While Trump cuts food stamps, USAID bankrolls Venezuela regime change with half a billion in tax dollars

The Trump administration has spent $654 million in “aid” to try to overthrow Venezuela’s government, including $435 million through USAID and $128 million directly to Juan Guaidó and his corrupt coup gang — all while imposing crippling austerity at home.

by Ben Norton

Part 4 - USAID’s role in coup attempts against Nicaragua and Cuba

Venezuela is by no means the only country targeted for regime-change operations in which the US Agency for International Development is deeply complicit.

USAID also played a significant role backing the right-wing coup attempt against Nicaragua’s democratically elected leftist government in 2018. The Nicaraguan opposition, which carried out many violent acts targeting supporters of the ruling Sandinista Front, receives tens of millions of dollars from the US government on an annual basis.

In 2018, USAID spent $24.5 million in Nicaragua. Its top recipients were the Democratic Leadership Development Program, Municipal Governance Program, and Lifting Nicaraguan Voices Program — that is to say, programs to help train, cultivate, and fund right-wing opposition leaders.

Of this $24.5 million in so-called “aid,” USAID spent $15 million (61%) on “governance” — that is to say, supporting opposition groups — while another $5.1 million (21%) went to covering administrative costs.

A mere $2.7 million (11%) was spent on education, with a meager $1.2 million spent on health (5%). In other words, just around 16% of the USAID budget in Nicaragua in 2018 was actually spent on aid, smaller than its own administrative costs.

USAID in Nicaragua essentially just acts as a job-creation program for coup-mongers.

Cuba has been another primary target of USAID. For decades, it has financed efforts to destabilize and overthrow the tiny island’s independent socialist government. The so-called aid agency even created its own fake Twitter platform called ZunZuneo, which it used to spread propaganda and disinformation to demonize the Cuban government and call for protests.

Bolivia has been a target as well. After the Trump administration oversaw a far-right military coup, in which fascist-led violent mobs toppled the democratically elected government of socialist President Evo Morales, USAID announced that it would be traveling to Bolivia to influence the May 3 election.

Source, links:

https://thegrayzone.com/2020/01/23/usaid-venezuela-regime-change-trump/

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