Sobering thoughts for Nelson Bocaranda.

I wanted to read to OpEds in Venezuela to see what is being said about Obama’s victory. Think for a moment of the perspective of Latin Americans, especially those under regimes such as Hugo Chavez, where the communist propaganda has been constantly to insult and attack the American system. While the elite there—whether that be the old guard “oligarchy” or the “new rich” communists that are pilfering the state—has offered no hope for improvement or for a better future, the election of Obama has undermined their argument about the evils of the American system, contradicted the accusations that America is a racist nation in which people of color have no hope or future.

There is a bright side to this, and I thought it might be worth sharing. Many in Latin America felt ignored by the United States over the past eight years, and blame American indifference to their plight for the rise of authoritarians such as Chavez, and the spread socialism across the continent.

A well known and highly respected journalist, Nelson Bocaranda Sardi, writes {my translation}:

"Example: Once again the United States has given a lesson of Democracy to the entire world, with special emphasis given to those countries where it is the military jackboot that reigns, and where the disdain for justice and law, as well as the shameless and cynical enjoyment of corruption with state monies, is the daily rule. John McCain’s capitulation speech, in which he recognizes his defeat and offers his support to the winner, and that of Barack Obama, curing old wounds, promising inclusion and a better future for new generations that turned out en masse to vote as they did for J. Kennedy in 1960 or G. McGovern in 1972, are the demonstration of the institutional quality of the nation that will once again be the beacon of democracy that Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington, and Franklin visualized. Another American dream is realized. "

Hence, Bocaranda is quite clearly suggesting that Venezuelan's will again see the contrast between their own plight, their own "Democracy", and the true democratic principals displayed by "the Empire", and that difference made plain should tarnish the popularity of Chavez. And, Obama represents a new hope that America will stop ignoring them and will help them throw off the yoke of tyrrany.

This is all well and good, but the same author continues:

"Promise?: The past June 5th we wrote here about the visit of Democratic governor Bill Richardson to President Chavez, in order to discuss the three North American hostages held by the FARC, and where the American elections were discussed. At that time, the governor informed Chavez of the interest by the Democrats in improving relations with Venezuela {Chavez}. Among the promises, that during the electoral process they would limit criticism of Chavez, and they would guarantee a meeting of Obama and Chavez, being either an informal meeting before Obama takes office, or immediately afterward. In return, Chavez would “lower his anti-Yankee flag”, tone down his anti-imperialist discourse, and increase the possibility of commercial exchange. "

It should also be noted that, the day after the election, once it became clear that Obama had won, the infamous Piedad Cordoba, Colombian congressional member and supporter of the FARC terrorist group, declared that Obama’s victory was a victory for “everyone who has fought for decades for equality”, and immediately requested that Obama work with her to “reach a humanitarian solution” to the ongoing conflict with the FARC.

Allow me a moment to put these events in context. It has been a long-standing goal for Hugo Chavez to spread his influence around Latin America, by any means necessary. This has led him to covertly and illegally pump millions upon millions of dollars into the election campaigns of friendly leftists throughout Latin America, from Argentina (where Chavez’s agents were caught smuggling suitcases full of money to the Kirchner campaign), to Mexico. Chavez stated years ago that he planned to have a “Bolivarian” president elected. And a constant stream of Democrats and another radical leaders has made its way to Venezuela, including film directors (Oliver Stone), actors (Sean Penn, Danny Glover), activists and community organizers (such as ACORN members), and of course, liberal politicians such as Bill Richardson, among others.

Meanwhile, another of Chavez’s strategies appeared to be to position himself for a Nobel Peace Prize. While his loyal followers submitted him for consideration, Chavez unilaterally intervened in the internal affairs of Colombia as they battled the FARC terrorists. It was alleged that Oliver Stone’s frequent visits to Venezuela during this time were intended to document Chavez’s glorious efforts to broker a humanitarian effort to release the hundreds of hostages held by the FARC. Chavez did in fact manage to obtain the release of several low-level hostages, including a political aide to Ingrid Betancourt—the Colombian presidential candidate who was kidnapped by the FARC in the middle of her political campaign. But Chavez could not obtain the release of the four most important hostages held by the FARC: Three American contractors working for Plan Colombia who were captured when their plane was shot down, and Betancourt.

However, when FARC leader Raul Reyes was killed in a military operation, and his laptop recovered, intelligence from that laptop revealed that Chavez had given around 300 million dollars to the FARC to arrange the “humanitarian” release of the three previous hostages. It was Piedad Cordoba who repeatedly kissed Chavez’s boots and praised him for his brilliant and neutral role, even though her own government repeatedly protested to world bodies that Chavez was violating their sovereign affairs. In short, in order to gain political glory and try to achieve world renown by winning a Nobel Prize, Chavez violated Colombian sovereignty and paid a ransom to the kidnappers.

It was in this context that Richardson visited Chavez. Yet another brilliant military intervention by the Colombians rescued Betancourt and the three American contractors without a shot being fired—and simultaneously deflated Chavez’s hopes of being the great liberator.

So, with this context provided, now one must re-examine the declarations by Piedad Cordoba, and the reports from Caracas, that these two very dangerous actors are pleased with Obama’s election, and already planning to meet with Obama.

And we must remember Obama’s statements that he would (and then would not) meet with Chavez without pre-conditions. If Obama does in fact meet with Chavez between now and his inauguration—or even afterward, for that matter, then he would be violating yet another of his campaign promises and revealing that he is the ideologue and naïve politician we thought he would be.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan immigrants who fled the Chavez regime to find safety in the United States, those who supported John McCain because they recognized in Obama this waffling liberal inability to properly assess the danger in characters such as Chavez, now must find themselves in the peculiar position of being members of opposition in two countries. But fear not: with the conservative Cubans by our side, we are all in very good company, and the fight will continue.

Sadly, however, if Obama provees himself to be the idiot I suspect him to be, it is the Venezuelans and others in Latin America who will suffer yet another great disappointment. Not only will America not save them from Leftist tyrrany, but an Obama administration just might help those authoritarians to gain international prestige and consolidate their power.

These are my sobering thoughts for Mr. Bocaranda.

Watch out America: What happened in Venezuela can happen here.

If you had asked me ten years ago if I thought that the strange, unbelievable events that happened over the past decade in Venezuela could occur in the United States, I would have said it was crazy. But having watched the events in Venezuela very carefully, and watching current events in the USA, I’m becoming deeply alarmed. In particular, I’m talking about the alarming claims of rampant voter fraud that is being reported in primarily Democrat counties in Alabama.
Before I get to what’s happening in Alabama, I need to review what we know about Venezuelan President Chavez.

It is now well known that Lt. Colonel Hugo Chavez led an illegal coup attempt in 1992 that resulted in the deaths of numerous innocent, unarmed Venezuelan civilians. After his coup failed, he agreed to go on the air and call for his armed co-conspirators to stop the coup, saying “we have failed—for now”. He went to jail, and eventually the Venezuelan president pardoned him for his crimes, and he embarked on a political campaign to accomplish ‘democratically’ what he had failed to accomplish by force.

Chavez embarked on a world-wide tour to gather financial resources from Cuba, middle-eastern leaders (including Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Syria’s Assad), and returned to Venezuela with millions of dollars for his campaign. He won the election, and immediately started to disassemble the Venezuelan government. Within a few years, he had replaced the federal judges with sympathetic followers, dissolved the bicameral congress and replaced with a temporary body that wrote a new constitution that favored him and his party and his “Bolivarian revolution”.

He then took complete control of the electoral council (Venezuela’s electoral system is completely centralized—a model that former US President Carter has said he’d like to emulate), and in every electoral process from that point forward, there were rampant charges of electoral fraud. Opposition candidates were harassed, beaten, arrested and threatened with impunity. Chavez supporters attacked opposition rallies en masse, resulting in many injuries and even deaths.

But what is very alarming is that entire electoral mechanism was undermined in a way that permanently disadvantaged the opposition parties. Millions of dollars of state funds found their way into pro-Chavez parties, rallies, and bought support around the country. People were paid to be bused to pro-Chavez rallies and show support for him, giving the impression to the world that his support was massive and popular. Voters were paid to cast votes for him, and there were many cases of intimidation against anyone who showed a proclivity to vote against him.
Chavez made it clear that he was willing to use the ever increasing petroleum revenue to fund his personal revolution, and that a top priority for Venezuela was to achieve the election—in the USA—of a “Bolivarian president”. This notion was mocked and laughed at as the ramblings of a Latin American madman.

However, over the next few years, a frightening pattern was revealed. Socialist parties across the Americas, from Mexico to Argentina and including many countries in between, were accused by their opponents of illegally and covertly receiving large sums of money from the Venezuelan government, in order to support the leftist causes and outspend their “neo-liberal” opponents. Chavez donated millions of dollars of petroleum to Sandinista candidates in Nicaragua, so that they could provide cheap fuel to their supporters—a way of demonstrating how supporting socialists would result in handouts for the poor. Chavez built housing in the districts of socialist candidates in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Bolivia, helping increase the popularity of the socialists. This pattern repeated itself in numerous countries, while the outcry of opposition leaders was ignored.

Following this pattern, the governments of Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Argentina and Nicaragua all turned to the left. There is a life and death struggle still going on in El Salvador and Panama.
The most telling turn of events occurred in Argentina, when it was discovered that high-level Venezuelan officials had funneled large sums of money into Argentina to covertly fund the election campaign of Kristina Fernandez de Kirchner—the wife of former socialist president Nestor Kirchner. The Kirchners were very vocal supporters of Chavez. Small wonder, when one considers how Chavez single-handedly (without the approval of the Venezuelan people) decided to buy Argentina’s multi-billion dollar debt to the World Bank. No one has yet been able to demonstrate how this purchase benefitted the Venezuelan people or economy, but it was clear that it supported Chavez: the Kirchners gained temporary popularity in Argentina and in turn showed him undying loyalty, defending his “revolution” in every forum of world government.

The way the money was funneled into the various countries is extremely important to understand. Chavez has always been savvy enough to maintain “plausible deniability”. That is to say, he might outwardly say that he wants to support the leftist parties in a country, but wouldn’t outwardly give the money to them. Instead, what has been learned is that the money often came directly from the coffers of the state-controlled Petroleum of Venezuela (Pdvsa), and was delivered secretly by private individuals contracted by government officials, who carried the money into the country under the guise of business discussions about oil leases and other convenient distractions. Unfortunately for Chavez, some of those suitcases of money were captured, and the whole plot was discovered.

At other times, the Circulos Bolivarianos, or “Bolivarian Circles”, were employed to this end. The Bolivarian Circles are a loosely organized system of community groups throughout the world, which claim to support underprivileged populations and provide a number of services. But they are alleged to be deeply involved in funneling money to opposition groups, to help organize and fund protest marches, even trigger riots.

In other cases, support was given as gifts of the Venezuelan government to its favored opposition leaders. This didn’t just happen in the backwaters of Latin American countries. Chavez gave cheap heating oil to the constituents of Democrat leaders in Boston and New York. He also tried to sway Native American populations in the USA with similar tactics, by donating gas or heating oil or other support.

Over the past few years, Chavez has received many visits from any number of American leaders, not to mention socialist Hollywood elite. Various members of the African National Congress have visited him, giving the impression that they not only support Chavez, but are expecting some return of favors.

Which brings me now to the events in Alabama.

According to the investigations of the Alabama Attorney General Troy King and the US Justice Department, a number of counties, whose local governments lean heavily Democrat, have been caught in a massive voter fraud scheme. The details that are being released are somewhat meager and unsatisfying. But in an interview on Fox news, AG King explained that they have discovered a pattern of vote-buying in these counties, the voters being offered between $50 and $100 to vote Democrat. What’s more, while his investigators attempted to gather information on the case, local officials in these counties actually arrested the Alabama state investigators for “harassment” of the voters who apparently accepted the bribes. King stated that he had to go to court to get his own investigators released from jail!

The method is extremely clear: the Democrat party has been encouraging its constituents to vote early via absentee ballots. This method was promoted heavily ever since the 2000 election, in which the vote was disputed in Florida, and the Democrats tried to claim that electronic voting machines were rigged by the Republicans to throw the election. So they have instead tried to get their constituents to vote by absentee ballots because—in their words—it would provide a paper trail in case of a future, contested election.

In Alabama, a number of these counties—which apparently are also predominantly black—have suddenly revealed some disturbing irregularities that suggest that something very odd is occurring. In Perry County, for example, the average number of absentee ballots cast in previous elections was close to one percent. Now, that has grown to nearly twenty five percent.
It is too early to tell exactly what is happening, but to me it’s very frightening. Where is this money coming from? Why are local officials trying to impede the investigations? Could the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, who visited Chavez on private business, be at all related to the sudden appearance of money throughout mostly black precincts throughout the South?

And, since Chavez repeatedly stated that he trying to get a socialist elected in the United States, could his have anything to do with the presidential campaign of Senator Obama? Could there be a reason why Obama was able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for his campaign, while none of the other candidates could come close? Could this be the reason why Obama refused to accept public financing--contracting his previous promise to do so?

It’s far from unprecedented for the Democrats to receive illegal funds from overseas—after all, this was exactly what President Clinton did when he accepted millions of dollars from the Chinese.

So, perhaps my speculations are not too hair-brained. Only time will tell.