Bashing U.S. works for Venezuelan leader

Houston Chronicle ^ | March 27, 2005 | JOHN OTIS Houston Chronicle South America Bureau

[Cincinatus' Wife]

CARACAS, VENEZUELA - As Venezuelan military officers barked orders, teenagers, grandfathers and housewives paraded across a flood-lit gravel lot, saluting and chanting patriotic slogans.

Dressed in white T-shirts and black baseball caps, volunteers in the newly formed network of "popular defense units" vowed to protect President Hugo Chavez's leftist government from an American invasion.

"We must be prepared to defend the homeland," declared a sweaty Thai Grimon, 34, as she cradled her 2-year-old son in her arms following 90 minutes of drills.

U.S. officials scoff at the notion of a military assault on oil-rich Venezuela even while ratcheting up their criticism of Chavez.

But the fact that people here are even talking about an invasion indicates that Chavez is using an escalating war of words with the United States to inflate his image here as a revolutionary leader willing to stand up to Uncle Sam.

"There's always someone at the State Department coming out and calling Chavez a negative force," said Teodoro Petkoff, editor of the Caracas daily newspaper Tal Cual and a frequent government critic.

"But this helps him," Petkoff said of the Venezuelan leader, both hailed as a hero by the nation's poor and despised by its rich and middle class. "It contributes to the Chavez mythology."

Nations trade charges The Bush administration has portrayed Chavez as a hemispheric menace for stocking up on weapons, for cozying up to Cuba's Fidel Castro and for his authoritarian style. U.S. officials have accused the Venezuelan president of supporting leftist movements across Latin America.

In response, Chavez has claimed in recent months that Washington is out to get him. He has hurled insults at President Bush and called for the formation of civil militias across Venezuela to help defend his government.

He has threatened to cut off oil exports to the United States in case of an invasion or an attempt on his life.

Yet Venezuela, which supplies about 15 percent of U.S. oil imports, has kept the petroleum flowing.

"I am not a threat," Chavez insisted recently. Although, he said, "we have said things — sometimes very harsh things — it has been in response to aggressions."

By many accounts, Chavez has grounds for distrusting Washington.

In 2002, the Bush administration seemed to endorse a military coup that briefly forced Chavez from office. Instead of immediately denouncing the overthrow of a democratically elected president, American officials said that Chavez had only himself to blame.

The National Endowment for Democracy, funded by the U.S. Congress, has funneled millions of dollars to opposition political parties here that have, in turn, plotted against Chavez.

And in a recent interview that caused an uproar in Venezuela, Felix Rodriguez, a retired CIA official involved in the capture of Ernesto "Che" Guevara in Bolivia in 1967, told a Miami TV station that he thinks the Bush administration has "contingency plans" to bring about regime change in Venezuela.

Thrives on antagonism Chavez thrives on the antagonism, said Caracas political analyst Luis Vicente Leon.

With his political rivals in disarray after failing to oust him in a recall vote last year, Chavez can no longer blame the country's woes on the domestic opposition, Leon said.

At the same time, power struggles have broken out within the president's governing coalition, which ranges from radical Marxists to centrist democrats.

To maintain unity among his followers and consolidate his power, Leon said, Chavez has resorted to slamming the United States and raising the specter of U.S. Marines landing on Venezuelan beaches.

"Chavez wants a rhetorical conflict, not a real one," said Alfredo Keller, who runs a Caracas polling firm.

The tactic appears to be working.

Chavez's job-approval rating stands at 69 percent, Keller said. Graffiti scrawled on walls across Caracas warn, "if they kill Chavez, he will come back as millions."

At the Caracas office of Tupamaros, a Marxist political party that often views Chavez as too conservative, people have rallied around the president.

"Chavez is telling the imperialists the way things are going to be and is demanding that they respect us," said Jose Pinto, the party's secretary-general. As a result, he added, "we are convinced the Americans have plans to overthrow this government."

Actions alarm observers

The rumors forced U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield, whom Chavez has refused to meet, to issue a public denial earlier this month.

"The United States ... will never invade Venezuela. Full stop," Brownfield said.

Yet Chavez's increasingly authoritarian rule has alarmed U.S. officials, who believe the Venezuelan leader is morphing into a left-wing dictator. Last year, Chavez packed the Supreme Court with pliant judges and pushed through a TV and radio law that could lead to media self-censorship.

"Should the United States and Venezuela's neighbors ignore President Chavez's questionable affinity for democratic principles, we could soon wind up with a poorer, less free and hopeless Venezuela that seeks to export its failed model to other countries in the region," Roger Noriega, the State Department's top diplomat for Latin America, told a U.S. House subcommittee this month.

But according to Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division at Human Rights Watch, Latin American leaders often tune out when U.S. officials speak about democracy in Venezuela because of the perception that Washington supported the brief 2002 coup against Chavez.

Isolation efforts fail

For example, Vivanco said, the U.S. State Department has tried to persuade Latin American nations to isolate Chavez. But the leaders of Argentina, Brazil and Colombia have all met with Chavez recently to discuss economic and security issues, and the president of Chile will visit Caracas next month.

"The trouble is, the Bush administration has a serious credibility problem," Vivanco said.

U.S. officials have accused Chavez of starting a regional arms race by buying 10 military helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles from Russia, and negotiating with Brazil for the purchase of 24 fighter planes.

Washington has hinted that Chavez might distribute the assault rifles to Marxist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia.

"I can't understand why Venezuela needs 100,000 AK-47s," U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week during a visit to Brazil.

Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel shot back by saying the weapons were for defensive purposes and labeled Rumsfeld "the lord of war" for overseeing a U.S. arms-buying spree.

The drumbeat of criticism by Rumsfeld and other American officials, Rangel added, "confirms the existence of a plan by the U.S. government against Venezuela."

Oil still flowing Despite the diplomatic fireworks, Chavez, who recently signed a deal to give China more access to Venezuelan oil, has not made good on his threat to divert petroleum supplies away from the United States, where gasoline prices have climbed to more than $2 a gallon.

The Venezuelan government's oil strategy calls for increasing exports to the United States over the next five years, said Luis Xavier Grisanti, president of the Venezuelan Hydrocarbons Association, which represents private petroleum companies.

Venezuela will look for new customers "but not at the expense of the U.S. market," Grisanti said.

Ironically, the only rupture in the petroleum supply line to the United States was the work of anti-Chavez politicians who promoted a general strike in late 2002 and early 2003 that paralyzed Venezuela's economy and nearly shut down its oil industry.

"We want to continue to supply 1.5 million barrels of oil to the United States on a daily basis and to continue doing business," Chavez said recently. "What I have said is that if it occurs to the United States, or someone there, to invade us, they can forget about Venezuelan oil."

Defense units formed Despite American denials of a pending attack, Chavez has gone forward with plans to form the popular defense units. The first of the militias, which will have 10 to 500 members each, began training this month in Caracas.

Commanded by officers in Venezuela's army reserve, defense-unit volunteers are to mobilize for natural disasters, such as floods.

They also are receiving weapons training in case of a coup or invasion.

But when a ragged group of militia members marched out of step across the gravel lot in Caracas recently, one volunteer acknowledged that the idea of war with the United States was unfathomable.

"How could there be a confrontation?" said Luis Adrizana, 58, who said he joined the militia to show support for Chavez and to get the program's perk of free health care at military hospitals.

"That's just a myth."

johnotis2002@yahoo.com

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Fidel Castro - Cuba

Hugo Chavez - Venezuela

U.S. exploring taming Chávez***With President Bush personally firing off questions, his administration is carrying out a top-to-bottom review of U.S. policies toward Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his leftist ''revolution,'' U.S. officials say. One option already on the table is to create a multiagency task force of a type usually reserved for critical issues. Others include campaigns to highlight allegations of graft in Chávez' government and persuade his Latin American neighbors to help rein him in, the officials added. With Chávez appearing increasingly belligerent toward the Bush administration in recent months, ''a chain reaction has been started to review what are the options on Venezuela,'' said Miguel Diaz, with the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. ………..***

[E Rocc]

Dressed in white T-shirts and black baseball caps, volunteers in the newly formed network of "popular defense units" vowed to protect President Hugo Chavez's leftist government from an American invasion.

Castro does this too.

The Bush Administration has normally been excellent WRT foreign relations, but screwed up severely not backing the coup that had this thug actually under arrest.

-Eric

[Cincinatus' Wife]

LINK to National Review frontpage story posted at FR.

Latin America’s Terrible Two - Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez constitute an axis of evil

[injin]

U.S. officials scoff at the notion of a military assault on oil-rich Venezuela

forget the assault , just send a few really well trained guys...

[Cincinatus' Wife]

As much as Chavez dreams of being Castro II (he's been at this since the 80s), he will not.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

March 27, 2005 Network to be regional CNN look-alike


CARACAS - (AP) -- Loose computer cables, laptops and a video camera fill a cramped hotel room where journalists are laying the groundwork for a new television network that they say will be Latin America's alternative to CNN.

With financial backing from Venezuela's government, the Telesur network is scheduled to begin transmitting by satellite 24 hours a day within three or four months, offering news and opinion shows from a decidedly South American perspective.

''Telesur's reason for being is the need to see Latin America with Latin American eyes,'' director Aram Aharonian said on Friday while taking a short break from his work planning new programs and hiring new staff.

''It's our right to have our own vision of what happens in Latin America, and not what Europeans or Americans, or whoever, tell us about how we are, who we are,'' said Aharonian, a 59-year-old Uruguayan who has worked for years as a print journalist.

The idea has long been discussed across Latin America and is now receiving a boost from governments like Venezuela that are concerned with increasing their countries' cultural independence.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/11238816.htm

[piasa]

With financial backing from Venezuela's government, the Telesur network is scheduled to begin transmitting by satellite 24 hours a day within three or four months, offering news and opinion shows from a decidedly South American perspective.

Wonder who else is funding it?

[First_Salute]

Bashing U.S. works for:

• Jane Fonda
• Bill Clinton
• Hillary Clinton
• Barbara Streisand
• Maxine Waters
• Sidney Blumenthal
• Al Gore
• George Soros
• John Kerry
• Ted Kennedy and all their commie allies.

[livius]

Good question.

[First_Salute]

Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel

Why does that name ring a bell? Hmm... Oh yeah, revising earlier post, now:

Bashing U.S. works for:

• Jane Fonda
• Bill Clinton
• Hillary Clinton
• Barbara Streisand
• Maxine Waters
• Sidney Blumenthal
• Al Gore
• George Soros
• John Kerry
• Ted Kennedy and Charlie Rangel all their commie allies.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

The list is long.

Judging from his bashers, Bush is doing good.

[Newshound2036]

Seriously, we got guys trained to handle stuff like this, it doesn't take a whole invasion unless you warn them beforehand.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Efficiency is good.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

He's got a lot more cash than Fidel ever had.

[lowbridge]

The National Endowment for Democracy, funded by the U.S. Congress, has funneled millions of dollars to opposition political parties here that have, in turn, plotted against Chavez.

Our tax dollars at work.

[seadevil]

"We must be prepared to defend the homeland," declared a sweaty Thai Grimon, 34, as she cradled her 2-year-old son in her arms following 90 minutes of drills.

ROTFLMAO....y'all down there need to study some...a bunch of dudes in white t-shirts are a perfect reflective medium for a laser target designator.

[Fedora]

Good question.

[injin]

you forgot Jimmy Carter and Jesse Jackson