Korean Job Discussion Forums

[stevemcgarrett]

blase:

And while you're at it, explain what you mean by "backed." If you're saying the U.S. supported the coup, in what form and to what extent?

If we merely concurred publicly with the change in government, that's not the same thing. And we didn't rush in to offer diplomatic recognition prematurely, now did we?

So set aside your spewing Chomskyian rhetoric for awhile and provide a rational defense. Sh-ort of that, I'll continue to ignore you.

But I do apologize for caricaturing Chavez as the Frito Bandito. He probably doesn't munch on corn chips from Dallas. But he is a bandito who likely eats corn tortillas from time to time, so maybe it's not too far off the mark.

But I digress....

[arjuna]

$300 MILLION FROM CHAVEZ TO FARC A FAKE

Here�s the written evidence
� and - please say it ain�t so! - Obama and Hillary attack Ecuador

By Greg Palast
Friday, March 6, 2008

http://www.gregpalast.com/300-million-from-chavez-to-farc-a-fake/


Do you believe this?

This past weekend, Colombia invaded Ecuador, killed a guerrilla chief in the jungle, opened his laptop � and what did the Colombians find? A message to Hugo Chavez that he sent the FARC guerrillas $300 million � which they�re using to obtain uranium to make a dirty bomb!

That�s what George Bush tells us. And he got that from his buddy, the strange right-wing President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe.

So: After the fact, Colombia justifies its attempt to provoke a border war as a way to stop the threat of WMDs! Uh, where have we heard that before?

The US press snorted up this line about Chavez� $300 million to �terrorists� quicker than the young Bush inhaling Colombia�s powdered export.

What the US press did not do is look at the evidence, the email in the magic laptop. (Presumably, the FARC leader�s last words were, �Listen, my password is �.�)

I read them. (You can read them here) While you can read it all in espa�ol, here is, in translation, the one and only mention of the alleged $300 million from Chavez:

�� With relation to the 300, which from now on we will call �dossier,� efforts are now going forward at the instructions of the boss to the cojo [slang term for �cripple�], which I will explain in a separate note. Let�s call the boss �ngel, and the cripple Ernesto.�

Got that? Where is Hugo? Where�s 300 million? And 300 what? Indeed, in context, the note is all about the hostage exchange with the FARC that Chavez was working on at the time (December 23, 2007) at the request of the Colombian government.

Indeed, the entire remainder of the email is all about the mechanism of the hostage exchange. Here�s the next line:
�To receive the three freed ones, Chavez proposes three options: Plan A. Do it to via of a �humanitarian caravan�; one that will involve Venezuela, France, the Vatican[?], Switzerland, European Union, democrats [civil society], Argentina, Red Cross, etc.�

As to the 300, I must note that the FARC�s previous prisoner exchange involved 300 prisoners. Is that what the �300� refers to? �Quien sabe? Unlike Uribe, Bush and the US press, I won�t guess or make up a phastasmogoric story about Chavez mailing checks to the jungle.

To bolster their case, the Colombians claim, with no evidence whatsoever, that the mysterious �Angel� is the code name for Chavez. But in the memo, Chavez goes by the code name � Chavez.

Well, so what? This is what . . . .
Colombia�s invasion into Ecuador is a rank violation of international law, condemned by every single Latin member of the Organization of American States. But George Bush just loved it. He called Uribe to back Colombia, against, �the continuing assault by narco-terrorists as well as the provocative maneuvers by the regime in Venezuela.�

Well, our President may have gotten the facts ass-backward, but Bush knows what he�s doing: shoring up his last, faltering ally in South America, Uribe, a desperate man in deep political trouble.

Uribe claims he is going to bring charges against Chavez before the International Criminal Court. If Uribe goes there in person, I suggest he take a toothbrush: it was just discovered that right-wing death squads held murder-planning sessions at Uribe�s ranch. Uribe�s associates have been called before the nation�s Supreme Court and may face prison.

In other words, it�s a good time for a desperate Uribe to use that old politico�s wheeze, the threat of war, to drown out accusations of his own criminality. Furthermore, Uribe�s attack literally killed negotiations with FARC by killing FARC�s negotiator, Raul Reyes. Reyes was in talks with both Ecuador and Chavez about another prisoner exchange. Uribe authorized the negotiations. However, Uribe knew, should those talks have succeeded in obtaining the release of those kidnapped by the FARC, credit would have been heaped on Ecuador and Chavez, and discredit heaped on Uribe.

Luckily for a hemisphere on the verge of flames, the President of Ecuador, Raphael Correa, is one of the most level-headed, thoughtful men I�ve ever encountered.

Correa is now flying from Quito to Brazilia to Caracas to keep the region from blowing sky high. While moving troops to his border � no chief of state can permit foreign tanks on their sovereign soil � Correa also refuses sanctuary to the FARC . Indeed, Ecuador has routed out 47 FARC bases, a better track record than Colombia�s own, corrupt military.

For his cool, peaceable handling of the crisis, I will forgive Correa for apologizing for his calling Bush, �a dimwitted President who has done great damage to his country and the world.� (Watch an excerpt of my interview with Correa here.)

Amateur Hour in Blue

We can trust Correa to keep the peace South of the Border. But can we trust our Presidents-to-be?

The current man in the Oval Office, George Bush, simply can�t help himself: an outlaw invasion by a right-wing death-squad promoter is just fine with him.

But guess who couldn�t wait to parrot the Bush line? Hillary Clinton, still explaining that her vote to invade Iraq was not a vote to invade Iraq, issued a statement nearly identical to Bush�s, blessing the invasion of Ecuador as Colombia�s �right to defend itself.� And she added, �Hugo Ch�vez must stop these provoking actions.� Huh?

I assumed that Obama wouldn�t jump on this landmine � especially after he was blasted as a foreign policy amateur for suggesting he would invade across Pakistan�s border to hunt terrorists.

It�s embarrassing that Barack repeated Hillary�s line nearly verbatim, announcing, �the Colombian government has every right to defend itself.�

(I�m sure Hillary�s position wasn�t influenced by the loan of a campaign jet to her by Frank Giustra. Giustra has given over a hundred million dollars to Bill Clinton projects. Last year, Bill introduced Giustra to Colombia�s Uribe. On the spot, Giustra cut a lucrative deal with Uribe for Colombian oil.)

Then there�s Mr. War Hero. John McCain weighed in with his own idiocies, announcing that, �Hugo Chavez is establish[ing] a dictatorship,� presumably because, unlike George Bush, Chavez counts all the votes in Venezuelan elections.

But now our story gets tricky and icky.

The wise media critic Jeff Cohen told me to watch for the press naming McCain as a foreign policy expert and labeling the Democrats as amateurs. Sure enough, the New York Times, on the news pages Wednesday, called McCain, �a national security pro.�

McCain is the �pro� who said the war in Iraq would cost nearly nothing in lives or treasury dollars.

But, on the Colombian invasion of Ecuador, McCain said, �I hope that tensions will be relaxed, President Chavez will remove those troops from the borders - as well as the Ecuadorians - and relations continue to improve between the two.�

It�s not quite English, but it�s definitely not Bush. And weirdly, it�s definitely not Obama and Clinton cheerleading Colombia�s war on Ecuador.

Democrats, are you listening? The only thing worse than the media attacking Obama and Clinton as amateurs is the Democratic candidates� frightening desire to prove them right.

******************
Watch Greg Palast�s reports from Venezuela and Ecuador for BBC Television Newsnight and Democracy Now! Compiled on the DVD, �The Assassination of Hugo Chavez.�

[arjuna]

Latin American crisis triggered by an assassination �Made in the USA�

By Bill Van Auken
7 March 2008

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/mar2008/colo-m07.shtml

Nearly a week after Colombia�s cross-border raid against an encampment of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrilla movement in neighboring Ecuador, Latin America continues to confront its worst regional diplomatic and military crisis in decades. The US government and mass media have weighed in with unsolicited judgments and advice, attributing the tense standoff between Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela to the threat of terrorism to Colombia, the complicity in terrorism on the part of Venezuela and overheated animosities between the respective heads of state of these three countries.

State Department spokesman Tom Casey declared that �it�s important to recognize that the events that took place were, in fact, a response to the presence of terrorists.� Similarly, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino affirmed that Colombia �was defending itself against terrorism.�

This official reaction extends to Colombia�Washington�s principal client state in South America and the recipient of some $600 million annually in American military aid�the mantle of the Bush Doctrine, which holds that in the �global war on terrorism� such niceties as respect for sovereign borders and international law no longer apply.

The Washington Post went a step further, calling the March 1 raid a �remarkable success� and accusing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa of �backing an armed movement with an established record of terrorism.� It compared the strike on the FARC camp to US air strikes against Al Qaeda in Pakistan.

And the New York Times, the voice of America�s erstwhile liberal establishment, found it �hard to believe that in the 21st century the democratically elected governments of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela would be talking about war.� While acknowledging that Colombia�s raid constituted �an infringement of Ecuador�s territory�a sensitive issue anywhere,� it urged the presumably hot-headed Latin leaders of Ecuador and Colombia to �cool their rhetoric and begin a serious discussion of how they can jointly secure their borders against the FARC.�

One would never guess that Washington had any role in the bloody events on the Colombian-Ecuadoran border. The Bush administration portrays itself�and is largely portrayed by a compliant media�as a selfless champion of democratic values and faithful ally of the people�s of the southern hemisphere.

The facts, however, tell another, far uglier story. The three Andean nations have been brought to the brink of war by a brutal and cold-blooded political assassination carried out to further the interests of US imperialism at the expense of the Colombian people and the population of the entire region.

The March 1 raid was carried out not to defend Colombia from terrorism, but to murder one man, Raul Reyes, considered the second-in-command of the FARC and the guerrilla movement�s principal international spokesman and diplomatic representative. He was well known in both Latin America and Europe, having served as the principal FARC negotiator in the abortive attempt under the government of President Andres Pastrana (1998-2002) to broker a peaceful settlement of the civil conflict that has wracked Colombia for more than four decades. During that same period, he met with officials of the Clinton State Department.

To carry out this political murder, air strikes were called in against the camp inside Ecuador as Reyes and some 20 of his comrades slept. Commandos were then sent into the camp to finish off most of the survivors and haul Reyes�s bloody corpse back to Colombia as a political trophy for the right-wing US-backed government of President Alvaro Uribe.

This ruthless attack was staged not to ward off some pending terrorist attack. On the contrary, it was designed as a �preemptive strike� against a negotiated release of hostages held by the FARC, among them a former presidential candidate, Ingrid Betancourt, who holds joint Colombian-French citizenship and has been held prisoner by the FARC for six years.

Just two days before the border massacre, French President Nicolas Sarkozy publicly called for the release of the ailing Betancourt and announced that he was prepared to fly to the Colombian border to personally receiver her.

The FARC itself issued a statement that Reyes had been working through Venezuelan President Chavez to concretize plans for a meeting with Sarkozy to arrange for the hand-over of Betancourt.

The French government has not denied this account. Indeed, on Monday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told the media, �It�s bad news that the man we were talking to, with whom we had contacts has been killed. Do you see how ugly the world is?�

Meanwhile, a French deputy foreign minister confirmed the role played by Chavez in mediating the Sarkozy-FARC hostage negotiations. �President Chavez has taken the initiative, he had taken the initiative earlier on that had allowed for the release of several hostages even though the situation had been blocked for some time, so we are aware of his involvement and the important role he has played,� the minister, Rama Yade, told a news conference in Geneva.

After the news of Reyes�s assassination, the French foreign ministry issued a pointed statement to the effect that the Colombian government was well informed that France was conducting negotiations with him.

This statement was fleshed out this week by the Argentine press. Citing sources in the Argentine foreign ministry, it reported that Sarkozy had sent a delegation of three personal envoys to Colombia and that they were in the border region to meet with Reyes.

�On Saturday [the day of the cross-border raid], the three negotiators were 200 kilometers from the attack zone and were headed for a meeting with Reyes when they received a call,� the daily Pagina 12 reported. It was Luis Carlos Restrepo, head of the Colombian government�s Peace Commission, who warned them not to go to the meeting place.


US role in Reyes�s assassination

Colombian officials have openly acknowledged the role of US intelligence agencies in instigating and coordinating the March 1 targeted assassination. General Oscar Naranjo, commander of the national police told reporters it was no secret that the Colombian military-police apparatus maintained �a very strong alliance with federal agencies of the US.�

The Colombian radio network, Radio Cadena Nacional (RCN), reported Wednesday that Reyes�s location was pinpointed by US intelligence as a result of monitoring a satellite phone call between the FARC leader and Venezuelan President Chavez. The February 27 call�three days before the raid�came after the FARC released to Venezuelan authorities four former Colombian legislators�Gloria Polanco, Luis Eladio Perez, Orlando Beltran and Jorge Eduardo Gechem�who had been held hostage for nearly seven years.

�Chavez was thrilled by the release of the hostages, and called Reyes to tell him that everything went well,� RCN reported. Presumably, the CIA or other US intelligence agencies were also tapping phone calls between Reyes and French officials over the proposed release of Betancourt.

Another Colombian station, Noticias Uno, cited intelligence sources as saying that they had received photographs from �foreign spy planes� pinpointing the location of Reyes�s camp in Ecuador.

The Colombian police commander insisted that, while relying on US intelligence, the March 1 attack was an �autonomous operation.�

This claim is improbable to say the least. US military �trainers� are attached to the elite counterinsurgency units that would have been employed in the ground attack that finished off the survivors of the aerial bombardment.

As for the air raid itself, Ecuador�s Defense Minister Wellington Sandoval reported the attack included the use of five �smart bombs� of the type utilized by the US military. �It is a bomb that hits within a meter of where it is programmed, from high velocity airplanes,� he said. He added that to target Reyes with such weapons, �they needed equipment that Latin American armed forces do not have.�

Both Washington and the right-wing regime in Colombia were determined to stop any further hostage releases in order to further efforts to politically isolate the Chavez regime and to enforce the Bush administration�s proscription against negotiations with �terrorists.�

At the same time, the bombs dropped on the FARC encampment were undoubtedly also meant as a message to Sarkozy not to meddle in Yankee imperialism�s �backyard.� It should be recalled that the French president, shortly after his election, sent his then-wife to Libya to consummate the release of six medical workers who had been held for eight years on false charges. This political coup managed to bypass the European Union, which had been negotiating the release, and paved the way for lucrative Libyan contracts for French corporations. Washington had no intention of seeing Paris pursue a similar path in relation to Venezuela, which constitutes the fourth largest source of US oil imports.

In the final analysis, this episode in the �global war on terrorism,� which has brought three South American nations to the brink of armed conflict, is the product of a filthy political murder carried out to defend the strategic and profit interests of US capitalism.

It is a reminder that �Murder, Inc.��as the CIA became known during the 1960s and 1970s, when it organized numerous assassinations and assassination attempts, along with right-wing coups and dirty wars�is still very much in business in Latin America.

[Gopher]

[blaseblasphemener]

[bucheon bum]

blas, if you can provide any links showing Chavez has improved the well-being of Venezuela's citizens, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Chavez is incompetent, that's my problem with him. I could care less about his feelings about America or his diatribes against it.

I'm headed to bed but I will try to provide a few links sometime this week to illustrate his poor governance. I know I've posted articles on at least a couple occasions that pointed out his failures.

Here is one for you to start with:

Propoganda, not Literacy

[agentX]

Looks like phase 3 of the Chavez plan is already in action.

http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/International/2008/03/10/4958931-sun.html

[stevemcgarrett]

Will do, agent X, and you keep hittin' that bong with Michael "Eco BigFootprint" Moore and Al "Make-em-Laugh" Franken.

[blaseblasphemener]

I see the CIA is going to page 1 of it's playbook. VENEZUELA'S GOING TO MAKE A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION!!! AHHHHHHH! Quick, put sanctions on them! Starve their people! Cut off medical supplies! Make up false evidence! Don't worry, no one from the American press will check anything! They will just quote Pentagon and State Department sources! It'll be hard to sell that these salsa dancing, beef eating South Americans are somehow related to Al Quaeda, but say it enough times and most Americans will buy it. COMMIES!!! REDS!!! COMMIE REDS!!!

[Pluto]

[blaseblasphemener]

http://www.rethinkvenezuela.com/downloads/ceprpov.htm

Link for the Chronic.

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]

How would things be for Chavez if oil was 22$ a barrel?

[blaseblasphemener]

[blaseblasphemener]

[Joo Rip Gwa Rhhee]