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Time to Wake-Up USA Re Chavez Regime & Venezuela!!The oil money Chavez might have used to help the poor in Venezuela has gone not only to filling his own pockets and those of his top supporters, BUT to financing dictators and international terrorism!
Now, the U.S. is fixing to get clobbered very soon with an oil embargo quick as Chavez has secured the last of his new oil customers to replace U.S. Anybody could see this coming for the last two years that took a look and listen to what he has been very openly doing and saying! Chavez, and his unbridled praise for, active alliances and support with, and openly proclaimed desire to have Venezuela become like; Cuba, Iran, Russia, old-Iraq, Libya, and China does not equate to helping his own people, nor to a sustainable future supporter of U.S. interests (oil needs amongst them), not by a long-shot. But, very dangerously, just the opposite! (BTW, too, China has made more 'investments' in Venezuela than in all of the rest of South America, including Mexico, combined! And, Chavez is on record eagerly proclaiming himself a Maoist when he visits there!)     This is not empty rhetoric from Chavez to simply be ignored, and the patriotic Venezuelians opposing him today know it all too well. Chavez, according to the top military that have left him in protest, is an active supporter of the FARC/ELN Columbian revolutionists, that US is currently fighting in Columbia, and they are supported materially in exchange for the lucrative drug trade that's transported via official health dept vehicles here across Venezuela with Puerto Rico often as the first foreign destination. In January of 2003 U.S. Customs agents have made what's believed to be the biggest cocaine seizure ever made at the Port of Corpus Christi and that oil tanker smuggling the $6 million worth of coke was state owned from Venezuela. And, Chavez donated 1 million $'s to Al Queda in Afganistan shortly after 9/11 to show his support! He also publicly excused his Chavista supporters burning USA flags then by saying USA brought 9/11 upon itself. If U.S. does nothing, or worse, quietly supports Chavez for illusions of stable oil in the short term, this administration will eventually be seen to have facilitated another, much more dangerous, Super Cuba in this hemisphere! The millions of Venezuelans, along with his top military that have deserted him, have had national strikes where over 2 million of them took to the streets protesting Chavez's cubanization of their beloved country. They know it all too clearly, they've been having to live through it...  Variations of that same "NO CUBA HERE!" sentiment was on a lot of their banners being carried down there...   We all here in the U.S.A. better get up-to-speed on this historic fight for freedom in Venezuela that'll surely impact us here, and quick, too! Attitude-wise, we could hope here in the USA for no better allies than the Venezuelan people. According to the 2002 Global Attitudes Survey by the Pew Research Center in Washington; 82% have a favorable opinion of the USA, and that is amongst the highest ratings of all the 44 countries surveyed. And, in regard to supporting the US led war on terrorism, 79% favor it while only 20% oppose it! (What's the current %'s for that question here in the USA?) Clearly, no country in South America holds more promise for being a strong and effective ally and supporter of the USA, perhaps none better in this entire Hemisphere, *when* Chavez is gone and remnants of his regime are fully rooted out. Also, though, there is no current government in this hemisphere that is a more "Clear & Present Danger" to the USA with the continuation and expansion of Hugo Chavez type initiatives and coming oil embargo. Unchecked, Chavez will be able to do throughout this hemisphere what Fidel has only dreamed/wished he could do! - Shane
__________________ WHAT TO DO IF A NUCLEAR DISASTER IS IMMINENT! "A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences." - Proverbs 22:3 _____________________________
I was down there, witnessed it first-hand, met and stayed with the top military that had just quit Chavez, saw the evidence and then made up my own mind, and was appalled at the lack of any U.S. support, even just vocally, then to have easily ousted Chavez. The US govt was not interested, they'd already made their deal. __________________________
I have no illusions of any of these world players being black & white, simpleton 'us' good guys and 'they' bad guys. The Bush administration and state dept have greatly disappointed me with what they've been handed in the past and have failed to simply announce and condemn publicly to the world that would have had Chavez eventually leaving with no need for proposing covert anything. He'd of changed his tune quicker than Gaddafi. But, instead, they had the Iraq war coming up, their plate was full, and they chose not to risk upsetting the oil supplies, I'm told. Others, best as I can tell, are simply for anything that weakens the US position and strengthens our enemies, like those that sing the praises of Cuba or have an eye towards NWO type globalization.
What I do firmly know, first-hand, is the real grassroots courage and patriotism of the everyday Venezuelan people, and had witnessed literally millions coming out; young, old, lots of families, kids on bikes, all waving their flags, joyfully and proudly singing their national anthem with real enthusiasm and reverence, like I've not heard in the US often, all together reclaiming their country. They came out and alongside the top military brass that they honored for having all just quit Chavez in protest and were there at great risk to their own lives and families. They all together overwhelmingly and genuinely showed a real love for their country as they were grieved and appalled that it's being taken from them as it's pushed along into Cubanization by Chavez and being aligned with terrorist states by him, too. I wish you could have seen it, even when unprovoked violence by Chavez thugs dispersed the crowds for a moment, and the blood of innocents was still wet on the pavement, they came right back out purposefully defiant to attest that they would not be deterred by it. It brought tears to my eyes as they raised their voices again singing their national anthem and at attention, as I had never experienced that level of patriotism and courage before and then shamefully realized that it's not something I'd probably ever see on that scale in the USA anymore either. It's really just that simple for me, both their motivations and mine for sharing them. - Shane _________________________
The assumption outside Venezuela would seem to be that Chavez, good/bad/ugly, is the duly elected leader of Venezuela, he is who they wanted, and thus all should now back-off and respect that democratic process that elected him. Will of the people and all.
That's THE premise that's dead wrong! Because most people in Venezuela see Chavez for what he is, a dictator that stole the election, his office, and now more of their countries liberties, resources and world standing! To an objective investigator it becomes clear here that his detractors are more than just venting some 'sour grapes' over losing. Chavez cheated in a big enough way that had he not, he would not be there today and the majority of the Venezuelan people know that very clearly, regardless of how outsiders might see it. - Shane __________________________ Coup in Venezuela, Evidence of Fraud Abounds Through vote fraud in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez has just carried out the second coup d'etat of his career. This time, by rigging electronic voting machines supplied by a shadowy government-company.  By Johan Freitas, in Caracas Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez claims to have won an August 15, 2004, recall referendum on his presidency. The former military coup-plotter supposedly got the backing of 57.8% of the electorate, with only 42.2% against him. But the reality, say observers on the ground, is the opposite: By tampering with electronic voting machines, Yes-votes for recalling Chavez got turned into No-votes allowing him to stay in power. The machines themselves were supplied and programmed by Chavez insiders at a heavy cost to the Venezuelan state. Tellingly, they are not even voting machines. Produced by Italy's Olivetti for use as lottery terminals, they were sold to a shady government-connected outfit called Smartmatic who doubled the price and immediately resold them to the Venezuelan taxpayers for use in the recall referendum. This was Smartmatic's first-ever involvement in electronic election machines. At the time of the deal, the company's largest shareholder was the Chavez government itself. No outside auditing of the election software has so far been effectively concluded. Opposition leaders denounced the Chavez-claim as a massive vote fraud, adding that exit poll numbers and paper ballots showed the opposite result. " - The process was marred by a sequence of fraudulent events," said Movement- to-Socialism party leader Leopoldo Puchi, a former Chavez supporter and Minister of Labor under Chavez. He revealed that the Chavez percentages did not come from the voters but were instead the result of a decision made in "a secret room, by a small group of government operatives". The real results: 59.4% want Chavez out In the streets of Venezuela, the real numbers soon became known: 59.4% against Chavez, with only 40.6% wanting him to stay on the job. Apart from the actual paper ballots casts, opposition negotiator Asdrúbal Aguiar also made public no less than six different exit polls, all taken on election day by the opposition's Democratic Coordinator, election group Sumate, private polling firms, and Venezuelan mass media. They all gave a twenty point lead to the anti-Chavez vote. " - It is not possible for all six polls to have been equally wrong," said a visibly upset Aguiar. Initial rejection of the rigged election in Venezuela was heard abroad, too. In the United Nations, reaction to the news from Venezuela was somber, with one official saying, "Free, fair and open elections are the foundation of a democratic society. Without them, the world's relationship with Venezuela inevitably will be affected." Chavez, a former paratrooper who rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, staged an abortive coup attempt in 1992. Today, twelve years later, he has staged a second coup with the ham-fisted vote rigging of electronic election machines. His regime has been plagued by a rise in crime, unemployment, human rights abuses and gross corruption, and characterized itself by the fervent will of its leader to cling to power. Army General (R) Nestor Gonzalez Gonzalez, one of the leaders of the dissident Militares Democraticos officers, stated that Chavez's "link to the uncovered fraud is another affirmation of Chavez's obsession with keeping himself in power at any cost." " - Where the public trust is concerned, election officials must go out of their way to satisfy a transparent result. But for Chavez, who needed to legitimize his latest coup, all he wanted was electronic vote rigging with no software audit and no paper trail." Another anti-Chavez spokesman, Social Democratic party chairman Henry Ramos Allup, stated that Chavez cronies in the National Election Council, or CNE by its Spanish initials, did not permit paper ballots to be audited, nor did they allow the opposition representatives any access to the area where voting results supposedly were tallied. " - We were not even allowed to audit the software in the voting machines, and none of our election observers were allowed to be present during what was claimed to be the vote count." The lack of an audit of the software in the electronic voting machines has become the critical point in the opposition's fraud investigation. Two weeks before the election, a defector from the Chavez team who rigged the machines went public with his accusations that the machines had been tampered with, and the software altered so it would produce results different than those reflecting actual voting.[1] The defecting programmer feared for his life, but revealed that the plan was in the hands of former Chavez vice- president Diosdado Cabello and supervised by Chavez. During several midnight visits, Hugo Chavez had personally visited the five control centers for the Venezuelan voting fraud: The Infrastructure Ministry, Palacio Blanco, the Bolivarian University and two unnamed buildings close to the National Election Council (CNE). As a result of these revelations, the CNE agreed to let the opposition check a sample of two hundred of the voting machines. There was just one detail: The machines were not chosen randomly. But these two hundred machines had been restored to their original pre-fraud software, and passed the test. Instead of choosing them randomly from the several thousand actual voting machines, Chavez allowed the representatives of Venezuela's opposition groups to see only what he wanted them to see. Chavez copies Latin American vote rigging With its blatant vote fraud, the pseudo-populist Venezuelan regime of former coup leader Hugo Chavez follows in a strong tradition of other Latin American dictators. In 1957, Venezuela's military dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez held a vote on whether or not he should continue in power. Like Chavez today, it was widely acknowledged that Perez Jimenez lost the vote. But unwilling to relinquish power, he ordered his election commission to stuff the ballots and make it look like he had won. Victory was shortlived for the the police state regime of Perez Jimenez, however. A few months after the vote fraud, a popular uprising by democratic movements ousted the dictator and today he only has few backers and followers in Venezuela -- one of them being Hugo Chavez. An awoved student of Venezuela's former military dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez, Chavez personally went to visit him in exile in Spain, where Pérez Jiménez fled with more than 200 million illicit dollars in his baggage or deposited in foreign banks. The steps taken by the Chavez administration to foil the will of the voters follow similar attempts by Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic and Peru's Alberto Fujimori in recent years. Chavez was aiming for just a little over half the vote. But just like both Milosevic and Fujimori discovered, vote rigging can backfire. In Peru, evidence of vote-fraud by then-President Alberto Fujimori's government marred that country's 2000-elections. Fujimori later resigned in disgrace. Another Latin strongman, Panama's dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega, also tried his hand at stuffing the ballot boxes. Anti-Noriega protests broke out in 1986 over charges of vote fraud, and soon thereafter Noriega was history. Hugo Chavez’s own commitment to democracy and constitutional rule is weak. His comments on this subject tend to be Delphic: " - I am not a rebel against democracy because you can’t rebel against something that doesn’t exist."[2] William Ojeda, once a Chavez supporter who went to jail for writing a book exposing corruption among Venezuela's judges, stated that by Chavez claiming victory in the recall referendum, he is "committing a crime against the will of the Venezuelan people". "- It is a blatant election robbery which we are not going to tolerate," maintained Ojeda, and stated that now the Chavez-dominated election commission "committed manslaughter against the voters." The findings, which leaders like William Ojeda implied might have just been the tip of a huge fraud iceberg, could spell the end of the Chavez era. Doubt among observers Less than an hour after the last polling place had finally closed, Venezuelan election commissioner Francisco Carrasquero took to the airwaves at 3.47 AM in the early morning to announce a supposed Chavez win. Although putting on a brave face in public, international election observers were surprised by the Chavez decision to hijack the referendum and by his victory claim at a time when they had already gone to bed. Amid accusations of vote rigging, Jimmy Carter of the Carter Centre and Cesar Gaviria of the Organization of American States (OAS) were bound by diplomacy to not outright reject the results of the host country's election commission. At the same time, however, the Carter Centre and OAS observers also did not certify the government's claimed results. They merely limited their statements to confirm that the tallies which they had seen from the (rigged) election machines matched what Chavez claims as his election results. Privately, election observers in Venezuela reveal that fairness of the vote is in doubt. The software of the electronic voting machines had never been independently audited, and there was ample evidence that government funds were diverted to finance Chavez referendum campaign. " - The Venezuelan electoral process is far from one that could be considered free and fair," a mid-level member of the observation team said. Other foreign commentators backend up this statement, with one saying: " - What happened is that the voter machines transmitted results that had already been altered by the rigged software, and they have been unable to audit the machines or the paper ballots. In order to catch the scam, you can't loose sight of the machines and paper ballots ... something they have already done." Basic standards of accountability and transparency have been cast aside by the Chavez-run CNE, in order to assure Chavez of his recall referendum 'win'. Immediately after the statements by the international observers, former presidential candidate Andrés Velásquez, labor union leader and head of the Causa Radical party, warned that Venezuela had been a victim of "a massive fraud". " - No president emerging from such a flawed electoral process can claim legitimacy." Brutal methods by a brutal military dictatorship The fraudulent election is only the latest in a series of extra- constitutional measures utilized by former military officer and coup leader Hugo Chavez to consolidate his authoritarian regime. Increasingly, human rights violations have been encouraged and gone unpunished since Chavez was inaugurated in 1999.[3] Human rights report refer to the routine torture of Venezuelan prisoners by methods that included "electric shock, water torture, asphyxiation [and] hanging of victims by a rope." Earlier this year, in the course of just one single week, Venezuela's armed forces killed at least 14 opposition protesters and left close to 300 wounded. Torture, arbitrary detention and excessive use of force were reported.[4] Venezuela under Chavez has become hell for independent opposition politicians. Some of them who exercised their constitutional right to sign a petition for the president's recall have been arrested, despite this being one of the freedoms guaranteed by the OAS Democratic Charter.[5] Today, as political prisoners, they languish in the jail cells of the DISIP, the Chavez Secret Police. But they are the lucky ones. Others have simply gone missing, because nightly disapperances are common, along with hundreds of politically motivated kidnappings, torture, and even murder of political opponents.[6] Hugo Chavez has little thought for such details. He sees nothing wrong in jailing or killing those who do not agree with his views. When he visited Iraq during Saddam Hussein's brutal reign, he kissed and embraced Saddam Hussein and called him "my brother". He is on equally friendly terms with other ruthless rulers such as Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Cuba's Fidel Castro and the Libyan leader Muammar al-Qadhafi, whose own political system, the 'Third Universal Theory', forms the basis of Hugo Chavez's 'Bolivarian Revolution' and its unique form of "direct democracy." " - They committed fraud and they know it and they know we know it." Although all five CNE-members have to be in session for the announcement of electoral results, only one -- Francisco Carrasquero -- actually took it upon himself to singlehandedly declare the fraudulent Chavez victory. Prior to this announcement in the wee hours of August 16, 2004, fellow CNE members had already announced the planned fraud. CNE Vice President Ezequiel Zamora used the word "arbitrary" and refused to support the validity of the result CNE principal director Sobella Mejías also distanced herself from the numbers, warning that these "results" could not in any way be considered official. To put the supposed Chavez win in perspective, these CNE directors pointed out that opposition witnesses were not allowed to be present during the act of tallying the ballot totals, and they -- along with directors Sobella Mejias and Ezequiel Zamora -- were also forced out of the audit process. The only ones present in the so called audit process, which took place in secrecy, were the three Chavez handpicked directors of the CNE; in a gross violation of previously established ground rules between the government and the opposition. This has some people wondering. Political commentator and opposition activist Daniel Duquenal, asks: " - If Chavez really got more votes than the opposition, why would the government dismiss all the rules agreed upon in the negotiation with the opposition and the international observers?" " - They committed fraud and they know it and they know we know it." Aleksander Boyd, political analyst of vcrisis.com, seconds in: " - Regardless of who won, the victor needs to prove beyond shadows of doubt in front of the eyes of the Venezuelan electorate, internal political actors and the international community that the results are indeed trustworthy. How can that goal be attained? Simple, respect the norms and have the scrutiny process made in front of the appropriate witnesses. The opposition can not agree with the figure simply because they were not present at the time of the counting; international observers can not endorse the results for the same reason and the voters of Venezuela will not rest." " - This unconstitutional recognition constitutes in real terms a new coup d'etat." " - Chavez is drunk on power," says Luis Miquelena, previously an Interior and Justice Minister in the Chavez government and the man who Chavez himself considers his political mentor.[7] To Miquelena, it is now all too clear that "Chavez is not fit to govern in a democracy." Miquelena saw this first hand on Monday, right outside his apartment in the Plaza Francia square. There, while celebrating the supposed Chavez-win, drunk Chavez supporters fired automatic weapons into a crowd of opposition bystanders, heavily wounding seven.[8] Unofficial vote counts on Sunday night by Ojo Electoral, an independent citizens group monitoring the elections, and by three private polling firms, had given Chavez at the most 43.7 percent of the vote. " - If Chavez sticks to his claims of victory, we have every right to believe that there was a well thought out fraud," said Ojo Electoral director Teodoro Petkoff. Alejandro Plaz, member of the opposition election watchdog Sumate, confirms: "- The vote tallies simply do not add up." In the street, many ordinary citizens reacted with helpnessness at the allegations of vote fraud. Elias Saavedra, an unemployed electrician, said, "There probably was a fraud, because Chavez is such a pathological liar. But you can't stand up to the Chavistas because they will either jail you, torture you or outright assasinate you." _____________________ More information: How To Steal An Election: Chavez Preparing Massive Vote Fraud How Chavez Cancelled Venezuela's Last Election Myth Unmasked: Chavez Never Won By "Landslide" _____________________ References: 1 - Nelson Bocaranda Sardi: "Runrunes". El Universal, Caracas, 29/JUL/04, http://www.eluniversal.com/2004/07/...rt_29108M.shtml 2 - Mark Falcoff: "Venezuela, Dancing On The Precipice". Latin American Outlook, American Enterprise Institute, Washington, 01/JAN/00 3 - PROVEA, "Situacion de los Derechos Humanos en Venezuela, octubre 2003-septiembe 2003", Caracas, 2003. Also report of the OAS InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights, December.2003, at http://www.oas.org/main/main.asp? sLang=E&sLink=http://www.oas.org/OASpage/humanrights.htm, and "Letter to President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias", Human Rights Watch, 09/APR/04, at http://hrw.org/english/docs/2004/04/12/venezu8423.htm. 4 - A recent report of the Venezuelan Ombudsman's Office stated that nine persons died in the clashes. Defensoria del Pueblo, "Informe Preliminar Derechos Humanos 27 de febrero al 05 de marzo", Caracas, March 2004. 5 - Inter-American Democratic Charter, Organization of American States, adopted 11/SEP/01, at http://www.oas.org/main/main.asp? sLang=E&sLink=http://www.oas.org/documents/eng/documents.asp. 6 - List of missing persons and political prisoners in Venezuela, 08/AUG/04, http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?co...rs/200403020624 7 - "Chávez se emborrachó con el poder" by Jose Valles, Revista Cambio, Bogota, Colombia, 16/DEC/02 8 - BBC World: "Caracas: 7 heridos en protesta", 16/AUG/04, http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/spanish/la...000/3571480.stm August 17, 2004 ___________________________
Originally Posted by wrs
I just don't see anything to get excited about, it's the same thing we have here in the US.........
Well, if a Super Cuba emerging 2 hours from the US that's aligning itself with all our enemies and actively/openly supporting terrorism against the USA does not give you pause, then one thing to maybe get excited about is that Chavez controls 15% of our incoming oil supply, and is quickly establishing other/new customers to sell to instead of us, so that he can wake us up shortly to a blackmail scenario complete with very long and expensive gas lines for our new national energy shortage & crisis. Brace yourself, as few others see it coming... _______________________
Chavez cheated the people, stole the election, and is a dictator maintaining power by intimidation and brutality, regardless of anything Carter ever says. _____________________________
Written in December 19, 2002 and first posted here...
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WHAT TO DO IF A NUCLEAR DISASTER IS IMMINENT! "A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences." - Proverbs 22:3 __________________________
Now, I'd invite you to re-read some of my comments regarding the Bush admin in this thread, they are not all that praise worthy. I'm not a Bush-bot, nor blind republican, though I've met and am an avid supporter of my own Republican Congressman, Ron Paul.
__________________ WHAT TO DO IF A NUCLEAR DISASTER IS IMMINENT! "A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences." - Proverbs 22:3
the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences." - Proverbs 22:3
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