Other - Chavez: Venezuela rejects visit of U.S. anti-drug chief

[enquirewithin]

Venezuela rejects visit of U.S. anti-drug chief

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/20...nt_9749212.htm

CARACAS, Aug. 31 (Xinhua) -- The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry has rejected a visit by John P. Walters, director of the U.S. National Drug Control Policy office, calling the proposed trip useless and ill-timed. A ministry statement issued Sunday said the American anti-drug chief "would better use his time to control the flourishing drug trafficking and abuse in his own country."

Venezuelans are displeased with the visit, it added.
The fight against drugs has actually seen "significant progress in Venezuela in the last few years, especially since the Bolivarian government ended the cooperation programs with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)," the statement said.

Venezuela ended cooperation with the DEA in 2006, accusing it of espionage. The government of President Hugo Chavez reaffirmed Sunday that the DEA operated in an illegal way on Venezuelan territory, and openly conspired against the South American country's democratic and constitutional order.

The U.S. government has been able to send thousands of soldiers to Iraq and to persecute Latin American countries, yet it was inefficient in the fight against drugs, the ministry statement said.

In his Sunday TV program "Hello President," Chavez accused the DEA of collaborating with drug dealers. Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela Patrick Duddy has said deteriorating diplomatic relations between Caracas and Washington are giving drug smugglers the upper hand.

Reputation Comments on this post:

	LOL! I love it. Good find!
	thanks for posting this. let's not forget the oil issue partly behind this

[Lunar Loops]

This from The Age (article link):

Venezuela rejects anti-drug pact with US

September 1, 2008 - 1:24PM

Venezuela has rejected US requests to resume cooperation in the war on drugs, insisting it has made progress despite an alleged four-fold gain in the amount of Colombian cocaine passing through its territory.
In the latest barb-trading over the issue, President Hugo Chavez called White House drug czar John Walters "stupid" for saying drug trafficking through Venezuela has soared in recent years. Chavez even warned that the US ambassador could be asked to leave the country.
Walters has been attempting for weeks to meet with Venezuelan officials while urging renewed cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration. Chavez suspended cooperation in August 2005, accusing DEA agents of espionage.
On Sunday, Venezuela's Foreign Ministry released a statement dismissing US attempts to renew drug talks as "useless and inopportune," saying US officials should focus instead on slashing demand for drugs at home.
"The anti-drug fight in Venezuela has shown significant progress during recent years, especially since the government ended official cooperation programs with the DEA," the statement said.
Walters claims the flow of Colombian cocaine through Venezuela has quadrupled since 2004, reaching an estimated 256 tonnes last year.
US law enforcement has detected a wave of flights that depart Venezuela and drop large loads of cocaine off the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, while other multi-ton loads are moved by boat and air to west Africa - a way station for shipments to Europe, he said.
Chavez also took issue with recent statements by US Ambassador Patrick Duddy, saying the diplomat was risking possible expulsion from Venezuela and would soon be "packing his bags" if he's not careful.
Duddy told reporters on Saturday that deteriorating diplomatic relations between Caracas and Washington are giving drug smugglers the upper hand.

[enquirewithin]

Walters claims the flow of Colombian cocaine through Venezuela has quadrupled since 2004, reaching an estimated 256 tonnes last year. US law enforcement has detected a wave of flights that depart Venezuel...

As Chavez knows, Walters is a compulsive liar (who wouldn't be in that job?). The main problem , as everyone knows, is Colombia. Walters accusations are political.

[Panthers007]

Chavez is no fool - or a patsy. He knows that Colombia is a mess because of a drug-war between the CIA's team of cocaine trafficers, and the leftists at war with the right-wing American-trained fascists. And it won't end until either all the people are dead, or the CIA packs it's tent and leaves. And it won't as long as there is a profit to be made. So why would Chavez want to listen to the American fascist pig? What can America offer Chavez? A fair trial and execution for being a commie? Choice of last meal and beverage?

I wonder how Manuel Noriega is doing...?

[enquirewithin]

He's no fool. He's escaped coups and assassaination attempts. Venezuela is one the few countries where the lives of the poor is impriving. The US doesn't want that.

[enquirewithin]

Ecuador Giving U.S. Air Base the Boot
Prevailing Nationalism, Investment From Elsewhere Make American Presence Obsolete
By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, September 4, 2008; A06

MANTA, Ecuador -- When U.S. officers stationed in this humid coastal city give reasons they should continue their decade-old airborne surveillance mission, they talk not only about fighting drug runners on the open seas but about the $71 million they've spent to renovate and maintain the city's airport, and the $6.5 million they inject each year into the local economy.
But the government of Ecuador has decided, and Washington has apparently agreed, that one of the most important foreign outposts in the United States' war on drugs will close. The 450 U.S. Air Force personnel and contractors stationed at a military base that shares the airport's runway will be leaving next year.
This decision reflects both the prevailing political climate here -- standing up to the United States tends to be widely popular -- and a new economic reality. With major projects underway in Manta by the Venezuelan government and a Hong Kong company, the U.S. dollars don't amount to much.
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela stood alongside President Rafael Correa of Ecuador in July to announce a jointly financed $6 billion oil refinery to be constructed on the outskirts of Manta. And Hong Kong-based Hutchison Port Holdings has begun building what will be among the largest deep-water ports on the west coast of South America, a $523 million project with piers, cranes, tuna-boat terminals, roads, and the capacity to eventually handle 1.6 million shipping containers a year at the continent's closest point to Asia.
"The U.S. stopped being the benchmark of what is good for Latin America," said Gustavo Larrea, Ecuador's security minister. "Because Latin America did everything that the U.S. asked it to do and wasn't able to get out of poverty, the North American myth lost political weight."
In the waning days of the Bush administration, governments in Latin America are rejecting many U.S.-funded programs, particularly anti-narcotics efforts, with rhetoric championing sovereignty and denouncing "imperialism" from the north.
In Venezuela, anti-drug officials say, cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has deteriorated sharply. In Bolivia, coca farmers decided in June to expel the U.S. Agency for International Development from part of the country amid accusations that it was conspiring against President Evo Morales.
The pushback resonates well politically in many parts of Latin America, where U.S. policies are often seen as security-obsessed Cold War vestiges or bitter economic pills forced down the throats of unwilling governments.
The leading spokesman of such anti-Americanism is Chávez, but other South American leaders often join in.
During his campaign for president, Correa said he would not renew a 10-year agreement reached with the United States in November 1999 that allowed the U.S. military to operate from the base at Manta. In late July, Ecuador's Foreign Ministry officially notified the United States that it must evacuate by November of next year.
The air base serves as a launching pad for surveillance flights over the Pacific Ocean to spot seaborne drug traffic and over Colombia to spot unauthorized planes. According to U.S. figures, the missions resulted in the seizure of about 230 tons of cocaine in 2007.
Whether the Americans stay or go "is a political thing," said Air Force Lt. Col. Robert Leonard, who recently completed a tour as commander of the U.S. contingent in Manta. "I don't think it's necessarily tied to our successes or the impact to the local folks. It's just a political thing."
But Ecuadoran officials say there is little benefit in the base. For one, their country is a minor player in the Andean world of coca and cocaine production. And the U.S. surveillance flights do nothing to help them uncover drug labs hidden under vast stretches of forest canopy.
"This is a problem for us of sovereignty," Larrea said. "It's as if we had a base in New York. This would be incomprehensible for North Americans."
The original agreement was signed by President Jamil Mahuad shortly before street protests and a military revolt forced him from office in 2000. Many Ecuadorans say the terms heavily favored the Americans. The United States, for instance, does not pay rent for the base.
The agreement was negotiated "in a moment of anguish" by a government that needed a loan from the International Monetary Fund but did not get it, said Adrián Bonilla, director of FLACSO, a think tank in Quito, the Ecuadoran capital.
"The political cost of a foreign base is very high. And the national need is very low," he said. "The political culture of Ecuador is very nationalistic. And it is mistrusting of the United States. . . . It's very popular to throw out the gringos from the Manta base."
U.S. officials don't yet know where they might move after Manta. Colombia is often mentioned. In other neighboring countries, such as Panama, officials have publicly ruled out letting the Americans move in. The loss of Manta, according to State Department spokesman Sean McCormack, would leave a "serious gap" in the U.S. drug fight.
But other officials, such as Leonard, say the U.S. planes could operate out of an existing base on the Caribbean island of Curacao for the time being and cover the same territory.
"The success will be slightly less. But I still think we'll have the coverage out there," Leonard said. "It's not like it will just disappear."
In Bolivia, the decision by the coca growers federation, still led by President Morales, to stop working with USAID in the Chapare region, was also motivated by a growing desire for self-determination. That part of Bolivia is home of the slogan "Long live coca, death to the Yankees." Residents express long-standing frustrations with U.S. efforts to eradicate the crop or persuade farmers to plant often-unviable alternatives.
"The famous macadamia nut? The cardamom? These were very expensive projects that resulted in what? In nothing," said Felipe Cáceres, Bolivia's vice minister of social defense and a former coca grower.
The USAID contingent, about 100 employees and contractors, whom Cáceres described as "all right-wingers," have left the Chapare. Morales has accused USAID of funding opposition groups to foment protests against him, allegations U.S. officials have denied.
Cáceres said last month that the Bolivian government plans to "nationalize" the war on drugs in Bolivia by controlling for itself how the aid money is spent. While Cáceres praised the cooperation between his government and the DEA, he ridiculed USAID projects as wasteful spending that often came with burdensome conditions.
From 1998 to 2003, Bolivian farmers could receive USAID funding for help planting other crops only if they eliminated all their coca, according to the Andean Information Network, a research group based in Bolivia. Other rules, such as the requirement that participating communities declare themselves "terrorist-free zones," simply irritated people, said Kathryn Ledebur, director of the Andean Information Network.
"Eradicate all your coca and then you grow an orange tree that will get fruit in eight years but you don't have anything to eat in the meantime? A bad idea," she said. "The thing about kicking out USAID, I don't think it's an anti-American sentiment overall" but rather a rejection of bad programs.
Another factor cited by Bolivian officials is that the European Union and Venezuela have stepped in as major sources of development funding without so many strings attached. The E.U. has earmarked about $350 million for Bolivia for the period from 2007 to 2013. "Most importantly and in line with the Bolivian authorities, activities have not been made conditional on the eradication of coca," said an E.U. strategy paper on Bolivia from late last year.
Meanwhile, U.S. aid for Bolivia's drug fight has been steadily dropping, Cáceres said, from more than $100 million a year during the 1990s to $26 million this year. This government has done the best job of fighting drugs, he said, "but each year we are getting less."
To U.S. anti-drug officials, the impending loss of the base in Ecuador and the halt of USAID projects in the Chapare do not portend disaster but suggest a lack of commitment to halt the flow of cocaine.
"I think it's a setback in the interests of the American people and the people of Ecuador and Bolivia," said John P. Walters, the White House drug policy chief. "But again, we respect the sovereign authority of the leadership of those countries, and we'll try to make the partnership work the best we can."
Correspondent Juan Forero contributed to this report.

[Woodman]

Wow!

Cool thread with interesting information.

I do hope that this non-cooperation becomes more of a trend among Centeral & South American countries.

It's sad to contemplate the billions of dollars that have been wasted.
It's just pissing money away that would have been better spent here, at home

[Panthers007]

"South America will never mean anything to us." - Henry Kissinger - Secretary of State under Richard M. Nixon.

[enquirewithin]

More the US's 'backyard':

Feature: Venezuela, US Governments Spar Over Drug Fighting

from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #550, 9/5/08; http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/...ezuela_cocaine


The tense relations between the Bush administration and Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez grew even more strained this week as Washington and Caracas traded charges and counter-charges over Venezuela's fight against cocaine trafficking. While it seems indisputable that cocaine trafficking through Venezuela has increased in recent years, the two governments are trading barbs over the extent of official Venezuelan complicity in the trade, whether Venezuela is doing enough to combat trafficking, and whether it needs to comply with US demands in order to effectively fight the drug trade.

Venezuela (from the CIA World Factbook)
Venezuela does not grow coca or process cocaine, but like other countries in Latin America, it has been used as a conduit, especially by traffickers from neighboring Colombia, the region's largest coca and cocaine producer. The rise of the European cocaine market in recent years has undoubtedly made the country an attractive way station for cocaine headed east.

"The flow of cocaine through Venezuela -- both north particularly through the Dominican Republic and Haiti but also into Europe through Africa and other places -- has increased dramatically," US drug czar John Walters told the Associated Press in a recent interview. He said smuggling through Venezuela had quadrupled since 2004, to about 250 metric tons last year, or about one-quarter of total regional (and thus global) cocaine production.


The remarks come as the US is pressing Venezuela to renew cooperation with it on drug trafficking, and are probably laying the groundwork for a looming decertification of Venezuela's compliance with US drug war goals. Relations between the US DEA and the Venezuelan government have been almost nonexistent since Chávezexpelled the DEA in 2005, charging that it was spying on his country. Only two DEA agents are currently stationed in Venezuela, and their activities are very circumscribed.
But Venezuela last weekend brusquely rejected renewed calls from Washington to accept a visit from Walters and resume cooperation on the drug front, saying it had made progress by itself and working with other countries. "The anti-drug fight in Venezuela has shown significant progress during recent years, especially since the government ended official cooperation programs with the DEA," Venezuela's foreign ministry said in a statement. Renewing talks on drugs would be "useless and inopportune," the statement said.


Walters had tried to "impose his visit as an obligation," the foreign ministry complained. "The government considers this kind of visit useless and ill-timed and feels that this official would better use his time to control the flourishing drug trafficking and abuse in his own country," the statement said. "Venezuela has become today a country free of drug farms, neither producing nor processing illicit drugs, and which has smashed records one year after another for seizing substances from neighboring countries," it added.

That statement came one day after US Ambassador to Venezuela Patrick Duddy ruffled feathers in Caracas by saying that Venezuela's failure to cooperate with the US was leaving an opening for traffickers. "The drug traffickers are taking advantage of the gap that exists between the two governments," Duddy told reporters, citing the estimated fourfold rise in trafficking.


President Chávez responded to those remarks Sunday by calling them "stupid" and warning that Duddy would soon be "packing his bags" if he is not careful. Chávez also suggested that the US concentrate on its own drug use and marijuana production.
On Monday, Venezuelan Vice-President Ramón Carrizales echoed his chief, telling reporters in Caracas that Venezuela was cooperating internationally, just not on US terms. "The DEA asks for freedom to fly over our territory indiscriminately," Carrizales said. "Well, they aren't going to have that freedom. We are a sovereign country."
Venezuela has seized tons of cocaine in recent years and has some 4,000 people behind bars on trafficking charges, he added. Most US-bound cocaine moves north by sea, he said, largely along Colombia's Pacific Coast.


But the Bush administration wasn't backing down. On Tuesday, State Department spokesman Sean McCormick said: "Our officials, including Ambassador Duddy, are going to continue to speak out on the state of US-Venezuelan relations... (and) what we see happening inside Venezuela. That does not foreclose the possibility of a better relationship... and certainly we're prepared to have a better relationship," he added, saying Washington first needed to see some unspecified actions by the Venezuelan government.


Good luck with that, said a trio of analysts consulted by the Chronicle. "There is little chance of increased cooperation," said Ian Vasquez, director of the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, who cited corruption within the Venezuelan government.


Prospects for a rapprochement on drug policy are low, said Adam Isaacson of the Washington-based Center for International Policy. "There is so much distrust between the two governments," he said. "Chávez's threat scenario is a US invasion, and a US military, security, or even police presence would be seen as probing for weaknesses. On the other hand, the US thinks Venezuela is on a campaign to bring Iran and Russia into the region, and Walters is an ideologue who thinks Venezuela is doing this to destabilize the region, you know, the idea of a leftist leader making common cause with drug traffickers. There is no trust, and there's not going to be any trust. The drug war stuff is really only one aspect of that larger context," he said.
"The Venezuelans have repeatedly stated they want to cooperate with the US on drugs, but Chávez deeply distrusts the US government," said Larry Birns, head of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington. "He has had a terrible time with activist US ambassadors and he feels they have intervened repeatedly in Venezuela's sovereign affairs, but this could be a propitious moment. The Bush administration will get nowhere with any new anti-Chávez initiatives, so they just might be interested in taking some steps toward normalizing relations with Venezuela simply to show that the US is capable of using diplomacy."


Still, said Birns, don't look for any dramatic breakthroughs. "There won't be any effective agreement on drug trafficking unless it's part of a larger mix of confidence-building measures," he said. "Hugo Chávez has a confrontational, combative personality, but he's relatively clean when it comes to human rights violations or other derelictions, and that's very frustrating for Washington. There will not be any comprehensive agreement on this issue, just some de facto improvements on a graduated basis because the necessary confidence between the two governments just doesn't exist."


All three agreed that cocaine trafficking through Venezuela is increasing, but none thought it was a matter of official policy. "It's true there is now a lot of cocaine going through Venezuela," said Isaacson. "While I don't think that Chávez is actively trying to turn the country into a narco playground, I haven't seen any major effort to root out drug-related corruption. Chávez also has problems controlling his national territory; there are security and public security problems, common crime is a serious problem, and organized crime is growing."


"Venezuela has an income of $100 billion a year from oil revenues, why would they be interested in drug revenues?" Birns asked. "I'm sure there are some rogue elements in the government, but this is not a matter of state policy," he said. "You can't deny there is drug trafficking in Venezuela, but I can't imagine that Chávez has anything to do with or gain from it. After all, he's giving away hundreds of millions of dollars a year around the world, including the US, in oil and heating oil, so this just doesn't seem like an income opportunity he would be interested in."


The war on drugs is just a waste of time and resources, said Vasquez. "Asking countries to enforce US drug prohibition is asking them to do the impossible," said Vasquez. "It hasn't succeeded in Colombia, Mexico, or anywhere in the Andes. You see some ephemeral victories -- you might kill a drug lord or shut down a cartel, but this is a multi-billion dollar multinational industry that can easily adapt to whatever is thrown at it."


Asking for more enforcement is only asking for trouble, said Vasquez. "The more prohibition, the more law enforcement, the more violent it becomes," he said. "There is no light at the end of the tunnel. To the extent that the drug war is more aggressively pursued, we can expect more violence and corruption."
Still, there are things Venezuela could do to ease tensions, said Isaacson. "Venezuela could be more cooperative in monitoring its airspace, sharing radar information, even allowing occasional US verification flights like the other Latin American countries do," he said. "And as Fidel Castro has done, they need to take a hard line against drug corruption in the state -- it can eat a state from the inside out."
But if Chávez can be accused of playing politics with the drug issue, so can the US, said Isaacson. "US anti-drug goals look even more politicized. I'm sure Venezuela will be decertified, and people will fairly say they're singling out Venezuela because they're leftists and say bad things about the US. Meanwhile, Colombia, with the world's largest coca crop, and Mexico, which has a huge drug trafficking industry, will get a pass because they're pro-US."
"The US certification process on drugs is very tarnished," agreed Birns. "All of these annual mandates from Congress on drugs and terrorism and the like have been carried out in an archly political manner. The US minimizes the sins of its friends and maximizes those of its enemies."


Washington's problems with Venezuela are just part of an overall decline in US influence in the region, said Birns. "With countries like Peru having high growth rates because of the increased valuation of natural resources across the board and new resource discoveries, with Brazil on the verge of becoming a superpower, with various new organizations of which the US is not a part, like the Rio Group and the South American security zone, our leverage over Latin America is waning. The only way to achieve real results on any of these issues is earnest negotiation where real concessions are made."

[Expat98]

Venezuela and Bolivia have expelled their U.S. ambassadors!

***

Venezuela expels U.S. ambassador

President Hugo Chavez says he's acting in solidarity with Bolivia, which ordered the U.S. envoy there to leave. The move is another setback in the region for Washington.

By Patrick J. McDonnell and Chris Kraul, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
September 12, 2008


ANOTHER BOOT: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez talks to
supporters outside the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas.

BUENOS AIRES -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said Thursday that he was expelling the U.S. ambassador in the latest escalation of tensions between Washington and Latin American leftists.

The move came a day after Bolivian President Evo Morales, a close Chavez ally, accused the U.S. envoy in his country of fostering divisions and ordered him to leave.

On Thursday, chaos worsened in Bolivia as clashes between government sympathizers and opponents in a remote province left at least eight dead and dozens injured. And Washington retaliated for the expulsion of Ambassador Philip S. Goldberg by telling Bolivia's ambassador, Gustavo Guzman, to leave.

In a speech laced with obscenities directed at the United States, Chavez told a cheering crowd that he acted in solidarity with Morales. Earlier, he said his country would come to Morales' aid if "Yankee stooges" tried to oust him.

Chavez and the Bush administration have been bitter rivals for years. Although this latest step signals a further deterioration, it is not clear how the expulsions will affect the region's political and economic stability.

Washington will continue to have diplomatic relations with Venezuela and Bolivia, at least for now. And Venezuela remains a major source of oil for the U.S.

On Thursday, Chavez renewed threats to cut off supplies should Washington launch "some aggression" against Venezuela, but stopped well short of stopping sales.

Still, expulsions of U.S. ambassadors are relatively rare and the moves shocked the region.

"This is a highly symbolic gesture," said Eduardo Gamarra, a professor at Florida International University in Miami. "And they're doing it at a time when no one in Washington is paying much attention to Latin America."

For years, the administration has sought to play down suggestions that an anti-U.S. leftist bloc was forming in Latin America while the White House was preoccupied in the Middle East. U.S. officials have contended that Washington would be making a mistake to overreact to Chavez.

But Morales and Chavez have been eager to prove that they pose a serious regional challenge. This week, the Venezuelans moved a step further by allowing Russian long-range bombers to visit a base, suggesting that greater military contacts might be ahead.

Venezuela and Bolivia have also reached out to Iran, angering Washington.

Chavez has found allies in Morales and Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa. But most governments in the region, including left-leaning administrations in Brazil and Argentina, have tried to maintain cordial relations with both Venezuela and the U.S.

The expulsion of Patrick Duddy after a year in Venezuela appeared to have little to do with his public actions. The ambassador has kept a low profile compared with his predecessor, William Brownfield, who sometimes responded to Chavez's anti-U.S. invective.

Chavez threatened to eject the ambassador a week ago in response to criticism from White House drug czar John P. Walters that his country wasn't doing enough to stop the flow of illegal drugs. Earlier, Chavez denounced a plot against him that he said was abetted by the United States, an allegation Washington denies.

Chavez said he also was recalling Caracas' ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Alvarez, until "there's a new government in the United States."

Throughout Latin America, Chavez has positioned himself as the prime opponent to "Yankee imperialism," a phrase he often invokes.

"If we have to create one Vietnam, two Vietnams, three Vietnams, here we are ready," Chavez said Thursday, echoing a phrase of Che Guevara, the late revolutionary leader. "Because we are not going to take hope away from our people."

In Bolivia, threats against gas pipelines have forced officials to restrict exports to giant neighbors Brazil and Argentina in the last two days. The government has shipped additional soldiers to energy fields to protect the pipelines.

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington that Bolivia's decision to expel Goldberg "will prejudice the interests of both countries, undermine the ongoing fight against drug trafficking and will have serious regional implications."

Bolivia is the world's third-largest producer of coca leaf, the raw material in cocaine, and a major recipient of U.S. anti-drug aid. But Morales rose to national prominence as president of a coca growers federation, a post he still holds, and has often been at odds with U.S.-backed anti-drug efforts.

The president frequently accused the ambassador of undermining his government. Morales was apparently incensed when Goldberg met recently with the governors of two provinces who oppose him.

Various South American nations, including Brazil, pledged support for Morales' government and offered help if needed to mediate the crisis.

Morales took office in 2006 amid hopes for national reconciliation in a country long riven by political, ethnic and regional differences. He was the first Indian president in a nation where much of the population is of indigenous ancestry.

But his socialist policies and rhetorical flourishes soon caused discontent in the eastern lowlands, home to much of the nation's agricultural and energy wealth. He accused "oligarchs" of seeking to break away from Bolivia.

Four lowland states voted this year for autonomy in a referendum Morales called treasonous and illegal. A fifth state, Chuquisaca, in the central highlands, has joined the four lowland provinces in opposition to Morales, whose base of support is in the western altiplano.

---

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...,3831144.story

Reputation Comments on this post:

Great additions to the forum as always.

[Lunar Loops]

These are indeed interesting developments. However, it would appear that this is more for 'show' than anything else and whilst it will undoubtedly anger Washington, I'd be less sure about any 'real' impact.

It will be interesting to see how this one develops (reaching out to Russia and Iran?).

[Lunar Loops]

This from The San Francisco Chronicle (article link):

US stops being polite as spat with Venezuela grows


By FOSTER KLUG and IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writer
Friday, September 12, 2008

The United States stopped trying to be polite Friday in an escalating diplomatic shoving match with the populist leaders of Venezuela and Bolivia. Washington slapped new sanctions on three aides close to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and called him weak and desperate. The Venezuelan ambassador got the boot for good measure, a move that was purely for show. Chavez had already brought his man home.

"Those who shout the loudest are not making the real news in the Americas," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said after Chavez used bathroom profanity to accuse the Americans of meddling in Latin America.

The rupture began Wednesday when Bolivian President Evo Morales expelled the U.S. ambassador there, accusing him of inciting violent protests. Chavez followed suit Thursday, accusing the "U.S. empire" of helping plot a coup against him. He later gave the American ambassador 72 hours to quit the country.

McCormack adopted a grave tone to read a long defense to reporters Friday.

"The only meaningful conspiracy in the region is the common commitment of democratic countries to enhance opportunities for their citizens," he said. "The only overthrow we seek is that of poverty."

Separately, the United States accused three members of Chavez's inner circle of aiding Colombian rebels known as the FARC by supplying arms and helping drug traffickers.

Adam Szubin, director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, said in a statement that the "designation exposes two senior Venezuelan government officials and one former official who armed, abetted and funded the FARC, even as it terrorized and kidnapped innocents."

Violent clashes over Bolivia's future have claimed eight lives. U.S. diplomats say Chavez and Morales are punching the United States to distract attention from mismanagement and unpopularity at home.

"This reflects the weakness and desperation of these leaders," McCormack said.

Not long after he spoke, Honduras announced that it will hold off on the accreditation of a new U.S. ambassador in solidarity with Venezuela and Bolivia. Honduran President Manuel Zelaya said the Central American nation is not breaking relations with the United States.

Zelaya said small nations need to stick together.

"The world powers must treat us fairly and with respect," he said.

Zelaya previously planned to receive credentials Friday from U.S. diplomat Hugo Llorens.

Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega, a close ally of Morales, has not announced yet whether he will take any action against the U.S. ambassador in Nicaragua.

"Dark forces of the empire are conspiring against the government of Morales," Ortega said Thursday, referring to the United States.

By the end of the week, it was clear that the Bush administration's second-term strategy to get along with many left-leaning governments in Latin America while saying as little as possible about Chavez had fizzled.

Chavez and Morales suggested they had no interest in improving ties with Washington until a new administration takes over in January.

Chavez has made a specialty of anti-American broadsides, including an infamous 2006 reference to President Bush as the devil. Morales, on the other hand, was seen by Washington as a potential partner. The former coca growing union boss campaigned with a mild anti-American edge, but shook hands warmly with Rice at a much-watched get-acquainted session in 2006. He gave her a present she couldn't keep: A traditional Bolivian string instrument plastered with coca leaves.

A two-week protest against Morales' plans to redo the constitution and redirect gas revenues turned violent this week as demonstrators in the country's energy-rich eastern provinces stormed public offices, blocked roads and seized gas fields.

His surprise move Wednesday to kick out the U.S. ambassador drew a mild response from Washington at first. The State Department said the diplomat had done nothing wrong, and then stalled for time to see if Morales was serious.

All hesitation was gone Friday.

"The charges leveled against our fine ambassadors by the leaders of Bolivia and Venezuela are false — and the leaders of those countries know it," McCormack said.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro said Bush's government is "the only one responsible for the state of deterioration" of its relations with Latin America.

The government said it will "submit all its relations with the United States to an intense process of evaluation."

The new sanctions target Hugo Carvajal Barrios and Henry Rangel Silva, both chiefs of Venezuelan intelligence agencies. A former government minister, Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, was also named. The officials have served as Chavez's most trusted security chiefs.

U.S. drug czar John Walters has said Venezuela, which suspended cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2005, is failing to take action against a sharp rise in cocaine smuggling. By U.S. estimates, the flow of Colombian cocaine through Venezuela has quadrupled since 2004, reaching an estimated 282 tons last year.

U.S. officials said the sanctions had been in the works for some time and are unrelated to the diplomatic dispute.

[enquirewithin]

McCormack adopted a grave tone to read a long defense to reporters Friday.

"The only meaningful conspiracy in the region is the common commitment of democratic countries to enhance opportunities for their citizens," he said. "The only overthrow we seek is that of poverty."

How can he say that without laughing?

[guldenat]

Originally Posted by enquirewithin

How can he say that without laughing?

It is the official policy of the US federal government to have no sense of humor.

[enquirewithin]

This is from an Iranian news web site:

Venezuelan envoy ordered to leave US
Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:44:03 GMT
Spokesman Sean McCormack
Washington has asked Venezuela's envoy to the US to leave the States, following the expulsion of its envoy to the Latin American country.

"We have informed the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States that he will be expelled and that he should leave the United States," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters on Friday, AFP said.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he was recalling his ambassador to Washington, Bernardo Alvarez Herrera, and did not know whether he had actually left already. McCormack, however, said that the Venezuelan envoy was still being expelled.

Chavez on Thursday expelled US ambassador to Venezuela Patrick Duddy.

The decision came after the Venezuelan head of state accused a group of current and former military officers of trying to assassinate him with the help of his political opponents and the United States.

Chavez said he was making the moves "in solidarity with Bolivia and the people of Bolivia."

Bolivian President Evo Morales accused the United States on Thursday of fomenting a coup d'etat by rich eastern department landowners against him, the country's first Indian president.

Chavez also accused the United States of having backed a coup plot against him. He threatened to cut off oil export to the US in case of any 'aggression' against his country.

[Panthers007]

Check out the movie: The Good Shepard - if you want a fairly accurate portrait of American foreign policy & methodologies.

[enquirewithin]

This article comes from Venezuela. Note that most of the media in Venezuela is hostile to Chavez, despite he impression hat the US media gives that he controls he media (nothing could be further from the truth).
_____________________

Cocaine traffic in Venezuela in 2007 doubled compared to 2004

http://www.eluniversal.com/2008/09/0...A1962685.shtml

"A permissive and corrupt environment in Venezuela, coupled with counternarcotics successes in Colombia, has made Venezuela one of the preferred routes for trafficking illicit narcotics out of Colombia," claims a US report.

According to the government of the United States, 116 metric tons of cocaine has been smuggled through Venezuela in January-June 2008. In contrast, US authorities estimate that 57 MT were smuggled in 2004; 136 MT in 2005; 170 MT in 2006 and 256 MT last year.

The drug trafficking data were gathered in the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report 2008, prepared by the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, from the US State Department. The document was obtained by El Universal and comprises some of the figures that US Drug Czar John Walters wanted to show to Venezuelan authorities, who have refused to meet with him.

According to the figures provided by the US government, which were obtained from the Consolidated Counterdrug Database (CCDB), cocaine smuggling through Venezuelan territory has increased almost fourfold over the past five years.

As for the type of transport used to take cocaine out the Venezuelan territory, the report states that records show that air transport of cocaine has increased 16 times in the past five years, while the drug flow by maritime routes has increased twice in the same period.

Irregular flights
The US authorities keep comprehensive data of the aircraft suspected of carrying drugs in the region. According to reports, "Colombia has regained control of its airspace." This has led to "a transfer to Venezuela of the transit routes related to the flow of drugs."

According to US records, there has been a tenfold increase in non-commercial flights carrying cocaine from Venezuela.

The main destination of the 220 flights that allegedly transported cocaine in 2007 was the Dominican Republic (117), followed by Mexico (26) and Haiti (17). From these countries, the drug is shipped to the United Stated or Europe.

On the other hand, the report claims: "A permissive and corrupt environment in Venezuela, coupled with counternarcotics successes in Colombia, has made Venezuela one of the preferred routes for trafficking illicit narcotics out of Colombia".

The report says that "Venezuelan police and prosecutors do not receive sufficient training or equipment to carry out counternarcotics investigations properly" and adds: "Due to the lack of effective criminal prosecutions, politicization of investigations and high-level corruption, the public has little faith in the judicial system." "Within this environment, organized crime flourished, while small seizures and arrests are limited to low-level actors."

The information handled by the United States with regard to drug trafficking in Venezuela contrasts with the information reported by the Venezuelan authorities, who have said, according to the Vice President, Ramón Carrizález, that Venezuela fights more efficiently drug trafficking without the aid from the US.

_______________________________

Venezuela's answer is obvious. Colombia, a US client state, is the source of the cocaine.

_______________________________

Venezuela denies increase of drug transit towards US

http://www.eluniversal.com/2008/09/0...A1963879.shtml

Néstor Riverol, the head of Venezuela's National Anti-Drug Office (ONA) said on Wednesday that the accusations against Venezuela, according to which 500 metric tons of drugs transit the Venezuelan territory to be destined for the United States, are "irresponsible".

In the midst of a strong controversy between Caracas and Washington about Venezuelan domestic policy to fight against drug traffic, Riverol headed on Wednesday the incineration of four metric tons of drugs at the Maiquetía Airport, located on the Caribbean coast near Caracas, to show the effectiveness of seizures, DPA reported.

"We have a shared international responsibility to meet, and we do develop both a domestic and foreign policy. In the international context, Venezuela is a transit country of illicit drugs coming from Colombia, the largest producer of cocaine in the world," said Riverol at a press conference.

Reputation Comments on this post:

good

[Lunar Loops]

Originally Posted by enquirewithin

This article comes from Venezuela. Note that most of the media in Venezuela is hostile to Chavez, despite he impression hat the US media gives that he controls he media (nothing could be further from the truth).

How do you know this? I am not saying it isn't true, as I will freely admit that you could write what I know about Venezuelan politics and their media on a gnat's todger. Genuinely interested as this article just seems to report on the findings of the US report and then on the response from the Venezuelan authorities with no great bias that I can see (mind you it is early in the day for me and I haven't had my caffeine kick start yet).

Reputation Comments on this post:

good

[enquirewithin]

I'm no expert on Venezuala either, but the press in the West usually portrays Chavez as a dictator and implies that he controls the media, which is not true. A failed US-backed coup against him was orchestrated by some of the media, not something the US government would take lightly too:

With a fortune of more than $4 billion, Gustavo Cisneros likes to promote the notion of himself as the wealthiest man in Latin America and the most powerful media baron of the continent, a Latino equivalent to Murdoch or Berlusconi. Since 1961 the Organización Cisneros has owned Venevisión, the main commercial tv channel in Venezuela—best known abroad for its rabid opposition to Chávez during the 2002 coup, and ceaseless denunciation of his supporters as ‘mobs’ and ‘monkeys’.

The fact that this paper devotes so much space to US government propaganda would seem to indicate that it may be against Chavez's government. According to John Pilger:

Venezuela is a country in which 95 per cent of the press and TV and radio are owned by the far-right. who mount unrelenting daily attacks on the government unhindered. The Latin American Murdoch, Cisneros, unfettered, controls much of it. Indeed, it is probably the most concentrated, reactionary media on earth....

[Lunar Loops]

Thanks for that enquire.

That's some job Chavez has with both the media and the USA gunning for him.

I would imagine their must be some pro-Chavez media though, even if it is in the minority.

[enquirewithin]

There is a famous (or infamous to the Western media) Chavez TV channel, for example. Chavez would have been killed by the US a while back, but he is very popular with ordinary people all over South America and survives.

He is always criticised by the US:

Feature: US Lists "Major" Drug Producing and Trafficking Countries, Names Only Bolivia, Burma, and Venezuela as Not Complying

http://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle/..._certification

In their annual exercise in congressionally-mandated diplomatic hubris, the Bush administration and the US State Department Tuesday released its FY 2009 List of Major Illicit Drug Producing Countries, but only placed three countries -- Bolivia, Burma, and Venezuela -- on their list of countries that had "failed demonstrably" to adhere to the US interpretation of the international anti-drug conventions and to the mandates of the Foreign Relations Authorization Act.


President Bush named 20 countries as major drug producers or transit countries: Afghanistan, The Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Burma, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. But while Afghanistan dominates global opium production, Colombia is the world's leading cocaine exporter, and Mexico is the primary conduit for drugs entering the US, Bush and his spokespersons aimed most of their criticism at Bolivia, Burma, and Venezuela. Bolivia is the third largest coca producer, behind Colombia and Peru, and the US has been critical of President Evo Morales' "zero cocaine, not zero coca" policies that have allowed a gradual expansion of the coca crop while at the same time working to inderdict cocaine produced from coca diverted to the black market. Burma is a distant second to Afghanistan in opium production, but also a leading source of methamphetamine for Asian black markets. Venezuela does not produce drug crops, but is accused by US officials of not adequately fighting the flow of Colombian cocaine through its territory on the way to European markets.
More importantly, all three countries are current political foes of the Bush administration. The Burmese military junta has been criticized for years by Washington on numerous grounds, while Bolivia's Morales and Venezuela's Chavez are at the core of a Latin American leftist bloc that is challenging US domination in the region and is now in the midst of a diplomatic showdown with Washington. Both Venezuela and Bolivia threw out US ambassadors last week in the midst of a still-unresolved dispute between Morales and conservative opposition governors in Bolivia's resource-rich eastern provinces.
"The Venezuelan government's continued inaction against a growing drug trafficking problem within and through its borders is a matter of increasing concern to the United States," said Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs David Johnson at a Tuesday afternoon briefing on the determination. "Despite Venezuelan assurances that seizures have increased, the amount of drugs bound for the United States and Europe continues to grow," he said. Perhaps as importantly: "Venezuela has refused to renew its counternarcotics cooperation agreements with the United States, including refusing to sign letters of agreement to make funds available for cooperative programs to fight the trafficking of drugs from and through Venezuela to the United States," Johnson said.
And although Johnson conceded that Bolivia "does have a number of effective, US-supported coca eradication and cocaine interdiction programs," he warned that "its official policies and actions have caused a significant deterioration in its cooperation with the United States. President Morales continues to support the expansion of licit coca leaf production, despite the fact that current legal cultivation far exceeds the demand for legal traditional consumption and exceeds the area permitted under Bolivian law."
The expansion of cultivation had resulted in an increase of 14% in coca cultivation and an increase of potential cocaine production from 115 to 120 metric tons, Johnson claimed. He also cited the recent departure of US AID workers and DEA agents from Bolivia's Chapare coca-producing region at the firm request of the coca growers' unions backed by the Bolivian government.
"The US government's determination that Bolivia 'failed demonstrably' to adhere to counternarcotics obligations seems to demonstrate the political nature of this process," said Kathryn Ledebur of the Cochabamba-based Andean Information Network. "It is worth noting that in his press statement, Assistant Secretary Johnson felt the need to highlight that the determination was not 'a hasty decision,' because it was just that -- a hasty response to the expulsion of Ambassador Goldberg," she said.
"Word from several Capitol Hill sources just days before Goldberg's expulsion was that while there were concerns, there was no way to justify saying Bolivia had 'failed demonstrably' in its obligations," Ledebur continued. "This is the third determination since Morales was elected and the fourth since the adoption of the cato system [allowing selected farmers to grow small coca crops], yet this is the first time they chose to decertify Bolivia."
Ledebur also pointed out that while the US criticized Bolivia for growing coca in excess of legal traditional consumption and above the 12,000 hectare ceiling established by Law 1008, that ceiling had never been honored. "At the peak of US-funded forced eradication and other repressive eradication policies, coca production was never reduced to the ceiling," she noted.
"I'm not at all surprised because the drug certification process has been so tainted and archly politicized," said Larry Birns, executive director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a Washington, DC-based think tank. "So you can predict that if the US has taken a certain line toward Bolivia and Venezuela, there will be a negative drug certification. The US always has a hidden test, and that's the nature of Washington's relationship with the country in question."
Birns pointed to the Clinton administration's refusal to decertify Mexico in the wake of the 1993 NAFTA agreements, although Washington had ample evidence of significant drug corruption in the Mexican government. At the same time, it refused to certify Colombia as cooperating in the drug war despite its real efforts because it accused then President Ernesto Samper of having received funding from drug traffickers during his presidential campaign. There are also non-drug examples of the politicization of certification exercises, according to Birns, who cited Reagan administration claims that El Salvador was improving its human rights situation during their civil war in the 1980s, and the Bush administration's use of the terrorism designation in order to pressure North Korea on its nuclear ambitions.
The Bolivian government was quick to challenge US figures and the whole certification process. In a Wednesday speech in La Paz, Morales countered with a UN report from earlier this summer that saw only a 5% increase in cultivation, then went on the offensive. "There should be a certification process for those who are fighting drug trafficking by eliminating the consumer market,'' Morales said. "Drug trafficking responds to the market." Morales also attacked the entire notion of US certification: "These are political decisions,'' Morales said. "We're not afraid of these campaigns against the government using black lists."
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was similarly -- if predictably -- scathing Wednesday in remarks reported by Agence France-Presse "The United States can say whatever it likes," Chavez said. "That is pure garbage. It is not true. They can release whatever list they like. What do we care about this list? They can shove it in their pocket, they are no moral authority to make any lists."
At the Tuesday State Department press briefing, an anonymous reporter used the last question to ask about the 800-pound gorilla in the room. Referring to the criteria for a country's inclusion on the "majors list," he asked: "If the Majors was applied to the United States, it would be on the list, too, correct? 5,000 hectares of cannabis and a major -- and a place through which drugs flow?"
"I don't know," Assistant Secretary Johnson evaded. "I don't want to tell you something I don't know. And I'll look into that for you. I'm not trying to dodge your question. I just don't -- I don't know."

[enquirewithin]

More on US double standards and why McCain/ Palin would make things worse:

Latin America ought to be a high priority for any new administration in Washington. But the only line in Palin’s Latin America résumé is a vacation to Mexico. And when world leaders arrive for the UN summit, Palin’s only meeting with a Latin American leader will be with Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, whose government has the worst human rights record in the entire region.
In an ongoing scandal, Colombia’s judicial system has arrested 29 members of congress and ordered investigations into 39 more for suspicion of collaborating with paramilitary death squads. Almost all of those implicated in the scandal are members of Uribe’s governing coalition. The president's former intelligence chief is even accused of feeding information to the paramilitaries to help them target and kill labor and human rights activists.
Uribe's own cousin, Senator Mario Uribe, was forced to resign in an effort to avoid a Supreme Court inquiry into whether he had paramilitary ties. The president and his cousin have been close political partners for decades. Álvaro Uribe has not been directly implicated in the scandal, but the president has long been dogged by accusations that paramilitary groups used his family’s farm to attack opponents in the 1990s.
The announcement of the Uribe-Palin meeting came just hours after the Colombian leader met with president George Bush. Uribe has been feverishly promoting his Colombia-U.S. free trade agreement in Washington. The Colombian government has paid more than $1 million to U.S. firms that have negotiated or lobbied in favor of the deal.
McCain has praised the Colombian government for prosecuting the drug war and making “substantial and positive” progress on human rights. Contrasting himself to his presidential opponent Barack Obama, McCain expressed support for the pending trade deal with the South American country.
The Huffington Post notes that McCain’s Colombia policy is informed by “a bevy of advisers who have earned large amounts either lobbying for the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, or representing corporations that do business with that country.”
The trade deal has been facing an uncertain future on the Hill. Many Democrats have opposed the initiative because Colombia’s labor and human rights record remains atrocious. Currently, the agreement is in legislative limbo since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi moved to indefinitely postpone consideration of the agreement.
The McCain campaign has also lined up Palin to receive some schooling in New York from a right-wing U.S. foreign policy stalwart. The Alaska governor will be chatting with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, an infamous Cold Warrior figure that is famous in Latin America for being the architect of U.S. destabilization of democratic Chile in advance of General Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup.
Previously, Palin was simply oblivious and uncurious about other foreign countries. But now, as she leaps on to the international stage, she stands to have a tremendous impact on the world—for the worse.
Currently, South America is exploding and a McCain-Palin administration will only exacerbate regional tensions. Bolivia is on the verge of civil war and president Evo Morales recently expelled the U.S. ambassador for meeting with members of the political opposition. Coming to the aid of an ally, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez followed suit by also expelling the U.S. ambassador in his country.
McCain is an implacable foe of Morales and Chávez and would like to isolate the so-called leftist “Pink Tide” in South America by cultivating links to the right-wing Uribe government in Bogotá and promoting free trade with sympathetic governments.

[enquirewithin]

HRW is not AI or Medicin san Frontiers. It occasionally criticizes Israel (to not do so would be too egregious), but it remains faithful to its masters. Here is the propaganda explained.
____________________________
Human Rights Watch in Venezuela: Lies, Crimes and Cover-ups
http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle20886.htm

By James Petras

28/09/08 "ICH " -- Human Rights Watch, a US-based group claiming to be a non-governmental organization, but which is in fact funded by government-linked quasi-private foundations and a Congressional funded political propaganda organization, the National Endowment for Democracy, has issued a report “A Decade Under Chavez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela” (9/21/2008 hrw.org). The publication of the “Report” directed by Jose Miguel Vivanco and sub-director Daniel Walkinson led to their expulsion from Venezuela for repeated political-partisan intervention in the internal affairs of the country.

A close reading of the “Report” reveals an astonishing number of blatant falsifications and outright fabrications, glaring deletions of essential facts, deliberate omissions of key contextual and comparative considerations and especially a cover-up of systematic long-term, large-scale security threats to Venezuelan democracy posed by Washington.

We will proceed by providing some key background facts about HRW and Vivanco in order to highlight their role and relations to US imperial power. We will then comment on their methods, data collection and exposition. We will analyze each of HRW charges and finally proceed to evaluate their truth and propaganda value.

Background on Vivanco and HRW

Jose Miguel Vivanco served as a diplomatic functionary under the bloody Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet between 1986-1989, serving no less as the butcher’s rabid apologist before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. His behavior was particularly egregious during the regime’s brutal repression of a mass popular uprising in the squatter settlements of Santiago in 1986-1987. With the return of electoral politics (democracy) in Chile, Vivanco took off to Washington where he set up his own NGO, the Center for Justice and International Law, disguising his right-wing affinities and passing himself off as a ‘human rights’ advocate. In 1994 he was recruited by former US federal prosecutor, Kenneth Roth, to head up the ‘Americas Division’ of Human Rights Watch. HRW demonstrated a real capacity to provide a ‘human rights’ gloss to President Clinton’s policy of ‘humanitarian imperialism’. Roth promoted and supported Clinton’s two-month bombing, destruction and dismemberment of Yugoslavia. HRW covered up the ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Kosovo by the notorious Albanian terrorists and gangsters of the Kosovo Liberation Army and the unprecedented brutal transfer of over 200,000 ethnic Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia. HRW backed Clinton’s sanctions against Iraq leading to the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children. Nowhere did the word ‘genocide’ ever appear in reference to the US Administrations massive destruction of Iraq causing hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.

HRW supported the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan where Kenneth Roth advised the US generals on how to secure the colonial occupation by avoiding massive civilian deaths. In words and deeds, HRW has played an insidious role as backer and adviser of US imperial intervention, providing the humanitarian ideological cover while issuing harmless and inconsequential reports criticizing ‘ineffective’ excesses, which ‘undermine’ imperial dominance.

HRW most notorious intervention was its claim that Israel’s murderous destruction of the Palestinian city of Jenin was ‘not genocidal’ and thus provided the key argument for the US and Israeli blocking of a UN humanitarian mission and investigative report. As in all of its ‘research’ their report was deeply colored by selective interviews and observations which understated the brutality and killings of Palestinian civilians by the Israeli state – even while the fanatics who run the major pro-Israel organizations accused HRW of bias for even mentioning a single murdered Palestinian.

Method

HRW currently makes a big play of its widespread interviews of a broad cross section of Venezuelan political and civic society government and opposition groups, as well as its consultation of most available documents. Yet the Report on Venezuela does not reflect anything of the sort. There is no careful, straightforward presentation of the government’s elaboration and justification for its actions, no academic critiques of the anti-democratic actions of anti-Chavez mass media; no discussion of the numerous journalists’ accounts which expose systematic US intervention. The Report simply records and reproduces uncritically the claims, arguments and charges of the principle publicists of the opposition while dismissing out of hand any documented counter-claims. In other words, Vivanco and company act as lawyers for the opposition rather than as serious and objective investigators pursuing a balanced and convincing evaluation of the status of democracy in Venezuela.

The political propaganda intent of Vivanco-HRW is evident in the timing of their ‘investigations’ and the publication of their propaganda screeds. Each and every previous HRW hostile ‘report’ has been publicized just prior to major conflicts threatening Venezuelan democratic institutions. In February 2002, barely two months before the US backed military coup against Chavez, HRW joined the chorus of coup planners in condemning the Chavez regimes for undermining the ‘separation of powers’ and calling for the intervention of the Organization of American States. After the coup was defeated through the actions of millions of Venezuelan citizens and loyalists military officers, HRW moved quickly to cover its tracks by denouncing the coup – but subsequently defended the media moguls, trade union bureaucrats and business elites who promoted the coup from prosecution, claiming the coup promoters were merely exercising their ‘human rights’. HRW provides a novel meaning to ‘human rights’ when it includes the right to violently overthrow a democratic government by a military coup d’etat.

Following the military coup in 2002 and the bosses’ lockout of 2003, HRW published a report condemning efforts to impose constitutional constraints on the mass media’s direct involvement in promoting violent actions by opposition groups or terrorists. President Chavez’ “Law for Social Responsibility in Radio and Television” provided greater constitutional guarantee for freedom of speech than most Western European capitalist democracies and was far less restrictive than the measures approved and implemented in Bush’s US Patriot Act, which HRW has never challenged, let alone mounted any campaign against.

Just prior to the political referenda in 2004 and 2007, HRW issued further propaganda broadsides which were almost identical in wording to the opposition (in fact HRW ‘Reports’ were widely published and circulated by all the leading opposition mass media). HRW defended the ‘right’ of the US National Endowment for Democracy to pour millions of dollars to fund opposition ‘NGO’s’, such as SUMATE, accusing the Chavez government of undermining ‘civil society’ organizations. Needless to say, similar activity in the US by an NGO on behalf of any foreign government (with the unique exception of Israel) would require the NGO to register as a foreign agent under very strict US Federal laws; failure to do so would lead to federal prosecution and a jail term of up to 5 years. Apparently, HRW’s self-promoted ‘credibility’ as an international ‘humanitarian’ organization protects it from being invidiously compared to an agent of imperialist propaganda.

HRW: Five Dimensional Propaganda

The HRW Report on Venezuela focuses on five areas of politics and society to make its case that democracy in Venezuela is being undermined by the Presidency of Hugo Chavez: political discrimination, the courts, the media, organized labor and civil society.

1.Political Discrimination

- The Report charges that the government has fired and blacklisted political opponents from some state agencies and from the national oil company.

- Citizen access to social programs is denied based on their political opinions.

- There is discrimination against media outlets, labor unions and civil society in response to legitimate criticism or political activity.

Between December 2002 and 2003, following the failure of the military coup of the previous April, the major business organizations, senior executives of the state oil company and sectors of the trade union bureaucracy organized a political lockout shutting down the oil industry, paralyzing production through sabotage of its computer-run operations and distribution outlets in a publicly stated effort to deny government revenues (80% of which come from oil exports) and overthrow the democratically elected government. After 3 months and over $20 billion dollars in lost revenues and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to machinery, with the aid of the majority of production workers and technicians, the bosses ‘lockout’ was defeated. Those officials and employees engaged in the political lockout and destruction of equipment and computers were fired. The government followed normal procedures backed by the majority of oil workers, who opposed the lockout, and dismissed the executives and their supporters in order to defend the national patrimony and social and investment programs from the self-declared enemies of an elected government. No sane, competent, constitutional lawyer, international human rights lawyer, UN commissioner or the International Court official considered the action of the Venezuelan government in this matter to constitute ‘political discrimination’. Even the US State Department, at that time, did not object to the firing of their allies engaged in economic sabotage. HRW, on the other hand, is more Pope than the Pope.

Nothing captures the ludicrous extremism of the HRW than its charge that citizens are denied access to social programs. Every international organization involved in assessing and developing large social programs, including UNESCO, the World Health Organization and the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, have praised the extent and quality of the coverage of the social programs instituted by the Chavez government covering 60% of the population and almost 100% of the poor. Since approximately between 20-30% of the poor still vote for the opposition, it is clear that needy citizens critical of the government have equal access to social programs, including food subsidies, free health care and education. This social safety net is more inclusive than ever before in the history of Venezuela. In fact some of the poor suburbs of Caracas, like Catia, which voted down the 2007 referendum, are major recipients of large-scale, long-term social assistance programs.

Only scoundrels or the ill informed could be convinced of the HRW charge of discrimination against mass media outlets, labor unions and civil society groups. The opposition controls 95% of the newspapers, a majority of the television and radio outlets and frequencies, with the widest national circulation. The government has ‘broken’ the ruling class monopoly on information by funding two major TV stations and a growing number of community based radio stations.

There are more trade union members and greater trade union participation in enterprises, internal debates and free elections than ever before under previous regimes. Rival lists and intense competition for office between pro and anti-government lists are common in the trade unions confederation (UNT). The entire HRW ‘Report’ is based on complaints from the authoritarian CTV(Confederation of Venezuelan Workers/Confederacion de Trabajadores de Venezuela) bureaucrats who have lost most of their supporters and are discredited because of their role in supporting the bloody April 2002 coup. They are universally disdained; militant workers have not forgotten their corruption and gangster tactics when they collaborated with previous rightwing regimes and employers.

2. The Courts

HWR claims that President Chavez has “effectively neutralized the judiciary as an independent branch of government”. The claim that the judiciary was ‘independent’ is a new argument for HRW – because a decade earlier when Chavez’ 1999 constitution was approved by referendum, HRW decried the ‘venality, corruption and bias of the entire judicial system’. After years of releasing the leaders of the 2002 coup, postponing rulings and undermining positive legislation by elected legislative bodies and after revelations of high and lower court bribe taking, the Government finally implemented a series of democratically approved reforms, expanding and renewing the judicial system. The fact that the new court appointees do not follow the past practices of the opposition-appointed judges has evoked hysterical cries by HRW that the new reformed courts ‘threaten fundamental rights’. The most bizarre claim by HRM is that the Supreme Court did not ‘counter’ a 2007 constitutional reform package. In fact the Supreme Court approved the placing of constitutional reforms to a popular referendum in which the Chavez government was narrowly defeated. The Venezuelan Supreme Court subsequently respected the popular verdict – unlike US Supreme Court, which overturned the popular vote in the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections, a constitutional crime against the popular will, which Kenneth Roth, Vivanco and the rest of HRW have yet to condemn.

3. The Media

Every outside media specialist has been highly critical of the advocacy of violent action (leading up to the coup) and gross falsifications and libelous ‘reports’ (including racist epithets against Hugo Chavez) propagated by the ruling class-dominated mass media. A single opposition television network just had one of its many outlets suspended for openly backing the opposition military seizure of power, an action that any Western capitalist democracy would have taken in the wake of a violent uprising. HRW did not, has not and will not condemn the arrest of dozens of US and international journalists, some brutally beaten, covering the Republican and Democratic Presidential Conventions. Nothing even remotely resembling the extraordinary powers of ‘preventive detention’ of journalists by the US Homeland Security/local and state police forces exists in Venezuela. The wanton destruction of journalists’ cameras and tape recorders by the police at the US Republican Party Convention would be un-imaginable in Venezuela today. In contrast the only offense prosecuted in Venezuela against the media is the act of supporting and advocating violence aimed at overthrowing democratic institutions. Like all countries, Venezuela has laws dealing with libel and slander; these are far weaker than any comparable statutes in the countries upholding the tradition of the Magna Carta. HRW blatantly falsifies reality by claiming state control of the print media: All one needs to do is peruse any newsstand in Venezuela to see a multiplicity of lurid anti-government headlines, or tune into the radio or television stations and view news accounts that compete for the worst anti-Chavez propaganda found in the US Fox News or CNN.

4. Organized Labor

HRW claims that the Venezuelan government has violated ‘basic principles of freedom of association’ because it requires state oversight and certification of union elections and that by denying the right to bargain collectively to non-certified unions, it undermines workers’ rights to freely join the union of their choosing and to strike. Practically every government in the West has rules and regulations regarding oversight and certification of union elections, none more onerous than the US starting with the Taft-Hartley Act of the 1940’s and the ‘Right to Work’ Laws current in many states, which have reduced the percentage of unionized workers in the private sector to less than 3%. In contrast, during the Chavez Presidency, the number of unionized workers has more than doubled, in large part because new labor legislation and labor officials have reduced employer prerogatives to arbitrarily fire unionized workers. The only union officials who have been ‘decertified’ are those who were involved in the violent coup of April 2002 and the employers lockout intended to overthrow the government, suspend the constitution and undermine the very existence of free unions. Former Pinochet official Jose Miguel Vivanco delicately overlooks the gangsterism, thuggery and fraudulent election procedures, which ran rampant under the previous rightwing Venezuelan labor confederation, CTV. It was precisely to democratize voting procedures and to break the stranglehold of the old-guard trade union bosses that the government monitors oversaw union elections, many of which had multi-tendency candidates, unfettered debates and free voting for the first time.

I attended union meetings and interviewed high level CTV trade unions officials in 1970, 1976 and 1978 and found high levels of open vote buying, government and employer interference and co-optation, collaboration with the CIA-funded American Institute of Free Labor Development and large-scale pilfering of union pension funds, none of which was denounced by HRW. I attended the founding of the new Venezuelan union confederation, Union Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT) in 2003 and a subsequent national congress. I have witness a totally different unionism, a shift from government-run ‘corporate’ business unionism to independent social movement unionism with a decidedly class oriented approach. The UNT is a multi-tendency confederation in which diverse currents compete, with varying degrees of support and opposition to the Chavez Government. There are few impediments to strikes and there is a high degree of independent political action with no inhibition to workers resorting to strikes in order to demand the ouster of pro-employer labor officials.

For example, this year, steel workers in the Argentine-owned firm SIDOR, went on strike several times protesting private sector firings (HRW, of course never discussed private sector violations of workers rights). Because the Venezuelan Labor Minister tended to take the side of the employers, the steelworkers marched into a meeting where Chavez was speaking and demanded the dismissal of his Minister. After conferring with the workers’ leaders, Chavez fired the Labor Minister, expropriated the steel plant and accepted workers demands for trade union co-management. Never in Venezuelan labor history have workers exercised this degree of labor influence in nationalized plants. There is no doubt that there are government officials who would like to ‘integrate’ labor unions closer to the state; the new unionists do spend too much time in internal debates and internecine struggles instead of organizing the informal and temporary worker sectors. But one fact stands out: Unionized and non-unionized Venezuelan workers have experienced greater social welfare payments, rising living standards, greater job protection and greater free choice in union affiliation than any previous period in their history. It is ironic that Vivanco, who never raised a word against Pinochet’s anti-labor policies, an uncritical apologist of the AFL-CIO (the declining and least effective labor confederation in the industrialized West), should launch a full-scale attack on the fastest growing, independent and militant trade union movement in the Western hemisphere. Needless to say, Vivanco avoids any comparative analysis, least of all between Venezuelan and US labor over the spread of union organizing, internal democracy and labor representation in industry, social benefits and influence over government policy. Nor does HRW refer to the positive assessment by independent international labor organizations regarding union and labor advances under the Chavez Presidency.

5. Civil Society and HRW: The Mother of All Perversities

Jose Miguel Vivanco, who kept quiet during his years as a state functionary serving the Chilean dictator Pinochet, while thousands of protestors were beaten, jailed and even tortured and killed and courageous human rights groups were routinely assaulted, shamelessly claims that President Chavez has adopted “an aggressively adversarial approach to local rights advocates and civil society organization.”

President Chavez has actively promoted a multitude of independent, democratically elected community councils with over 3 million affiliated members, mostly from the poorest half of the population. He has devolved decision-making power to the councils, bypassing the party-dominated municipal and state officials, unlike previous regimes and US AID programs, which channeled funds through loyal local bosses and clients. Never has Venezuela witnessed more intense sustained organization, mobilization and activity of civil society movements. This cuts across the political spectrum, from pro-Chavez to pro-oligarch neighborhood, civic, working class and upper class groups. Nowhere in the world are US-funded groups, engaged in overt extra-parliamentary and even violent confrontations with elected officials, tolerated to the degree that they enjoy freedom of action as in Venezuela. In the US, foreign-funded organizations (with the exception of Israeli-funded groups) are required to register and refrain from engaging in electoral campaigning, let alone in efforts to destabilize legitimately constitutional government agencies. In contrast, Venezuela asked the minimum of foreign government-funded self-styled NGOs in requiring them to register their source of funding and comply with the rules of their constitution, that is, to stay out of virulent partisan political action. Today, as yesterday, all the ‘civil society’ organizations, including these funded by the US, which routinely attack the Chavez government, can operate freely, publish, assemble and demonstrate unimpeded. Their fundamental complaint, echoed by HRW, is that the Chavez government and its supporters criticize them: According to the new HRW definition of civil society freedom,the opposition has the right to attack the government - but not the other way around; some countries can register foreign-funded organizations - but not Venezuela; and some government can jail terrorists and coup-makers and identify and criticize their accomplices – but not Venezuela. The grotesque double-standard, practiced by Human Rights Watch, reveals their political allegiances: Blind to the vices of the US as it descends into a police state and equally blind to the virtues of a growing participatory democracy in Venezuela.

The ‘Report’ contains egregious omissions. It fails to mention that Venezuela, under President Chavez, has experienced twelve internationally supervised and approved elections, including several presidential, congressional and municipal elections, referenda and recall elections. These have been the cleanest elections in Venezuelan history and certainly with more honest vote counting than one would find in the US presidential contests.

The ‘Report’ fails to report on the serious security threats including the recording of phone conversations of active and retired high military officials planning to violently seize power and assassinate President Chavez. Under the extraordinary degree of tolerance in Venezuela, not a single constitutional right has been suspended. In the US, similar terrorist actions and plans would have led to a state of emergency and the probable pre-emptive mass incarceration of thousands of government critics and activists. HRW ignores and downplays security threats to Venezuelan democracy – whether it involves armed incursions from Colombian paramilitary groups allied with the pro-US Venezuelan opposition, the assassination of the chief federal prosecutor Danilo Anderson who was investigating the role of the opposition in the bloody coup of April 2002, the US-backed secessionist movement in the state of Zulia, the collusion of the mass media with violent student mobs in assaulting Chavez supporters on campus or the economic sabotage and panic caused by the private sector’s hoarding of essential food and other commodities in the lead-up to the 2007 referendum.

One of Vivanco’s most glaring omissions is the contrast between Venezuela’s open society approach to the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrant workers from Colombia and the US authoritarian practice of criminalizing its undocumented laborers. While the US Homeland Security and Immigration police have implemented arbitrary mass arrests, assaults and deportation of working heads of immigrant families – leaving their wives and children vulnerable to destitution, Chavez has awarded over a million undocumented Colombian immigrant workers and family members with residency papers and the opportunity for citizenship.

HRW has yet to protest Washington’s brutal denial of human rights to its Latin American and Asian immigrant workers in recent months. HRW did not issue a single protest when US-backed local oligarch politicians, local government officials and racist gangs in Bolivia went on a rampage and slaughtered three dozen unarmed Indian peasant workers. Vivanco’s squalid selective slandering of Venezuela is only exceeded by his systematic silence when there are abuses involving US collaboraters!

Conclusion

The Human Rights Watch Report on Venezuela is a crude propaganda document that, even in its own terms, lacks the minimum veneer of ‘balance’, which the more sophisticated ‘humanitarian’ imperialists have put out in the past. The omissions are monumental: No mention of President Chavez’ programs which have reduced poverty over the past decade from more than 60% to less than 30%; no recognition of the universal health system which has provided health care to 16 million Venezuelan citizens and residents who were previously denied even minimal access; and no acknowledgment of the subsidized state-run grocery stores which supply the needs of 60% of the population who can now purchase food at 40% of the private retail price.

HRW’s systematic failure to mention the advances experienced by the majority of Venezuelan citizens, while peddling outright lies about civic repression , is characteristic of this mouthpiece of Empire. Its gross distortion about labor rights makes this report a model for any high school or college class on political propaganda.

The widespread coverage and uncritical promotion and citation of the ‘Report’ (and the expulsion of its US-based authors for gross intervention on behalf of the opposition) by all the major newspapers from the New York Times, to Le Monde in France, the London Times, La Stampa in Italy and El Pais in Spain gives substance to the charge that the Report was meant to bolster the US effort to isolate Venezuela rather than pursue legitimate humanitarian goals in Venezuela.

The major purpose of the HRW ‘Report’ was to intervene in the forthcoming November municipal and state elections on the side of the far-right opposition. The ‘Report’ echoes verbatim the unfounded charges and hysterical claims of the candidates supported by the far right and the Bush Administration. HRW always manages to pick the right time to issue their propaganda bromides. Their reports mysteriously coincide with US intervention in electoral processes and destabilization campaigns. In Venezuela today the Report has become one of the most widely promoted propaganda documents of the leading rightist anti-Chavez candidates.

For the partisans of democracy, human rights and self-determination, every effort should be made to expose the insidious role of HRW and its Pinochetista propagandist, Vivanco, for what they are – publicists and promoters of US-backed clients who have given ‘human rights’ a dirty name.

Professor Petras latest book Zionism,Militarism And the Decline of U.S Power(clarity press Atlanta) - August 2008

[Figaro]

I personally don't like Chavez, he is not my cup of tea, but in this case I have to applaud him. Why would he want to trust DEA CIA and the whole bunch. I don't trust them. I wouldn't tell Chavez to do.