- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
WHAT WOULD DONALD Trump have to do for the U.S. media to frame what he is doing in Venezuela as an act of war?
This isn’t a rhetorical question. It’s an actual inquiry, the pursuit of which can reveal a lot about how U.S. media’s default posture is state subservience and stenography. In the past few months, President Trump has committed several clear acts of war against Venezuela, including: murdering — in cold blood — scores of its citizens, hijacking its ships, stealing its resources, issuing a naval blockade, and attacking its ports. Then in a stunning escalation on early Saturday morning, the administration invaded Venezuela’s sovereign territory, bombing several buildings, killing at least 40 more of its citizens, kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from their bed, and announcing they will, henceforth, “run” the country.
This episode seems to indicate that the president can do almost anything in the context of foreign policy, and the media will still overwhelmingly adopt language that is flattering and sanitizing to the administration when describing what has unfolded. This dynamic reached a new low Saturday morning, when the U.S. media rushed to frame the administration’s unprovoked attack as, at worst, a “ratcheted up” (CBS News) “pressure campaign” (Wall Street Journal) and, as was more often the case, some type of limited narcotics police “operation” (CNN).
You must log in or register to comment.
If China decided that trump had violated some domestic law of theirs, and sent their military into Florida, dragged him and his third wife out of their beds, flew them back to their territory, and put them in prison, would these assholes consider that an act of war?
The US media is owned by the same oligarchs who benefit from his fascism. Why would they bite the hand that feeds?
ABC was covering it like it was a football game. “Incredible performance from the US military”, “Flawless victory over the Venezuelans”, “Impressive display of professionalism from the troops”
Makes me sick.
That is nauseating. These are human lives, 80 people died
And its the military’s job to kill people. I’ve never got people who love soldiers.
Soldiers are still human beings and there are enough instances where soldiers did the right thing. Aside that, soldiers do what they’re told. Kill the one person in charge and all soldiers stop
Hen turning off their critical thinking on purpose are a pity…
Unfortunately, those 80 human lives are almost nothing compared to the 38 million the US and EU have murdered over the past 50 years through economic sanctioning (still murdering half a million per year).
The world is sleepwalking into WWIII
Christ, I hope my country is putting some serious effort into jailbreaking their F-35s.
It is an act of war, the “capture” of Maduro is a kidnapping, and the deaths of ~80 cuban and venezuelan security and civilians is murder.
USA is a rogue state.
Not many people are bringing up that the US invaded a country and not only kidnapped a guy, but left a trail of bodies.
The subscription billionaire media companies are all complicit, and have been for quite a while.
As written by General Buttler in 1935, War is a Racket. The billionaire cabal benefits from war immensely, and the media they own and control will always sing the praises of war.
International law is very clear that the seizing of ships is not a casus bellum. Claiming it is a “clear act of war” suggests the author is more interested in rabble-rousing and news-as-a-team-sport than answering the question, which is disappointing.
It’s churnalism like this that landed us with Trump, Bolsonaro, Johnson, and all the other crap.
Seizing of ships? My sibling in Christ Nicolás Maduro was kidnapped by the USA
Its in the article.
I’m aware the US has seized ships, the act of war would be the invasion of the country, bombing of civilians, and kidnapping of the president
Special Millitary Operation in Venezuela. Quick 30 minute adventure.
Dipshits are gonna be greedy, fuck it up and turn it in to an another Afganistan. This time really close to home.
Nobody likes Maduro. They should play with that, take their successful 30min and exit.
If nobody likes Maduro, why is the USA placing Venezuela under extreme economic sanctioning?
Maduro is not an illegitimate or unpopular leader. The Bolivarian revolution was widely supported among the people of Venezuela and freed millions from poverty, until USA sanctions demolished their economy. The express purpose of USA sanctioning, according to the US government is to, and I quote, “bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government”. USA+EU sanctions additionally murder half a million innocents per year according to recent serious sociologic and medical studies.
By defending regime change under extreme economic sanctioning, you’re approving the murders of 38 million people over the past 50 years of economic sanctions, and directly supporting the CIA strategy of “impoverish them until they change their minds”.
USA Nukes Poland
“The president took another eyebrow-raising strategy today, let’s talk to a panel of assorted youtube streamers to analyze what he meant with this action…”
Friggin RIGHT?!?!?!
The semantics at play indicate the media “watchdogs” have put their tails between their legs and pissed themselves.
Media is just bought and controlled by the corporate donor class who have installed this administration to begin with. Every major outlet is compromised.
Every time you see media making the administration angry or they have spats, it’s just performance. I think if everyone realized how much of what we are experiencing is kayfabe people would have a mental breakdown.
I keep trying to point this out to my mother, who keeps overreacting to one news story after another. She agrees in the moment that it’s all theater, then goes right back to being outraged by every obvious bait story.
My parents were also people whom I would make great efforts to explain things to them with reason and logic and they would understand it and act logical when presented with logical arguments, but the moment an emotion rose up in them again it would all go out the window.
Some people can’t deal with emotions, they never worked out the basic concept that emotions are not the same as factual reality, they just respond to a feeling and let their brains write whatever story fits immediately to explain and validate those feelings, even if the story doesn’t make sense. The only way you can get people like that to stay aligned on a particular idea is to present them a constant narrative that provokes their emotions.
Unfortunately, this is a known technique now for capturing large segments of the population. Fear and anger are much stronger emotions than any others so as long as you can keep people scared or paranoid or angry at some other group, you can tell them anything and they won’t bother trying to reason it out.
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,”
Or the support of the press !
Major news organisations in general are really scared when it comes to pointing out things which are extreme, because they believe describing those things as extreme will lead to accusations of sensationalism. The reason they think that is because sensationalist outlets are indeed more likely to describe everything as extreme and make unjustified comparisons to extremities, so major media outlets often think that to be “unbiased” is to refuse to acknowledge that an action is extreme.
Vox described this as the “this is fine” bias.
Major “news” organisations are owned by oligarchs who support Trump so they have abandoned any pretence of accountability
This is bullshit, though, legacy media have no problem using sensationalist headlines when it suits their ideology. Example from New York Crimes on Oct 7th:
Death to America, death to “Israel”
It’s all Western media. And governments. EU deserves Greenland to be invaded - I wonder what’ll be the reports then like.
I bet you loathe Taiwan too.
Why would we loathe any Chinese province? China is pretty cool
Does Venezuela see this as an act of war? Regardless of if they’re going to fight or not. Ask people.
The Venezuelan government might. But according to some DW reporting and footage earlier today, the actual reaction of ordinary Venezuelans is mixed, and mostly concern and confusion rather than anger or fear. Maduro is generally not popular in Venezuela but I doubt many people really wanted the US to come and kidnap him. And understandably those who supported him are in the streets calling for his release.
according to some DW reporting
Why would anyone trust pro-genocide Zionist media on their reporting about Venezuela and the opinions of Venezuelans? Might as well ask Netanyahu himself.
Of course Maduro government doesn’t like the situation, but people’s opinion is important.
Yes, the method is still not right, but for now from my Eastern-European point of view the situation become better than it was.
Let’s wait for how the power transition will end.
for now from my Eastern-European point of view the situation become better than it was
Situation is so much better now that 100 people have been murdered in the name of oil!
Venezuela was supporting Russia, now that will stop most probably. And Russia kills hundreds every day in Ukraine.
The US + EU kill half a million yearly through economic sanctions alone, much more than the mortality from the Ukraine war. Should we also destroy those countries?
Oh, and of course EU sanctions Russia just for the sake of evil? As soon as Russia retreats from Ukraine, shoves its army to Putin’s ass and compensates the damage, sanctions will be lifted. Russia is the cause of all this shit. And destroying Russia is a good way as long as Russia is unwilling to stop aggression.
The EU sanctions Russia because we’re US puppet states, but the sanctions are more harmful to other countries like Cuba, Venezuela or the DPRK, none of which has invaded any other country. The half a million deaths per year mostly come from such countries and not Russia (though I fail to see how it’s morally good to prevent medical goods from entering Russia or anywhere in the world).
First, the MSM always props up the MIC. If this is surprising to you now, maybe you should revisit history. Second, the capture of Maduro was also Biden’s policy. Did you forget already?
Funny… I don’t recall Biden invading Venezuela, or drumming up lies about drugs then stealing their oil.
Proud Zionist Biden upped the bounty leading to Maduro’s arrest, claiming he was an illegitimate leader in favor of the US-backed Zionist puppet. Trump had his goons arrest Maduro. If you don’t like what Trump is doing then don’t vote for politicians that support genocide & regime change.
A) They didn’t up the bounty for his arrest. They upped the reward for legitimate information that could be used to support having him arrested. Since Biden never gave that bounty to anyone and didn’t arrest him or request he be arrested, then that should trigger in your thinking process that there is a huge fucking difference in policy between “We are investigating whether it is legally valid to pursue narco-terrorism charges against a world leader who we think did not win a legitimate election” and “We are invading a nation to capture a person to bring to trial without showing any evidence.”
B) That link was about getting information leading to his legal arrest through international cooperation in a court system, not about unilaterally deciding to invade a country and kill a bunch of people to extract a high value target.
Colombia and Brazil both declared Maduro’s election as illegitimate. They have also been in opposition of the capture of Maduro by the USA.
Colombia and Brazil both declared Maduro’s election as illegitimate
Source?
This may come as a surprise to you, but you can both condemn Trump’s actions AND recognize that Maduro was an illegitimate leader that stole an election according to every third-party audit. And not just like “well it was close, who’s to say who really won?” but like the votes went 2-1 to his opponent. He lost BAD, but decided to lie, cling to power and attempt to imprison his opponent. Maduro is a vicious dictator and calling him an illegitimate leader is not just a claim, it’s a fact.
And yes, it’s also true that Trump’s actions were an illegal act of war. Full stop. No questions at all there. But the people trying to condemn this by making Maduro out to be some innocent saint are either trolls ignoring his corruption, or people so ignorant as to the situation that they should maybe just shut the fuck up until they spend more than 2 minutes learning about it.
Maduro is not an illegitimate leader. The Bolivarian revolution was widely supported among the people of Venezuela and freed millions from poverty, until USA sanctions demolished their economy. The express purpose of USA sanctioning, according to the US government is to, and I quote, “bring about hunger, desperation and overthrow of government”. USA+EU sanctions additionally murder half a million innocents per year according to recent serious sociologic and medical studies.
By defending regime change under extreme economic sanctioning, you’re approving the murders of 38 million people over the past 50 years of economic sanctions, and directly supporting the CIA strategy of “starve them until they change their minds”.
