Venezuelan Traitor Praised in US. The Next Ahmed Chalabi ?

Looks like the big Pentagon Propaganda machine is loaded, cocked and aimed at Hugo Chavez.

CARACAS, Venezuela — For his outspoken opposition to President Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's best-known college student has been called a U.S. collaborator and has had his nose broken in a scuffle.

Known best to ..... ? Who can name a single other Venezuelan college student? Anyone?

On a wall opposite the converted garage where Yon Goicoechea lives, graffiti denounces him as a defender of the rich and powerful. Now, state television airs a cartoon of him holding a fistful of dollars and stamped "Made in USA."

Dollars with declining value thanks to the American right wing. These weak dollars are helping to make gas at the pump too expensive for impoverished America.

Lately the attacks have intensified because of the $500,000 award he received last month from the Cato Institute, a U.S. think tank that advocates individual liberties and free markets, for his "pivotal role in organizing and voicing opposition to the erosion of human and civil rights in his country."

"Free Market", the right wing euphemism for unregulated, unaccountable, predatory capitalism, and also the mantra uttered by multinational totalitarian organizations who prey in the name of profit upon governments and people; aka corporations.

In America, thanks to republicans (with an assist by dumbocrats) such corporations are increasingly unimpeded by labor law, environmental regulation and even common sense.

Markets have nothing to do with democracy. If the United States doesn't provide example enough, look at totalitarian china, a capitalist regime rife with markets. Where's the democracy?

Cato Institute also has a symbiotic relationship with corporate captains who have destroyed America for profit. Because Cato Institute is not just a supporter of unregulated capitalism that destroys democracy and shifts power into the hands of a relatively few extraordinarily wealthy robber barons and corporate chieftains. These organizations fund Cato and Cato does their public relations.

Cato supports Big Oil (including Exxon Mobil), Big Tobacco, Secret Campaign Funding, Social Security Privatization, and a whole gob of other loony, fuck the public, right wing, frothing for billions schemes that are completely unsustainable and have already left the world such a wreck many of us are beginning to wonder if our species will last another 100 years.

These companies that have done so much to destroy America, to lower the standard of living and erase even the semblance of democracy, also generously financially support Cato and other right wing think tanks, members of whom are trotted out on MSM TV as "experts" on topic like Venezuela.

The 23-year-old law student and protest leader arrives in the U.S. today and will collect the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty, named for the late Nobel laureate economist, in New York on Thursday.

Friedman was one of the worst things to ever happen to America (and other places glommed onto by American multinationals). He provided right wing extremists their free market battle cry. But even the most cursory examination of his theories shows how ridiculous his ideas were. His Nobel should be rescinded.

"In Venezuela you can't speak of democracy because all branches of government are controlled by one single branch," he said in an interview. "It's growing dangerously close to a totalitarian regime."

Actually, that sounds like America under George Bush. In Venezuela a majority of the population supported Hugo Chavez for president. Apparently this boy is being rewarded for lying. American corporations want to take Venezuela's oil without paying a fair market price. They want to kill Chavez and replace him with a compliant dictator who will pocket millions, oppress the people, and play for the American multinationals. Just like Saddam in Iraq or Pinochet in Chile or the Shah in Iran or a hundred other examples around the globe.

Still, his activities and occasional triumphs suggest Venezuela's opposition has room to maneuver, despite Chavez's efforts to tighten his socialist grip on the country.

Chavez has worked within the law of his country to see to it that multinational oil companies leave some of the profit behind for the people who own the oil. And nothing upsets the rabid right war mongers like fair markets or social justice. Exxon Mobil especially would like to see Chavez dead.

Goicoechea first drew attention last year, when he led protests against a government decision that forced an opposition TV channel off the air.

Hmm. A typically vague statement, exactly the kind used in Psychological operations run by the pentagon, NSA and CIA against the American public as they try to head off any protests or dissent or democratic movements.A.. Link here for what really occurred.

It runs in the family

His big moment came when he helped organize protest marches and made passionate speeches against constitutional changes that would have included removing presidential term limits and giving Chavez emergency powers to suspend civil liberties.

The reform was rejected in a December referendum, dealing Chavez his worst political defeat.

Goicoechea says an early influence was his Cuban-born grandmother, who left the island in the 1940s and became an ardent foe of Fidel Castro.

Goicoechea was just 14 when Chavez was elected in 1998, and says she warned him: "That guy's a communist."

An honor student at the private Andres Bello Catholic University, he emerged as a charismatic speaker while rallying students to vote "no" to Chavez's "dictatorial reform" and calling for "struggle against totalitarianism."

I need to see some proof , proof that Chavez is a totalitarian, not just this name calling supported by a handful of people who stand to profit to an obscene level by getting rid of Chavez. Since he is overwhelmingly popular in his country and has the overwhelming support of Venezuela, just how is he a dictator? Face it, Goicoechea is another Curveball or Ahmed Chalabi, a traitor and liar and willing to get a whole bunch of his country men killed in order to line his own pocket.

Chavez dismissed last year's protests as rich kids serving his critics in Washington. The $500,000 from the Cato Institute has led to posters going up on Caracas streets calling Goicoechea "Half-a-Million Yon." Mario Silva, a pro-Chavez talk show host, says the student is "a launderer of money that's going to be used to continue conspiring against Venezuela."

At a university event where Goicoechea was to speak last year, he was pummeled by several young men in the crowd, emerging with a fractured nose.

I'd like to spank his ass myself.

Goicoechea is unapologetic about accepting the prize. He says he is still studying the legal requirements for bringing the prize money into Venezuela but wants to use it to develop a foundation and train others in Latin America who share his values.