Originally posted by: sandorski
Originally posted by: Vic
There's a reason for this (although I don't approve, being a borderline isolationist). History has shown us time and again that governments like Chavez' are inherently authoritarian, centered around the cult of personality, and that human rights abuses inevitably follow.
i'll grant you that chavez could turn authoritarian, but until he does most(here) criticism against him is unwarranted.
You know, many said the same thing about JFK, that he was a 'tyrant'; heck, the very song 'cult of personality' includes JFK speaking in it.
George Washington by all accounts was a 'cult of personality', too. It doens't necessarily mean tyrant; Chavez has done much to increase democracy in Venezuela.
Because they are starting at a very different point than we are at, some of the measures look different.
For example, some land reform to give land to peasants looks very different between the US's conditions now, and the Venezuelan situation where a few hundred families own almost all the wealth and land, and you had masses without food and a lot of unused land. Actually, it was JFK who recommended the land redistribution to Venezuela. If we had most Americans without food and that level of concentration of land ownership, you would see our views change a whole lot, too. But the right fails to account for that.
People also fail to give any consideration to the situations some of these people find themselves in. If we had most of the wealth in the US focused on defeating democracy and overthrowing our president, you would see a lot of measures taked to defend both here, too, and, I suspect, broad public support for them. Such measures are in the interest of democracy when protecting democracy is the agenda and they are limited to that need. It's when they're used to thwart democracy that it's a problem.
When leaders don't take such measures, consider what happens, such as to Salvador Allende (elected president lost his life in a US-backed move to dictatorship), the leader of Iran (replaced by the Shah in a newly powerful role as dictator by the US, with a CIA-created brutal security force), and so on; we tried to assassinate Castro dozens of times; look at what happened to President Aristide of Haiti, as he ping ponged in and out of power (now out) as the US switched between democrats and republicans. Consider Daniel Ortega in the 80's in Nicaragua, who did nothing against us, but had to protect his country from a large US-created terrorist force made up of former security forces and criminals, as the US literally committed terrorism - the use of violence terrorizing the population to force it to vote how the outside force wants, and it worked.
Chavez increased the democracy in Venezuela. He removed voting barriers, he added a recall power for the public which was used against him and he abided by it.
If we had a TV station in this country owned by the 'wealthy elite' that was actively putting out lies to defeat democracy and remove the president for their own wealth to be better protected, including not just influencing opinion but being involved in an actual coup that had replaced our president by a new dictatorial government that abolished congress for a couple days - which is what happened in Venezuela - we'd say we were *very* patient for that station to remain operating for six years. That's not about free speech.
We'd demand the coup people be imprisoned as traitors at least - and Chavez was more gentle to them than that, I think he even put one into a position of power.
All existing evidence shows that he turned authoritarian years ago. Wacko conspiracy theorists aside, that wasn't CIA snipers firing on unarmed protesters in April 2002.
No, it was the opposition's snipers firing on the crowd of Chavez supporters, to get them to shoot back, and this very same tv station at issue here then put out a phony report making it look like the Chavez supporters had shot into a a crowd - to create an incident to trigger the coup. But film from another angle shows the Chavez crown was not shooting at a crowd, but at the snipers who were killing them.
Thanks for proving the point about the problem with the lies put out by the station.
That wasn't Bush who fired nearly 20,000 union oil workers to replace them with workers for a newly-created pro-Chavez union.
The US and Venezuelan elites also tried to force Chavez out of office with a devastating striked and economic meltodown. He again did the responsible thing and took the power out of the hands of those who abused it so badly to protect the Venezuelan economy. US corporations had the passwords for computers and such which they simply refused to hand over, and Chavez took steps not to leave the country so vulnerable to people who had abused their role to try to overthrow democracy.
And you condemn that while praising Reagan for getting rid of the air traffic controller union for far less cause, as he made our airline travel less safe?
Chavez is just following the model set by Castro. How to trick the people into seizing power in order to form a modern absolute monarchy -- call it socialism and tell them you'll use the force of government to solve all the people's problems. They'll fall over themselves to give you absolute power and cult of personality status, and by the time they realized they've been tricked, it's too late.
You are not telling the truth. It's fine as fictional paranoia, but not the facts of what's happening. For example, when the opposition had US funding for the 'recall election' - something against our law were it done here - Chavez was very restrained in not taking steps to shut it down as a foreign-pushed initiative, but he actually said he would resign if it passed, and allowed international election inspectors (something else we don't do, which wasn't an issue until 2000 and later).
I will say I'm concerned about reports of Chavez wanting to make the presedential term 25 years. I haven't seen confirmation they're true yet, they could be propaganda.
If they are true, I'd hear his side but start out against the move. So far, he's been great for democracy, in a very tough situation where the nation's money is in open treason.
Seems to me that Chavez should be a hero to America.