Zad wroterio wroteThere's a discussion on Chavez on the Jeremy Vine show today, which I shall be listening to at work.Part of me wants to join in the Huzzahs, but something about 95% approval ratings rings the "autocrat" alarm bells.Anyway, this is a very interesting guy. There are also very complementary articles about him in todays Guardian from Ken Livingstone (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1774913,00.html">http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story ... 13,00.html</a>)and Saturday's from John Pilger (<a class="postlink" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1773908,00.html">http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story ... 08,00.html</a>)
Darn, missed El Vino. Good? And I agree with you, he's a bit too good to be true. Even if he has made such improvements, apparently he'll still a dictator...And I don't know about you, but I couldn't give a shit what Ken thinks of him. The man's a wanker for the congestion charge alone, never mind any ridiculously overblown "OMG he called me a Nazi" incidents.
The Jeremy Vine show was good actually. Quite an animated debate between someone from Respect (pro Chavez) and a Venezuelan journalist/writer (against). I was expecting the journalist to achieve pwnage using the old "you don't live there, you're just a leftist idealogue" angle, but actually the Respect guy did a pretty good job and at the end I felt slightly more pro-Chavez than I did before.
As for Ken, I'm fairly indifferent. Something that is worth noting though: That journalist he insulted worked for the London Evening Standard- a product oowned by the Daily Mail group. I doubt he was offended. Rather he was just taking any available opportunity to portray a left-wing politician as an anti-semite. Of course, if said journo was really worried about what Livingstone said, he should probably be advised to change jobs, seeing as how the paper he works for was a big supporter of Hitler in the 1930s, and wanted to stop "the hordes of jews leaving Germany".
