Guardian UK: The old Iran-Contra death squad gang is desperate to discredit Chavez

[marmar]

The old Iran-Contra death squad gang is desperate to discredit Chavez


Democracy and hope in Latin America have been revived by Venezuela's leader. But the forces allied against him are formidable

John Pilger
Friday August 17, 2007
The Guardian


I walked with Roberto Navarrete into the national stadium in Santiago, Chile. With the southern winter's wind skating down from the Andes, it was empty and ghostly. Little had changed, he said: the chicken wire, the broken seats, the tunnel to the changing rooms from which the screams echoed. We stopped at a large number 28. "This is where I was, facing the scoreboard. This is where I was called to be tortured."

Thousands of "the detained and the disappeared" were imprisoned in the stadium following the Washington-backed coup by General Pinochet against the democracy of Salvador Allende on September 11 1973. For the majority people of Latin America, the abandonados, the infamy and historical lesson of the first "9/11" have never been forgotten. "In the Allende years, we had a hope the human spirit would triumph," said Roberto. "But in Latin America those believing they are born to rule behave with such brutality to defend their rights, their property, their hold over society that they approach true fascism. People who are well-dressed, whose houses are full of food, bang pots in the streets in protest as though they don't have anything. This is what we had in Chile 36 years ago. This is what we see in Venezuela today. It is as if Chávez is Allende. It is so evocative for me."

In making my film The War on Democracy, I sought the help of Chileans like Roberto and his family, and Sara de Witt, who courageously returned with me to the torture chambers at Villa Grimaldi, which she somehow survived. Together with other Latin Americans who knew the tyrannies, they bear witness to the pattern and meaning of the propaganda and lies now aimed at undermining another epic bid to renew both democracy and freedom on the continent.

The disinformation that helped destroy Allende and give rise to Pinochet's horrors worked the same in Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas had the temerity to implement modest, popular reforms. In both countries, the CIA funded the leading opposition media, although they need not have bothered. In Nicaragua, the fake martyrdom of La Prensa became a cause for North America's leading liberal journalists, who seriously debated whether a poverty-stricken country of 3 million peasants posed a "threat" to the United States. Ronald Reagan agreed and declared a state of emergency to combat the monster at the gates. In Britain, whose Thatcher government "absolutely endorsed" US policy, the standard censorship by omission applied. In examining 500 articles that dealt with Nicaragua in the early 1980s, the historian Mark Curtis found an almost universal suppression of the achievements of the Sandinista government - "remarkable by any standards" - in favour of the falsehood of "the threat of a communist takeover". ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2150655,00.html

[Truth2Tell]

1. K & R

Stay tuned for dictator labeling. Coming soon to a thread near you.

[acmavm]

5. People here have already been insinuating that. In fact, a

couple have used the word.

I cannot understand why someone giving power and economic security to the people raise the hackles of people even here.

[formercia]

6. WE are a product of our environment

I grew up in a racist family and had to learn on my own to behave otherwise. it's the same growing up in a society where the Great Wurlitzer bombards the population with the propaganda that Socialism is to be feared, in the same way that Liberal has been forced into a negative connotation by the spin masters.

A large percentage of the population still believe that Iraq and 9/11 are connected. It was all propaganda and they still have it burned into their brain.

[mogster]

2. Kick

and recommend :-)

[formercia]

3. The label du Jour is Marxist

Communism wore it self out and collapsed in a heap of rubble. Like any totalitarian society, it was bound to fail. Marxism, on the other hand is something the boys can really play the fear card with.

[formercia]

4. Marxism, the ultimate bogeyism

A Jew, Lutheran then Atheist, every thing the boys hate.


http://www.adherents.com/people/pm/Karl_Marx.html

Karl Marx was born to a Jewish Lutheran family. About a year before Marx was born, his father had converted to the Prussian state religion of Lutheranism in order to continue working as a lawyer. Luthernism was the major Protestant denomination of Christianity where Marx lived. Marx and his family were nominally Christian. Karl Marx was raised in an essentially non-religious home and he adopted atheism.

Karl Marx founded Marxism, which is widely known as an influential political and economic system, but which is also a religion from a sociological perspective. Marx founded "Marxist Communism" and he was one of history's most important proponents of Communism. Marx co-authored The Communist Manifesto, which is probably the most important document in the history of Communsim, essentially the "scripture" or "holy book" of the movement. But Marx himself did not create Communism; it was an existing, organized philosophy that he was attracted to.

The passage below briefly describes the religious background and religious affiliation of Karl Marx.

Source: Josh McDowell & Don Stewart. Understanding Secular Religions. Here's Life Publishers, Inc.: San Bernardino (1982). Pages 45-46.

The name of Karl Marx is probably the best known of any founder of a political or economic system...

Karl Marx was born in Trier, an ancient German city in the Rhineland... His ancestors, Jewish on both his mother's and father's sides, were rabbis. His father, Heinrich, had converted to Protestantism in 1816 or 1817 in order to continue practicing law after the Prussian edict denying Jews to the bar. Karl was born in 1818 and baptized in 1824, but his mother, Henriette, did not convert until 1825, when Karl was 7. While the family did not appear religious at all -- it was said that not a single volume on religion or theology was in Heinrich's modest library -- Karl was raised in an atmosphere of religious toleration. There was some discrimination against Jews in the area, but general religious tolerance was the standard. Karl was sent to religious school primarily for academic rather than religious training. On the whole, the family was not committed to either evangelical Protestantism or evangelical Judaism. Vincent Miceli notes:

The family lived as very liberal Protestants, that is, without any profound religious beliefs. Thus, Karl grew up without an inhibiting consciousness of himself as being Jewish. In changing his credal allegience, or course, the father, newly baptized Heinrich, experienced the alienation of turning his back on his religious family and traditions. Thus, though politically emancipated and socially liberated from the ghetto, the experience of being uprooted and not completely at home in the Germany of the nineteenth century did affect the Marx family (Miceli, Atheism, pp. 94, 95).

--snip--

[Vidar]

7. K&R.