NGC-Don't Tell My Mother I'm In (2008) Venezuela WS-PDTV XviD Ekolb

has this been posted before? - i feel that i have seen this

Don't tell Mama I'm blowing my trust fund on mocking populism in the global South. How forward thinking of National Geographic to send such an open-minded Legionnaire to the land of Chavez. Buñuel's analysis is so utterly embarrassing at times, the show is unwatchable but for the chance to bear witness to more mainstream imperialist spin against socialist Venezuela. From the start, the viewer learns that Venezuela is a "battleground", implying that there is ongoing military struggle there, which there really has not been since the US-backed military coup to remove Chavez that failed in '02. (That part of the story is left out, of course.) Perhaps Diego is just keeping the skids greased for what the elite are banking on. Furthermore, it is entertaining to witness the sudden silence of Buñuel's witty political commentary the second he crosses into empire-friendly Colombia.

Extract from this what you can, then check out Eva Gollinger's _The Chavez Code_ for something with a bibliography. There is also plenty of relevant, less imperially slanted, media here on onebigtorrent if you search for Chavez or Venezuela.

I don't think the presenter fairly depicted some of the events in this piece. For example when he spoke to the rancher, he was un-skeptical about his land only being good for range when it was visually apparent that his land would in fact be fine for farming. Perhaps he meant the hills that he was left with...

That said I also saw some visually apparent deficiencies in their agrarian reform. Notably absent is an effort to make the new found farmers educated in the more modern sciences of farming or to make people who are as such into farmers. A permacultural revolution would be right for such a manner of reform.

However I think the gas issue is a legitimate concern. There is a lot of money to be made from the gas that the state is subsidizing for the people. I'm not opposed to a lower than world price for petrol for Venezuelans, but on the other hand I am more than a little irked at the casualness that is given to wasting it by the locals. Never-mind the fact that the gas could be sold for much more and used to subsidize a local dairy industry or whatever.

I have to be honest though, for a parent company that is owned by Rupert Murdoch, we are lucky to see such fair reporting.

Scavengertype:

I agree the the petroleum funded revolution in Venezuela might be a litte unwise. A little known fact is that Chavez is actually subsidizing cheap fuel for the us market:

The CITGO-Venezuelan Heating Oil Program aids American citizens in the District of Columbia, Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. CITGO also provides discount oil directly to 220 Native American communities in the states of Alaska, Arizona, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oregon and Washington.

I agree there is little focus on the coup attempt on Chavez and some other things, but if the show should focus on american imperialism it would not get anything else done since the south has been Americas backyard for a long time..Monroe doctrine etc..

All in all I think Diego Buñuel´s shows are excellent, all of them. He is French by the way, not American.