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Venezuela's Chavez Scoffs at Health Emergency Rumors
CARACAS - Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez on Thursday mocked a U.S. media report that he had been rushed to a hospital with kidney failure linked to the socialist leader's ongoing treatment for cancer.
Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez gestures as he speaks to the media before welcoming Bolivia's President Evo Morales at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas September 17, 2011 (photo: Reuters) "I'm fine, here having my first coffee of the day," a sprightly sounding Chavez, 57, said in one of his regular, lengthy dawn telephone calls to state TV.
"Those who don't love me and want me ill, well bad luck!"
The Miami-based El Nuevo Herald reported overnight that Chavez had been admitted to a military hospital in Caracas due to kidney failure that left him in a dangerous condition.
The president did not specify from where he was phoning, but insisted the latest rumors about his health were wrong.
"Last night, I heard a group of people were spreading rumors," said Chavez, who like his mentor Fidel Castro is now the subject of constant speculation over his well-being.
"We must stop the speculation. I ask the Venezuelan people to ignore these rumors. If anything happened, I'd be the first person to tell you about any difficulty. Nothing's happened beyond what's normal in the treatment process."
Chavez has completed four chemotherapy sessions after surgery in Cuba to remove a cancerous tumor earlier this year.
The former soldier says he is now recovering fully and will win a new six-year term in an election in 2012. He accuses his opponents of exploiting his illness for political gain.
"The rumors are part of their strategy, but they are going to founder against reality," Chavez said.
'A MADHOUSE'
Information Minister Andres Izarra said it was irresponsible reporters, not his boss, who needed medical treatment. "The ones who should be admitted are the journalists of the Nuevo Herald, but to a madhouse," he said on Twitter.
Chavez has had to drastically cut a famously tough work schedule. Prior to his illness, he would frequently give speeches to the nation for up to six or seven hours, drink dozens of cups of coffee a day, and sleep just a few hours.
The president said he was working "at half-throttle" during his convalescence. He said that while rumors circulated about his health on Wednesday he had been meeting his foreign minister for a briefing on the U.N. meeting in New York.
Beyond Chavez, an inner circle of confidants and his doctors, very little is known about the president's precise condition, leading analysts and medical experts to speculate he may be putting a brave face on his treatment.
Chavez had cultivated an image of a robust, sports-loving leader, so while his sickness has given him a small sympathy bounce in opinion polls, it has also threatened to dent an aura of invincibility he has built up during 13 years in power.
(Additional reporting by Mario Naranjo; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Will Dunham)
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64 Comments so far
Show AllSo a dictator in the U.S. who robs are our freedom and terrorizes the world is fine as long as they wear an Armani suit? Maybe you should start a new reality tee vee show giving fashion advice to government leaders. You could call it project bomber runway!
Sigh!
I am pleased to see how many comments there are about Venezuela, once the subject comes up. I would like to see more news from there, as well as from Honduras, Argentina, etc. on Common Dreams. A few comments on the comments:As to the objectivity of Venezuelanalysis: The best way to determine this is to read the site. I think that there is no doubt that it is favorable to the Bolivarian process, but I have seen a lot of critical articles over the years I have been reading it, including some recent ones criticizing the bureaucrats who claim to be Chavistas. (By the way, "Chavezista" is an invention of fuster--"Chavista" is what they say in Venezuela.)
A few years ago someone went over several years of BBC articles on Venezuela and found that out of a few hundred, only four mentioned anything positive about what Chavez and his government were doing. The BBC's bias is just as extreme with regard to Chavez as it is toward, for example, the Palestinians.
The comment about how Chavez has "somehow managed to wreck Venezuela's economy. despite being awash in oil and with oil prices being way high, production is way down and revenues also way down" sounds like the New York Times' point of view. The fact that production is not high has as a lot to do with honoring OPEC quotas and not flooding the market with oil (as was done before Chavez, when the previous governments brought it down to around $10 a barrel.) The IMF says the "investment climate" in Venezuela is terrible, but that is their point of view. Venezuela's reserves are in pretty good shape, and in general the country is doing better than most with regard to unemployment, etc. If you read El Universal or El Nacional (the two big right wing newspapers) you will find that the country is going to hell in a handbasket, but this has to do with their point of view as mouthpieces of the oligarchy more than objective reality. There has been substantial reduction in poverty and hunger, education and health services are in good shape and getting better, and overall living conditions have come a long way in the last decade. There is a long way to go--what else is new?Fuster's remarks about "busting up the oligarchy required some repressive violence aimed their way, but what you see as local councils constructing popular power, other people regard as machines constructed to destroy any groups opposing Chavez's ideas. lots and lots of violence in Venezuela and people working as organizers in Venezuelan trade unions are getting beaten and killed as Chavez's party sets up new unions to replace the established ones." is hard to comment on, because I am not aware of this happening in any large scale systematic way. There has been a lot of violence toward peasant organizers, but that has been carried out by people working for rural oligarchs. There have been clashes between competing union groups, but to describe this as "Chavez's party setting up new unions" by beating and killing people is simply bizarre. The struggles are way more complicated than that, and a lot less violent than Fuster represents. Of course "some people" see popular power as
"machines constructed to destroy any groups opposing Chavez's ideas," but I am not aware of what reality there is behind this perception, apart from the overheated imaginings of the oligarchs about what what might eventually happen. As to "busting up the oligarchy required some repressive violence aimed their way": this is just silly. There has not been any repressive violence aimed at the oligarchy. They hold rallies, marches, etc., and have from time to time staged "guarimbas"--violent, destructive demonstrations, with the police acting with far more restraint than you would ever see in this country. The TV stations and newspapers are way more critical of the government than ours are, and the opposition political parties are in no way repressed. Regarding the supposed "gerrymandering": Venezuela has electoral districts that give somewhat more representation to rural areas than to cities. This is not something new, and it is very similar to the situation is the US. To imply that this is part of a nefarious scheme of the Chavistas is just silly. True, the way things came out in the National Assembly was a piece of luck for the Chavistas, but it is no more nefarious than the way the US Senate is set up to give the people of states with low populations a disproportionate say in legislation. In conclusion I would say that the Bolivarian revolution is remarkable in that it has been virtually non-violent, democratic, and from the point of view of the "popular classes," quite successful so far. Plenty of problems, blunders, confusions, etc., but how one views the process depends to a great extent on one's class position. The majority--those less affluent--are still very much in support of Chavez, not because they are repressed or propagandized, but because they see his government taking their side and improving their lives.
Thanks for skewering Uncle Fester's bullshit.
OH, poor g, but he did no such thing. he conceded that venezuelanalysis is pro-Chavez and he conceded that the election districts are not fair (without admitted just how unfair)and he conceded that oil production is indeed down (although he didn't just how great a drop it is.."Venezuela’s petroleum exports have dropped by almost 50 percent, since peaking at 3.06 million bbl/d in 1997.")
what he attempted was to explain away the facts that I laid out.....and while I appreciate his civil tone, the excuses don't really serve.
you want to remind us all of when it was the districts were last re-drawn?
and you want to argue about the result of that "blatant gerrymandering"?
48% of the doesn't just happen to produce 1.5 times as many seats as 47% of the vote.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/30/AR2010093006194.html
and no, it's not "similar to the US" because here there are two parties trying to screw around ....very different when there's only one party with any power.
I wonder that he is a bit closer to the end of life if he is starting to once again sense the sulfurous odor?
If you go to Venezuela you see a society which is very sharply divided along class lines. The people in the 23 enero neighborhood are solidly pro-Chavez, while the well-to-do folks in the Altamira neighborhood are solidly against him. (Of course there are individual exceptions.) The big newspapers like El Nacional and El Universal are against him, as are the mainstream TV stations. The local, low power radio stations that you find in nearly every poor neighborhood are generally pro-Chavez. There is nothing mysterious about this. The Bolivarian government has made solid improvements in virtually every aspect of life for the lower classes, and they are clearly aware of that. On the other hand, that same government has curtailed the ability of the oligarchy to get away with at least some of their more egregious thievery.Both sides have their own "facts" and even when they do agree about a fact, they put their own spin on it.It all comes down to the words of the old song about Harlan County: "Which side are you on?" It is clear that I am aligned with the people of 23 enero. Fuster's "facts" and their spin are straight out of Altamira and the oligarchical press of both Venezuela and of the US and Britain. This is something you get used to when you try to learn about Venezuela. It's like Harlan County--there are no neutrals there.