"Don't mess with me girl"

[Byzantine Prince]

another Chavez laughfest. Our beloved Fuhrer is telling Condleeza not to **** with him.

"Don't mess with me, Condoleezza. Don't mess with me, girl," Chavez said during his weekly Sunday broadcast, sarcastically offering her a kiss and jokingly referring to her as "Condolence."

CNN-link

Don't mess with the great man that is Hugo Chavez.

[Proletariat]

I LOLed. Keep it coming, Chavez. Great stuff.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Sounds likes he's insecure.

Crazed Rabbit

[discovery1]

Does anyone take him seriously?

[bmolsson]

Well, he got oil.....

[Ronin]

I say that next time she goes over there he just slaps her across the face and then go like....


"I´m Rick James *****!"



man....what a looney...

[Kanamori]

Well, he got oil.....

It's very unfortunate too. I don't know if the US still gets tons of oil from Venezuela, but I wonder how that's working out between them.

[Beirut]

I have to admit, I'm liking this guy more and more.

The world is full of psychos, tyrants, and crooks running countries, Chavez is certainly no worse than the rest of them, but at least he's colourful.

I love the part where the State Dept. accuses him of fostering good relations with Cuba. Oh God forbid!

[KukriKhan]

"Condi = girl". Ha! Can't wait for her to get all Oprah on his macho-talkin' butt .

http://www.angryblackwoman.com/

[Louis VI the Fat]

I don't know if the US still gets tons of oil from Venezuela, but I wonder how that's working out between them.

Oh, they do. What alternative does one have? If you want oil, you're going to have to deal with some raving mad regime somewhere. Be it Iran, Russia, Nigeria or Venezuela.

I'm sure there is some sort of direct correlation between 'amount of oil' and 'wackiness of regime'. Must be God's sense of humour.

[Reenk Roink]

Errm.. The guys has the vices of any other politician (even American ), except he's cooler...

[doc_bean]

The job of a President is to draw attention away from anything remotely important. He's the best president EVAR !

[AntiochusIII]

The job of a President is to draw attention away from anything remotely important. He's the best president EVAR !

Hai!

Wow. I think JAG's "study abroad" program work as Chavez's personal speechwriter is world-class. Where's the Pulitzer?



Now we shall put Hugo Chavez into a purple suit with a cane, and calls him "A Pimp Named Chavez." [/Boondocks reference] Oh, and I think next year we'll have Chavez as the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, with no apparent reason, of course, except that he's cooler than even BEP's old song, "Where is the Love?"

[Soulforged]

The job of a President is to draw attention away from anything remotely important. He's the best president EVAR !

No but seriously:

The warning comes days after Rice described Venezuela as one of the "biggest problems" for the Western Hemisphere and promised to develop regional alliances as part of an "inoculation" strategy to expose what the State Department calls anti-democratic behavior in Venezuela.

I wouldn't call it unimportant on the very least, we all know how easy a menace like this from a potence can turn effective. What Chavez said is, again, pure rethoric, but behind this messages there's always some substract of truth, the venuezuelan administration might be treating this subject very seriously, and frankly I'm pretty tired myself of Condoleeza.

[Major Robert Dump]

Him and Zhirinovsky should hang out. I laughed so hard when I read what that bolshevik said about poor Condi I woke my neighbors up the night that story broke. Chavez needs to work harder if he's gonna try to keep pace with Z.....

[KukriKhan]

Him and Zhirinovsky should hang out. I laughed so hard when I read what that bolshevik said about poor Condi I woke my neighbors up the night that story broke. Chavez needs to work harder if he's gonna try to keep pace with Z.....

Yeah, another Locker-room analyst on the international stage, that's what we need. Pravda gives his insights big play:

http://english.pravda.ru/main/18/88/...ndoleezza.html

”Condoleezza Rice released a coarse anti-Russian statement. This is because she is a single woman who has no children. She loses her reason because of her late single status. Nature takes it all.

”Such women are very rough...

Later in his quoted remarks, he proposes a solution to her roughness, involving soldiers and barracks.

Funny guys. Imagine the flak if she were president some day.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

Chavez is nothing if not entertaining.

Soul':

You keep asserting that Chavez' comments are largely "rhetoric" and that while there may be substance behind them, much of what he is saying is just hyperbole and showmanship.

On one level, I agree with you. However, I think that many politicians -- Chavez among them -- as well as yourself have not caught on to a fundamental shift in political interaction: the fruition of MacLuhan's "global village" and its spin-off problems for politicos everywhere.

We now live in a world where, for at least the last 5-10 years, virtually everybody between 18 and 40 (along with a sizeable percentage of those outside that demographic) is connected to the web during all of their waking hours unless they strive not to be. Cell-phones, blogging, net-surfing, the 24-hour news cycle of story bombardment etc. mean that ANY politician's words in ANY venue and on ANY occaision are now public domain. There will no longer be a chance for "Red Meat" speeches to be given to one's followers or party supporters simply to pump up their energy. ALL such communication will be blogged, translated, disected and fed into the unquenchable hunger of the 24-hour web/news world. We are no longer connected by Mass Media -- a la MacLuhan -- we ARE mass media, and the messages never stop.

A lot of the politicos, most of whom are 45+ in most cultures, aren't quite as in tune with this. 25 years ago, you gave your speech to the party faithful, they got pumped up, and everybody went home. Now, 6 bloggers have your words on the net in 20 minutes, 16 other bloggers from the other "team" are disecting your words, quoting anything outrageous, and feeding this into the mainstream media. Instead of going home, you get back to your room to find 3 reporters waiting for you to comment on the outrageous comments you made 34 mintues ago that "EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT." The semi-privacy of internal versus external, at least in politics, is gone. All statements are fully public at all times....and, Hilary, don't mumble too loudly while you take a nap on the plane.

[Tribesman]

Hilarious , take a local folk song , put it in a speech and watch the media have a fit .

[Adrian II]

Sounds likes he's insecure.

Guess who is insecure?

[Don Corleone]

Guess who is insecure?

No offense Adrian, but the Council on Foreign Relations is not exactly an unbiased view of the world. It's Jimmy Carter's cheering squad. I could put 3 or 4 articles from conservative foreign policy think tanks that could claim the exact opposite, that with the exception of Chavez, we've never been in a stronger position in Latin America.

I don't believe that any more than I believe Mr. Hakim's one-sided rant. The truth is a lot more complicated... no discussion of policy in Latin America is complete without at least a tacit acknowledgement that one of the largest roadblocks to strong relationships in Latin America is the undue influence that drug cartels wield in much of that part of the world.

The author rightly identfies that efforts in Latin America have taken a lesser role in national prominence in light of the ongoing War on Terror, but isn't that natural? Wouldn't you expect the hijacking of 4 jets and the loss of 3000American citizens, a national landmark and a large portion of the headquarters of your defense deparment to trump anger and disillusionment from Latin America that they're not getting all the US Aid that they think they're entitled to?

He makes the mistake that most policy analysts do... he's an expert on one part of the world, but he writes his analysis in a vaccuum and fails to place his sphere of knowledge in the context of the global picture. I could picture a guy writing the exact same policy statement on South East Asia... "America is missing a golden opportunity to bring Vietnam back into normalized and healthy relationships". Well, yeah, we are, but how many things can we do at one time?

[Adrian II]

No offense Adrian, but the Council on Foreign Relations is not exactly an unbiased view of the world.

You could have fooled me. Their January/February issue has a good article praising the new Iraqi Constitution. Instead of pooh-poohing a mag which you apparently never read, you might address the article. After all Hakim is not even a member of the Council.

I could put 3 or 4 articles from conservative foreign policy think tanks ..

Go right ahead. Let's see if they can refute Hakim's statements about U.S. prestige in Latin America, particularly the part about the attitude of Latin American elites.

[JAG]

another Chavez laughfest. Our beloved Fuhrer is telling Condleeza not to **** with him.



CNN-link

Don't mess with the great man that is Hugo Chavez.

When you go so right wing BP? You used to have some sense ;p

Chavez is far from a 'fuhrer' he is more democratically elected and responsible than Bush. Pandering to popular right wing myths at the start of a thread probably isn't the best thing to do, in my opinion anyway.

As to the topic of the thread, I see no problem. The US 'bigs itself up', constantly in terms of foreign nationals, leaders and countries. He is doing nothing out of the ordinary.

[Don Corleone]

Is the Council on Foreign Relations something I frequently peruse? No. Would I be sufficiently familiar with it to recognize that an author of an article posted on it's website is not a frequent contributor? No.

However, among other things, the Council on Foreign Relations has called for a unified government of Canada, Mexico and the United States with appointed leaders of the continent wide leadership council. (Lou Dobbs CNN, June 9, 2005)

Not somebody for whom I'm going to sacrifice a great deal of time listening to, as I tend to actually believe in the principal of national sovereignty.

That being said, I still stand behind my critique: that the article you posted is written from a point of view that focuses solely on US-Latin American relations and fails to place them into the perspective of other responsibilities the US has around the globe. It also fails to even briefly touch on what I would consider to be the defining issue in US-Latin American relations, namely the traffic of illegal narcotics and the USA's on-again/off-again war on drugs.

[L'Impresario]

Well, I had read the whole article some time ago, and it's a quite balanced account of the situation (the article also mentions drugs and the current international climate - and that's exactly why it says that the US are losing ground in their own backyard). I'm also researching the regional role of Venezuela and the political implications of the newly elected leaderships in Latin America for a university report and I have to say that Hakim represents a common, if not popular view of analysts. While there is a lot of disenchantment with the US policies (ofcourse the traditional distrust of the "Big Brother" up north is a constant), most governments aren't willing to risk any trade relations and still base their aspirations for development on the US.
But there is also a boom in regional partnerships that tries to limit that great dependancy, and with a whole new round of elections this year, L. America may prove a most difficult playground for ALCA supporters, ALCA being the foremost goal in the region for US governments for quite some time now.

BTW if you 're speaking with venezolanos in an informal or semi-informal environment, be prepared to hear a lot of "chico" and "chica", even if you don't know the speaker well. The whole Chávez emision tho was really entertaining heh, I'm still looking for a good transcript, there 's no way you can translate what the man said.

EDIT: FA doesn't identify itself with any views that get published, its articles come from quite a diverse lot and I guess that's why it's one of the most respected publications among IR experts worlwide.

[Adrian II]

However, among other things, the Council on Foreign Relations has called for a unified government of Canada, Mexico and the United States with appointed leaders of the continent wide leadership council. (Lou Dobbs CNN, June 9, 2005).

Nonsense. That was not the CFR, it was an independent tripartite task force. And it called for a security community, not a unified government.
Read, Don Corleone.

(..) the defining issue in US-Latin American relations, namely the traffic of illegal narcotics (..)

That issue defines only U.S.-Columbian relations, and only in U.S. eyes. It does not define wider U.S.-Latin American relations at all. The article addresses a range of issues that do define those relations and will eventually cause the U.S. to 'lose' Latin America.

[Tribesman]

No offense Adrian, but the Council on Foreign Relations is not exactly an unbiased view of the world. It's Jimmy Carter's cheering squad.
Don , have you looked at the board of directors and the corporations represented ??????

[Adrian II]

No offense Adrian, but the Council on Foreign Relations is not exactly an unbiased view of the world. It's Jimmy Carter's cheering squad.
Don , have you looked at the board of directors and the corporations represented ??????

Take one look at Richard Haass' resume and tell me he is Carter's lapdog. And even if he was, why can't someone address an article instead of Jimmy Carter's ghost?

Ach, Mr President, the crap we have to wade through...

[Adrian II]

While there is a lot of disenchantment with the US policies (of course the traditional distrust of the "Big Brother" up north is a constant), most governments aren't willing to risk any trade relations and still base their aspirations for development on the US.

Nonetheless I thought the information he gave in connection with the Zogby poll was rather revealing. A poll of Latin American elites found that 86 percent of them disapprove of Washington's management of conflicts around the world. The reliable Stroessners and Pinochets are no more, the Lulas and Chavezes are setting the tone and they have growing popular and elite support.

EDIT
Hakim suggests something of a new groundswell of aversion against the U.S. that is shared by the elite. Is this change obvious? Have you done any research into elite attitude changes, L'Impresario?

[Tribesman]

Ach, Mr President, the crap we have to wade through..
If the worlds banks , oil industry , stock market and arms merchants arn't quite conservative enough how about some of those linked to crazy right wing dictators ?
Talk about a very mixed bag .
Don doesn't like the article , so it must be some of Jimmys whiners that were behind it ?????

[Byzantine Prince]

When you go so right wing BP? You used to have some sense ;p

Chavez is far from a 'fuhrer' he is more democratically elected and responsible than Bush. Pandering to popular right wing myths at the start of a thread probably isn't the best thing to do, in my opinion anyway.

As to the topic of the thread, I see no problem. The US 'bigs itself up', constantly in terms of foreign nationals, leaders and countries. He is doing nothing out of the ordinary.

I am not turned right wing at all, don't worry. I was just having some fun with it, you know like one of those fake pundits(ie. Stephen Colbert)

I actually admire Chavez. I think he is doing a good job. I am glad there is some progress being made in South America. I think the US wants to keep their people poor so they can exploit them more.

Bush/Cheney --------------------------------------- Kim Jong Il ---------- Me