Xpost: Swiftboat on the Rocks 3: He's not a dictator?

[EFerrari]

Swiftboat on the Rocks 3: He’s not a dictator?

For anyone who hasn’t had time to keep up, the news is that the peaceful, progressive leader of Venezuela lost the vote on constitutional reforms in a transparent and orderly election. (Meanwhile, the ex-KGB violence prone leader of Russia stole an election and for some reason, there is no State Department concern over this. The Cold War must really be over!)

Why did the referendum in Venezuela garner tens of thousands of words in our press and barely a word about Russia even after it should have been a matter of simple research that Venezuela elections are clean but Russia’s are not?

On Friday, the New York Times printed the implication that the vote in Venezuela would not be monitored. I don’t know if they got that from State, but State was promulgating this falsehood because it appeared in other outlets such as the Chicago Tribune. Of course the election (held on cleaner systems than Florida has seen for a long, bad time) was monitored. The NAACP and the National Lawyers Guild were among the monitoring agencies. Yet, this “not monitored” meme was promulgated all over. In all fairness to the New York Times, they failed to cover Ohio in 2004 just as well.

Saturday, the Washington Post and the New York Times ran dueling hit pieces on Chavez. Between them, they compared him to every modern authoritarian except King Kong. That might have just been burn out. The hit pieces, as I tracked them about a month out from the election, went from being about one a week to one a day in the last week. That’s got to wear any writer worth their propaganda.

(The smear escalated to the point where they had to drag out an ex-wife, an ex-friend and a bono fide poor person. The bottom of that barrel must be very clean.)

Sunday, the English language press was treated to an OpEd by Donald Rumsfeld accusing Mr. Chavez of being a danger to democracy. This is the same Rumsfeld who said the problem with Abu Ghraib was digital cameras. I’m not sure why this person isn’t in custody for war crimes, and I’m sure the paper’s readership is wondering why a war criminal is allowed to propagandize on the editorial page. Or, perhaps, we aren’t. We’ve known too many Spaniards, to lift a phrase from the “Princess Bride”.

Whether or not the $8 million tax dollars that USAID sent to the opposition was effective or decisive is difficult to tell. The opposition handed out flyers claiming the referendum would make your children wards of the state. Untrue but most likely, frightening to working people. It may be more important for American citizens to understand that we paid for that disinformation ahead of a democratic election in Venezuela. Is this how we want our money to be spent? And, will we recognize the same tactics when they are deployed against our lawful elections, too? These are questions any American who values their vote might want to ask.

The controlling US government meme in the last week was “president for life” even though the referendum would grant Chavez no such power. But, it was repeated over and over in just about every major American media outlet. My own local Fox News outlet surprised me on Friday night by misreporting this story. This is a station that reports our local high school football game scores. I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never heard any local channel pronounce “Venezuela” before. That’s how thick the disinformation was over the weekend.

Whatever the back story is, and there is much good information to suggest a concerted effort to manipulate the vote in Venezuela, we need to attend to how the American media reported Venezuela for the last month. The misinformation was overwhelming and it accessed just about every level of government. It went out over national and local television outlets. There was a chorus of the willing in the print press.

If any of us believe our government will only use these tactics on Venezuela or in other countries and not domestically, we are making a very important mistake.

As for Mr. Chavez, his public image has only been burnished by his gracious response to the outcome of the vote and the world has been reminded that Venezuela is a vigorous democracy. I look forward to the time when the United States can enjoy a gracious leader and a vigorous democracy, too.

[donheld]

1. State = Slate?

or state dept?

[EFerrari]

3. State Dept was lying that the election wouldn't be monitored.

As if none of us could pick up a telephone and call and find out better!

[marmar]

2. "there is much good information to suggest a concerted effort to manipulate the vote in Venezuela"

It's happened before, and under less crazy, imperialistic administrations.

[EFerrari]

5. I just can't believe how naked it was this time.

Maybe it's just me, but, I don't remember the Haiti action being this naked, for example.

[Junkdrawer]

4. Chavez has 5 years to groom a successor ....

Any social movement that relies TOTALLY on a single personality is not worth a warm bucket of spit.

[EFerrari]

6. I agree. But by the same token, why is it incumbent on our State department

to interfere with foreign elections? Influence is one thing. But what our government did was just flat out dirty.

[Junkdrawer]

7. Maybe Chavez used it as a way of testing our election interference methods...

kind of like sending a drone over an enemy's radar network.

[EFerrari]

8. Seeing as how we got him kidnapped and nearly killed,

I wonder if he'd need to conduct that test.

I don't know. :shrug:

[Junkdrawer]

9. Apparently, he did extensive exit polls...

That would tell him WHERE any fraud took place...

WHO and WHY he knows already...

That leaves HOW...

[EFerrari]

10. I see. You really are talking about concrete ways to game an election.

Given how Venezuela votes, wouldn't that be pretty difficult?

[Junkdrawer]

11. With enough effort, ANY computerized system is open to fraud....

Even a system with VVPATs is vulnerable if voters don't review those "behind the glasss" tickets.

Most voters don't. And, AFAIR, that's the system they use in Venezuela

[EFerrari]

12. But they also do a huge audit.

You may be right but to my mind, their system is about as clean as you can have it. Open source, paper trail, significant audit AND monitoring. I wish we had the same here. :)

[Junkdrawer]

13. Yeah, well, we leave the combination to the safe on the table...

cookies, milk and keys to a getaway car....

[EFerrari]

15. So true. I hope we can hang onto California. They still haven't stopped

trying to grab it. That fight will get every bit as dirty as this last one in Venezuela.

[EFerrari]

14. Kick

[bridgit]

16. were reports that indicated student opposition being key to a defeat...

of the referendum wrong, or not reported correctly?

[EFerrari]

19. Hey, bridgit. Those reports tended to be skewed (as you have seen)

in a number of ways. The number of opposition students was inflated. The reporting tended to imply ALL STUDENTS were on the same side against Chavez which isn't true at all. And, none of those reports fessed up to the fact that they were covering a group organized by rich white kids.

I don't think the "student movement" was key, finally, to the defeat. But, it makes a good narrative when you print it. People think, oh yeah, I've heard of this happening before and they tend to give it legitimacy.

Now, it wouldn't surprise me if a real, democratically organized student opposition does come out of this. Because the rich white kids had to cross class and race lines to get numbers. Now, you've activated a different group and *that* one will be challenging their government and that's a good thing.

But as soon as this new phenomena really takes off, the oligarchy will start calling them Communist hippies and the tone of the stories will go from being positive to derisive. Watch. :)

[bridgit]

20. ah yes, then help us understand...if Chavez made it more possible for the...

lower classes, or has been documented extensively (the so-called upper class children of the 'oligarchs' being already represented in spades, or, USAID dollars as had been suggested :shrug:) by way of re-allocating petro, or whatever dollars, or euros for that matter; to access levels of higher education in Venesuala...

then when will there, if ever, come a time when, or may be entertained...that education itself has wrought such an end? knowledge being power and so forth...

imo, you do not need, or have to be the presumed spawn of some oligarchy, to understand the downside to matters that will have effected democratic principles detrimentally, yes?

or, no...

[EFerrari]

21. The tricky part is that at first, the oligarchy DID send their kids out

in their designer clothes to shill for them. (When was the last time you went to a march in designer heels? You can actually witness this in "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised". If you study the student protests, you can't help but notice that all the kids are white and very well dressed. Not your average student. So, I didn't assume, I looked at the thing, frame by frame.)

But then, other kids who are accessing higher education are jumping into the activity and on both sides.

That's what I meant when I said a real student movement may come out of this and, imho, that's a good thing.

[Time for change]

17. "It may be more important for American citizens to understand that we paid for that disinformation"

Yes indeed. That's an outrage for a so-called democracy. Unfortunately, our country has been doing that for a long time, at least under all Republican presidents since WW II.

Interesting the comment you made about the Cold War. Russia is no longer part of the Cold War because they're not Communist. The Cold War had much more to do with ideology IMO than it had to do with military threat. Venezueal is obviously no military threat to us. But they have an economic system and social policies that the conservative elites in our country find very threatening. If Chavez makes a success out of those policies in Venezuela they could spread to our country, and that is what all the concern is about.

With respect to the issue of "President for life", if the people are willing to keep on voting for him time after time, then why shouldn't he be president for life? FDR would have been president for life if he hadn't died... oh, wait a minute, he WAS president for life. The Republicans didn't want to see that ever happen again, and that's why they put through an amendment to our constitution with term limits for President and VP.

[EFerrari]

18. I don't know if I'm right but I've always suspected that the ideology

war against socialism and "Communism" was largely a cover for business deals among the global economic elites.

The Republicans really have a problem on their hands with respect to Putin. They've already claimed that St. Ronnie resolved that situation so they can't very well turn around and call him a thread. They've painted themselves into a corner -- for now, anyway.