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Of all the groups getting U.S. support in Venezuela, none has faced more scrutiny than Sumate, whose leaders have been called conspirators and "mercenaries" even though they insist they are simply promoting democracy.

Sumate acknowledges getting some $102,120 for voter education programs since 2003 from the Washington-based NED, though it says it has not used any direct aid from the U.S. government. The U.S. State Department granted Sumate $300,000 last year to help review the voter rolls, but the group returned the money in July saying it could not obtain a complete database to analyze.

Other groups have received funds through the U.S. Agency for International Development, including Leadership and Vision, which obtained about $45,000 in 2003 to organize 10 seminars aimed at promoting dialogue among opposition and pro-government camps.

USAID — which hired the Maryland-based company Development Alternatives Inc. to administer the grants — has declined to identify many Venezuelan recipients, saying they could be intimidated or prosecuted.

The U.S. government also provides financial support to other U.S. groups working in Venezuela — such as $1.7 million for the International Republican Institute and $2.1 million for the National Democratic Institute since 2002. Both say they provide technical training to parties across the political spectrum and support training of independent electoral monitors.

Freedom House has obtained $1 million in U.S. funds since 2004 to help train Venezuelan human rights groups.

Venezuela may soon take a tougher stand. Attorney General Isaias Rodriguez recently said: "It's not lawful for a non-governmental organization to receive funds from a foreign state."

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Chavez Government Probes U.S. Funding

Most states have laws against foreiign nations tainting the democratic process. For good reason.

We all know if this was done against Amerika they'd be shipped to Gitmo and the originating nation would be "shocked and awed" into the stone age.

And given the failure of the u.s. to unseat Chavez so far, i suspect the people of Venezula are far too familiar with such CIA tactics to be fooled again.

[ 27 August 2006: Message edited by: otter ]

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Most states have laws against foreiign nations tainting the democratic process. For good reason.

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Actually, the US also has similar laws on the books. If any candidate was to ever take money directly from a foreign source, they would be up on fraud charges.

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If Venezuela takes legitimate legal action against these foreign agents, every paper in the world would scream murder and we will forever see anti-Chavez propoganda on all websites

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Only on the ones that are owned and controlled by pro-US capitalists, or funded by US agencies (they do that a lot as well). Obviously, though, that's still a majority of media outlets in the world, and probably 90 per cent of the ones in Canada.

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So what action do you think Chavez should take?

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According to Human Rights Watch, there are several people up on treason charges for taking money from US sources (namely the CIA) to campaign against the Bolivarian government, both in the last election and in the referenda.

They have some concerns about this, in that may be too severe of a charge, especially since treason convictions carry the death penalty or long prison sentences.

I don't know what the electoral rules are in Venezuela. It would be good to have something like Elections Canada, only with enforcable rules.

Political organizations would then be required to submit financial statements and candidate screens before an election starts. It would also be good to have strict spending limits and anti-slander provisions in an elections act.

Finally, of course, the requirement for all parties to make their contributions and donation public. The agency should also have its own forensic auditors to investigate and review all claims and contributions.

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Finally, of course, the requirement for all parties to make their contributions and donation public. The agency should also have its own forensic auditors to investigate and review all claims and contributions.

If anyone is caught in a violation (like tkaing US money), they would simply be disqualified and their seat would be up for a by-election.

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The bulk of the bribes are going to "pro-demockracy groups" and "human rights groups", so your solution on political parties doesn't hold.

Many of us have serious concerns about the legitimacy of Human Rights Watch. Yes, they criticise the US (so do liberals) but much of their agenda magically matches US policies in Latin America:

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On May 16, 2005 HRW published a letter to the head of MINUSTAH (UN forces) in Haiti. It stated that Aristide supporters were responsible for most of the violence in Port-au-Prince and called for increased firepower for MINUSTAH and the Haitian National Police.[12] Again, the legitimacy of the UN forces was not questioned. Two centuries of uninterrupted brutality, murder and theft inflicted on Haiti by US and European governments were easily dismissed as was Aristide's popularity which was confirmed by electoral victories and even US commissioned polls. [13]

HRW had little to say about Haiti's brutal unelected government. It had much more criticism for Venezuela's democratically elected government. Two years after the coup in Haiti HRW allocated more than 22,000 words towards the situation in Venezuela - more than double what it had allocated to Haiti in the same period. [19]

Haiti offered much more compelling examples than Venezuela of a judiciary under the thumb of the executive. The Toronto Star reported that in December of 2004 "Justice Minister Bernard Gousse removed two prominent judges' caseloads after they had ordered the release of prisoners who were political opponents of the government." [21] In December, 2005 Haiti's unelected government fired the supreme court because it had hampered a US millionaire's attempt to run for president. HRW remained silent. [22]

Worse than the double standard HRW has revealed regarding judicial independence in Venezuela and Haiti has been their double standard towards the opposition in both countries. HRW strongly protested Venezuela's decision to prosecute members of Sumate, an NGO that had received US funds in violation of Venezuelan law to organize the recall referendum against Chavez. HRW referred to the trial as "government persecution". [23]

HRW has not used such strong words (in fact, any words) to defend Haiti's political prisoners. HRW's failure to join the international campaign to free the Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste is particularly glaring. The priest is a prominent Aristide supporter and humanitarian worker. He was illegally jailed twice after the 2004 coup. After his second arrest Amnesty International (AI) named him a "prisoner of conscience". AI also issued an appeal on behalf of Annette August, another Aristide ally, who has been imprisoned for two years without being charged. I have contacted HRW many times to ask why they have been silent about the plight of these prisoners. They have never replied. [24]

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Haiti and Human Rights Watch

HRW is increasingly viewed as puppet of the neo-lib agenda and I have grave concerns about their impartiality.

I hope the Venezuelans crack down with a decree stating ANY organisation receiving US funding (including HRW) will be prosecuted under Venezuelan law. They have nothing to lose.

And for those who continue to rely on HRW as a valid source, I suggest you e-mail them to ask why they write twice as much against Venezuela as Haiti (which has without doubt the worst human rights violations in our hemisphere). Their address is in New York, USA. Good luck and let us know when you hear something; to date no one ever has.

One last article to read:

Who is behind Human Rights Watch?

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Under President Clinton, Human Rights Watch was the most influential pro-intervention lobby: its 'anti-atrocity crusade' helped drive the wars in ex-Yugoslavia. Under Bush it lost influence to the neoconservatives, who have their own crusades, and it is unlikely to regain that influence during his second term. But the 'two interventionisms' are not so different anyway: Human Rights Watch is founded on belief in the superiority of American values. It has close links to the US foreign policy elite, and to other interventionist and expansionist lobbies.

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Read the article for all the gory details.

[ 27 August 2006: Message edited by: a lonely worker ]

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The CIA has rigged elections in Cuba prior to 1959 and around the world in addition to "removing" democratically-elected leaders and destabilizing countries with dirty tricks.

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You got that right Fidel. Here's what's happening in Mexico right now:

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Suspicions about computer-generated fraud – rooted, in part, in the fact that IFE’s computer systems were partly designed by companies and partners of Calderón’s brother-in-law Diego Hildebrando Zavala – have been raised anew by the statistical anomalies and inconsistencies both in the PREP counts and hard counts claimed by the IFE, particularly the lack of fluctuation in Madrazo’s hard count tally at the very moments when a radical shift occurred from Obrador to Calderón.

(Note that a full, manual recount is the only antidote for computer fraud.)

But wait, there’s more:

And the fact that IFE chairman Ugalde rushed, at 4 p.m. Thursday, to declare a winner without having transparently reported the region-by-region and state-by-state results (at press time, IFE still has not published them) smells as rotten as the legal fact that Ugalde is not empowered by any law to declare a winner but that he inexplicably did so anyway: that task belongs, legally, to the judicial branch of government, the Trife tribunal.

Ugalde’s illegal hurry suggests motive to literally play fast and loose with the facts, as he has done.

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Calderon's brother-in-law wrote the vote-counting software, and it's already been hacked!

Funny how the fact that the software being used to count the votes is owned by the neo-con candidate's own brother-in-law.

Sad is the fact that the majority of our corporate media aren't reporting this little problem. Here's yesterday's Star on the protests:

Mexican protestors don't fold their tents

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City under canvas takes on permanency
Backers of left-winger want full vote recount

I also watched a pottery class. It was given by a man called Sixto, who later showed me his tent, his home for the past three weeks.

"It sleeps three or four," he said as the two of us struggled to get inside.

I asked him how comfortable it was. "It's not too bad although it does get cold in the morning, very cold," he said.

Intrigued, I wanted to know why he had stuck it out. "For democracy," came the simple but expansive reply.

Calderon is believed to enjoy the backing of about half of all Mexican voters, and he may well become president in the next few weeks. But there is still time to catch that movie or take in a meal as these people show no signs of packing away their tent poles yet.

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Every weekend the Star's been running these same type of stories(last week it was about naked protesters) and yet never do we hear the facts about the irregularities. Contrast that to the outrage and scorn the Canadian media had for these same "authorities" when that couple was murdered in Cancun.

Even sadder in all of this, is that not a word has come out from Human Rights Watch over an issue they always preach to others about (especially Cuba and venezuela). But then again, who cares what some "leftist" "left wingers" or "populists" think when US interests are involved.

[ 27 August 2006: Message edited by: a lonely worker ]

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The CIA has rigged elections in Cuba prior to 1959 and around the world in addition to "removing" democratically-elected leaders and destabilizing countries with dirty tricks. It wouldn't be a reach to suggest that they have rigged American elections in the past.

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No, it certainly wouldn't be. Here's my onw take on the US electoral system, after going through three federal, two state and four county and municipal elections. I posted this in another thread, but here it is again. I focused on the federal scene, since that's where most of the fraud and long-established corruption is:

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, I don't think you can ignore the fact that US "democracy" is so restricted and subdued, especially in terms of economic and strategic decision-making, that people have so little choice or credible information on which to even make a choice.

I lived in the US for five years, during the Reagan fiasco. I saw first hand what a sham their whole electoral system is.

First, it's a rigid and closed two-party system that makes it almost impossible for a third party or independent to get on the ballot. It's a hugely expensive and bureaucratically daunting effort (while the two official parties have full access to tax-funded resources to do all this).

Second, the corporate media is almost completely geared to recognize only these two parties and is only interested in covering, and promoting these two. Legally media outlets are required to provide air time or print space (at full price, of course) tot he two parties. No one else gets that right. Add to this, that the corporate media has become increasingly devoted to the Republican Party with little critical journalism.

Third, if you think big money dictates election outcomes in Canada (it certainly does), wait until you go through an election campaign in the US! Major corporate and rich elite backing of candidates is a must in order to pay for the huge fees and campaign expenses. And graft is a regular day in US politics (as in, I'll give you money if you give me special consideration for this, or a big contract for that, or, etc.) As long as it can't be proven that anyone is breaking existing influence-peddling laws (which are pretty slack), it's OK to basically by and sell political support.

Fourth, the electoral process itself in so fraught with loopholes and authoritarian intervention rules it makes the whole thing a big joke. There is something called the Electoral College in the US that was created in the early 1800s to supervise federal elections, especially involving the president, to ensure the “right people” got elected.

It was given special powers after blacks and property-less people got the right to vote in the late 1800s, and again in 1919, when the Woodrow Wilson government feared the election of socialists, after teddy Roosevelt called for an elected US senate in 1913.

The college has the power to close polls early and, if the vote for a candidate is within a 12 per cent margin, can decide who wins regardless of how many votes they got (within the 12 per cent margin).

Fifth, the balloting process is especially corrupt. So, Bush and Chaney “won” in 2000 and 2004. Reagan and Bush (Sr.) “won” in 1984, etc. But did they? In the 2004 vote alone, according to the US electoral office, there are over 500,000 ballots they think were cast that are unaccounted for.

In addition, if there are people still waiting in line to vote by the time the polls close (and there are usually up to a couple million in most elections), they are either sent home without voting, or given “provisional ballots” were they can vote, but they won’t be counted unless the College, or the supreme court re-open or extend the voting times—which is almost never. In the 2004 vote, there were over a million provisional ballots issued that never got counted.

Add to this there were over a million absentee ballots cast (by US citizens living abroad—including my son-in-law), none of which have ever been verified as being counted. (The son-in-law sent in his ballot well before the deadline and never heard anything back—never got a receipt, or any confirmation that his ballot was received, let alone counted).

Furthermore, there are the estimated six million Americans in the US military that supposedly have the right to vote, as reports from various US journalists I have either read or heard from say US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan were ordered to vote for the Republican Party as a security and safety precaution. So much for “electing” (which actually means “to choose).

And let’s not even get into the whole screwed up primary and fomentation process within the two parties. I have read here some of the Americans complaining that it’s only the center-right candidates that win Democratic Party nominations. I hear them! And it’s easy, given what the political systems are like, to see why.

So, given this structure, it’s pretty hard for American voters to choose anything other than what’s offered them by a highly restricted voting system.

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- Venezuela is undemocratic.
- Venezuela is not co-operating on the war on drugs
- Venezuela is too friendly with terrorism.

All of these things, when added up, help set the stage for further US intervention. It is not that this will justify an invasion, but what it means is that when the US gets caught with its hand in the cookie jar, they will be able to spin it such that the Republicans will still think it was the right thing to do.

When, in fact, we all know the reason that the US is so against Venezuela has nothing to do with democracy, terrorism or drugs. It has to do with the fact that they are:

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It wouldn't be a reach to suggest that they have rigged American elections in the past.

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When, in fact, we all know the reason that the US is so against Venezuela has nothing to do with democracy, terrorism or drugs. It has to do with the fact that they are:

1) denying multinationals from making the same profit they once were.
2) abiding by OPEC agreements thus driving up the price of oil.
3) setting an example of how to give oil profits to the people instead of MNC's

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You forgot:
4)Giving hope to peoples of Latin America about escaping Uncle Sam's imperialist orbit
5)Being very close with socialist groups and nations( i.e Cuba), thus reviving, to CIA chagrin, the socialist movements of Latin America.

Anything that reminds us that socialism is alive,irritates the Western elites. They would rather maintain the myth that it is dead.

[ 29 August 2006: Message edited by: BetterRed ]

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Venezuelan intellectuals and artists suggested a US transitional government Monday, as an essential condition for a return to democracy in that country.

Venezuelan Culture Minister Francisco Sesto showed press a note issued by 38 winners of national awards in different artistic expressions, in which they warned about the current behavior of Washington´s government.

The professionals said those forces not only have intensified the imperialist inclination of that nation, with tragic consequences for the peoples and cultures of the world, but also are a menace to the US population.

[snip]

Faced with that panorama, the Venezuelan professionals of culture expressed the need to work for a change, as a solidarity gesture with the US people, whom they consider worthy of a better fate.

Quoting the Republic´s President Hugo Chavez, they noted that establishment of a transitional government in that country, in the short term, is essential.

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viva la transition!

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Its main purpose would be to democracy to the United States by destabilizing its governmental institutions and sabotaging its economy, much the way the US government does via its National Endowment for Democracy.

Then again, the Bush Administration's policies have pushed the public and personal debt and trade deficit so far into space, I don't think anything can save them--and Americans are getting too poor to provide the consumer spending they need to keep things going as they are.

Seriously, it seems that the US Empire won't actually be defeated. Rather, it will simply implode and totally collapse in on itself, the way the Soviet Union and the old British and French empires did.

And don't count on China taking over--at least not for long. Without the big US consumer market to support Chinese cheap labour products, and the US government credit system to provide shelter for Chinese capital, well, implosion shall cometh there too.

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The official August 12 start of Venezuela’s presidential election campaign has opened a new phase in Washington’s plans to destabilise the revolutionary government headed by socialist President Hugo Chavez.

Officially, the main opposition candidate in the December election is Manuel Rosales, the current governor of the state of Zulia. ...

A [Chavez] victory would further weaken US attempts to isolate Venezuela internationally and hand the Bolivarian revolution a powerful platform from which to continue its denunciation of Washington’s brutal policies and build a bloc of opposition aimed at breaking the hold of the world’s rogue superpower over the Third World. ...

As J. Michael Waller from the Center for Security Policy — an organisation with direct links to the Bush administration that counts among its members a who’s who of former CIA and US government personnel — stated as far back as May 2005, the re-election of Chavez is something that the US elite must avoid. ...

US strategy

Despite having widely publicised the scheduling of primary elections in order to select the best candidate to challenge Chavez, it seemed that overnight the majority of the Venezuelan opposition fell in behind the candidature of Rosales. The two candidates who until then had seemed the most likely to run suddenly dropped out of the race.

The US-funded so-called non-government organisation Sumate, which was key to the campaign to allege fraud in the recall referendum and last December’s National Assembly elections, quickly dropped all talks of a primary in order to back Rosales’s bid.

Rosales had been hesitant to run, because he would have had to resign his position as governor — one of only two out of 24 governorships that the opposition controls — and even he knew he wasn’t going to win against Chavez.

The choice of Rosales may reveal what the US is planning. Rosales has been a firm advocate of “autonomy” for Zulia, spearheading a move to separate the oil-rich state from the rest of Venezuela. Bordering Colombia, Zulia has historically had a strong sense of regional identity. Several times since the 1820s, there have been moves by the oil elites to push for the independence of Zulia in order to grab control of 40% of Venezuela’s oil.

By playing on this, along with running welfare missions very similar to the national government’s own social missions, Rosales has been able to gain a high level of support in Zulia. ...

Washington’s candidate

Although claiming to be independent from the US, Rosales’ history proves otherwise. He was the only governor to sign the infamous “Carmona Decree”, issued after Chavez was briefly deposed during the April 2002 coup. The decree dissolved the National Assembly and suspended the attorney-general, the ombudsman, and the governors and mayors elected during Chavez’s presidency. Rosales signed as a “representative of the state governors”.

Rosales’s party, A New Time, was one of the last opposition parties to pull out of last year’s National Assembly elections. It had initially argued against abstention, knowing that it had a real possibility of winning seats in Zulia. But in the end, it agreed to forego running in order to side with Washington’s preferred plan of abstaining in an attempt to delegitimise the elections.

The fact that the US-funded Sumate group, along with the US-funded political parties of the right, have all dropped out of the presidential race to support a candidate who time and time again has exposed himself to be nothing more than a puppet of Washington, lends credence to the argument that the real campaign manager of the opposition is the US empire.

Zulian historian Carlos Morales Manssur pointed out in a February 26 Prensa Latina article that the US has much to gain from an independent Zulia: “Washington would ... obtain control of the oil resources of Lake Maracaibo and could establish an important base of Plan Colombia [the US-funded war against left-wing guerrillas in Colombia], all at the expense of a government which it dislikes.” ...

A dangerous situation

It is possible that such a string of events could be used to generate violence, and “justification” for US military intervention. Already, Zulia is home to a large number of right-wing Colombian paramilitaries who have assassinated numerous peasant leaders and been implicated in destabilisation plans.

On August 23, a convoy of 20 trucks supposedly carrying diplomatic and personal effects for the US diplomatic mission in Venezuela was intercepted and discovered to be smuggling detonators and cables used in explosives. ...

In response, the revolutionary forces are organising themselves. Chavez has, as he puts it, “unleashed the Bolivarian hurricane”, in order to obtain the conscious vote of 10 million Venezuelans in defence of the revolution and its ideals.

To do so, the “Miranda Command” has been established at the national level and throughout the country, aiming to organise more than 200,000 people on a polling-booth-by-polling-booth basis. Like for the recall referendum, each polling booth will have 10 people assigned, whose role is to political convince 10 other people to not just vote for Chavez, but to integrate themselves into the revolutionary process and deepen it.

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Originally posted by Steppenwolf Allende:
Seriously, it seems that the US Empire won't actually be defeated. Rather, it will simply implode and totally collapse in on itself, the way the Soviet Union and the old British and French empires did.

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The British empire fell apart because it was too expensive to maintain a navy/army to prop up colonial rule.

French imperialism died because it was long past due.

The Soviet Union collapsed due to outside pressure to the extreme, as in cold war to the tune of several trillion taxpayer dollars spent in the west. Unofficially, there were various U.S. departments for economic warfare waged on the Soviet Union and Latin America including Cuba. People became fed up with waiting in long lines for groceries. Multinationals like Cadburys and Sunkist refused to sell their goods to the USSR, and people felt the Soviet system was failing them for not supplying them with even chocolate or oranges.

And there was western propaganda. Slavs, Hungarians and Russians who came to the west said they fully believed that everyone in the U.S. and Canada were wealthy and owned mansions with two cars. They were lied to for the sake of fomenting social unrest in the USSR. So there was social unrest created by cold war embargo and propaganda funded by, again, U.S. taxpayers -like the cold war mentality in the U.S. still insists on waging against Cuba and Korea.

But the knife in the back of the Soviets came with the Saudi's dumping oil on world markets in 1985 or so. Saudi oil production went from 2M bbls/day to 6M. They were slitting the Russians throats and similar to the way Saudi's did with Saddam after the war with Iran, and probably on Washington's suggestion. The Soviets went from billion dollar trade surplus to about a 1.5 billion dollar deficit the next year. This exacerbated shortages in the Soviet Union.

And then there were the Harvard and Princeton economists who travelled to the USSR and Yugoslavia to sell free market reforms. And there was an audience willing to listen, because in 1989, there were about 2 million Russians living in poverty. The economists used the same formula in each of the republics, which was essentially to dazzle them with presentation. There were slide shows and lots of numbers, and stacks and stacks of economic reports by the most brilliant minds in western economics.

In brief, glasnost was a disaster and said to have resulted in one of the largest human die-offs of the last half of that century next to capitalist India's record for planned and enforced genocide with IMF help today. Over the next 17 years, poverty in Russia skyrocketed to 30 times pre-glasnost numbers. Life expectancy dropped as Russian GDP was halved.

In any event, the trade deficit didn't mean anything really, because look at the U.S. three-pronged deficit today. The Yanks are carrying enormous fiscal, trade and accounts deficits far surpassing anything the Russians were suffering at the time. The point is, the Yanks are the world's military superpower, and the Chinese-Saudis and Japanese are funding America's deficit spending on military and consumerism because of it. The post-McKinley U.S. empire built on wars of conquest and golden age industrialism collapsed the first time, and "all by itself", in 1929. The 1930's marked the death of laissez-faire capitalism around the western world and was replaced with Keynesianism and New Deal Socialism in the U.S. in building the most prosperous nation ever. But there was no Soviet Union or its third world friendlies waging cold war on the U.S. then like is not the case today. Or is there?. Are the Saudi's working to keep the price of oil up or down right now ?. And what's happening to the Russian economy now that Putin has renationalised an equivalent amount of oil to Libya's annual production?.

Lyndon Johnson was apparently quoting Hanah Arendt when he said that empire abroad comes at a cost to the national well being at home. There is no cold war, just trade wars for oil and raw materials now. The Saudis and Russians are accepting cash on the barrelhead. And will they continue to demand USDN?.

So the knife in the back of the Soviets was bottom of the barrel oil prices. The Soviets, according to Gore Vidal, volleyed and stabbed the military industrial complex in the back by ceding the cold war. Keynesian-militarists are running out of enemies to point to in extorting the biggest welfare cheques in world history from the taxpayers. Some people I've heard said that the USSR was allocating half of GNP for military expansion. Not true, and RAND Corporation has admitted as much since the 1980's. Meanwhile US defenSe budgets have never been larger or less sustainable.

And btw, State-capitalism is what existed in 1930's Germany, and to a much larger extent today in the U.S. Of course, there was another poster who went by the handle "vigilante" and who was forever hungup on these same events of recent history.

[ 05 September 2006: Message edited by: Fidel ]

I really hope China pulls the plug on these warmongers, but I doubt it.

They're doing this in country after country (no one knows how much Harper received when he was running for the leadershit of the neo-cons). As usual our media are keeping us blind of these facts and i am grateful that everyday more are seeing this evil empire for what it really is.

Europeans See U.S. as Threat to Global Stability

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30 per cent of respondents believe the U.S. is the greatest threat to global stability.

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I hope that number grows every day.

[ 05 September 2006: Message edited by: a lonely worker ]

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President Hugo Chávez openly defies the ruling class in the United States, daring to push forward new productive relationships, to advance social reform that provides access to health care and education, to remove Venezuela from the economic orbit dominated by the United States, to diversify its production to meet human needs and promote human development, and to forge an economic coalition between Latin American countries.

But as Bush Versus Chávez reveals, Venezuela’s revolutionary process has drawn more than simply the ire of Washington. It has precipitated an ongoing campaign to contain and cripple the democratically elected government of Latin America’s leading oil power. Bush Versus Chávez details how millions of U.S. taxpayer dollars are used to fund groups — such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the United States Agency for International Development, and the Office for Transition — with the express purpose to support counter-revolutionary groups in Venezuela. It describes how Washington is attempting to impose endless sanctions, justified by fabricated evidence, to cause economic distress. And it illuminates the build-up of U.S. military troops, operations, and exercises in the Caribbean, that specifically threaten the Venezuelan people and government. Bush Versus Chávez exposes the imperialist machinations of Washington as it tries to “subvert a socialist revolution for the twenty-first century.”

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“An essential read for understanding the conflict between the United States and Venezuela.”
— Noam Chomsky

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