Venezuela's new revolution centers on land

[lostnfound]

For well or ill, this article is an interesting examination of some issues that are surely driving Condoleeza Rice's comments in her confirmation hearings. Interesting launch point for discussions of land reform, sustainability, foreign ownership, leftist governments, democracy vs capitalism, and economic alternatives.

http://www.sptimes.com/2005/01/24/Worldandnation/Venezuela_s_new_revol.shtml

...

Chavez cites a study that says more than 75 percent of Venezuela's agricultural land is concentrated in the hands of barely 5 percent of its farmers. His recently signed decree allows the government to "rescue" lands it deems idle, or whose owners fail to show clear title. The commissions have 90 days to determine the status of the land.

<snip>"This land is Venezuelan. They should get out of here," said Rafael Delgado, a 57-year-old barrel-chested peasant leader in torn jeans. He accused the Vestey Group of producing meat for export only to the United States. In fact, the Vestey Group, which owns 14 cattle ranches in Venezuela, is the country's largest beef producer for the domestic market.

<snip>The "Lancers" as they are called, are paid $100 monthly stipends. They attend courses given by a government program, Mission About-Face. Students are taught to reject capitalist thinking in favor of cooperative solidarity.

<snip>
"People are waking up," said Norali Verenzuela, 29, who runs a small organic vegetable garden in downtown Caracas to showcase endogenous development. "We've been dependent on McDonald's and Wendy's for so long. Now people are learning to eat what we can produce."

[David__77]

1. Industry must be popularized as well.

Not just land but capital must become the domain of the whole Venezuelan people. They need the technology to sustain not just agriculture but industry to withstand the assaults of the new colonialists. They must prepare against war because aggression is a real possibility. Next door, Uribe must be replaced with a people's government.

[AP]

2. Some comments about this article.

I'm going to excerpt parts of this article in effort to deconstruct what I think is going on with the media's presentation of these issues.

But first I'll start with a comment about land reform generally. My understanding is that former head of Clinton's council of economic advisors and World Bank economist Joe Stiglitz has argued that the only way out of poverty for the third world is land reform. His is not a communist argument. His argument is that capitalism can only work well when people at the bottom are able to own the land they live on and that the terriblly inequitable distribution of land caused by colonialism and imperialism is actually what's holding a lot of countries back from becoming developed, wealth-producing capitalist economies.

The argument makes sense to me. Wealth comes from work and from land. If a few people own a lot of land and don't use it, society is losing out on a lot of wealth that could be created. If people aquired their huge land holdings unfairly, it might be time to do something about that, because there is just about no other way to get wealth back into communities from whom land was taken without adequate compensation.

With land reform, ultimately the rich will get even richer (since there will be more wealth created), so long as they're willing to work for the wealth, which is only good.

Now, specifically speaking, this article follows a pattern that was very popular in the media just before the last Zimbabwean elections. They don't talk about the issue the way Stiglitz would. They frame the issue in terms of land reform being socialist and dictatorial (even though, to me, it's about encouraging commerce and entrepreneurialsim and creating a wealthy middle class and a wealthier successful working class).

Very interestingly, one of the most popular articles about Zimbabwe was about how the government was going to transfer a rhinoceraus preserve to landless farmers, like this was an outrage. Well, the Western media knows its audience: Westerners are bound to care more about some abstract notion of conservation and preservation and the protection of endangered species than they care about people, right? Well, interestingly this formulation appears in this article too. The frame they use is the takeover of a nature preserve.

So, let's take a look at the article.

"the revolution arrived in a cloud of dust... "a cavalcade of a dozen government SUVs swept up a shady avenue of bamboo trees, escorted by soldiers."

Right away, this isn't about economics or policy. It's about an armed revolution coming up a dusty path.

"...Interior Secretary Comrade Rafael Aleman...sporting a Che Guevara key ring"

Just setting the scene here with some loaded descriptive terms.

"The eco-lodge's nervous owner, one of the country's biggest cattlemen, waited in the shade of a grove of mimosa and mango trees."

OK, well it looks like it might not be the nature preserve the government wants to talk about, but the cattle holdings. We'll see. Anyway, this guy might have been waiting in the shade nervously, but HIS comrades -- the wealthy landowners -- certainly have not been doing nothing the last couple years when it comes to resisting Chavez's democratizing policies.

"But land - especially rich people's land - is the new front line in Latin America's latest revolution...there's no escaping the ever-tightening grasp on power of President Hugo Chavez."

Is this characterization fair? How can you describe a policy that would deconcentrate wealth, passing it down to an entrepreneurial class that is not connected to the government except insofar as the government helps them aquire title to land, as a "tightening grasp"? To me, the high concentration of wealth is the tightening grasp that is finally loosening now, thanks to Chavez's democratizing efforts.

"...Chavez says he has no intention of copying Cuba's communist system, but he sure seems headed that direction."

According to whom? Certainly Joe Stiglitz is no communist, and I'd like to hear his opinion about this issue. And here we are in paragraph 8 and we already have many allusions to Cuba, Castro and communism, and nothing about the politics and economis of land reform. And, mind you, even Scotland is interested in reforming land ownership, so there is a story to tell that wouldn't frame things in term of communist dictatorial politics.

"Land for those who work it! Justice in the farmlands," {Chavez} told an adoring crowd of red-shirted revolutionaries..."

This is the closest the article has come so far to talking about the policy issues, but they still had to slip in the allusion to communism. Yes, land for those who work it and justice. I want to hear more about that.

"Chavez has moved to cement his power. A new media law imposed tough penalties for ill-defined offenses against the "public order." Penal code reform limits political protest."

There's a thread here about the new media law that showed that it's not the nefarious law US media has tried to characterize it as being.

"{Chavez} has complete control and is moving with tremendous speed {according to a Washington think-tank analyst}."

The article is conjuring up the image of a fast moving invasion of the rights of private citizens -- it's the same image they use in the opening paragraph.

The article goes on:

Chavez's government is made up of "leftist guerrillas and leaders of militant organizations, {and} male strippers." While the people opposed to him are professors at businesses schools and businessmen who are graduates of the "prestigious London School of Economics."

Everything Chavez does is like Castro or Mao or Pol Pot.

And the article isn't afraid to state its greatest concern: if land reform fails, it could jeopordize the Venezuelan oil industry.

And reform is bound to fail because all other "experiments" in the region have failed. However, I suspect that the anxiety over land reform is that it's the one thing that will work (as Stiglitz argues).

Although Zimbabwe is really the first former colony in the world (other than the US) that has taken land reform seriously, the article argues that reform won't succeed because "land usually ends up divided into plots too small to be farmed efficiently, the peasants left to eke out a living." As far as I know there's no real history to use as proof of what will happen. And I do know that, according to UN study of South Africa (IIRC) subsidence farming is the most productive form of farming there is in the world.

But even this article seems incredibly confused about whether the pre-reform squatters have had success. After citing the example of a poor squatter whose husband died of cancer and who is barely eeking out a living as evidence that land reform isn't working, the article then uses the example of successful entrepreneurial squatters as evidence that it isn't working.

You really can't win with this article. If you're not successful, land reform was bad, and if you are a successful squatter, land reform was bad. Firstly, the poor woman seemed to have a few other problems besides land reform. Also, as a squatter her status is less certain than if she actually had title to the land, which is the ultimate goal of land reform. Secondly, the goal of land reform is to get wealth down to the people, so when a few squatters are successful and make a capitalist go of it, that's a GOOD thing. That's a sign of success.

Finally, towards the end of the article, they start talking about the nuts and bolts of the government's FDR-style reforms designed to build up a middle class. However, this article characterizes a "Buy Venezuelan" strategy as propaganda designed by former guerrillas, and describes an education and training plan (which sounds like a massive-scale MBA program preparing agrarian capitalists) as "an army of worker ants to boost production" in "a quixotic masterpiece of ill-conceived social engineering."

In an article filled with one-sided not-so-subtle spin, the author makes sure that if you haven't figured out his editorial agenda by the last sentence, he better leave you with something that hits you like a hammer: "The revolution departed the eco-ranch. The tourists returned from their fishing trip, and bird song filled the air."

Yes, hopefully the revolution will depart and the foreigners can get back to enjoying themselves and songs will fill the air.

If anyone wants to write the author, here's his email address:

David Adams can be reached at [e-mail]

[Robbien]

5. Does this David Adams usually follow the WH talking points?

or just in this case. Do you know?

And thanks for your analysis, it very nicely clarified many parts of the issue.

[Georgian2005]

14. Great Analysis

Now some questions form comments above and below:

1. "If a few people own a lot of land and don't use it, society is losing out on a lot of wealth that could be created." True, but two things: a. Why would an entity like Vestey let land lie fallow when it could produce income. Do you really believe that this is the case?

b. This is the same logic used in the US when they apply eminent domain to a homeowner that won't sell to Wal-Mart. The local govt. siezes the property in the name of creating a higher tax-base, or as you put it creating more wealth. This is what I would call a slipper slope.

2. "If people aquired their huge land holdings unfairly" Are we sure of this? I don't know the history but am interested in the topic, so please enlighten me.

3. We talk about creating wealth through respect from the land you own, but if the land you own was actually siezed by the govt, and then given to you, how can you actually feel comfortable in your ownership of said land?

Thanks for your responses.

[AP]

15. 1a. Since Vestey didn't have to pay competitive market rates for the land

they don't have the economic incentive to use it in a way that produces wealth at a rate that's good for the rest of VZ. Lord Vestey inherited that land from his grandfather. He makes all his money from doing other stuff and the land is just something he has on the side. Those squatters need that land much more and are willing to use it much more productively.

This is the same problem they have in Scotland. Twenty families own 90% of the land (IIRC) and they have no incentive to do anything super-productive with it. They're the idle rich and they are a drain on economic development.

1b. Eminent domain is when the gov't takes private property (with fair compensation), keeps it, and uses it for the public good. There's actually another principle in US property law in many states where private parties can take title to unused private property, and the reason that principle exists is to address the problem outlined above. What VZ is doing is a hybrid, and they're doing it for the right reason.

Incidentally, there is a property law example similar to your Wal-Mart example. In MI an auto mnfg'er convinced the city of detroit to appropriate by eminent domain a lot of private land that was being used efficiently and to give to them to make a plant they said would create more social value. The city did it.

Just a couple weeks ago, the MI supreme court overturned the legal principle that allowed that to happen. They said the gov't cannot take land that is being used by private people alread and give it to a private party, and I understand the decision argued that the plant had destroyed property values, is now abandoned, and therefore was a less efficient use of the land. So, bottom line: big powerful corporations shouldn't take land from smaller people who are using that land efficiently. They should have just bought it up if it was that valuable. Because they weren't willing to buy it up is probably a pretty good indication that it wasn't going to create the wealth they claimed.

But in VZ, what you have is a lot of people impoverished by the fact that there is a centuries-old inequitable distribution of land and they can't even afford to buy land that isn't being used even though, if they owned it, they would definitely put it to a better use than it's being put to by large landholders who are barely using it.

2. I don't know about the specific situation in VZ, but if an English guy got 15,000 acres two generations ago and he's not really using it efficiently, there are some screwed up imperialism-influenced economics going on, I'm guessing. The situation is much clearer in Zimbabwe, where the English took the land at the end of rifle and were killing people for it as recently as the 60s. In New Mexico, there were corrupt politicians who destroyed the property deeds of Mexican-Americans in the 1920s in order to transfer title to wealthy large landholders. Wherever you have a few large landholders not using land efficiently and a lot of poor former landholders, there's a pretty good chance that somebody didn't pay a fair price for that land somewhere down the chain of title.

3. I don't know what you mean by comfortable. I'd look up Stiglitz on this. He says that one of the biggest problems with development economics arround the world is that there are so many squatters subsistence farming who want to leverage their labor and land to get ahead (eg, by buying a piece of machinery that will make farming more efficient) but without the title deed as security, they can't get a loan at a fair rate. So, if comfortable means that the government has given you title to a piece of land that you're already working and that helps you leverage the economic power of your labor and land, I think they'll be really comfortable.

[Mike Niendorff]

16. It's analysis like this that first got me reading DU.

Thank you for taking the time to post this. There is much food for thought here.


MDN

[eg101]

3. media is "manufacturing consent" for invading Venezuela

Do you really think the media and the neoliberals it quotes in this story are really concerned about the welfare of the poor Venezuelans? No, they are backing up their corporate supporters who would lose capital and revenue in Venezuela, and they are really afraid of what happens if Chavez's experiment works and serves as a good example.

[lostnfound]

4. It's hard to pin this article on corporate supporters because..

the St. Pete Times is owned by a nonprofit media institute.

They were always known as a liberal newspaper. And I find this article to be far more balanced than the tripe that shows up in the Houston Chronicle or the New York Times.

I do recognize that there are other interpretations for the perspective presented in it, however. The frame of thinking is typical of American press, as AP pointed out, with communist vs capitalist opposition set up. And are there any writers who take the poor seriously, seeing not merely as objects but as competent actors in the world? The underlying premise is that affairs of state are best left to men with degrees from the London School of Economics etc. The poor are objects of pity in the better papers and objects of disdain in the worst.

[AP]

6. Phil Gunson, the reporter for this piece, has a long history...

...of not being a good reporter on this issue.

I don't think there's much at all that's balanced in this article. It's a series of negative images attached to statements.

A Brit Reporter’s Undisclosed Venezuela Conflicts

Phil Gunson and Eric Ekvall Are Upset with Narco News


By Al Giordano
With Unabridged Letters from Phil Gunson and Eric Ekvall

December 23, 2002

First, we will introduce the actors in this report on what happens when foreign media organizations don’t apply enough scrutiny on their English-language correspondents in Latin America.

Eric Ekvall is a political consultant in Venezuela who used to work for the state-owned oil company PdVSA and the Ford Motor Company. He popped up last April, during the brief coup d’etat in Venezuela, defending Dictator-for-a-Day Pedro Carmona in an article by Juan Forero of the New York Times.

Phil Gunson refers to himself as a “freelance correspondent” in Venezuela. He has written during the past month for the Miami Herald, the St. Petersburg Times, MSNBC (online only) and the Independent of London. He has also been interviewed recently on NPR and on WAMU radio in Washington DC about the events in Venezuela (parts of those interviews are quoted below).

The two men have a relationship related to Gunson’s “journalism” that – after they were given the opportunity to come clean by Narco News – neither Gunson nor Ekvall were willing to disclose.
...

http://www.narconews.com/Issue27/article572.html

[Judi Lynn]

7. Phil Gunson is a name the anti-Chavez poster, Windansea kept pushing

as an authentic source during his short but unpleasant stay here last year. Posters who read those threads will remember your discussions (on edit: would also like to mention there were other great D.U. posters who contributed wonderful presence to those threads, also) with that pro-oligarchy poster very well.

I took a quick look for Phil Gunson, found this ort:

Criticism of Phil Gunson's Piece in Vertigo Issue 7, Autumn/Winter 2004
Criticism from Alex Cox, Filmmaker
Dear Vertigo,

Re. 'Documentary & The Fabrication of Truth'
I won't play tit-for-tat and dissect the lies, evasions, and missing facts
that make up Phil Gunson's review of CHAVEZ: INSIDE THE COUP.
But two points must be made: 1) no matter how much Gunson dislikes him,
Hugo Chavez is the democratically-elected president of Venezuela - his
election having been ratified a second time by popular vote only a month
ago; 2) all but one TV channel in Venezuela is in the hands of corporations
and the nation's oligarchy, and before and after the coup attempt the
broadcast nonstop propaganada against Chavez and in favour of the United
States.
The documentary's Spanish title - LA REVOLUCION NO SERA TRANSMITIDA -
explains why filmmakers Bartley and O'Briain didn't offer 'balanced
coverage' by interviewing those who oppose Chavez. Such voices, whether on
TV in Venezuela, in the White House, or in the pages of The Guardian, are
legion: they speak for the rich minority, and are heard loudly around the
world.
Gunson's prattish and mean-spirited attack will win him friends in
Washington and Whitehall, perhaps - it also demonstrates why The Guardian
and The Observer's Latin American coverage has been so diabolically bad.
One suspects Gunson is really in a snit because, in all his alleged "25
years experience", he never managed the journalistic coup those these two
"novice documentarists"* pulled off in April 2002.
(snip)

http://www.vertigomagazine.co.uk/CriticismofGunson.htm

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mis-reporting Venezuela : Hugo Chavez as processed by the “Independent” newspaper
by Toni Solo
22 March 2004


Many people read the London based Independent newspaper because among its reporters is the outstanding Robert Fisk. The anti-war stance of the newspaper on Iraq and its stance on genetically manipulated foods and other environmental issues may give the impression that the Independent is a responsible newspaper across the board. But a look at its coverage of Venezuela reveals the same old story of distortion, omission and deceit on US intervention in Latin America that one finds everywhere else in the corporate media.
It may be worth pointing out that the owner of the UK Independent is Tony O'Reilly, one of Ireland's most prominent businessmen, formerly head of H.J. Heinz. H.J. Heinz heiress Teresa Heinz is married to Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry. Also of note is that O'Reilly shares philanthropic concerns through the Ireland Fund with fellow fund member Peter Sutherland, former GATT and World Trade Organization chief, also chairman of oil giant BP-Amoco. 1 It's unlikely their corporate philantropy extends to Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president.

Three important stories on Venezuela have appeared in the Independent during March. 2 One by Phil Gunson on March 2nd, one by Andrew Buncombe on March 13th and one by Rupert Cornwell on March 20th. Phil Gunson's article is crude anti-Chavez propaganda. Buncombe's is a straightforward account of US funding for the Venezuelan opposition. Cornwell's is a more insidious anti-Chavez piece employing classic BBC-style bonhomie and “balance”. Both pieces depend on ignoring crucial facts.

Gunson's report could be dismissed for the pap that it is and forgotten were it not part of an international media campaign to disparage and demonize Hugo Chavez and to intervene in Venezuela's internal affairs. The campaign gives aid and comfort to the anti-democratic US-funded opposition. The crisis in Venezuela stems from the opposition's lack of electoral support. They tried to rig the recall vote and became bogged down in constitutional process. Then they instigated violent insurrection to try and force the issue, so far without success. These basic facts are entirely absent from Gunson's report.
(snip)

http://www.doublestandards.org/solo15.html

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

This is what happens when a few percent of the Venezuelan people own almost ALL the land in the country, and the poor are crammed into slums, nearly sitting on top of each others' heads, in desperate conditions, with, as you can see, no sanitation, no proper plumbing, nothing at all. It is this environment the "poll takers" in Venezuela refuse to enter when they do their dandy little surveys of Venezuelan political trends, as they are afraid of them. That's why you don't EVER get truthful polls. There is a real shortage of phones here, too, so almost all of them are never reachable by phones. (A D.U. female poster who lived in Venezuela has already told us that.)

Mudslides and fires wipe these communities off the face of the earth, too, from time to time. This is just fine with the oligarchy scums, who couldn't care less about these people.

[lostnfound]

9. Thank you so much

I think it would be interesting to write to the Times about it. I've often wondered about the other correspondent they had on this story..I'm frequently skeptical of AP writers for example (cia plants?), but it's hard to imagine the Times having the same types of people as foreign correspondents.

[bin.dare]

8. here is how the Guardian reports it today ...

Squatters sit tight as land revolution is put to the test in Venezuela

Ruling on Lord Vestey's cattle ranch could signal the start of mass redistribution of private farms

Sibylla Brodzinsky in Hato el Charcote
Tuesday January 25, 2005
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,12716,1397833,00.html

Pablo Flores scowls at a small herd of cattle grazing just beyond the barbed wire edge of his small plot where he grows beans, squash and melons. The 13,600 hectare (33,500 acre) farm, he says, is not big enough for the cattle owned by the British meat-packing tycoon Lord Vestey and the 1,000 fellow squatters who have occupied plots on El Charcote ranch.
Emboldened by a presidential decree in 2001 which laid the legal framework for redistributing idle public and private land to the poor, a group of families occupied the northern half of El Charcote, building small shacks of wood and zinc plate and planting crops of corn, mangoes and beans. A year ago another group of squatters took over the rest of the land.

The land law and the fear of wide-scale nationalisation of private property was one of the factors that united opposition forces to try to put President Hugo Chávez out of power by means of demonstrations, a brief coup, a two-month strike, and finally a referendum, which he won in August.
Now, with his mandate firmly established, Mr Chávez is determined to advance his "revolution", and the land law will be the first real indication of how far the revolution will go in this oil-rich but poverty-ridden country.
El Charcote will be the first test. A commission set up by the government is investigating whether Agroflora, the Vestey Group company which runs the ranch, is the legitimate owner and is making "proper" use of the land.

Accompanied by 200 soldiers, the commission made its first inspection of the ranch earlier this month. It will issue its ruling by March.
Tony Richards, the ranch manager, says that because of the squatters he is able to work only 5,000 of the 13,600 hectares Lord Vestey's great-grandfather bought a century ago.

His pastures are overstocked, output has fallen two thirds since the first squatters came, and often he fears for his safety. "It's heartbreaking. We are trying very hard to work as if nothing is happening. But it is," said Mr Richards, a Briton who has lived in Venezuela for 18 years. "Of course there are social inequalities in Venezuela, but there are ways to address it without confrontation."

It is probably no coincidence that the British-owned ranch was the first target of the land reform effort. Lord Vestey himself protested outside a cocktail party at the Venezuelan embassy in London in 2002, demanding that the government take action against the squatters.
But observers say that Mr Chávez could hardly have forced the landless peasants from land he had convinced them was legally theirs. And he needed their support to fight off the very real challenges to his power.

Mr Richards welcomes the commission's intervention.
"At least we'll have some sort of decision one way or another so we can get on with our lives and they can get on with theirs," he said. "If as they say their agenda is only to establish the legal ownership and the productivity, I have nothing to fear."
But the constitution introduced by Mr Chávez and passed in 1999 says that latifundios - landholdings of more than 5,000 hectares - are "contrary to the social interest".

The 2001 land law allows for unused and under-used agricultural land to be taxed and expropriated. In addition to El Charcote, at least eight other ranches have been placed under review this month.
According to the 1998 official census 60% of agricultural land is owned by 1% of the population. Venezuela is a highly urbanised country where only 12% of the 25 million people live in rural areas.
The government has promised to grant rights to 100,000 plots of land to the poor by next year, taken either from government-owned land or from that expropriated from large landowners.

"The war against latifundios is key to the revolution," Mr Chávez said when he signed the decree regulating the land reviews.
"We must place the land in the hands of those who work it."
His critics call Mr Chávez a closet Marxist who wants to take Venezuela down the same path as Cuba: he is a close friend of President Fidel Castro.

But government officials insist that there is no sinister plot behind the application of the land law.
"There are people who are intent on demonising government efforts to distribute land more equitably," said Marisol Plaza, the inspector general, who is charged with defending the rights of the state.
"The land law will respect private property and any expropriation will be compensated."
The expectations of the poor people who have taken up Mr Chávez's war against the latifundio means the government is walking a tight-rope.
"How this issue is handled is the thread by which the future of the revolution is hanging," said Jhonny Yánez, governor of Cojedes state where El Charcote is located.

Mr Yánez has been named head of a national commission to organise the investigation of farms in other states.
"No revolution has ever been consolidated without touching the land. If we don't handle this right it could have a boomerang effect because of all the expectations that have been created," he said.
In the 1960s land redistribution was used to prevent revolutions in Latin America, benefiting many subsistence farmers. But later many of them sold their farms back to land owners and headed to the cities.

José Flores, who shares his brother Pedro's plot at El Charcote, says he is not interested in selling his land if he wins the rights to it.
"My family was originally from the countryside and moved to the city. I grew up there, but this is where I belong."

[sweetheart]

10. souncs like chavez is doing the right thing

The mistake in zimbabwe was using violence, and not finding a way to
make the land reform respect property rights. The instant it became
clear that no property rights were being respected, zimbabwe turned in
to an economic basket case and for all the talk of susinence farming,
the results are unimpressive... rather devolving into a purely anti
colonial war action of thuggery.

I'm very critical of Mr. Chavez, as he MUST be very careful to make his
revolution in such a way as to respect property rights, the very ones
that his newly enfranchised peasant farmer class will want to protect
their own farms one day. In this regard, without violence, his reforms
will make ripples across the world, and the US will not be able to
invade without violence... and even 1 case of grossly abused law.

Go for it Mr. Chavez, and please use the rule of law, the courts and
eminent domain to make us all proud. The risk of failure is the
deaths of 1000's of your people in an american coup, and the setback
of south american social justice and land reform for decades.

[oasis]

11. Power to the people.

[fshrink]

12. Always has been the problem. There and everywhere in SA.

Finally! Which makes Dr. Rizzy concerned no doubt. There must be a contract running on this guy's head. Maybe he should re-frame while it's still time?

[aikido15]

13. I love this country...

We could learn a lot from them! When will America wake up?

[Chicago Democrat]

17. Go Hugo Chavez!

Viva Venezuela!