...you get an instinct for what really happened, which is rarely wrong. You often have to dig out the truth--by your own reseaches; the Corporate Press almost never follows up, as to a protest by the poor and powerless against the rich and the corporate. They present the "spin" that the rich and the corporate want as the initial impression and that impression is never rescinded when other facts come out.
I will never forget actually being at a protest--Seattle '99--the most awesome peaceful protest I have ever witnessed or heard of--which was deemed "violent" by the Corporate Press, and which even the Seattle City Council had to admit was a police riot, after considerable hearings that received NO coverage elsewhere.
Probably what happened in this case is that the police fired upon the protestors, killing two people, and the protestors fought back, rather successfully, with rocks. By "rather successfully," I mean that the protestors prevented more of their people getting shot dead. Can't say for sure, on the basis of this skimpy report. But that's what long experience tells me.
It's important, though, to keep in mind the political situation in Peru and in South America, and the avid interest of U.S./E.U. transglobal corporate powers in instigating trouble with agents provocateur, infiltration and other dirty games, against Leftist governments. These are methods that the CIA and other powers have used for more than half a century to destabilize countries and overthrow good, democratic governments in Latin America, for the purposes of looting LatAm resources and creating slave labor pools. Such operations are by no means a thing of the past. We have seen several recently, although the ones involving protestors have usually utilized rightwing protestors--little more than thugs and criminals--for instance, to support a white separatist insurrection in Bolivia (2008, funded and organized out of the U.S./Bush Junta embassy). Infiltrating genuine grass roots groups, trade unions and Leftist groups is a more sophisticated technique--of the kind I would expect from Leon Panetta (whom I think is a very skilled "player" and "Old CIA," an associate of Bush Sr.).
Peru just elected a Leftist government, following a "neo-liberal" (and highly corrupt) government that signed a "free trade for the rich" deal with the U.S./Bush Junta. That "free trade" deal brought no benefit to Peru's vast poor majority, of course, but the Leftist government is saddled with it--and with scofflaw transglobal corporate looting of its resources--unless and until it decides to rip such agreements up, which it probably won't do. The Leftist president, Ollanta Humala, played a "centrist" game in the election campaign, probably in an effort to avoid U.S. interference/dirty tricks against him. He is unlike, say, Hugo Chavez, who had no qualms about ripping up "neo-liberal" agreements with Exxon Mobil that did not benefit the Venezuelan people and demanding better terms as the price of doing business in Venezuela. Humala is more cautious.
But how do the transglobals who are looting Peru keep him in line? He has examples all around him--in Venezuela, in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Argentina, and, to some extent in Brazil, of powerful Leftist governments acting in their peoples' interests, and, what is more, often acting in concert with each other in a new spirit of solidarity, to benefit their people. Humala is certainly inclined that way--toward a more "New Deal"-like government and toward South America's strength in unity. How to reign him in, to prevent serious reform, to retain transglobal extraction rights, to avoid environmental responsibility and regulation, to keep him away from strong alliance with other Leftist leaders, etc.?
Well, one way would be to exacerbate divisions on the Left in Peru--between the Indigenous and environmentalists, on the one hand, for instance, and Leftist government economic developers and Leftist-run police/military forces, on the other, while the foreign resource extractor--in this case, a Swiss company--just sits back and lets them shoot it out. Humala looks like the bad guy. He loses support; maybe even loses the next election. A rightwing corporate toady or worse (violent fascist) gets installed. The Swiss company and other transglobals can do as they like. (It was exactly this circumstance--police shooting Indigenous/environmental protestors--that helped get the "neo-liberal" president in so much political trouble--25% approval rating in his last year in office.)
This could be done by having operatives within the police/military forces intent on making trouble (shooting protestors to cause a melee). It could be done by infiltrating a genuine grass roots group and leading protestors astray at the last moment in threatening circumstances. And I'm sure there are other methods.
So-o-o-o, we need to be wary of Corporate 'News' handling of protest stories for several reasons--the main one being that they lie about real grass roots protests (outright lies, lies of omission, etc.) but an additional one being that the situation itself could be manipulated by corporate/covert powers--something that the Corporate Press will never investigate and certainly will not tell us, if they should stumble upon some information--when they are not actually part of the story--that is, colluding with corporate/covert powers, as was the case with RCTV in Venezuela during and after the 2002 coup attempt; RCTV knowingly broadcast doctored video that made it appear that Chavez supporters were shooting anti-Chavez protestors, for instance.
In Seattle '99, the Corporate Media started their 'news' broadcasts that night with vid of a black-masked "anarchist"'s foot going through a store window in downtown Seattle, but failed to report that that and other "anarchist" vandalism had been preceded by a ten-hour, brutal police riot against 10,000 completely peaceful protestors. They furthermore failed to investigate, report on or try to explain how these few masked "anarchists" could get away with their acts of vandalism without any interference by the police. Totally manipulated, upside-down so-called 'news' story.
The Corporate Press serves the Corporate Rulers and not just in a general way, but with specific distortions, lies and propaganda in the "news" itself. We need to understand this and to question every word and every image that they promulgate as "news."
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