Reply #11: You heard it here!

[Judi Lynn]

Still At It in Venezuela

posted by Oread Daily on Wednesday August 11 2004 @ 01:44PM PDT


STILL AT IT

US Ambassador to Venezuela, Charles Shapiro, acknowledged the US financed certain sectors of the opposition taking part in the presidential referendum on August 15. Ambassador Shapiro made the statement based on declarations emitted by the Sub Secretary of State for US Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roger Noriega, who acknowledged that his government had invested great quantities of money in the Venezuelan referendum. Shapiro said the money was not for a political campaign but for “specific programs.”

One way the US funds anti-Chavez forces is via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED has and is funding many of the same groups which took part in the failed coup against Chavez back in 2002. Some 2,000 pages of newly disclosed documents show that the little-known National Endowment for Democracy is financing a vast array of groups: campesinos, businessmen, former military officials, unions, lawyers, educators, even an organization leading a recall drive against Chávez. “It certainly shows an incredible pattern of financing basically every single sector in Venezuelan society,” said Eva Golinger, the Brooklyn, N.Y.-based attorney who helped obtain the documents through Freedom of Information Act requests. “That’s the most amazing part about it.”

One organization, Sumate, which received a $53,400 grant in September, is organizing the recall referendum against Chávez, Golinger said. The head of another group, Leonardo Carvajal of the Asociación Civil Asamblea de Educación, was named education minister by “dictator for a day” Pedro Carmona, a leading businessman who briefly took over Venezuela during an April 2002 coup against Chávez, she said. A leader of a third group assisted by the National Endowment for Democracy and its subsidiary organizations, Leopoldo Martínez of the right-wing Primero Justicia party, was named finance minister by Carmona, she said.

The NED’s involvement in Venezuela “is in keeping with a pattern from NED’s very origins when the Reagan administration used it to do overtly what it was trying to do covertly in Nicaragua -- undermine the Sandinista revolution,” said Peter Kornbluh of the National Security Archive in Washington.
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http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=04/08/11/7044087

Side view:



Full frontal Shapiro:



Arrogant US Ambassador to Venezuela Charles S. Shapiro says its not a crime to kill a President...

In an Associated Press (AP) dispatch the United States government has said it will open up an investigation into allegations made by Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias relative to conspiracy to assassinate him. Chavez Frias has said that "terrorist groups" in southern Florida have allied with Miami-based anti-Castro radicals.


USA Caracas Ambassador
Charles Shapiro

Amazingly US Ambassador to Venezuela, Charles S. Shapiro says "it is not necessarily a crime ... but we are in the full process of collecting information and we must follow all legal procedures ... if there is anyone to blame, our government knows what to do!"

With typical Washington cover-up rhetoric, Shapiro shakily admits that he has received information that "some Venezuelans have been receiving military training in the United States." He further admits that the information was also published in a Miami newspaper a year ago ... but remains remarkably silent as to why no action was taken by proper authorities Stateside. "We're not going to take action against anybody ... we haven't been able to make any headway!"
(snip/...)

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=11205
(Free registration required)


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CIA involvement in Venezuela

Hands Off Venezuela Campaign- http://www.handsoffvenezuela.org
---------------------------------------------------------- Venezuelan Group to file court cases against U.S.Ambassador Charles Shapiro

*by Cort Greene*

Caracas,Venezuela April-11-2004

The Association of Victims of the April 11,2002 coup against Hugo Chavez (ASOVIC) have said that they will file court papers at the World Court in the Hague and in the U.S.Courts, charging U.S.Ambassador to Venezuela, Charles Shapiro for his involement in sniper shootings at the Llaguno Bridge durning the coup against President Chavez at the Miraflores Palace, that left several people dead, including a jounalist.

Charles Shapiro is no stranger to being a participant with military coups, having been Deputy Chief of the Mission ( a position usually staffed by the CIA) at the U.S.Embassey in Chile at the time of the bloody and murderous military coup against the democraticly elected President Salvador Allende on September 11,1973.The U.S goverment inspired coup, carrried out by the CIA and Armed Forces of Chile, left in place a terrorist dictatorship for more than a decade.

In a statement by Merly Morales, spokeswoman for the lawyers of the (ASOVIC)," there are elements for conviction, in which in our judgement, serve as evidence to ask for the opening of an inquiry before the U.S.Courts and the appropiate international tribunals" against Ambassador Shapiro.

Evidence ranges from special courses in assault tactics given by U.S.authorities to members of the Caracas Metropolitan Police Phoenix Group and the Chacao and Baruta Municipal Police in the months leading up to the coup to conversations that were recorded in the Center of Operations of the Metropolitan Police on April 11, 2002 between Police Commissioner Forero and Ambassador Shapiro (code name Zeus 32 America) durning the hours of fighting and shots being fired against people with references from the Center that the Phoenix Group should use long-range rifles to neutralize the "talibans" who the police refered to as the pro-Chavez supporters at the Miraflores Palace.
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http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/04/1677334.php