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<h1 class="reader-title">Western Media Fall in Lockstep for
Cheap Trump/Rubio Venezuela Aid PR Stunt</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">By Adam Johnson - FAIR -
February 11, 2019<br>
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<p>The Trump administration’s now completely
overt effort to overthrow Venezuelan
President Nicolás Maduro had a very
successful public relations effort this
week, as major Western media outlets
uniformly echoed its simplistic,
pre-packaged claim that the Venezuelan
government was heartlessly withholding
foreign aid:</p>
<ul>
<li><a
href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/07/americas/venezuela-aid-blocked-bridge-intl/index.html">Tensions
Rise as Venezuela Blocks Border Bridge
in Standoff Over Aid</a> (<strong>CNN,</strong> 2/7/19)</li>
<li><a
href="https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/02/07/venezuela-blocked-bridge-aid-crisis-kiley-dnt-lead-vpx.cnn">Maduro
Blocks Critical Aid Sent to Venezuela</a> (<strong>CNN</strong>,
2/7/19)</li>
<li><a
href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/aid-arrives-venezuela-border-us-demands-maduro/story?id=60923491">Aid
Arrives at Venezuela Border as US
Demands Maduro Let It In</a>(<strong>ABC
News,</strong> 2/7/19)</li>
<li><a
href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47143492">Venezuela
Crisis: Pompeo Demands Aid Corridor
Opened</a> (<strong>BBC</strong>,
2/7/19)</li>
<li><a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/02/08/us-says-maduro-is-blocking-aid-starving-people-venezuelan-says-his-people-arent-beggars/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9e86b7eb934d">The
US Says Maduro Is Blocking Aid to
Starving People. The Venezuelan Says His
People Aren’t Beggars</a>. (<strong>Washington
Post</strong>, 2/8/19)</li>
<li><a
href="https://www.npr.org/2019/02/08/692698637/humanitarian-aid-arrives-for-venezuela-but-maduro-blocks-it">Humanitarian
Aid Arrives for Venezuela — But Maduro
Blocks It</a>(<strong>NPR</strong>,
2/8/19)</li>
</ul>
<p>All of the above articles—and <a
href="https://www.google.com/search?q=venezuela+aid+maduro&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS777US777&source=lnms&tbm=nws&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjw3bCXqa_gAhWJxIMKHYoQBW0Q_AUIDigB&biw=1433&bih=793">scores
more like it</a>—repeated the same script:
Maduro was blocking aid from the US “out of
refusal to relinquish power,” preferring to
starve “his own people” rather than feed
them. It’s a simple case of good and evil—of
a tyrannical, paranoid dictator not letting
in aid to feed a starving population.</p>
<p>Except three pieces of key context are
missing. Context that, when presented to a
neutral observer, would severely undermine
the cartoonish narrative being advanced by
US media.</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Both the Red Cross and UN warned
the US not to engage in this aid PR
stunt.</strong></li>
<li><strong>The bridge in question is a
visual metaphor contrived by the Trump
administration of little practical
relevance.</strong></li>
<li><strong>The person in charge of US
operations in Venezuela has a history of
using aid as a cover to deliver weapons
to right-wing mercenaries.</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>(1) Not only has the international aid
community not asked for the “aid,” earlier
this week, both the International Red Cross
and United Nations warned the US to
explicitly <em>not</em> engage in these
types of PR stunts. As<strong> Washington
Post </strong>contributor Vincent Bevins <a
href="https://twitter.com/Vinncent/status/1093835945764442112">pointed
out</a>, the transparent cynicism of these
efforts was preemptively warned about by the
groups actually charged with keeping
starving people fed:</p>
<blockquote>
<p><a
href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/red-cross-warns-u-s-about-risks-of-sending-aid-to-venezuela"><strong>Red
Cross Warns US About Risks of Sending
Aid to Venezuela</strong></a> (<strong>PBS
NewsHour</strong>, 2/1/19):</p>
<p>The International Committee of the Red
Cross has warned the United States about
the risks of delivering humanitarian aid
to Venezuela without the approval of
security forces loyal to President Nicolas
Maduro.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2019/02/06/world/americas/06reuters-venezuela-politics-un.html"><strong>UN
Warns Against Politicizing
Humanitarian Aid in Venezuela</strong></a>(<strong>Reuters</strong>,
2/6/19):</p>
<p>UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations
warned on Wednesday against using aid as a
pawn in Venezuela after the United States
sent food and medicine to the country’s
border and accused President Nicolas
Maduro of blocking its delivery with
trucks and shipping containers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Indeed, as Bevins also <a
href="https://twitter.com/Vinncent/status/1093836995770699777">noted</a>,
the Red Cross has long been working with
local authorities inside Venezuela to
deliver relief, and just last week <a
href="https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-venezuela-politics-redcross/international-red-cross-steps-up-aid-operations-in-venezuela-idUKKCN1PV1WC">doubled
its budget</a> to do so. We have ample
evidence the Maduro government is more than
willing to work with international aid when
it’s offered in good faith, not when it’s a
thinly veiled mechanism to spur civil war
and contrive PR victories for those seeking
to overthrow the government. It’s not just
Maduro—as the Western media are presenting
it—who opposes the US aid convoy; it’s the
UN and Red Cross. Why do none of the above
reports note this rather key piece of
information, instead giving the reader the
impression it’s only the stance of a
sadistic, power-hungry madman?</p>
<p>(2) Despite dozens of media outlets giving
the impression (and sometimes explicitly <a
href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/06/americas/venezuela-aid-blocked-bridge-intl/index.html">saying</a>)
that the Venezuelan government shut down an
otherwise functioning pathway into the
country, the bridge in question hasn’t been
open for years.</p>
<p>It’s true the Venezuelan government appears
to have placed an oil tanker and cargo
containers on the bridge to prevent
incursion from the Colombian side, but the
other barriers, as writer and software
developer Jason Emery </p>
<p>/the-tienditas-bridge-blockade-f240728fe5f7">noted,
have been in place since at least 2016.
According to <strong>La Opinion</strong> (<a
href="https://www.laopinion.com.co/cucuta/tienditas-el-puente-de-40-millones-de-dolares-que-no-han-estrenado-106377">2/5/16</a>)<em>,</em> after
its initial construction in 2015, the bridge
has never been open to traffic. How can
Maduro, as the <strong>BBC</strong> <a
href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47143492">suggested</a>,
“reopen” a bridge that was never open?</p>
<p>The reality is <strong>BBC</strong> and
other Western media were just going along
with the narrative pushed by Sen. Marco
Rubio and Trump Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo, not bothering to check if their
primary visual narrative was based on a bad
faith, context-free PR stunt.</p>
<p>This point is a relatively superficial one,
but in a long term PR battle to win over
Western liberals for further military
escalation, the superficial matters a lot.
Rubio and the Trump administration cooked up
a gimmicky visual metaphor, and almost every
outlet uncritically passed it along, often
making factually inaccurate assumptions
along the way—assumptions the Trump State
Department and CIA coordinating the effort
knew very well they would make.</p>
<p>(3) The Venezuelan government has an
entirely rational reason to suspect the US
would use humanitarian aid as a cover to
smuggle in weapons to foment armed conflict:
The person <a
href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/26/elliott-abrams-venezuela-us-special-envoy">running
quarterback</a> for Trump on the current
Venezuela operation, <a
href="https://fair.org/home/scandal-what-scandal/">Elliot
Abrams</a>, literally did just that 30
years ago.</p>
<p>From the first two paragraphs (emphasis
added) of a 1987<strong> AP</strong>/<strong>New
York Times</strong> article on Elliott
Abrams, “Abrams Denies Wrongdoing in
Shipping Arms to Contras” (<a
href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/17/world/abrams-denies-wrongdoing-in-shipping-arms-to-contras.html">8/17/87</a>—h/t <a
href="https://twitter.com/kgosztola/status/1091848921771638785?s=21">Kevin
Gosztola</a>):</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Assistant Secretary of State Elliott
Abrams has defended his role in <strong>authorizing
the shipment of weapons on a
humanitarian aid flight to Nicaraguan
rebels,</strong> saying the operation
was ”strictly by the book.”</p>
<p>Mr. Abrams spoke at a news conference
Saturday in response to statements by
Robert Duemling, former head of the State
Department’s Nicaraguan humanitarian
assistance office, who said he had<strong> twice
ordered planes to shuttle weapons for
the Contras on aid planes at Mr. Abrams’
direction</strong> in early 1986.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s literally the same person. It’s not
that Maduro is vaguely paranoid the US, in
general, would dust off its 1980s’
Contra-backing Cold War playbook, or some
unspecified assumption about a higher-up or
two at State. It’s literally the exact same
person in charge of the operation who we
know—with 100 percent certainty, because he
admitted to it—has a history of using aid
convoys as a cover to smuggle in arms to
right-wing militias.</p>
<p>It’s all playing out right now, in real
time. The same actors, the same tricks, the
same patently disingenuous concern for the
starving poor. And the US media is stripping
it of all this essential context, presenting
these radical regime-change operators as
bleeding heart humanitarians.</p>
<p>The same US media outlets that have
expressly fundraised and run ad campaigns on
their image as anti-Trump truth-tellers have
mysteriously taken at face value everything
the Trump White House and its
neoconservative allies have said in their
campaign to overthrow the government of
Venezuela. The self-aggrandizing “<a
href="https://fair.org/home/corporate-press-stoops-to-absurdity-to-balance-trumps-border-wall-lies/">factchecking</a>”
brigade that emerged to confront the Trump
administration is suddenly nonexistent as it
rolls out a transparent, cynical PR strategy
to delegitimize a Latin American government
it’s trying to overthrow.</p>
<p><em>The views expressed in this article are
the author's own and do not necessarily
reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis
editorial staff.</em></p>
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