Rory Carroll is "fit to be printed" there, or anywhere in the corporate "Big Lie" media. What's shocking to me is to see this tripe in the Guardian--or, I should say, what WAS shocking to me. After the BBCons bent over, on LatAm left subjects, I really stopped being shockable. I have NEVER HEARD a more shockingly biased--sneering, nasty, blind, stupid--'report' on LatAm than I heard on BBC radio not long ago about Chavez/Venezuela. My jaw literally fell open.
We are bereft of objective news and intelligent analysis--let alone pro-democracy and progressive news, analysis and opinion--on Latin America.
We of course have new, alternative, internet-based sources, or maybe we wouldn't be talking to each other. How did YOU get informed? I started with Venezuelanalysis (still kicking) and BoRev (now gone) and then started seeking more info wherever I could find it--Common Dreams, Colombia Reports (Judi Lynn put me on to that one), the fact-rich CEPR, the Real News, In These Times, Counterpunch and others--and began seriously ANALYZING what I was reading/seeing in Corporate News. I was pro-left to begin with, and had some notion of U.S./LatAm history, so it didn't take me long, with the internet, to start exposing specific lies, overall egregious bias and cute corporate 'journalism' tricks for getting their 'news' consumers to swallow shitpiles of disinformation. What an eye-opener!
This media junta--the pervasive lying about LatAm--occurred at the same time as the WMDs that were not in Iraq. Easy to see the parallel loss of integrity throughout the corporate media, especially given the New York Slimes shilling for Donald Rumsfeld (they might as well have been on his payroll). But when ALL the old more or less reliable sources began to "turn" bad, on LatAm (including BBCons and the New Yorker, for godssakes, as well as lesser lights like the Christian Science Monitor), it became easier to instantly know what was REALLY going on in LatAm: just REVERSE whatever the corporate media and fallen independents are trying to make you believe, about LatAm, and you will know truth.
For instance, "Chavez the dictator"? The exact opposite is true--Venezuela never more democratic than with their re-write of their constitution and election and re-election of Chavez. Chavez, Correa, Morales, et al, "anti-free speech"? Not true! LatAm has NEVER HAD freer speech! What they really mean is that the CIA/Corporate disinformation empire has been successfully challenged in LatAm. They can't create coup d'etats any more, that way; they can't easily install fascist governments using the media as one of their methodologies.
Once you know this--that the Corporate Media is dealing in impressions not facts, and that the REVERSE of these impressions is about 99% of the truth--then you can begin to make sense of items like this: The corporate media in Venezuela BANNING all Chavez government officials from the public airwaves during the 2002 coup attempt!
By "free speech," they mean CORPORATE speech; speech for the 1% and for NO ONE ELSE.
You begin to understand why the corporate media has NEVER--anywhere, at any time, in any publication--reported the very significant achievements of the Chavez government on poverty reduction, educational opportunity and economic growth, and--wonder of wonders--on honest, transparent elections, public participation, inclusiveness and voter turnouts.
You begin to understand why the corporate media has suppressed INDEPENDENT information sources on these achievements--including the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean, the Millennium Project, the Gallup Well-being poll, all international election monitoring groups, and more.
These things DON'T FIT the IMPRESSIONS they want to pummel your brain with--in repetitive "Big Lie" fashion--so they don't print them.
So, yes, I can believe that Rory Carroll would be published by any of the corporate propaganda horns--even the New Yorker, which recently fell to this media junta. (I wrote 'em a letter to the editor asking if they'd 'downsized' and fired all their famous fact-checkers. Gawd.) But the Guardian?
That's the last straw. And what it means is that "western civilization" is just about dead...except in Latin America!
The two most important planks of "western civilization"--honest journalism and honest elections--are just about gone...except in Latin America!
If the Guardian does nothing about Rory Carroll, then plank no. 1 is dead. And if our Democratic Party does nothing about ES&S/Dieobld vote counting here--and there is no sign whatever that they will--then plank no. 2 is dead.
What's left? Spying, dirty tricks and war. The CIA's world.
Except in Latin America.
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