By University of Los Andes (ULA) Political Sciences Professor, Dr. Franz J. T. Lee:
Between 1963 and 1977, all over Europe, Canada and the United States of America, with the help of all the international friends of the African Revolution, I collected funds, gave hundreds of lectures in many cities and even addressed the Special Committee against Apartheid of the United Nations.
To me, it had become crystal clear that ever since the 'discovery' and 'christianization' of our unfortunate continents, ever since the First Conquest, we have been victims of a cruel, mental holocaust, of Information and Education for Barbarism.
Overseas, with our very blood boiling with rage, we had to read the half-truths, the lies, the hoaxes and myths about us -- the 'miserables' and 'wretched of the earth' in the words of Victor Hugo and Frantz Fanon.
With pamphlets, booklets, flyers, miserably attended lectures and letters to editors, we tried to counter the waves of disinformation, the tsunamis of mind and thought control, the avalanches of CIA 'psy ops' mind manipulation operations. We were told that Chaka, Lumumba, Mandela, Agostinho Neto, Samora Machel, Kwame Nkrumah, Fidel Castro or Ho Chi Minh were 'red communist monsters', 'tyrants' and 'dictators', and many of us even fell prey to these character assassination maneuvers and racist defamation campaigns.
Nowadays, we see their continuation in all those parts of the world where progressive forces are trying to change the sinister, capitalist status quo, be it by mere social reforms, be it through efforts to generate a revolution. Nowadays, however, the international machinery of lies and defamation is infinitely more powerful than way back then.
Compared to the mental venom injected across the globe by the Murdoch empire and others, all our present campaigns of supplying truthful information about fascist operations and crimes on our continents, all our educational endeavors, have been reduced to a drop on the lava stream of the ongoing international mental holocaust.
Our material and financial capabilities and support are ridiculous in comparison to the fortunes moving the unfortunate wheel of disinformation world wide; and real, true freedom of expression, let alone of democratic human rights, are hindered until this very day to see the light. The world of ideas keeps being dominated by the dominant ideas of our epoch, that is, the ideas of the economically and politically dominant social classes.
When it comes to whatever modest an effort to reform or to launch an alternative to our existing capitalist reality, over 80% of international news suggests these experiments to constitute a deadly danger for the 'international community', an 'axis of evil', a terrorist threat, a negation of democracy and human rights, and so on.
Such is the case of Venezuela and its president, Hugo Chavez, or Bolivia and Evo Morales, or even Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe. All news regarding these countries are always negative, always destructive, always alarming. On the other hand and over the decades, 80% of news about the USA and their respective governments have been positive, constructive, encouraging; hiding the atrocities, conspiracies and crimes committed against other governments and peoples who happened to stand in the way of US strategic interests.
It is within this broader historic context and within the 'war of ideas' that we have to see the battle of VHeadline.com over the last decade, defending the truth about Venezuela.
I have published, along with many writers and colleagues who make up the VHeadline team, hundreds of comments in English and Spanish in this electronic medium and our observations and analyses about what has been going on in Venezuela went around the very globe. VHeadline.com had become an international point of reference for authentic journalism with its Chief Editor always defending the cause of the Venezuelan people, that is, the working people, the marginalized, the excluded, the 'under-dogs' of capitalist society.
In this sense, democracy, constitutionality and the rule of law has been the banner of VHeadline.com and for the sake of the cause of the people of Venezuela, Latin America, the world, for the sake of humanity, we cannot afford to lose the 'war of ideas'. New, emancipatory actions and ideas, praxis and theory, need to triumph globally!
In its quest to seek and disseminate the truth about Venezuela, about the Bolivarian Revolution, about its strengths and also weaknesses, VHeadline.com has become a thorn not only in the eye of mighty foreign interests that are interfering with whatever means in Venezuelan affairs and want to see President Chavez out of office, but also in the eyes of opportunists who literally profit from the Bolivarian Revolution and fear to be discovered and exposed.
This is why along the way funding has been unstable, until it finally subsided. Now, at the most critical stage of the Bolivarian Revolution, where true information is decisive, both for internal purge as well as for international solidarity, VHeadline,com needs to come back.
Thus, we appeal to our readers, collaborators, friends, to the defenders of the cause of the peoples of this world, to the fighters for the internationalization of the Bolivarian Revolution, to all democratic, peace-loving, emancipatory forces to help us to return and realize our historic duty, to fight for truth and emancipation, in a world in which the very species man is in danger of extinction.
As George Orwell famously stated: In a world of universal deceit, telling the truth is a truly revolutionary act.
venezuelanews@franzlee.org
http://www.franzlee.org
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Venezuela is facing the most difficult period of its history with honest reporters crippled by sectarianism on top of rampant corruption within the administration and beyond, aided and abetted by criminal forces in the US and Spanish governments which cannot accept the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people to decide over their own future.
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