Re: John Dinges on Venezuela

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Dear Louis Proyect,
>
> I greatly appreciate it when someone takes to time to comment in
> detail and criticize my writing. That is the essence of learning.
> And I'm the first to admit I'm still in the learning phase with
> regard to Venezuela.

I have to admit that I am astonished you replied. Truly astonished. When I
write these letters, it is mostly for the benefit of the sans culotte types
who subscribe to the Marxism list I moderate rather than people they are
addressed to--like yourself, Mark Danner or Ian Buruma--past targets of my
Lazlo Toth wrath.

> Your opener that my writing is "half crapola" was not inviting
> however. I also didn't understand what you mean by "tendentious and
> propagandistic." I should say I used to understand such discourse,
> in my more radical days, or I thought I understood it. But it no
> longer holds any meaning content other than simply to discredit an
> argument without presenting contrary evidence.

Again, I really didn't expect you to reply. If I thought that you would
bother, I'd have used a less violent term. Like horsefeathers or poppycock.

> I take your point about context of Petkoff's comments on the
> economy. I wish I could have gone into more detail, because the
> issue of whether Chavez has a coherent economic plan is --im my
> opinion-- one of the key areas of inquiry and I don't pretend to
> have an answer.

It is not so much that you don't have an answer. It is more that the
super-rich in the USA do. They want Chavez toppled, just the way they had
Daniel Ortega toppled in the 1980s. Unfortunately, despite your best
intentions, your CJR article feeds anti-Chavez prejudices in polite
society. The people who read CJR will get the impression that Chavez is
pretty awful and that the people taking their marching orders from the US
embassy are pretty awful as well. Who can save Venezuela? The answer is
obvious. People like the good Teodoro Petkoff, democratic architect of
neoliberal suffering.

> I am influenced by my previous experience in witnessing the last
> year of Allende's "via pacifica al socialismo." Much of my writing
> has focused on the atrocities of the Pinochet government, which I
> covered for five years as resident correspondent for the Washington
> Post and other publications. (Unlike my friend Mark Cooper, who I
> first met in Chile in 1973, I stayed on after the coup. We are
> close friends, but I apparently disagree with his take on
> Venezuela. I wouldn't lump him in with Hitchens, but that is a
> longer discussion.)

Well, okay. I guess that this means that you think he can still be lumped
with Paul Berman. That's called damning with faint praise.

> I hope you'll check out my other writing: The Condor Years: How
> Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (The
> New Press 2004, and paperback just released this spring); and my
> book with Saul Landau, Assassination on Embassy Row.
>
> Thanks for your note.
>
> Best regards,
> John Dinges

Yes, I will. Michael Moffett, the husband of Ronnie Moffett, was a strong
supporter of the volunteer program in Nicaragua I was involved with in the
1980s.