Iran and the Left

A theme has developed in the wingnut media, namely, that 'the left' has neglected Iran. This is presumed to indicate either hypocrisy and double standard ('They always criticise Israel!') or tacit sympathy for Ahmedinejad, the Ayatollah, and the mad mullahs who run the regime.

The evidence for this charge lies solely in the claim that leftists have been mute on Iran. They probably have been mute in the News Ltd media, since they don't exist at all within Murdoch empire, but a quick click on the links of my blog, and about thirty seconds googling revealed anything other than silence or complicity when it comes to the Iranian autocracy:

Lenin's Tomb is probably the foremost socialist blog in the UK, if not the world, excluding the large group blogs. Bloggers Richard Seymour and Yoshie have repeatedly tackled the issue of Iran, the elections, and the uprisings. Significantly, this extensive coverage has also encompassed critique of the deceits and conceits perpetuated regarding this crisis by the ruling elites in the Anglophone media.

Slavoj Žižek has published a widely-circulated text supporting the protestors in Iran, and calling for the downfall of the current regime. From a rather different leftist perspective, Chomsky has given this interview on the subject.

In Australia, Mark Bahnisch made some cautious remarks in support of the dissenters. Quiggin looked at things with reference to Obama. Slack @ndy has compiled pro-protestor links, anti-regime, and has criticised a presumed concordance between Ahmedinejad and Chavez. Green Left Weekly expressed solidarity with the dissenters of Iran.

In the US and beyond, there has also been plenty of critical comment on the topic of Iran's sham elections and their aftermath. Minnesota-based Trot Renegade Eye lent his voice of solidarity. Counterpunch has been providing almost daily coverage, including these two pieces. AlterNet had provided a number of pieces on this topic, particularly attacking the lack of freedom of speech. Marxism.com has published multiple pieces int he past week or so - see the link here. Zmag has sharply attacked the democratic pretensions of the regime, as has Socialist Worker.

Now for some general remarks. The above pieces are all well worth reading. Many are sceptical about the possibility of the protestors effecting lasting change. Even greater scepticism is reserved for Ahmedinjad's opponent, Moussavi, whose 'reformist' credentials are regarding by many commenters as dubious, at best. (Interestingly, Žižek is an exception here). All the same, each and every piece is concerned with the welfare of the protestors, and none supports the existing regime in any respect whatsoever.

Another point worth noting is that, roughly speaking, the further left you go, the more decisive the statements you are likely to find in relation to Iraq. Centre-leftists and social democrats such as Bahnisch and Quiggin are far more equivocal than are the socialist and anarchist commenters above.

It goes without saying that everybody of value in the left supports the opverthrow of the existing Iranian regime, and wishes the demonstrators success in their task of liberating Iran.

Finally, the attempt by rightists to pretend that the left are somehow opposed or indifferent to the uprisings in Iran is sheer chutzpah, occasioned by years of controlling both politics and the mainstream press. Not only do these clowns attempt to falsify the past, they are now, increasingly, it seems, trying to distort history as it happens. They must presume that leftist audiences are as stupid and apathetic as their own. It is an ongoing fight to ensure that these deceptions are rectified.

'Socialism' under Obama

Some people are saying that the GFC has plunged Obama's US into socialism.



But then, some people are morons.

(Chart taken from here).

Lies or Stupidity?

The tinfoil Rightists of the blogosphere frequently complain about 'left wing bias' in Universities. Supposing this bias to exist - is it any wonder, given the cretinism and dissembling that our Rightard friends exhibit when trying to argue a point?

The example, in this case, is a piece of 'research' by Joan Martin, on behalf of the proto-fascist British National Party, known for their criminal violence, anti-Semitism, and other niceties.

Naturally, this garbage is not only lapped up by the usual credulous bigots, but is then, without shame, passed off as gospel truth. It's not clear to me how this research, an attempted critique of Marxist influence on society, could be taken seriously by anybody, much less grown adults. Are the brazen liars, or merely drooling half-wits? Let's have a look at some of the rotten fruits of this research, and see:

A WORLD COUP d’ ETAT IS PLANNED TO BRING ABOUT WORLD GOVERNMENT
The time-line explained:
KARL MARX.1818-1883
Marx was a German Jew with radical views.

At least they got that bit right.

In 1842 he became a member of the Hegelians an anti-religious, radical group with Satanic interests.

And thus the blithering idiocy begins. Hegel was actually conservative in almost all of his opinions, and was an advocate of Protestantism. He also exhibited the typical conservative subservience to traditional authority figures. Neither Hegel, nor any of his followers whose names are known to history, have any demonstrable link to 'Satanic interests'.
Furthermore, following Hegel's death, there tended to be two groups of students influences by him: the Right Hegelians (conservatives, obviously) and the 'Young' (Left) Hegelians. Marx, in his early days, was associated by the latter. What they took from Hegel was not conservative opinion on Church and State, etc, but rather, Hegel's dialectical method of philosophy. Perhaps this is superfluous, since I see no evidence that our resident rightards have read a page of Marx or Hegel.

In 1843 he left Germany and went to Paris where he met Engels who helped him financially.
In 1845 he was expelled from Paris.
In 1848 went to live in Brussels were he wrote the Communist Manifesto.
In 1849 Marx moved to London and lived there for the rest of his life.

Back on track, but hardly an exposé.

THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO INCLUDES.
The Abolition of Private Property
The Abolition of the Family.
The Abolition of Countries and Nationalities.
The Abolition of all Religions, morality and Religious Liberty, this shows the Hegelians Idealism.
The Abolition of Freedom of conscience. In a Democracy people believe in the freedom to choose.
The word Communist covers anyone who aspires to World Government.
Marxism works towards achieving World Government and World Dictatorship.

The Manifesto includes a few other things, too, such as calls for universal education, and the abolition of child labour. You can see why the free marketeers would oppose it. Fundamentally, however, Marx and Engels used this text to argue in favour of a stateless and classless society, not a 'world dictatorship'. At the time of the Manifesto, only one nation in Continental Europe was a democracy (France), and even that brutalised its citizens, and even that only became democratic through revolutionary force.
Of course, the Manifesto has nothing to do with the abolition of religion or 'freedom of conscience', though Marx did point out the unholy alliances formed between religious powerbrokers and earthly rulers. Still less did this text have anything to do with 'Hegelian idealism', since Marx considered himself to be the precise opposite of an 'idealist' (i.e. he was a 'materialist'). The strident internationalism of the Manifesto cannot be understated, and it is on this point, as on many others, that Marxism is the precise opposite of fascism/Nazism, despite the dissembling of Rightards.

In any case, there is no excuse for the constant black propaganda against Marx, when all of his works are readily available for free.

Marx and his friends Engles and Balunin (sic) received their ideas from Moses Hess the founder of the German Social Democrat Party. Moses Hess taught that to gain a World State it could only be brought about by a revolution using class and racial hatred. He said race struggle is primary, class struggle is secondary.”
Mikhail Balunin said “That what ever the name or label of those who aspire to world government they must be prepared to awake the devil in people and stir their passions for them to act.” Passion as with football hooligans, vandals and various peace groups and the race groups.

Or perhaps 'passion' as seen by today's bigots, such as the BNP, or the Cronulla rioters, or some of our rightard bloggers.
Notably, no attempt is made to cite a single instance of 'racial hatred' by Marx, let alone demonstrate that is was 'primary' in his struggle. For what it's worth, Marx was influenced by Hess only in the relatively early days of his career, and he later disagreed with much of his work. In any case, Hess was a proto-Zionist, and therefore hardly an enemy of the rightards (must bring on the Rapture!).

Marx wrote three requirements for those who wished to join the fight for World Government.
1 To read the Communist and Revolutionary teachings of Marx and associates and work accordingly.
2 To work to destabilise nations both morally and financially.
3 To work to gain political control of the MONEY supply and the ASSETS of each Nation and put them BEYOND the REACH and CONTROL of each Government by ensuring that nations become INTER-DEPENDANT on each other for FOOD, MACHINERY and through LOANS.

Marx didn't actually set up a school or club of 'Marxists'. Naturally, one would expect anybody calling themselves Marxist to have read at least some of his works, just as we would with a Freudian, Newtonian, or whatever.
Point 2 is most interesting - it allows our conspiracy-minded tinfoilers the opportunity to interpret any perceived 'instability', new fad, crisis, or change in the wind as a MARXIST PLOY FOR WORLD DOMINATION!!!

Marx also said, “Steps should be taken to provide a master race to produce Leaders and Dictators”

Did he now? This slanderous claim is rather easily proven false. Significantly, the scum who produced this libel did not bother to attribute the quote, perhaps knowing that their half-witted audience would devour it anyway.

Based on this inauspicious beginnings, the rightards purport to demonstrate that a Marxist world government is about to take over any day now:

Capitalism was infiltrated and attacked from within in order to destroy its reputation and Hollywood was implemented to break down the image of the man who financially supports his family and to help create the romantic image of the ‘activist’ (who, when stripped of this fallacious image, is nothing more than an instrument to destroy what we had).
As globalist Marxists reach the zenith of their power, we small band of resisters face the prospect of seeing the true face of this beast unleash its vengeance upon us. It will have its day, the Bible predicts this. But that day will be cut short. We will need to be salt and light to this planet while we can. When we are gone, there will be nothing left.

How embarrassing. This is real fish-in-a-barrel stuff, and easily dismissed. Woe unto the next generation of half-educated youngsters, who may be so unfortunate as to take the above claims seriously, or to think that Hitler was really a socialist, or that Hillary Clinton is a communist and Obama a fascist. The ideas of Marx are there to be discussed and debated, but I can't see any attempt to do that in the above passage, which is being circulated as holy writ by our holy fools. As long as such flagrant smear tactics and peddling of untruths passes for Rightist 'research', we can expect, much to the chagrin of bigots, that genuine scholarship and academia will remain firmly outside of their grasp. But what can one expect from clowns whose highest philosophical achievement is (snicker) reading Ayn Rand?

The Failed Doctrine

It is customary for leftist solutions to concrete problems to be dismissed as little more than the dew-eyed ramblings of cloistered academics. In particular, unions are dismissed as 'irrelevant', the by-product of a long-dead industrial reality, and socialism is dismissed as self-evidently absurd. Faith in the 'market' as an all-purpose 'solution' is one of the few dogmas that brings a whole range of anti-leftists together.



With this in mind, I was struck by two recent articles illustrating the costs of the supposedly 'free' market.



China is in the process of 'freeing' up its markets for the exploitative labour of migrant workers. We have seen recent reports of slave labour literally occurring at the hands of indifferent, budding capitalists. In addition, last week a strike-busting squad, armed with shovels and other weapons, lead a vicious attack on workers. The workers were protesting the fact that they had not been paid in four months.



One of the victims of the assault is currently brain-dead, but is being kept artificially alive, lest his assailants face murder charges:




Of course, the employers had their reasons for withholding workers' wages:

Mr Xiang says most of the six seriously injured were, like him, singled out
by the Fuyuan thugs because they were team leaders. His dead colleague, Mr Lei,
was a safety monitor for Qiutian Construction, the subcontractor that brought in
the workers.
Qiutian says it has been unable to pay workers because Fuyuan
has refused to compensate it for losses suffered last summer when the site
flooded. Qiutian says that legally the developer is responsible for losses
caused by acts of nature.

This is, apparently, 'capitalism with Chinese characteristics'. Such things were not uncommon in Western capitalist countries not so long ago. Today, union-busting in Australia takes place via legislation, and is held by the Government to be in everybody's best interests, other than self-serving 'union bosses'.

Courtesy of our American friends at Crooks and Liars, I noticed this article (also being featured at Larvatus Prodeo). In contrast to the allegedly destructive Bolivarian socialism of Venezuela, free-market utopia Colombia has made the news once again for its treatment of union members:

The bus had just left Drummond Co. Inc.'s coal mine carrying about 50
workers when gunmen halted it and forced two union leaders off. They shot one on
the spot, pumping four bullets into his head, and dragged the other one off to
be tortured and killed.
In a civil trial set to begin Monday before a
federal jury in Birmingham, Ala., union lawyers have presented affidavits from
two people who allege that Drummond ordered those killings, a charge the company
denies.
Multinationals operating in Colombia have admitted paying right-wing
militias known as paramilitaries to protect their operations. But human rights
activists claim the companies went further, using the fighters to violently keep
their labor costs down.

Colombia is being treated as a mere colony for US Corporations, as are some of its northern neighbours. Yet pointing out the fact that corporations do not always act in humanity's best interests is virtually anathema in the mainstream press, and likely to result in accusations of 'anti-Americanism', or, still better, 'socialism'.

The existence of Stalin and Mao appears to be enough for some to dismiss any leftist doctrine - critics simply cite a figure of those killed under the relevant dictators, and consider the matter finished. When will the same critics turn their attention to the failed doctrine of capitalism, starving millions for the profits of a few, and crushing the resistance of those who stand in the way?

It is not that capitalism is inherently 'evil', (even if moralising had anything to do with it). The raison d'etre of capitalism is simply to generate capital. The inevitable by-product of this generation is that more or less people will be exploited, starved, and, in the cases we see above, killed.

But at least our plasma screens are relatively cheap.

Eleven theses on Psychoanalysis

In response to a long and interesting thread on Larvatus Prodeo, I think it timely to provide some clarificatory remarks on psychoanalysis, a much-maligned and oft-misunderstood discipline. I will try to be as schematic as possible.

1. Psychoanalysis is radical. The notion of a psychoanalytic unconscious, a part of ourselves that is fundamentally and irreducibly unknowable, beyond any control, and causative of a range of 'symptoms' (from the hysteric's phantom pains, to dreams, to the symptomatic nature of our romantic lives) is radical. Other psychoanalytic notions can make claims of being radical, however, the psychoanalytic unconscious is what gives the discipline its revolutionary character. Whilst Kant, Hartmann, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and others all dipped their toes into the murky waters of a radical unconscious, none were as detachedly systematic, whilst at the same time frighteningly intimate as Freud.

Nonetheless, psychoanalysis is not politically radical, Reich being the obvious exception. Freud rejected Marxist theories of the origins of society, and Lacan too was dismissive of Marxism, at least, until the uprisings in 1968 Paris. It is possible that, being Jewish, many early psychoanalysts thought it impolitic to also be socialist, given the Zeitgeist in which they operated. A strong sense of social justice can be found in psychoanalysis, from Freud's Free Clinics to the low-cost services provided by psychoanalytic schools today. This notwithstanding, Freud, and psychoanalysis is best understood, in 19th Century terms, as neither conservative nor radical, but as liberal-bourgeois.

2. Psychoanalysis is not a science. At least, it is not scientific in the sense by which we understand the term in physics or mathematics. Psychoanalysis is a science of the particular, which means it will never deal in the relatively tidy universals of the 'hard' sciences. All the same, psychoanalysis displays greater rigour, reasoning, and explanatory power than most of the rest of psychology, which is why today's neuroscientists, such as Damasio, or Kendall, are turning to Freud rather than Beck or Skinner.

Those who proffer narrow and dogmatic notions of scientificity (that is, most of academic psychology) will find psychoanalysis wanting. However, psychoanalysis is perfectly 'empirical' - it deals with a series of 'ones' rather than seeking to apply structural equation modelling or alpha-tests to subjects reduced to some kind of statistical totality. Like any of the 'human sciences', psychoanalysis incorporates 'qualitative' methodologies, which, though they eschew statistical methods, nonetheless proceed by way of evidence and reasoned argumentation. Indeed, given the flimsy conceptual foundations of mainstream psychology, the latters' fear and hostility towards psychoanalysis must be explained by means other than a recourse to notions of 'empirical validation'.

3. Psychoanalysis is not an art. The discipline, as least in its clinical guise, is not simply some whimsical expression of its practitioner's fancy. Nonetheless, unlike other 'therapies', true psychoanalysis cannot be 'manualised', that is, broken into a recipe book-style series of prescriptions for a therapist or subject. Psychoanalysis stands closer to the arts than any other of the psychologies, partly because art itself is 'symptomatic' and 'over-determined', but also because psychoanalysis does not suffer from the same knee-jerk rejection of all that is not narrowly scientific that its psychological cousins exhibit.

4. Psychoanalysis is anti-authoritarian. When practised by way of assisting the analysand to interpret his or her own associations, psychoanalysis is far removed from the likes of CBT, and refrains from issuing directives and imperatives. Furthermore, psychoanalysis does not stigmatise and pathologise in the manner of the DSM-IV; after all, in psychoanalysis, neurosis is 'normal', or even a best-case scenario, given that the alternative is psychosis. Clearly, someone like Foucault was not enamoured of psychoanalysis, yet any criticism that he (or Deleuze or Guattari) might have made could be doubly said of the highly authoritarian treatment 'regimes' currently predominating in our healthcare systems

5. There are different schools of psychoanalysis. Few analysts would accept all of Freud's teachings, though virtually all would cite Freud as the founder of their discipline. In the post-Freud era, psychoanalytic schools include the Anna Freudian, ego psychology, Bion's analysis, object relations, Kleinian approaches, Lacanian analysis, and the intersubjective school. In addition, there are various offshoots initially inspired by, but ultimately distinct from psychoanalysis, such as Jungian psychology, the neo-Freudians, and Adler's individual psychology. Whilst some of these approaches differ sharply from each other, there is no more sectarianism that what one would find in any other discipline, and the dominant form of analysis that one learns is often a result of one's time and place, or the orientation of one's school. Still, psychoanalysis is not homogeneous.

6. Psychoanalysis is neither misogynist, nor anti-feminist. Whilst feminism has an uneasy relationship with Freud and psychoanalysis, there is a relationship nonetheless. Freud made several problematic statements in relation to feminine psychology, which can be attributed to 3 basic origins:

1. Freud was a (relatively enlightened) product of his times, and consequently gave voice to a number of fairly typical prejudices.
2. The exigencies of some of Freud's theories, and the extent to which he took these theories literally, inevitably led him to some odd conceptual formulations. The Oedipus Complex, when applied to females, is among the more notorious of these.
3. Some of Freud's statements are in fact sexist, and seemingly have no basis in either theoretical or empirical necessity, and cannot be explained away via 19th Century prejudice.

Having established this, it should be remembered that not all feminists are hostile to Freud or psychoanalysis. American analysts such as Nancy Chodorow or Jessica Benjamin are excellent examples of a feminist (and intersubjective) engagement with psychoanalysis.

7. Psychoanalysis is not always encountered in its pure form. Indeed, whilst the neuroscientists and 'cognitive analysts' say that they engage with psychoanalysis, it would be more accurate to describe this engagement as one of colonisation. Psychoanalysis is often subordinate to some other discipline, or else the more radical and subversive aspects of its teaching are neutered. For instance, American ego psychologists, and the CBT practitioners (former analysts) shift the focus from the unconscious to the controllable and knowable conscious. Or take the difficult notion of the death drive, which has been virtually neglected by all post-Freudians other than Klein and Lacan. It is surely no coincidence that psychoanalysis becomes more acceptable, and more 'scientific' to people once it has been stripped of the unconscious, sex, and death.

8. Psychoanalysis is analogous to Marxism. That is to say, as Foucault pointed out, both psychoanalysis and Marxism are discourses that critically interrogate other discourses, often discourses of mastery. In psychoanalysis, discourses of mastery belie the subject of the unconscious, repressing to produce this illusion of 'mastery'. In Marxism, analysis is directed to looking at how class-relations are perpetuated through ideology, and how 'neutral' discourses are often sodden with ideological blindspots. This contributes to both disciplines being 'unacceptable'. Freud's discourse is further unacceptable because it engages meaningfully in those things often presumed to be meaningless, that is, the nonsensical elements of experience normally banished from polite academic company, such as neurotic symptoms, jokes, dreams, and slips of the tongue.

Whilst both psychoanalysis and Marxism undermine discourses of mastery, neither were intended to be applied in a haphazard, reductionist fashion. For instance, whilst a Marxist analysis of 'crime' enable us to observe how class relations and private property underpin our notions of legal transgression, phenomena such as sexual assault can never be exhaustively reduced by an analysis of class relations alone.

9. Psychoanalysis is not post-modern. Despite the protestations of Sokal, and others, there is nothing that Lacan has in common with the likes of Derrida, or Baudrillard, other than a similarly difficult oeuvre. Whilst psychoanalysis is applicable to non-clinical phenomena, there are many examples of what Freud called 'wild analysis' in this field. In addition, Kristeva and Irigary, inspired by analysis, have consciously engaged with the 'post-modern'. It should be remembered, however, that in his New Introductory Lectures, Freud explicitly said that the Weltanschauung of psychoanalysis was scientific and medicinal. All of the major theorists of psychoanalysis have since continued in this tradition, albeit incorporating the concerns of feminism, or linguistics. The struggles of psychoanalysts are not merely confined to obscurantist debates on paper; French analysts, for instance, have documented their battles with an unsympathetic and cynical healthcare system in the journal Lacanian Praxis.

10. Psychoanalysis is not dead. In particular, psychoanalysis thrives in places where Latin languages predominate, from Portugal to Quebec. It is Buenos Aires, and not New York, that actually has the highest per capita amount of psychoanalysts. In fact, psychology in Argentina is taught with mandatory units in philosophy, and does not waste its time with the niceties of statistical analysis. Last year, as I travelled through Europe, it was clear that Freud's 150th birthday was celebrated in London, Berlin, and Vienna. On the other hand, psychoanalysis, as enduring as it is, will never be the dominant paradigm, cumbersome as it is to both the 'normalising' discourse of bureaucratic-medical models, and to consumer capitalism. Historian of psychoanalysis, Eli Zaretsky, said much the same thing in the speeches he gave in Melbourne in 2005.

11. Psychoanalysis is on the side of freedom. This may be paradoxical, given Freud's apparent commitment to a thoroughly determinist model of mental functioning. Nonetheless, if we adopt a notion of freedom that is not simply either/or in nature, we can observe how psychoanalysis helps the analysand obtain freedom by degrees, by replacing ignorance and compulsion with knowledge and awareness.

It is no coincidence that psychoanalysis has been demonised by totalitarian regimes everywhere, from Hitler's Germany, to Stalin's Russia, and is today excluded from authoritarian modes of 'treatment' peddled in consumerist regimes. An anecdote that I heard from an Argentinian Lacanian suggested that Lacan's work found resonance in this latter country precisely because the obscurity of its language kept it from the attention of authorities.

Psychologist have ever but sought to change the human subject, that is, transform him/her into an object, force him/her to identify with a 'therapist', or to become the 'healthy', narcissistic, alienated subject of consumer capitalism.

The point is not to change things, but to interpret them. Through interpreting, change follows in any case, or moreover, analysand interprets for his or her own self. Psychoanalysis teaches the analysand how he or she 'enjoys' his or her symptoms; it does not enjoin the subject to necessarily cease this enjoyment.

Contra los mentirosos, los cerdos y los bastardos…

The Murdoch commentariat, ever-concerned with the welfare of Latin Americans, has decided to train its investigative eye upon the recent decision by the Venezualan government. The Venezualan government has decided not to renew the broadcasting license of the anti-government stations, RCTV and Globovision.

Our good-hearted friends in the employ of Murdoch have, in their humanitarian-inspired shrieking, taken quite an interest in Venezualan president Hugo Chavez, and his supporters, in Australia and elsewhere. Like a semi-retarded seaside caricaturist, who only knows how to draw one cartoon, Tim Bleh seems to blog about Chavez every other day. Matters Venezualan have also been getting the cartoon treatment from Andrew Bolt, well-known for his bleeding-heart sympathies for the downtrodden. And you know a third-world country is getting 'dangerous', and a democratically-elected leader, 'dictatorial', when this unholy trinity is rounded out by some 'fair and balanced' attention by Uncle Rupert's megaphone, Faux News.

Naturally, these champions of Latin American freedom don't feel that Venezuala's neighbour, Colombia, is worthy of the same attention, despite Columbia, (a country that receives more US 'aid' than any other in Latin America) having a horrific modern history. These history includes the mass murder of unionists, 'extrajudicial executions' of civilians, collaboration between military and paramilitary groups and drug cartels (courtesy of US cash), and the murders of indigenous community leaders. Perhaps the deafening silence that we hear from these News Ltd friends of freedom is not so surprising; dead unionists, US support for military, and the suppression of minority groups sounds like a rightard's wet dream.

It doesn't take a Rhodes scholar to realise the reason Venezuala is targeted for incessant criticism and disinformation. It is much the same reason that criticism of the US or Israel is shouted down, and 'human rights' is utterly ignored in places such as Colombia or Uzbekistan. Anything remotely resembling 'progressive' politics is subject to condemnation and apocalyptic murmurings. Even a blue-blooded Tory of grazier origins, such as Malcolm Fraser, is derided as a 'leftist' nowadays.

In any case, the fact of Venezuala losing some its anti-government media has received enormous attention. My point in this post is not to defend the dubious manoeuverings of Chavez, but merely to demonstrate that the hysterical rantings of the above 'commentators' has its more measured obverse.

Against the absolute freedom of speech argued for by Chomsky, I personally lean towards the 'freedom needs limits' approach of Žižek. It is obvious that freedom of speech is an inherent requirement of any democracy. Speech, however, is also an act, albeit one that is usually more tepid than 'direct action'. I see no essential reason why the right to shout 'fire' in a crowded theatre, or the right to incite violence against Jews, Muslims or gays ought to be accorded the same privilege as other speech. Nonetheless, there are likewise good reasons for 'anti-government' media to be allowed to exist, given that almost all we directly know of a government is via such media.

(As an aside - these issues are perversely distorted by the lens of ideology. The Flat Earthists scream for the ABC to air The Great Global Warming Swindle, in the interests of 'balance'. Given the status that these sorts of hired hacks have, 'balance' would be best served by airing such things at a rate of one per thousand, and only then, to satisfy the demands of propagandists and cranks.)

Stepping outside of the Murdoch echo-chamber, a number of views contrary to the Blair/Bolt/Fox bile have come to my attention. For instance, Richard Gott of The Guardian provides some facts of the case not available in Australia's media (or even blogosphere):

The debate in Venezuela has less to do with the alleged absence of freedom
of expression than with a perennially tricky issue locally referred to as
"exclusion", a shorthand term for "race" and "racism". RCTV was not just a
politically reactionary organisation which supported the 2002 coup attempt
against a democratically elected government - it was also a white supremacist
channel. Its staff and presenters, in a country largely of black and indigenous
descent, were uniformly white, as were the protagonists of its soap operas and
the advertisements it carried. It was "colonial" television, reflecting the
desires and ambitions of an external power.

The coup of 2002, the content of RCTV's programming, and the interests thereby served, are typically excluded from the facile gibberings of groupthink hacks such as BlairBolt. Gregory Wilpert described Venezuala's situation, in terms of the media, eloquently:

As far as world public opinion is concerned, as reflected in the
international media, the pronouncements of freedom of expression groups, and of
miscellaneous governments, Venezuela has finally taken the ultimate step to
prove its opposition right: that Venezuela is heading towards a dictatorship.
Judging by these pronouncements, freedom of speech is becoming ever more
restricted in Venezuela as a result of the non-renewal of the broadcast license
of the oppositional TV network RCTV. With RCTV going off the air at midnight of
May 27th, the country’s most powerful opposition voice has supposedly been
silenced.

It is generally taken for granted that any silencing of opposition
voices is anti-freedom of speech. But is an opposition voice really being
silenced? Is this the correct metaphor? Is the director of RCTV, Marcel Granier,
actually being silenced? No, a better metaphor is that the megaphone that
Granier (and others) used for the exercise of his free speech is being returned
to its actual owners – a megaphone that he had borrowed, but never owned. Not
only that, he is still allowed to use a smaller megaphone (cable &
satellite).

Whilst protests are floridly depicted on Fox, (and never degraded with 'rent-a-crowd' accusations as they are here), nobody bothers to report that a number of signatories from across Latin America actually support the Venezualan government's decision in the name of democracy, not against it. Even Australia's Guy Rundle, in Crikey, was able to temper the prevailing histrionic, hypocritical imbecility with a few oft-forgotten facts:

Both Matthew Weston and David Lodge (yesterday, comments), in criticising
Jenny Haines for defending the record of Hugo Chavez, argue that Chavez has more
or less abolished free media. This is utterly incorrect. 85% of Venezuelan media
remains in private hands -- a higher proportion than the UK, France or
Australian broadcast TV for that matter. Chavez may be doing a lot from the
executive, but that is what presidential government is about -- and the process
is backed by a solid parliamentary majority. Comparisons to Stalin and Hitler
are hysterical -- Venezuela is a social-democratic, mixed economy (with less
public ownership than Scandinavia), a fair electoral system and a free
press.

This is a country whose elections were subject to international scrutiny, and found to be fair. There are no evidence of human rights abuses in Venezuala, and all of the world's superpowers (and many of their proxies) have demonstrated far more sustained and egregious contempt for human life. Still, as BlairBolt will tell you, better some dead unionists than a democratically-elected 'leftist'. Think of the television.