Why Washington Hates Hugo Chavez

[Judi Lynn]

Why Washington Hates Hugo Chavez By Mike Whitney
Posted by Demeter
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27170.htm

In late November, Venezuela was hammered by torrential rains and flooding that left 35 people dead and roughly 130,000 homeless. If George Bush had been president, instead of Hugo Chavez, the displaced people would have been shunted off at gunpoint to makeshift prison camps--like the Superdome--as they were following Hurricane Katrina. But that's not the way Chavez works. The Venezuelan president quickly passed "enabling" laws which gave him special powers to provide emergency aid and housing to flood victims. Chavez then cleared out the presidential palace and turned it into living quarters for 60 people, which is the equivalent of turning the White House into a homeless shelter. The disaster victims are now being fed and taken care of by the state until they can get back on their feet and return to work.

The details of Chavez's efforts have been largely omitted in the US media where he is regularly demonized as a "leftist strongman" or a dictator. The media refuses to acknowledge that Chavez has narrowed the income gap, eliminated illiteracy, provided health care for all Venezuelans, reduced inequality, and raised living standards across he board. While Bush and Obama were expanding their foreign wars and pushing through tax cuts for the rich, Chavez was busy improving the lives of the poor and needy while fending off the latest wave of US aggression.

Washington despises Chavez because he is unwilling to hand over Venezuela's vast resources to corporate elites and bankers. That's why the Bush administration tried to depose Chavez in a failed coup attempt in 2002, and that's why the smooth-talking Obama continues to launch covert attacks on Chavez today. Washington wants regime change so it can install a puppet who will hand over Venezuela's reserves to big oil while making life hell for working people.

Recently released documents from Wikileaks show that the Obama administration has stepped up its meddling in Venezuela's internal affairs...

Editorials:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=579475

[social_critic]

1. A lot of this is false, misinformation or plain propaganda

Chavez didn't pass "enabling laws". What Chavez did was use the flooding as an excuse to have his supine National Assembly pass a series of laws to muzzle the press, control the internet, give the government more power, and finally the enabling law which gives the president the right to rule by decree for 18 months. It's important that this move, the enabling law, amounts to the National Assembly delegating its power to legislate to the executive power, and delegating the power of the new incoming national assembly as well. This is patently undemocratic, where else do we see a National Assembly with an expiring therm delegating THE POWER TO LEGISLATE OF THE INCOMING ASSEMBLY to the President? Note the Incoming Assembly, which is now left powerless according to the government, was elected in elections on September 26th, 2010, in which the government lost the popular vote.

Furthermore, the government response has been haphazard and counterproductive. For example, they forced hotel owners in some resort areas to take in people whose homes were flooded. Now, this may sound OK unless one realizes these hotels thrive in the Xmas season vacation period, and the Xmas tourist trade is the key resource for many beach towns. When the hotels are taken over the way they were - using illegal means - the net result is a serious reduction in tourism, and enormous damage to many small economies around Venezuela. This in turn impacts whole towns, including the poor, because EVERYBODY in these towns makes a living from tourism one way or the other. So by stupidly killing off the tourist trade, the government shot the economy one more time in the foot.

I could go on and on, but I can say with confidence the overall government response has been poor, there was no need for the slew of laws and decrees they passed, the move to put a few refugees in the Presidential palace grounds was good propaganda, but it's a meaningless gesture. And the problems caused by the floods are not the real problem in the country. The real problems continue to be a huge increase in the crime rate, hyperinflation, a shrinking economy, growing unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, and government policies which discourage investment and encourage lawlessness and corruption on the part of government officials. To this we can add the hysterical response by the government, which as it loses popularity and sees its support eroding, is moving towards muzzling the media and implementing more and more repressive measures.