The next shoe drops in Colombia's cross-border raid into Ecuador to get the FARC

I ended my earlier post Capture of Victor Bout related to raid on FARC in Ecuadorby saying "So, we wait for the next shoe to drop." Here from the BBC is a shoe dropping:

Farc rebel link files 'genuine'
International police agency Interpol says Colombian officials did not tamper with computers which they claim provide proof Venezuela financed Farc rebels.

The hard drives were purportedly seized after a raid on a rebel camp in Ecuador at the beginning of March.

Although Interpol certified the authenticity of the files, not their contents, correspondents say their tests add credence to Colombian claims.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez vehemently dismissed the allegations. [Snip]

Both Venezuela and Ecuador say that any contacts with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) were solely made as part of a humanitarian effort to free hostages held by the left-wing guerrillas.

Authenticity confirmed
Colombian forces attacked the Farc camp located just across the border in Ecuador on 1 March.

The computers they seized contain files which, according to Bogota, show that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was personally involved in financing and supplying arms to the rebels.

They also suggest that Ecuador maintained links with the Farc.

The Colombian authorities asked Interpol to check the files after Mr Chavez accused them of faking the documents.

Interpol head Ronald Noble said his team had not analysed the information contained on the drives, as Interpol's remit extended only to certifying the authenticity of the documents, not their contents.

Mr Noble said that deep forensic analyses showed Colombia did not modify, delete or create any files, although it did not always follow internationally accepted methods when handling the computers.

"We are absolutely certain that the computer discs our experts examined came from a Farc terrorist camp," he said.

But he was quick to stress that the fact that the files had not been tampered with did not prove that the information contained within them was totally accurate.

There are a lot of reports in the Internet about this Interpol report, but none add anything significant to BBC report above.

So we wait for more shoes headed groundward.

Our media was lying about the danger of 'Socialism' in Venezuela

Phoenix woman at firedoglake takes an non-Capitalist (and non Socialist) analysis of the modifications that Hugo Chavez wanted to the Venezuelan Constitution and explains what they were and what they were intended to achieve. The analysis is extremely unlike anything we have seen here in the U.S. media, but our media has been spouting the international oil company line.

You know the oil companies. Never give the natives an even break, and if they take it anyway, demonize them as Communists and Socialists.

I don't vouch for every element of this analysis (my Spanish isn't good enough to go to source documents - yet), but I'll guaranteed this analysis is more accurate than anything we have gotten from the American corporate media or from the Bush administration who immediately recognized the plotters of the 2002 Venezuelans coup when they tried (and failed) to replace Chavez.

Chavez reported to have lost the election in Venezuela

From Reuters in the Guardian:

* Reuters * Monday December 3 2007

CARACAS, Dec 3 (Reuters) - President Hugo Chavez has lost a referendum on whether he can run indefinitely for re-election, Venezuela's National Electoral Council on Monday said.

Chavez had 49.29 percent of the vote compared with 50.7 percent for the "No" camp.

The leftist sought approval for a raft of constitutional changes to increase presidential powers, advance his self-styled revolution and consolidate a socialist state for the OPEC nation.

The report of Chavez' loss was preceded by a Reuters report from Dec. 02, 2007 at 6:34 PM EST saying that he had won. See Reuters, 'Chavez wins Venezuela vote: sources' . That earlier report was based on government sources reported to be using exit poll data. The same 6:34 PM report further down in the text stated:

The opposition was skeptical of the government sources' exit poll data.

"According to our information, it is a statistical tie," said Leopoldo Lopez, a popular mayor of a Caracas municipality. He did not give details of any exit polls, other than to say the difference was "two points up, two points down."

Most pre-vote opinion surveys predicted a close vote on the package of constitutional changes that the opposition and even some former longtime allies say is authoritarian.

Then another report from Dec 3, 2007 at 1:44 AM EST states that Venezuelans reject Chavez's bid for new powers.

The self-styled revolutionary and close ally of Cuba conceded defeat but said he would "continue in the battle to build socialism."

Chavez also said the reform proposals remained "alive," suggesting he might try to push them through later on.

"This is not a defeat. This is another 'for now,'" Chavez said at his presidential palace, repeating a famous quote when as a red-bereted paratrooper he went on national television in 1992 and acknowledged his coup attempt had failed.

Students, rights and business groups, opposition parties, the Roman Catholic Church, former political allies and even his usually loyal ex-wife all lined up against Chavez ahead of the referendum vote.

They accused him of pushing the constitutional reforms to set up a dictatorship.

"Venezuela said 'No' to socialism, Venezuela said 'Yes' to democracy," said Leopoldo Lopez, the popular mayor of a Caracas district.

I wonder of this is the final report on this election?

I also wonder who sits on Venezuela's National Electoral Council. That report must have taken real courage.

Venezuela - Global trade trumps revolution with Chavez

Roger Cohen presents an interesting analysis of the limits of 21st century Revolution. Cohen's first point (of 8) I find especially interesting, then I will discuss his third point.

1) Trade trumps politics. Even as Chávez has been calling President George W. Bush "the devil," U.S.-Venezuelan commercial ties have blossomed.

This is the western hemisphere's equivalent of the Taiwan-China relationship: political enemies engaged in booming business. Bilateral trade will amount to about $47 billion this year, up on 2006, with Venezuelan exports to the United States reaching $37 billion (mainly oil), and imports totaling close to $10 billion. Chávez derides the "little Yankee" but can't get enough American cars and clothes for his "21st century socialism." Such links dilute danger.

So active and extensive trade is a major limitation on military force between nations. But Cohen's third point emphasizes something I have long believed:

3) Oil centralizes power. Venezuelan oil fetches a lower price than most because it's harder to refine, but Chávez is still pocketing between $4 billion and $6.7 billion a month, depending on whom you believe. Give anyone in an opaque, rather than open, society more than $100 million a day and he might start raving about ruling until 2050, as Chávez has. "The tendency of the petro-state is to recentralize, petrify and personalize power," said Margarita López Maya, a political scientist who long supported Chávez but is now disillusioned. From Moscow to Luanda to Caracas, this has proved the case.

The large sums of money from the oil trade tend to be controlled by the government because centralizing power is a way to keep the nation stable. Foreign oil companies prefer stability in nations that sit on top of the oil they are extracting, and there is little function for a middle class in pumping and exporting oil.

In Venezuela, as an a great many oil-rich nations, that has meant that there are very wealthy people and large numbers of very poor people, and there is not much economic use for a middle class. and the wealthy like it that way. Like wealthy Americans, they resist any reduction in the ability to buy yachts and Lexus' just so that some poor peasant's kid can get health care and education. There are too many peasant's kids to begin with. Move into a gated community, hire security guards, and just ignore the poor.

This routinely causes major pressure for a revolution, so the wealthy classes expect the Police and the Army to 'maintain order' in the lower class. Those efforts add to the pressures for more repression. An example if Iran, an oil country under the Shah. The Shah had his very brutal secret police, the SAVAK. The actions of the SAVAK, together with the great disparity between the average income of the ordinary Iranian and those working for the oil companies were major causes of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The discovery of oil in Libya in 1959, then one of the poorest nations in the world, caused similar pressures that led to the coup d’état against King Idris by Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi in 1969.

In Venezuela, similar pressures led to the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez on a platform of anti-corruption and anti-poverty. Although Chavez achieved power through an election, he did so by orchestrating the discontent of the poor Venezuelans. The discontent had the same bases as did the similar discontent in Iran and Libya. The disparity between the income of the wealthy and the poor, the large flow of money that came in because of oil but was not distributed equitably, and the disdain and limited repression of the poor by the wealthy class was the core of Chavez' election. Repression was less important than was the great disparity of income between the wealthy and the poor, but the corruption of the government and the absence of any accepted route out of poverty for even the most capable made it a clear that Chavez was offering the poor Venezuelans something they really wanted.

But Libya's revolution was 1969, and Iran's was 1979. Globalization was not the force against excess it was in 1998. Chavez may not realize that, so his efforts today to rewrite the Venezuelan Constitution may not be successful. I'd suspect that the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt failed for similar reasons. Venezuelans, especially the poor, saw in 1998 that the great disparity between the wealthy and the poor was caused by politics and was not necessary, so they elected Chavez to remedy the inequality. But the key is that they elected him. The Coup attempt was not acceptable.

The question now is whether Chavez' effort to rewrite the Constitution so that he can continue to run for President indefinitely will be any more successful than the 2002 coup was. Whether it is or not, Venezuela remains an oil producing nation in which the government retains control of the international revenue from oil, so the government will remain centralized.

One last point - the government had to take control of the oil companies. The companies would no more have permitted the greater distribution of oil profits to support the poor than the wealthy classes did. Because of the nature of oil production, only a very few people will control the oil wealth. Venezuela will be most stable if that oil wealth is distributed in the country in ways that appear fair. No totally free market will do that because of the centralizing effect of oil wealth.

So now we wait for the election results from Venezuela tonight. While you wait, go read the rest of Cohen's article.

The interesting experiment in Venezuala

Hugo Chavez gets a lot of bad press in the U.S., most of it because he was elected by the poor majority of Venezuela and has moved to take the oil companies over so that the revenue goes to the Venezuelan people instead of a few rich families and the oil companies. The members of OPEC got similar bad press when they muscled the oil companies out and took control of their oil production, also.

It shouldn't be any surprise that Chavez has done what he did. Venezuela is sitting on massive oil wealth and has been for most of the twentieth century, and literally none of it was going to the Venezuelan people. Chavez did not take power in a coup, and in fact was able to avoid being removed in a coup that was clearly recognized and applauded (if not instigated) by the Bush administration. The New York Times has an interesting article on the upcoming election which will revise the Venezuelan Constitution and create what one commenter calls a "centralized Oil-based socialist state."

In two weeks, Venezuela seems likely to start an extraordinary experiment in centralized, oil-fueled socialism. By law, the workday would be cut to six hours. Street vendors, homemakers and maids would have state-mandated pensions. And President Hugo Chávez would have significantly enhanced powers and be eligible for re-election for the rest of his life.

A sweeping revision of the Constitution, expected to be approved by referendum on Dec. 2, is both bolstering Mr. Chávez’s popularity here among people who would benefit and stirring contempt from economists who declare it demagogy. Signaling new instability here, dissent is also emerging among his former lieutenants, one of whom says the president is carrying out a populist coup.

“There is a perverse subversion of our existing Constitution under way,” said Gen. Raúl Isaías Baduel, a retired defense minister and former confidant of Mr. Chávez who broke with him in a stunning defection this month to the political opposition. “This is not a reform,” General Baduel said in an interview here this week. “I categorize it as a coup d’état.”

Chávez loyalists already control the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, almost every state government, the entire federal bureaucracy and newly nationalized companies in the telephone, electricity and oil industries. Soon they could control even more.

But this is an upheaval that would be carried out with the approval of the voters. While opinion polls in Venezuela are often tainted by partisanship, they suggest that the referendum could be Mr. Chávez’s closest electoral test since his presidency began in 1999, but one he may well win.

“We are witnessing a seizure and redirection of power through legitimate means,” said Alberto Barrera Tyszka, co-author of a best-selling biography of Mr. Chávez. “This is not a dictatorship but something more complex: the tyranny of popularity.”

Venezuela faces the same problem of any nation whose national income is primary from the sale of oil and which has no real middle class. This usually leads to an authoritarian government which represses the poor, while the wealthy live far beyond the possibilities any of the poor ever have a chance to achieve. This has frequently been the pattern in oil-rich nations, and in both Libya (1967) and Iran (1979) it led to a revolution which replaced the old and corrupt government with a revolutionary one. It is also the reason why the Muslim Brotherhood is so powerful in Egypt and why the Mubarak does not allow real elections while running an authoritarian nation. Much of the trouble in Nigeria can be traced to this pattern. The power that resides in control of the flow of income from oil allowed Saddam Hussein to keep the various sects and tribes in Iraq from successfully revolting, until George Bush removed him and left the whole kettle to explode.

When the export is oil, only a very few individuals control how the income from that oil is distributed. There is no middle class unless the government takes action to create one. Without a middle class, power remains centralized and the normal course of action is to repress the poor while catering to the wealthy.

Chavez seems to be moving to make Venezuela different. By nationalizing the oil production he has obtained control of Venezuela's international wealth, and has been taking action to distribute it to the average Venezuelan citizen. He has avoided a nasty revolt like those in Iran and Libya. He also needs to avoid central planning of the economy except for oil production and perhaps banking. Everything else normally works a lot better using market prices as signals, and neither of those industries is actually controlled by any market except the international price of oil and the government control of the money supply.

The accusation that he is centralizing power probably means that he is taking it away from the wealthy. If he can create a middle class, then new power centers will appear. Note that while his revision of the Constitution allows him to run for President indefinitely, it does not make him President-for-Life as so many men with his control of an oil rich nation have done.

I can see why the wealthy Venezuelans and both George Bush and Dick Cheney detest Chavez. He is what they hate and fear - a socialist who really is working to improve the status of his people in a manner that unrestricted exploitation of Venezuela's oil wealth has not done in nearly a century.

As I say, it is an interesting experiment. The two biggest mistakes I see likely are for the government to become overly repressive if there are too many coup attempts and attacks on the government, and for the attempt to create a middle class to fail. As long as Chavez avoids both of those threats, it seems to me that he can continue to be reelected for life, and should be. And if he fails, then he can be elected out.

As I say, this is going to be an interesting experiment.