Venezuela's Chavez & Spain's Juan Carlos and ¿Por qué no te callas? (Why don't you shut up?)

[stevenleser]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_steven_l_071118_venezuela_s_chavez__26.htm

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 18, 2007

Venezuela's Chavez & Spain's Juan Carlos and ¿Por qué no te callas? (Why don't you shut up?)

By Steven Leser


Despite sporadic coverage by major English Anglo-American news media like the Los Angeles Times, and Time magazine, it is hard to convey the massive impact on the Spanish speaking world of the confrontation between Spain’s King Juan Carlos and Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez. The confrontation culminated in the Spanish King telling Chavez “¿Por qué no te callas?” translated as “Why don’t you shut up?”


The utterance was captured on camera and immediately snowballed into a news, political and internet avalanche. Many people in Spain and Latin America have downloaded the ring tone to their cell phone that has the audio clip of Juan Carlos saying “¿Por qué no te callas?” There are several dozen music mixes of the confrontation on You Tube, at least one of which has been viewed over 1.1 million times and many have been viewed over 100,000 times. News media on both sides of the Atlantic eschewed attempts at fair coverage and took sides with a vengeance.


What the cultural phenomenon of “¿Por qué no te callas?” glosses over are some real issues that were attempting to be addressed at the 17th Ibero-American summit in Chile that ended on November 10th. The ironies and subtexts are also very interesting. Start with the fact that the person Chavez was interrupting and talking-over when Juan Carlos told him to shut up was Spain's current Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Zapatero is a Socialist and is/was regarded by Chavez as a close ally as they share much of the same ideology and beliefs. Second, the Ibero-American summit is supposed to be a friendly event designed to foster closer relations among all of the Spanish and Portuguese countries of the world and help them work together on economic and other issues.


The issue being addressed when the mood began to get ugly was how to improve Latin America’s economic situation. As Time magazine pointed out:

"Chávez became visibly irritated at the summit when Spain's current Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero — a socialist and Chávez ally — insisted that Latin America needs to attract more foreign capital if it's going to make a dent in its chronic, deepening poverty. Chávez blames "savage capitalism" for Latin America's gaping inequality and insists "only socialism" can fix it — hence his tirade against Aznar and other free-market "fascists." At that point Zapatero chided Chávez, reminding him that Aznar himself "was democratically elected by the Spanish people." Chávez kept trying to interrupt — summit organizers even turned off his microphone — at which point the King said what was on most summiteers' minds, if the general applause he got was any indication.”

-----------------------------

The person for whom I feel the most sorry is the host of the conference, Chile's President Michelle Bachelet. I wonder if any of the parties involved in the fracas have apologized to her. Hosting a major international summit like this is a big deal for Chile and its President and to have it degenerate into name-calling and the general disaster that it became is probably seen in Chile as a huge disappointment. Worse still is that the issues of poverty and slow growth for the region was not addressed because of the exchange.


The debacle shows the weakness of ideological rigidness in general and that of Chavez in particular. Chavez rightly rails against the extreme right ideologies of people like Bush and Aznar and the destructiveness of their policies, but cannot escape the rigidness of his own enough to even let someone else finish what they have to say without interruption. Time Magazine continued:

Back in Caracas today, Chávez is conveniently leaving the comments of Zapatero, who is supposed to be one of his leftist kindred spirits, out of the discussion. "What Zapatero said must have really bothered Chávez," says Venezuelan author and Chávez biographer Alberto Barrera. "It broke with the leftist fundamentalism on Latin America that he demands all his allies follow."

And it pointed up a fact about Chávez's revolution that chavistas are too reluctant to acknowledge. Venezuela, with its vast oil wealth, can afford to indulge socialism and eschew foreign investment; but most other Latin American nations can't. Their economic growth still depends on the kind of capital that global competitors like China and India are raking in, but which Latin America seems unable or unwilling to garner. The chavistas rightly argue that the distribution of capitalism's fruits has been grossly unequal in Latin America — which is a large reason why leftists like Chávez have been swept into power in recent years. But the region needs that investment nonetheless — and even leftists like Zapatero sound impatient with the region's mediocre performance.”

-----------------------------

I have to say that if I was a Socialist and had to choose between the Zapatero brand and the Chavez brand, there would be no question. Zapatero has ten times the brains and one hundred times the class of Chavez. Chavez’ behavior is a symptom of what seems to happen to many leaders who embrace extreme right or extreme left ideologies. They become infected with a disease that causes them to demagogue incessantly at the slightest provocation. The popular American saying applies here and that is, “Chavez, it’s not all about YOU.” It is about the people in the region, and your (Chavez) behavior caused a failure in the efforts to do anything about it. Chavez has to learn how to behave at major international summits and one of the more important rules of that behavior is that when a host or chair recognizes and gives the floor to someone else, you don’t interrupt them. Por qué no te callas, indeed.

[rjones2818]

1. And yet Chavez is getting results

greater than those of Zapatero (mind you, he has more room for greater results).

[Judi Lynn]

2. Venezuela's history, as a nation invaded, seized by Spanish conquerors,

with a HUGE minority population completely subjugated by the Spanish elite continuing into the present is so wildly different from that of its former master it should have NEVER been flatly compared with a European country which has enjoyed wildly different circumstances, so different they have absolutely nothing in common, other than a language base.

Chavez is getting the results for which his own people elected him, his people being the vast majority of poor, who have been ignored, and exploited by the European descended wealthy elite, whom, as it has been pointed out, identify more with Europe, and as most people are completely aware, who even pay attention, are in deadly contempt of their darker compatriots, viewing them as primitive inferiors. That's no secret to anyone who invests even a moment's time investigating.

Zapatero is far much closer to main-stream political thought in Europe, whereas the exploitive, racist minority has always held control in Latin America. It's the actual base one needs to touch before coming to terms with any part of Latin American history.

If it's possible to get past the knock-down-drag-out struggle going on with the fascist oligarchy in Venezuela, you'll be able to see far, far better, more meaningful results. That's exactly the reason he was elected by his supporters, the Venezuelan public, who started this movement, LONG BEFORE he was a Presidential candidate.

[stevenleser]

3. Much of what you say may be true, BUT it was not what was being discussed

when the fracas broke out and it doesn't excuse talking over and constantly interrupting other people at the summit. Like I said in the article, it isnt all about Chavez or even oil-rich Venezuela. There are other countries and peoples whose interests did not get addressed because of Chavez' behavior.

[Joe Chi Minh]

9. Tough. What Chavez is doing for Venezuela would make the most

progressive measures by any European country seem very cosmetic indeed. And what is more, Chavez is absolutely correct about demonic capitalism (though he expressed it more temperately) and its historic effects on the whole of South America, as Judy Lynn intimated. Where is your sense of proportion?

[stevenleser]

12. First of all, none of what you say is the point...

This is a regional summit where everyone has a right to have their say. No one talked over Chavez, why did he talk over anyone else? As I said, it is not ALL ABOUT HIM nor is it ALL ABOUT VENEZUELA.

Second, I dont think you can blame capitalism for this. People in socialist and communist nations have staked out mini empires for themselves replete with Dachas on the Black sea while the masses starved or barely eaked by, or have we already forgotten that? Have we forgotten that this is still the reality in places like North Korea?

You want to blame the particular economic system, but no matter the system people have found a way to have the exact same thing. People need to be able to step out of their ideologies and not be nationalistic about an economic system.

[Joe Chi Minh]

17. "it is not ALL ABOUT HIM nor is it ALL ABOUT VENEZUELA." Precisely!

It's about Venezuela. You don't think Chavez is doing enough for the Venezuelans? And etiquette at a conference trumps the economic salvation of millions? What a sorry sense of perspective you all have! Don't you ever think of the Day of Judgment?

[Joe Chi Minh]

11. Now don't upset them.

[Igel]

4. There was an article today in the NYT re: Bachelet.

I don't particularly care if it's perceived as a hit piece or not; it has pluses and minuses, and I'm not up on what's going on in Chile very much.

However, I was impressed by one fact: Politics for her is politics, it is not intensely personal. There may be personal aspects to it--that's unavoidable--but she keeps her persona separate from the "persona" of the country, not mixing the two, not making any personal bitterness or resentments national grudges. To mix the personal and the private like that is to repeat Louis XIV "l'etat, c'est moi" error. It makes you from a leader into a ruler, or from a ruler into a savior, a messiah, and you're blinded by your own self-apotheosis, and entrain followers into the same delusion; where you end up depends on how deep the failing is, where you (and your followers) start, and how long you have. How horrible the consequences depends on your followers, how long you have, and the the society you're moulding into your own image... and quirks of your neuroses. At some point, the difference between a petty Stalin and a beneficent despot comes down to the person's willingness to tolerate disagreement, and no more--in other words, to the patience of an individual, because the state's patience and forebearance of minority rights (or any rights) is become the ruler's patience. Scary when this happens in a church, in an academic department or in a workplace, and far worse when it happens in a country. I've seen the former two; and I've studied a couple of countries in which it also happened.

You may run on ethnic politics, but at some point you represent, but do not personify, the ethnicity that elected you; you may run on an ideology, but you merely develop and present the ideology, it is not buried under your skin, so personal attacks on you and attacks on the ideology are distinct things and are dealt with separately. It takes a strength of character, a certain intellectual and moral rigor, to do this, and many--most--don't have it. Good ones can feign such indignation, such a merger, for effect, but it should be perceptibly not a core feature of the person in power. Those that don't make this distinction are ticking time bombs when they're in politics. At any given point there's a percentage of the population incapable or unwilling to see the difference; when they are a majority, the country's destroyed; if they admit their error and reject it, the country's often destroyed again (but if they don't admit their error, at least privately, it's worse).

Kudos to Bachelet for being wise enough not to fall for this mistake, given her personal history and those of her constituents. No hay duda que se hubiese callado Bachelet; en realidad, creo que se habria callado hasta que tuviera la palabra.

[stevenleser]

5. Very well said!

Wow!

[Joe Chi Minh]

10. Why are you not focusing on the iniquitous politics of Chavez's predecessors,

threatened into submission by the US, when not simply bought and paid for? And all the juntas and dictatorships throughout South America, whose goons were/are "trained" by the School of the Americas? Where is your moral compass?

[stevenleser]

13. If they had misbehaved at the summit, I WOULD be focusing on them

Step out of your narrow ideology and realize that everything is not about that.

[Peace Patriot]

6. If you base your arguments on info from Time magazine and Alberto Barrera,

then, yeah, more "free trade" capitalism is just the thing for South America.

Har-har.

I do think you got some of the undercurrents at this meeting, but not the most important ones--and specifically not the black holes into which Time magazine and its war profiteering corporate news monopoly brethren throw...oh, Bush/CIA activity in South America; the rightwing paramilitaries in cahoots with the Colombian government (fat with billions of our tax dollars) and the Bush "war on drugs," who have been chainsawing union organizers and throwing their body parts into mass graves, and plotting yet more assassination attempts against Hugo Chavez and other democratically elected leaders; and U.S. collusion in the rightwing military coup against the Venezuelan people, their Constitution, and their elected president and National Assembly, in 2002, and Spain's collusion in that coup attempt--the immediate matter at issue between Chavez and Zapatero and the king--with rumors flying of yet another U.S.-supported rightwing military coup scheme, to prevent the people of Venezuela from changing their own Constitution by a vote.

No, Chavez was not polite. And too bad Michele Batchelet suffered embarrassment--Batchelet, who allowed herself to be strong-armed by Condoleeza Rice & co., when it was Venezuela's turn to sit on the UN Security Council. (She got publicly criticized for it, by her own ambassador to Venezuela.) She has been a lame, weak socialist, who has made all kinds of compromises with "free trade" and privatization, to the detriment of her people. Scraps from the "neo-liberal" table, is what she has agreed to.

Tough, that she got embarrassed. Tough that things got a little impolite--caused by a man who has a U.S. bull's eye on his forehead, or, rather, on his back.

The truth of the matter is that the Bolivarian Revolution--a peaceful, democratic, grass roots driven peoples' revolution with widespread support throughout the Andes region, and elected governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and Nicaragua, as well as close allies in Brazil and Uruguay--is driving the U.S.-controlled World Bank/IMF loan sharks, with their ruinous policies, out of the region, and replacing it with the social-justice friendly Bank of the South, and is successfully asserting national sovereignty over oil, gas and other resources, against the piggish, brutal profiteering of U.S.-based global corporate predators. And Spain appears to believe that it has some sort of vaguely monarchical, former colonialist's right to step into what Europeans must perceive as a "power vacuum." Surely these little brown peasants can't run their own affairs. They need "guidance." The U.S. out. Spain back in.

THAT'S what was going on. And Chavez couldn't stand seeing this imperial snobbery coming from a so-called socialist. Especially since Spain--albeit under that little Bush toady, Aznar--had sent its ambassador to the coup leaders in support of their coup, even as they were whisking the kidnapped Chavez away to an undisclosed location. That the current socialist government of Spain has not disavowed the former rightwing government's connivance in that coup is an outrage--especially in an atmosphere of continuing threat against the Venezuelan government from rightwing fascists in cahoots with the Bush Junta--and it leads to the suspicion that this CURRENT socialist government would just as soon see Chavez illegally and/or violently removed, so Spain can step into the breach and profit from the new prosperity that the Bolivarian Revolution is creating.

Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador don't need "foreign investment" to profit from--and promote social justice and prosperity with--the vast reserves of oil, gas, minerals, forests, fresh water and other natural resources that are rightfully theirs. They know what they are doing. They are building schools, medical clinics, community centers, baseball fields and other infrastructure in poor areas never before served by government; they are eliminating illiteracy, and providing free education through university; they are building roads, bridges and pipelines; they are providing loans and grants to small businesses and worker coops; they are engaging in land reform and other efforts to create and enhance food self sufficiency. And they are NOT sending the cream of these profits off to European bankers and loan shark financiers.

In Venezuela, farther along in the Bolivarian Revolution than the others, all indicators are up, with the most growth in the PRIVATE sector. In Argentina, all indicators are also up, after Venezuela bailed Argentina out of World Bank debt (the seed of the Bank of the South), and put it back on its feet, thus creating a healthy trading partner for itself, Brazil and other countries.

The task ahead of the Bolivarians cannot be underestimated, and the task in countries like Brazil, which are not so aggressive on social justice, is even more formidable. The U.S. and Europe--and Spain--have RAVAGED South America and have pitilessly created a vast underclass of millions and millions of dirt poor people who have NOTHING. They have been stripped of their farm land and driven into urban areas, to live in shantytowns. There, they have been utterly neglected by the rich and greedy elite who toady to U.S. and European global corporate predators, and who don't give a fuck about their own people, and haven't provided basic social decencies, let alone bootstrapping help, while they have sold off their country's resources, land and even its financial solvency to the highest foreign bidders. They have taken on ruinous World Bank loans, ripped off the money, and leave the poor to pay the debt.

And these millions of poor are supposed to look to Spain and European investors for succor? Give me a break.

No, actually, I take that back. Limited investment would be fine, along the lines that Evo Morales laid out, with his statement, "We want partners, not bosses." But, you see, Spain and the rich elites they installed in power in Latin America have always been the "bosses." They think they are born to rule. And their bossiness has taken some really terrible forms in the past. So, is it so difficult to understand why the millions of poor people--whom Chavez speaks for--would be just a little suspicious of their intentions now?

Some of the main goals of the Bolivarian Revolution are regional independence, and regional cooperation and self-sufficiency. They are aiming at a South American "Common Market," and common currency. And it is no accident who they named their revolution for--Simon Bolivar, the anti-colonial hero who threw Spain out of South America, and dreamed of a "United States of South America," to rival the economic powerhouse to the north. Spain was a major player in preventing that from happening, by slicing up the continent along colonial borderlines, and encouraging a "divide and conquer" strategy by the U.S. The current Bolivarian Revolution is the first peaceful movement that has emerged since the time of Simon Bolivar to re-ignite that dream--the dream of regional cooperation and independence. And its outlines are becoming visible, with the friendships among Chavez, Morales, Correa, Kirchner and da Silva, in particular, who represent vast constituencies of the poor, in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and Brazil, and in the common projects they have undertaken, such as the Bank of the South, regional trade groups, infrastructure development, and, not unimportantly, watching each other's backs.

When the Bushites sent word to South American leaders that they must "isolate" Hugo Chavez, Nestor Kirchner famously replied, "But he is my brother." When the Bushite demonization of Chavez was particularly intensified, prior to the December '06 election in Venezuela, Lula da Silva made a point of visiting Venezuela, for the ceremonial opening of the new Orinoco Bridge, two weeks before the election--an implied endorsement (an election that Chavez won with 63% of the vote)--and Lulu more recently endorsed the proposed changes to the Venezuelan Constitution that are up for a vote of the people. He pointed out that unlimited terms for a president are a common practice in many democracies. (People who criticize this proposal often forget that our own FDR ran for and won FOUR terms in office.) Rafael Correa, when he was running for president of Ecuador, and was asked what he thought of Chavez's remark to the UN that Bush is "the devil," replied that it was "an insult to the devil."

Correa won that election with 60% of the vote, and went on, this year, to win a referendum to create a national assembly to re-write Ecuador's constitution, with 80% of the vote. Morales in Bolivia is also engaged in a constitutional re-write. It is the common necessity of all of these countries, to try to break the lock of decades and centuries of highly corrupt entrenchment of the rightwing elite that was installed, enriched and given most of the land by SPAIN--corruption that the U.S., and most recently the Bush Junta, has fully supported, even to the lengths of horrendous brutality against the poor.

Time magazine provides you with the global corporate predator elite's view of these matters--full of big black holes, where context should be, and rife with every distortion imaginable to make their readers sympathetic with those who will continue to sell South America's resources, and the rights of its vast poor population, to the richest people on earth, and will likely betray them to the tender mercies of their paramilitary death squads. This conflict has been going on for centuries, with the poor always the losers. They are now taking matters into their own hands, with their Bolivarian Revolution, and you want them to be nice and trusting about Spain's intentions?

I hope they work things out--because I want peace on earth--but I can understand Chavez's impatience with things being worked out on the basis of lies and a coverup of treachery. And the king of Spain did his cause no good by telling the elected president of Venezuela, and the most visible spokesperson for the vast poor population of South America, to "shut up." But then he wasn't playing to the poor, was he?

--------------------



To get the other side of the story (if you don't trust the corporate news monopolies who brought you the Iraq War), I recommend, as a good place to start: www.venezuelanalysis.com. Also: "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," the Irish filmmakers' documentary on the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela, available at YouTube and at www.axisoflogic.com.

[stevenleser]

8. I think you are wrong and the ways you are wrong are obvious...

I think the Spanish, Chinese, Indian, French and Swedish models are much preferable to the rich in ideology and poor in theory practices of Chavez and they have another advantage, they have worked. As the next responder indicated, the Chavez model results in failure and we are seeing the signs of that already. Every country that has gone down this road has been met with failure. Vast petroleum resources might save Venezuela, great, that will not help the rest of the countries in the region that follow a fatally flawed model.

[twiceshy]

7. Well from some articles I've read...

Not all is so rosy.

1) The middle class is fleeing if they have the money/opportunity to do so.

2) The wealthy have already fled and taken what assets they could. Miami is full of them.

3) Citgo is shedding assets and reducing refining capacity. This is key because Venezulan oil is heavy (some of it so heavy it is only good for asphalt). Citgo was set up to refine Venezualn crude into gasoline, and thus fetch a better price.

4)btw, they closed/sold the Citco asphalt plant which was a major supplier on the East coast USA.

5) We're looking at another Zimbabwe in 10 years.

[Judi Lynn]

14. Comment: Larry Birns on Venezuela and Chavez

Comment: Larry Birns on Venezuela and Chavez
Mon Nov 19, 2007 10:48am EST

Larry Birns, Director of Council on Hemispheric Affairs: Hugo Chávez cannot be faulted on his democratic lapses, because there have been few of these. This is why he has proven to be such a frustrating adversary to Washington policy makers in that he hasn't thrown many home-run pitches to State Department batters - that is, there are no political prisoners, no firing squads, and no arbitrary arrests that are familiar to many U.S. allies around the world. While Chávez has been maddeningly lean on substance when it comes to irritating U.S. interests, he has been very generous in creating situations where he easily can be made to appear to be erratic, presumptive, violating the rules of protocol's niceties and good behavior, and incapable of respecting the canons of diplomacy.

It is there to be seen that Hugo Chávez is doing some of the most innovative thinking in all of Latin America. At the very time that the U.S. is at its nadir in terms of regional relevance, such transformative ideas as the Venezuelan leader's various social missions, or the use of some of the state oil company PDUSA's profits from record oil sales being diverted to social spending on the poor, or his use of petrodollars to speed to poor neighborhoods in the U.S., as well as poor countries throughout the world, various grants and concessions on oil prices, and his notion that Latin America has reached the point where it should decide whether the time has come for it to declare autonomy from the U.S., are examples of true generosity and self-enlightenment policy. With all of these good works operating on his behalf, why does he have grounds to be demeaned, discounted, and dismissed by lesser figures than himself, like when Spain's King Carlos shouted at Chávez the other day "why don't you shut up", after he had repeated his accusations against extreme rightwing former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar as being a "Fascist?"

Without question, Hugo Chávez has turned out to be a public relations disaster and a person who feasts on confrontation and diatribes. Yet his derelictions are clearly more bark than bite, and his ordinary transactions are filled with good will and cheer. He is a million light years away from being a Pinochet, nor is Venezuela anything near to being akin to what Argentina was under military rule during the 'Dirty War'.

But Chávez eclipses his own notable contributions to improving the region's agenda and wounds his own hemispheric standing by the rants, reversions to childish imbecilities, and petty insults against his opponents, even though there is more fact than fiction in his claims: the Brazilian Senate is a "bunch of parrots", President Bush may be a "donkey" when it comes to honoring the American people's right to reliable information, and Aznar is, of course, a "Fascist", but you don't necessarily have to give wings to these birds.

More:
http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSDIS95487120071119

[Peace Patriot]

16. Chavez is an interesting character. He is a plebian (born in poverty) and pugnacious,

but has never shown any tendency to personal (or state) violence, except once. As a young officer, he colluded with other leftists in the military in a coup attempt against a rightwing government that had slaughtered hundreds of people in a protest. (We often forget that there are leftist and democratic elements in Venezuelan and other South American militaries--military service is often the only avenue to education and advancement for the poor, and, in Venezuela, in particular, is constituted differently than the military here. It's more like the National Guard--closer to the people, often helps local communities.) Anyway, their coup failed. About 12 people were killed (all of them soldiers or police, I believe--and I don't think Chavez killed anybody). And Chavez went to jail. There he considered his options, and read a lot of books. And also there, while he was in prison for his part in the leftwing coup attempt, he became a national hero. The purpose of the leftwing military coup had not been to impose a military dictatorship in Venezuela, but rather to remove an oppressive, entrenched, fascist government, to make way for a truly democratic one. And that is WHY he became a hero. And that is why the people of Venezuela elected him president--and have re-elected him several times, with big majorities (60+%)--because he is a champion of democracy and of the poor majority.

Many otherwise good men and women can be tempted by violence, when they see great injustice. Indeed, it is the tragic story of many people in Latin America, who saw no alternative but to take up arms in the face of brutal oppression and vast inequity. But--except for Colombia--that is in the past. After long hard work by many people--from the poor grass roots in the shantytowns and the indigenous tribes in the mountains, to the professionals in the OAS and others in South American society--on building democratic institutions (such as honest and transparent elections, and constitutional assemblies and referendums), it is now possible, in most countries, to seek social justice peacefully and democratically.

Chavez's formation as a politician--and his personal formation, as an adult--occurred right at the cusp of this momentous change. I imagine there were many young people in the same political and psychological situation at that time. Is democracy possible? Is it really possible to change things democratically? Is it possible to fight the torturers and killers of the rightwing, and their vast wealth and power, and their connections in Washington, and their sellout of their countries to Exxon-Mobile and the World Bank, WITHOUT taking up arms?

Chavez changed in prison. He exited the paradigm of Simon Bolivar--champion of the people, sword in hand (the "good knight")--and that of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, FARC and others, attached to the uncompromising Marxist mode of struggle (forever tainted by Stalin and other bloody tyrants, who arose in societies with no democratic traditions or history)--and began to formulate a new revolutionary paradigm, one that combines the best from previous and existing systems of government, and pioneers new ground. The Bolivarian Revolution.

What Bolivar was notable for was fighting the revolution for independence against Spain, in multiple countries, but he also freed the slaves, and dreamed of a "United States of South America." The modern Bolivarian Revolution is seeking cooperation among South American countries--to resist the "divide and conquer" strategies of the Bushites and the corporatists--and has had considerable success in this regard. The Bolivarians' cooperative ventures somewhat resemble the EU. It is also seeking economic equity with similarities to European and Scandinavian socialism (a mixed socialist/capitalist economy). But one big difference is that South America has more natural resources--its strength and wealth are tied up in those resources--whereas European and Scandinavia socialism are built more on manufacturing and on an accumulation of banking/financial wealth and power.

Also, the wounds of brutal fascism are 60 years old in Europe, and very fresh in South America (and are on-going in Colombia, and some other places). Indeed, the fascist coup attempt in Venezuela was only five years ago, and was bad enough, as it was--very short-lived--but, if it had succeeded, could easily have turned into a bloodbath of torture and death for leftists, and even for mere defenders of the Constitution. Fascist rule in South America is, present time, violent in its intentions. This makes the Bolivarians' efforts at democratic change all the more intense; and it makes democracy more vulnerable and less steady on its feet. These new democracies--especially the ones with rich natural resources, like Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador--are constantly hanging over a fascist black hole and a plunge into CIA/Bushite-instigated "riots," CIA/Bushite-funded rightwing paramilitary assassinations, torture and death for many people, and other kinds of interference (such as USAID-NED funding of rightwing political groups, and the U.S. "war on drugs" mayhem of increased drugs and weapons trafficking).

It should be no wonder that a naturally pugnacious and plebian leader like Chavez would get testy at times. Think of what he and his many supporters have been facing--and how well they have faced it. Think of the democratic transformation that has occurred--and the odds against it--and think how, if you were in charge, you would seek to solidify it, to permanently protect the interests of the poor majority, in a context of peaceful, democratic change.

You know, the rightwing in this country used to revile labor leaders for their impoliteness, and lack of diplomacy and polish. They were made out to be "clowns" and "monkeys"--or, as some DUers call Chavez, "buffoon," "asshat," "thug," "dictator." Same old same old. Chavez is an impolite, undiplomatic, unpolished (but very well read) ELECTED PRESIDENT. He speaks for millions of people. You may not like his style. You may prefer Yale-educated "thugs" and World Bank "asshats." But ridiculing him for lack of diplomacy, and siding with the king of Spain, serves the interests of the people who would gain from his demise, and who clearly want his demise--one way or another--and who hate democracy, and exploit and harm the poor, here and there. I'm not accusing the king of Spain of hatred. I don't know what's on his mind. But he, too, aided the cause of the Bushites, of Exxon-Mobile & Co, and the fascists in Venezuela--whether inadvertently or not.

Think things through--is all I'm asking. Get the facts. Get them from varied sources. And do ask the question--that has arisen in many leftist struggles for fairness and justice: "Who's side are you on?" It's bullshit in Bush's mouth. But in the desperate struggles of the poor and the oppressed, it is not.

[Joe Chi Minh]

18. What a fascinating article! Thank you.

[nealmhughes]

15. Not very kingly of el don Juan Carlos de Borbon y Borbon by my Spanish.

He "dissed" him big time with the second person reflexive pronoun "te" and the second person singular "callas" instead of Vd. or el Presidente and calla, not that calla is much better than to tutear him.

Heck, I call waiters "el caballero" or "seo" and always say "Quisiera X, y, Z, por favor"!