Chavez and the Jackal
As Venezuela sinks into a sharp recession with no obvious means of recovery short of a miraculous rebound in oil prices, and as government workers (usually the most loyal chavistas) appear on the opposition TV station Globovisión to complain about late pay, management harassment and horrible working conditions…
Hugo Chavez praised the imprisoned Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal:
The Venezuelan president praised Carlos – whose real name is Ilich Sanchez Ramirez – during a speech saying: “I defend him. It doesn’t matter to me what they say tomorrow in Europe.”
Ramirez gained international notoriety during the 1970s and 80s as the alleged mastermind of a series of bombings, killings and hostage dramas. He is serving a life sentence in France for the 1975 murders of two French secret agents and an alleged informant.
“They accuse him of being a terrorist, but Carlos really was a revolutionary fighter,” Chavez said during a televised speech to socialist politicians from various countries, who applauded.
Can anyone identify these “socialist” politicians?
In his speech, Chavez also sought to defend other leaders he said are wrongly labeled “bad guys” internationally, including Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Chavez called both of them brothers and said he now wonders whether Ugandan dictator Idi Amin was truly as brutal as he was reputed to be.
“We thought he was a cannibal,” Chavez said, referring to Amin, whose regime was notorious for torturing and killing suspected opponents in the 1970s. “I have doubts. … I don’t know, maybe he was a great nationalist, a patriot.”
So is there any despicable anti-American or “anti-imperialist” whom Chavez has not defended or embraced? The only one I can come up with Kim Jong Il. And that’s probably just an oversight.
Comments
| 22 November 2009, 3:08 am |
Idi Amin, Carlos The Jackal, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez…..what a fine bunch of people.
I guess if you want to be a credible totalitarian madman and still keep your Far-Left kudos, make sure you spout the odd statement condemning the U.S., or perhaps Israel/”The West”/Capitalism.
Obviously Pol Pot didn’t quite have the right marketing campaign going.
Chavez: I don’t know, maybe he was a great nationalist, a patriot
Yeah, so was Hitler mate.
Hard to believe so many on the Left can fall for this shyster just because he sticks two fingers up to the U.S. Time for a lot of people to wake up.
Live long and keep fighting fascism.
| 22 November 2009, 4:44 am |
Carlos the Jackal?????
What on earth does this have to do with the Left?
Gevalt already:(
| 22 November 2009, 6:43 am |
Maybe Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun were not bad guys either.
| 22 November 2009, 8:48 am |
Good grief.
Chavez is completely off his trolley.
Indeed, those who the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
| 22 November 2009, 10:26 am |
Here’s a clue as to the nature of Ilich Sanchez Ramirez’s ideology after he converted to Islam. (Wikipedia) “In June 2003, Revolutionary Islam, a book “compiled and edited by a French journalist, Jean-Michel Vernochet, on the basis of letters, interviews and texts” by Carlos, went on sale.[15] In it Carlos praises Osama bin Laden and the September 11 attacks and advocates Revolutionary Islam as a “new, post-Communist answer to what he calls US `totalitarianism`”, telling readers “from now on terrorism is going to be more or less a daily part of the landscape of your rotting democracies.”
He is generally considered by the left to be lower than vermin.
Though apparently not by Chavez.
| 22 November 2009, 11:25 am |
Well, Andrew, even a sewer-living rat like Chavez needs someone he can look up to, even if it’s only someone in a slightly larger-diameter sewer..
| 22 November 2009, 1:01 pm |
Is Ken Livingstone still working for him as a consultant? Funny choice of friends he has. That Egyptian ’scholar’ fellow, a man who praises Mugabe and other facists….
| 22 November 2009, 2:18 pm |
Chavez allying with Kim Jong Il? That would be like 911 times 2,356.
| 22 November 2009, 4:13 pm |
He missed out Enver Hoxha. Racist.
| 22 November 2009, 4:18 pm |
“Si queremos tener referencias de un país que se adelantó al llamado Socialismo del Siglo XXI y que tiene una filosofía y una ideología que pone el acento en el ser humano y en el papel de las masas populares, no perdamos más tiempo, investiguemos, estudiemos y sigamos el ejemplo de Corea del Norte.”
“If we want to refer to a country that has responded to the call of Twenty-First Century Socialism and which has a philosophy and an ideology which stresses the human being and the role of the popular masses, let us not waste time, let us investigate, study and follow the example of North Korea.”
| 22 November 2009, 5:12 pm |
Monday, in Caracas, a spokesman for the Hugo Chavez government sent a signal of support to North Korea’s capital Pyongyang, and re-affirmed the ideological similarities of the two regimes.
Education minister Hector Navarro, while attempting to open the country’s leading university, Universidad Central de Venezuela, declared that he and the Bolivarian government stood firm in their principles, and that those principles would not change. He then extended a salute of “solidarity” to “friendly nations”, naming, specifically, Algeria, Cuba, Iran, and North Korea.
(Johan Freitas on http://www.neoliberalismo.com)
| 22 November 2009, 7:54 pm |
As a self confessed ‘ lefty ‘ this makes me cringe.
| 24 November 2009, 12:07 am |
Isn’t it time for the Chevez apologists to admit they were wrong?
The venue was the ‘International Meeting of Leftist Parties’ which is organized by Chavez’s own party, the Venezuelan United Socialists Party. Chavez is apparently referring to it as the Fifth International, as if we needed another one.
The PSUV website claims parties from more than 50 countries attended the meeting.