Here’s why they say that the news is bad for Chavez: He did not achieve his two-thirds majority. Further, the vote was closer than the outcome – that is, many of the seats that his party one were by scant margins. Also, some outlying regions are disproportionately represented in the legislature, individuals there having in effect more bang for their vote that those from more populated regions.
Which is eerily similar to American elections with our first-past-the-post winners and senators from small population states who have disproportionate power.
Unlike the U.S. president, Hugo Chavez remains a popular fixture in his country’s politics.
Nonetheless, there is a buildup of troops now in Colombia, where the U.S. is backing a thuggish government and where those who oppose those thugs are called “terrorists.” The threatened conflict will ostensibly be between Colombia and Venezuela, but much like the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980’s, will be suspiciously convenient for the U.S.
All that is needed is some Tonkin-like event to serve as a pretext to trigger the war.
What will follow? Hard to know. Augusto Pinochet is dead and buried, as is the Shah and Suharto. There’s never a shortage of murderous thugs, and all I am missing is the name of the next president of Venezuela. And remember please to speak American English: Venezuela, a free country, will not really be free until we destroy its freedom to elect its own government and install a thug to run it for us.
Piece of Mindful 
Eisenhower doctrine:
You are either with us or against us
Thus, self-determination is considered “against us”.
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Any country that squeezes out western oil companies is a potential target for our aggression.
Though I have to disagree with you about Chavez… yes he is still popular, but at the same time he has gathered almost every form of political power under his thumb and crushed any independent and opposition media out of existence.
Yes he was freely elected, but the only reason he remains in office is that he has sufficiently “reformed” the democratic process to the point that there is no series challenge to his power, only the facade of a truly functioning democracy.
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It is hard to judge all of that at this time. Castro warned Chavez that the U.S. would use democracy as a weapon to oust him – that is, the U.S. would corrupt the institutions of democracy – the press (owned by the oligarchy) and the flow of goods and services (choke points controlled by same), and then claim that Chavez was anti-democratic for fighting these elements.
You also have to remember that the US wants Chavez out of office, so that he constantly has to be on the lookout for coups and assassination plots.
All of that leads him to monitor everything around him, and that may indeed have a corrupting influence on him. But it is the nature of those who want to kill him, and not his own nature, that brings this about.
If you were a peaceful little guy walking through the woods, but learned that you were being stalked by bears and tigers, your nature would change.
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Chavez is not peaceful. He is a thug, ex-paratrooper who once tried to overthrow the government in a military coup. It failed, so he switched tactics.
Chavez has personally slaughter innocent humans with his own hands.
His only fear – his ex-wife – she can ridicule him like no one else can and with impunity. He caters to her economic whims – he is lucky she has no political will.
He is an example of your sociopath.
It must amaze you that so many show up in government, Mark, since you believe government is your savior from such evil.
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Mark… You make a good point, but it is equivalent to what we have done in this country since 9/11. The government subtlety makes the claim that we must surrender our civil liberties – while pretending they have done so thing – in order to ensure our security from terrorism. We may not be a peaceful little guy but we pretend to be… getting chased by bears and tigers, and our nature has most certainly changed.
We use that excuse to forgive constitutional abuses… Chavez uses the same excuse to curtail the functioning of democracy. In both cases the argument is not a legitimate one. It is simply the use of the threat of the “other” to the political advantage of those in power to stay in power.
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Valid point.
One significant difference is that there is no powerful outside force capable of invading us or overthrowing our government.
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No… But we have politicians that still enjoy scaring us with the prospect of a nuclear holocaust via Iran. It doesn’t matter if there is any real threat… just whether there is something sificiantly plausible to drum up scare thepoluce with.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
-Joseph Goebbels
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CFS
I completely concur with your post!~
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Chavez understands the power of corporate media. He may be anti-corporate as much as anti-big-oil. This would get any U.S. elected official unelected in a hurry. Clinton sold the farm a long time ago.
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I’d link the utube, but its in spanish, so I’ll type what happened.
A group of red shirt-wearing Chavista thugs show up at a farm and seize the farm in the name of the government, under the pretext that the 103 hectare farm is “idle land” and that the law allows them to take it over for “food production.”
The farmer protests politely, explaining that he’s been raising cattle on his farm for 23 years. He is rebuffed by another guy, who says, “this is not going to be a debate; this is a public act approved by the Venezuelan people. I’m governor and I’m here to ensure public order. There won’t be a debate, I ask you to listen to the document, after which the public will take charge of the land.”
When the farmer’s wife protests, he tells her to discuss it in court.
Chavez controls the judiciary.
The farmer is told to sign the form, and then to gather the animals so they can be accounted for.
When another one of the people who lived at the farm tries to ask a question, the man who identified himself as the governor insists that “this is not a debate, this is not a meeting, and if there’s any disruption, the public force is here,” pointing to the crowd in red shirts.
Is this would have happened to me there would have been a lots of bloody red shirts laying around.
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