World Social Forum

Let me paint a picture. Before a cheering crowd stands a man who sees the poverty of his people, a woman mourning the death of her son in a war she believes is unjust, and a
woman who grieves the death of her husband, who wanted independence for his country. Each of these people supports a cause. They want the U.S. to change. They want the U.S. to stop fighting foreign wars and stop interfering in foreign markets. They want the U.S. to allow other people to live the way they choose to live and accept that these people may have different values. They want peace and freedom.
But let's look a little deeper. First, the woman grieving hers husband. Though her husband did support independence, he was killed in an FBI raid. The FBI were searching for him because he stole $7.2 million from the U.S. Also, the country is Puerto Rico, a territory if the U.S.; a territory that I don't think many would consider exactly enslaved by the U.S. Now the second woman. Her son died in Iraq. Her son died as a volunteer in the military, fighting in a war to free a nation terrorized by its president and in which every intelligence agency in the world believed there were WMD. And finally, the man who claims to be fighting for the welfare of his nation. The man who is kicking out Christian missionaries, who threatens everybody who is American, whether they are good or bad, who fights against big business, taking away jobs from his people, who nationalizes industries, an economic move which has already been proven to devestate economies. A man who lies and threatens, who creates conspiracy theories to bring him sympathy, pity, and power. He is a man who seeks one thing - power at the expense of all else, even the welfare of his own people.
You can see these people as freedom fighters, who are fighting against a corrupt nation, or as villains who are spreading lies and deceit about a generally good nation. Or perhaps it is more complex than that. Maybe the people are bad, but the nation is also corrupt and they merely are feeding off that corruption. Or maybe the nation is good and these people are good and they are merely blinded by grief over the pain they see in those they love. The point is, I may be wrong.
Here is how I see it, though. Elma Beatriz Rosado was married to a criminal. He may have had good intentions, but he stole millions of dollars from the U.S. He broke the law and deserved to pay the consequence. He may have been killed before he could face trial, but I have serious doubts that the FBI shot without provocation. Cindy Sheehan is fighting not in support of her son, but against him. Rather than asking this government to structure an effective reconstruction scheme so that we can build up a nation and pull out without risking the civil war or having to return, she demands we pull out now and abandon the Iraqis to the terrorists who still have far too much control. She fights, blinded by her own grief, ignoring the fact that if we pull out now, her son's life would truly be a waste: Iraq would simply develop into a place either just as bad or worse than what it was like under Saddam.
Finally, Hugo Chavez. I do not have the words, and would not be willing to write them if I did, to describe my feelings about this man. He is truly a villaim who desires one thing: power. To get it, he plays off the unpopular actions of the U.S. He harnesses the traditional biases of the people against big business and the rich. He plays off racism: the battle between Hispanic and white Americans. To keep power and make it appear that he cares about the people, he tears apart the Venezualen economy. This man is evil. I have no doubt about this. He is doing things similar to what Hitler did in Germany. He is playing off the natural prejudices and the poverty of the people to, perfectly legally, place himself in power. The parallels are scary. In the early nineties, Chavez attempted a failed coup and was placed in jail. When he came out, he used the poverty of the people to catapult himself into elected office. Hitler attempted a coup. He was placed in jail. He came out, played off the terrible poverty of the Depression, and was elected into office. These moves do not mean Chavez is Hitler. But they may show that he thinks in a similar way. Let's not repeat history. Let's watch Chavez closely and be sure to defend the rights of his people, since so far he has not.