And so a Venezuelanalysis' spinmeister does Open Democracy
By Aleksander Boyd
London 04.08.05 | "Free thinking for the world". That's the wonderful motto that adorns the logo of Open Democracy, a website that purports to promote debate on relevant democratic issues. And to advance debate on democratic issues the said website published today an interview, conducted by Jonah Gindin, to William I Robinson (who?) entitled "The United States, Venezuela and "democracy promotion". Quite clearly they have smarten up about keyword utilization to appear prominently in news indexes. Open Democracy's 'author' is presented to the site's readership thusly "Jonah Gindin is a Canadian journalist living and working in Caracas, Venezuela. He writes regularly for www.venezuelanalysis.com, and occasionally for ZNet, NACLA Report on the Americas, Monthly Review, and other print and on-line publications". It is very telling that the great majority of chavista advocates aren't Venezuelan citizens, isn't it? Would Open Democracy care to inform its readership the source of Gindin's monthly paycheck?
Gindin -debe ser que vive guindao'- together with Wilpert, the new recruit Dutchman Jeroen Kuiper and some other twenty something pundits are in charge of crafting the image of Chavez that anglophones are to be fed. Open Democracy has come to join the list of EU clueless sites, lead by the BBC, that entertain the romantic idea that Castro's bitch, a.k.a. the President of the 'Bolivarian' Republic of Venezuela Hugo Chavez, is doing someting good for our country. They claim that illiteracy has been eliminated -Venezuela had one of the highest literacy rates of the region well before this regime-, they affirm that now the oil belongs to the people owing to Chavez's nationalization of the industry -never mind historical facts pointing to the contrary-, they would have you believe that health and education are now free and available to all thanks to the failed coupster -constitution of 1961 notwithstanding- in sum Venezuela is just disenfranchised paradise. Do I hear the last call of QE2 leaving for Caracas with a cargo of English Marielitos?
No wonder why a very English lady said to me today "so you're Venezuelan; do you like Chavez? Because I love him!" I said to her that I didn't like him one bit and when asked why I said "for the same reason Zimbabweans don't like Mugabe". I reckon the lady must be one assiduous reader of the Guardian, BBC or perhaps Open Democracy. Pitty the apologists don't prepare their lot to reply coherently to such parallelisms.
I wish I was Gindin and I had a sugar daddy as rich as Chavez so that I could go around Venezuela and the surrounding region interviewing people, just as Kuiper seems to be doing, with the sole purpose of recording the experiences of real people telling the real story. Do you reckon Open Democracy would publish my work?
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