Chavez lost, for now

Since I wrote several articles on Venezuela and its President Hugo Chavez I decided to have my last blog entry about them. The article that I chose was about Chavez’s defeat on his proposed changes to the Venezuelan constitution, and how people around the world took it. The changes Chavez wanted to make to the constitution were lowering the work day to six hours, and perhaps the most important one to Venezuelans was the removal of term limits so Chavez could run as many times as he wants. After the vote on Sunday that resulted in Chavez’s proposals losing, the U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said, “…people spoke for democracy and against unlimited power.” Comments such as these make me wonder why the Bush administration feels it has to say with pride how the people of Venezuela said no to Chavez but in the other elections which Chavez was the victor they said barely anything, the truth is that the Bush administration does not like Chavez. To me Chavez represents a true form of democracy and it seems that this true form of democracy in Latin America threatens the Bush administration. I feel this way because of a documentary I watched about the coup attempt on Chavez, which shows evidence of the U.S. interfering with the internal affairs of Venezuela. I will not ignore the situation that Chavez lost, he himself said, “Venezuelan democracy is maturing ... There is no dictatorship here.” Comments made by news media like Fox in reference to Chavez being a dictator is very up surd to me when I read comments like Chavez’s. The truth is I am sort of sad about the voting results on the constitutional changes because Chavez in my opinion is a blessing to Venezuela and I would have wished he could stick around longer than the end of his term in 2013.

Police Racism

The article that was chosen for this week was about accusations about racism in the Minneapolis Police Department. Recently their have been several transfers of black officers implemented by police administration. Community leaders such as Ron Edwards gave examples of demotions of three black police officers, and another community leader, Jerry McAfee said, “All these moves smell like racism to the highest degree.” With all these accusations one should keep in mind that these are just accusations there is still room for doubt. The new police chief, Tim Dolan has only had the position for only a year so it is hard to see if his position on diversifying the Minneapolis Police Department is from a racist perspective. Taking a look at all the angles I would have to say that it is too early to cry racism for the new police chief’s transfers. I would also conclude that the transfers do look very suspicious but I would not have gone public as Ron Edwards, and Jerry McAfee did. The best thing that these two community leaders could have done was to get more evidence. A recent transfer of a detective Charlie Adams is now under reconsideration perhaps because of the racial cries. I would have urged Edwards and McAfee to have kept quiet until they had irrefutable evidence, but since they cried racism the police administration perhaps had time to correct their mistakes, if they are guilty. For now it is best to keep a watchful eye out to see if there really is any racism.