http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d55CSEZvAP0&feature=player_embedded
This is so stupid, I am not going to bother to translate this little ditty from Hugo Chavez. The gist of it is that he expresses sorrow for all of the poor people condemned to live in the U.S. and then he sings a song about how he doesn’t love Hillary Clinton. It’s Chavez’ right to be an ass. No harm there. What I do find unsettling are the “optics” — the disciplined audience of party faithful, all wearing red and clapping in unison. We’ve see this movie before, and it never ends very well. Doesn’t exactly look like an atmosphere that encourages critical and independent thinking.
Marc Cooper is socialist, was a translator for the Allende government in Chile and barely escaped with his life when the coup happened.
But apparently he must have forgotten that Chavez stands against imperialism so therefore anything he does is permissible, justifiable, and exemplary.
I’ve noted of late the indistinguishable derisive rhetoric of both the “American” Left and Right.
One ring to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them.
Look, I haven’t exactly gone looking, but I haven’t seen anything major to indicate that Chavez is the horrible evil dictator he’s made out to be by most people or the benevolent democratic leader he’s made out to be by…Cindy Sheehan and Oliver Stone and some other activists. I always just see little things like this and then an opinion about Chavez. So I know a million opinions about Chavez, but very little fact.
Bob’s petulant obsession with deriding Hugo Chavez as a fool is getting very very boring. But does he want to work into the narrative the assumption that the US can be summed up by the TV foibles of its own presidents?
Is Polizeros that politically shallow?
There’s no reason to debate Chavez’s personality as the process he is part of is so much broader and more progressive; more humanist and more generous than any other on the planet at the present time. And thats’ not because Chavez, the man on TV, ‘stands against imperialism’ but because there is a genuine democratic movement across Venezuela that is deepening.
But Bob never addresses anything to do with that — never. You won’t find inconvenient truths on Poilizeros in regard to the social process in Venezuela. Polizeros, when it comes to Venezuela, prefers CNN speak. He has only one obsession among Latins south of the Rio Grande: Chavez. Thats’ South America in a nutshell for him. When these dumb Latins want to play at being “anti imperialist” all they can seemingly throw at Uncle Sam is caricatures.
Then anyone who thinks that Venezuela is an example of a very significant social change process — and there are tens of millions of people across Latin America and the rest of the world who do — is , according to Bob, simply being servile. They’re covering for a jester and the smucks refuse to recognize how determined Chavez is to morph into Joe Stalin!
As I’ve said before, go back in the archives here – I strongly supported Chavez in the beginning, but have become disillusioned with his increasingly autocratic and thuggish behavior – like having a paramilitary that answers only to him or jailing those who oppose him. I think the movement there was genuinely democratic and hopeful at first. But his movement is no longer that – it’s about him and solidifying power against increasing protest and economic turmoil.
The science is there, it is possible… but Hugo kinda’ lost me when he accused the US of causing the Haitian earthquake by setting off undersea explosions. Which is, of course, why that oil will continue to gush into the Gulf for years to come… go ahead, fool, cap off a nuke, or even a MOAB, see what happens. As a Mad Scientist I’m certainly interested.
Dave, if you knew what you were talking about I would afford you a measure of credibility. But you don’t, so I won’t.