Monk

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CARACAS, Venezuela, Monday, Dec. 3 — Voters in this country narrowly defeated a proposed overhaul to the constitution in a contentious referendum over granting President Hugo Chávez sweeping new powers, the Election Commission announced early Monday.

-- Simon Romero for The New York Times

I'm stunned that they evidently had a straight-up election.

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This week, The Times reported that President Hugo Chávez is planning to move Venezuela’s clocks ahead by half an hour. The story created one of those wonderful moments of newspaper community, as readers around the nation suddenly shared an identical thought:

Say what?

Chávez unveiled his plans on his regular Sunday television show, in what several other news reports referred to as a “rambling” address. Reaction was swift, with many people recalling the scene in Woody Allen’s “Bananas” when a revolutionary hero becomes president of a Latin American country and announces that from now on, “underwear will be worn on the outside.”

-- Gail Collins for The New York Times

Any bets on how long it will be before this Chavez announces his ascendancy into godhood? I sense a North Korea kind of thing happening.

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Ah, what better way to spend Saturday night than to read up on the travails of Latin American politics! Venezuela's Chavez is the real star of this trenchant criticism of unthinking, emotional dictatorial leftism that still plagues the region. We are familiar in this blog with how lefty Western intellectuals are sometimes given to lend philosophical credence to Islamist politics and terrorism. Mr. Alvaro Vargas Llosa makes the case for how the same applies with respect to Latin American strongmen and collectivism. His phrase "Latin American Idiot" refers to Chavez and his predecessors who take advantage of the region's hardships and turn it into an anti-American ideology that covers up their own self-aggrandizement at the expense of their countrymen, so that maybe they aren't idiots so much as criminals.

The current revival of the Latin American Idiot has precipitated the return of his counterparts: the patronizing American and European Idiots. Once again, important academics and writers are projecting their idealism, guilty consciences, or grievances against their own societies onto the Latin American scene, lending their names to nefarious populist causes. Nobel Prizewinners, including British playwright Harold Pinter, Portuguese novelist José Saramago, and American economist Joseph Stiglitz; American linguists such as Noam Chomsky and sociologists like James Petras; European journalists like Ignacio Ramonet and some foreign correspondents for outlets such as Le Nouvel Observateur in France, Die Zeit in Germany, and the Washington Post in the United States, are once again propagating absurdities that shape the opinions of millions of readers and sanctify the Latin American Idiot. This intellectual lapse would be quite innocuous if it didn’t have consequences. But, to the extent that it legitimizes the type of government that is actually at the heart of Latin America’s political and economic underdevelopment, it constitutes a form of intellectual treason

Although there is some truth to the idea that America has sometimes played harshly with her poorer brown neighbors to the south, the problems of the region are deeper than American greed and indifference, and leaders like Chavez are not the answer, but is more like throwing gas on a fire.


(Source: Alvaro Vargas Llosa, "Return of the Idiot" at Foreign Policy)

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While many in Argentina would, nevertheless, not hesitate to call the Venezuelan president a clown or a madman, it’s worth keeping in mind that a very heady dose of megalomania is a prerequisite for even dreaming of confronting a rival as overwhelmingly powerful as the United States — which is also led by a president viewed, in many quarters, as a clown and a madman.

-- Luisa Valenzuela, "What We See in Hugo Chavez" in The New York Times

Ms. Valenzuela writes of how Mr. Chavez fans the old dreams of an integrated Latin America that can stand against the hegemony of the United States:

Two major Argentine characteristics are in play here: intrinsic distrust and the need for immediate gratification. Mr. Chávez awakens both of these inclinations, and it’s interesting to see them balance each other out. The dream of a single-currency Latin American Union, modeled on the European Union, to create, insofar as possible, a buffer against the hegemony of the United States no longer seems so impossible.

I’m no political analyst; I have delved into politics only as a fiction writer. But I’m an optimist by nature, and the feeling of empowerment that President Chávez instills, and that various South American governments are endorsing, strikes me as a good engine for further progress — a means of upgrading ourselves from the status of someone’s backyard into that of a truly autonomous region, beyond Mr. Chávez, Mr. Bush and every other form of demagoguery.

Such grand dreams, though, have to be built on wealth if they are to be more than dreams, and Chavez-style 'socialism' is not likely to produce that kind of economic foundation.

It would be better to focus on working on the cooperation needed for a pan-Latin America framework, rather than enjoying the cheap thrill of blaming America for their woes. As the Islamists need to understand, scapegoating an enemy (even a very powerful one) is not the answer to development and empowerment; you have to be constructive and creative in your own right.

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Hugo Chavez may be having trouble keeping Venezuelans fed, but the military cannot complain:

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 24 — Venezuela’s arms spending has climbed to more than $4 billion in the past two years, transforming the nation into Latin America’s largest weapons buyer and placing it ahead of other major purchasers in international arms markets like Pakistan and Iran.

Venezuelan military and government officials here say the arms acquisitions, which include dozens of fighter jets and attack helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles, are needed to circumvent a ban by the United States on sales of American weapons to the country.

They also argue that Venezuela must strengthen its defenses to counter potential military aggression from the United States.

It is observed, however, that even this sort of military build-up would not be much of a deterrent for the United States.

It does set up Venezuela as a regional superpower of sorts. The more interesting speculation is that Chavez is arming sure-loyalists in his military in preparation for future internal division that leads to anti-Chavez forces. I think this means that Chavez is president for life. Though, some would have us believe that this is indeed idle speculation:

“We simply have an interest in maintaining peace and stability,” General Muller Rojas said, describing the Caribbean as a crucial to its military influence. “We have no intent of using the Venezuelan armed forces to repress human rights.”

Well, I know that I am reassured.


(Source: Simon Romero for The New York Times)

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CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 16 — Faced with an accelerating inflation rate and shortages of basic foods like beef, chicken and milk, President Hugo Chávez has threatened to jail grocery store owners and nationalize their businesses if they violate the country’s expanding price controls.

... Fears that more private companies could be nationalized have put further pressure on the currency as rich Venezuelans try to take money out of the country.

-- Simon Romero for The New York Times

Wow, it is like the French Revolution and Castro all in one. I guess, centralization and collectivization really don't work. Downhill:

“It is surreal that we’ve arrived at a point where we are in danger of squandering a major oil boom,” said José Guerra, a former chief of economic research at Venezuela’s central bank, who left Mr. Chavez’s government in 2004. “If the government insists on sticking to policies that are clearly failing, we may be headed down the road of Zimbabwe.”

Maybe it's just a yankee, imperialistic plot, and it's time to start executing traitors and counter-revolutionaries.

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CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday called the U.S. secretary of state "my little girl" and told Washington to "go to hell" after it questioned his plan to seek special powers to legislate by decree.

... "That is a sacrosanct legal authority of Venezuela. Go to hell, gringos! Go home! Go home!" Chavez said during his weekly Sunday broadcast. "We're free here, and every day we'll be more free."

-- Reuters

Well, Mr. Chavez may become more free everyday, but I do not like the prospects of ordinary Venezuelans. Stalinist Collectivization has just never proved a fruitful policy for the people. This does not exactly brighten the global political situation either, but seeing how matters in the Middle East are falling apart, this is more of a minor headache, for now.

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Thinking about the news that Hugo Chavez jumped up sales of Noam Chomsky's book, after urging people to read it so that they too can presumably smell the sulphur of our president, also known as the Devil, I am wondering if antilapsarian is one of the ones who raced out to buy a copy of Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance.

I am actually a little tempted, myself. I am a fan of Chomsky's egalitarian writings, though I believe he went off on a wrong track when it comes to the Middle East and the Islamist threat. But maybe it really is better to be stupid than smart.

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