Venezuelan opposition quit poll

This reform of the Supreme Court has prompted a lot of controversy both inside and outside of Venezuela. Venezuela's capitalist-backed opposition, as well as US officials and anti-Chavez commentators in the US media, have accused Chavez of violating “judicial independence” and of “packing the courts” with his supporters.

Not only is the claim fundamentally untrue — it is not the president but the National Assembly deputies who appoint the Supreme Court — but the hypocrisy of those making the claim is staggering. There was no serious judicial independence in the courts before Chavez's rise to power and the Bush administration is renowned for wanting to pack the US Supreme Court with judges who share its neo-conservative ideology.

What the Venezuelan opposition is really afraid of is that the capitalist elite is losing control over the courts, and therefore their immunity from prosecution for the crimes they have committed to date in their campaign against Chavez.
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1973 - Venezuela benefits from oil boom and its currency peaks against the US dollar; oil and steel industries nationalised.

1983-84 - Fall in world oil prices generates unrest and cuts in welfare spending; Dr Jaime Lusinchi (AD) elected president and signs pact involving government, trade unions and business.

1989 - Carlos Andres Perez (AD) elected president against the background of economic depression, which necessitates an austerity programme and an IMF loan. Social and political upheaval includes riots, in which between 300 and 2,000 people are killed, martial law and a general strike.

(Note: the difference in the totals represents the gulf between the official government count of the people Perez massacred, and the total estimated by the people who were on the scene. JL)

1992 - Some 120 people are killed in two attempted coups, the first led by future president Colonel Hugo Chavez, and the second carried out by his supporters. Chavez is jailed for two years before being pardoned

1993-95 - Ramon Jose Velasquez becomes interim president after Perez is ousted on charges of corruption; Rafael Caldera elected president.

1996 - Perez imprisoned after being found guilty of embezzlement and corruption.

1998 - Hugo Chavez elected president.
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The episode that generated the cover of the newspaper "Tal Cual" represents an absence of journalistic values and an insurmountable example of yellow journalism of bad taste where the ignorance and lack of intelligent criticism reigns, and it is mainly an offense to the journalistic ethics. It is, without doubt, a repudiable act.
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.....Hundreds of similar shanty towns surround Caracas, and many have already begun to turn the corner. In some places, the doctors brought in from Cuba are working in newly built premises, providing eye treatment and dentistry as well as medicines. Nearly 20,000 doctors are now spread around this country of 25 million people. New supermarkets have sprung up where food, much of it home-produced, is available at subsidised prices. Classrooms have been built where school dropouts are corralled back into study. Yet it is good to start with the difficulties faced by the motorway village, since its plight serves to emphasise how long and difficult is the road ahead. "Making poverty history" in Venezuela is not a simple matter of making money available; it involves a revolutionary process of destroying ancient institutions that stand in the way of progress, and creating new ones responsive to popular demands.

Something amazing has been taking place in Latin America in recent years that deserves wider attention than the continent has been accustomed to attract. The chrysalis of the Venezuelan revolution led by Chávez, often attacked and derided as the incoherent vision of an authoritarian leader, has finally emerged as a resplendent butterfly whose image and example will radiate for decades to come.

Most of the reports about this revolution over the past six years, at home and abroad, have been uniquely hostile, heavily influenced by politicians and journalists associated with the opposition. It is as if news of the French or the Russian revolutions had been supplied solely by the courtiers of the king and the tsar. These criticisms have been echoed by senior US figures, from the president downwards, creating a negative framework within which the revolution has inevitably been viewed. At best, Chávez is seen as outdated and populist. At worst, he is considered a military dictator in the making.

Yet the wheel of history rolls on, and the atmosphere in Venezuela has changed dramatically since last year when Chávez won yet another overwhelming victory at the polls. The once triumphalist opposition has retired bruised to its tent, wounded perhaps mortally by the outcome of the referendum on Chávez's presidency that it called for and then resoundingly lost. The viciously hostile media has calmed down, and those who don't like Chávez have abandoned their hopes of his immediate overthrow. No one is any doubt that he will win next year's presidential election.

The Chávez government, for its part, has forged ahead with various spectacular social projects, assisted by the huge jump in oil prices, from $10 to $50 a barrel over the past six years. Instead of gushing into the coffers of the already wealthy, the oil pipelines have been picked up and directed into the shanty towns, funding health, education and cheap food. Foreign leaders from Spain and Brazil, Chile and Cuba, have come on pilgrimage to Caracas to establish links with the man now perceived as the leader of new emerging forces in Latin America, with popularity ratings to match. This extensive external support has stymied the plans of the US government to rally the countries of Latin America against Venezuela. They are not listening, and Washington is left without a policy.
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Letter: Buy from Venezuela
Thursday, December 1, 2005

To the editor:

There will be people who will have to decide whether to heat their homes or eat this winter, and I applaud Congressman Delahunt and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for your response. In meetings together, the discussion about poverty in the world came up, and in response President Chavez agreed to provide 12 million gallons of discounted oil to Massachusetts consumers and organizations that serve the poor.

In contrast to this generous response, the big American oil companies, Exxon, Chevron, Gulf and others, have refused to assist our citizens. A request was made to the big oil companies to assist Americans who are the hardest hit with discounted oil, and the response was a resounding no.

These same companies made billions of dollars in profits the last quarter of 2005 and they see no obligation to America to lessen some of the burden. Steve Johnson of the right-wing Heritage Foundation responded by calling Delahunt "an apologist for Chavez" and said that, "it is not something I'd like my congressman doing." This is exactly what I'd like my congressman to do and for others to follow this lead. Ask those who are the recipients of this oil if this is something they want their elected representative doing.

I personally would like to express my gratitude to both President Chavez and Congressman Delahunt for your kindness and compassion for others. I applaud President Chavez who, by the way, was overwhelmingly elected by more than 70 percent of the population in Venezuela in elections overseen by Organization of American States and the Carter Center. Polls are showing that President Chavez has a 65 percent approval rating among his people, while only about 35 percent of Americans approve of Bush.
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~snip~Also last April, New York Times reporter Juan Forero reported that President Chávez had “resigned” when, in fact, Chávez had been kidnapped at gunpoint. Forero did not source his knowingly false claim. Forero, on Apr. 13, wrote a puff piece on dictator-for-a-day Pedro Carmona — installed by a military coup — as Carmona disbanded Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Constitution and sent his shock troops house to house in a round-up of political leaders in which sixty supporters of Chávez were assassinated. Later that day, after the Venezuelan masses took back their country block by block, Carmona fled the national palace and Chávez, the elected president, was restored to office.

Forero — who allowed US Embassy officials to monitor his interviews with mercenary pilots in Colombia, without disclosing that fact in his article — was caught again last month in his unethical pro-coup activities in Venezuela. Narco News Associate Publisher Dan Feder revealed that Forero and LA Times reporter T. Christian Miller had written essentially the same story, interviewing the same two shopkeepers in a wealthy suburb of Caracas, and the same academic “expert” in a story meant to convince readers that a “general strike” was occurring in Venezuela. The LA Times Readers Representative later revealed that Forero and Miller interviewed the shopkeepers together. Neither disclosed that fact.

In many ways, it has been the credibility problem posed by Forero that led to Toro’s hiring last November by the Times, and the importation of Times Mexico Bureau Chief Ginger Thompson to Venezuela last month.
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Coverage of the recent election in Venezuela offers a particularly interesting case of how we choose not to see what is right before us—practically our national obsession. For purposes of illustration I refer to an article by Juan Forero of The New York Times that ran on the day following the elections last week.

This article was particularly notable because of the sharp dissonance between the facts it dutifully reported and the interpretation it then imposed on those facts. Chavez won a victory at the polls 58% to 42% in his favor, reports Forero, a difference of 1.4 million votes—with the largest turn-out observer Jimmy Carter had “ever seen.” Then Forero editorializes: “But the voting, if anything, showed clearly that millions of Venezuelans—not just the very rich, as Mr. Chavez contends—want him out.”
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Conceding that Chavez probably won the election fair and square (a fact later corroborated by both independent election monitoring groups), Forero couldn’t let pass the opportunity to observe, “The government also spent handsomely on a sophisticated campaign that scared Venezuelans into believing a ‘yes’ vote for the recall would be a vote for American imperialism and the corrupt political parties that had ruled this country in the past.”

By inference, Forero strongly suggests that the gullible Venezuelan masses were hoodwinked into supporting Chavez. This is pure spin. It is much more likely that the vast majority of Venezuelans actually understand and willfully resist American imperialism, and view Chavez as their best guarantee against American-enforced abuses such as they have endured in the past.
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At least seven people have been killed and scores injured in street protests since December 2002, but there have been no confirmed reports of extrajudicial executions of opposition or government supporters.
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Where does Hugo Chavez enter into this story?

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Call or email Human Rights Watch offices and tell them that you believe that human rights are important issues and should not be used as a way to protect subversive groups that are funded by channeled CIA money and the US government and attack legitimate elected governments such as Venezuela. They should not be using human rights as a way to protect groups that participated in a coup in a country that has a democratically elected government and democratic constitution.

http://www.globalexchange.org/countries/americas/venezuela/3285.html

The President was Carlos Andres Perez.

1973 - Venezuela benefits from oil boom and its currency peaks against the US dollar; oil and steel industries nationalised.

1983-84 - Fall in world oil prices generates unrest and cuts in welfare spending; Dr Jaime Lusinchi (AD) elected president and signs pact involving government, trade unions and business.

1989 - Carlos Andres Perez (AD) elected president against the background of economic depression, which necessitates an austerity programme and an IMF loan. Social and political upheaval includes riots, in which between 300 and 2,000 people are killed, martial law and a general strike.

(Note: the difference in the totals represents the gulf between the official government count of the people Perez massacred, and the total estimated by the people who were on the scene. JL)

1992 - Some 120 people are killed in two attempted coups, the first led by future president Colonel Hugo Chavez, and the second carried out by his supporters. Chavez is jailed for two years before being pardoned

1993-95 - Ramon Jose Velasquez becomes interim president after Perez is ousted on charges of corruption; Rafael Caldera elected president.

1996 - Perez imprisoned after being found guilty of embezzlement and corruption.

1998 - Hugo Chavez elected president.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1229348.stm

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If ever a man had earned a coup attempt on his corrupt, barbaric administration, it was Carlos Andres Perez. He is still loved by the Venezuelan opposition, and calls publically for the assasination of Hugo Chavez. He and his fellow scum are determined to get Venezuela back in racist right-wing claws.

Here's the filthy P.O.S. with a great American Republican, _{George Bush.}

At present the media shows endless images of National Guard (pro-Chavez) violence against demonstrators as it paints the Metropolitan Police (opposition controlled) as heroes of the people. This is misleading to say the least, as the Caracas Metropolitan Police are the most brutal police force I have ever encountered. After the April 11 coup, police forces killed perhaps 40 government supporters while trying to strengthen the hold of Pedro Carmona’s short-lived government. In 1989 they were responsible for the worst massacre of democratic Venezuela’s history - between 300 and 2000 people were killed. I have been tear-gassed by the PM (as the police are called) simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, as they broke up a strike led by some of their fellow officers who were tired of the politicization of their mandate. The PM routinely fire on demonstrators with live ammunition (I have had to hide behind brick walls), and on any given day walking in the barrios or Centro of Caracas, one can find civilians who have at some point in the last year been shot by the PM, and bear the casts to prove it. As the street conflict, which also features pro-government supporters throwing molotov cocktails at the PM, grew ever more dangerous, the national government three weeks ago called in the National Guard to replace the PM and calm Caracas. The opposition has used this to record images of a militarized Caracas, to add support to their’dictatorship’ story. But for those of us who travel through, live in or work in the center of Caracas, we feel safe for the first time in months.
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