The National Endowment for Democracy- "Supporting freedom around the world."

[Orwellian_Ghost]

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a Washington D.C-based non-profit funded by the U.S. national budget, boasts that it is "supporting freedom around the world."

NED's website describes its mission as being "guided by the belief that freedom is a universal human aspiration that can be realized through the development of democratic institutions, procedures, and values." NED, which is publicly funded, "makes hundreds of grants each year to support pro-democracy groups in Africa, Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Eurasia, Latin America, and the Middle East."

NED was founded during the Ronald Reagan presidency in 1982, and shaped by an initial study undertaken by the http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=American_Political_Foundation">American Political Foundation.

According to William Robinson, "NED employs a complex system of intermediaries in which operative aspects, control relationships, and funding trails are nearly impossible to follow and final recipients are difficult to identify."

In a March 2005 interview, former CIA officer Philip Agee discussed the thinking behind NED's establishment: (Dennis Bernstein, http://www.flashpoints.net/index.html">"Philip Agee, Former CIA agent speaks on Venezuela", Flashpoints, March 14, 2005)

During the late 1970s there was new thinking at the highest levels of the U.S. foreign policymakers, and they reconsidered whether these ugly murderous military dictatorships of the 1970s were really the best way to preserve U.S. interests in these countries – U.S. interests being defined traditionally as unfettered access to the primary products and raw materials, to the labor and to the markets of foreign countries. This new thinking led to the establishment in 1983 of the National Endowment for Democracy. They had chosen the German pattern in which the major political parties in Germany have foundations financed by the federal government. They did more or less the same thing with the establishment of the NED as a private foundation – there is really nothing private about it, and all its money comes from the Congress.

But then there were the other core foundations – this was the fundamental mechanism for promotion of democracy around the world, but in actual fact, when they say the promotion of democracy, or civic education, or fortifying civil society, what they really mean is using those euphemisms to cover funding to certain political forces and not to others. In other words, to fortify the opposition of undesirable foreign governments as in the case of Venezuela, or to support a government that is favorable to US interests and avoid of coming to power of forces that are not seen as favorable to US interests.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=National_Endowment_for_Democracy">SourceWatch


All of these are the logos of youth movements in different countries that have either removed, or are working towards removing, governments undesirable to Washington. All have been organized and funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, the Freedom House, and other CIA organizations. Washington was instrumental in strengthening and supporting these groups, as well as similar groups in the Ukraine, Belarus, and others. The objective is to co-opt popular youth movements against a controversial government in order to open the country to Washington’s neoliberal interests.

[rockymountaindem]

1. If you want more information on them read "The New Cold War" by Mark McKinnon

of the Globe and Mail. The groups in Serbia and Georgia, as well as Ukraine in 2004 and Russia in 2005 really were positive forces for change.

[Orwellian_Ghost]

2. Philanthropic Imperialism: the National Endowment for Democracy

Philanthropic Imperialism: the National Endowment for Democracy

By William Clark
29 June 2007

Democracy building, or democracy assistance, is a putative socio-economic policy solution, which, because of the extent of the political and economic forces impacting on it, has become a contemporary socio-economic problem. Democracy building's institutional formation rests upon a reconfiguration of Cold War positions that retain, what Dr. Michael Pinto-Duschinsky termed 'such interference,'1 so as to continue subversive covert operations previously perpetrated by the CIA or MI6. This then, is a difficult area and few researchers are looking at the matter at a sufficient level of objective enquiry to satisfactorily outline some of its major contradictions. The bulk of researchers studying this problem propose policy solutions from within an overlapping institutional framework that ignores or rationalises subversion to effect covert foreign policy attempts at 'regime-change,' and are themselves sub-vented as part of the process. Democracy building becomes the cover for a policy goal that has always been surrounded by an enormous amount of deception. But we can identify a chain of command: organisations that were designed to engage in a duplicitous process of marketing philanthropic imperialism as democracy.

...

Former CIA personnel in NED

Many of the historic figures involved in the CIA's covert actions have, at some point, been members of the NED's Administrative Council, or of its board of directors: among them Otto Reich, John Negroponte, Henry Cisneros and Elliot Abrams. Currently it is presided over by Vin Weber, founder of the ultraconservative Empower America association and fundraiser for the presidential campaign of George W. Bush in the year 2000. Its executive director is Carl Gershman, a former Trotskyite responsible for the US Social Democrats and a member of the neo-conservative trend. Just how self-referential it all is can be indicated by: 'Unattributed quotes are taken from interviews conducted with NED and institute staffs.

The NED's attempts to explain away its covert aims are at times laughable:

'As a leading State Department official noted upon returning from Moscow, Kremlin officials believe that the "U.S. government or the West directs the activities of NGOs in order to weaken Russia, or in order to advance," as one Russian said, "your own geopolitical games in our neighborhood."

...

http://www.iefd.org/articles/philosophical_imperialism.php

[Orwellian_Ghost]

3. 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.

Thus it was that in 1983, the National Endowment for Democracy was set up to "support democratic institutions throughout the world through private, nongovernmental efforts". Notice the "nongovernmental"—part of the image, part of the myth. In actuality, virtually every penny of its funding comes from the federal government, as is clearly indicated in the financial statement in each issue of its annual report. NED likes to refer to itself as an NGO (Non-governmental organization) because this helps to maintain a certain credibility abroad that an official US government agency might not have. But NGO is the wrong category. NED is a GO.

"We should not have to do this kind of work covertly," said Carl Gershman in 1986, while he was president of the Endowment. "It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the C.I.A. We saw that in the 60's, and that's why it has been discontinued. We have not had the capability of doing this, and that's why the endowment was created."

...

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

[Karenina]

4. K&R!

[Karenina]

5. . .