Oh, big deal. The USA not only says nice things about dictators, but funds them as well. If Chavez had a change of heart about socialism and orchestrated a coup that returned control of oil to American corporations, he’d get the red carpet treatment from the White House and all the cheap propagandists in the bourgeois press, as well as their friends in the blogosphere like gringo.

“They call him the last dictator in Europe and me the last dictator in Latin America, but it is written in the Bible, the last shall be the first.”

The article previously stated that El Chávez said that the presence of the Byelorussian President Lukashenko in Venezuela is “a papable demonstration of how free the Venezuela people are.” (my translation.)

Keep talking, Hugo, but the PSF’s won’t listen.

So, back to the beginning….is Chavez figuring out how to interpret the law as to implementing plans to use rape, electrocution, waterboarding, etc. to “interrogate” terrorists?

Probably sooner, but five years from now we will surely know whether it was people like me or people like you who turned out to be right about Chavez and Chavismo.

Take care.

Often the same people.

Give me substantive responses.

Are you being expropriated or something? And yes, I read Apporea too, and the Left is split – as I said I would have abstained – BUT – I wouldn’t talk out my ass by saying that Chavez is somehow worse- or evne equivalent to- Bush. I care about social change and loyalty- not to a government, but a movement. Your bona fides aer definitely questionable.

http://www.economist.com/world/la/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10251226

Of course, most Chavez groupies will dismiss it because of the source.

I’ve been reading some of the discussions in the various fora of the Aporreo.org site (pro-Chavez, pro-Cuba site in Venezuela). Some of the discussions are interesting and some of the participants, despite idolizing Chavez, are making an honest attempt to understand their recent defeat. Many among them admit that corruption and lack of follow-through among government functionaries is a major problem. They all, of course, spare Chavez and blame his current advisors for isolating him from what’s really going on. Human nature: we need idols, it seems. When the economic hardships in Venezuela will become worse they will probably blame the yanquis, pitiyanquis, traidores (an increasingly common word over there), and so on. But not Chavez.

And Venezuela is already importing milk from Europe.

http://www.economist.com/world/ l…ory_id=10251226

http://www.economist.com/ opinion…ory_id=10252006

Compare w Chavista Weisbrot
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/120507H.shtml

Interesting report. I’ll read it.

You could fill a large city library with empirical data in regards to Bush’s abuse of power. And the power you speak of is power “on paper” which may well be true. But in reality, things are quite different. And I’ll grant that how power is used – power is not an evil thign unto itself – differs greatly between Bush and Chavez. Even if I were to grant all of the criticisms one has of Chavez, no one denies both his popularity (and don’t go dismissing that lest you sound like such an anti-democratic snob) and what George Cicariello Maher, in a recent piece on “dual power” (I’m sure conceptually you’ve never heard of that) in Venezuela, in Monthly Review, shows to be a profound growth in democratic practice, communal councils, decentralized decision making, endogenous development. Chavez’s critics can’t deny these things so they talk around them, forgetting that these things, not Chavez’s undeniable ego, is what angers capitalism and its enforcer Yankee state.

You give the caveat “within the US” as if that wipes away the fact that while Bush has indeed retaiend nominal bourgeois freedom, with heavy limitations and chills on civil libertie and “law and order” style surveillance culture, the real revolution in Bush’s power

The onus is on you to provide me with eviden ce that Chavez has, even in his entire time in power, done an iota of what Bush has done. Further, empirically, what is wrong with pursuing a different political model? Have you lost money or property or something? Do you have something to lose?

You have a world to win.

And yeah yeah yeah, I sound dogmatic and didactic. But I fucking mean it. Its people who think that they can be nice and liberal and “pox on everyone” who serve the dominant powers.

jcummings, if you really believe that Bush wields more power within the US than Chavez does within Venezuela, then there is nothing to discuss. You are totally wrong, but no argument or evidence will be sufficient to persuade you of your wrongness.

In any event, Chavez made the Venezuelan presidency much stronger that it was before he came to power, but even before he came to power a Venezuelan president wielded more power than a US president.

It’s amusing how so many of Chavez’s groupies cannot accept the fact that there are progressive leftists that are against Chavez.

This is it. My last on this thread.

He already has – in practice – done far more than Chavez could ever imagine.

- On term limits- well, I don’t particularly like this idea, but I understand why its out there. Canada has no term limits. We had Trudeau near a quarter century, and many folks miss him, in spite of teh fact that he was no progressive, more a liberal gaulist.

Compare this to Bush’s power grab. Now he hasn’t changed the length of the presidency, though Rex 84 is ready for anyone …but seriously, the White House in pra ctice has concentrated more power in the executive than any “democratic” country possibly in the last few hundred years. In fairness, this “imperial” presidency started under Kennedy, probably, and has grown more and more, Clinton too…but Bush and his circel of constitutional lawyer reactionary federalists who believe in being “deciders” and have come up with all sorts of elaborate intellectualizations of it, has- in all reality – committed more criems in the last couple of days than Chavez has in his entire presidency. So yes, when you echo State Department talking points on Chavez, you are, implicitly supporting Bush.

And I may well have abstained from the referendum because I agree with you about the structure of presidential power. But lets be proportionate here.. Further, in real soft power terms, as well as in terms of the process in the long run, I think the loss strengthens Bolivarianism. Who can call Chavez a dicgtator now? The mvoement isstronger than one man.

—

I see the aptly named “gringo” is recycling garbage that even Jews in Venezuela characterized as having nothing to do with anti-Semitism. As far as Israel’s behavior toward the Palestinians is concerned, I think that it would be more accurate to liken it to the South African apartheid state. But if the ultra-Zionists have their way and carry out a population removal as they have been advocating, all bets are off.

“Israel was committing genocide in Lebanon and its leaders should be held responsible and should be judged by an international tribunal … The Israelis criticize Hitler but have done something worse.” – August 25, 2006.
… “The world is for all of us, then, but it so happens that a minority, the descendents of the same ones that crucified Christ, the descendants of the same ones that kicked Bolivar out of here and also crucified him in their own way over there in Santa Marta, in Colombia. A minority has taken possession of all the wealth in the world” … — December, 24, 2005.

El Chávez ‘s fans might also tell their guy that getting the AN to pass an enabling law would also get El Chávez compared to another leader who also got an enabling law to play with: Adolf Hitler.

Lacy: Vos sos PSF. Soy yo escuálido. He trabajado con Venezolanos en Venezuela y también en los EE.UU. De tal modo no nos vamos a convencer.

You could fill a large city library with empirical data in regards to Bush’s abuse of power. And the power you speak of is power “on paper” which may well be true. But in reality, things are quite different. And I’ll grant that how power is used – power is not an evil thign unto itself – differs greatly between Bush and Chavez. Even if I were to grant all of the criticisms one has of Chavez, no one denies both his popularity (and don’t go dismissing that lest you sound like such an anti-democratic snob) and what George Cicariello Maher, in a recent piece on “dual power” (I’m sure conceptually you’ve never heard of that) in Venezuela, in Monthly Review, shows to be a profound growth in democratic practice, communal councils, decentralized decision making, endogenous development. Chavez’s critics can’t deny these things so they talk around them, forgetting that these things, not Chavez’s undeniable ego, is what angers capitalism and its enforcer Yankee state.

You give the caveat “within the US” as if that wipes away the fact that while Bush has indeed retaiend nominal bourgeois freedom, with heavy limitations and chills on civil libertie and “law and order” style surveillance culture, the real revolution in Bush’s power

The onus is on you to provide me with eviden ce that Chavez has, even in his entire time in power, done an iota of what Bush has done. Further, empirically, what is wrong with pursuing a different political model? Have you lost money or property or something? Do you have something to lose?

You have a world to win.

And yeah yeah yeah, I sound dogmatic and didactic. But I fucking mean it. Its people who think that they can be nice and liberal and “pox on everyone” who serve the dominant powers.