National Endowment for Democracy
Back to the future
Bill Berkowitz - WorkingForChange
07.27.01 - Until I read an item at MediaTransparency.com about the election of former Congressman Vin Weber as Chairman of its Board, I didn't realize the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was still in business.
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The NED functions as a full-service infrastructure building clearinghouse. It provides money, technical support, supplies, training programs, media know-how, public relations assistance and state-of-the-art equipment to select political groups, civic organizations, labor unions, dissident movements, student groups, book publishers, newspapers, and other media. It's aim is to destabilize progressive movements, particularly those with a socialist or democratic socialist bent.
The organization's Board of Directors is a collection of high-powered inside the beltway, longtime foreign policy "experts." In February, six new members were elected to the board: Frank Carlucci, current chairman of the Carlyle Group, a banking firm, and former Secretary of Defense and National Security Advisor in the Reagan Administration; General Wesley K. Clark (U.S. Army Ret.), currently associated the Stephens Group, a venture capital outfit, and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Commander in Chief; Julia Finley, a Republican Party activist working on NATO expansion issues; Francis Fukuyama, political scientist and author of, most notably, "The End of History"; Richard C. Holbrooke, outgoing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; and Weber.
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http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=11645More here:
http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:k3g7w7TqwrsJ:www.mediatransparency.org/recipientprofile.php%3FrecipientID%3D251+national+endowment+for+democracy+wes+clark&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=usCatalyst for Iranian Resistance
US “democracy promoters” and regime change in Iran
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NED’s Work in Iran Post-2004
Since 2004, five other groups, not mentioned in the preceding discussion, have also received NED money, they are the Vital Voices Global Partnership, the Institute of World Affairs, and three of the NED’s four core grantees, the American Center for International Labor Solidarity, the Center for the International Private Enterprise, and the International Republican Institute.
In 2004, Vital Voices Global Partnership received $40,500 to “conduct a leadership training-of-trainers seminar in Washington, DC for five emerging women leaders” to help “improve the political, economic and social status of Iranian women.” The three honorary chairs of the partnership include former First Lady Hillary Clinton, and two US senators, Kay Hutchison (R-TX) and Nancy Baker (R-KS). <32> This in itself is a case in point as, who else could promote democracy better than a bona fide Democrat like Ms. Clinton? Likewise, in 2004, the Center for the International Private Enterprise received $56,000 to “inject the voice of business into the reform debate in Iran.”
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http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11670August 4 , 2005
The N.E.D's Latest Front Group
Inside Bush's "World Movement for Democracy"
By TOM BARRY
The “world’s democratic movement” is not another one of the transnational citizens’ movements, like the anti-globalization or anti-war movements, that prides itself on having no central structure, no dogma, or even an office.
This movement is highly organized, better funded, and even has its own “secretariat.” Unlike other leaderless but world-shaking transnational citizens’ networks that emerged after the end of the Cold War, the “world’s democratic movement” is not a product of global civil society but a quasi-governmental initiative based in Washington, DC.
Carl Gershman, the longtime president of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) where the movement is headquartered, says that the U.S.-government-backed World Movement for Democracy is “an imaginative new mechanism that can facilitate networking, sharing, and solidarity among democrats around the world.”
The leading voice of this “movement” is President George W. Bush. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the neoconservative-led National Endowment for Democracy on November 6, 2003, President Bush said, “We’ve reached another great turning point , and the resolve we will show will shape the next stage of the world democratic movement.”
Whereas the democratization strategy that President Ronald Reagan launched in 1982-83 targeted the Soviet Union and its “evil empire,” Bush has said that his administration’s democratization initiative would focus first on the Middle East, and that the “establishment of a free Iraq will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.”
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/175
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