Good one, Quico. No wiggle room here.
One of the things that's got me wondering (and sort of alarmed) about these high-profile PSFs is their seemingly all-encompassing willingness to innocently(?) give Chávez and his murderous cronies if not a clean bill of health then at the very least a blanket benefit of the doubt.
It´s not that the shit's just starting to hit the fan; the shit's been hitting the fan here for years, and Chávez & Co,'s fingerprints are all over both the shit and the fan. And now these worthies come forward, after years of caustic opposition-baiting and high-minded refutation of oppo claims that Chávez & Co. constitute a thugocracy, and allow that, well, all of this stuff is, er, "troubling."
Now, I've been known to fall in love with radical causes myself. That's all pretty much 30-40 years behind me, but I remember well my frequent willingness to overlook the sort of obvious, and chalk up what might have struck me as "bad news" for My Team to the insidious workings of the reactionary US propaganda machine.
But then I didn't hold myself up as a paragon of political virtue, a light in the darkness, etc etc. PLusn I didn't have a blog, or run an influential(?) NGO.
I mean, I could sort of understand it if Weisbrot and Birns and all these guys have all along known and understood (and championed, in private, the thesis) that you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs, and have been playing wink wink nudge nudge with the facts on the ground here in Venezuela. Cynical, perhaps, but smart.
If they'd just come forward now, for example, and say, "Ok guys, the game's up, 'they' may not yet have won, but we have certainly lost what matters (the moral high ground, a politically legitimate platform, the next Utopian dream, a socialist beachhead in Latin America, whatever), and we gave it our best shot, and we tried to convince you all that they were choirboys doing the Lord's work, and we failed, because they most certainly are NOT what we prortayed them to be.."...if these guys would just come clean and say that they were consciously playing down all the negatives, obfuscating and enabling a bunch of sociopaths, hell, then I'd salute them: "Comrades, you fucked up, you lost the war, better luck next time!"
But no! It seems that it's now time for a tactical retreat. Grave words, solemn doubt, "troubling" evidence. Lots of throat-clearing and sideways glances. Could it be, just possibly be, that we, the learned lefties of the first world, were led astray (ah, yes, once more) by our combination of high-minded idealism and the oh-so-human foibles of our beloved Comandante & Friends. Darn!
Well, they haven't weighed in yet, so maybe I'm jumping the gun on these guys, but I'd like to know just one thing.
Are they just players, cynical players, with a lethal axe to grind, at the expense of real people, democratic principles, and basic human rights?
Or are they just plain stupid?
Or some combination of the two. Really, I'd like to know.
Here's my question: what about the other signers?
Charles Bergquist, University of Washington, Seattle
Amy Chazkel, Queens College, City Univerity of New York
Avi Chomsky, Salem State College
Luis Duno Gottberg , Florida Atlantic University
James Early, TransAfrica Forum Board of Directors and Institute for Policy Studies Board of Directors
Samuel Farber, Brooklyn College, City University of New York
Sujatha Fernandes, Queens College, City University of New York
Lesley Gill, American University
Greg Grandin, New York University
Daniel Hellinger, Webster University
Forrest Hylton, New York University
Diane Nelson, Duke University
Jocelyn Olcott, Duke University
Diana Paton, University of Newcastle, UK
Fred Rosen, North American Congress on Latin America
T.M Scruggs, University of Iowa
Sinclair Thomson, New York University
Miguel Tinker Salas, Pomona College
John Womack, Harvard University
Mr. Thomson? Rosen, Fred Rosen, paging Fred Rosen? Madame Olcott? Señorita Fernandes? Herr Scruggs? Chazkel-san? All y'all have, shall we say, less of a public profile in championing chavismo...will we be hearing from you soon? Or are you in the pro-cover up camp?
Speak, damn you!
And here's another promising rant angle: wasn't the whole controversy over the raid that killed Reyes about a Colombian "invasion" of Ecuador? But then, didn't Chávez recognize FARC as belligerents? Say Venezuela shares a long border with FARC? Recognize FARC's international legal personality?
If FARC really is a belligerent army that controls territory, applies internal laws, etc., wasn't the El Charco massacre technically an invasion of Venezuela? And one much more serious than the Reyes incident, in that actual Venezuelan servicemen were killed?
Cooooooño que arrechera...
This sort of thing happens in wars all the time. The U.S. didn't do anything to the Iraqi's after the Stark incident - Saddam was an ally then.
And as far as lies goes, this pales in comparison to the lies about WMD that got thousands and thousands killed or the lies about the Gulf of Tonkin that got millions killed.
BTW, I am kind of surprised this guy Isaacson take these documents at face value because the Colombians wouldn't want to risk getting caught lying?!?!?!? That is just down right silly - governments get caught lying all the time. That doesn't stop anyone.
charming ow
In the last ten years or so, since Chávez came to power, I've come across a broad spectrum of radical activists with a stake in the success El Proceso.
Some, like NarcoNews' Al Giordano are just flat-out raving nut jobs, foul-mouthed, machete-wielding purveyors of the whole truth and nuthin' but the truth. It's fortunate for the rest of us that most of these types just churn away within the confines of their preach-to-the-choir bloghettoes, and nobody pays them much attention.
Then there are the charming, endearing, earnest academic types. Or the strident, self-righteous, love-the-sound-of-their-own-voice types, many also in academe. And on your list.
What confounds me are the seemingly level-headed ones, who have all the production numbers (not always the correct ones, but what the heck) of the latest Five Year Plan at their fingertips. Who compose long letters to the Editor. Who oh-so patiently attempt to dispell us of our misapprehensions about Chávez and what we think is his agenda.
Maybe it's not fair to ask if they're just stupid, or just cynical. But what's the alternative? Massively, chronically, willfully deluded? Is it that simple?
Is Larry Birns, for example, just a deluded idealist? Or is he one more angry, don't confuse-me-with-facts neo-(proto-?)Stalinist?
This matters to me, because I have some friends in that camp, and they matter to me because they're long-time friends. But they don't chair Latin American Studies departments, don't run NGOs, and don't have an international forum within which to act out their misguided anti-American liberation fantasies.
Maybe it's some deep-seated flaw (see http://www.ponerology.com/)
that's latent in the human genome.
Beats me.
Quico, what sort of coverage will this receive in the local Venezuelan media, and does any of it impact the munincipal elections in november?
I suppose it all depends on the impact of "the big picture" and other countries responses to this news... but is any of it getting to be old news for the commited chavistas? the locals in the neighborhood?
There goes OW again throwing out red herrings to divert the discussion to something else than what Quico is writing about.
Marc,
Dunno...it would take some kind of suspension of the laws of physics for chavismo to lose in Apure, probably their strongest state.
It's getting some media play, but we're at such a level of scandal fatigue that...
I wonder what happened to the families of those murdered.
I would understand they would want to get out of all this, but also that they might want to come forward and protest.
It won't be easy, with the rogues we have in the government. Otherwise, as Quico said, people in Venezuela do not seem to be shocked by absolutely anything anymore, unless it touches their inner circle. It is some kind of protection to getting crazy, but it also makes a lot of people take on the long run very stupid decisions.
I think this story with the murder of the PDVSA employees has (or should have) legs. Remember, we're not talking about the cover-up of the murder of Maritza Ron. This is the post-paro PDVSA, the post-Plaza Altamira Army. We're talking about the coverup of the murder of chavistas!
The opposition should talk about this non-stop and see where it goes. It should drive home the point that a vote for Chavez in November is a vote for the FARC, the group that murders and kills Venezuelans.
Quico,
Remember this?
http://caracaschronicles.blogspo...eve-
chavez.html
I think we should plan an updated version. New and improved!
Very good post Quico, you're just asking for some intellectual honesty from these people.
By the way, thanks for changing back your comments software to haloscan, works so much better.
Espera sentado FT...
Katy, Quico,
100 good reasons only? What about lying to BBC about crime dramatically decreasing during his presidency (they interviewed him a couple of years ago)
It would be nice to add little by little some good links to each point, in English, and then send that to some lazy journalists out there.
OW openly supports the FARC. He has posted repeatedly that he supports the Venezuelan government's funding of FARC and wishes it would do more. Just so you know...
Que liiiiiiiiiindo vale...
This argument (that a principle has been violated in fact, not that it will necessarily be declared as such) could also apply to the OAS Democratic Charter. (Props to your old employer, Veneconomia, for this idea: http://www.veneconomy.com/site/?...?ids=43&
idt=219 .)
Article 2 says of the Charter ( http://www.oas.org/OASpage/eng/
D...tic_Charter.htm )says "The effective exercise of representative democracy is the basis for the rule of law and of the constitutional regimes of the member states of the Organization of American States." If Chavez is actively supporting the FARC, whose goal is the unconstitutional overthrow of the Colombian govt, then he has completely denied that assertion.
Yippeee!
The OAS to the rescue. Just in time.
I feel better already.
Well, what is king of interesting are the double standards of Chávez:
(i) a neighbouring country has a frontier incident with a neighbour of that country and Chávez is outraged and even threatens to go to war because of it; furthermore, he affirmed that anybody violating VZ's territory in the same manner would face war.
(ii) a neighbouring country had a frontier incident with VZ in Apure where several of its citizens were killed (innocents, not guerrilleros); here, he decides to sweep it under the carpet, doing nothing.
Quite telling indeed.
Folks,
Remember not to feed the trolls.
Ow, it is very unfair of you to compare FARC to Saddam Hussein. The FARC may be a bunch of drug-dealing thugs, but they haven't gassed anyone, as far as I know.
Still, as you point out, it is nice to see Chavez living up to the high standards set by the US government during the Iran-Iraq war. Way to go!
Bruno,
LOL...ha valido la pena hacer esta revolución!
At the risk of pointlessly granting credence to ow's outrageous smoke-screen of a comment, I'll add that the El Charco massacre was unlike the USS Stark incident in every relevant way:
1-Ronald Reagan did not personally conspire with the Iraqis to blame Iran
2-The incident did not take place inside US territory
Covering up the El Charco massacre was, por dios, illegal. I L L E G A L. How hard is that to grasp?
The question here is very simple: should Venezuelan law apply to all Venezuelans, or only to Venezuelans not named Hugo Rafael?
Still and all, Bruno's comment adds all that needed adding...
chicanery
thank you sir...fixed...
It does not matter whether there was a crime X or Z outside Venezuela or not. A crime is a crime and there is no discussion.
Whatever the US government might have done there: it does not have any bloody thing to do with the covering up of the Venezuelan government.
What kind of crooks can justify a crime because his enemy is committing the same or other crimes in another part of the world?
"What kind of crooks can justify a crime because his enemy is committing the same or other crimes in another part of the world?"
paid shills or "true believers".
http://www.skepdic.com/truebeliever.html
Take your pick. It's a "either or" thing if you ask me.
Quico, did you say that Weisbrot and Birns are on the Venezuelan government payroll or did I miss it?
Quico,
Regarding the list of U.S. academics. I know Diane Nelson of Duke University. Her field of specialty is Guatemala and its long civil war. She has only recently (within the last 5 years or less) become interested in Venezuela (for obvious reasons). She's a serious scholar who knows Guatemala very well but Venezuela much less.
My impression of her regarding Venezuela is that she knows very little about the country, its history, and the convoluted telenovela that is Venezuelan politics. What little she knows about Venezuela is probably from sources like Venezuelanalysis, maybe even one of those revolutionary tours Venezuela now offers for U.S. radicals with money to spend.
GP,
Yeah, but what does she know about forensic computer science? What does she know about the inner workings of Interpol? Because that's what this is about...
Mark my words, guys, nothing, absolutely nothing, will "reventar" in Venezuela because of the Charca incident. People here are Novocained beyond reality.
Katy,
It really is an odd list of academics because, as you point out, many of them don't work in forensic computer science. One wonders how some of them could be so gullible or misinformed.
Well, I dunno, if you read the letter closely its main point is that EVEN IF Interpol says the computers are real, the files still don't show what the Colombians say they show.
One could expect good politicians or real scholars to do a decent homework of informing themselves well before supporting any strong political statement. They didn't. I would perhaps be more patient with a scientist from another field, but someone from the social area?
They are twice guilty.
As Katy says, they know nothing of computer forensics and they know they don't.
Then: if they READ (which they should if they are in such a field as politics) some about the situation in Venezuela, they should do that from different sources and that should have lead them to the conclusion that they have to be extremely careful with this one.
They might not be experts on every region but it is their ethical responsibility to do some minimum research on the forces at play here and the antecedents to this thing.
They might have signed to this letter on a Saturday party under the influence of alcohol, but then they are just a bunch of wallies anyway.
Many intellectuals in the social sciences believe that reality is constructed (not our understanding, but reality itself), so there is nothing to check. What would you check your understanding against? You just make it up. If you add to that the incredible low standards of a lot of social science (as shown by Alan Sokal's publication of a junk paper in a prime social science journal), then it is not surprising that these people believe what they believe. It make perfect sense.
Kepler,
Pardon my ignorance, but what's a wallie? Cool term, I might start using it once I know what it means.
A wally (plural "wallies") is a term for "idiot" in British English.
I have a question as well I did not dare to ask before: what does that acronym for lefties supporting Chavez stand for?
Pendejos sin frontera.
That explains why I did not find it in either Webster's or Oxford.
True, but "pendejos" implies that they're gullible, sort of unwitting fools who let other people talk them into believing one thing or another.
I kind of like Pajuos Sin Frontera myself.
"... and their motley crew of groovy ñángara academics"
Bhahahaha very "ñángaros" indeed. Hahahah
Carol,
Mark my words, guys, nothing, absolutely nothing, will "reventar" in Venezuela because of the Charca incident. People here are Novocained beyond reality.
Very good point, indeed.
I have been away of Venezuelan news lately. How is the moronic political opposition reacting to Chavez kissy-kissy politics with the FARC?
Are they calling Chavez to resign yet or what are they waiting?
Y Justin no sale en la listica?
Kepler, you made me laugh...
I call them 'Pánfilos Sans Frontiers'.
I think it was Teodoro Petkoff who coined the term...
And Alitas dear, Justin should definetely be on the list!! faltaba mas!
Liz, Feathers,
Ustedes definitivamente no escucharon a su abuelita. La mía por lo menos decía que no había que hablar del demon... porque se aparecía.
Hahahah Katy
The good thing is that the propaganda joint will no longer operate in City Hall. I'll make sure Boris knows which members of staff were working in it.
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