Friday, August 26, 2005

Hugo Chavez, Pat Robertson, and Zombies

An interesting article on Hugo Chavez, oil, and Pat Robertson. It disturbs me that Chavez buddies up to Fidel Castro, and I'd like to know more about his own human rights record (which I confess to being ill-informed on). I've been adding more salt to my consumption of anything on Znet; I've long consumed mainstream news with a fair bit of sodium, but the longer I've been reading Znet, the more I've become aware that the site definitely has strong ideological parameters on what can be said on it, and that the leftist vision, while useful, has its blind spots... Still, I've been impressed with some of what I've heard from Chavez, and only ever felt a shudder of revulsion in regard to Pat Robertson... Anyone out there with informed, interesting views on the "bad side" of Chavez is invited to post a comment. Let me know what you think will happen in the future, too -- should we expect another Allende-style coup, and the propping up of a bloody dictator? Or is America stretched too thin to manage that this time around?

I don't think I'm actually going to participate in Zombiewalk. I approve heartily, though, and wish the zombies of the city a pleasant stagger through the streets. I am sorry that, despite the title, I actually fail to make any intellectual connections between Chavez, Robertson, and zombies... I hope none of you are too disappointed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Pemmican,
stumbled on this blog after seeing one of your amazon reviews, and immediately recognised the prose style and subject matter from bigdaikon (eg CAPITALISATION of words in sentences). On BD I was posting under the name Natukashii. Anyway, good to have a place to read your take on the world, now you've left the daikon. If you want an informed anti-Chavez viewpoint, you couldn't do better than this blog listed below, which is buy an anti-Chavez activist in Venezuela. Heartily recommend looking at the archives from late 2003, when Chavez was using hired militias to attack the anti-chavez protestors, and . Also very good on Chavez erosion of freedom of speech and independent media. The entry on Chavez daily TV chatshow 'Hola Presidente' is particularly good.

http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/2003_07_20_daniel-venezuela_archive.html

AND

http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/2003_06_29_daniel-venezuela_archive.html

and

http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/2003_06_29_daniel-venezuela_archive.html

NAT

Allan MacInnis said...

Natsukashii!

Jetbert looks in, but since I know him, it's not quite the same thing; he actually was the person who encouraged me to start a blog. Anyhow, you're the first Daikoner that I know of to stumble onto the site independently. Thanks for the Chavez links -- I'm off to work soon, but I'll spend some time with them when I return. I'm less enamoured of the left than I was on Daikon -- I'm sure they'd duly sweep any of these aspects of Chavez under the carpet, in the name of supporting socialism or such -- and I write more about the Vancouver arts scene than anything global on this site... but perhaps some of the tone of what I write will be familiar, for whatever its worth.

I don't capitalise so much here, though, since italics are an option...

Hope all is well --

A.