NPR : Growing Cuban Population Worries Venezuelans

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

Very interesting piece from Morning Editon 12/10/03.
Essentially, there are fears that the sudden influx of Cuban "Doctors" is really a way for the Venezeulan government to maintain control over dissidents, and should President Hugo Chavez Frias be thrown out of office, a ready-made grassroots campaign for social upheaval.
The deal supposedly is, Castro gets cheap oil, and the poor people of Venezuela get health care for free.
According to some, as many as 11,000 doctors arrived in one month recently.
Audio at:
http://www.npr.org/rundowns/segment.php?wfId=1540340

Link for background:
http://www.themilitant.com/2003/6738/673802.html

Keep your eyes on this one. Anything the Cubans are involved in that involves oil, and our GOP friends will be all over it soon.

[Mika]

1. I've heard NPR call Chavez a dictator

NPR's ceo was formerly Radio Marti director.

[Dirk39]

2. I don't get it...

Hello from Germany,
maybe it's cause english isn't my main language, but what does
"that the sudden influx of Cuban "Doctors" is really a way for the Venezeulan government to maintain control over dissidents" mean?

Sounds like "Bush has given free healthcare to all Iraqis and this is really a way for the US-puppet regime to maintain control over Al-Quaida". Jesus, I have problems with logic.

"The deal supposedly is, Castro gets cheap oil, and the poor people of Venezuela get health care for free" O jesus, that's really as wicked as communist terrorism can get: people from two countries are exchanging products? I'm annoyed. And it's not oil against dollars for multi-millionaires. It's oil against healthcare? Someone has to liberate them and give them free speech and democrazy. And a free market...
Dirk

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

3. Sorry, maybe I was a little more dense than I should have been

The point is, there are lots of doubts that all these Cubans are only doctors. Many feel they are there to create a Cuban-style cadre of Chavez supporters who would be ready to fight to return Chavez to the Presidency, if the need arises.
I did not say there was anything wrong with oil for doctors and free medical care, far from it. I think anyone who trades with Cuba is very brave and deserves support.
But, if in trading with Cuba you are installing sleeper agents to protect your little power base, well, that is quite a different story, is it not?
I sincerely hope that helps you understand what I meant, and I apologize for any confusion.
Cheers.

[Dirk39]

4. O.K. O.K., but if it's like this, my first reaction would be:

the world is head over heals once more:

if Cuba should support Venezuela in case the USA tries to overthrow their elected government: thank you Cuba! Please install as many sleepers as possible, there. To give Allende a gun as a birthday present really wasn't enough, as history has shown us.
Sleeper agents??? Just weeks after billionaire Soros did overthrow the government of Georgia installing thousands of sleepers from Yuguslavia there, paying busses and infiltrating people to overthrow one corrupt government with a more US-friendly one, that's even more corrupt, they warn us about cuban sleepers in Venezuela???
Wow, if this wouldn't be a joke, I would just pray for as many doctors, sleepers and freedom-fighters as possible in Venezuela!

"installing sleeper agents to protect your little power base"
little, little, little?
Didn't the US support terrorists in Venezuela, who tried to overthrow the large power base of the elected president of Venezuela not to long ago?
I don't know,if I should laugh or cry about this amount of brain-washing.
Dirk

[Foswia]

5. Sandinistas redux

"the large power base of the elected president of Venezuela"?

Am i the only one getting tired of this crap? He was elected w/ tatics that make Bush look like an amateur.

Ugh I am so sick of this. I bet you think the Sandinistas were 'elected' and peace loving.

Foswia

[Dirk39]

6. "He was elected w/ tatics that make Bush look like an amateur."

Could you please give me some details?
Dirk

[Foswia]

7. Details

If you are good at spanish check out PROVEA. They are a respected human rights group. Not sure where you can find the info in english, maybe Human Rights Watch, just google PROVEA and Chavez. You should find the info.

I would, but i have the flu and am off to bed.

Edited to fix URL

[Dirk39]

8. Stay in bed, I check it, ...

but I don't speak spanish.
While you're in bed, you could watch the documentary about Chavez and the coup in Venezuela, made by some irish filmmakers with the title "the revolution won't be televised". Till now, it seemed like a credible source to me.

chavezthefilm

Hello and don't suffer to much from your flu,
Dirk

[pescao]

13. just stay in bed!

u really cant say things as outrageous as "He was elected w/ tatics that make Bush look like an amateur" and then, when politely challenged, point to some golpista site that's in spanish anyway and tell us to find out ourselves! if u really believed one word of what u wrote, surely u could come up with something better than that? like, perhaps, an example of one of these dodgy 'tactics' that he was elected-in-a-landslide with? remember, these are serious issues that are at stake here; comparing venezuela and florida's versions of democracy is illuminating - if u want to contribute dont poison the well and then plead sickness.

[Say_What]

12. Venezuela's Media: Free or Footloose?

<clips>

APRIL 21, 2002. Imagine the owners of The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and NBC, ABC, CBS, and CNN meeting at the home of Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. with the head of the Joints Chiefs of Staff and assorted military top brass to plot to bring down U.S. President John Doe, a blowhard populist who has been elected by a landslide.

The plan is wickedly simple. Organize a massive march to the Washington, D.C. headquarters of Omnicom, the behemoth conglomerate that generates most of the country's riches, ostensibly to show support for their valiant struggle against the meddlesome, regulation-crazy Doe. Then, suddenly, turn the march around and head to the White House, which, your military co-conspirators tell you, will be left unguarded, to demand that Doe resign, or else ...

...Venezuela's media establishment, closely aligned with a local oligarchy that has the receptive ear of the Bush administration, almost unanimously abhors Chávez' populist policies, big-mouth authoritarian style, friendship with media buster, Fidel Castro, and intolerance of criticism. Chávez hates them back.

Led by Cisneros, the media group, which also included Andrews Mata, owner of El Universal, Venezuela's other major daily, met with self-proclaimed interim President and big business mouthpiece Pedro Carmona on Saturday April 14, as demonstrators were pouring out on the streets of Caracas demanding Chávez' return. Flanked by one of the generals who had installed him in the presidential palace only a day earlier, Carmona asked the media bosses for help.

<http://www.thegully.com/essays/venezuela/020421_venezuel_media_coup.html>

<>
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez arrives at a rally of his supporters commemorating the fifth anniversary of the former paratrooper's first presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Dec. 6, 2003. (AP Photo/Leslie Mazoch)

[Judi Lynn]

16. Translating the coup to our own culture makes it even more sinister

since we're so aware of the power these organizations and their leaders wield.

That article is difinitely valuable in helping to get a sense of what happened. It's really dirty.

The people in _Bush's group who were so involved in it are NOT people of honor, in my belief. Hideous.

I surely hope justice will get a chance to triumph here, even though the morally bankrupt rightwingers who plotted this will fight it 'til their evil last breaths.

From your first article:

Marchers will be recruited among the wealthiest 20 percent of the population, including members of Jimmy Hoffa's new AFL-CIO, which only unionizes top wage earners. Hoffa, however, will be dumped the moment Doe is removed from the White House. He knows about the coup to dump Doe, but not about the coup within the coup now being hatched in Sulzberger's parlor to disband Congress, suspend the Constitution, fire all Supreme Court judges, kick out all state governors, and dismantle not just the entire Doe administration, but any and all aspects of the federal and state government structure the conspirators dislike.

The day before the march, the networks and hundreds of radio stations the conspiring media barons control, broadcast free ads for the march every 10 minutes. The march itself gets lavish live media coverage. So does the coup, er ... the democratic action by civil society. And the coup within the coup (which, officially, doesn't even exist).

One highlight is the live coverage of the arrest and near-lynching of a Doe cabinet member by angry 20 percenters. The whole country also sees and hears a Sulzberger minion, who also happens to be the Fortune 400 association's boss of bosses, proclaim himself interim President and destroy the U.S. constitutional structure with the stroke of a pen, to the thundering applause of a bunch of billionaires and four-star generals jockeying to get in the picture with him.

Gustavo Cisneros is a personal friend of George H. W. Bush. He and the former, and impeached President of Venezuela, now living outside the country, to avoid punishment, both met with George H. W. Bush this year, in the Domican Republic, at the property owned by the Cuban "exiles" the Fanjuls, who also own sugar plantations in Florida.

[Say_What]

9. The Golpistas (coupmakers) have been ranting about this for ages

it's more of their lies that the US press disseminates to the US sheeple.

BTW, the oil, which Cuba gets at an attractive rate, also goes to other countries around the Caribbean also with very favorable terms.

Something to think about when Uncle Sam rails on Chavez or Cuba is that Colombia, which has the worst record for human rights in the western hemisphere, is the US's 3rd largest recipient of US military aid after Egypt and Israel. If NPR and the rest of the corporate press were concerned about US sheeple being informed, they would report on this but about Colombia and the atrocities that happen there we hear nary a peep. Dennis Kucinich had this to say in July when congress was getting ready to funnel more millions to Colombia--not for democracy, but for OIL. It's all about OIL.

<clips>

....Aid to Colombia has failed to end the drug flow to America, and it has failed to protect human rights. Strong ties between the Colombian military and the paramilitary group AUC, which has been listed by the United States as a terrorist organization, are deeply disturbing, given the atrocious human rights abuses committed by the AUC. Most interestingly, The Washington Post recently published the findings of a report commissioned by President Uribe that showed the AUC, which frequently fights alongside the Colombian military, is a drug-trafficking organization. The report estimated that as much as 80 percent of the AUC's funding comes from drug trafficking. This means that the U.S. is funding a military that is working with a terrorist drug-trafficking organization in an effort to eradicate drugs. Does this not seem a little paradoxical?

The AUC's close relationship with the Colombian military is also disturbing because it implicates the United States in human rights abuses. How can the U.S. fund a military which has combined forces with a terrorist group responsible for torture, executions, and disappearances of innocent Colombian citizens? Until the Colombian government ceases its relationship with violent paramilitary groups that terrorize ordinary citizens, the United States must not directly fund it.

http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/030723kuci.htm

[DUreader]

10. Wow , Recycling the Grenada Lie all over again. NPR=Psyops USA

[Judi Lynn]

11. I may not have as much time as I need now to get the link(s)

but I wanted to add what I have learned recently.

I thought for a long time, also, that Cuba gets reduced rates on oil, and in return, as part of the agreement, sends doctors to the poor parts of Venezuela.

Both things are happening.

However, Cuba is NOT the only country receiving preferred rates on oil. As per the San Jose agreement, both Mexico and Venezuela sell oil to Caribbean islands and ALSO Central American countries. I believe I heard it explained that both countries believe it's good for the stability of the region, as these countries simply cannot afford the highest prices.

I'll be checking for the appropriate links.

Mika is correct. The publisher of Miami's Herald newspaper, and the Cuban Spanish sister paper, El Nuevo Herald, Mr. Alberto Ibarguen has been made the head of Public Radio, a real kick in the head for moderate and liberal would-be listeners. It makes one sick.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Venezuela & Mexico administer San Jose accord,sell oil to Caribbean

and Central America, I've got a link to illuminate. There are many more links for anyone who would like to find out more:

Friday, 20 October, 2000, 02:36 GMT 03:36 UK
Venezuela signs cheap oil pact

The world's third-largest oil exporter, Venezuela, has signed an agreement to supply cheap oil to Central American and Caribbean countries.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said the accord, which 10 countries signed on Thursday, would support the region's developing economies.

"We are not giving oil away, nor is that what our brothers are asking for - this is a simple co-operation agreement," he said.

A BBC correspondent in the region says the accord is part of attempts by Mr Chavez to gain more influence and fulfill his vision of closer integration.

Critics say the accord provides no benefits for Venezuelan exporters and could be harmful to business.

Loans

The Caracas accord will double the 80,000 barrels of oil a day already provided on favourable terms by Venezuela to 11 of its neighbours under the 1980 San Jose accord, which it administers jointly with Mexico.

Venezuela will finance up to 25% of the cost of the crude when oil prices are over $15 a barrel.

The loans will be for up to 15 years, with a one-year grace period, an interest rate of only 2%, and the opportunity to pay for some of the oil in kind. (snip/...)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/980684.stm

So you can see, CUBA IS NOT THE ONLY COUNTRY TO BENEFIT FROM THIS ARRANGEMENT.

As long as people aren't aware of the actual information, it's easy to sell them anything. That's how propaganda survives.

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

Another look at the San Jose accord:

The San Jose Accord, an energy cooperation programme for Central American and Caribbean Countries, arose out of the needto help reduce the heavy oil import burden on non-oil producing countries in the region.

The Accord is a Venezuela/Mexico oil facility initiated in 1980 when the international oil market was experiencing its second shock. The PCJ negotiated on behalf of the Government of Jamaica. Under the agreement, Mexico and Venezuela, under concessionary financial terms, provide 29,000 barrels of crude oil per day to Jamaica.
Under the original Agreement, there was provision for 20% of the cost of the crude oil to be made available as a low interest loan for development projects when the price of oil exceeds US$15 per barrel. The Agreement is reviewed annually and the terms have been modified, making the Accord less concessional.

The Accord provides for:-

• Quota allocation to be made to the importing country each year, based on the quantity supplied the previous year.
  
  
• Deferred payment on 20% of the cost of the crude, to be made available to the government as a low interest loan for development projects.
  
  
• If development projects are not achieved, then the 20% deferred payment is to be settled within five (5) years.
  Petrojam refinery to process crude oil under the Agreement. (snip/)
  

http://www.pcj.com/alliance_main.htm

[Judi Lynn]

15. Concerning the Cuban Doctors in Venezuela

Here's an article from Marc Lifsher
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal:

Cuban Doctors in Venezuela Add To Rift Growing Between Classes
By Marc Lifsher
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
May 13, 2002

LAS SALINAS, Venezuela -- When businessmen and army officers launched a coup against leftist President Hugo Chavez last month, Damaris Fernandez figured she and fellow medical workers at this rundown, seaside clinic would be going home to Cuba .

Mr. Chavez's opponents, from the middle, upper and professional classes, despise the two-year-old accord that brings about 250 physicians, nurses and technicians, like Dr. Fernandez, to Venezuela from Cuba . They serve in poor, rural areas where Venezuelan doctors are reluctant to practice.

Critics maintain that the medical exchange program is the leading edge of a plot by Mr. Chavez and his friend, Fidel Castro, to "Cubanize" this oil-rich nation of 24 million people. That's why the coupsters and their supporters in the short-lived interim government moved quickly to root out the Cuban presence in Venezuela. They cut electricity and water service to the Cuban Embassy and threatened to halt shipments of bargain-priced oil to the island. But Mr. Chavez's loyalists launched a lightning counter-coup that brought the populist leader back to power and returned the Cubans to their status as Venezuela's key ally.

Now that Mr. Chavez has returned, the Cuban doctors are digging in and are more controversial than ever. "We come here to give humanitarian aid. We're trained with the idea of giving service to the most needy," says Dr. Fernandez, who came to Las Salinas in January.

Venezuela is one of about a dozen countries in Latin America and Africa that play host to some 2,000 Cuban doctors, as well as athletic coaches and technicians. The Cubans provide free medical care for impoverished patients who previously had few opportunities to see doctors. (snip/...)

http://members.attcanada.ca/~dchris/CubaFAQ408.html

Two thousand doctors working there is far different from the figure you mention of 11,000 arriving monthly. Amazing how people in the dark will grasp at anything, isn't it?

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

17. Right. Did you listen to the piece? Did you hear the minister

from Ven. cover the mike and say... "11k... we are not going to talk about that number in public, you see."

Personally, I find that number ridiculous. I am not sure Cuba even has 11,000 doctors.

And that was not monthly... just in a single one month period.

Yes, to someone else above, Shades of the Grenada lie again.

And it will be the same old crap again, which is why I posted the thing in the first place.

[Judi Lynn]

18. You're right, they could NEVER have that many doctors to spare

from an island with only just under 12,000,000 people altogether.

They sound similar to the Cuban "exile" community in Miami, which circulates hysterical stories continually, of the caliber of "Fidel Castro trains sharks to swim to Florida and attack swimmers," or "Fidel Castro infects birds with West Nile and sets them lose to fly to the U.S. and infect Americans."

Here's an article I just found on the West Nile "terror from Cuba:"

(snip) Carlos Wotzkow, a leading Cuban ornithologist who defected in 1999, says that Castro's "Biological Front, which coordinates military and scientific research, was extended to the Institute of Zoology in 1991 to develop ways of spreading infectious diseases, including encephalitis and leptospirosis, through implantations in migratory birds."

Roberto Hernandez, another exiled Cuban scientist, says, "We were instructed to look into viruses such as encephalitis which arehighly resistant to insecticides. Military-intelligence officers running the labs ordered us to trap birds with migratory routes to the United States with the idea of releasing contaminated flocks which would be bitten by mosquitoes which, in turn, infect humans."

A dead crow infected with West Nile virus recently was discovered on the White House lawn, according to the Washington Post. Sixty similarly infected birds fell around the U.S. Navy base in Boca Chica, Fla., during September 2001, causing an encephalitis epidemic that killed a civilian employee.

Scenarios worthy of Stephen King's sci-fi horrors are corroborated by Col. Alvaro Prendes, a former vice chief of the Cuban air force and exiled leader of Union de Soldados y Oficiales Libres (USOL), a clandestine pro-democracy movement within Cuba's armed forces. He tells Insight that Castro's biotech facilities operate under the close control of a colonel of the Directorate of General Intelligence (DGI), Librado Reina Benitan, a longtime protégé of Raul Castro, Cuba's defense minister and brother of Fidel Castro .

One fortified compound near a military hospital in east Havana is the size of two football fields and contains six giant bubbles to retain toxic gases. It is fronted as a cattle-feed producer, according to documents smuggled out of Cuba by military dissidents. The laboratory is equipped with a 10,000 Reid vapor-pressure centrifugal reactor and has its own water system and backup generators. It is in any case supported by high-priority circuits that feed a nearby artillery base storing Russian-made SS-22 medium-range missiles capable of reaching south Florida, according to Cuban documents obtained by Insight.

"Castro plans a Götterdämmerung if his regime becomes seriously threatened by an invasion or internal upheaval," warns Prendes, citing a doomsday plan that is code-named Lucero. "Known dissidents would be rounded up and herded into tunnels beneath Havana to be exterminated with poison gas," according to the former fighter pilot who was close to Castro and was decorated as a "hero of the revolution" for shooting down CIA-manned bombers during the aborted Bay of Pigs operation in 1961.(snip/...)

http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm/include/detail/storyid/273166.html

Creepy, right?

Here's a story mentioning someone seeing a " "Castro trained killer sharks to attack U.S." headline in Florida:

{snip) The Weekly World News report began:

"MIAMI -- A cruel plot by depraved dictator Fidel Castro to spread panic and discourage refugees from fleeing Communist Cuba is responsible for the shocking wave of deadly shark attacks along America's Atlantic and Gulf coasts."

According to Weekly World News reporter Cliff Linedecker, Castro is training the sharks at a secret marine laboratory on the heavily fortified Isle of Pines. Castro apparently decided to use killer sharks after plans to equip dolphins with explosives sabotage American cruise ships failed to produce the desired effect.

Linedecker based his report on a similar story in the underground exile newsletter Libertad. The newsletter said it got its information from a spy, code name Marco, who infiltrated the Isle of Pines training facility.

The exile group points to the recent string of shark bites at New Smyrna Beach to support its report. (snip/...)
http://www.sptimes.com/News/090201/Sports/Extra_Extra_Killer_sh.shtml

Unfortunately, there are far too many ignorant people who will be really quick to jump on these rumors and hold them as truths!

Sorry I misread your position earlier.