Hugo Chavez | ukwatch.net

London Protesters Demand an End to US Coups

JamieSW — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:44:36 +0000

Scores of solidarity campaigners picketed the US embassy in London on Wednesday night before a huge rally at the National Union of Journalists head office to demand an end to US interference in Latin America.

Responding to ongoing coup attempts in Bolivia and Venezuela, NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear said that it was ironic that he was protesting outside the US embassy when its government had nationalised more of its economy in the last few days than Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had in the last decade.

“The US is standing up for privilege, for the interest of the few against the interest of the many and will go to any length to achieve it,” he stormed.

“It will go to the lengths that it did in Chile and will drown the revolution in blood if it gets the opportunity,” referring to the CIA-orchestrated coup against Salvadore Allende 35 years ago.

“But there is one big difference – we are prepared, we have learned the lessons and we are already organised.”

The 100-strong crowd chanted “No More Coups” and waved colourful solidarity banners as embassy workers left for the day.

Dozens of people made speeches in English and Spanish, with some making the point that, in the dying days of US President Bush’s regime, many people thought that he would attack Iran – yet it was clear that Latin America was the real target.

Loud cheers went up whenever speakers brought up the expulsion the US ambassador in Bolivia because of his links to coup-plotters and Venezuela doing the same in solidarity, with cries of “Yankee go home” filling Grosvenor Square.

At the NUJ headquarters, Bolivian ambassador Maria Beatriz Souviron explained how the traditional political system in Bolivia had been swept away with the election of Evo Morales.

“He has given people hope for the first time. There has not just been a change in who controls the state, but also a change in culture in a country that has been racist for so long.”

Bolivia Solidarity Campaign organiser Amancay Colque, who helped organise the actions with Hands Off Venezuela, brought harrowing news from the northern state of Pando, where the far-right governor threatened to split from Bolivia and had paid mercenaries to machine-gun rural workers loyal to Morales.

She explained how the elite was fuelling racism to try to divide Bolivians and that, in the right’s eastern stronghold of Santa Cruz, it was now impossible for an Aymara or Quechua indigenous Bolivian to walk down the street without being attacked.

John McDonnell MP pointed out that “what is happening is not a personal attack on Morales or Chavez but an attack on the seeds of socialism that they are spreading.

“What the US is terrified of is the prospect that socialism will catch light all across the Americas, so of course it has to go on the attack. But it is exactly for this moment that solidarity campaigns exist.”

Venezuelan charge d’affaires Felix Plasencia said that he was “honoured to stand with Bolivia as all Latin America struggles for dignity, sovereignty and independence. We have finally thrown off the US Monroe Doctrine that treated us as their ‘backyard’ for 200 years.

“The aim now is to extend this people’s power throughout Latin America and the solidarity shown to Bolivia as it fights back against counter-revolutionaries is a significant step in uniting our countries,” he added to great applause.

Lies, kidnapping and a mysterious laptop

JamieSW — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 23:19:17 +0000

Sometimes you hear a stray sentence on the news that makes you realise you have been lied to. Deliberately lied to; systematically lied to; lied to for a purpose. If you listened closely over the past few days, you could have heard one such sentence passing in the night-time of news.

As Ingrid Betancourt emerged after six-and-a-half years – sunken and shrivelled but radiant with courage – one of the first people she thanked was Hugo Chavez. What? If you follow the news coverage, you have been told that the Venezuelan President supports the Farc thugs who have been holding her hostage. He paid them $300m to keep killing and to buy uranium for a dirty bomb, in a rare break from dismantling democracy at home and dealing drugs. So how can this moment of dissonance be explained?

Yes: you have been lied to – about one of the most exciting and original experiments in economic redistribution and direct democracy anywhere on earth. And the reason is crude: crude oil. The ability of democracy and freedom to spread to poor countries may depend on whether we can unscramble these propaganda fictions.

Venezuela sits on one of the biggest pools of oil left anywhere. If you find yourself in this position, the rich governments of the world – the US and EU – ask one thing of you: pump the petrol and the profits our way, using our corporations. If you do that, we will whisk you up the Mall in a golden carriage, no matter what. The “King” of Saudi Arabia oversees a torturing tyranny where half the population – women – are placed under house arrest, and jihadis are pumped out by the dozen to attack us. It doesn’t matter. He gives us the oil, so we hold his hand and whisper sweet crude-nothings in his ear.

It has always been the same with Venezuela – until now. Back in 1908, the US government set up its ideal Venezuelan regime: a dictator who handed the oil over fast and so freely that he didn’t even bother to keep receipts, never mind ask for a cut. But in 1998 the Venezuelan people finally said “enough”. They elected Hugo Chavez. The President followed their democratic demands: he increased the share of oil profits taken by the state from a pitiful one per cent to 33 per cent. He used the money to build hospitals and schools and subsidised supermarkets in the tin-and-mud shanty towns where he grew up, and where most of his countrymen still live.

I can take you to any random barrio in the high hills that ring Caracas and show you the results. You will meet women like Francisca Moreno, a gap-toothed 76-year-old granny I found sitting in a tin shack, at the end of a long path across the mud made out of broken wooden planks. From her doorway she looked down on the shining white marble of Caracas’s rich district. “I went blind 15 years ago because of cataracts,” she explained, and in the old Venezuela people like her didn’t see doctors. “I am poor,” she said, “so that was that.” But she voted for Chavez. A free clinic appeared two years later in her barrio, and she was taken soon after for an operation that restored her sight. “Once I was blind, but now I see!” she said, laughing.

In 2003, two distinguished Wall Street consulting firms conducted the most detailed study so far of economic change under Chavez. They found that the poorest half of the country have seen their incomes soar by 130 per cent after inflation. Today, there are 19,571 primary care doctors – an increase by a factor of 10. When Chavez came to power, just 35 per cent of Venezuelans told Latinobarometro, the Gallup of Latin America, they were happy with how their democracy worked. Today it is 59 per cent, the second-highest in the hemisphere.

For the rich world’s governments – and especially for the oil companies, who pay for their political campaigns – this throws up a serious problem. We are addicted to oil. We need it. We crave it. And we want it on our terms. The last time I saw Chavez, he told me he would like to sell oil differently in the future: while poor countries should get it for $10 a barrel, rich countries should pay much more – perhaps towards $200. And he has said that if the rich countries keep intimidating the rest he will shift to selling to China instead. Start the sweating. But Western governments cannot simply say: “We want the oil, our corporations need the profits, so let’s smash the elected leaders standing in our way.” They know ordinary Americans and Europeans would gag.

So they had to invent lies. They come in waves, each one swelling as the last crashes into incredulity. First they announced Chavez was a dictator. This ignored that he came to power in a totally free and open election, the Venezuelan press remains uncensored and in total opposition to him, and he has just accepted losing a referendum to extend his term and will stand down in 2013.

When that tactic failed, the oil industry and the politicians they lubricate shifted strategy. They announced that Chavez was a supporter of Terrorism (it definitely has a capital T). The Farc is a Colombian guerrilla group that started in the 1960s as a peasant defence network, but soon the pigs began to look like farmers and they became a foul, kidnapping mafia. Where is the evidence Chavez funded them?

On 1 March, the Colombian government invaded Ecuador and blew up a Farc training camp. A few hours later, it announced it had found a pristine laptop in the rubble, and had already rummaged through the 39.5 million pages of Microsoft Word documents it contained to find cast-iron “proof” that Chavez was backing the Farc. Ingrid’s sister, Astrid Betancourt, says it is plainly fake. The camp had been totally burned to pieces and the computers had clearly, she says, been “in the hands of the Colombian government for a very long time”. Far from fuelling the guerrillas, Chavez has repeatedly pleaded with the Farc to disarm. He managed to negotiate the release of two high-profile hostages – hence Betancourt’s swift thanks. He said: “The time of guns has passed. Guerilla warfare is history.”

So what now? Now they claim he is a drug dealer, he funds Hezbollah, he is insane. Sometimes they even stumble on some of the real non-fiction reasons to criticise Chavez and use them as propaganda tools. (See our Open House blog later today for a discussion of this). As the world’s oil supplies dry up, the desire to control Venezuela’s pools will only increase. The US government is already funding separatist movements in Zulia province, along the border with Colombia, where Venezuela’s largest oilfields lie. They hope they can break away this whiter-skinned, anti-Chavez province and then drink deep of the petrol there.

Until we break our addiction to oil, our governments will always try to snatch petro-profits away from women like Francisca Moreno. And we – oil addicts all – will be tempted to ignore the strange, dissonant sentences we sometimes hear on the news and lie, blissed-out, in the lies.

BBC: Imperial Tool

Ellie Keen — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:48:12 +0000

At a time of growing public disenchantment with the major media, millions now rely on alternate sources. Many online and print ones are credible. One of the world’s most relied on is not – the BBC. It’s an imperial tool, as corrupted as its dominant counterparts, been around longer than all of them, now in it for profit, and it’s vital that people know who BBC represents and what it delivers.

It was close but not quite the world’s first broadcaster. Other European nations claim the distinction along with KDKA Pittsburgh as the oldest US one. BBC’s web site states: “The British Broadcasting Company Ltd (its original name) was formed in October 1922….and began broadcasting on November 14….By 1925 the BBC could be heard throughout most of the UK. (Its) biggest influence….was its general manager, John Reith (who) envisioned an independent British broadcaster able to educate, inform and entertain the whole nation, free from political interference and commercial pressure.”

That’s what BBC says. Here’s a different view from Media Lens. It’s an independent “UK-based media-watch project….offer(ing) authoritative criticism” reflecting “reality” that’s free from the corrupting influence of media corporations and the governments they support.

Its creators and editors (Davids Cromwell and Edwards) ask: “Can the BBC tell the truth….when its senior managers are appointed by the government” and will be fired if they step out of line and become too critical. It notes that nothing “fundamentally changed since BBC founder Lord Reith wrote the establishment: ‘They know they can trust us not to be really impartial.’ “ He didn’t disappoint, nor have his successors like current Director-General and Chairman of the Executive Board Mark Thompson along with Michael Lyons, Chairman, BBC Trust that replaced the Board of Governors on January 1, 2007 and oversees BBC operations.

On January 1, 1927, BBC was granted a Royal Charter, made a state-owned and funded corporation, still pretends to be quasi-autonomous, and changed its name to its present one – The British Broadcasting Corporation. Its first Charter ran for 10 years, succeeding ones were renewed for equal fixed length periods, BBC is in its ninth Charter period, and is perhaps more dominant, pervasive and corrupted than ever in an age of marketplace everything and space-age technology with which to operate.

It’s now the world’s largest broadcaster, has about 28,000 UK employees and a vast number of worldwide correspondents and support staff nearly everywhere or close enough to get there for breaking news. It’s government-funded from revenues UK residents pay monthly to operate their television receivers – currently around 22 US dollars, and it also has other growing income sources from its worldwide commercial operations supplementing its noncommercial ones at home.

Most important is how BBC functions, who it serves, and Media Lens’ editors explain it best and keep at it with regular updates. They argue that the entire mass media, including BBC, function as a “propaganda system for elite interests.” It’s especially true for topics mattering most – war and peace, “vast corporate criminality,” US-UK duplicity, and “threats to the very existence of human life.” They’re systematically “distorted, suppressed, marginalized or ignored” in a decades-long public trust betrayal by an organization claiming “honesty, integrity (is) what the BBC stands for (and it’s) free from political influence and commercial pressure.”

In fact, BBC abandoned those notions straight away, and a glaring example came during the 1926 General Strike. Its web site says it stood up against Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill who “urged the government to take over the BBC, but (general manager) Reith persuaded Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin that this would be against the national interest” it was sworn to serve.

Media Lens forthrightly corrects the record. Reith never embraced the public trust. He used BBC for propaganda, operated it as a strikebreaker, secretly wrote anti-union speeches for the Tories, and refused to give air time to worker representatives. It got BBC labeled the “British Falsehood Corporation,” and proved from inception it was a reliable business and government partner. It still is, of course, more than ever.

Consider BBC’s role during WW II when it became a de facto government agency, and throughout its existence job applicants have been vetted to be sure what side they’re on. Noted UK journalist John Pilger explains that independent-minded ones “were refused BBC posts (and still are) because they were not considered safe.”

Only “reliable” ones reported on the 1982 Falklands war, for example, that Margaret Thatcher staged to boost her low approval rating and improve her reelection chances. Leaked information later showed BBC executives ordered news coverage focused “primarily (on) government statements of policy” and to avoid impartiality considered “an unnecessary irritation.”

This has been BBC practice since inception – steadfastly pro-government and pro-business with UK residents getting no public service back for their automatic monthly billings to turn on their TVs – sort of like force-fed cable TV, whether or not they want it.

Back on BBC’s web site, it recounts its history by decades from the 1920s to the new millennium when post-9/11 controversies surfaced. BBC only cites one of them rather pathetically. This critique gives examples of its duplicity across the world.

Misreporting on Iraq – Deception over Truth

The controversy BBC mentioned was the so-called Hutton Inquiry into the death of Ministry of Defense weapons expert Dr. David Kelly. On July 18, 2003, reports were he committed suicide, but they were dubious at best. Here how BBC explained it: “a bitter row with Government” emerged after a “Today programme suggested that the Government ‘sexed up’ the case for war with Iraq in a dossier of evidence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. (BBC governors) backed the report, rejecting (PM) Tony Blair’s (demands) for a retraction.”

“The row escalated over the following weeks when editorial flaws became evident.” Then came Kelly’s “suicide.” It made daily headlines because he was the source of the BBC report. “The Hutton Inquiry followed, and on January 28, 2004 chairman Gavyn Davies resigned when Lord Hutton’s findings were published. The following day the remaining governors accepted the resignation of Director-General Greg Dyke.”

True to form, BBC suppressed the truth, so here’s what we know. David Kelly, as an insider, accused authorities of faking a claim of Iraq WMDs that could be unleashed in 45 minutes with devastating effects. He then mysteriously turned up dead (three days after appearing before a televised government committee) to assure he’d tell no more tales with potentially smoking-gun evidence for proof. He apparently had plenty.

What BBC and the Blair government suppressed, a Kelly Investigation Group (KIG) examined and revealed. Consider these facts:

— Kelly’s death was pronounced suicide without an autopsy;

— Lord Hutton was aging and never before chaired a public inquiry, let alone one this sensitive making daily headlines;

— no formal inquest was ordered and was subsumed into the Hutton Inquiry;

— evidence showed Kelly’s body was moved twice;

— a supposed knife, bottle of water, glasses, and cap reported by later witnesses weren’t seen by the first ones who found Kelly;

— hemorrhaging from a left wrist arterial wound was ruled the cause of death, but there was little blood to substantiate it; other suspicious findings also suggested a thorough independent investigation was warranted.

In fact, evidence became clear that the real agenda was cover-up. Key witnesses weren’t called to testify. An anesthesiologist specialist read two KIG accounts (of known facts) about Kelly’s death and concluded that “the whole ‘suicide’ story (was) phony in the extreme….He was clearly murdered.” Another surgeon confirmed that Kelly couldn’t have died of hemorrhage as reported. It’s impossible to bleed to death from that kind of arterial severing.

Three other doctors also examined evidence, commented, and concluded that Kelly didn’t commit suicide. The doctors and KIG then wrote an 11 page letter to the Coroner, cited their concerns in detail, and got no response. In a follow-up phone call, the Coroner said that he saw the police report and felt everything was in order.

In the meantime, the Hutton report came out and was leaked a day early to defuse a possible murder angle. Concurrently, the Coroner refused to reopen the investigation, the Hutton Inquiry was bogus, it never proved suicide and, in fact, was commissioned to suppress Blair government lies, whitewash the whole affair, and end it with considerable BBC help.

In this instance, things didn’t play out as BBC planned, thanks to correspondent Andrew Gilligan. On May 29, 2003, he delivered what became known as his “6:07 AM dispatch” and said his source (David Kelly) alleged that the government “sexed up” the September dossier with the 45 minute WMD claim knowing it was false. He was immediately reigned in on subsequent accounts, but the damage was done, and Gilligan upped the stakes in a June 1 Mail on Sunday article.

In it, he quoted Kelly blaming Alastair Campbell (Blair government’s 1997 – 2003 Director of Communications and Strategy) for embellishing the dossier to provide cause for war against Iraq. The fat was now in the fire with Kelly through Gilligan accusing the Blair government of lying and BBC having to find an out and get back to business as usual.

It wouldn’t be simple with an exposed Campbell diary entry revealing he intended to go after Gilligan and apparently Kelly and do whatever it took to nail them. It all played out for days with Campbell demanding an apology and retraction, BBC wanting it to go away, Kelly’s July death, and other Blair allies defending the government with threats about reviewing BBC’s Charter until it ended predictably and disgracefully.

BBC cut a deal. Saying they resigned in late January 2004, it fired Gilligan along with Chairman Gavyn Davies and Director-General Greg Dyke. Even they weren’t immune to dismissal at a time of an “aberrant” report that later proved true. For BBC, it was back to business as usual under new management supporting two illegal wars showing no signs of ending or BBC reporting truthfully about them.

From the start, it championed Tony Blair’s “moral case for war,” was a complicit cheerleader for it with the rest of the media, and found no fault with Washington and London’s blaming Iraq’s regime for what it didn’t cause or could do nothing to prevent. Instead, round the clock propaganda ignored the facts and barely hinted at western responsibility for the most appalling crimes of war and against humanity that continue every day.

It’s the way BBC reports on everything. Fiction substitutes for fact, news is carefully filtered, wars of aggression are called liberating ones, yet consider what former BBC political editor Andrew Marr wrote in his 2004 book on British journalism: Those in the trade “are employed to be studiously neutral, expressing little emotion and certainly no opinion; millions of people would say that news is the conveying of fact, and nothing more.”

Even worse (and most humiliating) was his on-air 2003 post-Iraq invasion comment that he’d like to erase: “I don’t think anybody (can dispute) Tony Blair. He said that they would be able to take Baghdad without a bloodbath, and that in the end the Iraqis would be celebrating. And on both these points he has been proved conclusively right. (Even) his critics (must) acknowledge that tonight he stands as a larger man and a stronger prime minister as a result.”

So much for truth and accuracy and a free and impartial BBC. It continues to call a puppet prime minister legitimate; an occupied country liberated; a pillaged free market paradise “democracy;” with millions dead, displaced and immiserated unreported like it never happened.

Supporting Aggression in Afghanistan

BBC was no better on Afghanistan and considered the war largely over when Kabul fell on November 13, 2001. The bombing continues, but it was yesterday’s news, and only Taliban “crimes” matter. Unmentioned was how John Pilger portrayed the country in his newest book “Freedom Next Time.” He called it more like a “moonscape” than a functioning nation and likely more abused and long-suffering than any other.

Contrast that description with BBC’s reporting that Afghanistan is now free from “fear, uncertainty and chaos” because the US and UK “act(ed) benignly; (their) humanitarian military assault is beneficial (but those) meddlesome (Taliban) are trying (to) undermin(e) our good work.” Unreported is what really lay behind the 9/11 attack and the price Afghans and Iraqis keep paying for it.

BBC’s Disturbing Balkan Wars Reporting

BBC’s shame is endless, and consider how it reported on the 1990s Balkan wars that evoked popular support on the right and left. Slobadon Milosevic was unfairly vilified for the West’s destruction of Yugoslavia. Things culminated disgracefully with a 1999 seventy-eight day NATO assault on Serbia. Its pretext was protecting Kosovo’s Albanian population, but its real aim was quite different – removing a head of state obstacle to controlling Central Europe, then advancing east to confront a few others.

Milosevic was arrested in April 2001, abducted from his home, shipped off to The Hague, hung out to dry when he got there, then silenced to prevent what he knew from coming out that would explain the conflict’s real aim and who the real criminals were.

The war’s pretext was a ruse, Kosovo is a Serbian province but in 1999 was stripped away. Ever since, it’s been a US-NATO occupied colony, denied its sovereignty, and run by three successive puppet prime ministers with known ties to organized crime and drugs trafficking. It’s also home to one of America’s largest military bases, Camp Bondsteel, and it’s no exaggeration saying the territory is more military base than a functioning political entity.

Then on February 17, 2008, during a special parliamentary session, Kosovo unilaterally declared its independence. It violated international law but got something more important – complicit western backing (outweighing a one-third EU nation block opposition). It also got one-sided BBC support. Its reporting took great care to ignore an illegal act, leave unmentioned that Kosovo is part of Serbia, or explain the UN’s (1999) Security Council Resolution 1244. It recognizes the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” and only permits Kosovo’s self-government as a Serbian province. No longer with plenty of BBC help making it possible.

Targeting Hugo Chavez and Assailing His Democratic Credentials

BBC misreports everywhere at one time or other, depending on breaking world events and the way power elitists view them. Consider Venezuela and how BBC reported on Chavez’s most dramatic two days in office and events preceding them. Its April 12, 2002 account disdained the truth and headlined “Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez (was) forced to resign by the country’s military. (His) three years in power (ended) after a three-day general strike….in which 11 people died….more than 80 others (were) injured,” and BBC suggested Chavez loyalists killed them. It reported “snipers opened fire on a crowd of more than 150,000 (and it) triggered a rebellion by the country’s military.”

During anti-Chavez demonstrations, “Mr. Chavez appeared on the state-run television denouncing the protest, (then BBC falsely reported corporate TV channels it called independent ones) were taken off the air by order of the government. (High-ranking) military officers rebell(ed) against Mr. Chavez. (He) finally quit after overnight talks with a delegation of generals at the Miraflores presidential palace.”

“BBC’s Adam Easton, in Caracas at the time, says there are noisy celebrations on the streets, (and former army general) Guaicaipuro Lameda said Mr. Chavez’s administration had been condemned because it began arming citizens’ committees (and) these armed groups….fired at opposition protesters.”

In another report, BBC was jubilant in quoting Venezuela’s corporate press. They welcomed Chavez’s ouster and called him an “autocrat,” “incompetent” and a “coward.” They accused him of “order(ing) his sharpshooters to open fire on innocent people (and) betray(ing his) country.”

BBC went along without a hint of dissent or a word of the truth, but where was BBC when a popular uprising and military support restored Chavez to office two days later? It quietly announced a “chastened….Chavez return(ed) to office after the collapse of the interim government….and pledged to make necessary changes.” In spite of vilifying him in the coup’s run-up, cheerleading it when it happened and calling it a resignation, BBC put on a brave face. It had to be painful saying: “The UK welcomed Mr. Chavez’s return to power, saying that any change of government should be achieved by democratic means.”

It’s hard imagining Caracas correspondents Greg Morsbach and James Ingham see it that way. Morsbach called the country a “left-wing haven” on the occasion of 100,000 people taking part in the 2006 World Social Forum in the capital. He said the city is “used to staging big events (opposing) ‘neo-liberal’ economic policies,” then couldn’t resist taking aim at Chavez. “Five hundred metres away from the (downtown) Hilton,” Morsbach noted, “homeless people scavenge in dustbins for what little food they can find.” He then quoted a man named Carlos “who spent the last three years sleeping rough on the streets” and felt Bolivarianism did nothing for him.

It’s done plenty for Venezuelans but Morsbach won’t report it. Under Chavez, social advances have been remarkable and consider two among many. According to Venezuela’s National Statistics Institute (INE), the country’s poverty rate (before Chavez) in 1997 was 60.94%. It dropped sharply under Bolarvarianism to a low of 45.38% in 2001, rose to 62.09% after the crippling 2002-03 oil management lockout, and then plummeted to a low of around 27% at year end 2007. In addition, unemployment dropped from 15% in 1997 to INE’s reported 6.2% in December 2007.

Morsbach also omitted how Chavez is tackling homelessness. He’s reducing it with programs like communal housing, drug treatment and providing modest stipends for the needy. His goal – “for there (not) to be a single child in the streets….not a single beggar in the street.” It’s working through Mission Negra Hipolita that guides the homeless to shelters and rehab centers. They provide medical and psychological care and pay homeless in them a modest amount in return for community service. No mention either compares Venezuela under Chavez to America under George Bush (and likely Britain under anyone) where no homeless programs exist, the problem is increasing, nothing is being done about it, and the topic is taboo in the media.

Instead in a BBC profile, Chavez is called “increasingly autocratic, revolutionary (and) combative.” He’s a man who’s “alienated and alarmed the country’s traditional political elite, as well as several foreign governments,” (and he) court(s) controversy (by) making high-profile visits to Cuba and Iraq” and more. He “allegedly flirt(s) with leftist rebels in Colombia and mak(es) a huge territorial claim on Guyana.”

The account then implies Chavez is to blame for “relations with Washington reach(ing) a new low (because he) accused (the Bush administration) of fighting terror with terror” post-9/11, and in a September 2006 UN General Assembly speech called the president “the devil.”

Chavez’s December 2007 constitutional reform referendum was also covered. It was defeated, the profile suggested controversial elements in it, but omitted explaining its objective – to deepen and broaden Venezuelan democracy, more greatly empower the people, provide them more social services, and make government more accountable to its citizens. Instead, BBC highlighted White House spokeswoman Dana Perino saying: Venezuelans “spoke their minds, and they voted against the reforms that Hugo Chavez had recommended and I think that bodes well for the country’s future and freedom and liberty.”

In another piece, Inghram took aim at the country’s “whirlwind of nationalisations, and threats to private companies (are) changing Venezuela’s economic climate and threaten to widen a tense social divide.” It’s part of Chavez’s “campaign to turn Venezuela into a socialist state” with suggestive innuendoes about what that implies, omitting its achievements, and reporting nothing about how business in the country is booming or that Chavez’s approach is pragmatic.

Instead, Inghram cites his critics saying “his plan is all about power” (and) bring(ing) no benefit to the nation” in lieu of letting business run it as their private fiefdom. It’s how they’ve always done it, Venezuelans were deeply impoverished as a result, and BBC loves taking aim at a leader who wants to change things for the better and is succeeding.

It refers to his “stepp(ing) up his radical revolution since being re-elected in December 2006.” Venezuela is “very divided” and its president “far too powerful (and) can rule by decree” – with no explanation of Venezuela’s Enabling Law, his limited authority under it, its expiration after 18 months, and that Venezuela’s (pre-Bolivarian) 1961 constitution gave comparable powers to four of the country’s past presidents.

BBC further assailed Chavez’s refusal to review one of RCTV’s operating licenses and accused him of limiting free expression. Unreported was the broadcaster’s tainted record, its lack of ethics or professional standards, and its lawless behavior. Specifically omitted was its leading role in instigating and supporting the aborted April 2002 coup and its subsequent complicity in the 2002-03 oil-management lockout and multi-billion dollar sabotage against state oil company PDVSA.

Despite it, RCTV got a minor slap on the wrist, lost only its VHF license, and it still operates freely on Venezuelan cable and satellite. Yet, if an American broadcaster was as lawless, it would be banned from operating, and its management (under US law) could be prosecuted for sedition or treason for instigating and aiding a coup d’etat against a sitting president. BBC ignored RCTV’s offense, assailed Hugo Chavez unjustifiably, and reported in its usual deferential to power way.

It falsely stated RCTV’s license wasn’t renewed because “it supported opposition candidates (and said) hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Caracas….some to celebrate, others to protest.” Unexplained was that pro-government supporters way outnumbered opponents, it’s the same every time, and they gather spontaneously for every public Chavez address. Also ignored is that opposition demonstrations are usually small and staged-for-media events so BBC and anti-Chavistas in the press can call them huge and a sign Chavez’s support is waning. As BBC put it this time: The situation “highlight(s), once again, how deeply divided Venezuela is” under its “controversial” president – who’s popular support is so considerable BBC won’t report it.

BBC’s War Against Mugabe

On April 4, The New York Times correspondent Michael Wines wrote what BBC often reports: “New Signs of Mugabe Crackdown in Zimbabwe.” It highlighted “police raids….against the main opposition party, foreign journalists (and) rais(ed) the specter of a broad crackdown (to keep) the country’s imperiled leaders in power.”

Below is what BBC reported the same day in one of its continuing inflammatory accounts in the wake of Zimbabwe’s March 29 presidential and parliamentary elections. It pitted the country’s African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) President Robert Mugage against two opponents – the misnamed Movement for Democratic Change’s (MDC) Morgan Tsvangirai (a western recruited stooge) and independent candidate Simba Makoni.

In its role as an unabashed Tsvangirai cheerleader, BBC headlined: “Mugabe’s ZANU-PF prepares for battle” after its parliamentary defeat – MDC winning 99 seats; ZANU-PF 97 (including an uncontested one); a breakaway MDC faction 10 seats and an independent, one, in Zimbabwe’s 210 constituencies with only 206 seats being contested; ZANU didn’t contest one seat, and three MDC candidates died in the run-up to the poll.

Results for the 60 (largely ceremonial) Senate seats were announced April 5 with ZANU-PF winning 30 and the combined opposition gaining the same number. In addition, ZANU-PF announced 16 parliamentary seats are being contested and ordered recounts for them that could change the electoral balance. Mugabe is also challenging the presidential tally, asked the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission (ZEC) to delay releasing it and wants it retabulated because of what he calls “errors and miscalculations.”

MDC officials called the move illegal, BBC seems eager to agree, and then went on the attack the way it always does against independent black republics. It can’t tolerate them, but it’s especially hostile to Zimbabwe. It’s the former Rhodesia that British-born South African businessman, politician and De Beers chief Cecil Rhodes founded shortly after Britain invaded in 1893 and conquered Matabeleland. UK soldiers and volunteers were given 6000 (stolen) acres of land and within a year controlled the area’s 10,000 most fertile square miles through a white supremacist land grab. They went further as well, confiscated cattle, and coerced the native Ndebele people into forced labor. Brits also exploited the Shonas, they rebelled, and a year later were crushed at the cost of 8000 African lives.

Decades of exploitation followed, a 1961 constitution was drafted to keep whites in power, Rhodesia declared its independence in 1965, but Britain intervened to protect white privilege. UN sanctions and guerrilla war followed, Southern Rhodesia declared itself a republic in 1970, then became the independent nation of Zimbabwe (the former Southern Rhodesia, then just Rhodesia in 1964) in April 1980 after 1979 elections created independent Zimbabwe Rhodesia.

Robert Mugabe was elected president, won overwhelmingly, remained the country’s leader for 28 years, and at age 84 ran again for another term on March 29. He’s called outspoken, controversial, and polarizing but for millions in Zimbabwe (and in Africa) he’s a hero of his nation’s liberation struggle against white supremacist rule.

America, Britain and other colonial powers, however, don’t view him that way, and therein lies today’s conflict. A racist UK can’t tolerate an independent black republic and uses its state-owned BBC to vilify Mugabe and target him for regime change in a pattern all too familiar.

In a close March 29 election, vote-rigging is suspected, results days later weren’t announced, and BBC accused ZANU-PF of knowing and concealing them as well as governing dictatorially. With no official totals, it stated “Mugabe….failed to pass the 50% barrier needed to avoid a second-round run-off.” It’s now been announced, by law must be held within 21 days of March 29 (by or before April 19), but AP reports “diplomats in Harare (the capital) and at the UN said Mugabe (wants) a 90 day delay to give security forces time to clamp down.”

BBC expects trouble, appears trying to incite it, and denounces Mugabe loyalists as hard-line, militant and known for their violence. In battle mode, correspondent Grant Ferret from Johannesburg (BBC’s banned from Zimbabwe because of its anti-Mugabe reporting) states: “Intimidation is….likely to be part of the second round. Offices used by the opposition were ransacked on Thursday night (April 3) (and) two foreign nationals (were) detained (for) violating the country’s media laws.” An NGO worker “promoting democracy” was also detained.

Correspondent Ian Pannell joins the assault. He stresses a crumbling economy, out-of-control inflation, people unable to cope and talking everywhere about “a struggle to make ends meet.” They “spend hours queuing at the bank or waiting in line at a bakery where lines stretch around the corners. Many shops have as many empty shelves as full ones,” Zimbabweans are suffering, and “80% of the workforce” has no regular job. People survive anyway they can, there’s “a thriving black market,” overseas remittances help, but “fields (are) without crops, shops without goods, petrol stations….low or empty, women at the side of the road begging for food, traders desperate for customers and hard currency.”

There’s no denying Zimbabwe is under duress, but BBC won’t explain why. It never reported that ever since Mugabe’s ZANU-PF ended white supremacist rule, he’s been vilified for being independent, redistributing white-owned farms, mostly (but not entirely) staying out of the IMF’s clutches, and waging a valiant struggle to prevent a return to an exploited past.

Doing it hasn’t been easy, however. It’s meant getting little or no outside aid, bending the rules, restraining civil liberties, banning hostile journalism like BBC’s, but up to now (most often) holding reasonably free and fair elections and winning every time. Despite Zimbabwe’s problems, Mugabe’s popular support has been strong, especially from the country’s war veterans who didn’t fight for freedom to hand it back to new colonial masters.

But it looks like that’s where Zimbabwe is heading. The March 29 election showed weakness. The opposition made it close and forced a runoff (unless a retabulated count shows otherwise). It controls the parliament (barring a retallied change) and has strong western support that smells blood. Behind the scenes, regime change is planned and this time may succeed. An 84 year old Mugabe’s time may be passing – if not now, soon.

Zimbabwe’s economy has collapsed, drought problems have been severe, food and fuel shortages are acute, 83% of the population lives on less than $2 a day, half the people are malnourished, more than 10% of children die before age five, and the country’s HIV/AIDS rate is the fourth highest in the world. In addition, average life expectancy plunged to 37.3 years, inflation is out of control, conditions are disastrous, and it was mostly engineered by 2002 western-imposed sanctions.

Fifteen EU member states and Australia support them plus America after passage of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 (ZIDERA). Its effect has been devastating on an already weakened economy. It cut off the country’s access to foreign capital and credit, denied its efforts to reschedule debt, froze financial and other assets of ZANU-PF officials and companies linked to them, and effectively brought the economy to its knees.

ZIDERA states that economic and other sanctions will be enforced until the US president certifies that the “rule of law has been restored in Zimbabwe, including respect for ownership and title to property….and an end to lawlessness.” Unmentioned is the Act’s real purpose – restoring white supremacist rule, exploiting the black majority and doing to Zimbabwe what’s happening throughout Africa and in nearly all other developing states.

If Mugabe goes, the IMF can swoop in with a promised $2 billion (renewable) aid package for a new MDC government with the usual strings attached – sweeping structural adjustments, privatizing everything, ending social services, mandating mass layoffs, crushing small local businesses, escalating poverty, and returning the country to its colonial past under new millennium management under a black stooge of a president to make it all look legitimate.

BBC has a role in this, and it’s been at it for decades. It’s waged a multi-year anti-Mugabe jihad and seems now to be going for broke. For days, broadcasts practically scream regime change. Reports are inflammatory, visibly one-sided, with correspondents saying (MDC’s) Tsvangirai won, election results are being withheld, no runoff is necessary, and when it’s held Mugabe will use violence to retain power.

On April 5, BBC quoted Tsvangirai accusing Mugabe of “preparing to go to war against the country’s people (and) deploying troops and armed militias to intimidate voters ahead of a possible runoff….thousands of army recruits are being recruited, militants are being rehabilitated and some few claiming to be war veterans are already on the warpath.”

Tsvangirai wants the courts to force officials to release the results, Zimbabwe’s High Court is hearing MDC’s petition, but earlier it was claimed “armed police prevented MDC lawyers” from petitioning the Court to get them. BBC quoted one of them saying “police had threatened to shoot them,” then quoted Tsvangirai again saying Zimbabwe’s central bank was printing money for bribes and government-financed violence and intimidation campaigns.

BBC also suggests that international intervention is needed “to prevent violence if a second round is held (because) violence and intimidation (have) been characteristic of past (Zimbabwe) elections.” It quotes another MDC spokesman saying ZANU-PF will “use a runoff to exact revenge….it’s a strategy for retribution.”

Its correspondent Peter Biles reports “the ruling party remains divided….many (want) a change of leadership, and believe under Mr. Mugabe, Zimbabwe has no future.” BBC hammers at this daily in a full-court press to force out Mugabe either willingly or with outside intervention, and now is the time.

A broadcaster is supposed to be neutral, fair and balanced and BBC states “Honesty and integrity (is) what (it) stands for.” BBC is dedicated to “educate (and) inform, free from political interference and commercial pressure.”

The US-based Society of Professional Journalists states in its Preamble that it’s the “duty of the journalist (to seek) truth and provid(e) a fair and comprehensive account of events and issues. (They must) strive to serve the public with thoroughness and honesty. Professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility….Seek truth and report it….honestly, fairly, courageously.”

In serving power against the public interest for 86 years, BBC fails on all counts.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM – 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests.

The Making of a Tyrant

Tim Holmes — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 13:17:49 +0000

Latin America is a region to which the British press normally pays little attention. Unlike the European Union, China and all Muslim countries, it does not menace the British way of life. Nor does it offer imperial nostalgia. Being full of military men with silly hats and twirly moustaches, and visited only by reckless teenagers on gap years, it is not to be taken seriously.

But occasionally the press stirs itself to look at Venezuela and particularly its president, Hugo Chávez. Last week, Chávez, who has won 11 national votes in nine years, narrowly lost a referendum on a new constitution which, among other things, would have abolished restrictions on how often presidents can stand for re-election. A victory would have brought Venezuela into line with, for example, France or – if you accept we now have quasi-presidents in Downing Street – Britain. “Venezuela rejects Chávez power grab,” barked the London Evening Standard as the news broke.

Chávez makes no bones about being a socialist. Since being elected in 1998, he has embarked on a programme of nationalisation, designed to ensure the country’s wealth, based mainly on oil, is distributed more equitably. As Seumas Milne, writing from Caracas, told Guardian readers last Thursday, he has cut poverty and illiteracy, expanded free healthcare, and raised pensions. He has also tried to break US hegemony over Latin America and he opposes “free trade” agreements that would allow US corporations to control large sectors of the Venezuelan economy.

With such disreputable views, Chávez can never be allowed an outing in the British media unless he is shepherded by adjectives. President Bush is simply President Bush. But Chávez is “controversial”, “maverick”, “demagogic”, “populist” (but not “popular”), “overbearing” and “authoritarian”. As the Medialens website has meticulously documented, he is portrayed as, at best, a clown or “a left-wing firebrand”.

More often, though international monitors have verified all elections as free and fair and there are no reports of Venezuelans being tortured or detained without trial, he is branded a tyrant. His “use of anti-US sentiment to create an external threat” (which, since the US backed an anti-Chávez coup in 2002 and bankrolls opposition movements, needs little creativity) was “the classic gambit of the tyrant” and, therefore, “most sinister”, the Independent on Sunday explained last year.

If anyone points out that Venezuela still has a free press and an active opposition, we are told that Chávez’s attachment to democracy has, to quote one Independent editorial, “a temporary and improvised feel”.

So improvised apparently that the Independent captioned one picture of Chávez last year as “the Venezuelan dictator”. Even the New Statesman, in a cover story headed “From hero to tyrant”, has described Chávez as “power-crazed”. The consistently hostile Sunday Times found a “political scientist” to say that Chávez planned “to introduce a system similar to Pol Pot”. The same paper, covering Naomi Campbell’s recent visit to Venezuela, compared celebrities who support him to Lenin’s “useful idiots” who visited Moscow to support the Soviet system.

The strongest evidence adduced for Chávez’s malign intentions was his decision to deny the privately owned RCTV a renewal of its terrestrial licence. Though the station could continue on satellite and cable (admittedly unavailable to most Venezuelans), this was widely presented in the British media as an outrageous suppression of dissent. Yet in the run-up to the 2002 coup – when Chávez was briefly ousted – the station cancelled normal programmes and incited people to join a general strike, march through the streets and topple the government. During their two days in power, the coup leaders thanked RCTV for its help. As the Venezuela Information Centre points out, the Broadcasting Code in Britain forbids material likely “to lead to disorder” and it is hard to imagine that if, say, Channel Five had done something similar, a British government would have waited five years to get it off air.

Chávez, like all political leaders, has many faults. Human rights groups express concerns about Venezuela, just as they do about recent government measures in Britain and the US. Chávez is clearly a centraliser by instinct – like most recent British prime ministers – and he has lost considerable support over the past year, even among once close allies. Inflation is high, and some foods scarce. That no doubt largely explains his loss of support. Such are the ups and downs of politics.

British newspapers probably think that, at least in their reporting, they present a fair account. They don’t. From most coverage, readers wouldn’t get the faintest idea about how Chávez has improved the education, health and prosperity of the poor, about the US’s record of supporting genuine dictators in Latin America or about the region’s long history of glaring social and racial inequalities. But they are always reminded of Chávez’s cheeky irreverence towards Bush and of the less liberal side of his rule.

The Sunday Telegraph, for its only pre-referendum comment, wheeled on the Tory MEP Daniel Hannan to warn that “an entire continent is sliding unremarked into dictatorship”. Since, to make such a judgment even vaguely plausible, Hannan had to include the centre-left leaders of Brazil, Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador, we can see how widely the definition of dictatorship is being stretched. It now denotes an absence not of popular consent but of corporate consent. What the press defends, in the language and tone of its Latin American coverage, is not democracy, but unrestrained free-market capitalism.