>>I was hoping to hear more news from the Venezuelan people, do you know how they reacted, generally?<<
From The Devil's Excrement:
http://blogs.salon.com/0001330/
Funny how Chavez' stunt at the United Nations led so much traffic to my blog. You see, if you combine the words Chavez and Devil in any decent search engine, guess who is right at the top with many entries? Thus, I had a Devilanche of visitors as people tried to read more about what Chavez was saying about the leader of the country that buys the most oil from Venezela in the world. Fortunately I had made a post of the subject from work, which I rarely do, so that those arriving here could actually read about what happened.
As usual, and as expected, we got our share of PSF's and superficial Chavez admirers, who came to tell us what a great guy he is for daring to tell it like it is.As if disliking Bush is enough of a reason for liking our autocratic President. Well, I will tell them what it is like here: While Chavez was talking about peace and the rights of people, he continues to neglect his own country where, since Chavez took over in 1998, 90,000 people have died on homicides as murders have tripled in these eight years Chavez has been President. To put it in perspective this is more deaths under the "caring Chavez" than in the armed conflict in Colombia (73,000), The Persian Gulf War (63500), the Chchen war (50,000) or the war in Afghanistan (33,000).And those who die come from the lowest social strata, the "pueblo" that Chavze claims to care so much for. Meanwhile, 44 Venezulans die daily in homicides as Venzuela has 40 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants per year, an achievement that can be blamed completely on the Chavez Government which has tripled the numbers in eight years by ignoring the problem as well as its total incapacity to attack it.Venezuela now has the dubious honor of being the number one country in the world in deaths by firearms according to UNESCO.
Meanwhile, the country's judicial system, the cornerstone of Chavez accomplishments in the first three years in office can claim the following:
--90,000 monthly crime complaints are filed and processed.
--There are 98 cops per 100,000 people, less than one third of what is needed.
--Prosecutors handle 3,000 cases monthly each
--Judges decide on 1.6 complaints per hour
--93% of homicides go unpunished.
--Deaths by confrontation with police have increased by a factor of 5.
--Kidnappings have doubled in eight years.
--Over half the judges are temporary.
Thus, our "caring", "daring" President spends his time abroad insulting others and accusing them of the same crimes he is responsible for in Venezuela: His total neglect for his people as he travels and has become an absentee President, who in the end cares only about his personal project and not the "peace", "rights" or welfare of his Venezuelans citizens. Hopefully, he will spend sometime here in the next few months and leave his US$ 83 million Airbus parked, stop buying more weapons, planes and helicopters and worry about and work for his own people. But I doubt it.
The rest is simply a charade. But that is all we have seen for the last eight years. Ask what Vargas state is, what happened there in 2000 and what conditions are like today. Ask what inflation has been in the last eight months or in the last eight years. Ask what corruption is like at the highest levels of power. Ask how many corrupt politicians have been prosecuted. Ask what the fascist Chavez/Maisanta/Tascon list is. Ask who pays Chavez' campaign. Ask what the gag law is. Ask if the same person is the Minister of Information and spokesman for Chavez political party. Ask how many people have died in opposition rallies in the last eight years. Ask how many political prisoners there are. Ask who the El Llaguno shooters are and why they are free. Ask if Chavez' relatives owned so much land before he became President. Ask what has happened to the thousands of hectares of expropriated land. Ask how many military are part of the civilian Government. Ask how many fascist dictators Chavez has visited and embraced in the last eight years. Ask what happened to the 2.4 billionUS dollars missing from the FIEM fund. There are hundreds of questions like this you can ask and the answers are all absolutely terrifying and horrifying.
Just don't believe the charade.
The members of the U.N. consider themselves to be intelligent, sophisticated, and learned. Speakers at the U.N. are generally expected to be eloquent and they are expected to give educated or perhaps inspiring and uplifting speeches. Thus, I believe that many in the U.N. viewed Chavez' speech as a low class clown act. I think that many of the elites at the U.N. felt a sense of mortification and embarrassment. Imagine if you welcomed someone to a nice dinner with friends. Your expectation was that the man would be interesting and engaging. Instead, he stinks and picks his nose at the table, gets drunk, tells crude jokes, belches loudly, breaks wind and challenges other to do better, and grinds his cigarettes out in the beautiful rug. That, in essence, is the impression he made on many of the people at the U.N.
And BTW, he didn't exactly ingratiate himself with the Democrats either. Perhaps privately, they enjoyed it. But I think it is possible that they too felt some sense of mortification, and didn't want to be publicly associated with such a low class jerk. They have some pride and their sense is: "I can't be seen in public with you. It doesn't look good for me and you're an embarrassment." Rather, they would prefer that he return to Venezuela so they can admire him from afar. And there won't be any more dinner invitations.