Posted on 02/25/2003 6:38:48 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Venezuelan policemen inspect the area in front of Colombia`s consulate after a blast in Caracas February 25, 2003. Explosions hit a Spanish Embassy building and the Colombian consulate just a day after President Hugo Chavez, whose self-styled 'Bolivarian Revolution' aims to help the poor, accused the United States and Spain of siding with his enemies and warned Colombia he might break off diplomatic relations. There were no immediate reports of casualties. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
Venezuelan policemen inspect the area in front of Spanish embassy after a blast in Caracas February 25, 2003. Explosions hit a Spanish Embassy building and the Colombian consulate just a day after President Hugo Chavez, whose self-styled 'Bolivarian Revolution' aims to help the poor, accused the United States and Spain of siding with his enemies and warned Colombia he might break off diplomatic relations. There were no immediate reports of casualties. REUTERS/Jorge Silva
Chávez Says Leaders of Strike Should Be Tried as Saboteurs - How many Venezuelans can he jail?
Send in the U.N.
I would personally like to thank the Clintons for leaving us in such a MESS!!! The United States was the least of their worries.
Oh, never mind.
Having fired over 700 of PDVSA's top executives and most of its middle managers, PDVSA is a company without a brain. With the upper level management removed, PDVSA headquarters in Caracas, in La Campina, has been taken over by the Minister of Energy and Mines, now in place to execute government orders. The new Petroleos de Chavez will try to raise production using foreign companies, whose workers do not strike!
Which foreign companies are willing to come into Venezuela, under the new currency and price controls, unattractive royalties and tax regime, and a country full of potholes and beggars? Will these companies be from the United States, Europe, China, Nigeria or Russia?
The Chavez government is rumored to be preparing an attractive offer to present to foreign companies to come in and restart Venezuela's oil and gas production - using foreign companies' financial strength and technology.
Gustavo Coronel, former PDVSA Board member, wrote the following in a January 28, 2003 article: "With the collapse of PDVSA, we are witnessing the collapse of the country . . . when the time comes, if I am still around, I hope to be a witness for the prosecution. Why? Because when I was building pipelines for a better PDVSA, Ali Rodriguez, the current President of the "revolutionary" PDVSA, was blowing them up, as the main dynamite expert of the Cuban-supported guerrillas which failed in Venezuela during the 1960s." (VHeadline.com)
It is Ali Rodriguez who now has complete control of PDVSA: financially and contractually. Ali Rodriguez Araque not only fires and hires, moves PDVSA funds around, but also can sign contracts like the one with Pepex.com (Herb Goodman, CEO) to take over PDVSA's oil trading. There is no longer any transparency. Those who work for PDVSA now work for Petroleos de Chavez, the fully credentialed People of Petroleum having been replaced by the mediocre, and now led by an "Oil Commander-in-Chief" (Chavez), with no auditing, or transparency.
Venezuelans are living in a war economy - in an internal war - a civil war, which could last a long time. Over 12,000 commercial establishments have closed, and 5,000 businesses are bankrupted. The Chavez government is now using currency controls and price controls to attack the only remaining productive sector remaining.
The Opposition, led by Carlos Ortega, the brave President of the CTV (Confederation of Venezuelan Workers), is going to continue to march, by the hundreds of thousands of families, demanding that Chavez resign. But he will not resign. These millions of brave Venezuelans refuse to live under a corrupt, Cuban dictatorship, and refuse to give up their country to a man who intentionally is destroying Venezuela.***
He's also started torturing and murdering dissidents.
Sounds like a little Saddam in the making.
What is his potential for spreading terrorism outside of his borders?
Is he funding any chem or bio research in Venezuela?
Chavez Plans for Terrorist Regime***Reports on the investigation rescued from Chavez's burn pile and showed to Insight specify that two of the suspects sought by the FBI -- Fathi Mohammed Awada [Venezuelan ID card No. V6282373] and Hussein Kassine Yassine [No. V6293922] -- withdrew $400,000 from the branch of the Banco Confederado in Margarita before gong to Lebanon in December 2001. The report concludes that the individuals were "engaging in suspicious transactions which validate the suspicions of the U.S. government."
The money transfers never were recorded by Venezuela's national banking superintendent, a Chavez appointee. U.S. diplomatic sources in Caracas confirm that official inquiries through Venezuela's banking authorities have failed to reveal evidence on terrorist money laundering. "We've only consulted officials of the government," admits a U.S. economic officer.
Intelligence sources familiar with the cover-up say Chavez is withholding information on the Arabs, some of whom were important financial contributors to his presidential campaign. The report, withheld from the United States, also mentions Nasser Mohammed al-Din, described as a powerful entrepreneur and a close personal friend of Chavez, at whose home in Margarita the Venezuelan president stays on his frequent visits to the resort island, which is a favored venue for his private meetings with Castro. According to presidential pilot Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo, Chavez and Castro get together two or three times a week.
Margarita Island appears to be the center of an extensive terrorist financial network stretching throughout the Caribbean to Panama and the Cayman Islands, where three Afghanis traveling on false Pakistani passports were caught entering from Cuba with $200,000 in cash in August 2001. According to British colonial authorities, efforts to launder the money through Cayman banks also involved a group of Arab businessmen.
Chavez's ties to international terrorism date back to the days of his bloody 1992 military rebellion against the government of Carlos Andres Perez in which nearly 100 people were killed. After being received with honors by Castro in Havana, Chavez proceeded to Tripoli and Baghdad. "He came back with a lot of money to form his Movimiento Revolucionario Venezolano [MRV] and run for president," says Col. Pedro Soto, a Chavez supporter at the time.
Chavez paid presidential state visits to Libya, Iraq and Iran in February 2001, signing cooperation agreements with Muammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein and Tehran's ruling mullahs. Castro visited Libya, Iran and Syria some months later. An MRV politician and close Chavez aide closely tied to the Circulos Bolivarianos, Freddy Bernal, was in Iraq last March. He got caught trying to move arms into Saudi Arabia by U.N. peacekeeping forces policing the border.
Back in the days when he was a frustrated coup leader, Chavez also received help from Colombian narcoguerrilla organizations. He now is repaying them by closing Venezuelan airspace to U.S. antidrug flights. A military-intelligence report shown to Insight by the former commander of the 2nd army theater of operations on the Colombian border, Gen. Nestor Gonzales, shows that the Colombian drug forces are being protected by Chavez in camps inside Venezuelan territory. The sick leader of Colombia's National Liberation Army (ELN), Comandante Pablo, rests under DISIP protection at a villa in the upmarket Caracas neighborhood of El Marques.***
A Terrorist Regime Waits in the Wings***During the 1990s, the Clinton administration looked the other way as the FARC grew stronger. In 1995, according to a recent Rand study for the Pentagon, it had 7,000 fighters on 60 fronts; five years later, there were 15,000 to 20,000 FARC combatants on more than 70 fronts. The huge increase was financed with money from American cocaine and heroin users, but the Clinton administration reversed long-standing bipartisan policy and drew a distinction between drug traffickers and guerrillas. On condition of anonymity, a senior State Department official assured Insight with a straight face in 1999 that "there is no such thing as narcoterrorists." ***
I don't see any reason for him to feel any other way.
There are some serious concerns that he's got connections to Al Qaeda. Of course he's already in bed with Castro.
If he has had past contacts with Al Qaeda he'd be a real fool to continue those connections, because the US won't hesitate to take him out.
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