Chavez uses decree for disaster fund in Venezuela

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Chavez uses decree for disaster fund in Venezuela
– 1 hr 11 mins ago

CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez says he is signing his first decree under new powers granted to him by congress to create a fund for housing reconstruction after recent floods and landslides.

The National Assembly earlier this month granted Chavez broad powers to enact laws by decree for a year and a half.

Chavez opponents have condemned that and a package of other laws approved by the president's congressional allies, saying they are aimed at boosting Chavez's powers and enabling the government to crack down on dissent.

Chavez said Sunday that the new government fund will initially receive 10 billion bolivars ($2.3 billion) to pay for rebuilding areas devastated by torrential rains.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101227/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_venezuela_chavez

[Alamuti Lotus]

1. THE EVIL DICTATOR ON FULL DISPLAY!!!!!!!

:eyes:

:hi: Judi, was just about to post this myself

[Judi Lynn]

3. Blasphemer! How dare he help the poor and needy. He repudiates the directive

they must pull themselves out of catastrophe by their own bootstraps, no matter HOW far behind the idiots of the elite Gawd has positioned them, or how deeply in the hole.

They must beg for banks to give them loans for food and clothing and water. Otherwise, they should be put in prison and worked day and night for cheap labor. All proceeds from their labor must be surrendered to those who need it least. That's the way it works.

If they don't like it, screw'em.

That guy is just another do-gooder. Why can't he have the military mow down "the poor" in the streets, like his predecessor, Carlos Andres Perez?

[txlibdem]

5. Military firing guns at citizens? You mean like the USA did in the 1960s...

We have absolutely zero moral standing on the world scene. I can only dream that we could have a leader whose focus is on the people, not the Corporations and the Church of Trickle Down (aaaaaaaaaa-men) like our own President is.

The "human rights groups" he shut down funding for were most likely CIA front groups to fund a military coup, like the one we just succeeded in Honduras in 2009. Not to mention the other 30 bloody coups we've been involved in just in the last 100 years.

Opposition to Chavez is coming from business groups and wealthy land owners who had grabbed up all the land for themselves, I'm sure it was all legal and on the up and up (wink, wink). The wealthy are pissed off because Chavez is helping the poor. Sound familiar?

[Archae]

2. Why did I just get a Palpatine flashback?

[RedCloud]

4. Why didn't he cut a birthday cake with McCain?

It's what W did during Katrina. Then let your business moguls get rich off the clean up.

[bitchkitty]

6. He's going to build houses?

Houses for the poor?

I can't wait to see the poutrage from our resident democracy-haters.

[fascisthunter]

11. they love the rich and hate the rest who try to help others

for the better... it's really comes down to conscience.

[AlphaCentauri]

7. He is going to look good we shouldn't let him do that n/t

[COLGATE4]

8. Great idea. Too bad he didn't use some of the $5 billion spent on

obsolete Russian armament for that before. But, better late than never.

[Judi Lynn]

9. He should have used defense spending on this disaster before it happened?

That makes so much sense, doesn't it?

I'm certain he and his advisors have a very clear idea of what's needed for Venezuela's defense. The majority of Venezuelan people who have re-elected him certainly seem to believe he is competent enough to guide their affairs.

Your claim he bought crap to defend the country is probably not going to carry much weight in the overall scheme of things.

[COLGATE4]

12. No, he should have used part of it to provide desperately needed housing for the

marginal classes that he claims to champion, period. Now with the flooding, the housing deficit for the poorest Venezuelans is just that much greater. And with all the prospects of Venezuela being invaded, I can certainly see why he pumped over $5 billion dollars into obsolete Russian armement (as you term it, 'crap') instead - I guess you can't be too careful these days.

[EFerrari]

13. Affordable housing is an ongoing project in Venezuela

and not the false dilemma that you propose.

[Judi Lynn]

14. You're simply proving you haven't made any effort to keep up on information on Venezuela

apparently. They have been working steadily on housing from the very first.

If you're claiming Venezuela's president has no right to defend the country, you won't find any supporters among ordinary people anywhere. That part of Presidential effort is STANDARD.

He does NOT spend undue amounts of money on Venezuela's defenses, and you don't have access to any respectable information he does.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/media/images/46373000/gif/_46373924_south_america_defence466.gif
This graph was shared here some time ago by DU'er Ronnie624, thanks to him, and his source, the BBC, for publishing this Jane's graph.

~~~~~

~snip~
Peer-acknowledged world experts on military spending, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) think tank, this week released its survey of 2009 military spending around the world. When the focus is Latin America it makes for very interesting reading, especially when you consider the differences between verifiable facts and figures presented by SIPRI and the hyped out BS written in the English language about what goes on down this neck of the woods. The SIPRI figures that follow are taken from this EFE wire report.

Let's start with overall spending in dollar terms per country:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_7Se7iswAanA/TAp7t_VJo6I/AAAAAAAALuQ/ughwwdPosrs/s400/mil1.gif
Brazil was, far and away, the biggest spending country in 2009 with over $27Bn as the total budget. Next was Colombia spending over U$10Bn on all things warrior. Then comes Chile and Mexico and then down in 5th place comes the country painted as the big regional military spender by Hillary&Co, Venezuela.

But size of country matters too, so in this next chart we see the biggest spending countries in terms of total bill as a percentage of GDP.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_7Se7iswAanA/TAp7uQ0OdyI/AAAAAAAALuY/jCoYG_1-0BI/s400/mil2.gif
So from this we see that Colombia spends the most on its military compared to the size of its economy. Then close behind comes Chile (its military is directly funded by state copper company Codelco) and then Ecuador (that has to look after its border with Colombia due to the FARC). Fourth place is Brazil (which suddenly looks pretty reasonable, but it'd be better if it were off the chart low as Mexico is) and then in fifth place again comes Venezuela, edging out that other obvious destabilizing threat to the world, the nasty belligerent bunch from.....errrr....Uruguay.

Then there's this chart, which is really quite bizarre. This shows the Year-over-Year (YoY) change in military spending, with the 2009 spending as a percentage to 2008 spending.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_7Se7iswAanA/TAp7u-uTZAI/AAAAAAAALug/AWGEUkmIB8M/s400/mil3.gif
Uruguay boosted its spending on the military the most in 2009 compared to the previous year, but as the sector is quite small in absolute terms we're not that worried. Then comes Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia (up another 11%...natch) Mexico and then Peru, which is a special case in itself as it was Peru in 2009 that went around asking the other Latam countries to reduce spending on arms during the Unasur conferences....like wow, who in the world would have thought Twobreakfasts was capable of hypocrisy, eh? But then we have three countries that actually did do something about defence expenditures and cut their spending in 2009, namely Chile, Argentina and ....wait...what's this? Venezuela dropped military spending by how much??? Wow, you'd never guess that Chávezlandia spent 25% less in 2009 from the biased shit you've been reading, would you?

Finally, some context. It's always good to have some context.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_7Se7iswAanA/TAp7vLImGxI/AAAAAAAALuo/dgOJ7NwKrYM/s400/mil4.gif

http://incakolanews.blogspot.com/2010/06/military-spending-in-latin-america-2009.html

[fascisthunter]

15. you are a gold mine of info

:hi:

[Judi Lynn]

20. We're all learning together, as adults. I have learned so much here. It's a group thing, isn't it?

Something we must do for ourselves, because our corporate media absolutely has no intention of sharing any part of the truth with us.

What on earth do they imagine their job IS, after all?

Those who simply check with Fox, or the right-wing controlled press for their "news" will NEVER have a clue what has been happening in the world their entire lives.

[txlibdem]

16. Great info, too bad they don't include Honduras there since the CIA backed coup

In 2009 a military junta ousted the elected President of Honduras in a bloody coup with a coordinated attack from the Navy, Army and Air Force who bombed the Presidential Residence. This has CIA fingerprints all over it.

And what is our elected leader, Pres. Obama doing about this military takeover ousting the elected leader, President Zelaya of Honduras? And are things there better now that a bloody coup took over Honduras?

(speaking of the military dictatorship): they control the national media, which has been deployed to convince about 30-40% of the population that their elected president is an agent of a foreign government who seeks to turn the country into a socialist prison. However, that still leaves the majority, who have managed to find access to other information.

The strategy for dealing with them has been to try to render them powerless – through thousands of arrests, beatings and even some selective killings. This has been documented, reported and denounced by major human rights organisations throughout the world: Amnesty International, the Centre for Justice and International Law, Human Rights Watch, the Inter American Commission on Human Rights and others.

One important actor, the only major country to maintain an ambassador in Honduras throughout the dictatorship, has maintained a deafening silence about this repression: the US government. The Obama administration has not uttered one word about the massive human rights violations in Honduras.

This silence by itself tells you all you need to know about what this administration has really been trying to accomplish in the nearly three months since the Honduran military squelched democracy. The Obama team understands exactly how the coup government is maintaining its grip on power through violence and repression. And Barack Obama, along with his secretary of state, has shown no intention of undermining this strategy.

In fact, Zelaya has been to Washington six times since he was overthrown, but not once did he get a meeting with Obama. Why is that? Most likely because Obama does not want to send the "wrong" signal to the dictatorship, ie that the lip service that he has paid to Zelaya's restoration should be taken seriously.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/22/manuel-zelaya-honduras-coup-obama

The making of a coup:

Zelaya, whose gradual shift to the left and increasingly close ties with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez alarmed powerful Honduran business leaders and alienated his own political party, remains in exile in the Dominican Republic.

From the article:
Wikileaks: US called ex-Honduran leader rebellious teen, By ASSOCIATED PRESS, 12/12/2010 11:15

MEXICO CITY — A year before the coup that ousted Manuel Zelaya, an outgoing US ambassador called the Honduran president a "rebellious teenager" who secretly wanted to leave office a martyr, according to a diplomatic memo released on the Wikileaks website.

Ambassador Charles A. Ford sent the unflattering portrait of Zelaya — classified as "secret" — on May 15, 2008, to incoming Ambassador Hugo Llorens. More than a year later, on June 28, 2009, soldiers forced Zelaya into exile in a dispute over changing the Honduran Constitution.

http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.aspx?id=199050

[Judi Lynn]

21. Your source, Mark Weisbrot's integrity is beyond reproach. What a shame there's only ONE of him.

Thanks for posting the links.

We need so much MORE reality, don't we?

Looks as if you learned some time ago it doesn't come to you from your tv or radio, you have to go looking for it yourself.

That's why DU is such a great meeting place: we can pool our resources.

Thank you.

[txlibdem]

23. You can't get the truth from the American media outlets

You may get snippets, or a brief mention with no investigative effort. But mostly you'll get nothing but the corporate media story. I prefer to get my news from places where journalism still exists.

[sabrina 1]

26. He did. Are you at all familiar with what is going on in Venezuela?

He has reduced poverty by over 20% since taking office. Illiteracy, which was widespread ten years ago, has been dealt with. That was a promise he made when running for office, to educate every Venezuelan, not just children, but all those adults who had been deprived of an education until then.

A friend of mine who was in line to vote for him a few years ago, emailed to say that in front of him on line was a woman in her sixties. She told him she would be voting for Chavez. She had a book in her hands and said that she had never learned to read until he instituted the programs he had promised, and now she felt so empowered.

Wikileaks revealed in documents that the U.S. is spreading anti-Chavez propaganda, which many of us knew but now it is confirmed. The reason, he believes the profits from Venezuela's resources belong to the people. That doesn't sit well with Global Capitalists.

I would suggest you learn more about Venezuela, you appear to have been getting your information from the now confirmed 'western media's anti-Chavez campaign'.

[Prometheus Bound]

28. Man you sure are out of touch with reality.

You should try reading.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[One_Life_To_Give]

17. How Strange

Culturally Venezuela must be very different from US. Can anyone picture Harry Reid and/or Nancy Pelosi giving Obama that kind of Authority and skipping the limelight. I can't even picture such having been done for FDR on December 8th, 41.

[Judi Lynn]

18. Any attempt to compare the US to ANY Latin American country is outlandish, absurd.

Try comparing this "Authority" to the same "authority" given to the same President multiple times before, most of them before the oligarchy's media realized they could spin it for foolish, uninformed US American "readers" to fool them into not realizing that same power had been used by previous Venezuelan Presidents, as well, in addition to the same power used by OTHER Latin American Presidents in other countries many times in the last decade. It's been widely discussed here over the years.

What's keeping you for doing your homework, staying conscious long enough to be aware of what has happened in the other countries? How can you possibly have any grasp if you have no information whatsoever? Have you never learned you don't make wild claims without any foundation? Holy smokes.

Most of us wouldn't have survived childhood relying on such weak, insupportable behavior.

[One_Life_To_Give]

19. Excuse Me

I thought my point was that I can't comment on what is happening there because of my Cultural Baggage. But apparently all I managed to do was stick a size 10 in my mouth.

[Bacchus39]

24. you were correct, it would never happen, and not necessary for disaster relief either

it was just a preemptive move by Chavez before a larger proportion of the Ven legislature take office in January and will be able to block some actions, such as granting decree powers to Hugo.

the poster who responded to you is a Chavez poodle.

[txlibdem]

25. Short memory: has everyone forgotten "Dubya"

By edict or by default? What does it matter when the results are disastrous for the country?

[social_critic]

22. The Roman Senate gave it to Emperor Tiberius

There have been many instances where legislative authorities gave their power to a potential "savior". The Roman Senate did their part when they voted Tiberius, who turned out to be a pretty awful dude, the imperial power.

[Rage for Order]

27. It's like the mafia handing out turkeys on Thanksgiving n/t

[Peace Patriot]

29. Decree powers are COMMON in Latin American countries, rightwing spinmeisters to the contrary

notwithstanding. Not long ago, President Lula da Silva in Brazil used decree powers granted to him by the Brazilian legislature--just like the time-limited and issue-limited powers granted to Chavez by the Venezuelan legislature--to preserve a wide swath of the Amazon jungle for an uncontacted tribe.

It is JUST CRAP that this is irregular or that it means that Chavez--who has been elected by big majorities for two terms, and has broken no laws, has done no harm and in fact has done much good--is going to fulfill rightwing Cardinal Lara's ominous evaluation of Chavez at the beginning of his first term, that Chavez "is increasingly authoritarian," since picked up and promulgated by the CIA, the U.S. State Department and every corpo-fascist 'news' outlet in the world. "Increasingly authoritarian" WHEN?

If "dictating" to the likes of Exxon Mobil and "organized money" (as FDR put it), in order to insure fairness to "the little guy, is "authoritarian," then I want some of that "authoritarianism" here! But what Chavez has done isn't really "authoritarian" at all--it is merely strength in a leftist leader, as displayed by the best comparison for Chavez--FDR. Corporations and the super-rich have NO RIGHT WHATSOEVER to plunder resources, pay shit wages, harm workers and the poor, loot public services and the public coffers and defy the "common good." Democracy is not libertinism for the rich few. It is self-rule by the people, who alone hold the sovereign right to determine how business shall operate in their country.

Chavez has not only appropriately and legally regulated business in Venezuela, he and his government have done more for citizen participation in government and politics than any administration before them, and than most governments in the world can brag of. "Dictator"? Tell that to the people of Venezuela who can now read, who now have education available to all through college, who now have health care available to all, and who now have a say in their government. Tell it to women, gays, African-Venezuelans, the Indigenous, environmentalists and others whose causes the Chavez government has championed. When the rightwing says "dictator" they mean strength in a leftist leader, which they don't want to see!

[robcon]

30. Gee, I don't find support on DU for Rightwing Dictators in SA.

Why so much support for a leftwing dictator in Venezuela?

[Name removed]

31. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[txlibdem]

33. I feel sorry for you, so full of RW corporate media lies

I know I can't force you to learn the truth before posting but I recommend you research the CIA backed coups in that region. Learn the truth of where the anti-Chavez rhetoric is coming from.

[fascisthunter]

32. of course he's being unfairly criticized

... its all the corporate worms can do for their wealthy right wingnut masters.