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Venezuela Accuses US of Interfering in Internal Legal Proceedings
(Jonah Gindin, Venezuelanalysis.com, July 11, 2005)
Venezuela's embassy in Washington, D.C., released a communique this weekend, responding to US criticism of a court case against Venezuelan NGO Súmate. In a separate statement, Venezuelan Attorney General Isaías Rodriguez also released a statement criticizing both the State Department and Human Rights Watch's position on the Súmate trial. The position of Human Rights Watch (HRW) and that of the State Department were suspiciously similar, noted the Attorney General. . . . Last Thursday, district court Judge Norma Sandoval ruled that a case against four members of Súmate on charges of "conspiracy" would go to court, though no date was set. State prosecutor Luisa Ortega Díaz has accused Súmate leaders of violating article 132 of Venezuela’s Penal Code, "conspiracy against the republican form of the nation." The charge carries a maximum possible sentence of a 26 years. . . . The conspiracy charge stems from US$31,000 Sumate received from the U.S. government funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which state prosecutors allege they used for political activity which, according to Ortega, is a violation of article 132 of the Penal Code. . . . The political activity for which Súmate is accused of using NED funds is the recall effort against Chávez, which culminated last August 15th with a nationwide referendum on the President’s mandate. Chavez won with nearly 60% of the vote. . . . On Saturday, Venezuela's embassy in the in US responded, expressing its own disappointment at the State Department’s decision to pass "judgment on the merits of a legal proceeding underway in the Venezuelan judicial system." “Venezuela's democratically-elected government enjoys a separation of powers, as does that of the United States," continues the communiqué. [COMMENT by Lorenzo: That's another fantasy the Bush Regime has destroyed. An independent court wouldn't have appointed Bush our dictator.] "Venezuela's judicial branch of government is one of the primary democratic institutions that serve to guarantee the civil and political rights of our citizens. When governments, such as that the United States, choose to pre-determine the merits of pending legal proceedings in another country, whose authorities are democratically elected, it serves to do no more and no less than undermine the institutions of democracy," warned the Embassy statement. . . . Venezuela's Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez also issued a statement over the weekend, describing the Casey statement as a "grave interference in Venezuela's judicial process." Rodriguez advised human rights groups rushing to make declarations on the Sumate case to turn their gaze towards the recent decision of a US court to condemn US journalist Judith Miller to four months in prison for refusing to reveal a source. . . . "Where are Human Rights Watch, José Miguel Vivanco, the Department of State, Reporters Without Borders?" asked Rodriguez rhetorically? "Where are the condemnations of [the Miller trial], which violates liberty of expression and the right to information?" . . . While HRW has not issued a statement condemning the Judith Miller case in the US, they were quick to condemn the Venezuelan state for "persecuting political opponents" in a statement released just hours after a Judge ruled that Súmate would go to trial on conspiracy charges. . . . Venezuelan Attorney General Isaías Rodriguez responded, accusing the HRW statement not only of being disproportionate, but of being in "frank coincidence with the White House." According to Rodriguez, this coincidence reveals that "this pseudo human rights organization has no independence or autonomy of decision-making whatsoever." . . . Human Rights Watch, and José Miguel Vivanco in particular, are always ready to defend State Department interests, since "their statements and announcements rarely attack the many, many violations committed by the US," who Rodriguez described as the world’s worst enemy of human rights.

posted by LoZo 6:29 AM

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U.S. Government funding fascist politicians in Venezuela
(Al Giordano, Narconews.com, Jul 9th, 2005)
As court proceedings begin this month against four Venezuelans from an election campaign group that accepted donations from a foreign government - something that is indisputably a federal crime under both U.S. and Venezuelan law - it’s no surprise that members of the Bush administration in Washington cry that the sky is falling. . . . After all, it’s their money (well, on second thought, it is U.S. taxpayers’ money) that is at the root of the alleged criminal enterprise. And the upcoming trial of accused Venezuelan electoral delinquents, held in the public light of day, will shine yet more sunlight upon Washington’s secret recipes for meddling in the elections of other nations. . . . as last year’s presidential campaign in the United States revealed, Yankee political parties and candidates are prohibited from accepting foreign contributions from any source, especially from other governments. As John Kerry found out the hard way, the corrupting practices that Bush and Vivanco condone in Venezuela are strictly verboten in the United States. . . . The flap over a mere $2,000 check probably led to Kerry's most decisive campaign moment of 2004: he sent the check back, disavowed it, distanced himself, and redoubled efforts to do "background checks" on all donors to his campaign. . . . Contrast Kerry's response with that of the Venezuelan group Súmate – architects of last year's presidential recall referendum in Venezuela – which pocketed not $2,000 but $31,000 (that's $66,557,000, yes, sixty-six million plus Venezuelan Bolivares) from the US-funded "National Endowment for Democracy." This is the group that authored the August 15, 2004 referendum seeking to remove President Hugo Chávez, collected the signatures to place it on the ballot, hired Washington political consultants to front for its August 15 "exit poll," and then screamed "fraud" when its dubious and poorly collected exit poll stood alone and opposite the results of all other polls, including the most important one: that of the ballot box. . . . The government of Spain – the first government to recognize that of Venezuelan dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona during the short-lived 2002 military coup there - also chimed in, announcing it would send observers to the trial. The American Bar Association has sent court observers, too. They’re all very welcome. . . . Yet what bothers the same governments that tolerated (and authorized) the 2002 bloody coup d’etat in Venezuela is not that the trial is taking place. It is that the trial is taking place under democratic norms, out in the open, and the information likely to surface during these public proceedings is what has them on edge from Washington to Madrid. . . . Another interesting contrast between the case of John Kerry’s $2,000 foreign check in the United States and Súmate’s $31,000 foreign check in Venezuela - both received in 2004 - is that the U.S. candidate reported the donation to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC) as was his duty under the law. . . . But the political action group Sumate insists that it alone has the "human right" to hide the sources of its funding, and to engage in partisan political activity above the laws governing financing of political parties in Venezuela. Once again, upper class former oligarchs insist they have a "human right" to live above the law. . . . The fact remains that Sumate is in this legal jam now because it chose, instead of disclosing that it was taking money from the Bush administration, to hide the existence of the corrupting funds. It was only the result of an investigation by Authentic Journalist Jeremy Bigwood inside the United States, utilizing the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), that discovered that Sumate had been on the take in dollars. . . . Washington and Human Rights Watch do not want this trial to take place in open air. And if it does take place in public, they want to blow as much smoke as possible to distract from the facts that fly out of that courtroom. . . . What they want to stop is that the trial of the Sumate leaders for hiding a foreign government source of funding be held under the spotlight of public scrutiny. They’re all sending observers to the courtroom – and I say, welcome aboard! – because there are special interests very worried about what facts will come to light in the proceedings. They will be there with cell phones set to speed dial. And so will we in this horizontal network known as the Narco News Swarm. Won’t that be fun and informative for all? We'll serve the arepas, kids! . . . The facts that will come out in that trial about how the United States government meddles in foreign political campaigns – with practices that are decidedly illegal in the United States – are likely to be embarrassing to, say, the U.S. political consultants that collaborated with Sumate on cooking the books on a phony "exit poll." Let’s get some witnesses on the stand to talk about Penn, Schoen & Berland and those Sumate "training sessions" for "poll watchers." Let’s, finally, hear the participants questioned under oath about that and other imperial impositions that make a lie out of Washington’s claims to “promote democracy” in Latin America and elsewhere. . . . Let the trial begin. Let the facts come to light. And let the heavens fall.

posted by LoZo 12:04 PM

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Is U.S. Envoy setting up Venezuela for invasion?
(Associated Press, July 3, 2005)
A decline in cooperation between Venezuelan and U.S. authorities has weakened efforts to fight terrorism and drug trafficking, the U.S. ambassador to the South American country said. . . . "On the issue of illegal drugs, we have a situation where we have a reduction in cooperation between some police forces," U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield said in an interview broadcast Sunday on the Venezuelan television station Televen. . . . "I wish we could have more cooperation in passing along more information on matters of terrorism, the movement of specific people, Brownfield said, without giving details. . . . U.S.-Venezuelan relations have been marked by tensions during President Hugo Chavez's more than six years in power. . . . Chavez's close ties to Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his frequent criticisms of the U.S. government have coincided with U.S. officials' repeated statements of concern about his increasing domination of Venezuelan politics. . . . U.S. officials have denied Chavez's repeated accusations of backing plots against him, including a short-lived coup in 2002. . . . The United States remains the top buyer of oil from Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.

[COMMENT by Lorenzo: With all of the other diversions going on, who is going to notice if the Bush Regime is thinking about all that luscious oil so close to home. Better watch the Bush gang closely now that the price of oil it on its way up once again.]

posted by LoZo 5:05 PM