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VHeadline.com commentarist Chris Herz writes: It made a refreshing change to hear conciliatory sounds from US Ambassador Charles Shapiro as he tendered his farewells to the government of the Fifth Republic. This man, deeply complicitous in the events of the April coup and in subsequent political attacks on the lawful government of the nation to which he was sent by Washington, still could not quite bring himself to speak truth, however.

He leaves us with the statement that “the United States is not an empire”, although the cynical might take one look at conquered and colonialized Iraq and say that alone is quite enough to give him the lie. But what was new and even startling in his parting statements were denunciations of the appearance of Colombian paras just outside of Caracas.

Were it not for the heavy resistance and high costs in both money and blood the imperial forces have encountered in Iraq, we may be sure that the Colombian paramilitaries would have been accompanied by US Marines. No one should ever forget that. And we may be sure that President Hugo Chavez Frias will never be that naive.

The assault on democracy in Haiti, the rising crescendo of political and economic attacks on Cuba, and a continuing propaganda blitz in US media against the Bolivarian Republic show us that the imperial regime has accepted that it must delay its program. But it remains far from any abandonment of its hopes to exploit political and social division in your country and others for its own advantage. This is the historical pattern of US relations with all of the nations south of the Rio Grande del Norte. Neither property party here in the USA will voluntarily change the basic design of our policy.

What President Chavez and Vice President Rangel have done, correctly I believe, is to exploit the man-power shortages in the US military (as I write this, new US and satellite troops are being sent to the Mideast even from threatened Korea) to buy time for Venezuela to strengthen its conventional military and build up a new popular militia.

We have also, in several editorials called upon the Bolivarian authorities to be as creative on the diplomatic front as they have shown themselves on the military. We asked them to consider asking Holland if it is her intention to join the United States in aggression against Venezuela from her territories off your coast. And if hostilities are not intended to bar the use of the Antilles to US provocations and aggression.

This column has also appealed to President Chavez and Foreign Minister Perez to formally accuse US President George W. Bush and his leading officials of the war crimes they have already committed before the new International Criminal Court. This court is a part of the legal machinery of the United Nations and has jurisdiction to deal with violations of the Geneva Conventions, unprovoked military aggression and other crimes against humanity.

Some readers have suggested that because the USA are not signatory to the Convention that the court has no jurisdiction over its officials and soldiers. Nothing could be further from the truth, although these readers are hardly to be blamed for laboring under yet another misunderstanding, one carefully propagated by the corporate press.

After all, the USA has been, since day one of the Bush administration, using threats and bribes to arrange 89 bilateral agreements with other nations attempting to exempt its personnel from legal investigation or prosecution. But such individual arrangements only apply to each individual nation in its own relationship to the USA.

Ironically, a non-signatory country like the USA has lost the right to interpose between the international process and accused persons it own judiciary! And the vigor with which the USA has pursued this tactic of bilateral exemption reveals her sensitivity to this problem. And reveals as well a conspiracy at the summit of her government to subvert this aspect of international order as it has so many others.

Somehow this culture of imperious imperial impunity must be ended. And Venezuela's own President Chavez has the power to do it.

No wonder Mr. Shapiro was so nice and polite.

Chris Herz
cdherz44@yahoo.com

www.vheadline.com/herz More VHeadline.com commentaries by Chris Herz

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