A younger Castro with oil...

Babble on.

Bruce Gottfred is one of the few folks in the Canadian blogosphere who continues to follow the decline of Venezuela under Hugo Chavez.

According to Miami's El Nuevo Herald, Chavez has granted Cuban judicial and security forces extensive police powers within Venezuela. Cubans are already running the intelligence services and indoctrinating and training the military. They will effectively bypass what is left of Venezuela's judicial system when they exercise new powers to investigate, seize, detain, and interrogate Venezuelans and Cubans living in Venezuela, with the right to extradite them to Cuba and try them there. This threatens the safety of some 30,000 Cubans in Venezuela.
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Chavez, in turn, provides Castro with 80,000 barrels a day of essential oil. Venezuela's rich flow of oil revenues has enabled Chavez to buy the support of sectors of Venezuelan society and assert himself as the leader of what he calls a "jihad" against American imperialism. Chavez's sense of moral justice is manifest in his alliance with the worst criminal organizations in Latin America, especially the narcoterrorists in Colombia. Just recently, he denounced Colombian authorities because they arrested a senior member of the narcoterrorist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) who had been given sanctuary in Venezuela.

To get a sense of the degree to which Chavez is intimidating his opponents and harassing dissidents, just read the language of a new criminal law that he pushed through the legislature: "Any individual who creates panic in the community or makes it restless by disseminating false information via print media, radio, TV, phone, electronic mail, or pamphlets will be punished with two to five years in prison." Even the most popular form of political protest, banging pots and pans, done in the presence of members of his government, now carries with it up to a three-month jail sentence.

When the recall election was held in August of last year, I was one of those simple, trusting souls who swallowed Jimmy Carter's endorsement of the process as a fair and democratic one. I should have known better.

Carter's people counted fewer than 1 percent of the polling stations, which, instead of being selected at random, as originally anticipated, were selected by Venezuelan officials. Even then, only 76 of the previously agreed 192 ballot boxes were counted, with either opposition witnesses or international observers present at only 26 out of the 76 boxes reviewed. The Chavez-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) forbade access to the tallying centers, not only to Carter's people but to the representatives of the opposition, and even to the two members of the CNE who opposed Chavez. Two professors from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a report concluding that there was at least a 99 percent chance the election was a fraud. The audited sample (Carter's) was simply not a random sample, the professors concluded. Various independent exit polls showed that Chavez had lost the vote by 59 percent to 41 percent, instead of Chavez's contention that he had won by that margin.

Now before I start attracting the ire of friends to the left of me who supported this latest incarnation of the Tin-Hat Latin Strongman with reflexive anti-American solidarity, let me say that the government of Venezuela should be free to peacefully disagree with the government of any other nation on any matter they choose - including the mighty Yanquis.

But when an autocratic cabal seeks to oppress its own people under a flaking veneer of populism and democracy, I think that ruling clique should get called out by the international community. Incidentally, I'd include the collection of stiffs who ran Venezuela prior to the Chavez thugs among those who should be on the wrong end of worldwide censure.

Venezuelans deserve better than this. To those on the right I say: actively support true liberal democratic efforts in Venezuela, even if it results in a government that you don't like. A spanish-speaking Chirac is preferable by far to a younger Castro with oil, people. And to those on the left I say: stop shacking up with autocratic tyrants just because they hate America as much as you do (y'all look as dopey as Rummy shaking hands with Hussein - or Bush shaking hands with Crown Prince Abdullah for that matter).

Babble off.