APRIL 15, 2020
LUCAS KOERNER AND RICARDO VAZ
The Trump administration unveiled on March 31 a “democratic transition” plan to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from office, in favor of a “council of state” composed of both opposition and ruling party loyalists.
The plan was, however, less an offer to negotiate than a diktat, with the US State Department (3/31/20) vowing that “sanctions will remain in effect, and increase, until the Maduro regime accepts a genuine political transition.”
Despite the obvious mafioso overtones, Washington’s stenographers in the corporate press were quick to present the initiative as “sanctions relief,” once again whitewashing murderous US economic warfare against Venezuela (FAIR.org, 2/6/19, 6/14/19, 6/26/19).
Western journalists’ callous obfuscation of sanctions’ deadly toll, especially amid a global pandemic (FAIR.org, 3/25/20), goes hand in hand with their parroting of bogus “narco-terrorism” charges leveled against Maduro and top Venezuelan officials, which butresses Washington’s ever-illicit casus belli.
More:
https://fair.org/home/corporate-media-cover-for-us-mob-threats-against-venezuela/
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JANUARY 10, 2020
For Western Press, the Only Coup in Venezuela Is Against Guaidó
LUCAS KOERNER
The international corporate media have entered crisis mode following the replacement of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as head of the country’s National Assembly.
In headline after headline, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro “Takes Over” (NBC, 1/6/20), “Claims Control of” (New York Times, 1/5/20; CNBC, 1/6/20) or “Seizes” (Reuters, 1/5/20; NPR, 1/6/20) parliament, and “Ousts” Guaidó (Wall Street Journal, 1/5/20) in the process.
The Washington Post (1/5/20) takes this hysteria to another level, hyperbolically proclaiming that “Venezuela’s Last Democratic Institution Falls as Maduro Attempts De Facto Takeover of National Assembly.”
Such headlines obscure the elementary if inconvenient fact that Guaidó failed to secure the necessary votes from his own coalition’s deputies to continue as president of the legislature, leading him to convene a parallel, ad hoc session in the offices of the right-wing El Nacional newspaper.
Serving up state propaganda
Corporate journalists repeat unceasingly the US State Department talking point that the January 5 assembly election, which chose Luis Parra as the legislative body’s new president, was “phony” because Guaidó and his loyalists were barred from attending the session, rendering the vote void.
More:
https://fair.org/home/for-western-press-the-only-coup-in-venezuela-is-against-guaido/
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Washington Post Exposes Own Bias On Venezuela
by cameronreilly | Feb 25, 2020 |
In Ishaan Tharoor’s recent update on Venezuela, the typical US government / media propaganda / disinformation campaign is in full swing.
For example, he talks about the “grim conditions created by a dysfunctional economy”, but fails to mention these grim conditions are largely caused by crippling and illegal US sanctions. The sanctions have been criticized by the UN high commissioner for human rights who said last year they would ‘significantly exacerbate the crisis for millions of ordinary Venezuelans’, but the Post doesn’t even mention them until paragraph 8 and even then not mentioning the UN criticism or the illegality of the sanctions. He also doesn’t mention the report published by the Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research last year that 40,000 people may have died in Venezuela since 2017 because of US sanctions.
The Post then goes on to quote Ecuadoran President Lenín Moreno who “insisted that Maduro’s “despotic regime” had to go”. Moreno is the guy who took a sharp turn to the right when he became President in 2017, after a meeting with Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort (currently serving seven years in jail), then revoked Julian Assange’s asylum, after allowing Assange’s private conversations with his lawyers be bugged and shared with the US (it’s alleged), and accepted a US-backed $10 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. It’s the same Moreno who has been roundly criticised by his own people during the 2019 Ecuadorian protests, and who is currently sitting on an all-time low popularity, reaching only 7% of approval as of February 2020.
https://cameronreilly.com/washington-post-exposes-own-bias-on-venezuela/
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Participation of the United States in regime change in Latin America involved US-backed coups d'état aimed at replacing left-wing leaders with right-wing leaders, military juntas, or other authoritarian regimes.[1] Lesser intervention of economic and military variety was prevalent during the Cold War in line with the Truman Doctrine of containment, but regime change involvement would increase after the drafting of NSC 68 [Full Document] which advocated for more aggressive combating of potential Soviet allies.[2] Several instances of intervention and regime change occurred during the early-20th-century "Banana Republic" era of Latin American history to promote American business interests in the region.[1] United States influenced regime change in this period of Latin American history started after the signing of the Treaty of Paris in the wake of the Spanish-American War. Cuba gained its independence, while Puerto Rico and the Philippines were occupied by the United States.[3] Expansive and imperialist U.S. foreign policy combined with new economic prospects led to increased U.S. intervention in Latin America from 1898 to the early 1930s.[4]
More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America
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Media Assault on Latin America
US media coverage of the rise of the Latin American left is an echo of the Bush Administration's simplistic, knee-jerk rhetoric.
By Jonathan Cook APRIL 13, 2006
. . .
Perhaps the most obvious example of skewed coverage of Latin America has been Venezuela. The editorial pages have featured a remarkable outpouring of fear and loathing toward President Hugo Chávez. Whatever else one thinks of him, Chávez has won two independently monitored elections–and he survived a 2002 coup and a 2004 presidential recall referendum, both of which received more than a strong whiff of US support. Yet major US newspapers have consistently demonized Chávez, labeling him a “quasi-dictator” and “strongman.” Columnists like the Washington Post‘s Jackson Diehl and the Miami Herald‘s Andrés Oppenheimer have wielded the sharpest hatchets. Diehl, for instance, labeled pro-Chávez social movements “anti-democratic” while lauding the anti-Chávez opposition, which used such tactics as distributing false exit poll results during the 2004 referendum.
Away from the opinion pages, recent news coverage of Venezuela has been highly critical. Several articles have scornfully questioned Chávez’s ambitious antipoverty agenda. In a cynical July 2004 piece, Juan Forero of the New York Times implied that this “spending spree” was mostly just a “tool for solidifying support for Mr. Chávez” among poor voters. And rather than report on any of the government’s successful projects, a January 2006 Times article focused on its failure to rebuild a road between Caracas and the airport. Less ink is spilled on where these social programs originated: a desperate need to address poverty that worsened during years of neoliberal policies and control of the nation’s oil wealth by a small elite.
Away from the opinion pages, recent news coverage of Venezuela has been highly critical. Several articles have scornfully questioned Chávez’s ambitious antipoverty agenda. In a cynical July 2004 piece, Juan Forero of the New York Times implied that this “spending spree” was mostly just a “tool for solidifying support for Mr. Chávez” among poor voters. And rather than report on any of the government’s successful projects, a January 2006 Times article focused on its failure to rebuild a road between Caracas and the airport. Less ink is spilled on where these social programs originated: a desperate need to address poverty that worsened during years of neoliberal policies and control of the nation’s oil wealth by a small elite.
. . .
All these changes are coming in a continent that emerged only recently from decades of death squads, armed rebellions and military dictatorships, many of which were openly backed by a US government that had not yet found its current religion about “democracy.” So it’s strange to hear David Rieff (in a New York Times Magazine article about Morales) argue that the return of the left across Latin America “is more a sign of despair than of hope.” Rather than giving this dramatic period of change the thoughtful treatment it deserves, the mainstream US media too often sound like a mouthpiece of Wall Street and the State Department. Given the crucial role of the press in questioning orthodoxy and shaping public opinion, this failure to take Latin Americans and their concerns more seriously is tragic indeed.
More:
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/media-assault-latin-america/
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ETC.
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