Chavez shakes it up at the UN

Chavez stole the spotlight from Iranian madman Ahmadinejad at the UN with a fiery speech in which he denounced US imperialsim and called Bush the devil. His speech received a huge round of warm applause. This is sure to nix Venezuela's bid for a seat on the U.N. Security Council and will fuel Chavez' critics. For myself, I have some mixed feelings about Chavez and how he has been running his country since receiving a huge mandate from his population. All I know for sure is I spent ten days with some Venezuelans a few years ago, when Chavez was first elected and they loved him as a leader and thought he would save their country from the decades old, crass exploitation of the country by the oligarchy there.

And frankly I find Condi's response a little disingenuous. "I think it's not becoming for a head of state," she said. I have to ask as opposed to what? Her boss' constant judgemental berating of other countries and their leaders for not kowtowing to his policies? Furthermore for all the critics that claim Venezuelans are not a free people, I have to ask as opposed to what? Our country where our president now claims the power to seize any citizen without probable cause and hold them incommunicado for as long as he likes, (which so far has been years), without charging them with a crime or allowing them access to an attorney? Just ask Padillo how he feels about that.

I won't have time to read or view Chavez' speech for a couple of days and I may have more to say after I read it, but in the interim you can see the video yourself here and a transcript is available here. Draw your own conclusions.