Current Affairs

From BBC:

Mr Chavez, a radical leftist, will meet the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone as well as some Labour MPs and union leaders during his two-day trip.

But he will not meet Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom he has called a pawn of the “imperialist” US.

Mr Chavez controls a country with the world’s fifth largest oil supply. On Friday Mr Blair urged Venezuela to use its energy resources responsibly.

The BBC’s World Affairs correspondent Chris Morris says Mr Chavez is following in the footsteps of Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Mr Chavez combines populist economics, authoritarian politics and a fundamental dislike of the United States - particularly the way he says it tries to dominate its neighbours, our correspondent says.

From World Net Daily: about the dictatorial Bolivarian project. Looks like Chávez’s ex-mistress thinks of Chavez as a dictator and worse in fact than what Blair has said ever.

Herma Marksman, who spent nearly 10 years of her life as “the other woman” at the side of Hugo Chavez, as the military man plotted his way to power in the ’80s and 90’s, still recalls her ex-lover as “sweet” and “kind,” but when it comes to his current rule over Venezuela, the ex-mistress uses words like “totalitarian” and “fascist dictatorship.”

The professor of history, who’s written two books about Chavez’s politics, told the London Times: “He is imposing a fascist dictatorship. A totalitarian regime is coming because he doesn’t believe in democratic institutions. Hugo controls all the powers.”

Marksman, whose home was used by Chavez to plan his coup against the Venezuelan government, says the two once shared a dream of “a prosperous Venezuela where justice would reign”.

“We were preparing for the time when we would be in government,” Marksman has written. “We wanted to establish a state in which the law was respected, to abolish corruption, to develop our basic industries and to do a real restructuring of the education system. None of that has happened.

“If anything, there has been a turning for the worse. Today there is more injustice, and no sign of that group of democrats who voiced, and accepted, different opinions. We live under an autocrat who does not respect the separation of powers. There is a chief justice who does not act, a financial comptroller who does not control, an ombudsman who only defends government interests. So where is the Bolivarian project?”

UPDATE: Chavez, to give Europeans cheap oil? My goodness if this is true, how low we have fallen…

Tags: Chávez, Great Britain, Tony Blair, Venezuela, Herma Marksman