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<font size=3><br><br>
</font><font face="georgia" size=5 color="#A80000">Reuter's Fletcher uses
socialism to elicit negative images of the Chavez
administration<br><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=4><a href="http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=25923">http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=25923</a><br><br>
</font><div align="center"><font face="georgia" size=2><b>AxisofLogic.com
editor & publisher Les Blough
writes:</b></font><font face="georgia" size=3>
</font><font face="georgia" size=2>The following analysis of a February
25, 2005 Reuters article is meant to demonstrate the extreme prejudice
against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its president, Hugo
Chavez Frias. The Reuters article serves as an excellent example of
the corporate media attacks on President Chavez and the democratic
government created by his administration. Reuters billed this piece
as an <b>
</font><font face="georgia" size=2 color="#A80000">"International
News Article."<br><br>
</b></font></div>
<font face="georgia" size=5 color="#A80000">I ask, is it "News"
or is it "Opinion"? <br><br>
</font><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=4 color="#000080"><b><u><a href="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=7744742">Defying
US, Venezuela's Chavez Embraces Socialism</a><br><br>
</u></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fri Feb 25,
2005 02:59 PM ET<br>
<dd>By Pascal Fletcher <br><br>
</b></font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080"><b><u>Fletcher:</u>
"CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on
Friday embraced socialism as his ideology of choice in a political
statement that sharpened his antagonism against the United States."
<br><br>
"Chavez, a <i>firebrand nationalist</i> <i>(would Reuters call
George W. Bush a "firebrand nationalist" or a
"patriot"?)</i> who has governed the world's No. 5 oil exporter
for six years, has persistently declined to define the precise ideology
of his <i>self-styled "revolution."</i></b> <br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note:</b> The Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela is "styled" after the governing principles of 19th
Century Simon Bolivar who liberated Venezuela from the rule of Spain -
The republic is not "styled" after President Chavez as in
"self-styled." The term "revolution" involves
"revolving" from one condition to another, whereas the
corporate media has fostered the notion that "revolution" has
something to do with blood on the streets and mob-rule)<br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher:</u>
"But, addressing an international meeting on poverty in Caracas, he
said Western-style capitalism was incapable of solving global economic
and social problems</i>.<br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note:</b> We ask Mr. Fletcher -
when and where has "Western-styled capitalism" solved global
economic and social problems?)<br><br>
</i></font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher
continues quoting Chavez:</u> " 'So, if not capitalism, then what? I
have no doubt, it's socialism,' said Chavez, who also rebuffed US
criticism of his left-wing rule in Venezuela and denounced President Bush
as the "great destabilizer of the world." <br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note</b>: Of course, all Fletcher needs
to do is to use the term, "socialism" to elicit negative images
of the Chavez administration due to decades of media-conditioning of the
US population. <br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="georgia" size=3 color="#A80000">Chavez "rebuffed US
criticism"?</b></font> The nerve! Would not the leader of any
nation "rebuff" criticism of his country's government by a
foreign country? Does Fletcher think President Chavez should thank the US
it's critical media barrage against him and Venezuela? Should he thank
the US government for funding a coup against him in 2002? With the
world in upheaval as a result of President Bush's unprovoked war on Iraq,
a destabilized Middle East and world economic stability threatened by
Bush's US economic decline, can Mr. Fletcher rationally argue with
Chavez' statement? <br><br>
<font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher:</u>
"Since coming to power, he has irritated Washington by developing alliances with China, Russia and Iran and flaunting a close personal friendship with Cuba's Communist President Fidel Castro, a longtime foe of the United States."<br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note</b>: Does not any sovereign nation have the sovereign right to have close relationships with any other sovereign nation of their choice? Is this statement not crafted to rouse the ire of the US population to whom President Castro has been maligned for decades?) <br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher:</u> "Chavez's public support for socialism recalled Castro's defining announcement in the early 1960s that his 1959 Cuban Revolution was "socialist." <br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note:</b> So President Chavez should be upbraided for his support of socialism because Fidel Castro, President of Cuba described his government as socialist 45 years ago?)<br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher:</u> "Chavez said he had up to now avoided labeling his political program in Venezuela as 'socialist'."<br><br>
"But he added his personal experience in power, which included surviving a brief coup in 2002, had convinced him that socialism was the answer. 'But what kind?' <br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note:</b> </b>When a brilliant leader thinks innovatively, creating a new form of government, is he expected to label that form of government during its formation and before it is realized? "Fletcher: "His personal experience in power ..." - Would it not be just as accurate to say, "His term as an elected president?")<br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher:</u> "Chavez, who won a referendum in August ratifying his rule until early 2007, said previous experiences of socialism in the world -- an apparent reference to the former Soviet Union -- might not be the example to follow."<br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note:</b> It may sound absurd to complain about Fletcher's choice of words here, i.e. "His rule". But do we ever here about "Bush's rule"? Doesn't "His rule" makes Chavez sound more like a monarch than a president? Could Fletcher as easily have referred to "His presidency"? Regarding Chavez' reference to the Soviet Union, would Fletcher prefer that President Chavez follow the example of the Soviet Union?)<br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher quoting Chavez:</u> "... 'We have to invent the socialism of the 21st century,' he added." <br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note:</b> Is there something wrong with thinking creatively - inventively - to respond to the problem of the poverty of 80% of the Venezuelan people that resulted from 40 years of US-backed, corrupt regimes in Venezuela before Chavez was elected in 1998?)<br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher:</u> "Venezuela's 1999 constitution promoted by Chavez enshrines a multi-party political system and he has denied he is a communist. But he has intensified state intervention in the economy, encouraged the formation of cooperatives and is pursuing land reforms critics say threaten private property."<br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note: </b>Rhetorical question - Doesn't the United States government "intensify state intervention" in the economy of the United State on a daily basis in myriad ways and at multiple levels? Some may choose to call the land reforms which are written into the Venezuelan constitution, "communism". Others may choose to call it the attempt to problem-solve 4 decades of control by wealthy landowners who crushed domestic agriculture by buying up and in some cases, illegally annexing large tracts of land, forcing the Venezuelan people dependent on foreign food imports, primarily from the United States) <br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher:</u> "Chavez resumed his aggressive stance just a day after his vice president, Jose Vicente Rangel, called for talks with the United States and said Caracas was ready to help fight terrorism and drug-trafficking and keep oil flowing to the United States."<br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note:</b> Is Fletcher complaining that Vice President Rangel called for talks with the US and offered to help fight terrorism and drug trafficking and to "keep oil flowing to the United States"? Where's the beef?</u></b>)<br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="georgia" size=3 color="#A80000">Chavez has taken an "aggressive stance"?</i></b></font> Who is the aggressor in this case? Chavez' "stance" is not "aggressive" at all. It is rather a sovereign nation owning the right to have trade relations with other nations of their choice. One must ask, "Who is the aggressor?" - when it was the United States who funded the 2002 coup attempt through US institutions like the National Endowment for Democracy and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. One must ask, "Who is the aggressor?" - when the US continues to foment hatred through the corporate media and instigate insurrection in Venezuela. One must ask "Who is the aggressor?" - when the US gives safe refuge to a former Venezuelan president who publicly calls for the assassination of the duly-elected president of a foreign country. One must ask, "Who is the aggressor?" - when it is the US who funds the Uribe regime in Bogota with more foreign aid than to any country in the world, save Israel for Plan Colombia, designed to overthrow the democratic republic of Venezuela.<br><br>
<font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher:</u> "But Rangel had also echoed Chavez's anti-U.S. criticisms, and U.S. diplomats here complain their requests for meetings with government ministers are turned down."<br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note:</b> President Chavez has made numerous attempts to meet with the Bush Administration and been turned down. Earlier in the article, Fletcher stated that Venezuela's Vice President "called for talks with the US and offered to help fight terrorism and drug trafficking"). <br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher:</u> "WHO IS DESTABILIZING?"<br>
"While Venezuela remains a key oil supplier to the US, Chavez has this year stepped up a war of words with the United States. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has called him a "destabilizing influence" in Latin America."<br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note:</b> "Who is Destabilizing?" A very good question. What evidence did Condoleezza Rice provide for her claim that President Chavez is a "destabilizing force"? None at all. It was simply a parroted phrase that has received wide publication in corporate news agencies like Reuters. But we would agree that Chavez is a "destabilizing force" -- i.e. destabilizing to the decades of US programs of interference, death squads, economic control and oppression of Latin American countries. He is certainly "destabilizing" for Plan Colombia -- the US program directed at overthrowing the democratic government of Venezuela!) <br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher:</u> "A former paratroop officer, Chavez was first elected in a 1998 election, six years after leading a botched coup bid."<br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note:</b> I sometimes smile at the oft-repeated description of President Chavez which I read in the corporate media: "A former paratroop officer". Of course the description is crafted to elicit the racist notions to which US citizens have become aclimated for countries in Latin America -- like "banana republics" and "military dictator". President Chavez was a Leutenant Colonel in the Venezuelan Army before being elected president of his country by 80% of the Venezuelan people. Nearly all of the US presidents have served in the military and in fact, military service is almost a pre-requisite for candidacy in the US. "A botched coup bid"? President Chavez led the people of Venezuela in a revolt against US domination of their country in 1992 which was one step toward freeing Venezuela from corrupt, US-backed regimes)<br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher:</u> "Opponents of the Venezuelan leader, whom Chavez dismisses as puppets of the United States, accuse him of ruling like a dictator and dragging the country toward Cuba-style communism."<br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note:</b> Who are these "opponents". Are they the same people who attempted to violently overthrow the Venezuelan government in 2002? Are these the same people who shut down the PDVSA, Venezuela's oil industry for 3 months in December, 2002 in an attempt to bring the Chavez administration to its knees? Is the reader expected to give credibility to such a statement?)<br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher:</u> "In what Caracas calls "impertinent" meddling, U.S. officials are also opposing Venezuela's purchase of Russian helicopters and automatic rifles for its armed forces." <br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note:</b> Does a foreign nation, i.e. the US, have the right to dictate where another sovereign nation purchases their military hardware? Is this rhetoric meant to awaken tired, old, cold-war images in the US population of a dangerous enemy of the U.S. who once delivered missiles to Cuba?)<br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher: "The only destabilizer here is George W. Bush, he's the big destabilizer in the world, he's the threat," Chavez said. He has condemned the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. <br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note:</b> Hugo Chavez' condemnation of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq stands alongside the condemnation of these wars by many world leaders. Who can argue that the Bush "war on terrorism" has not created more terrorists than it has killed and captured -- as promised by George Walker Bush just after the September 11, 2001 attacks? Who can argue with Chavez' statement that Bush is not "the threat" to global instability? Whoever it may be, I would pay to watch the debate.)<br><br>
</font>
</dl><font face="Courier New, Courier" size=2 color="#000080">Fletcher: "Chavez also repeated charges that the increased US criticism was preparing the ground for an attack against Venezuela and included a plan to assassinate him. US officials have rejected this as 'ridiculous.' <br><br>
</b></font>
<dl>
<dd><font face="georgia" size=3>(Note:</b> Credible evidence exists that the CIA has been involved in 2 previous assassination attempts and the coup attempt on President Chavez. </font><font face="georgia" size=2>But you won't read about it in the New York Times</u></b></font><font face="georgia" size=3>. Based upon the current US invasion and occupation of oil-rich Iraq, and the invasion of "Caspian-oil-pipeline-Afghanistan," is it realistic to be concerned about the possibility of a US invasion and occupation of oil-rich Venezuela? Particularly when one considers the angry, aggressive, Washington rhetoric against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, one would be naive' to ignore the possibility. In the US it is called, "In the interest of national security." Of course the US rejected this charge as "ridiculous." </font><font face="georgia" size=2>Did Fletcher expect them to admit to it?</u></b></font><font face="georgia" size=3>)<br><br>
</dl>Conclusion:</b> The private media in Venezuela is owned and controlled by a handful of very wealthy people who oppose Chavez and who fully supported the violent overthrow of the Venezuelan government in 2002. The corporate media in the US has been fiercely critical of the Chavez administration from the very beginning of his term as President. It is important for us to recognize extreme bias against the Bolivarian government in both media coalitions and their choice of inflammatory terms and outright defamation when considering the "news" reports of the corporate media.<br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
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