Sunday, August 20, 2006

Warmed Over Chile - 1973 Style

Listen to Julie McCarthy's piece on Venezuela at your peril. It is a completely lopsided, ahistorical look at Venezuela's military build-up. This report might well have been written in the offices of the US State Department or Pentagon. It presents Chavez as a dictator in the making filled with paranoid delusions that the US wants to attack or overthrow him militarily. NPR conveniently fails to mention that the last coup against Chavez had US fingerprints all over it!

I listened to this sad bit of propaganda and thought if it were the Spring of 1973, I'd be hearing NPR warn us about the threatening government of Salvador Allende and his paranoia of the US and CIA. They'd be contrasting his dictatorial style with the US friendly military juntas in Brazil and Nicaragua--but NPR didn't exist in 1973 and so now they are making up for a lost opportunity by doing the journalistic "dirty work" on Venezuela.

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