Stephen Lendman's article is incredibly detailed, and provides a wide, comprehensive and meticulously researched historical overview, as well as insightful up to the minute analysis-- including a deconstruction of the familiar complicity of the pimp media.
Just as Iraq, Gaza, Mogadishu, Darfur, Guantanamo, are windows into what is being done to US- here in the USA- so too is Venezuela--
Lendman correlates the US actions in Venezuela to recent acts of political repression and sabotage here at home- most particularly the outrageous invasion and confiscation of Ron Paul's Liberty Dollar project.
Below are some excerpts, but I urge you to read the entire article.
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Coup D'Etat Rumblings in Venezuela
by Stephen Lendman; November 19, 2007
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=14325
The Bush administration tried and failed three prior times to oust Hugo Chavez since its first aborted two-day coup attempt in April, 2002. Through FOIA requests, lawyer, activist and author Eva Golinger uncovered top secret CIA documents of US involvement that included an intricate financing scheme involving the quasi-governmental agency, National Endowment of Democracy (NED), and US Agency for International Development (USAID). The documents also showed the White House, State Department and National Security Agency had full knowledge of the scheme, had to have approved it, and there's little doubt of CIA involvement as it's always part of this kind of dirty business. What's worrying now is what went on then may be happening again in what looks like a prelude to a fourth made-in-Washington attempt to oust the Venezuelan leader that must be monitored closely as events develop.
Since he took office in February, 1999, and especially after George Bush's election, Chavez has been a US target, and this time he believes credible sources point to a plot to assassinate him. That information comes from Alimamy Bakarr Sankoh, president of the Hugo Chavez International-Foundation for Peace, Friendship & Solidarity (HCI-FPFS) in a November 11 press release. Sankoh supports Chavez as "a man of peace and flamboyant champion of human dignity (who persists in his efforts in spite of) growing US blackmail, sabotage and political blasphemy."
HCI-FPFS sources revealed the plot's code name - "Operation Cleanse Venezuela" that now may be unfolding ahead of the December 2 referendum on constitutional reforms. According to Sankoh, the scheme sounds familiar - CIA and other foreign secret service operatives (including anti-Castro terrorists) aiming to destabilize the Chavez government by using "at least three concrete subversive plans" to destroy the country's social democracy and kill Chavez.
It involves infiltrating subversive elements into the country, inciting opposition within the military, ordering region-based US forces to shoot down any aircraft used by Chavez, employing trained snipers with shoot to kill orders, and having the dominant US and Venezuelan media act as supportive attack dogs. Chavez is targeted because he represents the greatest of all threats to US hegemony in the region - a good example that's spreading. Venezuela also has Latin America's largest proved oil reserves at a time supplies are tight and prices are at all-time highs.
Sankoh calls Washington-directed threats "real" and to "be treated seriously" to avoid extending Bush's Middle East adventurism to Latin America. He calls for support from the region and world community to denounce the scheme and help stop another Bush administration regime change attempt.
More information on a possible coup plot also came from a November 13 Party for Socialism and Liberation article headlined "New US plots against the Venezuelan Revolution." It states Tribuna Popular (the Communist Party of Venezuela) and Prensa Latina (the Latin American News Agency) reported: "Between Oct. 7 and Oct 9, high-ranking US officials met in Prague, Czech Republic, with parts of the Venezuelan opposition (where they were) urged to convene social uprisings, sabotage the economy and infrastructure, destroy the food transportation chain and plan a military coup." It said Paul Wolfowitz and Madeleine Albright attended along with Humberto Celli, "a well-known coup-plotter from the Venezuelan party Accion Democratica."
The article further reported Tibisay Lucena, The National Electoral Council chairman, said the Venezuelan corporate media was "stoking a mood of violence amongst right-wing students" through a campaign of agitprop, and Hermann Escarra from the "pro-coup" Comando Nacional de la Resistencia openly incited "rebellion" last August and then called for constitutional changes to be stopped "through all means possible."
The Venezuelan news agency, Diaria VEA, also weighed in saying "anonymous students planned on committing acts of destabilization" as the December 2 vote approaches. Venezuelan Radio Trans Mundial provided proof with a recorded video of a youth dumping gasoline into an armored vehicle, ramming metal barricades into police on top of other vehicles, and knocking them from their roofs and hoods onto the ground...
Venezuela's Foreign Minister, Nicolas Maduro, weighed in on this on November 8. He accused Washington of meddling by staging violent Caracas street protests against proposed constitutional reforms to extend the country's participatory social democracy. Referring to a November 7 shootout at Caracas' Central University, he said: "We don't have any doubt that the government of the United States has their hands in the scheme that led to the ambush yesterday" that Chavez calls a "fascist offensive." Several students were wounded on the streets from a clash between pro and anti-Chavez elements.
"We know the whole scheme," Maduro added, and he should as it happened before in 2002, again during the disruptive 2002-03 oil management lockout, and most often as well when elections are held to disrupt the democratic process. These are standard CIA operating tactics used many times before for 50 years in the Agency's efforts to topple independent leaders and kill them. Chavez understands what's happening, and he's well briefed and alerted by his ally, Fidel Castro, who survived over 600 US attempts to kill him since 1959. He's now 81 and very much alive but going through a difficult recovery from major surgery 15 months ago.
Chavez has widespread popular support throughout the region and from allies like Ecuador's Raphael Correa and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega who expressed his "solidarity with the revolutionary people of Venezuela and our friend Hugo Chavez, who is being subjected to aggression from a counterrevolution fed by the traitors from inside the country and by the empire (referring to the US)." He compared the situation to his own country where similar efforts are being "financed by the United States Embassy" in Managua to support elements opposed to his Sandinista government even though it's very accommodative to Washington.
Even Brazil's Lula chimed in by calling Chavez's proposed reforms consistent with Venezuela's democratic norms, and he added: "Please, invent anything to criticize Chavez, except for lack of democracy."
In their anti-government zeal, CNN and other dominant media ignore the many pro-Chavez events writer Fred Fuentes calls a "red hurricane" sweeping the country. An impressive one was held on November 4 when the President addressed hundreds of thousands of supporters who participated in an 8.5 kilometer Caracas march while similar pro-reform rallies took place at the same time around the country. They're the start of a "yes" campaign for a large December 2 turnout that's vital as polls show strong pro-reform support by a near two to one margin.
The pattern now unfolding on Caracas streets is similar to what happened ahead of the April, 2002 aborted coup attempt, and Petras calls it "the most serious threat (to the President) since" that time. The corporate media then claimed pro-government supporters instigated street violence and fired on "unarmed" opposition protesters. In fact, that was later proved a lie as anti-Chavez "snipers" did the firing as part of the plot that became the coup. A similar scheme may now be unfolding in Caracas and on other campuses around the country as well.
...when protests of any kind happen in the US, police usually attack them with tear gas, beatings and mass arrests to crush their democratic spirit and prevent it from being expressed as our Constitution's First and most important amendment guarantees. In Venezuela, the spirit of democracy lives. It never existed in the US, and we want to export our way to everyone and by force if necessary.
Here's a November 15 breaking news example of our way in action. At 8:00AM, 12 FBI and Secret Service agents raided the Liberty Dollar Company's office in Evansville, IN and for the next six hours removed two tons of legal Ron Paul Dollars along with all the gold, silver and platinum at the location. They also took all location files and computers and froze Liberty Dollar's bank accounts in an outrageous police state action against a legitimate business. This move also seems intended to impugn the integrity of a presidential candidate gaining popularity because he defies the bellicose mainstream and wants more people empowerment.
Chavez champions another way and answered his critics at a November 14 Miraflores Presidential Palace press conference where he denounced them for lying about his reform package. He explained his aim is to strengthen Venezuela's independence and transfer power to the people, not increase his own. "For many years in Venezuela," he said, "they weakened the powers of the state as part of the neoliberal imperial plan....to weaken the economies of countries to insure domination. While we remained weak, imperialism was strengthened," and he elaborated.
He then continued to stress his most important reform "is the transfer of power to the people" through an explosion of grassroots communal, worker, student and campesino councils, formations of them into regional and national federations, and the formation of "communes (to) constitute the basic nucleus of the socialist state." Earlier Chavez stated that democratizing the economy "is the only way to defeat poverty, to defeat misery and achieve the largest sum of happiness for the people." He's not just saying this. He believes and acts on it, and that's why elitists target him for removal even though he wants equity for everyone, even his critics, and business continues to thrive under his government. But not like in the "good old" days when it was all one-way.
Events Are Ugly and Coming to A Head
Through the dominant media, Washington and Venezuelan anti-Chavez elements are using constitutional reform as a pretext for what they may have in mind - "to arouse the military to intervene" and oust Chavez, as Petras notes in his article titled "Venezuela: Between Ballots and Bullets." He explains the opposition "rich and privileged (coalition) fear constitutional reforms because they will have to grant a greater share of their (considerable) profits to the working class, lose their monopoly over market transactions to publicly owned firms, and see political power evolve toward local community councils and the executive branch."
Petras is worried and says "class polarization....has reached its most extreme expression" as December 2 approaches: "the remains of the multi-class coalition embracing a minority of the middle class and the great majority of (workers) is disintegrating (and) political defections have increased (including 14) deputies in the National Assembly." Add to them former Chavez Defense Minister, Raul Baduel, who Petras believes may be "an aspirant to head up a US-backed right-wing seizure of power."
The situation is ugly and dangerous, and lots of US money and influence fuels it. Petras puts it this way: "Venezuelan democracy, the Presidency of Hugo Chave zand the great majority of the popular classes face a mortal threat." An alliance between Washington, local oligarchs and elitist supporters of the "right" are committed to ousting Chavez and may feel now is their best chance. Venezuela's social democracy is on the line in the crucial December 2 vote, and the entire region depends on it solidifying and surviving.
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