Here are the 45 goals of communism as stated by W. Cleon Skousen some 50 years ago. Read them with understanding and discernment and don’t be fooled by “President and Fellows of Harvard College” who copyrighted the updated communist manifesto—Empire.

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament by the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet Satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the UN.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev’s promise in 1955 to settle the Germany question by free elections under supervision of the UN.

9. Prolong the conference to ban atomic tests because the U.S. has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet Satellites individual representation in the UN.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the UN as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”

23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a world-wide basis.

30. Discredit the American founding fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.”

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of “the big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture—education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connaly Reservation so the U.S. cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.

The Castro Influence
by Paul Crespo

While many see Fidel Castro as an aging and decrepit dictator who poses little threat to America, he remains the inspiration for and godfather behind a growing global anti-American mafia of rogue states, terrorist groups and political movements.

These friends of Castro stretch from Latin America to the Middle East, Asia and Africa, and have been cultivated and developed by Castro during more than four decades in power.

Castro recently visited China, Vietnam and Malaysia, where he was elected president of the “non-aligned” movement, consisting of 116 traditionally anti-American countries, beginning in 2006. In Hanoi he repeated the familiar statement that the “American empire will eventually be brought to its knees.”

Castro also has visited his old friend, Libya’s terrorist leader Muammar Gadhafi, as well as the Iranian Islamic fundamentalist terror sponsor Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. In Libya, Castro said the “Cuban and Libyan revolutions have similar objectives.” In Iran he also publicly stated, “Together we will bring America to its knees.” Some have reported a biological weapons link between Cuba and Iran, with Castro providing Iran “dual use” biotechnology in 2001. In July 2002 Castro declared an expansion of relations with Iran.

Immediately following the Bush administration’s inclusion of North Korea in the Axis of Evil, along with Iran and Iraq, Fidel Castro called for strengthening ties between Cuba and North Korea. On Feb. 7, 2002, Castro praised his counterpart, Kim Jong-il, and his defiant anti-American stance.

Senior North Korean and Cuban military leaders met in Pyongyang to “strengthen relations between their armed forces.” The Cuban delegation, led by Gen. Alvaro Lopez Miera, vice minister and chief of staff of the island’s Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), was received by the chief of staff of the Korean People’s Army (KPA). Lopez Miera is a close confidant of Fidel’s brother, Cuban Defense Minister Raul Castro.

Castro’s primary focus, however, remains on Latin America and his right-hand man there, Venezuela’s dictator, Hugo

Chavez. Chavez has stated that Cuba and Venezuela are, in effect, “one team.” Chavez and Castro meet and talk regularly. Since 2000 Chavez has provided Castro with more than $2 billion in direct sales. Defectors have reported that Castro has virtually taken over Venezuela’s intelligence and security service, DISIP, especially the counterterrorism and intelligence-analysis sections.

Several thousand Cuban “sports trainers” and “teachers” in Venezuela are also believed to be Cuban intelligence operatives conducting communist indoctrination as well as training pro-Chavez paramilitary groups called Bolivian Circles. These armed groups have been used to intimidate Chavez’s democratic opposition.

Like Castro, Chavez is believed to be sympathetic with and even helpful to various terrorist groups. Senior American military officials have expressed concern about Chavez’s support for terror groups such as the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia), and defectors have reported Venezuelan links to Middle Eastern terror groups. Most recently, a potential Muslim suicide bomber arriving from Caracas with a Venezuelan passport was arrested in London.

Castro also has promoted the international and anti-American organization headquartered in Brazil known as the Sao Paulo Forum. Brazil’s new president, Inacio Lula da Silva, founded and became the chairman of this group, which is a successor to Castro’s old Tricontinental Congress and serves as a coordinating body for anti-American, communist and other radical and terror groups in Latin American. Its annual meetings focus on bashing America and capitalism while promoting radical socialism and communism under the guise of leftist “populism” and “anti-globalism.”

The Forum’s goal is to finance and support leftist and anti-American groups and leaders throughout Latin America, ultimately creating anti-American regimes that could, among other things, serve as bases for international terrorism.

The recent elections of Lula da Silva in Brazil and Col. Lino Gutierrez in Ecuador (a Chavez-supported former coup plotter) were seen as victories for the Castro-Chavez axis and the Forum. The next targets appear to be crisis-ridden Argentina and perhaps Paraguay and Bolivia as well.

—NewsMax.com, August 2003, p. 64

South of the Border
by Phil Brennan

While Washington’s attention is focused on the Middle East, communism and communist terrorism are threatening America’s security in Latin America, where another Axis of Evil is spreading its tentacles throughout the region.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is getting credit from the International Monetary Fund and Wall Street for following the orthodox economic policies of former President Fernando Cardoso while plunging his nation into communism and allying himself with Fidel Castro and Castro’s puppet in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.

So radical is the regime under Lula that the Rio de Janeiro city council recently declared President Bush persona non grata by passing a resolution offered by Fernando Gusamo, a councilman affiliated with Brazil’s Communist Party.

Brazilian-American Gerald Brant, a writer and former candidate for Brazil’s congress, wrote that “anti-American sentiment has grown so high in Brazil that President Bush received a lower approval rating among Brazilians than Saddam Hussein in an opinion poll conducted during the war in Iraq by the respected IBOPE Institute. This phenomenon has some relation to the Brazilian Workers’ Party’s (known as PT) attitudes towards the US.”

When Lula was running for the presidency, Brant reported, he covered up PT’s historic radicalism, but once elected he was able to pacify Wall Street while giving PT cover to gradually renationalize formerly privatized assets. “This strategy has worked brilliantly, so far,” Brant wrote.

“While Brazil’s new socialist government has drawn applause from the IMF and financial circles for continuing former President Cardoso’s orthodox economic policies in order to maintain bond and currency market stability, it has adopted an aggressive and nationalistic foreign policy clearly based on PT doctrine.”

Rebuilding Communism

Brant points his finger at Lula’s foreign policy adviser, Marco Aurelio Garcia, a notorious hard-line Marxist operative and founder and executive secretary of Sao Paulo Forum, a coalition of leftist parties and revolutionary movements dedicated, Garcia says, to “offsetting our losses in Eastern Europe with our victories in Latin America.”

In other words, rebuilding shattered world communism in Latin America.

A NewsMax.com investigation has revealed that Garcia, in his role as head of Sao Paulo Forum, controls and coordinates the activities of subversives and extremists from the Rio Grande to the southernmost tip of Argentina.

This new axis of terrorism begins in Cuba, then works its way down to Colombia, financed with Venezuelan oil billions, and ends in Lula’s Brazil.

In a policy dictated by Havana, Garcia has shown special interest in terrorist Manuel Marulanda Velez, aka “Tirofijo,” leader of the terrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Every year since 1990, Garcia has made it his priority to meet with FARC. The meetings have taken place not just in Havana (with Fidel Castro himself always present) but also in Mexico, where Marco Aurelio Garcia traveled to meet with FARC member Marco Leo Calara on Dec. 5, 2000.

What they talk about is a matter that remains behind closed doors. But every time they meet, FARC always increases its

attacks in the weeks that follow, with a high cost in human lives.

Brazil’s foreign policy, under the guidance of Garcia, will be designed in Havana. Garcia’s Brazil will actively work against United States policy, starting with its policy toward Castro. “We’ll attempt to eliminate the trade embargo against Cuba,” he promises.

Garcia describes PT as “radical, of the left, socialist.” But he is more than radical, and more to the left of mere socialists. Garcia is, in fact, a hard-line communist. He wants to revive communism.

The Communist ‘Agenda is Clear’

In an article he wrote about Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto, he concluded: “The agenda is clear. If this new horizon which we search for is still called communism, it is time to reconstitute it.”

Whereas Lula strives to fool the world about the true nature of his Marxist regime, Garcia makes no bones about what is going on. “We have to first give the impression that we are democrats, initially, we have to accept certain things. But that won’t last.”

Since Lula took power on Jan. 1, his government has:

• gone back and forth on abandoning the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and building nuclear weapons.

• gone back and forth on offering exile to Saddam Hussein.

• refused the Colombian government’s request to consider the FARC terrorists.

• shored up Chavez with oil shipments during the height of the Venezuelan opposition’s strike.

• declared a “strategic partnership” with communist China.

• abandoned scientific cooperation agreements with the U.S.

• appointed a self-defined Trotskyite and a Communist Party leader as Cabinet ministers.

• repeatedly compared Free Trade Area of the Americas to “U.S. annexation.”

• vocally supported France’s anti-war efforts.

• lobbied Chile to vote against the U.S. on the U.N. Security Council and abstained from condemning Castro’s crackdown on dissidents at the U.N. Human Rights Committee in Geneva.

All of these are ominous signs for the future of Latin America. As Richard Nixon once remarked, “As goes Brazil, so goes Latin America.” If that’s true, Latin America is headed for a communist takeover.

Brant wrote: “Lula’s brand of socialism is becoming a role model for the entire region. Analysts consider Nestor Kirchner’s Presidential election victory in Argentina a boon to Mercosul (the customs union between Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay) and a serious setback for the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas) negotiations with the U.S.”

Brant worries that “the entire South American continent may be getting off the train. …Fidel Castro’s wildest revolutionary ambitions are being fulfilled right under the nose of the Bush administration. As Castro once said, ‘the U.S. can’t attack us if the rest of Latin America is in flames.’”

—NewsMax.com, August 2003, p. 62, 63

Castro’s Cuba and the NAACP
by Steve Miller

Cuban dissidents yesterday accused the NAACP of a double standard in its promotion of human rights, defending those of blacks in South Africa while embracing—rather than condemning—the treatment of blacks in Cuba.

“I have never heard of a chapter of the NAACP taking an interest in the Cuban Negro,” said Eusebio Penalver Mazorra, a black Cuban who spent 28 of his 69 years as a jailed dissident in the communist nation.

“While they moved in a precise way for solidarity to get rid of apartheid in South Africa, we have never received their support, even though we have asked for it.”

Mr. Mazorra is part of the Municipalities of Cuba in Exile, an umbrella group for several factions of the Cuban community who now live in the United States after being jailed under the regime of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.

With the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People holding its 94th annual convention here, Cuban interest groups have lobbied for a meeting with its president, Kweisi Mfume, who yesterday told The Washington Times he understood the perception of such a double standard.

“As long as they know that there were other groups also advocating in South Africa. It wasn’t just the NAACP,” said Mr. Mfume.

With regard to those jailed by Mr. Castro, “Our concern is right up there with everyone else’s,” Mr. Mfume said. I think there needs to be a diplomatic effort here, and I think it will take negotiation, and most likely through back-channel communications. But something has to come out of this to help relations between the two nations.”

The United States maintains no diplomatic relations with Cuba, and trade and travel are severely limited.

Of the many overtures made to him, Mr. Mfume yesterday chose to spend 90 minutes with the Cuban American National Foundation, a group that is seen by some Cubans as too mainstream but that still wields a powerful anti-Castro stance.

“What we did was to establish a starting point,” said CANF Executive Director Joe Garcia. The meeting was attended by some of Mr. Mfume’s staff, we well as members of the local Cuban community.

“He is aware of what is going on in Cuba,” Mr. Garcia said. “But I am aware that we cannot deprogram him in one hour. Clearly, the debate in Cuba is one of civil rights and justice. But what we did was create a point of reference.”

Anti-Castro groups here have stepped up calls for international action against Cuba for human rights violations since the April execution of three black Cubans who attempted to hijack a boat to Miami.

The execution drew the condemnation of the international community and renewed accusations of racism in the Castro regime, which seized power in 1959. Cuba is 70 percent black,

but few blacks occupy high ranks in Mr. Castro’s government.

The NAACP did not comment on the executions.

As Mr. Garcia met with Mr. Mfume yesterday, Venezuelan human-rights activist Ana Maria Lamar accused the NAACP of hypocrisy for the trade agreement it struck with Mr. Castro during a fall visit to the island.

During that trip, a delegation of 18, including NAACP officials and leaders of black farmer groups, made a deal under which black American farmers would sell their goods to Cuba.

“[Mr. Mfume] is helping to subsidize a regime while blacks are being imprisoned and executed,” said Miss Lamar.

“We are asking that the NAACP be consistent in its human rights policies,” she said. “Maybe now that the national leaders are here and preparing to hold a Caribbean summit, they will use what we know about how Castro treats blacks as they speak.”

Mr. Mfume said that there are ways to deal with Castro’s actions.

“What we hope we can do is to work in coalition with these [Cuban human rights] groups,” he said.

Despite his tough talk on Castro yesterday, Mr. Mfume has praised Cuba in several discussions this week.

Mr. Mfume recounted a fall trip to Cuba during a press conference over the weekend: “We met with African American students who matriculated from Cuba—by the way, at no cost—from all over the U.S. because they couldn’t get into medical school here because of this system that still sometimes creates impediments.”

He has also lauded Cuba’s national health care plan and praised its public education.

On Monday, Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, himself a Cuban, further inflamed some local Cubans by apologizing to South African leader Nelson Mandela for a snub by Miami city officials here during a visit in 1990. Officials refused to welcome Mr. Mandela because of his close ties with Mr. Castro.

The apology was made during the mayor’s opening remarks at the convention.

Mr. Mandela had enraged the officials with comments he made in Havana about Cuban exiles in Miami.

“Who are they to call for an observance of human rights in Cuba?” Mr. Mandela asked in a speech. “They kept quiet for 42 years when human rights were attacked in South Africa.”

“Where is our apology from Mandela?” asked Ernesto Diaz Rodriquez, a Cuban immigrant. “Our mayor, a Cuban, apologizes for no reason. And he does not mention the oppression of blacks in our country.”

—The Washington Times, July 16, 2003, p. 1

Communist Venezuela, Here We Come
by Joseph Farah

Imagine if Fidel Castro discovered enough oil in Cuba to permit his nation to become part of the powerful cartel known as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Some in U.S. intelligence and even the State Department believe something as bad or worse has indeed happened with the rise to power in Venezuela of President Hugo Chavez.

In fact, when OPEC ministers met in Caracas, Venezuela, last week, the host country refused to seat a representative from newly liberated Iraq because of its ties to the United States.

Venezuela, which opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq, won’t recognize Iraq’s delegation to an Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries meeting July 31, the oil minister said Friday.

Rafael Ramirez said no Iraqi official would be allowed to attend any OPEC meeting until an “internationally recognized” government is in place.

“They can’t attend the OPEC meeting,” he said. “Perhaps some Arab states might meet with them informally.”

Venezuela is the world’s No. 5 oil producer.

But Chavez didn’t just oppose the U.S. intervention in Iraq. It would not be unfair to say he supported the other side.

Venezuelan military defectors say the radical Chavez not only gets his political inspiration from Fidel Castro, he has developed ties with terrorist groups throughout the world, including al-Qaida, and was at least cordial in relations with Saddam Hussein before his government was overthrown.

As Air Force Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo, who was Chavez’s pilot, told WorldNetDaily, “the American people should awaken and be aware of the enemy they have just three hours’ flight from the United States.”

Diaz has tried to warn U.S. officials of Chavez’s direct involvement with international terrorism and his formation of a bloc of Latin American countries opposed to the United States.

“My objective here in the U.S. is to show who Chavez really is and the danger he represents for the whole Western Hemisphere and especially in Venezuela.”

Diaz said he was part of an operation in which Chavez gave $1 million to al-Qaida for relocation costs, shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. He is one of more than 100 military officers who have quit the Chavez regime as the president tries to hang on to power amid a month-long general strike that has cut off oil exports, his primary source of income.

In addition to his purported al-Qaida links, Chavez has been warmly received in travels to Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea, China and Libya.

Now there are rumors in Caracas that U.S. Ambassador Charles Shapiro may soon be declared persona non grata.

Sources close to the top say Chavez believes the ambassador’s increasing involvement in national affairs is aimed personally against him. Some officials reacted with a sigh of relief as ambassador Shapiro left on a two-week vacation.

“It is a breath of fresh air,” said one official reacting to Shapiro’s departure. The ambassador, who had just attended a meeting with Executive Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel, talked to journalists on his way out of the meeting and said: “The U.S. and Venezuela have a memorable relationship,” reflecting on the long lasting cooperation between the two countries.

But the ambassador could not refrain from dealing with the immediate problem of the troubled country and told the media the most important thing on the agenda is “naming a new board of the national electoral college as a beginning of fulfilling a 29th of May accord signed between the government and the opposition.” Local media were quick to say that Ambassador Shapiro’s remarks echoed the views of many who believe only a new electoral college can pave the

road to a possible referendum which could end the regime of Chavez.

The relationships between Washington and Caracas deteriorated following the 1998 landslide election victory of Chavez, a revolutionary paratrooper who in 1992 led an unsuccessful coup against the democratically elected President Carlos Andreas Perez. At that time the colonel led the Revolutionary Simon Bolivar Movement, a clandestine group of left-wing officers. Observers say it is ironic the former rebel officer, who led hundreds of soldiers to the capital in a bloody coup that resulted in the deaths of 120 people, is now accusing others for plotting against his regime. The coup was quelled by soldiers loyal to the government and Chavez ended up in jail where he stayed for two years. The president, once a coup leader, is now warning his supporters, known as “The Red Berets,” of a coup against his regime.

The colonel gradually became a popular figure, the hero of the left, and the champion of the poor and the underprivileged. Those groups backed him in his election campaign, during which he preached for social and economic reform. His clandestine group was renamed to The Movement of the Fifth Republic. Chavez took over from President Andreas Perez, sentenced for embezzlement and corruption. Perez is now hiding in the Dominican Republic.

It was easy to blame the previous administration and the country’s elite and the Catholic Church for being all corrupt. These accusations haunted Chavez himself as disillusioned workers and a group of army officers forced his temporary removal on April 12, 2002, and the appointment of an interim government. The new government, under attack by The Red Berets and pro-Chavez officers, created a situation in which the caretaker government could not survive and within days Chavez was back in office.

Following his return to power, the president strengthened his agenda on a number of fronts, mainly through dramatic speeches and heated rhetoric. These speeches were aimed against the traditional Venezuelan power brokers, the banking system, the capitalist-style economy and the Church.

While busy pressuring the electorate to gradually change the “Bolivarian Constitution” to fit his agenda, he demonstrated a warm and friendly relationship with Castro. Intelligence analysts believe this friendship between the two paved the way for the Cuban intelligence’s move into Venezuela and the army. Some in the opposition are accusing the president of hiring Cuban bodyguards and agitators, who, from time to time, participated in anti-opposition attacks further destabilizing the country. Chavez was also the only western democratically elected president who in 2002 made a point of visiting Saddam Hussein in Baghdad. This on its own demonstrated his anti-American attitude and his defiance of President Bush.

Experts analyzing Chavez’s close relationship with Castro and his Baghdad trip say he is well aware of the power his country gains from the huge oil reserves.

During the period between January and June 2003, as the government was practically forced into negotiations with the opposition, the U.S., free from concerns over the flow of oil,

started to take a more open position on Venezuela. Since then Ambassador Shapiro, backed by the State Department, got more and more involved in the internal politics of Venezuela. The ambassador’s statements and those of other State Department officials left no doubt the U.S. was hoping a democratic system would allow a referendum to end the political career of the paratrooper dubbed Castro’s best friend.

Lately the president is being criticized by some of the same groups who supported him following his 1992 coup attempt. He is now being accused of behaving as a dictator rather than as a democratic head of state. Also criticizing him is the Human Rights Watch organization. A July 18 HRW document on Venezuela dealt with the Supreme Court decision to uphold “prior censorship and ‘insult laws.’” The HRW criticized the Supreme Court, which based its decision on constitutional changes and threats aimed at the justices.

The court stated that under articles 148 and 149 of the Criminal Code, people can be imprisoned for insulting “by speech or in writing” the president, the vice president, the president of the legislature, the chief justice and numerous other government officials, or by showing them “lack of respect in any other way.” Article 150 prohibits anyone from insulting the legislature, the judiciary and the cabinet. Human rights activists pointed out that the court’s decisions disregarded, not only democracy and the right of free speech, but also article 13 of the American convention on human rights and censorship. In 1995 the Inter American Commission of Human Rights published a report on ‘insult laws’ with the conclusion “the special protection desacato laws (laws endangering freedom of the press) ... are not congruent with the objective of a democratic society to foster public debate.”

The Chavez administration saw the Supreme Court decision as vindication of their ongoing vocal, at times brutal, attacks on the media. They assumed the media should and could be reined in. Decisions made by the government prohibited television and radio from reporting on violent demonstrations and riots. As the world’s human rights communities were sounding the alarm, the president and his top ministers did not yield.

The most alarming move by the president and chief of staff team is the plan to create a reserve territorial army, apparently following the Cuban model. The army will introduce the new units as operational by June 24, 2004, when the territorial reserve force will include 250,000 men, comprised of soldiers and volunteers. The first units were introduced as they paraded with the army on the last Armed Forces Day. The opposition reacted immediately with criticism claiming the Chavez plan was intended to enable the government to declare a state of emergency whenever it suited its purpose.

Western intelligence officers are convinced the new territorials are being formed and trained with direct Cuban involvement. Cuba is also seen as being behind Chavez’s friendly overtures to the Colombian left-wing guerrillas.

—WorldNetDaily, July 28, 2003