There is nothing that the Inter-American Dialogue likes more than dialoguery. Usually this involves two well dressed, blue-eyed Latinos dialoguing about how their poor, brown countrymen need to get a haircut and a real job and generally act more like the gringos. The great part about these dialogues is that they always end in consensus, which will inevitably lead to world peace one day maybe!
Of course budget constraints being what they are, oftentimes these dialogues get trimmed down to one well-dressed blue-eyed Latino explaining why everyone should be more like him. Linguists have a word for this type of conversation; it is known as “a very efficient dialogue.”
Anyway this is all to say that the Inter-American Dialogue has a new paper out! On Venezuela! It is a keen analysis of Venezuela’s current political situation, and it is of course written entirely by the leading voice of the Venezuelan opposition, Teodoro Petkoff, who is renowned for being fair because he was a hippie once in the 60s before turning into a right winger today. Dialogue!
But one of the drawbacks these very efficient dialogues is that nobody is around to fact check, so many retarded mistakes get made! One reader found a good one:
Petkoff says that the United States could finance Petro-Caribe [Venezuela’s hundred-million dollar oil program with Caribbean nations] with less than one billionth of its GDP. Uh, one billionth of the US GDP is about $14,000. And this isn’t just some typo--one millionth would be $14 million--still a fraction of the cost of the program.Well that was a stupid mistake, wasn’t it? And there are probably plenty more! Hey why don’t you read the thing and tell us what they are, and then we can all send a joint letter to the InterAmerican Dialogue together and laugh and then go get a beer? That’s right, you can be part of the dialogue with Inter-America! Keep us in the loop at BoRevNet (at) Gmail (dot) com.
