Journalism,
Wall Street Journal-Style
By Stephen Lendman
25 September, 2006
Countercurrents.org
It
takes great courage to venture onto the editorial pages of the Wall
Street Journal - especially on Fridays when Mary Anastasia O'Grady's
Americas column appears. This is a woman who surely will have a serious
back problem one day resulting from her permanent position of genuflection
to the most extreme far-right she pledges allegiance to. In her assigned
role at the Journal, which includes character assassination, she can
best can be characterized as one of the "devil's" disciples
- to borrow a word so aptly used by a well-known "courageous man"
in recent days. She proved it in her September 22 column titled In Chavez's
Crosshairs (the "courageous man" in question), and in it she
outdid herself in her level of vitriol that was enough to punish all
the senses of those able to get through it.
The column drips with hate
and is filled with the most outrageous lies and hostility from the opening
words to the last ugly pronouncement. This editorial writer begins by
telling readers that "Fidel Castro is not far from death"
which I'm sure will come as a surprise both to the Cuban leader and
his doctors who seem to be indicating that Fidel is slowly recuperating
from his major surgery which is quite normal for someone aged 80. She
cites as her evidence "Hugo Chavez's performance at the United
Nations" which she claims was a "revolutionary" baton-passing
to the "kook from Caracas, Castro's wealthiest and keenest protege."
O'Grady apparently didn't bother checking that the Venezuelan President's
salary at about $24,000 is barely above the poverty level for a US family
of four according to the US Census Bureau. Compare that to George Bush
(responsible for Mary's future back problem) who's extremely wealthy
and earns an annual salary of $400,000 plus all the luxury perks that
go with his office that Huo Chavez Frias doesn't have or even want.
But this was just for openers.
O'Grady then begins another diatribe against the man who's become her
favorite target. She begins by making her only notable truthful statement
describing the Venezuela leader as the "scariest speaker at the
General Assembly." She's right, of course, because today we live
in an age where the truth Chavez speaks has become a radical or even
a subversive act. It would never cross this hateful woman's mind that
Hugo Chavez is one of the few world leaders willing to admit publicly
what all the others know is true. For this he's condemned in the corporate-run
media and especially in columns of right wing flacks like Mary O'Grady
who have no credibility or even enough knowledge of the region she reports
on in her writing. It shows in what she has to say.
It helps to understand where
this woman is coming from if we note where she was formerly employed.
She one time worked as an options strategist for Advest, Inc., Thomson
McKinnon Securities, and Merrill Lynch & Co. She also once held
a position at the far-right Heritage Foundation think tank that never
met a corporate-friendly policy or US-led war it didn't support. In
addition, as a journalist, she was awarded the Inter-American Press
Association's (IAPA association of private media corporations) Daily
Gleaner Award for editorial commentary and received an honorable mention
in IAPA's opinion award category for 1999. With this kind of background,
there's nothing surprising about O'Grady's ideology and why her writing
is hopelessly biased and one-sided in favor of the Bush Administration's
neoliberal Washington Consensus model now waging a "long war"
against the world for total dominance and greater profits for the corporate
predators benefitting from it - all at the expense of people needs being
ignored
O'Grady has lots more to
say in this week's column and quickly gets into the meat it - that Venezuela
represents a "pressing threat" (where) "The battleground
is Bolivia, which Mr. Chavez badly wants to control so he can seize
that country's natural-gas reserves and become the sole energy supplier
in the Southern Cone." She goes on with the delusional notion that
Chavez hopes to "seriously damage the Brazilian economy and crush
Brazil's geopolitical ambitions as the leader in South America. In its
place he wants to plant the flag of Venezuelan hegemony. If he gets
away with it, Argentine and Chilean sovereignty would also be diminished
and continental stability lost." She has lots more to say, but
already she's left the reader breathless and needing to pause before
going further.
If O'Grady stuck to the facts
instead of specializing in her brand of poisoned rhetoric, she would
know Hugo Chavez is a positive force in the region and beyond and has
been a unifier, not a divider or exploiter. He's pursued his own Bolivarian
Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) progressive alternative to the corrupted
neoliberal WTO/IMF/World Bank model O'Grady champions. It's a comprehensive
plan for Latin American integration aiming to develop "the social
state" benefitting everyone, not just the privileged elite O'Grady
swears allegiance to. It's based on the principles of complementarity,
solidarity and cooperation among nations - just the opposite of the
exploitive practices O'Grady likes to think work best. She's right if
she means for the corporate giants that can only grow and prosper at
the expense of ordinary people everywhere. Hugo Chavez has a different
vision. Instead of trying to subjugate Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina,
Venezuela has joined with these nations in the Southern Common Maret
customs union known as Mercosur. In doing so, Chavez expressed hope
that this trade block would "prioritize social concerns (ahead
of) the old elitist corporate model'' that puts profits ahead of people
needs. These are the facts Mary O'Grady ignores as reporting them would
expose all the other lies she's written for years. It would also likely
get her fired for not sticking to the party line she's paid to do.
Her article continues by
referring to the opposition in Venezuela as "democrats," recounting
her distorted version of how they tried to remove Chavez in their 2004
recall referendum (aka US-directed coup by other means) and failed.
Chavez blew the opposition away with about 58% of the vote in an election
judged free, open and fair but which O'Grady characterized as "clocked
in state secrets" - no doubt because the wrong candidate won convincingly.
She claimed exit polls showed Chavez was "badly beaten" but
the "chavista-stacked electoral council declared him the winner."
She fails to identify what exit polls she's referring to or who conducted
them. The reader can only conclude they're either ones she dreamed up
for this column or they were fraudulent ones conducted by the oligarchs
in the country that have everything to gain if Chavez is ousted by any
means.
This woman doesn't know when
to quit. She then contends "Mr. Chavez boasts he was democratically
elected and foments hatred against his neighbors, including the US (and)
the non-aligned movement (intends) on going nuclear." She doesn't
explain she's referring to Iran, a country that's a signatory to the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), is in full compliance with it,
and has every legal right to develop its commercial nuclear industry
which is all it's doing according to all available evidence. She then
again stresses that chavistas are putting a "blitz" on Bolivia
"to make that country a (hydro) carbon copy of Venezuela."
Next, however, comes her
best shot and one of her least accurate. She makes the audacious claim
that Evo Morales (her other favorite target) "rose to executive
power by first using violence to bring down two constitutional presidents
and then forcing a new election, which he won." She doesn't explain
that Juan Evo Morales Ayma (known as Evo) was a leader of Bolivia's
cocalero movement or loose federation of coca leaf-growing campesinos.
He's also the leader of his Movement for Socialism Party (MAS which
means more). In both capacities he's been a champion of progressive
change in his country and organized peaceful protests in 2005 in the
capitol La Paz that forced the resignation of President Carlos Mesa
who served the interests of capital and ignored the needs of his people.
This is what O'Grady calls violence - courageous resistance to repression
and intolerance. Evo Morales was elected president of Bolivia in December,
2005 in an election controlled by the opposition because the people
were so fed p with business as usual they defied all expectations turning
out in large numbers to convincingly elect the only man they would entrust
to rule their country.
Morales isn't O'Grady's kind
of president because he wants to serve all his people and not just the
elite few who've always had things in Bolivia their way. So she says
"He dreams of an indigenous, collectivist Bolivarian economy under
the thumb of an authoritarian government" while falsely claiming
most Bolivians are "entrepreneurial." She may be right if
she leaves out the indigenous majority (about 70% of the population)
most of whom are poor and always had been disenfranchised until now.
She accuses Morales of being "coached" by Hugo Chavez who's
helping him institute progressive policies and programs which O'Grady
rails against - because they're people-friendly and bad for the corporate
interests she represents. She stresses Bolivia under Morales "could
use some help from the international community....to weaken Evo."
But she ends her weekly hate-column by coming back to her favorite target
and public enemy number one in her eyes - Hugo Chavez - by trumpeting
the notion that it's "clear....doing nthing while Mr. Chavez seizes
power on the continent is not an option." It has all the sound
of a call to arms to remove President Chavez by force or any other means
despite the fact that he's the leading democrat in the hemisphere and
beloved by the great majority of his people who will never tolerate
a return to the ugly past of rule by the repressive oligarchs they'll
never again accept.
Stephen Lendman
lives in Chicago and can be reached at [email protected].
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogsspot.com.