When enough people become tired of supporting the rich, and when
enough people realize that a human body outweighs a suitcase full of
dollar bills, then the people will tear down the Ruler's Palaces.
Carl Jarvis
On 1/24/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Venezuela January 23, 2020
While Trump cuts food stamps, USAID bankrolls Venezuela regime change with
half a billion in tax dollars
The Trump administration has spent $654 million in “aid” to try to overthrow
Venezuela’s government, including $435 million through USAID and $128
million directly to Juan Guaidó and his corrupt coup gang — all while
imposing crippling austerity at home.
By Ben Norton
Under President Donald Trump, the United States has dumped over half a
billion dollars into regime change-related “aid” efforts targeting
Venezuela’s elected, UN-recognized government.
From 2017 to December 2019, the Trump administration spent at least $654
million on Venezuela-related aid schemes. While Washington claims this
spending assisted humanitarian efforts, much of the US taxpayers’ money
financed efforts to destabilize and ultimately overthrow the government of
President Nicolás Maduro.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is a central arm of
Washington’s hybrid war on socialist and independent states around the
world. It has a long and sordid history of funding “civil society” groups
and political opposition parties to topple the governments of designated
enemies.
USAID has provided $435 million of this $654 million, bankrolling
Venezuela’s right-wing, US-controlled opposition. At least $128 million of
this USAID money went directly into the pockets of the coup leaders that the
Trump administration attempted to install as the rulers of the country in
2019.
USAID recently divulged this shocking level of support, acknowledging that
it is going to fund Venezuelan anti-government activists, NGOs, and
opposition media outlets, along with the supposed “interim government” led
by US-appointed coup leader Juan Guaidó, as well as Venezuela’s National
Assembly, which until January was led by Guaidó and controlled by the
right-wing opposition.
While the United States is spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying
to overthrow Venezuela’s leftist government, the Trump administration is
aggressively cutting social programs at home.
To slash $4.2 billion in public expenditures over five years, Trump gutted
food stamps that fed 700,000 poor Americans, most of whom are children.
Funding this crucial program would cost just around $840 million per year –
close to the amount Trump has poured into US regime-change efforts in
Venezuela.
The Trump administration has also drastically cut taxes for the rich and
large corporations. Thanks to these cuts, the richest 400 billionaires in
the US now pay a lower tax rate than the poorest Americans.
As working-class Americans increasingly bear the burden of this taxation,
their tax dollars are being spent on destroying socialist governments in the
Global South.
USAID’s role in US coup attempt against Venezuela
USAID has long acted as a front for the CIA and other government agencies,
disguising regime-change activities as supposed humanitarian work. Under the
administration of Donald Trump, the organization’s role as an arm of US
hybrid warfare has become more aggressive than ever.
In February 2019, a USAID plan was revealed to train “aid workers” as
special operations forces who serve in teams with military and intelligence
operatives to advance US “national security” interests.
That same month, the ostensible humanitarian agency was activated as the
lead element in a plot to overthrow Venezuela’s elected government. USAID
collaborated with the Defense Department and State Department in a scheme in
Cucuta, Colombia, on Venezuela’s border.
USAID military DOD DOS Southcom Venezuela aid coup
USAID worked hand in glove with Venezuelan coup leaders, many of whom
disguised themselves as so-called aid workers. On February 23, they tried to
ram a US “aid” convoy across the Venezuelan border.
The putsch attempt was ultimately unsuccessful. So as a last resort, violent
right-wing coup-mongers set the aid on fire, and Washington and the
international media immediately blamed the Maduro government — in a scheme
first exposed by The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal, and finally acknowledged
weeks later by The New York Times.
Actual aid organizations publicly condemned USAID’s involvement in the
violent coup attempt. The International Red Cross said the stunt “is, for
us, not humanitarian aid.” And the United Nations slammed the “politicized”
nature of USAID’s activities.
USAID Venezuela Mike Pence Colombia
US Vice President Mike Pence with USAID in Colombia, after the failed
February 23 coup attempt against Venezuela
USAID funding of Juan Guaidó’s corrupt coup cabal
In its December statement, USAID claimed, “No funds are provided directly to
elected National Assembly members, high-level officials of the Guaidó
Administration, Ambassadors, or the interim President himself.”
But in the same breath, just one sentence prior, the agency acknowledged,
“USAID is providing compensation, travel costs, and other expenses for some
technical advisors to the National Assembly and the interim Guaidó
Administration through assistance funds.”
USAID’s denial of direct funding appears to be bald-faced lies. In October,
The Grayzone reported that, through USAID, US taxpayers are paying the
salaries and expenses of Venezuelan opposition leaders from Guaidó’s shadow
regime.
The Grayzone contributor Leonardo Flores noted that USAID signed an October
8 agreement with Guaidó’s ersatz administration that included $98 million in
assistance allotted for Venezuela.
The Los Angeles Times obtained an internal government memo which showed that
approximately $42 million of that funding was taken from aid that had
originally been proportioned to assist desperate Central American migrants.
Instead, the money was re-routed to “Guaidó and his faction… to pay for
their salaries, airfare, ‘good governance’ training, propaganda, technical
assistance for holding elections and other ‘democracy-building’ projects.”
Today at @USAID, I signed a historic Development Objective Agreement with
@CarlosVecchio on behalf of Interim President @JGuaido to reaffirm our
commitment to freedom, prosperity, and democracy in #Venezuela
#EstamosUnidosVE pic.twitter.com/RCWMbnkUD0
— Mark Green (@USAIDMarkGreen) October 8, 2019
Even more scandalous is how Guaidó’s coup cabal has spent these huge sums of
US taxpayer money.
In June, a right-wing Miami-based website edited by a hardline anti-Chavista
Venezuelan revealed that Guaidó’s coup cabal had embezzled enormous amounts
of aid money, blowing it on wild parties and luxury goods.
The original plan, backed by Washington, was to use the “aid money” to bribe
Venezuelan soldiers to defect over to the Colombian side and launch an armed
uprising against Maduro. In reality, senior members of Guaidó’s US-backed
party, Voluntad Popular, instead used the money to live it up in Colombia.
In just a few weeks, the Venezuelan coup-mongers flushed well over $125,000
down the drain, spending wildly on swanky hotels, expensive dinners,
nightclubs, and designer clothes. (In Colombia, where the minimum wage is
just $268 per month, this is an unimaginable sum of money.)
Guaidó later publicly acknowledged the corruption, but attempted to defect
the blame onto Maduro.
And this well documented corruption did not stop USAID from giving Guaidó’s
political wrecking crew tens of millions more in US tax dollars to play
with.
Am I missing something or is the entire US media that zeroes in on any
negative situation in Venezuela totally ignoring the gigantic corruption
scandal that exposes Juan Guaido's Popular Will party as a US-backed mafia
comprised of white collar criminals? https://t.co/yf2x2dEOoO
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) June 22, 2019
In September, USAID head Mark Green announced an additional $52 million in
so-called “development assistance” for coup leader Guaidó and his fictitious
parallel government, which controls no actual assets inside Venezuela and is
not recognized by the United Nations.
USAID referred to the Venezuelan government of elected President Maduro,
which is recognized by the UN, as the “illegitimate Maduro regime.” It
reiterated that the money would go to funding opposition media outlets and
anti-government civil society groups, as well as Guaidó’s shadow regime and
the National Assembly.
Green announced the new funding while standing next to the Venezuelan coup
regime’s unrecognized ambassador to the United States, Carlos Vecchio, a
former lawyer for the corporate oil giant Exxon who has himself been
involved in a series of corruption scandals.
This September’s pledge of $52 million to help fund Venezuela coup leaders
stands in stark contrast to the measly $4 million in humanitarian assistance
that USAID pledged just two weeks before to help the Bahamas after Hurricane
Dorian.
USAID Mark Green, a former Republican politician from Wisconsin, has openly
cheered on the rightist Venezuelan opposition.
I commended @JGuaido for fearlessly standing up to Maduro’s illegitimate
regime last week at the 30th anniversary of the fall of the #BerlinWall.
Today, I am proud to support the people of #Venezuela in spirit as they
march for #democracy & #libertad. #EstamosUnidosVE #16N
https://t.co/b7ucEFWAEV
— Mark Green (@USAIDMarkGreen) November 16, 2019
Green regularly travels to Colombia to meet with right-wing Venezuelan
opposition activists and discusses ways to overthrow what he calls the
“illegitimate, authoritarian regime in Venezuela.”
.@USAID is proud to support #Colombia in providing immediate assistance to
those who have fled the illegitimate, authoritarian regime in #Venezuela. In
#Cúcuta @IvankaTrump and I met with women impacted by #Maduro's tyranny &
female leaders of the Guaidó coalition. 🇺🇸🇨🇴 pic.twitter.com/1yELM8Pl9R
— Mark Green (@USAIDMarkGreen) September 5, 2019
USAID’s direct involvement in US coup efforts continued well past the failed
putsch in February. In November, the US embassy in Madrid paid to promote
photos on Twitter showing Ambassador Duke Buchan with USAID on the Colombian
border with Venezuela. “It is time for Maduro to leave,” he declared.
Buchan, a right-wing Trump ally and former businessman, speaks miserable
Spanish, but has used his role as US representative in Spain to aggressively
lobby for regime change in Venezuela.
Emb. Buchan: “Me causa una profunda impresión ver cómo 40.000 venezolanos
tienen que cruzar el puente Simón Bolívar cada día por la crisis humanitaria
en Venezuela y tienen que ser atendidos en el Centro de Atención de
Refugiados. Es hora de que Maduro se vaya." #EstamosUnidosVE
pic.twitter.com/CZq2cFiam4
— US Embassy Madrid (@USembassyMadrid) November 7, 2019
The line between USAID’s putative aid work and Washington’s coup-mongering
abroad has always been blurry. Liberal presidents like Barack Obama sought
to preserve USAID’s image, while still using its aid and activities as a
form of soft power to advance US foreign-policy interests. Under Trump,
however, any pretense of independence or commitment to humanitarianism has
been dispelled, and USAID has become a blunt weapon of regime change.
USAID’s role in coup attempts against Nicaragua and Cuba
Venezuela is by no means the only country targeted for regime-change
operations in which the US Agency for International Development is deeply
complicit.
USAID also played a significant role backing the right-wing coup attempt
against Nicaragua’s democratically elected leftist government in 2018. The
Nicaraguan opposition, which carried out many violent acts targeting
supporters of the ruling Sandinista Front, receives tens of millions of
dollars from the US government on an annual basis.
Today I asked USAID’s Mark Green about the lethal violence of the opposition
his agency backs in Nicaragua and the proximity of one the favorite US
grantees, Felix Maradiaga, to armed elements. As expected, he totally ducked
the question. #NicaraguaQuierePaz pic.twitter.com/Oc2UEYcLpB
— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) August 8, 2018
In 2018, USAID spent $24.5 million in Nicaragua. Its top recipients were the
Democratic Leadership Development Program, Municipal Governance Program, and
Lifting Nicaraguan Voices Program — that is to say, programs to help train,
cultivate, and fund right-wing opposition leaders.
USAID Nicaragua 2018
Of this $24.5 million in so-called “aid,” USAID spent $15 million (61%) on
“governance” — that is to say, supporting opposition groups — while another
$5.1 million (21%) went to covering administrative costs.
A mere $2.7 million (11%) was spent on education, with a meager $1.2 million
spent on health (5%). In other words, just around 16% of the USAID budget in
Nicaragua in 2018 was actually spent on aid, smaller than its own
administrative costs.
USAID in Nicaragua essentially just acts as a job-creation program for
coup-mongers.
USAID Nicaragua 2018 purpose governance administrative costs
Cuba has been another primary target of USAID. For decades, it has financed
efforts to destabilize and overthrow the tiny island’s independent socialist
government. The so-called aid agency even created its own fake Twitter
platform called ZunZuneo, which it used to spread propaganda and
disinformation to demonize the Cuban government and call for protests.
Bolivia has been a target as well. After the Trump administration oversaw a
far-right military coup, in which fascist-led violent mobs toppled the
democratically elected government of socialist President Evo Morales, USAID
announced that it would be traveling to Bolivia to influence the May 3
election.
Falsely accusing Venezuela of the hemisphere’s worst migrant crisis
In addition to directly participating in regime-change efforts and
bankrolling right-wing opposition groups, USAID has helped to popularize
demonstrably false talking points demonizing Venezuela, which have been
breathlessly echoed by corporate media stenographers.
In its press statements announcing tens of millions of tax dollars in
support for Venezuela’s right-wing coup regime, USAID has accused Venezuela
of creating “the largest external displacement in the history of the Western
Hemisphere.”
Mainstream media outlets have frequently repeated this claim, citing the US
regime-change organization without investigating its veracity.
It is impossible to obtain a precise estimate of the number of Venezuelans
displaced in the US-fueled crisis. Venezuelan government officials have told
The Grayzone that most figures echoed by the US government and corporate
media outlets are greatly exaggerated, but that millions of Venezuelans have
been displaced because of the conflict — likely somewhere around 3 million.
The crisis has been undoubtedly fueled by Washington’s blockade of the
Venezuelan economy and relentless attempts to overthrow its government.
However, the largest external displacement in the modern history of the
Western Hemisphere has taken place not in Venezuela, but rather in its
neighbor Colombia, where a brutally repressive right-wing government, backed
to the hilt by Washington, has waged a decades-long internal war against
leftist insurgent groups. Millions of Colombians have been displaced because
of this US-backed war, which is still ongoing.
Colombia’s war was aggravated and prolonged by the US government’s notorious
Plan Colombia, which scholar Greg Grandin has blamed for “catastrophic
violence on the country, resulting in a mountain of corpses and millions of
displaced civilians.”
7.7 million internally people were displaced in Colombia in 2017, according
to the United Nations. That is more than any other country on Earth,
including Syria and Iraq.
Ironically, millions of these displaced Colombians were welcomed in
Venezuela. (This reporter interviewed a Venezuelan national of Colombian
descent who was born next door but has lived most of her life in the
impoverished Caracas barrio of Petare, and who staunchly supports
Venezuela’s leftist movement.)
While fueling Colombia’s migration crisis, Washington has sought to sabotage
its internal peace process, backing the hard-line, far-right President Iván
Duque in his fanatical opposition to the peace accord negotiated by his
predecessor, Juan Manuel Santos.
At every level, the US government has tried to destabilize and overthrow
Venezuela’s democratically elected leftist government, blaming the horrid
consequences of its aggressive policies on Caracas itself.
USAID has served the spearhead of its hybrid war on Venezuela. As the Trump
administration pours money into the regime-change machine, citizens at home
are suffering from another kind of sanctions, facing painful immiseration
and growing economic hardship as it slashes their already meager social
welfare programs.
Ben Norton
