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Chavez has gone and spoiled it all. He only went and lost the constitutional referendum. Not only that, but he has had the impudence to graciously concede defeat! Dziennik quotes him as saying “We respect the rules of the game. Venezuela is not a dictatorship.” Further, he called on his supporters not to cause disturbances and congratulated his opponents.

However, all is not lost. Dziennik reports that Chavez said “For the time being we have not succeeded.” Sinister, eh? The newspaper calls in some commentators: “According to many observers, he [Chavez] has not given up the fight.” Alas, these many observers remain unnamed. Modesty? Censorship? The newspaper adds that “as of yet” it is not known how Chavez will fight to ensure his socialist revolution does not end with his term of office. It’s all very ominous, isn’t it? Perhaps he will “fight” to keep the revolution alive by eradicating poverty or redistributing wealth. It gets worse (and by “worse” I mean “better”): Chavez has “unambiguously suggested” that life has taught him to forge from failure victory.

Just as it has the framers of the “new” EU constitution.

Dziennik has the decency to twice mention that they mislead the public by reporting Chavez’s victory yesterday. There is no apology, though.

An alternative take on the referendum.

I’ll never tire of this one. Here’s Gazeta Wyborcza’s page one headline from 10-11th of November:
“Hugo Chavez brata się z Kolumbijskimi terrorystami”
“Hugo Chavez fraternises with Columbian Terrorists”
Turning to the story within it emerges that Chavez is mediating between FARC and the Columbian government in the matter of prisoner exchange. Mediating, fraternising - what’s the difference?

South America, of course. Here is the first sentence of a news (not comment) article reporting Daniel Ortega’s victory in Nicaragua’s presidential elections: “The former revolutionary and friend of communist dictator Fidel Castro and Venezuelan populist Hugo Chavez won Sunday’s presidential elections.” As I mentioned before, no such discussion of politics in this newspaper can be complete without the demonising of Castro. The article is so hilariously prejudiced it is worth quoting at some length:

Yesterday in Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in Latin America, the worst nightmare of those who dream of the defeat of populists came true… The elections were won by a man who is the personification of demagoguery, opportunism and pandering to anything that might yield votes and popularity.

Yes, the parallells with Poland are striking, though unmentioned.

The article (signed by “MAS”) describes the Sandanistas’ contributions to Nicaragua after their overthrow of Somoza in 1979: universal education and social care and the nationalisation and dividing up of private fortunes. Pretty awful, eh? Damned populists. The Sandinistas in some mysterious, unexplained way “?ci?gn?li” (brought upon themselves) the hostility of the USA who armed terrorists to fight in a “civil war.” Ortega, we are told, was president from 1984 to 1990, after which the country turned to the right and became plunged in corruption. Sandanistas (who were out of power, remember) were, it says here, enthusiastic participants in the sleaze.

See here for some explanation of just why Nicaragua is so poor.

Also in today’s GW is an article about the US vice-ambassador’s outrageous interference in national Polish politics. Giertych (minister of education) had the temerity to propose a debate on the civilian casualties in Iraq. This caused unease in Washington and, the American said, if it had happened in France or Germany the minister would have been sacked.

Conspicuous by its absence from the newspaper’s report on Ortega’s victory is mention of the following:

In Managua, U.S. Embassy spokesperson Kristin Stewart threatened economic sanctions in the event of an Ortega victory. She was joined by four Republican congressmen threatening Nicaraguan voters with a cut off of remittances from the United States. Rep. Tancredo, (R-CO) issued his threat in a letter to Nicaragua’s Ambassador to the U.S. while Rep. Rohrabacher, (R-CA) wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff asking him “to prepare in accordance with U.S. law, contingency plans to block any further money remittances from being sent to Nicaragua in the event that the FSLN enters government.” Rep. Royce, (R-CA) and Rep. Hoekstra (R-MI) wrote a similar letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The BBC also mentions the US threats to the people of Nicaragua.

“The jury is out on Chavez” announces the headline of Denis MacShane’s article on Venezuela in the Guardian. If only it were. Any reporter I read seems to have his mind made up to give Chavez a fair trial before execution in the court of public opinion.

Today’s Gazeta Wyborcza contains an article on Chavez and Morales which is too outrageously partisan to pass up even though I’ve mentioned the subject before. It’s by Maciej Stasiński, which I suspect might be the name of a computer program which shuffles and deals out US-approved cliches about “populism,” “demagoguery” or “the free market.” Here are the first few sentences of what is ostensibly a news report (i.e. not an opinion piece or an editorial) about the Vienna summit:

The summit of 58 presidents and premiers was to open the road to dialogue. And maybe it would have worked, had it not been for the two greatest populists in Latin America: the Venezuelan Hugo Chavez and the Bolivian Evo Morales. The oil and gas wealth which the two control has turned their heads and prompted them to a demagogic and nationalist crusade against the free market [my italics]

Any political commissar could be proud of that. It’s a wonder Stasiński didn’t brand them “lap dogs” or “fellow travellers”… The rest is too awful to read but dipping in more or less at random I came up with this pearl:

Morales did not spare Spain’s socialist prime minister Jose Luis Zapatero either, even though he [Zapatero] supports him. He upbraided Zapatero for Spain’s failure to meet its promise to cancel Bolivian debt and double economic aid.

So you see, Morales is a miserable ingrate for daring to criticise a supporter. As for the substantive issue — has Spain really reneged on promises made to Bolivia — of that Stasinski has not a word to say. Nor does he explain what he means by “free trade” but we can be almost certain that “trade” would be a more accurate description of what is on offer, since inevitably any deal on the table will include patent protection laws.

On the facing page of the paper is an article and two interviews about France. You may have heard of France: its productivity is greater than that of the US and yet they have a 35 hour week. The article headline is: “Is France a ’sick man’?” Of course it is: just look at the first questions in the two interviews carried out by Konrad Niklewicz:
“Can France be reformed at all at all?” [Okay - I put in the second "at all" myself]
“France and Holland are two founder members of the EU. Holland is reforming and liberalising all the time, while France has ossified in its shell. Why?”
Clearly there is no agenda here. These questions are wide open and could invite any kind of answer — especially when, like Niklewicz, you put them to two Christian Democrat Euro-politicians.

Media Lens has a good article about Chavez coverage in Britain. Meanwhile in Poland Rzeczpospolita makes a much better attempt than Gazeta Wyborcza to disguise its disdain for Chavez in today’s paper.

Chavez is an object lesson in the way the mainstream media works. Consider this article in the Sunday Times by Sarah Baxter. Firstly, there’s the title, with its reference to Evelyn Waugh’s Black Mischief: “Mischief stirs for Bush in the ‘axis of good’.” Perhaps if Baxter knew more about Waugh than the titles of his books she would have remembered he saved his greatest scorn for foreign correspondents.

Secondly, there is the dateline: Washington, not Venezuela. This is very much a US-centric article. Baxter has perfectly internalised Washington’s viewpoint, writing: “Latin America is breaking out of its northern neighbour’s back yard.” The keen literary critic might find some ironic free indirect discourse there. I think it is more likely that Baxter really does think that South America is the US’s property. And while we’re getting up close to the written style of the US State Depar— sorry, of Sarah Baxter, how about this one:

Although it remains a distant threat, the Pentagon and the CIA did not see off the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 only to allow a fresh alliance of potentially nuclear-armed America-haters to form as close as 90 miles from the coast of Florida.

Now, pay attention please. To what does “it” at the start of the sentence refer to? The Pentagon? Well, grammatically yes (though it should be “they” since it’s the Pentagon and the CIA), but presumably the US State De– sorry Sarah Baxter — had in mind the Soviet Union — an extremely distant threat indeed, since it does not exist any more. Anyone who can tell me to what the word “it” refers to please use the comments button.

I could go on — the childish taunts about president Evo Morales’s jumpers, name-calling (Chavez is an “oil-rich joker”) and guilt by association (Iran, Hamas, Castro) — but the ambassador of Venezuela, Alfredo Toro Hardy, wrote the following letter to the Sunday Times. Please note, though, Baxter’s article appears under the heading of “politics”; Hardy’s under that of “opinion”.

In her article “Mischief stirs for Bush in the ‘axis of good’” (World News, last week), Sarah Baxter presents a one-sided perspective. Nothing is said about Washington�s active support and connivance with Venezuela’s opposition, the coup d�etat against President Chavez, the oil strike that cost the country more than $10 billion or his seven visits to the US while Bill Clinton was president, during a period when constructive bilateral relations prevailed.

It was with President Bush’s neocons and Cuban exiles in Washington that harassment of the Venezuelan government and bilateral tensions began, and it was Donald Rumsfeld who initially compared Chavez to Hitler. The article does mention, though, an alleged anti-semitism from Chavez, based on a phrase that was put out of context. This anti-semitism was emphatically denied by the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela.

Somewhere there must be a web site dedicated to western reporting of Chavez.

Saturday’s Gazeta Wyborcza carries a report by Maciej Stasinski about Teodoro Petkoff, the 74-year-old challenger to Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. This newspaper, please note, is regarded with deep suspicion for its left-wing and liberal sympathies by the right wing political establishment in Poland. On a couple of things, though, this newspaper, the American media and the most ardent right wingers can comfortably agree. One is Chavez, who can win elections from now until kingdom come but never, ever, be regarded with the same sympathy as George W Bush, who as we all know, won one presidential election and will never win another. There is some entertainment value in watching journalists struggle to fit Chavez’s achievements, his huge popular appeal, his charity to America’s poor and his democratic credentials into the pigeonhole marked “renegade dictator” along with Castro, Hussein and Milosevic…

Stasinski describes Chavez in the first sentence of the article as an “extreme populist.” Now perhaps the Polish language works differently, but can you be an “extreme” populist? Does it mean Chavez strongly (extremely?) cherishes the beliefs that have made him popular? That he has principles, in other words? Here’s another free press gem: “The president of Venezuela, like his master, Fidel Castro, is capable of harassing the public for hours with relentless attacks on alleged enemies of the country: neoliberalism, capitalism, the oligarchy, or ‘the dangerous Mr. Bush’.” I did not live under the horrors of a communist dictatorship but I doubt that “lengthy speeches” would top most Poles’ lists of the ills of totalitarianism.

It is wonderful to see how scrupulously Stasinski uses the word “allegedly” (not e.g. Poland’s “allegedly” humanitarian occupation of Iraq). The oligarchy is an “alleged” enemy. In fact there is abundant proof that they are real, not alleged, enemies of the country: the oligarchy led a coup to overthrow a popular and democratically elected leader, aided and abetted by another non-alleged enemy of Venezuela, George W Bush.

No Polish discussion of left and right wing international politics can be complete without mention of the US sponsored, right wing death squads in Latin Am— sorry, of Castro, Chavez’s “master.” Kaczyński, president of Poland, also has a master. His name is George W Bush and Poland is at war with a small and far away country called Iraq because of this master-servant relationship.

Stasinski does not entirely gloss over the 2002 Venezuelan coup. Although he writes not a word about who organised, carried out or backed the coup, he does briefly refer to Chavez being returned to power after it by a “miracle.” Not by the will of the people, understand, but by a miracle. Perhaps God is on Chavez’s side.

The BBC on the by no means perfect Chavez.