US Ambassador expelled from Venezuela

CARACAS, September 11.—Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has ordered the U.S. ambassador in Caracas, Patrick Duddy, to leave the country within 72 hours, a measure that was adopted in solidarity with Bolivia, and at the same time informed Washington of Venezuela’s decision to cut off supplies of crude oil to that nation, the AFP reported.


Evo & Hugo

President Hugo Chávez"As a gesture of solidarity with Bolivia, from this moment on, the Yankee ambassador in Caracas has 72 hours to leave Venezuela," the president said during an election campaign rally in Puerto Cabello, 120 kilometers west of the capital, for his party’s candidate for regional elections in November.

The Bolivarian leader expressed his support for Bolivian President Evo Morales, whose government is experiencing a crisis that has been incited by reactionary forces in the country. Morales had also expelled Washington’s representative in La Paz, accusing him of being behind the opposition’s maneuvers.

Chavéz’ announcement came just hours after the Venezuelan administration presented taped recordings of conversations and denounced an attempted coup d’état against Chávez, planned by active and retired military officers with the full support of the U.S. administration.

Likewise, the President announced that he would halt oil sales to the United States if the Latin American country is to become the target of an attack by the White House.

Speaking live on television, Chávez also gave instructions to his Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro to arrange for the immediate return of the Venezuelan ambassador in the United States.

The president stated that "when there is a new government in the United States," Venezuela will send an ambassador but as long as President Bush is in power, Caracas will have no diplomatic representation in that country.

The Bolivarian leader placed responsibility for the tense situation on the U.S. government, which is "behind all the maneuvers of political destabilization currently underway in Latin America," he stated.

Translated by Granma International •

Venezuela Expels Human Rights Watch Director for “Meddling Illegally”
September 19th 2008, by James Suggett - Venezuelanalysis.com

Mérida, September 19, 2008 (venezuelanalysis.com)-- The Venezuelan government expelled two employees of the U.S-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco and Americas Deputy Director Daniel Wilkinson, after the two presented a report that praised Venezuela's 1999 Constitution but harshly criticized the "government's willful disregard for the institutional guarantees and fundamental rights that make democratic participation possible."


Vivanco

In a press release, the Venezuelan Foreign Relations Ministry said Vivanco and Wilkinson "have done violence to the constitution" and "assaulted the institutions" of Venezuela by "meddling illegally in the internal affairs of our country."

The ministry also said the HRW report is linked to the "unacceptable strategy of aggression" of the United States government. The ministry said the expulsion of Vivanco and Wilkinson was in the interest of "national sovereignty" and "the defense of the people against aggressions by international factors."

Constitutional lawyer and National Assembly Deputy Carlos Escarrá explained to the press, "The constitution of Venezuela expresses that a foreigner with a tourist visa cannot make commentaries against the President of the Republic."

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro warned in a press conference that "any other foreigner... who attempts to come to Venezuela and use our democratic order, with the total freedom of expression, to assault our institutions in a rude manner... will receive the same reply."

HRW's report, titled "A Decade Under Chávez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela," says the two-day coup against President Hugo Chávez in April 2002 was the "most dramatic setback" to the human rights guarantees of the 1999 Constitution, but that the Chávez administration has since used the coup as a pretext to undercut those rights.

Specifically, the government has engaged in "discrimination on political grounds," "open disregard for the principle of separation of powers," and has "undercut journalists' freedom of expression, workers' freedom of association, and civil society's ability to promote human rights in Venezuela," according to the report, which bases its conclusions on interviews conducted over the past two years.

Expulsión del Director de Human Rights Watch (En Español)

The End of the World is Nigh

The End of the World is Nigh

Fareed Zakaria writes in Newsweek:

"At a meeting with reporters last week, President Bush said that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon." These were not the barbs of some neoconservative crank or sidelined politician looking for publicity. This was the president of the United States, invoking the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon."

"The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism." For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence."

"Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland's and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on?"

Read the rest here. If you're yet to be persuaded that the purpose of this increasingly hysterical rhetoric is to prepare the ground for a possible war, you may be interested in this interview in Esquire:

"Two former high-ranking policy experts from the Bush Administration say the U.S. has been gearing up for a war with Iran for years, despite claiming otherwise. It'll be Iraq all over again."

"In the years after 9/11, Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann worked at the highest levels of the Bush administration as Middle East policy experts for the National Security Council. Mann conducted secret negotiations with Iran. Leverett traveled with Colin Powell and advised Condoleezza Rice. They each played crucial roles in formulating policy for the region leading up to the war in Iraq. But when they left the White House, they left with a growing sense of alarm -- not only was the Bush administration headed straight for war with Iran, it had been set on this course for years. That was what people didn't realize. It was just like Iraq, when the White House was so eager for war it couldn't wait for the UN inspectors to leave. The steps have been many and steady and all in the same direction. And now things are getting much worse. We are getting closer and closer to the tripline, they say."

Read the rest here. And see my earlier posts giving background on the Iran situation here, here, and my radio interview on the subject with Nadim Mahjoub here.

from The Democrat's Diary

Oil, Israel, and America: The Root Cause of the Crisis
By Scott Ritter

The Big Lie: ‘Iran Is a Threat’
by Scott Ritter

Tormentors of Humanity

One contributor to an article below, "We are all Terrorists Now!", felt that my comments were over the top and polarised. In his own blog he asks the question, "ask yourselves what is the environment that makes educated people be so radicalised in their pessimism about their homeland?"

Tony's Tours

I am indebted to him for his caring attitude, a true Englishman from Yorkshire with an open mind and a generous heart willing to face the world as he finds it and to look for healing solutions. The world needs many more like Tony.

But, sadly for the world, there is another Tony. The one I just emailed at 10 Downing Street, suggesting to him a face-saving way out of the diplomatic mess he has created for himself through his pride and hubris. A man who never says sorry or ever admits to making a mistake. A wretched creature who betrayed his country by dragging it into a murderous war by telling us all a tissue of lies. That's the other Tony, a coward and an inveterate liar who tours the country in a bullet-proof vest inside a heavily armoured car wondering if his destiny could yet be at the hands of an assassin waiting for him somewhere around a dark corner.

This Tony doesn't seem to have any problem sleeping at nights, despite all the hundreds of thousands of innocents he and his desperado pal squatting in the White House (two elections stolen from under the very noses of the American people) are guilty of. Tony will always find a reason or an excuse to convince us he's a decent sort of chap.

When really he's nothing but a nasty little serial-killer who with his Texan pal have dragged us all into a Dantean Inferno. For what? For O-I-L, corrupt corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton and for the Weapons Industry. It's just like Vietnam which was meant for General Motors to make huge profits from. Only much, much worse. That's what Bush and Blair's "Freedom" is really about.

Nearly 40 years ago the Italian film-maker, Pier Paolo Pasolini, in an interview by PARIS MATCH, was asked whether he was afraid that fascism would return to Italy. He replied, "If you mean the pompous, strutting fascism of Mussolini's risorgimento, no. That's consigned to the past. But a new form of fascism could arise, the fascism of the consumer society."

He meant, of course, a new form of totalitarianism brought about by the state in the interests of the big multinational corporations like ... Bechtel and Halliburton. Well, guess what folks, Pasolini was right and we are now in the time of a consumer fascism where people are quite happily handing over their freedoms in the name of "Security" just so they'll be left in peace to carry on their endless credit-card consumer binge.

Ask yourself, how many people do you know would be prepared to take some form of direct action or go on strike to protest the mass killings of people in the Middle East or Somalia? How many of them would be prepared (supposing, of course, that they can) to write to their MP or Congressman protesting against the genocide their governments are conducting while trying to pretend it's all about freedom and democracy? I won't hold my breath while you're thinking of a reply.

If Tony Blair wanted to settle the Anglo-Iranian Maritime Dispute in a peaceable manner he's got a tool in international law that enables him to do so. The 1899 Hague Convention for the Pacific Settlements of International Disputes. Would he know about a 108-year old Convention, would his advisors in the Foreign Office? Do they care?

Or are they interested only in toadying-up to their paymasters in Washington DC? Getting up the arses of the Americans and staying there as ex-UK Ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, put it? The next few days and weeks will tell whether Blair cares more for the well-being of his 15 service people or the War Party's propaganda machine.

God forbid that the demonic Blair and Bush should escalate this affair into a full-blown nuclear blitzkrieg. If they do millions more innocents will die horribly and the whole world slide further down into the Pit of Hell. Then we shall see many, oh many, many more wake up in a radical, burning anger against these tormentors of humanity.


Now read "US & THEM" by William Bowles