Venezuela medics march over jobs

[IndianaGreen]

Looks like the Venezuelan version of the AMA is upset at the free medical care being provided by Cuban doctors and nurses. Hmmm, perhaps we can implement a similar program in the USA.

Last Updated: Friday, 15 July, 2005, 22:27 GMT 23:27 UK

Venezuela medics march over jobs

Hundreds of Venezuelan doctors have marched through the country's capital, Caracas, demanding the expulsion of Cuban doctors.

President Hugo Chavez says he invited the medical staff into the country to provide free health care for the poor.

But Venezuela's doctors, who are also asking for better wages, say the Cubans are taking their jobs.

They say the government is trading its oil revenues to pay for some 20,000 Cuban doctors and dentists.

Dressed in white medical gowns and bearing national flags, some 400 doctors and medical staff carried banners reading 'No More Cubanisation!' as they marched.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4688117.stm

[magellan]

1. Poor people are being helped and these doctors are upset?

Sounds like they deserve to be replaced.

[jmcon007]

2. I've done a little research on this. Venezuela is at the top of Bush's

"wanting to go to war with" list, because Chavez has extra oil revenues for a reason that has pissed off Exxon-Mobile.
Chavez, duly elected President, raised the royalty fee that poor Exxon-Mobile was paying for Venezuelan oil from 1% to 26% so that he could provide food and medical care for the poorest and also to work on infrastructure.
Bush has been saber rattling ever since.

A side bar: Bush instigated a coop against Chavez in 2002 and it was successful for a couple of days, but Chavez was re-installed as President when the people showed they didn't like it.
In fairness, it has never been proven conclusively that Bush was behind it, but the facts surrounding it speak for themselves.

[jmcon007]

3. PS

Bush really hates it that Chavez is selling and/or trading oil to Cuba for the doctors.
If there are no treaties barring such a thing, it's none of our damned business.

[TheFarseer]

4. See, in a real country they march about jobs

in this country we march to restrict a woman's medical desicions. It's too bad we can't all be poor in this country for just one day so we would know what is a priority and what is not.

[wli]

5. people march about jobs here, too

You just don't see much of it because the marchers are arrested en masse and locked up in Guantanamo-like detention camps that have recently sprung up all over the country.

[Judi Lynn]

6. People are being deliberately misled on this issue.

It's easy to do ONLY when the public can't get truthful information from its own press, and individual citizens won't take the initiative to do research.

The practise of selling oil to other countries at preferential prices has been effect in Venezuela from 1980, well BEFORE Hugo Chavez was elected as Venezuela's President.

Right now, Venezuela has around 11 or 12 countries involved in an arrangement which allows them reduced rates for oil. They are Caribbean and Central American countries which are poor and need assistance. I've heard this assistance explained as being necessary for the health of this area of the Americas, since the poor countries couldn't function well at all without it.

There are two programs which have been used: the San Jose Accord, and the Caracas Accord. Here's a look at the San Jose Accord:

Venezuela Insists on Cuba's Admission to San Jose Pact
By Luis Cordova, IPS, 6 August 1999
CARACAS, Aug 6 (IPS) - Venezuela will continue to insist that Mexico agree to allow Cuba and other nations to join the San Jose Pact, through which the two countries sell oil to 11 Central American and Caribbean nations under preferential conditions.

The Pact was officially renewed by presidents Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela Thursday, without any of the changes suggested by Caracas.

Venezuela has proposed to Mexico the expansion of the accord to other Caribbean nations, including Cuba, Deputy Minister of Foreign Relations Jorge Valero said Friday. But Mexico raised objections to the inclusion of Cuba.

He clarified, however, that the question had already been discussed and agreed, and that there was no dispute with respect to the contents of the accord.

Mexico's objections involve the financing possibilities contemplated by the Pact and the mechanism for supplying crude oil to Cuba.

The Venezuelan government will continue insisting on the expediency and possibility of expanding the Pact to other countries, including Cuba, when it is renewed again in August 2000.

On Jul 6, Chavez announced his proposal to expand the Pact to other nations, including Cuba, because it is part of the Caribbean.

The San Jose Pact, or Programme of Energy Cooperation with the Countries of Central America and the Caribbean, has been in effect since 1980, and Mexico and Venezuela have renewed it every year in early August.

Venezuela and Mexico make a decisive and non-rhetorical contribution to development and the progress of sister nations, said Valero, who stressed the significance of the act of renewal and the positive results obtained by means of the Pact so far.

Under the terms of the agreement, Mexico and Venezuela sell 160,000 barrels a day, divided in equal parts, to Barbados, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama and the Dominican Republic.

The 11 countries enjoy preferential payment facilities, as well as the possibility of recuperating up to 20 percent of what they spend on oil through the Pact in the form of long-term loans for development projects. The credits, meanwhile, benefit suppliers of goods and services in Mexico and Venezuela.
(snip/...)

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/40/154.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A little light on the subject goes a long, long way! The Venezuelan doctors' theatrical show is deliberate misinformation.

Where were these doctors all these years while the poor of Venezuela have languished in shameful, crushing helplessness, with NO ONE TO TURN TO? They are DISGUSTING.





More photos: http://www.salonchingon.com/exhibits/caracas2004/index2.html

[jmcon007]

7. and again...

Bush was pissed off because Exxon Mobile was pissed off. He doesn't need to know facts.

[tkmorris]

15. Judi Lynn that was great

Thanks for posting the link to that photo essay, that really brings the story of the Venezuelan poor home to me. I am sending that one around.

[jmcon007]

8. Chavez leads the way....

Chávez leads the way

In using oil wealth to help the poor, Venezuela's leader is an example to Latin America

Richard Gott in Caracas
Monday May 30, 2005
The Guardian

A muddy path leads off the airport motorway into one of the small impoverished villages that perch on the hills above Caracas, a permanent reminder of the immense gulf between rich and poor that characterises oil-rich Venezuela. Only 20 minutes from the heart of the capital city a tiny community of 500 families lives in makeshift dwellings with tin roofs and rough breeze-block walls. They have water and electricity and television, but not much else. The old school buildings have collapsed into ruin, and no children have received lessons over the past two years.


Two Cuban doctors are established in a temporary surgery here on the main track. They point out that preventative medicine is difficult to practise in a zone where the old clay sewer pipes are cracked and useless, leaving the effluent to flow unchecked down the hillside. The older inhabitants have been here for years; they first came from the country to take root on these steep hillsides in the 1960s. Many are morose and despairing, unable to imagine that their lives could ever change.
Others are more motivated and upbeat, and have enrolled in the ranks of the Bolivarian revolution of President Hugo Chávez. They expect great things from this government, and are mobilised to demand that official attention be focused on their village. If their petition to the mayor to repair their school and sewer pipes does not get answered soon, they will descend from their mountain eyrie to block the motorway, as they once did before during the attempted coup d'état of April 2002.
Hundreds of similar shanty towns surround Caracas, and many have already begun to turn the corner. In some places, the doctors brought in from Cuba are working in newly built premises, providing eye treatment and dentistry as well as medicines. Nearly 20,000 doctors are now spread around this country of 25 million people. New supermarkets have sprung up where food, much of it home-produced, is available at subsidised prices. Classrooms have been built where school dropouts are corralled back into study. Yet it is good to start with the difficulties faced by the motorway village, since its plight serves to emphasise how long and difficult is the road ahead. "Making poverty history" in Venezuela is not a simple matter of making money available; it involves a revolutionary process of destroying ancient institutions that stand in the way of progress, and creating new ones responsive to popular demands.
Something amazing has been taking place in Latin America in recent years that deserves wider attention than the continent has been accustomed to attract. The chrysalis of the Venezuelan revolution led by Chávez, often attacked and derided as the incoherent vision of an authoritarian leader, has finally emerged as a resplendent butterfly whose image and example will radiate for decades to come.
Most of the reports about this revolution over the past six years, at home and abroad, have been uniquely hostile, heavily influenced by politicians and journalists associated with the opposition. It is as if news of the French or the Russian revolutions had been supplied solely by the courtiers of the king and the tsar. These criticisms have been echoed by senior US figures, from the president downwards, creating a negative framework within which the revolution has inevitably been viewed. At best, Chávez is seen as outdated and populist. At worst, he is considered a military dictator in the making.
Yet the wheel of history rolls on, and the atmosphere in Venezuela has changed dramatically since last year when Chávez won yet another overwhelming victory at the polls. The once triumphalist opposition has retired bruised to its tent, wounded perhaps mortally by the outcome of the referendum on Chávez's presidency that it called for and then resoundingly lost. The viciously hostile media has calmed down, and those who don't like Chávez have abandoned their hopes of his immediate overthrow. No one is any doubt that he will win next year's presidential election.
The Chávez government, for its part, has forged ahead with various spectacular social projects, assisted by the huge jump in oil prices, from $10 to $50 a barrel over the past six years. Instead of gushing into the coffers of the already wealthy, the oil pipelines have been picked up and directed into the shanty towns, funding health, education and cheap food. Foreign leaders from Spain and Brazil, Chile and Cuba, have come on pilgrimage to Caracas to establish links with the man now perceived as the leader of new emerging forces in Latin America, with popularity ratings to match. This extensive external support has stymied the plans of the US government to rally the countries of Latin America against Venezuela. They are not listening, and Washington is left without a policy.
Chávez himself, a youthful former army colonel of 51, is now perceived in Latin America as the most unusual and original political figure to have emerged since Fidel Castro broke on to the scene nearly 50 years ago. With huge charm and charisma, he has an infinite capacity to relate to the poor and marginal population of the continent. A largely self-educated intellectual, the ideology of his Bolivarian revolution is based on the writings and actions of a handful of exemplary figures from the 19th century, most notably Simón Bolívar, the man who liberated most of South America from Spanish rule. Chávez offers a cultural as well as a political alternative to the prevailing US-inspired model that dominates Latin America.
So, what does his Bolivarian revolution consist of? He is friendly with Castro - indeed, they are close allies - yet he is no out-of-fashion state socialist. Capitalism is alive and well in Venezuela - and secure. There have been no illegal land seizures, no nationalisations of private companies. Chávez seeks to curb the excesses of what he terms "savage neo-liberalism", and he wants the state to play an intelligent and enabling role in the economy, but he has no desire to crush small businesses, as has happened in Cuba. International oil companies have fallen over themselves to provide fresh investment, even after the government increased the royalties that they have to pay. Venezuela remains a golden goose that cannot be ignored.
What is undoubtedly old fashioned about Chávez is his ability to talk about race and class, subjects once fashionable that have long been taboo, and to discuss them in the context of poverty. In much of Latin America, particularly in the countries of the Andes, the long-suppressed native peoples have begun to organise and make political demands for the first time since the 18th century, and Chávez is the first president in the continent to have picked up their banner and made it his own.
For the past six years the government has moved ahead at a glacial rate, balked at every turn by the opposition forces ranged against it. Now, as the revolution gathers speed, attention will be directed towards dissension and arguments within the government's ranks, and to the ever-present question of delivery. In the absence of powerful state institutions, with the collapse of the old political parties and the survival of a weak, incompetent and unmotivated bureaucracy, Chávez has mobilised the military from which he springs to provide the backbone to his revolutionary reorganisation of the country. Its success in bringing adequate services to the shanty towns in town and country will depend upon the survival of his government. If it fails, the people will come out to block the motorway and demand something different, and yet more radical.

[1932]

9. In Chavez's book (a long interview with Aleida Guevara), Chavez implies...

...that Gott's book on Venezuela is a good read.

I think Gott also wrote a book that (coincidentally) is a long interview with Castro, which Chavez might also mention.

It has been a few weeks since I read the Chavez book, so I might have mixed this up.

[bvar22]

10. Viva Chavez!!!!

I pray the Chavez reforms spread across the World, but especially to the US!

[jmcon007]

11. sometimes I am so ashamed of my country.....

The Nature of CIA Intervention in Venezuela

Tuesday, Mar 22, 2005

(http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1403)

By: Jonah Gindin – Venezuelanalysis.com

Philip Agee is a former CIA operative who left the agency in 1967 after becoming disillusioned by the CIA’s support for the status quo in the region. Says Agee, “I began to realize that what I and my colleagues had been doing in Latin America in the CIA was no more than a continuation of nearly five-hundred years of this, exploitation and genocide and so forth. And I began to think about what, until then would have been unthinkable, which was to write a book on how it all works.” The book, Inside the Company: CIA Diary, was an instant best-seller and was eventually published in over thirty languages. In 1978, three years after the publication of CIA Diary, Agee and a group of like-minded journalists began publishing the Covert Operations Information Bulletin (now Covert Action Quarterly), as part of a strategy of “guerilla journalism” aimed at destabilizing the CIA and exposing their operations.
Not surprisingly, the response of the US government and the CIA in particular to Agee’s work has been somewhat aggressive, and he has been forced to divide his time since the 1970s between Germany and Cuba. He currently represents a Canadian petroleum technology firm in Latin America.
Despite the recent rash of anti-Chávez editorials in the US media, and threatening statements made by a whole slew of senior US government officials at both the Departments of State and Defense, Agee sees a more cynical US strategy in Venezuela. Building on the work of scholar William I. Robinson on US intervention in Nicaragua throughout the 1980s, and recently published documents detailing CIA and US government activity in Venezuela, Agee suggests that the CIA’s strategy of “democracy promotion” is in full-force in Venezuela.
As with Nicaragua in the 1980s, a series of foundations are providing millions of dollars of funding to opposition forces in Venezuela, meted out by a private consulting firm contracted by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs Roger Noriega recently reaffirmed the State Departments commitment to this strategy, telling the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 2nd, 2005, “we will support democratic elements in Venezuela so that they can continue to maintain the political space to which they are entitled.” The funding of these “democratic elements” has as its ultimate goal the unification of Venezuela’s splintered opposition (formerly loosely grouped into the Coordinadora Democratica) for the upcoming Presidential elections in 2006. But failing a victory in 2006, cautions Agee, the CIA et al. will remain, their eyes set on the 2012 elections, and the 2018 elections, ad infinitum, “because what’s at stake is the stability of the political system in the United States, and the security of the political class in the United States.”
How do you view recent developments in Venezuela?
When Chávez was first elected and I began following events here, I could see the writing on the wall, as I could see it in Chile in 1970, as I could see it in Nicaragua in 1979-80. There was no doubt in my mind that the United States would try to change the course of events in Venezuela as they had in Chile and in Nicaragua, and before that in various other countries. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to really follow events day to day, but I did try to follow them from a distance, and eventually when Eva Golinger started her website it came to my attention and I began reading some of the documents on the website and I could see the application here of the same mechanisms that were used in Nicaragua in the 1980s in the penetration of civil society and the efforts to influence the political process and the electoral process here in Venezuela. In Nicaragua I had in 1979 I think, just after the Sandinistas took over, written an analysis of what I believed would be the US program there and practically everything I wrote about happened, because these techniques, through the CIA, through AID, through the State Department, and since 1984 through the National Endowment for Democracy, all follow a certain pattern. In Nicaragua the program for influencing the outcome of the 1990 elections began about a year and a half before the elections, for uniting the opposition, for creating a civic movement, all these things seem to be happening again in Venezuela. So this is my interest politically in Venezuela, is to see these things happening and to write from time to time about them.


For George Bush the news could not have been worse. Having failed, according to credible accounts, to dislodge firebrand Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez by force in an April 2002 coup d'etat, Bush now must come to terms with the fact that Venezuela has cultivated strong European ties. That point was underscored this week when Spanish prime minister Jorge Luis Rodriguez Zapatero agreed to sell ten C-295 military transport planes, two CN-235 naval patrol planes and eight coastal patrol vessels worth 1.3bn euros ($1.7bn) to Venezuela.

Though both Zapatero and Chavez stated that the military equipment would be used to peacefully patrol land and sea borders and to prevent drug smuggling, and Zapatero also announced that he would donate three troop transport planes to Colombia, a close U.S. ally, the developments could not have pleased the Bush administration. The Spanish sale follows close on the heels of Venezuela's plans to purchase 100,000 AK-47 assault rifles and 22 helicopters from Russia. The US state department has accused Venezuela of sparking an arms race.

The rifles, claim U.S. diplomats, could wind up in the hands of the FARC, Colombia's left-wing rebels. Now, the Spanish sale is adding fuel to the fire. The Spanish sale surely did not come as a surprise to the U.S. As early as January the Spanish minister of Defense, José Bono, made what Zapatero termed a "discreet" visit to Caracas where the Spanish official discussed the arms sales with Chavez. Currently, the U.S. is trying its best to deal with the diplomatic fallout from the sales. American diplomats in Spain stated the U.S. "was worried" but had not "complained" to the Spanish government about the arms transfers. When asked to clarify the U.S. position on Spanish arms sales to Venezuela, Robert Zimmerman of the State Department's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs commented delicately, "our concerns about arms sales to Venezuela are known to all the relevant parties."
Full Article : venezuelanalysis.com

[Judi Lynn]

12. So the U.S. right-wing sociopaths running the Republican Party

can't claim Venezuela is becoming a "communist" country, try it as they might, among the mouth breathers in our country: they will just claim Venezuela "isn't DEMOCRATIC enough" and hope that gets them all seeing red.

We all know what great, overpowering respect they have for democracy, don't we? We've seen so many examples of it since the election of 2000....

[IndianaGreen]

13. Imagine an America in which people are put ahead of profits

an America is which health care is a right, not a privilege of class. We can learn from the Bolivarian revolution and apply those lessons to America, particularly the way in which they replaced all the rightwing judges with non-partisan jurists (after the constitutional convention).

Do any of you want to keep the current judges that we have on the federal bench? I certainly don't!

[Judi Lynn]

14. You might find this headline inflammatory!

Venezuela uses oil sales, army buildup to defy U.S.

By Gary Marx
Tribune foreign correspondent
Published July 15, 2005


LOS ALTOS MIRANDINOS, Venezuela -- As military officials barked orders, more than 300 civilians gathered in the morning hours to practice saluting and precision marching in preparation for possible war.

There were homemakers and retirees, lawyers and street vendors, all volunteers of a newly expanded army reserve force that President Hugo Chavez is organizing to defend the country against the United States and other threats.
(snip)

So far, U.S. efforts to isolate Chavez diplomatically have failed.At a recent meeting of the Organization of American States, the U.S. couldn't muster enough support to set up a permanent committee to monitor democracy in the region, a proposal that was widely interpreted as aimed at Venezuela.

William LeoGrande, dean of the School of Public Affairs at American University in Washington and an expert on Latin America, said OAS members rejected the measure because Chavez is democratically elected and because the U.S. is disliked in a region where free-market measures have failed to ease poverty.
(snip)

"Every time Condoleezza Rice attacks Chavez, his approval rating goes up 2 or 3 percentage points," said Luis Vicente Leon, a pollster and Chavez critic.
(snip/...)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0507150122jul15,1,6967466.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
(Free registration required)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So, according to this familiar kind of thinking about Venezuela, any effort to protect its government against conspicuous threats from _{George W. Bush's} administration qualifies as "defiance!"

How do you get to "defiance" from there? Who is _Bush that nations should tremble before him? It's time we had a respectable President.

[jmcon007]

16. We need to do a little pre-emption ourselves.

We have to spread the word that Bush wants to get rid of Chavez because the Venezuelan President refuses to play ball exactly like Bush expects him to. Like Iraq, Bush will try and come up with any excuse to do away with Chavez and we need to pay attention and not let it happen.

Bush and Condi's tactics at the moment, it seems, is to try and get OAS (Organization of American States) to do their dirty work for them. See story of June 5th by Elise Labott at:
(http://polywhiz.blogspot.com/2005_06_05_polywhiz_archive.html)

My feel is that they are prodding one of the other South American country's to pick a fight with Venezuela for not being Democratic enough and the US will be the "hero to the rescue".


Also, apparently Bush had put out an order, through the CIA, to have Chavez assassinated, but because people got wind of it and it made its way into the news it was called off.
Below is the story.......
_____________________________________________
VENEZUELA:
Statements Indicate Chávez May Indeed Be in Somebody's Crosshairs

Analysis by Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Mar 9 (IPS) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. government has plans to assassinate him and thus trigger chaos that would allow it to intervene militarily and take control of the South American country's huge oil reserves.

Now, recent statements by the top U.S. official in Venezuela appear to back up his fears of a plot against his life.

In an interview last weekend with the Peruvian newspaper El Comercio, Venezuelan Vice President José Vicente Rangel reported that former U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro had warned him of the possibility of an attempt on Chávez's life.

Shapiro, who served as ambassador to Venezuela from 2001 to 2004, ”did not go into details, but felt he was obliged to share this information with us, for legal reasons,” Rangel added.

In the mid-1970s, Washington officially prohibited the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from planning or participating in assassination attempts against foreign leaders.

On Tuesday, the current U.S. ambassador to Venezuela, William Brownfield, admitted that ”Vice President Rangel is telling the truth. On two occasions, Ambassador Shapiro informed the Venezuelan authorities of actions against the current administration.” Brownfield did not clarify the origin of these actions.

”The first time was in April 2002, when he spoke to the (Venezuelan) president about the possibilities of a coup,” said Brownfield.

On Apr. 11, 2002, Chávez was ousted in a short-lived coup, and business leader Pedro Carmona was named de facto president. But just two days later, Chávez was restored to power by loyal factions of the military, backed by massive popular demonstrations.

”The other time was in September or October, when (Shapiro) spoke with Vice President Rangel about a possible assassination attempt,” said Brownsfield, who added that in both cases, the former ambassador was acting as required by U.S. law.

In January, Cuban President Fidel Castro, a staunch Chávez ally, also warned of plans to kill the Venezuelan leader.

Over the past few weeks, both at home in Caracas and during visits to Uruguay and India, Chávez has repeatedly referred to plans to put an end to his life, while Venezuelan Foreign Minister Alí Rodríguez brought an official complaint before the Permanent Council of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in Washington.

”We want to alert the international community to the fact that an event of this nature would not only threaten the peace in Venezuela, but in the rest of Latin America and beyond,” said Rodríguez. If the president were in fact assassinated, he said, ”who could control the reaction of the Venezuelan people, of the oil industry workers, for example?”

The longstanding friction between the administrations of Chávez and George W. Bush over issues like democracy, human rights, sovereignty and terrorism has done nothing to hinder the flow of Venezuelan oil to the United States, at the rate of a million and a half barrels a day, representing roughly 13 percent of total U.S. oil imports.

After Bush began his second presidential term in January, the U.S. government's war of words against Venezuela heated up, with newly appointed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calling Chávez a ”negative” and ”destabilising” force in the region.

”The empire is striking back,” Venezuelan political analyst Alberto Garrido commented to IPS, noting that Washington has also accused Chávez of supposed ties with Colombia's leftist FARC guerrillas, although without presenting evidence.

It has also attempted to raise alarm over the Venezuelan military's purchase of 100,000 Russian assault rifles, as well as calling on other governments of the region to pressure Venezuela. In addition, it sent a warship to the nearby island of Curaçao, a Dutch overseas territory.

Chávez has stated numerous times that ”we have evidence: if something happens to me, the person responsible will be the president of the United States, George W. Bush.”

The Venezuelan leader also frequently points to the example of neighbouring Colombia, shaken by violent armed conflict for over half a century after the 1948 assassination of popular leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.

When asked to provide proof for the Venezuelan government's charges, Rangel responded, ”This is rhetorical. The proof will be Chávez's corpse. Why not ask for proof from Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala or the Dominican Republic?” a reference to countries that have formerly been the targets of U.S. military intervention.

Venezuelan state television has repeatedly aired an excerpt from an interview, originally broadcast by a Miami, Florida television station, with Venezuelan TV actor and host Orlando Urdaneta, an outspoken Chávez opponent who now lives in the United States.

In the interview, filmed last year, Urdaneta says that ”Venezuela's biggest problem can be solved with a rifle with a telescopic sight,” obviously alluding to Chávez. When asked by the interviewer, ”Who would give the order?”, he replies, ”The order has already been given.”

According to Chávez, those plotting against his life in the United States intend for his death ”to spark an upheaval that would pave the way for a military intervention, which would allow them to seize control of the Venezuelan people's oil.”

U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher has labelled the Venezuelan leader's allegations as ”ridiculous and untrue”. In the meantime -- and despite his confirmation of the information that his predecessor provided to the Venezuelan authorities -- Ambassador Brownfield told Caracas television station Globovisión that his government has no plans to assassinate Chávez or any other leader.

”During the close to 200 years that our two countries have existed, the United States has never invaded, is not currently invading, and will never invade Venezuela. Period,” said Brownfield. (END/2005)
___________________________________________

Sorry, dudes. We don't trust your lying asses.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. The list of Caribbean countries that the U.S. hasn't invaded

is shorter than the list it has invaded or covertly destabilized/overthrown. Let's see, within my lifetime it has sent troops to the Dominican Republic, Panama, Grenada, and Haiti, has funded right-wing paramilitaries in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, has overthrown the democratically elected president of Guatemala, has played off the leftists and drug lords against each other in Colombia, most likely encouraged the sabotage that killed Panama's populist Omar Torrijos and Ecuador's populist president Boldos, and has embargoed and atatempted to foment a revolt in Cuba.

The cardinal sin in each of these cases has been refusing to play along with what the multinational corporations want.

Boy, that Chavez sure is paranoid! What makes him think that the U.S. wishes him ill or would intervene to protect corporate interests? :sarcasm:

[jmcon007]

19. exactly the way I feel.....

You know, I really try and give my country the benefit of the doubt WHEN there's doubt. As far as Venezuela goes, I began researching Hugo Chavez as best I could and it didn't take me long to realize something about the man's courage as well as his heart when he raised the royalty Exxon-Mobile had been paying (between 0% and 1%) for Venezuelan oil, took the extra money and fed, clothed, vastly improved the health care and made education a reality for all Venezuelans.
So what if he's worked something out with Cuba to help his citizens? Bush should have called Chavez, congratulated him for caring for the people first, and asked if there was anything we could do to help.
Bush should have then picked up the phone to Exxon's CEO and told him to quite complaining. $21.5 billion dollars ain't bad:

http://www.library.ca.gov/SITN/2004/0424.htm#S1701

"The 500 Largest U.S. Corporations." And "50 Years of the Fortune 500: The Lists." IN: Fortune (April 5,2004) F1+

<"Wal-Mart Tops Fortune 500 List: With sales of almost $259 billion, the late Sam Walton's global chain of general stores easily kept its No. 1 rank among the nation's largest publicly traded companies.... In terms of profits, Exxon Mobile was first with $21.5 billion in earnings. Wal-mart had $9.05 billion in earnings." Sacramento Bee (March 22, 2004) A4.>

[IndianaGreen]

21. Let's not forget the overthrow of President Allende in Chile

and the terrorist bombing of Letelier in Washington, DC, and the attempted assassination of anti-Somoza freedom fighter Commandante Zero.

Orlando Letelier
from the book
The CIAs Greatest Hits
by Mark Zepezauer

"Are you the wife of Orlando Letelier?" asked the anonymous caller. "Yes," she answered. "No," the caller said, ~ you are his widow."

A week later, on September 21, 1976, the exiled Chilean diplomat and prominent critic of the CIA-backed Pinochet regime was torn to pieces by a car bomb on the streets of Washington DC. Also killed was Letelier's American aide, Ronni Moffit. Her husband, blown clear of the car, immediately began shouting that Chilean fascists were responsible for the atrocity.

He was right, but those fascists had powerful allies in Washington. An FBI informant knew of the plot to assassinate Letelier before the fact but the FBI did nothing to protect him. After the bombing, CIA Director George Bush told the FBI that there'd been no Chilean involvement whatever. The CIA was certain of this, he said, because it had many reliable sources inside the Chilean secret police, DINA.

Actually, the CIA had known that a DINA hit squad was in the US and headed for Washington. After the bombing, the agency purged its files of photos of the assassins. The CIA and DINA then began planting stories in the press suggesting that Letelier had been killed by leftists seeking to make a martyr of him.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/Letelier_CIAHits.html

Commander Zero and the Smuggler

A giant figure in modern Nicaraguan history, Eden Pastora -- known to his fans throughout Central America as "Commandante Zero" -- was a left-leaning, outspoken commander with a flair for the dramatic.

Using his nom de guerre, Pastora had staged some of the most daring and successful operations of the uprising against Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza. A hero of the Sandinista forces, he served on the revolutionary junta after the July 1979 overthrow of Somoza. But in 1981 Pastora denounced the Sandinistas for their close relations with Cuba and the Soviet Union, and in short order began organizing hit and run attacks from bases on the "Southern Front" -- Nicaragua's border with Costa Rica.

The CIA funded Pastora's group, ARDE, for two years beginning in the summer of 1982. Pastora quickly developed a reputation with U.S. officials as a charismatic, erratic and ultimately unmanageable guerrilla leader. A CIA report on problems with Pastora stated that "from the time of his incorporation into the Nicaragua project in 1982, Eden Pastora proved to be a destabilizing element within the Nicaraguan opposition movement."

In May 1984, when Pastora refused to get on board with a CIA-directed contra coalition, the agency severed its official support of ARDE. Suddenly strapped for funds, Pastora dispatched his assistants to drum up donations.

http://www.parascope.com/articles/0797/helm02.htm

[bemildred]

17. Seems to be the new spin: "Cubanization"

Weak, relative to what we've heard in the past.
But, Noriega and his minions are playing a weak hand these days.
I expect the government will let these fellows march all they like.

[jmcon007]

20. I agree. They should let them go ahead and march.

It shows it's a democracy and that Chavez has nothing to fear. One of the Bush officials was quoted somewhere complaining that it's not a real democracy if you don't have 'freedom of the press'.
That caused me to research Venezuelan news sources and there are some loyal to the old guard that are ripping Chavez big time.
I don't believe anything Bush has to say about anything anymore.

[bemildred]

22. The Bushites talking about "freedom of the press" is most amusing.

And also about "real democracy" and "freedom" and the like.

We are way past "Alice in Wonderland" these days and
starting to get into "Naked Lunch" and "Animal Farm".