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Venezuela steps up border defence
(BBC News, 30 December 2003)
Military officials in Venezuela have announced they are tightening security along the border with Colombia. . . . The move comes after at least seven Venezuelan soldiers were killed in clashes with paramilitaries believed to be Colombian right-wing paramilitaries. . . . Each country says that its territory came under attack first. . . . Colombian President Alvaro Uribe has said he is treating reports of the clashes with caution but urged more cooperation between the two states. . . . In the latest incident, on Friday, Venezuela accused Colombian right-wing paramilitaries of killing two of its National Guardsmen. . . . However, the authorities in the Colombian village of Montelara accused Venezuelan troops of crossing the border and setting fire to the homes of gasoline smugglers. . . . General Julio Quintero, chief of Venezuela's Unified Command, told reporters that the 20,000 Venezuelan troops currently operating on the 2,200-kilometre (1,400-mile) frontier would be boosted . . . Television pictures reportedly taken after Friday's clash show fuel tanks in Montelara on fire and houses hit by bullets. . . . Policing of the border is a source of poor relations between Colombia and Venezuela, which both accuse each other of not doing enough to fight armed groups.

posted by LoZo 12:06 PM

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Cheney-Bush Junta Sets Sights on Venezuela's Oil
[COMMENT: As you read this, keep in mind what the Bushies did in Iraq. They lied about why they began the war, and now the VP's buddies are overcharging on rebuilding the country whose infrastructure we destroyed in our attack. And on top of that, these guys are now in control of Iraq's oil. Remember, Venezuela is one of the top three foreign suppliers of oil to the US. Trust me, these insane people who have hijacked our government are also planning on taking over in Venezuela, by force if necessary.]

Venezuela has become a haven for Islamic terrorist groups, if you believe General James Hill, head of US Southern Command - the US military's command centre responsible for keeping Latin America in line. . . . Such stories, with their unnamed government officials, inventions, supposed defectors and links to international terror groups, pop up more and more frequently in the US press. They are so reminiscent of an earlier era of government-sanctioned propaganda - disclosed by the Iran-Contra investigation - that they raise the question: "Who's now advising George Bush on Latin America?" . . . The answer is Otto Reich, special envoy to the western hemisphere. It was Reich who, in the 1980s, as head of the US State Department's Office of Public Diplomacy, planted disinformation in the US press about Nicaragua's left-wing San-dinista government. One of his fabrications - reported in some credulous newspapers - was that tiny Nicaragua had bought MiG fighter jets to attack the US. As the Iran-Contra scandal unravelled, the US comptroller-general concluded that Reich's office had "engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activity". Now, despite protests from the Senate, he's in from the political wilderness, concentrating on Venezuela and Chavez. . . . Elected in 1999, Chavez has introduced a series of moderate social reforms (free education, healthcare for the poor, land reform - but no grand nationalisations or seriously redistributive taxes). Though these may have irritated local and US elites, what has put Chavez on a collision course with America's manifest destiny is its oil - what a Venezuelan minister in the 1970s called "the devil's excrement". . . . Venezuela is one of the top three suppliers of foreign oil to the US (Canada and Saudi Arabia are the other two). Under its presidency of Opec, the price of a barrel of oil rose from $10 to $20 - a great gain for the funding of social programmes in Venezuela but not to America's liking. . . . In November, Chavez announced an initiative, PetroSur, at the Congress of Andean Parliaments, which would combine Venezuela's oil assets with those of Ecuador, Brazil and Trinidad, integrating the continent's oil resources. . . . last month, in a move that could push the country down the road to civil war, the right-wing opposition launched the "reafirmazo", a four-day petition drive demanding Chavez's recall. Results will not be known until next month, but according to the country's constitution, if the petitioners manage to get the signatures of at least 20 per cent of the population, or 2.4 million, a recall referendum must be held within four months. . . . The petition drive closed on 1 December and the opposition has claimed victory, putting the number of signatures between 2.8 and four million. Chavistas believe they have only 1.95 million signatures and allege large-scale fraud, a claim backed by international observers and the independent trade union federation. Local managers of Pepsi-Cola, Coca-Cola and other multinationals are suspected of having forced employees to sign the petition. The National Electoral Council will issue a decision on the validity of the signatures in the second week of January. . . . "If the opposition does not have the recall referendum it so desperately wants, it will cry foul and its more radical elements will launch into yet another campaign of destabilisation." . . . Already an opposition paramilitary group has formed. [COMMENT: Trained, no doubt, in the USA's School of the Americas (who recently changed its name to the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in order to better hide.] . . . Bloque Democratico and a grouping of senior army officers, Militares Democraticos - are likely to accuse the government of sabotaging the petition. Their tactics could include violence, fomenting unrest, even bombings.

posted by LoZo 5:37 PM

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Chavistas: `We have won!'
(CHRISTIANO KERRILA)
On the evening of December 2, tens of thousands of working-class supporters of Venezuela's radical left president, Hugo Chavez, poured into the streets of the country's capital, Caracas, to celebrate the defeat of the right-wing opposition's attempt to gather 2.4 million signatures required to force a recall referendum. . . . “We have won”, they shouted, according to a December 3 report on the Venezuelanalysis.com web site. “Many of those in the streets believed the government’s claims that the opposition had not gathered enough signatures to reach the 2.4 million needed to request the recall referendum”, the reported added. “Others believed that if they were to reach that amount, it was because of rampant fraud and sabotage of the signature process.” . . . The radical reforms implemented by the popularly elected Chavez government have provoked repeated attempts by Venezuela's ruling capitalist oligarchy to oust him from power. These attempts have included “general strikes” (employer shutdowns), capital flight, media manipulation, mass rightist demonstrations and two attempted military coups. . . . The first coup was initially successful, only to be reversed 48 hours later by an enormous worker-soldier uprising. The second coup attempt again failed to oust the government but it did temporarily succeed in shutting down the country's vital oil industry. The government's response to the oil bosses' strike was to organise oil production workers to “re-nationalise” the nominally state-owned oil industry by removing its managers, who were drawn from the families of the capitalist oligarchy. . . . At the same time, the government has promoted the emergence of popular organs of power, which have created an impressive network of grassroots communication and mobilisation that can serve as the foundation of a future political system based on participatory democracy, which is a constant theme of the Chavez government. . . . Following the failure of the bosses' oil strike earlier this year, the capitalist oligarchy has centred its attempt to oust the Chavez government on securing a recall referendum on the rule of President Chavez. The opposition needs to collect signatures from 20% of the electorate in order to force a referendum. . . . For the opposition to succeed in using the referendum to remove Chavez from the presidency, it would have to secure both a majority of votes and more votes than Chavez received in his original electoral mandate. . . . There is growing evidence that sections of the capitalist ruling class are plotting to carry out another coup attempt. According to a November 25 Venezuelanalysis.com report, the Venezuelan National Police have made a number of raids on large supplies of weapons and ammunition. . . . At the end of October, two pro-Chavez legislators presented recorded phone conversations in which opposition leaders mentioned plans to destabilise the government. One conversation took place between the former president of the country’s pro-capitalist union federation CTV, Carlos Ortega, now in self-imposed exile in Costa Rica, and the federation’s current president, Manuel Cova, in which they talk about when and how Ortega should return to Venezuela, and that when he arrives there would be a “civil rebellion” — the term the opposition used for the April 2002 military coup). . . . According to a December 3 report on Venezuelanalysis.com by US sociologist Gregory Wilpert, on December 1, “the last day of the petition drive, opposition leader Henry Ramos Allup indicated that the opposition had collected four million signatures. Then, Tuesday morning, one of the major dailies, El Nacional, ran a headline saying that there were 3.8 million signatures. Later that day, Enrique Mendoza, representing the opposition coalition Democratic Coordinator said that the correct number is 3.6 million.” . . . Sumate, a US government-funded outfit that organised a petition drive against Chavez last February and which provided logistical support to the petition drive this time, said that the figure was 3.4 million. . . . “Finally”, according to Wilpert's report, “opposition leader Henrique Salas Romer, who has been steering a somewhat independent line from the rest of the opposition, said that the real figure is at 2.8 million. . . . ``Government supporters, of course, provided their own figure, based on figures collected by their petition observers, which said that the total number of votes was 1.95 million (adjusting it downwards from an earlier figure of 2.2 million).” . . . Already, evidence has emerged that many of the signatures were obtained through fraudulent tactics. These include reducing the number of places to sign in order to increase the length of the lines and give the appearance of larger numbers in front of the international corporate media which have eagerly cooperated with the opposition campaign. . . . Ultimately, it is up to the National Electoral Council (CNE) to pronounce the verified number of signatures that the opposition collected in the petition drive. The CNE has 30 days in which to validate the signatures after they are delivered this week.

posted by LoZo 5:05 PM

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Thousands Rally in Support of Chavez
(VOA News, December 6, 2003)
Thousands of people have rallied in the Venezuelan capital to show support for President Hugo Chavez, who is facing a possible recall referendum. . . . Supporters of the president waved banners and shouted pro-government slogans as they marched Saturday into Altamira Square in eastern Caracas, traditionally controlled by opponents of Mr. Chavez. . . . Earlier this week, the political opposition said it had collected enough signatures to force a recall referendum on Mr. Chavez's rule. Election officials are verifying the signatures and are expected to decide next month whether to hold the referendum in March or April. . . . Recent polls show that two thirds of Venezuelans would vote against him in a referendum. Mr. Chavez says the polls are biased.

[COMMENT: It seems that when the popular will is contrary to the plans of the power elite they result to a recall. . . . It even works in California!]

posted by LoZo 6:51 PM

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Venezuela, a Battle between Past and Future
(Actualizado 2 de diciembre del 2003)
The opportunity used by political opposition in Venezuela to seek a recall referendum on presidential term wound up Monday with a fraud attempt an full of intriguing procedures. . . . Monday evening's round table discussion call the petition drive a third attempt by the Venezuelan oligarchy to defeat the Bolivarian process by imposing the interest of a minority over the power of a socially rooted revolution which favors the ignored majority. . . . Panelists referred to the desperate situation of Anti-Chavez groups in the face of the victory by the Bolivarian movement, which cast 2 669 684 votes to repeal 38 betraying lawmakers. . . . In their attempt, the opposition used dirty actions, said the panelists who referred to their inhuman pressures on hospitalized persons, signatures belonging to dead people, harassment against workers and provocations against the armed forces which have met the mission given by the Republic. . . . The round table discussion also showed the public appearance of President Hugo Chavez last Sunday, as he exposed the big fraud and called the public attention to the silence made by private media outlets, since they do not report on the people's denunciations and play their accomplice role. . . . We, the Bolivarian people, said Chavez, do not accept this dirty game; Chavez put his confidence on observers from the Carter Center and the OAS, as well as from other international bodies. . . . Panelists also gave evidence on the links of such painful actions to the Miami-based Anti-Cuba mafia, where they open an anti-Chavez signature-collection show. . . . Now the process is to be officially recognized so that in a four-month period a referendum would be called on the presidential mandate or on the opposition.

posted by LoZo 4:53 PM