Henrique Capriles Radonski: Neither victim nor victor

Remember this picture? The lamestream media up here don’t want you to. According to them, this silly poser, who pretended to be a Communist while in China for the Beijing Olympics, is The Man Who Will Beat Hugo Chávez, assuming that the allegedly rampant anti-semitism in Venezuela doesn’t make him the victim of a one-man pogrom before the campaign wraps up. But while the increasingly irrelevant Wiesenthalers and ADL soil themselves to no end over Henrique Capriles Radonski, and over the horrible “pig” insult allegedly lobbed at his head by you-know-who (in the presence of Sean Penn, no less!), here’s the unglamorous truth about his poll numbers:

A recent poll of presidential voting intentions by International Consulting Services (ICS) puts Hugo Chavez at 58.2% support and Capriles Radonski at 34.5%.

Ooooooo, that’s gotta hurt.

And just for good measure, here’s how Venezuelans really feel about socialism:

A January study by polling firm International Consulting Services (ICS) has shown that 53% of Venezuelans think that the kind of socialism promoted by the current president Hugo Chavez is a political and economic system that guarantees the development of the country. Meanwhile, the same polling organisation found if the 7 October presidential elections were held tomorrow Chavez would be re-elected with 58.2% of the vote.

Juan Scorza, director of ICS, said in a television interview that “the belief that this is a positive system for the country has been reinforced,” and pointed out that only 21% believe that capitalism is the system that would guarantee development for the country.

“Between socialism and capitalism, it is clear Venezuelans prefer socialism,” he stated. With regard to social programs, or missions, Venezuelans gave a positive appraisal of 80%.

“This concept of socialism is that all recent [government] measures, like the Law on Fair Costs and Prices, new missions, and protection to workers are creating an environment in which there is collective benefit and that’s how people perceive it,” he said.

As for problems, the director highlighted that 52.9% of Venezuelans see insecurity as the main problem in the country, followed by corruption and inflation.

“Nonetheless, [the perception of] insecurity as a problem has fallen in intensity. In October, it was at 60.2%,” he added.

That all translates to bad news for Capriles, who, like all the oppos, has been capitalizing on the “capitalism good, Venezuelan crime rates bad” mantra that these unoriginal toadies keep repeating, on orders of their gurus in Washington and Miami. Not only is he WAY behind Chavecito in the polls, with no hope of ever catching him (unless Diebold hacks the Venezuelan voting machines), even his platform is out of date. And his weak “centre-left” pose amid a “unity table” comprised of old right-wingers, fascists and putschists, who are in fact far from united (much less behind HIM!), can’t stand up to the popularity of 21st Century Socialism, either.

And just to add insult to injury, there’s this:

In reports published by the USA State Department on Venezuela and published by Wikileaks, Capriles was linked to the assault on the Cuban Embassy in Caracas, and as a suspect in the assassination of the Venezuelan Prosecutor, Danilo Anderson.

The documents demonstrate the complacency of the USA Embassy in Caracas towards this leader of the Primero Justicia Party of fascist bent and whose role in the assault to the Cuban Embassy and other illicit activities has been censured in the text.

These documents show that the USA Embassy not only recognizes Capriles, who is now the governor of the state of Miranda, but also offers him cooperation and the many paragraphs that are blacked out by the censors in Washington reveal collaborations that is beyond what they are prepared to confess.

On April 12, 2002, during the most tense hours of the coup d’etat, the Embassy of the Republic of Cuba was assaulted by a group of extreme right demonstrators that were led by two individuals identified in Venezuela to terrorist acts against Cuba, they are Salvador Romani and Ricardo Koesling. These two were soon after joined by Capriles and the former commissar of the DISIP (former secret police), the assassin, Henry Lopez Sisco.

They cut the electricity and water supply to the diplomatic headquarters, they destroyed the vehicles of the diplomats and they surrounded the embassy so that no one could leave it. Capriles Radonsky was caught on film by the Venezuelan TV stations climbing a ladder and jumping over the embassy fence, then enter the embassy and threatening the Ambassador of Cuba in Venezuela, German Sanchez Otero, with more violence if he did not give up the Venezuelan officials whom they thought were hidden in the Embassy.

On that same day, April 12, Capriles — who was then mayor of the municipality of Baruta where the Cuban Embassy was located- not only refused to take measures to stop acts of violence, but witnessing on site the violence, insisted on “inspecting” the Embassy, something completely against international conventions, and then made provocative statements.

Capriles Radonski was also an accomplice in the arbitrary detention of Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, then Minister of Justice and the Interior and took part in the illegal sacking of his home.

And this is the innocent victim of an anti-semitic “pig” smear?

Well, here’s the funny part: I searched for that speech where Chavecito allegedly called this putschist a cochino, which is the actual Venezuelan term for pig, and came up with nada! The terrible insult in question is majunche, which doesn’t have anything to do with unkosher pork. It means “of inferior quality, shoddy, mediocre”. And anyone who hangs with fascists, is NOT Jewish by religion (Capriles, Polish-Jewish grandparents notwithstanding, is a practicing Catholic who makes a big show of wearing his rosaries in public), and uses the “I’m a victim of anti-semitism” card when it’s obvious that they are not a victim of anything but their own delusions of grandeur and persecution…is of inferior quality, shoddy, and mediocre, all right.

With the poll numbers to prove it.

Clip ‘n’ Save: US foreign policy in a nutshell

This might also come in handy for the Harper Government™ hacks and apologists lurking here, seeing as you’re all trying to turn us into Yanks Lite with your dirty, smear-mongering politics. BTW, if you want to know where to start for Venezuela, it’s on the LEFT. Pay attention and memorize this, because you never know when reality will throw you a pop quiz. This concludes today’s tutorial. Any questions?

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Chavecito throws down

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!

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Another satellite for Venezuela

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.

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Lucky 13

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!

Posted in Festive Left Friday Blogging, Huguito Chavecito. Comments Off »

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Two million and counting!

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): 86,812

No 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!

Royally disgusting

Ahem. A little mood music, maestro:

Ah, that was lovely. And a timely reminder of the class of person we’re dealing with here: an unelected monarch who dares to try to shut up a democratically elected leader confronting him over Spanish support of a coup against democracy in Venezuela. Yes, that was Chavecito, and yes, that was the so-called king of Spain telling him to shut up. Quite the nerve on ol’ Juan Carlos, seeing as he was installed by Franco the fascist and all. His legitimacy as a ruler has always been in question. Little wonder he was so snippy. I don’t suppose his rotten royal temper will be improved at all by these revelations, either:

The King of Spain is a serial womaniser who once made a pass at Princess Diana while she was on holiday with Prince Charles, a book has claimed.

It also alleges that Juan Carlos is a ‘professional seducer’ who has had numerous affairs and has not shared a bed with his wife for the past 35 years.

[...]

The Solitude of the Queen by Pilar Eyre, which is likely to prove controversial in the Catholic country, claims the king made a ‘tactile’ advance to Diana while she and Charles were on holiday in Majorca in the 1980s.

It follows much-derided allegations made in 2004 by Lady Colin Campbell that the princess had a fling with Juan Carlos while on a cruise in August 1986 and then again the following April.

During a 1987 visit, in which Charles and Diana went to Madrid, the king was pictured smiling as he kissed the princess on the hand – a gesture which left Diana looking embarrassed.

Miss Eyre’s book also alleges that Queen Sofia has not slept in the marital bed since 1976 and only remains in the marriage out of ‘a sense of duty’.

She even claims the queen stumbled upon her husband with one of his alleged lovers, the Spanish film star Sara Montiel, at a friend’s country house in Toledo in 1976.

Sofia, now 73, was forced to attend a football match the day afterwards ‘as protocol demanded’, before storming out of the Zarzuela Palace, their official residence, with her children.

Advised to stay with her husband, she was told a break-up would mean she would ‘end up being paid to liven up the parties of the newly rich’.

Miss Eyre adds: ‘The role of the queen is sad, she is the loneliest woman in Spain.’

Nasty allegations, no doubt. But I can’t say I’m surprised, and they sure don’t sound out of character for this arrogant old fossil. I guess he’s used to getting whatever he wants, and can’t bear to be contradicted on anything. Little wonder, then, that he told Chavecito to shut up when the latter dared to demand an honest answer out of him. Real sovereignty and nobility are not his stock in trade, so he obviously has trouble seeing them exercised by an elected leader!

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Chavecito’s back, beeyotches!

And here he is, proving that his health is fully recovered from last year’s nasty cancer scare:

…and that he’s fit and ready for his re-election campaign. He looks and sounds it, all right. Nice to see he’s regained the weight he lost during treatment. He’s his usual burly self, not painfully thin, the way Jack Layton was at his last sad press conference. That alone is a good sign. So’s the fact that ExxtortionMobil has essentially lost its court case against him. (And, bonus: His hair’s finally coming back, too!)

Yeah, so much for those who said he was fixin’ to die, and that we’d see the end of him this year. Ha — Chavecito’s not going anywhere, beeyotches! You’re gonna have to dream up some other way to get rid of him, since he’s shaping up to win handily with at least 60% of the vote.

Or, in other words: Neener, neener, nee-ner!

Keystone XL: Dirty oil barons threaten Obama

The clearest, most concise explanation yet of why the Keystone XL pipeline project, which would ferry dirty tar-sands oil from Alberta to Texas, must not proceed. Yes, all this talk of “ending our dependence on foreign oil” is a LIE. Shocking? Wait, it gets worse. The pipeline would also threaten a geologically unstable area that happens to sit over the US’s biggest aquifer (also one of the largest in the world), and make the water undrinkable for about 23 million US citizens. AND, on top of everything else, it’s a job killer…and would make gasoline more expensive, not less so, for those still unfortunate enough to be driving locally made gas-guzzlers. Because the US is still a net petroleum IMPORTER, and most of that imported oil comes From Canada and the Middle East. And because the oil from that pipeline, from Canada, would not be going to serve US needs, but would be converted into gasoline for the lucrative export market. (I had to laugh at the part about shipping it to South America. They have more than enough of their own in Ecuador, Venezuela, Argentina, Chile…and now, Brazil. All South American countries would be more than adequately served from South American oil, refined and supplied by state-run industries! What would they need Texas-shipped gasoline for? Even Mexico and Cuba have plenty for their own needs, and won’t have to rely on the US for that. And Cuba will have help from Venezuela in developing and refining its own offshore oil, so US corporations will be out in the cold there.)

Yes, folks, this is the “ethical” oil that Ezra Fucking Levant is shilling his putzy ass off for. Seems so very ethical now, doesn’t it?

Wait, it gets worse. Let’s go back to the oil-baron threat again. You think it’s nothing serious? It got one previous US president assassinated for daring to oppose the barons. And his vice-president and successor, who happened to be from Texas, and very much in the pockets of the oil barons himself, was a key suspect in his murder:

Pay special attention to the part about Clint Murchison Sr., the oil king with connections to LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, and other shadowy figures of the Kennedy assassination. He was so intimate with them that they partied, and plotted JFK’s demise, at his Texas mansion. Was this where the order went out to kill Kennedy? Quite likely. Between them, the CIA, the Mafia, and the anti-Castro ex-Cubans, it was a perfect storm of colluding, and corrupting, interests!

And let’s not forget, Obama’s predecessor is a Connecticut Yankee from Texas. And yes, Dubya is himself deep in Big Oil’s pockets…STILL. As a wannabe oil baron himself, he was a bust, but as their patsy, he made out like a bandit both as governor and later, as a two-term unelected president.

Anyone who thinks Big Oil has clean hands, and isn’t above assassinating non-compliant leaders, really should watch The Men Who Killed Kennedy in its nine-episode entirety…and bear in mind that very little has changed in US politics since then. It will certainly put the enormous pressures on Obama in a powerful new light. And it will make clear why it is imperative for common citizens to oppose Big Oil and its inordinate influence on the politics of all North America. It is not an exaggeration to say that our entire democratic system is in grave danger from it.

Festive Left Friday Blogging: Chavecito’s back, Cristina’s on the mend

Good news from Venezuela…

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!