ETERNAL VIGILANCE

USA creating a base for war on the people of South America and Venezuela

Published: Monday, January 31, 2005, VHeadline.com
Bylined to: Bob Chapman

THE INTERNATIONAL FORECASTER editor Bob Chapman writes: The US for many years has been active in Colombia in assisting the government against FARC, the narco-terrorist group. As there was in Vietnam, there are military advisers in country-accompanied by US Special Forces and Colombian military.

Considering the actions of the US, in both Colombia and Venezuela recently, and the oil war now in progress, we believe the Bush administration wants to do the same thing in Venezuela as they have in Iraq and they are using Colombia as a springboard. In fact, it’s surprising that they did not pursue Venezuela first.

The oil is a short distance away, they already had a force nearby, and logistically it is a much easier target than Iraq. Be as it may, it is a safe bet Venezuela is next.

• That is why Petrosur or PetroAmerica is being used as an energy alliance and that is why the South American community of Nations was created in December. The first victim of these moves was FTAA. That is why the Granda affair was created.

PlanColombia and the domination of the region by the US has begun ... our government was not able to overthrow the Chavez government so the next move will be to bring about warfare.

Venezuela had best expedite their defense because their timeframe for outside interference is the next two years.

The Bush neocons cannot unseat the Chavez government legally, so before the next election, two years hence, they have to move to invade the country under the guise of rooting out this government, which they will accuse of helping the narco-terrorists.

• The elitists want to steal Venezuela’s oil now that they do not control it anymore. Yes, we will hear administration officials saying Venezuela is undemocratic.

The next we will hear is that Venezuela is aiding the narco-terrorists. It is the view of the elitists that once Venezuela is subdued, the remainder of South America will fall into their hands like ripe fruit.

There are currently more than 400 US advisers permanently in Colombia and most of them are mercenaries. Colombian police are being militarized and US$1.3 billion in the latest military equipment is being moved into Colombia.

We see a Colombian army of 200,000 and when you add in support, it’s 320,000 people ... the US is creating a base for war ... this is war on the people of South America and, particularly Venezuela.

Once the South American countries are defeated, the US will have a permanent residence on the continent. Stopping drugs will be the cover for the operation, whose real intent is to control the entire region.

All of this would not have been necessary had the Venezuelan elitist been able to maintain power, but they became so corrupt that the citizens removed them from power.

It is easy for the elitists to manipulate Colombia ... it is a country with 20% unemployment, and 40% of those who work have to depend on the underground economy. All the money in the country is in the hands of elitists or drug producers and the national economy is run by the IMF.

The people have an uncaring elitist government and the alternative is just as bad.

Behind the scenes all America wants in the name of free trade, globalization and transnational corporatist control is the further subjugation of the people.

There is now no question that there will be no budget cuts and the Bush administration will continue to add mounting debt and the Fed will continue to resort to debt financed growth via M3 and the repo pool. This means further US financial dependency as we stand and watch the decline of a once great empire. The plug will be pulled by foreign US asset holders. It is only a question of when.

This is compounded by imperial overreach in Iraq and Afghanistan and possibly in Iran, Syria and Venezuela.

Iraq is a deepening quagmire. Oil prices remain between $45 and $50 a barrel reflecting a continuing premium as violence spreads across the Middle East. All we need is one untoward event, a catalyst, and everything could break loose ... the event will occur ... the only question is when.

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Editor's comment: This has been excerpted from a much larger article covering a broad range of issues, from the economy, both domestic and foreign, the continuing decline of the dollar, the Economic Summit of the G-8 in Davos, Switzerland and much more. Here is the first few paragraphs of the article which reinforces our position of precious metals as a store of wealth, and, in particular, the Liberty Dollar as a viable alternative to the Federal Reserve Note.

We find that Federal Reserve monetary policy works by inciting changes in financial asset prices. Speculative trading is at the heart of their system and its liquidity, and balance and stability are maintained only as long as the Fed keeps leveraging. That is via the stock market and real estate. Those wealth factors keep America happy. Any sane person knows that your house cannot be an ATM machine forever. You cannot forget that leverage works both ways. Once leverage comes to an end, we have deflation. It should not and never has been heretofore the place of the government or the private Federal Reserve to accommodate massive debt. This is risk the average household does not understand and should not undertake. This is not creating financial and economic stability. In fact, it is just the opposite. The leveraging of today’s US housing market is going to be one of the colossal financial blunders of all time. The system has to be purged and that very serious structural adjustment is the only thing that can return our financial system back to stability. You cannot keep a system afloat by enticing foreign investors solely to keep their currencies from appreciating against our dollar. Who knows when the foreigners will cease accommodating our debt. This is being played out by the value of the dollar. It sinks as debt rises and accommodation wanes.

This is all gambling plain and simple. The financial affairs of our government and households are not supposed to function that way. Markets are going to fall and destabilization is on its way. Excesses are about to be accounted for. The stampede begins slowly with a little distress, which gives into fear and dissatisfaction. Bonds, stocks and real estate begin to fall in value and commodities; gold and silver, become the only safe haven in the storm. If nothing else, they will win by default. The world is about to rediscover that the only real money is gold.

From 2000 to mid-2004, credit grew $2.4 trillion a year. That is three times as fast as ten years earlier. It is like being on an accelerator that picks up speed every minute. Eventually it is going so fast you cannot get off. Something snaps and the escalator crashes and disintegrates. Credit expansion has to inherently go forward at a faster rate because if it does not it spirals into recession and depression.

To see the entire article from Bob Chapman, go to The International Forecaster.


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‘Final Solution’ for German Nationalists?

Gunther Deckert has a revolutionary idea. He thinks that freedom of speech and thought would be good for Germany. In this occupied nation, without a peace treaty 59 years after the war, such thoughts are forbidden.

By Guenter Deckert

The two leading German nationalist political parties, the National Democratic Party (NPD) and the German Volks Union (DVU), joined in 2004 to enter candidates in local elections and forged an agreement to support each other by not duplicating candidates for the same election spot. This turned out to be a real winning decision. It got a couple of dozen candidates into various state parliaments in the former East Germany most prominently.

The German news media has been spewing hate toward these men and women ever since. Good Germans are not acceptable to the establishment. Bad — former East German communists, now in Schroeder’s coalition — are good.

On Jan. 21 in the state of Saxony, the capital of which is Dresden, during the session of the state parliament, the establishment members demanded a minute of silence for the victims of the holocaust. Twelve NPD members refused to participate and instead demanded one minute of silence for the victims of the Dresden bombing holocaust on Feb. 13, 1945. According to historians at least 300,000 Germans were incinerated in Dresden, but the German occupation government will only admit that 35,000 died.

The NPD members were shouted down and the microphone silenced. Currently, there is a demand by the local politicians (no doubt their families were victims of the bombing as well) that the two spokesmen for the NPD members be charged with a hate crime. Using the phrase “bombing holocaust,” which they did, demeans the memory of the Jewish holocaust victims and instigates hatred. Such is the German law now on the books.

The German press is going ballistic, urging banning of the NPD and all “right wing” parties and throwing them all into jail instigating hate attacks against these Germans who have the courage of their conviction.

A few years ago the government tried to ban the NPD because they were “Nazis,” because members would march with forbidden flags, such as the army and navy flags under Kaiser Wilhelm. That suit almost ruined the party until the German Supreme Court had to rule, because of the evidence, that the so-called “Nazis” were working for the German version of the FBI which had planted these agitators. Photographers had paid them to act aggressively for the evening TV news. It was all a sham.

NPD has recovered from that debacle. Together with DVU they have made great inroads and hope to have members in the Bundestag this year.

If the haters of all things German could — and this includes many media people — they would destroy everyone who speaks up for freedom and democracy for Germans.

Attorney Horst Mahler, an incredibly courageous former leftist who has already paid with 10 years imprisonment, was just sentenced by a lower Berlin court to nine months in jail, no probation or suspension. Mahler had just gone through a grueling trial, which at first ended when the state stopped proceedings. He has now been hauled back into court and in spite of 500 pages of testimony and evidence presented by him, the court ignored all of it and sentenced him for “hate crimes.”

Mahler is an intellectual of the first order and brings well-reasoned and lucid arguments. However, he has become enemy number one because of that. He has been banned from practicing law and traveling.

When President Bush wants to spread freedom and democracy let him start with Germany first. They have no freedom of thought or speech and certainly can be punished with jail and fines if they speak out against state tyranny.

Since Germany has been reunited, the worst elements of the former Stasi operations have been introduced to punish revisionists, seeking truth for Germany. Thousands are being fined, and many are in prison.

Have you read about this in the U.S. press?

Historian, Guenter Deckert is a former headmaster of a school in
Germany. For his outspoken and highly controversial views about
World War II history, Deckert served four years in German prison in the 1990s.
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Editor's comment: This article appeared in the February 7, 2005 issue of American Free Press.

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I thought a few quotes by George Orwell (plus a few others) would be most appropriate here, for it has truly come to pass just as Orwell has said in his classic 1984 in the "politically correct" language of newspeak, where black is white, and white is black; where the truth is a lie, and a lie is the truth. The thought police have reversed even common sense it seems. Be watchful, the same thing is in store for us here in the U.S. if these rogues and charlatans have anything further to say about it.

"The heresy of all heresies in a tyranny is common sense." George Orwell

“Political language … is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase … into the dust bin, where it belongs.” Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell)

"Those who control the past, control the future; and those who control the present, control the past." George Orwell

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” George Orwell

“We are all ensnared by the tentacles of a system of social control, operating at all levels of society, which demands the blood sacrifice of millions of the cream of our youth every generation in bloody aggression to maintain prosperity. The primary intellectual and spiritual fundaments of this system spring from what passes for history, and are percolated down to the lowest member of society via a well-coordinated machine which leaves nothing unsullied by its poisonous output.” Willis A. Carto, 1983

“Democracy is a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.” H.L. Mencken

“Truth, whether in or out of fashion, is the measure of knowledge, and the business of understanding; whatsoever is beside that, however authorized by consent, or recommended by rarity, is nothing but ignorance, or something worse.” John Locke

“We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.” Edward R. Murrow

Together, We Can Take Back America!

by Edgar J. Steele

June 16, 2004, Conspiracy Pen Pal

Editor's note: Following is the full text of the remarks of Edgar J. Steele's address to the European-American Unity & Leadership Conference, sponsored by David Duke, held in New Orleans, May 30, 2004. It is a powerful indictment of the ruling classes in America for their desire to "remake" America for thesake of super profits. Steele is quickly gaining the attention of the mainstream for his "politically incorrect" views.

Go here for the abbreviated and edited audio version available on line at Duke's web site.

====================================

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.

Some say that patriotism is old fashioned. Some think that love of country is out of date. Some consider the slightest show of sentiment toward one's homeland to be naive.

But, God help us – and God help our country – if the cynics, the one worlders, the Zionist Neoconservative intellectual dilettantes ever persuade us that these things have passed us by.

Because, ladies and gentlemen, patriotism, loyalty, sentiment...THESE THINGS ARE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

In my lifetime, I have seen America grow and change. I have seen her stand tall and I have seen her brought low.

I have seen the best that America can be and now, just recently, I have seen the worst that America can be.

But always, she has been my America ...our America...and she will be our America, come what may...for better or for worse.

We have a habit here in America of forgetting what a grand and noble experiment she represented when our founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and, then, the Constitution. We forget the sacrifices they made...in property...in family...and, finally, in their own blood.

We forget the sacrifices by all those since that time. Sacrifices made so that we might have the freedom to come together like this and discuss change.

Yesterday we spoke some about the so-called “Holocaust.” Tomorrow is Memorial Day. Seems like we should really remember all those who gave everything in WWII.

75 million people throughout the world died in WWII. 75 million. Yet, we are supposed to honor and remember only 6 million? Out of 75 million!!! Just 6 million...Most of whom never even existed in the first place!

Nobody asked, but I've got a somewhat different take on the Holocaust: Why would Germany, fighting a war on two fronts...with fuel scarce...short of all resources...ship millions of Jews by railroad...hundreds and thousands of miles...to camps specially-built, just to hold them...feed them...clothe them...tattoo them in order to keep track of them....just so they could KILL them?

It doesn't even begin to make sense. If the Germans had wanted to kill the Jews, they would have done it just the way the Russian Jews killed well over 20 million Russian Christians earlier in the century...With a bullet to the base of the skull, wherever they were found.

Or, as my buddy Al likes to say: In all of German-occupied Europe , there were 2.8 million Jews. After the war, 3.6 million Jews applied for Holocaust reparations. Tragically, the remaining 6 million were lost.

America once was a beacon to the world. She was a beacon of liberty. A beacon of freedom. A beacon of moral strength. That reality became our reputation and a part of our heritage.

Now it is revealed that American troops, under orders from on high, humiliate, torture and sexually degrade prisoners of war. American troops shoot innocent Iraqi civilians...more than 10,000 of them, so far...many of them women and children.

Our heritage has been squandered for the sake of Jewish empire. Yes – Jewish empire, not America's...not Israel's...Jewish empire.

For America has become a Jewish nation in word. America has become a Jewish nation in deed. And America has become a Jewish nation in fact.

Torture is what Israel does. Humiliation is what Israel does. Lying, double dealing and, even, genocide are Israeli traits...because those things are Jewish traits. “By deception, we shall do war.” The motto of the Mossad.

We have become everything that America once stood against.

Last month, when my son told me that, at school, he no longer stood for the Pledge of Allegiance or rose when the flag went by, I replied, “Son, don't confuse America's current government with America herself. America still is here and she still has greatness. America is in her people and her back roads and her magnificent cities. But we must shake free of the Zionist cabal that rules us today.”

I told him, “Pledge allegiance to the America that we know and love, for she still deserves us and she needs us now, more than ever. Stand for the flag because that flag represents us – the real America. Our flag has been taken from us only temporarily. We will take it back.”

Ladies and Gentlemen, modern self government originated with the Pilgrims, as written into the Mayflower Compact. That was to grow into America 's Constitution, which was then amended to guarantee every American's God-given rights. America 's 1st Amendment is about the only thing left of that document – and even it now is in danger of being extinguished.

Truth always used to be an absolute defense to any charge. Not any more, though. Not in the field of defamation and, now, not in the new field of thought crimes.

A legislating Supreme Court has declared a great many things not even to be speech and, therefore, not deserving of the First Amendment's protection. Obscenity laws – “not speech.” Yet, somehow, dancing nude on a table in public is protected free speech. Commercial speech, as in advertising – “not speech.”

Flag burning used to be symbolic speech, then it wasn't – and now, it is again. Who knows what it will be tomorrow? This alone shows how we have become a nation of men and not of laws. Today, cross burning no longer is symbolic speech. Now it is a crime...per a US Supreme Court decision handed down just recently.

Hate used to be something kids did on the school grounds. Then, somehow, it became an enhancement for sentencing criminals. Now we have laws charging hate as a crime itself, separate from any other crimes.

Until recently, hate crime laws required a physical act. Courts were fond of saying, “We don't prosecute just speech in America.” They don't say that any more.

The line is being blurred in application of the hate crime laws. The courts strain to find any excuse to punish the thoughts being expressed. This is the way it's done, folks.

Once people get used to thinking it's illegal to say the word “nigger,” then they pass the law that actually makes that a crime, just as they are trying to do in America right now.

Leftists say there is no difference between hate crime enhancement and direct hate speech law. Oddly enough, I agree...but for a different reason. I say, that's why the laws should be rescinded.

And application of hate crime laws really work only in one direction – I had a client recently in southern Idaho, Lonny Rae, who was charged under Idaho's hate crime law for having hurled a racial epithet through an empty doorway into which had disappeared a hulking black man who just had assaulted his wife: “Tell that nigger to get out here, cuz I'm a gonna kick his butt.” He said it once.

The black man who injured his wife never was charged with anything, but Lonny Rae faced five years in prison for what he said. We finally prevailed on appeal of the conviction on a lesser-included offense, but that was a technical victory only. I'll take it. It's rare enough that the politically incorrect win in America these days, after all.

As Americans learn every day, all over America, only Whites can be guilty of hate crimes. Though Blacks commit 50 times (50 times!) the violent crimes of Whites, over 80% of all hate crimes are charged against Whites like Lonney Rae. Usually, for something just as stupid.

Today we focus on intent...tomorrow it will be effect, just as it now is in Canada. Just ask Nusrat Hussein, publisher of a Vancouver, BC Muslim newspaper who dared to reprint my essay, “It Wasn't Arabs,” and for which The Canadian Jewish Congress wanted him prosecuted. Now, all that matters is if you hurt someone else's feelings – and, usually that someone else has to be Jewish.

It is a hate crime today in Canada to say that fewer than 6 million died in the Holocaust or, even, merely to question some detail about the official Holocaust story, which has been proven to be largely a pack of lies. Just ask Ernst Zundel, who sits in jail for that very crime.

Canadian House of Commons Bill C-2, now pending, makes it illegal simply to watch any Arab TV Channels, like Al Jazeera, off a satellite. This is true! The penalty? An incredible $15,000 fine and 1 year in prison. They pretend the law is to discourage signal piracy, but why make it illegal to intercept a signal not otherwise available?

The Toronto Police Dept issued a press release recently, stating that it is “hate speech” merely to state that “Zionism equals Nazism.”

In France, a TV comedian recently was charged a $10,000 fine simply for criticizing Israel in a comedy sketch.

Recent Hungary law: Two years for publicly insulting a Jew; 3 years if you mean it...that is, if you express hatred – your intent. Their President refused to sign it, though passed by both houses of their government. Effect vs. intent. Both now get prosecuted.

This just in: Good news from Hungary. On Friday, just day before yesterday, the Hungarian Constitutional Court struck down Hungary's Hate Speech law. Immediately, the Jews started screaming “anti-Semitism.”

But things are going the other way in America just now. HR3077, the International Student Higher Education Act, passed the American House of Representatives just 3 weeks ago unanimously. It creates a federal panel to cut funding to public colleges that harbor academic critics of Israel, be they professors or students. Remember, the House has already passed it and there wasn't one single “no” vote.

And, now there is HR4230, just introduced by the House Committee on International Relations. It makes the US State Department responsible for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism everywhere in the world. America becomes Israel's world thought police and will have to intervene on behalf of Jews anywhere in the world. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP!

Today, we can protest our President and Vice President only in designated “free speech zones,” which can be up to a mile from anywhere either happens to be speaking.

Today, Say the N word, go to jail. Tomorrow, Say the J word, go to jail. The day after tomorrow? Say the J word, die. You think it can't happen here? You are wrong.

It has been forgotten that the first thing the communists did after seizing power in Russia early last century was to make anti-Semitism punishable by death. And before they were done, the Russian jews ended up killing between 20 and 80 million white Christians, don't forget. Most Russian Christian churches were burned to the ground during that same period, but not one synagogue.

What we see happening in the area of speech in America is just the tip of the iceberg. We've seen laws bootstrapped and misapplied to so many. Get charged with disturbing the peace or served with a domestic restraining order and you can no longer own a gun in many parts of America.

Waco...Ruby Ridge...Richard Butler...Christine Greenwood... Matt Hale...David Duke...Artie Wheeler...Ernst Zundel.

What we see elsewhere is coming to America; the same Zionist cabal is cracking down here. The Patriot Act is just the latest installment.

What we've done in Afghanistan. What we're doing in Iraq...Killing women and children...Snipers shooting ambulance drivers...Bombing churches during services and killing women and children...Bombing wedding services and killing women and children...Carpet bombing cities like Fallujah and, now, Najaf...Jailhouse torture, humiliation, rape and murder.

We're taking huge US casualties...we're being lied to, just like we were in Viet Nam.

Their freedom fighters are defending against a Marxist takeover of their country. We call them terrorists and insurgents. How can you be an insurgent in your own country, fighting an invader? This simply is propaganda at work.

They say that, if you want to take the measure of a man's character, just give him some power. Well, just look at George Bush.

Bush and Ashcroft have declared their critics to be traitors and they warn the rest of us to watch what we say. The media is totally under the control of the politically correct today – the “inner party,” if you will...our Zionist rulers...Jews!

George Orwell's fantasy has become the media's reality. Today, Whites are depicted as stupid and racist, while blacks are both noble and witty. Homosexuality is a desirable lifestyle, Christians are narrow-minded bigots and Patriots are traitors.

Orwell was right, you know. It was just his timing that was off.

Orwell said, "War is Peace" – Today, we have perpetual war to "keep the peace." Today, war is peace.

Orwell said, "Freedom is Slavery." Today, we yield civil liberties in the name of domestic security. Today, freedom is slavery.

Orwell said, "Ignorance is Strength." Today, we accuse those asking questions of being unpatriotic. Today, ignorance is strength.

Orwell's "Ministry of Peace" waged war. Today, our Defense Department conducts nonstop wars that we start.

We have gone beyond even George Orwell with our version of Newspeak.

There is nothing conservative these days about conservatives. Now, conservative means bigger government and more control.

And there is nothing liberal about liberals any more - who fall all over one another to surrender personal freedom. Liberal used to mean favoring personal freedom and liberty.

Racial diversity requires that everyone think the same. We destroy countries in order to save them – as in Afghanistan. We kill foreign civilians in order to liberate them – as in Iraq. We allow the Homeland Security Department to arrest our fellow citizens so we might feel safe and secure.

It is our Child Protective Services that facilitate wholesale child kidnapping, abuse, rape and murder. I've handled a few of these cases and I know what I'm talking about.

We support and create totalitarianism, then call it democracy, both at home and abroad. Anti-Semites, in truth, have become simply those of us who are hated by Jews. A great many Christians have become singularly unChristian toward those with whom they disagree.

Today, there are none so intolerant as those who preach tolerance.

Today, it's the entitlement mentality of socialism, with the centralized control of everything and everybody.

We reward laziness and call it welfare. We kill our unborn and call it choice. We abuse power and call it politics. We ridicule our forefathers' values and call it enlightenment.

Today, it's the overriding control freak outlook of fascism. Used to be, we had rights. Today, we possess only privileges, dispensed at the pleasure of our federal government.

A coup has taken place – and right under our noses. The Patriot Bill was passed by Congress without even being read by any legislator.

Laws already are on the books -- as part of the first Patriot Act -- that allow the government to visit our local libraries and bookstores to examine our reading habits. Neighborhood watch programs encourage neighbors to spy upon one another.

Provisions in Patriot Act II will allow secret arrests, warrantless searches, asset forfeiture and, believe it or not, the stripping of citizenship from Americans so that we then can be deported for “further processing.” Can you say torture and murder, boys and girls?

Already, right here in Louisiana, just one month ago, the Federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that police officers no longer need a warrant to search your home or business. Two dissenting judges on that panel quite correctly called their ruling “the road to Hell.” Well, they certainly would know it, because the legal system has been on the road to Hell for quite some time.

To be arrested under Patriot Act II, you merely have to be accused by a bureaucrat of providing support to groups designated as terrorist organizations, even if you're unaware of that group's activities.

Tomorrow's legal system will look like today's military tribunals. Tomorrow, thought control will look like today's hate crime laws.

The charge of hate is used selectively, of course. Lesbians spread their hatred of men but are never charged, while feminists teach young girls that all men are potential rapists. Blacks taunt whites with names like “honky” and “cracker,” without recrimination. Jewish written scriptures overflow with hatred of Jesus Christ and Christians.

Say the “N” word while white and go to jail. Burn a cross while white and go to jail. Challenge Holocaust lies with the truth and go to jail.

And it is not enough that Zionists control America. They have to reshape it to suit themselves. Virtually every recent case that involves removal of Christian symbols from society is brought and/or prosecuted by a Jew, usually with a Jewish judge presiding.

For the sake of the feelings of 2-1/2%, all the rest of us must yield our cultural heritage. Removing "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance. Taking down plaques of the Ten Commandments. Removing crosses from public venues. Taking Christ out of Christmas, first, then Christmas out of the year-end holidays altogether.

Hate laws are a singularly Jewish invention, foisted on an unsuspecting public so as to preemptively remove the possibility of criticism of themselves. Now, anti-Semitism is being added to the proscriptions of hate laws in America .

American borders are kept wide open to a flood of illegal immigrants, apparently to dilute the White population, thereby making us more easily controlled. Yet, there is a furious struggle to jail those who criticize Jews. Contrast this policy imposed upon America with the extremely closed society of Israel, which is reserved solely for Jews.

And consider the money that Israel has cost us, facilitated by their Jewish brethren. It is nothing short of breathtaking. Economist Dr. Thomas Stauffer estimates the cost of our Middle Eastern policies at over $2.5 trillion, more than the cost of the Vietnam war. $2.5 trillion. Boggles the mind, doesn't it?

Lessee now, America has a population of 290 million and about 80 million households, so that amounts to $31,250 from your family to Israel. And that doesn't include some other items which easily could double that figure, says Dr. Stauffer. That brings us to the $64,000 question, which is approximately double the $31,250 figure just cited: Is Israel worth it to you? Or could your family have put that $64,000 taken from it to better use?

What is particularly ironic is how much of that money came back from Israel for the purpose of buying off America’s elected representatives.

George Bush addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) just ten days ago. Here's a direct quote from his speech: “By defending the freedom and prosperity and security of Israel, you're also serving the cause of America...I know there are buses outside waiting to take you to Capitol Hill. I'm told -- Howard told me there's over 500 meetings scheduled with members of the Senate and the House. That is good news. I'm sure you're going to pass this message on to them: A free, prosperous and secure Israel is in this nation's national interest."

Mr. Bush also told the AIPAC audience that, "(W)e have a duty to expose and confront anti-Semitism, wherever it is found." He followed that up with, "The demonization of Israel...can be a flimsy cover for anti-Semitism."

With those statements, Mr. Bush made clear where his loyalties lie. With Israel and against America, that's where. Could it be any more clearly stated, folks? Of course, Mr. Bush is the same fellow who gave new life to the phrase, "yer either with us or yer agin us." At least, now we know what he meant by the word "us," and it sure wasn't you and me.

Since I'm quoting him, I can't resist telling you what Mr. Bush said while speaking at a Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, D.C., three years ago: "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on."

George W. Bush is inarticulate and politically inexperienced, yet he becomes America’s President. His own father was President before himself. Coincidence?

He gained the Presidency without winning the popular vote. Coincidence?

His election was decided by judges who overruled the popular vote count in a state governed by his own brother. Coincidence?

Do you believe in coincidence? Or, does the word "coup" come to mind?

Today, we have a dictatorship with only the illusion of democracy; not even a pretense of a Republic anymore. The judiciary makes law as directed by the Administration. The executive rules absolutely. Legislators simply steal, from the top of the heap for the new priesthood: the legal profession. Lawyers are the privileged class today and they are destroying America.

The New World Order is here and it's now – it is America. The UN isn't coming. ”They” aren't taking us over…we are taking over the rest of the world. America writ large, but no Bill of Rights; indeed, no rights whatsoever.

The system is broken – irretrievably broken. It can't be fixed because it won't be fixed. We can't work within the system any more to effect meaningful change because the system won't allow it. As a lawyer, I'm inside the system. Everyone says the system is broken. You don't know how bad things really are.

If you think Kerry will be different, you are wrong. There was no change from Bush to Clinton. There was no change from Clinton to Bush. There will be no change in the future, with politics as usual. Do you know what is wrong with America's 2-party system? Only one party ever loses at a time.

We've got to make a change in America. Maybe we won't succeed in making change, but we sure can deserve to succeed.

Make no mistake. We are at war. War for our very existence. If there must be trouble, let it come now, so that our children might live in peace. Let us fight the fight. Let us suffer defeat, if defeat it must be.

To win a war, one must risk death. That might seem scary, but to have nothing worth dying for...that is not living at all.

Put aside fear. There is a limit to physical pain and suffering, but there is no limit to fear.

Take it from me, in 20 years you will regret what you didn't do here and now far more than what you did do.

It was William Wallace, as played by Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart, who said, when rallying his army to fight the British: “Aye. Fight and you may die. Run and you will live - at least, a while. And, dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance - just one chance – to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they will never take our freedom?"

I can't advocate a violent revolution or I would be disbarred. But, that's exactly what the likes of William Wallace, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington would do today if they were still among us. I like to think that, if we were to bring them back to life today, tomorrow they would buy a road map, a red Cadillac convertible and a bazooka, then set out for Washington, DC.

What I advocate is being prepared and awakening others to what is coming. What's coming? Not worldwide empire, American style. What's coming is America’s comeuppance. I think it will go badly for the NWO crowd and, consequently, for America, too. But that will create an opportunity we don't currently possess – an opportunity to start over.

America worked once as a constitutional republic. It can work again.

Don't despair at how difficult the road ahead might seem to be. None other than Dale Carnegie pointed out that the most important things in the world have been accomplished by people who kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all. The only real failure in life is in giving up, you know.

I'm glad you are here. I'm glad you risk so much to make a difference. I'm glad so many are willing to give so much...like the distinguished speakers here today. I'm proud to call you friends.

We don't all have to be the same. We don't have to have the same abilities. We don't have to share the same beliefs. Dare to be different...even from one another. I don't know the key to success, but I do know that the key to failure is in trying to please everybody. Heaven knows that I don't manage to do that. We all have a role to play. Don't despair at your own talents.

Now, listen closely to what I'm about to tell you...Don't try to be better than anybody else. Just try to be better than yourself. Just do that, and they will never break our spirit...They will never silence us...They will never take our freedom.

Together, we can touch lives. Together, we can make a difference. Together, we can awaken America.

Together, we can take back America.

New America. An idea whose time has come.

Memo To: Website Fans, Browsers, Clients

From: Jude Wanniski

Re: A Book About the Evil Empire


If you happened to glance at the NYTimes Book Review today, you might have noticed a book on the best-seller list for the first time, in ninth place. The blurb tells us: “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins. (Barrett-Koehler, $14.97.) A former employee of an international consulting firm denounces the American global empire and its ‘corporatocracy.’”


What’s this all about? The book was published last fall, but only now shows up as a best-seller? It only recently was brought to my attention by a website fan who knows I’ve long argued that the International Monetary Fund and its sister organization, the World Bank, constitute an “Evil Empire.” The two “international financial institutions” (IFI’s) were founded in 1945 during the genesis of the United Nations as “do-good” enterprises. The IMF would assist countries trying to keep their currencies tied to the dollar under the terms of the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement. The World Bank would lend money at low interest rates gathered from the rich countries to help poor countries get off their backs.

Over the years, the process has been corrupted, with both the IMF and World Bank becoming controlled by the multinational corporations and their banks. When President Nixon went off the gold standard in 1971, the IMF’s reason for existence evaporated, because Bretton Woods and the fixed dollar went up in smoke. Now the problem for the big banks like Chase Manhattan, Citicorp and the Bank of America became two-fold:

1) As surplus dollars accumulated in their reserves and there were no credit-worthy Americans wanting to borrow, the banks had to think of ways to lend the money abroad or it would sit in their vaults earning zip, which means it really is losing money as the paper dollar – freed from its gold anchor – was inflating and losing purchasing power. Citigroup’s Walter Wriston (who died last week) came up with the idea that the surplus should be loaned to poor countries, even though they had no collateral, because governments had to pay off their hard-currency loans or lose their international credit ratings.

2) If the countries that borrowed from Chase or Citicorp could not pay back interest or principle and did not worry about stiffing the private bankers, they would have to swallow the non-performing loans. The solution was to have the IMF, looking for something to justify its existence, step in to collect the debt. All it had to do was persuade the U.S. Congress to ante up billion or two of taxpayer dollars to fill their coffers (and “replenish” them from time to time). They could then go to the deadbeat country and say, “We will give you this money so you can pay Chase and Citicorp what you owe them, but you will have to raise taxes on your own people and devalue your currency as the conditions for the loan!


What we have in this book from Mr. Perkins is an account of a foot soldier in these operations of the Evil Empire. I’ll get his book and check it out, but from what I can gather about it on the Internet he is well within the ballpark of what has been going on. Are bankers evil by nature? Of course not. But as bankers they follow the money, not giving a second thought to the conditions in which they leave their debtors. The first priority of any institution is self-preservation, and for the big banks, that means getting paid back on their loans. Is this any way to run the world? No. It is a dreadful way to operate, and it would end if our government returned to a dollar/gold system and abided by it. If not, I’m afraid nothing Mr. Perkins writes or that I write will change a thing. The folks who control the money control our government and that’s that. It is interesting that Perkins does identify the Bechtel Corporation and Halliburton as agents in this quiet conspiracy to make sure the good old USA flourishes, even though it means the relentless impoverishment of the poorest countries of the world.

Here is an interview that Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now" had with Perkins on November 9 last year. Remember his perspective is not from the highest level, but note he mentions George Shultz as an agent of the Evil Empire, which Shultz has been for decades. It was Shultz who, with Walter Wriston and Milton Friedman, persuaded Nixon to float the dollar and blow up the Bretton Woods monetary system. Shultz, now an octagenarian, is still a power in the Establishment, a key player at the Bechtel Corporation and a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board, a member of the Perle Cabal. Of course, the three men – thought it was the right thing to do at the time, but in retrospect it wasn’t.

---

Tuesday, November 9th, 2004

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions


We speak with John Perkins, a former respected member of the international banking community. In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man he describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then taking over their economies.

John Perkins describes himself as a former economic hit man – a highly paid professional who cheated countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.

20 years ago Perkins began writing a book with the working title, Conscience of an Economic Hit Men.

Perkins writes, "The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits – Jaime Rolds, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Rolds and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.

John Perkins goes on to write: "I was persuaded to stop writing that book. I started it four more times during the next twenty years. On each occasion, my decision to begin again was influenced by current world events: the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1980, the first Gulf War, Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden. However, threats or bribes always convinced me to stop."

But now Perkins has finally published his story. The book is titled Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. John Perkins joins us now in our Firehouse studios.

AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins joins us now in our firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!

JOHN PERKINS: Thank you, Amy. It's great to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: Its good to have you with us. Okay, explain this term, economic hit man, e.h.m., as you call it.

JOHN PERKINS: Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring – to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we’ve been very successful. We’ve built the largest empire in the history of the world. It's been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It's only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort. This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you become one? Who did you work for?

JOHN PERKINS: Well, I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the nation's largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately I worked for private corporations. The first real economic hit man was back in the early 1950's, Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy, who overthrew of government of Iran, a democratically elected government, Mossadegh’s government who was Time's magazine person of the year; and he was so successful at doing this without any bloodshed – well, there was a little bloodshed, but no military intervention, just spending millions of dollars and replaced Mossadegh with the Shah of Iran. At that point, we understood that this idea of economic hit man was an extremely good one. We didn't have to worry about the threat of war with Russia when we did it this way. The problem with that was that Roosevelt was a C.I.A. agent. He was a government employee. Had he been caught, we would have been in a lot of trouble. It would have been very embarrassing. So, at that point, the decision was made to use organizations like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. to recruit potential economic hit men like me and then send us to work for private consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so that if we were caught, there would be no connection with the government.

AMY GOODMAN: Okay. Explain the company you worked for.

JOHN PERKINS: Well, the company I worked for was a company named Chas. T. Main in Boston, Massachusetts. We were about 2,000 employees, and I became its chief economist. I ended up having fifty people working for me. But my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan – let's say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador – and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure – a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, Look, you're not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil. And today we're going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It's been extremely successful.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to John Perkins, author of Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. You say because of bribes and other reason you didn't write this book for a long time. What do you mean? Who tried to bribe you, or who – what are the bribes you accepted?

JOHN PERKINS: Well, I accepted a half a million dollar bribe in the nineties not to write the book.

AMY GOODMAN: From?

JOHN PERKINS: From a major construction engineering company.

AMY GOODMAN: Which one?

JOHN PERKINS: Legally speaking, it wasn't – Stoner-Webster. Legally speaking it wasn't a bribe, it was – I was being paid as a consultant. This is all very legal. But I essentially did nothing. It was a very understood, as I explained in Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, that it was – I was – it was understood when I accepted this money as a consultant to them I wouldn't have to do much work, but I mustn't write any books about the subject, which they were aware that I was in the process of writing this book, which at the time I called “Conscience of an Economic Hit Man.” And I have to tell you, Amy, that, you know, its an extraordinary story from the standpoint of – It's almost James Bondish, truly, and I mean –

AMY GOODMAN: Well that's certainly how the book reads.

JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, and it was, you know? And when the National Security Agency recruited me, they put me through a day of lie detector tests. They found out all my weaknesses and immediately seduced me. They used the strongest drugs in our culture, sex, power and money, to win me over. I come from a very old New England family, Calvinist, steeped in amazingly strong moral values. I think I, you know, I’m a good person overall, and I think my story really shows how this system and these powerful drugs of sex, money and power can seduce people, because I certainly was seduced. And if I hadn't lived this life as an economic hit man, I think I'd have a hard time believing that anybody does these things. And that's why I wrote the book, because our country really needs to understand, if people in this nation understood what our foreign
policy is really about, what foreign aid is about, how our corporations work, where our tax money goes, I know we will demand change.

AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to John Perkins. In your book, you talk about how you helped to implement a secret scheme that funneled billions of dollars of Saudi Arabian petrol dollars back into the U.S. economy, and that further cemented the intimate relationship between the House of Saud and successive U.S. administrations. Explain.

JOHN PERKINS: Yes, it was a fascinating time. I remember well, you're probably too young to remember, but I remember well in the early seventies how OPEC exercised this power it had, and cut back on oil supplies. We had cars lined up at gas stations. The country was afraid that it was facing another 1929-type of crash depression; and this was unacceptable. So, they – the Treasury Department hired me and a few other economic hit men. We went to Saudi Arabia. We –

AMY GOODMAN: You're actually called economic hit men – e.h.m.s?

JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, it was a tongue-in-cheek term that we called ourselves. Officially, I was a chief economist. We called ourselves e.h.m.'s. It was tongue-in-cheek. It was like, nobody will believe us if we say this, you know? And, so, we went to Saudi Arabia in the early seventies. We knew Saudi Arabia was the key to dropping our dependency, or to controlling the situation. And we worked out this deal whereby the Royal House of Saud agreed to send most of their petro-dollars back to the United States and invest them in U.S. government securities. The Treasury Department would use the interest from these securities to hire U.S. companies to build Saudi Arabia new cities, new infrastructure which we’ve done. And the House of Saud would agree to maintain the price of oil within acceptable limits to us, which they’ve done all of these years, and we would agree to keep the House of Saud in power as long as they did this, which we’ve done, which is one of the reasons we went to war with Iraq in the first place. And in Iraq we tried to implement the same policy that was so successful in Saudi Arabia, but Saddam Hussein didn't buy. When the economic hit men fail in this scenario, the next step is what we call the jackals. Jackals are C.I.A.-sanctioned people that come in and try to foment a coup or revolution. If that doesn't work, they perform assassinations. Or try to. In the case of Iraq, they weren't able to get through to Saddam Hussein. He had – His bodyguards were too good. He had doubles. They couldn’t get through to him. So the third line of defense, if the economic hit men and the jackals fail, the next line of defense is our young men and women, who are sent
in to die and kill, which is what we’ve obviously done in Iraq.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain how Torrijos died?

JOHN PERKINS: Omar Torrijos, the President of Panama. Omar Torrijos had signed the Canal Treaty with Carter much – and, you know, it passed our congress by only one vote. It was a highly contended issue. And Torrijos then also went ahead and negotiated with the Japanese to build a sea-level canal. The Japanese wanted to finance and construct a sea-level canal in Panama. Torrijos talked to them about this which very much upset Bechtel Corporation, whose president was George Schultz and senior council was Casper Weinberger. When Carter was thrown out (and that’s an interesting story how that actually happened), when he lost the election, and Reagan came in and Schultz came in as Secretary of State from Bechtel, and Weinberger came from Bechtel to be Secretary of Defense, they were extremely angry at Torrijos – tried to get him to renegotiate the Canal Treaty and not to talk to the Japanese. He adamantly refused. He was a very principled man. He had his problem, but he was a very principled man. He was an amazing man, Torrijos. And so, he died in a fiery airplane crash, which was connected to a tape recorder with explosives in it, which – I was there. I had been working with him. I knew that we economic hit men had failed. I knew the jackals were closing in on him, and the next thing, his plane exploded with a tape recorder with a bomb in it. There's no question in my mind that it was C.I.A. sanctioned, and most – many Latin American investigators have come to the same conclusion. Of course, we never heard about that in our country.

AMY GOODMAN: So, where – when did your change your heart happen?

JOHN PERKINS: I felt guilty throughout the whole time, but I was seduced. The power of these drugs, sex, power, and money, was extremely strong for me. And, of course, I was doing things I was being patted on the back for. I was chief economist. I was doing things that Robert McNamara liked and so on.

AMY GOODMAN: How closely did you work with the World Bank?

JOHN PERKINS: Very, very closely with the World Bank. The World Bank provides most of the money that’s used by economic hit men, it and the I.M.F. But when 9/11 struck, I had a change of heart. I knew the story had to be told because what happened at 9/11 is a direct result of what the economic hit men are doing. And the only way that we're going to feel secure in this country again and that we're going to feel good about ourselves is if we use these systems we’ve put into place to create positive change around the world. I really believe we can do that. I believe the World Bank and other institutions can be turned around and do what they were originally intended to do, which is help reconstruct devastated parts of the world. Help – genuinely help poor people. There are twenty-four thousand people starving to death every day. We can change that.

AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins, I want to thank you very much for being with us. John Perkins' book is called, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man.
_____________________________________________________

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PATRIOT REVOLT GROWS

50 million Americans want freedom from tyranny

By John Tiffany

The 9-11 attack has allowed the Bush administration to seize unprecedented powers. Congress ratified the so-called “Patriot Acts,” which purport to override many protections of the Bill of Rights. While Americans fight and die in Iraq, allegedly to impose “democracy,” democracy has been drifting away in the United States.

However, determined and knowledgeable patriots throughout America are fighting against these unprecedented power grabs and are determined to take the republic back one town at a time—and they are making solid headway.

A nationwide umbrella group called the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC), with numerous local chapters, says there are four states and 364 local governments that have already passed resolutions, ordinances and ballot initiatives against the Patriot Acts.

Together these “safe zones” boast a population of 56,077,539 people. The newest “safe zones” are Pontiac, Mich., which joined the patriot rebellion on Dec. 16, 2004, and Multnomah County, Oreg., which signed up on Dec. 9.

Some of the other recent “safe zones” are: El Paso, Texas; St. Petersburg, Florida; Jacksonville, Mississippi; Albany County, New York; Lexington-Fayette County, Kentucky; Placer County, California; Des Moines, Iowa; Glendale, California; Mercer County, New Jersey; Lincoln, Nebraska; Huntington, New York; Westchester County, New York; and Passaic County, New jersey—to list only the largest ones.

A total of 66 municipalities have signed up since Pittsburgh first took action on April 26, 2004, which AFP reported on May 10, 2004.

If your town or city or county has not yet joined the ranks of Americans who say “Yes” to liberty under law and “No” to federal tyranny, visit the web site of the BORDC at bordc.org, write 241 King St., Suite 216 Northampton, Mass. 01060 or call (413) 582-0110.
------------------------------------------------

Rights Resolution

The following contains excerpts from a model resolution to preserve Americans’ constitutional rights provided by the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.

RESOLVED by [Adopting Body] of [Location] that:

1. [Location] affirms its strong opposition to terrorism, but also affirms that any actions to end terrorism must not be waged at the expense of the fundamental civil liberties, rights, and freedoms of the people of [Location], the United States, or the world;

2. [Location] and its employees and instrumentalities shall continue to preserve residents’ freedom of speech, religion, assembly, and privacy; the right to counsel and due process in judicial proceedings; and protection from unreasonable searches and seizures; without regard to race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender, economic status, marital status, citizenship status, or disability;

3. To the extent legally possible, no [Location] resources, including law enforcement funds and educational administrative resources, will be used for unconstitutional activities in whatever manner or under whatever circumstances they may be presented;

4. [Location] urges our state representatives and senators, and United States representative and senators to monitor the continuing implementation of the USA Patriot Act, the Homeland Security Act, and related subsequent legislation, executive orders, and Department of Justice regulations, and actively work for the repeal of those provisions that are found to unlawfully infringe on civil rights and liberties;

5. Any new security measures of [Location] should be carefully designed and employed to enhance public safety without infringing on the civil liberties and rights of [Location] citizens; AND

6. Copies of this resolution shall be sent to the president of the United States; the attorney general of the United States; the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; the governor of [State]; and to each member of the [State] delegation in Congress.
______________________________________________

Editor's comment: This article is reprinted from the January 24, 2005 issue of American Free Press.

If you do not already subscribe to this outstanding weekly newspaper, why not? AFP exposes the fraud and corruption endemic in our headlong plunge toward the corporate dominated New World Order and literally gives fits to the Powers That Be.

For anyone wishing to subscribe by mail without a credit or debit card, here is my Distributor I.D. #29824. Thank you for your support.

Mail to:

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Subscription Department
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Washington, DC. 20003

Together we can stop the destruction of our country and bring things back to sanity under constitutional Rule of Law. The people need jobs and work, and the reinvigoration of industry and manufactures will lead the way, along with new policies on agriculture to bring the sound concepts of bio-agronomy to the fore. Also, a new energy policy that uses new methods of distillation of butanol, a fuel that is far superior to ethanol, which will lessen our dependence on imported oil. We can do it, America, if we tell the profit-mongers 'we don't need no stinking corporations' (fascism).


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Private Interests
The privatization of Romania's oil industry has enriched the well-connected—and corrupt
By Paul Cristian Radu, The Center for Public Integrity

WASHINGTON, January 25, 2005 — Iosif Dan, a top advisor to Romanian President Ion Iliescu, explained in a recent interview with the Center for Public Integrity why he had accepted money from a petroleum company vying for a piece of the country's oil-privatization action.

"I have taken some money from these boys, as a loan, and this seems perfectly okay to me," Dan said. "Should I have gone to a bank that would give me money with … interest instead of going to these people? They are my friends."

The frank and surprising interview took place in the Cotroceni Palace, the headquarters of the Romanian Presidency. Dan is just one of several top Romanian officials who have connections to the oil industry.

With proven crude oil reserves of about 950 million barrels and with the largest refining capacity in Central and Eastern Europe, Romania, a nation of 22.6 million people, plays an important role in the European oil economy.

From the end of the Second World War until December 1989, when Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was executed, the Romanian oil industry was entirely State-run. Since then, it has been gradually privatized and restructured and its refining capacity downsized.

Romania is scheduled to join the European Union in 2007. Privatizing the country's main oil company, the National Petroleum Society, Petrom, is considered a vital part of that process.

Petrom is the biggest national oil company in central and eastern Europe. It is the main crude oil producer in Romania and accounts for roughly a third of Romania's natural gas needs. It also has 700 retail stations and 146 depots, part of a national network that accounts for more than half of the total number of gas stations in Romania.

In 2003, Petrom's annual revenue was more than $2.7 billion. The company also does oil-field exploration in Kazakhstan, Iran and India and has a chain of gas stations in Hungary and the Republic of Moldova.

"Whoever owns Petrom has an important word to say in the economy, and whoever has an important word to say in the economy also has an important word to say in politics," Adrian Nastase, Romania's prime-minister, told the Mediafax news agency.

Not surprisingly, the privatization process, along with the country's standing as one of the biggest markets in Central and Eastern Europe, and its on-shore and off-shore oil and natural gas potential reserves, made it an attractive target for a slew of companies, including Gazprom, Shell, Halliburton, Lukoil, Total and Amoco, along with a handful of other smaller companies set up abroad by Romanian citizens.

Romania's government announced plans in the summer of 2003 to privatize the company; the country received 15 bids. In the end, the Austrian oil giant OMV won the bid.

Running Petrom means navigating in one of the most corrupt business environments in Europe. In 2004, the international watchdog group Transparency International called Romania a country with "rampant corruption" and ranked it on the same level as the Dominican Republic and Iran, slightly ahead of Russia, Albania and Sierra Leone.

The report cites oil as one of the country's main corrupting factors. In fact, hundreds of investigations into financial fraud and political corruption have exposed the involvement of the post-communist government in the oil business and the direct involvement of Romania's various intelligence-gathering services in the oil industry.

Petrol is Political Power

The privatization process in Romania was a tangled tale all its own, complete with plots and subplots that illustrate the intrigue of the country's oil politics. It involved the shadowy participation of a NATO officer ultimately convicted of forgery after other charges were dropped. In addition, one of the major bidders had apparent ties to the Romanian intelligence community, while a Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service officer seemed to be associated with the possible formation of privatization bidders. The cast of characters involved-sometimes with one another, sometimes acting on their own-clearly saw many opportunities for side deals in the privatization process.

Nothing particularly unusual occurred in the bidding process until the early spring of 2003, when a well-connected businessman, Ovidiu Tender-who controls a few major Romanian companies active in the oil services business and often accompanied the previous Romanian president in his official visits abroad-announced in an interview with the Romanian weekly, Capital, that his group of companies, Tender SA, would participate in Petrom's privatization. Tender also mentioned the two partners he would bring to the table: the U.S.-based company Halliburton and Willem Matser, a Dutch officer working in NATO's Office of the Special Adviser for Central and Eastern Europe and an author of studies on NATO-Russia relationships.

The announcement of Matser's involvement came as a surprise.

At the time, Willem Matser was known in Romania simply as a high-ranking NATO official who had chaired a meeting in September 2002 between intelligence officers from the defense alliance's member nations and from candidate-countries. As a NATO official, one would not normally consider Matser a potential investor in the country's economy.

In fact, however, the intelligence meeting, although announced as a NATO conference, was sponsored by private Romanian companies and businessmen. The meeting had been held in Snagov, near Bucharest, the Romanian capital. Among those sponsors two names stood out: Ovidiu Tender and his partner, Vasile Frank Timis, a businessman connected to companies active in the oil and gold mining industries in Romania.

Timis told the Center for Public Integrity that Tender had introduced him to Matser. He also mentioned he had contributed $50,000 towards the meeting, for which he got a receipt.

But what made Matser's involvement strange was not just that he was a NATO official. Days after Ovidiu Tender announced his interest in Petrom and his partners in this venture, Willem Matser was arrested in Brussels on suspicion of criminal conspiracy and money laundering, as well as forgery and fraud. Matser was subsequently charged with laundering $200 million of drug-trafficking money, alleged to be kept in a Colombian bank, along with the related fraud and forgery offenses.

Ultimately, the prosecution dropped the money laundering charge and failed to prove criminal conspiracy charges. The judge sentenced Matser in January 2004 to more than a year in jail for forgery. He was then released because the judge took into consideration that he had already spent roughly two-thirds of the sentence in pretrial detention.

The investigation of Matser led Dutch prosecutors to Romania, where prosecutors interviewed Ovidiu Tender about his business dealings with Matser. The inquiry revealed that Matser possessed forged bank documents related to Tender SA and had misused the name of the company in the transactions under investigation.

The Dutch investigation also revealed that Tender had strong ties to the Romanian intelligence community.

In written testimony to Romanian prosecutors obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, Tender described his connections to Matser:

"In April 2002, I was contacted by the head of the Presidential Administration, General Ioan Talpes, who is also the counselor on national security of the President of Romania and he told me that there is a high NATO official in the country who is willing to meet powerful Romanian businessmen...I agreed to meet Mr. Matser and Mr. Talpes arranged a meeting for me and Matser. We had dinner at the Hilton Hotel. This meeting was attended by myself, a general from the Romanian Intelligence Service and one general from the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service."

General Ioan Talpes was, between 1994 and 1997, the head of the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service. After that, he became State Minister for the Coordination of National Defense, European Integration and Justice.

According to Tender's testimony, Matser expressed interest in becoming a shareholder in Tender SA at the Hilton Hotel meeting. Following this meeting, Tender testified, he drafted a contract for Matser's review by which Matser would purchase an interest in the Tender SA companies. However, the Matser-Tender deal was never concluded.

Though the Tender SA transaction fell through, Matser still did business with the Romanian intelligence services. The Dutch company Tranwood NL, of which Matser is a shareholder, acquired 80 percent of the shares of a newly established Romanian company called Delta Holding SA. One of General Ioan Talpes's main advisors, Larry Watts, a historian and security issues analyst, also became a minority shareholder in the company.

According to Romanian officials, Delta Holding was set up after Matser vowed he would bring significant amounts of money to the Romanian economy.

"The secret services and high level politicians thought Matser was a blessing for Romania. They were so blind they didn't even check him. The fact he was working for NATO was a more than enough guarantee," an intelligence officer who asked for anonymity told the Center for Public Integrity.

A Triple Alliance

After Matser's arrest, the Tender SA-Halliburton joint venture continued its efforts to play a role in privatizing Petrom, without Matser. (In an e-mail sent to the Center for Public Integrity, Halliburton says that it has "no familiarity with Willem Matser, even by name.")

By the summer of 2003, a joint venture among Tender SA, Halliburton and the British company Regal Petroleum was set up to pursue participation in the privatization of the Romanian oil company.

Regal, a company listed on the London Stock Exchange's alternative market, was established by Vasile Frank Timis, the company's executive chairman. As mentioned earlier, Timis was one of the sponsors of the intelligence officers' meeting held in Snagov and chaired by Willem Matser.

Earlier in the year, in March 2003, Guenter Nolte, the managing director of Halliburton Europe, left the company to serve as chief executive in Regal Petroleum. Halliburton told the Center for Public Integrity that this move was not part of Halliburton's strategy for Petrom.

Regal and Tender were equity partners in the joint venture. According to Halliburton, it would have provided only technical, management and operational assistance, as well as organizational experience and assistance. The Halliburton-Tender-Regal offer was one of four bids rejected by the Romanian government in the first round.

Regal Chairman Vasile Frank Timis is a key person in Romania's mining and oil industries. He was born in Romania, but fled the country during the Ceausescu regime and established himself in Perth, Australia, where he was twice convicted in the 1990s for possession of heroin with the presumption of intent to supply. In the mid 1990s he set up a few companies in off-shore havens including Jersey, the Channel Islands and Barbados, and came back to Romania to invest in the gold-mining industry.

The Regal company name appears in another chapter in Romania's privatization saga, albeit only tangentially. A company that was once a Regal subsidiary, Central Europe Petroleum, became involved in the privatization of a refinery-a process that highlighted the connections between Romanian politics and control of the Romanian oil industry.

Privatized company, public debt

In March 2004, a former member of the Romanian Parliament and of the ruling party PSD (Social Democratic Party), Gabriel Bivolaru, was sentenced to five years in jail for embezzling about $70 million from Banca Romana pentru Dezvoltare (Romanian Bank for Development), a Romanian state-owned bank, now owned by French company Groupe Société Générale.

One month after his arrest, in May 2004, a Romanian group of oil companies, VGB, publicly acknowledged that the former MP was working for the group but "never was a shareholder in the group's companies." However, one of Bivolaru's close relatives and a former associate of his were shareholders in the group. The VGB group also stated, in the same public announcement, that, if Bivolaru could resolve his personal difficulties, he was welcome to join the group again.

The VGB group is associated with Ovidiu Tender's company, as well as with the daughter of Iosif Dan and with Dan's assistant (each of these two holds a ten percent interest in one of the VGB group companies).

The VGB group's name emerged in the autumn of 2003 when the company became, through a British company Balkan Petroleum, the largest shareholder of one of the biggest Romanian oil refineries, Rafo Onesti.

The refinery, previously owned by the state, went private in 2001 and currently owes more than $500 million to Romania, to Petrom and to other private companies.

Rafo's privatization is regarded as one of the biggest failures in Romania's post-communist privatization record. The refinery was bought from the state by a group of companies led by a member of the ruling party.

Eventually, Balkan Petroleum (BkP) became the refinery's main shareholder and vowed to resuscitate it. The company notes that Rafo's debts were inherited from previous owners of the refinery.

According to BkP, the plan is to reorganize the refinery by transforming its debt to shares that would be handed over to the creditors. If the plan is approved, the Romanian State would again become the majority shareholder in the refinery that it privatized just a few years ago.

Company records obtained by the Center for Public Integrity show that BkP's shareholders are as follows: the Romanian VGB Invest SA, part of the VGB group with 50 percent of the shares, Central Europe Petroleum, an off-shore company from the Channel Islands, with 25 percent, and the London-based Acornline with the remaining. Central Europe Petroleum's previous name was Regal Petroleum Services, a company that was part of the Regal group of companies established by Vasile Frank Timis.

Timis, however, no longer owns Central Europe Petroleum. "It was a company that I established in the past and I have no connection with BkP," Timis told the Center for Public Integrity. "Mr. Tender asked me to help the representatives of Balkan, some banks and two to three businessmen from Romania, to incorporate the company. I sold them the company. I put them in touch with David Grannell." David Grannell, a British accountant, afterwards became a director of the BkP, a position he left after a few months.

Company records show that David Grannell is a chief financial officer of European Goldfields, a company Timis established, and is also associated in a British company, Inktrend PLC, with a former business partner of Timis.
BkP representatives denied having any business relationships with Timis and said in a letter sent to the Center for Public Integrity that "we have some business relationships with Mr. Tender."

Meanwhile, in the spring of 2004, the VGB group and Ovidiu Tender emerged in yet another chapter in Romanian privatization.

A National Security Issue

Early in 2004, the Romanian National Security Department issued a report "on the privatization and the present situation of the S.C. Petromidia S.A."

Petromidia is another leading Romanian refinery that was bought in 2000 from the state by the Rompetrol Group N.V., a company based in the Netherlands whose chief executive officer, Dinu Patriciu, is a leading member of the Romanian National Liberal Party (PNL). This is one of the main opposition political parties that challenged the ruling party, the PSD, in the November 2004 general elections.

The very lengthy report, of which a copy was obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, is signed by General Ioan Talpes, then head of the National Security Department.

The report followed an October 2003 emergency ordinance of the Romanian government stipulating that the more than $600 million-debt that Rompetrol, the biggest private company in the oil business in Romania, owed to the state budget be converted to bonds.

Representatives of the Rompetrol group said the $600 million represented "historical debt" that was inherited from the previous owner of the refinery-the State-and to which penalties were added.

The NSD memorandum stated that "Romania's government illegally converted the amount of over 600 million US dollars in bonds. ... Through the Government Emergency Ordinance 118/2003 the government accepts as legal an absolutely abusive and illegal privatization contract which has huge financial implications ... the government consents to selling a jewel of the Romanian industry at a very cheap price."

The NSD report calls on the Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Economy and the Public Prosecution to analyze the Petromidia case and, eventually, to discuss the report on the Supreme Council for the Country's Defense, an organization that only gathers when Romania's security is at risk.

Shortly after the NSD report was issued the National Anti-Corruption Prosecution Office started an investigation in the Petromidia case.

Company records show that 25 percent of the Rompetrol group is owned by OMV, which is the Austrian company announced in May 2004 as the majority purchaser of Petrom, the national oil company. OMV in October announced plans to divest itself of its stake in Rompetrol.

The NSD report ignited a scandal, widely published in Evenimentul Zilei and other leading Romanian newspapers, when Rompetrol's CEO, Dinu Patriciu, said, at a press conference that Ovidiu Tender and the representatives of the VGB group had proposed to him that his company merge with the Rafo refinery in order to save Rafo from bankruptcy. He also claimed that he was also told that, if he didn't agree to the merger, there would be investigations of his companies that would lead to the Rompetrol group's destruction.

In a letter responding to questions asked by the Center for Public Integrity, Ovidiu Tender and the VGB group denied Patriciu's claim. They filed a lawsuit against Patriciu for suggesting that they had blackmailed him. That case is still pending.

In the President's Backyard

Iosif Dan, until recently a State Counselor and aide to former Romanian President Ion Iliescu, closely monitors the twists and turns in the Romanian oil industry.

"The day will come when these tensions will disappear and the parties that fight now will sit down and talk," Dan said in an interview with the Center for Public Integrity. "There's plenty of room for everyone under the sun and for us in the shadow with a steak and a cold beer."

He spoke openly about his political ties to the VGB group and to the oil business.

"These boys have gained a good position on Romania's oil business and this is very disturbing to others," he said.

He also added that he has never used his position in order to favor the VGB group, but said he went once with VGB representatives to an international bank. "I went once to Monte Carlo, and we talked with the president of the bank, not to get some money but to get a letter from them to prove our good behavior on the financial markets." He also said he had mediated a meeting between VGB and the representatives of the Ministry of Industry.

Iosif Dan's regard for the VGB group goes even further.

"The VGB group helped many, many poor families," he said. "There were desperate people who had serious illnesses or couldn't pay their rent. ... Considerable amounts of money were donated. This is not an excuse for the VGB group. It is, maybe, just the human side of this group."

"They are asked by me to help because, see, here come many requests for social help," he added. "There were very many cases when the Presidential Administration made investigations and concluded that people couldn't solve their social problems. These are people that went to various banks to save their situation and were denied and the Presidential Administration, through the president, doesn't have unlimited funds for social assistance. There is this mentality of people who say we will go to the president because he solves everything. They don't know that the president doesn't have these abilities, these rights. ... The VGB group were not the only ones to help. Many of my businessmen friends helped."

The previous Romanian President, Iliescu, didn't answer a Freedom of Information request, under the Romanian 544/2001 law, about the matter.

"We consider that this aid offered to people in need is not a subject to be used for propaganda," the BkP VGB Group said when asked by the Center for Public Integrity about their involvement in assisting the presidency in this matter.

Iosif Dan was voted in as a senator on the Social Democratic Party's slate for the November 2004 Parliamentary elections.
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Editor's comment: What we see here is the continuing and pervasive corruption which is endemic in, and caused by, the huge aggregations of capital within the current corporate paradigm.

No longer do the people have to fear the communist controlled government, for now they have the fascist corporate government to deal with, and the symbiant of the transnational corporations backed by the IMF in the international arena.

The Granda Kidnapping Explodes

The US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela

January 25, 2005 from CounterPunch

By JAMES PETRAS

A major diplomatic and political conflict has exploded between Colombia and Venezuela after the revelation of a Colombian government covert operation in Venezuela, involving the recruitment of Venezuelan military and security officers in the kidnapping of a Colombian leftist leader. Following an investigation by the Venezuelan Ministry of Interior and reports and testimony from journalists and other knowledgeable political observers it was determined that the highest echelons of the Colombian government, including President Uribe, planned and executed this onslaught on Venezuelan sovereignty.

Once direct Colombian involvement was established, the Venezuelan government demanded a public apology from the Colombian government while seeking a diplomatic solution by blaming Colombian Presidential advisers. The Colombian regime took the offensive, launching an aggressive defense of its involvement in the violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and, beyond that, seeking to establish in advance, under the rationale of "national security" the legitimacy of future acts of aggression. As a result President Chavez has recalled the Venezuelan Ambassador from Bogota, suspended all state-to-state commercial and political agreements pending an official state apology. In response the US Government gave unconditional support to Colombian violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and urged the Uribe regime to push the conflict further. What began as a diplomatic conflict over a specific incident has turned into a major, defining crises in US and Latin American political relations with potentially explosive military, economic and political consequences for the entire region.

In justifying the kidnapping of Rodrigo Granda, the Colombian leftist leader, the Uribe regime has promulgated a new foreign policy doctrine which echoes that of the Bush Administration: the right of unilateral intervention in any country in which the Colombian government perceives or claims is harboring or providing refuge to political adversaries (which the regime labels as "terrorists") which might threaten the security of the state. The Uribe doctrine of unilateral intervention echoes the preventive war speech, enunciated in late 2001 by President Bush. Clearly Uribe's action and pronouncement is profoundly influenced by the dominance that Washington exercises over the Uribe regime's policies through its extended $3 billion dollar military aid program and deep penetration of the entire political-defense apparatus.
Uribe's offensive military doctrine involves several major policy propositions:

1.) The right to violate any country's sovereignty, including the use of force and violence, directly or in cooperation with local mercenaries.
2.) The right to recruit and subvert military and security officials to serve the interests of the Colombian state.
3.) The right to allocate funds to bounty hunters or "third parties" to engage in illegal violent acts within a target country.
4.) The assertion of the supremacy of Colombian laws, decrees and policies over and against the sovereign laws of the intervened country.

The Uribe doctrine clearly echoes Washington's global pronouncements. While the immediate point of aggression involves Colombia's relations to Venezuela, the Uribe doctrine lays the basis for unilateral military intervention anywhere in the hemisphere. Uribe's doctrine is a threat to sovereignty of any country in the hemisphere: its intervention in Venezuela and the justification provides a precedent for future aggression.

Colombia's adoption and implementation of the extraterritorial policy as part of its strategy of unilateral intervention is not coincidental, as the Colombian security forces have been trained and advised by US and Israeli secret agencies. More directly, through its $3 billion dollar military aid program Washington is in a command-and-control position within all sectors of the Colombian state and thus able to determine the security doctrine of the Uribe regime. More important Uribe has been a long-time, large-scale practitioner of death squad politics prior to his ascendancy to the Presidency and prior to receiving large scale US aid. By borrowing the Bush Doctrine from his patron-state, Uribe has internationalized the terror practices which he has pursued for the past 20 years within Colombia.

Prior to the recent spate of high profile trans-border kidnapping (Trinidad in Ecuador, Granda in Venezuela), the Uribe regime has engaged in frequent interventions, kidnapping and assassinating popular leaders and soldiers from bordering countries, and providing material and political support to would-be 'golpistas', especially in Venezuela. Dozens of Colombian refugees fleeing marauding death squads have been pursued into Venezuela and killed or kidnapped over the past three years by Colombian paramilitary and security forces. Six Venezuelan soldiers were killed by Colombian security forces in an "unexplained" incident. More recently, in 2004, over 130 Colombian paramilitary forces and other irregulars were infiltrated into Venezuela to engage in terrorist violence ­ to trigger action by Venezuelan-US coup-makers. Shortly thereafter Colombian security forces and the US CIA intervened in Ecuador to kidnap a former peace negotiator of the FARC, Colombia's major guerrilla group.

What is new and more ominous is that the Uribe regime's de facto policy of extra-territoriality has been converted into a de jure strategic doctrine of unilateral military intervention. Colombia no longer pretends to be engaged in a "covert" selective policy of violating other countries sovereignty but has publicly declared the supremacy of its laws and the right to apply them anywhere in the world where it unilaterally declares its case for national security. Colombia's gross violations of Venezuelan and Ecuadorian sovereignty is a policy clearly endorsed and dictated at the highest levels of the Colombian state ­ exclusively the prerogative of President Uribe ­ and endorsed at the highest level of the US government by its principal diplomatic spokesperson in Colombia, Ambassador Woods ("We endorse Uribe's action 100%"). The 'Granda incident' is not simply an isolated diplomatic incident which can be resolved through good faith bilateral negotiations. The kidnapping is part of a larger strategy involving preparations ­ ideological, political and military ­ for a large-scale, political-military confrontation with Venezuela.

The enunciation and practice of the Uribe Doctrine has several purposes. One is in line with US and Colombian elite policy: To overthrow the Chavez regime. Chavez opposes the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as its plans to invade Iran. In Latin America, Chavez opposes the US-dominated Free Trade of the Americas Pact. Secondly the Uribe doctrine seeks to destroy Cuban-Venezuelan trade ties, in order to undermine the Cuban revolutionary government. Thirdly the Uribe doctrine is aimed at maintaining Venezuela as an exclusive oil exporter to the US ­ at a time when the Chavez government has signed trade agreements to diversify its oil markets to China and elsewhere. Fourthly, and most probably most important from the strict perspective of the Uribe regime's survival, the Colombian government is profoundly disturbed by the positive social impact which the Chavez welfare policies have on the majority of Colombians living in poverty, especially his newly announced agrarian reform, and his defense of national public enterprises (especially the state petroleum company) within the framework of free and democratic institutions. Uribe's austerity policies, his military and paramilitary forces displacement of three million peasants, his promotion of greater and greater concentration of wealth and the slashing of social services, and worse, the systematic long-term large-scale violations of human and democratic rights stand in polar opposition to Venezuela under President Chavez which provides a viable, accessible and visible alternative easily understood by vast numbers of Colombians who migrate to Venezuela. By intervening in Venezuela, by supporting US and its local coup-makers, Uribe hopes to undercut the political appeal of revolutionary politics, whether it takes the form of electoral, guerrilla and / or social movements.

The most immediate purpose of the Uribe doctrine is to defeat the 20,000 person guerrilla armies which control or influence half of Colombia's territory. The purpose of the recent interventions is to pressure neighboring governments to ally themselves with the Colombian death-squads in a regional campaign to resolve the Colombian elites internal problems ­ i.e. the decimation of the opposition to US regional domination. The bombastic "anti-terror" international propaganda campaign of the Uribe regime is an admission of the failure of its internal counter-insurgency campaign. Uribe's accusations that the Venezuelan State is "protecting" or "providing sanctuary to terrorists" is patently false. Uribe provides no systematic evidence. The real purpose is to blackmail the Venezuelan state ­ or its most malleable sectors ­ into abdicating their role as a neutral peace mediators and submitting to the dictates of the Colombian-US security apparatus.

The Uribe regime has been widely recognized as one of the worst practitioners of state terrorism in the world.

Tens of thousands of peasants, social and human rights activists, trade unionists and journalists have been murdered by the security forces ­ the military directly, or via the state financed paramilitary groups. Every day of every year, scores of peasants and critics of the regime are slaughtered. State terror is the defining characteristic of the Uribe regime and its US military advisory and military mission.

Uribe who sends 130 paramilitary forces to terrorize Venezuela, supports a failed violent coup and then provides asylum and material support to the exiled senior members of the coup and who blatantly bribes Venezuelan soldiers to betray their country to perpetuate a kidnapping, accuses Chavez of harboring terrorists and calls for an "international conference" on "terrorism". Uribe's purpose in calling for a regional conference is not to discuss the state terrorism which is endemic to and embedded in his regime (with US backing), but to justify the Uribe doctrine of unilateral intervention and to mobilize other regional US clients in support of its internal war and to pressure the Chavez regime to subordinate itself to Colombia's security doctrine.

Chavez has recognized the growing security threat posed by the kidnapping and has terminated state-to-state economic and military projects and recalled his ambassador from Bogotá. He has proposed to Uribe a bi-lateral meeting of heads of state to resolve differences with regard to the kidnapping and related incidents. But no amount of diplomatic maneuvering on the part of Venezuela's foreign ministry nor aggressive propaganda campaign by the Colombian security state can obviate the fact that the Colombian state is bent on a course of direct military confrontation with Venezuela.

Implication of Uribe Doctrine

The political and military implications of the Uribe Doctrine are an extreme departure from the recognized norms of international law and closely approximate the belligerent practices of imperial satraps. If all countries were to apply the Uribe Doctrine we would face a world of constant wars, conquests and prolonged liberation struggles throughout Latin America.

Explicit in the Uribe Doctrine's claim to militarily intervene across national borders is a state of permanent belligerency. This policy means that every Latin American country must limit its sovereignty according to the Colombian definitions of "national security". This is clearly unacceptable to any independent country, like Venezuela, though the Gutierrez regime in Ecuador has accepted the role of a "second level client" , of the Uribe regime which in turn is a client of the US.

Equally serious, the Uribe Doctrine rejects recognized frontiers, meaning that it arrogates to itself the right to cross national boundaries at will without consulting the countries whose borders it violates. It is a short step from not recognizing borders and national boundaries to annexing adjacent regions for "security" or economic reasons. Colombia has in the recent past (1992) nearly provoked a major war by sending its warships into Venezuelan waters. Uribe's notion of an international ideological war without frontiers is an exact replica of the Bush imperial project, translated into the Andean region. Clearly Uribe aspires to play a sub-imperial role in the Northern region of South America under US tutelage.

The Uribe Doctrine stands as a stark rejection of all United Nation's principles and in violation of international law-which, however, has already been weakened by the acquiescence of most of the major Latin American countries in the US-led invasion of Haiti, the kidnapping of its elected leader (President Bertrand Aristide) and the presence of Latin American colonial occupation forces on the island.

The Colombian threat to Venezuela's sovereignty has been taken by Venezuela's rightwing opposition as a welcome intervention. This was manifest in the Congressional debates following the kidnapping of Granda when opposition members of congress condemned the Venezuelan government's defense of national sovereignty and justified Uribe's intervention in Venezuela.

Washington has provided more military aid to Colombia than all the rest of Latin America combined, and only second to Israel in the world. The US strategy revolves around defeating the guerrilla movement as a first step toward consolidating power in the Andean region and the upper Amazon basin. Once secured this region would become a springboard toward invading and taking over Venezuela and its oil fields. The US, through Uribe, has tripled the size of the Colombian armed forces over the past few years to over 267,000 troops. It has vastly increased its aerial firepower (combat helicopters and fighter planes) and provided the most advanced technological weaponry to detect and track guerrilla movements. Yet the strategy, while massacring thousands of peasant sympathizers and displacing millions of others, has failed to gain any strategic military advantage over the guerrillas. As long as the Colombian regime is tied down by the guerrilla resistance, it can only play a limited role in any military invasion of Venezuela. For Uribe to engage in a US-sponsored invasion of Venezuela is a very risky proposition, opening a large swath of territory for a guerrilla offensive.

The kidnapping of Granda is only the "dress rehearsal" of a larger project of escalating provocations to test the loyalty, discipline and effectiveness of the Venezuelan security system. Washington is probing to see how far it can push Venezuela in surrendering its sovereignty and control over its borders.

Uribe and Washington's effort to drive a wedge between the popular resistance in Colombia and the Chavez government by using the "terrorist issue" as a political club has, in part, backfired , arousing a potent undercurrent of nationalist sentiment in Venezuela, while seriously jeopardizing important sectors of the Colombian economy, including elite classes which normally back Uribe.

Washington and Uribe's proposal for an international conference to discuss the issue of terror is based on their knowledge that most of the Latin American regimes today are eager to serve US interests. During the previous period of sustained economic and political warfare against the elected Chavez government by the authoritarian right, Brazil's Celso Amorin organized a group of countries calling themselves "The Friends of Venezuela" made up of hostile neo-liberal Ibero-Americans leaders, including ex-Presidents Aznar of Spain and Bush of the US (who both supported the failed military coup), Fox of Mexico and Lagos of Chile (notorious free marketers) and, of course, Brazil which gave equal political standing to the Venezuelan rightwing opposition as to the elected government. Chavez rightly rejected the mediation of such "friends".

Today Lula offers his services once again to "mediate" between an international aggressor and a sovereign country. Except for Cuba, not a single Latin American client regime has condemned Uribe's aggression or, worse, spoken out clearly in opposition to his doctrine of extra-territoriality. President Chavez is clearly aware of the pitfalls of meeting in an "international summit" dominated by hostile neo-liberal, pro-empire regimes that have already accepted and submitted to the Bush-Uribe anti-terrorist doctrine.

Chavez is absolutely correct to counterpoise the notion of a bilateral forum in which the focus is on Colombia's intervention, where the issues of Uribe's policy of state terrorism could become part of the public debate on "terrorism". Of course, Washington will "advise" Uribe to refuse. Chavez could then advise his foreign minister to take the matter to the UN General Assembly as a matter of urgent importance of peace, security and national sovereignty. Chavez has already retaliated to continued US overt aggression by signing oil export and investment agreements with China, Russia, Latin America and Europe. Shutting off imports to Colombia of agricultural products could stimulate a more intensified effort to promote local agricultural production, push for a more expeditious agrarian reform and greater public investment in local food production.

The kidnapping of Granda and the subverting of a few Venezuelan officials can serve as a wake-up call for the Venezuelan leadership to the real threats to national sovereignty which emanate from the US-backed Uribe doctrine. The threat is real, it is systemic and it is immediate. President Uribe has the backing of an imperial power but Chavez has the backing of the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans and the fact that they will be willing to fight to defend their land, their government and their right to live as a sovereign people. The question of Venezuelan sovereignty is now not simply a question of diplomatic maneuvers but of organizing the mass of the Venezuelans into becoming a military deterrent to any armed aggression.

James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50 year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in brazil and argentina and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu

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Editor's comment: Harken Oil, G.W. Bush's former oil company plaything, owns three oil wells in Colombia, and has drilling and exploration rights as well. CNN called Harken a "CIA front" and until the cartels, i.e., guerillas, are removed, there can be no furtherance of this oil drilling and exploration.

As noted in the article, until the guerillas are removed or neutralized, further subversive actions against Venezuela will be very risky if not impossible. Until that time, an attack to gain control of the oil wealth of Venezuela seems unlikely. But, there is no doubt that tensions and incursions by paramilitary units into Venezuela will continue.

$300 million in mostly military aid, and increasing, to Uribe's regime in Bogota bodes ill for peace in the region. All for the sake of oil profits for Harken.

Welcome to the Bush Crime Family's War on Terror, and The Pentagon's New Map.

Posted by: Jim / 2:58 PM