- By Malcolm Bell

You may be shocked, shocked to hear that our so-called responsible media rarely print a straight story about Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez.  They commonly fault his efforts to abolish term limits on the presidency as though allowing the voters to set the limits were unusual.  They fault his friendship with Fidel Castro without mentioning U.S. friendships with a host of tyrants.  They fault the recent non-renewal of the Radio Caracas Television license without mentioning that the station was a prime instigator of the 2002 coup attempt in which people were killed or that the U.S., too, frowns on those who incite the violent overthrow of our government.  And nary a responsible hint that maybe it’s time for a leader who challenges the bullying and exploitation by the Colossus of the North.  

So, where to seek a balanced view of Chavez?  The May/June 2006 Maryknoll magazine gave one. I trust generally the National Catholic Reporter.  “Chavez’s Fix” by Daniel Wilkinson gave one in the March 10, 2008, Nation.  So did "Fidel's Heir" by Jon Lee Anderson in the June 23, 2008, New Yorker.

More generally, a source I find highly useful for “news and views from around the world” and across the political spectrum is Worldpress.org (www.worldpress.org)..  Once there, click on “World Newspapers” for a vast array of non-US publications.  Click on “Think Tanks and N.G.O.s” for a lesser array of those sources, e.g., it lists The Green Institute but not Global Exchange.   Worldpress’s forte is articles and editorials listed, handily for Interconnect readers, by regions such as “Americas.”  A few examples:  “Big Stakes in November Elections in Venezuela” by Kiraz Janicke and Federico Fuentes, Green Left Weekly (radical newspaper), New South Wales, Australia, June 10, 2008; “Colombian ‘Democracy’ and 80 Years of Murdering Workers,” by Vinicius Souza and Maria Eugênia Sá, Idéias em Revista, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, May 25, 2008; and a particularly thought-provoking “Behind Latin America’s Food Crisis,” by Laura Carlsen, Americas Program, Center for International Policy, May 20, 2008.  

But then the Americas Program of the Center for International Policy (www.ciponline.org) is itself a source that’s well worth checking.  Project Censored (www.projectcensored.org) is a provocative provider of, as its slogan has it, “the news that didn’t make the news.”  Other people will have other favorites.  

So many articles, so little time; but we won’t see all the news that’s fit to print in the New York Times or hear it on NPR.

(Malcolm  Bell is Contributing Editor of INTERCONNECT.)