Shut Up (About) Chavez By Paul Buchheit

[Demeter]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18773.htm



11/24/07 "ICH" -- -- It gets tiresome to hear the one-sided media coverage of Hugo Chavez. Yes, he’s authoritarian. He’s also abrasive, arrogant, stubborn, and all too human. But he knows what happened to leaders in Iran and Guatemala and Chile and Haiti over the past half-century when they tried to defy the western world by nationalizing oil and other industries. He’s influenced by the memory of the US-backed attempt to depose him in 2002. And he can see the effects of unregulated multinational companies in Nigeria, where in 2004 80% of the revenue from the oil industry went to only 1% of the population, and only 2% of Shell Oil’s employees were from the local population.

Chavez has alienated the wealthy, the business establishment, thousands of upper-class student protestors, and, perhaps worst of all for him, the media. But the mainstream media rarely speaks for the poor majority. Chavez has instituted a literacy program, land-acquisition policies that benefit the poor, job training for unskilled workers, free health care, and manufacturing cooperatives which give the poor an active role in business development. He was democratically elected, and recent polls still place him about 20 percentage points ahead of his nearest challenger.

The Venezuelan leader’s popularity is summarized by human rights activist Medea Benjamin:

“Walk through poor barrios in Venezuela and you’ll hear the same stories over and over. The very poor can now go to a designated home in the neighborhood to pick up a hot meal every day. The elderly have monthly pensions that allow them to live with dignity. Young people can take advantage of greatly expanded free college programs. And with 13,000 Cuban doctors spread throughout the country and reaching over half the population, the poor now have their own family doctors on call 24-hours a day.”

Opposition to Chavez comes from those with connections to the old political elite: the Venezuelan business community, the Chamber of Commerce (Fedecámaras), and the major union federation CTV, who used their control over the media to disparage Chavez for economic problems and communist ties. Many officials and journalists in the U.S. dismiss him as a troublesome dictator. An editor of the leading El Nacional newspaper said Chavez and his cabinet “just want to steal and get rich.” Even some of the Venezuelan poor resent his attempts to spread his influence with anti-poverty programs outside the country.

Ironically, Chavez was criticized for two initiatives that most Americans would like to see implemented in the U.S. — health care and increased oil company taxes. He is maligned for his friendship with Fidel Castro, even though some 10,000 Cuban doctors and health care workers came to Venezuela in return for oil. His industry reforms included a doubling of oil company taxes. He also opposes U.S. efforts to implement free trade agreements that would surrender the country’s raw materials in return for expensive products from abroad. Perhaps most significantly, Chavez is feared because of his growing independence in a country whose vast oil reserves are coveted by the north.

One doesn’t have to be a socialist to cheer for equal opportunity for hard-working citizens of any country. According to the U.S. Department of State, the income gap in Venezuela decreased between 2003 and 2005, with the Gini coefficient (a measure of income disparity from 0 (equal) to 1 (unequal)) dropping from .618 in 2003 to .514 in 2005. Chavez speaks, however noisily, for the poor. Most of the media speaks for the people with money.

Paul Buchheit is a professor with the Chicago City Colleges, co-founder of Global Initiative Chicago ( www.GIChicago.org )

[pretzel4gore]

1. a wise man needs criticism (to become wise)

Hugo Chavez is a good guy, but human. Good, sensible article... what the author misses is the venality, the sheer unmitigated gall, of those whose cacophonus media flatulence rips through the atmosphere, killing countless brain cells in the haids of some of humanity's densest hyena-like idiots, and deafening everybody else...meanwhile bush shits in their baked beans! Shame on Jesus (for tolerating such adherents...)

[Judi Lynn]

2. Isn't it great seeing that rare article which doesn't seem to be written by someone foaming at the

mouth? The author does people a service by announcing he's a man who sees some rottn "journalism" going on here, so we are informed there is one more sane person out there, somewhere!

If we ever get a semi-decent President again, it should have an impact on the kind of crap we're seeing day in, day out on this Venezuelan President who has become their obsession. They write pure garbage just to keep the subject alive, and keep the hatred going, lest we forget.

Try to look for DU'ers writing comments on this subject from other countries. It's always tremendous reading the remarks from posters in Europe, Australia, the real people from Venezuela, and actual Canadians. Helps put things in perspective, doesn't it? Really helpful.

[Kurovski]

3. Kick. (nt)

[scarletwoman]

4. Wow, an even-handed factual article about Chavez! Good read!

Thanks for posting this! (k&r)

sw

[StClone]

5. "Go to Venezuela, You Idiot!"

Meshes with this article on Chavez:

I don't usually take the advice of rightwingers. But I did this time. After receiving inflamed email messages from dozens of angry rightists that I should get the hell out of the USA and go to Venezuela, I accepted their challenge and flew to Caracas.

"Would you like me to start a fund to ship your ass down there, Comrade Cohen?"

What had provoked the often-abusive emailers was my 2005 Internet column urging U.S. residents to buy their gasoline at Citgo, a subsidiary of Venezuela's state oil company. I called for a Citgo BUY-cott, to protest Bush's interventionist foreign policy while supporting innovative anti-poverty programs in Venezuela. (Last winter, Citgo started a program that provided discounted home-heating oil to low-income families in the U.S.)

"Hey moron, if you hate America so much and love Venezuela, why don't you go there?"

I'm glad I listened to the conservative chorus. In late June, I headed to Venezuela with a fact-finding delegation sponsored by the respected U.S. human rights group, Witness for Peace. The grueling trip covered much ground and all sides of Venezuela's social/political landscape. It is a complex country, headed by sometimes volatile President Hugo Chavez, a leftist and harsh Bush critic who was first elected in 1998.


http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0706-32.htm

I probably wouldn't get along with Hugo personally. But I support what his goals are and what he has done so far. He walks a fine line between acceptance and ridicule, despotism and magnanimity, life and death. Then again maybe I would like him in person.