Jan 01 2008
Comments & Glitter Graphics for Myspace, Hi5, Orkut, Friendster
Comments & Glitter Graphics for Myspace, Hi5, Orkut, Friendster
Comments & Glitter Graphics for Myspace, Hi5, Orkut, Friendster
Jan 01 2008
This is a New Year
Doctors Cite Pressure to Keep Silent On Bhutto
By Emily Wax and Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, January 1, 2008; Page A01RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Dec. 31 — Pakistani authorities have pressured the medical personnel who tried to save Benazir Bhutto’s life to remain silent about what happened in her final hour and have removed records of her treatment from the facility, according to doctors.
In interviews, doctors who were at Bhutto’s side at Rawalpindi General Hospital said they were under extreme pressure not to share details about the nature of the injuries that the opposition leader suffered in an attack here Dec. 27.
USA
An Odd Couple With Big Influence
By Joel Achenbach
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 1, 2008; Page A01GRUNDY CENTER, Iowa — Two states guard the campaign trail as though they own it. Their influence on national politics is wildly disproportionate to their modest populations. Neither has anything that could be called a large city, or a slum, or a sprawling suburb. Both are dotted with small towns where everyone knows everyone else. One is very white, the other whiter still.
Iowa and New Hampshire have defied all predictions of their impending obsolescence. By the time Iowans finish caucusing Thursday and New Hampshirites vote in their primary five days later, the course of the 2008 presidential race may have been shaped, before many people in 48 other states have even paid much attention.
It’s Huckabee on offense, or not
The GOP candidate purportedly turns the other cheek on an anti-Romney strategy. Still, he shows an attack ad to reporters anyway.
DES MOINES — In the last days before Thursday’s Iowa caucuses, Mike Huckabee, lacking money and staff, is adopting a freewheeling and inexpensive strategy of asymmetrical political warfare — inviting reporters to a pheasant hunt, a morning jog and a haircut — to needle his better-funded, better-organized challenger, Mitt Romney.As the campaign enters a new year, the daily battle of visual images increasingly pits Huckabee’s Doo Dah Parade-style theatrics against Romney’s Rose Parade of stately, flowery events. On Monday, Huckabee’s approach culminated in the most head-spinning news conference of the presidential campaign.
Huckabee aides had set the stage — a hotel conference room here — for the former Arkansas governor to attack Romney. Three poster boards rested on easels to display Romney’s gaffes and policy reversals. A blue backdrop read “Enough Is Enough” in reference to Romney’s TV ad attacks on Huckabee. And a screen had been set up to project a new Huckabee ad attacking the former Massachusetts governor for his record on crime, healthcare, spending and abortion.
After Ruling, Groups Spend Heavily to Sway Races
DES MOINES – Spurred by a recent Supreme Court decision, independent political groups are using their financial muscle and organizational clout as never before to influence the presidential race, pumping money and troops into early nominating states on behalf of their favored candidates.
Iowans have been bombarded over the last few days with radio spots supporting John Edwards that were paid for by a group affiliated with locals of the Service Employees International Union, which just kicked in $800,000 – on top of $760,000 already spent.
Europe
Paris and Berlin ban cafe smoking
Smoking has been banned in bars in the capitals of France and Germany but the laws will not be enforced immediately.Eight German states, including Berlin, have ushered in 2008 declaring their pubs and restaurants smoke-free.
Almost a third of Germans smoke and the authorities in Berlin have decided not to enforce the restrictions actively for the first six months.
In France, a law forbidding smoking in public places has now been extended to bars, cafes and hotels.
Race to save moulding Lascaux cave paintings
The French government is taking emergency action to rescue the world’s most celebrated prehistoric cave paintings from a second fungal invasion in seven years.Each day until 8 January, experts are treating the caverns at Lascaux in the Dordogne – nicknamed the Sistine Chapel of pre-history – with a fungicide to try to check a gradual spread of spots of grey and black mould. The caves will then be closed to all but essential visitors for three months.
An air conditioning system, installed just before a similar fungal attack seven years ago, is to be replaced. Some scientists believe the introduction of the machinery was misconceived and may be partially responsible for the fungal invasions.
Other experts blame global warming for increasing the temperature in the caves. Others point to an increased level of human activity in the caverns as part of an ambitious attempt to create an exact computerised record in three dimensions of the 17,000-year-old paintings of bison, wild cattle, deer and other animals.
Africa
Kenya on the brink as more than 100 killed in poll riots
Disputed election result sparks worst violence in 25 years
Kenya’s reputation as one of Africa’s most stable democracies was shattered yesterday as the fallout from Sunday’s highly controversial presidential elections led to nationwide rioting and the deaths of more than 100 people.Police and protesters fought running battles in a number of Nairobi’s slums as supporters of opposition leader Raila Odinga burned down homes and looted shops owned by supporters of the victorious incumbent Mwai Kibaki.
In western Kenya, where Odinga’s support is greatest, 40 people were reported to have been killed, many of them by police, and a day-time curfew was enforced.
Africa’s oasis of calm threatened by dangerous political game
Kenya is rare among east African nations. While its neighbours Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda and Somalia have all at one time or another been ripped apart by civil war, Kenya has remained stable.In a country made up of 42 different ethnic tribes, the tensions which exist between certain communities have never spilled over into all-out war. Ethnic clashes have broken out, most recently in the Mount Elgon region near the border with Uganda, but the country as a whole has remained united.
This may be Kenya’s biggest test. Luos, the second-largest tribe in Kenya, but one that has long been marginalised, believed they were finally going to get their chance to rule. The Kikuyus, Kenya’s largest tribe, have provided two of Kenya’s three presidents and retained influential positions during the rule of Daniel arap Moi, a Kalenjin.
Asia
2008: The year a new superpower is born
Here comes the world’s newest superpower. The rest of the world is gloomily contemplating economic slowdown and even recession. Not in Beijing. China is set to make 2008 the year it asserts its status as a global colossus by flexing frightening economic muscle on international markets, enjoying unprecedented levels of domestic consumption and showcasing itself to a watching world with a glittering £20bn Olympic Games.The world’s most populous nation will mark the next 12 months with a coming-of-age party that will confirm its transformation in three decades from one of the poorest countries of the 20th century into the globe’s third-largest economy, its hungriest (and most polluting) consumer and the engine room of economic growth.
Middle East
Iraqis fear surge is a temporary lull instead of permanent peace
Cheering triumphantly as his kick smashed through the front door of the abandoned house in a tense Baghdad neighbourhood, the Iraqi soldier led a team of four inside while a group of American troops watched.Moments later the men emerged empty-handed, signalled to their US shadows that the place was clear and trotted off to the next house as part of a joint operation to look for corpses, weapons and al-Qaeda fighters in one of the worst hotspots in the city.
Four US soldiers stepped into the rundown home in Saydiyah to check the Iraqis’ search skills, muttering about how their inexperienced counterparts preferred speed over thoroughness and sometimes missed things.
Baghdad: First New Year’s in years
BAGHDAD – It was something not seen in Baghdad since before the 2003 invasion – people publicly welcoming a new year with singing, dancing and general revelry.The ballrooms of two landmark hotels – the Palestine and the Sheraton – were full of people for the first New Year’s Eve celebrations after four years of violence that has bloodied Iraq.
“This place is now more secure,” said Zahraa, 23, adorned with heavy black eyeliner and red lipstick, sitting with colleagues at the Palestine hotel, which was the target of huge car bombs in 2005. “Yes, we are still afraid, but we need to lighten our moods occasionally.”
Latin America
Colombian hostage release halted
A Venezuelan-led mission to free three hostages held by Colombian left-wing Farc rebels has been suspended.The rebels said the planned release was not possible because of government military operations, according to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
But the Colombian president Alvaro Uribe said no new operations were under way and that the rebels may not be in possession of one of the hostages.
The Farc had promised Mr Chavez that they would release two women and a boy.
Jan 01 2008
 Muse in the Morning |
 Pains
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Good morning. Be excellent to one another.
Jan 01 2008
| Muse in the Morning |
The muses are ancient. The inspirations for our stories were said to be born from them. Muses of song and dance, or poetry and prose, of comedy and tragedy, of the inward and the outward. In one version they are Calliope, Euterpe and Terpsichore, Erato and Clio, Thalia and Melpomene, Polyhymnia and Urania.
It has also been traditional to name a tenth muse. Plato declared Sappho to be the tenth muse, the muse of women poets. Others have been suggested throughout the centuries. I don’t have a name for one, but I do think there should be a muse for the graphical arts. And maybe there should be many more.
Please join us inside to celebrate our various muses…
An Opened Mind XVII:
This poem makes big time reference to the eye candy, which itself was a pretty good depiction of what my life was like during my transition. The art is about 9 years old…from just after I added Painter Classic to my repertoire of programs.
Art Link Being Different
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I know you have talent. What sometimes is forgotten is that being practical is a talent. I have a paucity for that sort of talent in many situations, though it turns out that I’m a pretty darn good cook. 🙂
Let your talent bloom. You can share it here. Encourage others to let it bloom inside them as well.
Won’t you share your words or art, your sounds or visions, your thoughts scientific or philosophic, the comedy or tragedy of your days, the stories of doing and making? And be excellent to one another!
Jan 01 2008
( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Somebody send this to Wexler:
This is from AfterDowningStreet.org, and it’s a mind-blowing list of the massive evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors from the Bush administration in 2007 alone.
It seems that 2007 will go down as an extremely shameful year for the United States, and for the Democratic Party in particular:
Some of the 2007 evidence below was exposed by Congress, but most of it was unearthed by book authors, bloggers, independent reporters, federal prosecutors, and the corporate media. With the Democratic majorities came a complete ban on congressional investigations of war lies (not to mention an end to serious efforts to end the occupation of Iraq). Other investigations proceeded cautiously and at a glacial pace – and with no ultimate objective, Speaker Nancy Pelosi having declared impeachment “off the table.” It took over 4 months for the opposition party to issue its first subpoena. In June there was a minor burst of subpoenas. But it was quickly established that Bush, Cheney, Condi, and their underlings, would never comply with subpoenas, and that Bush would even (feloniously) order former staffers not to comply. The Democrats let it go at that and largely stopped trying to compel incriminating testimony. That the House Judiciary Committee had, a single generation back, passed an article of impeachment against a president for refusing a subpoena was buried in our national amnesia.
For those of us sick to death of the lack of response from our so-called “leaders” in the Democratic Party, and sick to death of the mainstream “media’s” deliberate ignoring of these crimes, this list will quite likely either infuriate you or numb you into further depressive submission.
I mean, I’m going to blockquote just one small section of the list, which is divided into categories. There are FIFTEEN other categories! Fifteen! This one is just for “war crimes”:
WAR CRIMESThis is one of the harder topics for Americans to discuss by name, yet 2007 yielded a bumper crop of evidence of war crimes:
2007 May 4 Army Surgeon General’s pentagon report on declining morale and war crimes
http://armymedicine.army.mil/n…US Attack on Iraqi Peace Parliamentarian
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…US Electromagnetic Weapons and Human Rights
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…‘Shocking’ video: Shi’a Iraqi soldiers beat Sunnis as US trainers watch
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…Death Squads, American Style
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…Fifth Marine Pleads Guilty in Murder of Innocent Man
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…Jailed Two Years, Iraqi Tells of Abuse by Americans
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…Bush Family War Profiteering
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…Coerced Labor Building Baghdad Embassy?
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…Illegal Bases in Iraq Openly Constructed, Used, Announced
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…Marine Told to Destroy Haditha Photos
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…The Other War: Iraq Veterans Speak Out on Shocking Accounts of Attacks on Iraqi Civilians
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…Marine says beatings urged in Iraq
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…Video: Marine on Hamdania Shooting
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…U.S. soldier convicted of beating Iraqi detainee with baseball bat
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…Marine tells of order to execute Haditha women and children
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…Documents Show Troops Disregarding Rules
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…U.S. Aims To Lure Insurgents With ‘Bait’
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…Soldier: Sergeant from N.C. ordered me to shoot unarmed Iraqi man
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…US Violating Chemical Weapons Convention in Iraq
http://afterdowningstreet.org/…And still we do not end the supreme war crime, the crime that contains the accumulated evil of the whole: the war of aggression.
And when I clicked randomly on just one of these links listed above, I found the following information, something I actually didn’t know! Why? Because nobody has reported it! But check this out:
Since this war on terror was declared following 9/11, the pay levels for the CEOs of the top 34 defense contractors have doubled. The average compensation rose from $3.6 million during the period of 1998-2001, to $7.2 million during the period of 2002-2005, according to an August 2006, report entitled, “Executive Excess 2006,” by the Washington-based, Institute for Policy Studies, and the Boston-based, United for a Fair Economy.This study found that since 9/11, the 34 defense CEOs have pocketed a combined total of $984 million, or enough, the report says, to cover the wages for more than a million Iraqis for a year. In 2005, the average total compensation for the CEOs of large US corporations was only 6% above 2001 figures, while defense CEOs pay was 108% higher.
But the last name of one family, which is literally amassing a fortune over the backs of our dead heroes, matches that of the man holding the purse strings in the White House. On December 11, 2003, the Financial Times reported that three people had told the Times that they had seen letters written by Neil Bush that recommended business ventures in the Middle East, promoted by New Bridges Strategies, a firm set up by President Bush’s former campaign manager, who quit his Bush appointed government job as the head of FEMA, three weeks before the war in Iraq began.
Isn’t that just darned interesting? It gets even MORE interesting, a lot more interesting, when you read even further down that article and learn about all the members of the Bush family who have directly profited from their family member’s little “war on terror”.
Isn’t that just a betrayal of the American people that none of this information has been reported by anyone, anywhere, at all?
Ah, Happy New Year indeed. May 2008 be remembered as the time our nation returned to sanity. Color me not optimistic.
But let’s spread this around, shall we? Blog it anywhere you can. Copy it word for word. Post it over at Dailykos if you want — I still can’t post over there for a week or so. Thanks.
Jan 01 2008
Here are mine. Please add yours below or tell me what you think. It’s time to start working on 2008.
1. The Hives: Tick Tick Boom. The Hives are a Swedish garage band that brings back the energy of early punk. They tried to do more serious music, perhaps to avoid the label of “shallow”, and abandoned that idea. Good move.
2. Serj Tankian The unthinking majority. I found his music online because he has a poltical bent. He has his own style that is Zappa-ish.
3. Foo Fighters. Pretender. A nice electric sound; I’m not a big heavy metal fan, but I like their sound.
4. Lily Allen. Everything’s just wonderful. Her sweet, sexy voice in that cockney accent singing sassy working class songs is an incongruent mix, but I love it.
5. Amy Winehouse. Rehab. Early last year I tried to buy tickets to hear her play at a movie theater near my house; she was sold out. I couldn’t wait for the album to be imported. I was singing rehab before Amy knew she was headed there.
6. Janine Jansen. The Bach Album. She plays a mean Bach partita on violin. I enjoy listening to her while I’m reading or paying bills. The intensity gives me energy. Bach played this way is an aural, black beauty.
7. Akon (with Snoop Dog). I wanna Love you (Remix). Akon sings with that intriguing African accent with good beats and Snoop Dog’s deep vocals are a nice complement. When the foreign language rap begins in the middle of the song I’m swept away to some cantina in a Latin country.
8. John Mayer: Continuum. I played this cut off of my CD for my class while I was waiting for the lecture time to formally begin. There were mostly women in my class and they love him. I like this particular song because it represents the younger generation’s outlook, which is very different from that of my generation. We believed we could change the world; they are waiting for the world to change.
9. Pink: I have seen the rain. She does this one with her dad, a Vietnam Vet. I saw Pink live this past year, and when she sang the anti-Bush song First Avenue rocked, as it did for all of her other songs.
10. Patti Smith: Redondo Beach. I went to a Patti Smith concert this year. She played a small venue downtown in Minneapolis and performed most of the songs from Twelve, an album of covers. She played a few of her old songs, including Redondo Beach. The new covers, except for gimme shelter, just didn’t work for me. I assume she thought that the album would be 12 replications of My Generation, a cover that she did in her own unique style that works. At the concert, she said she needed the money and wanted to resurrect her career.
Jan 01 2008
SURPRISE!!
And just for you, because you are SOooo Special….
Not one, but TWO CAKES!!
One to wish upon…
and an ooey-gooey Yummy one….
We’ve just been waiting on YOU!
Only the best for You, CHEERS!!
Drinks are on the house!
You ready? Let’s GO!
Today- it’s all ways YOU!
because it’s your…
and later this evening….
I hope you’ll be thinking….
and by the way…did I mention…..?
(^.^)
Jan 01 2008
For the last few years my mind has had wisps of ideas, but nothing really crystallized.
Everytime I thought I was getting it together…
The last few weeks all of that has changed. I’m seeing things differently. Pieces are fitting, I’m making connections, trying to find a solution to the morass I’m in.
I know I’m not alone in the morass, Buhdy’s going around talking to himself
and everybody’s all screaming…
Where Did All the GOOD PEOPLE Go?
I’ve also noticed others here & there in comments, and also in essays, there seems to be a convergence on an ideal….
a moving on, leaving the hatred & vitriol behind…
so yeah, we’ve been knocked down
it’s time to Get Up Again….
“It’s not the big things we need to worry about, but the little ones. It’s the little things
that’ll get us” -MrD
The other side to this is that the little things will save us.
So how do we begin?
Grab your gaze out of the gutter and look up to the stardust from whence you came and believe in yourself again.
You can change things. You know it’s true. Stop smoking. Get fit. Care more for those around you and let them know it.
Blog more. Sing louder. We are not proud, or tired. And we’ll show you the next time it comes around on the guitar.
With feeling. ~ek hornbeck
Its time to stand up & say….I will NOT be broken!
all it takes is One Good Idea…
Life is long enough.
The basic challenge is to come up with one good idea…an idea that will change and make better the lives of fellow humans.
How does one do that? ~Viet71
it’s time to get Back To Where It All Begins…
How about doing things backwards and opposite from most of the world….
I think next year it just might work if the rest of the world tried it too. Maybe?
How about next year instead of setting aside one day out of 365 at the end of the year to be good to each other, we do it backwards and set aside 364 days to be good to each other and one day to all be assholes, just so we have a day to get it out of our systems. All wars would have to be on that one day, of course… that would be a given.
Make sense? Anybody think it’s a lousy idea? ~edger
Or this, a simple idea to raise awareness & support of our troops… Little Green Army Men- have you heard about this? Poichick diaried about this last summer in orange
I first heard about this LGAM idea from mouthswideopen and I’ve put out battalions of LGAM in the last 3yrs.
OPOL shared a Simple Idea that struck a chord with me:
“We should be talking instead of fighting, reaching out to each other instead of blowing each other to shreds, we should be leading the world in the cause of peace. We should be putting an end to war. We should stop the insanity. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”
These are simple ideas…Of doing the right thing, living the golden rule, because nice matters
.
Have you seen this commercial (maybe it’s for insurance?) A man stops to pick up a toy thrown by a baby, someone stops him from walking into danger… it’s a series of little kindnesses passed one to another.
What made this commercial resonate in me? Probably the sad lack of kindness in our society today. Slowly it has disappeared, replaced by those thinking only of themselves.
“This is the generation our parents warned us about.”
It’s the “ME generation”
Luckily some of us fell through the cracks.
We taught our children manners, although we did not demand sirs & ma’ms all the time. We taught our children to hold the door & the chair, to say please & thank-you, to compliment a job well done. We taught them to care about others.
The other day I caught my son ‘teaching’ manners as he held the door: “It’s polite to say Thank-You when someone holds the door for you.” He stated in a louder than necessary voice to the 6-8 people who had taken advantage of him opening & holding the door for me with no word of acknowledgement. There was no rudeness in his voice, just a simple statement of fact. I had to laugh. He showed me just how simple it can be.
It’s time to get back to being nice. Just because it’s the correct thing to do.
It’s time to get back to Simple Ideas.
Changing the context in which human beings live isn’t engineering at all; it’s gardening. It is not the imposition on inert material of a pattern alien to that material’s nature; it is rather the provision of resource, and the removal of impediments, to the proper expression, through life and growth, of that nature.
It isn’t, therefore, something that one people does to another, with an end in view; it is something that peoples do with each other for its own sake — as you say, over Three Cups of Tea. ~Faber
ABSOLUTELY FREE FOR YOU TODAY……
Before admonishing another, one should reflect thus…
In due season will I speak, not out of season,
In truth will I speak, not in falsehood.
For his/her benefit will I speak, not his/her loss.
Gently will I speak, not harshly.
In kindness will I speak, not in anger. ~from the Vinaya, quoted by davidseth
It’s time to shine….In the Light
What’s really important to me…why I keep on keeping on despite all the horrors of the world …is all wrapped up in who I am… to the people in my life in some measure it’s all the same…I’m just ria, trying to help those I find along my path as best I can…whoever it might be…and that’s why to me, knowing I took the correct path…not always the one others thought I should..or the one that was pretty w/ bells & whistles…but the path that called to me, to my heart & said ‘over here’…that path has always been the one that makes my heart sing as I go down it…its doing as you want to be done to…remembering to really try to see it from the others POV…to give as much as you get & more… to leave things as good or better than you found them…
my thoughts-or how i see the world, affects other people… how I treat other people affects more people…I see it being passed on in little ways, tiny things that others would likely not notice…the fact that my son teaches his boy to say please & thank you… it’s ripples….
so, yes, I know I’ll die & prolly sooner rather than later…but I’ll be here……..when my grandson smiles at his grandson because he said ‘thank you, granpa’ …
It’s why we do this… why we fly our kites….
why we try to shed a little light….
HAPPY NEW YEAR DHARMENIZENS!!
Be EXCELLENT!
(^.^)
Jan 01 2008
Crossposted from http://SanchoPress.com
Stockholders Say: Eli Lilly is My Co-Pirate!
Eli Lilly, Astra Zeneca and Glaxo Smith Klein under investigation for involvement in Oil For Food scandal:
http://washingtontimes.com”>http://washingtontimes.com/app…
Sir Win Friendly is at the helm of Lilly…and CitiBank:
http://investor.lilly.com/corp…
To research the curious connections between industry, government and academe, go to
http://theyrule.net
Jan 01 2008
This is a short review of two biographies of Hugo Chávez, current President of Venezuela.
(from Idealterna on Flickr)
Mostly I am interested in comparing and contrasting the two biographical styles. Marcano and Tyszka are much like journalists, whereas Jones has a somewhat pro-Chávez axe to grind. In the end I find Jones more straightforward. I am also interested in depicting Chávez against the background of Venezuelan political economy, in which a rich few garner all of the profits from Venezuela’s enormous oil reserves while the poor majority have in the past found themselves shut out of the benefits in times when the price of crude oil has been high.
(crossposted at Big Orange)
Book reviews:
Marcano, Cristina, and Alberto Barrera Tyszka. Hugo
Chávez. New York: Random House, 2007.Jones, Bart. ¡Hugo! The Hugo Chávez Story from Mud Hut to
Perpetual Revolution. Hanover NH: Steerforth, 2007.
When reading the biography of a prominent individual, I always feel like I’m being asked to evaluate the historical time and space in which that individual lived. This makes things difficult, as historical individuals are usually never pure villains or heroes, but mere human beings blessed with both strengths and weaknesses. I think this is more important than the biases of the biographer, which can be ferreted out by looking at what the historical record has to say about the individual being “biographied.”
Today’s diary will be a review of two biographies Hugo Chávez, current President of Venezuela. The first one is written by two Venezuelan journalists who may be beholden in some sense to Venezuela’s typically anti-Chávez mass media. The second is written by a sympathetic leftist with some degree of sympathy for Venezuela’s poor.
Both biographers give us a fairly accurate picture of the same guy: an insomniac who lives off of very little sleep; very much a hands-on leader who likes to parade his face on Venezuelan TV; a playful guy in many respects; a guy who can’t stay married; makes enemies, and is rude and insulting to perceived enemies; a big reader of almost everything; very much a leftist and a populist with “marxist tendencies” and with enormous public support in Venezuela. Both texts are rich compendia of facts about the life of Hugo Chávez Frias.
The particulars of Chávez’s life stay the same with both biographers, although each biographer’s coverage of each event is different. Chávez was born on July 28, 1954 in a mud hut, grew up impoverished, went to military academy, read a lot, and went into the army, where he was a minor Venezuelan baseball star, and where he organized a subversive organization around the name of Simon Bolivar, which resulted in 1992 in a failed coup against the rather unpopular government of Carlos Andrés Pérez, who was impeached and convicted a year after the coup. Jones’s biography goes into detail as to Pérez’s second term, in which neoliberal “austerity planning” was forced onto Venezuela, resulting in a political climate of almost constant chaos.
After the failed coup, which resulted in Chávez’s imprisonment for two years, Chávez became wildly popular. The next important event in Chávez’s life, then, was his election to the Presidency “out of nowhere” in 1998. Thereafter, Chávez’s term as President was marked by an April 2002 coup led by Alfredo Carmona, which looked for forty-eight hours like it had some chance of succeeding, and by a November 2002 capital strike, centering upon oil production, which crippled the economy.
Chávez then won a 2004 recall effort (yes, Venezuelans have the right to recall their Presidents – wish we had that here!), and a 2006 election, which he won by a landslide.
The journalists, Marcano and Tyszka, like to write in a style vaguely reminiscent of the “objectivity” typically practiced by American journalists. They say, for instance, that “As time goes by, it will become more and more difficult to study the facts of Hugo Chávez’s life. His story already has an ‘official version,’ a party line that has been reconstructed and retold from his position of power.” (13) Jones, however, grants an audience to the story of Hugo Chavez, All-Venezuelan Boy, who grew up from humble origins in a mud hut in the state of Barinas to become an army officer, a baseball star, and, lastly and most importantly, President of Venezuela.
The Marcano and Tyszka story makes more of the various defections from Chávez’s inner circle, and of Chávez’s personal life, than does the Jones book. One major distinction in terms of reportage of fact contrasts these two books: when the coup of 2002 was in full swing, the anti-Chávez media broadcasted a film of some people shooting guns which they claimed was of pro-Chávez snipers killing anti-Chávez demonstrators. Marcano and Tyszka will neither confirm nor deny the media story about this film; Jones claims that it’s a fabrication.
Marcano and Tyszka insinuate that Chávez was lying to the Venezuelan public until 2005 when he finally “came out” as a socialist (23). Since Chávez hasn’t instituted any sort of genuine socialism in Venezuela with what the authors’ introduction-writer calls his “almost dictatorial powers,” the point would seem to be rather irrelevant except for the fact that Chávez calls his movement “21st century socialism.” Pushing away the hype and judging Chávez by his actions, however, Chávez seems to be a liberal populist, a reasonably good politician by Democratic Party standards, except that he has adopted a bullying manner of speaking about his enemies, a tremendous ego, and a country with a rather extreme class system and a corrupt political culture. Chávez’s historical circumstances cannot be ignored in any assessment of his term as President. Chávez inherited a country that was ruled through what Jones calls “piñata culture,” in which
…the “candy” or the money from oil revenues spills to the floor after the piñata is broken open and everyone grabs what they can in a free-for-all as they elbow others aside. Those who didn’t take what they could were considered pendejos, fools. (Jones 233)
Jones continues:
A best-selling book, The Dictionary of Corruption in Venezuela, cataloged some of the most infamous pillaging. It was three volumes long. It picked apart three hundred cases of graft among the high and mighty between 1959 and 1989. The series didn’t didn’t even go into the second term of Carlos Andrés Pérez, considered a gold-medal contender in the category, or mention his mistress Cecilia Matos. (233)
Whether Chávez has actually had any success in changing Venezuela’s political “piñata culture,” or whether he has just succeeded in bullying it into its subordinate place during the length of his term (and no further), is something that future historians will have to decide. But Jones’ explanation makes his explanations of elite hatred for Chávez seem plausible:
The elites’ hatred of Chávez stemmed froma variety of factors, including frustration, paranoia, classism, and a fear of being left out of Chávez’s project. All of it was reinforced by a twenty-four-hour-a-day bombardment of vitriolic anti-Chávez propaganda on television that brainwashed a segment of the population and stoked something bordering on mass hysteria.
Chávez was not a diplomatic politician and had a way of bullying his opponents, whom he likened to enemies in a war. He insulted them publicly and by name, belittling, humiliating, and depicting them as worthless scum. For their part, the elites could not accept that an uncouth country bumpkin like Chávez whom they were more accustomed to seeing in a tuxedo serving them at their clubs was now in charge of them. On a larger scale his political program and his plan to redistribute the country’s oil wealth was a clear threat to their interests. (Jones 370)
The corrupt interests that previously ran Venezuela are, in short, getting a dose of much-needed blowback, and from someone they are being prompted to despise. Whether it will all amount to anything after Chávez is gone is, however, uncertain.
I prefer the Jones book to the Marcano book because Jones’s narrative intent is straightforward, marshaling evidence toward a point, whereas Marcano and Tyszka seem to dance around like journalists, quoting this side and that. Jones thinks that some of Chávez’s post-2003 social programs are doing good things for the people of Venezuela. Jones also thinks that this is something that is vitally needed in a country traditionally dominated by a few rich people. (Marcano and Tyszka, on the other hand, merely report that these programs are “mired in controversy,” while citing an authority who regards them as a ploy to keep Chávez in power (268-270), suggesting that “all the programs function by remitting salary grants to the participants, according to a system of partisan affiliations and loyalty to the government” (269). How precisely that works, today, is not spelled out. Even so, the authors detail these programs concisely — including free health care, educational assistance, assistance for the unemployed, and subsidized access to food.
Despite an overall favorable account of Chávez, Jones details the failures of his program in the last chapter. Corruption and crime still exist in Venezuela. “Murder rates that were high throughout the 1990s did not decrease under Chávez’s reign and by some accounts got worse,” (449) we are told. The culture of patronage, and government corruption in general, did not disappear.
However, the poverty rate did decline under Chávez, if rather recently:
The poverty rate when Chávez entered office in 1999 was 42.8 percent, and it had indeed surged to 55.1 percent by the second half of 2003. That wasn’t surprising. The April 2002 coup and the December 2002 oil strike sent the economy into a tailspin. But once the opposition’s efforts to create turmoil ran out of steam, the economy boomed. It grew by 17.9 percent in 2004 and 9.3 percent in 2005 – the best rates in Latin America. Poverty plummeted, falling to 37.9 percent by the second half of 2005, nearly 5 percentage points lower than when Chávez began. And it only counted cash income. If the food subsidies and free health care were included, the rate would be substantially lower. The rate kept dropping as Chávez’s social programs expanded. By 2006, not including the subsidies it was 33 percent. (Jones 451-452)
So with Chávez the poverty rate has gone from 42.1 percent to 33 percent. And the growth rate should have been enough to keep all sectors of the Venezuelan economy happy. The center-Left in the US talk of “incrementalism”; Chávez achieves what they promise.
At the end of Marcano and Tyszka’s book, however, we are told that Chávez is all about power.
Of all the men we know Hugo Chávez to be, which is the most genuine? It is very hard to tell. What does seem evident, is that they all have something in common… No matter which Chávez he is, he will always, obsessively, seek power. More power. (Marcano and Tyszka 278)
It’s not difficult to tell from reading either book that Hugo Chávez is an egoist. If you were in his position, you’d probably be an egoist, too. And egoists love fame, money, power, and so on. So, as a political egoist, Chávez wants more power. To end a book on Chávez this way, however, is to belabor the obvious; what is interesting about power is not that the powerful want it, but what the powerful do with their power.
This is the weakness of a social movement, “21st century socialism,” that depends for its adhesive strength upon the popularity of a charismatic leader; it stands to be held captive to ego. In fact, this is why I despair of reading so many “candidate diaries” here between now and next November. At my current old age (I just turned 46) I tend to distrust the notion that having one individual or another in power is going to change the world in some dramatic way. All the drama around Chávez is indeed something to expected given his character and the character of his opponents. Yet when seen in perspective it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Changing the world will require ideals beyond both Chávez’s “21st century socialism” and power beyond that which the Bush administration and the Venezuelan opposition has expended in an attempt to get rid of Chávez by whatever means necessary.
