Top US general: Venezuela not a threat

[Peace Patriot]

17. The Venezuelan "threat" and Associated Pukes 'framing'...

The Associated Pukes is one of the worst offenders as to the corpo-fascist press and its decade-long propaganda campaign against Chavez. That's why I call them the Associated Pukes and it is sentences like this in their so-called 'news' stories that earned them that epithet:

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"Fraser was asked if he thought Venezuela's newly announced development of unmanned aerial vehicles and continued purchase of billions of dollars' worth of weaponry, including anti-aircraft missiles from Russia and other nations, did not present a danger to his country." -- Associated Pukes

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Notice, first of all, the passive tense of "Fraser was asked...". What really happened: Apropos of nothing, this propagandist (um...reporter) called up General Fraser from his/her hovel in the Watergate and tried to get him to say that Venezuela is a "threat" to the U.S. ('Hey, General! Billions and billions of dollars in communist weaponry...er, Putin weaponry...er Russian mafia weaponry...er something bad weaponry...'.) The General, of course, would be aware that Brazil spends far more money on weaponry than Venezuela, and, though U.S. generals are often a batable species, refused to be bated.

The passive tense is one of the Associated Pukes' cheaper tactics against Chavez. They use it here to make it seem as if everybody is asking this propaganda question, when, in fact, AP's own bosses--or the so-called reporter who is trying to kiss their asses--have designed the question to get a certain answer or to get a certain "talking point" into the "newsstream" (that Venezuela is "a threat"--whether the general thinks so or not).

Disgusting journalism. In truth, it is not journalism at all. What it reminds me most of is the Joe McCarthy red-baiting tactics of the 1950s. ('Is your wife not a a member of the communist organization, the Girl Scouts of America, General Fraser?' That sort of thing. 'Give us a line against Chavez, General, and we won't ask you that question.') And the shocking part of this is that it is not coming from an insane, foaming-at-the-mouth, 'anti-communist' demagogue like McCarthy; it is coming from a news organization, one of the biggest corpo-fascist news monopolies on earth! NOT as an editorial. As a NEWS ARTICLE.

IS Venezuela a "threat" to the U.S.? You bet it is--or we wouldn't have crap like this parading as journalism. But, by "his country" (was this not a "present a danger to his country"?)--i.e., by the "U.S."--this Associated Pukes propagandist doesn't mean the people of the U.S.; he or she means the transglobal corporations and banksters who are running the U.S. and who expect THEIR U.S. military to telegraph THEIR "talking points." The general wouldn't play along but they use him to push THEIR "talking point" ANYWAY.

The thing about corporate "talking points" is that they are not based on facts. Indeed, they are often contrary to the facts, and often deliberately so. They are commercials to brainwash you into "buying" something, whether a product or an idea.

It is not Venezuelan military purchases that threaten the transglobal corporations and banksters who rule over us. Venezuela's military purchases are quite normal for the region. It is Chavez's IDEAS that are the threat--and the ideas of those who elected him president of Venezuela by big margins, and the ideas of his allies such as Lula da Silva and his successor, Dilma Rousseff, in Brazil, and the people who elected them. The main idea that is so threatening is their "New Deal"-type government policies of spreading the wealth, of public services and works, of pouring resource revenues into education and other helps to the poor majority, of a "level playing field" in the business world (no domination by monstrous, transglobal monopolies), of maximum citizen participation in government and politics and of real democracy--ideas that are loathesome to "Wall Street" and the super-rich!

These ideas and policies ARE a "threat" to the "U.S." if you understand what the "U.S." really is to our corporate rulers and their employees in the corporate press. The "U.S." is not us. It is not our welfare. It is not our people. It is not our once-great democracy. The "U.S." is them--the execs and major investors in transglobal corporations and banks who have loyalty to no one.

THEY hijacked our military to steal Iraq's oil. They may yet hijack our military to steal Venezuela's. This U.S. general is either not going along with it, or is cagily following the lead of Leon Panetta (at the CIA and now at the Pentagon), who is implementing a different strategy than the Bush Junta for regaining "U.S." (transglobal corporate/bankster/ war profiteer) control of Latin America. The Bush Junta demonized and tried to "isolate" Chavez, quite uselessly, since Chavez's ideas are widespread in LatAm and are shared by many of its leaders. Panetta's policy seems to be to back off of this overt attack on Chavez and Venezuela's "New Deal" and to slowly pick off the weaker members of the new leftist coalition in LatAm--such as Honduras and Paraguay--and use them to get more U.S. military bases in the region and to further U.S. "free trade for the rich" inroads.

Further, Venezuela, Brazil and other countries with leftist governments (many) are in accord as to the real threat that the U.S. military and its corporate rulers pose to them. Brazil proposed a unified LatAm-wide defense against U.S. oil wars in LatAm. Panetta (and this U.S. General, speaking for him) may be trying to head off/undermine any effective, unified defense by downplaying their anti-Venezuela rhetoric--rhetoric and polices that only get LatAm's leaders' backs up. They don't want to see a unified defense and they don't want to see any more unified political action either. Their goal is "divide and conquer."