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who they are killing, the ties to the government and the military, the displacement of 2-3 million peasant farmers in Colombia, Colombia's 40+ year civil war, the US $6 BILLION in military aid, the corrupt, failed, murderous US "war on drugs," the big US military buildup in Colombia and other Colombia-related subjects--as well as posting about developments in Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and other countries. I don't do many OPs. But I do a lot of comment on threads posted by others.
I probably post the most about Chavez and Venezuela, but I have some very good reasons for doing so:
1. The intense demonization of Chavez in our media. I feel a very strong desire to counter this demonization, and to examine it closely--as it manifests in the corpo-fascist media and here at DU. There is so much disinformation to counter! It is really quite incredible. Chavez is clearly a target--he might as well have a CIA bull's eye on his back--of the US State Department and its corporate media echo chamber. And we also have to ask WHY. Intense, relentless, psyops/disinformation campaigns like this are generally the preliminary to war. And there is much to be worried about in that respect. As a citizen of the country that slaughtered a hundred thousand innocent people in one week of bombing alone, to steal their oil, I am naturally concerned to do what I can to prevent that from ever happening again. I am extremely concerned about the US military buildup in areas adjacent to Venezuela's main oil reserves, facilities and shipping (Colombia, the Caribbean off the Gulf of Venezuela).
2. The Venezuelan people were the first to throw off U.S. dictation and domination, with their remarkable leftist democracy movement, and were the actors of perhaps the most important event in Latin American history: The reversal of the 2002 coup. That amazing event inspired and was the omen for the leftist democracy movement that swept the region during the 2002-2010 period.
3. Venezuela is far ahead of the other leftist governments and peoples, time-wise, in implementing new ideas that support and encourage grass roots democracy and the social responsibility of government. They have made great advances in education, health care, projects like the community councils and "missions," land reform and other areas. It is good to study these ideas as they work out in the practical world, not just as theories or suggestions or hopes, but as real policies that have to be detailed out and workable.
4. The Chavez government has been very innovative and far-thinking on regional political/economic integration and of smaller countries banding together to exercise collective clout in their own interest, against the bully behemoth to the north. They have a "raise all boats" philosophy at home and in the region. They pretty much created the Bank of the South and the ALBA trade group, and also contributed to the formation of UNASUR, the all-South America prototype for a "common market." This notion--of regional political/economic integration--is not new, but it has been mordant since Simon Bolivar and his dream of the United States of South America. It has been rekindled. It has been embraced by all of the new leftist governments and leaders. It has influenced policy in the continent's giant, Brazil. These ideas, fostered by Venezuela from the beginning, need to be made to work. They are the only hope for a prosperous, democratic future for Latin America, which will otherwise be converted back into a chattel for the U.S. Others are innovating, too, but this is just one more reason of many why I so often comment on Venezuela. I want these ideas to succeed.
5. Venezuela holds several lessons for those of us in the US who see our democracy being destroyed. For instance, I often cite Venezuela's transparent voting system (as opposed to our own), and also the importance of grass roots organization in Venezuela, as the second key to electing good leaders, and the importance of thinking big--not an insurance run health care system in which the poor will be screwed once again, but free, universal health care for all: not predatory capitalism with fast diminishing social benefits, but socialism with a very well regulated, socially responsible capitalist sector. Think big! The Chavez government's and the Venezuelan peoples' battle against domineering, rightwing corporate media--which is portrayed as anti-free speech here--has made me realize that we, too, must think big, not just asking our corporate media to be fair--with letters and emails they never read--but requiring it of them, which is our right as a sovereign people. If we want free speech for everyone, not just for corporate moguls, we have to use the clout of government to get it. We have to assert our sovereignty.
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In responding to the plight of Colombian activists like Principe Gabriel Gonzalez Arango--and, as you point out, so many others--thousands--I think it's equally important to expose the US complicity in Colombian atrocities and to counter the US government and media's incredible slanders against Venezuela, a country that respects human rights--because the US is pitting these countries against each other. I don't ignore the atrocities in Colombia. I do what I can to expose them. But this is the kind of government that the US wants to impose on Venezuela, and just imposed on Honduras.
One other thing about Colombia: The atrocities in Colombia are more well known here than is Venezuela's good human rights record and amazing achievements in education, poverty elimination and democracy itself. I've seen many articles in the US press about the death squads in Colombia--not enough certainly, and not sufficiently connecting the dots to US military aid, but surprisingly many. And I have seen none--zero, zilch, NONE!--acknowledging Venezuela's social, economic, democratic and human rights achievements. It is ALL uniformly negative coverage of Venezuela. We need to defend the good as well as condemn the bad. I defend the good in other countries as well--in Bolivia, Ecuador, wherever I see positive developments. But Venezuela has been particularly demonized as a set up to use Colombia to destroy Venezuela's democracy. There are several ways in which the US puppets running Colombia are already doing this, and I fear there is much more and much worse to come. We need to support democracy and try to end our country's support for the Colombian fascists, narco-thugs and militarists.
Finally, I see NUMEROUS posts at DU, every day, by rightwing operatives, trumpeting corpo-fascist 'news' hit pieces on Chavez. This has to be countered--it has to be balanced with alternative views and above all with facts. The facts--universally ignored and black-holed by the corpo-fascist media, and by their trumpeters here at DU--favor Chavez and his government. But almost nobody in the US knows them. I hate these kind of lies--the "Big Lie" kind of lies which were used to slaughter so many innocent people in Iraq. I really hate them. And I passionately believe in democracy. I believe that ordinary people are fully capable of self-government, and that democracy is the best form of government, but they desperately accurate information to do so. And we are not getting anything even close to accurate information about Venezuela nor about the leftist democracy movement in Latin America of which Venezuela is an important leader.
Our government is certainly capable of instigating unjust war--and they certainly look like that's what they have in mind for Venezuela. This could happen to Venezuela--in our name, using our money--with most Americans not having a clue about what the US is destroying in that country. Information is needed to build a movement against such a war, and against other gross injustices of US policy in Latin America. They demonize Chavez to knock it all down at once--the entire democracy movement that has blossomed there. They used their bogeyman Chavez against Mel Zelaya and his supporters, who are now being murdered, just like in Colombia. They have used their bogeyman Chavez to keep El Salvador out of ALBA. They are using it to slander and intimidate and "divide and conquer." So it is not an obsessive thing to be concerned about this and to try to counter it.
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