Lula and Chavez Celebrate in Caracas Brazil Senate's Vote for Venezuela

[Judi Lynn]

Lula and Chavez Celebrate in Caracas Brazil Senate's Vote for Venezuela
Written by Newsroom
Friday, 30 October 2009

In a divided vote, Brazil's Senate foreign relations committee approved this Thursday, October 29, Venezuela's request to join Mercosur despite concerns over President Hugo Chavez's authoritarian style of government. The vote comes when Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva flies to Caracas to sign huge contracts for Brazilian corporations.

Following a heated debate the committee voted 12 to 5 in favor of Venezuela joining South America's main trade block started 18 years ago. The proposal must now go to the floor of Brazil's full Senate, and Paraguay's parliament must also approve before Venezuela can join.

At stake are tens of billions of dollars in trade and investment with the oil-rich nation and potentially affecting Venezuela's geopolitical ties to the region. Denying Venezuela membership could isolate Chavez from South America's major democracies and push him to deepen ties with distant allies such as Iran, Russia, and China, analysts summoned to the committee have repeatedly stated.

President Lula, who traveled to Caracas this Thursday, lobbied hard for Venezuela joining the group that is made up of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay with Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia as associate members.

More:
http://www.brazzilmag.com/content/view/11376/

[Peace Patriot]

1. Gee, you can't tell that this magazine is hostile to Chavez, can you?

Criminy.

Don't you just love how all these corpo-fascists fondle democracy when it suits them?

:puke:

As I said in another thread on this subject, what we have here is the Jim DeMint's and Orrin Hatch's of Brazil's Congress trying to sabotage the policy of Brazil's leftist, steelworker president, whom they hate. They couldn't give a crap about "democracy." In fact, give them the opportunity, and they would plunge Brazil into another heinous fascist dictatorship in a cold minute. They LOVE dictators. And they hate democracy and that is what burns them about Venezuela--it IS a democracy, as transparent and honest a democracy as exists in the Americas. It certainly beats the hell out of ours, on transparent elections, "best practices" election rules, public participation, public approval of their democracy, and, with the Chavez government's actions curtailing corpo-fascist, coup supporting corporate 'news' monopolies, and creating Telesur, improved public information and access, and the voters chose a socialist president, leader of the Bolivarian revolution for independence from US global corporate predators. Corpo-fascists are the same all over. They want "free speech" for themselves and their corporate pals, and for no one else.

And one more thing about Brazzil magazine: A 12 to 5 vote is not accurately described as a "divided vote." It is a decisive victory for the Left! A 9 to 8 vote would be "divided," or maybe even a 10 to 7 vote. 12 to 5 means that the rightwing got stomped on. And you can be sure that, if it had been the other way around, it would have described as "a decisive victory for the Right," or a "decisive loss for Lula da Silva and Hugo Chavez." Those five dissenting votes wouldn't count. But because they're rightwing votes, they do! The rightwing always gets two votes for every one--the vote itself, and then the vote in the corpo-fascist media.

Am I nuts, or is everybody in the goddamned world (including the BBC) starting to write like the Wall Street Urinal about the South American Left? They don't even bother to disguise it!

[Judi Lynn]

2. Corporatists are the guys buying up ALL the news sources. They control almost everything!

Your point about the vote is accurate. Preposterous claim about the cliffhanger vote! They wouldn't hesitate to announce the fascists had mopped up the floor with the democratic legislators, had they pulled this one out for themselves.

Everyone has known it was the nazi idiots in the Senate who've been fighting like wildmen all this time. No doubt they've had complete support from the fascist element in our own state department from the opening shot on EVERY subject relating to the Venezuelan democratic left.

Most people in their country aren't likely to forget what the right in Brazil did to the people of Brazil during their military dictatorship, a total nightmare for decent people. In time, they are all going to die off and NOT be replaced.

You're not wrong. I never expected to see a LOT of the crap I'm seeing now. The only soliution is legislation to break up the chokehold by the monopolies, or the advent of a ton of independent, courageous writers and publishers.

[Downwinder]

5. From the Ashes of Dying Newspapers Will Come Authentic News

I have to throw Al in here.

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3561/ashes-dying-newspapers-will-come-authentic-news

[Braulio]

3. They seem to like Lula

I believe their problem is with the communist-type left such as Chavez and Castro.

[Peace Patriot]

4. "...communist-type left..."? Exactly what do you mean, as to Venezuela?

Please explain how Venezuela is different from European socialist democracy. There is lots of private enterprise (the biggest growth sector over the previous five years), plenty of foreign investment (for instance, France's Total, British BP and Norway's Statoil and many others invested in Venezuelan industries/resources, as well as new Chinese and Russian investments), adequate taxation (half of Venezuela's budget), oil revenues (a quarter of the budget) and international cash reserves for funding of social programs (such as free education through college, free health care, land reform, loans/grants to small business). The structure of the system is very similar to Norway--a socialist democracy with a mixed capitalist/socialist economy and the country with highest "quality of life" rating in the world. Would you call Norway a "communist-type" government? They are very "communal" over there. They think that everybody should eat, be sheltered, be educated and have a decent life, and they strongly believe that their oil belongs to the people of Norway, and should be used for their benefit.

So I'm not seeing any parallel whatever to any communist system that I know of. Venezuela has transparent elections and full civil rights, and a very lively political culture, unlike, say, the former Soviet Union. It has strong western values--such as individual freedom, using enticements to change and improve things (such as land reform) rather than coercion, a completely free-flowing culture (as to music and the arts, the internet, public and scholarly debate)--unlike, say, China (in most of its communist history). The Chavez government has come down hard on a couple of industries--steel/cement and food production, for instance, where crippling strikes (that wouldn't yield to arbitration) or hoarding to drive up prices, posed serious threats to Venezuela's development. But Harry Truman at least threatened to take similar actions here, when industry was being totally irresponsible. They've also moved to regulate and diversity use of the public airwaves, which we should be doing here. There are no forced labor camps. There is no onerous military budget. There is no forced "collectivisation." There are no gulags. There is no political repression. There is no dictator or king. There is only a strong leader, much like our own FDR--freely elected by the people, several times (four times for FDR, three for Chavez if you count his first short term), because his leadership was greatly approved of and desired.

The rightwing here sneers at European socialism, but it's a damn good deal for the people who have it--and our socialist programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, are the most successful central government programs we've ever had. I think corpo-fascists in the western hemisphere fear European socialism making a comeback in the Americas, such that the people of the United States begin to wonder why we don't have socialized medicine, free college educations and government working on our behalf and not on the behalf of banksters and war profiteers, and so that the people in the less socialist countries of Latin America, like Brazil, begin to wonder the same thing. It means less riches for the rich and more sharing. And so they demonize it, and snipe at it every chance they get, and try to make people think that Venezuela is a dictatorship. What a damn lie!

One of these golpista generals gave the game away, when he said that, by their coup, they were "preventing communism from Venezuela reaching the United States" (quoted in a report by the Zelaya government-in-exile). That statement implies that "communism" is like a disease--like swine flu--that might "infect" people here. "...communism from Venezuela." It is not only wildly inaccurate, it reveals the motives of the rightwing and their corpo-fascist 'news' tools. They want to paint Venezuela as something scary, rather than what it is: European socialism! And they don't want people to get any ideas like that--socialist medicine, government working for the people, strict regulation of corporate profiteering--in countries that are still controlled by global corporate predators.

I think you are wrong that "their problem is with the communist-type left." I think their problem is that they are LYING.

[Braulio]

6. It's not what it looks like

Let's start by quoting you:

"France's Total, British BP and Norway's Statoil and many others invested in Venezuelan industries/resources, as well as new Chinese and Russian investments"

Not really. None of them have invested new money. They're using the cash they earn from previous investments, but they won't bring in new cash. The Russians are waiting for the Venezuelan Congress to approve a bi-lateral investment treaty which gives them the right to take PDVSA and the government to court in Sweden. When they get it, they'll invest a bit, but Venezuela is expected to re-cycle the cash back to Russia by purchasing weapons.

You see, in Venezuela today, nobody invests, because the country is too erratic, and nationalizations are carried out depending on what Chavez had for breakfast. The basic difference between Venezuelan and European nations is called "the rule of law". Venezuela is a lawless society, with high crime, and a government without checks and balances, ruled by an autocrat which uses a rubber stamp congress, has a supine supreme court, with a government which mostly ignores the laws it itself writes. If Venezuela were to ever develop respect for the law, then things would improve.

[spanza]

7. Full civil rights

except for the 2.5-3 million people who, unfortunately for them, have their names in a political blacklist for no other reason than legally signing for a referendum?

Is that acceptable?