Al Jazeera Wrongly Accuses Chavez of Supporting Gaddafi

[Fulanito de Tal]

http://blogs.aljazeera.net/africa/2011/02/24/live-blog-libya-feb-25


4:27am Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, has backed Muammar Gaddafi on Twitter.

Chavez tweeted:

Gaddafi is facing a civil war.

Long live Libya. Long live the independence of Libya.

Chavez's tweet makes no mention of supporting Gaddafi. That was Al Jazeera's statement.

[RadioRaheem84]

Exactly. It seems like even Al Jazeera is prone to anti-Chavism.

[Nolan]

He does. Gaddafi and Chavez are buddies like two oil executives.

Chavez and Gaddafi are both third positionists.

[Artemis3]

Hmm, this might prompt the end of Telesur/Al-Jazeera cooperation agreements... No wonder Telesur has sent their own journalists.

[Mr.Awesome]

To be honest, Chaves' tweet seems pretty anti-Gaddafi to me :blushing:

[Proukunin]

To be honest, Chaves' tweet seems pretty anti-Gaddafi to me :blushing:

That's what I get when reading it.

Oh well, other news sources have taken that and expressed how much castro and chavez love gaddafi and take up for the genocide he is doing..


why would anyone support this?

[Blackscare]

Chavez and Gaddafi are both third positionists.

Yea, I hear that they're pan-slavic monarcho-trotskyists too. :thumbdown:

[Devrim]

To be honest, Chaves' tweet seems pretty anti-Gaddafi to me :blushing:That's what I get when reading it.

Oh well, other news sources have taken that and expressed how much castro and chavez love gaddafi and take up for the genocide he is doing..


why would anyone support this?

I read it as being pretty pro-Gaddafi. Maybe that is what I expect from him and read between the lines a little. Those who are pro-Chavez will obviously do the same thing.

Devrim

[gorillafuck]

Yea, I hear that they're pan-slavic monarcho-trotskyists too. :thumbdown:Because that's equally ridiculous as calling them third positionists?

[Nolan]

Yea, I hear that they're pan-slavic monarcho-trotskyists too. :thumbdown:

Chavez is a Trotskyist. He said so himself.

[gorillafuck]

Imagine if someone said "long live the United States" if the US had a civil war. I dunno about you all but I'd probably interpret that as being in favor of the current US government.

[Delirium]

Well most of what chavez and castro have been talking about is the possibility of us intervention. When he says long live the independce of libya i take it as and anti-us statement rather than pro-gadaffi.

[Nolan]

Imagine if someone said "long live the United States" if the US had a civil war. I dunno about you all but I'd probably interpret that as being in favor of the current US government.

Well to be fair, not if it was a teabagger.

[Q]

This article may help (http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6016). Some bits:


Venezuela’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also released a statement yesterday, advising that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nicolas Maduro, had communicated by phone with his counterpart in Lybia, Mussa Kussa.

In the conversation, Kussa said Gaddafi remained in Tripoli, “carrying out his duties and tackling the situation in the country”.

Maduro said he hopes the Libyan people “find, in exercising their sovereignty, a peaceful solution to their difficulties, one that preserves the integrity of the people and the Libyan nation, without the interference of imperialism, whose interests in the region have been affected in recent times.”
No critical note here.

Another:

In 2009, Libya named a football stadium after Hugo Chavez, and recently, during a visit to Venezuela, Gaddafi presented Chavez with a Bedouin tent. Also in 2009, while Chavez was visiting Libya, he commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Libyan “revolution” with Gaddafi. There, Chavez expressed his support for African unity.
Sounds to me they're pretty buddy buddy.

In another article (http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/a_regime_we_can_trust?page=0,5):

Qaddafi's rambling 2009 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, in which he branded the Security Council a "terror council" and insinuated that the U.S. government was behind both 9/11 and swine flu, may have confused and annoyed most of the international community, but it won him a fan in the Venezuelan president, who praised the Libyan leader in his own address and invited him to a summit that month on the Venezuelan island of Margarita, calling him "one of the great leaders of this century."
Just saying.

[Blackscare]

Because that's equally ridiculous as calling them third positionists?

Yes. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Position)

[Cheung Mo]

Chavez is a Trotskyist. He said so himself.

Delusional fascists have been known to die while singing the Internationale.

Chavez is an anti-imperialist social democrat who seeks an alternative within capitalism. He's not a Trotskyist. That he genuinely wants the things that a lot of neolib estalishment "social democrats" in the Global North (and elsewhere) claim to want doesn't make a Trotskyist. Plenty of liberal governments mobilized both the people and state machinery in attempts to bring about universal literacy, and plenty of conservative governments have nationalized natural resources, utilities, and certain industries to the extent that Chavez has seemed willing to.

Either way, Chavez's relationship with and support for Gaddafi are disturbing. For all that's wrong with both Mugabe and Ahmadinejad (and to a lesser extent, that misogynistic, Ultramontane twit, Ortega), there is a broader anti-imperialist context which justified warm relations with their regime in certain domains. There's nothing of that sort with Gaddafi. He gives millions of dollars to far-right political organizations throughout Europe, he gets on famously with scum like Berlusconi and Blair, he does business with the most reactionary and bloody factions of the bourgeoisie on a regular basis, and he and his children have plenty of friends among the elite and the so-called "respectable" people. And unlike Berlusconi, Ortega, and the average GOP Primary convention attendee, I'm pretty sure Chavez isn't fucking the same underraged prostitutes as Gaddafi.