Rice Believes Chavez is "Destroying" Venezuela

[louis-t]

Aw jeez, here we go.

"I believe there is an assault on democracy in Venezuela and I believe that there are significant human rights issues in Venezuela," Rice told lawmakers at a congressional hearing. "I do believe that the president of Venezuela is really, really destroying his own country, economically, politically."

"Really, really"?

<snip>

Despite her comments Rice said she wanted to avoid getting into "a rhetorical contest" with Chavez. She said the United States has traditionally had good relations with Venezuela and would like to have them in the future.

<snip>

Venezuela has vowed to strip some of the world's biggest oil companies of controlling stakes in oil projects of the country's Orinoco Belt by May 1.

The pledge, which affects firms such as Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Conoco Phillips, Statoil and BP Plc, forms a vital part of the nationalizations at the heart of his revolution in Venezuela.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070207/pl_nm/venezuela_usa_rice_dc_2

[Demeter]

1. Rice Also Believes Bush Is Good for America

So at least she's consistent(ly wrong).

[Delphinus]

29. Yeah,

I'm wondering what she thinks her "husb.." the president is doing to this one.

[saigon68]

45. Her smile can stop a tornado

[Occulus]

55. Behold, the Mouth of Sauron

"My master, Sauron the Great, bids thee welcome..."

[Nihil]

63. Frighteningly close!

(In appearance and in job description)

[0007]

97. .....what about syphilis?

[Sabriel]

2. Irony alert!

Maybe she should turn her critical gaze inward, rather than toward South America. The gall of the US never ceases to amaze me. I can't imagine how people overseas see it.

[cdnwannabe]

5. They're disgusted, but they probably just laugh now....

otherwise you have to cry!

[TheLeftyMom]

3. Pot Meet Kettle!

n/t

[Supersedeas]

73. Watch your mouth Oil Maiden--flapping that trap could cost you big constituents

[xxqqqzme]

4. being a product of (snake) oil herself,

expected rhetoric spilling from her forked tongue.

[SOS]

49. Forked tongue and a miserable hypocrite

The Washington Post: “The meeting with Mr. Obiang was presumably a reward for his hospitable treatment of U.S. oil firms, though we cannot be sure since the State Department declined our invitation to comment.”

"Obiang, a somewhat unsavory and corrupt character who seized power in a 1979 coup, runs a regime regularly condemned by the State Department for human rights violations, including torture, beatings, abuse and deaths of prisoners and suspects. He's gotten as much as 97 percent of the vote in recent elections, he told CBS's "60 Minutes" a while back, but that was because "there is no one left in the opposition."
Human rights groups and, we hear, folks inside the State Department, were beside themselves that Rice would meet with what one advocate called "one of the most brutal, most corrupt and unreconstructed dictators in the world."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/16/AR2006041600737.html

[LiberalFighter]

58. Why would she shake hands with her twin brother?

:sarcasm:

[ronnykmarshall]

6. Like she's doing such a GREAT job in America!

Blow it out your tooth gap, Condi!

[oldtimecanuk]

7. My personal take is that Chavez is actually...

saving Venezuela from what he perseves to be major US attempt at a coup to oust him. I personally believe that Hugo is the best thing that ever happened to Venezuela. He may be thought of as a Dictator, but I believe that he has the best interest of both the Country and the people in mind.

ww

[Demeter]

12. Chavez Is The Best Thing That Ever Happened to SA and the World!

And Bush's worst nightmare--a competent leader who can't be bought off, decouped, or co-opted, or even smeared.

[Vidar]

31. Chavez' hero, Simon Bolivar, probably takes number one, but Hugo

easily takes number two.

[Poll_Blind]

15. I agree. n/t

PB

[Cha]

22. Unlike a certain "decider" not

having anyone's interest at heart(doesn't have one) besides his other Orwellian, Machiavellian, Pollution Belchin' cronies..and they drop each other in a New York second.

[happydreams]

42. Welcome to DU. I agree totally.

We need more of your kind around here. :kick:

[xultar]

8. Well lookie @ the pot callin the kettle pot.

[cdnwannabe]

9. An assault on the BushCo version of democracy, yes...

but as far as I'm concerned, nationalizing a country's natural resources is a very good thing!

[Hieronymus]

10. The citizens elected Chavez twice by large majorities ..

Evidently the citizens don't agree that he's destroying their country.

[yurbud]

11. every time the Bushies criticize Chavez, they make him look better

[acmavm]

13. Rice is an idiot. Look at the stuff she says. She proves you can

have boatloads of degrees and still be a simple bitch.

[Larkspur]

14. Remember, Rice and Bush Co define democracy as allowing corporations to rape

workers and third world nations of their natural resources with impunity. That is the frame she is working under when she claimed that Chavez is destroying democracy.

[saigon68]

46. And their Hoodlum John Negroponte= America's premier NUN RAPIST

[struggle4progress]

51. They's gonna git rid of the UN, slow but shore, one nation-state at a time

Afghanistan? check!
Iraq! check!
Haiti! check!
Iran! da check's in the mail!
Venezuela! ...

[malaise]

83. Ding ding

we have a winner :D

[yurbud]

16. contrast Chavez behavior at end of THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED with anything Bushies do

http://professorsmartass.blogspot.com/2007/01/90-sec-video-corporate-media-vs.html

Short summary of what they did to him:

>


The whole story:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5832390545689805144

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Judi Lynn]

61. In the post immediately above this earlier this evening, I thanked you for posting the montage

of images taken from Venezuelan private tv networks.

Thanks for posting the evidence which is only a glimpse of a heavy, HEAVY load of nonsense which spews from those networks 24/7, which would NEVER be allowed to operate against a right-wing pResident in the United States.

This kind of thing just would never happen here, as we all well know. Not even once.

It's good to show the evidence which right-wingers ignore, and deny. This is real, and it's only the tip of the iceberg of Venezuelan "news" media style of "journalism."

Don't forget the news photo with Chavez holding a rose which had been given to him, which was removed, and replaced with a gun in a Venezuelan periodical, Tal Cual, referred to later as the "guns and roses" issue.



BECAME



http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1025

[zeemike]

17. I would compare him to Benito Juarez

He seems unafraid of confronting power (like calling bush the devil) and the poor people of South America love that. We can hope for there sake that he lives up to those ideals. I think he will

[HuffleClaw]

19. bwahahahhahhaaaaaaa

'oh no, he's attacking OUR oil!!!!!!'


you could so easily replace 'venezuela' with 'the usa' in that rant though, and it would end up far more accurate. thusly:

"I believe there is an assault on democracy in the US and I believe that there are significant human rights issues in the US," Rice told lawmakers at a congressional hearing. "I do believe that the president of the US is really, really destroying his own country, economically, politically."

[Cha]

20. Yeh, and what does she think she

and the other Fucktards are doin' to the good ol' USA?

How's ol' chimp mcdecider doin' on the world scene? :nuke:

[Barrett808]

21. But we're "rebuilding" Iraq

:eyes:

[theaudacity]

23. I came in here to make the obvious comment about irony, but i was apparently too late.

I guess thats the problem with easy jokes.

P.S. - Condi, I really enjoyed watching you shit yourself during Senate questioning a few weeks ago.

[theaudacity]

24. "I believe it said Bin Laden determined to strike within the United States." nt

[Doctor_J]

25. And all four people who still listen to Rice agree

Why is she still cashing government paychecks?

[Gabi Hayes]

52. I think you misunderstimate that number by quite a bit....think of all the DUers

who swallow her line, hook, and sinker when it comes to that evil communist fascist dictator

[demo dutch]

26. Soooo.. we're going to invade Venezuela?

[Judi Lynn]

27. In Venezuela's malls, trade trumps politics

Posted on Wed, Feb. 07, 2007
In Venezuela's malls, trade trumps politics
By Vanessa Bauza and Tal Abbady

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

(MCT)

CARACAS, Venezuela - From the crowds packing the Sambil mall in Caracas, snapping up Tommy Hilfiger jeans, Xbox 360 video game consoles and palm-sized iPods, you might never guess that President Hugo Chavez is waging a crusade against conspicuous consumption. Though Chavez blasts capitalism and the United States, trade with Venezuela is booming, and South Florida is gaining as the main gateway for U.S. shipments to the oil-producing nation.

South Florida exports to Venezuela soared over the past three years, topping $3.5 billion last year and making Venezuela the area's No. 2 trade partner, trailing Brazil, the latest U.S. government data shows.

Fueled by high oil prices, Venezuela is buying telecom equipment, computers and other high-tech goods shipped from South Florida as well as American brand cars assembled in their own country.

Car sales jumped 52 percent last year, with market leader General Motors unable to keep up with demand for Chevrolets, said Pat Morrissey, a GM spokesman based in Weston.

At Noel Motors in eastern Caracas, saleswoman Zoraida Jimenez said the auto showroom gets so busy it looks "like a supermarket."
(snip/...)

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/world/16640817.htm

[Spiffarino]

28. CrudeOil Condi is shaking in her Manolo Blahniks

Hmmm...
Venezuela has vowed to strip some of the world's biggest oil companies of controlling stakes in oil projects of the country's Orinoco Belt by May 1.

The pledge, which affects firms such as Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Conoco Phillips, Statoil and BP Plc, forms a vital part of the nationalizations at the heart of his revolution in Venezuela.

Spiff, in his best "Mr. Burns" voice:

EX-cellent!

[Manifestor_of_Light]

80. Nope, Her Ferragamos.

Ferragamos are buttery soft and comfortable. You can buy flat ones or heeled ones. They are made in Florence. They also come in my size (really narrow), and the soles bend, unlike cheap shoes. They start at about $275.00, but you can get them resoled and wear them for years, because they are incredibly well made.

Manolo Blahniks only come in spike heels, which are worn by women who mistakenly think they are increasing their attractiveness while actually increasing the chances of foot problems, broken ankles, serious falls, and the like. Women who wear spike heels and get foot problems are the folks who make foot doctors rich, pretty much. Blahniks are "Knock me down and F___ me shoes".

I'm not that stupid. Besides, wearing spike heels HURTS. I don't like that burning sensation on the ball of the foot, where all the weight goes.

After all that speech about shoes, I still think it was unconscionable for Condi to burn up the Ferragamo store in NYC while thousands were dying in New Orleans.

[Spiffarino]

95. MB's are "Knock me down and F___ me shoes"

You are perceptive, no?

Based on her past failures and her general incompetence, Condi gets taken far more seriously than she deserves. Manolo Blahniks are the perfect analogy: A stylish nothing that brings on disaster.

[tanyev]

30. Oh, Condi. Isn't there a clusterfuck in the Middle East you should be fixing?

Priorities, girl, priorities.

[Spiffarino]

96. Please, O God, no.

It would be far better for the Earth for Condi to go shopping for the next two years. Leave diplomacy to competent professionals, not political hacks like Rice.

[Chemical Bill]

32. This proves that Chavez is doing a good job. n/t

[coalition_unwilling]

33. Breaking News: Pot calls Kettle Black! n/t

[youngdem]

34. I'd listen to her....She knows A LOT about destroying a country's democracy and human rights

Stupid, vapid bitch.

[Cocoa]

35. maybe a coup can save Venezuela

restore democracy, rule of law, etc.

[Judi Lynn]

37. The people of Venezuela do NOT want their elected government overthrown.

That's why they poured into the streets to protest when they learned a coup was underway the first time.

[Cocoa]

39. what do the people of Venezuela have to do with it?

didn't you hear what Condi said about Chavez being no good?

[Judi Lynn]

40. Oh, RIGHT! I got ya! Sorry. (gulp.) I do remember her great words

about how their votes have much value, since they voted for the wrong person, or some such astonishing drivel.

It can take your breath away to see people in government as crude about their views as the _Bush people. No respect for real democracy whatsoever.

[Unvanguard]

36. Good.

She represents exactly the kind of people whose preferred version of Venezuela should be destroyed.

[Judi Lynn]

38. The very kind they will NOT elect, and the oligarchy knows it! n/t

[Unvanguard]

41. Thus the destruction of "democracy."

Real democracy is the enemy of US-sponsored elite "democracy", as it has always been.

[Name removed]

43. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[superconnected]

44. Like we need another dose of their hypocrisy -

"I believe there is an assault on democracy in Venezuela and I believe that there are significant human rights issues in Venezuela," Rice told lawmakers at a congressional hearing. "I do believe that the president of Venezuela is really, really destroying his own country, economically, politically."

"Despite her comments Rice said she wanted to avoid getting into "a rhetorical contest" with Chavez. She said the United States has traditionally had good relations with Venezuela and would like to have them in the future."

[wholetruth]

47. That's small potatoes, Rice

Bush is mashing the international community

[Hotler]

48. As to the Neo-cons plundering Amurika....

and the rest of the world. STFU and go get your teeth fixed.

[Megahurtz]

50. Eyeballing Venezuela's OIL Now?

Thought you were already busy........



Isn't there any Country who's Democracy you cannot destroy?

[Divine Discontent]

140. that's the point, I agree --- OIL DOMINATION

DARTH CHENEY said it himself --- "the good Lord didn't see fit to put oil in democratic nations" or something very close to that... they think it's their resp. to take over the world's oil to protect our democracy! MY GOODNESS THEY'RE DELUSIONAL (not that I'm announcing anything new we didn't know!)


www.cafepress.com/warisprofitable <<-- antibush prodem stickers/shirts

[goforit]

53. roflmao!!!

[sonias]

54. I believe that Rice has already destroyed the US

So who's gonna call her on significant human rights violations right here in the U.S. and in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, that we perpetrated? What about the assault on democracy right here at home by "the decider". She is the slimmest oil pimp ever.

Sonia

[classysassy]

56. More kool aide

for witch doctor rice.

[roamer65]

57. Awww...C'mon Condi, take Hugo up on his offer and go get some lovin'.

:evilgrin:

[ckramer]

59. My husband says

Ooops!

[Say_What]

60. CondiSLEEZA's just pissed cuz PDVSA won't name an oil tanker after her...

that second snip says it all:

Despite her comments Rice said she wanted to avoid getting into "a rhetorical contest" with Chavez. She said the United States has traditionally had good relations with Venezuela and would like to have them in the future.

[and-justice-for-all]

62. Yes Condi,, Chavez is a better President then Chimpy...

..could be. At least Chavez knows that the fuck he is doing and why he is doing it. Chavez, unlike * , has an agenda that does not include global destruction.

[truthisfreedom]

64. She's just jealous that Chavez has the power to name ALL Venezuelan oil tankers after himself now.

Which is pretty darned special if you think about it. ALL of them.

[agincourt]

65. Chavez is destroying corporate serfdom,

and to conservatives, that is destroying "democracy". Rice will be remembered as part of an illegal, corrupt family, presidency that never should have been. This administration never should have happened.

[boilinmad]

66. God help any country....

.....sitting on a huge reserve of oil..........theyre doomed with Bushco in power........!!!!

[Judi Lynn]

67. More on a recent skirmish we had on Chavez, completely contrived, as this article shows:

Week of Feb. 08 to Feb. 14, 2007

Why Hugo Chávez was given more authority

By Maria Páez Victor, PhD.

This week the parliament of Venezuela gave President Hugo Chávez the authority to pass laws by decree for the next 18 months on 10 issues of domestic importance. This type of power has a time limit and an issue limit and is specifically allowed by Article 203 of the Venezuelan constitution.

It is not the first time President Chávez has been allowed this prerogative. Twice before he was given such powers, according to this constitutional provision, and he carried out the duties allowed to him by the parliament without any misstep or abuse of power.

A close look at Venezuelan history shows that this power, also enshrined in the past constitution, was given to presidents Rómulo Betancourt (1959) Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974), Jaime Lusinchi (1984) and Ramon Jose Velázquez (1993) to carry out decisions related to finance, external debt and creation of new state institutions among others. However, since these presidents were in friendly terms with the White House, there was no decrying of an erosion of Venezuelan democracy then.

In fact, during the past 40 years, and during previous presidential terms, glaring abuses of human rights have been committed in the country but not one word of protest or concern was uttered by Washington.
(snip/...)

http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Maria_Paez&otherweek=1170914400

Thanks to DU'er Say_What for sharing this material.

[cdnwannabe]

68. Beautiful post, Judi Lynn....

Thanks for sharing!

[Judi Lynn]

71. Hi, cdnwannabe. Welcome to D.U.!

:hi: :hi: :hi: :hi:

[malaise]

84. Great post n/t

[redqueen]

103. Thank you for reposting! n/t

:hi:

[David Zephyr]

69. Memo to Condi Rice: No one gives a damn what you say anymore, dear.

Everyone on the entire planet knows you are an evil liar. Everyone.

Further, your microphone will soon be shut off and then you can come out of the closet and then begin to convince everyone that you really contributed to progress for African-Americans, Women and Gays and Lesbians.

But guess what? No one cares.

[HockeyMom]

70. CITGO Commercial on CNN

It showed a woman in a NYC apartment bundled up in coat and hat in from of her open oven. It showed little children huddled together inside a blanket. The ad then said something to the effect that CITGO and the good people of Venezuela are there to help you with low cost heating oil of 40% below market value.

I assume this was a local ad for the NY market. It was a very powerful piece.

[LiberalFighter]

93. So Chavez is destroying his own country economically yet able to offer 40% off for heating oil

"I do believe that the president of Venezuela is really, really destroying his own country, economically, politically."

[Judi Lynn]

94. Yeah, he has really bleeped everything up, hasn't he?

Here's a report which is typical of a handful I've seen published recently, and posted at D.U. also. This one is the least informative, but points in the same direction:

Venezuela Jobless Rate Falls to Eight-Year Low (Update2)

By Theresa Bradley

Dec. 20 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuela's unemployment rate fell to its lowest in almost eight years in November as oil-fueled government spending spurred economic growth and a boom in consumer purchasing.

The jobless rate dropped to 8.8 percent last month from 10.9 percent a year ago, the country's national statistics agency, known as the INE, said in a statement. The rate is Venezuela's lowest since January 1999, the first month for which the data is available. Unemployment was 8.9 percent in October.

Venezuela's economy swelled 10.2 percent in the past year on government oil revenue, driving a consumer spending boom that helped create 424,000 jobs in November. President Hugo Chavez's government plans to pour nearly half its budget into social and job creation programs next year, and aims to slash unemployment to 7 percent next month, INE President Elias Eljuri said in today's release.
(snip)

The surge in government spending has helped slash poverty rates among Venezuela's 26 million people by nearly a third since the end of 2003, according to the INE.
(snip/)

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601086&sid=apNoX_fxT.wk&refer=news

[redqueen]

72. "Traditionally good relations" huh? We throw out their leaders

but that's 'traditionally good'.


Riiiiiiiight.

[ohio2007]

75. Let the people of that country decide after 18 months

If Venezuela is being destroyed. Will they be better off under Chavez and his current 2007 25 % inflation rate.

Meat, sugar scarce in Venezuela stores
CARACAS, Venezuela - Meat cuts vanished from Venezuelan supermarkets this week, leaving only unsavory bits like chicken feet, while costly artificial sweeteners have increasingly replaced sugar, and many staples sell far above government-fixed prices.

President Hugo Chavez's administration blames the food supply problems on unscrupulous speculators, but industry officials say government price controls that strangle profits are responsible. Authorities on Wednesday raided a warehouse in Caracas and seized seven tons of sugar hoarded by vendors unwilling to market the inventory at the official price.

<snip>


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070208/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_food_crunch

only 17 1/2 months left until decision time down there. Will the people be more prosperous under fixed prices? It's a lesson in economics playing out for those willing to look.

[redqueen]

76. Big business pulled the same stunts under Allende.

Nothing new here.

[ohio2007]

77. Chavez is mucho buisness in da casa now

he calls the shots, the middle class middlemen grumble......

[redqueen]

88. Middle class middlemen? So they're ones orchestrating the

shortages?

Well if so, then so.

[Judi Lynn]

82. DU'ers are all familiar with opposition writing, or articles which probably

had their content designed somewhere in the State Department, in a place like the Office of Public Diplomacy, where ugly, deformed little trolls crank out pathetic jibberish and have it published out of the country so it can be picked up and published here with no one the wiser. It's been done to death for decades.

DU'ers know that.

Here's something from the Guardian which was NOT created by a right-wing propagandist:

Most of the reports about this revolution over the past six years, at home and abroad, have been uniquely hostile, heavily influenced by politicians and journalists associated with the opposition. It is as if news of the French or the Russian revolutions had been supplied solely by the courtiers of the king and the tsar.
(snip)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1495260,00.html

There WERE plenty of fruits, tomatoes, eggs on display at a neighborhood market last summer when _Bush's aggressive ambassador William Brownfield cruised up to a children's Little League baseball game, and he tried to get out and make a public appearance there. He was chased off by local Venezuelan men and women who hopped on their motorcycles and chased his ass the hell out of there, pelting it with food items from a local produce shop. Here's a photo shot from the back of his limosine as he attempted to run away from them. Any attempt he made to parlay this event into an international incident seemed to fade quickly.



This might be helpful, written in December, 2006:

Chávez rides wave of Venezuela's economic growth
By Simon Romero / The New York TimesPublished: December 3, 2006

CARACAS: To understand why Hugo Chávez seemed assured of victory in the presidential election on Sunday - strengthening his mandate for what he calls a socialist revolution - consider the vigor here of that most capitalist of institutions: the stock exchange.

Housed in El Rosal, an upscale district with new skyscrapers and hotels, the Caracas stock exchange was the site of frenzied trading last week. Its main index climbed to a record high of 46,741, topping off a 129.2 percent rise this year that has made it one of the best performing markets in the world. On Friday, the index climbed 8 percent for its biggest daily gain in four years.

"For all of Chávez's faults, his government has been extremely pragmatic in economic terms," said José Guerra, a former chief of economic research at Venezuela's central bank.

"State-supported capitalism isn't just surviving under Chávez. It is thriving."
(snip)

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/03/news/venez.php?page=1

[ohio2007]

85. Well, that's quite a theory. So you saying is the writer of the article

NATALIE OBIKO PEARSON, AP Business Writer is a state department troll ?http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070208/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_food_crunch

your words;

....had their content designed somewhere in the State Department, in a place like the Office of Public Diplomacy, where ugly, deformed little trolls crank out pathetic jibberish and have it published out of the country so it can be picked up and published here with no one the wiser. It's been done to death for decades.


Decades?

[redqueen]

89. Yes, decades. Does the name "Allende" ring any bells?

This same kind of thing happened when he tried to thwart the elite's wishes to continue to fleece the masses.

Collusion among businesses in order to create illusionary 'shortages' and other manufactured crises of all sorts.

Disappointing that more don't see through this kind of charade by now.

[Judi Lynn]

92. Here's a quick google grab which relates to your post:

Washington Bullets: Pinochet And Kissinger

~snip~

....But American media in general ignored completely the role that the American government had in the crimes of not just the coup, not just the reign of terror which Pinochet's secret police extended around the South American continent and across the globe—including the worst terrorist act on U.S. soil prior to 9/11, the assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Karpen Moffitt in 1976 in Washington, D.C.—but also multiple attempts to overthrow the democratic government of Chile in the years prior to the coup. These efforts were coordinated from the very top of the American government, by President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.
(snip)

Chilean Commander-in-chief Rene Schneider's assassination in 1970 greatly destabilized Chilean politics and was part of a coup prompted by Richard Nixon. The Federation of American Scientists' Intelligence Resource Program summarizes these activities, including funding of terrorist groups.

Meanwhile, the United States pursued a two-track policy toward Allende's Chile. At the overt level, Washington was frosty, especially after the nationalization of the copper mines; official relations were unfriendly but not openly hostile. The government of President Richard M. Nixon launched an economic blockade conjunction with U.S. multinationals (ITT, Kennecott, Anaconda) and banks (Inter-American Development Bank, World Bank). The U.S. squeezed the Chilean economy by terminating financial assistance and blocking loans from multilateral organizations. But during 1972 and 1973 the US increased aid to the military, a sector unenthusiastic toward the Allende government. The United States also increased training Chilean military personnel in the United States and Panama.

According to notes taken by CIA director Richard Helms at a 1970 meeting in the Oval Office, his orders were to "make the economy scream." It was widely reported that at the covert level the United States worked to destabilize Allende's Chile by funding opposition political groups and media and by encouraging a military coup d'état. The agency trained members of the fascist organization Patria y Libertad (PyL) in guerrilla warfare and bombing, and they were soon waging a campaign of arson. CIA also sponsored demonstrations and strikes, funded by ITT and other US corporations with Chilean holdings. CIA-linked media, including the country's largest newspaper, fanned the flames of crisis. While these United States actions contributed to the downfall of Allende, no one has established direct United States participation in the coup d'état and few would assign the United States the primary role in the destruction of that government.

However, the FAS notes that no evidence could be shown in 1975 of Kissinger's or Nixon's role in the 1973 coup itself. That would have to wait almost 30 years, to President Clinton's declassification in 2000 of a raft of intelligence documents regarding CIA activities in Chile at the prompting of Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y. The Hinchey report is packed with revelations, including that the CIA paid $35,000 to Schneider's killers. But Peter Kornbluh of the Chile Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, still sorting through them, revealed in 2004 records of a conversation between Kissinger and Nixon (.pdf).

The transcript records a call made by President Nixon to Kissinger's home on the weekend following General Augusto Pinochet's violent overthrow of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile. Kissinger reports to the president that the new military regime was "getting consolidated" and complains that the press is "bleeding because a pro-Communist government has been overthrown." When Nixon notes that "our hand doesn't show on this one though," Kissinger responds that "We didn't do it" {referring to the coup itself}. I mean we helped them….created the conditions as great as possible."
(snip/...)

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/12/12/washington_bullets_pinochet_and_kissinger.php

[redqueen]

102. Thank you!

You're always so frickin nice... doin everyone's homework for 'em.

Bless you!

:loveya:

[Judi Lynn]

113. Thank you for reading these things. It takes a while, but it's really helps. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

116. Don't forget the newspaper Nixon practically bought with US taxpayer dollars,

in Chile, El Mercurio, from which his administration poured out all the needed perception molding propaganda from before the Presidential election, anti-Allende, continuing throughout Allende's service as President, and continuing in a support role to Nixon's bloody murderer/torturer/thief/dictator, Augusto Pinochet.

It was a loud, influential voice in Chile, being the equivalent of the New York Times in that country.

[Judi Lynn]

91. You're going to have to start doing your homework. Coming blank

to conversations doesn't allow you to grasp what people are discussing, and it's certainly not their faults you don't recall the material.

[Judi Lynn]

114. Yeah! Quite a theory, for sure. Got it out of thin air.....

The Media

Journalism is a perfect cover for CIA agents. People talk freely to journalists, and few think suspiciously of a journalist aggressively searching for information. Journalists also have power, influence and clout. Not surprisingly, the CIA began a mission in the late 1940s to recruit American journalists on a wide scale, a mission it dubbed Operation MOCKINGBIRD. The agency wanted these journalists not only to relay any sensitive information they discovered, but also to write anti-communist, pro-capitalist propaganda when needed.

The instigators of MOCKINGBIRD were Frank Wisner, Allan Dulles, Richard Helms and Philip Graham. Graham was the husband of Katherine Graham, today’s publisher of the Washington Post. In fact, it was the Post’s ties to the CIA that allowed it to grow so quickly after the war, both in readership and influence. (8)

MOCKINGBIRD was extraordinarily successful. In no time, the agency had recruited at least 25 media organizations to disseminate CIA propaganda. At least 400 journalists would eventually join the CIA payroll, according to the CIA’s testimony before a stunned Church Committee in 1975. (The committee felt the true number was considerably higher.) The names of those recruited reads like a Who's Who of journalism:

• Philip and Katharine Graham (Publishers, Washington Post)
  
• William Paley (President, CBS)
  
• Henry Luce (Publisher, Time and Life magazine)
  
• Arthur Hays Sulzberger (Publisher, N.Y. Times)
  
• Jerry O'Leary (Washington Star)
  
• Hal Hendrix (Pulitzer Prize winner, Miami News)
  
• Barry Bingham Sr., (Louisville Courier-Journal)
  
• James Copley (Copley News Services)
  
• Joseph Harrison (Editor, Christian Science Monitor)
  
• C.D. Jackson (Fortune)
  
• Walter Pincus (Reporter, Washington Post)
  
• ABC
  
• NBC
  
• Associated Press
  
• United Press International
  
• Reuters
  
• Hearst Newspapers
  
• Scripps-Howard
  
• Newsweek magazine
  
• Mutual Broadcasting System
  
• Miami Herald
  
• Old Saturday Evening Post
  
• New York Herald-Tribune

Perhaps no newspaper is more important to the CIA than the Washington Post, one of the nation’s most right-wing dailies. Its location in the nation’s capitol enables the paper to maintain valuable personal contacts with leading intelligence, political and business figures. Unlike other newspapers, the Post operates its own bureaus around the world, rather than relying on AP wire services. Owner Philip Graham was a military intelligence officer in World War II, and later became close friends with CIA figures like Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, Desmond FitzGerald and Richard Helms. He inherited the Post by marrying Katherine Graham, whose father owned it.

After Philip’s suicide in 1963, Katharine Graham took over the Post. Seduced by her husband’s world of government and espionage, she expanded her newspaper’s relationship with the CIA. In a 1988 speech before CIA officials at Langley, Virginia, she stated:

We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things that the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.

This quote has since become a classic among CIA critics for its belittlement of democracy and its admission that there is a political agenda behind the Post’s headlines.
(snip/...)

http://www.aliveness.com/kangaroo/L-overclass.html

[MasonJar]

74. And we all know lamebrain is destroying America. Shut up, Condi!

[bitchkitty]

78. chinga tu madre, Condi

I believe there is an assault on democracy in Venezuela and I believe that there are significant human rights issues in Venezuela.."

Yes, having people actually CHOOSE their President, that's quite an assault on Democracy! An ELECTED President? Ohhhh, the humanity! As to human rights - giving humans rights? Who ever heard of such a thing? What about the poor oil companies? He's destroying the rights of the oil companies by giving away free fuel to poor people.

Despite her comments Rice said she wanted to avoid getting into "a rhetorical contest" with Chavez.

I don't blame you, Condosleazah - You would lose. It's very hard to argue with the truth.

[fujiyama]

79. Has he lost a city

due to poor handling of the aftermath of a natural disaster?

Did he ignore evidence of impending terrorist attacks, leading to the death of 3,000+ people in a major city?

Did he get 3,000 soldiers killed in a war he started because of greed, imperialist tendancies, and personal revenge?

Did he...

[Name removed]

81. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[City Lights]

86. Condi is so transparent. Oil is the common demonator in

Iraq, Iran and Venezuela. Exxon Condi needs to STFU.

[Vinca]

87. And Condi's such a good judge of character? nt

[Joe Bacon]

90. Go toss a football, Kindasleazy!

Every word this evil wench says is a lie. Even when she farts and belches, she lies!

[gravity]

98. Chavez is no saint

Chavez claims he is the champion of the poor, but so did Fidel Castro, so it doesn't automatically mean that its a good thing.

Chavez has his own human rights violations, limits free speach, and election fraud. Crime is on the rise, along with coruption which is destroying the government bureaucracy in his country. In these areas he is actually a lot like our current president, probably worst.

While his economic policies are intended to help the poor, he is discouraging private enterprise which is hurting the economy overall. Private investment is needed for a healthy economy to grow, not just government handouts. The fact that he is champion of the poor doesn't matter if he is just keeping everyone poor. The only thing holding the economy a float right now is oil, so if oil prices go down, the wellbeing of his people are going to suffer for it.

So don't just judge Chavez on one factor, because overall he is doing a terrible job running Venezeula.

[Judi Lynn]

101. You're going to need to post links to provide substance for your charges,

just the way DU'ers do, themselves, here.

We always are prepared to back up claims, charges, insinuations with REAL, legitimate sources.

[gravity]

105. Here

http://hrw.org/doc/?t=americas&c=venezu

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13989898/site/newsweek/print/0/displaymode/1098/

http://www.eluniversal.com/2004/09/06/en_pol_art_06A489963.shtml

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/09/AR2007010901717.html

[Judi Lynn]

106. You need to extricate the information you want to share, as we don't have time

to read all of your publications.

Post a link, post the passage you believe you want to discuss, don't throw a pile of links for us to spend the day studying as we don't have that kind of time.

Just follow the example of other DU'ers, if you will.

[Judi Lynn]

112. Here';s a good bit of information already posted to DU on your first link, HRW,

which has been discussed here exhaustively. This was posted by DU'er JohnnyCougar:

JohnnyCougar (1000+ posts) Mon Feb-06-06 02:25 AM
Original message
Exposing Human Rights Watch and their motives for spreading misinformation
After reading the misinformation that Human Rights Watch is spreading about Hugo Chavez and his government in Venezuela, I became suspicious of their motives. It turns out that while they do some good things, they are not always on the up and up to say the least. Human Rights Watch was formed by the US government itself, and is not unbiased. It has been used as a PR staging ground to justify US interventionism before. But don't take my word for it:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Human_Rights_Watch

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=364&topic_id=332009

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

Concerning your use of anything written by propagandist Phil Gunson, reference in many sources, this one, for instance:

~snip~
Phil Gunson's article is crude anti-Chavez propaganda.
{snip}

Chavez rubbished among Gunson's garbage

The keynote in Gunson's piece comes in the second paragraph: "Three months after the opposition umbrella group, the Democratic Co-ordinator (CD), gathered more than three million signatures for a referendum against the leftist President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's electoral authority was poised to reject the petition.

The only way to revive the referendum, guaranteed under Mr Chavez's 1999 constitution, would be for hundreds of thousands of signatories to reaffirm their intentions - an option that seemed certain to be rejected by the CD as impractical."

Phil Gunson whimsically attributes to himself the authority to judge the number of signatures collected. He says nothing about the circumstances of the recall vote – which no European country would have regarded as acceptable. For example, voting lists were taken from the voting stations by opposition party representatives so as to register votes by going from house to house. The Chavez government accepted that and other abnormal voting procedures, presumably so as to quit the opposition of any excuse were they to lose the vote.

In the event the opposition failed to collect the necessary 2.4 million clearly valid votes they needed. They only got 1.8 million votes ratified by the national electoral council. 600.000 votes were disqualified outright by the electoral council as being obviously invalid. A further 800,000 thousand votes are in question, mainly because many of the signature forms presented as valid share identical handwriting. These questionable votes are now to be made available in voting stations to allow the people to whom the signatures were attributed a second chance to confirm their vote. Contrary to Gunson's comment, the constitutional procedure for the confirmation process is no more impractical than the original recall vote itself.

Gunson's article then notes the widespread violent protests by the US-funded Venezuelan opposition. The impression he gives is of broad based popular opposition to an oppressive unpopular regime. But he offers no support for any of his assertions. This example of weasel-like sourcing; gives the flavour: "Election observers from the Atlanta-based Carter Centre and the Organisation of American States (OAS) were preparing to leave, convinced - say diplomatic sources - that the process has been manipulated by the electoral authority, on whose board the government has a majority of three to two."

Gunson failed to get the answers he wanted from the Carter Centre or from the OAS, so he resorted to unattributed "diplomatic sources". What might count as "diplomatic sources" for Phil Gunson is unclear - two US embassy staff? Or one US embassy Information Service hack and a Colombian embassy representative of death squad-friendly President Alvaro Uribe? An impartial reader cannot tell.

Similarly, in the penultimate paragraph Gunson refers to Chavez's "increasing authoritarianism" with nothing to support this description of the Venezuelan President. One just has to recall the savage repression of peaceful protest in Miami around the FTAA meeting there last year to imagine what measures might be taken against demonstrators throwing petrol bombs and shooting civilians in the US. But in the alchemist's transformation of dross into sensationalism worked by Phil Gunson, security measures applied with minimum force in Venezuela against murderous assaults by the anti-democratic opposition become "increasing authoritarianism".

Gunson's report could be dismissed for the pap that it is and forgotten were it not part of an international media campaign to disparage and demonize Hugo Chavez and to intervene in Venezuela's internal affairs. The campaign gives aid and comfort to the anti-democratic US-funded opposition. The crisis in Venezuela stems from the opposition's lack of electoral support. They tried to rig the recall vote and became bogged down in constitutional process. Then they instigated violent insurrection to try and force the issue, so far without success. These basic facts are entirely absent from Gunson's report.
(snip/...)

http://www.counterpunch.org/solo03252004.html

There are many more articles referring to propagandist Gunson, this is the first I saw, so this is the one which got posted. He is well known to DU'ers who read for content.

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

Your Venezuelan "opposition" periodical, El Universal pushes a bogus story about fraud asserted by a group financed by American tax dollars through the NED, at the direction of _{George W. Bush's} administration, which also supported the earlier coup attempt, the coup leaders, and the management-directed strike of the oil industry in Venezuela, the work lock-out, which was designed to cripple the Venezuelan economy the way Nixon crushed (in his words, "Make the economy SCREAM") the Chilean economy under the popularly elected Salavador Allende.

In case you don't know, political groups like hers, transposed to the United States, WOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO ACCEPT FOREIGN FUNDS. It's illegal here.

El Universal's photo of María Corina Machado, and the White House photo of María Corina Machado, visiting her friend.



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

Concerning your last "evidence," how would you imagine anything from the same pResident who backed the coup against the people's choice, Hugo Chavez, who entertained the coup leaders only days before the coup, in the State Department, speaking with his officials, who had his Navy right off the coast sending messages to the coup leaders, who has poured millions and millions of dollars into the Venezuelan "opposition" groups to give them fire power against Chavez, would have any credibility to any one outside the American right-wing?

The article is crap. All right-wing conjecture, and assertions, nothing resembling substance, as you know, or should know, as an adult.

You can do better than this:

Chavez's Economic Plans Set Latin Markets Reeling
White House Warns Venezuela Over U.S. Companies

By the way, Juan Forero is a very undependable writer on Latin American matters. He is not trustworthy. He has been notable for some very shifty writing, during the time he worked for the New York Times.

[redqueen]

104. He is not doing a terrible job by any stretch of the imagination.

The "discouragement" of sainted "Private Enterprise" is not what is "damaging the economy overall", it is collusion.

They did the same thing to Allende. Don't let them fool you.

[gravity]

107. I agree that collusion hurts the economy but...

private enterprise is needed for an effecient economy to operate. He can still have programs to help the poor, which is more than likely good for the economy, but discouraging investment is a recipe for disaster. Just look at every single communist country in the world if you need proof.

[Judi Lynn]

110. Please post any information you've got on Hugo Chavez's refusal of

investment in Venezuela. We haven't seen articles like that here. You'd be doing everyone a service by educating us.

For information on what has happened to "Communist" countries in the Western Hemisphere, please start your research program on U.S. history concerning covert, overt operations, starting in Guatemala in 1954 against Jacobo Arbenz, in systematic programs of destabilization, terrorism, destruction. Continue your search through South America, and Mexico, and bring it all forward to the very present. There's a lot of ground to cover for you to catch up with DU'ers.

As has been said about the disappearance of Nixon-planted and supported dictator Pinochet's opposition, they were simply driven into hiding, or the survivors were, at least, after thousands were tortured to death, or tortured and thrown out of helicopters and airplanes, or simply "disappeared."

Villages wiped off the face of the map throughout Central America, under Reagan's dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, similar stories in other countries, hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered took its toll. Those people haven't changed their minds, they've been intimidated and harassed into hiding. The survivors remain. People retain the same beliefs.

Latin America intends to unify itself, and build its own identity, and NO RIGHT-WING IDIOTS are going to stop them. Even Henry Kissinger is completely aware how wildly wrong they were, and he is NOT free to travel without the risk of being taken somewhere and put on trial.

On edit:
Spelling correction.

[gravity]

120. Here you go

"Analysts concerned about anti-market moves in some Latin American countries

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently announced plans to nationalize the country�s telecommunications and electric energy sectors. The day after the January 8 announcement, the value of the Caracas Stock Exchange general index fell a record 19 percent and had fallen by nearly 30 percent by midday January 16.

The two largest utility companies in the targeted industries -- CA Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela ( 28.5 percent owned by the U.S.-based Verizon Communications ) and CA Electricidad de Caracas ( EDC, owned and operated by another U.S. company, AES ) also experienced sharp drops in value, and trading in their stocks had to be suspended temporarily. The value of EDC shares plunged 15 percent January 16 to a 10-month low one day after the government announced detailed nationalization plans for the utility.

...

Private sector experts agree that even the best-executed nationalization plans carry risks. Lowell R. Fleischer of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington told USINFO Chavez is trying to score political points by promoting his �socialism for the 21st century� agenda. But in the long run, he said, the move will have mostly negative consequences for Venezuela, which, despite its huge oil revenues, needs foreign investment to maintain and develop its oil sector.

�And if you start nationalizing,� Fleischer said, �this just scares off foreign investment,� which already has diminished during Chavez�s rule. �Further down the line, I think it means a deteriorating economic situation. Inflation is going to continue to rise and I think the first people to be hit by that will be the poorest people in Venezuela, the ones that are the backbone of Chavez�s support now

...

Jerry Haar, a professor of international business at Florida International University, told USINFO that in several Latin American countries, local elites gave market reforms a bad name by using privatization as a cover for corrupt �crony capitalism.�

�There is nothing in democratic capitalism that says you cannot have social safety nets, there is nothing that says you cannot have sound bankruptcy laws, flexible labor rules, competent tax systems, good public sector, transparent and honest courts,� said Haar."

http://media-newswire.com/release_1041406.html

[Judi Lynn]

122. Oh, please. Look at your source: Bush's State Department. Christ.

( USINFO is produced by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov )

[Kolesar]

138. Ohio has publicly-owned electricity generators &water systems. There is nothing wrong with that

Your quotes are just speaking for the corporatist party. One DUer used to have a quote in his sig line that said "Fascism ought to be named corporatism...". The attribution was Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini.

Tip of the hat to Judi Lynn :hi:

[redqueen]

111. His is not a communist country, so that comparison is invalid. n/t

[gravity]

115. He is turning the country communists

He is currently nationalizing all of the countries major industries. From a financial standpoint, it is suicide. No one is going to invest any capital in the country anymore since they fear that Chavez will take them over.


"Chavez's Economic Plans Set Latin Markets Reeling

BOGOTA, Colombia, Jan. 9 -- Financial markets from Buenos Aires to Caracas reeled on Tuesday following Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's announcement that he plans to nationalize some private companies, and the White House warned that it expects U.S.-based corporations to be compensated for any losses.

...

Chávez also said the Central Bank, one of the few semi-independent entities in the country, would come under state control as its directors are replaced. The Central Bank controls cash flow and releases economic data, operations the administration wants to wrest away.

One of the bank's outgoing directors, Domingo Maza Zavala, decried the government's moves.

"The Central Bank must be autonomous," Maza said in an interview Tuesday on Globovision, a Caracas news station. "Otherwise, the people will lose confidence in the currency."

In Venezuela, businessmen were bracing for more details about the government's plan while hoping for the best. Many have long complained that private investment has plummeted under Chávez, hurting industry.

Flavio Fridegotto, a businessman speaking by phone from Venezuela, said the government has to understand that it needs foreign companies to operate freely in the country."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/09/AR2007010901717_2.html?nav=rss_business/government

[Judi Lynn]

117. Please see this Venezuela timeline:

Last Updated: Thursday, 1 February 2007, 10:07 GMT

Timeline: Venezuela
A chronology of key events

..........

1973 - Venezuela benefits from oil boom and its currency peaks against the US dollar; oil and steel industries nationalised.

..........

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/country_profiles/1229348.stm

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

What happened there, in 1973? Were they "communists" then?

Do you think nationalization has happened anywhere which is NOT a "communists" country? Why don't you spend some time reading?

[redqueen]

119. Exactly ... nationalized industries exist in all kinds of governments. n/t

[gravity]

121. The problem isn't nationalized industries

Its when the government takes them away from private entities. No one wants to invest in a country in which they fear being taken over.

If you want to control corperations so they don't exploit the populous, you can tax them, set up trade unions, and regulations. If you allow them to still make a profit, society can still combat poverty and allow for future investment. These policies worked in almost every single industrialized nation, and thats the key to their success.

[redqueen]

123. They have not worked so well, IMO.

Poverty is still a problem in almost every single industrialized nation. So is homelessness. So is a growing wealth gap.

I'm sorry, but trade unions? Do you know what happens to trade unions in S. America?

Profits are not used to combat poverty. We're the (so-called) richest nation on earth, and look at the division of wealth here.

Sorry... it does not add up the way you say it does. I know that's the conventional wisdom, but I am not convinced.

He is not nationalizing every single company. So any hesitance regarding investment is irrational. It smells like just more of the same propoganda I'm so used to regarding these issues.

[gravity]

125. poverty is much better in industrialized nations

America isn't the best example, but still has some safety nets, and poverty here is still much better than being poor in any developing country. Look at western Europe too, they have much better social safety nets and their economies are still strong.

Profits encourage growth, which if the government has the right policies, it can be used to help benefit everyone in society.

[redqueen]

129. *Can*, but *won't*.

Sorry, but there are certain sectors of industry, which need to be socialized.

Until we have some leap in evolution, which causes those in power to NOT abuse that power to the detrmient of others and to their own benefit... then we will need certain things to be socialized.

And the "yeah it's bad but they're worse" is not one I recognize as valid.

[Judi Lynn]

126. He is RE-NATIONALIZING three industries, I believe. They were privatized

by a scum who was later impeached, but not before his economic decisions created a backlash, a protest of Caracas poor people, whom he had his troops shoot down in the massacre known as El Caracazo. It's discussed in this article, as one example:

The New York Times editorial, also published on January 10, attacks a recent statement made by President Chávez regarding the nationalization of one telephone company, CANTV, and an electric company. However the Times doesn’t explain that the CANTV is the only non-cellular telephone company in the country, giving it a complete monopoly on national land-line telecommunications and control over a majority of Internet service as well. Furthermore, the CANTV was privatized only in 1991, during the second non-consecutive term of Carlos Andrés Pérez a president later impeached for corruption who implemented a series of privatization measures, despite having run for office on a non-privatization platform just three years before. In fact, as soon as Carlos Andrés Pérez won office in 1988 after convincing the Venezuelan people he would not permit “neo-liberalism” on Venezuelan shores, he immediately began to announce the privatization of several national industries, including telecommunications, education and the medical and petroleum sectors. This deception led to massive anti-privatization protests during February 1989 during which the government ordered the armed forces to “open-fire” on the demonstrators and arrest and torture those not killed. The result was the “Caracazo”, a tragic scar on contemporary Venezuelan history that left more than 3,000 dead in mass gravesites and thousands more injured and detained. The re-nationalizing of Venezuela’s one landline phone company is a strategic necessity and an anti-monopoly measure necessary to ensure that Venezuelans have access to telecommunications service. (Take it from someone who lives here. You can’t even get a landline if it isn’t already installed in your residence. The waiting list is over 2 years and you have to bribe someone to actually do the job). And furthermore, the new Minister of Telecommunications, Jesse Chacón, announced that any company “nationalized” will be fully compensated for its shares and property at market value.
(snip/...)

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1933

Photos of Carlos Andres Perez' economic genius at work:

[redqueen]

118. Sorry, but I don't buy it just because you say it is so.

"All" of the "major" industries? What does that mean? IMO services which people need should be socialized. That is being done, but not completely, so that statement seems completely without merit.

That article contains some absolute howlers, too... central banks are usually owned by the government, so that guy is completely full of it!

On issues such as this one, which you should realize by now is rife with disinformation courtesy of well-paid or poorly-informed propogandists, it pays off to do a little reading on your own. Also, reading up on history helps you to see the situation more clearly. In regard to this issue, it would help to know the history of Chile, and how the rich conspired to get rid of that wealth-redistributing, friend-of-the-working-class nuisance Allende.

Peace, and happy reading!

:hi:

[gravity]

124. Thats what he is doing right now

"The leftist president also plans to nationalize other smaller companies in the electrical sector, oil projects operated by companies like Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp., as well as the country's largest telephone company, CA Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela, CANTV, which is 28.5 percent-owned by New York-based Verizon Communications Incorporated.

Chavez has called the nationalizations vital to Venezuela's strategic interests, but the moves have alarmed his critics who fear he's steering his country toward communism like that of his Cuban mentor Fidel Castro."

http://www.eitb24.com/new/en/B24_33913/world-news/NATIONALIZATIONS-IN-LATIN-AMERICA-Venezuela-and-Bolivia-to/


And I believe the Chile was a disaster too. A good economy has a healthy balance between the private and public sectors. When you go to far to one side or the other, the economy along with the people will suffer.

[redqueen]

127. He's not nationalizing industries, only certain companies...

This overreaction / propoganda doesn't surprise me at all though.

[gravity]

130. It destroying the economy

Chavez Vexes Venezuela's Investors

The Caracas Stock Exchange was poised for another strong year until the President announced plans to nationalize the largest public companies

It's still too early to gauge how far the government will go in its quest to deepen what it calls its Socialist Revolution. "I'm not happy with this," Ortiz says. "I think the government should have other priorities than nationalizing well-run companies." However, all the signs are that the tide is turning against investors. On Jan. 31, Venezuela's National Assembly voted to allow Chavez to legislate by decree for the next 18 months.

Not surprisingly, investors are running for the exits. The index on the Caracas stock exchange is down 15% since the start of the year. Trading volumes, which average about $1 million a day—modest even by regional standards—will be hit if Chavez goes ahead with plans to nationalize two of the exchange's blue-chips. Together, CANTV and Electricidad de Caracas account for 50% of daily trading. "Venezuela's capital markets are disappearing," says Miguel Octavio, executive director of Caracas-based BBO Financial Services. "The government has been planning this for some time."

Chavez's nationalization drive could also make it difficult for companies in Venezuela to get their hands on greenbacks. In 2003, the government instituted an official exchange rate—currently 2,150 bolivars to the U.S. dollar—and created a Foreign Exchange Administration Commission to regulate access to dollars. Since then, investors and companies seeking to repatriate profits have had two options aside from enduring the bureaucratic process of getting their dollars through the commission or buying them on the streets from tourists or small-time currency dealers.
Scarcity of Dollars

...

Such steps would create even greater incentives for investors and Venezuelans to get their money out of the country any way they can. Capital flight has been a problem in Venezuela for years. Chavez imposed capital controls in 2003 precisely to prevent funds from flowing out of the country. But tracking capital flight can be difficult. One way to measure it is through the balance of payments on capital spending.

"There are a lot of locals in Venezuela trying to get dollars out of the country, fearing that Chavez is really going to step up his nationalization agenda," says Christian Stracke, head of emerging markets research for CreditSights, a New York-based debt and equity research house. After a landslide reelection victory in December, Chavez believes he has a mandate to attack capitalism and promote socialism. Continued uncertainty is facing foreign investors and Venezuelans alike.

http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2007/gb20070205_643096_page_2.htm

[Judi Lynn]

131. Oh, yeah. Destroying the economy. Here's more evidence to back you up:

~snip~

Many analysts view dimly the nationalization of Venezuela's petroleum industry by the Chavez government, believing that it will induce the collapse of oil production in the country. Assertions that oil production is already declining in Venezuela support this belief. This assertion, however, is incorrect. Despite taking majority ownership in most of the country's joint ventures with foreign companies and significantly increasing tax and royalty rates on these ventures, there has not been an exodus of foreign oil companies from Venezuela. Out of 33 joint operating contracts with foreign oil majors, only two were abandoned by foreign oil companies. The remaining 31 were renegotiated on government terms.

Many analysts, including those at the U.S.-based Energy Information Agency, also believe that oil production in Venezuela is declining and that it will never recover to the pre-strike levels of 2001. While production of conventional crude oil has declined in the past five years, this decline has been entirely offset by increasing production of formerly unconventional extra-heavy crude oil in the Orinoco belt, which has climbed from 200,000 barrels per day in 2001 to almost 700,000 barrels per day in 2005.

This extra-heavy crude oil is refined into syncrude by several major foreign oil companies including ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Total. Combined, these companies will have Orinoco-related investment plans worth more than $12 billion in the next three years. By the end of 2006, the operating agreements under which these companies produce syncrude will also be renegotiated by the Chavez government leaving Venezuela with majority control and higher tax and royalty revenue. It is unlikely that these foreign oil majors will abandon Venezuela or their future investment plans since the Orinoco belt holds the promise of containing the largest pool of crude oil reserves in the world.

Venezuela claims that the Orinoco belt holds approximately 300 billion barrels of extra-heavy crude oil and has begun the process of certifying this claim with seismic studies in 27 blocks conducted with the state-owned oil companies of Brazil, Iran, China and India. These studies are expected to be followed by aggressive exploration and development. The Chavez government contends that this development will allow Venezuela to produce more than five million barrels of oil per day by 2010.

The attractiveness of developing Venezuela's extra-heavy crude oil reserves to foreign oil majors is substantial. Those companies already producing crude oil in the Orinoco belt have perfected the technology of extracting and refining oil that has the consistency of peanut butter. Extraction costs have plummeted in the past five years and refining losses have been whittled down to about ten percent. Improving extraction technology and falling costs have allowed for the sharp increase of extra-heavy crude oil production in Venezuela.

Although Canada's oil sands have been touted as the greatest potential pool of crude oil reserves in the world, development and production of these reserves is exponentially more expensive than development and production of Orinoco belt reserves. To produce one barrel of crude oil from oil sands takes nearly the equivalent amount of energy. In addition, recovering oil sands takes massive amounts of water to convert sand into pumpable slurry. Development of oil sands has yet to be proven commercially viable. The same cannot be said for Venezuela's extra-heavy crude oil, which has already become a viable alternative to lighter, sweeter crudes.

Foreign investment in Venezuela's petroleum sector, targeting primarily the Orinoco belt, is already increasing. According to statistics produced by Banco Central de Venezuela, foreign direct investment in Venezuela increased to $3 billion in 2005 from just over $1 billion in 2004. Foreign direct investment in the petroleum sector is expected to continue increasing during the next several years as oil majors fight to improve their extra-heavy crude oil extraction and refining capabilities. Many countries, including China and India, have considerable untapped extra-heavy crude oil reserves.

Rapidly increasing foreign direct investment and rising crude oil production during the next several years will be an enormous boon for Venezuela's economy. The social mission of P.D.V.S.A. should help to spread the country's new oil wealth among the population. In addition, increasing oil production will also boost growth across all sectors of Venezuela's economy, pushing unemployment down and wages up. This places Venezuela's economic outlook above all other Latin American countries. For this reason, Venezuela could become Latin America's wealthiest country within the next decade.
(snip/)

http://www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_id=572&language_id=1

[Judi Lynn]

133. Another recent article:

~snip~

Chavez has already begun to replace liberal democracy with a participatory democracy that is responsive to people’s needs, not to the interests of capitalist elites. It is this, together with Chavez’s economic program and anti-imperialist foreign policy, that has led the US and the corporate media to portray him as a dictator in the making. However, the people who are directly experiencing this transformation take the opposite view. A 2005 opinion poll by Latinobarometro found that more people in Venezuela consider their country “totally democratic” than any other nation in Latin America.

In order to understand what is meant by participatory democracy, it is necessary to explain that the existing state structures inherited from the ancien regime were riddled with corruption, remote and unresponsive to people’s needs, and in many cases staffed by government opponents who used their positions to undermine service delivery and resist reform. As a consequence, a parallel state structure began to emerge. The hugely popular social misiones, which are based in the barrios and provide everything from free health care to subsidised food markets, are run at arm’s length from government ministries. Critically, they are also subject to direct community involvement and control.

Building on the success of the misiones, this model has been extended to other areas of economic, social and cultural life. Communal Councils composed of 200-400 families (less in rural areas) have been established and will gradually take over key functions of the old state machinery, including managerial responsibility for public policy and projects. Further proposals for deepening popular power are currently being debated and will likely be entrenched in the new constitution, which is to be put to referendum later this year. Under a system of participatory democracy, a reversion to neoliberal policies would be unconstitutional without winning popular consent.

It is conceivable that the United States might respond by putting Venezuela under the same sort of economic sanctions that have been imposed on Cuba since its revolution, but it would prove extremely problematic.

Chavez is not isolated. His policies engage the overwhelming support — and increasingly the involvement — of the people of the country; and the left, in shades from “soft” to “radical”, dominates the politics of Latin America.

Having survived a US-inspired military coup and a business strike, controlling huge oil reserves on which the US economy partly depends, with rising China ready to invest in its diversifying economy, with Russia committed to re-equipping its military forces, and with Cuba — that survivor of 20th century socialism — as an ally and inspiration, Hugo Chavez’s claim that Venezuela’s progress to socialism is “unstoppable” begins to seem more than bombastic demagogy.
(snip/)

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/697/36215

[Judi Lynn]

134. Reposting an article I posted recently: In Venezuela's malls, trade trumps politics

Posted on Wed, Feb. 07, 2007
In Venezuela's malls, trade trumps politics
By Vanessa Bauza and Tal Abbady

South Florida Sun-Sentinel

(MCT)

CARACAS, Venezuela - From the crowds packing the Sambil mall in Caracas, snapping up Tommy Hilfiger jeans, Xbox 360 video game consoles and palm-sized iPods, you might never guess that President Hugo Chavez is waging a crusade against conspicuous consumption. Though Chavez blasts capitalism and the United States, trade with Venezuela is booming, and South Florida is gaining as the main gateway for U.S. shipments to the oil-producing nation.

South Florida exports to Venezuela soared over the past three years, topping $3.5 billion last year and making Venezuela the area's No. 2 trade partner, trailing Brazil, the latest U.S. government data shows.

Fueled by high oil prices, Venezuela is buying telecom equipment, computers and other high-tech goods shipped from South Florida as well as American brand cars assembled in their own country.

Car sales jumped 52 percent last year, with market leader General Motors unable to keep up with demand for Chevrolets, said Pat Morrissey, a GM spokesman based in Weston.
(snip/...)

http://www.montereyherald.com/mld/montereyherald/news/world/16640817.htm

[redqueen]

132. I see your point...

but I remain unconvinced, sorry.

Peace.

[Judi Lynn]

128. That's where reading will help you understand.

There's information right on this thread concerning Richard M. Nixon's destabilization operations against Salvador Allende, which started before the Presidential election, involved creating strikes by the trucking industry to jam the country up, operating a massive propaganda campaign, assassinations, involving the Chilean military, the violent coup, the violent rule of Pinochet.

The measures taken, the extreme, underhanded, unethical operations Nixon used were directed, as he told Richard Helms, who WROTE IT DOWN, preserving it for documentation, to "MAKE THE ECONOMY SCREAM." Take that phrase and put it in a search and find out more about it on your own. You owe it to yourself.

This encompassed YEARS. You simply MUST do your reading. Your inability to understand what has happened makes it almost impossible for people to discuss these matters everyone else here seems to know about. You've GOT to start reading.

If you don't know, you can't discuss it correctly, can you? You have no foundation.

As already discussed many times here, Hugo Chavez's administration, as per the will of the people, is RE-NATIONALIZING industries which were nationalized until the corrupt, bloody idiot Carlos Andrez Perez PRIVATIZED them. Please go read about it. It's as if we are trying to talk to a man who can't hear.

It's not going to get you as far as you think to keep ignoring actual facts.

[gravity]

135. Its the economy stupid

What Chavez is doing goes against basic economic theory. He is making it near impossible to allow foreign investment in his country in his quest against capitalism. This is shooting yourself in the foot.

Venezuela has been corrupt in the past too, but Chavez is just as bad as anyone previously. Just because he hates Goerge Bush, doesn't mean that he is any better. His ideology is a failure too, following the steps of other leaders like Fidel Castro, another champion of the people. Name one leftists leader who has lead a succesful country.

If he want to make his country better off, he needs to invest in its infrastrcture, create stable institutions, and encourage foreign investment. It doesn't have to be corrupt or neglect the needs of the poor.

What Chavez is doing right now though is not going to make the poor any better off in the long term.

[Judi Lynn]

136. If he actually were conducting his office as you claim, he would be a simpleton, wouldn't he?

That's why it will help you immeasurably to start reading a lot more. Then you won't have these blank spots in your understanding of what's going on there.

You've got to do it for yourself, just as we other DU'ers really have to get the lead out and take what little time we have to do our own research.

[Hassan]

139. ..

.

[Judi Lynn]

108. Here's a good article to get you started:

In Venezuela, Oil Sows Emancipation
by Luciano Wexell Severo

The data just released by the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) confirm that the Venezuelan economy grew at a cumulative 10.2 percent between the fourth quarter of 2004 and the fourth quarter of 2005. This is the ninth consecutive increase since the last quarter of 2003. Overall, in 2005, the gross domestic product (GDP) grew at 9.3 percent.

Just like in the previous eight quarters, the strong increase was fundamentally driven by activities not related to oil: civil construction (28.3 percent), domestic trade (19.9 percent), transportation (10.6 percent), and manufacturing (8.5 percent). The oil sector had an increase of only 2.7 percent. According to a report by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), the unemployment rate in December 2005 was 8.9 percent, two percentage points below the rate in the same period of 2004. In absolute terms, this means 266,000 additional jobs. Last year, the inflation rate reached 14.4 percent, but that was below the 19.2 percent rate in 2004. The nominal interest rate went down to 14.8 percent.

These results bear out the expectations of the ministry of finance and belie the persistently pessimistic forecasts made by economic pundits of the opposition, who insist on the idea of a "statistical rebound." The term was invented in June 2004 as an explanation for the growth in the economy: the increase in the GDP was supposed to be an arithmetic illusion due to the depth of the fall in the previous periods. But, by now, this would be a fantastic and unheard-of case of a ball dropping on the floor only to bounce back up and up, without signs of slowing down, in defiance of the law of gravity. In a commentary on the economic expansion, the minister of development and planning, Jorge Giordani, said ironically: "The productive rebound continues . . . social practice and some modest figures have falsified the ominous desires of the political opposition. Their political judgments, disguised as economic technicalities, have been exposed by the new reality."

It has been shown that one of the legacies of the neoliberal period is the disdain for history: a shortsighted strategy that goes only as far as the horizon of the financial system, virtual, outside of time, detached from reality, fictitious. That legacy could explain why the orthodox analysts view the Chávez government as responsible for the poor results in the economy between 1999 and 2003, a period they are trying to label as the "lost five years." Contrary to their view, let us remember: to a large extent, Hugo Chávez won the presidential elections of December 1998 because Venezuela was facing its most catastrophic economic, political, social, institutional, and moral crisis, after 40 years of power sharing between the traditional parties Acción Democrática (the socialdemocrats) and COPEI (the Christian democrats). The country and the people agonized as a result of the rampant corruption, profligacy, and perversity of the Fourth Republic (1958-98).

Venezuela, which hardly benefited from the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, was sinking, at a faster speed since the early 1980s. According to Domingo Maza Zavala, currently a director of the BCV, between 1976 and 1995 alone, the country was awash with nearly 270 billion dollars in oil revenues, equivalent to twenty times the Marshall Plan. Yet, the national foreign debt owed by Venezuela doubled between 1978 and 1982. This illustrates well the dynamics of wastefulness and economic savagery of the so-called "Saudi Venezuela."
(snip/...)

http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/lws160306.html

[Judi Lynn]

99. Helpful Background: Elite Democracy: When Washington Reigned Supreme in Venezuela

Elite Democracy: When Washington Reigned Supreme in Venezuela
The History of Democracy Prevention in Venezuela - Part 3
by Chris Carlson
February 04, 2007

When Hugo Chávez spoke at the United Nations last September, he accused Washington of promoting "elite democracy" in the world. Most people who heard the speech might not have realized what exactly he meant by the term "elite democracy". Few people probably understood just how relevant his words were. But Chávez was speaking from personal experience. Like much of the world, Venezuela has experienced the frustrations of an elite democracy and its devastating results. Chávez understands that in order to confront the crisis of modern democracy in the world, we must understand the tragedy that is elite democracy.

Throughout history, Washington has been dedicated to the exclusion of the masses and the prevention of true democracy. A long history of installing and supporting dictatorships in countries around the world is evidence enough of this. But when dictatorships become a public relations issue, Washington promotes a form of democracy of the elites, modeled after the system in the U.S., to pacify the population. Both dictatorship and elite democracy play the same role of preventing the "risk" of a truly democratic system. Whether through elite democracy, or dictatorship, the participation of the masses must be minimized. Real democracy must never be allowed to function.

Venezuela is a perfect case study of how this Washington strategy functions. In the 20th century, Venezuela transitioned from dictatorship to elite democracy and, finally, to that other dictatorship known as neoliberalism. The transitions were carefully orchestrated by Washington and the Venezuelan elite. The "risk" of true democracy was carefully avoided. Not suprisingly, U.S. corporations got exactly what they wanted from Venezuela; huge amounts of cheap oil and the best customer for U.S. goods in Latin America.

The brutal dictator and Washington ally, Marcos Pérez Jiménez, gave generous oil concessions to U.S. companies in the 1950's, and, perhaps more importantly, further opened the door to U.S. imports.(1) Although this was very detrimental to Venezuelan national production and industry, U.S. companies and the Venezuelan elite class benefited greatly. The resulting trade balance heavily favored the United States, as the oil money that Venezuela received was circulated back to the U.S. in the import of consumer goods. What more could the U.S. ask for? The system was serving them perfectly, just as long as the excluded majority in Venezuela was kept under control by the dictator and his state police; the infamous "National Security" goons.

But throughout the 1950's, the opposition to the dictator was growing. The popular movement that developed to remove the dictator worried the United States. As usual, they were concerned about the the participation of the masses, and the radicalization of the popular movement. Anti-americanism was so intense that Vice President Richard Nixon and his wife were almost killed by a Caracas mob in 1958.(2) Washington needed to assure that the people would not take control, that the popular will of the masses would not be exercised.
(snip/...)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=12034

[leftyladyfrommo]

100. No. We destroyed Iraq. That is what I would call destruction.

Chavez was voted in. People there like the guy.

[Norquist Nemesis]

109. Condi stands firmly behind Chevron! n/t

[tom_paine]

137. So? KindaSleazy is helping to destroy America.

For God's sake, will someone get these Bushevik Vampires off our necks before America is fully and finally destroyed?