Obama Requests Funding For Venezuelan Opposition in 2012 Budget

BY EVA GOLINGER

The US government is setting the terrain for the 2012 presidential elections in Venezuela, soliciting funding to back anti-Chavez groups and help prepare a "candidate" to oppose Chavez. Republicans call for an "embargo" against the oil-producing nation

This week, US President Barack Obama presented Congress with a $3.7 trillion dollar budget for 2012, the most expensive budget in United States history. Within his massive request, which proposes cuts in important social programs and federal jobs throughout the country, is a partition for special funding for anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela.

Included in the whopping $3.7 trillion request is over $670 billion for the Pentagon's ever-increasing annual budget, nearly $75 billion for the intelligence community and $55.7 billion for the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

For the first time in recent history, the Foreign Operations Budget (State Department) openly details direct funding of at least $5 million to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela. Specifically, the budget justification document states, "These funds will help strengthen and support a Venezuelan civil society that will protect democratic space and seek to serve the interests and needs of the Venezuelan people. Funding will enhance citizens' access to objective information, facilitate peaceful debate on key issues, provide support to democratic institutions and processes, promote citizen participation and encourage democratic leadership".

While the descriptive language justifying the diversion of millions in US taxpayers dollars to fund political groups in a foreign nation may sound "pretty", this type of funding has been a principal source of promoting subversion and destabilization in Venezuela against the democratic and majority-supported government of Hugo Chavez during the past eight years. According to public documents, just between the years 2008 to 2011, the US State Department channeled more than $40 million to the Venezuelan opposition, primarily directing those funds to electoral campaigns against President Chavez and propaganda slated to influence Venezuelan public opinion.

The funding requested in Obama's 2012 budget for anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela comes from a State Department division titled "Economic Support Fund" (ESF), which per State spokesman Philip Crowley, is used to fund NGOs and other non-governmental groups in "key strategic and important countries" for Washington. On top of the ESF funds for the Venezuelan opposition, additional multimillion-dollar financing for political campaigns, media propaganda and other destabilization activities in the South American nation is channeled through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), International Republican Institute (IRI), National Democratic Institute (NDI) and various other US and international agencies that support groups around the world who promote US agenda.

ILLEGAL FUNDING

The State Department's public disclosure of 2012 funding for the Venezuelan opposition comes just after the Venezuelan National Assembly passed a law prohibiting foreign funding for political activities in late December 2010. The Law in Defense of Political Sovereignty and National Self-Determination clearly renders all foreign funding for political campaigns, parties and organizations, including NGOs, that engage in political activities, illegal. How exactly does Washington propose to channel those $5 million to Venezuelan groups, when such financing clearly constitutes a violation of Venezuelan law?

In previous years, the Foreign Operations Budget never explicity detailed direct State funding to political groups in Venezuela. Since 2002, Washington has used an office of USAID, the Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI), to filter its multimillion-dollar funding to its Venezuelan counterparts. The OTI office, which was run like a clandestine operation in Caracas and never had authorization from the Venezuelan government to set up shop in the country, abruptly closed its doors at the end of 2010 and transferred its activities to Washington, and Miami. It was the longest running OTI operation in US history.

Clearly, funding and political support for the Venezuelan opposition has now been given a top priority and will be handled directly by the State Department.

The funds requested in the State Department's budget for 2012 most likely will be directed towards political campaigns, since Venezuela has both key presidential and regional elections that year.

The State Department budget also requests $20 million in funding for anti-Castro groups in Miami and elsewhere to continue efforts to undermine the Cuban Revolution.

Do US taxpayers know their hard-earned dollars are going to fund political activities in other nations instead of being invested in jobs, healthcare and social programs in their own country?

EMBARGO AGAINST VENEZUELA

This week Republican congressman and Head of the House of Representatives Sub-Committee on Foreign Affairs for the Western Hemisphere, Connie Mack, called on the Obama administration to impose an economic embargo against Venezuela, citing alleged links to terrorist groups as justification.

Mack, a neoconservative representing Southern Florida, also requested the US include Venezuela on this year's "state sponsors of terrorism" list, a petition the congressman has made unsuccessfully during the last three years.

During a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Mack referred to the democratically-elected Venezuelan President as a "thugocrat" who uses "weapons" such as "oppression, aggression, terrorism and drugs" to "destroy liberty and democracy in Latin America".

Mack did not present any evidence to back his outrageous claims. The Floridian Republican went so far as to allege that President Hugo Chavez "has become the Osama bin Laden and the Ahmadineyad of the Western Hemisphere".

During the past several years, right-wing sectors in Washington have escalated calls for direct aggression and intervention against Venezuela. Their cries have been accompanied by an increased funding for anti-Chavez groups with the hopes of fomenting destabilization and unrest in Venezuela, while working internationally to "isolate" the Venezuelan government and demonize President Chavez himself.

Nonetheless, the Venezuelan head of state retains a near 60% popularity at home and is one of the most admired leaders worldwide.

USAID Cierre Programa Injerencista en Venezuela

Por Eva Golinger

Creada en 2002, la llamada Oficina de Iniciativas hacia una Transición (OTI, por sus siglas en inglés), que financió con millones de dólares a esfuerzos para desestabilizar a Venezuela y remover al Presidente Chávez del poder, por fin ha cerrado sus puertas luego de múltiples denuncias sobre sus actividades subversivas



Cuando Russell Porter, el director de la Oficina de Iniciativas hacia una Transición (OTI), (una división de la Agencia International del Desarrollo de Estados Unidos (USAID) dedicada a la promoción de "transiciones" en países estratégicamente importantes para Washington), vino a Venezuela por primera vez en enero 2002, su tarea era "evaluar la situación política" para determinar como USAID mejor podría ayudar con una "transición hacia la democracia".

Pero el objetivo real no era apoyar la democracia en Venezuela, ya que Venezuela tenía un gobierno democrático apoyado por la mayoría del país. La misión de la USAID, junto a otras agencias de Washington, era impulsar un "cambio de régimen" favorable a los intereses estadounidenses, y eso significaba sacar al Presidente Hugo Chávez del poder.

De un principio, el programa de la USAID en Venezuela - que fue establecido pocas semanas después de la visita de Porter - estaba dedicado a financiar y asesorar a partidos políticos, organizaciones no gubernamentales (ONG), y medios de comunicación vinculados con el sector anti-chavista. Tres meses después del viaje de Porter al país suramericano, hubo un golpe de estado contra el Presidente Chávez, que luego de su éxito inicial, fue derrotado en menos de 48 horas por el pueblo venezolano. La mayoría de los grupos y actores involucrados en el golpe habían ya recibido un financiamiento multimillonario de la USAID y otra agencia estadounidense, la National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

PRESUPUESTO MULTIMILLONARIO

Durante sus primeros dos años de operaciones, la USAID/OTI en Venezuela manejó un presupuesto de más de 10 millones de dólares, financiando alrededor de 64 grupos y programas de la oposición en Venezuela. Gran parte de este financiamiento fue dirigida a la propaganda anti-chavista en los medios de comunicación durante un "paro patronal" a finales del 2002, y luego para respaldar la campaña del referéndum revocatorio para intentar revocar el mandato del Presidente Chávez.

Grupos opositores como Súmate, CEDICE, Primero Justicia, la CTV, Fedecámaras y otros, fueron los principales receptores de estos fondos, y los líderes de los esfuerzos de desestabilización en el país.

Fracasando en sus intentos de remover al Presidente venezolano de su cargo legítimo, en 2005, la USAID/OTI aumentó su presupuesto y reorientó su estrategia en Venezuela, está vez enfocando en un sector que aún no había sido explotado: la juventud.

Del 2006 al 2010, más de 34% del presupuesto multimillonario de la USAID/OTI en Venezuela - que llegó hasta 15 millones de dólares anuales - fue dirigido al financiamiento y asesoría de un movimiento "estudiantíl" y juvenil de la oposición. Talleres sobre como mejor utilizar redes sociales, como Twitter y Facebook, para facilitar un "cambio de régimen", o programas de capacitación del "liderazgo" entre jóvenes, fueron promovidos por todo el país, con el sello de la USAID.

El dinero fue efectivo. Nació un "movimiento estudiantíl" de la oposición - las "manos blancas" - que atrajo la atención mundial con sus protestas contra el gobierno venezolano y sus tácticas innovadoras, todas tomadas de los manuales y guiones de las agencias de Washington y sus socios, como el Instituto Albert Einstein y Gene Sharp - el "guru" de las llamadas "revoluciones de colores" en Europa Oriental.

Pero a pesar de la inversión multimillonaria en la oposición venezolana, no lograban su objetivo principal. Más bien, la popularidad del Presidente Hugo Chávez seguía creciendo, y los vínculos entre los grupos opositores y sus financistas y asesores estadounidenses los hacían menos atractivos.

EVIDENCIAS IRREFUTABLES

Para el año 2010, el financiamiento externo a grupos de la oposición en Venezuela llegó a más de 57 millones de dólares. Esta inmensa injerencia en los asuntos internos en Venezuela, y la violación de su soberanía, fue comprobada con documentos desclasificados del gobierno estadounidense, tanto como por informes públicos emitidos por instituciones internacionales, como la Fundación de Relaciones Internacionales y Diálogo Exterior (FRIDE) en España.

Al mismo tiempo, la presencia de la USAID en Venezuela nunca fue legítima - jamás fue autorizada por el estado venezolano, algo que evidenciaba una extrema violación de la soberanía nacional. A cambio de sus programas en otros países, que normalmente son realizados a través de acuerdos con las autoridades, en el caso de Venezuela, la USAID/OTI operaba de forma ilegal, semi-clandestina y subversiva.

Desde Venezuela, las denuncias sobre ese financiamiento desestabilizador por fin fueron escuchadas por las autoridades, y a finales del 2010 fue aprobada la Ley de Defensa de la Soberanía Política y la Auto-Determinación Nacional, prohibiendo el financiamiento externo para fines políticos en el país.

¿Será que USAID decidió obedecer la ley venezolana? ¿Se dio cuenta que había perdido sus millones de dólares en una oposición fraudulente e incapáz de retomar el poder? ¿O simplemente está reestructurando su estrategia contra el gobierno venezolano, buscando otros canales para seguir financiando y apoyando a sus aliados?

Lo cierto es que no terminará ni el flujo de dólares a los grupos que promueven la agenda estadounidense en Venezuela, ni acabará la injerencia imperial en el país. Pero, el cierre de la oficina de USAID en Venezuela es un logro de la Revolución y un paso gigante hacia la soberanía nacional.

PD: La denuncia persistente a veces funciona, aunque el adversario sea poderoso, el compromiso con la justicia y la verdad siempre vencerá.


[Página oficial de la USAID en Venezuela: Programa Ahora Cerrado! http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/cross-cutting_programs/transition_initiatives/country/venezuela/index.html]

A NOTE ABOUT THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE BELOW

Thanks to all for reading my work. While I am pleased to be mentioned in the New York Times, I am a bit disappointed with the profile piece about me that was published today, Saturday, February 5, 2011. The article makes me sound like some kind of propaganda queen for the Venezuelan government, which I am not. I was very clear during the interview that I am independent, nobody tells me what to do. I choose my work, I choose my subjects, I write what I wish, and as far as the newspaper, Correo del Orinoco International goes, (for which I am proudly Editor-in-Chief), it is publicly-funded by not "run" by the government. It is a public foundation with funding from the annual public budget approved by parliament. However, in the little more than a year that I have been Editor-in-Chief of the English-language newspaper, not once has anyone ever told me what to write, or not write, about. I have 100% editorial discretion. All my books (there are six of them) have been published by different publishers worldwide, not just in Venezuela and Cuba. The Chavez, Code, my first book, which is being made into a feature film by an independent French film company, has been translated and published in 8 languages - English (original), Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian, Farsi and Turkish. And my new television show, Detrás de la Noticia (Behind the News) on RT Spanish, which can be viewed worldwide on different cable and satellite servers, is also completely under my own discretion. I choose the topics and say what I wish, no censorship, no orders, just full independence.

So, I am disappointed that the Times article made me sound otherwise and just wanted to include this brief disclaimer about the piece. It's also unfortunate that there is little or no mention of my motivations for the work I do. I am and will always be a fighter for social justice. Venezuela is undergoing a profound transformation process based on principles of social justice, and I defend its path. I am proud and privileged to participate in the construction of this new patria and will forever fight against and denounce any illegitimate attempts to undermine or destroy the will and sovereignty of the Venezuelan people.

In Venezuela, an American Has the President’s Ear

By Simon Romero, The New York Times
original: here

SLIP into Librerías del Sur, a chain of state bookstores. Read a state newspaper. Turn on state television. Listen to state radio. Eva Golinger, a New Yorker who speaks Spanish with a thick American accent, seems to be expounding everywhere these days on the threats to this country’s so-called “Bolivarian revolution.”

Welcomed into President Hugo Chávez’s fold to such an extent that she accompanied him on a recent trip to Iran, Libya and Syria, Ms. Golinger, a lawyer who first came to Venezuela in the 1990s to research her family’s history, has created a unique niche for herself here: an American with the president’s ear.

She details in her writings what she contends are Washington’s efforts to destabilize Venezuela’s government, interpreting documents obtained in the United States through the Freedom of Information Act. Publishers here and in Cuba have printed more than 200,000 copies of her 2006 book on these claims, “The Chávez Code.”

She has since emerged as one of the most prominent fixtures of Venezuela’s expanding state propaganda complex. Reviled by the president’s critics, she appears on state television whenever tension ratchets up between Washington and Caracas, as it did recently in a spat over ambassadors, to explain the motives of the “empire,” the term used here for the United States.

She also edits the English-language edition of Correo del Orinoco, Venezuela’s equivalent of the Cuban newspaper Granma, and maintains a widely read blog called “Postcards from the Revolution,” which features a photograph of her clad in red, the color of Mr. Chávez’s movement.

“I’m a soldier for this revolution,” Ms. Golinger, 37, said in an interview at a cafe near her apartment in La Florida district. “I’d do whatever asked of me for this country.”

Her zeal invokes earlier waves of political pilgrims in Latin America from rich countries, like the volunteers who cut Cuban sugar cane in the 1960s or the Sandalistas, the idealists who flocked to Nicaragua in the 1980s (often clad in sandals) to support the Sandinistas.

But Ms. Golinger is a far cry from a Sandalista. She eschews the self-effacing style of some other leftist American transplants here. Instead, she has stepped to the fore and emerged as a symbol of Venezuela’s simmering polarization, with her televised claims of American-backed coup-plotting and conspiracy.

Some affected by Ms. Golinger’s accusations say they amount to a modern-day witch hunt.

“Golinger has systematically attacked defenders of human rights and freedom of expression by presenting them as puppets of Washington, something far from the truth,” said Andrés Cañizález, who came under her scrutiny for heading a press freedom group that received financing from the National Endowment for Democracy.

“Paradoxically she uses a right established in the United States, of access to public information, which Venezuelans do not have,” Mr. Cañizález said.

HER influence here has increased to the point where the National Assembly approved in December what is often called the “Golinger Law,” a measure intended to limit foreign financing for rights groups, political parties and other nonprofit organizations, some of which are critical of Mr. Chávez.

Her influence extends to the president himself. In October, she accompanied Mr. Chávez on a seven-country tour that included visits with Venezuelan allies like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran. “Chávez presented me as his defender to Ahmadinejad,” said Ms. Golinger, describing the Iranian leader as “gentle” after giving him her book at a dinner.

She came away from the trip with her own appreciation of other Venezuelan allies like President Aleksandr G. Lukashenko of Belarus, who is often called Europe’s last dictator.

After meeting Mr. Lukashenko in person, she described him as “really nice.” As for Belarus itself, she said its Western critics were mistaken because it is “not a dictatorship.” Rather, she said, “It is socialism.” She praised a Belarussian agricultural town she visited. “People seemed really into their communal work and stuff like that,” she said.

A seat on Mr. Chávez’s Airbus was not always in the cards for the woman born Eve Golinger at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Her father, a psychiatrist, served as an officer during the Vietnam War. She grew up without speaking Spanish and attended Sarah Lawrence College, near New York City.

Curiosity about her roots brought her to Venezuela in the 1990s. She said the family of her mother, an American lawyer, had lived in Cuba and Venezuela before immigrating to New York in the early 20th century. Ms. Golinger settled in Mérida, a student city in the Andes, singing in a jazz band to pay her rent.

After several years in Venezuela, she married one of the band members and they moved back to New York, where she earned a law degree at the City University of New York. But she said the marriage came under strain as she grew more involved in pro-Chávez political activities.

“He didn’t like what I was doing, so it was the reason for the split,” Ms. Golinger said. She then settled here in 2005, after obtaining Venezuelan citizenship in 2004 thanks to legislation that she said allowed her to “reclaim” it because of her ancestry.

CRITICS and supporters alike agree that she has influenced the public debate here and in neighboring countries. While much of her activism is rooted in distrust over American financing for groups that were critical of Mr. Chávez during the chaotic events surrounding his brief ouster in 2002, governments in several other countries, including Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru, have heightened scrutiny of financing sources for nongovernmental groups.

“No one else has been able to bring so much attention to declassified documents over such a long period,” said Jeremy Bigwood, an investigative journalist in Washington who has collaborated with Ms. Golinger.

Still, some who have worked with her question her methods. Before a 2007 vote on constitutional reforms, she helped publicize a document that she said was intercepted by Venezuelan counterintelligence officials. It described “Operation Pliers,” presumably a C.I.A. “psyops” destabilization project.

“It sounded like it was lifted from a second-rate story on TV,” said Mr. Bigwood, questioning why it was written in Spanish, not in English, and how a C.I.A. field officer could have written directly to the agency’s head. He compared it to a notorious 1924 British forgery of a Bolshevik letter that ended the first Labour government.

“Like the Zinoviev letter, it was a fake designed to change the course of an election,” Mr. Bigwood said. Ms. Golinger called the Operation Pliers episode “unfortunate,” saying that she had since grown more skeptical of some documents she was asked to analyze.

Coincidentally, Americans will soon get more exposure to Ms. Golinger by way of Russia. This year she began hosting a weekly program called “Behind the News” for the Spanish-language operation of RT, a multilingual news network financed by Russia’s government. The program will be available on some cable channels in the United States.

At the same time, she said, she planned on continuing to appear on state television programs like “La Hojilla,” or “The Razor Blade,” a nightly talk show that the government here often uses to attack its critics.

When asked whether it was appropriate to use state media to go after the president’s critics, she contended that his opponents were just as quick to heap scorn on the government.

“I don’t think it’s a question of validity,” she said. “It’s the reality of the situation.”