Telephones for the Classes – Socialism for the Masses

Need to phone Venezuela? Forget about it if Hugo Gets His Way

(A magazine article based on this post, "Chavez's New Statism" may be found at FrontPage Magazine. Click here -- DP.) 

  

By David Paulin

President Hugo Chavez has announced his intention to pursue an authoritarian socialist model for Venezuela, and to nationalize key companies. Predictably, the nation’s stock market and currency has gone into a nasty tail spin.

"We're heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it,” Chavez declared on Monday, in a national television address. Today he will be sworn into a third term that runs until 2013.

Chavez's embrace of socialism should surprise nobody who has been paying attention to what he's been saying. He was announcing his radical intentions, loud and clear, as early as 1999 when he took office. Specifically, Chavez vowed on Monday to nationalize Venezuela’s telecommunications company, unspecified electrical firms, and to reduce the Central Bank’s autonomy. Among other things, he also called for additional powers for himself so that he could rule by decree.
In respect to the nationalizations, the biggest prize would be Venezuela’s publicly traded telecommunications company, Compania Anonima Nacional Telefones De Venezuela (known by the Spanish acronym CANTV, pronounced "Can-Tee-V”). “Let it be nationalized," he said. "The nation should recover its property of strategic sectors.”

Before 1991, to be sure, CANTV was a state-owned and managed phone company. It also was an international basket case: People calling across town had trouble getting a dial tone – much less a connection. Calling other cities was virtually impossible.

I lived in Caracas during these years, working as a Caracas-based foreign correspondent for several American daily newspapers. The story of what CANTV was – and what it became in the hands of can-do American managers – is a remarkable one. It’s also testimony to the power of markets to transform an economy – in terms of providing investment, transparency, and accountability.

Inept Management

Poorly managed as a state-owned company, CANTV was rife with do-nothing political patronage jobs and corrupt unions that got what they wanted. In short, it was what you’d expect in a nation with a statist economy that, according to corruption-watchdog Transparency International, was among the world’s most corrupt.
Venezuela had a population of about 20 million people at the time – yet only 1.6 million of them had telephones. It wasn’t for lack of money. Rather, the money-losing state phone company took years to hook up phone lines – unless you had political connections, bribed the right officials or purchased a stolen line. The state phone company, according to some accounts, took out advertisements asking its customers not to use the phones too much.



Like many Third World countries, Venezuela realized it needed a modern telecommunications system to develop its oil-producing economy. After a highly politicized congressional debate, it privatized CANTV. A GTE Corp.-led consortium won a bidding process and acquired 40 percent of CANTV for $1.9 billion. The government retained 49 percent, and workers kept the remaining 11 percent. (Dallas-based GTE Corp. merged in March 2000 with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon Communications.)

Consider some of what the privatized CANTV accomplished: From 1992 to 1994, it invested more than $1.1 billion to upgrade and expand Venezuela's phone system – more than was spent during the 20 years preceding privatization.



Led by American managers, CANTV's 22,000 employees installed more than 863,000 phone lines by 1994 – 4 1/2 times as many as were installed during the two years preceding privatization.

More than 460,000 customers were added, three times more than CANTV connected during the two years before privatization.



Bottom line: By 1994, callers almost always got a dial tone. And they usually got a connection.

“The telecommunications system here was very poorly designed and maintained, with 40-to 50-year-old technology,” CANTV's 40-year-old president Bruce Haddad, a 19-year GTE veteran, told me during an interview in July, 1994.



Haddad had his share of problems. He was spoofed on a Venezuela comedy program, had annual reports tossed at him during an annual meeting, and was called a “gringo” and “foreigner.”



At one point, an arrest warrant that seemed politically motivated was issued against him. He was charged with complicity in a natural gas pipeline explosion, caused by a CANTV sub-contractor, which incinerated more than 50 motorists on a major highway. After lying low for a while, Haddad eventually turned himself in and was exonerated.



He and fellow GTE Corp. managers kept the company moving ahead through two bloody coup attempts (one led by Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez); draconian currency exchange controls, a 100 percent currency devaluation, 70 percent interest rates, and annual inflation of up to 100 percent.
Haddad and fellow GTE Corp. senior executive Douglas Mullen shocked Venezuelan workers by mingling freely with them at functions designed to build esprit de corps – something most status-conscious Venezuelan managers would never do.

It will be interesting to see how CANTV fares once it’s controlled again by Venezuelan managers: state employees of a government that, by all accounts, is involved in record levels of corruption.

Haddad, incidentally, never made it back to the states to settle down with his wife, Dorothy. They died when their corporate jet smashed into the side of a volcano near Guatemala City, Guatemala at 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 19, 1997. They were racing the clock to get to Dallas, where the couple was supposed to catch an airliner to China. Haddad was going there as part of his new position, senior vice president of international operations. Both were 43 years old. They had been high school sweethearts.

Author’s note: This was derived in part from articles I wrote for The Dallas Morning News while based in Caracas. For additional analysis, visit The American Thinker and The Devil's Excrement.

Also see these earlier posts:

Hugo’s Broken Promises

In Perspective: Hugo’s Anti-Americanism

Hugo Strikes Out – for Now

Getting Along with Thugs: Why Hugo Chávez’s Apologists Think The Way They Do

CULTURE WARS

Visitors to a Texas Library Learn about Admirable ‘Traditional Values’ of Marriage and Community...IN AFRICA!

...An occasional report from the “People’s Republic of Austin” (Photo of Elizabeth Kahura)

UPDATE: See Thomas Lifson's comments on this article at The American Thinker.

By David Paulin

Ann Coulter delivered a speech in hip and liberal Austin, Texas last year and nearly provoked a riot. The catcalls and boos that left-wing University of Texas students hurled at her hit a pitch when one student posed a vulgar question, intended to attack the conservative columnist's concepts of marriage and traditional values.

“Let him go” chanted supportive students at LBJ Library Auditorium, after nearby campus police quickly arrested the 19-year-old man.

Curiously, no such protests erupted during an event on traditional values a little over one week ago at a city library. Why? Perhaps it’s because the values being discussed were not American – conservative or otherwise.

No, this event focused on traditional African values – or as a library news release explained: the “traditional African values of family, community, responsibility, commerce, and self-improvement.” That, at least, is the virtuous picture of Africa that Elizabeth Kahura, a native of Kenya and professional “storyteller,” would have you believe. She spoke during an event associated with Kwanzaa week – the controversial African-American holiday which ended a little over one week ago.

In one sense, Kahura is the perfect cheerleader for the Africa-oriented Kwanzaa, which is taken very seriously in Austin.

Sixteen years after arriving in America, Kahura makes a career out of idealizing her native Africa – all while keeping both feet firmly planted in multicultural America. Her mission is to “enlighten the world on the true meaning of Africa,” as one Austin Public Library news release puts it.

Kahura, who settled in Texas, has spent ten-plus years playing up Africa’s virtues. At libraries, schools, and day care centers, she utilizes colorful presentations to show off African clothing, music, and dance. She was a big hit last year among grade-school kids in nearby Bastrop: They got to “dress up like an African King and Queen to demonstrate African Village life.”

In Austin, Kwanzaa gets plenty of serious coverage from the politically correct daily newspaper, the Austin American-Statesman. No matter that conservatives of all colors have long derided Kwanzaa as racial hucksterism with Marxist and racially charged overtones.

Nearly 40 years ago, Kwanzaa was dreamed up in California by Ronald Everett, an African-American who was an adherent of various black extremist groups and causes. In the early 70s, he served jail time for the false imprisonment and torture of two women who had been his followers. Completing his sentence, he reinvented himself. Today he’s Dr. Maulana Karenga, professor of black studies at California State University in Long Beach.

Over the years, Kwanzaa has been variously described as an African-American alternative to Christmas or a focal point for African-American pride and community. According to one survey, however, it's celebrated by a mere 1.6 percent of Americans – or 13 percent of African-Americans.

At Kwanzaa events you see few if any white faces, yet Kahura insists, “Kwanzaa is not just an African-American concept. It can help anyone."

She went on, “It’s about teamwork, unity, and people walking together. It celebrates culture and it can link African-Americans to their roots and their mother language.”

Oh really? Kahura obviously needs to learn more about her adopted country: American culture has always embraced the civic-engagement aspects she touts. Indeed, America’s remarkable levels of civic-engagement were highlighted in Alexis De Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” his seminal volume first published in 1835.

To be sure, a debate is underway about the status and possible decline of America’s levels of civic-engagement. Some experts say it remains healthy. Whatever the case, it’s doubtful Kwanzaa has contributed anything to America’s virtue of civic-engagement, as the holiday has morphed from its racist and militant origins into mainstream respectability. Today it’s utterly beyond criticism or probing questions by the mainstream media.

Multiculturalism Gone Berserk

How did this happen? Obviously, Kwanzaa’s ideologues rode the wave of multicultural and politically correct ideology that eventually infected the mainstream media. As a result, questions that ought to be asked are stifled. One example was a recent Kwanzaa puff piece from Cox News Service, owners of the American-Statesman, whose headline trumpeted: “Kwanzaa glows even brighter after 40 years.”

Completely missing was any mention of Dr. Maulana Karenga’s sleazy past; not a word about his criminal record and extremist associations, observed the NewsBusters blog. A provocative headline accompanied its incisive comments: “Cox News Honors Kwanzaa Creator, A Rapist and Torturer.”

As to Kahura, nobody has dared to publicly ask an obvious question about her: How can a Kenyan immigrant be so presumptuous as to settle in America and then make a veritable career out of lecturing Americans about traditional African values?

Let’s face it. The values she admires are mostly a product of her imagination. One reason Africa is a basket case, after all, is precisely because of its values.

Indeed, the idealized Africa Kahura extols would be unrecognizable even to the high-minded readers of America’s most liberal newspaper, The New York Times. Consider a Times article from May, 2005: “AIDS Now Compels Africa to Challenge Widows’ ‘Cleansing’.”

It focused on a bizarre yet common practice in rural areas of Zambia and Kenya and “a number of nearby nations.” After a husband’s funeral, a ritual takes place: “sex between the widow and one of her husband's relatives.”

Its purpose is “to break the bond” with the husband’s spirit, according to The Times. “Widows have long tolerated it, and traditional leaders have endorsed it, as an unchallenged tradition of rural African life."

Did the school kids whom Kahura dressed up as African kings and queens learn anything about this? I have yet to attend one of Kahura’s lectures, to be sure, having only had the pleasure of reading about them and seeing her on television. Even so, I doubt she’s ever waxed poetic about the joys of sex with bereaved widows – whether they want it or not.

Kahura caught my attention two years ago, not long after I moved to Austin. Reading a news item about one of her upcoming presentations, I was dumbfounded by what seemed to be a case of multiculturalism gone berserk. I dashed off a protest letter to the America-Statesman: It wasn’t published.

I complained to my public library which was hosting her presentation. A library official responded that Kahura was a well-respected “educator” and much in demand for events such as Kwanzaa, Black History Month, or for various educational purposes.

Conservatives, incidentally, have an epithet for this town: “People’s Republic of Austin.”

Child Sexual Abuse

Presumably, Kahura’s presentations about her idealized Africa also skip over the pesky issue of child sexual abuse in Africa. The problem is persistent in Kahura’s native Kenya – not to mention in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Uganda, Kenya, and Sierra Leone, according to an article in The New York Times last December, "Sex Abuse of Girls Is Stubborn Scourge in Africa." Dr. Rachel Jewkes, a specialist on sexual violence with South Africa’s Medical Research Council, was quoted as saying: “The prevalence of child rape in South Africa goes from really, really high to astronomically high.”

Some traditional values, huh?

Presumably, Kahura also skipped over another traditional African value: promiscuous sex. Once again, the venerable New York Times dealt with this in an article, “AIDS in Africa: Experts Study Role of Promiscuous Sex in the Epidemic." It was published way back in 1990, about the time Kahura first left her idyllic Kenya and came to America.

That article, believe it or not, actually stated that sexually promiscuous behavior may have something to do with Africa’s legacy of colonialism!

Presumably, Kahura’s lectures also have overlooked another ritual based on traditional African values – “female circumcisions.” Last June, The New York Times dealt with this in a delicately titled article, "Genital Cutting Raises by 50% Likelihood Mothers or Their Newborns Will Die, Study Finds.”

It stated, “In a number of African cultures, genital mutilation is part of a coming-of-age ceremony, and defenders have contended that it is a cultural practice, like male circumcision among Jews, with few, if any, proven long-term health consequences.”

Incidentally, the term “genital cutting” is the euphemism preferred by multicultural types who consider the more graphic “female circumcision" (the removal of the clitoris) to be too negative and judgmental of cultures that practice this procedure.

Modern-day Slavery

Some African-Americans and Kwanzaa diehards may idealize Africa – and Kahura may cater to their fantasies. However, they can count their blessings for having grown up in America, not Africa. Consider the plight of many African children – the subject of a New York Times article last October, "Africa’s World of Forced Labor, in a 6-Year-Old’s Eye."

African children sold into indentured servitude work up to 14 hours per day and “are part of a vast traffic in children that supports West and Central African fisheries, quarries, cocoa and rice plantations and street markets,” reported The Times.

“The girls are domestic servants, bread bakers, prostitutes. The boys are field workers, cart pushers, scavengers in abandoned gem and gold mines.”

Not very idyllic, huh?

Here’s a suggestion. The next time Kahura delivers a lecture on traditional African values, maybe the school or library or daycare center that’s hosting her can provide some counter-balance: Get a patriotic professor from the University of Texas to give a talk on American and Western values – with the aim of illustrating how those values have made us who we are.

Yeah, I know. In my dreams.

From the author:
….Readers that got this far may be interested in an Op-Ed piece I wrote in July, 2005 regarding the uproar over Mexico’s allegedly racist postage stamps. The piece, “All the Colors of the Rainbow,” ran in The Philadelphia Inquirer and Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

All the Colors of the Rainbow

Mexico’s ‘Racist' Stamp

By David Paulin

Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and White House spokesperson Scott McClellan all agree that a Mexican postal stamp plays upon racist stereotypes. Their unqualified agreement – from across our racial and political divide – is probably shared by most Americans. Our condemnation, though, may say a lot more about our culture than about Mexico's alleged racial insensitivity.

Don't get me wrong. I’m also put off by the stamp of a beloved Mexican comic-book character that, to me, also resembles a racist Jim Crow-era caricature: a goofy black male with exaggerated features such as thick lips. But Mexicans like the stamp, and President Vicente Fox has defended it.

So are Mexicans lining up to buy the stamp racists? I have my doubts, in part because I recall all too well how complicated racial politics can be in other countries, including in Venezuela and Jamaica where I have lived and worked.

Like in much of Latin America, for instance, Venezuela’s racial politics is complicated by the fact that it’s hard to tell just who is black -- and who isn’t. The reason is that 80 percent of Venezuelans are mixed race or mestizo. You find all sorts of gradations of colors and facial features. I first realized I was out of the loop when I asked a white upper-class Venezuelan friend why his country lacked any prominent black politicians.

“What about Claudio Fermin?” he asked with incredulity, referring to the dark-complexioned politician in the Democratic Action party.

"He's black?"

"He's as black as can be," he assured me.

He was right, of course. No doubt if I'd met Claudio Fermin on a street in Detroit or Atlanta, I would have figured that, yes, he was black. But in Venezuela, racial distinctions seemed harder to make.

It was an epiphany

How an American like me perceived somebody abroad, in terms of their race, often had more to do with culture and class than with skin color or features. It also had a lot to do with how people perceived and defined themselves.

Not all Venezuelans, to be sure, felt the same way. My Venezuelan girlfriend and I once visited one of the country’s venerable fortune tellers, called brujas. We were so impressed with Fanny – she provided correct numbers for a 4-digit Florida lotto, among other things – that my girlfriend referred a friend to her.

Fanny wasn't pleased.

"Why are you sending blacks to my house? I don't deal with that kind of clientele!"

I was shocked. I hadn't given it much thought until then. But Fanny was black. At least that's how she struck my girlfriend and me (who I guess, incidentally, would qualify as mestizo).

Perhaps Fanny was perhaps using one criterion that some in Venezuela used to determine race: kinky hair.

In overwhelmingly black Jamaica, racial politics and classifications were a lot more complicated. One strange thing I quickly realized: After a few days, I didn't regard Jamaicans I met as being "black.” The reason is that most ordinary Jamaicans, unlike many black Americans, didn’t define themselves by their skin color. Instead, they regarded themselves as Jamaicans – no matter what country they were in. It’s an attitude that upsets some black Americans.

For Jamaicans, however, that attitude affects how they perceive themselves – and how others perceive them. One Jamaican friend related how he was visiting Miami and was in a car with several white friends and acquaintances. Somebody blurted “nigger” in a casual conversation. An embarrassing silence ensued for a few seconds – for my Jamaican friend is black – until somebody in the group quickly clarified: "Of course, we're not talking about you. You’re a Jamaican!”

“It was like water rolling off a duck,” recalled my friend.

Interestingly, such an easy going attitude seemed common among Jamaicans, except for members of the left-leaning elite: newspaper columnists, university professors, and politicians. Many of them viewed the world through a racial prism – an obsession that gives them a lot in common with many black Americans, and with many left-leaning whites.

Ordinary Jamaicans, to be sure, also could be extraordinarily complicated about race.

"P-F-W” was one expression they applied to light-complexioned and upper class Jamaicans who, they complained, tried to “Pass for White.” They joked about whether those P-F-Ws could pass for white in America.

My Jamaican girlfriend, who looked something like the beautiful actress Angela Bassett, once referred to a fellow employee as “the woman with very African features.” I was a bit surprised, for my girlfriend had some African features of her own: sensuous lips that were far more beautiful than what any thin-lipped white women could get from a plastic surgeon. I never learned at what point sensuous lips morph into “African” lips, although it was one of many instances I encountered of blacks making seemingly harmless distinctions or judgments among themselves, based on racial features.

Interestingly, my girlfriend’s beauty opened doors throughout the Caribbean, though not in Cuba. There she was interrogated every time she tried to enter a Havana tourist hotel she was visiting

“Well, you look just like a nice Cuban girl!” the hotel manager of Spanish descent told her sympathetically, after she had vented her outrage. It’s a common complaint – one that left-leaning Jamaican and black American elites, curiously, never complain about.

When retelling her story of being wrongly “profiled,” incidentally, my girlfriend displayed none of the venom and insecurity one often finds among members of minority groups in America, when relating similar incidents.

For my part, I was surprised a Cuban doorman didn't find my Jamaican girlfriend as captivating as I did. But what constitutes beauty or “blackness” can be complicated, I realized. The same can be said for racism. You’d think decent people would know it when they see it. But I’m not quite so sure anymore – except to know that today in America it’s overused more often than not due to our hypersensitivity about race. There’s also no doubting that our ideals are simply much higher than in other countries – though we never get as much credit for those ideals as for our failure to consistently reach them.

As to Mexico, I’m withholding judgment on whether the country has a serious “race problem.” Despite that ambivalence I won’t be buying any of those postage stamps.

“Apocalypto” Enrages Leftist Elites

Mel Gibson’s epic about those fun-loving ancient Mayans and their fondness for human sacrifices has provoked cries of “racism” and “cultural insensitivity.”

By David Paulin

Filmmaker Mel Gibson has touched off a controversy with his violent epic, “Apocalypto,” but it has nothing to do with long-standing charges that he’s anti-Semitic. Members of the high-minded left are accusing Gibson of “racism” and “cultural insensitivity” for his allegedly unfair portrayal of ancient Mayan civilization. Much of “Apocalypto” revolves around the Mayan's charming predilection for internecine violence and human sacrifices.

Interestingly, some of “Apocalypto’s” harshest critics have offered few substantive complaints about the accuracy of the film’s gruesome scenes. What’s made them positively livid is that Gibson has violated a taboo that’s central to multiculturalism – the prohibition against criticizing other cultures, especially Third World and primitive cultures. This prohibition is especially applicable to Westerners – and to middle-aged white guys (like Gibson) in particular. Of course, there’s one exception to this no-criticism rule: You can vilify Western culture to no end.

"Culturally Insensitive’

Violating this no-criticism taboo is serious stuff in the minds of dedicated multiculturalists. Consider the toxic effect that “Apocalypto” had on Maya groupie Julia Guernsey, an assistant professor in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas in Austin.

Guernsey saw “Apocalypto” earlier this month and was so outraged that she complained of an elevated heart rate right after the show. She went to “Apocalypto” with a movie reviewer from the Austin-American Statesman, Chris Garcia, who also hated the film and said as much in his review.

Garcia definitely had a good idea in inviting the professor to the local premiere. Right beside his review, he published a Q & A piece with Guernsey, "Apocalypto Is An Insult to Maya Culture, One Expert Says," which made for entertaining reading. The interview was done after the show.

“As we stagger out of a sneak peek of Mel Gibson's Maya historical thriller 'Apocalypto,' Julia Guernsey is visibly shaken,” Garcia wrote. He added, “I’m a little worried.” Talking herself into a frenzy as she unloaded on “Apocalypto,” Guernsey declared: “I can feel my heart beating faster talking about this!”

She went on, “I hate it. I despise it. I think it's despicable. It’s offensive to Maya people. It's offensive to those of us who try to teach cultural sensitivity and alternative world views that might not match our own 21st-century Western ones but are nonetheless valid.” (Emphasis added).

Defending her beloved ancient Maya as a “very sophisticated culture,” Guernsey accused Gibson of one of the worst sins possible in the politically correct world – committing “really offensive racial stereotyping.” Gibson, she sniffed, also gave short shrift to the Mayans considerable accomplishments. They included sophisticated advances in astronomy, language, mathematics, and urban planning.

Gibson directed the film and co-wrote it with Farhad Safina. It has generally gotten positive reviews and generated strong ticket sales. The multicultural left, however, has gone frothing mad over “Apocalypto,” which focuses on Mayan civilization in the period before the Spanish conquest. Its criticisms are revealing.

Curiously, Guernsey admitted that “Apocalypto’s” scenes of bloody sacrifices got more things right than wrong. “We have evidence to suggest that there were group sacrifices. But it would probably have been done as a pious act with solemnity,” she said. (Emphasis added.)

Got that? The butchery was done with much piety and solemnity. I wonder what the sacrificial victims had to say. Would Guernsey also evoke the mantra of “cultural sensitivity” to excuse cultural practices unique to the Muslim world – “honor killings” and “female circumcisions”?

If morally neutral professors can excuse bloody human sacrifices, where might such thinking take future academics? A few hundred years from now, will professors like Guernsey look back on Germany’s Third Reich and be so awed by its engineering marvels, martial expertise, and social unity that they’ll overlook the evil zeal with which its leaders sent six million Jews to the gas chambers?

This is not to say, to be sure, that the Mayans were Nazis, but consider some parallels. The Mayans carried out human sacrifices to appease their Gods – a perfectly logical reason for their bloodlust, when viewed from a morally neutral perspective. As for the Nazis, they undertook the Final Solution for logical reasons of their own – namely, to protect the Fatherland and its heroic values from the pernicious influence of Jewish intellectual and genetic degradation. Who are we to judge them? Obviously, cultural and moral relativism can lead to some pretty absurd extremes.

Garcia, for his part, also favors looking at the Mayans from a morally neutral perspective. The important thing for him is to understand the Mayan's point of view. To make this point, his review criticized one scene in which Gibson contemptuously “sums up all of Maya evil.” This was where “terrified sacrificial victims are lined up to have their hearts cut from their chests by a distinctly satanic priest garbed in feathers and paint and human bones, with claw-like fingernails and wild eyes,” he wrote.

Incredibly, Garcia then attempted to legitimize such conduct with a paragraph that provides an astounding example of moral confusion: “It would be nice to get some context for the violence, but Gibson refuses to illuminate the cultural and religious forces behind the ritualized murder, the better to paint these people as barbaric monsters.” (Emphasis added.)

Incidentally, the title of Garcia’s review in one of the Statesman’s editions was revealing: “BARBAROUS/Rather than Maya achievements, 'Apocalypto' lingers on sacrificial slaughter.”

What kind of headline might Garcia come up with for a movie that was blatantly anti-American? Here’s one that I bet you’ll never see: “Rather than Focus on America’s Decency and Achievements, Its Critics Focus Upon Its Mistakes and Past Sins.”

Wounded Ethnic Pride

Another dimension of leftist outage over “Apocalypto” concerns Hispanic-Americans who feel the film has assaulted their “ethnic” pride. Roberto Lovato wrote in New America Media that “Apocalypto” left him “pondering the history of racism, pillage and apocalyptic war through my own blood and family history.”

“Like many Central Americans born and categorized as mestizos (mixed Indian and Spanish blood), I watched Apocalypto as someone who consciously revered the Maya and other indigenous groups while subconsciously prohibiting himself any real identification with them,” he explained.

How interesting that “Apocalypto” has engendered such feelings among some Americans of Hispanic descent. Why should they feel that way? It’s no doubt because they see themselves as Hispanic-Americans, and in this hyphenated identity they see themselves as more Hispanic than American.

A generation ago, such identify problems were rare. My family members who came through Ellis Island reinvented themselves as Americans. Our family name was Anglicized: Good riddance, Europe! Unfortunately, nobody these days says “Good riddance, Mexico!”

Precisely what put Mayan civilization into decline in southern Mexico and Central America is open to debate. But one theory argues that it contained the seeds of its own destruction. In the film’s opening scene, Gibson suggests this by citing a quote from historian and philosopher William James Durant: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.”

Obviously, different people will see different messages in “Apocalypto.” Speaking at a film festival the ever controversial Gibson even drew some kooky parallels between the decline of Mayan civilization and America.

“Apocalypto,” on the other hand, also may reinforce the notion that not all cultures are equal, that America and the West are indeed the good guys – regardless of what the Maya-loving left may say. They demand “cultural sensitivity” of everyone except those who criticize America and Western culture.

After Gibson’s drunken anti-Semitic rant, I had little interest in seeing another of his pictures, especially after seeing “The Passion of Christ,” whose non-stop focus on Christ's torture had the feel of pornography. But given the kinds of people who hate “Apocalypto,” this is a picture I’m definitely going to see. It may just be a good antidote for these morally confused times.

Caribbean Jihad

Radical leftist British MP Puzzled Over Caribbean’s Links to Islamic-Inspired Terrorism

Diane Abbott never considers that her own hate speech and support of anything-goes multiculturalism is part of the problem

By David Paulin

Diane Abbott, a long-time member of the British Labor Party’s radical fringe, is well known for her anti-Semitic rhetoric, racially tinged identity politics, and venomous diatribes against Tony Blair and George Bush. Invariably, the British-born daughter of Jamaican immigrants can be counted on to view the world through a prism of race and post-colonial grievances. She contends terrorism has two “root causes”: America and Israel.

Now the controversial Member of Parliament has gone on record as acknowledging the existence of a strange trend: A number of young British men who are angry, black, and have Caribbean origins have been converting to Islam – and taking up jihad-inspired terrorism.

Abbott, 53, in a little-known newspaper column she writes for a Jamaican newspaper, The Observer, admitted to being flummoxed at what’s causing the trend. She never considered it might have something to do with her own hate speech.

Abbott’s column described a number of terror plots and attacks with Caribbean ties that occurred after the Sept. 11 attacks five years ago. She echoed much of what was published here several weeks earlier.

In addition, Abbott noted the Caribbean emerged in mid-August in yet another jihad-inspired plot. This was the aborted suicide-bomb plot targeting as many as 10 trans-Atlantic airliners, possibly over U.S. cities, by detonating explosive chemicals hidden in carry-on bags. British authorities arrested 25 suspects, including some with Caribbean origins. In the plot’s aftermath, airline flights were disrupted worldwide.

Abbott’s column is noteworthy because it’s apparently the first time a prominent official has publicly endorsed the notion that several terror plots with Caribbean links represent more than an odd string of coincidences.

They are, Abbott contends, an ongoing trend.

Caribbean Terror Links

In the aborted plot targeting airliners, most of the alleged plotters were young British-born Muslims of Pakistani origin. However, Abbott noted, a “few Muslim converts of Caribbean origin have popped up in key roles.”

She mentioned Brian Young, 28, a former Rastafarian who adopted the name Umar Islam three years ago on becoming a Muslim. A bus inspector, he was married to a young Muslim woman with whom he recently had a child. The British press appears to have reported no additional information about him, perhaps because of Britain’s rules limiting pre-trial coverage.

“Six of the people arrested live in my community in Hackney,” noted Abbott, a graduate of Cambridge University. In 1987 she became the first black woman elected to Parliament.

Young men of Middle Eastern origin, to be sure, are bound to figure overwhelmingly into future Islamic-inspired terror plots, as they have in those plots with Caribbean links. But Abbott nevertheless observed that, “even though they may only be a handful, I will not be surprised to see other young men of Caribbean origin involved” in Islamic-inspired plots.

Why are such men drawn to jihad?

Abbott drew a blank on that, saying only, “These young men obviously need something to believe in. And radical Islam gives them this.”

She overlooked an obvious factor: They may be influenced by the hate-filled rhetoric she and like-minded politicians, intellectuals, and academics regularly spout in Britain and the Caribbean.

To be sure, that possibility was discussed in the article published here, “The Caribbean: A Playground for Jihad?” The leftist elite and Islamists, it suggested, use some of the same talking points, revolving around dark conspiracy theories and loathsome broadsides against America, Israel, and even Western culture.

Moreover, Abbott and like-minded public figures in Britain have spread these ideas to Britain’s middle-class since the Sept. 11 attacks, according to political observers who cite a rising tide of anti-Semitism and hate-filled Israel bashing.

Besides describing most of the plots with Caribbean links mentioned here, Abbott in some cases provided extra details of her own. The Caribbean in varying degrees has emerged in at least six terror plots and attacks since Sept. 11, 2001.

Among the participants: at least 14 young Muslim converts with ties to the region. Curiously, Jamaica had ties to every plot but one – the home-grown Miami-area terror plot that authorities broke up in June 2006. It involved six men of Haitian origin and one with ties to the Dominican Republic.

What makes these links especially strange is that the Caribbean is overwhelmingly Christian. Most if not all of the plotters were young black men. They had converted to Islam.

Besides the plot targeting trans-Atlantic jets, others with Caribbean links included:

*The foiled plot in Canada involving 17 alleged terror plotters, including one from Trinidad and another with Jamaican origins. The other suspects had Middle Eastern origins.

*The attempted “shoe bomber” attack by Richard Reid aboard an American Airlines jet bound from Paris to Miami in December 2001. Richard Reid was the British-born son of a Jamaican father and British mother.

*The Washington-area sniper killings in October 2002 involving Jamaican-born Lee Boyd Mavo, then 17, along with his 41-year-old partner, John Allen Muhammad who had lived in the Caribbean. Abbott neglected to mention this plot.

*The London suicide bomb attacks on July 7, 2005 by three British-born men of Pakistani descent along with Jamaica-born Germaine Lindsay, a 19-year-old Muslim covert. Lindsay killed 25 subway riders, making him the deadliest bomber. The attacks killed 52 commuters and injured more than 700.

Lindsay may have fallen under the spell of one of London’s notorious hate preachers with Jamaican origins: Sheik Abdullah el-Faisal. His sermons, Abbott related, also may have influenced Reid along with two other would-be jihadis: Zacarias Moussaoui, a Frenchman of Moroccan origin; and Earnest James Ujaama, an American imprisoned for providing support to Afghanistan’s Taliban.

Abbott and Jihad

In the plot targeting trans-Atlantic airliners, British authorities moved in after detecting some members making “martyrdom videos.” They had been monitoring the group with phone taps and listening devices. On the videos, the suspects complained of a “war against Muslims” in Iraq and Afghanistan. They sought revenge against the United States and its “accomplices” – Britain and the Jews, related a lengthy article in The New York Times.

Such bizarre accusations, of course, reveal much about the pathologies animating the Muslim world – not to mention those who migrate from it to Western Europe. Yet such views also are consistent with those promoted by Abbott and her intellectual soul mates.

Consider some of Abbott’s past statements:

*On the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq: “The war aims are above all to secure Iraq’s oil for the US oil companies that put George W. Bush in the White House.”

*On Israel’s recent invasion of Lebanon: “I have no doubt that what Israel is doing in Lebanon is a war crime” that killed “innocent women and children,” she told a massive anti-war rally in London as protesters chanted, “We are Hezbollah!”

*On the “root causes” of terrorism: “There are no excuses for terrorism but there is a political context. Politicians have to acknowledge that British and American foreign policy in relation to Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East, have (sic) embittered Muslims around the world.”

Anti-Western loathing, to be sure, often animates such ideas among the leftist elite in Britain and America. Among Britain’s middle-class, moreover, such attitudes have grown far more socially acceptable since 9/11, according to British author Melanie Phillips. She blamed Britain’s leftist elite – leftist politicians, liberal newspapers, the BBC – for serving as “an all-too willing conduit for anti-Jewish and anti-Israel poison and propaganda.”

Phillips, in an essay about this trend, recalled participating in a BBC panel discussion in which Abbott made anti-Semitic remarks and the audience’s visceral anti-Israel hostility was palpable and unnerving.

She was especially shocked at the reaction she evoked among the audience when she described Israel as a democracy.

“They laughed.”

Like Phillips, I’ve seen Abbott up close. When I lived in Jamaica nearly two years, I watched her deliver an impassioned speech at the University of the West Indies, where she whipped up hundreds of Kingston’s well-dressed elite. She evoked thunderous applause when she declared George Bush’s impending war in Iraq was about only one thing: oil.

The admiring crowd welcomed her as a returning local girl who had done spectacularly well in the wider world, but who had not forgotten her roots.

That Abbott got such star treatment was to be expected. Many of Jamaica’s elites embrace the same anti-American and anti-Western sentiments as she does. Most ordinary Jamaicans, on the other hand, reject such sentiments. Their main concerns: good jobs and crime-free streets.

Both are in short supply after years of misrule by the leftist government. Jamaica’s political leaders, for example, have never gotten serious about dismantling violent “garrison communities” where “dons” control the drug trade and other illegal activities – all while delivering votes to politicians.

Could young men saturated with the sort of hate talk spouted by Abbott and others be predisposed to embrace similar idea – albeit in an Islamic context?

Abbott fails to consider this. But she nonetheless makes some interesting points.

Islam and Racial Politics

Attempting to explain radical Islam’s attraction for angry young black men with Caribbean origins, Abbott's column noted that a generation ago they might have become non-violent Black Muslims or joined black-led churches or Pan-African movements. Now, inexplicably, they’re drawn to a strain of Islam preaching holy war and suicide bombings, one that is “quite different from the US Black Muslims or the Muslim faith as practiced in parts of Africa.”

Obviously, such a conversion is preceded by an identity crisis. What triggers it? Again, Abbott overlooks the obvious: It’s the multiculturalism she champions – all while simultaneously vilifying Western culture and British history.

In Britain and Jamaica, such notions have gained increasing credibility, thanks to leftist influence in academia and the news media. In Jamaica, slavery and colonialism are among the most popular subjects at the University of the West Indies, which influences the region's intellectual thought.

Plunged into multicultural Britain, it’s no wonder some young black man suffer identity problems. They can’t very well feel “British” – not when they’ve been taught only the negative aspects of Britain’s history, without a mention of its pivotal role in creating and spreading liberal democracy and in abolishing the worldwide slave trade.

In addition, such men may feel uncomfortable in defining themselves by a particular ethnic or racial group. Abbott along these lines has urged that “people of color” come together, claiming this is an antidote to Britain’s racism and urban unrest, including rioting in Birmingham between Jamaican and Pakistani immigrants; not to mention the tendency of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs to assert “their separate political identities.”

For young men bewildered by all this, Islam fills the void. It offers identify, belonging.

Radical mosques may appeal to them in another way. The grievances preached there – revolving around hatred of America, Israel, and Western culture – are things they’ve heard before. This makes the new religion familiar, and relevant.

No wonder some are attracted not to the church – but the mosque.

Abbott overlooks something else. Lindsay, Reid, and Malvo all had unstable upbringings – a factor that could have contributed to low self-esteem and identity problems. They’re like many young men in Jamaica, where single women head nearly 50 percent of households, and where most births are out-of-wedlock.

Some Jamaicans have observed that the country’s heavy reliance on remittances forces mothers and fathers to work abroad, leaving youngsters with little adult supervision.

How surprising that Abbott fails to recognize this given that she is herself a single-mother. In fact, British conversvatives have criticized her for this, believing that single-parent households are a factor in Britain’s social problems.

Backlash Against Multiculturalism

In the aftermath of London’s suicide bombings, Abbott has fought a growing backlash against years of Britain’s anything-goes policies on immigration, asylum seekers, and multiculturalism. She derides those who disagree with her as being racist.

“The British media love to play up the Caribbean origins of any terrorist suspects, even though they may be British citizens. Associating black men with terrorist violence is obviously irresistible,” Abbott noted in The Observer.

The Observer, incidentally, often serves as a vehicle for anti-American and anti-Semitic rants, along with the occasional piece suggesting America got what it deserved on 9/11. Ironically, it’s published by Gordon “Butch” Stewart, who heads the Caribbean’s iconic Sandals and Beaches resorts that depend on American tourism.

In London, Abbott also has condemned British newspapers for frightening readers with front-page stories featuring “big pictures of menacing, non-white men in beards.”

This carries “the subliminal message that all Muslims are a threat,” she argued.

However, opinion polls – not racism – probably play a bigger factor in the public’s jitters. In the London Times recently, one poll revealed some discomfiting statistics: One in ten British Muslims regard London’s suicide bombers as “martyrs,” while 16 percent (150,000 adults) condemned the attacks but felt “the cause was right.”

Obviously, many British are worried about their country and its future; not to mention their personal safety. But at an international workshop held in Ghana last March, Abbott was preoccupied with two of her favorite concerns: Slavery and colonialism.

Abbott also spoke on a third favorite subject: herself – or, specifically, her emergence from “colonial influences and slavery to become the first and only black female British parliamentarian." It’s a fact she likes to trumpet every chance she gets.

Africa First, a Minnesota company promoting "global dialogue," sponsored the workshop along with Ghana’s government and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, (UNESCO). “All the citizens of the world were invited,” Africa First proclaimed of the “International Workshop of History, Slavery, Religion, Culture, Art and Music.”

Conference goers rolled up their sleeves and addressed a number of complex issues, including:

“To investigate whether political instability particularly in Africa and Latin America, and illiteracy, poverty, health disparities, diseases, drug abuse and violence in the Caribbean, America, Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, especially within minority communities, are the direct results of colonization and slavery, and if so what can and should be done to correct them.”

Conference leaders even managed to work Jews into their discussions by addressing this issue:

“To investigate whether the deliberate looting, killings, raping, kidnappings and trading of Africans, America Indians, Asians, Aboriginal people of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Island as slaves and human commodities by Europeans, can be compared to the atrocities committed against Jews in Nazi German camps in Europe, and if so, whether their descendants are entitled to reparations?”

Apparently, conference leaders have not yet published their conclusions. How might Abbott have voted?

In London, meanwhile, some of Britain’s Muslims demanded that Pope Benedict XVI be beheaded in yet another raucous demonstration to avenge the latest “insult” to Islam. Meeting with top British officials, some Muslim leaders demanded sharia law for Britain’s Muslims.

Abbott has faced issues of a more personal nature. They included awkward questions about revelations that she had sent her son to a fancy private school costing more than $18,500 annually. Members of the left and right called her a hypocrite – and for good reason. In the past, she’d criticized other politicians for the same thing.

Abbott also faced criticism regarding her earnings outside Parliament over the past year – a whopping $159,000 for articles, speeches, and television appearances.

All in all, Abbott has done well for herself in Britain, despite all the country’s faults, unsavory history, and problems she has encountered as a minority.

As a single-mother, it’s doubtful she could have done as well in Jamaica, certainly not as the daughter of working-class parents: Her father was a welder, her mother a nurse. In Jamaica, people in such fields struggle to make ends meet.

One thing about Abbott is certain: She’ll be a rich woman when her reparations arrive. What’s less certain is whether she’ll want to live in the “Londonistan” she helped create.

Hugo Strikes Out – For Now

Hugo Chávez's U.N. rant revealed that his anti-Americanism is really about one thing: Hugo Chávez .

Hugo Chávez defines and empowers himself with his anti-Americanism – the foundations of which he laid during the Clinton administration’s soft-line approach toward him. Chávez knows less about America than he thinks, however. His controversial U.N. speech revealed some of the Venezuelan leader's weaknesses and contradictions. It also underscored the threat posed by his oil-rich regime.


By David Paulin

In Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela it’s a crime to “insult” the president. The offense became part of the penal code in March and mandates prison terms of up to two and one-half years.

How fortunate for Venezuela’s president that no such laws exist in America, and that President Bush never fomented the kind of political violence and polarization here that Chávez has introduced into his country.

Otherwise, imagine one scenario that might have played out: Federal marshals escort Chávez to a detention facility for the “insult” President Bush suffers after Chávez brands him a “devil” while waving around a Noam Chomsky book on America’s alleged malevolence. Across the country, meanwhile, gangs of Republican toughs shoot up and trash Venezuela’s Citgo outlets. Wielding baseball bats, others chase down U.N. delegates to avenge their applause and smirks over Chávez ’s rant to the U.N. General Assembly.

Ah, yes, wishful thinking, but there is a point here. In Venezuela, the left-wing populist has unleashed similar sorts of political violence by demonizing political opponents and polarizing Venezuelans along class and political lines.

Clinton’s Chávez Policy

Chávez pretended his anti-American rants in the U.N. and Harlem were about the “devil” Bush. In fact, Chávez's most outrageous conduct started during the Clinton administration. Its point man in Caracas, U.S. Ambassador John Maisto, peddled a soft-line approach on Chávez , viewing him as a late-blooming democratic reformer; no matter that the former Army lieutenant colonel, just six years earlier, orchestrated a bloody military coup and had a long history of radicalism.

A career diplomat with an academic bent, Maisto explained away Chávez’s anti-Americanism by saying, “Watch what Chávez does, not what he says.” The so-called “Maisto Doctrine” encapsulated Clinton-era wishful thinking about Chávez , according to Paul Crespo, a military attaché in Caracas during Maisto’s tenure. Chávez , meanwhile, was a man of his word. He quickly closed ranks with Cuba; sought alliances with Middle Eastern dictators; and expressed solidarity with imprisoned Venezuela-born terrorist “Carlos the Jackal.” In addition, he expressed veiled sympathy for Colombia’s Marxist narco-guerillas; it's also likely that he clandestinely provided them material support.

It was not until Chávez denounced the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan as a "slaughter of innocents" that the Bush administration undertook a belated post-9/11 reassessment of Chavez and soft-line "Maisto Doctorine" that astute observers had harshly criticized.

Venezuela’s law protecting El Presidente from “insults” is one of many examples of how democratic safeguards and respect for human rights and press freedoms spiraled downward early into Chávez ’s nearly eight-year rule. Many of the abuses occurred under Maisto’s watch, and of course while “Monicagate” distracted the Clinton White House and Congress. In the last few years, Chávez has used the foundation he laid during those years to undertake a huge arms build-up and meddle in regional politics. At home, he has veered into anti-Semitic rhetoric and harassment of Venezuela’s Jewish community. To some political scientists, the left-wing populist exemplifies a new form of democracy: “elected autocrat.”

Before Chávez's New York rant, most reasonably informed Americans knew about his vaunted “social programs,” not to mention his frequent and outlandish accusations: Washington wanted to invade Venezuela, kill him, and had played a role in a failed coup against him. The funny thing about such unsupported allegations is that they often had a ring of credibility, thanks to how the mainstream media reported them – for the most part soberly written up and juxtaposed against vehement U.S. denials.

Chávez : Warts and all

To truly understand what the telegenic Chávez is all about, he must be seen up close, unedited, warts and all. Television news certainly has its shortcomings. But in respect to Chávez's U.N. rant, give it credit for showing that the Emperor had no clothes. Many Venezuelans figured that out soon after Chávez ’s landslide presidential victory in December, 1998.

Months into Chávez's term, many Venezuelans got their fill of him during the regular television appearances he started making. In unscripted monologues similar to his U.N. rant, Chávez rambled on for hours, sprinkling his running commentary with personal anecdotes and baseball metaphors; and he regularly demonized political opponents.

Venezuelans eventually complained they were missing their favorite “telenovelas.”

After his New York performance, Americans at long last got a clear picture of Chávez ’s irrational and toxic anti-Americanism. They also sensed his narcissism -- the way adoring U.N. delegates obviously nourished and energized his ego.

Now, all those outraged Americans boycotting Citgo outlets know what Venezuelans have been suffering. Most Venezuelans reject Chávez ’s anti-Americanism and confrontational foreign policy.

Broken Promises

Nearly eight years ago, Chávez , a political outsider, won a landslide election by pledging to end rampant corruption and declining living standards. Voters, however, saw what they wanted to see in Chávez, who promised different things to different constituencies. To slum dwellers he was a rabble-rousing populist offering paternalistic handouts. Middle-class audiences saw him as a reasonable reformer. To them Chávez spoke about a Venezuelan version of a “Third Way” between socialism and capitalism.

Under Chávez , however, corruption, crime, and poverty all have worsened, according to the most credible accounts and statistics. And that’s despite record oil prices that have traditionally lifted the oil-dependent economy. The majority of 25 million Venezuelans are poor.

Chávez nevertheless wins elections and referendums with slim majorities – thanks to his populist programs, soaring oil prices, and fact that he controls the levers of power under a rewritten constitution. Political opponents settle on some choice descriptions of him: vulgar, irrational, a bully, a charming narcissist.

Rejects American Disaster Relief

One year after his election, Chávez demonstrated his willingness to put prickly nationalism and anti-Americanism above the needs of ordinary Venezuelans. In December 1999, he brusquely turned away U.S. Navy vessels steaming toward Venezuela to render assistance to victims of one of the worst natural disasters in Latin America's recent history. Heavy rains had triggered massive mudslides in and around Caracas, the capital, killing tens of thousands of people, leaving untold numbers homeless, and burying roads and villages.

A top Venezuelan military official had signed off on a major U.S. relief effort, prompting a Navy ship to start steaming toward Venezuela with hundreds of military engineers and heavy equipment. But Chávez , during a shoot-from-the-hip news conference, startled U.S. officials by rejecting the aid.

Chávez officials, meanwhile, also downplayed or ignored search and rescue operations being undertaken by U.S. Army Blackhawk helicopters that arrived shortly after the disaster. I described this early manifestation of Chávez's anti-Americanism for The Washington Times, while a foreign correspondent based in Caracas.

The thin-skinned Chávez and other officials also eagerly sought out malevolence in any U.S. action or comment. Then they would bluster on about Venezuela being a “sovereign” country and how bilateral relations should be guided by “mutual respect.”

Chávez , in contrast, welcomed suggestions and help from his friend and mentor, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. Cuba’s security services and advisors began playing significant roles in Chávez ’s government, which must have heartened top Chávez officials such as Alí Rodríguez , Venezuela’s oil minister, and later head of the state oil company, and then foreign minister. A lawyer and former leftist Congressman with an intellectual demeanor, Rodríguez fought in a failed 1960's Cuba-backed insurgency against Venezuela’s government, then a democratic beacon in Latin America.

Oil Diplomacy

To the international left, however, Chávez can do no wrong. The day after his U.N. speech, for instance, Chávez got a hero’s welcome at a Baptist church he visited with activist-actor Danny Glover. The event in Harlem focused on yet another initiative in which Venezuela is selling discounted home-heating oil to low-income people in the Northeast and Western Europe.

There is a huge irony in these initiatives. In his first presidential campaign, Chávez promised to put Venezuela’s oil wealth to work for poor Venezuelans, contending previous governments had failed to do so. He has indeed instituted a number of social programs, but poverty experts contend the patchwork of efforts fails to qualify as a serious poverty-reduction program. They nevertheless provide Chávez with plenty of political mileage.

In addition, Chávez has approved sweetheart deals to oil customers in Latin America and the Caribbean – all calculated to give Venezuela influence in the region. Cuba is the most outrageous example; in a barter arrangement it provides Venezuela with doctors and athletic trainers in exchange for oil.

Chávez's Harlem cheerleaders applaud such initiatives, believing they shame corrupt Western capitalism. They overlook the fact that Chávez is giving away the patrimony of his own impoverished country. Ultimately, these programs reveal Chávez to be as venal as previous Venezuelan leaders.

Presumably, Chávez was riding high over how U.N. delegates applauded him, followed by his big Harlem welcome. What came next surely surprised him: consumer disgust with Citgo, followed by 7-Eleven’s announcement that it was dumping the brand (citing Chávez ’s past conduct as a factor in what nevertheless was mostly a marketing decision).

And Chávez must have been stung by those unusual public rebukes by two influential Bush-hating Democrats: Charles Rangel of New York and Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco. Chávez was an “everyday thug,” Pelosi fumed. Surely Chávez was taken aback. After all, didn’t his comments echo the talking points of many Bush-hating Democrats – not to mention the great intellectual Noam Chomsky?

One of Chávez’s weaknesses is that he moves by all accounts in an insular world of fellow America haters, both in Venezuela and on his frequent road trips. As an elected autocrat, moreover, he faces far fewer checks and balances, nor vexing issues such as accountability (to the degree that this concept is truly understood in Latin America). So he can think and behave as he wants.

Chávez’s hubris may have hurt him, too. His amazing powers to read and persuade audiences have never let him down in the past.

In 1992, for instance, Chávez convinced a group of soldiers to join him in a bloody, disorganized, and failed military coup (although Chávez, to be sure, was apparently never in the thick of the fighting in which scores of civilians and soldiers died).

Widely condemned, the coup failed to inspire a civilian uprising or wider rebellion among the military. Chávez spent two years in jail. In winning the presidency, he convinced Venezuelans that he had traded the ballet for the bullet.

One thing the mainstream media oversimplifies about Chávez is to call him a hero to the poor. True, he draws most of his support from the poor, but not all of the poor support him. Moreover, this overlooks the fact that many middle class and even wealthy Venezuelans voted for him in 1998; they, too, were fed up with the nation’s two mainstream political parties, which were widely blamed for ruling irresponsibly and in their own self-interest.

Indeed, I meet a number of well-to-do, intelligent, and decent Venezuelans who saw Chávez as a reformer who would restore pride to Venezuela. During exit poll interviews I did in the wealthy La Floresta section of Caracas, I was surprised that most voters said they'd voted for Chavez. Like poor Venezuelans, they wanted sweeping changes. Ambassador Maisto, to be sure, wasn’t the only educated person who got suckered.

A handful of wealthy Venezuelans, of course, has remained on Chávez’s bandwagon, engaging in the sort of corruption that traditionally benefited politically connected business people who enjoyed no-bid government contracts and sweetheart deals. Most, however, quickly saw Chávez for the irresponsible and dangerous demagogue that he is.

Now Americans have seen Chávez for what he is, and they are registering their opinions by passing up Citgo outlets.

Good riddance.