China Strengthening Ties to Anti-US Venezuela

The Monroe Doctrine is dead, as shown by China’s strengthening ties to oil-rich Venezuela. The two countries are negotiating major new “energy diplomacy” deals to build refineries and expand crude output–for sale to China.

Beijing will invest in Venezuela’s oil infrastructure in connection with entering into long-term, preferential supply agreements with the South American nation, which is in the grip of the Castro-admiring, anti-American populist demagogue Hugo Chavez.

And China Confidential has learned that Beijing will also help Venezuela to unlock the awesome heavy oil wealth of the Orinoco River region. Important agreements are in various stages of development.

“As a power, the United States is going down, while China is moving up,” Chavez told reporters after meeting with an official from the China National Petroleum Corporation, the state-owned parent parentt of China’s largest oil producing company, PetroChina.

After the United States, China is the world’s second largest oil importer. Venezuela is the fifth-largest oil exporter.

It is also Latin America’s largest weapons buyer. Venezuela’s military spending has climbed to more than $4 billion through the past two years, placing it ahead of other major purchasers such as Pakistan and Iran in international arms markets. The arms acquisitions by Caracas include dozens of Russian-made fighter jets and attack helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles.

Back to energy. Chavez said Venezuela plans to boost oil exports to China to a million barrels a day by 2012, “nearing the level of Venezuelan supplies to the United States.”

He added: “We do not deny what a big market the United States is, one we have maintained and are resolved and interested in maintaining, as well as our refineries there and our great company, Citgo. But now Venezuela is diversifying.”

There is a self-defeating aspect to China’s alliance with America’s energy-rich adversaries–namely, Venezuela, Iran, and Russia (China’s partner in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that was set up by Beijing to counter US power and influence in Central Asia). In contrast with China, the exporters have an inherent interest in ever-escalating energy prices. Resurgent Russia is impossibly corrupt and increasingly authoritarian; and Islamist Iran and leftwing Venezuela are both conducting imperialist foreign policies that seek to radically alter the power relations among nations regionally (in Venezuela’s case) and globally (in Iran’s case).

Post Script: Named for US President James Monroe, who first stated it in 1823, the Monroe Doctrine proclaimed that European powers should no longer colonize or interfere with the affairs of the nations of the Americas. Certain pro-Chinese Bush administration officials have actually argued that the doctrine is not applicable to China–because (a) it is not a European power, and (b) its economic rise is in the US national interest.

# posted by Confidential Reporter @ 2:24 PM   

Official antisemitism erupts in Venezuela

Official antisemitism erupts in Venezuela – Karl Pfeifer

Added by David Hirsh on February 22, 2007 11:10:01 AM. Armed police raided the Jewish elementary and high school at the Jewish Cultural Centre in Caracas on 29 November 2004 implementing a court order that alleged that materials of a criminal nature, such as electronic equipment, arms and explosive devices were concealed in the building. The swoop started at 6.30 am, when school buses and parents had already started to bringing children to the school, but, after rooting through the building for three hours, the police left having found zilch. The court order, it has since been revealed, had been issued three days earlier but the police waited until Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, arrived in Teheran for a state visit to Iran. That was two years ago, but things have only got worse in the intervening period. Indeed, since election of the left-wing populist Chavez in 1998, Venezuela has witnessed a proliferation of virulently anti-Israel and anti-Zionist propaganda, frequently entwined with nakedly anti-Jewish slogans. The Jewish population in Venezuela numbers only around 25,000 out of a total population of close to twenty-seven million. So, why does the official media of a government that claims to be socialist, devote its energy to poisonous attacks on a very small Jewish community? One possible explanation given is the fact, that one of Chavez’s important early advisers and political mentors was a – now deceased – Argentine Holocaust denier called Norberto Ceresole, a friend of the French fascist Robert Faurisson and the French ex-Communist Roger Garaudy who converted to Islam and also took up Holocaust denial. Ceresole strongly believed that Latin America must forge alliances with Arab nations to fight the United States and what he called “the Jewish financial mafia.” The tendencies towards distortion of the Holocaust might, further, be explained partly against the background of the increasingly close relationship between oil-rich Venezuela and Iran and other Muslim countries. As such, this kind of nonsense has been incorporated into the Chavez government’s anti-imperialist rhetoric with Israel is viewed as a key factor in US politics and, thus, an enemy of the ‘anti-imperialist revolution’. Antisemitic ranting is not confined to government circles but is spread throughout the mass media. For example, in the Diario VEA newspaper, as recently as 20 September, the hardcore antisemite Basem Tajeldine raved: “The Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis was directed to eliminate the social basis of Judaism that believed in assimilation with the Europeans, the low class majority of Jews … The ideological affinity and the great ties of collaboration that existed between German Zionism and Nazism is undeniable … Sionazis is the most appropriate term to catalogue (sic) the organisation of the political capitalist Jewish elite of Israel that is responsible for the present Holocaust of the Arab people”. Similarly in El Diario de Caracas earlier this year, Tarek Muci Nasir claims that “The only resource they [the Jews – Editor] have left to stay united, is to cause wars and self- genocide,” Nasir goes on to urge that his readers “pay attention to the behaviour of the Israelite-Zionist associations, unions and federations that conspire in Venezuela to seize our finances, industries, commerce, construction, even infiltrating public positions and politics” and warns that “Possibly it will again be necessary to expel them from the country, like other nations have done before… this is the reason why the Jews are always in a continuous stateless exodus and thus in the year 1948 they invaded Palestine.” Commenting on the September visit to Caracas by Iranian’s fanatic president Ahmadinejad, Freddy Pressner, head of the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela, expressed “outrage”, citing the Iranian leader’s open denial of the Holocaust and his statements about erasing Israel from the face of planet. Chavez’s bloc with Iran is making Venezuelan Jews worry about their own security for the first time. Sammy Eppel, a Caracas-based columnist, addressed the deepening antisemitism in Venezuela in his presentation at a recent conference, in Budapest, of the Tel Aviv University-based Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism. In his lecture, he revealed that he had found no fewer than 195 examples of antisemitic content in the official and pro-government media in a 65-day period ending on 31 August 2006. Among slides shown by Eppel was one depicting the front page of a government publication called Docencia (Teaching) which denounced the “Jewish killers” perpetrating the war in the Lebanon and which conflates the Star of David with the Nazi swastika, Eppel pointed out that, until a few years ago, “there were hardly any antisemitic articles” in the Venezuelan media and that “the government has adopted an antisemitic policy.” At meetings between Jewish community leaders and top-level government officials, including Chavez himself, the government, according to Pressner, has bleated that its hands are tied, saying, “We’ll do what we can, but we can’t deny people freedom of speech.” The antisemitism evident even in the political cartoons published in government-owned newspapers is now finding explosive expression at street level. For example, antisemitic slogans, bearing the “signature” of the Venezuelan Communist Party and its youth organisation, have even been sprayed on the walls of the Jewish Cultural Centre in Caracas in broad daylight. The perpetrators were filmed on CCTV but when a complaint was lodged with the police and interior ministry nothing happened. It is clear beyond any question that under Chavez’s leadership, Venezuela is experiencing a disturbing rise in antisemitism, fostered in large part by Chavez’s own rhetoric and that of governmental institutions. The relentless and baseless attacks on the Jewish community are now putting it at great risk. Karl Pfeifer A number of images from Sammy Eppel’s presentation are available online, here. It is well worth a look. Just click on the images for the slide-show to progress.

Study shows Hugo Chavez rigged elections

Clarice Feldman
The New York Sun reports a blue ribbon study which shows that Hugo Chavez, who has assumed dictatorial powers in Venezuela, rigged both his election “landslides.”

Hugo Chavez may have lost both the recall referendum in 2004 and the December 2006 presidential election, according to studies conducted by a distinguished multidisciplinary team in Caracas, Venezuela. The team includes the rector of Universidad Simon Bolivar, Frederick Malpica, and a former rector of the National Electoral Council, Alfredo Weil.

Astonishing as it may seem to Americans who believe the contention by Mr. Chavez that he won both elections by a landslide – 58% to 42% in the recall and 61% to 39% in the presidential election – the studies show that since 2003, Mr. Chavez has added 4.4 million favorable names to the voter list and “migrated” 2.6 million unfavorable voters to places where it was difficult or impossible for them to vote.

How can this be? Jimmy Carter certified both of them.

“Socialism or Death” in Venezuela

“Socialism or Death” in Venezuela
By Jacob Laksin
FrontPageMagazine.com | January 16, 2007
January of 1989 was a particularly grim month for Cuba’s communist regime. An enfeebled Soviet Union was promising to make peace with the West and threatening to suspend aid — Cuba’s economic lifeblood — to its client states. Communism was everywhere on the defensive. Sensing the changing tide, Fidel Castro gave an impassioned defense of his dictatorship, then already 30 years old, committing Cuba to a fight to the finish, to “socialism or death!” The record of Castro’s crimes, its death toll likely stretching into the tens of thousands, has now revealed this to be a distinction without difference. Fast forward to January of 2007: In Venezuela, Castro’s reverent student, Hugo Chavez, seems determined to follow in his path. In a line that must have warmed the heart of the decrepit tyrant in Havana — assuming he is still alive — Chavez last week committed his country to Castro’s course: “Fatherland, socialism or death,” Chavez declared, “I take the oath.”  

It is rare for authoritarians of the Left to show their true colors so vibrantly. But where in the past it was possible to dismiss Chavez as a standard-issue demagogue, a charge his September bloviating at the United Nations about “the devil” President Bush did much to bolster, the latest developments make a compelling case that Chavez is what he always said he was: the next Fidel Castro.  

Consider Chavez’s pledge to turn Venezuela into a “socialist state.” This is not, to be sure, the first time that Chavez has staked his country’s future on a discredited ideology. Never before, however, has he moved so dramatically to put his radical vision into practice. “All of that which was privatized, let it be nationalized,” Chavez announced this week.  

He left little doubt about his sincerity. Private properties have already been seized for redistribution. Now power and telecommunications companies have been forced under state control; four prominent oil projects, currently administered by foreign companies, are next in line for official expropriation. Venezuela’s central bank also bids fair to become a holding of the state.  

Such legally suspect measures are bound to provoke criticism and opposition. Chavez has therefore also sought to silence dissenting voices. With that aim in mind, the government has refused to renew the broadcast license of Radio Caracas Television. Ties to the political opposition have evidently made the television network intolerable for Chavez, who seems intent on turning the country’s media into personal p.r. agencies. Taken together with previous attempts to muscle private networks off the air and the scandalous Law on the Social Responsibility of Radio and Television of 2004 — one of whose provisions imposed 20-month prison sentences for the crime of “disrespect” to government authorities — an unmistakable pattern of government attacks on free expression and press independence emerges.  

As if the writing on the wall were insufficiently clear, Chavez has also decided to spell it out — in the country’s constitution. Last week brought news of Chavez’s plan to ask the National Assembly, Venezuela’s equivalent of Congress, for power to pass a series of “revolutionary laws.” (Seeing as the assembly is packed with Chavez loyalists, who are unlikely to refuse their leader anything, the entire consultative process is so much political theater.) One of these laws would eliminate presidential term limits, enabling Chavez to seek office after his final term expires in 2012. Of course, with immanentizing the eschaton being a notoriously time-consuming process, Chavez has already confessed his preference for remaining in office until 2031. Venezuela, meet your new president-for-life.  

Predictably, Chavez still has his defenders. In the United States, the task of condoning every new attempt to consolidate power as an affirmation of people’s democracy in action has been taken up most prominently by the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. The center’s co-director, Mark Weisbrot, has reliably praised Chavez’s Venezuela as a “democratic” country and hailed the alleged success of the government’s economic policies.  

In an interview last week with FrontPageMag.com, Weisbrot struck the same theme. In Chavez’s attempt to do away with private property, to silence opposition media and indefinitely to extend his political prospects, Weisbrot saw “nothing too radical.” Since many of the enterprises seized by the state were “previously state-owned,” Weisbrot explained, “there is nothing all that radical about returning them to state ownership.” That private owners were unwilling to part with their companies did not impress Weisbrot, who admitted that he was “not sure what the complaint is — and what it has to do with democracy.” The bottom line, Wesibrot argued, was that “Chavez ran on a program of ‘21st century socialism,’ and won 63 percent of the vote, the largest majority of 9 elections in Latin America last year. So it should not be cause for surprise, or alarm, that the government would attempt to deliver some of what Venezuelans voted for.”  

One may reasonably dispute whether the backing of slightly over half the population can be construed as carte blanche for turning the country into a communist backwater. Still, there is no gainsaying that Chavez had the support of a sizeable segment of the population. How that has come to pass, however, does Chavez — and those who continue to applaud him — little credit.  

First, Chavez has plied the impoverished company with government largesse. Included in the welfare package are government-provided food, housing, gasoline, healthcare, and education through the university level; the constitution even contains special benefits for “housewives.” In other words, Chavez has used the country’s vast oil wealth to buy his people’s support. Not the least of the problems with this approach is that it’s entirely dependent on oil prices and, as such, unsustainable. As much was confirmed last month by the World Bank’s Global Economic Prospects report. Pointing out that “the government’s antibusiness posturing” has produced a drop-off in oil production, the report predicted that Venezuela could not maintain its current rate of economic growth. The good times cannot last.  

Second, Chavez has ruthlessly exploited the ethnic resentments of the pardos, the dark-skinned majority that by some estimates makes up 80 percent of the country’s poor. Indeed, a central component of Chavez’s popularity has always been his skill at stoking contempt for the lighter-skinned elite, the so-called mantuanos, who are held up in the popular imagination as a malignant fifth column. Chavez himself as made a generous contribution to this perception, using campaign stumps to rail against the hated “oligarchs” — widely understood as a reference to the white business class — and other “enemies of the people.” Chavez’s apologists on the Left prefer not to dwell on this history, and no wonder: The great “progressive” hope of Latin America, the reviler of George W. Bush, has fueled his political career on the fires of old-fashioned prejudice.  

Not so long ago, policy wonks downplayed the impact of Chavez’s provocations. Venezuela’s democratic institutions, the reasoning went, would constrain his worst excesses. That view is becoming increasingly untenable. The military, the judiciary and the attorney general’s office have become appendages of the government; the National Assembly, boycotted by opposition parties, is effectively a rubber-stamp legislature. Should Chavez get his way — and in this political climate it would be foolish to bet otherwise — governance will soon become the exclusive privilege of a single party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. If this is democracy, there is nothing democratic about it.  

“We’re heading toward socialism, and nothing and no-one can prevent it,” Chavez said this week, in another tribute to his Cuban mentor. All the evidence indicates that he has Castro’s ambition. If he should also end up having his success, one can only say: Pity the Venezuelan people.

Iran, Venezuela agree to thwart ‘US domination’

Iran, Venezuela agree to thwart ‘US domination’

Presidents Chavez, Ahmadinejad say ready to spend billions of dollars to finance projects in other countries to help thwart US domination. ‘We’ll underpin investments in countries whose governments are making efforts to liberate themselves from the (US) imperialist yoke,’ Venezuelan leader says
Associated Press

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The anti-US Presidents whose efforts to extend their influence have alarmed Washington met Saturday in Venezuela’s capital, the first stop on Ahmadinejad’s tour of Latin America that will also see him visit newly elected leftist leaders in Nicaragua and Ecuador. The oil-rich nations had previously announced plans for a joint USD 2 billion fund to finance investments in Venezuela and Iran, but Chavez and Ahmadinejad said Saturday that the money would also be used for projects in friendly third countries.

Reelection

Iran, Arab MK congratulate Chavez / Associated Press Tehran congratulates Venezuelan president on his reelection; MK Barakeh send letter of congratulations saying victory proves people’s rejection of US policy Full Story

“It will permit us to underpin investments … Above all in those countries whose governments are making efforts to liberate themselves from the (US) imperialist yoke,” said Chavez. “This fund, my brother,” Chavez said referring to Ahmadinejad, “Will become a mechanism for liberation.” “Death to US imperialism!” he said. Ahmadinejad called it a “very important” decision that would help promote “Joint cooperation in third countries,” especially in Latin American and African countries. It was not clear if the leaders were referring to investment in infrastructure, social and energy projects – areas that the two countries have focused on until now – or other types of financing. Before his meeting with Ahmadinejad, Chavez said in his state of the nation address that he had personally expressed hope to Thomas Shannon, head of the US State Department’s Western Hemisphere affairs bureau, for better relations between their two countries. Chavez said he spoke with Shannon on the sidelines of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega’s inauguration earlier this week, saying, “We shook hands and I told him: ‘I hope that everything improves.”’ Chavez – a close ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro whom Washington sees as a destabilizing influence – has pledged billions of dollars (euros) of help to the region in foreign aid, bond buyouts and preferentially financed oil deals.

‘Champion of struggle against imperialism’

Iran, meanwhile, is allegedly bankrolling militant groups in the Middle East like Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, as well as insurgents in Iraq, in a bid to extend its influence.

Ahmadinejad’s visit Saturday – his second to Venezuela in less than four months – comes as he seeks to break international isolation over his country’s nuclear program and possibly line up new allies in Latin America. After Venezuela, Ahmadinejad will visit newly elected leftist governments in Nicaragua and Ecuador that are also seeking to reduce Washington’s influence in the region. Bolivian President Evo Morales, another critic of US policy, said he plans to meet with Ahmadinejad while both are in Ecuador Monday. Chavez and Ahmadinejad have been increasingly united by their deep-seated antagonism to Washington. Chavez has become a leading defender of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, accusing the United States of using the issue as a pretext to attack a regime it opposes and promising to stand with Iran. Ahmadinejad, meanwhile, has called Chavez “The champion of the struggle against imperialism.” On Saturday, he congratulated Chavez on his December re-election and said the Venezuelan people were wise to choose “A person as important on the world stage, a person so wise as Hugo Chavez.”

The increasingly close relationship has alarmed some, and critics of Chavez accuse him of pursuing an alliance that does not serve Venezuela’s interests and jeopardizes its ties with the United States, the country’s top oil buyer. Venezuela is among the top five suppliers of crude to the US market. Both countries are members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, Chavez said Saturday that they had agreed to back an oil production cut in the cartel in order to stem a recent fall in crude prices. “We know today there is too much crude in the market,” Chavez said. “We have agreed to join our forces within OPEC … To support a production cut and save the price of oil.” The two governments, which already plan to jointly produce everything from bricks to bicycles and develop oil fields in Venezuela, signed another 11 accords Saturday to explore further opportunities for cooperation in areas like tourism, education and mining. Ahmadinejad is set to travel to Nicaragua to meet on Sunday with Ortega, a former Marxist guerrilla. On Monday, he travels to Ecuador for the inauguration of President-elect Rafael Correa, another outspoken critic of the administration of US President George W. Bush and Washington’s policies in Latin America.

Coming to a Neighborhood Near You: The Axis of Evil

Coming to a Neighborhood Near You: The Axis of Evil
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 8, 2006
The unsurprising victory of Venezuelan song and dance artist Hugo Chavez in his re-election bid on Sunday was warmly welcomed around the world.

Chavez friends in Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua were pleased. Castro and Daniel Ortega must think someone flipped a switch and they’re back in the early 1980s – only this time, there’s no President Reagan and no Contras.

 The Iranian Foreign ministry welcomed the Chavez victory, and didn’t even threaten to raise oil prices to $200 per barrel. That’s for next week. Al Jazeera knew the results even before the votes were cast, and showed Chavez with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran earlier this year, rigged out in orange hard hats, the best of buddies. “If the North American empire and its lackeys attempt another coup, or don’t acknowledge the electoral outcome, we will not send them one more drop of oil,” al Jazeera quoted al Jefe as saying. Oil is mainly what distinguishes Chavez from his mentor, Fidel Castro. Venezuela is the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter, and supplies the U.S. with about 11 percent of our daily oil supplies. And Chavez controls the oil. Instead of inviting the children to spend their summer holiday cutting sugar cane, as Fidel did in the 1960s, al Jefe is offering sugar plums to the poor via his wholly-owned U.S. subsidiary, CITGO, which controls 6% of all U.S. refining capacity. In July, Chavez had CITGO break existing distribution agreements with 1,800 independently owned service stations in ten predominantly red states, because he reportedly wanted to break contracts “that benefit U.S. consumers more than Venezuelans.” Now he is offering to supply discounted heating oil to “the poor” in several U.S. states as a public relations ploy. Even USA Today is asking if Citgo is no longer an oil company, but a “political tool” for Chavez. The Citgo offer of discounted fuel has won support from unexpected circles. On Friday, the parent company of the conservative Washington Times will be hosting Venezeuan ambassador Hernando Alverez Herrera to a “citizens forum,” where he will expound on Chavez’s kind and generous offer to supply discounted fuel to the poor. As a daily reader of the Times (and a former senior writer for Insight Magazine, an investigative newsweekly closed by the Times last year), I was surprised to learn that Herrera would be a featured speaker at a Washington Times event. I was even more surprised when the spokesman for the Citizens Forum, Brian Bauman, told me that he was planning to allow Herrera to speak unchallenged by any panelist who would focus on Venezuela’s strategic ties to Iran, a founding member of the axis of evil .“That’s not the direction of this forum,” he said. “It’s to speak to the cost of energy in the Washington, DC area. One facet of that is the Venezuelan program.” Come hither, Little One, said the Crocodile… Venezuela under Chavez ressembles Castro’s Cuba in important ways. Just as Castro did after he seized power, Chavez has sought to expand his influence throughout the region through covert action. He bankrolled Ortega’s return to power last month, and has helped leftist leaders win power in Bolivia and elsewhere. Also like Castro, he has sought the protection of a powerful opponent of the United States, in this case the Islamic Republic of Iran. Castro was powerless to prevent Nikita Krushchev from deploying nuclear-tipped missiles to Cuba, an act that nearly provoked a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. And Kruschhev was no radical Islamic fundamentalist. He was rational to the extreme, believing in the cold calculus of power politics. Ahmadinejad has stated publicly that the goal of his government is to bring about the return of the Imam Mahdi, the 12^th imam of Shiite Muslim lore who only comes out of his well after a devastating world war. Unlike Krushchev, who understood that he and his regime were doomed if nuclear missiles actually began to fly, Ahmadinejad believes that through death, he wins. It’s hard to deter such a regime. Iran does not currently have nuclear warheads – at least, so far as the CIA professes to know. But they do have missiles which, if deployed in Venezuela, would be capable of hitting the United States. But it goes against the pattern of Iranian regime behavior to act so overtly against the United States. Tehran’s mullahs prefer acting by indirection, through proxies, just as they are murdering Americans today in Iraq through proxies. Suppose for a moment that Iran has acquired a nuclear weapon – either on the black market, as many sources believe; or through a clandestine uranium enrichment program, which the CIA discounts (because they have no spies in Iran who might detect such a program). Iran could send a heavily-shielded nuclear warhead to Venezuela, where it would be fitted to a short-range missile and stowed on board a U.S.-bound cargo ship. That cargo ship would not be owned by Iranians or by Venezuelans, but perhaps by some Qatari millionaire through a front company in the British Virgin Islands. The deadly ship would then depart Venezuela carrying perfectly legitimate, declared cargo for the port of Newark, New Jersey. Perhaps the ship might not even be bound for the United States at all, but for Halifax, Nova Scotia, further up the Atlantic seaboard. Either way, the likelihood it would be inspected on the high seas are very low. Steaming along in commercial shipping lanes one hundred miles off the coast of Washington, DC, the ship’s international crew brings the missile launcher up from the hold and prepares it for launch. Under the cover of darkness, they fire their weapon, then stow the launcher and continue on their way. Two minutes later, Washington, DC is hit with a fireball that obliterates the White House, the Capitol Building, and the national monuments in seconds. And no signature links this act of war back to Iran. This, of course, is just fiction. But the technology is known and available. Iran has been testing sea-launched ballistic missiles since 1998. Well before any kind of military strike on America, both Iran and Venezuela are working to get America to surrender, by first admitting our helplessness. That is why Chavez is offering discounted oil through Citgo to Americans. You are poor, you are weak, and your government won’t take care of you. But we will, if only you will accept our gift. That is why Iran is trying to get the United States to accept its help in Iraq, and is working through proxies in America (since it has no legal equivalent of Citgo) to get its seductive offer across. We will stop the insurgency, Iran says, if only you will recognize the legitimacy of our regime, accept our nuclear program, and stop all efforts to support pro-democracy movements inside Iran. We can keep Americans from getting killed. “Come hither, Little One,” said the Crocodile, “and I’ll whisper.” In Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories, the Elephant’s Child is tempted by his ‘satiable curtiosity’ to seek out the Crocodile, and cannot believe the beast will actually try to eat him. As the Elephant’s Child pulls and pulls to free his nose from the Crocodile’s teeth, it grows and grows – and that is How the Elephant got its Trunk.We won’t get off so easily.

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U.S. Investigates Voting Machines’ Venezuela Ties — The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/29/washington/29ballot.html?ei=5065&en=e0c8ab46eb7f870b&ex=1162789200&adxnnl=1&partner=MYWAY&adxnnlx=1162123697-fGdgFeTtCKTTCxcnenqAsQ

Chavez’s Theater of the Absurd

Chavez’s Theater of the Absurd
By Joseph Klein
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 23, 2006

Venezuela is locked in a battle with
Guatemala to take over a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council, representing the Latin American region.  While neither country has been able to garner the necessary two-thirds majority from the General Assembly,
Guatemala has soundly beaten
Venezuela in virtually every round of voting to date.  The 35th round of voting ended on October 20^th with 103 votes for
Guatemala and 81 for
Venezuela.  Further voting has been put off for several days.  As one reporter put it during a daily press briefing at UN headquarters, the process is morphing into the theater of the absurd.

Venezuela has already served four times on the Security Council, while
Guatemala has never served.  It is time for
Venezuela, the perennial loser in balloting this time around, to either remove itself voluntarily in favor of
Guatemala or a consensus candidate, or to be forced to step aside.  According to the UN Charter, in electing a non-permanent member to the Security Council, the General Assembly is to give “due regard…in the first instance to the contribution of Members of the United Nations to the maintenance of international peace and security and to the other purposes of the Organization.” 
Venezuela fails that test, hands down.

 

There are at least two grounds for disqualifying
Venezuela from further consideration.  First,
Venezuela is committing serious human rights violations today, according to its own regional group’s human rights spokesperson.   
Guatemala’s past human rights record is far from stellar, but its record is improving while
Venezuela’s is rapidly deteriorating.  Second,
Venezuela has demonstrated its contempt for the Security Council’s decisions by actively backing
Iran’s outright threats to international peace and security in defiance of the will of the international community.   

The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States issued a statement on August 31, 2006 condemning the murder of Jesús Rafael Flores Rojas, a journalist of the daily Región, in
Venezuela.  This was no random act of violence.  On the night of August 23, 2006, Rojas arrived at his house in the locality of El Tigre, when an individual shot Rojas eight times in the presence of his daughter before fleeing in an automobile.  He had received prior death threats in response to his investigative political reporting. 

Nor was the murder of Rojas one isolated case.  It followed two prior murders in 2006. Joaquín Tovar, the editor of the weekly Venezuelan paper Ahora, was shot and killed June 17^th, while Jorge Aguirre, a photographer with El Mundo newspaper in
Caracas, was killed April 5^th. 

 

And the violence directed against journalists in
Venezuela continues.  On October 7, 2006, journalist Pedro Bastardo was killed by several shots to the head.  On September 30, 2006, a team of reporters working for news channel Globovisión was assaulted, allegedly by supporters of President Hugo Chávez, during the march of presidential candidate for the opposition, Manuel Rosales, in the state of
Trujillo, eastern
Venezuela.  On September 19^th, a reporter, Paulimar Rodríguez of the newspaper “El Nacional”, was also assaulted during a Rosales march, allegedly by Chávez supporters.  We are seeing violence directed at journalists by a bunch of fascist bullies, with Chavez’s regime the obvious beneficiary of a frightened press. 

 

Chávez has also railed against privately owned television stations, whose licenses are due to expire in 2007, charging that they broadcast content designed to “divide” the country.  With Presidential “elections” in
Venezuela coming up this December, the policy of press intimidation is obvious.   

 

Chavez has not confined his intimidation to the press.  He also has jailed political opponents.  In ordering the trial of four civil society leaders on dubious charges of treason, a Venezuelan court has assented to government persecution of political opponents, Human Rights Watch declared in July 2005.   “The court has given the government a green light to persecute its opponents,” said José Miguel Vivanco,
Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “Prosecuting people for treason when they engage in legitimate electoral activities is utterly absurd.”  

 

Coupled with
Venezuela’s deplorable human rights record at home is Chavez’s demonstration of contempt for the United Nations itself.   Perhaps his personal denunciations of President Bush as the “devil” before the General Assembly last month can be dismissed as the grand-standing of a lunatic buffoon.  But his unswerving apologia for
Iran’s defiance of the Security Council cannot be so easily excused.    Last February,
Venezuela joined
Cuba and
Syria in opposing the referral of
Iran to the U.N. Security Council for sanctions.   
Iran ignored the Council’s August 31^st deadline to freeze its uranium enrichment program and continues to call the Security Council “illegitimate” as it finally prepares for possible sanctions against the rogue regime.   Chavez continues to serve as
Iran’s perfect lackey, supporting
Iran’s nuclear ambitions and promising to thwart any international consensus toward sanctions against
Iran.   Parroting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel tirades before an adoring crowd at

Tehran
University during a recent visit to
Iran, Chavez accused
Israel of “terrorism and pure fascism.”  And Chavez’s trade with Iran, now in excess of $1 billion, may include lethal materials being brought into
Venezuela, including nuclear technology.  Like
Iran’s leaders, Chavez denies any intention of developing nuclear weapons.  Yet his government has reportedly signed agreements on nuclear energy and sought to buy a nuclear reactor, with no involvement of the civilian Venezuelan Institute for Scientific Research.  A prominent Venezuelan physicist has suggested that his country may indeed be embarked on a path to join the Nuclear Club along with North Korea and
Iran.

 

Iran awarded Chavez its highest state medal in gratitude for his “support for
Iran‘s stance on the international scene”, according to an Iranian station.   In contrast to
Venezuela’s complicity in undermining the authority of the very same Security Council that it wishes to join,
Guatemala has actively supported that institution’s decisions.  It contributed personnel for UN peacekeeping operations in each of the years 2006, 2005 and 2004. 
Venezuela has not contributed a single person during any of those years.

 

Chavez fancies himself as Castro’s successor, leading the world’s “oppressed” against the capitalist imperialists of the West.   Maybe, he does deserve the title.  After all, he has been Castro’s loyal puppet for many years.  Now he is adding Ahmadinejad as another puppeteer.  In his pathetic campaign for relevance on the world stage, Chavez is diverting oil revenues from meeting the needs of the poor back home in order to buy his way onto the Security Council.   He should be soundly rebuffed as a fraud who wants to sabotage the Security Council for his buddies, to the detriment of international peace and security. 

 

As a group of self-described “Venezolanos suffering (no peace, no prosperity, no hope) from Chavez lies” recently commented on the Internet (but would dare not write in any local Venezuelan newspaper for fear that they would end up like the murdered journalists): “We are Venezolanos living in Venezuela that want to apologize to the American People for the entropy that HUGO wants to create. He only has created fear and mistrust among the Venezuelan people and wants to do the same all around the world.”  The people suffering under Chavez’s yoke know him best and detest him.

 

In its previous four elections to the Security Council,
Venezuela received over 90% of the votes and was elected in the first round.  This time, it appears that less than half of the countries of Latin America are currently supporting
Venezuela.  Some of these countries have expressed resentment at Chavez’s interference in their elections.  They know their neighbor better than any country could outside of the region and do not trust him.

 

It is time for the President of the General Assembly to end Chavez’s theater of the absurd immediately and call for the election of a member state from the Latin American region that meets the minimum qualifications for a seat on the Security Council.

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Mass Venezuela opposition rally

Mass Venezuela opposition rally

By Greg Morsbach BBC News, Caracas

Tens of thousands of people have marched through the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, in support of the main opposition candidate, Manuel Rosales. Mr Rosales will face President Hugo Chavez in December’s presidential poll. The march, which filled the main avenues of the city centre, was the biggest opposition rally Venezuela has seen since early 2004. Then, protesters made an unsuccessful bid to oust Mr Chavez from power in a recall referendum. Chance to unite Young and old took to the streets to throw their weight behind the campaign of Mr Rosales, a middle-class Social Democrat who governs the state of Zulia, on the Colombian border. Many claimed that they were seeking liberty and democracy and that made Mr Rosales their only option: “The problem of the opposition is that before we had a lot of candidates and people couldn’t make up their minds whom to support,” one woman said. “Right now we have just one candidate and I believe that we have a better shot if we have just one candidate against Chavez.” For some it was simply a day out to enjoy the sunshine, but for most it was a chance to listen to a speech by Mr Rosales, who declared that Venezuela was “at a crossroads”. Mr Rosales condemned what he called the cheque book diplomacy of Mr Chavez, accusing him of giving away Venezuela’s oil wealth to foreign powers. If Mr Rosales can keep up this kind of pressure against his rival, the election results may not necessarily be a foregone conclusion. But for now, Mr Chavez still enjoys a clear lead in opinion polls because of a sense of loyalty that poor and working-class voters feel towards him.  

Rumsfeld: Venezuela build-up is concern

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writer 4 minutes ago

The recent military build-up in Venezuela by U.S. nemesis President Hugo Chavez has other countries in the region worried that the weapons could end up in the hands of terrorists, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday.

“I can understand neighbors being concerned,” said Rumsfeld, who is attending a meeting of Western hemisphere military leaders here this week.

Asked whether he believes Venezuelan officials’ contention that the weapon buys are strictly for defense and not a threat to the region, Rumsfeld said, “I don’t know of anyone threatening Venezuela — anyone in this hemisphere.”

Venezuela’s defense minister Gen. Raul Isaias Baduel, who is also attending the meeting, said Monday that his country’s recent military spending spree wasn’t “an arms race,” despite Washington’s protests.

Chavez, however, has repeatedly charged that United States is planning to invade his country, a claim American officials dismiss as preposterous. And he said Sunday that he’s heard the Bush administration is plotting to assassinate him or topple his regime.

U.S. Army Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, chief of U.S. Southern Command, called the accusation “mindless” and “way over the top.” But he also agreed that Venezuela’s recent deal to buy roughly $3 billion worth of arms from Russia — including rifles, jet fighters and helicopters — is triggering “more concern from more countries.”

Rumsfeld did not meet privately with Baduel, but did briefly exchanged pleasantries with him.

“I have spoken to Mr. Rumsfeld to convince him that he should try smoking Venezuela’s good tobacco,” Baduel told the Associated Press. “He said he doesn’t smoke, that his wife wouldn’t let him.”

Meanwhile, Craddock and other officials said Monday that they don’t see a credible threat in Venezuela’s call for the creation of an anti-U.S. military coalition with other leftist countries in the region. Craddock said Brazil’s defense minister told the gathering he doesn’t see a need for a regional military organization.

Gen. Moises Omar Hallesleven, the commander of the Nicaraguan military, told U.S. reporters he is not concerned about the Chavez effort.

Venezuela, he said through an interpreter, has very weak influence in the region. Hallesleven also vowed that as long as he is its leader, the Nicaraguan military will remain apolitical and professional — even if Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega wins the upcoming presidential election.

Chavez grabbed headlines recently when he called Bush “the devil” and slammed U.S. leaders for trying to block his country from taking a seat on the U.N. Security Council.

U.S. officials have long considered Chavez a destabilizing force. And they have suggested that Venezuela would make the Security Council unworkable if the nation were to win its bid against U.S.-backed Guatemala for a rotating council seat.

Rumsfeld, in his formal remarks to the gathering, also made a reference to the other main U.S. antagonist in the region: Cuba.

He said he hoped that one day soon “the final holdout in our hemisphere against the democratic sweep of history will give its citizens the right to choose their own destiny and will participate in our conference.”

Rumsfeld also called for more regional cooperation in the fight against terrorism.

“These new challenges can be solved only if we work together to protect our free democratic institutions and to provide economic opportunities for our people,” Rumsfeld said.

The military conference, along with a NATO defense ministers meeting and other military visits in the Balkans last week, have largely kept Rumsfeld out of Washington for the past week, where there is renewed debate on his stewardship of the Iraq war.

He said he will not resign, and openly questioned why reporters were so focused on a new book, “State of Denial” by Washington Post assistant managing editor Bob Woodward, that is critical of the defense chief.

Clearly frustrated with repeated questions about his job security, Rumsfeld told reporters he has not read Woodward’s book and is not likely to.

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Associated Press Writer Julie Watson contributed to this report.

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