Killing the Messenger, Burying the Message
On the one hand, Bush's Junta smothers the "Bad News Bearers"; on the other, the "liberal" US Corporate Media hides facts in order to boost Junior and his buddies
by Tamara Baker

Dec. 30, 2002 -- ST. PAUL (APJP) -- Anyone remember the old joke, "If the facts do not conform to the theory, they must be disposed of"?

Well, in finest Don Karl Rove Corleone fashion, yet another set of facts -- and their transmitters -- are being fitted with cement overshoes and readied for their one-way trip into the Potomac.

Here's the scoop, from what's left of the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

Mass Layoff Statistics Program Is Discontinued

This is the final news release for the Mass Layoff Statistics (MLS) program. Since 1994, the Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration has funded the program. That funding will end on December 31, 2002. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been unable to acquire funding from alternative sources and must discontinue the MLS program.

Limited historical data will continue to be available at http://www.bls.gov/mls/ on the BLS Web site.

Yupper: Just as the pace of layoffs has increased dramatically under the Bush regime (the MLS's data for November 2002 being especially grim), the Bushies react by doing their damnedest to sweep this information under the rug.

It's the old Memory Hole trick, of course: If we don't report it, none of the proles will know it happened.

Except that they can't keep us proles from noticing how things have slacked off in the last two years.

They can't keep us from noticing the stores that are empty of shoppers, even with 50% pre-Christmas discounts.

They can't keep us from noticing when we get laid off.

They can't keep us from noticing that this is all happening even as Georgie's buddies on the Wall Street Journal's editorial page want to shaft those "lucky duckies" who, unlike them, don't make enough money to escape payroll taxes.

(By the way: the Minneapolis StarTribune has this wonderful editorial skewering the greedheads over at the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere!)

They can still use the War on Whoever We Feel Like It as a distraction, but even that won't work forever.

They can run, and they have gobs and gobs and gobs of money -- enough to insulate them from the effects of their actions. But only for a while.

And then the reckoning will be due.

Item: Last week, the New York Times, just as it did earlier this year, called on that awful, low-down leftist, Hugo Chavez, to step down as President of Venezuela and -- in the name of "democracy", mind you -- let the oligarchic, bloodthirsty, anti-democratic oil buddies of Bush and Cheney take over.

Item: Last night, on ABC News, it was reported that Chavez' hold on power is eroding -- though nothing substantive was stated to back up this claim.

Item: Both the New York Times and ABC -- along with every other major daily paper and broadcast entity -- aren't telling you the whole story.

And their refusal to report certain key facts can only be construed in two (2) ways: as grotesque, industry-wide incompetence; or as a craven effort to shamelessly promote the Bush Junta's party line with respect to the nation that provides Americans with much of the gasoline we put in our cars.

For instance: did you know that Venezuela's pumping gas again?

Or that Brazil's newly-elected leftist government has, with the blessing of the other members of the Organization of American States (OAS), sent Chavez a tanker filled with oil in order to tide over Chavez until things are back to normal and the Bush-backed coup attempt is stopped?

If you read the New York Times cover-to-cover, as opposed to just Page One and the Op-Eds, you might have caught this little story by Ginger Thompson -- but none of the broadcast TV and radio networks would mention it:

PUERTO LA CRUZ, Venezuela, Dec. 28 -- Nearly a month into Venezuela's devastating national strike, all systems were back up and running close to normal this week at the refinery here that supplies gasoline to the eastern half of this country. Night shift workers were bursting with the pride of war heroes...

With skeleton crews working lots of overtime, Mr. Chavez is getting gasoline trickling back into Venezuela's pumps. Officials here said that since the beginning of last week, this refinery had produced 60,000 barrels of gasoline a day, about 70 percent its normal capacity and almost a fourth of the 225,000 barrels normally consumed by this country each day.

Got that? Even as the rest of the New York Times, and the rest of the US media, is telling us that Chavez Cannot Win, Ms. Thompson is reporting that he is winning.

What's more, he's doing it with the help of other Latin American countries, such as the aforementioned aid being given by Brazil, and fighting back the efforts of transnational corporations to oust him -- but, unless you know Spanish and read newspapers like Mexico's La Jornada, you'd never know it.

And that's why I want to take a little time here to thank Marcia MacMullan, a regular poster on Salon's "Table Talk" message boards, for bringing our attention to the La Jornada article, as well as the New York Times one, and taking the time to translate portions of the La Jornada piece.

Ms. MacMullan is doing, for free, what most of the salaried folks occupying the US corporate-media food chain aren't usually willing to do: present facts that contradict the Bush and Republican Party line with regard to Venezuela.

Thanks, Marcia -- and please, keep it up! We need you!