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national endowment for democracy
On Occupy Central's Ties with the NED
Oct 02, 2014
Numerous alternative media outlets, including WikiLeaks, have pointed out the connections between Occupy Central and the United States government through an organization called the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). I am not surprised at this, nor do I welcome it, given the United States' questionable record (to put it nicely) at bringing "democracy" to countries where it has intervened in the past. It is most likely in Hong Kongers' best interests that the US withdraw its monetary support for Occupy Central, as unlikely as this is to happen.
The same outlets, however, have been openly hostile towards Occupy Central for these reasons alone. Tony Cartalucci recently claimed that the protests "masquerade as a "pro-democracy" movement seeking "universal suffrage" and "full democracy," but are really backed by "a deep and insidious network of foreign financial, political, and media support". This assessment doesn't do Hong Kong justice for two reasons: firstly, it portrays Hong Kongers' grievances at the status quo as fictional and illegitimate, when they are in fact real, and it treats the protesters as pawns, when many in fact are taking to the streets of their own accord. Secondly, by treating the US as the sole independent actor in the movement and focusing entirely on analyzing and criticizing its actions in other countries, it only strengthens a United States-centered worldview that the mainstream media likewise seeks to disseminate.
None of the support provided by the NED for Occupy Central changes the reality of the economic situation facing middle- and working-class Hong Kongers today, brought about by the most extreme form of capitalism that the world has ever seen - to the extent that the extreme-right-wing Heritage Foundation dubs it "the world's freest economy" year after year. It is poor journalism to even attempt to analyze the roots of discontent in Hong Kong while paying no attention to the structural factors involved, and yet the alternative media, like the mainstream media, have been guilty of doing so. Foreign writers who claim the movement is orchestrated purely by Americans are naive to believe Hong Kongers can simply be co-opted by an external force to demonstrate. This type of thinking is unfortunately symptomatic of a neocolonial conviction that somehow only "Westerners" are capable of thinking for themselves and acting of their own accord. Hong Kongers, like the Ukrainians, Syrians, Iraqis, Libyans and Venezuelans, are merely being manipulated by the "West". Of course they are. After all, only those protesting against regimes in the "West" or backed by the "West" are legitimate - the rest are mere agents for "regime change"!
I will admit that I am not at all optimistic about the prospects of Occupy Central bringing genuine social change to Hong Kong. These prospects are only diminished by the involvement of the United States, with its own neoliberal and far-less-than-democratic agenda. They are further diminished by the absence of any radical groups calling explicitly for a more equitable distribution of income and wealth and end to the state's collusion with established local and Chinese elites. But what is evident is that the status quo leaves no room for Hong Kongers to decide on how their territory is run, and that attaining the vote provides the opportunity, though far from a guarantee, for genuine socioeconomic reform, by deposing the established political and economic elite from their position of power. Who we will replace them with must be ours to choose, and that is precisely why the United States, as with China, must step back and allow Hong Kongers to decide their own fate.
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National Endowment for Democracy: A Tool of US Empire in Venezuela
Feb 26, 2014
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."
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 Government's foreign policy making realm. Past Board members have included Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Frank Carlucci, General Wesley K. Clark, and Paul Wolfowitz. Today's board can be found here. Most notable is Elliot Abrams of Reagan Administration fame.
In reality, NED is part of the US Empire's tools, and "independent" only in the sense that no elected presidential administration can directly alter its composition or activities, even if it wanted to. It's 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."
In other words, 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. NED funding, for example, was used in all of the "color revolutions" in Eastern Europe and, I expect, currently in the Ukraine as well as elsewhere.
How do they operate? They have four "institutes" through which they work: the International Republican Institute (currently headed by US Senator John McCain), the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (currently headed by former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright), the Center for International Private Enterprise (the international wing of the US Chamber of Commerce), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS), the foreign policy operation of the AFL-CIO, with Richard Trumka the head of its Board of Directors.
As I documented in my book, ACILS had been indirectly involved in the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela by participating in meetings with leaders later involved in the coup beforehand, and then denying afterwards the involvement of the leaders of the right-wing labor organization (CTV) in the coup, leaders of an organization long affiliated with the AFL-CIO. We also know NED overall had been active in Venezuela since 1997.
The NED and its institutes continue to actively fund projects in Venezuela today. From the 2012 NED Annual Report (the latest available), we see they have provided $1,338,331 to organizations and projects in Venezuela that year alone: $120,125 for projects for "accountability"; $470,870 for "civic education"; $96,400 for "democratic ideas and values"; $105,000 for "freedom of information"; $92,265 for "human rights"; $216,063 for "political processes"; $34,962 for "rule of law"; $45,000 for "strengthening political institutions"; and $153,646 for Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE).
Additionally, however, as found on the NED "Latin American and Caribbean" regional page, NED has granted $465,000 to ACILS to advance NED objectives of "freedom of association" in the region, with another $380,000 to take place in Venezuela and Colombia. This is in addition to another $645,000 to the International Republican Institute, and $750,000 to the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs.
The irony of these pious claims for "freedom of association," etc., is that Venezuela is has developed public participation to one of the highest levels in the world, and has one of the most free media in the world. Even with massive private TV media involvement in the 2002 coup, the government did not take away their right to broadcast afterward.
In other words, NED and its institutes are not active in Venezuela to help promote democracy, as they claim, but in fact, to act against popular democracy in an effort to restore the rule of the elite, top-down democracy. They want to take popular democracy away from those nasty Chavistas, and show who is boss in the US Empire. This author bets they fail.
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