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View Full Version : Greg Palast: $300 Million from Chavez to FARC a Fake



Montag
03-08-2008, 06:51 PM
$300 Mllion from Chavez to FARC a Fake
By Greg Palast

March 7th, 2008
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/300-mllion-chavez-farc-fake

excerpt:

Here’s the written evidence
… and - please say it ain’t so! - Obama and Hillary attack Ecuador

Do you believe this?

This past weekend, Colombia invaded Ecuador, killed a guerrilla chief in the jungle, opened his laptop – and what did the Colombians find? A message to Hugo Chavez that he’s sent the FARC guerrillas $300 million – which they’re using to obtain uranium to make a dirty bomb!

That’s what George Bush tells us. And he got that from his buddy, the strange right-wing President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe.

So: After the fact, Colombia justifies its attempt to provoke a border war as a to stop the threat of WMDs! Uh, where have we heard that before?

The US press snorted up this line about Chavez’ $300 million to “terrorists” quicker than the young Bush inhaling Colombia’s powdered export.

What the US press did not do is look at the evidence, the email in the magic laptop. (Presumably, the FARC leader’s last words were, “Listen, my password is ….”)

I read them. While you can read it all in español, here is, in translation, the one and only mention of the alleged $300 million from Chavez is this:

“… With relation to the 300, which from now on we will call “dossier,” efforts are now going forward at the instructions of the boss to the cojo [slang term for ‘cripple’], which I will explain in a separate note. Let’s call the boss Ángel, and the cripple Ernesto.”

Got that? Where is Hugo? Where’s 300 million? And 300 what? Indeed, in context, the note is all about the hostage exchange with the FARC that Chavez was working on at the time (December 23, 2007) at the request of the Colombian government.

Indeed, the entire remainder of the email is all about the mechanism of the hostage exchange. Here’s the next line:

“To receive the three freed ones, Chavez proposes three options: Plan A. Do it to via of a ‘humanitarian caravan’; one that will involve Venezuela, France, the Vatican[?], Switzerland, European Union, democrats [civil society], Argentina, Red Cross, etc.”

As to the 300, I must note that the FARC’s previous prisoner exchange involved 300 prisoners. Is that what the ‘300’ refers to? ¿Quien sabe? Unlike Uribe, Bush and the US press, I won’t guess or make up a phastasmogoric story about Chavez spending money he doesn’t even have.

To bolster their case, the Colombians claim, with no evidence whatsoever, that the mysterious “Angel” is the code name for Chavez. But in the memo, Chavez goes by the code name … Chavez.

DulceDecorum
03-11-2008, 01:45 PM
Published: Friday, March 07, 2008
Bout's extraordinary career appears to have come to an end with his arrest in a hotel room in Thailand's capital, Bangkok, on Thursday.
He has apparently been handed over to American interrogators. It was U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency officials who told the Thais where to find Bout on the basis of information discovered in a laptop computer captured by the Colombian army when they raided a rebel camp in neighbouring Ecuador on Saturday.
The irony is that Washington has usually protected Bout, even though there are several international warrants out for his arrest over his supplying of arms to almost every war in Africa for the past 17 years and even though his clients have included the Taliban and al-Qaida.
Washington managed for a while to delay the imposition of UN sanction against Bout stemming from his fuelling of wars in Africa. The administration of President George W. Bush saw Bout only as a dependable contractor who was flying American troops and equipment in and out of Baghdad.
There are several versions of Bouts heritage. He is Russian, or perhaps Ukrainian, and was born around 1967 in Tajikistan or Turkmenistan or the Ukraine.
He certainly became a prize language student at Moscow's Military Institute and speaks at least six languages.

..... In his early years of operation Bout lived in Belgium, but he fled to the United Arab Emirates in 1997 after the government began investigating his African dealings.
Since then he has kept his base in the UAE while spending a lot of time in Moscow from where he cannot be extradited.
Bout's operation is a masterpiece of confusion designed to befuddle would-be investigators. There is a myriad of company names associated with his network of 60 aircraft and about 300 pilots.
Intelligence agencies began to take notice of Bout when his involvement in the Sierra Leone and Liberian "blood diamond" wars of the 1990s became apparent.
But it was not until October 2006, however, that Washington was persuaded to freeze Bout's assets and attempt to stop Americans, which includes the Haliburton company, from dealing with him.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=18177e34-c913-4d91-818b-a793c2952836