Comrade Chavez

[Zhukov]

Chavez ponders Mao and Bolivar friendship
Fri Dec 24, 2004 10:33 AM GMT


BEIJING (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has blasted U.S. imperialism, called capitalism the road to hell and said Mao Zedong and Venezuela's 19th century independence hero Simon Bolivar would have been mates had they met.
Addressing students and teachers at Peking University, one of China's top schools, the charismatic Chavez won warm applause and chuckles on Friday when he declared himself to have been a Maoist from the time he was a child.

"I think if Mao Zedong and Bolivar had known each other they would have been good friends because their thinking was similar," said Chavez, who quoted the late Chairman Mao several times.

"Their inspiration came from the same place. It came from humanitarianism...I think if Bolivar had come to China he would have become a socialist," Chavez said speaking in Spanish through a Chinese translator.

Chavez is visiting China hoping to boost China's investment in his country's oil and gas sector. Venezuela, an OPEC member, is the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.

Chavez is known to lambaste his critics in long, rambling speeches that mix government business with personal anecdotes, songs and poems.

The U.S. government is a favourite target and in Beijing he blamed his troubles in 2002-2003 on the United States.

"The thunder and lightening was created by Washington, this I must say," he said to cheers from a group of student supporters in the audience from Latin America.

"This is U.S. imperialism. It wants to become the master of the American continent, but Venezuela's people are the real masters of Venezuela."

Leftist Chavez survived a coup in 2002 and a gruelling oil industry strike a year later. He easily won a referendum on his rule this August.

Chavez on Friday pledged to deepen his self-styled "Bolivarian Revolution" and continue to build a socialist society in Venezuela.

"Capitalists believe in an unequal society. Capitalism is the champion of inequality," he said.

"Capitalism is the road that leads to hell."

But he won his most ringing applause when he re-affirmed Venezuela's support for a "one China" policy and opposition to Taiwan independence.

Beijing maintains that Taiwan is a part of China's territory and has vowed to reunite the self-governed island with the motherland, by force if necessary.

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=643550

 

[NATO AIR]

Chavez is a problem we're gonna have to deal with, one way or another. He's become the 21st century castro rather quickly.

 

[Said1]

"Capitalists believe in an unequal society. Capitalism is the champion of inequality," he said.

"Capitalism is the road that leads to hell."

Funny statement considering he had on problem with capitalism until very recently.

 

[rtwngAvngr]

It's funny he says all this in hope of inreasing chinese capital investment in his country.

 

[Said1]

It's funny he says all this in hope of inreasing chinese capital investment in his country.

And, how did the Venezuelan economy grow by 25+% during the first quarter of 2004? Lots of craft sales?