Beyond Torture: U.S. Violations of Occupation Law in Iraq

the U.S. has made iraq into the same hell hole that israel has made palestine into.

Most Cowardly War Ever Fought

The US invasion of Iraq was perhaps the most cowardly war ever fought in history.

After using the "good offices" of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, after making sure that most of its weapons had been destroyed, the "Coalition of the Willing" – better known as the Coalition of the Bullied and Bought – sent in an invading army.

Then the corporate media gloated that the United States had won a just and astonishing victory!

TV watchers witnessed the joy that the US army brought to ordinary Iraqis. All those newly liberated people waving American flags, which they must have somehow hoarded during the years of sanctions.

Never mind that the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square (shown over and over on TV) turned out to be a carefully choreographed charade played out by a handful of hired extras coordinated by the US marines. Robert Fisk called it the "most staged photo-op since Iwo Jima."

Never mind that in the days that followed American soldiers fired into a crowd of peaceful, unarmed Iraqi demonstrators who were demanding that US troops leave their country. Fifteen people were shot dead.

Never mind that a few days later US soldiers killed two more and injured several people who were protesting the fact that peaceful demonstrators were being killed. Never mind that they murdered 17 more people in Mosul. Never mind that in the days to come the killing will continue. (But it won't be on TV.)

Never mind that a secular country is being driven to religious sectarianism. Never mind that the US government helped Saddam Hussein's rise to power and supported him through his worst excesses, including the eight-year war against Iran and the 1988 gassing of Kurdish people in Halabja, crimes which 14 years later were re-heated and served up as reasons to justify going to war against Iraq.

Never mind that, after the first Gulf War, the Allies fomented an uprising of Shias in Basra and then looked away while Saddam Hussein crushed the revolt and slaughtered thousands in an act of vengeful reprisal.

After the invasion of Iraq, Western TV channels' ghoulish interest in the mass graves they discovered evaporated quickly when they realized that the bodies were of Iraqis who had been killed in the war against Iran and the Shia uprising. The search for an appropriate mass grave continues.

Never mind that US and British troops had orders to kill people, but not to protect them. Their priorities were clear. The safety and security of Iraqi people was not their business.

The security of whatever little remained of Iraq's infrastructure was not their business. But the security and safety of Iraq's oil fields was. The oil fields were "secured" almost before the invasion began.

It's worth noting that the reconstruction of Afghanistan, which is in far worse condition than Iraq, hasn't merited the same evangelical enthusiasm in reconstruction that Iraq has. Even the money that was so publicly promised to Afghanistan has not for the most part been handed over. Could it be because Afghanistan has no oil? It has a route for a pipeline, true, but no oil. So there isn't much money to be extracted from that vanquished country.

On the other hand, we were told that contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq could jump-start the world economy. It's funny how the interests of American corporations are so often, so successfully, and so deliberately confused with the interests of the world economy.

U.S. checking possibility of pumping oil from northern Iraq to Haifa, via Jordan

it was clear that the whole iraqwar was about oil and regional power....

How Do They Get Away With It?

It is not an enjoyable experience watching the Republican Party descend into the depths of propaganda and falsehood. Today's disaffected Republicans once believed the GOP to be the party of principle. Any remaining claim to principle ended with Bush's invasion of Iraq.

No informed person believed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction or terrorist connections to al-Qaeda and involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks.

It is not possible that the president and vice president of the United States, the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the director of the CIA and the national security adviser could have believed such rubbish. Yet, each one of them told the American people, the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, and our allies that they did believe it.

Did U.S. intelligence agencies actually convey totally false information to the highest government officials? If so, these agencies are the greatest threat to innocent people abroad and to the U.S. government's credibility. Such incompetence is more dangerous than terrorism. The agencies should be immediately abolished.

Contrary to Bush administration propaganda, Saddam Hussein was precisely the type of secular Arab ruler who would feature large on Osama bin Laden's hit list. Hussein brutally suppressed Islamic leaders, knocking off cleric after cleric, including Moqtada al-Sadr's father, a grand ayatollah.

If Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction to give terrorists, the terrorists would have used them on Israel. The U.S. is a derivative target because of our alliance with Israel against the Palestinians.

Bush and Rumsfeld claim that they believed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Yet, it is certain that the joint chiefs and commanding generals did not believe the falsehood. No general, no matter how incompetent, would have concentrated his invasion army in a small area adjacent to an enemy armed with WMD, when one weapon could wipe out the entire U.S. invasion force.

No one has been held accountable for the unjustified invasion of Iraq that has destroyed America's standing in the world and has cost tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and thousands of American dead and wounded.

Don't expect a demand for accountability from the public. A poll released August 20 by the Program on International Policy Attitudes [pdf] at the University of Maryland found that 54% of Americans continue to believe Iraq had WMD; 35% believe that Iraq was closely linked to al-Qaeda, and 15% believe Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attack.

What does the persistence of such extraordinary falsehoods say about the U.S. media? How can a free people with First Amendment rights be so totally misinformed? The answer is that an independent media no longer exists in the U.S.

Formerly independent media are now submerged into corporate chains where focus on advertising revenues means zero tolerance for controversy. In the run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the U.S. media served as a propaganda arm for the Bush administration. The New York Times and Washington Post have since published mild apologies for neglecting their responsibilities, but the U.S. media has been muzzled by the "you-are-with-us-or-against-us" mantra.

Anyone who tells the truth is in the "against-us" camp.

Having gotten away with one invasion based on deception, the Bush administration is eager to repeat the offense. Last week Undersecretary of State John Bolton used a Hudson Institute forum to repeat before a live C-SPAN TV audience the same lies – only this time it is Iran that has WMD:

"Today I'd like to speak about Iran, which has concealed a large-scale, covert nuclear weapons program for over 18 years, and which, therefore, is one of our most fundamental proliferation challenges. All of Iran's WMD efforts – chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles – pose grave threats to international security."

The grave threat to international security is posed by the Bush administration's relentless war propaganda. Does Bolton really believe that a nuclear weapons program, with all its extraordinary requirements, could be concealed for 18 years?

There is a total failure of U.S. diplomacy. Is the failure intentional? Does the Bush administration desire more war in the Middle East?

Every indicator reads yes. The U.S. has struck an aggressive stance toward Iraq, Syria and Iran – the three Middle Eastern countries that are not ruled by American puppets on the American payroll. Now that the Soviet Union is no longer a check on U.S. intrusions in the Middle East, the Bush administration intends to complete the colonization under the cloak of bringing "democracy" to Islam.

This is the neoconservative agenda. The same neocons who control the Bush administration have put forward this plan in written and spoken form for all to read and hear. They have informed us of their war intentions, and we are paying no attention.

If you favor the return of the draft and war without end, vote Republican.

Bonkers Bolton Threatens Iran

What's going on at the State Department? Can't Colin Powell keep Undersecretary John Bolton in his cage?
Apparently, not, because last week Bonkers Bolton made a mind-boggling presentation at the Hudson Institute – which was carried live on CSPAN – entitled "Preventing Iran from Acquiring Nuclear Weapons."
Virtually every paragraph in the inflammatory 2,800-word address contained allegations that were either misleading or flat-out wrong.

Here is how Bolton began, and it was downhill from then on:

"Today I'd like to speak about Iran, which has concealed a large-scale, covert nuclear weapons program for over 18 years, and which, therefore, is one of our most fundamental proliferation challenges.

"All of Iran's WMD [weapons of mass destruction] efforts – chemical weapons, biological weapons, nuclear weapons, and ballistic missiles – pose grave threats to international security. Iran's pursuit of these deadly weapons, despite its signature on treaties that ban them, marks it as a rogue state, and it will remain so until it completely, verifiably and irreversibly dismantles its WMD-related programs."

Iran denies that it has a covert nuke program. Yet, Bolton charged that German, French and British diplomats had told him that the Iranian representatives to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had told them that the Iranians could produce enough weapons-grade enriched uranium for a nuke within a year's time, and threatened to do so if the Brits-French-Germans didn't uphold their end of their deal.

(There were immediate news reports that French and German diplomats denied having told Bolton any such thing.)

You see, Iran had made a deal with the Brits-French-Germans about a year ago. In return for continued access to peaceful nuclear technology, Iran agreed to sign an Additional Protocol to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In the interim, while the terms of the Additional Protocol were being negotiated, Iran granted Mohamed ElBaradei – Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency – the unrestricted access to all its nuclear-related facilities that the Additional Protocol would eventually provide.

For months, now, IAEA inspectors have been going anywhere they wanted to go and inspecting every thing they wanted to inspect. Iran may have a covert nuke program, but IAEA inspectors have yet to find any "indication" that Iran now has – or has ever had – a nuke-development program.
Yet, Bolton claims that the IAEA has found such evidence.

"Iran is pursuing two separate paths to nuclear weapons, one that would use highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and one that would use plutonium.

"As to the uranium route, Iran has tried to develop two different uranium-enrichment methods in order to produce weapons-grade uranium. First, it has established a number of facilities for the manufacture and testing of centrifuges (many of which are owned by military industrial organizations), a pilot enrichment facility designed for 1,000 centrifuges, and a large buried facility intended to house up to 50,000 centrifuges.
"In parallel, Iran has pursued another program to enrich uranium with lasers. Both of these programs were successfully concealed from IAEA inspectors in Iran for years until an Iranian opposition group disclosed their existence."

Under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Iranians have the "inalienable right" to do everything that the Iranians are known to have done thus far.

The laser enrichment program was – as are all such programs in all countries – a research program. Therefore, Iran was not required to inform the IAEA about it – or any other research program – unless significant quantities of enriched uranium were produced thereby. The IAEA has confirmed that the Iranian laser program was unsuccessful – never producing more than milligrams of low-enriched uranium per day – and was abandoned years ago.

And even if the Iranians eventually do manage to get 50,000 centrifuges on-line, the Iranians could never produce weapons-grade uranium – as opposed to reactor-grade uranium – while subject to continuous IAEA monitoring and periodic on-site inspection.

The thing to note about ElBaradei's reports [pdf] is that – contrary to insinuations made by Bolton – virtually everything the IAEA has "discovered" in Iran about Iran's nuclear programs basically confirms what the Iranians have voluntarily told the IAEA.

By making his completely unsubstantiated charges, Bolton is either attempting to provoke Iran – as he did North Korea – into withdrawing from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or setting the stage for another unilateral application of the Bush Doctrine to a "rogue state."

Bolton ended his remarks with this threat:

"We cannot let Iran, a leading sponsor of international terrorism, acquire nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to Europe, most of central Asia and the Middle East, or beyond. Without serious, concerted, immediate intervention by the international community, Iran will be well on the road to doing so."
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more and more lies from the U.S. government.

this is how the iraq war started as well...

the dogs of war are preparing yet another useless invasion, in other words, another war for oil, power and wealth...

Gods of War, Gods of Greed and Profiteers of Misery

an excellent article from my favorite social critic, Manuel Valenzuela.

this article is about the U.S., big corporations, and the phony, never-ending "war on terror".

George W. Bush's Record-Breaking Economy

"Our economy since last summer has been growing at the fastest rate in 20 years" said President Bush in a speech last week. The word went out from on high, and soon it began to spread: the fastest-growing economy in 20 years! A very important discovery for this election season, with voters none too pleased about the state of the economy. During a TV talk show (CNBC's Morning Call) on which I appeared, this claim was repeated to me.

Is it true? Well if you pick the right three quarters -- the first quarter of this year and the second half of last year, to be exact -- it is technically true. Over these three quarters the economy grew by 5.4 percent, which is faster than any other 9-month period in the past 20 years. But not by much. For the last 9 months of 1999, for example, the economy grew by 5.1 percent.

But why take 9 months? If we look at the last year, it's not any record at all. Similarly for the last two years. And since the recession ended in the last quarter of 2001, the economy has grown by 3.6 percent. This not bad, but not particularly strong growth for a recovery from a recession -- when the economy usually grows at a much faster than normal rate.

In the same speech Mr. Bush also bragged about the 1.5 million jobs created since last August. This impressive-sounding number also depends on a careful selection of time period. If we look at Mr. Bush's whole presidential term, the economy is still down more than a million jobs. Even the 1.5 million jobs created during Mr. Bush's selected ten months are a weak performance, barely enough to keep pace with the growth of the labor force.

The economy from here on will have to do better than even Mr. Bush's "brag period," just for him to avoid the record achievement of being the first president since the Great Depression to preside over a net loss of jobs for the country.

Perhaps the worst part of the "job-loss" recovery for most people has been that real wages -- adjusted for inflation -- have actually fallen over the last year. This means that most Americans are literally not getting anything out of our "record" growth.

The Bush administration does have some real 20-year record-breaking numbers but they are not the kind that it would like to advertise. Here's the gold medal: our Federal budget deficit of $639 billion for 2004 is 5.6 percent of GDP, the highest since 1983, and second highest since World War II. Of course this figure from the Congressional Budget Office counts the borrowing from the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds -- which any good accountant would tell you should be counted, because it will have to be paid back.

This knocks the wind out of another of President Bush's recent economic boasts: that the tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 were a sound economic policy that ought to be continued. It is true that the tax cuts provided some modest stimulus to the economy, as opposed to doing nothing at all. But doing nothing was never the only practical alternative, and most economists would see these tax cuts as terribly irresponsible.

That's because the tax cuts build a huge structural deficit into our federal budget, for years and even decades to come, until they are reversed. Another record: federal tax revenues are at their lowest in more than 50 years, as a percentage of our economy.

For a small fraction of the trillions of dollars of deficit spending that the tax cuts have created over the next decade, we could have gotten the same or greater stimulus to the economy from a temporary rebate aimed at the majority of households -- and not so concentrated on the "haves and the have-mores."

About 24 percent of the Bush tax cuts have gone to the highest income one-percent of taxpayers. These are people who had already increased their after-tax income by 139 percent from 1979 to 2001 -- more than a $400,000 increase after inflation.

The Bush Administration decided that these were the folks who most needed more tax breaks: on capital gains, dividends, and inheritances. Now there's another record we could break: for inequality of income and wealth in America.

International Press Coverage Begins to Change Its Tune on Venezuela

With Chávez’ barely contested victory in the long awaited referendum on his mandate as Venezuelan President, there has been a manifest change in the attitude of the mainstream media towards Venezuela’s Bolívarian revolution. Venezuela’s left President has diverted a huge portion of this country’s oil wealth to social programs for the first time since oil was discovered in the early 20th century, though the distribution of oil wealth always held a prominent position in political discourse. The relationship between Chávez and the international private media has been anything but friendly since he was first-elected in 1998. Since then he has been re-elected once, his mandate reconfirmed in last Sunday’s referendum, and he has emerged successful from five other referenda and plebiscites on issues ranging from a new constitution to democratizing the labour movement.

Yet until recently, both foreign correspondents and, especially, the editorial writers of the major American and European newspapers remained in clear opposition to him despite everything.

Their position in the battle for Venezuela was clearly delineated during and after the short-lived coup in April 2002, reversed 48-hours later by massive popular mobilization. Venezuela’s domestic media threw any pretence of objectivity to the wind and actively joined the ranks of coup-plotters leading up to the coup. During the coup one journalist coyly admitted on one of the private television networks that the statement by members of the armed forces declaring to the populace that they were rebelling against Chávez was filmed in her house.

With the utter collapse of the two traditional parties in the wake of the Venezuelan peoples’ massive rejection of neoliberal structural-adjustment, the private media picked up the political torch. They played, and continue to play, the role of political parties in opposition to Chávez’ coalition of almost entirely new parties.
During the coup foreign correspondents, like their editorializing brothers in Washington and New York, reported the facts as filtered by the pro-coup national media almost without exception. And afterwards both were hesitant to admit fault, in many cases suggesting the coup might affect Venezuelan democracy positively by shaking Chávez out of his communistic reverie.

The Venezuelan government is itself partly to blame for this difficult relationship. The Ministry of Communication does an impressively poor job of providing foreign journalists with the information they need to tell the facts as they are in Venezuela. Thus, to do so these journalists would need to exhibit an independence and hunger for truth that is sadly lacking in most cases.

But more than anything the resistance of the foreign press to accept Chávez’ government, though consistently electorally supported by the majority of Venezuelans in almost every year of its existence can be seen as a reflection of the wariness of the international business community. Here was a feisty former military officer talking openly about revolution and opposition to international capital. He pushed through an ambitious land reform early in his term—one that actually stood a chance of resisting attempts by domestic and foreign commercial farmers to undermine it by making it impossible for peasant-farmers to sell their newly given land.

He cut a deal with Fidel trading cheap oil for Cuban doctors and teachers in order to provide universal, free and accessible health care and education to the 80% of Venezuela’s population living in poverty. And he loudly criticized US foreign policy from the bombing of Afghanistan to the false pretence of the war in Iraq.
Yet as oil prices have continued to rise over the past few years, almost entirely due to the US’ irresponsible behaviour overseas, many in the international business community—and nowhere more than on Wall St.—have begun looking for stability. And, loathe though they have been to admit it, that is what Chávez represents: a consistent supplier of oil who has only failed in his commitment to US markets as a result of an opposition oil-strike aimed at unseating him.

Though the international business community quietly backed the US when they supported both the 2002 coup and the 2003 oil-‘strike’ (led by white-collar workers and management), recently there has been a tangible change of mood.

In a press conference on Thursday August 12, Chávez quoted what appeared to be a consensus among risk analysts that “Chavez seems to be the only one who can maintain stability.” “This London Chavist,” joked Chávez, “Nicholas Field, who manages $750 million of emerging-market debt, is well informed.” The Lehman Brothers also received honourable mention, “and we’re not talking about Fidel Castro here,” clarified Chávez. According to the Lehman Brothers “an increasing number of bond-holders have learned to trust the disposition of the Chávez government to pay its obligations…we don’t think that in the short term the situation will necessarily improve if Chávez is defeated.”

But the real test was in the wake of Chávez round victory on Sunday by a margin of 59% to 41%, which was answered almost immediately by the first decrease in oil prices in months. And the foreign press quickly followed suit. Thus, some of Chávez’ most dedicated critics at the Washington Post, the Associated Press—whose anti-Chávez news wires defined Venezuela coverage for many newspapers over the last 5 years—and the New York Times recognized the referendum results almost immediately, though the State Department has still proven reluctant to do so.

Perhaps this can be explained, at least in part, by this relatively recent confidance invested in Chávez by ‘well informed’ risk analysts like Nicholas Field and the Lehman Brothers. But since the referendum results were released by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council at 4am Monday morning, and the Carter Center and OAS clear supportive declaration 10 hours later one thing has become excruciatingly clear in Venezuela’s surreal political realm: the opposition is imploding.

Despite completely unambiguous statements by both the Carter Center and the OAS saying that last Sunday’s referendum was free and fair and that they have absolutely no reason to doubt the results, the opposition has refused to recognize them. In the form of the Democratic Coordinator—that fractious grouping of anti-chavists of all political stripes, though perhaps not of all colours—the opposition declared that there was fraud and charged international observers with an exhaustive recount.

But when the Carter Center, the OAS, and the electoral council all agreed to conduct such a recount, the opposition back-pedalled furiously, calling on all sectors of the population opposed to Chávez to refuse to participate in the recount. Thus shooting themselves in the foot, the opposition has finally caused sympathizers in the international private media to give up.

Venezuela's Chavez Triumphant: History Making Democracy in Latin America

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, first elected in 1998 made democratic history today in a triumphant defeat of the recall referendum on his Presidency.

The very Constitution that he championed in 1999, that re-elected him in 2000, allows for a mid-term recall referendum for the President’s term in office. After six years in office, in this recall referendum held on Sunday, August 15th, Chavez lead with a 58% majority. Voters clearly exercised their constitutional right to confirm the President in a historic referenda process, never practiced in the history of this hemisphere.

Under the watchful eyes of over six hundred international observers and media scattered throughout the country, a majority of Venezuelan’s prevented their president from being ousted by a coalition opposition led by Accion Democratica (AD) and the Christian Democrats (COPEI), both parties representing the moderate and ultra right. Renowned international election observer delegations from the Carter Center, Organization of American States (OAS), and European Parliamentarians hailed the referendum process as free and fair.

With this referendum President Chavez’s government has been reaffirmed in a total of eight elections, referendums and plebiscites in six years. Apart from the democratic processes at work, Chavez and his government have withstood the coup d’etat of April 2002, a general lockout orchestrated by the oil-igarchy management and union leadership (CTV) that stalled the country’s oil economy. They have resisted the aggressive private media (press and television alike) that has been carrying out a flagrantly racist character assassination of the Mestizo (Indigenous, Black and White) politically left President.

Chavez escaped an opposition hired Colombian paramilitary’s attempt to assassinate him in May 2004. He has remained popular while a segment of the Catholic church leadership who enjoyed the benefits of aligning themselves with the wealthy tried to diminish his commitment to the Church and the poor. He has jarred the political opposition that is backed by the private media and corporations, not to mention the international private media that continues to frame Chavez as a militant red beret military commander and Chief, in spite of his repeated landslide democratic electoral victories. It has kept the tide out from the oil guzzling empire just north of Caribbean sea, who earned tax free investment and free market opportunities here for 80 years and backed the failed coup d’etat against Chavez in April 2002.

Regardless of this pressure, Chavez remains the only elected leader of a nation that has relentless guts to give continuing volume to his peoples opposition to U.S-led neo-liberalism in the region and economic, political and military aggression the world over. If the social movements who captured the world’s imagination with the slogan "another world is possible" could choose a political leader it should be President Hugo Chavez. Such resistance runs in the veins of Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution provoking left and middle ground political leaders.

In Latin America Chavez received the un-stinted support of progressive political parties such as Lula’s Workers Party (PT) in Brazil that sent a delegation of support this week. The Argentinean government sent two former Presidents: Eduardo Duhalde and Fernando de La Rua of the Peronist party. He receives standing ovations from Latin American Indigenous Rights Movements, Landless Movement of Peasant (MST), and Via Campesinas (Peasants Movement-- 60 million strong world wide).

Chavez enjoys credibility among leftist academics, writers, and artists, who signed a manifesto of support. It included such leading thinkers as Eduardo Galeano (Uruguay), Ahíjaz Ahmad (India), Tariq Ali (Pakistan-England), Manu Chao (Spain-France), Eric Hobsbawm (England), Naomi Klein (Canada), and Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London (England). The letter stated: " we wish to denounce the disinformation campaign that is being orchestrated by the major media and that attempts to characterize Chavez as a tyrant, a President who has consistently respected the rule of law and the country’s Constitution".

Endorsement of the President is now trickling in from the United States. Jesse Jackson dissenting from his own Democratic Party position articulated by the US presidential candidate John Kerry has signed a Chavez campaign letter. A few dozen US citizens including US congressman and Hollywood star Danny Glover are here in Caracas adding their voice to the never ending chants of "Uh ah Chavez no se va" (Uh ah Chavez will not go) that is echoing in the streets.

With yet another massive win under his belt, the real question is will the United States stay out of the internal politics of this country and let President Chavez carry out the democratic mandate of his people, or will they be continuing their overt and covert operations in Venezuela, as they did thirty years ago in Allende’s Chile?

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the opposition is now doing what was predicted...to call the elections "rigged" and as "a massive fraud"...
yet the OAS and the Carter Center as well as European governments have acknowledged Chavez' victory, calling the recall referendum as free and fair.

Why Venezuela has Voted Again for Their 'Negro e Indio' President

Dick Cheney, Hugo Chavez and Bill Clinton's Band
Why Venezuela has Voted Again for Their 'Negro e Indio' President
Tuesday, Aug 17, 2004
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By: Greg Palast

There's so much BS and baloney thrown around about Venezuela that I may be violating some rule of US journalism by providing some facts. Let's begin with this: 77% of Venezuela's farmland is owned by 3% of the population, the 'hacendados.'

I met one of these farmlords in Caracas at an anti-Chavez protest march. Oddest demonstration I've ever seen: frosted blondes in high heels clutching designer bags, screeching, "Chavez - dic-ta-dor!" The plantation owner griped about the "socialismo" of Chavez, then jumped into his Jaguar convertible.

That week, Chavez himself handed me a copy of the "socialist" manifesto that so rattled the man in the Jag. It was a new law passed by Venezuela's Congress which gave land to the landless. The Chavez law transferred only fields from the giant haciendas which had been left unused and abandoned.

This land reform, by the way, was promoted to Venezuela in the 1960s by that Lefty radical, John F. Kennedy. Venezuela's dictator of the time agreed to hand out land, but forgot to give peasants title to their property.

But Chavez won't forget, because the mirror reminds him. What the affable president sees in his reflection, beyond the ribbons of office, is a "negro e indio" -- a "Black and Indian" man, dark as a cola nut, same as the landless and, until now, the hopeless. For the first time in Venezuela's history, the 80% Black-Indian population elected a man with skin darker than the man in the Jaguar.

So why, with a huge majority of the electorate behind him, twice in elections and today in a referendum, is Hugo Chavez in hot water with our democracy-promoting White House?

Maybe it's the oil. Lots of it. Chavez sits atop a reserve of crude that rivals Iraq's. And it's not his presidency of Venezuela that drives the White House bananas, it was his presidency of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC. While in control of the OPEC secretariat, Chavez cut a deal with our maximum leader of the time, Bill Clinton, on the price of oil. It was a 'Goldilocks' plan. The price would not be too low, not too high; just right, kept between $20 and $30 a barrel.

But Dick Cheney does not like Clinton nor Chavez nor their band. To him, the oil industry's (and Saudi Arabia's) freedom to set oil prices is as sacred as freedom of speech is to the ACLU. I got this info, by the way, from three top oil industry lobbyists.

Why should Chavez worry about what Dick thinks? Because, said one of the oil men, the Veep in his bunker, not the pretzel-chewer in the White House, "runs energy policy in the United States."

And what seems to have gotten our Veep's knickers in a twist is not the price of oil, but who keeps the loot from the current band-busting spurt in prices. Chavez had his Congress pass another oil law, the "Law of Hydrocarbons," which changes the split. Right now, the oil majors - like PhillipsConoco - keep 84% of the proceeds of the sale of Venezuela oil; the nation gets only 16%.

Chavez wanted to double his Treasury's take to 30%. And for good reason. Landless, hungry peasants have, over decades, drifted into Caracas and other cities, building million-person ghettos of cardboard shacks and open sewers. Chavez promised to do something about that.

And he did. "Chavez gives them bread and bricks," one Venezuelan TV reporter told me. The blonde TV newscaster, in the middle of a publicity shoot, said the words "pan y ladrillos" with disdain, making it clear that she never touched bricks and certainly never waited in a bread line.

But to feed and house the darker folk in those bread and brick lines, Chavez would need funds, and the 16% slice of the oil pie wouldn't do it. So the President of Venezuela demanded 30%, leaving Big Oil only 70%. Suddenly, Bill Clinton's ally in Caracas became Mr. Cheney's -- and therefore, Mr. Bush's -- enemy.

So began the Bush-Cheney campaign to "Floridate" the will of the Venezuela electorate. It didn't matter that Chavez had twice won election. Winning most of the votes, said a White House spokesman, did not make Chavez' government "legitimate." Hmmm. Secret contracts were awarded by our Homeland Security spooks to steal official Venezuela voter lists. Cash passed discreetly from the US taxpayer, via the so-called 'Endowment for Democracy,' to the Chavez-haters running today's "recall" election.

A brilliant campaign of placing stories about Chavez' supposed unpopularity and "dictatorial" manner seized US news and op-ed pages, ranging from the San Francisco Chronicle to the New York Times.

But some facts just can't be smothered in propaganda ink. While George Bush can appoint the government of Iraq and call it "sovereign," the government of Venezuela is appointed by its people. And the fact is that most people in this slum-choked land don't drive Jaguars or have their hair tinted in Miami. Most look in the mirror and see someone "negro e indio," as dark as their President Hugo.

The official CIA handbook on Venezuela says that half the nation's farmers own only 1% of the land. They are the lucky ones, as more peasants owned nothing. That is, until their man Chavez took office. Even under Chavez, land redistribution remains more a promise than an accomplishment. But today, the landless and homeless voted their hopes, knowing that their man may not, against the armed axis of local oligarchs and Dick Cheney, succeed for them. But they are convinced he will never forget them.

And that's a fact.

Greg Palast's reports from Venezuela for BBC Television's Newsnight and the Guardian papers of Britain earned a California State University Journalism School "Project Censored" award for 2002. View photos and

Palast's reports on Venezuela at www.GregPalast.com.

Original source / relevant link: GregPalast.com
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USA agencies protect Venezuelan and international thieves and murderers

VHeadline.com commentarist Chris Herz writes: Whether it is the astounding revelations concerning Chilean ex-dictator Pinochet or the contemporary news involving Ahmed Chalabi and his relatives, the criminality of the US manipulators of all of these persons is not in dispute.

Pinochet, at the very moment he was under international investigation for his crimes of murder and repression against thousands of his own people, succeeded in having his bank accounts hidden from judges and prosecutors by the major international bank in Washington.

Chalabi, who with his colleague in disinformation at the New York Times, Judith Miller, managed to present to the incompetent Bush administration phony information supporting their cherished beliefs about Saddam Hussein and his "weapons of mass destruction," has now been charged by the puppet administration in Iraq with grievous crimes.

None of this was unknown to official US agencies even at the moment the crimes were committed. What is significant to Venezolanos and others in the international community is not that these persons are thieves and murderers, but that it was deemed in the interests of the North American Empire that they should be protected.

It is equally interesting that even at the moment of its life or death struggle with popular insurgency the Iraq puppet-regime saw the need to expose the criminals who more than any others incited and induced the American invasion of Iraq.

Both corporate factions in the USA ... that led by Senator John Kerry and its supposed foe, that led by President George W. Bush ... unite in the adamantine determination to protect such persons and to seek more of the same for their future operations against anyone proposing democracy, freedom and Independence for subject nations.

The machinations of a corporate state against its subject peoples are not to be crippled by any mere allegiance to law, morality or justice.

And in the Byzantine labyrinth of post-invasion Iraqi politics, it remains to be seen what will come of all this, but that it has happened at all is an indication of the essential weakness of the US position in that unfortunate devastated and occupied country.

Meanwhile in the corporate capital of the corporate empire, Washington, ever-growing measures of security are now in effect. Normal car and truck traffic past not only the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but also the US Capital are interdicted.

The latest terrorist threat warning by the Department of Homeland (In)Security has caused all the streets near the two Washington financial institutions to be either closed completely or subjected to checks on all passing motor vehicles or pedestrians.

The same situation pertains, by report, to various financial institutions in the cities of New York and Newark, New Jersey.

But to return to Washington ... the US Congress has since 9-11 been something of a step-child in the rush to a security state. Even though it was one of the original targets on the day of infamy, the full panoply of security measures had never been made available to the institution or to its members. Their jealousy and envy of their executive branch friends has at times been palpable.

Seizing the opportunity presented by this latest revaluation of terrorist computer files (up to four years old) their private police force closed off or drastically limited access to the whole Capital Hill area, including other residential and governmental areas.

Of course, that these files never even mentioned the Congress (perhaps acknowledging its contemporary irrelevance) was not part of the calculation. But, because the original architecture of the city laid out all the streets from the Capital Building, this insecurity ukase has impacted the entire city. Traffic is really snarled. But our representatives, while perhaps not feeling entirely secure, have at least the assurance that they are now in a position of equity vis-a-vis their executive branch colleagues.

Elsewhere in town, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), located near the State Department in the aptly named 'Foggy Bottom' section of the city, are likewise isolated from the rest of town. One of my very oldest friends working for the Bank reports that the materials he orders (office supplies of the most ordinary sort) can no longer be shipped directly to his organization. They must be delivered elsewhere and transshipped to the Bank premises after careful inspection.

Bombs among the carbon papers?
Anthrax in the paper clips?

Sunday evening, my wife and I decided that we would see the film Corporation, at the E Street Cinema. We observed that the entire audience was composed of upscale white persons in a city whose majority population is still working-class Black. This led to an entirely new level of speculation upon our part...
Was the domination and influence of the corporate media so pervasive that dissent was becoming a class phenomenon?

Are only upper middle class persons and above here the only ones with the personal resources available to investigate such matters as the utter corruption of our polity?
The only persons able to dissent effectively?

Has no one seen this film or Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9-11 but those least likely to object to the stratification of our imperial society?

But here in Washington, business is as usual ... we have heard hardly a mention of this week's Presidential recall election in Venezuela ... and we must speculate that the imperial propaganda expects President Hugo Chavez Frias to triumph over the oligarchic opposition and our masters here do not want to emphasize their failure to influence matters more to their liking.

From a dying democracy, all of here wish you well in your work, to grow your own freedom.

The Ghost of Orwell is Upon us

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"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." -- President George W. Bush, Aug. 5, 2004 in an apparent gaffe or a Freudian slip.
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A rather sad state of affairs has risen out of the propaganda-laced, nationalism-spewing, draped-in-the flag-espousing and testosterone-filled Democratic National Convention that would have made Joseph Goebbels proud. The party of peace and progress has mutated into one of warmongers and military might, whoring itself to the evils of war and violence in order to regain power, forgetting principles of pacifism and humanism for those espousing death and destruction. The leaders of the Democratic Party know that to once more sit in the White House, to replace lunatics and liars, they must become George W. Bush, albeit with a brain, proclaiming the drums of war and the strength of violence. In a nation addicted to the smells of human blood and of growing hatred for the Arab and Muslim world, only mirages of warmongers and charades of military might can compete with the façade that propels Bush today.

Granted, this cynical conversion has been strategically made in order to elect John Kerry into office, knowing that the American public sits on its collective couch, as always glued to the television, furthering society’s decline as they are made ignorant, unthinking and conditioned drones, chips in one hand, beer in the other, believing the fictions being bombarded into their minds, frightened of Arab bogeymen and cowering to the insecurity and fear conditioned into daily life by a government and military-industrial complex basking in the euphoria of an easily controlled populace. Thus, needing to project strength and the ability to protect the populace in this so-called ‘war on terror’ the Democrats unleashed a wave of military symbolism, personalities and speeches, trying to recapture the ‘security’ and ‘leadership in times of war’ mantra from George W. Bush and the Republicans.

This carefully orchestrated reinventing of the Party, full of colorful signs and light choreography, jingoistic speeches, unity of personalities and hypocritical support by peacemakers of yet another warmonger has let it be known that, even if Kerry is elected, America’s foreign policy, especially that of the Middle East, will surely continue its self-destructive agenda. The Democrats know they cannot be elected without projecting a macabre fascination with the continuance of the ‘war on terror’ that has become a most omnipotent force since the devastation of 9/11. This snowball effect continues to feed a vicious cycle of death, war and destruction that, with every passing month, grows in momentum and power, thus making it virtually impossible that one day it can be halted. Spiraling into the hands of the military-industrial complex, the corporate Leviathan and the warmongers/criminals/neocons in government, the Democrats have assured the American people that the debacle in Iraq will persist, the occupation and exploitation of the Middle East will linger, and the cancer created by Israel will continue to endanger all of humanity.

For Bush and his cronies have given life to a beast that has wrapped its malicious tentacles around the American psyche, breathing not oxygen but our exhaling fear, growing more powerful every day, feeding off our insecurity and continued dumbing down, enveloping our lives with our silent passivity, becoming omnipotent and omnipresent through our acquiescent complicity. Rolling down a snow-filled mountain as it gains unstoppable momentum, growing into a giant boulder intent on destroying 200 years of progress and hope, the disease created by Bush has become an unstoppable entity spiraling out of the control of humanity.

The “War on Terror” is this malevolent demon called, a virus that is infecting America, catapulting us straight into the pages of a fiction – or a prophesy – long ago written by George Orwell. Immersed in 1984 we presently find ourselves trapped in, living the chapters of a great book that today has become our nightmarish reality. As each day passes in these days of George the Lesser we continue to turn the pages of a once-thought fantasy, traversing bound passages horrific in print that are inevitably becoming the truth of our daily existence.

The fabrication that is the ‘war on terror’ thus continues to propel itself, becoming a mechanism created by man that is slowly spiraling out of our ability to rein it in and control it. It continues to expand, corrupt and divide, free to enrapture humanity with its dark haze of violence and hatred whose ramifications we do not yet fully comprehend. The perfect enemy has been created, the perfect sheep we have become, and in the dark constructs of human power, greed and control a military/ police state begins to grow.

What is coming cannot yet be fully seen, it cannot be grasped by the human mind, for our brains work in the present, not the future, in conceptualizing small pieces, not large amalgams. We are unable to put the pieces of the puzzle together, failing in connecting the dots of a fascism rearing its ugly head over the horizon and the slowly emerging wars and battles being designed against the lands of the Middle East. Eurasia, Oceania and Eastasia have come into existence, conveniently designed to wage perpetual war against each other, propping up created enemies and hated foes that captivate our minds and souls.

We are told that new bogeymen now breathe away our air of freedom. Blindly we believe that these evildoers hate our democracy, liberties and ways of living, and so we must wage war, destroying countries, cities, buildings, families and innocents, sacrificing our children and husbands, our wallets and wages, our own freedoms and liberties. In order to battle that dark-skinned phantom which has been conditioned into our frightful minds we are willing to contribute to the erosion both to our way of living and the future freedom of our progeny. The Red and Communist Russian has given way to the Turban and Muslim Arab, and so we must obey our government, as criminal and corrupt as it may be, like sheep blindly following the shepherd to slaughter.

The fear of our conscious and the silence of our being are robbing us of more than Arab bogeymen ever could. Our own government is terrorizing more than Osama ever imagined. Our own government has us capitulating to fear, using the psychology of the weak-minded human brain to ensnarl us in terror, insecurity and the acquiescence of its criminal actions. It is using human fear to erode our freedoms and rights, turning a once grand beacon of hope into a Soviet Russia-style police state. In order to feel secure, in order to have a sense of safety our fellow citizens are gladly eviscerating their rights and freedoms, granting their evil government unprecedented levels of power over us. We are blindly giving up the beauty of America and the future of our children for the perceived security provided by government. The mechanisms of fear are working their black magic yet again, condemning the masses to their own ruination.

As can be expected, humanity creates without understanding the implications of what it helps unleash. Our still primitive brains cannot fathom the ramifications our actions have into a future we are incapable of grasping. We create only to see what we birth spiral beyond our ability to control and understand it. To humans, forethought is but an afterthought, and, as our history eerily reminds us, what we spawn in the present comes back to haunt us in our future. Creating without thinking, forcing actions without planning, implementing policies without visionary imagination, the human mind cannot fully envisage more than a few years into the unseen future. The examples of this are littered throughout the pages of history. But, as is usually the case with mankind, we fail to learn from our tumultuous past, and so we repeat the mistakes of our ancestors through the folly of our mammalian passions and instincts.

Already, the stage has been set for the further implementation of a police state in America, now seen in New York and Washington, that is changing the very fabric of what America once was and stood for. Those in power, a small cabal of immoral and elite miscreants, are spreading the virus of fear for their own sinister motives, entrenching in the populace a continuous flow of scare tactics designed to manipulate human emotions. The cover of threat is spreading beyond the Northeast to other large cities and regions. Under cover of fear and terror, Bush and company are altering the very fabric of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. They are forcing us to voluntarily give up our freedoms and rights for the sake of protection and safety from the same state engulfing us with those same elements of fear mongering we now confront on a daily basis. The disease is being spread nationally; the cloud of fear is enveloping America from sea to shining sea.

These mechanisms of fear are inundating our daily lives, from local to national news, we are being conditioned to the new economy of fear, a new society based on terror that, since 9/11, has and will only continue to increase. Human emotions are being meddled with, our insecurities are being manipulated, and soon, whether in one year or five, a police state existing and thriving on fear will arise out of the blazing bonfires of all our burning rights and freedoms. The stage is being set, this path we are now on, and if we decide to put the jigsaw puzzle together a police state is what America is to become.

The parameters of time and space will dictate its speed and severity, yet if the pieces of this most ominous puzzle are put together, the inevitability of this reality will become manifest. We must look to the totality of the circumstances, both the short and long term, to the present and future, to momentum and current events, to the direction the nation is taking and the increased fear mongering by our government. The winds of fear are giving way to the resounding army of despotic boots marching toward the coming police state.

Incessant fear-mongering has begun to control the populace into both submission and complicity through acquiescence. Weekly terror alerts are conditioning us to an insecurity that, we are told, can only be alleviated by self-erasing our rights and freedoms, granting our government unlimited powers to “protect” us, and believing the plethora of lies and propaganda our “cherished” government tells us. Slowly, 290 million Americans are helping to seal their own fates, destined to live in perpetual fear and in the hands of a fascist form of governance.

The Department of Homeland Insecurity is doing a masterful job of scaring the populace into giving up its rights. It is transforming the land of the free into a nation bordering tyranny. It is making the home of the brave a country gripped by fear. In truth, Tom Ridge is doing exactly as told, hitting the airwaves, reading the script, scaring millions, helping to re-elect a fear-mongering, warmongering, unpatriotic and treasonous administration that has exploited all Americans, using us as pawns in the greatest transformation of American society and governance in our brief history.

The expansion of the police state can today be seen on the streets of New York and Washington, D.C., with a constant police presence roaming streets and important buildings. Armed to the teeth, donning the intimidating attire of riot police, black in color, armor protected, machine gun in hand, thousands of officers now patrol the sidewalks you and I walk, observing, surveilling, spying and helping to keep us quiet and obedient worker bees. Roadblocks, evasive personal inspections of self and possessions, security checkpoints, racial profiling, illegal stops and questioning, demands to see ID’s and a police presence on every corner are the hallmark and the beginning stages of a police state. In sectors of New York and Washington the future of America can today be seen.

The threats of terror spewing like a hot geyser keep coming out of the Department of Homeland Insecurity, adding more cities and buildings scheduled for “government protection.” Today New York and Washington, tomorrow Chicago and San Francisco. The fear hovering throughout the land continues to emanate from the “War” President’s White House, as always erupting lie after continuous lie. The destruction of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution perseveres in the hallways of the Injustice Department, its shredders hard at work eliminating the last vestiges of American freedoms and rights. Meanwhile, the Department of War has once more turned on the conveyor belts of death and destruction, getting ready for yet another invasion and subsequent occupation where the poor castes of America kill and get killed by the poor classes of Iran and/or Syria.

With each new terror warning, with each new city listed as a “potential target” the police state will increase. Soon police and the military will guard us side by side, in every street corner and every subway station, every airport and every mall, M-16 or M-4 Carbines at the ready, intimidating our every move and glance. The days of military checkpoints, army Hummers lining the streets, police dogs at the ready and an aura of military rule are not far off.

Already America’s truckers have been recruited to spy on their fellow Americans, told to be vigilant on the nation’s highways and rest stops. Fear is gripping millions who live in cities, and, whether we see it or not, are being transformed into tools of the state, spies ever vigilant to whatever captures their eyes. Tourists with video equipment and photographers with cameras are now seen with suspicion. Anyone of Arab ethnicity, Middle East name or Muslim faith is now a suspect, guilty first, innocent only after investigation. The inevitability that is the emerging police state dictates that one day soon our own children will be brainwashed to spy on us and our friends, to report anything that might constitute danger to the state. Entire neighborhoods now maintain watchful eyes, becoming ever-suspicious of one another. The day is fast approaching when co-workers and one’s boss will report the activities of those they see as different or as suspicious. Conditioning of our children in schools might one day transform them through programming into conduits and defenders of the powerful who control the state, becoming robots unaware of the splendors their parents were once free to live under and enjoy.

With further evisceration of our rights and the increased powers spawned by technology, it is not hard to conceive of a state aware of every movement and activity. Our government already has, through the mechanisms of Project Echelon, the capacity to record every email, fax, phone call and text message we receive and/or send. Every form of communication can be traced and inspected. Every financial transaction can be tracked, pinpointing our movements. Library books checked out are monitored, internet surfing surveilled. More and more cameras line the streets and buildings, no doubt to continue their exponential growth in the years to come. Satellites in space can read license plates, thermal imaging can see inside our homes. Eye scanning technology is upon us, as is instant fingerprint analysis and public DNA identification. Advancements in technology will undoubtedly assist the coming police state to suppress crime and potential terror, yet it will also act to find and halt dissent, suppress freedoms and rights and transform the citizenry into a collection of scared humans afraid to question authority and exhibit an ounce of individual thought.

The road America has embarked on has no end in sight. Up ahead, only the entrance to a most ominous tunnel can be seen, dark and dangerous, pulling us towards it, sucking the last pebbles of light from the once-great beacon of hope and freedom. The future under this reality does not look bright as a once progressive light of human existence is extinguished under the rubric of fear, terror and security. With each new terror warning the beacon shining high and proud for the world to see is made dimmer, now unable to inspire or embolden. Instead, under the Bush administration, a thick and black cloth now covers what once gave us daylight, transforming day into night, courage into fear and security into terror.

In these days of fear we now live, being driven to re-elect a cabal of madmen intent on destroying an America our Founding Fathers created and believed in. In these times we are made to exist, with fear being politicized, dissent being marginalized and patriotism being questioned. Our emotions are being manipulated by those in power. We are being used and exploited into sacrificing the future of our progeny. We are being made to self-cannibalize our remaining rights and freedoms under the name of security and the lies of the “war on terror.” Yet the day is fast approaching when we will wake from this state of hypnosis, spawned by the fake fear being conditioned into us on a daily basis, only to see society transformed into a nation of spies whose eyes, ears and mouths have become the tools of the same system subjugating them.

Today New York, militarized and under a police state, tomorrow your city and neighborhood. Think it unlikely? Look around, it is already happening. Pay close attention to New York City in late August and early September to see the police state in action, protecting Republican elite from dissenters, protesters and average citizens. Silencing free speech and squashing rights to protest, coralling citizens into free-speech zones, macing innocent and peaceful protesters, arresting and intimidating hundreds, this will be the reality of New York City under partial military rule, all under the lie of security and under the rubric of terror. The stage has been set to halt the expected half a million to a million protesters. With little less than a month to go before the Republican Convention is to begin terror warnings have been put in motion, allowing the police and military to be introduced into the City, allowing the government to impose a police state during the Convention that will have the effect of shutting down protests, dissent and the unity of a million people. Through fear the government can do as it pleases. Through terror it controls the populace and its behaviors.

Under a crimson sky of fear human psychology becomes a dangerous amalgam of animal passions and human evil. Survival becomes a carnal principle; rational thought becomes blurred. The instinct for safety and security places unlimited trust in governance, to the point that humankind willingly cedes freedoms and rights in order to be protected by that which is most feared. Those in power use this truth to increase control over the masses, using us as the means to an end. Through our fear and insecurity their power grows. They are able to unleash war upon the lands of Eurasia and Eastasia, create bogeymen and enemies, encourage retaliation, which in effect acts to grant them still more power over their populace, and foster an era of intertwined interdependence between two competing ideologies whose vicious cycle of terror and violence billions of innocents find themselves immersed in.

To live in 2004 is to live in Orwell’s 1984, and, if the same road continues to be taken, the America of tomorrow will cease to parallel the one of yesterday. At the crossroads we stand, and the failure to act will no doubt condemn our future generations to the mistakes of their forefathers. The America they will inhabit will be a vastly different land than the one enjoying its last remaining days. They will never miss what they never had, and they will never fight for what they always deserved. Our actions, our fear and our complicity are helping to seal the fate of those millions that will come after us. History is being repeated, but not learned; it is being forgotten, and once more a collection of humans is committing the mistakes that have condemned millions before.

Humanity seems never to learn. The fear will continue to increase, the insecurity will not cease. Warnings will only grow louder; attacks will eventually come to our shores, adding to the vicious circle that cannot be stopped. A police state is upon us, yet hundreds of millions seem oblivious to the coming chasm that will affect their lives forever. The mechanism spawned by humanity has taken a life of its own, possessing unstoppable momentum, breathing and living through the fear-laced air we exhale, enveloping our energies and our daily lives as it continues to grow and expand, sending us spiraling out of control.

Whether you wish to live in fear is up to you because it will not stop. On the contrary, incessantly it will grow, spreading like the virus it is throughout the lands of the United States, gripping millions in fright and insecurity. From frightened mind to frightened mind the virus will proliferate, creating a pandemic of human emotions captured by fear and terror, capitalized by a government exploiting its citizens, empowering a few at the top and placing in destiny’s hands the future course of humanity.

The virus is upon us, and it is spreading rapidly. Like a giant wild fire in times of drought, it has become uncontainable, burning everything in its path. Only the powerful monsoons of the Other Superpower can save America now. Will the rains come, or will the drought continue?
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Writer's Note: I urge everyone who reads this article to pick up a copy of George Orwell’s “1984” and read or re-read it. Its relevance to today’s America will awaken and scare you. If you want to understand America in 2004, and the direction it is embarking on, this work of art becomes of vital significance.

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the world of big brother is coming to us faster than we think...
sad but true.

peace, love
jure

CIA executives gathered in Santiago de Chile revealed in contingency plot to overthrow Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias

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Venezuela state-owned news agency VENPRES is quoting an El Mundo de Madrid (Spain) report that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is set to put a contingency plan in motion in the (likely) event that President Hugo Chavez Frias wins next weekend's Recall Referendum.

The Madrid newspaper says that the White House strategy is to avoid a regional expansion of the President Hugo Chavez Frias 'Bolivarian Revolution' which is seen by Washington D.C. as a direct step into the kind of socialism espoused by many European nations and envisaged in the United States if John Kerry wrests control of the White House from the Bush 2 administration this coming fall.

El Mundo says the CIA plan appears to concede a Chavez Frias victory next weekend "for good or bad" and that Langley spooks are already working on a strategy to "neutralize" Chavez Frias by fair means or foul.

CIA under secretary for southern hemispherical affairs, William Spencer, has been drafted to Santiago de Chile to analyze the "Venezuelan situation" with CIA country directors from Colombia, Ecuador, Brasil and Peru. Spencer is reportedly convinced that Chavez Frias intends (no matter how fanciful) to create two centers of "revolutionary focus" in South America in preparation to overthrow Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez and Bolivia's Head of State, Carlos Mesa.

Spencer espouses the theory that Chavez Frias will then forge onwards using a domino effect to include the overthrow of Peru's Alejandro Toledo, using multiple corruption scandals there as a pretext for invasion. Washington apparently sees Chavez Frias' progress as a "corrosive action" in a continuing Bolivarian Revolution which will expand easily into countries such as Ecuador where indigenous political are already reacting strongly to Washington's ideas of neo-liberalism.

The CIA contingency plan against President Hugo Chavez Frias seemingly also includes Argentina and Brazil in the Venezuelan leader's dastardly designs against US Homeland Security ... inciting South American nations further into "contagious anti-USA prejudices..."

According to the Madrid newspaper it is no coincidence that the US CIA delegates have gathered in Chile which is considered by Langley and Crawford (Texas) as the "last bastion of democracy and pro-US economic policies in South America." They are elaborating a financial strategy in cooperation with US Treasury officials and the Pentagon aimed at covering all possible loopholes in the anti-socialist strategy and to halt Chavez Frias "overwhelming ambition" to "transform Latin America into an impregnable replica of Fidel Castro's Cuba..."

Part of the CIA strategy reveals a plot to have Movimiento Quinta Republica (MVR) suspend the referendum using the argument that serious irregularities have been detected ... alternatively that a conspiracy has been uncovered to assassinate Chavez Frias before the result is known. "In such a scenario ... if a State of Emergency is declared, the referendum, would be suspended indefinitely along with Constitutional guarantees and the Congress would be dissolved and public protests would immediately be ruled unlawful."

A second scenario would be the fraudulent manipulation of the voting results and the repression of whatever protests that would be called by the opposition Coordinadora Democratica (CD) alliance. Whichever way, Chavez Frias will use to take whatever means necessary to avoid new elections taking place...
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what the U.S. essentially wants, is another 1970's Chile, where a U.S. friendly dictator was put to power, defying the will of the population who voted otherwise.

"If you're not with us, you're against us..." - a failed leader of a bankrupt country

Colombia and Venezuela: A Clash of Two Models

here's a little exerpt from an excellent article, albeit a long one...

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The legacy the Chavez government leaves behind can form the basis for long-standing institutional alternatives to U.S.-backed development as well as a regional means to escape part of the heavy dependence on foreign direct investment needed to lift the citizens of poor nations out of poverty.

It is for this reason these substantive, lasting, institutionalized measures are clearly seen as a threat to U.S. neoliberalism in Latin America. Colombia, in its economic obedience, serves as Venezuela's doppelganger of sorts - the quiescent country that will haunt its counterpart. Whichever US administration is in power will forgive the one and pour vitriol on the other. Nevertheless, resistance to the US agenda abounds in both Andean countries, despite their varying forms.

The paramilitaries in the Colombian legislature were met with fierce opposition not only within the parliament itself, but also outside, as families of disappeared and murdered, social organizations, and others raised their voices to yell "Neither oblivion nor pardon!" Movements in Colombia's cities continue to offer resistance in unexpected and spontaneous ways even more-established movements aren't expecting (20).

The Venezuelan referendum of August 15 is a crucial battle (if it is at all fair, Chavez will win easily) a long fight. The populations will not give up the fight for their region easily.
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Iraq-to-Haifa oil pipeline could spur economic rebirth

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JERUSALEM -- With Baghdad effectively in American hands, Israel and Jordan are testing the political waters to see whether the Haifa-Mosul pipeline could once again pump oil from Iraq to Israel's major port city.
According to a well-placed Israeli source close to the Jordanians, the deal, which is partially contingent upon progress on the Palestinian front, could open a new chapter in the cold peace between Israel and Jordan.

Infrastructure Minister Yosef Paritsky said April 9 that he has ordered his ministry to conduct a feasibility study for reopening and possibly widening the 350 mile pipeline. He estimated that oil coming straight from Iraq could reduce Israeli energy prices by 15 to 20 percent providing a much-needed break for the flagging economy.

Northern Iraq's oil fields are among the richest in the world, and according to some sources have reserves as large as Saudi Arabia's.

The Israeli source said Jordan took "a huge gamble in supporting the United States." The implicit price for Jordan's unparalleled help to coalition forces will undoubtedly be a quick infusion of economic aid, part of which, said the source, "could be significant revenues from the pipeline."

Paritsky reckoned that such a deal "can become feasible the day after a new regime begins operating in Iraq. But we have to wait and see what happens."

The British built the pipeline in the 1930s and 1940s, and oil flowed from Iraq to both Tripoli in Lebanon, along the T-line, and to Haifa, along the H-Line. However with the British withdrawal from Palestine on the eve of the 1948 War of Independence, the pipeline shut down, remaining dormant ever since.

The passage of oil from Iraq to Israel through already existing infrastructure could "transform Haifa into a new Rotterdam," said Paritsky.

He envisions tankers from all over the world taking on loads of crude oil, or oil already refined in Haifa's refineries all at a price, of course. As Israel buys its oil on the open market and ships it via tankers, a pipeline would significantly cut often-hefty shipping and docking prices.

A wary Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher denied reports that his country is considering reopening the pipeline.

Warming its relations with its neighbor to the west, Muasher told al-Jazeera, is contingent upon Israel advancing on the peace process.

"If the regime is pro-American and would like to negotiate, then we are more than willing," said Partisky, who optimistically received Muasher's reluctance to reject the deal as "positive."

Paritsky said he believes the oil trade would be lucrative for all parties, especially Jordan, which could profit handsomely, depending on the amount of crude that passes through its section of the pipeline.

The source said he and Jordanian counterparts have been discussing the possibility of the pipeline for several months as a way to jumpstart the cold peace between America's closest allies in the Middle East.

But before Jordanian-Israeli cooperation resumes, Israel must first demonstrate progress along the Palestinian front. The advent of the road map, the appointment of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), and the development of a different kind of Middle East with Saddam all increase the possibilities for the pipeline deal, he said.

Raging anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment continues to swirl in Jordan, where the campaign against the Iraqi regime was extremely unpopular. Some Jordanian sources said last week that mass demonstrations could have threatened stability in the Hashemite Kingdom.

"Ultimately, the government will be able to control the masses. Nevertheless, we have to tread lightly," in order not to spook Jordan, the Israeli source said.

But energy expert Dr. Amit Mor, president of Eco-Energy, said he believes that the pipeline would not have such a significant effect on the Israeli economy. He calculates that the pipeline would lower fuel prices by only 5 percent, or about $7 per ton of oil.

This would give the Israeli economy about a $70 million boost per year, certainly no reason for undue exuberance, he noted. Israel's GDP is around $100 billion.

"Anyway, it is a bit early to discuss this subject," he said skeptically, adding that geo-political reasons make it unwise to discuss this matter publicly for some time.

If exposed too early, the pipeline deal could damage both Israeli and American interests. It would also be foolhardy to depend too heavily on a single source for such a vital commodity as oil, considering the historical instability of the region, he noted.

Nevertheless, Paritsky is eager to meet with Jordanian counterparts to discuss future prospects. "I have not gotten an invitation yet," but would welcome an opportunity to discuss the matter with the Jordanians should the opportunity arise, he said.
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funny how this pipeline never gets touched by "insurgents"...
this all reminds me of the 70's, when Israel got free oil from the Shah in Iran.
This time around, Israel will get the cheap oil from Iraq.

and people said this war (these wars) were not about oil....HA!