Another Central American Coup

The military of Honduras has reportedly seized power, exiling president Zelaya at gunpoint yesterday. This follows the recent murder by the military of a leftist presidential candidate.

Obama and Hilary have reportedly been tut-tutting the coup, but given that the US has a military base in Honduras, and directly funds the pro-US parties, it is highly unlikely the coup could have occurred with prior US approval, if not direct assistance. Some things never change, regardless of who is in the White House.

UPDATE:
At this time, the State Dept has officially condemned the right-wing military coup, and there is no clear evidence that the US has conspired to oust the legitimate president. We shall see what unfolds in the next few days.

Crises in Neoliberalism

Neoliberalism is another name for free marker economic policies. The 'freedom' in question is not one for citizens, but for corporations, as neoliberalism has three fundamental aims, all convenient to business: lower taxes, lower input costs, and lower wages.

The other major pillar of neoliberal policy is deregulation. Again, this deregulation is more for capital than for citizens, and aims to remove barriers and restrictions on the way businesses operate. In this way, the 'invisible hand' of the market comes to the fore.

However, even the stooges of neoliberal, such as Thomas Friedman, have said that 'The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist'.

Different kinds of fists are being brought to bear behind different kinds of markets, both in Australia and across the world.

In Bolivia, the country's elite are threatening to take their bat and ball and go home, as the nation's wealthy seek autonomy from the rest of Bolivia. Money is not the only issue in this instance - the wealthy do not wish to be dominated by 'the Indians'.

The neoliberal policies of yet another US-backed dictatorial stooge, Mubarak, have led to ongoing strikes and protests for months in Egypt, ably reported by this blogger. In addition to strikes, Egypt has recently seen food riots, during which pictures of Mubarak were torn down by protesters. Sadly, free markets do not only provide no guarantee of affordable food, they provide no assurances of a free press: a broadcaster who televised the images of the torn posters is being charged.

In Australia, matters are far less dramatic, but important nonetheless.

In opposition to members, unions, and, most probably, much of NSW, the ALP Government is pushing ahead with plans to privatise electricity. Every ALP leader in the country, and every ALP leader since Hawke has been strongly in favour of neoliberal economic policies, despite the notional displays of support for social democracy brandished on the party's website. Carr and Keating have been vocal in their support of Iemma and the privatisation move. Keating clearly still has a sense of humour, referring to Iemma and Costa as a 'pair of honest souls'.

Meanwhile, in Victoria, the Government is headed for a larger-than-expected budget surplus, of $827.5 million according to George Megalogenis. This is despite a slowing economy, a huge population boom in Melbourne, and the ruinous neglect of the state's public services, which has seen industrial action from nurses, police, teachers, and now disability services workers, in just the last 6 months.

Business as usual, in other words.

The Failed Doctrine

It is customary for leftist solutions to concrete problems to be dismissed as little more than the dew-eyed ramblings of cloistered academics. In particular, unions are dismissed as 'irrelevant', the by-product of a long-dead industrial reality, and socialism is dismissed as self-evidently absurd. Faith in the 'market' as an all-purpose 'solution' is one of the few dogmas that brings a whole range of anti-leftists together.



With this in mind, I was struck by two recent articles illustrating the costs of the supposedly 'free' market.



China is in the process of 'freeing' up its markets for the exploitative labour of migrant workers. We have seen recent reports of slave labour literally occurring at the hands of indifferent, budding capitalists. In addition, last week a strike-busting squad, armed with shovels and other weapons, lead a vicious attack on workers. The workers were protesting the fact that they had not been paid in four months.



One of the victims of the assault is currently brain-dead, but is being kept artificially alive, lest his assailants face murder charges:




Of course, the employers had their reasons for withholding workers' wages:

Mr Xiang says most of the six seriously injured were, like him, singled out
by the Fuyuan thugs because they were team leaders. His dead colleague, Mr Lei,
was a safety monitor for Qiutian Construction, the subcontractor that brought in
the workers.
Qiutian says it has been unable to pay workers because Fuyuan
has refused to compensate it for losses suffered last summer when the site
flooded. Qiutian says that legally the developer is responsible for losses
caused by acts of nature.

This is, apparently, 'capitalism with Chinese characteristics'. Such things were not uncommon in Western capitalist countries not so long ago. Today, union-busting in Australia takes place via legislation, and is held by the Government to be in everybody's best interests, other than self-serving 'union bosses'.

Courtesy of our American friends at Crooks and Liars, I noticed this article (also being featured at Larvatus Prodeo). In contrast to the allegedly destructive Bolivarian socialism of Venezuela, free-market utopia Colombia has made the news once again for its treatment of union members:

The bus had just left Drummond Co. Inc.'s coal mine carrying about 50
workers when gunmen halted it and forced two union leaders off. They shot one on
the spot, pumping four bullets into his head, and dragged the other one off to
be tortured and killed.
In a civil trial set to begin Monday before a
federal jury in Birmingham, Ala., union lawyers have presented affidavits from
two people who allege that Drummond ordered those killings, a charge the company
denies.
Multinationals operating in Colombia have admitted paying right-wing
militias known as paramilitaries to protect their operations. But human rights
activists claim the companies went further, using the fighters to violently keep
their labor costs down.

Colombia is being treated as a mere colony for US Corporations, as are some of its northern neighbours. Yet pointing out the fact that corporations do not always act in humanity's best interests is virtually anathema in the mainstream press, and likely to result in accusations of 'anti-Americanism', or, still better, 'socialism'.

The existence of Stalin and Mao appears to be enough for some to dismiss any leftist doctrine - critics simply cite a figure of those killed under the relevant dictators, and consider the matter finished. When will the same critics turn their attention to the failed doctrine of capitalism, starving millions for the profits of a few, and crushing the resistance of those who stand in the way?

It is not that capitalism is inherently 'evil', (even if moralising had anything to do with it). The raison d'etre of capitalism is simply to generate capital. The inevitable by-product of this generation is that more or less people will be exploited, starved, and, in the cases we see above, killed.

But at least our plasma screens are relatively cheap.

Don't know much 'bout history, Don't know much 'bout geography...

Polling at the commencement of the Iraq War found that a majority (75%) of Americans supported the invasion. When the same polling occurred in April 2007, a majority (58%) said that the invasion was 'a mistake'. Public opinion around the world was even less favourable about Bush's war.

With this in mind, take a look at another recent survey, this one by Newsweek. The survey examined the views and beliefs of 1001 Americans aged 18 or older. The results were not flattering.

Even today, more than four years into the war in Iraq, as many as four in
10 Americans (41 percent) still believe Saddam Hussein’s regime was directly
involved in financing, planning or carrying out the terrorist attacks on 9/11,
even though no evidence has surfaced to support a connection.

The work of Republican speechwriters and Faux News has obviously paid off, then. One wonders what support for the invasion would be like if that 41 percent had their facts correct.

A majority of Americans were similarly unable to pick Saudi Arabia in a
multiple-choice question about the country where most of the 9/11 hijackers were
born. Just 43 percent got it right—and a full 20 percent thought most came from
Iraq.

The pollsters don't speculate as to why this might be: perhaps it is because Iran's (soon-to-be-invaded?) theocracy has taken the limelight from Saudi Arabia's brutal Wahhabist regime. The latter regime is, of course, of great concern to human rights organisations, but of much less concern to our bearers of 'Democracy', who count the Saudis among their allies.

And perhaps because most (85 percent) are aware that Osama bin Laden remains at large, roughly half of the poll’s respondents (52 percent) think that the United States is losing the fight against his terror group, Al Qaeda, despite no military defeats or recent terrorist attacks to suggest as much.

No military defeats (the Iraq War was declared 'mission accomplished' 4 years ago) and no recent terrorist attacks, yet the War on Terror is being lost; more cause for Washington (or Canberra) fear-mongering, no doubt. It is amusing to ponder the responses of the 15 percent who believe that bin Laden isn't actually at large. Osama's doing Elvis gigs in Vegas, perhaps?

Other results of the poll are also embarrassing:

Roughly half (53 percent) are aware that Judaism is an older religion than
both Christianity and Islam (41 percent aren’t sure). And a quarter of the
population mistakenly identify either Iran (26 percent) or India (24 percent) as
the country with the largest Muslim population. Only 23 percent could correctly
identify Indonesia. Close to two thirds (61 percent) are aware that the Roman
Empire predates the Ottoman, British and American empires.

It would be easy to interpret these results as evidence of 'dumb' Americans, and make reference to anecdotes of crass and boorish US travellers. After all, anyone in America (or Australia) with the inclination and resources can readily obtain a few basic facts about the world. Yet I think we should resist the 'only in America' interpretation, and sketch some possible explanations.

When discussing political matters, I often take the media to task. The reason for this is that, all that most people know about politics is what media agencies choose to tell them. Entire speeches are routinely condensed into soundbites, and state propaganda is allowed to pass unfiltered through a complicit media. This phenomenon has been discussed at length by the likes of Chomsky, who argued that US propaganda is as effective and pervasive as anything the Soviets employed with Pravda. Faux News and Australia's own Government Gazette differ from Politburo literature only in their sophistication. Clearly, the constant linking of Iraq and 11/9 by Governments and the media is a possible explanation for the results above.

Yet this is not the full story. Another recent (June 2007) poll that I found (courtesy of Ken L) found that respondents generally did not trust the media in America. Only 23% said that they had a 'great deal' or 'quite a lot' of confidence in television news. The figure was 22% when applied to the print media. State indoctrination cannot be the only explanation here. We might perhaps say of supporters of the war, after Žižek, that this is a case of 'they know what they are doing, yet they are doing it all the same'.

The next obvious target for criticism would logically be the education system, which, despite the bleatings of 'cultural warriors' here and in the States, has blatantly failed to educate its citizens with information that is damaging for the reigning regimes. Supposedly 'post-modern' teaching of history cannot be blamed for an ignorance of basic facts.

Whatever the explanation, it is likely that history shall remember the twin destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan as the most significant political event of the early 21st Century. Like Lady Macbeth's spot, the stain of blood spilled for conquest is not easily washed off, even in the face of pervasive ignorance. This is especially true when the 'spot' of blood is often more reminiscent of a torrent.

Shakespearean analogies aside, the significant distortion of history by our pro-Government, chickenhawk cheer-squads ensures that where there would be tragedy, there is instead farce.

I am not optimistic, but perhaps a little knowledge would go a long way to slowing America's sabre-rattling towards Iran. The Venezualans too fear that the Coalition will seek to 'democratise' them. Whilst it may seem a little too interventionist for the weak-stomached libertarians out there, perhaps the following should be distributed to the public, as a kind of war prophylactic:

Eleven theses on Psychoanalysis

In response to a long and interesting thread on Larvatus Prodeo, I think it timely to provide some clarificatory remarks on psychoanalysis, a much-maligned and oft-misunderstood discipline. I will try to be as schematic as possible.

1. Psychoanalysis is radical. The notion of a psychoanalytic unconscious, a part of ourselves that is fundamentally and irreducibly unknowable, beyond any control, and causative of a range of 'symptoms' (from the hysteric's phantom pains, to dreams, to the symptomatic nature of our romantic lives) is radical. Other psychoanalytic notions can make claims of being radical, however, the psychoanalytic unconscious is what gives the discipline its revolutionary character. Whilst Kant, Hartmann, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others all dipped their toes into the murky waters of a radical unconscious, none were as detachedly systematic, whilst at the same time frighteningly intimate as Freud.

Nonetheless, psychoanalysis is not politically radical, Reich being the obvious exception. Freud rejected Marxist theories of the origins of society, and Lacan too was dismissive of Marxism, at least, until the uprisings in 1968 Paris. It is possible that, being Jewish, many early psychoanalysts thought it impolitic to also be socialist, given the Zeitgeist in which they operated. A strong sense of social justice can be found in psychoanalysis, from Freud's Free Clinics to the low-cost services provided by psychoanalytic schools today. This notwithstanding, Freud, and psychoanalysis is best understood, in 19th Century terms, as neither conservative nor radical, but as liberal-bourgeois.

2. Psychoanalysis is not a science. At least, it is not scientific in the sense by which we understand the term in physics or mathematics. Psychoanalysis is a science of the particular, which means it will never deal in the relatively tidy universals of the 'hard' sciences. All the same, psychoanalysis displays greater rigour, reasoning, and explanatory power than most of the rest of psychology, which is why today's neuroscientists, such as Damasio, or Kendall, are turning to Freud rather than Beck or Skinner.

Those who proffer narrow and dogmatic notions of scientificity (that is, most of academic psychology) will find psychoanalysis wanting. However, psychoanalysis is perfectly 'empirical' - it deals with a series of 'ones' rather than seeking to apply structural equation modelling or alpha-tests to subjects reduced to some kind of statistical totality. Like any of the 'human sciences', psychoanalysis incorporates 'qualitative' methodologies, which, though they eschew statistical methods, nonetheless proceed by way of evidence and reasoned argumentation. Indeed, given the flimsy conceptual foundations of mainstream psychology, the latters' fear and hostility towards psychoanalysis must be explained by means other than a recourse to notions of 'empirical validation'.

3. Psychoanalysis is not an art. The discipline, as least in its clinical guise, is not simply some whimsical expression of its practitioner's fancy. Nonetheless, unlike other 'therapies', true psychoanalysis cannot be 'manualised', that is, broken into a recipe book-style series of prescriptions for a therapist or subject. Psychoanalysis stands closer to the arts than any other of the psychologies, partly because art itself is 'symptomatic' and 'over-determined', but also because psychoanalysis does not suffer from the same knee-jerk rejection of all that is not narrowly scientific that its psychological cousins exhibit.

4. Psychoanalysis is anti-authoritarian. When practised by way of assisting the analysand to interpret his or her own associations, psychoanalysis is far removed from the likes of CBT, and refrains from issuing directives and imperatives. Furthermore, psychoanalysis does not stigmatise and pathologise in the manner of the DSM-IV; after all, in psychoanalysis, neurosis is 'normal', or even a best-case scenario, given that the alternative is psychosis. Clearly, someone like Foucault was not enamoured of psychoanalysis, yet any criticism that he (or Deleuze or Guattari) might have made could be doubly said of the highly authoritarian treatment 'regimes' currently predominating in our healthcare systems

5. There are different schools of psychoanalysis. Few analysts would accept all of Freud's teachings, though virtually all would cite Freud as the founder of their discipline. In the post-Freud era, psychoanalytic schools include the Anna Freudian, ego psychology, Bion's analysis, object relations, Kleinian approaches, Lacanian analysis, and the intersubjective school. In addition, there are various offshoots initially inspired by, but ultimately distinct from psychoanalysis, such as Jungian psychology, the neo-Freudians, and Adler's individual psychology. Whilst some of these approaches differ sharply from each other, there is no more sectarianism that what one would find in any other discipline, and the dominant form of analysis that one learns is often a result of one's time and place, or the orientation of one's school. Still, psychoanalysis is not homogeneous.

6. Psychoanalysis is neither misogynist, nor anti-feminist. Whilst feminism has an uneasy relationship with Freud and psychoanalysis, there is a relationship nonetheless. Freud made several problematic statements in relation to feminine psychology, which can be attributed to 3 basic origins:

1. Freud was a (relatively enlightened) product of his times, and consequently gave voice to a number of fairly typical prejudices.
2. The exigencies of some of Freud's theories, and the extent to which he took these theories literally, inevitably led him to some odd conceptual formulations. The Oedipus Complex, when applied to females, is among the more notorious of these.
3. Some of Freud's statements are in fact sexist, and seemingly have no basis in either theoretical or empirical necessity, and cannot be explained away via 19th Century prejudice.

Having established this, it should be remembered that not all feminists are hostile to Freud or psychoanalysis. American analysts such as Nancy Chodorow or Jessica Benjamin are excellent examples of a feminist (and intersubjective) engagement with psychoanalysis.

7. Psychoanalysis is not always encountered in its pure form. Indeed, whilst the neuroscientists and 'cognitive analysts' say that they engage with psychoanalysis, it would be more accurate to describe this engagement as one of colonisation. Psychoanalysis is often subordinate to some other discipline, or else the more radical and subversive aspects of its teaching are neutered. For instance, American ego psychologists, and the CBT practitioners (former analysts) shift the focus from the unconscious to the controllable and knowable conscious. Or take the difficult notion of the death drive, which has been virtually neglected by all post-Freudians other than Klein and Lacan. It is surely no coincidence that psychoanalysis becomes more acceptable, and more 'scientific' to people once it has been stripped of the unconscious, sex, and death.

8. Psychoanalysis is analogous to Marxism. That is to say, as Foucault pointed out, both psychoanalysis and Marxism are discourses that critically interrogate other discourses, often discourses of mastery. In psychoanalysis, discourses of mastery belie the subject of the unconscious, repressing to produce this illusion of 'mastery'. In Marxism, analysis is directed to looking at how class-relations are perpetuated through ideology, and how 'neutral' discourses are often sodden with ideological blindspots. This contributes to both disciplines being 'unacceptable'. Freud's discourse is further unacceptable because it engages meaningfully in those things often presumed to be meaningless, that is, the nonsensical elements of experience normally banished from polite academic company, such as neurotic symptoms, jokes, dreams, and slips of the tongue.

Whilst both psychoanalysis and Marxism undermine discourses of mastery, neither were intended to be applied in a haphazard, reductionist fashion. For instance, whilst a Marxist analysis of 'crime' enable us to observe how class relations and private property underpin our notions of legal transgression, phenomena such as sexual assault can never be exhaustively reduced by an analysis of class relations alone.

9. Psychoanalysis is not post-modern. Despite the protestations of Sokal, and others, there is nothing that Lacan has in common with the likes of Derrida, or Baudrillard, other than a similarly difficult oeuvre. Whilst psychoanalysis is applicable to non-clinical phenomena, there are many examples of what Freud called 'wild analysis' in this field. In addition, Kristeva and Irigary, inspired by analysis, have consciously engaged with the 'post-modern'. It should be remembered, however, that in his New Introductory Lectures, Freud explicitly said that the Weltanschauung of psychoanalysis was scientific and medicinal. All of the major theorists of psychoanalysis have since continued in this tradition, albeit incorporating the concerns of feminism, or linguistics. The struggles of psychoanalysts are not merely confined to obscurantist debates on paper; French analysts, for instance, have documented their battles with an unsympathetic and cynical healthcare system in the journal Lacanian Praxis.

10. Psychoanalysis is not dead. In particular, psychoanalysis thrives in places where Latin languages predominate, from Portugal to Quebec. It is Buenos Aires, and not New York, that actually has the highest per capita amount of psychoanalysts. In fact, psychology in Argentina is taught with mandatory units in philosophy, and does not waste its time with the niceties of statistical analysis. Last year, as I travelled through Europe, it was clear that Freud's 150th birthday was celebrated in London, Berlin, and Vienna. On the other hand, psychoanalysis, as enduring as it is, will never be the dominant paradigm, cumbersome as it is to both the 'normalising' discourse of bureaucratic-medical models, and to consumer capitalism. Historian of psychoanalysis, Eli Zaretsky, said much the same thing in the speeches he gave in Melbourne in 2005.

11. Psychoanalysis is on the side of freedom. This may be paradoxical, given Freud's apparent commitment to a thoroughly determinist model of mental functioning. Nonetheless, if we adopt a notion of freedom that is not simply either/or in nature, we can observe how psychoanalysis helps the analysand obtain freedom by degrees, by replacing ignorance and compulsion with knowledge and awareness.

It is no coincidence that psychoanalysis has been demonised by totalitarian regimes everywhere, from Hitler's Germany, to Stalin's Russia, and is today excluded from authoritarian modes of 'treatment' peddled in consumerist regimes. An anecdote that I heard from an Argentinian Lacanian suggested that Lacan's work found resonance in this latter country precisely because the obscurity of its language kept it from the attention of authorities.

Psychologist have ever but sought to change the human subject, that is, transform him/her into an object, force him/her to identify with a 'therapist', or to become the 'healthy', narcissistic, alienated subject of consumer capitalism.

The point is not to change things, but to interpret them. Through interpreting, change follows in any case, or moreover, analysand interprets for his or her own self. Psychoanalysis teaches the analysand how he or she 'enjoys' his or her symptoms; it does not enjoin the subject to necessarily cease this enjoyment.

Contra los mentirosos, los cerdos y los bastardos…

The Murdoch commentariat, ever-concerned with the welfare of Latin Americans, has decided to train its investigative eye upon the recent decision by the Venezualan government. The Venezualan government has decided not to renew the broadcasting license of the anti-government stations, RCTV and Globovision.

Our good-hearted friends in the employ of Murdoch have, in their humanitarian-inspired shrieking, taken quite an interest in Venezualan president Hugo Chavez, and his supporters, in Australia and elsewhere. Like a semi-retarded seaside caricaturist, who only knows how to draw one cartoon, Tim Bleh seems to blog about Chavez every other day. Matters Venezualan have also been getting the cartoon treatment from Andrew Bolt, well-known for his bleeding-heart sympathies for the downtrodden. And you know a third-world country is getting 'dangerous', and a democratically-elected leader, 'dictatorial', when this unholy trinity is rounded out by some 'fair and balanced' attention by Uncle Rupert's megaphone, Faux News.

Naturally, these champions of Latin American freedom don't feel that Venezuala's neighbour, Colombia, is worthy of the same attention, despite Columbia, (a country that receives more US 'aid' than any other in Latin America) having a horrific modern history. These history includes the mass murder of unionists, 'extrajudicial executions' of civilians, collaboration between military and paramilitary groups and drug cartels (courtesy of US cash), and the murders of indigenous community leaders. Perhaps the deafening silence that we hear from these News Ltd friends of freedom is not so surprising; dead unionists, US support for military, and the suppression of minority groups sounds like a rightard's wet dream.

It doesn't take a Rhodes scholar to realise the reason Venezuala is targeted for incessant criticism and disinformation. It is much the same reason that criticism of the US or Israel is shouted down, and 'human rights' is utterly ignored in places such as Colombia or Uzbekistan. Anything remotely resembling 'progressive' politics is subject to condemnation and apocalyptic murmurings. Even a blue-blooded Tory of grazier origins, such as Malcolm Fraser, is derided as a 'leftist' nowadays.

In any case, the fact of Venezuala losing some its anti-government media has received enormous attention. My point in this post is not to defend the dubious manoeuverings of Chavez, but merely to demonstrate that the hysterical rantings of the above 'commentators' has its more measured obverse.

Against the absolute freedom of speech argued for by Chomsky, I personally lean towards the 'freedom needs limits' approach of Žižek. It is obvious that freedom of speech is an inherent requirement of any democracy. Speech, however, is also an act, albeit one that is usually more tepid than 'direct action'. I see no essential reason why the right to shout 'fire' in a crowded theatre, or the right to incite violence against Jews, Muslims or gays ought to be accorded the same privilege as other speech. Nonetheless, there are likewise good reasons for 'anti-government' media to be allowed to exist, given that almost all we directly know of a government is via such media.

(As an aside - these issues are perversely distorted by the lens of ideology. The Flat Earthists scream for the ABC to air The Great Global Warming Swindle, in the interests of 'balance'. Given the status that these sorts of hired hacks have, 'balance' would be best served by airing such things at a rate of one per thousand, and only then, to satisfy the demands of propagandists and cranks.)

Stepping outside of the Murdoch echo-chamber, a number of views contrary to the Blair/Bolt/Fox bile have come to my attention. For instance, Richard Gott of The Guardian provides some facts of the case not available in Australia's media (or even blogosphere):

The debate in Venezuela has less to do with the alleged absence of freedom
of expression than with a perennially tricky issue locally referred to as
"exclusion", a shorthand term for "race" and "racism". RCTV was not just a
politically reactionary organisation which supported the 2002 coup attempt
against a democratically elected government - it was also a white supremacist
channel. Its staff and presenters, in a country largely of black and indigenous
descent, were uniformly white, as were the protagonists of its soap operas and
the advertisements it carried. It was "colonial" television, reflecting the
desires and ambitions of an external power.

The coup of 2002, the content of RCTV's programming, and the interests thereby served, are typically excluded from the facile gibberings of groupthink hacks such as BlairBolt. Gregory Wilpert described Venezuala's situation, in terms of the media, eloquently:

As far as world public opinion is concerned, as reflected in the
international media, the pronouncements of freedom of expression groups, and of
miscellaneous governments, Venezuela has finally taken the ultimate step to
prove its opposition right: that Venezuela is heading towards a dictatorship.
Judging by these pronouncements, freedom of speech is becoming ever more
restricted in Venezuela as a result of the non-renewal of the broadcast license
of the oppositional TV network RCTV. With RCTV going off the air at midnight of
May 27th, the country’s most powerful opposition voice has supposedly been
silenced.

It is generally taken for granted that any silencing of opposition
voices is anti-freedom of speech. But is an opposition voice really being
silenced? Is this the correct metaphor? Is the director of RCTV, Marcel Granier,
actually being silenced? No, a better metaphor is that the megaphone that
Granier (and others) used for the exercise of his free speech is being returned
to its actual owners – a megaphone that he had borrowed, but never owned. Not
only that, he is still allowed to use a smaller megaphone (cable &
satellite).

Whilst protests are floridly depicted on Fox, (and never degraded with 'rent-a-crowd' accusations as they are here), nobody bothers to report that a number of signatories from across Latin America actually support the Venezualan government's decision in the name of democracy, not against it. Even Australia's Guy Rundle, in Crikey, was able to temper the prevailing histrionic, hypocritical imbecility with a few oft-forgotten facts:

Both Matthew Weston and David Lodge (yesterday, comments), in criticising
Jenny Haines for defending the record of Hugo Chavez, argue that Chavez has more
or less abolished free media. This is utterly incorrect. 85% of Venezuelan media
remains in private hands -- a higher proportion than the UK, France or
Australian broadcast TV for that matter. Chavez may be doing a lot from the
executive, but that is what presidential government is about -- and the process
is backed by a solid parliamentary majority. Comparisons to Stalin and Hitler
are hysterical -- Venezuela is a social-democratic, mixed economy (with less
public ownership than Scandinavia), a fair electoral system and a free
press.

This is a country whose elections were subject to international scrutiny, and found to be fair. There are no evidence of human rights abuses in Venezuala, and all of the world's superpowers (and many of their proxies) have demonstrated far more sustained and egregious contempt for human life. Still, as BlairBolt will tell you, better some dead unionists than a democratically-elected 'leftist'. Think of the television.