MEDIA ROOTS — Abby Martin breaks through the veil of establishment myths surrounding the late President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, by highlighting the criticisms and achievements of his 14-year presidency and outlining why he was such a threat to the status quo.  (Transcript included below.)

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UPDATED  10 MAR 2013  13:53 CST

Abby Martin:  “Alright, guys.  By now, I’m sure you’ve heard the news of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez passing away.  He lost his two-year battle with cancer on Tuesday, March 5^th, at the young age of 58.  Although he gave a voice to Venezuelan people in a way unlike any other Venezuelan leader, during his 14-year leadership, Chávez was a controversial and polarising figure on the world stage, who was, both, hailed and smeared.

“Now, if you’re looking at the rhetoric from the US establishment, you’re only getting the side of the story, that paints Chavez as a ruthless dictator, a tyrannical socialist, and a madman dead-set on destroying America.  See for yourself.”

FOX NEWS (woman with blonde hair):  “Well, it’s being called the Tour of Tyrants, Iran’s Mahmud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez making a joint appearance yesterday.  You’re seeing a video that, joking about Iran’s nuclear programme and US anger.”

CBS NEWS (male voice):  “A problem?  It’s coming at the hands of a man the US describes as nothing short of a dictator, Hugo Chávez.” 

Abby Martin:  “Strong words from media organisations, who had already made up their minds about what type of leader Chávez was. 

“So, how is the same establishment press running with the news of his death?  Let’s find out.”

NBC NEWS (woman with blonde hair):  “We move on now to the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez who lost his two year battle with cancer on Tuesday.  He was a polarising and outspoken figure.”

FOX NEWS (male voice):  “He referred to the US as the evil empire and famously branded US President George W. Bush as the devil during an address at the United Nations.  And he warned his countrymen frequently of an impending US invasion of Venezuela.”

CBS NEWS (male voice):  “Adding to the tension was Chávez’s long list of dubious friends, like a who’s who of American enemies, from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.”

CNN NEWS (male voice):  “The price of his socialist agenda?  Hugo Chávez, himself.  Term limits were abolished.  Even his critics admit he could have gone on winning elections indefinitely.  His biggest failure may be his unilateral success, a legacy of one.  Before his death, critics said Chávez was leading Venezuela in the control of narco-traffickers.”

NBC NEWS (woman with blonde hair) (c. 2:18):  “And this morning US officials are wondering how his passing will impact relations with the oil giant.”

 Abby Martin:  “Yes, of course, the big question:  What’s gonna happen to the oil?  Can you make it anymore obvious?  Look, I’m not gonna sit here and glorify Venezuela or Hugo Chávez, or socialism, for that matter.  In fact, there are many legitimate criticisms to be had.  Take, for example, the heightened rates of violence and censorship and prosecution of political dissidents.

“But you’ll hear the less appealing aspects of Chávez ad nauseum from the corporate press.  So, my job is to tell you what they won’t.  And I’m gonna lift the veil on the most egregious myths said about the Venezuelan president.

(c. 2:59):  “So, let’s get back to the subject of oil.  After all, Venezuela has the largest reserves of crude oil in the western hemisphere.  And the bold move by Chávez to nationalise the nation’s petroleum resources has been one of the biggest points of contention. 

“The seizures of foreign- and corporate-controlled lands in the country, along with the redistribution of wealth amongst the populace are notions, that do not sit well with many.  Unlike other developing nations, that allow multinational corporations to sell off the country’s natural resources, Chávez began to initiate incremental steps, giving the state full control over its oil reserves.

“With these funds, the government was able to instate various programmes of social development, narrowing the country’s wealth disparity and developing Venezuela into a principal player in the international community.

“Despite what you’ve heard about Hugo Chávez, it is undeniable that, under his leadership, the poorest in the country were empowered.

“In 2009, the Center for Economic and Policy Research published a report on Venezuela’s economic expansion.  It highlighted that, under Chávez, the country’s GDP nearly doubled in only five years; extreme poverty was down by 72%; child mortality down by a third.  There was unprecedented access to universal health care.  And college enrolment was on the rise.

(c. 4:20):  “Still, the myth we hear is one of a socialist comandante who manipulated the poor with handouts to gain their loyalty and support.  But, in reality, he helped the poor enormously.  It’s just a fact, that doesn’t bode well with the people supporting corporate domination over the region.

“Another media talking point is that Chávez was a ruthless dictator, who redrafted the Constitution to dissolve term limits to insure his perpetual, tyrannical reign.  Dictator?  Not so much.  Chávez won the seat of President four separate times, often by an overwhelming majority.  The last election, alone, drew over 80% voter turnout.  It was a process that, former US President, Jimmy Carter characterised as being, quote, ‘the best in the world.’

The referendum in question, to dissolve term limits was voted on and passed by over 50% of the people in the country.  So, when it comes to democratic participation, Venezuela puts the US to shame.  You won’t find that kind of enthusiastic voter turnout anywhere in this country.

“Chávez also has been painted as a conspiracy theorist and a loon for his questions of the Bush Administration’s role in 9/11 and for accusing the US of assassination and coup attempts to unseat him.

“But is it really so ludicrous to imagine that scenario, given the CIA’s sordid history of assassinations and coups across Latin America and against leaders, that didn’t quite fall in line with American interests?  In fact, there’s mounting evidence linking the Bush Administration to a 2002 coup, that briefly did oust Chávez.  And officials at the Organisation of American States have said that the US was not only aware of the coup, but that they, in fact, sanctioned the coup.

“By dismissing Chávez as a dictator like the media machine tends to do, we’re ignoring all of these valid points.  That same media machine ignores the impending tyranny in this country, the soft fascism leading to the indefinite detention of US citizens in 12 years of endless war.

“When you look at who Chávez was, lumped in with the likes of Fidel Castro, Muammar Gaddafi, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Saddam Hussein, they share a commonality.  They all opposed the US corporate imperialist take over of the planet. 

“Going forward, keep this in mind:  When a leader is vilified and demonised, it usually signifies they’re a threat to the status quo.  So, regardless of what you’ve heard or what your personal thoughts are about Hugo Chávez, he simply cannot be dismissed as a tyrant because his voice of opposition, and others like him, serves a necessary divide to prevent global corporate enslavement and tyranny.”

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Transcript by Felipe Messina for Media Roots and Breaking the Set.

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MEDIA ROOTS – Dissection of a 20 February 2013 New York Times article demonstrates the extent to which the “newspaper of record” muddles the truth on issues pertaining to Israel. Even the article’s title, Trial Offers Rare Look at Work of Hezbollah in Europe, is deceptive since the article is filled with superficial, Zionist axioms and mere conjecture.

The opening paragraph asserts the testimony of an alleged Hezbollah operative provides “a rare look inside a covert global war between Israel and Iran.” This is highly misleading. There is no global war of parity between the two countries. In reality, the Iranian people have been victimized by cyber-attacks, unjustifiable sanctions, and a wide array of insidious propaganda. Instead of responding in kind, Iran has taken caution not to provoke Zionism’s itchy trigger finger.

According to the Times, this so-called operative “described being handled by a masked man he knew only as Ayman.” Conveniently, the operative “never saw the face of Ayman” because Ayman “was always wearing a mask.”

At the mysterious Ayman’s behest, this operative transported bags, a package, a cellphone, and two SIM cards around Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. When the operative was arrested, he was in possession of a “small red notebook with the license plate numbers of two buses ferrying Israelis.” Two weeks after he was arrested, a bomb blew up alongside a bus in Burgas, Bulgaria, killing a Bulgarian chauffeur and five Israeli tourists.

According to the Times, “experts say” the Burgas attack was “similar to the one he [the operative] seemed to be planning.” Conveniently, unbiased “experts” are nowhere to be found in the Times’ article, which quotes only two pundits of sharp proclivity.

The first pundit is Daniel Benjamin, a Zionist, who comments on how the operative’s trial might tip European hesitancy in favor of designating Hezbollah as a “terrorist organization.” He also commented on Cyprus’ dedication to see this trial proceed, remarking how Cypriot authorities have “done the right thing and they’ve been resolute about it.” Benjamin has worked tirelessly against Hezbollah. As a careerist whose professional brand thrives implicitly on the pursuit of the United States’ foes, whether real or imagined, Benjamin is hardly an unbiased “expert.”

The second “expert” is Matthew Leavitt, a director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), which was founded by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a powerful, right-wing, Israeli lobby located in Washington, DC. (AIPAC used to be known as the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs). Instead of disclosing Levitt’s ties to this particular Zionist establishment, the New York Times provided him a platform through which he states “the evidence seems quite compelling that what he [the operative] was doing was conducting surveillance for a bombing that would parallel almost exactly what happened in Bulgaria.”

Belén Fernández, a scrupulous author and acclaimed analyst, reports on how much of the so-called evidence in the Burgas bombing was non-existent or manufactured. Investigative journalist Gareth Porter reveals how Bulgaria eventually conceded extremely tenuous evidence, which pertained to Hezbollah’s potential involvement, but only after Bulgarian officials received immense pressure from U.S. and Israeli officials.

For their part, Bulgarian authorities could only note Hezbollah’s potential involvement after relying “heavily on resources from foreign security services,” according to Tihomir Bezlov of the Sofia-based Center for the Study of Democracy. Even with all these externally-supplied “resources,” Bulgarian officials could only allude to “traces in this attack,” which might lead to “Hezbollah’s military wing.” The Times admits “officials in Cyprus have tried to keep the case as low-key as possible, declining in most instances to comment or to release documents.” Perhaps they too are being fed “resources” from foreign nations.

This lack of context – or perhaps selective detailing – plaguing the New York Times’ article is noteworthy.

The Times was generous enough to concede the so-called operative “described himself as ‘threatened, scared and confused,’ during his initial interrogation.” He was also “adamant that he was not participating in a plot to kill Israeli tourists.”

Perhaps the individual in question, who works as an administrator of a Lebanese trading company and aspires to become a fruit juice importer, will turn out to be a verified Hezbollah “operative,” but he could easily have been working for Mossad, whose patronage boasts a lurid history of conducting false flag operations against a variety of targets.

Unfortunately, the Times paints the suspect, who is still undergoing trial, as genuinely nefarious without disclosing their aforementioned prejudices.

Analysis of this article reveals the New York Times’ bias, which is consistent with their record of erasing Israel’s crimes and altering articles to favor Zionist narratives.

Christian Sorensen for Media Roots 

Photo by Flickr User Ron Almog

MEDIA ROOTS – Netanyahu otherwise known as ‘BB’ alleges that Hamas has committed a “double war crime” by firing out-dated rockets out of self defense at the Israeli aggressors. Israeli defense minister, Ehud Barak, who predicted the aftermath of 9/11 with his amazing prophetic psychic abilities, says that Israel intends to “systematically destroy” anywhere in Gaza where rockets are being produced.

Wouldn’t it be ridiculous if someone in Detroit fired rockets outside of Michigan and Washington D.C. responded with an ariel bombing of Detroit? At Media Roots we think firing on a population contained in your own country with military force is beyond ridiculous. Once again it evokes mass surrealism how biased the media is, including CNN in justifying these events. 

Robbie Martin for Media Roots




Ehud Barak’s psychic abilities on display


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CNN – “We are defending ourselves,” he said, arguing that Benjamin Netanyahu was looking to cement support in advance of an election in two months. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak denied that any politics are involved in the decision.

Speaking to CNN, Barak said Israel has destroyed most of the “heavy long range rockets” used by militants in Gaza and is working to “systematically destroy” installations in which other rockets are produced. “It will take some time,” he said, “and we are not going to stop until the whole thing will dramatically change” — with an end to the attacks from Gaza, he said.

Israeli forces are going after Hamas weapons, storage bunkers, weapons labs and workshops, an Israeli official told CNN. The official has direct knowledge of Israeli plans but declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the information. The Israeli army is moving nearly a division’s worth of troops — perhaps 1,500 to 2,000 — to the border, the official said.

Read More at CNN.com

MEDIA ROOTS – In recent years, the New York Police Department has not only developed into an international police division, its officers regularly flaunt constitutionally-protected civil liberties and single-out minorities. As the “war on terror” enters its eleventh year next week, the question now is who are the actual terrorists?

Currently targeting activists with facial recognition technology, the force also uses drones in the skies and in the harbor with no sight of a horizon in this sea of surveillance. Additionally, several units regularly brutalize offenders of minor laws because of a widespread mentality that the legal code is not applicable to them.

While possibly some of America’s finest officers work on this force, it is the current state of this police culture that is of dire issue. After all, it is not only a direct threat to a peaceful and prosperous future, it is indeed the exact mindset that America has spent over a decade fighting by sacrificing well over a million human lives and having spent approximately $11,000 for every man, woman, and child in America.

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AlterNet – [New York City]’s population is a little over 8 million. That means that there are 4.18 police officers per 1,000 people. By comparison, Los Angeles, the second largest city in the U.S. with 3.8 million people, has only 9,895 officers — a ratio of 2.6 police per 1,000 people.

What has the New York Police Department been doing with all that … manpower? In addition to ticketing minorities for standing outside of their homes, spying on Muslims who live in New Jersey, busing protesters, and gunning down black teens over weed, the NYPD has expanded into a massive global anti-terror operation with surveillance and military capabilities unparalleled in the history of US law enforcement.

In an email published by WikiLeaks, an FBI official joked about how shocked Americans would be if they knew how egregiously the NYPD is stomping all over their civil liberties. But what we already know is bad enough.

Read the full article on AlterNet “9 Frightening Things About America’s Biggest Police Force.”

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Photo provided by Flickr user ktylerconk.

MEDIA ROOTS – The Pentagon and the corporate media establishment are again attempting to control the 9/11 and War on Terror narrative by claiming that they are considering legal action against former Navy SEAL Matt Bissonnette (a.k.a. Mark Owen) for publishing his book No Easy Day. The supposed context for the publication of his story, scheduled for release on Tuesday, is that the veteran did not offer the manuscript to the Department of Defense for prior review and he now may face legal recourse from the agency. Additionally, his name was leaked by the Associated Press last week, resulting in possible threats to his life.

The book was originally scheduled for release on September 11 of this year. It was an attempt made by Owen to remain apolitical about arguably the most politicized event of the decade. But the current debate appears to be scripted for the history books as several hard questions about the death of bin Laden continue to be ignored and will most likely not be answered in the upcoming publication distributed by Dutton.

The first and probably the most obvious discrepancy is if military intelligence had known of his precise location for eight months prior to the raid, then why hasn’t more proof of his whereabouts been released to the American public? “Despite the intense surveillance effort the CIA was unable to obtain a photograph of Bin Laden or a recording of the voice of the mysterious man, presumed to be the al-Qaida leader,” states the Guardian the week after the raid.

With such precise knowledge of the bunker, why was bin Laden not captured for trial in a court of law? Attorney General Eric Holder answers that the operation was not only lawful according to the Authorization for Use of Military Force (2001) but was simply an act of national self-defense. But in a nation where children are taught the belief of liberty and justice for all, it’s quite contradictory for this nation’s leadership to not protect and promote these ideals worldwide.

Furthermore, Owen recounts a scene where bin Laden may actually have already been dead upon their arrival. “At first it was funny because it was so wrong,” Owen reflected in his account of May 1, 2011. This version is in direct conflict with that of the White House in which bin Laden was allegedly reaching for a weapon at the time of the fatal shots. Owen confirms that the suspected terrorist was unarmed at the time of his death and their team may have just been on a kill mission.

But the greatest and most pertinent question has still not been asked: was Osama Bin Laden actually killed on May 1, 2011? This past March, the online hacker group Anonymous was able to obtain emails from the intelligence analysis group Stratfor which directly contradicts the official story about what happened with bin Laden’s body after the raid. While possibly the smoking gun of a White House cover-up, several news stories reported before the raid also directly contradict the official narrative. Below are a just few examples:

2001 – “Usama bin Laden has died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication, the Pakistan Observer reported, citing a Taliban leader who allegedly attended the funeral of the Al Qaeda leader.” [Fox News]

2002 – “Pakistan’s president says he thinks Osama bin Laden is most likely dead because the suspected terrorist has been unable to get treatment for his kidney disease.” [CNN]

2006 – “Saudi intelligence services seem to be sure that Osama bin Laden is dead. The elements gathered by the Saudis indicate that the head of Al Qaeda was the victim, while he was in Pakistan on Aug. 23, 2006, of a strong case of typhoid fever that led to a partial paralysis of his lower limbs.” [France’s Directorate-General for External Security]

2007 – “… he also had dealings with Omar Sheikh, the man who murdered Osama bin Laden.” [Benazir Bhutto]

2008 – “The last relatively reliable bin Laden sighting was in late 2001.” [Time]

2009 – “What if everything we have seen or heard of him on video and audio tapes since the early days after 9/11 is a fake – and that he is being kept ‘alive’ by the Western allies to stir up support for the war on terror? Incredibly, this is the breathtaking theory that is gaining credence among political commentators, respected academics and even terror experts.” [Daily Mail]

The War on Terror is riddled with unanswered questions that range in depth and consequence. From numerous eyewitness accounts of what actually hit the Twin Towers to this morning’s attack at a US military base, the corporate media hardly scratches the surface of investigation, often simply regurgitating government propaganda. But as more individuals combat societal ignorance, becoming proactively aware of the atrocities committed by their military establishment and the history of their empire, the War on Terror is destined to end.

Oskar Mosco for Media Roots.

Photo provided by Flickr user Ben Sutherland.