Venezuela: the Gang's All Here Replay of Chile and Nicaragua?

[seemslikeadream]

Weekend Edition
June 26/27, 2004
Venezuela: the Gang's All Here
Replay of Chile and Nicaragua?
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN


Chávez is the best thing that has happened to Venezuela’s poor in a very long time. His government has actually delivered on some of its promises, with improved literacy rates and more students getting school meals. Public spending has quadrupled on education and tripled on healthcare, and infant mortality has declined. The government is promoting one of the most ambitious land-reform programs seen in Latin America in decades.

Most of this has been done under conditions of economic sabotage. Oil strikes, a coup attempt and capital flight have resulted in about a 4 percent decline in GDP for the five years that Chávez has been in office. But the economy is growing at close to 12 percent this year, and with world oil prices near $40 a barrel, the government has extra billions that it’s using for social programs. So naturally the United States wants him out, just as the rich in Venezuela do. Chávez was re-elected in 2000 for a six-year term. A US-backed coup against him was badly botched in 2002.

The imperial script calls for a human rights organization to start braying about irregularities by their intended victim. And yes, here’s José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch. We last met him in this column helping to ease a $1.7 billion US aid package for Colombia’s military apparatus. This time he’s holding a press conference in Caracas, hollering about the brazen way Chávez is trying to expand membership of Venezuela’s Supreme Court, the same way FDR did, and for the same reason: that the Venezuelan court has been effectively packed the other way for decades, with judicial flunkies of the rich. I don’t recall Vivanco holding too many press conferences to protest that perennial iniquity.

The “international observers” recruited to save the rich traditionally include the Organization of American States and the Carter Center; in the case of the Venezuelan recall they have mustered dead on schedule. On behalf of the opposition, they exerted enormous pressure on the country’s independent National Electoral Council during the signature-gathering and verification process. Eventually the head of the OAS mission had to be replaced by the OAS secretary general because of his unacceptable public statements.

The Carter Center’s team is headed by Jennifer McCoy, whose forthcoming book, The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela, leans heavily against the government. One of its contributors is José Antonio Gil of the Datanalysis Polling Firm, most often cited for US media analysis. The Los Angeles Times quoted Gil on what to do: “And he can see only one way out of the political crisis surrounding President Hugo Chávez. ‘He has to be killed,’ he said, using his finger to stab the table in his office far above this capital’s filthy streets. ‘He has to be killed.’”

more
http://www.counterpunch.com/cockburn06262004.html

[DaveSZ]

1. Is Kerry still threatening Chavez?

He makes me sick when he does that.

[lostnfound]

2. "We will not welcome a govt named by a military junta"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x648321

Actually, encouragingly, he did say that unlike Bush did in Venezuela, "we will not welcome a government named by a military junta."

Not as strong as I'd like, but after his previous comments, I was glad to see SOME indication that he would be an improvement in this area.

[CharlesGroce]

4. Don't vote for him

Seriously.

[struggle4progress]

24. Why shouldn't we vote for Kerry?

If we refuse to vote for an imperfect candidate, will we glow with moral superiority? And, if so, will that glow somehow overcome the executive power wielded by the Bushista lunatics if * is re-elected?

[sandnsea]

13. Threatening Chavez?

When did he ever threaten Chavez? All he ever did was criticize Bush for not supporting the democratic process in Venezuela, encourage Chavez to cooperate with the recall process like he said he would, and express concern about some of Chavez's actions that could be perceived as moving towards dictatorship. He never once threatened Chavez.

[GermanDJ]

3. Very interesting article

Thanks for this!

[CharlesGroce]

5. HERE'S A MESSAGE JUST FOR YOU IN THE ARTICLE:

"The end of this particular drama has yet to be written. The left here in the United States could make a difference if it got off its haunches and threw itself into the fray."

---

I think he means me and you.

[PATRICK]

6. Our subverted advocacy organizations

The Universal Sucker Principle has descended with both cloven hoofed feet on many trusted and prestigious groups whose creed and membership and most of its leadership PRESUMES many naive and lazy and dangerous things. Add that to the confidence game deftly played by the right and you have the Association for the Blind throwing away our right to vote, the AARP licking the poisoned scraps of the the mocking Prescription Discount Card sham, the Carter organization tsking tsking about Florida, but used like a poisoned blade to disenfranchise the poor in Venezuela.

The list extends on and on among the trusting the intimidated and the collaborationists blending seamlessly at times into the rabid monsters of the distinguished PNAC brain trust, itself receiving respectful air time instead of jail time.

Since when is demanding accountability for such "services" and charters, some semblance of sanity and justice, some stoppage of great crimes against humanity being "left"?

Since when is being "left" itself a subversive, excluded sobriquet ladled down from the clowns of Olympus who compromise a vast majority or "trusted" institutions and their failed, weak, unimaginative leadership?

America put pressure on Venezuela to be more democratic? Democrat, heal thyself. That is the best thing for Venezuela now since our own leadership is almost all gone bad. I do trust Kerry, but it seems for the oblique interest of a fraudulent snarl in Florida, he too does not get the picture. We need leaders who do.

[seemslikeadream]

10. Dispatches From Colombia's Paramilitary Stronghold

From: Toby Muse
Subject: Fearing Peace
Thursday, June 10, 2004, at 12:35 PM PT
For the connoisseur of slang, Colombia's rich lexicon of war and crime is a treasure trove.

In one short visit to this country, one may be the victim of "miracle fishing" (Marxist guerrilla roadblocks set up randomly in the hope of finding someone wealthy enough to kidnap), take a "millionaire ride" (be driven at gunpoint around the city withdrawing money from every ATM until your cash card is maxed out), or have someone "fall in love with you" (be murdered).
Colombia's extreme right-wing paramilitaries, originally founded by wealthy farmers as a vigilante group to guard against Marxist guerrillas, have been given numerous monikers, as if Colombians never tire of rolling the word "paramilitares" around their mouths only to spit out a new variation. The most common term is the simple abbreviation "para." Others call them "paracos," and an indigenous tribe in the north of Colombia inexplicably refers to them as "paraguayos" (Paraguayans).




The paramilitaries themselves prefer their official name: the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known by the Spanish acronym AUC. In some parts of the country, they're referred to as the "head-cutters," a nickname earned in the course of their merciless war against rebels and their sympathizers. The U.S. government calls AUC a "foreign terrorist organization" and lists them alongside al-Qaida.



Amid stories of paramilitary massacres, assassinations, extortion, U.S. extradition warrants, and human rights reports detailing the use of torture, it's easy to forget that there's a sizable minority in this country that approves and finances AUC. For many, especially the wealthy landowners who started the group, these fighters are saving the country from being overrun by guerrillas.



Locals say that when guerrillas operated in Cordoba in the 1980s, farm owners lived in fear of assassination, kidnapping, and extortion. Since the paramilitaries took over, the wealthy feel much safer, and now crime has dropped dramatically until it is one of the safer places in the country. It's a foolhardy criminal who strikes in an area under paramilitary control, with the prospect of immediate—and severe—justice.



Over the last five years, the paramilitaries have grown quicker than any other armed group in the country and are now Colombia's country's second-largest illegal force after FARC.
In an e-mail interview, Rodrigo argued that the peace process was nothing but a sham: As the paramilitaries "give up their mercenaries piecemeal, they earn time and keep abandoning their zones that logic dictates the guerrillas will retake.'' In the end, "they'll say that they cannot fully hand themselves over because the government has not fulfilled its obligations of containing the guerrillas." According to Rodrigo, the paramilitaries hope this peace process will whitewash their histories of drug-trafficking, legitimize the millions they've made, and remove the threat of extradition.


http://slate.msn.com/id/2102208/entry/0/




The government is stepping up its war against drugs with a military campaign targeting both drug traffickers and coca farms

The AUC, the country's principal right-wing paramilitary group, has been penetrating deeper into FARC territory, trying to drive the guerrillas out of the country. Like the FARC, the AUC says it taxes drug manufacturers.

Across the country peasants have been forced to flee their homes to escape the fighting between left-wing guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries. This school complex houses up to 10 families per room.

Fed up with languishing as refugees, a few families began moving back in July.

Refugee barrios are commonplace outside Colombia's cities. An estimated 40,000 people crowd into the one in Cartagena, and more arrive daily. When the sun went down on June 24, 2000, this field at the barrio's western edge contained only grass and a few small trees. By morning, hundreds of refugees had moved in, clearing the weeds and turning the trees into frames for their crude tents.
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2000/colombia.noframes/story/photo /

EVERY DEATH CREATES NEW ENEMIES
MORE TERRORISTS
MORE DANGER
MORE DEATH
AND REMEMBER...

HE IS JUST GETTING STARTED...

BUSH'S PLAN FOR PEACE
IS THE PEACE OF THE COMMON GRAVE

http://www.bushflash.com/pax.html


Wumpscut
Totmacher

sie ahnten nichts von mir
von meiner wilden gier
doch als du kamst zu mir
da wurde ich ein tier
kein gedanke an danach
als ich dir die knochen brach

tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot

tot

fuer mein naechstes leben
schoepfe ich neue kraft
ich bin dem toeten ergeben
in der einzelhaft

tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot
tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot

ein dahinsichen
von gottes hand
ich kann dich riechen
und das denken verschwand

tot tot tot tot tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot tot tot tot tot

ich mache dich tot ich mache dich tot
ich mache dich tot ich mache dich tot

sag mir was du willst
dass du meine sehnsucht stillst
ich mache dich tot fuer immerdar
von blut alles rot auf gottes altar

tot tot tot ich mache dich tot
tot tot tot von blut alles rot

ich mache dich tot fuer immerdar
ich mache dich tot glaub mir es ist wahr
ich mache dich tot fuer immerdar
ich mache dich tot auf gottes altar

[seemslikeadream]

11. When the Pentagon decided to send Colombia military

"FAIR USE"

Military aid . . . from the private sector
When the Pentagon decided to send Colombia military
help for the war on drugs, it chose to outsource it.

By Paul De La Garza and David Adams
December 3, 2000
© St. Petersburg Times



WASHINGTON -- As U.S. assistance to war-fatigued Colombia escalates, the Clinton administration portrays American military involvement there as nothing more than basic anti-drug fighting aid.
Haunted by the shadows of Vietnam and El Salvador, administration officials vow to avoid managing another war by proxy in a foreign land.

The truth, however, isn't that clear cut.

Enlisted U.S. military personnel in Colombia, which average 250 on any given day, are under orders to stick to anti-drug efforts, including training of three anti-drug battalions.

But the Clinton administration quietly has hired a high-level group of former U.S. military personnel whose job far exceeds the narrow focus of the drug war and is intended to turn the Colombian military into a first-class war machine capable of winning a decades-old leftist insurgency.

These military consultants keep in close contact with Pentagon officials while advising Colombians on efforts to improve the Colombian army and even advise on the passage of new laws to help make the Colombian military more professional and effective. In addition, the consultants are helping to revamp the National Police, traditionally charged with fighting the drug war in Colombia.

The hiring of military experts -- in this case, Military Professional Resources Inc., an Alexandria, Va.-based company run mostly by retired U.S. military brass -- is a relatively new development in American foreign military assistance programs.

Critics say the practice, known as outsourcing, is intended to bypass congressional oversight and provide political cover to the White House if something goes wrong. MPRI has done other work for Washington around the world, including in the Balkans.

"We're outsourcing the war in a way that is not accountable," says Robin Kirk of Human Rights Watch. She argues that because the 130,000-strong Colombian military is notorious for human rights violations, it is essential for the United States to provide assistance "in accordance with international law and in a transparent manner -- not in secret."

Supporters of private military companies, however, argue that not only are they more cost-efficient than the U.S. military but that they ease the pressure on American troops, burdened by foreign assignments, including peacekeeping missions.

MPRI is working full time in Colombia under a $6-million contract. The company has dispatched 14 employees to Bogota under the direction of a retired Army major general.

Administration officials say MPRI personnel are doing precisely what uniformed American soldiers have traditionally done. They say MPRI was hired not because it has any special expertise, but because U.S. Southern Command in Miami, which oversees American military operations in Latin America, cannot spare 14 men to send to Colombia.

"What are we doing with MPRI that Southern Command or someone else can't do? In theory, nothing," Brian Sheridan, the senior Pentagon official who oversees the work of MPRI, said in congressional testimony in March.

"It's a manpower issue," he said.

Nevertheless, U.S.-Colombia policy experts say the use of firms like MPRI is intended primarily to limit the risk of American military casualties there.

"It's very handy to have an outfit not part of the U.S. armed forces, obviously," said former U.S. ambassador to Colombia Myles Frechette. "If somebody gets killed or whatever, you can say it's not a member of the armed forces. Nobody wants to see American military men killed."

Although the hiring of MPRI was approved by Congress, it raises serious questions about the propriety of U.S. intervention in the affairs of a sovereign state, of American civilians participating in a foreign war, and whether the United States can guarantee the Colombian military will not misuse the assistance it receives from MPRI.

It also raises the question of the privatization of American foreign policy.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, is the author of human rights requirements in the $1.3-billion aid package Congress approved in June under Plan Colombia, a $7.5-billion internationally funded program with a strong U.S. military component designed to brace Colombia against collapse.

He, too, is critical of using companies like MPRI.

"(It) is fraught with dangers, especially when human rights are at stake," Leahy said.

"The Congress has little choice but to rely on the Pentagon to supervise the contractors, but the Pentagon too often does not pay close attention.

"We have no way of knowing if the contractors are training these Colombian soldiers in ways that are fully consistent with U.S. policy, laws and procedures."

MPRI and the Pentagon both denied requests by the Times to review the MPRI contract, which is renewable each year. MPRI spokesman Ed Soyster, a retired Army lieutenant general and former director of the Defense Department's Defense Intelligence Agency, compared the need for secrecy in Colombia with the need for secrecy in Vietnam.

"When I was in Vietnam, I wouldn't want to tell you about my operation," he said. "If the enemy knows about it, he can counter it."

Analytical problem solvers

In congressional testimony and in interviews, Pentagon and Colombian officials -- including Sheridan; the retired Southcom commander, Gen. Charles Wilhelm; and the Colombian ambassador to the United States, Luis Alberto Moreno -- have characterized MPRI staff as "men in business suits" who assess problems within the Colombian Ministry of Defense and provide solutions through detailed analysis that Colombia can either accept or reject.

In this view, they aren't any different than the other 50 or so private U.S. contractors providing equipment or services paid for by U.S. foreign aid in Colombia.

MPRI employees can "from time-to-time go out on a field trip to see something," the Pentagon says, including Colombian military operations, but they don't participate in battles against the rebel forces.

Its mission, according to MPRI internal documents, is to provide advice to the Ministry of Defense "with continued development and implementation of military reform measures."

Specifically, MPRI is working with the armed forces and the National Police in the areas of planning; operations, including psychological operations; training; logistics; intelligence; and personnel management.

Soyster, the MPRI spokesman, compares his company with other U.S. companies operating overseas -- "Like Coca-Cola," he said.

But, for the most part, MPRI officials operate out of public view, and neither Pentagon nor MPRI officials will talk in great detail about the company's activities.

MPRI's stated mission in Colombia is strikingly similar to its stated mission in the Balkans.

In January 1996, according to European-based Jane's Intelligence Review, Croatia and MPRI signed the Long Range Management Program designed to assist the Croats "in establishing the architecture, structure, organization and system for planning, programming and budgeting functions for the Croatian Ministry of Defense."

MPRI insisted that its work in Croatia was limited to classroom teachings and never involved any training in tactics or use of weaponry.

But suspicions were aroused after two successful military operations launched by Croatia in 1995, just months after MPRI's contracts began.

The operations "demonstrated that the Croatian army was now able to coordinate armor and infantry attacks supported by large artillery forces and master new communications techniques," Jane's reported. "Most importantly, the Croatian performance did not resemble the usual outmoded Warsaw Pact military tactics."

Officially, U.S. aid to Colombia is directed at the drug war, not the rebel war that has plagued the country for nearly 40 years.

But even senior administration officials, including drug czar Barry McCaffrey, acknowledge that the line between the drug war and the guerrilla war has become increasingly blurred because of rebel involvement in the drug trade.

Indeed, U.S. military officials familiar with the 18-week training program of anti-drug battalions in Colombia say that skills being taught by the Special Forces, including sniper training, are transferable to the fight against the Marxist rebels.

Farther-reaching influence

Among the most provocative parts of the MPRI mission are plans for MPRI to recommend legislation, statutes and decrees to Colombia regarding a military draft, a professional soldier statute, officer entitlements and health law reforms.

"They are using us to carry out American foreign policy," Soyster, the MPRI spokesman, said. "We certainly don't determine foreign policy, but we can be part of the U.S. government executing its foreign policy."

So delicate is MPRI's work in Colombia that State Department officials say there is an ongoing internal debate within the Clinton administration about for whom MPRI works -- the United States or Colombia?

Moreno, the Colombian ambassador, said he saw no problem in the contract. The United States was paying MPRI, but Colombia was the recipient of its military expertise, he said. "Colombia tells MPRI that we need help or we need advice in this area."

Moreno said he has met with MPRI personnel and that his country welcomed its help.

A country of 41-million people, Colombia has been at war with the rebels, a powerful force of 20,000 men, women and children, since 1964. Once fueled by Marxist ideology, the insurgency is now fueled by the drug trade, critics say.

Complicating peace efforts even further for the government are roving bands of right-wing paramilitary death squads, funded by wealthy landowners as well as the drug trade. Totaling between 5,000 and 10,000 strong, the paramilitaries often have been linked to the Colombian military.

"The military in Colombia has to be very professional and very modern if you are going to have peace," Moreno said. "Any time you spend on modernizing the Colombian military is time well-spent."

Washington has pumped more money into Colombia because it has grown increasingly concerned about the rebel war spilling over into its neighbors. Fighting already threatens stability on the border with Venezuela, a main U.S. supplier of oil, as well as Ecuador and Panama. Only Egypt and Israel get more U.S. foreign aid than Colombia.

U.S. and Colombian officials say one of the strategies in the drug war is to cut off funding to the rebels, who earn hundreds of millions of dollars by selling protection to the drug traffickers. Colombia provides as much as 85 percent of the cocaine sold on U.S. streets and an increasing amount of heroin.

In explaining the impetus for the use of MPRI, Pentagon officials say they have become frustrated over the past 40 years with trying to help reform the Colombian military piecemeal, doing exchange programs, for instance, that yielded poor results.

State Department officials say Washington is not using MPRI to ram military reform down the throats of the Colombians. Colombia can reject MPRI suggestions.

Moreno agreed.

When MPRI began operations in Colombia, the Pentagon said the ministry of defense already had begun a reform program.

It was Sheridan, the assistant secretary of defense for the Special Operations Low-Intensity Conflict, or SOLIC, section of the Pentagon, who recommended MPRI to Minister of Defense Luis Fernando Ramirez.

The Pentagon said that every quarter MPRI reports directly to a senior steering committee in Washington, including Sheridan, representatives of Southcom and Randy Beers, the assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Congress, meanwhile, gets no updates about the MPRI mission.

And that makes critics, even within the military, queasy.

In 1998, Col. Bruce D. Grant wrote a strategy research project at the U.S. Army War College questioning companies like MPRI.

Not only did he conclude that what they do is illegal, because they circumvent congressional oversight, but he also wondered how military men and women could sell their expertise to the highest foreign bidder.

"This dangerous trend removes military expertise from public accountability and corrupts our military," Grant wrote.

"The unintended consequences of profit-motivated military assistance could detract from U.S. foreign policy objectives, result in tragedy when misused by recipients and leave a dispirited military."

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/Columbia/PentagonWM.html

[AP]

7. HRW, Carter Center and OAS dont' come off so well in this article. Hmm.

Usually people attacking Chavez think ti's enough to site the opinions of these three groups in order to end an argument about who's right and who's wrong.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Yep, we really need to hear more info. on the Carter Center

as very little about its dealings in Venezuela makes its way back to us without taking a detour through right-wing propaganda mills, unfortunately.

From SeemsLikeADream's great article:

The imperial script calls for a human rights organization to start braying about irregularities by their intended victim. And yes, here’s José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch. We last met him in this column helping to ease a $1.7 billion US aid package for Colombia’s military apparatus. This time he’s holding a press conference in Caracas, hollering about the brazen way Chávez is trying to expand membership of Venezuela’s Supreme Court, the same way FDR did, and for the same reason: that the Venezuelan court has been effectively packed the other way for decades, with judicial flunkies of the rich. I don’t recall Vivanco holding too many press conferences to protest that perennial iniquity.

The “international observers” recruited to save the rich traditionally include the Organization of American States and the Carter Center; in the case of the Venezuelan recall they have mustered dead on schedule. On behalf of the opposition, they exerted enormous pressure on the country’s independent National Electoral Council during the signature-gathering and verification process. Eventually the head of the OAS mission had to be replaced by the OAS secretary general because of his unacceptable public statements.

The Carter Center’s team is headed by Jennifer McCoy, whose forthcoming book, The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela, leans heavily against the government. One of its contributors is José Antonio Gil of the Datanalysis Polling Firm, most often cited for US media analysis. The Los Angeles Times quoted Gil on what to do: “And he can see only one way out of the political crisis surrounding President Hugo Chávez. ‘He has to be killed,’ he said, using his finger to stab the table in his office far above this capital’s filthy streets. ‘He has to be killed.’”

A superficial dive into the google bin produced this:

But according to published polls, his support has now dropped to around 30%. This picture is often backed by reports of huge rallies against Chávez (while pro-Chávez rallies, often much larger, go unreported).

Justin Delacour of Narco News Bulletin followed up many of the media outlets that publish these polls to find out their source. They seem to come from 2 polling firms: Datanalisis and Keller and Associates.

The directors of both these firms are part of Venezuela’s wealthy elite and neither have made stringent efforts to maintain even an appearance of even handedness. After the failure of the April coup, Datanalisis director José Antonio Gil Yepes, interviewed in the Los Angeles Times on July 8, called for Chávez’s assassination.
(snip)

Delacour reports that the polling of both firms is conducted primarily in middle class areas of Venezuela’s ten major cities. Rural areas, where landless peasants are strongly supportive of Chávez, are generally ignored as polling in such areas is more costly.

In the strongly pro-Chávez slums of Caracas and Maracaibo, the population has made it clear that Datanalisis field workers are not welcome. Yet, those who publish the polls do not mention that these areas are not even included.
(snip)

http://www.cislac.org.au/country/venezuela/v67%20venezuela%20chavez%20in%20the%20polls.html

Anyone reading here at D.U. DURING the April coup remembers reading from the DU'er who had lived in Venezuela occassionally, as she spoke with Pescao, that the truly poor, which comprises a hefty 85% of the population, does NOT ordinarily have home phones, and would NEVER be included in any phone polls, anyway. I never forgot that.

I just found an interesting site worth studying for anyone who has the time. The photos are so large, if you click them, it would be innappropriate to copy them here. Please go there and take a look. The copy says more thana 50% of the people in Venezuela live like this:

http://www.cita.utoronto.ca/~jmartin/www_jmartin/Caracas/Caracas.html

[AP]

8. Cockburn makes a funny joke. To impress upon the reader the power of...

...the private media in VZ, he says: "Imagine if the right wing controlled almost the entire media during Clinton’s impeachment."

OHHHH, I get it. Yes, I can imagine what it's like.

[Carl Brennan]

16. Cockburn is a brilliant writer tying in Chile and Nicaragua.

That line cracked me up.

[AP]

9. And let's not forget the role NED is playing:

Just think what Greenberg’s associate, Mark Feierstein-a veteran of similar NED efforts in ousting the Sandinistas in the 1990 elections-can do with this kind of totalitarian media control. NED? That’s the National Endowment for Democracy, praised not so long ago by John Kerry, who, like Bush, publicly craves the ouster of Chávez.

The NED is coming over the hill arm in arm with the CIA and CIA-backed institutions in the AFL-CIO, where John Sweeney’s team has dismally failed to clean house. The NED has helped fund the opposition to Chávez to the tune of more than $1 million a year. Among the recipients are organizations whose leaders actually supported the April 2002 coup-they signed the decree that overthrew the elected president and vice president and abolished the country’s democratic institutions, including the Constitution, Supreme Court and National Assembly. The coup was thwarted only because millions of Venezuelans rallied for Chávez.

Left out of the coup government, despite his support for it, was Carlos Ortega, head of the CTV (Central Labor Federation). The AFL’s Solidarity Center, successor to the CIA-linked AIFLD, gets more than 80 percent of its funding from the NED and USAID and has funneled NED money to Ortega and his collaborators. The Solidarity Center has been up to its ears in opposition plotting, a reprise of the Allende years, when the AFL helped destroy Chilean democracy. The AFL has denied any role, but Rob Collier, an excellent San Francisco Chronicle reporter, recently gave a detailed refutation of AFL apologetics in an exchange in the current New Labor Forum. “In Venezuela,” he writes, “the AFL-CIO has blindly supported a reactionary union establishment as it tried repeatedly to overthrow President Hugo Chávez-and, in the process, wrecked the country’s economy.

The CTV worked in lockstep with FEDECAMARAS, the nation’s business association, to carry out the three general strikes/lockouts” of 2001, 2002 and 2003. The CTV, Collier says, was directly involved in coup organizing, and its leader was scheduled to be part of the new junta.

[seemslikeadream]

14. Chavez has video of a CIA instructing coupsters in surveillance techniques

Chavez has video of a CIA instructing coupsters in surveillance techniques
President Hugo Chavez Frias has revealed that his government is in the possession of a secretly recorded video of a US CIA officer giving instruction to would-be Venezuelan coupsters on surveillance techniques ... evidence that the CIA remains involved in clandestine activity (i.e. espionage) in Venezuela even after the US-backed coup attempt in April 2002. He also says he has clear and certain evidence of US involvement before and during the coup d'etat ... "some day these pieces of evidence will be released to the public."
Chavez Frias says the CIA's surveillance techniques training couldn;t have been very good since his security services were able to film the CIA officer "in action!"
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=11090
headline shortened from
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias says he has secretly-recorded video of a CIA officer instructing would-be coupsters in surveillance techniques

MetaTrope

If there really is a videotape
Why doesn't Chavez release it to the media? It would get airplay everywhere (except the U.S.), and would certainly strengthen his case. But like Saddam, who could have reamed Reagan and Bush I (and the current junta) immeasurably by sending around details of his arms deals with the U.S., Chavez is just going to play the gentleman and sit on the evidence?


RainDog

Greg Palast wrote about the coup BEFORE IT HAPPENED
in a 2002 article which I think was in The Guardian. If someone wants to go look for it, maybe it's still available w/o charge, or maybe it's on Palast's website.
Also, on April 11, 2002, the NYTimes ran an article about the coup which was full of lies. they had to retract this article in another story which they buried inside the paper....no front page mea culpa for that, although Jason Blair got the full treatment.
anyway, what happened back in 2002, for those who weren't on DU then, is that the coup plotters, all rich biz people who don't want Exxon to lose their oil monopoly, hence the CIA interference, took control of the presidential palace and "allowed" Chavez to leave and announced that Chavez had left willingly.
Before the coup, someone had told Chavez what was coming. He stationed 200 loyal troops in the basement of the palace, called the coup plotters, and told them this fact.
The coup plotters then left the building, in Elvis speak.
If anyone doubts CIA/USA interference, it should also be noted that Ari Fleischer quickly stepped up to support the coup for this administration, oil whores, the whole lot of them, and this was an embarrassment for the administration elsewhere, if not in media censored America.
I think this story was also listed by the Index on Censorship as one of the top censored stories for 2002.
CIA records are now part of the public record which show that they helped Pinochet, the murderous, in his coup to oust Allende, and Kissinger is implicated in contracting to hire the fascist in the military who killed the general...Rene?? who supported Allende.
Chavez is no angel, but he's trying to make his country more democratic and less of a plutocracy. Because of him, poor people carry around copies of their constitution.
But of course, America hates its own poor, so why should it support the cause of the poor in other countries?

gmoney

Right wing reaction...
As Noam Chomsky says, we are a terrorist nation afterall.
Our buddy Ann Coulter's new screed talks about 'The Great Pinochet"... what an ignorant bitch. (Notice how can't resist calling Clinton a Marxist, just in passing.) This is all supposed to be "evidence" about how the Times editor is a "traitor."

--------
"I am prepared -- just this once -- to name a traitor: Pinch Sulzberger, publisher of The New York Times.
(snip)
"By not opposing a military coup by the great Augusto Pinochet against a Chilean Marxist, Salvador Allende, the Times implied, the U.S. was party to a terrorist act similar to the 9/11 attack on America. This is how the Times describes Pinochet's 1973 coup: "A building -- a symbol of the nation -- collapsed in flames in an act of terror that would lead to the deaths of 3,000 people. It was Sept. 11."

"Allende was an avowed Marxist, who, like Clinton, got into office on a plurality vote. He instantly hosted a months-long visit from Castro, allowing Castro to distribute arms to Chilean leftists. He began destroying Chile's economy at a pace that makes Gray Davis look like a piker. No less an authority than Chou En-lai warned Allende that he was pursuing a program that was too extreme for his region.

"When General Pinochet staged his coup against a Marxist strongman, the U.S. did not stop him -- as if Latin American generals were incapable of doing coups on their own. And -- I quote -- "It was Sept. 11." Parsed to its essentials, the Times' position is: We deserved it."

http://tinyurl.com/o2gp



RainDog

again-
the remark-- on Orincus' blog?? that when the right wing starts accusing liberals, you can almost make bet that that's what they're up to rings true again.
Coulter called Katie Couric an Eva Braun, I believe?
Coulter is the whore of the fascists...maybe more like Mussolini's mistress...and when the fascists fall in our country, I can only hope they meet the same fates as those fascists in Europe.
Allende was no angel. That's not the point, tho.
Since when did America and Americans decide it was okay for us to kill or oust democratically elected leaders and install dictators and call that freedom??
actually, I know the answer to the question...we didn't get to decide, but the extra-govt powers that should not be decided when they removed Mossedegah and installed the Shah. It's been downhill since then.
I wonder how many people our secret agencies have killed in the name of democracy?
I'm watching The Sorrow and The Pity, a documentary made in the 60s about one French town and what happened to people there when the Nazis invaded and France's govt collaborated..some citizens did too, of course.
Interesting to see.
last night on Bill Moyers Now he talked about Lafayette persuading the King of France to send help which secured the American revolution.
In turn, our general, when he landed in France during WW2 said, "hello LaFayette." -- he was aware of the debt America owed to France in saving our butts from the Royalists.
Strange to say, but I wonder how it will fall this time...will France's interference in Bushies try at world dictator work, or will the world become collaborators?

chasqui

You are my hero
I grew up in Bolivia, with Hugo Banzer, Garcia Meza, etc. You know what goes on.

AP

I wrote about this before it happened. Beginning in the winter of 01,
NPR and the NYT started running stories that were criticial of Chavez. It was so obvious that the propaganda wheels were starting to spin.
In fact, if you want to see which media serves the Republican party, you could probably go back to Nov, Dec 01 and see who started laying down the groundwork to reduce American objections to the coup.
I wish I had a legal right to sue papers which did this. I would have incontrovertible evidence of the fact that they lie for the CIA.


JudiLyn

To remind DU'er's of only some of the twisted truths
we read from the NY Times, as they dared us to imagine they were being truthful concerning Venezuela:
(snip) The New York Times’ Venezuela problem continued to snowball yesterday as its Caracas correspondent Francisco Toro resigned.
Toro acknowledged, in a letter to Times editor Patrick J. Lyons, “conflicts of interest concerns” regarding his participation in protest marches and his “lifestyle bound up with opposition activism.”
Toro’s obsessive anti-Chavez position in Venezuela was publicly known after last April’s coup when he began sending emails to Narco News and other journalists who he placed on his own mailing list attacking Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. That the Times hired him in the first place was a violation of the Times’ own claims to objective and disinterested reporting. But regarding Venezuela, it was not the first. (snip)
(snip) * Also last April, New York Times reporter Juan Forero reported that President Chávez had “resigned” when, in fact, Chávez had been kidnapped at gunpoint. Forero did not source his knowingly false claim. Forero, on April 13, wrote a puff piece on dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona – installed by a military coup – as Carmona disbanded Congress, the Supreme Court, the Constitution and sent his shocktroops house to house in a round-up of political leaders in which sixty supporters of Chávez were assassinated. Later that day, after the Venezuelan masses took back their country block by block, Carmona fled the national palace and Chávez, the elected president, was restored to office. (snip)
(snip)* But Thompson’s reporting has also been laden with distortions. Last week she reported that there had been a “strike” by “bank workers” when, in fact, it was a lockout by bank owners supported only by the executives “union” – which represents only one percent of bank workers in the country. (That the bank lockout of its customers – conducted by 60 percent of bank branches over two days – constituted a theft of people’s access to their own money was not raised by Thompson’s article.) (snip/...)

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Giordana_NYT-Venezuela.htm



ramblin_dave
CIA planned to bring down Chavez' airplane en route to United Nations
This story is even bigger than the CIA surveillance story:
Venezuelan Military Intelligence says overwhelming evidence the CIA planned to bring down Chavez Frias' airplane en route to United Nations in New York
Details behind the sudden decision to cancel President Hugo Chavez Frias' next-week trip to Washington D.C. and New York (to deliver a speech to the United Nations) are being revealed by security services who say they have "overwhelming evidence" of a CIA-backed plan to "bring down" the Chavez Frias' airplane during the scheduled flight to the United States from Caracas. Sources in Venezuela's Military Intelligence Directorate (DIM) have told VHeadline.com that "presented with overwhelming evidence of Washington's planned attack on the Presidential flight, it was decided that the President's personal security was preeminent and that he should not go!"


http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=11121

RainDog

Is the BBC a credible source for you? here's a link
http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=155&row=1
or hear on audio
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/audiovideo/programmes/newsnight/newsi...
Warning to Venezuelan leader
BBC Newsnight
Monday, May 13, 2002

By Greg Palast
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had advance warning from OPEC of last month's failed coup attempt against him. ()
Chavez said that he had tried to avert a coup by sending a note to President Bush, assuring him that Venezuela would never join any oil boycott. But coup leader Pedro Carmona moved on 12 April, the day after a general strike began, and four days after Iraq banned oil exports.
However, the OPEC warning allowed Mr Chavez to position loyal troops in secret passageways in the presidential palace.
However, Mr Chavez's attempts to protect his offices with tanks failed and he was seized. But after just 48 hours in power, the coup leader Carmona was forced to resign to save his life after massive demonstrations by Chavez' supporters.

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=136&row=1

Guardian UK
Wednesday, April 17, 2002

by Greg Palast
Here's what we read this week: On Friday, Hugo Chavez, the unpopular, dictatorial potentate of Venezuela, resigned. When confronted over his ordering the shooting of antigovernment protestors, he turned over the presidency to progressive, democratic forces, namely, the military and the chief of Venezuela's business council.
Two things about the story caught my eye: First, every one of these factoids is dead wrong. And second, newspapers throughout the ruling hemisphere, from the New York Times to the Independent to (wince) the Guardian, used almost identical words - "dictatorial", "unpopular", "resignation" - in their reports.

Let's begin with the faux "resignation" that allowed the Bush and Blair governments to fall over their own feet rushing towards recognition of the coup leaders. I had seen no statement of this alleged resignation, nor heard it, nor received any reliable witness report of it. I was fascinated. In January, I had broadcast on US radio that Chavez would face a coup by the end of April. But resign? That was not the Chavez style.

The resignation myth was the capstone of a year-long disinformation campaign against the populist former paratrooper who took office with 60% of the vote. The Bush White House is quoted as stating that Chavez's being elected by "a majority of voters" did not confer "legitimacy" on the Venezuelan government. The assertion was not unexpected from a US administration selected over the opposition of the majority of American voters.

What neither Bush nor the papers told you is that Chavez's real crime was to pass two laws through Venezuela's national assembly. The first ordered big plantation owners to turn over untilled land to the landless. The second nearly doubled, from roughly 16% to 30%, royalties paid for extracting Venezuela's oil. Venezuela was once the largest exporter of oil to the USA, bigger than Saudi Arabia. This explains Chavez's unpopularity - at least within that key constituency, the American petroleum industry.
----

Please follow the links and read the articles. I stated in an earlier post that these articles existed. Before denying what you don't want to believe, why didn't YOU search out the information for yourself?
Are the BBC and The Guardian good enough sources for you?
I'd also like to remind you that Palast is the reporter who broke much of the information about the illegal felon voter purge Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush instigated before the 2000 election to ensure Dubya would take Florida.
In addition, you know, right, that Theresa La Pore, the butterfly ballot queen of Palm Beach, was a former employee of Adnan Khasshogi, the Iran/Contra gun runner Reagan/Bush used, right? (That was reported in the Wall Street Journal back in 2000, btw.)
Face it. The American press has been horribly damaged ever since Reagan's "project truth" (you can read about that at the Consortium online) Robert Parry is a former Newsweek and Pultizer-nominated reporter who reported on much of the slime oozing from the Reagan administration.
Project Truth was/is the attempt by CIA, etc. to infiltrate the American press and lie to hide their secret programs designed to destablize other country's govts, and no doubt to hide much of what Bush is doing now.
When I saw, in real time, the report from the NYTimes, and as I've followed what happened in the American media and press leading up to the Iraq invasion, I realize America no longer has a free press which will serve as the guardian of truth for the American people against the abuses of power by people like Cheney, Bush, and the whole nasty junta.
Also, I'd recommend a few books. The Pinochet Files is a new book which draws upon previously classified documents now available because of the FOIA. This talks about America's involvement in that coup. Powell himself has called it one of America's less proud moments, or something like that.
Also, Lost History, by Robert Parry. You can get it from his site, Consortium online.
Also All the Shah's Men, which details the US/Brit overthrow of the democratically elected leader of Iran and the installation of the Shah. Also a new book, but based upon declassified files which also appeared a few years ago around the New Year in the NYTimes.
Do you think that all these sorts of activities are only in America's past? Do you realize that many of the same plotters from Iran/Contra and the Iraqgate time are again in power?
Also good to read: Old Nazis, New Right, and the Republican Party, and Christopher Hitchens' The Trial of Henry Kissinger.
I burns me when someone says.. but is it credible? without seeking out information for themselves. Why should others do the work for you to find out the truth?


JudiLyn

Bless you, RainDog!
It burns me when someone says.. but is it credible? without seeking out information for themselves. Why should others do the work for you to find out the truth?"
Just takes one's breath away, doesn't it? Doesn't leave much to discuss with one who will not put out the effort to get informed.


RainDog

thanks for your posts on the other Chavez thread
concerning the attempted assassination via downing his plane.
have you seen this reported ANYWHERE in a U.S. media source?
have you seen this on any British source?
If this charge by Chavez is true or false, how will we know via any U.S. news source? who here will investigate such claims honestly? who will verfiy the claims?
This accusation by Chavez demands an investigation by Congress, simply based upon the precedent of events before this assassination claim.
The best thing we can do is write our representatives and demand an investigation.


JudiLyn
Yep, you're right
You may recall reading that Americans turn to foreign press in overwhelming numbers to get the information our own media can't be bothered to cover.
THEN if we've got some spare time, we can read all about it in our own press decades later, when the government papers get declassified, as in the Kissinger documents.
Don't say they never tell us everything! We have to think in bigger time frames, if we live long enough.


9215
I also wanted to thank you Judi
for your posts of support on the other Chavez threads. He really strikes a cord here at DU. I've been following Venezuela with a keen interest.


RainDog
one more thing, lastdem
when reagan and bush sr were engaged in genocide in Central America, and when they had the CIA running cocaine into the U.S., reporters who covered this story were slammed by the mainstream media outlets, including Time and Newsweek.
However, with the release of govt documents in Central America since that time, it turns out that those people who reported these atrocities were telling the truth.
of course, Newsweek and Time never bothered to offer an apology or a retraction to, say, the reporter at the San Jose Mercury News whom they smeared.
Nor has Oliver North ever apologized for knowing of drug shipments to America while his bosses wife was telling everyone to "just say no."
The mainstream press has never bothered to inform the American people that Reagan's administration worked with Klaus Barbie, the butcher of Lyon, one of Hitler's henchmen, when Barbie was training a "new SS" to fight in Central America.
But all these things are true.

chasqui

Klaus Barbie was not in Central America at the time.
He was in Bolivia. He had been a 'National Security' advisor to the regime of Hugo Banzer Suarez, in Bolivia, and was living under the alias 'Klaus Altmann.' He was extradited to France in 1983 by the government of Henrnan Siles Suazo.
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_Barbie

RainDog
I didn't say he was in Central America
I said he was training a "new SS" for use in Central America.
I'll go get the quote for this.
here's one-
this is from The Consortium. I'll go back again for the link
In 1980, four years after the coup, the Argentine military exported its terror tactics into neighboring Bolivia. There, Argentine intelligence operatives helped Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie and major drug lords mount a brutal putsch, known as the Cocaine Coup. The bloody operation turned Bolivia into the first modern drug state and expanded cocaine smuggling into the United States.
Videla's anything-goes anti-communism struck a responsive chord with the Reagan administration which came to power in 1981. President Reagan quickly reversed President Carter's condemnation of the Argentine junta's record on human rights. Reagan's U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick even hosted the urbane Argentine generals at an elegant state dinner.
More substantively, Reagan authorized CIA collaboration with the Argentine intelligence service for training and arming the Nicaraguan contras. The contras were soon implicated in human rights atrocities and drug smuggling of their own. But the contras benefitted from the Reagan administration's "perception management" operation which portrayed them as "the moral equivalent of the Founding Fathers."
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Human_Rights/VidelaArgentinaTerror.h...
..but my original post comes from Lost History, by Robert Parry.


chasqui

Yes
I was there when that bloody coup happened in Bolivia. I remember hearing machine guns going off in the city I was in at the time, Cochabamba, students running for cover inside our yard. Those were some really interesting times.
I have never, to this date, heard of Klaus Barbie having been involved in the coup of 1981. But if you go to this link:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/story40.html
You will find some stuff on the interaction between Klaus Barbie/Altmann, Hugo Banzer Suarez, Luis Garcia Meza, and Luis Arce Gomez. It is interesting to note that there was a close alliance between Roberto 'Techo de Paja' Suarez and Hugo Banzer Suarez. Having lived there I can say that the people from the area that Banzer is from are very tight with each other ... in other words, this was just s symptom of what I saw as a systemic involvement with narcotrafficking among a certain social circles - those involving wealthy ranch owners in the Bolivian east.
There was also a kidnapping of a close associate of Banzer's by the colombian mafias:
http://www.el-deber.net/20030905/santacruz_2.html
I hope you can read spanish. They nabbed him as he was dropping his kid, my classmate, off at school.


9215
For christ's sake!
Why quibble about his location. This guy's company Merex supplied drugs and guns to Reagan's Iran-Contra network. It is documented in the book "Whiteout" by Alexander Coburn. In addition he linked up with Unification Church narco-theocrat Rev. Moon just as the 80's cocaine boom hit the US.

The fucker is a CIA bought and sold ratline express rider.


protect freedom impeach bush now

Chavez Cancelled Trip to US Due to 'Overwhelming Evidence' of CIA Assassination Plot

"Details behind the sudden decision to cancel President Hugo Chavez Frias' next-week trip to Washington D.C. and New York (to deliver a speech to the United Nations) are being revealed by security services who say they have 'overwhelming evidence' of a CIA-backed plan to 'bring down' the Chavez Frias' airplane during the scheduled flight to the United States from Caracas. Sources in Venezuela's Military Intelligence Directorate (DIM) have told VHeadline.com that 'presented with overwhelming evidence of Washington's planned attack on the Presidential flight, it was decided that the President's personal security was preeminent and that he should not go!'"
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=11121


JudiLyn

Some interesting aspects of Chavez' government
have made him unpopular with 2% of the population, a very OLD story in Latin America, wouldn't you say?

(snip) In this oil-rich and largely urban nation, gaping inequalities in land ownership have long been overlooked by the ruling elite. According to the country's National Land Institute, which oversees land distribution, 60 percent of the arable property belongs to 2 percent of its landowners, while hundreds of thousands of farmers scrape by on small subsistence plots.

Now, in a bid to reduce poverty and bolster agricultural production, Chávez is implementing land reforms that have drawn fierce resistance from landowners, business groups and opposition politicians.

By the end of this year, Chávez says, the government will have distributed 5 million acres of idle, state-owned land to as many as 100,000 families.

"Venezuela right now has the only serious government-administered land reform in Latin America," said Peter Rosset, co-director of the Institute for Food and Development Policy, a San Francisco-based think tank. "In the U.S., Chávez is often painted as a villain or crazy, but this land reform, small and incipient as it is, shows that he is much more on the side of the poor than other presidents in the region." (snip/...)

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/world/ny-wolati0921,0,6597522....


Witholding damning info is an "insurance policy" where the holder says: "You keep fucking with me and I will tell all......you leave me alone and I'll leave you alone".

That is what it looks like to me. Chavez, IMO, should hold the info for his own safety and fuck with the BFEE/CIA's head, keep his ace in the hole. The BFEE is going down anyway as they blatantly try to kill anyone they oppose.

Chavez is one , smart, tough brave hombre! Reminds me of Castro in that regard.

Venezuelans should be happy to have him. Only good people fight the BFEE.


from this thread
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=124487

[Judi Lynn]

15. New U.S. ambassador to Venezuela in town

William R. Brownfield
Ambassador, Republic of Chile
Term of Appointment: 03/04/2002 to present



A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Bill Brownfield was sworn in as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Chile on March 4, 2002. As the President's representative, he heads a mission of 300 American and Chilean employees representing seven U.S. departments and agencies. The Embassy is pursuing an ambitious agenda of trade and commercial issues, law enforcement cooperation, support for democracy and human rights, and regional cooperation.

Prior to his arrival in Chile, Ambassador Brownfield served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere (WHA) from 1999 to 2002. He was responsible for U.S. relations with the Andean region, Caribbean, Haiti, and Cuba. From 1998-99, Brownfield was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. He managed over $300 million of annual counternarcotics assistance programs, a State Department air wing of more than 40 aircraft, foreign activities by the U.S. law enforcement community, and U.S. civilian policing operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, and East Timor.

Ambassador Brownfield's overseas postings included Counselor for Humanitarian Affairs in Geneva, as well as assignments in Argentina, El Salvador, and Venezuela. He was temporarily assigned as Political Adviser to the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Southern Command in Panama 1989-90.

In Washington, Ambassador Brownfield's assignments have included Director for Policy in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Executive Assistant in the Bureau of Interamerican Affairs, Member of the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff, and Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Political Affairs.

Bill Brownfield entered the Foreign Service in 1979. A graduate of Cornell University (1974) and the National War College (1993), he also attended the University of Texas School of Law (1976-78). He speaks Spanish and French. He is a native of the State of Texas.

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/biog/8903.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What does it mean if they are sending this little weasel home, Charles Shapiro, and bringing in a new creep?

Arrogant US Ambassador to Venezuela Charles S. Shapiro says its not a crime to kill a President...

In an Associated Press (AP) dispatch the United States government has said it will open up an investigation into allegations made by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias relative to conspiracy to assassinate him. Chavez Frias has said that "terrorist groups" in southern Florida have allied with Miami-based anti-Castro radicals.


USA Caracas Ambassador
Charles Shapiro

Amazingly US Ambassador to Venezuela, Charles S. Shapiro says "it is not necessarily a crime ... but we are in the full process of collecting information and we must follow all legal procedures ... if there is anyone to blame, our government knows what to do!"

With typical Washington cover-up rhetoric, Shapiro shakily admits that he has received information that "some Venezuelans have been receiving military training in the United States." He further admits that the information was also published in a Miami newspaper a year ago ... but remains remarkably silent as to why no action was taken by proper authorities Stateside. "We're not going to take action against anybody ... we haven't been able to make any headway!"

President Chavez Frias was forced to cancel his scheduled trip to the United Nations in New York on September 24 after intelligence agencies revealed a CIA-backed plot against the President's plane en route to the General Assembly. Chavez asked the United States to investigate his allegations, at the same time reiterating earlier requests that President George W. Bush should stop interfering in Venezuela's affairs.
(snip)

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=11205
(Free registration required)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Remember, it was Charles Shapiro who raced out of his building to rush up to wrap the little buddy on the right of this picture in his official U.S. arms, the moment the lil' fella declared himself the new President of Venezuela and voided the Venezuelan legislature, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution.

In this photo, the Pres. for a day is bathing in the love of Carlos Ortega, one of the strike leaders, and the head of the Chamber of Commerce.

[eablair3]

17. thanks

thanks for posting this.

[struggle4progress]

18. HRW has a long history of principled human rights work.

Cockburn apparently dislikes Vivanco, whom he accuses of "helping to ease a $1.7 billion US aid package for Colombia’s military apparatus"; but the previous Cockburn-Counterpunch article
( http://www.colombiasupport.net/200005/counterpunch-mccaffreyvivanco.html ), which gratuitously calls Vivanco "a whore," doesn't in any way establish Vivanco as a friend of military aid.

A quick Google of Vivanco, or a careful look through the HRW website, should provide ample indication that the man and the organization are serious and credible on human rights issues:

http://www.hrw.org/press98/oct/chile1019.htm

http://www.hrw.org/press/1999/nov/pan1111.htm

Jose Miguel Vivanco, the executive director of the Americas division of Human Rights watch said, "if the US sends aid without conditions, it risks becoming complicit in ongoing violations".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/902035.stm

While no evidence has been produced to link Negroponte to Battalion 316, Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director for Human Rights Watch Americas Division, has referred to him as "the ostrich ambassador: He never saw anything wrong. He never heard about any serious human rights violations. It was like he was living on a different planet."
http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_20_39/ai_99554454

http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/02042406.htm

http://www.house.gov/lantos/caucus/TestimonyVivanco100803.htm


Might I suggest that one might support Chavez without adulation and that one might distinguish the fine work done by Vivanco and HRW from (always expected) efforts of partisans to twist human rights reporting to political ends? Or that one might sometimes disagree with Vivanco's assessments, without resorting to calling him a whore? Or that so much might be gained (in the way of raised consciousness) from accurate human rights reporting, that the Left would do well to support principled human rights activists, even if they sometimes hint that there are no absolute heroes in our world?

[seemslikeadream]

19. The Reich Stuff

By Bill Berkowitz, AlterNet
May 6, 2004

Veteran of the Iran/Contra scandal, apologist for terrorists, Cuba basher, bullying Latin America envoy for President Bush, and lobbyist for the alcohol, tobacco and armaments industries – Otto Juan Reich has done it all, both inside and outside of government. This week, Reich announced that next month he will be leaving his post as the White House special envoy to the Americas and joining Team Bush’s reelection campaign. While it’s too soon to know how Karl Rove and company will use him, keep your eye on Florida where Reich has longtime connections to the right-wing Cuban exile community.


In late 2001, unable to get his nominee past the Senate, President Bush handed Reich, a native of Cuba and an alumnus of the Iran/Contra scandal, a recess appointment as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs. Reich’s term expired in December 2002; a month later, Bush found another spot for him on his Latin American team. Now, Bush figures Reich will be more useful in getting him re-elected.


Reich, along with Elliot Abrams and John Negroponte, was one of a trio of Iran/Contra alumni to re-emerge in the Bush Administration as Latin America policy operatives, something reporter Bart Jones pointed out in a January 2003 piece in the National Catholic Reporter. (In his new book “The Politics of Truth,” former Ambassador Joseph Wilson claims that Abrams, who still works with the administration, may have helped reveal to columnist Robert Novak that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA covert operative. Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has been nominated to become the first ambassador to Iraq after the June 30 so-called handover. He is expected to be confirmed by the Senate without being held accountable for his mishandling of human rights violations while working in Honduras during the 1980s.)


“There isn’t a single democratic leader in Latin America that doesn’t reject and deplore the role that our government played in Central America during the 1980s,” Robert White, a former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, told Jones in 2003. “To choose men like Elliot Abrams and Otto Reich is an insult.” Larry Birns of the Washington, DC-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs called the trio the “least talented Latin America team either in Republican or Democratic administrations that I have witnessed in monitoring this scene for 35 years.”

more
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=18627


Appointments insult human rights cause - appointment of John Negroponte, Otto Reich and Elliott Abrams

National Catholic Reporter, August 10, 2001

EXCERPT...

Otto Reich, who ran the Office of Public Diplomacy out of the State Department in the 1980s, also ought to be sitting before a congressional committee, again not for a confirmation hearing but to answer tough questions about his role in illegal domestic propaganda activities. During the 1980s, his office, taking orders from Oliver North, conducted a campaign to discredit opponents of the administration-funded contra war against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.

It is unsettling that someone whose idea of public service would include misinformation campaigns against fellow citizens should be rewarded with nomination as assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere.

CONTINUED...

http://articles.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_36_37/ai_77556...

[struggle4progress]

20. Yep. Reich, however, recently resigned. eom

<edit:> In the 1980's, Americas Watch was a great source of info on Reagan's human rights record, so HRW has a credible record going back years and years.

[AP]

22. The bigger these NGOs get, the more their activities rely on budgets...

...underwritten by corporate donations, and the more RW'ers want to interject themselves into their operations.

HRW might have been great in the 80s, and they might do a lot of good elsewhere, but I think it's ALWAYS smart to be criticial. If you were a RW'er you'd probably get way more mileage hijacking some small part of HRW than you would starting your own RW-equivalent of HRW.

It happened to NPR.

[struggle4progress]

23. Of course, the problem of funding is ever with the nonprofit sector.

And I have absolutely no problem with being critical.

Even the 1980s, the rightwingers tried to use Watch Committee stuff whenever possible, but denounced the material if it didn't serve their ideological ends. Personally, I think human rights work is very important and can form the basis of beautiful coalition building, so I'm not likely to bash a group like this when its reports fail to serve my own ideological objectives.

For a period of about five years in the 1990s, I read everything HRW published; their work, in my experience, was innovative, thought-provoking, effective, and timely.

I frequently read Cockburn and Counterpunch, but frankly HRW has more credibility with me.

Hope you have seen this:

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/06/23/usint8937.htm

[burrowowl]

21. Well about the only good thing is

that we are running out of troops.
The bad thing is that the U$ has always been the U$ for a loooong time in Latin America, as in looooong live U$ corporatism, whence the name banana republic. With bigger countries: kill Allende, put in a Pinochet, etc.