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offsite link North Korea Increases Aid to Russia, Mos... Tue Nov 19, 2024 12:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Trump Assembles a War Cabinet Sat Nov 16, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link Slavgrinder Ramps Up Into Overdrive Tue Nov 12, 2024 10:29 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link ?Existential? Culling to Continue on Com... Mon Nov 11, 2024 10:28 | Marko Marjanovi?

offsite link US to Deploy Military Contractors to Ukr... Sun Nov 10, 2024 02:37 | Field Empty

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The Saker
A bird's eye view of the vineyard

offsite link Alternative Copy of thesaker.is site is available Thu May 25, 2023 14:38 | Ice-Saker-V6bKu3nz
Alternative site: https://thesaker.si/saker-a... Site was created using the downloads provided Regards Herb

offsite link The Saker blog is now frozen Tue Feb 28, 2023 23:55 | The Saker
Dear friends As I have previously announced, we are now “freezing” the blog.? We are also making archives of the blog available for free download in various formats (see below).?

offsite link What do you make of the Russia and China Partnership? Tue Feb 28, 2023 16:26 | The Saker
by Mr. Allen for the Saker blog Over the last few years, we hear leaders from both Russia and China pronouncing that they have formed a relationship where there are

offsite link Moveable Feast Cafe 2023/02/27 ? Open Thread Mon Feb 27, 2023 19:00 | cafe-uploader
2023/02/27 19:00:02Welcome to the ‘Moveable Feast Cafe’. The ‘Moveable Feast’ is an open thread where readers can post wide ranging observations, articles, rants, off topic and have animate discussions of

offsite link The stage is set for Hybrid World War III Mon Feb 27, 2023 15:50 | The Saker
Pepe Escobar for the Saker blog A powerful feeling rhythms your skin and drums up your soul as you?re immersed in a long walk under persistent snow flurries, pinpointed by

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Lockdown Skeptics

The Daily Sceptic

offsite link Britain on Brink of Recession After Growth Revised to Zero Following Reeves?s Horror Budget Mon Dec 23, 2024 11:09 | Will Jones
Britain is on the brink of a recession after official figures were revised to show zero growth in the third quarter of the year and living standards fell, with Rachel Reeves's horror Budget blamed.
The post Britain on Brink of Recession After Growth Revised to Zero Following Reeves’s Horror Budget appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link What Fresh Hell is This? The Climate and Nature Bill Mon Dec 23, 2024 09:00 | Paul Homewood
If you thought eco zealot Ed Miliband was bad, wait until you get a load of the Climate Change and Nature Bill, which seeks to turbocharge the Net Zero agenda and already has the support of 192 MPs. Paul Homewood has the skinny.
The post What Fresh Hell is This? The Climate and Nature Bill appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link The Daily Sceptic Christmas Appeal Mon Dec 23, 2024 07:00 | Toby Young
The Daily Sceptic's Christmas Appeal launches today ? an opportunity for readers to show their appreciation of the work we do. Remember, donating just ?5/month or ?50/year will give you access to a range of premium perks.
The post The Daily Sceptic Christmas Appeal appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link News Round-Up Mon Dec 23, 2024 01:12 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

offsite link Staff at ?100 Million Alan Turing Institute Attack ?Chaotic? Management Amid Diversity Row Sun Dec 22, 2024 19:00 | Richard Eldred
Staff at the ?100 million Alan Turing Institute have erupted in protest over a diversity row, accusing leadership of "tokenistic" hiring and sparking fears that the organisation's credibility is at risk.
The post Staff at ?100 Million Alan Turing Institute Attack ?Chaotic? Management Amid Diversity Row appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.

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Voltaire Network
Voltaire, international edition

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?113 Fri Dec 20, 2024 10:42 | en

offsite link Pentagon could create a second Kurdish state Fri Dec 20, 2024 10:31 | en

offsite link How Washington and Ankara Changed the Regime in Damascus , by Thierry Meyssan Tue Dec 17, 2024 06:58 | en

offsite link Statement by President Bashar al-Assad on the Circumstances Leading to his Depar... Mon Dec 16, 2024 13:26 | en

offsite link Voltaire, International Newsletter N?112 Fri Dec 13, 2024 15:34 | en

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I’ll miss Hugo Chavez

category international | anti-capitalism | opinion/analysis author Sunday March 10, 2013 01:51author by Walden Bello Report this post to the editors

I’ll miss Hugo. When I first was introduced to him in Porto Alegre in 2003, he greeted me, “Mi padre,” and said he learned a lot from me. I was dubious about this and thought he was simply buttering me up, like any two-bit politician. Then he started telling me what he learned from Development Debacle, Deglobalization, and Dark Victory. I was stupefied; the guy actually read my stuff!
_hugo_chavez_walden_bello.jpg

About two years later, we met again, this time in Caracas. He told me he was seriously concerned about my safety since he had heard that the Darth Vader Battalion had marked me as a “counterrevolutionary” and targeted me for elimination. He invited me to cool off in Venezuela, telling me he would take me on a tour of the whole country. Thank you, I said, but he shouldn’t worry since I was dealing with a bunch of space cadets, though crazy ones. He asked me through the translator what a “space cadet” was. I tried my best to explain, then he said, “Ahh, un pendejo,” and roared in laughter.

In January 2006, during the World Social Forum in Caracas, he had several of us sit with him on stage and introduced us one by one. When it came to me, he declared grandiloquently that “in his veins runs the blood of Asian martyrs.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or crawl under my chair, while he went on to construct an image of me that, wow, I wish were true!

The next day, at a forum of representatives of social movements, he asked me what I thought about what was happening in Venezuela. I don’t know what came over me, but I made use of the occasion to criticize his government for going back on its promise not to sign the Declaration of the World Trade Organization Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong in December 2005, which would have led to the third collapse of a WTO ministerial, one that would have been the last nail in the coffin of that anti-development mafia dominated by the North. “As a revolutionary, you can’t go back on your word,” I said. He was silent, but that was the last time I got invited to Caracas. The guy was great, but he could not take criticism.

I didn’t take that personally, though, since nobody could kick the US in the ass like he did. He did and got away with what we all wanted to do, and he entertained us in the process, with unparalleled humor, as when he ascended the rostrum at the United Nations General Assembly where US President George W. Bush had spoken the day before and declared that he still smelled the sulfur that was the odor of el diablo.

His was a life that was larger than life, from his conversion to progressive views during the Caracas riots against the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1989, to his failed coup in 1992, when he declared on national television that his plans for the country had to be put on hold “por ahora, for now,” to his victory in the 1998 presidential elections, to his being reinstated in power by the urban poor when the right removed him in a coup in 2002. Along with Nestor Kirchner of Argentina, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador, he put an end to the reign of neoliberal IMF policies that had impoverished the masses of Latin America and inaugurated a new order of resource nationalism cum income redistribution that favored the poor and the marginalized. Perhaps nothing better captures the realities of the life and times of Hugo Chavez than the title of former Financial Times correspondent Hal Weitzman’s recent book, Latin Lessons: How South America Stopped Listening to the United States and Started Prospering.

Washington, of course, hated him and pilloried him for his support of progressive movements throughout the world, like the Palestinian resistance. What galled the Americans even more was that he won all his elections and referenda fair and square. Despite his anti-Yankee bluster, however, Chavez always made a distinction between the rulers and the people of the United States: during the oil price spike in 2007, he ordered the Venezuelan government-owned oil supplier CITGO to provide heating fuel at cut-rate prices to poor neighborhoods in New York, Boston, and other US cities.

Goodbye, Comandante Hugo. You were a class act, one impossible to follow. Wherever you are right now, give ‘em hell.

- Walden Bello represents Akbayan (Citizens’ Action Party) in the Philippine House of Representatives

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