US Murders Sleeping Civilians, Media Calls It "Audacious, Stunning"

And other rhetorical slights of hand

I apologise for the back-to-back Venezuela posts, but when the teachable moments come along, one must capitalise on them.

It has now been 24 hours since the US abducted Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro and rendered him, complete with war on terror-style ear defenders and a blindfold, to New York, to face phoney charges of being the head of a non-existent drug cartel.

(The ear defenders and blindfold, as well as the picture published by the US of Maduro wearing them, are, incidentally, breaches of that quaint document known as the Geneva Convention.)

In the process of the abduction, it is being reported that at least 40 Venezuelans were killed, including civilians who were sleeping in their beds when a hellfire missile from a US fighter jet tore through an apartment building.

Damage caused by a US missile on an apartment building in Caracas

PBS, The Guardian, The Washington Post and others called this murderous violence and flagrant breach of international law “an audacious raid.” ABC News called it “stunning.” Sky News said it was “spectacular” and “stunning” and the bombs “lit up the night sky.” You’d be forgiven for thinking they were describing a new year’s eve fireworks display not a murderous coup against the leader of a sovereign country.

European leaders from Macron to Starmer, while cautious in their response, refused to condemn the attack, all trotting out the warmongering justification (as predicted yesterday), that Maduro was a dictator who had to go. Macron artfully employed the passive voice, as if Maduro had been removed by magic rather than via a violent attack.

Leaders in South America struck a different tone, of course. Brazil, Colombia, Cuba and Mexico all condemned an illegal act of war and state terrorism. And it is not hyperbolic to think they may very well be next. In a Fox News interview Trump said “something is going to have to be done about Mexico” that “Cuba is going to be something we’ll end up talking about” and “we have to do it again in other countries. We can do it again, too. Nobody can stop us."

He really said this. The praise and lack of condemnation has emboldened him.

Shame on Europe, and shame on liberal leaders and their media handmaidens who postured about the dangers of Trump only to embrace his gangsterism.

Let’s also get something else straight. Venezuela was not being crushed by Maduro. It was being crushed by the US.

The Bolivarian Revolution

When Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999 on a popular uprising against a neoliberal right-wing government and IMF-imposed austerity programmes, Venezuela was broken. Poverty was over 50%, nearly a quarter of the country lived in extreme poverty, 10% of adults were illiterate and infant mortality was more than 20%. By the time Chavez died and Maduro took over, infant mortality had fallen to 13.7 per 1,000 live births, poverty had been cut to under 30%, extreme poverty had more than halved to 8.5%, and life expectancy had increased nearly two years, to match the regional average. On top of this, GDP had doubled, unemployment was just 7.6%, and 2.6 million young adults were enrolled in university, compared with under a million pre-Chavez.

Back then, The Guardian reported regularly on the successes of Chavismo.

Anyone repeating the line that Venezuela has been immiserated by the socialist revolution, then, is simply a liar or an imperial stooge.

It is true to say that from the mid 2010s onwards, many of these indicators regressed. But all the decent literature on this, including UN reports, puts the blame on punishing US and western sanctions designed to impoverish ordinary Venezuelans to the point of rebellion.

A 2021 report by the UN’s independent expert on Venezuela, Alena Douhan, laid this all bare.

In the report, Douhan says the sanctions programme against Venezuela amounts to “an economic blockade” and has had what she called a “devastating effect on the living conditions of ordinary Venezuelans.” Douhan said that “sectoral sanctions on the oil, gold and mining industries and the freezing of all Central Bank assets have…significantly reduced revenues, affecting public electricity, gas, water, transport, telephone and communication systems, as well as schools, hospitals and other public institutions.” She said these sanctions have led to a medicine, food and nutrition crisis. The US Treasury, the report says, specifically targeted a food programme introduced by Maduro to alleviate hunger. Douhan’s report concludes that the sanctions programme against Venezuela is “politically motivated, undermines the most fundamental human rights and violates international law.”

The US and the west deliberately crippled Venezuela.

Again, anyone who omits this critical context is a liar or a stooge. Which is to say, the entirety of the mainstream media.

Have you come across any of these facts, any of this context, in the reporting over the last day? Has mainstream media reported on the fact that the drug trafficking charges are laughably contrived? Of course not. Because the reporting exists not to educate, but indoctrinate. It exists not to rouse scepticism or anger against imperialism and the status quo, but to buttress and support it.

Maduro was also one of the few world leaders who stood in solidarity with the Palestinians and called out Zionism as a hateful ideology of terror. His removal is also a coup for Israel.

And finally, the official story from the western media and political establishment is that the opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, leads a massive popular movement and the party she leads won the last election. But last night Trump said she can’t be the leader, because she has no widespread respect or support. Which is odd, given that the claims against Maduro as a dictator are based explicitly on the fact that Corina Machado is the legitimate leader with popular support.

This then is another extremely revealing facet of the story you won’t be reading about in mainstream coverage.

The story of the last 24 hours, as well as a story of imperial violence, has also been the story of a broken, corrupt and captured media. A media which does not speak truth to power, but which amplifies the lies and propaganda of the powerful.

A media which deliberately omits critical context and manufactures consent for violence.

A media which professes concern for international law, democracy and for the downtrodden, and then cheers on coups and the violence of empire.

The last 24 hours have once again demonstrated the bankruptcy of mainstream media and why independent voices are more important than ever.

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