Harry’s Place

Zin’s explanation will be “counterrevolutionary imperialist”.

Flanker’s will be “Zionist”.

Oh David T you finally start paying attention to me and yet you still screw up.

Ask anyone here, they know my favorite word is “Neocons”

Try to keep up.

PS Baduel did not resign, he retired per tradition after x number of years in the service.

errr… what if he is corrupt? I hold no brief for Chavez and his groupies but are you really alleging the rule of law has broken down completely in Vz?

Think of South Africa … whose side are/were you on there? The dull defender of Mugabe who respected the law or the corrupt populist who hated Zanu PF?

It’s not simple.

errr… what if he is corrupt? I hold no brief for Chavez and his groupies but are you really alleging the rule of law has broken down completely in Vz?

It’s obvious that justice is not blind in Venezuela, where Chavez’s corrupt cronies continue to roam free and indulge in corruption.

You can always know when they know they are being douches for not even giving a shit, he was detained for not even bothering to show up in court.

corruption? in the wonderland of 21st Century socialism? no way, say it ain’t so

surely Comrade Zin would have told us, if that was the case?

“errr… what if he is corrupt?”

General Arnoldo Ochoa of the Cuban armed forces may well have been corrupt. But that’s not why he was shot.

Flanker

Revolutionaries always devour their own. If you wait in line your time will
come.

David T

If you google Venezuelan Jews you will see that Chavez’s apologists have already started the Zionist angle.

Of course Gene does not ask whether he is corrupt or not, just makes the insinuation that its a political fix up. It may be - but he offers no evidence.

Of course Chavez has been accused of being fascist here and elsewhere - in the Venezuelan media he has been compared with Hitler. I have to say, though, it’s not particularly Hitlerian or fascist to not kill or jail dozens or more of your opponents after a coup, and then participate in a recall vote, and then a vote on constitutional changes (subsequently lost be Chavez).

“Revolutionaries always devour their own”

Peachy, thank god I am not one then.

Benjamin, the student leaders are being killed off, one by one, week by week.
Chavez is resolved to rule, whether the majority want him or not. The Baduel arrest, in day light, is a warning to him and others who are opposed to Chavez
Because Baduel saved Chavez’s ass, and was lauded for it by an appreciative Chavez, he is too big to take out, but since he opposed the Chavez referendum seeking rule for life, which was defeated, he has been denounced by Thugo as a traitor.
Thugo wants to make sure, at a minimum, that Baduel keeps his head down during the upcoming state and local elections. Other notables who oppose thugo in the elections, without the high profile of Baduel, understand they will not be treated so gently.
The transition from democracy to tyranny is complete in Venezuela.

Sorry to be old fashioned, but those are your opinions, scarf; I am not saying you are wrong, and I am not saying Gene is wrong, I was just after some evidence.

Some people have been crying wolf about Chavez; we can safely rule out as credible those involved in the coup, and those shouty people who have been comparing Chavez to Hitler for years. However, there may be other sources that may be more credible and reasoned.

I did hope it was Zin. Ever so briefly.

Does the :D indicate there’s a block on “Flanker”?

Test.

No. What is it?

it means my website is happy

Is there any way to filter out this Benjamin asshole? Look, don’t give in to the urge to clutter every thread with your useless comments.

Benjamin

Those refugees that come in to my office from Venezuela all tell the same identical lies about Chavez. Who is co-ordinating all of this identical testimony. Perhaps you should visit Venezuelans who are free to talk in the USA and are not on Chavez’s payroll.

Funny, but I talk to hundreds of Colombians and never hear a single bad
word about its government or support for FARC.

a single bad

Meanwhile*,

SAN CRISTOBAL, Venezuela — The Venezuelan government, with help from Cuban military advisors and leftist Colombian guerrillas, is operating a secret paramilitary training camp in a closed-off tourist campground near here, former participants and government critics say.

The camp offers six-week courses for a rolling contingent of 400 to 1,000 participants, including a first-phase political indoctrination with texts printed in Cuba and a second phase of guerrilla training for the most loyal students that includes the use of light and heavy weaponry and use of explosives, they added.

http://www.miamiherald.com/457/story/713632.html

*Source is the Miami Herald, and everybody knows that Miami is under the thumb of anti-Castro fascists so the report has absoluteley zero credibility but is an intersting reflection nevertheless of the lengths the Neocons will go etc etc etc….

“Those refugees that come in to my office from Venezuela all tell the same identical lies about Chavez. Who is co-ordinating all of this identical testimony. Perhaps you should visit Venezuelans who are free to talk in the USA and are not on Chavez’s payroll.

Funny, but I talk to hundreds of Colombians and never hear a single bad
word about its government or support for FARC.”

I loathe to do a harriet type fallacy, but ever think that you hang out with gusano fascists because you are one?

Flanker, poor little rich boy, how do you reconcile your criticism of HP for preventing free speech (by reporting instances of a “journalist’s” racism to her paper) yet support Chavez who has closed down a variety of television and radio stations simply because they refuse to be his mouthpiece?

By the way, do you like Chavez simply because he pays your Dad (who pays for you, as you clearly don’t have a job, at least not a real one)?

Actually, I’m like my son, I don’t do any work at all but live off other people’s hand outs. It’s his Mum who’s the Chavez crony and brings home the bacon.

I’ve found that the most vocal supporters of totalitarianism are trust fund babies who’ve never gone a whole day w/o three meals and XBox. Revolution is for other people to suffer.

He’ll soon confess and UCU will organize a ‘two minutes of hate’ march against him.

“Chavez is talking about making himself president-for-life”, Nick Cohen told us in February 2007, after Chavez proposed a referendum on ending presidential term limits.

In the interests of consistency, here’s how Nick and the HP gang should report this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7652119.stm

“New York caudillo and dictator-in-waiting, Michael Bloomberg, is talking about making himself Mayor-for-life.”

I support the market driven economy. I dislike nearly all implementations of socialism and Chavez’z model is too much involved with US hatimg for me to have any sympathy for him.

BUT

He has let substantial sums of money trickle down to the poor classes.

Gadaffi was similar in that idea.

Pity that Chavez has to flop around the world screaming USA, USA all the time. And shake Achmedinejad’s hand too. I mean, could you find two people who shouldn’t be further apart.

Well. Achmedinejad and Gorgeous George.

I think.

In June 2005, Gene announced that another oppositionist was an entirely innocent victim of a Chavista fit-up.

“Machado has already been charged by the Venezuelan government with treason for her alleged support for the short-lived 2002 coup against Chavez. The “evidence” seems to be that her signature was on a sheet of paper found at the Presidential Palace after the coup was defeated.”

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2005/06/09/chavez-opponents-meeting-with-bush-provokes-predictable-outrage/

The “evidence” was apparently so flimsy, Gene was moved to put inverted commas around it.

What Gene ommited to mention was that the “sheet of paper” in question wasn’t just any old sheet of paper, but the 2002 coup decree that abolished all elected institutions, including parliament. And the signature on that innocent little sheet of paper was authenticated by none other than Maria Corina Machado herself!

If Chavez is really as bad as he’s made out, why does Gene need to distort the facts? Why does Nick Cohen lie?

There is an issue of personal integrity here.

Gene continued to back this coup plotter, long after her guilt was conclusively proved. And Nick Cohen emailed me to say that he stood by his claim that “Chavez was talking about making himself president-for-life”, even though he couldn’t provide a shred of evidence to support it.

SPOTTHE CONTRADICTION COMPETITION

New York Times editorial, December 1st 2007

“[Chavez wants to] extend the presidential term from six to seven years and remove presidential term limits. Opponents are calling for a massive “no” vote. For the sake of Venezuela’s battered democracy, voters should heed the call.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/01/opinion/01sat2.html?n=Top/Opinion/Editorials%20and%20Op-Ed/Editorials

New York Times editorial, September 30th 2007

“The bedrock of American democracy is the voters’ right to choose. Though well intentioned, New York City’s term limits law severely limits that right, which is why this page has opposed term limits from the outset… It is worth repeating: This is a rule that needs to be abolished..”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/opinion/01wed2.html

The difference, Zin, is that the Mayor of New York is not the ruler of the entire country, unlike El Comandante in Venezuela. Indeed, Chavez energetically opposed the removal of term limits for mayors and state governors because it would encourage caudillismo. As a former mayor of Caracas, he should know; there is only room for one caudillo in Venezuela.

The NYT claims to be opposed to term limits in principle - “The bedrock of American democracy is the voters’ right to choose” - not just where they apply to Mayors. This principle doesn’t extend towards Venezuela, undoubtedly because they don’t trust Venezuelan voters to make the ‘right’ choice.

Chavez is hardly ploughing a lonely furrow with his opposition to term limits. Several US commander-in-chiefs (or el commandantes, if you prefer the Spanish translation), such as Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton, oppose presidential term limits. And another, FDR, was elected four times.

The well known dictatorships of Britain, Germany, France, Portugal, and Australia don’t have prime ministerial or presidential term limits. As Gordon Brown may discover, an absence of term limits doesn’t necessarilly mean you are going to be a PM-for-life.

The NYT makes an additional argument for repealing Bloomberg’s term limit:

“The law is particularly unappealing now because it is structured in a way that would deny New Yorkers — at a time when the city’s economy is under great stress (my bold) — the right to decide for themselves whether an effective and popular mayor should stay in office.”

I would make a related argument for repealing Venezuelan presidential term limits: Term limits would deny Venezuelans - at a time when their country has embarked on an economic and social revolution - the right to decide for themselves whether an effective and popular president should stay in office.

The key difference is that Chavez put the proposal to a national referendum, whereas the NYT wants to ignore the voters. They argue that the NY City Council should “legislatively rewrite a law that voters have twice approved at the ballot box — in 1993 and 1996″

In Venezuela, the people get to decide.

Nick Cohen and the HP are very angry about that.

Why does Nick Cohen lie

Nick Cohen doesn’t lie.

You might not like the way he presents his interpretation of reality but he doesn’t lie.

I find that his interpretation of reality very much jibes with mine.

So stuff it.

The NYT claims to be opposed to term limits in principle - “The bedrock of American democracy is the voters’ right to choose” - not just where they apply to Mayors.

The bedrock of American democracy is the voters’ right to choose and the Constitution of the United States also permits the right to choose between strudel and danish at Mindy’s. The editorial did not say that there should be no terms on any election anywhere even within the State of New York, let alone nationally or internationally. There is a test case for this: if you can find NYT editorials opposing the Twenty-Second Amendment, you might be right. Otherwise, you have take a quote out of context and applied it to something completely different.

Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton, oppose presidential term limits.

All three were elected under the Twenty-Second Amendment, and none of them sought to change the Constitution. And all three left office after their second term. Oh, and the Amendment didn’t exist in FDR’s day.

The well known dictatorships of Britain, Germany, France, Portugal, and Australia don’t have prime ministerial or presidential term limits. As Gordon Brown may discover, an absence of term limits doesn’t necessarilly mean you are going to be a PM-for-life.

The people, or their representatives, in those countries can decide otherwise if they wish. They don’t wish; it’s called democracy.

at a time when the city’s economy is under great stress (my bold)

But we’re given to understand that the Venezuelan economy is booming as never before - imports of Humvees and 15-year old Scotch up etc. If the Bolivarian revolution has anything to do with the new wealth, then surely it’s not so fragile that it can’t be entrusted to Chavez’s successors.

In Venezuela, the people get to decide.

The people did decide on term limits: they said no. Don’t you trust the people?

RE: the claptrap from Clap Hammer

Nick Cohen said: “Chavez is talking about making himself president-for-life”

1. No, Chavez isn’t. Nick made that up. Nick is lying.
2. Chavez can’t “make himself” anything. Only a referendum can. Again, Nick invented this.
3. ‘Ending term limits’ does not equal ‘president-for-life’. Nick is fabricating once again. For Chavez to stay president he would have to be re-elected.

What Zin doesn’t tell you is that:

–Chavez supported the current constitution, which imposes term limits on the president.

–The defeated constitutional changes would have applied term limits to state and local officials but not to the president.

hasan prishtina

Absolutely. It’s up to Venezuelans to decide on their constitutional arrangements, just like it is with France, Britain, Portugal etc.

The charge against Chavez was that he was planning on making himself president-for-life. This lie was repeated over and over by people such as Nick Cohen, who knew it to be false but didn’t care.

Exactly, Gene. It went to a referendum. Chavez lost and accepted the result. It’s called democracy. And it drives a coach and horses through Nick Cohen’s lies and fabrications.

Curiously, you still haven’t explained why you deliberately distorted the facts to pass off a guilty coup plotter as an innocent victim of a Chavista fit-up. The evidence was available when you posted, and you had obviously studied it - hence your reference to the mysterious ’sheet of paper”, otherwise known as the Carmona decree.

The charge against Chavez was that he was planning on making himself president-for-life.

Whether or not he does want to be in office for life remains to be seen. Another test of democracy, as in France, the UK, Portugal etc. is the peaceful transfer of power.

Whether or not he does want to be in office for life remains to be seen

So what? This also applies to Gordon Brown.

Had Nick Cohen said that, he would have been guilty of a misleading inuendo, but not of actual bare-faced lying.

But Nick didn’t say that. He said that “Chavez is talking about making himself president-for-life.”

That, as you are well aware, is a bare-faced lie.

Exactly, Gene. It went to a referendum. Chavez lost and accepted the result. It’s called democracy. And it drives a coach and horses through Nick Cohen’s lies and fabrications.

I mean, Chavez submitted a new Constitution in 1999, approved by referendum, which limited the president to two terms.

Yes, and then Chavez proposed some ammendments, which were subsequently defeated. Sounds like democracy in action.

But you still haven’t explained why you deliberately distorted the facts to pass off a guilty coup plotter as an innocent victim of a Chavista fit-up.

Why?

You are right, it is also true of Gordon Brown. But unlike Chavez, there is no reason to suspect him. Brown has not:

1) attempted to use the military to overthrow the legitimate government of the country;
2) once in power, concentrated large amounts of day-to-day power in the hands of the military;
3) attacked the independence of the judiciary (also fundamental to democracy);
4) smashed the unions in the country’s major enterprise and turned it into his political piggy-bank.

1. Legitimate governments don’t starve the poor majority and massacre them when they protest, and secretly bury the bodies in mass graves.

2. The military now help the population in practical ways, instead of shooting them. That’s why when the 2002 coup took place, the population called the ordinary soldiers “comrades and friends” and urged them to rebel.

3. The judicary was never independent. It was a tool of the corrupt oligarchy, and has now been reformed to reflect the new genuine democracy.

4. If by “unions” you mean the oil executives who robbed the country of its natural resources, and then staged a political strike (along with the boards of McDonalds and other big businesses) to remove the elected president, then yes, smashing them was well deserved. Ronald McDonald and the oil men - legitimate workers representatives? Still, you’ve gotta admire their chutzpah

Ordinary blue collar oil workers backed the government, as did the mass of the population. Now the oil money - public money - is spent on schools, hospitals, housing, i.e. things that benefit the public.

Anyway, there’s no a damn thing you can do about Chavez. Venezuelans like him, vote for him, and consistently tell pollsters that their country is more democratic tha ever before.

1. I thought you said legitimacy came from people’s right to choose. In 1988, the people of Venezuela chose President Perez who, incidently, spent a higher proportion of Venezuela’s wealth on healthcare than the current incumbent.

Now we learn that legitimacy derives from whatever you think it means and stamping on the face of democracy with a jackboot is perfectly reasonable.

Does Chavez shoot people when they protest? Perish the thought.

2. The military help the people by extending military service, including high school children [scroll down for the article on Venezuela], by invading Guyana and supporting narco-terrorism in Colombia, by taking more jobs in the government, with the help of his own private militia.

3. If Chavez is such a democrat, then why would he accept a tied judiciary, instead of ensuring its independence? The Venezuelan judiciary was never perfect, but there has been a wee bit of concern in countries where this sort of thing is thought of as important. As for corruption, Venezuela’s ratings have dropped through the floor since the dawn of “21st Century Socialism.” Even Zimbabwe and Pakistan do better.

4. No, I mean the unions that belonged to the maintenance workers. If Chavez had as good an industrial relations record as Reagan or Thatcher, some of his claims of being a democratic socialist might hold water. But they don’t. The maintenance workers were sacked, barred from jobs or assistance in the public sector for which you have to be “redder than red” (and how is that democratic?). Venezuela’s oil industry still suffers from that lack of technical capacity, rising maintenance and production costs, an ever-larger web of chavista patrons to pay off and falling production capacity.

I don’t want to do anything about Chavez. The people of Venezuela, if they’re still allowed the right to choose (see Point 1), will do it soon enough. Sic transit gloria mundi.

hasan prishtina

Nice to see that your definition of a legitimate government extends to starving the population and murdering them in their hundreds or thousands. Classy.

I’m not going to bother rebutting all your disinformation garnered from right wing blogs, but one particularly nasty howler did stand out.

You posted pics of Chavista gunmen shooting opposition students.

These are actually pics of pro-government students escaping from the university social work compound, after opposition gunmen had trapped hundreds inside and were petrol bombing them and shooting them. The opposition then tried to murder the students by setting fire to the building.

Because universities in Venezuela are autonomous, the police can only enter with the permission of the uni authorities, which in this case were opposition. The authorities refused permission and left the students to their fate. After several hours under attack, the trapped students phoned the local barrio and ordinary working class Venezuelans came to their aid and escorted them out of the building.

I suggest you watch the unedited footage in full:

http://www.radiomundial.com.ve/yvke/noticia.php?990

Oh, and as for Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, you do know how the data was compiled? TI simply asked rich business people who almost all hate Chavez whether Venezuela was now more corrupt. And surprise surprise, the rich business people who hate Chavez said “Yes, it is”.

But that was nothing compared to TI’s report on Venezuela’s oil industry. Here, they simply fabricated the data altogether.

Read this pieces of mine, and see for yourself:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/may/22/seeingthroughtransparencyin

http://21stcenturysocialism.com/article/transparency_internationals_wall_of_silence_01676.html

This might have something to do the fact that TI’s Venezuela chapter is run by a lady who backed the 2002 coup. What do you think?

I’m sorry that you believe that the expressed will of the people does not confer legitimacy on a government; I thought you believed in democracy. I apologise.

If you believe that killing the population overrides legitimacy, then why has the proporation of underweight babies increased so much? Why are so many people dying of dengue fever and from violent crime? Sounds like our El Comandante’s (hint: democratic leaders don’t make a habit of styling themselves “Commander-in-Chief”) got some explaining to do. Or is it just leaders you don’t like whose peoples are ripe for military rule?

You discount a “right-wing” site and invite me to look at the Venezuelan government site. A question or two:

1) If the opposition students were so violent, how was it that a government camera crew we able to set up, shoot and commentate from behind their lines and move around with them? What you describe might be true, but ‘ataque de estudiantes de oposicion’ cannot also be true. The Al Jazeera report on the website to which I linked seems to tie in rather better with the story.

2) The pictures taken inside the building show virtually no students outside. There is no need; government hoodlums have taken the burnt-out building. Again, this ties in much better with the Al Jazeera report.

3) In all the pictures except those of the government, the building is festooned with ‘Si’ posters. In the Mundial pictures there are no ‘Si’ posters but ‘No’ is spray-painted on the walls (in a way that cannot cover up the ‘Si’ posters) and scrawled on primitive placards far more crude than the ones displayed by the opposition on its demonstration in the Al Jazeera report. Altogether, I have as much faith in Radio Mundial as I have in this account of bourgeois violence.

I enjoyed your articles, though they are based on oil prices fluctuated wildly in that period, and I think you would have to chart your, PDVSA’s (which amount to the same thing) and TI’s claims against each other over the period about which you are talking.

As for sheer political hatred, let’s get this straight. TI receives money from big corporations? So do the Proms and they showcase people from Venezuela. You are saying that business people have this unique hatred for Venezuela, worse than for doing business in Bangladesh, Cote d’Ivoire or Sierra Leone? I wasn’t born yesterday. If you can find a group of business people saying yes, they love doing business in say Belarus or Nigeria but can’t stand the corruption in Caracas, you might have a point. Otherwise, this tastes strongly of sour grapes.

Besides which, business people are a pretty good weathervane of corruption. And the closer to the line they are, the more likely they are to be squeezed. What the big businesses report is likely to be much worse for little ones.

But this hatred on the part of big business is a fiction. We know that no-one, except the military, has done better under “21st Century Socialism” than the rich. Yup, the Bolivarian revolution means that everything in Venezuela is up:

For the rich: luxury imports UP, dollar accounts UP, juicy contracts UP.

For the poor: food shortages UP, malaria cases UP, proportion of homes without safe water UP, inflation UP, crime UP, inequality UP.

In what sense is this regime of the Left again? Oh yes, trampling on the people’s wishes, violently attacking the opposition, running the state for the benefit of a few state-military-industrial leaders and ruining ordinary civilian’s lives with shortages and inflation. As you say, classy.

Sorry, that should read “in a way that could not be covered by the ‘Si’ posters”

democratic leaders don’t make a habit of styling themselves “Commander-in-Chief”

That takes care of all previous US presidents then, and also both current candidates.

RE: the opposition attacking students. The video was not shot by a TV crew - this is blindingly obvious when you check the quality. It matters not on which websites it’s posted. It shows, very clearly, that the opposition had surrounded and attacked a university compound. Other videos show the students inside, in fear of their lives.

Your comments about the poor in Venezuela getting poorer are, frankly, idiotic. The Venezuelan-American chamber of commerce (hardly a Chavista organisation!) says that incomes for the poorest 60% have risen by 130% in real terms, i.e. after inflation is taken into account. Incidentally, inflation, whilst high, is half the level it was under the previous government. So that’s another of your slogans exposed for the nonsense it is.

This increase in living standards does not include the one million more kids enrolled in school, the massive increase in higher education, or the provision of a free health service for every Venezuelan. I have seen these improvements first hand - real people, real improvements. And the improvements are everywhere, that is, if you make the effort to walk into a barrio where ordinary people live.

This is why the poor majority overwhelmingly support Chavez. It’s really quite obvious, if you care to think.

I won’t bang on about Transparency International. This opaque organisation lies and fabricates, and I’ve proved it beyond all doubt.

Nick Cohen and Gene do the same. As you can see, they make no attempt to defend their lies. Which is smart. Their lies are indefensible.

That takes care of all previous US presidents then, and also both current candidates.

Er, they usually style themselves ‘Mr President.’ People usually refer to US Presidents as Commanders-in-Chief because that is what they are.

Re the film: I’ve watched the film half a dozen times. There’s nothing whatever wrong with the quality. There may not have been a camera crew, but it was plainly shot by a hand-held camera which is allowed complete freedom to move among the students, gaze lovingly on their violent graffiti and placards and make pro-government commentary. In the middle of a rampaging crowd. You know it makes sense.

“Cowering students”: It’s strange that the ’students’ shown entering the building at 0″58 are the same cowering ’students’ shown inside the building at 3″37-3″39; we see them ‘cowering’ again around 5″50 from the evidently calm people outside (6″05).

‘Students’: 1″12 - when do right-wingers give clenched-fist salutes? Why are the ’students’ dressed completely differently from the ones in the Al Jazeera film? Why are there so many dressed in red? Again, the figures from 3″48 to 4″09 are few and dressed differently to anyone in the Al Jazeera film or earlier in the government film. Then from 4″35, we’re back to the ’students’ at the start of the film. Note the fire that had burnt out is now burning again.

Posters: At 1″58, the line of ‘Si’ posters that appears in the background behind the protesting students in the Al Jazeera report has been ripped down (you can still see the remains of one) and the crude daubings and one lonely placard displayed (several times) for the camera. Another one is brought to the camera at 3″21.

Why are the ’students’ inside the building around 5″30 identically dressed to the ones outside? And why is there nothing going on?

By 6″13 the ’students’ seem fairly placid, the fire has gone again and the two people with their evidently heavy placards are looking rather bored. Cameramen are calmly taking pictures as if it were a Sunday School outing.

Altogether, this is a clumsy piece of propaganda, with plenty of hamming from the crowd and heavy-handed editing to suggest a narrative that wasn’t there. I’m just sorry for you that people such as Al Jazeera (hardly a right-wing Venezuelan website) who don’t depend on government propaganda were there to show what actually happened. Perhaps you’d prefer something that shows the forces of the working classes bravely struggling against such counter-revolutionaries more clearly.

The Venezuelan-American chamber of commerce (hardly a Chavista organisation!)

So it’s alright to quote the big (US!) corporations when it suits us? So all that guff about the TI index being about big business’s unique hatred for Venezuela was a load of guff then. As I said, the rich have done very nicely out of this, thank you. News Flash: Poverty decreases when oil prices triple. If the price of oil were to fall to its level in 1999 levels, we’d see how many were really lifted out of poverty. Nevertheless, there is a way of telling: if Chavez’s policies have massively benefitted the poor, then wealth distribution should be much more even. But it isn’t: look at the gini coefficient. Inequality has increased.

Dengue fever 2004: 15,035; 2008: 27,049 (Source: PRO-Med Mail) Children with low birthweight 1999: 8.4; 2006: 9.1 (Source: PAHO)

Incidentally, inflation, whilst high, is half the level it was under the previous government.

Inflation 1998: 29.9% Inflation 2008: 34.5% (Source: Banco Central de Venezuela)

This increase in living standards does not include the one million more kids enrolled in school

…which has effected virtually no change to the illiteracy rate. (Source: Instituto Nacional de Estadistica de Venezuela)

the provision of a free health service for every Venezuelan.

Then why virtually no change in the most basic of indicators, infant mortality? (Source: PAHO)

So are these all ‘idiotic’? Are the UN, medical journals and various agencies of the Venezuelan government in the hands of enemies of “21st Century Socialism”?

I have seen these improvements first hand - real people, real improvements. And the improvements are everywhere, that is, if you make the effort to walk into a barrio where ordinary people live.

I saw exactly the same thing in Enver Hoxha’s Albania. Doesn’t make it any the less illusory.

How vulnerable Venezuela is in the current economic climate is plain its evidently huge waste (Where is all that money on health and education going? The army?), massive defence bill, ludicrously inflated vanity foreign policy, dependency on imports and falling oil prices, the poor may, allowed the chance, decide to give someone else a go. May be a ‘caudillista’ state governor or mayor, as Chavez once was? Providing they haven’t all been locked up, that is.

You have never been to Venezuela, and never been to a Venezuelan barrio. If you had, you couldn’t possibly have missed the massive improvements.

Read what Francisco Torro, former Caracas correspondent of the New York Times and editor of the opposition ‘Caracas Chronicles’ blog, says:

“Back in 2002, we didn’t stop to think through the risks, the potential costs involved in volunteering to be lied to. We didn’t stop to realize that with every story puffed up out of all proportion because it made the government look bad, our understanding of our own country would diverge just a little bit from reality. We didn’t think through the fact that, with every story buried or ignored because it made the government look good, the distance between the world as it is and the world as we think it is would grow.

“Those who warned about this process were dismissed as cryptochavistas or, at the very least, as spoil-sports for busting our vibe at a time when all we wanted to do was sing “y decimos síííííí a la esperanzaaaaaaa…” So, it’s true, we were systematically deceived…but it’s also true that we practically begged to be systematically deceived.

“…In the second quarter of 2004, when the misiones started to make themselves felt and Chávez’s popularity started to pick up, the punditocracy found itself up a political creek without an ethical paddle.

“Their reaction when faced with these changed circumstances shouldn’t surprise us: people like Giusti had been perfectly frank about it for years. This guerra was most definitely avisada. They lied. In the way that journalists and editors lie: not so much by telling outright untruths, but by puffing up those elements of truth that suit their objectives and playing down or ignoring those that don’t.

“So the polls that showed Chávez gaining in 2004 weren’t reported, or were reported in a box on page 29, while any hint that the Si campaign was doing well was an automatic six columns above the fold on page one. The startling impact that the misiones had on barrio life became more familiar to readers of The Guardian or The New York Times than to readers of El Nacional or Notitarde. The ongoing passion that many poor people felt for Chávez was systematically downplayed. And little by little, day in and day out, we as opposition supporters were deprived of the informational tools we needed to understand what the hell was happening in our own society, in our own country.”

[www.caracaschronicles.blogspot.com]
Thursday, October 04, 2007. On the sheer fucking hopelessness of the Abstentionist v. Participationist Debate.

On inflation: the average figure during the Chavez years is half the average figure during the previous administration. This is still a major problem, but one that goes hand in hand with high growth economies.

You have never been to Venezuela, and never been to a Venezuelan barrio. If you had, you couldn’t possibly have missed the massive improvements.

Thanks for telling me where I have or haven’t been to. Can you tell me where I left my spare pair of glasses? I’ve never heard such tripe in my life.

Re Francisco Torro: there are quite a number of eager people who’ve been pissed off by Chavez. Perhaps you might reflect why that is.

Inflation in some major growth economies: China, 3.5%; Czech Republic 6.5%, Brazil, 6.2%, India 8.3%, Russia, 4.7%. All have growth and industrial production growth figures that are higher than Venezuela’s. Argentina also does better, but as its government is about as poor as Caracas in dealing with public finance its inflation rate is much higher than the official rate of 9.0%.

Venezuela went through an inflationary cycle, as did many other countries in Latin America, during the 1990s. It was brought under control so that inflation fell for six straight years, relieving the poor from the fiscal effects it brings. Now, inflation has been rising for the last four years, on a completely different scale to other countries in Latin America (with the exception, as I say, of Argentina). The fiscal effects on the poor are ruinous; when will it be brought under control?

Well, I know you haven’t been to Venezuela, let alone a barrio, otherwise you couldn’t possibly present your alternative version of reality.

You have only to take a brief stroll through Petare or El 23 to see with your own eyes the phenomenal and very practical changes that are occuring. If you did, you couldn’t fail to see any number of new hexagonal buildings dotted around every barrio. These are health clinics, staffed by doctors and nurses, with the service provided free of charge to every Venezuelan. There are 2,000 of these new clinics, and the effect on the population is similar to when Britain set up the NHS in 1948.

If you continued your stroll, you would come across one of the 500 new infocentres, which provide banks of brand new broadband internet access and training, all free of charge to barrio residents.

Later, you undoubtedly see a government owned Mercal supermarket - these sell food at around half the market price.

If you are interested, I have written about these changes here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/feb/17/whythebarriosstilllovehug

Huge improvements, massive investment, rising living standards - and all involving the direct participation of the local population. This is the “startling impact that the misiones had on barrio life” that the OPPOSITION blogger and former NYT correspondent is talking about. This is why Chavez is so popular.

And your failure to accept reality (your willful ignorance, if you prefer), is what lies behind your flawed analysis. Or as the opposition blogger puts it: “[you are] deprived of the informational tools… needed to understand what the hell was happening”

PS: REAL incomes for the poorest 60% have risen by 130% under Chavez, i.e. after inflation. Go to Venezuela and see for yourself.

Well, I know you haven’t been to Venezuela, let alone a barrio, otherwise you couldn’t possibly present your alternative version of reality.

I quite like that; it’s very neat. It’s a bit like saying I haven’t been to Albania because I didn’t gush about healthcare like <a href=’http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=KbZksqdbe14 this or failed to wax lyrical on the joys of the country’s modern facilities like this. In short, your accusation is a variant on ‘if you don’t agree with the Party, your view of reality is so distorted you must be mad.’

By the looks of your photo, I’m probably a bit older than you and, I dare say, have travelled a bit more. But like you, I use to be a Man Of The Left. And why am I no longer? Actual day-to-day life under communism.

Later, you undoubtedly see a government owned Mercal supermarket - these sell food at around half the market price.

The royal road to shortages, inflation, black markets and corruption. As seen in every country from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. It’s about as predictable as the tide.

PS: REAL incomes for the poorest 60% have risen by 130% under Chavez, i.e. after inflation.

Not even the Banco Central de Venezuela agrees with this one. I note it’s impossible to find this survey on Nielsen Venezuela’s website. As I said, it’s not difficult to reduce poverty in an oil-rich state when the price of oil triples, a boon not given to Chavez’s predecessors (at least since 1979). As both prices and production is falling, we’ll see if the gains last. If they do, I’ll admit you were right about the economy. My fear is that Venezuela is terribly exposed in the current economic climate and that so far from being permanent, any gains will go the same way as populist measures tend to.

By contrast, Brazil shows solid growth and better economic management and less vulnerability despite heavy spending on welfare programmes and greater variability of commodity prices. Nobody’s pretending paradise has arrived; any trip to a favela will tell you that. But it’s progressive, levelheaded, and rather more likely to last.

Why in heaven’s name is there no preview? Sorry, first paragraph again:

I quite like that; it’s very neat. It’s a bit like saying I haven’t been to Albania because I didn’t gush about healthcare like this or failed to wax lyrical on the joys of the country’s modern facilities like this. In short, your accusation is a variant on ‘if you don’t agree with the Party, your view of reality is so distorted you must be mad.’

Once more, with feeling.

I quite like that; it’s very neat. It’s a bit like saying I haven’t been to Albania because I didn’t gush about healthcare like this or failed to wax lyrical on the joys of the country’s modern facilities like this. In short, your accusation is a variant on ‘if you don’t agree with the Party, your view of reality is so distorted you must be mad.’

I know you haven’t been to a barrio in Venezuela because you are describing a country that only exists in the imagination of people who are “begging to be systematically decieved”, as the opposition blogger puts it. Legitimate criticism is fine by me. It’s disinformation I have a problem with.

I doubt my words will convince you, which is fair enough. But if you do get the chance, go and see for yourself. Just try and leave the preconceptions and the stereotypes at home.

Anyway, thanks for the conversation.

Calvin