Has Justin Delacour joined the Venezuela Information Office?
By Aleksander Boyd
Caracas 29.12.04 | Let’s see, young Delacour visited Venezuela for the first time as part of a ‘delegation of observers’ that visited the country (courtesy of the Venezuelan taxpayer) during the recall referendum. The ‘mission’ was arranged by the Venezuela Information Office (VIO). Delacour’s way of counteracting unfavourable press vis-à-vis Fidelito, er Hugo Chavez, is shown in the VIO’s website as the appropriate method to be used by innocent and callous Americans ‘worried’ about biased information with respect to Venezuela. Delacour ‘denounces’ (in a government sponsored website one must add) that US media outlets give more weight to the opinions of anti-Chavez commentators than to two philo-chavistas (Margarita Lopez Maya and Samuel Moncada). Could said US media apathy towards the chavista sycophants be the result of their connections to the regime, as is the case with Moncada, or perhaps the fact that Lopez Maya has lied through her teeth, remember the Circular 16?
Should the US media rely on the official version of things or rather report the facts? For the former please contact Delacour or Weisbrot or Wilpert or Golinger or Ramonet or Forero, etc, etc... For the latter just analyse the actions of Chavez and his thugs.
To conclude, a jewel I found today in the Washington Times, expect another barrage of ‘independent opinions’ from Fidelito’s suckers:
Fellow Georgian and former President Jimmy Carter has had a busy past few months. And I'm not even referring to his 80th birthday celebrated this past October.
His hectic run really started back in August, when the former president's international good- government group, the Carter Center, served as an election monitor in the recall referendum of Fidel Castro's good buddy and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Of course, this is the same Hugo Chavez who has weakened democracy in Venezuela to an almost non-functioning level, who verbally trashes President Bush and our nation at every opportunity, and who despicably and routinely allows his military henchmen to fire on and coldly kill Venezuelan demonstrators who oppose his dictatorial-leaning ways.
So, when the recall referendum concluded, few were surprised that the election was marked by substantial anecdotal evidence of more Chavez shenanigans and bullying at the ballot box. And not many folks were stunned that Mr. Chavez claimed victory -despite an exit poll by a well-respected American polling firm forecasting his overwhelming recall. It proved to be wildly out of step with the "official" results (off by 30-plus percentage points). But what was unforeseen and shocking was Mr. Carter's reaction to all of this.
Just one day after the Venezuelan recall referendum (which, in addition to numerous voting irregularities, saw the shooting death of one woman and injury to several others), Mr. Carter turned a blind eye to what had just transpired and endorsed the highly suspect returns. While Mr. Chavez gleefully called the tumultuous election a "democratic fiesta," Mr. Carter chimed in by proclaiming it a "heroic performance" and saying that it was now "the responsibility of all Venezuelans to accept the results and work together for the future." Hmmm ... I just wonder how that whole "working together" thing works when you're getting shot in the park or in line to vote? Who knows?
Rep. Charlie Norwood is a Republican from Georgia.
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