Belafonte calls Bush 'greatest terrorist in the world'

Belafonte led a delegation to Venezuela that included actor Danny Glover, Princeton scholar Cornel West, farm worker organizer Dolores Huerta and Malia Lazu of the Hip Hop Coalition. They had met with President Chavez for more than six hours on Saturday.

"We respect you, admire you, and we are expressing our full solidarity with the Venezuelan people and your revolution," Belafonte told Chavez and his radio and TV audience.

Belafonte, 78, was a close comrade of Martin Luther King and is now a UNICEF goodwill ambassador. The U.S. Fund for UNICEF issued a statement that Belafonte was speaking only "as a private citizen." Belafonte has also criticized the U.S. embargo of Cuba.

During the talk show, broadcast live from a farming co-operative southwest of Caracas, Belafonte said he had come to learn about Chavez's "Bolivarian Revolution," which includes a wide range of social programs for the poor and is named after Simon Bolivar, the South American independence hero.

He said that while U.S. news media portray Chavez as a "dictator," Venezuela is a true democracy and Venezuelans are "optimistic about their future."

"We have to defeat imperialism to save ourselves - and not only ourselves, to save the world," Chavez said. He called Bush "Mr. Danger."

Read More
http://www.sfbayview.com/011106/belafonte011106.shtml