Hugo Chavez speaks to French newspaper Le Figaro:
The question is not whether the Israelis want to exterminate the Palestinians. They’re doing it openly.
Tag Archive for 'Hugo Chavez'
The global Jewish Diaspora loves to criticise Venezuela under Hugo Chavez for its supposed anti-Semitic attitudes and growing intolerance of Jewry.
But this essay in the North American Congress on Latin America debunks many of the myths, highlighting the deliberate mis-information campaign run by Zionist groups in the US and the mainstream media. High-profile critics of Israeli politics, such as Chavez, must be made to pay a price:
In the early morning hours of January 31, vandals broke into Tiferet Israel, a Sephardic synagogue in Caracas. They strewed sacred scrolls on the floor and scribbled “Death to the Jews” and other anti-Semitic epithets on the walls, before making off with computer equipment and historical artifacts. Understandably, the incident frightened and upset many in the Venezuelan Jewish community. Right away, U.S. news outlets, including The New York Times and The Miami Herald, linked the incident to Venezuela’s increasingly strained relations with Israel, after the two countries suspended diplomatic relations two weeks earlier over Israel’s bombing of Gaza, then still under way.
A Herald editorial went so far as to describe an “official policy of anti-Semitism” in Venezuela and implied that Chávez’s foreign policy had unleashed a wave of anti-Semitic violence in the country, culminating in the assault on the synagogue. Some international NGOs were no more nuanced. Just hours after the break-in, the U.S.-based Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was already implicitly comparing the Chávez government to the Nazis, calling the synagogue attack “a modern-day Kristallnacht.”
But the Caracas police investigation bore out a different story. Authorities quickly realized that the synagogue’s security fence had been cut from the inside, prompting detectives to investigate the break-in as an inside job. Within the week it became clear that the attack had in fact been a robbery disguised as anti-Semitic vandalism, carried out by the synagogue’s privately contracted security team. Eleven men were arrested for their role in the plot, and their statements to the police indicated that the graffiti and desecration were intended to throw off investigators.
Although the arrests helped ease the anxieties of Venezuela’s Jewish community, the international media pressed on with the storyline of a politically motivated attack. The very week that the Venezuelan Israelite Association issued a statement praising the swift and successful investigation, The Washington Post ran an editorial titled “Mr. Chavez vs. the Jews,” which again blamed the robbery on the government, or, more specifically, on an ugly comment left on a “pro-government Web site,” demanding “that citizens ‘publicly challenge every Jew that you find in the street, shopping center or park’ and called for a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses, seizures of Jewish-owned property and a demonstration at Caracas’s largest synagogue.” The idea that the sacking of the Caracas synagogue was based purely on anti-Semitism has persisted, even showing up in a recent piece authored by two academics in the high-brow The editorial concluded that the synagogue was then “duly attacked.”Boston Review. The authors claim the attack is a sign of “state-directed anti-Semitism.”
Oliver Stone’s new documentary, South of the Border, is about Latin America’s Left turn:
This sounds like desperate spin by the Zionist state. Evidence, please:
Venezuela and Bolivia are supplying Iran with uranium for its nuclear program, according to a secret Israeli government report obtained Monday by The Associated Press.
The two South American countries are known to have close ties with Iran, but this is the first allegation that they are involved in the development of Iran’s nuclear program, considered a strategic threat by Israel.
“There are reports that Venezuela supplies Iran with uranium for its nuclear program,” the Foreign Ministry document states, referring to previous Israeli intelligence conclusions. It added, “Bolivia also supplies uranium to Iran.”
The report concludes that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is trying to undermine the United States by supporting Iran.
One can’t help but think that Israel is so keen to convince Washington that Iran is the world’s greatest threat, it’ll say or do whatever it takes to make the case.
It’s not as if Israel isn’t threatening Iran on a nearly daily basis.
But how much proof do we need that the United States conspired with Britain to invade Iraq on utterly false pretexts causing the virtual destruction of an entire nation? What worse crimes have Ahmadinejad and Chavez perpetrated to earn themselves membership of the “awkward squad”? What would it take before Britain and America were inducted? The answer is that it could never happen because this kind of media labelling is a function of power, not of rational thought. The technical term: ‘propaganda’.
For our neutral media, ‘we’ are always reasonable, civilised, benign – it us up to ‘them’, the crazies, to reach out to ‘us’ in peace and friendship. Peace will reign when those who are “hostile” renounce their baseless aggression towards ‘us’. The myth of media objectivity obscures the deep mendacity of the mainstream stance: the world is always viewed from ‘here’, and ‘here’ is always high and moral.
The Palestinian Authority simply doesn’t seem to understand that Washington and Israel aren’t serious about peace. Case for the prosecution:
Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian Authority official and a chief negotiator of the Annapolis peace talks , told Israel Radio today that:
In December 2008 PA Chairman Abu Mazen submitted to US President George Bush a document citing the positions and proposals that had been presented in the course of the negotiations with Israel. A map was appended to that document.
Erekat said that this document was subsequently turned over to the European Union and to Russia.
Erekat said that Palestinian and Israeli representative had met more than 240 times in the aftermath of the Annapolis conference. He told Israel Radio that representatives of the two sides had been scheduled to meet in Washington with President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in January this year, but Israel decided to go to war a few days before that.
What a shock.
Alternative sources of power and income are required. Case for the prosecution:
Palestinian officials established formal ties on Monday with Venezuela and opened a diplomatic mission in the South American country.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad al-Malki thanked President Hugo Chavez’s government for its support during the recent Israeli military offensive in the Gaza Strip, which prompted the Venezuelan leader to break off relations with Israel.
Venezuelan-Palestinian relations have warmed as tensions have grown between Chavez’s government and Israel.
Al Jazeera on the media wars in Venezuela and the ways in which so much of the Western press, including the New York Times, simply echo Washington’s positions:
With the Arab Initiative on the table for Israel – acceptance by the region if the Jewish state accepts a two-state solution, a highly unlikely proposition considering its obsession with expansionism – the recent war against Gaza has shown once again the impotence of the Arab world:
There is more solidarity with the people of Gaza in South America than there is in neighbouring Arab states, according to American-Jewish political scientist Dr Norman Finkelstein.
He described the Arab world’s response to Israel’s assault on Gaza as “a total disgrace” and even “funny”, shortly after arriving in Bahrain to deliver a series of lectures.
“The reaction from the Arab world was a total disgrace, a disgrace to the whole region and its people,” Dr Finkelstein told a Press conference at the Diplomat Radisson SAS Hotel, Residence and Spa yesterday.
“This region has no shame. It’s very funny really because when they teach you about the Arab world in the West, they say it’s a shame culture, and that people are obsessed with issues of shame.
“I actually think it’s the opposite. What you showed in the last massacre in Gaza is that you have no shame at all.
“The most powerful reactions in the world came from Bolivia, Venezuela, Mauritania, Turkey and Qatar – and that’s just funny.
“There was more solidarity in South America than here.”
Venezuela has expelled the Israeli ambassador to protest against the country’s assault on Gaza, after the Venezuelan president described it as a “holocaust”.
Venezuela’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Israel’s campaign constituted “flagrant violations of international law” and the use of “state terrorism”.
“For the reasons mentioned above, the government of Venezuela has decided to expel the ambassador of Israel and part of the personnel of the embassy of Israel,” the statement said.
Sean Penn on Hugo Chavez and Venezuela and the American painting of a “dictator”:
More here.
Human Rights Watch, Hugo Chavez, Venezuela and the United States.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has a few words on the current financial crisis:
“If the Venezuelan government, for example, approves a law to protect consumers, they say, ‘Take notice, Chavez is a tyrant!’ Or they say, ‘Chavez is regulating prices. He is violating the laws of the marketplace.’ How many times have they criticized me for nationalizing the phone company? They say, ‘The state shouldn’t get involved in that.’ But now they don’t criticize Bush for having nationalize . . . the biggest banks in the world. Comrade Bush, how are you?
Documents released today by Wikileaks reveal that a US defence contractor may have sold millions of dollars worth of telephone tapping and other surveillance equipment to the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chavez.
My following article appears in the US magazine The Nation on the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit and the issue of web repression:
During the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008–sponsored by Harvard University and Google in Budapest, Hungary, in late June, and attended by over 200 bloggers, human rights activists, writers, journalists, hackers and IT experts from every corner of the globe–one participant joked that it was worthwhile buying domain names for dissidents likely to be imprisoned. “Just get them with ‘Free (insert name here).com,’ ” he said.
A recent University of Washington report found that 64 people have been arrested for blogging their political views since 2003. Three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues in 2007 than in 2006. More than half of the arrests since 2003 were made in Iran, China and Egypt. Internet censorship has become a cause with global relevance.
I was invited to present a paper at the two-day event that covered the research for my forthcoming book, The Blogging Revolution, on the Internet in repressive regimes, plans by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to combat Internet child pornography, and my work with Amnesty International Australia on its campaign against Chinese web filtering, Uncensor.
The goal of Global Voices, started in late 2004, is to provide insights into non-Western nations to Western audiences through country-specific blogs. The last years have seen its agenda expand to include a translation service for multiple languages, Global Voices Lingua , support for minorities in developing nations (the Rising Voices project) and Voices without Votes, the chance for global citizens to comment on the 2008 US presidential election campaign in every country except America.
The Budapest summit featured bloggers and activists from places as diverse as Madagascar, India, Belarus, Kenya, Pakistan, Singapore, Bangladesh, Armenia, Egypt, Iran and China. It was constantly stressed that although the Internet can’t bring democratic reform on its own– only citizens of a country have the right to determine a political system, not outside forces–it is allowing on-the-ground organizations to challenge corruption, fraudulent elections and police-led torture. Populations are being empowered.
Although everybody I met came from varied backgrounds, from the elites to indigenous communities using new technology to find a voice in a country like Bolivia, the sense of community was palpable. What can an Australian journalist like myself really understand about democratic struggles in Iran and Bangladesh? By sharing stories, it soon became clear that many speakers related to others on the opposite side of the globe. Tools such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, e-mail, FeedBurner and text messaging were common denominators used by a minority online community to challenge state-run, media lies.
Nobody talked about revolution or massive social change, but rather the ability to become engaged in a process usually reserved for an unelected class. In Morocco, for example, bloggers filmed corrupt policemen taking bribes and posted them on YouTube. “Targuist Sniper” inspired many others to act similarly, and the short videos have been watched millions of times. One female Egyptian blogger posted photos of police torture by tagging her entries with the names of the accused officials. Some of this evidence was used in a court of law. Two close US allies were forced to publicly respond to internal pressure.
Numerous sessions revealed insights into societies all too easily categorized as oppressive. Iranian exile Hamid Tehrani revealed that the regime, now with one of the most effective web-filtering systems outside of China, bans many anti-George W. Bush sites such as Juan Cole’s Informed Comment and The Huffington Post but allows a neocon and prowar site such as Pajamas Media to remain uncensored. It was a typically illogical move.
Only last week Iranian members of parliament announced a draft bill that aims to “toughen punishment for disturbing mental security in society.” The text of the bill would add “establishing websites and weblogs promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy” to the list of crimes punishable by execution.
The perception of the Internet in various countries remains troubling. Singaporean blogger Au Wai Pang said that the tool is “free” in his country, “but people behave like it is not.” Self-censorship is a key barrier to open debate. Au reminded the Budapest audience that technology isn’t always the answer to censorship issues. “How do you change people’s minds,” he asked, “[for] many who don’t believe in a society with free speech?” Nothing beats face-to-face interaction, but the web has become a space where citizens can voice their opinions and have them respected often for the first time.
A number of prominent Kenyan bloggers, including Ory Okolloh and Daudi Were, discussed the role of new technology in the aftermath of the stolen election in late 2007. With only 7-10 percent web penetration in the country, bloggers on election day woke up early to film people waiting patiently in line to vote. Some were even embedded with foreign observers and could immediately report, via SMS and Twitter, irregularities in the counting process. International support in the Diaspora was crucial to highlight this relatively stable nation descend into ethnic chaos.
Blogger Luis Carlos Diaz, from Venezuela, debunked many of the Western myths about President Hugo Chávez. “The problem is we have too much petroleum,” Diaz lamented. Although critical of many of his policies, Diaz said that Chávez was a democratically elected leader who wasn’t quashing freedom of speech. “Voting is a sport in Venezuela,” he said. To remain awake during the weekly eight-hour diatribes by Chávez on state television, bloggers were providing an alternative perspective on issues that matter to average citizens, such as poverty, housing and education. Diaz said he’d recently spoken to workers whose job is to transcribe Chávez’s speeches. They usually last around 3,000 pages every week.
Unsurprisingly, China featured prominently in the sessions. Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN journalist and now academic in Hong Kong, stressed that debate had to progress past who is more “brainwashed,” Western or Chinese audiences. One of the key translators of Chinese blog posts for Global Voices, John Kennedy, challenged his audience by asking whether the growing Western anger against the Chinese people was justified. Was nationalism as great an influence as claimed? Was self-determination for Tibet so unacceptable in the motherland? Are Chinese netizens any more thin-skinned than Westerners when attacked online for their opinions?
Despite these valid questions, one of China’s leading dissidents, Isaac Mao, wished that the Chinese mob mentality online on issues of national importance wasn’t so strong. He stressed that although the concept of freedom of speech is paramount in the West, many other societies place greater emphasis on the rule of law and fighting corruption.
Mao, who launched Digital Nomads to host hundreds of independent blogs away from prying authoritarian rule, feared citizens in prosperous, Western citizens rarely understood the “crimes of omission” in their own societies. “They don’t get why the non-Western world wants to talk about issues that the Western largely ignores,” Mao said, “such as poverty and environmental degradation.” A major theme of the event was highlighted. Too few bloggers in the West were bridging the information gap between different societies and preferred to preach rather than listen.
The role of blogs in China is more than simply reacting to perceived Western slights. Instead, many netizens may not be calling for the dissolution of the Communist Party or planning a revolution, but they’re been given far more freedoms today than five years ago. Mirroring what I found during my research in China last year, very few Chinese bloggers appear upset with the excessive filtering (though some are unaware what they’re missing out on.) This doesn’t mean, however, that the apparent blocking of parts of Facebook isn’t annoying for many users or the creeping Olympic crackdown.
It was encouraging to hear from IT insiders that many employees of companies such as Google and Yahoo feel distinctly uncomfortable with the role their companies play in a country such as China and regularly leak material about their actions anonymously and develop tools to allow an e-mail program such as Gmail to be used securely, away from the prying eyes of censorious regimes.
The Budapest conference showed yet again that the mainstream media remains woefully under-prepared and unwilling to cover vast swathes of the world. Blogging and citizen journalism therefore provides an essential alternative to the daily obsession in much of our media with re-printing government and corporate spin as news.
My latest New Matilda column is about the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Budapest last week:
Are Chinese netizens any more thin-skinned than Westerners when attacked online for their opinions? Antony Loewenstein reports from the Global Voices Citizen Media Summit
During the Harvard University sponsored Global Voices Citizen Media Summit 2008 in Budapest last week, attended by around 200 bloggers, human rights activists, writers, journalists and IT geeks from every corner of the globe, one participant joked that it was worthwhile buying domain names for dissidents likely to be soon imprisoned. “Just get them with ‘Free (insert name here).com’,” he said.
A University of Washington report this year found that 64 people have been arrested for blogging their political views since 2003. Three times as many people were arrested for blogging about political issues in 2007 than in 2006. More than half of the arrests since 2003 were made in China, Iran and Egypt. Internet censorship has become a concern of global significance.
I was invited to present a paper at the two-day event (see here) that covered the research for my forthcoming book, The Blogging Revolution, on the internet in repressive regimes, how Western multinationals are increasingly colluding with authoritarian governments, plans by the Rudd Government to institute filtering against child pornography and violence, and my work with Amnesty on its Uncensor campaign on Chinese censorship.
Initiated in 2004, Global Voices’s brief is to provide insights into non-Western nations, through country-specific blogs, to Western audiences. Recent years have seen it expand to include a translation service for multiple languages, support for minorities in developing nations (the Rising Voices project) and Voices without Votes, the chance for global citizens to comment on the 2008 US Presidential election campaign.
The Budapest summit featured bloggers and activists from places as diverse as Madagascar, India, Belarus, Kenya, Pakistan, Singapore, Armenia, Egypt, Iran and China. Although the internet can’t bring democratic reform on its own – and it was constantly stressed that only citizens of a particular country should have the right to determine a political system, not outside forces – it is gradually allowing on-the-ground organisations to challenge corruption, fraudulent elections and police-led torture.
Although the people I met came from varied backgrounds, from the elites to indigenous communities using new technology to find a voice in a country like Bolivia, the sense of community was palpable. After all, what can an Australian journalist like myself really understand about democratic struggles in Iran and Bangladesh? By sharing stories, it soon became clear that many speakers related to others on the opposite side of the globe. Tools such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, email, FeedBurner and text messaging were common denominators by a minority online community challenging state-run media lies.
Numerous sessions revealed insights into societies all too easily categorised as oppressive. Iranian exile Hamid Tehrani revealed that the regime, now with one of the most effective web filtering systems outside of China, bans many anti-George W Bush sites such as Juan Cole and Huffington Post but allows a neo-con and pro-war site such as Pajamas Media to remain uncensored.
A number of prominent Kenyan bloggers, including Ory Okolloh and Daudi Were, discussed the role of new technology in the aftermath of the stolen election in late 2007. With only 7-10 per cent internet penetration in the country, bloggers woke up early on election day to film people waiting patiently in line to vote. Some were even embedded with foreign observers and could immediately report, via SMS and Twitter, irregularities in the counting process. International support in the diaspora was crucial to highlight the relatively stable nation outside of Africa.
Blogger Luis Carlos Diaz, from Venezuela, debunked many of the Western myths about President Hugo Chavez. “The problem is we have too much petroleum,” Diaz lamented.
Although critical of many of his policies, Diaz said that Chavez was a democratically elected leader who wasn’t quashing freedom of speech. “Voting is a sport in Venezuela,” he said. To relieve the boredom of Chavez’s weekly eight-hour diatribes on state television, bloggers were providing an alternative perspective on issues that matter to average citizens, such as poverty, housing and education. Diaz said he’d recently spoken to workers whose job is to transcribe Chavez’s speeches. They usually run for around 3000 pages every week.
Unsurprisingly, China featured prominently in the sessions. Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN journalist and now academic in Hong Kong, stressed that the debate had to progress past the question of “who is more brainwashed?” – Western or Chinese audiences. One of the key translators of Chinese blog posts for Global Voices, John Kennedy, challenged his audience by asking whether the growing Western anger against the Chinese people was justified. Was nationalism as great an influence as claimed? Was self-determination for Tibet so unacceptable in the motherland? Are Chinese netizens any more thin-skinned than Westerners when attacked online for their opinions?
Despite these valid questions, one of China’s leading dissidents, Isaac Mao, wished that the Chinese mob mentality online on issues of national importance wasn’t so strong. He stressed that although the concept of freedom of speech is paramount in the West, many other societies place greater emphasis on the rule of law and fighting corruption.
Mao, who launched Digital Nomads to host hundreds of independent blogs away from prying authoritarian rule, feared that citizens in prosperous, Western countries rarely understood the “crimes of omission” in their own societies. “They don’t get why the non-Western world wants to talk about issues that the Western largely ignores,” Mao said, “such as poverty and environmental degradation.”
The role of blogs in China is therefore more than simply reacting to perceived Western slights. Many netizens may not be calling for the dissolution of the Communist Party or planning a revolution, but they’re given far more freedoms today than five years ago. Mirroring what I found during my research in China last year, very few Chinese bloggers appear upset with the excessive filtering regime.
A Western translator living in Japan, Chris Salzberg, posed one of the more provocative questions of the summit. During the recent mass-stabbing incident in Tokyo, two passers-by started filming the event, transmitting live murder around the web (discussion here and here). Only a few thousand viewers saw the video, but should such images be allowed broadcast? Should there be any limits on material posted on the internet? Japan, like Australia, is currently debating placing restrictions on online content and indicates a Western trend towards governmental regulations over the medium.
It was encouraging to hear from IT insiders that many employees of companies such as Google and Yahoo feel distinctly uncomfortable with the role their companies play in a countries such as China and regularly leak material about its actions anonymously and develop tools to allow an email program such as Gmail to be used securely, away from the prying eyes of censorious regimes.
The Budapest conference indicated yet again that the mainstream media remains woefully under-prepared and unwilling to provide coverage of vast swathes of the world. Blogging and citizen journalism therefore provides an essential alternative to the daily obsession in much of our media with reprinting government and corporate spin as news.
Fidel’s Heir: The rising influence of Hugo Chávez.
A New Yorker essay by Jon Lee Anderson, recent visitor to the Sydney Writer’s Festival.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, speaking to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, is asked about his fears of an American invasion:
Yes, this is a genuine concern. We have evidence of plans that exist in this sense. Well, you see what has happened in Iraq and many other countries over these years . . . Now I am hopeful that we don’t go that far. First of all, because there is no reason for that. I would understand if there were a big war, the world war. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, of course, even though we might question the reasons behind that, there was an act of aggression against Kuwait. Have we invaded anyone? Do we have plans to invade any other country? We are not a power. We do not have atomic bombs. We do not have missiles to destroy people, to attack other people. So there is no reason whatsoever. There is another element, of course – the bottom line, of course, but it is not a reason to invade: It is oil. I do think that the main reason to invade Iraq was the oil.
And his thoughts on former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro:
What I am about to say might seem an exaggeration to you. But if the world had to choose a president – a president that could address the problems of the world, a president to lead the world, a president with the powers to do that – Fidel would be the man. Perhaps he’s not the only one. . . . He’s a machine, a human machine to solve problems, (with) a huge analytical capacity to analyze things and look for solutions to problems. I truly love him as a father, and it doesn’t bother me to say so. An older brother? No, he’s a father. And I think he sees me as a son. But out of respect, he calls me brother. But I think it is a father-son relationship.
It’s a shame that Chavez completely ignores the profound lack of free speech in Cuba.
“Violation of US policy”? Pulease:
In an apparent violation of U.S. policy, Peace Corps volunteers and a Fulbright scholar were asked by a U.S. Embassy official in Bolivia “to basically spy” on Cubans and Venezuelans in the country, according to Peace Corps personnel and the Fulbright scholar involved.
“I was told to provide the names, addresses and activities of any Venezuelan or Cuban doctors or field workers I come across during my time here,” Fulbright scholar John Alexander van Schaick told ABCNews.com in an interview in La Paz.
The American administration, especially Reagan’s, specialised in tormenting Latin America.