The Wall Street Journal Calls Hugo Chavez A Threat to World Peace

by Stephen Lendman

You won’t find commentary and language any more
hostile to Hugo Chavez than on the editorial page of
the Wall Street Journal.  Their June 23 piece by Mary
Anastasia O’Grady in the Americas column is a clear,
jaw-dropping example.  It’s practically blood-curdling
in its vitriol which calls Hugo Chavez a threat to
world peace.  The sad part of it is Journal readers
believe this stuff and are likely to support any US
government efforts to remove the “threat.”

The O’Grady article is about the elections scheduled
to take place in the fall for five non-permanent UN
Security Council seats to be held in 2007. One of them
will be for the Latin American seat now held by
Argentina.  The two countries vying to fill the
opening are Guatemala and Venezuela, and the other
countries in the region will vote on which one will
get it.  You won’t have to think long to guess the one
the US supports - its Guatemalan ally, of course.  And
why not.  For over 50 years its succession of military
and civilian governments have all followed the
dictates of their dominant northern neighbor.  In so
doing, they all managed to achieve one of the world’s
worst human rights records that hasn’t abated even
after the 1996 Peace Accords were signed ending a
brutal 36 year conflict.  Although the country today
is nominally a democratic republic, it continues to
abuse its people according to documented reports by
Amnesty International. 

Amnesty is aware of sexual violence and extreme
brutality against women including 665 murders in 2005
gotten from police records; 224 reported attacks on
human rights activists and organizations in the same
year with little or no progress made investigating
them; forced evictions and destruction of homes of
indigenous people in rural areas (echoes of
Palestine); and no progress by the government and
Constitutional Court in seeking justice for decades of
genocidal crimes and crimes against humanity committed
by paramilitary death squads and the Guatamalan
military.  The sum of these and other unending abuses
led Amnesty to call Guatamala a “land of injustice.”

That record of abuse hardly matters to the Bush
administration nor did it bother any past ones either
since the CIA fomented a coup in 1954 ousting the
country’s democratically elected leader Jacobo Arbenz
Guzman.  That coup began a half century reign of
terror against the country’s indigenous Mayan
majority.  It was fully supported by a succession of
US presidents who were quite willing to overlook it as
long as Guatamalan governments maintained a policy of
compliance with the US agenda.  They all did, and in
return received the support and blessing of the US and
its corporate giants that continue to suck the life
out of that oppressed country.

Guatamala fills the bill nicely for the Bush
administration and would be expected to be a close
ally in support of US positions that come up for votes
in the UN Security Council.  Venezuela, on the other
hand, is a different story.  Since he was first
democratically elected in 1998, Hugo Chavez has done
what few other leaders ever do.  He’s kept his
promises to his people to serve their interests ahead
of those of other nations, especially the US that’s
dominated and exploited Venezuela for decades.  He’s
served them well, and in so doing engendered the wrath
of his dominant northern neighbor that already has
tried and failed three times to oust him and is now
planning a fourth attempt to do it.

The idea of a Chavez-led government holding a seat on
the Security Council does not go down well in
Washington, and the Bush administration is leading a
campaign to prevent it with aid and support of the
kind of attack-dog journalism found in the Wall Street
Journal.  Honest observers know this newspaper of
record for corporate America has a hard time dealing
with facts it dislikes so it invents the ones it does
to use in their place. 

The June 23 editorial is a good example.  It extolls
the record of the Guatamalan government with its
long-standing record of extreme abuse against its own
people falsely claiming it’s been “accumulating an
impressive record of international cooperation on a
variety of UN efforts.”  It claims one of its main
qualifications is its “active role in international
peacekeeping” and that the country is now home to a
Central American regional peacekeeping school and
training center.  Oddly, it mentions that Guatamalan
peacekeepers are now serving in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Sudan and Haiti.  What it fails to
mention is that those so-called “peacekeepers,” along
with those from other countries serving with them,
have in large part functioned as paramilitary
enforcers, and in that capacity have committed gross
human rights abuses against the local people rather
than trying to protect them.  The WSJ writer surely
knows this but didn’t choose to share that information
with her readers.  Instead she extolls the country’s
“democratic credentials.”  But readers with any
knowledge of recent Guatamalan history surely know
that country’s true record is one of extreme violence
and abuse against its own people and one no one would
think of as a nation representing them democratically.

The WSJ’s June 23 editorial is titled “A Vote for
Venezuela Is a Vote for Iran.”  The commentary in it
is one of the paper’s most extreme diatribes against
the Venezuelan leader which would seem to indicate the
Bush administration and corporate America are stepping
up their attack on Hugo Chavez in advance of when they
plan to make their move to oust him.  The Journal
writer calls him a “strongman” in an “oil
dictatorship” leading a government that values
“tyranny and aggression” who’ll use his seat and
Council presidency when his nation assumes it to
support “hostile states” like Iran, Cuba, Sudan and
North Korea.  Observers knowledgeable about Venezuela
under Chavez would have a hard time containing
themselves as the true Chavez record is totally
opposite the one the Journal portrays.  The Journal
writer, of course, knows this, but would never report
it in her column.  Her employer and the interests it
serves wouldn’t be pleased if she did. 

While claiming that a Guatamala seat on the Council is
a “voice for the region, not its own national
interests,” it says Venezuela’s “rests largely on oil
‘diplomacy’ and the capacity to push anti-American
buttons around the UN.”  It goes on to state “It may
seem strange Venezuela has any support in the region.
Over the past seven years, its meddling in its
neighbors’ politics ‘have’ (even the grammar is wrong)
earned it a reputation as a bully.  Mr. Chavez is
persona non grata in more than a few Latin nations.
Many countries are worried about Venezuela’s ‘big
spending’ to acquire fighter jets and 100,000
kalisnikovs from Russia.”  Readers may need to pause
to catch their breath.

What the Journal writer doesn’t explain is far more
important than what she does - but she’s doing her job
as a servant of the US empire.  Chavez’s so-called
“oil diplomacy,” in fact, is based on his Bolivarian
Alternative of the Americas or ALBA.  It’s based on
the principles of complementarity (not competition),
solidarity (not domination), cooperation (not
exploitation) and respect for other nations’
sovereignty free from the control of dominant powers
like the US and its large transnational corporations.
It’s the mirror opposite of US-style predatory
capitalism and the one-sided trade agreements it uses
to exploit other countries for its own gain. 

The nations participating in ALBA-style agreements are
able to operate outside the usual international
banking and corporate trading system in their exchange
of goods and services so that each country benefits
and none loses - just the opposite of the one-sided
way the US operates.  Because Venezuela is rich in
oil, it’s been able to trade that vital commodity with
its neighbors who need it, even sell it to them at
below-market prices, and get back in return the
products and services its trading partners can supply
on an equally favorable basis.  It’s a true “win-win”
arrangement for participating countries but one that
angers the US because it cuts its corporations and big
banks out of the process.  The Chavez plan is to help
his people, not serve the interests of the corporate
giants or dominant US neighbor.  The WSJ calls this
“meddling” and Chavez a “bully.”  What glorious
meddling it is, in the true spirit of the country’s
Bolivarian Revolution, and “bully” to Hugo Chavez for
doing it.

As for Chavez’s so-called “big spending” for weapons
that has “many countries worried,” one must wonder
which countries the Journal writer means.  She
mentions none, which she surely would have and quoted
their officials if, in fact, there were any.  The
truth, of course, is Hugo Chavez is acting no
differently than most all other countries in the
region or elsewhere, has expressed no hostility toward
any of them, has never invaded a neighbor or
threatened to, and is a model of a peace-promoting
leader who’s only taking sensible steps to upgrade his
small military and protect his nation against a
hostile US he has every reason to believe will attack
him.  But you’ll never find that commentary on the
pages of the Wall Street Journal.

The Journal editorial ends in grand style.  It demeans
the poor countries of the region benefitting from
below-market priced Venezuelan oil as likely
supporting that country for the Latin American Council
seat.  It also attacks Argentina for being a
“Venezuelan pawn,” calling it “once a haven for Nazis”
(the US was and still is), and stating “the country
has been so incompetent about managing its ‘resources’
that it too needs charity from Mr. Chavez.”  Indeed,
Argentina had big financial trouble at the end of the
1990s, but the Journal writer doesn’t explain why.  It
was because the country became the “poster child”
model for US-style neoliberal free market capitalism
in the 1990s.  It wrecked the economy causing it to
collapse into bankruptcy it’s still struggling to
recover from.

The Journal writer also attacks Bolivia and Cuba for
supporting Chavez but is particularly hostile to the
Lula government in Brazil for its siding with the
Venezuelan leader.  She calls that support
“surprising” and accused the Brazilian government of
being “Bolivia’s unofficial energy advisor (that)
orchestrated the confiscation of Brazilian assets (in
Bolivia) recently.”  Bolivian president Evo Morales
nationalized his nation’s energy resources which
Bolivian law clearly states the nation owns.  He
confiscated nothing, which the Journal writer surely
knows but failed to tell her readers.  She also
mentioned a so-called “eternal Brazilian struggle to
prove that it can challenge US ‘hegemony’ in the
region (that) trumps the need to regain dignity and
protect its investments abroad.”  Left out of the
commentary is any mention that Argentina, Bolivia,
Cuba and Brazil are sovereign states with the right to
support whatever policies and other countries they
wish without needing US approval to do it.

About the only final comment the Journal writer can
make is to claim Guatamala has the “solid backing of
the ‘more serious democracies’ in the region - such as
Colombia and Mexico.”  It’s likely what the writer
means by “serious” is those countries’ elections are
about as free and fair as ours - meaning, they only
are for the power-elites controlling them who arrange
the outcomes they want. 

The June 23 Wall Street Journal editorial was a
typical example of what this newspaper calls
journalism and editorial commentary.  This writer
follows it to learn what the US empire likely is up
to.  In the case of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, it’s no
doubt up to no good.  The continued hostile rhetoric
is clearly to signal another attempt to oust the
Venezuelan leader at whatever time and by whatever
means the Bush administration has in mind.  Stay
tuned.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at
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site at sjlendman.blogspot.com