Chavez's speech today
Joaquin Bustelo <jbustelo <at> gmail.com>
2007-12-01 02:27:37 GMT
Chavez spoke to a huge crowd in Caracas late this afternoon. It was
by a significant amount the hardest speech I've ever heard from him, mostly
to the effect of "Go ahead, make my day." (No, I'm not in Venezuela. I
listened to it -- most of it at any rate -- at work, where we have access to
the satellite signals of the government VTV and the opposition Globo
channel).
Chavez has ordered the military to protect the oilfields and other
installations and warned that if there is any sabotage, any US-inspired
disturbances Sunday night, oil shipments to the U.S. will be cut off
immediately. He singled out the bourgeois media and said that any attempt to
violate the law --which forbids publishing polls in the week before the
election and (alleged) election results before polls close-- will lead to
their immediate shutdown. He warned international broadcasters --and CNN by
name, and repeatedly-- that this or any other sort of shenanigans will be
met with the expulsion of their staff from the country.
He's also expressed very clearly the line he has taken especially
since coming back from abroad, that this referendum is an up-and-down,
yes-or-no vote on the revolution and his presidency. I'm sure the ultralefts
will go, "Aha! Bonapartist plebiscite!" But sometimes you've just got to
call things by their right name. That is what the fight is about -- not
whether the subordinate clause in article 53 is infelicitously worded.
And he made very clear what being with the revolution means -- it
means going against the oligarchs, against Uribe, against the American
imperialists, against the King of Spain, against the European imperialists,
and being in solidarity with progressive and revolutionary forces throughout
the world in general and with Fidel in particular.
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