Once upon a time ... there was a fantasy land to the North

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic News Posted: Wednesday, April 23, 2003 By: Roy S. Carson

VHeadline.com Editor & Publisher Roy S. Carson writes: Once upon a time ... there was a fantasy land to the North, full of Mickey Mouse and Disney World, Hollywood movies, cowboys & indians.  Soda pop and good clean living.  The empire ... for it was of empirical size and status in the minds of everyone south of the Rio Grande ... was so damned attractive to impoverished Latinos that they adopted words like "pana" (a vocalization of cowboy 'pardner'), "Chevere" (Chevrolet = excellent) and the "beisbol" unforgettables: "strajk" and "honrun."

Latino admiration for northern climes was also a respect for "Freedom" -- economic, firstly, but also of expression; the right to hold an opinion.  We heard all the time of how the "gringos" defended their Constitutional freedom of expression to an almost religious "nth" degree, fighting for the right to hold opinions whether or not they were commonly accepted or nay.

But, sadly, those days are gone!

Gone with the wind as politicians on both sides of the barricades realize the electoral brownie points they can whip up so easily on a xenophobic storm that negates everything that proud USA citizens had held to be true.  They say now that is is because they possess The Truth!  But what is this elusive thing called Truth?

President Hugo Chavez Frias insists in his speechifying that he will honor and defend the Constitution of the Republic of Venezuela.

President George W. Bush insists that he also will honor and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.

Chavez Frias' duty is to protect the sovereign best interests of the Venezuelan people.

Bush 2's declaration is to defend the sovereign best interests of the American (USA) people.

On this basic premise we can, hopefully, all agree?

The rot, however, appears to have set in somewhere around the time that Clinton was frolicking with an intern in the Oval Office.

The rot had already set in in Venezuela way before the time of the Lusinchi/Ibanez administration and the inevitable consequences of February 28, 1989 and the attempted coups against corrupt President Carlos Andres Perez in February and November 1992.

US Ambassadors to Venezuela had (almost) always enjoyed a warm and welcome reception in Venezuela ... certainly Jeff Davidow and John Maisto were among the more progressive of the US diplomatic corps on assignment to Caracas ... but something happened on the heels of Clinton Energy Secretary Bill Richardson's bull-whipping tours of the Middle East in parallel with Chavez Frias' and Venezuela's rise to prominence within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

The frivolous appointment of Donna Hrinak as US Ambassador to Venezuela seriously slammed US-Venezuelan relations into reverse gear and her extracurricular dalliances with a certain Venezuelan print media publisher did not win much respect for her or her entourage now sequestered in the bunker on Colinas de Valle Arriba ... Donna's dispatch into the backwoods of Brazil came not too early but the appointment of Charles Shapiro to the Caracas chair was full tilt into prehistoric USA-Venezuela paranoia a la Otto Reich.  Scarcely surprising that "reds under the bed" should begin to take such prominence in an upsurge of latent McCarthyism at US State.

Of course, it helps the Bush administration get over the fact of a questionable election victory in Florida against Chavez Frias' several times ratification as Venezuela's unquestionably democratically-elected President, that Reich and his Shapiro shadow can wag red-neck fingers at Chavez' open relationship with Cuba's Fidel Castro.  It had been difficult for Washington to accept the fact that Chavez Frias had insisted on Venezuela's sovereignty when they insisted they would send two shiploads of (armed) Marines to Venezuela in the wake of the December 1999 floods disaster.  Rejected, the Washington mandarins could not understand the natural suspicion that the Beltway Bosses would use the pretext to stay and neo-colonize as has been their wont elsewhere.

• Yes, admittedly it's Bush 2's design to protect the best interests of the American (USA) people ... but that in itself does not necessarily tally with the best and sovereign interests of Venezuela, France, Germany or the rest of the world...

That's why its such an anachronism to view the current state of US Freedom of Expression where, hey it's okay guys to express opinions in favor of the United States but, whoa there, a distinct no-no to express an opinion at variance with White House protocol.  Frenchies, Krauts, Venezuelans and other ne'er do wells beware ... Uncle Sam doesn't like it ... so Constitutional Freedom goes out the windows with Freedom (French) Fries and similar xenophobic nonsense polluting the airwaves.

Simply ... the world has gotta understand you're either with US or you're agin US!

So stuff the Stateside hate mail as we explore The Truth as seen from a Venezuelan perspective.

We make no bones about it at VHeadline.com ... we're totally biased on behalf of the Venezuelan people and the Constitution they are pledged to uphold.

We believe in Law & Order and we're not welded at the hip to any President by name or politics ... we do, however, acknowledge and uphold the democratic right of any duly-elected Venezuelan government to rule as befits the best interests of the sovereign Venezuelan people...

...and, if that's at variance with Bush 2 dictates; hey, get over it and move on!