Tag Archives: Cold War

Venezuela’s ‘Popular Consultation:’ Capitalism’s Glossy New Alternative To Actually Winning In A Democratic Election

FOURTH ESTATE / FIFTH COLUMN DEPT.

Seems the Associated Press is not the only big wire service to go Big Brother with Cold War propaganda; that is, they are not the only wire service to suddenly emerge on your news feed peddling full-out disembodied mis-informative Truthiness, emotionally cued to deceive you into supporting a right-wing political line that you don’t really support. All the corporations, lately, seem to have learned this from Trump: that citizens don’t know what the rules are; they only believe what the winners are shouting at them RIGHT NOW. Thus, goes the logic now playing out, just declare yourself the winner and then make your own reality. Anyway, now it’s Reuters who is guilty of the following puff-piece for Cold War Latin American banana fascism:

https://news.yahoo.com/venezuelas-opposition-concludes-popular-consultation-222116187.html

Remember Juan Guiado, the hand-picked U.S./U.K./OAS neoliberal corporatist wannabe-puppet dictator of Venezuela? He has actually gone through with his own suave idea; no, promise; no, threat; to hold a…rally? opinion poll? telethon? Anyway it’s his “alternative to democracy,” and it was today. He needed an alternative since he’s lost the last several elections and boycotted the most recent one. Guaido can’t very well call himself the Presidente For Life of Venezuela without SOME kind of popular support.The article doesn’t mention the actual results of the — poll? straw count? market survey? I can’t wait to see who wins!
Does this glossy, in-group consultation even count? NO. But this Reuters article make Guaido’s lackeys sound calm and patient, spinning their cool lies as inevitabilities. Nobody bothered to interview any members of the actual, elected, already working, Covid-strapped socialist government of Maduro. Do journalists “forget” to interview government sources on questions of state? NO. So, is this Reuters article even journalism? NO. So why is it on Yahoo’s newsfeed?

Actually the article DOES tell you, somewhere in there, that this is all a meaningless show, implying therefore that the entire premise of their article is meaningless. But this is only after you’ve had to pass several juicy click-bait ads. Truth or lie, they make money. This is not Shinola, it’s shit — and it is all happening worldwide. Trump and Covid somehow enabled the complete journalistic coup of faceless algorithmic aggregators owned by faceless algorithmic billionaire investors. It’s done, accompli. Who can claim to be well-informed today? How is that even to be a virtue anymore? Are there to be virtues anymore?

I annoy my Patient Readership with this only because…well, dammit, America and the World are fucked if we surrender to the corporate news algorithm.



J’Accuse, Journalists!

FOURTH ESTATE / FIFTH COLUMN DEPT.

Update: Another absolutely egregious, 1984-style article , or rather, 1948-style article (for that was the year of 1984) came out today from none other than the Associated Press. Sigh. View below.

‘Trump Backs Herd Immunity and Calls Millions Contracting COVID “Terrific”’

Click for the Truthout article by Chris Walker, Dec. 9 2020

Since few Americans have cared enough to stop the Rape of the Internet by the Tech Oligopolists; and since even fewer understand that an Internet run by a few trillionaires is nothing less than Big Brother; and since there is no place easily accessible online to receive Received Wisdom (sifted, proven, contextualized) any more, The View has to sully your day by screaming that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS HERD IMMUNITY. There never was or could be, without a mass vaccination program.

Talking about herd immunity is like talking about reverse gravity — a nonsensical and dangerous idea for a misguided individual or a society to trust in — unless there’s a flying machine or elevator handy. It could be compared to stumping for “dark sunshine” in case that might turn better for crops and skin cancers. OUTLANDISH NONSENSE, remains exactly that, even when spoken by the President. It should only be covered AS nonsense, which is the real story — Whacko President Spews More Bilge — instead of seriously sorting the fine and coarse chunks in a stream of verbal garbage.

To cover herd immunity like it is a real thing, a controversy with two sides, earnestly discussed and pursued by government leaders, is journalistic bad faith. Nothing in this article makes Trump seem like anything other than a brilliantly courageous leader struggling to enact a scientifically valid policy against his benighted experts’ advice. This absurd post normalizes insanity in a bid to be middle-of-the-road and get more clicks. That idea of journalism needs to be drowned in its vanilla latte, NOW.

In the meantime, where on Earth do we get the news?

UPDATE: Not from the AP, that’s for sure! Look at this horrible bit of Cold War anti-Socialist propaganda!
How do these “journalists” shave their faces in the morning? Oh, right…they don’t have faces. You’d never know from the article that Guaido, the suave-looking patriot they profile, is an unpopular banana capitalist dictator puppet who failed in his U.S./OAS-backed coup attempt. Nor would you guess that choosing to opt out of an election, then dubbing it illegitimate because you weren’t involved, and seizing power by running your own election outside of the country, is arrant Fascism. It’s short, and full of zingers; like “Maduro’s regime wants to annihilate any form of alternative democracy,” Guaidó said.

https://news.yahoo.com/venezuelas-guaid-time-revise-international-215252844.html Venezuela’s democratically elected government is socialist. Venezuela is poor and volatile because it has been starved by sanctions. Its society ripped apart, not by socialists, but by international thugs in the petrodollar ring, and then the U.S./U.K,/OAS/UN mercenary thuygs enforcing drastic sanctions during Coronavirus — all in order to control Venezuela’s strategic petroleum assets.
When Guaido boasts (like an indie producer on the lot with a new put-deal and big projects in development with the Front Office) that he will be working closely with the Biden administration, I’m hoping it doesn’t mean — well, that it doesn’t mean what I’m hoping it doesn’t mean. That we are verging on a full-out resuscitation of the Cold War in Latin America is a monstrously evil miscarriage of history by the U.S. and, for what?