| "Hugo Chavez and Venezuela's poor versus everybody else" Printed on Thursday, December 26, 2002 @ 11:34:47 EST ( |
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(YellowTimes.org) – Remember the coup in Venezuela earlier this year? A coup, if we need remind ourselves, that was an abortive one that the Bush administration initially backed with much fanfare, but then rescinded that jubilance when they discovered it to have crumbled under the pressures of military powers faithful to President Hugo Chavez and massive public backing from the impoverished Venezuelan masses.
Is that same pattern about to be repeated now or will it end this time in an orgy of violence as such South American endeavors so often do? If we look closely, current events in Venezuela resemble the transparent machinations of the failed April 2002 coup quite well. Once again, we have the upper middle class politicians, military officers, merchants, and demagogues attempting to bring the country's economy to a standstill in protest of Chavez's social and geopolitical strategies, strategies that challenge the U.S.' idea of a model South American strongman. Chavez sells oil to Cuba and meets with Fidel Castro. He also openly criticizes the U.S.' "war on terrorism" and globalization, and that's a Washington no-no.
All the while, the Chavez supporters, the vast and poverty stricken lower class, are the ones most hurt by the strikes as the elite Venezuelan oligarchy pursue their selfish agenda and plutocratic aspirations with the middle class as their tool.
And once again, the private, corporate media in both Venezuela and the United States are answering their paymasters' call by printing and reporting wildly one-sided affairs that virtually omit reference to the vast and consistent pro-Chavez rallies around the country.
Of the recent articles published by the New York Times about the situation in Venezuela, one has to read several articles to even find a one sentence mention of the pro-Chavez movement, let alone an entire article about them. Moreover, these people, their movement, and what they represent are half the story, yet are given only 1 percent of the coverage.
Why? Because then the American people might not so easily grasp the fact as they do now that Hugo Chavez is an evil tyrant, against the people, hell-bent on destroying Venezuela's economy for his own egotistical purposes.
Instead, we might see large demonstrations by the rural poor in support of Chavez while decrying the underhanded tactics of the corporations and news media attempting to seize control of the country. We might clearly see a divided country where an empowered oligarchy is trying to wrest control of the government for its own privatizing purposes in the face of international law and the Venezuelan constitution.
Chavez is continually called a dictator or a communist or a leftist: anything to conjure up some good ol' Cold War imagery, or of the Iron Curtain and Marxism, though no one really knows what being a Marxist means. People just know it's bad.
We should also recall the strange and little known quasi-government proxy known as NED.
The National Endowment for Democracy describes itself as "a private, nonprofit organization created in 1983 to strengthen democratic institutions around the world through nongovernmental efforts. [NED] is governed by an independent, nonpartisan board of directors."
NED, though billed as a private organization, more accurately functions as an unofficial government organization that carries out foreign policy initiatives throughout the world.
By all reasonable accounts, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) had more than an oblique and unintentional role in the proceedings in Venezuela in April.
Just before the April coup, NED had funded a conference where many of the opposition leaders, and ultimate coup organizers, were set to meet, including hand-picked, two-day dictator Pedro Carmona, president of the business group Fedecamaras, who was to speak at the event.
Upon coming to power, Carmona immediately issued decrees suspending the National Assembly and the Supreme Court until elections were to take place in the indefinite future. Emphasis is put on the word "immediately" here; remember, Carmona was only "in office" for a matter of hours. Why suspend such democratic tools as the National Assembly and the Supreme Court when he and his coup conspirators were supposedly seizing power to revive a hijacked Venezuelan democracy? Why would Washington back such flagrant and anti-democratic political measures?
Now, similar proceedings are unfolding once again this December just in time for a war in Iraq, when suddenly, the need for a strong oil-producing Venezuela will become paramount to the health of the U.S. economy.
[Matthew Riemer has written for years about a myriad of topics, such as: philosophy, religion, psychology, culture, and politics. He studied Russian language and culture for five years and traveled in the former Soviet Union in 1990. In the midst of a larger autobiographical/cultural work, Matthew is the Director of Operations at YellowTimes.org. He lives in the United States.]
Matthew Riemer encourages your comments: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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