By
Lizzie Phelan:
A recent article by
The Washington Post’s Juan Forero, entitled
Latin America’s new authoritarians,
is just the latest example of how the imperialists’ media machine is
relentlessly engaged in media warfare against sovereign nations in the
South, in order to fertilise the ground for new or increased economic
and military aggression against them. Such psy-op campaigns also seek to
influence events on the ground in target nations, in this case in
Venezuela ahead of the October elections, where all signs point to
another resounding victory for current President Hugo Chávez Frías.
The article is part of the psychological wing of what Nicaraguan based website
tortilla con sal
terms the West’s “War on Humanity,” in order to convince the world of
the moral superiority of the minority (the Western elite/imperialists)
over the majority, so as to minimise the threat of a mass organised
effort to challenge that minority’s increasingly doomed attempts to
achieve total global hegemony.
Their morals, the minority argues through its vast propaganda network
which bombard the majority, are superior because they are universal and
therefore must be defended and achieved regardless of the cost,
including that of the destruction of entire nations, let alone millions
upon millions of lives, whose governments stand in the way, Libya being
the most recent example.
Inconvenient facts, like the unrivalled criminal record of the NATO
powers/imperialists who claim moral superiority, must relentlessly be
legitimised through the imperialist’s media (including
The Washington Post)
and the entertainment industry’s portrayal of NATO crimes as acts of
freedom, while acts of resistance and self-defence by their adversaries
which undermine that claim to moral superiority and the total hegemony
agenda, are presented as crimes against mankind.
And so looking through Forero’s lens, the sovereign nations of Latin
America, that are consolidating their freedom from western domination
through the continent's growing unification, are the emerging bogey man
that the US government should do something about.
His hook is
Human Rights Watch's recent onslaught against Venezuela in their report entitled
Tightening the Grip, which, as the name screams out, is a document arguing that Chavez has become more authoritarian than ever.
And in one fell swoop Forero takes all of the popularly elected
leaders of sovereign, progressive nations on the continent down with the
report on Chavez, with a focus on those with the greatest support:
Ecuador’s Rafael Correa and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega.
Forero/HRW and the evil Venezuelan judiciary straw-man
In Venezuela the crux of the article’s venom, in line with the
HRW
report, is aimed at the country’s judicial system. Neither the article
nor the report make mention of the Venezuelan government’s recently
published plan for the next six years which has a section entirely
devoted to the judicial system which outlines the government’s intention
to tackle that system’s “racist and classist character…and impunity”.
In the West, such admissions only come after lengthy, meek and costly
public inquiries. Those governments would never dream of acknowledging
the racism, classicism and rife impunity so blatant in their own systems
without, for example, scores of embarrassing racist murders and
sustained public pressure by victims’ families, as happened when a
public inquiry “found” that the British police were institutionally
racist in the wake of the scandalous trial of Stephen Lawrence’s
murderers.
To make his case Forero cites the cases of two former judges who have
accused the Venezuelan government of rigging the judicial system. Top
government officials, he says, would call ex-magistrate, Eladio Aponte
who has since sought exile in the US, and ask him for “favours”. Forero
conveniently fails to inform the reader that Aponte was dismissed from
his
post because he faces charges of accepting money from drugs traffickers
and providing now jailed infamous drugs barron Walid Makled with an
identity card. During Makled’s trial he alleged that he paid
approximately $70,000 to Aponte. Nor does the article mention that
Aponte first fled to Costa Rica to evade trial, from where he travelled
to the US in a US Drug Enforcement Administration plane, no less. Aponte
has denied the allegations but provided no evidence to support his
denial. The Venezuelan authorities have said they will present the
evidence of their charges against Aponte.
Forero devotes just one sentence to mentioning that former judge
Maria Lourdes Afiuni, is facing trial after having “infuriated Chavez
with one of her rulings”. If more than 23 words had been devoted to the
case of Afiuni than perhaps some facts would have got in the way of a
good story, as the old adage goes. Because Afiuni, after making a ruling
where no prosecutors were present (contrary to the law) that Eligio
Cedeño, a financier who was charged with embezzling millions of dollars
and playing a role in other huge cases of corruption, be set free, then
immediately actually escorted him out of the courtroom and saw him off
onto a motorcycle where he began his escape ending up finally in Miami.
Regardless of the legality of Afiuni’s ruling, she unilaterally violated
the normal procedure of sending the defendant to the court’s detention
facility while the administrative procedures regarding his release were
completed. It is that scandal of such grave proportions that infuriated
the Venezuelan public and government, and it is for that that Afiuni is
facing trial.
The
Washington Post includes a disclaimer paragraph
conceding that “pro-American” leaders, like in Colombia, have “weakened
democratic governance”. So Colombia is a weak democracy but Venezuela,
Nicaragua and Ecuador are authoritarian regimes? This is another total
inverse of the reality. Colombia, the continent’s (and one of the
world’s) top recipients of US military aid, boasting seven US military
bases, currently detains approximately
5,700 political prisoners and has an eye-watering
3.6 million internal refugees. Such a bleak situation is totally incomparable with the reality in non-US client states like those
The Washington Post and
HRW have focused their ire on.
And indeed the most abysmal picture globally in terms of domestic abuse of the judicial system is at the hands of the US regime.
Unlike in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Ecuador, in the US you can be detained indefinitely without charge.
One in every 48 men of working age is behind bars and that figure excludes tens of thousands of immigrants facing deportation and people awaiting sentencing. The US imprisons
five times more
people than Venezuela, six times more than Nicaragua and eight times
more than Ecuador. While, the US tops the list of global prison
population rates, the other three are far behind at number 98, 122 and
160 respectively.
Conditions inside US prisons are unrivalled, especially given that
some 2.3 million people squander in them. Sexual abuse rates are
staggering and corporations use inmates as cheap – to - free sources of
labour. This is 21
st century systematic slavery in the
“developed” world and such a dangerous phenomenon means that there is
actually a huge monetary incentive for the corporate elite, which pull
the strings of the US political system, to incarcerate more and more.
While Venezuela has pledged to tackle the racist character of its
judicial system, and has supported the creation of an array of groups of
African descent which will act as pressure groups to ensure that the
struggle against racism progresses, the US has historically cracked down
on African-American organizations that genuinely strive for such
progress. There is nowhere on this planet where the treatment of Black
people is worse than at the hands of the US regime, as exemplified by
the fact that of the US’ 2.3 million inmates,
46 per cent are Black, despite that Black people make up just 13 per cent of the US population.
But neither
The Washington Post or
HRW dedicate a report to scrutinising the status of human rights in the US as they do with their sexy “
Tightening the Grip” headline for Venezuela and mention of the US’ domestic abuses are buried in their annual world reports. That is left every year
for the Chinese to do.
While
HRW has been busying itself propagandising for the
fall of the Syrian government on the back of a bunch of shaky youtube
videos, purporting to show Syrian security forces using weapons against
peaceful protesters, regarding which head of the UN Human Rights
Commission investigating Syria,
Paulo Pinheiro said:
“YouTube isn't a reliable means of investigation... There is
manipulation of the media”; there is no way it would mount a campaign
for US regime change on the back of
this very real video, which only adds to the reams before it, of US police opening fire on unarmed protesters in California’s city of Anaheim.
Popular leader or repressive authoritarian?
Continuing with this drive to divert attention from who the greatest
enemies of humanity are, the undertone of Forero’s article is that the
Venezuelan masses who back Chavez are somehow not in full control of
their mental capacities, and this therefore is another sign of how the
power hungry Venezuelan government are hoodwinking its people.
And so he quotes one Venezuelan judge who talks about his loyalty to
Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution and Chavez, as an example of how
supporters of Chavez are everywhere, including in the country’s most
important institutions. The ridiculous logic seems to be that popularity
is dangerous because, with people everywhere who support the
government, there will be less people to stand in the way of its agenda,
regardless of whether that agenda is to improve the lot of all
Venezuelans as it has proven hitherto to have done.
Forero patronisingly portrays the masses of poor Venezuelans like
sheep under the spell of a “captivating, messianic leader,” as though
they support Chavez for no other reason than being brainwashed by his
charisma. Even more abhorrent, is the use of academic Javier Corrales,
who authored a book about Chavez with the overtly racist title
Dragon in the Tropics, as a source to add to the shrill of voices claiming that Chavez is abusing his popularity.
Never mind then that that popularity is a direct result of the fact
that since Chavez won his first election in 1999, that country which had
one of the world’s widest gaps between rich and poor has seen poverty
reduce
by more than 50 per cent,
illiteracy eradicated, tens of millions now able to access free health
care, millions more participating in higher education for free, the
creation of tens of thousands of communal councils that give the
population the opportunity to
participate in the political
system, the emergence of 200,000 cooperatives, the emergence of an array
of women’s, indigenous and as mentioned African descendant
organisations and much more. These are the reasons why, like Nicaragua’s
President Daniel Ortega, when Chavez speaks in open squares, something
which the imperialists could never dare to dream of, millions flock to
hear him speak. This is why they came again in their millions to defend
him from the failed US backed coup in 2002 and this is why they
repeatedly vote for him in their millions.
Far from consolidating power in few hands, both Nicaragua and
Venezuela are steadily moving to strengthen and expand the organs of
direct democracy. Venezuela’s communal council’s were cited above, while
in Nicaragua, the Citizen’s Power model continues to improve the ways
in which local communities can make decisions about how government money
is spent in their municipalities. The connection between that model and
the recent statistics which showed the FSLN had managed to halve
extreme poverty in the second poorest country in the Americas after
Haiti, is clear. It is local people who know best the needs of their
community and as such, it is them who decide where government investment
should be prioritised for huge infrastructure development, i.e. road,
house, roof and electricity development, and social initiatives which
have been targeted particularly at enabling Nicaragua’s poorest women to
become self-sufficient. The ruling FSLN party has also expanded the
number of local government representatives, while not increasing the
budget for their salaries. This is a move which ensures more balanced
representation and will cut the salary of civil servants, to improve the
monetary/social service incentive of such a position in favour of the
latter.
Addressing the material and spiritual needs of the poor and
marginalised majority, as the nations attacked by Forero have done and
are doing, is key to ensuring that they enjoy the conditions that enable
them to participate in democracy building. Meanwhile, in the US and
England, for example, the idea that citizens should be able to have more
say over policies that affect their local communities over and above
choosing from two or three parties that all represent the same corporate
interests every three or four years, which is really no say at all, is
unheard of.
In Libya, the West’s preferred style of “democracy” has arrived on
the back of white phosphorous and Tomahawk cruise missiles, at the
expense of the system of direct democracy that was being built there,
not to mention tens of thousands of lives, millions of livelihoods,
stability and a level of development that brought the Libyan people the
highest standard of living in Africa.
Unmasking the missionary
But
HRW has a track record of preferring to propagandise in
favour of destroying such progress in countries where the balance of
power is not in the favour of the NATO powers.
Since its founding in 1978 as
Helsinki Watch by the
Ford Foundation, HRW has consistently promoted humanitarian intervention in countries viewed as adversaries by the West. Most recently in Libya,
HRW was a signatory to the document that led to Libya’s suspension from the UN Human Rights Council,
in violation of the UN’s own procedures,
and the subsequent Security Council Resolutions that led to nine months
of airstrikes supported by approximately 40 NATO countries.
Amidst its long and dirty history,
HRW in 2010
announced that they would be accepting $100 million
from George Soros who is the honey-pot behind some of the US’ most
powerful think-tanks, lobby groups and NGOs and therefore enjoys
considerable clout in influencing the US’ imperialist foreign policy.
Others amongst
HRW’s long list of malignant backers include the Sandler Foundation which has given
approximately $30 million to the group.
The foundation is the child of Marion and Herb Sandler who themselves
have been key donors of the Democrats and helped found a number of
think-tanks and lobby groups, including the Center for American
Progress, also funded by Soros and headed by John Podesta, White House
chief of staff under President Clinton. It is therefore unsurprising
that the foundation has consistently promoted US meddling in the South
including supporting the KONY2012 saga that called for military
intervention in Uganda on an entirely bogus pretext.
In short, if you follow the money of the NATO countries vast network
of think-tanks, lobbyists, NGOs, newspapers, news websites, news
channels, music and film industry, that of
The Washington Post and
HRW
included, it can almost always be traced back to a corporate or
“philanthropic” elite that have a vested interested in promoting NATO
countries global hegemony agenda.
I have noticed some surprise from people who discover the role of organisations like
HRW and
Amnesty International.
The humanitarian-intervention discourse, however, is perhaps one of the
oldest tricks in Western empire’s book, but it has only evolved its
disguise. This
Global Research article was right to call western NGOs modern
“Missionaries of Empire” or as
Black Agenda Report labelled HRW,
“Human Rights Warriors for Empire”. Accounts of the first English presence in Africa, like those given in Chinua Achebe’s
Things Fall Apart,
show the insidious way in which missionaries, following the first carve
up of Africa at the Berlin Conference, would embed themselves in
African communities and prey on some points of tension as an opportunity
to promote the idea to minority sections of those communities that
their grievances with their community were examples of suffering of the
gravest degree, the cause of which was the moral backwardness of their
society and could be solved if they embraced the only correct moral
path, the English church. This splitting of the community meant that by
the time the disastrous consequences became clear to all, and true
suffering of the gravest degree felt, it was too late.
NGOs operate in much the same way today, facilitating imperial
designs which only bring war, instability and misery first to the
majority people’s of the South behind the mask of those people’s “human
rights”. It is a mask however that is being ripped off, first with the
call by ALBA for member countries to expel US AID and its
representatives, and then this week with Russian President Vladimir
Putin signing a bill that will make all NGOs that receive external
funding register as foreign agents, and most recently with Chavez
pulling Venezuela out of the OAS’ Inter-American Human Rights Court. The
OAS is of course another tool of Western domination of the region; a
body that is supposed to promote democracy is itself undemocratic and
continues to violate the majority will of its members to end the
criminal blockade on Cuba.
Chavez’ decision to withdraw, he said, came, “out of dignity, and we
accuse them before the world of being unfit to call themselves a human
rights group." It is not unheard of for such groups to be barred by
governments in the South from their countries when they face actual
military aggression. But the war against such sovereign countries begins
long before direct military action. It begins in articles such as
Forero’s.
July 26, 2012
