Is Publishing Negative News an Act of Treason?

The last seven years of the Bush administration has taught us an important lesson in media manipulation. There was a time when the mere suggestion of WMDs in Iraq was faithfully reprinted from the NY Times to the San Diego Tribune.  Little was asked of the sources. We were in a war stance. The country pulled together.  We saw where that got us.

Today in Venezuela the government of Hugo Chavez is continually trying to make the case that the media which is critical of his actions is, in fact, planning a coup.  Recently a 36 hour long hostage siege at a bank in the city of Guárico was successfully defused with none of the 50 plus victims being hurt and the perpetrators captured.  This would have been a moment for the Interior Minister, Ramon Chacin, to demonstrate his crime fighting credentials through the calm recounting of the actions taken to secure these citizens from harm.  Instead he took the opportunity to rail against the "media oligarchy" of Globalvision, RCTV, CNN, accusing them and others of coup plotting. Why? Because they televised the drama live.  

This is not the exception to the rule in Venezuela. It is the rule. Another propagandist for the "beautiful" Revolution, Mario Silva, makes his living by supposedly uncovering plots being perpetrated against the regime.  He broadcasts from a cheap looking studio filled with images of the "heroes" of latinamerican revolutions from years past:  Fidel, Che, Marti, Chavez, etc. Recently he complained about news spots created by Globalvision which are maybe 30 seconds long and simply replay one of the governments latest expressions. One shows Chavez at the ALBA summit asking Bolivian president Evo Morales to please pass him some coca leaves, which he then proceeds to chew before the cameras. This is not, mind you, a sneaky scene showing a private moment between the two leaders.  It is a recording of a scene that Chavez clearly meant to broadcast to the world.  (See:  Mission Accomplished sign on aircraft carrier where Bush lands in his flight suit)  So they repeat the scene.  Why not?  

For Mr. Silva, however, this is a "subliminal" attempt to undermine the Revolution! What this clearly shows is that without the news blackout that Cuba "enjoys" it is not easy to claim all is well in the face of adverse facts. Stubborn facts. Facts that cannot be explained by any conspiracy. Facts which explain why Chavez currently has the lowest approval rating of his political career.  An approval rating that is, in fact, quite close to that of his nemesis, Mr. Danger, aka, George W. Bush. 

Chavez's Popularity Hits Rock Bottom: Only 21% Supports Government

Translated from Noticias24 (23/1/08)

Datanalisis pollster Luis Vicente Leon anticipated the trend last weekend and now a poll conducted by the firm Datos ("Facts") confirms it: Hugo Chavez's popularity is at its lowest point.  Only 21% of the population approves of the job his government is doing and confidence in the president himself has fallen to 30%.

According to a study undertaken by Suhelis Tejero and published today in El Universal, "confidence in president Hugo Chavez has fallen nine points in one year, according to polls conducted by the firm Datos, which show a decline from 39% in 2006 to a mere 30% of the population by the end of last year."

The director of Datos, Joseph Saade, highlights the fact that the "strategy of scapegoating " no longer functions for the president, explaining the decline in this indicator for 2007.

However, with respect to the job the government is doing, the results of the poll were even worse.  By the end of last year, confidence among Venezuelans in their government had fallen from the 35% registered in 2006 to a mere 21% approval rate.

Teodoro Petkoff (editor of TalCual) affirmed, in his editorial of last Monday, that "Chavez is in a free fall."

The Datos poll also made reference to the failed attempt to reform the constitution:  "26% of those polled considered that the worst of the proposed modifications to the Constitution was the proposal for unlimited terms, followed by changes to the Armed Forces, and those modifications affecting the character of private property."

El Orden y el Hombre Indispensable

Hay una teoría interesante dando vuelta por los blogs en EEUU de que a Bush nunca le intereso instalar un gobierno en Iraq que funcione. La lógica seria que un país que funciona ya no necesita la asistencia y la presencia militar de EEUU. De tal forma que el caos hace indispensable la continuidad de EEUU en Iraq y a consecuencia permita que se mantengan bases militares para proyectar fuerza en contra de Irán, Siria, et al. y también permite el control - naturalmente - del indispensable petróleo. 

Será que el hampa - al menos hasta cierto nivel - es estrategia chavista? Ya hemos visto como el contrabando de la leche se aprovecho para instalar fuerzas adicionales en la frontera con Colombia. La transferencia de la policía metropolitana de Caracas al gobierno federal también podría ser una excusa generada por el hampa para centralizar los poderes policiales en "anticipación" de futuros "disturbios" no tan criminales como manifestaciones políticas. 

Creo que a Chavez se tiene que dar por hecho que esta todos los días y todas las horas pensando en como puede mantenerse en el poder mas aya del 2012. Se hará el hombre "indispensable" por lograr el orden en el país? Parecería un chiste pensar en este momento que lo podría hacer pero no se puede negar que tiene el asesoramiento de uno de los países mas "pacificados" de Latinoamérica - Cuba. En el pensamiento izquierdista - mundialmente - se considera ilegitimo castigar los que roban para poder comer.  Pero, misteriosamente, se acepta el castigo contra enemigos políticos, como es el caso de Cuba.

Que alquimia doctrinaria se estará cocinando para convertir al pobre infeliz y al no tan pobre criminal sin escrúpulo en el nuevo enemigo de estado? Se abrió una brecha interesante con los buhoneros que se sienten "usados" por un Proceso que pidio su apoyo y ahora los traiciona. Ojo en desear un sistema de represión policial demasiado efectivo a manos de Chavez!

Two Wrongs Don't Make a Right

While Chavez broadcasts his support for the FARC to the four corners of the world, he consistently gets the same reply: they are terrorists. That is to say they engage in acts of violence against innocent civilians to advance their cause - whatever that may be at this post communist juncture in history. Chavez, interestingly enough, doesn't deny that they are committing acts of terrorism. He can't. After all he just went to the extremes of foolishness to make himself look the hero by getting the release of two hostages, Clara and Consuelo. 

What he argues instead, in a slight of hand that pays huge dividends, is that the biggest, "hyper" terrorist in the USA. This comment actually seams to generate a good deal of agreement, and this writer is not immune to its impact. The flaw, of course, in this "excuse" is that two wrongs don't make a right. The fact that tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed, maimed, displaced and abused in a stupid war promoted by a terrible president, does not excuse the FARC in a completely different part of the world from being the single greatest obstacle for peace in Colombia. 

Naturally, Chavez's attitude is familiar to all of us who can remember being kids or have kids. "Yes I broke those plates, but Jimmy broke the window." My sin is so much smaller as to be inconsequential next to his. 

But of course the real problem with this form of arguing is that it does work. And for this reason alone Bush should be impeached and made to clean cells at Guantanamo. The US has lost so much moral ground in the Iraqi adventure that it will be years if not decades before we can say: "what you did is wrong" with a clear conscience.

Why the Revolution Never Rests

El Hombre Nuevo (Che Guevara, 1965)

El revolucionario, motor ideológico de la revolución dentro de su partido, se consume en esa actividad ininterrumpida que no tiene más fin que la muerte, a menos que la construcción se logre en escala mundial. Si su afán de revolucionario se embota cuando las tareas más apremiantes se ven realizadas a escala local y se olvida el internacionalismo proletario, la revolución que dirige deja de ser una fuerza impulsora y se asume en una cómoda modorra, aprovechada por nuestros enemigos irreconciliables, el imperialismo, que gana terreno. El internacionalismo proletario es un deber pero también es una necesidad revolucionaria. Así educamos a nuestro pueblo.

The revolutionary, ideological engine of the revolution within his party, is consumed by his uninterrupted activity which has no other possible end than death, unless, that is, the project is completed on a global scale. If his revolutionary drive is satiated at the point when his most prized objectives are realized at the local level, and he forgets the international proletariate, the revolution which he has lead stops being a vital force and takes on the condition of a comfortable drowsiness which, in turn, leaves us vulnerable to our implacable enemy, the imperialists, who gain ground. For this reason the idea of a world proletariate is not only an obligation but a necessity. This is how we educate our people.

Gran Colombia? Gran Lio

Hablar como hizo recién, el presidente de Venezuela, ante la institución mas emblemática del poder político, la Asamblea Nacional, sobre su compromiso para lograr un futuro “Gran Colombia” como el antiguo que abarque el continente de mar a mar, es una gravísima señal de un proyecto expansionista. A lo mínimo, el gobierno Colombiano debería llamar a consultas a su embajador. En las implicaciones mas sencillas de este proyecto habrá que esperar que Chávez seguirá profundizando sus lazos con las FARC y tratara de movilizar un partido político en Colombia con afinidades “bolivarianas” como las entiende Chávez. Es un proyecto sumamente bélico en su seno que lo tapara con la insignia que “solo la revolución es camino de paz.”

A los millones de Venezolanos que han sufrido años de abusos institucionales por culpa de no seguir las locuras de Chávez, y los millones de chavistas que entregaron sus esperanzas de mejorar sus vidas cotidianas ahora mayoritariamente frustrados, se suman los millones de Colombianos que apoyan a Uribe por su compromiso a la integridad de su país, como nuevos victimas de un hombre que no tiene frenos sobre su carácter pugilista. Sin ir al hecho que Chávez explícitamente repudio el voto en su contra del 2 de diciembre, tenemos al frente un verdadero peligro internacional.

De nuevo se alzan las voces del que hacer? Habrá tiempo y condiciones para lograr un cambio democrático? Las elecciones de octubre cambiara el rumbo del presidente? Ya se vio lo poco que duro las tres Rs. Que tipo de contrapeso es suficiente ante semejante personaje? Que se puede esperar del Alto Mando que se vio servil ante las groserías emitida por Chávez en contra de la oposición.? Se puede esperar que ellos pongan freno al aprendiz de Fidel? Si a Fidel le queda poco tiempo de vida y a Chávez solo le motiva el expansionismo, que caldo nefasto se esta cocinando en estas dos mentes mesiánicas? En fin, estamos ante un fenómeno Cheney/Bush tropical.

En el mismo sentido que Bush fue corriendo a la guerra como un destino político para ocultar su falta de respuestas a los ataques del 11/9, Chávez corre a hacerse el campeón de la ultra izquierda para obviar el hecho que nada a mejorado en Venezuela. Pero la guerra con un vecino no es lo mismo que atropellar los intereses de la mitad de su población. Claro esta que empezara a hacer invenciones sobre planes de EE.UU. para combatirlo. La carta del victima es la mas tramposa pero efectiva de Chávez.

What the FARC is up?

"A Circus in the Colombian Jungle"
 by Carlos Alberto Montaner
 2001 – Firmaspress

This story is known only superficially. The communist narco-guerrillas known as the FARC, in concert with Hugo Chavez, manufactured a huge media circus in order to liberate three innocent captives held hostage in the Colombian jungles over the last several years. They intended to dominate the world’s headlines, but were preempted by other, more opportune, though equally sinister, terrorists who wrecked their party with the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. The publicity, naturally, will be significantly less. In any case, what where the objectives being pursued by the protagonists of this obscene spectacle based on exploiting the suffering of the victims and their families in Colombia?

Lets begin with Hugo Chavez

The Venezuelan president seeks to project his image and consolidate his status as the leader in a zone of influence. It fits part and parcel with his narcissistic psychosis, but it also responds to a particular strategy. He set up the operation as a collective political triumph. It was an opportunity to present himself at the head of a group of countries, which he proposes should adhere to his delirious plans of constructing an international political block dedicated to the hostile treatment of the Western World. Thus, he quickly asked of his allies that they designate representatives of a certain status that would demonstrate his power of assembly. Chavez, like all mafia godfathers, charges interest on whatever resources are loaned. His debtors, in some cases, are the thankful recipients of those electoral briefcases full of petrodollars that fly like comets throughout the region.

Argentina sent ex president Nestor Kirchner and foreign secretary Jorge Taina; Cuba, German Sanchez, ambassador in Caracas, and known by Venezuelans as the Viceroy, an able and hardened representative of the Cuban intelligence services; Ecuador picked Gustavo Larrea, ex Interior minister; Brazil, Marco Aurelio Garcia, a man who is close to both Lula and Castro; and Bolivia sent the vice minister Sacha Llorent. Together with these, somewhat disoriented, will travel the French ambassador Hadelin de la Tour-du-Pin, who will probably enjoy this picturesque excursion through the tropics and maybe even be convinced that he is the beatific agent of a charitable act, or perhaps a minor character in a Garcia Marquez novel.

For the FARC, the release of the two women and the child, born captive, assists them in six objectives:

*It allows them to demonstrate flexibility and improve their uncomfortable image as murderers and drugs traffickers.

*It obligates the hated government of Uribe to confer on them a certain legitimacy.

*The acceptance, if only provisionally, of “neutral zones.”

*The insertion, within the conflict, of international factors favorable to them.

*Lend support and please Hugo Chavez, their most valuable ally.

*And finally, perhaps take a step toward the tactic suggested by Chavez: give support to a candidate akin to their cause in the 2010 elections, a strategy recently approved by Raul Reyes, head of the FARC’s political arm. Prepare themselves, in sum, to realize at the polls what they have not achieved with four decades of violence. After that hypothetical victory would follow the now familiar script: a new Constitution and the progressive and total dis-articulation of the democratic / republican institutions of Colombia.

What no one can understand is what a person like Nicolas Sarkozky is doing in this inhosbitable region with such distasteful company. One would hope to see a more serious attitude from the president of France. He must know that the Council of the European Union has, for very good reasons, declared the FARC a terrorists organization. They are a sizable group, made up of thousands of members, dedicated to acts of extortion, drugs trafficking, kidnappings, and assassinations. Their explicit objective, to make matters worse, is to set up a collectivist madhouse, modeled after the soviets, once they occupy the Palace of Nariño. Where is the coherence of a diplomatic policy which only a few weeks ago warned of the dangerousness of Iran and today commits itself to the Colombian jungle at the hand of Ahmadinejad’s greatest ally in the world? How is it possible that the same France, which in Europe contributes loyally and efficiently to the prosecution of ETA, in Latin America naively falls prey to a dance performed to the tune played by Colombian narco-terrorists?

Why this blog

Recent events in Venezuela have made this country a bellwether for all of Latin America. Bolivia and Ecuador have followed her lead and Argentina and Brazil are increasingly within the same political orbit. Given her exceptional petroleum resources and the messianic aspirations of her president Hugo Chavez to integrate Latin America under the banner of an anti-imperialist (USA), revolutionary socialism, it is no wonder that conditions there are throwing off sparks. As in all politics, the Devil is in the detail, and it is often difficult to get up to speed on all that has happened in the last 9 years of Chavez's rule. There are several decent news sources and blogs on the subject, but with events far outpacing understanding, it appears useful to me to offer English translations of key opinion pieces and some useful background material as well. My bias is clearly not in favor of Chavez whom I consider to be at least as terrible a leader, if not so dangerous, as Mr. Bush.