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Chavez should read this article in a nationally televised speech. It is incredible. Our taxpayer dollars are being used to fund and organize the opposition against Chavez--a losing opposition campaign with only 30% to 40% support (according to all objective polling)--and to provide PR political "branding" and false polls, as well as false claims of election fraud, in order to foment civil disorder and another coup attempt. The PR corporation (Penn, Schoen & Berland) that is being paid to do this by our State Department--and that has conducted similar CIA-instigated fraudulent campaigns in the Ukraine and elsewhere--is based in Washington DC!
If another country did that to us, it would be reason to throw their diplomats out of our country, and bar travel here by that country's citizens. It is ILLEGAL here, as it is in Venezuela, for political campaigns to accept foreign money! It would further permanently taint any politicians associated with an attempted coup here, and possibly get them charged with crimes and imprisoned. It is, in effect, treason. That's what Venezuela's rich oil elite is guilty of in this case, treason against their own country--fomented by the Bush Junta.
Chavez is right that the issue in Venezuela and throughout Latin America is their sovereignty and SELF-DETERMINATION. That is what the Boliviarian Revolution, of which Chavez is the most prominent spokesman, is all about. This massive interference by the Bushites, NED, USAID and the US State Department is a prime example of why Latin Americans need to focus on self-determination.
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"...they must get enough people out into the streets in order to create a situation in which a transition of power could take place. Here is where Penn, Schoen & Berland comes in. In the recent months in the lead up to the December 2006 elections, Penn, Schoen & Berland has been instrumental in shaping public perception. In a series of election polls widely covered in the private media, the polling firm has consistently shown that Chavez's lead is shrinking and the opposition is gaining momentum, while all of the other surveys done over the last few months show that Chavez maintains a wide lead of between 20 and 30 percent.(9)
(snip)
"With the help of the mainstream media, almost all of which is vehemently opposed to the popular president, these fake polls have reached a wide audience. All the newspapers, the major television channels, and internet news sites report the poll results as if they were true and valid findings. They don't mention the fact that these findings are not supported by any other polling agency. Again, although the reality is that Rosales has almost no chance of winning in the December elections, much of the population now believes he will. The reality doesn't seem to matter. All that really matters is what the populace believes. When their candidate loses by a large margin, it will be a difficult reality to deal with. If the opposition strategy works, it might be possible to produce large protests and even riots.
"Two weeks ago on Globovision, one of the major private channels in Venezuela, opposition leader Rafael Poleo called on Venezuelans to do the 'Ukrainian' on the day after the elections.(11) Claiming the elections will be fraudulent, Poleo, who was involved in the 2002 coup attempt, described in detail a 'plan' to remove Chavez from power after the elections. Comparing it to the 'Orange Revolution', the plan calls for Venezuelans to come out en masse to protest against the Chavez government and what they call 'fraudulent elections.' Poleo then made a call to the high military command to back this 'movement', in what basically amounts to a call to overthrow the government."
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I might add that it's not just the Bush Junta. Many Democrats voted FOR this funding to directly interfere in other countries' elections, in the interest of global corporate predators, who want to reinstall fascist dictators in South America.
I don't think it will work. The peaceful, democratic, leftist (majorityist) revolution that is occurring all over Latin America is deeply rooted and unstoppable. But this noxious interference can cause a lot of trouble and even get people killed, and that is likely its purpose. Bushites thrive on chaos. And if they can provoke the Chavez government to retaliate in any way against this disgusting "plan," or to take normal measures to maintain civil order, this would then be used to accuse Chavez of "authoritarianism." Our war profiteering corporate news monopolies have accused him of that--in lockstep, all speaking the same lines (dictated from the State Department)--with no evidence of it at all. So they would not hesitate to take the slightest evidence of a reaction and blow it up into "'Stalinism." In fact, I think that's the Bushites' purpose--to push the Chavez government to do something--anything--that they can "interpret" as dictatorial. If he calls out national guard troops to quell Penn, Schoen & Berland-instigated fascist riots, as any good president would, he will be charged with suppression. And I also think there is a dual purpose here--both to try to instigate riots and a coup, if they can, and ALSO to further slander and discredit the justice-minded Chavez government, so that we in the U.S. will not get ideas about what a true populist government could do for us here.
But again, the Latin Americans have become savvy about the ways of Bushites and global corporate predators. For instance, last week, the president of Brazil, Lula da Silva, visited Chavez for the inauguration of a new bridge over the Orinoco River between their two countries, in an obvious gesture of solidarity with Chavez only a few weeks before the election. The leftist candidate in Ecuador recently repeated Chavez's charge against Bush at the UN (that Bush is "the devil"). And the OAS will be present monitoring the Venezuelan elections, along with the EU election monitoring group, which has 130 monitors arriving in Venezuela right about now. The Carter Center will likely again participate. All three of these groups have declared Venezuelan elections honest and aboveboard in the past.
In Bolivia, the people rose up and threw Bechtel Corporation out of their country (for privatizing the water in one Bolivian city and then jacking up the prices to the poorest of the poor, even charging poor peasants for collecting rainwater!). The Argentinians rose up as one against the World Bank/IMF and the global corporate predators who were decimating Argentina's economy and society; and, with Venezuela's help (easy term loans), they are now free of onerous World Bank debt and well on the way to recovery. All over South America, leftist governments have been elected--often directly in reaction to US-spawned "neoliberal" policies, and/or past US-backed brutalities--in Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile, with strong leftist movements in Ecuador (where the leftist is ahead in the presidential polls), and Peru (where the leftists are on the rise and will likely win in the next election cycle), as well as further north in Mexico (a huge uprising) and Nicaragua (Ortega elected president).
The vast majority of Latin Americans now know what US/Bushite/corporate interference in their countries means. And I don't think they are going to put up with this crap any more.
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