agitprop version 2.0

Why We Must Kill Hugo Chavez

Lally Weymouth of Newsweek Newspeak interviewed the Venezuelan president earlier this week. The interview is rather short yet insightful:

Why did you call the United States a terrorist state?
The country is one thing; we have lovely relations with the people—like in the Bronx [where Chavez paid a visit]. We have economic relations. We have a company [Citgo] that refines daily 800,000 barrels of oil... We have 14,000 gas stations in this country. We have sent major-league baseball players here. But the media is trying to make the American people see me as an enemy. What I said is that this U.S. administration—the current government—is a terrorist administration, not all U.S. governments.

Here's a nice loaded question:

Experts in Washington claim you are encouraging radical groups throughout Latin America, that you're helping the FARC in Colombia; Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua; Shafik Handal and the FMLN in El Salvador, and Evo Morales and the MAS in Bolivia. Are you?
Shafik is a great friend. We are together in this same revolutionary effort, of course. Daniel Ortega is a close friend, and I think he will be a candidate in the next election. Evo Morales is my friend, another great guy and an Indian leader. Do you want me to support the extreme right wing? I am a revolutionary. Latin America today is going to the left and not to the right.

According to Newspeak, you are a radical if you want to chart a course independent from U.S. hegemony and you believe that government should lift up all citizens, not just the oligarchs who've ruled your country for the past 200 years. If you are a left-wing party then you are radical. If you are a right-wing party then you are champions of democracy and freedom. It's as simple as that! The groups mentioned above by Newspeak are no more radical than the Bush regime is reactionary.

The truth is that Latin America is gradually embracing the left--policies that benefit their own people as opposed to private multinational conglomerates. No wonder Cold War dinosaur Ronald Dumsfeld has sent U.S. troops to Paraguay. What are they up to? Will the death squads be called Pat Robertson holy justice brigades?

Say what you want about Hugo Chavez but at least he was elected by a vast majority of his country unlike Emporer Nero Bush who stole the first election and then won the second election by scaring everyone to death.

hugo chavez venezuela

Peace Is Our Profession?

The excitement over North Korea's pledge to abandon its nuclear weapons programs was short lived. Today, the six party talks have hit a hurdle when Lil' Kim's government demanded a right to possess a civilian nuclear reactor:

The agreement, which came after a three-year stand-off over North Korea's nuclear ambitions, was hailed as an important breakthrough. However, in a statement broadcast on North Korean radio early on Tuesday morning local time, Pyongyang reiterated its "right to peaceful nuclear activities". It said the US "should not even dream" it would dismantle its nuclear arsenal until Washington had provided it with a light-water nuclear reactor. Soon afterwards, Vice-Foreign Minister Kim Kye-gwan told reporters that his nation was not prepared to make the first move. "They are telling us to give up everything, but there will be no such thing as giving it up first," he said.

I have the perfect solution! Donald Rumsfeld could sell them a civilian nuclear reactor. He already has experience selling nuclear reactors to North Korea considering his company did it between 1994 and 2000. Maybe he'd be kind enough to offer them a repeat customer discount. Remember this:

Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sat on the board of a company which three years ago sold two light water nuclear reactors to North Korea - a country he now regards as part of the "axis of evil" and which has been targeted for regime change by Washington because of its efforts to build nuclear weapons. Mr Rumsfeld was a non-executive director of ABB, a European engineering giant based in Zurich, when it won a $200m (£125m) contract to provide the design and key components for the reactors. The current defence secretary sat on the board from 1990 to 2001, earning $190,000 a year.

other Rummy/North Korea sources:

[Swissinfo/CommonDreams]   [Fortune]   [Counterpunch]

GOP: Making money off global catastrophe for 50+ years!

If the non-proliferation talks fail we could just nuke those commie bastards into pulverized kim chee. Congressman Tom Tancredo would definitely be game for such an operation. I bet Congressman Sam Johnson would volunteer to drop the bomb personally, Major T.J. 'King' Kong style.

See, only the American "can do" spirit can solve this mess.

Mmm...Beer

Oktoberfest fest starts early this year in Germany:

I'm getting thirsty already! According to Yahoo's photo captions, Oktoberfest is in September?! Then again, at the AGITPROP household, every weekend is Oktoberfest!

Girls in traditional Bavarian clothes toast with one-litre beer mugs during the opening day of the Oktoberfest in Munich September 17, 2005. Millions of beer drinkers from around the world will come to the Bavarian capital Munich for the world's biggest and most famous beer festival, the Oktoberfest. The 172st Oktoberfest lasts from September 17 until October 3. Some six million people are expected to visit 14 enormous tents, each capable of holding up to 10,000 people at a time, drinking some 5.5 million litres (1.453 million U.S. gallons) of beer in the process. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle

I've never been that fond of German culture, but I dig the traditional Bavarian clothes.

The Brits Do Censorship

Make Poverty History is now history:

Make Poverty History, the wide-ranging charity coalition that signed up a host of celebrities to star in a high-profile campaign before the G8 summit in Gleneagles, has been banned from advertising on television and radio. The media regulator Ofcom yesterday ruled that the "click" ads featuring people such as Kate Moss, Kylie Minogue and Brad Pitt, which received blanket coverage across all commercial broadcasters on March 31, constituted a political message and therefore fell foul of the 2003 Communications Act.

Take that Bono! You and your silly Africa-loving do-gooders will have to find another outlet for your charity.

If you readers are wondering what the "click" ads refer to, then try this . . . Click your fingers every three seconds. Each click signifies the death of child from poverty.

No wonder that was censored. It's just too real for television.

Catapulting The Propaganda Into Latin America

The last time I checked on our neighbors to the south, a left-wing government was inaugurated in Uruguay. Much has happened since then. The "pink tide" of socialism-lite has been spreading across the continent of South America as popular protests and indigenous movements have organized to resist neo-liberal policies of privatization. A regime in Ecuador was brought down by popular protests in April. Peasant revolts in Bolivia against the privatization of natural gas might even result in the election of the first indigenous president. Peru's president Alejandro Toledo has a 12% approval rating amidst mining strikes and the dissolving of the ruling cabinet.

Central America is a different story. With the passage of CAFTA, these nations are clearly in the pocket of Uncle Sam. They have learned the deadly consequences of charting their own course in the face of U.S. hegemony. In the 1980s President Reagan and the CIA sent death squads to terrorize people and organized the Contras which systematically wiped out political opposition as well as clergy members, women and children. I don't blame Central Americans for not wanting this oppression to be foisted upon them again. However, South America appears to be drifting further and further away from the WTO/neo-liberal economic model to a more socialist model of political economy. This begs the question . . . will U.S.-South America relations grow more antagonistic as the leftward trend grows in the continent?

Well, we already found a new villain down there and his name is Hugo Chavez. Donald "I Don't Do Diplomacy" Rumsfeld personally traveled to South America last week to warn nations about this new evildoer:

A visit by the U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, in the past week to South America felt like a throwback to the Cold War, when American officials saw their main job as bolstering the region's governments against leftist rebellions and Communist infiltration. During stops in Paraguay and Peru, Rumsfeld and his aides warned of what they consider troublemaking by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and Washington's old Cold War foe, President Fidel Castro of Cuba.

Why is Chavez an evildoer? Mainly because he opposes privatization and wants economic policies to benefit all people, not the privileged few.

Rumsfeld's goal in Peru and in Paraguay earlier was to stitch together support for isolating Chávez, who has become bitterly anti-Washington since the Bush administration tacitly supported a coup that briefly ousted him in 2002. But in some ways the visit has served as a reminder of how resistant Latin America is to U.S. pressure.

Hmm, I would be pretty anti-Washington if the United States sponsored a coup against my democratically elected regime. Look, Chavez ain't the greatest president around, but I admire him for surviving the 2002 U.S.-sponsored coup attempt as well as his U.S.-funded 2004 recall election. Oddly enough, the CSM notes that the United States has sold Venezuela weapons, tear gas, and other riot-control equipment even though Chavez is an evildoer. Maybe these items are intended for future coup plotters in the military.

Even the Christian Taliban has jumped on the anti-Chavez bandwagon. Pat Robertson, who last week blamed gays for abortion, evoked the Monroe Doctrine and argued that the United States should assassinate President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. The Heretik has the lowdown on this new-found assassin for Christ. But, back to Rumsfeld--the T. Rex of Cold War dinosaurs. I bet he would just love to see right-wing military dictatorships pop up all over Latin America. Hell, he was around in the Nixon White House when Kissinger and the CIA installed Augusto Pinochet in Chile.

latin america south america donald rumsfeld hugo chavez venezuela

War On Terror Spreads To South America

                        

It appears that the US military will have a new staging ground from which to launch operations in South America. A contingent of 500 U.S. troops arrived in Paraguay on July 1st with planes, weapons, equipment and ammunition. Thirteen more contingents are scheduled to arrive to conduct military operations. Maybe that's why paranoid Castro-wannabe President Hugo Chavez thinks the US is going to launch on attack on Venezuela.       

Continue reading my post US Troops Arrive in Paraguay currently up at The Uncapitalist.

technorati: paraguay war on terror

All Hail House of Saud

CNN: Saudi King Fahd is dead. Let us now welcome King Abdullah.

Bush: Hey Abdoo, You won't care if we nuke Iran will ya?

Abdullah: Nah, as long as you keep letting us fund terrorists and suicide bombers . . .

Forgotten Places

      

The mainstream media (MSM) creates and defines our reality. If we see a story on TV, then it must be real and it must be important.  The media pundits and talking heads will debate these stories thus elevating them to prominence within our national discourse. But what about the stories that don't make it to television or print media? Many stories are forgotten simply because the media chooses not to cover them. In their failure to cover such stories, thousands of lives are thrown into the dustbin of history while media monopolies profit from their info-tainment programming.

In Nicholas Kristof's column All Ears for Tom Cruise, All Eyes on Brad Pitt, he lambastes the media (including his own "liberal" New York Times) for failing to give any attention to the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan:

If only Michael Jackson's trial had been held in Darfur. Last month, CNN, Fox News, NBC, MSNBC, ABC and CBS collectively ran 55 times as many stories about Michael Jackson as they ran about genocide in Darfur.

The BBC has shown that outstanding television coverage of Darfur is possible. And, incredibly, mtvU (the MTV channel aimed at universities) has covered Darfur more seriously than any network or cable station. When MTV dispatches a crew to cover genocide and NBC doesn't, then we in journalism need to hang our heads.

So while we have every right to criticize Mr. Bush for his passivity, I hope that he criticizes us back. We've behaved as disgracefully as he has.

So far in 2005, the stories that have received 24-hour MSM coverage have included a dying brain-dead woman, a living brain-dead woman, an exonerated child molestor, and the dying and death of a Polish hero. If the media is so "liberal" as most conservatives claim, then why doesn't the media focus more on widespread issues of human rights and human suffering--typical points of liberal fascination--rather than sensational tales of personal drama?

I think our culture has a strong strain of sadism. The media covers stories about sensational violence which serve as pure entertainment value. Here in Southern California the local news will devote hours on end to police car chases that end in bloody shoot-outs. But when it comes to real violence in the world that humans could stop or prevent, the media and the public tend to look the other way. The media monopolies choose to either promote violence (cheerleading for the Iraq War) or simply ignore it (Darfur genocide, chaos in Haiti, oppression in Burma, etc).

In Darfur, about 400,000 black Sudanese have been systematically killed by government-sanctioned Arab "Janjaweed" militias. The complacency of both the media and the public is to blame. The United States declared the crimes in Darfur as genocide last year but has done little to stop the killing. The U.N. has done even less.  Have we not learned from the lessons of Rwanda? Bill Clinton just publicly apologized for failing to intervene to stop the 1994 Rwandan genocide. At the time he was probably too busy trying to grope interns or stop Newt Gingrich from taking over the Congress.

Links about other Forgotten Places:

• Truth Out:  UN Sees East Congo as Worse Crisis Than Darfur
• Amnesty International:  Crisis In Haiti
• The Heretik:  Dog Days (Haiti)
• Freiheit und Wissen:  Free Haiti - A Month of Tragedy
• Darfur: A Genocide We Can Stop
• Save Darfur
• The Burma Campaign

technorati: Darfur  Sudan  Haiti

Bonne Fête Nationale!

To the French, who were smart enough not to join George and Dick's Iraqi Adventure . . .

216 years ago today, the French people stormed the Bastille prison, symbolically overthrowing the old boss and ushering in the new boss during the French Revolution. The revolution spread liberty and freedom to the people and culminated in the rule of a benevolent, democratic ruler who brought glory to France. 

Today, French president Jacques Chirac celebrated by warning citizens that terrorists could attack France. There's something uniquely humorous about President Chirac. While speaking, he gives off the best facial expressions and exaggerated gestures of any world leader I've seen. 

A Moment of Silence

For our friends across the pond . . .