THE $300 MILLION FROM CHAVEZ TO FARC IS A FAKE

Exclusive interview with the
President of Ecuador


THE $300 MILLION FROM CHAVEZ TO FARC IS A FAKE


By Greg Palast

Do you believe this?

This past weekend, Colombia invaded Ecuador, killed a guerrilla chief in the jungle, opened his laptop – and what did the Colombians find? A message to Hugo Chavez that he sent the FARC guerrillas $300 million – which they’re using to obtain uranium to make a dirty bomb!

That’s what George Bush tells us. And he got that from his buddy, the strange right-wing President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe.

So: After the fact, Colombia justifies its attempt to provoke a border war as a way to stop the threat of WMDs! Uh, where have we heard that before?

The US press snorted up this line about Chavez’ $300 million to “terrorists” quicker than the young Bush inhaling Colombia’s powdered export.

What the US press did not do is look at the evidence, the email in the magic laptop. (Presumably, the FARC leader’s last words were, “Listen, my password is ….”)

I read them. (You can read them here) - http://www.gregpalast.com/farc-documents/ While you can read it all in español, here is, in translation, the one and only mention of the alleged $300 million from Chavez:

“… With relation to the 300, which from now on we will call “dossier,” efforts are now going forward at the instructions of the boss to the cojo [slang term for ‘cripple’], which I will explain in a separate note. Let’s call the boss Ángel, and the cripple Ernesto.”

Got that? Where is Hugo? Where’s 300 million? And 300 what? Indeed, in context, the note is all about the hostage exchange with the FARC that Chavez was working on at the time (December 23, 2007) at the request of the Colombian government.

Indeed, the entire remainder of the email is all about the mechanism of the hostage exchange. Here’s the next line:
“To receive the three freed ones, Chavez proposes three options: Plan A. Do it to via of a ‘humanitarian caravan’; one that will involve Venezuela, France, the Vatican[?], Switzerland, European Union, democrats [civil society], Argentina, Red Cross, etc.”

As to the 300, I must note that the FARC’s previous prisoner exchange involved 300 prisoners. Is that what the ‘300’ refers to? ¿Quien sabe? Unlike Uribe, Bush and the US press, I won’t guess or make up a phastasmogoric story about Chavez mailing checks to the jungle.

To bolster their case, the Colombians claim, with no evidence whatsoever, that the mysterious “Angel” is the code name for Chavez. But in the memo, Chavez goes by the code name … Chavez.

Well, so what? This is what . . . .
Colombia’s invasion into Ecuador is a rank violation of international law, condemned by every single Latin member of the Organization of American States. But George Bush just loved it. He called Uribe to back Colombia, against, “the continuing assault by narco-terrorists as well as the provocative maneuvers by the regime in Venezuela.”

Well, our President may have gotten the facts ass-backward, but Bush knows what he’s doing: shoring up his last, faltering ally in South America, Uribe, a desperate man in deep political trouble.

Uribe claims he is going to bring charges against Chavez before the International Criminal Court. If Uribe goes there in person, I suggest he take a toothbrush: it was just discovered that right-wing death squads held murder-planning sessions at Uribe’s ranch. Uribe’s associates have been called before the nation’s Supreme Court and may face prison.

In other words, it’s a good time for a desperate Uribe to use that old politico’s wheeze, the threat of war, to drown out accusations of his own criminality. Furthermore, Uribe’s attack literally killed negotiations with FARC by killing FARC’s negotiator, Raul Reyes. Reyes was in talks with both Ecuador and Chavez about another prisoner exchange. Uribe authorized the negotiations. However, Uribe knew, should those talks have succeeded in obtaining the release of those kidnapped by the FARC, credit would have been heaped on Ecuador and Chavez, and discredit heaped on Uribe.

Luckily for a hemisphere on the verge of flames, the President of Ecuador, Raphael Correa, is one of the most level-headed, thoughtful men I’ve ever encountered.

Correa is now flying from Quito to Brazilia to Caracas to keep the region from blowing sky high. While moving troops to his border – no chief of state can permit foreign tanks on their sovereign soil – Correa also refuses sanctuary to the FARC . Indeed, Ecuador has routed out 47 FARC bases, a better track record than Colombia’s own, corrupt military.

For his cool, peaceable handling of the crisis, I will forgive Correa for apologizing for his calling Bush, “a dimwitted President who has done great damage to his country and the world.” (Watch an excerpt of my interview with Correa here.)

Amateur Hour in Blue

We can trust Correa to keep the peace South of the Border. But can we trust our Presidents-to-be?

The current man in the Oval Office, George Bush, simply can’t help himself: an outlaw invasion by a right-wing death-squad promoter is just fine with him.

But guess who couldn’t wait to parrot the Bush line? Hillary Clinton, still explaining that her vote to invade Iraq was not a vote to invade Iraq, issued a statement nearly identical to Bush’s, blessing the invasion of Ecuador as Colombia’s “right to defend itself.” And she added, “Hugo Chávez must stop these provoking actions.” Huh?

I assumed that Obama wouldn’t jump on this landmine – especially after he was blasted as a foreign policy amateur for suggesting he would invade across Pakistan’s border to hunt terrorists.

It’s embarrassing that Barack repeated Hillary’s line nearly verbatim, announcing, “the Colombian government has every right to defend itself.”

(I’m sure Hillary’s position wasn’t influenced by the loan of a campaign jet to her by Frank Giustra. Giustra has given over a hundred million dollars to Bill Clinton projects. Last year, Bill introduced Giustra to Colombia’s Uribe. On the spot, Giustra cut a lucrative deal with Uribe for Colombian oil.)

Then there’s Mr. War Hero. John McCain weighed in with his own idiocies, announcing that, “Hugo Chavez is establish[ing] a dictatorship,” presumably because, unlike George Bush, Chavez counts all the votes in Venezuelan elections.

But now our story gets tricky and icky.

The wise media critic Jeff Cohen told me to watch for the press naming McCain as a foreign policy expert and labeling the Democrats as amateurs. Sure enough, the New York Times, on the news pages Wednesday, called McCain, “a national security pro.”

McCain is the “pro” who said the war in Iraq would cost nearly nothing in lives or treasury dollars.

But, on the Colombian invasion of Ecuador, McCain said, “I hope that tensions will be relaxed, President Chavez will remove those troops from the borders - as well as the Ecuadorians - and relations continue to improve between the two.”

It’s not quite English, but it’s definitely not Bush. And weirdly, it’s definitely not Obama and Clinton cheerleading Colombia’s war on Ecuador.

Democrats, are you listening? The only thing worse than the media attacking Obama and Clinton as amateurs is the Democratic candidates’ frightening desire to prove them right.
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Thanks to his dad, George W. Bush was saved from the horrors of Vietnam

• It is documented that the current U.S. president was partying in Alabama while 58,000 of his contemporaries were dying in that country • This truth that he was forced to deny cost CBS commentator Dan Rather years of humiliation

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD—Granma International staff writer—


WHILE the number of victims among U.S. soldiers condemned by George W. Bush to die in Iraq continues to rise, the truth of the circumstances in which the president himself avoided being sent to the war on Vietnam, like thousands of young men of his generation, are still censored.

Circulating information on that issue in the run-up to the 2004 presidential elections cost CBS journalist and commentator Dan Rather years of humiliation. Rather has just filed a million-dollar claim against his former employer for having punished him in order to calm down the furious White House occupant.

At that time, Rather was forced by his bosses to apologize in the middle of the top U.S. news program for having “used apparently false documents” on the military service record of President George W. Bush during the war in Vietnam… although he knew perfectly well that they were authentic.

In an article just published on this controversy, Greg Palast, the British-based investigative journalist revealed how Bush’s notorious cowardice has been an open confirmed secret since 1999.

Palest recalls that on September 8, 2004, Rather presented his report in which he explained how in 1968, then Congressman George Bush – father of the current president – had arranged things so that his son was not called up for the war in Vietnam, as he should have been, but did his military service in an aviation unit of the National Guard. Something totally unusual when that military corps demanded of its pilots three years’ previous experience in a regular National Air Force unit.

George junior was thus spared from the war in order to defend Houston from a Vietcong attack, the journalist ironically commented.

Bush Sr. maneuvered that solution just 12 days before his son was to be formally recruited.

The BBC had disclosed that information one year previously, Palast noted, and never had to retract it.

23 MILLION TO SAVE HIS BOY

The BBC report, Palast says, was based on a confidential Justice Department document that states how Ben Barnes, lieutenant governor of Texas, who made the arrangements to have Bush junior removed from the U.S. Army registers, received his reward 35 years later.

In 1997, as governor of Texas, George W. Bush, acting irregularly, granted a state lottery contract worth more than one million dollars to a company linked to Barnes, who received a commission of $23 million.

Barnes confessed how, in 1968, he received a call from businessman Sid Adger, a buddy of the Bush family, asking him to do him the favor of moving Bush junior’s name up the waiting list for the National Guard. The current president has always falsely claimed that there was a shortage of candidates to join that military corps whose members are not usually deployed outside national territory.

Barnes then called General James Rose, the local National Guard commander, who sorted out “W”’s registration in a unit of the Ellington airbase where he hooked up with other daddies’ sons.

Bush rapidly rose to the rank of second lieutenant while his less privileged counterparts had to wait years to gain such recognition.

Bush always distinguished himself for his unjustified absences and delays in completing the tasks ascribed to him. Over time, he learned to pilot an F-102, an obsolete aircraft that was not even being used in the South East Asia conflict.

From Ellington, he asked for a transfer to Montgomery, Alabama, where he never showed up. But he was seen taking part in maneuvers surrounding the Senate electoral campaign of Winton “Red” Blount, a buddy in his clan. And enjoying himself at parties where his excessive inclination to alcohol could already be seen. Marijuana and cocaine consumption was in fashion then in get-togethers of moneyed youth and his former buddies have affirmed that the future president was happy to indulge in that pleasure.

A number of documents that would make it possible to confirm the activities or lack of activities of George W. Bush in the war years have mysteriously disappeared from the National Guard files.

In 1972 (the year of Watergate), “W”, then aged 26, decided to extract himself from the masquerade; as it happened, at a time when the National Guard began to impose doping tests. He was then assigned to civilian tasks in Denver where he never showed up.

Meanwhile, 58,000 compatriots of his age lost their lives in Vietnam, in another useless war of a decadent empire.

Despite his documented cowardice, Bush has never hesitated to show himself off in the same Air Force uniform worn by those who never returned from the conflict.

Just like now he is resolutely maintaining more than 150,000 young soldiers in Iraq. More than 3,800 have already died in this war of occupation and thousands have been mutilated… as have one million-plus Iraqis, victims of the lessons in ‘democracy’ of this Texan cowboy who was so afraid of war.


"IN TIMES OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT, TELLING THE TRUTH WILL BE A REVOLUTIONARY ACT." - George Orwell

“If the world is upside down the way it is now, wouldn’t we have to turn it over to get it to stand up straight?” - Eduardo Galeano

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves. -- Edward R. Murrow

Bush Over a Barrel - Greg Palast takes a trip to Venezuela and gets a load of Chavecito:

Bush Over a Barrel

Greg Palast takes a trip to Venezuela and gets a load of Chavecito:


And what a load it is. Don't miss the appearance of Eva Golinger, who's been doing excellent work uncovering the State Dept. and the CIA's interference in Venezuela!