“You can’t exclude any hypothesis … It’s practically impossible that here in an [oil] installation like this which is fully automated everywhere and that has thousands of responsible workers night and day, civilian and military, and that there is a gas leak for 3 or 4 days and nobody responds. This is impossible.”

President Chavez responding to US media and opposition charges that the explosion and fire at the oil refinery was due to government negligence.

Introduction

Only 43 days before the Venezuelan presidential election and with President Chavez leading by a persistent margin of 20 percentage points, an explosion and fire at the Amuay refinery killed at least 48 people – half of those were members of the National Guard – and destroyed oil facilities producing 645,000 barrels of oil per day.

Immediately following the explosion and fire, on script, all the mass media in the US and Great Britain, and the right wing Venezuelan opposition launched a blanket condemnation of the government as the perpetrator of the disaster accusing it of “gross negligence” and “under-investment” in safety standards.

Yet there are strong reasons to reject these self-serving accusations and to formulate a more plausible hypothesis, namely that the explosion was an act of sabotage, planned and executed by a clandestine group of terrorist specialists acting on behalf of the US government. There are powerful arguments to sustain and pursue this line of inquiry.

The Argument for Sabotage:

(1) The first question in any serious investigation is who benefits and who loses from the destruction of lives and oil production?

The US is a clear winner on several crucial fronts. Firstly, via the economic losses to the Venezuelan economy – 2.5 million barrels in the first 5 days and counting – the loss will put a dent on social spending and delay productive investments which in turn are key electoral appeals of the Chavez presidency. Secondly, on cue the US joined by its client candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski, immediately launched a propaganda blitz aimed at discrediting the government and calling into question its capacity to ensure the security and safety of its citizens and the principal source of the country’s wealth. Thirdly, the explosion creates insecurity and fear among sectors of the electorate and could influence their voting in the October presidential election. Fourthly, the US can test the effectiveness of a wider destabilization campaign and the government’s capacity to respond to any further security threats.

(2) According to official government documents the US has Special Forces operations in over seventy-five countries, including Venezuela, which is targeted because of an adversarial relation. This means that the US has operative clandestine highly trained operatives on the ground in Venezuela. The capture of a US Marine for illegal entry in Venezuela with prior experience in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan is indicative.

(3) The US has a history of involvement in violent destabilization activity in Venezuela – backing the military coup of 2002 and the bosses’ lockout in the petroleum industry in 2003. The US targeting of the oil industry involved sabotage of the computerized system and efforts to degrade the refineries.

(4) The US has a history of sabotage and violence against incumbent adversarial regimes. In Cuba during 1960, the CIA torched a department store and sugar plantations, and planted bombs in the downtown tourist centers – aiming to undermine strategic sectors of the economy. In Chile following the election of Socialist Salvador Allende, a CIA backed right-wing group kidnapped and assassinated the military attache of Socialist President, in an effort to provoke a military coup. Similarly in Jamaica in the late 1970’s under democratic socialist President Manley, the CIA facilitated a violent destabilization campaign in the run-up to the elections. Sabotage and destabilization is a common weapon in the face of impending electoral defeats (as is the case in Venezuela) or where a popular government is firmly entrenched.

(5) Force, violence and destabilization campaigns against incumbent regimes have become common operation procedure in current US policy. The US has financed and armed terrorist groups in Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Chechnya; it is bombing Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. In other words US foreign policy is highly militarized and opposed to any negotiated diplomatic resolution of conflicts with adversarial regimes. Sabotaging Venezuela’s oil refineries is within the logic and practice of current global US foreign policy.

(6) Domestic politics in the US has taken a further turn to the far right in both domestic and foreign policy. The Republican Party has accused the Democrats of pandering to Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and Syria – of not going to war.
…

Washington is channeling millions of dollars via NGO’s to the Venezuelan opposition – for electoral and destabilization purposes. No doubt the opposition includes employees, engineers and others with security clearance and access to the petroleum industry.

(7) With a little more than a month left before the elections, and President Chavez is showing a 20 percentage point advantage; the economy is on track for a steady recovery; social housing and welfare programs are consolidating massive low income support or over 80%; Venezuela has been admitted into MERCOSUR the powerful Latin American integration program; Colombia signed off on a mutual defense agreement with Venezuela; Venezuela is diversifying its overseas markets and suppliers. What these facts indicate is that Washington has no chance of defeating Chavez electorally;it has no possibility of using its Latin neighbors as a springboard for territorial incursions or precipitating a war for regime change; and it has no chance of imposing an economic boycott.
…

Washington, by revealing its resort to clandestine terror, represents a clear and present danger to Venezuela’s constitutional order, an immediate threat to the life blood of its economy and of the democratic electoral process. Hopefully, the Chavez government, backed by the vast majority of its citizens and constitutionalist armed forces will take the necessary comprehensive security measures to ensure that there is no repeat of the petrol sabotage in other sectors, like the electrical grid.
…
Subsequent to their decisive electoral defeat they will claim fraud or interference. All this is predictable, but the vast majority of voters who assemble, debate and cast their ballots will feel secure and look forward to another four years of peace and prosperity, free from terror and sabotage.

August, 26, 2010

i agree. very sane, measured and modest on the part of both interviewer and interviewee. three hallmarks of significant humanitarian thought about politics – far removed from the self-serving, tub-thumping, breast-beating, mendacious and irresponsible war-mongering propaganda which fills the pages and screens of the compromised and prostituted ‘Western’ m.s.m.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2012/08/human-rights-or-civil-rights.html

the answers may surprise some. the piece the blog writer is using as his starting point is surprising, itself, given it was from al jazeera:

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/08/201282972539153865.html

massad does a good job there, especially tracing the roots of the “springs” back to their cold war beginnings. the part on cz is first rate. once he gets to the modern versions, he does very well, except on libya and syria, by failing to see the fundamental differences between these two insurgencies and those in tunisia and egypt. the latter two were zionazi take overs of budding uprisings, while the former were zionazi engineered regime change attempts. but that fail aside, the whole piece does decent justice describing the ziofascist/fascist strategy behind these top down regime changes and how the working people are being buggered by the rich and their bend over bois. it’s the same old colonial story, but with new names, new propaganda, and to a large extent, now under a jp thumb instead of plain old fascists and robber barons and slavocrats, ripping off the humans for the benefit of the subhumans.

both the moa and al jazeera pieces are excellent complimentary pieces to this interview of bricmont.

“The second remark is that the anti-war people are not necessarily on the left. True, there is a big part of the Right that has become neo-conservative, but there is also a big part of the Left that is influenced by the ideology of humanitarian intervention. However, there is also a libertarian Right, Ron Paul for example, that is staunchly anti-war, and there are some remnants of a pacifist or anti-imperialist Left. Note that this has always been the case: the pro and anti-imperialist position, even back in the days of colonialism, do not coincide with the Left-Right divide, if the latter is understood in socio-economic terms or in “moral” terms (about gay marriage for example).”

the divisions within both left and right are more varied, but that is a good starting point. the thing is both have to some extent been taken over by jp, the left more so, and this is where the pro-war factions derive from. it is in jp interests that the jewish run phoney left and the neo-con right factions are pro-war. there are other rightwing factions that are pro-war, such as the “rockefeller” old time fascists, who had jp’s power seat not so long ago in the usa, are always ready to send in somebody else’s kids to kill for their profits. currently, brzezinski is a representative of this faction. the left never had a pro-war faction before the jewish take over, and the left which is not pro-war is a continuation of the original left ideals. being revolutionary is not being pro-war, btw.

my suspicion from the beginning. remember the american terrorist venezuela caught? the zionazis and their fascist b-bros have more “extraordinary events” planned for venezuela. good thing venezuela closed down the israeli embassy, or there would probably be much more terrorism in the country.

“The text below was published on a Venezuelan opinion site on July 22nd well before the explosion at the Amuay refinery, which was an “extraordinary event.” Question: Is it the “extraordinary event” referred to by the personnel at the US Embassy mentioned in the following article? Is this a pointer to the Amuay tragedy?

After more than 24 hours reflecting on these terrible events and following the opposition news media and Tweets with their necrophilia at the death and destruction clear for all to see and read, more people are coming to the conclusion that the huge explosion at Amuay that claimed at least 41 lives, was not an “accident”.

Arturo Rosales,
Axis of Logic

“Contrary to what the majority of reliable polls reveal concerning the Venezuelan presidential elections, personnel of the US Embassy in Caracas “foresee a close result” and are interested in an “extraordinary event”.

In the section of his TV program called “Confidentials” broadcast on July 22nd the Journalist José Vicente Rangel reported that the director of one of the Venezuelan pollsters had a three hour meeting with personnel of the US Embassy in Caracas.

Rangel informed them of the bad news that, in spite of their efforts, the results of the October 7th presidential elections would show a result extremely favorable for the socialist candidate, Hugo Chávez. The US personnel, however, has a different point of view and “foresee a different scenario with a close result and had confidence in the ability of opposition candidate Capriles to close the existing vote intention gap,” stated Rangel.

During the conversation the North Americans were interested in “reducing the gap due to an extraordinary event whose magnitude and characteristics which they did not reveal, could have an impact on the results of the election and generate unpredictable consequences.”

Rangel asked the question: “what are these North American employees of the US Embassy referring to and what information do they have?”

from voltaire net