NY Times on Venezuela: mouthpiece for old style Imperialism!

Well, something non-nuclear/energy related, at least directly. A break from those polemics is called for.

We were treated yesterday to good ol' cold-war liberalism by Roger Cohen, columnist for the venerable liberal, US paper-of-record, the New York Times.

Due to copyright restrictions I cannot repost the entire column, but I will respond to some of his nonsense.

The democratic vote on the Constitutional Reform is tomorrow, December 2nd. Now, to the meat of the issue at hand:

It was a fascist general in 1930s Spain who coined the phrase "Viva la muerte!" or "Long live death!" Essentially meaningless, the words captured the cult of soil, blood and savagery that coursed through European Fascism, in its Francoist and other forms.
President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela hates fascists; they are central to his repertoire of insults. But he has not hesitated to deploy the imagery of death to bolster his leftist brand of petro-authoritarianism, now operating under the ludicrous banner of "Fatherland, Socialism or Death!"

The slogan of "Long live death" was a stand alone comment...it was not Franco but one of his underling fascists who stated this. It was their belief that "death" was good. Thus, fascist infatuation with the skull-and-cross bones.
"Fatherland, socialism or death" is a fighting slogan of free peoples, one exclaiming the dedication FOR their country, for socialism and democracy. Cohen's semantically obvious slight-of-hand notwithstanding.
He continues....

I might add Vladimir Putin to that list. Like the Russian leader, Chávez has already used gushing oil revenue, a pliant judiciary, subservient institutions and the galvanizing appeal of vitriolic anti-Americanism to concoct a 21st-century, gulag-free authoritarianism. But even Putin has not contemplated going as far as Chávez now intends to take his "Bolivarian revolution."

Leaving aside the comparison with Putin...notice the slight-of-hand, again, by Cohen: " gulag-free authoritarianism" in other words, he stating it is NOT Stalinist, but by raising this syphilitic form of socialism in the discussion, he hopes people think "gulag" anyway, even though there are no political prisoners or death squads in Venezuela, unlike in the US supported death-squad "democracy" of Columbia, next door.
He continues:

Venezuelans will vote Sunday in a referendum that would remove all limits on presidential re-election, grant Chávez direct control over foreign currency reserves, allow him to censor the media under a state of emergency declarable at his discretion, expand his powers to expropriate private property and create the second formally socialist nation in the Americas alongside Fidel’s.

Let's be clear: the change to the Venezuelan Constitution would remove term-limits...a basic democratic right enjoyed by...our neighbor the north, Canada, and just about all of Western European democracies. But...our imperialist mouthpiece above decides that Venezuelans cannot enjoy this democratic right, but have to change Presidents because...why? Because the US says so? Media cannot be censored, even though the press in Venezuela can actually call for the violent overthrow of the government without fear of arrest, unlike in the US where the press, uttering anything close to what the privatized capitalist press of Venezuela would utter would land the editors and writers in jail in a New York minute. For Cohen, what is not good for the US media even under our First Amendment is good for Venezuela.

"The measures amount to a constitutional coup," said Teodoro Petkoff, who edits an opposition newspaper. Certainly, they would prod Venezuela from an oppressive rule comparable to Mexico’s under its once impregnable Institutional Revolutionary Party toward the dictatorial absolutism of Cuba.

Total nonsense. By raising the issue of a "coup" ("golpe", or 'blow' in Spanish) he tries to setup the government FOR a coup, since obviously only a coup could remove the democratically elected Chavez from power. This they tried, with US support, in 2002 and it blew up in their faces.
I can't predict the outcome of the vote tomorrow. Polls in Venezuela have, everytime underestimated support by Chavez among the mass of people in Venezuela, most of whom support his "socialist" measures even more than they support him. I predict a close win. I hope so, for democracy's sake.

David Walters