Hugo Chavez Denies Seeking Dictatorship (M$M PUKE ALERT)

[Say_What]

<clips>

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez defended his administration Tuesday, denying he's seeking a dictatorship and accusing local media of falsely portraying him as authoritarian.

Chavez, a fervent nationalist who was first elected in 1998 and is up for re-election next year, says he fully backs democracy. His critics frequently claim that he holds increasingly power over the centers of power — the national legislature, the courts and the electoral council.

"From North America and parts of South America, they continue attacking Venezuela, trying to say there is a dictatorship here," Chavez told oil company executives in the northwestern state of Falcon. "Those who say I want to lead Venezuela toward a dictatorship are the same ones who tried to establish a dictatorship here, and they were defeated."

Chavez, a former paratrooper with strong ties to Cuba's
Fidel Castro, accuses Venezuelan television channels of playing a role in a short-lived 2002 coup against him and a devastating national strike that ended in early 2003.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051005/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_chavez

[valerief]

1. Oh, I see why BushCo hates him.

He was actually in the military.

[Canuckistanian]

2. A dictator who shares the resources with the people

OOOOOO, he's dangerous.

[alittlelark]

13. Bushcorporatists see him as a major threat....

MY GOD... he has doubled the literacy rate in his country...!!!!

[Canuckistanian]

15. OMG! People will be able to read contracts!

And warning labels, and disclaimers!

This just won't do!

[Cha]

3. Hey!...World M$M! bush is an authoritarian

albeit one who has to be told what to say. Chavez is giving poor people a leg up..and that just gripes the shit outta ya, doesn't it?

[Peace Patriot]

4. Chavez's entirely peaceful revolution, with socialist elements in it, his

popularity among the great majority of Venezuelans, his strong belief in democracy, and his sitting on all that oil, really stick in the craws of the norteamericanos, the vultures--that's for sure.

The big difference between Venezuela and the U.S., both of whom use electronic voting, is that Venezuela has open source code--that is, anyone may review how the votes are tabulated--whereas, now, the U.S. has SECRET, PROPRIETARY source code, controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations (mostly Diebold and ES&S).

Open source = good president, good government.

Secret, proprietary source code = bad president, bad government.


It's fairly simple, really.

[Peace Patriot]

5. P.S. They also had hundreds of international election monitors, including

the Carter Center, verifying their elections, and honest exit polls as a verification tool and check on fraud, unlike the DOCTORED exit polls of our news monopoly consortium, which CHANGED the exit poll data (Kerry won) to "fit" the "official result" of Diebold's and ES&S's secret vote tabulation formulae (Bush won).

No other democracy on earth would permit such non-transparency as we had in the 2004 election. Wise up, people.

[not fooled]

6. Hey, MSM: substitute * for Chavez...

...CHIMPY is the one who wants to be a dictator. :evilfrown:

[SammyWinstonJack]

22. Because it would be so much easier.

:yoiks:

[Say_What]

7. Mother Jones Interview with Richard Gott about Chavez

<clips>

Hugo Chavez and His Bolivarian Revolution

What to make of Hugo Chavez? By the Bush administration's lights, the president of Venezuela is an anti-American rabble rouser, a friend—clone, even—of Fidel Castro, a rogue state unto himself, prone to playing politics with Venezuela's oil industry, which supplies about 15 percent of the US's crude. To his increasingly frustrated political opponents in Venezuela, Chavez, a former army colonel, is a leftist demagogue who stirred up a wave of class and racial resentments and rode it to the presidency, and who, in office, has awarded himself new powers at every chance, on his way to becoming an out-and-out caudillo. And to a certain school of international opinion, exemplified by The Economist magazine, Chavez is an wacky utopian who sooner or later will run the Venezuelan economy into the ground.

True, Chavez is, for a world leader, refreshingly free with his opinions of the Bush administration. (And often, as at the United Nations last month, entertainingly so.) He makes a show of railing against US "imperialism," cheerfully baits and ridicules George W. Bush, and matter-of-factly denounces the US as a "terrorist state." Most days, it seems, he surfaces somewhere in the media alleging dark White House plots against his life (pace Pat Robertson, this seems farfetched), and he's fully convinced that the Bush administration backed, or at least countenanced, a coup attempt against him in 2002 (which seems quite plausible).

Also true, his governing style is frankly populist, and he routinely excoriates Venezuela's elite class, which dominates the political opposition and which, until the rise of Chavez, dominated the country's politics. Certain of his reform laws—in particular one regulating the media and another reshuffling the judiciary—have drawn protests from international rights groups. And yes, there's the matter of la lista, the list of signatures submitted in 2004 to demand a referendum on Chavez's recall, which, so signatories claim, now functions as a black list, deployed by the Chavez government to deny them jobs and services.

Then again, there's no gainsaying the fact that Chavez first won office, in 1998, in a fair election with 56 percent of the vote, or that since then he has prevailed in several electoral tests—not to mention a general strike and a coup attempt—growing steadily in popularity each time. Nor is there any denying that he has brought into the democratic process, for the first time, large numbers of Venezuela's poor, most of whom live in the ranchos, or shanty towns, that ring the cities. (As for his alleged class baiting, in a country where the poor account for about 80 percent of the population and where income inequality is extreme and glaring, democratic politics can’t help but involve issues of class—and race: Venezuela's poor are disproportionately black and indigenous.) Through a string of "missions" the Chavez government has brought healthcare and education to many of the ranchos and rural areas, which before now have seen little of either. The missions are financed by proceeds from Venezuela's oil industry, control of which Chavez seized after the 2002 (another sore point for opponents), and which, against expectation, is humming along quite nicely. (Also worth noting: for all that he fulminates against "neo-liberalist" free trade, and for all that he has expanded the role of the state in Venezuela's economy, Chavez's economic policy is fairly eclectic, and he's an energetic courtier of foreign investment.)

http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2005/09/richard_gott.html

[Say_What]

9. Don't miss these answers...

what 'murikans in general are completley in the dark about.

<clip>

...MJ: A big irritant for the United States, of course, is Chavez's closeness to Fidel Castro. What should we make of that relationship?

RG: One tends to forget in the United States or in Europe how popular and significant Castro is for Latin America. He remains this extraordinary bulwark against the United States, and he's regarded as the great Latin American figure of the 20th century. And Chavez belongs to a strand in Venezuelan life, and Latin American life, essentially of nationalism, and socialism, and support for the Cuban revolution, and he's never made any secret of that. But of course he has no plans to emulate the particular Soviet form of the Cuban economy, or the particular form of Cuba's political arrangements, which owe a lot to the fact that it's under an embargo and in a sort of state of war. But he does appreciate Castro's advice; they talk on the phone every night. They're very, very close.

...MJ: If Chavez's revolution succeeds, what do you think Venezuela look like ten years from now?

RG: I think Venezuela will be a model for the rest of Latin America—a society that's come to terms with its black and indigenous poverty-stricken populations, and where those populations participate fully in the democratic process. Because it's a new generation it's a little open-ended as to what will happen, but Chavez recognizes that. He says "Let the people decide," and I think he means it.

[LynnTheDem]

8. Dear M$M;

CHAVEZ IS NOT Gee DUHHBYA BUSH.

Morans.

[gratuitous]

10. Gee, and what would Bush say if the local press called him authoritarian?

You know, called a spade a spade?

[marginlized]

11. Who owns their media?

Venezuelan media are owned by the same cartel of media conglomerates we have here.

Since Katrina, Bush has called for military intervention in domestic "emergencies". That's not authoritarian? Send the Reserves and National Guard overseas and use the Army to keep the peace at home?

[Say_What]

20. Bush pal Gustavo Cisneros

Another Bush family friend...

<clips>

...But, other members of the Bush family also have important ties to Venezuela. After the failed coup d'etat against Chavez, television magnate and Bush Sr. friend Gustavo Cisneros was implicated as one of the principal proponents of the coup.

Cisneros publicly denied his role in the coup, but the magazine Newsweek noted that Pedro Carmona "was seen leaving Cisneros' office" before going to the Government Palace to swear in as provisional president.

According to Newsweek, Venezuelan legislator Pedro Pablo Alcantara said that the brief Carmona dictatorship was organized in Cisneros' offices, and that Cisneros was the "supreme commander" of the operation.

* Newsweek also said that Otto Reich had spoken with Cisneros "two or three times" during the events of the coup.

One of the calls was made by Cisneros to warn Reich on April 13 that a crowd of angry Chavez supporters had surrounded the building housing his TV station, Venevision.

http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/venezuela/2181.html


Old Bush with golpista (coupmaker) Cisneros

[newyawker99]

27. Hi marginlized!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[samsingh]

12. the msm should look at the real would be dictator

of course- the bush

[0rganism]

14. Who edited this crap?

"he holds increasingly power over the centers of power"

That reads like dubya speaks.

[Stockholm]

16. When Chavez finally nationalises oil it will be Iran 1953 all over again.

n/t

[Laughing Mirror]

18. Not if we help stop it

We are hip to their shit now.

[Peace Patriot]

19. No, I don't think so. Venezuelan democracy and the political strength

and savvy of the majority poor have grown by leaps and bounds under the new constitution and the Chavez administration. There is a passion there, for democracy and good government, that has an unstoppable feel. I think it would survive Chavez, if the Bushites have him assassinated. (Ironically, Pat Robertson's openly terrorist remarks might have given Chavez a mantle of protection, for a time anyway.) And there are now democratic movements and governments, and strong alliances, in the region. The Middle East in the '50s was not similar. There was no love for Iranian democracy in neighboring states, and the region was in tumult (and has never been otherwise in modern times). Also, Chavez is a very smart man, himself. The revolution he is leading is peaceful and moderate, and very democratic. It is a reformist movement, and does not seem to have any element of revenge in it (against the rich--and lord, did he have REASON to take revenge! They did a coup attempt against him--kidnapped him and nearly killed him--and tried to bring him down with an oil strike, then with a recall election--a provision of the constitution that HE helped write and pass! Even a non-dictator would have been tempted to jail them all!)

Chavez is taking moderate amounts of the oil profits and using them to bring services to the poor, who have never before been served by their government. He has no reason to nationalize the oil industry. It's already under government regulation, and it would be counterproductive to stir up the animosity of the oil industry and its workers.

And I think all this--all of the above--is why Chavez is so self-confident. He has strong backing from his own people, and from regional alliances, and he is doing the right thing in so many ways. He has nothing to feel bad about or cover up. Also, as much as the U.S. war profiteering corporate news monopolies would like to paint him as a dictator, he simply is not. It won't wash.

And if we could achieve even a measure of the transparency of Venezuelan elections here, any move against him by our government would be unthinkable. As it is, we have to worry about a government, our own, that is not accountable to its own people, that is not responsive to public opinion, and that would be backed up with outright lies and propaganda by the corporate news monopolies.

I can understand why you are thinking of Iran. On balance, though, I think Chavez's government is much safer than Iran was in 1953. Also, the Bushites are in considerable disarray these days. A Bush Cartel jihad against Venezuela might well spark a revolution HERE. It would be a dastardly deed, utterly naked of justification. And the other governments of the world--including China--would be mightily tempted to intervene.

[Say_What]

23. Huh?? Their oil industry WAS nationalized in 1975... PDVSA

http://countrystudies.us/venezuela/30.htm

[Stockholm]

25. Hmm

I think I remember reading somewhere that PDVSA (Petróleos de Venezuela) which was the "result" of the nationalisation had virtually become a front for corporate and foreign interests partly responsible for the coup attempt in 2002?

I could be wrong though.

[Say_What]

26. You're right--there's quite a bit about what PDVSA was like before

Chavez took office and what happened as a result of the 'opposition' tyring to shut down the economy on the web.

Here's one article:

<clips>

The Military Coup in Venezuela

The events leading up to the April 11 military coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez can be traced back to the worsening political climate evident since the end of last year. The conflict between forces loyal to President Hugo Chavez and those opposed to him heated up particularly after November 2001, when Chavez, using new powers granted him by the National Assembly, passed 49 laws, some of which were extremely controversial--such as the Land Law and the Organic Law of Liquid Hydrocarbons. Each of these laws was annulled on Friday, less than twenty-four hours after Chavez was ousted from power by the military in alliance with business elites and the top managers of Petroleos de Venezuela (Pdvsa), the state-owned oil company.

The opposition to Chavez, led by the Federation of Chambers of Industry and Commerce (Fedecamaras) and the top managers of Pdvsa, became increasingly active, organizing civic strikes, protest marches, and other activities. The demand that Chavez resign immediately became the clarion call of these mobilizations.

The opposition activities were met by the government and its supporters with counterdemonstrations, leading to an alarming degree of tension, which threatened to degenerate into violence on more than one occasion. However, prior to the week before the coup, the acts of violence registered in the demonstrations of both government supporters and opponents--verbal assaults aside--were few and far between.

After Chavez appointed a new president and board of directors to Pdvsa, the opposition adopted more strident measures against the government, culminating in a general strike. The strike was organized jointly by Fedecamaras and a group of trade unionists who had assumed leadership of the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers (CTV) after elections that were characterized by numerous irregularities. The general strike served as the platform for the military coup of April 11.

http://www.fpif.org/outside/commentary/2002/0204venezuela_body.html

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. "Fervent nationalist"? I'd say he's quite internationalist

He cooperates with Cuba, offers cheap oil deals to central American countries, and is setting up a Latin American transnational news agency. Far more outward-looking than previous Venezuelan leaders have been.

[Doctor_J]

21. Well, since Smirk ADMITTED seeking one,

what's the big deal?

[Say_What]

24. World Social Forum, Venezuela: Another World Is Possible

Anybody up for going to Venezuela?

<clips>

...Flash forward to January, 2006, Venezuela

In recognition of the unprecedented changes happening there, this year the World Social Forum is moving to the country with the most mobilized citizenry and the most progressive government in Latin America – Venezuela (see http://www.globalexchange.org/tours/722.html).

The World Social Forum has played a major role in uniting the world's social movements, Indigenous communities, women's rights activists, human rights organizations, environmentalists, intellectuals, and students, creating the vision of Another World Is Possible, as well as the space for us to build it together.

This is where the largest public mobilizations in human history – the February 15, 2003 protests against the war in Iraq – were hatched. Last year, over 120,000 people came from almost 100 countries around the world to participate, including thousands of people from the U.S.

The World Social Forum provides a unique venue for learning from each other’s struggles across boundaries and for sharing strategies across borders towards a truly global peace and justice movement. Latin Americans have been mounting impressive victories – electing progressive governments in Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina; stopping the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA); Bolivian peasants kicking Bechtel out of Cochabamba; Uruguayans passing a constitutional amendment against the privatization of water; Mexicans defending the right of the most popular progressive presidential candidate to stand for election next year.

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1571

[Judi Lynn]

28. This complex program is wonderful constructed. Your World Social Forum

article by Deborah James is so worth examining:

~ snip ~
The literacy campaign, the high school and college education missions, the health care for all program; these are the backbone of a wide series of missions putting oil money to use for the benefit of 24 million instead of a few thousand. Massive land reform and rural assistance programs combined with subsidized food stores reach over half the population are building food security and food sovereignty step by step. And Indigenous and African descendent Venezuelans are putting their newfound rights to use, gaining titles for traditional lands and including AfroVenezuelan contributions to the national educational curriculum.

Job training along with state investment in strategic industries is building new opportunities for Venezuelans and diversifying the oil revenue base. Rather than “stifling business” or “choking the economy” as free trade fundamentalists predicted, employment has taken a dramatic upturn and the economy is growing faster than any other in Latin America. In fact the private sector has grown faster than the public sector during Chavez' presidency, despite the big run-up in oil prices.
(snip/...)

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1571

He has made far more friends and admirers outside his country than he has made enemies. Our power-mad, greedy corporate ghouls are livid because its their goal to control Latin America and harvest every possible profit for themselves, while screwing the citizens who live there, and making their lives even more desperate. _Bush and cronies are truly the anti-Chavistas.

[Realityhack]

29. Why would he do that?

It would apear to go against everything he beleives in besides which he doesn't need to... they will re-elect him anyway.

I don't beleive everything anyone says about what they beleive in but Chavez didn't even retaliate agains the people who tried to disapear him. He has actualy followed through on getting the oil money to help the whole society etc.

I would beleve that when I saw some REAL hard evidence.