From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Sun Sep 09 2001 - 10:06:35 MDT
Charlie Stross wrote:
>
> On Sat, Sep 08, 2001 at 12:31:22PM -0400, Mike Lorrey wrote:
> >
> > What Chavez is doing is trying to leverage Venezuela's oil wealth into
> > constructing a latin only trade bloc to compete against the FTAA. He is
> > smart in wishing to be the big fish in a small pond rather than a small
> > fish in a big one.
>
> Point of note: the US government is apparently trying to use the FTAA
> to ram through legislation similar to the DMCA throughout the Americans.
>
> Maybe you should be rooting for Chavez, Ortega, et al; they may be half-
> assed and they may espouse an ideology you don't like, but they haven't
> been coopted by the machine that's trying to strip you of your basic
> civil rights as fast as it can.
Just different civil rights is all. You forgot that Castro is also in
the mix here, and that Ortega's popularity is due to the thousands of
people he gave land to that he stole from others.
You have a point about this, though, but I worry about the idea of
allying with them. Castro and Ortega both gained power as leaders of
minor factions of broad revolutionary movements, who killed off and
imprisoned their rivals once the revolution was over. With people such
as this, the best thing to do is to off them first and coopt their
movements.
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