Posted on 02/05/2011 12:27:49 AM PST by bronxville
CAIRO/VIENNA (Reuters) -
Nobel Peace Laureate Mohamed ElBaradei said on Friday he could run in Egypt's presidential elections if the Egyptian people asked him to, denying a report in an Austrian newspaper that he would not run.
"This is not true," ElBaradei said in a phone interview with Al Jazeera. "If the Egyptian people want me to continue the change process, I will not disappoint the Egyptian people."
ElBaradei has tended to answer the question of whether he wants to run for president, often asked of him, by saying he was ready for a role in helping Egypt achieve political change. He has also said he would consider running if there was a prospect of a free and fair election.
ElBaradei was also quoted by Austria's Der Standard newspaper as saying President Hosni Mubarak should step down immediately, but that he should be able to do so with "dignity".
"I am an agent for change in Egypt. If it comes, then I would have done my duty. I stand above the parties, which gives me more flexibility to express myself clearly," he said, when asked whether he would stand in presidential elections.
"Naturally I want to play a part in the future, but who stands in the election, that's really not so important at the moment. But if the people want it, of course I would be available."
Der Standard corrected an original text of the interview in which it quoted ElBaradei as saying he would not run.
(Reporting by Sylvia Westall and Shaimaa Fayed; Editing by Philippa Fletcher)
(Excerpt) Read more at in.news.yahoo.com ...
Another - Agent for CHANGE!
Another - Nobel Peace guy!
Egypt meet the new boss - same as the old boss!
ElBaradei is on the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group along with Soros, Turki al-Faisal, Kofi Annan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Samantha Power, Thomas Pickering, Carla Hills... et al.
http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/private/relationship.asp?personId=22885182&privcapId=6043529&previousCapId=6659326&previousTitle=International%20Crisis%20Group%20%28The%29
http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/private/relationship.asp?personId=109465949
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Crisis_Group
VIDEOS - Play the one with Wesley Clarke (Soros) - http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=the+international+crisis+group+muckety
Some of them also belong to Clinton's Global Institute and/or Clinton Foundation, CFR, Bilderberg etc.
Soros is like the Scarlet Pimpernel - we seek him here, we seek him there, we seek him everywhere - and he’s always right there...
Nobel Laureate no longer holds the same meaning and standing as it once did imo
Ex Saudi ambassador Prince Turki al- Faisal threatens U.S.
January 26, 2009
A Saudi Prince’s Threat to the Obama Administration
By Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com |
Monday, January 26, 2009
His Royal Highness Prince Turki al-Faisal is a Saudi powerbroker of the first rank.
Born in 1945 in Mecca to the future King Faisal, his official biography informs us Turki studied at the Ta’if Model Elementary and Intermediate School, the Lawrenceville School, and Georgetown University.
His career began in 1973 as an advisor in the Royal Court. He served as director general of the kingdom’s main foreign intelligence service from 1977 to 2001, leaving that office just before 9/11. Between 2002 and 2007, he served as ambassador to London and Washington. In retirement, he is chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh and co-chair of the C100 Group, an affiliate of the World Economic Forum.
These credentials help gauge the import of the remarkable op-ed Turki published on Jan. 23 in the Financial Times, “Saudi Arabia’s patience is running out.” He begins it by recalling his efforts over the decades to promote Arab-Israeli peace and especially the Abdullah Plan of 2002. “But after Israel launched its bloody attack on Gaza,” he writes, “these pleas for optimism and co-operation now seem a distant memory.” Then comes a threat: “Unless the new US administration takes forceful steps to prevent any further suffering and slaughter of Palestinians, the peace process, the US-Saudi relationship and the stability of the region are at risk.”
He goes on to whack George W. Bush in a way not exactly usual for a former Saudi ambassador: “Not only has the Bush administration left a sickening legacy in the region, but it has also, through an arrogant attitude about the butchery in Gaza, contributed to the slaughter of innocents.” Then comes the threat again, restated more directly: “If the US wants to continue playing a leadership role in the Middle East and keep its strategic alliances intact - especially its ‘special relationship’ with Saudi Arabia - it will have to revise drastically its policies vis-à-vis Israel and Palestine.”
Turki then goes on to instruct the new administration what to do: condemn Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians and support a UN resolution to that effect; condemn the Israeli actions that led to this conflict, from settlement building in the West Bank to the blockade of Gaza and the targeted killings and arbitrary arrests of Palestinians; declare America’s intention to work for a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction, with a security umbrella for countries that sign up and sanctions for those that do not; call for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces from Shab‘ah Farms in Lebanon; encourage Israeli-Syrian negotiations for peace; and support a UN resolution guaranteeing Iraq’s territorial integrity. Mr. Obama should strongly promote the Abdullah peace initiative.
Finally Turki notes that Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called on “Saudi Arabia to lead a jihad against Israel [that] would, if pursued, create unprecedented chaos and bloodshed.” He soothingly notes that, “So far, the kingdom has resisted these calls,” but then reiterates his threat a third time: “every day this restraint becomes more difficult to maintain. … Eventually, the kingdom will not be able to prevent its citizens from joining the worldwide revolt against Israel.”
(1) As a Financial Times article on Turki’s op-ed notes, “The prince’s article recalls the letters that King Abdullah, as crown prince, sent to George W. Bush in 2001, warning that the kingdom would review relations with the US unless the administration adopted a forceful push for Middle East peace. The letters rang alarm bells in Washington but were soon overshadowed by the September 11 attacks, which involved a group of Saudis. It was only after Riyadh launched its own campaign against terrorism two years later and started addressing the root causes of radicalism that ties with the US improved again.” In other words, we’ve been down this road before, to little effect.
(2) For all his years at the apex of the Saudi establishment, Turki left his final position ignominiously in 2006. Here is a contemporary account of his exit, from the Washington Post:
Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, flew out of Washington yesterday after informing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and his staff that he would be leaving the post after only 15 months on the job, according to U.S. officials and foreign envoys. … Turki, a long-serving former intelligence chief, told his staff yesterday afternoon that he wanted to spend more time with his family, according to Arab diplomats. Colleagues said they were shocked at the decision. The exit [occurred] without the fanfare, parties and tributes that normally accompany a leading envoy’s departure, much less a public statement.
(3) Turki has a history of Islamist radicalism and hot-headedness vis-à-vis the Arab-Israeli conflict. In a speech earlier this month at a forum on relations between the Persian Gulf region and the United States, he addressed Obama:
The Bush administration has left you [with] a disgusting legacy and a reckless position towards the massacres and bloodshed of innocents in Gaza. Enough is enough, today we are all Palestinians and we seek martyrdom for God and for Palestine, following those who died in Gaza.
“Seek martyrdom”? Sounds like the revolutionary Iranian regime, not the staid Saudi monarchy.
(4) Turki’s threats could conceivably sway the Obama administration, but the new president’s comments about the recent Gaza hostilities suggest he is going in a decidedly different direction, having laid down three markers that Hamas must fulfill before it can be accepted as a diplomatic partner (”recognize Israel’s right to exist; renounce violence; and abide by past agreements”). In the words of a Washington Post analysis, thus far, “Obama appears to have hewed closely to the line held by the Bush administration.”
Mr. Pipes (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. http://www.danielpipes.org/article/6151
I think he was involved in the BCCI Bank.
It’s an indicator that s/he’s a favored One of the NWO cabal. You know I laughed when I saw the Soros connection but it’s really not funny. It’s truly scary how far these people have come in their takeover...how many of their goals have been accomplished even in this country.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=International_Crisis_Group
VIDEOS - Play the one with Wesley Clarke (Soros) - http://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=the+international+crisis+group+muckety
Thanks for info! I am watching all american tv news fox ,Cnn and msnbc. No word of whats happenning in the middle east. I just went to Matt Drudge he has a url for Live tv of middle east. This takes you to a live picture of the gas pipeline explosion on al jazeera tv, Noo not one americn news has it on their network. Just amazing!
With georgies money, he could run here in the USSA.
The Council on Foreign Relations and the Center for Preventive Action (Part 2 of 2)
By Michael Barker
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Michael Barker’s ZSpace Page
The first part of this two-part article provided a brief overview of the history of the Council on Foreign Relations (hereafter referred to as the Council), and demonstrated how with the backing of America’s leading liberal foundations (and working closely with many CIA-linked individuals) it has worked industriously to manufacture elite consent.
This concluding part of the article will examine the Council’s present day DEMOCRACY MANIPULATING CREDENTIALS, and provide a critical investigation of the people involved with their Orwellian Center for Preventive Action.
The Council as Premier Democracy Manipulator
Problematically, it is near on impossible to determine the extent of the Council’s current relations with secretive agencies like the CIA.
However, it is possible to examine the Council’s links to global democracy manipulating organisations, like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which play an integral role in promoting US hegemony through soft power.
Examining the ties of Council directors to such groups is particularly important as waging a cultural war for the world’s minds has always also been an integral component of the CIA’s own work: that said, this aspect of their work is downplayed and often misunderstood.
In addition it is more than coincidental that the first head of the NED, Allen Weinstein, noted: “A lot of what we [the NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” [1]
Key democracy manipulators who currently sit on the Council’s board of directors include, Madeleine K. Albright, Richard Holbrooke:
* Peter Ackerman – who is the chair of both the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict and Freedom House, and serves on the US advisory council of the US Institute of Peace
* Stephen W. Bosworth – who is the former president of the United States-Japan Foundation)
* Tom Brokaw – who is a director of the International Crisis Group, the International Rescue Committee, and the Committee to Protect Journalists, and whose wife is vice-chair of Conservation International
* Frank J. Caufield – who is a director of Refugees International
* Ann M. Fudge – who is a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, and is the chair of the US program advisory panel for the Gates Foundation
* Helene D. Gayle – who is a director of InterAction, and is the president of CARE USA
* Maurice R. Greenberg – who is a member of the board of overseers of the International Rescue Committee
* Carla Anderson Hills – who is a director of the International Crisis Group, and is a member of the leadership council for the Initiative for Global Development
* Thomas R. Pickering – who is a trustee of both the Carnegie Corporation and the Eurasia Foundation, and a former director of the Center for Democracy – a Center whose president from 1985 to 2003 was Allen Weinstein, that is, the NED’s first acting president
* Colin L. Powell – who sits on the board of overseers of the International Rescue Committee
* David M. Rubenstein – who is a trustee of Freedom House
* Richard E. Salomon – who “serves as senior advisor to David Rockefeller”
* Anne-Marie Slaughter – who the chair of the Secretary of State’s Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion, is a director of the New America Foundation, a trustee of the World Peace Foundation, serves on the strategy committee of the Project on Justice in Times of Transition, and is a member of both the Inter-American Dialogue and the Task Force on the United Nations [2]
* Vin Weber – who is a former chair of the NED, and is a member of the Advisory Committee on Democracy Promotion, and
* Fareed Zakaria – who is a director of the New America Foundation.[3]
Given the strong links between the Council and the democracy manipulating establishment it is fitting that since 2002, the Council has AWARDED MOST OF THEIR ANNUAL ARTHUR ROSS BOOK AWARDS TO ‘DEMOCRACTICALLY-LLINKED AUTHORS. The prize is given to those writers whose work makes an “outstanding contribution to the understanding of foreign policy or international relations”, and the Gold (first prize) winners to date – from 2007 to 2002 – include: [4]
* Kwame Anthony Appiah – Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers; Appiah is the chair of the American Council of Learned Societies, and he is a former director of the Sabre Foundation.
* Tony Judt – Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945; Judt is a member of the board of overseers of the Watson Institute for International Studies, and is a director of the French-American Foundation.
* Steve Coll – Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001; Coll “has been a foreign correspondent and editor at The Washington Post since 1985.”
* Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon – The Age of Sacred Terror: Radical Islam’s War Against America; Benjamin was a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and prior to joining this Center he was a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace, while before this (from 1994 to 1999) he served on the staff of the National Security Council; Simon is presently a senior fellow for the Council.
* Samantha Power – “A Problem from Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide; Power’s work has been critically analysed in some detail by Edward S. Herman (2007). In addition, her democracy manipulating affiliations are numerous and include being the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy (1998 to 2002), a member of the strategy committee of the Project on Justice in Times of Transition, a director of both the US Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, the International Rescue Committee, and the International Center for Transitional Justice, and she has also worked as a political analyst for the International Crisis Group.
* Robert Skidelsky – John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Freedom 1937-1946; Skidelsky is linked to two pro-free market think tanks, the Social Market Foundation (where is was a former chair of their board), and the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (where he is presently a trustee).
As the Council prides itself on its ‘OPEN’ nonpartisan nature it makes sense that Grose would mention in passing the existence of Shoup and Minter’s book Imperial Brain Trust. More critically Grose points out that “Richard Barnet, a scholar elected to Council membership in 1969 who remained a frequent critic, noted that membership in the Council on Foreign Relations could well be considered ‘a rite of passage for an aspiring national security manager.’”
Although as Edward S. Herman and David Peterson (2008) note in their brilliant article, There Is No “War on Terror”, it would be more accurate to point out that membership in the Council is a rite of passage for an aspiring national insecurity manager.
Finally, it is worth remembering that for all their elite links to key DEMOCRACY MANIPULATORS the Council also invites people whom many people would actually consider to be leading progressives.
Such ostensibly ‘progressive’ individuals include people like Katrina vanden Heuvel, who is the editor and publisher of The Nation magazine. However, The Nation’s Council ties do not end there as two of their regular contributors are also linked to the Council, these being Mohamad Bazzi (who is “currently the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations”), and Henry Siegman (who “served as a senior fellow on the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations from 1994 to 2006”). This of course does not imply that The Nation is by any stretch of the imagination a mouthpiece for the Council – indeed their magazine does contain some articles that are critical of the Council [5] – but it highlights the importance that the Council places on attempting to coopt progressive media.[6]
Having now firmly established the Council as a major players in the US’s democracy manipulating armament, the final section of this article will introduce the Council’s Center for Preventive Action: a center that as will become apparent, might more accurately described as the Center for Prevent[ing Democratic] Action.
Preventive Action or Preventing Democracy?
According to their website, the Center for Preventive Action was established in 1994 to ostensibly “help prevent, defuse, or resolve deadly conflicts around the world and to expand the body of knowledge on conflict prevention.” However, as John Bellamy Foster (2008) recently wrote, the misnamed Center for Preventive Action is actually:
“…DEVOTED TO OVERTHROWING GOVERNMENTS OPPOSED BY WASHINGTON BY POLITICAL MEANS (or where this is not practicable, USING POLITICAL LOW INTENSITY WARFARE TO SOFTEN THEM UP FOR MILITARY INTERVENTION). The CPA [Center for Preventive Action] is headed by Reagan’s former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, GENERAL JOHN W. VESSEY, who oversaw the invasion of Grenada. The members of the advisory committee of the CPA… have all been heavily involved in helping to fulfill U.S. war aims in YUGOSLAVIA, and the Center has recently focused on overturning Chavez’s government in Venezuela”.
Other than this brief mention, almost nothing has been written about this controversial group; thus it is necessary to briefly outline the democracy manipulating credentials of the various individuals linked to the Center’s work, and then critically examine a number of their recent policy papers.
The founding Director of the Center for Preventive Action, Barnett R. Rubin, remained in this position for six years; however, since relinquishing his leadership in 2000 he has recounted the experience he gained at the Center in his book Blood on the Doorstep: The Politics of Preventive Action (Century Foundation Press, 2002). Presently Rubin – a former ‘peace’ fellow at the US Institute of Peace – is a senior fellow at the Center on International Cooperation, and is linked to a number of other ‘democratic’ groups, as he is a member of the Human Rights Watch’s Asia Advisory Committee, and serves on the boards of both the OPEN SOCIETY INSTITUTE CENTRAL EURASIA PROJECT Project and the INTERNATIONAL LEAGUE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS. In 2000, GENERAL WILLIAM L. NASH replaced Rubin as the Center for Preventive Action’s new Director, and like his predecessor Nash’s democracy manipulating pedigree is strong as he formerly served as the director of civil-military programs at the National Democratic Institute (which is one of the NED’s core grantees). Nash remained at the helm of the Center from 2000 until 2007 when he was replaced by Paul B. Stares, who came to the position after working for five years at the US Institute of Peace (most recently serving as the vice president of the Institute’s Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention).[7] Stares is the author of numerous books, but his most recent one is Diasporas in Conflict: Peacemakers or Peace Wreckers? (United Nations University Press, 2007), which he co-edited with former US Institute of Peace fellow, Hazel Smith.
Having briefly introduced the ‘democratic’ backgrounds of the Director, and former Directors, of the Center for Preventive Action, this article now reflects upon the composition of their 18 person strong advisory board.
Thus particularly ‘democratic’ members of this board include Barnett R. Rubin, William L. Nash, Peter Ackerman (see earlier):
* David Hamburg – who is president emeritus of the Carnegie Corporation of New York
* John G. Heimann – who is a director of the American Ditchley Foundation), Reynold Levy (who is a former president of the International Rescue Committee, 1997-2002
* Vincent A. Mai – who is chair of Human Rights Watch’s Africa Advisory Committee, is vice-chair of the International Center for Transitional Justice, serves on the board of overseers of the International Rescue Committee, and is a former trustee of the Carnegie Corporation
* Julia V. Taft – who is a former chief executive officer of InterAction, and a former NED director,
* Kenneth Roth – who is the executive director of Human Rights Watch.[8]
Notable former advisory board members include Morton I. Abramowitz and Leslie H. Gelb (who is president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the International Crisis Group, and a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace).
Other interesting people presently serving on the Center for Preventive Action’s advisory board, who do not exhibit strong links to democracy manipulating organisations, include the president of the Council on Foreign Relations Richard N. Haass, and Jane Holl Lute – who is presently a director at the Hunt Alternatives Fund – a Fund that is chaired by ‘democratically’-linked Swanee Hunt – is the former head of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, was a senior public policy fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, and was the director of European Affairs in the National Security Council staff at the White House).
Finally, given the Center’s apparent commitment to democracy, it’s ironic that one member of their advisory board, GENERAL (Ret.) GEORGE A. JOULWAN, currently serves as a board member of General Dynamics Corporation – that is, one of the largest ‘defence’ manufacturers in the world.
Dealing With Democracy in Latin America
Presently the global democracy manipulators, particularly the US ones, have been busily attempting to counter the rising threat of democracy in Latin America. Most notably this has involved the NED’s ongoing interventions in Venezuela’s domestic affairs. On this score it is relevant to peruse three of the Center for Preventive Action’s recent reports: (1) Andes 2020: A New Strategy for the Challenges of Colombia and the Region (January 2004) – produced with support provided by the Ford Foundation and the Hewlett Foundation (p.vi); (2) Living with Hugo: U.S. Policy Toward Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela (November 2006), a “publication… made possible in part by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York” (p.vii); and (3) Bolivia on the Brink (February 2007). [9]
In 2004, the Center for Preventive Action released a report by an ‘independent’ commission entitled Andes 2020: A New Strategy for the Challenges of Colombia and the Region. The report was directed by Julia E. Sweig (who gave a special thanks in the foreword that Cristina Eguizabal, who runs the Ford Foundation’s programs in Latin America) and a group of “over twenty scholars, practitioners, and regional policy experts” who were led by Daniel W. Christman (who is vice president of the core NED grantee, the Center for International Private Enterprise, and a director of the weapons manufacturer Metal Storm Limited), and Center for Preventive Action advisory board member, John G. Heimann.
Not surprisingly, the first page of the report starts by noting: “The democracies of the Andean region – Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia – are at risk… [and] the region remains on the brink of collapse, an outcome that would pose a serious threat to the US goal of achieving democracy, prosperity, and security in the hemisphere.”
Later, with no sense of irony, the report then states:
“The lack of responsive democratic institutions – in particular, meaningful access to a functioning legal system by those other than the country’s elites – complicates attempts at substantive economic and political reform… The distortive influence of oil and other extractive industries on governance, transparency, and management of revenues also undermined public confidence in the political and legal system and the private sector”.
Although the policy prescriptions in the report will not be reviewed here, paradoxically, two consecutive policies call for the need to
(1) “Amplify U.S. Military Training in Columbia” under the aegis of Plan Columbia, and
(2) “Continue to Prioritize Progress on Human Rights for Security Assistance”. Of course for the seasoned democracy manipulators who were involved in this ‘independent’ commission such contradictions pose no problems.
Finally, although I will not recount the democracy manipulating credentials of all the Andes 2020 commission members, one particularly ‘democratic’ commission member is-
George Soros,; while three of the NED’s four core grantees were also represented on the commission, that is,
the International Republican Institute (by George A. Folsom, their president and CEO),
the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center (by Barbara Shailor who is a trustee of the Center), and
the Center for International Private Enterprise (by commission chair Daniel W. Christman).
(One other intriguing commission member is Alexander F. Watson who, from 1996 to 2002, served as the vice president of the Nature Conservancy.)
The second report, concerning democracy in Venezuela, was briefly mentioned by John Bellamy Foster in 2007, where he noted, that in the reports foreword the Council’s president, Richard Haass, “emphasized… that the object was to formulate a long-term strategy ‘to dilute Chávez’s appeal and power.’” Foster added that the report proper argued that: “The main tool to achieve this was for the United States, in agreement with other Latin American states, to establish ‘red lines in foreign and domestic policies’ such that, if Chávez crossed them, they would automatically trigger the isolation of the Bolivarian Republic.” Foster went on to clarify that such:
“Red lines could be drawn, it was specified, around
(1) any attempt to amend the Venezuelan constitution to extend Chávez’s term of office;
(2) Venezuelan support for destabilizing forces in other countries; or
(3) a military relationship with Iran or some other enemy of the United States. Any contraventions of what the United States considers to be ‘democracy’ could be red-lined, provided that the other major Latin American powers agreed.”
Currently this analysis of the Center for Preventive Action’s work is the only critique available of their working papers; therefore, I will now extend Foster’s critique of the Venezuelan report and finally examine their Bolivian report.
The Living With Hugo report’s author, Richard Lapper, opens by noting:
“The popularity of the new political and economic model being developed in Venezuela has been a consistent source of aggravation for the U.S. government. Since first winning the presidency in December 1998, Hugo Chávez has been able through repeated electoral victories and radical constitutional reform to dominate Venezuela’s government and public institutions… Most alarming to those concerned with the health of Venezuelan democracy, Chávez and his allies have concentrated political power in the hands of the executive, curtailed the independence of the judiciary, shown limited tolerance for domestic critics, and openly intervened in the electoral politics of neighboring states.”
Despite having evident knowledge of the NED’s activities in Venezuela, Lapper merely observes that “U.S.-Venezuela relations were… seriously damaged by suspicions that Washington was involved in a brief military coup against President Chávez in 2002”. His only half-hearted criticism of this involvement is that “the United States responded clumsily to the coup on April 11 [2002]”.
Later on in the report Lapper then states: “Limited U.S.-funded programs to support Venezuela’s civil society have been ineffective while feeding the perception that the United States aggressively seeks regime change”. Lapper then cautions the US government from further alienating public opinion, and suggests that as “roughly 60 percent of Venezuelan oil exports are destined for the United States” that is 1.5 million barrels of oil per day the: [10]
“…most suitable policy approach is to avoid demonizing Chávez, which only diminishes U.S. credibility and provides fodder for many of the Venezuelan leader’s accusations. Instead, as long as Chávez does not take steps that fundamentally threaten essential U.S. interests in Latin America, the United States should demonstrate that it is willing to work with Venezuela on a pragmatic basis on such issues as counternarcotics and energy policy.”
With all seriousness, the report concludes by saying: “Only by attacking the root causes of inequality that fuel Chávez’s involvement in the affairs of fragile states can the United States regain credibility as an advocate of democracy in the hemisphere”.
The third Center for Preventive Action report, Bolivia on the Brink, authored by Eduardo A. Gamarra opens by noting that the “models of representative democracy and market-oriented economic policies… are being challenged by Morales’s calls for direct, participatory, and ‘unmediated’ forms of democracy – all of which have the potential to threaten liberal democracy itself”. With this in mind it is no wonder that Gamarra identifies the Morales administration as presenting a “threat to stability and democratic governance in Bolivia”, even though he concedes that:
“Winning 53.7 percent of the vote, Morales became the first president since the 1982 transition to have been elected without a congressional second round, as called for by the constitution. This factor alone gives Morales greater legitimacy than any of his predecessors.”
However, Gamarra does state that the “threat” to democracy “does not come from the Morales administration alone”, and he points out that the “most salient threat to democracy stems from the unwillingness of all parties involved to exercise good faith in a process of constitutional reform demanded in the 2005 elections by the majority of Bolivia’s citizens”. The report then acknowledges that “U.S. commercial, energy, security, and political interests in Bolivia and in the Andean rim subregion may be threatened” if the “crisis persists”, thus the US “must prioritize conflict prevention” which apparently “involves using and even expanding current trade and development assistance to increase economic opportunity, bolster the professionalism of the Bolivian military, and deepen Bolivian civil society’s commitment to democratic compromise”. The latter point best sums up the democratic priorities of the Center for Preventive Action, as the Bolivian people must accept a “democratic compromise” – that is, plutocracy – in order to safeguard US business interests. Strangely perhaps, for the poor of Bolivia at least, the report concludes that Morales’ “promise of justice” also “contains the threat of instability”. Such nonsense sounds much like the infamous Trilateral Commission report that determined that there was a Crisis of Democracy in the world because there was simply too much democracy.
Council for the Future
This article provided an overview of the work of just one elite planning group, which unfortunately, only exposes the tip of the iceberg that embodies elite domination of Western democracy.
However, while the Council, like other antidemocratic groups like the NED and the US Institute of Peace, now conduct a lot of their work in the open, freely publicizing their activities on the internet, [11]
other elite planning organizations continue to carry out their work cloaked in secrecy, e.g. the Rockefeller-linked Trilateral Commission and the like-minded Bilderberg Group, and of course the notorious CIA.
The cloak and dagger nature of such elitist groups has, in turn, fueled a burgeoning cottage industry of conspiracy theorists, especially from conservative groups, like the John Birch Society, who falsely impute communist goals on capitalist organisations. A good example of a Birchite critique of the Council is provided by James Perloff’s, The Shadows of Power: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Decline of America (Western Islands, 1988).
Yet despite their obvious ideological mishaps, much important information can be gleaned from this large and often well researched right-wing conspiracy literature.
To our own neglect, however, many progressive writers simply dismiss out of hand all writers (from both the Right and Left) whose work seeks to understand the regressive mechanisations of liberal elites.
Thus rather than trying to document the ways by which antidemocratic elites work to manipulate democracy to serve their own interests, most progressive writers either ignore, or simply write off potentially informative work as simply belonging to the realm of conspiratorial ramblers. In this respect, Susan George’s excellent piece of ‘fiction,’ The Lugano Report: On Preserving Capitalism in the Twenty-First Century (Pluto Press, 1999) – which presents a group of “[f]ictional experts recruited by world leaders to discuss the future of global capitalism” – provides a welcome exploration into the dark world of elite planning.
Elite planning is not, and never will be, compatible with popular or participatory forms of democracy. Therefore, progressive citizens need to work together to understand how elitist organisations like liberal foundations, or even for that matter internal ‘intelligence’ agencies like the FBI, influence their own work. Two excellent books dealing with this topic, for both liberal foundations and the FBI respectively, are Joan Roelofs’ Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (SUNY Press, 2003), and Brian Glick’s War at Home: Covert Action Against U.S. Activists and What We Can Do About It (South End Press, 1989).
If progressives are to seize the handles of democracy from the grasps of capitalist ruling elites in the near future, it is vital that they leave no stone unturned in their attempts to understand the historical precedents that have facilitated the rise of the contemporary neo-liberal world order. Only then can concerned citizens be sure that they are working towards creating a truly progressive participatory (capitalist-free) future, rather than simply acting out a role for them that is dictated to them by the vagaries of liberal capitalists and their well endowed foundations.
In summary, it is fitting to end this article with the thoughts of the original Imperial Brain Trust scholar, Laurence Shoup (2003), who in one of his more recent articles concludes:
“In the long term it is only through democratic, collective decision-making in both the public and private spheres that we can avoid the disasters that we are now facing. That decision making must confront root causes, central among them capitalism and empire. The grip of oil imperialism, or any other kind of imperialism, cannot be broken within the framework of the current order. Thus we must build a world apart from corporate capital and one that does not require a fossil fuel economy. It is the solidarity, courage, and resistance of the people at all levels, especially at the workplace and in the streets, that appears to be the only way we have a chance stop the barbarism we now face. We as citizens have never faced a more urgent duty.”
Viva revolution? [12]
Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at Griffith University, Australia. He can be reached at Michael. J. Barker [at] griffith.edu.au. Most of his other articles can be found here.
Notes
[1] According to Grose: “In May 1946 the [Council’s] directors voted to invite more representatives of the labor movement into the membership. Carefully chosen invitations went out; only two more accepted. Their numbers grew over the coming decades, and two presidents of the AFL-CIO, Lane Kirkland and Thomas R. Donahue, along with Glenn Watts, president of the Communications Workers of America, served terms on the Council’s board of directors.” This is noteworthy because the AFL-CIO is one of the NED’s core grantees. The late Lane Kirkland (1922 - 1999) had also been a former Rockefeller Foundation trustee, and was been honoured with the NED’s Democracy Service Medal in 1999. In February 2005, “the Albert Shanker Institute, Freedom House, and the National Endowment for Democracy co-sponsored a book launch for a new biography of former AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland. Lane Kirkland: Champion of American Labor... written by Arch Puddington, Freedom House’s director of research, with a grant from the Shanker Institute.” Thomas R. Donahue is a former vice chair of the NED, and is also a director of the Albert Shanker Institute and received the NED’s Democracy Service Medal in 2006. For more details on the AFL-CIO ties to the NED see the Worker to Worker Solidarity Committee (www.workertoworker.net).
[2] The Council is presently running three ‘Independent’ Task Force Projects, these are the:
* Independent Task Force on Civil Liberties and National Security (November 21, 2006—Present) – Chairs: Bob Kerrey and William H. Webster; Director: Daniel B. Prieto
* Independent Task Force on U.S. Policy toward Latin America (February 23, 2007—Present) – Chairs: Charlene Barshefsky and James T. Hill; Directors: Shannon O’Neil and Julia E. Sweig
* Independent Task Force on Global Climate Change (July 11, 2007—Present) – Chairs: George E. Pataki and Thomas J. Vilsack; Directors: Michael A. Levi and David G. Victor
[3] Laurence H. Shoup, (2004) highlights that: “The Council’s membership network consists of people one would expect to be CFR members-David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger, Peter G. Peterson, George Soros, Maurice Greenberg, Robert Rubin, George P. Shultz, Alan Greenspan, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard B. Cheney, and George Tenet-as well as individuals whose membership is more unexpected, such as John Sweeney, Jessie Jackson, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Katrina vanden Heuvel, Richard J. Barnet, and Daniel Schorr.” That said, it should not be unexpected that the Council would have many liberals as members, because as the links to Source Watch illustrate many of these individuals have links to the ‘democracy promoting’ community.
[4] Four of the seven people serving on the 2007 jury for the Arthur Ross Book Award maintain strong ‘democratic’ links, and these include Rose E. Gottemoeller (who serves as an expert for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace), James F. Hoge, Jr. (who is chairman of the NED-funded International Center for Journalists, a director of both the American Ditchley Foundation and the Foundation for a Civil Society, a member of the strategy committee of the Project on Justice in Times of Transition, and a director of Human Rights Watch), Robert W. Kagan (who is a senior associate of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century), and Michael A. McFaul (who heads the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, is a trustee of both the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Freedom House, is a former director of the NED-initiated International Forum for Democratic Studies, and serves on the advisory board member for Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Advisory Committee).
[5] For two recent articles that provide limited critiques of the Council, see Scott Sherman’s (2004) Kissinger’s Shadow Over the Council on Foreign Relations, and Stephen F. Cohen’s (2006) The New American Cold War in which he notes that an “astonishing… Council on Foreign Relations ‘task force report’ on Russia” is “[a]n unrelenting exercise in double standards”.
[6] It is noteworthy that Pranay Gupte, the founder and editor of The Earth Times, a “newspaper focusing on economic development and environmental security”, from 1991 to 2003 was also a Council member. As noted earlier the Council has always been closely linked to staff at The New York Times and two current Council members working for the Times include their deputy foreign editor Ethan Bronner, and their United Nations bureau chief Warren Hoge – whose brother is the former editor of the Council’s journal Foreign Affairs. Finally, given the Council’s recognition of the influence of all forms of media, including popular entertainment, to manufacture consent, it makes sense that they recruit Hollywood actors to their organization, with members including Michael Douglas, Richard Dreyfuss, and most recently Angelina Jolie. Finally, the war boosting ‘Democrat’, Peter Beinart, the former editor of the New Republic (see earlier), and author of The Good Fight: Why Liberals-And Only Liberals-Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again (2006) is currently the Council’s senior fellow for US foreign policy.
[7] “In 2006, Stares led the Iraq Study Group’s Strategic Environment Expert Working Group.”
Stares directed the Center for Conflict Analysis and Prevention (CAP) from 2005 (the year it was established) until 2007, whereupon he was replaced by Scott Lasensky (who is presently CAP’s acting vice president). CAP’s mission is to “initiate and support programs aimed at forestalling serious outbreaks of violence in key areas of the world”. Current priority countries are CAP’s priorities are: Iran, Iraq and its Neighbors, the Korean Peninsula, Pakistan, Lebanon, and Zimbabwe. The Center also oversees three projects (1) the Muslim World Initiative, (2) Political Oppositions in the Arab World, and (3) Political Transitions in Africa.
[8] With regards to the formation of Helsinki Watch in 1978 (which later became Human Right Watch’s Europe and Central Asia Advisory Committee), “[t]he Ford Foundation was particularly keen to recruit opinion-leaders, and a blue-chip board, drawn heavily from the ranks of the Council on Foreign Relations, was duly convened.” Kirsten Sellars, The Rise and Rise of Human Rights (Sparkford, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2002), p.140. (Related letter.)
[9] The cited materials in the following section can be found on the following pages of each report, Andes 2020 (p.13, pp.61-2.), Living With Hugo (p.3, p.21, p.26, p.14, p.5, p.40), and Bolivia on the Brink (p.3, p.15, pp.4-5, p.45).
[10] According to Lapper, “the United States obtains approximately 11 percent of its oil imports from Venezuela.” (p.14)
[11] According to the Council: “An increasing number of Council meetings – nearly 50 percent – are conducted on an on-the-record basis, with meeting transcripts posted on the Council’s website, CFR.org.”
[12] The ending for this article was inspired by a creative undergraduate student who concluded his examination essays in this way.
http://www.zcommunications.org/tthe-council-on-foreign-relations-and-the-center-for-preventive-action-part-2-of-2-by-michael-barker
A very long but informative article with more links at the site. It appears to be written by a Progressive/Marxist/Communist about Plutocractists - same as the difference between a frying pan and a skillet.
PS: I despise Wesley Clarke.
Thanks for the links. Sorry, the article is a LOT longer than I thought...
It’s all pre-planned and they’ve had plenty of practice -
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2668971/posts
I despise Wesley Clarke already. Yes, Soros but Clarke sooo much more.
So much is going on behind the scenes it’s just amazing.
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