Venezuela's Chavez denies plans to finance leftist party in El Salvador

[Judi Lynn]

Source: International Herald Tribune/Associated Press

Venezuela's Chavez denies plans to finance leftist party in El Salvador
The Associated Press
Published: February 10, 2008

BARINAS, Venezuela: President Hugo Chavez has rejected a U.S. allegation that Venezuela plans to send campaign money to El Salvador's main leftist party, calling it a lie.

Chavez scoffed at accusations by U.S. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell that his government plans to help finance the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, saying that sending money was unnecessary because the FMLN is a "solid" and "well-organized" party with popular support.

"It's a lie. We don't need to do that, and they don't need it," Chavez said.
(snip)

Chavez noted that Alex van Schaick — a Fulbright scholar currently working in Bolivia — said this week that a U.S. Embassy official in Bolivia's capital of La Paz asked him to keep tabs on Venezuelan and Cuban workers in Bolivia.
(snip)

"As soon as this was brought to our attention, appropriate measures were taken to assure that these errors would not be repeated," the statement said.




Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/09/america/LA-GEN-Venezuela-Salvador.php

[Judi Lynn]

1. The New Politics of Political Aid in Venezuela

The New Politics of Political Aid in Venezuela
Tom Barry | July 24, 2007

Americas Program, Center for International Policy (CIP) americas.irc-online.org

Five years after U.S.-funded groups were associated with a failed coup against Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez, the U.S. government's political aid programs continue to meddle in Venezuelan domestic politics. A new focus of the "democracy builders" in Venezuela and around the world is support for nonviolent resistance by civil society organizations.*

In the name of promoting democracy and freedom, Washington is currently funding scores of U.S. and Venezuelan organizations as part of its global democratization strategy—including at least one that publicly supported the April 2002 coup that briefly removed Chávez from power.

When he first heard the news of the coup, the president of the International Republican Institute (IRI) praised those "who rose up to defend democracy," ignoring the fact that Chávez was the twice-elected president of Venezuela. Despite this declared support for a coup against a democratically elected president and for the opposition's blatant disregard for the rule of law, IRI still runs democratization programs in Venezuela that are underwritten by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

The IRI, a supposedly nonpartisan institute established to direct U.S. democratization aid for which Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is chairman, is one of five U.S. nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that channel funding from USAID to Venezuelan organizations and political programs. USAID also funds the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDIIA) and three U.S. nongovernmental organizations: Freedom House, Development Alternatives Inc., and Pan-American Development Foundation.

The United States has supported democratization and human rights groups in Venezuela since the early 1990s, but funding for "democracy-building" soared after Chávez was elected president in 1998. Both USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which funds IRI and NDIIA, sharply increased their funding to Venezuela's business associations, its official labor confederation, human rights organizations, and political party coalitions.

More:
http://americas.irc-online.org/am/4420

[ronnie624]

10. President Chavez must defend himself against false accusations,

while his opponents can do exactly what they accuse him of doing, and operate openly while they do it. Mind boggling.

Notice also, that the recipients of funding from USAID and NED include "human rights organizations". There is no doubt that this means HRW - considering public statements made by past and current Latin American directors - and possibly AI as well. This is one reason, among numerous others, that I give limited consideration to references to these two organizations, when it comes to Latin America. Both organizations can provide a valuable service to human society, but then they have to go and entangle themselves in political matters, and shill for the wrong side, to boot. This can only damage their credibility.

[boricua79]

12. The U.S. has no interest in development persay...

it has only an interest in developing its economic interests in the area, and those of its lackeys, by extension.

After 100 years of neocolonial antics...I'm surprised anyone can actually TRUST any activity by any U.S. government affiliated organization. That's what a tarnished reputation will do to you.

No self-respecting leader should accept U.S. money aid unless it is given to a world organization first. Trusting in American officials to disburse the money in legitimate ways would be the height of naivete. Maybe giving it to international NGOs with proven records of competence.

[Judi Lynn]

2. US refuses to reveal groups receiving funding in Venezuela

September 27, 2006
US refuses to reveal groups receiving funding in Venezuela

The Dominion - http://www.dominionpaper.ca

Members of Venezuela's government are calling for full disclosure of US
funding to opposition groups in Venezuela. Documents acquired by the
Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act listed 132
contracts totalling in the millions of dollars, but more than half of the names
and other identifying information had been redacted, rendering the
recipients anonymous.

The programs, which are funded by the National Endowment for Democracy
(NED) and USAID's "Office of Transition Initiatives," are ostensibly
aimed at promoting democracy and human rights.

According to a USAID official, the funding will go to "a wide range of
seminars, educational programs and even public service TV commercials
aimed at promoting dialogue between pro- and anti-Chavez camps. Other
projects include workshops on conflict resolution, efforts to promote
human rights, and training for positive citizen involvement in their
communities."

Chavez supporters and some observers claim that funding for "democracy
promotion" is a way to channel funds to political groups that carry out a
political agenda set by the US. Through USAID and NED, the US government
has provided hundreds of millions of dollars to opposition groups and civil society
organizations in hundreds of countries. Notably, the programs have
achieved success in Serbia, Montenegro, Georgia, Haiti and Ukraine, among
others, where US-funded opposition groups have come to power, though not
always through elections.

"Can you imagine the Venezuelan government financing a project in the
US to evaluate the effectiveness of the US Constitution?" asked
journalist Eva Golinger, referring to one US-funded program in Venezuela.
"It's total intervention." The US government was among the first to
recognize a military coup that removed Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's elected
president, and provided funding to many of the groups that backed the coup.

More:
http://www.dominionpaper.ca/international_news/2006/09/27/us_refuses.html

[margotb822]

3. Well of course

He wouldn't want any other fascist power challenging his own power, now would he?

[Judi Lynn]

4. Socialism is not fascism. Did you understand the article? n/t

[margotb822]

5. Did you?

Chavez does not want to be challenged or question in 'his' hemisphere. Especially by the US...

[Judi Lynn]

6. What information do you have which we don't to prove this? He is challenged continually

by the almost completely opposition owned media in Venezuela, and he has been a target for the _Bush administration from the very first, well before the U.S. supported his kidnapping, and the violent coup against him, in 2004.

On edit, correction: The coup was in April, 2002.

[ronnie624]

11. She probably understood,

but that won't stop her from perpetuating lies, anyway.

[ima_sinnic]

8. recommended as most ignorant post of the morning

--why don't you learn about the subject before spewing nonsense?

[AlphaCentauri]

17. Clarifying that point of view

From 1929 to I939, Mussolini completed the building-up of the totalitarian state.
In 1938, the Fascist Grand Council abolished the Parliament, and set up in its place an Assembly of Corporations which consisted of representatives from twenty-two industrial and professional corporations. In other words, the parliamentary system in Italy came to an end.

Other discussion about the same point of view
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=336940&mesg_id=336982

[Andrushka]

19. Excuse me as I spray a little of this around the thread...

[Judi Lynn]

7. DU'ers might want to get a look at an example of a country funding destabilization of Nicaragua,

and you will see this pattern has been implemented over and over and OVER throughout Latin America. It's an oldie, and not so goodie:

The CIA's Attempts to Destabilize Venezuela
How RCTV President’s CIA Connection Links Venezuela and Nicaragua

by Chris Carlson

~snip~
Nicaragua’s La Prensa: A model for Venezuela’s RCTV

In the same year that the Sandinista rebels overthrew the brutal, decades-long dictatorship of the Somoza family in 1979, the U.S. State Department was already searching for a way to avoid any significant changes in the country and create what they referred to as “Somocismo without Somoza”.<7> In the years of Sandinista rule that followed, the United States and the CIA tried nearly every strategy at their disposal, including all out violence and warfare through U.S.-funded “counter-revolutionary” forces called the “contras,” in order to undermine, destabilize, and eventually topple the revolutionary Sandinista regime. The use of the media would be a critical element in the campaign.

In its attempts to create a hostile media atmosphere, the United States aided, created, and financed media outlets both inside and outside Nicaragua in order to shape public opinion and destabilize the Sandinista government. In the early years, the CIA broadcast into Nicaragua from radio stations in neighboring countries like Honduras, and gave financial assistance to existing opposition radio stations inside Nicaragua. But later, the United States eventually set up its own station inside the country called Radio Democracia with money from the CIA’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The mission, according to the director of the station, would be to “offset the instruments for consciousness formation.”<8> This was logical, after all, since a conscious population might not agree with Washington’s plans for “Somocismo without Somoza.”

The most important media for the U.S., however, would be the well-known opposition newspaper La Prensa. From the very beginning of the Sandinista government, the Managua daily received millions of dollars in payments from the CIA and NED, much of it funneled covertly through third-party connections like Eladio Larez and the Venezuelan government of President Carlos Andres Perez.

Larez met with La Prensa’s owner, and Washington’s preferred candidate for the 1990 elections, Violeta Chamorro, the year before the elections to set up a fraudulent foundation to receive money from the CIA and pass it on to the opposition newspaper.<9> According to one document, Larez’s front organization, the National Foundation for Democracy, “would probably not actually have to serve as a pass-through other than on paper.”<10>
(snip)http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6505

~~~~~~~~~~~~
Take time to research the U.S. destruction of the popularly elected President Salvador Allende, of Chile, after attempts to keep him from being elected failed. Nixon told Richard Helms, who entered it into records now declassified that he wanted to "make the economy scream." If you don't know how he did that, you will be very deepened finding out! It will throw a lot of light into an intentionally dark room since massive destabilization efforts like this were never discussed at the time, and are only becoming slightly more well known now through the Freedom of Information Act and access to a FEW of the "declassified" documents.

From CNN:

CIA acknowledges involvement in Allende's overthrow, Pinochet's rise

September 19, 2000
Web posted at: 9:06 PM EDT (0106 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The CIA is acknowledging for the first time the extent of its deep involvement in Chile, where it dealt with coup-plotters, false propagandists and assassins.

The agency planned to post a declassified report required by the U.S. Congress on its Web site Wednesday that admits CIA support for a kidnapping attempt of Chile's army chief in October 1970, as part of a plot to prevent the congressional confirmation of Marxist leader Salvador Allende as president.

The kidnapping attempt failed, and Gen. Rene Schneider was shot. He died two days later, the same day the Chilean congress confirmed Allende as president.

The CIA admits prior knowledge of the plot that overthrew Allende three years later but denies any direct involvement. The agency says in the report that it had no way of knowing Allende would refuse safe passage with his palace under bombardment and kill himself.

The report said there is no evidence the agency wanted Schneider killed for refusing to join the 1970 plot to block Allende from becoming president, although it supported the idea of kidnapping him and later paid $35,000 to the group that botched his capture, resulting in his death.

It also disclosed for the first time a CIA payment to secret police head Gen. Manuel Contreras Sepulveda, the head of the military regime's feared secret police, whom the CIA knew to be involved in post-Allende human rights abuses.

In 1993, Contreras was sentenced to prison for a rare act of foreign-sponsored terrorism on American soil -- the 1976 car-bomb killing of Chilean socialist leader Orlando Letelier and an American associate on Embassy Row in Washington.

Contreras, now serving the final year of his prison term, has denied any connections with the CIA, and has said the CIA -- not his secret police force -- was behind the Letelier assassination.

The report does not reveal how much Contreras received in a one-time payment for his CIA services and says the payment was made by mistake after it had been overruled by high officials. The report, however, says the CIA had contact with Contreras on several occasions before and after the bombing.

The report says payment to remnants of the group that kidnapped Schneider was made for "humanitarian reasons," to maintain their good will and avoid disclosure of prior CIA contacts.

The report also describes efforts to influence news media in Chile against Allende and to continue anti-leftist propaganda efforts by successor Gen. Augusto Pinochet, "including support for news media committed to creating a positive image for the military Junta" now accused of an array of abuses during his 17-year rule, including more than 3,000 killings.

Civilians collaborating with the CIA, but not acting on CIA direction, produced the "White Book," intended to justify Allende's overthrow with allegations of plans to murder the high command in the months before the coup, the report said. It said the CIA knew at the time this was "probably disinformation."

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/WORLD/americas/09/19/us.cia.chile.ap/

[InkAddict]

13. Latest from Nicaragua:

http://www.nicanet.org/?p=458

Network Hotline (February 5, 2008)

1. Appointment of Callahan for US Ambassador questioned

The appointment of Robert Callahan as the new US Ambassador in Managua was questioned by the Nicaraguan press this week. Callahan, who was spokesman of the US Embassy in Honduras during the 1980s from where Washington financed and trained contra troops, is due to take over from current Ambassador Paul Trivelli later this month.

On Jan. 29 the weekly magazine Confidencial, of Social Democratic leanings, published a translation of an article by U.S. journalist Stephen Kinzer which asked why the US government would want to “rub salt into Nicaragua’s wound by naming as Ambassador someone who collaborated in one of the bloodiest wars of the country’s history?” Kinzer observes that in Nicaragua Sandinistas and ex-contras were able to reconcile their differences “long ago,” pointing out that President Daniel Ortega’s Vice President, Jaime Morales Carazo, is a former contra leader.

Leader of the Sandinista Renovation Movement (MRS) and former presidential candidate Edmundo Jarquin described Washington’s choice as “strange” and “provocative” while several journalists have described Callahan’s name as being “stained with Nicaraguan blood.” Retired army general Hugo Torres believes that Callahan’s principal mission in Nicaragua will be to unite the right wing before the local elections in November in order to produce an electoral defeat for the Sandinista party (FSLN). Uniting the right-wing has been the mission of the past three US ambassadors, all of whom failed at the task.

Topic 2: Labor unions denounce Free Trade Zone companies’ threat to leave Nicaragua

A joint declaration of five labor unions from Central America protested the threat by eight multinational companies with textile factories within the Nicaraguan Free Trade Zones to suspend operations in the country claiming they have experienced a significant reduction in orders from the US. Over 8,850 jobs are at stake.

snip

Ruiz said that the situation in the Free Trade Zone sector is very serious due to the fact that the gigantic Korean consortium, Nien Hsing, which owns five factories and employs over 20,000 Nicaraguans, has also threatened to leave.

Topic 7: Venezuelan aid to Nicaragua in 2007 was worth over US$385 million

During his message to the nation about the 6th Summit of the ALBA on Jan. 29 President Daniel Ortega said that Venezuelan aid to Nicaragua in 2007 exceeded US$385 million. Ortega went on to announce that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had promised another US$372.2 million for 2008. This money will be used for, among other things, road repairs in impoverished areas across the country, the purchase of beans to sell to poor families at below market prices, to develop Nicaragua’s cattle farming industry, for the Zero Usury and Zero Hunger programs and to repair the pier in Puerto Cabezas which was partially destroyed during Hurricane Felix in September 2007. The Puerto Cabezas pier is essential for Nicaraguan / Venezuelan trade. Venezuelan aid dwarfs US aid to Nicaragua. The US has yet to pay more than $17 billion in reparations owed after the World Court ruled that the US-sponsored contra war was illegal.

Network Hotline - January 29, 2008

1. ALBA bank founded at Sixth ALBA Summit in Caracas

snip

Speaking at the Summit, Ortega said that the global capitalist model is in “crisis” and that the “only option for humanity is socialism … the only way to solve the world’s problems is by abandoning the logic of free trade.”

Perhaps the most significant announcement to come out of the sixth ALBA Summit was the founding of the ALBA bank with US$3 billion. It was announced that the ALBA bank, which will finance social and economic development projects in Latin America and the Caribbean, will be fully functioning within two months. The aim of the ALBA bank is to break the region’s dependence on the international capitalist financial institutions.



GOBS OF TOPICS RE CENTRAL AMERICAN POLITICS/ECONOMICS IN THESE "NEWS"LETTERS.

[Judi Lynn]

15. Very useful information. Had not heard about Negroponte's protege Callahan.

Unbelievably crude, isn't it?

Here's the article by Stephen Kinzer to which the article referred, very likely. I found it after seeing your post:

Contra-temps

Robert Callahan is an odd choice for US ambassador to Nicaragua - considering that he helped inflict on that country the bloodiest war in its history

January 24, 2008 7:30 PM

~snip~
President Reagan named Negroponte as ambassador to Honduras after the previous ambassador, Jack Binns, insisted on filing inconvenient reports about government repression.

Negroponte presided over the embassy during a period when US military aid to Honduras skyrocketed, and Honduras became the clandestine base for the secret contra army.

While Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras and Callahan was his spokesman, the embassy not only falsely denied knowledge of contra activities but went out of its way to minimise the repressive nature of the Honduran regime. When the Economist published an article in 1982 about government-sponsored death squads in Honduras, Negroponte wrote a letter of protest calling the article "simply untrue". The next year, his human rights report asserted: "The Honduran government neither condones nor knowingly permits killings of a political or nonpolitical nature."

Every sentient creature in Honduras at the time knew that was not true. Years later an exhaustive investigation by the Baltimore Sun confirmed that hundreds of Hondurans "were kidnapped, tortured and killed in the 1980s by a secret army unit trained and supported by the Central Intelligence Agency".

After documents relating to Negroponte's term in Honduras were declassified in 2005, the New York Times said they showed that "he helped word a secret 'finding' authorising support for the contras, as the Nicaraguan rebels were known, and met regularly with Honduran military officials to win and retain their backing for covert action."

More:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/stephen_kinzer/2008/01/contratemps.html

[InkAddict]

16. If you like that, you'll love this one friom the same newsletter

2. DEA mission to meet with Ortega in February

John Feeley, head of Central American Affairs at the US State Department announced this week that, as requested by President Daniel Ortega, a mission from the State Department and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) will visit Managua in early February to meet with Ortega and explain in depth the links between the DEA and the Nicaraguan National Police. Earlier this month Ortega accused DEA officials in Nicaragua of paying individual police officers to carry out favors for them. “With the pretext of combating drug trafficking, is corrupting our police officers,” said Ortega at a National Police event on Jan. 10.

The allegations were firmly denied by the US Embassy in Managua in a press statement. It was denied that the DEA makes any “direct or indirect” payments to individual police officers in Nicaragua. According to the US Embassy statement the DEA’s activities with the Nicaraguan National Police consist of training, technical and expert assistance and donations of equipment.

On Jan. 25, during the Sixth ALBA summit, Ortega reiterated his distrust of the DEA saying that after he assumed the presidency in Jan. 2007 he became aware of a DEA plan to set up a telephone espionage system in Nicaragua, a plan which was aborted when Ortega won the presidential elections in 2006. Ortega said he planned to review the cooperation agreement between Nicaragua and the DEA in order to establish a set of clear rules and regulations for the US agency to follow within the country. He said a set of rules and regulations is necessary because “practically, is occupying Nicaragua.”

In statements to the Nicaraguan press this week John Feeley went on to say that during the meeting with Ortega the DEA mission planned to discuss the Merida initiative, a regional security initiative between the US, Mexico and Central America funded by the US with the aim of combating drug trafficking, international crime and terrorism. Ortega has openly criticized and formally complained to the US government about how the program is to be funded. US President George Bush has requested US$550 million for the first phase of the program, US$500 million of which is to go to Mexico and the other US$50 million of which is to go shared between the Central American countries. Nicaragua, considered by Washington as the most secure country in Central America, is to receive just US$2 million for the first phase of the program, which Ortega described as an “insult” to the Nicaraguan army and police force which are key players in the regional fight against drug trafficking.

[ima_sinnic]

9. of course "US officials" have no problem w US history of funding RW parties

throughout the Caribbean and Latin America, or with actively working to oust democratically elected leaders, as in Haiti, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and elsewhere.

U.S. meddling in elections in Central and South America and the Caribbean is an atrocity and one of the greatest tragedies of the last 75 years. The suffering, death, and terror caused by their smuggled weapons, calculated efforts at destabilization, and covert funding of elections and death squads are profound.

[devilgrrl]

14. Bugga bugga Hugo Chavez - oooooh scary - he the devil!!!!

:eyes:

[Peace Patriot]

18. What a disappointment the International Herald Tribune is!

I used to think they were a cut above. Now they--and also Reuters--are just like the Associated Press--mindless bullshit, Bush/CIA copy boys.


---------------------------------------

OH, HEY! I JUST CAUGHT THE "AP" IN THE URL!

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/09/america/LA-GE...

I broke my own rule: Always look for the "AP" hidden in the url. Then you don't have to waste your time reading it. You can be sure its war profiteering corporate "news" monopoly Bushturds