NYT: Venezuelan officials kidnap political opponent

After a judge ordered the arrest of prominent foes of President Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan police seized a businessman early today who had led a recent two-month strike against him.

Shots rang out as protesters and private bodyguards faced off with the state security officers who seized the strike leader, Carlos Fernández, outside a Caracas steakhouse shortly after midnight and pushed him into a waiting car, officials and witnesses said.
...
The arrest occurred after a judge ordered Mr. Fernández and the strike's other main leader, Carlos Ortega, the leader of Venezuela's largest labor union, detained for rebellion against the state, sabotage and other charges. Mr. Ortega told reporters he would go into hiding.

The order and arrest rattled the opposition, which was already reeling from the killings of three dissident soldiers and an anti-Chávez protester whose bodies were discovered this week. The police say the deaths probably involved a personal grudge, but grieving relatives blamed political persecution.
...
The case has fueled opposition fears that Mr. Chávez may be leading Venezuela toward armed struggle by encouraging supporters to silence dissent, more than 10 months after he narrowly survived the coup led by rebel officers.

Caracas Chronicles on political pressure in Venezuela:

The Chávez government has always hung its claim to respect human rights on the fact that no opposition figures have been murdered or imprisoned in Venezuela. The latter claim collapsed with Carlos Fernández? arrest last week. The former, thankfully, still stands. But what these claims ? and too much foreign reporting ? gloss over is the systematic campaign of threats, intimidation and harassment government supporters have launched against all sorts of opposition figures.

The campaign is extraordinarily broad ? most opposition politicians and pundits are under threat. Many journalists as well, and almost all private media owners. The threats are sustained, personal, delivered in a variety of ways. They target opposition moderates and radicals equally. Few have so far been carried out, but it?s hard to overstate the way this drip-drip-drip of intimidation poisons the political atmosphere here.
...
?I love my boss,? a friend of mine who works for a major media outlet tells me, ?he?s a standup guy who?s taught me a lot. The problem is, he?s out of his mind.? He describes the way the mixture of the president?s threats to move against his company, together with the anonymous threats he keeps getting, have created this kind of siege mentality at the company. ?He?s worked his whole life to get to the point where he can run a company like this,? my friend says ?and he?s convinced that Chávez is going to take it away from him. He might be right, but the thing is that the pressure?s gotten to him. He?s just not thinking straight anymore.?
...
The threats, the torrent of well-orchestrated threats, can?t possibly be a matter of a few rogue chavistas striking out on their own to spook their political enemies. The campaign is too broad for that, too carefully run. If the government had any problem with it, it clearly could have cracked down long ago. Many here are convinced that the state security apparatus is behind it. And as the political violence escalates around the country, most are convinced it?s only a matter of time until these threats start turning into real attacks.

NYT Op-Ed: Threats, Promises and Lies by Paul Krugman

The funny thing is that this administration sets great store by credibility. As the justifications for invading Iraq come and go ? Saddam is developing nuclear weapons; no, but he's in league with Osama; no, but he's really evil ? the case for war has come increasingly to rest on credibility. You see, say the hawks, we've already put our soldiers in position, so we must attack or the world won't take us seriously.
...
Mr. Fox is not alone. In fact, I can't think of anyone other than the hard right and corporate lobbyists who has done a deal with Mr. Bush and not come away feeling betrayed. New York's elected representatives stood side by side with him a few days after Sept. 11 in return for a promise of generous aid. A few months later, as they started to question the administration's commitment, the budget director, Mitch Daniels, accused them of "money-grubbing games." Firefighters and policemen applauded Mr. Bush's promise, more than a year ago, of $3.5 billion for "first responders"; so far, not a penny has been delivered.
...
Despite his decline in the polls, Mr. Bush hasn't fully exhausted his reservoir of trust in this country. People still remember the stirring image of the president standing amid the rubble of the World Trade Center, his arm around a fireman's shoulders ? and our ever-deferential, protective media haven't said much about the broken promises that followed. But the rest of the world simply doesn't trust Mr. Bush either to honor his promises or to tell the truth.

French Lesson by Regis DeBray

For the current trans-Atlantic crisis to be defused, the White House would do well to steer between those extremes and to treat its European allies as what they are ? citizens of independent states, each with an idiosyncratic history and geography. That approach would spare us many a useless bout of hysteria as the Security Council this week considers Iraq. To each its own geopolitics.
...
The United States, of course, is free to decide that a cadaverous satrap, kept under close surveillance, affects its national (and familial) interests. If the American administration is intent on precipitating the war that is Osama bin Laden's fondest wish, if it wants to give fundamentalism, which is currently ebbing, a second chance, we can say only, so much the worse for you ? while regretting that history's most constant law, the perverse effect, is not better known to the Pentagon. Provoking chaos in the name of order, and resentment instead of gratitude, is something to which all empires are accustomed. And thus it is that they coast, from military victory to victory, to their final decline.
...
Whence this paradox: the new world of President Bush, postmodern in its technology, seems premodern in its values. In its principles of action, America is two or three centuries behind "old Europe." Since our countries did not enter history at the same time, the gap should not surprise us. But as to which of the two worlds, the secular or the fundamentalist, is the more archaic, it is surely not the one that Donald Rumsfeld had in mind.

lileks.com: In response to a NYT op-ed

So: a half-century of forced obedience to the Soviet hegemony is analogous to freely choosing an alliance with the US. They are not capable of assuming the right to judge for themselves, and the evidence is the fact that they have chosen not to stand with France. Remind me who it is that wants only vassals?
...
Except when the long-term consideration - disarming a despot - might require urgent action, lest he grow too strong to dissuade. To put it in terms familiar to France: Confronting the remilitarization of the Rhineland was not an urgent matter; what counted was the long-term consideration - how best to give Hitler his way without war.
...
Was the Marshall Plan shortsighted? Was the half-century involvement in Europe to counterbalance the Soviet bloc shortsighted? Granted, the US can be preoccupied with short-term threats, but perhaps this is preferable to being paralyzed by the long-term, a view which always leads one to a shrug, a cynical epigram about human nature, and another round of Grand Marnier. In the long term, we?re all dead - but I?d prefer to succumb to geriatric organ failure than smallpox or radiation.

Related:

• NYT.com: The French Lesson, by RÉGIS DeBRAY
  

denbeste.nu: Why I'm not a Libertarian

25 years as an engineer has made me "ruthlessly pragmatic" (as one reader put it) and made me deeply suspicious of anyone who proposes solutions because they fit some established ideology, rather than because they actually bring about the best result.

...Equally, I agree with libertarians about a lot of issues, but I end up disagreeing with them on other things, and even when I do agree with them it's often the case that I don't agree with their reasons.

...What their proposals would end up doing as a practical matter is to eliminate direct government regulation, and instead gain paralysis in the courts or what amounts to a kibitzer's veto on many issues as hordes of people end up using lawsuits to try to exercise their newly dispersed property rights.

...So there were two reasons why I didn't use the magic word "libertarian" in that posting: One was that I don't consider myself a libertarian even though I agree with libertarians about a lot of things, any more than I consider myself "leftist" just because I agree with them about many things.

The other is that a lot of Libertarians are like Objectivists or fundamentalist Christians (or Macophiles, for that matter) in that if you ever say anything even remotely negative about their view of things then you'll get flooded with mail trying to set you straight.... Which is why, for instance, I did not give a specific example above of how the Libertarian proposal would fail because I would instantly start receiving two kinds of letters: "You've misinterpreted our policy" and "But how about this nitpicky little detail right here?"

...I ain't any ism. If there's any formal political persuasion you can put a name on, it's virtually certain that I disagree with it in some way, on at least one substantial issue ? almost always because of practical evaluation of outcomes, given that I'm not particularly impressed by ideology.