Documents Reveal Multimillion-Dollar Funding to Journalists and Media in Venezuela

[Wilms]

Please kick and recommend the thread in GD.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=8761592&mesg_id=8762996

Documents Reveal Multimillion-Dollar Funding to Journalists and Media in Venezuela

Thursday, July 15, 2010

By Eva Golinger

US State Department documents declassified under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) evidence more than $4 million USD in funding to journalists and private media in Venezuela during the last three years. This funding is part of the more than $40 million USD international agencies are investing annually in anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela in an attempt to provoke regime change

The funding has been channeled directly by the State Department through three US agencies: Panamerican Development Foundation (PADF), Freedom House, and the US Agency for International Development (USAID).

In a blatant attempt to hide their activities, the State Department has censored the names of organizations and journalists receiving these multimillion-dollar funds. However, one document dated July 2008 mistakenly left unveiled the names of the principal Venezuelan groups receiving the funds: Espacio Publico (Public Space) and Instituto de Prensa y Sociedad (Institute for Press and Society “IPYS”).

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What these documents demonstrate is that Washington not only is funding Venezuelan media, in clear violation of laws that prohibit this type of “propaganda” and “foreign interference”, but also is influencing the way Venezuelan journalists perceive their profession and their political reality.

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Other programs run by the State Department have selected Venezuelan students and youth to receive training in the use of these new media technologies in order to create what they call a “network of cyber-dissidents” against the Venezuelan government.

For example, in April 2010, the George W. Bush Institute, together with Freedom House and the State Department, organized an encounter of “activists for freedom and human rights” and “experts in Internet” to analyze the “global movement of cyber-dissidents”. Rodrigo Diamanti, anti-Chavez youth activist, was present at the event, which took place in Dallas, Texas and was presided over by George W. Bush himself, along with “dissidents” invited from Iran, Syria, Cuba, Russia and China.

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More funds have been distributed to anti-Chavez political groups in Venezuela through USAID’s Office for Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Caracas, which has an annual budget between $5-7 million USD. These millions form part of the more than $40 million USD given annually to opposition organizations in Venezuela by US, European and Canadian agencies, as evidenced in the May 2010 report, “Venezuela: Assessing Democracy Assistance” published by the National Endowment for Democracy’s World Movement for Democracy (WMD) and Spain’s FRIDE Institute.

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http://www.chavezcode.com/2010/07/documents-reveal-multimillion-dollar.html

[rabs]

1. K&R on both forums.

Very interesting. Thanks for posting.

[EFerrari]

2. WMD. That's perfect. n/t

[Wilms]

3. Kind of like...

Operation Iraqi Liberation

[Judi Lynn]

4. Wilms, days after you posted this, which I didn't see at the time, I posted it, too.

It is important enough to run over and over again.

I've already filed it away for future use.

Really wish I'd caught it the first time, and sorry for the screw-up.

It's a big day for human beings when we can get information like this published.