Religions > Atheism > OT - Stealing Mexico - Bush team helps ruling party "Floridize" Mexican presidential election.
| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Meteorite Debris" |
| Date: |
30 Jun 2006 07:53:50 PM |
| Object: |
OT - Stealing Mexico - Bush team helps ruling party "Floridize" Mexican presidential election. |
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/063006R.shtml
http://www.gregpalast.com/stealing-mexico
Stealing Mexico
By Greg Palast
GregPalast.com
Friday 30 June 2006
Bush team helps ruling party "Floridize" Mexican presidential
election.
George Bush's operatives have plans to jigger with the upcoming
elections. I'm not talking about the November '06 vote in the USA
(though they have plans for that, too). I'm talking about the election
this Sunday in Mexico for their Presidency.
It begins with an FBI document marked, "Counterterrorism" and
"Foreign Intelligence Collection" and "Secret." Date: "9/17/2001," six
days after the attack on the World Trade towers. It's nice to know the
feds got right on the ball, if a little late.
What does this have to do with jiggering Mexico's election? Hold
that thought.
This document is what's called a "guidance" memo for using a
private contractor to provide databases on dangerous foreigners. Good
idea. We know the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and
the Persian Gulf Emirates. So you'd think the "Intelligence
Collection" would be aimed at getting info on the guys in the Gulf.
No so. When we received the document, we obtained as well its
classified appendix. The target nations for "foreign counterterrorism
investigation" were nowhere near the Persian Gulf. Every one was in
Latin America - Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico and a handful of others.
Latin America?! Was there a terror cell about to cross into San
Diego with exploding enchiladas?
All the target nations had one thing in common besides a lack of
terrorists: each had a left-leaning presidential candidate or a left-
leaning president in office. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, bete
noir of the Bush Administration, was facing a recall vote. In Mexico,
the anti-Bush Mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was
(and is) leading the race for the Presidency.
Most provocative is the contractor to whom this no-bid contract
was handed: ChoicePoint Inc. of Alpharetta, Georgia. ChoicePoint is
the database company that created a list for Governor Jeb Bush of
Florida of voters to scrub from voter rolls before the 2000 election.
ChoicePoint's list (94,000 names in all) contained few felons. Most of
those on the list were guilty of no crime except Voting While Black.
The disenfranchisement of these voters cost Al Gore the presidency.
Having chosen our President for us, our President's men chose
ChoicePoint for this sweet War on Terror database gathering. The use
of the Venezuela's and Mexico's voter registry files to fight terror
is not visible - but the use of the lists to manipulate elections is
as obvious as the make-up on Katherine Harris' cheeks.
In Venezuela, leading up to the August 2004 vote on whether to re-
call President Chavez, I saw his opposition pouring over the voter
rolls in laptops, claiming the right to challenge voters as Jeb's crew
did to voters in Florida. It turns out this operation was partly
funded by the International Republican Institute of Washington, an arm
of the GOP. Where did they get the voter info from?
In that case, access to Venezuela's voter rolls didn't help the
Republican-assisted drive against Chavez, who won by a crushing
plurality.
In Mexico this Sunday, we can expect to see the same: challenges
of Obrador voters in a race, the polls say, is too close to call. Not
that Mexico's rulers need lessons from the Bush Administration on how
to mess with elections.
In 1988, the candidate for Obrador's Party of the Democratic
Revolution (PDR), who opinion polls showed as a certain winner,
somehow came up short against the incumbent party of the ruling elite.
Some of the electoral tricks were far from subtle. In the state of
Guerrero, the PDR was leading on official tally sheets by 359,369.
Oddly, the official final count was 309,202 for the ruling party, only
182,874 for the PDR. Challenging the vote would have been dangerous.
Two top officials of Obrador's party were assassinated during the
campaign.
Crucial to the surprise victory of the ruling party was the
introduction of computer voting machines and the centralization of
voter databases. Observer Andrew Reding of the Council on Hemispheric
Affairs reported that ruling party operatives had special access codes
denied the opposition.
Whether the US "War on Terror" lists will find a use in Sunday's
election, we cannot know. But the use of American government resources
to interfere in south-of-the-border campaigns is an open secret. The
GOP's International Republican Institute has run training sessions for
the PAN youth wing, funded by US taxpayers through the "National
Endowment for Democracy."
Foreign - that is, American - interference in political campaigns
is a crime. That didn't stop Team Bush. However, when the theft of its
citizen files was discovered, Argentina threatened to arrest
ChoicePoint contractors until the company returned the tapes - and
Mexico's attorney general did in fact arrest the ChoicePoint data
thieves to avoid his party from looking too much the stooge of its
Washington patron. Whether George Bush gave back his copy, no one will
say.
Wholesale theft is expected on Sunday in forms both subtle and
brutal. How the US' purloined "counterterrorism" lists will be used,
we don't know. We are certain however, that the Administration did not
siphon off these Latin voter files to fight a War on Terror. It
appears, rather, part of the Bush Administration's and GOP's
hemispheric War on Democracy - along a battle line which runs from
Florida to Ohio to Juarez.
For as-it-happens reporting on the Mexican election, check
www.GregPalast.com for dispatches from our team investigator Special
Correspondent Matt Pascarella with video journalist Rick Rowley in
Mexico City.
Special thanks to the Electronic Privacy Information Center,
Washington. DC, which received and passed on to our team the FBI
ChoicePoint files and other foreign intelligence documentation.
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, ARMED
MADHOUSE: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, China Floats Bush Sinks, the
Scheme to Steal '08, No Child's Behind Left and Other Dispatches From
the Front Lines of the Class War.
Get your copy of Palast=3Fs new book, Armed Madhouse, at
www.GregPalast.com.
--
Remove YOUR_SHOES before replying
apatriot #1, atheist #1417,
Chief EAC prophet
Jason Gastrich is praying for me on 8 January 2009
http://members.optusnet.com.au/~pk1956/
Apatriotism Yahoo Group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/apatriotism
Commit an act of sedition every day - practise free speech
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| Title: Re: OT - Stealing Mexico - Bush team helps ruling party "Floridize" Mexican presidential election. |
30 Jun 2006 08:57:02 PM |
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Meteorite Debris wrote:
Bush team helps ruling party "Floridize" Mexican presidential
election.
Bush is the #1 enemy to democracy.
He destroyed it in the United States, sent it into exile in Haiti,
attacked it in Venezuela and turned the entire middle east
into ripe picking for Islamic fundamentalism.
So now he's going after democracy in Mexico? What took
him so long?
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| User: "johac" |
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| Title: Re: OT - Stealing Mexico - Bush team helps ruling party "Floridize" Mexican presidential election. |
01 Jul 2006 01:54:33 AM |
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In article <1151719022.207389.82760@75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com>,
wrote:
Meteorite Debris wrote:
Bush team helps ruling party "Floridize" Mexican presidential
election.
Bush is the #1 enemy to democracy.
He destroyed it in the United States, sent it into exile in Haiti,
attacked it in Venezuela and turned the entire middle east
into ripe picking for Islamic fundamentalism.
So now he's going after democracy in Mexico? What took
him so long?
I'll bet he wishes that he could invade. Just like 1846. I'm sure those
terrist Mexicans must have some rusty old WMDs lying around somewhere.
--
John Hachmann aa #1782
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities"
-Voltaire
Contact - Throw a .net over the .com
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| User: "" |
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| Title: Re: OT - Stealing Mexico - Bush team helps ruling party "Floridize" Mexican presidential election. |
30 Jun 2006 08:10:06 PM |
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Meteorite Debris wrote:
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/063006R.shtml
http://www.gregpalast.com/stealing-mexico
Stealing Mexico
By Greg Palast
GregPalast.com
Friday 30 June 2006
Bush team helps ruling party "Floridize" Mexican presidential
election.
George Bush's operatives have plans to jigger with the upcoming
elections. I'm not talking about the November '06 vote in the USA
(though they have plans for that, too). I'm talking about the election
this Sunday in Mexico for their Presidency.
It begins with an FBI document marked, "Counterterrorism" and
"Foreign Intelligence Collection" and "Secret." Date: "9/17/2001," six
days after the attack on the World Trade towers. It's nice to know the
feds got right on the ball, if a little late.
What does this have to do with jiggering Mexico's election? Hold
that thought.
This document is what's called a "guidance" memo for using a
private contractor to provide databases on dangerous foreigners. Good
idea. We know the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and
the Persian Gulf Emirates. So you'd think the "Intelligence
Collection" would be aimed at getting info on the guys in the Gulf.
No so. When we received the document, we obtained as well its
classified appendix. The target nations for "foreign counterterrorism
investigation" were nowhere near the Persian Gulf. Every one was in
Latin America - Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico and a handful of others.
Latin America?! Was there a terror cell about to cross into San
Diego with exploding enchiladas?
All the target nations had one thing in common besides a lack of
terrorists: each had a left-leaning presidential candidate or a left-
leaning president in office. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez, bete
noir of the Bush Administration, was facing a recall vote. In Mexico,
the anti-Bush Mayor of Mexico City, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was
(and is) leading the race for the Presidency.
The US is worried about the "killer Bs" from South America!
The Bolivarian countries!
Give me a freaking break. Because these countries are voting
for leaders that are working in their own interests, that makes
them terrorist nations? Then again, that's the same argument
used to invade and interfere with countries during the cold war
to "prevent the spread of communism".
It wasn't true then (it was the US that spread communism by
destroying democratic movements), and it's not true now (like
any predominantly catholic country is going to become a "muslim
terrorist nation"...).
And people wonder why the US has no credibility.
Bob Dog
Atheist #153 = 1^3 + 5^3 + 3^3
EAC's chief cook and brainwasher
-----
"The people we starve and torture have an unsociable
tendency to steal and murder. We think it's because
their brows overhang."
- Ann Druyan
"Texas: 50th in education, first in executions...
how's that working for you?"
- Kinky Friedman's campaign slogan
in the Texas governor's race
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| User: "ranDoM ark ranDoM" |
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| Title: Re: OT - Stealing Mexico - Bush team helps ruling party "Floridize" Mexican presidential election. |
30 Jun 2006 08:23:58 PM |
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The US is worried about the "killer Bs" from South America!
The Bolivarian countries!
Give me a freaking break. Because these countries are voting
for leaders that are working in their own interests, that makes
them terrorist nations? Then again, that's the same argument
used to invade and interfere with countries during the cold war
to "prevent the spread of communism".
It wasn't true then (it was the US that spread communism by
destroying democratic movements), and it's not true now (like
any predominantly catholic country is going to become a "muslim
terrorist nation"...).
And people wonder why the US has no credibility.
I have some interesting stuff on this...
Mark D.
-------
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
May 16, 2006
MEDIA ALERT: RIDICULING CHAVEZ - THE MEDIA HIT THEIR STRIDE - PART 1
Controlling what we think is not solely about controlling what we know - it
is also about controlling who we respect and who we find ridiculous.
Thus we find that Western leaders are typically reported without adjectives
preceding their names. George Bush is simply "US president George Bush".
Condoleeza Rice is "the American secretary of state Condoleeza Rice". Tony
Blair is just "the British prime minister".
The leader of Venezuela, by contrast, is "controversial left-wing president
Hugo Chavez" for the main BBC TV news. (12:00, May 14, 2006). He is as an
"extreme left-winger," while Bolivian president Evo Morales is "a radical
socialist", according to Jonathan Charles on BBC Radio 4. (6 O'Clock News,
May 12, 2006)
Imagine the BBC introducing the US leader as "controversial right-wing
president George Bush", or as an "extreme right-winger". Is Bush - the man
who illegally invaded Iraq on utterly fraudulent pretexts - +less+
controversial than Chavez? Is Bush less far to the right of the political
spectrum than Chavez is to the left?
For the Independent on Sunday, Chavez is "Venezuela's outspoken President".
(Stephen Castle and Raymond Whitaker, 'Heralding the end of US imperialism,'
May 14, 2006) For the Mirror, he is a "controversial leader" called "'the
Crackers from Caracas' by his own supporters". (Rosa Prince, 'He calls Bush
"Hitler" and Blair "the pawn",' May 16, 2006) He is an "aggressively
populist left-wing leader", the Times writes. (Richard Owen, 'Pope tells
Chavez to mend his ways,' May 12, 2006) He is a "left-wing firebrand," the
Independent reports. (Guy Adams, 'Pandora: 'Chavez stirs up a degree of
controversy at Oxford,' May 15, 2006) He is a "Left wing firebrand"
according to the Evening Standard. (Pippa Crerar, 'Chavez to meet the
Mayor,' May 12, 2006) He is an "international revolutionary firebrand",
according to the Observer. (Peter Beaumont, 'The new kid in the barrio,' May
7, 2006)
A Guardian news report describes Chavez as nothing less than "the scourge of
the United States". (Duncan Campbell and Jonathan Steele,' The Guardian, May
15, 2006) Although this was a news report, not a comment piece, the title
featured the required tone of mockery: "Revolution in the Camden air as
Chavez - with amigo Ken - gets a hero's welcome".
An Independent report declared of Chavez:
"He has been described as a fearless champion of the oppressed poor against
the corrupt rich and their American sponsors. But also as a dangerous
demagogue subsidising totalitarian regimes with his country's oil wells."
(Kim Sengupta, 'Britain's left-wing "aristocracy" greet their hero Chavez,'
The Independent, May 15, 2006)
Imagine an Independent news report providing a similarly 'balanced'
description of Bush or Blair using language of the kind employed in the
second sentence. Again, mockery was a central theme: "And yesterday in the
People's Republic of Camden the villains remained very much President George
W Bush, his acolyte Tony Blair, big business and the forces of reaction."
Younger readers may have missed the BBC's prime time TV series Citizen Smith
(1977-80), which lampooned a fictional organisation called The Tooting
Popular Front, consisting of six die-hard Marxist losers, and its deluded
dreams of achieving radical change. This is a favourite media theme -
pouring scorn on popular movements is an absolute must for mainstream
journalism. Thus Richard Beeston reported in The Times this week:
"Hugo Chavez's Latin American bandwagon descended on London yesterday,
briefly enlivening a dull Sunday in Camden with the sound of drums, the
cries of revolution and the waving of banners.
"At the start of his controversial two-day visit to London, the Venezuelan
President succeeded in attracting an eclectic group of supporters ranging
from elderly CND activists to young anti-globalisation campaigners, members
of the Socialist Workers' Party and even the odd Palestinian protester."
(Beeston, 'Chavez fails to paint the town red in Camden,' The Times, May 15,
2006)
This recalled the Observer's September 2002 account of what, at the time,
had been London's greatest anti-war march in a generation. Euan Ferguson
wrote:
"It was back to the old days, too, in terms of types. All the oldies and
goodies were there. The Socialist Workers' Party, leafleting outside Temple
Tube station by 11 am. ('In this edition: Noam Chomsky in Socialist
Worker!'). CND, and ex-Services CND. The Scottish Socialist Party.
'Scarborough Against War and Globalisation', which has a lovely ring of
optimism to it, recalling the famous Irish provincial leader column in 1939:
'Let Herr Hitler be warned, the eyes of the Skibereen Eagle are upon him.'
Many, many Muslim groups, and most containing women and children, although
some uneasy thoughts pass through your mind when you see a line of pretty
six-year-old black-clad Muslim toddlers walking ahead of the megaphone
chanting 'George Bush, we know you/Daddy was a killer too,' and singing
about Sharon and Hitler." (Ferguson, 'A big day out in Leftistan,' The
Observer, September 29, 2002)
The emphasis, again, was on the absurdity of a ragtag army of Citizen
Smith-style oddballs who imagined they could somehow make a difference to a
real world run by 'serious' people. The idea is that the public should roll
their eyes and shake their heads in embarrassment at such delusions - and
turn away.
Hidden far out of sight are the life and death issues motivating such
protests - in 2002 the marchers were, after all, attempting to prevent a war
that has since killed and mutilated hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
civilians. It is not inconceivable that if British and American journalists
like Ferguson had emphasised the desperate importance and urgency of the
anti-war protests, rather than sneering at them, those civilians might still
be alive today.
Similarly, the press has barely hinted at the unimaginable horror and
desperate hopes buried beneath the mocking of Chavez - namely, the suffering
of Latin American people under very real Western economic and military
violence. The Independent on Sunday managed this vague mention:
"Mr Morales was, the Venezuelan President said, a direct descendant of an
indigenous Latin American people, adding: 'These are oppressed people who
are rising. They are rising with peace, not weapons. Europe should listen to
that.'" (Stephen Castle and Raymond Whitaker, 'Chavez on tour,' Independent
on Sunday, May 14, 2006)
The tragedy out of which these people are arising, and how their hopes of a
better life have been systematically crushed by Western force in the past,
was of course not explored. The Guardian also managed a tiny reference to
the reality:
"His [Chavez's] unabashed opposition to US foreign policy, and the pressure
it has produced from Washington, tap into the deep vein of suspicion and
resentment that two centuries of US invasions, coups, and economic
domination have aroused in Latin America and the Caribbean." (Jonathan
Steele and Duncan Campbell, 'The world according to Chavez,' The Guardian,
May 16, 2006)
But that was it. As the Guardian writers know full well, these comments
appear in a context of almost complete public ignorance of just what the
United States has done to Latin America - a subject to which we will return
in Part 2.
In 2004, the American media watch site, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
(FAIR) reported that a search of major US newspapers turned up the phrase
"death squad" just five times in connection with former US president Ronald
Reagan in the days following his death in June 2004 - twice in commentaries
and twice in letters to the editor. Remarkably, only one news article
mentioned death squads as part of Reagan's legacy. (Media Advisory: 'Reagan:
Media Myth and Reality,' June 9, 2004, www.fair.org) As we have discussed
elsewhere, US-backed death squads brought hell to Latin America under
Reagan. (see our Media Alerts: 'Reagan - Visions Of The Damned':
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/04/040610_Reagan_Visions_1.HTM and
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/04/040615_Reagan_Visions_2.HTM.)
Quite simply the British and American press do not cover the West's mass
killing of Latin Americans.
Radical, Maverick, Firebrands - The Subliminal Smears
A Daily Telegraph comment piece continued the pan-media smearing of Chavez:
"Now the anticipation is over, and today, flush with six trillion dollars
worth of oil reserves, Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, flies in to fill
the despot-of-the-month slot at London mayor Ken Livingstone's lunch table."
(William Langley, 'Welcome to the El Presidente show,' The Daily Telegraph,
May 14, 2006)
The Independent on Sunday (IoS) wrote:
"An icon of the anti-globalisation movement, Mr Chavez's brand of aggressive
socialism is taken seriously because of his country's vast oil resources."
(Stephen Castle and Raymond Whitaker, 'Chavez on tour,' Independent on
Sunday, May 14, 2006)
We wait in vain for an IoS news report referring to Bush and Blair's "brand"
of "aggressive" and in fact "militant" capitalism - this would be biased
news reporting, after all. Likewise, the suggestion that Bush and Blair's
aggressive support for "democracy" is taken seriously only because of their
economic and military power.
The Observer noted that Chavez has a "growing regional profile", which is
"built on a mix of populist rhetoric and his country's oil wealth". The
report added that Chavez "has been publicly feuding with Bush, whom he has
likened to Adolf Hitler - with Tony Blair dismissed as 'the main ally of
Hitler.'" ('Chavez offers oil to Europe's poor,' The Observer, May 14, 2006)
In responding to similar comments in the Times, Julia Buxton of the
University of Bradford has been all but alone in providing some background:
"To place this statement in context, Chavez was compared to Adolf Hitler by
the US Secretary of State for Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, during a visit to
Paraguay. President Chavez rejected the comparison and countered that if any
individual were comparable to Hitler, it would be President Bush." (See
Buxton's excellent analysis here:
http://www.vicuk.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85&Itemid=29)
The Times' 'Pandora' diary column wrote:
"Ken Livingstone has invited the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, to lunch
at City Hall. Even by the London Mayor's standards, it's a provocative
gesture - Chavez has a controversial record on human rights - and several
guests have refused to attend."
(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6-2171200,00.html)
Channel 4 News asked of Chavez: "Is he a hero of the left or a villain in
disguise?"
For the media, of course, a "hero of the left" +is+ a "villian in disguise",
so viewers were in effect being asked if Chavez was a villain or a villain.
Like many other media, Channel 4 patronised the Venezuelan president as "a
global poster boy for the left". The same programme later asked if he was "a
hero of the left or a scoundrel of all democrats?"
In similar vein, Daniel Howden observed in the Independent:
"Not surprisingly for a man who divides the world, Hugo Chavez is greeted as
a saviour or a saboteur wherever he goes. The Venezuelan President seems
immune to nuance and perfectly able to reduce the world to Chavistas or to
Descualdos, the 'squalid ones' as his supporters dismiss those who try to
depose him." (Dowden, 'Hugo Chavez: Venezualean [sic] leader divides world
opinion. But who is he, and what is he up to in Britain?' The Independent,
May 13, 2006)
The reference to a lack of "nuance" is a coded smear with which regular
readers will be familiar. Chavez is in good company. Steve Crawshaw wrote in
the Independent: "Chomsky knows so much... but seems impervious to any idea
of nuance." (Crawshaw, 'Furious ideas with no room for nuance,' The
Independent, February 21, 2001)
The BBC's former director of news, Richard Sambrook, told the Hutton inquiry
that BBC journalist Andrew Gilligan had failed to appreciate the "nuances
and subtleties" of broadcast journalism. (Matt Wells, Richard Norton-Taylor
and Vikram Dodd, 'Gilligan left out in cold by BBC,' The Guardian, September
18, 2003)
Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow wrote in the Guardian of John Pilger:
"Some argue the ends justify [Pilger's] means, others that the world is a
more subtle place than he allows." (Snow, 'Still angry after all these
years,' The Guardian, February 25, 2001)
In 2002, Bill Hayton, a BBC World Service editor, advised us at Media Lens:
"If your language was more nuanced it would get a better reception." (Email
to Editors, November 16, 2002)
The Channel 4 programme cited above went on to describe the Iraqi cleric
Moqtadr al Sadr by his official media title: "the radical cleric Moqtadr al
Sadr". Likewise, the media invariably refer to "the militant group Hamas".
The media would of course never dream of referring to "radical prime
minister Tony Blair" or to "the militant Israeli Defence Force".
The reason was unconsciously expressed by Channel 4 news presenter Alex
Thomson in response to a Media Lens reader who had suggested, reasonably,
that "a terrorist is one who brings terror to another person". Thomson
responded:
"Your definition of a terrorist as one bringing terror is nonsensical as it
would encompass all military outfits from al Qaeda to the Royal Fusilliers."
(Forwarded to Media Lens, February 25, 2005)
It is inconceivable to the mainstream media that Western armies could be
responsible for terrorism, no matter how much terror they actually create.
Likewise, it is inconceivable that Western leaders could be described as
"militant" or "fundamentalist". This indicates that these adjectives are
smear words - they mean, approximately, 'bad'. More specifically, they mean
'a threat to Western interests,' which is why, by definition, they cannot be
used to refer +to+ the West.
The use and non-use of these words shepherd viewers and readers towards the
idea that leaders like Bush and Blair are reasonable, rational, respectable
figures who must be described with colourless, neutral language.
The deeper implication - all the more powerful because it is unstated,
almost subliminal - is that figures like Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales do not
merit balanced 'professional' media treatment - the rules do not apply to
them because they are beyond the pale.
Because almost all journalists repeat this bias - and because the public
imagine journalists are simply well-informed, independent observers who just
happen to reach the same conclusions on who is worthy of respect - the
impression given is that the media consensus is the only sane view in town.
Before we know it, we find ourselves accepting the corporate media view as
our own. If we see enough journalists smearing "maverick", "controversial",
"left-wing", "Gorgeous George" Galloway, we will likely find ourselves
responding: 'I can't stand that guy!' But how many of us will really know
why, beyond feeling that there is 'something about him I don't like'? And
how many of us will have reflected that, of all MPs, Galloway has at least
been uniquely honest in his opposition to the Iraq war?
As for that other "maverick Chavez" (Sunday Times, February 19, 2006), the
Financial Times noted that he was invited to London by Ken Livingstone:
"London's maverick mayor." (David Lehmann, 'Why we should bother about
Chavez and his politics,' May 15, 2006)
In Part 2 we will examine the realities of Western political, economic and
military violence in Latin America - realities that are consistently ignored
by the corporate media.
MEDIA LENS: Correcting for the distorted vision of the corporate media
May 18, 2006
MEDIA ALERT: RIDICULING CHAVEZ - THE MEDIA HIT THEIR STRIDE - PART 2
In Part 1 of this alert we showed how the mainstream media have been united
in depicting Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez as an extreme, absurd and
threatening figure. In essence, the public has been urged to consider Chavez
beyond the pale of respectable politics.
As John Pilger has observed, British media attacks "resemble uncannily those
of the privately owned Venezuelan television and press, which called for the
elected government to be overthrown". (Pilger, 'Chávez is a threat because
he offers the alternative of a decent society,' The Guardian, May 13, 2006;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1773908,00.html)
We focused mainly on news reports, skipping many of the more madcap comment
pieces. Aleksander Boyd, for example, wrote in the Times of how: "The
Venezuelan President aligns himself with dictators, human rights abusers and
notorious narcoterrorists." (Boyd, 'Guess who's coming to dinner with Red
Ken?,' The Times, May 9, 2006)
No surprise, then, to learn that in thrall to this monster: "Venezuela has
ceased to be a real democracy: it now exists instead in the murky twilight
world between democracy and dictatorship, where there is still a free press
and a nod to holding elections." (Ibid)
In fact Chavez is one of the world's most popular heads of state. Boyd has
been quoted and heard elsewhere - in The Sun and on BBC Radio 2, for
example. Julia Buxton of the University of Bradford responded in a letter to
the Times:
"Mr Boyd has been linked to threats of violence against people working and
writing on Venezuelan related issues for the past few years. He has also
organised disruptive protest actions that have undermined public security
and he has published libellous and inflammatory articles on Islam, Middle
Eastern and South American politics."
(http://www.vicuk.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85&Itemid=29)
It might be argued that media reporting simply reflects a dismal reality -
perhaps Chavez +is+ irresponsible. But in fact the current media smear
reveals more about power relations in Britain than it does about politics in
Venezuela. In 1992, Jeff Cohen of the US media watch site Fairness and
Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) described media coverage afforded to one
important Western ally:
"During that whole period when the United States was helping build up the
military and economic might of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the issue of his
human rights abuses was off the media agenda. There was this classic in the
New York Post, a tabloid in New York. After the [1990] crisis began, they
had a picture of Saddam Hussein patting the British kid on the head and
their banner headline was 'Child Abuser'. That was very important to us [at
FAIR] and very ironic, because Amnesty International and other human rights
groups had released studies in 1984 and 1985 which showed that Saddam
Hussein's regime regularly tortured children to get information about their
parents' views. That just didn't get the coverage.
"It shows one of the points FAIR has made constantly: that when a foreign
government is in favour with the United States, with the White House, its
human rights record is basically off the mainstream media agenda, and when
they do something that puts them out of favour with the US government, the
foreign government's human rights abuses are, all of a sudden, major news."
(Quoted, David Barsamian, Stenographers To Power, Common Courage Press,
1992, p.142)
In a review of press reporting on Iran under the mass murdering Shah - a
Western ally installed and armed by Britain and America - William A. Dorman
and Ehsan Omad noted:
"We have been unable to find a single example of a news and feature story in
the American mainstream press that uses the label 'dictator'." (Dorman and
Omad, 'Reporting Iran the Shah's Way,' Columbia Journalism Review,
January-February 1979)
British media performance is close to identical, as we have documented many
times.
Of the hundreds of media reports on Chavez in recent weeks, almost none have
depicted events in Venezuela as a fundamentally positive and urgently needed
attempt to improve the condition of impoverished people. In a rare
exception, John Pilger wrote in the Guardian:
"Mavis Mendez has seen, in her 95 years, a parade of governments preside
over the theft of tens of billions of dollars in oil spoils, much of it
flown to Miami, together with the steepest descent into poverty ever known
in Latin America; from 18% in 1980 to 65% in 1995, three years before Chávez
was elected. 'We didn't matter in a human sense,' she said. 'We lived and
died without real education and running water, and food we couldn't afford.
When we fell ill, the weakest died. In the east of the city, where the
mansions are, we were invisible, or we were feared. Now I can read and write
my name, and so much more; and whatever the rich and their media say, we
have planted the seeds of true democracy, and I am full of joy that I have
lived to witness it.'" (Pilger, op. cit)
Almost nothing of this has been reported elsewhere. Do the journalists of
our corporate press just not care about people like Mavis Mendez? Does it
not matter to them that Chavez is, as Pilger writes, "a threat, especially
to the United States... the threat of a good example in a continent where
the majority of humanity has long suffered a Washington-designed peonage"?
(Ibid)
In all the voluminous coverage, there has been close to zero analysis of why
so many Latin Americans living in resource-rich countries have been so poor
for so long. The role of the West in this catastrophe has been essentially
invisible. Instead, a remarkable leader in the Independent on Sunday
observed:
"Mr Chavez is an unabashed admirer of Fidel Castro, which gives his
attachment to democracy a temporary and improvised feel. As do the human
rights abuses of which the Venezuelan government is guilty.
"Most sinister of all, perhaps, is Mr Chavez's use of anti-US sentiment to
create an external threat in the classic gambit of the tyrant. As we
reported recently, he has formed a militia of ordinary Venezuelan citizens
to mobilise against the threat of an 'invasion' by unspecified enemies. That
is not the sane or balanced action of a committed democrat." (Leader, 'Why
Hugo Chavez is no hero,' Independent on Sunday, May 14, 2006)
Can it be that the media ingénues at the Independent on Sunday are
completely unaware of the reality of Latin American politics?
Killing Hope - Of Jackals And Economic Hit Men
In his book, Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man, John Perkins describes the
role he played in the West's devastation of the Third World for profit,
Latin America very much included. Perkins compares himself to the slave
traders of colonial times:
"I had been the heir of those slavers who had marched into African jungles
and hauled men and women off to waiting ships. Mine had been a more modern
approach, subtler - I never had to see the dying bodies, smell the rotting
flesh, or hear the screams of agony." (Perkins, Confessions Of An Economic
Hit Man, Ebury Press, 2005, p.148; http://www.johnperkins.org/)
In January 1971, Perkins was hired by American big business to forecast
economic growth in Third World countries. These forecasts were used to
justify massive international loans, which funded engineering and
construction projects, so funnelling money back to US corporations while
enriching a small Third World elite.
Perkins explains that his real task - rarely discussed but always understood
in high government and business circles - was to deliberately exaggerate
growth forecasts in countries like Peru, Ecuador, Indonesia and Saudi
Arabia. The goal was for these countries to +fail+ to achieve their inflated
targets and so be unable to repay their loans. The point being, as Perkins
writes, that Third World leaders would then "become ensnared in a web of
debt that ensures their loyalty". As a result, American interests "can draw
on them whenever we desire - to satisfy our political, economic, or military
needs. In turn, they bolster their political positions by bringing
industrial parks, power plants, and airports to their people. The owners of
US engineering and construction companies become fabulously wealthy". (Ibid,
p.xi)
The "needs" include military bases, votes at the UN, cheap access to oil and
other human and natural resources. Perkins describes this as a non-military
means for achieving "the most subtle and effective form of imperialism the
world has ever known". (Ibid, p.139)
Bankrupt debtor countries have thus been forced to spend much of their
national wealth simply on repaying these debts even as their people sicken
and die from malnutrition and poverty. For example, international banks
dominated by Washington loaned Ecuador billions of dollars from the 1970s
onwards so that it could hire engineering and construction firms to improve
life for the rich. In the space of thirty years, poverty grew from 50 to 60
per cent, under- or unemployment increased from 15 to 70 per cent, public
debt increased from $240 million to $16 billion, and the share of national
resources allocated to the poor fell from 20 per cent to 6 per cent.
Today, Ecuador is required to devote nearly 50 per cent of its national
budget to debt repayment - leaving almost no resources for millions of
citizens classified as "dangerously impoverished". Out of every $100 worth
of oil pumped from the Amazon, less than $3 goes to Ecuadorian people dying
from lack of food and potable water.
Perkins is clear that, waiting in the wings should the economic hit men
(EHMs) fail, are the real hit men - "the jackals". He writes of Jaime
Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama, who
both died in plane crashes:
"Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they
opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose
goal is global empire. We EHMs failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around,
and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always
right behind us, stepped in." (Ibid, p.ix)
Perkins writes of Roldós's death in May 1981:
"It had all the markings of a CIA-orchestrated assassination. I understood
that it had been executed so blatantly in order to send a message. The new
Reagan administration, complete with its fast-draw Hollywood cowboy image,
was the ideal vehicle for delivering such a message. The jackals were back,
and they wanted Omar Torrijos and everyone else who might consider joining
an anti-corporate crusade to know it." (Ibid, p.158)
Torrijos was killed just two months later. This is the likely fate that
awaits Chavez, Morales, and other Third World leaders currently being
ridiculed by the British press.
The last fifty years have seen a vast bloodbath as Washington has funnelled
money, weapons and supplies to client dictators and right-wing death squads
battling independent nationalism across Latin America. Britain's only
left-wing daily newspaper, the Morning Star - with a tiny circulation of
between 13,000-14,000 - is a lone voice describing some of these horrors. Dr
Francisco Dominguez, head of the Centre for Brazilian and Latin American
Studies at Middlesex University, writes:
"Military dictatorship, death squads, torture, assassination, economic
blockade, economic genocide, military intervention, wanton repression,
corruption and every other means intrinsic to capitalist and imperialist
'management techniques' has been utilised to secure the profits of primarily
US multinationals and the wealth of the privileged few. Mass unemployment
and mass poverty are just two extra means with which to obtain compliance
with the economic and political pillage of the continent." (Dominguez,
'Latin America takes centre stage,' Morning Star, November 22, 2005)
John Pilger adds:
"In the US media in the 1980s, the 'threat' of tiny Nicaragua was seriously
debated until it was crushed. Venezuela is clearly being 'softened up' for
something similar. A US army publication, Doctrine for Asymmetric War
against Venezuela, describes Chávez and the Bolivarian revolution as the
'largest threat since the Soviet Union and Communism'." (Pilger, op., cit)
Who benefits? The answer is provided by Professor William Domhoff of the
University of California at Santa Cruz in his study 'Wealth, Income, and
Power In the United States'. Domhoff reports that as of 2001, the top 1% of
US households owned 33.4% of all privately held wealth, and the next 19% had
51%, indicating that just 20% of the people owned 84%, leaving only 16% of
the wealth for the bottom 80%. In terms of financial wealth, the top 1% of
households had an even greater share: 39.7%.
In terms of types of financial wealth, the top 1 percent of households have
44.1% of all privately held stock, 58.0% of financial securities, and 57.3%
of business equity. The top 10% have 85% to 90% of stock, bonds, trust
funds, and business equity, and over 75% of non-home real estate. Domhoff
comments:
"Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of
income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the
United States of America." (G. William Domhoff, 'Wealth, Income, and Power
In The United States,' February 2006;
http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html)
These fabulously wealthy elites own politics, they own the media, they
control what the American people know, see and think. In Britain, the top 5%
of the British population own 45% of the nation's wealth - they also run
politics, the economy and the media in their own interests.
Naturally, then, elite journalists reflexively declare that the United
States and Britain are passionately intent on bringing democracy to the
world. A recent BBC radio talk show asked: "Are 100 British soldiers' lives
too high a price to pay for democracy in Iraq?" (BBC Radio Five Live)
This, despite the fact that the income ratio of the one-fifth of the world's
population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest
countries went from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1995.
Despite achieving bestseller status by word of mouth, Perkins' account has
been all but ignored by the mainstream British press since its publication
last year, receiving mentions in just four articles. In one of these, a
Sunday Times reviewer wrote:
"One measure of the success of an author is whether his book passes the
'laugh out loud' test. John Perkins's had me in stitches. The problem is, it
is not meant to." (David Charters, 'A miss not a hit,' Sunday Times, March
5, 2006)
Cynically ignoring the issues and evidence, Charters dismissed the book as
"ridiculous": "If it was not so laughable, it could be depressing." The book
has received similar treatment in the US press.
We should be under no illusions. The corporate media oppose Chavez because
the corporate system is viscerally opposed to policies that are unleashing
democratic hopes in Venezuela. It takes a moment's thought to understand
that greater democracy, equality, justice and popular empowerment are +not+
in the interests of a system built on exploitation. As John Perkins comments
of the media:
"Things are not as they appear... Our media is part of the corporatocracy.
The officers and directors who control nearly all our communications outlets
know their places; they are taught throughout life that one of their most
important jobs is to perpetuate, strengthen, and expand the system they have
inherited. They are very efficient at doing so, and when opposed, they can
be ruthless." (Perkins, op. cit, p.221)
As long as we support this corporate media system - as long as we hand over
our money for its product, for its phoney 'balance' and subliminal smears -
it will continue to subordinate the welfare of millions of human beings to
corporate greed.
SUGGESTED ACTION
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others. In writing letters to journalists, we strongly urge readers to
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