More Left Wing Death Squads
Mary Madigan
It's odd how the term "Death Squad" is usually preceded by the phrase "Right Wing". Odd because state terrorism is virtually owned by Marxism. 100 million dead as a result of Communism is proof of that.
It's also funny how the Left repeats, ad nauseum, the phrase "Democratically Elected Hugo Chavez". What kind of Democratically elected leader kills people for the "crime" of protesting his regime?
History is repeating itself. Nationalist and Socialist, the "Democratically elected" Hugo Chavez is predicatably politicizing his armed forces.
The most lasting impact of Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chávez's self-proclaimed revolution may not be his incendiary speeches against U.S. "imperialism" nor his daily praise for the Cuban dictatorship, but something that has drawn much less attention — the politicization of Venezuela's armed forces.I doubt that former PDVSA worker Jose Villas, who was murdered by Chavez's Left Wing Death squads while protesting Chavez's regime would consider these deaths squads "folkloric".On Tuesday, at the swearing-in ceremony of his new defense minister, Orlando Maniglia, Chávez proclaimed that Venezuela's armed forces are "anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist," and thus opposed to U.S. policies in the region. "The Venezuelan armed forces are at the heart of the revolution — alongside the people," he added. At another ceremony days earlier, in which he decorated 96 Cuban "internationalist" teachers, Chávez stated that "The Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions are already one and only," and will defend one another against a potential U.S. invasion, the daily El Universal and the Reuters news agency reported Saturday. U.S. officials deny any plans to attack Venezuela, and say the idea exists only in Chávez's mind.
While Chávez's increasingly belligerent rhetoric is nothing new — in fact, his revolutionary fervor seems to be directly proportional to the price of oil, which has risen from $9 per barrel when he took office in 1999 to $61 today --he is taking dramatic steps to restructure the Venezuelan armed forces, which may haunt what is left of Venezuela's democracy for decades to come.
"People don't take him seriously, but he has been doing everything he said he would do," says Alberto Garrido, a Venezuelan writer specializing in military affairs.
"Chávez has tried to give this process a folkloric connotation, but it isn't folkloric at all."
"The Territorial Guard is being created as a death squad, a terrorist and killing apparatus, covered up by the impunity it would get from its direct dependence from the head of state," said Oswaldo Alvarez Paz, one of the few remaining opposition state governors.Many anti-war protesters, between shouts of Bush=Hitler, will effusively praise Chavez's "democratically elected" government. How many of them would be willing to go to Venezuela and protest any aspect of Chavez's homicidal "democratically elected" regime? I'm guessing none.
[Miami Herald link thanks to Fausta's Bad Hair Blog]
Freedom House currently lists Venezuela a 3.5--"partly free," and significantly less free than many other South American nations.
Notably, since Chavez' two failed military coups and subsequent election, freedom has been on a downward slide there.
The original one should have been destroyed in 1961, when the United States government organized, trained and armed a substantial unit of Cuban freedom fighters -- Brigade 2506. Then at the last minute, the treacherous and vile Kennedy administration dumped them at night to land at a coastal swamp rather than near the port where anti-communist help was expected to show up, and pulled the plug on promised air support from the US Navy. God-damn them. And I'm not talking about the Cubans here.
I have nothing against a policy of bringing democracy to the middle east, half way around the world. But wouldn't it make more sense to the the victims of the totalitarian leftist regime 90 miles from Key West to clean out their own local communist-fascist (two sides of the same coin) regime, and help other liberty-minded men and women stop a new one from taking root in South America, before investing all this effort to clean up the poisons of the islamo-fascist world?
After I recently studied in detail the bit of history that I more or less ignored since 1961, about the way that bastard Kennedy treated the Cuban fighters of Brigage 2506, I felt as if someone had burned the American flag, right there in the oval office of the White House. And that's not a feeling I like.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
He's not "democratically-elected." He's an election-rigging thug.
Arthur Silber* Arnold Harris.Bush* is plotting to impose a fascist dictatorship on his people in the name of "democracy".(*ha! ha! ha! quite a character! ha! ha! ha! Back to our regular programing....)"Given that the planet is about the size of Saturn I'd have to agree that it'd probably be pretty uncomfortable to live on, but then maybe not: you'd likely be squished like a bug by the gravity so fast you wouldn't have much time to be uncomfortable."
Send Chavez there and let him turn that into his "People's Republic"!
Venezuela is probably one of the least free nations in South America. Part of the problem may be the oil economy.
Costa Rica, in contrast, is a Central American country that has been a democracy for years. Since it was formed, Costa Ricans have had, through the country-wide coffee industry, fairly equal opportunities. They don't have equal incomes, but they have equal opportunities.
When the Venezuelan government controls the oil industry, it not only guarantees unequal opportunity, it guarantees that the government doesn't have to rely on the people for income. The only thing Chavez has to do is guarantee that no one will kick him out of office. Like the Saudis.
The fact that the Western Left supports Chavez is just proof that they'll side with any scumbag, as long as he's an anti-American scumbag.
But they'll like supporting Chavez even more than they support the Islamist terrorists because Chavez talks socialism...
They include something interesting called Benford's law, and how the "no" votes for the election violated it.
Maor:
Commies talk in total drivel because they use language to kill thought rather than to express thought. See Orwell's 1984, particularly his appendix on Newspeak.
Andrew Ian Dodge:
You are right. I have heard "progressives" dismiss Solzhenitsyn as a "Czarist", so his Gulag Archipelago is invalidated and so Stalin wan't so bad after all. Of course, if you call them Stalinists, they'll scream "McCarthyism!"
Scorecard:
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, etc. -- 100,000,000+ deaths
Senator McCarthy - 0 deaths
But, Jimmy Carter said that Chavez was elected, fair and square. If you can't trust Jimmy, who can you trust? He's so progressive. /sarcasm
You are right. I have heard "progressives" dismiss Solzhenitsyn as a "Czarist"
Some "progressive" "peace" activists have defended Saddam, others have defended Milosevic. Most support the Intifada. Progressives are kind of like Orwell's Ministry of Peace. With their firm belief that Freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength, it's no surprise that they talk in total drivel.
Yes, but I wonder WHY they find it so important to kill thought. Hitler was a raving lunatic but he made his points quite clear. Same thing with mentally retarded KKK guys and Islamic terrorists. But communists always sound like some bizarre version of Mad Libs. Why are they so different?
*Disclaimer--not endorsing this, but won't be crying if it happens, either.
"But, Jimmy Carter said that Chavez was elected, fair and square. If you can't trust Jimmy, who can you trust? He's so progressive. /sarcasm"
I hate Jimmy Carter and anybody he likes I hate.
M. Scott Eiland wrote:
"The irritating thing is that even if Venezuela lucks out by someone giving the evil SOB a .45 caliber lobotomy*, we'll end up having to put up with seeing his ugly mug on moonbat-worn T-shirts for the next fifty years. Life just isn't fair sometimes. :-(
*Disclaimer--not endorsing this, but won't be crying if it happens, either."
I am endorsing it, and I would cheer if anybody had the guts to do it. As for those T-shirts, I would treat any T-shirt, bumper-sticker, or button praising a Communist dictator exactly as I would an old-fashioned Communist Party membership card. Anybody who praises a Communist dictator is a Communist, and should be treated as such. I know, I know, I know the inevitable response to what I just said, so I'll just repeat myself:
Scorecard:
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Castro, etc. -- 100,000,000+ deaths
Senator McCarthy - 0 deaths
Maor wrote:
"Yes, but I wonder WHY they find it so important to kill thought. Hitler was a raving lunatic but he made his points quite clear. Same thing with mentally retarded KKK guys and Islamic terrorists. But communists always sound like some bizarre version of Mad Libs. Why are they so different?"
Indeed. I have long found that Nazis, KKK, Islamic terrorists, as well as my more formidable enemies on the American Right (or the Bottom Right of my 2-dimensional spectrum) such as Bork, Santorum, etc., write and speak so much better than Communists, neo-Communists, and nihilists of the Left (or Bottom Left), who seem to always be competing to see who can be the worst writers ever. I think it is because my enemies on the Bottom Right at least believe in some kind of spiritual ideal, e.g., the Aryan Race, Allah, etc., even if diametrically opposed to my own, while my enemies on the Bottom Left believe in nothing more than "atoms and the void".
People who say "democratically elected" always ignore that "democratically elected" doesn't mean "democratically ruling", let alone "liberal democracy", as others have noted.
True. It doesn't necessarily mean "respecting individual rights to life, liberty, and property", which is the whole raison d'etre of any legitimate government. If it doesn't respect the rights of the individual, then I'm against it, no matter how popular it may be.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI