Salzman's AEB defending Hugo Chavez?

This article is posted here as supplemental background material. For discussion and more information visit watchpaul.blogspot.com.
***
Are you nuts?

In a message dated 3/29/2007 12:25:01 PM Pacific Daylight Time, salzman@inreach.com writes:

For those of you who read the editorial in the Times Standard on Hugo Chavez, by Rhonda Chriss Lokeman of the Kansas City Star, here are responses posted by her readers on the Star's website: www.kcstar.com
-
You can read her editorial here:
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/columnists/rhonda_chriss_lokeman/16962297.htm

----
http://pod01.prospero.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?msg=1276&nav=messages&webtag=kr-kctm

3/25/2007 4:01 PM
With all due respect--i.e. NONE--I don't believe a word of this. Lady, you don't know a caudillo when you see one, because you're not seeing one--at least not where you should be. You're seeing a massive projection from your own feverish subconscious, and a very poorly constructed, unoriginal one at that. Chavez as Voldemort? What a joke! Chavez's landslide victories in Venezuela are the result of a clean election; ask Jimmy Carter. They are also the product of trust, not fear, and improvement, not decline! His policies are working; why do you think he got re-elected? Because he threw money around? No, because he put it back into his country, instead of taking it all away to Miami like his tame, corrupt predecessors did. Call them crazy, but ordinary Venezuelans like having free, public healthcare and education for a change. Not to mention infrastructure, housing, and more of a say over how their country is being run, all of which and more he is using his law decrees and all that evil, evil oil money to provide. Can YOUR president do that?
I don't believe you really have been outside your own country; you parrot the smug attitudes of its leadership perfectly. You want to know who the really bully is? It's Bush, and you're NOT standing up to him. Chavez is, and people are responding to that. Next time, do your homework, have the courage to go down there and see for yourself what's really going on, and don't just write whatever the State Dept. tells you to.
Posted by: No Thanks!

3/26/2007 12:43 PM
It seems that you haven't travel that much. People that follow our President do not do that out of fear. Bully?, who can talk about bully?, go and say that to the poor people that for the first time their children have a doctor. You do not have to tell us who the bully is, we know him; I cried in front of the bully when my child was a baby and was ill, but I did not have money to take him to the doctor, and a man that was a veterinarian student told me to give my four months baby half aspirin with pepsi. Mrs. Rhonda, you do not know our pain, the poverty that has been our bully for long time, so please use your colum to say some truth about my country and our President,and the people that follow him out of respect and hope. You are very welcome to visit my country, you may go to my mother's house and listen her and the other ladies that are very happy to konw that they have rights,and that they know there is a little book named Constitution that has their/our rights, and do y
ou know how they know that?, it is because Chvez taught us about it. After they knew how to read and write, they know how to find the rights that protect them from the real bully: besides poverty, lies like the ones in your colum. Where is the bully coming from?, answer this question to yourself. I hope that in your answer and thoughts, you do not bring the word populism in the way is used lately about our President. Venezuelan people, the poor ones, know a demagogic or populist politician because they were Presidents for forty years, and they are the parents of the bully in Venezuela. Ask who they are, and about their "friends" kings of bullies.
Posted by: Negda Leon

3/26/2007 2:03 PM
Chavez' power actually comes from his links with the poor majority - he backs them and they back him. That's why columnists like this right-wing ratbag hate him and slander him.
Posted by: Richard Cheeseman

3/26/2007 7:58 PM
Rhonda,
A king granted huge land favors to lords hundreds of years ago in Venezuela. Is that capitolism? The indigenous people who lived there then had that much less land to work and prosper on. It was wrong then and even more wrong today. To try and hang the label communist on Hugo because he is correcting huge mistakes of the past, is so shortsighted that I fear journalists who support this line of thinking, may just walk off a cliff. Was it capitolism when in early america that Manhattan Island was bought with a box full of trinkets from the indians? I believe in capitolism, but just because it is capitalistic doesn't mean it is right or fair. That is why there are laws to define what people can do in a capitalistic society. The lack of fair laws in Venezuela allowed the transfer of too much wealth to the few. It is not a crime or against capitalism to correct greed/Capitalism of the past. A look at history shows us that when the privileged own it all, is when a Revolution will b
ring it all to an end, with heads rolling. It is actually a favor to the rich of Venezuela to correct the problem before the fat cats heads roll. I can't say that everything about Hugo Chavez is perfect, but I see free education, health care, a chance to work the land, as a huge improvement to what unrestrained Capitolism brought them.
Posted by: Jim Blevins

3/26/2007 10:58 PM
I hope you read the comments that readers have sent in response to your article VERY carefully, and read them many times over. Your readers comments are very intelligent and insightful, whereas your article is offensive nonsense that you need to apologize for writing and publishing. How DARE you call Chavez a dictator!!?? Look at the facts. His opposing candidate acknowledged that he won the last democratic election fairly. And the fact is, the man you refer to as your fearless leader (maybe yours, but certainly not mine) STOLE the election fraudulently. And that is only for starters. I don't have time to go through all the ridiculous flaws in your article. I hope I can make time at a later date. But you need to do your homework. You should be ashamed of yourself. You call yourself a journalist??!! How pathetic. Hey, are you a coward or are you going to write a column in response to all these readers criticism of your Orwellian article?? We will see, won't we?
Posted by: David Parker

Comments
Chaves is working for the poor people in the region and many arround the world. Please let Hugo help those who need his help.Why are you portraying him like that while you all know that when Bush is using guns and bombs to kill, Chavez is helping with oil revenues so what?
Posted by: Maliga

3/26/2007 10:06 AM
Simply, you present no evidence for your accusations.
Posted by: Steven Goetz

3/26/2007 11:36 AM
It's too bad you don't read before you write. Unfortunately, Chavez is an important and complex figure who is turning the globe in a different direction -- and we readers need clarification not silly hyperbole. You do your readers a disservice by simplifying what's clearly out of your range. You need to go back & do your homework.
Posted by: Professor M
--
The following information is a reminder of your current mailing
list subscription:

You are subscribed to the following list:
Redwood Progressive