Sean Penn Visits Hugo Chavez, Talks Politics And Obama's Nobel Prize

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chavez said he met privately with actor Sean Penn on Wednesday, and that the Oscar-winning celebrity may film a movie in Venezuela.

Penn may shoot a film based on a novel by Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, which is set largely in the jungle along Venezuela's southern Orinoco river, Chavez said. He appeared to be referring to Carpentier's 1953 novel, "The Lost Steps," about an American anthropologist and composer's journey into the jungle region.

Penn's publicist could not immediately be reached for comment.

Chavez added that he discussed politics with Penn, who said he would soon see U.S. President Barack Obama. Chavez said he'd asked Penn to tell Obama he should take action to earn his Nobel Peace Prize, and should scrap a plan for the U.S. military to increase its presence at bases in Colombia.

"They gave him the Nobel Prize, very well, now he should earn it," the socialist leader said, paraphrasing an open letter by documentary filmmaker Michael Moore to the U.S. president.

Chavez also applauded Moore's work, and dismissed comments the director made during an interview with Jimmy Kimmel on ABC earlier this month. Moore said he'd drunk tequila with Chavez at the Venice Film Festival and offered the Venezuelan president suggestions for an upcoming speech at the United Nations.

The comments drew criticism from some of Chavez's supporters in Venezuela. But Chavez dismissed the controversy, saying it had been fueled by opponents who abused a comedic situation to suggest he'd been partying.

"They don't understand humor," Chavez said of his critics, pointing out the interview was held on a talk show hosted by a comedian.

Penn arrived in Venezuela from Cuba, where he was reportedly seeking an interview with the nation's ailing former leader, 83-year-old Fidel Castro. Last year, Penn was the first American to obtain an interview with Castro's younger brother, current President Raul Castro, after he was named interim president in late July 2006. The interview appeared in the Dec. 15 edition of The Nation magazine and on the magazine's Web site last November.

This is Penn's third visit with Chavez, who has welcomed a host of celebrities to the presidential palace, including supermodel Naomi Campbell and actors Danny Glover and Benicio del Toro.

Comments

[oldnewsy]

09:46 PM on 11/01/2009

Human Rights Watch was kicked out of Venezuela. Yes, go to Venezuela, but don't dare speak up against Chavez. Sean Penn probably exchanges smiles for bucks. Or at least his brain for some publicity.

"On September 18, we released a report in Caracas that shows how President Hugo Chávez has undermined human rights guarantees in Venezuela. That night, we returned to our hotel and found around twenty Venezuelan security agents, some armed and in military uniform, awaiting us outside our rooms. They were accompanied by a man who announced--with no apparent sense of irony--that he was a government "human rights" official and that we were being expelled from the country.
. . .

...Why did Chávez do it? One Brazilian on the plane on which we were forced to leave Venezuela offered a view that is increasingly widespread throughout Latin America: "Chávez is crazy." But the human rights defenders we work with in Venezuela have drawn a far more sobering conclusion. Chávez, in their view, was sending a deliberate message to his fellow countrymen: he will not allow human rights guarantees to get in his way, no matter what the rest of the world may think."

"Hugo Chavez Versus Human Rights," by Jose Miguel Vivanco, Daniel Wilkinson, The New York Review of Books, November 6, 2008

[oldnewsy]

07:52 PM on 11/01/2009

Chavez loves power, not people - but people are invested in being "right" about their own agendas, beliefs they don't have to live out in suffering and loss... Chavez is trouble, not just for South America.

There's much more to this than "socialism" - which Chavez is going against in every form, dismantling unions, taking away worker's right...

the following is from "The Chavez-Obama U.N. Plot Against Honduras" by Cliff Kincaid

"...former Marxist SDS radical Tom Hayden, leader of Progressives for Obama... ...said that he thinks Obama and Chavez are working together on Honduras and have an "understanding," which he even describes as "collaboration." The call Chavez made to Shannon suggests that Chavez is calling the shots. "

" ...this would benefit Iran, a terrorist state developing nuclear weapons which is developing a vast network throughout Latin America. A recent report from the organization examines the deep Iranian connections to Venezuela as well as Bolivia...

"...If the Obama Administration is, in effect, acting as an agent of Venezuela and Iran in Honduras, such a foreign policy could be described not only as anti American but potentially treasonous, considering that the outcome could be the loss of another country in Latin America to the Chavez brand of communism.

It is time for some investigative reporting into the nature of the Chavez Obama axis. "

Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of Accuracy in Media

[Chicagofan1]

04:31 PM on 11/01/2009

Dickhead with pothead. Perfect mix.

[Johnathan Vrozos]

08:52 AM on 11/01/2009

Johnathan Vrozos of the Vrozos Fund of Opening Markets of South America is quite surprised at how open Chavez is and then how closed minded he is on the same issues.
As a dictator he can do whatever he wants to whomever he wants.

[Sievehead]

01:26 AM on 11/01/2009

The one Venezualan I've come across who was bitching about Chavez was mainly upset that his family couldn't buy more than one car due to import difficulties and Chavez's hope to allow wider ownership of whatever vehicles were available. It is very hard to get people, especially the status-seeking petit bourgeois who have made some little inroad towards their dreams of infinite wealth and ownership, to restrain their burdgening desires once even a small flickering flame of greed is allowed to burn too long and too brightly in their avaricious little hearts. Having grown up in a land, though, where everything is always purchasable at reasonable prices due to our continued reliance on outright slavery and an abiding willingness to support economic policies that allow a criminal oligarchy to emerge unchallenged within our midst, I must admit I would probably find it hard going under a tyrant like Chavez; but then again, I'm a petit bourgeois, not a peasant. I might see things very differently in that case...

[H321]

11:52 PM on 10/31/2009

Yuck.

[Libby48]

11:33 PM on 10/31/2009

Another liberal non-event.

[LatteLiberals]

08:46 PM on 10/31/2009

Chavez nor Castro our the poster child's for liberals, progressives or leftiest. The Northern European countries should be our models, not these two men with enormous egos.

[ezeflyer]

10:08 PM on 10/31/2009

People in the Northern European countries mostly admire these two men for having accomplished the near impossible, standing up to American banks and corporatists and helping their people instead. This took enormous courage, conviction and strength to achieve. Enormous egos are the norm with America's exceptionalists. Facing up to them is not a contest of egos, but of justice versus injustice.

Cuba has withstood forty years of a demonic embargo, becoming self-sufficient in food and exporting doctors worldwide. Cuba and Venezuela offered aid after Katrina but were turned down by American fascists.

[LatteLiberals]

07:23 AM on 11/01/2009

Unless you're Northern European you can not speak on their behalf. More importantly, you've missed the point entirely.

Do you want to model the US on Northern Europe's economic and democratic model or do you want to model it on Cuba? Not all forms of socialism are the same.

Which example do you want to emulate? Northern Europe offers a sane ecological model mixed in with a social democracy. Cuba on the other hand has had the same man in power for 50 years and passed along the Presidency to his brother. A nation with very low environmental standards with large amounts of pollution in Havana and deforstation around the island.

Standing up to the US is hardly the reason to think the Cuban government is the ideal model. Iran has also stood up to the US, do you want to advocate for something like Shia law? I hardly think so.

If you speak out against the Cuban government as a Cuban, you can lose access to housing, jobs, education opportunities or worse, experience jail time. There is an informal secret police with neighbors, friends and children reporting on each other and parents to keep you in line.

You can not with good conscious be critical of a right wing government engaging in such behavior and turn a blind spot when its being done by a left wing one. Consistency matters.

Animosity with Venezuela/Cuba only serves the military industrial complex in the US. They need enemies to exist.

[ezeflyer]

11:34 PM on 10/30/2009

It's nothing short of admirable how the oiligarchy has been able to demonize Chavez even among so called progressives for nationalizing the oil companies and using the revenues to help his and other peoples, including our own poor instead of turning his country over to the IMF, the World Bank and corporations. Good for you Sean. And thank you President Chavez.

[LatteLiberals]

08:39 PM on 10/31/2009

Is the foriegn press controlled by the same forces that control the American media? I'm reading the foriegn press about Chavez.

I'm a progressive. I had no issues with Chavez nationalizing oil to help the people of his country. Chavez priorities are now screwed up. He's nationalizing industries that don't really need to be nationalized like hotels.

I got into government work to help my community and work on issues I care about. Never in a million years would I want to be working in a hotel. Chavez should be spending money on teachers, doctors and other areas that help the people. No one ever died because they couldn't stay in a luxury hotel.

I would hope Chavez would model his country on Norway instead of Cuba, which does not respect human rights, but it seems Chavez has chosen the latter.

I also have a hard time with Chavez demonizing Americans. He's trying to convince his Latin American neighbors that at any moment the US is going to invade. I know the US has a terrible track record, but outright invasion has never been the MO down South. It doesn't do the US or Venezuela a bit of good to have the kind of relationship that Cuba and the US has had for 50+ years.

Be critical of what the US government/corporations have done in Latin America. Siding with authoritarian leadership, acting as if that leadership has done no wrong makes a true progressive look like a hypocrite.

[Sievehead]

01:37 AM on 11/01/2009

It's more than just a matter of a "poor track record". We may never have invaded directly (although we actually did so in several auspicious instances - remember Grenada, anybody?), but we have nonetheless been actively supportive and complicit in the torture, mutilation and death of millions upon millions of South Americans over the short course of our bloody history. Chavez would indeed be thoroughly insane were he not to take careful notice of our charming predilection for rapine, slaughter and mayhem.

[DannyGee]

09:21 PM on 10/30/2009

maybe Penn will film a movie about the Chavez govt financing of the FARC army

[Bailey Reynolds]

08:43 PM on 10/30/2009

As a journalist, employed by McClatchy, I'm so jealous of Sean Penn. He has great wealth and can travel and do things we mere mortals can't. I would chase after his stories and thinking if I had that kind of bank.

Sean Penn seems like a great guy. He should be recognized, not only for his excellent body of film work, but for his reporting and help.

[ZenCrusader]

04:58 PM on 10/30/2009

suddenly Sean Penn cares nothing about human rights and free speech. Chavez is a repressive dictator.

[Bailey Reynolds]

08:44 PM on 10/30/2009

Step away from the mainstream media....

[DannyGee]

09:22 PM on 10/30/2009

read a newspaper (unless of course you are in Venezuela)

[LMPE]

04:33 PM on 10/30/2009

Anything to make Billo the Clown's head explode.

[latoussaint]

02:42 PM on 10/30/2009

Most of you people are moronic, narrow minded fools who can't see out of their tunnel-vision. Have you been to Venezuela or even know the history what led to this current political situation, how brainwashed are you?I praise Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Jimmy Carter... good, honest Americans who want the best for the entire world. Thank goodness for them.

[beauwulff]

02:45 PM on 10/30/2009

Here's one now.

[ZenCrusader]

04:59 PM on 10/30/2009

I live in Central America, visit Venez & have good friends there - Chavez is repressive.

[drjasonmd]

05:07 PM on 10/30/2009

As evidenced by all the anti-Chavez television that goes on 24 hours a day. Oh, and don't forget the nonexistent political prisoners.

Spare me the rhetoric. Chavez is so repressive he enjoys an over 60% approval rating.

[beauwulff]

02:03 PM on 10/30/2009

It's a characteristic of the loony left that any leader who's anti-U.S. is automatically a champion of "the people". No matter that they create and nurture a cult of personality, try to set themselves up as maximum leader for life, purchase $ billions in useless weapons while a huge percentage of their country's population is starving, suppress opposition press, jail opposition leaders and wreck their country's economy with crackbrained nationalization schemes.

Meanwhile, any of these actions by a U.S. president would produce bleats of indignation from the same bunch.

[Blimpius]

02:11 PM on 10/30/2009

Penn is a stooge.

[drjasonmd]

05:13 PM on 10/30/2009

Does Venezuela have any troops stationed outside its national territory?

It's characteristic of the loony right to draw false comparisons using hypothetical scenarios, but completely ignore the actual facts on the ground. Ever notice how any president who stands up to multinational corporations is automatically labeled a tyrant and enemy of the U.S., but even the Saudi Royal family is considered a friend?

Tool is too gentle a word.