'Shut up about Chavez the killer' Venezuelan co-star tells Sean Penn
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The saccharine conventions of showbusiness were thrown out of the window last week, when the Hollywood actress Maria Conchita Alonso was collared by paparazzi and asked if she was pleased about her former co-star Sean Penn's recent Oscar victory.
"He's an amazing actor. I can't take that away from him," she said of Penn, who worked with her on the 1988 cop film Colors. "It's just that he has no clue at all what's going on in Venezuela. He's been praising Hugo Chavez, who is a dictator and a killer. He should shut up about what he doesn't know." Alonso, who was raised in Venezuela, was apparently upset by a glowing article that Penn had written for The Nation magazine about her homeland's charismatic but increasingly dictatorial left-wing President.
In normal circumstances, Alonso's interview might have been brushed under the carpet. But for the first time a Hollywood insider was saying what much of America thinks: left-wing luvvies in the movie business should wake up to the real nature of their hero. For one thing, Mr Chavez throughout his career has criticised Hollywood as a medium of American "cultural imperialism". And Penn, who since his Oscar-winning performance in Milk has become a vociferous gay rights activist, is also open to allegations of hypocrisy. The Venezuelan leader's political hero, Fidel Castro, imprisoned and executed gay men, and once declared: "In this country [Cuba] there are no homosexuals."
Penn has plenty of company. On Thursday, Benicio del Toro made headlines when he took tea with Mr Chavez at his palace in Caracas. The actor, in Venezuela to promote Steven Soderbergh's film Che, told journalists that his host was "nice" and that he'd "had a good time". Del Toro's comments caused apoplexy on the political right in the US, but lately even Democrats have been perturbed by Mr Chavez's intolerance of media criticism and political opposition.
Last month, through a referendum, Mr Chavez managed to alter the constitution to allow him to run for as many terms of office as he likes, and last week he caused further ructions by nationalising a rice mill owned by the US agricultural giant Cargill. He has frequently threatened to halt all oil exports to the US, and to seize the assets of American petroleum firms with operations in Venezuela.
Other Hollywood liberals face public criticism, most notably Oliver Stone, currently filming an adulatory authorised biopic of Mr Chavez. Stone could be joined in the pillory by Danny Glover, who was given $18m by Mr Chavez in 2006 to make a left-leaning film about Haiti's 19th-century leader, Toussaint Louverture. Harry Belafonte sparked outrage two years ago when he appeared on a platform with Mr Chavez to call George Bush "the greatest terrorist in the world".
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Comments
The left will always promise the "have-nots" of the world everything under the sun to get into power, and Hugo is no different. Neither is Obama for that matter. Hugo and Obama will drive the economies of thier respective countries into the ground before they admit their philosophy is flawed, or that once you've fleeced all the rich people, there won't be anyone left to pay for the false promises that got them into office in the first place.
God forbid someone tells them to get off their collective lazy asses and earn what they want or be satisfied with what they already have.
I WOULD LIKE TO ASK WHAT'S WRONG WITH BEING A LIBERAL OR WHAT IS WRONG ABOUT A REFERENDUM? COME ON, PEOPLE CAN THINK FOR THEMSELVES, DON'T YOU THINK?
When the communication system(s) became advanced, the thinking capability of mankind went down enormously. More people can discuss TV shows, sports, crime and whatever else the media displays, but when government or the philosophies are introduced there is a lull in the conversation.
It is easy to slide backwards when nothing of intelligence is bombarded across the controlled media!
I WOULD LIKE TO ASK WHAT'S WRONG WITH BEING A LIBERAL OR WHAT IS WRONG ABOUT A REFERENDUM? COME ON, PEOPLE CAN THINK FOR THEMSELVES, DON'T YOU THINK?
Nothing wrong with referenda or being a liberal, since I am a US liberal Democrat myself. But, just like his idol Castro, Chavez is no democrat. Consider all the things he has done, which if only his name was George W. Bush he'd be condemned for:
1) Chavez, as a junior military officer, led a bloody coup attempt in 1993 that attempted to overthrow a democratically elected President.
2) Chavez was later released by court order (itself highly questionable, I would argue, given that civilians died during his coup attempt) and won the Venezuelan presidency in 1998.
3) Since then, he has repeatedly revised the Constitution, first to enable himself to run for a second term in office, then to move Venezuela to an officially-mandated socialism. But he was careful to first pack the Venezuelan Supreme Court with his supporters before making any of these moves.
4) The referendum he "won" recently (there is plenty of evidence that the electoral commission, completely under Chavez's control, made sure to swing the result) was his SECOND attempt in fourteen months to enable indefinite re-election for himself. Why the need for the second referendum if he failed in the first attempt? Had not the people already spoken on the matter? I put this question specifically to all those saying Chavez is a democrat respecting the will of the people.
5) Yes, in 2002 or so there was a right-wing attempted coup against Chavez that the Bush Administration quite foolishly supported, rhetorically. To condemn that coup attempt does not remotely mean Chavez is the hero of the day.
6) Oil exports from Venezuela pre-Chavez were 64% of that country's income. Now they are 92% and climbing, even as oil prices have collapsed. In other words, he has made his country MORE dependent on oil as its primary source of income, not less so. If this is a case of President Chavez preparing his citizens for non-oil-related work through better education and whatnot, at a minimum it clearly is not working.
http://thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2
7) Despite his supposed championing of Venezuela's poor, violent crime against the poor has exploded during Chavez's now ELEVEN years in power.
Replace Mr. Chavez's name with Mr. Bush's in all but #5 above, and if it were Mr. Bush distorting democracy in the U.S. in the manner Mr. Chavez has done so in Venezuela, the left would be apoplectic and properly so.
Chavez can trumpet his horn all he likes, but he's just the newest version of the same old tired Latin American strongman, this time justifying his abuses and increasingly authoritarian rule in the name of the poor. That Fidel Castro is Chavez's hero is in itself an indicator of where he's going -- 50 years now and running for the Castro Brothers' dictatorship since they swept into Havana promising to "restore democracy" and the Cuban people are still waiting.
And I am not pointing my finger at his physiognomy. No further comments.
He has turned that around, that is why he is so popular. The powers that be in the West don't like him because they identify with the wealthy ex-ruling class. Too bad. He's a larger than life exhibitionist showman, but there's no denying that his heart is in the right place and that he is trying to look after the interests of the people, despite every attempt by the wealthy opposition and their Western enablers to put the boot in.
More power to him.
"it's not important who the people vote for, but who counts the votes"
oh, and according to the lefty-luvvies here, probably the soviet union was a democracy, with astoundingly uniform voting patterns, i.e. 99.8% for the beloved leader (or syria or cuba or .... the list goes on and on).
Somehow it all goes horribly wrong time after time.
See North Korea.
Let us not forget all the trouble caused by the USA in the Latin America countries over the years.
So far, no statistic, UN or CIA, demonstrated that Chavez is any thing but a capable leader of his people or at least the majority of them who voted him in power twice, and by the looks of it will do so for a third time next year.
So, spare us the diatribe of emigres who are themselves responsible for the 45 year blockade that caused hunger and suffering in Cuba - while they were complaining about Dr. Castro and his ill-treatment of his people.
3 wolves
1 sheep
voting on what to eat for lunch!
If one has power over the press and can talk with a silver tongue;
then one can take advantage of a democratic (mob rule) government.
A democracy has also been called a suicide pack; sooner or later it will kill itself.
"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." Thomas Jefferson
If only that was true, here in the UK it was 22% of the electorate at the last election. 78% of the electorage didn't vote for labour. Of course you can arge that the 40% who couldn't be bothered to get of their arses deserve everything they get.
There are a lot of right wingers like Alonso who throw around words like "dictator" and "killer" because it's easy although they have no basis whatsoever in reality.
Yep, Chavez really is a daemon, he has built a whole new brand of dictatorship......democratic dictatorship!
But crucially, why not ask (and Chavez's detractors never ask) - how come the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans keep electing this man, in thier millions if he is such a tyrant? Poll after poll, at free and fair elections, he just keeps winning! Some may not like the way he does things, but at the end of the day the majority vote him in office. The oppositions should get over themselves, quit moaning and start co-operating if they want to gain respect from the majority of ordinary people who live in Venezuela.
Bush is not the biggest mass murderer in history and if he is so bad why would you have to resort to lies?
Can't you think logically?
Wake up people, one Venezuelan actress has something bad to say about Chavez, and it's just another excuse to criticise the man. Anyway personally I trust Sean Penn's opinion more than Alonso's, face it, she's awful, when someone's been acting for over thirty years, been in over fifty films, and yet the best thing they've had is a co-starring role in Predator 2, that's when you know they're in the wrong business.
But OK, maybe you're right, maybe we are a little too left wing here, relative to you. We need to learn a lesson from across the Atlantic where nearly half of the electorate (46%) voted for a Republican ticket on which there was that great right wing thinker Sarah Palin.
And for those of you defending the tyrant Chavez, elections can be fixed (and people can be stupid as shown by the recent elections in the US) and the fact that he managed to secure power for himself indefinitely is horrifying. Nothing new, but still horrifying. Term limits are badly needed more now than ever.
In 1940s Germany Jews were the enemy. Respect to Jane Fonda for standing up for what she believed in and having dealings with people whose crime was to have been targeted by Japanese French and US colonial military powers.
And how strange for The Independent to host comments claiming that providing universal healthcare is buying votes, and therefore undemocratic. Guess that means the US is the only democracy amongst the industrialised nations, eh?
(2) When did Fidel Castro ever execute a gay man for being gay?
(3) What is the term limit for British prime ministers?