Defender of the Fifth Republic

Supporters of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez Shoot at the Opposition

Sometimes false or misleading statements can jump out of a webpage like pop-up figures in a Winnie the Pooh book. Common Dreams, a “Progressive” news site, specializes in those kinds of gross distortions that are an endless source of amusement to me. I’m not saying that they are talented writers. It’s just that they exaggerate and contort reality so far beyond recognition that it can easily drive any intelligent person into a belly ache full of laughter.

Yesterday’s webpage at Common Dreams contains an article that brings together two extremely rich comic book characters.

The Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone

– and –

Venezuela’s Presidente, Hugo Chavez.

In these days of pretentiously false propaganda figures who can ask for anything more? Basically the article is an open letter from Livingstone praising the Venezuelan pseudo-dictator. Titled, “Not a Difficult Choice At All - Chavez and Venezuela deserve the support of all who believe in social justice and democracy”.

I get a kick out of how Livingstone hysterically portrays Chavez as the champion of democracy!

Ohhhh where to begin? The list of anti-democratic actions by Chavez is long and the prospect of documenting them is very intimidating. I just don’t have the time to go through A to Z. Let’s just skip over the basics.

Upon assuming power Chavez fired hundreds of judges. His critics have accused him of replacing them with loyal judges who have served as his henchmen, while Chavez counters with the valid point that the justice system was in urgent need of reform. However, over the course of time the facts favor the view that Chavez is packing the courts for his own political gain.

In 2004 Chavez pushed through legislation to expand the Supreme Court from 20 to 32 justices. This allowed him to obtain a majority of Chavez supporters on the court. When the head of Human Rights Watch Americas division, Jose Miguel Vivanco, spoke out against this maneuver he was briefly detained by the Venezuelan government who condemned him of, “open and unpardonable meddling in the internal affairs of our country” and threatened to make him a “persona non grata” in Venezuela. Can you imagine if the Bush Administration performed a similar action against a human rights activist? The anti-American bias in the world’s press and public opinion becomes painfully obvious when reflecting upon this question. Not to mention the fact that it was hard enough to replace two Supreme Court judges, Bush couldn’t possibly dream of adding 12 more additional judges.

The plight of Venezuelan Judge Miguel Angel Luna is particularly illuminating. In February 2004 two truck drivers were dragged in front of him, but were not charged with any crime. The prosecutors demanded that they be jailed because they had been parked near an anti-government demonstration. Instead Judge Luna set the two men free and three days later he was fired by the president of the Supreme Court without any explanation. Upon a written appeal Luna was reinstated, only to be fired again when upholding the right of a Chavez opponent to appoint two new lawyers to represent himself.

This is just the tip of the iceberg folks. Upon assuming the Presidency, Chavez quickly consolidated his power by conducting referendums in order to completely redraft the country’s constitution in his favor. Using the state funded media; his allies were able to campaign for the Constitutional Assembly and won 120 of the 131 assembly seats.

The assembly then gave itself absolute power by setting up a judicial emergency committee with the ability to remove judges without consulting any other branch of government. When they finally got to work on the constitution they extended Chavez’s term of office by a year. Again, can you imagine the uproar if President Bush had his term of office extended?

A key provision of the new constitution allowed Chavez to centralize a vast amount of power under his control. The document set up a one-chamber legislative body that gives him the ability to dissolve congress as he wishes and to remove congressional review of military appointments.


Chavez’s new super powers allowed him to pass the infamous Enabling Act of 2000, giving him the strength that even Superman would be jealous of. For a year Chavez ruled by decree as a king or dictator would. He was invested with the authority to pass any mandate into law without approval from the National Assembly. The champion of democracy donned a suit of magical armor and bullets just bounced right off of him. He needed that magic to combat the extreme displeasure of the Venezuelan opposition.

Actually I am exaggerating, there was no magic involved. It was a three-step process.

1. Seize enormous power
2. Enrich your cronies and bribe the poor
3. Attack the freedom of speech

Chavez has many leftwing supporters in the western world. A particularly amusing website called VHeadline.com caught my eye because of its similar tone to Common Dreams. It is based in the US but dedicated to praising the Venezuelan revolution and glorifying Chavez. In an outlandish anti-Bush rant, columnist Mary MacElveen compared our President to the rise of Adolph Hitler (she saw it in a movie,... I'm serious).

MacElveen actually lowers the bar for political commentary (if that is even possible). She compares the persecution of German reporter Fritz Gerlich to Bush’s objection to the leak of the National Security Agency story by the NY Times. Gerlich was a reporter that dedicated himself to exposing how dangerous Hitler was. When Hitler seized power he imprisoned Gerlich in Dachau, the German concentration camp. About a year later Gerlich was murdered and his bloodied glasses were callously sent to his wife as proof of his death. So how could MacElveen compare Gerlich to the NY Times? The only thing that the reporters at the Times have to worry about is whether or not their press passes can get them into the Bronx Zoo free of charge.

If you recall the website she writes for is called VHeadline and they publish pro-Chavez articles like;

Chavez does not take crap from the USA. You want to play hardball, go ahead!

US State Department looking for a fight in which it might get a black eye!

Treating Venezuela as if it were the enemy does not make any sense at all

So when I began reading MacElveen’s article comparing Hitler to Bush I thought my eyes were deceiving me. Just read this quote;

“…One has only to look at the Patriot Act to know this to be true.

When Hitler came to power, he pushed for an Enabling Act which, as I have stated before, is strikingly similar and during his reign of terror he also pressured the press.”

In complete disbelief of what I was reading, I had to re-read this paragraph. After reading it a second time I thought that maybe a hacker defaced her article. I couldn’t believe that anyone could be so ignorant, she is really describing her beloved Presidente Chavez! After all, he passed his own Enabling Act to seize more power. Did she forget that he abused his office to extend his term of office, rewriting the constitution and packing the courts with his cronies?! What was this woman thinking when she wrote this article?

She goes on to describe how Gerlich witnessed the Munich Beer Hall Putsch in which Hitler attempted a coup to seize control of the Bavarian government. Did she forget that Chavez also attempted a coup against his government? Is she mad? The similarity between the two is undeniable. They both rose to national prominence as a result of their attempts to seize power by force and they both changed their strategy to take control of their governments through legal means after the failures of their coups. I guess this is to be expected from someone who bases their historical research on a made for TV movie (“Hitler: The Rise of Evil”). While Fritz Gerlich risked his life to confront Hitler’s fascist lust for power, Mary MacElveen risks her reputation to compare Bush to such nonsense. How can she be blind to the fact that her hero, Hugo Chavez, represents everything that she accuses Bush of?

The Left rallies around Chavez because they are superficial and sheep-like. They love a strong anti-American leader who can hit each and every leftwing political talking point. Chavez’s totalitarian outrages are lost in the cheer of his political rhetoric.

Getting back to the Common Dreams article, Ken Livingstone concludes by saying, “Today Venezuela is being “opposed” largely on the basis of lies...It is the duty of all people who support progress, justice and democracy to stand with Venezuela.” I would agree with his statement if he changed one word, delete opposed and replace it with “supported” and you have yourself a truthful sentence.