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Chavez defeated!

California

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Finally! The people of Venezuela came to their senses and voted that they didn't want a president-for-life, no matter how much he did for the poor. They loved the way he baited Bush, but not so much that they would let him become another Castro.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071203...onstitution;_ylt=AsmefJPR0bCC87XawG9dDCys0NUE

"CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez suffered a stinging defeat Monday in a vote on constitutional changes that would have let him run for re-election indefinitely and solidify his bid to transform this major U.S. oil provider into a socialist state.

"It was the first victory for an emboldened opposition against Chavez after nine years of electoral defeats.
...The changes would have created new forms of communal property, let Chavez handpick local leaders under a redrawn political map, permit civil liberties to be suspended under extended states of emergency and allow Chavez to seek re-election indefinitely.
 

Av8r3400

Gone Flyin'
Anyone want take a bet that this means nothing to Hugo?

(Why are all the TV people pronouncing it YOO-go now???)
 

fogtender

Now a Published Author
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He is just going to redo the paperwork and do it again so the people won't have a clue.... He won't leave without a major bloodbath...
 

California

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I don't expect a bloodbath. Their custom is to expect 'what goes around comes around'. For example losing politicians are usually allowed to go into exile rather than assassinated. It's not unusual for a president to be someone who was imprisoned or exiled by the opposition party during a previous administration. They don't play as rough as we might.

I'm no fan of Chavez. Their back and forth administrations from different parties over the last 50 years was their only curb to corruption. Chavez is a combination of clown, socialist, and overinflated ego, and they are stuck with him for a few more years.

What put him in power was like the circumstances that allowed Hitler's rise - their economy got sharply worse each year for many years and everyone, particularly the poor, was ready to support anyone who promised them better times. He has sharply improved the economy for the poorest classes so he will always have a core of supporters. And everybody there loves the way he continually moons Bush. That's theater to amuse his citizens, not a real challenge like Ahmadinejad's raving.

I think this vote shows the middle class became more frightened than pleased with him.
 

Melensdad

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I don't expect a bloodbath. Their custom is to expect 'what goes around comes around'. For example losing politicians are usually allowed to go into exile rather than assassinated. It's not unusual for a president to be someone who was imprisoned or exiled by the opposition party during a previous administration. They don't play as rough as we might.

I'm no fan of Chavez. Their back and forth administrations from different parties over the last 50 years was their only curb to corruption. Chavez is a combination of clown, socialist, and overinflated ego, and they are stuck with him for a few more years.

What put him in power was like the circumstances that allowed Hitler's rise - their economy got sharply worse each year for many years and everyone, particularly the poor, was ready to support anyone who promised them better times. He has sharply improved the economy for the poorest classes so he will always have a core of supporters. And everybody there loves the way he continually moons Bush. That's theater to amuse his citizens, not a real challenge like Ahmadinejad's raving.

I think this vote shows the middle class became more frightened than pleased with him.
There is a Catholic Church component to his rise in power as well. Some left wing (marxist) priests and bishops in South America developed something called Liberation Theology. It has been pretty resoundly refuted by the Vatican over the past 20 years, but it still exists in the Maryknoll and Jesuit orders, particularly South America. To a lesser extent the Paulist order was also involved. It is a theology that is focused on the poor and the oppression of them, and mixes in political activism. The proponents of Liberation Theology have helped many of the marxist leaning candidates over time. The movement is not dead, but has been minimized. It is now still common to find it in some sectors of the US, particularly higher education/seminaries of the Jesuit order.
 

Snowcat Operations

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He wont leave without a blood bath: You got that right!

This means nothing to him: Absolutely correct! Its a bump in the road to him. If he doesnt get his way with a vote he will do it with the threat of a bullet!.
 

Snowcat Operations

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He will start killing his enemies. He will at first do it quietly then when the people start to stand up and protest the killings he will have his excuse to start mowing them down. Not to long after that he will be assasinated. I just hope they off him before he murders thouands.
 

California

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I doubt it. This guy isn't Saddam. He just thinks he's Simon Bolivar reincarnated except he isn't as bright as Bolivar.

What's your basis for expecting him to mow down his citizens?
 

Snowcat Operations

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He already has killed several who have protested. Also, absolute power courrupts absolutely! Once his rain of power is threatend he will pull out all the stops to keep his power. No need to argue about it. Not that we are. Lets just watch and see what happens. You say he's no Suddam? Just wait.
 

Bobcat

Je Suis Charlie Hebdo
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Oops, started reading this from the last post and thought you were talking about Bush. My bad. :yum:
 

Melensdad

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Oops, started reading this from the last post and thought you were talking about Bush. My bad. :yum:
Nope, Chavez has already unleashed his goon squads:
Gunmen fire on Venezuelan protesters
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/11/07/venezuela.protest.violence.ap/index.html
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Gunmen opened fire on students returning from a march Wednesday in which 80,000 people denounced President Hugo Chavez's attempts to expand his power. At least eight people were injured, including one by gunfire, officials said.

A supporter of Venezuela President Hugo Chavez points a pistol at two opponents of Chavez Wednesday.

Photographers for The Associated Press saw at least four gunmen -- their faces covered by ski masks or T-shirts -- firing handguns at the anti-Chavez crowd. Terrified students ran through the campus as ambulances arrived.

Antonio Rivero, director of Venezuela's Civil Defense agency, told local Union Radio that at least eight people were injured, including one by gunfire, and that no one had been killed. Earlier, Rivero said he had been informed that one person had died in the violence.
 

Bobcat

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Went looking for more info thinking it was a current event, now I see that incident was last month.
 

Melensdad

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Went looking for more info thinking it was a current event, now I see that incident was last month.
Yes, but related to the event that started this thread. The student protest (from just a little more than 3 weeks ago) were protesting Chavez's attempt to eliminate the term limits that were defeated within the last 24 hours. Since the protests were opposing Chavez's bid, which was ultimately defeated yesterday, it seemed logical to tie the two events together and show proof that he is already working with a heavy hand. I'm not sure that he will risk too many public killings, but I suspect that he may find ways to have people vanish.
 

fogtender

Now a Published Author
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He now has four years to kill off his enemies one at a time. They will be a lot of "Accidents" to those that went against him in this vote. If they are lucky, someone will "Pop" him first, but I doubt it until he has cut a fairly wide path....:shitHitFan:
 

XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

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Update:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/74230

Attempted Theft

Hugo Chávez tried to overturn the results of Venezuela's recent vote but was rebuffed by the military.

By Jorge Castañeda | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Dec 7, 2007 | Updated: 4:23 p.m. ET Dec 7, 2007



Most of Latin America's leaders breathed a sigh of relief earlier this week, after Venezuelan voters rejected President Hugo Chávez's constitutional amendment referendum. In private they were undoubtedly relieved that Chávez lost, and in public they expressed delight that he accepted defeat and did not steal the election. But by midweek enough information had emerged to conclude that Chávez did, in fact, try to overturn the results. As reported in El Nacional, and confirmed to me by an intelligence source, the Venezuelan military high command virtually threatened him with a coup d'état if he insisted on doing so. Finally, after a late-night phone call from Raúl Isaías Baduel, a budding opposition leader and former Chávez comrade in arms, the president conceded—but with one condition: he demanded his margin of defeat be reduced to a bare minimum in official tallies, so he could save face and appear as a magnanimous democrat in the eyes of the world. So after this purportedly narrow loss Chávez did not even request a recount, and nearly every Latin American colleague of Chávez's congratulated him for his "democratic" behavior. Why did these leaders not speak out? Surely they knew of Chávez's machinations, and with the exception of Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, Ecuador's Rafael Correa, Bolivia's Evo Morales and, to a large extent, the Argentine Kirchner duo, none of the region's heads of state sympathizes with the Venezuelan revolutionary.
The reason for the silence: these leaders know Chávez can count on a fifth column in nearly every country in the region. Even while he denounces the policies of his opponents and throws vitriol in every direction, he also uses his nation's resources to befriend their constituencies. These acolytes are devoted to his ideals and, more important, to his funding. They are boisterous, or powerful, or both, and they can make life miserable for governments ranging from the emblematic left (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil) to the liberal right (Mexico's Felipe Calderón or Colombia's Alvaro Uribe).
Over the years Chávez has picked fights, from north to south, with virtually every leader in the region. He called Calderón caballerito, "tin soldier," early this year and questioned his electoral victory last year. He said this month he would have no relationship with Colombia while Uribe, "the liar," was president. He accused the Brazilian senate of being a "Bush lapdog" and heaped scorn on anything Spanish under the sun, including the king, the government, the opposition and the banks. He warned two weeks ago that if the right-of-center opposition won next spring's election in Spain he would nationalize every Spanish corporation in Venezuela. He has meddled incessantly in his neighbors' affairs. With varying degrees of proof, stridency and significance, he is said to have interfered in the domestic politics of Mexico in last year's election, in El Salvador by funding the left-wing FMLN, and in Nicaragua by financing public works for Managua's Sandinista mayor, which led to Ortega's victory in the presidential vote. In Peru he openly backed radical nationalist Ollanta Humala in 2006. In Argentina he funded the Kirchners and the so-called piqueteros, or street fighters. He has meddled as well in Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia and, of course, Colombia, where his intervention led to a breakdown in the international mediation efforts to free a number of hostages.

His changing relationship with Chile illustrates just how shrewd Chávez can be. Michelle Bachelet once showed a mystifying affection for Chávez, given his constant tirades against her country's legislative branch, junior government coalition partners and foreign ministry. But relations cooled after he disrupted the annual Ibero-American Summit in Santiago a month ago by picking a fight with the Spanish heads of state and government. Then, after the summit, he attended a "hard left" rally at a "hard left" Chilean university known as ARCIS. Upon learning the school had lost its government funding, he whipped out his checkbook and donated a huge sum of money to the school. In view of the $250 million to $300 million Venezuela receives per day from nearly $90-a-barrel oil prices, this was just small change. But while Bachelet was not entirely pleased with this turn of events, she preferred to keep her peace, leaving it to the Spaniards to finally say enough was enough. At the summit King Juan Carlos asked Chávez to "shut up." Such an outburst was long in coming, but it was not going to spring from fellow Latin Americans.
This meddling is the reason nobody pushes back, and it is hardly surprising that regional leaders applauded his "democratic" performance last week. Chávez is willing to disregard any accepted norm of international conduct and diplomatic etiquette. But for a variety of reasons his colleagues are not. Is this a sustainable stance for Latin democracy? Probably not, in the long term. This time the region was spared the lacerating choice of condemning Chávez for electoral fraud and provoking his petro-finance outbursts and meddling, or countenancing a stolen election by looking the other way. But it may be the last time Latin America's leaders are afforded such an easy exit.


Jorge Castañeda is Mexico’s former foreign minister and Global Distinguished Professor at New York University.
 

XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Master of Distraction
Staff member
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Gotta love thes "socialists", why do they always seem like dictatorships to me?

http://uk.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUKN1326790820071214

Vuitton-clad Venezuela minister spouts socialism

Fri Dec 14, 2007 1:02am GMT

CARACAS (Reuters) - A video of a Gucci- and Louis Vuitton-clad politician attacking capitalism then struggling to explain how his luxurious clothes square with his socialist beliefs has become an instant YouTube hit in Venezuela.
Venezuelan Interior Minister Pedro Carreno was momentarily at a loss for words when a journalist interrupted his speech and asked if it was not contradictory to criticize capitalism while wearing Gucci shoes and a tie made by Parisian luxury goods maker Louis Vuitton.
"I don't, uh ... I ... of course," stammered Carreno on Tuesday before regaining his composure. "It's not contradictory because I would like Venezuela to produce all this so I could buy stuff produced here instead of 95 percent of what we consume being imported."
The video clip (www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDsdXkY4UlE) had been viewed more than 15,000 times on Thursday, a day after it was posted on the YouTube Web site.
Despite the best efforts of left-wing President Hugo Chavez to instil austere socialist values in its people, the oil-rich South American nation remains attached to consumerism.
Riding a boom in oil prices, middle-class and wealthy Venezuelans are on a spending spree, guzzling fine whiskies and snapping up luxury cars. Poorer Venezuelans also have benefited, with subsidies driving a spike in demand for basic products.
(Reporting by Enrique Andres Pretel, writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Xavier Briand)
 

California

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Update:http://www.newsweek.com/id/74230
Hugo Chávez tried to overturn the results of Venezuela's recent vote but was rebuffed by the military. ...
Yeah. That was a close one.

Venezeholian politics runs on a different model than here. Our constitution established a balance of power - Executive, Legislative, Judicial, so two factors could curb the the power of the third if it got out of control.

Latin America is different. In several countries the military is the only stable ongoing factor and everything else can be in continuous chaotic change while the rich steal everything and the people suffer. Legislatures are dismissed by a president under emergency powers, presidents dismissed by coups or corruption charges, whatever.

Every leader comes to power promising to end the chaos, nearly all soon face charges of massive stealing. Chavez made the promises but also started pouring Venezuela's massive oil income back into buying votes with public works for the poor. He truly had popular support until he overdid it with that president-for-life proposal.

I don't doubt the military threatened to roll Chavez if he declared victory and hid the ballots.

What this shows is that the people of Venezuela have more power to elect their leaders than say Iran or Saddam-era Iraq. Chavez has to at least pretend to respect the popular vote, and in this case was forced to, by this threat from the military. I think Venezuela has turned a corner and Chavez will spread the oil money around more broadly to buy support from the middle and upper classes who had opposed him. I don't think he will back down much from his socialist agenda however, or his mooning Bush for the amusement of his supporters.

So relative to US interests, little has changed. The outcome could have been significantly against our interests.

I wonder how many of those nameless military leaders were educated in the US under State Department scholarships?
 

California

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Not always bad. Just a near-invisible element of US influence. This often works to our benefit like in this instance.

These scholarships are an example of how diplomacy in a subtle form can have as much influence as a raw threat to send in the Marines after things have gone all to hell.

The USSR, and now the Chinese, expanded their influence this way at far less cost than any direct invasion would have cost. And I think this has served US interests in Latin America for several generations now.
 

XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Master of Distraction
Staff member
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Yup, that Chavez isn't such a bad guy. We obviously are missing how his great socialist policies are benefiting the people of Venezuala:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2251440,00.html

Revealed: Chávez role in cocaine trail to Europe

The guerrilla group Farc has long been suspected of running the Colombian cocaine industry. But how does it move the drug so readily out of the country? In a special investigation, John Carlin in Venezuela reports on the remarkable collusion between Colombia's rebels and its neighbour's armed forces

[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]Sunday February 3, 2008[/FONT]
[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif]The Observer[/FONT]


Some fighters desert from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) because they feel betrayed by the leadership, demoralised by a sense that the socialist ideals that first informed the guerrilla group have been replaced by the savage capitalism of drug trafficking. Others leave to be with their families. Still others leave because they begin to think that, if they do not, they will die. Such is the case of Rafael, who deserted last September after 18 months operating in a Farc base inside Venezuela, with which Colombia shares a long border.

The logic of Rafael's decision seems, at first, perverse. He is back in Colombia today where, as a guerrilla deserter, he will live for the rest of his days under permanent threat of assassination by his former comrades. Venezuela, on the other hand, ought to have been a safe place to be a Farc guerrilla. President Hugo Chávez has publicly given Farc his political support and the Colombian army seems unlikely to succumb to the temptation to cross the border in violation of international law.

All this is true,' says Rafael. 'The Colombian army doesn't cross the border and the guerrillas have a non-aggression pact with the Venezuelan military. The Venezuelan government lets Farc operate freely because they share the same left-wing, Bolivarian ideals, and because Farc bribes their people.'

Then what did he run away from? 'From a greater risk than the one I run now: from the daily battles with other guerrilla groups to see who controls the cocaine-trafficking routes. There is a lot of money at stake in control of the border where the drugs come in from Colombia. The safest route to transport cocaine to Europe is via Venezuela.'

Rafael is one of 2,400 guerrillas who deserted Farc last year. He is one of four I spoke to, all of whom had grown despondent about a purportedly left-wing revolutionary movement whose power and influence rests less on its political legitimacy and more on the benefits of having become the world's biggest kidnapping organisation and the world's leading traffickers in cocaine.

Farc has come a long way from its leftist revolutionary roots and is now commonly referred to in Colombia and elsewhere as 'narco-guerrillas'. Pushed out to the border areas, it has been rendered increasingly irrelevant politically and militarily due to the combined efforts of Colombia's centre-right President, Alvaro Uribe, and his principal backers, the United States, whose Plan Colombia, devised under the presidency of Bill Clinton, has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the Colombian military and police. A large part of Plan Colombia is designed to eradicate the vast coca plantations cultivated and maintained by Farc and other Colombian groups.

However, the impact on Farc has been ambiguous: its chances of launching a left-wing insurrection in the manner of Nicaragua's Sandinistas in 1979 are nil, but then they probably always were; yet it looks capable of surviving indefinitely as an armed force as a result of the income from its kidnapping, extortion and cocaine interests.

Helping it to survive, and prosper, is its friend and neighbour Hugo Chávez. The Venezuelan President sought to extract some international credit from the role he played as mediator in the release last month in Venezuelan territory of two kidnapped women, friends of Ingrid Betancourt, a French citizen and former Colombian presidential candidate held by Farc for six years. But Chávez has not denounced Farc for holding Betancourt and 43 other 'political' hostages.

I spoke at length to Rafael (not his real name) and three other Farc deserters about the links between the guerrilla group and Chávez's Venezuela, in particular their co-operation in the drug business. All four have handed themselves in to the Colombian government in recent months under an official programme to help former guerrillas adapt back to civilian life.

I also spoke to high-level security, intelligence and diplomatic sources from five countries, some of them face to face in Colombia and London, some of them by phone. All of them insisted on speaking off the record, either for political or safety reasons, both of which converge in Farc, the oldest functioning guerrilla organisation in the world and one that is richer, more numerous and better armed than any other single Colombian drug cartel and is classified as 'terrorist' by the European Union and the US.

All the sources I reached agreed that powerful elements within the Venezuelan state apparatus have forged a strong working relationship with Farc. They told me that Farc and Venezuelan state officials operated actively together on the ground, where military and drug-trafficking activities coincide. But the relationship becomes more passive, they said, less actively involved, the higher up the Venezuelan government you go. No source I spoke to accused Chávez himself of having a direct role in Colombia's giant drug-trafficking business. Yet the same people I interviewed struggled to believe that Chávez was not aware of the collusion between his armed forces and the leadership of Farc, as they also found it difficult to imagine that he has no knowledge of the degree to which Farc is involved in the cocaine trade.

I made various attempts to extract an official response to these allegations from the Venezuelan government. In the end Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro made a public pronouncement in Uruguay in which he said, without addressing the substance of the allegations, that they were part of a 'racist' and 'colonialist' campaign against Venezuela by the centre-left Spanish newspaper El País, where I originally wrote about Farc and the Venezuelan connection.

What no one disputes, however, is that Chávez is a political ally of Farc (last month he called on the EU and US to stop labelling its members 'terrorists') or that for many years Farc has used Venezuelan territory as a refuge. A less uncontroversial claim, made by all the sources to whom I spoke (the four disaffected guerrillas included), is that if it were not for cocaine, the fuel that feeds the Colombian war, Farc would long ago have disbanded.

The varied testimonies I have heard reveal that the co-operation between Venezuela and the guerrillas in transporting cocaine by land, air and sea is both extensive and systematic. Venezuela is also supplying arms to the guerrillas, offering them the protection of their armed forces in the field, and providing them with legal immunity de facto as they go about their giant illegal business.

Thirty per cent of the 600 tons of cocaine smuggled from Colombia each year goes through Venezuela. Most of that 30 per cent ends up in Europe, with Spain and Portugal being the principal ports of entry. The drug's value on European streets is some £7.5bn a year.

The infrastructure that Venezuela provides for the cocaine business has expanded dramatically over the past five years of Chávez's presidency, according to intelligence sources. Chávez's decision to expel the US Drug Enforcement Administration from his country in 2005 was celebrated both by Farc and drug lords in the conventional cartels with whom they sometimes work. According to Luis Hernando Gómez Bustamante, a Colombian kingpin caught by the police last February, 'Venezuela is the temple of drug trafficking.'

A European diplomat with many years of experience in Latin America echoed this view. 'The so-called anti-imperialist, socialist and Bolivarian nation that Chávez says he wants to create is en route to becoming a narco-state in the same way that Farc members have turned themselves into narco-guerrillas. Perhaps Chávez does not realise it but, unchecked, this phenomenon will corrode Venezuela like a cancer.'

The deserters I interviewed said that not only did the Venezuelan authorities provide armed protection to at least four permanent guerrilla camps inside their country, they turned a blind eye to bomb-making factories and bomber training programmes going on inside Farc camps. Rafael - tall and lithe, with the sculptured facial features of the classic Latin American 'guerrillero' - said he was trained in Venezuela to participate in a series of bomb attacks in Bogotá, Colombia's capital.
Co-operation between the Colombian guerrillas and the Venezuelan government extended, Rafael said, to the sale of arms by Chávez's military to Farc; to the supply of Venezuelan ID cards to regular guerrilla fighters and of Venezuelan passports to the guerrilla leaders so they were able to travel to Cuba and Europe; and also to a reciprocal understanding whereby Farc gave military training to the Bolivarian Forces of Liberation, a peculiar paramilitary group created by the Chávez government purportedly for the purpose of defending the motherland in case of American invasion.

Chávez's contacts with Farc are conducted via one of the members of the organisation's leadership, Iván Márquez, who also has a farm in Venezuela and who communicates with the President via senior officials of the Venezuelan intelligence service. As a Farc deserter who had filled a senior position in the propaganda department said: 'Farc shares three basic Bolivarian principles with Chávez: Latin American unity; the anti-imperialist struggle; and national sovereignty. These ideological positions lead them to converge on the tactical terrain.'

The tactical benefits of this Bolivarian (after the 19th-century Latin American liberator, Simón Bolívar) solidarity reach their maximum expression in the multinational cocaine industry. Different methods exist to transport the drug from Colombia to Europe, but what they all have in common is the participation, by omission or commission, of the Venezuelan authorities.
The most direct route is the aerial one. Small planes take off from remote jungle strips in Colombia and land in Venezuelan airfields. Then there are two options, according to intelligence sources. Either the same light planes continue on to Haiti or the Dominican Republic (the US government says that since 2006 its radar network has detected an increase from three to 15 in the number of 'suspicious flights' a week out of Venezuela); or the cocaine is loaded on to large planes that fly directly to countries in West Africa such as Guinea-Bissau or Ghana, from where it continues by sea to Portugal or the north-western Spanish province of Galicia, the entry points to the EU Schengen zone.

A less cumbersome traditional method for getting the drugs to Europe in small quantities is via passengers on international commercial flights - 'mules', as they call them in Colombia. One of the guerrilla deserters I spoke to, Marcelo, said he had taken part in 'eight or nine' missions of this type over 12 months. 'Operating inside Venezuela is the easiest thing in the world,' he said. 'Farc guerrillas are in there completely and the National Guard, the army and other Venezuelans in official positions offer them their services, in exchange for money. There are never shoot-outs between Farc and the guardia or army.'
Rafael said he took part in operations on a bigger scale, their final objective being to transport the cocaine by sea from Venezuelan ports on the Caribbean Sea. His rank in Farc was higher than Marcelo's and he had access to more confidential information. 'You receive the merchandise on the border, brought in by lorry,' he said. 'When the vehicle arrives the National Guard is waiting, already alerted to the fact that it was on its way. They have already been paid a bribe up front, so that the lorry can cross into Venezuela without problems.

'Sometimes they provide us with an escort for the next phase, which involves me and other comrades getting on to the lorry, or into a car that will drive along with it. We then make the 16-hour trip to Puerto Cabello, which is on the coast, west of Caracas. There the lorry is driven into a big warehouse controlled jointly by Venezuelan locals and by Farc, which is in charge of security. Members of the Venezuelan navy take care of customs matters and the safe departure of the vessels. They are alive to all that is going on and they facilitate everything Farc does.'

Rafael described a similar routine with drug operations involving the port of Maracaibo which, according to police sources, is 'a kind of paradise' for drug traffickers. Among whom - until last week when he was gunned down by a rival cartel in a Venezuelan town near the Colombian border - was one of the 'capos' most wanted internationally, a Colombian called Wilber Varela, but better known as 'Jabón', which means 'soap'. 'Varela and others like him set themselves up in stunning homes and buy bankrupt businesses and large tracts of land, converting themselves almost overnight into personages of great value to the local economy,' a police source said. 'Venezuela offers a perfect life insurance scheme for these criminals.'

This 'tactical' convergence between the Venezuelan armed forces and Farc extends to the military terrain. To the point that, according to one especially high-placed intelligence source I spoke to, the National Guard has control posts placed around the guerrilla camps. What for? 'To give them protection, which tells us that knowledge of the tight links between the soldiers on the ground and Farc reaches up to the highest decision-making levels of the Venezuelan military.'

Rafael told how he had travelled once by car with Captain Pedro Mendoza of the National Guard to a military base outside Caracas called Fuerte Tiuna. He entered with the captain, who handed him eight rifles. They then returned to the border with the rifles in the boot of the car.

Rafael said that members of the National Guard also supplied Farc with hand grenades, grenade-launchers and explosive material for bombs made out of a petrol-based substance called C-4.

An intelligence source confirmed that these small movements of arms occurred on a large scale. 'What we see is the drugs going from Colombia to Venezuela and the arms from Venezuela to Colombia. The arms move in a small but constant flow: 5,000 bullets, six rifles. It's very hard to detect because there are lots of small networks, very well co-ordinated, all of them by specialists in Farc.'

Rafael worked directly with these specialists, both in the arms and the drugs business, until he decided the time had come to change his life. 'In June and July I had received courses in making bombs alongside elements of Chávez's militias, the FBL. We learnt, there in a camp in Venezuela, how to put together different types of landmines and how to make bombs. They also taught us how to detonate bombs in a controlled fashion using mobile phones.'

They were training him, he said, for a mission in Bogotá. 'They gave us photos of our targets. We were going to work alongside two Farc groups based in the capital. The plan was to set off bombs, but as the date dawned I began to reflect that I could not continue this way. First, because of the danger from the military engagements we had with the ELN [another formerly left-wing guerrilla group] on the border over control of the drug routes and, second, because it now seemed to me there was a very real risk of getting caught and I believed I had already spent enough years in jail for the Farc cause. It was also highly possible that the security forces in Bogotá would kill me. That was why at the end of August I ran away and in September I handed myself in.'

A European diplomat who is well informed on the drug-trafficking business generally, and who is familiar with Rafael's allegations, made a comparison between the activities of Farc in Venezuela and hypothetically similar activities involving Eta in Spain.

'Imagine if Eta had a bomb-making school in Portugal inside camps protected by the Portuguese police, and that they planned to set off these bombs in Madrid; imagine that the Portuguese authorities furnished Eta with weapons in exchange for money obtained from the sales of drugs, in which the Portuguese authorities were also involved up to their necks: it would be a scandal of enormous proportions. Well, that, on a very big scale, is what the Venezuelan government is allowing to happen right now.'

'The truth,' one senior police source said, 'is that if Venezuela were to make a minimal effort to collaborate with the international community the difference it would make would be huge. We could easily capture two tons of cocaine a month more if they were just to turn up their police work one notch. They don't do it because the place is so corrupt but also, and this is the core reason, because of this "anti-imperialist" stand they take. "If this screws the imperialists," they think, "then how can we possibly help them?" The key to it all is a question of political will. And they don't have any.'

A similar logic applies, according to the highest-placed intelligence source I interviewed, regarding Farc's other speciality, kidnappings. 'If Hugo Chávez wanted it, he could force Farc to free Ingrid Betancourt tomorrow morning. He tells Farc: "You hand her over or it's game over in Venezuela for you." The dependence of Farc on the Venezuelans is so enormous that they could not afford to say no.'

A nation at war

· Colombia, the centre of the world's cocaine trade, has endured civil war for decades between left-wing rebels with roots in the peasant majority and right-wing paramilitaries with links to Spanish colonial landowners.
· Manuel 'Sureshot' Marulanda named his guerrilla band the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in 1966.
· Farc is thought to have about 800 hostages. The most high-profile is Ingrid Betancourt, 45, held since 2002.
· Every Farc member takes a vow to fight for 'social justice' in Colombia.
· About a third of Farc guerrillas are thought to be women. · Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez is pushing for 'Bolivarian socialism', while Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is a free-market conservative.
 

California

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Good find! That explains a lot, it clarifies the motivation behind what we see on the surface.

It seems that 'Boliviarian Socialism' = a cocaine-fueled regional power grab by Chavez. I wonder if he realizes this parallels the role of heroin in funding, but corrupting, Afghanistan's economy.

I saw a related note in the paper over the weekend. I don't have an online cite but it said Chavez starts his day chewing cocoa leaves, ie ingesting cocaine, and chews some more for a pick-me-up throughout the day.

This custom is traditional for the indigenous people living in harsh conditions high in the Andes. Dosing a politician like that probably explains Chavez's constant raving. No wonder he sounds looney and impulsive - he's high all the time!
 

California

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Another piece in the puzzle.

FBI probes purchases of US aircraft by drug lords
MIAMI (Reuters) - A Venezuelan man has been charged with laundering drug profits to buy U.S. aircraft to smuggle cocaine
...
The Conquest II is the aircraft of choice among traffickers transporting cocaine from Venezuela for the long haul to Africa, the indictment says. Africa has become an increasingly important staging point for drug shipments to Europe, international police organizations say.
Ok, that ties together with the story above saying $10billion of Colombian cocaine goes to Europe annually via Venezuela and Africa.

This is the kind of analysis my favorite Pol Sci prof in college encouraged us to pursue. With enough research into public sources, you can get a picture of what's going on. Of course you need a variety of unrelated sources to distingush bogus info from real. I suspect that prof was ex-CIA and had been trained professionally to do this sort of research.

Now if you are suspicious like me - is this real, impartial information, or is it the beginning of a campaign to discredit Chavez, preparing to roll him. I don't doubt the drug connection is real, but I think the motive for publicizing this needs to be examined also.
 

XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Master of Distraction
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Now if you are suspicious like me - is this real, impartial information, or is it the beginning of a campaign to discredit Chavez, preparing to roll him. I don't doubt the drug connection is real, but I think the motive for publicizing this needs to be examined also.

A government's got to do what a government's got to do. Now who threw the first stone in this fight? Seems to me that Hugo picked the fight. :whistle:
 

California

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Now who threw the first stone in this fight? Seems to me that Hugo picked the fight.
Not really. There is a parallel here to the anti-US sentiment that motivated Bin Laden.

US oil companies have had a huge influence on Venezuelan government (and economy and therefor culture) for nearly a century now. There was resentment in Venezuela when the dictators 70 years ago gave concession contracts to Standard Oil, probably in exchange for personal bribes. The population has always feared that their leaders sold out to the 'imperialists'.

More recently, maybe over 30 years, Ecuador has had the same experience. Texaco and Shell started extraction with reasonable contracts then I've been told by friends there that subsequent governments renegotiated the royalties downward for no visible reason. Their economy crashed about 1999, so bad that they abandoned their worthless currency and converted to dollars as the official money. I was told the currency became worthless because the dictator who went into exile cleaned out the national treasury's currency reserve, the support behind the value of their currency. In any case some Ecuadorians will listen to anyone who says he can restore their national pride, ie Chavez.

Chavez is exploiting this mistrust in the region by promising the Andes nations of South America that he can assure them their deserved powerful role among nations. And as the leader of a major OPEC producer he really is in a position to influence the US economy by selling or withholding fuel, and directly influencing OPEC cartel pricing.

I think it's just his drug-fried paranoia but I think he fears being invaded like Saddam was, to take over his oilfields and secure US interest by 'stabilizing' (dictating) the price for oil sold to the US.

The problem facing the US: how do you reason with a lunatic?
 

XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Master of Distraction
Staff member
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Good points Cali, but if he was smart he would have done it quietly. His rhetoric and loose mouth will be the end of him.

I'm not sure the "masses" of Venezuala are any better off with him in charge than with a corrupt US-friendly government. Unfortunately, corruption is king in most third world governments.
 

BigAl

Gone But Not Forgotten
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I am going to really step in it with this statement .:shitHitFan: "I think we ( The US) try to influence the rest of the world countries and there people way too much." Our U.S. values and beliefs are not necessary the best way .

Infighting within a country and its people has been going on since mankind formed borders and it will continue after we are dead and gone .

WE keep getting invovled in politics of other countries and it keeps biting us in the Ass . Panama and Noriega , Bin Laden and Afghanastan , and a half dozen other mid east countries where we supported a certain power figure only to have him turn against to US are examples I have personally seen in my lifetime . More will follow . These countries are not our U.S. Territorys . WE are always trying to buy friendship by throwing money at them !!!!! Tell me how that makes them a true friendly nation ?

Sure I am against innocent people being hurt ,but it you believe enough in your cause to stand up and fight ,well then .... the game rules have been established .The U.S. Civil War proves that .

What happens when America runs out of money to support these countries for there so called friendship ??? I guarantee they will turn around, blame us ,and accuse us of meddling in there internal affairs .

And Bingo ! We just added another one to the "U.S. HATE LIST"

I think this "ties in" to the originial post and apolize if it does not.:tiphat:
 
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