Ellner on Today's General Strike against Chavez

["Jay Moore" <pieinsky@xxxxxxx>]

Family and Friends: Today's "general strike" whose only slogan is Chavez's
exit from power, has not been successful. Carmen, Michael (wife and son) and
I have driven around Barcelona and the outskirts of Puerto La Cruz. The
traffic everywhere is nearly normal. The vast majority of the commercial
establishments on the main drag (Avenida 5 de Julio) of Barcelona are
closed, but curiously the ones on the side streets and those of the barrio
areas are mostly open. The big industries -- oil, steel, aluminum,
electricity and the metro of Caracas -- all have normal activity from what I
can gather. Again, I must emphasize, the complete lack of objectivity of the
private media which openly and aggressively support the strike. All (with
apparently one exception) national newspapers were not published today. El
Nacional (the nation's premier newspaper) recently had to retract an
editorial that called the perhaps million or two million Chavez supporters
who marched last Sunday in support of Chavez "lumpen" who went to the march
because they were offered rum. Nevertheless, an even more insulting
editorial which came out about a month ago was not retracted. It compared
the Chavez people to the Nazis who attacked Jews in the 1930s in Germany!
The quote "You can fool some of the people...." that I ended my last email
on is equally applicable. Of course it was from Lincoln, but there is a Bob
Dylan song of the 60s that attributes it to FDR. In any case, the quote was
meant for the Venezuelan media -- at least 95% of it. Steve Ellner



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