Stratfor.com tells lies

[donsu]

http://www.bigleftoutside.com/

20 Stratfor Lies About Latin America

-snip-

Stratfor is one of these snake-oil disinfo sales firms that traffics in "intelligence briefings" for people gullible enough to pay for them. Imagine that: you can get lied to for free all over this great land, but some people actually pay to be deceived!

From time to time, they send a free one out via email. Stratfor's track record in Latin America is abhorrent (how many years in a row did it predict that Hugo Chavez would not survive that year as Venezuela's president?). It's "spin" is ideological: pro-corporate, which is no surprise, given that it's undisclosed clientele purchases something called "Business Intelligence Services."

-snip-

I found - count 'em - 20 obvious, knowingly false, lies in that single document (well, one of those 20 lies might have just been a boneheaded error that proves they don't use decent fact-checkers, but the rest are knowing lies). Anyway, in a 2,888 word document, I found 20 gross, demonstrable, distortions of the truth. Here they are. It's a long document and a long, section-by-section, rebuttal from me, so I've tucked it below in the "Extended Entry" box. Just click it to read.

-snip-

The #2 Stratfor Lie: Of the "four Latin American presidents" that Stratfor claims were "toppled," here are the true facts. Peru's authoritarian Alberto Fujimori resigned. Argentina's Fernando de la Rua resigned. Bolivia's Gonzalo "Goni" Sanchez de Lozada resigned. In those three cases, none of them resigned under military force. Popular, unarmed, protests led, in each case, to a consensus that the leader had no support among his countrymen. That is not a "toppling." It is a peaceful, orderly, constitutional, change in power, like, say, the 1974 resignation of Richard M. Nixon in the United States. Very much like that, in fact. In the fourth case, Ecuador's Jamil Mahauad resigned in 2000 after a rebellion that included a dissident military faction and a popular unarmed uprising.
-snip-
--------------------------------------

[NNN0LHI]

1. The freaKers just love this source. The cite it all the time n/t

[MSchreader]

2. Stratfor lies?! I'm shocked! Shocked, I tell ya!

Seriously, folks on the far left have known Stratfor was a Drudgesque "information" outfit for some time.

Martin

[cliss]

3. I do believe you're right, Donsu.

I used to quote them all the time when I first jumped on the DU. I was truly impressed, and felt grateful about getting their tiny "freebies"; abbreviated articles about current political happenings. Like a sample cup of wine at a vineyard.

I had no reason to doubt them. They claim they are Ex-CIA agents with "insider" knowledge that journalists, government people and high-ranking officials can't get their hands on.

And a membership is spendy on that web site. I think the minimum is $99 per year. So it sounds good.

However, I started noticing some inconsistencies in their stories. They made the claim that the US was preparing to bomb Iran. Not 2 weeks later, they wrote that the US would be entering into an alliance with Iran to defeat the resistance fighters in Iraq.

Nor do I detect any criticism of what's going on. They correctly stated that the war in Iraq is about control of the Middle East, but they forgot about the oil.

Forget about Statfor.

[UTUSN]

4. Great Blog, Thanks. *Lots* of Goodies. n/t