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on April 11, the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy stepped up its funding to opposition groups, including money funneled through the International Republican Institute. The latter's funding multiplied more than sixfold, to $340,000 in 2001.

Here is the heart of the anti-democracy: a foreign government funding an un-elected and unpopular political movement which takes the money to overthrow a legally-elected and popular government. Isn't this what the Soviet Union did in Eastern Europe? So what makes it OK for us to do it? Answer: it was wrong for the Soviets and it is wrong for us. That is why people are no longer pro-America. But too many blockheads here just don't get it.

How would people on this thread react if Colombia started funneling millions of dollars to Democratic Party candidates. Hell: how did all of us here react when it came out that the Red Chinese were funneling money to Clinton and the Democrats!!!! We were pi$$ed!!. As are foreign countries when we intervene in their electoral proceses. Why don't people here get it?

***** In sum, the typical AP report on a major event in a foreign country is first filtered through a friendly English-speaking establishment spin-doctor before reaching the writer, then filtered through a giant bureaucracy of AP editors with no relationship to either the writer or the ultimate reader, and finally chosen, not chosen or tampered with by news editors at the commercial media outlets who buy the story. There are a few exceptions -- such as AP’s Mexican and Caribbean correspondent Mark Stevenson. In Venezuela, Niko Price has occasionally reported outside of the box constructed by pro-coup elites that the rest of the reporter’s peers have fallen for hook, line and sinker -- but still offers very little insight. Venezuela, a country with such a wide gap between a wealthy elite and a poor majority, seems tailor-made for the trap that most AP Latin American correspondents have fallen into: the administration, rather than the reporting, of the news. *****

Good grief, they call Chavez a firebrand, pugnacious, left-leaning - I'd say they find him quite appealing. Poor Hugo, he has critics outside of the mainstream media. Hugo doesn't like critics, does he?

Hell: how did all of us here react when it came out that the Red Chinese were funneling money to Clinton and the Democrats!

I missed that news item about Clinton and his minions getting kicked out of office for this, let alone getting any major political heat for it. Seems only the freepers cared that Clinton sold off American national security for political gain and campaign cash. And note - I dont blame the Chinese for trying, I blame Clinton for being corrupt enough to sell out our national security for gain (as he did on several issues!).

Anyway, Clinton handpicked Ehud Barak as Israeli PM with Carville advising his campaign, intervened and made Arafat a leader of PA as opposed to just PLO leader, invaded Haiti and removed a government, eliminated serbian sovereinty over Kosovo and in the process displaced thousands of serbs ... all this direct and heavyhanded Clinton interventionism in the last decade, and you are looking for faint fingerprints in an internal crisis in South America? Hilarious.

You are missing the obvious in your search for hidden skeletons: Economic interests and the (shrinking) middle-class *in* Venezuala dont want the would-be castroite Chavez ruining their economy and stealing their property and turning their industries into socialist fiefdoms. THAT is where the opposition is coming from, that is where the money is coming from. This is the life-and-death struggle of economic opportunity and freedom for these people.

And you better hope the opponents win. If they lose, they will migrate to Miami like the Cuban Americans did when Castro took over in 1960 in Cuba and hound you for decades on this point! :-)