Chavez

I have never been a fan of Chavez but I am much less of a fan of his enemies and critics in the West or in the East.  But this is what I wish to note to you: there is such enormous outswell of support and sympathy for him.  His pictures are all over Arabic pages on Facebook and Tweets have been dedicated to him.  I never realized how much he--or enemies of US and Israel--strike a chord with Arab youth.  Several called him another Nasser, although he had no charisma to speak of.  But comrade Amer said it best on Facebook yesterday: that the West turned him (although he was democratically elected more than once although the New York Times today commented that his victories were arranged through gerrymandering--a concept that is alien to Western democracies as we all know) into the worst dictator on the worst stage and not because of his rule so much but because he dared to stand up against the US and Israel.  Chavez allowed opposition media (many of which were funded or supported by the US government no doubt) but the New York Times commented (in its most silly obituary of the man) that he compelled opposition media to carry his speeches.  Wow.  That is something that is not done in the various dictatorships that US support and cuddle, and which don't allow any vestiges of opposition media.  Chavez was certainly more democratic in his rule than China, Russia, and all the Arab dictatorships and Central Asian dictatorships that the US support, fund, and arm but he was turned in the media as a twin of the North Korean dictator.  This comes to show you that the standards of Western governments and media have nothing to do with democracy and everything to do with 1) defiance against US will; 2) with the extent to which the regime allow multinational corporations to exploit and steal in a particular nation.  Chavez championing of the poor was certainly offensive to Western governments and media.  That we know.