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...world leaders would consider it a good day if the King of Spain were to tell them publicly to "shut up." But then, few heads of state are as skillful as Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez at turning a foreign diplomatic rebuke to domestic political advantage. Chávez's radical left-wing rule resides in his populist challenge to "imperialist" threats - and what more convenient symbol of colonial oppression for Chávez (besides his favorite, the U.S.) than the Spanish throne, which plundered South America for three centuries before it was thrown out in the 1800s...
That's why Chávez seems less than ruffled at being told by King Juan Carlos, "Por qué no te callas?" - Why don't you shut up? - over the weekend at the Ibero-American Summit of Iberian and Latin American leaders in Santiago, Chile. The king got fed up when the Venezuelan firebrand went on one of his rants and repeatedly accused former Spanish Prime Minister José MariaAznar of being a "fascist" who had supported a 2002 coup attempt against Chávez. Chávez later spun Juan Carlos' outburst as a monarchical affront to democracy...
...behind the royal reprimand, much of the international media missed what may have set Chávez off in the first place. Chávez became visibly irritated at the summit when Spain's current Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero - a socialist and Chávez ally - insisted that Latin America needs to attract more foreign capital if it's going to make a dent in its chronic, deepening poverty. Chávez blames "savage capitalism" for Latin America's gaping inequality and insists "only socialism" can fix it - hence his tirade against Aznar and other...
...Summoning Spirits? I was disappointed to see Brazil's President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, cast alongside Hugo Chávez - a clearly paranoid and delusional man - as simply another "leftist anti-Yanqui" South American leader [Oct. 8]. It seems that Tim Padgett is more interested in stirring the old ghosts of anti-commie sentiment, which in South America led to the disastrous and brutal rule of the U.S.-backed military juntas (from which many countries are still reeling), than in presenting us with an accurate account of current politics. Pedro Morais, Lisbon...
...Chadian capital of N'Djamena on Sunday to finalize the release and return of three French journalists and four Spanish crew members of a jet Zoe's Ark had chartered to airlift 103 children it claimed were orphans from Darfur. Chadian police in the eastern city of Abéché moved in to stop the plane from departing on Oct. 25, amid charges the group was planning to sell the children to adopting parents in France. Since then, police and U.N. agency investigations have discovered most if not all the 103 children are not orphans nor from Darfur...