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Spinning Chavez
Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit
Venezuelanalysis - Nov 28, 3007
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2917
Spinning Ch!vez
by Hugh O'Shaughnessy
On Sunday 2 December 16 million Venezuelans vote in a referendum: all
the signs are that they will approve constitutional reforms proposed by
President Hugo Ch!vez.
Popular as ever for having put a big dent in the shocking gap between
rich and poor in an oil-rich country, he wants a chance to bury 19th
century Leninist ****bboleths, strengthen already rumbustious local
democracy and stand for election again.
It is very likely that the electors will give Ch!vez what he wants: it
is certain that spinners in Wa****ngton, London and elsewhere will do
their best to pull the process to pieces.
The spinners blench at the idea that US nationalism could be challenged
by nationalism of some South American. Nor can they abide the feeling
that Ch!vezs star is waxing, despite his injudicious outbursts.
At the same time the feeling that the US star is waning - consequent on
a floundering Wall Street and a foundering dollar, George Bushs
military defeats in the Third World, Abu Ghraib, Guant!namo Bay and a
global kidnapping scheme " cannot be contemplated.
Now those who have fawned on Saudi Arabian kings, indulged the
Israelis atom bomb and their criminal mistreatment of Palestinians,
and quietly backed every Latin American dictator from Somoza and
Pinochet to the Argentine and Brazilian generals will attempt to
****tray the Venezuelan leader as anti-democratic.
They will also try to bury the European Commissions high praise for
last years presidential elections in Venezuela - "the high turnout,
and peaceful atmosphere in which they were held, together with the
acceptance of results by all those involved".
Ch!vez won that poll having in 2002 had to fight his way out of a brief
coup by a dim but authoritarian businessman.
The stage is set for the undermining of Ch!vez. On 19 November BBC2s
This World screened 'The Trillion Dollar Revolutionary', programme
which would never have been permitted about, say, Begin or Olmert.
Its combination of culpable ignorance and sneering superciliousness
produced what must be the worst do***entary of the decade.
With slightly more sophistication, Chatham House four days earlier had
staged a conference on fighting social inequality in Latin America
aided by the Foreign Office and DIFID and funded by the
Wa****ngton-based Inter-American Development Bank.
Toe-curlingly, it was inaugurated by Shaheed Malik, a junior minister
at DIFID, who contented himself with sad little jokes about Lanca****re
and York****re but, to the relief of all, soon rushed off.
Despite the fact that Ch!vez has distinguished himself in the fight for
a fairer society the day included no speakers from Venezuela and
attempted to avoid any reference to that country. It refused to accept
the words last month of the UN Economic Commission for Latin America
which commented: "Thanks to rapid GDP growth and the ongoing
implementation of broad social programmes, in 2006 alone the poverty
rate was lowered from 37.1% to 30.2% and the indigence [extreme
poverty] rate from 15.9% to 9.9%." Venezuela was, the UN said, well on
the way to reaching its first Millennium Development Goal.
Meanwhile at the top end The Economist, which has for long made money
out of laughing at poor people, forms a plangent Greek chorus who
forlornly hope that wicked Venezuelas oil, the countrys prop, will
run out or the price collapse. But with Venezuelas growing reserves
the magazines writers might as well dream Osama bin Laden will become
the next editor of Vogue.
With Ch!vez gaining strength, a spinners life in Britain is not a
happy one.
*
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