Venezuela says arrests suspected U.S. drugs agent

[struggle4progress]

Source: Reuters

Thu May 29, 2008 5:07pm EDT

CARACAS ...

President Hugo Chavez in 2005 ended cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), saying the agency was spying on him. The United States denied the charge and says Chavez does too little to stop trafficking from neighboring Colombia, the world's largest cocaine exporter.

Gen. Gabriel Oviedo said the man was acting suspicious when he was detained close to the border with Colombia while bearing Canadian and French passports and a Venezuelan identity card.

"The official at the scene proceeded to interrogate him and he said he was a DEA agent," Oviedo told state television.

The U.S. Embassy in Caracas said it had no knowledge of the arrest ...

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN2929449720080529

[angstlessk]

1. can Venezuela waterboard him now that waterboarding is officially just

a fraternity hazing prank?

[Dogtown]

2. Hmmmmm...

Who to believe?


:rofl:

[unkachuck]

6. believe Hugo....

....he doesn't lie as much as bushco....

[gulfcoastliberal]

3. This is an important story. K&R

Lends a lot of credence to Chavez's allegations. It's a fact that the CIA was behind the failed '02 coup attempt -makes sense that another "alphabet agency" is trying to stir up shit.

[bemildred]

4. Must be a "loose cannon" or a "bad apple".

The CIA would never deal in drugs for money.
:sarcasm:

[Peace Patriot]

5. Notice the word twisting in the Reuters headline:

"Venezuela says arrests suspected U.S. drugs agent"

They contort this headline in order NOT to write: "Venezuela arrests suspected U.S. drugs agent."

They want to slip in there a hint that the Venezuelan government is not reliable, or is lying about U.S. DEA agents being used to spy on them. "Venezuela says arrests suspected...." But the compression is too great, and they mangle the sense of the headline. Put in the word "it," and you get what the headline was supposed to do--put a sort of onus on Venezuela, questioning the government's action:

"Venezuela says (that IT) arrests suspected U.S. drugs agent."

The headline I wrote--"Venezuela arrests suspected U.S. drugs agent"--is what you would normally see, if it was referring to a government that kowtows to the U.S./Bush "war on drugs" boondoggle, and to U.S. global corporate predators. In my version (the normal version), the word "suspected" sufficiently conveys that this was merely an arrest, not a conviction. And it's quite clear that it is the arresting government that "suspects" the arrestee of being a U.S. agent. That's all this headline should have said:

"Venezuela arrests suspected U.S. drugs agent."

But they had to get their dig in, that it's "just Venezuela" saying this--and they thus made the headline nearly impossible to understand:

"Venezuela says arrests suspected U.S. drugs agent."

I had to read it several times, and I didn't really understand it until I read the article.

Cheap shot, from an increasingly cheap, tawdry, corporate ass-kissing, disinformationist 'news' agency. (They're becoming as bad as the Associated Pukes.)

[AP]

7. I also like how it says

that Chavez accuses U.S. of spying on him, when the accusation is that the U.S. is spying on Venezuelan government. They personalize it to make it sound like less like what it really is, which is about democracy and a government's autonomy (and not about personality).

[AP]

8. I also like how it says

that Chavez accuses U.S. of spying on him, when the accusation is that the U.S. is spying on Venezuelan government. They personalize it to make it sound like less like what it really is, which is about democracy and a government's autonomy (and not about personality).

[Judi Lynn]

9. They do that with every leftist democratically elected President. They attempt to make it appear he

is in office through illegitimate means, like _{George W. Bush.} Makes it so much easier to demonize him when people don't automatically remember he's a well-liked, well-supported President who won by a large majority of Venezuelan citizen voters.

It's abhorrent seeing the people who purport to serve the public by delivering trustworthy information simply mock us by lying in our faces, even as we provide their very means of support. There's something especially dirty and insulting about this.

[uberllama42]

10. I wrote a paper about Venezuela last semester

focusing on the high inflation there. I found two major distortions by the 'left-wing media' in the U.S.:

1). It is often pointed out in the American media that Venezuela has the highest inflation in the Western Hemisphere, but under Chavez inflation has been half of what it was under the previous regime. That government was operating under an IMF austerity program, intended, among other things, to limit inflation. Chavez replaced that with one of the most generous welfare states in this hemisphere, hugely expanding access to health care and basic education.

2). A few years ago, the Venezuelan Congress granted Chavez the right to rule by decree for eighteen months. The media (led by the New York Times) had a conniption, accusing him of revealing his dictatorial tendencies. Two years earlier, though, the Colombian Congress granted our good buddy Alvaro Uribe the very same authority. Crickets in the U.S. press. If you're fighting the Drug War, it's OK to consolidate executive power. If you're feeding and educating the poor, you're a threat to Western values.

[Judi Lynn]

11. uberllama42, this is a valuable message. Undoubtedly you know how deeply buried that information

has been! It surely gets in the way of some furiously spinning propaganda, doesn't it?

Thanks for sharing what you have discovered. I had no idea URIBE also had the same ability. This is so damned odd! I really want to remember both points you've made.

(Of course you know Uribe started working on getting his unpresidented THIRD TERM only moments after his own National Assembly awarded him the right to his UNPRESIDENTED SECOND TERM. It has been capably pointed out here by Peace Patriot that when Uribe got his second term opportunity, he got it through bribing the legislators, as is being tesitified now by one of them who cooperated and voted for him in return for promises. Peace Patriot does remind people to recall that Hugo Chavez put the option of giving him the chance to run for election indefinitely up for a vote by the people themselves.)

[Peace Patriot]

12. Good points, uberllama42! The disinformation, psyops and outright lies

in the corporate press about South America's peaceful democracy and social justice revolution are as disgusting as their lies about WMDs in Iraq, and just as dangerous. The Bushites have a war plan for South America--Oil War II--and they are hellbent on entangling us in it before they leave office. I frankly fear U.S. military intervention, siding with fascists, in South America, before the year is out, more than I fear an attack on Iran. It could well become Obama's "quagmire." And I am not at all convinced that he sees it coming. His speech in Miami last week, about Latin America, gives me grave concern about who is advising him, his level of information (or should I say, disinformation), and his (there is no other word for it) arrogance about Latin America's "need" for U.S. "leadership," and the (again, no other word for it) delusional notion that anyone but rich fascist minorities plotting coups in South America would welcome "leadership" from the giant to the north which destroyed South American economies with "free trade" and supports the murder of thousands of union leaders and other innocents in Colombia, and has, in the past, inflicted South Americans with heinous dictatorships. South America is on its own path away from these U.S.-inflicted horrors, and toward social justice and self-determination. What do they "need" our "leadership" for?

Anyway, this corporate 'news' disinformation about South America appears to me to be laying the ground work for trapping Obama into BAD policy. We don't see corporate disinformation campaigns like this to no purpose. They have a purpose. And it is up to us to try to figure it out, and do our best to head it off.