NED Back on the Offensive in Venezuela

[AP]

Here's an interesting article about the National Endowment for Democracy and their efforts to stop a prosecution of Sumate, an anti-Chávez organization they funded.



On November 8, 2004, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) president Carl Gershman made an historic visit to Venezuela with a very peculiar purpose. Gershman traveled to the South American nation to request President Chavez to influence the outcome of a legal case brought against NED direct grantee Sumate ... currently in the hands of the independent Attorney General's office.

...

All of the NED-funded initiatives have shared just one goal: remove President Chavez from power ... be it through legal or illegal means.

The case against Sumate was brought earlier this year by the Attorney General's office alleging violation of Article 132 of the Penal Code, which makes it a crime to conspire to destroy the government and to solicit international intervention in international politics or to incite civil war or defame the President or diplomatic representatives in the foreign press.

...


Though NED representatives and spokespersons have time and again claimed their work in Venezuela as impartial and only promoting democracy, Gershman's declarations to the Venezuelan press showed otherwise. After being snubbed by the Executive, Gershman angrily declared to the Venezuelan media that Venezuela is neither a democracy nor a dictatorship but rather something in between. In the same breath, Gershman claimed that, in Venezuela, the NED only finances democratic groups, which must imply that groups involved in coup d'etats fit within the NED's view of democracy. He also tried to make a weak comparison between the Venezuelan government and the Chilean dictator Augustus Pinochet by claiming in the eighties, we were attacked by the Pinochet government, which didn't like the fact that we supported the groups that moved forward the democratic transition in Chile.

...

Deception, manipulation, pressure, intimidation, threat and constitutional violations seem to be the NED's tools for promoting democracy around the world. Luckily, Venezuelans are on to the trickery of this heavy-handed organization and are unwilling to cede to its bully tactics.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=6745

[bullimiami]

1. The NED is about as anti-democracy as it gets.

What an Orwellian name.

[billbuckhead]

3. "Somewhere between a democracy and a dictatorship"

That could sum up many governments.

[Carl Brennan]

8. You can count the US out of that definition

It's a dictatorship period and a fascist one to boot. The last vestiges of democracy died with this corrupted election and the one before it. The public has no say anymore.

[Imperialism Inc.]

4. I just got a case of uncontrollable giggles thinking about

NED and its efforts in Venezuela. It is like something out of bizarro land. Supporting 'democracy' through coups, strikes and then finally as a last resort the legal way of the recall.
And then to invoke Chile. Holy crap, that is just too much!


Kissinger Declassified
http://www.progressive.org/komisar9905.htm

I RECENTLY GOT HOLD of a declassified memorandum about Henry Kissinger's only meeting with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The meeting occurred on June 8, 1976, in Santiago, and the internal State Department memorandum shows how hard Kissinger tried to shield the Chilean general from criticism and assure him that his human rights violations were not a serious problem as far as the U.S. government was concerned.

-snip-

The memo describes how Secretary of State Kissinger stroked and bolstered Pinochet, how--with hundreds of political prisoners still being jailed and tortured--Kissinger told Pinochet that the Ford Administration would not hold those human rights violations against him. At a time when Pinochet was the target of international censure for state-sponsored torture, disappearances, and murders, Kis-singer assured him that he was a victim of communist propaganda and urged him not to pay too much attention to American critics.

[knowbody0]

2. viva chavez

he wears a bullshit sifter to everything amerikan

[natrat]

5. why even let a scumbag like that into the country

[AP]

6. We hate them for their freedom.

[Donna Zen]

7. NED has four branches

that operate separately. The one your on about is the republican branch. Write to your Senator...these grants are overseen by the congress. I don't think the branch that is administered by the unions is involved in this. At first they were accused of interferring with a democratic election, but were cleared upon investigation.

In the end the over sight is with the congress.

The last time I looked, the Democratic initiatives involved supporting women entering politics in 3rd world countries.

We give very little in way of aid to the world compared to other countries; making it work or getting rid of it altogether. Those are your choices.

[AP]

9. Do you have a link for that? I don't think they have four branches.

If you read this article, it sounds like they do a few "liberal" things to cover for the fact that one of their big goals is to get people elected who help US corporate profits, or whatever. This article describes how after ONLY giving money to anti-Chávez groups, they lied about giving money to other groups and then tried to give money to real democratic groups only in the last couple weeks. Clearly they're doing that only for appearances.

As for your comment about making US foreign aid work, the US gives this American organization money and they spend it any way they chose. I wonder if it's even included in calculations of US foreign aid. I'd rather see direct foreign aid determined by a democratic vote and then let these quasi-private organizations be run totally privately, relying on corp. and individual donations, and not getting any federal funding, unless it's tied to a grant for a specific project which democratically elected representatives determine.

[Carl Brennan]

10. Sumate was target of assasinated prosecutor Danilo Anderson.

Did Condi give the go ahead for the hit?


http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=6738
....On Tuesday November 16th, George Bush put forward Condoleeza Rice as his proposed Secretary of State to take over the diplomacy of US warmongering from the outgoing fraud, Colin Powell. Two days later on November 18th leading Venezuelan judicial prosecutor Danilo Anderson was killed in a car bomb attack eerily reminiscent of the murder of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit in Washington in 1976 by Cuban terrorists working for Augusto Pinochet and protected by the CIA. The Venezuelan authorities believe Anderson was killed by two charges of C4 plastic explosive fixed to his car and detonated remotely, apparently by cell phone. The timing of Rice's nomination and Anderson's murder are unlikely to be fortuitous.


With Rice's appointment, George Bush sustains the incestuous link between his regime and earlier, still extant, plutocrat state terror Godfathers like George Bush Sr., James Baker and George Schultz. Rice, a protege of Schultz, the former Bechtel president, could hardly be a more emblematic representative of the nexus between state terror and big business. Chevron may have renamed the former "Condoleeza Rice" oil tanker "Altair Voyager", but that all-too-recent link to an outfit boasting it "... now ranks among the most important international petroleum producers in Venezuela and Colombia, is one of the largest private integrated oil companies in Brazil and is the third-leading producer in Argentina." (www.chevrontexaco.com/operations/ <http://www.chevrontexaco.com/operations/> docs/latin_america_caribbean.pdf) bodes ill for people in Latin America.

Why was Anderson murdered?
Danilo Anderson was an investigating magistrate in charge of several prominent and politically sensitive cases. His work proceeded in the context of recent elections confirming overwhelming popular support for President Hugo Chavez. Among the cases within Anderson's brief were those against the leader of a mob that attacked the Cuban Embassy in Caracas during the failed coup d'etat of April 12th (2002) and against members of the Caracas Metropolitan Police accused of unlawful attacks under opposition ex-mayor Alfredo Pena. Anderson was also processing cases against owners of Venezuelan TV and Press media implicated in the April coup of 2002 as well as the signatories of the coup declaration overthrowing the elected government.

Perhaps the most internationally sensitive case he was working on was that against the Sumate organization, a supposedly impartial NGO funded by the CIA's companion organization the National Endowment for Democracy. In fact, Sumate actively campaigned with US government money to defeat President Chavez throughout the long process ending in last August's recall referendum. Such activity contravened Sumate's neutral non-profit status, breaking Venezuelan law in the process.

Writer and academic Heinz Dieterich has written cogently about Anderson's murder, "The menace of Danilo for Washington's terrorist project was two-fold: he threatened one of its main instruments of power, Venezuela's corrupt class justice system and too he was becoming a symbol of the honest patriot and servant of the majority of the new Bolivarian nation....Danilo Anderson's murder shows that the subversion has made a qualitative leap to a generalised offensive. From now on, people emblematic of the process whose death may have a high propaganda value for Washington will be in danger. Likewise, the subversion will begin attacks against energy and transport infrastructure and carry out more murders and incursions along the Colombian border...Looking back in history, we can say that the Bolivarian revolution has entered the phase of the Cuban revolution of 1960 when the US-Cuban counter-revolution launched attacks, sabotage and murders from nuclei in the Sierra Escambrey or, too, Nicaragua from 1983 onwards." (<http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=7885>

[Carl Brennan]

11. Bizarro!!Sumate>Choicepoint>election fraud 2000>Venezuela

OHHH Jeeez. Sumate linked to Choicepoint>Fraud 2000>Venezuela. This is by Palast:
http://olm.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20040531/002119.html

Not surprisingly, ChoicePoint ties with the Bush government are very close. According to Palast the company got US$12 million for helping to identify the victims of 9/11. On top of that, Palast indicates that the company got a contract to help fight terrorism: A no-bid $67-million deal offered profiles on any citizen in half a dozen nations. "While the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates, ChoicePoint's menu offered records on Venezuelans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Argentineans and Mexicans."

To make a long story short, Greg Palast writes the following: "What do these nations have in common besides a lack of involvement in 9/11 attacks? Coincidentally, each is in the middle of major electoral contests in which the leading candidates-presidents Luiz Ignacio "Lula" da Silva of Brazil, Nestor Kirchner of Argentina and Mexico City mayor Andres Lopez Obrador-have had the nerve to challenge the globalization demands of George Bush.

When Mexico discovered ChoicePoint had its citizen files, the nation threatened company executives with criminal charges. ChoicePoint protested its innocence and offered to destroy the files of any nation that requests it. But ChoicePoint, apparently, presented no such offer to the government of Venezuela, home of President Hugo Chavez."

Now, I am going in for the kill.

It is public knowledge that the US government gave money to SUMATE to "promote democracy." Sumate is basically a database "non-profit" organization ... it works for the opposition's Coordinadora Democratica . I found this jewel at their website <<http://205.209.129.197/consulta.php>>

I invite you to input your Venezuelan ID number and see what happens. The incredible thing is that it does not matter if you signed or not in any of the opposition's rallies. They have you in their records! Try any number and most probably you will get somebody's information, anybody's... In the US this would be (at the least!) invasion of privacy ... which is considered a federal crime ... not to mention other possible dangers such as identity theft among others. In Venezuela though, with the support of the Gods of freedom and liberty, this is done to promote democracy! Is Big Brother here?

[Carolab]

12. I read something tonight

that the 9/11 list was drawn up after 9/11, although it was being pushed that it was drawn up beforehand. A British firm was contracted to cough up 15 of the 19 "hijackers" on the 14th.

Where is Jimmy Carter????