Foreign Intervention Won The Venezuelan Elections

[Joanne98]

December 3rd 2008, by Eva Golinger
Years of work penetrating communities and financing "democracy" programs and projects with an anti-socialist vision in the communities of Petare, Sucre Municipality of Miranda State, and Catia, Libertador Municipality in Caracas, and in other zones where the vast majority of the population of Caracas and Miranda is located, allowed the opposition to retake control of these areas. The strategic political consultation, with its separatist vision and in favor of the infiltration of paramilitaries in Zulia and Tachira, allowed these areas that are of such importance to the security of the Venezuelan state to be controlled by an opposition that is subordinate to the agenda of Washington and the objectives of Plan Colombia that plague the region.

It's not just the 4.7 million dollars invested in the opposition's campaign for the regional elections in 2008 by the United States Agency of International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and their affiliated agencies, but also the 50 million dollars, along with expert political consultation, donated by the US and used since 2000 to construct a solid base of the Venezuelan opposition, who, beginning in 2004, began to set their sights on infiltrating communities supportive of Chavez as well as students.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/4010

[Joe Chi Minh]

1. Wouldn't you know it! The are right are like the monster in the film. Just when

the hero/heroine seems to have finished them off and turn their back, it rears up - admittedly only to be walloped again, fortunately. This time for good. Let's hope life continues to imitate art!

[Peace Patriot]

2. Chavez's socialist party won 17 of 23 governorships, many by big margins.

The rightwing opposition won only 6 out of 23, four more than they had before. They've been boycotting elections since 2004, when their recall failed by a big margin, so it was expectable that they would win some this time--since they were not in petulant rebellion against one the best, most transparent election systems in the world (they gave that up, it made them look so foolish)--but they predicted a 60/40 win, and so did all the corpo/fascist media in Venezuela, and they didn't even come close.

How is this a "win" for the opposition? It's true that the Bushwhacks have poured millions of our tax dollars into the opposition, but what have the corpo-fascists got for our money? Not much. They stymied a Constitutional reform last year--that, among other things, would have given equal rights to women and gays, as well as letting Chavez run again (lifting the term limit)--but it was a very close vote (50.7% vs. 49.3%) with voters confused by too many amendments (69) on too many issues, and probably the women/gay rights amendment killed the whole proposal (due to Venezuela's particularly rightwing Catholic clergy). Chavez has a 63% approval rating, unchanged in half a decade, his party just won most of the governorships and other offices (the only serious loss being the mayoralty of a portion of Caracas), and Chavez's influence on social justice issues, on the sovereignty of Latin American countries, on democracy, and on the new South America Common Market--UNASUR--and his alliances with most South American countries, remain very strong.

Sometimes I think this is why the global corporate predators who rule over us abandoned Bush and his boy McCain and Ms. To-Nowhere. The Bushwhacks have failed so catastrophically in South America--even throwing around all our cash ($6 BILLION to the narco-fascists running Colombia, multi-millions to buy a coup in Bolivia, and probably to try to arrange similar efforts in Venezuela and Ecuador as well), all for nought--that I think maybe the GCPs decided to let Obama have a go at it. The South Americans really pulled together on the Bushwhacks' effort to instigate the white separatists' coup in Bolivia. And I think they're all quite onto Bushwhack/Exxon-Mobil (and probably Rumsfeld) designs upon Venezuela's and Ecuador's oil (and Brazil's? Lula da Silva has said that the Bushwhack reconstitution of the US 4th Fleet in the Caribbean is a threat to Brazil's Atlantic coast oil as well). So maybe Obama niceness can improve our corpo/fascists' ill repute in the southern hemisphere, and regain some US momentum at raping their resources and toppling their democracies.

Sorry, I became rather a cynic about Obama and South America, when he appointed Eric Holder--Chiquita Internationa's death squad attorney--as chief law enforcement officer of the US. Chiquita paid $1.7 million to rightwing death squads in Colombia, over a 7 year period, who murdered at least 4,000 union leaders--and they got off with a hand-slap, with Eric Holder representing them and the Bushwhacks colluding. Maybe Obama will succeed at being nice for a while; then the nazi that Diebold & brethren install in the White House in 2012 won't be. It'll be kind of like the Clinton-Bush 1-2 punchout of the people of Iraq. First starve them and kill thousands of their children for 12 years, and bomb the peripheries to get rid of their air force, then "shock and awe" a virtually defenseless country and kill a million more innocent people, to get their oil.

Clinton also prepared the way (with "Plan Colombia") for the horrors in Colombia over the last eight years--and the Clintons are back in the saddle, with Hillary as SoS, Holder as A.G., and other such appointments. Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia need some "softening up." Then?

However, I think this corporate/war profiteer strategy will fail. South America is a very different case than the Middle East. Democracy has a firm foothold in the oil-rich countries of Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, and in most of South America, and they have the passion of our own Founders for self-rule. And what do we have? A tattered, looted country, with our Constitution in shreds, and far rightwing corporations 'counting' all our votes with 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY code. We have big guns. We have lots of cannon fodder, given the job outsourcing (started by Clinton). But we lack morale. Why should any more of our youngsters die for Exxon Mobil? Why should we keep giving billions of dollars to Colombia, to kill union leaders and flood our streets with cocaine? You hear me, Barack? It is a BANKRUPT policy! A shameful and horrible policy! A FAILED policy! But clearly he can't hear me, and apparently has no intention to start over, with a pro-democracy, pro-social justice, anti-corporate predator policy. Has no intention to, or simply can't. The emperor as prisoner in what used to be the peoples' house, and no longer is.

Well, anyway, that's how I feel about Obama and South America. Not good.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Just want to post what Eva Gollinger said about what I just said....

She has a different perspective--but equally valid, I think--as to the extreme danger to Venezuelan democracy of USAID money and other US and global corporate predator interference of this kind:

"This is the most dangerous foreign interference that the Bolivarian Revolution faces. Its deadly web extends across the country after the results of November 23. The people and national government need to act now to neutralize this growing threat to their future. The fact that the new United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV, Spanish acronym) won 17 governors races with nearly six million votes is an important step for the strengthening of the revolution. It also shows the revolutionary commitment of the majority of Venezuelans. Despite this, the strategic victory of the opposition forces can't be denied or discounted, and its recovery of these regional governments should be a wake up call for the revolutionary citizens and the Venezuelan government. They will use these spaces to introduce and promote their individualist, anti-socialist vision, shrouded in the message of 'democracy and liberty.' And they will open up their regions even more to the imperial web. The border area is in serious risk. The Venezuelan 'half moon' could further strengthen with Zulia and Tachira in the hands of the most reactionary right-wing political players in the country.

"Its time for strong actions to combat the interference of foreign agencies in the country. If they aren't neutralized now, they will embed their followers so deeply in the country that they will be here for good."

--Eva Golinger (conclusion of the same article)

---------------------------

And this is just the sort of smearing over, and whitewashing, of predatory corporate intentions that Hillary Clinton, and her pro-corporate, pro-war brand of Democratic Party leadership, is good at. Bill sold us NAFTA--that colossal disaster for us and for other affected countries. He sold us the US "war on drugs"--a compounding disaster, and, for many Colombians, the final disaster. Tens of thousands of peasant farmers (the best food producers) driven from their lands by toxic pesticide spraying, and not a dent in the cocaine trade, because that's not who is manufacturing and moving cocaine! They may grow a few leaves--a traditional indigenous medicine. That is NOT the problem. And tens of thousands slaughtered by rightwing death squads with close ties to the Colombian government and military. Union leaders, small peasant farmers, human rights workers, political leftists, journalists, and sometimes uninvolved bystanders--youths lured by jobs, killed and dressed up as guerrilla fighters, to up the Colombian military's "body count" to please their masters in Washington. Both disasters started by Clinton, and driven to even worse extremes by Bush. Totally corrupt policies. We shall see if Hillary has any independence from Bill's paymasters, or the ability to think creatively and grow in wisdom. The omens are not good. She had Mark Penn--a paid agent of the Colombian government!--as her chief campaign adviser (until he was caught, and back-benched). That shows terribly bad instincts and lack of discrimination, and a complete lack of originality. Can Obama push her out of the corpo/fascist mold (or provide her the opportunity to change)? Does he want to? I don't know. I really don't. All I can do is hope, and continue to promote TRANSPARENT VOTE COUNTING as the best help we can give the new administration. A return to transparent vote counting will give Obama less reason to listen to the corpo/fascists and more reason to listen to the people, as it should be.

Golinger points out the particular danger to the Venezuelan area near the border of Colombia (in the Venezuelan state of Zulia). That is where Oil War II-South America will start, in my opinion. I have been warning about it for some time. But it was in rightwing, coupster hands before these by-elections. So I don't see the elections as changing the equation that much. Venezuela is still 60/40 pro-Chavez, as it has been all along. I do strongly agree with her on one thing: The Venezuelan government needs to BAN FOREIGN MONEY from all political and quasi-political activities, and strongly enforce the already existing laws against such money. This has gotten ridiculous! $50 million (at least) of our tax dollars to fund the rightwing opposition in Venezuela! We need to work on this from our end, on our own government, to STOP THIS USE OF OUR MONEY! But we have a lot less to say about our government than Venezuelans have to say about theirs. They have the democratic power to ban it. I hope they heed her warning and do so.