On Thu, 6 May 2004, Joe Dees wrote:

> The US is definitely not on the same level of depravity as those it has
> recently faced in battle, Jei (although it has to be that way for you,
> because you so much WAAAANT it that way).

Joe, that is a matter of definition of depravity and opinion.
And since when have you become such an expert in what I want?

(Joe) I know what you have written, and it is exceedingly difficult to interpret it any other way.

It seems to me that it is you, Americans, who are like rabid believers,
actively ignoring and explaining away all the facts that contradict your
belief in the Almighty America the Righteous Nation, instead of looking
at the facts on the ground of what you are doing.

(Joe) What we are doing is suffering more casualties on the ground than we would have to if we were not extremely careful to avoid civilian deaths while fighting against an enemy who cynically exploits this decency by employing those selfsame civilians as human shields behind which it fires on our forces.

Amnesty International has plenty of reports, but I don't suppose
any of you even bother to follow them, since they've been plenty
critical of America's conduct as well.

(Joe) I'm still waiting for the six million to die that they predicted would freeze and starve after a US invasion of Afghanistan, as well as for them to develop enough of a sense of perspective to criticize the elevation of the Sudan to a position on the UN Human Rights Committee at the same time that they are pursuing a Muslim genocide of Animists and Christians in the southern darfar region.

> And the US is busily assisting the Iraqis in crafting a true
> independence that the citizenry can enjoy and that the country can hold
> on to.

That is what you may believe, indeed it is what your TV is saying 24/7,
but is that really your governments' real and ultimate goal, the driving
force behind the decition to go to War?

I think the ultimate goal was stated in the PNAC documents, and that is
to gain control over oil and strategic oil producing region. - Nobody
goes to war for any other reason than profit.

(Joe) Try security (and not just ours, but theirs, as well).  Democracies rarely go to war with each other, preferriing to compete in the economic domain.  This is better for us, and better for them.

People certainly don't go around making democracies and bashing
dictators out of the goodness of their hearts. Indeed, US has a
consistent habit of destroying democracies that don't suite their
tastes, such as in Iran, and the more recent attempt to overthrow
the government & president in Venezuela. There's PLENTY of examples
to go around of this.

(Joe) In Iran, the US was still involved in regrettably necessary Cold War counterbalancing, something that is not necessary any more.  In Venezuela, the president is attempting to subvert the democratic process, and align himself with Cuba (hardly a democratic model).  See story at bottom.

> If the US cuts and runs rather than sticking it out, Iraq would
> probably follow the same path that Afghanistan did after the soviet
> pullout.

It didn't do that bad, until you bombed their mud-huts back to stone age.

(Joe) It did terribly.  For everybody.  First the Taliban took over the government and installed a draconian theocratic rule, then Osama Bin Laden moved in and established training camps that prpduced 20,000 trained Al Qaedan shaheeds.

Well, at least the US seems to have gotten Afghanistan's opium production
back to record levels, after the Taleban had eliminated from the country
near totally. Good work, I guess we will see opium production take root in
Iraq as well.

(Joe) Opium production did not actually slump that much; the Taliban merely stockpiled that production.  They are now selling it off in order to finance their efforts.

> This would be a danger to both its own people and to those of
> other nations, but would most likely delight Jei, as anything that might
> cause the US or its people pain or discomfort seems to delight him so.

Don't put words in my mouth Joe. I don't wish bad to anybody in this
world. The fact is that I can see the real motives behind PR-talk,
while you choose to ignore the reality and prefer to stick to the rosy
fantasies of your government's PR-agency.

You are living in a dark hole, Joe. You may choose to dig yourself deeper,
but the ugly reality is still there. I really pity you Joe, 48 years old,
and you're still incapable of thinking outside of your little box.

(Joe) it is you who are willfully blind.  Your memetic hooks and filters are so numerous and interwoven that it would take a flow chart to enumerate them and list their interrelations.  I have no need for the condescension of lockstep anti-US memebots.

Now to the Venezuela story:

The Recall That Matters
By Carroll Andrew Morse

http://www.techcentralstation.com/050704B.html

Can democracy exist when people outside the government play by the rules, but people inside the government change them when they do not like the results -- or just ignore them altogether? This question underlies the petition drive to force Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez into a recall election.

The constitution of Venezuela requires that the President stand in a recall election if 20% of the registered voters sign a recall petition. In December of 2003, a petition signed by about 3.4 million people was presented to the Venezuelan body that administers elections, the National Electoral Council (CNE). Currently, the CNE only accepts 1.9 million of the signatures as valid. Of the remaining 1.5 million, the CNE claims that 1.2 million are invalid because personal identification data -- not the signatures themselves -- was filled out by a poll worker or someone other than the signer. Over 300,000 signatures were rejected for other reasons.

After a five-month delay, the CNE has announced procedures to resolve the situation. The CNE will administer a "repair" procedure between May 28 and May 30. On these three days, signers in the group of 1.2 million rejections can go to a public polling place to confirm the legitimacy of their signatures. Signers in the group of 300,000-plus rejections for other reasons will not be allowed to participate in the repair process. Their signatures have been permanently barred.

About 550,000 people who signed the petition need to participate in the repair process in order to reach the total of approximately 2.4 million needed to trigger a recall. If they are successful, the recall election will be held sometime in early August. That, for the moment, is the official word from the government.

Supporters of the referendum regard the "repair" procedure, at best, as a partial victory. The Carter Center, who sent observers to monitor the original collection of signatures, does not believe that the 1.2 million signatures require any additional authentication. In early March, the Carter Center issued a statement saying that "in the case of the petition forms in which the basic data of several signers, but not the signatures themselves appear to have been filled in by one person, we [the Carter Center] do not share the criterion of the CNE to separate these signatures, sending them to the appeals process in order to be rectified by the citizens".

There are doubts about the ability of the CNE to objectively administrate a Chavez referendum. The Miami Herald reported that CNE member Jorge Rodriguez told the president of an election-hardware provider "that election will never take place" when referring to the referendum. The Herald also reported than the CNE has hired a firm "whose touch-screen voting machine has never been used in an election anywhere" to provide voting machines for the referendum. There have been widespread reports of people being fired from government ministries and state run industries for signing the petition, or facing threats of firing if they go to repair a disputed signature.

There is no faith that the Venezuelan courts can act as an impartial check on the power of the CNE. The Constitutional and Electoral chambers of the Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) are locked in a struggle over who has legitimate judicial authority to rule on recall related cases. A March 2004 ruling by Electoral Chamber restoring enough disputed signatures to force the recall was overturned by the Constitutional chamber. The Constitutional Chamber ruled that the Electoral Chamber did not have authority in electoral matters related to the referendum. Since the current Venezuelan constitution and structure of the court system only date back as far as 1999, there are no agreed upon precedents to determine who has authority in this situation. They are making up the rules as they go.

Should any petition or referendum related matters find their way to a plenary session of the TSJ, Chavez has taken steps to insure that the court will rule in his favor. In the last week of April, the National Assembly approved the creation of 12 new TSJ seats to be added to the existing 20. The new members will all be appointed by Chavez. By the time any petition or referendum dispute is heard by the full court, Chavez will likely have had time to install a commanding majority loyal to him.

There is an active debate within the Venezuelan opposition whether the petition and referendum are meaningful or if they are diversions intended to frustrate and dissipate the energies of the opposition. There is a fear that cooperation with a referendum procedure amidst the campaign of intimidation against petition signers, the belief that votes will not be counted fairly by the CNE, and the confusing and contradictory rulings of the TSJ might only give an aura of legitimacy to an election that is unfair.

When the channels for peaceful change are blocked, the choices can appear dauntingly polarizing. The people can openly revolt or they can accept life under a tyrannical government. Other choices may exist, however, if the situation is larger than one nation's democrats versus its dictators; if the battle line is democrats -- both inside and outside of Venezuela -- versus the dictators in Venezuela, then democracy has hope of triumphing peacefully. The Americas of 2004 may be a historically unique time and place where it is possible to muster enough international cooperation to restore democracy to Venezuela.

The Inter-American Democratic Charter

The uniqueness of the moment lies in the fact that Venezuela is both a member of the Organization of American States and a party to the Inter-American Democratic Charter. At first blush, it seems naïve to pin the hopes for a meaningful defense of democracy on a multilateral paper guarantee. Other high-level multilateral documents do very little to deter the repressive and anti-democratic actions of state governments. Why should anyone expect the protection of the Inter-American Democratic Charter to be any more effective than the protection of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights?

Part of the hope lies in the fact the Charter is relatively new. Signed less than three years ago on September 11, 2001, it has not yet become reflexive to ignore the Charter. Secondly, the contradictions between the principles of the Charter and the events in Venezuela have grown too obvious to ignore. In addition to the traditional state-centric definition of the threat to democracy -- "an unconstitutional interruption of the democratic order" -- the charter also concerns itself with a citizen-centric definition of the threat to democracy -- "an unconstitutional alteration of the constitutional regime that seriously impairs the democratic order in a member state". The Chavez regime's continuing manipulation of Venezuela's political institutions, manipulation intended to limit the political participation of dissenting citizens, is exactly the situation that the citizen-centric definition of the threat to democracy was intended to counter.

In mid-April, the Senate of Colombia passed a resolution asking the OAS to invoke the Charter against the Venezuelan government. (This event, sadly, was not covered in the mainstream American media). The resolution cited CNE and TSJ obstruction of the recall petition, as well as concerns about government-sponsored intimidation of the opposition. Within a week, three different groups -- the government of Venezuela, the Colombian foreign ministry, and the OAS Secretary General -- had responded to the Senate's request. Alas, their reactions suggested that people of the Americas may still succumb to the temptation to toss the Inter-American Democratic Charter on to the ever-growing pile of frequently ignored, multilateral agreements.

At least two different rationales denying the applicability of the Charter to the Chavez regime were offered. Jose Vicente Rangel, vice-President of Venezuela, and Cesar Gaviria, OAS Secretary General, concurred (in separate and unrelated statements) that the request was invalid because it did not originate with a "government". The Colombian foreign ministry went even further. The ministry stated that its foreign relations with Venezuela are "managed having the principles consecrated in the Charter of the United Nations as frame and guide". The United Nations Charter is infamously silent on the subject of democracy. The response of the Colombian foreign ministry comes dangerously close to repudiating the commitment to the Democratic Charter.

Given the Chavez regime's history of lashing out at dissenting views, the defensive reaction of the Venezuelan government is wholly unremarkable. The quick rejection by the OAS Secretary-General, on the other hand, risks marginalizing both the Democratic Charter and the OAS itself.

The statement that invocation of the charter must be initiated by a "government" is not quite correct. According to Article 20, procedures involving the Charter may commence at the request of a government or the OAS Secretary General. Though it is true that Secretary General Gaviria is not required to convene the OAS at the request of the Colombian Senate, he should consider providing the Senate a substantive answer, not a procedural one. He should explain why the ad-hoc rule changes of the CNE and the restructuring of the TSJ, actions intended to obstruct a constitutionally mandated popular referendum, are not "unconstitutional alterations of the constitutional regime that seriously impair the democratic order in a member state". He should explain why his office has not yet given serious consideration to use its right to invoke the Charter.

The procedural dismissal -- and the unwillingness of any other OAS government to take up what the Colombian Senate has started -- casts doubts upon the readiness and the willingness of the OAS to enforce the commitment to the Democratic Charter. Allowing such doubts to linger decreases the chances of a peaceful resolution in Venezuela. Peaceful restoration of Venezuelan democracy depends upon the people of Venezuela having access to civil mechanisms not under the control of the Chavez regime. Such mechanisms are embodied, in theory, in the principles and processes of the Democratic Charter; they only exist, in reality, if the members of the OAS are willing to honor their commitment to collectively protect democracy. The failure of the OAS to tangibly show a democratic commitment will send a clear message to Venezuelans that their only options for throwing off a dictator are uncivil ones.

Finally, the loophole that allowed the Colombian foreign ministry's response to the Colombian Senate needs to be closed. Democratic peoples everywhere should insist that the United Nations begin working on its own version of the Democratic Charter, something to deter UN members like China from their recent cancellation of 2005-2006 executive and legislative elections in Hong Kong. Thanks to the work of the OAS, we see that the mechanics of forging an agreement that protects democracy are not impossible.

And if the United States and the other democracies of the world do not see reasonable progress towards a United Nations Democratic Charter within a two-year frame, the United States and the other democracies of the world should announce their intention to withdraw from the United Nations. A different forum where the executive branches of the world represent their interests to one another -- a forum that does not carry the UN's baggage of indifference to the links between human rights and democracy -- can be formed easily enough.

Carroll Andrew Morse is a frequent contributor. He recently wrote for TCS about What Hugo Chavez Means for Democracy.

And here's that story:

What Hugo Chavez Means for Democracy Around the Globe
By Carroll Andrew Morse

Millions of Venezuelans have signed a petition demanding that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stand in a recall election. Resist any urge to draw a parallel between the Venezuelan recall effort and the California recall of 2003. Venezuela is not California and Hugo Chavez is not Gray Davis. Over the past 4 years, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has installed autocratic rule over Venezuelan society, destroying the democratic institutions intended to check the concentration of political power. In the absence of democratic institutions, the only peaceful option the people of Venezuela have left for saving themselves is this exercise in direct democracy.

Hugo Chavez was elected president of Venezuela in December of 1998. Almost immediately, he took his first steps towards consolidating all of the power of the Venezuelan state into his own hands. He organized a series of referenda. The first authorized re-writing the Venezuelan constitution. The second selected delegates to a Constitutional Assembly, distinct from his country's legislature, to do the re-writing. The rules governing the election of the Constitutional Assembly featured a few non-standard items. Although no candidates -- neither Chavez's supporters nor his opposition -- were allowed to run under party banners, Chavez used state funded media to campaign for the election of his supporters. This, combined with Chavez's personal popularity, allowed Chavez supporters to win 120 of the 131 assembly seats.

The Constitutional Assembly, with the backing of Chavez, moved beyond re-writing Venezuela's Constitution. In August of 1999, the assembly set up a "judicial emergency committee" with the power to remove judges without consulting any other branch of government. The New York Times quoted the judicial emergency committee chairman as saying, "The Constitutional Assembly has absolute powers. The objective is that the substitution of judges will take place peacefully, but if the courts refuse to acknowledge the assembly's authority, we will proceed in a different fashion."

In the same month, the assembly declared a "legislative emergency." A seven-member committee was created to perform congressional functions, including law-making. The Constitutional Assembly prohibited the Congress from holding meetings of any sort. In a national radio address quoted in the Times, Chavez warned Venezuelans not to obey opposition officials, stating that "we can intervene in any police force in any municipality, because we are not going to permit any tumult or uproar. Order has arrived in Venezuela."

The new constitution -- increasing the President's term of office by one year, increasing the power of the president in general, and placing new government restrictions on the media, among other things -- was approved in a referendum held in December of 1999. Elections for the new, unicameral legislature were held in July of 2000. During the same election, Chavez stood for election again -- restarting the clock on his Presidential term of office. Though Chavez supporters won about 60% of the seats in the new unicameral assembly, Chavez still did not feel that he had enough power. In November of 2000, he pushed a bill through the legislature allowing him to rule by decree for one year.

In December of 2000 there was another set of elections. During elections for local officials, Chavez added a referendum on dissolving Venezuela's labor unions. Though it is unclear what authority was invoked, he attempted to consolidate all Venezuelan labor unions into a single, state controlled "Bolivaran Labor Force."

Put this sequence of events into perspective. Imagine, after winning the October 2003 election for Governor of California, Governor Elect Arnold Schwarzenegger called a second election for a constitutional convention to replace the state constitution with a new document increasing the power of the governor, then called a third election to replace existing California legislature with a new unicameral legislature, then called a fourth election to grant himself another full term of office, then called a fifth election to oust the labor union leadership in California, all within the space of two years. Would these be considered legitimate democratic practices because they involved elections?

The record is clear. Since his election in 1998, Hugo Chavez has engaged in a methodical campaign to eliminate dissenting voices from Venezuelan politics. He has provided the world with a clinic on how to set up totalitarian rule. First, get control of one branch of government. Then, eliminate all opposition within the government by making all other branches subordinate to the one branch you control. Next, use the power of government to prevent any other segment of society from organizing. He has attacked the labor unions, the independent media, the church -- any source of people organizing that is an alternative to the state.

By the time of the December 2000 election, it was readily apparent that Hugo Chavez was, as Jennifer McCoy and Laura Neuman of the Carter Center had worried in a February 2001 Current History article, a populist autocrat -- a ruler who does not seek the consent of the governed, but uses mobs to carry out his own will. With the government firmly under his control, and the organs of civil society smashed, Chavez would have to turn his attention to the final part of the totalitarian program -- preventing the expression of displeasure with the government at the individual level.

Not even populist autocrats can decree that the honeymoon will last forever. Eventually, Chavez's overwhelming level of popular support started to fade. The militarization of schools and social services and the shrinking Venezuelan economy under his rule began to grate on people. Civil chaos ensued. A coup attempt against Chavez in April of 2002 failed when key elements of the military refused to support it. A bitter two-month general strike between December of 2002 and February of 2003 wreaked further havoc. The petition for a recall election emerged against this backdrop of increasing chaos. In May of 2003, Chavez and the opposition momentarily reached an agreement -- the Organization of American States (OAS) brokered a deal that would allow a recall petition to proceed.

Alas, the government's anti-democratic behavior continued unabated. In September of 2003, The Economist reported that the government used a "rapid reaction" squad to raid the offices of the National Electoral Council (CNE), the government body overseeing the petition drive. The Economist also reported that the government punished Venezuelan citizens for signing the petition. Names of signers were leaked to a pro-Chavez legislator who published them on his website. Military officers who signed the petition were disciplined. Venezuela's state run oil company would not hire people known to have signed the petition.

Despite the continuing intimidation, the petition drive continued and 3.2 million signatures were gathered. Eventually, the CNE rejected the petition by a vote of 3-0 with 2 members abstaining. They ruled that signatures collected before the mid-point of Chavez's term were not valid under Venezuelan law.

A second petition drive began, the drive currently in the news. Again, the opposition collected over 3 million signatures. This time the CNE questioned the validity of individual signatures, saying that disputed signatures must be re-confirmed individually. The petitioners appealed the Electoral Chamber of the Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) -- the Venezuelan "Supreme Court." The court reinstated over 800,000 of the disputed signatures, bringing the total to 2.7 million -- well above the 2.4 million needed to authorize the referendum. However, about a week later, the Constitutional chamber of the TSJ overturned the Electoral chamber's ruling.

The pattern of government intimidation repeated itself. Again, the names of petition signers were posted publicly. The president of the Venezuelan Workers Confederation was quoted in the Associated Press as claiming that the government has began firing petition signers from government ministries, the state oil company, the state water company, the Caracas Metro, and public hospitals and municipal governments controlled by Chavez's party. The Associated Press also quoted Venezuela's Health minister as justifying petition related layoffs by saying that petitioners were engaged in terrorism against the state.

The last procedural hope for the recall lies in an appeal to the full 20 justices of the TSJ. The full court has shown flashes of independence over the past few years. Numerous sources cite that Chavez cannot count on the court to rubber stamp his wishes because several judges have aligned themselves with former Constitutional assembly leader Luis Miquilena whose relationship with Chavez turned sour some years ago. Most notably, the TSJ ruled 11-8 to dismiss charges against several military officers associated with the 2002 coup attempt. Most recently, the TSJ has gone against Chavez's wishes by ruling that Cuban doctors cannot practice medicine in Venezuela without a review of their qualifications. Chavez, of course, wants to change the rules. He wants to increase the TSJ membership to 32 so he can appoint more justices loyal to him.

As of three years ago, in Chavez's Venezuela, the election process, by itself, was an all-powerful source of legitimacy. Elections were called at irregular intervals whenever they suited Chavez's purpose of eliminating opposition, inside or outside the government -- seven elections in two years by McCoy and Neuman's count. Now, when election outcomes are not reliably pro-Chavez, the government is doing everything it can, both legally and illegally, to stop elections from happening -- even when millions have called for an election in accordance with the law created under Chavez's guidance. Were the consequences not so serious, the history of elections in Chavez's Venezuela would be the perfect comic parody of the totalitarian dream: you can hold as many elections as you want, whenever you want, so long as you are not allowed to vote against the incumbent.

It is a tribute to the resilience of the Venezuelan people and their belief in democracy that, faced with a leader who relies on intimidation rather than deliberation, they are still willing to work through the democratic institutions that have been nearly obliterated. The democratic spirit lives on in the Venezuelan people. Because of this, Venezuela, in many ways, is a more critical test of the viability of democracy within the existing international system than is Iraq or Haiti. The usual justifications for inaction against a dictator do not apply to the case of Venezuela. The logistical problems for democracy in Venezuela are not overwhelming. The necessary institutions exist and the memories of democracy, imperfect though it was, are fresh. No nation building is necessary to rescue Venezuelan democracy.

If the people inside of Venezuela can organize themselves to throw off the chains of a dictator, should not the people outside of Venezuela be able to organize to help them? The outcome in Venezuela will reveal much about whether the existing international system helps or hinders organizing in the name of freedom. The OAS and the Carter Center have performed commendably in Venezuela; their actions provide some measure of hope that countries are beginning to learn how to cooperate with one another for the advancement of democracy. Let us hope that their work is not negated by "sophisticated" internationalists who insist that the international community put its authority behind stabilizing any dictator who holds a United Nations vote.

Carroll Andrew Morse recently wrote for TCS about The Bias Towards Brutality and Totalitarianism.