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It's not just that Chavez has high approval ratings. Venezuela ALSO has transparent elections--transparent on their face, on the facts, as well as certified by all international election monitoring groups--and it also does NOT have rightwing death squads assassinating leftists, thousands of murdered union organizers, and hundreds of other people--human rights workers, community organizers, peasant farmers--DEAD; intimidation and threats against leftist rallies, leftist campaign activists and leftist candidates, whom Uribe has called "terrorists," and who live in fear for their lives, before, during and after elections, and a hundred other ways to rig public oplnion and rig the vote, that occur in Colombia. Venezuela is a free and open society, with a government that respects human and civil rights, and promotes human and civil rights. It is also a country with a pre-dominantly rightwing corporate news media, forever criticizing the Chavez government. There is no comparison to Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy. That is absurd. There is also no comparison to Colombia, where you take your life in your hands if you advocate a leftist cause.
I think the poor majority in Colombia lives in fear, and are not free to express their true opinions. That means that polls and votes are screwed up. And that is not the case in Venezuela. I do not base my view of the Chavez government on opinion polls alone. I base it on ALL indicators. His government has a positive and beneficial program AND the people of Venezuela overwhelmingly approve of it, in every kind of opinion poll, AND they vote for it, in large numbers, with high participation rates, in transparent elections, AND there no repression. People are free to meet, organize, speak out, protest, petition their government, run for election and freely support candidates. These things are not true in Colombia, and were not true in Hitler's Germany or Mussolini's Italy. There is no indication whatsoever that Chavez is any kind of tyrant or that the people of Venezuela would approve of tyranny--or that the other leaders of the continent, who like and approve of Chavez, would like and approve of a tyrant!
I didn't say there is a pro-Chavez gang. I think there is an anti-Chavez gang, and others, who are very well-informed about Latin American history and current events, and who approve of Chavez, Correa, Morales, Lulu, Batchelet, Lugo, Vasquez and other leaders of the leftist movement in Latin America, and approve of the movement itself, which they (and I) see as the most positive and progressive development in Latin America's history. We see the matter in CONTEXT. We are not "pro-Chavez" or "pro-Lulu" so much as we are "pro-MOVEMENT"--pro-grass roots, pro-people. The anti-Chavez gang, on the other hand, is obsessed with Chavez, just as our corpo/fascist media is. That's all they see. Chavez, Chavez, Chavez! Chavez is a dictator. Chavez is a stupid clown. Chavez is this, Chavez is that. They can't and won't see that Chavez, a) works with other leaders, and b) is the product, not the creator, of the leftist democracy movement in Venezuela, which has inspired the region.
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