IAPA: the oligarchy of disinformation, advised by Bush’s spokeswoman IAPA: the oligarchy of disinformation, advised by Bush’s spokeswoman

BY JEAN-GUY ALLARD —de Granma International—

WITH the participation of Bush’s spokeswoman in Congress, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, terrorist-at-large Carlos Alberto Montaner and former Venezuelan TV magnate Marcel Granier, the Inter-American Press Association has just ended another one of its shows in Miami aimed at generating headlines against the Cuban Revolution and against Bolivarian Venezuela.

The star of the event, Bush’s top representative on foreign affairs in the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, even attacked Ecuador and Nicaragua, along with Cuba and Venezuela, in her interminable sermonizing on the issue of freedom of the press and human rights.

After trotting out her usual rhetoric on the presidents of Cuba and Venezuela, she said that "we have to be alert" to the return of Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas, whose actions "we have to supervise."

Regarding Ecuador, the Bush spokeswoman called on her interlocutors to "monitor" President Rafael Correa, who, she says, is harassing the media by calling it a mafia.

There is no doubt that when it comes to the Mafia, she has extensive knowledge.

The daughter of a deceased CIA collaborator, this congresswoman was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for the first time after leading a campaign to release terrorist Orlando Bosch from prison in 1989.

Now celebrated by her IAPA associates, Ros-Lehtinen had a run-in with freedom of the press a few months ago, when she appeared in a British documentary titled 638 Ways to Kill Castro, in which she can be heard saying with conviction: "I applaud any initiative to kill Fidel Castro."

In response to criticism of this, Ros-Lehtinen lied to reporters, affirming that her statement was staged. However, she had no alternative but to admit she had said it after evidence was published on the Internet by the documentary’s makers, showing that she had indeed pronounced those murderous words.

THE HEIRS OF COLONEL DUBOIS

The IAPA, which claims to represent freedom of the press in the Americas, is nothing more than a cartel of big-business media executives on the continent, created in New York in 1950, in an operation directed by a U.S. military intelligence colonel, Jules Dubois.

From 1951 until his death, this agent, under the cover of the Chicago Tribune, presided over the Commission for Freedom of the Press and Information, described as the IAPA’s "backbone" because of its ideological role.

Dubois was found dead on August 16, 1966 at the age of 56, in a hotel in Bogotá, Colombia. His remains were buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, which is reserved for the empire’s "heroes."

It is not surprising, then, that one of the IAPA panels at the conference should include the presence of Carlos Alberto Montaner, recruited by the CIA in Havana, where he dedicated himself to making bombs.

In 2006, the name of this agent —disguised as a Miami Herald columnist— appeared on a list of Miami journalists who were renting themselves to the Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB), the mother ship of Radio and TV Martí and the U.S. government’s anti-Cuban propaganda apparatus.

With the same imperialist logic, the IAPA awarded its Grand Prize to Venezuelan businessman Marcel Granier for his "tenacious struggle for freedom of the press in the Western Hemisphere," as the organization’s president, Rafael Molina, said without batting an eyelash. Molina, 77, is with the El Nacional newspaper in Santo Domingo, where his friendly ties with the U.S. Embassy and USAID are well-known.

All of Venezuela remembers how, on April 11, 2002 Granier was celebrating in Miraflores with Pedro Carmona, the dictator of the coup d’état, while snipers were shooting down civilians in front of the presidential residence. Hours later, his now-defunct TV network, RCTV, was given instructions to ignore the huge masses of people who ended the fascist coup.

A COLD SHOWER

After ending their meeting, the continental media capos got a cold shower when Honduran President Manuel Zelaya spoke. He criticized the powerful economic and political forces in his country that are misinforming the people.

He emphasized that the Honduran people have the right to receive truthful information, and not "collections of gossip, lists of calumnies and a set of lies and manipulations."

"We cannot sell poor-quality products. The exercise of journalism should not be something dirty, with no values, and destructive to social morale," he added, in the presence of several members of his country’s media involved in campaigns against him.

The IAPA mostly represents the most powerful newspapers controlled by different national oligarchies in Latin America. They are all in a serious crisis at this time as a result of the spectacular growth of the Internet. They have been severely affected by the dramatic fall in the number of newspaper readers and the consequent reduction of their income.

This association of media executives held their meeting at the Hotel Inter-Continental in Miami, even though their main offices are located in that mafia capital of Florida. The building where the IAPA’s offices are located is called the Jules Dubois.