By Greg M. Schwartz
In this spring’s inaugural World Baseball Classic, I found myself having a stronger rooting interest for Venezuela than for the USA. This was a new experience for me – I thought I might root for Mexico against the USA in the last World Cup, just because I’ve been to Mexico and seen first hand how their fans care so much more about soccer than Americans do. But when the game came, I couldn’t help but root for the USA. Something about the WBC was different, however.
It’s not a lack of patriotism – when America’s Olympic hockey and basketball teams compete, I clear my schedule to watch the games and root avidly for the USA. Part of my conflicted feelings had to do with how Venezuela’s team featured Cleveland Indians star Victor Martinez and former Tribe favorite and future hall-of-famer Omar Vizquel, while the U.S. team featured three players from the Evil Empire, aka the New York Yankees. But my real reasons for backing Venezuela have to do with my affinity for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’ populist politics and the courageous way he’s stood up to George W. Bush’s treacherous global agenda when no one else will.
International sporting competitions are supposed to be a place to leave politics behind. But due to the disinformation that the Bush regime has been pumping out about Chavez, I found myself wishing to see Venezuela defeat the U.S. in the WBC. Such a result would have provided great drama, great publicity for Venezuela’s social justice movement and would have required the Bush regime to eat some serious humble pie. Alas, neither team advanced to the championship game. But the bottom line for my rooting preference was that my sense of nationalism was trumped by my planetary citizenship. Venezuela is doing more for global social justice than the USA is these days, and that’s why I was pulling for them.
Venezuela has been in the news a lot these past few years, but many people’s knowledge of this is probably limited to right-wing evangelist Pat Robertson outrageous call for the assassination of Chavez, or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s ludicrous comparison of Chavez to Hitler. A far stronger case could be made for comparing Bush and Rumsfeld to Nazis, but that’s another article.
Why does the Bush regime have such contempt for Chavez? A little research provides a simple answer: the rise in the price of oil has made Venezuela – the planet’s fifth largest oil exporter – a major player in the game of global politics. Uncle Sam would naturally like to have a Venezuelan government that will play ball with U.S. imperialism. But Chavez wants to play a different game – he’s taken bold steps to use his country’s oil profits to pump up Venezuela’s social programs, rather than be bullied by the profiteering interests of Big Oil. What a novel concept in this era of dog-eat-dog capitalism that Uncle Sam trumpets as the formula for democracy.
Medea Benjamin of San Francisco’s Global Exchange offers penetrating insight on the issue when she writes that the Bush regime’s problems with Venezuela "relate to a deeper concern about the erosion of support for the neoliberal ‘free market’ system promoted by the US government in Latin America for decades… In addition, the concerns of the Bush Administration stem from Chávez’s promotion of regional integration, because it interferes with the US attempts to impose the failed model of corporate globalization embedded in projects like the stalled Free Trade Area of the Americas, the top US priority in Latin America for the past decade." Medea Benjamin's complete analysis
Chavez’ populist politics have made him immensely popular with the working class in Venezuela, even as the business class constantly tries to oust him via elections, recalls, and even a failed coup d’etat in 2002 that had backing from Uncle Sam. Chavez and other Latin American governments are frequently denounced in the American media for being "populists." Such criticism truly defies logic – Webster’s defines populism as "a political philosophy or movement that promotes the interests of the common people." Isn’t that what government is supposed to be about?
We also hear often hear that Chavez has threatened to cut off our oil. What usually isn’t included is the fact that Chavez told Nightline’s Ted Koppel that he would only cut off oil to America if we were to invade Venezuela. The lapdog American media also frequently cites Chavez as having voiced "anti-American" sentiments. But as Arthur Shaw of Axisoflogic.com points out, this is not at all the case.
"President Chavez has not displayed even the slightest ‘anti-American sentiments,’ rather he has displayed anti-Bush sentiments and such a display of sentiments is pro-American," wrote Shaw in March, see: Shaw's March article
Shaw’s article also highlights how Venezuela has been offering low-cost heating oil to poor American communities via the Citgo Petroleum Corporation, which is a subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company. But instead of praise for this altruistic service, Bush minions such as Republican congressman Joe Barton from Texas, have tried to insinuate that it’s merely part of a political agenda. See: Shaw's Article
If offering aid to the economically disadvantaged is a political agenda, bring it on. It sure beats whatever Bush and the GOP have been doing for America’s poor – which is jack shit. In fact, those who loathe the policies of the Bush regime should heed the call of Jeff Cohen (founder of media watchdog group FAIR - Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) and join in on a Citgo "buy-cott." If you want to use your hard-earned dollars to vote against Bush regime policy, you should buy your car’s gas at a Citgo station whenever possible. See: Common Dreams
As Cohen says, "Of the top oil producing countries in the world, only one is a democracy with a president who was elected on a platform of using his nation's oil revenue to benefit the poor. The country is Venezuela." When you buy your gas at Citgo, your money goes primarily to Venezuela to support health care, literacy and education. When you buy from the other companies, most of your money goes to Saudi Arabia and the Bush regime’s Big Oil cronies.
We cannot count on the mainstream American media to offer objective coverage of what is going on with Venezuelan politics, due to the incestuous relationship between the conglomerated media and the Republican Party. What’s happening in Venezuela does indeed threaten the status quo here in America- and that is a good thing. We could use some more populism here in the homeland, where the Bush regime is selling off every aspect of government to the highest corporate bidders.
Finally, in what may be the most intriguing development in American-Venezuelan relations yet, word has recently come out that Venezuela will lead an international investigation into learning the truth about what happened on 9/11/01. See: truth about 9/11.(infowars.com/articles/sept11/venezuela launch international 911 investigation.htm)
World Trade Center survivor William Rodriguez and billionaire philanthropist Jimmy Walter are “educating top Venezuelan officials on the evidence that 9/11 was a self-inflicted wound carried out by the American military-industrial complex.” What? You mean the Bush regime and the American media haven’t told us the truth about 9/11? If you’re not familiar with the 9/11 Truth Movement, then you just haven’t been paying attention and it’s past time to confront your fears. As Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote recently, it’s just a matter of “how far down the rabbit hole you are willing to go.” New York magazine recently published a compelling examination of 9/11 conspiracy theory titled, “The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll.” See: The Ground Zero Grassy Knoll
The fact that we Americans have to look to another country to get a serious investigation into the holes in the Bush regime’s Swiss cheese version of 9/11 is disturbing (and don’t talk to me about the so-called 9/11 Commission that Bush stonewalled for almost three years before orchestrating a trumped up 21st-century Warren Commission to sweep the unseemly details under the rug.) We should be thankful that some government in this hemisphere is still interested in truth and democracy.
Those who wish to remain informed about what’s really happening with Hugo Chavez and Venezuela should keep up to date with web sites such as Venezuelan Analysis , Venezuela FOIA , Rethink Venezuela , as well as the coverage provided by Common Dreams , Axis of Logic , and investigative reporter Greg Palast.
Greg M. Schwartz is a graduate journalism student and a senior editor for Seeds of Change. He blogs at The Smoking Mirror Blogspot . Contact him at gschwar1@kent.edu