AlterNet Special

AlterNet:
Waging a Dirty War With Italy's Help

By Jeffrey Klein and Paolo Pontoniere, AlterNet
Posted on July 26, 2006

There's a covert, illegal, parallel American-Italian intelligence structure operating out there. Rogue spymasters like Robert Lady, the CIA's "retired" station head in Milan, and Marco Mancini, until recently number two at SISMI, the Italian CIA, are two of its now-exposed operatives. They worked within a web spun by President Bush and Silvio Berlusconi. Big B and little b huddled together for an overnight retreat in Crawford in late July 2003. At the time, Berlusconi was prime minister of Italy, and he remains today that country's richest man.

Their webs of intrigue connect: the forged yellowcake dossier used by President Bush to justify the invasion of Iraq, the "extraordinary rendition" of terrorism suspects to countries where they would be tortured, and the payback to the Italians via a contract to build 23 Marine Ones, the president's helicopter fleet.

The intimate relationship between the shadowy American and Italian security networks is being illuminated by Milanese prosecutors, who simultaneously are being spied upon by those whom they are investigating. The prosecutors' disclosure of parallel American and Italian wiretapping and disinformation campaigns sheds rare light on black operations.

Some of the more troubling news is buried among the papers filed in Abu Omar abduction case. Omar, an Egyptian imam, was kidnapped on a busy Milan street by an American-Italian "special removal" unit and flown to Cairo where he was tortured, apparently under the supervision of the CIA's Robert Lady. The Milanese prosecutors have obtained a confession from Lady's Italian partner, Marco Mancini, and are on the verge of indicting General Nicolò Pollari, the current head of SISMI. The prosecutors have also obtained arrest warrants for 26 CIA agents and are seeking their extradition.

According to L'espresso, a leading Italian newsweekly, the prosecutors claim that it was in the sweltering heat of the Texas summer that Big B asked little b to appoint an Italian operative trusted by the CIA to head SISMI's First Division. The Prima Divisione is in charge of counterintelligence and anti-terrorism, and the recommended agent was none other than Marco Mancini, the overseer of the Abu Omar rendition.

Mancini's subsequent appointment to head SISMI's Prima Divisione created a safe haven for the CIA and SISMI's joint operations. These were carried out by both current and former agents, the latter acting as mercenaries. In addition to abducting suspected terrorists, the agents are charged with global eavesdropping, intercepting financial transactions and fabricating disinformation about terrorist threats. Their tradecraft included spying on investigators, judges, journalists and parliamentarians; misleading congressional and judicial inquiries into criminal acts; and planting stories in media such as Il Giornale, the New York Times and the Times of London.

An incestuous mix of public and private interests profited from the covert work. For example, Giuliano Tavaroli directed Italy's Telecom security department until scandals forced his resignation. One of his tasks was to conduct phone taps requested by the police. Tavaroli used this authority to set up a massive eavesdropping program codenamed "Super Amanda." Eerily similar to the plan implemented by the Bush administration after Sept. 11, 2001, to wiretap Americans' telephone and email communications, Super Amanda was Berlusconi's big ear on Italian civil society and his political rivals. Today Tavaroli stands accused of violating several laws, including selling information illegally intercepted on behalf of SISMI's First Division to business intelligence firms.

Tavaroli and Marco Mancini are best friends. Both began their careers in the anti-terrorism unit of Italy's paramilitary corps. According to the Milanese prosecutors, Tavaroli joined forces again with his best friend to bribe public officers who were investigating the Abu Omar abduction. He also frequently hired CIA agents as consultants and was about to hire Robert Lady away from the CIA before the scandals broke.

Marco Mancini was a surprising choice to head SISMI's First Division. Traditionally the department had been headed by a general, and Mancini is barely a captain. But Gen. Nicolò Pollari - SISMI's director now facing indictment - claims that Mancini's appointment was imposed by the highest Italian political authority and supported by America. He didn't disappoint.

From the investigators' filings something deeply subversive emerges: the spy network fomented political instability and raised fortunes by concocting false security threats. On one occasion described by the prosecutors, Mancini alerted the local police of Reggio Calabria (the capital of the Italian state of Calabria) of an imminent mafia attempt on the life of its mayor. On another occasion, Mancini directed the Italian coast guard to intercept a shipment of explosives destined for Al Qaida.

According to Calabria Ora, a regional daily for Calabria, on the first occasion the SISMI tip-off authored by Mancini sent Reggio Calabria's police searching behind the toilet bowl in the office of Giuseppe Scopelliti, the city's mayor. There they discovered a plastic device, which, according to Mancini, would have detonated shortly thereafter. But the device lacked a fuse. Mayor Scopelliti, a known fascist in a region where collusion between political parties and organized crime is a fact of life, went on to acquire the status of an anti-mafia hero. On the second occasion, even though the Italian Coast Guard launched a Mediterranean-wide search and paid some 300,000 euros to a mysterious informer introduced by Mancini, the cargo full of Al Qaida's explosives, the informer, and the money that was paid out were never found.

The Super Amanda project created an intelligence fraternity among the security heads of Italy's largest communication and defense industries. This fraternity promoted or blocked the careers of policemen, investigators, secret agents, coast guards and Carabinieri across the country. And the companies themselves became more incestuous, with Finmeccanica, Italy's largest defense firm, often profiting. For example, Telecom Italia during Tavaroli's tenure transferred control of Telespazio, one of its subsidiaries for space defense, to Finmeccanica. Finmeccanica was also the surprising winner of the prestigious contract to build 23 Marine One helicopters for the U.S. president. The only industry members not surprised by this decision were top Finmeccanica executives. Before the Pentagon announced the winner, one Finmeccanica insider told us, the company's division heads jockeyed for what they were told was an imminent payback from Bush to Berlusconi.

Through the illegal wiretapping operation, Marco Mancini monitored any opposition that might be brewing to the cabal's plans, but evidently didn't consider that his own calls might be tapped. Investigators traced one of the phone calls Mancini received to an 11-room penthouse apartment at Via Nazionale 230, the beautiful Umbertino building just a few minutes walk from Rome's Spanish Steps and Trevi Fountain. The apartment turned out to be SISMI's secret propaganda office filled with tens of thousands of files on unfriendly politicians, magistrates, entrepreneurs and celebrities. Accounts of phone calls in these files were allegedly assembled by members of the Telecom security office. Prosecutors working on the investigation have questioned F.G., a Telecom employee who managed connections between people in the telephone corporation and the SISMI.

Other files indicate SISMI not only wiretapped some Italian journalists, but also hired others as covert flacks. For example, the apartment files contained receipts for payments of 2,500 and 5,000 euros signed by "Betulla," Italian for birch tree. The prosecutors found that Betulla was the code name of the deputy director of Libero, a conservative Milanese daily. Investigators also found drafts of articles, including a smear piece against Prime Minister Romano Prodi. The article was later published in Libero.

The seized materials show how eager SISMI was to refute that "the yellowcake dossier" was a collaborative Italian-American venture concocted to justify President Bush's invasion of Iraq. The dossier's bogus intelligence was cited by President Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address as proof that Saddam Hussein had bought yellowcake uranium ore from Niger to fuel nuclear weapons. To refute La Repubblica's expose of this Nigergate affair, SISMI successfully enlisted or fooled Italian journalists (at Giornale, Unita, Libero, Riformista and Panorama), as well as reporters covering the story for the New York Times and the Times of London. Surreptiously, SISMI shifted blame to French Intelligence.

As Marco Mancini was put behind bars in a Milan jail, he said, "I have confidence in the courts; it will emerge that I had nothing to do with the case." But what emerged was a confession. SISMI's No. 2 fingered SISMI's No. 1, Gen. Nicolò Pollari, and thus was released from jail to house arrest. In turn, Pollari has implied that all of his activities were approved by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

The current prime minister, Romano Prodi, now faces a difficult choice. The shadowy American-Italian web tried first to smear him, then to entangle him. Also Berlusconi, despite being charged since he left office with more financial crimes, is like the maniacal villain in Hollywood movies: he's gone but never dead. Prime Minister Prodi must stay out of the Milanese magistrates' way so that he retains the support of his slim anti-Berlusconi majority. On the other hand, Prodi isn't going to push for the extradition of the 26 CIA agents charged with kidnapping Abu Omar. Running the Italian government is difficult enough without angering an American president. At the recent G8 summit in St. Petersburg, Italian reporters asked Prodi if he'd discussed the spy scandal with Bush. "I don't think that President Bush knows the SISMI initials," Mr. Prodi joked. "We didn't talk about it."

Jeffrey Klein, a founding editor of Mother Jones, this summer received a Loeb, journalism’s top award for business reporting. Paolo Pontoniere is a New America Media European commentator.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/39482/

---

Our Willful Blindness in Lebanon

By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet
Posted on July 26, 2006

On Friday morning, as I traveled north on Interstate 5, I passed two tractor-trailers heading south toward the 32nd Street Naval Station in downtown San Diego. Each vehicle carried about 10 unmarked bombs; each bomb was approximately 15 feet long. Two military helicopters hovered low above each tractor-trailer, providing overhead escort. I wondered where these bombs were headed. They must have been in a big hurry because they usually ship their bombs more covertly.

Israel had just put out an S.O.S. to the United States government to rush over several more bombs. "The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration," according to the New York Times. Although always well-equipped with sophisticated U.S.-made weapons, Israel was evidently running out of munitions to drop on the Lebanese people.

Washington loses no opportunity to scold Iran and Syria for providing weapons to Hezbollah. Yet during the Bush administration, from 2001 to 2005, Israel received $10.5 billion in foreign military financing - the Pentagon's biggest military aid program - and $6.3 billion in U.S. arms deliveries. Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign military assistance.

The U.S. Arms Export Control Act stipulates that foreign countries receiving weapons from the United States must use them solely for defensive purposes or to maintain internal security. During the last major Israeli incursion into Lebanon, in 1981, the Reagan administration cut off U.S. military aid and arms deliveries for 10 weeks while it investigated whether Israel was using weapons for "defensive purposes."

Last week, both houses of Congress, mindful of the importance of retaining Jewish votes and campaign contributions, passed resolutions stating that Israel was acting in self-defense. The vote in the Senate was unanimous; the House vote was 410 to 8. Walking in lockstep with Bush, neither resolution calls for a ceasefire. The Senate resolution praises Israel for its "restraint" and the House resolution "welcomes Israel's continued efforts to prevent civilian casualties."

U.S.-provided Israeli bombs have killed nearly 400 Lebanese, of whom the overwhelming majority were innocent civilians. The bombing has displaced half a million people and caused an estimated $1 billion in damage.

After Israel ordered people in southern Lebanon to evacuate their homes, several vehicles filled with evacuating Lebanese civilians were bombed by the Israeli military.

An Israeli helicopter fired a missile at a white minibus carrying 19 people fleeing Tairi. Three people were killed and several wounded.

A green Mercedes with a family fleeing Mansuri was struck by an Israeli missile. Three lay dead, while others were severely injured. Eight-year-old Mahmoud Srour's face was burned beyond recognition.

As Zein al-Abdin Zabit evacuated with his wife and four sons, his white Nissan was hit by an Israeli missile. "It's nothing more than revenge, revenge on civilians," Zabit said as he lay in bed with broken ribs.

Human Rights Watch confirmed yesterday that Israel is using artillery-delivered cluster munitions in populated areas of Lebanon. "Cluster munitions are unacceptably inaccurate and unreliable weapons when used around civilians," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "They should never be used in populated areas."

The use of cluster munitions in populated areas of Iraq caused more civilian casualties than any other factor in the U.S.-led coalition's major military operations in March and April 2003, killing and wounding more than 1,000 Iraqi civilians, HRW reported. HRW photographed U.S.-produced/U.S.-supplied cluster bombs among the arsenal of Israel Defense Forces artillery teams stationed on the Israeli-Lebanese border during a July 23 research visit.

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail reported that the Lebanese Ministry of Interior has confirmed the Israelis have used the incendiary white phosphorous gas. This is a chemical weapon, much like napalm, that can burn right down to the bone. The U.S. military used white phosphorous in Fallujah, Iraq.

Article 35 of Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions prohibits the use of weapons "of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering." Cluster bombs and white phosphorous fall into this category.

Bilal Masri, assistant director of the Beirut Government University Hospital, told Jamail, "The Israelis are using new kinds of bombs, and these bombs can penetrate bomb shelters," Masri added. "They are bombing the refugees in the bomb shelters!" Masri also said that 55 percent of the casualties are children under 15 years of age.

It is a violation of the laws of war to target civilians. "A fundamental rule of international humanitarian law is the obligation to distinguish between civilians and civilian property on one hand and military targets on the other," Nada Doumani, Middle East spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross told Aljazeera.net. "Under no circumstances can civilians and public and private property be deliberately attacked. All parties in the conflict have to abide by these rules."

Doumani quoted ICRC Director of Operations Pierre Krahenbuhl, who said: "The high number of civilian casualties and the extent of damage to essential public infrastructure raise serious questions regarding respect for the principle of proportionality in the conduct of hostilities."

Nearly every report from the corporate media seeks to find symmetry in this war. When an outlet covers the massive devastation in Lebanon and increasing numbers of Lebanese civilians killed by Israeli bombs, it is careful to juxtapose reports of Hezbollah rockets fired into Israel.

Jan Egeland, the United Nations emergency relief chief, however, called the "disproportionate response" by Israel to Hezbollah's actions "a violation of international humanitarian law." Egeland, who characterized the devastated areas of Lebanon as "horrific," said Israel is denying access to relief operations.

At least 384 people have been killed in Lebanon, including 20 soldiers and 11 Hezbollah fighters. Israel's death toll is at least 40, with 17 people killed by Hezbollah rockets and 23 soldiers killed in the fighting.

On Monday, a high-ranking Israeli Air Force officer told reporters that Lt. Gen. Dan Halutz, the Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff, had ordered the military to destroy 10 buildings in Beirut in retaliation for every Katyusha rocket strike on Haifa by Hezbollah.

Last week, several Jewish organizations and Christian Zionists lobbied the White House to support Israel. Bush complied, giving Israel at least another week to continue slaughtering the Lebanese people.

While Bush stood by and watched the humanitarian catastrophe Israel is wreaking in Lebanon, Condoleezza Rice traveled there and met with Fuad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister. Rice's visit was an "important show of support for the Lebanese public and the Siniora government," a U.S. official said Monday. The official told reporters traveling with Rice, "The fact we are going to go right into Beirut after all that has happened is a pretty dramatic signal to Lebanon and their government."

It would be much more dramatic for Bush-Rice to call a halt to the carnage. When Helen Thomas asked White House spokesman Tony Snow why the president opposed a ceasefire, he rudely thanked her for her "Hezbollah view."

Bush could stop Israel in its tracks with a snap of his fingers. But why would he? Israel is doing Bush's bidding - redrawing the map of the Middle East to facilitate U.S. domination. Bush began that task with Iraq; Israel is following suit with Palestine and Lebanon. Indeed, Bush is hoping Israel's next stop will be Iran or Syria.

A July 21 list of talking points from the White House Office of the Press Secretary referred to a Los Angeles Times op-ed by Max Boot titled, "It's Time to Let The Israelis Take Off the Gloves." The White House release contained this quote from Boot's piece: "Our best response is exactly what Bush has done so far - reject premature calls for a cease-fire and let Israel finish the job."

That quote was preceded by this language: "Iran may be too far away for much Israeli retaliation beyond a single strike on its nuclear weapons complex. (Now wouldn't be a bad time.) But Syria is weak and next door. To secure its borders, Israel needs to hit the Assad regime. Hard. If it does, it will be doing Washington's dirty work."

We turn a blind eye at our peril.

Marjorie Cohn, professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, is president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/39471/

---

A Modern-Day Tyrant

By Javier Corrales, Foreign Policy
Posted on July 26

As the 20th century drew to a close, Latin America finally seemed to have escaped its reputation for military dictatorships. The democratic wave that swept the region starting in the late 1970s appeared unstoppable. No Latin American country except Haiti had reverted to authoritarianism. There were a few coups, of course, but they all unraveled, and constitutional order returned. Polls in the region indicated growing support for democracy, and the climate seemed to have become inhospitable for dictators.

Then came Hugo Chávez, elected president of Venezuela in December 1998. The lieutenant colonel had attempted a coup six years earlier. When that failed, he won power at the ballot box and is now approaching a decade in office. In that time, he has concentrated power, harassed opponents, punished reporters, persecuted civic organizations, and increased state control of the economy. Yet, he has also found a way to make authoritarianism fashionable again, if not with the masses, with at least enough voters to win elections. And with his fiery anti-American, anti-neoliberal rhetoric, Chávez has become the poster boy for many leftists worldwide.

Many experts, and certainly Chávez's supporters, would not concede that Venezuela has become an autocracy. After all, Chávez wins votes, often with the help of the poor. That is the peculiarity of Chávez's regime. He has virtually eliminated the contradiction between autocracy and political competitiveness.

What's more, his accomplishment is not simply a product of charisma or unique local circumstances. Chávez has refashioned authoritarianism for a democratic age. With elections this year in several Latin American states - including Mexico and Brazil - his leadership formula may inspire like-minded leaders in the region. And his international celebrity status means that even strongmen outside of Latin America may soon try to adopt the new Chávez look.

The democratic disguise

There are no mass executions or concentration camps in Venezuela. Civil society has not disappeared, as it did in Cuba after the 1959 revolution. There is no systematic, state-sponsored terror leaving scores of desaparecidos, as happened in Argentina and Chile in the 1970s. And there is certainly no efficiently repressive and meddlesome bureaucracy à la the Warsaw Pact. In fact, in Venezuela, one can still find an active and vociferous opposition, elections, a feisty press, and a vibrant and organized civil society. Venezuela, in other words, appears almost democratic.

But when it comes to accountability and limits on presidential power, the picture grows dark. Chávez has achieved absolute control of all state institutions that might check his power. In 1999, he engineered a new constitution that did away with the Senate, thereby reducing from two to one the number of chambers with which he must negotiate. Because Chávez only has a limited majority in this unicameral legislature, he revised the rules of congress so that major legislation can pass with only a simple, rather than a two-thirds, majority. Using that rule, Chávez secured congressional approval for an expansion of the Supreme Court from 20 to 32 justices and filled the new posts with unabashed revolucionarios, as Chavistas call themselves.

Chávez has also become commander in chief twice over. With the traditional army, he has achieved unrivaled political control. His 1999 constitution did away with congressional oversight of military affairs, a change that allowed him to purge disloyal generals and promote friendly ones. But commanding one armed force was not enough for Chávez. So in 2004, he began assembling a parallel army of urban reservists, whose membership he hopes to expand from 100,000 members to 2 million. In Colombia, 10,000 right-wing paramilitary forces significantly influenced the course of the domestic war against guerrillas. Two million reservists may mean never having to be in the opposition.

As important, Chávez commands the institute that supervises elections, the National Electoral Council, and the gigantic state-owned oil company, PDVSA, which provides most of the government's revenues. A Chávez-controlled election body ensures that voting irregularities committed by the state are overlooked. A Chávez-controlled oil industry allows the state to spend at will, which comes in handy during election season.

Chávez thus controls the legislature, the Supreme Court, two armed forces, the only important source of state revenue, and the institution that monitors electoral rules. As if that weren't enough, a new media law allows the state to supervise media content, and a revised criminal code permits the state to imprison any citizen for showing "disrespect" toward government officials. By compiling and posting on the Internet lists of voters and their political tendencies - including whether they signed a petition for a recall referendum in 2004 - Venezuela has achieved reverse accountability. The state is watching and punishing citizens for political actions it disapproves of rather than the other way around. If democracy requires checks on the power of incumbents, Venezuela doesn't come close.

Polarize and conquer

Chávez's power grabs have not gone unopposed. Between 2001 and 2004, more than 19 massive marches, multiple cacerolazos (pot-bangings), and a general strike at PDVSA virtually paralyzed the country. A coup briefly removed him from office in April 2002. Not long thereafter, and despite obstacles imposed by the Electoral Council, the opposition twice collected enough signatures - 3.2 million in February 2003 and 3.4 million in December 2003 - to require a presidential recall referendum.

But that was as far as his opponents got. Chávez won the referendum in 2004 and deflated the opposition. For many analysts, Chávez's ability to hold on to power is easy to explain: The poor love him. Chávez may be a caudillo, the argument goes, but unlike other caudillos, Chávez approximates a bona fide Robin Hood. With inclusive rhetoric and lavish spending, especially since late 2003, Chávez has addressed the spiritual and material needs of Venezuela's poor, which in 2004 accounted for 60 percent of the country's households.

Yet reducing Chávez's political feats to a story about social redemption overlooks the complexity of his rule - and the danger of his precedent. Undeniably, Chávez has brought innovative social programs to neighborhoods that the private sector and the Venezuelan state had all but abandoned to criminal gangs, though many of his initiatives came only after he was forced to compete in the recall referendum. He also launched one of the most dramatic increases in state spending in the developing world, from 19 percent of gross domestic product in 1999 to more than 30 percent in 2004. And yet, Chávez has failed to improve any meaningful measure of poverty, education, or equity. More damning for the Chávez-as-Robin Hood theory, the poor do not support him en masse. Most polls reveal that at least 30 percent of the poor, sometimes even more, disapprove of Chávez. And it is safe to assume that among the 30 to 40 percent of the electorate that abstains from voting, the majority have low incomes.

Chávez's inability to establish control over the poor is key to understanding his new style of dictatorship - call it "competitive autocracy." A competitive autocrat has enough support to compete in elections, but not enough to overwhelm the opposition. Chávez's coalition today includes portions of the poor, the bulk of the thoroughly purged military, and many long-marginalized leftist politicians. Chávez is thus distinct from two other breeds of dictators: the unpopular autocrat who has few supporters and must resort to outright repression, and the comfortable autocrat, who faces little opposition and can relax in power. Chávez's opposition is too strong to be overtly repressed, and the international consequences of doing so would in any case be prohibitive. So Chávez maintains a semblance of democracy, which requires him to outsmart the opposition. His solution is to antagonize, rather than to ban. Chávez's electoral success has less to do with what he is doing for the poor than with how he handles organized opposition. He has discovered that he can concentrate power more easily in the presence of a virulent opposition than with a banned opposition, and in so doing, he is rewriting the manual on how to be a modern-day authoritarian. Here's how it works.

Attack Political Parties: After Chávez's attempt to take power by way of coup failed in 1992, he decided to try elections in 1998. His campaign strategy had one preeminent theme: the evil of political parties. His attacks on partidocracia were more frequent than his attacks against neoliberalism, and the theme was an instant hit with the electorate. As in most developing-country democracies, discontent with existing parties was profound and pervasive. It attracted the right and the left, the young and old, the traditional voter as well as the nonvoter. Chávez's antiparty stand not only got him elected, but by December 1999 also allowed him to pass one of the most antiparty constitutions among Latin American democracies. His plan to concentrate power was off to a good start.

Polarize Society: Having secured office, the task of the competitive autocrat is to polarize the political system. This maneuver deflates the political center and maintains unity within one's ranks. Reducing the size of the political center is crucial for the competitive autocrat. In most societies, the ideological center is numerically strong, a problem for aspiring authoritarians because moderate voters seldom go for extremists - unless, of course, the other side becomes immoderate as well.

The solution is to provoke one's opponents into extreme positions. The rise of two extreme poles splits the center: The moderate left becomes appalled by the right and gravitates toward the radical left, and vice versa. The center never disappears entirely, but it melts down to a manageable size. Now, our aspiring autocrat stands a chance of winning more than a third of the vote in every election, maybe even the majority. Chávez succeeded in polarizing the system as early as October 2000 with his Decree 1011, which suggested he would nationalize private schools and ideologize the public school system. The opposition reacted predictably: It panicked, mobilized, and embraced a hard-core position in defense of the status quo. The center began to shrink.

Chávez's supporters, meanwhile, were energized and not inclined to quibble as he colonized institutional obstacles to his power. This energy within the movement is essential to the competitive autocrat, who actually faces a greater chance of internal dissent than unpopular dictators because his coalition of supporters is broader and more heterogeneous. So he must constantly identify mechanisms for alleviating internal tensions. The solution is simple: co-opt disgruntled troops through lavish rewards and provoke the opposition so that there is always a monster to rail against. The largesse creates incentives for the troops to stay, and the provocations eliminate incentives to switch sides.

Spread the Wealth Selectively: Those expecting Chávez's populism to benefit citizens according to need, rather than political usefulness, do not understand competitive autocracy. Chávez's populism is grandiose, but selective. His supporters will receive unimaginable favors, and detractors are paid in insults. Denying the opposition spoils while lavishing supporters with booty has the added benefit of enraging those not in his camp and fueling the polarization that the competitive autocrat needs.

Chávez has plenty of resources from which he can draw. He is, after all, one of the world's most powerful CEOs in one of the world's most profitable businesses: selling oil to the United States. He has steadily increased personal control over PDVSA. With an estimated $84 billion in sales for 2005, PDVSA has the fifth-largest state-owned oil reserves in the world and the largest revenues in Latin America after PEMEX, the Mexican state-oil company. Because PDVSA participates in both the wholesale and retail side of oil sales in the United States (it owns CITGO, one of the largest U.S. refining companies and gas retailers), it makes money whether the price of oil is high or low.

But sloshing around oil money isn't polarizing enough. Chávez needs conflict, and his recent expropriation of private land has provided it. In mid-2005, the national government, in cooperation with governors and the national guard, began a series of land grabs. Nearly 250,000 acres were seized in August and September, and the government announced that it intends to take more. The constitution permits expropriations only after the National Assembly consents or the property has been declared idle. Chávez has found another way - questioning land titles and claiming that the properties are state-owned. Chávez supporters quickly applauded the move as virtuous Robinhoodism. Of course, a government sincerely interested in helping the poor might have simply distributed some of the 50 percent of Venezuelan territory it already owns, most of which is idle. But giving away state land would not enrage anyone.

Most expropriated lands will likely end up in the hands of party activists and the military, not the very poor. Owning a small plot of land is a common retirement dream among many Venezuelan sergeants, which is one reason that the military is hypnotized by Chávez's land grab. Shortly after the expropriations were announced, a public dispute erupted between the head of the National Institute of Lands, Richard Vivas, a radical civilian, and the minister of food, Rafael Oropeza, an active-duty general, over which office would be in charge of expropriations. No one expects the military to walk away empty-handed.

Allow the Bureaucracy to Decay, Almost: Some autocracies, such as Burma's, seek to become legitimate by establishing order; others, like the Chinese Communist Party, by delivering economic prosperity. Both types of autocracies need a top-notch bureaucracy. A competitive autocrat like Chávez doesn't require such competence. He can allow the bureaucracy to decline - with one exception: the offices that count votes.

Perhaps the best evidence that Chávez is fostering bureaucratic chaos is cabinet turnover. It is impossible to have coherent policies when ministers don't stay long enough to decorate their offices. On average, Chávez shuffles more than half of his cabinet every year. And yet, alongside this bureaucratic turmoil, he is constructing a mighty electoral machine. The best minds and the brightest técnicos run the elections. One of Chávez's most influential electoral whizzes is the quiet minister of finance, Nelson Merentes, who spends more time worrying about elections than fiscal solvency. Merentes's job description is straightforward: extract the highest possible number of seats from mediocre electoral results. This task requires a deep understanding of the intricacies of electoral systems, effective manipulation of electoral districting, mobilization of new voters, detailed knowledge about the political proclivities of different districts, and, of course, a dash of chicanery. A good head for numbers is a prerequisite for the job. Merentes, no surprise, is a trained mathematician.

The results are apparent. Renewing a passport in Venezuela can take several months, but more than 2.7 million new voters have been registered in less than two years (almost 3,700 new voters per day), according to a recent report in El Universal, a pro-opposition Caracas daily. For the recall referendum, the government added names to the registry list up to 30 days prior to the vote, making it impossible to check for irregularities. More than 530,000 foreigners were expeditiously naturalized and registered in fewer than 20 months, and more than 3.3 million transferred to new voting districts.

Chávez's electoral strategists have also figured out how to game the country's bifurcated electoral system, in which 60 percent of officeholders are elected as individuals and the rest of the seats go to lists of candidates compiled by parties. The system is designed to favor the second-largest party. The party that wins the uninominal election loses some seats in the proportional representation system, which then get assigned to the second-largest party.

To massage this system, the government has adopted the system of morochas, local slang for twins. The government's operatives create a new party to run separately in the uninominal elections. And so Chávez's party avoids the penalty that would normally hit the party that wins in both systems. The benefit that would otherwise go to an opposition party gets captured instead by the same people that win the individual seats - the precise outcome the system was designed to avoid. In the August 2005 elections for local office, for instance, Chávez's party secured 77 percent of the seats with only 37 percent of the votes in the city of Valencia. Without morochas, the government's share of seats would have been 46 percent. The legality of many of the government's strategies is questionable. And that is where controlling the National Electoral Council and the Supreme Court proves useful. To this day, neither body has found fault with any of the government's electoral strategies.

Antagonize the Superpower: Following the 2004 recall referendum, in which Chávez won 58 percent of the vote, the opposition fell into a coma, shocked not so much by the results as by the ease with which international observers condoned the Electoral Council's flimsy audit of the results. For Chávez, the opposition's stunned silence has been a mixed blessing. It has cleared the way for further state incursions, but it left Chávez with no one to attack. The solution? Pick on the United States.

Chávez's attacks on the United States escalated noticeably at the end of 2004. He has accused the United States of plotting to kill him, crafting his overthrow, placing spies inside PDVSA, planning to invade Venezuela, and terrorizing the world. Trashing the superpower serves the same purpose as antagonizing the domestic opposition: It helps to unite and distract his large coalition - with one added advantage. It endears him to the international left.

All autocrats need international support. Many seek this support by cuddling up to superpowers. The Chávez way is to become a ballistic anti-imperialist. Chávez has yet to save Venezuela from poverty, militarism, corruption, crime, oil dependence, monopoly capitalism, or any other problem that the international left cares about. With few social- democratic accomplishments to flaunt, Chávez desperately needs something to captivate the left. He plays the anti-imperialist card because he has nothing else in his hand.

The beauty of the policy is that, in the end, it doesn't really matter how the United States responds. If the United States looks the other way (as it more or less did prior to 2004), Chávez appears to have won. If the United States overreacts, as it increasingly has in recent months, Chávez proves his point. Aspiring autocrats, take note: Trashing the United States is a low-risk, high-return policy for gaining support.

Controlled chaos

Ultimately, all authoritarian regimes seek power by following the same principle. They raise society's tolerance for state intervention. Thomas Hobbes, the 17th-century British philosopher, offered some tips for accomplishing this goal. The more insecurity that citizens face - the closer they come to living in the brutish state of nature - the more they will welcome state power. Chávez may not have read Hobbes, but he understands Hobbesian thinking to perfection. He knows that citizens who see a world collapsing will appreciate state interventions. Chávez therefore has no incentive to address Venezuela's assorted crises. Rather than mending the country's catastrophic healthcare system, he opens a few military hospitals for selected patients and brings in Cuban doctors to run ad hoc clinics. Rather than addressing the economy's lack of competitiveness, he offers subsidies and protection to economic agents in trouble. Rather than killing inflation, which is crucial to alleviating poverty, Chávez sets price controls and creates local grocery stores with subsidized prices. Rather than promoting stable property rights to boost investment and employment, he expands state employment.

Like most fashion designers, Chávez is not a complete original. His style of authoritarianism has influences. His anti-Americanism, for instance, is pure Castro; his use of state resources to reward loyalists and punish critics is quintessential Latin American populism; and his penchant for packing institutions was surely learned from several market-oriented presidents in the 1990s.

Chávez has absorbed and melded these techniques into a coherent model for modern authoritarianism. The student is now emerging as a teacher, and his syllabus suits today's post-totalitarian world, in which democracies in developing countries are strong enough to survive traditional coups by old-fashioned dictators but besieged by institutional disarray. From Ecuador to Egypt to Russia, there are vast breeding grounds for competitive authoritarianism.

When President Bush criticized Chávez after November's Summit of the Americas in Argentina, he may have contented himself with the belief that Chávez was a lone holdout as a wave of democracy sweeps the globe. But Chávez has already learned to surf that wave quite nicely, and others may follow in his wake.

[Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in Foreign Policy.]

Javier Corrales is associate professor of government at Amherst College.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/38632/

---

Hugo Chavez in His Own Words

By Greg Palast, The Progressive
Posted on July 26, 2006

You'd think George Bush would get down on his knees and kiss Hugo Chávez's behind. Not only has Chávez delivered cheap oil to the Bronx and other poor communities in the United States. And not only did he offer to bring aid to the victims of Katrina. In my interview with the president of Venezuela on March 28, he made Bush the following astonishing offer: Chávez would drop the price of oil to $50 a barrel, "not too high, a fair price," he said - a third less than the $75 a barrel for oil recently posted on the spot market. That would bring down the price at the pump by about a buck, from $3 to $2 a gallon.

But our President has basically told Chávez to take his cheaper oil and stick it up his pipeline. Before I explain why Bush has done so, let me explain why Chávez has the power to pull it off - and the method in the seeming madness of his "take-my-oil-please!" deal.

Venezuela, Chávez told me, has more oil than Saudi Arabia. A nutty boast? Not by a long shot. In fact, his surprising claim comes from a most surprising source: the U.S. Department of Energy. In an internal report, the DOE estimates that Venezuela has five times the Saudis' reserves.

However, most of Venezuela's mega-horde of crude is in the form of "extra-heavy" oil - liquid asphalt - which is ghastly expensive to pull up and refine. Oil has to sell above $30 a barrel to make the investment in extra-heavy oil worthwhile. A big dip in oil's price - and, after all, oil cost only $18 a barrel six years ago - would bankrupt heavy-oil investors. Hence Chávez's offer: Drop the price to $50 - and keep it there. That would guarantee Venezuela's investment in heavy oil.

But the ascendance of Venezuela within OPEC necessarily means the decline of the power of the House of Saud. And the Bush family wouldn't like that one bit. It comes down to "petro-dollars." When George W. ferried then-Crown Prince (now King) Abdullah of Saudi Arabia around the Crawford ranch in a golf cart it wasn't because America needs Arabian oil. The Saudis will always sell us their petroleum. What Bush needs is Saudi petro-dollars. Saudi Arabia has, over the past three decades, kindly recycled the cash sucked from the wallets of American SUV owners and sent much of the loot right back to New York to buy U.S. Treasury bills and other U.S. assets.

The Gulf potentates understand that in return for lending the U.S. Treasury the cash to fund George Bush's $2 trillion rise in the nation's debt, they receive protection in return. They lend us petro-dollars, we lend them the 82nd Airborne.

Chávez would put an end to all that. He'll sell us oil relatively cheaply - but intends to keep the petro-dollars in Latin America. Recently, Chávez withdrew $20 billion from the U.S. Federal Reserve and, at the same time, lent or committed a like sum to Argentina, Ecuador, and other Latin American nations.

Chávez, notes The Wall Street Journal, has become a "tropical IMF." And indeed, as the Venezuelan president told me, he wants to abolish the Washington-based International Monetary Fund, with its brutal free-market diktats, and replace it with an "International Humanitarian Fund," an IHF, or more accurately, an International Hugo Fund. In addition, Chávez wants OPEC to officially recognize Venezuela as the cartel's reserve leader, which neither the Saudis nor Bush will take kindly to.

Politically, Venezuela is torn in two. Chávez's "Bolivarian Revolution," a close replica of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal - a progressive income tax, public works, social security, cheap electricity - makes him wildly popular with the poor. And most Venezuelans are poor. His critics, a four-centuries' old white elite, unused to sharing oil wealth, portray him as a Castro-hugging anti-Christ.

Chávez's government, which used to brush off these critics, has turned aggressive on them. I challenged Chávez several times over charges brought against Súmate, his main opposition group. The two founders of the nongovernmental organization, which led the recall campaign against Chávez, face eight years in prison for taking money from the Bush Administration and the International Republican [Party] Institute. No nation permits foreign funding of political campaigns, but the charges (no one is in jail) seem like a heavy hammer to use on the minor infractions of these pathetic gadflies.

Bush's reaction to Chávez has been a mix of hostility and provocation. Washington supported the coup attempt against Chávez in 2002, and Condoleezza Rice and Donald Rumsfeld have repeatedly denounced him. The revised National Security Strategy of the United States of America, released in March, says, "In Venezuela, a demagogue awash in oil money is undermining democracy and seeking to destabilize the region."

So when the Reverend Pat Robertson, a Bush ally, told his faithful in August 2005 that Chávez has to go, it was not unreasonable to assume that he was articulating an Administration wish. "If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him," Robertson said, "I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

There are only two ways to defeat the rise of Chávez as the New Abdullah of the Americas. First, the unattractive option: Cut the price of oil below $30 a barrel. That would make Chávez's crude worthless. Or, option two: Kill him.

Palast: Your opponents are saying that you are beginning a slow-motion dictatorship. Is that what we are seeing?

Hugo Chávez: They have been saying that for a long time. When they're short of ideas, any excuse will do as a vehicle for lies. That is totally false. I would like to invite the citizens of Great Britain and the citizens of the U.S. and the citizens of the world to come here and walk freely through the streets of Venezuela, to talk to anyone they want, to watch television, to read the papers. We are building a true democracy, with human rights for everyone, social rights, education, health care, pensions, social security, and jobs.

Palast: Some of your opponents are being charged with the crime of taking money from George Bush. Will you send them to jail?

Chávez: It's not up to me to decide that. We have the institutions that do that. These people have admitted they have received money from the government of the United States. It's up to the prosecutors to decide what to do, but the truth is that we can't allow the U.S. to finance the destabilization of our country. What would happen if we financed somebody in the U.S. to destabilize the government of George Bush? They would go to prison, certainly.

Palast: How do you respond to Bush's charge that you are destabilizing the region and interfering in the elections of other Latin American countries?

Chávez: Mr. Bush is an illegitimate President. In Florida, his brother Jeb deleted many black voters from the electoral registers. So this President is the result of a fraud. Not only that, he is also currently applying a dictatorship in the U.S. People can be put in jail without being charged. They tap phones without court orders. They check what books people take out of public libraries. They arrested Cindy Sheehan because of a T-shirt she was wearing demanding the return of the troops from Iraq. They abuse blacks and Latinos. And if we are going to talk about meddling in other countries, then the U.S. is the champion of meddling in other people's affairs. They invaded Guatemala, they overthrew Salvador Allende, invaded Panama and the Dominican Republic. They were involved in the coup d'état in Argentina thirty years ago.

Palast: Is the U.S. interfering in your elections here?

Chávez: They have interfered for 200 years. They have tried to prevent us from winning the elections, they supported the coup d'état, they gave millions of dollars to the coup plotters, they supported the media, newspapers, outlaw movements, military intervention, and espionage. But here the empire is finished, and I believe that before the end of this century, it will be finished in the rest of the world. We will see the burial of the empire of the eagle.

Palast: You don't interfere in the elections of other nations in Latin America?

Chávez: Absolutely not. I concern myself with Venezuela. However, what's going on now is that some rightwing movements are transforming me into a pawn in the domestic politics of their countries, by making statements that are groundless. About candidates like Morales [of Bolivia], for example. They said I financed the candidacy of President Lula [of Brazil], which is totally false. They said I financed the candidacy of Kirchner [of Argentina], which is totally false. In Mexico, recently, the rightwing party has used my image for its own profit. What's happened is that in Latin America there is a turn to the left. Latin Americans have gotten tired of the Washington consensus - a neoliberalism that has aggravated misery and poverty.

Palast: You have spent millions of dollars of your nation's oil wealth throughout Latin America. Are you really helping these other nations or are you simply buying political support for your regime?

Chávez: We are brothers and sisters. That's one of the reasons for the wrath of the empire. You know that Venezuela has the biggest oil reserves in the world. And the biggest gas reserves in this hemisphere, the eighth in the world. Up until seven years ago, Venezuela was a U.S. oil colony. All of our oil was going up to the north, and the gas was being used by the U.S. and not by us. Now we are diversifying. Our oil is helping the poor. We are selling to the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, some Central American countries, Uruguay, Argentina.

Palast: And the Bronx?

Chávez: In the Bronx it is a donation. In all the cases I just mentioned before, it is trade. However, it's not free trade, just fair commerce. We also have an international humanitarian fund as a result of oil revenues.

Palast: Why did George Bush turn down your help for New Orleans after the hurricane?

Chávez: You should ask him, but from the very beginning of the terrible disaster of Katrina, our people in the U.S., like the president of CITGO, went to New Orleans to rescue people. We were in close contact by phone with Jesse Jackson. We hired buses. We got food and water. We tried to protect them; they are our brothers and sisters. Doesn't matter if they are African, Asian, Cuban, whatever.

Palast: Are you replacing the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as "Daddy Big Bucks"?

Chávez: I do wish that the IMF and the World Bank would disappear soon.

Palast: And it would be the Bank of Hugo?

Chávez: No. The International Humanitarian Bank. We are just creating an alternative way to conduct financial exchange. It is based on cooperation. For example, we send oil to Uruguay for their refinery and they are paying us with cows.

Palast: Milk for oil.

Chávez: That's right. Milk for oil. The Argentineans also pay us with cows. And they give us medical equipment to combat cancer. It's a transfer of technology. We also exchange oil for software technology. Uruguay is one of the biggest producers of software. We are breaking with the neoliberal model. We do not believe in free trade. We believe in fair trade and exchange, not competition but cooperation. I'm not giving away oil for free. Just using oil, first to benefit our people, to relieve poverty. For a hundred years we have been one of the largest oil-producing countries in the world but with a 60 percent poverty rate and now we are canceling the historical debt.

Palast: Speaking of the free market, you've demanded back taxes from U.S. oil companies. You have eliminated contracts for North American, British, and European oil companies. Are you trying to slice out the British and American oil companies from Venezuela?

Chávez: No, we don't want them to go, and I don't think they want to leave the country, either. We need each other. It's simply that we have recovered our oil sovereignty. They didn't pay taxes. They didn't pay royalties. They didn't give an account of their actions to the government. They had more land than had previously been established in the contracts. They didn't comply with the agreed technology exchange. They polluted the environment and didn't pay anything towards the cleanup. They now have to comply with the law.

Palast: You've said that you imagine the price of oil rising to $100 dollars per barrel. Are you going to use your new oil wealth to squeeze the planet?

Chávez: No, no. We have no intention of squeezing anyone. Now, we have been squeezed and very hard. Five hundred years of squeezing us and stifling us, the people of the South. I do believe that demand is increasing and supply is dropping and the large reservoirs are running out. But it's not our fault. In the future, there must be an agreement between the large consumers and the large producers.

Palast: What happens when the oil money runs out, what happens when the price of oil falls as it always does? Will the Bolivarian revolution of Hugo Chávez simply collapse because there's no money to pay for the big free ride?

Chávez: I don't think it will collapse, in the unlikely case of oil running out today. The revolution will survive. It does not rely solely on oil for its survival. There is a national will, there is a national idea, a national project. However, we are today implementing a strategic program called the Oil Sowing Plan: using oil wealth so Venezuela can become an agricultural country, a tourist destination, an industrialized country with a diversified economy. We are investing billions of dollars in the infrastructure: power generators using thermal energy, a large railway, roads, highways, new towns, new universities, new schools, recuperating land, building tractors, and giving loans to farmers. One day we won't have any more oil, but that will be in the twenty-second century. Venezuela has oil for another 200 years.

Palast: But the revolution can come to an end if there's another coup and it succeeds. Do you believe Bush is still trying to overthrow your government?

Chávez: He would like to, but what you want is one thing, and what you cannot really obtain is another.

Investigative reporter Greg Palast, who interviewed President Hugo Chávez for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), is the author of "Armed Madhouse: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War," from which this is adapted.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/38549/