WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2004-03-03 Posted By: Jan
From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 3/3/2004 8:52:01 AM
Venezuela: The Next Cuba
[I noticed Robert Mugabe was in Venezuela recently while at the same time, there were very violent street protests against the ruler of Venezuela. This article sheds light on it. All the leftist scum have a way of flocking together – all the planet’s dirt bags. I wonder when we’ll see the ANC there? Jan]
As Venezuelas embattled democratic opposition gears up for its planned August referendum against that South American nation’s increasingly authoritarian ruler, President Hugo Chavez is consolidating his Bolivarian Revolution and subverting whats left of the countrys constitutional democracy. Calling the legal referendum on his rule a mega-fraud, Chavez is doing all he can to thwart the peaceful recall effort. Many fear that he has little intention of allowing a vote. Meanwhile, the migration of frightened Venezuelans to the US continues.
There is no doubt that Chavez “ with Fidel Castros help — is creating a Cuban-style socialist state in Venezuela. Scholar Maxwell Cameron calls it the world’s first “slow-motion constitutional coup.” In the process, Chavez also is breathing new life into Fidel Castros dying and decrepit dictatorship. But whats even more worrisome is the fact that the mercurial Chavez is turning the large, oil rich country into a base for international terrorism.
Sadly, not many people recognize this threat. In my July 2003 American Legion Magazine article — The Other “Axis of Evil” I described the dangerous and growing alliance between Latin Americas two major anti-American rogue states and international terror groups operating throughout the hemisphere.
Focusing on the close and burgeoning partnership between Castro and Chavez, I explored the links both Castro and his new Caracas-based clone have with Latin American communist guerillas, drug dealers and Islamic terrorists. Referring to Castro as an anti-American godfather, increasingly advising his new alter-ego in Venezuela I wrote that Chavez, with Castros direction and support “ may be turning Venezuela into a new anti-American terrorism hub.
Noting Castros long history of subversion, espionage and terrorism — including the October 2001 arrest in Washington, DC of Cuban spy Ana Belen Montes, the former senior Cuba analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) — my article highlighted Castro’s continuing threat to the US. Cuba remains on the US State Department list of state sponsors of terrorism. Chavez and Castro are intimately linked, meeting and talking regularly. Chavez has said Cuba and Venezuela are, in effect, one team.
The partnership is so close that Venezuelas intelligence and security service, known as DISIP, reportedly has come under control of the Cuban intelligence service, the DGI. Because of this, US intelligence agencies have ended their longstanding liaison relationships with their Venezuelan counterparts. Hundreds of Cuban advisors, coordinated by Cubas military attache in Caracas, are also in charge of the elite presidential guard who defend Chavez against potential coups or military unrest.
Meanwhile, Chavez has purged and is reorganizing the Venezuelan military, making it personally loyal to him. Thousands of Cuban teachers, doctors and sports trainers also have flooded Venezuela. Their real job is to indoctrinate and train fanatically pro-Chavez paramilitary groups known as Bolivarian Circles that are part of a new 100,000-person Peoples Reserve militia recruited from Venezuelas poorest classes. These groups provide alternative armed cadres outside regular military channels loyal to Chavez.
While most of the mainstream media have ignored this growing menace, one major news magazine, US News and World Report, followed my piece with an in-depth investigative report in October 2003, Terror Close to Home: In Venezuela, a volatile leader befriends Mideast, Colombia and Cuba, confirming my exposition and clearly detailing the danger of Chavezs links to Castro and terrorism.
The weekly newsmagazine said that its two-month review, “including interviews with dozens of US and Latin American sources, confirms the terrorist activity,” adding that “the oil-rich but politically unstable nation of Venezuela is emerging as a potential hub of terrorism in the Western Hemisphere, providing assistance to Islamic radicals from the Middle East and other terrorists.”
Most prominent in Venezuelas list of friendly terror groups are the communist FARC guerillas (Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces) who have terrorized Colombia for over 30 years and have killed thousands of people. Gen. Gary Speer, former acting chief of Americas Southern Command, who said during a Senate Armed Services committee hearing in March 2002 that we are very concerned about President Chavez the FARC operates at will across the border into Venezuela.
There are arms shipments originating in Venezuela that get to the FARC and the ELN [National Liberation Army], he added. We have been unable to firmly establish a link to the Chavez government, but it certainly causes us suspicions. The company that Chavez keeps around the world, although under the guise of OPEC, certainly causes additional concerns as well. The US News piece details the exact location of FARC camps inside Venezuela where Venezuelan military advisors reportedly train FARC guerillas.
Sadly, Democratic presidential hopeful John Kerry stated in a February speech in Boston that the murderous FARC guerillas had “legitimate complaints” despite the fact that they have the support of less than three percent of Colombia’s citizenry.
Chavezs links to Middle East terrorists may be more indirect but US officials note that Venezuela is providing support–including identity documents–that could prove useful to radical Islamic groups. U.S. News noted that Chavez’s government has issued thousands of cedulas, the equivalent of national ID cards, to people from Cuba, Colombia, and Middle Eastern (96)`countries of interest’ like Syria, Egypt, Pakistan and Lebanon that host foreign terrorist organizations.
According to US News, some of these cedulas were subsequently used to obtain Venezuelan passports and even American visas, which could allow the holder to elude immigration checks and enter the United States. Chavez also was the only western leader to travel to Iraq to visit Saddam Hussein prior to his ousting by the US.
This article provoked an outcry from Chavez and his henchmen. The Venezuelan ambassador to the US, Alvarez Herrera, wrote an angry letter to the editor of US News deriding the articles accusations as false and outrageous.
The ambassador then tried to counter the magazines first-hand evidence by stating unconvincingly that the government of Venezuela has ratified the Inter-American Convention Against Terrorismand has signed multiple UN conventions on terrorism. Yet, the signature of this anti-democratic leftist demagogue on any international treaty hadly confirms his peaceful and lawful intent.
An indignant Chavez also told foreign reporters “I challenge the staff of US News and World Report or its owners to come here and look for one single shred of evidence, to show the world one single shred of proof.” Chavez added that, “It is a strategy, to launch an offensive by concocting anything — an assassination, a coup, an invasion.” As a diversion from his terror links, Chavez has begun claiming loudly, and without any substantiation, that the CIA is trying kill him.
Much of the problem with our reaction to Chavez began with former US Ambassador to Venezuela, John Maisto who I briefly served as a military attache at the US embassy in Caracas. His soft approach to the leftist demagogue was clearly flawed. Early on in Chavez’s administration, the U.S. ambassador downplayed the Chavez threat, stating that it was Chavezs actions, not words that really mattered.
Other Clinton administration officials echoed that sentiment and said that we should ignore Chavezs rhetoric. That approach became informally known as the “Maisto doctrine.” Yet, Chavez’s actions inexorably have matched his rhetoric.
Despite his failure to appreciate the menace of a Chavez-Castro alliance, Maisto was inexplicably picked by the Bush administration to head “ until recently — the Western Hemisphere Affairs section at the National Security Council. He is still influencing Latin America policy as US Ambassador to the Organization of American States.
Fortunately, other members of Bushs National Security team such as Presidential Envoy to Latin America, Otto Reich and Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere Roger Noriega do seem to understand the threat posed by the Chavez-Castro terror nexus.
Given the mischief Castro and Chavez are pursuing, Uncle Sam has his hands full dealing with the two dangers on either end of the Caribbean.
Paul Crespo is a former Marine Corps Officer and military attache at the US embassy in Caracas. An adjunct faculty member in the Political Science Departmnent at the University of Miami, he is also a Senior Fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (www.DefendDemocracy.org) in Washington, DC.
Source: Front Page Magazine
URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArti…br>