Like Dracula, the "miracle laptops" keep climbing out of the grave...

[Peace Patriot]

Look what the discredited "miracle laptops" have been used for, recently! They are a Rumsfeld-designed (I am convinced) "black ops" gift that keeps on giving....

--------------------------------------

Venezuela’s Armed Forces Under Fire by Washington

By EVA GOLINGER, CORREO DEL ORINOCO , January 20th 2012

During an event that included the transfer of mandate of several members of the high military command on Tuesday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said changes to the National Bolivarian Armed Forces (FANB) are important for strengthening democracy.

Chavez was referring specifically to General Henry Rangel Silva, who was sworn in this week as the new Minister of Defense. “May the decent and patriotic officials of our Bolivarian Armed Forces give their full support to our new Minister. Changes in the National Bolivarian Armed Forces are important for our democratic homeland”, declared the President.

Rangel Silva’s designation as the South American nation’s new Minister of Defense has been hyped up and distorted in media outlets throughout Venezuela, Colombia and the United States. In 2008, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a division of the Treasury Department, included Rangel Silva on its list of foreigners allegedly involved in drug trafficking and/or terrorism under the “Kingpin Act”. However, no evidence was presented to support this serious claim.

OFAC also included the head of Venezuela’s military intelligence, General Hugo Carvajal, and then Minister of Interior and Justice, Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, on the same list with Rangel Silva, who at the time oversaw Venezuela’s civilian intelligence agency, SEBIN. The inclusion of the three heads of Venezuelan intelligence was largely viewed as an attack against the oil nation’s security apparatus, at a time when the US government was considering placing Venezuela on its list of “state sponsors of terrorism”.

The allegations against Rangel Silva, Carvajal and Rodriguez Chacin, were based on unsubstantiated data from laptop computers acquired by the Colombian government during the March 2008 attack on a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) camp. Using the laptop content, Washington claimed the three Venezuelan officials had “materially assisted the narcotics trafficking activities of the FARC, a narcoterrorist organization”.

INTERPOL later determined the information on the computers could not be authenticated nor could the original source of the data be verified. Colombia’s highest court also ruled that the laptop data could not be used as legal evidence against anyone. Nonetheless, the famous FARC laptops have been used by both the conservative Colombian government, Washington and some media to tarnish Venezuela’s image and accuse it of compliance with drug trafficking and terrorism. The FARC is considered a terrorist group only by Colombia and the United States.

No corroborating evidence has ever been presented to demonstrate Rangel Silva’s or other members of the Venezuelan government’s involvement with the FARC or any illicit activities. President Chavez did hold negotiations with the FARC on several occasions under the direct authorization of the Colombian government. His involvement secured the release of several hostages the FARC had held for years, including Ingrid Betancourt and three US military officers.

On Wednesday, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland warned “our concerns about Rangel Silva are well known and of long standing”. But those “concerns” have yet to be substantiated by any legally credible evidence. Rangel Silva has adamantly denied the charges against him. No formal complaints have been brought against him within Venezuela or by Colombia, nor has any other independent evidence been presented to link him to any illegal activities.

Rangel Silva has been a close ally and collaborator of President Chavez for over 20 years. He trained with him as a younger soldier and participated in the Chavez-led military rebellion against the murderous and corrupt government of Carlos Andres Perez on February 4, 1992.

The new Minister of Defense has held high-level positions during the Chavez administration, including head of the intelligence agency SEBIN and Commander of the Strategic Operational Command, which oversees all of Venezuela’s Armed Forces operational activities. At the time of his designation as Minister of Defense, he was the highest ranking officer in the country.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/6761
(Creative Commons License - my emphasis)

---------------------

I figure that Rangel Silva, Carvajal and Rodriguez Chacin have just been too good at defeating CIA plots against Chavez and his government and the fascist forces here can't get over their snit about that. There are also the Pentagon's war plans to worry about. They want to regain control of Venezuela's oil (the biggest oil reserves on earth--twice Saudi Arabia's, according to the USGS) and their fascist/corporate allies want to smash all this stuff about universal free medical care and universal free education, and vast reductions in poverty, and high employment rates and decent wages, etc., in Venezuela (info that is only available in the alternative press) and keep these ideas from spreading north. So they truly hate and fear certain developments in South America, such as intelligence sharing among the many Leftist governments, the strong alliances such as between Venezuela and Brazil and Venezuela and Argentina, new institutions for Latin America cooperation and defense (UNASUR, CELAC), and, in particular, Venezuelan savvy on the intelligence, defense, political and economic fronts.

"The U.S. has not changed," as the outgoing president of Brazil said in his last speech in office, after a year of the Obama administration. That they are using the highly discredited and even laughable "miracle laptops"--more than likely a project of Rumsfeld's "Office of Special Plans"--is profoundly disgusting. There are bits and pieces of evidence that the Obama administration doesn't want to be like this--like the Bush Junta--or, shall I say, has mixed feelings about it. (They and Panetta certainly acted to remove the malefactor in Colombia--Alvaro Uribe--but that may have been merely part of coverup of Bush Junta crime in Colombia--Uribe was landed on a silk cushion--and likely also prep for U.S. "free trade for the rich" by cleaning up Colombia's image). When they do shit like this--still trying to "isolate Chavez," just like Bush Jr. and his massively criminal cronies--you can't help but see that the thrust of their policy is the same: war mongering, corporate corrupt.

You also gotta wonder if they aren't planning to restore mafioso Uribe to power. The "miracle laptops" were his "WMDs in Iraq"--i.e., lying bullshit excuse for warmongering against Venezuela--or at least paving the way for Bush Junta II to do so and for Oil War II to begin, in this hemisphere. Bill Clinton paved the way for Bush Jr in Iraq. Are Obama/Clinton/Panetta paving the way for Jeb in Venezuela?

[Zorro]

1. You nailed it

Yes, just as you have been predicting for years, Obama is planning to invade Venezuela at the behest of his oil corporation overlords.

It's quite obvious from Obama's personality and temperament that he will stop at nothing to interfere with Chavez' re-election campaign.

The attack may come at any moment. Be vigilant.

[Peace Patriot]

3. You can't look at the Pentagon's expansion in Honduras,

the Bushwhacks' reconstitution of the U.S. 4th Fleet in the Caribbean, State Department bellicosity about Venezuela and many other indicators of planned U.S. aggression--not to mention the history of U.S. aggression and interference in Latin America--and the history of the Iraq War, and not be concerned about another oil war. You'd have to have your head in the sand not to be concerned.

As to predicting when our "military-industrial complex" is going to spring the next corporate resource war upon us, their war scenarios are SECRET, they often build up tensions with "feints" along the way, looking for opportunities to manufacture war when and where they to and they have war profiteer interests and transglobal corporate interests all over the world. Late in the Bush Junta, with Uribe in power in Colombia, making all sorts of saber rattling noises, and given the Ecuador incursion and other indicators, it was a good guess that a war scenario was being carried out but the bankster bailout (trillions of our tax dollars to the Bush Junta's finance industry pals) took precedence.

Obama? You are entirely misstating what I said. I don't think that Obama is going to make war on Venezuela; however, after Libya and after U.S. drone strikes around the world, I have to wonder what he is capable of. But I think he is more of a Clinton--laying the ground work, for instance, in the State Department's ludicrous threat of "sanctions" against Venezuela, continuing the demonizing war bullshit rhetoric, not pulling back the Pentagon's footprint anywhere in Latin America but rather expanding it and letting Bush Junta expansions become a fait accompli, and continuing the rotten-to-the-core U.S. "war on drugs." The counter-indications--as to the Obama team laying the ground work for war--are few and far between. One is the removal of Uribe, and Panetta's apparent agreement with Santos making peace with Venezuela--but, as I said, in that case, Uribe, with his ties to Bush Junta crime, is a liability (Colombian prosecutors have been on Uribe's criminal trail--investigations that have yielded witnesses to close ties between Uribe's illegal spying apparatus and the U.S. (Bush Junta) ambassador); they (Panetta/Obama) showered Uribe with honors and special protection measures as they canned him and he obviously thinks he can make a political comeback.

Panetta is canny. I'll give him that. He knows that he has a seriously rebellious region on his hands, with, for instance, tight bonds between Venezuela and Brazil that our MIC operatives have been unable to break. This does not mean that they are not planning a war. It means that the rebellion against U.S. domination of Latin America is SERIOUS and, if it's Venezuela's oil that they want, and/or destruction of the Leftist movement and alliances, they have a lot of long term work to do and aggression now could easily backfire, as when Lula da Silva said that the Bushwhack reconstitution of the U.S. 4th Fleet was "a threat to Brazil's oil," and when he said that "the U.S. has not changed!" Now we have his successor, Dilma Rousseff, visiting Cuba. U.S. aggression and bullying, in the current atmosphere, could create impermeable hostility toward U.S. interests throughout the region. But "canniness" does not mean that U.S. intentions are non-aggressive. I think we can be quite sure that Venezuela has a prominent place on the Pentagon's Big Dartboard and if the outright fascists come to power again in the U.S.--with segments of the Diebold Congress already foaming at the mouth for war against Venezuela and others--we will find ourselves at war in this hemisphere.

Could be a proxy war (as with the Reagan horrors in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala). Could be an outright war as with the Bush Junta and Iraq. Could be a "circle the wagons" action in Central America and the Caribbean, trying to extend that "circle" to Venezuela's oil coast. Could also involve protected drug cartels as one of the proxies (as appears to be happening in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras)--that is, anonymous death squads creating social mayhem. The coup president of Honduras, installed as president by the U.S. State Department, recently said that "some Americans" are coming to Honduras to make Honduras (where political murders and "war on drugs" murders are rampant) "safer"--pointing to a U.S. strategy of anonymous murder and terror that is answered by more militarism and fewer human and civil rights.

There already has been a war against the Left--in Colombia--with thousands of labor leaders and other advocates of the poor murdered and millions displaced. That was prep for U.S. "free trade for the rich"--the latter Colombia/U.S. agreement carried out by Obama. That kind of low grade "war on drugs" proxy mayhem and the Reaganite "contra"-type mayhem are war strategies, short of commitment of large numbers of U.S. forces (which Uribe and the Bushwhacks were clearly planning with their secret military agreement). This kind of mayhem effectively decapitates the Left and silences many--with death or fear--in the countries that it is unleashed upon. It can be a preliminary to war. It can be accomplish transglobal corporate/war profiteer goals without a full scale war. But to subdue Venezuelans--and those allied with Venezuela--will take outright war. Subduing Venezuelans and toppling their democracy, and regaining control of their oil profits, has been the No.1 goal of U.S. Latin American policy since Chavez was elected. And what do Bushites do when they want something? Have we not had enough lessons about that? And what do our Democratic leaders do to pander to the war profiteers, to serve transglobal corporations, to lay the ground work for war and to legitimize Bushite aggression and cover up for them after the war crimes are committed? They wring their hands and do their bidding.

The evidence of U.S. status as a typical, war expanding, imperial entity is overwhelming. And it makes not one particle of difference which party is in charge. The one plans. The other executes. They work in tandem to use the U.S. war machine--all that's really left of this once great country--for transglobal corporate purposes. And one of those purposes is to loot Latin America and smash the notions of sovereignty, independence and social justice that the people of Venezuela have awakened in the region.

[Demeter]

2. Since Reagan left office, US's Latin American policy has been a mystery

I'm so glad that unity against the 1% is working...and I hope the message catches on here.