If you need an Iranian missile, a Chinese AK-47, a Philipina slave girl, or a kilo of Colombian cocaine, Venezuela is the place to shop for it.
I've written enough stories about Venezuela and Hugo Chavez' slow march towards totalitarianism. I'd been hoping to just let the issue rest for a while and focus on more pleasant parts of the world. Most people seem to have made up their minds about Chavez, either against him or for him despite all the evidence, so they probably aren't listening anyway. But when I start getting news digests from the services I subscribe to and they fill my email with story after story of things going sour in Venezuela, I can't ignore it because no matter how predictable or inevitable, it's news and deserves to at least be noted.…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - Paul
Dave you are a completely sold out corporate media puppet. The simple and obvious truth is that Chavez is the most popular president in all of South America and all his altruistic actions speak for themselves. He has already increased the minimum wage to the highest in all of South America, eliminated illiteracy, improved the economy by more than 10 percent every year and I can go on forever. The truth is the neoliberal, imperialist media wants to demonize him because he does not bow down to them. He is a blessing and an inspiration to all justice loving people of the world.
27 - Christopher Rose
Doc, you are my kind of political thinker. How very unAmerican of you!
28 - Jen
Great writing Dave. As a foriegner in Venezuela all I can say is that you've hit the nail on the head! In the 9 years that I have lived here I have seen with my own two eyes all that you have written about above. I can promise each and everyone of you; what Dave describes are NOT stories but in fact reality.
29 - Dr Dreadful
Thanks Chris. Again, I'm not doubting the veracity of the various eyewitness reports, but similar stuff goes on all over South America - it's not unique to Chavez's Venezuela.
Something smells about the received US version of the Chavez regime. We're only getting one side of the story.
30 - troll
...much as I make it a point to disagree with Brits on general principles I gotta go with Dreadful on this - but perhaps I'm just jaded by 100 years of US deceit south of the border
31 - moonraven
Actually, you are not getting ANY side of the story in this latest obscenity by Nalle.
1. Nalle says it's old news that tens of thousands of students have marched against the referendum of Dec. 2nd--36 ammendments proposed by the National ASssembly and 33 by Chavez.
What has apparently escaped Nalle's very furtive glance is that HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of pro-government students have also been marching.
Funny how when it doesn't fit his smear campaign, Nalle suppresses information and writes his lies instead.
2. As has already been mentioned, Dave Goebbel's has written another LIE when he says "chavista thugs gunned down students". There is no proof of who they were--and no news services have even SAID they were. Nalle links, as usual, to a source that contradicts his statement.
Also, neither Nalle or clavos, who already circulated this chavista thugs lie a couple weeks ago or more, has indicated why they support the students who entered the UCV campus--of which they were NOT students, but students from the Bello Catholic university, and set fire to the building of Social Work and threatened to lynch all the students inside because they were pro-government.
I want an answer as to why you are promoting that violence and murder.
3. Where are the alleged weaknesses in the 1999 Constitution? How are the 69 proposed reforms deigned to make the Constitution weaker. Do tell us.
And while you are at it, you still have not posted the US law in regard to States of Emergency, which is far more severe than that proposed in Venezuela. You were requested to do that more than 2 weeks ago.
4. [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor] The Datanalsis poll actually showed EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what has been posted here now at least 2 times in the past few days: It was 49% FOR the reforms and 39% AGAINST. (Source: Reuters, in SPANISH, printed TODAY in the LATIN AMERICAN press.)
5. Nalle also completely disinforms in regard to the OPEC meeting in Saudi Arabia. The discussion that ended up being tabled, and to which the Saudi king referred, was this: Whether to change all OPEC sales to being invoiced in EUROS!
Frankly, that will happen, and will happen as soon as the OPEC producers in the GULF untie their currency from the dollar--which is currently in process.
6. Nalle contends that Venezuela's economy is in the toilet and that poverty is not decreasing under Chavez.
Right [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]. This is the fourth year of economic growth in double digits in Venezuela!
Poverty when last calculated and figures released was just over 30%--HALF of the OFFICIAL poverty figures for MEXICO.
As for Nalle's facile use of OLD gini figures--when he has dismissed the gini coefficient in other venues as absolutely meaningless, I suggest that he give us other old figures--.49 in 1998, before Chavez took power, for example.
The rest of Nalle's piece is just invective--spewing his puritanical fixations with stuff like prostitution across the page.
The bottom line is this: Nalle [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor] foams at the mouth--and all because a non-white man controls what are currently the world's largest petroleum reserves and tells Nalle and his ilk exactly where they can go.
I say MORE POWER TO HIM! It's fucking time someone in this hemisphere had the balls to do something positive for not only HIS people, but for the people on this planet who have been--and continue to be victimized by the US and its interests.
And it's time for Nalle to stop trying to shit us with his [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor] phony statistics.
[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]
You are old news, Nalle. I took your measure on September 21, 2006. And it was lacking.
32 - moonraven
So that folks do not in ANY WAY put this poster in the same capacity of duplicitous manipulation of numbers as Nalle, please be advised that the US Department of State (hardly a Chavez shill) indicates that the gini co-efficient for Venezuela in 2006 (the last measure) was .45--which means that from .49 in 1998--the year that Chavez was elected (he took power in 1999) to the last year measured, the gini co-efficient has NOT gone up, but down.
Reality is where we are NOW. Not, as I have indicated in the past, where we were 5 or 10 years ago.
And the reality of where the US is now is not pretty: a president with less than 30% approval rate who is defended by folks like [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor] Dave Nalle on this site as if he were Jesus Christ, rampant corruption, billions and billions of YOUR tax dollars being squandered and pilfered by Cheney and the Halliburton Gang, 1.2 million Iraquis murdered, mayhem and murder in Afghanistan, NOBODY willing to stop the current wars or prevent the next ones.
YOU, US shills, are hated and despised all over the planet.
And with damn good reasons.
33 - moonraven
Again, from the US Department of State:
"Real GDP increased by 10.3% in 2006. The economy recovered strongly in 2004 (17.9%) and 2005 (9.3%) after two consecutive years of deep economic recession (in 2003, Venezuelan GDP contracted 7.7%, after contracting 8.9% in 2002). The economic recovery has been driven by a large increase in government expenditures, based on an oil windfall, which in turn generated higher consumption levels."
[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]
And, just to show how generous I am with INFORMATION copied right from the US sources, Auntie also says:
"Venezuelan sovereign debt, both domestic and foreign, has decreased in recent years in both absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP. Venezuela's external debt/GDP ratio of approximately 16% is low by Latin American standards. Venezuela's Emerging Markets Bond Index investment risk rating, at 202 basis points, dropped somewhat over 2005, but remained higher than many in the region.
There is considerable income inequality. The Gini coefficient was 0.45 during 2006. According to government statistics, the percentages of poor and extremely poor among Venezuelan population were 33.9% and 23.2%, respectively, in 2006.
[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]
34 - moonraven
For anyone who has a genuine interest in the constitutional reform process that will culminate with a referendum on Sunday Dec. 2nd, and who does not understand Spanish, an article-by-article explanation in English is available on the venezuelanalysis.com website. There is also a link which works to the Spanish text of the proposed changes.
In addition, there is a very clear and well-documented analysis of the constitutional reform by Chris Carlson.
The website was hacked down a few days ago--pretty good evidence that it is doing its job in getting the TRUTH out to those English speakers who are INTERESTED.
Nalle, of course, will not read any of it.
He knows better. he knows full well that Venezuela is really in Central America--squeezed in somewhere between Panama and Costa Rica--and that those folks who post on this site and the folks who make and publish atlases are just liars and shills for the People's Republic of China.
35 - Dave Nalle
I think the most important thing to remember here is that whenever I post on Venezuela we get the same three people disagreeing with me, none of whom is currently in Venezuela. In conrast, on this article as with my last one and Clavos' recent article, actual people from Venezuela or who have been there recently show up and strongly and eloquently support what we're saying.
If the news media and the NGOs I draw on for my material AND eyewitnesses in the country agree on what I'm reporting, then what do Lapdog and Brian and MR have to back them up except for an irrational love of Chavez and a devotion to the expansion of quasi-socialist oppression?
Dave
36 - moonraven
Wrong again, [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor] Dave. I have already backed up my statements with FACTS. Something you are allergic to, I know [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor].
You foamed [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor] all over this site--supposedly in support of FREE SPEECH--while demanding that I be banned from blogcritics at the very same moment--last June.
At that time I was in Caracas--posting eyewitness accounts myself--as well as providing those accounts to ETHICAL journalists in the US [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor].
Can't refute your OWN US Department of State info, so your grab with your filthy fingernails at anything you can think of to disparage this poster and others who have had the temerity to challenge your propagandistic abuse of power with INFORMATION, huh???????????????????????
[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]
As for the media YOU use (Fox News) and YOUR NGOs--give me a break--anyone anywhere in the world can form an on-paper NGO--frequently as nothing more than a tax dodge--and your eyewitnesses, they never seem to pan out, do they, [Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]? I show them for the phonies that they are and they are GONE.
Let's see you REFUTE the PROOF I have already posted of your LIES.
That's the same challenge I made to you on Sept. 21, 2006. You have never met it. You have never posted proof of a single one of your statements about Venezuela.
[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]
37 - moonraven
How many folks did you EXPECT to show up on a RIGHT WING HATE site LIKE BLOGCRITICS and support Chavez?
DO tell us, Nalle.
And then tell us about the folks who support Chavez--or even human decency, for that matter--who have been invited to Fox News and shouted down and railed with obscentities?
Yet Maria Conchita Alongwegoto shop was invited on FOx and even got Chavez' name wrong--yet she was allowed to speak as an expert against him as a venezolana!
The fact that she doesn't live there of course weas not at all important.
You can't have it both ways, Nalle.
38 - moonraven
This bird is off to prepare to celebrate her birthday tomorrow.
In Latin America--not in a trailer in Texas.
39 - Clavos
"I show them for the phonies that they are and they are GONE." (referring to the Venezuelan residents and other eyewitnesses who have posted anti-Chavez comments on virtually every Chavez thread).
Actually, they leave after a few posts because of the vile, scatological, disgusting and vitriolic comments you post addressed to them and with which you attack them.
40 - moonraven
Where are those clones NOW, clavos? Get em out here.
[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]
I presented much more evidence that the "eyewitnesses" were fakes than either you or Nalle have ever presented in regard to Venezuela in the total of pieces and posts that you have ever put on this site.
[Personal attack deleted by Comments Editor]
41 - Clavos
"I presented much more evidence that the "eyewitnesses" were fakes"
That is, simply put, a lie.
Nobody on these threads has ever seen any "evidence" from you or anyone else that those commenters were "fakes."
42 - Franco
Chavez is proving who and what he is, and what he is not, as time moves on. I don’t have to do that for you, he will be faithful in doing it for your and he already is.
With each power step Chavez makes he is defining and reveling himself within the minds of his own people, and the minds of other free nation states.
Important Voices from within knowledgeable circles of the Venezuelan People
There is a key number of people from within Chavezs own personal life circle, from within his own government, and from within his own military that tirelessly worked with him, for him, they know him, and loved him, all through his rise to power for the cause of the revolution.
Why are they now trying to tell the Venezuelan people, and the world, that he is not the same rational reasonable liberator they once supported since he has taken hold of power?
These very important voices from within Venezuela are NOT asking anyone to discuss or debate their concerns like we do here on BC. These voices speak facts from first hand experience and knowledge gained from intimate involvement from the actual behind the seines happenings within the privet Chavez revolutionary camp. These are people with facts from once deep inside the revolutionary machine itself from its beginnings and its growth to power and they are now trying to warn the people of Venezuela and the world of what they are now desperately afraid of.
Chavez now calls them all “traitors”. What else would you expect from a man who denies it. If they were telling the truth, Chavez would have to deny it.
They are not the traitors to the dream of this revolution for the Venezuelan people, Chavez is, and they are telling us that full power in his hands, not the peoples, is the hell that is coming.
Does anyone put names to these factual voices?
Other Free States
With each power step Chavez makes there is an increase in the number of free states starting to voice their concerns and this is beginning to grown in a more clearly defined resistance against him. They are basing their decisions on his actions as he displays them in front of them and at them, and behind their backs. Surprisingly this growing resistance is growing in his hemisphere, not just in the free world at large.
What Chavez has wanted to accomplish in Latin America through political influence against the US and the Western would free market at large, and combining these efforts with money and natural resorces in “buying” his revolution with countries under finical hardships is not working out to the magnitude as he had hoped for.
So what he hoped money and US hate speech would do in influencing other Latin states into his fold, he is now faced with the realization that what worked for him at the start with a few is not working with the many.
What options that are now left to him in maintaining his personal power quest to expand his revolution of "Fatherland Socilism or Death" in the face of this newly defining resistance in other Latin countries is now going to be the next big question.
If he can not except they’re growing resistance and he wants to keep moving his revolution forward, he will have to add a measure of "force" to his other weakening measures.
All of his actions so far indicate he can not control or contain himself. And the Venezuelan voices address above she it will get worse not better. This is clear from what he shows now as his well know stock and trade of behavior. His own inability to control himself is his single biggest weakness thus leaving him to face his most formidable enemy of all, himself.
Chavez reasons to lower the voting age to 16 coupled with his transformation of the schooling and educational system to cultivate the young minds for his revolution. This is well timed to start turning out the new young reeducated revolutionary voters in the next few years and for years to come. If Chavez remains in power for years, he will have all the hearts and minds with hands he needs to place all the AK103 Russian assault weapons in, which will be manufactured, in the Russian factories being constructed in Venezuela under Russian permits. And some still think the Cold War is over!
I don’t think it is a matter anymore if he is going to step over this line of force and cause the need of other states to possibly recognize the needs to contain him. I think that is already a growing thought on the minds of many world free states. I know it is in several countries in Central and South America.
The free world will not tolerate Chavez filling the jungles with reeducated rebel fighter’s hell bent on destabilizing other free states.
Can anyone put names to the factual free states without sighting the US?
43 - Dave Nalle
I guess I have to get down in the dirt with the dirty bird and refute some of her usual lies. It's remarkably easy, but it's time consuming and tedious and I guess it has to be done as a matter of form.
1. Nalle says it's old news that tens of thousands of students have marched against the referendum of Dec. 2nd--36 ammendments proposed by the National ASssembly and 33 by Chavez.
What has apparently escaped Nalle's very furtive glance is that HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of pro-government students have also been marching.
If you search the news reports - which I doubt you will bother to do - estimates describe both the pro and anti-government marches as consisting of 'tens of thousands' of people with nothing more specific than that. And I never said that Chavez didn't have supporters.
2. As has already been mentioned, Dave Goebbel's has written another LIE when he says "chavista thugs gunned down students". There is no proof of who they were--and no news services have even SAID they were. Nalle links, as usual, to s source that contradicts his statement.
Except, of course, that it doesn't contradict anything I said. The fact that the source I linked to doesn't specifically talk about the links between the thugs and Chavez' government doesn't mean the links aren't there. The later link on crime does talk about the support criminal gangs have given to the regime.
Also, neither Nalle or clavos, who already circulated this chavista thugs lie a couple weeks ago or more, has indicated why they support the students who entered the UCV campus
Actually, I don't believe either of us said a single word in support of those students. Do provide a quote where we supported them.
3. Where are the alleged weaknesses in the 1999 Constitution? How are the 69 proposed refrorms deigned to make the Constitution weaker. Do tell us.
I already went over this here and in previous posts. The flaws in the constitution are well documented and anyone who reads the 69 proposals can immediately see how they increase government power at the expense of civil rights.
And while you are at it, you still have not posted the US law in regard to States of Emergenecy, which is far more severe than that proposed in Venezuela. You were requested to do that more than 2 weeks ago.
Sorry, missed that request. And it has nothing at all to do with this subject. It's completely irrelevant. What's more, I previously wrote an entire article on the subject. Go read that.
4. It really helps to not be a liar or to know the language of a country you are gratuitously shitting yourself about. The Datanalsis poll actually showed EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what has been posted here now at least 2 times in the past few days: It was 49% FOR the reforms and 39% AGAINST. (Source: Reuters, in SPANISH, printed TODAY in the LATIN AMERICAN press.)
So you're saying that Datanalisis' own English language translation of their results is incorrect? I'll see if I can find their retraction. Or is it just that every translation from Reuters to every newspaper is incorrect? Are Spanish language translators that hard to find?
5. Nalle also completely disinforms in regard to the OPEC meeting in Saudi Arabia. The discussion that ended up being tabled, and to which the Saudi king referred, was this: Whether to change all OPEC sales to being invoiced in EUROS!
Which Chavez promoted as a way to attack the US and which as I clearly stated the other members rejected because they don't like the idea of using oil as a political weapon. Seems perfectly clear in the article and the source I linked to.
6. Nalle contends that Venezuela's economy is in the toilet and that poverty is not decreasing under Chavez.
Actually, I never said anything of the sort. Good strawmanery, though.
What I did say is that the old oligarchs are being replaced by the boligarchs and that not much good is being done for the rest of the society.
Right, Herr Goebbels. This is the fourth year of economic growth in double digits in Venezuela!
Even you ought to know that economic growth is not the same as improving conditions for the poor or increasing income equality.
Rather than setting up these straw men, why don't you actually deal with some of the issues raised in the article.
As for Nalle's facile use of OLD gini figures--when he has dismissed the gini coefficient in other venues as absolutely meaningless, I suggest that he give us other old figures--.49 in 1998, before Chavez took power, for example.
Quite right, I referenced an article which only compared 2000 with 2005. I could have gone to a more up to date source and noted that the GINI has actually risen to 49.1 as of 2006, so it's actually even worse than I originally suggested.
So that folks do not in ANY WAY put this poster in the same capacity of duplicitous manipulation of numbers as Nalle, please be advised that the US Department of State (hardly a Chavez shill) indicates that the gini co-efficient for Venezuela in 2006 (the last measure) was .45--which means that from .49 in 1998--the year that Chavez was elected (he took power in 1999) to the last year measured, the gini co-efficient has NOT gone up, but down.
It should be noted that there is more than one way of calculating GINI, and MR seems to be taking advantage of the fact that the State Department and other agencies which calculate GINI use slightly different formulae, which allows her to misrepresent stagnation as change by comparing incompatible figures.
Dave
44 - brian
Dave: 'I've fixed it for you because I know how eager you are to read some actual facts about Venezuela.'
If i wanted facts about Venezuela, the last place i'd go is The Economist, which advocates neoliberalism and has a long history antivenezuelan articles...
Your 'masked chavista thugs' links to the BBC, which says: 'A number of gunmen arrived at the Central University of Venezuela campus on motorcycles, law faculty dean Jorge Pabon told AFP news agency.'
No mention of who they were....but after the april 2002 aborted coup, we can guess they were Antichavez thugs ,..or do you have solid evidence of who they were?
you also write:
'in the grand Latin American death squad tradition'
Yes, but that trasdition has its origins in the School of the Americas, which trained death squads, or have you forgotten:
'In 1990, in El Salvador, populist Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated. Three-quarters of the Salvadoran officers implicated in the killing were trained at the SOA. Roberto D'Aubuison, the late leader of El Salvador's Death Squad, was implicated in the plot to assassinate Archbishop Romero. He also participated in numerous murders, including a massacre in the village of El Mazote, where more than 900 men, women, and children were killed. He graduated from SOA as well.'
...
'In Honduras, General Humberto Ragalado Hernandez, was trained at the SOA at the same time that he was linked to Columbian drug cartels, and the highest ranking officers in the Honduran Death Squad were trained at SOA as well.
In Peru, the most senior officers convicted of the February 1994 murder of nine university students and a professor, were graduates of the SOA. In Columbia, a 1992 human rights tribunal cited 246 officers for crimes against the people of Columbia. 105 of the officers were trained at the SOA. In Panama, ex-dictator Manuel Noriega, formerly on the CIA payroll, graduated from the SOA. He is now in a US prison, convicted of trafficking in drugs.'
etc
Third World Traveler
45 - Dave Nalle
Ooh, good try at distraction, Brian, but I'm pretty sure this article isn't about events that happened in Peru more than a decade ago.
Dave
46 - Clavos
In any case the practices of assassination and death squads are a loooonngg tradition in LatAm.
In fact they go all the way back into Pre-Columbian times and really flowered under Spanish occupation; the Spanish having originally learned from their Moorish masters.
I know it's fashionable to blame all the ills of LatAm on various initiatives originating in Gringolandia, but in point of fact Latinos have been screwing over each other for centuries, long before the USA even existed as a nation.
For an interesting "insider" look at the Mexican character in particular, read El Laberinto de la Soledad (The Labyrinth of Solitude), by Octavio Paz.
47 - Lapdog
I can't understand why the anti-Chavez stooges here don't untwist their panties and relax while the people of Venezuela prepare to accept or reject the proposed constitutional revisions.
If things are "going sour in Venezuela" and the poor are getting poorer, with less and less food to eat, and their dissatisfaction with Chavez is as widespread as we're told, they'll give him a hard smack on December 2nd. No problemo!
Of course if everything goes his way then sooner or later somebody's going to have to plant a video on YouTube showing Chavez doing a devil worship ritual with some of Manuel Noreiga's old paraphernalia. If he's dressed in a Dracula costume and snorting coke through the barrel of a machine gun while holding a butcher knife to the throat of a cute little puppy, so much the better.
Oh yeah, and the scene won't be complete if there isn't a naked blonde slave girl spread-eagled on a pirate's chest filled with diamonds still steaming with fresh human blood.
I know the goons who dislike Chavez can come up with a better Pre-Invasion Demonization Plan than I can so go to it girls and boys.
Forgot to mention that the video will need a decent sound track...lots of horrific screaming and wailing. Something like the noises made by an Iraqi family when the taxi that's taking them home is blown apart by US 'contractors'.
48 - Dave Nalle
I'm looking forward to that video, Lap.
The problem with the election for those of us with at least a marginal interest in the situation, would be the natural skepticism that Chavez' opponents will be allowed to enter the polls at all.
Dave
49 - Lapdog
You're confusing anti-Chavez voters in Venezuela with black disallowed voters in Florida.
"A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals."
"In Jacksonville, to determine if Republicans were using the lists or other means of intimidating voters, we filmed a private detective filming every "early voter" - the majority of whom are black - from behind a vehicle with blacked-out windows."
Read all about it here
50 - brian
Dave, im still waiting for real evidence the shooters were chavistas. And you seem to have ignored the fact that the attacks were made on a Chavez friendly campus..so:
'According to eyewitness reports from Hands Off Venezuela members, violence broke out yesterday in Caracas when opposition students arrived back from a peaceful demonstration against the proposed constitutional reforms. Apparently frustrated by the lack of violence, a group of about 250 of the opposition students (many from other universities) went straight to the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) to the School of Social Work which is a stronghold of revolutionary students inside UCV.'
Hands Off Venezuela
SO the invaders are oppostion students...NOT chavistas...QED.
And your BBC link says this:
'Photographers for the Associated Press news agency saw at least four masked gunmen firing handguns at the crowd, as terrified students fled. '
No mention of Chavists..Thats YOUR adddition.
51 - Dr Dreadful
I've never heard of Helena Handbasket, but I'm assuming she must be some sort of public relations guru. If so, I can understand why Venezuela would want to go to her.
52 - Clavos
Doc, Doc, Doc, at times your naiveté is astonishing.
Helena Handbasket is the opposition candidate; the headline is reporting the results of the latest poll of likely Venezuelan voters.
The poll, commissioned by Venezuela's roly-poly, jolly incumbent, is used to identify opposition voters and help them exit prior to the actual vote.
Which is why it's called an "exit poll."
53 - Jen
Dave, these guys who support Chavez from afar have NO idea what things are like in this country. I'd like to see them make lines for an hour to buy milk...what would THEY do if they went to 3 to 4 suermarkets just to find everything on their shopping list.
I dare them to live a day in the shoes of an average Venezuelan...
54 - Jen
Oh and for the info of anyone REALLY interested one of the shooters has been identified as a PDVSA worker....so my bet is these shooters were for a fact Chavez supporters.
55 - Lapdog
If we're to believe Jen
With life being so tough for the average Venezuelan it must be Barefooted Hell for the multitude of below average Venezuelans who support, or used to support, Chavez.
According to anti-Chavez sources Chavez hasn't helped the underprivileged in the least, and they claim he's actually made the poor even more desperate than they were before he arrived on the scene.
With so many people shoeless and hungry Chavez' popularity has got to be at rock bottom.
The anti-Chavez gang claim that Chavez has been given more than enough time to raise the standard of living for the poor, and I think it's safe to say you don't have to be a sophisticated voter to know when you can't afford to feed your children.
Well, there goes all Chavez' support and it's obviously goodbye to Hugo in the very near future.
56 - Dave Nalle
Dave, these guys who support Chavez from afar have NO idea what things are like in this country.
At least one of them is in deliberate denial for purely political reasons and ought to know better.
I'd like to see them make lines for an hour to buy milk...what would THEY do if they went to 3 to 4 suermarkets just to find everything on their shopping list.
I've never livd in Venezuela, but I know what that's like having lived for some years in the Soviet Union. We were lucky and most of the time we could bring in milk and other staples from Finland, but the hardship that regime imposed on the average citizen was evident everywhere.
Oh and for the info of anyone REALLY interested one of the shooters has been identified as a PDVSA worker....so my bet is these shooters were for a fact Chavez supporters.
Here's a report from the CBC which seems to confirm that they were. In looking around today I found some really excellent first hand reporting from Venezuela from a journalism student spending some time there. Her reports are detailed, first hand and truly chilling.
Dave
57 - Jen
I recommend for those of you who can read and understand Spanish to check out www.megaresistencia.com and see what some venezuelans have to say. Go to Foros and you'll see. Sure they are anti-Chavez but many are also anti oppo and anti Bush. You see not all Anti Chavez people are Pro G. Bush.
I have seen crime, poverty and homelessness climb in 9 years and with the price of oil so high whats going on? Sure right lapdog Chavez has done wonders for the poor. I invite you to visit Venezuela for a month and then write here the marvels of Chavez.
58 - brian
Truth goes to hell in michales handbasket....
The right wing "debates" in Venezuela
'This is an AP photo out today, a rather dramatic one I'd say, quite newsworthy. The AP caption reads: "An opponent [Ed. note: actually it appears like multiple opponents] to President Hugo Chavez, left, uses an iron stick to hit a Chavez supporter during a rally against the reforms to the nation's constitution proposed by the president in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela, Tuesday, Nov. 27, 2007." Let's see how many newspapers run with this photo tomorrow, shall we?
59 - Lapdog
Nalle's CBC link contains a reference to Venezuela in 2002. Maybe it's not the link he intended. If it is it's hardly an 'in-depth' or even accurate look at a shooting incident in Venezuela.
"The Bolivarian Circles were blamed for the 15 dead and 350 wounded (157 shot) that day. It was alleged that members of the Circles had shot at a peaceful demonstration. That is not true. Mysterious snipers on the roofs of buildings shot the first victims actually among the Bolivarian Circles. There was total confusion. Near the El Silencio metro station, a squad of the National Guard responded to the stone throwing of "civil society" with tear gas grenades, and shot directly into the crowd. Small groups of the city police of opposition mayor Alfredo Peña shot arbitrarily at anything that moved. Other police behaved well."
More about that here
As for 'truly chilling', I wouldn't take the ridiculously biased word of someone who's obviously trying to scurry up the US corporate media ladder for all she's worth. Not much anyway.
60 - brian
Davde is recycling april 2002 with his blame the Chavistas for shooting..The incident took place on a campus that was pro-chavez....the attackers were opposition students.
61 - Jen
Lapdog, once again you disclaim those who are or have been in Venezuela. Easy isn't it?
62 - brian
Jen: 'Dave, these guys who support Chavez from afar have NO idea what things are like in this country. I'd like to see them make lines for an hour to buy milk...what would THEY do if they went to 3 to 4 suermarkets just to find everything on their shopping list.
I dare them to live a day in the shoes of an average Venezuelan..'
Jen, its the average venezuela and esp the average poor venezuelan who have voted for Chavez and his government..
Where do you live? I bet its no where near a Barrio...
AS long as im here, your lies wont get much beyond your lips.
YOUR kind have tried to destroy thr economy, and treat the coloured venezuelans with racist contempt.
63 - brian
Jen: 'Oh and for the info of anyone REALLY interested one of the shooters has been identified as a PDVSA worker....so my bet is these shooters were for a fact Chavez supporters.'
care to share the source of your evidence?
64 - Clavos
It's risible that brian, in his vain attempts to refute the eyewitnesses who are actually experiencing the chaos in Venezuela, can only present commentary from partisan sites like venezuelanalysis, which is probably paid by the Chavista government, since its praise of Chavez and his policies is unremitting and unrelenting, not to mention phony as a nine dollar bill.
Utterly unconvincing and misleading.
Utterly.
65 - brian
what eyewittnesses Clavos? You mean the ones who saw Yepez spat on and kicked by his killers...bet you loved that!
66 - Lapdog
Brian, I guess the majority of Venezuelans should consider themselves lucky that the US is so far only interfering in the country's politics by financing anti-Chavez propaganda and working behind the scenes for his defeat. When they're really desperate for Venezuelan oil they'll slaughter anyone who gets in their way.
Nalle and Clavos would no doubt pop up to supply the lame excuses.
67 - Dave Nalle
Brian, is your reading entirely limited to the propaganda from venezuealalysis.com? Do you see me taking all of my material from vcrisis.com? Or any of it for that matter?
This is the key difference between reporting and propaganda. I use only mainstream sources and first hand accounts. You're using a propaganda site. I know where I could find anti-Chavez propaganda, but I don't use it as a source.
And Lapdog, the US has less than no interest in interfering in Venezuela. Our interest in their activities is a fantasy in the fevered mind of Hugo Chavez.
Dave
68 - Lapdog
"And Lapdog, the US has less than no interest in interfering in Venezuela. Our interest in their activities is a fantasy in the fevered mind of Hugo Chavez."
Which explains your lack of interest in the topic and your focus on US war crimes in Iraq.
69 - brian
Dave:'Brian, is your reading entirely limited to the propaganda from venezuealalysis.com'
I only source from evidence based articles... Youre hatred of Venezuelan analysis is because they arent currying the favour of the neoliberals.
dave: 'I use only mainstream sources '
Ive seen your MS sources: the Economist!? As we know, the Main stream sources(MSS) in US didnt post the Downing Street minutes for a month after they appeared. In UK, the MSS have a foreign policy line very similar to the govt in power, witness their articles on Zimbabwe. The MSS is declining in popularity, because people (maybe not you) are learning they are not as free and independent as they make out.
Dave: 'first hand accounts'
Not if they dont favour your point of view. Sin by ommission... common with the MSS.
Dave: 'You're using a propaganda site'
No, Venezuela Analysis is an Analysis site... It writes from a left wing angle, yes, you right from a right wing angle. Youve not proven anything they post is untrue.
You link to a BBC article
and use the claim: 'had masked chavista thugs gun down 8 students'
which nowhere appears in that BBC link! Go and have a look! Here BBC is a bit more honest than you are... Here you sin by Commission.
70 - brian
dave: 'And Lapdog, the US has less than no interest in interfering in Venezuela'
am i the only person here who finds the semantics here strange?...'less than no interest'...
Do you mean the US govt has no interest in interfering in Venezuela...if thats what you mean, then you need to do a bit more research...
I suspect your conscience was wrestling with your efforts to tell a bare faced NED funded lie.
71 - brian
I notice that dave has tried to deftly avoid the issue of Opposition violence and US interfence in a sovereign states politics.
Perhaps he thinks it would be ok if Venezuela funded a political opposition in the US...US needs one
72 - Clavos
"Perhaps he thinks it would be ok if Venezuela funded a political opposition in the US.."
Chavez already is, by selling cheap heating oil in this country. Buying support for his despotism disguised as a "humanitarian" gesture.
Not too different from what he's doing in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia; and attempting in Argentina.
73 - Dave Nalle
Do you mean the US govt has no interest in interfering in Venezuela...if thats what you mean, then you need to do a bit more research...
Which international leftist propaganda site should I do that research on, because most of the legitimate news sources agree that there's no current US involvement there.
I suspect your conscience was wrestling with your efforts to tell a bare faced NED funded lie.
Sorry, I forget who the NED is. How do I get my check again?
Dave
74 - T
First off the comment about the Bankok alley was a euphemism for how it feels on the street in Caracas.
Yes Venezuelas economy has shown increses in the past three years, at 9/11 oil was aprox $26/bl now it is over $90. When your countries main export raises in price 300% it is easy to show a 300% growth. But where is all that profit? It has not made it anywhere near the people since poverty is expanding exponentially also.
To the people saying death squads are common in Latin America. They have been in areas, not Venezuela, and even if they have been common elsewhere does it make it ok?
Lapdog, I couldn't find a video of Chavez in a demonic ritual, but these are the best representations of the situation there I could. They do not show how it is in the poor ranchos. You need to remember in the march scenes that the Venezuelan flag is anti-Chaves, his supporters wear red.
You are quick to slam the facts with rhetoric I am interested in how you see these.
I hope and pray that he will lose this Sundays vote but I know that its hard to lose when you count the votes yourself.
You are also quick to try and change the topic from Chaves debauchery to Bushs. Don't get me wrong, Bush is a monster too, hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq and millions displaced by his direct action. I am not defending Americas actions but those are comments for another site and they dont have any direct correlation to what this one is about.
I hope this is not seen as a personal attack. How dare you say I can't get the facts straight about students getting shot at a demonstration. I never said I saw students. What I saw was over half a million people In the street all supporting opposition. Have you ever seen a man with half his face missing simply because he wanted freedom? Have you seen a kid face down in his own blood because a regime wanted to scare peaceful marches. I doubt it. Its easy to throw false information from your comfortable chair a thousand miles away but until you've seen it with your own eyes you carry no weight.
To everyone else, please keep the poor people there in your thoughts.
75 - troll
T - *They do not show how it is in the poor ranchos.*
what would be the consequences were you (a more or less average middle class Joe - ?) to take your video camera out to these areas to document the situation - ?