What gives me a warm fuzzy feeling is that clearly they're doing exactly what Chavez expected them to do. They look awful dangerous, but they've been maneuvered into a corner where it was act now or let Chavez--and, worse, the people and "el proceso"--win. And now is not a good time for them to act--they have less media power than they used to, Chavez is high in the polls, the economy is rocking, his party dominates parliament and he just won a strong mandate on a socialist platform, so he can't even be accused of bait-and-switch.
The CIA and the opposition can pull all the dirty tricks they want. The people will bury them. In the process the opposition will discredit themselves severely--again--and they'll be too busy licking their wounds after the referendum to block Chavez when he starts implementing the reforms to go with the constitutional enabling laws. Chavez would seem to be like five times as smart as they are.
Meanwhile, Glavin is resurrecting the old "Chavez is an anti-Semite" canard. And the source he quotes notes near the end that the Venezuelan Jewish community disagrees with this politically-motivated smear. Not to mention other reasonable folk.
But what else can we expect from a fellow who thinks being called a "neo-con" is anti-Semitic?
For the record, here's the original Spanish:
El mundo tiene para todos, pues, pero resulta que unas minorías, los descendientes de los mismos que crucificaron a Cristo, los descendientes de los mismos que echaron a Bolívar de aquí y también lo crucificaron a su manera en Santa Marta, allá en Colombia. Una minoría se adueñó de las riquezas del mundo, una minoría se adueñó del oro del planeta, de la plata, de los minerales, de las aguas, de las tierras buenas, del petróleo, de las riquezas,pues, y han concentrado las riquezas en pocas manos: menos del diez por ciento de la población del mundo es dueña de más de la mitad de la riqueza de todo el mundo y a la...más de la mitad de los pobladores del planeta son pobres y cada día hay más pobres en el mundo entero.
The Romans with the complicity of local elites two millennia ago, and rich elites throughout history. To read "Jews" into this is seeing what Glavin and his right-wing allies want to see.
What does Chavez think of anti-Semitism?
Chávez drew on Peronism through his relationship with the Argentine sociologist Norberto Ceresole, a complex and eccentric character who advised him for years before he dismissed him –among other things because of his declared anti-Semitism– and ordered his expulsion from Venezuela in 1999.
Before you get all excited about this, don't you think you should at least wait for some authentication? Chavez likes to blame the CIA for every ill that happens everywhere (because of course, Chavez can do no wrong himself), so its about time he blamed the CIA for the faltering support for his constitutional changes.
You know, the CIA aren't the only organization to engage in false flag, deception and misinformation operations.
By all means, let's see what unfolds. But you'll admit that this is a well-thumbed script, Sean.
Time, I say, for the Company to get to good business.
Mark
Ottawa
Yeah, Mark, like 1973. I've seen that movie before.
Well, for Mr. Pelette and Mr. Collins, clearly Chavez has done plenty of wrong. Doubling the real income of the bottom 60% of the population, free health care and education, cheap food, not to mention the communal councils giving the proles the idea they might get to have a voice in anything--why, it's just unconscionable! What if Canadians were to start getting ideas like that? We'd *never* be able to properly kill medicare!
***Stay tuned for official US denials, cover-ups, and the other assorted dirty-tricks paraphernalia of the Manifest Destiny crowd.***
yeah, the "manifest destiny" crowd, better what out for them! ya know how there's one under every bed...
You again? No one reading your blog, or what?
Betcha you had to look up "Manifest Destiny," too.
Yeah, Chavez has done this script before. So has that rag Counterpunch. Many times in fact.
Chavez is doing a fine enough job of destabilizing Venezuela on his own. There is no need for the CIA to do anything.
And why they would write memorandums in Spanish is open question.
BTW, your opinion poll link doesn't work properly.
The opinion poll links work fine for me, Sean.
The original memo wasn't in Spanish. The original English version is supposed to be released into "the public sphere" and be made available for examination. We'll see.
I was referring, of course, to CIA destabilization endeavours all around the globe, although they've been intimately involved in Latin American politics for decades. As you should know.
Chavez is eliminating poverty in Venezuela, and breaking the power of the elites. That alone makes him a serious US target, if you're familiar with Latin American history.
LOL. I love how progressives fawn all over so called "leftist" dictators. And let's face it, that is what Chavez is. I cannot understand how anyone could support a man who suborns his own country's constitution to grant himself exclusive legislative, and executive powers for life. Oh, sure, the usual arguments about helping the poor, etcetera are trotted out and all. However, guys like this do more harm than good.
One indication of this is the current milk shortage in Venezuela. That's right, milk. Dairy is in such short supply that it cannot be found virtually anywhere. This in a country that used to be a net exporter of dairy. This is reminiscent of the destruction caused by Castro and Guevera to Cuban agriculture. Within less than a decade, Cuba, which had been an exporter of numerous food stuffs to South, Central and North America was unable to feed it's own population. Why? Guevera's disastrous collectivization program, in the name of sound socialist economic theory had destroyed agricultural productivity.
And today, we see a crowd on Bilivar Boulevard estimated at 160,000 people to protest Sunday's so called referandum. I find it hard to believe the CIA organized this. That, and the fact that most trade unionists and student groups in Venezuela oppose Chavez pokes holes in the conspiracy theories. Mind you, Chavez merely dismisses them all as spoiled rich kids.
Face it, the man is a thug, and is running the country to benefit himself, and his cronies, and not some vaunted and sainted hero of the poor.
Progressives do make me laugh though.
Dawg;
The memo we were presented with was in Spanish. Why is it taking so long to show the real one?
CIA destabilization efforts are not universal. Just because Venezuela is experiencing some upheavals doesn't mean that the CIA is behind it. I would be more inclined to believe this if we were still in the midst of the Cold War when the competition between capitalism and communism was still in the balance. And if Chavez wasn't so obviously a thug, a demagogue and self-proclaimed revolutionary.
The logic of revolution dictates that if the revolution doesn't work out as planned it can't be that the revolution is flawed, it must be due to a conspiracy of domestic counter-revolutionaries and their foreign backers. How often did we heard that script over the past century?
If this is a genuine socialist revolution, then it doesn't require that Chavez be able to rule in perpetuity as that would be a violation of its democratic principles. Chavez is obviously trying to tie the revolutions ideals to himself personally. An indication that he is sliding into adopting the Fuhrer principle.
Now I know that Chavez has done some good things for the poor, but he is not eliminating poverty. His health and eduaction programs were a very good start. But giving out money gratis only fuels inflation, which erodes any income gains the poor of Venezuela are being given. Chavez is seriously mismanaging the country's economy and that will not help the poor.
A memo such as the one described here would have been encrypted before transmission. Pretty unlikely that Chavez's monkeys would have the sophistication to decrypt it.
Ex-spook (and ex-State dept. official) Larry Johnson has some things to say about the authenticity of the Steele memo.
As the official bubble burster let me state for the record, this is patent nonsense. State Department officers do not write memos to Hayden. Particularly mid-level Foreign Service Officers. A CIA officer under diplomatic cover sends his communications to headquarters via an encoded message. We call these messages cables, harkening back to the days of telegraphs and telegrams.
This, in my judgment, is the work–very clumsy work at that–of the Venezuelan intelligence service eager to build on the truth that the United States has sought to oust Chavez. All of this is quite convenient with Venezuelan elections on the horizon. It may be hamhanded, but for internal Venezuelan consumption, this is brilliant psyops and should help Chavez further demonize the equally clumsy Americans.
I would be shocked if the CIA weren't mucking about, as they have for decades, but I guess we should stay tuned for further authentification.
This is a very unsophisticated black operation, possibly coming from the DGI. Anyone with the slightest knowledge of how the USG works and communicates would know immediately that this is a fake. U.S. embassies, like their counterparts in many other countries, use encryption on a one-time basis that is impossible to decipher. To say that Chavez's intelligence operatives have "deciphered" a CIA communication is to credit them with a lot more intelligence than they, or for that matter, any other similar organization in the world has. Also, a confidential classification is reserved for routine matters, such as a report of a conversation with someone who needs to be protected. If the conversation involved matters where the informant could be killed if disclosed, the classification would be much higher. Also, middle level officials in our embassies do not send memos directly to their agency chiefs, but they go through channels.
The whole purpose of this game is to cow anyone who opposes Chavez and to discredit any ties between the democratic opposition and their counterparts in Western democracies.
Certainly the CIA has played games like this before: but I am persuaded by some of the commenters here, not to mention Larry Johnson, that this "intercepted message" has a bad feel about it. The point about encryption in particular is an excellent one.
I shall publish an update about the matter, attached to this post, very shortly.
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