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NPR reports: “President-elect Joe Biden has nominated former UN Ambassador Samantha Power to lead the U.S. Agency for International Development. Biden also said he was elevating that role — USAID administrator — to be a member of the White House National Security Council.”

The International Rescue Committee has released a statement: “24 million Yemenis at catastrophic humanitarian risk following new U.S. terrorist designations of Ansar Allah, warns IRC.”

DANIEL KOVALIK, dkovalik@outlook.com, @danielmkovalik
Kovalik is the author of No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using “Humanitarian” Intervention To Advance its Economic and Strategic Interests (see on Simon and Schuster’s website.)

He was featured on an accuracy.org news release last month: “Samantha Power’s Role in Yemen Disaster.”

Said Kovalik: “While making her name by penning a Pulitzer-prize award-winning book inveighing against the evils of genocide — A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide — Power went on as Obama’s ambassador to the UN to actually help facilitate quite possibly the greatest slaughter of innocents in modern history.”

Kovalik cites the work of Shireen Al-Adeimi who wrote the piece “How Dare Samantha Power Scrub the Yemen War From Her Memoir,” which states that Power, in her 2019 autobiography, The Edu­ca­tion of an Ide­al­ist, “down­plays her role in the blood­shed that fol­lowed in Libya. … The most strik­ing thing about Power’s mem­oir is her com­plete omis­sion of her role in what became the world’s worst human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis: the ongo­ing U.S. inter­ven­tion in Yemen.”

See past accuracy.org news releases on USAID.

See “Democracy Now” segment from 2014: “Is USAID the New CIA? Agency Secretly Built Cuban Twitter Program to Fuel Anti-Castro Protests.”

Media reports indicate that Joe Biden is considering naming Samantha Power to head USAID [the United States Agency for International Development].

DANIEL KOVALIK, dkovalik@outlook.com, @danielmkovalik
Kovalik is the author of No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using “Humanitarian” Intervention To Advance its Economic and Strategic Interests (see on Simon and Schuster’s website.)

He said today: “While making her name by penning a Pulitzer-prize award-winning book inveighing against the evils of genocide — A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide — Power went on as Obama’s ambassador to the UN to actually help facilitate quite possibly the greatest slaughter of innocents in modern history.”

Kovalik cites the work of Shireen Al-Adeimi who wrote the piece “How Dare Samantha Power Scrub the Yemen War From Her Memoir,” which states that Power, in her 2019 autobiography, The Edu­ca­tion of an Ide­al­ist, “down­plays her role in the blood­shed that fol­lowed in Libya. … The most strik­ing thing about Power’s mem­oir is her com­plete omis­sion of her role in what became the world’s worst human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis: the ongo­ing U.S. inter­ven­tion in Yemen.”

Kovalik added: “As Foreign Policy noted back in October 2015, the fact that the United States was supporting the Saudi coalition military offensive against Yemen — in the form of intelligence, logistics (including mid-air refueling of Saudi jets), and even cluster bombs — and ‘inflicting extreme hardship on civilians in one of the Mideast’s poorest countries provides an awkward counterpoint to the Obama administration’s stated commitment to stand up for the region’s oppressed people.’ In addition to the military support for the Saudi coalition operations, this same piece mentions that the United States also provided diplomatic cover to these operations at the United Nations. Thus, the U.S. Mission to the UN, led by Samantha Power herself, scuttled a proposal which merely would have asked all the key actors to cooperate with human rights investigations in Yemen and would have reminded them to abide by international humanitarian law norms and human rights law in the prosecution of the conflict.”

Colum Lynch reported at the time: “Behind closed doors, the United States has sought to limit international scrutiny of rights abuses in Yemen. Last Friday, the United States blocked a proposal in a UN Security Council sanctions committee to have the committee’s chair, Lithuanian UN Ambassador Raimonda Murmokaite, approach ‘all relevant parties to the conflict and stress their responsibility to respect and uphold international humanitarian law and human rights law,’ according to Security Council diplomats. The committee also recommended that Murmokaite ask the key players to cooperate with its investigations into potential human rights abuses in Yemen.”

See piece in Al Jazeera from a year ago: “Yemen ‘could lose six million children’ from malnutrition.”

JONATHAN LATHAM, jrlatham at bioscienceresource.org, @BioSRP
Executive director of the Bioscience Resource Project, Latham said today: “Everyone wants to know how a bat coronavirus got into humans. That is to say, how did this virus make the leap from not infecting humans at all to being a virulent pathogen. There almost has to have been some kind of intermediate host and many observers have seen the exotic animal trade as the probable intermediary. As time has gone on, however, evidence to support Wuhan’s Huanan ‘wet’ market as the location for this has weakened since the very earliest known patient had no specific connection to it. Equally, a plausible animal intermediary species has not emerged either. With very little, and sometimes no evidence at all, snakes, civets, and pangolins have been suggested. At the very same time, it has emerged that the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), just eight miles from the epicenter, has a large collection of bat coronaviruses and was actively working on them. Moreover, like quite a few virologists, I have strong concerns about coronavirus recombinant DNA research in general, about gain-of-function and passaging research in particular, and about the competence and safety record of BSL-4 labs around the world. Given as well the proximity between the lab, I agree with Professor [Nikolai] Petrovsky who was quoted by the Australian Science Media Centre: ‘this either is a remarkable coincidence or a sign of human intervention’ i.e. that it was research at the WIV that bridged the gap.”

SAM HUSSEINI, samhusseini at gmail.com, @samhusseini
Husseini is an independent journalist. He asked the CDC’s Principle Deputy Director Anne Schuchat if it was a “complete coincidence” that the outbreak happened in Wuhan given the presence of labs there. The questioning was at a news conference at the now-shuttered National Press Club on Feb. 11. (See writeup, video and audio here.)

In a new in-depth piece published by Salon “Did This Virus Come From a Lab? Maybe Not — but It Exposes the Threat of a Biowarfare Arms Race,” he writes: “While much of the media and political establishment have minimized the threat from such lab work, some hawks on the American right like Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., have singled out Chinese biodefense researchers as uniquely dangerous.

“But there is every indication that U.S. lab work is every bit as threatening as that in Chinese labs. American labs also operate in secret, and are also known to be accident-prone. …

“‘Biodefense’ implies tacit biowarfare, breeding more dangerous pathogens for the alleged purpose of finding a way to fight them. While this work appears to have succeeded in creating deadly and infectious agents, including deadlier flu strains, such ‘defense’ research is impotent in its ability to defend us from this pandemic. …

“Following the Ebola outbreak in west Africa in 2014, the U.S. government paused funding for what are known as ‘gain-of-function’ research on certain organisms. This work actually seeks to make deadly pathogens deadlier, in some cases making pathogens airborne that previously were not. With little notice outside the field, the pause on such research was lifted in late 2017. …

“During this pause, exceptions for funding were made for dangerous gain-of-function lab work. This included work jointly done by U.S. scientists from the University of North Carolina and Harvard and the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This work — which had funding from USAID and EcoHealth Alliance not originally acknowledged — was published in 2015 in Nature Medicine. …

“At least one Chinese government official has responded to the allegation that the labs in Wuhan could be the source for the pandemic by alleging that perhaps the U.S. is responsible instead. … Obviously the Chinese government’s allegations should not be taken at face value, but neither should U.S. government claims — especially considering that U.S. government labs were the apparent source for the anthrax attacks in 2001. Those attacks sent panic through the U.S. and shut down Congress, allowing the Bush administration to enact the PATRIOT Act and ramp up the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Indeed, in October 2001, media darlings like Richard Butler and Andrew Sullivan propagandized for war with Iraq because of the anthrax attacks.

“The 2001 anthrax attacks also provided much of the pretext for the surge in biolab spending since then, even though they apparently originated in a U.S. or U.S.-allied lab. Indeed, those attacks remain shrouded in mystery.” Husseini is also senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy.

The Los Angeles Times reports in “Trump administration diverts Central America aid to U.S.-backed opposition in Venezuela” that: “The Trump administration plans to divert more than $40 million in humanitarian aid from Central America to the U.S.-backed opposition in Venezuela, according to an internal memo and interviews.

“The memo, dated July 11 and obtained by The Times, is a notification to Congress from the U.S. Agency for International Development that the money is going to Venezuela in response to an ‘exigent’ crisis involving U.S. ‘national interest.’

“The U.S. has been an ardent supporter of forces attempting to oust the leftist government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and now recognizes his challenger, opposition leader Juan Guaido, as the legitimate ruler of the besieged nation.

“All of the money being diverted will go to Guaido and his faction, the memo said, to pay for their salaries, airfare, ‘good governance’ training, propaganda, technical assistance for holding elections and other ‘democracy-building’ projects.

“The $41.9 million had been destined for Guatemala and Honduras, two of three countries in Central America’s so-called Northern Triangle, an impoverished and violence-ridden region that accounts for the majority of migrants now fleeing to the United States.”

DAN KOVALIK, dkovalik at outlook.com, @danielmkovalik
Kovalik is author of the just-released book The Plot To Overthrow Venezuela, which has a foreword by Oliver Stone.

Kovalik said today: “Again, we see that the claim of ‘humanitarian intervention’ in Venezuela is nothing but a fig leaf for imperial designs aimed at stealing Venezuela’s oil. As a recent study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, co-authored by economist Jeffrey Sachs, concluded, U.S. sanctions since August of 2017 have killed over 40,000 Venezuelans and will kill even more this year. Yet, the U.S. continue to ratchet up these sanctions, even attempting to sanction Venezuela’s food-distribution system known as CLAP [Local Supply and Production Committees]. The U.S. is simply running the same game plan of regime change it has since its coup in Iran in 1953 — starve out the target country and then blame it for starving.

“And now, we see the U.S. diverting much-needed humanitarian aid for Central America — a region greatly in need of such aid given the U.S.’s ravaging of that region with war and death squads — to the Venezuelan opposition. And, it is doing so despite recent revelations that the opposition forces it is supporting have themselves diverted aid to such things as luxury hotels, clothing and their own pockets. No, this is not a humanitarian intervention in Venezuela — it is an old-time stick-up which must be opposed.”

Background accuracy.org news release: “Will Elliott Abrams, ‘Abettor of Genocide,’ do to Venezuela What He did to Guatemala?“

Newsweek reports Tuesday: “Boat Carrying Wounded Palestinians Breaks Gaza Blockade, Gets Towed to Israel.” AP reported late last week: “Israel’s supreme court rejects human rights group’s request to declare it unlawful for soldiers to shoot at unarmed civilians.”

LEEN ABUSAID, ASMAA TAYEH, leen.abusaid at gmail.com, asmaatayeh9 at gmail.com, [in Gaza] also via PAM BAILEY, pam.palestine at gmail.com, @WeAreNotNumbers
Abusaid, Tayeh and Bailey are with the group We Are Not Numbers. The group tweeted: “Update on the Al-Hurriyeh (Liberty) boat: Of the 17 passengers, 4 are crew, 2 unemployed students, 2 injured protesters, 2 deaf (seeking treatment), & the rest are ill with cancer/similar serious diseases. The boat was shelled & they are in Ashdod. Call for their safe release!”

Tayeh is an English literature student at Gaza’s Al-Azhar University. She was born in Gaza and lives in a refugee camp called Jabalia in northern Gaza. Leen is a freelance journalist and has B.A. in English and French Literature.

See piece from the group: “Boat from Gaza attempts to break Israeli blockade” that profiles a wounded protester seeking treatment outside of Gaza.

See also statements from Freedom Flotilla Coalition, which “condemns Israel’s brutal act of state piracy in attacking the aptly named Hurriya (Liberty) vessel which attempted to leave the port of Gaza today filled with people needing urgent medical assistance as well as students and crew, as they attempted to peacefully make safe passage to Cyprus.”

ALFREDO PRIETO, [in Havana] prietogo at cubarte.cult.cu
Prieto is writer and editor at Ediciones Unión and a member of the Cuban Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC). He is former editor of Caminos journal at Havana’s Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Center. He has been a researcher and a professor with various teaching institutions in Cuba and abroad, including Hampshire College, Johns Hopkins University, David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, Harvard University, and Tulane University.

AVIVA CHOMSKY, achomsky at salemstate.edu
Available for a limited number of interviews, Chomsky is a historian, activist and author of eight books, including The Cuba Reader and A History of the Cuban Revolution. She teaches at Salem State University in Massachusetts, where she is also the coordinator of the Latin American studies program.

She said today: “The news that Cuba and the United States will move forward on opening embassies in each other’s countries is certainly a welcome, though not unexpected, step in the gradual restoration of relations. Unfortunately, President Obama continues to couch every announcement in terms of the longstanding U.S. policy of unwarranted intervention in Cuba’s internal affairs. Our unremitting hostility towards Cuba’s independence over the past 50 years wasn’t wrong, the president suggests, it just ‘isn’t working.’ With more open relations, the United States will be able to ‘increase our contacts with the Cuban people’ including ‘civil society and ordinary Cubans who are reaching for a better life.’ Through greater engagement we can ‘advance our interests and support for democracy and human rights.’

“This is precisely the approach that President Bill Clinton took in the 1990s when he announced his ‘Track Two’ policy of attempting to foster anti-government activity in Cuba. This means creating, funding, infiltrating, and guiding anti-government organizations on the island. Over the past year several of these USAID projects have been exposed, ranging from creating the ZunZuneo social media platform to sponsoring a covertly anti-government AIDS conference. If the United States really wanted to allow the right of the Cuban people to choose their own future, it would renounce its so-called ‘democracy promotion’ projects on the island and accompany today’s renewed diplomatic relations with a respect for Cuban sovereignty.”

AP reports: “The United States and Cuba will start talks on normalizing full diplomatic relations, marking the most significant shift in U.S. policy toward the communist island in decades, American officials said Wednesday.”

REESE ERLICH, rerlich at pacbell.net, @ReeseErlich
Erlich is an award winning foreign correspondent. His books include “Dateline Havana: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Future of Cuba.”

LARRY BIRNS, coha at coha.org, @cohastaff
Birns is the director of Council on Hemispheric Affairs, which today released a statement: “Alan Gross was working in Cuba as a sub­contractor of the United States Agency for International Developments (USAID) in 2009, when Cuban authorities arrested him. A Cuban court convicted Gross for smuggling illegal satellite equipment into the island, which in Cuba is considered a crime against the state.

“Given decades of U.S. deployment of psy­ops and other subversive activity against the Cuban regime, it is not implausible to believe that Gross was likely a player in (intentional or not) a CIA­-USAID plot to weaken Castro’s rule under cover of a human rights project. At the time, Havana was undergoing a transition to normal relations with Washington after decades of a ‘special period’ of economic hardship in Cuba caused by the U.S. economic embargo and exacerbated by the fall of the Soviet Union.

“It was not the first time, nor presumably the last, that the CIA and USAID have been caught in a plot to overthrow Cuba’s government through cultural or human rights projects on the island. For example, the CIA­-USAID partners promoted a ‘Cuba Twitter’ program aiming at overthrowing the government. The latest one to date was a story exposed by The Nation, which reported a USAID-financed cultural project, aimed at promoting certain political behavior among the dynamic Cuban hip ­hop scene. These projects, if not futile, routinely prove to be at the very least completely ‘reckless’ and ‘stupid’ endeavors, as stated by Sen. Patrick Leahy. One can only agree with his reasonable statements.”

NEFTA FREEMAN, netfa at ips-dc.org
The Institute for Policy Studies released a statement today “applauding the just-announced dramatic shifts in U.S.-Cuba policy — shifts that IPS public scholars have been advocating for many years.

“Key to the policy shift, which includes full normalization of U.S.-Cuba relations, was a prisoner swap. U.S. contractor Alan Gross, who was jailed in Cuba for espionage, was released in exchange for the release of three members of the Cuban 5. IPS Fellow Saul Landau had suggested just such a swap in a 2010 commentary.

“Landau devoted his last film ‘Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up?’ to raising awareness of the plight of the Cuban Five, a group of Cuban men sent to Miami to infiltrate right-wing terrorist organizations. When they turned over evidence of U.S.-based terrorism to the FBI, they themselves were arrested and convicted while the anti-Castro terrorists continued to live freely in Florida. Landau, who died in September 2013, made six films about Cuba and wrote countless articles and books criticizing U.S. policies towards the island nation and calling for full normalization of relations.

“For the past three years, IPS has also been an active supporter of the annual advocacy events called ‘Five Days for the Cuban Five,’ led by the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5. These events included rallies at the White House, visits to members of U.S. Congress and Senate, and public and cultural events with well-known personalities from the United States and abroad.”

“The release of the remaining imprisoned Cuban 5 is a long overdue act and we’re hopeful about the possibility of a new relationship between the United States and Cuba,” said Netfa Freeman, IPS Events Coordinator, as well as an organizer in the International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban 5. “We will continue to work in solidarity with the people of Cuba to change over 50 years of unjust U.S. policy toward Cuba.”

The group also noted: “Several times in the last years of his life, Saul Landau joined actor Danny Glover in driving hours across the California desert to visit Gerardo Hernández Nordelo, one of the Cuban 5 prisoners involved in the prisoner swap announced by President Obama today as part of a major shift in U.S. policy towards Cuba.”

Note: Producers might want to use Jackson Browne’s “Going Down to Cuba” as intro music. [Video]  

AP reported on Friday “U.S. Secretly Created ‘Cuban Twitter’ to Stir Unrest,” which stated: “Documents show the U.S. government planned to build a subscriber base through ‘non-controversial content’: news messages on soccer, music and hurricane updates. Later when the network reached a critical mass of subscribers, perhaps hundreds of thousands, operators would introduce political content aimed at inspiring Cubans to organize ‘smart mobs’ …

“The Obama administration on Thursday said the program was not covert and that it served an important purpose by helping information flow more freely to Cubans. Parts of the program ‘were done discreetly,’ Rajiv Shah, USAID’s top official, said on MSNBC, in order to protect the people involved.”

In an update to the story over the weekend, Reuters reported: “Cuba said on Sunday the United States continues to use social media to ‘subvert’ the island’s government and that the revelation this week of a U.S.-created, Twitter-like service for Cuba was just one of several examples.”

KIM SCIPES, kscipes at pnc.edu
Associate professor of sociology at Purdue University North Central in Indiana, Scipes is author of AFL-CIO’s Secret War against Developing Country Workers: Solidarity or Sabotage? He said today: “The AP’s report about the U.S. government using Twitter accounts to inspire political dissent is just another example of the on-going U.S. war against Cuba.

“The statement by USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah is simply absurd; his denial of it not being covert defies belief for any one more developed than an amoeba. The AP’s documents clearly establish it was another covert U.S. attack on Cuba.

“As my research on developments in Venezuela have shown, the U.S. government has been found acting against governments with which it disagrees. Where it previously supported dictators in the countries U.S. leaders wished to control — Mobuto in Zaire, Somoza in Nicaragua, and Marcos in the Philippines, for example — since the mid-1980s, they have shifted their efforts to support civil society groups in countries they wish to control, trying to support groups who advance policies and actions with which the U.S. agrees, no matter how bad they are for the local population.

“Thus, prior to the 2002 coup in Venezuela, the U.S. was supporting a peasant organization that opposes land reform; an educational organization that has suggested no education reform; and organizing seeking to incite a military rebellion; a civic association that was working to mobilize middle class neighborhoods to ‘defend themselves’ from the poor; a civil justice group that opposes grassroots community organization because they support the Chavez government, etc. Altogether, Venezuelan and American groups operating in Venezuela received $4,039,331 from U.S. government organizations between 1992-2001.

“Further, reporting on the National Endowment for Democracy alone — a U.S. government initiated and funded organization that claims to be ‘independent’ but is not — showed that the NED provided $1,338,331 to organizations and projects in Venezuela in 2012 alone: they provided $120,125 for projects for ‘accountability’; $470,870 for ‘civic education’; $96,400 for ‘democratic ideas and values’; $105,000 for ‘freedom of information’; $92,265 for ‘human rights’; $216,063 for ‘political processes’; $24,962 for ‘rule of law’; $45,000 for ‘strengthening political institutions’; and $153,646 for the Center for International Private Enterprise.

“In short, despite any rhetoric to the contrary, the U.S. continually engages in attacks on and operations within any country it deems acting against its interests, no matter how democratically supported and politically engaged that government is with its own population.

“The U.S. government prattles on endlessly about its love for democracy around the world, but we see again and again — under both Democratic and Republican administrations — that it continues to seek to undermine governments with which it disagrees and which it believes it can bully. Ironically, it continually seeks to undermine governments seeking to improve the lives of their people, while supporting repressive regimes such as those in Egypt, Honduras, Saudi Arabia and the Ukraine.

“This behavior is despicable — and so very hypocritical.”

KIM IVES
Ives, a journalist with Haiti Liberte newspaper, just returned from Haiti on Thursday. He reports that with the rainy season coming, tens of thousands of Haitians remain homeless, living in giant camps of sheets, tarps and tents. Many complain that they still do not receive food aid, charging that the coupon system devised by some NGOs is plagued by favoritism and corruption.

Ives said today: “‘I have no tent, no tarpaulin, no food, no water, no coupons, no aid period,’ complained Lamercie Lounes, 28, echoing the words of many others I interviewed. ‘The guys who get the food coupons give them to their friends, or to women who sleep with them, or they sell them. It is corrupt. You have to know someone to get aid. It is a business.’

“Many have noted the lower death toll in Chile, which is still in the hundreds while Haiti’s is in the hundreds of thousands. Analysts have noted that Chile enforced strict building codes while Haiti had few codes and they were unenforced. However, the death toll disparity has more to do with the differing political economies of the two countries.

“Haiti’s agricultural society has been largely destroyed over the past three decades by economic policies devised and promoted by Washington. By eradicating Haiti’s creole pigs, dumping cheap rice, lowering tariff barriers, and privatizing state industries, neoliberal reform champions in the Haitian government, pushed by the World Bank, IMF and USAID, have forced tens of thousands of small farmers off the land and into the capital where they build flimsy houses vulnerable to natural disasters.”

Ives was recently interviewed, while in Haiti, by Democracy Now for a segment titled “How Western Domination Has Undermined Haiti’s Ability to Recover from Natural Devastation.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Reuters just reported: “Honduras … told a U.S. envoy not to present his credentials as ambassador on Friday in a diplomatic snub in support of Bolivia. Bolivia and … Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez are in a fight with Washington over what they see as U.S. support for violent protests against Bolivian President Evo Morales. …

“The United States imposed sanctions on aides to Venezuela’s Chavez on Friday in retaliation for his expulsion of the U.S. ambassador, escalating a crisis that raises the specter of a possible oil supply cutoff. …

“Violent anti-government protests have killed eight people in Bolivia, where rightist governors have rebelled against the popular president, demanding autonomy and rejecting his plans to overhaul the constitution and break up ranches to give land to poor Indians.”

MARK WEISBROT
Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The group issued a statement today which “called on the U.S. State Department to release information detailing whom it is funding in Bolivia — where violent rightwing opposition groups have wreaked havoc this week in a series of shootings, beatings, ransacking of offices, and sabotage of a natural gas pipeline — as well as in other Latin American countries including Venezuela. Recent events suggest there may be evidence for Bolivian President Evo Morales’ assertions that the U.S. Embassy is supporting groups promoting violence and seeking ‘autonomy’ from Bolivia, and the Center called on USAID and other U.S. agencies to ‘come clean’ in order to demonstrate the U.S. government’s good faith.”

Weisbrot is the author of numerous papers and articles on Bolivia and Latin America including a new report, “The Distribution of Bolivia’s Most Important Natural Resources and the Autonomy Conflicts,” and the op-ed “Bolivia: Can the Majority of People Vote for Change and Actually Get It?” He recently traveled to Bolivia, where he met with both high-level government officials and opposition politicians in the Eastern lowlands.

DEBORAH JAMES
James is director of international programs at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and has been worked extensively on Bolivia. She said today: “This crisis is a good example of why we need a new foreign policy towards Latin America — so that our relations with countries like Bolivia can be based on respect, sovereignty, mutual collaboration towards development … instead of having the vast majority of the population confident that the U.S. is behind the violence and is funding the autonomy movement.”

LARRY BIRNS
Birns is director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, which will be issuing material on the crisis later today.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167