Sing a song of subversion: US funded Venezuela rock bands to dent Chavez

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Sing a song of subversion: US funded Venezuela rock bands to dent Chávez

Partially redacted grant application shows scheme involved paying 10 groups to write songs promoting ‘freedom of expression’

Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá
@joeparkdan
Wed 27 May 2020 23.28 BST
Last modified on Thu 28 May 2020 00.00 BST

The United States funded rock groups in Venezuela to record songs promoting democracy – and undermine the rule of Hugo Chávez – according to documents released after a Freedom of Information Act request.

More than 10 bands were contracted in 2011 to produce new songs promoting freedom of expression in the oil-rich nation. The $22,970 scheme, which was to culminate in a battle-of-the-bands style concert, was approved by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a non-governmental agency responsible for promoting democracy abroad.

The partially redacted grant application was uncovered by Tim Gill, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and shows the efforts of US officials “to promote greater reflection among Venezuelan youth about freedom of expression, their connection with democracy, and the state of democracy in the country”.

Tim Gill
@timgill924
·
9h
Have to share this.

Going through documents I FOIA’d from the government.

In 2011, the U.S. through the National Endowment for Democracy funded “rock groups” in Venezuela to write songs about freedom of expression. It paid a producer, recorded the songs, and distributed them.

Link to tweet

Gill said the revelations were unorthodox but unsurprising. “The NED supported many causes in order to promote democracy, not all of them nefarious,” the academic said. “But the issue is that it has the ability to fund some voices instead of others.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/27/venezuela-us-funded-rock-bands-hugo-chavez

[Judi Lynn]

1. Wow! Thoroughly interesting account of more of the same scheming, dirty underhanded ops

watchers have come to expect, over the years, when democratically elected leftist leaders refuse to get out of the way and allow pro-US interests to regain control of the countries, their natural resources, control of their labor class, and the populations themselves.

So classic, so stupid, so embarrassingly familiar.

People in this country, at the beginning of the Viet Nam war, were already very familiar with the expression, "The Ugly American." Even a best selling book (and movie) was written about it by Burdick and Lederer.

Ain't we proud to know the tradition carries forward continually, unchanged?

Thank you for this article. It's a keeper.