Democracy of Chavez trumps the democrazy of Bush

Published on Wednesday, December 5, 2007 by CommonDreams.org

Venezuela Is Not Florida

by Mark Weisbrot

Last Monday, with less than 90 percent of the vote counted and the opposition leading by just 50.7 percent to 49.3 percent, President Chavez congratulated his opponents on their victory. They had defeated his proposed constitutional reforms, including the abolition of term limits for the presidency.

No one should have been surprised by Chavez's immediate concession: Venezuela is a constitutional democracy, and its government has stuck to the democratic rules of the game since he was first elected in 1998. Despite the non-renewal of the broadcast license for a major TV station in May - one that wouldn't have gotten a license in any democratic country - Venezuela still has the most oppositional media in the hemisphere.

But the U.S. media has managed to convey the impression to most Americans that Venezuela is some sort of dictatorship or near-dictatorship.

Some of this disinformation takes place through mere repetition and association (e.g. "communist Cuba" appearing in thousands of news reports) — just as 70 percent of Americans were convinced, prior to the Iraq war, that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the massacres of September 11. In that case, the major media didn't even believe the message, but somehow it got across and provided justification for the war.

In the case of Venezuela, the media is more pro-active, with lots of grossly exaggerated editorials and op-eds, news articles that sometimes read like editorials, and a general lack of balance in sources and subject matter.

But Venezuela is not Pakistan. In fact, it's not Florida or Ohio either. One reason that Chavez could be confident of the vote count is that Venezuela has a very secure voting system. This is very different from the United States, where millions of citizens cast electronic votes with no paper record. Venezuelan voters mark their choice on a touch-screen machine, which then records the vote and prints out a paper receipt for the voter. The voter then deposits the vote in a ballot box. An extremely large random sample - about 54 percent - of the paper ballots are counted and compared with the electronic tally.

If the two counts match, then that is a pretty solid guarantee against electronic fraud. Any such fraud would have to rig the machines and stuff the ballot boxes to match them - a trick that strains the imagination.

In 2007, Venezuelans once again came in second for all of Latin America in the percentage of citizens who are satisfied or very satisfied with their democracy, according to the prestigious Chilean polling firm Latinobarometro - 59 percent, far above the Latin American average of 37 percent.

It is not only the secure elections that are responsible for this result - it is also that the government has delivered on its promises to share the nation's oil wealth with the poor and the majority. For most people - unlike the pundits here - voting for something and actually getting what you voted for are also an important part of democracy.

The Bush Administration has consistently sought regime change in Venezuela, even before Chavez began regularly denouncing "the Empire." According to the U.S. State Department, Washington funded leaders and organizations involved in the coup which briefly overthrew Chavez's democratically elected government in April 2002. The Washington Post reported this week that the Bush Administration has been funding unnamed student groups, presumably opposition, up to and including this year.

Venezuela must be seen as undemocratic, and Chavez as the aggressor against the United States, in order to justify the Bush Administration's objective of regime change. As in the run-up to the Iraq war, most of the major media are advancing the Administration's goals, regardless of the intentions of individual journalists.

It Turns Out Ahmadinejad Was the Truthful One

Published on Wednesday, December 5, 2007 by TruthDig.com

It Turns Out Ahmadinejad Was the Truthful One

by Robert Scheer

Bush is such a liar. Or is he just out to lunch on the most important issue that he faces? In October, he charged that Iran's nuclear weapons program was bringing the world to the precipice of World War III, even though the White House had been informed at least a month earlier that Iran had no such program and had stopped efforts to develop one back in 2003.

Is it conceivable that Bush was telling the truth at his press conference Tuesday when he stated that he learned of the National Intelligence Estimate report, which contained that inconvenient fact, only last week? Even if Bush read the NIE report, he clearly doesn't respect it, for at his press conference he said "the NIE doesn't do anything to change my opinion about the danger Iran poses to the world-quite the contrary." Not that he has anything against the NIE, whose directors he handpicked. "I want to compliment the intelligence community for their good work. Right after the failure of intelligence in Iraq, we reformed the intelligence community."

But whether or not the intelligence agencies are reformed, the president still ignores them. He didn't listen when they told him he was wrong in claiming that Iraq had purchased yellow cake uranium from Niger and he doesn't listen now when they tell him his alarms about Iran are without factual foundation. The difference this time around is that because Bush is a discredited lame duck the intelligence chiefs were a bit more forthcoming with their findings in a report that has, in part, been made available to the public.

The whole episode shows that our democratic system retains at least some essential checks and balances, but it also is depressing to see that, in this instance at least, the fanatical leader of a theocracy seems to have a higher regard for truth than does the president of the world's greatest experiment in representative democracy.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who took office as Iran's president in August of 2005, two years after Iran's nuclear weapons program ended, has now been vindicated in his claims that Iran has abandoned the weaponization program. Not so Bush, who has summarily dismissed the intelligence community's findings and, using his favorite tactic in dealing with debacles, is sticking to his original story. A story, as in the case of the earlier Iraq threat inflation, that too many in the mass media and Congress, including some leading Democrats, have bought.

Take Hillary Clinton, who said that "Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard is in the forefront of that" by way of defending her vote for a resolution that, like the one she voted for before the Iraq war, blindly supports rather than seriously questions the president's case for war. Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was absolutely correct in calling candidate Clinton out on that vote and challenging her lame excuse that she had not read the full intelligence report before her Iraq war vote. "Members of Congress," Obama cautioned, "must carefully read the intelligence before giving the president any justification to use military force."

Not a bad idea. In the case of Iraq's non-nukes, the intelligence evidence supporting Bush was flimsy at best when it did not directly contradict his key assertions. In the case of Iran, it is now publicly understood that there is no such evidence, flimsy or otherwise. But don't count on that to stop the bipartisan coalition of invasion hawks from pushing on.

Once again, they will attack the United Nations' experts, who have been proved right in Iran as they were in Iraq. A spokesman for the International Atomic Energy Agency pointed out that the NIE report supports the agency's view that there is "no evidence" of an undeclared nuclear weapons program in Iran and "validates the assessments of [IAEA Director General] Mohamed ElBaradei, who continuously said in his public statements that he saw no clear and public danger, and that therefore that there was plenty of time for negotiations."

Can we get ElBaradei to run in the Iowa caucus? Why are our leading presidential candidates so easily fooled?

It's humiliating to all of us who believe in a free press, separation of powers and individual liberty that a system of government designed by its founders to hold leaders accountable can be so easily manipulated by an unremarkable loser who has been rewarded throughout his life for screwing up. It is hoped that this time around the truth will catch up with him before he gets us in yet another bloody war, just to show he can.

practice practice

Tengo pensado pasar un par de semanas en cada sitio que visite.*

Practicando el subjuntivo.

Preparando para America del Sur en dieciocho meses.

dia muy fuerte

it was a strange and potent day.  the first grade teacher didn't show up, so I was put in charge of 15 hispanic kids, without the ability to demonstrate much command of the classroom. no sooner was the first activity underway than flor threw up... on the floor, of course.  while janitors managed the room, i tromped off with the others and -- with the help of the substitute principal -- found a space on the stage in the gym to read them where the wild things are.  they learned the new word "rumpus." then they all wrote their own stories and proceeded to make the entire morning a rumpus of wild proportions.

anyway, tengo que preparar la cena ahora.  las cosas son tremendos y mas grande que podemos imaginar.  aqui viene mi esposa.  i need a drink

from senor espringer-melville

i have your hat, tu gorro.  if you want to come to poker thursday, please do.  we'll be having a farewell to filippo/rocky, since it's his last time.

this morning, one of the old computers in my office just wouldn't output anything to the monitor.  it is the computer i was using to compose my east bend mess.  i don't think i lost much (but even if i did, i didn't lose much, if you know what i mean).  maybe this will be the kickstart i need to actually write the thing.

i meant to ask you sunday what you were working on.

my problem with writing these book projects, is that all my enthusiasm is invested in the planning and outlining and once this brilliant strategy is laid out, then i have no oomph left to go through the writing, unless i take painstaking time to enjoy writing and rewriting every line.  kind of like the way it used to be when i was composing query letters to publications.  i took so much time writing a brilliant query, i had great success selling projects and then was stuck with the pain of actually writing the thing.

i'm sitting at the computer in the first grade classroom, waiting for the kids to come. 

anyway,

later

pg