As with Cindy Sheehan the best thing that could happen to you would be seeing some WONDERFUL activist sticking an AK-47 up your Glory Holes and sending you into eternity. But this is not a threat as I am a paci-fist preferring to confront dumb fucks like you two with words rather than violence. But I would gather my 1st amendment rights permit me to HOPE (!) and PRAY (!) that someone decides you're better off as statistics. Honestly, should I hear of either you leaving this earth prematurely I would initiate a personal celebration that would make Animal House appear to be just another quiet Sunday in church.

... Therefore, I trust the both of you mother fuckers will continue to show yourselves on TV shows, exposure to more and more people, as GUARANTEED your words will someday possibly accelerate your demise again not on my hand but by someone who believes in such finalizing action. ... Would love to celebrate and would for days one end as I always would and will when still another America HATER meets his/her maker.

Larry Johnson has some thoughts. And while the evidence piles up, I'll just try not to sound like a broken record.

Be sure to catch Miller's dialogue with Sokolowski when she calls him up at home. You've got to love his denials that the letter constitutes a threat; it's probably true in the actionable sense, but certainly not in any ethical or moral sense on this planet. Perhaps on Bizarro World.

[Hat tip to Sharoney in comments.]

"If I were grading I would say we probably deserve a 'D' or a 'D-plus' as a country as to how well we're doing in the battle of ideas that's taking place in the world today," Rumsfeld said during a visit to the Army War College in March. "I'm not going to suggest that it's easy, but we have not found the formula as a country for countering the extremists' message."

The Associated Press obtained a memo by Dorrance Smith, assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, that said new teams of people will "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and "correct the record."

The memo describes an operation modeled after a political campaign -- such as that made famous by Bill Clinton's 1992 presidential race war room -- calling for a "Rapid Response" section that quickly answers opponents' assertions.

Another branch would coordinate "surrogates."

In a political campaign, surrogates are often high-level politicians or key interest groups who speak or travel on behalf of a candidate or an issue. It also would include new workers to book civilian and military guests on television and radio shows.

Despite repeated requests for details on the cost and scope of the program, which has been in the works for months, Pentagon press secretary Eric Ruff would not provide the exact number of people to be hired, how many would be transferred from other Pentagon jobs, or how many would be political appointees or contractors.

It also was unclear where the funding would come from, considering the Defense Department is struggling to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as repeated requests from Army and Marine Corps leaders to repair and replace equipment lost and damaged in battle.

Ruff said the effort was not initiated in response to eroding public support for the war. He said it was not aimed at helping in next week's elections. He also said he would not call it an "information operations" program, which generally refers to a propaganda-type campaign.

Ruff said the effort grew out of Rumsfeld's criticism of the department's communications capabilities, which the secretary compared unfavorably to how quickly and effectively terrorists can get their message out.

The Pentagon changes come as Americans prepare to go to the polls next week with the war in Iraq as a key issue. Polls suggest the Republicans could lose their majority in the House, and perhaps the Senate, too.

The Democrats have assisted the Republicans at virtually every turn over the past six years. From the bloody invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, to the passing of CAFTA, to the confirmations of Samuel Alito and John Roberts, to the support of the PATRIOT Act, to the dismantling of Habeas Corpus, to the championing of Bush's ravaging forest plan, to backing Israel's brutal assault on Lebanon -- the Democratic Party has long played the role of enabler. And now they want your vote.

Author Jeff Cohen in Commondreams.org recently pled with progressives to elect Democrats to office this year. "A Democratic win in 2006 would be similar to 1998: a rejection of rightwing extremism and hypocrisy."

I fail to see the rationale. If we usher the Democrats into office on November 7 we'll just be electing rightwing extremism under a substitute banner -- it won't be called Republican but it'll still be wicked as all hell. Even Cohen admits that the Democratic leadership doesn't have a progressive agenda, but still feels that a lefty push inside the party could change that around. What Cohen and others have embraced is a blatant call for lesser-evilism: ignore alternatives and vote for what you don't believe in, because it's strategic.

The whole plan: "take back Congress and then pull the Democrats left down the road". When has that ever worked? And why would the corporate Democrats give its progressive wing any credence? If the Democratic Party continues to receive progressive votes regardless of their rightwing positions, there is absolutely no reason for them to change.

Sadly Cohen's position, like the Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) of which he serves on the Board, is analogous to The Nation magazine's foul electoral philosophy. Neither will "endorse" pro-war Democratic candidates, nor will they "oppose" them.

Silence is complicity.

I hold out no hope that the Democratic Party can ever be reformed, but let's say by some divine intervention they can. If so, the only way it will ever happen will be when its progressive constituents leave the party and challenge them from the outside. In fact, that is what The Nation seems to fear most.

In the upcoming November 13 issue, on shelves this week, The Nation editors warn, "If Democrats fail to recapture at least a working share of Congressional power, they and their party will rightly be cast into disrepute, too, and distressed citizens may reasonably begin looking for other options."

What would be so wrong with that? Progressives should have been looking for other options long ago. However, The Nation, like Cohen and the PDA, does not support independent politics or the emergence of a legitimate progressive third party. And that's why they have not lived up to their promise of truly opposing pro-war Democrats by endorsing any of their antiwar challengers.

Of the 23 new Democratic candidates for the House, 22 are ardently pro-war. The other is suspect. But The Nation and the PDA don't want you to know any of that. Instead they'd rather see left-leaning voters cramped inside the cage of the Democratic establishment. Nothing could be more damaging to social movements or our hope for real progressive change.

Joshua Frank is the author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush and edits http://www.BrickBurner.org

With Iraq turning into a yoke for the Republicans in the midterms, Mr Cheney and the president, George Bush, are turning up the rhetoric in an attempt to energise Republican supporters in tight races.
"However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: the terrorists win and America loses," Mr Bush told a raucous crowd in the southern state of Georgia.

"That's what's at stake in this election. The Democrat goal is to get out of Iraq. The Republican goal is to win in Iraq."

However, the Los Angeles Times today reported that growing numbers of US military officers were privately questioning the White House assertion that setting a deadline for troop reductions would strengthen the insurgency and undermine efforts to create stability.

The paper cited Kurt Campbell, a former Pentagon official, as saying that more officers were calling for deadlines after concluding that the indefinite presence of US forces was enabling the Shia-run Iraqi government to avoid making compromises.

The US has recently suffered one of its highest military death tolls since the war began in 2003, with more than 100 troops killed in October. The rising level of casualties and the spiralling sectarian violence have turned the war into a liability for the Republicans.

The party fears that an increasingly unpopular conflict and a sex scandal over a congressman who sent lewd emails to congressional pages could lead to the loss of the House of Representatives and possibly the Senate as well.

As Mr Cheney raised the possibility that insurgents were trying to sway US voters, it emerged that the Pentagon was planning to set up an information unit to accentuate positive news from Iraq.

In a memo obtained by the Associated Press, Dorrance Smith, an assistant secretary of defence for public affairs, said new teams of people would "develop messages" for the 24-hour news cycle and "correct the record". The plan would focus more resources on the internet, including blogs.

The Pentagon proposal takes a leaf out of Bill Clinton's book. In his successful 1992 presidential race, Mr Clinton set up a highly effective rapid response team to quickly challenge assertions from opponents or the media.

The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has complained that the press focuses too much on bad news from Iraq, claiming that not enough is said about progress being made.

During a trip to Nevada this year, Mr Rumsfeld said he was deeply troubled by the success of terrorist groups in "manipulating the media" to influence westerners. "That's the thing that keeps me up at night," he added.

Faced with potential GOP defeat in both chambers, Bush and Cheney aimed to avert that by convincing voters that they cannot risk giving the opposition party any power in Washington.

"However they put it, the Democrat approach in Iraq comes down to this: The terrorists win and America loses," Bush told a raucous crowd of about 5,000 GOP partisans packed in an arena at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, one of his stops Monday. "That's what's at stake in this election. The Democrat goal is to get out of Iraq. The Republican goal is to win in Iraq."

Democrats reacted sharply to the latest White House attacks. Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said Bush "resorted to the same tired old partisan attacks in a desperate attempt to hold on to power." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said Bush is looking to retain a "rubber-stamp Republican Congress that has done nothing to change our failed Iraq policy."

Cheney, meanwhile, said in an interview with Fox News that he thinks insurgents in Iraq are timing their attacks to influence the U.S. elections.

"It's my belief that they're very sensitive of the fact that we've got an election scheduled," he said. Cheney said the insurgents believe "they can break the will of the American people," and "that's what they're trying to do."

The increasingly combative tone from the White House signaled a coordinated GOP effort to use every channel to remind conservatives why they should turn out to vote, despite what many say is their disenchantment with the Mark Foley page scandal, anger over escalating federal spending and anxiety over the course of the Iraq war. Bush held a telephone conference call with about 3,000 Republican local officials on Saturday to fire them up for a final get-out-the-vote push. On Monday, Bush invited Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity for a ride on Air Force One and an interview later; the presence of the conservative celebrity stirred its own buzz among the standing-room-only crowd at Georgia Southern. Bush is barnstorming this week before friendly Republicans after months of just raising money for GOP candidates.

But the president's travel schedule in the final week of the campaign is also a stark reminder of his political weakness in many parts of the country -- and in many swing districts -- where it is too dangerous for GOP candidates to be seen with Bush. After his rally in Georgia on Monday, Bush flew here to stump for the GOP candidate trying to succeed former House majority leader Tom DeLay (Tex.), who won his seat by 14 points two years ago before resigning amid the Jack Abramoff scandal. There was no sign of the man who once relished his Capitol Hill reputation as "The Hammer" on Monday's visit, which drew several thousand to an aircraft hangar festooned with a giant Texas flag.

The White House has been leaving it to surrogates to appear in swing areas, with first lady Laura Bush campaigning Saturday for Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.) and press secretary Tony Snow appearing on behalf of Sen. James M. Talent (R-Mo.) among others on Monday.

"The fact that Republicans are working hard to hold on to one of the most Republican districts in the country -- that tells you the depth of the Republican struggles around the country," said Amy Walter, who tracks House races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

White House aides disputed this characterization, saying the Sugar Land race is a special case since DeLay resigned too late for the courts to allow the GOP to replace him on the ballot. Instead, Republicans are promoting Shelley Sekula Gibbs, a Houston City Council member and dermatologist, as a write-in candidate.

Sekula Gibbs is badly trailing former Democratic Rep. Nick Lampson in fundraising, though Cheney recently came here to raise money, and the National Republican Congressional Committee is spending more than $1 million on her behalf. But a poll published Monday by the Houston Chronicle showed the race statistically tied, even though Republicans acknowledge the difficulty of getting voters to write Sekula Gibbs's name on their ballots.

Sara Taylor, the White House political director, said the purpose of Bush's trip Monday was "to shine a spotlight" on the steps Republicans must take to give their candidate a chance to win. "We're going to focus the president's time on places where he can maximize Republican turnout," she added.

Democrats, meanwhile, believe they have the luxury of competing outside their usual strongholds. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is now funding ads in Kentucky's 3rd District, where challenger John Yarmuth is running against Rep. Anne M. Northup (R); in Nevada's 3rd District, where Tessa Hafen is running against Rep. Jon Porter (R); and in Nebraska's 3rd District, featuring rancher Scott Kleeb (D) against state legislator Adrian Smith (R) for an open seat.

In Georgia, Bush is trying to play a little bit of offense this week, appearing on behalf of GOP candidates in two of the few Democratic districts where Republicans have an opportunity to pick up a seat. The vast majority of competitive races around the country are in districts now held by Republicans, which is one reason Democrats are optimistic they can win the 15 seats necessary to gain a majority in the House.

Bush's rally Monday was on behalf of former Republican congressman Max Burns, who is in a close race to regain his seat from freshman Rep. John Barrow (D). On Tuesday, the president is slated to come back to the state for former representative Mac Collins, who is trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Jim Marshall. Both districts were redrawn by the Georgia legislature in 2005 and are now seen as more favorable to Republicans.

Unlike other Democrats, Barrow and Marshall have not sought to distance themselves far from the president. "I agree with George Bush on this one," Barrow said in a recent ad about tax reform.

Ferrel Guillory, who directs the program on southern politics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said Bush's popularity has not "tanked" as badly in the South as in the rest of the country. "Having the president in your district in the South is still probably a risk worth taking," he said.

The crowd at Georgia Southern seemed to respond most enthusiastically to Bush's most conservative lines, roaring for about 10 seconds after he criticized last week's ruling from the New Jersey Supreme Court that gay couples are entitled to the same rights as heterosexual couples. Bush said the ruling "raises doubt about the institution of marriage."

"We believe that marriage is a union between a man and a woman and should be defended," Bush shouted.

Bush also drew a good response from an applause line he used in both Georgia and Texas: "We will not run from thugs and assassins."

In the interview with Hannity on the Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes," Bush said he believes the United States will one day be hit by another terrorist attack. Asked whether the country would be attacked again, Bush said, "I think so, and we've got to do everything we can to stop them."

Staff writer Michael Fletcher and washingtonpost.com staff writer Chris Cillizza contributed to this report from Washington.

For those of us who have seen United Nations military vehicles in the United States, and who have also noticed convoys of military tanks being transported through the wilderness areas of our nation - the same areas that have been locked down and away from the American people via Biosphere Reserves and conservation corridors - we have realized for a great many years that, as one patriot stated, the "stage was being set" for difficult times on American soil - the key issue that mass media ignores at its professional finest. So, with stages being set, one must also look to the timing of the Real ID card, and to 2008 in general. Let us not forget all the other paramilitary systems in our nation, like the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, Citizens Corp groups, Neighborhood Watch groups, C.O.P.S. (Community Oriented Policing Services), the militarizing of law enforcement departments, and the many new for-hire corporations that offer private armies with weapons for a price. And then, of course, there are the U.N. peacekeeping forces, which the American military has been actively involved with for many, many decades while, simultaneously and incrementally, our "leaders" have been closing our homeland military bases during these same decades.

The professional timing of the Real ID card in 2008, and its mandatory issuance, brings to mind several forthcoming coincidences and issues. The collecting and databasing of all personal information of every American adult - coinciding with the CFR's North American Community - and all global government infrastructures in place and play, one must consider the following:

- How are "domestic terrorists" determined and identified?

- Who will be held in the Civilian Labor Camps on American soil?

- What is the real issue behind the "identity theft" propaganda?

- Why are the off-limits American wilderness areas crawling with secret military operations?

- And why the mandatory issuance of an ID card that sums up every American citizen with one swipe?

One cannot help but to almost laugh when it comes to considering how directly global intentions rest beneath our noses. So easy to see, yet so blindly the public goes about its merry and dull way. On that note, the Real ID card will ultimately seal your fate. You will be a compliant and completely identifiable slave to the New World Order, or you will be its enemy - and your Real ID will determine which global creature you shall be.

Therefore, America, let us not in-fight. The fact of our demise as free people exists no matter whose research is right or wrong. The stage is, in fact, being set for our nation's conquering. The Democrats and Republicans have seen to this fact and have worked steadfastly to raise their one-world government. They knew from the beginning that people with property, firearms, and rights were their primary problems, or in other words, the people of the United States of America and other westernized nations. Our "leadership" is not what they seem.

The public acceptance of the Real ID in May of 2008 seals the deal. It will be more than interesting to see which of our friends, neighbors, and family members will willingly sign onto their fate as new "citizens" of the global police state. Just keep telling yourselves that you voted them into office. So did I. As such, we have a lot of soul searching to do and very, very little time - about 21 months. Are we going to continue to allow our "representatives" to march off with this nation and our Constitutional freedom, or are we going to unite and reclaim OUR nation? Ignorance is never bliss. It is abject slavery, and this time, the enslavement is backed by a system far greater than concepts or perceived notions of freedom. It's past time to do more than wave flags, wear patriotic tee shirts, hats, and pins. It's time to serve through action and duty to this nation. Start an A.C.E. (Americans for Constitutional Enforcement) chapter in your neighborhood NOW. Request an information packet (contactus@a4ce.org) and create your local chapter. It's YOUR job and Constitutional duty to save our nation and to preserve freedom. We have been betrayed. For the sake of your children, open your eyes and act. The only potential answer is to UNITE for freedom and to command that freedom with one voice. Then, as a nation UNITED in knowledge, we can rid ourselves of our "representative" globalists. Now, please stop the bickering and bitching, especially of the partisanship flavor, and get to WORK. Global government is non-partisan minus the master-slave divide.

You may also request a mailed copy of the A.C.E. Information Packet by sending $10.00 to A.C.E., P.O. Box 293, Iron Mountain, MI 49801.

For more information: http://www.papersplease.org

Police tried to calm the teen, but Holyfield became combative, according to the statement. Officers fired the stun gun at him after he ignored their warnings, then fired again when he continued struggling, police said.

Holyfield was flown to St. Louis' Cardinal Glennon Hospital after the confrontation Saturday; he died there Sunday, police said.

An autopsy was planned for Tuesday.

The statement expressed sympathy to Holyfield's family but said city and police officials would not discuss the matter further.

Calls Tuesday to Jerseyville Police Chief Brad Blackorby were not immediately returned. The department has been using stun guns for about five months, according to the statement.

In a report released in March, international human rights group Amnesty International said it had logged at least 156 deaths across the country in the previous five years related to police stun guns.

The rise in deaths accompanies a marked increase in the number of U.S. law enforcement agencies employing devices made by Taser International Inc. of Scottsdale, Ariz. About 1,000 of the nation's 18,000 police agencies used Tasers in 2001; more than 7,000 departments had them last year, according to a government study.

Police had used Tasers more than 70,000 times as of last year, Congress' Government Accountability Office said.

Amnesty International has urged police departments to suspend the use of Tasers pending more study. Taser International said the group's count was flawed and falsely linked deaths to Taser use when there has been no such official conclusion.

The city of St. Louis also drew unwanted attention for crime this week when it was named the most dangerous U.S. city by Morgan Quitno Press. The ranking looked only at crime within St. Louis city limits, not its metro area.

The family had lived elsewhere in Menifee County but just recently moved into the house where the shootings occurred, state police Sgt. Robert Conn said. He said police had not determined a motive.

"We never responded there for any domestic violence or anything," Conn said.

The father worked for a landscaping business, and his wife worked with the elderly, Conn said.

Autopsies were to be performed Monday, but police didn't immediately release the results.

Frenchburg is in Menifee County, about 47 miles east of Lexington.

The motive for the shooting wasn't known, and police were searching for a suspect.

New Orleans has seen a sharp uptick in violent crime as evacuees have returned to the city devastate by Hurricane Katrina. In June, after five teenagers were shot to death in one night, National Guard troops and state police were sent to the city to help police, a mission they will continue through December.

Last month, the French Quarter was a scene of a macabre murder-suicide in which a man chopped up his girlfriend and cooked her head and legs in an apartment above a voodoo temple before leaping to his death.

The city's homicide count for the year had reached 117 by the weekend. With the population around 230,000, that translates into a homicide rate roughly 10 times the national average.

"We don't know what caused it at this point," Shaw said. He said emergency crews were investigating.

Garland County Sheriff's Lt. Rodney Neighbors said he saw damage to the building's sheet metal roof and to conveyor belts and electrical wiring.

He said the employees were working with containers of aluminum on conveyor belts when the accident occurred, but he said it wasn't obvious what exploded or what killed them.

"Due to the damage in the area, we can't tell what was supposed to be doing what," Neighbors said.

Residents of the area were not in any danger, Neighbors said. He said local authorities would ask the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration to investigate.

The names of the workers were not immediately released. Shaw said the survivor suffered minor injuries and was taken to a local hospital.

According to the company's Web site, Arkansas Aluminum Alloys Inc. uses furnaces and casting equipment to recycle scrap aluminum. The plant, which operates around the clock with about 30 employees, is 55 miles southwest of Little Rock.

That's a question that I set out to address in my recently released book, Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and The Challenge To The U.S. (St. Martin's Press). The book explains how Chavez is a manifestation of growing social and political discontent against Washington's policies.

The Times Launches Its anti-Chavez Broadside

As a result of Chavez's bombastic performance in New York, I received plenty of interview requests from the mainstream media. Though I certainly wasn't surprised by the irate right wing callers and talk show hosts on AM radio, I was slightly taken aback by a column by Roger Lowenstein in the New York Times Business Section ("An Uncertain Threat in Venezuela," September 17, 2006), in essence a political attack on my book and not a book review per se. The Times printed my short response ("The Chavez Factor") in a letter on October 1.

The New York Times sets the tone of public debate about foreign policy questions, and I believe we shall see articles that mimic Lowenstein's talking points in the months and years ahead.

Strategy #1: Shift The Focus Onto Domestic Venezuelan Politics and Away From the U.S.

One of the classic strategies employed by mainstream media is to try to shift attention away from U.S. destabilization of Venezuela, and to move the conversation towards Chavez and his domestic record. When I was recently interviewed on the Jim Bohannon show, which broadcasts to more than 300 AM stations through the Westwood One network, Bohannon kept on trying to discredit Chavez by bringing up the question of the Venezuelan media.

At least, Bohannon made no secret of his true agenda: at one point during our exhaustive one hour interview he remarked that the U.S. should be funding the Venezuelan opposition as Chavez was a dictator.

Historically, the New York Times has been similarly bellicose on Venezuela. In April 2002, the paper supported a brief coup d'état against Chavez, only recanting its position later. Today, the paper is a bit more subtle than right wing AM radio and since the coup has provided some thoughtful coverage of Venezuela.

But, in his piece about my book, Lowenstein employs a strategy that is similar to Jim Bohannon's. At one point he implies that I am not a "friend" of Venezuela. A "true" friend of Venezuela, Lowenstein argues, would concentrate not on U.S.-Venezuelan relations but on Chavez's domestic policies.

Strategy #2: Over Generalize About the Military

What about Lowenstein's claim that Chavez poses a threat to his own people? Here, the Times oversimplifies a complex political milieu in an effort to demonize the Venezuelan president.

Lowenstein first claims that Chavez has militarized the government. That's a serious overstatement. While it is true that the Venezuelan president has tapped military officers for key positions, the country remains a civilian democracy. What's more, while I personally have reservations about Chavez's military regalia and his arming of new civilian militias, the fact is that the military has done some positive social good in the country through Plan Bolivar 2000, a civic works program.

In my book, I talk about my own doubts about Chavez in 2000-2001 when I was in Venezuela, which had to do precisely with the president's own military background. But Lowenstein ignores many of the subtleties in the book, choosing instead to paint me as some kind of raging apologist for the Chavez regime and everything that it does.

Even beyond these mischaracterizations, one wonders whether Lowenstein's critique of militarism is consistent throughout Latin America. Colombia, which borders Venezuela to the west, has armed itself to the teeth with U.S. taxpayer money. Compared to the Venezuelan military, the Colombian armed forces have been involved in vastly more human rights abuses. The Times, much to its discredit, has been largely silent on the issue.

Strategy #3: Over Generalize About the Threat to Democratic Liberties

In a further effort to shift attention away from the U.S. role in Venezuela, Lowenstein claims that Chavez has anti-democratic tendencies and has intimidated the media. Lowenstein says he lived in Venezuela in the 1970s, but he seems out of touch with reality on the ground in the country. The Times is taking on a very complicated and thorny issue here and oversimplifies.

Time and again during my recent six week trip to Venezuela, I turned into Globovision, a leading opposition TV station based in Caracas. Watching Globovision, I heard commentators make incredibly scurrilous and vitriolic attacks against the president. Indeed, Venezuelan media is much more combative than mainstream TV news in this country.

To his credit, Chavez has not shut down Globovision or opposition newspapers. That is remarkable when you consider that the opposition media exhorted people to come out onto the streets and actually overthrow the government in April, 2002.

One may easily imagine that the Bush White House would not be so tolerant were Lowenstein and his colleagues to preach rebellion on the front pages of the Times.

I had the chance to learn more about the Venezuelan media during my recent trip to the country. According to Carlos Correa, the former director of Provea, a leading human rights organization in Caracas, there was incredible freedom for the media to express its views. "In fact," he said, "there's been some abuse in that both state and private media have gone too far and said too much."

To be fair however, the media picture was not entirely rosy.

The problem, as Correa explained it, was that after journalists had reported, some had been physically attacked. Correa told me that the government had not been zealous enough in investigating the crimes. Additionally, opposition journalists did not always have access to information or to leading politicians (though that's a situation which is certainly not unique to Venezuela).

Despite these problems, Correa said, only four Venezuelan journalists had been killed since the April 2002 coup. One was killed in the violence during the coup itself. Another was killed by hit men while pursuing a story on drug trafficking. Two others were killed during political protests, and both were from pro-Chavez newspapers.

That's a far cry from a place like Colombia, where the human rights situation is appalling and journalists get attacked and killed routinely. Given the kind of gross human rights violations in Colombia and the terrible climate faced by many journalists, one would think that the newspaper of record would run frequent stores on the issue, but the Times ignores the story.

Strategy #4: Misrepresent the State of The Economy

In yet another attempt to focus attention away from U.S. foreign policy, Lowenstein says that Chavez has eroded confidence in the economy. But contrary to the Times' claims, the economic outlook in Venezuela looks very promising.

It should be said that Chavez inherited a very unenviable economic situation when he was elected in 1998; the country in fact was on the road towards increasing poverty, misery and inequality. Additionally, Chavez had to contend with disruptive economic sabotage through the oil lock out in 2002-3 which resulted in almost $8 billion in losses.

Despite this incredible hardship, investment has actually increased in recent years. In 2002, in the midst of political and financial instability, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) plunged to $800 million, a drastic decrease from 2001 when FDI was $3.7 billion.

Since then FDI has been up and down, but recent figures indicate that Venezuela is on the rebound with an FDI of $1.2 billion in 2005, a 4.5% increase from the previous year. What's more, the investment bank Bear Stearns is forecasting that Venezuela will increase FDI in 2006 by a further 25%. Despite FDI volatility and investor concern over growing government control over the economy, all but three oil companies have agreed to sign joint oil ventures with the state.

Not only is FDI looking up, but the macroeconomic indicators look positive. In 2005-6, Venezuela had the fastest economic growth in Latin America; inflation has been halved; unemployment has been steadily dropping; incomes of the poor doubled in the past two years, and the poverty rate has been dropping.

In its effort to discredit Chavez, the Times has vastly oversimplified the economic picture.

Strategy #5: When All Else Fails, Resort to Cold War Rhetoric

In his column, Lowenstein attempts to tar both the Venezuelan government and myself through retrograde rhetoric. For example, he argues that Chavez is pushing forward a failed socialist agenda and is unhappy with my supposedly Marxist "new-lefty rhetoric [which] I had thought went out in the '70s."

If Lowenstein had actually gone to Venezuela and spoken with the beneficiaries of Chavez's social programs, he'd be able to recognize the fallacy of his argument.

During a recent trip to the country I was able to observe some of the successes of the Chavez regime. In Catia, a poor district of Caracas, I toured a so-called "Endogenous Center of Development," where women had set up a flourishing textile cooperative. The women were proud of their new red T-shirts, which displayed a profile of the revolutionary hero Che Guevara.

Contrary to Lowenstein's claims however, the economy does not follow a strictly socialist model. Venezuela is open to thriving foreign investment and its people are voracious consumers of imported Scotch Whiskey as reported by the Times itself on August 20.

It would be fairer to say that Venezuela is pursuing a nationalist course based on poverty relief for the neediest. In this sense Chavez's economic approach is more akin to FDR's New Deal, a not so subtle difference lost on the likes of Lowenstein.

Summing Up: The Times' Belief System

Lowenstein's discrediting of Chavez is not surprising in light of the overall economic philosophy at the Times. For years, the paper has been touting the so-called virtues of free trade and hemispheric integration, tendencies which Chavez has successfully challenged through anti-poverty programs and promotion of a regional initiative called Bolivarian Alternative of The Americas (known by its Spanish acronym ALBA). Chavez's own trade initiative is a challenge to Washington, which has long pushed its own corporately friendly FTAA or Free Trade Area of the Americas.

The issue of the Times' historic support for free trade was analyzed in a thorough 2001 report by the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). Though the Times reported on the contentious FTAA summit at Quebec in 2001 which drew thousands of anti-globalization protesters, the paper "tended to focus more on the politicking and 'challenges' that Bush must navigate to seal the deal than on the particulars of what might happen if he succeeds."

As I point out in my book, Chavez was critical of the FTAA in Quebec, and his antipathy towards the agreement only increased with time. In this sense Chavez shared some common ground with anti-globalization protesters, who were also vilified by the Times. According to FAIR, Times columnists Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman led the charge in seeking to discredit FTAA critics and the anti-globalization movement. Friedman in fact went as far to say that protesters were "choking the only route out of poverty for the world's poor."

Krugman agreed with Friedman, remarking that "many of the people inside that chain-link fence [hemispheric politicians supporting the FTAA] are sincerely trying to help the world's poor. And the people outside the fence, whatever their intentions, are doing their best to make the poor even poorer."

In a telling aside, FAIR remarked: "Perhaps the most startling thing about these editorials was their failure to acknowledge that the 'world's poor' have in fact themselves been taking to the streets to protest globalization."

Fast forward now from 2001 to 2006, and it's not surprising that the Times would carry on the torch and seek to criticize Chavez. The fact that the Venezuelan leader has been able to successfully resist some of the tenets of "neo-liberal" economics, in line with the thrust of the earlier anti-globalization movement, is disagreeable to the paper of record.

Chavez will most certainly win the December 2006 presidential election. The question is now just a matter of how wide the margin shall be. George Bush and whomever his successor may be will almost certainly try to further destabilize Venezuela in future.

In light of Lowenstein's piece, it seems likely that the mainstream media will take its cue from the Times, over generalizing and misrepresenting the truth on Venezuela until the public starts to become obsessed with Hugo Chavez.