"What about Zimbabwe?" you ask.

I'll tell you.

The U.S. added several Zimbabwe government businesses to its list of sanctioned companies.

And now I suppose you want to know what the Zimbabwe government's response has been.

Zimbabwe's information minister has dismissed new United States sanctions that target him and other members of President Robert Mugabe's ruling party, saying "imperialist" Washington could go to hell.

  Mail & Guardian article

Thanks to Maru for the link, as he asks the question, "You mean that asshole imperialist?"

By the way, I read a Venezuelanalysis article recording that account of Chavez getting righteous in a speech to a crowd of supporters, in which the quoted term was not "asshole" but "jerk."

Either one works.

I'm going to transcribe for you some excerpts of Hugo's welcoming speech at the G-15 summit last week, so you can see why the asshole and his comrades are so anti-Chavez.

Speech by President Hugo Chavez, at the opening of XII G-15 Summit Monday, March 1, 2004 ...A proposal arising from the Summit of Non-Aligned Countries in Algiers in 1973 is now become important: the need to create a new international economic order. The UN Assembly ratified this proposal in 1974, but it has become simply a historic reference. ...All the great struggles, ideals and proposals have sunk in the Neoliberal Flood...and the triumphant chant of neoliberal globalization, which today, besides being an objective reality, is a weapon of manipulation intended to force us to passiveness, calls for an economic world order that excludes our countries in the South and condemns them to the never-ending role of producers of wealth and recipients of leftovers. Never before has the world had such a tremendous scientific-technical potential, such a capacity to generate wealth and well-being. But authentic technological wonders that have brought every country in the world close, regardless of distance, have not been capable of bringing well-being for everyone - but rather, only for a meager 15% living in the countries of the North. ...The great possibilities that a globalization of solidarity and true cooperation could bring to all people in the world through scientific-technical wonders has been reduced by the neoliberal model to a grotesque caricature of exploitation and social injustice. Our countries of the South have been told a thousand times that the sole true "science" capable of ensuring development and well-being for everybody was synthesized in unregulated markets, privatizing everything, and creating conditions for transnational capital investment, banning the State from intervening in the economy. ...Neoliberal thought and politics were created in the North to serve their interests, but it should be highlighted that they have never been truly applied there...We are, dear friends, in Latin America, the favorite scenario of the neoliberal model in the past decades. Here, neoliberalism has reached the status of dogma and has been applied with the greatest severity. Its catastrophic results can be easily seen and are the explanation for the growing and uncontrollable social protest that the poor people and excluded people of Latin America have been expressing, every day more vigorously, claiming their right to life, to education, to health, to culture, to a decent living as human beings. ...The neoliberal model promised Latin Americans greater economic growth, but during the neoliberal years, growth has not even reached half of that which was achieved in the period of 1945-1975 with different politics. ...We were asked to be ultraliberal in trade and to lift any barrier which may obstruct imports coming from the North. But the vocal champions of free trade actually are champions of protectionism. The North spends $1 billion per day in practicing what the South has been banned from doing - subsidizing inefficient products. ...Each cow grazing n the European Union receives in its four stomachs $2.20 a day in subsidies, thus having a better situation than 2.5 billion poor people in the South who barely survive with an income of less than $2.00 per day. With the FTAA, the government of the United States wants us to reach a zero tariff situation in their benefit and wants us to give away our markets, our oil, our water resources and our biodiversity, in addition to our sovereignty, whereas walls of subsidies for agriculture keep access closed to the markets of that country. It is a peculiar way of relieving the huge commercial deficit of the United States, doing exactly the opposite of what they present as a sacred principle in economic policy. Neoliberalism promised Latin Americans that if they accepted the demands of multinational capital, investments would overflow the region. Indeed, the incoming capital increased. A portion to buy state-owned companies sometimes at bargain prices. Another portion as speculative capital to seize opportunities in the financial liberalization environment. The neoliberal model promised that after a painful adjustment period necessary to deprive the State of its regulatory power over economy and to liberalize trade and finance, wealth would spread over Latin America, and the long-lasting history of poverty and underdevelopment would be left behind. But the painful and temporary adjustment became permanent, and it appears that it will become everlasting. ...Even though social struggles are growing sharp, and even some governments have been overthrown by uprisings, we are told by the North that neoliberal reform has not yielded good results because it has not been fully implemented. So they now intend to recommend the formula of suicide. ...Passive acceptance of the exclusionary rules imposed by this economic and social order cannot be exercised by Heads of State and government who have the highest responsibility for our people....Passivity and grieving are useless. Instead, joined and firm action is the sole conduct that will enable the South to rise from its sad role of exploited and humiliated rearguard. ...I propose that we: -- focus our attention and political actions on "Grants for the South" to students from underdeveloped countries to continue studies in the South -- cooperate in matters of health to decrease infant mortality, provide basic medical care, fight AIDS, and many other actions that would only be possible if we foster them with solidarity [to combat] expensive and ineffective dependency on the North -- advance the system of trade preferences among developing countries; promote compensation trade and investment flows within the South instead of competing in a suicidal fashion amongst ourselves offering concessions to the multinationals of the North -- establish a University of the South -- create a Bank of the South ...But finally, dear friends, I would like to mention in particular a proposal which, in my opinion, has great significance within this set of proposals: In the South we are victims of the media monopoly of the North which acts as a power system responsible for disseminating in our countries and planting in the minds of our citizens information, values and consumption patterns that are basically alien to our realities and that have turned themselves into a most powerful and effective tool of domination. Domination is never more perfect than when the dominated people have internalized the views of the dominator. To face and begin to change this reality, I propose the creation of a TV channel that could be seen throughout the world showing information and pictures from the South...to broadcast our own values, our own roots, and to tell the people of the world..."The South Also Exists".

The South is indeed rising again. This time on a global stage. And once again, the North is the staging ground of corporate capitalists.

History recycles stories.

I guess my dear old deaf grandfather was right. He used to watch television without sound (in the days of two TV channels: CBS and NBC), and when I asked him how he could know what was happening, he said, "For all the shows, there are only two plots."

Archetypal stories. Variations on a theme.

Previous posts on Venezuela
More information on Venezuela