Will the gang that fixed Florida fix the vote in Venezuela

[wilheim]

Hugo Chavez drives George Bush crazy. Maybe it's jealousy: Unlike Mr. Bush, Chavez, in Venezuela, won his Presidency by a majority of the vote.

Or maybe it's the oil: Venezuela sits atop a reserve rivaling Iraq's. And Hugo thinks the US and British oil companies that pump the crude ought to pay more than a 16% royalty to his nation for the stuff. Hey, sixteen percent isn't even acceptable as a tip at a New York diner.

Whatever it is, our President has decided that their president has to go. This is none too easy given that Chavez is backed by Venezuela's poor. And the US oil industry, joined with local oligarchs, has made sure a vast majority of Venezuelans remain poor.

Therefore, Chavez is expected to win this coming Sunday's recall vote. That is, if the elections are free and fair.

They won't be. Some months ago, a little birdie faxed to me what appeared to be confidential pages from a contract between John Ashcroft's Justice Department and a company called ChoicePoint, Inc., of Atlanta. The deal is part of the War on Terror.

Justice offered up to $67 million, of our taxpayer money, to ChoicePoint in a no-bid deal, for computer profiles with private information on every citizen of half a dozen nations. The choice of which nation's citizens to spy on caught my eye. While the September 11th highjackers came from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon and the Arab Emirates, ChoicePoint's menu offered records on Venezuelans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Mexicans and Argentines. How odd. Had the CIA uncovered a Latin plot to sneak suicide tango dancers across the border with exploding enchiladas?

What do these nations have in common besides a lack of involvement in the September 11th attacks? Coincidentally, each is in the throes of major electoral contests in which the leading candidates – presidents Lula Ignacio da Silva of Brazil, Nestor Kirschner of Argentina, Mexico City mayor Andres Lopez Obrador and Venezuela's Chavez – have the nerve to challenge the globalization demands of George W. Bush.

The last time ChoicePoint sold voter files to our government it was to help Governor Jeb Bush locate and purge felons on Florida voter rolls. Turns out ChoicePoint's felons were merely Democrats guilty only of V.W.B., Voting While Black. That little 'error' cost Al Gore the White House.

It looks like the Bush Administration is taking the Florida show for a tour south of the border.

However, when Mexico discovered ChoicePoint had its citizen files, the nation threatened company executives with criminal charges. ChoicePoint protested its innocence and offered to destroy the files of any nation that requests it.

But ChoicePoint, apparently, presented no such offer to the government of Venezuela's Chavez.

In Caracas, I showed Congressman Nicolas Maduro the ChoicePoint-Ashcroft agreement. Maduro, a leader of Chavez' political party, was unaware that his nation's citizen files were for sale to U.S. intelligence. But he understood their value to make mischief.

If the lists somehow fell into the hands of the Venezuelan opposition, it could immeasurably help their computer-aided drive to recall and remove Chavez. A ChoicePoint flak said the Bush administration told the company they haven't used the lists that way. The PR man didn't say if the Bush spooks laughed when they said it.

Our team located a $53,000 payment from our government to Chavez' recall organizers, who claim to be armed with computer lists of the registered. How did they get those lists? The fix that was practiced in Florida, with ChoicePoint's help, deliberate or not, appears to be retooled for Venezuela, then Brazil, Mexico and who knows where else.

Here's what it comes down to: The Justice Department averts its gaze from Saudi Arabia but shoplifts voter records in Venezuela. So it's only fair to ask: Is Mr. Bush fighting a war on terror – or a war on democracy?

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller “The Best Democracy Money Can Buy." AlterNet.com

 

[jointpleasures]

Venezuela's judges probably don't try rewrite the election laws, like Florida's.

 

[PatPatriot]

You mean rich retired transplanted New yorkers that can spot a 10 bill at a 100 yards and invented fine print on contracts that claim they can't read a ballot that they have used for the last 50 years under their own election committee control?...that gang wil?

 

[Skyweasel]

Loathed by the Rich
Why Hugo Chavez is Headed for a Big Win

By RICHARD GOTT

To the dismay of opposition groups in Venezuela, and to the surprise of international observers gathering in Caracas, President Hugo Chávez is about to secure a stunning victory on August 15, in a referendum designed to lead to his overthrow.

First elected in 1998 as a barely known colonel, armed with little more than revolutionary rhetoric and a moderate social-democratic programme, Chávez has become the leader of the emerging opposition in Latin America to the neo-liberal hegemony of the United States. Closely allied to Fidel Castro, he rivals the Cuban leader in his fierce denunciations of George Bush, a strategy that goes down well with the great majority of the population of Latin America, where only the elites welcome the economic and political recipes devised in Washington.

While Chávez has retained his popularity after nearly six years as president, support for overtly pro-US leaders in Latin America, such as Vicente Fox in Mexico and Alejandro Toledo in Peru, has dwindled to nothing. Even the fence-sitting President Lula in Brazil is struggling in the polls. The news that Chávez will win this month's referendum will be bleakly received in Washington.

Chávez came to power after the traditional political system in Venezuela had self-destructed during the 1990s. But the remnants of the ancien régime, notably those entrenched in the media, have kept up a steady fight against him, in a country where racist antipathies inherited from the colonial era are never far from the surface. Chávez, with his black and Indian features and an accent that betrays his provincial origins, goes down well in the shanty towns, but is loathed by those in the rich white suburbs who fear he has mobilised the impoverished majority against them.

The expected Chávez victory will be the opposition's third defeat in as many years. The first two were dramatically counter-productive for his opponents, since they only served to entrench him in power. An attempted coup d'état in April 2002, with fascist overtones reminiscent of the Pinochet era in Chile, was defeated by an alliance of loyal officers and civilian groups who mobilised spontaneously and successfully to demand the return of their president.

The unexpected restoration of Chávez not only alerted the world to an unusual leftwing, not to say revolutionary, experiment taking place in Venezuela, but it also led the country's poor majority to understand that they had a government and a president worth defending. Chávez was able to dismiss senior officers opposed to his project of involving the armed forces in programmes to help the poor, and removed the threat of a further coup.

The second attempt at his overthrow - the prolonged work stoppage in December 2002 which extended to a lockout at the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, nationalised since 1975 - also played into the hands of the president. When the walkout (with its echoes of the CIA-backed Chilean lorry owners' strike against Salvador Allende's government in the early 1970s) failed, Chávez was able to sack the most pampered sections of a privileged workforce. The company's huge surplus oil revenues were redirected into imaginative new social programmes. Innumerable projects, or "missions", were established throughout the country, recalling the atmosphere of the early years of the Cuban revolution. They combat illiteracy, provide further education for school dropouts, promote employment, supply cheap food, and extend a free medical service in the poor areas of the cities and the countryside, with the help of 10,000 Cuban doctors. Redundant oil company buildings have been commandeered to serve as the headquarters of a new university for the poor, and oil money has been diverted to set up Vive, an innovative cultural television channel that is already breaking the traditional US mould of the Latin American media.

The opposition dismiss the new projects as "populist", a term customarily used with pejorative intent by social scientists in Latin America. Yet faced with the tragedy of extreme poverty and neglect in a country with oil revenues to rival those of Saudi Arabia, it is difficult to see why a democratically elected government should not embark on crash programmes to help the most disadvantaged.

Their impact is about to be tested at the polls on August 15. Vote "Yes" to eject Chávez from the presidency. Vote "No" to keep him there until the next presidential election in 2006. The opposition, divided politically and with no charismatic figure to rival Chávez to front their campaign, continue to behave as though their victory is certain. They discuss plans for a post-Chávez government, and watch closely the ever-dubious and endlessly conflicting opinion polls, placing their evaporating hopes on the "don't knows". They still imagine fondly that they can achieve a victory comparable to that of the anti-Sandinistas in Nicaragua in 1990.

Yet their third attempt to derail the government is clearly doomed. The Chávez campaign to secure a "No" vote has struck the country like a whirlwind, playing to all his strengths as a military strategist and a political organiser. A voter registration drive, reminiscent of the attempt to put black people on the election roll in the United States in the 1960s, has produced hundreds of thousands of new voters. So too has a campaign to give citizenship to thousands of long-term immigrants. Most will favour Chávez, and Chávez supporters are already patrolling the shanty towns and the most remote areas of the country to get the vote out on August 15. One unexpected bonus for Chávez has been the dramatic and perhaps semi-permanent increase in the world oil price. As he explained to me a few days ago, he is now able to direct the extra revenues to the poor, both at home and abroad, for Venezuela supplies oil at a discount price to the countries of Central America and the Caribbean, including Cuba. Chávez celebrated his 50th birthday last month, and he has talked of soldiering on as president for years in order to see through the reforms he envisages. That is not such an improbable proposition.

He has also been helped by the changing political climate in Latin America. Other presidents have been climbing over themselves to be photographed with him. He has patched up relations with Colombia and Chile, hitherto cool, and last month reinforced his friendly relations with Brazil and Argentina by signing an association agreement with the Mercosur trading union that they lead. Once perceived by his neighbours as a bit of an oddball, he now appears more like a Latin American statesman. Up and down the continent he has become the man to watch.

Faced with a Chávez victory, the opposition may yet turn in desperation to violence. His assassination, hinted at recently by former president Carlos Andrés Pérez, or the deployment of paramilitary forces of the kind unleashed in recent years in Colombia, is always a possibility. Yet the more civilised sectors of the opposition will set themselves, with luck, to the difficult task of organising a proper electoral force to challenge Chévez in 2006. When I asked an uncommitted bookseller whether he would vote to sack the president in mid-term, he replied: "No, they should let him get on with the job."

Richard Gott is the author of In the Shadow of the Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the Transformation of Venezuela, published by Verso; his latest book, Cuba: A New History, will be published next month by Yale University Press

 

[Oceans11]

The last lefty dude that started really changing things in S America was in Chile. Salvador Allende in the 70's.

Uncle Sam made sure he didn't succeed.

 

[wilheim]

Nixon/Kissinger/CIA disinformation and propaganda campaign did in Allende. The terror regime of Augusto Pinochet resulted. As we speak legal action is taking place in Chile and the US against Kissinger for events that took place in the early 70's.

wil.

 

[Phaedrus]

What's interesting are the reviews of Gott's books at Amazon (see here) Especailly the vast disparity between collegiate whitebread reviewers and those of Venezuelans.

Naturally, I consider the Bush administration's interference in Venezuela despicable, but that's because Chavez is the ruler (er, leader) they seem to want down there, not because Chavez himself is any particular ray of light. I love all the comparisons to Castro -- this cockknocker isn't fit to shine Castro's shoes in terms of intelligence, military strategy, political talent etc. and probably can't match him for communist depravity and disregard for human life either. Just another caudillo to seduce and destroy Latin Americans.


Phaedrus

 

[wilheim]

Chavez made the mistake of calling a certain head of state a "pendejo" (earning eternal disdain) because of the his support of the Haitian coup that overthrew a democraticaly elected Dawne Astride. Go figure.

wil.

 

[sfeiner]

i still cant for the life of me understand why leftys think that america should have no interest in having a leader of these resource rich countries who actually LIKES america. while im still waiting on an that answer to how the republicans stole the elections in tennesee and arkansas could you please also inform me how having leaders in these countries who HATE america and all that it USED to stand for before the communists took over the democratic party and the democrats took over the republican party benefits america??? or is that the whole point? anything that benefits america is like a stake in a leftys heart?

 

[WildBill]

What a joke the whole thing is. Chavez will find some way to stay in office, either through winning the vote, fixing the vote, or just plain maneuvering. A non-event if you ask me. The oil there has only one major buyer. Not to mention the state oil company PDVSA owns Citgo, so obviously they have rather large stake in the US still getting along with them...just as the US has a stake in them continuing to send oil. A simple case of a despot making lots of noise, but really having little substance.

That Richard Gott is something else. If memory serves me right, he wrote a pretty glowing story about North Korea telling the world that it wasn't nearly as bad as the evil world media made it out to be. Of course he probably went on the guided tour so who can blame him for missing the millions of starving people?

As for Chavez he is a joke, he rewrites laws and the constitution to his fitting and still has trouble solidifying his power and winning elections. Wait, you could say that about the Bush team!

 

[Brazil4Worldcup2002]

 

[Mr NJ Sports]

The cartoon is not funny because for something to be funny it has to be based on truth. Bush won Florida by 500+ votes and Gore was the guy that used lawyers and that is why it ended up in the Supreme Court

 

[Marco]

I gotta little chuckle over the cartoon....the guy dressed in red on the right side of the cartoon appears to be giving everybody the finger....

 

[Jimmymak]

"for something to be funny it has to be based on truth. "

You mean the Simpsons are a TRUE reflection of American society? Doh!

 

[Mr NJ Sports]

for a joke to be funny it has to be based on some sort of truth for example.

why did michael jackson get food poisoning.....


he ate a nine year old wiener.

 

[Marco]

The one I heard about Jackson, pretty similar to yours:

Why does Michael Jackson like twenty eight year olds?

....Because there's twenty of them...