Tariq Ali

Has Chavez been drinking the Nescafe?

At the Doha Tribeca Film Festival in 2009, I remember asking renowned writer and activist Tariq Ali, during a Q&A after the screening of the film “South of the border” he’d helped Oliver Stone create - whether in the spirit of the “enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend”, he and Stone had jettisoned objectivity in their uber-respectful, often fawning conversations with the leaders of Venezuela, Bolivia and other “Bolivarian” countries of Latin America.