USAID – Strategic Culture Foundation https://www.strategic-culture.org Strategic Culture Foundation provides a platform for exclusive analysis, research and policy comment on Eurasian and global affairs. We are covering political, economic, social and security issues worldwide. Sun, 10 Apr 2022 20:53:47 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.16 How U.S. Meddling Split Sudan, Creating an Oil Republic Drowning in Poverty and Conflict https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/02/04/how-u-s-meddling-split-sudan-creating-an-oil-republic-drowning-in-poverty-and-conflict/ Fri, 04 Feb 2022 17:47:04 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=782497 Following decades of US soft power aid interventions to exploit South Sudan’s energy reserves and counter China’s influence, the republic is trapped in humanitarian crisis.

TJ COLES

Like most countries, the Republic of South Sudan is a complex nation of shifting alliances and external influences.

Recently, President Salva Kiir, who sports a Stetson hat gifted him by George W. Bush, signed a peace agreement with old enemies, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army-In Opposition. Around the same time, the so-called Embassy Troika consisting of the US, Britain, and Norway facilitated International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs for South Sudan.

When China proposes investment schemes, US politicians call it “debt-trap diplomacy.” As has been seen in South Sudan, whenWestern corporations seek to plunder poor, resource-rich nations, they call it “development.”

The West’s interest in South Sudan is oil. Invoking the colonial-era “white man’s burden” of 19th century imperialists, the US government-backed Voice of America recently justified foreign interference in South Sudan by pointing out that the country’s 3.5 billion proven barrels of crude cannot be easily exported due to the lack of pipeline infrastructure and financial mismanagement. The Embassy Troika and its IMF programs insist “that fiscal data – including on oil and non-oil revenues – should be published … regularly and without delay.”

Today, the US has lost control of the proxy it created and South Sudan is descending into a humanitarian crisis. Alan Boswell, a South Sudan specialist at the International Crisis Group, has acknowledged, “US efforts in South Sudan seemed like a final spasm of naive American nation-building, which has all collapsed in epic fashion.”

So what role did the US play in splitting Sudan and driving the country’s south into crisis?

“Tell them Muslims are responsible”

In 1899, Britain created the Condominium of Anglo-Egyptian of Sudan. The “Egyptian” eponym was a misnomer because Britain also ruled Egypt as a so-called “veiled protectorate,” so Sudan and its capital Khartoum were basically placed under British control until independence in 1956.

According to a CIA Intelligence Assessment, a “profitable slave trade was developed by European traders and their Arab cohorts in Khartoum … [T]he violence and cruelty that it fostered have not been forgotten in the South.”

Britain adopted its typical divide and rule strategy. “Christian missionaries kept the slavery issue alive by telling southerners that northern Muslims were responsible.” After independence, the southern region was “barely integrated” with the north.

In 1955, secessionist southern rebels, the Anya-Nya (“snake venom”), initiated the decades-long civil war. The CIA’s Current Intelligence Country Handbook noted that religion was not the only — or even main — point of division. The majority of southerners were black and the ruling officials in the north were overwhelmingly Arab. Resource concentration was a major problem. Heavily dependent on revenue from cotton, Khartoum absorbed Sudan’s wealth to the detriment of the rest of the nation.

CIA analysts were hopeful that the first post-independence dictator, Lt. Gen. Ibrahim Abboud, would follow a pro-Washington course. An Intelligence Bulletin states: “The regime has accepted the American aid program … [and] has moved to curb pro-Communist …. publications.” Gains made by communist politicians a decade later were crushed after the elected government banned left-wing parties and disenfranchised southerners.

As the north’s war against southern secession continued, a reported one million people had died by 1970 and hundreds of thousands had fled to neighboring countries. The US tolerated Soviet arms to Khartoum as it effectively let the USSR fight a proxy war against the south. Israel poured weapons into the south, reportedly to worsen the war in the hope of diverting the attention of the northern government from the Arab-Israeli conflicts.

The South: “exploitable amounts of crude oil”

Between 1971 and ‘72, Ethiopia brokered a short-lived peace between Sudanese ruler, Maj. Gen. Gaafar Nimeiri, and the Anya-Nya’s political wing, the South(ern) Sudan Liberation Movement. The agreement later led to Anya-Nya rebel leader, Lt. Joseph Lagu, heading the High Executive Council of the Southern Sudan Autonomous Region; a political arrangement that lasted until its abolition by President Nimeiri in 1983. By this time, Chevron had spent millions of dollars in a fruitless effort to modernize the south so that it could efficiently extract oil.

US policy shifted to quiet support for the southern secessionists. With Sudan’s oil located mainly in the south, US analysts reckoned that Nimeiri’s regime, which they described as “moderate” and “pro-Western,” had continued de-developing the south. At the time, Washington’s adversary, Col. Muammar Gaddafi, had long been in power next door in Libya. The pro-Soviet Mengistu was ruling Ethiopia on the southeast border. The CIA feared that Sudan’s “severely underdeveloped” south would again rebel, weaken Nimeiri, and leave Khartoum open to Soviet influence.

The 1980s saw the emergence of American “soft power” in Sudan: the use of “aid” and investment to create a viable, independent southern regime.

A history of the US Agency for International Development’s (USAID) operations in fertile Sudan noted in the early-‘80s that, “[b]efore Sudan becomes the ‘breadbasket’ of the Middle East and other parts of the world, … it will need a great deal of investment directed towards development projects.” Of greater interest to Washington was petroleum: “The Sudanese government is reasonably confident that commercially exploitable amounts of crude oil have been discovered in southern Sudan.”

In 1983, the Sudanese Armed Forces mutinied. Commander John Garang, who had been trained by the US at Fort Benning, Georgia, led the creation of the southern Sudan People’s Liberation Army. A CIA research paper describes Garang as a “socialist.” Other papers note his being backed by Ethiopia and Libya. Their backing wasn’t to last in the face of US “aid” programs.

The Clinton years: “energy management” and soft power

Washington’s slow push for south Sudanese secession probably began in the 1980s, with so-called civil society projects designed to boost the rebel groups opposing the northern government. In 1987, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) – the US government-sponsored regime change entity – began funding The Sudan Times, which “uses NED funds to purchase supplies essential to its continued publication.”

In the north, President Nimeiri was overthrown by General Rahman Swar, whose ephemeral reign saw him replaced by the elected President Ahmed al-Mirghani. At this point, the CIA’s record dries up, so it is unclear what relationship the US initially enjoyed with General Omar al-Bashir, who took over in a coup in 1989.

Martin Meredith’s history of Africa notes that from 1991, the ethnic Nuer commander, Riek Machar, was aided by al-Bashir to seize the oilfields by wresting control from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army, led by Garang, an ethnic Dinka. Evidence is scarce, but the Clinton administration (1993-2001) presumably saw southern political fractures as empowering their northern enemy, al-Bashir.

The USAID program, Sudan Transitional Rehabilitation, successfully negotiated a peace between Garang and Machar in 1999. The Agency notes that its grants included provision for “Energy management.” Northwest University’s William Reno seems to argue that the effect of USAID’s Operation Lifeline Sudan, which started the year in which al-Bashir came to power, ultimately legitimized the southern rebels. Claiming that they were spies, Al-Bashir’s men executed USAID staff in 1992, leading the Agency to halt its northern programs.

In 1993, Garang was openly courting the US State Department, though media showed little interest and the history is largely confined to specialist publications. At a meeting in Washington, Garang pressed the southern elites’ cause with Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and longtime CIA hand, Frank Wisner, and Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, George Moose. Eventually, the meetings paid off.

USAID reports: “In 1998, at the urging of Congress, the White House changed policy to allow the United States to provide development assistance to opposition-held areas alongside humanitarian aid countrywide.”

In 1997, an Operation Lifeline Sudan report revealed the grassroots organizing in which USAID and partner NGOs were involved. So-called Capacity Building included working with “community leaders” from Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the political wing of the southern Army (SPLM/A). Training included land surveying and gender empowerment “at odds with cultural norms and values.” The cultural modernization project prepared south Sudan for future independence.

Proxy nations as “front line states”

Garang was a personal friend of Uganda’s pro-Western dictator, Yoweri Musevini, who provided arms to the SPLM/A. Human Rights Watch reported in 1998: “The U.S. is providing U.S. $20 million in surplus military equipment to Eritrea, Ethiopia and Uganda, for defensive purposes (referring to the government of Sudan’s purported support for rebel forces from each of those countries).” Likewise a Library of Congress report notes that, “[d]uring the mid-1990s, [Clinton] instituted a Front Line States policy of pressure against Khartoum with the assistance of Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea.”

The Clinton administration sanctioned Sudan, citing as an excuse the Bashir regime’s alleged links with “al-Qaeda” and the political National Islamic Front, which certain US politicians claimed was a terror group.  In 1998, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC) revealed: “Dr. John Garang, in his meeting with SFRC staff, insisted that all development assistance be targeted to areas under SPLA control, some of which have not been under [National Islamic Front] control for five or more years.”

So-called aid money continued to pour into the south in an effort to consolidate the rebels and build a sense of southern nationalism in the public psyche. In March 1999, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) President, Carl Gersham, said: “NED grantees continued to play prominent roles in the human rights and democracy struggles in Liberia and Sudan, where NED has mounted significant programs.”

In 2001, NED began funding the Center for Documentation and Advocacy (CDA), which “publishes and distributes the South Sudan Post throughout Sudan and abroad.” The CDA also received USAID grants. USAID notes that ceasefire in the Nuba Mountains was signed in January 2002 at the behest of the US and Switzerland, calming violence between al-Bashir’s forces and SPLM/Nuba people, who sit on enormous oil wealth. The July 2002 Machakos Protocol, according to USAID, “established the premise of ‘one country, two systems’.”

But “one country, two systems” would soon become two countries, two systems. By then, the George W. Bush administration’s (2001-09) attitude towards the north was a little more balanced. Secret “counterterrorism” operations saw quiet collaboration between al-Bashir and the Bush administration, even as the US continued to bolster al-Bashir’s southern enemies. Al-Bashir’s National Security Advisor, Salah Gosh, for instance, was a CIA collaborator who met with Secretary of State, Colin Powell. (Gosh later attempted a failed coup against al-Bashir.)

In 2002, US Ambassador John Danforth described the SPLM as “the chief antagonists in the Sudan conflict.” In December, USAID’s Office of Transitional Initiatives (OTI) sponsored the All-Nuba Conference, which “[brought] together representatives of civil society, the [government of Sudan], the SPLM, and others from all parts of the political spectrum to discuss the future of the Nuba people.”

Peace agreements legitimized southern rebels

USAID’s OTI was described in 2004 as “supporting people-to-people peace processes in southern Sudan.” The program also sought to “increase the participation of southern Sudanese in their governance structures.” This would be achieved by establishing a so-called Independent Southern Sudan Media and the creation of legal aid units, women’s empowerment, and an Education Development Center to establish short-wave radio broadcasts in Dinka, English, Juba-Arabic, and Nuer.

Facilitated by USAID’s  then-administrator, Andrew Natsios, and Ambassador John Danforth, al-Bashir signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005 with the SPLM. Though the US took credit, it was a hard-won peace largely negotiated behind the scenes with Garang and Vice President Ali Osman Taha. USAID notes that the CPA “usher[ed] in a new era of American assistance in Sudan.  The country became a U.S. priority in Africa, and among the highest in the world.”

Garang died in a 2005 helicopter crash attributed to “pilot error.” He was replaced with Salva Kiir, whom US President George W. Bush described as “a friend of mine.”

In November of that year, Kiir addressed the US government-funded think tank, the Wilson Center. “I have met very important officials and I have not only come to know at personal levels but has afforded me to know how things work at the American Government,” said Kiir. This led to the establishment of “the two chambers of the national legislatures” in the south, “as well as the council of ministers (Cabinet) of the Government of National Unity.”

“Aid” continued to mold fractured southern rebel movements into a cohesive whole in preparation for the independence vote. In November 2005, US Deputy Secretary of State, Robert Zoellick, noted the southern factions’ “inability to come together (sic).” Perhaps more importantly, aid was also used to propagandize the southern civilians into supporting unity. Run by the Grand Africa Media Service Co., the Khartoum Monitor was established in 2000 by southern journalists. Its publisher, Alfred Taban, won the NED’s Democracy Award 2006.

In 2007, Rep. Frank R. Wolf, a Republican stalwart of humanitarian interventionism, told Bush’s Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice: “Salva Kiir needs his people to be trained with regard to the security, with the death of John Garang, if anything happened to him. So if you can quickly make sure that his people are trained, that would be helpful.”

The Obama years: chasing “millions of dollars worth of oil”

The US-backed Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) promised a referendum on particular forms of government for the south, including the possibility of secession. In September 2010 just months before the referendum, President Obama’s Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and future head of USAID, Samantha Power, said of her boss: “The President decided to participate in this event, which was actually at one point originally intended as a ministerial, because this could not be a more critical time in the life of Sudan.”

NED funded and championed a host of South Sudan civil society and propaganda organizations, including: the South Sudanese Network for Democracy and Elections, Eye Radio 98.6FM, the Internews Community Radio Network the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, and the South Sudanese Women’s Empowerment Network.

With pro-Western PR stunts like wearing the Stetson hat, regional leader Kiir promoted US iconography. This was bolstered by a visit from Hollywood star, George Clooney, who “observed” the referendum, which was officially monitored by the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission (SSRC) in Khartoum and the Southern Sudan Referendum Bureau (SSRB).

But USAID influenced both organizations: “we are playing a key role by providing technical and material assistance, and have provided significant funding to international and domestic groups to both educate voters and ensure credible observation of the referendum.” This included a voter registration drive, which according to the European Union Election Observation Mission (EUEOM) was more concerned with getting 60 percent of registered voters to participate, as the CPA demanded, than educating the populace about the issues.

The referendum took place in January 2011. Having seized control of southern media, the US by proxy blocked out pro-unity arguments. The EUEOM concluded: “An almost complete absence of pro-unity campaigning created an environment where debate on the consequences of secession or the continued unity of Sudan was drowned out.”

Despite a preposterous 98.83 percent of voters opting for independence, US President Barack Obama instantly recognized the new government of Salva Kiir and his Vice President Riek Machar as the leaders of the Republic of South Sudan.

In 2011, the SPLA was legitimized in the eyes of the US Africa Command (AFRICOM). SPLA soldiers were trained in de-mining and tactical casualty combat care by AFRICOM personnel.

Joseph Kony’s “Christian” Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) is the African equivalent of “al-Qaeda”: an elusive terror group that offers the US a pretext to arm several nations under the banner of counter-crime and counter-terrorism. Commenting on the LRA, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Karl Wycoff, said in February 2012 (paraphrased by AFRICOM): “the United States is providing training, equipment and logistical support for military efforts in Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan to fight the insurgency.”

But South Sudan, flooded with US arms and training, descended into civil war. Noting the importance of oil to the equation, AFRICOM stated that “South Sudan’s government in Juba turned off the flow in early-2012, charging that the Sudanese are siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars worth of oil (sic).” Also in 2012, US President Obama’s Secretary of State Hillary Clinton travelled “to the world’s youngest country, … where she and President Kiir discussed security, oil and economic opportunity.”

Years of US meddling culminate in humanitarian disaster

US efforts to create an oil vassal state did not go according to plan. The South’s Kordofan and Unity states remained in conflict, with the African Union trying to mediate. With the northern Sudanese government based in Khartoum attacking the states, the SPLA sent troops to occupy the oilfields. Citing SPLA attacks, the Sudanese Armed Forces annexed Kordofan.

A year later in December 2013, Kiir accused Vice President Machar of attempting a coup. This led to the South Sudan Civil War, in which Machar formed the rival SPLM-In Opposition. The peace of 2015 was ruptured after the SPLM-In Opposition splintered and stoked more internal fighting.

In July 2015, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) reported: “The Obama administration is blunt: the humanitarian disaster now underway is the result of unscrupulous political leaders who have exploited an ethnic conflict that they cannot control.” But the CFR neglected to mention who empowered these corrupt leaders.

China has quietly done what successive US administrations had hoped it would not do: courted South Sudan’s government and invested in the country’s energy. The International Crisis Group has said that, “by 2013, roughly 100 Chinese companies were registered in South Sudan, covering energy, engineering, construction, telecommunications, medical services, hotels, restaurants, and retail.”

Meanwhile, the public suffers the consequences of neocolonial games. South Sudan’s GDP is under $5bn compared to Sudan’s already small $35bn. Extreme poverty is over 60 percent, compared to 25 percent in Sudan. Malnutrition is 12 percent in Sudan and not even measured in South Sudan, though USAID suggests that it could be as high as 50 percent. Infant mortality in South Sudan is 62 deaths per 1,000 live births compared to 41 in Sudan. The republic is suffering under internal power struggles and violence, including a border clash that left 24 dead on January 5, 2022.

Many of these economic disparities and political problems existed while the south was part of Sudan, but after decades of US meddling, there is little light at the end of the tunnel.

 

]]> The Bay of Tweets: Documents Point to U.S. Hand in Cuba Protests https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/07/17/bay-tweets-documents-point-to-us-hand-in-cuba-protests/ Sat, 17 Jul 2021 19:00:17 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=745071 The U.S. government can cause economic misery for the Cuban people, but it cannot, it appears, convince them to overthrow their government.

By Alan MACLEOD

Cuba was rocked by a series of anti-government street protests earlier this week. The U.S. establishment immediately hailed the events, putting its full weight behind the protestors. Yet documents suggest that Washington might be more involved in the events than it cares to publicly divulge.

As many have reported, the protests, which started on Sunday in the town of San Antonio de los Baños in the west of the island, were led and vocally supported by artists and musicians, particularly from its vibrant hip-hop scene.

“For those new to the issue of Cuba, the protests we are witnessing were started by artists, not politicians. This song ‘Patria y Vida’ powerfully explains how young Cubans feel. And its release was so impactful, you will go to jail if caught playing it in Cuba,” said Florida Senator Marco Rubio, referencing a track by rapper Yotuel.

Both NPR and The New York Times published in-depth features about the song and how it was galvanizing the movement. “The Hip-Hop Song That’s Driving Cuba’s Unprecedented Protests,” ran NPR’s headline. Yotuel himself led a sympathy demonstration in Miami.

But what these accounts did not mention was the remarkable extent to which Cuban rappers like Yotuel have been recruited by the American government in order to sow discontent in the Caribbean nation. The latest grant publications of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) — an organization established by the Reagan administration as a front group for the CIA — show that Washington is trying to infiltrate the Cuban arts scene in order to bring about regime change. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” NED co-founder Allen Weinstein once told The Washington Post.

Yotuel Romero

Yotuel poses with workers, July 14, 2021, at at a Cuban restaurant in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood. Wilfredo Lee | AP

For instance, one project, entitled “Empowering Cuban Hip-Hop Artists as Leaders in Society,” states that its goal is to “promote citizen participation and social change,” and to “raise awareness about the role hip-hop artists have in strengthening democracy in the region.” Another, called “Promoting Freedom of Expression in Cuba through the Arts,” claims it is helping local artists on projects related to “democracy, human rights, and historical memory,” and to help “increase awareness about the Cuban reality.” This “reality,” as President Joe Biden himself stated this week, is that the Cuban government is an “authoritarian regime” that has meted out “decades of repression” while leaders only “enrich themselves.”

Other operations the NED is currently funding include enhancing Cuban civil society’s ability to “propose political alternatives” and to “transition to democracy.” The agency never divulges with whom it works inside Cuba, nor any more information beyond a couple of anodyne blurbs, leaving Cubans to wonder whether any group even vaguely challenging political or societal norms is secretly bankrolled by Washington.

“The State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the U.S. Agency for Global Media have all financed programs to support Cuban artists, journalists, bloggers and musicians,” Tracey Eaton, a journalist who runs The Cuba Money Project, told MintPress. “It’s impossible to say how many U.S. tax dollars have gone toward these programs over the years because details of many projects are kept secret,” he added.

A currently active grant offer from the NED’s sister organization, USAID, is offering $2 million worth of funding to groups that use culture to bring about social change in Cuba. Applicants have until July 30 to ask for up to $1 million each. The announcement itself references Yotuel’s song, noting, “Artists and musicians have taken to the streets to protest government repression, producing anthems such as ‘Patria y Vida,’ which has not only brought greater global awareness to the plight of the Cuban people but also served as a rallying cry for change on the island.”

The hip-hop scene in particular has long been a target for American agencies like the NED and USAID. Gaining popularity in the late 1990s, local rappers had a considerable impact on society, helping bring to the fore many previously under-discussed topics. The U.S. saw their biting critiques of racism as a wedge they could exploit, and attempted to recruit them into their ranks, although it is far from clear how far they got in this endeavor, as few in the rap community wanted to be part of such an operation.

MintPress also spoke with Professor Sujatha Fernandes, a sociologist at the University of Sydney and an expert in Cuban music culture. Fernandes stated:

For many years, under the banner of regime change, organizations like USAID have tried to infiltrate Cuban rap groups and fund covert operations to provoke youth protests. These programs have involved a frightening level of manipulation of Cuban artists, have put Cubans at risk, and threatened a closure of the critical spaces of artistic dialogue many worked hard to build.”

Other areas in which U.S. organizations are focussing resources include sports journalism — which the NED hopes to use as a “vehicle to narrate the political, social, and cultural realities of Cuban society” — and gender and LGBTQ+ groups, the intersectional empire apparently seeing an opportunity to also use these issues to increase fissures in Cuban society.

The House Appropriations Budget, published earlier this month, also sets aside up to $20 million for “democracy programs” in Cuba, including those that support “free enterprise and private business organizations.” What is meant by “democracy” is made clear in the document, which states in no uncertain terms that “none of the funds made available under such paragraph may be used for assistance for the government of Cuba.” Thus, any mention of “democracy” in Cuba is all but synonymous with regime change.

Capitalizing on a battered economy

The protests began on Sunday after a power outage left residents in San Antonio de los Baños without electricity during the summer heat. That appeared to be the spark that led to hundreds of people marching in the street. However, Cuba’s economy has also taken a nosedive of late. As Professor Aviva Chomsky of Salem State University, author of “A History of the Cuban Revolution,” told MintPress:

Cuba’s current economic situation is pretty dire (as is, I should point out, almost all of the Third World’s). The U.S. embargo (or, as Cubans call it, blockade) has been yet another obstacle (on top of the obstacles faced by all poor countries) in Cuba’s fight against COVID-19. The collapse of tourism has been devastating to Cuba’s economy — again, as it has been in pretty much all tourism-heavy places.”

However, Chomsky also noted that it could be a mistake to label all the protestors as yearning for free-market shock therapy. “It’s interesting to note that many of the protesters are actually protesting Cuba’s capitalist reforms, rather than socialism. ‘They have money to build hotels but we have no money for food, we are starving,’ said one protester. That’s capitalism in a nutshell!” Chomsky said.

Rick Scott Cuba protests

Florida Sen. Rick Scott holds a photo of Cuban protesters during a press conference in DC, July 13, 2021. J. Scott Applewhite | AP

Eaton was skeptical of the idea that all those marching were in the pay of the U.S. “Certainly, much of the uprising was organic, driven by Cubans who are desperate, poor, hungry and fed up with their government’s inability to meet their basic needs,” he said. Yet there were signs that at least some were not simply making a point about the lack of food in stores or medicines in pharmacies. A number of demonstrators marched underneath the American flag and the events were immediately endorsed by the U.S. government.

“We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom,” read an official statement from the White House. Julie Chung, Biden’s Acting Assistant Secretary for U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, added:

Cuba’s people continue to bravely express yearning for freedom in the face of repression. We call on Cuba’s government to: refrain from violence, listen to their citizens’ demands, respect protestor and journalist rights. The Cuban people have waited long enough for ¡Libertad!”

Republicans went much further. Mayor of Miami Francis Suarez demanded that the United States intervene militarily, telling Fox News that the U.S. should put together a “coalition of potential military action in Cuba.” Meanwhile, Florida Congressman Anthony Sabbatini called for regime change on the island, tweeting:

The corporate media cheering section

Corporate media were also extremely interested in the protests, devoting a great deal of column inches and air time to the demonstrations. This is extremely unusual for such actions in Latin America. Colombia has been living through months of general strikes against a repressive government, while there have been three years of near-daily protests in Haiti that were almost completely ignored until earlier this month, when U.S.-backed President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated.

The effect of U.S. sanctions was constantly downplayed or not even mentioned in reporting. For example, The Washington Post’s editorial board came out in favor of the protestors, claiming Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel was reacting “with predictable thuggishness…blaming everything on the United States and the U.S. trade embargo.” Other outlets did not even mention the embargo, leaving readers with the impression that the events could only be understood as a democratic uprising against a decaying dictatorship.

This is particularly pernicious because government documents explicitly state that the goal of the U.S. sanctions is to “decrease monetary and real wages, to bring about hunger, desperation and [the] overthrow of [the] government” — exactly the conditions brewing in Cuba right now. Professor Chomsky noted:

The U.S. embargo/blockade is one (not the only) cause of Cuba’s economic crisis. The U.S. has overtly and continuously said that the goal of the embargo is to destroy Cuba’s economy so that the government will collapse. So it’s not just reasonable, it’s obvious that the U.S. has some kind of hand in this.”

Chomsky also took issue with the media’s explanation of events, stating:

Look at coverage of Black Lives Matter or Occupy Wall Street protests in this country. One thing that we see consistently is that when people protest in capitalist countries, the media never explains the problems they are protesting as caused by capitalism. When people protest in communist or socialist countries, the media attributes the problems to communism or socialism.”

Media were at pains to emphasize how large and widespread the anti-government demonstrations were, insisting that the pro-government counter-demonstrations were smaller in number, despite images from the protests suggesting that the opposite might be true. As Reuters reported, “Thousands took to the streets in various parts of Havana on Sunday including the historic centre, drowning out groups of government supporters waving the Cuban flag and chanting Fidel.”

If this were the case, it is odd indeed that so many outlets used images of pro-government movements to illustrate the supposed size and scope of the anti-government action. The Guardian, Fox News, The Financial Times, NBC and Yahoo! News all falsely claimed a picture of a large socialist gathering was, in fact, an anti-government demo. The large red and black banners emblazoned with the words “26 Julio” (the name of Fidel Castro’s political party) should have been a dead giveaway to any editors or fact checkers. Meanwhile, CNN and National Geographic illustrated articles on the protests in Cuba with images of gatherings in Miami — gatherings that looked far better attended than any similar ones 90 miles to the south.

Social media meltdown

Social media also played a pivotal role in turning what was a localized protest into a nationwide event. NBC’s Director of Latin America, Mary Murray, noted that it was only when live streams of the events were picked up and signal-boosted by the expat community in Miami that it “started to catch fire,” something that suggests the growth of the movement was partially artificial. After the government blocked the internet, the protests died down.

The hashtag #SOSCuba trended for over a day. There are currently over 120,000 photos on Instagram using the hashtag. But as Arnold August, the writer of a host of books on Cuba and Cuban-American relations, told MintPress, much of the attention the protests was getting was the result of inauthentic activity:

The latest attempt of regime change also has its roots in Spain. Historically, the former colonizer of Cuba plays its role in all major attempts of regime change, not only for Cuba, but also, for example, in Venezuela. The July operation made intensive use of robots, algorithms and accounts recently created for the occasion.”

#soscuba hashtag

Within days the #SOSCUBA hashtag generated over 120,000 images on Instagram

August noted that the first account using #SOSCuba on Twitter was actually located in Spain. This account posted nearly 1,300 tweets on July 11. The hashtag was also buoyed by hundreds of accounts tweeting the exact same phrases in Spanish, replete with the same small typos. One common message read (translated from Spanish), “Cuba is going through the greatest humanitarian crisis since the start of the pandemic. Anyone who posts the hashtag #SOSCuba would help us a lot. Everyone who sees this should help with the hashtag.” Another text, reading “We Cubans don’t want the end of the embargo if that means the regime and dictatorship stays, we want them gone, no more communism,” was so overused that it became a meme in itself, with social media users parodying it, posting the text alongside pictures of demonstrations beside the Eiffel Tower, crowds at Disneyland, or pictures of Trump’s inauguration. Spanish journalist Julian Macías Tovar also cataloged the suspicious number of brand new accounts using the hashtag.

Much of the operation was so crude that it could not have failed to be discovered, and many of the accounts, including the first user of the #SOSCuba hashtag, have now been suspended for inauthentic behavior. Yet Twitter itself still chose to put the protests at the top of its “What’s Happening” for over 24 hours, meaning that every user would be notified, a decision that further amplified the astroturfed movement.

Twitter leadership has long displayed open hostility towards the Cuban government. In 2019, it took coordinated action to suspend virtually every Cuban state media account, as well as those belonging to the Communist Party. This was part of a wider trend of deleting or banning accounts favorable to governments the U.S. State Department considers enemies, including Venezuela, China and Russia.

In 2010, USAID secretly created a Cuban social media app called Zunzuneo, often described as Cuba’s Twitter. At its peak, it had 40,000 Cuban users — a very large number for that time on the famously Internet-sparse island. None of these users were aware that the app had been secretly designed and marketed to them by the U.S. government. The point was to create a great service that would slowly start to feed Cubans regime-change propaganda and direct them to protests and “smart mobs” aimed at triggering a color-style revolution.

In an effort to hide its ownership of the project, the U.S. government held a secret meeting with Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, aimed at getting him to invest in the project. It is unclear to what extent, if any, Dorsey helped, as he has declined to speak on the matter. This is not the only anti-government app the U.S. has funded in Cuba. Yet, considering both what happened this week and the increasingly close ties between Silicon Valley and the National Security State, it is possible the U.S. government considers further cloak-and-dagger apps unnecessary: Twitter already acts as an instrument for regime change.

Cuba in perennial crosshairs

By the end of the nineteenth century, the United States had effectively conquered its entire contiguous landmass; the frontier was declared closed in 1890. Almost immediately, it began to look for opportunities to expand westwards into the Pacific — to Hawaii, the Philippines and Guam. It also began looking southwards. In 1898, the U.S. intervened in the Cuban Independence War against Spain, using the mysterious sinking of the U.S.S. Maine as a pretext to invade and occupy Cuba. The U.S. operated Cuba as a client state for decades, until the Batista regime was overthrown in the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power.

The U.S. launched a botched invasion of the island in 1961, the Bay of Pigs event driving Castro closer to the Soviet Union, laying the groundwork for the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year. The U.S. reportedly attempted to kill Castro hundreds of times, all without any luck. It did, however, carry out a bitter and protracted terroristic war against Cuba and its infrastructure, including using biological weapons against the island. Along with this came a long-standing economic war, the 60-year U.S. blockade of the island that throttled its development. In addition to this, it has attempted to bombard the Caribbean nation with anti-communist propaganda. TV Martí, a Florida-based media network, has cost the U.S. taxpayer well over half a billion dollars since its creation in 1990, despite the fact that the Cuban government successfully jams the signal, meaning virtually nobody watches its content.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Cuba was left without its main trading partner, to which it had geared its economy. Without a guaranteed buyer for its sugar, and without subsidized Russian oil imports, the economy crashed. Sensing blood, the U.S. intensified the sanctions. Yet Cuba pulled through the grim time collectively known as the “Special Period.”

After a wave of left-wing, anti-imperialist governments came to power across Latin America in the 2000s, the Obama administration was forced to move towards normalizing diplomatic relations with the island. However, once in office, President Donald Trump reversed these actions, intensifying the blockade and halting vital remittances from Cuban-Americans to the island. Trump advisor John Bolton labeled Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua a “troika of tyranny” — a clear reference to George Bush’s “Axis of Evil” speech, implying that these three nations could expect military action against them soon. In its last days, the Trump administration also declared Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism.

While Biden had intimated that he might turn the U.S. Cuba policy back to the Obama days, he has, so far, done little to move away from the Trump line, his unequivocal endorsement of this week’s actions the latest example of this.

Despite monumental worldwide media coverage, encouragement and legitimation from world leaders, including the president of the United States himself, the recent action petered out after barely 24 hours. In most cases, counter-protests effectively diluted the protests, without the need for repressive forces to be deployed.

The U.S. government can cause economic misery for the Cuban people, but it cannot, it appears, convince them to overthrow their government. “The current events in Cuba constitute in reality the U.S.S. Maine of 2021,” August said. If this really was an attempted color revolution, as August is implying, it was not a very successful one, amounting to little more than a Bay of Tweets.

mintpressnews.com

]]> USAID Admits to Venezuela Regime Change Fraud https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/05/07/usaid-admits-to-venezuela-regime-change-fraud/ Fri, 07 May 2021 17:00:45 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=738002 Red Lines host Anya Parampil explores an internal USAID report admitting the agency’s policy on Venezuela was driven by the State Department and National Security Council’s push for regime change.

By Anya PARAMPIL

The report specifically investigated USAID’s attempt to use the US military to force aid through Venezuela’s border with Colombia on February 23, 2019. Anya highlights the most interesting findings in the audit, including that USAID failed to put proper fraud controls in place in order to appease US officials seeking to overthrow Venezuela’s elected government.

thegrayzone.com

]]> Blinken’s Winking and Nodding to the Neocons https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/04/11/blinken-winking-and-nodding-to-neocons/ Sun, 11 Apr 2021 17:18:14 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=736799 Biden’s Western Hemisphere foreign policy is not much different from that of Obama’s, Wayne Madsen writes.

Like proverbial bad pennies, the neocon imperialists who plagued the Barack Obama administration have turned up in force in Joe Biden’s State Department. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has given more than winks and nods to the dastardly duo of Victoria Nuland, slated to become Blinken’s Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the number three position at the State Department, and Samantha Power, nominated to become the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Nuland and Power both have problematic spouses who do not fail to offer their imperialistic opinions regardless of the appearance of conflicts-of-interest. Nuland’s husband is the claptrappy neocon warmonger Robert Kagan, someone who has never failed to urge to prod the United States into wars that only benefit Israel. Power’s husband is the totally creepy Cass Sunstein, who served as Obama’s White House “information czar” and advocated government infiltration of non-governmental organizations and news media outlets to wage psychological warfare campaigns.

True to form, Blinken’s State Department has already come to the aid of Venezuela’s right-wing self-appointed “opposition leader” Juan Guaido, whose actual constituency is found in the wealthy gated communities of Venezuelan and Cuban expatriates in south Florida and not in the barrios of Caracas or Maracaibo.

Blinken and his team of old school yanqui imperialists have also criticized the constitutional and judicially-warranted detention of former interim president Jeanine Áñez, who became president in 2019 after the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) government of President Evo Morales was overthrown in a Central Intelligence Agency-inspired and -directed military coup. The far-right forces backing Áñez were roundly defeated in the October 2020 election that swept MAS and Morales’s chosen presidential candidate, Luis Arce, back into power. It seems that for Blinken and his ilk, a decisive victory in an election only applies to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, not to Arce and MAS in Bolivia.

It should be recalled that while Blinken was national security adviser to then-Vice President Biden in the Obama administration, every sort of deception and trickery was used by the CIA to depose Morales in Bolivia and President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. In fact, the Obama administration, with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, claimed its first Latin American political victim when a CIA coup was launched against progressive President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras. Today, Honduras is ruled by a right-wing kleptocratic narco-president, Juan Orlando Hernández, whose brother, Tony Hernández, is currently serving life in federal prison in the United States for drug trafficking. For the likes of Blinken, Power, Nuland, and former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice, who currently serves as “domestic policy adviser” to Biden, suppression of progressive governments and support for right-wing dictators and autocrats have always been the preferred foreign policy, particularly for the Western Hemisphere. For example, while the Biden administration remains quiet on right-wing regimes in Central America that are responsible for the outflow of thousands of beleaguered Mayan Indians to the southern U.S. border with Mexico, it has announced that Trump era sanctions on 24 Nicaraguan government officials, including President Daniel Ortega’s wife and Nicaragua’s vice president, Rosario Murillo, as well as three of their sons – Laureano, Rafael, and Juan Carlos – will continue.

Biden’s Western Hemisphere foreign policy is not much different from that of Obama’s. Biden and Brazilian far-right, Adolf Hitler-loving, and Covid pandemic-denying President Jair Bolsonaro are said to have struck a deal on environmental protection of the Amazon Basin ahead of an April 22 global climate change virtual summit called by the White House. A coalition of 198 Brazilian NGOs, representing environmental, indigenous rights, and other groups, has appealed to Biden not to engage in any rain forest protection agreement with the untrustworthy Bolsonaro. The Brazilian president has repeatedly advocated the wholesale deforestation of the Amazon region. Meanwhile, while Biden urges Americans to maintain Covid public health measures, Bolsonaro continues to downplay the virus threat as Brazil’s overall death count approaches that of the United States.

Blinken’s State Department has been relatively quiet on the Northern Triangle of Central America fascist troika of Presidents Orlando of Honduras, Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala, and Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. Instead of pressuring these fascistas to democratize and stop their genocidal policies toward the indigenous peoples of their nations, Biden told Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that he would pump $4 billion into supposed “assistance” to those countries to stop the flow of migrants. Biden is repeating the same old American gambits of the past. Any U.S. assistance to kleptocratic countries like those of the Northern Triangle has and will line the pockets of their corrupt leaders. Flush with U.S. aid cash, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador will be sure to grant contracts to greedy Israeli counter-insurgency contractors always at the ready to commit more human rights abuses against the workers, students, and indigenous peoples of Central America.

Biden is also in no hurry to reverse the freeze imposed by Donald Trump on U.S.-Cuban relations. Biden, whose policy toward Cuba represents a fossilized relic of the Cold War, intends to maintain Trump’s freeze on U.S. commercial, trade, and tourism relations with Cuba. Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, a Jewish Cuban-American expatriate, is expected to reach out to right-wing Cuban-Americans in south Florida in order to ensure Democratic Party inroads in the 2022 and 2024 U.S. elections. Therefore, even restoring the status quo ante established by Barack Obama is off-the-table for Biden, Blinken, and Mayorkas. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Cuban-American and ethically-challenged Democrat Bob Menendez, has stated there will be no normalization of pre-Trump relations with Cuba until his “regime change” whims are satisfied. Regurgitating typical right-wing Cuban-American drivel, Mayorkas has proclaimed after he was announced as the new Homeland Security Secretary, “I have been nominated to be the DHS Secretary and oversee the protection of all Americans and those who flee persecution in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones.” The last part of that statement was directed toward the solidly Republican bloc of moneyed Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, and Bolivian interests in south Florida.

While Blinken hurls his neocon invectives at Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba, he remains silent on the repeated foot-dragging by embattled and highly unpopular right-wing Chilean President Sebastian Pinera on implementing a new Constitution to replace that put into place in 1973 by the fascist military dictator General Augusto Pinochet. The current Chilean Constitution is courtesy of Richard Nixon’s foreign policy “Svengali,” the duplicitous Henry Kissinger, an individual who obviously shares Blinken’s taste for “realpolitik” adventurism on a global scale.

While Blinken has weighed in on the domestic politics of Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, he has had no comment on the anti-constitutional moves by Colombian far-right authoritarian President Ivan Duque, the front man for that nation’s Medellin narcotics cartel. It would also come as no surprise if Blinken, Nuland, and Power have quietly buttressed the candidacy of right-wing banker, Guillermo Lasso, who is running against the progressive socialist candidate Andrés Arauz, the protegé of former president Rafael Correa. Blinken can be expected to question the results of the April 11 if Lasso cries fraud in the event of an Arauz victory. Conversely, Blinken will remain silent if Lasso wins and Arauz cries foul. That has always been the nature of U.S. Western Hemisphere policy, regardless of what party controls the White House.

]]> U.S. Paves Way for Intervention in Ethiopia, Horn of Africa https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/03/12/us-paves-way-for-intervention-in-ethiopia-horn-of-africa/ Fri, 12 Mar 2021 19:04:56 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=719702 USAID – with an annual budget of over $27 billion and operating in over 100 countries – is notoriously intertwined with covert operations run by the CIA, Finian Cunningham writes.

An ominous development underway in Ethiopia’s devastating civil war is the intervention by the United States under the pretext of humanitarian relief.

The U.S.’ international aid agency – USAID – announced last week it has deployed a Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) in the northern Tigray region where millions of people are facing starvation.

A humanitarian crisis has been created in Ethiopia after the central government in Addis Ababa launched a military offensive against the Tigray region in November last year. Heavy fighting continues between Tigray militia and the Ethiopian National Defense Force. The Ethiopian government forces are being assisted by Eritrean troops which have invaded Tigray. There are reports of widespread violations against civilians.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in a phone call on February 27 to open up Tigray to humanitarian access and he expressed deep concern over possible war crimes. Washington then promptly deployed the USAID intervention apparently without authorization from the Ethiopian federal government.

The American move came despite a row during a closed meeting at the UN Security Council last week when it is understood that Russia and China objected to U.S. intervention plans in Ethiopia, which they said was over-riding legal processes and issues of national sovereignty.

USAID said its disaster response team is “assessing the situation in Tigray, identifying priority needs for the scaling up of relief efforts”. Given the dire humanitarian and security situation in Ethiopia that provision is logically paving the way for a major U.S. military intervention under the guise of the “right to protect” (R2P) presumption which has been unilaterally invoked by Washington in other conflicts.

President Joe Biden has picked Samantha Power as the new head of USAID. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a former national security advisor to President Barack Obama, Power is a stalwart proponent of R2P foreign interventions. Biden also wants to make Power a member of his national security council.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is, like Power, another staunch advocate of “humanitarian interventions”. They were senior members of the Obama administration who formulated American military interventions in Libya and Syria. The “humanitarian” remit is rightly seen as a cynical moral cover for what would otherwise be condemned as American military aggression to achieve Washington’s own political objectives, such as regime change.

USAID – with an annual budget of over $27 billion and operating in over 100 countries – is notoriously intertwined with covert operations run by the CIA.

The damnable thing about Ethiopia’s current crisis is that arguably it was provoked by the United States from its geopolitical ambitions to control the Horn of Africa region and in particular to cut out China and Russia from this strategically important global hub.

Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed worked previously as a top military intelligence officer in the Ethiopian army before he became prime minister in early 2018. A long-time bilateral security partnership between the U.S. and Ethiopia made Abiy an ideal CIA asset. He was involved in developing Ethiopia’s telecom spying network in a replication of the National Security Agency in the U.S.. He was also educated at a private American university.

Before Abiy’s rise to political power, Ethiopia had an independent policy on foreign relations, pursuing strategic partnership with China for economic development. Ethiopia – the second most populous country in Africa and home to the African Union – was seen as a crucial link in building China’s new silk routes from Asia to Africa.

Oddly, Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at the end of 2019 for a supposed rapprochement with Ethiopia’s northern neighbor Eritrea. The two countries fought a bitter border war in 1998-2000. In hindsight, the award was a travesty given how Abiy has invited Eritrean troops into Tigray to wage war against the civilian population there, committing horrendous massacres.

But the Nobel prize can be seen as part of Abiy’s image-building by his CIA handlers for their objective of reordering Ethiopia. Tellingly, the Western media during his early months in office gushed with praise about the “young democratic reformer” and “peacemaker”. How foolish and fawning those media look now in light of the mayhem and suffering that Abiy unleashed in Tigray over the past four months.

In truth the war was building ever since Abiy took office. Almost from the get-go, there was a campaign of low-intensity aggression directed against the Tigray region. (This author was living there.) This was while the Western media were hailing him as a “reformer”. Abiy’s campaign of hostility towards Tigray involved the central government cutting electricity, water and communications as well as political assassinations. The purpose was to wear down the region and the people’s support for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front which had been the previous dominant governing party before Abiy’s ascent. The Tigray region represented a bastion of opposition to the plan by Abiy and his CIA handlers to refashion and reorient Ethiopia geopolitically. The power struggle culminated in the full-blown war launched against Tigray on November 4, 2020, under false claims of being a security operation against a “terrorist junta”.

The terrible irony is that the war and humanitarian crisis inflicted on six million people in Tigray was predictable because Abiy seems to have been following an American imperial plan to destabilize Ethiopia for boosting its great power rivalry with China and Russia. The Horn of Africa is a geopolitical hotspot: it provides a commanding position for North Africa and Sub-Saharan mineral-rich countries, overlooking the vital shipping lanes of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, and proximate to the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula. Russia last year opened a naval base in Port Sudan on the Red Sea, while China’s only overseas military base is located in Djibouti adjacent to Ethiopia.

Now humanitarian interventionists in the Biden administration are stepping in to “resolve” a mess that the U.S. was instrumental in creating. If the USAID mission is scaled up, as seems intended, then American military could be deployed in Ethiopia giving Washington an unprecedented foothold in a strategically vital region.

It is notable that while the Biden administration seems to be over-riding the authority of the Abiy regime in Addis Ababa, the American objective does not necessarily seek regime change on this occasion. The Biden administration is promoting itself as a mediator in Ethiopia’s civil war, even though this war would not have come about were it not for America’s covert manipulation of Abiy. Recently, the Tigray militia have appeared to be gaining the upper-hand against Abiy’s forces and their Eritrean allies. The American intervention seems prompted in part by concern in Washington to prevent the Abiy regime collapsing in defeat.

]]> Document Exposes New U.S. Plot to Overthrow Nicaragua’s Elected Socialist Gov’t https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/08/06/document-exposes-new-us-plot-overthrow-nicaragua-elected-socialist-govt/ Thu, 06 Aug 2020 15:00:58 +0000 https://www.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=476691 Ben NORTON

A newly released document exposes a US government operation to overthrow the democratically elected socialist government in Nicaragua.

The plot is administered by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), a regime-change vehicle that uses the pretense of “humanitarian aid” to advance Washington’s aggressive foreign-policy interests.

The document (PDF) details the creation of a new “task order” called Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN) and its plan for “Nicaragua’s transition to democracy” – a euphemism for removing the leftist Sandinista Front for National Liberation (known commonly by the Spanish acronym FSLN) from power.

In the pages, the US government agency uses hardline neoconservative rhetoric, referring to Nicaragua’s elected government as the “Ortega regime,” and making it clear that Washington wants to install a neoliberal administration that will privatize the economy, impose neoliberal reforms, and purge all institutions of any trace of the leftist Sandinista movement.

The USAID regime-change scheme states openly that one of its top “mission goals” is for Nicaragua to “transition to a rules-based market economy” based on the “protection of private property rights.”

The document concludes by calling for the future US-installed regime in Nicaragua to “rebuild institutions” and “reestablish” the military and police; to “dismantle parallel institutions” that support the Sandinista Front; and to persecute FSLN leaders through “transitional justice measures” – in other words, a thorough purge of the Sandinista movement to prevent it from ever returning to power.

In case it was not explicit enough that Washington’s goal was regime change, the 14-page USAID document employed the word “transition” 102 times, including nine times on the first page alone.

USAID declared its intention to assist in what could be an “orderly transition” or a “sudden transition without elections,” which is clear code for a coup. At the same time, it acknowledged that Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition is divided and has little chance of winning the upcoming 2021 national election.

USAID oversees another far-right coup attempt in Latin America

Ever since the Sandinista Front returned to power in Nicaragua through democratic elections in 2006, Washington has been hellbent on trying to topple it.

In 2018, the Donald Trump administration supported a violent coup attempt in Nicaragua, in which far-right gangs took over neighborhoods and paralyzed the country with bloody barricades known as tranques. The US-backed insurgents unleashed a reign of terror, killing and injuring hundreds of Sandinista activists and state security forces; marking the homes of leftist activists, ransacking and burning some down; and torturing and threatening supporters of the elected government.

When the 2018 putsch attempt failed, the US government resorted to a raft of aggressive tactics to bring down Nicaragua’s leadership. In the past two years, the Trump administration has imposed several rounds of suffocating sanctions on the small Central American nation, often with bipartisan support in Congress, not a word of opposition from the Democratic Party, and cheers from the billionaire-funded human rights industry.

The US Agency for International Development was instrumental in the Donald Trump administration’s violent US coup attempts against Venezuela’s elected government in 2019, working directly with the Department of Defense. USAID has poured hundreds of millions of dollars funding the US regime-change efforts against the leftist Chavista government, and has bankrolled the Trump-backed coup regime of Juan Guaidó .

USAID has always functioned as a CIA cutout and soft-power arm for Washington. But under the Trump administration, it has kicked its coup efforts in Latin America into hyper drive.

In April 2020, USAID was taken over by de facto director John Barsa, a hardline Republican businessman, Trump ally, and son of anti-communist Cuban immigrants. In coordination with Secretary of State and former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Barsa has turned USAID into a blunt weapon of regime change, openly financing putsch efforts against the socialist governments of Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua.

US govt’s Democracy International posts job listing for USAID coup liaison in Nicaragua

The Grayzone contacted USAID to ask confirmation that the document detailing its plans for a political “transition” in Nicaragua was authentic. The agency did not respond.

We were able, however, to gather evidence demonstrating the document’s legitimacy. The pages spelling out the regime-change plot employ precisely the same language and phrases as a job listing that was posted in late July by another US government-funded organization, Democracy International. In fact, the USAID document appears to be a more detailed job description for this post.

Democracy International stated in its listing on LinkedIn that it was seeking a Nicaraguan national in the capital of Managua to work as a “Senior Level Technical Expert – Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance to provide technical and programmatic support for USAID/Nicaragua’s Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN) Task Order.”

Directly echoing the USAID document, the Democracy International job listing said that the “purpose of the Task Order is ‘to provide rapid, responsive, and relevant analytical and technical assistance that bridge USAID/Nicaragua’s efforts to create the conditions for, and support, a peaceful transition to democracy in Nicaragua.’”

This employee would help develop a “Transition Response Plan” – a regime-change scheme. (The brief job listing uses the term “transition” 10 times.)

During the Cold War, coup coordination jobs like these would have been covert positions arranged with the CIA. In the freewheeling 21st century, however, this dirty regime-change work is carried out in the open, and advertised publicly on LinkedIn.

In case it wasn’t clear what this organization’s relationship was to USAID, it stated clearly on the post: “Democracy International, Inc. (DI) provides technical assistance, analytical services and project implementation for democracy, human rights, governance and conflict mitigation programs worldwide for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the US State Department and other development partners.”

The job listing explicitly noted that the employee would work with the US government to provide “technical advice and country knowledge to GON (government of Nicaragua) ministries, USG (US government), and other stakeholders.”

Clearly, Democracy International is searching for a local point person to help carry out Washington’s regime-change efforts on the ground. The USAID document spelled out in detail the specific destabilization strategy that this liaison would follow.

The Grayzone called the Democracy International office with a request for comment on the LinkedIn job listing, the RAIN program, and the USAID document. A secretary would not let us speak with a specific member of the international team, simply saying, “We will inform the relevant people that we have received a call and I can give them their name and number and they will call you.”

The secretary asked if The Grayzone had a specific question to respond to. We said, “Local Nicaraguan media outlets have criticized USAID’s RAIN program, which is described in the Democracy International job posting, and characterized it as what appears to be an attempt at orchestrating a coup in the country. Can you respond to that characterization and do you think it is fair or unfair?” The Democracy International secretary replied, “Wow that’s so interesting. I will definitely let them know that you called.”

USAID’s regime-change plot to “transition” Nicaragua to a “market economy”

USAID’s Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN) plan makes it clear that it is just a “short term bridge” to bring about regime change in the country, adding, “It is USAID’s intent to follow RAIN with longer-term programs, which will be determined as the crisis evolves.”

The regime-change plot outlined a “Mission Goal 2” in which “Nicaragua provides basis for future economic growth and increased trade through transition to a rules-based market economy based on transparent and accountable regulatory institutions, fiscal and monetary stability, respect for the rule-of-law and protection of private property rights.”

A supplementary “mission objective” emphasized USAID’s desire for a new neoliberal regime in Nicaragua that “works with the private sector to rebuild institutionality and an efficient and fair administrative bureaucracy” – in other words, mass privatization.

(Among the supposed crimes committed by the Nicaraguan “regime,” USAID lists “confiscation of properties.”)

The USAID document outlined further US priorities for Nicaragua following a successful regime-change operation.

USAID’s “Mission Goal 3” would be “Security reform and rebuilding institutions” to “reestablish independent and professional security forces.” This is clearly a call for purging the police and military of Sandinista loyalists and bring in US trainers to establish a neocolonial-style security force, much like General Keith Dayton did in the occupied West Bank after Palestinian resistance was extinguished following the Second Intifada.

The “new government must act quickly to dismantle parallel institutions,” USAID adds. This is an indirect hint that Washington seeks to destroy the Sandinista Front, the Sandinista Youth, and other grassroots institutions that work with but are independent of the current socialist government. At its most severe, such a proposal could amount to an Augusto Pinochet-style purge of the left in Nicaragua.

“Additionally, it will need to implement transitional justice measures,” the USAID document added. This language, which has also been used in the proxy war on Syria, suggests the new neoliberal Nicaraguan government would be compelled to prosecute Sandinista Front officials, echoing the strategy the US-backed right-wing regimes in Bolivia and Ecuador have used to criminalize the left-wing parties that previously ruled those countries, hunt down former leftist leaders, and throw opposition officials in prison on dubious charges.

Another important part of the RAIN job would include recruiting native coup coordinators to help carry out the regime-change plot. USAID described this responsibility as follows: “Identification of potential Nicaraguan partners for rapid impact Grants Under Task Order to promote transition-related activities.”

The initiative allotted $540,000 in grants to entice Nicaraguan opposition groups into assisting the regime-change effort. (In the second-poorest country in the Western hemisphere, where the minimum wage is between $200 and $300 per month, half a million dollars is no petty sum.)

These funds would compliment the millions of dollars that USAID and the NED provide to right-wing Nicaraguan organizations every year.

The USAID document insisted that “Nicaragua’s immediate future remains highly uncertain.” Yet it acknowledged that the right-wing opposition is divided and unpopular, admitting that its leadership has not “coalesced around a party or candidate.”

Taking into account the weakness of the opposition heading into the 2021 national elections, the USAID plan outlines three scenarios for the overthrow of the socialist government and a “transition” to a US-friendly neoliberal regime.

The first is an “Orderly Transition scenario,” a far-fetched situation in which an unpopular US-backed opposition group somehow manages to win the election.

The second potential regime-change scenario is described as a “Sudden, Unanticipated Transition,” in “which one or more political crises, such as a snap or failed election, a presidential resignation, a major health crisis, a major natural disaster, or internal conflicts, lead to sudden regime crisis and transition either to an interim government or a new government.” This is the coup option, and USAID makes it clear that it would be more than happy with such a situation, and wants its RAIN liaison to prepare for it.

The third is a “Delayed Transition scenario,” in which the Sandinista government remains in power. In this case, USAID says that RAIN would help it destabilize the government in other ways and lead to future regime change.

But USAID didn’t want readers to get the wrong impression. It stressed in the document that its coup would be “gender sensitive in compliance” and based on “gender-informed analytical work.” (Although the women who make up the bulk of the Sandinista base would have to be excluded from Washington’s woke political “transition”).

The USAID document balanced its liberal language on gender with neoconservative rhetoric claiming, “Malign foreign influences, principally Cuba, Venezuela, and Russia, will continue to attempt to strengthen the corrupt autocratic Ortega regime.”

“What if Nicaragua did that in the United States?”

The existence of the USAID regime-change document was first reported on July 31 on the popular Nicaraguan radio and video show Sin Fronteras, hosted by William Grigsby Vado.

Grigsby, a prominent leftist media personality with a large following at the base of the Sandinista Front, condemned the US plot. “It is nauseating, the document; bearing to read it is difficult,” he said in outrage. “You have to have a strong liver to bear it. It pained me a lot.”

“What right does the US government have to contract a firm to subvert public order in any country?” Grigsby fumed. “It is a shameless intervention. Before they did it with the military; in this case they are doing it by subverting public order and funding political opposition activities. That is unacceptable!”

“What if Nicaragua did that in the United States, if for example Daniel Ortega said, ‘Hey, we’re going to help the protesters in Portland’?” he added. “But they reserve to themselves the right to act against the democratic institutionality of a country.”

Grigsby concluded by condemning “yankee imperialism” and slamming Nicaraguan opposition figures who are participating in this regime-change scheme.

“You all can do one of two things,” he thundered at the opposition. “Follow the rules of democracy, accept your defeat, and participate in the political game. Or you can simply remain as treasonists, hitmen, and traitors.”

The USAID document shows Washington pushing the latter option, and driving the country into a deepened conflict.

thegrayzone.com

]]> US Military Attack on Venezuela Mulled by Top Trump Advisors and Latin American Officials at Private DC Meeting https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/04/15/us-military-attack-on-venezuela-mulled-by-top-trump-advisors-and-latin-american-officials-at-private-dc-meeting/ Mon, 15 Apr 2019 13:41:44 +0000 https://new.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=85173 Away from the public eye, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) think tank hosted a top-level, off-the-record meeting to explore US military options against Venezuela.

Max BLUMENTHAL

(The complete list of attendees for the private CSIS event on US military options against Venezuela appears at the bottom of this article.)

The Washington, DC-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) hosted a private roundtable on April 10 called “Assessing the Use of Military Force in Venezuela.” A list of attendees was provided to The Grayzone and two participants confirmed the meeting took place. They refused to offer any further detail, however.

Among the roughly 40 figures invited to the off-the-record event to discuss potential US military action against Caracas were some of the most influential advisors on President Donald Trump’s Venezuela policy. They included current and former State Department, National Intelligence Council, and National Security Council officials, along with Admiral Kurt Tidd, who was until recently the commander of US SOUTHCOM.

Senior officials from the Colombian and Brazilian embassies like Colombian General Juan Pablo Amaya, as well as top DC representatives from Venezuelan coup leader Juan Guaido’s shadow government, also participated in the meeting.

On January 23, following backroom maneuvers, the United States openly initiated a coup attempt against Venezuela’s elected government by recognizing National Assembly president Juan Guaido as the country’s “interim president.”

Since then, Venezuela has endured a series of provocations and the steady escalation of punishing economic sanctions. President Nicolas Maduro has accused the US of attacks on the Simon Bolivar hydroelectric plant at the Guri dam, which have led to country-wide blackouts openly celebrated by top Trump officials.

In a March 5 call with Russian pranksters posing as the president of the Swiss Federation, US special envoy for Venezuela Elliot Abrams ruled out military action against Venezuela, revealing that he had only held out the threat to “make the Venezuelan military nervous.”

Since then, however, Guaido has failed to mobilize the national protest wave the Trump administration had anticipated, and the Venezuelan military has demonstrated unwavering loyalty to Maduro. In Washington, the sense of urgency has risen with each passing day.

‘We Talked About Military Options in Venezuela’

The CSIS meeting on “Assessing the Use of Military Force in Venezuela” suggests that the Trump administration is exploring military options more seriously than before, possibly out of frustration with the fact that every other weapon in its arsenal has failed to bring down Maduro.

On April 10, I obtained a check-in list containing the names of those invited to the meeting. It was apparently incorrectly dated as April 20, but had taken place earlier that day, at 3 PM.

I confirmed that the meeting had taken place with Sarah Baumunk, a research associate at CSIS’s Americas Program who was listed as a participant.

“We talked about military… uh… military options in Venezuela. That was earlier this week though,” Baumunk told me, when The Grayzone asked her about the meeting that was wrongly listed for April 20.

When The Grayzone asked if the event took place on April 10, Baumunk appeared to grow nervous. “I’m sorry, why are you asking these questions? Can I help you?” she replied.

After I asked again about the meeting, Baumunk cut off the conversation. “I’m sorry I don’t feel comfortable answering these questions,” she stated before hanging up.

The Grayzone received additional confirmation of the meeting from Santiago Herdoiza, a research associate at Hills & Company, who was also listed as an attendee. “I’m sorry, that was a closed meeting. Good evening,” Herdoiza commented when asked for details on the event.

A Who’s Who of Trump Administration Coup Advisors

The CSIS check-in list not only confirms that the Trump administration and its outside advisors are mulling options for a military assault on Venezuela; it also outlines the cast of characters involved in crafting the regime change operation against the country.

Few of these figures are well known by the public, yet many have played an influential role in US plans to destabilize Venezuela.

The complete check-in list can be viewed at the end of this article. Below are profiles of some of the more notable figures and organizations involved in the private meeting. (Names of attendees are in bold).

Admiral Kurt Tidd, Former Commander of US SOUTHCOM: From 2015-18, Tidd was the commander of the US Naval Forces Southern Command, overseeing operations in Central and South America. Last October, Tidd complained, “My Twitter feed is made up of about 50 percent of people accusing me of planning and plotting the invasion of Venezuela, and the other 50 percent imploring me to plan and plot the invasion of Venezuela.” Given his participation in the CSIS meeting on attacking Venezuela, his accusers might have had a point.

On February 20, Tidd’s successor, Admiral Craig Faller, threatened Venezuela’s military and urged it to turn on Maduro in support of the US-backed coup attempt.

Brownfield advised Trump’s National Security Council, “Don’t just hit everyone because you can. Hit the right people and then maybe get others to just be scared and wonder when they’ll get hit.” Mark Feierstein, a NSC official at the time who now works as a senior associate at CSIS and attended its April 10 meeting, was reportedly involved in the plot. However, the plan fell apart as soon as the US sanctioned Cabello under pressure from Sen. Marco Rubio.

Fernando Cutz and Juan Cruz, former National Security Council officials at the Cohen Group: Cutz collaborated closely with Brownfield on the plan to generate rifts in Maduro’s inner circle. Born in Brazil, Cutz is a career USAID foreign service officer who worked on Cuban policy under Obama and entered the Trump NSC under its former director, Gen. H.R. McMaster. Cutz is credited by the Wall Street Journal with presenting Trump with his initial platter of options for destabilizing Venezuela, starting with “a financial strike at Venezuela’s oil exports.” Cutz’s colleague at the Cohen Group, Juan Cruz, was Trump’s former Latin America director. In March 2018, Cruz became the first US official to openly call for the Venezuelan military to disobey Maduro and implement a coup.

Pedro Burelli, BV Advisors: A former JP Morgan executive and ex-director of Venezuela’s national oil company PDVSA, Burelli allegedly helped foot the $52,000 bill for a series of meetings in Mexico in 2010 where Guaido and his associates plotted to bring down then-President Hugo Chavez through street chaos. In an interview with The Grayzone, Burelli called the Mexico meetings “a legitimate activity,” though he refused to confirm his participation. Today, he makes no secret of his desire for Maduro’s removal by force, tweeting images of jailed Panamanian President Manuel Noriega and the murdered Libyan leader Muammar Ghadafi to suggest preferred outcomes for Venezuela’s president.

Roger Noriega, American Enterprise Institute: A veteran of the Iran-Contra scandals and regime change operations from Haiti to Cuba, where he plotted to sabotage US efforts at rapproachment – “stability is the enemy and chaos is the friend,” he said – Noriega has been at the center of Washington’s efforts to impose its will on Venezuela. Last November, Noriega recommended that Trump appoint Ambassador Brownfield to lead contingency plans for a military invasion of the country.

Carlos Vecchio and Francisco Marquez, Guaido’s shadow embassy in Washington: Installed as the symbolic ambassador of the Guaido coup regime in Washington DC, Vecchio currently oversees no consular facilities and has no diplomatic authority. He is wanted in Venezuela on arson charges and was photographed posing with a young man who brutally beheaded a woman named Liliana Hergueta. Marquez is associated with Vision Democratica, a DC-based lobbying outfit which employs another Venezuelan opposition member who attended the CSIS meeting on military force, Carlos Figueroa.

Sergio Guzman, Bernardo Rico, and Karin McFarland, USAID: The US Agency for International Aid and Development (USAID) has been the leading edge of the Trump administration’s attempts to undermine Venezuela’s government. After ramping up its activities in Venezuela in 2007, USAID began contributing between $45-50 million per year to Venezuelan opposition political, media, and civil society groups. On February 23, USAID director Mark Green presided over a deliberately provocative attempt to ram aid shipments by truck across the Colombian border and into Venezuela. The humanitarian interventionist spectacle backfired badly, resulting in opposition hooligans setting fire to the aid shipments with molotov cocktails. (Green falsely accused Maduro’s forces of burning the aid.) This February, USAID rolled out plans for a “Red Team…to train aid workers as special forces” capable of “executing a mix of offensive, defensive, and stability operations in extremis conditions.”

Emiliana Duarte, Caracas Chronicles and advisor to Maria Corina Machado: Duarte’s name was crossed off the CSIS check-in list, indicating that she was invited to the private meeting on military options but did not attend. She is a staff writer for Caracas Chronicles, a leading English language publication echoing the political line of Venezuela’s opposition. Duarte has also contributed to the New York Times, most recently in February, when she argued that the US-backed coup attempt was, in fact, “Venezuela’s very normal revolution.” Nowhere in Duarte’s writing has she acknowledged that she is serving as an advisor to Maria Corina Machado, a close ally of Sen. Marco Rubio and one of the most extreme figures among Venezuela’s opposition. In 2014, a series of emails were leaked allegedly revealing Machado’s role in an alleged assassination plot. “I think it is time to gather efforts; make the necessary calls, and obtain financing to annihilate Maduro and the rest will fall apart,” Machado wrote in one email.

Santiago Herdoiza, Hills & Company: While Herdoiza appears to occupy a low level position, he works at a high powered international strategy firm founded by former George W. Bush administration officials. The firm works on behalf of clients like Chevron, Boeing, and Bechtel to “eliminate barriers to market access and profitability.” In some cases, the firm says it has been able to persuade governments to lower tariffs and drop opposition to free trade deals. Through its participation in the private CSIS meeting, Hills & Company seems to have signaled that it is willing to also entertain the use of military force to open up markets for its clients.

David Smolansky, OAS coordinator for Venezuelan migrants: Once a leader of Guaido’s US-backed Popular Will party, Smolansky took sanctuary in Washington and began working for regime change in 2017. Following the US recognition of Guaido as “interim president,” Smolansky was appointed by OAS President Luis Almagro as coordinator for Venezuelan migrants. While it is unknown what advice Smolansky offered at CSIS regarding a military assault on his country, there is a near-consensus in Washington that an attack would massively exacerbate the migration crisis. A war on Venezuela “would be prolonged, it would be ugly, there would be massive casualties,” Rebecca Chavez, a fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue, declared in testimonybefore the House Foreign Affairs Committee in March. (Chavez’s boss, Michael Shifter, was a participant in the CSIS meeting on use of force).

thegrayzone.com
]]> Is Washington Preparing the Groundwork for a Maidan Scenario in Venezuela? https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/04/01/is-washington-preparing-the-groundwork-for-maidan-scenario-in-venezuela/ Mon, 01 Apr 2019 10:00:52 +0000 https://new.strategic-culture.org/?post_type=article&p=84889 The global community can only hope that common sense and scruples wins out over opportunism and rogue politics, all in the name of oil profits.

Venezuela is home to the largest oil deposits in the world, which makes the political stakes involved much higher than they would be otherwise. Enter Juan Guaidó, Washington’s puppet leader in Caracas, who will be attempting to rally the country against legitimate (i.e., democratically elected by the people) President Nicolas Maduro next month.

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó has announced that April 6 will kick off a nationwide “tactical actions” as part of the so-called Operation Freedom protests, which are designed to oust President Nicolas Maduro.

“On April 6 will be the first tactical actions of the # Operation Freedom across the country,” Guaidó declared over Twitter this week. “That day we must be ready, prepared and organized, with the Aid and Freedom Committees already formed. The rescue of Venezuela is in our hands!”

Is this the start of Maidan 2.0?

But first, who is Juan Guaidó? That’s a questioning worth pondering momentarily because just a few months ago, the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans – 81 percent of the population – had never heard of the young man before. That all changed when Guaidó, 35, was awakened by a phone call from none other than US Vice President Mike Pence. Literally overnight he had become the poster boy of the political opposition in Venezuela and leader of the National Assembly. “Juan Guaidó is a character that has been created for this circumstance,” Marco Teruggi, a sociologist and leading observer of Venezuelan politics, told the Grayzone. “It’s the logic of a laboratory – Guaidó is like a mixture of several elements that create a character who, in all honesty, oscillates between laughable and worrying.”

In fact, Washington recognized Guaidó more than just an opposition leader; it recognized him, without a drop of legality, as the de-jure president of the Latin American country (Just this week, Guaidó’s wife Fabiana Rosales was the guest of honor at the White House, as the media referred to her as “first lady” and “first-lady-in-waiting”).

Meanwhile, the US media has wasted no time placing the laurels on Guaidó’s young, inexperienced head, declaring the quiet coup d’ etat the “restoration of democracy” in a land where the election process, which provides its voters with a digital receipt, is considered to be the most transparent and reliable in the world. In other words, if Maduro is in office, which he is, it is due to the will of the people, not the will of Mike Pence.

So what should Venezuela expect on April 6 with the commencement of Guaidó’s organized protest? Anything is possible, but the likelihood of some sort of event or incident that will heighten the tensions in the country cannot be discounted. It certainly does not help that Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton warned in the past of “serious consequences” if any harm comes to Guaidó.

“Let me reiterate – there will be serious consequences for those who attempt to subvert democracy and harm Guaidó,” Bolton tweeted back in January. Those sorts of threats must be treated with extreme caution and due consideration. Suffice it to recall what followed like clockwork in Syria after such red-line threats were delivered about what would happen in the event of a chemical attack. Unsurprisingly, a chemical attack would eventually occur, whereupon the United States would immediately blame the event on the government, as opposed to the ragtag terrorist rebels who had infinitely more reason for resorting to such methods, and more so following such declarations from the US. In other words, should anything untoward happen to Guaidó, the West would have its perfect pretext for whatever follows next, which are better left to the imagination.

Although it appears as though Juan Guaidó’s popularity is on the wane – his motorcade was attacked by a pro-Maduro crowd just this week, while turnout for his anti-government marches has been reportedly dwindling – Caracas took the step of barring him from holding public office for 15 years due to irregularities in his financial records. According to the State Comptroller, Juan Guaidó has taken 90 international trips without indicating who provided the estimated $94,000 in expenses.

“We’re going to continue in the streets,” Guaidó responded.

Meanwhile, back in the United States, a number of government officials are taking a very unhealthy interest, if not suspicious interest, in what is happening in Caracas. Senator Marco Rubio, for example, sounds worse than any opposition figure in Venezuela, and tweets about practically nothing else than what is happening south of the border. On one particularly lamentable occasion, Rubio was delusional enough to actually post before-and-after images of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The first showed him in power, the second just moments before being brutally murdered by a street mob. It boggles the mind to think that this man, who has a strange penchant for quoting Bible verse while fomenting for violent upheaval, stood on a platform as a Republican presidential hopeful.

In any case, there have been several events that strongly suggest that the United States has some sort of plan to bring about the crisis that could lift Guaidó into power, as well as open up the Latin American oil industry to foreign private interests, as he has already promised to do.

First, there is the well-documented incident from last month in which a ‘humanitarian supply’ truck, attempting to cross into Venezuela from Colombia, was torched. The US quickly blamed the incident on Maduro, however, video footage seems to indicate that it was actually anti-government protesters who carried out the attack with the use of Molotov cocktails.

Meanwhile, the beleaguered Latin American country has suffered a spate of electricity blackouts this month, which Maduro has been quick to blame on the United States. Guaidó, of course, blamed the outages on the “incompetence” of the Maduro government. However, Maduro may be forgiven for seeing the hand of the United States every time the lights go out. In fact, such things were discussed years ago, as revealed in a Wikileaks email dump that show even during the reign of Hugo Chavez, the problem of energy supplies was considered as a crowbar to break down the government. The following email was from Stratfor, which provides intelligence analysis.

“A key to Chavez’s current weakness is the decline in the electricity sector. There is the grave possibility that some 70 percent of the country’s electricity grid could go dark as soon as April 2010… This could be the watershed event, as there is little that Chavez can do to protect the poor from the failure of that system. This would likely have the impact of galvanizing public unrest in a way that no opposition group could ever hope to generate.”

Now, to what degree, if any, the United States may be tempted to hack/attack the Venezuelan power grid is anybody’s guess, but it certainly does not seem to be beyond the realm of possibility. And this could explain why the United States is so rattled by the presence of some 100 Russian cyber specialists in Venezuela, which arrived last week.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Russia’s relations with Venezuela are conducted “in strict accordance with the Constitution of this country and in full respect of its legislation.”

Understandably, the last thing that Moscow would like to see is yet another regime change fiasco, this time in Caracas, similar to the one that occurred on its border in Ukraine with the Maidan uprising, which continues to wreak havoc on global relations. In that sense, the global community can only hope that common sense and scruples wins out over opportunism and rogue politics, all in the name of oil profits.

]]> Burning Aid: An Interventionist Deception on Colombia-Venezuela Bridge? https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/02/28/burning-aid-interventionist-deception-colombia-venezuela-bridge/ Thu, 28 Feb 2019 10:25:00 +0000 https://strategic-culture.lo/news/2019/02/28/burning-aid-interventionist-deception-colombia-venezuela-bridge/ Max BLUMENTHAL

The Trump administration’s coup against Venezuela culminated on February 23 with US-backed opposition attempting to ram several trucks loaded with boxes of USAID “humanitarian aid” across the previously unused Francisco de Paula Santander bridge connecting Colombia to Venezuela.

The trucks failed to reach the other side — but that was never really the point of the stunt. As Father Sergio Munoz, a right-wing Venezuelan activist posted on the Colombian side of the border, explained to journalist Dan Cohen, the humanitarian “aid” was a purely symbolic provocation aimed at discrediting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in international eyes and generating waves of destabilizing violence.

By the end of the day, the trucks lined up on the Francisca de Paula Santander bridge were flanked by gangs of guarimberos.

Photo courtesy: Telesur

These were the nihilistic masked youth who form the shock troops of the right-wing opposition, and who placed Caracas under siege with violent barricade protests, known as guarimbas, at several points between 2014 and 2017. A mob of guarimberos burned to death Orlando Figuera, a 22-year old black Venezuelan accused of supporting Maduro, on an eastern Caracas street in broad daylight, back in June 2017.

On the Santander bridge this February 23, the guarimberos rained down a hail of rocks and molotov cocktails on Venezuelan national guardsmen holding the line against the USAID trucks. Suddenly, the trucks caught fire and the masked youth began unloading boxes of aid before they burned. Within minutes, pro-opposition media reported that the Venezuelan national guard forces were responsible for the fires.

A reporter for the private anti-government channel NTN24 claimed without evidence that the Venezuelan security forces had caused the fires with tear gas:

The claim was absurd on its face. I have personally witnessed tear gas canisters hit every kind of vehicle imaginable in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, and I have never seen a fire like the one that erupted on the Santander bridge.

In 2013, the San Bernadino Sheriff’s Department deployed special incendiary teargas canisters (“burners”) to torch the house where fugitive cop killer Chris Dorner had holed up. But it is highly unlikely that the Venezuelan national guardsmen had anything like this weapon in their arsenal when they confronted the rioters on February 23.

The total lack of evidence of Venezuelan culpability did not stop Cuban-American Senator Marco Rubio from tweeting this accusation from nearby in Cucuta, Colombia:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who is facing calls for her own resignation after video appeared of her condescendingly browbeating a group of environmentalist children, repeated Rubio’s baseless allegation, using it to call for Maduro to step down.

By blaming the Venezuelan government for burning the USAID trucks, Rubio was clearly attempting to establish the casus belli he had been seeking. Yet neither he nor anyone in the “whole world” had seen the national guard set the fire, as he claimed. In fact, the evidence pointed in the exact opposite direction, suggesting that the masked opposition youth had torched the trucks themselves.

Colombian writer Humberto Ortiz produced footage from a pro-opposition channel showing what appears to be the exact moment when a guarimbero sets the aid on fire with a molotov cocktail:

Telesur reporter Madelein Garcia published photographs showing a guarimbero with a gas canister next to one of the burning trucks:

Drone footage also published by Garcia shows how far away the trucks were from Venezuelan national guardsmen when they caught fire, and demonstrates that they were clearly on the Colombian side of the border:

Even Bloomberg News, which has run a relentless stream of pro-opposition reports, published video showing guarimberos on the bridge making molotov cocktails, which could easily set a truck cabin or its cargo alight:

Meanwhile, the International Red Cross issued a statement condemning Venezuelan opposition activists disguising themselves as Red Cross workers – a blatant breach of humanitarian protocol. A screenshot from pro-opposition NTN24 coverage shows a fake Red Cross worker near one of the burning trucks:

Days ago, self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido announced that he would lead a “human wave” across the bridge and into Venezuela. But as darkness fell on February 23, Guaido found himself at a stormy press conference with other right-wing, US-aligned Latin American leaders. By his side was Colombian President Ivan Duque, who repeated the evidence-free allegation that Venezuelan security forces had burned the aid trucks.

Having failed miserably at every phase of the coup he had attempted engineer, Rubio ended the day with a Twitter tantrum that peaked with a call for “multilateral actions” against Venezuela’s government. What form that action could take is still unclear, but it will certainly be justified by a series of baseless claims about what took place on the Santander bridge.

grayzoneproject.com

]]> Starbuck’s and Modern Mercantilism: No Different Than the British East India Company https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2019/02/04/starbucks-and-modern-mercantilism-no-different-than-british-east-india-company/ Mon, 04 Feb 2019 07:55:00 +0000 https://strategic-culture.lo/news/2019/02/04/starbucks-and-modern-mercantilism-no-different-than-british-east-india-company/ Howard Schultz, the founder and current major shareholder of the ubiquitous coffee chain, Starbuck’s, wants to be president of the United States. When asked why he wants to run as an independent candidate, Schultz replied with a “glittering generality” common among new age mercantilists who run for political office: “I want to bring the country together.”

Schultz and those like him who have or are harboring political ambitions want governments to serve the neo-mercantilist elites, not the common folk. The historical precedent for this behavior is the British East India Company, also known as the “Honorable East India Company.” This London-based company controlled a vast monopoly on trade, extending from India and Southeast Asia, China, and Japan to the wharves of Boston in the British colony of Massachusetts Bay in North America.

The famous “Boston Tea Party” of 1773 was a rebellion by American colonial merchants over the imposition of the Stamp Tax on tea and other goods imported to North America from India by the British East India Company. However, the rebels of Boston were more interested in their bottom line than in political fervor to break from the British Crown. In fact, the thirteen red and white stripes on the flag of the British East India Company, with the British Union Jack in the canton, became the basis for the design of the American flag, with a field of white stars replacing the Union Jack. When Americans fight over respect for “the flag,” few realize that what they are being forced to respect is a modified form of the standard for one of the largest mercantilist contrivances in history. In effect, the British East India Company, which had its own army and navy, ruled over India and British colonies in Malaya, China, Burma, Mauritius, and Reunion.

The same mercantilist notions of trade expansion and control of commodities exists today with companies like Starbuck’s. The coffee chain distinguishes itself from its competitors by offering coffee choices with exotic-sounding names like “Sulawesi Dark Roast,” “Rwanda Blue Bourbon,” “Sumatra Dark Roast,” and “Guatemala Antigua,” and menus featuring choices written in a bastardized version of Esperanto. Schultz prides himself on being an enlightened entrepreneur, however, a close look at the Brooklyn-born mega-merchant of Seattle, yields the company he formed far from advocating any notions of progressive capitalism. As with other “new age” global corporations, including Apple, Amazon, Ikea, Microsoft, Starbuck’s has ridden the wave of corporations becoming more powerful than many countries, just as was the case with the old British East India Company and British South Africa Company, the latter founded by uber-capitalist and colonialist Cecil Rhodes.

When it came to buying coffee from some of the world's worst human rights violators and child labor practitioners, Schultz led the pack.

Starbucks enjoyed a very cozy relationship with the Indonesian military-backed coffee-growing colonists who ran East Timor's large plantations, during the Indonesian occupation of the former Portuguese colony. In 1999, protestors highlighted Starbucks' practices in East Timor and other countries during the anti-World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, Starbuck's headquarters. Starbuck’s, a company that prided itself as being progressive, turned out to be no different from than Shell, British Petroleum, Nike, Chiquita Brands, and other companies that exploit workers in poor developing nations.

In 1994, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) officially took control of East Timorese coffee plantations from the Indonesian armed forces. One of the Indonesian military bigwigs in on the deal was former Indonesian armed force commander General Benni Murdani, a favorite of the Central Intelligence Agency. Although Murdani was forced to resign as commander in 1993, his influence over East Timor's coffee production remained significant. Operating through a local super-cooperative called the Timor Coffee Project, which acted like a modern-day British East India Company, USAID and the US National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA) administered the coffee plantations and arranged for most of the organically-grown reddish-hued Arabica bean crop to be sold to none other than Starbuck's.

In East Timor, many of the local officials of the coffee cooperative were not even native Timorese, but migrants from Java and Bali who wanted to turn a quick profit on the backs of underpaid East Timorese farm workers.

Rather than be caught selling East Timorese coffee at its stores, Starbuck's cleverly re-named the coffee as being from Sulawesi or Sumatra.

To deal with the public relations debacle caused by its exposure in East Timor, Starbuck’s agreed to place "Fair Trade" labels on its products as proof that it was paying coffee farmers a fair price for their coffee. The Fair Trade labels were the brainchild of Trans Fair USA, the American branch of a self-regulatory international industry watchdog group that guarantees coffee, tea, chocolate, and banana growers receive a fair price without the markup of middlemen, and that farm laborers work under safe conditions.

Starbucks, as the first company to adopt the Fair Trade labeling scheme for coffee, offered its "fair trade" coffee free to passers-by during the World Bank protests in Washington, DC in 2000. Although Starbucks wanted to get ahead in the public relations contest, fair trade labels were not found on most of the company's products. Also, there has never been a real way for determining how much of Starbucks' business is really conducted through "fair trade" entities, or if only a small percentage of its wholesale coffee purchases are "greenwashed" for public relations reasons. Many have argued that such “mercantile activism” is nothing more than a corporate smokescreen designed to hide more unsavory business practices.

As East Timor slowly drifted toward independence from Indonesia, Washington, DC lobbyists, some employed by Starbuck’s, went to work. Following East Timor's overwhelming vote for independence in a 1999 referendum, every statement issued by the US State Department concerning the Indonesian genocide against the people of East Timor was tainted by assertions that any United Nations relief operation would have to be worked out with the authorities in Jakarta. Oddly, no such preconditions concerning Belgrade's acquiescence were ever attached to NATO's invasion of Kosovo taking place at the same time. Starbucks’ lobbyists were clearly trying to buy time for the status quo in East Timor.

One place where Starbuck’s phoniness on fair trade coffee was exposed was in the rebellious Mexican state of Chiapas. There, a Starbuck’s "greenwashing" effort was in full operation. In an attempt to drive independent squatters off of the sensitive rain forest land in Montes Azules, where farmers slash and burn for agricultural land, groups such as Conservation International and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), as well as the always suspect USAID, began a campaign to protect the land for 66 surviving Lacandon Mayan families. However, it was discovered that the non-governmental organizations and their USAID partners had other motives, which included gaining access to the Montes Azules rainforest for the exploitation of coffee, fruit, oil, and pharmaceutical precursors. Leading the parade of the firms wanting to exploit Montes Azules was Starbuck’s, with ExxonMobil, Chiquita Brands, and Coca Cola in tow. The Zapatista National Liberation Front, which is active in Chipas, said it would fight any attempt to remove any villagers from Montes Azules, once again pitting Starbuck’s and its agents of influence against the poorest of the poor.

Starbucks' support for unsavory regimes did not end with the Indonesian military occupiers of East Timor. After Rwandan President Paul Kagame transformed his country into a virtual one-party state, Starbuck’s announced it was interested in buying Rwandan coffee. In April 2004, Kagame made a pilgrimage to Seattle, the home of Starbucks, with his trade and agriculture ministers in tow. Rwanda's coffee industry received financial support from the Bush administration, anxious to bolster its client in Kigali. The “Assistance a la Dynamisation de l'Agribusiness au Rwanda” (ADAR), a Rwandan enterprise designed to spur entrepreneurship in the coffee industry, received US government funding.

In an appearance in Seattle to promote his movie, "Hotel Rwanda," director Terry George, used the occasion to promote Rwandan coffee: "If Starbuck's would carry Rwandan coffee—which is extremely good, by the way—that alone could save the country from economic disaster."

Under Brazil's new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, the nation's child labor laws are being rolled back, with companies like Starbuck's at the ready to take advantage of the situation to purchase cheaper coffee beans.

Howard Schultz, like other mercantilists of today and yesteryear, made his billions on the backs of others, including, in some cases, children as young as five-years old. It does not help Schultz’s political case to have signed on to his nascent exploratory campaign staff, Steve Schmidt, the former Republican Party strategist who convinced 2008 Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, to select Alaska’s Governor, Sarah Palin, as his running mate. The United States has already experienced the ravages brought about by a self-seeking billionaire currently occupying the Oval Office and it can ill-afford to replace him with another.

]]>