Murdoch’s Australian newspaper proves the seriousness of its reporting on foreign affairs:
The Government of international pariah Hugo Chavez has signalled a challenge to Australia’s influence in the Pacific with an aggressive diplomatic push based on cheap fuel for island states. Speaking on the sidelines of the 38th Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga yesterday, Venezuela’s Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs for Asia, Middle East and the Pacific, Vladimir Poljak, said his Government was ready to help end the West’s “domination” in the region.
“International pariah”? Get real. Chavez may be increasingly authoritarian and spending far too much time cozying up to Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but this report could have been written by the US State Department. If anything, the Bush administration is the pariah, loathed the world over, including in Australia.
But that would actually take some independent thinking.