June 20, 2013

Snotty Rotters!

Their snotty presumptions and wrongness are over the top once again, when they're scribbling about (er, propagandizing about) the Latin American left.

As if better education means higher income, ergo, why are these educated people exercised over bus fares?

As if the better educated cannot fathom social justice, nor protest on behalf of themselves or the poor!

As if this movement is stymied by government and corporate 'news' deafness and callousness, like the Occupy movement, when in fact, they have already gotten lowered bus fares in several states and the sympathy of the leftist national government, with President Dilma Rousseff praising their efforts!

Plain and simple, this is Rotters' owners' WISHFUL THINKING! They want to demean and disempower these protestors, like they did Occupy, and they use nasty snotty little tricks to do so, as if this was reporting.

And the lede line "but" is really off the charts:

"Brazil's blossoming protest movement is a coming-of-age for what had been one of Latin America's most politically disengaged youth populations, but does not appear to constitute a major threat to governability or established political parties."

The truth: These protestors were polite and peaceful BECAUSE THEY KNOW THEY HAVE A GOVERNMENT THAT LISTENS! They DON'T WANT TO BE "a major threat" to government--they want ACTION, and they got it! They DON'T WANT TO BE "a major threat" to the Workers' Party--they ARE the Workers' Party or part of it.

Rotters' thinking is upside down, inside out and backwards, just like Alice's Wonderland. They aren't "a major threat" so they won't accomplish anything. If they don't want to overthrow the government, forget them--they're just "university educated" spoiled brats, in any case.

Gawd.

I don't call them Rotters for nothing.

June 2, 2013

"Not exactly a household" issue? But that is exactly what it is!

That's a writing error by Weisbrot, who is usually so incisive.

"This may not appear to be exactly a household issue, but the fight is a very significant one for a number of reasons." --from the OP

The "household" is where families, workers, the poor--society's majority--encounter the 1%'s 'home invasion' by the bankster thugs who steal food right out of the mouths of poor children, when they aren't enforcing corporate poisoning of everybody with pesticides and GMOs; who steal the schoolbooks right out of children's hands, by requiring the defunding of education and other social programs; who steal the pittance wages of their parents with required skyrocketing costs of public services (water, electricity, transportation, communication); who drive small local farmers out of business by dumping Big Ag produce on local markets, destroying entire traditions of local food production and the entirety of a country's food self-sufficiency--numerous family farm households obliterated, small farmers driven into urban squalor; who create massive, hopeless, extreme poverty with no chance at upward mobility (often resulting in poor teenagers turning to crime out of desperation, among other things), and who impact households with "privatization" and de-regulation of every kind (miner and other workplace safety, for instance--loss of breadwinners; lack of medical care for workers and the poor; corporate theft of a country's natural resources, the profit from which should be helping the country's people; vast damage to the environment, which harms the poor first and foremost), and on and on.

This very much IS a "household issue" though a lot of people may not know how personally and directly it affects them.

The very point of World Bank/IMF policy has been to loot and plunder the poor majority's households where they live, in every bill they pay, in every service they depend upon, in every tiny little bit of property they may have, and in their individual or collective power to influence government.

The fact that workers and the poor in victim countries AND HERE may not be familiar with WHO is wreaking all this havoc around the world, AND HERE, is the other part of the problem that Weisbrot goes on to describe in his normally brilliant and incisive way. I'm speaking of corporate control of the media. Corporate "Big Lies." Corporate disinformation. Corporate blackguarding of any leaders who dare to fight back on behalf of their people--and I have to say that the Guardian has been almost as guilty as the rest of the corporate media on blackguarding democratically elected Latin American leaders, like Hugo Chavez, who have helped drive the ruinous World Bank/IMF out of the region.

Saying that the World Bank/IMF may not be a "household issue" throws off to the side this other vital issue, by which, as a matter of fact, the corporate rulers ALSO invade homes, via corporate control of the broadcast airwaves (airwaves belonging to the public!) with non-stop propaganda and brainwashing on behalf of the local and global 1%, and the black-holing of information vital to the 99%. With a properly functioning "Fourth Estate," the World Bank/IMF thuggery would be common knowledge, "Bretton Woods" would be a household name, many other deliberately hidden 1%-er forces would be exposed and all of our democracies would be greatly improved.

Weisbrot writes about the new movement within the World Bank/IMF, by victim countries, and he does address a bit of corporate disinformation on this matter (and has generally been an awesome journalistic force against corporate lies):

"The financial press has inaccurately portrayed the fight as 'China seeks to water down key World Bank report' – the headline of the Financial Times's report on the controversy. But China is just one of many countries, and a latecomer at that, which have opposed the index within the Bank. Opposition has come from Brazil, Argentina, India and other developing countries." --from the OP (my emphasis)

But there is much more to corporate lies and disinformation, and the use of corporate news propaganda as cover for looting and plundering the poor, than this nasty little twisted bit about China and the World Bank. These ~!@#$-ing banksters are now after the Food Stamp Program here--the poor's last refuge against DEATH at the hands of the banksters. Follow THAT horror in Washington and understand how important World Bank/IMF "austerity" policies are to every poor, or increasingly poor, household in the U.S.!

Weisbrot's main point:

"...perhaps the greatest significance of this fight: developing countries are beginning to organise within the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in order to change policies. These two institutions have been controlled by Washington, with varying amounts of input from other rich countries, since their founding nearly seven decades ago. Many of their policies have been harmful to developing countries. But in contrast to the World Trade Organisation – where developing countries form blocs and fight for their interests – the world's majority has mostly let the rich countries run the show in the IMF and World Bank.

"Over the past decade the IMF has lost most of its power in developing countries and, as a result, Washington has also lost its most important avenue of influence over their policies. The middle-income countries of Asia, most of Latin America, Russia and others all made sure that they would never have to borrow again from the fund.

"The World Bank has exercised much of its influence in conjunction with the IMF...."

--from the OP

Again, we are not talking about general things here, or faraway global issues. We are talking food on the table--edible food, local food, nutrition--the devastation of the school system and slashed funding in all social programs--and all the devastation that the rich have perpetrated on the poor majority, in other countries, in our name, AND HERE. The World Bank/IMF "austerity for the poor while the rich get richer" program has HIT HERE. And this makes this movement within the World Bank, by victim countries, extremely relevant HERE, at OUR dinner tables, in OUR households, in all the bills WE pay, and all the services that WE are being robbed of, in catastrophic unemployment, in the shit-wages jobs, in the usurious thieving criminal banks and all the rest.

We also have U.S. wars that we are forced to pay for, with our hard, hard-earned money and our youngsters' lives. Other countries that are not direct victims of U.S. invasion do suffer from U.S. wars in various ways--including, for instance, the U.S. "war on drugs" (--high death tolls, diversion of resources, militarization of society, U.S. infiltration of victim country militaries and police forces, and outright use of the "war on drugs" for political/corporate purposes--such as the FIVE MILLION peasant farmers brutally displaced in Colombia), and, often, the U.S. "war on drugs" invasion is handmaiden to World Bank/IMF-enforced "austerity." But, more than any other country, we bear the direct cost of corporate-imperial wars--and "austerity" has been ADDED on top of this already unbearable burden, here.

We need more news about the rebellion against U.S./corporate financial aggression not only because we have a right to be informed, but also because we need a rebellion against it HERE. The loan policies that are being targeted by these rebellious countries--policies that are used to destroy their economies and societies--we see adopted HERE every day by our ES&S/Diebold (s)elected Congress and our Herbert Hoover-like president (lame, half-assed measures against the monstrous power of "organized money"--as FDR put it). THAT is most certainly becoming a "household issue" here, but we need to understand its origins in the out-of-control greed machine, spawned from our shores, that has been looting and plundering everybody else. And we need to learn from their rebellions, especially the one right here in the western hemisphere.

May 16, 2013

Interesting analysis, except that Venezuela's economy has been growing at 5+%...

...post-Bush Junta worldwide depression, and grew at a sizzling 10% for 5 straight years, pre-Bush Junta depression. Most of this growth is in the private sector and not including oil. (And Venezuela has had no trouble attracting oil investors, after Exxon Mobil quit the field in a snit over having to pay for social programs.)

My conclusion: These shortages in Venezuela are mainly caused by business HOARDERS. They've used that tactic before and I think they are using it now. I'm with the Venezuelan government on this. This is part of a concerted rightwing effort to destabilize the country.

A secondary reason is that the Venezuelan majority now has money to spend (high employment rate, good jobs, good wages/benefits, pensions for all, including street vendors and full-time mothers). As with the so-called energy "crisis" in Venezuela the problem is prosperity--higher demand for energy as the upwardly mobile poor class buys appliances they never could afford before, and are placing high demands on many product lines, including food and household items.

Oh my, the LIES that the Associated Pukes, the Economyst, Rotters and the Wall Street Urinal, and their ilk, tell about Venezuela!

In the recent Gallup Well-being poll, Venezuelans rated their own country FIFTH IN THE WORLD on their own sense of well-being and future prospects. 5th in the world! Our benighted corporate rulers are bent on killing that optimism, that upward mobility, that wealth-sharing, that prosperity for the many.

That is why we have Associated Pukes headlines about Venezuelan toilet paper.

May 16, 2013

Amazing, positive, historic political events occurring in Latin America...

...and nary a whisper about them in the U.S. media!

Thank you for posting this news! It's notable that you had to go all the way to Malaysia to find a report on this important event--an historic first for women in Ecuador!

--

"...three women legislators from the ruling party were appointed to lead the parliament..."

--

The seating of the legislature, with a huge leftist majority--in a country that the U.S. tried to destabilize, and whose president, Rafael Correa, is second only to Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro in the U.S. media slander-fest against leftist presidents in Latin America--is also remarkable, historic, a big plus for the people of Ecuador and completely ignored by our benighted press.

In order to find real democracy these days, we have to look for it in the countries that the U.S. government and the corpo-fascist media slander as "dictatorships."

And we have to re-write the dictionary to understand how these entities use such words with regard to Latin America.

"Dictatorship" = a government of, by and for the people.

"Dictator" = honestly elected, FDR-type leader committed to "New Deal"-like policies of inclusion and wealth-sharing.

Also,

"human rights" = corporate rights;

"free speech" = speech for corporate media moguls and no one else;

"elections of leftists" = flawed, fraudulent;

rightwing coup d'etats = "legitimate" governments;

"democracy" = places where rightwing death squads can kill labor leaders and other leftists with impunity;

"free trade" = free trade for the rich while the poor get kicked "off the island"; and so forth.

Such words in the mouths of U.S. government officials and corpo-fascist media pontificators have come to mean the opposite of what they used to mean. We are heading full bore into a Stalinist "Big Lie" information environment--lies repeated so often they begin to seem like reality--certainly where Latin America is concerned, and it seems to be across the board on many issues.

The non-existent WMDs in Iraq was not a fluke. It was just the most egregious of MANY similar lies that are being told in the interest of transglobal corporations, banksters and war profiteers.

"Big Lie" methods include endless repetition of falsehoods and reversals and distortions of language (of the very meanings of words), AND "black holes" where information should be--burying real news in a place from which no light can emerge.

We have seen both of these methods--"Big Lie" falsehoods and "black-holing" of real information--escalate over the last decade, with regard to Latin America's huge democratic rebellion against U.S. rule. This is the most important political movement in half a century, and one of the most important ever. It is the true hope of the world as to democracy. It has transformed the political landscape in half of the western hemisphere for the better.

Nothing--NOTHING!--about it in the corporate media! --except for "Big Lie" reversals, distortions, jabberwocky and "black holes" where information should be.

It is APPALLING. The Fourth Estate is DEAD, except on the Internet (where the truth can be found, here and there).

Dead and rotting in its grave. I've been following this death agony over the last decade on Latin American issues and it is comprehensive. It includes virtually ALL news and opinion sources described by the phrase "mainstream media" (in truth, 1%-er media--not "mainstream" at all). And it is so bad that I have renamed them: The New York Slimes, the Associated Pukes, the Washington Psst, the Wall Street Urinal, the Miami Hairball, Rotters, the BBcons, the Economyst, Blobbovision and other Spanish language versions of same, and the alphabet soup of deception on TV/radio.

And lately--to my profound shock--it has even included the Guardian and the New Yorker! Egregious, unrepentant LYING in both of these once great publications.

Evidently, the desperate need of our corporate rulers to regain control of Latin America crosses "the Pond" and all intellectual barriers to outright frigging lies. Virtually every source of information we once relied upon is now tainted with greed, and perhaps also classicism and racism, with regard to Latin America.

It does all come down to money--theft of resources, banksterism, looting, war profiteering, privatization of "the commons," kicking the poor "off the island." Real democracy is THE most powerful force against greed and for decency and equality. Thus, if real democracy arises somewhere--as it has in Latin America--it must be demolished for the rich to get richer.

And, above all, it must be kept from spreading north!

That is a major goal of this comprehensive "Big Lie" campaign--to keep the people of the U.S., the people of England, and as many people as possible around the world, in complete ignorance of the rebirth of democracy in Latin America.

Because, if WE reclaim our democracy and sovereignty, like the Latin Americans are doing, it will mean sharing the wealth.

May 11, 2013

Venezuela's new Labor Law: better hours, maternity leave, pensions for all

"Part of the Transition to Socialism": Venezuela's Labour Law Comes into Effect

By RYAN MALLETT-OUTTRIM

Merida, May 10th 2013 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuela's new Labour Law for Workers (Lottt) came into effect this week, guaranteeing shorter working hours, longer maternity leave and pensions for all Venezuelans.

(SNIP)

Along with establishing new working hours, the Lottt prohibits unfair dismissal, outsourcing, guarantees the right to work for both women and people with disabilities and increases maternity leave.

...Venezuela now has the world's third longest maternity leave. Mothers are entitled to six weeks pre-natal leave, and twenty post-natal. Fathers are also entitled to two weeks paternal leave. Under the law, the same conditions apply to parents who adopt a child under three years of age.

All workers are also now entitled to retirement pensions, including full time mothers and the self employed.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/9202

-------------------------------

An article about the recent spike in inflation notes that the minimum wage was raised 20% this May 1 and will be raised another 10% in September.
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/9196
This does not quite keep up with inflation but it is hella better than what's happening HERE, where wages that are very low to begin with (for those who can find jobs at all!) are eaten up by the rich with skyrocketing medical costs (medical profiteering), ever increasing and disgraceful education costs (educational profiteering and fascism--college for the rich only), bankster usury against students and everyone else, huge gasoline cost increases (talk about inflation!), increases in every kind of transaction including virtually all interactions with government, and on and on and on--the absolute destruction of the middle class and devastation of the poor.

Beware, beware, beware the rightwing "talking point" about inflation! While inflation in Venezuela is too high this quarter and should be brought down, it is occurring amidst massive improvement in the lives of ordinary Venezuelans, who rated their country FIFTH IN THE WORLD on their own sense of well-being and future prospects (in the recent Gallup Well-being poll). 5th in the world!

April 27, 2013

Know what kind of audit we have here? NO AUDIT AT ALL in half the states and...

...a miserable 1% audit in the other half.

Know how much usually gets audited in a recount, here (if you can afford the money and lawyers to get a recount)? 3%.

Know who owns the programming code in these UNAUDITED and miserably inadequately audited voting machines, all over the U.S., in every state? 75% owned and controlled by ONE, PRIVATE, FAR RIGHTWING CONNECTED CORPORATION--ES&S which bought out Diebold.

Know what this code is called? It is called 'TRADE SECRET' code! The public is forbidden to review it!

Know what Venezuela's code is called? OPEN SOURCE code! It is owned by the PUBLIC and anyone may review it.

Know how much of an audit experts say is needed to detect fraud in electronic systems? At least 10%!

Venezuela is doing an audit that is more than FIVE TIMES the amount needed to detect fraud!

The U.S. government demanding a 100% audit in Venezuela is "Alice in Wonderland-ish" hypocrisy.

“'The U.S. government must know this...' said CEPR Co-Director Mark Weisbrot...".

He's damn right they know it. EVERY Democratic Party/Obama administration POLICY is designed with one thing in mind: the noose that ES&S/Diebold has around their necks.

One, private corporation, with far rightwing connections that would make your hair stand on end, designed the U.S. vote counting system (um, vote rigging system) for profit and for power, and operates it as a monopoly!

And they dare to criticize Venezuela!?

Gawd.

April 17, 2013

This is as Alice-in-Wonderlandish as it gets...

--upside down, inside out and backwards.

1. In the United States, 75% of the votes are 'counted' by ONE. PRIVATE. FAR RIGHT-WING-CONNECTED. CORPORATION--ES&S, which bought out Diebold--using 'TRADE SECRET' code--code that the public is forbidden to review--with half the states doing NO AUDIT AT ALL (automatic comparison of electronic results to ballots--most because they HAVE NO ballot), and the other half doing a miserably inadequate 1% audit. And even if the fingernails of secretaries of state are pulled out and they are forced to do a recount--in the states that CAN do a recount--they only do 3% or so.

2. According to statisticians, and computer and election experts, 10% is the minimum audit needed to detect fraud in an electronic system.

3. Venezuela votes electronically, but uses OPEN SOURCE CODE--code that anyone may review and that belongs to the PUBLIC--and they do a whopping 55% audit--more than five times the minimum needed to detect fraud. Furthermore, Venezuelan elections are closely monitored by all the major election monitoring groups, by invitation of the Venezuelan government--the OAS, the EU, Unasur, the Carter Center and others, and Jimmy Carter recently said that Venezuela has "the best election system in the world." These groups do not just drop in on election day and make pronouncements. They help set up the system and monitor it all along the way. They KNOW what's needed--as to audits and other requirements of honest, transparent elections--and have repeatedly validated Venezuela's elections, including THIS election.

4. The U.S. State Department (Obama, H. Clinton) helped to legitimize the fascist military coup in Honduras by THE U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT holding an 'election' UNDER MARTIAL LAW, using entities like John McCain's INTERNATIONAL REPUBLICAN INSTITUTE to 'monitor' the voting. (John McCain has telecommunications and other interests in Honduras.) No reputable elections group in the world would touch that election. Talk about 'illegitimate.' Honduras has since become a Colombia-like killing field, as rightwing death squads murder hundreds of labor leaders, teachers, community activists, leftist politicians, journalists and others, and inflict a reign of terror on Hondurans, with every kind of oppression.

5. The U.S. (Obama, H. Clinton) did the same thing in Haiti--phoney election in which the party that represents 70% of Haitians was banned from the ballot!

6. As Mark Weisbrot has pointed out, the leftist Manual Obrador in Mexico lost the presidential election in 2005 by only 0.05% of the vote. Millions of Mexicans demanded a recount of Mexico's largely paper ballot system (but with highly riggable, PRIVATE electronics at the top of the chain, which the Bush Junta helped Mexico put in place). The U.S. (Bush Junta) immediately endorsed the rightwing candidate, Felipe Calderon (who also, like the fascists in Honduras and Colombia, has engaged in violent repression against labor leaders, community activists and peasants, in Oaxaca, and furthermore invited the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs" into Mexico, for a bloodbath in the border areas--some 50,000 dead!) Why was that much closer election "legitimate" while Venezuela's (1.6% difference), with all of its safeguards and above-board systems, is not?


I am writing this for those of you who know instinctively that this U.S. government demand that Venezuela do a 100% recount is absurd. Your instincts are correct. I am also writing it for those who know nothing about these matters: Half the states in the U.S. cannot even DO a recount! Our system is 100% RIGGABLE by corporate CEO's whose far rightwing connections would make your hair stand on end.

Obama should be calling for 100% recounts HERE! Why isn't he? Why are our Democratic leaders as silent as the dead about OUR egregiously riggable system--and instead beat up on Venezuela, where they CAN prove, and HAVE proven, who was elected?

Not one elected official in this country can prove that he or she was actually elected. Not Obama. Not anybody else. NOT ONE OF THEM! Our system is UNVERIFIABLE, and has been rendered unverifiable DELIBERATELY--methodically, knowingly--and we can only wonder why and who is really calling the shots. WHO is picking and choosing among our already compromised and LIMITED political candidates--drenched with money, pandering to Corporate Media, and with ES&S/Diebold's noose around all of their necks? WHO is choosing who to give our power and our sovereignty TO? WHO is choosing our rulers? And are those "dark actors" the ones responsible for the wretchedness of this unrepresentative Congress, for the shackles on Obama, for the loony rightwing governors and state legislatures we see, and for the obvious wars being waged against the poor majority and all progressive policy?

And Obama--who surely knows all of this, and has to have agreed to it (along with other "deals" like no prosecution--and not even investigation--of Bush Junta war criminals)--dares to demand a 100% recount of Venezuela's election--a country whose president and whose poor majority DID EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to ensure a clean, honest, verifiable election system?!

It is just bizarre. It really is. Upside-down, inside out and backwards.

We really, really, REALLY need to understand this--however difficult and demoralizing it seems to be--because it is REALITY. Our system is rigged. It is anti-democratic, even to the very 'counting' of our votes. And it is producing office-holders--holders of OUR power as a people--who are clearly NOT acting in our interests, and are interfering against the peoples' interests in other countries--not just in the war zones of the Middle East but also in our own hemisphere. We need to face this. We need to expose it. We need overcome it--peacefully and democratically.

That is a difficult project, to say the least. But, hey, the people of this country have faced difficult projects before--on our long road to a fairer and more progressive society. We owe it to those who went before us, to straighten out the goddamned fascist disaster that has fallen upon us, starting with Reagan. And if Latin Americans--who have suffered so much grief at the hands of our ruling powers--can throw off those shackles, as they are doing in country after country, so can we.

The powers that control Obama KNOW that Latin America is undergoing a vast, deep, grass roots, leftist democracy revolution, and that Venezuela is the pioneer and inspirer of this amazing revolution. It has swept through most of South America, with strong leftists elected and re-elected in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, and soon to be re-elected in Chile (after a miserable rightwing hiatus), and into Central America (Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras until the coup). Their Corporate Media are doing their best to keep this information from us, precisely because they FEAR that we, too, will be inspired with democracy once again. And they REQUIRE their hand-picked office holders to LIE about Latin America's democracy revolution continuously and to engage in anti-democratic plots--with twisted lies like this one, about a 100% recount, and with worse.

Obama is obediently LYING. He has no other choice. And that lie--like the lie about the "constitutional crisis" in Honduras--is the visible element of a destabilization and overthrow plot, that Obama may or may not be in control of. I DO think that Obama was elected, by the way, but he was also PERMITTED TO BE elected, and that is the problem. We have been deliberately deprived of verifiable elections--and we had better be aware of how vulnerable this makes us to FUTURE Bush Juntas, beyond the misery of seeing a Democratic president propose cuts to Social Security and all our other current miseries. Worse is not only possible; it is likely, and it is all set up to have the APPEARANCE of legitimacy with no legitimacy at all.

April 10, 2013

The New Yorker Corrects Two Errors on Venezuela, Refuses a Third

The New Yorker Corrects Two Errors on Venezuela, Refuses a Third

By KEANE BHATT - NACLA, April 9th 2013

Thanks to readers’ responses to The New Yorker following my last post (LINK), “On Venezuela, The New Yorker’s Jon Lee Anderson Fails at Arithmetic,” the magazine has amended two errors in two separate articles.

The first correction involves an online piece that Anderson wrote on the eve of Venezuela’s elections in October of last year. As was pointed out almost immediately after (LINK) Anderson’s entry was published, he had incorrectly claimed that “Venezuela leads Latin America in homicides” in his “The End of Chavez?” (LINK) (the headline was changed to “Chavez the Survivor” after the late Venezuelan president handily won his reelection).

Actually, it is Honduras that leads Latin America (LINK)—and indeed the entire world—in per capita homicides: 92 per 100,000 people are killed annually there, while Venezuela’s figure stands at 45.1, according to the most recently available United Nations data. And unlike the Venezuelan government, the Honduran government contributes to this body count by regularly murdering its own civilians through its military and police, both of which (LINKS) receive tens of millions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers. (The New Yorkerhasn’t published a single article referring to Honduras’s current post-coup regime, headed by Porfirio Lobo, who came to power in January of 2010.)

Reacting to readers’ complaints, the magazine’s editors issued an addendum to Anderson’s October 7 piece, which reads (LINK):

*An earlier version of this post said that Venezuela led Latin America in homicides; globally, it was in fourth place, but third in Latin America (behind Honduras and El Salvador), according to U.N. statistics (LINK) on intentional homicides for 2010-11.

Another Anderson article—“Slumlord: What has Hugo Chávez wrought in Venezuela?”—also misled the print magazine’s readers by giving the impression that Chávez’s presidential tenure was predicated on a coup d’etat rather than his victories in over a dozen internationally vetted elections. The New Yorker released a correction (LINK) for the inaccuracy in its April 1 issue, two months after the original piece had been published:

In “Slumlord,” by Jon Lee Anderson (January 28th), Hugo Chávez is described as having been concerned with “preventing a coup like the one that put him in office.” In fact, Chávez’s coup attempt, in 1992, failed; he was elected to office in 1998.

For Jon Lee Anderson’s most recent factual error, unfortunately, The New Yorker has thus far refused to issue a clarification or retraction. One month ago—the day Chávez died—Anderson wrote a third piece (LINK), for NewYorker.com, claiming:

What (Chávez) has left is a country that, in some ways, will never be the same, and which, in other ways, is the same Venezuela as ever: one of the world’s most oil-rich but socially unequal countries. . .

As I pointed out in “Anderson Fails at Arithmetic (LINK)," this allegation misleads the reader in two ways. Inequality has been reduced enormously under Chávez, using its standard measure, the Gini coefficient. So one can hardly say that in this aspect, Venezuela remains the “same as ever.” Making Anderson’s contention even worse is the fact that Venezuela is the most equal country in Latin America, according to the United Nations (LINK). Anderson’s readers come away with exactly the opposite impression.

To The New Yorker’s credit, a senior editor sent me an email regarding my article’s criticisms, and flatly conceded the first two misstatements in Anderson’s pieces. However, the note offered a strained defense of Anderson’s position on inequality, arguing that Anderson’s point was valid, given that his claim supposedly combined Venezuela’s conditions of being both “oil-rich” and “socially unequal” as one assertion.

I pointed out in my response that any reasonable reading of the statement would portray Venezuela as both one of the world’s most oil-rich and one of the world’s most socially unequal countries. And the fact of the matter is that the CIA’s World Factbook ranks (LINK) the country 68th out of 136 countries with available data on income inequality—that is to say, Venezuela is exactly in the middle, and impossible to construe as among the most unequal.

I also explained that when Anderson was confronted with this evidence on Twitter, the magazine’s principal correspondent on Venezuela expressed extreme skepticism (LINK) toward publicly available, constantly used, and highly scrutinized data; he instead cited his own “reporting” and “impressions” as the authority for his assertions. Given Anderson’s defiant admission not to even pretend to care about empirical data—after his magazine had already retracted two of his articles’ factual claims—it was incumbent on editors and fact-checkers to uphold The New Yorker’s reputation as a trustworthy and evidence-based journal by addressing the issue immediately.

Lastly, I argued that the awkward formulation of combining “oil-rich” and “socially unequal”—a reading I reject—exposes Anderson’s contention as even further at odds with reality. Included in my email was the following list showing the top 10 most “oil-rich” countries ranked in order of their total crude oil production,according to the International Energy Agency (LINK). Each country’s corresponding Gini coefficient from the CIA World Factbook (LINK) appears in parentheses—the higher the Gini coefficient, the greater the country’s inequality:

1. Saudi Arabia (unavailable)
2. Russia (0.42)
3. United States (0.45)
4. Iran (0.445)
5. China (0.48)
6. Canada (0.32)
7. United Arab Emirates (unavailable)
8. Venezuela (0.39)
9. Mexico (0.517)
10. Nigeria (0.437)

When provided with these arguments and data, The New Yorker’s senior editor fell silent in the face of repeated follow-ups. I received a reply only once: a rejection of my request to publicly post our correspondence. While issuing a correction to Anderson’s third Venezuela article over the past year would have been embarrassing, the continued silence and inaction of the elite intellectual journal is perhaps a greater indictment. Anderson’s error remains unchanged on the liberal magazine’s website, while its senior editor has refused to address the matter in private correspondence or offer a public rationale for leaving Anderson’s claim intact.

When asked to comment on this issue, Branko Milanovic (LINK)—a lead economist at the World Bank and arguably the world’s foremost expert on global inequality—interpreted Anderson’s quote the standard way: “The article says that Venezuela is one of most ‘socially unequal’ countries,” he wrote by email. But The New Yorker’s “extremely vague formulation,” he added, obscured an important reality: “What we know…is that Venezuela is among two or three most equal Latin American countries measured by income inequality.” According to his own research of inequality throughout the world, Venezuela is likely to be ranked somewhere “around the middle, or perhaps slightly above (these things do change from year to year).”

Prominent macroeconomist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (LINKS) found The New Yorker’s factual contention and subsequent unresponsiveness astonishing: “This is pretty outrageous,” he wrote by email. “Do they have any data to support their assertion, or is the argument that because they don’t like Chávez they can say anything they want about him?”

Readers can pose such questions to The New Yorker by contacting its editors at www.newyorker.com/contact/contactus, by email at [email protected], or on Twitter at@tnynewsdesk. Such media activism plays a crucial role in engendering more careful portrayals of countries like Venezuela, which has long been the target of cartoonishly hostile, slanted, and outright false media coverage. Previous demands for accuracy and accountability have already prompted two admissions of error by The New Yorker, and can lead to a third, in spite of the magazine’s obstinacy. More importantly, the magazine now faces a real political cost to publishing sloppy reporting, as well as a powerful deterrent to running reckless news and commentary during a politically significant transitional moment for Venezuela.

Source: NACLA
This work is licensed under a Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Creative Commons license

(My emphasis.)
(LINKS at the site.)

http://www.nacla.org/blog/2013/4/8/new-yorker-corrects-two-errors-venezuela-refuses-third

found at: http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/8562

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My email to the New Yorker:

Not you, too!

I have been flabbergasted by the Corporate Media's propagandistic coverage of the Chavez government in Venezuela and I've held out the hope that The New Yorker would counter this garbage with an intelligent, fact-based article, as it has done on other subjects.

Alas, you instead decided to pile some more (or rather the same) refuse onto the garbage heap, by publishing Jon Lee Anderson's lies about Venezuela's murder rate and about how Chavez came to power--lies right out of the Corporate Media's "talking points" folder on Venezuela; lies for which you then published lame and very late corrections--plus a third lie that you haven't corrected, that Venezuela is now "one of the world's most...socially unequal countries."

According to the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean, Venezuela is "THE most equal country in Latin America," after more than a decade of the Chavez government winning honest elections and implementing "New Deal"-like policies. Furthermore, in the Gallup Well-being poll, Venezuelans rated their own country FIFTH IN THE WORLD on their own sense of well-being and future prospects.

Obviously, Anderson consulted neither easily available, fact-based sources nor the people of Venezuela in his assessment of the Chavez government.

I used to have great respect for New Yorker fact-checkers. What happened? Did you down-size that staff?

Upshot from my point of view: The New Yorker's going onto the garbage heap unless you do a REAL correction of Anderson's lies and bias, by finding an intelligent and objective reporter to explain to the world why the Chavez government keeps winning honest elections by big margins, despite the relentless, monotonous, "Big Lie" campaign against them in ALL Corporate Media, here and there. Answer THAT, and you win the prize for the only honest news source in the western world.

And DO re-hire those fact-checkers, if that's the problem.

March 29, 2013

Good gesture! Tells me he may know what the problem is...

...and that it is very, very old, indeed, and deeply rooted, way back in the 5th century--the original sin of the Church-as-institution.

It was a specific crime that led to all the others and that sent the Church down the wrong road into woman-hatred from which it has never recovered.

In the 5th century, a woman named Hypatia, a mathematician and philosopher, who was the beloved teacher of bishops and other clergy, was skinned alive on the streets of Alexandria by a mob of monks under the direction of a very evil man, Bishop Cyril, who went on to cause a riot and sword fights at a Church synod over the weird subject of the virginity of Jesus' mother. The man was sick, but became a "Father of the Church"--the first to call himself a "patriarch"--and was later canonized as a "saint," by which the Church means that he is in Heaven with God.

What had Hypatia done? She was a brilliant, powerful and highly respected figure. She was a Pagan but that does not explain the horror of her death at the hands of allegedly 'christian' monks. Alexandria was famous for its learning and its tolerance of all religions, philosophies and cultures. It was a haven for the Jews, especially the Alexandria Library, when she headed at that time. She was friends with Orestes, the Roman governor of Alexander. Like the rightwing of today in the U.S, Cyril was trying to undermine the civil government and subject it to Church rule. He sent his mobs against the Jews, confiscated their property and drove them out of Alexandria. Orestes opposed him, and they clashed several times. But neither does this explain the particular horror of Hypatia's murder.

Skinning alive in those days was intended to prevent the soul from going to Heaven. It was worse than death. It was eternal damnation.

Why did Hypatia merit eternal damnation, in this truly terrible form of murder? (--not to mention how Cyril ended up presumed into Heaven by Church "sainthood"; he is called Saint Cyril to this day.)

None of her works survived the crumbling of the Roman Empire. Probably they were burned. (Cyril's monks also attacked the Library.) An index indicates that she wrote several mathematical works. The only thing that remains are the letters of Bishop Sinesius of Ptolemais TO Hypatia. Sinesius had been her pupil and worshiped her. How is it that a Christian bishop considered Pagan Hypatia to be his greatest teacher? Interesting question.

There are hints in his letters to her (and also in certain other events that occurred around that time) that what she may have been embarked upon was peace between, and possibly even a synthesis of, Pagan and Christian teachings--the wedding of Pagan learning (which, in Hypatia's case, was embedded in highly ethical and high-minded neoplatonism) and Jesus' message of love for all, across tribal, religious and class lines.

Another feature of Paganism is worship of the Goddess--a particular target of "Fathers of the Church" like Cyril who took control of Church doctrine, or rather, established that there would be Church doctrine--rigid doctrine from which no one was permitted to deviate. This notion gained ascendance with the cementing of the Church with the power of the State, around the same time. One doctrine (all others anathematized), one Church, enforced by the brutal powers of king and emperor, with particular emphasis on casting out any group, leader or set of ideas that included the Goddess (such as the Christian neoplatonists of the time--the Gnostics) or anything remotely connected to the Goddess (such as the nature worship of the Pelagian Christians) or anything human (such as Jesus being born of a normal mother).

What seems to have seized this sick man Cyril's mind was loathing of women. He is the main force of that era for infecting the Church with this original sin. Jesus didn't hate or loathe women. In fact, in the Gnostic gospels he basically designates Mary Magdalen as head of the apostles. He says she is the only one of them who really understands his teaching. Cyril and his ilk burned those gospels, and somebody during that era grabbed a whole bunch of them, in willy-nilly fashion, as if in a hurry, and buried them in a cave in sealed jars in a desert near Alexandria (where they remained, undiscovered, until the 20th century). So there was obviously an underground movement, at the time--the same period as Hypatia's death--to preserve that which the Cyrils of the newly doctrine-ridden Church were trying to extinguish.

There is an underground Church that runs all through Church history--driven underground by people like Cyril--in which there is no such conflict with half the human race and no such loathing of women and rejection of the Goddess. This is the real Church--the Church of the People, not of the Prelates; the Church of the washing of feet, not the swishing of red robes and the crowning of kings. The washing of feet is a womanly act, a motherly act, a loving act. In doing it, Jesus made himself like a woman and made women (who were often the servants performing tasks like this) equal.

The male hierarchy, with its 1,500 years of misogyny dating back to "Saint' Cyril, turned that act into yet another exclusive male ritual. Pope Francis seems to have sensed its true origin and meaning. I doubt that this will result in reversal of the misogyny of Church doctrine or policy any time soon but it might start the process of bringing the underground Church--the real Church--aboveground. I think that Hypatia was an early activist in that underground Church, earnestly trying to direct bishops and monks onto a higher path of learning and tolerance, and she paid for it by an intolerant, woman-hating dogmatist trying to destroy her very soul, with the particular torture that he subjected her to.

To cleanse such a profound sin will take time. We obviously have quite a lot of sick male descendants of Cyril, quite abominably in positions of religious and moral authority. There is no easy cure for this. But I have to say that symbolism is a good way to begin. Symbols and symbolic acts can be very powerful in bringing about the deep, psychic change that is needed to overcome such a history of error, sin and crime. These men--bishops, cardinals, many priests--are deeply attached to the notion of their superiority--their primacy before God, their self-worship. They are also very, VERY attached to symbols, and need the help of symbols to overcome it. Maybe Pope Francis was intentional in this, or maybe only intuitively or dimly aware of it. Hard to say. But he seems to have good instincts.

March 7, 2013

Some good articles on Chavez...

Very good article. I'm quoting its opening and its conclusion. It's a long article, well worth reading...

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MARCH 06, 2013

Not One Step Backward, Ni Un Paso Atrás

Preparing for a Post-Chávez Venezuela

by GEORGE CICCARIELLO-MAHER

Hugo Chávez is no more, and yet the symbolic importance of the Venezuelan President that exceeded his physical persona in life, providing a condensation point around which popular struggles coalesced, will inevitably continue to function long after his death. It’s not for nothing that the words of the great revolutionary folk singer Alí Primera are on the tip of many tongues:

Los que mueren por la vida

no pueden llamarse muertos

—

Those who die for life

cannot be called dead.

(BIG SNIP)

In 1959, Frantz Fanon declared the Algerian Revolution irreversible, despite the fact that the country would not gain formal independence for another three years. Studying closely the transformation of Algerian culture during the course of the struggle and the creation of what he called a “new humanity,” Fanon was certain that a point of no return had been reached, writing that:

“An army can at any time reconquer the ground lost, but how can the inferiority complex, the fear and the despair of the past be reimplanted in the consciousness of the people?”

In revolution, there are no guarantees, and there’s no saying that the historical dialectic cannot be bent back upon itself, beaten and bloody. The point is simply that for the forces of reaction to do so will be no easy task. Long ago, the Venezuelan people stood up, and it is difficult if not impossible to tell a people on their feet to get back down on their knees.

George Ciccariello-Maher, teaches political theory at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He is the author of We Created Chávez: A People’s History of the Venezuelan Revolution (Duke University Press, May 2013), and can be reached at gjcm(at)drexel.edu.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/06/preparing-for-a-post-chavez-venezuela/

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I don't entirely agree with the following article, but its passion is so extraordinary and so heartfelt, that it surely deserves to be passed along. It likely expresses the feelings of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have poured into the streets to mourn Chavez, and many people around the world who received the gift of hope from the Bolivarian Revolution.

I agree that Chavez was a great leader--and probably the greatest in the world, in this era--but I believe that the Venezuelan people are the chief actors in the Bolivarian Revolution and that it was THEIR actions in re-writing their constitution, in electing Chavez, in rescuing Chavez from the Bush Junta-supported coup, in reelecting Chavez--in correctly reading the Corporate anti-Chavez propaganda and ignoring it, and so much else--including their creation of an honest, transparent election system (which Jimmy Carter recently called "the best in the world&quot and their awesome grass roots organization--that empowered Chavez to implement a "New Deal"-type revolution for Venezuela.

We must beware of deification of Chavez because the opposite of a god is a demon--and Chavez haters were and are good at playing that game. They created a demon--a bogeyman "dictator" to knock down. Both sides of the god/demon notion are phantoms. Chavez was neither god nor demon--he was just a man with certain great qualities including charisma and luck that enabled him to ride the crest of a profound revolution and help direct it, in so far as such great political waves, comprised of so many people and actions, can be directed. It's not only a mistake to equate the man with the revolution--as if it could not have occurred without him--it leads to wrong predictions. Venezuela's leftist democracy revolution was created by its people--a truth that the Corporate Media has tried so hard to obscure--and thus it is going to survive and even get stronger, and will likely spread farther than it already has, maybe, even to...here?

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MARCH 06, 2013

Long Live Revolution...Damn It!
Chavez’s Triumph

by ANDRE VLTCHEK

Nairobi.

When we lose people that are indispensible to us, nothing may change on the surface: we are still walking, eating sleeping, working, even fighting. The void, the gaping hole is what dominates our hearts and our souls.

Yesterday, the President of Venezuela and one of the greatest revolutionaries in the history of mankind – Hugo Chavez – passed away, and the world is still moving by inertia. Buildings did not collapse, continents did not sink, and the wars and misery ravaging many parts of the world did not stop.

Yet something changed. Three beautiful muses that have been inspiring so many millions all over the world, turned into widows, at least for one day or two. Their names are: Love, Faith and Hope.

Some ask: is it really wise to make an entire country, an entire revolution dependent, and reliant on one single man?

My answer is simple: people like Chavez are born infrequently, too rarely. It would be a historical anomaly for two giants of his size to live in the same period of time, in the same city, and even in the same country.

* * *

Yet his words and deeds were simple and pragmatic: poor people have to be housed, fed, educated and given medical care, and above all, they have to be armed with dignity. And the wealthy world, which became rich through plunder, colonial expansions and unmatchable brutality, has to stop terrorizing and looting; the countries of Europe and North America have to be forced to behave like members of the international community consisting of states with equal rights, instead of what they have been accustomed to for decades and centuries: a bunch of thugs living above the law.

Hugo Chavez was a man who appeared to come from a different era, where Western propaganda, indoctrination and surveillance had not yet broken the free spirit of men and women. He stood tall, spoke loudly and coherently, naming names, and pointing fingers. He was not afraid of his own people: he drank gallons of coffee and talked to them from the balcony of the Presidential Palace, and at street corners.

(MORE)

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/06/chavezs-triumph/

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The following article captures one of the intangibles about Chavez's personality and leadership--he really loved to talk, and he said what he really thought--unusual in a politician--and he said it amiably and politely to most people and audiences, but sometimes spoke bluntly to the powerful and with exhilarating rudeness to oppressors. He must have been the most talkative president ever to hold office.

I really liked this quality about Chavez. He loved to communicate. And he seemed to have none of cloaking devices, slyness or masks of other politicians. He believed what he said. He said what he thought. And he had a lot of thoughts--he bubbled with ideas, and very much wanted others to understand his ideas and policies not passively but actively--to engage with him in the creation of social justice and democracy.

It's difficult to assess the importance of Chavez's talkativeness. I mean, a leader can be taciturn and still feed the poor and do other good things. I've never been to Venezuela but I've had reports that people talk politics a lot--street vendors, bus drivers, shopkeepers, any and all; some carry copies of the constitution in their pockets and pull them out and argue about that; it's "in the air" that ordinary people exchange political opinions and info, and have a right and duty to do so, and that what they say is meaningful and can have influence. Maybe that's the importance of Chavez the Talker--he opened up discussion of public affairs. Not only was change possible, but one and all had to argue out what the changes would be.

In addition to his jokes, his songs, his friendly demeanor and his bright smile, in casual conversation, he engaged the public frequently with serious matters of government, in extemporaneous lectures on his TV show, and in long speeches full of detail--not 'talking points" or "sound bites" or vague platitudes, but saying how things actually work and what a proposal actually means in the real world. His speech was straightforward and practical, like your Dad explaining to you how to mount a bicycle wheel and going through the tools you will need. Useful political speech. Not the blather we are used to from politicians.

Our leaders talk that way--practical, useful--to banksters and war profiteers. They don't talk to us that way. We get degraded, meaningless speech, for people who are not expected to be actors in public affairs, who don't have influence, whose opinions don't count. There you go. Chavez spoke to ordinary people as active participants in government whose opinions and actions matter a great deal. The kid trying to mount the bicycle wheel might get restless at his Dad's notions about tools, or his admonition to "read the manual," but would absorb some of it and eventually benefit in doing things on his own. Chavez wasn't particularly paternal or top-down in his speech, though. He just really, really wanted people to see how things work, now that they had a government working FOR them, now that, through his eyes, they could see it from the inside.

The Venezuelan people created their own revolution and demanded their "New Deal" and were gifted with a leader who was determined to do their will and anxious for them to understand the particulars and talked them up incessantly.

Maybe this is just a native quality of Venezuelans--political talkativeness--but, if so, Chavez was surely the top exemplar of it.

The Corporate Media accused Chavez of suppressing "free speech." Ha-ha-ha! What really bothered them, I think, was that street vendors had free speech and the government was paying attention to them, and not to the billionaire media moguls. Oh, yeah, there was RCTV and all that--long overdue denial of the right of coup to media monopolists. (I wish we had some of that here.) The real problem, for them, was that Chavez was talking over them, around them, under them, to everyone else; not accepting their terms of discussion; not accepting their limited venues; flouting them; and talking USEFULLY to the real sovereigns of the country, the people. It was a blow to their mighty egos--and they determined to shut him up.

Do you know what these media moguls did during the 2002 coup attempt? They not only hosted those who had kidnapped the president and had suspended the constitution, the courts, the national assembly and all civil rigths; they also banned all Chavez cabinet members from the broadcast airwaves--wouldn't let them speak to the people. That's your Corporate "free speech." Only they get to speak!

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MARCH 06, 2013

The Spark That Lit the Fires in Latin America
The Convictions of Hugo Chavez

by CHRIS GILBERT

Caracas.

Hugo Chávez, who died yesterday afternoon, was something of an Emersonian hero. “Speak your latent conviction,” said the sage of Concord, “and it shall be the universal sense.”

Chávez said things that other people thought, or at least recognized that they thought after he said them.

One could say that he expanded the notion of the political. He sang and recited poems during his innumerable hours of television… he talked incessantly.

(MORE)

Chris Gilbert is professor of Political Science at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/03/06/the-convictions-of-hugo-chavez/

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My thanks to the writers of these articles for helping me to pull together some of my own thoughts about Chavez.

And my thanks to all Venezuelans, for producing such a leader! The Bush decade would have been unbearable without him. Now we've all got work to do to protect existing social justice revolutions and create more of them, and the neverending, difficult work of being sovereign, self-governing peoples.

I won't say, "Rest in peace, Hugo Chavez," because that implies quietude. I hope his soul is swirling around joyfully somewhere in active discussion with the angels and telling God a thing or two about how to improve the Universe. I'd love to hear that discussion!