[lbo-talk] Chavez is no prince and neither is Ahmadinejad (was: Chavez, bush, the devil and jon stewart)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 9/30/06, ylle521 at highstream.net <ylle521 at highstream.net> wrote:
> And another thing, while I got a kick out of his UN speech, IMO Hugo
> Chavez is no prince, see: embrace of Ahmadinejad.   Hmm, could be
> that Christian religious streak Hugo's got coming out, that makes it
> easier for him to overlook the fundamentalist oppressiveness of the
> Iranian govt as personified in this reactionary guy.

Or perhaps both the majorities of Iranians and Venezuelans, as well as
the majorities in the Middle East and Latin America, are conservative,
when it comes to gender issues, though populist on economics and
anti-imperialist on foreign policy, which both Presidents reflect:
e.g., both Iranian and Venezuelan women lack the right to abortion.

So, the question is what relation Western leftists want to have with
peoples who are economically populist, internationally
anti-imperialist, and sexually conservative.

>  But, as Juan
> Cole observed in his interview on Democracy Now! a few days back:
<snip>
>>And remember, the Iranian president is powerless, virtually. The
>> commander-in-chief of the armed forces is Khamenei, the Supreme
>>Juridprudent. Ahmadinejad can consult on the appointment of cabinet
>> ministers and ambassadors, but there are very few orders that he
>> could give of any significance in the Iranian system. He's kind of
>> like our Secretary of the Interior or something. So what he thinks
>> about things isn't that important.

It seems to me that, if you agree with Cole that "the Iranian
president is powerless" and that "what he thinks about things isn't
that important,"* it shouldn't matter whether or not Chavez embraces
Ahmadinejad (as he did Khatami when he was President, though the
relation between Chavez and Ahmadinejad is closer than between Chavez
and Khatami).  The question ought to be, instead, whether Chavez
embraces Khamenei.

* I think who has power in Iran is more complex than Cole says.  After
all, formal command can be informally subverted, as it often is in
many countries outside the West.
-- 
Yoshie
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