Center for Security Policy says, Boycott EADS CASA

An influential Washington think-tank with close ties to the White House and Pentagon is calling for the US to blacklist EADS CASA for its attempts, over US national security objections, to help Chavez modernize his military aircraft fleet.

The Center for Security Policy devoted its September 27 Decision Brief to Venezuelan issuues. It singled out EADS CASA:

"EADS CASA, the French-German-Spanish-Russian aerospace company, has gone out of its way to ignore repeated U.S. requests not to sell C-295 military aircraft to Caracas. The company has circumvented the U.S. nonproliferation law and willfully broken the U.S. arms embargo against Venezuela. It has also misled Congress about the nature of the Venezuela deal. EADS CASA planned to recoup any losses incurred in its Venezuela sale by getting Congress to buy the C-295 for the new Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) program. Therefore, Congress and the Administration must declare that the U.S. will not purchase any EADS CASA aircraft until the Chavez regime is gone. That means removing the EADS CASA C-295 from consideration in the JCA program and removing funding for purchase of the aircraft by the Coast Guard Deepwater program."

Venezuela action items from the Center for Security Policy

The Center for Security Policy issued a list of policy recommendations for how the US should deal with Venezuela.

Those recommendations include:

1. Issue a presidential finding that would allow covert action against the Venezuelan regime.
2. Create an Inter-Agency Working Group on Venezuela that is run from the National Security Council.
3. Create a bipartisan White House Working Group on Venezuela for working with non-governmental organizations.
4. Systematically collect intelligence on Venezuelan leaders and officials, and use the information for psychological warfare campaigns to undermine the regime.
5. Ramp up a surrogate radio, TV and Internet media outlet for Venezuela, along the lines of Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, so they will be in place by the time the regime has extinguished the opposition media.
6. Ban all US government purchases of CITGO fuel and products, to stop transfers of US tax dollars to the Venezuelan government.
7. Ban all US government purchases of EADS CASA aircraft, in response for EADS CASA's insistence on selling military aircraft to Caracas.
8. Work with Latin American governments, even those on the left, to isolate the Chavez regime.

These policy recommendations are important, because the Center for Security Policy has been highly influential behind the scenes at the Pentagon, in Congress and in the intelligence community. Last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, other senior officials from the Department of Defense, intelligence community and White House, and several congressmen and senators attended the Center's annual awards dinner. The Venezuela paper is the Center's first product since that event.

For the full text of the Center for Security Policy paper, click here.

7-Eleven drops CITGO from its 2,100 stations

The 7-Eleven convenience store chain is dropping CITGO from its 2,100 gas stations and will replace the Venezuelan-owned supplier with its own independent brand.

7-Eleven spokesman Margaret Chabris tells AP, "Regardless of politics, we sympathize with many Americans' concern over derogatory comments about our country and its leadership recently made by Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez."

According to AP, "Chabris said a boycott of Citgo gasoline would hurt the 4,000 employees of the US subsidiary, who have no connection to Venezuela."

Blogger on Fox News to comment on Chavez

While Chavez was in Harlem haranguing a crowd at a local church, this blogger was on Fox News "Dayside" program giving a different perspective.

On the other side of the issue was a hysterical woman named Fanny who gave a pro-Chavez rant to the hoots of the studio audience. Fanny didn't say it on the program, but she is a representative of Casa de Maryland, an illegal alien advocacy group.

To read the rather chaotic transcript and view the video, click here: http://mms.tveyes.com/Transcript.asp?StationID=130&DateTime=09%2F21%2F06+13%3A16%3A10&term=Juliet&PlayClip=TRUE

Poll shows Venezuelans less supportive of Chavez

The latest election poll shows a weakening of support among Venezuelans for Hugo Chavez as he runs for another term as president. The numbers indicate that his support has dipped below 50 percent, Reuters reports. Even so, the opposition remains fragmented, meaning that even Chavez would win by plurality.

Opposition candidate says Chavez might have him killed

After being attacked by the regime's Bolivarian Circle mobs while campaigning in a poor area of Caracas, opposition presidential candidate Manuel Rosales said September 14 that Chavez might have him killed.

"I want to tell Venezuela that if something happens to me, if I am killed during any of those ambushes that are being laid, this was ordered by Chavez."

The threat could be very real: Rosales is reportedly tied with Chavez in the polls, according to El Universal.

With Fidel too ill to lead, Chavez dominates Havana Non-Aligned Summit

Hugo Chavez "dominated the summit opening" of the rejuvenated Non-Aligned Movement in Havana, pledging total support for Iran and teaming with North Korea and other designated state-sponsors of terrorism to rebuild the 118-member movement.

"The United States is attempting to deprive other countries of even their legitimate right to peaceful nuclear activities," said the second-ranking leader of North Korea, Kim Yong-nam.

Kim blamed the US for "threatening Korea using all sorts of maneuvers, accusing it of being part of an 'Axis of Evil.'"

Chavez pledges military support for Cuba and Iran

"Iran is under threat; there are plans to invade Iran, hopefully it won't happen, but we are with you," Chavez tells Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Havana.

"Under any scenario we are with you just like we are with Cuba," Chavez says in an AP report from the Cuban capital. "If the United States invades Cuba, blood will run. . . We will not have our arms crossed while bombs are falling in Havana or they carry Raul off in a plane."

Venezuela not recognizing Mexico’s new government

The Caracas regime is refusing to recognize the incoming government Mexican President-elect Felipe Calderon.

"The foreign minister Nicolas Maduro said it first, and I second him," says Chavez in an article of his regime’s mouthpiece, Venezuelanalysis.com. "We are evaluating. Venezuela has not recognized the new Mexican government."

As suspected during the Mexican presidential campaign, the Venezuelan government was covertly supporting leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who lost very narrowly in elections certified by international observers. Lopez Obrador has indicated that he will not accept losing and that he might form a parallel "government." It appears that Venezuela is waiting for Lopez Obrador’s next move.

Cuban 'doctors' on Chavez delegation to UN

Cubans "doctors" are among the 200 people Hugo Chavez wants to bring with him to New York when he addresses the United Nations General Assembly next week.

Chavez claims that the US is deliberately denying visas to his security and medical aides, but the US says it has not denied a single visa request for the UN visit. The Venezuelan government has made many last-minute requests and, complicating things further, some of the people on the Venezuelan delegation requesting visas are Cuban nationals.

Der Spiegel likens Venezuelan oil to blood transfusion for ‘bedridden man’

In a commentary about the Chavez cultural phenomenon, the German magazine Der Spiegel says that the ostentatious way in which Venezuela is providing oil to Cuba makes Fidel Castro look "rather like a bedridden old man kept alive after a blood transfusion."

Chavez: 9/11 might have been inside job

Speaking after the fifth anniversary of the Islamist terrorist attacks on the United States, the Venezuelan leader says the US government might have planned the 9/11 attacks.

Chavez says that a TV report that the Bush administration blew up New York’s World Trade Center is "plausible."

"The hypothesis is not absurd ... that those towers could have been dynamited," Chavez said in a speech to supporters. "A building never collapses like that, unless it’s with an implosion."

"The hypothesis that is gaining strength ... is that it was the same U.S. imperial power that planned and carried out this terrible terrorist attack or act against its own people and against citizens of all over the world," Chavez said. "Why? To justify the aggressions. . . ."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13401534/

Heritage: Venezuela’s state terror ties are ‘alarming’

Venezuela’s cutoff of military cooperation with the US, its militarization, and its network of relationships with state sponsors of terrorism are "alarming" and must be countered, three Heritage Foundation analysts argue.

"His new military muscle portends another decade of bloodshed, misery, and lost economic opportunity in Latin America. America and its allies need to be ready to confront those plans — probably sooner rather than later," say Heritage’s Stephen Johnson, Ariel Cohen and William L. T. Schirano. The authors offer general guidelines for a US strategy.

http://www.latinbusinesschronicle.com/app/article.aspx?id=392

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman calls Venezuela 'adversarial regime'

Comparing Venezuela to Iran, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar said that the Chavez government is an "adversarial regime" that uses energy as a "weapon."

This is an important development, as Lugar - one of the most powerful foreign policy figures in the United States - is known as a political moderate who weighs his words very carefully.

Lugar made the comment in a written keynote speech at the Richard G. Lugar-Purdue University Summit on Energy Security on August 29. The full text of his speech appears on his homepage at: http://lugar.senate.gov/pressapp/record.cfm?id=262155.

Chavez hints at being president for life

Pounding his populist bandwagon to mobs of supporters, Hugo Chavez said he might work toward changing his new constitution so he can become president-for-life. The MercoPress agency carries the report.

Venezuela seen financing Mexican extremism

The Venezuelan government has been financing the huge mobs assembling in Mexico City to protest the official electoral outcome that is expected to affirm the presidential election of Felipe Calderon.

The Chavez regime, Mexican sources tell Venezuelastan.com, is channeling the funds through the large Cuban embassy in Mexico City. Mexico and Venezuela have all but broken diplomatic relations over Chavez's intereference in the electoral campaign.

Calderon's opponent, Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has called for mass mob action in the event the election results don't go his way.

Marxist.com and other radical websites have been championing Lopez Obrador and the mobs.

Calderon, of the center-right PAN party, won the July election by a fraction. European and other international election monitors say the voting process was clean and efficient.

The concern now is that Chavez-backed forces might try to prevent a democratic transfer of power and plunge Mexico into a constitutional crisis - or worse, police action against the protesters that could result in bloodshed and a propaganda victory for the pro-Bolivarian side.

China and Venezuela announce $5 billion development fund

US global influence was pushed another step backward September 3 when the Venezuelan regime announced a joint $5 billion development fund with the People's Republic of China.

Beijing reportedly will put up 60 percent, or $3 billion, of the fund, according to the Associated Press. The PRC also is said to plan to invest up to $5 billion in Venezuela's oil exploration and production infrastructure.

Report: Hezbollah in Venezuela radicalizing Indian tribe

Hezbollah operatives are working with an indigenous tribe on the Colombia-Venezuela border to convert them to Islam, according to a Venezuelan opposition website.

The Wayuu tribe, which has lived for centuries on the Guajira peninsula that forms the Colombia-Venezuela border. The tribesmen are free to cross to and from each country. According to the report on VCrisis.com, Hezbollah is working on the Venezuelan side, "indoctrinating the members of this tribe, to convert them into Islamic fanatics."

Chavez alleges another coup plot

As Fidel Castro has done over the decades to legitimize his grip on power, Hugo Chavez piles claim upon claim of US-backed plots to assassinate him and/or overthrow his government.

The latest comes on September 2, when he accused opposition candidates for the December presidential election of conspiring with the US to oust his regime, UPI reports.

Regime honors Cuban troops in Angola

On a five-hour visit to Luanda, Hugo Chavez established diplomatic ties with Angola and praised the Cuban troops who fought to install the Marxist-Leninist regime in the 1970s and '80s.

"The South American head of State remembered the first Angolan President Agostihno Neto and then mentioned the island s martyrs, who shed their blood for the definitive freedom of the African nation, and Cuban top leader Fidel Castro," the Cuban propaganda agency Prensa Latina reports.