Hugo's "Old School" Aspirations

There's nothing like beginning a new century with ambitions to turn to a failed economic ideology from the previous century. Hugo Chavez, whose first name appears to be an amalgamation of the words "huge" and "ego" is pledging to use his impending vast new powers to usher in a socialist worker's paradise:

During a live broadcast from a cattle ranch in Venezuela's central plains, Chavez inaugurated a series of centers where he said Venezuelans will study socialist ideals while undergoing job training.

As workers milked cows and showed Chavez how they produce cheese, the president asked them about their daily lives and warned against the evils of capitalism.

He urged all Venezuelans to embrace "the socialism that we are going to create." But Chavez denied that he was attempting to steer oil-rich Venezuela toward Cuba-style communism, as many critics allege.

Perhaps someone should ask Hugo the Magnificent why, if the socialist state he would like to create is so superior to capitalism, tens of thousands of Mexican immigrants are seeking entrance into the United States instead of getting in on the ground floor of the worker's utopia he aspires to create? Hugo's also trying to calm the upper class -- and probably also the middle class -- understandably nervous about his ambitions by telling what I certainly believe to be a pernicious lie:

President Hugo Chavez denied Sunday that his left-leaning government would seize private property - such as second homes or expensive cars - from the wealthy and called on Venezuelans not to fear his accelerated push toward socialism.

Then there's this howler:

Chavez has raised concerns by repeatedly saying he wants to continue governing Venezuela until 2021 or longer. He was re-elected to a second, six-year term in December - his last under Venezuela's Constitution. But Chavez has proposed a constitutional reform that would allow indefinite re-election.

Why even bother stating a date? Surely his ambition is to govern Venezuela until he dies, after which he will limit himself to one term in recognition of the challenge of facing such a workload at such an, ahem, advanced age. I fear that this guy won't be going anywhere for a long, long time.

Video: Despotism

Since one of our largest concerns about Hugo Chavez is his movement towards consolidated control over the government and what media is allowed in Venezuela. This video from the late 1940s illustrates the traits that a democracy and a despotism show. We already see Chavez engaging in media suppression similar to what's in the video.

Chavez Threatening To Expel U.S. Ambassador

Hugo the Magnificent is once again rattling his butter knife, this time at U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela William Brownfield:

President Hugo Chavez warned he could expel the U.S. ambassador if he keeps "meddling in Venezuela's affairs," saying the diplomat went too far by suggesting U.S. investors should receive fair compensation when Venezuela nationalizes its largest telephone company.

"Mr. ambassador, go meddle in the affairs of your own country," Chavez said during a speech Thursday night, referring to Ambassador William Brownfield.

Chavez then whipped out his legal credentials -- probably those which he obtained via mail order -- and promptly accused the United States of violating the Geneva Accord:

"If you continue meddling in Venezuela's affairs, first of all, you are violating the Geneva accords and getting yourself involved in a serious violation and could ... be declared persona non- grata and would have to leave the country," Chavez added.

All this uproar just because Brownfield essentially suggested that Chavez shouldn't steal from the shareholders of Verizon Communications. Since Verizon is a New York-based company, it will be interesting to see what Senators Clinton and Schumer have to say about the nationalization. Brownfield also had the audacity to do the following:

A Texan with a penchant for understatement that at times verges on sarcasm, Brownfield has drawn Chavez's anger not only by raising Washington's concerns but also by handing out donations to youth baseball leagues and other charities in slums that are pro-government strongholds.

This is all a tad bit confusing. Chavez has sought to support his arguments for socialism partly through claims that Jesus Christ was a socialist. Chavez subsequently advocates a nationalization policy that would have him stealing money from shareholders. As if that weren't enough, he takes great offense when the U.S. Ambassador gives money to Venezuelan charities and other non-political causes. Maybe I have to read my Bible more thoroughly, but I'm pretty sure that Jesus was against stealing and supportive of charity. Ah, but what do I know.

New voice at Hugo Chavez Watch

Joe McCoy of Dictator Watch fame will be joining the Hugo Chavez Watch team. I'm proud to see this blog grow in scope and opinions, and I think Joe will add greatly to this blog.

Joe's primary blog, Scottish Right, can be found here.

Low levels of Venezuelans protest Chavez power grab

Joe at Dictator Watch posted this story:

Hundreds of Venezuelans have protested in Caracas against a congressional measure that would grant Hugo Chavez, the country's president, unbridled powers to pass laws by decree.

The protest came as the pro-Chavez National Assembly said it would postpone granting final approval to allow him to enact laws by decree for an 18-month period.

Raising their hands in the air, some 400 to 500 protesters stood in a plaza and shouted in unison: "Faced with authoritarianism - more democracy."

I have to agree with the assessment that Joe gives:

Hopefully this number is underreported or just the start of mass protests. It would be highly disturbing if tens of thousands don't take to the streets.

It is as clear as day that Chavez intends to become the Castro of the 21st century, an oppressor of his own people acting as a thorn in the side of freedom and democracy.

"Bush Likes Chavez’s New Venezuelan Tourism Slogan"

From Scrappleface:

(2007-01-21) — U.S. President George Bush today said he thinks Venezuela’s new tourism slogan, unveiled during President Hugo Chavez’s weekly broadcast, “really captures the appeal of the place for American travelers, and makes a bold call to action.”

Within the past two weeks, Mr. Chavez received authority from parliament to rule by decree, announced plans to nationalize several major industries and declared his belief that “capitalism is the road to the destruction of the world.”

However, a spokesman for Mr. Chavez denied that the Venezuelan president had introduced a new tourism slogan aimed at Americans, noting that the only remark in his speech directed to U.S. citizens was “Go to Hell, Gringos.”

Mr. Bush, when told of the denial, said, “My bad. It sure sounded like a Venezuelan tourism advertisement to me."

Paging Dr. Chavez...Paging Dr. Chavez (Part Tres)

One of the more interesting aspects of the Fidel Castro health saga has been the emergence of Latin America's premier gastroenterologist: Hugo Chavez. As documented on this blog here and here, Mr. Chavez has routinely provided updates on Castro's recovery from intestinal surgery. And as you might expect, this charismatic leader has done so with a flair and panache unmatched by your typical PR flack or commie stooge. In fact, word has it that Chavez will lend his talents to Kim Jong-il when the North Korean leader has his annual colonoscopy next month.

Anyway, Dr. Chavez was at it again yesterday offering his prognosis for Castro's recovery and dispelling rumors that the Cuban "leader" has one foot in the grave. Oh...And naturally the good doctor blamed the US for everything, which apparently includes using the embargo to deny Castro a high fiber diet. As reported by Reuters:

QUITO (Reuters) - Fidel Castro's recovery from surgery is slow and has risks, his close ally Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday, but he denied a Spanish newspaper report the Cuban leader's condition was serious.

Chavez, who regularly visits or speaks with Castro and gives frequent updates on his health in speeches, was less upbeat than he typically is about his mentor's convalescence following surgery on his intestine last year.

Chavez accused the United States of being behind false reports exaggerating the illness, which has forced Castro to temporarily hand power over to his brother on the communist-run island. "The empire (the United States) is bent on killing off Fidel Castro," Chavez said.

Cuban Heroes

My Spanish is ferocious bad, but anyone who speaks the language may want to visit PayoLibre.com. The site publishes news concerning Cuba.

Jay Nordlinger, of National Review, discusses several of Cuba's heroes.

Castro in "grave" condition?

That's by way of Reeson, who has this to say about Fidel Castro's successor to power:

If Castro dies, there will be some weakening of the Cuban government, largely because it is centered on a Stalin-like cult of personality with Fidel. But his brother, and likely successor, is even more ruthless, despite some inclinations toward Chinese-style economic reforms.

I don't personally know much at all about Raul or what his Cuba would look like. The age difference between the two isn't that substantial though, and eventually there will be another transition of power.

Private industry becomes an endangered species in Venezuela

Chavez aims to nationalize absolutely all of his country's energy sector, his own words:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez said on Saturday the country's entire energy sector had to be nationalized, reinforcing his socialist revolution and possibly giving himself more targets for state take-over.

But he said he would permit foreign firms to hold minority stakes in energy deals.

The anti-U.S. leader, in power since 1999, this week announced he would nationalize power utilities and the country's biggest telecommunications firm, confirming his status as the catalyst of Latin America's swing to the left.

"We have decided to nationalize the whole Venezuelan energy and electricity sector, all of it, absolutely all," Chávez said in his annual state of the nation address to parliament, potentially opening up more projects for state acquisition in the No. 4 crude exporter to the United States.

The president was reinaugurated this week for a term that runs through 2013.

It's so obvious to me, and it should be obvious to anyone paying attention, that Chavez is trying to consolidate his power in order to become the Fidel Castro of the 21st century. Let's hope the Venezuelan people see through the smokescreen and see that they are being manipulated.

Holy Crapola!!

Thank the Lord for YouTube. I don't know where I would get my Hugo and Castro videos without it.

Mr. T talks about Hugo Chavez

I came across this video while cruising YouTube. I think it's the first time I've ever heard Mr. T say anything remotely political.

Chavez, Ahmadinejad, and the root of all evil

Ahmadinejad and Chavez are a bit upset about falling gas prices. I don't know about you, but seeing the price of unleaded under $2.00 has just about made me drive of the road (if you're not so lucky, you have my condolences--I'm giving credit to the nuclear reactor down the road: it may not make sense economically [to give such credit], but I don't care at the moment).

They're also looking to spread the joys of anti-Americanism and capitalism by spreading cash around the third world. [Anybody else having fond memories of the Cold War? Sure, Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons yet, but we're not doing anything to hinder them in their pursuit].

And by the way: everything wrong with the world is America's fault. Whether it is poverty, disease, conflict, mismanagement, or aggressive stupidity, the U.S. is behind it:

Mr Ahmadinejad focused on injustice and poverty in the developing world,
laying the blame at Washington's door. "All this is the work of the
superpower."

Ahmadinejad heads to Venezuela again

Chavez and Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are headed for another meeting, to kick off Ahmadinejad's tour of Latin America. Here's an excerpt of the WaPo article on the meeting:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad left Iran on Friday for his second trip to Latin America in four months, starting with a visit to Venezuela and talks with its anti-U.S. President Hugo Chavez.

Ahmadinejad, who like Chavez peppers his speeches with statements against Washington, will also visit Nicaragua and Ecuador, where presidents opposed to U.S. policies have also recently won elections.

"Iran and Venezuela are very good friends ... The aim of this trip is to follow up previous agreements and to reach new ones," Ahmadinejad told reporters at Tehran's International Mehrabad airport, the official IRNA news agency said.

The cult of Hugo

Oh my stars... Check out this photo. I found it on an excellent Venezuelan blog. The post surrounding the photo concerns the wacky cult of personality developing around Chavez. And did you know he called the OAS secretary a pubic hair? Well he did. Go read that post.

Cindy Sheehan ignores appeals to visit Cuban prisoners

We all know how much love St. Sheehan has for Hugo Chavez, so why on earth would she want to waste her time visiting the victims of Castro's Cuba when she can spend her time with victims of American imperialism?

Christopher Hitchens has said it many times, and it needs repeating. Those that call themselves anti-war are not anti-war. They are pro-war for the other side.

The Damas de Blanco, or Ladies in White, who march silently through the streets of Havana every Sunday in protest at the incarceration of political prisoners of the Castro regime, wrote a letter to Ms. Sheehan inviting her to visit Cuban prisons.

The Damas drew Ms. Sheehan's attention to the poor state of Cuban prisons, which they say lack clean drinking water and adequate food and where their relatives are imprisoned solely for speaking out against Fidel Castro's government.

The leader of Ms. Sheehan's trip, Medea Benjamin, said the American activists had not seen the letter and that they would be focusing solely on Guantanamo.

"It just so happens that this is where the [ Guantanamo] prisoners are," Ms. Benjamin said. That the group is visiting Cuba, where prisons define daily life for many, is "very incidental," she added.

Video: Chavez sworn in

Adding to Scatbug's last post, here is a video from Fox on Chavez's promise of socialist revolution in Venezuela.

Hugo's idea man (Updated with a new quote and improved sarcasm!)

I suppose you've heard that Hugo Chavez yesterday officially condemned the Venezuelan people to the prison of socialism. Here's the story:

Chavez Gets More Power by Nationalizing

CARACAS, Venezuela -- As Venezuela embarked on another six years under Hugo Chavez, the president announced plans to nationalize power and telecom companies and make other bold changes that will concentrate more power in his hands.

Chavez, who will be sworn in Wednesday to a third term that runs until 2013, also said he wanted a constitutional amendment to strip the Central Bank of its autonomy and would soon ask the National Assembly, solidly controlled by his allies, to give him greater powers to legislate by presidential decree.

"We're moving toward a socialist republic of Venezuela, and that requires a deep reform of our national constitution," Chavez said in a televised address after swearing in his new Cabinet. "We're heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it."

Legislating by decree. "nothing and no one can prevent it." All that's missing (for now) is a pledge to re-educate those who don't have their minds right.

And in case you think the alarms being sounded over Chavez's power grab are an over reaction, familiarize yourself with Heinz Dieterich. He's the thug whisperer who's training the new breed of Latin American socialists. The term Chavez adopted, "21st Century Socialism"? Dieterich wrote the book (literally). And I'm not talking about European socialism lite. No, Mr. Dieterich is an old-school Leninist. Here are some of his thoughts from an interview in Unsere Zeit, the German Communist Party newspaper. (I found it on a different web site so click the first link for the full version.)

On what it will take for Chavez to be successful...

In my view, one can only do today in Venezuela what Lenin did in the New Economic Policy. Every other attempt to make steps toward socialism under today's conditions would lead rapidly to the collapse of the system because there is no basis of power from which to execute it. The bourgeois state has not been destroyed, it has merely reorganized itself into a new way of governing. The church has not lost its influence. Eighty percent of the mass media are in the hands of large companies opposed to the government. Also, the kind of correlation of power that would allow for a repetition of what happened in Cuba or the Soviet Union is lacking.

[...]

Lenin defined different requirements for different times. First, there was electrification. That meant the insight that the objective conditions for socialism did not exist -- they could be only created. That allowed for the collectivization of agriculture. The whole movement of farm collectives was a result of the political necessity, for the future of the revolution, of bringing under party control the potential within the population of making a decision for it. That was the deciding factor. And Lenin realized, of course, that the Soviet Union would remain bourgeois in the medium term if the peasants were not brought under the ideological direction of the party and the workers.

Of course as every schoolboy/girl knows (har-har), Lenin's New Economic Policy and collectivization killed people in the tens of millions either by execution, disease, or forced starvation...and sometimes all three for good measure. So it appears Mr. Dieterich fails to grasp that the term Great Famine -- just one catastrophic result of the NEP -- is not meant as a compliment to Lenin's skills as an economist and social organizer. If Dieterich has a similar favorable impression of the Great Famine Redux under Stalin, the interview doesn't say. But he does give some praise to Mao, so undoubtedly he has a soft spot for Uncle Joe as well.The whole interview is just more and more of that kind of rubbish.

However, at the end Mr. Dieterich at least supplies some comic relief...

But in any case it [socialism] must all be done democratically. If at some point the people say, "We have reached the level of development of Costa Rica and that's good enough for us, we don't want any socialist experiments in Venezuela," then there is nothing to be done. Democracy means that the majority rules. If the majority is satisfied with quasi-first world social conditions and does not wish to go any farther, socialism cannot be imposed.

Goodness...Many a collectivized field could be fertilized with that dung heap of a quote. Has Hugo Chavez given any indication he'd go along with a vote to remove him from power? What about Castro (Fidel or Raul)? Or Kim? And let's revisit the beginning of this post: legislating by decree; "nothing and no one can prevent it." That sure sounds like imposing socialism, no?

UPDATE: So Chavez was sworn in as tyrant...er...president today. I wonder if he ran this line from his speech past Heinz Dieterich: "Fatherland. Socialism or death — I swear it." Wow. That kinda adds a few more tons to Dieterich's dung heap, doesn't it.

Sabotage

A teen managed to hack into Venezuela's government website:

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- A 17-year-old has been detained by Venezuelan authorities after hacking into multiple government Web sites and posting playful photos of President Hugo Chavez and his close ally, Cuba's Fidel Castro, on some of them.

The boy modified 23 Web sites -- including those of the vice president's office, the National Guard and the investigative police -- between December 30 and 31, Oswaldo Guevara, the investigative police's head of computer-related crimes, said Friday.

He signed off on the photo-postings and other cosmetic changes made to the home pages with his hacker name, "J41ber", and home telephone number. The modifications had included photomontages of Chavez and Castro, Guevara said.

Local media reported the boy, who was living in a poor neighborhood in western Carabobo state, was hoping his actions would win him a job with the private telecommunications company hosting the Web sites.

I wonder what the pictures looked like? Were they similiar to the ones we have at the top of this blog?

Prison Safety in Venezuela

South America Daily, a repository of news articles primarily concerned with South America is one of my favorite news sources on South America. There are headings on each of eight major South American countries.

Today (03Jan07) has three articles concerning prison riots in Venezuela (of six ledes):

>Venezuela prison riot kills 16 inmates

>22 Inmates Killed This Week in Venezuelan Prison Riots

>Venezuelan prison riots kill 22 inmates this week

Remind me not to get arrested in Venezuela. (Although I think all three stories refer to the same riots, but from different newspapers).

Nutty S.O.B.

From the Japan Times:

Revolution was good for Cuba.

The author, Grant Piper, demonstrates that he is a communist by praising the Bolshevik Revolution and the Chinese Communist Revolution as the best things to happen to those countries in modern times.

This guy belongs at a U.S. college teaching "journalism".

Get well...uh...eventually.

With everyone zigging on the Saddam rope-a-dope, I thought I'd zag with an Uncle Fidel update. It seems the old rascal has issued a New Year's greeting to "his people". In the message he thanks them for their "courage" and their "calm and maturity" during his long illness. He also assures them that he still has a finger in the blood pudding through regular updates from his henchmen. And of course no Fidel message would be complete without the obligatory harangue against global imperialists for consuming things and destroying the environment (as if greater Havana's anything to brag about).

But what I found curious about the story, was the accompanying photo:



According to the caption, the graffiti translates as: "Long live Fidel and his recuperation". Hmmmm. Not exactly "Get well soon", is it. Maybe it's just a Commie thing. They're like totally into heroic struggles, so that must apply to getting sick too. And actually, I share the sentiment. I hope the recuperation lasts the rest of his life.

(Cross-posted at Scatbug's Scatterings)