Sumate is a Venezuelan group, with 45,000 volunteer members, which has produced a detailed white paper critiquing the obviously corrupt referendum on continuing Castroite Hugo Chavez's tenure as president. Recall that Jimmy Carter pronounced his blessing on the election with unseemly haste, a move for which he deserves deep scorn.

The website Vcrisis, an excellent resource on Venezuela, excerpts the white paper, which can take quite a long time to load in pdf format.

We will continue to pay attention to the situation in Venezuela which, despite our media's distinterest, is of vital importance to all Americans, for reasons which go beyond Venezuela's role as a top ranking supplier of close—by oil to our massive Gulf Coast refineries. The emergence of a leftist, racialist demagogue threatens not just our energy supply but also the favorable trend towards democracy and capitalism in Latin America, a region to whose fate we are intrinsically linked.

Thomas Lifson   10 21 04