Venezuela Watch

Here is more info and history on our Latin American foreign policy.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4068.htm

http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=1024

http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=205

http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=331

http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=355

http://blogs.albawaba.com/Alexanderjames/2067/2005/11/24/2342-1987_john_stockwell_ex-cia_official_explains_how_cia_is_the_premer_international_terrorist_organization

http://www.csrwire.com/article.cgi/3542.html

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness . . . " 1

The Unalienable Rights possessed by All Life Forms by the nature of their existence as encompassed through their sovereignty over their own being:

Personal Security, Personal Liberty, Private Property.

Personal Security; All Life Forms have the right to defend their existence in any way necessary and possible.

Personal Liberty; All Life Forms have the right to do whatever they choose to do with their own person and property as long as they do not directly harm the person or property of any other Life Form.

Private Property; All Life Forms have the right to sell their personal services and acquire and possess private property

How well does your hero Chavez do in protecting these rights of "the life forms" in Venezuela?

America's actions in South America have often been appalling.


This does not make Chavez good.


Is this something you realize?

I don't know. Chavez is not my hero and I am not a socialist.

Yes, I realise that. I present information here. Extremely disturbing information that presents an overwhelming imminent critique.

Information that if excepted as truth literally seems to take the foundation of who we are and dissolves it as a lie leaving us with no foundation. This is not true. State sponsored terror is not an American invention. After World War II we came out on top and europe was f**ked up, we became the leaders of civilization. We vowed never to "not get envolved" again. We justified and engaged ideological war but it became something else. I tell myself that any people or country would do the same thing and justify it under any ideology, that that is the nature of men and thus the outcome of civilization. Men and their ideologies are corruptible by their own nature. But if I deny the truth then I truly have no foundation. I have made a journey. I have made a realization. I am a good American, I am a good person. I have made them the same thing.

The real Americas foundations are Jefferson, Tom Paine, John Locke, Samuel and john adams etc, etc. Everybody that sighned the declaration of independence and The Constitution.

If you can't test your ideals against the truth you have ****. That is why I am attacked. Others are unwilling to test their ideals and beliefs against the truth or they are afraid to admit what they have become.

What is the remedy to the human condition? capitalism? communism? christianity? Islam?

"There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance." -Socrates

Ever since the Spanish conquistadores took over Latin America with the sword nearly 500 years ago, the pattern in most of the countries has been a very small, very rich elite (formerly owning most of the land, now owning most of the business, trade, and industry, as well as land), and an impoverished multitude, who had virtually no access to resources, nor any means to acquire them. A lot of that was very close to a caste system: the light-skinned or lighter-skinned mostly European descendants, versus the poor darker-skinned indios and mestizos (different terms in different countries, but same realities) and African-descended inhabitants. Venezuela has been pretty much the same.

Chavez has some authoritarian tendencies, but most of the leaders in most of the other countries do too, including many of the ones our government has supported as "democrats" who were out-and-out authoritarians and kept the power concentrated in their own hands and those of their cronies.

This is NOT one of those models the right keeps trying to fit it into it's NOT "free enterprise versus commies" or any of those other pat dichotomies. It predates all of that 19th century claptrap and goes back to the original Spanish colonial model, and that had NOTHING to do with capitalism or socialism. It was 300 years before they were even invented.

In most of the cases of resource-rich countries in CA and SA coming into contact with industrialized countries in the 20th century, the profits from the exploitation of those resources flowed only into the hands of the already-rich who controlled tthe land, often through the corrupt governments who fed the contracts to their buddies--this was really "crony capitalism" at its worst.

Chavez does seem, on the available evidence, to be channeling a lot of the oil money to the people who've been systematically shut out from access to resources before, witness the free schools, the free or low cost medical and dental clinics, the worker cooperatives. Anybody who's spent a day in any mercado in Latin America knows the countries have always been market-based. That doesn't seem to be changing, but Chavez's populism means giving people the chance to better themselves. In the world today, you can't do that if you can't afford education and most of Venezuela's kids, and the other country's kids got sketchy educations at best, and you can't do it if you're sick all the time.
Far more than in the USA, most people were shut off from any chance of a relatively comfortable life. If you have to go to work in the market selling chiclets when you're ten to help your family get enough to eat, you're not gonna have the chance to do much more than that with your life.

I don't know how Chavez's efforts will play out over the next coule years, but it seems to me that a lot of what he has done to spread the nation's patrimony around a little more evenly than it's usually done have the potential for being admirable--it's sure a better social good than giving it to another bored socialite to buy another private jet to head up to Miami for the weekend, hang out at the clubs in South Beach til 5am snorting coke, and buy another half-dozen Rolexes, which is what the SA Paris Hiltons have done for the last couple decades.

Allow me, please, to repost a portion of the Parenti article Amigo posted back at the start of this topic, with some of Chavez's positive programs(I'm pretty sure this is from post #2034648--just scroll back, it's all there if you want the original):

"In Venezuela over 80 percent of the population lives below the poverty level. Before Chavez, most of the poor had never seen a doctor or dentist. Their children never went to school, since they could not afford the annual fees. The neoliberal market "adjustments" of the 1980s and 1990s only made things worse, cutting social spending and eliminating subsidies in consumer goods. Successive Administrations did nothing about the rampant corruption and nothing about the growing gap between rich and poor, the growing malnutrition and desperation.

Far from ruining the country, here are some of the good things the Chavez government has accomplished:

A land reform program designed to assist small farmers and the landless poor has been instituted?-this past March a large landed estate owned by a British beef company was occupied by agrarian workers for farming purposes
Education is now free (right through to university level), causing a dramatic increase in grade school enrollment
The government has set up a marine conservation program and is taking steps to protect the land and fishing rights of indigenous peoples
Special banks now assist small enterprises, worker cooperatives, and farmers
Attempts to further privatize the state-run oil industry?-80 percent of which is still publicly owned?-have been halted and limits have been placed on foreign capital penetration
Chavez kicked out U.S. military advisors and prohibited overflights by U.S. military aircraft engaged in counterinsurgency in Colombia
"Bolivarian Circles" have been organized throughout the nation, neighborhood committees designed to activate citizens at the community level to assist in literacy, education, vaccination campaigns, and other public services
The government hires unemployed men, on a temporary basis, to repair streets and neglected drainage and water systems in poor neighborhoods
Then there is the health program. I visited a dental clinic in Chavez's home state of Barinas. The staff consisted of four dentists, two of whom were young Venezuelan women. The other two were Cuban men who were there on a one-year program. The Venezuelan dentists noted that in earlier times dentists did not have enough work. There were millions of people who needed treatment, but care was severely rationed by one's ability to pay. Dental care was distributed like any other commodity, not to everyone who needed it, but only to those who could afford it.

When the free clinic in Barinas first opened it was flooded with people seeking dental care. No one was turned away. Even opponents of the Chavez government availed themselves of the free service, temporarily putting aside their political aversions.

Many of the doctors and dentists who work in the barrio clinics (along with some of the clinical supplies and pharmaceuticals) come from Cuba. Chavez has also put Venezuelan military doctors and dentists to work in the free clinics. Meanwhile, much of the Venezuelan medical establishment is vehemently opposed to the free clinic program, seeing it as a Cuban communist campaign to undermine medical standards and physicians' earnings. That low-income people are receiving medical and dental care for the first time in their lives does not seem to be a consideration that carries much weight among the more "professionally minded" practitioners.

I visited one of the government-supported community food stores that are located around the country, mostly in low income areas. These modest establishments sell canned goods, pasta, beans, rice, and some produce and fruits at well below market price, a blessing in a society with widespread malnutrition.

Popular food markets have eliminated the layers of middlepeople and made staples more affordable for residents. Most of these markets are run by women. The government also created a state-financed bank whose function is to provide low-income women with funds to start cooperatives in their communities.

There is a growing number of worker cooperatives. One in Caracas was started by turning a waste dump into a shoe factory and a T-shirt factory. Financed with money from the Petroleum Ministry, the coop has put about 1,000 people to work. The workers seem enthusiastic and hopeful.

Surprisingly, many Venezuelans know relatively little about the worker cooperatives. Or perhaps it's not surprising, given the near monopoly that private capital has over the print and broadcast media. The wealthy media moguls, all vehemently anti-Chavez, own four of the five television stations and all the major newspapers."

The same could be said for President Bush also/

As a point of fact....Hitler was never elected to any position in the Govt.
He was APPOINTED Chancellor of Germany,then went on to become dictatir after the death of the German President.

username, read your post. good point of veiw.

Terrorism & Security
posted May 17, 2006 at 11:00 a.m.

US slaps arms sale ban on Venezuela

As ban chills relations further, Venezuelan general threatens to sell F-16s to Iran in response.

By Arthur Bright | csmonitor.com

The US State Department banned sales of weapons to Venezuela on Monday, further widening the diplomatic gap between the two countries.
The BBC reports that the ban will include all military sales, including resale of weapons manufactured in other countries.

Washington has already put pressure on Spain and Brazil to halt their plans to supply military equipment - including aircraft - to Venezuela which contains some US technology.

However, the US has been unable to block a purchase by Venezuela of some 100,000 rifles from Russia. The guns have not yet been delivered.

The Associated Press reports that Venezuela purchased $33.9 million in US military equipment in 2005, $30.5 million of which was C-130 cargo plane spare parts. AP reports that it is spare parts, for the C-130 and other aircraft, that the ban will impact the most.

Continued at:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0517/dailyUpdate.html

Venezuela previously bought 100,000 assault rifles and military helicopters from Russia.

With due respect for your sincere motivations, Amigo - this actual assertion is bull ****.

I mean, I cant speak for all others, but I am confident that many of us are well aware of the US and the CIA having done terrible things in Latin America. Easing along the Pinochet coup, training the Contras etc. George excepted, I think we can all agree on that, if not every specific case in the long list you brought.

That you are forwarding this, is NOT the reason you are being "attacked". The information you bring is hardly anything new.

But this thread is not about the long history of CIA involvement in Latin-American perversions of democracy. It is, quite specifically about Venezuela. Venezuela and Chavez's government there.

What you appear to be doing is deflecting any concrete reference to specific bad things Chavez has done by referring to the long history of even worse things the US has done. But two wrongs dont make a right, and the fact that "the other one" has done even worse things, dont make the bad things "this one" has done right.

Like Dlowan says:

As I expected.

Confronted with a quite specific list of concrete complaints about ways the Chavez government has violated or is violating human rights, you choose:

A) To ignore every single one of the concrete points and cases HRW made

B) To impugn the source instead.

Re: A)

Even if HRW would have been the lackey stooge organisation for American interests you imply it is, would it have made any difference to the actual cases these individual reports highlight?

Would it undo trials against dissidents, beatings of demonstrators, pakcing the Supreme Court with Chavez allies?

Do you have anything to say about any of those things, at all?

Re: B)

Moreover, to try to portray HRW as some kind of pro-American pro-imperialist stooge is a laugh.

Look up what HRW has to say about the US's own practices. In Iraq. In Guantanamo. Here, does this look like an American stooge organisation?


For the heck of it, look up what conservative posters here have said about HRW, whenever it came up with an uncomfortable report again. Yes, they chose to lambast the organisation as well. Just another liberal anti-Bush UN-stooge lobby club!

Yes, you can go stand in their corner now - in the corner of those who choose to dismiss the organisation as obviously partisan as soon as it dares criticize the government of your preference.

I agree so much on what nimh has said, he's now on my signature line.

BTW, where is blatham?
I do care about his opinion on this issue.

wait till Dag sees that..

Nimh, I don't know why you think you can you can "get me" some how. Now I will answer every one of your questions. How many of my questions have been answered in this thread?. You say

A.) I ignore the concrete casses the thr HRW makes.

Re: A)

Even if HRW would have been the lackey stooge organization for American interests you imply it is, would it have made any difference to the actual cases these individual reports highlight?

Answer. Yes, your source matters. Who is Chavez in a cold war with? The U.S.. Why in the hell would you show me a Human rights report from the U.S. about Chavez. I read Amnesty International report about Chavez and Venezuela.

Chavez's enemies Human rights report on Chavez?

Here is a link to a thread about china criticizing Americas Human rights record.

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2036196&highlight=#2036196 (see my reply next post to topic)

Shell consider Israels human rights record on Palistine or Palestine human rights record on Israel. Does it make a difference to the actual cases. All human rights casses matter as the sources credibility and motive in exploiting those casses.

Would it undo trials against dissidents, beatings of demonstrators, pakcing the Supreme Court with Chavez allies?

Answer. No

Do you have anything to say about any of those things, at all? Yes. But I am tired of typing right now. Will you answer two of my questions.

Why is the World Bank, American Development Bank and application of an American States Democratic charter suggested as a cure to the Human rights problem considering they are the biggest pepetuators of Human rights violations in Latin America? (do I really have to post all the crap again about the School of the Americas, American Corparate interest, Death squads, Jhon Stockwell, etc, etc?)

I'm not trying to "get you"; there's no conspiracy. In fact, since you already kindly told Fbaezer that you didnt really consider him "one of you", I'll point out that barring George, you're actually mostly in the company of fellow-leftists here.

Thats why the info you bring about past CIA misdeeds is hardly news to us. Though Dlowan and I both, I am guessing, have nothing in the way of Fbaezer's actually heroic past, affinities have, I'm sure, largely been the same. I was taken to events of the Netherlands-Chile Solidarity Committee (or whatever it was called, exactly) age 7, and age 11 wrote a strident paper about the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution and the threat of the imperialist Contra thugs.

I'm only bringing up such childnesses to show that it is hardly because we are not aware or unwilling to face up to the "truths" about CIA evilnesses that we "attack" you; we know about those well enough already. We criticize your assertions (which is quite something else) because we fundemantally disagree with you that all the complaints brought about Chavez's human rights violations can be as easily dismissed by assumptions of partisan smearing or references to the CIA's greater evil as you are doing.

What I've done is merely addressed your points as they came up, and presented my reaction to them, at least trying to give concrete examples. But, if you want to know what I think the problem is with your approach here, rather than with that of Chavez in Venezuela, then this is something I wrote earlier today that I didnt post (because I'd posted more than enough already).:

So - am I understanding you correctly - you are discounting Human Rights Watch because it's based in the US? Any source based in the US can not be trusted?

Do you realise that this would also include, say, SOA Watch, which you have quoted and linked in extensively above (that's PO Box 4566, Washington)?

And Amnesty International, that's based in Tony Blair's UK, Bush's obediant poodle ally. How's that any better?

This is, of course, a non-argument. Fact is, that HRW is an independent human rights organisation, not connected to the US government, not connected to the US political parties, and that it has fiercely criticized governments of rightwing and leftwing persuasion alike, whenever it noted human rights abuses.

Fact is, that the same Human Rights Watch has been fiercely critical of US governments, the Bush Jr. one not least. I already brought a bunch of links in which HRW criticizes the Bush administration's abuses of human rights in Guantanamo as stridently as it did Chavez's human rights violations.

So what is your point here? If you do see this all simply as one big fight between the US and Venezuela, HRW is obviously not part of the US side - its on the fence. Much, in fact, like most of your fellow-posters here. Wouldnt that be a POV you'd want to consider rather than dismiss immediately?


The World Bank, an intergovernmental institution of 184 countries, has now somehow merged into one fluid whole with the US's School of the Americas and the death squads it trained? I have not agreed with many of the World Bank's policies either - I think they're too neo-liberal, though not half as much as those of the IMF, with which the WB has an often strenuous relationship. But this careless plumping together of everything you associate with the West one way or another, as one sorta unified kind of being is - what?

Furthermore, you are not reading the very quote you brought here yourself correctly. Nowhere did the HRW suggest the World Bank and the OAS "as a cure to the Human rights problem". This is what you quoted:

"[the] humans rights watch report [is] "recommending that the Organization of American States ought to get involved and apply its Democratic Charter" and also recommends that the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank should condition future loans on the government's implementation of the recommendations contained in the HRW report."

All HRW here suggests re: the World Bank is that, as long as the government does not stop violating human rights, intergovernmental institutes like the World Bank should not give it further loans.

Seems straightforward to me. What exactly do you object to in the proposition that international organisations should not lend money to governments that violate human rights? You can bet HRW suggests the same kind of approach to rightwing governments that violate human rights.

Otherwise, basically - lest I repeat myself - my answer to your question is in the last paragraph of my previous post.

Now, if we can get beyond the knee-jerk reaction of impugning the source, I hope you will still also get round to actually addressing the warnings about concrete human rights violations in Chavez's Venezuela that were listed in those HRW items.

Nimh, When I say "get me" I would have hoped it would not be used to imply that I might believe everything is a conspiracy. I think you are mistaken in quoting me as tell fbaever I don't consider him one of me"one of you". I am not on a side. I think people would like to paint a picture of me as to dicredit and dismiss what I am saying. I do not align myself with "Leftist". I cannot be labeled or put into a group inless you or others choose to.

I see people here building a case against Chavez but when I present relevant information I become a "conspiracy" nut living in a "fantasy" world instead of adding that information into the pool of things to to be considered when understanding Chavez and Venezuela.

If you dismiss the history of American intervention in Latin America (Training Death squads, propaganda, assassinations, bribes, etc, etc) then both me and Chavez DO look nuts.

I have to cut this short like I did my last post and will take up where I left off.

I still have this to answer to:

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

"Do you have anything to say about any of those things, at all?

Re: B)

Moreover, to try to portray HRW as some kind of pro-American pro-imperialist stooge is a laugh.

Look up what HRW has to say about the US's own practices. In Iraq. In Guantanamo. Here, does this look like an American stooge organisation? "

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

And then some. I have alot to say on what you are presenting to me.

username, read your post. good point of veiw. To bad so many poor had to wait so long. Whatever good Chavez has done was done despite very powerful opposition.

Chavez' help for the poor of Venezuela will be every bit as ephemeral and illusory as that of Juan Peron for the poor of Argentina. Give him five more years and it will take Venezuela more than a generation to recover.

Nimh, This is getting rediculous if you ask me.

********Abuse spands decades and not particularly bad. After all there was a coupt attempt. By who? -amigo

"Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch publish allegations against the Venezuelan government on their websites. HRW's director general José Miguel Vivanco criticised the media laws introduced last year as having "flouted international principles that protect free expression". The two organisations have also accused the government of attempting to muzzle criticism by threatening opponents with prosecution. Amnesty highlights alleged brutality by the security forces over decades, which Chávez has not ended. But neither organisation singles Venezuela out as having a particularly bad record globally."

Excerpt from

http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,,1775763,00.html

*******HRW report recomending loans from World Bank taken from the report. -Amigo

To international lending agencies:

The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank can play a significant role in strengthening Venezuela's justice system, as is clear from their involvement in the country to date. The Inter-American Development Bank provided a loan for $75 million in 2001 for projects in the Attorney General's Office and Ministry of the Interior and Justice aimed at improving the efficiency, professionalism and equity of the criminal justice system.

The World Bank has supported the Venezuelan judiciary in recent years with a $30 million loan for a project (authorized in 1993 and completed after multiple delays in 2003) that aimed to modernize the infrastructure of the judiciary, as well as a $4.7 million loan for a project (authorized in 1997 and completed in 2000) that aimed to improve the functioning of the Supreme Court. The Venezuelan judiciary has since developed a proposal for a third loan from the Bank.

The most pressing issue facing the Venezuelan justice system now is the threats to its independence and autonomy. Until these threats are addressed, improvements in other areas may only help a fundamentally flawed system function more efficiently.

Therefore, international lending agencies interested in supporting the Venezuelan judiciary should:

direct aid toward efforts to strengthen the independence of its judges and autonomy of its courts.
suspend all future assistance for justice sector projects until Venezuela takes concrete steps to address the threats to judicial independence documented in this report.

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2004/venezuela0604/6.htm#_Toc75153615

********More recomendations from HRW involving Bush, World Bank and inter-American Development Bank Taken from the HRW report -amigo

"If the United States is to have a positive influence in Venezuela today it will have to be through the sort of multilateral diplomacy that the Bush administration endorsed when it signed the Inter-American Democratic Charter in 2001. The Democratic Charter authorizes the OAS to respond actively to threats to democracy in the region, ranging from coup d'états to government policies that undermine the democratic process, and it identifies judicial independence as an essential component of a democratic system."

"International lending agencies could also have a positive influence on the situation in Venezuela. The World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank have supported projects aimed at improving the administration of justice in Venezuela?-from training prosecutors and police to developing court infrastructure. The most urgent improvement needed now is the strengthening of judicial independence and autonomy. Without that, other improvements may only help a fundamentally flawed system function more efficiently. To encourage progress where it is most needed, all future international assistance aimed at improving the Venezuelan justice system should be made contingent upon Venezuela taking immediate and concrete steps to shore up the independence of its judges and the autonomy of its highest court. "

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/07/07/venezu9020.htm


"Ironically, the U.S. government, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International's accusations stress Chavez' sins regarding press censorship and undermining the Constitution - that Chavez is anti-democratic. In light of the US coup planning and destabilization efforts, such charges seem misplaced - at best.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, along with the U.S. Government, have contributed not only to political confusion about Venezuela. By misusing the words, democracy and human rights, they have created a semantic nightmare. They seem to accept US coups and destabilization campaigns as compatible with democracy, while Chavez's efforts to make majority rule a reality by providing for basic substantive rights become an offense. He has not shut down, censored or interfered with the media or the property that belong to his enemies. You figure it out!"

excerpt from

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/4/5091