"Do Foreign Governments Have a "Human Right" to Buy Venezuela Elections?"
Do Foreign Governments Have a "Human Right" to Buy Venezuela Elections?
By Al Giordano,
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/7/9/113427/7207
Posted on Sat Jul 9th, 2005 at 11:34:27 AM EST
As court proceedings begin this month against four Venezuelans from an election campaign group that accepted donations from a foreign government – something that is indisputably a federal crime under both U.S. and Venezuelan law – it’s no surprise that members of the Bush administration in Washington cry that the sky is falling.
After all, it’s their money (well, on second thought, it is U.S. taxpayers’ money) that is at the root of the alleged criminal enterprise. And the upcoming trial of accused Venezuelan electoral delinquents, held in the public light of day, will shine yet more sunlight upon Washington’s secret recipes for meddling in the elections of other nations.
On Friday, U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey and Jose Vivanco of Human Rights Watch – thirteen blocks from the White House and on the same day - chirped in harmony to spin this story as a case of “persecution” against “legitimate electoral activities.”
But as last year’s presidential campaign in the United States revealed, Yankee political parties and candidates are prohibited from accepting foreign contributions from any source, especially from other governments. As John Kerry found out the hard way, the corrupting practices that Bush and Vivanco condone in Venezuela are strictly verboten in the United States…
Let’s take a short walk down amnesia lane: A little over a year ago, U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry found himself in a firestorm of (Bush campaign-generated) controversy over the acceptance of a mere $2,000 campaign check from a Korean citizen (not the South Korean government, just a citizen, mind you). Conservative news agency Newsmax, among others, reported that Kerry immediately returned the contribution, and that the foreign government under suspicion - South Korea - called its diplomat home:
“Kerry's presidential campaign also acknowledges that some of its fund-raisers met with a South Korean government official who was trying to organize a Korean-American political group. That official has been sent home amid questions he was involving himself in American politics.”
The gringos – just like the members of any other country’s political class - are understandably touchy about foreign meddling in U.S. political campaigns, especially about foreign money. Those U.S. debts, after all, to shining democracies like Saudi Arabia and China, could conceivably be utilized, if not expressly prohibited, to buy elections in the United States. The flap over a mere $2,000 check probably led to Kerry’s most decisive campaign moment of 2004: he sent the check back, disavowed it, distanced himself, and redoubled efforts to do “background checks” on all donors to his campaign.
Contrast Kerry’s response with that of the Venezuelan group Súmate – architects of last year’s presidential recall referendum in Venezuela – which pocketed not $2,000 but $31,000 (that's $66,557,000, yes, sixty-six million plus Venezuelan Bolivares) from the US-funded “National Endowment for Democracy.” This is the group that authored the August 15, 2004 referendum seeking to remove President Hugo Chávez, collected the signatures to place it on the ballot, hired Washington political consultants to front for its August 15 “exit poll,” and then screamed “fraud” when its dubious and poorly collected exit poll stood alone and opposite the results of all other polls, including the most important one: that of the ballot box.
That the Bush administration has a foreign policy based on double standards is hardly a shock to anyone. But when it comes to Venezuela, Bush counts with a reliable ally for his simulation campaigns to paint an imprimatur of “human rights” upon what are, in fact, violations of the human rights of a people to have clean elections uncorrupted by foreign funds.
Human Rights Watch fixer Vivanco’s decidedly anti-human rights double standard when it comes to Venezuela and his obsession with toppling the democratically elected government of President Hugo Chávez has been documented on these pages before, and before that.
U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey, during a Friday press briefing, said: “we're very disappointed by the July 7 decision of a Venezuelan judge to try the four leaders of the civic nongovernmental organization Sumate on charges of conspiracy for accepting a $31,000 grant from the National Endowment for Democracy to carry out voter education activities.”
Of course, an administration that coddles and protects some violent terrorists while waging a so-called “war on terrorism” elsewhere, not surprisingly, speaks with forked tongue. Nobody really expects the government to tell the truth anymore. It’s the government. It's here to help you... yada yada. That’s why it needs a simulating “human rights” organization to “independently” back up its spin, and thus the beltway media circus that ensued yesterday.
And so on Friday, as the State Department held a press briefing where it whined about “democratic rights” in Venezuela, Jose Vivanco of Human Rights Watch was a golf swing up Connecticut Avenue NW following orders from headquarters as a soldier in the war against authentic democracy.
Do Foreign Governments Have a "Human Right" to Buy Venezuela Elections?
By Al Giordano,
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/7/9/113427/7207
Posted on Sat Jul 9th, 2005 at 11:34:27 AM EST
As court proceedings begin this month against four Venezuelans from an election campaign group that accepted donations from a foreign government – something that is indisputably a federal crime under both U.S. and Venezuelan law – it’s no surprise that members of the Bush administration in Washington cry that the sky is falling.
After all, it’s their money (well, on second thought, it is U.S. taxpayers’ money) that is at the root of the alleged criminal enterprise. And the upcoming trial of accused Venezuelan electoral delinquents, held in the public light of day, will shine yet more sunlight upon Washington’s secret recipes for meddling in the elections of other nations.
On Friday, U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey and Jose Vivanco of Human Rights Watch – thirteen blocks from the White House and on the same day - chirped in harmony to spin this story as a case of “persecution” against “legitimate electoral activities.”
But as last year’s presidential campaign in the United States revealed, Yankee political parties and candidates are prohibited from accepting foreign contributions from any source, especially from other governments. As John Kerry found out the hard way, the corrupting practices that Bush and Vivanco condone in Venezuela are strictly verboten in the United States…
Let’s take a short walk down amnesia lane: A little over a year ago, U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry found himself in a firestorm of (Bush campaign-generated) controversy over the acceptance of a mere $2,000 campaign check from a Korean citizen (not the South Korean government, just a citizen, mind you). Conservative news agency Newsmax, among others, reported that Kerry immediately returned the contribution, and that the foreign government under suspicion - South Korea - called its diplomat home:
“Kerry's presidential campaign also acknowledges that some of its fund-raisers met with a South Korean government official who was trying to organize a Korean-American political group. That official has been sent home amid questions he was involving himself in American politics.”
The gringos – just like the members of any other country’s political class - are understandably touchy about foreign meddling in U.S. political campaigns, especially about foreign money. Those U.S. debts, after all, to shining democracies like Saudi Arabia and China, could conceivably be utilized, if not expressly prohibited, to buy elections in the United States. The flap over a mere $2,000 check probably led to Kerry’s most decisive campaign moment of 2004: he sent the check back, disavowed it, distanced himself, and redoubled efforts to do “background checks” on all donors to his campaign.
Contrast Kerry’s response with that of the Venezuelan group Súmate – architects of last year’s presidential recall referendum in Venezuela – which pocketed not $2,000 but $31,000 (that's $66,557,000, yes, sixty-six million plus Venezuelan Bolivares) from the US-funded “National Endowment for Democracy.” This is the group that authored the August 15, 2004 referendum seeking to remove President Hugo Chávez, collected the signatures to place it on the ballot, hired Washington political consultants to front for its August 15 “exit poll,” and then screamed “fraud” when its dubious and poorly collected exit poll stood alone and opposite the results of all other polls, including the most important one: that of the ballot box.
That the Bush administration has a foreign policy based on double standards is hardly a shock to anyone. But when it comes to Venezuela, Bush counts with a reliable ally for his simulation campaigns to paint an imprimatur of “human rights” upon what are, in fact, violations of the human rights of a people to have clean elections uncorrupted by foreign funds.
Human Rights Watch fixer Vivanco’s decidedly anti-human rights double standard when it comes to Venezuela and his obsession with toppling the democratically elected government of President Hugo Chávez has been documented on these pages before, and before that.
U.S. State Department spokesman Tom Casey, during a Friday press briefing, said: “we're very disappointed by the July 7 decision of a Venezuelan judge to try the four leaders of the civic nongovernmental organization Sumate on charges of conspiracy for accepting a $31,000 grant from the National Endowment for Democracy to carry out voter education activities.”
Of course, an administration that coddles and protects some violent terrorists while waging a so-called “war on terrorism” elsewhere, not surprisingly, speaks with forked tongue. Nobody really expects the government to tell the truth anymore. It’s the government. It's here to help you... yada yada. That’s why it needs a simulating “human rights” organization to “independently” back up its spin, and thus the beltway media circus that ensued yesterday.
And so on Friday, as the State Department held a press briefing where it whined about “democratic rights” in Venezuela, Jose Vivanco of Human Rights Watch was a golf swing up Connecticut Avenue NW following orders from headquarters as a soldier in the war against authentic democracy.
