Regarding COHA Director Larry Birns January 26 Interview on NPR program "on the Media"

Hugo Chavez Censors Opposing Media, NPR Airs One Side: Censorship Defenders

Posted by Tim Graham on January 30, 2007

NPR's weekly show On The Media routinely tilts strongly to the left. On the January 26 version, it includes a segment with ex-Greenpeace researcher/Washington Post writer William Arkin denouncing the Iraq surge as a worthless political smokescreen, and an analysis of the Bush State of the Union address with former Clinton speechwriter Michael Waldman (exaggerating the negative reviews Clinton received for his annual yawnfests). But the real eye-opener of the show was a segment defending Hugo Chavez for censoring opposition media outlets. What? An NPR segment with only one guest, making the case for censorship? Yes.

The guest arguing from deep inside the Hugo tank was Larry Birns of the Council for Hemispheric Affairs, a long-standing cheereleader for Latin American dictators and revolutionary guerrillas of the Left. NPR host Bob Garfield noted that a number of establishment newspapers editorialized against Chavez, and asked Birns skeptical questions about setting a bad precedent. But there was no defender of RCTV, the banned media outlet. So it's not a debate about Chavez, but a one-sided defense of his dictatorial move.

Garfield: "Chavez's former communications minister has referred to the move as 'the leading edge of the information hegemony of the state,' and RCTV says it has been denied due process. But to Larry Birns of the Liberal Council on Hemispheric Affairs, the underlying facts betray anti-Chavez editorializing as one-sided and simplistic."

Larry Birns: "RCTV is arguably the most scabrous example of yellow journalism in Latin America. It's an advocacy outfit, and it was one of the major plotters of a coup against Chavez back in April of 2002. This station engaged in trick photography and all sort of scandalous behavior in order to advance that coup."

Garfield: "Does not the principle of free speech, even of, you know, sort of obnoxious critics trump the history of RCTV's behavior? Is Chavez not setting a very bad precedent by silencing his most vocal critic?"

Birns: "This is a situation where RCTV uniquely was shouting out the word "fire" in a crowded theater. Ninety-five percent of the media in Venezuela is controlled by the anti-Chavistas, and they have their knives out for Chavez. So talking about constitutional guarantees, you may be talking to the wrong bunch."

Garfield: "Last month, Chavez was reelected in a landslide with 63 percent of the vote in an election with the highest voter turnout in Venezuelan history. Isn't that ample evidence that RCTV and anyone else in the right-wing media represent no great threat to his government?"

Birns: "Well, perhaps at this moment, no. But if you are using lies, distortions, prevarications, at some point your influence may prevail."

Garfield: "I want to ask you about what I referred to in the introduction, and that's the media coverage in the United States about Chavez's so-called Bolivarian Revolution. It's pretty close to being unanimous in denouncing Chavez's tactics, if not necessarily his goals. These editorial boards are not populated by know-nothings. In your view, they've all gone wrong. Why do you suppose that is?"

Birns: "Well, it was said of The New York Times that The New York Times will do everything for Latin America except visit it. It happens that most of the journalists, the correspondents give measured and fair and balanced treatment. But I do think that these editorials are simply scurrilous. It's basically an issue probably more of style than substance. I mean, Chavez is the kind of fellow that you don't find at Eton – bad instincts for public relations, bizarre antics. But this is Chavez's playful style. That has nothing to do with the quality of his thinking and the proposals that he's made. He is not a cruel, heartless man. He is not a Pinochet. He's anything but a Pinochet."

Garfield said the U.S. editorialists were worried he would become not a Pinochet, but a Castro. Birns concluded that Venezuela has always been a "faux democracy," that is, until Hugo came along: "Today, Venezuela is not only a formal democracy, a constitutional democracy, but it also is a real democracy in that people have the right to more than just starve. They also have the right to access to an education, to medical help and so forth."

You can tell Birns is on the hard left because NPR's Garfield says he has a "liberal group," which is not a label they would use for a liberal group, but only for a group that's liberal when compared to the liberal "mainstream." Why couldn't NPR also allow the counter-argument from RCTV?

~

The Kennedy, Chavez & Chomsky Pipeline

By Marc Sheppard

Have you seen the latest Citgo-sponsored commercial for Citizens Energy Corporation? At first glance you may have mistaken it for a Saturday Night Live sketch and watched it prepared for a good laugh. That is, until you'd realized it was all too serious. Until it struck you that a member of one of North America's most powerful political families may well be in bed with one of South America's most notorious and dangerous men. But it gets even more disturbing. The language used to rationalize this unholy alliance appears to be right from the playbook of the devout anarchist many refer to as the Ayatollah of anti-Americanism.

The bizarre 30 second pitch (video) opens with a man who complains he needs 2 pairs of long underwear and a jacket to stay warm inside his house. We then fade into the image of an elderly "84 and alone" woman dragging an iron cot into her kitchen from her basement so she can, as her voice-over tells us, "sleep by the oven." The next voice we hear is that of Joseph Kennedy II, who assures us that "help is on the way." The son of Robert Kennedy then explains that heating oil is available at 40% off thanks to "our friends in Venezuela at Citgo." In closing, tyrant Hugo Chavez's good buddy asks us to give him a jingle at 1-877-JOE-4-OIL because "no one should be left out in the cold."

It's Nothing Political Joey, Strictly Benevolence

Of course, this wasn't the first time that the former Massachusetts congressman's name and company have been attached to a Chavez oil for fool scheme. In 2005, an ad with the banner HOW Venezuela Is Keeping the Home Fires Burning in Massachusetts ran in major U.S newspapers and offered cheap heating oil to America's poor as a "simple act of generosity." A November 20, 2005 story in the Boston Globe outlined this earlier CEC creepy covenant with CITGO, the Houston-based subsidiary of Chavez's state-owned petroleum company Petróleos de Venezuela.

The Globe reported scuttlebutt that Chavez had helped broker the deal partly as a jab at President Bush. Larry Birns, executive director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, a group that tracks Latin American politics and government agreed:

''It is a slap in the face" to the Bush administration. "Chávez is involved in petro-diplomacy."

No doubt. For starters, the move curries favor among segments of the U.S. population most likely duped by his class warfare gamesmanship. This diaphanous tactic works quite well on weak-minded, self-hating Americans - just ask Chavez-bots like actor Danny Glover and singer Harry Belafonte. And, as a bonus, El Commandante gets to portray the United States as a country that can't even keep its own people warm in the winter without charity from marginally civilized Latin American socialists.

Not surprisingly, Kennedy dismissed all of this and assured critics he was not concerned with the politics of the man whose allies represent a virtual who's who of America's enemies:

''You start parsing which countries' politics we're going to feel comfortable with, and only buying oil from them, then there are going to be a lot of people not driving their cars and not staying warm this winter. There are a lot of countries that have much worse records than Venezuela."

As usual, to a Kennedy (any Kennedy), welfare (any welfare) from the state (any state) is always the cure for want (any want).

With friends like these who needs loyalties?

But it was the curious reference to "our friends in Venezuela" in this most recent commercial that caught the eye and ire of a January 19^th USA Today editorial, which fittingly noted:

"It's not entirely clear which ‘good friends' Kennedy is referring to. Chavez, who has called Bush ‘a genocidal murderer and a madman'? The Venezuelan people, whose natural resources Chavez is squandering?"

The column, which also reminded readers that only his nation's mammoth oil reserves distinguish Chavez from other cruel and murderous Latin American tyrants, elicited an immediate indignant reply from Kennedy. After drearily repeating the lame moral equivalency argument he put forth in 2005 and mentioning that poor cot-dragging woman we met in the commercial, he continued with words which placed his earlier disregard for Chavez's politics in serious doubt:

"More than 558 million barrels of Venezuelan oil made their way to the USA last year. Why just go after the small slice that helps senior citizens and struggling families? Why not take on those who also make money off Venezuela - GM and Ford, which sold 300,000 cars there last year, and Shell, BP, Conoco Phillips and other oil interests that, unlike Venezuela and Citgo Petroleum, spurned our requests for assisting the poor?"

Hey Joe, could it be that mutually-beneficial business deals don't leave either party beholding to the other, whereas charity from a socialist expansionist madman with an agenda obvious to everyone but you does?

Needless to say, outside unwashed circles Kennedy's explanation didn't quite satisfy. A week's worth of ongoing critical commentary prompted a decidedly emotional supplementary response on January 24^th. In it, he suggested that windfall tax revenues on oil and gas be used to finance increased public assistance. As to the deal with Venezuela and those who critique it:

"The alternative is a continuation of policies that steer tax breaks to the wealthy and subsidies to our biggest corporations, while telling the needy, ‘You're on your own' - a kind of socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor that leaves the most vulnerable out in the cold." [emphasis added]

Did he say Socialism for the Rich?

You bet. In fact, Kennedy had made prior use of that silly idiom, including in his aforementioned January 19^th rebuttal. Interestingly enough, his brother Robert also employed the puzzling phrase when he accepted a Sierra Club Tree-Hugger Award in September of 2005.

More interesting still, almost a decade earlier, American political dissident Noam Chomsky wrote an article which commenced:

"The Free Market is socialism for the rich: the public pays the costs and the rich get the benefit -- markets for the poor and plenty of state protection for the rich."

Sounds a lot like Joseph the Second's January 24^th comments, doesn't it? Don't be surprised. You see, Joe's buddy Hugo has a buddy named Noam who's been whining about the evils of capitalism in general and as practiced by selfish Americans specifically for decades.

You'll recall the stir Chavez caused addressing the U.N last September when he opened his speech by waving a copy of comrade Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States in the face of the General Assembly. The Latin nutcase claimed that the book contained proof that the greatest threat looming over our planet is the

"hegemonic pretensions of the American empire [which is] placing at risk the very survival of the human species."

In an uneven tirade which included his referencing President Bush alternately as the world dictator and the devil himself, he gushed over the book so convincingly that it jumped to number 1 on Amazon's best-seller list overnight. There must have been an abundance of Libertarian socialists, Anarcho-syndicalists, and otherwise-aligned America haters in the gallery that day.

I told you, we're an Anarcho-syndicalist Commune

A recurring theme in Chomsky's work of late has been the evolving symbiosis between Venezuela and Cuba which he holds forth as a shining model of the virtues of Chavez's socialist petro-charity. Chavez provides low-cost oil while his dying hero and mentor Castro reciprocates with literacy and medical programs. Take that premise and add another familiar Chomsky fantasy -- Chavez's brave struggle to overcome American backed trade agreements which exploit workers and perpetuate unfair economic and social strata. Now, mix well in a large Margarita pitcher and Voila -- Kennedy's argument exactly.

And by the way, the man who favors a social revolution whereby freely co-operative workers' unions would replace all forms of competition, leadership and executive power is no stranger to Kennedy's ploy. It just so happens that in December of 2005, Chomsky penned an article addressing the hoopla over the Citgo-Kennedy connection. The anarchist linguistic genius begins by making disappointingly generic moral equivalence points similar to Pal Joey's - and then manages to degrade farther still. True to form, the piece quickly descends into his signature rhetorical abyss -- blaming all things Capitalist America for all things awry in South America, advocating Chavez as the natural, if imperfect, outcome. And, of course, adding the requisite socialist-expansion academic spam:

"At issue in the region, as elsewhere around the world, is alternative social and economic models. Enormous, unprecedented popular movements have developed to expand cross-border integration - going beyond economic agendas to encompass human rights, environmental concerns, cultural independence and people-to-people contacts. These movements are ludicrously called "anti-globalisation" because they favour globalisation directed to the interests of people, not investors and financial institutions."

Curiously, the man once voted the world's top public intellectual also failed to ask one obvious question. If even Hugo's best friend is expected to pony up recompense for cheap Latin-tea, why would he provide the same to his worst enemy without similarly anticipating his due pound of flesh?

The Three Ameriphobic Amigos

Okay, so Hugo loves Noam and Joey loves Hugo and maybe Noam but Noam loves Hugo and, while no fan of Kennedys per se, maybe even Joey. So just what is it that connects these three contrasting socialists -- one dictatorial, one anarchistic and one welfare-state?

On the day following the September 11^th terrorist attacks President Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías mumbled,

"The United States brought the attacks upon itself, for their arrogant imperialist foreign policy."

In an interview a week later, one Avram Noam Chomsky Ph.D proclaimed:

"During these years the US virtually exterminated the indigenous population, conquered half of Mexico, intervened violently in the surrounding region, conquered Hawaii and the Philippines (killing hundreds of thousands of Filipinos), and in the past half century particularly, extended its resort to force throughout much of the world. The number of victims is colossal. For the first time, the guns have been directed the other way."

And while a prominent American who might agree wouldn't be stupid enough to say so, Joseph Patrick Kennedy II certainly isn't lacking stupid things he is willing to say. For instance, last November, he told a Wall Street Journal Reporter questioning his assisting "an anti-American tyrant at the expense of the Venezuelan people," that as to democracy, there is,

"ample room for improvement in the ways that people get elected in Venezuela as well as in Florida."

So then, it would appear that there's one thing the three share much more congruently than their underlying common dream of wealth redistribution.

~Hello Larry,

I wrote on this issue in article titled RCTV's Acts ofSedition. I encourage you to read it on my blog site- sjlendman.blogspot.com.

We agree on all RCTV has done since Chavez firstelected. Key point is Venezuelan law is clear and allcorporate media violated it egregiously. Chavezacting against RCTV because its VHF license expiringin May. He's barely slapping it on wrist.

If RCTV and others pulled these stunts in US against aUS admin. they could be charged with sedition carryingup to 20 years in prison or treason that could getthem death penalty. No nation tolerates what thesepeople did, not should they.

Steve Lendman

~Hello Mr. Birns,

I'm the new Media Analyst at the Venezuela Information Office (www.veninfo.org) located in Dupont Circle, DC. I don't know if youhave heard of us, but our mission is "...to educate the public aboutcontemporary Venezuela. We seek to present an accurate view of the current political scene in Venezuela for the American public and buildallies for the Venezuelan people."

I just heard and very much appreciated your interview that airedyesterday. I thought you did an excellent job of filling in what the mainstream media consistently leaves out of its coverage of Chavez andVenezuela. In particular, I appreciated the way you distinguishedPresident Chavez style from the quality of his thinking and policies.

I hope to have a chance to meet you sometime. Please let us know ifwe can ever be of assistance to you.

Sincerely,

Paul Beich

Media Analyst

Venezuela Information Office

~Larry,
You were fabulous on NPR today. Here on my blog is a mini-tribute to you. I think this is the first time I haven't been a total smartass in my postings.

Best to you,

Eric

http://www.borev.net

"The voice of Stewart, the acumen of Zinn, the sardonic dig of Wilde, Larry Birns is a goddamned UNESCO World Heritage Site of analysis. You can hear him today on NPR's On the Media on Venezuela and the RCTV controversy. The transcript is here . But take the time to click the "listen" button. It's worth it."