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News :: Education |
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Invade us and You will Lose more Than Just oil, Chavez tells Shrub |
Current rating: 0 |
by Billy Bob
(No verified email address) |
08 Mar 2004
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March 9, 2004
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.
Venezuela's President, Hugo Chavez, has vowed to freeze oil exports to the US and wage a "100-year war" if Washington ever tried to invade his country. |
The US has repeatedly denied ever trying to overthrow Mr Chavez, but the leftist leader has accused Washington of being behind a failed 2002 coup and of funding opposition groups now seeking a recall referendum on his presidency. US officials say Washington supports peaceful elections in Venezuela.
But Mr Chavez accused the US of ousting the former Haitian President, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, and warned it not to "even think about trying something similar in Venezuela".
Venezuela "has enough allies on this continent to start a 100-year war," Mr Chavez said during his weekly television and radio show on Sunday.
"US citizens could forget about ever getting Venezuelan oil" if the US ever tried to invade.
If people wanted a referendum against him, they should seek one peacefully, he said.
In the rambling five-hour broadcast that mixed threats with appeals, he also said he regretted the deaths of eight people in the recent street protests by opponents calling for him to submit to a recall vote.
"So what is it this Government is trying to do? Destabilise its secure [oil] supplier?" Mr Chavez asked. He said the recent anti-Government protests were "made in the USA". Venezuelan oil exports were not affected by them.
Venezuela provides about 15 per cent of US oil imports but relations between the two countries are rocky over Mr Chavez's friendship with Cuba's President, Fidel Castro, his criticism of US-led negotiations for a free trade zone in the Americas, and his opposition to the Iraq war.
The US was slow to condemn the 2002 coup attempt, initially accusing Mr Chavez of provoking his own downfall.
Mr Chavez has increasingly railed against US meddling in Venezuelan affairs as his opponents step up protests to demand the recall vote. American officials have recently accused Mr Chavez of becoming increasingly autocratic.
On Saturday, at least 500,000 Venezuelans marched in Caracas to protest against a National Elections Council decision last week that an opposition petition for the recall vote did not have enough valid signatures. Opponents turned in more than 3 million signatures on December 19 but the council ruled only 1.8 million were valid. It ordered more than one million citizens to confirm they had signed, and rejected more than 140,000 signatures.
Rioting over the decision killed eight people and injured scores more. The violence subsided after the Organisation of American States and the US-based Carter Centre pledged to help give citizens a fair chance to prove they signed.
Venezuela is riven between those who fear Mr Chavez is trying to impose Cuba-style socialism and those who say he has given an unprecedented political voice to the impoverished majority.
Mr Chavez insists election officials have reason to believe the recall petition is fraud-ridden. He claims many signatures belong to dead people, minors and foreigners. |
This work is in the public domain |
Comments
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Re: Invade us and You will Lose more Than Just oil, Chavez tells Shrub |
by Bill
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
09 Mar 2004
|
"Venezuela is riven between those who fear Mr Chavez is trying to impose Cuba-style socialism and those who say he has given an unprecedented political voice to the impoverished majority."
erm... "Cuba-style socialism" and "unprecedented political voice to the impoverished majority" are the same same thing. The only difference is that wealthy -- and wealth is criminally concentrated in Venezuela -- the wealthy say it is "imposed" and the majority say it is "given".
The only "rive" is between the obscenely wealthy few and the abysmally poor many. |
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Pirate Radio as Public Radio, in the President's Corner |
by Juan Ferero
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
10 Mar 2004
|
CARACAS, Venezuela, March 7 - The sound room of Radio Perola, a small community station on the poor edge of this city, is papered with posters celebrating Latin American revolutionaries like Fidel Castro and offering a stern warning to the behemoth to the north: "Death to the Yankee Invader."
The setting seems fitting for José Ovalles's politically charged Saturday radio program. Gripping a microphone and waving reports from a government news agency, the white-haired retired computer teacher charges that a far-flung opposition movement arrayed against President Hugo Chávez is part of an American-led conspiracy. He ridicules the president's foes as criminals with scant backing.
He urges listeners to defend what Mr. Chávez calls his Bolivarian Revolution, which is under international pressure to allow a recall vote on the president's tumultuous five-year rule. "We have to fight for a free country," he said recently, "one with no international interference."
The message, beamed from a 13-kilowatt station in what was once the storeroom of a housing project, reaches at most a few hundred homes. But Radio Perola is part of a mushrooming chain of small government-supported radio and television stations that are central to Mr. Chávez's efforts to counter the four big private television networks, which paint him as an unstable dictator.
With Venezuela on edge, stations like Radio Perola are poised to play an even bigger role in this oil-rich nation's political battle.
Instead of shutting down his news media tormenters, Mr. Chávez's tactic appears to be to ignore them as much as possible while relying on former ham radio operators and low-budget television stations to get the government's message across.
Although the stations say they are independent and autonomous, Mr. Chávez has announced that $2.6 million would be funneled to them this year. They also will receive technical assistance and advertising from state-owned companies.
"This year, we will not only legalize and enable approximately 200 more communitarian radios and televisions with equipment, but we will also promote them," the communication and information minister, Jesse Chacón, said in an interview posted on a pro-Chávez Web site.
The stations have been important to Mr. Chavez's government during the current turmoil, in which the opposition has accused the government of fraudulently disqualifying hundreds of thousands of signatures for a recall referendum.
Through it all, the private television and radio stations and the nation's largest newspapers have stepped up their pressure, presenting a parade of antigovernment analysts and opposition figures.
Mr. Ovalles, though, calls the opposition "gangsters" and accuses private news organizations of faking the sizes of antigovernment marches.
At first glance, the community stations and their largely volunteer staffs hardly seem political, nor do they offer the wallop of the big news organizations. Programming often deals with mundane matters like trash pickups or road conditions. The stations are staffed by volunteers, from teenagers eager for the chance to play Venezuelan hip-hop or salsa to homemakers who want to tell listeners how to stretch earnings in tough times.
The main objective, say those who work at the stations, is to show there is another side to neighborhoods that, in the popular press, are presented as crime-ridden ghettos.
"The image of the barrios is one of criminals, violence, prostitution, where kids are abandoned," said Gabriel Gil, a producer at Catia TV, a three-year-old station that recently moved into a vast building belonging to the Ministry of Justice. "We say we are television of the poor."
Radio Un Nuevo DÃa, in a poor neighborhood, is much like the rest. Its small transmitter has been set up in the corner of a bedroom in a two-room cinder block house belonging to a cleaning woman, Zulay Zerpa.
Bedsheets separate the bare-bones operation from the cots where her two children sleep.
"I cook, I clean, I watch the kids, and they do what they have to do," Ms. Zerpa said. "I do my part by giving up a bit of my house."
Music is a big part of the broadcast fare. Disk jockeys arrive with stacks of CD's, playing for hours on end. "I like to talk, and I like to play the music," said Rosa Amarista, 26. "Private radio is so grandiose. Here you can say what you want, tell people what you feel."
Nuevo DÃa, with just 5 kilowatts, does not have much of a signal, reaching only a few miles around Ms. Zerpa's house on a crowded street. It is still waiting for a $31,000 government grant. Its 15 staff members are unpaid. But the people who broadcast are committed to Mr. Chávez.
While the station is small, it is just one in a string of outlets that have been popping up in neighborhoods, one after another, covering a broad expanse of urban Venezuela. The number of community radio and television stations, both licensed and unlicensed, has grown to about 300 from 50 in three years, said Alfredo Flores, who helps stations nationwide set up operations.
Although Nuevo DÃa has modest means, it also clearly demonstrates its close ties to the government. When its reporters are sent downtown, they have easy access to governing party officials and government functionaries. The station broadcasts the president's garrulous speeches.
This week, the health minister, Roger Capella, is expected at Ms. Zerpa's house for an interview.
"This is a counterbalance," said one of Nuevo DÃa's operators, Armando Farias, 37, referring to the new dynamic with the private stations. "Right now, it is balanced one way. Our idea is to counterbalance the other way." |
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