Doug Henwood answered:
> > Didn't think highly of Chavez? I had his planning minister on the
> > radio in 2002 for a very sympathetic interview - is that early enough
> > for you?
On 5/22/06, Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, you did so in June 2002, after the anti-Chavez coup (four years
> after Chavez got elected). Let's not wait till a coup against
> Ahmadinejad or something like that happens.
>
> By now, we have enough to go on to make a preliminary judgment about
> what the Ahmadinejad administration is up to, having seen what it was
> able to carry out, what it attempted but got blocked by what Tariq Ali
> calls the "mullah–bazaari nexus," what it is planning on doing, and so
> on.
I think that there's good cause to wait (though there's no reason to avoid studying the issue at length and no reason to jump to "fuck Ahmadinejad" sloganeering).
Some people jumped to support Pol Pot when the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia. Others have latched onto various (much milder) types who promised "revolution." I myself once was excessively positive toward the Velasco government of Peru (until I studied it a bit). Maybe Doug was right to wait a few years to see if Chavez was significantly better than Velasco and a lot of other "populist"-sounding types ...
-- Jim Devine / "Capitalism is the legitimate racket of the ruling class." -- Al Capone (attributed)