Public Transport Strike Scheduled for Monday in Caracas

[protocol rv]

The strike is intended as a protest against the high crime rate, the drivers are being robbed and murdered, and they want government action to stop the crime wave.

http://www.talcualdigital.com/Avances/Viewer.aspx?id=33117&secid=4

[Judi Lynn]

1. Oh, please, this tactic has been done to death already. Nixon financed a strike like this in Chile.

Who the hell could be stupid enough to think this is some big deal at this late date?

Here's just one reference to it, and we are so aware it's not hard to find volumes on the subject.

This was done to destroy another leftist, Salvador Allende.

U.S. Responsibility for the Coup in Chile
Daniel Brandt

~snip~

After Allende's victory, Nixon, Kissinger, Helms, and John Mitchell met on September 15, 1970. Helms came from that meeting with the impression that "Nixon wanted a plan for action that would include a military coup and a broad-based destabilization effort that would 'make the economy scream.'" Helms' notes of the session read, "Not concerned with risks involved. Full time job -- best men we have."57 An additional $6 million was spent over the next three years,58 including $1.5 million to rightist candidates in the March, 1973 congressional election.59 The grand total of $8 to $11 million spend by the CIA since 1970 may have been worth $40 to $50 million after being funneled through the black market.60

On the day that Helms received his instructions from Nixon, the owner of El Mercurio, wealthy Chilean businessman Agustin Edwards, conferred with top officials of the Nixon administration.61 The El Mercurio network consists of newspapers, radio station, ad agencies, and a wire service; it dominates the Chilean media in audience, size, and prestige, and includes the three principal newspapers of Santiago and seven provincial papers.62 In the seven-month period from September 9, 1971 to April 11, 1972 the CIA spent $1.5 million on El Mercurio,63 but the funding also preceded and followed this period. El Mercurio may have been the recipient of almost half of the total CIA expenditures in Chile since 1970.64 In addition to the sort of ads that were used successfully in the 1964 campaign, CIA funding also sponsored mailings before the election on forged Popular Unity stationery to hundreds of thousands of voters. These mailings asked voters to list household goods and indicate whether they would be willing to share with the poor after the election.65 The CIA even purchased a radio station for the right-wing.66 The El Mercurio network was used by the CIA to "launder propaganda, disinformation, fake themes and scare stories which were then circulated through 70 percent of the Chilean press and 90 percent of the Chilean radio. The USIA and the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) in turn circulated these stories all over the world."67 CIA agents at El Mercurio included Enno Hobbing, Alvaro Puga, and Juraj Domic.68

The CIA helped finance truckers' strikes in 1972 and June, 1973, probably through the International Transport Workers Federation,69 and may have had a hand in funding, training, and arming the Patria y Libertad, an extreme right-wing party in Chile.70 Michael Townley, a former Peace Corp volunteer in Chile recruited by the CIA, directed groups of Patria y Libertad to paint "Djakarta is approaching" slogans all over Santiago immediately before the coup.71 CIA money also subsidized a strike of middle-class shopkeepers and a taxi strike in the summer of 1973.72

http://www.namebase.org/chile.html

[protocol rv]

3. You'll have to prove the bus drivers are financed by Nixon

I can see you really don't know much about Venezuela, here people strike all the time. or do you forget the Caracazo happened because the government raised gasoline prices and bus drivers went berserk? The strike will likely take place, nothing will be done about the crimes, and life will go on dragging the same as it always has.

One of these days, there will indeed be a huge strike against the government, and it'll involve a lot more than bus drivers. I suppose at that time you'll continue to insist it has to be the CIA, and those of us who know much better will tell you it's because people get tired of not having a government respond to problems. We really don't care if they dress in red, put on mickey mouse ears, and chant their stupid slogans, but we want to see the garbage picked up, the water running, the air cleaned up, and crime controlled. I don't ride buses too much, I'm more worried about the bad guys who commit robberies in my neighborhood when we try to walk to the grocery store two blocks away. If somebody orgsnizes a protest about that, you can bet I'll be there. And your historical musings about Chile won't mean a thing to us. We'll be protesting because we're sick and tired of your hero doing a poor job.

[Bacchus39]

5. I agree with your assessment of the strike and any consequences

the CIA is so stupid and inept not to figure that out. Its so embarrassing.

[naaman fletcher]

7. Correct

If couldn't possibly be that bus drivers being robbed and killed in a high-crime city would strike. The CIA must be behind this.

[Bacchus39]

2. there is an ongoing public transport strike in Bogota right now

http://laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=353168&CategoryId=12393

however, the transportation companies aren't striking because drivers are getting killed like in Caracas but because they aren't satisfied with the money they are going to get for removing the pollution generating old buses. I guess this is part of the US strategy as well.

[protocol rv]

4. Darned CIA

They are attacking the Uribe regime because they didn't bomb Ecuador hard enough.

[protocol rv]

6. The bus strike is over

They gave free passes in the metro yesterday. The CIA must be so disappointed. Now all people talk about is the smoke becuase the national park forest had a big fire over the weekend. Must have been US special forces dropping flames from their invisible black helicopters.