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The Buzzards are Circling Printer friendly page Print This
By Paul Richard Harris, Axis of Logic
Axis of Logic Exclusive
Sunday, Jan 6, 2013

One of our frequent readers - fellow Canadian, fellow Jew - sent me a private email a few days ago. I did respond to him privately; but my co-editor, Les Blough, thought I should expand my response into something more public, for all to see. Because this started as private correspondence, I'm going to identify the writer only as Dr Brown (he holds a PhD). And the only reason I mentioned that he is Jewish will be clear at the end of this piece - it certainly has no bearing on how he feels about this issue or how we feel about each other.

Dr Brown began his email to me by acknowledging that he believes I'm "a smart man and a decent human being", for which I am grateful. Dr Brown is a well-known and well-respected community activist in Western Canada and has even recently been awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in recognition of his community work. Nevertheless, Dr Brown and I agree on almost nothing.


The guts of Dr Brown's message to me was this:

Aren't you ashamed about the tricks going on in Venezuela, while Chavez is being kept alive by machines in Cuba?? This reminds me the way they acted during the Soviet times, when Brezhnev was already dead but nobody talked about, while his "heirs" were jockeying for the top positions.

Or what is going on in North Korea!


How can a "people's revolution" sink so low??
 
What are they going to do next? A ceremony in front of the corpse?

This article is not about what they did or did not do in the Soviet Union - a place I have spent significant time and in which I'm sure Dr Brown has never set foot. It's about Venezuela, and about a man who is very ill. What follows is a slightly edited version of what I sent to Dr Brown.

prh, Editor
Axis of Logic


Let me address North Korea first - mostly because I don't get your point. I confess I have not paid a great deal of attention to North Korea recently, but I am aware they have done some more of their underwhelming missile tests that tend to frighten absolutely no one. The only other recent news I've heard about them is their president, Kim Young Punk, suggesting out loud that he'd like to get into discussions with South Korea about being friends again. I have no idea if there is anything insidious behind his remarks, but I am convinced that rapprochement between these two won't happen because the US wouldn't allow it. North Korea is a helpful strategic enemy so this is a sore spot the US wouldn't want to heal over.

And just to be sure: You do know that North Korea is not EVEN REMOTELY a leftist state, right?

As we've all seen, the press is full of stories about the health of Hugo Chávez, his prognosis, the future for Venezuela when he dies - because, apparently, as the breathless reporting of the mainstream media and the opposition media in Venezuela will assure you, there is not any chance of his recovery. All these articles are written by wishful thinkers who have no more actual knowledge of the President's condition than I do. Sometimes, they interview doctors who have never seen the patient and don't know what type of surgery he had or any of the other details, but they are apparently experts nonetheless.

There are some senior Venezuelan officials who seem to be up to speed on Hugo's health but they are being close-lipped about it. So let's be clear about this: There is no reason that they should be saying more than they have. They've made clear he's very ill and in fragile shape and that's all anyone needs to know. The finite details of his condition only concern the President and his doctors - after all, control of the government has been handed over so at this point he is just a very ill man struggling to recover. Keeping the exact details out of the public eye is, in my view, the responsible thing to do - you know, the same way American citizens never got to see or hear about President Franklin Roosevelt in his wheelchair.

The man's health is first and foremost his own business, and that of his family. But the nation certainly has a claim upon him, and it's my view that government officials have stated clearly enough that Hugo is not well and may have a long road ahead to recovery. No one who is actually close to the facts speaks of his imminent death.Perhaps because it is  true that there is good reason to hope for a full recovery.

So let's look at what we actually know. Since June 2011, the President has undergone four surgeries. We know from the patient himself that this began as an unspecified abscess in an unspecified part of his pelvic region. And the patient also told us the doctors discovered cancerous cells either at or near the site of the abscess. Naturally, the doctors removed the cancerous cells, but since then the President has undergone three further surgeries. We have not been advised of the exact type of cancer (and it does matter, some are more easily treated than others), nor do we know the exact location of the original findings or any of the subsequent findings.

Regardless of all that, what we really know with certainly is that Hugo is a very ill man. The buzzard-like glee that fills the mainstream media and the voices of the opposition in Venezuela (and you, Dr Brown) is barbaric, crude, and vulgar.

He may indeed be dying. Now, I expect you to dismiss this comment, but it is my belief that the Cuban medical team would be hard to beat. There is a very good reason that people travel from all over the world for medical care in Cuba - in some cases, no doubt, the lower cost is an issue. But there is a high level of medical tourism to Cuba where cost is clearly not the determinant - it's faith in the level of care provided. So having said that, I have trust in the ethics of the Cuban doctors. No responsible doctor keeps on cutting a patient unless there is a viable chance that the patient will survive the procedure and will obtain an improved quality of life post-surgery. So the fact he has now had four surgeries suggests to me there is at least a fighting chance that he is going to recover.

Hugo Chávez does not strike me as the sort of man who would want to live in a vegetative state and if he wasn't given some assurances that surgery could help him, I believe he would have declined and accepted his fate.

You imply that the President must be cadaverous at this point and only being kept alive by machinery. I'll ignore the fact you have nothing more than your own hopes for believing that; but really, Dr Brown, what would you expect?

Consider this - the patient isn't Hugo Chávez; the patient is Dr Brown. And Dr Brown has now undergone four heavily invasive surgeries in about 18 months. You probably know that general anaesthetic is brutal, and that full recovery from it takes time. Some of its affects are cumulative, so when Dr Brown has been under the knife four times in a relatively short period, his constitution is not going to be at its best. And as luck would have it, Dr Brown develops something that is a VERY common post-surgical complication - respiratory infection, or pulmonary embolism, or some such thing. Should I presume that if your doctors wanted to start you on a respirator to allow your chest to clear you would refuse? After all, there you'd be - with just a machine keeping you alive. No, I didn't think so.

If I understand what you want, it is your belief (and I'll presume it is just because you don't like the President rather than any inherent evil in your soul) that Hugo Chávez should just die and get it over with. How dare he try to get adequate care in the best hopes of coming through all this with his health restored?

As you know, the Venezuelan opposition is rubbing its hands in expectation of feasting on the corpse. Beyond the obvious inhumanity and barbarism (actually, come to think of it barbarism IS humanity), there is the political issue. I am not a constitutional expert, but I do have some sense of the law. The part of the constitution that speaks of the presidential inauguration has some equivocal language; clearly, the two sides here are reading it the way it suits them best. But that's where the Supreme Court comes in. It will be their job to rule over how the constitution should be interpreted - if they rule in favour of the Chavista view, they will be seen as stooges of the government. If they rule for the opposition, they will be seen as stooges of the government who were scared off by the opposition. Unfortunately, they are in a position where they will have to rule and they have no hope of making a ruling which is not controversial. Nevertheless, their decision will be made - assuming the President is not well enough to be sworn in next Thursday.

If Hugo Chávez can't be sworn in, or dies, and elections have to be called, he has already indicated his preference for a candidate to run in his place. Naturally, the Western press says that means he has 'appointed or annointed his successor'. Of course, he's done nothing of the sort - it is no different than a retiring Conservative Party of Canada prime minister declaring his preference among the candidates to succeed him - that successor still must get elected.

Probably the part that the anti-Hugo forces are failing to grasp at all, is that if he dies, or lives but can't serve, new elections will almost certainly crush the opposition and send Mr Radonski back to his country club. Even the opposition is speaking aloud that Radonski was the wrong candidate in October. But if elections have to be called again shortly, they have no other viable arrows in their quiver so they'll be stuck with Radonski again.

It is certainly a mistake to believe that the departure of Hugo Chávez is going to revert Venezuela to some colonial American brothel. The people have come too far in too short a time to put up with heavily regressive rulers - they have tasted progress and the power of the masses. Hence the reason Radonski kept promising during the recent election campaign not to roll back Hugo's social engineering.

So, in closing, I like to think you are not one of those sick and evil Fox News vultures dancing gleefully at the side of the gurney waiting to hear the death rattle. If you are, I'll be sorely disappointed.

But one more final point about your suggestion that it is somehow grotesque for Hugo to be on a respirator to give him a fighting chance for recovery - How's Ariel Sharon doing these days?


Paul Richard Harris is an Axis of Logic editor and columnist, based in Canada. He can be reached at paul@axisoflogic.com.

Read the Biography and additional articles by Axis Columnist, Paul Richard Harris


© Copyright 2013 by AxisofLogic.com

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