Chávez is no revolutionary. He is a Perón, a fascist with a penchant for irritating yankies. So, he's a friend of Fidel, Qaddafi and Saddam. Great! What a man! That's really revolutionary!
He's launched his Bolivarian revolution pretending to be Simon Bolivar, but any hint of trade union militancy and he's more like General Pinochet. Trade unions are pissed off because Chávez wants to dictate who represents them, so they are revolting and we should support them. Chávez has even abandoned his own party to refound his military junta, the MBR-200. It's nothing to do with Acción Democratica or Copei. It's all to do with people being fucked off with big business and big government and some big bastard with too much power and using all the oil revenues while 80 per cent of the rural population live in poverty. This time it's Chávez, before it was Pérez - no difference for the ordinary Venezuelan struggling with poverty.
Chávez = Castro = Pastrana = Pinochet = Reagan = Thatcher = Bush = bin Laden = Qaddafi = Saddam. All dictators are the same, whatever their rhetoric. Chávez is just another dictator who needs a bullet in his head. Who cares if he's hated by the US?

I don't know enough about Venezuela to comment about the situation there, but I do know enough about human rights and the purpose of Indymedia to say that suggesting bullets in heads for anybody at all is not emancipatory, constructive or even bloody amusing. More and more in this fucked up world where those who willing to use violence and weapons rule, those of us who want a just and peaceful world are going to have to stand up against the knee jerk 'up against the wall' mentality. It ain't big and it ain't funny, it just makes for a new generation of blokes with guns deciding what's best for us.
no comply!
What is wrong with improving the mechanisms of formal justice, using shame, deprivation and confinement to punish rather than creating martyrs and more of a climate of armed mob rule?
for peace and justice,
z

I think the Chavez regime deserves closer scrutiny. Dismissing him as a "fascist dictator" comes easily to some IMC posters, who use the term so loosely and to describe such disparate regimes that it becomes a mere term of abuse and a substitute for real thought. It's what the tabloids or George Bush's speechwriters do - reduce everything to a black/white, with us/against us formula. It has, then, a certain propaganda value.

Describing him as such suits the Corporate sector very well. The New York Times states that among the criticisms levelled at Chavez are his "animosity to the private sector". This is the giveaway since it hints at the fact that the Chavez regime is not an entirely willing partner in the global neo-liberal agenda, nor a docile supporter of complete US hegemony. This is a rare phenomena for a resource rich country. Any regional government or insurgency professing such sentiments in earnest can expect attempts from the US to crush them. The record is long and grim and the fact that the New York Times is even reporting protests in Venezuela suggests the propaganda battle is underway.

While poverty is rampant and the poor have seen little of the oil revenues, currently much of the dissent emerges from the rich, in response to government attempts at land and tax reform which threaten their grip on the nations resources. Similarly, much of the Union actions have been by those that represent business interests, just like in Chile where the transport owners union played a major part in destabilising the elected Allende government. The right is clearly capable of mobilizing unions for its own perceived interests, as we saw in the UK with the fuel tax protests. The fact that they are unions doesn't mean they should be automatically supported does it? Should we fundraise for the Institute of Directors because they don't like Blair? Er, surely not.

Finally, I think that publicly suggesting, as Daniel does in his post, that Chavez be given a third eye is as contemptible as it is unwise.

What do you know about Chávez? OK, so he comes out with all the right noises and flirts with leaders of 'rogue nations'. But really, he's not a lot different from Carlos Perez, who he failed to overthrow in an abortive coup d'état in 1992. There's no doubt that his regime is corrupt. He's imposed a state of emergency, simply to bolster his own presidential powers. There's not really a threat from the military and the AD-Copei duopoly of the oligarchy has been broken, although it could rise up again if Chávez continues his present megalomaniac path while the poor remain poor.

What pisses off the trade unions is that he's stalled and tried to manipulate the election of the president of their equivalent of the TUC. The results were due in October and they are still delayed, purely because Chávez is paranoid. He's got no right to do this, but he's such a paranoid politician that, like Blair, he won't accept any one not in tune with his vague Bolivar revolution, which is more like caudillismo. To say that trade unionists have somehow been bought off because they are rejecting Chávez's choice of candidate is to insult and patronise the Venezuelan trade union movement. Anyway, who are you to say what the Venezuelans really want? Trade unions are a better barometer of public opinion than some white European sitting in England with fantasies about Latin American dictators!

Chávez won't even allow foreigners to criticise him. Imagine if Blair repatriated any foreigner in Britain who opposed the war on Afghanistan. We'd all call him a fascist, and we'd be right. So why isn't Chávez a fascist for introducing this law preventing the freedom of speech of foreigners? And what do you say about extrajudicial executions committed by the security services since 1998 which have not resulted in any trial. I note that Chávez has not used his enormous 'emergency' powers to arrest and try the perpetrators of human rights abuses.

As for helping the poor, how many Venezuelans have gained from the recent oil price boom Chávez has helped to encourage in OPEC? Well, his friends in the military have got some pretty neat jobs in the PdVSA, the country's main hydrocarbons producer and one of the largest oil companies in the world. General Guaicaipuro Lameda Montero now heads PdVSA and has already fallen out with the oil workers over a pay dispute.

You quote the NY Times as saying Chávez is against the private sector. Yet the Bolivarian revolutionary has crawled on his hands and knees to get foreigners investing in natural gas exploitation through joint partnerships with PdVSA. The Law for Promotion and Protection of Investment passed in October 1999 was positively pro-capitalist, in that it granted tax incentives to foreigners for up to 10 years. The IMF would be proud!

The main reason Chávez has not followed the neo-liberal agenda is because while oil prices were high and money was rolling in, he didn't have to implement measures to consolidate government finances and stabilise the economy. As oil prices plummet, Venezuela will be in deep trouble and Chávez will need IMF financing, which will entail a commitment to austerity measures. Out will go all the crap about helping the poor, and Chávez will become another Pinochet, mark my words.

Chávez, like any self-obsessed politician, wants to hold onto power more than he wants to help his nation. You can back him because he's out of favour with Washington, if it makes you feel good. Personally, I've aiming for a non-hierarchical society which doesn't bank on the kind of short-sighted solutions and megalomania offered by the populist left. That doesn't involve a dolt like Chávez or some old Stalinist like Castro.