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Hugo Chávez and Al-Qaeda · 28 July 2006, 09:50 CET by Charles Vermeulen

Yesterday’s edition of NRC Handelsblad reported on the world tour of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez and his predilection for authoritarian regimes. The president, a close ally of Fidel Castro, already met Alexander Lukashenko, president of Belarus and "Europe’s last dictator", and President Vladimir Putin. Furthermore, Chávez will visit Iran, Qatar, Vietnam and Mali. He was eager to visit P’yongyang, but even the pro-government, Venezuelan Congress thought that a visit to Stalinist North-Korea would be too controversial. (Merijn de Waal, Chávez bezoekt de ‘as van het goed’, NRC Handelsblad, 27 July, 2006, page 4)

In the previous entry I wrote about Al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahri who seems to be searching for an alliance with the non-muslim, ‘downtrodden’ of the world to join the battle against the ‘tyrannical Western civilization and its leader, America’. Now, one wonders how long it will take before Chávez and Al-Qaeda will find each other. Afterall, the world has already seen more staggering pacts.

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Is Hugo Chávez a Dictator? · 31 March 2006, 16:01 CET by Charles Vermeulen

In his article ‘The Failure of Hugo-Bashing’ Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research is moderately positive about the Venezuelan president as the following quote shows:

"First, Venezuela is a democracy — despite the best efforts of the Bush team to use President Hugo Chavez’s close relations with Cuba’s Fidel Castro as evidence to the contrary. Its elections are transparent and have been certified by observers from the Organization of American States, the Carter Center and the European Union. Freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly and of association prevail, at least as compared with the rest of the hemisphere."

In a report on Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela Human Rights Watch, on the other hand, expresses its concerns on current developments in the country.

"Since winning a national referendum on his presidency in 2004, Hugo Chávez and his majority coalition in Congress have taken steps to undermine the independence of the country’s judiciary by packing the Supreme Court with their allies. They have also enacted legislation that seriously threatens press freedoms and freedom of expression. Several high profile members of civil society have faced prosecution on highly dubious charges, and human rights defenders have been repeatedly accused by government officials of conspiring against the nation. Police violence, torture, and abusive prison conditions are also among the country’s most serious human rights problems."

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