Above Photo: Ben-Perrusi Martins/Flickr
Having lost Eurasia, the US elites and their allies have focused much more attention on Latin America and the Caribbean in order to re-consolidate their absolute control of the region’s resources. They work to destroy the movements and political leaders who defend impoverished majorities against the neocolonial agenda of the West. Western elites devote special attention, along with their local allies, to the elimination of all expression of international sovereignty. From within countries, they undermine and co-opt governments and institutions. From the outside, they deploy all kinds of financial, commercial, diplomatic and media aggression, in addition to the blatant military harassment.
These fundamental processes impelled the political and economic events in the region during the 1990s. They have done so with increasing intensity since the failed coup of 2002 against President Chávez in Venezuela and the successful coup in Haiti against President Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Recent aggressive statements by US National Security Adviser John Bolton against Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela point to another explicit escalation of an already well-advanced process under President Obama’s administration. This Western offensive to recolonize Latin America and the Caribbean has highlighted the complex links in North America and Europe between media coverage of news abroad and domestic political control.
The recent media attacks against Max Blumenthal and Kerry Ann Mendoza because of their reports about an American writer involved in the Nicaraguan coup opposition exposed this reality in a categorical way. Western journalists and editors cared more about an activist coup writer legitimately deported home in the United States than about the lives of 22 New Radio workers. Already attacked and almost burned alive by terrorist groups that American writer supported. These Western journalists share their role as intellectual managers with university academics and the management of international non-governmental organizations.
Throughout the political spectrum, people from these sectors project themselves as trustworthy baqueanos while offering false maps of the psychological warfare terrain they intend to control. John Bolton’s lying assault on Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela as a “troika of tyranny” unveiled the pernicious class role of these disloyal, interested individuals in the media, universities and Western NGOs who attack the governments of these countries with the same false information and deliberate omissions that Bolton. Recent examples in the case of Nicaragua demonstrate this clearly.
Professor of Sociology Professor Benjamin Waddell falsely alleges that the Sandinista government has banned public protests. In fact, the only thing the Nicaraguan government has done is to apply existing laws in accordance with North American and European public order standards. Now the public protests in Nicaragua require permission from the police and formally agree with the time and route of the demonstration. Prior to this measure, the extremists of the political opposition in Nicaragua used firearms routinely to cause wounded and dead, since they needed casualties to be able to claim the use of lethal repression against them.
Waddell himself mentions casualties, including “a 16-year-old boy wounded in crossfire between government forces and protesters.” A more honest version would have noticed the reports of the Truth, Peace and Justice Commission
an independent entity of the National Assembly that demonstrate as the report on the basis that Waddell writes his article includes more than a hundred dead without any connection to the protests against the government, in addition to another amount of supposed dead without documentation. Waddell does not cite independent reports either which confirm that around 66% of those killed during the failed coup attempt were Sandinista sympathizers or bystanders at the time of the events who had no political affiliation.
From the other political sidewalk to Waddell, Bill van Auken explains in relation to President Daniel Ortega that, “Until now, Washington has shown some ambivalence towards the Sandinista leader’s government, who returned to power in 2007 based on an economic program that favored the interests of Nicaraguan and foreign capital. “Neglect, you have not misread it, Van Auken truly argues that the US government is no longer going to tolerate a regime in Nicaragua that favors the interests of foreign capital.This type of misinformed irrational comment is typical in the western coverage of Nicaragua.
Other writers deploy their ignorant ignorance through brazen falsehoods. The academic, Jenny Pearce, commenting on the failed coup attempt in Nicaragua allegesPresident Ortega “responded to the protests against corruption and authoritarianism by unleashing para-police forces against the demonstrators.” In fact, President Daniel Ortega responded in a timely manner to the extremely violent initial protests of the opposition for calling for a national dialogue with the However, Pearce increases its initial falsehood when it alleges that “the majority” of the coup leaders in Nicaragua “are neither counterrevolutionaries nor are they from the right.” But the reality is totally the opposite. They are well-known figures in the Nicaraguan right or are prominent members of groups financed from abroad that have long been political allies of the Nicaraguan right.
The coup plotters identified quickly and openly: Piero Coen, the richest individual in Nicaragua; Micheal Healy manager of agro-business interests of Colombia; the private business organization COSEP; the fascist bishops of the Catholic Church; the extreme right political parties; NGOs and media funded by the US authorities, all closely associated with the MRS party aligned with American interventionist politicians; the Anti-Canal Movement funded from abroad; and a small number of students without any massive base. The leaders, NGOs and MRS media openly accept funding from the US authorities and seek the support of fascist US politicians Marco Rubio and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. But nevertheless,
Another respected university academic, the Belgian economist, Eric Toussaint, overcomes the false analysis of Pearce with very deliberate misinformation. His most recent attack starts with the falsity denied from a startthat the proposed reform of Social Security in Nicaragua was dictated by the International Monetary Fund. The truth is totally the opposite. The government proposal defended workers and pensioners against the measures recommended by the IMF. For this reason, the coup leaders rejected the proposed reforms and skillfully used mass manipulation through social networks and right-wing media to mobilize a large number of misinformed protesters. These protesters were quickly exploited by opposition extremists as cannon fodder in their violent attacks. At this point, someone of Eric Toussaint’s preparation has no excuse to re-launch that old lie when reality is clearly documented.
Amid much misinformation, Toussaint defends sinister individuals such as Francisca Ramirez and Medardo Mairena who in recent years have organized marches and blockades of roads, often violent, to protest against the proposal of the Interoceanic Canal. Now with a retrospective glance, it is seen that they were pre-pairing themselves precisely for this recent coup attempt. During the unsuccessful coup attempt between April and July, Ramírez, Mairena and their violent accomplices harassed and extorted producers and merchants in their area while giving free passage to the products and animals of them and their supporters. It has been reported that Medardo Mairena had been previously expelled from Costa Rica accused of trafficking in persons. Now Mairena awaits trial accused of murder of four police officers and a primary school teacher in the town of Morrito, on July 12, 2018 when the attempted coup was about to be finished.
Whether from the right or from the left, the apologists of the attempted coup d’etat in Nicaragua try to hide what is more than evident. The US authorities attack the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela precisely because these governments have democratized their societies and economies against the interests of the Western elites and their allies. The failed coup d’état in Nicaragua copied faithfully the series of coup attempts in Venezuela since 2013. All these attacks were organized and programmed to facilitate measures of harassment and blockade from abroad in order to force a regime change. Currently, the big lie about Nicaragua is that the country is still in crisis, when in reality the crisis ended in July and the country has quickly returned to complete normalcy.
The recycling of falsehoods and lies that promote the US agenda of regime change in Latin America and the Caribbean corrupts the democratic debate in Western countries. In addition, it provides an alibi for framing the disloyal anti-democratic electoral processes of American allies as happened with the election of the fascist ideologue Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil. Anti-imperialist writers with clear vision, such as Max Blumenthal, Kerry Ann Mendoza and Jonathan Cook, among many others, repeatedly insist on this same point. The lying reports and analyzes disseminated by the class of intellectuals, NGO managers and media communicators in the West, destroy the democratic debate in North America and Europe for the benefit of the elites of those same NATO countries. The western coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean, especially at this time in Nicaragua and Venezuela, demonstrate this reality one after another.