Ignacio Ramonet loves dictators.
"Non-profit"Kennedy II and Chavez's ambassador give our oil away.“There's no denying that with Chavez firmly in the Venezuelan government driver's seat for the foreseeable future -- perhaps past 2012 -- that anyone in opposition to President Hugo Chavez Frias' ambitions for a Bolivarian socialist-style Venezuela will find themselves on a hiding to nothing!”. Roy S. Carson mailto:Carsoneditor@vheadline.com
Fellow traveler Carson is not alone. Dozens of Chavez’s fellow travelers and/or mercenaries are saying similar things all over the world, from the U.K. to Sierra Leone, from France to Argentina. The network of Chavez’s ideological companions and/or hired guns now covers the planet: Ignacio Ramonet, Richard Gott, Eva Golinger, Roy S. Carson, Franz Lee, Alimamy Sankoh, Danny Glover, Oliver Stone, Miguel Tinker-Salas, Mark Weisbrot, Robert Mugabe, Daniel Ortega, Cristina Kirchner, Joseph Kennedy III, Jesse Jackson and a multitude of assorted, minor characters, a la Cequea, a very diverse menagerie united under the common denominator of a deep hatred for United States democracy, although quite a few were born in the United States and all would refuse to live in Chavez’ s Venezuela.
These people do not give a hoot for our country. Their game is different. They have taken sides in a global struggle between different types of social and political models and have chosen the dark side. They openly favor Castro in Cuba, the sandinistas in Nicaragua, Morales in Bolivia, Chavez in Venezuela, Ahmadinejad in Iran, the Hamas in Palestine and the Hizballah in the Islamic world. Many of them hate Israel and sympathize with Robert Mugabe. For reasons only known to themselves or their psychologists many carry resentment in their hearts, even if they are famous and rich, like Glover or Stone. Some of them are driven by greed, by the desire to gain material rewards from their actions. Kennedy III manages Chavez’s obscene deliveries of our oil to the “poor” in the United States, although those “poor” are ten or more times richer than our Venezuelan poor. Glover gets $20 million to make a film. Oliver Stone travels to Venezuela, all expenses paid, in order to make a glorifying documentary about Chavez. Ortega, Kirchner and Morales are repugnant parasites, sucking away at our national resources. Each one seems to have a different but equally well-planned agenda to extract the most from Chavez’s Venezuela, while the money lasts.
Carson, quoted above, is just a minor league player in this tragic game. He has had uneven results in trying to serve Chavez. He has been in and out of favor with the dictator. For a time he was in the doghouse due to friction with Chavez’s collaborators Izarra and Pimentel. However, he never said anything negative about Chavez. In his eyes everybody else in the Venezuelan government can be and, in fact, is corrupt and inefficient, but not Chavez, no sireee. According to Carson, Chavez is the new embodiment of Simon Bolivar, just as he, Carson, would like to be the new Daniel Florencio O’Leary, the noble Irish from Cork who served Bolivar so well. In fact, just as Chavez has appropriated Bolivar’s name for his obscene revolution, Carson is taking over O’Leary’s name for a Daniel Florencio O’Leary Foundation of his own that, no doubt, will serve to advance his personal agenda and allow him to return to the full favor of the tyrant.
The combined efforts of the group outlined above are extending Chavez’s political lease on life. Some of them are very good at what they do. Some of them are extremely well remunerated. They probably have some kind of coordination and network, probably a central “brain” that could be located in Washington DC, I wouldn’t know. The Venezuelan Information office, located in Washington, has a lot of money at its disposal and hands it, preferably in cash, to some of the hired guns. Chavez distributes abundant cash in the region, and beyond, to the piqueteros in Argentina, to Umala followers in Peru, Bolivian bureaucrats, Salvadorian leftist extremists, Hamas and Hizballah terrorists, soccer fans in Ghana and samba schools in Rio. He also rewards intellectual efforts. U.S. Academicians eagerly jump to try to discredit a highly critical Human Rights Watch Report that won the forced departure of its author from Venezuela. Some U.S. based pseudo-think tanks publish glowing reports on “the increasing Venezuelan GDP” (CEPR) or the “popularity” of his confiscations of private business (COHA). The London Mayor who accepted diesel handouts from Chavez and, because of this, was thrown out of office has now become his personal adviser on Urban Upgrading. His ambassadors, like Toro Hardy, Moncada and Chaderton, some of who used to work for democratic governments, are now “sold” on defending the despot and creatively justify his abuses of power to audiences that listen to them with increasing disgust.
Greed trumps principles. In defending a tyrant, in trying to use Venezuela as a pawn in a geopolitical game, these people and others like him have become accomplices of the crimes of Hugo Chavez. Not that they care. For many of them the important thing is the immediacy of the “cuanto hay pa’eso”, what is in it for them (they are ideali$tic). Others are simply dominated by hatred and fanaticism and believe that the enemy of their enemy must be their friend.
It is important to clarify that the writer understands the world under a capital-oriented paradigm. The only conceivable reason for so many foreigners to be supporting Chavez is either money or terrorism. He mentions a dark side in the world. Why yes darker-skinned peoples of the world are struggling out of slavery, in the case of Africa. Others, like Venezuelans are struggling out of Colonialism. Some people on the bright side (as opposed to dark), are aware of this situation and choose not to be indifferent and instead try to join a stream of information that has just been inaugurated, the stream that sends information out about the dark side... That had never happened, it has the bright side coming up with news about the dark side. Now the dark side has a voice, and some bright people have joined this effort. They don't need to live inside Venezuela. However, many of them have come to see for themselves how bad Venezuela was left by colonialism and how hard but ambitious it is to help it recover and grow. Jose Herrera
ResponderEliminarJan is wrong in assuming that the poor of Venezuela are being helped out of poverty by a demagogue with dreams of totalitarian power such as the semi-illiterate paratrooper. The poor Venezuelan should be helped to become a self-starter,a generator of wealth, not a beggar i in a long line, waiting for the bag of potatoes or the cash that Chavez hands out in order to buy his/her political loyalty. And now, we have the hired guns who help Chavez out of hate for their own societies, just as U.S. citizens spied for Stalin at one time. They had a problem in their childhood or in college that made them feel discriminated and decided to get even with the system. And if they could get paid by the dictator, so much the better.
ResponderEliminarColonialism? Go to Cuba today if you want to see how the oppressed live. Castro was a colonialist in Angola and is being one now in Venezuela, where he controls intelligence, money and the life of the gorilla. Colonialism, what an abused word!