U.S. Warns of Possible Venezuela Threats

[Khephra]

January 16, 2004, 11:50 PM EST


CARACAS, Venezuela -- The U.S. State Department warned Friday of a potential threat to American interests in Caracas, urging U.S. citizens here to take precautions.

"The U.S. Embassy has received information of a possible threat against U.S. interests in Caracas sometime between Sunday, January 18, and Tuesday morning," said the advisory on a U.S. State Department Web site. "U.S. citizens are advised to maintain security awareness."

more.......

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/wire/sns-ap-venezuela-us-warning,0,315520.story?coll=sns-ap-world-headlines

[Syrinx]

1. well, if we didn't interfere in their internal affairs...

Like trying to overthrow their elected government, we probably wouldn't have these problems.
]

[PaDUer]

2. Do a google search

lot of election interference by * and gang in other countries.

[Syrinx]

8. I know. That's what I'm saying.

The attempted coup came straight out of Cheney's office.

[Mikimouse]

3. This is nothing but a set-up for Chavez...

mark my words, something is in the works, and the * assholes are behind it all the way. This type of announcement was completely predictable.

[burrowowl]

4. Oh! Pleeeeze!

Warning the US State Department is hazardous to your health!

[madrchsod]

5. several weeks ago

the venezuelians found a huge amount of new us money trying to be smuggled in. they were not sure if this was just one shipment or if others have gone undetected.the boys must be paying someone off...

[JohnyCanuck]

27. Interesting commentary from The Specator

I posted a link to this story already on another thread, but it does seem relevant here as well.

Indeed, one ought to speak of a ‘conspir- acy of silence’ about the role of secret services in politics. This is especially true of the events in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It is the height of irresponsibility to discuss the post-communist transition without extensive reference to the role of the spooks, yet our media stick doggedly to the myth that their role is irrelevant. During the overthrow of the Georgian president, Eduard Shevardnadze, on 22 November 2003, the world’s news outlets peddled a wonderful fairy-tale about a spontaneous uprising — ‘the revolution of roses’, CNN shlockily dubbed it — even though all the key actors have subsequently bragged that they were covertly funded and organised by the US.

Similarly, it is a matter of public record that the Americans pumped at least $100 million into Serbia in order to get rid of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and huge sums in the years before. (An election in Britain, whose population is eight times bigger than Yugoslavia’s, costs about two thirds of this.) This money was used to fund and equip the Kosovo Liberation Army; to stuff international observer missions in Kosovo with hundreds of military intelligence officers; to pay off the opposition and the so-called ‘independent’ media; and to buy heavily-armed Mafia gangsters to come and smash up central Belgrade, so that the world’s cameras could show a ‘people’s revolution’.

At every stage, the covert aid and organisation provided by the US and British intelligence agencies were decisive, as they had been on many occasions before and since, all over the world. Yet for some reason, it is acceptable to say, ‘The CIA organised the overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadeq in Iran in 1953’, but not that it did it again in Belgrade in 2000 or Tbilisi in 2003. And in spite of the well-known subterfuge and deception practised, for instance, in the Iran-Contra scandal in the mid-1980s, people experience an enormous psychological reluctance to accept that the British and American governments knowingly lied us into war in 2002 and 2003. To be sure, some conspiracy theories may be outlandish or wrong. But it seems to me that anyone who refuses to make simple empirical deductions ought to have his head examined.

I believe in Conspiracies

[Melinda]

6. Hmm, wonder what the Bush* cabal has up their sleeves now.....

:nuke:

[Minstrel Boy]

7. This sounds ominous.

Chavez, my friend, be safe.

[lostnfound]

12. Our govt tries to topple him is annoying; knowing it's OUR tax dollars

being used to try to topple him is all the more infuriating.

[IndianaGreen]

9. The only threat in Venezuela is the US

These bastards will never give up until they replace Chavez with an American-educated member of the Venezuelan elites.

Where in the world is Otto Reich today?

[tritsofme]

10. You can't get all chummy with Castro,

and NOT get thrown into the Axis of Evil!

Duh!

Everybody knows that! Those evil commy pinkos.

[bemildred]

11. FWIW

I think this is noise, provocation.
They would not warn Hugo if they were up to something.

[rooboy]

13. Maybe the State Dept. is moving to preempt the neocons or CIA... n/t

[Dover]

15. It seems it is the U.S. who is posing the threat.

Yes, they did the same thing to Iran and Syria.....

[IndianaGreen]

16. Didn't Venezuela announce recently that it was converting to Euros?

Didn't Venezuela announce recently, I think it was in the past week or so, that it was converting its dollar reserves to Euros?

Here is an interesting essay about oil, wars, dollars, and euros:

Cóilín Nunan: Oil, Currency and the War on Iraq

It will not come as news to anyone that the US dominates the world economically and militarily. But the exact mechanisms by which American hegemony has been established and maintained are perhaps less well understood than they might be. One tool used to great effect has been the dollar, but its efficacy has recently been under threat since Europe introduced the euro.

The dollar is the de facto world reserve currency: the US currency accounts for approximately two thirds of all official exchange reserves. More than four-fifths of all foreign exchange transactions and half of all world exports are denominated in dollars. In addition, all IMF loans are denominated in dollars.

But the more dollars there are circulating outside the US, or invested by foreign owners in American assets, the more the rest of the world has had to provide the US with goods and services in exchange for these dollars. The dollars cost the US next to nothing to produce, so the fact that the world uses the currency in this way means that the US is importing vast quantities of goods and services virtually for free.

<snip>

A third OPEC country which has recently fallen out with the US government is Venezuela and it too has been showing disloyalty to the dollar. Under Hugo Chavez’s rule, Venezuela has established barter deals for trading its oil with 12 Latin American countries as well as Cuba. This means that the US is missing out on its usual subsidy and might help explain the American wish to see the back of Chavez. At the OPEC summit in September 2000, Chavez delivered to the OPEC heads of state the report of the 'Interrnational Seminar on the Future of Energy’, a conference called by Chavez earlier that year to examine the future supplies of both fossil and renewable energies. One of the two key recommendations of the report was that ‘OPEC take advantage of high-tech electronic barter and bi-lateral exchanges of its oil with its developing country customers’, i.e. OPEC should avoid using both the dollar and the euro for many transactions.

http://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-000538/

[bemildred]

17. They are talking about it (Euros).

And Hugo was quite, umm, outspoken in Mexico.
But I'm just saying thta if they were going to DO something,
they would not poke Hugo with a stick right beforehand.
The other guy aboves idea about State prempting the more
aggressive types might make some sense, but who knows for
sure.

[Dover]

18. Here's one explanation about the oil/euro situation in Iran and Venezuela

http://www.greenhouseonline.org/PR-022403.html

[bemildred]

19. Well, I mean OPEC is talking about it now.

The dollar is toast as a reserve currency. It will take
a while to unfold, nobody wins if the US economy takes a
header. They have some talks planned for next month.
They are talking about baskets of Dollars, Euros, and maybe
a few others thrown in. Hugo brought the subject up some
time ago and made nice with Saddam and pissed people off,
but they have tried and failed to remove him a couple times
now, and he is stronger than ever, and they NEED the oil.
If they do a sloppy job of removing him, or fail in a sloppy
way, it will get really unpleasant, and it will look tacky too.

[Dover]

14. Any country who doesn't submit to the Cheney regime is a "threat"

And we all know how they deal with "threats to U.S. interests". If there is no immediate cause, they will manufacture one in order to seize the oil.

Heads up Venezuela!

[cache]

20. Warning is wider than US

The warning was actually issued by U.S., British, and Spanish embassies. The specific warnings were for incendiary devices.

In Caracas the expectation that the "radical group" planning the attack is linked to previous bombings at the Spanish embassy and Colombian consulate in Caracas last February.

Those terrorist attacks have been conclusively linked to rebel Venezuelan military officers who had maintain a year-long anti-government protest in Plaza Altamira in eastern Caracas. Four named officers have fled the country and are now sought on Interpol fugitive warrants in southern Florida (USA) where they have petitioned Washington D.C. for political asylum.

To read more, visit http://vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=14526

[fearnobush]

21. This is Bushit.

Their trying to over throw Chavez again.

[0rganism]

22. Threat to US interests, or to US ideology?

Is there a difference anymore?

You are with us or with the terrorists. No one is innocent. We had to burn the village to save it. I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. Kill 'em all.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

26. Chavez is the one leader

who is representing our ideals. He cares about the well being of the poor which make up 80% of the population he started a constitution, he takes the input of his people (the man has a weekly tv show where people can call in and talk to the President) he has a program for literacy.

He objects to our policy - that's his "problem"

[0007]

23. When ya go against junior like the crowd booing him at MLK memorial

and Hugo Chavez pissing junior off in Mexico the other day. We expect junior having a little apoplectic fit.

But yet junior will cozy up to the Pakistan dictator, give me a break and thrown that asshole junior out of office.

[Polemonium]

24. This administration knows no shame

I now understand how our government pulls off vilification of a country, but it sickens me. Venezuela is home to some wonderful memories while traveling.

[ChavezSpeakstheTruth]

25. I said it Friday

Now that Chavez has decriminalized drug possession he will be removed by any means necessary. The best way to get American public opinion against him is to paint him and his nation as a terrorist threat. We will hear all about how he is a dictator (lie) doesn't care about his people (huge lie) he's a thug a Catro-lover, etc, etc. They can't assasinate him, but they can add Venezuela (4th largest oil producer worldwide) to the axis of evil. I hate this crap but I saw it coming.