[Peace-discuss] Best is none too good
Jenifer Cartwright
jencart13 at yahoo.com
Thu Nov 29 23:10:22 CST 2007
BBC World News of late (today particularly) shows a slightly tarnished halo above Mr Chavez's head -- riots in the street by students and middle classes, state police roughing up and shooting at protesters... Elections coming up soon, and polls have Chavez w/ less support than formerly. And then there was his refusal to renew everybody's favorite commercial TV station, so folks had to take a roundabout route (as I recall) so they could watch their favorite soaps again... and soon after that, his attempt to throw out term limits so he could be Venezuela's Castro and stay in power forever (which failed, as I recall). Venezuela under Chavez was looking like a true socialist democracy, and I think we all hope that isn't going to change. Morales is having trouble in Bolivia as well, but didn't catch the specifics... Keeping my fingers crossed for all of Latin America -- I actually dared hope for the whole continent.
--Jenifer
"C. G. Estabrook" <galliher at uiuc.edu> wrote:
[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
###
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