NY Times: "Mr. Chavez' Unsavory Friends"

May 25, 2008
Editorial
Mr. Chávez’s Unsavory Friends

President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela has been caught. Despite his protestations of innocence, Interpol has corroborated the authenticity of thousands of computer files captured during a Colombian Army raid on a FARC rebel camp in Venezuela. Only a small share of this trove has been released, but it leaves little doubt that Venezuela has been aiding the guerrillas’ effort to overthrow Colombia’s democratically elected government.

The Colombian government released documents from the computers that suggest Venezuelan intelligence officials tried to secure weapons for the FARC and that Mr. Chávez’s government offered the rebels oil and a $250 million loan. Information in the files has already led to the seizure of FARC funds in Costa Rica.

Colombia can now take the issue to the Organization of American States, the United Nations Security Council or the International Court of Justice. But it might need further corroborating evidence, as Interpol only certified that the Colombian government did not tamper with the files but said nothing about the veracity of their content.

Mr. Chávez has a more important choice to make: he can sink once and for all into the role of regional pariah, to be contained or isolated in the name of regional stability, or he can commit to becoming a responsible neighbor. All of his neighbors, and all Venezuelans, should urge him to choose the latter course.

Responsibility means that Mr. Chávez must halt all aid to the FARC — which long ago chose drug trafficking over political liberation — and use his influence to get the rebels to lay down their arms and join the demobilization process that is under way for Colombia’s right-wing paramilitary groups.

Mr. Chávez’s posturing as a populist liberator is wearing thin at home, where voters defeated his proposal to overhaul the Constitution so he could stay in power indefinitely. It is also wearing thin abroad, where Mr. Chávez has used Venezuela’s oil riches to meddle in Argentina, Bolivia and Nicaragua, among others.

Latin America’s leaders need to realize that his actions threaten the stability of the entire region and that cheap oil does not lessen that threat. They need to remind Mr. Chávez of the commitment to nonintervention and democratic rule in the Organization of American States charter. And they need to make clear that he has only two possible moves from here: he can become a responsible neighbor or be ostracized in the hemisphere.

for more reality
try re-reading the whole piece with the name Chavez replaced with Bush, Reagen, Carter or Nixon. it's waaaaay more accurate then.

sadly the NYT seems unable to write such an editorial as that would probably expose a few truths that just are not available in public discussion/life.

Chavez has been caught is the top. last line in paragraph 2 then become amusing.
and just when since George the First was in has America not been de-stabilizing Colombia? War on Drugs...rubbish, you guys need cocaine to finance half the stuff you do, including Presidential Campaign Funding!

Chavez remains incredibly popular with the little people, you know that smelly herd of populace who do all the work, while editors of such paymaster worshiping, corporate scum papers as the NYT ride our backs.

but a change will come and one can only hope it's got guys like Chavez involved in it, Liberation Theology will out, etc...

now I see what baiting is too.

foal30 said:

I'll give you novel

Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, Chile and Venezuela.
all had elections deemed unsuitable to the USA. Funding of terrorists and en actioning of coup's followed. Whose reality?
Do we wish to include full scale invasions? again whose reality?

Commit yourself to becoming a responsible neighbor. Nobody wants to be a pariah.
Whoever wrote this shoddy piece clearly has no understanding of the reality of how America is viewed globally.

What part needs to be isolated or contained? Those ideas and actual practices of hospital and school building? Nationalization of Industry. Workers owning the Factory as opposed to being a slave to it?

2/ routine trash Bush.

as if this even needs to be brought up. what sane individual or organization could defend either he or his administration. What they could do is agitate their own country to sign up to the ICCJ and other paragons of international law, as opposed to asking for others to cop it. As above the NYT will not do this because they know just who the boss is.
As for whatever else you post, I couldn't care less, I am responding to this not whatever other journalist classics you've done the service of high-lighting.

3/ de-stabilizing.

are you seriously suggesting that Colombia is in any way stable? As in stable for the people not to get shot by rampaging hordes of drug-runners. (some admittedly masquerading as Marxist's).Stable for those with no clean drinking water? No school? No job? The American "War on Drugs" is simply one of the biggest lies ever told. The primary function is to ensure a leftist government is not formed (read:elected) in Colombia. Check the murder rates, and see if this is stability.
Explicit consent. Yeah they do as they are told. You can't seriously expect me to believe this is a two way dialog of respect and mutual admiration.
And of course you get consent when your Foreign Aid is a hundred Attack Helicopters, 500 000 assault rifles , a few tanks that always make a show come Election time to remind the people just how to vote against their best interests.


4/ just when will the President for life lie stop? Elections every 5 years, do not let this detail escape you.The referendum I think you mean did pre-empt unlimited runs for Office as opposed to say the American or Russian system of 2 x 4 year terms. This is not voting to install a President for Life.


I do realize it serves vested interests to paint Chavez as a terrorist sympathetic/sponsor, a megalomaniac, a loose cannon but when we analyze the gains made to the poorest sections of society, in every way his Administration leads the world in eliminating the burden of poverty and Capital oppression from them. We should be supporting him on this. Only a preferential option for the poor can rescue the malaise humanity finds itself in.

Hugo CHavez is a tyrant and should be removed from power.

could be, it will be interesting to see the longer he is President how much of a cult of personality grows.

as for the moment, the word tyrant is odd. Chavez has won elections that were far more free and fair than say America 2000, and Mexico 2006.

but our guys won then, so I guess that's OK?