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Related: About this forumNational Endowment for Democracy: A Tool Of US Empire in Venezuela
Published on Wednesday, February 26, 2014 by Common Dreams
National Endowment for Democracy: A Tool Of US Empire 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 Empires 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 peopleand 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.
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. However, its Board of Directors is drawn from among the elites in the US Governments foreign policy making realm. Past Board members have included Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Frank Carlucci, General Wesley K. Clark, and Paul Wolfowitz. Todays board can be found here. Most notable is Elliot Abrams of Reagan Administration fame.
In reality, NED is part of the US Empires tools, and independent only in the sense that no elected presidential administration can directly alter its composition or activities, even if it wanted to. Its initial project director, Professor Allen Weinstein of Georgetown University, admitted in the Washington Post of September 22, 1991, that a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.
More:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/26-11
Mika
(17,751 posts)Nice list of henchmen/woman on the NED's board list.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)to operate on their soil. Especially if that country has oil or other resources we think belong to us, or is strategic regarding placing military bases in the region.
Thanks for the reminder ... Reagan's secret wars, that's all anyone needs to know.