Venezuelan democracy: "The best in the world."

[JackRiddler]

23. Still missing the essential point.

Your country, the US, is waging an illegitimate propaganda and politics war against Venezuela. Venezuela's failings become secondary in the face of this. Yes, they do. Stop the lies and the deliberate stoking of tension, then you have standing to complain about the handful of exaggerated cases you cite - which are a joke compared to the US treatment of Bradley Manning, Don Siegelman or the Portland anarchists and the Austin occupiers, among many others. You should ask, when will the US end its hostility to Venezuela!

And let me know when Chavez opens up an island prison in a foreign country (so that it can evade its own laws) and renditions people kidnapped from around the world into it and tortures them for years without letting them receive visits let along have representation. Let me know when Chavez drone-bombs his own nationals, or when VZ has the equivalent of an NDAA 1021/1022.

Mexico and Colombia are directly relevant, because they represent the alternative that the US is trying to push on the rest of Latin America: drug war, neoliberalism, and death squads. This is what the US wants for VZ! These are the "allies," one of them next door to VZ, a recipient of US military aid with a half-dozen US bases and US forces operating within its borders. So when you join in the chorus of right-wing talking points against Chavez, that is what you are objectively supporting: the Pinochet solution, which the US attempted to impose on VZ in 2002.

Meanwhile, the world's most advanced police state has been built right here, in the US. And you don't really want to get into the question of the "company we keep," do you? That's a laugher. At least two of the "bad" countries you cite - Russia and Iran - have a history in which the US fucked them over very badly, as you should know, resulting in many of their woes to this day. Would there have been a Putin as a nationalist reaction, if there had not first been a shock therapy run by the Chicago boys. Would there have been ayatollahs without the overthrow of the democratic government and the dictatorship your country imposed on Iran? This is what the US is supporting as a solution for VZ - it's good news that VZ has so successfully resisted and inspired most of Latin America to emerge from the US shadow.