The US Capitalist Class is the #1 State Sponsor of Terrorism in the World; Defend Venezuela, Defeat US Imperialism!

As the criminal government of the US capitalist class reveals its latest sanguinary plot to overthrow the elected government of Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela, we present the formerly “secret” US Special Forces manual on How To Overthrow Governments The US Capitalist Class Sees as a Threat to Its Continued Domination of the World.  OK that’s what its title *should* be, not what it is.  But seriously, this manual describes in detail the arrogant imperialist attitude of the numerically tiny US capitalist class that seeks to rule the world – in the name of “Democracy(TM)”, of course!  The US capitalist class, which lives in the same kind of endless fear of a workers socialist revolution that plagued the slave-owning “Founding Fathers(TM)” back in the day, can not allow the working class to take power in even the tiniest of nation-states.  They figure that if the workers ever prove to the world that they can run a country better than the capitalists can, and in a more egalitarian fashion, distributing the wealth of the nation better than the 85% (for the top 15%)-15% (for the “bottom 85%) “split” typical of capitalist states, then it will be the beginning of the end for them. So, every time a new government attempts to adopt even the slightest tinge of socialism, the US Government – wholly owned and operated solely by and in the interest of the richest 15% of Americans – immediately begins to plan the overthrow of that government.  But that doesn’t mean a simple invasion, like in the olden days; now it means a whole panoply of sub-military measures, ranging from propaganda campaigns and street thuggery against the “enemy” political party and its activists all the way up to economic sanctions, financing the political opposition and assassinating the leaders of the “hostile” political party or parties – which generally are working-class or pro-working-class parties.  Brutal military dictatorships and monarchies have always found friends in Washington; the working class has always found its most implacable enemies there. Of course, the US capitalist class aren’t Nazis! Not at all! They provide this service this all in the name of “Freedom(TM)” and “Democracy(TM)”! (That’s all part of the psychological warfare techniques they use: they scream about “Russian meddling” in US elections to cover up their own massive “meddling” in other nations – including “regime changes” a.k.a. “coups d’etat.”

To a capitalist, the only kind of “Freedom(TM)” that matters is the freedom of a capitalist to buy low, sell high and rob as many workers as possible for as long as possible. Anyone who dares to interfere in their wholesale robbery of the world’s workers has got to go!  Yesterday it was Castro and Qaddafi; today it’s Kim Jong-un and Nicolas Maduro who are being made to wear the “black hats”.  It’s not an easy trick to pull off while the US capitalist class – unlike Qaddafi, Kim, Maduro and Castro – has implanted its military forces in over 180 nation-states around the world and is busy slaughtering workers 24/7/365.  The use of mass media to keep the workers in a state of fear and confusion is all spelled out in this “unconventional warfare” manual, which should be called: “How to Overthrow Governments For Personal Profit While Making It Look Like You’re Doing the World A Huge Favor”.

Read this and see how many of these vicious and highly undemocratic techniques you can identify being used against governments all over the world; from Syria to Venezuela, Nicaragua to North Korea!  And consider the “democratic” nature of such nuggets of US capitalist class wisdom as “[Unconventional Warfare] is specifically focused on leveraging the unwillingness of some portion of the indigenous population to accept the status quo or ‘whatever political outcome the belligerent governments impose, arbitrate, or negotiate.'”

Don’t forget: this is “The Best of All Possible Worlds(TM)” – according to the US capitalist class!  Any worker or politician anywhere who dares to think that the capitalist status quo is *not* “the best of all possible worlds” is an “enemy” and a “traitor” (to the capitalists) and must be “neutralized” in the name of “Freedom(TM)” and “Democracy(TM)”!  Got it?

This manual comes to us thanks to the hard and self-sacrificing work of Chelsea Manning and WikiLeaks.  Thanks to them we get to see right straight through the disgusting hypocrisy of the US capitalist class and their repulsive worker-hating government.  It’s way past time the workers of the USA dumped the twin parties owned and operated by the US capitalist class and we built ourselves a strong revolutionary socialist workers party to lead the fight to seize power from the hands of the capitalist few and put it into the hands of the working-class majority.  Get off your asses and join us already!  What are you waiting for? World War Three?  By then it will be too late.

— Iwpchi

“Army Special Operations Forces: Unconventional Warfare” manual_us-fm3-05-130

Chelsea Manning Letter Acknowledges Her Authorization of @xychelsea Twitter Account

We are publishing – as a service to our readers and all supporters of heroic whistleblower and US political prisoner Chelsea Manning (this is not authorized by her or anything) – a text version of the handwritten letter released on 16 April 2015.  We just want to help disseminate this information as far and wide as possible.

The letter is legible but for some people difficult to read as it is in cursive handwriting, so we’ve made our own transcription of it.  It’s in two pages, on “official” Chelsea Manning Fort Leavenworth stationery and is signed by her. Here’s a .pdf of the two-page letter: Manning _4apr2015_Twitter account letter

The official Chelsea Manning Support Group is here.   The Chelsea Manning Legal Defense Fund is here.  And the new Chelsea Manning Twitter account can be found here.  We encourage all our readers to give generously to this most worthy cause!  We say: FREE CHELSEA MANNING NOW!

IWPCHI

Chelsea E. Manning
89289
1300 North Warehouse Road
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027-2304

                                                            2015.04.04

STATEMENT FOR: PUBLIC RELEASE

SUBJECT: @XYCHELSEA TWITTER ACCOUNT

Everyone,

  I want to thank all of those of you who are now
following my new Twitter account. It was pretty amazing
to get so many followers so quickly! It’s only possible
because of you all, out there, who care about the
things and people that I do.

  I wanted to set up this account awhile ago, but
I didn’t really have the time or energy to until I
began to start taking hormones a few months ago. So a few
weeks ago I asked my friend Trevor Fitzgibbon if he would
set up an account that I reserved in 2013, and he
agreed to help for no cost.

   This is a temporary arrangement until I can find
a way to either access my account more easily, or find
someone else willing to put in the labor of managing
the account, like Courage to Resist or another volunteer.

   The tweets, except for retweets, are verbatim dictated
over the phone to someone that I can call from here in Kansas.

(1)

[Page 2: IWPCHI]

                                                                                                    2014.04.04 [sic – IWPCHI]

SUBJECT: @XYCHELSEA TWITTER ACCOUNT

  I think this arrangement is the best way for me
to be able to stay in as much contact with all
of you who are out there and wanting to help me
and support me!

  And, again, I want to thank all of you for
your support and funding throughout my court-martial
and now my appeal! We’re working very hard and
I am hopeful that we can be successful if we
can keep funding the Chelsea Manning Support
Network’s Legal Defense Fund!

                         With Warm Regards,
Chelsea Manning

P.S. #itsreallyme =P

(2)

[End of letter – IWPCHI]

Movie Review – CITIZENFOUR: “Speaking Truth to Power” is not What Needs to Be Done (* out of 5)

[Note: this review is being simultaneously published by the Independent Workers Party of Chicago and the Friends of WikiLeaks – Chicago on the respective websites of both groups.]

CITIZENFOUR – a film by Laura Poitras  https://citizenfourfilm.com/

We expected a lot from Laura Poitras’ new film CITIZENFOUR; we were massively disappointed.  With ex- CIA/NSA contract worker Edward Snowden still stuck in exile in Russia and the citizenry of the United States far more interested in the latest shiny objects for sale at the Apple Store than in fighting for their rapidly disappearing Constitutional rights, we had hoped that this film would be a clarion call to the workers of the United States to take action in their own self-defense by standing up in support of Snowden and his fellow heroic whistle-blowers Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, Jeremy Hammond and others.  Instead what we get is a very tepid and shallow overview of “the story so far” of the world-shaking revelations made by Snowden exposing the US Government’s global espionage network that monitors and stores for future use every cellphone call, email message and the wealth of information derivable from our daily movements as recorded by our cellphones every day.  CITIZENFOUR should be like a nuclear howitzer blasting chunks out of the edifice of US and British imperialism; instead its effect is like that of a dozen pies thrown in the faces of a gang of war criminals.  You could say that CITIZENFOUR pulled all its punches… except for the fact that it never even attempts to throw any.  This is, by the way, the primary reason why it’s getting such great reviews from the bourgeois press.

So far as we can tell, the reason that Poitras doesn’t engage in aggressive political “agitprop” – a fact that nearly every reviewer from the bourgeois press extols as one of her film’s strengths – is apparently that she has no political axe to grind – or more accurately, she is a liberal bourgeois democratic reformist whose political aspirations rise no higher than to being one who “speaks truth to power”.  What this means in practice is that she and others like her – including Assange and Snowden – willingly self-limit the extent of their political activities to begging the “legitimate powers that be” to behave themselves and to urging the paid employees of the US capitalist ruling class that have set up the global espionage network – the bourgeois politicians in the “Five Eyes” nations – to start taking their alleged “responsibilities” to the citizens of their respective nations seriously by curbing the “excesses” that they themselves signed off on!

This kind of “inside the box” thinking may seem strange coming from the likes of Poitras, Assange, Snowden and Greenwald; but if we analyze their political philosophies in more detail it doesn’t seem strange at all.  Unless a person has consciously broken away from the worthless, selfish, greedy corporatist ideology of the capitalist system and has become a conscious Marxist revolutionary dedicated to the overthrow of the capitalist class and its economic system, one’s politics are going to be by definition REFORMIST at best; and so how can a non-revolutionary do anything else but simply beg the bourgeoisie to straighten up and fly right?  If you believe that the capitalist economic system is “the best of all possible economic systems”, and that only the capitalist class and its favored institutions of higher learning are capable of producing “legitimate” political leaders – where does that leave you politically?  It leaves you “speaking truth to power” like a good, loyal (if somewhat uppity) wage-slave!

Is CITIZENFOUR worth seeing?  For us, it was worth the price of admission just to see the “Dream Team” of Snowden, Greenwald and Poitras in the same room preparing to launch one of the world’s most impressive exposes of massive governmental abuses of power affecting everyone on the planet who has access to a telephone and/or a computer connected to the Internet.  This NSA spy scandal makes Watergate look like a pillow fight!  But the cursory overview made by the film of the extent of the revelations can’t be very compelling to anyone who hasn’t been following the story over the past year or so.  The movie barely describes the NSA and GCHQ-run “Five Eyes” espionage juggernaut; nor does it clearly show the threats of assassination and worse levied against Snowden, Assange and Greenwald by various US Government scumbags through the news media for daring to bring all this criminality into the light of day.  And, having not even really covered any of these issues, the film fails to even attempt to engage the audience in the critically important work of what is to be done: building new political parties to take down those that have erected the Big Brother spy apparatus that is intended to be used primarily to rapidly identify political opponents of the US, UK, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand Governments INSIDE  THEIR RESPECTIVE NATION-STATES!  This is, after all, the real purpose of all this espionage: to create a database of the day-to-day activities of every citizen of the world’s leading capitalist states in order to identify and neutralize them if they should ever seek to organize seriously threatening political opposition to the neo-fascist police states being set up in the US and its partners in the “Five Eyes” nations.  The primary target of all this espionage isn’t foreign terrorism: the target is the domestic working-class political opposition that – if it turns in a revolutionary socialist direction – potentially threatens the continued class rule of the capitalist classes of the world.  The capitalist classes of the US and UK in particular have absolutely no intention of sharing political power with the numerically and economically vastly superior working class that creates all the wealth under capitalism.  Any attempt by the domestic working classes of the US or UK to throw off the yoke of capitalist exploitation through political or economic strike action will immediately be placed under the microscope of the global espionage network, where the movement’s leaders will be quickly identified, isolated and “neutralized” – physically if the capitalists deem it to be necessary.  This is precisely what makes so extremely dangerous  the Obama Administration’s precedent-setting legal findings asserting that a sitting US President has the “right” to order the assassination of any US citizen whose writings or friends and associates he – or more accurately his employers in the US capitalist class – do not like.

This is not crazy commie paranoia speaking here: the Obama Administration has openly admitted that it has murdered four US citizens in drone strikes overseas – that we know of; and the US government maintains a “watch list” of its perceived opponents that already had a million people listed on it in 2009 – and it is being constantly updated. In 2013 it was reported that an additional 450,000 people were “nominated” to be added to the list – with few of the nominees escaping that dubious honor.

The faith in the hired political lackeys of the bourgeoisie implicitly espoused by Poitras, Greenwald, Snowden and Assange; their placid belief that steady pressure applied to the so-called liberal “left-wing” and Libertarian sections of the political class will ultimately win the day and allow the necessary political reforms to be enacted is, quite frankly, absurd – and evidence of a political immaturity in all of them that is quite shocking, especially considering what they have learned since Snowden came forward with his revelations.  Those actual members of the US or UK capitalist classes who go to see CITIZENFOUR will undoubtedly feel a tremendous relief in their discovery that these potentially dangerous opponents of the capitalist class are, in fact, posing no serious threat to the status quo at all.  The capitalists and their spies and hired guns can sleep a bit easier knowing that Poitras, Assange, Snowden and Greenwald – for all their genuine courage and excellent work in exposing the crimes of the ruling class – have set for themselves only the pathetic task of “speaking truth to power”.   That is something that the ruling class can listen to from Assange, Snowden – or anyone else, for that matter – for ever, condescendingly acknowledging and even thanking them profusely for their heroic selflessness in bringing to the world’s attention these “serious issues” – while doing absolutely nothing substantial to change the workings of the national security state at all.  Viewed in this way, CITIZENFOUR becomes just another pointless pantomime rebellion in the long, bloody history of capitalism.  The capitalists will, first of all, breathe a deep sigh of relief now that it’s clear that the film isn’t presenting an indictment of the capitalist class or their system; then, having been let largely off the hook by the film’s protagonists, we expect the capitalist class to continue to do what they have in fact been doing: applauding the film.   Perhaps Poitras and Greenwald will be invited to  testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee to speak “truth to power” on CSPAN; or at the Council on Foreign Relations… or at the United Nations or one of the capitalist soirees like the annual hand-wringing exercise at Davos, Switzerland.   Finally, perhaps, the capitalist class will direct the editors of their news media conglomerates to heap praise on the film and even to heartily recommend that it be awarded the Palme ‘d’Or, or even an Oscar or two!  This is how activist filmmakers like Poitras and investigative journalists like Greenwald are co-opted by the capitalist class and transformed from courageous opponents of the capitalist system to prominent pro-regime songbirds publicly displayed in golden cages. Ask Barbara Kopple or Bob Woodward how it’s done.

Poitras, Greenwald et al are, we believe, decent, courageous and apparently honest bourgeois reformist journalists.  But we ask our readers to imagine how much further along in investigating, exposing and successfully fighting this impending global police state we’d be if the documents unleashed by Snowden had been placed not in the hands of “responsible journalists” but in the hands of worker-revolutionaries who weren’t so loyally censoring the documents in order to “protect the agents and assets” of the racist, bloodthirsty and greed-obsessed US capitalist class and its spy organizations!  Snowden makes clear in the movie that his motivation for placing the blockbuster documents he purloined from the NSA into the hands of trustworthy representatives of the bourgeois press was that he wanted to be sure that there would be no reckless release of information that would seriously damage the “legitimate” goals of the shadow government of the US!  Greenwald et al have scrupulously respected the “sacred trust” placed in them by Snowden to protect the “family jewels” of the espionage agencies of US and British imperialism.  This is disgusting!  Instead of placing the interests of the 7.2 billion workers of the world above all else, Snowden and his team are protecting the “legitimate rights” of the microscopically small capitalist class against those of the multi-billion strong international working class!  Snowden and his collaborators are doing a tremendous service for the US and British capitalist classes, which are, by the way, going to repay them and all of us by imposing their will on the world – both internationally and domestically – through increasingly brutal military and police-state force.  To throw the US and British capitalist classes such a huge life-preserver when they should instead be having ANCHORS tied to their necks is to betray the entire human race in order to maintain the tenuous and despotic rule of a class of criminals responsible for the perpetuation of the horrors of a capitalist world in which – to name just one major example – the world does little or nothing while 17,000 children die of starvation every single day!  There is nothing “legitimate” about the capitalist class or their “interests”!  Every effort should be made to destroy the NSA, the CIA and the US military and the cretinous ruling class that spawned them – not to save them!

Nothing short of workers revolution can change the increasingly deranged plans of the US capitalist class.  They have plans of global military domination of the entire planet that go far beyond what even Adolf Hitler envisioned; so long as their political opponents refuse to form working class revolutionary parties to overthrow the capitalist class and system, the ruling capitalists have nothing to fear.

The working class, however, DOES have something to fear from the fact that most of their erstwhile leaders are so completely dedicated to the continuation of the brutal capitalist system that they are prepared to follow the capitalist class all the way down the road to hell, where the fascists and eventually World War Three will put an end to this historical epoch – and perhaps throw the human race back into a pre-industrial stage of development.  Apparently, these folks think that they have more to gain from clinging to the coat-tails of the capitalist class than they can gain by fighting for the emancipation of the workers of the world.  If they insist on taking the capitalist road, that’s fine; but let’s not imagine that because THEY are heading down that road, that we, too, must take that well-worn path to political oblivion.  We’re not followers – we aspire to be revolutionary workers leaders. We warn the Poitrases and Greenwalds of the world of the dangers that lie ahead; we try to point out the reasons why we disagree with them; we urge them to take the high rather than the low road; but we can’t force them to lead a workers revolution.  They are simply not revolutionaries; perhaps it’s just not in their nature to be revolutionaries.  It’s a pity, but that is, in the end, their problem – we don’t need to make it ours.

The working class must look elsewhere than to Poitras, Snowden, Assange and Greenwald for the political leadership necessary to lead the workers of the world out of the dead end of the capitalist stage of development and into the next stage: that of socialism.  It’s “socialism or barbarism” brothers and sisters, just like Marx, Engels, Lenin, Luxemburg, and Trotsky explained to us so many years ago!  Now –  as then – to ignore the warnings of those great, selfless and honest internationalist leaders of the working class is to help the capitalist class pave the road leading to the hell of the next – and possibly this time, the last – world war.

Workers of the World, Unite!

IWPCHI and Friends of WikiLeaks – Chicago

WikiLeaks US State Department Cables Reveal US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Extensive Governmental Destabilization Efforts

We have read with interest the Guardian’s interview with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro published this past week.  It is clear how extensive the impact of the WikiLeaks and Snowden revelations has been: people who have been paying attention to what has been revealed about the US Government’s global police-state operations are seeing right through the lies coming out of Washington in an endless stream.

No longer are people wondering ‘if” the United States is involved in destabilization efforts aimed at those governments the US does not like; everyone KNOWS that if any government is facing opposition from the right, the United States Embassy in that country is probably at the center of the unrest.  From the Ukraine to Venezuela, wherever the global investments of the US capitalist class are threatened, the US Government of that capitalist class is swinging into action with every weapon in their arsenal, from the seemingly innocuous (to the unaware) Agency for International Development to the CIA, NSA and the US Military.

Maduro credits WikiLeaks with having revealed documentary proof that the US Government is behind the right-wing provocateurs organizing street violence against the Maduro government.  Maduro told the Guardian that Venezuela has been on the receiving end of a type of ” ‘unconventional war that the US has perfected over the last decades’, citing a string of US-backed coups or attempted coups from 1960s Brazil to Honduras in 2009.”

“Speaking in the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, the former bus driver and trade union leader said Venezuela’s opposition had ‘the aim of paralysing the main cities of the country, copying badly what happened in Kiev, where the main roads in the cities were blocked off, until they made governability impossible, which led to the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine.’ The Venezuelan opposition had, he said, a ‘similar plan'”:

“They try to increase economic problems through an economic war to cut the supplies of basic goods and boost an artificial inflation”, Maduro said. “To create social discontent and violence, to portray a country in flames, which could lead them to justify international isolation and even foreign intervention.”

“Pointing to the large increases in social provision and reduction in inequality over the past decade and a half, Maduro said: ‘When I was a union leader there wasn’t a single programme to protect the education, health, housing and salaries of the workers. It was the reign of savage capitalism. Today in Venezuela, the working class is in power: it’s the country where the rich protest and the poor celebrate their social wellbeing.’ ”

[Source: The Guardian (UK): “Venezuela protests are sign that US wants our oil, says Nicolás Maduro”, by Seumas Milne and Jonathan Watts, 8 April 2014]

These statements show that if Maduro’s bourgeois reformist government hasn’t taken the proper steps to lead the Venezuelan working class in a revolutionary struggle to overthrow capitalism in Venezuela, it’s not because they are unaware of the magnitude of the financial and political attacks coming from Washington, D.C.  In fact, the Guardian article makes it clear that Maduro is bedazzled by the kid gloves of the US’ mailed fist: NGOs peddling “peaceful, democratic reforms” in Venezuela, and is prepared to allow that Trojan Horse of counterrevolution – the Vatican  – to work its “magic” in a “peace process” that will negotiate a “settlement” between the vicious, greedy Venezuelan capitalist class and the Venezuelan workers.  No compromise is possible between the working class and the exploiting capitalist class!  Venezuelan workers: arm yourselves and prepare to overthrow capitalism in Venezuela! And if the Maduristas continue to bar the path to workers socialist revolution, they will have to be pushed aside as well!  Those who seek compromise with the capitalists are the enemies of the working class!

Last week, the Associated Press revealed that the supposedly benign United States Agency for International Development (USAID) – a US government agency that publicly pretends to be a “no strings attached” organization that provides food assistance and other forms of non-political aid – was actually behind a secret program to create social unrest in Cuba with the ultimate aim of overthrowing that Stalinist degenerated workers state.

As usual, the Democratic Party rushed to the assistance of USAID, which they cherish as one of their most effective propaganda operations and weapons in the US capitalist class never-ending efforts to crush militant workers movements wherever they arise.  Obscenely, the Cuban government’s propaganda mouthpiece, Granma, favorably quoted anticommunist US Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy’s and lapped up the crocodile tears he shed over the revelations:

“Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy from Vermont, chairman of the Senate sub-committee overseeing State Department and Foreign Operations, said that the revelations were troubling.

” ‘There is the risk to young, unsuspecting Cuban cellphone users who had no idea this was a U.S. government-funded activity,’ he pointed out.”  As if this craven servant of the US capitalist class gives a shit about the rights of Cuban workers – or any workers anywhere in the world!”

[Source: Granma: “Revelations about U.S. Operations in Cuba corroborate President Raúl Castro’s assertions“, 4 April, 2014]

Leahy and the rest of the Democrats want you to believe that USAID’s running a secret destabilization program against Cuba is some kind of anomalous activity for this organization: it is no such thing!  USAID has been running covert operations against workers all over the world since its inception; they were an integral component of the US Government’s war crimes in Vietnam, having participated in the infamous counterinsurgency and “pacification” programs in Vietnam.  USAID has been repeatedly embroiled in military assistance and “drug control” programs that the US Government has used to make an “end run” around those rare US Congressional bans on direct US military aid to death-squad governments.

DOCUMENTS:

1:  REPORT TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES: SURVEY OF INTERNAL  AUDITS AND INSPECTIONS RELATING TO UNITED STATES ACTlVlTIES IN VIET NAM (1966)

2:  REPORT TO THE CONGRESS: Suggestions For Changes In U.S. Funding And Management Of Pacification And Development Programs In Vietnam (1972)

 President Maduro was not imagining things when he said that WikiLeaks had proof of US organization of antigovernment programs in Venezuela:  the Guardian’s Seumas Milne, in an article his paper published on 9 April,  provided a link to one such document from the US State Department Cables provided to WikiLeaks by working class hero Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning:

USAID/OTI PROGRAMMATIC SUPPORT FOR COUNTRY TEAM 5 POINT STRATEGY

Here we read about the US Agency for International Development’s “Office of Transition Initiatives” – a.k.a. “Office of Overthrowing Governments the US Capitalist Class Doesn’t Like”.

What is this supposedly “non-partisan” US Governmental agency doing in Venezuela?  Money is no object for USAID: in 2009, according to the WikiLeaks State Department cables,  it asked for a budget of $10,000,000.00 (up from $7 million the previous year) to spend on “transition initiatives” in Venezuela.  Let’s read the opening paragraphs of the USAID/OTI document we posted above:

“1. (S) During his 8 years in power, President Chavez has
systematically dismantled the institutions of democracy and
governance. The USAID/OTI program objectives in Venezuela
focus on strengthening democratic institutions and spaces
through non-partisan cooperation with many sectors of
Venezuelan society.
“2. (S) In August of 2004, Ambassador outlined the country
team’s 5 point strategy to guide embassy activities in
Venezuela for the period 2004 ) 2006 (specifically, from the
referendum to the 2006 presidential elections). The
strategy’s focus is: 1) Strengthening Democratic
Institutions, 2) Penetrating Chavez’ Political Base, 3)
Dividing Chavismo, 4) Protecting Vital US business, and 5)
Isolating Chavez internationally.
“3. (S) A brief description of USAID/OTI activities during
the aforementioned time period in support of the strategy
follows:

[…]

“5. (S) OTI has supported over 300 Venezuelan civil society
organizations with technical assistance, capacity building,
connecting them with each other and international movements,
and with financial support upwards of $15 million. Of these,
39 organizations focused on advocacy have been formed since
the arrival of OTI; many of these organizations as a direct
result of OTI programs and funding.

“6. (S) Human Rights: OTI supports the Freedom House (FH)
“Right to Defend Human Rights” program with $1.1 million.
Simultaneously through Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI),
OTI has also provided 22 grants to human rights
organizations, totaling $726,000. FH provides training and
technical assistance to 15 different smaller and regional
human rights organizations on how to research, document, and
present cases in situations of judicial impunity through a
specialized software and proven techniques […]

“7. (S) Citizen Participation in Governance: Venezuelan
NGOs lack a long history of social activism. In response,
OTI partners are training NGOs to be activists and become
more involved in advocacy […]

“8. (S) Civic Education: One effective Chavista mechanism
of control applies democratic vocabulary to support
revolutionary Bolivarian ideology. OTI has been working to
counter this through a civic education program called
“Democracy Among Us”. This interactive education program
works through NGOs in low income communities to deliver five
modules: 1) Separation of Powers, 2) Rule of Law, 3) The
Role and Responsibility of Citizens, 4) Political Tolerance,
and 5) The Role of Civil Society. Separate civic education
programs in political tolerance, participation, and human
rights have reached over 600,000 people […]

 ————–
Penetrate Base/Divide Chavismo
————–
9. (S) Another key Chavez strategy is his attempt to divide
and polarize Venezuelan society using rhetoric of hate and
violence. OTI supports local NGOs who work in Chavista
strongholds and with Chavista leaders, using those spaces to
counter this rhetoric and promote alliances through working
together on issues of importance to the entire community.
OTI has directly reached approximately 238,000 adults through
over 3000 forums, workshops and training sessions delivering
alternative values and providing opportunities for opposition
activists to interact with hard-core Chavistas, with the
desired effect of pulling them slowly away from Chavismo. We
have supported this initiative with 50 grants totaling over
$1.1 million. There are several key examples of this:
10. (S) Visor Participativo: This is a group of 34 OTI
CARACAS 00003356 003.2 OF 004
funded and technically assisted NGOs working together on
municipal strengthening. They work in 48 municipalities
(Venezuela has 337), with 31 MVR, 2 PPT and 15 opposition
mayors. As Chavez attempts to re-centralize the country, OTI
through Visor is supporting decentralization. Much of this
is done through the municipal councils (CLPPs). The National
Assembly recently passed a law that creates groups parallel
to the mayor’s offices and municipal councils (and that
report directly to the president’s office). These groups are
receiving the lions share of new monies Chavez is pumping
into the regions, leaving the municipalities under-funded.
As Chavez attempts to re-centralize all power to the
Executive in the capital, local Chavista leadership are
becoming the opposition as their individual oxen are gored.
Visor has been providing these leaders with tools and skills
for leadership to counter the threat represented by the new
legislation […]”

We ask our readers to imagine the reaction of the US Government if ANY foreign government attempted to spend as much money causing political unrest inside the US!

Having been pointed in the direction of the WikiLeaks cables by Maduro and the Guardian, we thought we’d do a little searching for other USAID/OTI-tagged State Department Cables.  We went to the WikiLeaks PlusD website and typed “USAID/OTI” into the “Keywords” search box and… presto! 195 State Department cables popped up!

There is some tantalizing information on USAID/OTI’s ops in Sri Lanka, where a savage campaign of mass murder was instituted by the Sri Lankan government against the Tamil Tigers revolutionary party; there are a lot of documents relating to African countries, particularly Chad and Sudan.  There is plenty of evidence to show that USAID is up to its ears in US Government efforts to manipulate and channel political events in countries all over the world on to pathways that will fill the pockets of the US capitalist class with profits squeezed from the blood of the workers.

DOCUMENTS:

30May2003_SRI LANKA_ STATUS OF USAID-OFFICE OF TRANSITION INITIATIVES

 

In Venezuela, we see USAID/OTI throwing unlimited amounts of cash into purchasing politicians and manipulating elections.

DOCUMENT:

2006_USAID-OTI VENEZUELA ELECTION RELATED ACTIVITIES

A major national scandal was triggered when it was discovered that the US-sponsored “Sumate” organization, which pretends to be “a vote-monitoring group” had accepted a $300,000.00 donation from the United States Government.  The Chavistas accused the Sumate group’s leaders with treason and conspiracy; Sumate returned the money, saying that it was a grant from the US’ “National Endowment for Democracy”.  The WikiLeaks Cables tell a different story: the Sumate money came from the US State Department’s “DRL”: their  bogus “Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor”.  Although their Wikipedia article claims that they get “94 %” of their support from “private Venezuelan interests”, when the Chavistas leveled treason charges at them, it was the US Embassy in Caracas that they ran to for support.

Comic relief department: one of the principal leaders of the “Sumate” group, one  Maria Corina Machado  states on her Wikipedia biography (next to her smiling photo op with GW Bush in the Oval Office) that her father was a “steel entrepreneur”.   (And no, that does not mean that he repaired old pots and pans from a handcart on the streets of Caracas).

DOCUMENTS:

14AUG2006:_SUMATE ASKS FOR ASSISTANCE

9FEB2004_HUMAN RIGHTS STRATEGY FOR VENEZUELA

27MAR2009_REQUEST FOR ADDITIONAL FUNDS TO HELP STRENGTHEN LOCAL GOVTS AND CIVIL SOCIETY GROUPS

Here’s a bonus for those of you intrepid enough to have read all the way to the end of this article: a 27 August 2009 cable from Caracas alerting the State Department that a company called “Development Alternatives, Incorporated” (DAI), a front for the US Government through which the USAID/OTI office funneled millions of dollars to DAI, which ran agents for the US Government that were involved in organizing street protests against the Chavez government.  On August 26, the Chavez government initiated an investigation into DAI, which was run by two US citizens, Eduardo Fernandez and Erin Upton.  At issue were “unusually large cash transfers in 2007 and 2008” that were run through DAI by USAID.  “[T]his coincides with the December 2007 Constitutional Referendum and national state and local elections in 2008. The focus of the investigation will be the origin of these funds; DAI objectives in Venezuela; DAI fiscal status; and the destination of project funds.”

Having had the crap scared out of him by the Venezuelan government agents, even though, as the cable says, the officers “behaved in a polite and professional manner”, Fernandez immediately ran to the US Embassy for advice.  “DAI runs a 20-person office consisting of two Amcits Fernandez and financial officer Erin Upton, and 18 Venezuelans as program development officers and clerical staff. […] As part of its grant agreements, DAI commits to protect the identity of all grant beneficiaries. DAI files are structured so that financial information could be released without compromising identities. That said, DAI has 50 boxes of files on its premises that contain sensitive information and are vulnerable to seizure.

“Fernandez said that ‘the streets are hot,’ referring to growing protests against Chavez’s efforts to consolidate power, and ‘all these people (organizing the protests) are our grantees.’ Fernandez has been leading non-partisan training and grant programs since 2004 for DAI in Venezuela.

[…]

“Action Request ————– 7. (S) Post requests urgent guidance on the following issues: (1) whether Fernandez enjoys any immunity based on his official passport and visa, or whether he should appear before CICPC or any other Venezuelan authorities; (2 whether Mr. Fernandez should disclose any information and if so, what; (3) what DAI should do about its 50 boxes of files, some of which contain the names of persons directing DAI grantees; and (4) if Mr. Fernandez is considered to be working on behalf of the USG, should he remain in-country or to try to depart Venezuela before the September 1 police interview. ”

28AUG2009_GBRV POLICE TARGET USAID-OTI-FUNDED DEMOCRACY PROGRAMS

For Workers Socialist Revolution in Venezuela!  Workers of the World, Unite!

IWPCHI