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Chavez's Citizen Militias - Page 2

post #51 of 54
10/30/07 at 5:01pm
I think there are parallels in the "idealogical freedom fighter" - though in the Chavez story, the citizen militias's ideology is for the poor and for Chavez; and in Blackwater's case it's for the rich, powerful, Bush and Christian right. There are also parallels in the armed civilians accountable to no one category. The story's subject fired guns during the protests - Blackwater guards fired guns at refugees in the aftermath of Katrina. There were Blackwater people all over New Orleans before they even had a contract.
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post #52 of 54
10/30/07 at 9:22pm
As miserable and no-win as the situation in Venezuela is, I can't help but be amused in a fit of solipsism when reading these threads.
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post #53 of 54
10/31/07 at 5:45am
From the article:

López is emerging as one of the more prominent challengers to Chávez's rule.

For his efforts, López has had more than 20 charges filed against him, ranging from the alleged mismanagement of funds to "ecocide" after he replanted trees, which he claims are now thriving elsewhere in his municipality. He is officially barred from running in another election until 2017. More seriously, López has survived a kidnapping and three assassination attempts. During the most recent, last year, bodyguard Carlos Mendosa was shot six times in the passenger seat of their car, where López usually sits. "He died in my arms," López told Maclean's.

López positively identified the murderer, yet the man spent only one hour in police custody before he was released. "It all suggests something with somebody close to the government," he said. "Because it is unexplainable how, if we caught the assassin, if we have material proof that this guy was responsible for the assassination, he was let free." López's car still has the bullet holes, now rusting slightly around the edges. A friend says she doubts he will ever get them fixed.
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I say again, it doesn't sound anything like Blackwater. Your connections are tenuous, at best. I could as easily write, "Stalin used words. Greenpeace uses words. Greenpeace is Stalinist."
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post #54 of 54
2/11/08 at 3:15pm
Bumping this thread to post this interesting article about the Chavez opposition maturing: Life After Chavez.

Quote:
Is Hugo Chávez crashing?

It's hard to believe that a strongman who commands more than $40 billion in annual petroleum revenue, who has been granted the right to rule by decree by a rubber-stamp parliament, who controls his country's courts and television media, and who has recently spent billions on new weapons for his army could have much to worry about. Yet as Venezuela's president held a parade to celebrate the 16th anniversary of his unsuccessful military coup against a former democratic government last week, his own nine-year-old administration was struggling to pull out of a tailspin.

The trouble began in early December when Venezuelan voters rejected a new constitution that would have turned Venezuela into a socialist state along the lines of the Cuban model and made Chávez its de facto president-for-life. The self-styled "Bolivarian revolutionary" accepted the democratic verdict, according to multiple Venezuelan accounts, only after the country's military commanders told him they would not support him if the announcement of a fraudulent result touched off a popular rebellion.

Since then an increasingly erratic Chávez has dug his political hole steadily deeper. He shocked both Venezuelans and leftists across Latin America by publicly embracing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a onetime Marxist guerrilla group that long ago morphed into a syndicate of kidnappers and drug traffickers. Last week hundreds of thousands of people from Bogota and Caracas to Madrid and Tokyo responded with anti-FARC marches. Chávez then struck a bellicose posture toward Colombia's democratic government -- which only served to generate broad international sympathy for Colombia's conservative president, Álvaro Uribe, while once again provoking jitters among Venezuelan military commanders.

Venezuelans not worrying about war are increasingly obsessed with the remarkable result of Chávez's disastrous economic policies: worsening shortages of consumer goods and soaring prices, a combination previously seen only in such benighted places as Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. Almost every day, newspapers report another addition to the items missing from store shelves: from milk, bread, sugar, chicken, eggs, rice and cheese to auto parts and over-the-counter drugs. A black market thrives; food is smuggled across the border to Colombia, while cocaine in increasing quantities is trafficked back to Venezuela. Chávez recently raised the price of milk 37 percent, contributing to an inflation rate that hit 22 percent in 2007 and 3.4 percent in just the month of January. But he also threatened to seize private banks, farms, supermarkets and food distributors, thereby ensuring that the investments needed to end the shortages will not take place.
...
More at the link.
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