Freedom Is Slavery, Popular Support Is Authoritarianism
http://www.countercurrents.org/phelan260712.htm**<
http://www.countercurrents.org/phelan260712.htm>
*By Lizzie Phelan*
26 July, 2012
*Lizzie Phelan Blog*<
http://lizzie-phelan.blogspot.in/2012/07/freedom-is-slavery-popular-support-is.html>
*The Washington Post’s double-speak*
A recent article by *The Washington Post’s Juan
Forero*<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/2012/07/22/gJQAMdtD3W_story.html>entitled
Latin America’s new authoritarians is just the latest example of
how the imperialist’s media
machine<
http://www.countercurrents.org/print.html#>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* <
http://tortillaconsal.com/> 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<
http://www.countercurrents.org/print.html#>of the NATO
powers/imperialists who claim moral superiority, must
relentlessly be legitimised, through the imperialist’s media (including The
Washington Post) and entertainment industry 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 then ever.
And in one fell swoop Forero takes all of the popularly elected leaders of
sovereign, progressive <
http://www.countercurrents.org/print.html#> nations
on the continent down with the report on Chavez, with 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<
http://www.countercurrents.org/print.html#>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* <
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6955> 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 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*<
http://www.justiceforcolombia.org/about-colombia/#political-prisoners>and
has an eye-watering
*3.6 million internal refugees* <
http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e492ad6.html>.
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 are behind
bars* <
http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/incarceration-2010-06.pdf>and
that figure excludes tens of thousands of immigrants facing
deportation
and people awaiting sentencing. The US imprisons *five times
more*<
http://www.prisonstudies.org/info/worldbrief/wpb_stats.php?area=all&category=wb_poprate>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
21st 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*<
https://www.aca.org/government/population.asp>,
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.*<
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-04/10/c_13822287.htm>
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:
*<
http://internacional.elpais.com/internacional/2012/07/22/actualidad/1342974173_769291.html>“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*<
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR67yRQdOlo&feature=player_embedded>,
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 then 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 facts 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,* <
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/6451> 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 wests 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 lead to Libya’s suspension from the UN Human Rights
Council,*in violation of the UN’s own procedures
* <
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pU9IzXsALwo&feature=player_embedded>, 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
*<
http://www.hrw.org/news/2010/09/07/global-challenge>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.*<
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/magazine/09Sandlers-t.html?pagewanted=3&_r=3&ref=magazine>The
foundation is the child of Marion and Herb Sandler who themselves have
been key donors of 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” * <
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29595>or as
Black Agenda Report labelled HRW,* “Human Rights Warriors for
Empire”*<
http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/“human-rights”-warriors-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 NGO’s
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.
*Lizzie Phelan* is a freelance journalist specialising in the struggles of
peoples defending their countries against violations of their sovereignty.
Currently based in Nicaragua, she has reported from Syria and Libya for
Press TV and Russia Today as well as independently. In Libya she was there
until the NATO onslaught paved the way for the rebels to invade Tripoli.
She blogs at *
http://lizzie-phelan.blogspot.in*<
http://lizzie-phelan.blogspot.in/>/
LIZZIE PHELAN'S YOUTUBE CHANNELS:
*www.youtube.com/theliberatedzone*<
http://www.youtube.com/theliberatedzone>AND
*www.youtube.com/theliberatedzonetv*<
http://www.youtube.com/theliberatedzonetv>.
Visit her *blog* <
http://lizzie-phelan.blogspot.in/> to donate support her
work
Received on Sat Aug 04 2012 - 15:38:44 EDT
