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WHO RULES: THE ISRAEL LOBBY
OR UNCLE SAM?
The answer
at last! Uri Avnery, former Knesset member, assesses the Lobby's
power. "If the Israeli government wanted a law tomorrow
annulling the 10 Commandments, 95 U.S. Senators (at least) would
sign the bill forthwith." But, yes, in the end the dog wags
the tail.Fifty
years ago Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" blew the cobwebs
out of millions of young minds and drove a stake through the
heart of Eisenhower's America. Lenni Brenner remembers Ginsberg
in the East Village.Dr Mengele died in exile, in disguise. Dr Ishii
died rich and recognized, in his own Tokyo home. Christopher
Reed on Japanese WW2 medical tortures and how the U.S. covered
them up.CounterPunch
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The Bush Administration
is Trying to Link Hugo Chavez to Iran's Nuclear Program
By LARRY BIRNS and
MICHAEL LETTIERI
Washington is no stranger to flimsy
pretexts when it comes to justifying its ill-conceived, and at
times illicit, Latin American initiatives. The contra
epoch, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban missile crisis, Ollie
North, former U.S. ambassador John Negroponte's skullduggery
in Honduras, and countless acts of chicanery aimed at Havana,
Santiago, Grenada and Guatemala come to mind.
A spate of articles tying Hugo
Chávez to Iran's covert nuclear program suggests that
Washington may now be finding it increasingly difficult to resist
further calumniating Venezuela by working to forge a new weapon
for its anti-Caracas jihad.
The only problem is that the
basis for such a charge would be a complete concoction, more
worthy to be put to work in Iraq, where anything goes, than in
Latin America. Such a scenario would intimate that ties exist
between alleged Venezuelan uranium supplies and the Iranian nuclear
program. In other words, Caracas would be presented as a terrorist
nation, illicitly involved in trafficking bootleg uranium to
the pariah Iranian regime in exchange for nuclear devices and
maybe other considerations.
The Plot
In the fall of 2005, Venezuelan
officials began to explore the possibility of acquiring nuclear
reactor technology from either Argentina or Brazil, both of which
have nuclear energy programs and facilities for peaceful use.
This maneuver provoked a predictably prickly response from the
State Department, which made no effort to disguise the fact that
it would not be amused if this transaction would be carried out.
While no agreement was ever reached or shipments made, Caracas
already had established close political ties with Tehran, which
became yet another reason why the White House was suspicious
of Chávez's ultimate intent. Iran's decision to resume
enrichment of uranium this year, which has now provoked an international
uproar, also brought new scrutiny to the purported burgeoning
relationship between that nation and Venezuela. At the U.N.,
Caracas helped fuel such suspicions, as Venezuela was one of
only a handful of member nations that expressed support for Iran's
resumption of peaceful nuclear activity which would effectively
not be under the U.N.'s supervision.
The wide-ranging, if somewhat
vague, cooperation agreements between Iran and Venezuela were
repeatedly reiterated by Washington sources to suggest that more
malignant factors might be at play. The most popular rumor had
Caracas sending its uranium to Iran in exchange for nuclear technology,
with the most radical version beginning with accusations that
Caracas was seeking to obtain weaponry from Tehran. Some went
so far as to suggest that nuclear devices already had been clandestinely
transported to Venezuela on chartered oil tankers. Further speculative
intrigue came about after the expulsion of the New Tribes missionaries
from the Amazonas region in February, as stampeding rumors began
to circulate that the evangelical group was somehow involved
in uranium exploration activities in the state of Bolívar
and that the missionaries' airstrip was facilitating such anti-Chávez
operations. The allegations, which included purported links to
the CIA, were heatedly denied by the group.
Much to
do about Nothing
Yet all of these theories concerning
some diabolic plot linking Iran to Hugo Chávez have been
entirely based on a handful of anemic charges coming from several
former Chávez officials, who, at best, merely quote each
other, but fail to advance the core of their charge or provide
minimum evidence that Venezuela somehow has been complicit with
Iran when it came to supplying uranium to the latter. In turn,
their diaphanous allegations are now being picked up by kindred
rightwing sources domiciled in the U.S. who write enraged op-eds
in Rev. Moon's Washington Times ("Showdown with Chávez")
or get like-minded congressional colleagues to make rabid speeches
from the floor of congress accusing Chávez of striving
to hatch a nuclear plot with Tehran or some other threatening
complot.
While the rumors sometimes
involve an alleged Israeli intelligence report which speaks of
covert uranium mining in Venezuela, the so-called findings have
never been seen, let alone validated. In fact, while Venezuela
may possess some yet to be established uranium deposits, there
is no evidence that these have been located, let alone worked.
Venezuelan officials have vehemently denied charges that the
country is facilitating the enrichment of uranium by the Iranians,
and even the State Department has minimized such suggestions,
noting that while it is "aware of reports of possible Iranian
exploitation of Venezuelan uranium," it does not see any
"commercial uranium activities in Venezuela." Furthermore,
the speculated ties overlook the fact that Iran does not particularly
need to import uranium all the way from Venezuela for its projects,
as it has ample supplies of its own.
All of this likely matters
little to the Bush administration, which is likely feeling increased
pressure from its own policy hardliners to take an anti-Chávez
stand. The recent Bolivian gas nationalization has been cited
by extra conservative pundits, whose knowledge of Latin America
is barely enough for them to cite Venezuela's capital city as
evidence of the pernicious spread of Chavista influence.
They also derisively point
to the lack of any U.S. response to this challenge. Such militancy
on their part, combined with Washington's growing tension with
Iran, may make the time ripe for some form of diplomatic or even
a retaliatory response to allegations of Venezuela's special
relationship with Tehran and other manifestations of anti-U.S.
behavior.
Such a step by Washington would
be entirely predicated on rumors, inventions, and conjecture--a
script, at this point at least, entirely based on phony or no
evidence--like the spurious yellowcake of Niger which provided
the basis for U.S. intervention in Iraq. By conceivably tying
Chávez into the Iranian crisis, the Bush administration
possibly could be laying the groundwork for its own dirty tricks
campaign.
Yet the world would be well-advised
to be wary of such machinations: mysterious vials, contrived
satellite images, or fuzzy photographs are now beginning to be
employed for tendentiously-pursued, if illusory, ends by a brigade
of Chávez-bashers serving under a variety of self-serving
ideological gods.
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