That's a good phrase--"the Stealth Destabilizer"--for the MIC/CIA during...

...the Obama era. Sneaky, infiltrating, secretly propagandizing, 'training,' dividing and conquering, spying, blackmailing, bribing, undermining, camouflaging, impersonating, poisoning the public dialogue, engaging in dirty tricks, and lying, lying, lying, in selected, targeted countries--for instance, Latin American democracies with leftist governments--and, in other targeted countries, all of the above, plus gun running to terrorists, aiding violent protestors, ripping countries to pieces, instigating civil wars and committing many proxy atrocities, and, of course, more lying, real whoppers.

All of this is a different style of colonial conquest than Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were engaged in, but it has the same goals--subjugation, the plunder of resources, the acquisition of markets and slave labor, militarization--and it is equally destructive. This Panetta-designed resurgence of the old CIA combines the old CIA methods, now on steroids, with new technology ("total information awareness" spying; drone assassination by anonymous killers) and savvy new operatives, in order to detach the U.S. from the horrors of the Iraq War and other Bush Junta "blunders," and to blind the American people to what is occurring. It has been very clever in that respect. The USAID/NED plays an important role in this new/old strategy.

The article makes a very important point about this:

"...according to Professor William Robinson in his 1996 book, Promoting Polyarchy, NED is a product of US Government foreign policy shift from 'earlier strategies to contain social and political mobilization through a focus on control of the state and governmental apparatus' to a process of 'democracy promotion,' whereby 'the United States and local elites thoroughly penetrate civil society, and from therein, assure control over popular mobilization and mass movements.' What this means, as I note in my 2010 book, AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage?, 'is that instead of waiting for a client government to be threatened by its people and then responding, US foreign policy shifted to intervening in the civil society of a country ‘of interest’ (as defined by US foreign policy goals) before popular mobilization could become significant, and by supporting certain groups and certain politicians, then channel any potential mobilization in the direction desired by the US Government.'

Obviously, this also means that these 'civil society' organizations can be used offensively as well, against any government the US opposes....".--from the OP

There was an internal war among factions of our overlords that came to crisis with the Rumsfeld-Cheney attack on the CIA (2003) and the CIA's retaliation (the Fitzgerald investigation--2005, during Katrina), which was resolved in favor of, and by, the old CIA (Bush Sr. and Leon Panetta), with Rumsfeld being ousted (2006) and Cheney curtailed during the final two years of the Bush Junta. Bush Sr. and Panetta (with Bush Sr.'s "Iraq Study Group&quot allied with military brass to stop Rumsfeld-Cheney from nuking Iran, to prevent Bush Jr. from suffering CIA retaliation along with Rumsfeld and Cheney, and to redirect policy away from outright war (and potential armageddon) to "stealth destabilization."

Panetta then was installed as CIA Director, and, after a year, jumped to the Pentagon, to end this internal war, and get everybody "back on the same page" in service to our corporate, bankster and military contractor masters.

This is my theory of how we arrived at today, with the U.S. gun running to Syria and Libya, drone bombing in Yemen and other places, supporting fascists in Ukraine, funding/'training' violent rightwing protestors in Venezuela, spying on the leftist president of Brazil's phone calls and emails, very likely instigating civil war in a number of countries, but not invasion and "shock and awe" bombing nor just nuking them to get what our multinationals want. It's smoother. It's easier to lie about. It's what the CIA is "good" at. It keeps others off-balance, and our people ignorant.

The Stealth Destabilizer.

Thank you, Kim Scipes! And thank you, Judi, for posting this.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Excellent post. Painfully true, right on the money. Thank you, so much. n/t