The Venezuelan Economy: Media Sources Get It Wrong, Again

[Peace Patriot]

The Venezuelan Economy: Media Sources Get It Wrong, Again

Monday 13 September 2010

by: Mark Weisbrot | The Center for Economic and Policy Research | News Analysis

The bulk of the media often gets pulled along for the ride when the United States government has a serious political and public relations campaign around foreign policy. But almost nowhere is it so monolithic as with Venezuela. Even in the run-up to the Iraq War, there were a significant number of reporters and editorial writers who didn't buy the official story. But on Venezuela the media is more like a jury that has twelve people but only one brain.

Since the Venezuelan opposition decided to campaign for the September elections on the issue of Venezuela's high homicide rate, the international press has been flooded with stories on this theme – some of them highly exaggerated (LINK). ... all it took was a decision by the Venezuelan political opposition that homicide would be its main campaign issue, and the international press was all over it (LINK).

The "all bad news, all the time" theme was overwhelmingly dominant even during Venezuela's record economic expansion, from 2003-2008. The economy grew as never before, poverty was cut by more than half, and there were large gains in employment. Real social spending per person more than tripled, and free health care was expanded to millions of people. You will have to search very hard to find these basic facts presented in a mainstream media article, although the numbers are hardly in dispute among economists in international organizations that deal with statistics.

For example, in May the UN Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) found that Venezuela had reduced inequality by more than any other country in Latin America from 2002-2008, ending up with the most equal income distribution in the region. This has yet to be mentioned by the major international press.

(MORE)
(My emphasis)
http://www.truth-out.org/mark-weisbrot-the-venezuelan-economy-media-sources-get-it-wrong-again63197
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/sep/10/venezuela-economics

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The disinformation about Venezuela and the Chavez government that pervades the corpo-fascist press, and that gets posted and promoted here at DU, is so mind-bogglingly stupid-making--and worrisome and dangerous--that I'm posting this Guardian article as a counter-measure. I don't think it's been posted at DU before and I think it pinpoints with great precision this media problem that I have often commented on and tried to describe--and tried to warn people about: We are NOT GETTING an accurate picture of Venezuela, the Chavez government or the Latin American left from the corpo-fascist press--and, by "corpo-fascist press," I mean every damn one of our corporate-run news sources, including the BBC. (They are nearly as bad as the Miami Hairball on this subject.) In fact, we're getting a grossly distorted view. Weisbrot does an excellent job of explaining just how this works and just how bad it is.

Back when I was a kid going to Catholic grammar school, and around the time I achieved sentience--age 9, 10-ish--I began to notice that every story in the "History of the Church" that we were obliged to read was based on the premise that the Church is always right. Every bit of history told in these alleged historical accounts had that point, and hammered it home again and again. I was beginning to understand what an "a priori" argument is: Your mind is made up before you begin thinking. The "first premise"--the prior thought before thinking--is that the Church is always right. Everything else follows from that, and if the facts have to be twisted and manipulated and lied about, to confirm that "a priori" premise, so be it. The Church HAS TO BE right because the Church IS ALWAYS right because, um...because God said so, and who speaks for God? The Church!

It took me several decades of reading REAL history--from many perspectives--to realize just how bad, self-serving and dishonest that "History of the Church" had been. And that intellectual journey prepared me rather well for evaluating corporate propaganda about Latin American leftists, and Chavez and his government in particular, since they have been SO badly, self-servingly and dishonestly portrayed, by toady journalists in service to billionaire media moguls.

The Church's "a priori" premise was that the Church is always right. And the corpo-fascist 'news' monopolies' premise is that Chavez is always wrong. Sub-premises: socialism in Venezuela is bound to fail (despite its many economic and social successes); Chavez is bound to be a "dictator" (despite voluminous evidence to the contrary); and, the most insidious one--society can only alleviate poverty, create opportunity for all and share the wealth through public services by means of "dictatorship"--so, forget it, kids! Milton Friedman and "dog eat dog" is the only way!

One other hidden premise or rather propaganda technique: "Chavez IS the story"--a "buffoon," a "dictator," an "incompetent," a "terrorist-lover," a "menace to the region" and what-all--a phantom created by the media to be taken down by the media. But the real story is not all about Chavez or any leader. The real story is the People of Venezuela, the honest, transparent election system that they struggled to achieve, and the "New Deal" that they got for themselves by means of difficult grass roots community organizing. And their stunning rescue of their president and their democracy from a rightwing coup d'etat, in 2002, clearly establishes the DEMOCRATIC nature of the power equation in Venezuela. But all of this is hidden from the children of the North--us--in bogeyman tales of "communism" and "dictators." Capitalism is your Daddy, get it?

The Church is your Daddy and Daddy is always right. And Capitalism is your Daddy and is gonna make you rich.

The resemblance between the two institutions is haunting--the monolithic, international Church and the monolithic, multinational corporation. And they have the same contemptuous, menacing attitude toward secular government and freedom of thought. They don't want you to make up your own mind. They want you to accept their "a priori" dictates--to confine your mind narrowly within those prison bars. Both seek power, not understanding. Both are propaganda machines, acting in the interest of perpetuating their power. Back in the Middle Ages, people couldn't SEE the Church--it was everywhere. Its power was pervasive. That is the case today with the Corporate Rulers. Most people can't SEE them. They can't fathom how pervasive their influence is. They think these corporations are bringing them "the news," when what they are getting is self-serving, twisted, vile lies, sometimes subtle and clever, often egregious. The Church, too, told egregious lies--but no one could see it--not until a popular, independent press arose. And now that product of the Enlightenment--a popular, independent press--has been usurped, corporatized, conglomerated and destroyed.

The result is the hijacking of the U.S. military for corporate resource wars, massive, unprecedented looting by the rich, the demise of transparent vote counting in our once great democracy and the damned lie that there is no other way. 'Y'all elected Pukes to do it to you again!' Right. Don't believe them. Chavez is bad. Don't believe them. The millions of Venezuelans who can get an education for the first time, who can read for the first time, who have health care for the first time, who can put decent meals on the table for the first time, who can put shoes on their children's feet for the first time, who can send their children to the best classical music training program in the world, for free, now opened to tens of thousands of children, and who are seeing so many benefits from their own oil, for the first time, say otherwise, and have said so time and again, in polls and elections. Venezuela has its up and downs, and its on-going problems, like any country--especially in this Bushwhacked world economy--but its government has its priorities straight: serving the people. Can we say the same?

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

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[Peace Patriot]

4. Being an advocate doesn't mean you have to be a LIAR!

For instance, I can completely disagree with Bill Clinton on numerous issues, and I can understand full well what the Clinton prosperity was based on (exploitation of poor countries, especially Latin American countries, the "free trade" debacle that resulted in massive outsourcing of jobs here, and ultimately catastrophic deregulation of the banking industry) and still acknowledge that he DID create prosperity for SOME goodly portion of the middle and lower class, here, and he ran a government that DID ITS JOB efficiently and with a minimum of corruption. I protested in Seattle--where we warned everybody what was coming. But I voted for Clinton. Advocacy does not mean you have to LIE--and that is especially true of an institution that purports to have a corner on "the Truth" and condemns lying as a sin.

The Church can advocate for "love thy neighbor"--WITHOUT LYING. There is no reason for the Church to lie about its history except powermongering--and especially to lie so egregiously. They called it "history." Not theology. Everybody has a point of view, in history writing, and all of it must be read critically. I'm not talking about focus or emphasis, or coloring a story, or being a bit selective about your facts. I'm talking about an "a priori" decision that all the historical accounts will have the point that the Church is always right--and everything that the Church did wrong--including heinous crimes--is edited out!

That is LYING, not advocating.

I could advocate for Clinton back then (don't know if I could do it now, though), and urge people to vote for him, and still go to Seattle to protest what I considered to be ruinous policies. That is the genuine nature of truth. It is not a rock. It is an ocean. And we barely have our bearings on it. We have to divine truth as well as we can.

One of the things that bothers me no end, is the completely one-sided coverage of the Chavez government. It's just like Church history. It is an elaborate and relentless lie. And I try to do my little bit of balancing here, by posting some of the news that NEVER GETS PRINTED OR BROADCAST. I feel no obligation whatsoever to print negative news or criticism about Chavez. The corpo-fascist press has that totally covered. They never print anything else. Never! It is insulting to an intelligent mind--just like that Church history was insulting to my intelligent child-mind.

I'm old enough not to have faith in any politician. Not Chavez. Not anybody. We are "at sea" in judging politicians in this pervasively manipulated media age. All we can do is be as widely well-informed as we can and do our best to understand history and current events and CONTEXT. The Bolivarian Revolution cannot possibly produce all that it has promised--certainly not any time soon--but it is, in fact, a revolution and a profound one, the core of which is that we really have to give up the predatory greediness of capitalism in favor of social and ecological responsibility. This doesn't mean that we have to give up on business or markets or creative technology or a fun variety of products or, god knows, individual initiative. But it means that the untoward greed of the rich and the wretchedness of the poor--this imbalance--is unsustainable. I think that is a profound idea, in this Reagan-Clinton-Bush disaster of a country, and worthy of consideration. It has less to do with Chavez or any other leader, and more to do with the people who put Chavez in office and other leaders like him. It is a new current of consciousness in Latin America. And our power players and rulers don't want us to think about it. So we must!

The Venezuelans, in doing all they did to put Chavez in power and keep him there in the face of coup attempts and so on, are proposing a different model of human behavior and organization than we have been used to seeing. Chavez is their spokesperson--or one of them. He is not the issue. That he won't take Wall Street's advice is certainly a plus. But he is not alone. Lula da Silva, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and many others are with him on this. And we have to understand that this new attitude toward economics and finance and other policy is very widespread and is an expression of many people--of their desire for a system that doesn't impoverish them and deny them education and health care and oppress them. Our media moguls are deliberately ignoring, marginalizing or misrepresenting this. They can criticize the homicide rate in Venezuela--and demonize Chavez as if he were committing the murders himself--but ignore the crimes of the homicidal maniacs who were running our own government and slaughtering a hundred thousand innocent people in Iraq, to steal their oil.

That is criminally negligent journalism. It is not advocacy--as if journalists should be advocates of war or corporate rule. It is a deliberate lie. Venezuela has problems. And the Chavez government may be disappointing in some respects, for not having solved them all. But to dwell on the homicide rate in Venezuela, while Bush Jr. is free to open his presidential lie-berry is obscene. Look at the harm that war criminal has done! Look at the incompetence!. Deliberate, malicious harm on a massive scale. Deliberate "drowning of government in the bathtub." UNNECESSARY creation of Great Depression II! Oh, but Chavez hasn't solved the street crime problem!

Well, he really can't. Venezuelans have to solve that problem themselves--just as they solved the problem of getting no benefit from their own oil by electing Chavez, who was willing to stare Exxon Mobil and the other rat bastards in the Venezuelan oil industry down. Venezuelans are in love with guns. And they need to deal with that. Obsession with this issue in the corpo-fascist press is absurd. It is not advocacy. It is a form of lying, considering what they DON'T REPORT.

And I hate lying. I really do.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Kicking to keep near the top for later reference. I need to read this later this evening. Thanks!

Recommending.

:kick: :kick: :kick: :kick:

[social_critic]

3. But the Venezuelan economy is lousy, and crime rate is high

On the other hand, the Venezuelan economy is lousy, and the crime rate is very high. Now, in a real democracy, if you have real democratic ideals, then the best way to force the other guys out of power is to point out over and over just how lousy a job they are doing recently. And because the Venezuelan economy has been going down for two years, and crime has been rising for 10 years, then it makes sense for a politician to hammer away at the figures. A savvy government would just work hard to get things turned around, or at least face the piper and say they know things aren't alright but they're working on it.

So what you see in Venezuela is the majority, which is fed up with incompetence at the top, deciding it's time for change. The majority already voted against the chavistas in late September. The elections were gerrymandered. The government "victory" - they got more seats thanks to a gross gerrymander of districts - was so hollow they suspended their celebration and went home quietly. And what was their response? More radical moves which have really pissed off a large portion of the population.

The Venezuelan economy is still going down, inflation is still going up. So what are the geniuses in the communist hallways going to do to fix things? Keep up the three tiered currency controls, pass more laws to gum up commerce, and nationalize more industry to make sure nothing gets produced? Time's running short, boys, and the people don't like to see Xmas approaching without the money to buy hallacas and bread.

[Peace Patriot]

5. The Venezuelan economy is THE MOST EQUAL IN LATIN AMERICA!

That is the conclusion of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in their recent report. Other indices (UN, Latin American, the Millennium Project) also report on Venezuela's dramatic reduction of poverty (by half) and extreme poverty (by more than 70%).

I'm sure that pisses off the have's in Venezuelan, and here--cuz Uncle Milton said pain for the poor is the only way to get really rich--but it is A FACT. Every school book, computer, musical instrument, hot lunch, school uniform and other essentials of education that the government gives to poor children, every medical checkup for the elderly who have never seen a doctor before, every student in college who wouldn't be there but for the Chavez government, every decent subsidized dinner on the table in the hovels and barrios of Caracas, every small peasant farmer who has been given back their land, every new farmer trained, every grant or loan to small businesses, every item of this marvelous bootstrapping of the poor majority, is money that the rich could otherwise be using to make themselves richer. They are very angry about it, and the corpo-fascist media, there and here, is wholly on their side. They never print or broadcast anything else. And the USAID and other agencies of our corporate-run government pour multimillions of our tax dollars into rightwing groups in Venezuela to KEEP SAYING, OVER AND OVER AGAIN, that everything is "LOUSY" in Venezuela and it's the "commies" fault.

The people you are advocating for--by repeating their propaganda "talking points" over and over and over again--DON'T LIKE EQUALITY! They want to GET RICH AT THE EXPENSE OF THE POOR. U.S. INEQUALITY is their model of governance. They want to turn Venezuela into Colombia--a U.S. client state with one of the WORST rich/poor discrepancies in Latin America. And the assholes at the New York Slimes, the Associated Pukes, the Wall Street Urinal, the Miami Hairball, FauxNews, CBS-NBC-ABC-CNN, and all of the assholes in corpo-fascist media in Venezuela--all of whom supported the 2002 rightwing coup attempt--are trying to help them do it!

Inflation favors the poor. Deflation favors the rich. That is why there is inflation in Venezuela and deflation here. We are on a downward spiral, with the super-rich and the war profiteers cleaning up as they kick us off the cliff into Great Depression II. They want to do the same to Latin America--rob its people blind, again--and Chavez won't let them, and has inspired a rebellion throughout the region. The rightwing in Venezuela wants to ride that robbery of their countrymen and their neighbors to riches and power--as they did before with the oil, raking off the top for themselves and their rich urban elite pals and to hell with everybody else. They were giving away most of the oil profits to multinational corporations--to Exxon Mobil and their ilk--for their own benefit, and utterly neglecting the impoverished majority. The Chavez government changed all that.

An economy is not "lousy" if it cuts poverty in half and extreme poverty by over 70%, and earns the plaudit of being the MOST EQUAL economy in Latin America. And I might add that the Chavez government did this while stimulating a sizzling 10% economic growth rate, during the 2003 to 2008 period, with the most growth in the private sector, not including oil! While the Bushwhacks here were robbing us blind, outsourcing all our jobs, "privatizing" everything including our elections, deregulating the banks, basically destroying our country and slaughtering innocent Iraqis, the Chavez government was growing Venezuela's economy and eliminating poverty. While the fascist thugs running Colombia were murdering trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, journalists and others, and displacing FIVE MILLION peasant farmers from their land--on our dime ($7 BILLION in military aid--for the benefit of Occidental Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, Monsanto, Chiquita, Dyncorp and Blackwater, et al, the Chavez government was growing Venezuela's economy and eliminating poverty. While the U.S., Colombia and the rightwing in Venezuela were trying to topple the Chavez government with coup plots and assassination plots and destabilization plots and media plots and election plots, the Chavez government was growing Venezuela's economy and eliminating poverty. While the U.S. was trying to topple Chavez ally Evo Morales' government in Bolivia, and succeeded in toppling Chavez ally Mel Zelaya's government in Honduras, the Chavez government was growing Venezuela's economy and eliminating poverty.

Growing Venezuela's economy and eliminating poverty is what the Chavez government does best--despite every obstacle. They are very good at it. And they will continue doing it, in spite of further U.S. and rightwing aggression and lies, and despite the Bushwhack-induced worldwide depression. The rich in Venezuela are going to have to EAT equality. They have no one of Chavez's stature to run against him, who could win in honest elections. They have no one capable of selling inequality. Here, those selling inequality rise to power via 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines. That is not possible in Venezuela. Venezuelans will NOT throw out their "New Deal" and their "FDR" if they have a choice.

Midterm, by-election losses are typical in democratic systems. Most two-term governments experience them. FDR had his ups and downs as well. This will not affect the presidential election in 2012, except perhaps to make Chavez's win bigger if the rightwing engages in the sort of obstructionism and thuggery in the legislature that we see the rightwing doing here. When it comes down to a choice between Chavez and his "New Deal" for Venezuelans and a rightwinger selling a return to inequality, robbery of the poor and toadying to our corporate rulers, Venezuelans will choose Chavez, as they have before. FDR ran for and won four terms in office, before the corpo-fascists here cut off that option and decided to dismantle the "New Deal" (which they have very nearly accomplished). That is my prediction for 2012. We are going to get a far worse government. Venezuela will be steady on.

There is gerrymandering here. There is gerrymandering there. There is gerrymandering in every democratic system, good and bad. Venezuela's--created by a bipartisan commission--is mostly an effort to balance rural and urban interests. And the rightwing did NOT win a majority of the total national vote in the by-elections. That is a rightwing "talking point" and yet another lie. Look at the final numbers! They did do better than expected but that is less of a victory than it is a return to normality. The rightwing BOYCOTTED previous elections! They had NO seats in the National Assembly, by their own stupid action. They deigned to participate this time. That does NOT mean they have momentum to unseat Chavez. Apparently, all their USAID "training" and money has helped them appear to be more civilized. This will not likely translate to ousting Chavez--and it is my prediction that it will not. I think the FDR analogy is apt. Given a choice--given honest elections--people will not throw over their "New Deal."

The by-elections had a low voter turnout, for Venezuela. The poor majority will mobilize for the presidential election. Or not. I don't have a crystal ball. I'm just trying to look at all factors and make a good guess. I'm aware that FDR's 3rd and 4th term election victories had as much to do with WW II as they did with the "New Deal." But I do see positive signs that the Venezuelan economy is turning around, despite the worldwide depression, and I just don't think the millions of families who can send their kids to college, who never could before, and small entrepreneurs who can start businesses, who never could before, and people who can buy homes, who could never get mortgages before, and people with jobs and good salaries, who never had those opportunities before, and all the people benefitting from this government that they elected and restored to power after the coup attempt--the majority--will vote to end their "New Deal," which a rightwing government coming to power would surely mean. The rightwing may lie. That is what they are good at. They may say they don't intend to dismantle Venezuela's "New Deal." I don't think Venezuelans will believe them, when it comes to voting against Chavez, whose government has been so good at ending poverty and inequality.