Now Venezuela is running out of toilet paper

[Peace Patriot]

133. Capriles and Uribe sued over plot to wreck Venezuela's trade with Colombia

First posted by Judi Lynn here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/110817351

Very relevant to this thread, so I'm quoting it in its entirety below.

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Venezuelan opposition leader sued in Colombia
posted by Adriaan Alsema
May 16, 2013

Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles and Colombian former President Alvaro Uribe have been sued for trying to disrupt exports to Venezuela and destabilize their governments.

According to the plaintiff, Colombian lawyer Aurelio Jimenez, Capriles met with Uribe and the former president’s adviser Jose Obdulio Gaviria in November 2011 to plan a disruption of exports to Venezuela with the aim of destabilizing the government of Colombia’s neighbor to the east.

The Colombian and Venezuelan politicians subsequently approached Colombian exporters and Venezuelan importers to convince them to suspend trade and intentionally cause scarcity in supermarkets in Caracas, according to Jimenez.

The attorney’s claim has been supported by audio that was leaked to Colombian newscast CM& who published an article about the meeting on its website. The article and audio later disappeared from the news website. Venezuelan television station TeleSur does still have a copy of the audio made during the meeting.

In the audio, Uribe instructs Venezuelan opposition leader on how to deal with an upcoming visit to Caracas of current President Juan Manuel Santos.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/venezuela-opposition-leader-sued-in-colombia/

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Also first posted by Judi Lynn, here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/110817350

"Uribe denies meeting Capriles
posted by Adriaan Alsema
May 17, 2013

Colombia’s former President, Alvaro Uribe, says he never met Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles who was sued because both allegedly conspired to destabilize their governments’ relationship.

On his Twitter account, Uribe said he had never met Capriles, but would love to talk to him. Uribe’s claim was supported by Primero Colombia, a think tank run by Uribe’s adviser Jose Obdulio Gaviria.

The tweets followed the publication of news that a Colombian lawyer had included Capriles in a lawsuit against Uribe and Gaviria for their alleged attempts to disturb exports to Venezuela and plotting to discredit Uribe’s successor, current President Juan Manuel Santos.

According to the filed lawsuit, Capriles was one of the Venezuelan opposition politicians that met with Uribe and Gaviria in November 2011, preceding a visit of Santos to his then-counterpart, the late Hugo Chavez. Lawyer Aurelio Jimenez says Capriles, Uribe and Gaviria are guilty of endangering Colombia’s national integrity, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Uribe faces additional charges of treason.

Colombia’s former president, an ideological opponent of the leftist Venezuelan government and its late President Hugo Chavez, has previously been accused by Venezuela of trying to meddle in domestic affairs."

http://colombiareports.com/uribe-denies-having-met-capriles/

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What we have here, in the corporate media toilet paper article, appears to be stage two of a two-stage attack on Venezuela's economy (and on Manuel Santos, president of Colombia, who made peace with Venezuela): Stage one: Uribe and Capriles meet and devise a plot to pressure Colombian and Venezuelan exporters and importers to disrupt Venezuela's economy, in order to destabilize the country (and also cause trouble for Santos, whom Uribe hates). Stage two: The Associated Pukes follow up with the destabilization headline about the toilet paper and other shortages--the latest in a long list of AP campaign ads against Chavez and Maduro parading as 'news' articles.

Uribe is a fascist who stated publicly that everyone who opposes him is a "terrorist." This included labor leaders, teachers, academics, students, opposing politicians, community activists, peasant farmers, journalists, prosecutors, judges, the lot. Likely with U.S. (Bush Junta) help, he was spying on everyone and using his spy agency, DAS, to draw up hit lists for assassination, death threats, blackmail and intimidation. Some one hundred of Uribe's closest associates, including family members, are under investigation or already in jail in Colombia for ties to the death squads, drug trafficking, illegal domestic spying and other crimes. The Bush Junta larded $7 BILLION on Colombia, during Uribe's tenure, for the U.S. "war on drugs," ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. That corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. boondoggle was made to order for consolidating the trillion+ dollar cocaine trade into fewer hands. I believe that that was what Uribe was using it for--to drive the smaller players out with murder, mayhem and displacement (FIVE MILLION peasant farmers brutally displaced from their farms during Uribe/Bush's "scorched earth" policy) while protecting his own criminal organization, all with U.S. support and massive funding.

Colombian prosecutors have not yet been able to nail Uribe, probably because he is under the protection of the CIA (probably because of what he knows about Bush Junta crimes in Colombia). There is a lot of "tip of the iceberg" evidence to this effect. This allows him to run around free--like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld--making trouble for Santos, plotting against Venezuela's leftist government, and plotting a return to power in Colombia, where he wants to re-start the 70 year Colombian civil war (excuse for murdering his opponents), and re-start plans for a U.S./Colombia war on Venezuela (should Venezuelans continue to elect leftists) when Jeb is Diebolded into the White House.

What this lawyer in Colombia is suing Uribe and Capriles for is quite believable. Capriles was/is clearly running a destabilization campaign in Venezuela, where Capriles' mobs murdered nine people and torched medical facilities and poor peoples' homes after Capriles lost the recent election. And Uribe hates Venezuela's leftist leaders as much as he hates Santos. Santos not only made peace with Venezuela's leftist government (on his first day in office!), he has started peace talks with the armed leftist guerrillas (the FARC) to end Colombia's civil war, and--probably his worst crime, in Uribe's eyes--he has called publicly for the legalization of all drugs and an end to the "war on drugs."

Legalization would seriously cut into Uribe's funding stream. His funders apparently don't want to go legit. And, if, as I've guessed (because Santos is also a rightwinger although of a different stripe than Uribe), Santos is fronting for a Big Pharma/Big Ag/Big Chem legalization scheme, those entities have the power and capital to sink non-cooperating drug lords. (Santos signed the "free trade for the rich" agreement with the U.S., so it's my guess that this is the deal: Big Pharma/Big Ag/Big Chem want to take over the huge market in herbal, recreational and addictive drugs, and monopolize it, though legalization. This may explain Santos' astonishing call for legalization. He may also want legalization in order to de-fund Uribe.)

Capriles seems to just want chaos--sufficient chaos with which to overthrow the Chavaz-Maduro government. Capriles' claims of election fraud have all along been absurd. Jimmy Carter called Venezuela's election system "the best in the world" and he knows what he's talking about. His Carter Center helped set-up Venezuela's election system and has monitored numerous elections there, as well as hundreds of elections around the world. I've also researched the details of Venezuela's election system, and it has very solid anti-fraud procedures. Further, ALL Latin American countries have endorsed Maduro's win, and most of the world has, except for the U.S., which seems to be still hoping for destabilization.

One point I want to stress here is the apparent COORDINATION between the alleged conspirators--Uribe and Capriles, on disrupting trade to harm both economies and governments--and the Associated Press. I have re-named AP the Associated Pukes because of their HORRIBLE, propagandistic coverage of the Chavez government. They are the worst of the worst. And Fabiola Sanchez--one of the two by-lines on this AP so-called news article--has done this sort of thing before--written AP hit pieces that echoed the latest rightwing "talking points" out of Venezuela (and probably originating in Langley).

What you are reading here, in this toilet paper article, is rightwing propaganda, trumpeted here at DU by rightwing posters--and apparently deriving from this plot by two traitors to their countries--Uribe and Capriles--two men who will do anything to gain power. Uribe has been associated with rightwing death squads, drug trafficking and other criminal activities from the beginning of his career. Capriles has a core of fascist coupmongers in his political coalition, and was thick with the coupsters during the 2002 coup attempt against the Chavez government in Venezuela.

Capriles is slimy and slippery like Uribe, and, like Uribe, no one's been able to nail him as yet. I hope that this Colombian lawyer, Aurelio Jimenez, is able to do so, but Capriles may be under U.S. protections similar to Uribe's. Jimenez is a brave man to try. I hope he has a good case and gets an honest and brave judge, and puts these two away. They are a menace to civilized society and to the people of Venezuela and Colombia--and they are a menace to us as well. Uribe wanted a war with Venezuela and tried his damnedest to start one. But the U.S. wasn't ready for that oil war, yet--so they put him on ice for a while, teaching law students at Harvard and Georgetown (yup--Obama did that, or rather Leon Panetta). That is where these "toilet paper" headlines are heading. It is part of the ten year barrage of hit pieces against Venezuela by AP and other corporate media--whether it's shortages, or blackouts, or inflation, or street crime, or bogeyman "dictators." Where have we heard this drumbeat before?

NOT prosecuting war criminals has consequences.