US considers toughening stance toward Venezuela(more $$ to anti-Chavistas)

[Robbien]

WASHINGTON, April 26 (Xinhuanet) -- US President George W. Bush and his top aides are weighing a tougher approach, including funneling more money to foundations and business and political groups opposed to President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

The Bush administration has already begun to urge Venezuela's neighbors to distance themselves from Chavez and to raise concerns about press freedoms, judicial independence and the Venezuelan government's affinity for leftist groups abroad, including Colombian guerrillas. But Washington has found no allies so far in its attempts to isolate the Venezuelan leader, a by-lined story in the New York Times said.

On Sunday, Chavez ended a 35-year military cooperation agreement and ordered out four American military instructors he accused of fomenting unrest. The accusation, which American officials denied, was the latest blow to relations that had been bitter since the US tacitly supported a coup that briefly ousted Chavez in April 2002, the article said.

. . .

However, the New York Times' article said that a main problem for the United States is that Washington has little, if any, influence over Caracas. The high price of oil has left Venezuela with no need for the loans or other aid that the Untied States could use as leverage.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-04/26/content_2881437.htm

[In Truth We Trust]

1. Viva Chavez! Fuck corporate imperialism and george w fraWd

[Occulus]

2. Blatant interference in another nation's affairs.

They aren't even trying to hide anything. Is this even legal on the part of our government?

[Robbien]

7. No it is not legal

We have done it for years and years, but previously we have always done it covertly. BushCo doesn't feel it needs to do things covertly because no one will take them to task. The NYT article should have written about this activity in negative terms, but it did not. No one else is talking about it in negative terms either, not the UN, not the EU, not China. No one except for Cuba and Venezuela. Even the OAS is silent.

[Zorra]

12. Neocon philososphy holds legality, morality and ethics as unnecessary

when it applies to them and their actions. Their twisted, sociopathic Straussian-Machiavellian beliefs place them above legality and morality. They feel they can do whatever they want to whoever they want whenever they want because they are superior to everyone else.

Bush and the neocons are "vampires".

To neocons, legality, morality and ethics do not apply to them, and are only convenient tools through which they control and manipulate their victims, (and pretty much the rest of us are their victims), for political and financial gain.

The republican party has always been corrupt, but the neocons have turned it into a cesspool of stinking gangrenous rot.

[ninkasi]

19. Perfect description of them, Zorra

You are so right, they are vampires. They stay alive by draining the rest of us, and they can't stand to have the light of truth shined upon them. They do their evil in the dark, and they have no sympathy for the lives they ruin.

They see the rest of us as existing only for the reason of providing them with whatever they need. They suck up our money, our children's lives, our hopes for the future. As they have gained power, they have gained even more arrogance.

Our only hope is that as they become more and more brazen, more of our sleep walking American public will wake up, realize that our lives have become a nightmare, and vote in such overwhelming numbers that even Diebold can't deliver them a victory.

[cliss]

23. Interesting point.

I've read that as Washington's desperation becomes more apparent, they will let the pretense fall. It will become so obvious to the rest of the world (and the US, as well) that we are simply "out for the oil".

[LiberallyInclined]

3. a possible plausible scenario? could * make a deal with China...?

They can have Taiwan- but we get Venezuela.

Sooner or later, the U.S. is going to make a play for all the oil in the western hemisphere...the Monroe Doctrine kinda implies that it all belongs to us,after all.

[Double T]

4. When Will The Armada Begin Sailing Across The Caribbean

To Fight The Evil Empire Of Venezuela that Won't Fall In Line

[Rainscents]

5. China is Venezuela's biggest oil supplier now...

and I believe, China will back Hugo over US.

[loudsue]

14. I think you mean "China is Venezuela's biggest oil CUSTOMER now"

Venezuela is the supplier. But China has struck a deal w/ Chavez whereby China is going to invest HEAVILY in Venezuela's infrastructure for oil refining and transportation to ports. China is investing all over South America, and the bush warmongers are in a precarious position if they think they're going to try to enforce the Monroe Doctrine over countries that China has invested in heavily.

The bush administration keeps putting this nation more in danger every time they move or speak. They are absolute idiots.

:kick:

[confludemocrat]

6. What "they" voted for: fight with everyone, all the time

Perpetual war for perpetual war, thanks to the now-ingrained love of Militarism in this country, hand-in-hand with the romance of covert ops and sophisticated weaponry, always for supposedly defending freedom. No in the whole world one buys this figurative "twenty acres of Florida land" except the bare majority scraped up with a toxicly stupid and brain-vacant mixture of electoral fraud and deceit and vast swaths of uninformed people in barely livable red-state wastelands.

[sam sarrha]

8. so isn't it illegal to use my tax money to overthrow a foreign government??

or something.. :shrug:

[Robbien]

11. They are labeling it a "push for democracy"

if a government gets overthrown in the process that's just a cost of obtaining "Democracy".

There, now don't you feel better.

At least we aren't dropping bombs on them as we did in Iraq's push for democracy. Or at least not yet.

[ninkasi]

22. I guess I'm confused, then

I thought Venezuela already had a democracy. I thought the people elected Chavez, and that the ones opposing him are that country's rich, who are unhappy about losing their stranglehold on the oil industry there.

So we're paying to overthrow an elected leader, in a country that already has a democracy? Or are we just indulging, with our tax dollars, the demented maniac currently destroying our democracy here? Perhaps he and the other neocon thugs feel that they are restoring some sort of cosmic balance by installing their own version of democracy on other countries, to atone for ruining ours.

[atreides1]

25. The US has done it before

Chile comes to mind, as does Vietnam, in both cases the US supported the overthrow of elected officials in the name of "democracy".

In Chile it was Allende, a Socialist, in his place the US put Pinochet, and we all know what happened under him.

In Vietnam, the US circumvented planned democratic elections, because of the fear that the Communists would win the elections. So
we helped to prop up a dictator. And when the US's chosen dictator
had his military launch a violent crackdown on Buddhist monks, the US
convinced South Vietnamese generals to overthrow Diem, which only made the country more unstable.

So what we see starting here is just another attack on a democratically elected President.

[leftchick]

29. Bob Novak on c-span 2 this morning

said it isn't a "real" Democracy so they need to be delt with. :eyes:

[mtnester]

9. Seriously, just what has Venezuela done to the US to warrant our

interference besides be critical of Bush and his minions?? I would appeal ANY move the US made toward Venezuela to the UN if I were Chavez. ANY move. This would be one of them. And I would take my democratic buddies/countries with me to back up my appeal.

[meganmonkey]

10. I think Bushco is so miserable they just can't stand seeing anyone happy

Plus, there's the oil, and the self-determination, and that crazy commie Chavez ;)

[Durant]

13. Hmm takes note of the source of the article ..

and thinks about the people who will take any alleged (and I do mean alleged) story as an opportunity to do the "hate America" routine. The US isn't worried about Chavez, he's a gnat. They will continue to sell the oil as they always have. That's the extent of interest the US has in Venezuela...

[meganmonkey]

15. Why do you think Chavez is a 'gnat' ?

and who hates America?

[renaissanceguy]

16. And look at what we did

to another country that has the oil we crave.


http://www.cafepress.com/liberalissues.21326152

[loudsue]

17. Nice try, Durant. However,

Venezuela is not looking to sell their oil to the U.S. any longer, AND, furthermore, they are selling their oil in EUROS, not dollars.

The sale of oil in Euros is one thing the bush cabal gets maddest about...and has been offered as one explanation of why they went after Saddam -- he had switched to selling Iraqi oil in Euros, not dollars.

It sure wasn't because he posed a threat, or had WMD's, or had ties to Al Qaida.

:kick:

[Tempest]

21. If Bush isn't worried about Chavez

Why does Chavez seem to get so much attention from the WH?

Too bad the facts get in the way of a good lie.

[gold_bug]

24. Regarding the source,

you can read the more in-depth NYT version instead

[Judi Lynn]

27. Thanks for providing that N.Y.Times source, gold_bug.The reporter,

Juan Forero,should have been gone from there a long time ago! He and another N.Y. Times, Francisco Toro have been known to write goddawfully anti-Chavez crap since before the Bush-backed coup.

Toro quit. I thought Forero was removed, but it looks like the new waves of anti-Chavez hatred coming from _Bush'sadministration has encouraged the NY Times to keep this clown working.

A look at the damage he's done to the good faith of American readers:

Also last April, New York Times reporter Juan Forero reported that President Chávez had “resigned” when, in fact, Chávez had been kidnapped at gunpoint. Forero did not source his knowingly false claim. Forero, on April 13, wrote a puff piece on dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona – installed by a military coup – as Carmona disbanded Congress, the Supreme Court, the Constitution and sent his shocktroops house to house in a round-up of political leaders in which sixty supporters of Chávez were assassinated. Later that day, after the Venezuelan masses took back their country block by block, Carmona fled the national palace and Chávez, the elected president, was restored to office.

Forero – who, Narco News reported in 2001, allowed US Embassy officials to monitor his interviews with mercenary pilots in Colombia, without disclosing that fact in his article – was caught again last month in his unethical pro-coup activities in Venezuela. Narco News Associate Publisher Dan Feder revealed that Forero and LA Times reporter T. Christian Miller had written essentially the same story, interviewing the same two shopkeepers in a wealthy suburb of Caracas, and the same academic “expert” in a story meant to convince readers that a “general strike” was occurring in Venezuela. The LA Times Readers Representative later revealed that Forero and Miller interviewed the shopkeepers together. Neither disclosed that fact.

In many ways, it has been the credibility problem posed by Forero that led to Toro’s hiring last November by the Times, and the importation of Times Mexico Bureau Chief Ginger Thompson to Venezuela last month.
(snip/...)

http://www.narconews.com/Issue27/article584.html



Juan Forero

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

Bending Venezuela

Coverage of the recent election in Venezuela offers a particularly interesting case of how we choose not to see what is right before us—practically our national obsession. For purposes of illustration I refer to an article by Juan Forero of The New York Times that ran on the day following the elections last week. (For a revised version of the article, go here).

This article was particularly notable because of the sharp dissonance between the facts it dutifully reported and the interpretation it then imposed on those facts. Chavez won a victory at the polls 58% to 42% in his favor, reports Forero, a difference of 1.4 million votes—with the largest turn-out observer Jimmy Carter had “ever seen.” Then Forero editorializes: “But the voting, if anything, showed clearly that millions of Venezuelans—not just the very rich, as Mr. Chavez contends—want him out.”
(snip)

By inference, Forero strongly suggests that the gullible Venezuelan masses were hoodwinked into supporting Chavez. This is pure spin. It is much more likely that the vast majority of Venezuelans actually understand and willfully resist American imperialism, and view Chavez as their best guarantee against American-enforced abuses such as they have endured in the past.

This instance of bending the truth provides a wonderfully naked example of how we distort our perception of reality to match our preconceived notions. Forero is doing it, but we Americans usually play right along. If, for example, you’d just as soon believe that Chavez is a “childish” and “irresponsible” man, as Forero reports, and not a credible representative of millions of Venzuelans’ informed and legitimate sentiments toward U.S. imperialism, then you are unlikely to challenge—or even notice—Forero’s spin on the story.
(snip/...)

http://thingsasitis.net/2004/08/bending-venezuela.html

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

So THIS is what we're getting fed by a large U.S. newspaper now. I appreciate the fact you posted it in answer to some clown's insult to the original posted article. It explains why DU'ers really MUST look beyond the sources we're unwittingly led to believe without question.

[StaggerLee]

18. Hands off Venezuela!

This is sickening. You'd think we'd be more concerned with trying to fix our own house than to meddle into the affairs of another.

Venezuela I love and respect you!

sL-

[Kimber Scott]

20. Why can't we mind our own business? Why? Not be isolationists, but

still mind our own business. How about spending some of the money they send around the world to forment unrest right here at home on health care? I can't take it. I just can't take it.

[Roland99]

26. No oil, no problem.

Too bad Chavez is running a country so vital to the US oil companies' interests.

[bemildred]

28. A weak reply to the ending of "military cooperation".

The headline should read "Venezuela continues to ignore loud
whining noises coming from the Bushites" or maybe "Bushites, hopelessly
tied down in Iraq quagmire, continue impotent Latin American policy of
bluster and bullshit".

[bvar22]

30. It is much more than just oil!!!

South American countries are forming trade alliances to RESIST the colonization efforts of the Global Corporations and predatory lending organizations (IMF, WTO). The experiments with privitization of public assets in Argentina, Chile, and others has proven to be MISERABLE FAILURES. A Bolivarian Socialist Revolution is underway in South America (relatively bloodless so far).

Imagine the PURE ARROGANCE of Chavez, using part of the profits from oil to fund Universal Education and Universal HealthCare!!!! He has also started a program to return UNUSED land owned by vacant Foreign Landlords to peasant farmers who will cultivate it.

You would begin to think that Venezuelans owned Venezuela instead of RICH, WHITE, FOREIGNERS and GLOBAL CORPORATIONS who have a god given right to export profits!!!

Can you imagine the HORROR if these reforms migrate northward. This dreaded disease is already showing some signs in Mexico City!!! Next thing you know, Texans might be demanding HealthCare funded by Oil Profits!!