Shut Up (about) Chavez

[darkbeaver]

Shut Up (About) Chavez

By Paul Buchheit
11/24/07 "ICH" -- -- It gets tiresome to hear the one-sided media coverage of Hugo Chavez. Yes, he’s authoritarian. He’s also abrasive, arrogant, stubborn, and all too human. But he knows what happened to leaders in Iran and Guatemala and Chile and Haiti over the past half-century when they tried to defy the western world by nationalizing oil and other industries. He’s influenced by the memory of the US-backed attempt to depose him in 2002. And he can see the effects of unregulated multinational companies in Nigeria, where in 2004 80% of the revenue from the oil industry went to only 1% of the population, and only 2% of Shell Oil’s employees were from the local population.
Chavez has alienated the wealthy, the business establishment, thousands of upper-class student protestors, and, perhaps worst of all for him, the media. But the mainstream media rarely speaks for the poor majority. Chavez has instituted a literacy program, land-acquisition policies that benefit the poor, job training for unskilled workers, free health care, and manufacturing cooperatives which give the poor an active role in business development. He was democratically elected, and recent polls still place him about 20 percentage points ahead of his nearest challenger.
<font face="Times New Roman">The Venezuelan leader’s popularity is summarized by human rights activist Medea &nbsp%3

 

[jimmoyer]

Hasn't Chavez become a popular ring tone for US hispanics ?

 

[lone wolf]

Socialism brings terror to the hearts of those who aren't very ... uh ... social. Remember: care, too, is a four letter word....

Woof!

 

[Nuggler]

Chavez has instituted a literacy program, land-acquisition policies that benefit the poor, job training for unskilled workers, free health care, and manufacturing cooperatives which give the poor an active role in business development. He was democratically elected, and recent polls still place him about 20 percentage points ahead of his nearest challenger.
<font face="Times New Roman">The Venezuelan leader’s popularity is summarized by human rights activist Medea &nbsp%"

Yes, by Jeez, actually helping the everyday folk. Drag that bastard out and shoot him quick.

:roll:

:read2:Let's have more tax cuts for the rich, Steve, quick like a bunny, ok?

 

[#juan]

Wouldn't it be too bad if other countries began using oil revenue to actually benefit people rather than just providing obscene profits to big oil companies.

 

[darkbeaver]

When you trade oil for social services (doctors dentists teachers) and de bankers get left out then you got a sityeeashun that smacks of commonism, this is un-American and un-capital well just bad form all arround similar to the Iranian banking system, and we capit-all-ists just can't makeout like that I quess, it's like stealing from the rich before they can steal from the poor.If we didn't have the rich there wouldn't be a problem. And don't bother telling me what they do for thier economy and how much of thier hard earned gravy falls of thier tables.

 

[Toro]

Hugh's a blowhard who once tried to overthrow a democratic government.

If you Lefties want to idolize someone in Latin America, you should look to Lula in Brazil. At least he isn't competing with W and Fidel for bottom-scraping approval ratings south of the Rio Grande as Hugh Chav is.

 

[Zzarchov]

US backed coup? Couldn't possibley be a coup as a result of the Chavez cronies (who where clearly identified of the massacre then defacto pardoned by the Chavez gov't) shooting into crowds of opposition protesters.

That kind of thing can spark a coup on its own (see Bloody Sunday). Chavez somehow had blocked out all media channels before the event, making it impossible for the events to be shown as they occurred. A couple of stations broke this rule and instead split screened to show Chavez cronies firing into an unarmed crowd with live rounds to disperse protesters. They then lost their stations.

He's a strong man. Anything he gives the poor is a temporary measure to placate them, no different than Bush raising the terror alert to another arbitrary colour. It has no real effect and no chance in hell at living in the long term.

His main goal is to ensure he sticks around forever. And he's shown that already.

The first article should have ended with "Yes he's authoritarian". No doubt good things happend as a result as well, Hitler turned the German economy around and pre-war really dropped infant mortality rates. Good for him eh?

He's a scumball, picking on minority groups with the support of the Mob, who don't really even know what they are losing.

 

[lone wolf]

It goes: you can have the ones backed by the mob, or you can have the ones who want to stamp the mob out because they don't want competition. The first happy medium is really gonna clean house some day.

Woof!

 

[TenPenny]

If American's didn't actually like Chavez, they'd probably stop buying gas at Citgo.

 

[darkbeaver]

Bottom scraping approval ratings? Competition, I thought capitalist loved it. Quess you learn something new everyday.:smile:

 

[#juan]

Funny. Sweden is at least as socialistic as Venezuela but we don't hear the same crap about Swedes. I guess it makes a difference if you have oil.......:roll:

 

[gopher]

You know how it is with the Republicans - if it's not BLAME CLINTON! or BLAME LIBERALS! or some other such crap, they will always find some scapegoat if he doesn't comply with their idea of what a lapdog should be.

 

[Toro]

Funny. Sweden is at least as socialistic as Venezuela but we don't hear the same crap about Swedes. I guess it makes a difference if you have oil.......:roll:

No, its because you don't have the same crap coming out of Sweden.

 

[Toro]

Leftist students rally against Chavez.

To Oppose Chávez, Youth
In Caracas Rally Behind Stalin

[FONT=Times New Roman,Times,Serif]That's Ivan Stalin González,
Student-Movement Leader;
A Broad Dissent on Campus[/FONT]
[FONT=times new roman,times,serif]By JOHN LYONS and JOSÉ DE CÓRDOBA
November 24, 2007; Page A1

[/FONT]...

As Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez attempts to push through what he calls 21st-Century Socialism, his biggest obstacle is an army of students led by a leftist named Stalin. Ivan Stalin González, who prefers to be called just plain Stalin, is president of the student body at the Central University of Venezuela, or UCV, Venezuela's biggest public university. During the past few weeks, Mr. González and other student leaders here have organized protest marches by tens of thousands of students opposed to a constitutional referendum set for Dec. 2. The proposed changes would dramatically expand Mr. Chávez's power and allow him to seek perpetual re-election. ...

The student movement has taken the government by surprise, highlighting an embarrassing irony for the fiery Mr. Chávez: University students, long a bastion of the left here as in the rest of Latin America, are overwhelmingly opposed to him. They have also emerged, along with the Catholic Church, as among the last major opposition to Mr. Chávez in a country where he already controls the congress, courts, army and most media outlets.

Elia López, a 22-year-old architecture student at UCV, worries that by the time she is designing buildings, the only client will be the state, limiting her creativity. "Imagine if you studied to do something creative, and suddenly you couldn't do it, or you could do it only if your ideas were the same as the government," she said.

Variations of that concern are almost universal among Venezuela's university students, whether they are majoring in sociology, dentistry or law. In a UCV campus election that became national news in mid-November, anti-Chávez student slates won 91% of the vote. Mr. Chávez's student supporters garnered 9%. ...

Anti-Chávez sentiment on Venezuelan campuses burst into the open in May, when the government pulled the plug on RCTV, a television network critical of Mr. Chávez. Tens of thousands of students viewed the move as a blow to freedom of speech. They were also alarmed by Mr. Chávez's promises that the "revolution within the university" would be next -- likely expanding government control over areas like the curriculum. They took to the streets, creating a protest movement in campuses across the country. The Dec. 2 referendum has sparked a round of new protests.

Caught off guard, Mr. Chávez has called the students "terrorists" and written them off as "pampered, rich mama's boys." UCV, which charges no tuition, has a range of students, from the scions of businessmen to the sons of taxi drivers. ...

Mr. Chávez's description also hardly fits Mr. González. The 27-year-old, sixth-year law student grew up in a poor household that dreamed of a Communist Venezuela. His father, a print-machine operator, was a high-ranking member of the Bandera Roja, or Red Flag, a hard-line Marxist-Leninist party that maintained a guerrilla force until as recently as the mid-1990s. Its members revered Josef Stalin as well as Albania's xenophobic Enver Hoxha. As a boy, Mr. González remembers packing off to marches with his sisters, Dolores Engels and Ilyich, named in honor of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

As a young man, Mr. González burnished his leftist credentials, joining Marxist youth groups and following his father into the Bandera Roja. He traveled to Socialist youth conferences in Latin America.

Mr. González was still in his teens when Mr. Chávez was voted into office in late 1998. Even then, he says, he was skeptical about Mr. Chávez's socialist rhetoric, as are many Venezuelan leftists. Mr. Chávez, a lieutenant colonel who had staged an unsuccessful coup attempt in 1992, would be more authoritarian than egalitarian, Mr. González reasoned.

He says his suspicions were confirmed when Mr. Chávez started forming the "Bolivarian Circles" of civilian supporters, some of which turned into armed gangs used to break up opposition gatherings. "Military men belong in the barracks," he said.

Still seeking to make a life out of left-wing politics, Mr. González enrolled in 2001 at UCV. Rising in the ranks of the student body can be a fast track into political life, and as head of the 40,000-member student federation, his studies have taken a back seat to politics. He plans to graduate next year.

Even before the recent marches, Mr. González took positions on Venezuela that set him apart from other leftists. In 2003, organizers of a conference for young socialists in Guadalajara, Mexico, jumped him to the top of the speakers' list.

"I think they saw my name, Ivan Stalin, from Venezuela, and put me first," he says.
They regretted the move, he says. Speaking about a coup attempt against Mr. Chávez the year before, Mr. González pointed out that Mr. Chávez had been reinstated by generals in the military -- not by a popular protest of supporters as the audience seemed to think.

"After I spoke, the place went nuts. All the Cubans were lining up to denounce me," Mr. González says. He says he wasn't invited to the group's meeting this year in Quito, Ecuador.

For all his disappointment with Mr. Chávez's brand of leftism, Mr. González still holds a candle for his revolutionary heroes. He has a signed copy of a seven-hour speech Fidel Castro delivered at the university several years ago. "I never got bored," he says.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119586925917802724.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

You also have leftist governments in Brazil and Chile condemning Hugh too, so why not the students?

But not in Canada! :lol:

 

[gopher]

That Wall Street Journal article sounds like right wing propaganda. Do you have a Venezuelan source to confirm that?

By contrast, the majority polled in a major Venezuelan newspaper agree that constitutional reforms are acceptable to them:

http://www.noticiasdevenezuela.com.ve/component/poll/1-encuesta-reforma

 

[Colpy]

Funny. Sweden is at least as socialistic as Venezuela but we don't hear the same crap about Swedes. I guess it makes a difference if you have oil.......:roll:

No the Swedes aren't closing down anti-gov't media, the gov't of Sweden is not using gangs of thugs to shoot up protest marches, and (as far as I know) the PM of Sweden is not changing the constitution to set himself up as President-for-life.......

No comparison......

 

[gopher]

``leftist governments in Brazil and Chile condemning Hugh too``


Lula in Brazil and Bachelet of Chile are very much pro Chavez, contrary to your belief. Also, Argentina's leftist government of Kirchner is equally pro Chavez.

Chavez is having problem with Colombia's government whose leader Uribe is another Bush right wing lapdog.

So get your facts straight.

 

[Toro]

``leftist governments in Brazil and Chile condemning Hugh too``


Lula in Brazil and Bachelet of Chile are very much pro Chavez, contrary to your belief. Also, Argentina's leftist government of Kirchner is equally pro Chavez.

Chavez is having problem with Colombia's government whose leader Uribe is another Bush right wing lapdog.

So get your facts straight.

You're sort of missing the point, Gopher. There are many leftists around the world who aren't buffoons whom you Leftists could hold up as examples.

Not one who sticks his nose in the elections of others

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5028910.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1788512,00.html

Yes, let's get the facts straight -

Brazilian Senate condemned Chavez for shuttering the media

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/..._dispute_marks_Mercosur_summit_without_Chavez

Bachelet tells Chav to stop being such an ass

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSN1337876620070413

I'm sure the left-wing Senators of both countries were appreciative of being called fascists by Hugh.

Let's not forget that in Chile, the socialists are really modern European social democrats, quite different than Hugh's amalgamation of political parties

President Michelle Bachelet opened an international gathering of socialist leaders in the Chilean capital on Monday by urging them to take advantage of the "reality" of globalization instead of fighting it.

"Let's admit it, comrades, modernity and globalization are not an imperialist invention," Bachelet told the conference of the Socialist International, an umbrella organization for socialist parties from around the world. "They are realities and it is up to us to turn them into opportunities." ...

"Our rival is not economic modernity," Bachelet told the gathering. "Our rivals are the forces that oppose social progress and seek an accumulation of wealth that excludes many."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/06/AR2006110600911.html

Yes, I'm sure Hugh Chav would stand up in an international forum and say such a thing.

And of course any dissent to Hugh must be manufactured by the right-wing press. :lol: Must be comforting to think so.

 

[lone wolf]

Leftist students rally against Chavez.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119586925917802724.html?mod=todays_us_page_one

You also have leftist governments in Brazil and Chile condemning Hugh too, so why not the students?

But not in Canada! :lol:

Leftist - but they're protesting against a socialist. Seems to me, they like throwing about the loony left tag on socialists too. Hmm.... Guess the tightie Righties are going to have to figure out some new labels so they can keep score of everyone who messes with their insecurities....:roll:

Woof!