HONKEY KONG FAR WORSE THAN JAN 6. From [HERE] With upcoming elections scheduled for July 28, the United States is working overtime to dislodge the socialist government of Nicolás Maduro. Ten individuals are vying for the position, including nine in opposition to Maduro, who heads a coalition of 13 leftist groups.

Washington, though, has made clear that its preferred candidate is 74-year-old retired diplomat Edmundo González, and is spending big, bankrolling a myriad of opposition organizations, from political parties to NGOs and media outlets, all with the same goal in mind: ousting Maduro and returning Venezuela into the U.S. sphere of influence.

The U.S. is also continuing its campaign of economic warfare against the country, with crushing sanctions designed to make the economy scream and foster domestic resentment towards the Maduro administration. Its reason for doing so is that, since 1998, Venezuela has offered a different political and development model and has been a leading anti-imperialist force, opposing U.S. actions and serving as one of the loudest critics of Israel, who Maduro recently accused of carrying out one of the worst genocides since the Second World War.

RUNNING INTERFERENCE IN VENEZUELA

The primary vehicle through which the U.S. supports overseas groups is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Since President Hugo Chavez’s election in 1998, the United States has spent tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars on “democracy promotion” in the country.

For example, the NED’s latest published country report notes that it spent over $100,000 sponsoring a program called “Food Security and the Transition to Democracy,” which consisted of “foster[ing] a network of activists, intellectuals and citizens” who could act as leaders for a “democratic transition.” Since the United States is one of only a handful of countries that fails to recognize the legitimacy of the government of Venezuela, it is clear that this would involve regime change.

A second grant, this time for over $180,000, is designed to “enhance the leadership, organizational, and networking capacity of youth to engage in the recovery of democracy; and to foster international solidarity by raising the profiles and voices of youth leaders” – in other words, to train a generation of pro-U.S. political leaders to challenge and overthrow the government.

Much of the local Venezuelan media is also financed by Washington, and the NED report details numerous projects promoting pro-U.S. anti-government messaging. From schemes “disseminating independent information to citizens and activists” to “strengthen[ing] independent media and overcom[ing] government censorship” and “expanding independent news coverage,” Washington’s money has bolstered and promoted oppositional groups for more than twenty years. The NED, however, refuses to divulge any of the names of the Venezuelan groups it funds.

Founded in 1983 after a series of public scandals that seriously undermined the image of the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy was explicitly designed as a cutout organization that could do much of the agency’s most controversial work. This includes overthrowing foreign governments. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,” NED President Carl Gershman explained. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” NED co-founder Allen Weinstein added. Recently, NED projects have included channeling money to the leaders of the Hong Kong Protest movement, fomenting a nationwide protest campaign against the Cuban government, and attempting to overthrow the Lukashenko administration in Belarus. [MORE]