And gives the right-wing candidate and sham primary victor, Henrique Capriles Radonsky, notice that he’s got to stand and deliver, or leave with his tail between his legs:
Here’s the gist of what he said. Accept no lamestream substitutes. And remember that word majunche (it means “little wimp”, more or less), you’re gonna be hearing it a lot between now and October 7!
Looks like Simón Bolívar will have even more company in orbit. In addition to his Bolivian and Ecuadorian counterparts, he’s going to be joined by another Venezuelan satellite, named after another independence hero:
The new satellite, “Generalísimo Francisco de Miranda”, represents a great leap for the development of technological independence in Venezuela, said president Hugo Chávez.
During a meeting with engineers who will be traveling to China to prepare for the project of building the second Venezuelan satellite, the head of state added that this would also aid scientific, human and economic development in Venezuela.
“When we talk about science and technology, we are talking about an instrument of integral development for the country,” Chávez said.
The Popular Power Minister for Science, Technology and Innovation, Jorge Arreaza, said that VRSS-1, the new Earth-observation satellite, could enter orbit in September or October of this year.
In October 2008, the Venezuelan government launched its first satellite in the history of the country, Simón Bolívar, which serves in telephonic, information and Internet access among other things, above all in remote locations with low population density. It has also enabled the consolidation of social programs by the National Executive.
Translation mine.
Of course, the lamestream media are probably gonna paint this one as a spy satellite, too, and further evidence that those evil commie Venezuelans are in cahoots with those eviler, commier Chinese. I can only look at their uncritical coverage of Harpo’s latest trade mission over there and shake my head. And note in passing that we so-called freedom-loving North Americans have done absolutely nothing to help our Venezuelan counterparts develop technologically, and that our lovely corporate press really must learn to watch which side of its collective mouth it talks out of.
It’s 13 years now since Chavecito was sworn in as president of Venezuela. And, contrary to all the right-wing lamestream media naysayers up here, he’s not dead yet, and neither is Venezuelan democracy, which is going stronger than ever.
And of course, that was the plan 13 years ago yesterday, when Chavecito swore on the “moribund” constitution of 1961, as he called it, to give the country the constitution and participatory democracy it deserved. Since then, not only has that plan prospered in Venezuela, it’s caught on like a wildfire throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, with the ALBA alliance, CELAC and Mercosur all shaking their feet to the Bolivarian beat. Cuba is now out of the cold (or Cold War isolation, if you will), and the only tyranny in sight is that of a good example. Education and access to healthcare are up; poverty is way, way down. Illiteracy is wiped out, and childhood malnutrition is becoming an endangered species. International co-operation is in vogue between Latin American countries, and the only ones not happy are the gringos and their local lackeys. Workers are drafting their own labor laws, instead of letting Washington and multinationals dictate them. That’s something that’s never happened there before, and it puts the lie to the common media quackings about how 21st Century Socialism is just old 20th century Soviet communism repackaged.
Yes, it’s been a lucky 13 years for Venezuela, and it looks like they’re in for a good many more. In that time, the Revolution can only solidify. As it stands, both inside and outside disruptors have had zero luck in dislodging it. And while that’s not Chavecito’s doing alone, it all couldn’t have happened without him as its unifying leader.
¡Viva Venezuela, y VIVA CHÁVEZ CARAJO!
Ahem. Make that two and a HALF million…
And now, the story from Aporrea:
At 10:06 this morning, and three months shy of his second anniversary on Twitter, President Hugo Chávez made history as the most-followed head of state on the social network, with two and a half million followers.
1394 tweets, following 21 tweeters, and found on 55,400 lists, @chavezcandanga exceeded all expectations. We can emphasize that he has more followers than @Facebook, which was created on December 7, 2009.
Here is a list of the most-followed heads of state in Latin America, as of 10:21 am:
1. @chavezcandanga (Venezuela): 2,500,038
2. @FelipeCalderon (Mexico): 1,392,980
3. @DilmaBr (Brazil): 1,044,256
4. @CFKArgentina (Argentina): 830,906
5. @SebastianPinera (Chile): 677,821
6. @JuanManSantos (Colombia): 677,294
7. @MashiRafael (Ecuador): 207,911
8. @Laura_Ch (Costa Rica): 86,812No doubt about it, this is one more demonstration that the Bolivarian Revolution is consolidating itself in all spaces, considering that @chavezcandanga is one of the best communicators in history.
Translation mine; linkage as in original.
If the Internet is the marketplace of ideas, then it looks like a leading anticapitalist is the top seller. Outpacing even Facebook on the tweeter — how about that?
And if you think it’s just a tweetish fluke, I can assure you it’s not. His messages also appear on Facebook, and get huge numbers of “likes” in no time at all. The only one who gets “liked” faster is Cristina Fernández (a.k.a. CFKArgentina), mainly because she uses Facebook more she does Twitter. Which she does almost as much as Chavecito.
But then again, Chavecito has only to get on Facebook himself (he doesn’t seem to have a personal profile there yet, only a generic “politician” page and a whole slew of fan pages), instead of simply linking it to his Twitter account. The day he does is the day Facebook’s entire server farm crashes from all the happy Bolivarian traffic welcoming him aboard the Internet’s biggest time-suck.
Watch out, Fuckerberg!
…and Evo had a great time meeting one of the great Brazilian soccer team’s heroes (and his own too, no doubt), Ronaldinho:
Evo also presented Ronaldinho with a special medal for his outstanding contribution to South American sportsmanship:
And there was a friendly match between Flamengo and a local team, Universitario de Sucre, at which Ronaldinho undoubtedly shone:
Bonus: Here’s a little song by Jorge Ben, which pretty much sums up Brazilian pride in teams like Flamengo (and other fun things about life in a tropical country):
“I live in a tropical country/Blessed by God and beautiful by nature/In February there’s Carnival/I have a Fusca and a guitar/I root for Flamengo and my girlfriend’s name is Tereza…”
The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, will return on Sunday with his well-known TV program, Aló Presidente, which has been on hiatus for seven months. This will be the first show since Chávez recovered from the cancer that was diagnosed in June, said a government spokesman on Wednesday.
“This Sunday, Aló Presidente returns. VictoryWithChavez2012,” wrote the minister of Communication and Information, Andrés Izarra, on his Twitter account.
The last episode of the program was broadcast on June 5 of last year. The show has been on the air since May 23, 1999, when it was broadcast from the studios of Radio Nacional de Venezuela, before appearing as well on the state television channel, VTV.
The program became irregularly scheduled in April and May, because Chávez suffered various health problems, such as the flu and knee trouble, which removed him from political activity for several weeks. Chávez reduced his usual appearances on television and in public, after having been operated on for a pelvic abscess in Cuba in June. From there, he announced to the world that he had been suffering from cancer, though he did not reveal which type, or the exact location thereof.
In order to combat the disease, Chávez received chemotherapy in Caracas and Havana. The last round was completed in September.
Six months after having been diagnosed with cancer, Chávez said he had recuperated from it, and predicted that 2012 will be a year of “lots of work” leading up to the presidential elections of October 7, in which he seeks re-election to a third mandate.
Aló Presidente has become an important tool of the government. With it, Chávez, who has appeared on camera for as long as eight hours at a stretch, communicates presidential decisions and develops his vision on various topics.
Translation mine.
Aló Presidente is now also on Twitter and Facebook, according to Aporrea, which also reports that the coming episode will be broadcast from the Orinoco oilfields.
And from Argentina:
Today (Friday), eating normally, with no intravenous line and normal clinical and laboratory controls, waiting for release within the coming hours…
Translation mine, again.
Cristina was diagnosed shortly before the holidays with thyroid cancer, and her surgery to remove the tumor was two days ago. According to the official communiqué from the presidential palace, the Casa Rosada, she was to be released from hospital within 72 hours of the operation, and will be off work until January 20.
¡Fuerza Cristina, y VIVA CHÁVEZ!
Who says so? No less an authority than The Pew:
Young people — the collegiate and post-college crowd, who have served as the most visible face of the Occupy Wall Street movement — might be getting more comfortable with socialism. That’s the surprising result from a Pew Research Center poll that aims to measure American sentiments toward different political labels.
The poll, published Wednesday, found that while Americans overall tend to oppose socialism by a strong margin — 60 percent say they have a negative view of it, versus just 31 percent who say they have a positive view — socialism has more fans than opponents among the 18-29 crowd. Forty-nine percent of people in that age bracket say they have a positive view of socialism; only 43 percent say they have a negative view.
And while those numbers aren’t very far apart, it’s noteworthy that they were reversed just 20 months ago, when Pew conducted a similar poll. In that survey, published May 2010, 43 percent of people age 18-29 said they had a positive view of socialism, and 49 percent said their opinion was negative.
It’s so funny to watch the media sputter over this, isn’t it? Wait, it gets funnier:
It’s not clear why young people have evidently begun to change their thinking on socialism. In the past several years, the poor economy has had any number of effects on young adults — keeping them at home with their parents, making it difficult for them to get jobs, and likely depressing their earning potential for years to come — that might have dampened enthusiasm for the free market among this crowd.
Indeed, the Pew poll also found that just 46 percent of people age 18-29 have positive views of capitalism, and 47 percent have negative views — making this the only age group where support for socialism outweighs support for capitalism.
Young people have also been among the most involved in the nationwide Occupy movement, whose members have leveled pointed criticism at the capitalist ethos and often called for a more equal distribution of American wealth.
In general, income inequality — which a Congressional Budget Office report recently pointed out is at historic levels — has received more and more attention in politics and the media since the Occupy movement launched in mid-September. Usage of the term rose dramatically in news coverage following the start of the protests, and politicians from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to President Barack Obama have used the movement’s language to describe divisions in the American public.
Isn’t that funny? They say “It’s not clear why…”, only to go on for four paragraphs making it altogether clear why. This tells me one thing: the media don’t get it, but the younger folks do.
Socialism was something most young people of my generation couldn’t mention without sneering, when they mentioned it at all. (Reagan and Bush I: Fuck ‘em.) The fact that all these kids who grew up during the Clinton Boom (and came of age during the BushObama Bust) are willing to contemplate it gives me hope for the future. I had to grow into my socialism. I hope they never grow out of theirs.
I hope they just keep it growing and growing and growing.
It may be the holiday season for most of us, but Latin American heads of state aren’t getting any rest. While Evo is off signing bilateral agreements in Peru with Ollanta, his vice-president, Alvaro García Linera, is holding down the fort at home.
Now, the big question of the day: What do you suppose he’s saying here? Leave a caption in the comments slot below…
Courtesy of Cubadebate, we have the following amusing little item to celebrate today:
The historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, is the person subject to the greatest number of assassination attempts, according to the Guinness Book of World Records and, surely, the archives of the US Central Intelligence Agency, the principal promoter of these frustrated homicide attempts.
According to the data reiterated on Tuesday by the Yahoo portal blog, as of 2006, the count of assassination attempts against him stands at 638, almost all of them perpetrated by the CIA.
The methods aimed at killing him were many, though all of them failed: from snipers, explosives hidden in his shoes, poison injected in a cigar, to a small explosive charge inside a baseball, among others.
From the very moment in which he headed the triumphant Cuban Revolution in 1959, enemies began to plot his physical demise. Among those most interested in killing the former prime minister of Cuba were the North American agencies of espionage and subversion.
Translation mine.
I couldn’t help snickering the entire time I was translating that. Either Fidel is incredibly clever and preternaturally good at outwitting his enemies, or (and personally, I suspect this latter is more the case) they are just that fucking stupid in Langley. Great at concocting elaborate plans, sure, but the execution is always lacking (pun intended).
And of course, Fidel IS very smart, much smarter than they, which is why Cuba remains the only Latin American country with no child malnutrition. It’s also why Cuba exports literacy and medical education to the rest of Latin America. And, oh yeah, this and so much more is why any effort to reverse the Revolution has failed to take. The problem with the so-called Cuban dissidents isn’t that they’re so few or so oppressed (they are neither), but because they have no fresh ideas. All they have is the financing and backing of the same failed US state organ that’s made a record number of assassination attempts on one leader who has now retired, since they couldn’t kill him out of office. Is it any wonder that they lack credibility? At this rate, Fidel will live to be 100, only to die peacefully in his sleep, and, one gets the feeling, merrily thumbing his nose in the general direction of Gringolandia.
Anyway: Enjoy your retirement and your Guinness, Fidel, ya big barbudo. You’ve certainly earned both.
