Reply #131: Venezuelan student groups are on the payroll of the U.S. government, thanks to right-wing a-holes

[Judi Lynn]

like _{George W. Bush,} and his filthy, scum-ridden right-wing power mad maggots. Most DU'ers who keep an eye on South American politics have known this for years.

Saturday, May 10, 2008
Who Pays the Opposition Students in Venezuela?

By Pablo Roldan and Mauro Vanetti
Thursday, 08 May 2008

It is not true that US imperialism does not help the Third World! One of its agencies, the Cato Institute based in Washington DC, just signed a cheque for $500,000 (yes: half a million bucks!) to a young Venezuelan. Yon Goicoechea has been awarded the "Milton Friedman Liberty Prize", for his merits in the promotion of "Individual Liberty, Free Markets, and Peace".

Well, we have to admit that Mr Goicoechea is not exactly a poor boy from a Caracas slum. He is a law student at the expensive Andrés Bello Roman Catholic University in Caracas, whose fees are 5,820 Bolivares Fuertes (officially equivalent to $2,710) per year, a very high price in Venezuela. Nevertheless, this badly needed financial aid was honestly earned by Mr Goicochea for the good job he did in the cause of the free market (i.e. capitalism) and democracy (i.e. conspiracy against the elected government of Hugo Chávez). The reason he is considered a hero by the Cato guys is that he is the leader of the "students' movement" that opposes the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela.

Right-wing and Anti-Democratic

The main activities of this movement have been organising demonstrations (and clashes with the police), with the typical display of inverted Venezuelan flags and an overwhelming presence of white-skinned people, on the following issues:

*In favour of the private right-wing TV channel RCTV, that supported the coup against Chávez in April 2002;
*Against progressive reforms in the universities (e.g., equalising the weight of students' and teachers' votes in elections for
university institutions) and promotion of affordable universities for the poor;
*Against the progressive reforms proposed by the Constitutional Referendum held on December 2, 2007.

There is no need to comment on the recurrent accusations about "erosion of human and civil rights" or "a constitutional reform that would have turned the country into a dictatorship". In the current war that the US ruling class and the nation's government are waging against the Bolivarian government of Venezuela, those statements have the same character as the old stories told by the British and American governments during the First World War about German soldiers cutting off the breasts of Belgian women - they are purely war propaganda fabrications.

More:
http://advant.blogspot.com/2008/05/who-pays-opposition-students-in.html

Nice try.