How Hugo Chavez's revolution crumbled

[hack89]

While the world has been preoccupied with the crisis in Haiti, Latin America has quietly passed through a tipping point in the ideological conflict that has polarized the region -- and paralyzed U.S. diplomacy -- for most of the past decade.

The result boils down to this: Hugo Chávez's "socialism for the 21st century" has been defeated and is on its way to collapse.

During the past two weeks, just before and after the earthquake outside Port-au-Prince, the following happened: Chávez was forced to devalue the Venezuelan currency, and impose and then revoke massive power cuts in the Venezuelan capital as the country reeled from recession, double-digit inflation and the possible collapse of the national power grid. In Honduras, a seven-month crisis triggered by the attempt of a Chávez client to rupture the constitutional order quietly ended with a deal that will send him into exile even as a democratically elected moderate is sworn in as president.

Last but not least, a presidential election in Chile, the region's most successful economy, produced the first victory by a right-wing candidate since dictator Augusto Pinochet was forced from office two decades ago. Sebastián Piñera, the industrialist and champion of free markets who won, has already done something that no leader from Chile or most other Latin American nations has been willing to do in recent years: stand up to Chávez.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/24/AR2010012402379.html

[izquierdista]

1. Well, isn't that special

I think I will wait to read the World Socialist Web Site's take on things before I believe the gospel according to the Washington Post.

[Jim Sagle]

2. The op's handle may shed some light on this.

;)

[d_b]

3. lol diehl

[bemildred]

4. Big Diehl. nt

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Jackson Diehl?

Do you know what his journalistic qualifications are?

He was a SPORTS WRITER for the Yale Daily News when he was an undergraduate.

An amazing number of names that I saw on the bylines of the Yale Daily News when I was a grad student there would turn up with their bylines in major newspapers or there names in the staff list of major magazines or on the production staffs of PBS programs right out of college. I knew some of them personally, and they were really nothing special.

No, there's no class system in the U.S. None at all... :sarcasm:

By the way, wasn't Chavez' referendum just approved?

As far as the election in Chile is concerned, presidents there are limited to one term, so we'll see what happens after a few years of right-of-center politics.

[hack89]

8. He is an award winning foreign correspondent.

Diehl joined The Post in June 1978 as a reporter on the metropolitan staff. He joined the foreign desk in 1981, working as a correspondent from January 1982 until July 1992 in three of The Post's bureaus: Buenos Aires, Warsaw and Jerusalem. From October 1982 until November 2000 Diehl worked in several newsroom management positions, including assistant managing editor/foreign and assistant managing editor/national. He became deputy editorial page editor in February, 2001.

Diehl was awarded the Inter-American Press Association Award for Interpretive Journalism in 1984 for his coverage of South America, and the Bob Considine Award of the Overseas Press Association in 1990 for his coverage of the 1989 revolution in Eastern Europe.

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/jackson+diehl/

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. He still has neocon biases

Awards or no awards.

[Joe Chi Minh]

13. Gee whizz! If he was covering geopolitics from a US perspective, those

awards are badges of infamy, for crying out loud!

Award-winning foreign correspondent! Hitler was on the short-list for the Nobel Peace Prize.

[Vidar]

6. More baseless garbage.

[jonathan_seer]

7. great example of spin being substituted for factual reporting and thoughtful analysis

Using a few bits of data, a picture of failure is painted spreading across Latin America's left leaning governments.

It's all so sensible and glib, too sensible and glib.

The simple facts he uses fall far too short of the proof needed to makes his idiotological conclusions re: Chavez's failure and Chile's election.

He refers to the election of a center-right government in Chile as proof of this, when it is actually proof that Chile has an elected government and changes leadership from time to time.

In any case he uses an antiquated definition of "right wing" when he refers to Pinoche.

That's like referring to A Republican victory as returning to President Lincoln's values and beliefs.

NOT A CHANCE. Chile is a mature republic, and this sort of change is NORMAL - and DOES NOT indicate a continental failure on any level.

Even more pathetic his POV reflects the habit that causes the USA so much grief when dealing with Latin America, and that's to connect dots as if the significant differences between these nations is so irrelevant you can use Chile to analyze Venezuela, and use Honduras to back up those claims.

Just how rediculous this is can be demonstrated by using the English speaking nations of the world.

We can explain the election of Barack Obama via Brown's rising to PM in the UK, which obviously indicated a trend in English speaking nations to move left and this move was initiated by the Australians who finally shed its right wing government after a decade in power a year before Obama's victory.

Of course to make it sound solid you leave out the anomalies like Bolivia and Canada respectively

Even more extreme in terms of using facts to create lies - the forces that "defeated Chavez's revolution" do NOT exist as an opposition force - they're economic.

As long as the world was riding high on the world bubble, so was Venezuela. It endured longer than other nations thanks to huge oil exports, but eventually the deep worldwide recession came to Venezuela thus the devaluation Etc.

I wonder if he'd ever use the same idiotic reasoning to declare the American Democratic experiment is killed by the Wall Street Economic bubble economy built of non-existent assets implosion.

And our American Corporate News Establishment (ACNE) is beside itself as Americans consider it a failure when it comes to reporting the news.

Strip out the spin and the entire article disappears, because the few facts alone don't amount to anything.

[bemildred]

9. It's "interpretive journalism", see?

Used to call it "propaganda", especially when people we don't like did it, but that has too many bad connotations, so it's "intepretive journalism" now.

[southernyankeebelle]

11. Am willing to bet somewhere behind the scene the US is involved some way.

[Capers]

12. Boy, somebody's reaching.

[bvar22]

14. Quick Chavez review:

Chavez has diverted some Corporate Profits to...

*Feed the hungry

*Educate the Ignorant

*Heal the Sick

*House the Homeless

*Give voice to the disenfranchised

Why YES!
I can see why so many in the US hate him.
This kind of thing could catch on,
and we (The RICH Corporate Owners) can't afford to let THAT happen here.

VIVA democracy!!!
Venezuela belongs to the Venezuelans.
It is none of our business.


"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone

[RedCloud]

15. And has more oil than Saudi Arabia.

[KoKo]

16. Why are you Spamming this Board about Chavez 24/7? What's your Agenda?

:shrug:

[hack89]

17. Why don't you tell everyone just how many Chavez OPs I have posted? nt