Antony Blinken and the NY Times on Venezuela's Sunday Election: The Art of Deception

Anybody reading Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s statements and NY Times headlines would think that the Sunday elections in Venezuela were fraudulent. But if you read the articles carefully, you’ll see that this was not the case. Blinken is basically making two highly deceptive assertions which are shared by the corporate media.

First, they say that it wasn’t a level playing field, that the governing PSUV party had advantages over the opposition parties. When they accuse the government of (in Blinken’s words) “restricting Venezuelans’ access to accurate information” what they mention the most is that the PSUV got more TV time than the opposition, in violation of the electoral rules. An additional accusation is that on the day of the elections, PSUV tables in some places were located closer to the polling centers than stipulated by the nation’s electoral council. Does that make the elections fraudulent? If you believe the Republicans, there was massive fraud in the U.S. elections last year. And if you believe the Democrats (which I do in this case), voter suppression and gerrymandering, which could be considered examples of electoral fraud, have become the new normal in U.S. politics. Furthermore, hasn’t the NY Times heard of the Koch brothers? Haven’t they heard of dark money in U.S. elections? How level is the playing field in U.S. politics?

Blinken also accuses the Venezuelan government of “arbitrarily imprisoning reportedly more than 250 individuals on political grounds,” and “arbitrary arrests and harassment of political and civil society actors, etc.” This statement is also misleading. The arrests took place mainly prior to the electoral process after which all the major parties of the opposition accepted participation in the elections. Indeed, some “political” prisoners such as Freddy Guevara, one of the main leaders of the Voluntad Popular party of Juan Guaidó, was released from prison. What Blinken doesn’t acknowledge is that these arrests occurred in the context of numerous attempts on President Maduro’s life (including a drone attack at a public gathering) and several coup attempts engineered by Voluntad Popular politicians and others. A similar number of arrests (or more) would have taken place in any country in the world in the face of similar circumstances.

Progressive U.S. politicians such as Bernie Sanders should speak out about these half-truths whose truth content doesn’t reach 5%. What happens throughout the world is as important (undoubtedly more important) for the causes that progressives like Sanders cherish as are the issues related to economic equality within the U.S. that Sanders most focuses his attention on. 

 

True to form the commercial media provide an unbalance and misleading account of yesterday’s Chavista electoral triumph in Venezuela

Just consider this Reuters article. First it quotes President Maduro’s statement on celebrating the Chavista party’s (the PSUV’s) triumph. They don’t quote the part of his short statement in which he calls on the entire nation to work together and pledged equal support for the three states that are now in the hands of the opposition. Then the article makes reference to the opposition’s boycott in previous elections on grounds “that a fair vote was impossible due to rigging and intimidation by violent gangs loyal to Maduro.” That’s one point of view, but there is also another, namely that there was never solid evidence that previous elections were rigged, only that the governing party was accused of getting unequal time on state TV channels and that their tables at the polls were a few feet over the established line set by the national electoral council, and other “unfair” practices. Throughout the article, Reuters refers to the Chavista party as the “ruling party,” somewhat of a loaded term. 

The article does quote the prestigious opposition pollster Luis Vicente León as saying “This result is lamentable for the opposition." Any objective journalistic account of the elections would have pointed out that yesterday’s smooth electoral process and the Chavista victory put the lie to Washington’s narrative that Maduro is a dictator with no popular support. 

It’s true that the PSUV coalition didn’t get a majority of the vote. But 46% by a government that has been submitted to a ruthless international campaign, which reduces the export or its main commodity to nearly zero, isn’t bad. And it certainly debunks the myth that Maduro is a dictator without any popular support. 

https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/venezuelans-head-polls-regional-local-elections-opposition-returns-2021-11-21/

 

LIZ CHENEY EXPELLED FROM REPUBLICAN PARTY IN WYOMING

 At first I reacted to this news thinking as bad as she is, I can sympathize with her for having the courage to stand up to Trump. But after listening to an interview with her in which she defended the neo-con position (with words out of her father’s mouth) against withdrawal from Afghanistan, even though polls indicate that a majority of the U.S. population favor it, I changed my mind. She basically calls those who support withdrawal isolationists, but that statement is deceptive. Engaging other countries in favor of peace and lending a helping hand to suffering people in the South is not isolationist. Liz Chaney and Trump: A Plague on both your houses.

The case of pro-Maduro businessman Alex Saab: To use the courts for political ends is criminal. Has nothing to do with justice

Alex Saab is on trial in Florida for allegations of corruption involving Venezuela’s safety net program of food distribution (CLAP), and yet the U.S. judicial system leaves untouched neoliberals and their families. An example is Cecilia Flores, the long-time lover and then wife of Venezuela’s neoliberal president Carlos Andrés Pérez. To quote Wikipedia “Matos is still unable to account for her personal wealth or how a junior secretary in the Venezuelan Congress went on to own real estate in New York, Washington, D.C., Caracas, Paris and Florida and foreign bank accounts without any income or economic activity to justify these assets.”

 

Carlos Andrés Pérez himself moved from the Dominican Republic to Miami in 2002 to avoid extradition to Venezuela on grounds of corruption. Miami is a haven for corrupt politicians, neoliberal ones, of course. Not too far away, Saab is being tried for the crime of helping feed hungry Venezuelans.

   

Socialist candidate India Walton defeated in the Buffalo elections for mayor thanks to the machinations of Democratic Party centrist leaders

 

Socialist candidate India Walton’s loss in the mayoral elections in Buffalo is another example of the double standards and dishonesty of Democratic Party centrists. Walton beat Byron Brown fair and square in the Democratic Party primaries in June. She lost on Sunday because in addition to a flood of big money supporting Brown in his successful write-in campaign in Sunday’s election, the centrist Democratic Party leadership of the state of New York refrained from providing Walton with meaningful support. The Democratic centrists would prefer to have a traitor win the elections than to have a real progressive triumph.

 

I remember clearly the same thing happening to then progressive anti-war candidate Ned Lamont in CT (who I personally campaigned for, house to house in New Haven and then at the polls) who defeated Joseph Lieberman, who then left the party to run as an independent. The Lamont campaign pleaded with Bill Clinton and Obama to come to CT to campaign for him, but it never happened. As a result the Democrats lost the opportunity to have a much-needed 60-person majority in the Senate.  

 

Compare that with independent Bernie Sanders. In order to run in the primaries in 2016 he had to swear that he would support the winning candidate, that is Hillary Clinton. “Do as I say, not as I do” is the identifying slogan of Democratic centrist leaders.