Showing posts with label Hugo Chavez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hugo Chavez. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Palast & Pilger on Neocolonialism & Democracy

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This week in New World Notes, radio program #71, July 7 & 10:


Axis of evil or champion neocolonialism-busters? (L to R:) Hugo
Chavez (Venezuela), Fidel Castro (Cuba), Evo Morales (Bolivia).
All other photos: Click to enlarge.

Palast & Pilger on
Neocolonialism & Democracy

Or: Andes, Schmandes, Let's Have Some in Muncie, Indiandes!

Two dispatches from South America show progress from (1) colonialism to (2) neocolonialism to (3) neocolonialism disguised as democracy to (4) democracy. Greg Palast reports from Ecuador (Stage 3), ruthlessly exploited by & practically a colony of the World Bank and global financial institutions. John Pilger reports from Bolivia, which has recently and tentatively arrived at Stage 4. The US should be so fortunate!

Top: American writer & BBC reporter Greg Palast.
Bottom: Australian filmmaker, essayist, & correspondent John Pilger.

Credit where due:

We play selections (on Bolivia) from John Pilger's film, War on Democracy, adapted to radio by Lyn Gerry for the Unwelcome Guests Collective (www.unwelcomeguests.org). Many thanks thereunto. KD reads passages on Ecuador from Greg Palast's recent book, Armed Madhouse.

New World Notes is produced by Kenneth Dowst for WWUH-FM, "Public Alternative Radio," at The University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail dot com.

Songs--

  • Chumbawamba, "The Bad Squire"
  • Sam Cooke, "A Change Is Gonna Come" (Pilger film theme-song)

Coming soon (dates of WWUH Tuesday broadcast shown):

  • July 14--Are Our Schools Bad on Purpose? (John Taylor Gatto, Part 1)
  • July 21--The Art of the Rant, Part 1

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):


Dr. Seuss (Theodore Seuss Geisel), 1904-1991

The Art of Poetry--Lessons 1 & 1.5:

Happy birthday to me!
I'm 59, not 43.
I look like a mon-key,
And I don't watch TV!

[Segue:]

God . . . bless Vi-ag-ar-a!
Pill . . . that is good!
Stand beside it . . . and guide it . . .
[insert some words here] . . . whole neighborhood!
From [more words needed]
To . . . "
To Norwegians, white as foam!
God bless Vi-ag-ar-a!
Where-e're you roam!
God bless Vi-ag-ar-a!
[Last line needed. Suggestions?]

Astrodome? weighty tome? ev'ry home? Kookie, lend me your comb?, fertile loam?, genome? metronome? to frosty Nome? this here poem? old-age home? when in Rome? microtome? from her womb [sight-rhyme]? rhizome? Hillary, then you too would moan?

. . . Blue-dress Spot:
It may never come out, Monica, it may not! (???)

Aw, the hell with it--and apologies to Connecticut's own T.S. Geisel ("Dr. Seuss")--one of the few people I've heard of who died after having made the world a better place--along with another former neighbor of mine, the Rev. Fred Rogers, of Pittsburgh--whom I never had the courtesy to thank. And yes, I am a little old to be having another Midlife Crisis, but my first one didn't go well!

Happy Independence Day!

Ken


"Fredosaurus Rex", on the grounds of public TV station
WQED, in Pittsburgh, honors Fred Rogers.


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Saturday, March 21, 2009

John Pilger on Venezuela




New World Notes News
Volume 2, Number 12 -- March 24, 2009


This week in New World Notes, #55 -- March 24 & 27:

John Pilger on Venezuela

Last week's newsletter/blog extravaganza took 'way too much time, so this week (God willing) we shall be brief. If you haven't yet seen last week's opus--a quirky though still scary collection of five dozen photos exploring some parallels between the Warsaw Ghetto of 1940-43 and Gaza and the West Bank today--you can page downwards a couple of entries or else take this link: http://newworldnotes.blogspot.com/2009/03/peace-propaganda-promised-land-part-3_10.html .

This week's installment of New World Notes is taken from lefty Aussie filmmaker John Pilger's super documentary, The War on Democracy. It's the film's 20-minute segment on Venezuela, nicely adapted to radio by the Unwelcome Guests Collective.

Filmmaker John Pilger


It's a fascinating narrative of an idealistic reformer taking on Established Power, becoming beloved by the common people, hated by the rich oligarchs, overthrown in a (it goes without saying) CIA-sponsored coup, and restored to power soon afterwards by popular demand. This is quite a story! and the climactic scene of Chavez's return is stunning. It recalls the climax of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Al Gore won the popular vote in Florida in the year 2000--hence the electoral vote in the United States. The establishment press and TV networks acknowledged same (very quietly) weeks later. They had joined together and hired the respected Roper Organization to examine all the Florida ballots cast in the election. Roper concluded that--no matter what sane principles of counting one employed--Gore received more votes than Bush.

The U.S. Supreme Court had ordered the recount of the Florida ballots stopped when it became clear that Gore would win if the recount continued. According to the court's unsigned decision, the civil rights of one G.W. Bush would be irreparably harmed if the recount proceeded according to Florida law.

Overdosed on lies and BS by the mass media, Americans sat on their sofas, refused to see a coup d'etat when it was unfolding in front of them, and on cue cried out, "Why won't Gore accept defeat?!"

In a similar situation, the people of Venezuela, unarmed, took to the streets, stormed the President's mansion, persuaded the enlisted soldiers guarding it to fight against the coup, and restored the deposed Chavez to office in short order.

Democracy, anyone?


Hugo Chavez


Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern) . . .




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