Colombia – a Model US Client State and a Dangerous Place to be if you are a Trade Unionist

What is the British Police Involvement in Supporting Colombia's State Repression?

Police arrest a protester during clashes in Cali, Colombia, 10 May 2021. (Photo: Gabriel Aponte / Getty Images)

It is one of the mysteries of US Foreign Policy that it applies sanctions against Cuba and Venezuela for ‘human rights violations’ but Colombia, next door to Venezuela, as America’s favoured child, is immune.  Maybe what Roosevelt is reputed to have said about Nicaragua’s dictator Somoza, is applicable: ‘he may be a son of a bitch but he’s our son of a bitch.’

Although there has been a decline in the number of murders in recent years, Colombia is still one of the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist. At least 14 trade unionists were murdered in Colombia between January 2019 and March 2020.

The National Crime Agency building in Westminster, central London. (Photo: Dan Kitwood / Getty Images)

Perhaps that is why Britain’s National Crime Agency was attracted to the idea of training Colombia’s murderous police. An article in Declassified UK by Matt Kennard reveals that the NCA has spent £2.3 m in the past 5 years training a police force that has killed 63 people since May whilst suppressing protests over the government’s proposed tax reforms.

Kennard describes the NCA as ‘UK’s secretive law enforcement arm that operates globally but which is shielded from any transparency.

The NCA “engaged” with “Colombian law enforcement agencies to improve their capability”. However the NCA refuses to answer any questions as to what that engagement means, its own role or even which police units it is training.

An article in the Guardian on 7^th July ‘I just need my son’: the people who disappeared amid Colombia’s protests’ reveals how 77 people have disappeared since April as the people have risen up in protests.  Of course disappearances are nothing knew when it comes to American client states in Latin America but what it does demonstrate is the thread of hypocrisy which runs through US foreign policy.

Only Cuba and Venezuela are subject to sanctions whereas in the case of Colombia and similar death squad regimes, the West trains, funds and supports their military – all in the name of human rights!

Dolores Barros is looking for her 17 year old son, Duvan, who disappeared on 5 June.  ‘The disappearances have evoked memories of some of the darkest days of the country’s civil war’.

In several Colombian cities the Police have detained protesters in extrajudicial sites, using football grounds and shopping centres to hold people without formally charging them. People with long memories will remember how Chile’s Junta detained people in Santiago’s football ground prior to murdering them. Folk singer Victor Jara had his hands and fingers crushed or chopped off by soldiers who then riddled his body with bullets.

Colombia is a good response to groups like If Americans Knew who believe that United States support for Israel is because of the Israel lobby which distorts the true, peace-loving nature of US foreign policy. 

Kendrick Sampson

Kendrick Sampson, the actor and Black Lives Activist described his experience of a trip to Cartagena, Colombia where he had a traumatizing experience with police brutality. Earlier this year in Cartagena, local civil rights organizations declared a local emergency because of the number of young Black men being killed by police. And during protests in Bogota last autumn, at least 13 people were killed in clashes with police after thousands flooded the streets in protest of the police murdering Javier Ordoñez. Sampson wrote that:

In the U.S., we need to keep pushing our leaders to move billions of our taxes out of fundamentally violent systems like military, police and prisons and move that money into community led and operated systems that repair the harm done, and center care of those who need it most. That is what will keep us safe—care and repair. The U.S. has zero legitimacy in speaking out against abusive policing and militarization if it continues funding it, here and abroad.

We have to understand the struggle for Black liberation is an international struggle in solidarity with all oppressed peoples. From Palestinians in Shiekh Jarrah facing ethnic cleansing, to the Rohingya people, to police brutality in Brazil and Colombia. We must commit to stand with all people fighting against state-sanctioned violence and continued imperialism and colonialism. Our liberation is inextricably linked together. None of us are free until everyone is free. Let’s get free together.

The situation in Columbia has deteriorated markedly since "President" Ivan Duque came to power in 2018 (through fraud & backed by narco paramilitary funding). He is known to be a puppet front under the influence of ex-president Alvaro Uribe Velez, listed as trafficker #82 in declassified US official documents. Uribe is still free despite having hundreds of legal cases against him for narcotrafficking, paramilitarism, and massacres of civilians.

The most horrifying genocide which was perpetuated under his presidency (2002-2010) was the assassination of 6402 innocent young men who were enticed under promise of work in distant regions and assassinated and then passed off as guerrillas (known as 'false positives' but more correctly extra-judicial executions) in exchange for benefits and holidays for military officials and to demonstrate to the public that Uribe's "democratic security" policy was effective against the FARC guerrillas.

The mothers have formed a network to look for their disappeared sons. See Colombian military accused of 6,400 extrajudicial killings

The rate of unionisation in Colombia is less than 4% but trade unionists are still threatened and killed yearly. According to the latest ITUC report Colombia is among the 10 worst countries for working people.

Even after the signing of the Peace Process in 2016, social and environmental leaders have been murdered at the rate of approximately 1 nearly every day. ie more than 200/year as well as trade unionists, indigenous and black leaders and women leaders, adding up to 1180 in the last 5 years

Paramilitary armies which the state uses to carry out state terrorism are still in their thousands free to roam the country now that the FARC guerrillas have left. The government blames "armed drug trafficking" groups but these are not the main assassins of social leaders. The government turns a blind eye when the police or army are found to be collaborators with these groups.

Colombia has extreme land concentration, environmental deprivation, underfunding in health education, pensions etc.. In other words a savage neoliberalism coupled allied to a police state. A horror which the mainstream media keeps pretty silent on.

Hence there are plenty of reasons for the General Strike which has gone on continuously since the 28th April 2021 and is now in its 61st day.

Over the last month during the strike 67 people were murdered by the riot police, more than 1500 injured, about 50 young people have had permanent eye injuries and sexual assaults by the police. The number is increasing as the strike has not stopped.

Further Information on the situation in Columbia

Colombia Solidarity has a revamped web-site which has some good all-round analysis of the situation in Colombia.

There are also some good recent articles in the Jacobin magazine

Also the US NGO Wola

You can find articles in Open Democracy such as Why Colombia has erupted in protest and Alvaro Uribe, the Colombian ex-president, faces judicial worries in the US

See also ‘I just need my son’: the people who disappeared amid Colombia’s protests Guardian 7.7.21.

Justice for Colombia has info on trade unions and the demobilised FARC combatants.

You can also have a look at ABColombia which is the umbrella body for NGOs

Tony Greenstein 

As Venezuela is Subject to US Destabilisation We Remember another American ‘War for Democracy’

At a time when US imperialism is baring its teeth once again in Venezuela, which like Iraq is coincidentally another oil laden country, it is good to be reminded of another American ‘war for democracy’ in Cuba. What is staggering, in view of the past 60 years of embargos and sanctions (only sanctions against Israel are hateful, those on Cuba are full of love) is that when the Cuban revolution happened, it was welcomed in the belly of the beast, the United States.

However that situation did not last for long.  US Corporations and their spokesmen were not amused at seeing their assets being nationalised.  Castro, who at that time had nothing to do with Cuba’s Communist  Party which had opposed his driving out of Batista, was forced into the hands of the Soviet Union by Eisenhower and Nixon. Castro was an anti-imperialist and the United States was the world’s major imperial power.

Castro with Dr. Grayson Kirk, president of Columbia University. IMAGE: JOHN DUPREY/NY DAILY NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES

Today the United States under their idiot President Trump has rolled back the agreement Obama reached with Cuba. Trump would dearly love to see the overthrow of the Cuban state but that is beyond his grasp.

Tony Greenstein

He is either incredibly naive about communism or under communist discipline. My guess is the former.

RICHARD NIXON, VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

1959

Fidel Castro and his American admirers

When New York went crazy for the Cuban leader

by Chris Wild

When Fidel Castro came to New York in April 1959, it was a mere four months since the 33-year-old had led the successful revolution to overthrow the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.

Castro had pulled no punches in his anti-America speeches, and he had extensive associations with the political left. Yet the press loved Castro, and it was the American Society of Newspaper Editors who extended an invite for his visit to the U.S. 

Castro seemed almost super-real, like a character from an action movie, in his trademark green army uniform, boots and bushy beard.  Castro certainly did not disappoint his journalistic hosts, regaling reporters with the many tales of his time as a fighter in the Cuban guerilla war.

The police confront a ring of anti-Castro Cubans at 39th Street and Fifth Avenue. They were among spectators who launched a fusillade of eggs when Castro supporters showed up in red shirts for the fifth annual United Puerto Rican-Hispanic parade up Fifth Avenue. Fidel's fans were shouting "Viva Castro" and "Down with Yankees." IMAGE: PHIL GREITZER/NY DAILY NEWS ARCHIVE VIA GETTY IMAGES

President Eisenhower had refused to meet Castro — that job was handed down to Vice President Richard Nixon. But Castro took full advantage of his 11-day stay.  He hired a public relations firm, ate hot dogs, kissed ladies like a rock star, and held babies like a politician. He even placed a wreath on George Washington’s grave.

Youngsters admire Fidel Castro's beard during a visit to his hotel. The children attended a Queens school with Castro's son. The boy was secretly living In New York while his father led the Cuban revolution. Left to right: Gene Wolf, Kathy Johnston, Kathy Tableman, David Friedlander, Karen Leland and Robert Boyle. IMAGE: GEORGE MATTSON/NY DAILY NEWS ARCHIVE VIA GETTY IMAGES

But within a year, Eisenhower had authorized a plan to attack Cuba. With the CIA arming and training Cuban exiles, the attack when it came — the operation known as the Bay of Pigs — was a fiasco.  

We take A Look Back in Time When Fidel Castro Charmed the United States

Sixty years ago this month, the romantic victory of the young Cuban revolutionaries amazed the world—and led to a surreal evening on the US’s  premier variety show “The Ed Sullivan Show”

January 27, 2019 Tony Perrottet Smithsonian Magazine

Ed Sullivan interviews Fidel Castro in January 1959, shortly after dictator Fulgencio Batista had fled the country. , CBS Photo Archives / Getty Images

The world’s most notorious guerrilla leader was about to invade their living rooms, and Americans were thrilled. At 8:00 p.m. on Sunday, January 11, 1959, some 50 million viewers tuned their television sets to “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the trendsetting variety revue that had introduced them to Elvis Presley a few years earlier and would bring them the Beatles several years later. On this winter’s evening the avuncular Sullivan was hosting a Latin celebrity who had aroused intense curiosity across the United States: Fidel Castro, a charming 32-year-old lawyer-turned-revolutionary, known for his unkempt beard and khaki patrol cap, who had against all odds overthrown a bloodthirsty military regime in Cuba.

Miss Gladys Feijoo, 19, who was nominated Miss La Prensa of 1959, kisses Castro as he signs an autograph for her collection. IMAGE: GEORGE LOCKHART/NY DAILY NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES

For America’s most beloved entertainment program, it was a rare excursion into politics. Earlier in the hour, Sullivan had presented a more typical array of artistic offerings for the staid Eisenhower era. Four acrobats leapt and gamboled around the stage (two of them wearing ape costumes). The Little Gaelic Singers crooned soothing Irish harmonies. A stand-up comic performed a cheesy routine about suburban house parties. Finally, Sullivan cut to the main attraction: his friendly interview with Fidel at the very cusp of the rebels’ victory.

Castro waves to crowds on his way to Pennsylvania Station from the Statler Hilton Hotel in New York City, en route to Boston. IMAGE: CARL T. GOSSETT JR/NEW YORK TIMES CO./GETTY IMAGES

The segment had been filmed at 2:00 a.m. on January 8 in the provincial outpost of Matanzas, 60 miles east of Havana, using the town hall as an improvised TV studio. Only a few hours after the interview, Fidel would make his triumphant entrance into the Cuban capital, his men riding on the backs of captured tanks in euphoric scenes that evoked the liberation of Paris. It was the electrifying climax of history’s most unlikely revolution: a scruffy handful of self-taught insurgents—many of them kids just out of college, literature majors, art students, and engineers, including a number of trailblazing women—had somehow defeated 40,000 professional soldiers and forced the sinister dictator, President Fulgencio Batista, to flee from the island like a thief in the night.

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Cuba Libre!: Che, Fidel, and the Improbable Revolution That Changed World History

The surprising story of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, and the scrappy band of rebel men and women who followed them.

Given the animosity that sprang up between the U.S. and Cuba soon after, the chummy atmosphere of the conversation today seems closer to “The Twilight Zone.” On-screen, Sullivan and his guest could hardly look more incongruous. Trying to look casual as he leans against a table, the thickset 57 -year-old yanqui impresario appears to have just walked out of a Brooks Brothers ad in his tailored suit and tie, his helmet of dyed hair neatly combed and brilliantined. (He was often parodied as a “well-dressed gorilla.”)

Fidel, by contrast, was already a fashion icon for rebellious American youth, his olive-drab uniform, martial kepi, and raffish facial hair instantly recognizable. Clustered around the pair are a dozen equally shaggy young rebels who were known in Cuba simply as los barbudos, “the bearded ones,” all cradling weapons—“a forest of tommy guns,” Sullivan later said. Fidel’s lover and confidante, Celia Sánchez, who often appeared by his side in press interviews, was this time standing off-camera, wearing specially tailored fatigues and balancing a cigarette in her finely manicured fingers. The most efficient organizer of the Rebel Army, she had brokered the media event and now dedicated herself to keeping the male guerrillas, who were as excitable as schoolboys, from wandering across the set or talking.

Police and plainclothes detectives ride the miniature railway transporting Fidel Castro during his tour of the Bronx Zoo. IMAGE: OSSIE LEVINESS/NY DAILY NEWS VIA GETTY IMAGES

With his first breath, Sullivan assures CBS viewers that they are about to meet “a wonderful group of revolutionary youngsters,” as if they are the latest pop music sensation. Despite their unwashed appearance, Fidel’s followers are a far cry from the godless Communists depicted by the Cuban military’s propaganda machine, he adds; in fact, they are all wearing Catholic medals and some are even piously carrying copies of the Bible. But Sullivan is most interested in Fidel himself. The sheer improbability of his victory over the thuggish strongman Batista had bathed him in a romantic aura. U.S. magazines openly described Fidel as a new Robin Hood, with Celia as his Maid Marian, robbing from the rich to give to the poor.

Sullivan’s first questions are not the most hard-hitting: “Now, in school,” he chortles in his distinctively nasal voice, “I understand you were a very fine student and a very fine athlete. Were you a baseball pitcher?”

“Yes,” Fidel replies in the halting English learned at his Jesuit high school and several visits to New York City. “Baseball, basketball, softball. Every kind of sport.”

“Undoubtedly all of this exercise you did at school prepared you for this role?”

“Yes. I found myself in good condition to exist in the mountains . . .”

The hardened celebrity hound Sullivan is clearly starstruck by his guest, and his delivery is far more animated than his usual monotonous drone back in the New York studio. Comandante en Jefe Castro, meanwhile, comes across as earnest, sweet-natured, and eager to please, furrowing his brow with effort as he grasps for his English vocabulary. It’s hard not to feel for the rebel leader as he struggles gamely with the half-remembered tongue.

Some of the interview is haunting in retrospect. “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions, Fidel,” Sullivan says, serious for a moment. “In Latin American countries over and over again, dictators [have] stolen millions and millions of dollars, tortured and killed people. How do you propose to end that here in Cuba?”

Fidel laughs. “Very easy. By not permitting that any dictatorship come again to rule our country. You can be sure that Batista . . . will be the last dictator of Cuba.”

In 1959, Sullivan saw no reason to argue.

The lovefest now proceeds to its crescendo. “The people of the United States, they have great admiration for you and your men,” the host advises Fidel. “Because you are in the real American tradition—of a George Washington—of any band who started off with a small body [of men] and fought against a great nation and won.” Fidel takes the compliment in stride; after all, the U.S. press had been idolizing him for nearly two years as a citizen-soldier in the very spirit of 1776.

“What do you feel about the United States?” Sullivan asks.

“My feeling to the people of the United States is a feeling of sympathy,” Fidel says evenly, “because they are a very worker people . . ."

(“They work hard,” Ed interprets.)

“They have founded that big nation, working very much . . .”

(“That is right . . .” Ed nods.)

“United States is not one race [of] people, [they] came from every part in the world . . . at is why the United States belong[s] to the world, to those who were persecuted, to those who could not live in their own country . . .”

“We want you to like us.” Sullivan glows. “And we like you. You and Cuba!”

The show then cuts back to Sullivan in CBS’s Manhattan studio, where the arbiter of middle-class American taste lavishes Fidel with the same magnanimous praise he had heaped on Elvis.

“You know, this is a fine young man and a very smart young man,” he pronounces, squeezing his arms together in his famous hunched stance. “And with the help of God and our prayers, and with the help of the American government, he will come up with the sort of democracy down there that America should have.”

And then the show rolled on to its next variety segment: a fashion show for poodles.

**********

Today, it is all but impossible to imagine that moment in 1959 when the Cuban Revolution was fresh, Fidel and Che were young and handsome, and Americans could view the uprising as an embodiment of their own finest ideals. As Sullivan observed, here was a people fighting for freedom against injustice and tyranny, a modern echo of the War of Independence, with Fidel as a sexier version of a Founding Father and his guerrillas the reincarnation of Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys, the irregular sharpshooters who helped defeat the redcoats.

A string of other gushing interviews would quickly follow Sullivan’s, conducted by everyone from the revered CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow to the Hollywood actor Errol Flynn. A few months later, in April 1959, Fidel even traveled on a victory lap of the northeastern United States: he was mobbed by admirers as he ate hot dogs in New York City, spoke at Princeton, and made dutiful visits to hallowed shrines of democracy such as Mount Vernon and the Lincoln Memorial.

Meanwhile, American Cubaphiles flocked to Havana to see the revolution firsthand and were warmly welcomed. They immersed themselves in the Mardi Gras atmosphere, attending mass rallies and wacky, radical street celebrations such as a mock funeral parade for a nationalized telephone company, complete with musicians dressed as mourners and fake coffins. Havana was a round-the-clock fiesta, with buskers on every corner singing patriotic songs to raise money for the new Cuban state in a delirious wave of optimism.

Beat poets wrote odes to Fidel. African-Americans were exhilarated by Cuba’s overnight abolition of all segregation laws, just as the Civil Rights Movement was gaining pace in the U.S., and joined special group tours for black writers and artists. A Creek chief traveled to meet Fidel wearing a full-feathered war bonnet. Feminists rejoiced in Cuba’s promise that women’s liberation would be “a revolution within the revolution.”

The entire world was fascinated by the apparent explosion of idealism: Fidel, Che and Celia basked in goodwill, entertaining intellectuals like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. There was a chance, many felt, that Cuba would become a paradise of political, racial, and gender equality.

The reason for our amnesia about how the revolution was received is, of course, political: the popular memory of the guerrilla campaign was an early casualty of the Cold War. When los barbudos first rolled into Havana in January 1959, they were showered with admiration for what seemed a black-and-white struggle for liberty. But Atomic Age milestones such as the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in April 1961 and the near-Armageddon of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, which pushed the human race the closest it has ever come to extinction in nuclear war, quickly overshadowed any romance for most in the Western world. It became widely accepted in the U.S. that Fidel and his supporters had been covering up Communist sympathies that had lurked in their hearts from the start.

And yet, the story of how a few amateur subversives defeated one of Latin America’s most loathsome regimes remains a defining saga of the 20th century. In the words of historian Nancy Stout, Cuba’s was “the perfect revolution” for the visual media age that kicked off in the 1950s: it was short; it was successful; it unfolded in neat stages—“like an operetta”—and yet with the narrative arc of a paperback thriller. It was also full of larger-than-life characters. Coinciding with the birth of network television and the golden age of magazines, it became history’s most photogenic revolt. Images of the dashing guerrillas and attractive guerrilla women—almost all in their 20s or early 30s, some of them fresh-faced teenagers—jolted the world towards the 1960s.

Thanks to the veil of suspicion and ideology hanging over Cuba today, few are aware of just how improvised the revolution was; its leaders were largely forced to make up their own brand of jungle combat and urban resistance as they went along. Even fewer recall the genuine bravery and self-sacrifice of those years, when ordinary Cubans risked torture and death every day at the hands of Batista’s henchmen, who were as sadistic as Gestapo agents. Under Batista, thousands of young rebel sympathizers disappeared into police torture chambers, their mutilated bodies strung up in parks or dumped in gutters the next morning. Today, long decades after el triunfo, “the triumph,” a few famous images of the main characters—Fidel with his Old Testament beard, Che in his beret gazing mystically ahead—have become frozen as Soviet-era clichés.

But by going back to original letters, diaries, TV and newspaper accounts, it's possible to turn back the clock to recapture the atmosphere of Cuba in the 1950s, when the actors were unknowns, history was unformed, and the fate of the revolution hung in the balance. Imagining history as it was lived helps to explain how the optimism of the uprising went so badly awry. Were Americans—and the many moderate Cubans who supported the revolution—duped by Fidel, as hardliners would later allege, tricked by a Machiavellian figure who had a secret agenda from the start? Or could the story of modern Cuba, which reshaped international politics so radically, have gone another way?

Tony Perrottet is a contributing writer for Smithsonian magazine, a regular contributor to the New York Times and WSJ Magazine, and the author of six books including The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games, Napoleon's Privates: 2500 Years of History Unzipped and The Sinner's Grand Tour: A Journey Through the Historical Underbelly of Europe.

From Cuba Libre!: Che, Fidel and the Improbable Revolution That Changed World History by Tony Perrottet, published by Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (c) 2019 by Tony Perrottet.

US Plots Conquest of Venezuela in Wake of Chavez' Death

US State Department Paper

Leopoldo Lopez

Following my post Hugo Chavez RIP– Death of a Revolutionary Nationalist and Socialist Leader on the death of Hugo Chavez and the reaction of US President Obama, who promised to support ‘democracy’ in Venezuela (eradication of poverty and corruption is never democratic and certainly not a challenge to free-market policies) whilst not having a word to say in condolences, we have seen a mass outpouring of national grief.

Of course the BBC has concentrated on the reactions of the US supported opposition who would like to get their mits on the oil wealth of Venezuela, but then the BBC has always been a faithful supporter of US foreign policy.

John P Holdren

The article below suggests that the US is actively plotting to use the death of Hugo Chavez in order to conquer by coup Venezuela.  We should not be surprised at these reports.  The ‘war against drugs’ in Central America has long been used as a way of supporting death squads and wiping out peasant leaders and reversing land reform.

Tony Greenstein

US Plots Conquest of Venezuela in Wake of Chavez' Death

By Tony Cartalucci

March 07, 2013 "Information Clearing House" -   (LD) - US corporate-financier funded think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), declared in its "post-Chávez checklist for US policymakers,"   that the US must move quickly to reorganize Venezuela according to US interests. Upon its checklist were "key demands":

John M Deutch

The ouster of narco-kingpins who now hold senior posts in government
The respect for a constitutional succession
The adoption of meaningful electoral reforms to ensure a fair campaign environment and a transparent vote count in expected presidential elections; and
The dismantling of Iranian and Hezbollah networks in Venezuela

In reality, AEI is talking about dismantling entirely the obstacles that have prevented the US and the corporate-financier interests that direct it, from installing a client regime and extracting entirely Venezuela's wealth while obstructing, even dismantling the progress and geopolitical influence achieved by the late President Hugo Chavez throughout South America and beyond.

John P Holdren

The AEI "checklist" continues by stating:

Now is the time for US diplomats to begin a quiet dialogue with key regional powers to explain the high cost of Chávez’s criminal regime, including the impact of chavista complicity with narcotraffickers who sow mayhem in Colombia, Central America, and Mexico. Perhaps then we can convince regional leaders to show solidarity with Venezuelan democrats who want to restore a commitment to the rule of law and to rebuild an economy that can be an engine for growth in South America.

Of course, by "Venezuelan democrats," AEI means Wall Street-backed  proxies like Henrique Capriles Radonski and his Primero Justicia (Justice First) political front, two entities the Western media is already gearing up to support ahead of anticipated elections.

Radonski

West Has Positioned Proxies to Strip Venezuela to the Bones After Chavez' Passing

Primero Justicia (Justice First) was co-founded by Leopoldo Lopez and Julio Borges, who like Radonski, have been backed for nearly a decade by the US State Department. Primero Justicia and the network of foreign-funded NGOs that support it have been recipients of both direct and indirect foreign support for at least just as long.

Image: US State Department document (archived) http://www.scribd.com/doc/109310143/Ven-Us-State-Dept-138014 illustrating the role National Endowment for Democracy (NED)-funded NGOs play in supporting US-backed opposition figures in Venezuela. The US regularly fails to transparently list who is included in extensive funding NED provides opposition groups in Venezeula, so documents like this give a rare glimpse into the names and dynamics actually involved. As was suspected, NED money is going into networks providing support for current presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski.  In this particular document, NED-funded Sumate's legal trouble is described in relation to its attempted defense of Radonski. At the time this document was written, Radonski was in jail pending trial for his role in facilitating the 2002 US-backed failed coup against President Hugo Chavez. The document may still be online at the US State Department's official website here. 

Paul Volker

All three co-founders are US educated - Radonski having attended New York's Columbia University (Spanish), Julio Borges attending Boston College and Oxford (Spanish), and Leopoldo Lopez who attended the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (KSG) , of which he is considered an alumni of.

The Harvard Kennedy School, which hosts the notorious Belfer Center, includes the following faculty and alumni of  Lopez, co-founder of the current US-backed opposition in Venezuela:

John P. Holdren, Samantha Power, Lawrence Summers, Robert Zoellick, (all as faculty), as well as Ban Ki-Moon ('84), Paul Volcker ('51), Robert Kagan ('91), Bill O'Reilly ('96), Klaus Schwab ('67), and literally hundreds of senators, ambassadors, and administrators of Wall Street and London's current global spanning international order. Harvard's Kennedy School of Government (KSG) is clearly one of several universities that form the foundation of both creating corporate-financier driven globalist-international policy, as well as cultivating legions of administrators to execute it.

To understand fully the implications of Lopez' education it helps to understand the leadership and principles guiding Harvard's mission statements, best exemplified by KSG' Belfer Center, which to this day, lends its public support  to Lopez and his Primero Justicia opposition party.

Image: John P. Holdren (bearded, left), an advocate for population reduction through forced sterilization overseen by a "planetary regime," is just one of many "colorful" characters to be found within the halls of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government from which Primero Justicia co-founder Leopoldo Lopez of Venezuela graduated. To this day, KSG provides forums in support of US-backed opposition bids at seizing power in Venezuela.

Named after Robert Belfer of the Belco Petroleum Corporation and later, director of the failed Enron Corporation, the Belfer Center describes itself as being "the hub of the Harvard Kennedy School's research, teaching, and training in international security affairs, environmental and resource issues, and science and technology policy." Robert Belfer still sits in as an International Council Member. http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/about/international-council.html

Belfer's director, Graham Allison provides an example of self-serving corporatism steering US policy. He was a founder of the Trilateral Commission, a director of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a consultant to the RAND Corporation, Director of the Getty Oil Company, Natixis, Loomis Sayles, Hansberger, Taubman Centers, Inc., and Belco Oil and Gas, as well as a member of the advisory boards of Chase Bank, Chemical Bank, Hydro-Quebec, and the shady International Energy Corporation, all according to his official Belfer Center bio.

Other questionable personalities involved as Belfer alumnus are Goldman Sachs, CFR member, and former-World Bank president Robert Zoellick. Sitting on the board of directors is CFR member and former Goldman Sachs consultant, Ashton Carter. There is also former director of Citigroup and Raytheon, former Director of Central Intelligence and CFR member John Deutch, who required a pardon by Clinton to avoid prosecution over a breach of security while fumbling his duties at the CIA. Meanwhile, Nathaniel Rothschild  of Atticus Capital and RIT Capital Partners, Paul Volcker of the Federal Reserve, and former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff   all serve as Belfer Center's "advisers."

Michael Chertoff

Last but not least, there is John P. Holdren, also a Council on Foreign Relations member, science adviser to both President Clinton and President Obama, and co-author with Paul Ehrilich, of the now notorious "Ecoscience."   When Holdren isn't brand-building for "Climate Disruption," he is dreaming of a Malthusian fueled totalitarian global government that forcibly sterilizes the world's population. He feared, erroneously, that overpopulation would be the end of humanity. He claimed in his hubris filled, fact deficient book, "The No Growth Society,"   that by the year 2040, the United States would have a dangerously unsustainable population of 280 million he called "much too many." The current US population is over 300 million, and despite reckless leadership and policies, it is still sustainable.

One could argue that Lopez' education is in his past, independent of his current political activities, however, the interests driving the agenda of the Belfer Center are demonstrably still backing his Primero Justicia party's bid for seizing power in Venezuela. Lopez, Radonski, and Borges are to this day still receiving substantial funding and support through NGO networks funded directly by the US State Department's National Endowment for Democracy, and is clearly favored by the Western press. Furthermore, the CFR , Heritage Foundation, and other corporate-financier driven think-tanks have all come out in support of Radonski and Primero Justicia, in their bid to "restore democracy" American-style in Venezuela.

With Chavez' passing, the names of these opposition figures will become mainstays of Western reporting ahead of anticipated elections the West is eager to have held - elections the West is well positioned to manipulate in favor of Lopez, Radonski, and Borges.

Whatever one may have thought about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his policies, he nationalized his nation's oil, forcing out foreign multinational corporations, diversified his exports to reduce dependency on Western markets (with US exports at a 9 year low), and had openly opposed corporate-financier neo-imperialism across the globe. He was an obstruction to Western hegemony - an obstruction that has provoked overt, depraved jubilation from his opponents upon his death.

And while many critics are quick to claim President Chavez' policies are a "failure," it would be helpful to remember that the US, on record, has arrayed its vast resources both overtly and covertly against the Venezuelan people over the years to ensure that any system outside the West's sphere of influence inevitably fails.

Dark Days Ahead

 Dark days indeed lay ahead for Venezuela, with the AEI "checklist" foreshadowing an "uprising," stating:

As Venezuelan democrats wage that struggle against chavismo, regional leaders must make clear that Syria-style repression will never be tolerated in the Americas. We should defend the right of Venezuelans to struggle democratically to reclaim control of their country and its future. Only Washington can make clear to Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and Cuban leaders that, yes, the United States does mind if they try to sustain an undemocratic and hostile regime in Venezuela. Any attempt to suppress their self-determination with Chinese cash, Russian arms, Iranian terrorists, or Cuban thuggery will be met with a coordinated regional response.

US military contractors and special forces had been caught operating in and around Venezuela.  Just as there were warning signs in Syria years before the 2011 conflict began, the US' intentions of provoking bloodshed and regime change in Venezuela stretch back as far as 2002. Just as Syria is now facing a Western-engineered proxy war, Venezuela will too, with the AEI already declaring US plans to wage a Syria-style proxy war in South America.

The AEI also reminds readers of the West's faux-human rights, "economic development," and "democracy promotion" racket Hugo Chavez had ejected from Venezuela and displaced across parts of South America, and the West's desire to reestablish it:

US development agencies should work with friends in the region to form a task force of private sector representatives, economists, and engineers to work with Venezuelans to identify the economic reforms, infrastructure investments, security assistance, and humanitarian aid that will be required to stabilize and rebuild that country. Of course, the expectation will be that all the costs of these activities will be borne by an oil sector restored to productivity and profitability.

Finally, we need to work with like-minded nations to reinvigorate regional organizations committed to democracy, human rights, anti-drug cooperation, and hemispheric solidarity, which have been neutered by Chávez’s destructive agenda.

 As the US openly funds, arms, and backs Al Qaeda in Syria, conducts global renditions, operates an international archipelago of torture dungeons, and is only now wrapping up a decade of subjugation and mass murder in Iraq and Afghanistan that is still claiming lives and jeopardizing the future of millions to this day, it is difficult to discern just who the AEI's target audience is. It is most likely those who can read between the lines - the corporate-financier vultures waiting for the right moment to strip Venezuela to the bone.

The fate of Venezuela lies in its people's hands. Covert destabilization must be faced by the Venezuelan people, while the alternative media must do its best to unravel the lies already being spun ahead of long-planned operations in "post-Chavez Venezuela." For the rest of us, we must  identify the corporate-financier interests  driving this agenda, - interests we most likely patronize on a daily basis, and both boycott and permanently replace them to erode the unwarranted influence they have used, and will continue to use against the Venezuelan people, as well as people across the globe.

Hugo Chavez RIP– Death of a Revolutionary Nationalist and Socialist Leader

As Barak Obuma Rages, the People of Venezuela Mourn Their Hero

The Crowds Mourn

Supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez across the Americas mourn his death.

 Barak Obama, the Uncle Tom President of the United States who has faithfully represented the interests of the white ruling class against those who voted for him, found it impossible to express even a word of condolence to the Venezuelan people on the dead from cancer of their four time elected President, Hugo Chavez.

As today’s crowds demonstrate, Chavez was wildly popular in Venezuela, much to the chagrin of Obama and the United States.  On hearing of his death Obama said that ‘"At this challenging time the United States reaffirms its support for the Venezuelan people and its interest in developing a constructive relationship with the Venezuelan government.’

Chavez and Fidel Castro

Chavez remarking on the whiff of Sulfur following Bush's speech

"As Venezuela begins a new chapter in its history, the United States remains committed to policies that promote democratic principles, the rule of law, and respect for human rights,"

You only have to read the previous post to see what a hollow, sick joke this is.  The United States which has sponsored torture in Iraq, hasn’t dared refute the evidence, supports all manner of corrupt, brutal and oppressive regimes throughout the world, is apparently concerned to ‘promote democratic principles’ etc. in Venezuela.

What Bush and Obuma hated was that Venezuela was too democratic.  Instead of simply voting in a stuffed ballot election once every 4 years, people had real control and access to the products of Venezuela’s oil wealth.

And unlike many other populist dictators, Ghadaffi to Ahmedinajad, his rule wasn’t based on torture and murder.  That must have grated with Bush/Obuma even more.  He was popular for the greatest sin of all under capitalism – he redistributed the wealth of the country from the rich to the poor, faced down a coup (which precisely because of his popularity didn’t succeed) and squashed the US financed opposition.

Chavez and fellow fighter against US imperialism

Maybe his most famous joke was his reference to Bush at the United Nations as the devil and then remarking on the smell of sulfur that was around.  He would have appreciated the tributes below from Hollywood stars such as Michael Moore and Sean Penn.


Salute to Hugo Chavez, who puts British socialists and their talking shops to shame.

Socialist socialites: Hollywood mourns Hugo Chavez

Joel Ryan / AP

By Becky Bratu, Staff Writer, NBC News

As thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets of Caracas to mourn President Hugo Chavez after learning of his death Tuesday, tributes began pouring in from supporters around the world — including several Hollywood heavyweights who stood by the socialist firebrand during his reign.

Actor Sean Penn, one of the Latin American leader's most vocal supporters (he once joined Chavez on the campaign trail and attended a candlelight vigil for him in Bolivia last year) said the United States had "lost a friend it never knew it had."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and actor-director Sean Penn listen to an explanation from a doctor during a visit to a hospital Aug. 3, 2007 in San Cristobal, Venezuela.

"And poor people around the world lost a champion," Penn said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. "I lost a friend I was blessed to have. My thoughts are with the family of President Chavez and the people of Venezuela."

Filmmaker Oliver Stone, who first met Chavez in December 2007 and credited him for many of the social changes taking place in South America, said the former leader would live forever in history.

''I mourn a great hero to the majority of his people and those who struggle throughout the world for a place," Stone said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter. "Hated by the entrenched classes, Hugo Chavez will live forever in history."

"My friend, rest finally in a peace long earned," Stone added.

"In sadness and in tribute to my friend, Hugo Chavez, I join with millions of Venezuelans, Latin Americans, Caribbeans, fellow U.S. citizens  and millions of freedom-loving people around the world, in hope for a rewarding future for the democratic and social development charter of the Bolivarian Revolution,” Glover told theGrio.

“We all embraced Hugo Chavez as a social-champion of democracy, material development, and spiritual well-being.”

Others, including Argentine soccer legend Diego Maradona, paid their respects via Twitter. "So long comandante @chavezcandanga, we will miss you forever #ChavezVive," Maradona posted Wednesday.

"Ruling Classes hated Hugo Chavez. RIP," tweeted comedian Roseanne Barr.

"You won't hear much nice about him in the US media in the next few days. So, I thought I'd say a couple things to provide some balance," tweeted filmmaker Michael Moore Tuesday.

"54 countries around the world allowed the US to detain(& torture) suspects. Latin America, thanks 2 Chavez, was the only place that said no," he added.

"We spoke for over an hour," Moore said of an encounter with Chavez in 2009. "He said he was happy 2 finally meet someone Bush hated more than him."