- On November 26, 2007, the Venezuelan government broadcast
and circulated a confidential memo from the US embassy to the CIA which
is devastatingly revealing of US clandestine operations and which will
influence the referendum this Sunday (December 2, 2007).
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- The memo sent by an embassy official, Michael Middleton
Steere, was addressed to the head of the CIA, Michael Hayden. The memo
was entitled Advancing to the Last Phase of Operation Pincer and updates
the activity by a CIA unit with the acronym HUMINT (Human Intelligence)
which is engaged in clandestine action to destabilize the forth-coming
referendum and coordinate the civil military overthrow of the elected Chavez
government. The Embassy-CIA polls concede that 57% of the voters approved
of the constitutional amendments proposed by Chavez but also predicted
a 60% abstention.
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- The US operatives emphasized their capacity to recruit
former Chavez supporters among the social democrats (PODEMOS) and the former
Minister of Defense Baduel, claiming to have reduced the yes vote by 6%
from its original margin. Nevertheless the Embassy operatives concede that
they have reached their ceiling, recognizing they cannot defeat the referendum.
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- The memo then recommends that Operation Pincer (OP) [Operaci
Tenaza] be operationalized. OP involves a two-pronged strategy of impeding
the referendum, rejecting the outcome at the same time as calling for a
no vote. The run up to the referendum includes running phony polls, attacking
electoral officials and running propaganda through the private media accusing
the government of fraud and calling for a no vote. Contradictions, the
report cynically emphasizes, are of no matter.
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- The CIA-Embassy reports internal division and recriminations
among the opponents of the amendments including several defections from
their umbrella group. The key and most dangerous threats to democracy raised
by the Embassy memo point to their success in mobilizing the private university
students (backed by top administrators) to attack key government buildings
including the Presidential Palace, Supreme Court and the National Electoral
Council. The Embassy is especially praiseworthy of the ex-Maoist Red Flag
group for its violent street fighting activity. Ironically, small Trotskyist
sects and their trade unionists join the ex-Maoists in opposing the constitutional
amendments. The Embassy, while discarding their Marxist rhetoric, perceives
their opposition as fitting in with their overall strategy.
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- The ultimate objective of Operation Pincer is to seize
a territorial or institutional base with the massive support of the defeated
electoral minority within three or four days (before or after the elections
is not clear. JP) backed by an uprising by oppositionist military officers
principally in the National Guard. The Embassy operative concede that the
military plotters have run into serous problems as key intelligence operatives
were detected, stores of arms were decommissioned and several plotters
are under tight surveillance.
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- Apart from the deep involvement of the US, the primary
organization of the Venezuelan business elite (FEDECAMARAS), as well as
all the major private television, radio and newspaper outlets have been
engaged in a vicious fear and intimidation campaign. Food producers, wholesale
and retail distributors have created artificial shortages of basic food
items and have provoked large scale capital flight to sow chaos in the
hopes of reaping a no vote. President Chavez Counter-Attacks
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- In a speech to pro-Chavez, pro-amendment nationalist
business-people (Entrepreneurs for Venezuela EMPREVEN) Chavez warned the
President of FEDECAMARAS that if he continues to threaten the government
with a coup, he would nationalize all their business affiliates. With the
exception of the Trotskyist and other sects, the vast majority of organized
workers, peasants, small farmers, poor neighborhood councils, informal
self-employed and public school students have mobilized and demonstrated
in favor of the constitutional amendments.
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- The reason for the popular majority is found in a few
of the key amendments: One article expedites land expropriation facilitating
re-distribution to the landless and small producers. Chavez has already
settled over 150,000 landless workers on 2 million acres of land. Another
amendment provides universal social security coverage for the entire informal
sector (street sellers, domestic workers, self-employed) amounting to 40%
of the labor force. Organized and unorganized workers workweek will be
reduced from 40 to 36 hours a week (Monday to Friday noon) with no reduction
in pay. Open admission and universal free higher education will open greater
educational opportunities for lower class students. Amendments will allow
the government to by-pass current bureaucratic blockage of the socialization
of strategic industries, thus creating greater employment and lower utility
costs. Most important, an amendment will increase the power and budget
of neighborhood councils to legislate and invest in their communities.
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- The electorate supporting the constitutional amendments
is voting in favor of their socio-economic and class interests; the issue
of extended re-election of the President is not high on their priorities:
And that is the issue that the Right has focused on in calling Chavez a
dictator and the referendum a coup. The Opposition
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- With strong financial backing from the US Embassy ($8
million dollars in propaganda alone according to the Embassy memo) and
the business elite and free time by the right-wing media, the Right has
organized a majority of the upper middle class students from the private
universities, backed by the Catholic Church hierarchy, large swaths of
the affluent middle class neighborhoods, entire sectors of the commercial,
real estate and financial middle classes and apparently sectors of the
military, especially officials in the National Guard. While the Right has
control over the major private media, public television and radio back
the constitutional reforms. While the Right has its followers among some
generals and the National Guard, Chavez has the backing of the paratroops
and legions of middle rank officers and most other generals.
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- The outcome of the Referendum of December 2 is a decisive
historical event first and foremost for Venezuela but also for the rest
of the Americas. A positive vote (Vota SÃ ) will provide the legal
framework for the democratization of the political system, the socialization
of strategic economic sectors, empower the poor and provide the basis for
a self-managed factory system. A negative vote (or a successful US-backed
civil-military uprising) will reverse the most promising living experience
of popular self-rule, of advanced social welfare and democratically based
socialism. A reversal, especially a military dictated outcome, will lead
to a massive blood bath, such as we have not seen since the days of the
Indonesian Generals Coup of 1966, which killed over a million workers and
peasants or the Argentine Coup of 1976 in which over 30,000 Argentines
were murdered by the US backed Generals.
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- A decisive vote for SÃ will not end US military
and political destabilization campaigns but it will certainly undermine
and demoralize their collaborators. On December 2, 2007 the Venezuelans
have a rendezvous with history.
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