News of the Restless

Look what happens when you take a deliberate misinterpretation of a local event seriously. You get poopy-doo everywhere!

Guido David Núñez-Mujica tells Boing Boing,

On Saturday, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez decreed that February the 2nd, the anniversary of his ascent to presidency, would be a national holiday.

The government said that it would enforce the holiday and close and fine any open store. They are doing that and officers from the equivalent of the IRS, the SENIAT, are closing many stores that opened today. The country is paralyzed, no children at school, no classes at the universities, just because the selfish desires of a tyrant who said two days ago that he intends to be in power until 2049 and that there would be war if the opposition wins.

[…]

The situation here is getting worse every day. Chavez issues crazy order after crazy order and nothing is done. People are tired of this, but they are also afraid to protest.

On Saturday, a synagogue was attacked in Caracas, something that never had happened before in Venezuela. On my way to the university I see walls painted with “killer jews” slogans and “Throw them out”. I am sick of this, and I am even sicker that many of my fellow liberals think that this crap is the answer to our problems.

Yo, BoingBoingers? Please note that the guy who sent you this is in favor of globalization (says so right at the head of his blog, helpfully enough.) Considering what globalization did to Venezuela, I have to wonder just where this boy keeps his head. Perhaps it’s in some weird orifice not yet known to humanity in general. As luck would have it, he’s also into “transhumanism”–that philosophy that holds that we’d all be better humans if we were genetically modified with genes from other species. (AHA! That explains the Venezuelan oppos–they’ve all been “improved” with recombinant genes from rats and roaches!)

He also characterizes patriotism as “silly, irrational, evil and dangerous”–which is a pretty silly, irrational, evil and dangerous generalization. And oh yeah, he reprinted that “bomb in a turban” toon–another odious generalization comin’ right atcha. Apparently his (trans)humanistic views only go so far, and they don’t extend to Muslims. Isn’t he charming?

Now, for the real news. Apparently our charming, transhumanized oppo hasn’t seen fit to explain the situation very well. This is what actually happened on the 2nd:

On Monday, Venezuelans celebrated the tenth anniversary of the inauguration of President Hugo Chávez to his first presidential term. Many Venezuelans consider this day to mark the commencement of the “Bolivarian Revolution,” which has brought a new progressive constitution, sustained economic growth, and unprecedented expansion of health care and other social services to this OPEC nation.

Over the past ten years, “Venezuela went from being a disabled nation that was in the dirt, muzzled, and dominated, to being a country in the vanguard of the world,” Chávez declared during an event in which each government ministry displayed its decade of achievements on Sunday.

According to the Education Ministry, enrollment in pre-schools has increased from 40.3% to 60%, and in elementary schools from 78% to 93% for males and from 85% to 98% for females over the past ten years. High school graduation rates have increased from 47% to 66%, and university enrollment has increased from 676,515 students to 1.8 million students.

Also, through the educational program called Mission Robinson, more than a million Venezuelans were taught to read, bringing the illiteracy rate down to less than one percent. Last year, the United Nations Science, Education, and Culture Organization (UNESCO) announced that Venezuela is on track to achieve the Millenium Development Goals by 2015.

In health care, the government’s unprecedented expansion of a public system of free clinics in local communities has made primary care accessible to nearly all Venezuelans, compared to a decade ago, when one fifth of Venezuelans had access to primary care. Also, infant mortality has dropped from 21 to 13 per one thousand.

Gee, I’d say those 10 years more than merit a national holiday just based on educational and health achievements alone. But wait, there’s more:

The re-direction of investments has saturated the agricultural sector, and created considerable growth in the small and medium-sized business sector, said Pedro Morejón, the Minister of Communal Economy, Sunday.

Morejón also highlighted the new training programs in which the government has invested to promote cooperative businesses, social production enterprises, and other new forms of commerce through which Venezuelans “have assumed an important role in their participation and formation of businesses based on social property.”

Along with the new types of businesses, the government has opened new spaces for political participation, as well as through the direct funding of tens of thousands of community councils that now manage local affairs in democratic assemblies.

The Director of Venezuela’s National Statistics Institute (INE), Elías Eljuri, reported Sunday that domestic credit has increased from 12% to 21.4%, and the percentage of the population working in the formal economy has risen from 45% when Chávez took office to more than 56% today.

This has helped the percentage of people living in extreme poverty to drop from 23.4% to 9.1% over the past ten years, while the percentage in poverty has also decreased from 54.5 to 31.5%, according to the INE.

Poverty down? Small and medium-sized business (including co-ops) up? Wow, that sounds just HORRIBLE!

But worst of all is this:

Overall, the Venezuelan economy grew consistently for twenty consecutive trimesters, following a recession provoked by the U.S.-backed coup in April 2002 and the management-led oil industry shutdown that sought to topple Chávez’s presidency in early 2003.

Also, unemployment hit a new low of 6.1% last month, less than half of its peak of 14.6% following the oil strike in 2003.

With these investments and growth, an increase in demand has surged, causing a hike in inflation over the past three years. Overall, annual inflation has averaged 22% during the Chávez presidency, compared to 57.8% during the presidency of Rafael Caldera during the mid-1990s.

N.B.: The presidency of Rafael Caldera is reckoned by some to be a “golden age” of globalization in Venezuela. This although real economic growth was poor, and unemployment and poverty hit record highs at that time, just as Caldera was cutting all programs that could have done anything to help the poor, so that the World Bank, the IMF and transnational oil companies could enjoy more “freedom”. Hmmm.

But leaders are not supposed to pay attention to those pesky domestic problems, right? We the People are supposed to take matters in our own hands–and alleviate everything by outcrossing ourselves with, I guess, immortal jellyfish. Meaning, we’d improve by being eternally young–and strangely asexual and sp
ineless. But hey, no more of those “silly, irrational, evil and dangerous” national boundaries, yay! We’ll just all swim in the ocean, being pulled hither and thither by every current, wave and tide, gloop gloop. Sounds like a real paradise to me, as long as we don’t all get eaten by a baleen whale or something.

Oh, and that “antisemitism” charge? Also falso. But shhhhh, our little transhumanist doesn’t want to be bothered with the actual words of the “silly, irrational, evil and dangerous” Chavecito there, either. Too late, I’m posting them anyway.

President Chávez also weighed in on the attack on Sunday. “We condemn the actions against the Synagogue of Caracas, just as we condemn the burning of the Avila, which the oligarchy does not condemn,” said Chávez, referring to a recent incident in which opposition students were filmed setting fire to the national park north of Caracas.

“We condemn violence, no matter where it comes from and we will fight it no matter where it comes from,” said Chávez.

OhmyGAWDS, he’s consistently opposed to vandalism and violence, no matter who’s doing it or for what reason! How silly, irrational, evil and dangerous! How…how…how HUMANISTIC!

Gee, maybe our little transhumanist pal should first master that humanism thing, before he starts meddling with that potentially carcinogenic trans stuff. Ya think?

PS: Look what happens when you point out ON BoingBoing that they got rolled: You get banned from commenting further! And they consider Chávez a dictator?