(GLOBALRESEARCH) Did the NSA Kill Hugo Chavez?
By Eva Golinger
Global Research, January 14, 2014
Cuba Inside the World 3 January 2014
During 2013, Venezuela experienced one of the most difficult times in its history with the death of President Hugo Chavez on March 5. Chavez, a major leader whose policies transformed the country, was the victim of an aggressive cancer that killed him in less than two years. The charismatic Venezuelan president faced large and powerful enemies during his 14 years in power ever democratically elected majorities and strong. Coups, economic sabotage, electoral interventions, psychological warfare, U.S. billionaire from his opponents and attempts on his life funding agencies were some of the tactics and strategies of destabilization that Chavez had to fight during his tenure.
He headed the lists of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon as the main target of their attacks, and the United States significantly expanded its military presence open and clandestine-around Venezuela during his administration. So his sudden and unexpected death caused much suspicion among his followers and those scholars of his socio-political vision. Chavez defied the most powerful interests in the world, and in turn, controlled the largest oil reserves on the planet. Could it have been a political assassination Chavez’s death?
Maybe a few years ago that question would have caused laughter in a majority of readers.However, today, with the vast amount of information that has come to light as whistleblower WikiLeaks and excontratista National Security Agency United States (NSA) Edward Snowden on grave violations of human rights and sovereignty committed by the U.S. government, questions like that not only do the ‘conspiracy theorists’ and connoisseurs of dirty Washington politics. Today the world knows how the U.S. government spy on their friends, allies, enemies and citizens: no one is safe from the eyes and ears of Washington. Today it is known that almost all U.S. embassies worldwide are centers of espionage and intelligence operations, violating all international norms and rules regardless of the consequences. Serious human rights abuses committed by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are known, and how the Obama administration expanded the use of drone-o’-drones’ to murder innocent people via remote control.
Today the Government of the first African-American known how the Presidency pursued with fury to tell truths about the abuses of Washington, and even more so when are U.S. citizens and Bradley (Chelsea) Manning, Edward Snowden and Jeremy Hammond. It is known that Washington used its economic power to try to neutralize WikiLeaks and freeze their finances, blocking access to Visa, Mastercard and Paypal only in order to silence him and prevent its continued publication of documents revealing the dirty laundry of the White House.
Both knowledge has become the global public less skeptical and more realistic when it comes to the ability of the U.S. government to silence its enemies, cover their mistakes and use any measure to achieve its domain.
Hugo Chavez was always a stone in the imperial shoe. Underestimated by analysts and consultants ‘Cold War mind’ in Washington, Chavez ended the influence and domination of the United States in Latin America in less than a decade. Transformed Venezuela from a dependent country and delivered to American culture and politics to be a sovereign, free, independent, dignified and proud of its roots, its history and its Indo-Afro-American culture.He rescued the control of strategic resources not only in Venezuela, but throughout Latin America, always with the banner of social justice. He promoted regional integration and the creation of organizations such as the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), among others. His stand against U.S. aggression hand gave an example and an inspiration to millions around the world, who viewed with hope the revolution in Venezuela and its regional expansion.
No doubt many powerful interests in Washington and elsewhere wanted the passing of Hugo Chavez. They tried to do it in April 2002 with a coup promoted by the U.S. government that failed. Months after strong economic sabotage that almost destroyed the country’s oil industry sought to overthrow him, but failed. Year and a half later paramilitary mercenaries were sent from Colombia to assassinate him, only to be captured by Venezuelan authorities, neutralized plot. In the following years there were many attempts on his life and destabilization plans to overthrow his government, none worked. Meanwhile, Chavez’s popularity grew and his socialist project began to take root in the country.
The leaked documents from the NSA by Edward Snowden revealed that President Chavez and his government were on the list of the six main targets of U.S. intelligence since at least 2007. Just one year ago, the White House created a special intelligence mission to Venezuela that reported directly to the National Director of Intelligence, above the CIA and 15 other intelligence agencies in the United States. A special mission was completely illegal, with great resources and capabilities. There were only two other missions that style: for Iran and North Korea. Venezuela include two enemy countries was held in Washington indicator of threat posed by Hugo Chavez to U.S. power.
DISEASE
Chavez suffered cancer that ended his life so suddenly was weird. As explained by the current president Nicolas Maduro, his cancer was unusual, unnamed and extremely aggressive. It was organ-specific. The Chavez family had no other cancer cases, there was a genetic predisposition. It was detected in June 2011 and in less than two years, despite strong treatments, killed him.
U.S. Army declassified and obtained by AP in 1995 by the Law on Access to Information (FOIA) documents were evidence that since 1948 the Pentagon sought to create a weapon of radiation to political assassinations .
Another study of U.S. Army intelligence in 1969 confirmed that the illegal use of radiation as a weapon could cause death or serious illness in political adversaries. In other words, it was a method of murder who were actively trying.
Can you imagine if Washington since 1948 was experimenting with radiation as a weapon of political assassination, would have come this far in the twenty-first century technology.
MURDER VIA SPY
A secret State Department cable of January 31, 1976 warned of the serious health effects caused by radioactive microwaves used by the KGB to spy on the U.S. Embassy in Moscow: “Our medical experts are of the view that prolonged exposure to microwave radioactivelevels measured at the Embassy of the United States constitute a threat to health. “
However, Washington proceeded to develop more powerful tools and with greater frequency radiation espionage.
NSA filtered by Edward Snowden Documents and recently published in the German newspaper ‘Der Spiegel’ refer to a powerful team developed by the U.S. agency that issues continuous high frequency radio waves against a target to monitor and capture all your communications . According to the document-secret NSA, equipment, CTX4000, is “a portable radar unit continuous wave (CW). It can be used to illuminate a target to retrieve information out of the network. “
“The ability to collect supplies CTX4000 signals that otherwise would not be collected, or would be extremely difficult to collect and process.” The document details their capabilities, “Frequency range: 1-2 GHz; Broadband: 45 MHz, Output Power: 2W to using internal enlarger, enlarger up to 1 kW external”.
A kilowatt is a strong capacity and amount of radioactive waves. This projected against a person for a continuous period amount may cause serious harm to your health. The study of the U.S. Army in 1969 (mentioned above) on the health effects of radiation as a weapon stresses that the impact-or event desired, in other words, the death of the white-may manifest years after exposure to the agent radioactive.
Within the NSA documents published in Der Spiegel there are also details of other forms of espionage through cell phones, wifi mobile systems and networks that might also have serious health effects for whites. However, the use of a portable radar equipment that emits continuous wave high power against a person appears to be a spy mechanism could be an instrument of murder.
Hugo Chavez was the main target of NSA for years. The possibility that their spy tools have contributed to or caused his illness no longer seems as science fiction may have been a while ago.
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Labels: ASSASSINATION, HUGO CHAVEZ, VENEZUELA
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Chavez Poisoned? Venezuela To Investigate Whether Late President Was Infected With Cancer By ‘Dark Forces’
By Global Research News
Global Research, March 14, 2013
The Huffington Post
By Hunter Stuart
Venezuela’s acting president, Nicolas Maduro, said the country would open a scientific investigation to see whether late leader Hugo Chavez was poisoned “by dark forces that wanted him out of the way,” Reuters reports.
“We are almost certain [that there was foul play] based on the data we have,” Maduro said in an interview with a the Telesur network, according to CNN.
Maduro, who barely avoided explicitly saying the United States had poisoned Chavez, talked about “scientific laboratories [that were] testing how to cause cancer” in the U.S. in the 1940s and 1950s and asked whether that technology might have progressed since then, CNN adds.
This isn’t the first time Maduro has claimed Chavez’s death was orchestrated. On March 5, hours before the president’s death was announced, Maduro said there was “no doubt” that Chavez’s illness was caused by an “attack” by foreign enemies.
Chavez Was Poisoned
At the time, a spokesman from the U.S. State Department vigorously denied the accusation, calling it “absurd,” according to the Washington Post.
Chavez himself made similar claims on more than one occasion. In 2011, he accused the U.S. of covertly poisoning Latin American leaders with cancer, and in 2005 he announced that if the U.S. succeeded in assassinating him, “the name of the person responsible is George Bush.”
The State Department has repeatedly denied trying to kill Chavez.
Although the claims may seem absurd, a CIA report declassified in 2007 revealed that the U.S. had plotted to assassinate another socialist leader it considered a threat: Fidel Castro.
The plot, which relied on poison pills, according to a Washington Post report on the documents, was abandoned after the Bay of Pigs invasion, a failed CIA-orchestrated effort to remove Castro from power.
Moreover, the U.S. is reported to have tacitly supported a coup d’etat that removed Chavez from power for two days in April 2002, even though the Bush administration denied having prior knowledge of the plot, according to The New York Times.
Labels: ASSASSINATION, HUGO CHAVEZ
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Farewell Commandante Hugo Chavez Frias
By The Post
Fri 08 Mar. 2013, 11:40 CAT
There are moments in history that require a comment, even if it is as brief as Julius Caesar's Alea jacta est (The die is cast), when he crossed the Rubicon. It had to be crossed on Tuesday when Venezuelan Vice-President Nicholas Maduro announced the death of Commandante Hugo Chavez Frias.
Human cognition dictates that those who stand tall because they are carried aloft by the masses they represent and lead, will, in the many instances be seen as merely outstanding individuals, leaving the loving hands of the millions that serve as their pedestal out of sight and out of mind.
When the news was announced that at last Commandante Chavez had succumbed to the icy hand of death, the people he loved, the people who loved him, whose bare hands served as his pedestal while he lived, shed tears of grief that one who had so epitomised their revolutionary dream, their Bolivarian Revolution had left, never to return.
They kissed the images of his face that had been captured by a photographer who only went on a routine mission to take ordinary pictures for ordinary purposes. As he did his work, the photographer would not have known that one day wherever his photograph of the face of Commandande Chavez was seen, the people would approach and interact with it as though it were a holy shrine.
For these masses, the words of the poet of an earlier struggle, Berthold Brecht - "There is no greater crime than leaving" - would have been suffused with very deep meaning because they knew that the very life of their own heroic son, Commandande Chavez, who only left because death dictated that he must leave, confirmed the truth that there was no greater crime than living.
"There is no greater crime than leaving.
In friends, what do you count on? Not on what they do
You can never tell what they will do. Not on what they are.
That
May change. Only on this: their not leaving.
He who cannot leave cannot stay. He who has a pass
In his pocket - will he stay when the attack begins?
Perhaps
He will not stay.
Before we go into battle I must know: have you a pass
In your coat pocket? Is a plane waiting for you behind the battlefield?
How many defeats do you want to survive?
Can I send you away?
Well, then, let's not go into battle."
Commandante Chavez was ready to survive many defeats. He would never allow himself to be sent away from his people. He had no pass in his pocket to take him away from the battlefield. And because he could not leave, he stayed. And the people of Venezuela deeply grieve the forced departure of Commandante Chavez because with him at the helm, they knew that they could survive many defeats, with none willing to commit the crime of abandoning his or her comrades during a battle.
But of course there are others in the world that would not shed the tears that Venezuelans are shedding at the loss of such a titan among their ranks. Perhaps these saw Commandante Chavez merely as an individual of immense influence who could, like the kings of the old, decree what must be, knowing that it would be.
The masses for whom Commandante Chavez spoke thus disappeared from the eyes of these, who thought these masses were but mere hordes who could be commanded to do anything, provided the commander was such a hero of these masses as was Commandante Chavez.
About this, a world of heroes and heroines without ordinary people would not even so much as cook the food these shinning stars would eat, Brecht composed the famous poem - Questions from a Worker who Reads.
"Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
Of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Great Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song
Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Antlantis
The night the ocean engulfed it
The drowning still bawled for their slaves.
The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not have a cook with him?
Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?"
Many of those who speak ill of Commandante Chavez and have shed no tear at his departure, would speak of him in a manner that would evoke similar questions from a worker who reads.
The worker who reads would ask such questions because the detractors of Commandante Chavez, those who would deny the reality of the rich and indelible heritage of principled and courageous struggle he left the Venezuelan people and all those who fight for a more just, fair and humane world everywhere else in the world, have sought to pretend that we could, as in the case of Julius Caesar, speak of Commandante Chavez without speaking about his cook.
They do this because they do not want the story to be told about the poor conditions of life under which the poor people of Venezuela and those of Latin America and the Caribbean in general were subjected to. Commandante Chavez, a product of the natural world of creation, because Commandante Chavez, the product and exemplar of the struggle for justice because the poor people of his country and his continent and indeed of the whole world were condemned to inhuman conditions.
On Tuesday, a man died who throughout his life was an example of courage, coherence and dedication.
The loss of Commandante Chavez, as a political person, as a revolutionary, as a socialist, is of great significance. Our reading of this tragedy is that it affects not only Venezuela, Latin America and the Caribbean, but the whole world and that stories of the people's revolutions and leaders are being lost.
It is inconceivable that Commandante Chavez could have lived in another place, in another age, if not this one, this epoch. He had an enormous moral and political stature which cannot be claimed only by Venezuelans. It belongs to us more widely. He belonged to this period, a certain period of struggle and politics, of which we are also a part. As a political person, a man who so deeply participated in our contemporary history, his contribution was so large that his loss has to be perceived as not only of Venezuelans, but as a loss to all humanity.
We were stunned and could barely believe he was gone. How could it be true that this great man has left us when our poor world, the Third World, and indeed Venezuela itself still need men of his stature?
Commandante Chavez has left the world with a grand legacy of words and deeds. His personal example and his teachings, his faith and firmness, his sincerity and cordiality will linger, always bringing benefit to all who learn from his life.
We think the Bolivarian Revolution that Commandante Chavez led has given rise to a galaxy of wonderful personalities in Venezuela and Latin America in general.
Commandante Chavez was outstanding in his grasp of big ideas and big developments, by his vision of the future and at the same time understanding the intricate problems of the ongoing process. He has left a formidable legacy. He will always be a symbol of commitment and dedication in the struggle to achieve a better life for our poor people. Commandante Chavez did not shirk from taking tough decisions but he was always very sensitive to the real needs of the most deprived.
Commandante Chavez was a fighter, an unforgettable man, full of humour, valour in thought and display. He was a heart to heart, flesh and blood revolutionary, socialist, Christian.
Commandante Chavez was a true human being for our world. A challenge to be humane. With him one cherished to be human.
We cannot minimise the loss and pretend that all is as before. We are very much worse off without Commandante Chavez. We say that no one is indispensable. But we only had one Commandante Chavez. We won't have another.
The greatest tribute we could pay him is to live and struggle as he did, with warmth and kindness, with great integrity, with courage, with a simple unaffected humility. We hope the Venezuelan people and all of us will be able to live up to his legacy.
We consider it an honour to have been invited by his government to monitor last October's elections, which he won. It gave us an opportunity to see him in action, to hear his words and see his deeds.
Hasta la Victoria Siempre!
Labels: HUGO CHAVEZ, LIBERATION, NEOCOLONIALISM
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US Plots Conquest of Venezuela in Wake of Chavez’ Death
By Tony Cartalucci
Global Research, March 07, 2013
Land Destroyer
US corporate-financier funded think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), declared in its “post-Chávez checklist for US policymakers,” that the US must move quickly to reorganize Venezuela according to US interests. Upon its checklist were “key demands”:
* The ouster of narco-kingpins who now hold senior posts in government
* The respect for a constitutional succession
* The adoption of meaningful electoral reforms to ensure a fair campaign environment and a transparent vote count in expected presidential elections; and
* The dismantling of Iranian and Hezbollah networks in Venezuela
In reality, AEI is talking about dismantling entirely the obstacles that have prevented the US and the corporate-financier interests that direct it, from installing a client regime and extracting entirely Venezuela’s wealth while obstructing, even dismantling the progress and geopolitical influence achieved by the late President Hugo Chavez throughout South America and beyond.
The AEI “checklist” continues by stating:
Now is the time for US diplomats to begin a quiet dialogue with key regional powers to explain the high cost of Chávez’s criminal regime, including the impact of chavista complicity with narcotraffickers who sow mayhem in Colombia, Central America, and Mexico. Perhaps then we can convince regional leaders to show solidarity with Venezuelan democrats who want to restore a commitment to the rule of law and to rebuild an economy that can be an engine for growth in South America.
Of course, by “Venezuelan democrats,” AEI means Wall Street-backed proxies like Henrique Capriles Radonski and his Primero Justicia (Justice First) political front, two entities the Western media is already gearing up to support ahead of anticipated elections.
West Has Positioned Proxies to Strip Venezuela to the Bone After Chavez’ Passing
Primero Justicia (Justice First) was co-founded by Leopoldo Lopez and Julio Borges, who like Radonski, have been backed for nearly a decade by the US State Department. Primero Justicia and the network of foreign-funded NGOs that support it have been recipients of both direct and indirect foreign support for at least just as long.
Image: US State Department document (archived) illustrating the role National Endowment for Democracy (NED)-funded NGOs play in supporting US-backed opposition figures in Venezuela. The US regularly fails to transparently list who is included in extensive funding NED provides opposition groups in Venezeula, so documents like this give a rare glimpse into the names and dynamics actually involved. As was suspected, NED money is going into networks providing support for current presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski. In this particular document, NED-funded Sumate’s legal trouble is described in relation to its attempted defense of Radonski. At the time this document was written, Radonski was in jail pending trial for his role in facilitating the 2002 US-backed failed coup against President Hugo Chavez. The document may still be online at the US State Department’s official website here.
….
All three co-founders are US educated – Radonski having attended New York’s Columbia University (Spanish), Julio Borges attending Boston College and Oxford (Spanish), and Leopoldo Lopez who attended the Harvard Kennedy School of Government (KSG), of which he is considered an alumni of (and here).
The Harvard Kennedy School, which hosts the notorious Belfer Center, includes the following faculty and alumni of Lopez, co-founder of the current US-backed opposition in Venezuela:
John P. Holdren, Samantha Power, Lawrence Summers, Robert Zoellick, (all as faculty), as well as Ban Ki-Moon (’84), Paul Volcker (’51), Robert Kagan (’91), Bill O’Reilly (’96), Klaus Schwab (’67), and literally hundreds of senators, ambassadors, and administrators of Wall Street and London’s current global spanning international order. Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government (KSG) is clearly one of several universities that form the foundation of both creating corporate-financier driven globalist-international policy, as well as cultivating legions of administrators to execute it.
To understand fully the implications of Lopez’ education it helps to understand the leadership and principles guiding Harvard’s mission statements, best exemplified by KSG’ Belfer Center, which to this day, lends its public support to Lopez and his Primero Justicia opposition party.
Image: John P. Holdren (bearded, left), an advocate for population reduction through forced sterilization overseen by a “planetary regime,” is just one of many “colorful” characters to be found within the halls of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government from which Primero Justicia co-founder Leopoldo Lopez of Venezuela graduated. To this day, KSG provides forums in support of US-backed opposition bids at seizing power in Venezuela.
….
Named after Robert Belfer of the Belco Petroleum Corporation and later, director of the failed Enron Corporation, the Belfer Center describes itself as being “the hub of the Harvard Kennedy School’s research, teaching, and training in international security affairs, environmental and resource issues, and science and technology policy.” Robert Belfer still sits in as an International Council Member.
Belfer’s director, Graham Allison provides an example of self-serving corporatism steering US policy. He was a founder of the Trilateral Commission, a director of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a consultant to the RAND Corporation, Director of the Getty Oil Company, Natixis, Loomis Sayles, Hansberger, Taubman Centers, Inc., and Belco Oil and Gas, as well as a member of the advisory boards of Chase Bank, Chemical Bank, Hydro-Quebec, and the shady International Energy Corporation, all according to his official Belfer Center bio.
Other questionable personalities involved as Belfer alumnus are Goldman Sachs, CFR member, and former-World Bank president Robert Zoellick. Sitting on the board of directors is CFR member and former Goldman Sachs consultant, Ashton Carter. There is also former director of Citigroup and Raytheon, former Director of Central Intelligence and CFR member John Deutch, who required a pardon by Clinton to avoid prosecution over a breach of security while fumbling his duties at the CIA. Meanwhile, Nathaniel Rothschild of Atticus Capital and RIT Capital Partners, Paul Volcker of the Federal Reserve, and former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff all serve as Belfer Center’s “advisers.”
Last but not least, there is John P. Holdren, also a Council on Foreign Relations member, science adviser to both President Clinton and President Obama, and co-author with Paul Ehrilich, of the now notorious “Ecoscience.” When Holdren isn’t brand-building for “Climate Disruption,” he is dreaming of a Malthusian fueled totalitarian global government that forcibly sterilizes the world’s population. He feared, erroneously, that overpopulation would be the end of humanity. He claimed in his hubris filled, fact deficient book, “The No Growth Society,” that by the year 2040, the United States would have a dangerously unsustainable population of 280 million he called “much too many.” The current US population is over 300 million, and despite reckless leadership and policies, it is still sustainable.
One could argue that Lopez’ education is in his past, independent of his current political activities, however, the interests driving the agenda of the Belfer Center are demonstrably still backing his Primero Justicia party’s bid for seizing power in Venezuela. Lopez, Radonski, and Borges are to this day still receiving substantial funding and support through NGO networks funded directly by the US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy, and is clearly favored by the Western press. Furthermore, the CFR, Heritage Foundation, and other corporate-financier driven think-tanks have all come out in support of Radonski and Primero Justicia, in their bid to “restore democracy” American-style in Venezuela.
With Chavez’ passing, the names of these opposition figures will become mainstays of Western reporting ahead of anticipated elections the West is eager to have held – elections the West is well positioned to manipulate in favor of Lopez, Radonski, and Borges.
Whatever one may have thought about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his policies, he nationalized his nation’s oil, forcing out foreign multinational corporations, diversified his exports to reduce dependency on Western markets (with US exports at a 9 year low), and had openly opposed corporate-financier neo-imperialism across the globe. He was an obstruction to Western hegemony – an obstruction that has provoked overt, depraved jubilation from his opponents upon his death.
And while many critics are quick to claim President Chavez’ policies are a “failure,” it would be helpful to remember that the US, on record, has arrayed its vast resources both overtly and covertly against the Venezuelan people over the years to ensure that any system outside the West’s sphere of influence inevitably fails.
Dark Days Ahead.
Dark days indeed lay ahead for Venezuela, with the AEI “checklist” foreshadowing an “uprising,” stating:
As Venezuelan democrats wage that struggle against chavismo, regional leaders must make clear that Syria-style repression will never be tolerated in the Americas. We should defend the right of Venezuelans to struggle democratically to reclaim control of their country and its future. Only Washington can make clear to Chinese, Russian, Iranian, and Cuban leaders that, yes, the United States does mind if they try to sustain an undemocratic and hostile regime in Venezuela. Any attempt to suppress their self-determination with Chinese cash, Russian arms, Iranian terrorists, or Cuban thuggery will be met with a coordinated regional response.
US military contractors and special forces had been caught operating in and around Venezuela. Just as there were warning signs in Syria years before the 2011 conflict began, the US’ intentions of provoking bloodshed and regime change in Venezuela stretch back as far as 2002. Just as Syria is now facing a Western-engineered proxy war, Venezuela will too, with the AEI already declaring US plans to wage a Syria-style proxy war in South America.
The AEI also reminds readers of the West’s faux-human rights, “economic development,” and “democracy promotion” racket Hugo Chavez had ejected from Venezuela and displaced across parts of South America, and the West’s desire to reestablish it:
US development agencies should work with friends in the region to form a task force of private sector representatives, economists, and engineers to work with Venezuelans to identify the economic reforms, infrastructure investments, security assistance, and humanitarian aid that will be required to stabilize and rebuild that country. Of course, the expectation will be that all the costs of these activities will be borne by an oil sector restored to productivity and profitability.
Finally, we need to work with like-minded nations to reinvigorate regional organizations committed to democracy, human rights, anti-drug cooperation, and hemispheric solidarity, which have been neutered by Chávez’s destructive agenda.
As the US openly funds, arms, and backs Al Qaeda in Syria, conducts global renditions, operates an international archipelago of torture dungeons, and is only now wrapping up a decade of subjugation and mass murder in Iraq and Afghanistan that is still claiming lives and jeopardizing the future of millions to this day, it is difficult to discern just who the AEI’s target audience is. It is most likely those who can read between the lines – the corporate-financier vultures waiting for the right moment to strip Venezuela to the bone.
The fate of Venezuela lies in its people’s hands. Covert destabilization must be faced by the Venezuelan people, while the alternative media must do its best to unravel the lies already being spun ahead of long-planned operations in “post-Chavez Venezuela.” For the rest of us, we must identify the corporate-financier interests driving this agenda, – interests we most likely patronize on a daily basis, and both boycott and permanently replace them to erode the unwarranted influence they have used, and will continue to use against the Venezuelan people, as well as people across the globe.
Labels: HUGO CHAVEZ, NEOCOLONIALISM, VENEZUELA
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Chavez vs. Thaksin: How the Media Demonizes a Progressive Leader while Praising a Corrupt Autocrat
By Tony Cartalucci
Global Research, March 06, 2013
Land Destroyer
Confounding was the Australian’s (newspaper) recent op-ed titled, “Death of a ruthless autocrat,” in regards to the late Hugo Chavez. Confounding not for the op-ed’s condemnation of socialist policies or its criticism of Hugo Chavez, an obstruction to Western corporate-financier interests in South America for over a decade, but because of the obscene hypocrisy displayed throughout, from a newspaper and a corporate-financier-academic establishment in Australia that coddles a figure in nearby Thailand that is every bit as guilty of everything it accuses Chavez of.
Image: When is blood-red socialism ok (Thailand) and when is it “ruthless autocracy” (Venezuela)? The answer depends on whether or not you serve Wall Street and London’s international order. Contrary to popular belief, socialism is not a unified global ideology and is instead like any tool – only as good or bad as the hands it finds itself in. The use of socialism by two governments no more indicates an affiliation than would guns in the hands of two opposing armies on a battlefield.….
The piece begins with:
HE was lionised as a hero by the Western Left, of course, but it would be hard to find a leader in recent history who more comprehensively betrayed the wellbeing of his country than Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. He was driven by an irrational, demagogic and self-defeating antagonism towards Washington that blinded him to his nation’s best interests.
The rambling narrative of the Australian equates to condemning Venezuela for not opening itself up to Western exploitation, domination by corporate-financier monopolies, and the folly of its challenging of the West’s campaign of global aggression from Mali, Libya, and Syria, to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
In fact, the Australian itself makes a point of condemning Chavez for his support of Saddam Hussein, who’s nation was occupied by the West during a brutal 10 year war, following a decade of sanctions that in total cost the lives of over 2 million Iraqis (including half a million children) and still counting. The Australian implies that Chavez was wrong to support Iraq, despite documented evidence that the Western assault on Iraq was waged upon a patently false pretense.
The Australian condemns Chavez’ “populist economics” and ends its piece by stating:
Thumbing your nose at Washington and aligning your country with the world’s worst dictatorships is a recipe for disaster. Those who come after Mr Chavez should see that and change course.
Thumbing your nose at Washington and its interests is indeed a recipe for disaster, as has been thumbing your nose at brutal empires throughout human history. Your nation will become the target of covert military operations, terrorism, political subversion, and economic sabotage, the very root of Venezuela’s current malaise. Thumb your nose long and hard enough at the West, and you may even become subject to an outright invasion, as was the case in Iraq, Libya, Vietnam, and Afghanistan. Or, you may suffer a long-term proxy war, as Syria now faces.
In reality, the Australian reveals what Hugo Chavez was really guilty of. Not of being a “ruthless autocrat,” or of being a socialist, but of being independent and for having the nerve to challenge the extraterritorial interests of an increasingly violent and unhinged West.
Thaksin Shinawatra – Populist, Socialist, Ruthless Autocrat, and Darling of the West.
Of course, the most preposterous statement of the Australian’s op-ed would easily be, “but it would be hard to find a leader in recent history who more comprehensively betrayed the wellbeing of his country than Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.” The Australian might start with Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand, propped up and coddled by the West since the 1990's, and to this day given free passage throughout the West despite being a convicted criminal and a fugitive from the law in his native country.
The Australian’s editorial board itself has lent support to his despotic, nepotist regime, currently led by his own sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, defending him as a progressive, pro-democratic force in Thailand. In a 2011 Australian news article preceding Thailand’s national elections, no where is found the same venomous language directed at Chavez in describing Thaksin’s own populist/socialist schemes. No mention at all is made of Thaksin’s grotesque human rights record – the worst in Thai history, his intimidation of the press, and his habitual assault on any and all who challenge him.
Indeed, while the Australian calls Hugo Chavez a “ruthless autocrat,” it was Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand who mass murdered 3,000 innocent people over the course of 90 days during a so-called “war on drugs” where police were sent into the streets to conduct extrajudicial executions. It would later be determined that most of the those murdered were not even involved in the drug trade. Human Rights Watch (HRW) would confirm this in their 2008 report titled, “Thailand’s ‘war on drugs’,” a follow up to the much more extensive 2004 report, “Not Enough Graves.”
To this day Thaksin counts his “war on drugs” as one of the many highlights of his 2001-2006 stint in office. And while the Australian fails to remind readers of this inconvenient fact, other Western propagandists, such as the Economist, boldly defend the mass murder that took place under his ruthless regime. In its op-ed titled, “Thailand’s drug wars: Back on the offensive,” the Economist states:
Faced with soaring methamphetamine abuse, Mr Thaksin ordered the police to draw up blacklists of suspected traffickers and “to act decisively and without mercy”.
The Economist would also go on to say:
On the streets of Khlong Toey, the largest slum in Bangkok, there is nostalgia for Mr Thaksin’s iron-fisted drugs policy. The 2003 crackdown drove up prices, smashed trafficking networks and forced addicts into rehabilitation programmes. In drug-ravaged communities, where the ends tend to justify the means, that was enough to turn Mr Thaksin into a hero.
The Economist finishes its op-ed by lamenting that the then military-led government which ousted Thaksin in 2006, had not kept up Thaksin’s abhorrent, extrajudicial campaign of mass murder:
You might expect a military junta with sweeping powers to have kept up the fight against such illicit activity. Anti-narcotics officials say that drug seizures have risen since the military coup in September 2006.
And more recently, the Huffington Post hosted Stanley Weiss of the Business Executives for National Security (BENS) and his op-ed titled, “The Oracle of Thailand,” where he praises Thaksin Shinawatra’s populist-socialist policies and suggests the US would be better off if it applied his “Thaksinomics” across America. Weiss openly admits that Thaksin Shinwatra, despite being a convicted criminal and living in exile, is running the country by nepotist proxy. Yet, he defends what he considers a brilliant exploitation of Thailand’s desperately poor, notoriously under-educated rural population, spinning it as:
The great innovation of Thaksin and Pansak (along with U.S.-trained academic Somkid Jatusripitak) was “the increased role of government in the allocation of credit,” as Chulalongkorn University Professor Pasuk Phongpaichit writes. But not just anywhere: “Thaksinomics” focused the government’s attention on the poor and rural areas of Thailand. Arguing that “a country is a company and a company is a country,” the self-described “CEO Prime Minister” approached the national economy like a business, looking for ways, as Pasuk explains, to “mobilize any dormant or unexploited assets including unused natural resources and neglected human resources.”
Tapping unused reserves of credit in the state banking system, the team created one rural credit fund after another. To lower household expenses, they offered low-cost housing and health insurance; provided subsidized credit for buying taxis and provided loans for children to get to school.
One might wonder how that is any different than what Hugo Chavez did in Venezuela, who also won over the population in part by using state money to subsidize his support base. The difference is simple: Hugo Chavez used socialism to co-opt the population in opposition to the Wall Street-London international order, while Thaksin Shinwatra co-opted Thailand’s rural poor on behalf of Wall Street and London’s interests.Weiss’ BENS front is lined with representatives of America’s Fortune 500 who have played a pivotal role in both Thaksin’ rise to power, and his continued relevance in Thai politics.
Thaksin had been prime minister from 2001-2006. Long before Thaksin Shinwatra would become prime minister in Thailand, he was already working his way up the Wall Street-London ladder of opportunity, while simultaneously working his way up in Thai politics. He was appointed by the Carlyle Group as an adviser while holding public office, and attempted to use his connections to boost his political image. Thanong Khanthong of Thailand’s English newspaper “the Nation,” wrote in 2001:
“In April 1998, while Thailand was still mired in a deep economic morass, Thaksin tried to use his American connections to boost his political image just as he was forming his Thai Rak Thai Party. He invited Bush senior to visit Bangkok and his home, saying his own mission was to act as a “national matchmaker” between the US equity fund and Thai businesses. In March, he also played host to James Baker III, the US secretary of state in the senior Bush administration, on his sojourn in Thailand.”
Upon becoming prime minister in 2001, Thaksin would begin paying back the support he received from his Western sponsors. In 2003, he would commit Thai troops to the US invasion of Iraq, despite widespread protests from both the Thai military and the public. Thaksin would also allow the CIA to use Thailand for its abhorrent rendition program.
In 2004, Thaksin attempted to ramrod through a US-Thailand Free-Trade Agreement (FTA) without parliamentary approval, backed by the US-ASEAN Business Council who just before 2011?s elections that saw Thaksin’s sister Yingluck Shinawatra brought into power, hosted the leaders of Thaksin’s “red shirt” “United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship” (UDD).
Image: The US-ASEAN Business Council, a who’s-who of corporate fascism in the US, had been approached by leaders of Thaksin Shinwatra’s “red shirt” street mobs. (click image to enlarge)
….
The council in 2004 included 3M, war profiteering Bechtel, Boeing, Cargill, Citigroup, General Electric, IBM, the notorious Monsanto, and currently also includes banking houses Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Chevron, Exxon, BP, Glaxo Smith Kline, Merck, Northrop Grumman, Monsanto’s GMO doppelganger Syngenta, as well as Phillip Morris.
Photo: Deposed autocrat, Thaksin Shinawatra before the CFR on the even of the 2006 military coup that would oust him from power. Since 2006 he has had the full, unflinching support of Washington, Wall Street and their immense propaganda machine in his bid to seize back power.
….
Thaksin would remain in office until September of 2006. On the eve of the military coup that ousted him from power, Thaksin was literally standing before the Fortune 500-funded Council on Foreign Relations giving a progress report in New York City.
Since the 2006 coup that toppled his regime, Thaksin has been represented by US corporate-financier elites via their lobbying firms including, Kenneth Adelman of the Edelman PR firm (Freedom House, International Crisis Group, PNAC), James Baker of Baker Botts (CFR), Robert Blackwill of Barbour Griffith & Rogers (CFR), Kobre & Kim, and currently Robert Amsterdam of Amsterdam & Peroff (Chatham House).
Robert Amsterdam of Amsterdam & Peroff, would also simultaneously represent Thaksin’s “red shirt” UDD movement, and was present for the inaugural meeting of the so-called “academic” Nitirat group, attended mostly by pro-Thaksin red shirts (who literally wore their red shirts to the meeting). Additional support for Thaksin and his UDD street-front is provided by the US State Department via National Endowment for Democracy-funded “NGO” Prachatai.”
Time to Grow Up
It is time for the general population to refine their understanding of socioeconomic-political processes. Socialism is not an internationally unified political ideology. It is a set of tools that is only as good or as bad as the hands that wield them. And just because these tools can be found in two different hands, does not mean that both hands serve the same agenda – no more so than would guns in two opposing armies’ hands indicate a mutual agenda or alliance.
Hugo Chavez used socialism to build a support base, because if he didn’t, Wall Street and London would do it themselves with their proxy opposition front in Venezuela – just as they have done in Thailand with Thaksin Shinwatra.
The proof is in the West’s own narrative, where they hypocritically celebrate Thaksin Shinawatra’s “Thaksinomics” while condemning Chavez’ “Chavismo.” It would appear that socialism is only “ok” if it is used to co-opt the population for the interests of Wall Street and London. “Thumb your nose” at the West, and it doesn’t matter what socioeconomic strategy you employ, you are a “ruthless autocrat” whose days are numbered and whose memory will be immediately defiled upon your passing.
Governments do not adhere to political ideologies, they simply use them when and where profitable. In the US where a corporate-financier oligarchy literally writes the policy for politicians on both sides of the aisle, the use of socialism and “free market” economics is done in tandem to achieve a multitude of goals that would be impossible using only one or the other. While the West itself placates its population with socialism, such policies are condemned when employed contra to their interests, especially when used to galvanize a population against Western advances – as was the case in Chavez’ Venezuela.
In reality, socialism is but a single tool. An entire nation cannot be sustained upon it, no more than an entire house can be built using only a hammer. The true test of a government is not whether it uses socialism or not, but with what other tools it employs it. A nation must seek to build upon socialism’s stop-gaps with sustainable, pragmatic solutions. Outside of Wall Street and London’s international order, many nations are doing just that, but progress is difficult to gauge when the West arrays the summation of its influence and power against such progress.
The general population’s habit of perceiving socialism, capitalism, or any other socioeconomic system as a unifying ideology is folly. The ruling elite, whichever side they stand on, do not see such systems as unifying ideologies, but merely tools. It is time for the general population to look at how these tools are used, and whose hands they are actually in, instead of fixating on the tool itself as being inherently “good” or “bad.”
The story of Chavez and Thaksin illustrates the double standards and hypocrisy hidden in plain sight and casts doubts on narratives proposing anyone using “socialism” is part of a unified global cabal. Such a notion falls flat unless financial and political ties can be documented. In the case of Hugo Chavez and Venezuela, the chasm between his movement and the West’s use of socialism couldn’t be any deeper or wider.
Labels: HUGO CHAVEZ, THAILAND, THAKSIN SHINAWATRA, VENEZUELA
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The Demonization of Chavez by the Western Media: “He Wasted Money on Healthcare When He Could Have Bulit Gigantic Skyscrapers”
By FAIR
Global Research, March 07, 2013
FAIR
By Jim Naureckas
One of the more bizarre takes on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s death comes from Associated Press business reporter Pamela Sampson (3/5/13):
Chavez invested Venezuela’s oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world’s tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in AbuDhabi.
That’s right: Chavez squandered his nation’s oil money on healthcare, education and nutrition when he could have been building the world’s tallest building or his own branch of the Louvre. What kind of monster has priorities like that?
Venezuelan Poverty Rate
Souce: NACLA’s Keane Bhatt
In case you’re curious about what kind of results this kooky agenda had, here’s a chart (NACLA, 10/8/12) based on World Bank poverty stats–showing the proportion of Venezuelans living on less than $2 a day falling from 35 percent to 13 percent over three years. (For comparison purposes, there’s a similar stat for Brazil, which made substantial but less dramatic progress against poverty over the same time period.)
Of course, during this time, the number of Venezuelans living in the world’s tallest building went from 0 percent to 0 percent, while the number of copies of the Mona Lisa remained flat, at none. So you have to say that Chavez’s presidency was overall pretty disappointing–at least by AP‘s standards.
Labels: HUGO CHAVEZ, MEDIA, PROPAGANDA, VENEZUELA
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Chavez was a great leader - KK
By Staff Reporters
Thu 07 Mar. 2013, 14:00 CAT
DR Kenneth Kaunda says late Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez was a great leader. And Dr Kaunda is expected to be honoured with a doctorate degree by Incheon University of South Korea in April this year for his extemporary contribution to Africa.
In an interview yesterday shortly after South Korea's Incheon Metropolitan City vice-mayor, Kim Hyo-Seok, visited his residence, Dr Kaunda said Chavez was a great leader of Venezuela and a good and loving friend to developing countries.
"His greatness was his love for the poor not only in his country but even in developing countries," Dr Kaunda said.
"What he did for Venezuela speaks volumes."
A teary-eyed Dr Kaunda prayed that the people of Venezuela get a chance to elect a "brother" to the late president.
"We hope the good Lord Almighty will guild them towards finding a leader similar in quality, in thought, word with Chavez," added Dr Kaunda.
And Mbita Chitala says Zambia should derive lessons from Chavez's leadership and emulate his resource nationalism policy.
In an interview, Dr Chitala who is Zambia Research Foundation executive director, described Chavez as a rare fearless leader who fought imperialism for the benefit of his nation.
"Chavez was such a fearless leader and there are very few in this world remaining. He showed the Western world that he could use fewer resources to build his country's economy. Zambia with its copper can emulate the resource nationalism policy. The mineral resources can help build this nation if used prudently," said Dr Chitala.
And PF secretary general Wynter Kabimba said Chavez should be remembered for achieving 100 per cent literacy levels among citizens in two years.
"He was a man of the people and a voice for the voiceless. In just two years, Chavez achieved 100 per cent literacy levels for his people. Our wish as PF is that his ideas do not die with him."
Kabimba also hoped that Vice-President Nicolas Maduro would take-over the mantle and lead Venezuela to greater prosperity.
And a member of the Pan Africanist Movement in Zambia says Chavez's death is a great loss to the world's anti-imperialist movement.
Sibanze Simuchoba, a Lusaka-based legal practitioner, said in an interview yesterday that the late Venezuelan leader was an indefatigable fighter for the wretched of the earth and was also a true leader of his people.
"He used his influence and authority in Venezuela and beyond to speak and work for the upliftment of the vulnerable, by taking head-on the imperialist forces whose full-time occupation is exploitation of surrogate states in Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America," Simuchoba said.
"It will be impossible to replace him but we are comforted that he built enough especially in terms of human resources, because there will be another hand stretched out as we speak to take on the baton of standing up to the Yankee imperialist and their admirers."
President Chavez, a stalwart Bolivarian-inclined leader of one the world's major oil producing nations, died on Tuesday at 58 from cancer.
Cuba has declared three days of mourning for who the firebrand leftist leader who succumbed to cancer while Venezuela has decreed seven days of national mourning.
Foreign minister Elias Jaua said international dignitaries would be received tomorrowfor the funeral at the Military Academy of Caracas.
In Cuba, the Revolutionary government declared official mourning from yesterday to today while tomorrow would be the national mourning day.
The Cuban Council of State suspended all public entertainment and festive activities while the national flag would be hoisted at half-mast on public buildings and military establishments.
"With a deep and searing sorrow, our people and the revolutionary government have known of the death of President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias and are preparing to pay a heartfelt and patriotic tribute in his entry into history as a Hero of Our Americas.
We express our sincere condolences to his parents, brothers, his daughters and his son and to all his relatives who are our own, in the same way Chavez is also a son of Cuba and of Latin America and the Caribbean, and the world. In this moment of profound sadness, we share the deepest feelings of solidarity with the fraternal people of Venezuela who we will accompany in every circumstance," reads in part the Cuban government's message read on national television.
Under Chavez, Venezuela became Cuba's lead trading partner and benefactor following the demise of the Soviet Union.
Chavez and Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro were close allies.
The Cuban government stated that Chavez felt in his flesh the difficulties and problems in Cuba and did the best with his extraordinary generosity especially in the most difficult years of the special period (the end of the USSR).
"The Bolivarian Revolution will have our determined and unlimited support in these difficult days," the Cuban government stressed. "We will always remember him as a patriotic military man at the service of Venezuela and the big homeland; as an honest, lucid, audacious and brave revolutionary fighter, as leader and supreme commander who reincarnated Bolivar to do what he couldn't finish; founder of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) and of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. His example will guide us in the next battles."
Vice-President Maduro who announced Chavez's death on Tuesday afternoon (Venezuela time) called on Venezuelans to face the "immensely painful" moment with great fortitude and calmness.
"We have received the toughest and the most tragic information that comandante President Hugo Chavez died today at 4:25 pm," he said. "This is a historical tragedy. Comandate, where are you sir? Thank you, a thousand times. Thank you on behalf of the people that you protected, a people that never failed you. One can only understand and respect the greatest ideals of peace that Hugo Chavez pursued."
Under the Venezuelan constitution, the head of the congress or national assembly, in this case Diosdado Cabello, will assume the interim presidency before the election is held. The election will be held within 30 days.
President Chavez was yet to be sworn-in for the new six-year mandate following his victory on October 7, 2012. Before departure for Cuba for surgery on December 8, Chavez said if he was incapacitated or died, Vice-President Maduro should be elected president of Venezuela.
Chavez was receiving treatment following an operation in Cuba on December 11, 2012. Chavez succumbed to cancer after four surgeries and cycles of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. He first had surgery to remove a cancerous tumour in the pelvic region on June 10, 2011.
And Vice-President Maduro said he had activated a special deployment of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces to guarantee public safety.
"Respect and peace have to go hand in hand in the immense pain of this historic tragedy which has today touched our country," he said. "From this moment on, it is forbidden to weep…let us sing to honour him. Let's sing him songs by Ali Primera Venezuelan poet, musician and political activist.
With Ali's song and the spirit of Hugo Chavez, let us raise the greatest forces of this homeland to confront the challenges ahead of us. Our people can be assured that they have a government of men and women committed to protect them.
Those who die for life cannot be called dead. To those factors who never supported him; respect the pain of the people and we call you to peace as Venezuelan men and women. It is a moment to think about our families, our country… We say respect, respect. Much fortitude and prayer. Honour and glory to Hugo Chavez. May he live forever."
Bolivia President Evo Morales said Chavez was more alive than ever.
"Chavez will always be with us," President Morales said from the Palacio Quemado as broadcast by TeleSur.
Mexico's Enrique Pena Nieto and Peru President Ollanta Humala also paid tribute to Chavez.
"Goodbye commander and friend. My deepest condolences to his family and the people of Venezuela," wrote President Humala.
Labels: HUGO CHAVEZ, KENNETH KAUNDA, LIBERATION
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Chavez warns that Africa and South America Must Unite or face Western Interventions
By Global Research News
Global Research, February 24, 2013
Venezuela Analysis 22 February 2013
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in an open letter has urged countries of the South American and African continents to unite into a “true pole of power”, while railing against recent Western interventions in Africa.
The letter was read out yesterday by Venezuelan foreign minister Elias Jaua to the sixty-three countries at the III Africa – South America Summit (ASA), which is taking place in Equatorial Guinea.
In the letter, Chavez called for “an authentic and permanent link of joint work” between Africa and South America to search for strategies of sustainable development that could benefit both continents.
“It’s in our continents, where enough natural, political and historic resources are found…to save the planet from the chaos it’s been driven towards [by the capitalist system],” he argued.
The Venezuelan president further urged countries of the two continents “not to miss the opportunity…to unite the capacities of our nations into a true pole of power”.
He also wrote that while “in no way do we deny our sovereign relations with Western powers, we must remember that they are not the source of the comprehensive and definitive solution to the problems that our countries share”.
Venezuelan foreign policy during the Chavez presidency has held that greater cooperation between Africa and Latin America is important to the attainment of a “multipolar” world order, to counteract the dominance of the United States and its allies.
Venezuela has been a key nation promoting the ASA Summit initiative, hosting the II ASA Summit in 2009 and taking on the organisation’s secretariat. The first summit was held in Nigeria in 2006.
In his letter Chavez urged that the pace of integration between the two continents be picked up, and argued that priorities for cooperation should be energy, education, agriculture, finance and communications.
He also suggested that Venezuela’s proposals for integration projects be advanced, such as the University of the Peoples of the South, Petrosur, and the Bank of the South. Trade between the two regions has increased from US $7.2 billion in 2002 to $39.4 billion in 2011, Telesur reports.
Representatives of other South American countries also argued for the need to increase cooperation with Africa. Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño said that sometimes it had been difficult for the two regions to reach agreements.
He said that this was because “we don’t know each other well, we don’t have experience of joint work…there’s so much we can offer each other, and not only in terms of commerce”. The minister argued that the historic lack of cooperation between the two continents was rooted in the legacy of colonialism by European powers.
Chavez claimed in his letter that modern-day intervention by Western powers had interrupted the path of joint work between Africa and South America set by the ASA summit in 2009.
Referring to Western interventions in Libya and Mali, among others, Chavez wrote, “It’s not by luck or chance…[that] since the Summit in Margarita (Venezuela) the African continent has been the victim of multiple interventions and attacks by Western powers”.
The Venezuelan president argued that one of the objectives of these interventions had been to put a brake on the consolidation of African unity, in turn slowing cooperation between Africa and South America.
As such, Chavez repeated Venezuela’s “total rejection of all interventionist activity by NATO” in Africa and around the world.
The summit continues, with president of Bolivia Evo Morales and summit host and president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang, making speeches today.
Health update
The Venezuelan government released another update on Chavez’s health yesterday as he is recovering from a cancer operation undergone last December.
The official statement informed that “[Chavez’s] respiratory insufficiency, emerging in the course of the post operatory phase, persists and its tendency has not been favourable, due to which it continues to be treated”.
“However, medical treatment for the base illness [cancer] continues, without presenting any significant adverse effects up to now,” the statement added.
Chavez returned to Venezuelan on Monday after spending over two months in Cuba recovering from his operation. He will continue to receive treatment at the Dr. Carlos Arvelo military hospital in Caracas.
Labels: HUGO CHAVEZ, PANAFRICANISM, VENEZUELA
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Are the Venezuelan People’s Gains `Solely Because of Oil’?
By Paul Kellogg
Global Research, November 30, 2012
While most eyes in North America have been on the presidential election in the United States, for people in the South another election last month was actually of more interest. In the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, incumbent president Hugo Chávez was up against a strong challenge, from a – for once – united opposition. Gwynne Dyer (2012) was not alone when he speculated, days before the vote, that this could be “Hugo Chávez’s swan song”.
However, when the vote came, it wasn’t really close, Chávez winning a third term as president with 55.08% of the vote, far ahead of the 44.3% obtained by his challenger Henrique Capriles Radonski (CNE 2012). Neither candidate in that other presidential election in the Americas can even dream about this kind of a victory margin.
There was good reason for huge interest “South of the Border” in the results of the election. The Chávez presidency has been at the centre of an assertion of sovereignty in Latin America and the Caribbean, an assertion of sovereignty that has put up a wall against economic, political and military encroachments by the Global North. To take one example from each of the spheres of economics, politics and the military, this wall of resistance has seen:
1. the 2005 collapse of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), scheduled to be implemented that year, but which is now completely moribund;
2. the 2009 decision by the Organization of American States (OAS) to end its exclusion of Cuba from the organization (OAS 2012);
3. the 2009 suspension of Honduras from OAS membership because of a right-wing coup against President José Manuel Zelaya (OAS 2010).
None of these would have been conceivable just a few years previous. The fact of a growing group of states willing to defy the U.S. is a huge change from the 1990s. None of it would have been possible without the accession to office by Chávez in 1999, the first government in some years in the region (except for, of course, the one in Cuba) to openly oppose U.S. hegemony.
The accomplishments of the Chávez presidency are almost always minimized in the Global North press. Dyer is typical, acknowledging that “Chávez’s rule has benefited the poor in many ways” but saying that this is solely because of oil. Chávez, he says, “has enjoyed the advantages of big oil exports and a tenfold increase in the world oil price” so that “almost all the growth in Venezuela’s economy since Chávez took power is due to higher oil prices” (Dyer 2012).
This is quite misleading. Alberta in Canada has oil, and is one of the most developed areas of the world. By contrast, Nigeria in Africa has oil, and is mired in deep, debilitating poverty and underdevelopment. Using a resource like oil for national development, or alleviating poverty, is not an inevitable question, but a political question, and the situation Chávez inherited when he took office in 1999 was politically retrograde.
Since 1976, oil extraction, refining and distribution in Venezuela, has been under the umbrella of a state-owned oil corporation, Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). But PDVSA did not operate in the interests of either the Venezuelan economy or the Venezuelan poor. It was, in effect, a front for Global North oil corporations, which maintained most of their privileges, paying exceedingly low royalties and taxes. In the Orinoco tar sands area, for instance, “the PDVSA capped the royalties to be paid by these projects at 1 percent” (McNew 2008, 153). An elite in PDVSA and the Venezuelan government became wealthy, but the economy remained in bad shape, poverty grew, and the oil wealth flowed out of the country.
Changing this situation proved extraordinarily difficult. In 2006 Chávez would call his plan for the oil industry “Full Sovereignty Over Oil” with the aim of gaining majority control of the 32 joint ventures with foreign companies, raising income taxes to 50% and increasing “royalties payable to the government from as low as 1 percent to 33 percent” (Carreño 2006; Collier 2006; McNew 2008; O’Grady 2005). In 2000, the objectives were much more modest. In November 2001, he passed the Hydrocarbons Law, whose key provision was to introduce royalties on a sliding scale from 20% to 30%.
The source for the details about the Hydrocarbons Law is an otherwise dry as dust publication called “The Oil Daily”. Interestingly, in the same issue of that publication, the authors highlight another aspect of the Chávez reforms that they consider problematic. “Also controversial is new land reform legislation that allows the expropriation of areas deemed unproductive by the government” (The Oil Daily 2011). There is a fascinating consistency to these spokespeople for big business, concerned to protect the interests of Global North corporate profits, and the Global South privileged, landed elite.
It was this modest attempt to push back against the privileges of the oil industry, which provoked the social crises of 2002 and 2003. The corruption in Venezuelan society was not limited to the corporations. The leaders of the main trade union central, the Workers’ Confederation of Venezuela (CTV) – including its most important section, the oil workers of Fedepetro – joined with the main bosses’ organization, Fedecamaras, to oppose Chávez. This perverse united front of privileged managers and corrupt union leaders, bent every effort to roll back the reforms.
The highlights of this struggle are well known. April 2002, there was an attempted coup against Chávez, stopped by massive mobilization of the poorest sections of Caracas, and a split in the armed forces. In the winter of 2002-2003, there was a strike (really a lockout) centred in the oil industry which brought the economy to its knees. This was only ended when the blue-collar workers who supported Chávez, pushed aside the white-collar workers who supported the opposition, and began to restart production. In the end, 18,000 PDVSA employees – half of the PDVSA workforce, but fully “90 percent of PDVSA’s white-collar workforce” were dismissed (Collier 2006; Clough 2008).
It is only after this massive social upheaval lasting almost two years, that Chávez was able to assert the very basic right to increase royalties on oil production in the country. The point is, there is nothing automatic about being able to direct profits from the extractive industries towards national economic development, let alone social assistance for the poor. There were very serious class forces opposed to these steps being taken, and two years of intense class struggle before these very modest reforms could be implemented.
None of this history matters for commentators like Dyer. He berates Chávez for overseeing a rate of economic growth that has been slower than in Brazil or Colombia. Of course economic growth in Venezuela has been slower. First, Brazil is the biggest economy on the South American continent, with a domestic market many times the size of that in Venezuela. Second, Colombia’s growth has been as a virtual client state of the U.S., and the price of its growth has been the displacement of millions from their land, and the death of thousands at the hands of right-wing death squads. Third, while Venezuela was able to assert control over oil by 2003, the oil industry in the country has never fully recovered from the loss of the 18,000 white-collar professionals. It is absolutely understandable why they were fired – their alliance with the bosses’ federation pushed the country to the brink of chaos. But the modern oil industry is extraordinarily complex, and their skill and expertise has yet to be replaced in the oil fields and refineries.
Veteran Latin American Commentator Mike Gonzalez in his analysis of the election, identifies some real problems in contemporary Venezuela. “[W]hoever travels to Venezuela with open eyes cannot fail to notice the conspicuous consumption of the bourgeoisie with its shopping centres, restaurants, the permanently guarded houses and estates, and the fourwheel drives with tinted windows that speed through the streets” (González 2012). He is right. There is a new elite developing around the state apparatus. The privileges of the old elite are still remarkably intact.
But Gonzalez makes his critique less persuasive by offering a confusing assessment of the election results. “Although official spokespeople of the government insist that the vote for Chávez grew, in reality, despite a large campaign backed up by immense resources, the vote he received was much lower than any since 1998” (González 2012).
In fact, the exact opposite is true. This is not the lowest vote total for Chávez since 1998. It is his highest vote total ever. The chart on this page makes this very clear. It shows the total votes counted in the last three presidential elections, the total vote for Chávez, and the total vote for his chief opposition candidate (CNE 2006; CNE 2012; IFES 1998).
There are several remarkable aspects to this chart. First – voter participation has exploded. The total votes cast in 1998 were just under 7 million. This jumped to almost 12 million in 2006 and more than 15 million in 2012. More than twice as many people cast ballots in 2012 compared to 1998.
This can only partly be accounted for by population increase. The other key factor has been the increase in overall participation. In 1998 63.76% of the eligible population cast a ballot. In 2006 that figure jumped to 74.69%. This year it reached the astonishing figure of 80.52%. These levels of voter participation are higher than in Canada, and far higher than in the United States. Perhaps we need editorials in the Globe and Mail and the New York Times, bemoaning the lack of democracy in the Global North, and praising Venezuela for high levels of citizen involvement in elections.
Then look at the vote totals for Chávez. He was first elected, in 1998, with 3.7 million votes. He almost doubled this in 2006, to a total of 7.3 million. This year he received almost 8.2 million votes, an increase of more than 800,000 from the total of 2006.
The 2012 elections did see a narrower margin of victory for Chávez, in the context of a massive voter turnout. Clearly what was going on was a serious mobilization by the right wing to oust Chávez. That his vote increased in the face of this tidal wave of right wing organizing, is impressive.
It was the fact of this right wing surge which shaped political attitudes in Venezuela. The only position to take in the 2012 election, with whatever criticisms, was to support Chávez, something that, as Jeffrey Webber points out, “was recognized by close to the entirety of the Venezuelan left over the last several months, including those sectors especially critical of the limits to the political economic program of the government and the lingering influence of an important conservative bureaucratic layer within the ruling party” (Webber 2012).
Outside of Venezuela, we face a different challenge. Chávez’ great crime in the eyes of the leaders of the United States, Britain and Canada, is that he has presided over a movement which has restricted their ability to drain oil profits out of the country, a movement which has instead diverted those profits towards social programs. As a result, the transnational oil companies, and the Global North governments will be only too ready to support any mobilization of the right-wing against Chávez, and we have to be ready to do our bit to oppose them, if and when they embark upon such a course of action.
References
Carreño, Rafael Ramírez. 2006. “Full Sovereignty Over Oil.” Sitio Web PDVSA.
Clough, Langdon D. 2008. “Energy Profile of Venezuela.” The Encyclopedia of Earth.
CNE. 2006. “Elección Presidencial – 3 De Diciembre De 2006.” Poder Electoral.
———. 2012. “Divulgación Elección Presidencial – 07 De Octubre De 2012.” Poder Electoral.
Collier, Robert. 2006. “Chavez Drives a Hard Bargain, but Big Oil’s Options Are Limited.” San Francisco Chronicle, September 24.
Dyer, Gwynne. 2012. “Hugo Chavez’s Swan Song in Venezuela?: He Could Lose; He Could Die. But What He Has Built Will Survive Him.” The Spectator, October 2.
González, Mike. 2012. “Venezuela: El Chavismo Contra Un Candidato No Tan Nuevo.” En Lucha, October.
IFES. 1998. “Election Profile for Venezuela – Results.” Election Guide.
McNew, B. Seth. 2008. “Full Sovereignty over Oil: A Discussion of Venezuelan Oil Policy and Possible Consequences of Recent Changes.” Law and Business Review of the Americas 14: 149–158.
O’Grady, Mary Anastasia. 2005. “Americas: Oil Wells Refuse to Obey Chavez Commands.” Wall Street Journal, May 20, sec. A.
OAS. 2010. “Member States.” OAS – Organization of American States: Democracy for Peace, Security, and Development.
———. 2012. “Member States.” OAS – Organization of American States: Democracy for Peace, Security, and Development.
The Oil Daily. 2011. “Venezuelan Strike Poses Big Challenge.” The Oil Daily, December 10.
Webber, Jeffrey R. 2012. “Latest Step in a Long Road: The Venezuelan Elections.” The Bullet, October 12.
Labels: HUGO CHAVEZ, VENEZUELA
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Exxon 'loses' Venezuela nationalisation case
World's biggest oil company receives ten per cent of what it demanded in a dispute over the planet's "largest" deposit.
Chris Arsenault Last Modified: 06 Jan 2012 15:08
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has taken a tough line with multinational oil companies [GALLO/GETTY]Hugo Chavez must be smiling.
In the latest showdown between western oil companies and Venezuela’s populist president, Exxon Mobil is widely seen as the loser, after the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) ruled that the world’s biggest oil company would not be entitled to most of the damages it demanded after its fields were nationalised.
"The ICC only awarded Exxon ten per cent of what they wanted," Chavez said recently. "You can make your own conclusions."
Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state oil company, said on January 2 it would pay Exxon Mobile $255m, after accounting for money frozen in a New York bank account and outstanding debts.
"Exxon has been granted the value of its [initial] investment, but not the value of the project today," Chris Nelder, an independent energy analyst, told Al Jazeera. The company had demanded as much as $12bn, citing potential lost future profits and other concerns, after the nationalisation of its Venezuelan heavy oil assets in the Orinoco belt in 2007.
"This is a victory against a corporation that tried to abuse Venezuelan law," said Eva Golinger, a lawyer and author of The Chavez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela. "The Venezuelan government had originally offered $1bn for the nationalisation and now they end up only having to pay $255m."
After four years of arbitration at the ICC, Exxon still has another case pending against Venezuela at the World Bank-affiliated International Centre for Settlement and Investment Disputes.
"The Orinoco is incredible - it is the largest volumne of oil on the planet. "
- Steve Levine, Georgetown University
'Sending a signal'
"Traditionally, Exxon is very litigious," Steve LeVine, professor of energy security at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera. "This whole exercise is about Exxon sending a signal around the world to anyone who would attempt to mess with their contracts."
After refusing to obey Venezuela’s new petroleum laws in 2007, under which foreign companies would have to become minority partners with PDVSA, Exxon and ConocoPhillips, another US firm, pulled out of the country entirely.
Exxon spokesman Patrick McGinn told the Associated Press that the arbitration award "represents recovery on a limited, contractual liability of PDVSA".
Talk of foreign companies cancelling Venezuelan oil projects abounds in some business circles. But aside from Exxon and ConocoPhillips, western multinationals have stayed, perhaps because the stakes of leaving are so high.
"ChevronTexaco is still there. European oil companies are there from Italy and France; the Russians, Chinese, Indians and Brazilians are there," Golinger told Al Jazeera. "Foreign companies shouldn’t try to use their political and economic power to undermine local laws."
Biggest deposits 'ever assessed'
Venezuela’s Orinoco belt, containing an estimated 513bn barrels of technically recoverable heavy oil, is "the largest accumulation ever assessed" by the US Geological Survey. Until recently, the oil was not counted in reserve figures, because it was too expensive to extract. New technologies, rising oil prices and dwindling conventional reserves have changed the game.
"The Orinoco is incredible - it is the largest volume of oil on the planet," Professor Levine said. "The cost of producing it is huge, but the volume is bigger than Saudi Arabia's."
Venezuela celebrates 200 years of independence
Unlike Saudi’s proven reserves of 260bn barrels of light sweet crude, heavy oil in the Orinoco is expensive, difficult to refine and environmentally harmful to extract. This type of oil is either mined, or separated from earth by injecting steam deep into the ground in a process called insitu. Most experts believe that Venezuela does not have the technology to profitably extract and refine this heavy crude alone. Extracting heavy oil from tar sands deposits causes up to three times more greenhouse gas emmissions than conventional crude, while polluting huge amounts of water. Environmentalists believe these despoits should be left in the ground, as fears of global warming intensify.
Despite this recent victory, PDVSA is facing some trouble. Under Chavez, the energy giant has undertaken ambitious social spending, running subsidised food distribution programmes and international aid projects as if it were a state unto itself.
Critics say oil companies should not be delivering government services. And the money used for "Bolivarian" projects means the corporation has less to invest in developing new reserves; production has dropped from about 3.3m barrels per day in 1998 to about 2.25m in 2011, The Economist reported.
After subsidised gasoline for locals and cheap oil sent to Venezuelan allies - such as Cuba - is figured into the mix, the firm only exports about 1.25m barrels per day at regular market prices.
"Chavez did bring in social programmes to reduce inequality," Amy Jaffe, director of energy research at Rice University’s Baker Institute, told Al Jazeera. "But he did so in a way that damaged the future of the oil industry in Venezuela. Is it really in people’s interest to have production cut in half or worse?
"Is it better to have 60 per cent of a lot or 100 per cent of a little? Sometimes people get so hell-bent on the ideology of getting 100 per cent that they lose the baby with the bathwater."
Under Chavez, PDVSA may not be a perfect model for corporate governance. Chavez’s vocal critics, however, tend to compare current problems at PDVSA with a barometer such as Norway’s Statoil, rather than PDVSA in the pre-Chavez era.
"Prior to the Chavez administration, there were governments in place getting kick-backs from these [international oil] agreements; they didn't care if companies obeyed the law," Golinger, a vocal supporter of Chavez, said. Corruption, and the selective enforcing of local laws, has also been a major problem for Chavez's government, according to critics and former government officials.
Poverty reduction
Like many of its South American neighbours, Venezuela has drastically reduced poverty in the past decade; the Bolivarian Republic’s poverty rate fell from 48.6 per cent in 2002 to 27.8 per cent in 2010, according to the UN Commission for Latin America's 2011 report. Inequality also declined sharply. This progress is linked to tough negotiations with foreign oil companies, so the state can have more resources to invest in local communities, Chavez’s supporters contend.
"If we [the world] really were running out of oil, people might have to kiss the ring in Venezuela. That is not the reality we are facing."
- Amy Jaffe, Rice University
Away from the medical clinics funded by oil wealth in poor Venezuelan neighbourhoods, or the stores selling subsidised food, the Exxon case symbolises something larger happening on international energy markets.
"The big picture is that the vast majority of the world’s remaining [conventional] oil resources are not accessible to the western oil majors," Nelder, the independent analyst, said. "The easy to access oil, the stuff in the western hemisphere, has been declining. Those with the resources try to drive the hardest bargain possible."
Other analysts aren't so sure. Concerns over peak oil - the idea that demand will rapidly outstrip supply in the near future - may seem to have been exaggerated, they contend, especially as new, unconventional sources come onto the market.
"Instead of staying in Venezuela, Exxon invested in shale gas in the US and the Canadian oil sands," Jaffe said. "People are now making a fortune drilling in the US. There will be one million barrels a day coming from North Dakota, Ohio is going to have oil. If we [the world] really were running out of oil, people might have to kiss the ring in Venezuela. That is not the reality we are facing."
But with prices rising from around $12 a barrel in 1998 to $100 today, markets view oil scarcity as a growing reality, which helps Venezuelan exporters demand more from companies, even with new supplies coming online.
"Oil is sort of like cocaine," Levine said. "Supply creates demand." If the professor is correct, then international consumers are going to be demanding crude from massive Orinoco reserves for generations to come. In this context, driving a hard bargain doesn't sound like such a bad idea.
Follow Chris Arsenault on Twitter: @AJEchris
Labels: EXXON MOBIL, HUGO CHAVEZ
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The Destabilization of Venezuela? Applying Washington's “Benghazi Formula”
US Nuclear-Powered Submarine in Venezuelan territorial waters
by Nil Nikandrov
Global Research, November 14, 2011
On November 10, H. Chavez called Contragolpe host Vanessa Davies in the middle of the show to break the news that a US nuclear-powered submarine had been spotted in the country's territorial waters. According to Chavez's on-air account, an “unidentified” and “large-size” submarine appeared on the radars of the Venezuelan submarine fleet which was conducting regular exercise, but, being an extremely fast-moving vehicle, easily escaped the Venezuelan boats that took to trailing it. Chavez stressed that the Venezuelan navy responded to the provocation with due restraint and did not open fire during the incident.
As a matter of fact, this was not the first US submarine invasion of Venezuela's territorial waters on record. In April 2002, on the eve of an attempted anti-Chavez coup, US Defense Intelligence Agency operatives were supposed to hold a coordination meeting with the perpetrators aboard a US submarine. In September 2005, the USS Virginia, a US attack submarine, left the Naval Submarine Base in Groton, CT, for a 70—day reconnaissance raid in the Caribbean Sea. The Virginia and other US submarines are known to have paid a number of uninvited visits to Venezuela's territorial waters since the time.
Evidently, the objectives behind the US Navy's missions were to explore the region of a potential military campaign and to polish the plans for suppressing the Venezuelan armed forces' resistance, carrying out landing operations, dropping off sabotage groups, and supplying arms to anti-Chavez insurgents. The US Navy also likely made on-site efforts to refine the tactic of disrupting Venezuelan oil supplies to Cuba and other countries. Venezuelan security experts suspect that US undersea operations included bugging the Venezuela-Cuba fiber-optics line which came on-line in February, 2011. Cuba's getting hooked up to global communications network angers Washington which, for example, disallowed the construction of a Florida-Cuba fiber-optics link on the grounds that it constituted a breach of the anti-Castro embargo.
The de facto demonstrative tours of the Venezuelan territorial waters by “unidentified” subs reflect a wider US strategy aimed at undermining Chavez's regime. Considering the extensive deployment of US aircraft and naval bases across the region, the plan has a key military dimension. Citing the drug-trafficking problem, Washington grabbed practically full control over the armed forces of its allies – Columbia, Guatemala, and Honduras – and planted on the Caribbean islands of Curaçao, Aruba, and Bonaire airbases which clearly pose a threat to Venezuela. The bases are also used to permanently monitor cargo transit via Venezuelan seaports and the Orinoco River.
Washington's hopes to displace Chavez by peaceful means may still be alive but are purely illusory. At the moment polls give the Venezuelan leader 62% in the October 7, 2012 presidential election, with no close challengers in sight. Former US envoy to the Organization of American States and Venezuelan regime's staunch opponent Roger Noriega, as a result, has to maintain that Chavez's current health problems leave him at most six months. Noriega calls the US to make serious arrangements for “the period of turbulence” which, according to his projections, awaits in the foreseeable future the country supplying 10% of the US oil demand. Noriega contributed a piece to the InterAmerican Security Watch urging the US Department of State to set up a work group of representatives from the Western Hemisphere countries in order to prevent the confrontation between Chavez's supporters and foes from escalating into chaos in Venezuela. From the perspective of Noriega and his camp, a US intervention in Venezuela would be a welcome act of propping up democracy and not letting Chavists retain the grip on power in the country.
A faction of Venezuelan watchers warn that Washington, emboldened by the absence of any limitations in international politics over the years of the “war on terror”, can already in the early 2012 take radical steps to destabilize Venezuela in line with the “Benghazi formula”… Like Benghazi in Libya recently, Maracaibo, the main city of Venezuela's state of Zulia, appears to be the likeliest candidate for the role of an epicenter of mass unrest. Throughout the populist epoch, Zulia remained the radical opposition's political stronghold, with the US embassy in Caracas coordinating and unnanouncedly supporting materially the activities of the regional leaders. Former Zulia governor Manuel Rosales competed against Chavez in the 2006 presidential race and later fled Venezuela amidst corruption charges. Zulia's present governor Pablo Pérez is an aspiring Venezuelan opposition leader and as such intends to rival Chavez in the 2012 election, but clearly lacks the charisma and reputation that could take him anywhere in the race. Ample evidence of Pérez's substance abuse being available on YouTube, the only reason why he emerged as the US intelligence community's bet is that the kind of character will under no circumstances defy his patrons' control. Pérez will no doubt do his best to feed to TV channels worldwide footage of Chavez's forces' alleged atrocities or let a mix of violence-prone urban lows, corrupt police forces, and Columbian paramilitary group members enter the stage. Then “the insurgents” would predictably take to self-organization, devise a transition government, confront Chavez with an ultimatum, and beg the US for help.
The world's tolerance to the US aggression against Libya created a situation whereby any country sitting on considerable energy resources – Syria, Iran, or Venezuela - became a potential target. Indications of US preparations for an aggression against Venezuela are multiplying. US SouthCom is massively enrolling students in Spanish-language programs emphasizing specifically Venezuelan aspects of the Spanish spoken in Venezuela. Graduates of the programs dressed in Venezuelan army uniforms would possibly be pulling off provocations when Chavez's regime comes under fire. Incidents of this type have been reported previously – in 2004 a Columbian group of some 100 people moved into the Daktari estate near Caracas, the plan being to attack Palacio de Miraflores, the official presidential residence, in the guise of rebel Venezuelan army servicemen.
A Frente Internacionalista Bolivariano analytical paper on the provocations involving US nuclear-powered submarines listed Washington's hypothetic moves for the nearest future. Those include a boosted anti-Chavez propaganda campaign built around the human rights and freedoms theme plus media allegations of an imminent regional conflict that would be blamed on Venezuela, with mythical threat used as a pretext for a US military intervention. In the wake of the above, US special forces instructors and intelligence operatives would infiltrate Venezuela to help strengthen the opposition's paramilitary formations and secure contacts with an opposition coalition patterned on that in Libya. The fifth column would focus on exterminating Chavez's loyalists in the army command and, in anticipation of US air raids, sabotaging the Venezuelan air defense infrastructures.
The Venezuelan leadership is making maximal efforts to prevent the aggression. Currently UNASUR – the Union of South American Nations – is equipped with its own defense council. Brazil's military planners are no doubt mindful of the growing activity of the US Fourth Fleet and the maneuvers performed by US nuclear-powered submarines in the Atlantic Ocean. It is an easy guess that, on top of keeping the populist regimes at gunpoint, the Pentagon is keenly interested in the offshore energy resources in the proximity of the state of Rio de Janeiro and in the Espiritu Santo marine shelf deposits which, according to Petrobras, total 35 billion barrels of crude.
Therefore, Venezuela can count on the backing from its allies across the continent. Recently, Venezuelan defense minister Carlos Mata Figueroa attended a regular conference of the South American Defense Council, with establishing a zone of peace across the continent featuring on the agenda.
Recently the Venezuelan parliament instructed the country's defense agency to open a probe into the recent submarine invasion. Adm. Diego Molero announced synchronously that Venezuela's navy would hold a round of exercises meant to ensure better protection of the national territorial waters, one of the objectives being to improve coordination between the Venezuelan submarine fleet and drones in the hunt for intruders.
Nil Nikandrov is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Nil Nikandrov
Labels: HUGO CHAVEZ, NEOCOLONIALISM, VENEZUELA
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Chavez: "UNASUR is our Armour against Barbarism"
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By Agencia Venezolana de Noticias (AVN)
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez exhorted all South American countries to consolidate the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) to protect the region from situations like that of Libya, whose government was overthrown by NATO’s actions that killed its leader Muammar Gaddafi last week.
“UNASUR is a wonderful opportunity we have today to consolidate South America as a zone of democratic peace…that is our armour against barbarism…it is the most reliable guarantee that providence can give us so that we can assure the continuity of our republics and South American independence,” said Chávez after a meeting held on Wednesday in Caracas with the Secretary General of the regional organisation, María Enma Mejía.
On this issue, Chávez and Mejía declared that in the coming months the defence ministers of the 12 member countries of UNASUR will gather in Lima, Peru to continue shaping and organising the statutes of the organisations’ South American Defence Council.
Yesterday Venezuela became the sixth country to ratify the Additional Protocol to the Constitutive Treaty of UNASUR, which outlines the organisation’s commitment to democratic principles.
The Protocol describes joint measures which can be taken by UNASUR member states in the event of a “threat or rupture to democratic order, a violation of constitutional order, or any situation which puts in risk the legitimate exercise of power”.
These measures include suspending participation of a UNASUR member state in the organisation, closing of borders, limiting economic exchange, and diplomatic pressure to promote the reestablishment of a democratic government.
Mejía added that the organisations’ working-councils, comprising representatives of UNASUR member states, will be gathering over the coming months to give reports in December concerning topics of common interest. These include energy, defence, infrastructure and planning, education, drug trafficking, social development and financial integration.
UNASUR was formed in 2008 by 12 member states: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Surinam, Uruguay, and Venezuela, and has become a key mechanism of regional integration in South America.
The organisation also became accepted an official observer to the United Nations (UN) yesterday, pending a general assembly resolution in November.
Libya - OPEC
Chávez affirmed it is still too soon to establish the position of Venezuela in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) regarding the events in Libya, which is an OPEC member country that will have a representative for making decisions regarding the production quotes and prices of oil.
“What we can say is that NATO has installed a government in Libya by using bombs and killing the president. The casualties are estimated at 50 thousand deaths, a real massacre has happened there,” he stated.
The Venezuelan president labelled the NATO’s bombings over Libya as something that "can only be compared to the genocide against our indigenous peoples when the Spaniards arrived here, but now it is worst because they have aeroplanes and bombs, it is technological advance in the service of barbarism, (…) I never thought I would see something like this, but we are seeing it and some people celebrate it”.
In regard to those Venezuelans that celebrate what happened in the African country, Chávez said: “Here in Venezuela, there are crazy people saying that Chávez will have the same end as Gaddafi and that NATO will come here to save us. What craziness! Fortunately, they are a small group, but that little group has newspapers and TV stations for their purposes.”
Edited by Venezuelanalysis.com
Labels: HUGO CHAVEZ, NEOCOLONIALISM, UNASUR, VENEZUELA
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