Long live Chavez!

Before I try to explain why, as a Liberal with strong beliefs in democracy and civil liberties, I support Hugo Chavez, it is important to establish one important fact. There is NO national fruit of Colombia. This made finding a suitable illustration difficult, as such I have chosen a selection of what the internet tells me are popular home grown fruits. If anyone can manage to find out if there is a national fruit, or indeed if any states have national fruits, I would very much appreciate it.

On the question of why i support Hugo Chavez I guess there are two main reasons. Firstly it is because I am a Liberal. As such it seems clear that we must respect the self determination of nations, with the Venezuelans as no exception. While it may be easy to condemn a leader for the repression of his people, we must accept that any intervention by the west would be hugely detrimental, as the number of American and British supported leaders who go on to commit unthinkable atrocities shows. Chavez is a symbol of a state whose people have risen up against the USA's intervention in their politics, and as long as he continues to keep this stance, we should not be so quick to condemn him.

The second reason is that there seems something undeniably British about him. He is the underdog, biting at the heels of a giant, with no real prospect of becoming a superpower but still having a good go! While this conjures up images of Tim Henman at Wimbledon and Scooch in Eurovision, it is an image equally well applied to Hugo. He is flying in the face of convention and providing a genuine alternative to the commonly accepted way of Government of the West. If only he could clean up his record on Civil Rights then finally there would be an anti-American hero leader of which we can be proud.

Tomorrow is Lemon Party Friday, but don't worry, it's surprisingly inoffensive (lots of pictures of different coloured lemons..... with a twist).