Eva
Golinger's New Book -
Bush vs. Chavez
By Stephen Lendman
23 November, 2006
Countercurrents.org
Eva
Golinger's eagerly awaited new book is now out - but only for those
able to read and understand Spanish as it's not yet available in English.
It's appropriately called Bush vs. Chavez - Washington's War Against
against Venezuela published by Monte Avila Editores in Caracas. Hopefully
it will soon be available in English as well.
Golinger is a Venezuelan-American
attorney specializing in international human rights and immigration
law. She wrote her first blockbuster book published in 2005 called The
Chavez Code - Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela that documented
the events surrounding the 2002 US-directed failed coup against Hugo
Chavez that ousted him for two days and that the people of Venezuela
through their mass outrage reversed. In her first book, Golinger obtained
top-secret documents from the CIA and State Department through Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) requests showing the Bush administration had
prior knowledge of and was complicit in the 2002 coup against President
Chavez and had provided over $30 million in funding aid to opposition
groups to help pull it off. It failed because they hadn't expected the
kind of people-power that's likely to arise again in the face of trouble
and support the president they love and won't give up without a fight.
Golinger also showed how
the US government funded the so-called National Endowment for Democracy
(NED) that functions to subvert the democratic process to help oust
leaders more concerned with serving their own people than the interests
of wealth and power. Also involved in the coup plot was the international
arm of the Republican party, the International Republican Institute
(IRI), the National Democratic Institute, the US Agency for International
Development (USAID) and the AFL-CIO that has a long and disturbing record
of acting as an instrument of US foreign policy instead of sticking
to what it's mandated to do - representing the interests of American
working people it falls far short of much too often in its policy of
selling out to the interests of capital for the personal gain of the
union's leadership.
In the Chavez Code, Golinger
showed how these agencies funded and worked with the Chavez opposition
beginning in 2001 cooking up schemes that led to mass-staged street
protests leading up to the day of the coup. It was done with the full
knowledge and approval of the Bush White House that mounted a full-scale
effort post-9/11 to oust Hugo Chavez and has now tried and failed three
times to do it.
In her new book, Golinger
picks up from her first one chronicling the Bush adminstration's focused
efforts at illegal intervention in Venezuelan affairs attempting to
destabilize the Chavez government leading up to another scheme to overthrow
it that may be only days away following the December 3 presidential
election Chavez is virtually certain to win impressively. The book documents
the usual kinds of mischief directed out of Washington:
-- a demonization campaign
conducted through the complicit US corporate-controlled media that's
likely to reach a crescendo in early December.
-- financing 132 anti-Chavez
groups. Golinger explains ...."the US is funding these organizations
in civil society....to obtain control in all different parts of the
country." She goes on to say "The US government has censored
the names of organizations, but they've left the descriptions of what
the funding is for....what they are proposing to do with the money;
we just don't know if they're actually doing it."
-- The Bush administration
is making a determined effort at subversion in the run-up to the December
3 election "bringing down their best experts....political strategists,
communications experts, to help them craft the entire (opposition) campaign"
- of Zulia state governor Manuel Rosales who was the only governor in
the country to sign the infamous Carmona Decree after the 2002 coup
that dissolved the elected National Assembly and Supreme Court and effectively
ended the Bolivarian Revolution and all the benefits it gave the Venezuelan
people (for two days.)
-- The Bush administration
is conducting "diplomatic terrorism" against the Chavez government.
Golinger explains "This includes sanctions against Venezuela for
made-up things....claiming Venezuela is not collaborating on (curbing)
drug trafficking, which is not true (as a US State Department report
shows by having documented that from 1998 - 2004 Venezuela's drug seizures
rose from 8.6 to 19.1 tons and Caracas claims the tonnage rose dramatically
in 2005)." It also includes a "second sanction....for trafficking
in persons. But there is not a shred of evidence that Venezuela is not
doing everything in its power to prevent trafficking in persons."
-- Most important of all,
the US created a new classification in May, 2006 "and Venezuela
is the only country (under it) - which is for not cooperating with the
war on terrorism." Venezuela is now sanctioned and "prohibited
from buying arms that have been manufactured in the US or use US parts."
The Bush administration is hard-pressed explaining what this new classification
means, why Venezuela in the only country accused under it, and what
the Chavez government is doing. It can only say (fraudulently) "All
the countries on the list are state sponsors of terrorism" even
though the US has never classified Venezuela as a terrorist nation as
the world community would never go along with that kind of outrage.
-- a campaign of hostile
rhetoric coming out of Washington has been ongoing for some time and
is part of the Chavez-demonization project attempting to justify whatever
schemes the Bush administration has cooked up trying for the fourth
time to oust him. It comes in the harshest language and from the highest
levels in the administration like Secretary of State Rice referring
to Chavez as "a negative force in the region" and now fired
and discredited former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld calling
Chavez another Hitler and one of the most dangerous and destabilizing
forces in the region.
-- Golinger also explains
the US Congress issued a report on border issues mentioning Venezuela
and incredibly saying: "President Chavez is engaged in smuggling
Islamic radicals from out of the Middle East to Margarita Island (off
the Venezuelan coast) where they are training them in Spanish and giving
them ID documents and sending them to Mexico, where they are crossing
the border to the US."
-- Golinger also covers Washington's
"military front" attack directed against Venezuela including
"an increased presence in the region." She explains she investigated
the Pentagon's presence on the tourist island of Curacao in the Caribbean,
close enough to Venezuela to see the coastline, where a US base is located.
She calls this an "alarming" development, and it's being supported
by the government of The Netherlands.
-- Golinger also cites the
Pentagon's use of anti-Chavez directed psychological warfare including
the use of ugly agitprop directed against the Chavez government.
-- She also explains "The
use of Colombian paramilitaries by the US (as part of the "military
front")....And the intervention of US Special Forces....as well."
US Special Forces handle the command-and-control function directing
the intruding paramilitaries who are "actors....sent over to try
to assassinate Chavez."
-- Further, the book covers
the US "building up a secret base near the border with Venezuela,
next to Apure state....a small base, but the US is building airplane
hangars for spy planes (to be used as a) launching point for espionage
operations and monitoring of Venezuela. They also have large amounts
of high-ranking US Special Forces there" along with high and low-ranking
Colombian forces all controlled by US Special Forces.
Golinger shows how once again
the Bush administration is funding and directing the above-mentioned
agencies like NED to subvert and overthrow democracy in Venezuela as
well as one other one - Sumate - a nominally non-governmental organization
(NGO) founded in 2002 by a group of Venezuelans led by Maria Corina
Machado functioning as an anti-governmental organization dedicated to
the overthrow of Hugo Chavez and the return of the country to its ugly
past ruled by the former oligarchy and the interests of capital.
The book also covers possible
Bush administration plans to invade the country outlined in Plan Balboa.
It "was created as a military exercise jointly simulated with NATO
(an arm of US interventionism) forces, supposedly realized during the
month of May, 2001....but contains real satellite images, of the US
institutions and precise coordinates of Venezuelan airstrips and strategic
points within the territory of the country." The idea is to "come
in from Colombia, Panama and from bases in Curacao....take over (oil-rich)
Zulia (state) and the border area and declare it an international zone"
- in other words, divide the country and steal the oil-rich part of
it by force, then deal with the rest of the country.
She also discusses the possibility
of Colombian right wing paramilitary intervention, and she believes
their mission is to assassinate Hugo Chavez. She interviewed a paramilitary
leader who told her there are already more than 3000 paramilitaries
in the region around Caracas alone.
If paramilitaries intervene,
it won't be the first time as this tactic has been used before and was
foiled by Venezuelan police when a paramilitary plot was uncovered and
arrests were made. Chavez has also had to combat years of paramilitary
infiltration across the border conducting a wave of kidnappings and
assassinations, especially in areas bordering the two countries like
in Tachina state where the number of killings rose from 81 in 1999 to
566 in 2005.
There's also considerable
evidence Colombian right wing president and close Bush ally Alvaro Uribe
had a hand in these activities as well as the present destabilization
efforts to oust Hugo Chavez and possibly try to assassinate him. He
has a long and ugly record supporting the interests of wealth and power
in his own country and has used his paramilitary assassins to leave
a long trail of blood in displacing three million peasants from their
land as well as having one of the worst records of state-sponsored terrorism
in the world and a well-known contempt for democracy and human rights.
Golinger believes there are
plans in place to overthrow the Chavez government and recently said
Washington is "trying to implement regime change (in Venezuela).
There's no doubt about it (even though it) tries to mask it saying it's
a noble mission."
Many longtime Venezuelan
observers and this writer believe the next attempt at regime change
will unfold around the time of the December 3 election and likely begin
the day after its conclusion when Hugo Chavez is virtually certain to
be declared the winner with an impressive margin of victory. Expect
it to include mass-opposition street protests claiming fraud and demanding
Chavez not be allowed to claim victory and another term in office. Whatever
happens next, only the coup-plotters know for sure, but it's almost
certain to be ugly and may include US-behind-the-scenes-directed violence,
possibly extreme in a determined effort to succeed this time unlike
previous attempts to oust Chavez that failed.
We'll soon learn whether
the coup-plotters will be any more successful this time than before.
Chavez knows something is up and is prepared to act against it when
it comes. It won't be long before the fireworks begin, and it now remains
to be seen how the latest chapter in the saga of the Bush administration
vs. Hugo Chavez will play out. Stay closely tuned.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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