From time to time we see a lot of misinformation passed around by both sides of the American political machine pertaining to some foreign country or another. So much of it passes for gospel in the United States, but, as has been the case over and over again in U.S. history, what the American public thinks it knows and what the reality is are two very different things.
Hugo Chavez is a case in point.
Let's explore 4 myths about Hugo Chavez and see if we can bust them or not.
Myth 1: Chavez shut down a media outlet that spoke out against him.
Chavez allegedly "shut down" the TV station RCTV on May 27th, 2007. Four months later, even Democrats and progressives still believe this.
Here's how the myth goes:
Chavez has shut down all radio, TV and newspapers that criticize his presidency. He has pretty much banned free speech in Venezuela.
Here's the reality:
If CBS tried to do in America what RCTV did in Venezuela, they wouldn't be in business PERIOD. Yet RCTV still operates in Venezuela. Not one single media outlet has been shut down. Not even RCTV.
What Chavez DID do was decide not to renew RCTV's broadcast license that granted RCTV a monopoly over a section of the publicly-owned frequencies. This in spite of the fact that in April 2002 RCTV faked film footage to make it look like pro-Chavez gunmen were shooting down demonstrators on the streets of Caracas. This and other manipulations by the Venezuelan media helped provoke a military coup against the elected government.
To this day, RCTV can still broadcast on satellite and cable. But over the public airwaves? No company in any nation could do what they did and not get their public airwaves license revoked. At the MINIMUM.
Venezuelans to this day can watch, hear and read extremely harsh criticism of their government every day. The largest newpapers are all rabidly anti-Chavez. In fact, if anything, Venezuelans have a hard time escaping the Faux News outlets in their country and finding any reality-based media at all. Only in Venezuela they have names like Globovision and Venevision.
Which brings us to
Myth 2: Chavez ordered his supporters to fire on protestors on April 11, 2002.
Here's how the myth goes:
On April 11th, 2002, pro-Chavez supporters on the Puente Llaguno overpass fired upon and killed unarmed opposition demonstrators. Several opposition television stations, most notably the above mentioned RCTV, captured the shootings on camera and broadcast them across Venezuela. This caused outrage and created support for the coup. For this reason, Chavez has had all media outlets that criticize him shut down (ie, Myth 1).
Here's the reality:
Anti-Chavez commercial stations only showed a small part of the scene while claiming the pro-Chavez demonstrators were firing on unarmed people. This was not only slanted news coverage to create public support for the coup, but it was later exposed by an amateur cameraman who's own footage showed that the Chavez supporters were not firing at the demonstrators at all, since there were no demonstrators present on the street below, only an armored police vehicle that had fired upon the bridge. Witnesses at the scene reported that snipers had fired upon them from the windows of nearby buildings.
Opposition demonstrators DID die, though. They were farther down the street, well out of range of the small arms fire from the bridge and so could not have been hit by the Chavez supporters. Indeed, autopsy results showed they'd been shot from directly above, indicating snipers on rooftops had fired directly down into them to create the incident which the TV stations then dutifully reported. According to witnesses, some of these same snipers, who've never been identified but are suspected to belong to a radical right wing group allied with the opposition coup leaders, opened fire upon pro-Chavez demonstrators on the bridge, prompting them to return fire.
In fact, there's audio evidence that the opposition planned to create these deaths all along as part of their coup.
The CNN correspondent, Otto Neustaldt, was asked by the opposition leaders to videotape the pronouncement that asked for Chavez to resign. He was told at 11am, well before the protests got started, that, "We no longer know if there will be 20 officers who will rise up, but it will still be a significant or at least representative number, who will ask for Chavez’s resignation. Everything else will remain as planned. There will be a video, several deaths, and then the officers will come out and talk."
Several deaths. That was part of the plan all along. When the microwave equipment didn't arrive on time, Neustaldt suggested to the officers that perhaps they should do a trial run of their pronouncement, which he could record. They agreed and recorded the pronouncement. To Neustaldt’s surprise, the Vice-Admiral, with ten other high-ranking officers behind him, said that there have been several deaths in the city, when, at the time the pronouncement was being read, around 2pm, not a single death had happened yet.
Afterwards, two employees of a couple of anti-Chavez stations still operating in Venezuela (again, see Myth 1) admitted their stations were complicit in the coup.
Patricia Poleo, rabid opposition "journalist" (again, note those snarky little quotation marks) confesses that the commercial media all showed up at the presidential palace on April 12, the day after the coup, to receive instructions from the new "government" (again, note quotes) on how to slant their news. The order: no pro-Chavez anything. No word on the massive protests mobilized to bring Chavez back. No word on the fact that most of the military was not behind the rebel officers. Only pro-coup, pro-Carmona news allowed.
And when the coup was obviously falling apart like a well-ripened Roquefort cheese? Then they were under orders to show no news at all. Only movies and cartoons.
The people, in other words, had no right to be informed, only mindlessly "entertained"--if not propagandized and lied to at every turn.
Myth 3: Chavez stole the recall election.
Chavez was subjected to a referendum to oust him out of power and call new elections. The main stream America media and our politicians have been insinuating that something fishy went on despite Jimmy Carter's seal of approval over the integrity of the elections.
Here's how the myth goes:
Chavez had a consistent 40% of voters aggressively against him and should have not been able to defeat the opposition by more than 80% of the votes.
Chavez hand picked the CNE directive(government body that regulates and oversees the elections) ALL of them identified themselves with "the process" or "the revolution" as they call it. The opposition fought hard to get representatives on the CNE and they were granted a minority seat.
Come referendum day people were lining up to exercise their right to vote and all the polls gave the opposition a victory yet Chavez got 80% of the votes for the first time.
Here is the reality:
The exit polling that allegedly contradicted the election results was conducted by Penn, Schoen & Berland (PSB) and it contradicted 5 other exit polls held. Also PSB employed Sumate personnel and Sumate was an anti-Chaves NGO. Also, the results of the PSB polls went out hours before the polls were even closed.
So one has to take their exit polling with a grain of salt.
The above myth in its entirety was the brainchild of one Ricardo Hausmann, former chief economist at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). He was brought in at the request of Sumate. The IDB is in direct conflict with Chavez.
Clay Lowery, the U.S. Treasury Department's acting undersecretary for international affairs, argues that the U.S. plays a larger role than reflected in its aid figures. The United States, for instance, drove Inter-American Development Bank and World Bank debt relief deals totaling $7.5 billion over the past three years in Latin America, he said.
"Who is the biggest financier of the IDB? The United States. Who is the biggest financier of the World Bank? The United States is. We don't count those," Lowery said. "We're basically engaged on a multilevel, multi-prong approach."
Multi-prong approach. I like that. As in "fuck you in every hole approach."
The article then further expands on the U.S. and IDB's role in South America:
U.S. officials are taking their cue from the free eye surgeries and medical training that Chavez offers, says Adam Isacson of the Washington-based Center for International Policy, which tracks American aid and advocates international cooperation.
"They're trying to do things that are aimed in a small way at countering what Chavez is doing Chavez's much larger aid programs," he said.
His group calculates that nearly half of U.S. aid to the region goes to military and police programs. However, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson also has pointed to the U.S. government's work with the IDB to mobilize up to $200 million through private lenders to support small business loans.
Chavez gives free eye care and medical training, the U.S. gives money to support military dictatorships (how often does a S. American nation go to war with its neighbors? What do they NEED military money for? Oh, yeah, to keep leftists out of the drug trade, ie, squelch any revolutionaries from overthrowing any S. American dictatorships). And, of course, they give money to the IDB to give to S. Americans as LOANS. I think we all know by now how Debt Equals Money and how the financial scam of loan lending is a means to enslave, not assist, people.
How does that work out for the S. Americans?
When a Brazilian plastics factory was shuttered in 2003 by its indebted owners, hundreds of workers formed a cooperative. They appealed for help in a private meeting with Chavez, who offered subsidized raw materials in exchange for the technology to produce plastic homes in Venezuela. The factory soon hummed back to life.
When there's not money to be made "helping" the South Americans, you see a vast difference between what the U.S. and IDB is willing to do and what Chavez has done:
When floods hit Bolivia this year, the U.S. provided $1.5 million in a planeload of supplies and cash. Chavez promised 10 times more and sent in teams that helped victims for weeks. In all, Chavez's pledges to Bolivia total over $800 million, more than six times the U.S. commitment this year.
So now you know the relationship between the IDB, South America, the United States, and Hugo Chavez.
Chavez recent commitments in the region exceed those of the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. Each lent nearly $6 billion in 2006, but their influence has declined as nations repay their outstanding loans. Regional International Monetary Fund debts dropped from $49 billion in 2003 to just $694 million this year, largely due to early repayments, some of them financed by Chavez.
So of course the former chief economist of the IDB is going to claim elections fraud. But tell me, what makes an economist qualified to judge election integrity in the first place? I guess if he has ties to the very same corporations that are losing influence thanks to Chavez makes him so huh?
Evidently he isn't qualified because most experts say his conclusions are unlikely and that Chavez did, in fact, win the election by 80%. An audit by international observers found that the results were, in fact, legitimate. Said one auditor: "The type of check used in this audit of the electronic system doesn't leave us much doubt regarding the result"
Yet this myth persists today both in the American media and on the political stage as well as in the American publics psyche.
Myth 4: Chavez has given himself dictatorial powers, usurping his nations courts and legislature.
The above is a direct quote of none other than Markos Moulitsas Zúniga at his blog, the Daily Kos. I've already exploded this myth right here at Conceptual Guerilla. Here is the synopsis:
Here's how the myth goes: Chavez has seized dicatorial powers and bypassed congress and the courts.
Here's the reality:
ummm, about those "dictatorial powers"
It's their nations tradition to allow their president a period during which he has an incredible level of control. Chavez was given those same "dictatorial powers" by the government in his previous term as well. He didn't abuse them. They are temporary powers granted to every Venezuelan president. Why they do that I have no frickking clue, but no one claimed the capitalist presidents before him were "Dictatorial".
And let's not forget that he didn't "give himself" those powers, the congress did. As they've done before.
Jennifer McCoy, political science professor at Georgia State University, says it is not the first time that Venezuela's legislature has given such control to the president. She says Venezuela's 1961 constitution, which was replaced in 1999, also allowed the president to issue decrees.
"And of course, President Chavez had this power before in 2001, when he decreed 49 laws and that did lead to great upheaval and the attempted or the short-lived coup in 2002," she said.
Some of the laws imposed in 2001 included land reforms and higher taxes for foreign oil companies, which triggered a bitter struggle with opposition groups.
Yet just the other day on the Ed Schultz show I heard congresscritters claiming Chavez was a dictator and Ed went right along with spreading this false meme.
It's astonishing just how far and how effective their propaganda campaign has been to date.
Okay, not really astonishing.
UPDATE: And let one more myth be exploded. (Thanks to Lib Dem FoP for her excellent response.)
Myth 5: Hugo Chavez has a terrible record according to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Here's how the myth goes:
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have terrible things to say about Hugo Chavez and his governments rule of Venezuela.
Here's the reality:
The latest entry (March 2007) relates a success in that an investigation into the shooting of a education rights protester had been instigated as they had urged. The shooting appears to be linked to allegations of corruption against officials in one state in the country. No links are suggested to the central government or Chavez.
The latest Human Rights Watch entry relates to the non-renewal of the TV station's licence and was written by somebody in Washington. It is however worthwhile quoting from their 2006 overview.
Thousands of extrajudicial executions by police officers have been reported over the past several years, although the problem long predates the current administration. In August 2006, 24 soldiers and policemen were sentenced to up to 30 years in prison for the murder of three university students in June 2005. The agents had opened fire on the students’ car and then summarily executed two of the occupants when the car stopped. Such rapid prosecutions for police and army abuses are exceptional, however. In April 2006 Attorney General Isaías Rodríguez reported that 6,110 officials were implicated in alleged killings between 2000 and 2005, yet only 760 had been charged, and only 113 convicted.
Political Violence in Rural Areas
Land reform measures introduced by the Chávez administration have brought a wave of violence against peasant leaders and beneficiaries of the reform. According to a report by the national human rights ombudsman in May 2006, 54 peasants were killed and 21 were wounded between 1999 and 2006 because of their activities in defense of land claims, particularly after the Land and Agricultural Development Act entered into force in 2001. According to the ombudsman, contract killers hired by landowners appear to have been responsible for most of the killings. The nongovernmental human rights organization PROVEA (Program of Education and Action on Human Rights) reached similar conclusions, although it found that military and police units were also responsible for some abuses against peasants.
In other words, the Human Rights situation is far from idea but this cannot necessarily be laid at the feet of Chavez, indeed much of the rural killings are a result of peasants trying to assert land rights given to them by Chavez. Those organizing come from that same class who both organized the abortive coup and who have corruptly slipped money out of the county to set themselves up in the USA from where they snipe and promulgate anti-Chavez propaganda with the help of the CIA.
Thank you Lib Dem FoP for exploding yet another myth about Hugo Chavez.
