Chavez: The Venezuelan Boor

Sitting in airports and flying around the country occasionally gives me some time to get caught up on world events other than the snapshot news at the top of the hour that one views on airport terminal TVs or in the early am.

While travelling to and fro the not-so-lovely City of Pittsburgh earlier this week, I read two interesting articles about our latest little Latin nemesis, Venezuelan 'president' Hugo Chavez. And, while not being completely ignored in the major media in the U.S., it would seem that the American media is more fascinated by Islamo-fascists rioting over cartoons than the threat that this little socialist poses to the Western Hemisphere.

The first article that piqued my interest was a brief article entitled "Chavez turns up heat in tit-for-tat battle with Bush" that was found on page six of Tuesday's Financial Times.

In sum, this article described how Chavez is insulting Condoleeza Rice by blowing her a kiss on his national TV, calling George Bush "Mr. Danger," spreading his influence throughout Latin American and threatening to cut off its oil supplies to the U.S.

Ironically, however, the article also stated that Venezuelan oil can only be processed in US-based refineries owned by Citgo, the Venezuelan state-owned oil company.

After explaining how the Venezuelan autocrat expelled the US naval attache, essentially accusing the US of spying--and the US responding in kind by expelling Venezuela's embassy chief of staff in Washington, the article quotes Adolfo Salguiero, an international relations analyst in Carcas as saying:

"Relations with the US are deteriorating and they are going to get worse. At some point this year we could wel face a grave diplomatic crisis as Chavez attempts to rally nationalist sentiment ahead of [his re-] election."

As always, for every one of society's parasitic ticks to thrive today, the enemy must be the US (or capitalism).

The second article is from Foreign Policy magazine and brilliantly describes Chavez's rise to power, his tactics in demonizing America to keep his population's focus away from his own totalitarian tendecies, even has he faces opppostition. In sum, the article describes, the modern-day, democratically-elected dictator.

It is an excellent article and well worth the read. You can link to it here:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3332

As you read the article about Chavez, you may find (as I sadly did) similarities between his tactics and those of the political parties in America.