The Ironies of the Venezuelan Opposition, part 22 - pre-planned violence in National Assembly, pt 2

[Catherina]

6. "The Devil Wears Prada:" María Corina Machado and Washington’s Indecent Game Against Venezuela

"The Devil Wears Prada:" María Corina Machado and Washington’s Indecent Game Against Venezuela

BY COHA Director Larry Birns
– Posted on February 9, 2006


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...One component of Washington’s larghetto attempts to undermine Venezuela’s constitutional rule has been the channeling of funds to anti-Chávez cabals being mixed in Venezuela, and then reacting with cultivated outrage when the leaders of such a movement are threatened with prosecution. No clearer example of this exists than the events surrounding María Corina Machado, the leader of the profoundly anti-Chávez Caracas group, Súmate.

Indignation Misplaced

In one of his earliest initiatives after becoming Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Thomas Shannon appeared before the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere in November, where he denounced Venezuela’s “persecution” of Machado and Alejandro Plaz, leaders of the Súmate electoral organization. The two are currently facing prosecution for “conspiracy against the republican form of the nation,” a charge stemming from Súmate’s acceptance of a $31,000 National Endowment for Democracy grant. As for Shannon’s rhetoric, any hope that Shannon might bring some professionalism and moderation to his job is now rapidly evaporating. The White House’s ideological extremism that has done so much damage to U.S.-Latin American relations apparently is scheduled to continue.

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The case against Plaz and Machado seems to be clear cut: Venezuela’s Ley de Partidos Politicos, Reuniones Públicos y Manifestaciones (Political Party Law), which dates to 1965 contains the clause in Article 25 that parties “may not accept donations or subsidies…from foreign companies…or from foreign governments or organizations.” Caracas authorities claimed, then, that the organization’s acceptance and administration of a $31,000 grant from the NED was precisely that, and that Súmate’s behavior in the 2004 referendum – actions which were funded by the grant – constituted political organizing rather than non-partisan “democracy promotion.”

NED’s Generosity to the Rich

Of course, it should be noted that even a cursory examination would reveal that the NED is far from being an ordinary charitable organization. In fact, the word “endowment” was meant to be something of a conceit. The NED has always operated as a quasi-intelligence agency whose main purpose was to launder funds to ultra-right wing overseas groups needing seed money to launch their coups and assassinate their opponents. Reagan planners were originally able to muster Congressional budgetary support – even from liberal Democrats – by setting up a quadripartite system meant to deliver pork to both the Republicans and Democrats. This was done by the division of funds: half to ostensibly centrist operations like the National Democratic Institute, which was meant to be the self-respecting liberal deodorant to relieve the foul scent of the three other right wing core grantees, whose funds mainly go to extremist causes. NED was chartered by congress and nearly all of its $80.1 million 2004 annual budget comes from U.S. taxpayers. It also should be noted that the NED was founded by President Reagan at the height of the Cold War and was meant to fund controversial back-door Cold War projects with which the State Department didn’t want to be publicly associated. NED’s president since its founding has been Carl Gershman, who was one of the most rightwing ideologues of the Reagan Administration (he was a deputy to hardliner Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the Bolton-esque U.S. ambassador to the UN at the time). Throughout its history, the organization, whose core grantees, including the International Chamber of Commerce and the International Republican Institute (IRI), have been involved in controversial projects linked to the heavy ideological purposes to which their grants are directed – skillfully earmarked its funds to extremist causes. In Haiti, for example, the IRI was intimately involved with the paramilitary “thugs” (as described by then Secretary of State Powell) who eventually overthrew constitutional President Jean-Betrand Aristide. Those types of unsavory involvements were made evident in a recent New York Times article, which suggested that the IRI partisanly worked against Aristide rather than behaving in a non-partisan fashion. It is not too far of a stretch to argue that the IRI’s backing of Súmate was the mirror image of its earlier, very controversial, activities in Haiti.

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http://www.coha.org/the-devil-wears-prada-maria-corina-machado-and-washington%E2%80%99s-indecent-game-against-venezuela/