The New York Times Comes Undone Over Venezuela

[BayCityProgressive]

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=2000
Today the New York Times published an editorial critiqueing the economic policies of the Venezuela government and pointing out supposed flaws in them. It's worth taking a look:


President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela had an especially good time baiting President Bush during their recent competing tours of Latin America. But demagoguery and showmanship will do nothing to solve Venezuela’s 20 percent inflation rate — now the highest in Latin America — and growing food shortages that are punishing the poor whose interests Mr. Chávez so loudly declaims.
Funny how they leave out that Venezuela also has the fastest growing economy in the Western Hemisphere, that real income is WAY up, and that food consumption was up 16% last year. I guess they were pressed for space and couldn't fit those little factoids into their editorial.

Too bad they also left out the little fact that in the 10 years prior to Chavez coming to power only ONCE did inflation go below 30% and that year it was 29.9%. Maybe the editorial writers from the Times could benefit from this graph:

[sasha031]

1. to bad we couldn't have Chavez

I know it'ss crazy

The librul NYT hates anything Latino and progressive, they are a corporate rage.

[Mojambo]

2. That's a pretty big smackdown. n/t

[BayCityProgressive]

5. New York Times

is nothing but the propaganda mouthpiece of Wall Street. They are a complete joke. Their fine journalism also helped to land us in Iraq. I wish they would do an editorial on Democracy, foreign policy, and the economy nearly this hard hitting on our own country. Then again, with their complete failure to even use any facts, maybe that wouldn't be so good.

[Selatius]

3. Figures a corporate-owned news outlet is unfriendly to anything leftist in nature.

I remember the corporate news media shit its pants when Howard Dean floated the notion of breaking up the corporate news oligarchy through anti-trust actions.

[Clark2008]

12. Both he and Wes Clark proposed that and guess what happened?

Dean was made to look like a stark-raving idiot and Clark was completely ignored.

Go figure.

[Gabi Hayes]

14. that's EXACTLY what they do. they crucified Dean because, at the time,

they were AFRAID of his power, afraid that he could DO something about media concentration.

they've never been AFRAID of Clark, but if he ever becomes popular enough a candidate, they WILL have to pay attention to him, rather than ignore him the way he did when he spoke out.

if the dems are serious about this country NOT becoming a modern version of the Fourth Reich, they'd better wake up to the fact that their REAL opponent isn't the Republican Party, but it's the Corporate/Fascist Media, who serves both as handmaiden and bride to the neokryptos who've taken over the party of Lincoln.

[Peace Patriot]

4. Scumbags. Why bother? They've got the blood of a hundred thousand innocent

people on their hands, and that of thousands of US soldiers, and tens of thousands of injured, not to mention unknown counter-proliferation agents that their star war propagandist Judith Miller may have helped to get killed.

Useless, corrupt, lying scumbags. I've really had it with the war profiteering corporate news monopolies. I really have. They are lying from word one. They are lying and war profiteering and kissing the asses of global corporate predators before they ever go to press, in the black-holing of news that doesn't serve war and ungodly profit, and in their selection and framing of stories and headlines, and highly selective choice of opinions to promulgate. But I appreciate your post, your facts and your analysis, because I do know that they are polluting many peoples minds with a false narrative of national and international events, and it takes good analysis to help people extract themselves from this corporate brainwashing.

[MasonJar]

6. I just sent the NYT as scathing rebuttal to its self-serving diatribe against Chavez.

Please join me in responding to them. They make me sick, pandering to the Bushites and big oil.

[Prophet 451]

7. I love Chavaz

I have a few questions over some of his recent policies but I'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt simply because I have to love anyone who's so obviously made it their life mission to mess with Bush's head.

[Cha]

8. Why would the nyt suddenly start a

full investigative journalistic endeavor?

Better, just to repeat surface stuff..they think no one knows the difference. Too bad for them Al Gore Invented the fookin' Internet.

[Jcrowley]

9. Finally

They've been behind the disgusting WaPo in their hatchet jobs on Chavez. Wall $treet must have told them to get with the program.

January 2007 Import Highlights: Released on March 13, 2007
Preliminary monthly data on the origins of crude oil imports in January 2007 has been released and it shows that three countries have each exported more than 1.20 million barrels per day to the United States. Including those countries, a total of four countries exported over 1.00 million barrels per day of crude oil to the United States (see table below). The top five exporting countries accounted for 72 percent of United States crude oil imports in January while the top ten sources accounted for approximately 93 percent of all U.S. crude oil imports. The top sources of US crude oil imports for January were Canada (1.851 million barrels per day), Saudi Arabia (1.563 million barrels per day), Mexico (1.435 million barrels per day), Nigeria (1.106 million barrels per day), and Venezuela (0.955 million barrels per day). The rest of the top ten sources, in order, were Angola (0.553 million barrels per day), Algeria (0.548 million barrels per day), Iraq (0.514 million barrels per day), Ecuador (0.258 million barrels per day), and Brazil (0.204 million barrels per day). Total crude oil imports averaged 9.623 million barrels per day in January, which is an increase of 0.039 million barrels per day from December 2006.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/company_level_imports/current/import.html

[Prophet 451]

15. And they'll become more important

As the liquid crude becomes rarer, the mass of tar sands in Venezuala become a more realistic option and the hub of oil power shifts from Saudi Arabia to Venezuala. See Armed madhouse (Greg Palast).

[Gabi Hayes]

10. anybody that's posted here should have recommended it. deserves

to be on greatest, just to attract the anti-progressive corporatists who labor under the delusion that Chavez is an evil comsymp dictator.

those are the funniest posts of all.

[Mojambo]

13. Thanks for reminding me. Done. n/t

[Jcrowley]

16. Not to mention

The usage of the language that is used by Empire.

That's a really interesting thing to witness. People will be parroting the very same words of the oppressor and claim to have some form of analysis that is unique and worthwhile. And it's all the very tired rationales of cultures of conquest and so many people have internalized this it has become a permanent aspect of their character.

[Gabi Hayes]

17. amen...it's so sadly obvious, but Orwell couldn't have imagined just how

correct he was, and I have NO DOUBT that Rove and his predecessors have carefully studied the work of Edward Bernays, Josef Goebbels, and other less known practitioners of Marketing 101 and its political applications.

have you seen the article that links Bernays to Rove? pretty interesting

if I can find it, I'll repost it. I've put it up here several times

[Jcrowley]

18. I haven't seen that

I'm very familiar with Bernays and the work of Alex Carey on propaganda in a democracy.

The Soviet apparatchiks were in awe of the American propaganda system and how sophisticated it is.

[Gabi Hayes]

22. here

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized… "

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/bender2.html

I know....Rockwell, but he does have people like Karen Kwiatkowski on there, too.

[Crunchy Frog]

11. Too bad they can't be bothered to cover the flaws in our own country's policies.

It's very easy to sit around pointing at everyone else's flaws. Pravda in the old Soviet Union did a great job of pointing out the flaws in other countries. Right now, I've got about as much respect for the American corporate media as I did for the old Soviet media.

[Broadslidin]

19. With Venezuela/China Oil Deals in the works, Its a Negroponte Set Up..!

The n.y.t. stenographers are once again,
ordered into action
by their inside the U.S. government sources.

The Imperial Bushies and their Oily Corporate Ilk
are Smelling South American Blood,
with the lucrative crude oil contracts
being drawn up by the pinko Venezuelans
and Wal-Mart's close business associate,
the Communist Chinese.
From BBC Business News:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6492833.stm

If You are finding yourself
in a very Strange Sort of 1930s Mood,
driven to wonder whether it would be wise
to secretly listen to the BBC...?
Close the door and keep it low...!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/noscript.shtml?/radio/aod/radio2_aod.shtml?radio2/laycock

[JackRiddler]

20. kick

[femrap]

21. I don't see what is wrong with a bit of

Socialism. I consider it the 'sharing economic system.'

But after the Reagan administration which brought us Deregulation, I saw the masses buying the propaganda hook. line and sinker.

What Reagan did was deregulate Greed. Folks, we need Greed regulated....I thought that was just common sense.