Washington Extra – Waiting for Hugo
Grab a chair, some drinks and snacks and get ready for the show.
The United States slapped sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil giant PVDSA for trading with Iran, a move that could worsen Washington’s already sour relations with Caracas. Now we’re waiting for President Hugo Chavez to respond.
Expect a lot of noise, in typical Chavez fashion. In the warm-up act, one ally called the sanctions “ridiculous” and accused the United States of wanting to “once again…turn into the global policeman.”
Chavez himself might make some threats against his biggest foe, including an old one about cutting off oil supplies to the United States. He’s done it before — in 2004, 2006, 2008 and 2010, and maybe more times than we can count.
But it never comes to anything. The fact that 45 percent of Venezuela’s oil goes to the United States might explain why. With that kind of dependence, Venezuela is unlikely to stop the shipments, though there may be some tit-for-tat retaliation. The United States and Venezuela need each other, no matter what the Presidente says and no matter how long he talks.
Here are our top stories from Washington…
Ambassador Sean Penn? Dream on, President Chavez
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez regularly vents his fury against the United States, but there are a few Americans he’d like to talk to — such as Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, Noam Chomsky and even former President Bill Clinton.
Chavez named his U.S. dream team on Tuesday as possibilities to fill the role of U.S. ambassador to Caracas after his government turned down the Obama administration’s nominee, Larry Palmer.
The State Department was not nearly as starry eyed.
“We appreciate President Chavez’ suggestions but the fact is we are not looking for another candidate to be the U.S. ambassador to Caracas,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said, adding that the administration still believed Palmer was the best man for one of the most difficult diplomatic jobs going.
“There have been suggestions, particularly suggestions by President Chavez, that we are looking for another candidate and the answer is that we’re not looking for another candidate,” Crowley said. “We’re prepared to stay where we are for an indefinite period.”
Where things stand is far from clear however.
Washington despises Hugo Chavez because he is unwilling to hand over Venezuela’s vast resources to corporate elites and bankers. That’s why the Bush administration tried to depose Chavez in a failed coup attempt in 2002, and that’s why Obama continues to launch covert attacks on Chavez today.
Chavez was correct in rejecting Larry Palmer as American ambassador in Caracas. Palmer has been openly critical of Chavez saying there were clear ties between members of the Chavez administration and leftist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia. It’s a roundabout way of accusing Chavez of terrorism. Even worse, Palmer’s background and personal history suggest that his appointment would pose a threat to Venezuela’s national security. Palmer has a long history of working with the U.S. backed oligarchs in the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Honduras.
Larry Palmer was to replace Patrick Duddy, who was involved in the attempted coup against President Chavez in 2002 and an enemy of Venezuelans throughout his term as U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela.
Venezuela is already crawling with US spies and saboteurs. They don’t need any help from agents working inside the embassy. Besides, Chavez disproved Palmer’s spurious accusations just last week when he extradited ELN commander Nilson Albian Teran Ferreira, alias “Tulio” to Colombia, the first extradition of a Colombian guerrilla to his home country. The story appeared NOWHERE in the western media because it proves that Chavez is not supporting paramilitary groups operating in Colombia.
Is Venezuela the new Cuba?
It takes a brave man to mention the word Cuba among certain company in Venezuela.
For detractors of President Hugo Chavez, the island is synonymous with all they dislike in their country– the swing to socialism in the last decade; Chavez’s alliance with Fidel Castro; the stifling of private industry; and an increasingly authoritarian political system. So it is impossible in Caracas opposition circles to have any sort of rational conversation about Cuba — everything is seen through the perspective of Chavez. You like anything about Cuba, you think there’s any merit in anything on the island like its health or education services, then you’re ’comunista’.
For diehard “Chavistas”, it’s precisely the opposite. Cuba’s free health and school services, its record on sending volunteers around the world, and its thousands of workers in Venezuela, are to them a model of south-south cooperation. You think Fidel Castro failed to carry through the ideals of his revolution, turned the island into a dictatorship? You’re obviously a Yankee agent.
Yet one also gets the impression that many in the Chavista rank-and-file, while loyal to their man, are slightly embarrassed by the Cuba connection. Certainly the applause is getting lighter every time Chavez stops a speech to salute Fidel and the Cuban revolution. They love Chavez, but they don’t want Venezuela to turn into Cuba.
Chavez famously said in the past Venezuela was heading towards the same “sea of happiness” as Cuba, and President Raul Castro said this month that the two nations were now “the same thing”, united forever.
But beyond the rhetoric, just how close a path to Cuba is Venezuela taking? Does it pose dangers, as a retired Venezuelan general told Reuters this week. Or does the model bring tangible benefits, such as cheap food like Venezuelans enjoy in their “Socialist Arepera”?
Never happened, TyC. Propaganda from the right wing anti-Chavez media.
Chavez’s space plans have Foggy Bottom in stitches
Russian PM Vladimir Putin flew all the way to Venezuela for a quick 12-hour visit to boost oil and military ties with President Hugo Chavez, the loudest basher of U.S. “imperialism” in Washington’s backyard.
Besides guns, tanks, jet fighters and missiles, Chavez wants a Russian hand in developing nuclear energy to cope with chronic electricity shortages in his oil-producing country, and technology to start a space industry.
“We are not going to build the atomic bomb, but we will develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” said the former paratrooper who has been in power for 11 years.
Chavez suggested Moscow might want to set up a satellite launch site in Venezuela, along with its “factory.”
The U.S. State Department scoffed at Chavez’s space plans. Spokesman P.J.Crowley pointed out that Venezuela was so short of electricity that the government had extended the Easter holiday for a full week as part of widespread efforts to save power, and could hardly contemplate “space travel.”
“Perhaps the focus should be more terrestrial than extraterrestrial,” Crowley said.
Do you think Chavez should be focusing on solving his country’s economic woes before looking towards the stars, or is a space program the way to go for his developing nation?
For hundreds of years, men and women of African ancestry–under the one drop of black blood rule– qualified to be called black,African American or negro. President, Obama is one of millions of blacks of mixed racial ancestry. Are we now creating a system of apartheid, or an hierarchy of white ancestry: brown, black and blackest? Michelle has a little white ancestry, Emmit Smith has a little, some have more, others have less. So, why should President Obama be referred to as anything other THAN African American? He is of African and American ancestry like millions of other African Americans..stop being so racist. And for those who need to be called of mixed race, if that makes them feel better, then let them refer to themselves that way.
Is Chavez helping Iran build the bomb?
Veteran Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau is on Hugo Chavez’s case.
Morgenthau warned last week at Washington’s Brookings Institution that Iran is using Venezuela’s financial system to avoid international sanctions so it can acquire materials to develop nuclear weapons and missiles. He urged more scrutiny of the “emerging axis of Iran and Venezuela” in an op/ed article in the Wall Street Journal, in which he said a number of mysterious Iranian factories had sprung up in remote parts of Venezuela.
Chavez’s man in Washington, Venezuelan Ambassador Bernardo Alvarez, called the allegations “outrageous … unfounded and irresponsible” in a letter to the district attorney seen by Reuters.
True, leftist President Chavez has done little to endear himself to Americans. A fierce critic of the United States, his foreign policy rule of thumb is my enemy’s enemies are my friends. His last trip abroad included visits to Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iran, Belarus and Russia. He loudly announced plans to buy Russian tanks and anti-aircraft missiles.
But Chavez maintains the weapons are needed to defend Venezuela, which he says is threatened by a growing U.S. military presence in neighboring Colombia. And he swears he has no intention of developing an atomic bomb.
Besides vast oil reserves, Venezuela has large deposits of uranium, though there are no signs of any plans to mine them.
To Jaime
No doube both of them got plenty of reserves but if they dont built something to keep their defence proper then went expecially us/uk will come running with excuses like (wmd) to steal that oil.
see iraq
makes sense
U.S.: Chavez comments par for the course
He’s driven Exxon out of his country and suggested former U.S. President George W. Bush was the devil incarnate.
But Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez really teed off the State Department with his latest outrage — calling golf a bourgeois sport.
“My position, independent of what anyone else thinks, is that it’s a bourgeois sport,” the baseball-loving Chavez told his weekly television audience in July.
“There is no justification for having a golf course in the middle of a city, when there is such a shortage of land for housing for the people, including the middle class.”
Since his comments, The New York Times reported on Tuesday, pro-Chavez officials have moved to close two of Venezuela’s best-known golf courses — in Maracay and Caraballeda.
This did not go unnoticed by U.S. diplomats.
“As the Department of State’s self-appointed ambassador-at-large for golf, I wish to protest the unwarranted attack by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on the game of golf,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said at the start of Wednesday’s briefing.
Why not use baseball stadiums around the country for public housing too??? He likes baseball so it’s all cool. He doesn’t like golf so it’s the enemy’s sport. Typical Hugo Chavez madness.
Honduran coup tests Obama in Latin America
Deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya got his strongest endorsement yet from President Barack Obama on Tuesday as the exiled leftist leader returned to Washington to meet Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The United States has joined Latin America in unanimously condemning the military coup in the banana-producing country that ran Zelaya out of town in his pajamas ten days ago. But Washington has been reluctant to slap sanctions on Honduras and cut off U.S. aid. Instead it is cautiously looking for a negotiated and peaceful resolution to a crisis that looks like a win-win situation for the United States’ main adversary in the hemisphere, Venezuela’s leftist leader Hugo Chavez. Zelaya, a wealthy rancher who turned left in office and signed on to Chavez’s growing anti-U.S. coalition, is hardly the best poster boy for democracy. His moves to follow Chavez’s example and extend presidential term limits in Honduras sparked the political crisis in which the Honduran Supreme Court, with the backing of Congress, ordered the army to oust the president. After years of U.S. neglect of Latin America during the Bush administration, Obama is trying to improve relations with the region and cannot afford to be on the wrong side of a crisis that many Latin Americans see as a flashback to a dark era of military dictatorships supported by the United States in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Pentagon suspended military cooperation with Honduras last week, even though it maintains a U.S. base in the Central American country that served as an “unsinkable aircraft carrier” in the 1980s when the United States was supplying the Contra war against Nicaragua’s Sandinistas. Experts on Latin America warn that the close relationship with the Honduran military could lead the United States to do what it had done for decades during the Cold War: side with the elites. “The battle between Zelaya and his opponents pits a reformist president supported by labor unions and social organizations against a mafia-like, drug-ridden, corrupt political elite who is accustomed to choosing not only the Supreme Court and the Congress, but also the president,” said Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. Dan Erikson, of the Inter-American Dialogue, believes Chavez is well-positioned to benefit from any outcome. “If Zelaya is restored, then another Chavez ally remains in power. If the coup is not reversed, then Chavez has a new issue with which to rally anti-American sentiments in the region. The bottom line is that Chavez is engaged in trying to exploit the Honduran coup to maximum advantage,” Erikson said. The hemisphere has still not figured out how to contain a new breed of power-grabbing populist leaders like Chavez who have risen through the ballot box, Erikson said. But whatever their authoritarian tendencies might be, there is broad consensus today –unlike in decades past– that military coups against democratically elected governments are totally unacceptable.
Reuters photos by Luis Galdamez (Zelaya at San Salvador airport on July 5); Daniel LeClair (soldiers stop a woman), and Henry Romero ( Zelaya supporter protesting after soldiers fire tear gas at Tegucigalpa airport, where troops blocked the runway on July 5 to prevent the ousted president from landing).
The removal of Zelaya is a great example of Democracy making a correction to prevent a dictatorship like the one that currently exists in Venezuela from taking place. The institutions of government represented by their own congress, the supreme court and their own people supported his ouster and in the process preserved Democracy for the next generation.
First Draft: From No. 54,000 to No. 2 — after a handshake
The handshake that set Washington buzzing — that awkward grip-and-grin between President Barack Obama and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez at a weekend summit in Trinidad — seems to be great for book sales. Specifically, the tome Chavez passed to Obama, “Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of Pillage of a Continent” leaped from Number 54,000 on Amazon.com to Number 2, almost overnight.
The anti-colonialist book is in some strange company atop the online bestsellers list. Five of the others in the top 10 are editions in the popular romantic vampire “Twilight” series. There’s also “The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed the World” at Number 7. The online description says it’s about how “the United States there has been a gradual drifting away from the Founding Fathers original success formula.”
Number 9 is “The Ultimate Depression Survival Guide: Protect Your Savings, Boost Your Income, and Grow Wealthy Even in the Worst of Times.” Number 8 is “The Shack,” billed as “a one of a kind invitation to journey to the very heart of God.”
What’s at the very top? “Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto.” This one tells “how conservatives can counter the liberal corrosion that has filtered into every timely issue affecting our daily lives, from the economy to health care, global warming, immigration, and more.”
The handshake itself got a negative review from former congressman Newt Gingrich who said on NBC’s “Today” program: “It does matter to the world if the United States tolerates a vicious anti-American propaganda campaign and then smiles and greets the person who’s systemmatically been anti-American for his entire career.”
For more Reuters political news, click here.
Photo: Kevin LaMarque/REUTERS (Obama gets a book from Chavez during the Summit of the Americas, April 18, 2009)
Brian Lee. I am getting weary of my conservative viewpoints being censored and not allowed to be part of the debate. However, we have to endure the diatribes from the left.
Summit Saturday: One for the books
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad and Tobago - Saturday’s Summit of the Americas was one for the books. Just as President Barack Obama’s morning meeting with South American leaders was about to start, up popped Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. He ceremoniously presented the U.S. leader with a book along with a big handshake, their second or third of the summit, but then who’s counting. The book was “Las Venas Abiertas de America Latina” (The Open Veins of Latin America) by Eduardo Galeano, a 1970s-era criticism of 500 years of European and U.S. economic exploitation of the Americas. Asked later what he thought about the tome, Obama quipped: “I thought it was one of Chavez’s. I was going to give him one of mine.” The U.S. president never produced a copy of his book — but one of the other leaders did. As they gathered for the summit family picture, Saint Lucia Prime Minister Stephenson King produced a copy of “Dreams from My Father,” which Obama then autographed. No book for Chavez, though he did exchange another big handshake with Obama, his third or fourth of the summit, but then who’s counting. For more Reuters political news, click here.
Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Chavez presents Obama with a book — and a handshake)
Not being an Obama supporter because I don’t believe in his policies or world view, I will usually take an opposing view to most things he does.
This is a big one. And it is a big mistake. He is already being used for propaganda purposes. Also, if you missed it, some of the dictators are already playing hardball with him because he is showing weakness.
So, it isn’t whining to care about wanting to survive as a nation. Different opinion than someone else? Of course, but I am not confident this won’t lead to a bigger catastrophy for us. But that’s just my opinion. Eloise.
Obama, anti-U.S. leader Chavez shake hands at summit
PORT OF SPAIN - President BarackObama Friday greeted and shook hands with Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez during an impromptu meeting with the anti-U.S. leader at the Summit of the Americas.
Photographs released by the Venezuelan government showed Chavez, a fierce foe of former President George W. Bush, smiling and clasping hands with Obama at the start of the summit of Latin American and Caribbean leaders in Trinidad.
“I greeted Bush with this hand eight years ago; I want to be your friend,” Chavez told Obama, according to a Venezuelan presidential press office statement.
Chavez, a staunch ally of Cuba, had became one of the Bush’s administrations most strident critics. In March, he called Obama at best an “ignoramus” after the U.S. leader said Chavez obstructed progress in Latin America.
Ties between Washington and Caracas have frayed under Chavez, who often accuses U.S. officials of trying to topple him. Chavez expelled the U.S. envoy to Caracas in September in a dispute over U.S. activities in Venezuelan ally Bolivia.
Former soldier Chavez says socialist revolution can counter U.S. free-market policies in South America and he has become a standard-bearer for anti-U.S. sentiment in the region. But Washington has branded him a threat to regional stability.
