Chavez to visit London?

[Streathamite]

here's yer link, peoplebang opposite the HoC

anyone up for meeting in SW1 for a pint before this?

 

[Crispy]

Balls, won't be back in London in time
Would love to have gone.

 

[cemertyone]

here's yer link, peoplebang opposite the HoC

anyone up for meeting in SW1 for a pint before this?

There`s a lovely little pub just right next door as it happens....really good ale and sandwichs etc..but i think it may be busy....i`m uo for a meet up if your around that way though...

 

[Grego Morales]

There's a thread here;http://http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=161972
that says attendees have to register first.

 

[JoePolitix]

Where's that stat come from???

This is the lastest I could find from last year. Slightly less than I said but 70% approval's still not bad for a whole continent!

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1465

In a recent, coordinated set of surveys conducted across Latin America by a consortium of polling firms, President Bush was given a 26 percent approval rating - lower even than the much reviled International Monetary Fund…

Marta Lagos, director of Latinobarómetro, attributes much of Mr. Chávez's success to his anti-American oratory, which she said had long worked for Mr. Castro. "Hugo Chávez has adapted that discourse very well," she said. "That's a discourse that sells very well in Latin America…."

“Flush with oil money, he is remaking his country and spending billions on social programs that have given him a 70 percent popularity rating.”

 

[JoePolitix]

Times gives space to Genghis Khan wannabe!

Funny.

It appears that it's only the Times and Fox News - both owned by Rupert Murdoch - that are running that story.

It gets worse. The Times have in the last few days published an opinion piece by Aleksander Boyd with the subheading "The Venezuelan President aligns himself with dictators, human rights abusers and notorious narco-terrorists":

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2171200,00.html

Boyd is the main spokesman for the Venezuelan opposition in Britain and runs the website V Crisis. A cursory glance through the sites' archives will reveal that Boyd is a quite sociopathic advocate of the violent overthrow of the Chavez government. Is this really a man suitable to give space to in the "respectable" press? Cheers to "Zin" for this:

http://www.vcrisis.com/index.php?content=letters/200403180748

“I wish I was Genghis Khan, I wish I had eaten my half-brother… Therefore the scum of this earth a.k.a. Hugo Chavez and followers would not be willing to piss me off. Ergo they would be extremely careful of not treading on my rights. Attempts to conquer commanded by me would encounter nothing less than total submission owing to the sheer fear that my presence would cause... I wish I was the Khan an order my hordes to capture them and pour melted silver into their eyes,..

I wish I could decapitate in public plazas Lina Ron and Diosdado Cabello. I wish I could torture for the rest of his remaining existence Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel...

There’s nothing left, with mentally unstable people one can not engage in dialogue."

http://www.vcrisis.com/?content=letters/200412071531

My ‘terrorist’ status derives from opinions of mine posted in this site with respect to what I consider to be the solution to deal with criminals such as Hugo Chavez, i.e. violence.

http://www.vcrisis.com/?content=letters/200411020559

"The solution in my view is clear and simple: violence."

http://www.vcrisis.com/?content=letters/200410101107

"...the more I become convinced that the sole way of effectively opposing Chavez is through violence"

 

[colacho]

This is the lastest I could find from last year. Slightly less than I said but 70% approval's still not bad for a whole continent!

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1465

Interesting. Haven't had a proper look at the latest latinobarómetro yet, but I'm surprised that the anti Chavez propaganda prevalent in lots of countries hasn't had more of an effect. It certainly HAS worked pretty well in Colombia, but it looks like social spending plus telling the US to fuck off pays dividends elsewhere...

 

[JoePolitix]

Interesting. Haven't had a proper look at the latest latinobarómetro yet, but I'm surprised that the anti Chavez propaganda prevalent in lots of countries hasn't had more of an effect. It certainly HAS worked pretty well in Colombia, but it looks like social spending plus telling the US to fuck off pays dividends elsewhere...

I would have thought Venezuela would be seen as a beacon of light in Colombia. The regime in Colombia is surely the most rightwing and authoritarian in the whole of LA. Tell me is Uribe popular?

 

[colacho]

I would have thought Venezuela would be seen as a beacon of light in Colombia. The regime in Colombia is surely the most rightwing and authoritarian in the whole of LA. Tell me is Uribe popular?

Yes, unfortunately, which is why he's going to win the election hands down at the end of this month. Colombians have a traditional rivalry with Venezuelans anyway, something stoked up for years by local political hacks, and reinforced by the shitty treatment of Colombians in Venezuela over the years. At the moment Colombians are not allowed to board planes to Venezuela unless they have a notarised letter of invitation, or a hotel voucher proving they have booked somewhere to stay. Crass, and certainly incoherent given that Venezuela always goes on about the need for regional integration.

As for Uribe, well, the paternalism that is certainly a worrying element of "chavismo" has been capitalised on by Uribe in Colombia. After the shambles of the Pastrana years many Colombians wanted someone to sort out the mess, even if he was going to be an authoritarian. Uribe chunters on constantly about "patria" which is another thing Colombians love, and he has a brilliant populist touch. He's not just a nasty little man with a bad temper and some extremely dodgy friends, he's a very clever politician with some shrewd advisors around him.

That said, his landslide win in 2002 was achieved with just under 6 million votes, if I remember correctly. In other words just over 25% of the electorate voted for him. Says a lot about the quality of Colombian democracy. And he can win again with a repeat performance. What's important here right now is that Carlos Gaviria, the left candidate, comes second rather than burnt out Liberal dinosaur Horacio Serpa who will say anything to anyone to get elected. If that happens the disorganised and bickering left in Colombia have a chance of forming a real opposition to his nibs' plans.

I don't know whether this is the most authoritarian regime in LAm, actually, not because Uribe wouldn't want it to be so, but because the institutional framework does provide some significant guarantees. He came a cropper in 2004 with the referendum and he doesn't get it all his own way.

 

[gnoriac]

Pilger on Chavez

If even half of it's true, I can only assume Washington's only allowed him to survive because they're rather overstretched by Iraq ATM.

 

[fela fan]

Pilger on Chavez

If even half of it's true, I can only assume Washington's only allowed him to survive because they're rather overstretched by Iraq ATM.

Maybe chavez has thus far outwitted the americans.

Castro's managed it well enough down the years!

 

[lostexpectation]

Pilger on Chavez

If even half of it's true, I can only assume Washington's only allowed him to survive because they're rather overstretched by Iraq ATM.

together with the steepest descent into poverty ever known in Latin America; from 18% in 1980 to 65% in 1995, three years before Chávez was elected.

Just shows how much Venezuala was in the shit back then and wasn't in the headlines as much.

 

[Grego Morales]

Did anyone go to the meeting today?

 

[Harajuku]

This article makes the neat point that Chavez is - or should be - laughing. His survival is practically guaranteed despite the lunatic ramblings of Rumsfeld et al, because "two thirds of Venezualans live in poverty and no politician has previously mobilised their support so effectively":
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/index.php?menuID=1&subID=487&p=2
December's presidential elections should be a walk-over...

 

[JoePolitix]

Spreading the love to Europe baby!

Another slick manoeuvre by Chavez. The gringos and oligarchs are really losing the "hearts and minds" campiagn...

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1966

Venezuela Proposes Discounted Heating Oil to Low-Income Europeans

Yesterday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez proposed providing a low cost heating oil program to low income Europeans. The proposal comes after Venezuelan subsidiary Citgo provided a well received heating oil subsidy to hundreds of thousands of households across six states in the US.

“I want to modestly offer help to the poorest people who in winter, don’t have resources for heating [their houses],” Chávez, accompanied by Bolivian President Evo Morales and Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage, told a group of European and Latin American socialist organizations. He said the program would be an expansion of the US program, but did not offer details of how such a program would work.

The heating oil programs to the global north appear to be part of a long term Chávez strategy of developing links between low income and progressive people across the globe. “We have to unite all possible movements, otherwise the world is not going to change," Chávez was quoted in All Headline News as saying at the talk.

 

[JoePolitix]

Dennis Macshane: Lying Blairite filth right to the core

Dennis Macshane, the Blairiod junior foreign office minister launches his diatribe against Chavez:

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/denis_macshane/2006/05/chavez_is_populist_not_a_socia.html

Packed with lies, slanders and distortion ofcourse.

Point one – comrade Macshane brags that “When the coup happened I was the only Minister in Europe at once to issue a call for a return to democracy.”

What comrade Macshane doesn’t tell us is that as foreign office minister for Latin American affairs he initially tactically backed the coup, repeated the slanders that Chavez had ordered a massacre and compared Chavez to Mussolini (he only compares him to Peron in this article) - all within the crucial 48 hours following the coup. It was only when the tide turned against the coup that comrade Machane did a volte face and disowned it:

http://www.redpepper.org.uk/inv-archive/June2002.html

Point two – Comrade Macshane repeats the lies of the rightwing Zionist Simon Wiesenthal Center that Chavez "made openly antisemitic comments". He fails to mention that the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela rejected this slander and were supported by the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress on this point

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2805

Point Three - Comrade Macshane biggest porker is that the oil executives strike in 2002 was caused by Chavez trying to "Thatcherise the workforce"! In fact it is well known that the “strike” was a bosses lockout opposed by the workforce and linked to the short lived coup:

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=4614

I don’t think comrade Macshane the filthly lying lowest common denominator Blairiod pimp should be lecturing anybody about “socialism” god forbid!