Bob's Links and Rants

Welcome to my rants page! You can contact me by e-mail: bob@goodsells.net. Blog roll. Site feed.

Saturday, November 20, 2004

Watch the Washington Post

Those bastards are trying to take over Venezuela again. Today's editorial, Watch Venezuela, could easily have been written by the looniest of the many loonies which make up a large part of the opposition to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (and it probably was). The Post berates the Bushies for not having paid enough attention to overthrowing Chavez in the past four years--probably because they were too busy overthrowing Saddam in the bloodiest and most incompetent way possible, to the relentless cheerleading of that same Washington Post.

Whatever problems there are with Chavez and his government, and there are many, the Bush administration has the least standing of anyone to complain, except for maybe the Post itself. They say that Chavez "survived" a recent recall referendum--he got 59% of the vote, compared to the meager 51% that Bush got against the totally hapless John Kerry. And listen to the Post's litany of complaints against Chavez, and see if they don't remind you of a smirky idiot from Texas who's always bragging about his man date:
In the past Mr. Chavez has been assailed by independent media who sympathize with his opposition; he has responded with a new media law that will allow his government to suspend the licenses of radio and television stations for content deemed "contrary to the security of the nation." A new penal code will outlaw most forms of public protest and designate some as terrorism. An expansion of the Supreme Court will allow the president to stack the only judicial body that has retained some independence. A campaign has been launched against civil society groups, beginning with the election monitoring group Sumate, whose organizers are threatened with charges of treason. Mr. Chavez is using Venezuela's oil revenue to fund antidemocratic or populist movements in nations such as Bolivia and to subsidize Mr. Castro's bankrupt regime.
"Independent media who sympathize with his opposition?" Almost all of the major media in Venezuela are OWNED by the opposition. Suspending licenses of radio and TV stations? Our government has been shutting down micro FM stations, and fining radio and TV stations for "indecency." And funding antidemocratic movements? That is pretty much a definition of US foreign policy for the past fifty years.

Venezuela and Cuba have their problems, to be sure. Two of the biggest are in Washington--the US government and the Washington Post.