editorial at/@
tortillaconsal punto/dot com
by toni solo, February 7th 2010
Plenty of people have written recently on the death of US historian Howard Zinn. Alternative media outlets like Counterpunch, ZNet and Dissident Voice published several articles in Zinn's honour which might lead a casual visitor to those web sites to think they shared Zinn's commitment to open debate and factual analysis. They would be wrong. On Nicaragua, those flagship web sites for the North American radical progressive movements have spread falsehoods and suppressed debate.
The editors at Dissident Voice recently had sufficient chutzpah to publish an article by William Blum in which Blum repeats, “One of my favorite Howard Zinn quotes: "The chief problem in historical honesty is not outright lying. It is omission or de-emphasis of important data.”(1) That could hardly be more true of those progressive web sites' coverage of Nicaragua since late 2008. They have shown constant ideological hostility to Nicaragua's revolutionary governing party, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN).
Back in November 2008, the international corporate media mounted a fierce anti-FSLN campaign supporting false Nicaraguan right-wing opposition claims of massive systematic fraud in the country's municipal elections held in November 2008. Those claims were never substantiated - nor could they be, since they were entirely false. But the repeated assertion was enough to trigger condemnation of the vote by Western Bloc governments – the US and Canada, European Union countries and their Pacific allies - and punitive measures clearly aimed at damaging the FSLN's ability to implement its program of government. All the condemnation and extortionate economic pressure failed.
The European Union withheld over US$40m in budget support. The US State Department ordered the cutting of US$60m in development aid via the Millenium Challenge Account. The pretext for that criminal extortion at the expense of the Nicaraguan people was an alleged threat to democracy, implying a systematic denial of civil and political rights to people in Nicaragua. Subsequent events have demonstrated the absurd falsity of such claims. Despite that rich-country extortion - "do what we want or else" - Nicaragua's Sandinista-led government proceeded successfully with its programme by seeking alternative funding and making appropriate spending cuts.
Even so, the false claims of the Nicaraguan right wing opposition have been repeated and elaborated in articles published in Counterpunch, ZNet and Dissident Voice. Editors of those websites have suppressed attempts to refute the falsehoods they published. When that fact was pointed out to the well-known progressive, media-monitoring organization Media Lens, the editors of that site did not even reply. As Enrique Ubieta Gómez reminded us recently, for the international right wing “political debate turns not on truth but on power, it does not try to demonstrate or convince with arguments or factual information but rather to impose, to confuse, to surprise and to induce fear,” (2) The same applies to á la carte imperialist fellow-travellers too.
It is not just on Nicaragua that these alternative media operate in practice as fellow-travellers of their governments and corporate media. For example, Counterpunch editorials regularly pour scorn on people actively trying to discover what really happened during the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11th 2001. The editorials dismiss such concerns as pointless conspiracy theory. Still, Counterpunch editorials themselves aggressively stoke the theory of a conspiracy promoting false arguments to demonstrate disastrous human-made climate change. The criteria for such a double-standard seem to be entirely arbitrary.
Both positions chime well with important government and corporate briefings on those issues. Counterpunch regularly publishes critical comment by former US government officials, including loyal but dissident former US military and CIA officers. For its part, ZNet regularly publishes articles that have appeared elsewhere in corporate media like the UK Guardian. In accordance with North American liberal and European social democrat tradition, all these alternative sites tend to prioritize and strongly emphasize civil and political rights over social and economic rights.
So while Counterpunch will campaign for political prisoners like the Cuban Five, they will also not infrequently publish articles attacking Hugo Chavez or Daniel Ortega. All these alternative news outlets adopt positions that amount to a kind of narcissistic neocolonialism. So long as the beneficiaries of their solidarity are in some kind of dependent or subordinate state, they get sympathetic treatment. Political movements showing determined independence and autonomy – like the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, the FARC in Colombia or, to some extent, the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, tend generally to be ignored, patronized or attacked.
These alternative web sites could all fairly be described as anti-Communist. It may be wrong to describe them as imperialist fellow-travellers – but they are can hardly be described as anti-imperialist, as their treatment of Nicaragua amply demonstrates. If one looks for the most unstinting, while critical, support for the Bolivarian and Sandinista revolutionary processes in Venezuela and Nicaragua in recent years, it has been the international Communist Parties that have given it, welcome or not. The support – or otherwise - of the opportunist neocolonial Left is defined as much by their marketing requirements as by any principled commitment.
The fundamental objection to the editorial practice of these alternative media is that they prioritize the self-regard of themselves and their market audience over the well-being of millions of people determined to achieve a better life and self-determination despite vicious opposition from the Western Bloc powers. On Nicaragua, a handful of individuals in the North American and European progressive and radical movements have used their influence to collaborate with Western Bloc, rich-country policy. Editorial policy on Nicaragua at Counterpunch, ZNet and Dissident Voice through 2009 and to date has betrayed the impoverished majority in Nicaragua, aiding that majority's local and regional enemies, a tiny, but influential, local managerial elite supported by the US government.
The truth about Nicaragua is that education, health care and infrastructure have been greatly improved under Daniel Ortega's Sandinista-led coalition government, despite persistent practical problems. Investment in agricultural production, small and medium sized businesses and in electricity generating capacity have promoted a resurgence in the country's productive capacity for both domestic and export markets. Contrary to international feminist propaganda, the position of women has improved markedly in terms of economic rights, broader representation as decision-makers and health issues like maternal mortality.
Politically, the Sandinista government now seems to command over 40% electoral support while the combined support of all the opposition parties is around 15%-20%, with a large bloc of voters uncommitted to either grouping. The opposition regularly hold much-hyped but, on the day, disappointing marches. They control the national Press and dominate national television and radio. Civil and political rights in Nicaragua are incomparably better defended than under Porfirio Lobo in Honduras or Mauricio Funes in El Salvador. In both those countries journalists, environmentalists, trades unionists and human rights activists are regularly detained and tortured or murdered.
Rather than acknowledge that reality in Nicaragua, Counterpunch, ZNet and Dissident Voice have spread imperialist propaganda (3) and suppressed information exposing the falsehoods and outright lies on which that propaganda is based. If they do so in relation to events in Nicaragua, they may well do so on other issues too. It is entirely justifiable on the basis of their coverage of Nicaragua to talk about a neocolonial Left working in tacit sympathy with relatively liberal elements of their countries' governments, in the same way as other non-governmental outfits in sectors like human rights, or aid and development, have done for decades.
Notes.
1. “Haiti and Media Censorship,
The Anti-Empire Report”, William Blum, Dissident Voice, February 6th,
2010 (http://dissidentvoice.org/2010/02/haiti-and-media-censorship/)
2. “Venezuela, pequeña historia sobre la verdad y la mentira en Twitter”, Enrique Ubieta Gómez, Rebelión, 07-02-2010 http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=100012
3. The following articles recycling right-wing Nicaraguan opposition and US State Department propaganda have appeared either in Counterpunch, ZNet, or Dissident Voice over the last twelve months:
“Et Tu, Daniel :The Sandinista Revolution Betrayed”, Roger Burbach;
“Ortega Organizes Street Gangs to Quash Public Dissent : Fear in Nicaragua”, Danny Weil; “Living the farce : Nicaragua Now”, Clifton Ross.
Tortilla con Sal's responses to Burbach's article were blocked by Counterpunch, ZNet and Dissident Voice. When we pointed this out to Media Lens, that site's editors failed to reply.
See:
http://www.tortillaconsal.com/false_consensus.html
http://www.tortillaconsal.com/anti-burbach.html
http://www.tortillaconsal.com/toni/neocolonialist_left.html
2. “Venezuela, pequeña historia sobre la verdad y la mentira en Twitter”, Enrique Ubieta Gómez, Rebelión, 07-02-2010 http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=100012
3. The following articles recycling right-wing Nicaraguan opposition and US State Department propaganda have appeared either in Counterpunch, ZNet, or Dissident Voice over the last twelve months:
“Et Tu, Daniel :The Sandinista Revolution Betrayed”, Roger Burbach;
“Ortega Organizes Street Gangs to Quash Public Dissent : Fear in Nicaragua”, Danny Weil; “Living the farce : Nicaragua Now”, Clifton Ross.
Tortilla con Sal's responses to Burbach's article were blocked by Counterpunch, ZNet and Dissident Voice. When we pointed this out to Media Lens, that site's editors failed to reply.
See:
http://www.tortillaconsal.com/false_consensus.html
http://www.tortillaconsal.com/anti-burbach.html
http://www.tortillaconsal.com/toni/neocolonialist_left.html