The Guardian's attack on Venezuela. posted by Richard Seymour

The link on the main page says "The Inside Story of Venezuela's Regime of Terror". You have the picture already: a regime of terror is one like Saddam's or Suharto's, a one-party state with a mass grave beneath the ground and a mass prison above it. The article, mumbled into a dictaphone by Rory Carroll, clarifies that it is only discussing Venezuelan prisons. To be clear, it discusses only a few of those prisons, and concentrates on Los Teques, where British and other foreign prisoners are held. There is mention of a "killing zone" and men with "glazed eyes" bearing knives and mobile phones. But it becomes clear that they are the Venezuelan prisoners, not government death squads. Most of the foreign prisoners are 'drug mules', and are threatened with rape and murder by other prisoners. In fact, it becomes clear that the terror is of the kind meted out by violent inmates, not by the state itself.

Prisons are hellish places, to be sure. Regimes of terror, no doubt. If our mainstream liberal newspaper is advocating the abolition of such institutions, I am all ears. But it is not. It is engaged in mud-throwing. The Venezuelan Prisons Observatory, a group usually cited by the State Department, but which has been in operation since 1994, is source for some serious criticisms of Venezuelan prisons. There are some interesting anecdotes and statistics, and I wouldn't be dismissive of every single claim made.

However, the framing of the story is simply rhubarb. There is no 'regime' of terror. Among South American states, Venezuela has the lowest prison population rate. In fact, it is lower than all American states, including the US and Canada, and is lower than most European countries including the United Kingdom. Unsurprisingly, the US has the largest rate of prisoners in the world. 30% of black males will spend some time in prison in America. The US tortures its own prisoners as a matter of policy, not to mention those it imprisons illegally, wherever in the world they have been kidnapped. That's a global "regime of terror" that The Guardian devoutly wishes it could support, if only a Democrat were in charge.