Venezuela

Perfora Cariño, Perfora!

dlindorff — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 12:44:06 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

It’s going to be interesting to see how much longer the vicious
decades-long US embargo of Cuba lasts, whichever person wins the White
House this November.

The main reason the US has stubbornly refused to trade with Cuba,
and has used sanctions to bully other nations into refusing to trade
with Cuba, while enthusiastically trading with and investing in China,
Vietnam and other communist regimes, is that Cuba has had little to
offer the US, either in terms of products or markets.

That’s all about to change dramatically, with word that the
Communist island just 90 miles to the south of Florida may possess oil
reserves equal to or greater than all the oil reserves left in the
United States.

According to a report in the British newspaper The Guardian,
Cuba may be sitting on some 20 billion barrels of oil, located in Cuban
territory under the Gulf of Mexico. If the reports from Cuban, Spanish
and other geologists are correct, Cuba, which currently only produces
60,000 barrels of oil per day (about half the country’s domestic
demand), is on the verge of joining the ranks of the world’s exporting
nations.
20 billion barrels of reserves would place the little country in the top 20 nations in the world in terms of reserves.

The Republican crowds who are greeting presidential candidate John
McCain and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin with rowdy chants of
“Drill Baby, Drill!” my have to start shouting “Perfora Cariño, Perfora!”
while watching Raul Castro joining meetings of OPEC.

After all, most experts say that a lot of the offshore drilling
being planned in US coastal waters is likely to lead to dry holes,
while drilling in Cuban waters by the country’s national oil company
Cubapetroleo, or Cupet, and by a consortium led by Spain’s Repsol,
which is set to begin with punching some test wells early next year,
are likely to produce gushers.

If the oil starts flowing, how long will it be before the US starts
clamoring to buy it? How long will it be, for that matter, before US
oil companies start using their lobbying clout to get the US embargo
lifted, so they can get a chance to join the drilling party? After all,
if the US companies are kept out by vestigial anti-Communist ideology,
the investment opportunities will be left wide open for European,
Middle Eastern and Venezuelan interests.

For the long-suffering Cuban people, who have been forced to eke
out a national economy virtually barred from the global marketplace,
this oil find is an astonishingly lucky break, particularly coming at a
time that existing oil reserves are beginning to run out, and that
prices for crude are soaring.

It’s going to be fun to watch the rationalizations coming out of
Washington, particularly from the hard Right, for whom Fidel Castro’s
Cuba has for several generations served as a prime bogeyman in the Cold
War pantheon of villains. Just as Corporate America has since the 1970s
been hypocritically singing the praises of Communist China, and has
been justifying economic trade and investment with that nation on the
grounds that “economic engagement” will bring democracy (all the while
calling for a boycott of all things Cuban), we will soon be hearing
such songs about virtues of economic engagement with Cuba.

This new oil bonanza may not be great news for the
environment—either the waters of the Gulf or for the carbon-sogged
atmosphere of the earth—but for the Cuban people, at least for the
short term, it’s an amazing turn of events.
__________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His
latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2006 and
now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Beyond Boondoggles

dlindorff — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 11:23:21 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

Critics of government get all worked up when Washington spends money
stupidly, or does something manifestly stupid. There was a even senator
from Wisconsin, William Proxmire, who used to hand out "Golden Fleece"
awards for such things.

The Pentagon's notorious $600 payments for toilet seats that were
$12 in local discount stores, or $434 paments for hammers that were $10
in the local hardware store were good examples of this.

But nobody seems to be screaming about the incredibly wasteful
rescue of AIG, on which the government has spent first $85 billion and
now another $37.5 billion.

Bad enough that the Treasury Department is pumping an astonishing
$123.5 billion into a private company to prop it up, but what no one
has mentioned is that at the time of the initial announcement of an
$85-billion bailout, the insurance giant's stock had crashed so far
that it could have been bought outright by the government for a scant
$7 billion! That's small change by today's standards.

For $123.5 billion, the taxpayers have gotten warrants that could,
if exercised, end up giving "us" 80 percent of the company, but if the
government had just gone ahead and bought 100 percent of AIG right
away, it would have only cost about five percent of that amount.

Talk about a "Golden Fleece" award!

The money is now flying so thick and fast--$700 billion here, $37.5
billion there, $25 billion to the auto industry, $900 billion to buy up
short term corporate debt, hundreds of billions of dollars more to buy
stakes in failing banks--that we've simply lost sight of what we the
taxpayers are getting for our money, or whether the government is even
bargaiining for good deals.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson reportedly came up with the initial
$700 billiion figure for the Wall Street bailout off the top of his
head, with the only consideration being that the number be large enough
to "shock" investors into feeling confident.

Before another dollar of borrowed cash is spent on this binge,
Congress should call urgent hearings to look into what's being paid and
what the taxpayers are getting for their money. Any deals--like the AIG
boondoggle--that were clearly bad should be halted and reconsidered.

My suspicion is that with AIG, ideology intruded. The Bush
administration doesn't want to be seen as simply nationalizing banks
and insurance companies--the kind of thing they condemn Venezuela's
Hugo Chavez or Cuba's Castro for doing. But they are doing that anyhow,
and on a much bigger scale than Chavez or Castro ever dreamed of--just
not overtly. And to avoid overt takeovers, they are spending many
multiples of hundreds of billions of dollars just taking over the
liabilities of companies that they could have taken over lock, stock
and barrel for a fraction of the cost.

Left out of consideration is the incredible carnage this is certain
to cause down the road. Every penny that is being spent on this rolling
bailout is borrowed money. As an NPR reporter quite accurately noted in
a report yesterday on Britain's colossal $900-billion bailout of UK
banks, that borrowed money will have to be repaid by taxpayers over
time, and will come at the expense of other things that the public
wants, like Britain's vaunted National Health Plan, education, etc.

We don't hear much about that on the reporting, even on NPR, about
the US bailout, but it is equally true here. The bailout is doing to
the nation's public funding in a few short weeks what Ronald Reagan and
his budget director David Stockman tried to do over the course of two
presidential terms off office: bankrupt the government to kill off
social spending.

As of this point, if all these allocated funds being thrown at
financial institutiions are spent, there will be no money left for
health care, education, infrastructure, environmental protection,
national parks, Social Security, welfare assistance, or critical things
like consumer protection and worker safety. Truth to tell, there won't
be any money left for the military either--probably the only good thing
you can say about this mess.

It's enough to make one think that this is all some final disastrous
plot by the Bush/Cheney administration to bring on a collapse of what
remnants were left of the old New Deal and Great Society programs
before leaving Washington. And that's not such a wild notion. The whole
eight years of Republican rule in Washington has been a giant wrecking
game.

If some KGB mastermind, back in the late 1960s (perhaps young Vlad
Putin?), had dreamed up a scheme to capture the child of a leading
American political family, and re-program him to become a kind of
"Manchurian Candidate" who would return and work his way into the
presidency, from which high office he would destroy the country, he
could not have accomplished more than President Bush has done.

The financial fiasco and the subsequent bailout boondoggle is the final blow--one from which the nation may well never recover.
____________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006
and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

digg_url = 'http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/36728';
digg_title = "Beyond Boondoggles";
digg_bodytext = "By Dave Lindorff\r\n\r\n\r\nCritics of government get all worked up when Washington spends money stupidly, or does something manifestly stupid. There was a even senator from Wisconsin, William Proxmire, who used to hand out \"Golden Fleece\" awards for such things.\r\n\r\nThe Pentagon\'s notorious $600 payments for toilet seats that were $12 in local discount stores, or $434 paments for hammers that were $10 in the local hardware store were good examples of this.\r\n\r\nBut nobody seems to be screaming about the incredibly wasteful rescue of AIG, on which the government has spent first $85 billion and now another $37.5 billion.\r\n\r";
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Russia Invades Latin America While Condi Talks Trash

Bob Fertik — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:55:03 -0400

George Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, John McCain, and the crazy Neocons have been playing "poke the giant" around Russia in places like Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, and the Czech Republic.

So Russia decided to retaliate by strengthening military and business relations in places like Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. Here's a good roundup from Bloomberg News:

Russia Builds Ties in Latin America to Challenge U.S.

By Henry Meyer

Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Russia is in talks to build a space center in Cuba as it forges closer ties with Latin American countries opposed to the U.S. in the wake of Cold War-era tensions sparked by the Georgia conflict.

The head of the Russian Federal Space Agency, or Roscosmos, Anatoly Perminov, who visited Havana with Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin earlier this week, made the announcement in a statement posted today on the agency's Web Site.

After Cuba, Sechin traveled to Venezuela, whose President Hugo Chavez heads to Moscow next week, and Nicaragua. Russia is playing its most active role in the region since the Soviet era, in a challenge to the U.S. in its traditional backyard.

``We're increasing our presence in Latin America -- the countries in the region themselves want this,'' said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Igor Lyakin-Frolov. ``There's a big power in the north. They need a counterweight,'' he said by telephone from Moscow today, referring to the U.S.

Russia has sold billions of dollars of weapons to oil-rich Venezuela in recent years. Since the August war with U.S.-backed Georgia provoked a rift with the West, Russia has stepped up efforts to bolster its influence in Latin America.

``The worse Russia's ties with the West become, the more it will look for allies elsewhere,'' said Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the USA and Canada Institute in Moscow. ``Russia can play the role of a great power; it can sell oil, weapons and nuclear technology.''

Ties With Nicaragua

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, whose revolutionary Sandinista government was supported by military aid from the Soviet Union in the 1980s, said yesterday after talks with Sechin that he planned to strengthen ties with Russia. Sechin said Russia will study plans to fund energy projects and boost trade. Nicaragua was the only country to follow Russia in recognizing the independence of Georgia's two breakaway regions.

Bolivia, South America's poorest country, will turn to Russia to replace U.S. funding for its anti-drugs program, the Bolivian government said yesterday.

Bolivia will send representatives to Russia to wrap up an agreement to provide it with helicopters, logistical support and military training to help the fight against drug trafficking, La Razon reported today, citing Felipe Caceres, Bolivia's vice minister of social defense.

Strained Ties

Relations between the U.S. and Bolivia have soured in the past week after President Evo Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador for allegedly helping foment violence in the opposition stronghold of eastern Bolivia.

Russia's Foreign Ministry yesterday criticized what it termed efforts to undercut Bolivia's territorial integrity and ``all forms of outside interference in the affairs of this sovereign Latin American nation.''

Morales, Ortega and Chavez are close allies who oppose the historic U.S. influence in Latin America. By courting Russia, ``Latin American states can demonstrate to the U.S. that if it doesn't treat them with respect, they have other countries they can turn to,'' Kremenyuk said.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will be in Peru in late November for the summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation group and plans a weeklong regional trip, his office said today.

Sechin's visit to Cuba followed one he made in July to the Cold War-era ally. Russian newspaper reports of plans to station nuclear bombers on the Caribbean island prompted warnings from the U.S. not to cross ``a red line'' and were later denied by Russia.

U.S. Missile System

Russia opposes proposed U.S. missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic, former Communist-era satellites. It's also resisting further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine, accusing the U.S. of threatening its security by moving militarily up to Russia's borders.

Chavez last week welcomed two Russian TU 160 bombers, which flew from Venezuela to conduct training flights over neutral waters. Venezuela is planning a joint naval exercise in the Caribbean later this year with Russian warships, including the atomic-powered Peter the Great cruiser.

The Venezuelan leader will be in Moscow for the second time in two months next week. Three Russian oil companies signed exploration deals for Venezuela during Chavez's last visit to Russia in July.

Russia is currently in talks to sell air defense systems, armored personnel carriers and new-generation Su-35 fighter jets to Venezuela, the Kommersant newspaper reported, citing state industrial holding company Russian Technologies chief Sergei Chemezov.

So how is our Russia expert-in-chief responding? With typical Bushevik denial and trash talk.

Rice says West must resist Russian "bullying"

Reuters/Susan Cornwell
Thu Sep 18, 6:17 PM ET

The West must stand up to "bullying" by Moscow, which is becoming increasingly authoritarian and aggressive, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a speech highly critical of Russia on Thursday.

In her first major address on Russia since its incursion into Georgia last month, Rice said Moscow had taken a "dark turn" that left its global standing worse than at any time since 1991, when it emerged from the fall of the Soviet Union.

Rice, a former Soviet expert who has presided over a steady deterioration of relations with Russia, said Moscow's invasion of Georgia was part of a pattern that included its use of oil and natural gas as a political weapon, the suspension of a treaty on conventional forces in Europe and a threat to target peaceful nations with nuclear weapons.

"The picture emerging from this pattern of behavior is that of a Russia increasingly authoritarian at home and aggressive abroad," Rice said in the speech to the German Marshall Fund.

The United States and Europe must not allow Russian actions in Georgia to achieve any benefit, she said. "Not in Georgia. Not anywhere," she said.

"Our strategic goal now is to make it clear to Russia's leaders that their choices are putting Russia on a one-way path to self-imposed isolation and international irrelevance."

Umm Condi, Russia isn't facing isolation, it's expanding throughout Latin America!

Moscow was internationally condemned for sending troops to Georgia to stop Tbilisi's attempt to reassert control over the pro-Russian, separatist region of South Ossetia.

Moscow later recognized South Ossetia and another rebel region, Abkhazia, as independent states, and on Wednesday signed treaties to protect them from Georgian attack.

The Kremlin said it had a moral duty to defend the regions against what it called "genocide" by Georgia's military.

But some political analysts have said Russia's actions heighten the risk of Moscow attempting to exert more influence over other former Soviet territories, particularly Ukraine.

'SPHERE OF INFLUENCE'

Rice rejected a Russian "sphere of influence" over its neighbors and hoped Russia leaders would "overcome their nostalgia for another time."

Umm Condi, you've squandered the American "sphere of influence" over Latin America, which dates back to another time - the presidency of James Monroe.

"We cannot afford to validate the prejudices that some Russian leaders seem to have: that if you pressure free nations enough -- if you bully, and threaten, and lash out -- we will cave in, and forget, and eventually concede," Rice said.

"The United States and Europe must stand up to this kind of behavior, and all who champion it."

She also scoffed at Moscow's recent dispatch of "Blackjack" bombers to U.S. foe Venezuela.

Rice said Russia's behavior threatened its participation in a number of global diplomatic, economic and security bodies, including the Group of Eight industrialized nations, and jeopardized Moscow's bid to join the World Trade Organization and the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development.

But she said Washington would continue to pursue areas of common concern with Russia, from denuclearizing the Korean peninsula to stopping Iran's rulers from acquiring nuclear weapons and combating terrorism, underscoring Washington's need for Moscow to play a role in international negotiations.

Rice, who called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to tell him she was giving the speech, said the door remained open for Georgia and Ukraine to eventually join the NATO alliance.

But some European governments have misgivings about allowing those states to take the first step toward joining NATO, and successfully blocked the move earlier this year.

In London, Pentagon chief Robert Gates used a less critical tone when asked whether NATO should change its operational posture toward Russia as a result of events in Georgia.

"I think we need to proceed with some caution because there clearly is a range of views in the alliance about how to respond, from some of our friends in eastern Europe and the Baltic states, to some of the countries in western Europe," Gates said.

One U.S. analyst said he did not see the point of Rice's speech. "It didn't lay out a framework that showed American leadership for where do we go from here," said Robert Hunter, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO now with the RAND corporation.

Nope, it was just trash talk - the only thing the Busheviks are good at.

Heckuva job, Condi!

Huffing and Puffing at the Pentagon

dlindorff — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:02:26 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

American Secretary of War Robert Gates knows a real leader when he sees one. “Clearly, as far as I’m concerned,” he said, Vladimir Putin, and not President Dmitry Medvedev, "has the upper hand right now."

Well hell, Gates should know. After all, he deals on a daily basis with the same peculiar situation here in the US, where the president also is a figurehead and the real power lies in the hands of Vice President Dick Cheney.

But Gates doesn’t speak with such clarity and directness in other matters. "I think that there is a real concern that Russia has turned the corner here and is headed back toward its past rather than toward its future, and my hope is that we will see actions in the weeks and months to come that provide us some reassurance," he said, speaking on ABC and CNN, claiming that the country was returning to the authoritarianism of the old Soviet era.

Ahem.

It might also be noted that the US is heading increasingly towards an authoritarian future, no? Certainly over the course of the last seven years we have seen the executive branch in the US claim that it no longer needs to enact or adhere to laws passed by Congress or to terms of international treaties approved by the Senate. We have also seen this administration refuse to respond to Congressional subpoenas for information and testimony from White House officials, effectively establishing the presidency as a dictatorship, have we not?

As for Gates’ condemnation of Russia for resorting to force in Georgia, one need not defend Russia’s actions there to note that such tactics have long been deemed fully appropriate in the US. Only recently America used force to depose an elected government in Haiti, hustling its elected president off into exile. The US has also been working assiduously through covert means to overthrow the elected government of Venezuela, even supporting (and probably helping to organize) a temporarily successful military coup there. Then of course there is the decades-long effort by the US to overthrow the government of Cuba, which has included everything from invasions and embargos to multiple assassination attempts against Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Russia is clearly moving in an authoritarian direction at home, and is reasserting its influence and control over some—though hardly all—of the states that were formerly part of the USSR. But in all of this it is merely aping the behavior of the US government, which is becoming more authoritarian also, and which has always been a bully in its local neighborhood.

If Gates has anything legitimate to complain about it is that the American military disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its preoccupation with drumming up conflict with Iran, have rendered the Pentagon almost impotent when it comes to threatening Russia.

All that is left for Gates to do is huff and puff about Russia backsliding to the bad old days when it was able to stand up to the US as an equal.
________________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Talk is Cheap, Even with Enemies, and By the Way, Rivals Aren't Enemies

dlindorff — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:41:02 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

What the hell is Barack Obama talking about?

He says that America should be talking with leaders in Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Korea, Syria. Fine. But he calls this “talking with our enemies.”

What enemies?

Let’s get something straight. Enemies are people who are fighting against you, who are trying to destroy you. Is Cuba fighting against America? Is Iran fighting against America? Is Venezuela fighting against America? Syria? China? No. These countries may be rivals, but they are not enemies.

The closest we come to having an actual enemy in today’s world is North Korea, where we are technically still in some kind of truce following a hot war, but of course that war itself has been over for half a frigging century, and nobody has been killing anyone on the Korean Peninsula in decades.

The truth is, America doesn’t have any real enemies, except for the ones it has made for itself in Iraq and Afghanistan, and of course the Al Qaeda organization. But Al Qaeda is a gang of terrorists, not a country, and in Afghanistan it is movement, the Taliban, once the government of that country, which we overthrew. And even there, where we have enemies, talk is better than war. It is obvious that at some point if we are ever to exit from Iraq and Afghanistan, there will have to be talks with the people we are fighting. Afghanistan’s leaders have said this—that there will have to be talks with the Taliban. And Bush’s own “Iraq Study Group,” headed by former Republican Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Congressman Lee Hamilton, concluded that the US will have to negotiate to settle the Iraq conflict. Both those processes should be begun immediately, not after more thousands have been killed.

By calling other countries “enemies,” Obama fell into a trap of his own making, though admittedly, he’s not the first to define all these rival nations as enemies. It’s a logical outcome of the Bush/Cheney position that “either you’re with us or you’re against us.”

Instead of buying into that nonsense, Obama should have questioned the premise. Then he wouldn’t be in the mess he’s in now, trying to fine-tune whom he would talk to and whom he wouldn’t talk to. Erstwhile Democratic presidential candidate and former Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel had it right when, during an early TV “debate” before the media decided to black him out, he replied to the moderator’s stupid question to all the candidates of “Who, after Iran, are America’s biggest enemies?” He challenged the premise, asking, “Iran’s not our enemy. Who are we afraid of? We don’t have any enemies.” He got one of the biggest applauses of the evening for that.

As for the basic point—talking with people we have disagreements or rivalries with—it is obvious that not talking is idiotic, and gets you nowhere—or worse, into a war.

Let’s take Cuba. For exactly half a century since its Communist revolution, we have treated Cuba like a mortal enemy, blockading the country, forcing other countries to join us in an embargo (an act of war, by the way), plotting and attempting to assassinate the country’s leader, Fidel Castro, and financing and supporting an obsessed group of dispossessed rich Cubans who want to return the island to its mob-infested, neo-colonial days. In those 50 years, the only thing not talking has accomplished has been the impoverishment of two generations of Cubans. Meanwhile, of course, the US has talked, conceded, caved in, given in, pandered and invested in China, another Communist country that, unlike Cuba, actually has fought against the US (in Korea, by proxy in Vietnam, and against an ally, Taiwan). There is clearly no logical reason for not talking with Cuba, and if we were talking with Cuba, life there would be better, and no doubt, things would be better here, too.

Iran is another example. It is known that when the US invaded Iraq, in 2003, Iran tried desperately to initiate talks with the US. The Bush/Cheney administration didn’t want to talk. It was calling Iran an “Axis of Evil” nation. Had talks begun, there might not even be a nuclear dispute today. Indeed, there might not even have been a rivalry. Instead, we now have the Bush/Cheney administration pushing forward for plans to attack Iran.

We could go back to Iraq, too, of course. Before the US launched its attack, Saddam Hussein was telling the Bush/Cheney administration he was willing to leave the country. All he wanted was a safe haven like Idi Amin got, and a billion dollars. We were not told about this offer until years later. Yet think how much cheaper that solution, arrived at through a little talking, would have been than what we got through not talking. Instead of letting Hussein run off with a billion of his own ill-gotten wealth, we’ve spent close to a trillion dollars, killed upwards of a million innocent Iraqis, destroyed a country, driven four million people in a nation of 24 million into exile, ruined America’s global reputation, and bankrupted the US treasury, not to mention running up the price of oil four-fold.

Talk is cheap, I’d say.

Obama should be more forthright and admit that America has no enemies, and that we can talk to anyone.
____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

News Not Fit to Print: US Coup Planned for Venezuela?

dlindorff — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 11:05:40 -0500

By Dave Lindorff

The New York Times had a news article about Venezuela in Thursday’s edition, but it was about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez saying he would cut diplomatic ties with neighboring Colombia. There wasn’t a word about a memo from a CIA operative in Caracas to CIA Director General Michael Hayden, uncovered yesterday, outlining a plan for interfering with a Venezuelan referendum set for Dec. 2, and laying out the steps for instigating and backing a coup.

The plot, called “Operation Pliers,” and laid out in the letter to Hayden by an undercover operative named Michael Steele, who reportedly works in the US Embassy as a “regional affairs officer,” was intercepted by Venezuelan intelligence and released publicly on state TV yesterday.

In the Nov. 20-dated letter, Steele refers to an $8 million US-funded in-country propaganda campaign against Chavez and the referendum, already being implemented, which is designed to institutionalize many of Chavez’s socialist reforms and to permit him to continue to run for president beyond his current two-term limit. He proposes trying to stall the referendum, which pro-Chavez forces are expected to win handily, and failing that, to then promote a campaign to refuse to accept the results. Steele further confirms that the agency is working with international news agencies in an effort to distort reports about the referendum and the reforms. (CNN had to apologize for a “mistake” which led to the words “Who killed him?” superimposed over a photo of Chavez broadcast on CNN’s Spanish-language international broadcast in Venezuela. Was this a deliberate CIA-inspired black-op?)

Among the tactics Steele recommends in his letter are:

* Promoting street demonstrations and violent protests
* Creating a climate of ungovernability
* Provoking a general uprising
* Working through the US military attaché at the embassy to coordinate with ex-military officers and former coup plotters against Chavez.

Even more darkly, the letter calls for initiating “military actions” to support opposition mobilizations and strategic building occupations, involving US military bases in neighboring Curacao and Colombia to provide support, and even taking control of parts of Venezuela in the days after the referendum, while encouraging a “military rebellion” inside the Venezuelan National Guard.

The CIA communication has been reported in articles filed by the Associated Press, but the Times and other major US news organizations have not mentioned it
.
Instead, the Times today ran a column by Roger Cohen, which compares Chavez to the fascists of 1930s Europe, and which calls for defeat of the referendum. (Are Cohen and the Times part of the CIA's propaganda campaign?)

The Cohen column is so rabid that it would be almost comical, were it not for the fact that there is a real threat of a bloody CIA-inspired coup in the democratic nation of Venezuela.

In fact, I thought it would be fun and instructive to alter Cohen’s hit piece a bit, substituting the US for Venezuela, and Bush and Cheney for Chavez, to show its hypocrisy. Here then, a sample of the only lightly tweaked column:

________________

Shutting Up America’s Bush and Cheney

By Richard Cohen (courtesy of editing by Dave Lindorff)

It was a fascist general in 1930s Spain who coined the phrase “Viva la muerte!” or “Long live death!” Essentially meaningless, the words captured the cult of soil, blood and savagery that coursed through European Fascism, in its Francoist and other forms.
President Bush and Vice President Cheney hate Islamo-fascists; they are central to their repertoire of insults. But they have not hesitated to deploy the imagery of death to bolster their rightist brand of petro-authoritarianism, now operating under the ludicrous banner of “Homeland, Free Markets and Democracy!”

The slogan looks almost quaint in its anachronism. Bush and Cheney would no doubt claim American Revolutionary, rather than Spanish fascist, roots for it (Patrick Henry also invoked liberty and finality). The bottom line is this. America’s oil-gilded caudillos are getting serious about instituting executive rule, much like Franco and Mussolini.

I might add Vladimir Putin to that list. Like the Russian leader, Bush and Cheney have already used fears of terrorism, a pliant judiciary, subservient institutions like the Congress, and the galvanizing appeal of vitriolic anti-Arabism to concoct a 21st-century authoritarianism, complete with gulags and arrest and indefinite detention without charge. But even Putin has not contemplated going as far as Bush and Cheney with their doctrine of pre-emptive war and “regime change” abroad.

Americans will vote next November most likely between two candidates for president who endorse many of the new powers already claimed by Bush and Cheney, and the Congress, even under Democratic control, continues to grant them additional powers, including the power to conduct sweeping spying on electronic communications without any court order or demonstration of probable cause, the power to declare martial law anywhere in the country on the slightest of pretexts, and the power to expropriate private property of those deemed to be “threatening” the American occupation in Iraq.

“The measures amount to a constitutional coup,” said Teodoro Petkoff…etc.

…Bush’s and Cheney’s grab for emperor status is grotesque and dangerous—as Fascism was—a terrible example for a world that is moving towards democracy. Venezuela’s Chavez got it right when he told the assembled delegates at the United Nations General Assembly, shortly after President Bush had left the podium after addressing the same group, that he could still “smell the sulfur” left in the room by the American president.

____________________

Of course, we in America only read such things about foreign governments, not about our own.

Which may explain why despite the constitutional coup that has been occurring in the US over the last seven years, we have yet to see any hearing in the Judiciary Committee on the impeachable crimes of Bush and Cheney.
_______________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book, co-authored by Barbara Olshansky, is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Terror = Treason?

Chip — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 02:35:54 -0400

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune that he has a "gut feeling" that the US has entered into a new period of increased risk of terrorism.

Let me get this straight - Chertoff has a "gut feeling" that the US is on the verge of another terrorism attack.

I'm getting a gut feeling that this is a impending Wag the Dog operation as Bush continues to feel the increasing public scorn for his commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence, the mounting public opinion against the war, the plummeting Bush-Cheney public approval ratings, the defection of Republican senators from the "all war, all the time" Bush war agenda, the backlash from claiming executive privilege for the RNC emails originating in the White House, the White House refusal to allow aides to testify before congress, the burgeoning congressional investigations...those are just a few of the high points from which it's important to distract the public's attention.

But there's more, and even more reason to be concerned about the Bush administration's handling of national security. ABCNews is reporting that an alQaeda cell is either in or en route to the US.

Bush doesn't want to offend our ally, Pakistan's Musharraf, where the US has provided $10 billion in aid since 911, but of which less than 1/10 - $900 million, has actually gone for the country's development, according to a report issued by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. According to the report's author, Frederic Grare, "The question is the extent to which this money has effectively increased U.S. and international security," the report said.

Aside from the fiscal accountability issue, and the fact that the hefty funding hasn't improved the existence of the populace of an underdeveloped country while precariously propping up a military dictatorship (Musharraf never renounced his role as Chief of the Army Staff, contrary to Pakistan's constitution), the American taxpayers' money also hasn't bought much consideration from the Pakistani president, either.

The serious impacts of the policy of accommodation practiced by Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf toward the Taliban and its extremist supporters in Pakistan have been dramatized by the clashes between security forces and Islamic extremists at the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad.

That crisis came only a few days after a report in the New York Times on June 28 that the Pakistani Interior Ministry had warned Musharraf earlier in June that a "general policy of appeasement towards the Taliban" had "further emboldened" the Islamic extremist forces.

But despite these indications that the news from Pakistan is likely to shed a harsh light on its Pakistan policy, the Bush administration has continued to offer unqualified endorsement of Musharraf's policy toward terrorism. Efforts by journalists to elicit an expression of concern about the implications of the violence in Islamabad from State Department spokesman Sean McCormack produced only reassuring phrases that there is "still a lot more to do" in regard to Islamic extremists in Pakistan and that "we support [Musharraf] in those efforts".

The Bush administration knows that Musharraf has been playing a double game over al-Qaeda and Taliban networks. Four months earlier, it had tried to exert quiet pressure on Musharraf over the issue, but had also continued its policy of portraying Musharraf as a loyal ally in the "war against terror", even after he signaled his rejection of any pressure.

Vice President Dick Cheney visited Islamabad in late February, accompanied by Stephen R Kappes, deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), when unnamed US officials told the Washington Post that there was evidence al-Qaeda operatives in camps in Pakistan had resumed training of foreign jihadis. Just hours after Cheney had reportedly delivered a warning that aid would be cut by the US Congress if something was not done, the Musharraf government issued a statement insisting that "Pakistan does not accept dictation from any side or any source"....

Musharraf's failure to act against religious extremists and their madrassas is widely understood to be part of a fundamental strategy by the military regime of using political parties that embrace extreme Islamic ideology as a political base of support for the military dictatorship to ensure against the return of democratic forces seeking to reverse Musharraf's 1999 coup.

There's evidence to suggest that Musharraf's government has negotiated with and harbored terrorists.

The Musharraf government's deals with pro-Taliban groups in 2004 and 2006 in the border provinces of South and North Waziristan helped the Taliban generate increased manpower and logistics support for cross-border raids into Afghanistan by Taliban guerrillas based in those provinces.

According to a report by the International Crisis Group last December, after the September 2006 accord, the government "released militants, returned their weapons, disbanded security check posts and agreed to allow foreign terrorists to stay if they gave up violence". The new accommodation with the Taliban "facilitates the growth of militancy and attacks in Afghanistan by giving pro-Taliban elements a free hand to recruit, train and arm", the report said.

Bush maintains an irresponsible, reckless policy of not upholding his oath of office to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution by securing our national borders against illegal immigration using our existing laws, meanwhile funding massive amounts of federal aid to Pakistan where it is misappropriated - where Pakistan's actions actually support terrorist operations - and so is ineffective in enhancing our national and international security.

According to a House Committee on Homeland Security report:

During 2005, Border Patrol apprehended approximately 1.2 million illegal aliens; of those 165,000 were from countries other than Mexico. Of the non-Mexican aliens, approximately 650 were from special interest countries. Special interest countries are those “designated by the intelligence community as countries that could export
individuals that could bring harm to our country in the way of terrorism.”1...Federal law enforcement estimates that 10 percent to 30 percent of illegal aliens are actually apprehended...

Data indicates that there are hundreds of illegal aliens apprehended entering the United States each year who are from countries known to support and sponsor terrorism.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigations have revealed that aliens were smuggled from the Middle East to staging areas in Central and South America, before being smuggled illegally into the United States.
Members of Hezbollah have already entered the United States across the Southwest border.
U.S. military and intelligence officials believe that Venezuela is emerging as a potential hub of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere. The Venezuelan government is issuing identity documents that could subsequently be used to obtain a U.S. visa and enter the country.

If the Border Patrol is only apprehending 10-30% of the illegal aliens, and 650 of those were from "special interest" countries, then not securing our nation's borders using existing laws is a dereliction of duty by Bush, as is not funding legislation passed to improve border security against illegal immigration.

After all, as Ronald Reagan said in his speech "Our Noble Vision: An Opportunity for All": "Democratic nations do not wage war on their neighbors. But make no mistake, those who would hang a "Do Not Disturb" sign on our shores, those who would weaken America or give Castro's terrorists free rein to bring violence closer and closer to our borders are doing no service to the cause of peace."

Our Constitution defines treason as: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."

Is Bush giving terrorists free rein to bring violence closer and closer to our borders?

And isn't that treason?

Hugo Chavez

Joy — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 10:53:15 -0400

Cindy Sheehan has met with Chavez a few times as well as some other liberal figures and he openly admits that he is probably the next target of imperialist America because of his oil so Im wondering if we should make him a major part of our election strategy, bring him into commercials and what not as supporting the democratic party in ending our imperialistic ways and putting our country on the right track with nations like Venezuala instead on the track to war. I think we should put a lot of emphasis on Hugo Chavez as an ally of the democratic party, it'll reach out to the mainstream.

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Three Countries Will Stop Sending Military to School of the Americas

Ted Kahl — Thu, 06 Apr 2006 21:38:46 -0400

Robert Koehler writes:

Indeed, something remarkable is happening in the Southern Hemisphere, news of which we in El Norte get only in heavily filtered, ludicrously distorted doses. Women and indigenous people are suddenly ascending to ranks of power. In Uruguay, a former human-rights attorney is now defense minister. Unimaginable possibility is dawning, and the wounded and imprisoned of earlier decades are grieving openly for the first time and crying “Nunca mas!” — never again.

And three countries so far, Venezuela, Argentina and Uruguay — with more, almost certainly, to follow suit — have formally declared that they will no longer send their military personnel for training at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, which is better known by its former name, the School of the Americas, housed in Fort Benning, Ga.

This barbed-wire-enclosed compound, where Augusto Pinochet’s ceremonial sword is said to hang in a place of honor, is also called the “School of the Assassins.” It’s America’s secret, long-discredited training institute for torture and repression, by which we guard our “interests” South of the Border. The only thing novel about the horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo is that the torturers there are U.S. soldiers and paramilitary personnel. In fact, we’ve been in the torture business for the last half century-plus. This is our shadow foreign policy: manipulate, overthrow, rule by fear. The best-kept secret in the Land of the Free is our own hypocrisy.

So it is with gratitude and awe that I salute the recent mission of Bourgeois — who founded SOA Watch in 1990, following the slaying in El Salvador of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter, by, it turned out, graduates of the little known school — along with fellow activists Carlos Mauricio and Lisa Sullivan, to Bolivia, Uruguay and Argentina. They met with government officials, including, in Bolivia, the newly elected President Evo Morales, representing — in a way someone like, say, Condoleezza Rice is incapable of doing — the American conscience. They met to talk about SOA/WHISC.

“I’m filled with hope and inspiration,” Bourgeois said. “We didn’t get any resistance — none. Defense ministers, high-ranking military leaders . . . we got nothing but positive results. They were very aware of the school and its effect on their country — the disappeared and the massacres. They know better than us about this school.”

Citgo

ami — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 06:50:57 -0500

Citgo is the wholly-owned subsidiary of the national oil company of Venezuela. It set-up a program where it is providing subsidized heating oil or gas to poor communities in Chicago, Boston and New York. Remember when Grassley was begging the major oil companies during to Senate Hearings on price-gouging to do something similar but got no takers?

Heard last week on Democracy Now, a Senate Commmittee (intelligence, I think) was starting an investigation into the Citgo program looking for fraud or other wrong-doing. This is apparently more important than investigating how Bush lied us into the Iraq war or of Bush's illegal wiretapping program.

This sort of irony would be funny if it were not so sickening.