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NATO's "progressive" propaganda outlet The Guardian continues attacking Hugo Chávez

toni solo, 8 de noviembre 2014

Along with most of the US media and other right-wing soul-mates like Britain's Daily Mail, NATO's propaganda outlet for progressives, the Guardian, continues smearing the reputation of deceased President Hugo Chávez. The latest effort is a report by Richard Luscombe "Ally of Hugo Chávez jailed for links to Colombian drugs cartels. Top judge’s sentence for extortion charges associated with illicit drugs trade taints late Venezuelan president and party." Luscombe's article harks back to a 2008 article in the Guardian's sister propaganda outlet, the Observer, by another NATO country apologist John Carlin, "Revealed : Chavez role in cocaine network to Europe".

 

Luscombe's article offers absolutely no factual evidence to justify his article's headline and leaves out plenty of evidence to the contrary. Nor does it offer any new evidence to vindicate Carlin's fact-free article from 2008. Luscombe reports the conviction by a Miami court of a former Venezuelan judge, Benny Palmeri Bacchi, on three counts related to money laundering and extortion in relation to drugs transactions by Colombian. Unlike Carlin's 2008 propaganda concoction, it is possible to glean a few facts from Luscombe's self-evident exercise in psychological warfare.

 

Palmeri-Bacchi was arrested in July 2014 and originally pleaded not guilty to the charges based on testimony by FBI-run informers including, Luscombe admits, "trafficker-turned-informant Jaime Alberto Marín Zamora". The US Department of Injustice indictment covers the period February 2009 to September 2010 and contains four counts : conspiracy to distribute drugs illegally imported into the US; conspiracy to obstruct US justice by delaying extradition proceedings in Venezuela against Marín Zamora; money laundering of narcotics proceeds; and extortion against an unnamed defendant indicated by the initials J.C.S.

Luscombe notes that Palmeri Bacchi changed his plea, "At first Palmeri had pleaded not guilty to all charges but changed his mind apparently in return for cooperating with investigators." Luscombe also reports that the original indictment on which Palmeri Bacchi was arrested dates from December 2013 and names another venezuelan former public official, Rodolfo McTurk. Apart from these useful facts almost everything else in Luscombe's text is tendentious and speculative.

 

The Guardian report suggests that the indictment against Palmeri Bacchi and McTurk is linked to the indictment of retired venezuelan army general Hugo Carvajal Barrios. In fact, the indictment against Carvajal Barrios was issued separately in May 2013 and involves much more serious crimes. It includes charges of direct involvement in drugs trafficking over a very long period of time starting in 2004. Luscombe's article seems to mention Carvajal Barrios by way of a propaganda follow up to persistent, vain attempts by various US and allied NATO country propaganda outlets to link the Venezuelan government itself directly to the Colombian FARC guerrillas, for example via the "magic computer" of FARC Comandante Raul Reyes.

 

The article repeats the longstanding but unsupported US government propaganda claim that the FARC Colombian guerrillas are systematically involved in drugs trafficking. The only new element provided by Luscombe's report is the legal context created by US Injustice Department indictments and the conviction of Palmeri Bacchi. But even a cursory look at that legal context shows how suspicious and weak those indictments and conviction really are.

No one questions that the regional narcotics trade based on production in Colombia  is active in Venezuela, although the Guardian report implies that this is some kind of revelation. Nor does anyone question the prevalence of serious corruption that bedevils Venezuela's public life as it does everywhere else, including the United States and Europe. Even so, in 2008, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime ranked the Venezuelan government third, after the US and Colombia, in terms of intercepting and seizing illegal narcotics. In 2011, the UNODC declared Venezuela free from illicit drug cultivations for the sixth consecutive year and ranked the country fifth in the world in terms of seizures of llegal drugs.

Likewise, despite their propaganda claims, the United States authorities have been unable to demonstrate that the FARC guerrilla are systematically involved in narcotics trafficking. Nor have they been able to establish that any senior Venezuelan government figure is involved in the regional drugs trade. On the contrary, it is the US financial and security authorities, including the Drugs Enforcement Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency against which convincing evidence of involvement in drugs trafficking has accumulated relentlessly over many years, most notoriously perhaps in the reporting of Gary Webb and, among many others, writers like Robert Parry and Douglas Valentine, but also as regularly documented by news outlets like NarcoNews.

 

Only two senior FARC members are in prison in the US. Against one, Simon Trinidad, the US Department of Injustice had to drop narcotics charges for lack of evidence. Against the other, Anayibe Rojas Valderrama, the conviction depended entirely on the testimony of Colombian army informers. Rojas Valderrama always maintained her innocence. On that basis, claims that the FARC are systematically involved in trafficking narcotics are pure propaganda.

Likewise, the case against Palmeri Bacchi and McTurk depended entirely on testimony from individuals under pressure to tell the US Department of Injustice what they wanted to hear. Precisely the same kinds of pressures make Palmeri Bacchi's change of plea extremely suspect. If one asks why he changed his plea, the likelihood is that he was threatened with abusive treatment and a life sentence in a US prison if he didn't do what his tormentors wanted. In the US injustice system, plea bargaining makes a guilty plea completely meaningless, a fact most recently made clear in the case of John Kiriakou.


It is also worth considering Palmeri Bacchi's options in the context of the kangaroo court verdicts and sentences handed down by politically sectarian Miami judges. The scandalous trial of the five cuban anti-terrorists featured very obvious, unscrupulous, politically motivated procedural manipulation by US Injustice Department officials. The US government and its agencies, including the Department of Injustice, are all guilty as hell in terms of their own relationships to the regional drugs trade and its powerful financial sector beneficiaries.

 

The US Injustice Department itself deliberately avoids prosecutions of high profile individuals managing powerful financial institutions involved in laundering the proceeds from narcotics and other organized crime. Elsewhere in the US injustice system, while perhaps most Drugs Enforcement Agency officers work honestly and hard to carry out their agency's brief, others are rotten to the core. The DEA itself is subject to strong political pressures. Involvement in narcotics dealing by the Central Intelligence Agency is all too well known and well documented, thanks to brave and determined investigative writers like Gary Webb and many others.

 

Even so, in relation to US official involvement in narcotics, NATO propagandists like Richard Luscombe and his Guardian colleagues look the other way. In that regard, they follow the tradition of the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times who effectively destroyed Gary Webb in the worst traditions of vindictive persecution so typical of hypocritical Western liberals when defending their support networks in the spirit of don't-shit-where-you-eat. Webb's offence was to uncover the facts about US government agency narcotics involvement whose urgent suppression is one of the primary functions of US and allied propaganda media.

 

Writing about the US and its allies, like Colombia's narco-terror paramilitary leader, former President Alvaro Uribe Velez, the Guardian's psywarfare team generally suppress the facts and avoid making criticism. By contrast,on Venezuela, they seize on any rumour or speculation implying possible involvement in narcotics by individuals with any connection to the Venezuelan government. Richard Luscombe's tendentious and speculative article in the Guardian applies the same NATO propaganda double standard used against any government opposed to the policies of the US and its NATO allies, whether it's Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Belarus, Zimbabwe, North Korea or, in this case, Venezuela.