International Republican Institute

The world will be watching.

The International Republican Institute has announced the arrival of an international delegation to observe the parliamentary elections.

Filipino election watchdogs and Bang Zamoro civil society groups will also be watching.

The Commission on Elections, Cumlec, meanwhile, has entered the final stage of preparations for an election that has been postponed repeatedly but is finally upon us.

Then I'm finding everywhere Daniel Twining.

He's McCain, uh, orbit, state policy planning, [clears throat] the, uh, German Marshall Fund, the International Republican Institute, which is a tentacle of the National Endowment for Democracy, and also on Microsoft's Human Rights Advisory Council.

Well, in America, there's no such thing.

Our rights come from God.

This is ... [laughs]

In general, church has very high popularity among Armenian society, which is predominantly considering itself as Christians, uh, followers of Armenian Apostolic Church, and if we look at the public surveys, like from International Republican Institute, church is the second most trusted institution in, in Armenia.

However, it is interesting to notice that, uh, that trust has gone down, uh, in the past years especially.

It was in its lowest point after this big protests, uh, which did not have any success.

That's in 2013.

Then, of course, 2014, the International Republican Institute, again chaired by John McCain and financed overwhelmingly by U.S. taxpayers through government grants, already operated party, polling, election, and civil society programs in Ukraine before the overthrow of the elected president by the Ukrainian people.

The White House confirmed CIA Director John Brennan visited Kiev April 12th to 13th for security consultations.

And as you know, that led to the Maidan revolution, the duly elected president going to Russia for safety and security.

I mean, the United States has, under the justification of supporting democracy, supported the development of civil society in countries that have emerged from dictatorship.

So there's a lot of money pumped into all of Eastern Europe by mainly two organizations funded by U.S. Congress, the IRI, which is the International Republican Institute, and then the Democrats had their own.

And the idea was to develop civil society, tell people, you know, sort of voting is good and all those kinds of things.

Right.

So for instance, in the 1990s, Merlo worked for the US State Department, overseeing its attempt to try to destabilize the revolutionary government in Cuba.

Then in the 2000s, Merlo worked for the International Republican Institute, the IRI, which is a CIA cutout funded by the US government to carry out regime change operations and coups around the world.

And since then, Merlo has been a political advisor and a consultant working with right-wing politicians in the US and Latin America, linking them together.

And one of the closest colleagues of Damian Merlo in the United States is Mauricio Claver-Carone.

A lot of Republicans aren't particularly happy with this.

I gather, if my research is right, that you worked at the International Republican Institute, which is associated somewhat with the Republican Party, isn't it? Um, do you, do you know any Republicans? Do you, do you keep in contact with any Republicans? Can, can you tell us anything about what's going on inside of that power base? Are they, are they as divided as they seem to be from the outside?

American conservatism is fantastic.

I, I'll start by saying that the, the name of the institute is a bit unfortunate in that there's both a Republican, International Republican Institute and a National Democrat Institute, but they're detached from their parties, even if party foreign policy luminaries on, are on both of their boards.

Um, [coughs] I had the honor of working abroad with them in, in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that would have been for Senator McCain and for General Petraeus in, uh, the war efforts between 2006 and '10.

I've, I've worked alongside many Americans, um, and have, over the years, established a big, uh, relationship with a lot of American conservatives.

And then, yeah, just one more thing on the cohesion element.

I think at least for Kosovo's side, the issue on Serbia is used sometimes for a lot of domestic consumption, even though when you look at polls, there was a poll by International Republican Institute just a couple of weeks ago, and it asked citizens for their main concerns, and for everyone it was the economic concerns.

situation, healthcare situation, and their concern about the Kosovo-Serbia dialogue was at 11% or something, as opposed to like 50, 60, 70% that other things were prioritized.

So I think what's really important in a lot of, I mean, you've said a lot there and all of it is important, but I think the part to me that's quite striking that I really want to underline is, you know, you talk about the discovery of these mass graves, how lived and current You know, I'm going to use the term history, but it's not history if it's still happening.

So they're very independent, let's say.

And they have a lot of other organizations that work under them, the International Republican Institute and so forth.

The National Endowment for Democracy does all kinds of work, but it's regime change work around the country.

If there's a color revolution happening anywhere, all the money and the NED who's been