Role of the International Republican Institute in the Honduran Coup

While this article may have its faults it certainly discusses and brings up issues that are simply ignored or glossed over by mainstream western media for the most part.

This is the same group that was involved in the failed coup that attempted to overthrow Chavez. This article also claims that they were involved in the overthrow of Aristide. NED or the National Endowment for Democracy has become in effect a means by which attempts are made to establish U.S. friendly regimes worldwide. It does openly what the CIA used to do covertly!

Role of the International Republican Institute (IRI) in the Honduran Coup

The International Republican Institute talks of “coup” in Honduras, months before
By Eva Golinger

The International Republican Institute (IRI), considered the international branch of the U.S. Republican Party, and one of the four “core groups” of the congressionally created and funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), apparently knew of the coup d’etat in Honduras against President Zelaya well in advance. IRI is well known for its role in the April 2002 coup d’etat against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and its funding and strategic advising of the principal organizations involved in the ouster of President Jean Bertrand Aristide of Haiti in 2004. In both cases, IRI funded and/or trained and advised political parties and groups that were implicated in the violent, undemocratic overthrow of democratically elected presidents.

After the 2002 coup d’etat occured in Venezuela, IRI president at the time, George Folsom, sent out a celebratory press release claiming, “The Institute has served as a bridge between the nation’s political parties and all civil society groups to help Venezuelans forge a new democratic future…” Hours later, after the coup failed and the people of Venezuelan rescued their president, who had been kidnapped and imprisoned on a military base, and reinstalled constitutional order, IRI regretted its premature, public applause for the coup. One of its principal funders, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), was furious that IRI had publicly revealed the U.S. government had provided funding and support for the coup leaders. NED President Carl Gershman was so irritated with IRI’s blunder, that he sent out a memo to Folsom, chastising him: “By welcoming [the coup] – indeed, without any apparent reservations – you unnecessarily interjected IRI into the sensitive internal politics o Venezuela”. Gershman would have much prefered that NED and IRI’s role in fomenting and supporting the coup against President Chávez have remained a secret.

IRI, chaired by Senator John McCain, was created in 1983 as part of the National Endowment for Democracy’s mission to “promote democracy around the world”, a mandate from President Ronald Reagan. In reality, one of NED’s founders, Allen Weinstein, put it this way in a 1991 interview with the Washington Post, "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA." IRI’s own history, according to its website (www.iri.org) also explains that its original work was in Latin America, at a time when the Reagan administration was under heavy scrutiny and pressure from the U.S. Congress for funding paramilitary groups, dictatorships and death squads in Central and South America to install U.S.-friendly regimes and supress leftist movements. “Congress responded to President Reagan’s call in 1983 when it created the National Endowment for Democracy to support aspiring democrats worldwide. Four nonprofit, nonpartisan democracy institutes were formed to carry out this work – IRI, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI), the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS).”“In its infancy, IRI focused on planting the seeds of democracy in Latin America. Since the end of the Cold War, IRI has broadened its reach to support democracy and freedom around the globe. IRI has conducted programs in more than 100 countries.”

In its initial days, IRI, along with the other coup groups of the NED, funded organizations in Nicaragua to foment the destabilization of the Sandinista government. Journalist Jeremy Bigwood explained part of this role in his article, “No Strings Attached?”, "’When the rhetoric of democracy is put aside, NED is a specialized tool for penetrating civil society in other countries down to the grassroots level’ to achieve U.S. foreign policy goals, writes University of California-Santa Barbara professor William Robinson in his book, A Faustian Bargain. Robinson was in Nicaragua during the late ‘80s and watched NED work with the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan opposition to remove the leftist Sandinistas from power during the 1990 elections.”

The evidence of IRI’s role in the 2002 coup d’etat in Venezuela has been well documented and investigated. Proof of such involvement, which is still ongoing in terms of IRI’s work, funding, strategic advising and training of opposition political parties in Venezuela, is available through documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act posted here: , and also available in my book, The Chávez Code: Cracking U.S. Intervention in Venezuela (Olive Branch Press 2006). None of the claims or evidence regarding IRI’s role in fomenting and supporting the April 2002 in Venezuela and its ongoing support of the Venezuelan opposition has ever been disclaimed by the institution, primarily because all evidence cited comes from IRI and NED’s own internal documentation obtained under FOIA.
Hence, when the recent coup d’etat occured in Honduras, against democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya, there was little doubt of U.S. fingerprints. IRI’s name appeared as a recipient of a $700,000 Latin American Regional Grant in 2008-2009 from NED to promote “good governance” programs in countries including Honduras. An additional grant of $550,000 to work with “think tanks” and “pressure groups” in Honduras to influence political parties was also given by the NED to IRI in 2008-2009, specifically stating, IRI will support initiatives to implement [political] positions into the 2009 campaigns. IRI will place special emphasis on Honduras, which has scheduled presidential and parliamentary elections in November 2009.” That is clear direct intervention in internal politics in Honduras.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) also provides approximately $49 million annually to Honduras, a large part of which is directed towards “democracy promotion” programs. The majority of the recipients of this aid in Honduras, which comes in the form of funding, training, resources, strategic advice, communications counseling, political party strengthening and leadership training, are organizations directly linked to the recent coup d’etat, such as the Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción, the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, the Honduran Private Enterprise Council (COHEP), the Council of University Deans, the Confederation of Honduran Workers (CTH), the National Convergence Forum, the Chamber of Commerce (FEDECAMARA), the Association of Private Media (AMC), the Group Paz y Democracia and the student group Generación X Cambio. These organizations form part of a coalition self-titled “Unión Cívica Democrática de Honduras” (Civil Democratic Union of Honduras) that has publicly backed the coup against President Zelaya.

IRI’s press secretary, Lisa Gates, responded to claims that IRI funded or aided (which also involves non-monetary aid, such as training, advising and providing resources) groups involved in the Honduran coup as “false reports”. However, there are several interesting links between the republican organization and the violent coup d’etat against President Zelaya that do indicate the institute’s involvement, as well as to the above mentioned funding that exceeds $1 million during just this year. In addition to its presence on the ground in Honduras as part of its “good governance” and “political influence” programs, IRI Regional Program Director, Latin America and the Carribean, Alex Sutton, has recently been closely involved with many of the organizations in the region that have backed the Honduran coup. Sutton was a featured speaker at a recent 3-day conference held in Venezuela by the U.S.-funded ultraconservative Venezuelan organization CEDICE (Centro para la Divulgación de Conocimiento Económico). CEDICE’s director, Rocío Guijarra, was one of the principal executors of the 2002 coup d’etat against President Hugo Chávez, and Guijarra personally signed a decree installing a dictatorship in the country, which led to the coup’s overthrow by the people and loyal armed forces of Venezuela. The conference Sutton participated in, held from May 28-29 in Venezuela was attended by leaders of Latin America’s ultra-conservative movement, ranging from Bolivian ex president Jorge Quiroga, who has called for President Evo Morales of Bolivia’s overthrow on several occasions, Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa and his son Alvaro, both of whom have publicly expressed support for the coup against President Zelaya in Honduras, and numerous leaders of the Venezuelan opposition, the majority of whom are well known for their involvement in the April 2002 coup and subsequent destabilization attempts. The majority of those present at the CEDICE conference in May 2009, have publicly expressed support for the recent coup against President Zelaya.

But a more damning piece of evidence linking IRI to the Honduran coup, is a video clip posted on the institute’s website at http://www.iri.org/multimedia.asp. The clip or podcast, features a slideshow presentation given by Susan Zelaya-Fenner, assistant program officer at IRI, on March 20, 2009, discussing the “good governance” program in Honduras. Curiously, at the beginning of the presentation, Zelaya-Fenner explains what she considers “a couple of interesting facts about Honduras.” These include, “Honduras is a very overlooked country in a small region. Honduras has had more military coups than years of independence, it has been said. However, parodoxically, more recently it has been called a pillar of stability in the region, even being called the U.S.S. Honduras, as it avoided all of the crisis that its neighbors went through during the civil wars in the 1980s.”

Important to note is that what Zelaya-Fenner refers to as “U.S.S. Honduras” and “avoid[ing] all of the crisis that its neighbords went through during the civil wars in the 1980s” was because the U.S. government, CIA and Pentagon utilized Honduras as the launching pad for the attacks on Honduras’ neighbors. U.S. Ambassador at the time, John Negroponte, and Colonel Oliver North, trained, funded and planned the paramilitary missions of the death squads that were used to assassinate, torture, persecute, disappear and neutralize tens of thousands of farmers and “suspected” leftists in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Zelaya-Fenner continues, “Thus, Honduras has been more recently stable, and it’s always been poor, which means that it’s below the radar, and gets little attention. The current president, Manuel Zelaya and his buddies, the leftists in the Latin American region have caused a lot of political destabilization recently in the country. He is a would-be emulator of Hugo Chavez and Hugo Chavez' social revolution. He has spent the better part of this administration trying to convince the Honduran people, who tend to be very practical and very 'center' that the Venezuelan route is the way to go. Zelaya's leftist leanings further exarcerbate an already troubled state. Corruption is rampant, crime is at all time highs. Drug trafficking and related violence have begun to spill over from Mexico. And there's a very real sense that the country is being purposefully destabilized from within, which is very new in recent Honduran history. Coups are thought to be so three decades ago until now (laughs, audience laughs), again.”

Did she really say that? Yes, you can hear it yourself on the podcast. Is it merely a coincidence that the coup against President Zelaya occured just three months after this presentation? State Department officials have admitted that they knew the coup was in the works for the past few months. Sub-secretary of State Thomas Shannon was in Honduras the week before the coup, apparently trying to broker some kind of deal with the coup planners to find another “solution” to the “problem”. Nevertheless, they continued funding via NED and USAID to those very same groups and military sectors involved in the coup. It is not a hidden fact that Washington was unhappy with President Zelaya’s alliances in the region, principally with countries such as Venezuela and Nicaragua. It is also public knowledge that President Zelaya was in the process of removing the U.S. military presence from the Soto Cano airbase, using a fund from the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA – Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua, St. Kitts, Antigua & Barbados and Venezuela) to convert the strategically important Pentagon base into a commercial airport.

IRI’s Zelaya-Fenner explains the strategic importance of Honduras in her presentation, "Why does Honduras matter? A lot of people ask this question, even Honduran historians and experts. Some might argue that it doesn't and globally it might be hard to counter. However, the country is strategic to regional stability and this is an election year in Honduras. It's a strategic time to help democrats with a small “d”, at a time when democracy is increasingly coming under attack in the region.”
There is no doubt that the coup against President Zelaya is an effort to undermine regional governments implementing alternative models to capitalism that challenge U.S. concepts of representative democracy as “the best model”. Countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, are building successful models based on participatory democracy that ensure economic and social justice, and prioritize collective social prosperity and human needs over market economics. These are the countries, together now with Honduras, that have been victims of NED, USAID, IRI and other agencies’ interventions to subvert their prospering democracies.

Stiglitz on corporate welfarism for the big banks

Stiglitz has no definition of socialism. He seems to see it as helping out ordinary individuals. No doubt it would but surely he should know as an economist that socialism is the socialisation of the means of production distribution and exchange through worker or some type of collective ownership and production on the basis of need rather than profit.
What some commentators are calling socialism with American characteristics is not socialism at all but a form of corporate welfare where costs are socialised and profits privatised. As some have put it, it is "socialism" for the rich.

© The Berkeley Electronic Press
The Economists’ Voice
www.bepress.com/ev
Joseph E. Stiglitz

With all the talk of “green shoots” of economic recovery, America’sbanks are pushing back on efforts to regulate them. While politicians talk about their commitment to regulatory reform to prevent arecurrence of the crisis, this is one area where the devil really isin the details—and the banks will muster what muscle they have left toensure that they have ample room to continue as they have in the past.The old system worked well for the bankers (if not for theirshareholders), so why should they embrace change? Indeed, the effortsto rescue them devoted so little thought to the kind of post-crisisfinancial system we want that we will end up with a banking systemthat is less competitive, with the large banks that were too big tofail even larger.It has long been recognized that those of America’s banks that are toobig to fail are also too big to be managed. That is one reason thatthe performance of several of them has been so dismal. Becausegovernment provides deposit insurance, it plays a large role inrestructuring (unlike other sectors). Normally, when a bank fails, thegovernment engineers a financial restructuring; if it has to put inmoney, it, of course, gains a stake in the future. Officials know thatif they wait too long, zombie or near zombie banks—with little or nonet worth, but treated as if they were viable institutions—are likelyto “gamble on resurrection.” If they take big bets and win, they walkaway with the proceeds; if they fail, the government picks up the tab.This is not just theory; it is a lesson we learned, at great expense,during the Savings & Loan crisis of the 1980s. When the ATM machinesays, “insufficient funds,” the government doesn’t want this to meanthat the bank, rather than your account, is out of money, so itintervenes before the till is empty. In a financial restructuring,shareholders typically get wiped out, and bondholders become the newshareholders. Sometimes, the government must provide additional funds;sometimes it looks for a new investor to take over the failed bank.The Obama administration has, however, introduced a new concept: toobig to be financially restructured. The administration argues that allhell would break loose if we tried to play by the usual rules withthese big banks. Markets would panic. So, not only can’t we touch thebondholders, we can’t even touch the shareholders—even if most of theshares’ existing value merely reflects a bet on a government bailout.I think this judgment is wrong. I think the Obama administration hassuccumbed to political pressure and scare-mongering by the big banks.As a result, the administration has confused bailing out the bankersand their shareholders with bailing out the banks.Restructuring gives banks a chance for a new start: new potentialinvestors (whether in equity or debt instruments) will have moreconfidence, other banks will be more willing to lend to them, and theywill be more willing to lend to others. The bondholders will gain froman orderly restructuring, and if the value of the assets is trulygreater than the market (and outside analysts) believe, they willeventually reap the gains.But what is clear is that the Obama strategy’s current and futurecosts are very high—and so far, it has not achieved its limitedobjective of restarting lending. The taxpayer has had to pony upbillions, and has provided billions more in guarantees—bills that arelikely to come due in the future.Rewriting the rules of the market economy— in a way that has benefitedthose that have caused so much pain to the entire global economy—isworse than financially costly. Most Americans view it as grosslyunjust, especially after they saw the banks divert the billionsintended to enable them to revive lending to payments of outsizedbonuses and dividends. Tearing up the social contract is somethingthat should not be done lightly.But this new form of ersatz capitalism, in which losses are socializedand profits privatized, is doomed to failure. Incentives aredistorted. There is no market discipline. Thetoo-big-to-be-restructured banks know that they can gamble withimpunity—and, with the Federal Reserve making funds available atnear-zero interest rates, there are ample funds to do so.Some have called this new economic regime “socialism with Americancharacteristics.” But socialism is concerned about ordinaryindividuals. By contrast, the United States has provided little helpfor the millions of Americans who are losing their homes. Workers wholose their jobs receive only 39 weeks of limited unemploymentbenefits, and are then left on their own. And, when they lose theirjobs, most lose their health insurance, too.America has expanded its corporate safety net in unprecedented ways,from commercial banks to investment banks, then to insurance, and nowto automobiles, with no end in sight. In truth, this is not socialism,but an extension of long standing corporate welfarism. The rich andpowerful turn to the government to help them whenever they can, whileneedy individuals get little social protection.We need to break up the too-big-to-fail banks; there is no evidencethat these behemoths deliver societal benefits that are commensuratewith the costs they have imposed on others. And, if we don’t breakthem up, then we have to severely limit what they do. They can’t beallowed to do what they did in the past—gamble at others’ expenses.This raises another problem with America’s too-big-to-fail,too-big-to-be-restructured banks: they are too politically powerful.Their lobbying efforts worked well, first to deregulate, and then tohave taxpayers pay for the cleanup. Their hope is that it will workonce again to keep them free to do as they please, regardless of therisks for taxpayers and the economy. We cannot afford to let thathappen.

Joseph E. Stiglitz is a Professor of Economics at Columbia University,and a Nobel Laureate in economics. He chairs a Commission of Experts,appointed by the President of the U.N. General Assembly, on reforms ofthe international monetary and financial system. A new global reservecurrency system is discussed in his 2006 book, Making GlobalizationWork.