Venezuela After The Death Of Hugo Chavez
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2013-03-06/venezuela-after-death-hugo-chavez
Venezuela after Chavez: What the death of the Socialist leader will mean for the country, the region and the U.S.
Guests
Moises Naim
senior associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, chief international columnist, El Pais, and author of "The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being in Charge Isn't What It Used to Be."
Tom Gjelten
NPR national security correspondent and author of "Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause."
Geoff Thale
program director of Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA).
Comments
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Farewell Compadre.
Thanks for showing us what matters. (The people who do the necessary work.)
I'll think of you every time I fill up the truck at Citgo.
(You don't leave an odor of sulphur like some of our leaders do.)
The American foreign policy regarding Central and South American has been a disgrace. For 70 years our CIA has propped up one Fascist dictator after another. 10`s of thousands murdered in nearly every country. One by one as these old cold war relics die off,our hope should be the true friendship with all of our neighbors.
I am glad that a guest from WOLA is appearing on this show to counter some of the bizarre and distorted anti-Chavez politics of Moises Naim. Not that everyone has to agree with Chavez but Naim is as anti-Chavez as it gets. Among other things, he claimed that Chavez was behind in a preponderance of the polls prior to the last Venezuelan - a blatantly false claim. All Tom Gjelten will do is recycle the views of the US government on whatever issue is before the panel. Chavez never got a fair hearing in the US media and I don't expect that to change now that he has passed.
jordan88 wrote:
Chavez never got a fair hearing in the US media and I don't expect that to change now that he has passed.
After what he said at the UN about our president tells me he exactly as fair as he deserved. You may not like our former President but, you will respect him and the office if you wish to enjoy the same from us. Good riddance to an angry little man, who believed that stealing form the haves is justification in and of itself.
The US 'Bad Neighbor Policy' is going to carry on. It's so simple, it's brilliant: support those most interested in their own welfare in order to purchase their betrayal to the benefit of the US. Chavez was right to demonize us, I'm afraid. Our foreign policy has long been our worst feature.
Hi Diane,
I am a local Spanish teacher in the public schools. I often discuss Latin American politics and history with my students.
While I do not agree with Hugo Chavez's concentration of power in Venezuela, I don't understand why it seems we only demonize left-wing Latin American leaders. Aside from Pinochet, can Americans name any of the horrible, right-wing dictators who have terrorized and murdered hundreds of thousands of people in Latin America in the past 50-60 years?
Thank you for your show!
You've got it exactly right, Jordan88. Trying to get a fair hearing in the US media or in Congress is about as likely as the Fed getting audited or for our military to proclaim us well enough armed.
Not much interest in a dead communist and the America haters who admire him.
margaret.m.johnson wrote: "I am a local Spanish teacher in the public schools I often discuss Latin American politics and history with my students."
Dear god let us have a school voucher program!
To Freedom: Our foreign policy isn't much better than Genghis Kahn's. It in no way reflects the Americans I know, but then I don't know many people who blindly wave the flag; they all thoughtfully consider everything we do.
Angry Pancho wrote:
Trying to get a fair hearing in the US media or in Congress is about as likely as the Fed getting audited or for our military to proclaim us well enough armed.
You forgot as likely as a third world country not taking millions of US foreign aid and then turning on the very nation that feed them, or that a murderous strong man wont be able to find friends and supporters in the US Liberal sheep. Simply looking at the one or two good things a person did, doesn't wipe out the atrocities they commit.
Your guests point out that Chavez should have used Venezuela's oil wealth to help the poor at home and developing infrastructure rather than helping allies in other countries is well made. They should apply the same standard to the United States where the nation's wealth should be used to help the poor and improve infrastructure rather than used to lay waste to other countries.
Chavez clearly did not despise the wealthy. But it is well known that Chavez helped the masses immensely. There is no way of getting around that.
What will happen to Venezuela's nationalized oil industry. Are the private oil fat cats licking their chops.
To mnemecek: You've got to be kidding. The vast majority of our 'aid' is in the form of vouchers only capable of being used in the US. It's as much aid to us as to them.
And as to 'atrocities' do you mean those we committed? Because we've got quite a long list in Latin-America.
In regards to the car accident in Cuba... This is a very common practice in African countries with dictatorships, usually it is a collision occurs with an army or truck, and the scene is immediately cleaned up, there is no investigation, only an official account of the "accident" published in the local (government controlled) news paper.
To Blueneck: Our leaders do love fascists, don't they? We carefully build them up in the press and with arms deals. After all, it's not OUR people they're suppressing. They think that means our hands are clean!
Hopefully elections in Venezuela are more fair than the U.S. selection of the Bush administration by the US Supreme Court in 2000
kathleen wrote:
"Chavez clearly did not despise the wealthy. But it is well known that Chavez helped the masses immensely. There is no way of getting around that."
"Unfortunately he's destroyed the economy and centralized all power in his hands, decimated the democratic institutions in the country and left the Venezuelan democracy in even worse shape."
Under Chavismo, oil specialists were sacked and replaced by party loyalists, foreign oil contracts were radically altered or canceled, making investment in Venezuela risky business for international firms.
"These factors have really led to shortages in basic staples. So, Venezuelans for example suffer from a lack of in some cases, baby diapers, or flour, or corn meal, which is the basic daily dietary of the Venezuelan diet, so this is just an example of the distortions in the economy that have been a result of Chavismo,"
Chavez leaves Venezuela saddled with high inflation -- 22.2% year-on-year in January, according to the Central Bank of Venezuela
After Chavez nationalized foreign-run oil fields, critics say oil production has slowed.
"Venezuela in 2008 was producing 3.2 million barrels per day. One of the most recent statistics I have shows Venezuela producing 2.5 million -- so that shows you a decrease of the last four to five years,"
In our power-driven socities, anytime consideration is shown to the poor, the rich will come down on it-hard.
What is it that Tom Gjelton knows that the majority of Venezuelans can't figure out? Seems he makes the point of the patronizing American press.
To Freedom: Funny how you're more concerned with the way Chavez centralized power than how the wealthy have taken control of our own second rate government. Forget Venezuela, we deserve better.
Did Chavez leave Venezuela in a better position than he found it? Probalby not. As previously mentioned, the state-owned oil company has squandered its profits, much like PEMEX did. Also, the economic displacements his policies caused hurt rahter than helped the poor. Remember, he did revalue the bolivar, which left that currency in a weaaker position against the world's leading currencies. His policies may have been with the intention of helping the nation's downtrodden, but they have had the opposite effect.
Gotta go, boys and girls.
Mnemecek - maybe you didn't hear that Bush went to war against a country that posed no threat to it whatsoever and resulted in up to a million people being killed (Lancet/John Hopkins study) and millions more displaced. The Bush admin also tried to overthrow Chavez in a coup that ultimately failed. Chavez had every reason to criticize the US and neoliberal US foreign policy - which promotes poverty and unemployment throughout the developing world. Furthermore, no one disrespected the Office of the President - more than Bush/Cheney with their policies, conduct and lack of accountability - so spare us the sanctimonius dribble.
Not much interest in folks who close their eyes to the world around them and pretend that the US can do no wrong.
Angry Pancho wrote:" Funny how you're more concerned with the way Chavez centralized power than how the wealthy have taken control of our own second rate government. Forget Venezuela, we deserve better."
Funny how your assertions are shattered and then you try and avert attention from the topic at hand to another one that you will lose on just as bad. Look, if you hate the country that much, last time I looked that open southern boarder is still open. Don't let that broken fence snag on your.....
I'm extremely disappointed in the panel chosen to discuss Chavez' legacy. Rather than present a balanced discussion, which ought to be NPR's hallmark, this program has given a platform to largely-unsubstantiated, anti-Chavez rhetoric. Clearly the man had his faults, but these faults hardly justify a reactionary dismissal of everything he did and represented.
The show presented the full anti-Chavez argument. It would have been nice to hear an opposing view. He had and has millions of supporters. Getting at least one of them on the panel should have been well within NPR's means.
Before discussing the "evils" of Chavez, Castro, or any other foreign leader, Americans would do well to look at the evils of the regimes they replaced, and what the US has done in those countries elsewhere in supporting a stream of fascist, dictatorial regimes in the name of "democracy."
I have been listening for many years and have enjoyed the program very much. This is the first time I have been compelled to make a comment. In my opinion this is the most BIASED discussion that I have ever heard on this program. It is well below the standards that I have come to expect from Diane, her staff, and her guests. I am VERY DISAPPOINTED.
At the insistence,and political lobbying United Fruit,got BRUTAL murderous dictators installed everywhere in Central and South America. United Fruit came in a stole the property of the people,forced slave wages on the people,with the blessing of a corrupt government,owned by our CIA.
A few citizens made out well financially,and remain loyal to Fascism still. You hear them on RARE occasions,thankfully.
Pancake Rankin wrote:
"Thanks for showing us what matters."
You mean like awarding and personally presenting the Orden del Libertador - Venezuela's highest award of distinction and comparable to the Medal of Freedom in the USA - to such distinguished advocates of freedom and democracy as Muammar Gaddafi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Bashar Al-Assad?