Friday 26th of April 2024
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‘calibrated’ dishonesty: western media coverage of venezuela sanctions……..

US sanctions, even by outdated estimates, have killed tens of thousands of Venezuelans. The unilateral policies have been widely condemned by multilateral bodies and human rights experts for their deadly impact, as well as for violating international law (Venezuelanalysis, 9/18/21, 9/15/21, 3/25/21, 1/31/19).

But corporate media readers/viewers in the Global North are completely oblivious to this reality, as establishment outlets have gone out of their way to endorse sanctions by whitewashing their effects altogether (FAIR.org, 6/4/21, 12/19/20)—writing for example, that Washington has “sanctioned the government” (AP, 5/21/22) rather than the people of Venezuela.

A recent policy opening, microscopic to begin with and closed quickly enough, put all these dishonest traits on display, illustrating how free a rein US officials have to continue inflicting collective punishment on Venezuelans without challenge or scrutiny.

 

BY 

Stenographers at ‘ease’

The US Treasury Department on May 17 allowed the US-based oil company Chevron to talk to PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company, to discuss its operations in the country. Officials made clear that the energy giant remained forbidden from drilling or dealing in Venezuelan crude (AP, 5/17/22).

Two weeks later, the White House renewed Chevron’s current license, which only permits maintenance work, until November. Nevertheless, this brief opening revealed some clear trends.

First off, all mainstream outlets had virtually the same headline, writing that the US “eases some sanctions” (NBC, 5/17/22), was “to ease a few economic sanctions” (AP, 5/17/22) or “begins easing restrictions” (Washington Post, 5/17/22) on Venezuela. And though the very narrow scope of the authorization left few word choice alternatives, it certainly did not force corporate journalists to stick to the information spoonfed by “anonymous officials.”

Not a single establishment outlet mentioned that sanctions have an impact on ordinary Venezuelans. Instead, the privilege of “just talking” to oil execs was painted as an incentive for President Nicolás Maduro to resume talks with the opposition.

The meager background/context provided in most pieces left room for plenty of representations. When referencing why government/opposition talks broke down last October, readers were told that Maduro walked away after the “extradition of a close/key ally” to the US (Washington Post, 5/17/22; AP, 5/17/22). However, there was no mention of the fact that, according to documents disclosed by Caracas, the “ally” in question (Alex Saab) has diplomatic immunity, and that Washington violated the Vienna convention by having him arrested overseas and extradited (FAIR.org, 7/21/21).

Corporate outlets continued the habit of echoing unfounded charges against the Maduro administration as absolute truths, be they about electoral fraud (FAIR.org, 1/27/21), drug trafficking (FAIR.org, 9/24/19) or media censorship (FAIR.org, 5/20/19). The consequence is that by now no editor will flinch at a description of the Venezuelan government as “authoritarian” (Washington Post, 5/17/22), “autocratic” (CNN, 5/17/22) or “corrupt and repressive” (New York Times, 5/17/22).

Establishment journalists were also happy enough to echo mobster-like threats from their anonymous sources, namely that the US will “calibrate” sanctions depending on whether progress in government/opposition talks is deemed acceptable (Reuters, 5/17/22; NBC, 5/17/22; AFP, 5/17/22; AP, 5/17/22). US officials refer to policies that are killing thousands of civilians as though they were a dial they can turn up or down at will, and their enablers in the media see no reason to be alarmed by this.

 

For its part, the New York Times (5/17/22) described the steps as “minor sanctions relief” which despite the adjective still seems a bit overstated, considering that sanctions include an oil embargo and this was just an opportunity to talk to Chevron. The paper of record also tried to paint sanctions as having little to do with the collapse of Venezuela’s oil industry, writing that they only began in 2019. In fact, the first measures against PDVSA—cutting it off from international credit—are from mid-2017, after which output collapsed from nearly 2 million barrels a day to 350,000 in three years (Venezuelanalysis, 8/27/21).

Simultaneously, Spain’s Repsol and Italy’s Eni got oil-for-debt licenses that “will not benefit [PDVSA] financially” (Reuters, 6/5/22). And no corporate journalist found any issue with the fact that somehow the US Treasury Department has the power to “let” European corporations deal with Venezuela.

 

Not all critics created equal

The Biden administration revisiting its sanctions policy even a little bit has generated a ferocious backlash that fed corporate media bias. The Wall Street Journal’s opinion section provided its usual extremism, with editorial board member Mary Anastasia O’Grady (5/26/22) writing that the US might be “tiptoeing toward a rapprochement with dictator Nicolás Maduro that will abandon the cause of Venezuelan freedom.”

The Journal columnist referred to the opposition’s unelected Venezuelan “interim president,” Juan Guaidó, as “internationally recognized,” when the number of countries that actually recognize him is down to 16 (Venezuelanalysis, 12/8/21). She somehow presented the 2002 US-backed military coup that briefly deposed democratically elected President Hugo Chávez as “opponents defend[ing] the rule of law using institutions.”

But there was plenty of bias in news reports as well when it came to weighing pros and cons of the Biden administration’s initiative. Indeed, only “hawkish” criticism of official policy gets airtime (FAIR.org, 5/2/22).

A group of Venezuelan opposition figures, from economists to political analysts to business leaders, penned a letter to the Biden administration in April calling for sanctions relief (Bloomberg, 4/14/22). Though they conceded to the US’s supposed role in solving the country’s political crisis, they pointed out the obvious: Sanctions are hurting the Venezuelan people. Nevertheless, once it was time to discuss the sanctions policy, none of these figures was reached for comment by corporate journalists.

 

Instead, the Guardian (5/14/22) reached out to the hardliners, going as far as interviewing someone with a made-up job in Guaidó’s “interim government” and calling her “the country’s deputy foreign minister.” The US-sponsored politician opposed sanctions relief without political concessions and—keeping up with the latest trends in propaganda—warned that “if Maduro is helped, so is Putin.”

A number of US House Democrats have grown increasingly vocal in opposing the administration’s Venezuela policy, based on its humanitarian consequences. Days before the timid overtures, they wrote yet another letter to Biden (The Hill, 5/12/22). But when it was time to evaluate the latest measure, this letter earned a grand total of one sentence in just one report (AP, 5/17/22).

In contrast, Sen. Marco Rubio (Guardian, 5/19/22) and Rep. Michael McCaul (New York Times, 5/17/22), both hardline Republicans, were on hand to accuse the administration of ”appeasing” or “capitulating to” Maduro. The only featured Democrat was notorious anti-Cuba and anti-Venezuela hawk Bob Menendez, whose rejection of showing any mercy to Venezuela was widely circulated (AP, 5/17/22; AFP, 5/17/22; NBC, 5/17/22; Washington Post, 5/17/22; Reuters, 5/17/22).

Remarkably, even after the Biden administration decided to kick the can on Chevron’s license down the road until the midterms, outlets like the Associated Press (5/27/22) still only platformed the hardliners. And so, with next to no changes to Trump’s “maximum pressure” efforts, the corporate media audience will see the White House chastised for “bending over backward to appease an oil despot,” but not for causing a reported 30% of the Venezuelan population to be undernourished (Venezuelanalysis, 8/22/21).

 

Imperialists in Wonderland

 

If Western journalists are not keen to tell their audience what sanctions have meant, they are even less eager to challenge outright falsehoods coming from high-ranking Beltway figures.

In a Bloomberg report (5/19/22), writers Patrick Gillespie and Erik Schatzker walked a familiar path by allowing senior White House advisor Juan Gonzalez to play hostage-taker, demanding that sanctions relief will require unspecified “democratic steps” and “bigger political freedoms.” But in the process, they published an outrageous and blatant lie.

“The unilateral lifting of sanctions on Venezuela is not going to improve the lives of Venezuelans,” Bloomberg quoted Gonzalez. Amazingly, the authors let this statement go out unopposed, when in fact lifting sanctions is the most obvious thing the US could do to improve the lives of Venezuelans.

The Venezuelan government, Venezuelan opposition figures/groups, UN special rapporteurs, think tanks, economists, US representatives and even the US Chamber of Commerce have documented or at least recognized the harmful consequences of unilateral sanctions. To not include a single one of these sources to counter Gonzalez’s ludicrous assertion is a choice that is as deliberate as it is dishonest.

The latest Venezuela appearance in the spotlight showed again just how key the corporate media is for US foreign policy. With their “calibrated” efforts to conceal the consequences of sanctions, Western journalists have in fact made thousands and thousands of Venezuelan victims invisible to the public. It is they who deserve to be sanctioned.

 

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https://fair.org/home/calibrated-dishonesty-western-media-coverage-of-venezuela-sanctions/

 

 

SEE ALSO: 

washington's rackets, in the nasty footsteps of madeleine albright...

 

 

 

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sanctions on Russia don't work…..

 

written by ron paul

 

 

It’s easy to see why, according to a new Harris poll, 71 percent of Americans said they do not want Joe Biden to run for re-election. As Americans face record gas prices and the highest inflation in 40 years, President Biden admits he could not care less. His Administration is committed to fight a proxy war with Russia through Ukraine and Americans just need to suck it up.

 

Last week a New York Times reporter asked Biden how long he expects Americans to pay record gasoline prices over his Administration’s Ukraine policy. “As long as it takes,” replied the president without hesitation.

 

“Russia cannot defeat Ukraine,” added Biden as justification for his Administration’s pro-pain policy toward Americans. The president has repeatedly tried to deflect blame for the growing economic crisis by claiming Russia is solely behind recent inflation. "The reason why gas prices are up is because of Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia," he said in the same press conference.

 

But Biden has a big problem: Americans do not believe him. According to a Rasmussen poll earlier this month, only eleven percent of Americans believe Biden’s claim that Russian president Vladimir Putin is to blame for high prices.

 

When it comes to disdain for the average American hurt by higher prices, there is more than enough in the Biden Administration to go around.

 

Brian Deese, Director of President Biden’s National Economic Council, was asked in a recent CNN interview, “What do you say to those families that say, listen, we can’t afford to pay $4.85 a gallon for months, if not years?”

 

His answer? “This is about the future of the Liberal World Order and we have to stand firm.”

 

Has there ever been an Administration more out of touch with the American people? If you asked working Americans whether they’d be happy to suffer poverty for the “liberal world order,” how many would say “that sounds like a great idea”?

 

President Biden’s attempts to bring down gasoline prices are bound to fail because he does not understand the problem. He can beg the Saudis to pump more oil, he can even threaten the US oil companies as he did in a Tweet yesterday. He can buy and sell from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in attempt to give the impression that prices are lowing. None of it will work.

 

The strangest part of this idea that Americans must suffer to hurt the Russians is that these policies aren’t even hurting Russia! On the contrary: Russia has been seen record profits from its oil and gas exports since the beginning of the Ukraine war.

 

According to a recent New York Times article, increasing global oil and gas prices have enabled Russia to finance its war on Ukraine. US sanctions did not bring the Russian economy to its knees, as Biden promised. They actually brought the American economy to its knees while Russian profits soared.

 

As Newsweek noted last week, Russian television pundits are joking that with the financial windfall Russia has seen since sanctions were imposed, “Biden is of course our agent.”

 

Washington’s bi-partisan foreign policy of wasting trillions on endless wars overseas has finally come home. Biden is clearly out of touch, but there is plenty of blame to go around. The only question is whether we will see an extended recession…or worse.

 

Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

 

 

 

READ MORE:

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2022/july/04/foreign-policy-fail-bidens-sanctions-are-a-windfall-for-russia/

 

 

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sanction value-added…..

India takes advantage of the sanctions against Russia: it buys cheap oil and resells it refined and more expensive to Europe

 

Updated Saturday, 4 June 2022 - 20:01

 

India receives about 600,000 barrels a day from Russia, up from 90,000 last year. The maneuver raises the price paid by Europeans for fuel from the Asian country....

 

Right now, there are 57 million barrels of crude oil extracted from the Russian Urals and transported by ship to Asia. In a few months, there will be a first landing in China, then in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. However, most barrels are destined for India, which has large refineries capable of turning Russian crude into diesel, and other fuels currently in high demand that could then end up in Europe.

The resulting paradoxical situation is as follows: the European Union banned most imports of Russian oil on Monday, as a sanction against Putin's country for its invasion of Ukraine. But now, India buys oil at very favorable prices from Russia and markets it once refined and at a higher price in Europe.

“India is becoming the de facto refining hub of Europe,” says a recent report by analysts at investment bank RBC Capital Markets. “On the other hand, the cost of buying diesel from India will increase prices in Europe, because it is more expensive to ship the fuel from the Asian country than to bring it by pipeline from Russian refineries. The undesirable consequence is that Europe will import inflation to its own citizens,” says RBC.

India's appetite for Russian crude oil has grown steadily since the start of the war in Ukraine. According to analyst firm Kpler, India receives about 600,000 barrels a day from Russia, up from 90,000 a day last year. In March, Asia's third largest economy bought 11 million barrels. This figure increased to 27 million in April. Last month it was 21 million. A stark contrast when compared to the 12 million barrels that India bought from Russia for the whole of 2021.

Now that EU leaders have agreed to ban 90% of Russian crude oil by the end of the year as part of the sixth sanctions package, causing yet another shock to the global economy – Russia is the third largest oil producer, after the United States and Saudi Arabia, and the second largest exporter - Moscow is looking to Asia to sell cheap oil. According to Kple, Asia already overtook Europe as the top buyer for the first time in April. This gap should widen sharply when the May figures are published.

 

AMBIGUITY

Since the beginning of the war, India and China have maintained the ambiguous position of not condemning Russia but also of not supporting the Russian invasion. Despite warnings from think tanks in Washington. So far, Beijing has failed to act as an umbrella for the Russian economy in the face of a barrage of sanctions. Although its purchases of Russian oil have exploded (from March to May, China bought 14.5 million barrels, three times more than during the same period last year) the Chinese government, as Reuters reports, has avoided entering into new contracts between its refineries and Russia, despite deep discounts.

The leaders of the second world power have informed that they will continue to maintain close ties with their first-tier neighbor, especially commercial ties. In April, according to data from the Chinese customs administration, imports of Russian products reached a record figure of 8.89 billion dollars, an increase of 56.6% compared to the previous year.

"China is taking advantage of Russia's isolation to obtain cheap energy and favorable trade agreements, but it will remain very cautious to avoid violating Western sanctions in a direct way," said Maria Shagina, an analyst at the international institute for strategic studies.

The Western sanctions that China is so critical of have so far had no impact on its purchases of Russian oil and gas, although US President Joe Biden has warned Beijing that there could be consequences if it does. helped Moscow evade sanctions. It is this threat that is causing Chinese companies to move slowly, lest they lose access to valuable Western markets.

 

MORE PURCHASES AT DISCOUNTED PRICES

India, however, goes further than neighboring China. Refineries in the country, which is the world's third-largest oil importer and consumer, have bought far more Russian crude through spot tenders, taking advantage of low prices offered by Moscow: Ural oil in Russia is currently trading around $95 a barrel, while the average price of Brent crude oil, the benchmark in the European market, is above $119.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.elmundo.es/economia/macroeconomia/2022/06/04/629a1c44e4d4d8fb2a8b460d.html

 

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dear president, we need your oil....

 

 by 

 

COP 27: Are global leaders warming to Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro?


John Kerry spoke with him in a ‘impromptu’ meeting while Emmanuel Macron called him ‘president,’ leaving Juan Guaido on the curb.

After years of trying to isolate Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the United States and its European allies appear ready to change their approach to dealing with the embattled leftist leader.

In a seemingly impromptu meeting at the COP 27 summit in Egypt, French President Emmanuel Macron told Maduro that he “would love it if we could speak at greater length,” signaling his interest in helping to mediate the political crisis in Venezuela. Macron also referred to Maduro as “president,” affirming the European Union’s decision to stop recognizing opposition figure Juan Guaido as the country’s leader.

 

Maduro also held a warm conversation with Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa, whom the Venezuelan leader invited to visit Caracas.

Even John Kerry, the Biden administration’s climate envoy, spoke with Maduro on the sidelines of the conference. The brief interaction was the highest-level U.S.-Venezuela conversation since March, when the top White House advisor on Latin America met with Maduro in Caracas.

The State Department later said Kerry’s conversation was “not planned or substantive in any way,” and a video of their chat seems to back up that claim. But the optics of the exchange, along with Maduro’s more productive meetings with European leaders, appear representative of a broader shift in Western policy toward Caracas.

“I saw Macron as trying to encourage Maduro to be part of a political solution in the region,” said William LeoGrande, a professor at American University. “That probably represents how the Biden administration is thinking about the way forward in Venezuela, even if they don’t want to say it out loud.”

The policy of isolating Maduro, which started in 2019 after elections that the West viewed as a sham, has steadily lost support both within and outside of Venezuela. The country’s political and economic situation has deteriorated in the intervening years, in part because of comprehensive U.S. sanctions on the regime and the fact that the UK continues to hold more than $1 billion of Venezuela’s gold reserves.

But the leftist leader has shown himself to be more resilient than Washington originally assumed. As a result, many Latin American leaders have soured on the idea of ousting him, with new leaders in Brazil and Colombia pushing for a diplomatic end to the crisis in Caracas. And, as Russia’s war in Ukraine has driven concerns about global oil prices, Western leaders have begun to soften their stance on the internal politics of the biggest oil producer in the region.

President Joe Biden has been slow to move away from his predecessor’s policy toward Venezuela, likely because of the domestic political complexities associated with U.S. Latin America policy. But Biden has made changes at the margins, including opening up a backchannel that led to a prisoner swap last month.

In the meantime, Macron appears happy to take on a bigger role in Western policy toward Caracas.

“Macron seems to enjoy the role of diplomatic broker,” LeoGrande said. “He’s played the same role in the conflict in Ukraine by sort of being the West’s channel to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, and this seems potentially similar.”

 

READ MORE:

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2022/11/09/cop-27-are-global-leaders-warming-to-venezuelas-nicolas-maduro/

 

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GUSNOTE: THE "WORLD" LEADERS ARE NOT WARMING TO MADURO FOR HIS WINDMILLS.....

 

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