Day: April 11, 2002

Violence in Venezuela Tonight

Tonight violence erupted in Venezuela as police opened fire on a large crowd of people protesting the increasingly dictatorial rule of Hugo Chavez. CNN reports that at least 12 people were killed and 96 wounded. Chavez ordered private television stations shut down.

Chavez is a socialist who hobnobs with Fidel Castro, and like Castro he talked a big game about the poor and the workers until they started talking back. Chavez refuses to recognize the leader of the largest labor group in Venezuela, for example.

The kicker, though, is that Chavez has been relatively popular with not only Leftists but also with some anti-war Right wingers such as AntiWar.Com’s Justin Raimondo.

That Chavez had a dictatorial bent (he had previously led a failed military coup against the elected government of Venezuela) was apparent to many people a long time ago, but Raimondo chose to see Chavez through rose-colored glasses, dismissing critics who predicted exactly the sort of thing that happened tonight. Back on January 5, 2001, for example, Raimondo wrote,

The recent elections to the National Assembly returned followers of Chavez by a resounding 90 percent-plus. Chavez isn’t dreaming about the
dictatorship of the proletariat, in spite of the ultra-left sympathies of
some of his followers: instead, he dreams of “a confederation of Latin
American states for the new century,” one “joining the Caribbean basin
though railways and linking them with the great rivers such as the Orinoco,
the Amazon and the Plata,” which he calls “the arteries of our continent.” Like Bolivar, he dreams of a sovereign, independent, and prosperous South
America: to the US State Department, this is a crime. To the people of
Venezuela, and beyond, it is an ambition that may be worth fighting for.

Yeah, and apparently worth opening fire with snipers on a crowd of protesters.

I certainly hope that we can now expect to see Raimondo chastise himself in one of his extended rants about how sick he is of pseudo-libertarians singing the praises of a socialist dictator-wannabes.

Michael Bellisles — Fraud

Michael Bellisles is a “scholar” who wrote a book called Arming America that had a novel thesis — Bellisles claimed that there were very few guns owned by private citizens in the United States prior to the middle of the 19th century. Bellisles’ book was well-reviewed and praised, largely for the ammunition it apparently provided for gun control advocates.

Despite winning a prestigious award, however, gun nuts on the Internet began dissecting the book almost immediately and what they found was damning enough that professional historians took a second look at the book and found systemtic, egregious errors.

The main issue left to resolve is whether or not Bellisles was simply incompetent at conducting historical research or whether the book was an intentional fraud. Given how thorough the factual errors are in the book, it was difficult to believe Bellisles was not intentionally fraudulent.

Bellisles this week inadvertently confirmed that his book is almost certainly fraudulent in an example of just how hard it is to pull of a lie — and all because of e-mail.

James Lindgren is a respected scholar who began looking into Bellisles’ book and carried on an e-mail correspondence with Bellisles beginning in 2000. The problem for Bellisles is that answered questions that Lindgren had about how Bellisles has conducted his research. But today, Bellisles is telling a completely different story — in just two years, his claims about he collected data he used in his book has gone through numerous changes to the point where he was either lying in 2000 or is lying today (or he was lying in both cases).

So Bellisles, apparently as a last resort, accused Lindgren of fraud. Bellisles claimed that he did not write the e-mails that Lindgren has produced and which have been referenced in articles about the controversy.

Big mistake. Aside from the obvious problem of how or why Lindgren would fake the e-mails, Bellisles appeared on a radio show with Lindgren on January 16, 2001 and acknowledged writing the e-mails as well as defended the statements in the e-mails which Bellisles now claims he never wrote.

For example, one issue is that in one of the e-mails Bellisles claims to have done research on some records at the National Archives. The problem is that the records at issue aren’t in the National Archives. In the radio interview, Bellisles repeats the substance of the e-mail, “[I] did in fact, ah, look at them at the National Archives.”

But now he’s denying that he ever wrote the e-mail at all!

Emory University, where Bellisles is a professor, has already initiated an investigation which will almost certainly lead to his termination. This latest episode just puts the final nail in the coffin.

Man in China Sues Wife for Having an Abortion

The BBC reports that in March a man in China became the first to file a lawsuit under a new law in that country that guarantees both men and women equal say in having children.

As part of its extreme family planning policies, China approved a law that makes both spouses in a marriage equally responsible for family planning decisions. In this case, a man his wife because she aborted her pregnancy despite his desire to see her carry the pregnancy to term.

The law was apparently passed due to concern that the brunt of enforcement of China’s one-child policy was falling largely on women. Health experts called on men to take more active of a role, and the government responded with a law granting men and women equal legal status in making decisions about when to have children.

The BBC reports that a Chinese court recommended that the man’s lawsuit be allowed to proceed.

Chinese man sues wife over abortion. Vickie Maximova, The BBC, March 20, 2002.

The Economist Celebrates “Facts for Life”

The Economist ran a short little article exalting the influence of the United Nations Children’s Fund’s book, “Facts for Life.” First printed in 1989, the United Nations has printed and distributed more than 15 million copies of the book in 215 different languages.

The book is about 170 pages and crammed with basic health information targeted at people in developing countries. As The Economist puts it,

Of course the book is no substitute for the medicines and basic equipment so desperately needed in many countries. But for the world’s poorest, who have so few other ways of finding things out, the book’s tips can be life-saving.

Each year nearly 11m children die from easily preventable causes before reaching their fifth birthdays. Ignorance is often the cause.

By dispelling common and often life threatening myths (such as the belief that drinking liquids makes diarrhea worse), “Facts for Life” has made an excellent but cheap contribution to improving the lives of those in developing countries.

As The Economist concludes, “Not all aid can be delivered this way. But perhaps more of it should be.”

Source:

Knowledge is power. The Economist, March 30, 2002, pp.40-1.