Political Attacks Against Venezuela Continue

[Robbien]

Last week the government of Venezuela decided, after a vote of its elected General Assembly and the approval of the executive, to add 12 new justices to its 20- member Supreme Court. Human Rights Watch denounced the move as a "severe blow to judicial independence" and the Miami Herald said Venezuela "stands at the brink of being an elected dictatorship."

These allegations are unfounded. Imagine, if you can, that a group of military officers in the United States overthrew our elected President, dissolved our elected Congress and Supreme Court, and abolished the Constitution. Now imagine that democracy is restored but the Supreme Court rules that the officers who kidnapped the President and overthrew the government cannot be tried for any crime. That is what happened in Venezuela.

Our Congress would certainly use its constitutional powers to impeach that Supreme Court. So it should not be surprising that Venezuela's General Assembly, where pro-government parties hold a slight majority, would do the same thing by legally "packing" the court with new judges.

Personally, I favor an independent judiciary. But Venezuela -- like much of Latin America -- has never had such a thing, and to pretend that it did and is now losing it, is quite misleading.

Such exaggerations, many of which appear almost daily in the press, have created an astoundingly false impression of Venezuela among Americans. Most Americans think of the country is some kind of quasi-dictatorship "ruled" by the "authoritarian" Hugo Chavez. In fact President Chavez has considerably less power than our own president.

Freedom of speech, the press, assembly and other political freedoms prevail. In fact these compare favorably to the United States, where journalists are being thrown in jail for refusing to reveal their sources, and broadcast stations are fined for violating decency standards. Venezuela's mass media is possibly the most virulently (and often dishonestly) anti- government media in the entire world.

Most of the media is explicitly part of the opposition and supported the April 2002 coup.

more at:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=45&ItemID=6917

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Most of the media is explicitly part of the opposition and

supported the April 2002 coup. <<

Any country that rankles American corporations will pay, first with the ouster of their elected government, then in many cases with their lives. They will submit or they will face destabilization the likes of which many others have faced for standing their ground.

[Robbien]

2. Watching Chavez is an education in what it takes to get rid

of global corporates which have permeated all aspects of his country.

It makes one wonder if it is ever going to be possible to do the same thing here.

[pretzel4gore]

3. shoot them all and let god sortem out

only way....

[Axo1ot1]

4. Probably Not

The corporation's weakness in those South American countries is that they didn't first completely lock down the methods of communication there, so people weren't made complacent and accepting of the new controls on their lives. We're so intoxicated with consumer culture here I find it hard to imagine the US ever routing corporate control from the government.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. Venezuela "stands at the brink of being an elected dictatorship."

Gee, we don't have to worry about that, do we?