Very pleased to see this savaging of Hugo Chavez in the lefty New Statesman. Alice O’Keeffe comments on the aftermath of Hugo’s shutdown of the RCTV network:
RCTV has been replaced by TVes (pronounced té vès, or “you see yourself”), a government channel that has the apparently laudable aim of moving away from a western, consumerist agenda and reflecting the “real” Venezuela. But when I tuned in at prime time on a Saturday evening, it was broadcasting an hour-long programme about the armed forces, encouraging conscription to the reserves. An army general was explaining, over footage of Iraqi insurgents waving guns, that ordinary Venezuelans had to be trained in tactics of “asymmetrical resistance”.
“What the country needs now is union, complete union between the population and the armed forces,” he said. The journalist conducting the interview smiled and nodded.
Sounds like a real democratic revolution! And who’s applauding it? Some of the very people who deplore creeping fascism and servile journalism here in the States.
Since we’re on the topic of threats to journalists, and since the Chavez regime is clearly in the business of romanticizing the violence in Iraq:
This report from John Burns on the slaying of Iraqi reporter Khalid Hassan, all of 23 years old, is essential reading. Having worked last year with a burly 26-year-old Kurdish reporter and translator, I feel a certain familiarity with Khalid:
Slumped in his seat, he called his mother, then his father, at work as a school caretaker, telling them he had been shot. “I’m O.K., Mom,” he said.
An off-duty policeman in a gasoline station line told Mr. Hassan’s father what came next. A second car with gunmen, an Opel Vectra, seeing Mr. Hassan on his cellphone, pulled forward and fired two fatal shots into Mr. Hassan’s head and neck.
[…]
After his parents separated during his teenage years, Mr. Hassan supported his mother and four sisters, all under 18, by selling cosmetics door to door and, for the last four years, using a polished colloquial English learned through movies, for The New York Times.
Grieve for Khalid Hassan and his stricken family.
P.S. — from NY Times reporter Ed Wong:
“A reader mentioned contributing money to the fund for Khalid’s family. If you’re interested, please send an email to foreign@nytimes.com. Write ‘fund for Khalid Hassan’s family’ in the subject line. The foreign desk will get back to you with more information.”
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