[R-G] AEI and Venezuela: Einstein Turns in His Grave

[Anthony Fenton]

Apri1 16, 2008
AEI and Venezuela
Einstein Turns in His Grave
http://www.counterpunch.org/maher04162008.html
By GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER

Caracas.

In the inaugural 1949 issue of Monthly Review, renowned theoretical  
physicist Albert Einstein penned a now famous article entitled "Why  
Socialism?" Here was a towering giant of the scientific community,  
transcending the limits of his own nominal expertise to weigh in with  
a clear political verdict: "I am convinced there is only one way to  
eliminate these grave evils [of capitalism], namely through the  
establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational  
system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an  
economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are  
utilized in a planned fashion."

It is ironic at best and an insult at worst that the Albert Einstein  
Institution (AEI) bears his name. Masquerading under the banner of  
"nonviolent action," the AEI has come to play a central role in a new  
generation of warfare, one which has incorporated the heroic examples  
of past nonviolent resistance into a strategy of obfuscation and  
misdirection that does the work of empire. It is clear enough that  
Einstein himself would not have supported this sort of apolitical and  
empty "nonviolence," much less when employed toward imperialist ends.

I recently published on Counterpunch a review of Eva Golinger's  
important book Bush Versus Chávez (recently translated by Monthly  
Review), a book which deftly tracks contemporary U.S. efforts to  
undermine the Chávez government in Venezuela. I immediately received a  
poorly-conceived email from one Arthur Edelstein, accusing me of  
libelous statements for merely summarizing Golinger's well-documented  
findings. This unsubstantiated claim would be followed by a complaint  
(and veiled threat) from Gene Sharp, founder and "senior scholar" at  
the AEI. I attach the email in full below with errors intact. The  
letter speaks for itself, but it's worth quickly clarifying the two  
central points in question:

Firstly, Golinger's claim that the AEI has received funding from the  
U.S. government. Sharp is at pains to deny this below, but would no  
doubt concede that the Institution has received funds from both the  
National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the International  
Republican Institute (IRI). These funding sources are reported in  
AEI's own annual funding statements. It is only through the worst of  
bad faith that one could claim that these are not in essence  
institutions pertaining to the U.S. government, since their formally- 
private status does little to hide the fact that they were both  
created by the U.S. Congress in 1983 to support Reagan's covert wars.  
Both, moreover, have been shown (e.g. in Golinger's first book, The  
Chávez Code) to have directly financed the coup-mongers among the  
Venezuelan opposition.

Secondly, Golinger's claim that AEI was linked to Venezuelans who were  
plotting to assassinate Chávez. In his letter below, Sharp quarrels  
with the phrase "linked to," when this is in fact not "slippery" in  
the least, but rather the most precise description of the facts. The  
AEI did not actively participate in plotting to kill Chávez--it would  
be inaccurate to claim as much. Rather, Cuban-born far-right  
opposition leader Robert Alonso (brother of María "Conchita") boasted  
of having met directly with the AEI shortly before Colombian  
paramilitaries were discovered training at his estate in El Hatillo, a  
few short miles from Caracas. When interrogated, they admitted their  
mission was to kill Chávez.

More direct, however, was AEI's training offered to the Venezuelan  
opposition toward the formulation of what was called "Operation  
Guarimba" (brainchild of Alonso himself), a series of often-violent  
street blockades that resulted in several deaths. The Guarimba tactics  
of 2003-2004 have been more recently taken up by the opposition- 
controlled student movement during 2007. According to an analysis  
published by Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor), Venezuelan student  
leaders traveled to Belgrade in 2005 to meet representatives of the  
AEI-trained opposition movement OTPOR-CANVAS, before later traveling  
to Boston to consult directly with Gene Sharp himself. When these  
allegedly non-partisan students hit the streets in 2007, their logo  
was exactly the same as that used by OTPOR and which appears in AEI  
literature.

Nowhere does Sharp bother contesting these facts regarding AEI's role  
in Venezuela.

But it's worth pausing for a moment to address Sharp's claim that his  
organization operates on a "transpartisan" basis, that it is non- 
ideological, and that it is "neither pro-Chávez nor anti-Chávez." To  
understand the patent falseness of such claims, it is sufficient to  
cite the AEI's own annual report from the years 2000-2004, according  
to which Chávez "became increasingly authoritarian" after his initial  
election, his "popularity began to wane," and he "responded with  
violent repression" against opposition protestors. Aside from the  
utter ridiculousness of these claims, there is no mention of the fact  
that the organizers of these same protests were the same ones who  
would participate in a violent and anti-democratic coup in April 2002.  
The valiant people of Caracas are currently celebrating the 6th  
anniversary of their popular revolutionary victory against these  
nefarious forces.

In this same report, moreover, it is admitted that Sharp himself met  
with Venezuelan opposition leaders as discussed above, and that AEI  
staffers Robert Helvy and Chris Miller held a "nine-day consultation"  
in 2003 with the same opposition, here described (in a clearly  
"partisan" manner) as "democratic" despite the fact that these were  
the very same people involved in and supportive of the coup a year  
earlier. Despite Sharp's claims that his organization neither supports  
nor opposes Chávez, the AEI's own documents claim that "the objective  
of the consultation was to provide them with the capacity to develop a  
nonviolent strategy to restore democracy to Venezuela" (p. 21).

The AEI's own Robert Helvy--a retired U.S. Army colonel with a history  
of government employment, including at the Defense Intelligence  
Agency--puts this political agenda best when he expresses his initial  
relief upon discovering that the AEI wasn't all hippies and pacifism:  
"It is all about seizing political power or denying it to  
others" (Newsday, December 26th 1999, reprinted in the AEI's report  
for the years 1993-1999, p. 7). While Sharp presents this position in  
the letter below as in some way "deeper" than others, the transparent  
truth seems to be that it is far more superficial: politics are denied  
as a surface gesture, obscuring what is a clear political content.

Albert Einstein was clear about what his values were. He didn't hide  
behind the empty formalism of "nonviolence" as a replacement for  
political belief, but rather combined a socialist ethic with a clear  
preference for a non-violent world. The AEI would do well to follow  
this example, firstly by admitting that political values do indeed  
underlie their activities, and secondly by recognizing in all honesty  
that these values are quite different from those endorsed and espoused  
by Einstein himself.

Abstract nonviolence is a recipe for continued domination, for turning  
a blind eye to the violence that runs through the veins and  
capillaries of the empire. It is no substitute for the struggle for a  
truly peaceful world. As the unsurpassed saying goes, "No Justice, No  
Peace."

George Ciccariello-Maher is a Ph.D. candidate in political theory at  
UC Berkeley. He is currently writing a people's history of the  
Bolivarian Revolution, and can be reached at gjcm(at)berkeley.edu.

     Dear George Ciccariello-Maher,

     We have not met, and to the best of my knowledge we have not been  
in touch in any way. I note, however, that you are working toward a  
Ph.D. in political theory at Berkley. In the early 1960s I did  
similarly at Oxford.

     I note, however, with considerable distress, and also concern for  
you, about your apparent lack of caution and credulity in concluding  
that Eva Golinger is correct in her accusations against the Albert  
Einstein Institution. She claims to show that the Albert Einstein  
Institution is "directly supported by the State Department (135), and  
linked to prior attempts to train Colombian paramilitaries to  
assassinate President Chávez (136-137)."

     I am shocked that you apparently have in this case not exercised  
appropriate scholarly and political caution that would normally be  
expected of a Ph.D. candidate in political theory, by failing to check  
whether the accusations are accurate. You have committed both errors  
of fact and of logic. This action by you reflects badly on your  
credibility, as well as political judgment. This does not reflect well  
on your university, either.

     Your wording in your article about Eva Golinger's book makes it  
clear that you accept her apparent false statements and you repeated  
them as true.

     The gravity of your statements is not reduced by your using the  
slippery phrase "linked to."

     The Albert Einstein Institution provides information and  
consultations about nonviolent alternatives to persons and groups,  
only when requested, and even to those that use violence and may do so  
in the future, as we have done with groups hostile to the Rangoon  
military dictatorship.

     Neither the Albert Einstein Institution, nor we individually, are  
responsible for any violence that opponents of President Chávez might  
commit despite our efforts to inform them that nonviolent means of  
action exist that can be used in acute conflicts.

     Only with greater knowledge of this nonviolent option is there a  
chance that such persons and groups might chose to adopt it in place  
of violence. If we had refused the request for a workshop for the  
Venezuelan resisters, some of them would possibly have concluded the  
"only" option to be another coup d'état, riots, assassinations, or  
even a foreign invasion, as in Iraq.

     Unfortunately, you have now placed yourself among others that  
have attacked the Institution, its publications, or me personally,  
with whom I would have assumed that you had nothing in common. These  
include the military dictators of Burma (then called the SLORC) and  
the FSB (formerly the KGB) of Putin's Russia.

     You find it distressing that some Venezuelans learned from the  
successful nonviolent undermining of the cruel Milosovic dictatorship  
of Serbia, where our writings on nonviolent struggle were influential.  
Would you have recommended that the dissident Venezuelans instead use  
violence?

     I regret that Mr. Chávez, unfortunately, repeated similar  
accusations when he read in virtual quotations from the writings of  
Thierry Meyssan, also apparently without checking their accuracy.  
Please see our open letters to President Chávez and Thierry Meyssan on  
the AEI website, www.aeinstein.org

     Neither the Institution nor I personally is a tool of, or  
apologists for, Unites States' government policies and actions. Many  
of these I personally find to be quite unacceptable. As a young man I  
did prison time for opposing US military policies.

     The Albert Einstein Institution has never received funding,  
advice, suggestions, requests, or instructions from the State  
Department.

     We have had nothing to do with, or knowledge of, any attempts to  
assassinate President Chávez or to train Colombian paramilitaries to  
do anything.

     Our research and policy studies are "transpartisan," in the sense  
that we welcome interest in obtaining greater knowledge about  
nonviolent struggle from diverse persons and groups across most of the  
political spectrum, except fascism. The Albert Einstein Institution is  
concerned about the problems of war, dictatorship, oppression, and  
genocide.

     We have writings about the relevance of nonviolent struggle for  
all of these. You will note in my open letter to President Chávez that  
I called his attention, if he anticipates a coup d'état, to our  
publication "The Anti-Coup" on our website, www.aeinstein.org To my  
knowledge this is the only program in existence for deterring and  
defeating coups d'état from any source. We also have programs for  
resisting invasions and occupations that were used in Estonia, Latvia,  
and Lithuania in 1991.

     We are in no way ideological. We do not participate in  
ideological campaigning. We are neither pro-Chávez nor anti-Chávez. We  
operate on what we regard as a deeper level. We focus on the technique  
of nonviolent action as a substitute for both violence and passivity.  
Nonviolent struggle has political consequences, principally through  
empowering people.

     In addition to research and policy studies, we prepare and  
provide, when able, educational information about nonviolent conflicts  
to groups engaged in conflicts. We do not campaign or participate in  
on-going conflicts on any side. We do not give advice on what any side  
should do in a specific conflict.

     You have a choice. You can reaffirm your own and Ms. Golinger's  
false accusations, or you can personally retract and correct your own  
false statements and strongly urge CounterPunch to publish your  
corrections prominently. The latter will help to improve your  
credibility.

     I look forward to learning what corrective action you are taking.

     Sincerely,
     Gene Sharp
     Senior Scholar

     CC: Jeffrey St. Clair, Alexander Cockburn