Charlie Hardy exposes the AP

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Charles Hardy, a.k.a. the Cowboy in Caracas–really ought to blog more often. His entries on Venezuelanalysis are always excellent, but far too sporadic for my liking. In his latest one, he takes on a “news” agency which seems to be locked in a death-race to the bottom with FUX Snooze:

In an Associated Press article with the byline of Christopher Toothaker published on the Internet on August 9, mention was made of Colombia’s accusation and that Sweden confirmed the sale of the weapons to Venezuela (which happened in the late 80s). It also said that, “Chávez denies aiding the FARC.” But the article did not say anything about the weapons being among those taken in 1995.

So I called Mr. Toothaker to ask why he omitted that. He replied that he didn’t “believe” that they were the weapons that were stolen. He added that Chávez said the weapons involved were taken by the ELN, (the National Liberation Army in Colombia). That was pretty much all of our conversation.

Afterwards I was thinking that maybe the weapons that the Colombia government retrieved were taken from the ELN and not the FARC. It is difficult for me to trust anything coming from the Colombian government. I thought about calling Mr. Toothaker again to ask about that possibility, but decided not to do so. I felt I would just receive another of his beliefs.

Now, Mr. Hardy knows a thing or two about beliefs; he’s a devout Catholic, a former priest, who has worked in the slums of Caracas as a Maryknoll missionary for a number of years. This would explain why he is far too polite to say the word bullshit about anything the infamous Christopher Toothaker writes. But you can definitely hear him thinking it, particularly here:

It ought to be noted that the Associated Press in Venezuela has its offices in the building that is home to El Universal, one of the major opposition newspapers. Having offices there is like trying to grow beautiful smelling roses in a hotbed of onions. Not exactly the best place for a news service that is should be presenting balanced reporting.

“A hotbed of onions”? Well, at least onions are good for something. (Companion-planting gardeners, BTW, swear by garlic–another member of the allium family–as a companion to roses.) I respectfully suggest he may have been thinking of raw, uncomposted sewage.

But El Universal is actually more like a hotbed of radioactive waste. You can’t smell it, and unless you come equipped with a Geiger counter calibrated to bullshit, you come away burned–and contaminated–from just being in the same building. Which is a damned strange place for the AP to be, when you think about it. And which would also explain why so many AP “reporters” are merely stenographers, repeating in English whatever the highly-biased El Luniversal says in Spanish. They probably sit in on the same editorial bull sessions. It must save the AP a whackload of dinero; also saves its lazy journos having to actually go out there and report on something.

Anyhow, long story made short: Something is definitely sniffy when the AP’s offices are in the same building with those of the most rabidly right-wing paper in the nation. Finally, someone exposed this very salient fact about the Dissociated Press. Now, let’s see if anyone else does anything about it.

Good job, Charlie–keep it up!

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2 Responses to Charlie Hardy exposes the AP

  1. BillORightsMan says:

    WHOA! This just in (snagged from the Sam Seder Board by ghettodefender)
    US State Department Bankrolls Young Venezuelans to Slander against Chávez in the USA from “Postcards from the Revolution”

    US State Department Bankrolls Young Venezuelans to Slander against Chávez in the USA
    By Eva Golinger. Translated from Spanish into English for Axis of Logic by Iris Buehler and revised by Les Blough
    Axis of Logic (English); Rebelión (Spanish)
    Thursday, Sep 10, 2009
    —In the midst of an international campaign launched against President Chávez, carried out by the extreme Right from Colombia and supported by Washington, the US State Department has organized and financed the trip of eight young Venezuelan politicians to the USA in order to denounce the Venezuelan government and to strengthen the links between young US Republicans and the Venezuelan Right. The eight young Venezuelan men and women have been selected by the US State Department as part of the program “Democracy for young political leaders”. It is a project of the interchange program “International Visitor Leaders – Venezuela”, which is being used by the Washington administration to recruit and train political actors who would later on promote the North American agenda in Venezuela.

    YOIKES!
    Figures tho, doesn’t it?
    Note the neo-liberal capitalist-imperialist key-word “North American Agenda”
    Nothing fishy here!
    Change we can believe in! Yeah, right.
    imbillorightsmanandiapprovethismessage

  2. Heh…not a bit surprised there. JAVU (United Activist Youth of Venezuela, in English) is the latest group to surface, and whaddya know–they have the exact same fisty logo as OTPOR, another CIA front, from the former Yugoslavia. Their homepage, now scrubbed (but hey, the Google Cache is our friend!) shows that they also got money from USAID. They’re also vicious thuggies–I’ve been seeing them all week on La Hojilla, masked and gloved and throwing things, when they’re not insulting the journos from VTV and AvilaTV.
    This is the “peaceful resistance” that the US media want us to believe in? Meh.

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