While the difficulties continue to mount in Haiti, tough policy choices will have to be made. Do we send in more troops to create order? No matter what we do, it’s clear some will never be pleased:
The United States is using the humanitarian crisis in Haiti as an excuse to occupy the earthquake-hit island nation, two of Washington’s most vocal leftist critics in Latin America implied at the weekend.
…
“What is happening in Haiti seriously concerns me as U.S. troops have already taken control of the airport,” Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said late Friday.
Did Obama’s betrayal of democracy in Honduras buy us nothing with these dictators? Sheesh.
Even our real allies are complaining about a supposed “occupation.” This just goes to show that in the international arena, no American good deed goes unpunished.
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Does this reasoning sound familiar?
President Hugo Chavez on Tuesday announced a new chain of government-run, cut-rate retail stores that will sell everything from food to cars to clothing from places such as China, Argentina and Bolivia.
“We’re creating Comerso, meaning Socialist Corporation of Markets,” Chavez said at the opening of a “socialist” fast-food location for traditional Venezuelan arepas (cornbread).
“They’ll see what’s good. We’ll show them what a real market is all about, not those speculative, money-grubbing markets, but a market for the people,” said Chavez in his drive to change Venezuela from a market-based economy to a socialist one.
“We’re going to challenge all that junk food that just fattens people up,” he added referring to the arepa stand he opened to the public.
…”We’re going to defeat speculation. Private individuals in sales can still sell, but they’ll have to compete with us and with a people who is now fully aware,” Chavez said.
Chavez has taken the Democrats aborted plans for a “public option” in health insurance and applied it to, well, everything.
You have to feel sorry for the people of Venezuala as their country is destroyed around them by the failed ideas of the 20th century.
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America’s troubles on the world stage were the result of being disliked – disliked because George W. Bush was such a terrible president. That’s what we were told. So why hasn’t a year of Barack Obama’s enlightened foreign policy leadership, promised as the antidote to Bush’s cowboy ineptitude, made the likes of Hugo Chavez less prone to delusional sabre rattling?
President Hugo Chavez ordered Venezuela’s military on Sunday to prepare for a possible armed conflict with Colombia, saying the country’s soldiers should be ready if the United States attempts to provoke a war between the South American neighbors.
“The best way to avoid war is preparing for it,” Chavez told military officers standing at attention during his weekly television and radio program.
Repeating an often-used military adage, he added, “If you want peace, prepare for war.”
Chavez told his supporters that President Barack Obama holds sway over Colombia’s government, and he cautioned the U.S. leader against using his allies in Bogota to mount a military offensive against Venezuela.
“Don’t make a mistake, Mr. Obama, by ordering an attack against Venezuela by way of Colombia,” he said.
It turns out that what we actually do is of little relevance to “world leaders” like this. We are a scapegoat. We are The Other upon which failing socialist dictators can direct the ire of the people, in hopes that they might be distracted their hungry bellies and diminishing freedoms – basically, from the inevitable mess created by a discredited ideology. Instead of operating under the delusion that Chavez is reacting to objective reality, we must realize that he will say things like this no matter what we do, nor who is president.
Does this mean we should just go around not caring who we cross or piss off? Of course not. The point is that we should focus on our national interest and not worry so much about why we are demonized, as if there were some way it could be stopped. So long as failing dictators need an enemy to rally against, we will be disliked. It’s a constant of international affairs, and therefore ought to be completely irrelevant to crafting policy.
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Michael Moore feels the heat from ex-lover Hugo Chavez:
Moore described a strange encounter with Chavez during last September’s Venice Film Festival. Chavez was there for the screening of Oliver Stone’s documentary “South of the Border,” which is about Chavez and other leftist leaders in Latin America.
Moore said that during a 2 a.m. encounter in Chavez’s hotel suite, he gave the strongman political advice and even helped him write a U.N. speech. The two also downed a bottle-and-a-half of tequila, Moore said.
…The anti-Moore charge is being led by Venezuela-American lawyer Eva Golinger — a Chavez political operative whom one of Venezuela’s anti-Chavez newspaper editors has branded as Venezuela’s answer to Sen. Joe McCarthy because she equates criticism of Venezuela’s government as being “anti-Venezuelan.”
Golinger, in an article filled with grammatical errors, skewered Moore’s “fairy tale” in a shrill analysis. Calling Moore a man with an “extreme ego,” she suggested at various points that the filmmaker was a racist. For instance, she pointed out that Moore mistook Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro as Chavez’s bodyguard, “but hey, all latinos (sic) look alike!”
I can’t help but enjoy when leftist demagogues turn cannibal.
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Sometimes it takes a crazy person to stumble upon the truth:
During one of Chavez’s customary lectures on the “curse” of capitalism and the bonanzas of socialism, the Venezuelan leader made reference to GM’s bankruptcy filing, which is expected to give the U.S. government a 60 percent stake in the 100-year-old former symbol of American might.
“Hey, Obama has just nationalized nothing more and nothing less than General Motors. Comrade Obama! Fidel, careful or we are going to end up to his right,” Chavez joked on a live television broadcast.
Hilarious.
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Socialist President of Venezuela, and Barack Obama backer, Hugo Chavez is teaming up with Iranian nutjob Ahmadinejad to start new socialist university.
Venezuela and Iran plan to start a new university program in the South American country with a focus on teaching socialist principles.
Venezuela’s government says it plans to establish the University of Civilizations under accords recently signed with Iran.
Deputy Minister for Academic Development Tibisay Hung says the program will begin in Caracas at the existing, tuition-free Bolivarian University.
Hung tells the state-run Bolivarian News Agency that the aim is to promote discussion of “21st century socialism.” Venezuela announced the program on Monday.
There will no doubt be a flood of American academics ready to teach there. Though one wonders why we need yet another educational institution hawking the miseries of socialism on the planet when we already have UCLA, UCSC and all the other bastions of radical leftism attracting socialists from all corners of the world to the U.S.
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Glass Monument to Che in Venezuela Shot
A glass monument to revolutionary icon Ernesto “Che” Guevara was shot up and destroyed less than two weeks after it was unveiled by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s government.
…Police said they had yet to identify those responsible. The Venezuelan newspaper El Nacional published a copy of what it said was a flier found by the monument signed by the previously unknown “Paramo Patriotic Front.”
“We don’t want any monument to Che, he isn’t an example for our children,” the flier read. It called Guevara a “cold-blooded killer” and said the government should raise a monument in Chavez’s hometown of Sabaneta, in the nearby lowland plains, if it wants to commemorate the Argentine-born revolutionary.
An appropriate end for a monument to such a worthless, sadistic murderer.
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It looks like another experiment in leftist government has resulted in miserable failure. I’m shocked, SHOCKED I tell you.
CommentsThe Venezuelan economy, under the direction of President Hugo Chavez, is starting to unravel in the currency market.
While Venezuela earns record proceeds from oil exports, consumers face shortages of meat, flour and cooking oil. Annual inflation has risen to 16 percent, the highest in Latin America, as Ch?vez tripled government spending in four years.
Exxon Mobil and ConocoPhillips are pulling out after Chavez demanded that they cede control of joint venture projects.
The bolivar has tumbled 30 percent this year to 4,850 per dollar on the black market, the only place it trades freely because of government controls on foreign exchange. That compares with the official rate of 2,150 per dollar set in 2005. Ch?vez may have to devalue the bolivar to reduce the gap and increase oil proceeds, which make up half the government’s revenue.
. . .”It’s like our director of marketing, our director of sales, our director of manufacturing is President Chavez,” said Edgar Contreras, who runs international operations at Molinos Nacionales, a Caracas-based food manufacturer that employs 1,500 people. “We can’t go on like this.”
Contreras called the government-set prices on many products “fantasy prices” that are below production costs. Milk, chicken, coffee and flour have disappeared from store shelves in Caracas at times this year.
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Liberal icon and “socialist reformer” (read: creator of destruction and misery) Hugo Chavez is preparing to remove those pesky term limits that prevent him from becoming dictator-for-life.
President Hugo Chavez will unveil a project to change the Constitution on Wednesday that is expected to allow him to be re-elected indefinitely, a move that would enhance his authority to accelerate a socialist-inspired transformation of Venezuelan society.
The removal of term limits for Mr. Chavez, which is at the heart of the proposal, is expected to be accompanied by measures circumscribing the authority of elected governors and mayors, who would be prevented from staying in power indefinitely, according to versions of the project leaked in recent weeks.
The aim of the overhaul is “to guarantee to the people the largest amount of happiness possible,” Mr. Lara said at a news conference on Tuesday.
The project has already led to fierce debate over Mr. Chavez’s expanding power. Critics in the Roman Catholic Church have been clashing with Mr. Chavez over the re-election proposals, with one cardinal, Rosalio Jos? Castillo Lara, calling him a “paranoid dictator.”
The American left has long played the apologetic fools to Chavez’s power grab. They’ve accepted without question his paranoid delusions about supposed American complicity in the attempts of the Venezuelan people to overthrow the dictator. Congressional Democrats have even written to chastise Bush for not protecting the thug from opposition to his authoritarian administration. Why must the left keep supporting anti-democratic dictators?
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We’re all aware of the creeping totalitarianism of the Chavez regime in Venezuela, particularly in light of his recent closure of the Radio Caracas broadcast television station. Chavez decided the popular station needed to disappear from the airwaves because they opposed his power grabs.
But in the eyes of the American left, Chavez is a hero for the cause and can do no wrong. A good example is the jaw-dropping article in the Section A of the L.A. Times today justifying Chavez’ behavior. Try to get your head around this one: The L.A. Times, one of the most politically charged publications in all of print media, and constant critic of the Bush administration, publishes this article justifying the closure of opposition media by a dictator.
VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez’s refusal to renew the license of Radio Caracas Television might seem to justify fears that Chavez is crushing free speech and eliminating any voices critical of him.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists and members of the European Parliament, the U.S. Senate and even Chile’s Congress have denounced the closure of RCTV, Venezuela’s oldest private television network. Chavez’s detractors got more ammunition Tuesday when the president included another opposition network, Globovision, among the “enemies of the homeland.”
But the case of RCTV ? like most things involving Chavez ? has been caught up in a web of misinformation. While one side of the story is getting headlines around the world, the other is barely heard.
The demise of RCTV is indeed a sad event in some ways for Venezuelans. Founded in 1953, it was an institution in the country, having produced the long-running political satire program “Radio Rochela” and the blisteringly realistic nighttime soap opera “Por Estas Calles.” It was RCTV that broadcast the first live-from-satellite images in Venezuela when it showed Neil Armstrong walking on the moon in 1969.
But after Chavez was elected president in 1998, RCTV shifted to another endeavor: ousting a democratically elected leader from office. Controlled by members of the country’s fabulously wealthy oligarchy including RCTV chief Marcel Granier, it saw Chavez and his “Bolivarian Revolution” on behalf of Venezuela’s majority poor as a threat.
RCTV’s most infamous effort to topple Chavez came during the April 11, 2002, coup attempt against him. For two days before the putsch, RCTV preempted regular programming and ran wall-to-wall coverage of a general strike aimed at ousting Chavez. A stream of commentators spewed nonstop vitriolic attacks against him ? while permitting no response from the government.
Then RCTV ran nonstop ads encouraging people to attend a march on April 11 aimed at toppling Chavez and broadcast blanket coverage of the event. When the march ended in violence, RCTV and Globovision ran manipulated video blaming Chavez supporters for scores of deaths and injuries.
After military rebels overthrew Chavez and he disappeared from public view for two days, RCTV’s biased coverage edged fully into sedition. Thousands of Chavez supporters took to the streets to demand his return, but none of that appeared on RCTV or other television stations. RCTV News Director Andres Izarra later testified at National Assembly hearings on the coup attempt that he received an order from superiors at the station: “Zero pro-Chavez, nothing related to Chavez or his supporters?. The idea was to create a climate of transition and to start to promote the dawn of a new country.” While the streets of Caracas burned with rage, RCTV ran cartoons, soap operas and old movies such as “Pretty Woman.” On April 13, 2002, Granier and other media moguls met in the Miraflores palace to pledge support to the country’s coup-installed dictator, Pedro Carmona, who had eliminated the Supreme Court, the National Assembly and the Constitution.
Would a network that aided and abetted a coup against the government be allowed to operate in the United States? The U.S. government probably would have shut down RCTV within five minutes after a failed coup attempt ? and thrown its owners in jail. Chavez’s government allowed it to continue operating for five years, and then declined to renew its 20-year license to use the public airwaves. It can still broadcast on cable or via satellite dish.
Granier and others should not be seen as free-speech martyrs. Radio, TV and newspapers remain uncensored, unfettered and unthreatened by the government. Most Venezuelan media are still controlled by the old oligarchy and are staunchly anti-Chavez.
If Granier had not decided to try to oust the country’s president, Venezuelans might still be able to look forward to more broadcasts of “Radio Rochela.”
Unbelievable.
Imagine if the L.A. Times applied this same rationale to opposition media in the U.S. Let’s keep in mind that many of the nation’s journalists indeed consider Bush a tyrant. There’s a strong case to be made that the L.A. Times, N.Y. Times et.al. are guilty of exactly the offenses alleged in the article – they’ve been trying to get Bush out of office since day one. And don’t get me started on the N.Y. Times leaking classified intelligence info. What if Bush decided to shut down these two papers for sedition or trying to oust the Democratically elected president? Would they run pieces in Section A insisting that these papers deserved it? That if only they hadn’t dared try to get Bush out of office then people might still be able to enjoy their Sunday editions? That they brought it on themselves?
Of course not. They’d cry foul and fight and cling with all their might to freedom of the press. There’s no way they’d stand for it if a Republican President did it. Not in this country. But in Venezuela, when their up-and-coming star and fellow socialist does it, they just can’t understand why no one is bothering to look at it from the dictator’s point of view. Poor Chavez is just the victim of media bias. The traitors at RCTV are just lucky he tolerated them for as long as he did.
If only they were so interested in the other side of the story when reporting politics in the U.S.
I bet it’s an awkward feeling when a journalist must ally with a dictator in silencing dissenting media in order to stay true to his personal political inclinations. Bart Jones and the L.A. Times should be ashamed of themselves.
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science, but please don't hold that against me.
