Washington Coughs up a Thread, Evita Golinger Weaves a Sweater
It takes some doing to make Eva Golinger, doyenne of unembarassedly pro-authoritarian chavista boosterism, look good. But the U.S. State Department is doing just that. By continuing to pour money into Venezuela's beleaguered dissident press, Foggy Bottom just makes it too easy for her - and, in the process, creates many more problems for the opposition's credibility than their funding can solve.
As I wrote in my Memo to then president-elect Obama, almost two years ago now,
The policy of funding opposition-minded civil society groups through the NED and the OTI has been worse than ineffective, it has been deeply damaging. The meme that such funding is part of an imperialist conspiracy to destabilize the Chávez government is now deeply entrenched among the president's followers.
The government has whipped up and exploited this interpretation as a way to delegitimize and marginalize not only those organizations that in fact receive US taxpayer money, but every organization that dares criticize President Chávez, on the theory that publicly reported NED and OTI funding must be the tip of the CIA destabilization iceberg. In short, the policy has allowed President Chávez to attack as treasonous any and every expression of dissent, from bus drivers' unions striking over rampant crime to neighborhood groups protesting for better access to drinking water.
The strategic use of anti-yanqui paranoia to justify the government's failures has been stretched to truly belief beggaring extremes, such as the recent statement by Venezuelan public health officials that an outbreak of dengue fever in rural Zulia State may have been part of a CIA biological warfare plan. Such accusations may strike you as far-fetched - and indeed they are - but within Venezuela they gain some measure of verisimilitude from the fact that the United States truly has supported civil society groups that are alligned with the domestic opposition.
The downside of the current NED-OTI approach is plain, but the upside hard to pinpoint. The trickle of funding that has in fact been made available to Venezuelan civil society groups has come nowhere near bridging the massive funding gap between pro-government organizations - which are on the receiving end of literally billions of petrodollars - and opposition-minded civil society groups receiving a tiny fraction of those sums.
I stand by all of that, actually.
Which puts me in the rather novel position of, well, not quite agreeing with Eva (her contention that the state department basically dictates everything the opposition media says is still paranoid dreck) but of at least having to send some (grudging) props her way.
Certainly, it's sign #28,193 of her intellectual bankruptcy that she digs up information using the U.S. Freedom of Information Act to defend a government that systematically refuses to honor its own citizens' Freedom of Information requests, hell one that now openly practices censorship. And yes, her conclusions about a fully paid-up-and-delivered Venezuelan opposition are psychotically detached from the evidence...
Still and all, they tossed her a hanging curve ball right down the middle of the plate...and she slugged it pretty good.
Roberto N
Kepler
torres
dcisfun
Hmmm....
So, Quico, your logic essentially goes as Chavista paranoia will see any foreign financing of pro-democracy outifts as destabilizing efforts against the current government. But, isn't that paranoia always the case, whether there is financing or not of any form? As I read Golinger's post, I was struck by how she would take every neutral statement and then spin it in her charcteristic paranoid nonsense.
Other than to stop financing of these outfits, do you have a suggestion for a better alternative to the juggernat of Chavista propaganda?
What about home-grown neurons?
Where is that money going? I am not sure, but it seems it goes mostly to journalists to visit the US or for printing
books on "Ozpor tactics" that are copied just like that.
We cannot just imitate the movements in Ukraine, Serbia or Georgia. Firstly: they were for completely different conditions. Secondly: they were not that sustainable. Just look who is in power now in Ukraine.
Venezuela is in Latin America. We need our solutions.
We need to use old technology: copy folders, distribute them in Blitz actions.
We need to do that not in Baruta/Chacao/North Valencia/posh parts of Maracaibo and not to cars during a jam and not as PJ/UNT do with yellow shirts and PJ caps.
We need to distribute our propaganda in the secondary cities (i.e. where 70% of Venezuela's population lives), we need to do that in the buses where still most people get around (yes, most Venezuelans still depend one way or the other on buses), in bus stations. We need to do that fast and incognito and disperse in a jiffy so that the thugs don't attack us.
Se perdieron esos reales
Four million dollars given to ... Espacio Publico? IPYS? Carlos Correa? Ewald Scharfenberg? Who the fuck *are* these people?
Oh, and where do I get in line to receive funding for Twitter, Facebook and blogging? 'Cause Lord knows *this* financially-beleaguered blog could use the cash.
This stuff is just laughable.
That's just my point...this money is totally wasted!
...$4 million down the toilet for what? So Evita Golinger can pontificate!
Ipys te da sueño
Lo que es una lástima porque, por ejemplo, ahora tendremos un insoportable taller con el Jefe de Investigación de The Guardian, David Leigh
By the way
I object to that picture of Eva Golinger ... way too flattering.
Actually, it proves the opposite
As I was just telling Quico privately, this FOIA finding proves the exact opposite of what Eva Golinger claims.
If after searching extensively and using all the legal tools at your disposal, all you can come up with is a meager $4 million dollars funneled to some no-name groups that have ZERO influence, then your claim that Washington funds the opposition ... is completely baseless!
In other words, you can't claim black swans exist, go on an extensive, world-wide search for black swans, come up with nothing, and still claim black swans exist.
The fact that this is all they could find proves she's full of shit.
That's just what I was trying to get across in that Memo
...given that, on the scale on which it's politically realistic to carry them out, these funding initiatives have extremely limited impact - BUT they provide the government an easy scapegoating option - why go on with them?! It's like our own version of the Cuban Embargo...a policy that's been catastrophically backfiring year after year after year...
Well, that's true
We agree that the money is being completely wasted, and that it gives Golinger a thread from which to hand her hare-brained theories.
But let's not confuse the two. Golinger is still full of shit, more so after reading this.
By the way, the claim is that the US funds Venezuela's opposition, but in that article, there is absolutely zero link between the State Department and Venezuela's political parties, who are the main actors (one could say the only ones) in Venezuela's "opposition."
Again, the article proves Golinger is wrong, wrong, wrong.
This certainly explains...
... the proliferation of ND and Noticias24 look-alikes pages on the web.
So the objective seems to be to create a wide and scattered network of independent journalists dedicated to investigative journalism and opinion diffusion. That certainly would be a positive development.
No matter how many times you write to Obama or Clinton they're going to continue supporting efforts to bring democracy in Venezuela and money is certainly a key resource. Si no puedes con ellos...
Espacio Publico sounds a lot like Esfera Publica....
If that's what they're doing with the money...
...they're basically defrauding the U.S. taxpayer...those sites are all copy-paste-a-thons...
Listen, I know what Espacio Publico and IPYS do with their money. They do "capacitación" seminars with young journalists teaching them such radically counterrevolutionary techniques as "interviewing sources", "avoiding polarized framing", "independent confirmation" and the like. I've been to some of these - they're utterly vanilla. Boring, actually.
If I was IPYS, I'd offer Eva the following challenge: come to some of our seminars. You get to keep writing shit about us but if, AND ONLY IF, you manage to stay awake the whole time!
Can't lose...
Eva
Well, good luck in getting her to actually have an open discussion with ANYONE! Read this post: http://blog.erlingsson.com/?p=3549.
"La novia" had a chance to actually defend herself, but, apparently, chose not to.
Nice link
Actually, I thought she did an OK job on that one. The use of "political prostitute" was derogatory, and the author's implications that she was a fraud because he couldn't find her dissertation is simply wrong. As for Alek's other claims, well, those are still outstanding.
True ...
... but some efforts are better than others.
Take Radar de Los Barrios for instance, it has a unique target and a different take on things.
Disculpa haberte producido
Disculpa haberte producido tanta somnolencia. Ya lo sabemos para no invitarte y evitar que tu agudeza se aburra. Pero, ayúdame a recordar: ¿en qué evento de Ipys has estado?
While I hear you, I disagree
Where else are these groups to turn, given that the Chavez government 1) pumps mad money into its political party, 2) abuses all thinkable public resources (not least of which, media), and 3) intimidates individuals and corporation (with expropriation and tax scrutiny) even thinking about funding civil society and political parties?
In a functioning and free democracy, I would agree with you that foreign financing of civil society is unnecessary and unwanted. However, in Venezuela, unfortunately, civil society is the only check on a power-hungry and over-centralized government.
The Europeans have not done their part. We are still waiting for Japan to engage. Despite the troubled past of US intervention in the region, its support for Venezuelan civil society today is crucial for preserving political space and any hope for a future, more plural government in Venezuela. http://twitter.com/robertosilvers
Cachete!
Pana I had heard of the Golinger and vaguely remember her the last time I went home a couple of years ago, pero no que estaba tan Chevere!!!!
Foreign Assistance
I take it that none of this assistance violates Venezuelan law.
Further, I don't see any suggestion that it is to be used by any political party as part of the election campaign.
So how is it any different from the aid which Chavez receives from Cuba?
who...whom
So how is it any different from the aid which Chavez receives from Cuba?
Support for Hugo= good
Support for opponent of Hugo= bad
That simple.
Plus, the "aid" from Cuba is not free
It comes with a VERY steep price tag.
Vamos a ver...
... these post and thread need a bit of context, no FT? Juan?
Let us see, the person 'denouncing' that some journos in Venezuela have received millions of dollars -note plural in both cases- is herself a recipient of millions of dollars of Venezuelan taxpayer money to spread propaganda (see Eva Golinger gets $3.2 million from Chavez regime). So that bit, right there, forevermore disqualifies whatever argument related to questionable funding Eva Golinger wants to put across. And this is, of course, not considering past instances where 1) she has benefitted from services rendered to el caudillo, and 2) other instances where it has been proved that she's nothing but a fraud.
If the above wasn't reason enough to disregard whatever deranged accusation of Golinger, her paymaster, let us not forget, took about $1.5 million from Spanish bank BBVA, which is illegal according to Venezuelan laws (see Baltasar Garzon's take pag. 5 & 7). That is to say, when huguito was skinned and didn't have enough funds to run his political platform, he readily accepted illegal money.
So this is a proverbial case of cachicamo diciendole al morrocoy conchuo. To top it all of, Chavez and Golinger have not got one shred of credibility left in their discourses. Whatever their accusations, these are utterly immaterial, for as Juan says, there's no normal people left in chavismo, and their rants are for chavista consumption, none of this is going to make the opposition, or the press, or indeed the journalists/groups allegedly involved, any more or less credible in a larger scheme of things.
But then we have some practical considerations, no? First is the fact that a journo accepting hospitality, or air fares to the US, is not a violation to any laws, neither in Venezuela nor in the US. Second, where exactly in the 'declassified-top-secret' docs that Golinger has 'unearthed' is there evidence that the US is dictating editorial lines to opposition-aligned journos? MOreover, were that to be proved, what to say of Eva Golinger's own line, is that independent from her paymaster?
In closing, I disagree with your position about foreign funding, if and when such funding is legal. That it provides ammo to Golinger et al, so fucking what?