🧵Whenever we read a corporate media piece about Venezuela, the 1st instinct is to go crazy at all the disingenuous reporting and biased narratives. Not great for your health. But after we’ve gathered ourselves, it’s useful to break down the propaganda. Bear w/ us here! (thread)
The piece we’re tackling this time around is from the bourgeoisie mouthpiece that is Bloomberg (@business). It comes on the heels of supremely dishonest contenders from the @guardian and @Reuters (links at the end of the thread) bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
Look at this headline! FFS! Venezuela doesn’t have “two presidents,” it has never had “two presidents”! It has one president (Maduro), who won a *presidential election*. And then there was this moron @jguaido who, on US orders, *proclaimed himself* “interim president”
We ought to underline this entire introductory paragraph… First off, notice how for Bloomberg going to Davos and being invited by Trump to the State of the Union somehow legitimizes someone as “president.” Politicians should stop running in elections and secure those invitations
But it gets worse. You’ll forgive us, but we’re not ready to proclaim an opposition politician as “president” because he organized large (not “giant”) opposition rallies in opposition strongholds. Also Maduro didn’t need to “douse” anything, it fizzled out within weeks
Again, there was nothing that could even remotely be described as a “stalemate.” Maduro just kept running his government, paying public sector wages, commanding the armed forces, etc. And this buffoon ran around playing “pretend president” w/ the US and loyal acolytes
The only thing that’s “bizarre” here is the disgusting corporate media coverage. “Fraud” allegations never need any evidence, and Washington declaring a puppet as president, w/ all its acolytes going along, is deemed normal by these loyal stenographers
Guaidó only had “60% support” in DC (or according to unreliable pro-opp pollsters). His “large crowds” never moved an inch out of the middle-class opposition strongholds, while Chavista marches also became a regular feature. Of course the media establishment will not report it
Count on the media to misrepresent Guaidó’s coup failure as “soldiers rebuffed calls to defect.” The cheap Obama lookalike tried an outright military putsch and even contracted mercenaries, only w/ troglodytical skills and underestimating the anti-imperialism of the Vzlan people
Wouldn’t be a description of the Venezuelan economy w/o a terrible misrepresentation of sanctions. These measures were levied on all economic sectors, not just oil. And they weren’t just on “oil exports”, they went from banning imports to secondary sanctions on intl companies
For a better understanding of US sanctions, their deadly consequences, and how the media establishment has gone out of its way to endorse them, watch the following video: venezuelanalysis.com/video/15519
We don’t really care if US surrogates get accurately depicted in the media or not but this is hilarious. The main opposition forces ousted Guaidó b/c he became a disastrous embarrassment, and the corporate media thinks it gets to decide who represents the “pro-democracy movement”
Normalizing mobster antics. Corporate journos don’t see anything wrong w/ the US using frozen, sorely needed funds to blackmail the Venezuelan govt into talking to its puppets. Nor do they see anything wrong w/ threats of more sanctions that kill 1000s of civilians #SanctionsKill
As promised, here’s a thread on that most liberal of rags, the @guardian
Follow Venezuelanalysis to get accurate, on-the-ground news and analysis on all things Venezuela. And as a bonus we will destroy the pro-imperialist propaganda from the media establishment.
🧵When it comes to reporting about Venezuela, there is no corporate outlet even remotely close to the level of dishonesty of the New York Times. Seriously, it's one piece of misrepresented bullsh*t after another. Follow this thread as we break it down
This is the piece:
The article is not to be taken seriously b/c it starts from a blatant lie. US "prodding" has nothing to do with Venezuela holding elections. It is dictated by the Constitution that they be held this year and they were never in doubt shorturl.at/LFusR
Anyone not high on Western exceptionalism would actually be ashamed of their government meddling in other countries' affairs. But alas, this is the NYT.
In corporate media spiel, "restoring democracy" just means a US puppet being back in the presidential palace
🧵🧵The border dispute between Venezuela and Guyana has flared up recently, leading to a war of words, increased military deployment and increasing signs of US intervention. We have prepared an infographic to explain the history and context of the controversy (thread)
The Essequibo Strip is a sparsely populated, 160,000 square km region spanning to the west of the Essequibo River. It has been the subject of centuries of dispute which, sadly, have never taken into account the indigenous population
Instead, it has always been pretty much about resources. Gold mining is what drove British expansion westward (more on this below), and the recent discoveries of massive oil deposits led to Venezuela and Guyana raising tensions too
About time... Spain's @el_pais reports that the $3 billion in frozen Vzlan assets will soon be released. This was agreed to between the Venezuelan govt and opposition last November! But this thread is to point out the dishonest b.s. from the Spanish establishment's mouthpiece 🧵
This is the article in question:
It essentially relies on anonymous sources who say that the funds will soon be released. El País then covers this fairly straightforward report in a cloak of lies and misconceptionsenglish.elpais.com/international/…
So it begins. How dare Maduro want to access Venezuelan funds? Then it's incredibly disingenuous and racist to claim the govt wants to fix schools/hospitals to "polish its image." If a western govt builds a hospital, it's laudable. If Vzla does it it's to fool voters. GTFOH
🧵🧵Worse than a broken clock... Even when it wants to state the obvious, in this case that sanctions are a terrible and wrong policy, the @nytimes remains fully draped in US exceptionalism. The corporate media are an active front of the US empire (thread)
The article in question () is instantly off to a bad start. We are supposed to agree that Iran and NK should not have nuclear weapons, unlike the only country to ever use them. And would they also call the Iraq war an "egregious violation of intl laws"? https://t.co/ElNZjjKTlTtinyurl.com/3rmur79p
The end of the first section shows that this editorial is really not going anywhere since it's based on the outrageously false premise that the US should have some kind of god-given ability to impose murderous sanctions on other nations when it so pleases
🧵🧵🧵We just came across an incredible piece from the Financial Times (not in a good way). It has a remarkable blend of fallacious arguments, outright lies, bias, and lack of standards. This is a long thread, so bear with us!
This is the article in question from @FT (tinyurl.com/y32pmvtk). You can tell from the off that you're in for a ride because it's based on this assumption that the West "presses for free and fair elections" when this in fact has happened less frequently than Yeti sightings
FT "journalists" must get a bonus for every use of the word "authoritarian." It's not often that a piece starts w/ an outright falsehood, b/c "democracy" never left Venezuela, only the US didn't like election results. But this apocalyptic tone is worthy of a good chuckle
The US-backed Venezuelan opposition, which runs an imaginary parliament, wants a US court to declare a Venezuelan bond as invalid to try and soften the disaster brought by their complete bundling when in charge of CITGO
The strategy haw few chances of success, for several reasons, not least of them that when this National Assembly was actually running it *did not* formally declare the bond issued by the Maduro govt as illegal. A US-backed group was not about to challenge financial investors
.@Reuters will not let a short, straightforward piece get in the way of some outrageous lying. US sanctions have been classified as "collective punishment" against the Vzlan population, and these stenographer clowns write "sanctions against the Maduro govt" #SanctionsKill