At
National Review,
Otto J. Reich complains about the Venezuelan elections:
If I were still assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs I would urge the secretary of state to not recognize the results of this election unless and until independent auditors documented that it was accurate. Even then, it was not a free or fair election. All assets of the national government were mobilized to support Maduro and international observers and media report widespread “irregularities” in the process.. the will of the Venezuelan people is being thwarted.
From
Wikipedia:
Reich held the post of Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the time of the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt on April 11, 2002 against Hugo Chávez. On the day Pedro Carmona was installed as president, Otto Reich summoned ambassadors from Latin America and the Caribbean to his office to express their support and that of the US administration for the new government.
They should start hiring guys off the street to do this sort of work, just to avoid this sort of embarrassing backstory. Then again, why bother?
IOKIAR. In any event, the GOP doesn't like democracy and is working hard night and day to eliminate it in this country.
ReplyDeleteElections only count when wingnuts win.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing J. Otto Reich, like most wingers, has no capacity for embarrassment; so problem solved.
ReplyDeleteWikipedia, again:
ReplyDeleteAt age 14, Otto Reich left with his family for the US as refugees a year and half after Fidel Castro came to power.
Sounds like a shoo-in as Secretary of State in a Rubio administration.
His points are actually not bad ones, in my arrogant and entirely correct opinion---but a pity that their being made by someone who doesn't care about democracy and whose support of right-wing terror made his nickname 'Third' actively _lowers_ their credibility.
ReplyDeleteChavez was and stayed a thug---he attempted a coup a few years before his entirely legitimate election, and his instincts always seemed to be toward the most naked use of force with which he could get away. (Mystified force is less 'pure', and so is really, really, preferable for any kind of civilised society, given that 'no force' will be impossible until Scarcity is over.) His thuggishness was entirely in line with the environment we have continued to support in Latin America, and he did very many good things...but he was still a thug.
"I would urge the secretary of state to not recognize the results of this
ReplyDeleteelection unless and until independent auditors documented that it was accurate."
That's pretty rich from a guy appointed by George W. Bush.
I must admit that this, yet another example, of shameless self-unawareness, still boggled my mind for a second or three.
ReplyDeleteI would not be surprised if he was part of the Brook's Brothers mob that stormed the Florida recount.
And why does this guy sound like he might have been related to one of the "Boys from Brazil" guys who decided to set up shop in Havana.
...
Oh, the concern! Oh, the lack of humanity!
ReplyDeleteIf I could clear up one misconception in Americans' minds, it would be the one that holds that anti-communism is about freedom rather than foreign investments.
ReplyDeletejust to avoid this sort of embarrassing backstory
ReplyDeleteWho's embarrassed? No, really: who? Name a single member of the Bush administration that ever displayed an emotion corresponding to shame. The one that got busted for shoplifting in the Gaithersburg Target doesn't count.
Next time send Rand Paul.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure I'm a force. I can force my hand to scratch my chin where I just shaved. AND I'm one to be reckoned with even! (Proof: I have R.E.M.'s second album!) And I'm currently mystified. And... who are you and why are spying on me/writing my autobiography?
ReplyDeletePeople in non-white-folk countries can only be trusted to elect their own governments if they elect governments that are sympathetic to US interests.
ReplyDeleteOtto "Da-Fé": "...international observers and media report widespread “irregularities” in the process..."
ReplyDeleteI've scanned two dozen new reports on this election and find nothing supporting this statement. On the contrary, every story so far has international observers declaring the election was fair and legitimate and determined at the ballot box.
Now a military coup by a right-wing pro-business, pro-American elites? There's a free and fair election Otto can get behind!
Without actually using the words "horribly shameful capitulation to lying warmongering", Colin Powell has seemed kind of abashed for the past decade.
ReplyDelete...As far as way as possible, but make sure it isn't inhabited. Why hassle possible alien friends?
ReplyDeleteThe "Well, Duh!" heard around the world.
ReplyDeleteThey should start hiring guys off the street to do this sort of work, just to avoid this sort of embarrassing backstory.
ReplyDeleteFeature, not bug.
Haven't you noticed that NONE of these people are capable of the emotion we humans know as shame?
ReplyDeleteIt's like asking a jellyfish what it thinks of the collected works of Shakespeare.
Do you really get to call a Latin American leader a thug when his main tactic of thuggery was going on TV and demonizing the opposition?
ReplyDeleteI'm not a Chavez fan. I do think it's rich that Reich was moved, or tapped, to make the case for democracy here.
ReplyDeleteAdded: This is because written, or even just scratched, words can't convey AS MUCH information AS quickly as kissyface to kissyface. So even if I can't move in smooch-time, I can let my Vault-suited compatriot know that I'm behind him. Not RIGHT behind him... (My name ain't... What? Mack? WHAT knife... ooohhh...
ReplyDeleteWell, now. That should have read either "away" or "assway". I am my own grammar nosy.
ReplyDeleteIt's almost like "any thing goes, if you are an authoritarian."
ReplyDelete...
Reich shorter: What Venezuela needs is a nice military junta.
ReplyDeleteThose kinds of governments always work out so well - for US corporate interests, anyway.
Does Barney the dog count?
ReplyDeletethe will of the Venezuelan people is being thwarted.
ReplyDeleteNumber of Venezuelans quoted in the piece: zero. Man, journalism is easy!
He's just playing good coup, bad coup.
ReplyDelete"Otto Reich"
ReplyDeleteOf course, he is our voice of right-wing "democracy" in South America.
Why do you ask?
~
The Venezuelan government is too important to be left to the Venezuelans.
ReplyDeleteI would not be surprised if he was part of the Brook's Brothers mob that stormed the Florida recount.
ReplyDeleteIf he wasn't there in the flesh, I would assume he was there in spirit. Quite possibly in the wallet, as well. Being one of Dubya's "pioneers" is as good a way as any to get a plum job like that.
why should venezuelans give a shit what you or i or otto reich may think?
ReplyDeleteNot to mention their oil and natural resources.
ReplyDeleteIt's beneath us all.
ReplyDeleteIt's a fish in a barrel.
It's completely irrelevant.
Still...
Hee hee - Reich.
And, let's not forget that it was Reich who was instrumental in getting Orlando Bosch (a convicted terrorist and known torturer) back into this country.
ReplyDeleteThere's a particular class of neoconservatives that came out of Cuba that, at heart, liked Batista and, fifty years later, still don't understand why the revolution happened there, and any country not operating as Batista's Cuba did is suspect.
Venezuela, under Chavez, has allowed international observers in to monitor elections (the United States, with some very hinky-looking elections in the recent past, does not). Real poverty in Venezuela under Chavez has declined, noticeably, while in the U.S., it has increased. Chavez's great sin was to trade oil to Cuba in exchange for medical and agricultural assistance (in large part because of British and U.S. interests controlling farm land, 80% of Venezuela's food was imported at the time of Chavez's first election--most of the food grown and the revenues from that production were exported).
For the Otto Reichs, Chavez's crime was to elevate the status of the poor at the expense of the rich, and for aristocratic authoritarians, that is the worst thing a leader can do. We regularly complain in this country about the failure of the government to address the same gross inequalities developing in this country that existed in Venezuela prior to Chavez's election. Chavez is described as a thug and a dictator (although he was legitimately elected--multiple times--while George W. Bush was installed), and yet, he was reversing a trend similar to that happening in the U.S. now.
Maybe there's a small lesson there about propaganda and the purposes to which the Otto Reichs of this country put it.
Barney died of shame.
ReplyDeleteThere really does seem to be a functional disorder among the Otto Reichs concerning the definition of democracy. I'm particularly reminded of the hours after the coup by Pedro Carmonas and his wealthy backers when, in a matter of minutes, the Constitution was suspended, the Supreme Court dissolved, the Legislature suspended, a new President installed with the assistance of rogue military officers, and when a new Attorney General was sworn in and listed all these affronts to democratic governance, announced before an audience of the well-to-do and the well-heeled, "democracy has been restored!"
ReplyDeleteWhat had happened, in fact, was a military defeat of democracy and the reinstallation of an oligopoly. And the Bushies cheered.
At least we know what side they're on.
Oh, so that's what " thug?" Means? Wish we had more thugs.
ReplyDeleteRemember the half-successful coup to try and push Hamas out of the driver's seat in Palestine? It's only democracy if the right people win.
ReplyDeleteNot really surprising when you consider that Rumsfeld and Cheney probably wept harder than any communist when the USSR disintegrated.
Chavez improved the condition of the poorest Venezuelans, which is the opposite of what the USA has done in recent decades. If that's thuggery, then elect more thugs please! Thug Life!
ReplyDeleteI don't know how badly Wall Street got scorched when Chavez nationalized the oil companies, but given that the very idea that someone who was merely elected should have any power over Holy Mother Market is anathema, and must be crushed immediately, it's not really a surprise that Chavez was so roundly hated here.
ReplyDeleteMaybe he flushed his bottle of Ambien.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.talkleft.com/story/2003/11/13/911/66488/otherpolitics/Colin-Powell-on-His-Drug-Use
I'm reminded of something I read years ago. Bob Lancaster, a long-time watcher of the anti-communist kooks in Arkansas, humorously says this of Harding Univ.: "For half a century Searcy was the world's mecca of kook anti-communism. Harding University at Searcy turned out more kook anti-communists in its day than Commonwealth College at Mena had turned out kook communists in its. But then this glasnost crapola came along and just ruined everything. When President Reagan said, 'Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall,' the deafening chorus that rose up out of Searcy, Arkansas, was 'No! wait!'"
ReplyDeleteAgain, the myth gets repeated, sometimes innocuously, as you do, or for other, more sinister purposes. Chavez could not have "nationalized the oil companies" because one of his predecessors nationalized oil production in 1975. There were a number of companies operating in Venezuela after nationalization that--largely because of private corrupt agreements with previous leaders--had retained assets which effectively gave them political control over PDVSA. In 2007, partly due to the strike which the previous managers of PDVSA had started in order to break Chavez's government, Chavez took over some assets for which the companies were paid book value. ExxonMobil is still fighting this, claiming that their assets are worth much more than Chavez's government paid (they might be worth more, but that means that their assets were intentionally undervalued for tax purposes, a common practice of American companies in league with corrupt South American governments).
ReplyDeleteOne of the interesting things about the aftermath of Chavez's putting his own manager in charge of PDVSA was that Venezuela was, the next year, paid a dividend from its share of Citgo for the first time in fourteen years--$400 million. Effectively, PDVSA was being run as a private cash cow for its managers, virtually all of whom were in charge prior to the election of Chavez. Essentially, Chavez told the managers that they work for Venezuela, not for the American oil companies or for themselves, and, naturally, they didn't care for that one bit. That's where the mythmaking about Chavez nationalizing the oil companies came from. In fact, Venezuela's nationalization in 1975 simply followed a trend among most OPEC countries in the late `60s and early `70s.
Well, that's your Bush Administration:
ReplyDeleteVladimir Putin: "[I] looked into his eyes and saw his soul"
Hugo Chavez: Legitimately elected anti-American thug
You know who else is named Reich?
ReplyDeleteWell, that was what Star Trek VI was about--people who feared the loss of the status quo so much that they were willing to cooperate with their supposed enemies to keep it.
ReplyDeleteLet's not idolize him too much. Corruption is huge, crime a major problem, the economy is, arguably, being mismanaged.
ReplyDeleteNot the turning everything over to the oligarchs is the solution, either.
Do you have an actual example of thuggery or just generic complaints about corruption and mismanagement?
ReplyDeleteReich's idea of a proper election south of the border consists of a properly-supervised one-man-one-vote election followed by a coup conducted by a caudillo trained at Fort Benning.
ReplyDeletehe was still a thug.
ReplyDeleteAnd how does this make him any different from the last several American Presidents? For a thug, he did a lot more good for Venezuelans than our guys have done for us.
Reich is utterly consistent with the fundamental principles of Republicanism and the Bush Administration(s), which are anti-democratic and follow only power. This is exactly why they attacked Iraq, why they ridiculed "police actions", why they destroyed the balanced budget they inherited, and eventually the whole economy. The Republicans are fundamentally fascists in the sense that they believe only in destroying "enemies" and raising up "friends."
ReplyDeleteWilhelm?
ReplyDeleteStar Trek VI had a plot?
ReplyDelete*pffft* Star Trek VI had a great plot. The thing that I liked about it is that the conspiracy had several back-up options, each of which could have caused the peace talks to break down completely.
ReplyDeleteHis initial coup against a bad, elected government; his administration's shutdown of opposition media, his administration's threats to press freedom, and his attacks on an independent judiciary.
ReplyDeleteLike I childlishly said, Otto 'Third' Reich, coddler of at least one plane-bomber and enabler of Lateinamerikanischeseinsatzgruppen...I would rather have lived under the rule of, much less had lunch with, Chavez.
ReplyDeleteAnother terrible thing Chavez did was send free heating oil to U.S. poor.
ReplyDeleteobviously like your website but you have to test the spelling on quite a few of your posts.
ReplyDeleteMany of them are rife with spelling issues and I in finding it very troublesome to tell
the reality however I'll certainly come back again.
Also visit my web blog :: declaring bankruptcy in florida