7-09-08, 9:34 am
It isn't much of an exercise to deceiver the coded language of the imperialist. Blatant aggression is labeled “national defense.” Crippling trade agreements that force one-sided structural adjustments that breed dependency and hegemony are called “free trade.' When societies submit to the pressures of Western power, for instance the paramilitary-linked, anti-labor regime in Colombia, they are labeled as “free and democratic” societies, irregardless of their human rights record, but when popular movements, like that of the Venezuelan Bolivarian Revolution, take on the forces of capital and control they are derided with claims of authoritarianism.
For nearly a decade Hugo Chavez has helped Latin America begin to cast aside the chains of U.S. domination and reclaim the region's vast resources for the indigenous, the poor, and the working-class of Latin America who have for centuries bore the brunt of successive imperialist assaults on their homeland. Chavez, Morales, Ortega, Correa and the other leaders of Latin America's resurgent Left all maintain the support of large majorities in their respective nations, but have still drawn the ire of the American mainstream press, the White House and elites from opposition Democrats.
Chavez is particular has been targeted by the Western media for his denunciation of American aggression in the global South and his move to reclaim his country's resources from foreign capital. There is little to no mainstream press coverages of the deepening institutions of participatory democracy in Venezuela, the expansive “mission” programs for the poor, which have for example made literate more than 1.5 Venezuelan adults, or of Chavez's work to free hostages held by FARC and provide generous aid to millions of disadvantaged people across the world. Instead, the thrice democratically elected Chavez is labeled as an unstable “tin-pot dictator” and lumped into the same category as despots in North Korea and Iran.
The coverage blatantly ignores the fact that Chavez enjoys the support of around 70 percent of his country's population, while the American President's approval ratings hovers in the high 20s. As well as domestically, internationally it is Bush, and not Chavez that has a problem with legitimacy. It is America and not Venezuela, or Cuba for that matter, that is seen as the greatest threat to international peace in polls conducted in Europe and elsewhere across the world.
The corporate media coverage of Chavez has been fueled by branches of the U.S. government, which also had a hand in the 2002 coup that temporarily removed Chavez from power. The State Department has with merit accused Chavez of supporting FARC movement in Colombia and this month they have gone as far as to attempt to connect Venezuela with the Lebonese resistance group Hezbollah. According to a June 18th press release from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the U.S. government ordered the freezing of the assets of a Venezuelan diplomat and a Venezuelan travel agent, who are both of Lebanese descent. Hezbollah declared that the men were not members of their organization and Venezuelan officials noted that they had not heard any complaints from the Lebanese government on this matter. The U.S. seems determined to gather enough evidence in the face of reality, in order to designate Venezuela as a state-sponsor of “terror.”
Demonization campaigns spearheaded by the mainstream media and sponsored by the U.S. government are nothing new and they aren't merely irritating media exercises in misinformation, rather they are precursors to imperialist aggression. We have seen the result of the American campaign against the Sandinistas during the 1980s, the embargo against Cuba, the 1990s sanctions and subsequent invasion of Iraq, the coup of Aristide in Haiti and the efforts of the CIA in the past to subvert and overthrow Latin American reformers like Salvador Allende and Jacobo Arbenz-Guzman. History seems to be repeating itself with the concerted effort by the United States and the privileged classes in Bolivia and Ecuador who have been manufacturing successionist “movements” to undermine those progressive governments. In the case of Venezuela, the United States is doing everything in its power to paint Venezuela as a rogue nation.
Fortunately after generations of foreign agitation, it appears that the masses of Latin America and the world at large are ready to turn the corner and decide their own destines free of Wsashington or Brussels. --Bhaskar Sunkara is an American student activist and a member of the Young Democratic Socialists, he can be contacted at bhaskar.sunkara@gmail.com. http://theactivist.org
