Democrats and George Soros operatives in the thick of Venezuela counter-revolution

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Counterpunch Weekend Edition
June 26/27, 2004
Venezuela: the Gang's All Here
Replay of Chile and Nicaragua?
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

You can set your watch by it. The minute some halfway decent government 
in Latin America begins to reverse the order of things and give the 
have-nots a break from the grind of poverty and wretchedness, the usual 
suspects in El Norte rouse themselves from the slumber of indifference 
and start barking furiously about democratic norms. It happened in 1973 
in Chile; we saw it again in Nicaragua in the 1980s; and here’s the same 
show on summer rerun in Venezuela, pending the August 15 recall 
referendum of President Hugo Chávez.

Chávez is the best thing that has happened to Venezuela’s poor in a very 
long time. His government has actually delivered on some of its 
promises, with improved literacy rates and more students getting school 
meals. Public spending has quadrupled on education and tripled on 
healthcare, and infant mortality has declined. The government is 
promoting one of the most ambitious land-reform programs seen in Latin 
America in decades.

Most of this has been done under conditions of economic sabotage. Oil 
strikes, a coup attempt and capital flight have resulted in about a 4 
percent decline in GDP for the five years that Chávez has been in 
office. But the economy is growing at close to 12 percent this year, and 
with world oil prices near $40 a barrel, the government has extra 
billions that it’s using for social programs. So naturally the United 
States wants him out, just as the rich in Venezuela do. Chávez was 
re-elected in 2000 for a six-year term. A US-backed coup against him was 
badly botched in 2002.

The imperial script calls for a human rights organization to start 
braying about irregularities by their intended victim. And yes, here’s 
José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch. We last met him in this 
column helping to ease a $1.7 billion US aid package for Colombia’s 
military apparatus. This time he’s holding a press conference in 
Caracas, hollering about the brazen way Chávez is trying to expand 
membership of Venezuela’s Supreme Court, the same way FDR did, and for 
the same reason: that the Venezuelan court has been effectively packed 
the other way for decades, with judicial flunkies of the rich. I don’t 
recall Vivanco holding too many press conferences to protest that 
perennial iniquity.

The “international observers” recruited to save the rich traditionally 
include the Organization of American States and the Carter Center; in 
the case of the Venezuelan recall they have mustered dead on schedule. 
On behalf of the opposition, they exerted enormous pressure on the 
country’s independent National Electoral Council during the 
signature-gathering and verification process. Eventually the head of the 
OAS mission had to be replaced by the OAS secretary general because of 
his unacceptable public statements.

The Carter Center’s team is headed by Jennifer McCoy, whose forthcoming 
book, The Unraveling of Representative Democracy in Venezuela, leans 
heavily against the government. One of its contributors is José Antonio 
Gil of the Datanalysis Polling Firm, most often cited for US media 
analysis. The Los Angeles Times quoted Gil on what to do: “And he can 
see only one way out of the political crisis surrounding President Hugo 
Chávez. ‘He has to be killed,’ he said, using his finger to stab the 
table in his office far above this capital’s filthy streets. ‘He has to 
be killed.’”

Media manipulation is an essential part of the script, and here, right 
on cue, comes Bill Clinton’s erstwhile pollster, Stan Greenberg, still a 
leading Democratic Party strategist. Greenberg is under contract to 
RCTV, one of the right-wing media companies leading the Venezuelan 
opposition and recall effort. It’s a pollster’s dream job. Not only does 
he have enormous resources against an old-fashioned, politically 
unsophisticated poor people’s movement, but his firm has something 
comrades back home can only fantasize about: control over the Venezuelan 
media. Imagine if the right wing controlled almost the entire media 
during Clinton’s impeachment.

full: http://www.counterpunch.org/
--
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org