The New York Times and the Washington Post trash Maduro

This week end two majors newspapers of the world have come out with harsh to blistering editorials. They are worth putting in full in this blog as for once, editorials sound almost as stringent as this blog.  I have taken the liberty to highlight a few words in both editorials, to show how degraded the image of Venezuela is. For two papers and this blog to use almost the same language is quite striking, unless, of course, chavista will claim it a conspiracy and yours truly advising the editorial boards of both papers.....

The dumb and the sharp

It is nice to see that while at the OAS seat in Washington all but a couple of folks play dumb on Venezuela, a few blocks away at the Washington Post Jackson Diehl calls it as it is.

The Washington Post criticizes Obama silence on Rosales forced exile and brave Peru

It is interesting to read the Washington Post criticizing a president they endorsed in November, at his hundred days mark, as he rolls high in polls. The editorial is clear, extremely clear for whomever wants to read it, in this blog or at the White House and State. I am posting just the end to make sure you do not miss it. My emphasis.

That's certainly a worthy goal -- and we have no objection to Mr. Obama's handshake with Mr. Chávez. The administration's strategy -- to open up a constructive dialogue with Venezuela and avoid being cast as Mr. Chávez's Yanqui foil -- is reasonable; it is also the same strategy as was tried, unsuccessfully, by the previous two administrations. What doesn't make sense is to deliberately ignore steps by Mr. Chávez to consolidate an autocracy. In so doing, the administration encourages Latin American governments that have shrunk from confronting the Venezuelan strongman to continue in their own silence. It sends pro-Chávez governments in countries such as Bolivia and Nicaragua the message that they can persecute their own domestic opponents with impunity. And it makes it more rather than less likely that Venezuela, with the help of Iran and Russia, will become a threat to the United States.

Peru's democratic government is to be congratulated for its decision to offer Mr. Rosales asylum. It is shameful that the Obama administration won't say so.

As the Post writes, I had no problem with Obama's hand shake. But that should not mean acquiescence on something as patently autocratic and anti democratic as what Chavez is doing these days. I am going to allow myself to repeat once again a warning to President Obama and Secretary Clinton: Chavez is out to get you and he does not play by the rules. Ever. You are dealing with a thug. Deal with it!

-The end-

The post November US

Two articles today allow us to think that the US will not be as tame in its relations with Chavez, no matter which is the new administration. We already know that Obama and McCain have been competing in being the harshest on Chavez and his pals, but what these two articles make us see is that the "anti-Chavez feel", to give it a name, is percolating beyond the presidential candidates circles, an essential condition for a bipartisan policy against Chavez to be implemented.

The first one is an editorial, no less, from the Washington Post. Here the novelty is a clear petition that the US only helps friendly regimes and let the other ones sink in the "XXI century socialism" predictable fiasco. I am not too sure about the hang up about Correa who is weaker than one would expect in spite of winning his referendum in rather scandalous conditions. To begin with he lost in Guayaquil, his home state, thus previewing the rise of a strong opposition much faster than what many will expect. And second the dollarization of Ecuador's economy which will limit his range of action. If Correa dares to leave the dollar zone the backlash could quickly undermine him and create conditions for an early exit. After all dollarization survived the constituent assembly, the ideal time to make such change, and thus Correa might have missed his real chance at controlling all à la Chavez.

But the Post is right on one thing: the satellites of Chavez need more the US than the US needs them and it is simply fair that the US start using its leverage in forcing them to chose once and for all between socialist misery or democracy and a diversified economy. The resources recovered them can be transferred to more reliable partners or allies such as Colombia, Peru and the rest of Central America. Crisis or no crisis, "capitalism" and true democracy have demonstrated historically to be resilient, a re-inventive system whereas autocratic socialism has yet to establish a successful example anywhere in the world. Time is on the US side and Western values and thus it is time that the US starts speeding things up by choosing who to help: the other side will rot even faster.

The other article is from O'Grady at the WSJ. It is a direct warning that the congressional democrats need to put their act together. We do observe indeed a tendency from the House to be too lenient towards extremist groups while refusing to vote the free trade treaty with Colombia. However we cannot help but be dismayed by that congressional ambivalence that does not exist with Obama who is called to become their leader next November (I think it is in the bag for him as I cannot foresee how the GOP will recover in one month from the financial crisis). I suspect that once Obama is in the white House things will straighten up some as it has been clear that part of the ambiguous congressional posturing was for electoral purposes. Freed of that pressure and looking ahead to 8 years of rule the trade treaty with Colombia can be easily voted, in particular with the help of Chavez as he wants nuclear energy. We should not forget that we can always rely on Chavez to offer his enemies the necessary arguments to counterattack him.

If the current summary of Venezuela situation by Ms O'Grady is excellent (includes a video where she stumbles on the word Nuclear), we can still regret that she could not resist the cheap shot of showing Pelosi and Cordoba in chavista red. The picture was taken a year ago, when Cordoba was still not as implied in terrorist activity and before the freedom of Ingrid Betancourt. Since that picture was taken even Chavez publicly broke with the FARC (even if we all know that secretly he is doing anything he can to help them, but that is another story). Probably today Cordoba would not be received anymore by Pelosi. However this partisan moment of O'Grady does not diminish at all the main point she makes: the US Congress will have to chose sides if it hopes to retain any relevance.

-The end-

Power Grab in Venezuela

[erratum] It is not me saying it, it is the Washington Post in today's editorial. Do not miss it, as complete in a few paragraphs as it gets.

The last line is just great:
His power grab is a backhanded tribute to the strength of Venezuela's democratic opposition -- proof that this tribune of the people actually fears them.

But there is an interesting detail for which I will ask the collaboration of the readers of this blog. Read the comments on this editorial and you will read a collection of PSF old and tired clichés. I mean, really old and really tired. You must know that there is concerted effort by the Venezuelan government to discredit the WaPo, all started by a letter from Izarrita (a.k.a. Andres Izarra the on and off communications minister). If you read the comments you will quickly realize this, by the lack of originality, the repetitive tone, etc... No point of course in rebutting these people, do not waste a minute of your precious time. However if you could drop a simple note of support it would be great (you need to register, sorry, but it is for a good cause and the Post does not send spam). The note could be simply "Excellent editorial! Great to see that the Washington Post sees clearly the situation in Venezuela." Let's see if this blog by itself can place as many positive notes as the negatives Izarrita is trying to send.

And in case you wondered who are the people besides the comment handles, one of them is probably Greg Wilpert at Venezuelanalysis. His descent into pro Chavez sycophancy is making him a strange version of a XXI century Tokyo Rose. It is amazing that someone would put his pen so easily at the service of justifying the disqualification of folks for political motives. He goes as far as writing that Primero Justicia was a political party in 1998 when it was just an NGO, becoming a party two years later, I believe. He also forgets, conveniently, that the real accusation was to use some budget money to pay employees instead of something else of the budget, due to Chavez not sending the funds owed to Chacao. But Chavez does fund shifting all the time and Ruffian is blind to it, hence Wilpert accomplice silence?. That Leopoldo Lopez did not profit himself of a single penny does not seem to bother Greg Wilpert either. Then again the Tascon list does not seem to have deprived him of sleep in its days.

[erratum] I put the wrong link for the editorial. Sorry. It is corrected now.

-The end-

The Washington Post on the Russian list

As I was finishing the preceding post, Immaturity Politics, I received the latest OpEd from Jackson Diehl, someone who knows exactly what is going on in Venezuela. His article would not quite fit in the point I wanted to make, but it is too important to miss and deserves to be put in the "must read" section. It looks like Leopoldo US tour was successful.

-The end-

When it rains, it pours: now the Washington Post makes a Reyes lap top editorial

Not a good Sunday for Chavez. There was this piece from Romero about his desperate need to control everything; the one by Carroll feeling sorry for the guy; and now the blast from the Washington Post. Here is the title and even more telling subtitle:

Hard-Drive Diplomacy
Evidence of Venezuela's support for terrorism could carry Hugo Chávez to the pariah status he deserves.

Oh dear.....

I am reporting this late because for some reason the mail daily digest of the WaPo came in late today. But talk about cosmic karma, the icing on the cake after the two previous articles.

Note that if the WaPo is direct, and strong, and convinced of Chavez complicity with the FARC, it also understands very well the rather cowardly Latin American mood. Thus its very constructive solution, one advocated in this blog already: punish the culprits, do not punish Venezuela. The WaPo wisely notices that the referendum was voted down in December and thus a majority of Venezuelans clearly do not agree with the FARC ties. Punishing all of us can only serve Chavez interests.

All in all AN EXCELLENT assessment of the present situation. Let's hope that all the people concerned, from the silly lefty Democrats (Delahunt) to the right wing nutty Republicans (Connie Mack) will sit down together and realize the gravity of the situation, that the time of permissiveness and grand standing is over.

-The end-

The case for Colombia: the Washington Post takes side for Colombia and against Venezuela

Today's editorial in the Washington Post is a must read because it marks a milestone in how a newspaper regards its role when the interests of a country are at stake, when faced with outdated parochialism from its top leaders. In this almost acerbic editorial the Post takes directly upon Speaker Pelosi and Union leader Sweeney, accusing them of false motives regarding their opposition to the trade deal with Colombia and thus favoring Venezuela. It cannot be any clearer. Below I post in full the editorial with my comments in between paragraphs. It is just too delicious to miss such an opportunity even if the editorial speaks for itself.

--- --- --- --- --- --- ---

Colombia's Case
The intellectual poverty of a free-trade deal's opponents

The subtitle says it all from the start.

HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says the Bush administration's free-trade agreement with Colombia may not be dead, even though she has postponed a vote on it indefinitely. If the White House doesn't "jam it down the throat of Congress," she said, she might negotiate. Ms. Pelosi wants an "economic agenda that gives some sense of security to American workers and businesses . . . that somebody is looking out for them" -- though she was vague as to what that entails. Nor did she specify how anyone could "jam" through a measure on which the administration has already briefed Congress many, many times.

The Post calls Pelosi's bluff, if not lies. The lack of real leadership from Pelosi has been quite apparent and she has been a disappointment as a speaker. Her sole agenda seems to have been countering Bush. It is her right but not her duty for someone in her position. She could have started by realizing that Bush was a lame duck and thus think a little bit more outside the sand box keeping partisanship at home and not let it spill on the necessary bipartisan approach for foreign policy. Iraq, for all of its mistakes and horrors cannot cloud Pelosi's mind on other issues. That is her duty.

Still, in the hope that Ms. Pelosi might in fact schedule a vote, it may be worth examining once more the arguments against this tariff-slashing deal. Perhaps we should say "argument," because there is really only one left: namely, that Colombia is "the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist" and that the government of President Álvaro Uribe is to blame. As AFL-CIO President John Sweeney put it in an April 14 Post op-ed, union workers in Colombia "face an implicit death sentence."

Because that is the only argument that is left for Sweeney and Pelosi now that all the other arguments have been made irrelevant. The Post implicitly recalls that it would actually benefit US workers as the trade deal FAVORS exports toward Colombia. The only advantage for Colombia is that its favorable status in exporting to the US will be made more permanent instead of being subjected to the vagaries of whomever is sitting in the Oval Office or Congress. In other words two Democrats are opposing the creation of more potential jobs for US workers that would be exporting to Colombia. Priceless! The third Democrat in the race must be be beaming!

Colombia is, indeed, violent -- though homicide has dramatically declined under Mr. Uribe. There were 17,198 murders in 2007. Of the dead, only 39 -- or 0.226 percent -- were even members of trade unions, let alone leaders or activists, according to the Colombian labor movement. (Union members make up just under 2 percent of the Colombian population.)

This hardly suggests a campaign of anti-union terrorism in Colombia. Moreover, the number of trade unionists killed has fallen from a rate of about 200 per year before Mr. Uribe took office in 2002, despite a reported uptick in the past few months. (Arrests have already been made in three of this year's cases, according to Bogota.) And evidence is sparse that all, or even most, of the union dead were killed because of their labor organizing. As Mr. Sweeney and other critics note, precious few cases have been solved, which is hardly surprising given that Colombia's judicial system has been under attack from left-wing guerrillas, drug traffickers and right-wing death squads -- a war, we repeat, that Mr. Uribe has greatly contained. But in cases that have been prosecuted, the victims' union activity or presumed support for guerrillas has been the motive in fewer than half of the killings.

The Post says it all briefly. Even crudely presented as that, it hardly seems enough of a reason to stop the trade deal when China children factories are allowed to export to the world, and the US. Apparently Colombia's evil are much greater than workers exploitation in China, in a scale that was not seen since the XIX century worst hours of US capitalism. where are the Union Leaders of China? How often they visit and sit down with Sweeney and Pelosi to ask them for help in protecting China's workers rights? Maybe next in line after the Tibetan monks....

An April 10 letter to the editor from Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch suggested that we would not make such arguments "if death squads with ties to the U.S. government were targeting Post reporters for assassination." We like to think that our criticism would be energetic but fair, especially if the government was responding aggressively to such a campaign and the number of killings was declining. No fair-minded person can fail to note that Colombian unionists are far safer today than they used to be.

This is kind of interesting. That the HRW Malinowski offers such an image is in fact perverse. We all know that journalists in Colombia and Mexico are routinely persecuted and killed by drug boss cartels and disgruntled politicians. The issue is completely different here and that Malinowski offers such a cruel and unnecessary comparison only proves the Post point: arguments against the FTA with Colombia have long ceased to be based on rationality.

There are two important countries at the north of South America. One, Colombia, has a democratic government that, with strong support from the Clinton and Bush administrations, has bravely sought to defeat brutal militias of the left and right and to safeguard human rights. The other, Venezuela, has a repressive government that has undermined media freedoms, forcibly nationalized industries, rallied opposition to the United States and, recent evidence suggests, supported terrorist groups inside Colombia. That U.S. unions, human rights groups and now Democrats would focus their criticism and advocacy on the former, to the benefit of the latter, shows how far they have departed from their own declared principles.

There, you have it, clear as water. The price the Democrats will pay for that is yet to be fully measured, but it will cost the US dearly. Trust me on that one. Again let me remind you that had Pelosi and her court in Congress be serious about their opposition they would have included time clauses or something to demand continued progress inside Colombia. But no, the objective was to sink a Bush proposal, one of the very few good ones he has had in 7 years. Partisanship at its worst.


-The end-

Bloggers in jail, today Egypt, tomorrow?

Hosni Mubarak has been seen as one of the most palatable dictators of the Middle East, which is not saying much. Well, in his old age, and perhaps with some senility creeping, his regime has sent a blogger to jail. The reason, according to the Washington Post Editorial is that he reported on some stuff as an eye witness. Stuff such as directed rioting by Islamist extremist against the Christian Copt community of Alexandria.

What is even more remarkable is that the Post editors use material form another noted Egyptian blogger (who knows of this blog by the way). Sandmonkey has been writing a few entries about his colleague now in jail, Abdel Kareem Nabil Soliman. You can read his extensive article at PJM, or some of his entries here, here or here.

Now, all is there, from the anguish to see a fellow blogger jailed for reporting what the censored media does not report to whether stay in Egypt and risk one's life. The parallel with Venezuela is starting. Right now Venezuelan opposition bloggers have little more to worry but pesky chavista supporters visiting, insulting and even sometime threatening (the worst come from e-mail letters...). But imagine if RCTV is shut up, if Globovision starts self censorship, if the TalCual fine becomes a mere precedent, if newspapers are tamed... Bloggers would be next and this is not necessarily that far in the future. One year? Two? It does not matter, what is crucial is that bloggers must start watching their back, in particular if they cover some events live as this blogger or Miguel have done in the past when luck made us cross path with news.

Today there is nothing comparable to anti Coptic riots in Alexandria, but the culture of violence and hatred preached now everyday from El Supremo can only lead someday to some nasty outbreak. We have already seem too many journalists attacked by chavista followers, we are living with the daily consequences of the Tascon list (list of links on the right side), now probably expanded to those who sent money to Tal Cual as these people will probably be labelled as "very dangerous enemies". If you do not express vocally your support of Chavez you may be barred from many a public service, including jobs, and more, much more discrimination, subtle or not, that keep creeping, creating second class citizens, and not forgetting even that old scourge of anti semitism. It seems that it is not a matter of IF, but more and more of WHEN a blogger will put to the index. Do not forget that there was already a first salvo with the infamous paid advertisement against the "anglo american conspiracy". Chavez needs targets and too many lackeys are willing to oblige him.

-The end-