Chavez: New Coup Plot Discovered

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center>Venezuela's Chavez:
new coup plot discovered</font size></center>

Sep 11, 2008 03:22 PM

IAN JAMES
The Associated Press

CARACAS– President Hugo Chavez said his government has uncovered a plot to overthrow him and detained a group of alleged conspirators.

Chavez said Thursday that "various" suspects were detained, and accused them of trying to assassinate him with tacit backing from his political opponents and the United States.

A group of current and former military officers were recorded during tapped phone conversations discussing blowing up the presidential jet or bombing the presidential palace, Chavez said. He played some of the recordings during a televised speech.

"They're the same coup-plotters," said Chavez, who survived a failed 2002 coup. Without offering evidence, he said the suspected conspirators had support from "the political opposition ... the U.S. empire.''

U.S. officials have repeatedly denied Chavez's accusations that Washington has backed attempts to overthrow him.

While the leftist leader has regularly accused opponents of trying to oust him, he has not recently given such a detailed account of any purported plot.

Chavez ordered his defense minister to investigate the alleged plot involving an active vice admiral and other former military officers. He said his intelligence services had been "following this for some time.''

Chavez ally Mario Silva, who hosts a program on state television, first played recordings of the purported phone conversations late Wednesday. Silva said Vice Admiral Carlos Millan was among those accused, along with two other ex-officers from the National Guard and the air force.

In one recording aired, a voice identified as an ex-officer said ``we're going to take" the presidential palace.

Chavez said the conspirators have been "looking for ground-to-air missiles ... to try to blow up the presidential plane ... or bomb the (presidential) palace with a plane.''

Chavez accused private media organizations of trying to ``silence" news of the alleged coup attempt, and insisted he has evidence that an attempt to assassinate him "is being planned.''

http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/497577

 

[QueEx]

<font size="4">
Old Plot Information:</FONT SIZE>
<font size="3">

Venezuelan Coup and the US involvement </font size>
http://www.bgol.us/board/showthread.php?t=21026&highlight=chavez


`

 

[drunkard]

its not really a coup its an intervention and i'm sure they'll keep trying

 

[QueEx]

whats the difference ???

QueEx

 

[drunkard]

an intervention implies someone out of control not aware of their best interests and that of their people. coup is ugly, violent and dirty.

intervention after intervention in Latin America throughout the 20th century and today

 

[QueEx]

you just confused me more . . .

 

[drunkard]

its semantics.

regardless i dont think messing with chavez is wise now that him and putin have made arrangements.

 

[QueEx]

I think that if there is some concern over Chavez and if that concern is heightened by some kind of relationship between Putin and Chavez, NOW is the time to deal with it. I don't think the Russian's can be dealt with timidly.

QueEx

 

[drunkard]

in what manner could they confront russia, when iraq and afghanistan are not finished of yet, and the army is struggling to gain more recruits

 

[QueEx]

Venezuela nabs man in alleged plot to kill Chavez

<font size="5"><center>
Venezuela Arrests man
in alleged plot to kill Chavez</font size></center>


Associated Press
April 30, 2010


CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan police have arrested a man on suspicion of trying to incite the assassination of President Hugo Chavez.

Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami says the 28-year-old was detained Thursday in the southwestern city of El Vigia after a weeklong investigation. The man's identity has not been released.

El Aissami says the man has traveled frequently to Colombia and police found messages on his computers alluding to a plot to kill Chavez involving Colombia's outlawed right-wing paramilitary groups.

Tensions are strained between Colombia's conservative government and Chavez's socialist administration.

Venezuelan authorities have claimed numerous purported plots against Chavez in recent years, but none have led to arrests.

 

[QueEx]

<font size="5"><center
'Venezuelan army asked Colombian
paramilitaries to overthrow Chavez' </font size></center>

Colombia Reports
by Cameron Sumpter
Thursday, 29 April 2010


Colombian paramilitaries turned down a proposal by a group of Venezuelan military officers to stage a coup against President Hugo Chavez in 2002, according to extradited former AUC leader Salvatore Mancuso.

Speaking from a U.S. prison on Thursday, Mancuso said that a Venezuelan military emissary named "Luke" approached the former paramilitary to ask the AUC to overthrow the president, reports Global Vision.

Mancuso says that he told Luke it was "the craziest thing in the universe," and that now-deceased paramilitary leader, Carlos Castaño, also refused the proposal.

In May 2004, Venezuelan authorities arrested hundreds of alleged Colombian paramilitaries on a farm near Caracas, accusing them of planning a coup to topple the Chavez government and attempting to kill the president.

Hugo Chavez pardoned the group in 2007 as a "goodwill gesture" when he started work as a mediator for FARC prisoner releases.

DAS links to Paramilitaries

Salvatore Mancuso also asserts that Colombian security agency DAS orchestrated the 2008 claim of former paramilitary Jose Orlando Moncada, alias "Tasmania," that he was forced to incriminate President Uribe by a Supreme Court judge.

The extradited AUC leader claims former DAS director Jorge Noguera had links to paramilitaries.

Mancuso also said that former deputy director of security agency DAS, Jose Miguel Narvaez, had visited paramilitary camps to politically indoctrinate their fighters at a time when he was an advisor to the Ministry of Defense.

"Narvaez met camp commander Carlos Castaño in 1996 or 1997 - he was the ideological instructor to the heads of the paramilitaries. Castaño constantly asked Narvaez for favors," Mancuso said.

DAS head Felipe Munoz reacted to the allegations against his organization by saying he does "not respond to criminals."

On Wednesday Colombia's Prosecutor General said that Mancuso was responsible for the deaths of over 10,000 people during his time in charge of the AUC's Catatumbo Bloc.


http://colombiareports.com/colombia...mbian-paramilitaries-to-overthrow-chavez.html

 

[QueEx]

Bumped From the Archives -- The Best of Hugo Chavez --

July 28, 1954 - March 5, 2013




Seven days of mourning after president dies in Caracas - The Guardian


The Passing of a Political Tsunami - Fox News


Death Comes for el Comandante: Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) - TIME


Obituary: Hugo Chavez - socialist showman who transformed Venezuela - REUTERS

 

[QueEx]

In the end, it wasn't a "Plot" that killed him.

Or, was it ? ? ?

 

[SPECTRE1]

CARACAS, Venezuela -- In a move that heightened tensions surrounding the health of cancer-stricken President Hugo Chavez, his vice president on Tuesday expelled the U.S. Embassy's military attache, accusing him of "proposing destabilizing plans" to members of Venezuelan armed forces.

Speaking at the Miraflores presidential palace after conferring with Cabinet ministers, 20 state governors and the military chiefs of staff, Vice President Nicolas Maduro accused attache David del Monaco of "illegal activity that mocks international conventions."

"He has had meetings in recent weeks with active military members that go against the military stability of Venezuela," Maduro said on national television. He added that the government has informed the U.SS. Embassy that Del Monaco has 24 hours to leave the country.

The charge comes a day after the Venezuelan government said Chavez's health had taken a turn for the worse due to a lung infection. Maduro's statements added to an increasingly radical tone that Chavistas have taken in accusing internal opposition figures -- and now the U.S. government -- of creating "disturbances" during Chavez’s health crisis.

Without giving specifics on what the U.S. official was allegedly planning, Maduro said the Venezuelan government is "on the trail" of other individuals "involved in this poisonous scenario" and accused the U.S. government of taking actions to weaken his country's economy and of promoting a "permanent rumor campaign."

Contacted by email, a U.S. Embassy spokesman had no immediate reaction to Maduro's expulsion order. The U.S. and Venezuela had previously expelled each other's ambassadors. The U.S. charge d’affaires in Caracas is James Derham.

http://www.latimes.com/news/world/w...out-american-attache-20130305,0,2839400.story

 

[QueEx]

Interesting article, isn't it?

Just hours before Chavez's death, Chavez's hand-picked successor, Maduro, expels a U.S. military attache for "un-specified" destabilization activity. Of course, that attache might very well have been involved in something nefarious. On the other hand, the timing could suggest that Chavez's death was imminent and it would bode well for Maduro to play the U.S. Devil Card -- to either invent a crisis that works in his political favor - or - to inflame Chavez's base around him (Maduro).

Which would be your guess ? ? ?



.

 

[thoughtone]

Interesting article, isn't it?

Just hours before Chavez's death, Chavez's hand-picked successor, Maduro, expels a U.S. military attache for "un-specified" destabilization activity. Of course, that attache might very well have been involved in something nefarious. On the other hand, the timing could suggest that Chavez's death was imminent and it would bode well for Maduro to play the U.S. Devil Card -- to either invent a crisis that works in his political favor - or - to inflame Chavez's base around him (Maduro).

Which would be your guess ? ? ?



.

Inflame? Didn't the US government at least play a role in the coup?

 

[QueEx]

In what coup ?

 

[QueEx]

I don't mind sharing my opinion, but are you talking about the general subject of the thread or my specific comments just above ???


.

 

[thoughtone]

In what coup ?

Venezuelan Coup and the US involvement

 

[thoughtone]

I don't mind sharing my opinion, but are you talking about the general subject of the thread or my specific comments just above ???


.

Interesting article, isn't it?

...Chavez's death was imminent and it would bode well for Maduro to play the U.S. Devil Card -- to either invent a crisis that works in his political favor - or - to inflame Chavez's base around him (Maduro).

Which would be your guess ? ? ?



.

My responce.

 

[QueEx]

Venezuelan Coup and the US involvement

Inflame? Didn't the US government at least play a role in the coup?

I don't know. Quite possibly though. But, if you read carefully my comments just above, I think its equally possible that the attache could have been involved in something nefarious - or - Maduro was simply seizing the moment.

Don't you ???


.

 

[thoughtone]

I don't know. Quite possibly though. But, if you read carefully my comments just above, I think its equally possible that the attache could have been involved in something nefarious - or - Maduro was simply seizing the moment.

Don't you ???


.

Again, as a politician I'm sure he is trying to take advantage of the moment. However, the attitude of the US government toward Venezuela over the last 10 years or so hasn't made his political actions difficult in the eyes of the Chavez supporting Venezuelan.

 

[muckraker10021]

Big Oil, Big Ketchup and The Assassination of Hugo Chavez

Venezuelan President Chavez once asked me why the US elite wanted to kill him.
My dear Hugo: It's the oil. And it's the Koch Brothers -- and it's the ketchup.

by Greg Palast | January 11, 2013

http://www.gregpalast.com/vaya-con-dios-hugo-chavez-mi-amigo/

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Big-Oil-Big-Ketchup-and-T-by-Greg-Palast-130111-543.html

Reverend Pat Robertson said:
"Hugo Chavez thinks we're trying to assassinate him. I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it

It was 2005 and Robertson was channeling the frustration of George Bush's State Department. Despite Bush's providing intelligence, funds and even a note of congratulations to the crew who kidnapped Chavez (we'll get there), Hugo remained in office, reelected and wildly popular.

But why the Bush regime's hate, hate, HATE of the President of Venezuela? Reverend Pat wasn't coy about the answer: It's the oil.

"This is a dangerous enemy to our South controlling a huge pool of oil."

A really BIG pool of oil. Indeed, according to Guy Caruso, former chief of oil intelligence for the CIA, Venezuela hold a recoverable reserve of 1.36 trillion barrels, that is, a whole lot more than Saudi Arabia.

If we didn't kill Chavez, we'd have to do an "Iraq" on his nation. So the Reverend suggests,

"We don't need another $200 billion war".It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

Chavez himself told me he was stunned by Bush's attacks: Chavez had been quite chummy with Bush Senior and with Bill Clinton.

So what made Chavez suddenly "a dangerous enemy"? Here's the answer you won't find in The New York Times: Just after Bush's inauguration in 2001, Chavez' congress voted in a new "Law of Hydrocarbons." Henceforth, Exxon, British Petroleum, Shell Oil and Chevron would get to keep 70% of the sales revenues from the crude they sucked out of Venezuela. Not bad, considering the price of oil was rising toward $100 a barrel.

But to the oil companies, which had bitch-slapped Venezeula's prior government into giving them 84% of the sales price, a cut to 70%was "no bueno." Worse, Venezuela had been charging a joke of a
royalty -- just one percent -- on "heavy" crude from the Orinoco Basin. Chavez told Exxon and friends they'd now have to pay 16.6%.

Clearly, Chavez had to be taught a lesson about the etiquette of dealings with Big Oil.

On April 11, 2002, President Chavez was kidnapped at gunpoint and flown to an island prison in the Caribbean Sea. On April 12, Pedro Carmona, a business partner of the US oil companies and president of the nation's Chamber of Commerce, declared himself President of Venezuela -- giving a whole new meaning to the term, "corporate takeover."

U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro immediately rushed down from his hilltop embassy to have his picture taken grinning with the self-proclaimed "President" and the leaders of the coup d'état.

Bush's White House spokesman admitted that Chavez was, "democratically elected," but, he added, "Legitimacy is something that is conferred not by just the majority of voters." I see.

With an armed and angry citizenry marching on the Presidential Palace in Caracas ready to string up the coup plotters, Carmona, the Pretend President from Exxon returned his captive Chavez back to
his desk within 48 hours. (How? Get The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, the film, expanding on my reports for BBC Television. You can download it for free for the next few days.)

Chavez had provoked the coup not just by clawing back some of the bloated royalties of the oil companies. It's what he did with that oil money that drove Venezuela's One Percent to violence.

In Caracas, I ran into the reporter for a TV station whose owner is generally credited with plotting the coup against the president. While doing a publicity photo shoot, leaning back against a tree, showing her wide-open legs nearly up to where they met, the reporter pointed down the hill to the "ranchos," the slums above Caracas, where shacks, once made of cardboard and tin, where quickly transforming into homes of cinder blocks and cement.

"He [Chavez] gives them bread and bricks, so they vote for him, of course." She was disgusted by "them," the 80% of Venezuelans who are negro e indio (Black and Indian)--and poor. Chavez, himself
negro e indio, had, for the first time in Venezuela's history, shifted the oil wealth from the privileged class that called themselves

"Spanish," to the dark-skinned masses.

While trolling around the poor housing blocks of Caracas, I ran into a local, Arturo Quiran, a merchant seaman and no big fan of Chavez. But over a beer at his kitchen table, he told me,

"Fifteen years ago under [then-President] Carlos Andrés Pérez, there was a lot of oil money in Venezuela. The "oil boom' we called it. Here in Venezuela there was a lot of money, but we didn't see it."

But then came Hugo Chavez, and now the poor in his neighborhood, he said, "get medical attention, free operations, x-rays, medicines; education also. People who never knew how to write now know how
to sign their own papers."

Chavez' Robin Hood thing, shifting oil money from the rich to the poor, would have been grudgingly tolerated by the US. But Chavez, who told me, "We are no longer an oil colony," went further "too
much further, in the eyes of the American corporate elite.

Venezuela had landless citizens by the millions -- and unused land by the millions of acres tied up, untilled, on which a tiny elite of plantation owners squatted. Chavez' congress passed in a law in 2001 requiring untilled land to be sold to the landless. It was a program long promised by Venezuela's politicians at the urging of John F. Kennedy as part of his "Alliance for Progress."

Plantation owner Heinz Corporation didn't like that one bit. In retaliation, Heinz closed its ketchup plant in the state of Maturin and fired all the workers. Chavez seized Heinz' plant and put
the workers back on the job. Chavez didn't realize that he'd just squeezed the tomatoes of America's powerful Heinz family and Mrs. Heinz' husband, Senator John Kerry (now, Obama's nominee
for U.S. Secretary of State).

Or, knowing Chavez as I do, he didn't give a damn.

Chavez could survive the ketchup coup, the Exxon "presidency," even his taking back a piece of the windfall of oil company profits, but he dangerously tried the patience of America's least forgiving
billionaires: The Koch Brothers.

How? Well, that's another story for another day. [Watch this space. Or read about it in the book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits. Go to BallotBandits.org).

Elected presidents who annoy Big Oil have ended up in exile--or coffins: Mossadegh of Iran after he nationalized BP's fields (1953), Elchibey, President of Azerbaijan, after he refused demands of BP
for his Caspian fields (1993), President Alfredo Palacio of Ecuador after he terminated Occidental's drilling concession (2005).

"It's a chess game, Mr. Palast," Chavez told me. He was showing me a very long, and very sharp sword once owned by Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator. "And I am," Chavez said, "a very good chess player."

In the film The Seventh Seal, a medieval knight bets his life on a game of chess with the Grim Reaper. Death cheats, of course, and takes the knight. No mortal can indefinitely outplay Death who, this week, Chavez must know, will checkmate the new Bolivar of Venezuela.

But in one last move, the Bolivarian grandmaster plays a brilliant endgame, naming Vice-President Nicolas Maduro, as good and decent a man as they come, as heir to the fight for those in the
"ranchos." The One Percent of Venezuela, planning on Chavez's death to return them the power and riches they couldn't win in an election, are livid with the choice of Maduro.

Chavez sent Maduro to meet me in my downtown New York office back in 2004. In our run-down detective digs on Second Avenue, Maduro and I traded information on assassination plots and oil policy.

Even then, Chavez was carefully preparing for the day when Venezuela's negros e indios would lose their king-- but still stay in the game.

Class war on a chessboard. Even in death, I wouldn't bet against Hugo Chavez.

* * * * * * * *

Investigative reporter Greg Palast covered Venezuela for BBC Television Newsnight and Harper's Magazine.

 

[thoughtone]

Big Oil, Big Ketchup and The Assassination of Hugo Chavez

Venezuelan President Chavez once asked me why the US elite wanted to kill him.
My dear Hugo: It's the oil. And it's the Koch Brothers -- and it's the ketchup.

by Greg Palast | January 11, 2013

http://www.gregpalast.com/vaya-con-dios-hugo-chavez-mi-amigo/

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Big-Oil-Big-Ketchup-and-T-by-Greg-Palast-130111-543.html

Reverend Pat Robertson said:
"Hugo Chavez thinks we're trying to assassinate him. I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it

It was 2005 and Robertson was channeling the frustration of George Bush's State Department. Despite Bush's providing intelligence, funds and even a note of congratulations to the crew who kidnapped Chavez (we'll get there), Hugo remained in office, reelected and wildly popular.

But why the Bush regime's hate, hate, HATE of the President of Venezuela? Reverend Pat wasn't coy about the answer: It's the oil.

"This is a dangerous enemy to our South controlling a huge pool of oil."

A really BIG pool of oil. Indeed, according to Guy Caruso, former chief of oil intelligence for the CIA, Venezuela hold a recoverable reserve of 1.36 trillion barrels, that is, a whole lot more than Saudi Arabia.

If we didn't kill Chavez, we'd have to do an "Iraq" on his nation. So the Reverend suggests,

"We don't need another $200 billion war".It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with."

Chavez himself told me he was stunned by Bush's attacks: Chavez had been quite chummy with Bush Senior and with Bill Clinton.

So what made Chavez suddenly "a dangerous enemy"? Here's the answer you won't find in The New York Times: Just after Bush's inauguration in 2001, Chavez' congress voted in a new "Law of Hydrocarbons." Henceforth, Exxon, British Petroleum, Shell Oil and Chevron would get to keep 70% of the sales revenues from the crude they sucked out of Venezuela. Not bad, considering the price of oil was rising toward $100 a barrel.

But to the oil companies, which had bitch-slapped Venezeula's prior government into giving them 84% of the sales price, a cut to 70%was "no bueno." Worse, Venezuela had been charging a joke of a
royalty -- just one percent -- on "heavy" crude from the Orinoco Basin. Chavez told Exxon and friends they'd now have to pay 16.6%.

Clearly, Chavez had to be taught a lesson about the etiquette of dealings with Big Oil.

On April 11, 2002, President Chavez was kidnapped at gunpoint and flown to an island prison in the Caribbean Sea. On April 12, Pedro Carmona, a business partner of the US oil companies and president of the nation's Chamber of Commerce, declared himself President of Venezuela -- giving a whole new meaning to the term, "corporate takeover."

U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro immediately rushed down from his hilltop embassy to have his picture taken grinning with the self-proclaimed "President" and the leaders of the coup d'état.

Bush's White House spokesman admitted that Chavez was, "democratically elected," but, he added, "Legitimacy is something that is conferred not by just the majority of voters." I see.

With an armed and angry citizenry marching on the Presidential Palace in Caracas ready to string up the coup plotters, Carmona, the Pretend President from Exxon returned his captive Chavez back to
his desk within 48 hours. (How? Get The Assassination of Hugo Chavez, the film, expanding on my reports for BBC Television. You can download it for free for the next few days.)

Chavez had provoked the coup not just by clawing back some of the bloated royalties of the oil companies. It's what he did with that oil money that drove Venezuela's One Percent to violence.

In Caracas, I ran into the reporter for a TV station whose owner is generally credited with plotting the coup against the president. While doing a publicity photo shoot, leaning back against a tree, showing her wide-open legs nearly up to where they met, the reporter pointed down the hill to the "ranchos," the slums above Caracas, where shacks, once made of cardboard and tin, where quickly transforming into homes of cinder blocks and cement.

"He [Chavez] gives them bread and bricks, so they vote for him, of course." She was disgusted by "them," the 80% of Venezuelans who are negro e indio (Black and Indian)--and poor. Chavez, himself
negro e indio, had, for the first time in Venezuela's history, shifted the oil wealth from the privileged class that called themselves

"Spanish," to the dark-skinned masses.

While trolling around the poor housing blocks of Caracas, I ran into a local, Arturo Quiran, a merchant seaman and no big fan of Chavez. But over a beer at his kitchen table, he told me,

"Fifteen years ago under [then-President] Carlos Andrés Pérez, there was a lot of oil money in Venezuela. The "oil boom' we called it. Here in Venezuela there was a lot of money, but we didn't see it."

But then came Hugo Chavez, and now the poor in his neighborhood, he said, "get medical attention, free operations, x-rays, medicines; education also. People who never knew how to write now know how
to sign their own papers."

Chavez' Robin Hood thing, shifting oil money from the rich to the poor, would have been grudgingly tolerated by the US. But Chavez, who told me, "We are no longer an oil colony," went further "too
much further, in the eyes of the American corporate elite.

Venezuela had landless citizens by the millions -- and unused land by the millions of acres tied up, untilled, on which a tiny elite of plantation owners squatted. Chavez' congress passed in a law in 2001 requiring untilled land to be sold to the landless. It was a program long promised by Venezuela's politicians at the urging of John F. Kennedy as part of his "Alliance for Progress."

Plantation owner Heinz Corporation didn't like that one bit. In retaliation, Heinz closed its ketchup plant in the state of Maturin and fired all the workers. Chavez seized Heinz' plant and put
the workers back on the job. Chavez didn't realize that he'd just squeezed the tomatoes of America's powerful Heinz family and Mrs. Heinz' husband, Senator John Kerry (now, Obama's nominee
for U.S. Secretary of State).

Or, knowing Chavez as I do, he didn't give a damn.

Chavez could survive the ketchup coup, the Exxon "presidency," even his taking back a piece of the windfall of oil company profits, but he dangerously tried the patience of America's least forgiving
billionaires: The Koch Brothers.

How? Well, that's another story for another day. [Watch this space. Or read about it in the book, Billionaires & Ballot Bandits. Go to BallotBandits.org).

Elected presidents who annoy Big Oil have ended up in exile--or coffins: Mossadegh of Iran after he nationalized BP's fields (1953), Elchibey, President of Azerbaijan, after he refused demands of BP
for his Caspian fields (1993), President Alfredo Palacio of Ecuador after he terminated Occidental's drilling concession (2005).

"It's a chess game, Mr. Palast," Chavez told me. He was showing me a very long, and very sharp sword once owned by Simon Bolivar, the Great Liberator. "And I am," Chavez said, "a very good chess player."

In the film The Seventh Seal, a medieval knight bets his life on a game of chess with the Grim Reaper. Death cheats, of course, and takes the knight. No mortal can indefinitely outplay Death who, this week, Chavez must know, will checkmate the new Bolivar of Venezuela.

But in one last move, the Bolivarian grandmaster plays a brilliant endgame, naming Vice-President Nicolas Maduro, as good and decent a man as they come, as heir to the fight for those in the
"ranchos." The One Percent of Venezuela, planning on Chavez's death to return them the power and riches they couldn't win in an election, are livid with the choice of Maduro.

Chavez sent Maduro to meet me in my downtown New York office back in 2004. In our run-down detective digs on Second Avenue, Maduro and I traded information on assassination plots and oil policy.

Even then, Chavez was carefully preparing for the day when Venezuela's negros e indios would lose their king-- but still stay in the game.

Class war on a chessboard. Even in death, I wouldn't bet against Hugo Chavez.

* * * * * * * *

Investigative reporter Greg Palast covered Venezuela for BBC Television Newsnight and Harper's Magazine.

 

[SPECTRE1]

It looks racists and bigoted to attempt assassination or destablization only against Muslims, Hispanic, and African leaders for their natural resources.

It reminds me of what was done to Native Americans, just kill them off and take their land or resources instead of engaging in capitalism. It also ties into slavery, instead of paying a wage to Africans, just chain them down and pay them nothing to work in your field.

Maybe I should try this, if you don't sell me X that is worth $100 million, I will destabilize and assassinate you. Your replacement will than sell me X for $10,000.

 

[muckraker10021]

In Death as in Life, Chávez the Target of "Corporate Media" Scorn
His independence, help for Venezuela's poor will not be forgiven

<font="verdana, helvetica"="" size="3" color="#000000">
March 6, 2013

http://fair.org/take-action/media-advisories/in-death-as-in-life-chavez-target-of-media-scorn/


Venezuela's left-wing populist president Hugo Chávez died on Tuesday, March 5, after a two-year battle with cancer. If world leaders were judged by the sheer volume of corporate media vitriol and misinformation about their policies, Chávez would be in a class of his own.

Shortly after Chávez won his first election in 1998, the U.S. government deemed him a threat to U.S. interests--an image U.S. media eagerly played up. When a coup engineered by Venezuelan business and media elites removed Chávez from power, many leading U.S outlets praised the move (Extra!, 6/02). The New York Times (4/13/02), calling it a "resignation," declared that "Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator." The Chicago Tribune (4/14/02) cheered the removal of a leader who had been "praising Osama bin Laden"--an absurdly false charge.

But that kind of reckless rhetoric was evidently permissible in media discussions about Chávez. Seven years later, CNN (1/15/09) hosted a discussion of Chávez with Democratic strategist Doug Schoen, where he and host John Roberts discussed whether or not Chávez was worse than Osama bin Laden. As Schoen put it, "He's given Al-Qaeda and Hamas an open invitation to come to Caracas."

There were almost no limits to overheated media rhetoric about Chávez. In a single news article, Newsweek (11/2/09) managed to compare him to Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. (Chávez had built a movie studio, which is the sort of thing dictators apparently do.) ABC (World News, 10/7/12) called him a "fierce enemy of the United States," the Washington Post (10/16/06) an “autocratic demagogue." Fox News (12/5/05) said that his government was "really Communism"--despite the fact he was repeatedly returned to office in internationally certified elections (Extra!, 11-12/06) that Jimmy Carter deemed "the best in the world" (Guardian, 10/3/12).

Apart from the overheated claims about terrorism and his growing military threat to the region (FAIR Blog, 4/1/07), media often tried to make a simpler case: Chávez wasn't good for Venezuelans. The supposed economic ruin in Venezuela was a staple of the coverage. The Washington Post editorial page (1/5/13) complained of "the economic pain caused by Mr. Chávez," the man who has "wrecked their once-prosperous country." And a recent New York Times piece (12/13/12) tallied some of the hassles of daily life, declaring that such

frustrations are typical in Venezuela, for rich and poor alike, and yet President Hugo Chávez has managed to stay in office for nearly 14 years, winning over a significant majority of the public with his outsize personality, his free-spending of state resources and his ability to convince Venezuelans that the Socialist revolution he envisions will make their lives better.​

Of course, Venezuelans might feel that Chávez already had improved their lives (FAIR Blog, 12/13/12 ), with poverty cut in half, increased availability of food and healthcare, expanded educational opportunities and a real effort to build grassroots democratic institutions. (For more of this, read Greg Grandin's piece in the Nation--3/5/13 .)

Those facts of Venezuelan life were not entirely unacknowledged by U.S. media. But these policies, reflecting new national priorities about who should benefit from the country's oil wealth, were treated as an unscrupulous ploy of Chávez's to curry favor with the poor. As the Washington Post (2/24/13) sneered, Chávez won "unconditional support from the poverty-stricken masses" by "doling out jobs to supporters and showering the poor with gifts." NPR's All Things Considered (3/5/13) told listeners that "millions of Venezuelans loved him because he showered the poor with social programs."

Buying the support of your own citizens is one thing; harboring negative feelings about the United States is something else entirely. As CBS Evening News (1/8/13) recently put it, "Chávez has made a career out of bashing the United States." But one wonders how friendly any U.S. political leaders would be toward a government that had supported their overthrow.

Though this is often treated as another Chávez conspiracy theory--"A central ideological pillar of Chávez's rule over 14 years has been to oppose Republican and Democratic administrations in Washington, which he accuses of trying to destabilize his government," the Washington Post 1/10/13 ) reported--the record of U.S. support for the coup leaders is clear.

As a State Department report (FAIR Blog, 1/11/13 ) acknowledged, various U.S. agencies had "provided training, institution building and other support to individuals and organizations understood to be actively involved in the brief ouster of the Chávez government." The Bush administration declared its support for the short-lived coup regime, saying Chávez was "responsible for his fate" (Guardian, 2/09 of editorials on human rights, which showed Venezuela getting much harsher criticism than the violent repression of the opposition in U.S.-allied Colombia.

In reporting Chávez's death, little had changed. "Venezuela Bully Chávez Is Dead," read the New York Post's front page [URL="http://www.nypost.com/archives/covers/?dateChosen=03062013]3/6/13[/URL]); "Death of a Demogogue" was on Time's home page (3/6/13). CNN host Anderson Cooper (3/5/13) declared it was "the death of a world leader who made America see red, as in Fidel Castro red, Venezuela's socialist president, Hugo Chávez."

"The words 'Venezuelan strongman' so often preceded his name, and for good reason," declared NBC Nightly News host Brian Williams (3/5/13); on ABC World News (3/5/13), viewers were told that "many Americans viewed him as a dictator." That would be especially true if those Americans consumed corporate media.

The fact that U.S. elite interests are an overarching concern is not exactly hidden. Many reports on Chávez's passing were quick to note the country's oil wealth. NBC's Williams asserted, "All this matters a lot to the U.S., since Venezuela sits on top of a lot of oil and that's how this now gets interesting for the United States." MSNBC's Rachel Maddow (3/5/13) concurred: "I mean, Venezuela is a serious country in the world stage. It is sitting on the world's largest proven oil reserves."

And CNN's Barbara Starr (3/5/13) reported: "You're going to see a lot of U.S. businesses keep a very close eye on this transition in Venezuela. They're going to want to know that their investments are secure and that this is a stable country to invest in." Those U.S. businesses would seem to include its media corporations.

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[muckraker10021]

Reality based exposition from a former high level insider, delineating the true intentions of the monopoly capitalist controlled military industrial complex; American empire

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HUGO CHAVEZ
Chavez was not an enemy of America.
He was an enemy of Washington’s hegemony over other countries

by Paul Craig Roberts

The Honorable Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was appointed by President Reagan Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and confirmed by the US Senate. He was Associate Editor and columnist with the Wall Street Journal, and he served on the personal staffs of Representative Jack Kemp and Senator Orrin Hatch. He was staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, staff associate of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, and Chief Economist, Republican Staff, House Budget Committee. He wrote the Kemp-Roth tax rate reduction bill, and was a leader in the supply-side revolution. He was professor of economics in six universities, and is the author of numerous books and scholarly contributions. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.

March 12, 2013
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/03/12/hugo-chavez-paul-craig-roberts-4/

On March 5, 2013, Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela and world leader against imperialism, died. Washington imperialists and their media and think tank whores expressed gleeful sighs of relief as did the brainwashed US population. An “enemy of America” was gone.

Chavez was not an enemy of America. He was an enemy of Washington’s hegemony over other countries, an enemy of Washington’s alliance with elite ruling cliques who steal from the people they grind down and deny sustenance. He was an enemy of Washington’s injustice, of Washington’s foreign policy based on lies and military aggression, bombs and invasions.

Washington is not America. Washington is Satan’s home town.

Chavez was a friend of truth and justice, and this made him unpopular throughout the Western World where every political leader regards truth and justice as dire threats.

Chavez was a world leader. Unlike US politicians, Chavez was respected throughout the non-western world. He was awarded honorary doctorates from China, Russia, Brazil, and other countries, but not from Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, and Oxford.

Chavez was a miracle. He was a miracle, because he did not sell out to the United States and the Venezuelan elites. Had he sold out, Chavez would have become very rich from oil revenues, like the Saudi Royal Family, and he would have been honored by the United States in the way that Washington honors all its puppets: with visits to the White House. He could have become a dictator for life as long as he served Washington.

Each of Washington’s puppets, from Asia to Europe and the Middle East, anxiously awaits the invitation that demonstrates Washington’s appreciation of his or her servitude to the global imperialist power that still occupies Japan and Germany 68 years after World War II and South Korea 60 years after the end of the Korean War and has placed troops and military bases in a large number of other “sovereign” countries.

It would have been politically easy for Chavez to sell out. All he had to do was to continue populist rhetoric, promote his allies in the army, throw more benefits to the underclass than its members had ever previously experienced, and divide the rest of the oil revenues with the corrupt Venezuelan elites.

But Chavez was a real person, like Rafael Correa, the three-term elected president of Ecuador, who stood up to the United States and granted political asylum to the persecuted Julian Assange, and Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia since the Spanish conquest. The majority of Venezuelans understood that Chavez was a real person. They elected him to four terms as president and would have continued electing him as long as he lived. What Washington hates most is a real person who cannot be bought.

The more the corrupt western politicians and media whores demonized Chavez, the more Venezuelans loved him. They understood completely that anyone damned by Washington was God’s gift to the world.

It is costly to stand up to Washington. All who are bold enough to do so are demonized. They risk assassination and being overthrown in a CIA-organized coup, as Chavez was in 2002. When CIA-instructed Venezuelan elites sprung their coup and kidnapped Chavez, the coup was overthrown by the Venezuelan people who took to the streets and by elements of the military before Chavez could be murdered by the CIA-controlled Venezuelan elites, who escaped with their own venal lives only because, unlike them, Chavez was humanitarian. The Venezuelan people rose in instantaneous and massive public defense of Chavez and put the lie to the Bush White House claim that Chavez was a dictator.

Showing its sordid corruption, the New York Times took the side of the undemocratic coup by a handful of elitists against the democratically elected Chavez, and declared that Chavez’s removal by a small group of rich elites and CIA operatives meant that “Venezuelan democracy is no longer threatened by a would-be dictator.”

The lies and demonization continue with Chavez’s death. He will never be forgiven for standing up for justice. Neither will Correa and Morales, both of whom are no doubt on assassination lists.

CounterPunch, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, and other commentators have collected examples of the venom-spewing obituaries that the western presstitutes have written for Chavez, essentially celebrations that death has silenced the bravest voice on earth. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/08/obituaries-for-hugo-chavez/ [1]
http://fair.org/take-action/media-advisories/in-death-as-in-life-chavez-target-of-media-scorn/ [2]

Perhaps the most absurd of all was Associated Press business reporter Pamela Sampson’s judgment that Chavez wasted Venezuela’s oil wealth on “social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs,” a poor use of money that could have been used to build sky scrappers such as “the world’s tallest building in Dubai and branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi.”
http://www.fair.org/blog/2013/03/06...hen-he-could-have-built-gigantic-skyscrapers/ [3]

Among the tens of millions of Washington’s victims in the world–the people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Mali, with Iran, Russia, China, and South America waiting in the wings for sanctions, destabilization, conquest or reconquest, Chavez’s September 20, 2006 speech at the UN General Assembly during the George W. Bush regime will stand forever as the greatest speech of the early 21st century.

Chavez beards the lion, or rather Satan, in his own den:

“Yesterday, the devil himself stood right here, at this podium, speaking as if he owned the world. You can still smell the sulfur.”

“We should call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world. An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: ‘the Devil’s Recipe.’”

The UN General Assembly had never heard such words, not even in the days when the militarily powerful Soviet Union was present. Faces broke out in smiles of approval, but no one dared to clap. Too much US money for the home country was at stake. [A reader pointed out that although Chavez's speech was not interrupted with clapping, he received a healthy round of applause at the end.]

The US and UK delegations fled the scene, like vampires confronted with garlic and the Cross or werewolves confronted with silver bullets.

Chavez spoke about the false democracy of elites that is imposed by force and on others by “weapons and bombs.” Chavez asked, “What type of democracy do you impose with Marines and bombs?”

Wherever George W. Bush looks, Chavez said, “he sees extremists. And you, my brother–he looks at your color, and he says, oh, there’s an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him. The imperialists see extremists everywhere. It is not that we are extremists. It is that the world is waking up. It is waking up all over and people are standing up.”

In two short sentences totaling 20 words, Chavez defined for all times early 21st century Washington: “The imperium is afraid of truth, is afraid of independent voices. It calls us extremists, but they are the extremists.”

Throughout South America and the non-western world, Chavez’s death is being blamed on Washington. South Americans are aware of the US congressional hearings in the 1970s when the Church Committee brought to light the various CIA schemes to poison Fidel Castro.

The official document presented to President John F. Kennedy by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, known as the Northwoods Project, is known to the world and is available online. The Northwoods project consisted of a false flag attack on American citizens in order to blame Cuba and create public and world acceptance for US-imposed regime change in Cuba. President Kennedy rejected the proposal as inconsistent with morality and accountable government. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods [4]

The belief has already hardened in South America that Washington with its hideous technologies of death infected Chavez with cancer in order to remove him as an obstacle to Washington’s hegemony over South America.

This belief will never die: Chavez, the greatest South American since Simon Bolivar, was murdered by Washington. True or false, the belief is set in stone. As Washington and globalism destroy more countries, the lives of elites become more precarious.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood that security for the rich required economic security for the underclasses. Roosevelt established in the US a weak form of social democracy that European politicians had already understood was necessary for social cohesion and political and economic stability.

The Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes set about undermining the stability that Roosevelt provided, as Thatcher, Major, Blair, and the current prime minister of the UK undermined the social agreement between classes in the UK. Politicians in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand also made the mistake of handing power over to private elites at the expense of social and economic stability.

Gerald Celente predicts that the elites will not survive the hatred and anger that they are bringing upon themselves. I suspect that he is correct. The American middle class is being destroyed. The working class has become a proletariat, and the social welfare system is being destroyed in order to reduce the budget deficit caused by the loss of tax revenues to jobs offshoring and the expense of wars, overseas military bases, and financial bailouts. The American people are being compelled to suffer in order that elites can continue with their agendas.

The US elites know what is coming. That is why they created a Nazi-style Ministry of the Interior known as Homeland Security, armed with enough ammunition to kill every American five times and with tanks to neutralize the Second Amendment rights of Americans. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34259.htm [5]
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ralphbe...ecurity-its-time-for-a-national-conversation/ [6]

Pistols and rifles are useless against tanks, as the Branch Davidians found out in Waco, Texas. The protection of a small handful of elites from the Americans they are oppressing is also the reason the police are being militarized, brought under Washington’s control and armed with drones that can assassinate the real leaders of the American people who will be, not in the legislative, executive, or judicial chambers, but in the streets. http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-mi...ogy-and-tactics-by-local-level-police/5326303 [7]

Internment camps in the US appear to be real and not a conspiracy theory. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfkZ1yri26s [8]
http://info.publicintelligence.net/USArmy-InternmentResettlement.pdf [9]

The threat that the US government poses to its own citizens was recognized on March 7, 2013, by two US Senators, Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY), who introduced a bill to prevent the US government from murdering its own citizens: “The Federal Government may not use a drone to kill a citizen of the United States who is located in the United States” unless the person “poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury to another individual. Nothing in this section shall be construed to suggest that the Constitution would otherwise allow the killing of a citizen of the United States in the United States without due process of law.” http://www.cruz.senate.gov/record.cfm?id=339952 [10]

The “indispensable people” with their presidents Bush and Obama have begun the 21st century with death and violence. That is their only legacy.

The death and violence that Washington has unleashed will come back to Washington and to the corrupt political elites everywhere. As Gerald Celente says, the first great war of the 21st century has begun.



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[thoughtone]