The dirty hand of the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela

by: Eva Golinger
May 12 2014

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DilmaRousseffreceivingaHugoChvezpicturefromNicolsMaduro 1

 

Author and journalist Eva Golinger details recent U.S. funding of the Venezuelan opposition, concluding that, "What is clear is that the US government continues to feed efforts to destabilize Venezuela".

Anti-government protests in Venezuela that seek regime change have been led by several individuals and organizations with close ties to the US government. Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado- two of the public leaders behind the violent protests that started in February - have long histories as collaborators, grantees and agents of Washington. The National Endowment for Democracy "NED" and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have channeled multi-million dollar funding to Lopez's political parties Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, and Machado's NGO Sumate and her electoral campaigns.

These Washington agencies have also filtered more than $14 million to opposition groups in Venezuela between 2013 and 2014, including funding for their political campaigns in 2013 and for the current anti-government protests in 2014. This continues the pattern of financing from the US government to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela since 2001, when millions of dollars were given to organizations from so-called "civil society" to execute a coup d'etat against President Chavez in April 2002. After their failure days later, USAID opened an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Caracas to, together with the NED, inject more than $100 million in efforts to undermine the Chavez government and reinforce the opposition during the following 8 years.

At the beginning of 2011, after being publically exposed for its grave violations of Venezuelan law and sovereignty, the OTI closed its doors inVenezuela and USAID operations were transferred to its offices in the US. The flow of money to anti-government groups didn't stop, despite the enactment by Venezuela's National Assembly of the Law of Political Sovereignty and NationalSelf-Determination at the end of 2010, which outright prohibits foreign funding of political groups in the country. US agencies and the Venezuelan groups that receive their money continue to violate the law with impunity. In the Obama Administration's Foreign Operations Budgets, between $5-6 million have been included to fund opposition groups in Venezuela through USAID since 2012.

The NED, a "foundation" created by Congress in 1983 to essentially do the CIA's work overtly, has been one of the principal financiers of destabilization in Venezuela throughout the Chavez administration and now against President Maduro. According to NED's 2013 annual report, the agency channeled more than $2.3 million to Venezuelan opposition groups and projects. Within that figure, $1,787,300 went directly to anti-government groups within Venezuela, while another $590,000 was distributed to regional organizations that work with and fund the Venezuelan opposition.  More than $300,000 was directed towards efforts to develop a new generation of youth leaders to oppose Maduro's government politically.

One of the groups funded by NED to specifically work with youth is FORMA (http://www.forma.org.ve), an organization led by Cesar Briceño and tied to Venezuelan banker Oscar Garcia Mendoza. Garcia Mendoza runs the Banco Venezolano de Credito, a Venezuelan bank that has served as the filter for the flow of dollars from NED and USAID to opposition groups in Venezuela, including Sumate, CEDICE, Sin Mordaza, Observatorio Venezolano de Prisiones and FORMA, amongst others.

Another significant part of NED funds in Venezuela from 2013-2014 was given to groups and initiatives that work in media and run the campaign to discredit the government of President Maduro. Some of the more active media organizations outwardly opposed to Maduro and receiving NED funds include Espacio Publico, Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS), Sin Mordaza and GALI. Throughout the past year, an unprecedented media war has been waged against the Venezuelan government and President Maduro directly, which has intensified during the past few months of protests.

In direct violation of Venezuelan law, NED also funded the opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Table (MUD), via the US International Republican Institute (IRI), with $100,000 to "share lessons learned with [anti-government groups] in Nicaragua, Argentina and Bolivia...and allow for the adaption of the Venezuelan experience in these countries".  Regarding this initiative, the NED 2013 annual report specifically states its aim: "To develop the ability of political and civil society actors from Nicaragua, Argentina and Bolivia to work on national, issue-based agendas for their respective countries using lessons learned and best practices from successful Venezuelan counterparts.  The Institute will facilitate an exchange of experiences between the Venezuelan Democratic Unity Roundtable and counterparts in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Argentina. IRI will bring these actors together through a series of tailored activities that will allow for the adaptation of the Venezuelan experience in these countries."

IRI has helped to build right-wing opposition parties Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, and has worked with the anti-government coaltion in Venezuela since before the 2002 coup d'etat against Chavez. In fact, IRI's president at that time, George Folsom, outwardly applauded the coup and celebrated IRI's role in apressrelease 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..."

Detailed in a report published by the Spanish institute FRIDE in 2010, international agencies that fund the Venezuelan opposition violate currency control laws in order to get their dollars to the recipients. Also confirmed in the FRIDE report was the fact that the majority of international agencies, with the exception of the European Commission, are bringing in foreign money and changing it on the black market, in clear violation of Venezuelan law. In some cases, as the FRIDE analysis reports, the agencies open bank accounts abroad for the Venezuelan groups or they bring them the money in hard cash. The US Embassy in Caracas could also use the diplomatic pouch to bring large quantities of unaccounted dollars and euros into the country that are later handed over illegally to anti-government groups in Venezuela.

What is clear is that the US government continues to feed efforts to destabilize Venezuela in clear violation of law. Stronger legal measures and enforcement may be necessary to ensure the sovereignty and defense of Venezuela's democracy.

Eva Golinger is a Venezuelan-American journalist and an attorney specializing in international human rights and immigration law. Her website is Postcards from the Revolution. This article was posted at Venezuelanalysis.com.

Photo   Brazilian President Dilma Rouseff receiving a picture of Hugo Chavez from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.   Agencia Brazil/Creative Commons 3.0

 

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  • Making the World Safe for the Multinationals:
    What the NED does in Venezuela is similar to what the Koch brothers and other billionaires are doing in the U.S.; they buy elections and candidates that will protect the 1% from socialism. The goal is not to make the world safe for democracy, but to make the world safe for the multinational corporations. Regime change and destabilization are for those who threaten the wealth and privileges of the rich and corporate few. NED and the Koch brothers do not object to a democracy that forbids both the rich and the poor from sleeping under the bridge or stealing bread. They oppose any democracy that serves the poor and underclasses, implements land reform, builds schools, houses, health clinics, provides jobs, and removes the nation’s resources, land, labor force from corporate exploitation to benefit the few. By any U.S. or western standard, Venezuela has a democratically elected government expressing the will of the majority. The freedoms of press, speech, and association allow the puppets, agents, and lapdogs of foreign intervention to attack the Chavistas with impunity, and to challenge them in electoral campaigns. The only freedom lacking is freedom of unregulated markets that allows the corporate rich to run roughshod over the working poor and underclasses. In addition to the Koch model, there is the Pinochet model of subverting democracy. Instead of elections and due process, vicious right-wing fascists violently overthrow democracy. Henry Kissinger has made some honest statements about the Chilean counterrevolution. He said if given a choice between saving the economy and saving democracy, it is better to save the economy for capitalism and the multinationals. In Chile, that meant using, funding, and supporting fascists. As the chances for peaceful and democratic regime change slips out of the hands of the antigovernment opposition, the NED may turn to plan B, the Pinochet model. NT

    Posted by Nat Turner, 05/20/2014 7:30am (11 years ago)

  • Thanks to you Eva Golinger for this timely article.
    Thanks to Norman Markowitz for his informative comment. The situation in Venezuela is critical, and vitally connected with peace and progress in Cuba.
    The world crises the international working class faces from two and more perspectives(the main two, the working class from the inside of the U. S. and the working class in socialist (including China) and non-capitalist countries)has to be solved by an organizational unity which would help put pressure on the United Nations, along with capitalism's state superstructure.
    This is what W. E. B. Du Bois envisioned with his NAACP representation at his recurring Pan African Conferences, starting with the one at the turn of the 20th century, this, long before he helped found the U. N. in San Francisco(one of three in an, again, NAACP delegation in 1945).
    We must remember that the NAACP was a largely socialist influenced organization at its inception.
    In this vein, we have had two important Du Bois continuers, the Communist Henry Winston and the very popular, has been Communist, Angela Yvonne Davis (no anti-communist or one neutral on the Communist '48ers who wrote the Communist Manifesto).
    It is this, and other historic and immovable connections with the working class' and humanity's freedom, tied with the genius activities of Marx/Engels and those working class scholars(Winston, Davis, including the great V. I. Lenin, who the present writer's working class mother, from Hannibal, MO, an NEA member who taught for 50 years in public schools, told one could not go wrong, following) have unearthed, which C I A rulers, with its misnamed anti-human, fascistic, reactionary, extreme right and draconian, "The Endowment for Democracy", " The World Congress for Cultural Freedom", which brother Markowitz names, which organizations wish to confuse and derail, thwarting history's natural, positive development.
    These "Dirty Handed" scoundrel organizations need to be identified, exposed, destroyed or smashed, that positive, human, and international organizations can be supported and built.

    Posted by E.E.W. Clay, 05/14/2014 12:09pm (11 years ago)

  • One of the best ways for an American knight of liberty to evaluate validity of an idea or program is to observe the negative reaction it provokes from the likes of Golinger.

    Posted by Tony Monroni, 05/14/2014 7:24am (11 years ago)

  • This is an important artlce for our readers. "The Endowment for Democracy" was established by the Reagan administration to continue and expand the work legally that the Central Intelligence Agency had begun to do illegally through its front, "The World Congress for Cultural Freedom" which it created on the model of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, established by Sidney Hook and other leading anti-Communists at the end of the 1930s, part of a program of mobilizing anti-peoples "united fronts" of trade unionists, cultural organizations, professional organizations, to fight to support imperialist policies through the world.

    Posted by norman markowitz, 05/13/2014 9:25am (11 years ago)

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