- A social revolution is taking place in Venezuela. No
wonder the neocons and their friends are determined to discredit it
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- The chilling Oliver Stone film Salvador got a rare airing
on television this week. It was a reminder of a time when, for those on
the left, little victories were increasingly dwarfed by big defeats - not
least in a Latin America which became synonymous with death squads and
juntas. How different things seem now. Yesterday US Vice-President Dick
Cheney came uncomfortably close to the reality of Afghan resistance to
foreign occupation. On the same day Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez
delivered a mightier blow to the neocon dream of US domination, announcing
an extension of public ownership of his country's oil fields - the richest
outside the Middle East.
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- Much more is at stake than London mayor Ken Livingstone's
welcome oil deal with Chávez, which will see London bus fares halved
while Venezuela gets expertise from city hall and a bridgehead in the capital
of the US's viceroy in Europe. Washington's biggest oil supplier is now
firmly in the grip of a social revolution. This month I watched with Chávez
as thousands of soldiers, French and British tanks, Russian helicopters
and brand new Mirage and Sukhoi fighter bombers passed by: the soldiers
chanting "patria, socialismo o muerte" - enough to make any US
president blanch. Chávez answered the salute with the words: "the
Bolivarian revolution is a peaceful revolution but it is not unarmed".
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- The music played throughout the event was the hymn of
Salvador Allende's 1970s Chilean government, declaring that the people
united will never be defeated. But Chávez's socialism is a good
deal more red than Allende's - and its enemies seem no less determined
than those who bathed Chile in blood in 1973. Despite complete control
of Venezuela's national assembly - the opposition boycotted the last elections
after being defeated in seven electoral tests in a row - Chávez
has been given enabling powers for 18 months to ensure he can pilot his
reforms through entrenched opposition from the civil service, big business,
the previously all-powerful oligarchy, their vast media interests and their
friends in Washington. Among those friends we must include our own prime
minister, who only last year declared Venezuela to be in breach of international
democratic norms - though when I pressed him in parliament he was unable
to list them.
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- The atmosphere in Caracas is fervid. The vast shanty
towns draping the hillside around the cosmopolitan centre bustle with workers'
cooperatives, trade union meetings, marches and debates. The $18bn fund
for social welfare set up by Chávez is already bearing fruit. Education,
food distribution and primary healthcare programmes now cover the majority
for the first time. Queues form outside medical centres filled with thousands
of Cuban doctors dispensing care to a population whose health was of no
value to those who sat atop Venezuela's immense wealth in the past.
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- Chávez, who regularly pops over to Havana to check
on the health of Fidel Castro, is at the centre of a new Latin America
which is determined to be nobody's backyard. Reliable US allies are now
limited to death squad ridden Colombia, Peru and Mexico - and latterly
then only by recourse to rigged elections. But Chávez's international
ambitions are not confined to the Americas. He became a hero in the Arab
world after withdrawing his ambassador from Tel Aviv in protest at the
bombardment of Lebanon by US-armed Israeli forces last summer, and has
pledged privately to halt oil exports to the US in the event of aggression
against Iran. This all represents a challenge to US power which, if Bush
was not sunk in the morass of Iraq, would be at the top of his action list.
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- Not that his supporters are marking time. The mendacious
propaganda that Chávez is a dictator and human rights abuser is
being spread with increasing urgency by the Atlanticist right and their
fellow travellers, such as leftie-turned-neocon Nick Cohen who told his
London newspaper audience last week that Livingstone's relationship with
Chávez was making him think of voting Tory. Chávez's decision
not to renew an expired licence for an opposition television station involved
in a coup attempt - there are plenty of others - is being portrayed as
the beginning of the death of democracy. It's as if Country Life's diatribes
against the fox hunting ban were taken as irrefutable proof of totalitarianism
in Britain.
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- The so-called "dictator" Chávez is nothing
of the kind. He has won election after election, validating his radical
course. Still the fear of a coup - such as in 2002 when Chávez was
removed and imprisoned for three days before millions descended to the
presidential palace to reinstate him - is everywhere. One Englishman abroad
who welcomed the 2002 coup as the "overthrow of a demagogue"
was the foreign office minister Denis MacShane - a humiliating correction
had to be issued following Chávez's restoration. That tale underscores
the importance of the links being forged between revolutionary Caracas
and anti-war London. Chávez is well aware that the people were defeated
in Chile, the fascists allowed to pass in Republican Spain. Just as in
Venezuela, the defence against counter-revolution lies with the poor and
the working people who are shaping the world they want; so too must all
those internationally who want to see this ferment reach its potential
rally to Venezuela's side.
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- George Galloway is the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and
Bow and presents a radio show three times a week on TalkSport
- www.Georgegalloway.com
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- © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
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