Replies to post #28654 on Simply Politics and News (GOV)

[StephanieVanbryce]

CIA and FBI Plan to Assassinate Hugo Chávez


by Kurt Nimmo

November 20, 2005
Alternative Press Review

This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation. “How do we know that the CIA was behind the coup that overthrew Hugo Chávez?” asked historian William Blum in 2002. “Same way we know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. That’s what it’s always done and there’s no reason to think that tomorrow morning will be any different.”

Now we have a bit more evidence the CIA and the FBI connived with reactionary elements to not only briefly overthrow Chávez, abolish the constitution and the National Assembly, but later assassinate the Venezuelan State Prosecutor, Danilo Anderson. He was killed by a car bomb in Caracas on November 18, 2004, while investigating those who were behind the coup. Giovani Jose Vasquez De Armas, a member of Colombia’s right wing paramilitary group called the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, claims he was in charge of logistics for the plot to kill Danilo Anderson. Vasquez De Armas told the Attorney General’s office that those planning the killing, “all discussed the plan with the help of the FBI and CIA.”

And the sun will rise tomorrow.


“According to the Attorney General, Vasquez De Armas said that during a meeting in Darien, Panama, on September 4 and 6, 2003, an FBI Officer called ‘Pesquera’ and a CIA agent called ‘Morrinson,’ attended a meeting along with two of the plot’s alleged organizers, Patricia Poleo and Salvador Romani, as well as two of those who actually did the killing, Rolando and Otoniel Guevera,” writes Alessandro Parma. “An official from the Attorney General’s office, speaking on behalf of Vasquez De Armas, said that in Panama the FBI and the plotting Venezuelans agreed, ‘to take out Chavez and the Government.’ He said, ‘the meeting’s final objective was to kill President Chavez and the Attorney General.’”

None of this is new or particularly revelatory. Steve Kangas writes:
"CIA operations follow the same recurring script. First, American business interests abroad are threatened by a popular or democratically elected leader. The people support their leader because he intends to conduct land reform, strengthen unions, redistribute wealth, nationalize foreign-owned industry, and regulate business to protect workers, consumers and the environment. So, on behalf of American business, and often with their help, the CIA mobilizes the opposition. First it identifies right-wing groups within the country (usually the military), and offers them a deal: “We’ll put you in power if you maintain a favorable business climate for us.” The Agency then hires, trains and works with them to overthrow the existing government (usually a democracy). It uses every trick in the book: propaganda, stuffed ballot boxes, purchased elections, extortion, blackmail, sexual intrigue, false stories about opponents in the local media, infiltration and disruption of opposing political parties, kidnapping, beating, torture, intimidation, economic sabotage, death squads and even assassination. These efforts culminate in a military coup, which installs a right-wing dictator. The CIA trains the dictator’s security apparatus to crack down on the traditional enemies of big business, using interrogation, torture and murder. The victims are said to be “communists,” but almost always they are just peasants, liberals, moderates, labor union leaders, political opponents and advocates of free speech and democracy. Widespread human rights abuses follow."
Examples include the coup to overthrow the democratically elected leader Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran, the ouster of democratically elected Jacob Arbenz in Guatemala, one coup per year (between 1957-1973) in Laos, the installation of the murderous “Papa Doc” Duvalier in Haiti, the assassination of Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, the overthrow of Jose Velasco in Ecuador, the assassination of the democratically elected Patrice Lumumba in the Congo (later Zaire), the overthrow of the democratically elected Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic, the overthrow of the democratically elected government of Joao Goulart in Brazil, the overthrow of the democratically elected Sukarno government in Indonesia, a military coup in Greece designed to install the “reign of the colonels” (when the Greek ambassador complained about CIA plans for Cypress, Johnson told him: “F— your parliament and your constitution”), the overthrow of the popular Prince Sahounek in Cambodia, the overthrow of Juan Torres in Bolivia, the overthrow and assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile, the assassination of archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador, and dozens of other incidents rarely if ever taught in American school history lessons.

As John Perkins (author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man), as a former respected member of the international banking community and National Security Agency economist, told Amy Goodman: “Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring—to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government…. This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men.” Perkins’ job was “deal-making”:
It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan—let’s say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador—and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure—a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, “Look, you’re not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil.” And today we’re going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It’s an empire. There’s no two ways about it. It’s a huge empire. It’s been extremely successful.
Most of the money for these loans, according to Perkins, is provided by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the two premier neolib loan sharking operations (it is important to note that the Straussian neocon, Paul Wolfowitz, is now president of the World Bank, thus demonstrating how closely related the neocons and traditional neolibs are).


If the loan sharks are unable to steal natural resources (oil, minerals, rainforests, water) as a condition of repaying this immense debt, “the next step is what we call the jackals.”
Jackals are CIA-sanctioned people that come in and try to foment a coup or revolution. If that doesn’t work, they perform assassinations—or try to. In the case of Iraq, they weren’t able to get through to Saddam Hussein… His bodyguards were too good. He had doubles. They couldn’t get through to him. So the third line of defense, if the economic hit men and the jackals fail, the next line of defense is our young men and women, who are sent in to die and kill, which is what we’ve obviously done in Iraq.
Hugo Chávez is now between the assassination point of this neolib plan and invasion, when “our young men and women” will be “sent in to die and kill” Venezuelan peasants the same way they are now killing poor Iraqis. Of course, it remains to be seen if Bush can actually invade Venezuela—the neocon roster is teeming with targets, from Syria to Iran—and so we can expect the Bushcons and their jackals to continue efforts to assassinate Chávez, as Giovani Jose Vasquez De Armas reveals the CIA and the FBI are attempting to do, with little success. One notable failure by the jackals is Fidel Castro in Cuba, who experienced numerous assassination attempts and CIA counterinsurgency specialist Edward Lansdale’s Operation Mongoose (consisting of sabotage and political warfare), also known as the ‘’Cuba Project.’‘


As Blum notes, we know all of this is happening, same as we know the sun will come up tomorrow.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NIM20051120&articleId=1296

Kurt Nimmo is a photographer, multimedia artist and writer. You can visit his blog “Another Day in the Empire” at www.kurtnimmo.com/blog.

[StephanieVanbryce]

U.S. Keeps a Wary Eye on the Next Bolivian President
By JOEL BRINKLEY

WASHINGTON, Dec. 20 - On the campaign stump, Evo Morales liked to say that if he was elected president of Bolivia, he would become America's nightmare. After his election on Sunday, a State Department official said essentially the same thing, calling Mr. Morales "potentially our worst nightmare."

The Bush administration says it fears that Mr. Morales will follow through on his promise to join Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan president, as an anti-American, leftist leader, while also carrying out his promise to reduce restrictions on his nation's production of coca leaf, the primary ingredient of cocaine, much of which finds its way to the United States.

Mr. Morales made an early strike on Tuesday when he told Al Jazeera television in an interview that President Bush was "a terrorist" and that American military intervention in Iraq was "state terrorism."

The administration's public stance is to wait and see what policies Mr. Morales puts into place.

At the State Department briefing on Tuesday morning, Sean McCormack, the spokesman, said the department had congratulated Mr. Morales on his victory and expressed hope for Bolivians that "with this election that they can begin to move beyond what has been a difficult period in Bolivia's political history."

"And as for the future, we'll see what kind of policies the next Bolivian president pursues and that the kind of relationship and the quality of the relationship between the United States and Bolivia will depend on what kind of policies they pursue," he said, "including how they govern, do they govern democratically and do they have a respect for democratic institutions."

The election could add to a string of difficulties for the Bush administration, which is held in low regard in many Latin American countries.

During a visit to the region this fall, Robert B. Zoellick, the deputy secretary of state, described Mr. Chávez and others with similar approaches and policies as "pied pipers of populism." State Department officials say Mr. Morales's campaign speeches appear to place him in that group, assuming he continues the same course in office as he did during the campaign. The officials declined to be identified, citing department policy.

Stephen Johnson, a former State Department official and now a senior policy analyst with the Heritage Foundation, said of Mr. Morales, "It will be difficult for him to moderate his position because he has a political base that is a little bit more hard-line, more populist, than he is."

That base is Bolivia's indigenous population, from which Mr. Morales came. Many of those people are coca farmers in a region where chewing coca leaf and making coca tea are deeply ingrained in the culture.

In Bolivia, though, the election of Mr. Morales on Sunday is seen as a potent signal that the country has tired of the traditional and often corrupt politicians who had long been in power. Saying they were tired of old economic formulas, Bolivians not only elected Mr. Morales but also voted three main parties out of national prominence.

Mr. Zoellick and other American officials have been openly critical of Mr. Chávez, a close ally of Mr. Morales's, saying he is eroding democratic freedoms in Venezuela. Mr. Morales has not indicated any intention of doing that.

Still, he "has certainly unleashed strong expectations" among his constituents, said Peter DeShazo, another former senior State Department official who now directs the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If he is seen as too moderate and accommodating, he risks invoking the wrath of these groups that want radical change."

Several State Department officials said the primary challenge that the United States faced in Latin America was the fragility of democratic governments in the region, which makes them vulnerable to populist leaders who, they said, were almost by definition anti-American. Those leaders, the officials said, also tended to chip away at democratic freedoms.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in an interview with CNN on Monday, said: "The issue for us is, will the new Bolivian government govern democratically? Are they open to cooperation that, in economic terms, will undoubtedly help the Bolivian people, because Bolivia cannot be isolated from the international economy? And so from our point of view, this is a matter of behavior."

The State Department office that monitors drug trafficking says Bolivia produces the third-largest coca crop in the hemisphere, behind Colombia and Peru. In a report put out in March, the department said Bolivia exceeded its coca-eradication goals in 2004. Nonetheless, "coca cultivation increased by 6 percent over all." A department official said little had changed since March.

During a news conference in La Paz, the capital, on Tuesday, Mr. Morales said that he would not allow unlimited production of coca and that he would hold a referendum to determine how it should be controlled. He promised to fight drug trafficking, but he did not rescind his promise to drop support for the American-financed coca eradication program.

The primary focus of that campaign has been to eradicate coca plants in the Chapare region, where Mr. Morales is from. If restraints are lifted, "there is the potential for large-scale industrial production in the Chapare," Mr. DeShazo said. "And that would be of grave concern for the United States."

In 2004, the United States spent $150 million on coca-eradication programs in Bolivia, the State Department said. But Bolivia still produced 60,500 acres of coca plant, enough to manufacture 72 tons of cocaine. The Bush administration says, however, that it plans to give Mr. Morales every chance. A senior official is likely to be sent to La Paz to meet and congratulate the new president in the weeks ahead.

Juan Forero contributed reporting from La Paz, Bolivia,for this article.


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/21/international/americas/21latin.html