Carlos Sierra: The US tries to create a juvenile School of the Americas

ABN 25/04/2008

Caracas, April 25 ABN.- To repeat the scheme of the School of the Americas, but in a juvenile version, intends the government of the United States with the creation of training centers for “leaders”, which opposition leader Yon Goicochea already announced.

This was affirmed this Friday by the president of the Bolivarian Federation of Students (FBE, for Spanish), Carlos Sierra, after handing over to the Counselor of the Bolivian Embassy to Venezuela, Martha Montaño, a document to support the people and government of that South American country.

“They are just trying to train fascists and with them intervene the progressive governments of the continent. If it is not true, then we defy Goicochea to pronounce against the meddling of the US Government in the department of Santa Cruz,” stated Sierra.

Likewise, he called Goicochea to donate the money he recently won with the Milton Friedman Prize to democracy, to the city of Caracas, “due to all the damage caused by the violent armed demonstrations he led at the capital of the country.”

Sierra expressed that members of the FBE will travel to Bolivia in order to “defend our brother country on every field,” so he called the Venezuelan revolutionary student movement to denounce before the world the secessionist attempts of the Bolivian opposition.

President Chávez sworn in the new Minister of Women

ABN 25/04/2008
Caracas, Distrito Capital

Caracas, April 25 ABN.- The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, sworn in Thursday the new minister of Women Affairs, María León, who was the President of the National Institute of Women (Inamujer).

The ceremony took place in the Alba Caracas Hotel. Several female representatives and employees of the Venezuelan State, among them the president of the National Assembly, Cilia Flores, the General Attorney, Luisa Ortega Díaz, the president of the Justice Supreme Court, Luisa Estela Morales, among others.

María León was sworn in after her appointment published in the Official Gazzete number 38.889, dated on March 10, 2008, through the decree number 5.919.

The appointment of the new minister was proposed by all the women movement of Venezuela, along with the Patriotic Pole , union of all the political parties that support president Chávez.

León,60, has a lot of experience in the Venezuelan politics; she was member of the Communist Party since 1958 since her sworn in as principal member of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), in 2008.

The new minister has been a fighter of the women' rights. She has been co-founder of several women organizations, among them the Women National Union.

President Chávez : The revolution has to change Venezuelan economic system

ABN 24/04/2008
Caracas, Distrito Capital

Caracas, Apr. 24. ABN.- The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, reiterated that the commitment of the socialist revolution is to change the Venezuelan economic system to recover the lands and agriculture.

“We are obliged to change the Venezuelan economic system, because previous governments transformed Venezuela into an oil rentier country and they abandoned the agriculture, which is the most important economic activity because produces food to satisfy population's basic needs”, he said.

The statements were made by President Chávez during the launching of the Socialist Fund for Agricultural Development (FONDAS, Spanish acronym), carried out at the Socialist Productive Technical Center Florentino, in Barinas State (center-western Venezuela).

Moreover, he pointed out that people have to keep fighting in order to change the capitalistic model that Venezuela had.

in this regard, he emphasized: “We are in a revolutionary struggle to change the structure of the capitalistic mono-producer model that transformed Venezuela into a North American factory, which only produced oil and the other products were imported. That's why we are fighting to
recover our lands and agriculture”.

In addition, he noted that other objective is to transform Venezuela into a continental power. “We have to be united to form the motherland that we want to. We are going to conform a motherland of equals and the only way we can have that motherland is following the socialist path”.

Likewise, the President made a call “to all the land owners, if you have a piece of land, you have to sow it. There can not be a single hectare of arable land without being cultivated. We need to produce more food every
day”.

President Chávez said that the Bolivarian Revolution is recovering the economic potential of the country in order to transform Venezuela into a food exporter to help all world's nations.

“Soon, Venezuela will be a food exporter. Those who have the agricultural potential like us have to develop it in order to help those countries that do not have arable lands, of course, preserving an ecologic balance”, President Chávez concluded.

Translated by Ernesto Aguilera

National Assembly supports nationalization of the Venezuelan cement industry

ABN 17/04/2008
Caracas , Distrito Capital

Caracas, Apr 17. ABN.- The National Assembly agreed to publish in the Official Gazette number 38,911, dated on April 16, an agreement to support State's decision of nationalizing Venezuela's cement companies, in order to guarantee the supply and proper use of this raw material for the construction of decent houses fro Venezuelan people.

The National Assembly deemed the cement is a strategic resource for national development. Therefore, he fully supported the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, in his duty of guaranteeing adequate cement supply for the smooth development of the national small and medium industry.

In addition, the National Assembly agreed to boost the recovery of all country's strategic resources, as a source of raw materials for national industry, in order to achieve Venezuela's development goals.

Furthermore, congresspeople urged National Government to take advantage of the recovery of the cement companies to control the emission of pollutants generated by this industrial activity and, thus, improving the quality of life and environment for Venezuelans.

The National Assembly makes a call to Venezuelan people to support the recovery actions of the national cement industry, which is carried out for Venezuelans' benefit.

Chávez calls to work voluntarily to build socialism

ABN 15/04/2008

Caracas, April 15 ABN.- The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, reiterated this Tuesday that in the building of socialism “the voluntary work is essential to guarantee the communitarian development and the triumph of the Bolivarian Revolution.”

While handing in 448 million 949 thousand /bolivares fuertes/ (strong bolivars or Bs.F.) to two thousand 462 projects presented by the organizations of the People's Power from the 24 states of the country, the President explained how can be reduced the costs for the production of appropriate housing if the volunteers are incorporated to the process.

“In this project of substituting shanties for housing, a house of 91 square meters can only be produced under a cost of Bs.F 24 if neighbors are incorporated to the project,” added the socialist leader, from Caracas.

Likewise, he remarked that the money transferred to the communities should be allocated to productive projects which impact positively in the socioeconomic system of the regions.

“It is also necessary to count with the strict survey of the social comptroller. Only that way we will avoid to repeat old vices as corruption, squandering and inefficiency,” he added.

Besides contributing with the improvement of the quality of life of organized communities, president Chávez handed in resources for the construction of integral farms of poultry and pig production, financing communal banks, urban lands committees, educational centers and the development of different cultural projects.

Chávez makes a call for unity to achieve a victory in November's elections

ABN 15/04/2008

Caracas, Apr 15. ABN.- The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, made a call this Tuesday for the unity of those supporting the Bolivarian Revolution in order to to achieve a victory in the next elections of governors and mayos.

“We have to put a halt on individualism, because nobody is indispensable, the only essential thing is the collectivity”, Venezuela's President assured during a granting of financial resources to the organized communities.

President Chávez made a call to do not “give away political spaces to the enemy. If there are critics, we have to make proper demands, but we should not lose the spaces we have won. An united People's power is essential. I know we are going to make it”, he added.

Furthermore, he said people can not permit to be fooled by demagogic campaigns of some political parties that “after all, they are just derivatives of Acción Democrática (AD) and COPEI” (the two political parties ruling for more than 40 years in Venezuela).

“There are already some opposition candidates that have said they want to win to improve (governmental) Barrio Adentro Mission and others. Is there anyone believing that with a capitalistic government our missions could exist?”, Chávez asked.

Moreover, he reiterated that the launch of candidacies of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) should be discussed with the bases, as well as the method to be chose.

“We should have our candidates in July, in order to support them opportunely. We will win only united and putting a halt on individualisms”, he stressed.

Finally, he reiterated that PSUV candidates will have to make a commitment with the people in order to comply with the governmental programs discussed in the heart of the communities.

Translated by Ernesto Aguilera

Intellectuals of the meeting Armed with Ideas make their final declaration

ABN 15/04/2008
Caracas, Distrito Capital

Caracas, Apr 15. ABN.- The full text of the Declaration of Caracas of the meeting Armed with Ideas, which took place on April 12 and 13 in Caracas, reads as follows:

Our most firm solidarity with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its people on the revolutionary process taking place in this country in full exercise of its legitimate right to self-determination. We, resolutely, support President Hugo Chávez Frías and people's organization processes that strengthen day after day their path towards a Socialism built with imagination, humanism, and creativity.

Furthermore, we support Evo Morales Ayma's Government, its policies of changes, and Bolivia's sovereign constituent process. We condemn United States meddling on Bolivia's internal affairs and we denounce the separatist and discriminatory actions carried out by some oligarchic groups of that country against the originator people and their autonomies. We reject the autonomous Statute of Santa Cruz, which was declared unilaterally, because it is unconstitutional and it attempts against the unity of the multiracial Bolivian nation.

We express our solidarity with the honorable position assumed by the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa defending Ecuador's sovereignty due to the violation of its territory by the Government of Colombia in joint with the armed, logistic, and intelligence support of United States as part of the regional imperialist domination strategy. We express our indignation on the massacre of Ecuadorians, Colombians, and Mexicans, as well as we reject any kind of war intervention against our peoples.

We show our concern due to the historical crisis in Colombia and we support firmly the brave fight of its people for a real democracy respecting human rights, for a humanitarian agreement, and looking for a negotiated political solution that could put a halt to this long war that has left hundreds of thousands deaths, wounded, and disappeared people.

We make a call to all the member governments of the so-called United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (Minustah), and specially Latin Americans, to withdraw immediately their troops and, thus, contribute to reestablish the democracy with full respect to the self-determination of Haitian people.

We condemn energetically the reiterated aggressions of United States to our peoples behind the pretext of war on terrorism and drug trafficking, as well as we demand the extradition of the terrorist Luis Posada Capriles, who has confessed his own terrorist act of murdering 73 people putting a bomb on a passengers' airplane.

We demand the immediate release of the five Cubans unfairly kept in North American jails because they were protesting the State terrorism against Cuban people.

We denounce the unfair, cruel, and illegal blockade that, for about half a century, United States has kept against Cuba.

We reject the indirect adoption of the Plan Colombia by Mexican Government.

The progress of the Merida initiative in that country and the alliance for the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America are expansionist mechanisms of military intervention of United States in Latin America. We deem inadmissible that the Government of Felipe Calderón did not condemn the massacre carried out in Ecuadorian territory, where four students of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México lost their lives, which contributes with the criminalization of the victims and survivors of that murder. In turn, Calderón was protesting for the legitimate Venezuela's Government nationalization of the Mexican company CEMEX. We declare ourselves against the colonialist and neo-colonialist domination in Our America and we demand the independence of Puerto Rico and all the colonies remaining in the Caribbean.

We make a call for a mobilization to close and withdraw foreign military bases in Latin American and the Caribbean countries.

We reject the ecological manipulation to transform our territory in agrofuel suppliers in order to satisfy United States energy requirements.

We denounce the strip of the ancestral knowledge of our indigenous people of Our America to be commercialized by capitalist medical corporations, as well as the plundering carried out by museums and collectors of United States, whom keep in their power hundreds of thousands of pieces of our historical and cultural heritage.

The attendants of this meeting commit ourselves to continue, wide, and deep the participation of intellectuals and artists -committed with the struggles of the people of Our America- in the battle of ideas. We recognize the rich experiences that we are going through building people's power from the bottom, from the struggle process of the indigenous people. As President Chávez stated in this meeting: “only the people save the people”.

Caracas, Venezuela, April 14, 2008.

Translated by Ernesto Aguilera

I will devote every single breath to defend the Socialist Bolivarian Revolution

ABN 13/04/2008
Caracas, Distrito Capital

Caracas, Apr 13. ABN.- This Sunday, the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, emphasized that he will never be a traitor and will live the rest of his days “at the service of the heroic Bolívar's people and Venezuelan motherland”, during his speech from the Miraflores Presidential Palace, in Caracas, to celebrate the Day of the National Dignity's Rescue.

“Every single breath left on me will be devoted, each minute and each second, to fight defending the Socialist Bolivarian Revolution. He urged Venezuelan people to devote themselves also to this cause and we have to engage with the progressive and people's movements of Latin America and the Caribbean”, he stressed.

President Chávez commented that without the February 4 (1992), the historical process “that bought us here” would have not been unleashed “because from February 4th to December 6th 1998 there is a straight and narrow line”.

“By then, most of the Venezuelans decided that this soldier of the people had to arrive at the Presidency of the Republic. Despite international sectors worldwide, subordinated to Washington, have deployed a media campaign in order to transform me into an empire's ally, oligarchy's, they have never done it and they will never do it”, Chávez detailed.

“For that reason we are here today and we recognize each other as Bolívar's sons, as truly human, beautiful, fighter, and revolutionary people, onwards the construction of the socialism”, he added.

Regarding the events happened on April 11,12, and 13, 2002, the President of the Republic stressed that those that took the streets of Caracas and the Miraflores Presidential Palace during 47 hours, “to create that tyrannical, murderer, bourgeois, lackey and despotic government subordinated to the White House, represent the same historical and stateless current, the same linage, of those that in 1828 expelled Simón Bolívar from Caracas and they ordered to kill him in joint with the Marshal José Antonio de Sucre”.

Chávez asks for an expansion of the network of intellectuals for Latin American peace and sovereignty

ABN 12/04/2008
Caracas, Distrito Capital

Caracas, Apr 12. ABN.- The President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez Frías, asked for an expansion of the network of intellectuals and artists for Latin American peace and sovereignty, which gathered this Saturday in Caracas to hold a meeting that was called “Armed with Ideas: Intellectuals and Artists for Latin American Peace and Sovereignty”.

Venezuelan President arrived at that conclusion after stating that the network of intellectuals and artists has, beyond individual commitment, a great task with the collective; therefore, it has to multiply.

“You, gunners of words and thoughts, have a great task individually in your countries, universities, but beyond the individual factor is the collective one; therefore, I ask this network to be multiplied and strengthened”, Chávez said.

Furthermore, Chávez stressed how important is for this network to be stronger and the impact that could have in the reality of each country in the continent, as well as it has to work in a more coordinated way every day more.

Moreover, Venezuelan President emphasized that both ideas and knowledge are the way to get to the consciousness of people. With them the people of the world can be organized and mobilized.

“It is impossible to have consciousness without ideas and knowledge. There is organization and mobilization only with consciousness (...) The will is a product of the consciousness”, he stated.

In this regard, he held that Bolivarian Revolution is peaceful but armed with ideas to fight capitalism. In turn, he expressed that battalions of ideas have to be organized to neutralize the misinformation machinery used by the North American empire.

6th Anniversary of Peoples Victory

“Venezuela es libre y más nunca será colonia de nadie”
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Bolivarian Curricular Model: an open book for the debate, a people's election

Caracas, April 7 ABN (Lena Jahn).- As part of the public policies progressed by the National Government in matters of human and social rights, the Curricular Model of the Bolivarian Education System places as the spearhead of the process of improving education in Venezuela, once the primary goal of inclusion is achieved.

Around 320 thousand teachers of the whole country have taken part in the different workshops to create the new Curricular Model, carried out at national, state and municipal level, since December 2007 until now; and around the debate have arouse different proposals, observations and considerations necessary for the definite structuring of this model.

Precisely due to being widely debated, the president of the Republic, Hugo Chávez Frías, proposed to submit it to a referendum perhaps for next year, at the time he invited the Venezuelan opposition to present their own proposal, just as the Government is doing.

In fact, this is not an isolated issue. During the coming days, the World Peace and Anti-imperialist Conference, to take place in Caracas, as part of its schedule will tackle with the defense of the rights of the nations of the world, among them education, linked to the repressive actions and domination on behalf of the United States and suffered mainly by Latin American nations.

In Venezuela, the education issue is not out of the discussion, neither is foreseen to retire it from the scenery during a long time. On the contrary, it is every time more noticeable the discussion of a human right and of basic social duty that, besides a constitutional article which defines it, has ten years materializing through public policies that make feasible the legal framework.

From the neoliberal model to the education's democratization

Talking about education in Venezuela and, even more, about the direct influences that the United States has played upon this important area for development requires a hindsight that covers at least the last 20 years of national and international history.

'In the world dynamics of the nineties and the eighties were boosted policies addressed to privatize the educational spaces. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the crumble of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics (USSR) is imposed a capitalist ideological and political model in Latin America which fosters a paradigm of decentralization and privatization of the educational sceneries.'

The analysis corresponds to the general director of the International Relations from the Ministry of People's Power for Education, Luis Alejandro Sauce, who affirms that statements as individualism and mass production of economic resources, proper form the capitalist model, led to the misunderstood necessity of privatizing education due to arguments like the State could not satisfy the educational demand nor sustain the infrastructure because it was inefficient and incapable.

'In the Venezuelan case, infrastructure was abandoned, investment was abandoned, the rate of schooling registration diminished, and it showed that the State should take part in education. However, behind that imposed the ideological and political model of the capital. This model called to privatize education because it is a profitable space by nature since everybody want to study, at the time it favored the perfect path to control the production, generation and supply of knowledge,' he explained.

In other words, the education offered by the State was effectively deficient, but that answered to a strategy of power with a political aim.

Sauce commented that while the financial control was exerted by the World Bank, the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund made the same with the political and economic power, respectively.

'They took part on education policies and it were even created, at the then Ministry of Education, offices that stimulated -allegedly- the development of a competitive education in negative, unequal and excluding terms for the people of low economic resources,' he affirmed.

Thus, the parameters that defined education, according the 1961 Constitution, were not in keeping with the public policies because there was no coherence between the legal dispositions and the sociopolitical scenery.

Fortunately, Venezuela reacted first with the Caracazo (wave of protests, riots and looting that occurred in Caracas) in 1989, to the package of neoliberal measures, and started the rupture of a political, economic and social process that was the starting point for the breaking-off of the constitutionality in political terms.

Nevertheless, the representative of the education office affirmed that the highest rupture was in 1998, when president Chávez came to power. 'On the reconfiguration of the new State is given expression to the basic idea of retaking education as a human right, which guarantees it to be free, accessible, plural and democratic nature,' he expressed.

This way came up a Constituent Assembly and a new Constitution which confirms a series of social rights considered as the central axis of the national state's transformation and the jump to the real democratization of education.

First step, Inclusion

With the arrival of Hugo Chávez at the presidency of the Republic, besides generating a new political and legal structure of the State, it is showed the political will of attending the education sector in order to make the legal framework correspond with reality.

Among the measures taken, the percentage of the Gross Domestic Product allocated to education increased from 2% to 7%, at the time that the schooling registration went from 5 million 800 thousand students in the school period 1996-1997 up to 11 millions 800 in the period 2006-2007.

'In education exists knowledge, wisdom to build a country, to develop a nation and achieve independence, improvement and sovereignty of the nations; and, finally, the State understood that in order to achieve this it should rule this sector and invest on it,' indicated Sauce.

Among the actions to carry out, the Revolutionary Government started with educational missions as leading projects, oriented to guarantee the right to education to those who discarded the option of studying due to the necessity of entering the labor world.

This way came up Mission Robinson I, oriented to the literacy of more than a million 500 patriots; and Mission Robinson II, in order to continue primary studies, in which -according to information given by the General Direction of Situational Analysis of the education office- are studying 258 thousand 826 Venezuelan, besides the 395 thousand 302 who have already graduated.

Other missions, as Ribas and Sucre, offer access to secondary and university education to people in the same conditions of social exclusion, result of the schemes of power that had ruled and which let out those who had no possibilities to pay studies in private institutions.

Additionally, in Venezuela is guaranteed the right to food for more than 4 million children and young people, through the Program of School Feeding (PAE, for Spanish), addressed to strengthen the academic return of students.

In educational matters, it is interesting to check out articles in the constitutional framework as the 103, in which is recognized early education starting since nursery school, with which Venezuela becomes the first country in the continent to guarantee education since they are given birth. This way started the Simoncitos, educational institutions with pedagogical characteristics designed for children since zero to six years old.

Likewise, article 106 not only recognizes but also fills with constitutional nature the private education under the strict inspection and surveillance of the State and under previous acceptance of this one. According to Sauce, private education is not infringed since there are the structural conditions required and the supreme aim of education predominating over profitability.

There are also dispositions to count with a system of special education, which is currently one of the spaces of the ministry's workshop, created as part of the attention and protection policy for disabled people who, consequently, have special education needs and have always belonged to the traditionally excluded groups.

The goal, high quality education

'The scheme of work of the Bolivarian Government has been, firstly, social inclusion, to then go to the improvement, high quality education,' stated Luis Alejandro Sauce.

That way began the need for a new curriculum that fits no only in appearance but also in essence to the constitutional rules referring to the integral, democratic, participatory and permanent nature of education.

Learning to create, learning to coexist and participate, learning to value the basic mainstay of the Bolivarian Curricular Model, all of it closely related with human rights.

'Having the opportunity to distinguish and construct under your own principles, views, ideologies, as master Simon Rodriguez said, either we invent or we err, we cannot import models,' expressed Sauce. He also affirms that there are sectors which with a deep ignorance disown themselves when obviating in the new curriculum proposals as the possibility of creating, which influence in the possibility of being free.

'We foster other human rights, as the diversity of thought, coexistence in a plural, democratic, participatory space,' he added.

Sauce stated as well that the debate of this curriculum should take place in a political context but also in the pedagogical and philosophical, 'Mass media have limited it to the political space, but they obviate that it is the first time in the democratic history of Venezuela that education guidelines are being submitted to a discussion and to the collective construction.'

The director explained that it deals with a great social debt inherited due to the imposition of a scheme that influenced in the education dynamics of the complete continent; a model that intended to privatize and control the creation and production of knowledge in order to dominate nations.

Thus, he insistsed on that improving education will be done just if people feel part of a curriculum and collaborate with their contributions for the structuring of an original and homegrown education.

'What a better democratic exercise that bestowing the new curriculum at everybody's disposal, which links to a scenery of full exercise of human rights?', he wonders. Now, with the president's proposal of holding a referendum to decide the fate of this project, the sovereign practice and people's power are highlighted once more in Venezuela.

Translated by Felitza Nava López

Bush vs Chavez – Washington's war on Venezuela

Bush vs Chavez – Washington's war on Venezuela, By Eva Golinger, Monthly review Press.

Reviewed by Roberto Jorquera

Eva Golinger's latest installment in the battle between Bush and the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela is a fascinating account that looks behind the scenes of US policy towards the Chavez government. The book is a brilliant sequel to her previous book The Chavez Code. Combing through thousands of documents attained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in the U.S., Golinger is able to bring to light the facts behind U.S. Policy towards Venezuela throughout the Presidency of Hugo Chavez.

Golinger particularly focuses on the role of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) and their subsidiary organisations scattered throughout Latin America.

Throughout the first section of the book Golinger provides a historical look at U.S government intervention in Latin America and how its policy has developed in Venezuela learning from past interventions such as in Chile, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti to name but a few. From the information that Golinger has been able to access via the FOIA a clear pattern is unveiled and it is clearly shown how the political developments against Chavez since 1998 have had their roots directly in the above mentioned U.S. Government bodies. Golinger is able to provide the evidence that the major political events that have occurred against the Bolivarian revolution have been orchestrated in the U.S. These include the December 2001 one day strike organised by the bosses, the April 2002 coup attempt, the December – February 2003 lockout of PDVSA workers and the shut down of the oil industry, the Guarimba of February of 2004, the recall referendum of August 2004, the continued build up of U.S. Military troops in the Caribbean and in Colombia and numerous other events.

Golinger notes that ''For the Fiscal year 2003 USAID's OTI office requested $5,074,000 for its Venezuela operations''...In Fall 2003, the OTI requested an additional $6,345,000 for use in Venezuela during 2004. USAID also gave the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) more than $2 million for “strengthening political parties” and “promoting electoral processes” in Venezuela during 2003-04. The NDI's grant specifically mentioned collaboration with Sumate”.

The Guarimba of Feb March 2004 called for widespread civil disobedience in an attempt to provoke the Venezuelan authorities to react and crack down. Similar activities had been organised in Chile during the Allende period and in Nicaragua during the Sandinista government of the 1980's

Golinger writes,”The information about the actions-many of them illegal- of the U.S. Government in Venezuela, through the Central Intelligence Agency , the State Department, and other entities operating within Venezuela and strategically from inside Washington, is voluminous and overwhelming.

“Since the publication of the Chavez Code in early 2005, we have witnessed a serious and scary shift in U.S. Policy toward Venezuela. Three major fronts of attack have been launched and are rapidly taking form: the financial, the diplomatic and the military. These have become the battlefields for which a new form of war – asymmetric warfare – is being waged on the Venezuelan people and their government. This is a war with no clear lines , a war without frontiers, and a war, it seems , with no end.”

“The financial front commenced in 2001, when the National Endowment for Democracy quadrupled its annual funding to anti-Chavez groups that later used those same funds to plan and execute the coup against Chavez”. “President Bush requested Congress to double NED's budget for its work in Venezuela during 2005-6, and again for the fiscal year 2007-08.” At the same time funding has grown for USAID and the Office for Transitional Initiatives that operates out of the U.S embassy in Caracas.

In 2006, George Bush asked Congress to increase its funding for “democratic initiatives” in Latin America. “Since 2005, NED and USAID funding in Venezuela has remained substantial. The total sum invested in the years 2000-4 in opposition groups in Venezuela was approximately $27 million in U.S. Taxpayer dollars. For the year 2005-7, NED was granted more than $3 million for its Venezuela activities and USAID issued approximately $7.2 million for its Caracas based Office of Transition Initiatives and other Venezuela programs.”

These funds where shared amongst a variety of organisations including the International Republican Institute to “promote more responsive political parties'', Sumate “to educate citizens on the election law and to encourage and provide them with the tools to claim their right to free,open and transparent elections” and Press and Society Institute-Venezuela “to promote freedom of expression and journalist professionalisation and safety”.

Not surprisingly many of the representatives of these organisations openly supported and in some cases put their signature to the Carmona degree, which was the documents that ousted Chavez in April 2002.NED continues to classify Venezuela as a country that has moved away from democracy and engages in human rights abuses against its own citizens.

Washington has consistently argued that Venezuela has not moved to stop drug trafficking, that it has not done anything against the trafficking of people and that it has not condemned terrorism.

The U.S. Administration has repeatedly claimed that Venezuela is a heaven for middle east “terrorist groups” and that the Venezuelan government provides “operational and financial support” to these groups.

Successive U.S. Ambassadors to Venezuela have repeated these unsubstantiated remarks. The U.S. Administration has also campaigned hard in the international community to create a front against what it calls, “the growing threat of Hugo Chavez”. Rice continued to classify Venezuela as a : threat to democracy” and a “destabalising negative force” in the hemisphere.

Condoleezza Rice stated during her confirmation hearing in Jan 2005 that, “ I think that we have to view at this point the government of Venezuela as a negative force in the region”

“Asymmetric warfare is the new terminology used to describe what in the past century was referred to as “low -intensity conflicts”... This type of war may be military or nonmilitary, lethal or nonlethal, or a mix of everything- all rules apply and there are no rules at all. It can involve everything from diplomatic strategies (trying to build international coalitions against the nation state), financial backing of opposition movements, direct military threats, and electoral interventions. In sum all the tactics the U.S. Government is employing today against Venezuela”.

Golinger also explores the new CIA agency the National Clandestine Service which directly aims to gather intelligence on Cuba and Venezuela.

Golinger makes special mention of the report titled “What to do about Venezuela” authored by the Centre for Security Policy's Vice President for Information Operations J. Michael Waller. This report which was published in May 2005 has become the premise for U.S. Policy towards Venezuela. In its opening paragraph the report states “Nowhere is the lack of a U.S. Strategic approach to the Western Hemisphere more evident than in the unchecked rise of a self-absorbed, unstable strongman in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, who has made common cause with terrorism and the regimes that support him, and has developed a revolutionary ideology that has begun to plunge the Americas again into violence and chaos. It is necessary for the democratic nations of the hemisphere to come together and stop this rising threat to peace before it is to late”.

The Centre also lays out a 6 point plan for regime change in Venezuela including promoting the continuation and establishment of anti Chavez organisations within Venezuela.

Golinger argues that 2006 was a transitional year for U.S. Policy towards Venezuela changing from a “negative force” to a “threat to national security” and firmly placing it on the same raider as Iran, North Korea and Cuba all of which the U.S continues to consider the option of military intervention. In conclusion Golinger writes, “Washington's war against Venezuela will continue to increase as it loses its grip on power in the region..The people of the United States have the choice of supporting Washington's unjust and dangerous war against a peaceful nation or actively taking the initiative to halt any further efforts to violate Venezuela's sovereign right to self -determination. People around the world are already rising up against such aggressions and defending their right against U.S. Domination and bullying tactics”.

Roberto Jorquera is on the Management Committee of the Centre for Latin America Solidarity and Studies based in Melbourne and Co-National Convener of the Australia – Venezuela Solidarity Network.

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