[1363] in peace2
AI 133: USA to instigate Coup in South America!!!! (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John S Reed)
Sun Jan 6 08:25:05 2002
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Date: Sun, 06 Jan 2002 08:24:58 -0500
From: John S Reed <jreed@MIT.EDU>
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In an alarming development, rumors are brewing that
the United States is in the process of instigating a
coup in Venezuela becuase they are charging higher
royalties to Western oil companies as of Jan 1 2002.
San Francisco Examiner
December 29, 2001
The Scent of Another Coup
By Conn Hallinan
There is the smell of a coup in the air these days.
It was like this
in Iran just before the 1953 U.S.-backed coup
overthrew the Mossedeah
government and installed the Shah. It has the feel of
1963 in South
Vietnam, before the military takeover switched
on the light at the end of the long and terrible
Southeast Asian
tunnel. It is hauntingly similar to early September
1973, before the
coup in Chile ushered in 20 years of blood and
darkness.
Early last month, the National Security Agency, the
Pentagon and the
U.S. State
Department held a two-day meeting on U.S. policy
toward Venezuela.
Similar such
meetings took place in 1953, 1963, and 1973, as well
as before coups
in Guatemala, Brazil and Argentina. It should send a
deep chill down the
backs of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and the
populist coalition
that took power in 1998.
The catalyst for the Nov. 5-7 interagency get together
was a comment
by Chavez
in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist assault on the
World Trade
Center and the Pentagon. While Chavez sharply
condemned the attack, he
questioned the value of bombing Afghanistan, calling
it “fighting
terrorism with terrorism.” In response, the Bush Ad
ministration temporarily withdrew its Ambassador and
convened the
meeting.
The outcome was a requirement that Venezuela
“unequivocally” condemn
terrorism, including repudiating anything and anyone
the Bush
Administration defines as “terrorist.” Since this
includes both Cuba
(which Venezuela has extensive trade relations with)
and rebel groups in
neighboring Colombia (which Chavez is sympathetic
to), the demand was the equivalent of throwing down
the gauntlet.
The spark for the statement might have been Sept. 11,
but the dark clouds
gathering over Venezuela have much more to do with
enduring
matters—like oil, land and power—than current issues
like terrorism.
The Chavez government is presently trying to change
the 60-year old
agreement
with foreign oil companies that charges them as
little as 1 percent
in royalties, plus hands out huge tax breaks. There
is a lot at stake
here. Venezuela has 77 billion barrels of proven
reserves, and is the
US’s third biggest source of oil. It is also
a major cash cow for the likes of Phillips Petroleum
and ExxonMobil.
If
the new law goes through, U.S. and French oil
companies will have to
pony up a bigger slice of their take.
A larger slice is desperately needed in Venezuela. In
spite of the
fact that oil generates some $30 billion each year,
80 percent of
Venezuelans are, according to government figures,
“poor,” and half of
those are malnourished. Most rural Venezuelans have
no access to land except to work it for someone else,
because 2
percent of the population controls 60 percent of the
land.
The staggering gap between a tiny slice of “haves”
and the sea of
“have nots” is little talked about in the American
media, which tends to
focus on President Chavez’s long-winded speeches and
unrest among the
urban wealthy and middle class. U.S. newspap
ers covered the Dec. 10 “strike” by business leaders
and a section of
the union movement protesting a series of economic
laws and land
reform
proposals, but not the fact that the Chavez
government has reduced
inflation from 40 percent to 12 percent, gener
ated economic growth of 4 percent, and increased
primary school
enrollment by one million students.
Rumblings from Washington, strikes by business
leaders, and
pot-banging
demonstrations by middle-class housewives are the
fare most
Americans get about
Venezuela these days. For any balance one has to go to
the reporting
of local journalists John Marshall and Christian
Parenti. In a Dec. 10
article in the Chicago-based bi-weekly, In These
Times, the two
reporters give “the other side” that the US media
always goes on about but rarely practices: The
attempts by the
Venezuelan government to diversify its economy, turn
over idle land to
landless peasants, encourage the growth of coops
based on the highly
successful Hungarian model, increase health spendin
g fourfold, and provide
drugs for 30 to 40 percent below cost.
But the alleviation of poverty is not on Washington’s
radar screen
these days.
Instead, U.S. development loans have been frozen, and
the State
Department’s specialist on Latin America, Peter
Romero has accused the
Chavez government of supporting terrorism in
Colombia, Bolivia and
Ecuador. These days that is almost a declaration of
war and certainly a green light to any anti-Chavez
forces considering
a
military coup.
U.S. hostility to Venezuela’s efforts to overcome its
lack of
development has
helped add that country to the South American “arc of
instability”
that runs from Caracas in the north to Buenos Aires
in the south, and
includes Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. Failed
neoliberal economic
policies, coupled with corruption and autho
ritarism have made the region a power keg, as recent
events in
Argentina
demonstrate. And the Bush Administration’s antidote? :
Matches,
incendiary statements, and dark armies
moving in the night.
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