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How Nicolas Maduro Is Strangling Democracy In Venezuela
In the superheated political conversation of Venezuela, smearing the other side is an age-old tradition. So it was hardly unusual to hear the National Assembly howl with invective this week over how political “parasites” are indulging in “speculation, hoarding, smuggling and black marketeering.
What was jarring was the orator in question—President Nicolas Maduro. Ostensibly, the Venezuelan national leader was letting loose against the perils of corruption, which he said threatened to wreck the economy and drive the country “far from socialism.” In practice, he was asking the legislature to grant him extraordinary powers to run the country as he pleases for the next year.
The government’s gambit for superpowers is not a foregone conclusion. To win “enabling powers,” as the handlers in Caracas call them, Maduro needs 99 votes, or three fifths of the 165-seat National Assembly. At present, his ruling coalition is one vote short, and so must convince at least one member from the national opposition front to turn coat.
The political opposition, led by Miranda state governor Henrique Capriles Radonski, is scrambling to block the initiative, and has even called on his supporters to boycott the law should it pass.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/10/how-nicolas-maduro-is-strangling-democracy-in-venezuela.html
12 replies
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...the Economyst, and the Christian Science Flapdoodle. Wishful thinking and a propaganda template we've seen over and over and over again, for a decade, during Chavez's presidency, and now re-tooled for Nicolas Maduro, and always handy, for decades and decades past, to accompany the attempted destabilization of Latin American countries and the overthrow of leftist governments.
It would be laughable if it were not so incredibly destructive and false.
Here, they treat Chavez as the "good ol' days." 
“If Chavez were around and told people that things would be fine, things would probably fine,” says Riordan Roett, a Latin America expert at Johns Hopkins University. “But this is Maduro, and even though he keeps trying to draw the Chavez cape around him, he doesn’t have the charisma or the backing to pull this off.” --from the OP
Chavez was the pariah before, but now, Maduro is going to fail because he's NOT CHAVEZ.
Gawd.
Anyone, one big item of disinformation (among many) in the article is its failure to note that MANY Latin American governments have "enabling laws" (or "decree laws"
, which are perfectly legal and constitutional, which resemble "states of emergency" in state government here (special circumstances laws, to give the executive the power to solve certain kinds of immediate problems), and ALL such laws, including Venezuela's, are not only discussed and voted on in the country's ELECTED legislature, but also they ALL, including Venezuela's, contain LIMITS as to time frames, powers granted (very specific) and other restrictions. Brazil's president, for instance, used "enabling laws" to save and preserve a portion of the Amazon forest where an uncontacted indigenous tribe was discovered. One of Chavez's set of "enabling" powers, granted him by the legislature, was to deal with catastrophic floods that destroyed a whole town and made tens of thousands of people homeless. These powers are neither casual nor autocratic. They are a normal part of the government system in many Latin American countries.
There is NOTHING UNSUAL about "enabling" laws in Latin America, just as there is nothing unusual about Latin American countries re-writing their constitutions and submitting the new constitution to the voters. LatAm's government systems are different than ours in several ways. And U.S. presidential "signing statements" are far more undemocratic than Latin America's "enabling laws." In fact, the latter IS democratic, and the former ISN'T. U.S. presidential "signing statements" and the many kinds of White House secret orders and secret budgets--not to mention secret wars--are blatantly undemocratic.
It is also quite evident that Enrique Capriles is a U.S. tool--yet another resemblance to past U.S./CIA atrocities in Latin America, even as recently as 2002, wherein the U.S.-supported coup d'etat against Chavez was enacted by the local fascist elite (to which Capriles has many ties).
There are MANY items of disinformation in this article. One other important one is that Evo Morales/Bolivia, Daniel Ortega/Nicaragua and Chavez-Maduro/Venezuela are using "enabling laws" to somehow harm "political and economic liberties." This is utter bullshit! These countries have never been more democratic than now--never, in their entire histories.
There has never been more public participation in politics and government. There have never been more inclusive civil liberties. There has never been more action by government for the common good. There have never been more honest and transparent elections, nor better voter participation. There has never been more equality, more fairness, more 'upward mobility', more health care, more educational opportunity, better wages, more effective labor unions, fairer taxation and better regulation of banks, corporations and rich elites for the common good.
It is utter bullshit and a "Big Lie" of enormous proportions that these countries have become undemocratic under leftist governments. The exact opposite is true. They have never been more democratic, and the poor majority has never had so much prosperity and so much say in their governments, as now.
It is obvious WHY a writer for these corpo-fascist publications would tell such lies. The corpo-fascists he scribbles for HATE socialism with a burning passion. THEIR idea of a good Latin American government is a fascist military regime that drops leftists out of airplanes over the ocean, after torturing them to death. They want dead leftists and the "freedom" to loot and plunder these countries--just as they have always done to Latin American countries, and as they have begun to do in earnest here as well. Anything for the common good--Social Security, Medicare, libraries, public schools, good wages/benefits for the many, fair taxation, government regulation of the banksters, etc.--is their target. And besides using the resources of our government, and their own resources, to detabilize and overthrow leftist governments in Latin America, they don't want other countries in the western hemisphere giving us any ideas that government should be "of, by and for the people." In their view, government should be "of, by and for" the uber-rich--here and there.
So they lie and lie and lie some more, including many lies of OMISSION, such as those above about "enabling laws," and others, such as NEVER reporting that the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean found Venezuela to be "THE most equal country in Latin America," NEVER reporting that Venezuelans rated their own country FIFTH IN THE WORLD on their own sense of well-being and future prospects, in the Gallup Well-Being poll last year, and FIRST in Latin America on even more detailed surveys of well-being and happiness this year.
They are propounding a FALSE NARRATIVE about Venezuela and other countries with leftist governments. It is shit journalism. And this article is a good example of it. CHERRY-PICK anything negative they can find, or invent, about Venezuela, IGNORE every positive--EVERY positive!--and predict chaos and failure. They've been doing this since 2002! The same article, over and over and over again.
And, believe me, that is just the top layer of perfidy--the most visible layer--aimed at Venezuela: the false narrative, to keep us stupid, and to help FOSTER destabilization and overthrow. The other layers of this abominable U.S. policy are enacted by our secret government, and by transglobal corporate and war profiteer operatives. They hate Venezuela in particular because Venezuela's elected leaders and the Venezuelan people have done much to inspire the leftist democracy movement that has swept through South America and into Central America, and have also led the new unity movement among Latin American countries--assertion of LatAm independence and sovereignty, having each other's backs, and unprecedented economic and political cooperation. Venezuela is thus THE major Latin American TARGET of the U.S. government and its corporate rulers and war profiteers. And this article is one of many, many newsbombs just like it that have pummeled Venezuela for over a decade, to help bring its government down.
Chavez's death has given them new hope. And they want a "domino effect," as this article makes clear. They want to topple Venezuela's socialist government, then the others. The NSA spying revelations tell us that they even have designs against the Workers Party government in Brazil, which is a more capitalist-oriented, leftist government. (Thus, the NSA spying on the phone calls and emails of Brazil's leftist president!) They want this leftist democracy movement stopped, in all of its forms and in every country where it has arisen, so that U.S. transglobal corporations can freely loot and plunder this region as before.
This is why they lie, and why shills like Mac Margolis are employed to write up their false narrative, over and over again. It is PROPAGANDA, not news. News would tell us the whole story--including the many achievements of the Chavez-Maduro government--in poverty reduction, access to education and health care, and so on. News would quote people favorable to the Chavez-Maduro government, which the Venezuelan people have elected, time and again--rather than just quoting obviously hostile, so-called "experts." This is NOT NEWS. It is a hit piece--yet another!
You do seem to know a lot about Venezuela. Were you born there, or did you move there?
I am curious - every now and then there are threads about leaving the U.S. and moving to another country. Most of the ones that people pick, generally in Europe, are not very welcoming towards American immigrants. They require either a job in a critical field, or boat loads of money in the bank to live off of. And they don't want to extend their generous safety net.
Is Venezuela more accommodating? Can a poor DUer move there with nothing but the clothes on their back and dreams of a perfect socialist state, and expect to receive the free healthcare, food, hygiene items, and housing that we all need and thus should have a right to expect?
