Fausta's Blog

Hugo Chavez, whose ties with Hezbollah have finally made the MSM news recently, just hired former London mayor Ken Livinstone (h/t Siggy; emphasis added):

Chavez gives Livingstone a job

Former London mayor Ken Livingstone has got himself a nice little earner – from his old friend and fellow socialist, Hugo Chavez (pictured right with Livingstone). The Venezuelan president has invited him to work as a consultant on policing, urban planning and transport in the country’s notoriously badly-run capital, Caracas, in the run-up to local elections in November.

“I believe that Caracas will become a first-world city in 20 years,” Livingstone told reporters on a surprise visit to Venezuela. “I have a very extensive network of contacts both domestically and internationally which I will be calling on to assist in this.”

It is two years since Livingstone and Chavez first attempted an arrangement between the two capitals with a deal to supply London with cheap fuel for its bus fleet in return for advice on city management. When Boris Johnson became Mayor in May, he made the cancellation of this agreement one of his first priorities, at the cost of £7m in compensation.

Yesterday, the mayor’s office said of Livingstone’s new arrangement: “Boris Johnson made it clear during his election campaign that he did not want to be on the payroll of Hugo Chavez and did not believe a poor South American country should be subsidising one of the wealthiest cities in the world.

“Ken Livingstone is free, as a private individual, to offer his advice and services to whomever he wants.”

Asked by journalists in Caracas what he was being paid, Livingstone said: “It depends to what extent we will be tapping into our individual resources. The whole cost of this trip has been paid for by the government of Venezuela and as an unemployed citizen I would not be able to pay for my own fare otherwise.”

Some might call this arrangement the reverse of former NY City’s Rudy Giuiliani’s national security expertise.

And I guess that £7m had to go somewhere after all.

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Friend of Hugo Chavez does not think he will win the mayoral race.

18 Doughty Street has a series of videos on Livingstone’s other friends.

Gateway Pundit has more on Ken‘s loss.

UPDATE
London bridge is falling down.

This just in:
Boris Johnson poised to become London Mayor as Tories seal local election success

Boris Johnson is preparing to be unveiled as the new mayor of London later today following Labour’s collapse across Britain in the local elections.
Senior Conservative sources said they would be “gobsmacked” if Mr Johnson did not win the mayoral contest and even Downing Street aides appear to have conceded that Ken Livingstone has lost. Confidence of a Tory win was boosted after one bookmaker announced it was paying out on a Boris Johnson victory hours before the official result is expected later this evening.
…
Winning the London mayoral contest is expected to cap an historic electoral win for the Conservatives with David Cameron’s party on course for more than 44 per cent of the national vote. Labour is now expected to finish with as little as 24 per cent, humiliatingly pushed into third place by the Liberal Democrats on 25 per cent.

Good-bye to Red Ken
Break out the champagne!

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This is the third ad campaign from 18DoughtyStreet.com and this week’s two minute ad attacks the high spending, low delivery record of London Mayor Ken Livingstone. Everything the advert says is sourced here.

At that link, I find items 8, 9 and 10 particularly interesting,

8 Al-Qaradawi is the strongest force for the modernisation of Islam
“Unbelievably, Mayor Livingstone asserted in the question period that Yusuf al Qaradawi was the “strongest force for modernization of Islam – he is the future of Islam.”
9 Qaradawi describes suicide bombing against Israel as duty
‘Recently he told Al-Jazeera that he was not alone in believing that suicide bombings in Palestinian territories were a legitimate form of self defence for people who have no aircraft or tanks. He said hundreds of other Islamic scholars are of the same opinion. In this respect, he is very much in tune with what the vast majority of people in the Arab world believe. Defending suicide bombings that target Israeli civilians Sheikh A-Qaradawi told the BBC programme Newsnight that “an Israeli woman is not like women in our societies, because she is a soldier.’

Go to the link for item 10, and all the others.

And 18 Doughty Street doesn’t even mention Hugo

Livingstone also spent taxpayer’s money suing Aleksander Boyd of VCrisis. Here’s the latest from VCrisis: Guardian’s Comment is Free censors Vcrisis

Cross-posted at MNM

technorati tags Ken Livingstone, London, terrorism

Just like Joe Kennedy, Ken Livingstone is fond of Hugo. It has been a rocky relationship, but they appear to have made up.

With a little help of a lot of money:

Mayor signs Venezuelan oil deal

Ken Livingstone has signed an oil deal with Venezuela – providing cheap fuel for London’s buses and giving cut price travel for those on benefits.

V Crisis sums it up nicely: Dictator Hugo Chavez to give up to $32 million/year to Livingstone

Chavez is to give up to $32 million/year to Europe’s richest city.

World Politics Watch reports on the ongoing Venezuelan arms race, Venezuela Preparing for ‘Asymmetrical’ Showdown With U.S.

Venezuela is beefing up its military capabilities by land, sea and air in preparation for what one senior official called a possible “asymmetrical conflict” with the United States.

Venezuelan Ambassador to the United States Bernardo Alvarez said that while his country is preparing for possible warfare with the United States — a notion President Hugo Chavez has repeatedly asserted — Venezuela is nonetheless in complete compliance with international and regional non-proliferation treaties.

By characterizing a warfare scenario with the United States as “asymmetrical,” the ambassador was acknowledging the distinct firepower and personnel advantage of the United States, though he noted his country was preparing itself for defense nonetheless.
…
The ambassador’s remarks follow a recent report that Venezuela’s latest arms improvement will focus on the country’s navy, which is said to be interested in purchasing nine additional submarines.

Having already spent $3.4 billion on Russian arms, including assault rifles and fighter jets, the Venezuelan Navy is planning to spend $3 billion more to create the largest submarine fleet in the region by 2012, according to Venezuelan Navy Vice Adm. Armando Laguna.
…
The submarines will be the “diesel-electric variety,” said Laguna in a recent communiqué, quoted earlier this month by Brazil’s leading newspaper, Estado de Sao Paulo, and will weigh in at approximately 1,750 metric tons apiece. The Venezuelan Navy is currently considering bids from German, France and Russia, the odds-on favorite, for the new vessel contracts.

The French must really know how to forgive and forget.

Meanwhile, Venezuela to Al-Qaeda: Do not menace us, we are anti-imperialists!! (h/t MNM)

When Ken Livingstone is not spending $70,000 of taxpayers’ money in travel, and suing bloggers at taxpayers’ expense, he gets into debates:

Gates of Vienna has a 7-part video, and posts,

Red Ken spoke first, and gave a very urbane speech about the need for multiculturalism and a coming together of different cultures to form a “world civilization”. He referred repeatedly to the defects of the United States, and gave his opinion that the era of America as the premier global power is even now coming to an end.

Mr. Pipes expressed a strong disagreement with the mayor.

“The problem is not so much a clash of civilizations,” he said, “but a clash between civilization and barbarism… The ‘clash of civilizations’ idea fails; it does not fit the facts; it is not a good way to understand the world.” He went on to detail the dangers of the largest and most violent barbarism of all, radical Islam. He singled out Britain, and in particular London, as the world’s principal haven for Islamic terrorists.

Watch all the videos.