Chávez deal to aid low-income Londoners

Source: The Guardian

Chávez deal to aid low-income Londoners


Lee Glendinning
Tuesday August 21, 2007
The Guardian

Up to a million people on income support will be eligible for half fares on London's buses under Ken Livingstone's oil deal with Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's president.

Single parents, carers, the long-term sick and disabled people will benefit from the plan, first mooted during Mr Chávez's visit to the UK last year, paying 50p for a single journey if they use an Oystercard.

In exchange for a 20% oil discount to fuel London buses, an office will be set up in Caracas, Venezuela's capital, where London officials will offer expertise in town planning, tourism, public transport and environmental protection.

Under the scheme applicants must take proof of their income support status to a post office to get a special photocard for a discounted Oystercard.



Read more: http://society.guardian.co.uk/socialexclusion/story/0,,2153350,00.html

lol

Thanks for showing there are some poor people in a poor country.

And that's a promise.

:hi:

(I'd love to know who signs Alex's checks.)

"Working Behind the Scenes": The Details of U.S. Government Support for the Venezuelan Opposition
Posted in the database on Monday, June 06th, 2005 @ 12:09:17 MST (128 views)
by Dan Feder FromTheWilderness.com

In April, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez canceled the long-running IMET (International Military Education and Training) program, which had seen Venezuelan soldiers traveling to the U.S. for training, as well as U.S. officers giving courses in Venezuela. Chávez's announcement of the program's cancellation grabbed headlines for several days, most media repeating the State Department's assertion that the announcement was "unexpected" with "no explanation." But the cancellation was the direct result of findings by a determined young Venezuelan-American attorney and journalist named Eva Golinger, who had discovered a direct connection between the program and coup-plotters in the Venezuelan military.

The 2002 coup d'état, in fact, bore all the hallmarks of past U.S. interventions in Latin America. A popular president, struggling to change the situation of social exclusion and poverty in his country, and reassert local sovereignty at the expense of U.S. political and economic interests, was forced out of office by high-ranking members of the military and representatives of the country's oligarchy. Hours after it had taken control, the U.S. State Department praised the new regime, which proceeded to dissolve all democratic institutions and constitutional rights. Almost immediately after a popular revolt and rebellion of loyal military officers returned Chávez to office, Venezuelans and observers began to denounce the coup as having been "made in the U.S.A."; a repeat of the 1973 coup against Chilean President Salvador Allende and countless others. For a time, such speculation remained just that. Both Washington and the Venezuelan opposition countered that no proof existed, and that such claims were the product of paranoid conspiracy freaks.

But the proof didn't take long to come in. Behind much of the research that demonstrated U.S. complicity were the names Eva Golinger and independent journalist (and Narco News School of Authentic Journalism professor) Jeremy Bigwood. Last winter, Golinger and Bigwood revealed that millions of dollars had been funneled into anti-Chávez groups - including major participants in the 2002 coup - through such public agencies as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID. Other revelations followed. Much of their information came from documents revealed through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and released via the website venezuelafoia.info.

I first met Golinger in Caracas this April, where both of us were attending the events organized for the 3rd anniversary of the coup and countercoup of 2002. Golinger was something of a guest of honor at the event, sharing the stage with Chávez at the opening ceremonies and frantically running around the city to meetings, speaking engagements, and interviews with the Venezuelan media.

http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=738

He must LOVE tweaking the powers that be. :rofl:

:)

it's actually a fair deal. Livingstone, who I'm no great fan of anyway, has used the fuel cost saving to subsidise bus fares and in return will help sort the traffic problem in Caracus. What's wrong with that ?

on Los Angeles. :)

Arnold or someone else ?

Arnold. But county officials would have to weigh the wrath of Arnold if he didn't like the idea.

Is that about right?

from the Feds as well.

Next thing you know Britain will be getting screwn with national health care. Oh.. wait..

;)

there's not a whole of difference. Fidel gets criticised for the way he runs Cuba : soon as one of our our governments get into power they do what they please anyway.

Apart from that our health service is being robbed blind to pay for Iraq.

At least in Venezuela the people seem to get to provide some input into what's occuring. John Pilger's new film The War Against Democracy is worth seeing if you get the chance - we had the whole film on tv late last night.

I even wrote to his website and asked how I could buy a copy. :(

:hi:

http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/film.jsp?id=161731

Do you know if this will be available streaming at any point for people outside the U.K.? Absolutely cannot wait to see this, and surely don't want to wait for months and months or worse!

:hi:

Also, the VIO said they would try to get a copy for me but, I don't know if they can while there's any chance Pilger can still make a deal.

I think a petition might be our best bet right now. :shrug:

it should!

Maybe it could be arranged to tie down some of these clowns and pin their eyes open so they can't shut them for the hour 33 minutes needed to get some actual truth jammed into those roomy, empty, almost completely unused skulls. :hi:

to US audiences. That needs to change. :hi:

John Pilger is a former ABC journo, and they often screen his documentaries - the commercial
networks wouldn't touch them.

The ABC board is currently stacked with Howard appointees, but sometimes the program producers get
brave and screen things that Howard hates.

I doubt the film will ever be shown on tv in the USA : maybe limited cinema release or what I still call the pictures....lol. Be out on DVD eventually and probaly get posted on dossieronline or informationclearinghouse.

Aside from some very moving interviews with people who had suffered under the hands of South American death squads there was one particular section concerning the coup against Chavez which just amazed me.

Picture this as I write. It's roundabaout the day of the coup inspired and led oddly enough by the privately owned media. There are two opposing groups of protesters in high volume who intentionally have been kept apart. Much to their amazement the anti Chavez crowd get re-routed to the Palace. Snipers open up shooting some of them in the head and you see some guys who are on a bridge shooting into the crowd with handguns. Got it ? The generals whatever interviewed on tv later mention the killings carried out by Chavez supporters.

Pilger documentary showed the original footage - see film below too. There were no protestors below the bridge - the street was empty. The guys on the bridge were defending themselves against the snipers. The film had been cross edited. A CNN guy later interviewed said that it was also a fact that the recording of the generals which mention the killing of the protestors was actually filmed 10 hours before the demonstrations.

Swtich to Ari Fleischer spewing forth............nuff said ?

You should find this to be of interest - the shooting section is about 35 minutes into it:
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED : http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5832390545689805144&q=the+revolution+will+not+be+televised&total=158&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
It's 74 minutes long so put the kettle on first.:pals:

edited to ad this too : http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1321

It's astonishing, isn't it? :hi:

and it sure wasn't Amazon.........lol.

Your copies of the other film may turn out to be gold dust certainly for the time being. If by any chance they're not multiregion WMP will cope anyway - just program in the region.

BTW - the picture of Chavez smiling, in the link which Judi gave to the Pilger film, was the exact moment that he said to Pilger, in perfect english, "would you like some coffee John ?" He was so proud of his limited english and his ability pronounce it correctly.

Oh just look what I found :

Go here : http://www.thedossier.ukonline.co.uk/video_cover-ups.htm

You'll need a fast connection to download it as it's 70 minutes long.

Was added today and that's not a Micky Mouse site. It's here in the UK and I think it's associated with one or more of our tv channels.

For your petition you need to be a USA resident so I can't do it - they'd soon spot I was UK.

edit: download is to watch on realplayer as a temporary file. Anyone know how to store it permanently ?

"realplayer" link for the movie...

Choose save link as

Pick a spot on your hard drive and save.

It says it's 54.7 Meg. war_on_democracy_pilger.rm

Thanks edwardlindy!

I'm sure most of you have already seen the Irish documentary mentioned eleswhere in this thread, but for those of you who haven't, I highly recommend "The Revolution will not be televised", which can be found on Google Video. It's brilliant!

Go Chávez! ¡Viva Venezuela!

country. You are very, very kind.

I've watched 23 minutes, am saving the rest, 70 minutes, for the next chance I get. I will be sharing this one immediately. It's not to be missed for any reason whatsoever.

It's always a shock to get a look at what they're pushing on Venezuelan "news" programs, as well. Truth is definitely stranger than fiction, isn't it?

Thank you so much for your kindness to your DU acquaintances.

(I'm checking back later to see if someone answers your question about getting this documentary on a permanent file.) On edit: Just saw "Proud Dad's" instructions to DU'ers on right-clicking the file. Sounds good.

cheap bus faires. Why can't he behave like a respectable US dictator by stating wars & killing a few hundred thousand folks?

Fucking helping people and shit! I hate that! x(

There are millions and millions of poor in Venezuela. He shouldn't give their money away to others who are much better off.

he traded oil at subsidised price for technical help in return.

There are millions of poor people in the USA with no health care - everyone in Venezuala gets free health care and poor housewives get paid too.

London is paying back Venezuela by providing know how on urban development issues. They're bartering, and Venezuela benefits too.

It could have said "Chavez saves the world from alien invasion" and they'd still spread their manure around DU.

"Why,that's not good for the aliens left back on the home planet." :crazy:

and the school meals and the home ownership programs and the effort to establish community councils to identify local needs and get federal funding to meet them.

We know better.

:)

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

had total control over our foreign policy, giants like Jesse Helms!

Senator Helms and Murder
In the U.S. Senate today is a man, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who should be called upon to answer the following question: "Senator, is murder an acceptable tactic in foreign policy?"
In a December 7, 1994 article profiling the Senator, the New York Times said:

For Mr. Helms, the devil lived down in Latin America during the 1980's. The Senator and his staff aimed to fight him. They became a crucible of American support for the far right wing: politicians linked to death squads in El Salvador; the Guatemalan military, which killed thousands of people suspected of ties to the left; Honduran military intelligence; the Argentine junta; and other violently authoritarian governments of the era.

According to the article, Senator Helms aided Roberto D'Aubuisson and his ARENA party, a Salvadorean politician in command of the death squads, by disclosing a secret CIA plan to support Jose Napoleon Duarte, D'Aubuisson's centrist opposition in an election. As a result, enraged D'Aubuisson supporters plotted to kill U.S. Ambassador Thomas Pickering. Mr. Helms sent a letter to these partisans that said:

Ambassador Pickering has been the leader of the death squads against democracy. Mr. Pickering has used his diplomatic capacity to strangle liberty during the night.

Senator Helms was censured by the Senate for conducting his own foreign policy. Luckily, Ambassador Pickering escaped murder.
(snip)

http://www.spectacle.org/595/helms.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jesse Helms, a tradition of right-wing excellence in foreign policy!

MAY 23, 2001
Deadly Alliance
New evidence shows how far Jesse Helms went to support Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet

BY JON ELLISTON

In the summer of 1986, two residents of Washington, D.C., visited Chile, a country wracked by protests against the military dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet.

One of the visitors, U.S. Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina, chatted amicably with Pinochet and returned to tell the American people that it was a "myth that human rights is a major problem in Chile."

The other, Rodrigo Rojas, a 19-year-old Chilean exile who had been living in the United States, died at the hand of Pinochet's security forces after they beat him senseless and set him on fire.

The incident received international publicity, and the case of Los Quemados--"The Burned Ones"--became a grisly milestone in the history of Chile's struggle against dictatorship. It also proved to be one of the most controversial chapters in Helms' foreign policy career--a chapter that has been reopened following the declassification of government documents that reveal just how far the senator went in backing the Pinochet regime.

"I am not pro-Pinochet or anti-Pinochet," Helms said at the time. But, as he had done since Pinochet seized power in 1973, the Republican senator rose to the defense of the dictator. Ignoring eyewitness accounts that Chilean soldiers had committed the attack on Rojas, Helms vilified the teenager and Carmen Quintana--an 18-year-old Chilean who narrowly survived the same burning--as "communist terrorists." He pushed Pinochet's cover story that the victims had immolated themselves.
(snip/...)

http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A15917



Rodrigo Rojas and before/after Carmen Gloria Quintana

How it was young Mr. Rojas was murdered by right-winger dictator, Augusto Pinochet's regime, set in motion, guided, supported praised by Nixon, Kissinger, Jesse Helms and other right-wing Americans:

On 2 July 1986, a Chilean army patrol was cruising a poor suburb of Santiago, rounding up opponents of General Augusto Pinochet's regime, when they spotted two teenagers. Perhaps because one of them, Rodrigo Rojas De Negri, was taller than the average Chilean and had a camera, they were stopped.

Whatever the reason, the youths were dragged into a side street where soldiers began breaking their bones. Then, according to eyewitnesses, General Pinochet's men doused the pair in kerosene and set them alight.

The case of los quemados, or 'the burnt ones', shocked the world. Rodrigo and Carmen Quintana had come to Quilicura, north of Santiago, to express solidarity with the poor at the start of a two-day national strike in protest at Pinochet's harsh economic policies.

The teenagers were the children of Chilean exiles, raised in North America. Thirteen years after the coup that brought Pinochet to power, they thought it safe to return. But Rodrigo, a 19-year-old photographer from Washington DC, and Carmen, 18, a Canadian student, made a mistake.

Tomorrow, Rodrigo's mother, Veronica De Negri, hopes the House of Lords will make amends for the brutality of that army patrol. A member of American Amnesty, she will sit in the public gallery at the reconvened hearing to determine whether Pinochet has immunity from extradition to Spain.

Four days after the attack, on 6 July 1986, Rodrigo died from his burns. The official explanation was that he was a terrorist who accidentally set himself alight with a Molotov cocktail.
(snip)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/pinochet/Story/0,,209253,00.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When the bill comes for this country to account for all the damage done to Latin American citizens, almost all of it by the right-wing, racist Republicans, there won't be enough begging, howling, lamenting they could do for generations and hundreds of years to come to compensate the suffering, and grief, the heartbreak done by fools and drooling idiots just because they could, once they gained the power, resist the dirty urge to use it! What fun IS the power to murder, maim, and burn, if they can't see it in action? True fools.