What the mainstream media doesn’t tell you about Venezuela

A group of protesters took to the stage during the Lima Group press conference in Ottawa with a banner rejecting intervention in Venezuela (Lars Hagberg / AFP)

The Canadian government – supported by the Conservative and NDP “opposition” – has joined in a U.S.-led coup attempt against the constitutionally and democratically elected government of Venezuela headed by President Nicolás Maduro.

“We are indeed calling on the military of Venezuela, as we call on all Venezuelans, as we call on all governments of the world, to recognize Juan Guaido as interim president of Venezuela,” Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland said after hosting a meeting in Ottawa of the Lima Group, a collection of mainly right-wing Latin American governments plus Canada as the direct representative of North American imperialism.

Guaido recently proclaimed himself “president” gaining instant (and obviously scheduled) recognition of Trump and his allies including the Trudeau government.

I am currently in Mexico, where the newly-elected government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) has refused to join the pro-coup calls of other Lima Group members, now supplemented by similar calls of many European governments. I may write more on this dangerous confrontation, but I think Yves Engler, in the article below, makes essential points about the issues and the role of the Trudeau government. Engler is the author of several recent books on Canada’s international role, including his latest, Left, Right — Marching to the Beat of Imperial Canada.

Reposted, with thanks, from Yves Engler’s blog.

– Richard Fidler

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What the mainstream media doesn’t tell you about Venezuela

By Yves Engler

The corporate media is wholeheartedly behind the federal government’s push for regime change in Venezuela. The propaganda is thick and, as per usual, it is as much about what they don’t, as what they do, report. Here are some important developments that have largely been ignored by Canada’s dominant media:

• At the Organization of American States meeting called by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on January 25 the Canadian-backed interventionist resolution was defeated 18-16.
• The “Lima Group” of governments opposed to Venezuela’s elected president was established 18 months ago after Washington, Ottawa and others failed to garner the votes necessary to censure Venezuela at the OAS (despite the head of the OAS’s extreme hostility to Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro).
• Most of the world’s countries, with most of the world’s population, have failed to support the US/Canada push to recognize National Assembly head Juan Guaidóas president of Venezuela.
• The UN and OAS charters preclude unilateral sanctions and interfering in other countries’ affairs.
• UN Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur for sanctions, Idriss Jazairy, recently condemned US/Canadian sanctions on Venezuela.

As well, here are some flagrant double standards in Canadian policy the media have largely ignored:

• “Lima Group” member Jair Bolsonaro won the recent presidential election in Brazil largely because the most popular candidate, Lula Da Silva, was in jail. His questionable election took place two years after Lula’s ally, Dilma Rousseff, was ousted as president in a ‘parliamentary coup’.
• Another “Lima Group” member, Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernandez, defied that country’s constitution a year ago in running for a second term and then ‘won’ a highly questionable election.
• “At the same time”as Canada and the US recognized Juan Guaidó, notes Patrick Mbeko, “in Democratic Republic of Congo they refuse to recognize the massive recent victory of Martin Fayulu in the presidential election, endorsing the vast electoral fraud of the regime and its ally Félix Tshisekedi.”

Beyond what the media has ignored, they constantly cite biased sources without offering much or any background. Here are a couple of examples:

• The Globe and Mail has quoted Irwin Cotler in two recent articles on Venezuela. But, the decades-long anti-Palestinian and anti-Hugo Chavez activist lacks any credibility on the issue. At a press conference in May to release an OAS report on alleged rights violations in Venezuela, Cotler said Venezuela’s “government itself was responsible for the worst ever humanitarian crisis in the region.” Worse than the extermination of the Taíno and Arawak by the Spanish? Or the enslavement of five million Africans in Brazil? Or the 200,000 Mayans killed in Guatemala? Or the thousands of state-murdered “subversives” in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil?
• CBC and Canadian Press (to a slightly lesser extent) stories about former Venezuelan Colonel Oswaldo Garcia, whose family lives in Montréal, present him as a democracy activist. But, notes Poyan Nahrvar, Garcia participated in a coup attempt last year and then launched raids into Venezuela from Colombia until he was captured by the Venezuelan military.
• The media blindly repeats Ottawa’s depiction of the “Lima Group”, which Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described as an organization established to “bring peace, democracy and stability in Venezuela.” One report called it “a regional block of countries committed to finding a peaceful solution” to the crisis while another said its members “want to see Venezuela return to democracy.” This portrayal of the coalition stands its objective on its head. The “Lima Group” is designed to ratchet up international pressure on Maduro in hopes of eliciting regime change, which may spark a civil war. That is its reason for existence.

As part of nationwide protests against the “Lima Group” meeting taking place in Ottawa on Monday, activists in Montréal will rally in front of Radio Canada/CBC’s offices. They will be decrying not only Canada’s interference in Venezuela but the dominant media’s effort to “manufacture consent” for Canadian imperialism.