Caracas Chronicles

Chavistas are still freaking out about Raúl Reyes' laptop? They must have come up with at least a dozen bogus reasons why it's totally fakety-fake now... :D

Talking with a Chavista is like talking to a Chinese man who just got off the plane in his first trip outside of China and whose understanding of the local language and culture comes exclusively form a tiny, poorly written English phrase book he bought in the Beijing airport before boarding his plane. He keeps trying to argue with you, but shows no understanding whatsoever of what you are saying or even what HE is saying, not even at the most basic grammatical level. You try using logic and reason and all he does is to repeat the same basic phrases over and over, all of which sound like they were written by a 5-year-old child, and seem to have absolutely no relation with the ongoing conversation ("Where is bathroom?" "Which way to hotel?!" "Where can sell mother-in-law to sexual slavery?!?!"), and he gets increasingly angry with you because you are not responding in the way that the little cartoon character in his phrase book says you should, so he cannot make the conversation go where he thinks it's supposed to go.

"Remember, remember the 5th of November"

Last fall I attended a faculty seminar intended to prepare participants for Žižec's upcoming visit (not quite my cup of tea, in part because I find him way too eager to play the diva-that-does-not-want-to-play-the-diva role), the group was a hodgepodge of hard core marxists, middle ground theologians, never-paid-income-tax anarchists and jesuits, all teachers in this red-state university. My guess is that another common characteristic, aside form reading the flavor-of-the-month philosopher, was that most were PSF. That aside, I made a remark about the 5th of November administration and the implied possibilities of change. I must say I have seldom sense such a collective "humph", a complete dismissal of what Obama might have meant. Yet the fact that grant monies paid for them to sit and ruminate on the coming end of Western Civilization and capitalism seemed to escape them...

My point, like the verdolaga, they are everywhere (although you can make a good salad with purslane and professors may give you hartburn).

...is the smug posturing, you know, the "well-the-deluded-masses-might-buy-this-business-about-international-terror-plots-being-'news'-but-you-and-I-both-know-that-only-a-conspiracy-could-explain-this-rash-of-news-stories" pose. It's the self-satisfied glow with which deliriously non-sensical are arguments put forward in a site that bills itself - with no hint of irony - the Axis of Logic. 
It makes my soul ache...

where did you get that picture of chris carlson, Quico?

The point is that they control the media and they don't have to come up with a good response. Thank God for the internet that gives us access to unapproved ideas.

Every time that every single Chavista outlet - including Aporrea and Venezuelaanalysis - carries the same story, it's proof positive of "an impressive and well coordinated smear campaign" BY the Venezuelan government.

AIO

Anonymous, that's the whole point -- these people live and work as part of a well organized media campaign in which "news" shows are just a slightly different format for showing the same message. While the Chomskyian analysis of advanced capitalist news is that it ends up being just as censored, it's not really the case that there are, for example, direct orders from the White House, or even from the editor in chief, about just what to cover -- "cover the Dow Jones average, skip the Palestinian peace rally" is not the content of the memos. On the other hand here there are direct orders from the information ministry to be sure to cover X, and those memos get amplified on their way down through the burocracy to the point that VTV "news" is just a half-hour exercise in condescencion and mockery.

Yep, the chavistas really must think we're all idiots and they're the only ones who have the keys to the truth. I worked for a chavista for a while, and they really live in their own little world. Thank you for your blog and keep up the struggle. Saludos desde Honduras.

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