“No Country in the World is Interfering in Venezuela”

[Say_What]

If the last paragraph is factual, Venezuela keeping the CIA's shinanighans in Venezuela in the world spotlight was smarter than everyone thought--unless Uncle Sam has another dirty trick up his filthy sleeve, which would not surprise me in the least.


<clips>

“We do not have any evidence, at this moment, … that any country in the world is interfering in Venezuelan internal affairs,” said President Chavez yesterday, in one of his first joint press conferences in many years with both the national and international media. He went on to say that “our relations with the U.S. have gone through a notable and surprising positive improvement.”

Chavez was responding to whether he believed that the U.S. government was trying to destabilize the Venezuelan government. According to Chavez, the U.S. had decided to suspend “microphone diplomacy,” speculating that the reason might be because the U.S. had realized that it was being fooled by Venezuela’s opposition into believing all kinds of lies. In the end, Chavez said, the Washington realized that what Venezuela’s opposition was doing was to trick the Bush administration into pursuing the interests of the opposition, but not of the U.S. or of Venezuela as a whole.

Chavez made these comments in the course of one of his typical 3.5 hour news conferences, in which merely eight questions were asked. The comments appeared to contradict statements issued by pro-Chavez legislators Nicolas Maduro and Juan Barreto, who had a few weeks ago presented a video recording that they said showed CIA officers training Venezuelans in surveillance.

A government official, who asked not to be identified, informed Venezuelanalysis.com that a tacit agreement had been reached between the governments of the U.S. and of Venezuela that accusations against Venezuela’s policies would cease if Venezuelan officials stopped going public with information about supposed CIA involvement in Venezuelan affairs.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1114

[9215]

1. Oh yea, this is gooooood!

But if I was Chavez I wouldn't let my guard down.

I wonder if Wall Street's higher bond approval rating of Venezuela had anything to do with the reduction of tensions? Is that the "interests of the US" Chavez indicates? This is really getting interesting.


I agree SayWhat. Keeping Venezuela in the spotlight scares the bejesus out of intel types. The biggest threat to tyranny is an informed public.

Know a tyrant, for he will deprive you of information

[Say_What]

4. Palast: CHAVEZ VERSUS THE FREE TRADE ZOMBIES OF AMERICA

Another reason why I find it hard to believe that the US is 'hands off' Venezuela. What Palast is reporting are things NEVER to be seen in the US corporate pres. We need to watch carefully over the next two days. ;-)

On edit: for some reason the blog link doesn't want to work. Go to Greg's main page http://www.gregpalast.com/index.cfm and click Read Greg's Web Log on the right column.

<clips>

...Every nation but one: Venezuela, the single and solitary nation to say "no thanks" at Miami’s treaty of the living dead economies. Today, I met up with Venezuela’s chief FTAA negotiator. Victor Alvarez was saved from zombification by his sense of humor. He noted that while the Bush Administration was preaching free trade to their dark-skinned compatriots south of the border, the USA itself was facing one of the largest penalties in World Trade Organization history for raising tariffs on steel products. He would have laughed out loud in Miami if it didn’t hurt so much: the illegal US trade barriers have closed two steel plants in Venezuela.

Venezuela’s ‘negociador jefe’ Alvarez went through the well-known data: in ten years of free market free-for-all, industrialization in Venezuela dropped from 18% of GNP to 13%. And Venezuela fared best. Elsewhere in Latin America, economies simply imploded. And NAFTA created employment only in a fetid trench along the Rio Grande, the ‘maquiladora’sweatshops which sucked down wages on both sides of the Mexico-US border.

We finished our conversation as the President walked in. Hugo Chavez is not one for subtleties. "FTAA is the PATH TO HELL," said Chavez.

He meant this in the deepest theological sense. What is at stake for Chavez is Latin America’s mortal soul. "I have seen children shot to death," said the president, "not by an invading Army but by our own nation’s soldiers."

Chavez was referring to February 27, 1989. While the Northern Hemisphere was celebrating the impending fall of the Berlin Wall, "another wall was going up," he explained, "the wall of globalization." That day, the army massacred Venezuelans, young and old, during a demonstration against diktats of the International Monetary Fund imposed on Venezuela.



http://www.gregpalast.com/blog.cf

[9215]

8. Deep politics

We have Soros now opposed to Bush, we have Wall Street making upbeat comments about Venezuela.

It got me thinking about Trilateralism/Neoliberalism "elite planning for world management". The Capitalists don't want the world to get pissed off at capitalism and IMO Bush has stirred up a hornet's nest of opposition to to his policies and stiffening resistance to Neoliberal globalistic policies. Bush is pissing off the high finance folks.


What these high finance people want is stability and could care less about BFEE drug/oil/mayhem profiteering. I gotta run.

This is really getting interesting.

Judilyn's topic on Wall Street and Venezuela:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=179064#179087

[Tinoire]

2. Aw Jeez Chavez! Do not let down your guard!

;) Of course we all know Chavez can outwit that inarticulate frat boy anyday.

My guard is up big time now! Beware of Bushistas bearing gifts!

[Say_What]

3. My thought exactly!!

[Say_What]

5. The Golpista website in London is now attacking Greg Palast

Check it out... calls him a racist and says that he is following a Chavez-design script as he is reporting this week from Caracus (see above post). Along the way he also takes a crack at Greg Wilpert.

http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200311282157

[Judi Lynn]

7. The author is a shill for the right wing coup pushers

Only had time to make a quick grab for something about him, being a real rush. Found this reference to Coronel:

(snip) By predicting an eventual social unrest and popular discontent under these neo-liberal conditions, the existence of an obedient military body and a police force becomes a necessity, ready to brutally repress anyone daring to oppose such “free market” generosity.

That’s why Coronel recommends that the military should “return to being subordinate to civilian authority,” meaning that instead of selling chickens in popular markets and other embarrassing things like doing social work in the communities, they should return to their historical role of massacring students, grass-roots leaders, journalists and street protestors to “maintain the order” if things get out of hand ... possibly including the restoration of the old intelligence apparatus of repression along with the magical methods it employed to “disappear” people and to give clandestine beatings without leaving body marks; all of which has been the routine in the 40+ years when the security bodies of state were “professional and loyal.”

Therefore, using Coronel's thesis, the military ought to receive again its lost dignity along with its “professional” customs ... such as torturing, selective and mass killings, and arms-trafficking among other deeds of past glories.

With regard to the privatization of prisons: I would suggest the reader to look upon the shameful experience of Wackenhut Corporation in New Mexico in August 1999 to know the consequences of making business out of human imprisonment. Additionally, this Reaganite measure is either unrelated to the privatization wave that accompanies the free market game. It is useful to make money out of prisons because that’s where the surplus population goes ... and because private capital would have an increasing influence on policy-making, the laws are going to benefit the advocates of private jail systems, obviously due to the demand of inmates that would be needed to run the business.
(snip/...)

http://www.ucs.louisiana.edu/~dxc1905/

The author's a right-wing retard. It's almost comical seeing right-wingers trying to pass off their obvious hatred of democratic interests, while pretending to identify with the greater cause of securing and promoting the common good.

[Say_What]

9. How about the golpista site's owner, Aleksander Boyd-- a real POS

I googled the name--he was born in Venezuela but is currently a law student in the UK. He seems to have a running battle with the BBC and posts to a variety of message boards as well, including the IMF. Here's a link to the BBC correspondence--they seem to be blowing him off. This guy seems like a real nutcase desparate to get his ideas out to anyone who will listen to him.

http://venezuelatoday.net/aleksander_boyd.html

Gustavo Coronel was a regular on vheadline.com but it appears he's found a new outlet for his tripe. Maybe these two make a good pair.

[ozone_man]

6. I was hoping for an outcome like this.

I assume that Chavez has been trying to expose the CIA to prevent another coup. Seems to be working, but I don't think he should let down his guard.

"The comments appeared to contradict statements issued by pro-Chavez legislators Nicolas Maduro and Juan Barreto, who had a few weeks ago presented a video recording that they said showed CIA officers training Venezuelans in surveillance."

[reknewcomer]

10. Uncle Sam and his filthy sleeves

You only mean the Uncle Sam under Bush right? You don't mean that the USA and its history in general is "dirty". Right?

[Judi Lynn]

11. Why don't you treat yourself to a little reading

You can start your education with a simple stroll through google, looking at United States C.I.A. Latin American intervention with 30,900 sources:


http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22United+States%22+C.I.A.+Latin+America+intervention&btnG=Google+Search

Just jump in there anywhere, and don't stop reading until you have a grasp of what's been happening.

[Say_What]

13. LOL are you serious??

Get yourself an education. Start right here at home with the Native Americans, which Uncle Sam committed genocide against over most of the 19th century. Add to that Afro-Americans, poor whites, migrant workers to see just HOW filthy Uncle Sam's sleeves are. Oh yeah, don't forget to count the hundreds of thousands who died in Heroshima and Nagasaki. After you investigate that a little bit, then check out Latin America and other places around the globe.

Here's a site that'll help you on your way.

<clips>

Meet the Friendly Dictators - three dozen* of America's most embarrassing "friends", a cunning crew of tyrants and corrupt puppet-presidents who have been rewarded handsomely for their loyalty to U.S. interests.

Traditional Dictators seize control through force and often are self-styled "Generals." Constitutional Dictators hold office through voting fraud or severely restricted elections and are frequently mouthpieces for the military juntas which control the ballot boxes. Both types of dictators are covered here, along with a few tyrannical kings. but don't look for "enemy dictators" (communists and the like) in this set of cards. These are America's allies, strange and undemocratic as they may be.

Friendly Dictators often rise to power through bloody CIA-backed coups and rule by terror and torture. Their troops may receive training or advice from the CIA and other U.S. agencies. "Anti-communism" is their common battle cry and a common excuse for political repression. They are linked internationally through extreme right-wing groups such as the World Anti-Communist League (see card 17). Strong Nazi affiliations are typical - some have been known to dress in Nazi paraphemalia and quote from Mein Kampf, while others offer sanctuary for actual Nazi war criminals.

Friendly Dictators usually grow rich, while their countries' economies go down the drain. U.S. tax dollars and U.S. backed loans have made billionaires of some; others are international drug dealers who also collect CIA paychecks. Rarely are they called to account for their crimes.

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Cards_Index.html

[Judi Lynn]

19. Appreciate this site.

Funny, isn't it, how few people ever find out what American behavior toward Latin America has really been, all these years later?

There's just a really big blank spot in our public school information about Latin America altogether, as if it almost isn't there!

You'd think someone would notice every now and then, wouldn't you? Like wonder WHY we haven't been told more?

Thanks.

[Say_What]

20. El Salvador --Children Massacred

This film is currently on Link TV (Dish Network). I saw it yesterday. Here' a link to the BBC article about this. It's related to the assasination of the Jesuit priests by the SOA-trained Salvadoran army. The film pointed out that the high command of this US-supported army lives today as US citizens who walk the streets free men. 80,000 people were murdered in El Salvador to stop the spread of *communism*.

Doubt that they're teaching this FACT about Uncle Sam in school.

<clips>

...Children Massacred

Normally they uncovered the remains of young men. But here they found a hundred and sixteen skeletons of small children and one pregnant woman. The children had been shot, stabbed and killed with grenades.

During five years covering the war in El Salvador, I had often heard from survivors stories of appalling massacres by Salvadoran troops -often fresh from training by US advisors - in which thousands of villagers were murdered. Almost always it was the old, the women and the children who were caught and killed. Those of fighting age were able to escape and hide in the hills.

The piles of little skeletons proved beyond all doubt the stories were true. But it was the only excavation the authorities allowed. The war ended with a negotiated settlement and a slogan to "forgive and forget". That, many in the army and in Washington hoped, would be the end of the matter.

But it was not - because it turned out that not all the children had been killed. Many had been taken by the army to be put in orphanages, sold or given away for adoption. The idea was to stop them growing up "indoctrinated with Communism" and prevent a future time bomb. But instead it created one which is exploding today - as more and more of the children are found.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/correspondent/992119.stm

---

...When the military go on feeding frenzies in Latin America, as they are wont to do with unsettling regularity, accusing fingers often point to Washington. This is what happened in 1989, when a Salvadoran army patrol burst into the Central American University and murdered six Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter. Some of the victims were executed lying face down on the ground. Human rights groups were quick to accuse the US of aiding and abetting El Salvador's military regime. This was not an idle allegation. Nineteen of the 27 Salvadoran officers who took part in the massacre by a UN Truth Commission report were graduates of the SOA. In fact, almost three-quarters of the Salvadoran officers implicated in seven other bloodbaths during El Salvador's civil war (including the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero 15 years ago this month) were trained by the SOA. The elite institution has left its mark everywhere in Latin America: Of the 246 officers cited for various crimes in Colombia by a 1992 international human rights tribunal, 105 are SOA graduates.

The three highest ranking officers who supported former Guatemalan President Serrano's 1993 attempted coup are graduates of the SOA--including former Defense Minister Jose Domingo Garcia and the sinister presidential chief of staff, Luis Francisco Ortega Menaldo. In 1976, Ortega, then a captain, took a military intelligence course at the SOA. Other Guatemalan big-name SOA graduates include current Defense Minister, Gen. Mario Enriquez and Congress President, Gen. Jose Efrain Rios Montt. A former president of Guatemala (1982-83) Montt is best remembered for his "beans or bullets" policy--beans for the obedient, bullets for the rest.

In Honduras, five ranking officers who organized--with US complicity--the secret death squad known as Intelligence Battalion 3-15 in the mid-1980s are SOA graduates. They include Generals Gustavo Alvarez Martinez, Daniel Ball Castillo, Luis Alonzo Discua and Juan Lopez Grijalva. An America's Watch report has charged Lopez with involvement in a death squad. Captain Pio Flores, whose house was used as a detention and torture center, took four courses at the SOA. Colonel Amilcar Zelaya, from whose residence muffled screams were regularly heard, also attended the school. Battalion commanders Luis Alonzo Villatoro Villeda and Adolfo Diaz took courses at the SOA, as did Lieutenants Segundo Flores Murillo and Noel Corrales. Murrillo's specialty was interrogation and torture.

The three highest ranking officers convicted in February 1994 of murdering nine university students and a professor in Peru are all SOA graduates--as is the commander of the Peruvian military who dispatched tanks to block an investigation.

http://pangaea.org/street_children/latin/soa.htm

---

ALFREDO CRISTIANI
President of El Salvador
General Hernandez Martinez's 1932 anti-communist purge (see card 2), was carried out on behalf of EI Salvador's rich coffee oligarchy, the so-called "Fourteen Families." New president Alfredo Cristiani is a member of those same "Fourteen Families" and his ARENA party is linked to brutalities surpassing Hernandez Martinez's. Cristiani, former leader of a motorcycle gang, the "Bad Boys," is a perfect figure-head: photogenic, moderate-sounding, schooled in Washington D.C., and indebted to the military for power. As puppet president, he yields to ARENA founder Roberto D'Aubuisson, whom former U.S. Ambassador Robert White calls a "pathological killer."

D'Aubuisson, a former cashiered Army Major with ties to Jesse Helms arid the U.S. right, studied unconventional warfare in the U.S. and Taiwan. He once told European joumalists, "You Germans were very intelligent. You realized that the Jews were responsible for the spread of communism, so you killed them." According to D'Aubuisson, "the Christian Democrats are communists," but Jesuit priests are "the worst scum" of all. U.S. State Department cables indicate D'Aubuisson "planned and ordered the assassination of the late Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero." It is believed he was behind the White Warriors Union (UGB), whose slogan was "Be patriotic - kill a priest." In 1989 six priests were slain and Cristiani soon admitted his U.S. trained soldiers had committed the murders. Yet, although assassinations of priests are notable, 70,000 other civilians have been killed by the Salvadoran military and the death squads since 1980.

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/CentralAmerica.html

[markses]

12. Read the recent Nation article on Lula de Silva

Looks like Latin America is getting its shit together against the Norde Americano juggernaut. Good on 'em.

[tedzbear]

14. Who are the good guys in Venezuela?

Geez, I get Venezuela and Chavez mixed up with Columbia, Brazil, and Bolivia. I assume Chavez represents the people, emphasizing their needs over the agenda pushed by the USA.

Is there a website about Latin America that lists the pro-indigenous governments and movements versus the repressive puppets of the USA?


Edit: I think my question is partly answered with the link to the "friendly dictator playing cards" site. Are there anymore good sources for this kind of info?

Thanks.

[Say_What]

15. That would be a great website to have access to, but as far as I know

none exists. Off the top of my head here's what I can tell you.

You are correct that Chavez is pro-indigenous. Lula in Brazil, who comes from a very poor background, also supports the poor--no easy task in a country that large and complex. Eva Morales in Bolivia is another power to be reckoned with that represents the poor. These three I'm sure make Uncle Sam very nervous. When the US press begins to demonize them, it will mean trouble's brewing.

Uribe in Colombia is a US lap dog who recently tried to have IMF austerity measures enacted through a referendum. Colombians didn't go for that and instead voted in a lefty for mayor of Bogota who aspires to be another Lula. Uribe's power since has been greatly diminished. Another is Gutierrez in Ecuador. Although the poor voted him in, he quickly became the latest US Chihuahua. Consequently, there have been massive demonstrations over the past several months. Also, a case is being tried in Ecuador: the ingidenous peoples of Ecuador vs. Chevron-Texaco. If the indigenous Equis win, it will set a precident for environmental abuses throughout Latin America. Already there have been assasinations of those who oppose Chevron Texaco.

It's hard to get any info from the US press, here's some sites that will give you some background and statistics:

http://www.wola.org/

http://www.lawg.org/index.htm

http://lanic.utexas.edu/subject/countries/

Peace!!

[Say_What]

18. Links to the films...

BTW, Colombia is the US' 8th largest supplier of OIL. The worst atrocities carried out against the indigenous people of Colombia are in the area that produces the most OIL. You can read more about that at the Plan Colombia film site at this thread.

Meanwhile, here's Roger Ebert's review of The Revolution Will Not be Televised. It provides a good overview of what happened in Venezuela during the coup and Uncle Sam's role.

<clips>

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED / ***1/2 (Not rated)

October 31, 2003

With Hugo Chavez, Pedro Carmona, Jesse Helms and Colin Powell.

Vitagraph Films presents a documentary directed by Kim Bartley and Donnacha O'Briain. Running time: 74 minutes. No MPAA rating. In English and Spanish with English subtitles.

BY ROGER EBERT

Was the United States a shadowy presence in the background of the aborted coup in Venezuela in 2002? The democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez was briefly overthrown by a cabal of rich businessmen and Army officers, shortly after their representatives had been welcomed in the White House. Oh, the United States denied any involvement in the episode; there's Colin Powell on TV, forthrightly professing innocence. But earlier we heard ominous rumblings from Jesse Helms, Ari Fleischer and George Tenet, agreeing that Chavez was no friend of the United States, and after the coup, there was no expression of dismay from Washington, no announcement that we would work to restore the elected government.

Why was Chavez not our friend? It all comes down to oil, as it so often does these days. Venezuela is the fourth largest oil-producing nation in the world, and much of its oil comes to the United States. Its price has been guaranteed by the cooperation of the nation's ruling class. Chavez was elected primarily by the poor. He asked a simple question: Since the oil wells have always been nationalized and the oil belongs to the state, why do the profits flow directly to the richest, whitest 20 percent of the population, while being denied to the poorer, darker 80 percent? His plan was to distribute the profits equally among all Venezuelans.

http://www.chicagosuntimes.com/output/ebert1/wkp-news-revolution31f.html

[Say_What]

16. LOL You're right that friendly dictator site has a wealth of documented

information that's good for historical purposes as it is only current to 1990. Important though because it details what happened to Latin America at the hands of US-supported dictators.

A couple of good films you may want to see is the Chavez film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, Plan Colombia, The Failure of the War on Drugs, and Hidden in Plain Sight. I think these were mentioned in one of the links above.

Here's something from the Report of the Americas (Nov/Dec 2003)

<clips>

Beyond The Washington Consensus

Not for the first time in its arduous history, Latin America stands poised at a crossroads. Continuing along the present path of deepening indebtedness, never-ending recession, plummeting employment and household impoverishment is simply unsustainable. It would be a mistake to conclude that the dominant economic policy paradigm in the region is exclusively responsible for this sorry performance. Nonetheless, the verdict is now in on the ability of the market-based economic policies associated with the Washington Consensus to generate positive results: The market-driven model has failed miserably, and alternatives need to be put in place sooner rather than later.

Historians may look back on the utter collapse of the Argentine economy in 2001 as the critical moment that awakened the world to the extent of the region-wide crisis. The Argentine debacle carried with it the real possibility of analogous breakdowns in neighboring Uruguay and Brazil. <1> Perhaps more importantly, the crisis coincided with persistent economic emergencies across much of the Andes and significant portions of Central America and the Caribbean. The full range of neoliberal reforms were not applied in all of the countries that teetered on the brink of social and economic catastrophe at one point or another from the mid-1990s through 2002. Yet even where popular resistance had managed to block domestic implementation of some market-oriented reforms, the crises and their social repercussions could be traced to the impact of a broadly neoliberal international regime on domestic economic stability. Argentina was crucial, not only for the extreme nature of its predicament and the breadth of its reverberations, spanning oceans beyond Latin America, but also because it had for so many years served as the model for the advocates of wholesale privatization, deregulation, trade liberalization and financial integration. Finally, Argentina’s ordeal reflected the degree to which today’s Latin American economic crisis is of even greater dimensions than that which accompanied the Great Depression or the debt crisis of 1982.

Argentina may or may not represent the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. But there is little doubt that its crisis marked the end of the period during which power-holders in Latin America, and its de facto capital city for economic policymaking, Washington, D.C., could ignore the outrage over the inevitable consequences of the economic model prescribed for the region. However we allocate blame for the economic devastation that has brought ruin to millions of households across Latin America and the Caribbean, it is time to label the experience clearly. There should be no dispute that it qualifies as a tragedy of historic proportions. Protests from the direct victims of this region-wide tragedy have time and again elicited reactions of disinterest, dismissal or suppression from government officials and international financial institutions. Before the Argentine collapse, few were willing to listen to progressive intellectuals or advocacy groups outside the region who condemned, as consciously or inadvertently pernicious, the process of wholesale privatization, institutional dismantling and regressive redistribution that was being foisted upon Latin American countries for roughly two decades.

But those raised voices can no longer be ignored. It is not only that the evidence of failure now exceeds the capacity for denial of even the most impervious economists.<2> Rather, what is most significant is that the political pendulum has now swung decidedly against the champions of the market as a one-size-fits-all solution to Latin America’s economic woes. In one Latin American country after another, progressive leaders have come to office and are confronting the established paradigm, as Cecilia López Montaño notes in her contribution to this NACLA Report. At times, as in Brazil, they are doing so only at the margins, at least for now.<3> But elsewhere, as in Argentina and, arguably, in Venezuela, they are confronting that paradigm and its apostles head on. Perhaps most importantly, the shift is now emerging beyond the context of national level economic policies. This point was driven home last September when developing countries walked out of the trade negotiations at Cancún, declaring themselves fed up with the collusive charade being enacted by the governments of the United States and the European Union.

http://www.nacla.org/issue_disp.php

[goforit]

17. LOL!!!!.The achilles heel!!!..Petition alone is Swarzenagger Part II !!!

Banana Republics supported by the Bush administration
are their signature.

We don't even need a video to proove that scam.
Geee.....these guys are so predictable!