Wednesday, December 5, 2007

The Red Devil

By Pepe Escobar

"......Crucially, what this means is that roughly one-third of Venezuela wants to forge towards democratic socialism no matter what; one-third prefers to remain under the standard liberal capitalist system; and one-third has not made up their minds yet, or was just too busy surviving to bother to vote. This de facto three-way tie, in itself, is also a major political earthquake. In virtually every country in South America, except fierce US ally Colombia, a similar referendum might yield similar results. The world is definitely not flat......

Most of all Chavez is so dangerous for Washington and right-wing comprador elites in Latin America because he is pushing, no holds barred, towards democratic socialism. For Washington and Wall Street elites this is way worse than the spectre of totalitarian communism branded throughout the Cold War. Everyone in Latin America remembers how Allende in the early 1970s was demonized as a Stalinist dictator by a CIA-funded propaganda campaign. But it was Henry Kissinger who got the whole point, when he told then President Nixon how Allende had to be taken out because he was such a bad example for the rest of the developing world. Chavez is the 21st century Allende. He has already survived a US-backed coup, in 2002. And he knows others – the sons of Operation Pincer - are in the works. Still, even if the Yes had won, he would not have as much institutional power as George Bush......."

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