Download the ringtone of the popular song: Bad Ass Strippa …

One reader recently wrote to The Nation , “Like the U.S. government and corporate press, author Kathie Klarreich describes ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide as ‘the most polarizing figure in Haiti’s recent political arena,’ with no indication of how small a number of wealthy U.S. and Haitian elites dominate the relentless hateful opposition to Aristide and his Lavalas Party.” Klarreich time-and-time again provides no mention of the embargo, the foreign funding of the elite opposition, or the elite backed paramilitaries who ran a low intensity conflict against the government for nearly three years - assassinating mayors, police, and civilians alike.

Another interesting similarity is the reliance on sources from politically tinged aid agencies such as the NED and USAID OTI. I see from Justin Delacour’s article “Marc Cooper’s Venezuela” that Marc Cooper’s coverage of Venezuela has provided little in the way of documented evidence, while relying on Alexander Boyd (!?!) for an impartial view.

I would argue that Klarreich and Cooper, for the most part, like numerous other U.S. journalists writing on the countries to our geographic south have fallen into a position of downplaying the human rights abuses of U.S. allies, while exaggerating the abuses of official enemies.

“BTW, I forgot to ask something: Can anyone name five (5) prominent (and I mean prominent) “left” (I will give you some leeway there, I suppose) intellectuals who, in the words of “Rare Bear,” absolutely “fetish” either Hugo Chavez or Che Guevera? Because I certainly can’t.”

OK…The list (careful…Chavez loves lists):

1- Michael Hardt
2- Antonio Negri
3- Noam Chomsky
4- Howard Zinn
5- Is Michael Moore an intellectual?

Firstly, I am not an operative nor a minsinformant (or if I am, I certainly don’t know it, and wish I did, cause then I could at least get paid for it). I am an assistant professor struggling with all the things assistant professors struggle with in anti-intellectual societies such as our own: low wages, disinterested students, the rigours and banality of institutional life. I am in love with a Venezuelan, and from being involved in this relationship I have been pushed to learn most of what I know about Venezuela, which also stems from my own interest in Latin American politics as well as a concern for the patria of my partner and his family, who live in Venezuela. So, like all intellectual projects, this one has a certain resonance within the personal. That doesn’t make it invalid, mind you, but perhaps helps to locate it. Oh, and also, my partner could by no means be described as a “squalid one,” just in case you think he is a Venezuelan millionaire. He works for a wage, like I do. We work, we think. We’re hardly extraordinary, except perhaps for the fact that we have a tactile relationship with quotidian life in Venezuela, and therefore it’s harder for us to participate in the love-fest from afar that many in Europe and North America have for Chavez and his policies.

I am a US Latina/o and I am fully aware of the complications of the contemporary Left as well as the racial politics of US attitudes towards Latin America (and Latinas/os in the USA, which is not necessarily the same thing). I am also familiar with all sides of the Chavez debate. I consider myself a part of the Left, for what that’s worth, given the Left’s continued reliance on the concept of false consciousness to undermine its argumentative opponenets. To paraphrase Lora Romero, I may be wrong thinking, but I am not *unthinking*.

I wanted to spur some discussion on the *reception* of Chavez in the West, a certain criticism of the cartoonish politics of the representation of resistance on the Left and Right, triggered by an exhaustion with the refusal of the Left, in the face of its contemporary trauma here in the USA, to engage in *thinking* about Chavez as an epiphenomenon, and the piece seems to have done this. No blog entry can capture the immense complexity of such a topic, and my entry does not seek to do this. There is, in fact, a lot more to be said as regards Chavez, which is happening here and in other places and no doubt will continue to happen. Rather, I use my blog as a milieu for intellectual thinking that is separate from my formal academic work and distinctly colloquial, of which the piece on Chavez was only a part.

While I obviously don’t agree with everything that has been said here and in other places, of of the comments are engaged in debate, and I am glad to have sparked a discussion which, hopefully, has then triggered other modes of thinking, whether in resistance or agreement.

On a final note, the Pet Shop Boys are indeed my favourite band (in fact, their new album came out yesterday in the UK) and Stuart Hall, who is one of my intellectual heroes, is not dead. My reference to his works speaks not only to my own intellectual training, but the refusal to take his arguments seriously: in short, politics is hard work, and we must leave the house the simple binary if we wish to effectively counter the rise of the Right.

By way of continuing the conversation, I would urge you, as some have before, of looking at Alma Guillermoprieto’s writing on Venezuela, especially her two-part series in the New York Review of Books last October, which I found interesting:

“Don’t Cry For Me, Venezuela”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18302

“The Gambler”
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18355

Best, Oso

Au contraire Morty.

“(journalist) Parmenio Medina came to Costa Rica in 1968, fleeing violence in Colombia. Fellow journalists are not satisfied with the official inquiry into his death, but are reluctant to carry out their own inquiries, because under the Costa Rican penal code, they could be charged with defamation if they report anything considered to fall foul of the country’s “crimes against honour law”. **Under this law anyone who libels, slanders, defames, or reproduces offensive statements against anyone, even public officials can be fined or imprisoned. In a poll last year, 56% of the journalists interviewed said they had been threatened by public officials who took exception to their reporting. Seven had received physical threats and 37% said they had been threatened with charges of libel, slander and defamation.**(emphasis added)

Since Medina’s shooting there have been a number of arrests of common criminals suspected of being the actual triggermen. However, as the second anniversary of the crime approaches, Costa Rican organisations are again planning street protests, to express widespread concern that the investigation to determine who put out the contract on Medina’s life is going nowhere, reportedly because those involved are too powerful to touch.”
http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAMR240012003?open&of=ENG-CRI

You see, Costa Rica’s strongmen are “bullying the press” with “legislation that seriously threatens press freedoms and freedom of expression.” With majorities of journalists feeling personally threatend by the authoritarian bullying.

Furthermore, there’s no room for any “mealy-mouthedness” or “rationalizations” for Costa Rica’s press laws, under which “anyone who libels, slanders, defames, or reproduces offensive statements” about the rulers there can be thrown in jail.

You see, for libel, slander and defamation laws to cover what’s said about state officials or government employees. State officials “have the guns” while the press only “has the cameras”, so therefore the press should be perfectly free to libel and slander any elected officials or persons who work for the government, and if any of the targets of these complain they are a “bully” attacking “freedom of expression” and engaging in political persecution.

Costa Rica is clearly run by a power-mad dictator out to squelch freedom of expression, and protect the impunity of those who are “too powerful to touch”.

Far from “making a case” for it, Mr. Cooper knows that “it takes more than voting to make a democracy”, and would denounce Costa Rica as the dictatorship it is, unless of course he comes down with some kind of “complex” and starts “worshipping” it due to the psychological syndrome.

“I wish we had the right to recall our President - one Chavez gave his country.”

Exactly. The only reason they had a right to recall in the first place was because Chavez put it in the new constitution (ratified by public referendum). The US doesn’t have anything that democratic.

And the notion that the referendum, or any of Chavez’ electoral victories were rigged is absurd. Nobody has produced a scratch of evidence to that effect, but it doesn’t matter. Smoke and mirrors is apparently enough if you just blow the smoke on enough blogs.

It also doesn’t matter that even opposition-aligned polling agencies have been getting results of 70 and 80 percent approval ratings for Chavez. No, he still only “won” elections. He didn’t win them.

“The depressing truth is that Chavez represents the flip side of the criminal administration we currently have here in the USA in its rapaciousness and ideological excesses”

More like the “necessary lie is”. This moral equivalence argument misses that:

Chavez hasn’t declared a right to spy on the private conversations and activities of anyone he deems fit, without any judicial review. Chavez hasn’t declared a right to invade and conquer any country he decides might become a threat to Venezuela someday. Chavez hasn’t started a war killing tens of thousands of innocent people. Chavez hasn’t declared a right to seize anyone on the globe that he sees fit and hold them without charges, without due process of any kind, and theoretically forever. Chavez is not harboring terrorists and denying legitimate requests to extradite those terrorists for trial.
Chavez is not building or expanding nuclear weapons arsenals in violation of the NPT.

And that’s hardly an exhaustive list.

But Chavez’ supposedly horrendous crimes are certainly just the “flip side” of all the above. Afterall, he “bullies the press” (I suppose since he is as critical of the press that almost uniformly disparages him and his government every day, as it is of him).

Or he “pack the courts”, which is to say that he and his allies win elections, and therefore, devilishly, appoint people they want to the court, rather than people the opposition, who lost the elections, want on the court.

“and hand over regional governments to cronies like his aged father?”

Oh my goodness. How horrible.

So the government does some bad things in Venezuela. Which doesn’t? Venezuela’s are minor compared to most, but some people love to exaggerate them.

Can we condemn abuses or bad policies by the Venezuelan government? Certainly, but that’s not what people like Marc Cooper or Oso Raro appear to want.

They want another “democratic” coup d’etat like 2002 to reimpose neoliberalism and “freedom”, and they justify this by claiming the wildly popular elected leader is a “dictator” so they can impose a dictator, and by wildly exaggerating the failings of the Chavez government, underplaying or ignoring all the positives of the Chavez government, all of which are uniformly irrelevant to understanding the situation, and even mentioning them is “rationalizations”.

The proportion is also extremely out of whack. Compare Venezuela’s rights record to its neighbors and it is better than most, if not all. Compare it to the country most of us are sitting in and it is a choir boy.

And the “Che Complex” reminds me of the old Soviet tactic of claiming all the dissidents are insane. If someone doesn’t agree with you they must have some kind of psychological “complex”.

The original article is an excercise in disinformation. The only substantive charges about the supposed “authoritarianism” is imaginary. I wish we had the right to recall our President - one Chavez gave his country. Chavez has simply done what Oso Raro advises for the poor everywhere - “getting its share of that transnational pie.” The charges relating to the (Tascon) “list” have been denounced by Chavez and It is illegal to use. The courts and CNE are as they were before Chavez - and much fairer than our own appointed election overseers in State capitals. The Sumate group leader (Machado) is in trouble because she took US money then signed a decree ending democracy during the coup. Chavez’s record # of election wins are not in serious dispute. Nor is the freedom of the press or anyone to vicously attack him daily. His “shaky” democracy has brought record numbers to the polls, brought them into more decision-making processes, and has resulted in not one political prisoner.

Meanwhile the economy has been the fastest growing for 2 years, poverty is down by nearly 25% despite the damaging employer lock-outs. Chavez has wiped out illiteracy, provided access to health care, higher education, affordable food and billions in loans and programs for the poor. He has also taken the lead in the region - providing cheap oil, defeating FTAA, buying up debt, launching Telesur, inspiring others to challenge neo-liberalism.

That so many of you on this blog seem to have bought hook line and sinker the Bush Admin’ and media line on Chavez is really quite sad to me…

This guy is wonderful…is he real or is somebody making him up in order to slander “marxists” ?

Next time aim higher…like for the ankles.

Clueless again, Rockford…unless you know more about Tillman than Tillman’s mother. You’re “Charlie Sheen” in this particular scenario.

If one ever wanted an example of how willfully ignorant and/or stupid the left factions who defend “Guevarism” or some such apparently are, that sentence certainly stands out as one of the more blatant.

Ahmed - since you admit to not having read the book, I’m at a loss as to how to respond to your frettings over Gitlin other than to repeat what I said the first time. Lazare is really beneath contempt for that “review” - it’s not a critique of Gitlin’s book, it’s a canned rant. Anyone who actually read the book and read that review - whatever they though of Gitlin’s argument - would be left scratching their head. As for the “identity politics” thing - you’re digging yourself an even deeper hole IMHO. We’d never agree on this…but if you can’t see the maanifest problems with the “identity politics” left, I guess I’m, again, left scratching my head at the staggering disconnect from reality.

“Start from Zero.”

Just like the Romantics and Rousseau, the Left (or a whacking great part of it anyway) wants to start from Zero to remake society in a new image. Plato’s Republic. This is an old, old danger of the Left dating back to the French Revolution. Along with it the worship of the absolute autocrat who gets things done (see: Walter Duranty and Stalin or TE Lawrence and Ibn Saud or Fisk and bin Laden).

At it’s best it produces things like the Anti-Slavery movement in the UK in the late 1700’s; the Abolitionists, Suffragettes, the Civil Rights Movement, and so on. The dark side is of course the Temperance Movement, the Eugenics obsession of people like Sanger, and ultimately Pol Pot. That’s the worst.

Yes Rare Bear is absolutely correct, Leftists in the US tend to project onto Fidel, Che, and Chavez (all pretty loathesome guys) the idea of total destruction of society and forming something “new and improved.” No matter how many people they have to kill, artists, writers, labor leaders, whoever that gets in the way of “Great Leader.”

Ironically this was the argument used by Tim McVeigh to “justify” his mass murder and his notion that “blowing up a building can change the world.” It’s why you have Weather Underground, Black Panthers, Red Brigades, Red Army Faction, various Leftist support for Islamic terrorists dating back to the Seventies. Anyone promising violence in the name of “start from Zero” appeals directly to the naive utopian impulse to rebuild society from nothing in the image of the builder. Very narcissistic as you point out. Some small racist component on the extreme right (McVeigh), but mostly on the Left.

[If you believe Tillman was a fan of Chomsky, Charlie Sheen has a 9/11 Conspiracy for you.]

Ironically the idea of the early Left (that change has to come) has largely been embraced by the Center-Right. The difference is that the Center-Right has embraced FDR’s reform agenda rather than the Romanticism of a “state of nature” total rebuilding of society from zero by an autocrat who (kewl!) kills people. I don’t see much freedom given to the Cuban or Venezuelan people. Here in this country Russ Feingold is able to propose Censure of the President (for which Rove undoubtedly thanks him) whereas gays and poets and librarians are imprisoned in Cuba and Venezuela is as Rare Bear describes. GWB will be gone in 08. Castro and his family will rule for perhaps another 40 years in hereditary despotism.

The Left would be far more effective if it dumped it’s related “Start from Zero” and autocrat worship for an alternative to reform on the Center-Left. Principally focusing on raising incomes of poor people through reform measures. I don’t see the narcissism allowing that to happen though.

http://www.geocities.com/mark_y1/BA.JPG

Look Cummings you’re just a dumb punk. A blind uber liberal who lives in a protected world of imaginary sources and and false cause fallacies. You’re insulting radical and happily irrellevant.

Maybe Marc should accept the fact that his left is what is traditionally called social democracy and that the left he despises is rooted in the traditions of the Russian Revolution (Parenti) or anarchism (Chomsky).

I really don’t see the point of him obsessively attacking those to his left, since most of his postings have become boringly repetitious. We get it, Cooper. You hate Chavez, Castro, and Ramsey Clark. (Yawn)

Maybe it would be a better use of your time and energy to simply promote your social democratic vision of change in Latin America. One might actually learn something about the need for slow and tepid incremental change that will not invite a response from the National Endowment for Democracy or the CIA.

Instead of lambasting Hugo Chavez, maybe you can make the case for Costa Rica or Mitterand’s France? I am quite sure that these countries have never done anything to anger you.

With your finely honed journalistic skills, maybe we could see a transformation of the American campuses. Che Guevara’s image will be replaced by Oscar Arias’s on t-shirts. Young people will begin reading Irving Howe rather than Noam Chomsky.

Accentuate the positive, my friend.

I don’t see it.

Political justice requires economic justice. Economic justice means upholding the property rights of the poor as well as the rich.

Let me know when a significant portion of the left (apart from the marginalized Joe Lieberman in a party that would be considered rightist in most other countries) starts supporting property rights.

Property.

If the property rights of the rich are not respected they will not invest. If the property rights of the poor are not respected they will not be able to create wealth up to their full potential. It is hard enough to get capital and labor to cooperate without a theory that makes them class enemies.