The Bush Administration doesn't just want to justifiably capture and punish terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. It doesn't just want to take over Afghanistan. It doesn't just want to rape and pillage Iraq. It doesn't just want to nuke Iran or North Korea.
It's pissy about Venezuela too. George Bush has been trying to destabilize Venezuela for a while now, since a pesky Liberal has control of what I'm sure he views is HIS oil, but unlike past U.S. abuses in Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Bolivia, Nicaragua, etc., it's just not working this time around.
To clarify the situation apart from the Administrations psychotic spin on the issue, here are a few raw facts about the country that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has refers to as a "negative force in Latin America" and which the newly NeoCon "reformed" CIA has now classified as a "potentially unstable country":
1.) Venezuela is a representative DEMOCRACY.
2.) Despite U.S. sponsored coup-attempts, President Hugo Chávez has won multiple elections in landslides of popularity, and currently enjoys a 71.8% approval rating. He has defeated the oil-wealthy opposition three times now.
3.) On August 10th 2005, Chávez's party won 80% of the vote.
4.) All the elections have been verified as clean by the Carter Center and other international monitors. The same cannot be said of U.S. elections lately.
5.) The Venezuelan economy is booming. Since President Hugo Chavez was ELECTED, their GDP Has only improved. It grew 17% in 2004 ALONE.
- The oil economy experienced an 8.7% growth rate, but even the average growth rate for non-oil economy was 17.8%.
- All non-oil sectors demonstrated significant growth, with a particularly strong showing in construction (up 32.1%).
- Financial institutions and insurance business is up 26.6%,
- Transportation and warehousing business is up 26.4%.
- Commerce and repair services are up 25.5%
- Manufacturing and industry are up 25.4%.
- Mining business is up 11.8%.
- Communications industry is up 10.2%.
- Electricity and water production is up 6.9%.
6.) Unemployment dropped 3.7 percentage points this year.
7.) By 2004, Venezuela had earned a surplus of $14.6 billion, an increase of over $3 billion from 2003, when the surplus amounted to 11.4 billion dollars, and it continues to grow.
President Hugo Chavez 8.) Venezuela bought 100,000 AK-47s from Russia to help the Army protect the people by patrolling the dangerous border with drugged out Colombia. This was portrayed by U.S. media as though they had just acquired nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration is selling F-16's to the Pakistani Dictatorship instead of Democratic India.
9.) Recently, U.S. DEA agents were discovered helping Columbian drug dealers bring cocaine into Venezuela, and so Chávez broke off cooperation with the DEA. Venezuela will continue to fight drug trafficking on it's own. The Venezuelan Government also said it "would be willing to work with the DEA, as long as it accepted its subordination to Venezuelan norms and laws", while operating within it's borders.
10.) The Petróleos de Venezuela company's huge surplus oil revenues have been redirected into imaginative new social programs to help the poor get back on their feet. Innumerable projects, or "missions", were established throughout the country. They combat illiteracy, provide further education for school dropouts, promote employment, supply cheap food, and extend a free medical service in the poor areas of the cities and the countryside. Chávez has taken redundant oil company buildings and transformed them into the headquarters of a new University for the poor, and oil money [nationalised in 1975] has been diverted to set up "Vive", an innovative cultural television channel that is already breaking the traditional US mould of the Latin American media.
11.) Chávez called George W. Bush a "pendejo" (which means "stupid" or "fool" -- not "asshole" as Reuters and Time Magazine translated it) for his support of the Haitian Coup which overthrew the democratically elected President Aristide.
12.) Cuba sent Venezuela 10,000 doctors to staff rural hospitals in the rough terrain of the country. The U.S. NeoCons have offered to give Chávez a bullet in the head. If you're Chávez, who you gonna love?
13.) Venezuela is one of the few countries that guarantees universal access to treatment for all people with HIV/AIDS. The country's AIDS Awareness and Prevention Program funds the Health Ministry's free distribution of up to 20 million condoms through the entire national network of public health care facilities, with a special focus on youth and women because the statistical risk factors are highest among those populations within Venezuelan society. Half of the women currently infected with HIV/AIDS are homemakers, many of whom were infected by their spouses, so a major educational campaign has been initiated, including television and radio spots, newspaper ads, and billboards along the country's highways.
14.) Chávez just gave unused Venezuelan land back to the Indians as an apology for past governmental abuses and land theft. Over 317,000 acres to six indigenous communities who were abused and impoverished by former right-wing dictatorships. Has anyone else on BOTH continents EVER done that for native people before? According to Venezuela’s new 1999 constitution, the county’s indigenous peoples have right to their ancestral territories, a right that had been denied to them for several centuries. A Kariña Indian woman said that Chávez "has been the first president who has kept his word to a people who have been stripped of their lands."
15.) Venezuela just donated $3 million for food aid to three hunger-stricken West African countries, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Mauritania. Venezuela also donated $6.2m to Sri Lanka for victims of the tsunami that struck Southeast Asia last year.
Damn Liberals!!!! The NERVE of them all running their countries into mind-boggling success!!! How DARE they!!
So let's do the math:
Venezuela = liberal run, roaring economy, fair elections, budget surpluses, peace.
United States = conservative run, tanking economy, rising unemployment, rigged elections, budget deficits as far as the eye can see, and not one, but TWO wars.
Tell me again how conservatives are more "responsible" leaders??????? Do their elephants also fly???
Robert Zoellick, the new Deputy Secretary of State, referred to the Venezuelan Government as a “new breed of authoritarianism,” claiming “You win the election, but you do away with your opponents, you do away with the press, you do away with the rule of law, you pack the courts.”
Now where have I heard of that happening before.......? Oh yes, HERE.
