Chavez to U.S.: 'Go to hell, gringos!'

Amazing then that you appear so insensitive to the rather large gulps Chavez is taking in Venezuela.

I see no logical consistency in your apparent position. It doesn't take more than a very superficial knowledge of the unhappy history of the past century to see the harm comiing to the people of Venezuela at the hands of this self-proclaimed Marxist dictator.

But why do we care if he is a dictator or not?

We've gotten along so well with any number of dictators over the years. Reagan thought the apartheid government of South Africa was just ducky. And the list goes on and on.

I think Lord Ellpus has a real point. If all this guy did was to export coffee to us, he could say anything he wanted and the most he'd get is a two inch AP article designed for burying on page 7 of your local newspaper. Something like



And that would be that.

Oil changes everything.

Our insatiable addiction to oil products changes everything. It is convenient to put it all on the governmental bureaucracy, but we SUV-driving, pesticide-spraying citizens have to put ourselves up there too, as co-conspirators who are unwilling to cut back on or replace oil consumption.

Huh?

Hasn't the US long intervened in South America whenever they thought a leftist regime...whether dictatorish or normally democratic...might perturb American economic and political interests there?


I agree that the US historically has no problem with South and Central American dictators who support US interests, and that therefore proposing that the US, policy wise, gives a hoot about how Chavez treats his people is a furphy, but I think seeing the reaction to Chavez as being only about oil is overly simplistic.

I disagree, Deb.

If Chavez was just the President of some tinpot little South American country that had no oil, he would be portrayed, IMO, as some sort of comic figure who ran a "banana Republic". I can imagine all the jokes about him on programmes such as Letterman.

He would receive column inches in the USA press, but it would be much more in the way of slapping him down through dismissive humour.

But once a leader shows that he can pose a real threat to the USA, either economically (threat of cutting off oil or considering the payment for that oil in Euros, as opposed to Dollars, for example) or militarily (bay of pigs, supposedly harbouring terrorists etc) THEN he will come in for a severe filthy tricks campaign, at the very least.

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Contrary to what was said earlier in this thread, Chavez does NOT need the USA. He doesn't NEED to sell his country's oil to the U.S.
It may lead to a lessening of oil profit if he had to send his oil further afield, but those profits would still be immense.

Look at Saudi Arabia for instance. They send their oil to countries all over the world, and I don't see them making a loss on the whole deal.

I say again.....the USA should be nice to him (constructive negotiations, genuine assistance in development programmes etc) if they want to secure a sufficiency of Venezualan oil for the future. OR......they will have to try and get him deposed or worse, through meddling and more serious tactics.

It seems they've tried the second option already, and have failed, pissing him off big time.

Wouldn't it now be sensible to somehow try and get option one into action?



Oh, and George.... just because someone has never been to a certain country, doesn't mean to say that he/she can't hold an opinion or two regarding the situation.

If I'm correct, GWB had never set foot in Iraq before he kicked their door in with a size 11 American hobnail boot, had he?

Maybe I'm wrong....maybe he went there during his extensive overseas duties whilst serving his country with the Military.

From the knowledge that he portrays regarding that part of the world, it would appear that GWB thinks Iraq is sandwiched somewhere between a country called Allahville and another called Terrorland.

Well, as far as I know Chile, for instance, has no oil, but the USA, through the CIA, was happy to help assist the downfall of its democratically elected leader, Allende, leading to Allende's murder, the torture and killing of thousands of Chileans, and the installation of a fairly brutal dictator, just as one small example of US intervention in the south.

I do not think they react all that more savagely to oil than to other interests being perceived as threatened.

Our only difference is that I think some of you are over privileging oil as a trigger for US enmity towards regimes that do not suit its purposes.


Not that, as far as I can tell, Chavez is anyone to write home about.



(To stem the torent of shrill accusations of anti Americanism, "you support terrorists" and the like that can be expected after such a comment, I do not think that the US reacts especially differently from the way other imperia powers, such as the UK, have reacted in their time in these matters. Yawn...as should be obvious, but it seems it needs to be stated each time.)

A Dictatorship Rises

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 1/22/2007

Latin America: Hugo Chavez's confiscations of U.S. properties are bad enough. But they're overshadowed by his bolder move to turn Venezuela into a dictatorship and put the entire region in peril.

Chavez's declaration last week that he'll suspend Venezuela's constitution and congress for 18 months and rule by decree will turn Venezuela into a dictatorship. Checks and balances of democratic power sharing will end, and anyone who thinks Chavez will voluntarily return to democracy is a wishful thinker.

Chavez openly calls himself a communist and has ambitious plans to expropriate even more businesses, farms and buildings. He's giving himself carte blanche to meddle with the food supply and will create shortages. He intends to bulk up the military to intimidate his neighbors. That heralds a whole new level of trouble for the region because it's unlikely to stop at Venezuela.

The consolidation parallels how another democratically elected leader, Adolf Hitler, seized power in Germany's weak democracy. It also vindicates the much-derided observations of Donald Rumsfeld, who first compared Chavez to Hitler last year.

Chavez isn't even trying to conceal the similarities. He called his move to rule by decree the "Enabling" Act, the same term Hitler used. Yet, as in the years preceding Hitler's rise to absolute power, no one seems to notice a problem.

Venezuela remains nominally a democracy, and the moves Chavez has made have some technical basis in the Venezuelan constitution ?- again, like Hitler. The nation also remains a member of the Organization of American States, shielded from censure because of Venezuela's democratic facade.

The U.S. response has been distressingly mealy-mouthed. A State Department spokesman over the weekend was almost apologetic. Before admitting that Chavez's plans "have caused us some concern," he took pains to acknowledge that Chavez "is the elected president" and has a "sovereign right" to rule by decree.

Chavez's response was what could be expected from a predator sensing weakness ?- a torrent of abuse. "Go to hell, gringos!" he shouted on his Sunday TV show, adding a menacing, sex-tinged and degrading tirade against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

His wild response to mild criticism from the U.S. shows he's too far gone to respond to dialogue from the one democracy that questions his autocratic actions. But at least the State Department is saying the right things. Far worse are Democratic Party freelancers playing at foreign policy.

Connecticut Sen. Christopher Dodd, for example, justifies any autocratic action out of Venezuela with the watery "yes-but" pablum that "Chavez was elected democratically." As if democracy ends on election day.

This is dangerous because Latin America has just had an 11th election that seated many left-wingers who are unsure of the value of democracy. They don't know whether they want to be social-democratic or totalitarian, and are most likely to take the path of least resistance. Chavez's emergence as dominant leader of the region is likely to drive them in the totalitarian direction.

This is already occurring in Bolivia and Ecuador, where left-wingers are working to end their legislative and constitutional bases of power in favor of one-man rule. We wouldn't be surprised to see it happen in Nicaragua as well. With much of Latin America bound by a common language, history and culture, the states often move in political tandem.

Whether the U.S. can tolerate a hostile new axis of leftist states, led by a tyrant with Hitler-like aspirations, is problematic. But tolerating dictatorships under facades of democracy is a road we've been down before.

The U.S. needs a strong plan of action for countering Chavez's dictatorship, because too many of his neighbors stand to be sucked into the vortex with him.

I thought that the American right loathed Chavez and thought him a raving socialist lunatic who talked too much and needed to be ignored.
Why the attention to him now?

James Surowiecki had a piece in the Jan. 8, 2007 New Yorker titled "Synergy with the Devil", in which he laid out a description of the growing entwinement of the US and Venezuela during and despite the rhetoric going on.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/070108ta_talk_surowiecki

With the recent business - since Jan. 8 - about Chavez announcing he would act by decree, I can see it's reasonable to fear serious changes re the oil situation, and thus fear some action by the US (good grief).

I totally agree with that point, Deb. The UK has behaved despicably in the past, regarding the support of Dictatorships, or trying to influence a regime change here and there.

I disagreed with Thatcher and the way that she shielded Pinochet, and I am currently disgusted with the way Blair thinks that the UK should still be doing this sort of stuff today. I'm alluding to the Iraq debacle, of course.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree about the importance of oil when it comes to these situations though.
Sources of energy, who's got it, who hasn't and who wants it, will play a major part in some real underhand, nasty and violent events throughout the world over the coming one or two decades, IMO.

In Other News: South America's About-Face
December 1, 2006

by Patrick Roath

First, in 1954, Guatemala. Then, soon after, Cuba. Then Ecuador, Brazil, Nizaragua, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Chile and Grenada. This is a chronological listing of Latin American countries that have been governed by Communist regimes or threatened by Communist revolutions in the last 50 years. It is not surprising that this is also a near-perfect timeline of U.S. intervention in the region?-intervention carried out either by the CIA or the U.S. military. The extensive history of Communist governments in Latin America has concerned the American government for over 50 years (its origins going back as far as the Monroe Doctrine of 1823). Now, to the considerable chagrin of US policymakers, the last few years have seen a tremendous influx of popularly elected left-leaning or social democratic governments in the Americas. In addition to the Cold War relic of Fidel Castro's Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Brazil, Venezuela, and Chile are now led by leftist leaders with varying degrees of hostility toward the current American administration.

Personal criticisms of the controversial American president, George W. Bush, run the full spectrum: from the moderate president-elect of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, calling Bush "dimwitted," to the fiery UN address of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez referring to Bush as "the devil." Despite the different angles from which each leader approaches national politics, their mandates are quite similar: the low-income people want help from their governments. Although the new administrations undoubtedly pale in comparison to the Cold War socialist-inspired regimes buttressed by the USSR in their radicalism, the general shift towards the far left of the political spectrum is remarkable for its seemingly continental appeal and the potentially hazardous international repercussions it produces.

Barrels for Friends
The two countries that best epitomize this trend are Venezuela and Nicaragua. Although most analysts of the region employ nuance and couch their interpretations with phrases like "authoritarian populism" and "third-way economics," the most recent elections in these countries have empowered leaders who are essentially socialist in their politics.

On November 5, 2006, Daniel Ortega won the presidency of Nicaragua. For those to whom this name is oddly familiar, you may remember him as the president of Nicaragua in the 1980s during the Sandinista revolution?-the political force at the center of the infamous Iran-Contra scandal. The lesson from two decades ago is simple: Ortega is no friend of the United States.= However, despite his Marxist background, his current campaign led the Economist to remark that "nowadays Mr. Ortega is a pragmatist." The degree to which Ortega eschews his Communist past will become more apparent in the coming year, and will undoubtedly be closely watched in the United States and abroad.

In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez wears his stripes more proudly. The popular quasi-authoritarian leader is one of the most vocal anti-American voices in the developing world and?-thanks to his country's considerable oil endowment?-one of the wealthiest and most influential voices. First elected in 2000, Chavez has used his power to rally other leftist leaders around the continent to his cause, providing comfortable oil giveaways in return for their friendship. On the world stage Chavez has been active too, pushing for a seat on the United Nations Security Council as a representative of Latin America. Although he has been frustrated in his attempts for pan-Latin American unity and undermined at the UN by other member states, Chavez continues to pursue the most activist, and perhaps most radical, agenda in the region.

Another One Bites the Dust
On November 27, an election in Ecuador may provide the next domino in the region to be proverbially knocked over. In a heated run-off pitting leftist economist Rafel Correa against business magnate Alvaro Naboa, Correa seems to be leading the race, with the Associated Press claiming that Correa is "headed to victory" at the time of publication. Having made public his close friendship with Venezuelan President Chavez, Correa's campaign rhetoric also included suspending debt payments and cancelling international trade talks?-moves the United States government has flagged as distressing. Moreover, the new leader has suggested that the tiny Central American country rejoin OPEC, the international oil producers' cartel, a move which may signal his nation's readiness to use its natural resources to speak from the bully pulpit.

Other countries previously considered staunch U.S. allies in the region, such as Bolivia, Mexico, Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, have also recently acceded to the socialist trend. Although in Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the leftist Presidential candidate, was defeated by the smallest of margins in this year's election, he refuses to admit defeat and continues to run a "parallel government." In Bolivia, President Evo Morales has been seen to be tottering between a moderate, pragmatic approach and a more idealistic Chavez-style approach rooted in his indigenous background. Under Morales, the Bolivian government has "recovered ownership" of all the major oil corporations by nationalizing the corporations, and has almost doubled the minimum wage. Additionally, leaders in Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil have all been elected on Socialist platforms.

Sister Republics
In his inaugural address on January 20, 1961, President John F. Kennedy made this promise: "To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge?-to convert our good words into good deeds?-in a new alliance for progress?-to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers."

President Kennedy's statement was to define, or perhaps sugarcoat, the United States' policy towards Latin American socialism during the Cold War. An extension of the older Monroe Doctrine, the so-called "Kennedy Doctrine" set the tone for the aggressive American encounters in the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis, two events that characterized relations between the U.S. and the region in the Cold War-era. Although the U.S. hasn't intervened with paramilitary or conventional forces since its excursion in Grenada, it continues to make its preferences known through more subtle measures. In the lead-up to Nicaragua's election, the United States was explicit about the possibilities of aid to the country should Ortega win election, and rumors abound about American efforts to undermine Hugo Chavez' regime. One American public figure, past presidential candidate Pat Robertson, has even openly called for his assassination.

So what has changed since Kennedy's speech? If not the character of the governments of Latin America, then certainly their disposition towards their people. The crucial difference is that the leftist leaders across the continent, with the notable exception of Castro, have all been elected in (more or less) free, internationally observed, regular elections. This wave of populist voting has ushered in a new cadre of leaders with a strong social mandate and a burgeoning international agenda. It seems that the phenomenon is here to stay for at least a few more years and in the mean time the U.S. will have to get used to having a more uppity southern "backyard" for the foreseeable future.
http://www.tuftsobserver.org/news/20061201/in_other_news_south_ameri.html

I think you have it backwards. The attention is being sought by Chavez with his staged theatrical insults. Here on A2K it is coming from Chavez apologists who, like elpus, propose that we kiss his ass because he has oil.

This is a loathsome, spineless tactic, unworthy of serious people, and worse it is a foolish and ineffective way to handle such a bullying, clownish dictator.

In the first place, as history amply demonstrates, Chavez will very quickly wreck the economic incentives that drive Venezuela's economy. The waste and needed subsidies will grow even faster than the price of oil, and declining output of that commodity (a result of government ineptness) will eventually reduce their income, whether in dollars or euros. The victims will be Venezuelans, niot American conservatives.

The United States faces no real danger from Chavez, except in his potential ability to spread his destructive political movement. Ecuador and Bolivia can self-destruct as well with little impact on this country. Perhaps if the contaigon reached Panama or Mexico we would have a reason to be copncerned, however, the political currents in these far better developed countries have been in the opposite direction.

I agree with elpus that prior visits to a country are not a prerequisite for accurate judgements on its political situation. My question was more a suggestion that he apply a little more concrete analysis and reference to comparative events in our collective histories.

Well, the USA chose to kick arse as far as Iraq's oil was concerned, and look where it's got you. Of course, the war on terror was given as the reason, but hey ho...how fortunate to have all this oil lying around now we've whupped them, eh lads?

Maybe kissing would be a better, more productive tactic and not result in so much bloodshed.

Oil is king, as far as your country is concerned, and Venezuala has MASSIVE stocks of the stuff.

With the likes of China coming into the modern day industrial world and consuming oil at an ever increasing rate of knots, the regular and guaranteed supply of oil becomes ever more important.

America will do what it has to, in order to keep the flow up and running.
If that means metaphorically kissing the odd gluteous maximus here and there, I'm sure your leaders will take a deep breath and do it.

Business is business, after all.

Of course, they could always try to depose him again, or worse.......but then they run the risk of pissing him off even more if they fail for the second time.

My SUV thirsts for free Iraqi oil. Any timeline for when that oil will be coming our way Lord Ellpus?

Just as soon as they find those goddam weapons. That's what they are waiting for. And then comes the flood.

It is very interesting to observe the lengths to which people will go to preserve and cling to illusions which have no foundation in fact.

There has been no reduction or restriction of US oil imports fropm Venezuela. There is a well-developed world market for petroleum, and oil, once it is pumped and sold, becomes a fungible international commodity. Pipelines and the like can create some dependencies of sorts between source and consumer, because of the ease of transport & distribution. However, once the oil is put in a ship, it doesn't matter very much how far it must travel - and that is the case with US oil imports from Venezuela.

While it is true that the British Empire attempted to exercise direct political and military control over its sources of oil, initially in Bahrain & Kuwait, and later in Iran & Iraq, that has not been the US practice. We instread invested in oil field development and purchased the products, even submitting to partial nationalization of our investments by producing countries. To be sure, we had close diplomatic relationships and worked hard to favorably influence policies, but, apart from our complicity in restoring the Shah of Iran (whose father was first placed on his throne by the British) we have not tried to exercise direct political control. Elpus is merely projecting systematic British imperial practices and vices on the United States.

It is worth remembering that the U.S. rapidly depleted huge petroleum reserves during two world wars, which on the Allied side were largely fought with American oil. (Unfortunately gratitude is not a lasting thing.)

Whether one supports or opposes our intervention in Iraq, there is no evidence (or even plausible argument) suggesting that securing ownership of Iraqi oilfields was the purpose. There is certainly an indirect reason relating to petroleum sources -- we want to see a continuation of the free market for the stuff and a more stable political situation in the Persian Gulf than has existed since the British and the French seized it all from the Ottomans in 1914-1918 (and subsequent). Whether we have improved or worsened the situation is a proper subject for separate debate. (Those who point to the current situation in Iraq should refresh themselves on the History of that country and the surrounding region since the British thoroughly destabilized it between 1914 and 1921.).


I wonder if Elpus will advocate more energetic kissing of Russia's ass by the major European powers in view of their far greater (compared to the U.S. & Venezuela) , real-time dependence on Russian gas and petroleum, supplied by pipeline.

Oh sure....no disagreement there.

My point is that the US is pretty hair trigger in acting aggressively in Central and South America, in a sort of "our back yard" way...perhaps like the UK in Ireland?....I think there would be a campaign against Chavez even sans oil.