Sean Penn: Conversations With Chavez and Castro

[marmar]

from The Nation:



Conversations With Chavez and Castro
By Sean Penn


November 25, 2008


This video was produced by Brett Story in New York City, November 2008: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081215/penn?rel=hp_picks


Soon to be Vice President-elect Joe Biden was rallying the troops: "We can no longer be energy dependent on Saudi Arabia or a Venezuelan dictator." Well, I know what Saudi Arabia is. But having been to Venezuela in 2006, touring slums, mixing with the wealthy opposition and spending days and hours at its president's side, I wondered, without wondering, to whom Senator Biden was referring. Hugo Chávez Frías is the democratically elected president of Venezuela (and by democratically elected I mean that he has repeatedly stood before the voters in internationally sanctioned elections and won large majorities, in a system that, despite flaws and irregularities, has allowed his opponents to defeat him and win office, both in a countrywide referendum last year and in regional elections in November). And Biden's words were the kind of rhetoric that had recently led us into a life-losing and monetarily costly war, which, while toppling a shmuck in Iraq, had also toppled the most dynamic principles upon which the United States was founded, enhanced recruitment for Al Qaeda and deconstructed the US military.

By now, October 2008, I had digested my earlier visits to Venezuela and Cuba and time spent with Chávez and Fidel Castro. I had grown increasingly intolerant of the propaganda. Though Chávez himself has a penchant for rhetoric, never has it been a cause for war. In hopes of demythologizing this "dictator," I decided to pay him another visit. By this time I had come to say to friends in private, "It's true, Chávez may not be a good man. But he may well be a great one."

Among those to whom I said this were historian Douglas Brinkley and Vanity Fair columnist Christopher Hitchens. These two were perfect complements. Brinkley is a notably steady thinker whose historian's code of ethics assures adherence to supremely reasoned evidence. Hitchens, a wily wordsmith, ever too unpredictable for predisposition, is a wild card by any measure who in a talk-show throwaway once referred to Chávez as an "oil-rich clown." Though I believe Hitchens to be as principled as he is brilliant, he can be combative to the point of bullying, as he once was in severe comments made about saintly antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan. Brinkley and Hitchens would balance any perceived bias in my writing. Also, these are a couple of guys I have a lot of fun with and affection for.

So I called Fernando Sulichin, an old friend and well-connected independent film producer from Argentina, and asked that he get them vetted and approved to interview Chávez. In addition, we wanted to fly from Venezuela to Havana, and I asked that Fernando request on our behalf interviews with the Castro brothers, most urgently Raúl, who had taken over the reins of power from an ailing Fidel in February--and who had never given a foreign interview. I had traveled to Cuba in 2005, when I had the good fortune of meeting Fidel, and was eager for an interview with the new president. The phone rang at 2 o'clock the following afternoon. "Mi hermano," Fernando said. "It is done." ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081215/penn?rel=hp_picks

[IndyOp]

1. Excellent article!

I think it was during the second debate when Obama brought up labor-leaders in Latin or South America being killed -- that is one of the statements he has made that I cling to in hopes that we will be able to create real change.

Also see "Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope" by Tariq Ali
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/2613

[Peace Patriot]

2. Elected "in a system that, despite flaws and irregularities...". Let's put this system in

perspective. In the U.S., half the voting systems in the country are 100% non-transparent--the ones with the touchscreens run on 'TRADE SECRET' code, owned and controlled by far rightwing Bushwhack corporations--and the other half are about 99% non-transparent, also run on 'TRADE SECRET' code, owned and controlled by the same, highly partisan corporatiions. They used optiscans, which have a paper ballot, but some states just dump the ballots into a box and they are never seen again, while even the best states do only a 1% automatic audit (not nearly sufficient for a 'TRADE SECRET' code system). And all the central tabulators are run in the same way--non-transparent; the public has no right to review the innards of these computers--not even our secretaries of states, because the lobbyists for these election theft corporations have re-written our election laws to put themselves in control of our election results.

By contrast, Venezuela has an OPEN SOURCE code electronic system--anyone may review the code by which the votes are tabulated; every vote has a paper record, and they count a whopping 55% of the votes, as a check on machine fraud or error. Their audit is about five times the minimum necessary (10%) to detect fraud in an electronic system (according to the experts whom I most respect).

In this system the fascist opposition wins some (when they are not boycotting the elections), and Chavez and the socialists win some, generally a 60/40 left/right split in the country. Chavez's party won 17 of the 23 state governorships in the by-elections last weekend, although you wouldn't know it--this huge victory for the Chavez government and socialism--from our corpo/fascist 'news' monopoly reports. For one thing, they fail to report that the wingers have been boycotting elections since they lost the U.S.-funded recall against Chavez in 2004, no doubt at the direction of the Bushwhacks, who still held out hope of instigating a fascist coup to be jumpstarted with cries of election "fraud" (aided and abetted by the PR firm of Hillary Clinton's chief campaign adviser, Mark Penn, by the way). This time they participated, and it was expectable that they would win some offices. They predicted that they would win 60/40. The opposite occurred. With all of the shenanigans of the Bushwhacks in Venezuela, and rightwing control of most of the media--and also having lost the Constitutional vote, by a hair, a year ago--it was a remarkable achievement for Chavez and his newly formed socialist party. (He won previous elections with a fragmented political base, and recently pulled the grass roots together into a one party.)

I don't know what "flaws and irregularties" Sean Penn is referring to, in his article. (And I haven't read the whole yet thing, so I don't know if he mentions any detail.) But I do follow Venezuelan elections very closely, and I have seen NOTHING reported about "flaws and irregularities" that come anywhere close to the humongous "flaws and irregularities" in our own system, in which some seven million voters--all of them Democratic, black or other minority voters--were disenfranchised this year (--there went Obama's landslide and overwhelming mandate), and in which fascist corporations own and control the secret code by which all votes are tabulated. But even comparing Venezuela's election system to other transparent systems, Venezuela comes off well, and is so highly regarded that many international election monitors visit Venezuela to learn how it's done.

No system is without some "flaws and irregularities." I just wanted to give an overview of the situation, since the corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies hugely exaggerate ANY flaw they find in Venezuela, of ANY kind. Venezuela has one of the best election systems in the world, and is arguably a far better democracy than our own. It is a country in which the government actively encourages maximum citizen participation, in many different ways, including voting.

[Pastiche423]

3. K&R!