Academics and diplomats contest the Washington Post's propaganda on Venezuela
Thursday, October 2, 2014 (All day)
Academics and diplomats contest the Washington Post's propaganda on Venezuela
The Washington Post editorial, "Venezuela doesn't deserve a seat on the UN Security Council," combines ad hominem attack with misinformed smears. The Post's views appear to have been formed by uncritically accepting all of the propaganda offered up by the right-wing opposition press in Venezuela.
It should be beneath the Post to denigrate the recently elected Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro, as an "economically illiterate former bus driver." Despite his lack of training in economics, Maduro is right that Venezuela is facing what amounts to internal economic warfare, with business hoarding, currency fraud, and contraband trading.
The economic policies of Maduro, and those of former President Hugo Chávez, have certainly been experimental, even trial and error, but these policies have also reduced poverty by half and expanded access to the social goods long denied to millions of ordinary Venezuelans. These are real gains in terms of human development that are all too easily dismissed by the Post.
The Post might have mentioned that some of the "economic pragmatists" it champions are precisely those whose ideologically driven bad advice sent the global economy in its recent free fall. Deregulation of the financial sector was an epical disaster, in the United States, in Latin America, and around the world, yet orthodox economic advisors continue to call for free market solutions to any and all economic problems. This is really bad advice, and people around Latin America realize it: three-quarters of the region is governed by left-wing governments, which appropriately see a larger role for the state in guiding their economic fortunes.
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