Venezuela

A `Man of Contradictions` ~ Venezuela`s Next Step and the Obama Admin (Outlook? Not Too Promising with a Democrat Admin) ~ UPDATED

Published by Papa Giorgio

posted at AEI, “Post-Chávez crisis an opportunity for Venezuela” ~ via Roger Noriega (Twitter: @rogernoriegaUSA)

Alas, Hugo Chávez will not live long enough to atone for his abuse of millions of Venezuelans nor to correct the corrupt and destructive policies that have wrecked the country he leaves behind. Moreover, although his cronies and their Cuban handlers are maneuvering to hold on to power, a Chavista succession is neither stable nor sustainable. With more audacious leadership among Venezuela’s democrats and intelligent solidarity from abroad, Chávez’s legacy might be buried with him.

The foundations of Chavismo are being shaken by an impending socioeconomic meltdown, a faltering oil sector, bitter in-fighting in his own movement, complicity with drug-trafficking and terrorism, rampant street crime, the inept performance by Chávez’s anointed successor, and growing popular rejection of Cuban interference, corrupt institutions, and rigged elections. Beset by these challenges and with Chávez no longer at the top of the ballot, the regime will use every advantage to engineer a victory in a special election to choose a new president.

A currency devaluation last month was too little and too late to break the fall of a Venezuelan economy that has been decimated by gross mismanagement, staggering corruption, and policies that were meant to strangle the independent private sector. The Chavista economic team is scrambling to stabilize the economy in advance of the election, but its incompetence is evident as it ratchets up restrictions that will stifle production and commerce. Inflation, food shortages, power outages, and crumbling infrastructure are taking a terrible toll on the quality of life of all Venezuelans.

Unlike in the past, Venezuela will not be saved by a windfall of oil revenues, because production is greatly diminished and oversubscribed. Contrary to official numbers, actual production is 2.4 million barrels per day, far below a peak of 3.3 million before Chávez. And sweetheart deals with China, Russia, and Iran as well as giveaways to Cuba and other client states in the Caribbean and Central America are bleeding Venezuela dry. Although China loaned about $28 billion to Chávez in the last 18 months, Beijing has closed its checkbook because of the questionable legality of the interim regime and the simple fact that Venezuela has no crude oil left to sell. As a result of this mess, there are reports that Venezuela is actually importing gasoline to satisfy domestic demand. In short, Chávez politicized the state-run oil company and treated its revenue as his petty cash fund – now the company is ruined and the till is empty….

…read more…

Rich Lowry recently “eulogized” the media stronghold regarding Chavez at Politico:

Let us pause and reflect. The left’s favorite self-aggrandizing thug has shed this mortal coil. Hugo Chávez, R.I.P.

All the country’s least reflective and most reflexive ideologues of the left immediately issued warm farewells — Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Oliver Stone and, of course, the nation’s 39th president, Jimmy Carter.

Carter praised Chávez for his commitment “to bring profound changes to his country,” which by installing himself as the effective president for life, he certainly did. Carter noted his “formidable communications skills,” a quality that is not unusual in successful populist demagogues. In the gentle tone of someone who regrets that his good friend sometimes cheats at bridge, Carter allowed that he did not agree “with all of the methods followed by his government.”

Such is the appeal of the socialist caudillo that ThinkProgress had to take a break from blogging about the latest Republican idiocy, real or imagined, to warn off its allies with a piece titled, “Why Democrats Shouldn’t Eulogize Hugo Chávez.”

It didn’t get to New York Rep. José Serrano in time. He rushed to praise Chávez: “He understood democracy and basic human desires for a dignified life.” As a technical matter, Serrano is right: Chávez understood democracy exceedingly well, if by that you mean he understood how to exploit its forms while hollowing out its institutions to entrench himself in power in perpetuity.

He displaced a corrupt, conscienceless oligarchy when he took power in 1999, and replaced it with his own corrupt, conscienceless rule. In a recent report, Human Rights Watch detailed how “the accumulation of power in the executive and the erosion of human rights protections have allowed the Chávez government to intimidate, censor, and prosecute critics and perceived opponents in a wide range of cases involving the judiciary, the media, and civil society.”

[….]

The night of his death, Rachel Maddow had Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson on her program to discuss Chávez. She asked Robinson in a voice heavy with sarcasm whether Hugo Chávez was really “the monster” he was made out to be. Robinson explained that Chávez bonded with the poor and had lots of popular support. Maddow very gently prodded Robinson to address criticisms of Chávez for not advancing freedom, “even as he did advance economic populist aims.”

Unable to muster any of the denunciatory venom he lavishes on Republicans once or twice a week, Robinson issued forth with a strangely tortured construction, “he was not what we would call a lover of democracy as we would like to see it practiced.” Eric Cantor must wonder why Robinson doesn’t similarly mute his criticisms of him. Robinson noted that Chávez gerrymandered electoral districts, but, hey, “that happens elsewhere as well.” All in all, he was … “a man of contradictions.” You know, like Disraeli or Gladstone.

…read more…

I have followed the actions of Marxists in Venezuela for quite some time (here as well as at my old blog), and the craziness Hollywood supported Hugo Chavez with. I wish to post again a blogger from Venezuela, and her clear statement of the travesty our Left embraces… from The End of Venezuela As I Know It:

Chavez died today…. When I heard the news, these past fourteen years passed by me in an instant. My adolescence, my youth, all that fear, all that disappointment, all those street demonstrations, all those stories, all those lives that were lost in the way not by cancer but by the sound of a trigger. I wrote to my friends, to all those people who accompanied me during all those years when everything was about Chavez. All those people with frustrated dreams and hopes. Everyone who saw in this fourteen years a definite ruin of what we once called home. Pain, that is Hugo Chavez legacy.

(`The Morning Answer` Memorializes a Dictator ~ Chavez)

One should keep in mind that this destruction of human life for a “conceived of” utpoia is what the Left will sacrifice. That is, lives for an ideal. Here is an older informal poll showing that Chavez was more popular than Kerry (via Breitbart):

In an informal poll in 2004, the populist progressive site Democratic Underground took a reader poll asking who they respected more: Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez or then-Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Chavez won, 70% to 30%.

So the type of help needed in South America/Venezuela is not one that will readily coming from our current administration. Another horrible effect of the past election, or mandate — “loss of lives traded for an unproved ideal.” Another “thank you Dems” is needed.

In fact, one of the largest financial supporters to the Democratic Party — the SEIU — held a candlelight vigil for Hugo Chavez:

Marching Marxists… SEIU Holds Hugo Chavez Memorial Candlelight Vigil and March in Times Square

The SEIU radicals organized a Hugo Chavez memorial march and candelight vigil in New York City on Friday. Global Dispatch reported:

[….]

A memorial vigil was held Wednesday at the Venezuelan consulate in Manhattan, but the union march is raising eyebrows.

“Bring candles will walk to the statue of the Liberator Simon Bolivar in Central Park.” – instructions included in the hispanic announcement which reached out to Fidel Castro supporters as well.

[….]

A Celebration and procession for the life of our comrade Hugo Chávez, an extraordinary human and revolutionary. Your energy, love and example will not be forgotten.

The revolution will continue until there is liberation for all.

And again, the Marxist/National Socialist connections at he SEIU have been confirmed a long time ago:

I have long contended that the US’s largest and most militant labor organization the Service Employees International Union, is allied to, or subordinate to the country’s largest Marxist organization – Democratic Socialists of America.

Here is proof of this connection, from the latest edition of DSA’s Democratic Left, Winter 2011/2012, page 11

Continuing:

Detroit DSA leader David Green wrote in Democratic Left, Spring 2007

Our goal as socialists is to abolish private ownership of the means of production. Our immediate task is to limit the capitalist class’s prerogatives in the workplace…In the short run we must at least minimize the degree of exploitation of workers by capitalists. We can accomplish this by promoting full employment policies, passing local living wage laws, but most of all by increasing the union movement’s power…

Through SEIU, DSA has 2.1 million paid lackeys to do just that.

`The Morning Answer` (Radio Program-870am) Memorializes a Dictator ~ Chavez

Published by Papa Giorgio

From video description:

Ben, Heidi, and Brian talk about the death of Chavez and the confused reaction by the left and the press. (Posted by: Religio-Political Talk) A very small portion of Celsius 41.11’s opener (http://tinyurl.com/cwhd22p) is inserted after the audio of the NYT’s reporter.

And a small paragraph from The End of Venezuela As I Know It:

Chavez died today…. When I heard the news, these past fourteen years passed by me in an instant. My adolescence, my youth, all that fear, all that disappointment, all those street demonstrations, all those stories, all those lives that were lost in the way not by cancer but by the sound of a trigger. I wrote to my friends, to all those people who accompanied me during all those years when everything was about Chavez. All those people with frustrated dreams and hopes. Everyone who saw in this fourteen years a definite ruin of what we once called home. Pain, that is Hugo Chavez legacy.

Here is some words from the New York Times:

…Dr. Edmundo Chirinos, a psychiatrist who got to know Mr. Chávez as a patient, described him in a profile in The New Yorker in 2001 as “a hyperkinetic and imprudent man, unpunctual, someone who overreacts to criticism, harbors grudges, is politically astute and manipulative, and possesses tremendous stamina, never sleeping more than two or three hours a night.”

Mr. Chávez would delight in angering his critics in rich countries. He heaped praise, for instance, on Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, the Venezuelan terrorist better known as Carlos the Jackal, with whom he corresponded.

“I defend him,” Mr. Chávez said of his friend, who was jailed in France on charges of murdering two French police agents and a Lebanese informer in Paris in 1975. “I don’t care what they say tomorrow in Europe.”

No mentor was more supportive than Mr. Castro, who well understood how important Venezuela’s subsidized oil shipments were to Cuba’s fragile economy. An ally from the start of Mr. Chávez’s presidency in 1999, he offered help in one of Mr. Chávez’s most difficult moments, a coup d’état that removed him from office for 48 hours in April 2002. Mr. Castro telephoned Venezuela’s top military officials, pressing them to assist in returning Mr. Chávez to office.

The collapse of the coup, which received tacit support from the Bush administration, and Mr. Chávez’s swift return to power signaled a shift in his presidency. Seemingly chastened, Mr. Chávez promised compromise and harmony in the future. But instead of reconciliation, his response was retaliation.

He began describing his critics as “golpistas,” or putschists, while recasting his own failed 1992 coup as a patriotic uprising. He purged opponents from the national oil company, expropriated the land of others and imprisoned retired military officials who had dared to stand against him. The country’s political debate became increasingly poisonous, and it took its toll on the country.

Private investors, unhinged over Mr. Chávez’s nationalizations and expropriation threats, halted projects. Hundreds of thousands of scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs and others in the middle class left Venezuela, even as large numbers of immigrants from Haiti, China and Lebanon put down stakes here.

The homicide rate soared under his rule, turning Caracas into one of the world’s most dangerous cities. Armed gangs lorded over prisons, as they did in previous governments, challenging the state’s authority. Simple tasks, like transferring the title of a car, remained nightmarish odysseys eased only by paying bribes to churlish bureaucrats.

Other branches of government often bent to his will. He fired about 19,000 employees of Petróleos de Venezuela, the national oil company, in response to a strike in 2002 and 2003. In 2004, he stripped the Supreme Court of its autonomy. In legislative elections in 2010, his supporters preserved a majority in the National Assembly by gerrymandering.

All the while, Mr. Chávez rewrote the rule book on using the media to enhance his power. With “Aló Presidente” (“Hello, President”), his Sunday television program, he would speak to viewers in his booming voice for hours on end. His government ordered privately controlled television stations to broadcast his speeches. While initially skeptical of social media, he came to embrace Twitter, attracting millions of followers.

He also basked in the comforts allowed him as head of state in a nation with some of the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East. He traveled in a luxurious Airbus A-319. In one jaunt around Venezuela in 2007 with the actor Sean Penn, he roamed the plane regaling foreign journalists with tales from his days as a soldier…

I celebrate with others their happiness of Hugo’s loss.

Communism Fail!

Department of Labor Representative Dolores Huerta Involkes Hugo Chavez While Saying Republicans Hate Latinos

Published by Papa Giorgio

The BLAZE h/t:

Audio from Department of Labor representative Dolores Huerta’s speech praising Venezualan dictator Hugo Chavez and saying “Republicans hate Latinos,” reveals that Huerta’s appearance seems to have been supported by Congressman Raul M. Grijalva (D-AZ). A representative from Grijalva’s office attended and “brought” Huerta to the Aprill 2006 speech, which addressed students at Tucson High Magnet School….

…(read more)…


Know Thine Enemies

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is a story that has been growing in the intelligence world (I am sure) for quite some time. I noted it here in an old post blogged in March of 2008 entitled, Obama and FARC. Gateway Pundit notes some interesting updates to this story. For some older background to this growing story, here is a Hannity look at it:

Here Gateway lists a few of the notable notables in regards to FARC and info gleaned from captured computers in 2008:

  • FARC connections with Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa
  • Records of $300 million offerings from Hugo Chavez
  • Thank you notes from Hugo Chavez dating back to 1992
  • Uranium purchasing records
  • Admit to killing the sister of former President Cesar Gaviria
  • Admit to planting a 2003 car bomb killing 36 at a Bogota upper crust club
  • Directions on how to make a Dirty Bomb
  • Information that led to the discovery of 60 pounds of uranium
  • Letter to Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi asking for cash to buy surface-to-air missiles
  • Meetings with “gringos” about Barack Obama
  • Information on Russian illegal arms dealer Viktor Bout who was later captured
  • FARC funding Correa’s campaign
  • Cuban links to FARC
  • Links to US Democrats
  • $480,000 of FARC cash in Costa Rican safe house
  • $100,000 to President Correa’s campaign for election
  • Chavez attempts to buy arms for FARC through the Belarus regime
  • FARC branches in 17 countries including Germany and Switzerland
  • FARC terrorists expanded operations to 17 countries
  • FARC terrorists expanded operations to Germany and Switzerland

Continuing, Gateway begins to make his main point:

…The FARC Computers also contained documents that reportedly showed US Democrats were secretly reaching out to the FARC terrorists. Not only were the FARC terrorists of Colombia hoping Barack Obama would win the presidential election because he was most aligned with the Colombian Marxist group but the terrorists were also reportedly communicating with US Democrats on the sly…

This is the reason (actually, one of many) that makes me say confidently that we have a radical secularist in office. I will never, upon what I know to date, say Obama is a Muslim. I digress.

Venezuela has close ties to FARC. And Venezuela has close ties to Middle-Eastern terrorists. Here is a recent report on all these connections:


Who are these Democrats that side with Iran in the student uprising, support a supremacist Mosque at Ground-Zero, take over car companies, raise taxes and increase debt by massive stimulus programs and take over health-care? Whoever they are, let us throw them out in November! An aside: I can’t count the times, by-the-by, that I was told Bush was in bed with the Saudi’s, which is bad. Now building a Mosque with money from the Saudis and Iran is okay with he laft. Hmmmm.


Hugo Chavez Expanding Power Grab

Published by Papa Giorgio

Chavez is expanding his control of socialism by taking over more private businesses. Maybe Spicoli can get a share in one of these companies.

(Archived at ECONOMICS JUNKIE)

President Hugo Chavez announced Saturday the expropriation of a group of iron, aluminum and transportation companies in Venezuela’s mining region.

Among the expropriated companies is Materiales Siderurgicos, or Matesi, which is the Venezuelan subsidiary of Luxembourg-based steel maker Tenaris SA.

Venezuela’s socialist president said in a televised that his government was going to take over Matesi because “we couldn’t reach an amicable and reasonable settlement with the owners.”

Chavez said production at the company has been paralyzed since midway through last year, when Venezuela’s president announced plans to nationalize it.

Chavez said he was also going to expropriate Venezuelan-owned Orinoco Iron and aluminum-maker Norpro de Venezuela C.A., which is an affiliate of the U.S. company Norpro in association with France’s Saint Gobain, among other companies.

As well, Venezuela will take over transport companies that ship raw materials in areas southeast of Caracas. He did not name the companies.

Since coming to power more than a decade ago, Chavez has nationalized major companies in the electricity, oil, steel and coffee sectors, as well as other private businesses.