The Dirty Hand of the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela
Weekend Edition April 25-27, 2014
Agents of Destabilization
The Dirty Hand of the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela
by EVA GOLINGER
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 in Venezuela 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 National Self-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.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/25/the-dirty-hand-of-the-national-endowment-for-democracy-in-venezuela/
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Here are Maria Cochina Machado and Leopoldo Lopez, and a bit of their wealthy backgrounds. They are fighting very hard to bring control of Venezuela back to the rich and away from the people of the country:
Machado was born 7 October 1967[1] as the "eldest of four daughters [of] a steel entrepreneur and an accomplished psychologist".[3] She acknowledges a "childhood protected from contact with reality" in a "conservative, staunchly Catholic family", that included education in Venezuelan private schools and U.S. boarding schools, and trips to Europe.[4] Her ancestors included the author of the 1881 classic Venezuela Heroica and a relative who was killed in an uprising against Venezuelan dictator Juan Vicente Gómez.[4]
AND
López was born in Caracas on 29 April 1971, into a wealthy family.[1] He has two sisters, Diana and Adriana López.
López is a “political blue-blood,” in the words of the Guardian, who comes from “one of the most powerful families in Venezuela.”[11] López' mother, Antonieta Mendoza, is the daughter of Eduardo Mendoza Goiticoa, who was Secretary of Agriculture for two years during the Rómolo Betancourt years that lasted from 1945 to 1948. Through her, López is the great-great-great-grandson of the country's first president, Cristóbal Mendoza. López is also the great-great-grand nephew of Simón Bolívar. Bolivar's sister, Juana Bolivar, is López's great-great-great-great-grandmother, making him one of Bolívar's few living relatives. His first cousin is Thor Halvorssen Mendoza.[12] His great-uncle Rafael Ernesto López Ortega was Minister of Education during the presidency of López Contreras. His grandfather Leopoldo López Ortega and great-uncle Rafael Ernesto López Ortega were both doctors, founders of the Centro Medico of San Bernardino in Caracas.[13]
This dude studied at Harvard, at the school where many CIA agents were trained, called, The Kennedy School. He's putting his training to excellent use, trying to set up regime change in his own country, to take control from the people, and give it back to the oligarchy.
No doubt whatsoever learning about his current living descendant would make Simón Bolívar gag within his sepulcher. If he had known it could come to this, he probably would have looked been more careful about whom he married, and whether he even wanted to have kids.
Really hated seeing the photo of the two children of privilege smirking together in this country's White House.
Once more is known about these two malicious pampered maggots, Maria and Leopoldo, they may choose to spend more of their time traveling to Washington, where they will feel far more appreciated.
Who can forget the fact that after George W. Bush departed his tour of Guatemala's archeological holy site, Iximche, and the Mayan priests who stepped forward after he left to burn incense and candles to purify the negative energies he left behind.
Here's one photo of Guatemalan people greeting the former pResident as he drives by in Guatemala:
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