John McCain and the International Republican Institute

[DogPoundPup]

Senator John McCain presents himself as a what-you-see is what-you-get presidential candidate: clean, pragmatic, following his convictions even when not politically expedient. He considers himself to be someone who would make an excellent foreign policy president.

But this image sits in contrast with the International Republican Institute (IRI), for which McCain has served as board chairman since 1993. Under the cover of spreading democracy and a free market economic system, the IRI installs U.S.-friendly governments and undermines those that are not by supporting coups and ousters.

The Nation in 2002, for example, argued that the “NED was designed to run a parallel foreign policy for the United States, backing and assisting entities that Washington might not be able to officially endorse.” The IRI is funded by U.S. tax dollars to the tune of $75 million a year.

According to its website, the IRI at first “focused on planting the seeds of democracy in Latin America since the end of the Cold War, has broadened its reach to support democracy and freedom around the globe has conducted programs in more than 100 countries and is currently active in 70 countries.”

The IRI engages in what it calls “consolidating democracy.” That is, it facilitates the coming together of splintered opposition parties, civil society organizations such as churches, human rights organizations, worker unions, women’s organizations and student unions– hence consolidation. This becomes a formidable force that is then either able to vote the incumbent out of office or when that fails, overwhelm the incumbent into submission through mass action.

Outside issues of international law and sovereignty, this may sound well and good. For example the so-called color revolutions in former Soviet Union republics toppled bad guys and replaced them with stalwarts of the free-market economy and Western-styled democracy. Hence in Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, the IRI-backed candidate, defeated Viktor Yanukovych, who was representing old decrepit Soviet style authoritarianism.
Controversial Actions

But IRI activities in countries like Haiti and Venezuela are more controversial. In Haiti, even those opposed to Jean-Bertrand Aristide would agree that he was democratically elected. Yet the IRI consolidated democracy against him leading to his violent ouster. Mother Jones reported that “several of the people who had attended IRI trainings were influential in the toppling of Aristide.” Today, Haiti is more poor, divided and violent, and less democratic than it was at the time of Aristide’s ouster.

In 2002 the then-IRI president George Folsom is reported to have applauded the failed Venezuelan coup against President Hugo Chavez. "Last night, led by every sector of civil society, the Venezuelan people rose up to defend democracy in their country," he said in a statement the IRI released.

Not expecting the coup to fail, he went on to proudly claim that the role of the IRI had been to “serve as a bridge between the nation's political parties and all civil society groups.”

No matter what one may think of Chavez, coups are not avenues to democracy. Chavez was the democratically elected president of Venezuela meaning that the IRI was working against the popular vote of the Venezuelan people in order to serve U.S. interests.

It’s not surprising that Egypt views the IRI with so much suspicion that in 2006 it asked the IRI to suspend its efforts at democracy building until it received official permission.

Egypt isn’t an emblem of democracy, but as it turns out, neither is the IRI. As the board chairman of this outfit, McCain would have some trust issues in international gatherings right from Day One if he were to win the U.S. presidential election.

The questions that McCain needs to answer are obvious: As board chairman has he been fully aware of the more covert IRI activities? As president, would he endorse a coup if he felt the end result would be a democratic government friendly to the United States? Is the IRI fully accountable and transparent to the American people? As President, would he continue to fund the IRI without an investigation into its mandate?

McCain has over the years worked very hard to put the 1989 Keating Five corruption scandal behind him. But if the IRI is not to become his Achilles’ heel, McCain should come clean, if he is to remain, well, Mr. McClean.
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/5330

Read more about the IRI ... McCains ties to the infamous quasi-governmental organization require far greater scrutiny. http://www.alternet.org/audits/89431/?page=4

[MadMaddie]

1. PBS has a documentry on Aristide and it's revalations

are shocking. Not only groups like IRI but the Senior * and the Junior * participated in removing a Democratically elected Aristide.

Aristide's main flaw..trying to aleviate the abject poverty in Haiti, trying to raise the minimum wage from 30 cents a day to 1.00 a day.

Americans have no idea the truth behind the removal of Aristide.

And lets not forget the French who also collaborated in removing Aristide...

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/latin_america/haiti/index.html

[Peace Patriot]

2. NarcoNews also posted this great article on McCain and the IRI, by Sarah Hamburger,

which originated at COHA:
"A Hidden Agenda: John McCain and the IRI," by Sarah Hamburger (6/25/08)
http://www.coha.org/2008/06/a-hidden-agenda-john-mccain-and-the-iri/

...as well as the best analysis of Barack Obama's Miami speech about Latin American policy that I have read:

"Obama and the US-Latin America Time Bomb
Defusing US Policy Toward Latin America Requires Cutting the Wires in Proper Order"
http://narconews.com/Issue53/article3110.html

The Obama speech contained quite a lot of disturbing Bushite cant. I was dismayed at it. Al Giordano provides a detailed analysis that finds hope in some the subtler aspects of that speech.

[Peace Patriot]

3. "No matter what one may think of Chavez..."

"No matter what one may think of Chavez, coups are not avenues to democracy. Chavez was the democratically elected president of Venezuela meaning that the IRI was working against the popular vote of the Venezuelan people in order to serve U.S. interests." -- Mukoma Wa Ngugi (FPIF)

Packed into that telling phrase--"No matter what one may think of Chavez"--a caveat that shows up, in one form or another, in far too many leftist articles--is a whole lot of hard work by the Associated Pukes & brethren, fed by a steady stream of faxes/emails from the Bush-purged CIA, the Bush State Department, and associated Bush disinformation agencies, sometimes re-typed verbatim and presented to us as "news." The result is a sort of cloud that hangs over Chavez's name, occasionally spitting lightning and thunder ("dictator," "increasingly authoritarian," and, more recently, "terrorist lover"), but mostly produces a slow drizzle of slander that makes even good writers nervous, and feeling like they must cover their asses, cuz maybe, well, there's something wrong with Chavez, even though he is--as this writer says--"democratically elected."

I have thoroughly investigated this topic--Hugo Chavez and Venezuelan democracy--and I can tell you without equivocation that there is absolutely no evidence--zero, zilch--that Hugo Chavez is a "dictator," is "increasingly authoritarian," or a "terrorist lover." ALL evidence points overwhelmingly the other way--that Hugo Chavez has run an open, democratic, beneficial government for ten years that has done no harm to anybody, and has in fact ACTIVELY ENCOURAGED citizen participation in government and politics, and MAXIMUM democracy and fairness, including a recently proposed equal rights amendment for gays and women (in a Catholic country with particularly rightwing Catholic clergy), wiping out illiteracy, reducing poverty by 30%, pouring the country's oil profits into education, medical care, land reform and other great benefits, and producing an almost 10% economic growth rate, with the most growth in the PRIVATE sector (not including oil).

Chavez possesses NO POWER that is not rightfully his as the president of the country, including decree powers over the economy that were ALSO given by the National Assembly to previous rightwing governments. In fact, he's shown great restraint. Most of the coup plotters of 2002 are running around freely, spouting off their rightwing bullshit and even running for office. The corporate press lavishes abuse upon him and his government daily, unfettered. (Using his legitimate power as president, Chavez denied a license renewal to one TV station--RCTV--which had actively participated in the 2002 coup attempt. And, boy, did the Bushites try to make hay out of that--something that they wouldn't hesitate for a second to do, if, by some miracle, a U.S. TV station had actively supported a violent military coup against them.) Chavez even put his own term limit to A VOTE OF THE PEOPLE. They voted it down (by a close vote--50.7% vs 49.3%--in a total of 69 amendments that included the gay/women's rights amendment). The Venezuelan Constitution--that Chavez helped to write and pass, by a VOTE OF THE PEOPLE--contains a recall provision for the president. The rightwing tried a recall--with Bushite (our money) behind them--and failed, in 2004. In 2006, Chavez won a second term with 63% of the vote, in elections that put our own to shame for their transparency. It is an insult to the people of Venezuela to presume that they would elect, and then re-elect, a "dictator."

And it is the people of Venezuela, and their democratic system (real democracy, unlike here) that is the true target of these lies. The Bushites have sought to overturn their democracy by every means possible--violent coup, U.S. taxpayer funded recall, pouring millions of dollars into fascist groups, an oil professionals' strike, and dirty tricks and black ops, and Bush-backed fascist/oil corp schemes of every kind, including--the most recent--a plot to split off the oil rich state of Zulia from the national government--a plot that may mature this summer, when the newly resconstituted U.S. 4th Fleet--a nuclear fleet--will be up and running again, and roaming off the Venezuelan coast near Zulia.

The intense Bushite/corporate media psyops that have planted this meme in our minds, about Chavez somehow being questionable or illegitimate or our "enemy"--this indefinable cloud over his name that infects even leftist writers, and causes them to produce phrases like this--"No matter what one may think of Chavez"--is a preliminary to war. If they attack the Venezuelan people in this way--by instigating a civil war in Zulia (where most of the oil is)--this psyops is intended to make it difficult for leftists here to mobilize opposition to U.S. military support for that secessionist coup, because, hey, Chavez is some kind of "dictator," right? I mean, didn't he squelch free speech, or something?