February 14, 2006 | By Nathaniel Ward

The UN rewards a dictator

Cuban dictator Fidel Castro applauds after giving Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez a United Nations award for spreading "liberty."

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, an anti-American socialist who’s fond of posing for photographs with the world’s tin-pot dictators, has now been in power for eight years. Bolstered by high oil prices, Chávez has reinforced his regime—and added to its record of electoral fraud, human rights violations, property theft and political repression.

He’s been nothing less than a dictator while in office, Heritage’s Nile Gardiner and Stephen Johnson report:

Upon entering office in 1998, Chávez ordered the constitution rewritten to keep himself in power and established Cuban-style neighborhood spy committees, called “Bolivarian Circles,” to inform on citizens who harbor dissident thoughts. Chávez’s policies provoked protests that forced his temporary retreat from office and sparked strikes that shut down the state oil company. Dissidents were shot or incarcerated.

Chávez enacted new laws to seize private property, to close commercial radio and TV stations for airing content deemed “contrary to national security,” and to jail ordinary citizens for voicing criticism of public officials. He has consolidated single-party rule by stacking Venezuela’s courts with provisional, partisan judges, and won a 2005 referendum on his leadership only after padding the electoral rolls and intimidating his opponents.

So faced with this new threat to human rights, civil liberties and other basic values, what does the United Nations do? It gives him an award, of course. And just for good measure, the award was presented by Chávez’s mentor, Fidel Castro.

Gardiner, the Bernard and Barbara Lomas Fellow in Heritage’s Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, and Johnson say this award shows that “the world body remains true to its anti-democratic instincts.” Real reform, they say, would mean rewarding those who fight for individual freedom.

Rather than give honors to dictators, UNESCO should reward the efforts of little-recognized champions of individual freedom such as Cuba’s Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White), spouses of political prisoners who have raised awareness of their husbands’ plight. Another deserving recipient would be Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, a dentist jailed and beaten for advocating peaceful change in Cuba.

UNESCO’s award to Chávez is a stunning insult to the victims of two of Latin America’s most repressive regimes. As well, it is another major blow to the image of the United Nations as it attempts to restore its battered reputation in the wake of an array of scandals, from abuse by UN peacekeepers in the Congo and the decline of the UN Commission on Human Rights to its disastrous administration of the Iraq Oil-for-Food Program.

The United Nations has failed to live up to its mission and to the ideals and principles of its founding. This award reminds us again of the organization’s collaboration with the worst of the world’s oppressive regimes and its failure over the past 60 years to uphold freedom and human rights. I’m not holding my breath for reforms.

Congress knows best

Unfortunately, it seems earmark reform will be an uphill battle. While lawmakers proclaim the need for cutting pork-barrel spending, they also try to justify pork projects with bizarre appeals to authority.

“Who knows best where to put a bridge or a highway or a red light in their district?” Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) asked a few weeks ago in defense of pork-barrel spending.

While I’m sure Congressmen are familiar with their districts, does this make Congress more qualified to dictate stoplight placement than, say, a town government that deals with local traffic every day? And why should Congress pay for that stoplight with federal taxpayer dollars?

The courage for real reform

Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) addresses The Heritage Foundation's President's Club in November 2005.

Speaking on Saturday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual gathering of conservative activists in Washington, DC, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) addressed the need for Congress not just to preach ideals but to act on them as well.

“But as we reform our rules of ethics,” he said, “we will do so with the understanding that these are but symptoms of the core problem. The real scandal in Washington D.C. is runaway government spending.”

“Only by marrying budget reform and ethical reform can we restore the confidence of the American people in the fiscal and moral integrity of our national government.”

Heritage President Ed Feulner served as master of ceremonies at the CPAC President’s Banquet on Thursday night, an event which saw addresses by Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. George Allen (R-VA).

A day of romantic dinners, anti-imperialism and bonfires

Today is Valentine’s Day, a day when we express our love for our family and friends and demonstrate our commitment to our long tradition of marriage. To put a damper on our fun, though, radical Muslims in India have raided stores that sell Valentine’s Day merchandise and declared the holiday a tool of Western imperialism.

The group kicked off its campaign Friday against “Lover's Day” in Srinagar, the state’s summer capital, by raiding half a dozen shops, confiscating Valentine's Day cards and making a bonfire out of them.

The aim of Valentine's Day is to “pave the way for Western culture to invade youths’ hearts and minds and distance them from their traditional culture and Islamic principles,” added [militant leader Aasiya] Andrabi.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you, too.

Love is in the air

In honor of Valentine’s Day, National Review asked leading lights of the female persuasion to identify the men they love (not including those they’re related to by blood or marriage).

Law professor Gail Heriot wrote that Ed Meese, Heritage’s Ronald Reagan Fellow and chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, “is considered one of those rare creatures in the world of politics—a nice guy, the kind who actually enjoys other people’s successes. Here’s to you, General Meese!”

Columnist Bridget Johnson, though, expressed her undying love for Heritage’s Nile Gardiner. “Yes, I've called this fellow at the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom a ‘Heritage Hottie’ and a ‘conservacutie,’ but my admiration for Nile Gardiner really does extend beyond that damn adorable smile,” she wrote. “Nile has an illustrious track record of putting the smackdown on Kofi Annan and consistently reminding the wavering to get tough on terror.”

In other news

• Heritage tax analyst Daniel Mitchell, the McKenna Senior Fellow in Political Economy, told CNS News yesterday that America’s tax code is in danger of becoming like France’s. By our count (using Lexis-Nexis, which tracks mainly larger newspapers) this marks the 172nd time he’s warned the American people of the danger of becoming France. And Dan has told at least that many France jokes in the halls of The Heritage Foundation.
• According to a new study based on tree rings, the world is now warmer than at any point in history—well, at least since 800 AD. In other words, the last time the world got this hot, it cooled off for the next 1200 years.

Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.

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