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April 4, 2006
US Criticizes Foreign Dude Who Fails to Care for His Own Country First
Here's an article in the NY Times criticizing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for--get this!--spending all kinds of money to fix things in foreign countries when there are still poor people in Venezuela. Thanks to this article, we learn that
Mr. Chávez is "spending considerable sums involving himself in the political and economic life of other countries in Latin America and elsewhere, this despite the very real economic development and social needs of his own country," said [Bush appointe] John Negroponte, the American director of national intelligence, in February at a Congressional hearing in Washington.
Can you imagine?! A president of some resource-rich country in the Americas, spending lots of money abroad while people in his own country go hungry, cold or naked, while there are children who are uneducated, people in their prime without work, and old people who are sick and alone? What would it be like to live in such a country? And what would it be like for citizens of other countries to know that their lives are shaped by the hypocritical meddling of a government eager to buy influence abroad, even at the expense of its own citizens' well-being?
p.s. Here's a response from Counterpunch that's pretty insightful.
Posted by holly at April 4, 2006 9:50 AM
Hey, this Foreign Dude, Pres Hugo Chavez, is such a copy-cat! I think he may be infringing on our patent for hypocritical meddling. Maybe that's the *real* controversy here. Who does he think he is, anyway? A president from the Bush-Dynasty?
God, I'm sooo glad I'm not American. Oh, WAIT I hate Canada, too!
There has been an interesting programme on television here over the last two nights on recent politics in South America (I think it was on the BBC). The focus was initially on the upcoming elections in Peru where another populist and former military officer who once led a failed coup d'etat looks poised to win the elections. The funny thing was that the presenter tried to interview Otto Reich, who, along with Negroponte and Elliot Abrams (spit), cut his teeth in the Reagan administration by orchestrating the propaganda campaign and the covert actions in Central America. The awful thing is that these self-serving twits, whose criminal activities were actually exposed in Congressional investigations and by special prosecutors and who are not even smart, have found their way back into government jobs.
But on Negroponte's (and Reich's) comments: of course there is poverty in Venezuela! It's the poor who are Chavez's main political support! And of course he's providing money to regional allies! Back in the 1980s, when the Latin American debt crisis broke out, the one thing that Washington and the international financial institutions worked hardest to avoid was any kind of collective response on the part of the debtors. The mantra was that solutions had to be determined on a case-by-case basis (never mind the creditors' cartel). That just got the region even further in debt and today, something like 40% of Argentines live below the poverty level. So Chavez -- along with several other regional heads of state -- is trying to help establish regional cooperation for an alternative to dependency on the US. And with the US mired in a very destructive war in Iraq now, all they really have to throw at Latin America is the likes of Negroponte and Reich. (That's why there are Canadians and Brazilians and others policing Haiti after the US-organized coup there.) This could change but the people in the South have to count themselves lucky for the moment.
Sorry for the rant...