VHeadline editor & publisher Roy S. Carson writes: It was probably to be expected that the mainstream US media should go into overdrive when presented with news from Venezuela that the country's National Assembly (AN) has approved a new Intelligence & Counterintelligence Act. Headlines claiming Chavez is setting up a spy organization, and that Venezuelans are being ordered to snitch on one another, were the Stateside order of the day ... but, as usual when taking a closer look at the US mainstream media, what is REALLY the truth?
The facts are that Venezuela is in the process of reforming a thoroughly disorganized police service which has traditionally been crippled with individual acts of corruption, gun-toting cops on the rampage and extra-judicial killings which, even by the most elastic stretch of the imagination, can not be placed at the doorstep of reformist President Hugo Chavez Frias.
Of course, if the Washington DC spin machine was to be believed, strongman 'dictator' Hugo Chavez could easily have dealt with all and sundry by putting them up against a brick wall and despatching them with a spray of bullets from an imported Russian-built AK-47.
But, hey! Reality is quite another thing away from the biased spotlight of Fox News and sundry.
YES! Violence and crime are rampant! They've always been rampant. It's one of the more tragic aspects of ANY third world country that law & order is not necessarily uppermost in the minds of people who are trying to eke out a miserable survival in the slum-barrios that cling to the hillsides around most Venezuelan centers of population. That doesn't excuse it, but when you consider that since colonial times Latin America has largely been under the influence of Spanish conquistadores (a.k.a. robbers & bandits), old customs die hard.
Speaking on State-owned Venezolana de Television (VTV), State Political & Security (DISIP) Police chief, General Henry Rangel Silva admitted that the implementation of the new Intelligence & Counter Intelligence Act has been "controversial," but went on to say that, for the first time, it defines what is allowed and what is disallowed in state security surveillance operations.
While the political opposition to President Hugo Chavez Frias ... perhaps mindful of how they, themselves, conducted state intelligence operations during the half century while they were in corrupt power ... have gone ballistic claiming worst scenarios in all aspects of how the new law will be put into effect, including the fact that their Washington DC backers have already joined in the chorus as though they, the US State Department, were as white as the driven snow!
But, cut away the hysteria, and you'll see that a modernation of Venezuela's security services was a essential high priority in Venezuela's scheme of things.
The Directorate of Military Intelligence (DIM by its Spanish acronym) and DISIP are, of course, the outward expression of Venezuela's policing reform although the program delves deeper into the nation's pshyce with reforms to community and urban police forces as well as the heralded implementation of a national police force and combination of other disparate policing groups to form a homogenous cadre of trained professionals to meet the demands of a NEW Venezuelan society.
Why the United States should be so concerned over the setting up of Venezuelan versions of the CIA and the FBI is beyond me ... UNLESS ... unless, they undersdtand that their own years of efforts to infiltrate and corrupt Venezuelan policing is about the be rendered as nought.
Under such circumstances, their habitual wrath over all things Venezuela is perhaps excusable, but then...
DISIP General Henry Rangel Silva says that those who view the new law as creating a society of snitchers "don't have a clue" since the existing organization already has a large network of collaborators ... and he's right! It's the proper thing for ANY country's security services to set up "a large network of collaborators" to keep tabs on organized crime, would-be terrorists and others who seek to disrupt the democratic process of legitimate government.
Viewed against a backdrop of draconian US Homeland Security provisions, Venezuela's efforts are but a pussy-cat!
Venezuela's Intelligence & Counterintelligence Act has been drawn up strictly within the provisions of the country's Constitution and has been approved by a majority in the country's Legislature. What then is the beef? Is the US Homeland Security Act compliant with the US Constitution? I leave that one for discerning minds to answer...
Rangel Silva rightly says that "there's no culture of intelligence for the preservation of the state in Venezuela" ... of course!
Intelligence operations in Venezuela have been blighted by abuse for decades during which the current opposition held the high ground and did nothing to render remedy or to reform. Venezuelans grew to fear the unilaterality of any police action knowing that compliance was the only antedote to a severe beating up or even a bullet in one's head. Shoot first and ask questions later was quite often the individual police agent's armory in what is/was admittedly a brutal war against crime.
The fact that the US has become a corrupt empire doesn't make Chavez, simply for opposing it, good. His moves are still dictatorial.
To quote you & comment:
"...the setting up of Venezuelan versions of the CIA and the FBI" is the entrenchment of the dictatorship. That's what all liberty minded people in the US say about those two parts of "our" government. Why should the Venezuelan versions be seen any differently?
'It's the proper thing for ANY country's security services to set up "a large network of collaborators" ' Continuing a snitch network is just as bad as setting one up. Your own article proves the critics right on this issue.
"...the heralded implementation of a national police force... " is one of the hallmarks of a dictatorship. A national government has no business being in law enforcement. You know that such forces will be abused. The previous regimes sure abused police powers. As Jefferson warned:
When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.
The same applies to Caracas since it became the center of all power in Venezuela.
The whole thrust of your article seems to be that Chavez's dictatorship is OK because the US is one. Not so, higher standards are needed in both countries. Please read my diary entry for a critique of the new decree:
YOur contention that Chavez is a dictator is in error
Your contention that Chave is a dictator is in error. Put quite simply it is the onus of any democratic government to safeguard the interests of the nation from both domestic and external sabotage. I used the "models" of the CIA and FBI only as examples of institutions that supposedly are in place to maintain these constitutional safeguards. I can, however, agree that the USA versions of both are bastardized but the theory of such institutions remains the same in application with the essential oversight of the people in a democratic society. Your contention of a dictatorship, however, does NOT jive with the form of grassroots democracy that is growing in Venezuela. That is not yet complete is obvious and the implementation of the new Intelligence and Counterintelligence Law certainly gives the essential democratic structure for the law to be implemented to the democratic satisfaction of those citizens who have learned from past abuses that they now have opportunity to make sure such abuses will not remain. I know that in your mind you will continue to view Chavez as a dictator. The US massmedia has poisoned so many minds into such a belief but a closer inspection of what is REALLY happening in Venezuela will assure you that democracy is in much better health in Venzuela than it is most anywhere ... and if the new form of grassroots, participative democracy can only shed the evils of the past, we should applaud the reform, not attempt to smother it at birth because it comes from imperfect parentage.
by
Roy S. Carson (41 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 10 comments)
on Saturday, June 7, 2008 at 5:49:47 PM
What passes for democracy these days is the elected dictatorship. It's no different in Venezuela:
"It is not because a part of the government is elective, that makes it less a despotism, if the persons so elected possess afterwards, as a parliament, unlimited powers. Election, in this case, becomes separated from representation, and the candidates are candidates for despotism."
--Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
You & Chavez's other supporters seem to be saying that since he's a good guy he can be trusted with power. This is wrong & dangerous. As Patrick Henry warned arguing against adoption of the Constitution:
It is on a supposition that your American governors shall be honest that all the good qualities of this government are founded; but its defective and imperfect construction puts it in their power to perpetrate the worst of mischiefs should they be bad men; and, sir, would not all the world blame our distracted folly in resting our rights upon the contingency of our rulers being good or bad? Show me that age and country where the rights and liberties of the people were placed on the sole chance of their rulers being good men without a consequent loss of liberty! I say that the loss of that dearest privilege has ever followed, with absolute certainty, every such mad attempt.
BTW, I hope you're not suggesting that my mind has been poisoned by the media here. First, I have first hand experience with Chavez's government having been there for his electoral campaign & lived under it for one year. That's how & where I formed my POV about him. Second, libertarians always take what the media says with a grain of salt, we don't trust it either.
There's one subject I'm sure we can agree on. That is that the US gov should not intervene in Venezuela's affairs.
by
Darren Wolfe (4 articles, 125 quicklinks, 79 diaries, 598 comments)
on Saturday, June 7, 2008 at 6:10:54 PM
I am but a supporter of democracy. Chavez is the duly-elected President of Venezuela under its Constitution and the rule of law. It's all quite simple, you either accept democracy (as some sectors in Venezuela have not) or you accept the imperfection of it in its current form and work to achieve a degree of perfection which some may say is unattainable. QED
by
Roy S. Carson (41 articles, 0 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 10 comments)
on Saturday, June 7, 2008 at 6:56:18 PM
There are more similarities between the US & Venezuela, & between Bush & Chavez than differences. I don't understand how progresives can see how evil Bush is but be blind to the same qualities in Chavez. Oh well.
BTW, I guess because I've seen your name elsewhere I didn't realize you were new to OEN, so welcome aboard & happy debating.
by
Darren Wolfe (4 articles, 125 quicklinks, 79 diaries, 598 comments)
on Saturday, June 7, 2008 at 7:33:49 PM
