President Hugo Chavez response to George W. Bush's Insults.

SouthAmerica, are you still there? Some examples to back up your statement would be appreciated... Thanks!

 

Here is a picture showing a fragment of Venezueal's slum. In fact, this is one of the "better' slums of Caracas.

I have been to Caracas, and one side of it is a continuous shanty, with make shift housing constructed of cinderblock and corrugated aluminum. No water or sewage.

That asshole Chavez is a typical Socialist pig. He is more interested in power than is justice, equality, and human development.

He and Bush are two sides of the same coin.

Here is the commentary of an observer:
http://www.travelblog.org/South-America/Venezuela/Caracas/blog-15311.html

 

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Please provide evidence that Bush "is more interested in power than he is in justice, equality, and human development."

 

I am in no way sympathizing with or defending Chavez, but surely these slums existed long before he came to power?

 

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hapaboy: Please provide evidence that Bush "is more interested in power than he is in justice, equality, and human development."


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December 12, 2005

SouthAmerica: Bush’s solution for any problem is more tax breaks – tax breaks and tax breaks. Or let’s start a war somewhere.


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TrendBert: I am in no way sympathizing with or defending Chavez, but surely these slums existed long before he came to power?


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SouthAmerica: The Bush administration hates Hugo Chavez because: President Chávez has embarked on a series of economic reforms, such as funneling billions of oil industry profits into massive programs for health care, education, literacy, and clean water, and promoting regional integration in South America…


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The Chávez Victory: A Blow to the Bush Administration's Strategy in Venezuela
The New York Times - August 20, 2004, Friday
By JUAN FORERO; STEVEN R. WEISMAN CONTRIBUTED REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON FOR THIS ARTICLE. (NYT); Foreign Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 8, Column 1


CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 19 - When President Hugo Chávez was ousted in a coup two years ago, the Bush administration celebrated, calling the ouster his own doing. The rest of Latin America was left fuming by the overthrow and expressed strong support for Mr. Chávez as he was almost immediately swept back into power in a popular uprising.

On Sunday, when Mr. Chávez triumphed over his adversaries in a referendum on whether he should be recalled from office, countries from Brazil to Argentina, Colombia to Spain heartily congratulated him. The United States remained silent for more than a day, until a State Department spokesman, Adam Ereli, offered tepid backing for the "preliminary results."

The resounding victory was a blow to the Bush administration, which has struggled with how to deal with Mr. Chávez, a leftist firebrand who presides over the world's fifth-largest oil exporter and has opposed Washington on every major initiative in Latin America. "There's no doubt in my mind that at least in the White House - I don't know about the State Department - there was a deep desire to see Chávez lose," said former President Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center monitored the election and who has briefed American officials on his efforts to broker a peace between the government and its opponents.

Now, the United States has the challenge of constructing, from the ground up, a new relationship with Mr. Chávez, who has done everything imaginable to antagonize what he calls "the colossus to the north."

He has used an expletive to describe President Bush, threatened to hold back oil sales if the United States invaded, and expanded Venezuela's ties with Cuba. His campaign to win in the vote was built largely on demonizing the United States.

"The Bush government will be defeated on Sunday," Mr. Chávez told reporters three days before the recall vote. "The confrontation in Venezuela is not really with this opposition. The opposition has a master, whose name is George W. Bush."

American diplomats privately say they do not think that Mr. Chávez believes his public statements, and that he manipulates latent anti-Americanism for political gain. But American policy has been largely counterproductive, only contributing to Mr. Chávez's increasingly hostile barbs.

The United States long ago threw its lot in with an opposition movement that is being discredited by foreign diplomats and many Venezuelans for insisting that fraud took place when the preponderance of evidence indicates it did not.


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“Investigating Pat Robertson”
By: Deborah James
AlterNet – August 25, 2005

"For years the US government has been working to create a climate hostile to the democratically elected government of Venezuela -- Pat Robertson's statements are, unfortunately, consistent with the actions of the Bush administration. The administration supported the 2002 coup against President Chávez, and has continued to fund coup leaders in their efforts to remove President Chávez from office after the coup. . . . The policy of America's governmental antipathy towards Venezuela stems more from that country's creation of an alternative economic vision than unsubstantiated concerns regarding democracy. President Chávez has embarked on a series of economic reforms, such as funneling billions of oil industry profits into massive programs for health care, education, literacy, and clean water, and promoting regional integration, which fly in the face of Bush's failed efforts to promote corporate globalization by establishing a Free Trade Area of the Americas."


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Progreso Weekly – June 1, 2005
“China, Venezuela and the U.S.A – trouble brewing”
By Saul Landau

…China already operates two Venezuelan oil fields and after signing a January agreement in Caracas, China will also begin developing other fields – seemingly in decline – in eastern Venezuela. China also agreed to buy 120,000 barrels of oil a month and build an additional fuel producing facility.

Venezuelan officials announced that they expect trade with China to reach $3 billion in 2005, more than double 2004. And – hold onto your hats, Castro haters in the Bush Administration – a huge Chinese oil company will begin searching for potential oil fields off the Cuban coast.

Why did Chinese leaders choose late 2004 and early 2005 to make their whirlwind spending tour of several Latin American nations? First, they may well have noticed that Latin American governments no longer race to sign onto the U.S.-backed Free Trade of the Americas agreement as they did previously to NAFTA in the 1990s.

Because the free-trade-free-market model failed to perform as predicted – in Argentina it led to bankruptcy – governments that question Washington’s economic model now sit in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela and Cuba; Bolivia and Ecuador may be next. Indeed, if the radical populist Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador succeeds in winning the 2006 Mexican presidential election – he is currently the leading contender – U.S.-sponsored trade agreements may all be doomed.

Second, the petroleum mavens don’t expect supply to rise above demand in the near future. So, given this climate, China’s gaining access to oil and gas sources in the U.S. backyard has flustered the Bushies, who remain preoccupied with Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea and Iran and their religious commitment to change social security, execute underage murderers, stop legal abortion and rescue the brain dead. Is it hard for the Bushies to see the world strategic big picture while they mobilize around family values and religious issues?

Source: http://www.progresoweekly.com/index.php?progreso=Landau&otherweek=1117170000



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“Loathed by the Rich”
The Guardian/UK – August 7, 2004
By: Richard Gott

"To the dismay of opposition groups in Venezuela, and to the surprise of international observers gathering in Caracas, President Hugo Chávez is about to secure a stunning victory on August 15, in a referendum designed to lead to his overthrow. . . . Chávez has become the leader of the emerging opposition in Latin America to the neo-liberal hegemony of the United States. Closely allied to Fidel Castro, he rivals the Cuban leader in his fierce denunciations of George Bush, a strategy that goes down well with the great majority of the population of Latin America, where only the elites welcome the economic and political recipes devised in Washington. While Chávez has retained his popularity after nearly six years as president, support for overtly pro-US leaders in Latin America, such as Vicente Fox in Mexico and Alejandro Toledo in Peru, has dwindled to nothing."


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BBC World News
Thursday, December 5, 2002
Profile: Hugo Chavez

…The former army paratrooper burst back on to the political scene in 1998, promising to transform Venezuela.
But as Mr Chavez proved unable to bridge the huge gap between the country's rich and poor, his combative rhetoric alienated and alarmed the country's traditional business and political elite.

When Mr Chavez came to power, the old Venezuelan order was falling apart.
Unlike most of its neighbours, Venezuela had enjoyed an unbroken period of democratic government since 1958, but the two main parties which had alternated in power stood accused of presiding over a corrupt system and squandering the country's vast oil wealth.


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December 12, 2005

SouthAmerica: Here are some examples of why the United States is losing all its influence in Latin America. Everybody is aware of what is going on and American propaganda can’t reverse the realities of what has been happening in Latin America.


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Rick Salutin: Failed States All Over, Globe and Mail/Canada, March 5, 2004

"The U.S. navy intervened [in Haiti] 24 times between 1849 and 1913 to support American business. In 1915, the U.S. invaded and ruled for 19 years. It backed the brutal Duvaliers from 1956 to 1986. After its candidate lost to Jean-Bertrand Aristide in Haiti's first democratic election ever, in 1990, the U.S. supported a 1991 coup that led to thousands massacred. It returned M. Aristide to power in 1994, but only after he agreed to economic concessions that made social instability inevitable. When he was re-elected massively in 1999, the U.S. forced the withholding of $500-million in economic aid -- in a country whose yearly budget is $300-million. Why? Perhaps to warn against the kind of bad example Haiti almost set in the Caribbean -- and so close to Cuba. This week the U.S. backed the coup and insisted the president leave, though he was ready to compromise. To the extent that Haiti has often "failed," it hardly did so on its own. In the real world -- personal or political -- almost no one fails by themselves."


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Andrew Buncome: U.S. Revealed to Be Secretly Funding Opponents of Chavez, Independent (U.K.), March 13, 2004

First came Haiti, with Venezuela on deck: "Washington has been channelling hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund the political opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez - including those who briefly overthrew the democratically elected leader in a coup two years ago. Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act reveal that, in 2002, America paid more than a million dollars to those political groups in what it claims is an ongoing effort to build democracy and 'strengthen political parties'...The documents reveal that one of the group's organising the collection of [recall] signatures -- Sumate -- received $53,400 (£30,000) from the US last September."


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Daniel Grech: Transcript: U.S. OKd "Dirty War", Miami Herald, December 4, 2003

"At the height of the Argentine military junta's bloody 'dirty war' against leftists in the 1970s, then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the Argentine foreign minister that 'we would like you to succeed,' a newly declassified U.S. document reveals.This document is a devastating indictment of Kissinger's policy toward Latin America. Kissinger actually encourages human-rights violations in full consciousness of what was going on. The transcript of the meeting between Kissinger and Navy Adm. Cesar Augusto Guzzetti in New York on Oct. 7, 1976, is the first documentary evidence that the Gerald Ford administration approved of the junta's harsh tactics, which led to the deaths or 'disappearance' of some 30,000 people from 1975 to 1983."


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December 12, 2005

SouthAmerica: Quoting from an article published by The New York Times on December 10, 2005 – “Hugo Chavez and His Helpers”

…Meanwhile, Washington’s hemispheric influence continues to dwindle, partly because President Bush has not been attentive enough to Mexico on immigration, Brazil on agricultural subsidies and Argentina on debt restructuring.

And so on...


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SouthAmerica: all this is fine and well, but doesn't answer my question - namely what are the insults that Chief Chimp Bush hurdled to Chief Chimp Chavez? It appears to me that it is mainly Chavez who is insulting; not just Bush but also the dignity of the Venezuelan people he claims to represent. Squandering the countries precious natural resources to prop up a dictator and murderer like Castro is not a sound or wise policy.
Secondly, what you post are the opinions of journalists, and they seem to be no more than that: opinions. I do not know the journalists quoted so I cannot judge their merits.
Thirdly: I have no sympathy for Bush nor for Chavez but I like to learn the facts in all this. Thanks.

 

Of course they did, my point is it is questionable policy for Chavez to discount oil sales to Americans while so much poverty remains in his own backyard. It is nothing more than a public relations ploy, not an act of heartfelt charity.