By
Finian Cunningham
February 15, 2019 "Information
Clearing House"
-
US-backed Venezuelan opposition figure Juan
Guaido has claimed that 300,000 of his
compatriots will die from starvation – if
American “humanitarian” aid is not let into
the South American country.
No doubt, this opposition figure is being
coached by his minders in Washington to set
up a Western media drama in order to put
pressure on the government of President
Nicolas Maduro.
The events unfolding have an unmistakeable
propaganda stamp, yet the Western media and
certain disgraceful European governments
have sheepishly gone along with this ruse
for US-led regime change in Venezuela.
The dutiful Western corporate news media
which have so far pushed the Washington
narrative on Venezuela are spinning the
drama according to the script. The narrative
being: the benevolent, caring US government
is sending humanitarian aid to help the
starving people of Venezuela, but the "Maduro
regime" is wickedly blocking aid from
reaching the needy. Oh how nefarious!
Please, please Uncle Sam quickly intervene…
send in the merciful US marines!
Juan Guaido, the 35-year-old US-educated
opposition figure whom most Venezuelans had
never heard of until recently, is
breathlessly described in Western media
reports as the "internationally recognized
president".
Are You Tired Of The Lies And Non-Stop Propaganda? |
That's a lie for a start. Guaido is
recognized by the US and some other states,
but the vast majority of nations continue to
recognize the government of President Maduro
as the legitimate authority. Maduro was
inaugurated on January 10 for the second
time as elected president. That's when
Washington began to crank up its
regime-change campaign in this country,
which happens to possess the world's
biggest-known oil reserves.
In an audacious subterfuge, Guaido
proclaimed himself "acting president" of
Venezuela on January 23. It was a move fully
orchestrated by the Trump White House as a
step towards regime change.
Guaido is now contriving a set-piece drama
over humanitarian aid which is misleadingly
being reported as blocked by the Maduro
government on a single and actually defunct
border crossing with Colombia. The bridge
was built in 2015 but never opened due to an
ongoing dispute between the two countries.
Juan Guaido, who has documented links with
the American CIA, is being used like a
puppet by the regime-change schemers in the
Trump administration. They include war hawks
John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, as well as
convicted felon Elliot Abrams who during the
1980s ran weapons to anti-government death
squads in Central America under the cover of
"humanitarian aid".
The contrived deadline set for February 23 —
to mark a month since the White House
anointed Guaido as "leader" — is aimed at
fomenting social discord within Venezuela
and a moral imperative for Washington to act
on its threats of military intervention.
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this
week warned Washington against using
military force in Venezuela. Russia, like
the majority of UN members, has continued to
respect Venezuela's sovereignty and its
elected authorities. Moscow has denounced
what it calls another illegal regime-change
maneuver by Washington.
In the fog of propaganda churned out by
Western news media it is sometimes difficult
to discern what's really going on. The
denigration of President Maduro and his
socialist government in Caracas is almost
relentless. The amplification of
"pro-democracy opposition" seduces false
perception. One would not know, for example,
from Western media coverage that Maduro
continues to be supported by the majority of
Venezuelans. One would not know that most
Venezuelans are against any form of US
military aggression in their country. One
would not know that the economic chaos in
Venezuela has been largely caused by
unremitting US-imposed sanctions on the
nation's oil-dependent economy.
Never mind sending "humanitarian aid". The
best way to alleviate the hardship in
Venezuela is for the US to stop hammering
the country with illegal economic warfare.
But here is one word by which to divine the
truth of the situation: "Yemen".
This week, the United Nations again
reiterated desperate appeals for
humanitarian intervention in the Arab
country. Some 14 million people are on the
brink of starvation, according to the UN.
That is about half the country's population.
That truly enormous human disaster compares
with the alleged number of 300,000
Venezuelans said to be at risk of
malnutrition. That figure is unverified and
is bandied about by the US-backed
opposition. But let's take it as authentic
for sake of argument. That equates to less
than one per cent of the Venezuelan
population.
The infernal, pandemic suffering in Yemen is
barely reported by Western news media, save
for the occasional report which is usually
shorn of any meaningful context. Yet the
situation is incomparably more urgent than
what is occurring in Venezuela.
There are no plane-loads of food and
medicines arriving from the US landing in
Yemen. There are few anguished calls in
Western media about imminent deaths of
children and mothers.
No, all the "concern" and drama is being
focused on Venezuela where — although a
country in turmoil — there are no skeletal
children nor massive numbers of babies dying
from cholera and other preventable diseases,
as in Yemen.
Why aren't CNN, BBC, France 24, and so on,
bringing daily reports from on the ground in
Yemen and making those reports top of their
news bulletins? Why isn't the US government
mobilizing millions of dollars in aid and
emergency food shipments to Yemen where the
numbers of hungry civilians are incomparably
greater.
The answer is plain to see. The US and its
Western allies do not care about
humanitarian suffering. Neither do Western
news media who obviously are led by their
noses. It is propaganda pretense.
If Western media had any principles they
would be exposing the vile links between
their governments and arms companies and the
Saudi war in Yemen causing the human
catastrophe there. Instead, these media are
too obsequiously playing up the false drama
over Venezuela to facilitate their
governments' criminal agenda of regime
change.
Yemen is proof of the moral bankruptcy that
resides in Washington, and much of the
corporate news media.
Finian Cunningham has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in newspaper journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For nearly 20 years, he worked as an editor and writer in major news media organisations, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent.
This article was originally published by "Sputnik"-
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