[News] DAIs not so invisible puppet show
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Sat Jan 9 10:55:59 EST 2010
Date: Sat, 09 Jan 2010 11:04:24 +0000
From: Machetera <missmachetera at gmail.com>
DAIs not so invisible puppet show
Posted: 08 Jan 2010
As we wait to learn the identity of the mystery
Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI)
subcontractor who was handing out cellphones
and laptops like Santa Claus in Cuba this
December, lets deconstruct the recent statement
by Dr. James Boomgard, DAI Chief Executive
Officer, denying DAIs relationship to U.S. intelligence services.
Boomgard said: The detained DAI subcontractor
was not working for any intelligence service.
In this post Clinton it depends on what the
meaning of is is world, perhaps that was meant
as some kind of denial. What Boomer did not say
was that the detained subcontractor was not doing
the work of U.S. intelligence.
In an interview the former CIA agent Phil Agee
gave to Dennis Bernstein of the Flashpoints radio
program in March 2005, he explained how
intelligence work came to be shifted from the CIA
to contractors such as the National Endowment for
Democracy and their associated subcontracting
NGOs such as DAI, Chemonics International (an
international development consulting firm that
promotes meaningful change to help people live
healthier, more productive, and more independent
lives), Partners for Democratic Change,
<http://www.counterpunch.org/maher04162008.html>Albert
Einstein Institution, Freedom House and countless
others. Agee was speaking specifically though
not exclusively of Venezuela on that occasion.
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
bbeing 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
aall its money comes from the Congress.
But then there were the other core foundations
this was the fuundamental 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. This will be
the case since the early 1990s in Nicaragua
because all those programs that were started in
order to assure the defeat of Daniel Ortega in
1990 continued, and they continued to make sure
that Sandinista Front was not reelected again
after their defeat in 1990 and that has been
the case. These programs go on in various
different countries and they require quite a bit
of research.
I am sure that one could find
these programs in Mexico, Colombia, Peru
probably, Brazil, and other countries outside the Latin American region.
Such as Cuba.
Lets review who the sorry subcontractor likely
reported to. Michael Morfit, DAIs Vice
President for Governance and Public Sector
Management began his career in Indonesia where he
worked for eight years on behalf of the Ford
Foundation and USAID. He later moved on to the
Philippines, and finally to USAIDs Office of
Caribbean Affairs and the Office of Strategic
Planning. He also directed USAIDs Haiti Task
Force where, according to the Georgetown
University
<http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/mm755/>website,
he was directly involved in U.S. Government
planning and policy formation for major international development initiatives.
According to the same website, his tenure at DAI
was immensely profitable for the company, since
the democracy and governance portion of the
business saw its revenues increase from $3
million to $25 million under his
stewardship. Most recently he has been
consulting in Serbia, the same land from which
emerged Ivan Marovic, of OTPOR, which as both
Eva Golinger and
<http://www.counterpunch.org/maher06092007.html>George
Ciccarielo-Maher explained, was the model advised
for the student protests in favor of U.S.
objectives in Venezuela. Marovic later surfaced
in Honduras where he was warmly received by the
independent journalist Al Giordano, whose annual
journalism classes are being
<http://www.authenticjournalism.org/>partially
underwritten this year by Peter Ackermans
International Center for Non-Violent
Conflict.
Heres Eva (in Spanish) on Otpor and incidentally, Peter Ackerman:
<http://machetera.wordpress.com/2010/01/08/dais-not-so-invisible-puppet-show/>
[]
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