I don't see squat from you about what to do about the extreme problems pre-Chavez - you pay a lttle lip service as a disclaimer in parentheses, but you don't challenge it at all.
You close your post with your quiet acceptance of the problems - simply describing a few rich families controlling all the land, business, political system as 'returned to the people'.
That shows you to be a terribly biased person advocating great harm to the people of Venezuela, even if your criticisms of Chavez are valid (it's clear you exaggerate badly).
There's a larger issue you fail to appreciate about the legacy culture in South America of colonialism and political dominance by the US, and to an extent Europe. For all your complaints abut Chavez, why do I not see people of your persuasion who attack that have much to say about the history on the other side, again outside of the paranthetical disclaimer - the taking of a vibrant left-wing democracy like Chile into a totalitarian state under Pinochet that still hasn't recovered its political culture, for example.
Or the terrorism committed in El Salvador against their own people, or against Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega's first presidency in terrorism bin Laden wouldn't dare attempt, the message to an entire nation that the bullets to them would continue until they voted out the government the terrorists wanted out - all for our corporate interests to exploit in partnership with a corrupt elite in these countries.
Change is often problematic. Were the people who led revolutions against the monarchies in France and England completely supportable leaders who did no wrong? Hardly.
Even in our own nation, the United States, far better off than those nations, we've lost control for a while as our nation declines, the few most powerful scheming to take all the nation's economic growth for themselves, reducing the nation's economic health while they thrive and most Americans losing ground, our system greatly corrupted by the money supplied by the rich who excessively influence our politicians of both parties.
There are real problems with the excess concentration of wealth - problems we reduced in the reforms after the great depression bt have lost ground to since Reagan. And these problems are extreme in many South American nations, but you have no solution at all for any of them, as you simply oppose the change that might help to get things better by making some basic shifts.
When the rich who owned 90% of the media abused that power by having the television create and show a lie about how Chavez had conspired to shoot at political protestors, in order to support a coup against him, you say not a word of bad against that corruption and betrayal of democracy - you only say that any measures to reduce that corruption are 'attacks on the freedom of the press'.
Can you post a breakdown of the media in Venezuela today - how many stations and papers are owned by whom? All I see are baseless claims as you lazily cut and paste from the old condemnations of the USSR and who cares about the accuracy. You can't even respond to the points in my post apparently - where are the mass plitical prisoners, executions, torture that we see in nations you are not criticizing?
I don't accue you of the sort of bias where it's in your self-interest, but rather you appear to just have a laziness to your views to not bother to try to for any quality.
Consistency, adherence to principles of what's good for the people, attacking the problems in the status quo you defend, foget abou that, just selectively attack.
Here is an AP article today on the situation in Honduras:
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/world/2009/11/22/D9C4OU000_lt_honduras_coup
In it, you find the telling context:
"Honduras has always been run by a handful of families who control the news media, economy and every power sphere from the military to the Supreme Court."
I goes on to describe the uphill battle for anyone to challenge that conentration of power - including the flawed President who was removed in a coup. But at least it was possible improvement - not the 'return to the people' as you so dishonestly describe the status quo without that change.
What happens when a small number of people gain such control over the economic and political and media powers that any attempt to fix the imbalance causes a lot of misery?
That's a form of tyranny - one which we'd had a taste of as we rant and rail against the preferential policies of 'too big to fail' Wall Street firms and banks, one which these South American countries are immersed in. We need to do better - whether reining in the corruption in our own country to prevent becoming more and more like those others, or in those countries, to offer them some increased hope of the far more egalitarian system we've long enjoyed.
You are a chanpion for the tyranny, unwittingly thinking you are the enemy of the 'tyranny' of the flawed leaders for change.
Your call for a bullet to the elected leader there who is at least making osme important efforts for change makes you immoral scum like anyone who demands that - ignorance is not an excuse for your statement. Your ilogic is evidennt in your attacks such as only being concerned with one side 'pursuing power' - how else is a political movement going to make change? Both sides 'purrsue power' but you criticize only one for doing so.
There are many criticisms of Chavez I'd agree with,many I've made, but your position is far more flawed - you arne't simply pointing out his flaws.
The topic wasn't about them - there was a post saying he's a 'communist dictator for life', which is inaccurate, and I pointed that out. You disagreed, meaning that, absent specifics in your post, you are defending that he *is* a 'communist dictator for life' - and you are wrong as well. You did not rebut anything in my response to that misstatement, you simply said, implicitly, that he is a communist dictator for life.
If you want to discuss the actual flaws of Chavez, that'd be find, but you are wrong until you stop defending the extremist lies.
If you had any responsibility for trying to lead Venezuela to freedom from the corruption of its oligarchy and outside corporate domniation, you too might find yourself struggling against forces far more powerful outside and inside your country and needing allies, even very flawed allies, just as we see Chavez allying with some bad figures in his attempts to deal with the corruption, going too far at times.
Was the leader of Mexico's revolution a flawless leader? Were the American rebels in Mexico who fought at the Alamo without flaw, as they defended slavery against the Mexican government who outlawed it - or was the Mexican goernment flawless as it outlawed religions it didn't like? You don't get ideal people.
History is filled with this sort of corruption causing harm. The roots of WWII laid in one set of powers - the allies - doing some things that were oppressive to other lesser powers - the excesses against German after WWI, the blocking of Japan's development as an industrial power - allowing very flawed factions to rise to power in those nations, nations who did great wrongs themselves - the murderous actions of Japan against China helping destabilize that nation where the monster Mao rose to power, on and on.
What we can do is try to challenge corrupt power - and in Venezuela now, that means breaking up the oligarchy and outside exploitation more than worrying about Chavez's flaws IMO. The pieces can be put back together of a better country following Chavez, it seems, if there are some changes to the corrupt concentration of wealth, than are possible if you just go back to pre-Chavez and that tyranny.
You need to consider the bigger issues there and elsewhere that excess concentrations of wealth lead to under any type of governemnt from lassez-faire to communist.
The pre-Chavez situation of IIRC 99% of all land owned by hundreds of famiolies and over 90% of all media in the hands of a few rich members of that class is not good for most.
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