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Amid Chaos Venezuelans Struggle To Find The Truth, Online (npr.org)
In Venezuela, where media is controlled by the government, figuring out what is truth, rumor or propaganda has always been difficult. NPR reports: In recent days it's gotten even more confusing. President Nicolas Maduro has refused to cede power to the opposition party. There have been widespread protests and looting -- and the rumor mill has been churning on social media. But many Venezuelans have found a way to use social media in their favor.
Javier Rojo owns a pharmacy in the capital city of Caracas. As the chaos started, he gave his workers the day off, went home and turned on the TV -- only to find nothing was being reported. "Independent media has been gradually attacked or shut down over time," says professor Gregory Weeks, who teaches Latin American politics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. "So that in general social media becomes the means by which you learn what's going on, on an ongoing basis."
Back at his house, Rojo says he started getting messages on WhatsApp like this one from from one of his employees: "Tanks are rolling into the park. They are launching tear gas." But then, Rojo started receiving WhatsApp messages with rumors from people he doesn't even know. One man, who says his aunt's husband is a military officer, swore that Maduro has resigned. Professor Raisa Urribarri researches technology and politics at Universidad de Los Andes in Venezuela. She says it's hard to trace the origins of some messages in Venezuelan social media. They can be from panicked citizens, the opposition or the government.
Javier Rojo owns a pharmacy in the capital city of Caracas. As the chaos started, he gave his workers the day off, went home and turned on the TV -- only to find nothing was being reported. "Independent media has been gradually attacked or shut down over time," says professor Gregory Weeks, who teaches Latin American politics at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. "So that in general social media becomes the means by which you learn what's going on, on an ongoing basis."
Back at his house, Rojo says he started getting messages on WhatsApp like this one from from one of his employees: "Tanks are rolling into the park. They are launching tear gas." But then, Rojo started receiving WhatsApp messages with rumors from people he doesn't even know. One man, who says his aunt's husband is a military officer, swore that Maduro has resigned. Professor Raisa Urribarri researches technology and politics at Universidad de Los Andes in Venezuela. She says it's hard to trace the origins of some messages in Venezuelan social media. They can be from panicked citizens, the opposition or the government.
https://twitter.com/Louis_Alld...
@Louis_Allday
This is too perfect.
Anti-Maduro Venezuelan on 19 January: "I'm living in the cutest apartment in Paris studying fashion... life is good"
24 January: "I live here [Venezuela]. I live this. live with having rationed food, toilet paper, basic human necessities."
The Internet has a protocol for this problem: Pics or it didn't happen.
Video is even better.
When you get right down to it, trust is a valuable, important thing. Civilizations that learn how to cultivate and protect it do better than those which don't. US media once knew this. Then they discovered they could lie for money, and burned all the trust they'd ever had (except among the elderly who are no longer capable of detecting that their once cherished institutions have turned into money-grubbing liars). I would have called them lying whores, but whores at least provide a useful service.
This is an opportunity for some Venezuelans to become a reporters. Real reporters. If they live through it, they could win the Pulitzer prize. Odds aren't good they'll live through it. Speaking truth to power in such places is hazardous to one's health.
If you spend your whole life blaming everyone else for your problems it becomes difficult to accurately trace cause to effect.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/0...
Conspicuous by its absence in much of the mainstream news coverage of Venezuela’s political crisis is the word “socialism.” Yes, every sensible observer agrees that Latin America’s once-richest country, sitting atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, is an economic basket case, a humanitarian disaster, and a dictatorship whose demise cannot come soon enough.
But socialist? Perish the thought.
Or so goes a line of argument that insists socialism’s good name shouldn’t be tarred by the results of experience. On Venezuela, what you’re likelier to read is that the crisis is the product of corruption, cronyism, populism, authoritarianism, resource-dependency, U.S. sanctions and trickery, even the residues of capitalism itself. Just don’t mention the S-word because, you know, it’s working really well in Denmark.
Curiously, that’s not how the Venezuelan regime’s admirers used to speak of “21st century socialism,” as it was dubbed by Hugo Chávez. The late Venezuelan president, said Britain’s Jeremy Corbyn, “showed us there is a different and a better way of doing things. It’s called socialism, it’s called social justice, and it’s something that Venezuela has made a big step toward.” Noam Chomsky was similarly enthusiastic when he praised Chávez in 2009. “What’s so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela,” the linguist said, is that “I can see how a better world is being created and can speak to the person who’s inspired it.”
The biggest "news" channel in the US is Fox "news."
How is that the democratic left? It's the propaganda arm of the Republican party.
The biggest "news" channel in the US is Fox "news."
How is that the democratic left? It's the propaganda arm of the Republican party.
These days it may be more accurate to say that the Republican Party is the political wing of Fox News.
In 2009, Noam Chompsky said " “What’s so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela,” the linguist said, is that “I can see how a better world is being created and can speak to the person who’s inspired it.”
In 2017, he says "I never described Chavez's state capitalist government as 'socialist' or even hinted at such an absurdity. It was quite remote from socialism. Private capitalism remained ... Capitalists were free to undermine the economy in all sorts of ways, like massive export of capital."
It's always "I have seen The Future, and It Works", until the megadeaths become impossible to ignore, then "Oh, no, that wasn't real socialism. We need to try real socialism. This time for sure."
That trick never works. Never.
They are trained to do this and therefore can figure things out much better than you or I can.
You've never heard the media reporting on something you have personal experience with, have you? What's remarkable is the number of people who hear and read what the media write about things they know, and know they've gotten it wrong, but then trust the media to be right about everything else. And now this message that they media knows better than we do about what is right and true.
but he is the democratically elected representative of the nation.
He is no more "democratically elected" than any other tyrant in history.
Which is why CANADA supports the fellow who actually won, and many are calling for an open and monitored election to take place...
As for "probably not a nice chap", turning the bread basket of South America into a hell-hole where there is literally nothing - not clean water, not clean food, not even toilet paper - someone who maid that happen, is the Devil incarnate. He has earned his place with the monsters of history like Stalin or Pol-Pot.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Why do you support intervention in foreign countries? How many times in the past 65 years has that actually helped?
Weren't you recently going off on slashdot about how the US has a glorious past punching Nazis in WWII? I'm pretty sure all the Nazis attacked in WWII were on foreign soil.
(Or is this another one of your positions where it's okay, but only if their politics match yours?)
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
d. The Afghan government harboring Al Quada caused the US invasion, not the other way around.
I was about to laugh in his face (i.e. opium) but you beat me to it.
The West's MO has been to keep the Middle East destabilized; you can like it, love it or hate it... but a fact's a fact.
Why would we (the US) bother? Places like Afghanistan have been a mess for as long as I can remember and beyond by their own hands, not ours. What usually happens in the middle east is the USA sits back, waiting for them to police themselves and deal with the various despots who come to power until somebody gets delusions of greatness and invades somebody else, then the UN gets upset and we wade in busting heads, restoring the peace and returning things to normal for the sake of the world's access to fossil fuels at reasonable prices.
These folks have been hammering on each other for religious differences for over two thousand years, long before the USA existed. Our involvement has generally helped the region's stability (Though I expect some groups wouldn't agree with who got left in power). But generally the USA takes a very hands off stance and attempts to set the people of the countries we liberate on a course to self determination. Take Iraq... We fought TWO major conflicts with Iraq in my life time. The first one was to toss them out of Kuwait which Sadam had decided rightfully belonged to him (Why did he do this? Because he mistakenly thought the USA didn't have the will to protect Kuwait.) The second was to root out the terror network Sadam was hosting. However, even after taking the WHOLE country, we gave it back to the people of Iraq by establishing free and fair elections, not on our terms, but the terms determined by the people of Iraq.
We certainly didn't leave things worse than we found them, even if we didn't do everything right. Generally the middle east is better off because of US intervention.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101