Canada employs ‘human-rights’ group to disrupt Venezuela

Scan page 9

Socialist Action JANUARY 2011 9 While many on the left know that Washington has spent tens of millions of dollars funding groups that oppose Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, less well known is Ottawa’s role, especially that of the Canadian government’s “arms-length” human rights organization, Rights & Democracy (R&D).

Montreal-based R&D recently gave its 2010 John Humphrey Award to the Venezuelan non-governmental organization PROVEA (El Programa Venezolano de Educación-Acción en Derechos Humanos).

According to R&D’s website, “the Award consists of a grant of $30,000 and a [December] speaking tour of Canadian cities to help increase awareness of the recipient’s human rights work.” PROVEA is highly critical of Venezuela’s elected government. In December 2008 Venezuela’s interior and justice minister called PROVEA “liars” who were “paid in [U.S.] dollars.”

During a September visit “to meet with representatives of PROVEA and other [Venezuelan] organizations devoted to human rights and democratic development,” R&D President Gérard Latulippe blogged about his and PROVEA’s political views: “Marino [Betancourt, director general of PROVEA] told me about recent practices of harassment and criminalization of the government towards civil society organizations.”

In another post Latulippe explained, “We have witnessed in recent years the restriction of the right to freedom of expression. Since 20042005, the government of President Chavez has taken important legislative measures which limit this right.”

Upon returning to Canada, Latulippe cited Venezuela as a country with “no democracy.” He told Embassy magazine, “You can see the emergence of a new model of democracy, where in fact it’s trying to make an alternative to democracy by saying people can have a better life even if there’s no democracy. You have the example of Russia. You have an example of Venezuela.”

Latulippe’s claims have no basis in reality. On top of improving living conditions for the country’s poor, the Chavez-led government has taken initiatives to increase democratic space. They have also won a dozen elections/referendums over the past 12 years (and lost only one).

R&D, which is funded almost entirely by the federal government, takes its cues from Ottawa. The Canadian government has repeatedly attacked Chavez. In April 2009 Stephen Harper responded to a question regarding Venezuela by saying, “I don’t take any of these rogue states lightly,” and after expressing “concerns over the shrinkage of democratic space” in September, Minister for the Americas Peter Kent said, “This is an election month in Venezuela and the official media has again fired up some of the anti-Semitic slurs against the Jewish community as happened during the Gaza incursion.”

Even the head of Canada’s military recently criticized the Chavez government in the Canadian Military Journal. After a tour of South America, Walter Natynczyk ... Jobs picture (continued from page 1: “Prospects for the New Year: Jobs picture bleak”) media. Last year, the percentage of workers who were unemployed for more than six months rose to a staggering 45.6 percent. The average length of unemployment topped 34 weeks in 2010, up from 29.1 weeks in 2009—the longest number of weeks since the Labor Department started keeping records in 1948.

What options are there for unemployed workers these days? Some households that had relied on two or more breadwinners in the past must now live on the income only of one person who is working. Workers who feel they are too old to be hired in a good job might elect to take “early retirement” if they are lucky enough to qualify for pensions or Social Security, or if they have savings. But few have very much in the bank.

The employment picture will not get better soon. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke cautions, “It could take four to five more years for the job market to normalize fully.” But even that might be far too rosy a scenario. The U.S. economy would have to add 500,000 jobs every month for three years to restore the economy to pre-recession job levels. Many economists point out that U.S. employment levels might never stabilize to what was considered “normal” a few years ago—and could even get much worse if the economy should fall back into a “double-dip” recession.

Important portions of the U.S. economy are still downsizing. Construction lost 16,000 jobs last month. Government offices are laying off workers due to the budget crunch.

Yet a few sectors of the economy—such as the automobile industry, which is riding high on government bailouts—seem to be awakening. A Dec. 29 AP dispatch points out that some U.S. employers have begun hiring new workers, “but the jobs are going elsewhere. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, says American companies have created 1.4 million jobs overseas this year, compared with less than 1 million in the U.S.”

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich commented a year ago on his blog: “The basic assumption that jobs will eventually return when the economy recovers is probably wrong. Some jobs will come back, of course. But the reality that no one wants to talk about is a structural change in the economy that’s been going on for years but which the Great Recession has dramatically accelerated.

“Under the pressure of this awful recession, many companies have found ways wrote, “Regrettably, some countries, such as Venezuela, are experiencing the politicization of their armed forces.”

The Harper government’s attacks against Venezuela are part of its campaign against the region’s progressive forces. Barely discussed in the media, the Harper government’s shift of aid from Africa to Latin America was largely designed to stunt Latin America’s recent rejection of neoliberalism and U.S. dependence by supporting the region’s right-wing governments and movements.

To combat independent-minded, leftist governments and movements, Harper’s Conservatives have “played a more active role in supporting U.S. ideologicallydriven [democracy promotion] initiatives,” notes researcher Neil A. Burron. They opened a South America-focused “democracy promotion” centre at the Canadian Embassy in Peru. Staffed by two diplomats, this secretive venture may clash with the Organization of American States’s non-intervention clause.

According to documents unearthed by Anthony Fenton, in November 2007 Ottawa gave the Justice and Development Consortium (Asociación Civil Consorcio Desarrollo y Justicia) $94,580 “to consolidate and expand the democracy network in Latin America and the Caribbean.” The Justice and Development Consortium—funded by the U.S. government’s CIA front group National Endowment for Democracy—has worked to unite opposition to leftist Latin American governments.

Similarly, in the spring of 2008 the Canadian Embassy in Panama teamed up with the National Ento cut their payrolls for good. They’ve discovered that new software and computer technologies have made workers in Asia and Latin America just about as productive as Americans, and that the Internet allows far more work to be efficiently outsourced abroad. “This means many Americans won’t be rehired unless they’re willing to settle for much lower wages and benefits. Today’s official unemployment numbers hide the extent to which Americans are already on this path. ”

Is there no way out of this dilemma?

Frances Fox Piven, writing in the Nation (Jan. 10-17), outlines some elementary steps to create decent and beneficial jobs.

Demands that we have also called for in Socialist Action would include massive investments in public-service programs, and using government resources to “spur big new initiatives in infrastructure and green energy.” Unfortunately, Piven notes, “Nothing like this seems to be on the agenda. Instead the next Congress is going to be fixated on an Alice in Wonderland policy of deficit reduction by means of tax and spending cuts.”

Piven points out that organizing unemployed workers presents many unique difficulties since “when people lose their jobs they are dispersed, no longer much connected to their fellow workers or Juan Karita / AP (Left) Bolivian Pres. Evo Morales and Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chavez at April 10, 2010, climate-change conference in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

dowment for Democracy to organize a meeting for prominent members of the opposition in Venezuela, Bolivia, Cuba, and Ecuador. It was designed to respond to the “new era of populism and authoritarianism in Latin America.” The meeting spawned the Red Latinoamericana y del Caribe para la Democracia, “which brings together mainstream NGOs critical of the leftist governments in the hemisphere.”

The foremost researcher on U.S. funding to the anti-Chavez opposition, Eva Golinger, claims Canadian groups are playing a growing role in Venezuela, and according to a May 2010 report from Spanish NGO Fride, “Canada is the third most important provider of democracy assistance” to Venezuela after the U.S. and Spain.

Burron describes an interview with a Canadian “official [who] repeatedly expressed concerns about the quality of democracy in Venezuela, noting that the [federal government’s] Glyn Berry program provided funds to a ‘get out the vote’ campaign in the last round of elections in that country.” You can bet it wasn’t designed to get Chavez supporters to the polls.

Ottawa is not forthcoming with information about the groups they fund in Venezuela, but according to disclosures made in response to a question by former NDP Foreign Affairs critic Alexa McDonough, Canada helped finance Súmate, an NGO at the forefront of anti-Chavez political campaigns. Canada gave Súmate $22,000 in 2005-06. Minister of International Cooperation José Verner explained that “Canada considered Súmate to be an experienced NGO with the capability to promote respect for democracy, particularly a free and fair electoral process in Venezuela.”

Yet the name of Súmate leader Maria Corina Machado, who Foreign Affairs invited to Ottawa in January 2005, appeared on a list of people who endorsed the 2002 coup against Chavez, for which she faced charges of treason.

The simple truth is that the current government in Ottawa supports the old elites that long worked with the U.S. empire. It opposes the progressive social transformations taking place in a number of Latin American countries and as a result it supports civil society groups opposed to these developments. n Yves Engler is the author of “Canada and Israel: Building Apartheid” and the “Black Book of Canadian Foreign Policy”. For more info: http://yvesengler.com.

their unions.” Still, fighting organizations of unemployed workers had success in some localities at the time of the mass union drives of the 1930s.

Today, Piven says, “An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightening speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees. “A loose and spontaneous movement of this sort could emerge. It is made more likely because unemployment rates are especially high among younger workers.”

We agree with Piven in many respects, while observing that mass movements that appear spontaneous on the surface often come about only as a result of long organizing efforts behind the scenes.

Unemployment, which is endemic to the capitalist system, must become a central issue for a revitalized and fighting labor movement in this country. A key job-creating demand that labor must fight for is lowering the workweek to 30 hours for 40-hours pay. Success will require a clean break with the Democratic Party. Workers need their own party, able to take on the bosses’ government—and win. n