Letter Never Sent

Italians showed the power of the general strike when millions of Italian workers staged the biggest strike in decades. They are protesting new proposed rules by the pro-business premier, Silvio Berlusconi. From the NY Times:

The main impasse is over a reform that would eliminate rules requiring employers to take back workers found to have been fired for “unjust causes.” Employers complain those rules hamper their ability to get rid of unneeded workers. Under the proposed reform, employers would have to pay the workers compensation but not take them back.

The government insists the reforms are necessary to make the Italian economy more competitive and attract foreign investment. The unions say the reforms will cost dearly in hard-won job security, widen the gap between rich and poor and undermine Italy’s social stability.

One day there will be the resurrection of American labor.

The ‘newspaper of record’, the NY Times, reported today that high-level Bush administration officials had met several times in recent months with the leaders of the failed coup against Hugo Chavez. The Bush administration admitted today that they did meet with the coup leaders and agreed with them that Chavez should be removed, tacitly providing the go ahead for the coup d’etat.

We were not discouraging people,” the official said. “We were sending informal, subtle signals that we don’t like this guy. We didn’t say, `No, don’t you dare,’ and we weren’t advocates saying, `Here’s some arms; we’ll help you overthrow this guy.’ We were not doing that.”

The disclosures come as rights advocates, Latin American diplomats and others accuse the administration of having turned a blind eye to coup plotting activities, or even encouraged the people who temporarily removed Mr. Chávez. Such actions would place the United States at odds with its fellow members of the Organization of American States, whose charter condemns the overthrow of democratically elected governments.

In the immediate aftermath of the ouster, the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, suggested that the administration was pleased that Mr. Chávez was gone. “The government suppressed what was a peaceful demonstration of the people,” Mr. Fleischer said, which “led very quickly to a combustible situation in which Chávez resigned.”

According to an article in The Washington Post, The Bush administration has been cleaning up the speech transcripts of their lead buffoon, GW, editing out gaffes and presidential bloopers. While this might seem like a minor issue it amounts to a falsification of official records of historical importance. In Bush’s case this is almost forgivable since he is such an obvious moron, but this practice has been extended even to comments made my White House Spokesman, Ari Fleischer. Laste September, “when White House press secretary Ari Fleischer warned that Americans “need to watch what they say.” The phrase did not at first appear in the White House transcript.” The White House transcripts have even cut out heckling, boos, and laughter while preserving cheers and applause. Is there any doubt that the Bush administration has some serious problems with honesty and respect for the democratic process?

US returns to bad old ways in Venezuela by Wayne Madsen in Washington DC and Richard M. Bennett

The one important thing to be learnt from the Venezuelan coup is that the United States has not changed its view that only Governments acceptable to Washington can be allowed to survive in Latin America and that like it or not, the United States will undermine and help overthrow even legally elected administrations if it so chooses. This became obvious when Pentagon sources gleefully revealed that the United States provided critical military and intelligence support to the Venezuelan military coup against President Hugo Chavez on Friday 12th April.

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Contrary to statements made by the Bush administration and the US government, the Venezuela coup was planned in advance and was aided by US intelligence. The Bush administration must be nostalgic for the days when they could assassinate and depose elected governments with impunity. It turns out according to inside sources that the US provided military and intelligence support: (Source: Narconews, Three Days that Shook the Media.)

Narco News has learned that the CIA headquarters for organizing, distributing said cash, and engineering the attempted coup d’etat, was the office known as the MIL GROUP. That’s the name by which the US Military Liason staff in Embassies – “usually a repository for fixers and grafters pitching Department of Defense sponsored weapons sales to third world satrapies,” as one source colorfully explained to Narco News – had, according to another well-placed source, greatly increased its staff size in the weeks prior to the attempted coup.

We presume the increase in personnel – or individuals posing as personnel at the MIL GROUP – was not due to a sudden desire by Washington to sell more arms to the Chavez government.

Former National Security Agency officer Wayne Madsen, writing with Richard M. Bennett, reveal that the U.S. participation in the failed coup attempt was not only financial, but military. Reporting from the National Press Building in Washington, they have just blown the roof off of U.S. government denials of involvement in the coup with this Intelligence Report:

Under the cover of the COMPTUEX and a Joint Task Force Exercise (JTFEX) training exercises in the Caribbean the US Navy provided signals intelligence and communications jamming support to the Venezuelan military. Particular focus by US Navy SIGINT vessels was on communications to and from the Cuban, Libyan, Iranian, and Iraqi diplomatic missions in Caracas. All four countries had expressed support for Chavez and the plans for US military and intelligence support for the coup d’etat were brought upto date following President Bush’s visit to Peru and El Salvador in March 2002. The National Security Agency (NSA) supported the coup using personnel attached to the US Southern Command’s Joint Interagency Task Force East (JIATF-E) in Key West, Florida. NSA’s Spanish-language linguists and signals interception operators in Key West; Sabana Seca on Puerto Rico and the Regional Security Operating Centre (RSOC) in Medina, Texas also assisted in providing communications intelligence to US military and national command authorities on the progress of the coup d’etat.

From eastern Colombia, CIA and US contract military personnel, ostensibly used for counter-narcotics operations, stood by to provide logistics support for the leading members of the coup. Their activities were centred at the Marandua airfield and along the border with Venezuela. Patrol aircraft operating from the US Forward Operating Location (FOL) in Manta, Ecuador also provided intelligence support for the military move against Chavez. Additional USN vessels on a training exercise in the Outer Range of the US Navy’s Southern Puerto Rican Operating Area also stood by in the event the coup against Chavez faltered, thus requiring a military evacuation of US citizens in Venezuela. The ships included the aircraft carrier USS George Washington and the destroyers USS Barry, Laboon, Mahan, and Arthur W. Radford. Some of the latter vessels reportedly had NSA Direct Support Units aboard to provide additional signals intelligence support to US Special Operations and intelligence personnel deployed on the ground in close co-operation with the Venezuelan Army and along the Colombian side of the border.

Does this mean that part of Plan Colombia involves aiding groups against Chavez? This is outrageous. The media in the US has given the false impression that the coup was an impromptu event. The evidence suggests an operation planned well in advance with the aid of the United States which has an obvious stake in the outcome. According to vheadline a colorful presidential sash had been ordered from Spain for the interim president, Carmona.

A colorful Presidential sash had been ordered specially from Spain to be worn by the Military-Civilian Junta’s interim President Pedro Carmona Estanga who was also to be given the fullest use of the newly-acquired Presidential jet…

Executive Vice President Diosdado Cabello has shown the newly-discovered trophy to a small group of journalists and says “it clearly shows that the coup had been planned and there was nothing spontaneous about it.”

Cabello reveals that an investigation into the April 11 killings will be undertaken … that he was meant to be the first victim … “we’re searching for TV footage from other angles other than the Televen shots of Bolivarian armed groups firing from the bridge.”

I was looking over at c-span.org seeing what would be on Washington Journal in the morning when I got off work, and I saw a link to a segment where they had talked to the creator of the website, thelastamericanwarriors.com, for a few minutes. Evidently, they review websites every saturday or so. Anyway, it’s really a great site. Lots of video and other resources. I spent a few hours watching clips from a documentary on the Kennedy Assassination. There were also some great video clips from the Guerrilla News Network. Stop by and check it out.

Great piece by the BBC’s Tom Gibb:

In the days before the overthrow of President Chavez, the US State department was urging caution, saying Washington would not support a military coup or the unconstitutional overthrow of the Venezuelan leader.

But after his removal, the White House reaction appeared remarkably different – with officials clearly pleased at the result.

Far from condemning the ouster of a democratically-elected president, US officials blamed the crisis on President Chavez himself – accusing him of ordering supporters to open fire on anti-government demonstrators.