[Peace-discuss] Re: Frontline, Venezuela

[John W.]

On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 11:05 AM, Bob Illyes <illyes at uiuc.edu> wrote:

Frontline was pretty light-weight. It referred to the "failure", I believe
> it was, of the health care system, without explanation. It mentioned the
> increase in violence without mentioning that drugs are being moved through
> Venezuela since Columbia is relatively locked down. It mentioned the
> non-renewal of the TV license without mentioning that the station had
> supported the coup against Chavez.....
>
> I would like to have heard a discussion of issues in the implementation of
> economic reforms, particularly the health care system, but they weren't
> really there.


This last thing is what I missed most too.  No real in-depth discussion of
Chavez' economic reforms.  No hard data of any kind.

I now better understand the Counterpunch article.  The Frontline piece did
seem somewhat biased, portraying Chavez as basically a blowhard who likes to
talk big and bully people, even his own cabinet ministers, but whose
policies have largely failed.  Unfortunately the Counterpunch author,
Patrick Irelan, seems biased in the opposite direction.  Bottom line:  I
feel no closer to knowing and understanding the "real" Hugo Chavez than I
was before.  Maybe I'll go buy a pinata and see if there's any secret
information hidden inside...

John Wason
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/archive/peace-discuss/attachments/20081128/6d5ddfe3/attachment.html