|
Edited on Mon Dec-13-10 09:18 PM by Peace Patriot
It's not that no story that points to problems in Venezuela, or that points to misssteps, failures or bad tendencies of the Chavez government should never be published or promulgated. It's that, while there are many palpable, provable, obvious and at times startling achievements of the Chavez government, NONE IS EVER COVERED by the corpo-fascist press. Not ONE! EVER!
Something's wrong with this picture.
Venezuela was just designated THE MOST EQUAL COUNTRY IN LATIN AMERICA on income distribution, by the US Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean. Is that not important news? Is that not the bottom-line condition for democracy to work--according to most political scientists--narrowing the gap between rich and poor? And should that not be one result of a good working democratic system--that everybody has fair play, a chance to improve, upward mobility of the poor? Well, here it is. That's what's happening in Venezuela. NOT ONE STORY. Not one!
This has been true of EVERY Chavez government accomplishment. No, it is not a perfect government, democracy or country. But Jeez! WHY has it been voted for, three times, by big majorities? There's another story NEVER covered--WHY? Not to mention HOW (in a transparent election system--far, FAR more transparent than our own--that has had international election monitoring groups crawling all over it).
Nothing. Nada.
And then, when somebody criticizes the Chavez government for something, it is not only the only kind of coverage that the Chavez government ever gets, it is often itself distorted, as a news story--clarifying context entirely left out, historical context entirely left out, Chavez defenders not quoted, only rightwing opposition quoted, often anonymously (as with the infamous Associated Pukes' "His critics say..."). We see negative headline after negative headline after negative headline, sometimes referring to something negative that is real, on its face (such a the murder rate in Venezuela and slowness of the Chavez government to do something about it), more often referring to something that, while it may be real, is presented in an unfair, distorted context or no context (such as Chavez's non-renewal of RCTV's broadcasting license), and including entirely made-up negative shit (such as that Chavez is anti-semitic) handled without even a remote gesture at fairness.
And that's it. On the spectrum of downsides to upsides, as to governments, it's ALL downsides. There is NO upside. So what's wrong with Venezuelan voters? Are they stupid peasants or what? They've voted for a completely ALL-DOWNSIDE government, time and again, by big majorities, and they--what?--don't realize what a terrible mistake they keep making?
How Chavez and his government are treated by the corpo-fascist press is not only unfair and propagandistic, it doesn't make any sense!
Chavez supports gay rights and equal rights for women. Do you EVER see these arguably courageous positions for a Latin American leader mentioned, anywhere in the corpo-fascist press? THAT is a news story--one of many that are NEVER EVER EVER covered. But we hear all about the blackouts, inflation and street crime, over and over and over again.
Meanwhile, we find out that, next door, during the Bushwhack (and U.S. taxpayer supported) ($7 BILLION!) Uribe regime, political opponents of the government have been all grouped together by Uribe as "terrorists" and have been terrorized by the Colombian military and rightwing death squads--trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, journalists, academics, political leaders, peasant farmers--MURDERED, in the thousands, getting death threats, living in fear for their lives, and ROBBED of their livelihoods and possessions--mostly peasant farmers FIVE MILLION of whom have been displaced from their lands, mostly be state terror and U.S. "war on drugs" toxic pesticide spraying--THE worst human displacement crisis on earth--with the peasants' lands then given to Uribe's cronies, big drug lords and multinational corporations. We find that Uribe has been illegally spying on everybody in Colombia whom he considered an "enemy"--judges, prosecutors, members of congress and all of the above. We find that 70 of Uribe's closest political cohorts are under investigation or in jail, for bribery, spying, ties to the death squads, drug trafficking and other crimes. And now we find that this horrible leader is being coddled and protected by the U.S. government--which has acted to remove witnesses against Uribe from Colombia and put them out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors--and that he has claimed "sovereign immunity," here in the U.S., from even having to give a deposition (in the death squad case against Drummond Coal), and will probably extract this monarchical status from the U.S. State Department (which is clearly trying to cover something up in Colombia, probably Bush Junta complicity in some of these Uribe and Colombian military crimes).
This is not a political misstep, an over-enthusiastic ruling party, a highly popular party and government taking advantage of its power to get a little more power, as virtually every known highly popular party and government throughout history has done (including the Democrats during the New Deal era). This is not Venezuelan prosecutors getting a bit enthusiastic about targeting rightwing political corruption--a known hazard of every justice system in democratic countries in the entire world. What has been happening in Colombia is NOT NORMAL. It is HEINOUS. It is mind-bogglingly EVIL.
The Chavez government may be making missteps and taking unfair advantage but there is nothing they are alleged to be doing that is not "bread and butter" politics here in the U.S. and everywhere else. The check on any such missteps or powermongering in Venezuela is the Venezuelan people themselves. They hold honest, transparent elections. They even wrote a recall provision for the president into their constitution. (The rightwing, aided with U.S. taxpayer money, tried that once, and lost, big time.) They have not seen murder and mayhem all around them, inflicted by their own government and military, for decades. They have firmly established their human and civil rights. They have had a government that has fostered and expanded their human and civil rights, including encouraging maximum political participation, especially by previously excluded groups. Venezuela is a fully functioning democracy, with aspects to it that are better than our own. Here, the poor have no say in any goddamn thing. They are the majority, though they have virtually no representation in government. Venezuela is much more balanced--politically, socially, economically--than it has ever been.
(Edited to add: The Venezuelans can throw Chavez out, if they don't like him. They did inflict a sting on him in the prior by-elections--though the socialists did well in the recent second by-elections. That's the breaks. FDR also had up's and downs (and ran for and won four terms in office, and was also called a "dictator" by the rightwing press!) Uribe is an entirely different story. If the truth were known, it took the CIA to get rid of him. That's what I think happened. He was planning a coup to stay in power and Panetta said no, for his own reasons--probably the need to start hushing up Bush Junta activities in Colombia. And Uribe's successor, Santos. was CIA vetted and approved. The U.S. has a $7 BILLION investment in Colombia (at least). Nobody rules over that much U.S. largesse who is not U.S.-approved. Again, things are NORMAL in Venezuela. It is a normal, functioning democracy--kind of amazing actually--given the rightwing coup attempt in 2002 and other destabilization efforts, funded by you and me. That is not true in Colombia. Colombia is neither a functioning democracy nor an independent country. It is a U.S. client state.)
In any case, there is a BALANCED story in Venezuela, that receives NO balance in our corpo-fascist press. They flip the board over and flick "the other side of the story" into the trash bin. It is beyond the beyond biased and unfair.
And compared to Colombia, Venezuela is like night and day. That's is why about a quarter of a million Colombians have fled over the border into Venezuela for refuge from the Colombian government and the Colombian military and its death squads. They hear that peasants have a right to life, in Venezuela. They don't in Colombia. They have a right to nothing, in Colombia. They also hear that workers have decent wages. They hear that even the poor can get a college education. They hear they have a chance, there, for a decent life. And THAT burden gets inflicted on the Chavez government, again with no notice by the corpo-fascist press (except perhaps where they see a chance to criticize Chavez--he hasn't done enough for Colombian refugees!) They promulgate all the crap that that pathological liar Uribe can throw about Chavez "harboring FARC guerrillas" and SAY NOTHING about what Colombia's 70 year civil war has done to Venezuela's border areas, through no fault of Venezuela's or the Chavez government. Instead, Uribe wants to spread that murder and mayhem into Venezuela, a well-known Rumsfeld technique for destroying societies and robbing them blind.
Some of Colombia's horrors have made it into the corpo-fascist press. Things are so bad there that it can hardly be entirely ignored--funded by $7 BILLION in U.S. tax dollars. But, on the whole, the corpo-fascist press has taken the CIA's tack of coddling and protection of one of the most awful fascists that the U.S. has ever supported. Meanwhile, they can't get enough of beating up on Chavez, day after day after day, negative story after negative story (not to mention the vitriol on the editorial pages and on our PUBLIC airwaves). You'd think he was Josef Stalin. You'd think he was Hitler. He has done NOTHING to harm ANYBODY. He's just a president, struggling to govern in the Bushwhack-induced Depression, like every other leader of the free world--a president with significant achievements in poverty reduction, economic growth and improvements in human and civil rights. That's what one U.S. diplomatic cable called him--Hitler!
It's Uribe and the Bush Junta who have actually committed crimes that could merit that name. Chavez has done nothing to merit it. NOTHING!
Where is the balance in the corpo-fascist press on these matters? It does not exist. The treatment of Chavez and his government is THE most egregious example of Stalin's "Big Lie" propaganda technique, of repeating a simplistic lie over and over, to paralyze the human mind's ability to think for itself, and to create stupid robots, that I have ever seen in our so-called news media. They are the Stalins, not Chavez.
--------------------
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
