"New Axis of Evil" Update -- Chavez : US a "Terrorist State"

From Agence France-Presse via Truthout

Four months after the US arrested terror bomber Luis Posada Carriles but refused to extradite him to Venezuela, and scant weeks after Pat Robertson called on national TV for his assassination, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez labeled the United States a "terrorist state" and called for the United Nations to move out of New York.

"It is a terrorist state. It is a government that violates all rules and behaves shamelessly," Chavez said on Friday. He also charged that he has evidence that the US is planning an invasion of Venezuela.

On Nightline last night, Chavez said that the Bush administration has carried on a campaign of propaganda against Venezuela and Chavez's government, and has left the American people IN THE DARK about the reality of Venezuela:

We're one of the biggest investors of Latin America. I think we're the prime investor of Latin America in the United States. We are giving employment to more than 2,000 U.S. workers and their families. We are paying taxes to the government of the United States. We cooperate with many cities, with mayoralties, Houston. And now with Katrina, this awful drama that the United States is living through, from the very first day I ordered a group — a coordinating a group of support being sent to where one of our refineries is located. We've been helping. And we've been even rescuing people. Practically no one in the United States knows that we've donated millions of dollars to the governorship of Louisiana, to the New Orleans Red Cross. We're now giving care to more than 5,000 victims, and now we're going to supply gasoline, freely in some cases, and with discounts in other cases, to the poorest of communities, starting with New Orleans and its surroundings. The people of the United States should know that.

CITGO, the Venezuelan state-owned oil company, has put hundreds of evacuees up in housing in its plants along the gulf coast.

He told Ted Koppel that, contrary to Bush administration claims, Venezuela is no threat to a peaceful United States:

It's very difficult for someone to bring the empire to its knees. That is not my pretension. That would be something totally disproportional. What we do want to do is have both of us on our feet — both of us standing up or both of us sitting down. Or, if we kneel, let both of us kneel. That would be to pray — to pray, as we Christians pray.

When he addressed the UN General Assembly in Friday, he criticized harshly the Bush administration for the UN-opposed war on Iraq as well as for his contempt for the United Nations. He "won rousing applause" for his comments. Speaking past his five minute limit, Chavez was given a note by a UN diplomat to end his speech. He threw it on the floor and announced that if Bush could speak for 20 minutes, he would speak for twenty minutes. The Associated Press reports, "When he finally stopped, he got what observers said was the loudest applause of the summit."