[Peace-discuss] Best is none too good

[C. G. Estabrook]

[Given that Olbermann's is one of the few voices in mainstream media 
critical of the administration, it's unfortunate that he's unable to 
free himself from USG propaganda, as the following piece from 
CounterPunch shows.  --CGE]

	November 23, 2007
	Trashing Chavez: Keith Olbermann's Jaundiced Rant
	By CLIFTON ROSS

I don't know why I was so shocked listening to Keith Olbermann's 
insulting, degrading and uninformed remarks about President Hugo Chavez 
yesterday. Perhaps because Olbermann is the only man on commercial 
television who has so far had the guts to make a frontal attack on Bush 
and his coterie of war criminals. I suppose I thought his articulate and 
courageous stand against the Republicans, his criticism of their 
comrades, the spineless Democrats and other collaborators with the Bush 
regime, indicated a superior knowledge, analysis and understanding of 
politics in general. I hoped that his bold commentary indicated a 
suspicion of a system glued together by massive lies. Sadly, it appears 
that I was wrong.

On his November 20th program Keith Olbermann referred to a "news" story 
in which Chavez, trying to make his way to the bathroom past a reporter, 
reportedly said, "I have to go. Do you want me to pee on you?"

First of all, it's a tragic commentary on the state of "news" and 
journalism that bodily functions become major news stories, be they 
sexual or excretory, especially when people like Chávez have so many 
more interesting features worthy of discussion, most notably, ideas. 
That Olbermann would stoop to the news cycle at its most base level is, 
itself, a disappointment. But his comment after the reference to "peeing 
on" someone was more so: "Maybe you should have asked that before you 
started doing that to your own country's laws and citizens."

To what is Mr. Olbermann referring when he states that Chávez is "peeing 
on" the laws and citizens of Venezuela? Is he referring to Chávez's 
dozen or so electoral victories, all declared clean and fair by 
international observers (including ex-President Carter)? Is it Chávez's 
stand for the dignity and independence of Latin America? Is it Chávez's 
internationalism which has not only taken him to Cuba and Iran but also 
caused him to discount heating oil for the poor in the U.S.? Could it be 
the clinics Chávez has set up around the country, Barrio Adentro, 
guaranteeing Venezuelans free health care? Or the Bolivarian 
Universities he's funding to enable three million people, without means, 
resources, hope or future, to study and win degrees and new 
possibilities? Was Chávez "pissing on the laws" when he allowed a 
referendum on his presidency to go through and which he won handily in 2004?

Mr. Olbermann needs to get his facts straight and he could start off by 
reading Mark Weisbrot and Luis Sandoval's study published in July of 
this year by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, entitled, "The 
Venezuelan Economy in the Chávez Years" 
(http://www.cepr.net/content/view/1248/8/ ) wherein they show that "Real 
(inflation-adjusted) GDP has grown by 76 percent since the bottom of the 
recession in 2003." Indeed, once the pressures of a U.S. inspired coup, 
U.S.-backed oil strike and Referendum (all funded by Olbermann's and our 
local nemesis, Bush) were soundly defeated by Chávez and his supporters, 
Weisbrot and Sandoval agree that "it appears that the Venezuelan economy 
was hit hard by political instability prior to 2003, but has grown 
steadily and quite rapidly since political stability began improving in 
that year."

The economy has grown, but that new wealth has not merely trickled, or 
gushed, upwards into the pockets of the rich, as it always seems to do 
in the U.S. In Venezuela the poverty rate has dropped 31% under Chávez, 
(extreme poverty from 53% to 9.1 percent) but the authors acknowledge 
that this current poverty rate "does not take into account the increased 
access to health care or education that poor people have experienced. 
The situation of the poor has therefore improved significantly beyond 
even the substantial poverty reduction that is visible in the official 
poverty rate, which measures only cash income." This is not to mention, 
as the authors also point out, the "increased health care benefits to 
the poor, since in the absence of these benefits, most poor people would 
simply have gone without health care, and therefore suffer from worse 
health, lower income, and lower life expectancy." And those health 
benefits are substantial: "In 1998 there were 1,628 primary care 
physicians for a population of 23.4 million. Today, there are 19,571 for 
a population of 27 million.

Given these facts, and your absence of them, Mr. Olbermann, could you 
explain exactly on whom Chávez has been pissing? If not, perhaps in the 
future you could drop the subject or deal with something a bit more 
substantial when talking about Chávez than urine.

In other words, put up or piss off.

[Clifton Ross represented the U.S. in Venezuela's World Poetry Festival 
in 2005. From 2005-2006 he reported from Mérida, Venezuela. His movie, 
"Venezuela: Revolution from the Inside Out" is now available from 
www.freedomvoices.org and www.progressivefilms.org. He is the co-editor 
of Voice of Fire: Communiques and Interviews of the Zapatista National 
Liberation Army (1994, New Earth Publications) and his book, Fables for 
an Open Field (1994, Trombone Press, New Earth Publications), has just 
been released in Spanish by La Casa Tomada of Venezuela. His forthcoming 
book of poems in translation, Traducir el Silencio, will be published 
later this year by Venezuela´s Ministry of Culture editorial, Perro y 
Rana. Ross teaches English at Berkeley City College, Berkeley, 
California. He can be reached at clifross1 at yahoo.com.]

http://counterpunch.org/ross11232007.html

	###