The Steady Stream of Lies about Venezuela or The Killers and Liars Prepare (tags)
"The fourth big lie is saved up to the end, and follows on that grand tradition of the great human rights abusers accusing others to deflect attention from themselves. Chavez is said to be “cultivating” regimes that are characterised by “rigged elections, media censorship, the criminalisation of dissent and leaders for life”. Not a touch of irony, as the death squads in Colombia murder trade unionists and civil leaders unchecked, as the Obama Administration pussyfoots around the coup regime in Honduras (which deposed a Chavez ally), as election fraud and bloody war rages in Afghanistan and as the US launches missile attacks on Pakistan. It can be tedious to document such lies. They are so common and, no sooner is one lot done than the next day’s lies appear – if not in The Economist then in the Washington Post, The Australian or The Times. These monopolies count on the vulnerable, who do not have alternate sources of information, who do not read history and are able to be swayed by crude and often racist agitation. In the bigger picture, this is a delegitimising process, organised by the private media monopolies which, in their hatred for the sort of popular democracy led by Chavez (as also in the past by Allende), are preparing the ground for coups, wars of intervention and conquest. It has been done before and – while these monopolies remain unchecked – it will be done again."
The Second Honduran Coup Came Today Because the First One Failed (tags)
"The timing of the elections set for November 29, 2009 is now a straight jacket, especially in the context of current confusion, the emergency decree... the complex media situation (an open and truly fair media being the sine qua non for an election of this significance), and the need for enough reconciliation to give confidence to the whole process." Facusse’s proposal is in effect on behalf of The Third Coup, or at least a trial balloon toward its attempt. But beyond its whacky proposals above, The Third Coup has an even more fatal flaw: It was developed in a back room by rich and powerful magnates, without so much a consulting, much less dialoging with, a single worker, or farmer, or student, much less their organizations that represent the great mass of the mobilized Honduran people. For it is their power from below that has prevented both malicious coups this year from triumphing. No regime - not any more - can hold on to power in Honduras unless it sufficiently satisfies the amalgam of social movements that are now popularly referred to as The Resistance. Furthermore, to attempt to reward Micheletti just two days after he bared his despotic teeth – in effect, betraying his other coup plotters in their lust for portraying this pustch as “not a coup” - with a lifetime unelected post in Congress, as Facusse’s proposal does, indicates a mindset so far removed from the realities demonstrated over the past summer, so profoundly out of touch with the overwhelming sentiment of the majority of his countrymen and women, that it offers a glass window into the mysterious mind of the oligarch, trying one more time to extract advantage over everybody else, even as his best made plans come crashing down all around him."