[Peace-discuss] NYT Editorial on Venzuela, with commentary

Sun Dec 11 15:27:19 CST 2005

Apt commentary!
As Ed Herman notes  in Z Magazine, December, 2005:

The New York Times versus The Civil Society

  http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Dec2005/herman1205.html

…The veteran Times reporter John Hess has said that in all 24 years  
of his service at the paper he “never saw a foreign intervention that  
the Times did not support, never saw a fare increase or a rent  
increase or a utility rate increase that it did not endorse, never  
saw it take the side of labor in a strike or lockout, or advocate a  
raise for underpaid workers. And don’t let me get started on  
universal health care and Social Security. So why do people think the  
Times is liberal?” The paper is an establishment institution and  
serves establishment ends. As Times historian Harrison Salisbury said  
about former executive editor Max Frankel, “The last thing that would  
have entered his mind would be to hassle the American Establishment,  
of which he was so proud to be a part.” …
…
--mkb

On Dec 11, 2005, at 12:08 PM, David Green wrote:

> NYT Editorial from Dec. 10th. Parenthetical comments
> have been added:
>
>      The kind of lucky breaks President Hugo Chávez of
> Venezuela has been getting lately (living in a country
> with lots of oil, which we need for our cars) could
> tempt even a modest man - and Mr. Chávez is no modest
> man (he challenges U.S. power)- to dream grandiose
> dreams (such as helping the poor of his country, and
> of ours). High oil prices (partly a result of
> exploitation by American oil companies), a terminally
> inept opposition (they couldn’t overthrow him with a
> military coup, supported by Bush and the NY Times),
> and the Bush administration's scandalous neglect of
> its Western Hemisphere neighbors (they haven’t been
> able to ram through another free trade agreement) have
> left the field wide open for Mr. Chávez to bully
> people at home (provide them with education and
> healthcare), buy friends abroad (by providing cheaper
> oil for poor people) and annoy Washington at every
> turn (not support U.S. imperialism).
>
>
>      Since first taking office (being elected) in
> 1999, Mr. Chávez has pushed through a new Constitution
> that lets him rule as a quasi dictator (he is
> supported by an elected legislature, but opposed by
> the Venezuelan corporate media). He has marginalized
> Congress, undermined judicial independence and
> prosecuted political opponents (who tried to violently
> overthrow him). By tightening control of the national
> oil company (it is a state-owned company, and he is
> the elected President), he has been able to use high
> world oil prices (which U.S. oil companies love and
> exacerbate) to increase funds for popular social
> programs for the poor, making him electorally
> unassailable (how dare a politician do things to be
> popular—especially among poor people?). That dangerous
> concentration of power (so much more concentrated than
> the neocons in Washington, who can lie their way into
> war and use the most powerful army in history when
> doing so) will most likely worsen after last Sunday's
> Congressional election, in which parties allied to Mr.
> Chávez won every one of the 167 seats. The opposition
> can blame only itself because it boycotted the polls
> even after its demands for stricter ballot secrecy
> were met. (Should Chavez give the opposition a few
> seats anyway just to appease the NY Times?)
>
>
>      That petulant idiocy (even the opposition in
> Latin countries are idiots—after all they’re all
> Latin) frustrated regional diplomats (American
> surrogates) who had pressed the secrecy demand on the
> opposition's behalf, and it mystified and
> disenfranchised Venezuelan voters who had wanted a
> choice at the polls (to choose to protect their
> privileges). Even without the boycott, pro-Chávez
> parties would have won a majority. But now not a
> single opposition voice will be heard in Congress, and
> Mr. Chávez is free to do whatever he likes (such as
> pursue a progressive agenda that provides a “bad
> example” to other countries that simply cannot be
> tolerated).
>
>
>      A month earlier, at the Summit of the Americas in
> Argentina, Mr. Chávez cavorted (while not even landing
> on an aircraft carrier) before crowds of
> anti-Washington (anti corporate globalization,
> antiwar) protesters and networked with his fellow
> Latin American presidents (wouldn’t “networking” be
> the purpose of such a meeting?). He is hoping that
> either Argentina or Brazil will sell him a nuclear
> reactor, a step that would be a very bad idea
> considering Venezuela's burgeoning friendship with
> Iran and the excessive indulgence Caracas has shown
> toward Iranian nuclear ambitions (the Axis of evil
> clearly is missing a member since our invasion of
> Iraq, and Venezuela might fit the bill—the NYT can’t
> seek any lower than this one sentence, especially
> considering the Judy Miller affair).
> Meanwhile, Washington's hemispheric influence
> (hegemony) continues to dwindle (be challenged),
> partly because President Bush has not been attentive
> enough to Mexico on immigration, Brazil on
> agricultural subsidies and Argentina on debt
> restructuring (hasn’t found a way to develop cosmetic
> solutions to deep-seated problems rooted in American
> hegemony that silence dissent while satisfying elites
> in all countries).
>
>
>      The United States should not further feed Mr.
> Chávez's ego (this is all about personal
> pathology--only Latin American leaders have
> egos—American leaders have ideals and interests) and
> give him more excuses for demagogy (a word best
> applied to leaders of countries that challenge the
> U.S.—those that don’t are “charismatic”) by treating
> him as clumsily as it has treated his hero and role
> model, Fidel Castro (the remnants of McCarthyism,
> playing the remnant of anti-communism for all it’s
> worth, with shameless hyperbole), for the past four
> and a half decades (during which the U.S. has been
> terrorizing Cuba, which can protect its citizens from
> hurricanes, while the U.S. cannot). Instead,
> Washington needs to compete more deftly and actively
> (really put the screws on) with Mr. Chávez for
> regional influence (because it can’t get away with
> overthrowing him or murdering him as it would have
> already done in the past), and look for ways to work
> with the hemisphere's other democracies (countries
> that do what the U.S. tells them to) to revive the
> multiparty competitive democracy (that used to be
> controlled by the rich) that has now just about ceased
> to exist in Venezuela (because rich Venezuelans, like
> rich Americans, don’t like democracy when the people
> don’t allow them to rule as they wish, so they've
> picked up their pieces and gone home).
>
>
>
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