Documents Show How the US Government Used Social Media to Intervene in Venezuela

Tim Gill and Christian Lewelling

Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro speaks during a news conference in Caracas, Venezuela, August 2021. (Manaure Quintero / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

In recent months, US lawmakers have condemned Facebook for harming children’s health, amplifying violence from Washington to India, and disseminating misinformation surrounding COVID-19 and its vaccine. The criticisms follow a leak of thousands of internal company documents known as the Facebook Papers, which reveal that despite knowledge of its products’ role in fueling a range of toxic behaviors, Facebook has refused to take any meaningful action in response, putting its profits before social health.

Yet while lawmakers are exploiting the leak’s political fallout to ramp up ongoing attacks on the tech giant, taxpayers might also be interested to know that the US government has funded programs to assist opposition political parties and activists in using Facebook to undermine foreign governments. Venezuela is a case in point.

Regime Change, Lies and Video Films

Rosa Miriam Elizalde

Twenty years of lies from Washington, but only 10 days were enough for the Taliban to take control of Afghanistan. Joe Biden has finished it off by stringing together a pathetic excuse, again a lie: “Our mission in Afghanistan was not to build a nation, not to create a united democracy. Our only national interest in Afghanistan has been and continues to be to prevent a terrorist attack on the United States.”

Who believes him? The Washington Post compiled some 2,000 pages of notes from more than 400 interviews with Afghan military, diplomats, aid workers and officials a year and a half ago. They believed they were testifying on condition of anonymity and talked their heads off about the mistakes of the U.S. military and the deliberate deception of the Afghan population (and the world) to sustain the “regime change” project in Afghanistan at all costs. Lessons learned, they called this an unusual piece of paper.

This people will never lack patriotic virtues

Fidel lived, thought and acted for his times and for those to come. This is why the Revolution is a legacy we are obliged to give continuity

Granma | July 16, 2021

Photo: Jorge Luis González

Fidel lived, thought and worked for his times and for those to come. This is why the Revolution is a legacy we are obliged to give continuity. Nothing was ever easy for the Revolution, not at the time of its forging, nor at times of keeping it afloat, and this is why it has been a crucible of brave men and women, made for difficult times.
This is what Fidel said in 1992, on the occasion of the 39th anniversary of the September 5th uprising against the Batista dictatorship:

“Difficult times are difficult times. In difficult times the number of those who waver increases; in difficult times – and this is a law of history – there are those who become confused, there are those who become discouraged, there are those who are intimidated, there are those who become soft, there are those who betray, there are those who desert. This happens in all times and in all revolutions.

Cuba: US Pushes for Intervention

Angel Guerra Cabrera

Resumen Latinoamericano | July 16, 2021

Cuban majority, the revolutionaries take the streets. (Photo: Miguel Febles Hernandez)

On the day of the protests and acts of vandalism in Cuba President Miguel Diaz-Canel denounced the desire of the United States (US) government to provoke a massive social outburst on the island. “To which all that propaganda and all those ideological constructions contribute… to summon the so-called humanitarian interventions, which end up in military interventions… that crush the sovereignty of the peoples.” Díaz-Canel informed and analyzed before the people his talk with the nonconformists in San Antonio de los Baños. There are not many leaders who assume such a radically democratic behavior.

The following day his Mexican counterpart, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, put his finger on the sore spot when he affirmed: if they wanted to help Cuba, the first thing they would have to do is to put an end to the blockade “as most of the countries of the world are requesting… it would be a truly humanitarian gesture”. It is clear that the blockade is the fundamental cause of the severe shortages of food and medicine, the power cuts and other daily suffering in Cuba. This, together with the frenetic subversive activity of the US, created the psychological conditions, in sectors where the revolutionary message has not been able to reach, to trigger the events of July 11.

The United States tries to take advantage of the price Cubans are paying for the blockade and the pandemic

Manolo De Los Santos and Vijay Prashad

Globetrotter | July 14, 2021

3 days of the blockade (embargo) is equivalent to the pencils, paper and other materials for a whole school course. (Photo: Flickr – preservationgal)

Cuba, like every other country on the planet, is struggling with the impact of COVID-19. This small island of 11 million people has created five vaccine candidates and sent its medical workers through the Henry Reeve International Medical Brigade to heal people around the world. Meanwhile, the United States hardens a cruel and illegal blockade of the island, a medieval siege that has been in place for six decades. In April 2020, seven United Nations special rapporteurs wrote an open letter to the United States government about the blockade. “In the pandemic emergency,” they wrote, “the lack of will of the U.S. government to suspend sanctions may lead to a higher risk of such suffering in Cuba and other countries targeted by its sanctions.” The special rapporteurs noted the “risks to the right to life, health and other critical rights of the most vulnerable sections of the Cuban population.”

As the US intensifies sanctions against Nicaragua, 191 organizations say STOP INTERFERING

Alliance for Global Justice | July 14, 2021

As elections approach in Nicaragua, we call on the United States to stop interfering

“How would it be if the United States were viewed by the rest of the world as interfering with the elections directly of other countries and everybody knew it? What would it be like if we engaged in activities that they engaged in? It diminishes the standing of a country.” President Biden, June 2021

Thirty-five years ago, on June 27, 1986, the International Court of Justice in the Hague ruled that the United States had violated international law by supporting the contras and mining Nicaragua’s harbors- in breach of our country’s international obligations “to not use force against another state, not to intervene in its affairs and not to violate its sovereignty”.  The decision included the need to pay reparations, calculated at over $US 17 billion.   The US refused to comply.  Over 30,000 Nicaraguans died as a result of the war and their economy was totally destroyed by the time the war ended.  

The US went on to interfere in the 1990 election, pouring in millions of dollars to create a candidate of choice and to threaten the people of Nicaragua with more war if they did not vote according to US dictates. 

Following the Sandinistas’ return to power via elections in 2007, the US resumed efforts to undermine the Sandinista government, openly channeling over $200 million dollars through Nicaraguan non-profits and dozens of newly-created media outlets for regime change efforts. This culminated in a failed coup attempt that killed over 200 people in 2018.  

Inside America’s Meddling Machine: NED, the US-Funded Org Interfering in Elections Around the Globe

by Max Blumenthal

Filmed inside the Capitol, this Grayzone special explores the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a taxpayer-funded organization that has interfered in elections, mobilized coups, and orchestrated public relations campaigns against nations that resist Washington’s agenda.

Live Updates: Venezuelan Govt Says Guaido Coup Failed, Lopez Hides in Chile’s Embassy

teleSUR | April 30, 2019

 Photo: teleSUR

The Venezuelan opposition lawmaker has once again called on the military to overthrow the legitimate government of President Nicolas Maduro. 

Juan Guaido, the opposition lawmaker who illegally proclaimed himself “interim president” of Venezuela Tuesday morning made a call on social media asking the military and people to begin an uprising against the legitimate government of President Nicolas Maduro.

 

‘Enough with Threats, Ultimatums,’ Cuba Tells US

teleSUR | April 27, 2019

President Miguel Diaz-Canel has denounced the U.S. sanctions and aggression against Cuba. | Photo: Reuters

The international community will never cave to the archaic strategies of the Cold War, President Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Twitter.

Cuba has had enough of U.S. threats and ultimatums, said President Miguel Diaz-Canel, denouncing 60-years-worth of northern power’s attempts to destabilize Cuba.

U.S. imperialist domination in Latin America and Europe

by Atilio A. Borón

 International 360 | April 26, 2019

The history of empires amply demonstrates that in their phase of decline they become more violent and bloodthirsty, and that their leaders tend to be coarser and more brutal. Not only their leaders, as Donald Trump clearly demonstrates. Also its environment of advisors reflects similar devolution, becoming something similar to what Harold Laski, referring to the leaders of European fascism, called “outlaw elites”.⁽²⁾ One need not refer to the prophet Moses and the Tables of the Law to conclude that vicious characters such as John Bolton, Elliot Abrams, Mike Pompeo, Juan Cruz, Marco Rubio and the director of the CIA, Gina Haspel, are a gang of thugs who, as a product of the accelerated moral and political decomposition of the empire, move through the offices of the White House when a maximum-security prison in the Nevada desert would be the appropriate place to pursue their interests. Not one statesman or intellectual among them is capable of offering a realistic and sophisticated view of contemporary reality. Not one of them would withstand ten minutes of debate with Vladimir Putin or Sergey Lavrov, or even with Xi Jiping, because they would be intellectually destroyed in a devastating way.