These orchestrated attacks on Chávez are a
travesty
A social revolution is taking place in Venezuela. No wonder the
neocons and their friends are determined to discredit it
By George Galloway
02/28/07 "The
Guardian" The chilling Oliver Stone film Salvador
got a rare airing on television this week. It was a reminder of
a time when, for those on the left, little victories were
increasingly dwarfed by big defeats - not least in a Latin
America which became synonymous with death squads and juntas.
How different things seem now. Yesterday US Vice-President Dick
Cheney came uncomfortably close to the reality of Afghan
resistance to foreign occupation. On the same day Venezuelan
President Hugo Chávez delivered a mightier blow to the neocon
dream of US domination, announcing an extension of public
ownership of his country's oil fields - the richest outside the
Middle East.
Much more is at stake than London mayor Ken Livingstone's
welcome oil deal with Chávez, which will see London bus fares
halved while Venezuela gets expertise from city hall and a
bridgehead in the capital of the US's viceroy in Europe.
Washington's biggest oil supplier is now firmly in the grip of a
social revolution. This month I watched with Chávez as thousands
of soldiers, French and British tanks, Russian helicopters and
brand new Mirage and Sukhoi fighter bombers passed by: the
soldiers chanting "patria, socialismo o muerte" - enough to make
any US president blanch. Chávez answered the salute with the
words: "the Bolivarian revolution is a peaceful revolution but
it is not unarmed".
The music played throughout the event was the hymn of Salvador
Allende's 1970s Chilean government, declaring that the people
united will never be defeated. But Chávez's socialism is a good
deal more red than Allende's - and its enemies seem no less
determined than those who bathed Chile in blood in 1973. Despite
complete control of Venezuela's national assembly - the
opposition boycotted the last elections after being defeated in
seven electoral tests in a row - Chávez has been given enabling
powers for 18 months to ensure he can pilot his reforms through
entrenched opposition from the civil service, big business, the
previously all-powerful oligarchy, their vast media interests
and their friends in Washington. Among those friends we must
include our own prime minister, who only last year declared
Venezuela to be in breach of international democratic norms -
though when I pressed him in parliament he was unable to list
them.
The atmosphere in Caracas is fervid. The vast shanty towns
draping the hillside around the cosmopolitan centre bustle with
workers' cooperatives, trade union meetings, marches and
debates. The $18bn fund for social welfare set up by Chávez is
already bearing fruit. Education, food distribution and primary
healthcare programmes now cover the majority for the first time.
Queues form outside medical centres filled with thousands of
Cuban doctors dispensing care to a population whose health was
of no value to those who sat atop Venezuela's immense wealth in
the past.
Chávez, who regularly pops over to Havana to check on the health
of Fidel Castro, is at the centre of a new Latin America which
is determined to be nobody's backyard. Reliable US allies are
now limited to death squad ridden Colombia, Peru and Mexico -
and latterly then only by recourse to rigged elections. But
Chávez's international ambitions are not confined to the
Americas. He became a hero in the Arab world after withdrawing
his ambassador from Tel Aviv in protest at the bombardment of
Lebanon by US-armed Israeli forces last summer, and has pledged
privately to halt oil exports to the US in the event of
aggression against Iran. This all represents a challenge to US
power which, if Bush was not sunk in the morass of Iraq, would
be at the top of his action list.
Not that his supporters are marking time. The mendacious
propaganda that Chávez is a dictator and human rights abuser is
being spread with increasing urgency by the Atlanticist right
and their fellow travellers, such as leftie-turned-neocon Nick
Cohen who told his London newspaper audience last week that
Livingstone's relationship with Chávez was making him think of
voting Tory. Chávez's decision not to renew an expired licence
for an opposition television station involved in a coup attempt
- there are plenty of others - is being portrayed as the
beginning of the death of democracy. It's as if Country Life's
diatribes against the fox hunting ban were taken as irrefutable
proof of totalitarianism in Britain.
The so-called "dictator" Chávez is nothing of the kind. He has
won election after election, validating his radical course.
Still the fear of a coup - such as in 2002 when Chávez was
removed and imprisoned for three days before millions descended
to the presidential palace to reinstate him - is everywhere. One
Englishman abroad who welcomed the 2002 coup as the "overthrow
of a demagogue" was the foreign office minister Denis MacShane -
a humiliating correction had to be issued following Chávez's
restoration. That tale underscores the importance of the links
being forged between revolutionary Caracas and anti-war London.
Chávez is well aware that the people were defeated in Chile, the
fascists allowed to pass in Republican Spain. Just as in
Venezuela, the defence against counter-revolution lies with the
poor and the working people who are shaping the world they want;
so too must all those internationally who want to see this
ferment reach its potential rally to Venezuela's side.
George Galloway is the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow
and presents a radio show three times a week on TalkSport
www.Georgegalloway.com
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