CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- Venomous political attacks have become the norm in Venezuela, and now a governing party legislator has unleashed a tirade in the country's legislature using gay slurs in trying to discredit the opposition.
The lawmaker displayed photos in the National Assembly on Tuesday showing a top aide to opposition leader Henrique Capriles dressed, along with other men, in women's clothing, apparently at a party. He suggested, without elaboration, that the photos proved the aide's involvement with drug traffickers and male and female prostitution.
Legislator Pedro Carreno, a member of the movement built by the late President Hugo Chavez, didn't say where he got the photos, although the aide's apartment was searched last week by military agents.
The aide, Oscar Lopez, is in hiding. The government said it was investigating him on unspecified corruption charges, which the opposition calls part of a new wave of political repression.
Carreno, a former military officer, is angry with Capriles for accusing him of being forced out of the armed forces for corruption and has challenged him to provide proof or resign as Miranda governor.
"Respond, you homosexual," Carreno said during Tuesday's legislative session. "Accept the challenge, you faggot."
Carreno then claimed there is a police report saying Capriles was caught having oral sex in public in 2000.
President Nicolas Maduro hurled more invective Wednesday, alluding during a public event to lascivious material that he insinuated was seized from Lopez.
"Just 1 percent what was discovered was shown" in the National Assembly, Maduro said. "The videos and photos of orgies are not publishable."
Maduro also accused Capriles of using his office as governor of the central state of Miranda to "prostitute youths." Lopez is Capriles' chief of staff there.
A leader of the opposition's pro-tolerance movement, Tamara Adrian of Pro Inclusion, called the behavior despicable.
"Venezuela is the only country in Latin America where the National Assembly has never discussed such issues as same-sex marriage. And if anyone asks why, the answer was clear yesterday," she said Wednesday in talking about Carreno's outburst.
Capriles said Wednesday he was "honored" to be attacked by a government that he says is going to be brought down by its own corruption and what he says was the theft of the April 14 presidential election.
"If I was a homosexual I would acknowledge it with pride to the four winds," Capriles said.
Analyst Luis Vicente Leon, director of the Datanalisis polling firm, called the increasingly personalized attacks by government officials a sign of Maduro's weakening position in the face of worsening inflation, rampant violent crime and foreign currency, food and medicine shortages.
Maduro won the presidency by a 1.5-point margin after squandering a double-digit lead after becoming the hand-picked successor of Chavez, who died of cancer March 5 after 14 years in power.
Carreno backpedaled some Wednesday, offering an apology in a TV interview if he offended anyone with his remarks about homosexuals.
"The problem isn't the sexual inclination (of his adversaries), but that they have a hidden life," he said.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Maduro Appeals to Homophobia in Slandering Enrique Capriles
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Vuelva te al Sur
the way love always returns,
I am returning to you,
with my own wish, with my own fear.
I carry the South,
like a destiny of the heart,
I am the South,
like the airs of the bandoneon (instrument).
I dream the South,
immense moon, heaven on earth,
I am searching for the South,
the open time, and everything after.
I love the South,
its good people, its dignity,
I feel the South,
like your body during intimate moments.
I love South,
South, I love you.
I am returning to the South,
the way love always returns,
I am returning to you,
with my own wish, with my own fear.
I love the South,
its good people, its dignity,
I feel the South,
like your body during intimate moments.
I am returning to the South,
I carry the South,
I love the South,
I love the South...
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Friday, July 5, 2013
Monday, July 1, 2013
Revolt without Revolution
In this context, the manifesto of the Spanish indignados, issued after their demonstrations in May, is revealing. The first thing that meets the eye is the pointedly apolitical tone: 'Some of us consider ourselves progressive, others conservative. Some of us are believers, some not. Some of us have clearly defined ideologies, others are apolitical, but we are all concerned and angry about the political, economic and social outlook that we see around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers, leaving us helpless, without a voice.'- Slavoj Zizek, "Shoplifters of the World, Unite!"
They make their protest on behalf of the 'inalienable truths that we should abide by in our society: the right to housing, employment, culture, health, education, political participation, free personal development and consumer rights for a healthy and happy life'. Rejecting violence, they call for an ‘ethical revolution ... The indignados dismiss the entire political class, right and left, as corrupt and controlled by a lust for power ... And this is the fatal weakness of recent protests: they express an authentic rage which is not able to transform itself into a positive programme of sociopolitical change. They express a spirit of revolt without revolution.
Friday, June 21, 2013
Brazil EXPLODES
More than a million Brazilians took to the streets of at least 80 Brazilian towns and cities in demonstrations that saw violent clashes and renewed calls for an end to government corruption and demands for better public services.
Riot police battled protesters in at least five cities, with some of the most intense clashes in Rio de Janeiro, where an estimated 300,000 demonstrators swarmed into the city's central area.
Television images showed police firing tear gas canisters and rubber bullets into crowds of young men, their faces wrapped in T-shirts. Other demonstrators were shown detained lying on pavements.
An 18-year-old man was killed in Sao Paolo state after a car drove through barricades.
The country's president Dilma Rousseff called off a visit to Japan to deal with the crisis.
Official estimates suggest that there were more than a million protesters out across the country in total.
In Brasilia, police struggled to keep hundreds of protesters from invading the Foreign Ministry as protesters lit a small fire outside.
Other government buildings were attacked around the capital's central esplanade, and police resorted to tear gas and rubber bullets in attempts to scatter the crowds.
Clashes were also reported in the Amazon jungle city of Belem, in Porto Alegre in the south, in the university town Campinas, north of Sao Paulo, and in the north-eastern city of Salvador.
The protests took place a week after a violent police crackdown on a much smaller protests in Sao Paulo galvanised Brazilians to take to the streets.
The unrest is hitting the nation as it hosts the Confederations Cup football tournament with tens of thousands of foreign visitors in attendance.
It also comes a month before Pope Francis is scheduled to visit the nation, and ahead of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics, raising concerns about how Brazilian officials will provide security.
In Salvador, police shot tear gas canisters and rubber bullets to disperse a small crowd of protesters trying to break through a police barrier blocking one of the city's streets.
One woman was injured in her foot. Elsewhere in Salvador 5,000 protesters gathered in Campo Grand Square.
Despite the energy on the street, many protesters said they were unsure how the movement would win real political concessions.
People in the protests have held up signs asking for everything from education reforms to free bus fares while denouncing the billions of public pounds spent on stadiums in advance of the World Cup and the Olympics.
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