Oh, The Money To Be Made in Crushing Bolivian Democracy...

Here come the vultures! Eva Golinger has an excellent piece on the role of USAID-OTI in destabilizing the elected government of Evo Morales in Bolivia. USAID has been working on this campaign for some time now. A Washington DC based company, Chemonics, has cut the deal of a century with USAID, landing a contract worth $120 million per year until 2011! Take that Indigenous Democracy!! We'll get you in the end!!

>>>You can also make a sure bet that the OTI, or should I say the CIA, is backing these protests in Bolivia's eastern city of Santa Cruz.

>>>In Bolivia, as in many countries, airport taxes are supposed to be handled through the federal government. But the managers of the Viru Viru international airport in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, connected tightly with the local political elites who form the main base of the USAID-OTI anti-government opposition in Bolivia, have been circumventing tax laws and refusing to hand over the taxes to the Bolivian federal authorities. Apparently the management put about $250,000 toward some mysterious honorarium administrative council! Imagine that!

>>>The managers of the Viru Viru international airport in Santa Cruz have been charging between $1,000 and $2,000 to every plane wanting to takeoff. So American Airlines of course begin canceling flights out of precaution; playing perfectly into the strategy (surprise, surprise) of portraying a weak unstable government and the national economy as a risky investment (economic destabilization anyone?).

>>>This past Thursday the Bolivian government stepped in to clean up the situation and put the airport under new management. Now of course the USAID-backed-elites have discovered the newest pretext of "repression" and under the snapping lens' of foreign reporters, who undoubtedly just happened to be on hand, the democratic warriors rushed the airport seizing it back for the elites little people and.. oh yes democracy!

>>>Maybe Evo should just do it, declare US Ambassador Philip Goldberg persona non grata.

>>>"Goni" Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, former-Bolivian President now wanted in his home country for crimes against humanity, is laughing it all up in DC from his spot in the propaganda matrix Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), a "respected" think tank well loved and financed by the good folks at the world bank, USAID and all the rest. The IAD loves to lecture poor people in the south on how they should run their democracy. If only they would just listen!

>>>In semi-but-not-really-related news Stephen Johnson, formerly of the Heritage Foundation, has been appointed deputy secretary for the Department of Defense in the Western Hemisphere.

Why Did The 'Denim Revolution' Fail In Belarus?

The British Helsinki Human Rights Group (BHHRG) has released a fascinating and detailed report on the 2006 elections in Belarus and why the USAID-EU sponsored 'denim revolution' did not occur as planned.

NED Publishes 2007 Grants and Experts Go Wild for US-Corpo-Democracy

The NED has published
its new 'best of' 2007 list of groups or programs that it is financing across the western hemisphere.

The most fascinating thing with the NED is how they are able to employee the language of popular and participatory democracy - when the model they are based on, US Democracy, is just the opposite.
In regards to Venezuela, American-Venezuelan attorney Eva Golinger writes, "many groups now being funded appear to be trying to "break" into the Chávez camp to counteract or sabotage social programs or advances, such as the community councils (NED proposes "citizen councils"), and to impose the US-NED view of "democracy"."

So here we are: the 2002 coup did not work, USAID-NED-STATE have not been able to successfully undermine Chavez in the polls, obviously they have been unable to murder him, and he remains hugely popular- all this while the Venezuelan media (in the hands of a few wealthy buisnessmen) remains %90 against the elected government.

So, the NED realizes they need to deepen their strategy, infiltrate "left talking, right walking" groups into the chavista cohort.

In countries such as Bolivia and Haiti the NED has become an expert at such strategies, sponsoring "grassroots organizations" and backing "particpatory local initiatives". In Haiti alone the NED are backing a number of both new and old faces, such as the Centre de Formation Citoyenne et d'Appui au Développement (Center for Citizen Training and Development Support) (CEFCAD), Comite d'Initiatives de la 3eme section du Limbé (Initiative Committee of the Third Section of Limbé), Coordination Nationale des Organisations de Base (National Coordination for Grassroots Organizations) (CONOB), Fondation Espoir (Hope Foundation),Grand Front National des Etudiants Haïtiens (National Grand Front of Haitian Students) GRAFNEH), and the Rassemblement National des Citoyens Organisés pour le Développement d'Haïti (National Assembly of Citizens Organized for the Development of Haiti) (RANCODHA).

US-Democracy advocate Dr Thomas Carothers should be able to aptly explain all of this during his coaching moderating of an
upcoming talk with IRI Prez Lorne W. Craner and NDI Prez Kenneth Wollack.

Oh..and how can we forget the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) published a wacky and misleading expert report on Haiti. Narco News could just not help themselves with this one. The Sun Sentinel did much better.

USAID to outsource series of polls in Haiti

Check this out.

Belarus: Political Interventionism and Isolationism

Historical time lines have created an odd situation in Belarus. Belarus is basically the only former eastern bloc country that has not taken part in the massive 'shock therapy' of privatization and neoliberalism. To some extent this has paid off, with a good health care system, increasing real wages, low numbers of people in poverty and some of the best indicators for women in the former eastern bloc. The President of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, has been widely attacked in the corporate media. Stephen Gowans reports on his blog, that a huge amount of NED and other foreign 'democratization' monies have been going toward anti-goverment civil society in Belarus. This is something to watch closely.