First, a personal note. I just published a major essay on Canadian Foreign Policy — I hope Canadian readers (and others) find it useful.
Now to Latin America issues. Some time ago, Justin Delacour prepared a good article on Venezuela’s pollsters, published for Narconews but republished on ZNet. He has revisited the issue now, with good reason — the Venezuelan referendum is coming up and polls will be important. He discusses some replies from his critics from the Venezuelan ‘opposition’ (really the Venezuelan elite), one of whom discusses how unworried he is that sites like ours are publishing such critiques:
Thankfully, the 20,000 people who read ZMag [note: the article also ran on the progressive U.S. webzine ZNet, at http://www.zmag.org/] are all equally blinded by ideology and unreasonable, and such writing is most unlikely to reach or influence people who matter, who know anything at all, or who have anything like an open mind. So I really wouldn’t worry about it.
Nice, huh? I got some hate mail myself recently that I thought I’d share as well. It speaks so eloquently for itself that I feel no comment is necessary, though I have to admit I did take some guilty pleasure in replying to this fellow in kind, attempting to ape his highly eloquent style.
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2004 10:18:11 -0500
From: Sebastián Arboleda Palacios
Subject: Your little website, Sir.
Mr. Podur,
As a Colombian that actually lives in his country and studies in Canada, I must confess that your little website is not only a sack of lies and deceit, but it suffers from a chronical disease typical of first-world left-wing fools that can’t see past their noses – naivety and misinformation.
Human rights workers in this country have, time after time, shown a politicised approach to the defense of human rights. From Amnesty International to the smallest NGO, they all, in one way or another, show their political orientation in every condemning report that ingenues like yourself value so much.
Your lack of condemnation for the Chavez regime is truly remarkable. You sit idly while a madman rapes his country and hands it to his supporters while denying more and more freedoms to his people every day. The Venezuelan armed forces have shown their reluctance to act against the guerrillas, so much that there have been several reports issued by the Dept. of State regarding the use of Venezuelan territory as a safe haven for FARC narco-terrorists. Mr. Chavez is not a man to be commended but a dictator in the making, a nationalist that believes in a “greater”, “Bolivarian” Venezuela and that is more a threat to the stability of the region than the three illegal armed groups that operate in my country.
I personally applaud the U.S. for its aid to my country and myself, like 75% of the Colombian electorate, approve of Mr. Uribe’s effort to restore security to the Nation. As a Canadian that lives a very comfortable and tranquil life, you are in no position to understand what it is to live in fear of being robbed, kidnapped, blackmailed or blown up when going to the mall or the supermarket. I strongly suggest that you read the (independent and unbiased, unlike your darling NGOs) polls before you pretend to be the voice of the Colombian people when clearly you are not.
I do suggest that you dedicate yourself to your country’s politics before writing a misleading and ridiculously biased website about other people’s affairs. It’s not like you’re void of corruption, single-party politics and rampant misuse of taxpayer funds. And by the way, you should try to read something other than ‘Adbusters’. Anti-american and left-wing may be chic these days, but that doesn’t make it right.
Most sincerely,
-Sebastian Arboleda Palacios
