Incoming: Venezuela cracks down on anti-Chavez leaders

[EFerrari]

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan authorities have launched a legal assault on the country's top opposition leaders, helping leftist President Hugo Chavez consolidate his grip on the OPEC nation.
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Nearly all of the country's best-known anti-Chavez politicians are now either under indictment or facing investigation in what the opposition says are political witch-hunts but the government calls simple corruption probes.

Venezuela's top opposition leader went into hiding and a prominent former Chavez ally was arrested last week as the combative ex-tank soldier critics call a dictator-in-the-making moves to protect his self-styled revolution from potential challengers.

After winning a February referendum that allows him to run for reelection as often as he likes, an invigorated Chavez stripped control of ports and roads from opposition governors and mayors who won key posts in a 2008 regional vote.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/latinamerica/articles/2009/04/06/venezuela_cracks_down_on_anti_chavez_leaders/

[Peace Patriot]

1. I wish the Obama justice dept. would go after the vast criminality and corruption of

the Bush Junta and its banksters, which worked in collusion with Venezuelan fascists to try to destroy Venezuela's democracy, and whom I believe was/is facilitating Bush Cartel drugs/weapons trafficking out of Colombia. (That and the U.S. 4th Fleet--i.e., the Rumsfeldian plan for instigating civil war on Venezuela's oil coast--are likely why Chavez restored federal control of the ports.)

The fascists in Venezuela were running money through the highly corrupt Stanford Bank in Caracas, to avoid paying taxes, and to launder illicit money, as well as very probably to receive money from the Bushwhacks. I'm glad that the Venezuelan prosecutors are going after these fuckwads. Here, we give the banksters unfriggingbelievable BONUSES, for destroying our economy, and let their toady politicians--every one a criminal--blather all over our public airwaves. Venezuela has the right idea. Commit a crime; serve the time. The rich have no qualms about imposing that maxim on the poor; time to apply it to the rich.

[EFerrari]

2. I've come to the hard conclusion that the Obama administration

will most likely continue the war on democracy in Latin America. They are joined at the hip with IMF, WTO and the rest of the vampires. It's an ugly kind of insight and one I'd prefer not to have.

But, his first appearance was before those terrorism funding creeps at CANF, he makes off the cuff, very serious remarks about Venezuela that are demonstrably false, Hillary Clinton, ditto. My hope is that Venezuela and the rest of Latin America has been sufficiently "neglected" by the Pentagon to have a head start on what will follow.

[Peace Patriot]

3. I think Obama L/A policy is still...liquid, in motion, incomplete and rather neglected.

That's the hopeful part. Our global corporate predators and war profiteers are still gaging how much they can get away with--with Obama/Clinton, and, riding on Obama's popularity in L/A, with L/A leaders. I do think that the "rightwing" on L/A in the Obama administration has gravely miscalculated the level of solidarity among leftist L/A leaders (who now comprise the vast majority of leaders in L/A). And they are still committed to Bushwhack "divide and conquer" strategy. If they win the day, within Obama circles, it will be more a defeat for us--for we, the people of the U.S.--than it will be for L/A. L/A will go its own way, with UNASUR. For me, it's more a matter of not wanting to see Obama fail, and of wanting a true democracy-supporting, social justice U.S. policy in L/A, at long last. If we don't get it, it's our loss, not L/A's. The Obama administration--and the private forces at work (up to and including war plans, to get control of the oil)--can cause a lot of grief. They cannot win.

[EFerrari]

4. You're somewhat more sanguine than I am and I'm so glad you are.

lol

I very much want Obama to do well and to be well. In fact, I've been putting off writing about his still nascent LA policy because writing now would result in a challenge to him and his administration that I deep down do not want to make.

I feel the same way as I did before our CA 2006 elections -- not sure if the process isn't already tainted beyond repair. Turned out I was wrong then, thank heavens.

The problem I see is that State is still full of BushCo holdovers. Clinton's LA policy was not left behind by Senator Clinton. Obama is an appeaser and while that is a valuable skill in some situations, it can also have unintended negative consequences for the less powerful parties in any negotiation. Obama seems to know very little about Latin America. The forces arrayed against democracy in Latin America are on full tilt bogey because BushCo is gone, at least nominally.

I see the downside very clearly and so am grateful when you point out the up side. :)