The Devil's Excrement

And continuing
on the subject of official Government lies, two articles in El Universal this
week by reporter Gustavo Mendez, told the public what the blogosphere has known for quite a
while: UNESCO never certified that Venezuela is free of illiteracy. This
has been a huge
lie, President Chavez and his Minister of Education Aristobulo Isturiz have not only
made the claim publicly, but a huge banner with the claim was plastered
over the Ministrys building for months.

Mendez has
clearly been very thorough in his research of the issue. In the first
article on Friday, Mendez shows how according to UNESCO’s own statistics
for 2005, 7% of Venezuelans were till illiterate. Thus, despite all of the
noise about Mision Robinson, illiteracy ahs barely budged during Chavez’ years
in power.

The lie
was there from the beginning as Mision Robinson was supposed to eliminate illiteracy
in the 1.5 million Venezuelans who could not read and write, but the 2001
census said there were only 1.2 million. Thus, a researcher from Universidad
Central de Venezuela asks in the article: Where are the 660 thousand people
that the Government claimed were going to be taught to read and write in the first
six months of Mision Robinson?

It turns
out that the infamous “certification” was simply backing by UNESCO for the method
being used in Mision Robinson which was twisted around by the spinners of the
Chavista Government as a “certification” of the elimination of illiteracy in Venezuela..

In today’s
article, Mendez quotes a study by Francisco Rodriguez, a one time Chavez
supporter, now at Wesleyan University and researchers at IESA and the University
of California at Berkeley, which show that indeed in 2001, there were only 1.08
million people in Venezuela who could not read and write and compared it with
the 1.05 million who, according to the Government Statistics Institute, were in
that condition in 2005: 1.01 million. The researchers conclude that it is next
to impossible to evaluate if Mision Robinson had an impact or not.

Thus, another
fraud, another lie and another claim by the autocrat and his followers.

So now,
they plan to export the plan to Bolivia
and the Dominican Republic.
Will they export the lie or actually do something?

The “pretty”
revolution strikes again!

This entry was posted on October 15, 2006 at 7:30 pm and is filed under Venezuela.