What your tax dollars bought in Venezuela:

According to James Petras, who wrote about the CIA destabilization memo, the memo acknowledges that they've managed to sway public opinion by 6 percentage points, far more than enough to alter the outcome of the election.

-personman

http://www.democracynow.org/2007/11/30/tens_of_thousands_protest_chavez_proposals

James Petras: Now, what the memo talks about essentially is, first of all, the effectiveness of their campaign against the constitutional amendments, and it concedes that the amendment will be approved, but it does mention the fact that they’ve reduced the margin of victory by six percentage points. The second part is more interesting. It actually mentions the fact that the US strategy is what they call a “pincer operation.” That’s the name of the document itself. It’s—“pincer” is “tenaza,” and it’s, first of all, to try to undermine the electoral process, the vote itself, and then secondly, once the vote goes through, if they are not able to stop the vote, is to engage in a massive campaign calling fraud and rejecting the outcome that comes from the election. So, on one hand, they’re calling a no vote, and on the other hand, they’re denouncing the outcome if they lose.

All I have seen are alleged excerpts in Spanish, translations thereof, and analysis. But no original document.

Has the Venezuelan government held on to it because it contains information that might be embarrassing? Or does it even exist?

It is argued the who thing is a fabrication. I searched the would-be author. He and his wife bought a home in Reston for $500,000. She teaches in an American grade school in Caracas, photo online. They were in Chile before VZ. Little else, almost too little.

Look for it to pass later.


Amazing though that 6% are such complete idiots that they'll side with the people who were killing them not that long ago with a little push.

You lose some, you win some.

There will be other battles. You move on.

The fact that Chavez is respecting the vote signals a great day for Latin American democracy.

I think it should be obvious that an election decided by a 0.7 percent margin with lots of american money funding the opposition, was bought and paid for by us, and has little to do with democracy.

What's done may be done, but the idea that people should just take it laying down and sort of nod along in subservience at the deliberate undermining of the electoral process strikes me as anti-democratic.