Did Venezuela's Opposition Meet with US Officials in Puerto Rico?

[subsuelo]

Even by Venezuelan standards, the story seemed implausible. On January 9, a young reporter Pedro Carvajalino, from community television station Ávila TV, filmed four leading figures of Venezuela's right-wing opposition returning from Puerto Rico. They had just arrived by private jet from the U.S. territory, where they had purportedly met with representatives of the U.S. Department of State.

According to emails obtained by the reporter, officials held the meeting to plan strategy and secure funding aimed at defeating a proposed amendment to the Venezuelan constitution that would allow elected officials, including President Hugo Chávez, to seek reelection.

... Patrick Caulfield, the leading diplomat at the U.S. embassy in Caracas had left for Puerto Rico a few days earlier. An embassy spokesperson has confirmed that the Caulfield traveled to Puerto Rico, but insists that he was there on unofficial business to attend a wedding and take a few days of vacation.

According to Carvajalino, Ravell's email states “our friend from the embassy will leave one day earlier.” It also makes reference to a group of “advisors who have been working very hard these last few days" and “will outline a strategic campaign with ideas about TV commercials, events and speeches.” The email further states that they have “bounced ideas with major league advisors in the United States … everything is ready to confront this reform.” Finally, Ravell brings up the $3 million needed to pay for the campaign's costs, “which will have to be shared by all.”

... The alleged US government link to the Puerto Rico meeting is particularly sensitive given Washington's past financial support to the Venezuelan opposition through the National Endowment for Democracy and other analogous institutions. Domestically, the Puerto Rico meeting undermines efforts by Un Nuevo Tiempo and Primero Justicia, parties to distance themselves from the policies of AD and COPEI, which governed Venezuela from 1958 through 1998. Finally, the meeting is one more bit of evidence that corroborates allegations by the PSUV and other leftist forces that the commercial mainstream media in Venezuela—especially Globovisión—are simply an extension of the opposition.

http://nacla.org/node/5415">NACLA - read more

[Judi Lynn]

1. This is a superior article. Have heard about this meeting earlier, but this is the best account

I've seen. Getting the participants' names, organizations' names is particularly helpful.

There's one reporter I read about a year or two ago, a stringer for a global wire service, like AP or Reuters, don't remember which one, who actually has simply taken his stories from Globovision's tv news. Really saves a lot of wear and tear on a guy, if he doesn't have to leave his room in running down the news stories he writes about and sends back to his editor as his own!

I was horrified to hear this, since those wire service stories are swallowed hook, line, and sinker, and Globovision is a HIDEOUS news source, considering they are virulently anti-leftist, not even occassionally a legitimate news source.

From your posted article:

Ravell refused to give responses to Carvajalino's questions and then proceeded to verbally spar with the young reporter who repeatedly asked about the purpose of the trip to Puerto Rico. When Carvajalino labeled Ravell a “palangrista” (a journalist who receives bribes in exchange for published materials), the media mogul exploded and started yelling obscenities at the reporter, threatening him physically and reportedly blurting out homophobic comments. While this exchange unfolded, the other three leading figures of the Venezuelan opposition remained largely silent; one opted to take pictures with his cellular phones.

Unbelievable. Sure glad Carvajalino got the goods on these guys, and _Bush's embassy tools as they crafted their next move on sabotaging the Venezuelan peoples' will in choosing their own government.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Great article! Thanks for posting! The Bushwhacks, true to form, can't keep their fingers out

out of it ONE WEEK before they are scheduled to relinquish power in the White House, the State Department and the CIA.

In other threads on their continuing policy of undermining and toppling democratic governments in South America--funding and organizing fascist rioters and murderers in Bolivia only this September--I have posed the question of the meaning of this: Are they working to undercut Obama policy, and set things in motion that he cannot stop, if he wants to? Are they working with Obama in a continuum of anti-democratic policy in Latin America? Or do they have plans of their own--using resources stolen from us--for a private war to regain global corporate predator control of Venezuela's and Ecuador's oil, and other resources, whether or not Obama agrees?

I don't know the answer to this question, although there is more evidence for points 2 and 3--Obama complicit--or his appointees such as Hillary Clinton complicit--and a private war is planned, involving billions stolen from our coffers, the Colombian military and rightwing paramilitary death squads ($6 BILLION in U.S/Buswhack military aid), and Blackwater (active in Colombia), and possibly orchestrated by Donald Rumsfeld, that U.S. forces may or may not directly participate in. If point #1 is the case--current Bushwhack activity in South America, such as this collusion in Puerto Rico--is being done against Obama's wishes--then we may be looking at Obama's Bay of Pigs.

I think it is very odd that a U.S. diplomat (Caulfield?) was meeting with this cabal, if he was--and I have little doubt that he was (considering what the U.S. ambassador and the DEA tried to do in Bolivia in September)--at this point in the Obama/Bush transfer of power. It could point to a rush to get U.S. money to these fascists, or to their assumption that this fascist campaign will be continued and completed through the end of January, into February and up to the vote. The war plan may be aiming at the period when Chavez is a lameduck (2010-11) and the government is changing. If he wins the vote on his term limit, and runs again, and is elected again (which he probably would be), that makes their war plan harder. (It is a plan, in my estimation, to foment a fascist secession in the oil-rich state of Zulia, on the Caribbean (and adjacent to Colombia), and have U.S. forces drawn in--from nearby islands like Curacao, or the newly reconstituted U.S. 4th Fleet--very similar to the Bushwhack civil war plan in Bolivia, which was foiled partly because Bolivia has a strong and very popular leftist president, as does Venezuela).

Would Barack Obama approve such a plan? I think he might, but wouldn't want to be seen as directly associated with it. Thus, the private war.


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I like this idea (further down in the article)

"Jorge Rodríguez, the PSUV Mayor of the Libertador district of Caracas has insisted that Globovisión should register with the National Electoral Commission as an opposition party."

It would be a good idea to require the same of most of the corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies in this country. Or else re-instate the Fairness Doctrine.