Comparisons with the international debacle over South Ossetia and East-West posturing on phallic prominence are schoolyard at best!

VHeadline editor & publisher Roy S. Carson writes: VHeadline's regular sparring partner, former Venezuelan Ambassador to the United Nations (UN), Milos Alcalay, is a cunning fox in every aspect of international diplomacy and, more often than not, he comes with valid points of criticism with regard to the debasement of President Hugo Chavez Frias' original philosophy of how Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution should proceed.

With Milos one has the freedom to agree or disagree ... a rare quality in today's politically sectarian Venezuela ... but one usually comes away a little bit the wiser given the former UN Ambassador's vast experience at the epicenter of world affairs.

I do, however, choose to disagree with the senior politician when, in a recent article in Analitica he posed the rhetorical question: Venezuela is a Russian satellite?

I quote: "The Venezuelan government's backing for Russian neo-imperialism and justifying their aggression against Georgia, seems to show that (Venezuelan) Bolivarian diplomacy assumes positions more pro-Russian than the Russians themselves!"

The precept is, of course, that Venezuela's Bolivarian diplomacy does NOT give backing for USA neo-imperialism and does NOT justify the United States' interference in Georgian affairs with regard to breakaway South Ossetia...

Milos certainly makes a case for questioning why faraway Venezuela should stick its nose into political problems in the former Soviet Republic ... but equally so, one should ask why the United States of America is also sticking its nose into Georgian affairs, especially when it seems more like scoring paranoid Brownie points against Russian Prime Minister Putin and the Kremlin's military strategists.

Ambassador Alcalay sees this as Venezuela becoming "a willing satellite of the Russian Federation" ... although, I fear, the undercurrent tends to somehow link today's Russia with the Cold War's Soviet Union ... or is that the true intent?

Milos says "Venezuela is unilaterally and voluntarily established as a satellite of Moscow, angrily to defend the military aggression, using the outdated language of the Cold War."

Although he cites Glasnost and Perestroika as "ending the Soviet ambition to impose clumsy handling of state control of industries, agriculture, commerce in their satellite countries through centralism," Alcalay seeks to confuse the issue by drawing parallels with President Chavez' much-vaunted ideas about Socialism of the 21st Century and says the evidence of his contention is "a collapse of a totalitarian system that was disguised as a popular anti-imperialist democracy which actually imposed the most perverse humiliations on Marxist supporters and dissidents, with the shameful support of 'redder than red' Commissioners glorifying the violation of human rights, freedom of expression, freedom of the press ... particularly in justifying anti-imperialist reactions in which the followers of communism joined the dissidents to tear up the (Soviet) Revolution in the beginning of the nineties."

Either Ambassador Alcalay is misinformed or we at VHeadline are watching some other TV channel than a Fox News derivative, since it is hard to understand Milos' incomprehension when he alleged that Miraflores (The Venezuelan Presidential Palace) has offered unconditional military and political backing, to offer Venezuelan territory for the establishment of military bases (he does go so far as to say that such allegations have been rejected by the Russian Defense Minister himself!), to welcome the Russian Fleet with open arms and to acquire US$ billions in obsolete Soviet era equipment etc., thus converting Venezuela into a Russian satellite in breach of Chavez' mandate under Article 13 of the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution defining that Venezuela should remain "a zone of peace."

Yes! We do agree that most times, Milos Alcalay gets it right ... but, this time, he's got it on the back foot!

Just juxta-posit 'all things Russian' for 'all things USA' and you get my meaning...

Like many allegedly on the opposite side of the barricades in Venezuela, there's a willingness to accept the worst interpretation and overlook the blindingly obvious.

Whether or not, Ambassador Alcalay is willing to admit it ... and I'm sure he would! ... Venezuela is living in a dangerous world where it is unfortunate that it is necessary to protect itself against all sorts of intermissions by disparate political, economic and, yes, criminal interests.

You need first to recognize that in an effort to release Venezuela from the shackles of United States influence ... plus the fact the the United States reneged on its solemn contractual undertaking to provide spare parts for USA-built military hardware in a clear effort to subjugate the Chavez government to the Washington dictate that had been enjoyed and manipulated by previous presidencies and their corrupt corporate sidekicks.

It was indeed necessary for the Chavez government either to yield unreservedly to unilateral Pentagon impositions, or to seek elsewhere for its military requirements and to make itself independent of further protection racket blackmailings from within the D.C. Beltway; or, logically, to give USA liaison militaries their marching orders from within the Caracas Fuerte Tiuna garrison and to treat with suspicion each and every USA manipulation of Venezuela's domestic and foreign politics.

Cause and effect: If the United States of America now bleats that Venezuela no longer wants to kiss its hind quarters, is it not more to blame the thoughtless strategists in the Bush administrations who sought to destroy Venezuela's sovereign independence. Is it not better to blame the CIA's covert financier, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) for its solid support of rebels against Venezuela's new-found democracy when in April 2002, Washington sought to impose 'Dictator for a Day' Pedro Carmona Estanga to wipe out the National Assembly/Congress, the Judiciary and the Constitution in one fell swoop of covert collaboration?

While it is NOT to say that everything in the Miraflores Palace -- or indeed outside it -- is hunky-dory, apple-pie, it sure as hell isn't yet a former-Soviet satellite of Moscow ... YET!

Milos is perhaps confusing the corruption of power within the former Soviet administration that led to the final break-up and the scalings of the Berlin Walls ... and, YES, we can agree that there is a regrettable tendency within the Chavez administration to appoint Commisars and Politruks to subjugate the citizenry into blind obedience to the party (PSUV); but these are matters of domestic political protest, defiance, debate, negotiations etc., in the lead-up to the November 23 local and regional elections which MAY just imbue a greater sense of national responsibility in the Venezuelan electorate away from the rah-rah religiosities of the leftier of the Left in Venezuelan politics.

Comparisons with the international debacle over South Ossetia and East-West posturing on phallic prominence are schoolyard at best.

Milos 'The cunning fox' Alcalay is a positive force for the democratic changes that are necessary to being Venezuela back on the rails again; he's a voice of moderation and, while he may be seen by the Chavez government as having fallen flat on his face on the anti- side of the political divide, seasoned sensibilities should rather see that (comical as it might appear to the fertile imagination) Milos Alcalay is not so much breathing fire out of both nostrils as walking his own tightrope on top of the thoroughly silly barricades in his own inimitable way of trying to stage manage a perhaps unachievable unity of Venezuelan intent to rescue the inherent values of what Venezuela is truly all about ... WITHOUT the sidestepping allusions to either Moscow or Washington ... or for that matter to Timbuktu!

Roy S. Carson
vheadline@gmail.com

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Venezuela is facing the most difficult period of its history with honest reporters crippled by sectarianism on top of rampant corruption within the administration and beyond, aided and abetted by criminal forces in the US and Spanish governments which cannot accept the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people to decide over their own future.

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