Venezuela's Chavez vows to thwart vote coup plot

[cal04]

Anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez vowed to thwart what he says is an opposition plot to stage a coup and "ruin Venezuelans' Christmas" after an election on Sunday that he expects to win easily.

Chavez, president since 1999, is comfortably ahead in polls, idolized by a long-ignored poor majority who have enjoyed lavish handouts from the OPEC heavyweight's oil windfall.

"We know what they are up to," the loquacious leader said of the opposition at a news conference on Thursday.

(snip)
Chavez's challenger Manuel Rosales, 53, governor of the western oil state of Zulia, denies the president's charge that he is planning to instigate street protests and an army uprising after the election.

http://news.scotsman.com/latest_international.cfm?id=1779712006

[everythingsxen]

1. Wow what a surprise...

I am so amazed that there is an imaginary coup attempt.

My prediction, Chavez will lose and lose big, then turn around and blame his opponent along with US and/or Zionist agents then use the private army he has been building to take over and wipe out the opposition.

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. Lose and lose big when the polls have him leading 70/30?

But of course, since when can polls be trusted?

:eyes:

[everythingsxen]

5. Right you can trust the polls....

when the leader of your country threatens to arrest you for broadcasting "lies" of course the Chavez definition of "lie" is "anything that makes me look bad".

[StClone]

8. I am really interested

In some information to back up these charges of errant polls.

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. You are aware, of course, that the media in Venezuela is owned

by the oligarchic RW oil barons, aren't you? The ones who were behind that last two attempts to oust Chavez? The ones who he has left pretty much alone, despite their constant agitation against him? It would be easy, if he were the dictator that the RW says he is, for him to nationalize the media, to confiscate the estates of his opponants, to have them arrested or killed, but no, there they are, still owning the papers and the radio and TV stations. What kind of half-assed dictator would put up with that?

One who is not a dictator.

[Matilda]

13. You forgot your "sarcasm" smiley.

I can't believe you're serious.

[MrPrax]

24. No doubt...

And I suppose you also figure that Chavez and his 'supporters' here at DU are the majority your talking about?

[Judi Lynn]

14. Oh, yeah! Here's some faux poll work described in a Guardian article

I just posted to another thread:

Mixed messages
Manuel Rosales faces almost certain defeat in Venezuela's elections but he has told his supporters: 'It is true, we are winning.'
Calvin Tucker

About Webfeeds November 30, 2006 08:00 PM
With only days to go before Venezuela's presidential elections, President Hugo Chávez has a massive lead over his US backed rival, Manuel Rosales. The six most recent polls conducted by recognised firms put the gap between the two candidates as follows: Zogby - University of Miami: 29%, Associated Press - IPSOS: 32%, Datanalysis: 27%, Datos: 27%, Consultores 21: 17%, Evans McDonough: 22%.

Faced with almost certain defeat, one might have expected Rosales to rally his supporters with typical politician's bluster about how victory was still possible. Instead, he issued a very curious statement: "Every single important pollster has reported we have an apparent lead over the other candidate. It is true, we are winning."

One such "important pollster" is Alfredo Keller of Keller and Associates. On November 2, Keller released a poll which purported to show that the candidates were neck and neck. Later, it emerged that the interviewees had never actually been asked how they would vote. Keller simply took a guess based on their answers to other questions. Keller is an opposition supporter.

Another "important pollster" is Survey Fast Venezuela. They published a poll on November 21 that predicted a statistical dead heat. I had never heard of this so-called pollster, so I decided to type their name into the Google search engine. They attracted a mere 35 references (all of which related to their November 21 poll) and did not appear to have either a website or an identifiable track record or methodology. In other words, Survey Fast is a bogus firm and a front for the Rosales campaign. By contrast, when I googled the unimportant pollsters, i.e. the major firms that all show Chávez way out in front, I was rewarded with tens or hundreds of thousands of references.

And then there are the really, really important pollsters. Pollsters like Víctor Manuel García, director of Ceca, who released a poll showing that Rosales was a full 10 points ahead. Garcia, like his presidential hopeful Rosales, was a key participant in the failed 2002 coup that briefly overthrew Chávez and abolished parliament.
(snip/...)

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/calvin_tucker/2006/11/post_723.html

[StClone]

4. Chavez and the last CIA-led Coup

It does hurt to start at that well-established point and allow Chavez to be noisy.

[zeemike]

6. Yep all coups in South America are imaginary

And the US is never involved in thwarting Democracy there.
The Polls that put him comfortably ahead are a communist lie and really the boor as well as the rich hate Chavez.
I got it.

[w4rma]

15. It's time to come back to reality, everythingsxen. You've gone off into fantasy land. (nt)

[Say_What]

18. Whatever you're smokin' it's workin... n/t

[Richard Steele]

19. My prediction: your prediction is WILDLY incorrect.

Good for a chuckle, though. Thanks!

[tritsofme]

2. People take to the streets protesting election results in Mexico=Good

People take to the streets in Venezuela=Bad.

That's the sentiment I expect around here.

[StClone]

7. Mexico's election was like Florida in 2000

And Ohio in 2004. There is no comparison between Venezuela's Chavez election to that of Felipe Calderon's installment in Mexico.

[RaleighNCDUer]

11. Oh, I fully expect to see the opposition in the streets in post-

election demonstrations. And they will be met, three to one, by Chavez loyalists, just like last time.

The Carter Center validated that last election as completely legitimate. (It also said that OUR election did not meet the base standard necessary for them to observe it.)

[Peace Patriot]

9. I'm glad he mentioned it publicly. I've read of some of the evidence for it

including a Washington DC-based, U.S. P.R. firm, paid by our tax dollars, to disseminate a set of false polls, saying the election is close, in order to create an excuse for riots and rightwing thuggery, that could precipitate a military coup, when Chavez wins. All the reputable, independent polls given Chavez a 20% to 30% lead. The opposition in Venezuela--which did the attempted coup in 2002, the absurd and wasteful Recall election, and is always complaining that the elections are unfair, on the basis of exactly nothing--are not used to working for a living, or thinking very hard, and so cannot mount a decent opposition. I'm not sure at all that they are even patriotic and have their country's interests at heart. It appears to me they just want a free ride--the Bushite State Department doing the fundraising for their campaigns--from you and me--and then, the country will tip over and pour the oil money into THEIR pockets.

I hope the publicity will forestall another of their (and the Bush Junta's) plots. But I am not terribly worried about the Venezuelan people as a whole. They have proven themselves capable of handling everything the Bushites and their tools in Venezuela have so far cooked up. (The '02 attempted coup and the Recall aren't even the half of it.) Also, the revolution in Venezuela and throughout South America is deeply rooted. It cannot be decapitated.

See: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x460259 - for the elements of this U.S.-backed coup plot. (Note: It is illegal in Venezuela to accept foreign money for a political campaign, as it is here. So, Bush, USAID, NED, the State Dept., Congress et al are violating Venezuelan law by pouring money into the opposition campaign.)

www.venezuelanalysis.com is a good source on Venezuela and Chavez.

[anotherdrew]

12. so I suppose that oil money Alaskans get is a 'hand-out' too? n/t

[ret5hd]

16. Remember, James Carville has worked against Chavez in the past...

from 2003:

http://www.casavenezuela.org/05persp/articles/economia_stupid.html

Venezuela's embattled private sector is banking on the colorful U.S.
political consultant James Carville to help oust leftist President Hugo
Chavez. The hire may herald an effort by the anti-Chavistas to focus more on
the issues than on personality. According to several individuals with
knowledge of the matter, a group of business executives contracted with Mr.
Carville this year to craft a strategy that will unify a fractious and
frustrated Chavez opposition and resonate with voters in a possiblerecall
referendum. The executives are hoping that Mr. Carville -- the folksy,
59-year-old Democratic Party consultant from Louisiana known as the Ragin'
Cajun -- will push a variation of his "It's the economy, stupid" theme that
helped propel Bill Clinton to victory in 1992.

But analysts say Mr. Carville and his clients face a formidable challenge.
Mr. Chavez has strengthened his hand since surviving a military coup in
April 2002 and defeating a recent two-month national strike led by oil
executives, labor leaders and business organizations. Despite a deepening
economic recession, the business elite here and its middle-class allies are finding it hard to persuade core Chavez supporters in urban slums and the countryside that the president isn't delivering on his populist promises. They have another hurdle to jump in blaming all the country's economic problems on Mr. Chavez after their own ill-starred strike accelerated the economy's slide.

"These business owners are arrogant. They can bring Carville or anyone else,
but they don't stop to understand what everyday life is like for the
people," says Patricia Marquez, an anthropologist and academic director of
the Institute for Higher Administrative Studies, a graduate school of
management here in the capital.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

17. "lavish handouts"

like education and medical care. :eyes:

[Judi Lynn]

20. You may find this worth the time spent reading it: Coup D'etat in Venezuela: Made in the USA

Coup D'etat in Venezuela: Made in the USA
The U.S.-designed Plan to Overthrow Hugo Chavez in the Days Following the Election
by Chris Carlson
November 24, 2006

In 1999, when the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Serbia didn't get rid of Slobodan Milosovic, Washington changed its strategy. U.S. intelligence organized a $77 million effort to oust Milosovic through the ballot box. They sent in CIA front organizations funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Instead of guns and bombs, these U.S. forces were armed with fax machines, computers, and perhaps most importantly, sophisticated surveys done by the Washington-based polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland.(1) Their mission: to take down Milosovic by strengthening opposition groups.

Milosovic is now long gone, as the U.S. effort to mobilize the opposition and produce mass protests was successful in unseating him in the 2000 elections. This victory was a landmark for U.S. intelligence agencies. They had developed a new way to overthrow unfriendly regimes, and it was much easier than a violent overthrow, or a messy invasion. Penn, Schoen & Berland had played an important role; so important that the U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright commended them, saying "This may be one of the first instances where polling has played such an important role in setting and securing foreign policy objectives."(2) They did, indeed, secure their foreign policy objectives. Milosovic was out, and the U.S.-backed opposition took power.

Since 2000, this smooth new strategy to influence elections and topple regimes has been implemented in many other countries. Dubbed as the "post-modern coup" by Jonathan Mowat, the same brilliant techniques were used in Belarus in 2001, in Georgia in 2003, and in the Ukraine in 2004, to name a few. Although it ultimately failed in Belarus, in Georgia the U.S. effort produced the "Rose Revolution" which overthrew President Eduard Shevardnadze. In the Ukraine it was the "Orange Revolution" that installed Victor Yushchenko in 2004.(3) Each time, groups financed by the NED, and USAID worked inside the country to build popular support for the opposition candidate. Each time they constructed an appealing campaign image using the modern marketing tactics that they have perfected along the way. And each time, they used Penn, Schoen & Berland election "polls" to shape the public's perception.

In his article, "Coup D'etat in Disguise," Jonathan Mowat described how these "polls" work: "Penn, Schoen and Berland (PSB) has played a pioneering role in the use of polling operations, especially "exit polls," in facilitating coups. Its primary mission is to shape the perception that the group installed into power in a targeted country has broad popular support. ""...the deployment of polling agencies' "exit polls" broadcast on international television...give the false impression of massive vote-fraud by the ruling party, to put targeted states on the defensive."(4)
(snip)

The U.S. has already set up camp in Venezuela, and all the original cast members are here. We've got NED, USAID, and yes, once again, Penn, Schoen & Berland. Just like in Serbia, or Ukraine, the objective of the U.S. forces is to remove Chavez from power. Therefore they have teamed up with major opposition groups to map out and implement their strategy. The strategy in Venezuela takes from many of the important lessons that they first learned in Serbia, and have since been carried to many other nations. The goal is to create a situation like in Ukraine in 2004: huge protests against the elections and against the government in order to cause chaos and instability. Basically, it comes in three parts.
(snip/...)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=11471

[robcon]

21. Chavez is not the only one conjuring imaginary coups, Judi Lynn

If you say it often enough, someone will believe it.

[Judi Lynn]

22. Would help if you weren't so vague. What IS it you mean? n/t

[Bridget Burke]

23. He means that if HE says something often enough...

Someone might believe him. Since he can't come up with data to support his opinions, repetition is all he's got going for him.

[Judi Lynn]

25. Right! He doesn't post supporting info., does he?

It's a familiar pattern we've learned to recognize a mile away.

They never have the info. to back themselves up because unless you accept right-wing gibberish, THERE ISN'T ANY.

[ronnie624]

26. Well, at least Christian Oliver

has discovered a new adjective, with which to smear Chavez: loquacious

No bias in that article. :eyes: