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When Washington decides Democracy is dangerous: stoking opposition in Venezuela and Syria

by Ramiro S. Fúnez

Part 3 - Doing the dirty work of Washington and Wall Street

Contrary to popular belief, Venezuelan and Syrian opposition leaders are not impoverished, working-class activists who act on their own will. They are well-funded saboteurs armed and trained by bureaucrats in Washington and their wealthy handlers on Wall Street.

Let’s start with Venezuela.

Since 2009, the U.S. Department of State has allocated at least $49 million to the South American country’s right-wing opposition, according to publicly-available budget documents released by the State Department.

Washington has claimed the funds support “democracy practitioners” and help “efforts to preserve and expand democratic space through programs that strengthen and promote civil society, citizen participation, independent media, human rights organizations, and democratic political parties.

Yet almost all of those funds have gone directly to opposition parties like Primero Justicia (Justice First) and Voluntad Popular (Popular Will), both of which helped organized violent protests that resulted in the deaths of at least 43 people in 2014 and 124 people this year.

Now, Syria.

Four years ago, former U.S. President Barack Obama secretly began funding Wahhabi-linked Syrian opposition militants, whom he described as “moderate rebels.” The allocation of funds, which Obama claimed would be used to “degrade and destroy” the Daesh terrorist group (ISIS), didn’t become public until 2014, when the U.S. Congress gave final approval to train and arm the FSA.

According to Foreign Policy magazine, ironically one of many mainstream media publications that blindly supported the so-called Syrian “revolution,” the United States has spent over $500 million on financing the opposition since Obama took office in 2009.

WikiLeaks, however, reported that Washington has financed Syrian opposition members and institutions since 2006 under former President George W. Bush.

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