Then it launches straight into what Chavecito did after his 1992 rebellion failed. Uh-huh–the whole “por ahora” thing was just a big, fat, lucky gamble on his part. They’re leaving out the whole other part of the equation here–namely, who seized on the phrase and ran with it. Wasn’t the ‘Cito; he was in jail, and likely to remain there unless somebody pardoned him, which he certainly hadn’t bet on. That somebody was Rafael Caldera, who ran partly on a platform of “Okay, I’ll pardon him, since all you peons like him so much.” Yet strangely, no mention of this from Reuters, let alone of the fact that this would make Caldera a crazy old gambling fool, too. Hilariously, they also mention the UN speech in which Chavecito called Dubya the devil. That’s “gambling”? Hell, by then, it was a safe bet for most of the world; he was just saying what others were thinking but didn’t have the ‘nads to utter. The fact that the speech got the expected laughs should have come as a surprise to no one, but apparently it shocked Reuters, that agency with a finger on the carotid pulse of every corpse.And then there’s how he responded to the March 1 incident, in which Colombia illegally bombed Ecuador. He sent tanks out to guard the Venezuelan border, which was not the “dangerous” move Reuters makes it out to be; it’s only common sense when you consider that it was Colombia acting like the loose cannon, threatening its neighbors wantonly with bombings and violence. Shit, who’d want a Colombian army or paramilitary raid on their turf? Last time Colombia sent its people unilaterally into Venezuela after a FARC guy, it didn’t go over well–not because of any great sympathy for the FARC in Venezuela, but because it was a violation of Venezuelan sovereignty, duh. They could have said “Heads up, you got Rodrigo Granda, and we want him”–and Venezuela would have handed him over. But noooooo, they just had to make an international incident out of it, the better to shove the blame on the usual suspect. A real crazy gamble, but on whose part?But wait! Even the big guy’s astute response to the PDVSA lockout of ’02 is characterized as a gamble. If ever an oil company was ripe for a purge, PDVSA was it–and the fact that the move paid off was really a no-brainer. Privatizing, traitorous greedheads have no business being at the helm of a state industry, and neither does the CIA.Looks to me like someone at Reuters is betting on their readers being majorly stupid. Feel lucky, punks?Socialist President Hugo Chavez wants Venezuelans to vote on a constitutional referendum in early 2009 that would allow him to run for the top office again, even though he lost a similar vote a year ago.A defeat would be devastating, possibly ending his dream of staying in the top job for another decade and giving opponents new hope of winning the presidency.The former soldier has shown a penchant for high-stakes political gambling. Here are some of his previous political adventures.
Bina, this story seems like quite good propaganda.
It plays to the credulity and the general stupidity of the US masses, specifically, the managerial/intellectual classes. The omissions and blind-spots are the deep-coding of imperialism and oligarchy.
Look for corporate, imperialist media to continue trying to soften up opinion among the managerial/intellectual classes for an eventual attack on Venezuelan democracy.
The journalistic outrages will never end, not for a day.
Venezuela under Chavez is an errant child–the managerial classes come to believe overtime, by whack-journalism–and if it becomes a ‘threat to the region’ and US ‘interests’, then we must defend freedom.
Sick shit, but they get away with it more often than not.