Observers invited by Venezuela condemn election

[Judi Lynn]

50. Is the Carter Center, long without Jimmy Carter, the ultimate last word, everywhere, now?

That's doubtful.

The CEO of the Carter Center worked for years with the U.S.A.I.D., which is viewed with varied levels of concern, and has been, for years. Her Name is Paige Alexander:


PAIGE ALEXANDER
Paige Alexander joined The Carter Center as chief executive officer in June 2020. Ms. Alexander has had a distinguished global development career, with over two decades of experience spanning the government and nonprofit sectors. She has held senior leadership positions at two regional bureaus of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Between 1993 and 2001, Ms. Alexander held several roles in USAID’s Bureau for Europe and the Newly Independent States Task Force, including deputy assistant administrator, chief of staff, director for the Democracy and Governance Office, deputy director of the Bosnia Task Force, and country desk officer.

After leaving for 10 years to work in a leadership role in the nonprofit sector, Ms. Alexander returned to USAID in 2011 in the Senate-confirmed position of assistant administrator for Europe and Eurasia; in 2015, she was again confirmed to lead the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Bureau, overseeing 1,000 employees, programs in 12 countries, and more than $1.4 billion in annual funding. From 2017 until her appointment to The Carter Center, she served as executive director of the European Cooperative for Rural Development (EUCORD) in Brussels and Amsterdam, working to bring market-led solutions to marginalized farmers in Africa to sustainably improve the livelihoods of families and communities. Ms. Alexander serves on the boards of the Romanian-American Foundation, Free Russia Foundation, the World Affairs Council of Atlanta, the ADL Southeast Region, and as a member of several human rights organizations. Follow Alexander on X at @P_AlexanderCEO.

https://www.fp4america.org/paige-alexander/

~ ~ ~


USAID skills:


US secretly created 'Cuban Twitter' to stir unrest and undermine government


USAid started ZunZuneo, a social network built on texts, in hope it could be used to organize 'smart mobs' to trigger Cuban spring

Associated Press in Washington
Thu 3 Apr 2014 08.34 EDT


In July 2010, Joe McSpedon, a US government official, flew to Barcelona to put the final touches on a secret plan to build a social media project aimed at undermining Cuba's communist government.

McSpedon and his team of high-tech contractors had come in from Costa Rica and Nicaragua, Washington and Denver. Their mission: to launch a messaging network that could reach hundreds of thousands of Cubans. To hide the network from the Cuban government, they would set up a byzantine system of front companies using a Cayman Islands bank account, and recruit unsuspecting executives who would not be told of the company's ties to the US government.

McSpedon didn't work for the CIA. This was a program paid for and run by the US Agency for International Development, best known for overseeing billions of dollars in US humanitarian aid.

According to documents obtained by the Associated Press and multiple interviews with people involved in the project, the plan was to develop a bare-bones "Cuban Twitter," using cellphone text messaging to evade Cuba's strict control of information and its stranglehold restrictions over the internet. In a play on Twitter, it was called ZunZuneo — slang for a Cuban hummingbird's tweet.

Documents show the US 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" — mass gatherings called at a moment's notice that might trigger a Cuban spring, or, as one USAid document put it, "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society."

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-twitter-zunzuneo-stir-unrest


By the way, former President Jimmy Carter's diplomat in Havana, Wayne S. Smith, the man he appointed as the head of the United States Interests Section always, until his death a couple of weeks ago, believed the US should drop the embargo and establish decent relations with Cuba:

JULY 15, 2024
Wayne Smith Devoted His Career to Dialogue and Diplomacy

The former Foreign Service officer liked to say "Cuba seems to have the same effect on American administrations as the full moon has on werewolves.”

PETER KORNBLUH and WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE
SHARE

“Cuba,” as former Foreign Service officer Wayne S. Smith was fond of observing, “seems to have the same effect on American administrations as the full moon has on werewolves.” Smith devoted his career—in and out of government—to advancing the cause of dialogue, diplomacy, and normal relations between Washington and Havana. He lived to see his tireless efforts come to fruition when President Barack Obama began normalizing relations in 2014, only to have President Donald Trump reverse course, returning to the failed policy of hostility and regime change.

At the time of Smith’s death at age 91 on June 28, 2024, the cause he championed— rapprochement between Washington and Havana—remains as critical, and as elusive, as ever.

As a young diplomat, Wayne Smith was posted to Havana just months before the triumph of Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959. When the Eisenhower administration broke relations in January 1961, he was one of the last US officials to leave, carrying with him the American flag that had flown over the Embassy. Eighteen years later, he returned as “principal officer” of the reopened US “Interests Section”—part of the Carter administration’s incremental and halting efforts to improve relations.

Options memo on normalizing relations, part of Smith’s early efforts to get the embargo lifted.
In a comprehensive, and witty, options memorandum, “Possible Steps to Improve Relations with Cuba,” he recommended a wide range of economic, cultural, military, and diplomatic steps to move US policy toward normal relations. He proposed lifting the embargo on food and medicine, calling it “unconscionable.” He advocated opening the door to selected Cuban exports, including Cuba’s renowned tobacco products (of which Smith was a connoisseur). He suggested an exhibition baseball game in Havana. Given Cubans’ fanatical love of the sport, he argued, baseball diplomacy would “emphasize the affinities between our two countries.” The Soviet Union, he noted, “does not play baseball.”

Smith was also one of the first officials to identify advantages for US security interests in counternarcotics collaboration with Cuba. “This strikes me as an initiative to which only the Mafia could object strongly,” he wrote.

More:
https://www.thenation.com/article/world/cuba-diplomacy-tensions-peace-latin-america/