Intellectual blind spots.
Both left and right can have blind spots when it comes to certain favoured regimes or countries. Some on the left are always willing to overlook the negatives of the regimes in Venezuela, Cuba, Gaza or even Iran, while the right does much the same when it comes to Israel or Colombia, and yes, I am generalising here. Our governments, bless them, have much the same attitudes when it comes such bastions of human rights as Saudi Arabia, which can never be sold enough weapons as long as the oil keeps flowing, and that's without bringing into the equation nations such as Pakistan, our relationship with which is a complete mess of contradictions and compromises.
This sort of thing though just makes you look like a useful idiot. Within a few pages of each other in today's Graun you have this report:
Then Seumas Milne on the "transformation of Latin America":
Yes, what could possibly have given that impression? It's the intellectual dishonesty more than anything which makes you want to scream: everyone can see that Venezuela is a vastly more equal country than it was when Chávez came to power, and the short-lived coup against him was proof if it was ever needed of what sort of opposition he has always faced; trouble is, he's since turned to using exactly the same sort of methods as they did then. He might not tick all the required boxes to truly be considered a dictator, but anyone suggesting the ban on publishing "graphic" images is anything other than censorship for a political purpose is spouting the equivalent of nonsense on stilts. You can support Chávez's aims without giving succour to his methods or even him personally, yet still so many have a fundamental problem with grasping such subtlety. Is it really so difficult?
This sort of thing though just makes you look like a useful idiot. Within a few pages of each other in today's Graun you have this report:
Venezuela has banned its press from publishing graphic images of crime and violence for one month, fuelling a row over censorship in the runup to elections.
A court yesterday imposed the "temporary" order on print media, citing a need to protect the "psychic and moral integrity of children and adolescents".
The ruling said: "For the next four weeks, no newspaper, magazine or weekly of the country can publish images that are violent, bloody, grotesque, whether about crime or not."
Then Seumas Milne on the "transformation of Latin America":
So expect a flurry of new claims that Chávez is a dictator who has stifled media freedom and persecuted bankers and businessmen, and whose incompetent regime is running into the sand. In reality the Venezuelan president has won more free elections than any other world leader, the country's media are dominated by the US-funded opposition, and his government's problems with service delivery stem more from institutional weakness than authoritarianism.
Yes, what could possibly have given that impression? It's the intellectual dishonesty more than anything which makes you want to scream: everyone can see that Venezuela is a vastly more equal country than it was when Chávez came to power, and the short-lived coup against him was proof if it was ever needed of what sort of opposition he has always faced; trouble is, he's since turned to using exactly the same sort of methods as they did then. He might not tick all the required boxes to truly be considered a dictator, but anyone suggesting the ban on publishing "graphic" images is anything other than censorship for a political purpose is spouting the equivalent of nonsense on stilts. You can support Chávez's aims without giving succour to his methods or even him personally, yet still so many have a fundamental problem with grasping such subtlety. Is it really so difficult?
Labels: foreign affairs, Grauniad, politics, Seumas Milne, Venezuela
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