Corporate media attack Venezuela

[John Dolva]

Ex-CIA Agent Reveals HOW Venezuelan “STUDENTs” Get PUTSCHIST Training

By Paul Capote and The 4th Media

The 4th Media

Thursday, Apr 17, 2014

In a recent interview in Havana, a former CIA collaborator, Cuban Raúl Capote, revealed the strategy of the CIA in Venezuelan universities to create the kind of destabilizing opposition student movement the country is currently facing. He also discusses media manipulation, and alleges that one of the U.S. diplomats that President Maduro expelled from Venezuela last September was in fact a CIA agent.

Paúl Capote is a Cuban. But not just any Cuban. In his youth, he was caught up by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). They offered him an infinite amount of money to conspire in Cuba. But then something unexpected for the US happened. Capote, in reality, was working for Cuban national security. From then on, he served as a double agent. Learn his story, by way of an exclusive interview with the Chávez Vive magazine, which he gave in Havana:

Q. What was the process by which you were caught up?

It started with a process of many years, several years of preparation and capture. I was leader of a Cuban student movement which, at that time, gave rise to an organization, the Saiz Brothers Cultural Association, a group of young creators, painters, writers, artists. I worked in a city in southern-central Cuba, Cienfuegos, which had characteristics of great interest to the enemy, because it was a city in which an important industrial pole was being built at the time. They were building an electrical centre, the only one in Cuba, and there were a lot of young people working on it. For that reason, it was also a city that had a lot of young engineers graduated in the Soviet Union. We’re talking of the last years of the 1980s, when there was that process called Perestroika. And many Cuban engineers, who arrived in Cuba at that time, graduated from there, were considered people who had arrived with that idea of Perestroika. For that reason, it was an interesting territory, where there were a lot of young people. And the fact that I was a youth leader of a cultural organization, which dealt with an important sector of the engineers who were interested in the arts, became of interest to the North Americans, and they began to frequent the meetings we attended. They never identified themselves as enemies, or as officials of the CIA.

Q. Were there many of them, or just always the same person?

Several. They never presented themselves as officials of the CIA, nor as people who had come to cause trouble, or anything.

Q. And who do you suppose they were?

They presented themselves as people coming to help us and our project, and who had the ability to finance it. That they had the chance to make it a reality. The proposal, as such, sounded interesting because, okay, a project in the literary world requires that you know a publisher, that you have editorial relations. It’s a very complex market. And they came in the name of publishers. What happened is that, during the process of contact with us, what they really wanted became quite evident. Because once they had made the contact, once they had begun frequenting our meetings, once they began to promise financing, then came the conditions for being financed.

Q. What conditions did they demand?

They told us: We have the ability to put the markets at your disposal, to put you on the markets of books or sculpture or movies or whatever, but we need the truth, because what we’re selling in the market, is the image of Cuba. The image of Cuba has to be a realistic one, of difficulties, of what’s going on in the country. They wanted to smear the reality of Cuba. What they were asking is that you criticize the revolution, based on anti-Cuba propaganda lines, which they provided.

Q. How big was these people’s budget?

They came with an infinite amount of money, because the source of the money, obviously, we found out over time from whence it came. For example, there was USAID, which was the big provider, the overall contractor of this budget, which channeled the money via NGOs, many of them invented just for Cuba. They were NGOs that didn’t exist, created solely for this type of job in Cuba, and we’re talking thousands and thousands of dollars. They weren’t working on small budgets. To give you an example, at one time, they offered me ten thousand dollars, just to include elements of anti-Cuba propaganda, in the novel I was writing.

Q. What year are we talking about?

Around 1988-89.

Q. How many people could have been contacted by these people, or captured?

In reality, their success didn’t last long, because in Cuba there was a culture of total confrontation with this type of thing, and the people knew very well that there was something behind that story of them wanting to “help” us. It was nothing new in the history of the land, and for that reason, it was very hard for them to get to where we were. In a determined moment, around 1992, we held a meeting, all the members of the organization, and we decided to expel them. They weren’t allowed to attend any more of our meetings. Those people, who were already coming in with concrete proposals, and also preconditioned economic aid they were giving us. What happened is that at the moment we did that, and rejected them, we expelled them from the association headquarters, then they started to particularize. They began to visit with me, in particular, and other comrades as well, young people. With some they succeeded, or should I say, they succeeded in getting some of them out of the country as well.

Q. What kind of profile were they looking for, more or less, if any kind of profile could be specified?

They wanted, above all at that time, to present Cuba as a land in chaos. That socialism in Cuba had not managed to satisfy the needs of the population, and that Cuba was a country that socialism had landed in absolute poverty, and which, as a model, no one liked. That was the key to what they were pursuing, above all, at that time.

Q. How long were you an agent of the CIA?

We were in this initial story until 1994. Because in 1994, I went to Havana, I came back to the capital and here, in the capital, I began to work for the Union of Cultural Workers, a union which represented the cultural workers of the capital, and I became more interesting yet to them, because I went on to direct — from being a leader of a youth organization with 4,000 members, to directing a union with 40,000 members, just in the city of Havana. And then, it gets much more interesting. Contacts followed. In that period there appeared a woman professor from a new university who came with the mission of kick-starting the production of my literary work, to become my representative, to organize events.

Q. Can you give her name?

No, because they used pseudonyms. They never used real names. And that type of work, promoting me as a writer, was what they were very interested in, because they wanted to convert me into a personality in that world. Promoting me now, and compromising me with them in an indirect manner. And then, in 2004, there arrived in Havana a person well known in Venezuela, Kelly Keiderling. Kelly came to Havana to work as Chief of the Office of Press and Culture. They set up a meeting. they arranged a cocktail party, and at that party I met with 12 North American functionaries, North Americans and Europeans. They weren’t only North Americans. All of them people with experience, some also inside the Soviet Union, others who had participated in training and preparation of the people in Yugoslavia, in the Color Revolutions, and they were very interested in meeting me. Kelly became very close to me. She began to prepare me. She began to instruct me. I began to receive, from her, a very solid training: The creation of alternative groups, independent groups, the organization and training of youth leaders, who did not participate in the works of our cultural institutions. And that was in 2004-5. Kelly practically vanished from the scene in 2005-6. And when I started to work, she put me in direct contact with officials of the CIA. Supposedly, I was already committed to them, I was ready for the next mission, and they put me in touch with Renee Greenwald, an official of the CIA, who worked with me directly, and with a man named Mark Waterhein, who was, at the time, the head of Project Cuba, of the Pan-American Foundation for Development.

This man, Mark, as well as directing Project Cuba, had a direct link to Cuba, in terms of financing the anti-revolutionary project, as well as being involved in working against Venezuela. That is, he was a man who, along with much of his team of functionaries of that famous project, also worked against Venezuela at that time. They were closely connected. At times it took a lot of work to tell who was working with Cuba, and who was not, because many times they interlocked. For example, there were Venezuelans who came to work with me, who worked in Washington, who were subordinates of the Pan-American Foundation and the CIA, and they came to Cuba to train me as well, and to bring provisions. From there arose the idea of creating a foundation, a project called Genesis.

Genesis is maybe the template, as an idea, of many of the things going on in the world today, because Genesis is a project aimed at the university youth of Cuba. They were doing something similar in Venezuela. Why? The idea was to convert universities — which have always been revolutionary, which have produced revolutionaries, out of those from which many of the revolutionaries of both countries came — and convert them into factories for reactionaries. So, how do you do that? By making leaders. What have they begun to do in Venezuela? They sent students to Yugoslavia, financed by the International Republican Institute (IRI), which was financed by USAID and by the Albert Einstein Institute, and sent them, in groups of ten, with their professors.

Q. Do you have the names of the Venezuelans?

No, we’re talking of hundreds being sent. I spoke with the professor, and watched one group and followed the other. Because they were working long-term. The same plan was also in place against Cuba. Genesis promoted, with in the university, a plan of training scholarships for Cuban student leaders and professors. The plan was very similar. Also, in 2003, they prepared here, in Havana, a course in the US Interests Section, which was called “Deposing a leader, deposing a dictator”, which was based on the experience of OTPOR in removing Slobodan Milosevic from power. And that was the idea, inside the Cuban university, to work long-term, because these projects always take a long time in order to reap a result. For that reason, they also started early in Venezuela. I believe as well — I don’t have proof, but I believe that in Venezuela it began before the Chávez government, because the plan of converting Latin American universities, which were always sources of revolutionary processes, into reactionary universities, is older than the Venezuelan [bolivarian] process, to reverse the situation and create a new right-wing.

Q. Did the CIA only work in Caracas?

No, throughout Venezuela. Right now, Genesis has a scholarship plan to create leaders in Cuba. They provide scholarships to students to big North American universities, to train them as leaders, with all expenses paid. They pay their costs, they provide complete scholarships. We’re talking 2004-5 here. It was very obvious. Then, those leaders return to university at some time. They’re students. They go to end their careers. Those leaders, when they end their student careers, go on to various jobs, different possibilities, as engineers, as degree-holders in different sectors of Cuban society, but there are others who go on constantly preparing leaders within the university. One of the most important missions of the university leaders was to occupy the leadership of the principal youth organizations of the university. In the case of Cuba, we’re talking about the Union of Communist Youth, and the University Student Federation. That is, it was not to create parallel groups at that time, but to become the leaders of the organizations already existing in Cuba. Also, to form a group of leaders in the strategies of the “soft” coup. That is, training people for the opportune moment to start the famous “color revolutions” or “non-violent wars”, which, as you well know, have nothing to do with non-violence.

Q. What were they looking for in a professor, in order to capture them?

Professors are very easy. Identify university professors discontented with the institution, frustrated people, because they considered that the institution did not guarantee them anything, or didn’t recognize their merits. If they were older, even better. They didn’t specify. Look for older persons, so you can pick them. If you send a scholarship plan, or you send it and, first crack, they receive an invitation to participate in a great international congress of a certain science, they will be eternally grateful to you, because you were the one who discovered their talent, which has never been recognized by the university. Then that man you sent to study abroad, if you’re from his university, and participating in a big event, and publish his works, and constructing him a curriculum. When that person returns to Cuba, he goes back with a tremendous curriculum, because he has participated in a scientific event of the first order, has passed courses from big universities, and his curriculum reaches to the roof, then the influence he could have in the university will be greater, because he could be recognized as a leading figure in his specialty, even though in practice the man could be an ignoramus.

Q. And how effective were these types of captures, that type of missions they came to accomplish here?

In the case of Cuba, they didn’t have much of a result. First, because there was a most important reason, because I was the one directing the project, and I, in reality, was not an agent of the CIA, I was an agent of Cuban security, and so, the whole project passed through my hands, and they thought I was the one who would execute it. And the plan always passed through the work I was able to do, and what we did was slow it down as much as possible, knowing right away what was being planned. But just think, the goal of their plan, they were calculating for the moment in which the historic figures of the Revolution would disappear. They were figuring on a five- or ten-year term, in which Fidel would disappear from the political scene, and Raúl, and the historic leaders of the land. That was the moment they were waiting for, and when that happened, I was to leave university, with all the support of the international press and that of the NGOs, USAID, and all the people working around the CIA’s money, and that there would arise an organization which would present itself before the light of the public, as an alternative to what the Revolution was doing. That is what was to have happened with the Genesis Foundation for Freedom.

Q. What is that Foundation?

The Genesis Foundation for Freedom was to have a discourse, apparently revolutionary, but the idea was to confuse the people. The idea is that they would say they were revolutionaries, that what they wanted was to make changes in the government, but, when it comes to practice, when you get to the essence of the project, when you ask yourself “What is the project?” the discourse was, and the project was, exactly the same as those of the traditional right-wing. Because the changes they promoted, were the same that the right-wing, for a long time, has been promoting in the country. In practice, they almost had their big opportunity, according to their criteria, in 2006, when the news came out on TV that Fidel, for health reasons, was stepping down from his governmental responsibilities, and they have always said that the Cuban Revolution would die when Fidel died. Because the Revolution was Fidel, and on the day Fidel was no longer there, either by dying or leaving government, the next day the Revolution would fall. And they calculated that there would be internal confrontations, that there would be discontent with this or that. Calculations that I don’t know where they got them from, but they believed it. And in that moment, they believed that the time had come to act.

Q. We’re talking about 2006. What was the plan?

They called me automatically. We met, the CIA station chief and I, here in Havana. Diplomatic functionaries also showed up, and one of them said to me, we’re going to organize a provocation. We’re going to organize a popular uprising in a central neighborhood in Havana. There will be a person going there to rise up for democracy, and we’re going to execute a group of provocations, in different locations, in such a way that Cuban security forces will be forced to act against these people, and later we’ll start a big press campaign and start explaining how all of this will function. The interesting part of that, what really caught my attention, was this: How was it possible that a functionary of the US Interests Section could have the power to call upon the principal media, and that those people would obey with such servility? It was really attention-getting. The idea was — and I even told them this — what you’re telling me is just crazy. This man you mentioned to me, called Darcy Ferrer — the guy they picked, a young agent, a doctor — they picked him to be the ringleader of the uprising. I told them, that guy won’t budge anyone. No one is going to rise up in the centre of Havana. The date they picked was none other than Fidel’s birthday, and they told me that day! And I said, Look, buddy, if that man, on that day, decides to go make proclamations, or to start some kind of uprising in the middle of Havana, the people are going to respond harshly. It’s even possible that they might kill him. Why, how could you put him in a humble working-class neighborhood to start those things, the locals…And he told me, flat out, the best thing that could happen for us is if they kill that man, it would be perfect, and they explained to me what would happen. All he had to do was provoke. They would go into the street, and there would be a clash there. If that happened, the press would do the rest, and they told me, we’re going to start a huge media campaign to demonstrate that there is chaos in Cuba, that Cuba is ungovernable; that in Cuba, Raúl is unable to hold the reins of government; that the civilian population is being killed; that students are being repressed in the street, and the people in the street, that the police are committing crimes. What a resemblance to Venezuela! It’s not a coincidence. It’s like that.

Q. So, what was supposed to happen in those circumstances?

Once all the opinion matrices were created, and all the media matrices had constructed that image, the whole world was supposed to have the image of Cuba as a great disaster, and that they’re killing the people, that they are killing them all. Then, my organization was to complete the final task.

Q. What was the final task?

Well, to gather the international press, in my capacity as a university professor, and as a writer, and as a leader of that organization, that I go out publicly to ask the government of the United States to intervene in Cuba, to guarantee the lives of the civilians and to bring peace and tranquility to the Cuban people. To speak to the country in the name of the Cuban people. Just imagine that!

That plan fell apart on them. It gave them no result, but as you could see, later, the way the war in Libya went, and the way it was set up. More than 80% of the information we saw, was fabricated. They’re doing the same in Syria, and they’ve done the same in Ukraine. I have had the opportunity to converse with a lot of Ukrainians, since they were in the bases. People in favor of uniting with Europe. I tried to talk with them these days. Trying to find out, what are those processes like? And they were surprised at the images which were transmitted around the world. What happened in Miami, and they themselves said so, but we’ve been protesting there, but those things that appear on TV, that was a group, or rather, there were sectors, there were places where there were right-wing groups, of the very far right, where there were incidents of that type, and where they burned things, but the greater part of the demonstrations didn’t have those characteristics. Or that this is, once more, the repetition of the scheme, using all the communication media.

Q. The relationship between the CIA and the embassies, in the respective lands, are they direct, then?

Yes, completely direct. In every embassy in Latin America, all the US embassies have CIA officials, working within them, using the façade of diplomatic functionaries.

Q. From what you know, is there a greater CIA presence in the region?

Well, at a certain moment, Ecuador was a major power in that, it had a strong concentration of them, and of course, Venezuela, because in 2012, when I attended the Book Fair in Caracas, all those people who had worked with me against Cuba, all the CIA officials, including Kelly Keiderling, were in Caracas at that time. And I was on a TV show, on VTV, where we talked about this subject, being very careful, because we were talking about two countries who have relations. That’s not the case with Cuba, or rather, Cuba has no relations with the United States. That’s a declared enemy. But we were talking about functionaries who had diplomatic relations, and it was very awkward to do it, without having concrete proofs you could present. However, the interview happened, and the denunciation was made of what was going on. Kelly Keiderling is an expert in this type of war. I have not the slightest doubt. When one follows the itinerary she has, in the countries where she’s been, and when I was in that type of conflict.

She has toured a series of countries in the world where very similar situations have occurred, like what she tried to do in Venezuela. And when you analyze Venezuela, and what has happened nowadays and the way in which she has acted, I think that in Venezuela, the characteristic that has been that they are tremendously aggressive in the manipulation of the information.

Tremendously aggressive. To the point where you say it’s a blunder, because there are images which are so obviously not from Venezuela. I saw a very famous one, in which a soldier appears with a journalist, with a camera.They are Koreans. It’s an image from Korea. They’re Asian. They don’t look like Venezuelans at all. Also, the uniforms they wear. They’ve been very aggressive with that image which has projected what’s going on in Venezuela to the world. The greater part of the world’s people, this image is the one they’re seeing, of what they’re trying to say.

Q. They control the media. Do you know any case of any journalist which has been, as you have seen, known or unknown, which you have seen in the process of training?

No.

Q. CNN, for example?

No, there was a guy who had a lot of ties to me at the time here, who served as a link for meeting an official from the CIA, Antony Golden, of Reuters. But, all right, he was an element independent of Reuters. CNN has always been very closely linked to all these things. CNN, from its first moments of operation, above all this latest step, and above all, CNN en Español, has been an indispensable tool for these people, but the problem is that you have to understand one thing: to understand what’s going on, and to be able to mount a campaign, you have to understand that nowadays, there is no TV station that acts on its own. There are the conglomerates, and the communications conglomerates — who directs them? Because, for example, Time Warner and AOL, and all those big communications companies — cable TV, movie TV, TV in general — who is the boss, in the end? Here it’s Westinghouse, there it’s General Electric. The same who build warplanes, the same US arms industry, the same people who are the owners of TV networks, movie studios, publications, book publishers. So, the same guys who produce warplanes, the cookie you’ll eat at night, that presents an artist to you, are the same who rule the newspapers of the entire world. Who do these people answer to?

Q. When you see what’s happening in Venezuela, and you compare it with what you did here [in Cuba], what conclusion can you draw?

It’s a new strategy, which they’ve been developing based on the experience they’ve had all over the world, but I see, I’m convinced, that they’ve only gotten results when people in those places don’t support the revolution. They managed it with Milosevic, because Milosevic was a Yugoslavian leader whose image had fallen far, thanks to things that happened in Yugoslavia. The same happened in Ukraine, because Yanukovych was a man with very little popular support, and it has given results in other places where the governments had little support from the people. Wherever they have a legitimate government, a solid government, and people disposed to defend the revolution, the plan has failed on them.

Q. And what phase do they enter when the plan fails?

They’re going to keep on doing it, they’ll go on perfecting it. We are the enemy. That is, Venezuela, Cuba, everything going on in Latin America as an alternative. We are the dissidents of the world. We live in a world dominated by capitalism. Where that new capitalist way of being dominates, so that now one can’t even call it imperialist, it’s something new, something that goes way beyond what students of Marxism wrote in history years ago. It’s something new, novel. It’s a power, practically global, of the big transnationals, of those megalopolies they’ve created. Therefore, we are the enemy. We are presenting an alternative project. The solution that the world proposes to us, is not that. We know how to do it, and Cuba, Venezuela, the ALBA countries, have demonstrated that it can be done, that one or two days more are nothing. The Cuban revolution has been in existence for 55 years, and with political will, it has achieved things that the US government, with all the money in the world, has been unable to do. So that’s a bad example.

And I’ve told my students: Can you imagine that the Indignants in Spain, the thousands and millions of workers out of work in Spain, that the Greeks, that all those people in all the world, know what we’re doing? Can you imagine that these people get to know who Chávez is? Or who Fidel is? Or of the things we’re doing here? Or the things we’re doing with so few resources, only the will to make revolution and share the wealth? What will happen to capitalism? How much longer will capitalism last, which has to spend billions of dollars, every day, to build its image and fool the people? What would happen if the people knew who we really are? What is the Cuban Revolution, really, and what is the Venezuelan Revolution? Because, if you talked to a Spaniard and asked him about Chávez, and he gives you a terrible opinion of Chávez, because it’s what they’ve constructed in his mind/ And you meet an unemployed person who tells you that Chávez is a bad guy, because the media have convinced him of that, but if these people knew how things really were! So they can’t allow that such formidable enemies as ourselves should be there, at the door.

Q. From the viewpoint of the national sovereignty of our people, how can we stop the CIA? We’ve already talked about the consciousness of the people, which is fundamental in these types of actions, but, in the concrete, how does one foresee the CIA’s work? What can be done? What recommendations do you have?

I think of a thing that Chávez said, and that Fidel has always said, that is the key to defeating the empire, and that is unity. It’s not a slogan, it’s a reality. It’s the only way you have of defeating a project like that. A project that comes from the Special Services and from capitalism. One can only do it with the unity of the people.

Q. Are we talking about the civilian-military?

Yes, unity in all senses. Unity based in diversity, in the peoples, but unity as a nation, unity as a project. Wherever the people are divided, there is another reality.

Q. Where do they have to concentrate? In what area must they concentrate forces to defend us from this type of actions, this type of attacks?

The army to defeat that is the people. I believe that the Cuban experience has taught that very well. There are experiences in the world which mark you very clearly. What has happened in the world, when the people have not been protagonists in defence of the Revolution? And when the people have been protagonists, what happened? And there’s the case of Cuba. We have managed to defeat the CIA and the empire millions of times, because the people have been the protagonist.

Q. Does the CIA use the databases of the social networks, and that sort of thing, to define their plans?

They’re the masters. They’re the masters of that. Fine, there are the denunciations of Snowden and all that has come out of Wikileaks, and all those things that are no secret to anyone, because we suspected, but it’s been demonstrated. It’s been demonstrated that the servers, the Internet, are theirs. All the servers in the world, in the end, die in the North Americans’ servers. They are the mother of the Internet, and all the networks and services are controlled by them. They have access to all the information. And they don’t hesitate to record it. Facebook is an extraordinary database. People put everything on Facebook. Who are your friends? What are their tastes, what movies have they seen? What do they consume? And it’s a source of firsthand information.

Q. Have you been in contact with Kelly Keiderling, after what happened in Venezuela?

No, I haven’t had contact with her. I don’t know what was her final destination, after what happened (she was expelled from Venezuela for meeting with and financing terrorists).

Q. With the experience she has, how far was she able to penetrate into Venezuela, and Venezuelan universities?

I am certain that she got quite far. She’s a very intelligent agent, very well prepared, very capable, and very convinced of what she’s doing. Kelly is a person convinced of the job she is doing. She is convinced of the justness, from her point of view, of what she is doing. Because she is an unconditional representative of capitalism. Because she comes from capitalism’s elite. She is organic of the actions she is doing. There is no contradiction of any kind. And, based on the experience of her work, of her capability, I am sure that she managed to get very far, and gave continuity to a job which is not just for now, it’s a job she will go on doing for a long time, to reverse the process in Venezuelan universities. What’s going on is that up to whatever point they can reach, in the long term, that is what will show the Bolivarian process, in the measure of which the people are aware of what could happen. If that fascist right wing becomes uncontrollable, it could get into power again.

Q. What kind of person who has contacts, who could reach the people, such as by being an activist in a movement, could be captured by the CIA?

They will find them, they will try to do it. If it’s a young person and a leader, they will try to capture them for their interests. We have to train our leaders. We can’t leave that to spontaneity, we can’t leave that to the enemy. So, if we leave them to the enemy, those are spaces which the enemy will occupy. Any alternative project that we leave unattended, any alternative project that we don’t realize the necessity of getting close to, that is a project that the enemy will try, by all means, to take advantage of. Using the enormous amount of money they have for that, which has no limits, in terms of resources to be used, because they are playing with the future and, above all, the young are the key.

The good thing is that the young are the present of Latin America. The Latin American revolution which is there, which is everywhere, is of the young. If not, fine, it will never have results, and if you manage to make young people think differently, if you succeed in getting these youngsters to believe that savage capitalism is the solution to all their problems, then there will be no revolution for Latin America. It’s that simple.

Translation: Sabina C. Becker

Original interview in Spanish

As the guy says, these revelations are confirmations. It's sort of wryly amusing to see the us agencies being revealed for what they are. Thoroughly predictable because they fundamentally have no idea what makes the cuban revolution tick. It seems natural they target education because education was the number one task of the cuban revolution along with redistribution of resources and removing foreign dominance in things cuban. This leads to a dramatic shift in perception and with the us empire fracturing its acts in response to situations clearly have one aim that is foreign to more and more of the world. They've contradicted them selves into a corner. I think it is in these moments that the measure of a nations civilisation is revealed. In that regard cuba has no problems.

Prensa Latina :

Zunzuneo: The Wicked in USAID Sometimes Make up Something New

Panama, Apr 18 (Prensa Latina) The year that the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the United States attacked Cuba through Playa Giron, Panamanian professor and political analyst Nils Castro recalled in an article about Zunzuneo.

That is the name of a destabilization program executed by USAID against Cuba in the Twitter style, which Nils Castro quoted to recall the origin of that Agency and its infamous story in Latin America.

Under the title: The Wicked in USAID Sometimes Make up Something New, the author of the article wrote:

When President J.F. Kennedy shaped USAID, announced it as the agency devoted to gather in only one authority, all the US initiatives for aid to development.

In that context, it is not surprising that the authority repeatedly covered operation by another agency, the CIA.

There have been also operations of another nature. Together with the projects of assistance to agriculture or child malnutrition, the USAID has been denounced for conspiracy and destabilization against legitimate Governments that do not yield to Washington's interests. In recent years, it was expelled from Ecuador and Bolivia for that reason.

Although the US State Department tried to deny it, several reports leaked through wikileaks spread information about operations by the agency in Bolivia and one of them concluded: "many of the economic programs administered by UASID are against the direction the Government wants for its country."

So, it is no surprise for anybody that one of the most important US agencies had revealed the program Zunzuneo, the name of which referred to the Cuban name of the hummingbird.

This has been just another of the many projects for infiltration, misinformation and destabilization against a Government that Washington tries to destroy.

In any case, the difference, if there is any, is that the mentioned operation was organized through USAID offices in third countries as Costa Rica and Spain, something that adds to the usual immoralities, disrespect to the nations that these US officials used for that objective.

iom/ro/lma Modificado el ( viernes, 18 de abril de 2014 )

[Steven Gaal]

The Dirty Hand of the National Endowment for Democracy in Venezuela

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Eva Golinger
RINF Alternative News

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 a pressrelease 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.

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Eva Golinger is the author of The Chavez Code. She can be reached through her blog.

Edited April 25, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[John Dolva]

CARACAS, April 29. /ITAR-TASS/. The ex-chief of Venezuela’s national security service Eliezer Otaiza has been killed. As the country’s Minister of Interior Affairs Miguel Rodriguez reported on Monday, the body with fur gunshot wounds was found in one of Caracas districts. Recently, Eliezer Otaiza was heading one of the municipalities of the Venezuelan capital.

According to the Interior Ministry, Otaiza’s body was found in the Araguata neighborhood on Saturday. However, the victim did not carry any documents, and it took time to identify him. Later on the same day, the police found Otaiza’s car with a bullet hole.

The circumstances of murder of the national intelligence service ex-chief are being established.

The Minister of the Interior refrained from announcing any versions.

Eliezer Otaiza graduated from a military college in Caracas.

In February 1992, he took part in a coup attempt led by lieutenant colonel Hugo Chavez.

After Chavez came to power, Otaiza was serving in his personal guard.

After that, he was member of the National Assembly (Venezuelan parliament),

headed the national intelligence service,

was chair of the agency carrying out the agricultural reform,

as well as chairman of the national employment agency.

[John Dolva]

Latin America Demands that U.S. Respect Venezuela

Asuncion, May 4 (Prensa Latina) All Latin America is demanding that U.S. government respect Venezuela, said Rodrigo Cabezas, chairman of the Economic Committee of the Latin American Parliament.

Interviewed by Prensa Latina during a stopover in Paraguay, Cabezas, who was minister of Economy of the Venezuelan government, said that all the parties that joined the Sao Paulo Forum, the Latin American left-wing, rejects Washington's interference in Venezuela.

We demand that President Barack Obama not be conducive, as he has been done, to violent actions aimed at reenacting in our country the destabilizing plans used in other regions of the world to try to overthrow a legal, legitimate and popular government, he said.

Cabezas stressed that Washington should realize somehow of the change in Latin America, because it is not possible to conceive the region as its backyard, although that opinion still remains in his speeches, as a U.S. senator recently did.

He praised the steps taken in the integration processes, and described as a starting point the construction of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), whose latest summit was held and chaired by Cuba, as an example of substantive political and democratic changes.

According to the prominent Venezuelan economist, the United States is violating processes decreed by the peoples through a true change of era, having integration and anti-neoliberalism as two of its mainstays.

Cabezas stressed the firmness with which his nation responds to interventionist attempts, and to U.S. lawmakers who talk of presenting a list of Venezuelan officials with possessions in the United States, he challenged them to present the lists and evidences of such falseness.

Despite that situation, Cabezas stated that in the dialogue convened by President Nicolas Maduro with the opposition, the democratic forces will prevail.

During his stay here, Cabezas participated as a guest in the 3rd Congress of the Movement for Socialism Party and met with leaders of other left-wing sectors, including the Guasu Front. He expressed gratitude for the solidarity received by the Venezuelan cause.

jg/iff/jrr Modificado el ( domingo, 04 de mayo de 2014 )

[John Dolva]

Venezuela: Wealthy stir violence while poor build new society

Monday, May 5, 2014

By Dario Azzellini

The barrios of Caracas, Venezuela. Film still from Comuna Under Construction (2010), directed by Dario Azzellini and Oliver Ressler.

Before Hugo Chavez became president of Venezuela in 1999, the barrios of Caracas, built provisionally on the hills surrounding the capital, did not even appear on the city map.

Officially they did not exist, so neither the city nor the state maintained their infrastructure. The poor inhabitants of these neighbourhoods obtained water and electricity by tapping pipes and cables themselves. They lacked access to services such as garbage collection, health care and education.

Today, residents of the same barrios are organising their communities through directly democratic assemblies known as communal councils ― of which Venezuela has more than 40,000.

Working families have come together to found community spaces and cooperative companies, coordinate social programs and renovate neighborhood houses, grounding their actions in principles of solidarity and collectivity.

And their organising has found government support, especially with the Law of Communal Councils, passed by Chavez in 2006. This has led to the formation of communes, which cover larger areas and are made up of elected communal council representatives. These can develop social projects on a larger scale.

Violent protests

You will not hear about the self-governing barrios in Western reports of protests spreading across Venezuela. According to the prevailing narrative, students throughout the country are protesting a dire economic situation and high crime rate, only to meet brutal repression from government forces.

Yet the street violence that has captured the world’s attention has largely taken place in a few isolated areas ― the affluent neighbourhoods of cities like Caracas, Maracaibo, Valencia, San Cristobal and Merida ― and not in the barrios where Venezuela’s poor and working classes live.

Despite international media claims, the vast majority of Venezuela’s students are not protesting. Not even a third of all people arrested in connection with the demonstrations since early February are students, even though Venezuela has more than 2.6 million university students (up from about 700,00 in 1998) ― thanks to the tuition-free public university system that Chavez created.

A look at recent arrests reveals that the “protest” leaders are really a mixture of drug traffickers, paramilitaries and private military contractors ― in other words, the mercenaries typical of any CIA military destabilisation operation.

In Barinas, the southern border state with Colombia, two heavily armed barricade organisers were arrested. One was Hugo Alberto Nuncira Soto, who has an Interpol arrest warrant for membership in Los Urabenos, a Colombian paramilitary involved in drug trafficking, smuggling, assassinations and massacres.

In Caracas, the brothers Richard and Chamel Akl ― who own a private military company, Akl Elite Corporation, and represent the Venezuelan branch of the private military contractor Risk Inc. ― were arrested while driving an armoured vehicle in possession of firearms, explosives and military equipment.

Their car had been equipped with pipes to be activated from inside to disperse motor oil and nails on the streets, not to mention tear gas grenades, homemade bombs, pistols, gas masks, bulletproof vests, night-vision devices, gasoline tanks and knives.

After Chavez’s death in March last year, Venezuela’s opposition politicians saw an opportunity to win presidential elections, perhaps assuming that the public merely cared about Chavez’s famous charisma.

However, the opposition’s leading candidate, Miranda state governor Henrique Capriles Radonski, lost to Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro. Having been defeated in 18 of 19 elections since 1998, part of the opposition decided not to hold out hope for electoral victory any longer, but instead to destabilise the country and violently oust its elected government.

Most often the municipalities where the riots are taking place are governed by anti-Chavista mayors who support them. They do this by either taking part in violent actions themselves or by ignoring the barricades defended with petrol bombs and firearms, instead of sending in municipal police. They also neglect to collect trash so that the relatively well-off are stirred to revolt.

Struggle for a new society
What the wealthy in Venezuela are afraid of, and what mainstream media channels won’t show, is that a different world is possible ― and Venezuela’s working classes are trying hard to build it.

This is the real reason why the country is under attack. And make no mistake: this is a vicious attack on Venezuela, its infrastructure and its very sources of hope.

On April 1, a group of rioters set the housing ministry on fire with Molotov cocktails while 1200 workers were inside the building. The fire was started close to the ministry’s nursery school and 89 toddlers had to be evacuated by firemen.

This lethal act is no anomaly. During the past several weeks, a university has been burned down, as have nurseries, subway stations, buses, medical centres, food distribution centres, tourist information sites and other civic spaces.

In Merida, the drinking-water reservoir was deliberately contaminated with fuel. In Caracas, the nature reserve on the north side of the city was set on fire to destroy the power lines that supply the city with electricity.

These attacks follow the same logic employed by the US-backed Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s: assail easy targets that symbolise the improvements to living conditions achieved by the government or organised communities and thereby spoil any hope that there is an alternative to the rule of capital. Yet there are ample reasons for such optimism.

Through nationalising its oil and gas reserves and investing most of its budget in social programs, Venezuela has become the only country in the world that achieved the UN Millennium Development Goals set for 2015. It does not look as if many more countries will achieve them.

The poverty rate in Venezuela has been more than halved since 1998, and extreme poverty has been cut by 70%. Today, inequality is lower than anywhere else in Latin America and the Caribbean (not to mention the US). Most people in Venezuela are far better off today than they were before Chavez was elected.

There is no doubt that Venezuela is now going through a difficult economic situation; it has suffered high inflation and acute shortages of food and electricity during the last year.

Mismanagement and corruption are problems, but as the government itself has admitted, the shortages were caused mainly by speculation, smuggling and intentional reduction of production and hoarding by the private sector, just as before the US-backed coup in Chile in 1973.

Even so, during a visit to Caracas earlier in April, a representative of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) underlined the admirable efforts of the Venezuelan government to deepen the impact of social programs.

Last year, the FAO officially recognised Venezuela as one of 18 countries in the world to have achieved huge progress in cutting malnutrition, which dropped from a rate of 13.5% in 1990–92 to less than 5% in 2010–12.

That’s why millions of Venezuelans continue to live their lives normally even if the effects of economic crises always hit the poorest first. The protesters behaving violently and getting international media coverage identify with or are beholden to the classes least affected by the shortages and inflation. Most of Venezuela’s students are decidedly not protesting.

But in truth, hardly anyone in Venezuela is protesting: they are waging war.

[Reprinted from Creative Time Reports. Dario Azzellini is an artist and filmmaker who has made a series of documentaries on Venezuela with Oliver Ressler.]

[John Dolva]

O U R A M E R I C A

If there was any doubt that the United States is behind opposition violence in Venezuela, the country’s very own Associated Press has added evidence, revealing that the State Department and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a government funded group, sent some 7.6 million dollars to these Venezuelan organizations in 2013.

AP gained access to documents which indicate that funds for the year were 15% greater than the 2009 allocation, although the story of U.S. financing of forces opposed to the Bolivarian Revolution goes back more than a decade.

Leopoldo López and María Corina Machado - two opposition leaders who publicly incited violence to overthrow current President Nicolás Maduro this past February - have been longstanding, funded collaborators of Washington. The National Endowment for Democracy and the United States Aid to International Development organization (USAID), provided funds to Leopolds’s political parties, Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, to María Corina’s non-government organization Súmate, and her election campaigns.

The revelations made by Hannah Dreier, AP correspondent in Caracas, shed light on this pattern of U.S. financing of violent groups in Venezuela underway since at least 2001, when millions of dollars were delivered to organizations labeled as "civil society," in fact the principal source of funds used to organize the April 2002 coup attempt against President Hugo Chávez, which was defeated in 48 hours.

After that fiasco, USAID opened a Transition Initiatives Office in Caracas, along with the NED, investing more than 100 million dollars, over eight years, in efforts to overthrow the Chávez government and strengthen the opposition.

The list of U.S. backed groups includes the student group JAVU, whose leaders don’t even attempt to hide efforts to incite violence, taking the lead in February, organizing guarimba road blocks, and terrorist attacks on their fellow Venezuelans, even burning down a childcare center for children under five years of age.

In early 2011, after being publicly condemned for its violations of Venezuelan sovereignty and national laws, the Transition Initiatives Office was closed, and the organization of USAID operations transferred to the United States. Far from ending, as we have seen, the flow of dollars has increased, despite the 2010 approval of the Law of Political Sovereignty and National Self-determination, which prohibits the external financing of political groups in the Venezuela.

The National Assembly approved the prohibition after evidence emerged documenting the NED’s funding of María Corina Machado’s Súmate, which organized the unsuccessful 2002 campaign to recall Chávez.

The U.S. agencies NED and USAID, as well as the groups receiving funds, continue to violate Venezuelan law with impunity. Budgets presented by the Obama administration included more than 5 million dollars to support these violent groups through USAID in 2012. As AP revealed, the amount was further increased in 2013.

The situation created by the death of Bolivarian leader Hugo Chávez, and the international right-wing’s aspirations to retake political power in Venezuela at all costs after the election of Nicolás Maduro to the Presidency, has generated the decision to opt for an anti-democratic solution. U.S. government financing to support destabilization continues to grow.

During 2013 and 2014, a large portion of NED funds were invested in media initiatives and groups, to mount a campaign to undermine confidence in the Maduro government, according to investigator Eva Golinger. Among these groups of alleged journalists are Espacio Público, Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS), Sin Mordaza and GALI. The campaign to discredit the government and President Maduro, in particular, is unprecedented.

One of the groups funded by NED in an effort to identify new, younger opposition leaders is FORMA, as organization run by César Briceño, linked to the Venezuelan banker Óscar García Mendoza.

García Mendoza manages the Banco Venezolano de Crédito, which has channeled the flow of NED and USAID dollars to opposition groups in Venezuela, such as Súmate, Cedice, Sin Mordaza, Observatorio Venezolano de Prisiones and FORMA, among others.

This past year, Bolivia expelled USAID from the country, for attempting to undermine the government. Ecuador has put an end to USAID projects there, and recent revelations raised concerns about continued undercover operations in Cuba, where the U.S. surreptitiously established a seemingly innocuous mobile phone social network, the so-called Cuban Twitter, and collected users’ personal data.

The NED is required to submit annual reports on its operations, but omitted the names of Venezuelan groups and individuals who received 7.6 million dollars in 2013, and since 2010, the State Department has refused to publicly name the groups it is funding, leaving to the imagination the actual destination of large sums of money.

NED spokesperson Jane Riley said that the agency is not revealing names of recipients given "the severe climate of intimidation, which includes threats of physical violence, hate campaigns in the state media, and legal reprisals," a timid justification for those who utilize U.S. funds to subvert the constitutional order of a democratic, sovereign nation. (Cubahora)

[John Dolva]

Oil Background in Destabilizing Plan in Venezuela

Caracas, Oct 24 (Prensa Latina) The destabilization plan against Venezuela is also part of an internal struggle for controlling the country''s oil reserves, economist Fernando Travieso asserted today.

The venezuelan Government has been promoting for 15 years policies aimed at keeping sovereignty over the natural resource, but the right-wing sectors seek a change of power to boost privatization of the sector, he explained.

Behind the attacks against several Middle East countries and Venezuela, there are strong economic interests of those who are trying to take control of the world crude oil reserves, he said.

The United States seeks to change the Arab nation's geopolitics to take control of their hydrocarbons, Travieso told the station Venezolana de Television.

The curde oil reserves are decreasing since 1981. There is more difference every time between what is produced and the oilfields discovered and in such extend the military attacks will increase, the analyst said.

Currently, State-run Petroleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa) is the most solid company of its kind in the world, due to the high levels of its oilfields under exploitation, he said.

According to Pdvsa figures, the Orinoco Belt is the largest source of liquid hydrocarbon reserves in the world, stretching along 55,314 square kilometers and an exploitation area of 11,593 square kilometers.

sc/iom/pgh/ifb Modificado el ( viernes, 24 de octubre de 2014 )

[John Dolva]

Caracas, Dec 17 (Prensa Latina) The rejection of the recent sanctions approved by the US Senate against the Venezuelan government continued today on the rise in government, legislative, and social sectors.

Media and local agencies reacted in the last hours against the measure taken on last December 10, while executive and parliamentary forums respond in various ways against the Washington Congress.

The Venezuelan National Assembly approved last Tuesday a draft of an Agreement commemorating the 15 years of the Bolivarian Constitution including the rejection of meddling in the internal affairs of the country by the US Senate and Government.

Venezuelans voted mostly for the Magna Carta on December 15, 1999 because they wanted a definite change, and then came the evil plans of the US-backed right to unbalance the country, said the deputy Earle Herrera upon introducing the document. The empire has no morals to accuse anyone of violating human rights, he commented, referring to the part of the project relating to the interference of Washington by means of such sanctions.

Whoever wants to listen to episodes on the subject, go to the prison in Guantanamo (Cuba), where humiliation, torture and death are United States' everyday tasks, said the senator.

The National Assembly's document reminds that precisely the Venezuelan Constitution includes the principles of non-intervention from other countries in the National Government's decision-making.

The text reiterates that the new aggression from the US Senate and government reveal a conspiracy to distort the Venezuelan reality, and establish a reign of violence, in their attempts to overthrow the president, Nicolas Maduro.

The law sanctioning Venezuelan officials for alleged violations of human rights is repudiated by the Draft Agreement, while the deputy Yul Jabour said that Venezuelans assured that the Venezuelans showed their unity by supporting the government against Washington during the act in last Sunday's 15th anniversary of the Constitution.

The US rulers have visualized an opportunity to sharpen the Venezuelan political situation, and they think that this Senate bill will intimidate the revolutionary and democratic factors in the country, he added.

Our Constitution also provides key elements such as the self-determination of our people and the non-interference in our internal affairs, which we are committed to continue defending, he said.

Jabour recalled that after 15 years after the Constitution was approved, it is again under aatack by the United States, although this has not been the first time, because throughout all that time, Washington noted the danger posed by this revolution independent to its interests.

sus/l2p/tgj/apb Modificado el ( miércoles, 17 de diciembre de 2014 )

[Steven Gaal]

Obama signs Venezuela sanctions legislation

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Thursday, December 18, 2014 2:48 p.m. CST

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama on Thursday signed legislation to impose sanctions on Venezuelan government officials found to have violated protesters' rights during demonstrations earlier this year.

Congress had approved the measure last week and sent it to him for his signature.

The measure would deny visas and freeze assets of officials involved in what the law considers a crackdown on political opponents during three months of street protests in Venezuela over crime and the economy that left 43 dead.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro had railed against the measure's "insolent imperialist sanctions" after it was passed by the Senate. The government of OPEC member Venezuela has accused the opposition of plotting with Washington to topple Maduro.

(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Grant McCool)

Edited December 18, 2014 by Steven Gaal

[John Dolva]

Group of 77 And China condemns US sanctions against Venezuelan officials

World

December 23, 6:51 UTC+3

G77 + China is a large international association of developing countries created at a conference of foreign ministers of Asian, African and Latin American developing nations in 1964

BUENOS AIRES, December 23. /TASS/. International community of developing countries known as the Group of 77 and China (G77 + China) condemns the U.S. sanctions against a number of Venezuelan government officials, President Evo Morales of Bolivia said on Monday.

Bolivia currently holds a term of rotating presidency of the association that functions within the format of the UN.

© EPA/MARCELO HERNANDEZ

Bolivia invites Russia to G77

Morales said G77 + China had passed a resolution calling for an urgent revocation of sanctions against Venezuela as they undermined the UN Charter and international law, including the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of sovereign countries.

G77 + China urged the international community to take efficacious steps towards preventing a unilateral use of coercive economic measures against the developing countries, Morales said.

U.S. Congress passed a bill earlier that envisioned new unilateral sanctions against Venezuela. President Barack Obama signed it into law last week.

First and foremost, the law bans the issuance of U.S. entry visas to the former and incumbent Venezuelan officials whom Washington holds responsible for what it believes to be encroachments on human rights.

G77 + China is a large international association of developing countries created at a conference of foreign ministers of Asian, African and Latin American developing nations in 1964.

At the initial stages of its history, it had seventy-seven members and the fact offered the reason for its name but its current membership has risen to 133.

[John Dolva]

Defender of the Venezuelan people underlines social accent of its management PDF Print E-mail

Dec (PL) The newly elect Defender of the People of Venezuela for the period 2014-2021, Tarek William, made sure today here that it will grant to its management towards internal a social and popular accent.
He hoped to work without distinction for all the Venezuelans by means of the functioning of this institution to intercome up in the conflicts, and to exercise the defense and protection dedicated in the Constitution, added in declarations to Noticias24 TV.

The politician, lawyer and poet, elect this December in this position, moved forward that along with other organisms of the State it will direct its action in particular to vulnerable social sectors, campaign to raise public awareness campaigns to create a culture of peace and the promotion of a society of reunion.

We will relaunch the role of the Defensoría of the People as intermediary between the powers of the State "so that a denunciation that could be done on human rights violation has a prompt answer", he affirmed.

For William, the impunity is the biggest enemy of these rights and that's why the Defensoría will be to the order for the dialogue between the Venezuelans and between the political factors, me called the fact is that there becomes stronger this channel of communication and of debate, he stood out.

He added on this matter that it was not chance that its first official act was a mass for the peace last December 24 with relatives of the victims of the guarimbas (violent acts caused by the right).

On recent criticism of the Committee Against the Torture of the UNO, the Defender of the People clarified that he will look for objective information, although it moved forward that all these cases are being treated by different organisms of the State.

According to William, any activity that implies an action violatoria to the human rights be called a torture, extrajudicial execution or illegitimate deprivation of the freedom, it has to receive an administration of justice that each of these alleged offenses allows to sanction.

"No authority of the State comes to the Government to endorse circumstances as the torture or to apply illegally a death penalty, of that I am completely sure", it clarified.

With regard to the international projection of the Defensoría of the People, William remembered that a very negative crusade exists in the world against Venezuela, although the government has extended the civil and political rights.

These internal advances turn out to be reduced by a terrible campaign in opposing responsible for international organizations of the process of transformations of the country "and I believe that it there is to debate it in the international forums", it indicated.

pgh/apb

Dec (PL) The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, urged to start a solid unit in Latin America to face the offensive of the United States against the region, according to interview that there publishes today the newspaper Day.
In declarations during the recent summit of the Common market of the South, in Argentina, Morales condemned to the journalist Stella Calloni the creation of what it considered to be as the frustrated states that, he said, they have affected to several countries of the area.

It indicated that they are part of the American offensive that includes the called war against the drug trafficking, used to act against popular leaders and peoples of the continent.

They handle, he said, the war to the drug trafficking with ends of geopolitical character and it serves to him to accuse governments and to finish them that way.

Enclosed they said to me Andean Bin Laden and accused us of terrorists and drug traffickers, when the first country that impels and favors the drug trafficking is the United States, he emphasized.

The drug trafficking looks like the big business of the capitalist system, expressed the Bolivian chief, who questioned that such a developed country and with so many technology this scourge could not control.

Earlier they were ordering to murder political or social leaders and were accusing them of communists, of red, or were demolishing governments that they were not handling. Now to the presidents and antimperialistas they accuse the peoples of drug traffickers, of terrorists, he insisted.

I think that the country that impels the drug trafficking is the United States, a big business; it is the big illegal business of the capitalist system, the Bolivian leader noticed.

He criticized hardly that the United States continues as if nothing should happen with its aggression politics.

He repeated that the reduction of the oil provoked by the United States is directed to attack economically Venezuela and also to Russia.

On this matter he thought that the pressures and economic sanctions are used like economic terrorism, because they fail in trying military coups and other forms of blows, which have suffered all the countries in these recent years.

They forget that we are in times of integration and unit of Latin America and that this integration is a liberating process, it pronounced itself.

Mulberry trees it referred to the Alliance Bolivariana for the Peoples of Our America (DAWN) like the group of integration with major political, ideological and anti-imperialistic definition.

He reflected, also, on what happens in the continent, where "we have managed to liberate ourselves politically, that it is a way of liberating us economically and of deciding we. They wanted to dominate us politically to steal us, but that ended, it has changed".

"They wanted to divide us to control ourselves. And we are joining increasingly and do not depend now on the political decisions that come from the World Bank or from the International Fund, but other new ways have us of trying to dominate, with provocations, aggressions, like what it is happening now with Venezuela, or in Argentina with these funds vulture, which they threaten with sequestrations, with everything", specified.

He said that before these threats "there are reactions in our peoples and us solidarizamos with the brothers. It has to be an active solidarity".

We want neither interventions nor blackmails nor that determine us. I hope that the president of the United States, Barack Obama should not be wrong, it concluded.

mgt/ool

[John Dolva]

Venezuelan President Denounces Coup Attempt

Caracas, Jan 23 (Prensa Latina) Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, denounced today that local rightwing groups, supported by elements abroad, prepare a coup against the constitutional government of this nation, which they allege do not know.

Financed by Colombian drugtraffickers and reactionary sectors of the United States rightwing, responsable for the coup attempt of 2014 and the one staged in 2002, organize a "forum" for next Monday and openly call to insubordination, said the President.

Three former Latin American presidents are summoned to participate: Felipe Calderon of Mexico, Sebastian Piñera of Chile and Andres Pastrana of Colombia, he informed.

They come to support a coup dÂ�état, he warned, but in case this comes to happen, they will be blood-stained forever.

There is money from drugtrafficking involved in that alleged forum organized by a group that disavows this government and its institutions to sabotage public opinion, stressed Maduro.

There is freedom of expression and everyone can emit their opinions freely, but with respect to the Constitution, said the President.

He also recalled that the Piñera government privatized education in Chile, repressed students and the mapuches, while Calderon was linked to drugtrafficking in Mexico.

During a popular rally to commemorate the overthrow of Marcos Perez Jimenez dicftatorship, Maduro denounced the strategies of rightwing groups aimed at destabilizing the country.

Before that rally, Maduro asked the National Assembly to open a historic investigation of the present economic conspiracy and those responsible for it.

He also called for a permanent mobilization of the people to defeat the economic war.

While some attempt to generate chaos in Venezuela, the executive holds meetings with businesspeople to guarantee production, supplies of food and other goods, he indicated.

In fact, we have reached agreements with the main 70 food and essential products distributors, he affirmed.

The government maintains as priority the investment in infrastructure, generation of employment, protection of income and salaries, the access to services as health and education, concluded the President.

ef/mgt/ifb Modificado el ( viernes, 23 de enero de 2015 )

[Steven Gaal]

Featured

The US Covert War on Venezuela in 2015 – Diary:

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Jan 22

By Arturo Rosales writes from Caracas

Axis of Logic

Friday, Jan 23, 2015

Today is Day #1 for the distributors and wholesalers of food, cleaning and personal hygiene products when these companies will be interviewed and obliged to sign an ultimatum to comply with their social and constitutional duties to deliver products regularly, and on time. We will update on this process in the coming days.

A worker from the pharmacy chain Farmatodo spoke out on the state TV channel VTV confirming that this company has always formed part of the economic war since President Maduro was elected in April 2013. He stated that products were retained and hidden from the public to cause irritation and ensure that long lines formed. These products include diapers, corn flour, wheat flour, detergent, bath soap, deodorant and shampoo.

Lines outside a Farmatodo store in Caracas

Minister of Defense, General-in-Chief Vladmir Padrino Lopez, confirmed on his Twitter account that the Armed Forces had discovered 11 tons of coffee beans in sacks ready to be smuggled to Colombia. These sacks were confiscated and arrests made. Coffee has been difficult to find for several months and such contraband just aggravates the situation.

Contraband coffee beans destined for Colombia

National Airlines being looked at

Due to hundreds of complaints from passengers since the beginning of this month, the authorities are taking a close look at the service national airlines offer - this has always left something to be desired at the best of times.

Complaints include overpricing, planes overbooked, rude treatment by airline staff, late arrivals and departures and flights cancelled for no good reason, leaving families stranded.

The government will try to resolve this impasse by setting up working groups so as to improve service and value for money and so give a better deal to the long-suffering passengers.

Bicentenario managers jailed

The managers of a Bicentenario Supermarket in Ciudad Bolivar, Jorge Pérez Zapata and Magaly Campos Abad, were remanded in custody to await trial for reselling basic products at speculative prices from the store they managed.

Warehouse full of hoarded products in Ciudad Bolivar

They were also accused of hoarding and corrupting others to participate in their criminal scheme. Another 23 employees seduced by easy money are awaiting arraignment from the same supermarket. Pérez Zapata and Campos Abad are facing 10–12 years behind bars for hoarding a huge number of basic products for which they were responsible.

Damning Evidence of Destabilization Conspiracy

During his annual report to the nation before the National Assembly, President Maduro presented damning evidence of the conspiracy to cause chaos in Venezuela with the aim of overthrowing the government.

He presented two telephone conversations that had been recorded by the Security Services, uncovering the intellectual authors of the hoarding and chaos prevalent in Venezuela since January 8.

The people involved are both ex–military personnel, presumably in the pay of the US Think Tank behind the current problems in Venezuela. They are Iván Carratu Molina and José de Jesús Gómez Bustamante – a former Colonel in the Venezuelan army and a graduate of the School of the Americas, of which he appears to be very proud.

In the conversation Gómez Bustamante confirms that ex-Chavista and head of Venezuelan Civil Defense, General Rivero, is working hand-in-glove with the jailed leader of the fascist political party Voluntad Popular, Leopoldo López, who is currently awaiting trial in the military prison of Ramo Verde.

From a video clip of the conspirators

The recorded conversation took place on December 17, 2014 and the main objective was to generate public looting, by hiding products from them and boosting prices. In other words, a replica of the Caracazo looting and popular rebellion of February 27–28, 1989 when security forces murdered 3,000 people in cold blood to protect private property under orders from then president Carlos Andrés Pérez.

The second audio is between Gómez Bustamante and one Franklin Hernández, calling from the Andean city of Mérida. These two conspirators discuss causing chaos by sending in agents-provocateurs in the lines waiting to buy food causing the stores to close and then provoking the public to riot and loot the products. This conversation took place in early January.

Based on this information, President Maduro ordered the National Guard to patrol all supermarkets with lines outside to avoid these heinous plans being put into action. There were very few problems and hardly any looting with the exception of a Farmatodo store in Falcón state where the workers were hiding diapers from desperate mothers.

The three conspirators in the video/audio are all now behind bars as investigations continue into who is really behind the planning and financing of this pre-coup plan that has been put into action so far this year.

The soundtrack with subtitles was shown on live TV on all national channels and heard on all radio stations as Maduro spoke in front of the opposition deputies and 80 ambassadors present for his annual report.

There is no doubt that Venezuela is under attack both economically and politically, and the strength of resistance will be made evident in the march called by the governing United Socialist Party (PSUV) for January 23 – an iconic date in contemporary Venezuela history when the last dictator, Pérez Jimenez, was ousted by a combined popular and military uprising in 1958 leading to the modern – albeit corrupt for 40 years– democratic era.

[Steven Gaal]

US Embassy Bribing Venezuela Officials to Topple Maduro Government

By Telesur

Global Research, February 04, 2015

Telesur

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro made the accusations on his TV show, saying he provided evidence to regional organizations and asked them to mediate.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro accused officials at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas of conspiring to bribe people close to the Venezuelan government, including current and former ministers and military officials, in order for them to conspire against the Bolivarian government.

The president made the accusation during a televised speech Tuesday.

Maduro added that the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) Secretary-General Ernesto Samper will be visiting Venezuela Wednesday to verify claims that a coup conspiracy is afoot in Venezuela, adding that he is calling on the the regional bloc to work with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) to mediate in the conflict between Venezuela and the United States.

The Venezuelan leader said Samper had been provided with “proof” of the activities of U.S. diplomatic staff in Venezuela and expressed hope that President Barack Obama is unaware of these activities, saying he is giving Obama “the benefit of the doubt.”

He repeated his accusation that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was behind the plot, saying the U.S. politician told regional leaders that the Venezuelan government would be “overthrown.” Maduro said presidents of the region had told him this directly at the recent CELAC summit in Costa Rica.

The U.S. applied new sanctions against Venezuela Monday, which were repudiated by Caracas. In a statement, the Ministry of Foreign affairs stated, “The people of Venezuela ratifies their independence and sovereignty. We do not recognize … interference of any kind by foreign powers.”

Caracas also noted that the action of the U.S. “contravenes the will of all governments and peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean,” referencing unanimous declarations at the CELAC summit against foreign intervention in the region.

The Venezuelan government has been the target of anincreasingly aggressive media campaign, attacking the country’s leader’s and policies in order to justify foreign intervention.

“All imperialist wars have been precipitated by media campaigns such as this one, giving false information that wishes to provide the world with the justification for an intervention,” said Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez.

[John Dolva]

HAVANA, FEBRUARY 6, 2015

OFFICIAL VOICE OF THE COMMUNIST
PARTY OF CUBA CENTRAL COMMITTEE

Author: lidice velenzuela | lidice@granma.cu

february 5, 2015 10:02:50

President Nicolás Maduro has addressed the brutal economic war and media campaigns against Venezuela.

The Bolivarian government of Venezuela is currently under continual fire from the international and domestic right wing. These forces - divided but backed by the U.S. – are attempting to destabilize and overthrow the Bolivarian Revolution with plans ranging from the prolongation of a brutal economic war to smear campaigns against its leaders, through the worldwide media dissemination of misinformation.

What’s happening in Venezuela is longstanding, as since 1999, when the late historic leader of the Revolution, Hugo Chávez, arrived at Miraflores Palace, right-wing forces have not ceased in their attacks on the socialist political project that prioritizes improved quality of life for the poorest citizens, to the detriment of the privileged local bourgeoisie, which has resulted in the increasing political polarization of the country in which a revolutionary majority has prevailed.

However, although attacked by the domestic media, supported by foreign organizations with large circulations, such as the right-wing newspaper ABC of Spain, the government of President Nicolás Maduro, who replaced Chávez in 2013 by popular vote, is making extraordinary efforts to resist counter-revolutionary attacks.

Chavista forces are mobilized and have not allowed the pro-U.S. opposition to take over the streets.

Presenting his annual speech to citizens at the National Assembly on January 21, Maduro noted that this customary speech had been preceded by an enemy campaign of psychological warfare, which sought to create a state of street violence - like that of 2014 which left 43 dead - due to shortages of staples caused by a combination of hoarding by large importers and increased purchases due to the holiday season, resulting in queues of hundreds of people.

Once again, the opposition call for a national strike on January 12 failed, and faced with the economic programs already put in place by the government to normalize the situation, they moved on to other phases of their current strategy of destabilization.

The President stated, “The Venezuelan right concluded that, given the difficult situation created by the economic war and falling oil prices, the government would have no choice but to proceed with a large currency devaluation, accompanied by a set of neoliberal measures which would adversely impact the living conditions of the people, and create favorable conditions for their return to power and the reverse of the revolutionary process,” which has not happened.

The drop in oil prices to control the international market - designed by Washington to impact nations like Russia and Venezuela, - clashed with government plans for the creation of projects to increase productive capacity without oil dependence, operations to control hoarding, and the immediate sale of goods at fair prices. In this context, the renowned Venezuelan journalist, Eleazar Díaz Rangel, director of the newspaper Últimas Noticias, warned in his column that, “the maneuvers employed by Washington to overthrow Chilean President Salvador Allende, in the 70s,” are being used against the country, stating that in messages of the time exchanged between Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Richard Helms, the latter noted, “A suddenly disastrous economic situation would be the most logical pretext for a military move.” In the midst of the revolutionary counteroffensive, the right sought to put together a media spectacle by inviting to Venezuela three former Latin American presidents, renowned for the neoliberal governments that ruined their nations - Andrés Pastrana of Colombia, Felipe Calderón of Mexico and Sebastián Piñera of Chile - with the intention of visiting, without government authorization, the imprisoned counterrevolutionary leader, Leopoldo López. López – one of the leaders behind the so-called guarimbas (violent street barricades) of last year – whose trial has been delayed for a year because he refuses to appear before the judge, while relatives of the victims demand justice. A competent court ruled that López was subject to a default judgement, and, beginning this month, actions have accelerated to continue his prosecution.

These former presidents, a sorry memory for their people, thanks to their neoliberal and repressive policies, traveled to Caracas to participate in a forum called Neoliberalism and Human Rights last January 26, under the auspices of the discredited opposition coalition, Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), led by the former deputy, Maria Corina Machado, Antonio Ledezma (metropolitan mayor of Caracas) and the governor of Miranda State, Henrique Capriles.

The visit by these right-wing politicians, which like other plans ended in failure, caused another element of the strategy against the Revolution to be put into motion: with a global media campaign accusing, without evidence, Venezuelan officials such as the leader of Parliament, Diosdado Cabello, of having links with international drug trafficking. Speaking to TeleSUR, the Governor of Barinas State, Adán Chávez Frías, announced that the national government will take legal action against several international media outlets that, he said, have sustained a campaign of slander and libel in order to bring down the Bolivarian Revolution. Chávez stated that the Venezuelan authorities “categorically reject these malicious actions” and called for “compelling evidence” regarding the information published by ABC, which accuses Cabello of being “the leader of the Cartel de los Soles,” (Cartel of the Suns drug trafficking group) a claim immediately denied by the accused and other Bolivarian leaders.

The ABC report based itself on the supposed testimony of Leamsy Salazar, a former bodyguard of the late President Chávez and now a U.S. resident, who in response has maintained silence.

The Governor of Barinas rejected the accusations as “lies” and challenged the media outlets echoing the ABC claims to present evidence against Cabello and other relatives of the deceased president relating to drug trafficking. Venezuelan Defense Minister, Vladimir Padrino, has also been attacked by opposition groups seeking to discredit the military and its leadership. Padrino recently denounced a smear campaign against the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB), in which they were held responsible for alleged human rights violations, and noted that, “as a cornerstone of the Republic, the military corps is respectful of human rights and is aware of its historic role,” in accordance with the regulations published in the Official Gazette.

Despite the counterrevolutionary plans, which certainly will not cease, for 2015 the Bolivarian Revolution proposes ambitious new goals, despite the unfavorable international economic outlook, without negatively impacting - as Maduro announced –major plans for social inclusion embodied in the “Plan de la Patria” (Homeland Plan) left as part of the legacy of President Chávez.