Final Post

I’ve found this semester an interesting one, especially given that throughout my studies I have often relied, implicitly or explicitly, on a rights discourse that I had never really analyzed. I found it useful to look at the problematic nature of rights, especially in terms of the tension between the universal nature of rights documents and the realities of social and political diversity. Obviously there is a problem when one tries to apply a universalistic moral doctrine in a culturally and politically specific context. Also, it was interesting to note that the language of rights becomes politicized by both sides, as exhibited in the Lexicon of terror. The piece portrayed the tension in a rights discourse that tries to nail into place a fluid and dynamic language, as terrorists and terrorized alike attempted to conquer the vocabulary of rights for their own purposes.

However, I remain skeptical that the tensions we have found in rights discourse should lead us to discard that discourse as a whole. I think that a decision like that would be the result of Manichean thinking that fails to take into account of the complexities of our reality. The fact that a concept’s meaning is contested does not make that concept irrelevant. If it did, thousands of supreme court justices all over the world would find themselves out of work. There is obviously a use in having general principles that we adhere to whose meanings are broad enough that in order to ascertain them involves constant contestation. The fact that throughout history there have been many different definitions and ideas of what constitutes justice has not led us to abandon the term. Likewise with rights.

Similarly, after taking this course I am even moiré convinced that our post-modernity induced fear of universality should not have us finding solace in an equally damaging extreme relativism. If the universality of rights is a fiction, it was a fiction that was knowingly created for useful purposes. Our species needs moral standards that it can adhere to beyond the statutes and treaties of states. Rights exist beyond United Nations treaties. They exist in the consciousness of a large and diverse cross-section of humanity. Because of this, a rights discourse that applies beyond the confines of any one state, or any one culture, is useful as it gives people a moral and philosophical justification for action that can be appealed beyond the authority of states and organizations. The fact that they are politicized does not necessarily make them without use. Virtually ALL of our useful terms are politicized. Language is politicized. That just seems kind of obvious to me.

Anyway, this class has certainly forced me to go back and look the problematique of rights discourse in a new light. Having done that, I would suggest to anyone who sees the problems that Jon has pointed out, but still want to hold onto rights as something valuable, that they look at the classical utilitarian view of rights. Shortly after Locke and Rousseau were writing about the universal nature of human rights, Bentham and Mill were pointing out the same problems that we have looked at in class. In their view, natural rights were a fallacy. One could only have rights in a social context, and we had rights not because they were handed to us by nature, but because society agreed that they would be good and useful things for us to have. I see no reason why we couldn’t continue to use rights in this context. Global society needs rights, not because of some ill defined celestial laws, but because they serve some very concrete and useful purpose.

Anyway, that’s what I think.

Bob

last301

Admission of guilt in Mexico

Well, it finally happened.

At the end of his term, 6 years after elected office, Fox’s government has finnaly (and quietly) published a report that indicts the Mexican government for 20 years of human rights violations. An aritlce in today’s New York Times staes that the “800-page report is the first acceptance of responsibility by the government for what is known here as the “dirty war,” in which the police and the army are believed to have executed more than 700 people without trial, in many cases after torture”.

The report admits ( the first such admittal by the Mexican government) that between 1960 through the early 80’s, the government used torture, summary execution, and the razing of vllages as a matter of policy to deal with everyone from protesting students (hubndreds of unarmed student protesters were killed by security forces in a protest in Mexico City in 1968 – well, I think it was 68) to guerrilla sympathetic villagers (the Mexican government launched a brutal counterinsurgency against EPR insurgencies in the state of Guerrero – nice enoug place actually).

The admission of guilt by the Mexican government could be seen as a major step towards democracy. However, one hsouldn’t get too optimistic. After all, all the offences illustrated in the report were commited by the PRI – the report was issued by Fox’s PAN. How difficult can it be to issue damaging reports about your political rivals? Not only this, but even though Fox promised to issue this report in 2000, it took him 6 years to sum up the huevos to actually do it, and he still waited until his time end was just around the corner. This sounds like the actions of a man who met stiff and serious resistance from his own government when he tried to unearth abuses that in some cases were more than 40 years old (on the other hand, we still don’t know who killed john kennedy, though I’m pretty sure teddy’s assassin will go by the name of a Mr. Jack Daniels).

And finally, where’s the admition of massacres in Chiapas, or the big oversized novelty cheque that the PRI gave to the brutal Paz y Justicia militia? Guess that report comes out for 2050.

Love

Bob J. Neubauer

last301

Who's to Blame in the Ixil Triangle?

In unfinished conquest, Perera lists off an almost endless list of crimes and tragedies. In attempting to make sense of them, he runs into what seems a inescapable dilemma: to whom do we assign blame? All crimes need criminals.

As he conducts interview after interview, he gets many answers. Asking military men, he finds the usual set of culprits. The guerrillas provoked the conflict. Moscow and Cuba are responsible for these atrocities. Reagan himself seems to praise the army, pinpointing the blame, no doubt, on the godless communists. Asking refugees, the line gets blurred. None love the army, but many are disenchanted with the guerrillas, who are accused of treating campesinos as more and more dispensable as time passes.

Though no guerrillas are interviewed (at least, not in the sections we read) we are left to assume that they would finger the army, the ladino elite, and possibly even foreign buyers of Guatemalas cash crops.

Interestingly enough, Perera finishes off the chapter “The War Goes On” with the statement: “the guerrilla army of the poor… must bear responsibility for jeopordizing the lives of thousands of native Guatamalans who believed their impossible promises of a swift victory over their oppressors and redress of their centuries-old grievances”.

I take issue with this. It places a moral obligation of the oppressed not to challenge their oppressors unless a swift and painless victory is assured, which would seem to rule out all revolutionary action from the slave revolt of Spartacus to the American civil rights movement. Sometimes long odds pay off. Sometimes they don’t. The moral burden should not be on those who object to their own oppression.

Now, there are several ways in which the EGP could be considered guilty of those army abuses. One is that they themselves committed abuses (which I do not doubt for a minute). Another is that they hid in Ixil territory without the consent of the people there, bringing volence down upon people whose only crime was living in an area that the guerrillas decided to hide.

But this does not seem to be the case in the Ixil triangle. Numerous accounts in the book indicate that a large majority of the population actively supported, endorsed, and even aided the guerrillas. They did this because they wanted a way out of a brutally oppressive social system. To act as though they were naively “duped” by the cycnical guerrillas is condescending and racist. These people had agency, and they exercised it as they thought best. To blame the EPB for the deaths of people that willingly aided them seems to me unfair. The fault should lie with the oppressors, not the oppressed.

last301

The Right To Be Informed: The media and the 2002 coup in venezuela - Bobby Joe Neubauer

In April, 2002, the world witnessed an attempted coup d’etat against President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Amongst the usual suspects of disgruntled military factions and business elites, Venezuela’s private media emerged among the coup’s leading planners and executioners. An analysis of the media’s role in the coup problematizes mainstream, state-centric rights theory that too frequently portrays rights violations as a Manichean struggle between state or armed non-state actors as rights violators and “civil society” as rights champions and vicitms. The actions of the bulk of the private media, by facilitating the violation of democratic and human rights (while simultaneously making strategic use of rights discourse), illustrate how unarmed, “civil society” actors can easily form a class of “rights violators”, even while they are hailed as guarantors of rights. The experience of Venezuela indicates that in a world of mass telecommunication coupled with a concentration of media ownership, the right of access to accurate information can actually be subverted by a media ostensibly committed to the rights of free speech.

I have chosen four sources that give some preliminary background on Venezuelan political history and explain in some media culpability in the coup, even while pointing out the flaws in mainstream rights discourse. One such source is the 2003 Annual Country Report published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF). RSF is an international advocacy group that monitors “press freedom” in countries around the world. The 2003 report laments that the “the polarisation of Venezuelan society” which lead to the coup took such a “heavy toll in attacks against the press”.[i] It describes in detail the numerous attacks on members of the press, both pro-and anti-government, noting that one journalist was killed and over 50 more were physically attacked during the unrest of 2002.[ii] They also heavily criticise Chavez for infringing upon “press freedom’ by forcing the private media to broadcast his speeches, and by ordering private broadcasts shut down on April 11, 2002.[iii] While admitting that the national private media engaged in a serious breach of “professional ethics” by seeming to actively participate in the coup, only Chavez’ government is described as infringing on democratic rights by attempting to regulate or shut down the broadcasts of an openly hostile private media.[iv] The report is useful not only because of its detailed account of media involvement n the events of 2002, but it also serves as an excellent example of the failings of mainstream rights discourse.

Another source is Omar Encarnacion’s “Venezeula’s Civil Society Coup”, published in the World Policy Journal in 2002. Encarnacion points out the failings of the contemporary wisdom that a “strong and invigorated civil society is an unmitigated blessing for democracy” and by extension human rights.[v] He uses the case of Venezuela to make the case that civil society “only serve[s] as an effective foundation for democracy where there are credible functioning state institutions”.[vi] He sees media (as well as union and church) involvement in the coup as the outcome of 40 years of political “decay” and extreme wealth polarization in Venezuela.[vii] The article provides a decent overview of Venezuelan political history and puts the actions of the Chavez administration in historical context. It also describes how media served to undermine democracy by actively participating in the coup. However, while Encarnacion condemns media involvement in the coup, he implicitly justifies it as a response to the authoritarian rule of President Chavez. In doing so, he reinforces a dominant discoursethat positions the state as the inevitable violator of rights, and the actions of a loosely defined “civil society” (including media) as the unfortunate but inevitable reaction against the state-sanctioned abuse of political and civil rights, providing us with a relatively sanitised account of media involvement in the attempted coup.

A third source is Jon Beasley-Murray’s “The Coup Will Be Televised” and “The Revolution will not be Televised”, two eyewitness accounts of Caracas during the coup. Beasley-Murray explains how support for “Chavez’ once overwhelmingly popular regime [had] been in steady decline, in part as a result of a relentless assault by both the press and the television networks”[viii], and in part due to his increasing authoritarianism and alienation from his political base.[ix] He argues that the real motivation behind the coup lied in the fight over PDVSA, the state owned oil company that controlled the nation’s vast oil wealth.[x] He also emphasises the battle for political control that was waged by both sides through the communications media. He then claims that the counter-coup that reinstalled Chavez was representative of a new politics of “the multitude” that supported Chavez due to its frustration with traditional Latin American political structures.[xi] Beasley-Murray’s account gives us a detailed description of media behaviour during the coup without lionising or glorifying President Chavez. However, he goes on to suggest that Chavez’ attempt to use television to reconstruct a “broken contract” between people and nation failed when the medium “rebelled against him”, the medium of television being “unsuited to such simple narratives”.[xii] This explanation that shifts focus onto the character of television itself, and not to a discernable class of social actors that dominated it, does not seem wholly convincing.

The final source utilized in this essay is “The Revolution will not be Televised”, a documentary film by directors Kim Bartley and Donnacha O Briain that was co-funded by the Irish Film Board and the BBC. Bartley and O Briain’s crew arrived in Caracas seven months before the April Coup in order to peel away the “layers of myth and rumour that surrounded” Hugo Chavez’ presidency.[xiii] In doing so, they are fortunate enough to capture key moments of the coup on camera, such as the shooting of protesters outside the Presidential Palace. Contrasting their footage with the footage presented by the private television stations, they construct a picture of the media as a powerful, socially regressive political actor that, desperate to reverse the egalitarian policies of President Chavez, actively partakes in the planning and execution of the coup. The film suffers from a disappointingly uncritical admiration of Chavez that at times reduces its credibility. Still, the film’s remarkable “inside account” of the coup and it’s wealth of footage (both their own and that used by the private media) helps to cut through the accepted wisdom regarding a free press and human rights, resituating the large media companies of Venezuela as rights abusers, instead of rights victims.

For decades, Venezuela had long been ruled by two elitist political parties that squandered the nation’s vast oil wealth for their own benefit while the majority of the country lived below the poverty line.[xiv] This changed in 1998 when Hugo Chavez campaigned for the presidency on a platform of radical wealth redistribution, winning by the largest margin in the nation’s history.[xv] The following year, Chavez’ government ratified a new national constitution that was overwhelmingly approved by national referendum. Encarnacion notes that the constitution “increased the role of the state in the economy [and] reinforced presidential power at the expense” of the senate, now abolished, and the traditional parties that dominated the judiciary and the national assembly[xvi]. He initiated a program of sweeping land reform and used Venezuela’s oil wealth to pay for bold new social programs, a move that angered those in the middle and upper classes many of whom, according to O Briain and Bartley, “still wielded considerable economic power”.[xvii] His detractors began to protest what they saw as Chavez’ goal of turning Venezuela into an authoritarian socialist state though he maintained a solid base of support amongst the nation’s poor.[xviii] In 2002 Chavez, in an attempt to consolidate his hold on the nation’s oil wealth, fired several members of the board of directors of PVSDA, the nation’s state oil company, replacing them with men loyal to him.[xix] In response, the conservative National Chamber of Commerce (Fedecameras) and CTV, Venezuela’s largest union, called a general strike and announced that the opposition would hold a massive rally on April 11^th, 2002 to demand Chavez’ resignation.[xx] The stage had been set for a coup, a coup in which Venezuela’s media oligarchy would play a pivotal role.

The bulk of Venezuela’s private media, the bulk of whose ownership was extremely concentrated and dominated by a small commercial elite[xxi], had long adopted a policy of unvarying criticism of President Chavez [xxii] (with the noticeable exception of the local press and radio).[xxiii] O Briain and Bartley’s film illustrated how the private television stations berated Chavez’ policies on a daily basis, going so far as to describe him as being mentally ill, a Hitler-inspired fascist, and a subordinate of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, helping to cultivate an atmosphere of anti-Chavez hysteria.[xxiv] Against an overwhelmingly hostile media, Chavez’ only effective tool for public communication was Channel 8, the state owned network with a rather limited share of the national audience.[xxv] In response to these media attacks, Chavez would force the private stations to broadcast his speeches, or “chains”, over their networks,[xxvi] prompting even harsher criticism from the private stations.[xxvii] After Chavez announced his plans for the PSVDA shake up the media stepped up the information war, broadcasting frequent advertisements for the April 10^th protest, urging Venezuelans to demonstrate and for Chavez to resign the Presidency.[xxviii]

The media’s involvement in the coup went far beyond a simple smear campaign. The day before the march was to take place, several owners of the major news outlets took part in a closed door meeting with Pedro Carmona, head of Fedecameras and one of the coup’s top organizers (Carmonas would assume the presidency during Chavez’ temporary ouster).[xxix] On the same day, the major networks broadcasted a televised message of an official from the military high command, urging President Chavez to step down and hinting at the possibility of a coup if he refused.[xxx] It was later revealed on television that this message was filmed in the house of a journalist from Venevision (one of the country’s largest networks) and was broadcasted as a ploy designed to force Chavez (who had planned a trip out of the country) to remain in the country for the 11^th, so that the coup could take place as planned.[xxxi]

On April 11^th, the anti-government rally marched past their stated destination towards a counter-protest staged by Chavez supporters outside the Presidential Palace, a move that Beasley-Murray argues was almost certainly designed to provoke a conflict,[xxxii] thereby creating an opportunity the coup leaders could use to move against Chavez. In an attempt to block what was slowly being understood as the initial stages in an organized coup, Chavez ordered the private television stations to go off the air, arguing that they were irresponsibly broadcasting inaccurate and misleading information in an attempt to bring down the government.[xxxiii] Upon reaching the Palace, unknown snipers opened fire on protesters from their positions on the rooftops of nearby buildings, killing at least 13 civilians, many of them Chavez supporters.[xxxiv] At this point, as O Briain and Bartley note, “some of the Chavez supporters began to shoot back in the direction [of] the sniper fire”.[xxxv] Luis Alfonso Fernández of Venevisión captured footage of the Chavez supporters on an overpass, defending themselves from sniper fire.[xxxvi] While the unedited footage made it undeniably clear that the Chavistas were defending themselves from the rooftop snipers, and that the anti-Chavez marchers had been nowhere near the overpass, the footage was manipulated to make it appear that “the Chavistas were assassinating innocent marchers”, editing out the numerous and clear indications that the Chavistas were under heavy fire.[xxxvii] The private media began broadcasting, en masse, the falsified footage “over and over and over again” while calling on the army to overthrow President Chavez for his orchestration of the “massacre”.[xxxviii] In stunning example of political choreography, the military high command promptly withdrew support for Chavez, citing the falsified footage as justification.[xxxix]

Shortly after this, a unit of the anti-Chavez Caracas police raided and shut down government owned Channel 8, the only Chavez-friendly television station.[xl] The military high command then took Chavez into custody at 1:30am, though he refused to resign.[xli] Pedro Carmona immediately assumed the presidency , forming a “transitional government” composed of ultra-conservatives and members of the business community[xlii], and the government proceeded to dissolve the national assembly and the supreme court, while dismissing the attorney general, head of the central bank, the ombudsman and the national electoral board.[xliii]

The next day, in an obvious attempt at sabotaging any public resistance to the coup, the same media outlets that had given “wall-to-wall” coverage of anti-Chavez protesters initiated what one of the local, pro-Chavez newspapers described as “a diabolical blackout that left most of Venezuela misinformed about what was happening to the country”.[xliv]The large media outlets pointedly ignored stories about firefights in the city center and military uprisings all over the country.[xlv] Though international networks were broadcasting easily accessible footage of police shooting into crowds of pro-Chavez protesters,[xlvi] and though the President’s supporters had begun protesting in the streets, the private TV stations responded by broadcasting “soap opera and cartoons”.[xlvii] By April 14^th, word of mouth had slowly spread the news that Chavez had not resigned but was in fact being held captive by the army, and in response tens of thousands of his supporters gathered in front of the Presidential Palace demanding his release.[xlviii] Yet no news at all was broadcast on April 14 by the private media channels, and most newspapers simply did not publish.[xlix] Andres Izarra of RCTV noted that the media blackout was official policy, and that journalists “were told [by station management that] no pro-Chávez material was to be screened … even if we had it available, and even if we had information on unrest and protests in support of the president” (Izarra resigned in protest).[l]

However, Chavez’ supporters were able to organize a counter attack. The palace guard, emboldened by crowds of Chavez supporters, succeeded in retaking the palace[li] and one by one sections of the military, believing that Carmona had gone too far in abolishing the nation’s democratic institutions the previous day, began withdrawing support for Carmona’s government.[lii] Though the the private media still denied anything of import was happening in Caracas, Chavez’ cabinet returned to the newly retaken palace to dismiss the “transitional” government, and Chavez, soon released by the military, returned to the palace shortly after 2 am on April 14^th.[liii] The coup was over.

However, the implications of the media behaviour during the coup are profound, and extending far beyond the coup itself. Through a shockingly unified policy of misinformation, active participation in the planning and execution of the coup, and self-imposed censorship, and the active cover up of mass murder (the sniper shootings), the private media was complicit in the murder of civilians and was actively working to overthrow democratic institutions. By any reasonable analyses, this should be understood as an infringement on the rights of the Venezuelan people.

Yet the mainstream discourse presents the private media as rights victims, not abusers. RSF’s annual report stated that “the three days that this coup attempt lasted…were the darkest of the year for press freedom”, citing Chavez’ order to cut off private broadcasts on April 11th.[liv] That the same press conspired to undermine the democratic freedoms of Venezuelans is apparently of little consequence. Such statements echo the position of members of the transitional government, one of which proclaimed during the coup attempt that Chavez should be tried for violations of human rights as well as freedom of expression.[lv] Even Encarnacion states that media action against Chavez should be understood as a reaction to the President’s contempt for free speech and democratic principles, though he makes the concession that the private media’s contempt for democracy proved to be “as callous” as Chavez.[lvi] There is no doubt that Chavez, in attempting to censor the private press, acted against democratic principals, as consistent with his at times authoritarian leanings. However, it is unclear how his behaviour was even comparable, let alone equal to, that of a media complicit in the murder of civilians that actively participated in a conspiracy to dissolve the nation’s democratic. The common thread in these accounts appears to be that as a member of “civil society”, the media is implicitly a champion and guarantor of rights. This should be viewed as the result of a discourse that inevitably positions the private press as the eternal victim of state sponsored rights abuses, as opposed to potential abusers themselves.

Interestingly, RSF states that its mandate is to guarantee society’s “right to be informed” by fighting for a free press.[lvii] This is unsurprising. International and national rights documents as well as traditional rights theory make frequent reference to the right to free speech and a free press, and implicit in this has always been the assumption that through these rights society’s “right to be informed” would be protected. This rationale has long been central to the criticism of totalitarian states, who by severely limiting or outright banning the free press, are (rightly) criticised for acting against the rights of its citizens. These criticisms touch upon the obvious; the right to accurate information about the world is fundamental to a society’s ability to govern itself. A people systematically deprived of such information will have a diminished capacity to maintain their own autonomy, which undermines its ability to protect a variety of social, human, and political rights.

However, as shown by the case of Venezuela, free speech and freedom of the press may be necessary to ensure a society’s right to be informed, but it is by no means sufficient. In Venezuela, private media ownership was concentrated into four national channels, all connected to the traditional ruling elite that had united against Chavez.[lviii] In comparison to these national media outfits, the small local media and the state run Channel 8, both of whom supported Chavez, were able to reach only a fraction of the national audience of that of the Chavez-hostile press.[lix] Hence, it was a relatively simple thing for a ‘media elite’ to exercise oligopalistic control over information in a strategic attempt to subvert democracy.

In this context, Murray-Beasley’s comments that the medium of television was simply unsuited to the simplified narrative Chavez tried to construct lose their poignancy. After all, numerous studies have illustrated that when media ownership is highly concentrated, television proves to be an excellent medium for simple, Manichean narratives that serve the interests of powerful economic and political actors. Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s Manufacturing Consent[lx] and the ongoing work of the American watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting[lxi] are just two sources that immediately come to mind, but there are of course others. Any casual viewer of CNN or Fox News knows that recent wars would not be nearly so easy to sell to the American public were this not so. Marshall Mcluhan now classic statement that “the medium is the message” may be of less value here than the simpler, but still convincing, adage: “money talks”. It is actors, not mediums, which possess agency. The actions of the private media during the coup clearly bore the evidence of strategic coordination, not only amongst themselves but with the army and commercial elite. In cases such as this, the intrinsic aspects of the medium may be of secondary importance to the political interests of those that have access to it.

The implications are clear. The right to a free press is only meaningful when media ownership is sufficiently broad and diverse to guarantee that a handful of actors cannot subvert the “freedom of the press” for it’s own purposes. If media ownership is consolidated by an ideologically and politically united elite, “freedom of the press” may actually subvert a society’s “right to be informed”, and with it the democratic and human rights that depend on that right. In terms of their effects on meaningful political participation, there is little difference between a state controlled media monopoly and a corporate media oligarchy, except that the latter is bestowed with legitimacy and lionised by a rights discourse of the kind utilised by RSF, Omar Encarnacion and others.

---

[i] “Venezuela: 2003 Annual Report”. Reporters Without Borders For Press Freedom.

2003. http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=6230 (Accessed Nov. 12, 2006).

[ii] “Venezuela 2003”.

[iii] “Venezuela 2003”

[iv] “Venezuela 2003”

[v] Encarnacion, O. “Venezuela’s Civil Society Coup” World Policy Journal. Summer, 2002. pg. 38.

[vi] Encarnacion, O. pg. 38.

[vii] Encarnacion, O. pg. 39.

[viii] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised” Coup Against Chavez in Venezuela.

Greory Wilpert, ed. Caracas: Fundacion Venezolana para la Justicia Global, 2003. pg. 41.

[ix] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised” pg. 45.

[x] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised” pg. 42.

[xi] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Coup Against Chavez in Venezuela. Greory Wilpert, ed. (Caracas: Fundacion Venezolana para la Justicia Global, 2003). Pg. 85.

[xii] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Pg. 86.

[xiii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain (Directors). The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. (Film) 2003. (Time: 4:15).

[xiv] Encarnacion, O. pg. 41.

[xv] Encarnacion, O. pg. 41.

[xvi] Encarnacion, O. pg. 43.

[xvii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 10:58.

[xviii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 9:00.

[xix] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised”. Pg. 43.

[xx] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised” pg. 43.

[xxi] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 13:00.

[xxii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 13:00

[xxiii] “Venezuela 2003”.

[xxiv] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 13:45.

[xxv] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 13:40.

[xxvi] “Venezuela 2003”.

[xxvii] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised” pg. 41.

[xxviii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 25:30

[xxix] Encarnacion, O. pg. 42.

[xxx] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 38:00.

[xxxi] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 43:02.

[xxxii] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised”. Pg. 48.

[xxxiii] Encarnacion, O. pg. 44.

[xxxiv] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 32:00

[xxxv] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 32:15.

[xxxvi] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 32:43.

[xxxvii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 32:50

[xxxviii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 32:55.

[xxxix] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised”. Pg. 44.

[xl] “Venezuela 2003”.

[xli] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 38:00.

[xlii] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Coup Will Be Televised”. Pg. 44.

[xliii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 45:45.

[xliv] Encarnacion, O. pg. 46.

[xlv] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Pg. 78.

[xlvi] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Pg. 81.

[xlvii] Encarnacion, O. pg. 46.

[xlviii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 45:00

[xlix] Encarnacion, O.pg. 47.

[l] “Venezuela 2003”.

[li] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 55:04.

[lii] Beasley-Murray, J. “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”. Pg. 78.

[liii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 62:02.

[liv] “Venezuela 2003”.

[lv] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Pg. 44:40.

[lvi] Encarnacion, O. pg. 43.

[lvii] “About Us” Reporters Without Borders For Press Freedom. http://www.rsf.org/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=280

[lviii] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 15:00.

[lix] Bartley, K. and D. O Briain. Time: 15:05.

[lx] Chomsky, N. and E. Herman. Manufacturing Consent: the political economy of the mass

media. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988.

[lxi] “Fairness And Accuracy In Reporting: Homepage” http://www.fair.org/index.php

(Accessed: Nov 18, 2006).

last301

Hubris of intervention in Guatemala

There was something I found both fascinating and disturbing about this week’s reading. There was something about the hubris of intervention in Guatemala that was particularly humbling, and yet all too familiar given the recent shenanigans of the Bush administration.

Eisenhower and his crew could see only one objective – the removal of Arbenz and the protection of United Fruit, which was important at least in the symbolic sense that it provided a stern warning to other countries in the region not to experiment with national sovereignty at the expense of American regional hegemony.

However, Chapter 15 (The Aftermath) the situation quickly sprialled out of control, leading Guatamala down a path towards civil war and the creation of a security state. The CIA could simply not see further than Arbenz’ downfall and Armas’ rise. They could not understand that Arbenz rise was merely the effect of a growing tension between sectors of Guatemalan society and the growing demand for redistribution of wealth. By removing a popularly elected leader and putting in it’s place a unrepresentative junta, America quickly lost control of the situation – leading to a constant succession of coups, short lived junta’s and escalating counterinsurgency wars.There was simply no understanding that removing a leader like Arbenz would in no way remove the social pressures and tensions that had brought a man like him (by all means uncharismatic and unremarkable in himself) to power. By disrupting the process of democratization and redistribution of wealth and power, the US had unwittingly unleashed a chain of events that soon seemed beyond their control, though they attempted, rather unsuccessfully, to contain it. What shocks me is that only 50 years later the US has committed the same era, albeit in another region and for oil instead of bananas.

last301

Of Evo and Ice Tea (for Christine)

An article in the Globe today announced that Bolivia’s Evo Morales is backing off in his plan to naitonalise thew nation’s vast mineral wealth. Morale’s states that his country simply does not have the funds to operate the industry without foreign investment, and will be forced, at least in the short term, to continue to allow international (sorry guys, it really is the most appropriate word) capital to exploit the mineral resources of the country. This is no small development; mineral exports in Bolvia topped $530 million dollars last year. That’s enough money for the Sultan of Brunei to buy 33 birthday concert performances from Michael Jackson, or to buy 530 million Arizona ice teas form the dollar store down from my house.

Hmmm……

Maybe I’ll go with the tea.

Anyway, what’s interesting here is the clear picture we get of the global political economy as a complex power matrix that limits the abilities of countries to provide their citizens with economic, human, and social rights. Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not speaking for the Comintern, and you won’t catch me handing out pamphlets with the UBC Trotskyists outside the student union builing (or the Spartacists for that matter, how did those guys manage ruin both my favourite historical figure AND Kubrick movie?). What I’m saying is that I don’t believe that a centrally planned economy, free from the fetters of foreign capitol, is necessary to safeguard a people’s rights (I would say Stalin pretty much proved that one wrong).

However, a country like Bolivia is extremely wealthy in natural resources, and yet a depressingly large proportion of its population have little education, access to medicines, economic and political autonomy, etc. And yet hundreds of millions of dollars leave the country every year. A quick read through Galleano’s Open Veins shows how money that could be used to promote this type of social welfare are funnelled into the developed world while a small fraction of it goes to placate a domestic elite. I think Bolivia is a good example of this, and in order for Bolivia to garantuee basic rights to its people it needs to exercise greater control over how it’s resources are used, or at least demand a greater cut from multinationals. However, the realities of the global political economy mean that those who have all the capitol, have all the leverage. And those that have all the leverage, get all the Arizona ice tea.

Or thirty-three Michael Jackson concerts.

If that's what you really want.

Love

Bob J. Neubauer

last301