Posted on 12/19/2002 8:20:59 AM PST by Zviadist
CARACAS (Dec. 18) "Where are they getting their money?" asks historian Samuel Moncada, as the television displays one opposition commercial after another. Moncada is chair of the history department at Central University of Venezuela in Caracas. We are sitting in one of the few restaurants that is open in the eastern, wealthier part of Caracas.
For two weeks during this country's business-led strike, the privately owned stations that dominate Venezuelan television have been running opposition "info-mercials" instead of advertisements, in addition to what is often non-stop coverage of opposition protests.
"I am sure there is money from abroad," asserts Moncada. It's a good guess: prior to the coup 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.
But if history is any guide, overt funding from Washington will turn out to be the tip of the iceberg. This was the case in Haiti, Nicaragua, Chile, and other countries where Washington has sought "regime change" because our leaders didn't agree with the voters' choice at the polls. (In fact, Washington is currently aiding efforts to oust President Aristide in Haiti -- for the second time). In these episodes, which extended into the 1990s, our government concealed amounts up to the hundreds of millions of dollars that paid for such things as death squads, strikes, economic destabilization, electoral campaigns and media.
All this remains to be investigated in this case. But the intentions of the U.S. government are clear. Last week the State Department ordered non-essential embassy personnel to leave the country, and warned American citizens not to travel here. But there have not been attacks on American citizens or companies here, from either side of the political divide, and this is not a particularly dangerous place for Americans to be.
In this situation, the State Department's extreme measures and warning can only be interpreted as a threat. The Bush Administration has also openly sided with the opposition, demanding early elections here. Then this week Washington changed its position to demanding a referendum on Chavez's presidency, most likely figuring that a divided opposition could easily lose to Chavez in an election, despite its overwhelming advantage in controlling the major means of communication.
The discussion in the U.S. press, dominated by Washington's views, has also taken on an Orwellian tone. Chavez is accused of using "dictatorial powers" for sending the military to recover oil tankers seized by striking captains. Bush Administration spokesman Ari Fleischer urged the Venezuelan government "to respect individual rights and fundamental freedoms."
But what would happen to people who hijacked an oil tanker from Exxon-Mobil in the United States? They would be facing a trial and a long prison sentence. Military officers who stood outside the White House and called for the overthrow of the government (and this just six months after a military coup supported by a foreign power) would end up in Guantanamo facing a secret military tribunal for terrorism.
In fact, the U.S. press would be much more fair if it held the Venezuelan government to the standards of the United States. In the U.S., government workers do not have the right to strike at all, as Ronald Reagan demonstrated when he summarily fired 12,000 air traffic controllers in 1981. But even this analogy is incomplete: the air traffic controllers were striking for better working conditions. Here, the employees of the state-owned oil company -- mostly managers and executives -- are trying to cripple the economy, which is heavily dependent on oil exports, in order to overthrow the government. In the United States, even private sector workers do not have the legal right to strike for political demands, and certainly not for the president's resignation.
In the United States, courts would issue injunctions against the strike, the treasuries of participating unions would be seized, and leaders would be arrested.
Meanwhile, outside of the wealthier areas of eastern Caracas, businesses are open and streets are crowded with shoppers. Life appears normal. This is clearly a national strike of the privileged, and most of the country has not joined it.
More than anything right now, this country needs dialogue and a ratcheting down of the tensions and hostilities between the two opposing camps, so as to avoid a civil war. But this dialogue will never happen if the United States continues to pursue a course of increasing confrontation.
Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington D.C.
Whay can't the reat of the world understand that we don't take kindly to them electing Anti-American Marxists?
Stick it in your ear. I was working for the Republican party when you were still sh!tting your diapers.
So you believe you have the right to tell foreign countries how to vote? Just like the Soviets. You people amaze me.
Venezuela’s already weakened constitutional processes are once again under serious battering from a series of strategies by lethal opponents of the Chavez government who have as their mission the ousting, at any cost, of the Venezuelan president, who was democratically elected in 1998.
"Yeah, ok, I clip my fingernails in public but you people are lethal."
When foreign nations vote themselves into our enemies, their sovereignty becomes worthless. Ours, however, becomes absolutely vital.
If you undermine the sovereignty of other countries the concept of sovereignty itself is undermined. Ultimately that will come back to haunt us. Witness the growth of the UN. Best to defend the principle of popular and national sovereignty as such. Other threats we can deal with accordingly.
I do not support 'nation-building', i.e. spreading 'democracy' around the world. I do support the U.S. employing our own sovereignty to overthrow any tin-horn dictators who threaten us or our interests, regardless of the whining of the 'multilateralists' at the U.N.
Look at Saudi Arabia (before 9/11). No freedom, only oppresion. They even hate us. Does the US support the House of Saud opposition? No. Why? Because our oil supply from that country is stable.
Look at North Korea. They are communists. They even hate us. We were even giving them huge amounts of aid every year. Now they have a nuke program. Now we will "intervene" there as well.
We will leave you alone until you start screwing with our interests (ie our money and security).
How long would you leave your neighbor alone when he starts screwing around with your economic life-line or your family's security?
From the article:
"It is this charge of repression that most infuriates Chávez's supporters. Not a single leader of the April coup, they note, is in jail, even though some of them continue to openly advocate his overthrow. Not so long ago, the same could not be said for many of the poor who spoke out against Venezuela's old regime."
Some dictatorship. The ignorance of history on these threads is positively astounding.
Sounds like the crowds in the street want self-determination. I guess I am for self-determination. Chavez out now.
He didn't seize power til 1975.
Wrong again. The strikes didn't start til he drove the economy into the ground.
I have seen tens of thousands across this country protesting the way Bush is governing. Does that equal "Bush out now"? Or do we have elections every four years, like the Venezuelans, to determine who will lead this country? A mob in the streets is not "the people". It is a mob, either here in the US or in Venezuela.
Same with Clinton. You think a violent overthrow of the American government was in order under Clinton, or do you just have a double standard for Latin Americans?
The U.S. Constitution, 213 years old and very difficult to amend is something I respect. The Venezuelan Constitution which Chavez basically gutted after he took office is barely worth the toiletpaper its printed on.
I suppose you respect Cuba's constitution as well. Can't have those Cubans protesting, it's against the constitution.
February 2002 - Chavez security chief alleges FARC links - Cuban and Russian security advisors in - I am resigning because I disagree with the (Venezuelan Police Intelligence Division) DISIP's policy of providing security to Colombian guerrillas ... this policy is more than just irregular, it approaches treason to Venezuela given the innumerable deaths, kidnappings and other crimes for which these groups are responsible in our country." Egui Bastidas said 90 percent of his fellow officers "obey orders but do not agree with them" and called on President Hugo Chavez to reverse his policy of tacit support for the rebels.
"All the peace negotiations there are over and open confrontations between the guerrillas and the Colombian government have begun. Are they going to carry on letting them cross over into Venezuelan territory?" Egui Bastidas asked. The former DISIP official called on the Armed Forces to issue a statement about their view of the Chávez government's alleged support for the Colombian guerrillas.
Egui Bastidas also made a number of revelations about DISIP activities in recent months. He said the Venezuelan security service had collected personal information about all serving military officers and had also tried to smear opposition figures, such as Alberto Pena, the mayor of Metropolitan Caracas.
The official said he was also concerned at the growing role of Russian and Cuban security advisers in Venezuela. Egui Bastidas said he had experienced "the direct participation and the attempts at indoctrination by the Russian and Cuban intelligence services, who have direct and virtually unlimited access within the Helicoide (DISIP's headquarters building)." The official's lawyer, former DISIP Secretary-General Joaquin Chaffardet, said around 100 members of the Cuban intelligence services are currently operating in Venezuela. The new allegations would, if proven, further strain the already difficult relationship between the United States and Venezuela.***
Posted April 2002 from July 1998 article- Fidel Castro's Deadly Secret - Five BioChem Warfare Labs***The Cuban dictator is devoting a lot of his destitute island nation's budget to secretive biological- and chemical-weapons research. Will he share his germ arsenal with terrorists? Not far from Havana's picturesque harbor, where ogling tourists and curvaceous prostitutes ply Cuba's only thriving form of free trade, stands the Luis Diaz Soto Naval Hospital, flanked by a newly built concrete laboratory complex about 400 feet long by 300 feet wide. Inside the compound, along a 165-foot acid-resistant work table with built-in circuit breakers, military biotechnicians reportedly experiment on cadavers, hospital patients and live animals with anthrax, brucellosis, equine encephalitis, dengue fever, hepatitis, tetanus and a variety of other bacterial agents.
Five chemical- and biological-weapons plants operate throughout the island, according to documents smuggled out of Cuba and made available to Insight by Alvaro Prendes, a former Cuban air force colonel who now is the Miami-based spokesman for the Union of Liberated Soldiers and Officers, a clandestine pro-democracy movement within Cuba's security services. The credibility of the smuggled documents is enhanced by a recent classified Pentagon analysis. Also, these facilities have not been on the itinerary of such visiting dignitaries as retired Marine Gen. John Sheehan, the recently passed-over candidate for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who enthusiastically embraced normalizing relations with Havana following a recent round of junketing with Castro.
Pentagon, State Department and congressional sources also point to continuing Cuban support for international terrorism and drug trafficking. They tell Insight that, according to the CIA, Russian specialists still operate the electronic listening station at Lourdes on the northeast tip of the island which taps into U.S. communications. During the Persian Gulf War, this station forwarded strategic information to Iraq.
Reports smuggled out this year by dissident Cuban military officers and scientists are believed to be among the factors prompting Defense Secretary William Cohen to revise a Pentagon report sent to Congress last April which decertified Cuba as a threat to U.S. national security. The revised report, still classified but made available to an Insight reporter, states: "Cuba's air force is in disrepair and much of the regular army is demobilized, but the Castro government retains the potential to pose unconventional threats. It has the infrastructure which can be adapted to the production of chem-bio weapons."
A classified annex to the Pentagon's final report to Congress further warns: "According to sources within Cuba, at least one research site is run and funded by the Cuban military to work on the development of offensive and defensive biological weapons." Why does the president ignore this? "Clinton just wants to avoid another front," says Ernesto Betancourt, former director of Radio Marti, a U.S. government broadcasting service. Betancourt believes that the administration is terrified of provoking a confrontation which could lead to another Cuban wave of refugees. ***
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