Sunday, December 20, 2015

Left press review

On a slow Saturday night I decided to do what I have stopped doing long, long ago, to examine the misinforming to plain idiotic articles supporting the bolivarian farce. But two upset readers sent me these pieces and by sheer courtesy I read them and went ahead to comment below.

The first one is from CounterPunch. Since I do not read such pages I cannot evaluate how far left these people are. Nor I care for, taking the piece for itself as objectively as I could. It did not go far... All started well enough, pointing out the wish for the revolutionaries to fight back while acknowledging a major electoral setback. But then by the 4th large paragraph we were back in 2002... Really? It is OK that here, in Venezuela, they use that argument because they have no other one left, but overseas? Can't they afford to be a tad more creative in defending the revolutionary farce? Here the paragraph in full:

In April 2002, the U.S.-backed opposition in Venezuela staged a coup against then President Chavez in a desperate attempt to reassert their control over the country and extinguish the Bolivarian Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans poured into the streets of Caracas, with millions more in other parts of the country, calling for Chavez to be restored tohis rightful office, and for the coup leaders to be arrested. There was really no doubt that the U.S. was responsible for this attempt at forced regime change, with many mainstream news outlets reporting within days that high-ranking officials in the Bush administration were intimately involved in orchestrating the coup.

The US had sympathies but it was NEVER proved that the Bush administration gave a "go ahead". Apparently for the left it is absolutely impossible to conceive that actually there would be a strong popular movement against a leftist regime, a movement that does not need to be stoked on by the CIA. Sigh...  The good savage theory from the North Atlantic do-gooders....

As for the hundred of thousand in Caracas and the millions across the country, pictures please. Amazing how some urban legends that started with a small crowds of looters on Friday 12 and some protest gatherings in the name of Chavez AFTER it was becoming clear that the army may be returning Chavez to office ended up becoming throngs of freedom seeking folks who did all the work. Apparently the author was in Caracas and I wasn't.

You can gather by yourself that the rest of the piece read like an open propaganda pamphlet. No need to comment further, just to point out that the piece appeared first in Telesur. 'nuf said!

The other piece graced Huff Post, where you can find about everything if you are patient enough to set through it (I do not). It is written by Dan Kovalic who presents himself as an adjunct professor. And has his twitter avatar posing next to Chavez tombstone. So there goes academic objectivity.

At least, in a way, he is more honest: you do not need to wait for the 4th paragraph, you get it right in the face from the start.

Of course, given the fact that the opposition was able to win such an election, and that President Maduro and the PSUV are going to honor that election, is a true testament to what many of us have been saying for years -- that, despite the claims of the U.S. government and its compliant media (collectively, the U.S.), Venezuela under Chavez/Maduro governance is authentically democratic. Indeed, one of the great achievements of the Chavista revolution has been democratic reforms.

So right there you have it, before Chavez there was no democracy (how did he get elected, to begin with?). And poor Mr. Kovalic: he should have waited a few days before writing on the Huff: Maduro et al. are not "honoring" the result.

For the rest Mr. Kovalic reveals his true colors: the bolivarian farce is good and worth defending no matter what because, well, it is anti US.  Mr. Kovalic does in very broad strokes. Not for him to have read the 18 pages letter from OAS secretary exquisitely detailing all the electoral treachery BEFORE the first vote was cast. Nor for him either to take a calculator and verify that the minimum wage today in Venezuela is not even 20 USD a month and as such ALL social advances of Chavez, whatever those may be, are now voided, leaving people worse off than what they were in 1998. The rest of the note is thus quite predictable. As is predictable that both notes do not expand much on the reasons why people voted against the regime: years of waiting on line under the sun for food and medicine and sanitary items. Conditions that neither one would tolerate for a minute in the cozy countries where they live and from where it is so easy to decide what is best for Venezuela (even if it is OK to sacrifice it on the anti US altar).

The problem with people like these two authors is that debate with them is useless, It is not that they believe in what they write about, it is that they desperately want to believe. And against that, history, logic and facts are impotent.

May the dear readers do as they wish with this blog entry.




12 comments:

  1. Counterpunch is an extreme left website, which rarely publishes anything worth reading. Here's a copy of the author of the article you quoted

    Eric Draitser is the founder of StopImperialism.org and host of CounterPunch Radio. He is an independent geopolitical analyst based in New York City. You can reach him at ericdraitser@gmail.com.

    As far as I can tell these "independent" analysts have a very uniform and submissive line towards Chavism. I would love to see if their salaries and funding comes from accounts fed via the money laundering schemes being uncovered.

    The key to all of this is to realize that publications like Huffington, the UKs Guardian, and others do have a communist dictatorship being fed this type of garbage. It's human nature.

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    Replies
    1. Boludo Tejano1:50 AM

      The key to all of this is to realize that publications like Huffington, the UKs Guardian, and others do have a communist dictatorship being fed this type of garbage. It's human nature.

      The HuffPo has not earned reputation for balanced, objective reporting. Daniel commented on a HuffPo article. Given the HuffPo's track record, I was surprised by a recent HuffPo article written by Jorge Quiroga, former President of Bolivia: In Venezuela, the Opposition is on the Right Side of History. Here is an excerpt:
      Since canceling the vote was out of the question, rigging started. Massive use and abuse of government funds, employees and resources -- check. Nonstop media coverage for government candidates while opponents disappeared off radio and TV -- check. Keeping the iconic Leopoldo López jailed and invisible -- check. Keeping elected mayors Ceballos, Scarano and Ledezma under house arrest and off the campaign trail -- check. Barring prominent opponents like María Corina Machado from running for Congress - check. Deporting Colombians to stir up nationalism (a la Trump) -- check. Decreeing emergency status in all border areas to prevent campaigning in unfriendly areas -- check. Cloning the opposition symbol and colors in the ballot to confuse voters -- check. Unleashing violence against opposition leaders in the midst of campaign rallies -- check. Turning the wrath of the government against a small neighbor like Guyana -- check. Killing an opposition member standing a few feet away from Leopoldo's wife Lilian Tintori at an opposition gathering -- check. Check, check, check.

      Name a trick and the regime used it. Nothing was left on the shelf and every rotten maneuver was deployed.

      It did not work.


      In the HuffPo? Will wonders never cease?

      Delete
  2. Counterpunch? My goodness, I had totally forgotten about those. I must have flushed them down my bookmark toilet at least some 8 years ago together with Commondreams and Truthout. I see they keep up with the good work.

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  3. The 'Left' do not deal in facts and they do not debate. Twas always thus. Tell them to read it from various sources to make clear the facts then they will ignore you. If you don't agree with them you are evil, Nazi, racist, stupid etc. (or whatever the a la mode word of the day is).

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  4. The influence of CounterPunch is about as strong as my local neighborhood newspaper. That is, infinitesimal.
    HuffPo will publish anything that gets clicks.

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  5. US leftist love to throw out numbers about how Chavez cut poverty way down, brought literacy way up, & brought malnutrition way down. Oh, & let's not forget that he brought modern medicine to the poor who didn't have it before (sarcasm). No amount of facts nor logic moves them. They then completely ignore the fact that there are massive shortages, rampant crime (2nd highest murder rate) & 200% inflation. Workers' paradise? I don't think so.

    About the only thing they get right is that there is US intervention in Venezuela. Somehow they're OK with Cuban shenanigans though. Double standard anyone?

    Daniel, if you thought Counterpunch & HuffPo were bad here's what ANSWER republished from Liberation News:

    Following electoral defeat, Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution prepares to move forward

    "In fact, what is most needed in Venezuela is the rule of the working class; in Marxist terms, the dictatorship of the proletariat."

    "But the only way that the working class can actually take power is through a socialist revolution that “expropriates the expropriators” – that seizes the factories, banks, natural resources, means of distribution, and so on, most of which is in the hands of a tiny minority, the capitalist class. Such a revolution would break up the old state apparatus and fully consolidate power."

    http://www.answercoalition.org/after_election_venezuela_s_bolivarian_revolution_prepares_for_challenging_period

    & here I thought ANSWER was pacifist. Now their true colors show.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Boludo Tejano12:29 AM

    The first one is from CounterPunch. Since I do not read such pages I cannot evaluate how far left these people are. Nor I care for, taking the piece for itself as objectively as I could.

    Because I occasionally read CounterPunch, I knew that a certain academic from Drexel University -whom I could call a moonbat Chavista- is a frequent contributor. When I did an Advanced Google Search at CounterPunch on George Ciccariello Maher, I got 82 hits.

    Someone from my high school crowd- though I was better friends with his brother- wrote for CounterPunch. From the ideology that inundated our childhood, which might be expressed as "Alger Hiss was not guilty," it was not much of a jump at all to write for CounterPunch. I changed more from that ideology than did my high school acquaintance who wrote for CounterPunch. I wonder which one of us was the "conservative."

    I doubt that Daniel had a lot of experience in the US with people such as myself who left the Left.

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  7. CounterPunch is nuts, Alger Hiss was not only innocent he was working for freedom. Jeeeeeebus. And the Rosenbergs, they were not only innocent, they were keeping the world free of US fascism. By dawg if I had my way we'd find those bastards, dig um up and execute them again at halftime on Sunday Night Football.

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  8. One of the interesting things about the left(liberal/progressive/socialists) is that they tend to gradually gain control of most government bureaucratic offices in the West. P

    erhaps it is simply due to the fact that people on the right (conservatives, small government advocates, constitutional government advocates, pro-capitalism advocates)don't believe corporations and businesses are all bad. They will work for about anyone who pays them the most. Those on the left would rather work for government (the good guys in their minds).

    In any case, that is why there are such lies as, "1 in 6 people in the US face hunger". When in fact, those who tend to be poor in the US tend to be getting fatter and fatter. Part of the reason for statistics like this is that a bureaucracy called the USDA provides the definition of hunger and their funding is partly tied to how many they can define as being hungry.

    The few hungry people seen in the US tend to be those with drug or alcohol problems and those with mental illness. In the US, due to rights given to the mentally ill, it is not possible for forcibly put them into a mental institution. Therefore, the USDA statistic is useless for making real policy but it does help the USDA in getting funding.

    Those on the left in the US then can use the statistic to say countries like Venezuela under Chavez or Cuba are better than we in the United States are because the governments of Venezuela and Cuba report a smaller percentage of hungry people than does the US. I've actually seen such comments before.









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  9. Any country can "eradicate" poverty or bring down there numbers by juggling and playing with the mathematical numbers or equations used to evaluate and determine poverty levels. The equations used now are not the same as those used in 1997 and before.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Any country can "eradicate" poverty or bring down there numbers by juggling and playing with the mathematical numbers or equations used to evaluate and determine poverty levels. The equations used now are not the same as those used in 1997 and before.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Boludo Tejano6:51 PM

    The best reply to the "Chavez reduced poverty" mantra is to point out that even before the 2014 crash in the price of oil, the performance of Venezuela's economy was anemic compared to the rest of Latin America. And this with the oil price bonanza.


    GDP per capita, PPP (constant 2011 international $)
    Percentage Change 1998 to 2013

    Venezuela 15.1%
    Latin America & Caribbean (developing only) 32.0

    How can you reduce poverty with an anemic economy?

    World Development Indicators Databank (World Bank)

    ReplyDelete

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