VHeadline.com commentarist Arthur Shaw writes: Over 400 owners, editors and journalists of the capitalist media and propaganda network throughout the western hemisphere met, or more correctly, conspired March 17-20 in Quito (Ecuador), for what they called their Midyear Meeting of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) to review and to plot bourgeois propaganda and psychological warfare operations against "populist" masses of Latin America and the Caribbean, who are struggling for democracy, national sovereignty, and a higher standard of living.

The IAPA defends a contradiction that is correctly called "bourgeois democracy;" the poles in this opposite -- the bourgeoisie and democracy -- struggle against one another.

IAPA, in practice, denies the possibility of democracy if the bourgeoisie doesn't exercise power. Thus, it denies the possibility of free speech and free press where the bourgeoisie doesn't exercise power.

Venezuela is a country where the bourgeoisie does not exercise power. The IAPA sometimes criticizes bourgeois regimes that restrict press freedom, but the IAPA members generally bury or ignore stories about bourgeois regimes in their publications, but stories about non-bourgeois governments … which are almost always false … are blown up and rammed down the throats of the public..

These IAPA representatives of the capitalist press of the western hemisphere conspired … in comfort … at Hotel Swissotel in Quito which charged the visiting owners of the capitalist media the full rate, but the journalists and editors, the professional liars of the bourgeois media, got a discount rate of US$110 a day.

In consideration of the full rate that the media big shots paid, the accommodating management of the hotel set aside a VIP lounge in its Montreaux Room of the Hotel so that the capitalist owners of the media and high-ranking Ecuadorian government officials (including Ecuadorian President Alfredo Palacio) would not have to fraternize with riff-raff, trash, or the socially "populist" journalists and editors whom the media owners employ in their propaganda operations.

On Saturday, March 18, the Committee on Freedom of the Press & Information of IAPA met from 9:00 am to review and put the final touches on the game plan for the defamation of Venezuela.

A series of panel discussions followed Saturday from 9:30 am - 4:00 pm (with numerous breaks for coffee, liquor, and the restrooms) during which the participants discussed restrictions on the bourgeois press in various countries.

For IAPA, the non-bourgeois press doesn't count, so it's OK for the state to restrict it.

The IAPA was not interested in press freedom in the United States. When it discussed the massive infringements, corruption, and restrictions on free speech in the USA, the IAPA tends to trivialize and apologize for the manifest contempt of the ruling GOPs for the First Amendment of the US Constitution which, among other things, protects free speech and press.

The 400 or so IAPA participants groveled like dogs before the propaganda representatives of the USA dictatorial regime in Washington which murders journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan, trains death squads in Latin America that murder and torture journalists, throws journalists into jail and keeps them there, edits the journalistic content of the submissive US bourgeois media to assure "national security" and "antiterrorist" compliance, surveilles the telephones and computers of journalists; criminalizes the reporting of crimes and other illegal acts by the Bush regime to the media, classifies vast about amounts of formerly public information to conceal the activities of the government and bribes journalists into writing false but favorable stories about the Bush regime. All of these restrictions … and more … on the press in the USA were skillfully rationalized and trivialized and apologized away by the bourgeois and imperialist propagandists, many of whom appeared to be either drunk or high by 1:00 pm, Saturday. (They would have had an even better time if they had met in Colombia.)

After the assembled disciples of Joseph Goebbels lined up and paid homage to the US propaganda apparatus, they turned their vile attentions to the main event, the defamation of Venezuelan democracy.

After nearly a full day of coffee, liquor, and restrooms, the IAPA delegates were in a receptive frame of mind. From 2:30 - 4:00 on Saturday a "special panel" on press freedom in Venezuela took over, composed of David Natera, Correo del Caroni, Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela; Marcel Granier, Radio Caracas TV, Canal 2, Caracas, Venezuela; and Bruce W. Sanford, Baker & Hostetler, Washington, D.C.

• This "special panel" did not disappoint the hundreds of representatives of the bourgeois media who had flocked to and descended on the hotel in Quito, possessed by an insatiable and indiscriminate craving for tales against democracy and revolution in Venezuela.

Among the highlights of the presentation of the "special panel" were tales about "censorship and harassment" against the media and journalists in Venezuela., about the so-called "Content Law" and how it allegedly affects the free exercise of journalism, about how "journalists," under investigation for crimes, suffer persecution, and about regulatory hassles that the sniveling bourgeois media has to contend with in Venezuela.

The special panelists competed with one another to find out who could tell the biggest and the longest lies about Venezuela. Not to be outdone, numerous members of the audience, listening and watching the panelists, jumped into the orgy of lies and misrepresentation. A virtual struggle emerged between the panel and audience to exhibit excellence in the deliberate falsification of information about Venezuela. Although the audience boosted numerous gifted liars and dishonest individuals, it could not outperform the carefully selected panel.

This large mass of bourgeois media owners, editors, journalists went on such a wild and uninhibited rampage of lying and insane falsification against Venezuelan democracy that even IAPA President Diana Daniels, vice president of The Washington Post Company … for a moment … looked appalled.

An encore performance of Saturday's show was rescheduled for Sunday, the next day, but, by then, much of the material had gone stale and some delegates spent all of their time Sunday in the restrooms...

The IAPA rapped up on Monday, March 20, with the approval of the usual cheeky resolutions about Venezuela, rehashed from the October 2005 IAPA meeting in Indianapolis, and a big closing luncheon … fit for millionaires … to celebrate and rejoice over the anti-Venezuelan resolutions and to honor the despicable Cuban pro-imperialist journalist-in-exile Carlos Alberto Montaner.

The Miami-headquartered IAPA is a kind of NED, the National Endowment for Democracy. That is, the IAPA is a money laundering vehicle through which funds flow from US imperialism to Latin American and Caribbean propaganda outlets that oppose non-bourgeois regimes, like Venezuela … however democratic they are … or outlets whose support is necessary in order to perpetrate US frauds, like FTAA and CAFTA, on the region.

The money must be real good because a multitude of hemispheric capitalists in the communications field has stampeded to the trough or, more correctly, the IAPA pigsty.

Today, the IAPA has a membership in excess of 1,300, representing newspapers, TV, radio, and magazines from the North to the South Poles, with a combined newspaper and magazines circulation of 43,353,762.

In Venezuela alone, the IAPA has 29 members (with 19 of them in Caracas) which collectively constitute the totality of the Venezuelan capitalist media.

(These are only the public members, IAPA also has close ties to secret members which try to “false flag” or “misdirect” the public, pretending to be “left” or “revolutionary” and the like.)

Millions of dollars flow every year to these parasites or harlots.

A special organization called “IAPA Press Institute” coordinates the propaganda line of the various media in Venezuela and in Latin America against democracy and revolution in Venezuela.

The influence and presence of the CIA is pervasive within the IAPA. The whole setup seems to be more a matter of coordination and direction under the aegis of the CIA and IAPA, rather than direct ownership by US imperialists. However, US imperialists, as either shareholders or creditors, do own big pieces of the Latin American media.

The line of the CIA and IAPA-coordinated propaganda of the Venezuela bourgeois media is clear. It’s nothing short of what is called a full-court press in basketball. The bourgeois media attacks Venezuelan democracy on all four of the fundamental democratic principles -- sovereignty, the electoral principle, accountability, and the principle of the rule of law. Accountability is the special province of the IAPA because in a democracy, the free press and independent judiciary are two of the main institutions of accountability. So, IAPA propaganda devotes a lot of negative attention to the press and the judiciary. Needless to say, a lot of journalistic resources are spent trying to brainwash the Venezuela people that their democracy does not respect free and fair elections which the electoral principle upholds. Sovereignty is not overlooked but it gets the least amount of attention of the four principles from the bourgeois media.

In Quito meeting of the IAPA, something peculiar seemed to have emerged with regard to the principle of the rule of law as it relates to journalism. The Venezuela bourgeois media seems to be manufacturing a brand new “journalist privilege” which elevates reporters and their capitalist employers above the law. Thus, a journalist can go out and commit crimes, including murder, and then dare the state to prosecute him. If the state doesn’t prosecute him, then the journalist commits more crimes.

On the other hand, if the state prosecutes him, the entire bourgeois media, in Venezuela and through the hemisphere, screams “stop persecuting and restricting of the free press.”

• Thus, a reporter/media owner can attend a meeting in Panama with a handful of conspirators to plot the murder of State Prosecutor Danilo Anderson.

After Anderson is murdered, the “journalist” can say either she didn’t attend the meeting or, if she did, she was there only as a journalist.

Arthur Shaw
arthur@vheadline.com

http://www.vheadline.com/shaw