Has the Venezuela Information Office recruited FAIR?
By Aleksander Boyd
London 14.10.05 | An organization by the name of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) has taken issue with certain remarks about Hugo Chavez's actions in Latin America published in Walter Scott's Personality Parade. FAIR has even issued an action alert requesting whomever supports them to call or email Parade's editor. This looks terribly similar to the techniques employed by the Venezuela Information Office (VIO), mind you calling for action alerts to defend an authoritarian and militaristic coupster?
FAIR contends that Scott's take on Chavez's political tendencies and claims that he funds revolutionaries and terrorists throughout Latin America is false. To be frank I sense liberal pestilence behind such preposterous stance in view of the very notorious displays in favour of terrorism that Fidel's toyboy has made. Has anyone informed FAIR people that Chavez brought relationships to a halt with Venezuela's second commercial partner and neighbour over the capture, in Caracas, of an internationally wanted FARC narcoterrorist, known as Rodrigo Granda? Has anyone briefed them that former Ecuadoran president Lucio Gutierrez declared recently in Colombia that Hugo Chavez was behind his ousting? Have they read the latest expropriation of private property spree that neocommunist Hugo Chavez is undertaking in the country? Does FAIR think that citing Hugo Chavez or Counterpunch will lend any credibility to their appeal?
FAIR explains that the large quantities of oil that Chavez sends to his Cuban master are paid with the services of "more than 20,000 Cuban doctors" (sic). Supposing that Venezuela's benchmark of crude sells for $60/barrel the services of each of the 20.000 'doctors' costs Venezuela 150 barrels a month or $9.000. Ergo FAIR's claim "the relationship is mutually beneficial" is utter and absolute nonsense, beneficial indeed for Fidel Castro.
Something truly tragic is happening in the USA; the organizations that are meant to fend off media excesses are far worse than the entities they should watch. The action alert is nothing but sycophantic unadultered propaganda, hence my suspicion that the VIO may have 'masterminded' it.
FAIR's assessment on Chavez not being a Marxist is appropriate, he's not. Communist is a better term.
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