How Hugo Chavez's revolution crumbled

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/24/AR2010012402379.html

I think I will wait to read the World Socialist Web Site's take on things before I believe the gospel according to the Washington Post.

;)

Do you know what his journalistic qualifications are?

He was a SPORTS WRITER for the Yale Daily News when he was an undergraduate.

An amazing number of names that I saw on the bylines of the Yale Daily News when I was a grad student there would turn up with their bylines in major newspapers or there names in the staff list of major magazines or on the production staffs of PBS programs right out of college. I knew some of them personally, and they were really nothing special.

No, there's no class system in the U.S. None at all... :sarcasm:

By the way, wasn't Chavez' referendum just approved?

As far as the election in Chile is concerned, presidents there are limited to one term, so we'll see what happens after a few years of right-of-center politics.

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/staff/articles/jackson+diehl/

Awards or no awards.

awards are badges of infamy, for crying out loud!

Award-winning foreign correspondent! Hitler was on the short-list for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Using a few bits of data, a picture of failure is painted spreading across Latin America's left leaning governments.

It's all so sensible and glib, too sensible and glib.

The simple facts he uses fall far too short of the proof needed to makes his idiotological conclusions re: Chavez's failure and Chile's election.

He refers to the election of a center-right government in Chile as proof of this, when it is actually proof that Chile has an elected government and changes leadership from time to time.

In any case he uses an antiquated definition of "right wing" when he refers to Pinoche.

That's like referring to A Republican victory as returning to President Lincoln's values and beliefs.

NOT A CHANCE. Chile is a mature republic, and this sort of change is NORMAL - and DOES NOT indicate a continental failure on any level.

Even more pathetic his POV reflects the habit that causes the USA so much grief when dealing with Latin America, and that's to connect dots as if the significant differences between these nations is so irrelevant you can use Chile to analyze Venezuela, and use Honduras to back up those claims.

Just how rediculous this is can be demonstrated by using the English speaking nations of the world.

We can explain the election of Barack Obama via Brown's rising to PM in the UK, which obviously indicated a trend in English speaking nations to move left and this move was initiated by the Australians who finally shed its right wing government after a decade in power a year before Obama's victory.

Of course to make it sound solid you leave out the anomalies like Bolivia and Canada respectively

Even more extreme in terms of using facts to create lies - the forces that "defeated Chavez's revolution" do NOT exist as an opposition force - they're economic.

As long as the world was riding high on the world bubble, so was Venezuela. It endured longer than other nations thanks to huge oil exports, but eventually the deep worldwide recession came to Venezuela thus the devaluation Etc.

I wonder if he'd ever use the same idiotic reasoning to declare the American Democratic experiment is killed by the Wall Street Economic bubble economy built of non-existent assets implosion.

And our American Corporate News Establishment (ACNE) is beside itself as Americans consider it a failure when it comes to reporting the news.

Strip out the spin and the entire article disappears, because the few facts alone don't amount to anything.

Used to call it "propaganda", especially when people we don't like did it, but that has too many bad connotations, so it's "intepretive journalism" now.

Chavez has diverted some Corporate Profits to...

*Feed the hungry

*Educate the Ignorant

*Heal the Sick

*House the Homeless

*Give voice to the disenfranchised

Why YES!
I can see why so many in the US hate him.
This kind of thing could catch on,
and we (The RICH Corporate Owners) can't afford to let THAT happen here.

VIVA democracy!!!
Venezuela belongs to the Venezuelans.
It is none of our business.


"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans. I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will stand up for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."---Paul Wellstone

:shrug: