The Blue Voice

Monday, November 12, 2007

More on Chávez and the King

King Juan "why don't you shut up, punk?" Carlos I of Spain

This is a somewhat longer video than I linked before of the now-famous encounter between Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, on the one hand, and Prime Minister Zapatero and King Juan Carlos of Spain, on the other. Doggone if I can make the embed work. But here's the link, from Clarín: Zapatero, Chávez y el Rey Juan Carlos. There's also a similar version now on YouTube.

The King's crack to Chávez became an instant favorite on the Internet: ¡Que nadie se calle! El Mundo 11.11.07 (includes audio of a ring-tone version); "¿Por qué no te callas?", la frase de moda en Internet Clarín 11/12/07 (I'll modestly note that readers of this blog heard about it pretty early on.) It's kind of sad, but inevitable. King Juan Carlos deserves a great deal of credit for facilitating the transition to democracy in Spain after the death of the late, (should-be) unlamented Francisco Franco. But, "Why don't you shut up, punk?" will probably be the most famous quotation of his life.

Before I go into the rest, I'd say Zapatero handled this situation with a great deal of dignity. What he was doing was the correct thing in demanding that Chávez show respect to Spain in that diplomatic setting, even though he knows what a major-leak jerk Aznar can be. And can you imagine how moritified he must have been when the King piped up and stuck his foot in his mouth like that? For the King to blurt out something like that is funny to us commoners. But Zapatero had to know instantly that Juan Carlos had made a fool out of himself by tossing aside royal protocol like that. And, good grief, this is the King of Spain at a meeting of nations almost all of which were once Spanish colonies. And here's the Socialist Prime Minister trying to do the right thing and the King is talking to the head of one of the main oil-producing countries on earth and a former Spanish colony as though the King thought he was talking to trailer trash. Zapatero probably wanted to punch the King in the mouth at that moment. But he handled it with remarkable diplomatic poise.

This video in El País shows Zapatero (left) and Aznar (right) talking about Zapatero's defense of Aznar, for which Zapatero actually got no love at all from Aznar's party, the Partido Popular (PP). That's not exactly what the video shows, though. El País is considered the leading "quality" paper in Spain. Can you imagine the New York Times running something that would spoof our Glorious Leader Bush like this? Even if you don't understanding Spanish, you will be able to appreciate the question if you watch it: El País de 'Los Guiñoles'

Even though Zapatero defended him, the PP didn't have the good grace to appreciate the fact that the Socialist (PSOE) Prime Minister diplomatically defended Aznar's hiney over one of his more questionable actions during his time as prime minister. They're bitching about how Zapatero ought to recall the Spanish ambassador to Venezuela and yadda, yadda. The PSOE pointed out that Aznar himself managed to visit Chávez 14 times. The implication being, to paraphrase the King, "Why don't you shut up, PP punks?"

But whatever you think of Chávez' "populist" brand of democracy, as his critics like Mario Vargas Llosa have been known to call it, his question that he posed to King Juan Carlos after their famous encounter is a perfectly reasonable one: did you know about the attempted coup against the elected Venezuelan government in 2002? ("La pregunta que me hago es... bueno que responda el Rey de España. Señor Rey, responda ¿sabía usted del golpe de Estado contra Venezuela, contra el Gobierno democrático, legitimo, de Venezuela en 2002?") See Chávez reta al Rey a revelar si conocía el golpe de Estado de Caracas en 2002 El País 12.11.07. The King should make a response.

A bit of recent history, sadly underreported in the Establishment press in the US (imagine that!): Chávez was briefly ousted in a coup in 2002 but the coup crumbled essentially within hours and Chávez maintained his elected power as President. Whatever validity there may be in some of the opposition's criticisms of some of Chavez' methods of governance, the real reason that Venezuela's economic royalists wanted to oust their elected government was that they had been living big off the state-owned oil company PDVSA (prounounced pay-day-vay-sa) and Chávez came up with the subversive idea of devoting a larger share of that oil revenue to programs that would benefit working people and the poor.

The American ambassador was on the phone within hours giving advice to the coup leaders, practicing the Dick Cheney version of "democracy promotion", i.e., oil interests always come first and who the hell wants to bother with this election nonsense anyway? From the news I've read on it, the Cheney administration wasn't necessarily taking the lead on promoting the coup, although they were happy to go along and actively cooperated.

According to the Spanish news magazine Cambio 16, (link to the Web site, not the particular article), Aznar's government in Spain also cooperated in promoting the coup, along with the wealthy and powerful Catholic order Opus Dei in Spain. The secretive Opus Dei figures in many conspiracy theories, but just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not after you. Opus Dei was founded to promote reactionary politics and religion in Spain, was a pillar of support to Franco's dictatorship and is the most important reactionary group in the Roman Catholic Church today. Pope Ratzinger I (Benedict XVI) has been an enthusiastic sponsor of the group. It's not at all far-fetched that Opus Dei would have been involved in a scheme like this. (I'll try to pull out that article soon and post on it.)

On the subject, see:

"US revealed to be secretly funding opponents of Chavez" Independent 03/13/04; quoted in my blog post of 03/14/04. (This is one reason I developed the annoying blog-habit of citing the names and sources of articles in my posts; it leaves me with a reference when the original links go dead.)

Lötterdämmerung by James Galbraith The American Prospect Online 12/17/02. He refers to a later attempt by the Cheney-Bush administration to promote a coup against Chávez.

Venezuela has another little beef with the US. The US is refusing to extradite accused terrorist and Venezuelan national Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela to stand trial for blowing up a Cuban plane on a flight from Venezuela in 1976 on which 73 people were killed. The Cheney-Bush administration says they won't extradite him because he might be tortured in Venezuela. I wonder how much credible that sounds to the rest of the world. The Iberamerican Summit of 2005 demanded that he be extradited. The National Security Archive summarized some of the contents of documents they got released on the case (Luis Posada Carriles: The Declassified Record 05/10/05):

The National Security Archive today posted additional documents that show that the CIA had concrete advance intelligence, as early as June 1976, on plans by Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb a Cubana airliner. The Archive also posted another document that shows that the FBI's attache in Caracas had multiple contacts with one of the Venezuelans who placed the bomb on the plane, and provided him with a visa to the U.S. five days before the bombing, despite suspicions that he was engaged in terrorist activities at the direction of Luis Posada Carriles.