Bij
de protesten in Chili zijn intussen meer dan 1.500 demonstranten
gearresteerd en zijn 19 mensen omgekomen.... Deze protesten kwamen
opgang nadat de regering de tarieven voor de metro verhoogde, echter
dat was de spreekwoordelijke druppel voor de studenten, arbeiders en het arme
deel van het volk, om massaal de straat op te gaan.....
De regering
zet het leger in tegen demonstranten en dat in een land waar de
fascistische junta onder Pinochet een enorm aantal studenten,
vakbondsleiders en politici van links heeft gemarteld, verkracht en vermoord, dit nadat een coup
een eind maakte aan het democratisch gekozen bewind van Salvador Allende, een coup
georganiseerd en geregisseerd door de CIA, dit tijdens de eerste 9/11
in het Chili van 1973..... Allende werd tijdens de coup vermoord........
Het leger op straat, alsof martelbeul, verkrachter en massamoordenaar Pinochet nog leeft....
Ondanks
het voorgaande berichtten de massamedia in de VS en de rechts
geregeerde landen in Latijns-Amerika positief op de repressie tegen
de demonstranten, die in die media worden afgeschilderd als links
gewelddadig tuig.... Na de protesten van afgelopen vrijdag waarbij
meer dan een miljoen mensen de straat opgingen, heeft president
Sebastian
Piñera de regering naar huis gestuurd en
beloofd tegemoet te komen aan de protesten.... Ja nu wel, waar
blijkt dat een overgrote meerderheid van het volk het inhumane en
ijskoude neoliberalisme meer dan zat is en de demonstranten ook het
vertrek van deze Piñera
eisen......
Hetzelfde
geldt voor de protesten in Ecuador, waar de oorspronkelijke volkeren
het land lam legden en een overwinning boekten in de bescherming van
haar gebieden in het oerwoud, waar men verder wilde gaan met de olievervuiling van leefgebieden, door nieuwe olieboringen en
winningen en daarnaast andere commerciële activiteiten te ontwikkelen als bomenkap voor de houtindustrie en landbouw.....
Wat
een verschil met de berichtgeving in die media als het om Venezuela
gaat, terwijl de demonstranten daar wel degelijk zwaar geweld
gebruikten tegen de politie en de ambtenarij..... Deze demonstranten
werden en worden verheerlijkt als waren het helden uit onze 80 Jarige Oorlog,
sterker nog: het aangewende geweld werd toegeschreven aan de politie
en het leger, terwijl het leger niet eens aanwezig was... Ook nadat
de waarheid uitkwam en bleek dat gewelddadige elementen zelfs vanuit
het buitenland werden aangevoerd, hoogstwaarschijnlijk door de CIA,
een terreurorganisatie die al zo vaak heeft gehakt met dezelfde bijl,
heeft men geen rectificaties geplaatst, nee men houdt de leugen
gewoon overeind..... Een situatie verdacht veel lijkt op de zaken
die plaatsvonden en vinden in Syrië en Oekraïne......
Media
Whitewashes Neoliberal Repression in Chile and Ecuador
Paarden (en honden) inzetten tegen mensen, meer dan schunnig en alleen thuishorend in een fascistische dictatuur...
Santiago (FAIR)
– Throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, people are rising up
against right-wing, US-backed governments and their neoliberal
austerity policies.
Currently
in Chile, the government of billionaire Sebastian Piñera has
deployed the army to crush nationwide demonstrations against
inequality sparked by a subway fare hike.
In
Ecuador, indigenous peoples, workers, and students recently brought
the country to a standstill during 11 days of protests against the
gutting of fuel subsidies by President Lenin Moreno as part of an IMF
austerity package.
One
might expect these popular rebellions to receive unreservedly
sympathetic coverage from international media that claim to be on the
side of democracy and the common people. On the contrary, corporate
journalists frequently describe these uprisings as dangerous
alterations of “law and order,” laden with “violence,”
“chaos” and “unrest.”
This
portrait contrasts remarkably with coverage of anti-government
protests in Venezuela, where generally the only violence highlighted
is that allegedly perpetrated by the state. In the eyes of
Western elite opinion, Venezuela’s middle-class opposition have
long been leaders of a legitimate popular protest against an
authoritarian, anti-American regime. Poor people rebelling against
repressive US client states are considered an unacceptable deviation
from this script.
‘Crackdown’
in Venezuela
Corporate
journalists have never been able to contain their enthusiasm for the
right-wing Venezuelan opposition’s repeated coup attempts, which
are regularly cast as a “pro-democracy” movement
(FAIR.org, 5/10/19).
In
2017, Venezuela’s opposition-led four months of violent,
insurrectionary protests demanding early presidential elections,
resulting in over
125 dead,
including protesters, government supporters, and bystanders. It was
the opposition’s fifth major effort to oust the government by force
since 2002.
Despite
the demonstrations featuring attacks on journalists, lynchings and
assassinations of government supporters, they were depicted as a
“uprising” against “authoritarianism” (New
York Times, 6/22/17),
a “rebellion” in the face of “the government’s crackdown”
(Bloomberg, 5/18/17)
and a David-like movement of “young firebrands” facing down a
sinister regime (Guardian, 5/25/17).
Reporters frequently attributed the mounting death toll to state
security forces (France
24, 7/21/17;
Newsweek, 6/20/17; Washington
Post, 6/3/17),
while generally ignoring opposition political violence reported to be
responsible for over
30 deaths.
The
pattern was repeated in January when deadly clashes broke out across
the country in the days before and after opposition leader Juan
Guaidó declared himself “interim president” with the US’s
encouragement. Corporate outlets described the events as a “violent
crackdown” (Independent, 1/24/19),
with security forces “spreading terror…to target critics”
(Reuters, 2/3/19)
and “soldiers and paramilitary gunmen…hunting opposition
activists” (Miami
Herald, 1/27/19).
International journalists based their accounts largely on
pro-opposition sources, suppressing inconvenient details that
complicated their Manichean narrative, such as the fact that
some 38% of protests were violent and at least 28% featured armed
confrontations with authorities.
Unlike
in Chile and Ecuador, corporate outlets have consistently vilified
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—who won 6.2 million votes, or
31% of the electorate last year—as an “authoritarian”
(FAIR.org, 4/11/19, 8/5/19)
or a “dictator” (FAIR.org, 4/11/19),
justifying the latest coup effort.
Chile
‘Riots’
In
recent days, Chileans have taken to the streets in mass
demonstrations against the Piñera administration, following a
further increase in Santiago’s exorbitant subway fare.
Beginning
as high school student-led protests, the movement has escalated into
a full-scale rebellion against the savagely
unequal neoliberal order,
prompting the government to militarize the streets and impose a
curfew for the first time since the Western-backed Pinochet
dictatorship (1973–90).
Despite
the largest protests since the return of democracy, the international
corporate media have largely referred to them in pejorative terms
such as “riots” (CNN, 10/19/19; CNBC, 10/21/19),
“violent unrest” (New
York Times, 10/19/19)
and “chaos” (NPR, 10/19/19; Vice, 10/21/19),
providing a moral casus belli for war against the people.
Revealingly,
no major outlets have described the government’s brutal repression
as a “crackdown,” nor called into question the legitimacy of
Piñera, who was elected in 2017 with the backing of 26% of
registered voters.
It’s
true that international journalists are beginning to reference
allegations of human rights violations reported by Chile’s National
Human Rights Institute,
including, as of October 23, 173 people shot and 18 dead, among them
at least five presumably
at the hands of authorities.
However,
the victims of state violence in Chile have not received anywhere
near the amount of attention international outlets have dedicated to
protester deaths in Venezuela, where the dead have been movingly
profiled (New
York Times, 6/10/17; BBC, 5/14/17)—provided
they were not lynched
by the opposition.
In
two emblematic cases, Manuel Rebolledo, 23, died on October 21 after
being run
over by
a navy vehicle near Concepción, while Ecuadorian national Romario
Veloz, 26, was shot dead the day before at a protest in La Serena.
Neither men have been mentioned by name in Western press reports.
It
would appear that the only worthy victims, in the eyes of US
corporate journalists, are those that have propaganda value from the
standpoint of Western foreign policy interests. Reporters
spontaneously empathize with neoliberal technocrats like Piñera,
even as they occasionally chide them for “excesses.”
“Mr.
Piñera said that he is mindful of the broader grievances that fueled
the unrest… But he seemed to have difficulty coming to grips with
the real source of the population’s frustrations,” the New
York Times (10/21/19)
sympathetically observed, before going on to note that the president
has declared “war” against his own people.
The
paper of record suggested that Chileans might find the imposition of
martial law “jarring,” given that “the military had killed and
tortured thousands of people just decades ago in the name of
restoring order.” But despite the article being headlined “What
You Need to Know About the Unrest in Chile,” the Times did
not find it relevant to mention anywhere that state security forces
were currently maiming and killing demonstrators in the streets, and
allegedly torturing
detainees.
The
dominant narrative fed to the public is that Piñera’s government
has been “inept” in responding to the protests
(Economist, 10/20/19; Reuters, 10/21/19; New
York Times, 10/21/19),
but never criminal or cruel.
No
Western newspapers have published scathing op-eds calling Piñera a
“dictator” and demanding their government take action to “restore
democracy,” as they have done regularly in the case of Venezuela
(FAIR.org, 4/11/19).
Rather, they counsel the billionaire president to address
“inequality,” barring any reference to what is increasingly
coming to resemble state
terror (New
York Times, 10/22/19; Guardian, 10/23/19; Bloomberg, 10/23/19).
Corporate
journalists continue to whitewash Piñera, describing him as
“center-right”
(Guardian, 10/21/19; CNBC, 10/19/19; Reuters, 10/21/19)
and concealing his personal ties to
murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet and those of his top
cabinet members.
Police
in Chile blast protesters. Flickr | Carlos Andrés Gamero Esparza
(leondeurgel)
Ecuador
‘Violence’
Corporate
journalists have shown only marginally more sympathy to Ecuador’s
recent indigenous-led uprising against IMF-imposed austerity
measures, frequently described in headlines as “violent protests”
(CNN, 10/8/19; Guardian, 10/8/19; USA
Today, 10/9/19; Financial
Times, 10/8/19).
President
Moreno has yet to be labeled by the international media as
“authoritarian,” despite ordering soldiers to repress
demonstrators in the streets, imposing a curfew, suspending basic
civil liberties and arresting rival politicians.
Since
betraying his campaign promise to continue his predecessor Rafael
Correa’s left-wing policies. and embracing the oligarchy he ran
against, Moreno has become the darling of Western elite opinion
(FAIR.org, 2/4/18).
Like
in Chile, corporate outlets have whitewashed Moreno’s
vicious crackdown,
which left seven dead, around a thousand arrested and a similar
figure wounded. However, corporate outlets have been even more
nefarious in obfuscating the origins of the crisis in Ecuador.
As
Joe Emersberger has recently exposed for FAIR (10/23/19),
Western journalists’ favorite lie is that Moreno “inherited a
debt crisis that ballooned as his predecessor and one-time mentor,
former President Rafael Correa, took
out loans for a major dam,
highways, schools, clinics and other projects” (New
York Times, 10/8/19).
In fact, the country’s debt-to-GDP level remains low, though it has
increased slightly under Moreno, due not to public works but to his
pro-elite policies.
Corporate
outlets have for the most part admitted that Moreno has presented no
evidence to back his ludicrous claims of Correa and Maduro supporters
orchestrating the protests; nonetheless, they have, with few
exceptions (DW, 10/14/19; Reuters, 10/12/19),
shamefully ignored Moreno’s draconian persecution of Correaist
politicians (including elected representatives), which he justifies
on the basis of the very same conspiracy theory. This coverage
contrasts sharply with the red carpet treatment regularly provided to
Venezuela’s US-friendly opposition politicians, regardless of how
many coups they perpetrate (Reuters, 4/30/19; LA
Times, 4/30/19; Guardian, 2/6/19).
Western
Media Gendarmerie
It
is not coincidental that Western journalists stand aghast at the
violence of the excluded and exploited in Chile and Ecuador while
rationalizing that spearheaded by Washington-backed opposition elites
in Venezuela.
This
bias has nothing to do with any actual amount of looting or arson.
Rather, it is the eruption of the racialized poor into polite
bourgeois society’s technocratic body politic that is viscerally
violent to local neocolonial elites and their Western
professional-class backers.
Ecuador’s
protests are the latest in a long line of anti-neoliberal uprisings,
which brought down three presidents between 1997 and 2005.
The
rebellion exploding in Chile is the largest in over a generation,
evidencing the terminal legitimacy crisis of the “low-intensity
democracy” crafted by Pinochet to maintain the neoliberal model
imposed at gunpoint. The Chilean uprising has genuinely terrified
elites, leading the right-wing president to wage war on his own
people. At stake is not just the stability of a key Western ally, but
more crucially, neoliberalism’s ideological narrative that has
upheld Chile as a “success
story.”
Corporate
journalists will most likely continue to muffle themselves vis-a-vis
repressive US client states, in the same way that they systematically
conceal the impact of Washington’s sanctions on Venezuela
(FAIR.org, 6/26/19),
which are estimated to have already killed
40,000 Venezuelans since
2017.
If
the first casualty of war is truth, its self-anointed purveyors in
the international media have much blood on their hands indeed.
Lucas
Koerner is an editor and political analyst at Venezuelanalysis.com.
=======================================
Zie ook:
'Chili, de protesten en de verslaggeving'
Zie wat betreft Venezuela:
'Venezuela is nog lang niet verslagen door de VS'
'VS heeft beslag gelegd op 5 miljard dollar van Venezuela voor medicijnaankopen'
'Venezuela: ultieme couppoging van Guaidó mislukt'
'Trump vermoordde al 40.000 Venezolaanse burgers'
'VS dreigt Rusland, China en Iran met geweld vanwege hulp aan Venezolaanse volk......'
'The Monroe Doctrine is Back, and as the Latest US Attack on Cuba Shows, Its Purpose is to Serve the Neoliberal Order' (een artikel van CounterPunch)
'Venezuela: in geheime zitting in Washington is gesproken over een militaire inval'
'VS legt nog meer sancties op aan de bevolking van Venezuela, Cuba en Nicaragua'
'Venezolaanse regering treft nieuwe regeling voor hulpgoederen van het Rode Kruis, 'onafhankelijk NOS' brengt alweer fake news'
'Venezuela: onafhankelijke journalisten ontmaskeren leugens over dit land bij presentatie voor de VN'
Beste bezoeker, dat was het voor deze dag, morgen meer berichten. Maak er zo mogelijk een mooie dag van.
Plaza
de la Dignidad, centrale plein in hoofdstad Santiago de Chile. Alle
foto's ©Ricard
“Wij
staan op de eerste rij omdat we niets te verliezen hebben” Meerdere
betogers achter deze slogan dragen oogverbanden voor de kwetsuren
opgedaan tijdens vorige betogingen.
