Monday, November 29, 2010

Eva Golinger, The Hague and me

There are certain issues that will not be solved by a vote, no matter how often we vote. Watching Eva Golinger last Tuesday in cadena reminded me of a problem that we need to solve: what would we do with some chavistas if in 2012 or earlier Chavez leaves the presidency?
From the New York Times, see text

A couple of months ago I was invited to a farewell party of an official that I used to deal with, in an embassy that shall remain nameless because really, that is not the point here. The fact of the matter is that when I arrived most people were in the main rooms chatting amiably, drink in hand. And on one balcony there were two people alone, visibly standing apart. After a while, as the room was becoming a tad warm for my taste we moved closer to the balcony and there I recognized Eva Golinger talking to some guy who my companion recognized as one of these VTV folks specialize in awful micros bashing the opposition.

Once upon a time, maybe 5 years ago, I might have tried to engage Eva Golinger. After all the venue was safe enough that both of us would have to behave and still be able to tell each other a piece of our mind. There was a time, before chavismo promoted her as Caracas Rose, that Eva was not above writing to bloggers. But that night I had absolutely no wish to meet her, and even less to talk to her. And apparently no one else, except for the hosts who took turns to talk to her and her VTV co-guest. Why did I not want to talk to her? It is true that today it is more dangerous in that she could be tempted to trace me down and report me as a NED recipient or who knows what other baseless accusation she could come up with, her specialty today as last Tuesday so sickly established. As much as this might have been a consideration, it was not the most important: the fact of the matter is that really, I had no desire to talk to her. Period. No interest, nothing to say, and likely nothing I wanted to hear. If Eva had anything to tell me she has my address, she can write to me again and she knows I will not be rude. But from what I saw that night, she preferred to be in a corner on her own, a vivid representation of the social apartheid that the country has become, courtesy of people like her.

In fact at some point another guest arrived, a noted journalists that was close to the regime but who distanced himself since 2007.  He, at least, went to greet Eva and her companion but the exchange was brief, limited clearly to a hi!, how-are-you-doing nice-to-see-you-her talk-to-you-later. She was in a social ghetto, making me wonder how come she actually decided to come.

But to this scene I can add another scene reported here during the world cup. This blog correspondent there sent me that banner displayed in South Africa against Chavez, plus the tales of the local police trying to remove such displays (apparently there were chavistas in attendance and they seem to have been much busier in monitoring banners flown than any soccer playing on the grass). The censored banner read "Chavez, te espero en La Haya", Chavez, I await you at the Hague [seat of the international court of justice, the leitmotiv of Diego Arria].

My correspondent wrote to me how upset they were at the local police trying to stop those displays, though in all earnest I am sure that they were willing to stop any political display whatsoever. I probably failed to be as sympathetic as could have been because if truth be told I was torn in between the need to remind the world all the time what a fraud Chavez is, and the need to preserve the World Cup from a political arena. Objectivity is hard to come by, you know….

And thus here I am left to wonder about how we can try to bridge that political chasm that Chavez has imposed upon us. From my days as a student in France I had no problem to talk to communist students (yes, the Communist party was still something then, strong enough in campus to try to sell me subscriptions to L’Humanité). Though of course then I had little affinity to commie students, my circle of friends was an even mix of socialists and RPR and we all got along just fine, playing Tarot for hours and hiking as spring came. In my US years I was clearly on the Liberal side but I always managed to have Republican friends. Not of the fundamentalist variety to be sure, but Republicans nevertheless, even gay ones!

But in Venezuela today whenever I suspect any one from chavismo I simply let it go, try to find the necessary polite excuses not to talk to them further than the very strict necessary.

Why can’t I deal with them? Sometimes I think that it is for the same reasons that I could never deal with any religious fundamentalists, with what is for me an abhorrent mind set of submitting oneself willingly, unquestioningly to a book or a leader. But it goes further because in Venezuela the consequences of 11 years of chavismo are for all to see. We are not in Nazi Germany where quite a few people could claim with some credibility that they did not know what was going on in death camps (at least until 1940-41). There is too much media today, too much Youtube to plead such ignorance even if you are too poor to have access to Youtube or a TV set. People know in Venezuela that something is rotten and yet...  Let’ look at the fantastic report of Simon Romero about the Waraos living off the garbage in Puerto Ordaz. Eva Golinger does not know that? Is it not fit to print in her English version of “Correo del Orinoco”?

She could actually print that these Waraos are still reported as supporting Chavez no matter what. After 11 years of “revolution”, still eating people’s waste and still with “mi comandante”. The mind reels… But I could talk to these people still, I did so as much as I could when I was myself in Delta Amacuro. They are not the problem, they are permanent victims and the mere fact that Chavez acknowledges their existence better than anyone else did in the past might be enough for them, even if that is all what he does, acknowledging their existence while those who should know better like Nohemi Portocarrero fawn in Guajiro gown all over Chavez. My gripe is more toward the Golinger and Flores and Cabello and Ramirez of Venezuela who have no excuse in standing up to Chavez and denounce the incompetent programs that are still leaving so many native American eating trash. The problem here is that these are so deep in denial that they prefer to hide in corners when at some reception where the welcome flag is not red.

How many chavista are like them? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Will we need some day a dechavistation program? Psychologically people who have deluded themselves willingly and willfully for so many years must be affected in their sanity and simply cannot be recovered for society. Not even a future chavismo without Chavez, when the extraordinary abuses of this regime will finally be exposed, verified and condemn, can have use of such people.

Even reddish shoes, Dorothy!
Their road to degradation can easily be traced, and we can probably point out the moment when Chavez got them for good, once and for all. Since Eva Golinger is the most recent example we can see how it is to follow when she was a nobody, circa 2001 to now preside one of the most egregious events in Venezuelan formal history, be the center piece, all in red, including her scarf, and end up in the front page of Tal Cual with the title “payasada” ill translated as clownesque. Because of course it was nothing more than a rather tawdry performance when the once upon a time self styled defender of the oppressed and the immigrant is on her way to become the inspiration of a legislation that would put me in jail even though once upon a time we shared air time in some radio station.

The real problem I have with Eva is not that she is about to become a virtual concentration camp guard, it is her mediocrity. The woman is a crook alright, as Alek Boyd has shown clearly (here and here).  However her worse offense remains that she is a mediocrity. She lives off the Venezuelan money quite comfortably without any apparent benefit for us, or does anyone believe that her latest venture, Correo del Orinoco, is able to sustain itself like a normal newspaper? However her leechness is still not as bad as her mediocrity. You need to listen to her speech or read it, with its numbing accumulations of platitudes, clichés and useless attacks when not a single one of her “evidences” made it to some court to get some real condemnation. So what does she do? She proposes a law so that her attacks can now be assimilated to thought crimes. Goebbels would have had it that easy.

And yet even if we can laugh while we cringe at small fish like Golinger who will leave the county in the first plane to Miami the day Chavez falls, we must think already as of today of a reconciliation process with which will be able to condemn enough people for the example while opening the door for those who were true believers but finally saw the light. We do not want to fail our own Reconstruction version of history lest in 2 or 3 decades form now a new Chavez comes to destroy the country once again. We cannot forget that and thus we cannot be distracted by red flags, almost literally, such as Eva Golinger.

The ones we need to think about what to do with are the like of Cilia Flores who introduced her in that event, where a flushed up Eva did not realize how manipulated she was in doing the dirty work of Cilia and Hugo.  Maybe Cilia crimes are not worthy of The Hague like the ones of Hugo, though she keeps adding merits daily, but she, along at least a few dozens of her colleagues, will need to face prosecution.  And we must think about it already, here in Venezuela and wherever we can.

And be writing this post, you must realize that with the current winds, I am starting to expose myself seriously.  For the "me" part of the title.

Eva has a clear understanding on how much chavista propaganda the opposition blogs have cost the regime. And yet that is not why she will help prosecuting us at some point: she has been unable in all of her writing career, to give it a name, to write texts of the strength and quality that you can find routinely in any of the major anti Chavez English language blogs.  Her mediocrity will turn into jealousy and she will try to get us at some point. As I wrote above her "crossing pointt" was last Tuesday.  However we can always hope that her mediocrity will maintain her as inefficient as she has been all along.

14 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:36 AM

    Oh yes, but were the panties red too!

    danno: this is a very serious comment

    ReplyDelete
  2. William6:03 AM

    Great post Daniel. With a few notable exceptions, prosecution, whether it be in the Hague or Venezuela, will not necessarily be in the best interests of the country. It may be best to provide incentives for the most high-profile members of the current government to relocate to Cuba or Iran or wherever. Will a new government want to have political prisoners around to be the downtrodden darlings of the extreme left? Better to have them out of the country.

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  3. While reading the history or North Korea from the Wikipedia I came about this part which greatly surprised me:

    "Indeed, a great many of the refugees fleeing to China because of famine still showed significant support for the current government as well as pride in their homeland. Many of these food refugees reportedly return to North Korea after earning sufficient money."

    So don't expect the Waraos or anyone for that matter to shift their allegiance because of economical problems. With enough Brainwashing they will be loyal forever.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Charly12:17 PM

    Daniel, what a waste of talent, writing so much about that useless gringa. Just another opportunist rebolucionaria.

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  5. Daniel, thanks for bringing up this subject.

    I never, ever, watch cadenas. Except this time I did. The moment I saw her standing there, I got curious...

    The majesty of the place she was standing. It was sacrilege! Well, at least to myself. And then I heard all the rubbish she spoke. It was a mix of Lina Ron and chavez speeches, with a gringo accent. Almost funny, but no, it was a cochinada. That's the adjective that fits the whole affair.

    I concur with you. To me, the comeflorismo of accepting these people into a new Venezuela will be a big, big mistake. What to do? Our future involves many Nurembergs. Our future or our children's future, will not be a nice one.

    For justice to be upheld, many unsavory days will come by. If not, we'll never get rid of the cancer that slowly gnaws our country.

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  6. charly

    i started a post about her when i saw her but i dropped it because you are right, she was not worth much of my time. but after last tuesday she became a symbol of how chavez degrades all what he touches and thus she became a case story, worth a narration.

    that she is featured is in a way accidental, but she offers a complete narrative of descent into abjection because she started on the internet, hacking pro chavez stuff in english.

    if i may say a good word about her, believe it or not, she is head and shoulders above some of the other hacks like borev or that kid in merida whose name escapes me now. not to mention justin delacour or calvin tucker. at least at first she believed in the stuff and became anti US only over time: these other guys became pro chavez because they were anti US. that is why she was better than all of them, political connections et al., she had at least a hint of genuine. now she lost it to become a major, major sycophant. hence the post.

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  7. Daniel,

    Great post. I think it is important to consider what will happen to the high officials of the Robolution. The magnitude of the fraud is simply to great to shrug off. There must be an accounting.

    However, what about the Waraos, the llaneros, the campasinos, the people living in urban slums (ranchos)... all of the approximately two to three million chavistas who are true believers? How are they going to react to having their entire belief system ripped out from under them? These people love and revere their Comandante. They believe in him not for his logic, or his results. No, they believe in him because they love him. What will happen when this "love" is taken away from them?

    I suspect that we can look for guidance to the Kübler-Ross model of "Five Stages of Grief".

    In order, these are:

    1. Denial and Isolation
    2. Anger
    3. Bargaining
    4. Depression
    5. Acceptance

    However, the effects will be magnified because we will be dealing with large masses of people experiencing these feelings at the same time. The part to focus on is number Two, "Anger". Having two to three million angry people in the streets venting their rage and desperation is not a prospect to look forward to.

    However, there will be a short respite during stage One, "Denial". During that brief stage, there will be a small window of opportunity create a psychological campaign to short circuit the process, to blunt the anger, or at least redirect it from taking vengeance on anyone who is, represents, or supports the Opposition.

    I do hope that someone smarter than I am is already working on this "PsyOp" campaign. This plan needs to be crafted, polished, and ready for when the time comes. Without such a plan, the Opposition may find themselves in charge of a pile of charred ruins.

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  8. Somehow I don't foresee too many problems with Chavistas in a possible aftermath of the demise of Chavez's power.Those' interesados' who are making money or receiving ego benefits will find new venues for their needs.Criminals never lack for venues, they just switch them.

    As for those who are genuinely fooled, most them are by nature fearful, and lacking in self confidence.These types will be loyal to anyone in power or at least be fearful enough to hang low in a situation where their 'papito' has lost power.

    Fearful types don't feel they have the necessary inner resources to think for themselves or act alone, so they have to rely on infrastructures, groupthink, allies and supports outside themselves for survival.Once they establish trust they hold on to it for dear life.Truth will not be readily available to them.This is why we see( to our utmost consternation) Chavistas who actually don't think that crime in Venezuela is that bad :)The cannot see because they have delegated their seeing to their highest authority.

    People who have so much trouble contacting their own inner guidance think that- as the Japanese say,: " The blade of grass that grows too high gets chopped off".

    When a new government comes in, if they perceive it as powerful and popular enough they will adapt to it.They will shift their alliances to whatever influence is hitting the hardest at the moment.

    If I worry about anybody it won't be so much the Venezuelan Chavistas, it will be the "revolutionary" foreigners in the country.But whatever ruckus they and a few Venezuelan fanatics might cause would be a drop in the bucket compared to the escalating crime in Venezuela today.

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  9. On a lighter note, William wrote-

    "It may be best to provide incentives for the most high-profile members of the current government to relocate to Cuba or Iran or wherever."

    I vote for Iran. No booze, no bikinis, pray five times a day.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Charly1:18 AM

    Daniel, you are too kind and this country will definitely need people like you to put itself back together once the scoundrels are kicked out. I personally have no such generosity and, consequently do not find Eva any more decent than Tucker, Chris Carlson (aka Tosh), etc. After all this is the individual who cut and paste a lot of material available freely on the web and presented it as a dark conspiracy to take down her hero, remember "The Chavez Code"? What a piece of disinformation. Alex Boyd also documented her dishonesty in the past with respect to her status as a lawyer, etc.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous4:50 AM

    They Daniel, great post. One small correction though, I struggled with this paragraph quite a bit:

    "We do not want to fail our own Reconstruction version of history least in 2 or 3 decades form now a new Chavez comes to destroy the country once again."

    I think you meant

    "We do not want to fail our own reconstruction version of history, lest 2 or 3 decades from now, a new Chavez comes to destroy the country once again.

    Luis

    ReplyDelete
  12. luis

    done! thanks1

    ReplyDelete
  13. 1979 Boat People6:50 PM

    m_astera,

    Um...,you forgot to mention NO RED (T-)SHIRTS in your comment.:)

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous4:04 AM

    Wow.
    This post is art.
    I don't even know where to start, except to say that your prose is a gift, and I'm a gay republican in the southern US ;-)

    Great work Daniel.

    ReplyDelete

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