|
and their supporters, and of course to the hostages themselves, as well as an opening that could possibly lead to an end of the 30 years Colombian civil war. And I think it's courageous of Chavez--a man who lives every day with a Bushite "bull's eye" on his back--to attempt it. He can lose in so many ways, including it being a trap of some kind. The Colombian fascists and rightwing paramilitaries, who hate Chavez and have plotted against his life, have been known to set up shootings where they falsify evidence (for instance, put bodies of innocent people they've targeted--local community organizers, union leaders--into Colombian military uniforms and claim that FARC killed them). They are a devious and vicious bunch, just like their sponsors in the White House.
I hope all goes well.
I would caution you about presuming that Chavez is a "loud mouth." I've been following the global corporate news monopoly campaign to demonize Chavez quite closely, and I am highly suspicious of everything they publish, what they choose to publish and how they frame it. They reiterate Bush State Department "talking points" reflexively--with no skepticism and little or no investigation. Sometimes the writing--and other editorial choices (what is covered as "news," titling of articles, who is quoted, etc.)--is blatantly prejudicial, and easy to spot; other times, they use subtler tactics that maybe only a professional writer would notice. For instance, when they first started the campaign to portray Chavez as a "dictator," I would often find this phrase, "...his critics say...", especially in AP articles (which are used in numerous publications here and worldwide--they are even now doing the news on Air America). And it would go like this: "His critics say that he is increasingly authoritarian." No attribution. No quotation marks. And no evidence to support it.
So I started looking around for the sources. (This was about two years ago.) I couldn't find anybody who had actually said this. I finally tracked it to an extremely rightwing Venezuelan Catholic Cardinal, who had spent his career in the Vatican finance office, and was fired in the fascist banking scandals of the 1980s (--one of the few people ever fired by the Vatican). He died about a month ago. He was quite old. But he was known for his railings against Chavez in the pulpit. HE said that Chavez is "increasingly authoritarian." And one of the reasons he may have said it was that Chavez wanted to reduce the GOVERNMENT subsidies that the Catholic Church receives.
There is no evidence that Chavez is authoritarian. None. Zilch. I have been following this closely as well. Every story in the corporate media, that has been trying to make this Cardinal's (and the Bush regime's) point, has been twisted to an almost unbelievable degree, to the point of just outright lying. They leave out important context. They leave out important facts. They make shit up. And the "talking point"--that Chavez is "authoritarian" or a "dictator"--simply evaporates, when you start investigating it.
So-o-o-o-o, when ANOTHER impression emerges from the corporate news monopoly illusion machine--this time that Chavez is a "loud mouth" or a bully or a thug or impolite--I question it to its very roots. And I disbelieve it upfront. What they are doing to Chavez, in the media, is so like what they did with Iraq and the WMDs, that we need to be very cautious about accepting even the bare facts (date, time, event) that they provide, and especially cautious about the subterranean messages--the image, the impression, the choices of what to cover, the selection of what to quote (and what to assert WITHOUT quotes--i.e., "his critics say").
We also need to ask ourselves--if some incident proves to be true (say, that Chavez DID interrupt Zapatero, and that Juan Carlos DID tell him to shut up--which occurred on tape, so maybe it happened) (--but do remember the Howard Dean "scream" tape that was doctored--just as a caution)--WHY Chavez was moved to interrupt him? Was it because he has no manners? Was it because he is a "loud mouth"? Or...speculation (but there is evidence that it might be the case), was he worried about a RECENT plot (right now) to destabilize Venezuela and topple its democratic government, and perhaps kill him, and the collusion of Spain, under Aznar, in the 2002 coup attempt, had never been condemned by the new socialist Spanish government? Were they colluding again? Had they, once again, been clued into a coup attempt, and they weren't telling Chavez and his government? Or, had their failure to condemn it encouraged the Bushites and their fascist allies in Venezuela to try again? Had their been an unresolved argument about this, somewhere else in the forum, which spilled over into the public meeting, perhaps?
Another possibility is that, in the four hour, closed door meeting that had preceded this public meeting, there had been a heated discussion about Nicaragua's proposal to form a new OAS with the U.S. not a member of it. Spain, as an EU country, is much more connected to institutions like the World Bank and EU banks and financial institutions. And Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina--the Bolivarian countries, and allies such as Brazil--are genuinely hurting the World Bank, for instance, by offering an alternative to the World Bank's ruinous loans to third world countries (--the Bank of the South). That could have been the context--a confrontation of the harmed countries, with Spain, who maybe was shilling for the World Bank? I don't know. I don't know what happened in the closed session.
My point is that corporate news monopolies like AP or Reuters, who have financial interests themselves at stake, and who are the propaganda arms of global corporate predators and their financial institutions, would, of course, play this Chavez/Juan Carlos exchange up as some sort of personality defect in Chavez. That fits with their baseless portrait of him as a "dictator." I've seen no reports of Chavez behaving this way in any other forum. He's a plebeian, for sure--a "man of the people"--who speaks bluntly. But there is no evidence that he is a megalomaniac, doesn't listen to others, or is generally impolite (interrupts people). I've read the contrary, that he listens well to other people.
So I strongly suspect that something else was going on, that corporate editors/reporters were told to cover up (possibly the thing about evicting the U.S. from the OAS--could have impact on the dollar), and they then promulgated the very superficial story about Chavez and Juan Carlos. 'Oh, that ever so polite, nice, democratic King' (who has never been elected to anything), vs. their phantom, the uppity, gun-toting leftist revolutionary, Castro-loving "dictator" (whom the Venezuelan people have elected to office three times, with ever-increasing margins, in highly transparent elections).
AP, Reuters, et al--and even the BBC--are into protecting global corporate predators and their dirty rotten schemes, and fascists like Bush and Aznar, who do their bidding. What Chavez was saying (and contradicting Zapatero about) was Aznar's part in the dirty rotten scheme to overthrow Venezuela's democracy and install a fascist coup. Consider the source--in all corporate news reports about Chavez, Venezuela and the South American left. Beware of the impressions they want to leave you with.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
