When Truth and Integrity are Dead-Letter Words

Why are we fucking with Venezuela now? Leave them alone! If they have problems, let them deal with it--oh, but they're an oil rich country. God, our bullshit is SO transparent!


Washington’s Presumption
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS


The new president of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, is cast in Chavez’s mold. On May 4, he called US president Obama the “grand chief of devils.”

Obama, who has betrayed democracy in America, unleashing execution on American citizens without due process of law and war without the consent of Congress, provoked Maduro’s response by suggesting that Maduro’s newly elected government might be fraudulent. Obviously, Obama is piqued that the millions of dollars his administration spent trying to elect an American puppet instead of Maduro failed to do the job.

If anyone has accurately summed up Washington, it is the Venezuelans.

Who can forget Chevez standing at the podium of the UN General Assembly in New York City speaking of George W. Bush? Quoting from memory: “Right here, yesterday, at this very podium stood Satan himself, speaking as if he owned the world. You can still smell the sulphur.”

Hegemonic Washington threw countless amounts of money into the last Venezuelan election, doing its best to deliver the governance of that country to a Washington puppet called Henrique Capriles, in my opinion a traitor to Venezuela. Why isn’t this American puppet arrested for treason? Why are not the Washington operatives against an independent country–the US ambassador, the counsels, the USAID/CIA personnel, the Washington funded NGOs–ordered to leave Venezuela immediately or arrested and tried for spying and high treason? Why allow any presence of Washington in Venezuela when it is clear that Washington’s intention is to make Venezuela a puppet state like the UK, Germany, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Japan, and on and on.

There was a time, such as in the Allende-Pinochet era, when the American left-wing and a no longer extant liberal media would have been all over Washington for its illegal interference in the internal affairs of an independent country. But no more. As CounterPunch’s Jeffrey St. Clair has recently made clear, the American left-wing remains “insensate to the moral and constitutional transgressions being committed by their champion”–the first black, or half-black, US president“ – leaving Rand Paul to offer official denunciations against [Washington’s] malignant operations” against independent countries.

Against the Obama regime’s acts of international and domestic violence, “the professional Left, from the progressive caucus to the robotic minions of Moveon.org, lodge no objections and launch no protests.” St. Clair has written a powerful article. Read it for yourself.

I think the American left-wing lost its confidence when the Soviet Union collapsed and the Chinese communists and Indian socialists turned capitalist. Everyone misread the situation, especially the “end of history” idiots. The consequence is a world without strong protests of Washington’s and its puppet states’ war criminal military aggressions, murder, destruction of civil liberty and human rights, and transparent propaganda: “Last night Polish forces crossed the frontier and attacked Germany,” or so declared Adolf Hitler. Washington’s charges of “weapons of mass destruction” are even more transparent lies.

But hardly any care. The Western governments and Japan are all paid off and bought, and those that are not bought are begging to be bought because they want the money too. Truth, integrity, these are all dead-letter words. No one any longer knows what they mean.

The moronic George W. Bush said, in Orwellian double-speak, they hate us for our freedom and democracy. They don’t hate us because we bomb them, invade them, kill them, destroy their way of life, culture, and infrastructure. They hate us because we are so good. How stupid does a person have to be to believe this BS?

Washington and Israel present the world with unmistakable evil. I don’t need to stand at the UN podium after Bush or Obama. I can smell Washington’s evil as far away as Florida. Jeffrey St. Clair can smell it in Oregon. Nicolas Maduro can smell it in Venezuela. Evo Morales can smell it in Bolivia from where he cast out CIA-infiltrated USAID. Putin can smell it in Russia, although he still permits the treasonous “Russian opposition” funded by US money to operate against Russia’s government. The Iranians can smell it in the Persian Gulf. The Chinese can smell it as far away as Beijing.

Homeland Security, a gestapo institution, has “crisis actors” to help it deceive the public in its false flag operations.

The Obama regime has drones with which to silence American citizens without due process of law.

Homeland Security has more than a billion rounds of ammunition, tanks, a para-military force. Detention camps have been built.

Are Americans so completely stupid that they believe this is all for “terrorists” whose sparse numbers require the FBI to manufacture “terrorists” in so-called “sting operations” in order to justify the FBI’s $3 billion special fund from Congress to combat domestic terrorism?

Congress has taxpayers paying the FBI to frame up innocents and send them to prison.

This is the kind of country American has become. This is the kind of “security” agencies it has, filling their pockets by destroying the lives of the innocent and downtrodden.

“In God we trust,” reads the coinage. It should read: “In Satan we follow.”

Iran: The Neocons Are At It Again--After Iran, Venezuela? (2 articles)

 (Neocons suck and are the bane of any hope for a peaceful existence. They are power-hungry douchebags with no conscience, no empathy, and no soul.--jef)

Wednesday, January 11, 2012 by CommonDreams.org

by Ralph Nader

 

The same neocons who persuaded George W. Bush and crew to, in Ron Paul's inimitable words, "lie their way into invading Iraq" in 2003, are beating the drums of war more loudly these days to attack Iran. It is remarkable how many of these war-mongers are former draft dodgers who wanted other Americans to fight the war in Vietnam.

With the exception of Ron Paul, who actually knows the history of U.S.-Iranian relations, the Republican presidential contenders have declared their belligerency toward Iranian officials who they accuse of moving toward nuclear weapons.

The Iranian regime disputes that charge, claiming they are developing the technology for nuclear power and nuclear medicine.

The inspection teams of the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) that monitor compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran belongs, have entered Iran numerous times and, while remaining suspicious, have not been able to find that country on the direct road to the Bomb.

While many western and some Arab countries in the Gulf region have condemned Iran's alleged nuclear arms quest, Israel maintains some 200 ready nuclear weapons and has refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty, thereby avoiding the IAEA inspectors.

Israelis in the know have much to say. Defense minister, Ehud Barak, responded to PBS's Charlie Rose's question "If you were Iran wouldn't you want a nuclear weapon?" with these words:

"Probably, probably. I don't delude myself that they are doing it just because of Israel. They have their history of 4,000 years. They look around and they see the Indians are nuclear. The Chinese are nuclear, Pakistan is nuclear as well as North Korea, not to mention the Russians."

The Iranian regime, with a national GDP smaller than Massachusetts, is terrified. It is surrounded by powerful adversaries, including the U.S. military on three of its borders.

President George W. Bush labeled Iran, along with Iraq and North Korea, one of the three "axis of evil," and Teheran knows what happened to Iraq after that White House assertion. They also know that North Korea inoculated itself from invasion by testing nuclear bombs. And all Iranians remember that the U.S. overthrew their popular elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 and installed the dictatorial Shah who ruled tyrannically for the next 27 years.

Recently, Iran has experienced mysterious cyber sabotage, drone violations of its air space, the slaying of its nuclear scientists and the blowing up of its military sites, including a major missile installation. Israeli and American officials are not trying too hard to conceal this low level warfare.

Israel military historian--strategist Martin van Creveld said in 2004, that Iranians "would be crazy not to build nuclear weapons considering the security threats they face." Three years later he stated that "the world must now learn to live with a nuclear Iran the way we learned to live with a nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear China....We Israelis have what it takes to deter an Iranian attack. We are in no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us...thanks to the Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from the U.S. and Germany."

U.S. General John Abizaid is one of numerous military people who say that the world can tolerate a nuclear Iran--which, like other countries, does not wish to commit suicide.

Using the "Iranian threat," served Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, who on his first tour of duty back in 1996, speaking to a joint session of Congress, made a big point of the forthcoming Iranian bomb.

Somehow the Iranians, who were invaded in 1980 by a U.S.-backed Saddam Hussein, resulting in a million casualties, and who have not invaded anybody for 250 years, are taking a very long time to build a capability for atomic bomb production, much less the actual weapons.

In mid-2011, Meir Dagan, recently retired head of Israel's "CIA," repeated his opposition to a military attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, adding it would engulf the region in a conventional war.

He further took the Israeli government to task for failing "to put forth a vision," noting that "Israel must present an initiative to the Palestinians and adopt the 2002 Saudi Arabia peace proposal, reiterated since, that would open full diplomatic relations with some two dozen Arab and Islamic countries in return for an Israeli pullback to the 1967 borders and recognition of a Palestinian state."

The war-mongers against Iran have often distorted Iranian statements to suit their purpose and kept in the shadows several friendly Iranian initiatives offered to the George W. Bush Administration.

Flynt L. Leverett, now with Brookings and before a State Department and CIA official, listed three initiatives that were rejected. Right after the Sept. 11 attacks, Iran offered to help Washington overthrow the Taliban. The U.S. declined the offer. Second, in the spring of 2003, top Iranian officials sent the White House a detailed proposal for comprehensive negotiations to resolve questions regarding its weapons programs, relations with Hezbollah and Hamas and a Palestinian peace agreement with Israel. This proposal was rebuffed and ignored.

Third, in October 2003, European officials secured an agreement from Iran to suspend Iranian uranium enrichment and to pursue talks that Mr. Leverett said "might lead to an economic, nuclear and strategic deal." The Bush administration "refused to join the European initiative, ensuring that the talks failed," he added.

A few days ago, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Iran was developing a capability for making nuclear weapons someday but was not yet building a bomb. So why is the Obama Administration talking about a western boycott of Iran's oil exports, so crucial to its faltering, sanctions-ridden economy? Is this latest sanction designed to squeeze Iranian civilians and lead to the overthrow of the regime? Arguably it may backfire and produce more support for the government.

Backing the Iranian regime into such a fateful corner risks counter-measures that may disrupt the gigantic flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Should that occur, watch the prices of your gasoline, heating bill and other related products go through the roof--among other consequences.

Isn't it about time for the abdicatory Congress to reassert its constitutional responsibilities? It owes the American people comprehensive, public House and Senate hearings that produce knowledgeable testimony about these issues and all relevant history for wide media coverage.
The drums of war should not move our country into a propagandized media frenzy that preceded and helped cause the Iraq invasion with all the socio-cide in that country and all the costly blowbacks against U.S. national interests?

It is past time for the American citizenry to wake up and declare: Iran will not be an Iraq Redux!

++++++++++++++++

Is Chavez Next?

by MIKE WHITNEY

“The build-up against Venezuela that began during the George W. Bush administration has rapidly accelerated under Obama.”
– Eva Golinger, author of  The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela

Attorney and activist Eva Golinger has written an excellent piece on US-Venezuela relations that’s posted on her website Postcards from the Revolution. Golinger details the astonishing turnaround that Chavez has effected since he took office 12 years ago. Not only has Chavez routed the predatory oligarchs who once dominated Venezuelan politics, but his revolutionary social programs have also raised the standard of living for the poor and middle classes while strengthening the institutions that have transformed Venezuela into one of the hemishpere’s most vibrant democracies. Venezuela has seen a 50 percent reduction in poverty since Chavez took office in February, 1999. Venezuelans are now guaranteed free, universal healthcare, a K-through-college education, and civil liberties that are protected under the constitution. US citizens have every reason to be envious of the social safety net Chavez has created for his people via his Bolivarian Revolution.

Naturally, Chavez’s progressive policies have raised a few eyebrows in Washington where his successes are seen as a threat to the established order. Corporate mandarins regard Chavez as a troublemaker and they’re doing whatever they can to get rid of him ASAP. This is why one never reads anything positive about Chavez or his accomplishments in the US media, because the corporate bosses hate him, as they do anyone who diverts money from the 1 percent at the top of the economic foodchain to the 99 percent at the bottom.

US-Venezuela relations have continued to deteriorate under Barack Obama, who has turned out to be as big a disappointment to Chavez as he has to his supporters in the US. The Obama administration continues to fund the stealth network of US-backed NGOs that have been working around-the-clock to depose the democratically-elected leader for more than a decade. Golinger has written extensively on U.S. government agencies and their persistent meddling in Venezuela’s politics. Here’s an excerpt from Golinger’s post:

“Ever since the US-supported coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela failed in April 2002, Washington has been pursuing a variety of strategies to remove the overwhelmingly popular South American head of state from power. Multimillion-dollar funding to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela through US government agencies, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has increased exponentially over the past ten years, as has direct political support through advisors, strategists and consultants- all aiming to help an unpopular and outdated opposition rise to power.
US government agencies, including the State Department, Central Intelligence Agency, National Directorate of Intelligence and the Pentagon, have pumped up their hostile language towards the Venezuelan government in recent years. The major oil-producing nation has been placed on the countless, and baseless “lists” produced annually by Washington, including “failure to cooperate with counter-narcotics efforts”, “failure to aid in the war on terror”, “trafficking in persons”, and others, that are based on political decisions instead of concrete, substantial evidence to support their accusations. These classifications have enabled Washington to justify not only the millions of US taxpayer dollars channeled to anti-Chavez groups fronting as NGOs, but also to increase military presence in the region and convince public opinion that Hugo Chavez is an enemy.” (“War on Venezuela: Washington’s False Accusations Against The Chavez Government”, Eva Golinger, Postcards from the Revolution)

So, things have not improved under Obama at all, in fact, they’ve gotten worse. The US congress–whose public approval rating has plunged to single digits–is also beating the war drums against Chavez trying to garner support for direct intervention.

While Obama has refrained from name-calling or explicit accusations; his underlings in and out of the bureaucracy never hesitate to connect Chavez to Iran or to suggest links between Chavez and terrorism. Obama’s role in the smear campaign is as clear as his role in eviscerating the Bill of Rights with his recently-passed NDAA.

Here’s more from Golinger: “Other “commentators” and “analysts” are busy writing blogs and columns warning of the growing terrorist threat south of the US border. These dangerous, unfounded accusations could easily be used to justify an attack against Venezuela, as weapons of mass destruction was used against Iraq and “protecting the population” was used against Libya. ….Time again, Venezuela has shown there are no “terrorist training camps” on its soil. Nor is it secretly building a bomb to attack the US. Venezuela is a nation of peace. It does not invade, attack or threaten other countries.”

So, what does a peaceful country like Venezuela need to do to avert a confrontation with the United States?

Venezuela needs to become more like neighboring Colombia that Obama and others regularly hold up as a model of “democracy” in the region. Colombia –where human rights abuses and targeted assassinations are routine and where the US spends billions on a drug eradication program (Plan Colombia) that routinely sprays toxic (re: poison) chemicals on crops, livestock, water supplies and children.

Here’s a little background from Aljazeera: “In 2008, Colombian soldiers were revealed to have murdered possibly thousands of civilians and then dressed the corpses in FARC attire in order to receive bonus pay and extra holiday time. Juan Manuel Santos (who is now Colombia’s president) was serving as defence minister …when the “false positives” scandal broke…. Despite this and other details – such as that, since Uribe’s assumption of office, more trade unionists have been assassinated in Colombia than in the rest of the world combined …(Even so)…..the country has been applauded by the US State Department and the Inter-American Development Bank as a regional role model in confronting security threats ensures the fortification of a system in which profits depend on the perpetuation of insecurity.”(“Private security and ‘the Israelites of Latin America’”, Belen Fernandez, Aljazeera)

So, this is how one becomes America’s friend; just follow orders, kill and imprison your own people, (preferably trade unionists) and allow the corporate looting to go unchecked. No wonder the repressive Saudi dictatorship consistantly ranks so high on Washington’s Friend’s List.

So, what’s in store for Chavez, who’s done nothing except raise living standards, strengthen the rule of law, and make the world a better place for ordinary working people?

The Obama administration presently has its hands full with its wars in Central Asia, the Middle East and Africa. But as soon as Obama is finished “liberating” Tehran, it’ll be on to Venezuela. You can bet on it. After all, Venezuela sits on the biggest ocean of oil in the world, “over 500 billion barrels”. That means it’s only a matter of time before WMD and Al Qaida training camps are discovered in Caracas.

Polls, Damned Polls and the Truth About Venezuela

The Observer Effect
By CLIFTON ROSS

When I read The Huffington Post (HP) repost of a report that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s popularity is “hitting a seven year low,” and that he’s coming in at only 36% popularity, I’m reminded why HP is called a “liberal” website. Phil Ochs got it right when he nailed that political sector in his song, “Love Me I’m a Liberal:”

Once I was young and impulsive
I wore every conceivable pin
Even went to the socialist meetings
Learned all the old union hymns
But I've grown older and wiser
And that's why I'm turning you in
So love me, love me, love me, I'm a liberal.

Ochs wrote that song based on what a whole young generation had learned about the “good liberals” who presided over the US in the ‘60s. “Liberals” like Kennedy and Johnson dragged us into Vietnam, and kept us there; the “conservative” Nixon, after ratcheting up the war crimes with the secret bombing of Cambodia &etc., finally ended it. Both conservatives and liberals kept that genocidal war going for almost as long as they have have done in Afghanistan today. Conservatives and liberals represent the right and left hands of the Empire, and we would do well to always remember that.

Don’t get me wrong. I read HP regularly, or, more accurately, skim it. I’m grateful they’re around and they often print excellent news and commentary, making them a much-needed critical voice. Nevertheless, the editors there should consider fact-checking AP stories when they print them, assuming they hope to distinguish themselves from the massive lie the liberal-conservative press propagates at every turn of the page and click of the mouse. Had they done so they might have exposed the AP poll for the wishful thinking that it was.

Two days after the AP story appeared, Judith Leon wrote at aporrea.org (a Spanish language site from Venezuela that I would recommend) that Teodoro Petkoff, the former leftist, now rabid anti-Chavista, had claimed that Chavez’s popularity had dropped six to ten points, to 54%. Petkoff isn’t a more reliable source for information about Chavez than AP: in many ways he’s far less so, but he would certainly not be one to cite higher poll numbers in favor of Chavez. What’s clear is that Chavez still has a stunningly high approval rating for a leader who has undergone more than a dozen elections and served more than a decade in power: His “favorable” ratings reach 72% in the state of Anzoategui, according to Instituto Venezolano de Análisis de Datos (IVAD), an institute on which the anti-Chavez opposition also relies for its data.

Either way, polls are often extremely unreliable, as those of us who expected the FSLN to win the elections of 1990 discovered. One night the world went to bed sure that Daniel Ortega would win a resounding victory, only to awake to the news that UNO’s Violeta Chamorro, the favorite of the US, had won. The polls had fooled us. People often say one thing to a pollster (who they think might be working for the government) and do something entirely different when they’re alone in the voting booth.

A more important problem with polls might be related to the “observer effect:” in lieu of “measuring” opinion, they often help create it (even if this wasn’t the case in Nicaragua in 1990 where US terrorism won out over democracy). The “observer effect” is most obvious in how pollsters frame the issues, and what issues they take up as “important.” But polls are also often taken by those very organizations that “create the facts” upon which opinions are based, that is, by the “newsmakers” themselves. Upwards of 90% of “news” is “created” by a handful of corporations (literally five or six) and when they don’t work directly as “pollsters” (as in a CNN Poll), they operate in a social context of a “reality” as created by news organizations that hold that same conception, and therefore tend to confirm that same socially constructed “reality.” As writer Morris Berman points out in the movie “Psywar,” quoting Marshall McLuhan: “if a fish could talk, and you could ask the fish what’s the most obvious element of the environment, the last thing that the fish would say would be water… and it’s true about any culture. Those things that are most powerful and most obvious to an outsider don’t get seen by those people swimming in the water.”

Few North Americans suspected how poisonous the water in which they swam had become back in 2003. At that time, if they had been reading the foreign press it’s unlikely that (1) by June of that year, three months after the invasion of Iraq, 57% would have still been convinced that Iraq had WMDs at the time of the invasion or (2) that 69% would have been convinced Saddam Hussein was involved in the Twin Towers attacks of September 11th, 2001. Incidentally, example two comes from fact and reality makers the Washington Post and USA Today, September 6, 2003.

The problem then, as now, was that the US press colluded with the government to create massive lie which few dared challenge. So as not to perpetuate that lie, that “none of us knew what we know now,” it’s important to point out that truly independent, brave and critical writers and analysts on the left, and, to their credit, the libertarian right at www.antiwar.com , did their best to speak out and be heard. But those voices, as we all know, were excluded from the corporate press. The lie was, again, “most obvious to an outsider” and many reverted to getting their news about the war from the foreign press.

By contrast with what might be called a totalitarian unanimity of the dominant US media (if we agree that conservatives and liberals, behind the curtain, are, in fact, on the same side), in Venezuela the media is divided and quite diverse, as is public opinion. For one thing, Venezuelans have far more daily newspapers in opposition to the government than those supporting Chavez. Diario Vea is the only pro-government daily in the country, and its size and circulation is dwarfed by any one of the large corporate papers like El Nacional or Universal. Vea is rarely found outside of the major urban centers while the corporate press still finds its way into the remotest corners of the country. Pro-government opinion is carried into the countryside by one or more of a few television channels or, more likely, by community radio stations which have grown exponentially under Chavez. This range of opinion and competition of ideas, coupled with dramatic increases in funding for education under the Chavez government, has inculcated in the Venezuelan public a rare critical consciousness.

It’s no coincidence that the AP report reprinted at The Huffington Post would appear just at the moment it did. The poll was released less than a month from the time that Venezuela faces parliamentary elections (on September 26rd ) and corporate media (and, unfortunately, some of the liberal press) appears to be doing its best to ensure that the PSUV take a hit similar to the sort of beating the Democrats are expected to face in November in the US. While the reasons for voter anger differs in each country, systemic corruption and impunity play a role in both contexts. But there the similarity ends. In Venezuela no one expects the PSUV to lose its majority. For the past ten years under the presidency of Hugo Chavez, Venezuela has undergone a process that in many ways merits the term “revolutionary” and the majority still side with that process.

As Mark Weisbrot and Rebecca Ray point out in their recent report, “Update on the Venezuelan Economy,” even though Venezuela followed the rest of the world into recession in 2009, its “economy grew by an estimated 5.2 percent in the second quarter of 2010, on an annualized basis.” More significantly, Weisbrot and Ray go on, in the prior economic expansion under Chavez “poverty was reduced by 47 percent and extreme poverty by 70 percent. Real social spending per person tripled, and there were greatly expanded public programs in health care and education; unemployment fell by half and there were large gains in employment.” Also, “according to a recent report by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America, Venezuela had the sharpest reduction in inequality in the Americas during this expansion.”

It’s doubtful any North American could make the claim that the US has made anywhere near the same sort of social progress under the Democrats, much less the Republicans. To the contrary, all indicators show that wealth inequality in the US has increased dramatically under both parties. For that reason, comparing the political processes in the two countries is like comparing apples to oranges. Nevertheless, one element remains consistent in both contexts. As US and Venezuela approach elections, the Spectacle of the corporate media works its dark magic on the minds of both populations, driving voters toward the cliff’s edge. That is, after all, one role of the media in a capitalist economy: to help provide “fresh meat” for those who own the world. The only sure defense against the illusions of this great corporate shadow play, and Hugo Chavez surely knows this, is public awareness of who pulls the strings.

Oliver Stone Tells the Real Story of the Leftist Latin American Leaders Transforming the Continent

Stone's new film traces the rise of Chávez, Lula, Evo, and others who see participatory democracy and cooperation between Latin American countries as the future.
By Daniela Perdomo | AlterNet | July 12, 2010

After decades of military dictatorships and IMF puppetry in Latin America, the southern cone of the New World is slowly but surely moving toward reformist, left-leaning governance. This all started in 1999, when Hugo Chávez was elected in Venezuela. Today, Chávez has left or left-center allies at the helm of Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, and preceding him, Cuba.

But given the minimal and distorted coverage of political developments in Latin America, most Americans don't know the real story. And when the U.S. corporate media does deign to discuss the region's significant ideological shift, it's usually in a very alarmist way. "Leftist menace," CNN has blared, while Fox News consistently warns of "Rising dictators" when one of these so-called despots wins a democratic election.

The good news is that Oliver Stone's new documentary, South of the Border, offers American audiences an alternative version of this continent-wide paradigm shift. The film traces the rise of Chávez, Lula, Evo, and all the other members of a new generation of political leaders who see participatory democracy, socialism, and mutual aid and cooperation between Latin American countries as the future. Neo-liberalism, capitalism and imperialism, they believe, are out -- and they're not going to let the United States push them around anymore. This is a terrific development given that the United States has launched military interventions and political coups in Central and South America an astounding 55 times.

Part of what makes the film so compelling is that the historical actors tell the story in their own words. Indeed, Stone's legacy as a successful filmmaker known for going against the Hollywood grain -- consistently leftist, anti-war and anti-power -- landed him relatively intimate and uncensored access to each of the heads of state in question.

Hugo Chávez comes off as particularly charismatic, which is likely why Stone dedicated nearly the entire first half of the film to him. Multiple scenes depict him driving through Caracas, children running after the car yelling, "Hugo! Hugo!" He shakes many hands and holds many babies during his time with Stone.

But you also get a sense of the personality fueling the Bolivarian revolution -- which is "peaceful but armed," he says -- and of his efforts to distribute land for communal ownership by his country's poorest. The film also explains the man behind the dramatic flourishes -- such as calling Bush a sulphurous devil and making the sign of the cross at the United Nations' General Assembly -- that are so widely disseminated by the American press. In one interview, Chávez admits that the American media's depiction of him hurts -- or at least it did at first. In one of the film's funnier moments, as he and Stone walk to a corn processing plant (pre-Chávez, Venezuela had to import most of its corn) he tells the camera and its eventual American audience, "This is where we're building Iran's atomic bomb."

Chávez isn't the only one who scoffs at the U.S. media's depiction of him. Rafael Correa, the young American-educated president of Ecuador, tells Stone he doesn't mind the bad press in the United States: "I'd be worried if the U.S. media was speaking favorably of me."

In this vein, one of the strongest points Stone makes is the way the American government and its complicit press corps give consistently negative coverage to, say, Venezuela but refer favorably to Colombia, one of the United States' last malleable allies in the region. Human rights, Stone intones, has become a buzzword void of meaning, employed by the media and the State Department to delineate who we support and who we don't. Although Colombia has a pretty terrible human rights record -- indeed worse than Venezuela's, which is easily a safer place to vote, unionize and politically organize -- you never hear about it in the editorial pages of the New York Times or in remarks given by our diplomats.

South of the Border is a biting critique of the American media's coverage of the movement -- sparing no major news outlet. The movie opens with a bumbling, outrageous clip featuring Fox News' Gretchen Carlson essentially accusing Bolivian president Evo Morales of being a cocaine addict (he chews coca leaves, as most Bolivians have for generations, so as to withstand the nation's high altitudes), but Stone also calls out our so-called newspaper of record, the New York Times, for endorsing (and then recanting its endorsement of) the failed 2002 U.S.-backed military coup of Chávez, a democratically elected leader.

It is no surprise, then, that the mainstream media has made valiant efforts to pan South of the Border. Larry Rohter wrote a particularly damning article in the Times in which he details what he views as the documentary's "mistakes, misstatements and missing details." (It's curious that the Times let him write the piece in the first place given that Rohter is the newspaper's former longtime South American bureau chief, responsible for penning a 2004 factually imaginative article which claimed that Lula had a drinking problem that negatively impacted his job as president of Brazil.)

Although Stone and co-writer Tariq Ali, the historian and commentator, have handily refuted all of Rohter's qualms with their film, once the movie opens nationwide we can expect more corporate media outlets to spout talking points similar to Rohter's, and of course to repeat the same less sophisticated barbs CNN and Fox News have long been propagating about the move to the left in Latin America.

What the media is unlikely to publicize is the fact that South of the Border demonstrates that Latin American leaders have a genuine interest in maintaining good relations with America -- even Raúl Castro of Cuba professes his love for the American people. The presidents Stone meets with speak of their hope in Barack Obama's presidency -- they view his replacing Bush as a tremendous win for the relationship between the United States and their countries. (Things were really bad, after all. Former Argentinian president Nestor Kirchner, now succeeded by his wife Cristina, tells an appalling anecdote about asking Bush for a Marshall Plan for Latin America; Bush reportedly replied that the best way to revitalize an economy is to engage in war.)

As positive as these new Latin American heads of state are about Obama's presidency, they are not waiting around for the United States to extend a hand. Already Argentina and Brazil are engaging in trade in their own currencies, having dropped the dollar. Lula envisions an end to IMF (and American) economic control of the region -- Brazil has paid off its foreign debt and boasts a $260 billion surplus -- and a continent-wide effort to strengthen labor unions. Evo has banned all foreign military bases in Bolivia; Correa told the United States it could build a military base in Ecuador only if he could build one in Miami. Fernando Lugo, a former Roman Catholic bishop now president of Paraguay, has revived the liberation theology of the 1960s, which calls for the humanization of socio-economic structures that benefit all -- especially the most destitute. And all of these nations want to help reintegrate Cuba into the global system.

There was little about the film I did not find fascinating or compelling. Requisite disclosure: I was raised in Latin America -- mostly Brazil, but also Argentina, Mexico and Guatemala -- and believe that a move to a multi-polar world is a really good thing. As a Latin American, it is awesomely heartening to see not only governors who actually look like the people they govern -- Evo and Lula in particular -- after years of presidents culled only from the lighter-skinned, wealthier classes, but to see that the continent's new leaders are making concerted efforts to address the plague of poverty and ill distribution of opportunities that have long defined the region. In fact, I'd argue that having leaders that come from the same background as the majority of the population is the only way real change is ever going to come to Latin America.