Tag Archives | Venezuela

AP Reports: Hugo Chavez Wasted Venezuela’s Money On Healthcare Instead Of Building A Giant Skyscraper

By JacobSloan on March 21, 2013 in News 0

The western media can’t comprehend why Hugo Chavez used Venezuela’s oil wealth to pull his nation’s population out of poverty, when he could have built an indoor artificial ski mountain like in Dubai. Earlier this month from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting:

One of the more bizarre takes on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s death comes from Associated Press business reporter Pamela Sampson (3/5/13):

‘Chavez invested Venezuela’s oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. But those gains were meager compared with the spectacular construction projects that oil riches spurred in glittering Middle Eastern cities, including the world’s tallest building in Dubai and plans for branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums in Abu Dhabi.’

That’s right: Chavez squandered his nation’s oil money on healthcare, education and nutrition when he could have been building the world’s tallest building or his own branch of the Louvre.

… Read the rest

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On The Legacy Of Hugo Chavez

By JacobSloan on March 7, 2013 in News 8

This past fall, the Independent‘s Owen Jones wrote that Hugo Chavez’s towering feat was “proving it is possible to lead a popular, progressive government that breaks with neo-liberal dogma”:

Even opponents of Chavez told me that he is the first Venezuelan president to care about the poor. Since his landslide victory in 1998, extreme poverty has dropped from nearly a quarter to 8.6 per cent last year; unemployment has halved; and GDP per capita has more than doubled. Rather than ruining the economy – as his critics allege – oil exports have surged from $14.4bn to $60bn in 2011, providing revenue to spend on Chavez’s ambitious social programs, the so-called “missions”.

But when it comes to his relationship with his opposition, Chavez has arguably been pretty lenient. Many of them – including [recent presidential opponent] Capriles – were involved in a US-backed, Pinochet-style military coup in 2002, which failed only after Chavez’s supporters took to the streets.

… Read the rest

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Hugo No More

By JoeNolan on March 6, 2013 in News 12

Kim Monaghan and I recorded an epic episode of Coincidence Control Network today. It’ll likely go live by Thursday. During the recording Monaghan was moved to declare his love for Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. The legally elected Chavez has been vilified as a mad dictator despite the fact that his political roots reach back to his heroic resistance of the former Venezuelan government that ordered soldiers to kill citizens during an uprising.

Tonight, news reports that Chavez has died are all frantically emerging across the mediascape. Chavez had cancer and had contracted a severe infection.

Oliver Stone’s South of the Border (2009) profiles Chavez, picturing a hero of the Venezuelan people who is vilified for his anti-business politics – in other words, he wouldn’t take orders from America. The film also pictures Chavez as the de facto leader of a “pink wave” of socialist leaders who have emerged throughout the region: : Evo Morales of Bolivia; Cristina Kirchner and former president Néstor Kirchner of Argentina; Rafael Correa of Ecuador; Raúl Castro of Cuba; Fernando Lugo of Paraguay; and Lula da Silva of Brazil.… Read the rest

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A New Bermuda Triangle Off The Coast Of Venezuela?

By JacobSloan on January 10, 2013 in News 4

Fancy a trip? The Guardian reports:

The as-yet-unexplained disappearance last Friday of the plane carrying six passengers and crew, including Italian fashion mogul Vittorio Missoni, has prompted some to blame the “Los Roques curse”.

There have been a series of mysterious plane crashes and “vanishings” over the past decade or so between the Caribbean archipelago of Los Roques, where Missoni’s plane disappeared mid-air, and the Venezuelan capital Caracas, 140km to the south. Inevitably, comparisons have been made with the infamous Bermuda Triangle, the area between Miami, Bermuda and Puerto Rico that has long had a reputation for unexplained disappearances of ships and planes.

To date, no wreckage of Missoni’s plane has been located since it took off from Los Roques for Caracas. Venezuela’s civil aviation authority said the aircraft’s last recorded position was 18km south of the Los Roques.

… Read the rest

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Survival International Withdraws Yanomami Massacre Claim

By Matt Staggs on September 12, 2012 in News 11

Picture: Fabio Rodgrigues Pozzebom (CC)

Via BBC News:

Humanitarian organization Survival International made headlines last week when it announced that a village of the Yanomami, an indigenous people living in a remote region of Venezuela, had been massacred by gold miners. Now, it seems, Survival International is in the unenviable position of having to withdraw the story after Venezuelan authorities found the Yanomami alive and well. Read and cringe:

Venezuelan officials said a team sent to the area had found no bodies and no evidence of an attack.

The attack was alleged to have happened in the remote Irotatheri community, close to the border with Brazil.

Survival carried reports from Yanomami organisations which described how illegal gold miners had set fire to a communal house, and how witnesses said they had found burnt bodies.

There were said to be three survivors.

On Monday, Survival International said this account did not appear to be correct…

While Survival International states that the report was incorrect, other advocacy groups have claimed that the Venezuelan government simply may have found the wrong village.… Read the rest

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Margarita Island: Venezuela’s Party Prison

By JacobSloan on June 9, 2011 in News 27

Suppose prison was fun? Venezuela’s San Antonio prison houses 2,000 convicts, including many foreigners from around the globe, mostly convicted on drug charges. They can do anything they want, except leave — there are pool halls, dance parties, swimming, drugs, guns, gender mixing and unlimited visitors. Crazy, yes, but is it any worse than what we have here? The New York Times reports:

Bikini-clad female visitors frolic under the Caribbean sun in an outdoor pool. Marijuana smoke flavors the air. Reggaetón booms from a club filled with grinding couples.

Prisoners barbecue meat while sipping whisky poolside. In some cells, equipped with air-conditioning and DirecTV satellite dishes, inmates relax with wives or girlfriends. (Venezuela, like other Latin American countries, allows conjugal visits.) The children of some inmates swim in one of the prison’s four pools.

Luis Gutiérrez, the warden at San Antonio prison, refused to discuss the prison he nominally oversees. Renowned on Margarita Island as a relatively tranquil place where even visitors can go for sinful weekend partying, is in a class of its own.

… Read the rest

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Venezuelan Inmates Take 22 Hostages Including Prison Director

By Pelliciari on April 28, 2011 in News 4

Miranda State, Venezuela. Photo: Wilfredo R. Rodríguez H.(CC)

In an effort to bring attention to the outbreak of tuberculosis in El Rodeo II prison, inmates are holding officials hostage. Prisoners are hoping such actions are a loud enough shout for help to have medical teams sent in to examine them. BBC reports:

Inmates at a jail in Venezuela have taken the prison director and 21 other officials hostage in an effort to draw attention to an alleged tuberculosis outbreak.

The prisoners at El Rodeo II prison in Guatire in Miranda state are demanding a medical team be sent into the jail to deal with the alleged outbreak.

The government denies there is a tuberculosis outbreak.

Officials say they will not negotiate until the inmates release the hostages.

Deputy Interior Minister Edwin Rojas said holding the officials hostage was “not the most adequate way [for the inmates] to proceed to make their grievances known”.

… Read the rest

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Squatters Take Over 45-Story ‘Tower of David’ in Venezuela

By BananaFamine on March 7, 2011 in News 6

Could you ask for a more poetic sign of the times? Simon Romero and Maria Eugenia Diaz report from Caracas, Venezuela, for the New York Times:

Architects still call the 45-story skyscraper the Tower of David, after David Brillembourg, the brash financier who built it in the 1990s. The helicopter landing pad on its roof remains intact, a reminder of the airborne limousines that were once supposed to drop bankers off for work.

View of Caracas taken from Mount Avila by Gloria Rodríguez (CC)

The office tower, one of Latin America’s tallest skyscrapers, was meant to be an emblem of Venezuela’s entrepreneurial mettle. But that era is gone. Now, with more than 2,500 squatters making it their home, the building symbolizes something else entirely in this city’s center.

The squatters live in the uncompleted high-rise, which lacks several basic amenities like an elevator. The smell of untreated sewage permeates the corridors.

… Read the rest

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Chavez Blames U.S. Gov’t for Absolutely Everything That’s Ever Gone Wrong in History of the Planet

By Raymond on February 1, 2010 in News 8

Blather.net has been around for more than a decade and is one of the best sites for disinfo-style content. This article about Hugo Chavez is funny and sad. The constant pressure of U.S. interests has turned Chavez farther and farther away from sanity since the attempted coup of 2002.

From Blather:

Presidents Chavez and Ahmadinejad blame Obama administration for the Haiti earthquake, conflict in Israel, 13th century plague, the Crusades, the sinking of the Titanic and the clogging of Kim Jong Il’s toilet. A special conference, convened by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has met in Caracas Venezuela to explore ways in which alternative historians can justifiably blame the United States of America for any natural, political or military disaster since the dawn of time.

Historians, anthropologists, economists and randomly selected performance artists gathered together for a lavish five-day event at the Universidad de Pandejos, Caracas at the invitation of the Venezuelan and Iranian presidents.

… Read the rest

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