At today’s bloggers briefing, Representative Connie Mack (FL-14) joined us to talk about the threat posed by Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. Specifically how Chavez is building alliances with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other US enemies. Mack was recently featured in documentary about the growing ties between Iran and Venezuela titled, “Crisis in the Americas.â€
Here’s the trailer.
We also heard from Dave Mastio who came by to promote the launch of a new site, RightyBlogs.com.
Connie Mack
Yesterday a resolution co-sponsored by Mack was passed in the House, which according to Mack's office, laid out the "House of Representatives’ growing concerns over the national security implications regarding Iran’s growing relationships in Latin America."
Mack described the resolution, and the documentary as all part of an effort to get the American people to pay more attention to what’s happening in Venezuela.
Mack said,
It rests upon our shoulders and your shoulders to highlight to the American people the dangers posed by Hugo Chavez.
Mack argued that if Hugo Chavez continues his relationship with Ahmadinejad, and gives Ahmadinejad a foothold in our hemisphere, we’ll have something like Castro and Cuba during the Cold War.
"Do we want someone like that in our backyard?" Mack asked. He continued, saying we need to have a forceful discussion about policy toward Chavez, and we need to let the people of Venezuela know that we support them.
This guy's addicted to power, and he’s addicted to conflict. He sees himself as Castro, except he doesn’t want to be the dictator of just Venezuela but of all of Latin America.
Mack also stated that free trade agreements between Latin American countries and the US are important.
It sends the message to allies that we care.
Dave Mastio came by to talk about Rightyblogs.com, a directory of Conservative blogs organized by state, that Mastio hopes will be an, "accurate reflection of the Conservative blogosphere in each state."
The site's been launched in cooperation with Eagle Publishing (the owners of RedState) and is build on the BlogNetNews.com platform, that Mastio also developed.
Mastio said that they already have over 4,000 blogs in the directory and are adding about a dozen a day. If you have a blog that you want listed, you can email Mastio at editor (at) blognetnews (dot) com.
::UPDATED::
Next week Rob Bluey announced that John Bolton is supposed to come by to talk about his new book.
Comments
Castro
Rather than holding ourselves under the assumption that Chavez is "addicted to power," and the notion that we might have something like another Cuban Missile Crisis on our hands (which is ridiculous because Iran isn't anything like the old USSR in terms of power, and Venezuela isn't "in our backyard," it's on another continent. On the other hand, Cuba is closer to Miami beach than I am to my parents' house (Tucson to Phoenix)), we might be better suited at looking at Chavez' financial interest in supporting Iran, namely, oil. Both Venezuela and Iran are member states of OPEC, which is an organization that relies on nationalized oil among members and group unity to maintain a consistent, more powerful pricing front against the larger and more powerful Euro-American influences. When Iraq fell, OPEC lost a member state, the world's third richest nation in petroleum reserves, and $10-30 trillion in potential income. If Iran falls as well, we can expect it to be bullied into turning control of its own oil reserves over to American corporate interests just as Iraq is being blackmailed into now (with the threat being "turn over your oil or lose billions in reconstruction funds"). With the loss of both Iran and Iraq, and Saudi Arabia in our pocket, the United States would subsequently almost wholly undermine OPEC's power and become itself controller of much of the oil of world, something we apparently want with China rising so quickly and procuring ever greater shares of the product. In that light, it only makes sense for Chavez to come to Iran's aid, because a fallen Iran would directly effect his own bottom line and threaten his own country's security.
The larger question here is whether we have a right to be doing any of these things, "liberating" people with one hand, and pushing them down with the other. These countries are relatively poor, and in nearly every case oil is the only profitable commodity they have. Turning control of their oil over to American corporations strips them of their so-called freedom, and moves their primary revenue stream onto our shores. That sure sounds like subjugation to me, and we shouldn't blame Chavez for trying to help.
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