Blackwater mercenaries stride through New Orleans

There was nothing natural about the disaster that befell New Orleans in Katrina’s aftermath.

Mother Jones | Aug 28, 2009

By James Ridgeway

Confronted with images of corpses floating in the blackened floodwaters or baking in the sun on abandoned highways, there aren’t too many people left who see what happened following Hurricane Katrina as a purely “natural” disaster. The dominant narratives that have emerged, in the four years since the storm, are of a gross human tragedy, compounded by social inequities and government ineptitude—a crisis subsequently exploited in every way possible for political and financial gain.

But there’s an even harsher truth, one some New Orleans residents learned in the very first days but which is only beginning to become clear to the rest of us: What took place in this devastated American city was no less than a war, in which victims whose only crimes were poverty and blackness were treated as enemies of the state.

It started immediately after the storm and flood hit, when civilian aid was scarce—but private security forces already had boots on the ground. Some, like Blackwater (which has since redubbed itself Xe), were under federal contract, while a host of others answered to wealthy residents and businessmen who had departed well before Katrina and needed help protecting their property from the suffering masses left behind. According Jeremy Scahill’s reporting in The Nation, Blackwater set up an HQ in downtown New Orleans. Armed as they would be in Iraq, with automatic rifles, guns strapped to legs, and pockets overflowing with ammo, Blackwater contractors drove around in SUVs and unmarked cars with no license plates.

“When asked what authority they were operating under,” Scahill reported, “one guy said, ‘We’re on contract with the Department of Homeland Security.’ Then, pointing to one of his comrades, he said, ‘He was even deputized by the governor of the state of Louisiana. We can make arrests and use lethal force if we deem it necessary.’ The man then held up the gold Louisiana law enforcement badge he wore around his neck.”

The Blackwater operators described their mission in New Orleans as “securing neighborhoods,” as if they were talking about Sadr City. When National Guard troops descended on the city, the Army Times described their role as fighting “the insurgency in the city.” Brigadier Gen. Gary Jones, who commanded the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force, told the paper, “This place is going to look like Little Somalia. We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”

Ten days after the storm, the New York Times reported that although the city was calm with no signs of looting (though it acknowledged this had taken place previously), “New Orleans has turned into an armed camp, patrolled by thousands of local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, as well as National Guard troops and active-duty soldiers.” The local police superintendent ordered all weapons, including legally registered firearms, confiscated from civilians. But as the Times noted, that order didn’t “apply to hundreds of security guards hired by businesses and some wealthy individuals to protect property…[who] openly carry M-16’s and other assault rifles.” Scahill spoke to Michael Montgomery, the chief of security for one wealthy businessman who said his men came under fire from “black gangbangers” near the Ninth Ward. Armed with AR-15s and Glocks, Montgomery and his men “unleashed a barrage of bullets in the general direction of the alleged shooters on the overpass. ‘After that, all I heard was moaning and screaming, and the shooting stopped. That was it. Enough said.’”

Malik Rahim, a Vietnam veteran and longtime community activist, was one of the organizers of the Common Ground Collective, which quickly began dispensing basic aid and medical care in the first days after the hurricane. But far from aiding the relief workers, Rahim told me this week, the police and troops who began patrolling the streets treated them as criminals or “insurgents.” African American men caught outside also ran the risk of crossing paths with roving vigilante patrols who shot at will, he says. In this dangerous environment, Common Ground began to rely on white volunteers to move through a city that had simply become too perilous for blacks.

Full Story

Kantipur | Sep 21, 2008

BY UPENDRA LAMICHHANE

BARA, Sept 22 – Not even a week after Maoist minister Matrika Yadav retook a huge swathe of land and house belonging to several locals of Siraha, discarding Home Minister Bamdev Gautam’s directives to vacate it on September 15, local Maoist activists here in Bara district captured seven bigha land belonging to former king Gyanendra’s elder sister Shanti Singh at Simara-2, Sunday.

Subsequently, Maoist cadres invited landless squatters over loud speaker and distributed land to them.

In the presence of their district committee member Jivan Kalikote and VDC secretary Bishnu Prasad Rijal, the Maoists gave away 10 dhur land to each squatter family.

“I came here after hearing on the loudspeaker that land was being distributed,” said an elated Hira Tamang of Amalekhgunj-2. “I plan to erect my house here.”

On Sunday, the Maoist cadres distributed the seized land to 61 such families of Pathalaiya, Simara and Amalekhgunj. They said the process would go ahead until all the land was given.

The land was under control of the Maoist-close All Nepal Transportation Workers’ Union for the last three years.

I resigned for PM’s ease: Matrika

Maoist leader Matrika Yadav said Sunday that he chose to quit the ministerial portfolio in order to make it easy for the prime minister to run the government.

Speaking at a programme at Haripur of Sarlahi, he also said he would never shun revolution and relationship with people.

He also claimed that his Siraha land grab was right in every way.

“While the centre of people’s war was Rolpa, the centre for land reforms movement will be Siraha,” he said while revealing that he would rather be active in such campaigns now onward.

On Friday, the then minister for Land Reforms and Management Yadav resigned from his post after he was severely chastised by partners of the coalition government and the party itself. Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal had even said the party would take action against Yadav as the latter’s act was against party policy.

Like tens of thousands of people around the country, those living here are victims of what experts say has become the most serious human rights abuse in the country: land seizures that lead to evictions and homelessness.

NY Times | Jul 27, 2008

By SETH MYDANS

ANDONG, Cambodia — When the monsoon rain pours through Mao Sein’s torn thatch roof, she pulls a straw sleeping mat over herself and her three small children and waits until it stops.

She and her children sit on a low table as floodwater rises, bringing with it the sewage that runs along the mud paths outside their shack.

Ms. Mao Sein, 34, was resettled by the government here in an empty field two years ago, when the police raided the squatters’ colony where she lived in Phnom Penh, the capital, 12 miles away.

She is a widow and a scavenger. The area where she lives has no clean water or electricity, no paved roads or permanent buildings. But there is land to live on, and that has drawn scores of new homeless families to settle here, squatting among the squatters.

With its shacks and its sewage, Andong looks very much like the refugee camps that were home to those who were forced from their homes by the brutal Communist Khmer Rouge three decades ago.

Like tens of thousands of people around the country, those living here are victims of what experts say has become the most serious human rights abuse in the country: land seizures that lead to evictions and homelessness.

“Expropriation of the land of Cambodia’s poor is reaching a disastrous level,” Basil Fernando, executive director of the Asian Human Rights Commission in Hong Kong, a private monitoring group, said in December. “The courts are politicized and corrupt, and impunity for human rights violators remains the norm.”

With the economy on the rise, land is being seized for logging, agriculture, mining, tourism and fisheries, and in Phnom Penh, soaring land prices have touched off what one official called a frenzy of land grabs by the rich and powerful. The seizures can be violent, including late-night raids by the police and military. Sometimes, shanty neighborhoods burn down, apparently victims of arson.

“They came at 2 a.m.,” said Ku Srey, 37, who was evicted with Ms. Mao Sein and most of their neighbors in June 2006.

“They were vicious,” Ms. Ku Srey said of the police and soldiers who evicted her.

“They had electric batons” — and she imitated the sound made by the devices: “chk-chk-chk-chk.” She said, “They pushed us into trucks, they threw all our stuff into trucks and they brought us here.”

In a report in February, Amnesty International estimated that 150,000 people around the country were now at risk of forcible eviction as a result of land disputes, land seizures and new development projects.

These include 4,000 families who live around a lake in the center of Phnom Penh, Boeung Kak Lake, which is the city’s main catchment for monsoon rains and is being filled in for upscale development.

“If these communities are forced to move, it would be the most large-scale displacement of Cambodians since the times of the Khmer Rouge,” said Brittis Edman, a researcher with Amnesty International, which is based in London.

That, in a way, would bring history full circle.

Like other ailments of society — political and social violence, poverty and a culture of impunity for those with power — the land issues have roots in Cambodia’s tormented past of slaughter, civil war and social disruptions.

The brutal rule of the Khmer Rouge, during which 1.7 million people are estimated to have died, began in 1975 with an evacuation of Phnom Penh, forcing millions of people into the countryside and emptying the city. It ended in 1979 when the Khmer Rouge was driven from power by a Vietnamese invasion, sending hundreds of thousands of refugees into Thailand.

Many of the refugees returned in the 1990s, joining a rootless population displaced by the Khmer Rouge and the decade of civil war that followed in the 1980s. Many ended their journeys in Phnom Penh, creating huge colonies of squatters.

Now, many of these people are being forced to move again, from Phnom Penh and from around the country, victims of the latest scourge of the poor: national prosperity.

Whichever way the winds of history blow, some people here say, life only gets worse for the poor. If it is not “pakdivat,” revolution, that is buffeting the poor, they say, it is “akdivat,” development.

The Cambodian economy has at last started to grow, at an estimated 9 percent last year. And Phnom Penh is starting to transform itself with modern buildings, modest malls and plans for skyscrapers. It is one of the last Asian capitals to begin to pave over its past.

From 1993 to 1999, Amnesty International said in its report in February, the government granted commercial development rights for about one-third of the country’s most productive land for commercial development to private companies.

In Phnom Penh from 1998 through 2003, the city government forced 11,000 families from their homes, the World Bank said in a statement quoted by Amnesty International.

Since then, the human rights group said, evictions have reportedly displaced at least 30,000 more families.

“One thing that is important to note is that the government is not only failing to protect the population, but we are also seeing that it is complicit in many of the forced evictions,” Ms. Edman, of Amnesty International, said.

The government responded to the group’s report through a statement issued by its embassy in London.

“Just to point out that Cambodia is not Zimbabwe,” the statement read. “Your researcher should also spend more time to examine cases of land and housing rights violations in this country, if she dares.”

Here in Andong, the people have adapted as best they can.

Little by little, they have made their dwellings home, some of them decorating their shacks with small flower pots. A few have gathered enough money to buy concrete and bricks to pave their floors and reinforce their walls.

But this home, like the ones they have known in the past, may only be temporary. The outskirts of Phnom Penh are only a few miles away. As the city continues to expand, aid workers say, the people here will probably be forced to move again.

“A total world population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.”

-Ted Turner, creator of the United Nations Foundation, quoted in both an interview with Audubon magazine and in the The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, June ‘96

“Since I was a little boy, I’ve always been very partial to the U.N. I love the flags.”

-Ted Turner, CNN Interview with Larry King 1997

Turner has donated $1 billion to ‘U.N. causes’ through his United Nations Foundation

Ted Turner massive land purchases called suspicious

Transworld News | Nov 29, 2007

Ted Turner has become the largest private landowner in the country with a total of 2 million acres in 11 different states. Turner recently outbid hopeful ranchers in an auction for 26,630 acres of ranch land in Nebraska.

After paying nearly $10 million dollars for the land, ranchers in the area began questioning the CNN founder’s intentions. Ranchers are suspicious of Turner is going to do with all of his land. The Turner camp says he only wants to be a rancher, but farmers and owners of the neighboring land believe he is trying to put them out of business.

Other theories include Turner attempting to gain power by cornering the land over the Ogallala Aquifer, which is the largest underground water system. Others believe he is conspiring with the United Nations to create a wildlife refuge before turning it over to the federal government.

“With him it’s such a concern. You don’t know what his plan is and what he’s going to do,” said Nebraska landowner Cindy Weller. “The entire way of life here is threatened, and it’s not just Turner, but he’s one reason. The whole area is economically depressed.”

. . .

Related

The U.N.’s global land grab

SEPARATING PEOPLE FROM THEIR WATER

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, AGENDA 21 AND PRINCE CHARLES

“The United States has got some of the dumbest people in the world. I want you to know that we know that.”

“If I only had a little humility I would be perfect.”

- Ted Turner

Reports of Turner’s buying spree – like the Associated Press account of his Nebraska purchase – have generated numerous conspiracy theories. One is that he is scheming with the United Nations to create a vast wildlife refuge that would put Nebraska ranchers and farmers out of business.

Independent | Dec 1, 2007

By Leonard Doyle in Washington

Ted Turner gave the world CNN, but the legacy he intends to leave America is not the incessant drumbeat of television news, but millions of acres of wide-open spaces teeming with wildlife and protected endangered species.

Formerly known as the Mouth from the South, the patriarch of cable news is no longer in the media business, having left Time Warner in 2003. Today, he is America’s biggest conservationist as well as its largest private landowner.

Like many American outdoorsmen he is both a committed hunter and environmentalist, except that he has managed to turn his passion into a profit-making business.

Over the past few years, Ted Turner has used his $2.3bn (£1.1bn) wealth to create wildlife sanctuaries across many of the two million acres he owns in 12 states as well as in the southern tip of the Americas, Patagonia.

His mostly western lands are filled with bison, native cut-throat trout and cougars in habitat that he manages in an environmentally sensitive way. Hunters and fishermen pay big fees to bag elk, deer and catch and release rare species of trout, which he has brought back from the brink of extinction. His Nebraska ranches are home to America’s largest herd of buffalo, some 50,000 strong, which supply his restaurant chain, Ted’s Montana Grill, with bison burgers.

The Turner land grab has, however, generated suspicion among ranchers who are complaining that this is another land grab by a rich liberal environmentalist, which is putting them out of business.

But Turner says he is more than a philanthropist, and tries to make money from all his ventures. His Vermejo Ranch in northern New Mexico was once a hideaway for Hollywood celebrities. These days it is a hunting preserve for the wealthy who come to bag elk, deer, antelope and Merriman turkeys. But he is also mining for propane natural gas from the immense coal reserves beneath the ranch – in an environmentally sensitive way, he says.

In the Nebraska Sandhills region, the Turner organisation recently outbid 19 local ranchers to pick up another 26,300 acres of prime ranch land for nearly $10m. The ranch had been in the same family for more than 100 years and is adjacent to a 100,000-acre spread he bought in 1995. According to the general manager, Russ Miller, the Nebraska spread was bought because it offered good grass and good water, despite a persistent drought in recent years.

“We’re resilient, the bison are resilient and the Sandhills are resilient,” Mr Miller said. Turner paid $17.78m for a 58,000-acre ranch in the Sandhills in 2005 and bought a 45,000-acre ranch in Sheridan County in 1998.

Mike Phillips, executive director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund, a Turner spin-off, says his boss is just a “doggone serious rancher,” dedicated to preserving the environment.

Along with his land-buying, Turner has given more than $1.5bn to charity, including the United Nations Foundation, and an initiative aimed at ridding the world of nuclear weapons. The Turner organisation is now in discussions with the World Wildlife Fund and the World Conservation Union about conserving bison.

Both groups are hoping to develop a huge park where bison could once again roam the Great Plains freely. Reports of Turner’s buying spree – like the Associated Press account of his Nebraska purchase – have generated numerous conspiracy theories. One is that he is scheming with the United Nations to create a vast wildlife refuge that would put Nebraska ranchers and farmers out of business.

But Turner spokesmen insist that the driving force behind his land purchases is simply the desire to make money. The Vermejo Ranch offers week-long elk hunting excursions at $12,000 a pop. And there are now more than 51 Ted’s Montana Grill restaurants across the country serving the famous bison burgers.

Five million acres is comprable to 7,812 square miles — an area about the size of New Jersey.

Raw Story | Nov 3, 2007

by Adam Doster

As the U.S. military budget balloons, so does the Armed Services’ need to train its soldiers. In fact, some military planners foresee a need for 5 million more acres for training facilities by 2011.

In September, Sen. Wayne Allard (R-Colo.) told his fellow Congressmen that “the Army believes it has a current deficit of 2 million acres needed for training, a figure expected to grow by 2011 to 5 million acres.” Five million acres is comprable to 7,812 square miles — an area about the size of New Jersey.

Now, Colorado is the site of a contested fight between the U.S. Army and longtime ranchers. The military wants to expand the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, a 1,000-square-mile facility near the New Mexico border, by 418,000 acres, thus tripling its size. This would require land owned by private ranchers.

The government is appealing to the patriotism of the community, but the landowners are skeptical of the appeals to national security. “It’s rude. It ain’t right. It’s not American,” said Stan White, a rancher who could lose more than 6,000 acres in Walsenburg. “We take our military and our country very seriously, but we’re up against something we can’t get ahold of. If they get this done, it’s a national disgrace.”

According to the Washington Post, “Several dozen ranchers and members of 15 county commissions that voted to oppose the project find themselves pitted against the Pentagon and Colorado business interests in a struggle over property rights, personal heritage and the contested priorities of national security.”

Businesses have joined the military in advocating for the base expansion. Brian A. Binn, president of the military affairs committee of the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce, said “the benefits to the state economy and national defense are clear. If the ranchers triumph and the training site is not created, he added, other states would be all too willing to accept the troops and the business.”

Salem News | Oct 25, 2007

The legislation is known as the “Clean Water Restoration Act.”

(GOLDEN, Co.) – Legislation quietly moving forward in the U.S. Congress would expand the federal government’s control over U.S. waters to such an extent that even periodically wet ground would come under federal hegemony, a group of business leaders is warning.

“This bill represents one of the most expansive power grabs by the federal government over state and local control in memory,” said Jim Sims, President and CEO of the Western Business Roundtable. “The extent to which this bill puts states and their water resources under the thumb of the federal government is simply astounding.”

“This bill would give federal agencies domain over virtually every wet area in the nation. It will fundamentally erode the ability of citizens, and state governments in particular, to manage our own water resources. It would cause an avalanche of new un-funded mandates to envelop state and local governments.”

Sims added: “It will make it more costly to grow crops, provide water to cities, operate and maintain water storage and delivery facilities, produce energy (including renewable power), build and maintain public transportation systems, deliver affordable goods and services to consumers and carry out virtually any activity that occurs on the land without federal agencies constantly threatening to interfere.”

The legislation, known as the “Clean Water Restoration Act,” is sponsored by Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.) in the House (H.R. 2421) and Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wisc.) in the Senate (S. 1870).

The bill’s sponsors contend U.S. waters are threatened due to Supreme Court decisions in 2001 and 2006 that clarified which waters fall under federal jurisdiction. But by changing the Clean Water Act’s jurisdictional sweep from regulation of “navigable waters” to “waters of the United States,” the bill would have “a devastating impact on Western state sovereignty and virtually every citizen in our region,” Sims said.

“There is virtually no business or job-creating activity in the nation that would not be adversely affected by this bill,” he added.

The Roundtable sent a letter to Congress earlier this week outlining its concerns about bill. It pointed out that the bill:

* Would expand the regulatory reach of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Army Corps of Engineers to include essentially all arguably wet areas (or areas wet at some time) in the U.S., giving the federal government jurisdiction over groundwater, ditches, pipes, streets, gutters and desert features.

* Would expand the legal basis for the Clean Water Act, moving it beyond the current jurisdiction under the “commerce clause” in the U.S. Constitution, which limits congressional authority over water to the ability to regulate commerce. The new legislation would make congressional authority over any U.S. water virtually unlimited.

* Would essentially grant EPA and the Corps a veto over local land-use policies. Any activity involving water could be affected, including commercial and residential real estate development, agriculture, electric transmission, transportation, mining and energy development – even recreational activities.

* Would eliminate existing regulatory limitations that allow common sense uses such as prior converted cropland and waste treatment systems. Currently, the CWA’s rules acknowledge limitations covering those elements.

* Would implement an expanded definition of waters that would burden state and local governments both administratively and financially. A broad expansion of the CWA’s jurisdiction would put un-funded mandates on those entities, including requirements to adopt water quality standards (including monitoring and reporting).

* Would also impact land-use plans, floodplain regulations, building and other codes, watershed and storm water plans, and likely delay development of new projects and maintenance of existing infrastructure.

* Would cause water providers, landowners and water-use entities’ liability risk to grow.

Sims added that, under an expanded CWA, citizen suit liability and exposure for attorneys fees awards would increase for all landowners with water features on or near their properties. Similar concerns and risks would be faced by all water delivery and water-use entities.

The Roundtable said it has launched a region wide effort to build opposition to the bill.

Environmental Movement Steeped in Eugenics and Land-Consolidation Agenda Aimed at Third World Population Control

JonesReport.com | Aug 8, 2007

by Aaron Dykes

Australia hosted a televised debate to air out questions arising from the Great Global Warming Swindle– a film that challenges the notion that humans are to blame for a crisis in changing temperatures.

One woman takes the opportunity to challenge the foundations of the environmental movement itself, and what agenda that may reveal– particularly for the third world.

(CUE VIDEO TO 4:21 FOR RELEVANT QUESTION)

Great Global Warming Swindle ABC Debates Part 8/9

“I’d like to take the debate into another quick– I mean, we’ve been debating the science here; we’ve not debated anything in terms of the credibility of the environmentalism movement. The environmentalist movement was formed by Sir Julian Huxley who was the founder of the Eugenics Society, the WWF and these other organizations are actually [offshoots] of that eugenics society. Now this has huge implications for developing countries. Is that the intention behind the environmentalist scam behind the global warming swindle?”

The woman’s question is fielded by Greg Bourne, the CEO of the Australian branch of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), who basically ignores the substance of the question, claims that all concerns have been taken into consideration and asks that the audience please trust environmental movements to do good work. He rattles off meaningless claims about his friends in exotic-sounding countries.

Meanwhile, the WWF is implementing an agenda to consolidate 200 ecoregions worldwide and is one of the largest contributors to depopulation efforts worldwide. Both of these planks coincide with U.S. state department memos from1974 penned by Henry Kissinger.

Indeed, Julian Huxley was a top eugenicist from a very eugenics-friendly family (see T.H. Huxley). After eugenics was stripped of its good name in the post-World War II world, Huxley coined the term “transhumanism” to encompass eugenical beliefs inside a general belief in human “advancement” through scientific processes.

A number of other notable WWF heads may reveal some of the agenda at hand. Prince Bernhard, of the Netherlands, served as the first president of the fund from 1962-1976, and is certainly a nefarious character. He not only founded the Bilderberg group– a shadowy organization that is pursuing world government and heavily influences the agenda of nearly every nation in the Western world– Bernhard is also a former Nazi SS officer.

HRH Duke of Edinburgh (Prince Philip) was also a president of the WWF from 1981-1996. He stated more than once that: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation”– an idea that promotes a radical agenda, to say the least.

What indeed lies in the shadows of the environmental movement and what impact indeed will it have on the third world? Questions worth asking, even if the figureheads of our loving NGOs will not give a straight answer.

“Even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.” Sir Julian Huxley, first director general of UNESCO (1946-1948)

The Observer | Feb 4, 2007

Argentinian critics say an American campaigner is buying up vast wetlands for US strategic goals

The Argentinian press has suggested Tompkins might be a covert CIA operative securing US access to the aquifer.

Douglas Tompkinscalls himself a ‘deep ecologist’. He is a millionaire on a quest to preserve some of Argentina’s last frontier lands from human encroachment by buying them and turning them into ecological reserves.
But Argentina may not permit him such philanthropy. Opponents are branding him a new-age ‘imperialist gringo’ and claim he has a secret aim: to help the US military gain control of the country’s natural resources. Tompkins, who sold his Esprit clothing firm in 1989 for a reported $150m to devote his time and wealth to ecology, takes such attacks in his stride. ‘Land ownership is a political act; it arouses passions,’ he says.

Tompkins, 63, holds to a very severe brand of environmentalism and is fond of reminding listeners that, unless runaway consumerism is halted, ‘we humans will be building ourselves a beautiful coffin in space called planet Earth’.

Yet such statements do not carry much weight with Argentinian nationalists. The heaviest fire has come from radicals in the ruling Peronist party. Left-wing legislator Araceli Mendez introduced draft legislation in Congress a few months ago to confiscate the American’s vast holdings. At the centre of the storm is a 310,000-acre estate Tompkins owns in the Ibera wetlands, a labyrinth of marshes, lakes and floating islands of nearly 2 million acres. ‘He says he’s worried about the birds and the wildlife,’ said Mendez. ‘But his land is above the Guarani aquifer, one of the most important fresh water reserves in the world, only 700km from an airbase the United States plans to build in neighbouring Paraguay.’

CBS | Nov 29, 2006

Chavez insists he’s a friend of the private sector, but his government has taken actions that rattle investors, including seizing ranch lands

Venezuelans are swilling aged whiskey, snapping up luxury cars and treating themselves to plastic surgery in an oil-fueled spending spree worthy of one of the fastest-growing economies in Latin America.

The bonanza belies fears of radical economic changes if President Hugo Chavez wins another six-year term in elections Sunday and fulfills his pledge to begin a new, more profound phase of his self-styled socialist revolution.

Chavez has promised a sharper break with Venezuela’s capitalist past and more drastic steps to help the poor. Clothing factory owner Noel Alvarez fears that could mean workers suddenly taking over his plant with the government’s blessing.

“Investors are nervous and uneasy,” said Alvarez, who heads the Consecomercio chamber representing some 200,000 small and medium-sized businesses.

A survey of those businesses last month showed that despite soaring sales, most are not hiring, expanding their businesses or making long-term investments. Alvarez said the reasons include high crime, a lack of confidence in the legal system, and an anti-private sector “bias” in the Chavez government.

Chavez insists he’s a friend of the private sector, but his government has taken actions that rattle investors, including seizing ranch lands it deems idle. In recent weeks, he has threatened to nationalize Venezuela’s largest telecommunications company for failing to pay out court-ordered pensions.