E.F. Nicholson – Public Reading Rooms https://prruk.org/ The Politics of Art and Vice Versa Mon, 24 Aug 2020 13:43:08 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.1.1 What has head-chopping Saudi Arabia got that Venezuela hasn’t? https://prruk.org/what-has-head-chopping-saudi-arabia-got-that-venezuela-hasnt/ Fri, 04 Aug 2017 09:21:33 +0000 http://www.prruk.org/?p=4881

How the corporate media is helping groom the UK public for regime change in Venezuela.

Source: Things That Matter

Right now, across the political establishment and mainstream media, both in the U.K and the U.S there is an outpouring of faux indignation and concern over the current political turmoil in Venezuela. Two days ago, U.S. president Donald Trump announced:

“The U.S. condemned the actions of the “Maduro dictatorship.” The two opposition leaders were “political prisoners being held illegally by the regime.”

Of course, when Trump was lavishing praise on the Saudi regime, holding orbs, and swinging swords, he forgot to mention the teenage political prisoner being held illegally by the regime who was soon up for beheading; but not for the crime of orchestrating a violent overthrow of a democratically elected government but based on the accusation of turning up to a protest.

In addition, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former CEO of Exxon, who has a completely impartial view of the oil-rich country of Venezuela, described the re-arrest of the two opposition leaders as

“very alarming.”

Tillerson has also stated:

“The situation from a humanitarian standpoint is already becoming dire.”.

Yet, his concerns regarding the humanitarian standpoint and its direness seems to be eerily absent from his thoughts about Saudi Arabia. He goes on to say:

“We are evaluating all of our policy options as to what can we do to create a change of conditions, where either Maduro decides he doesn’t have a future and wants to leave of his own accord, or we can return the government processes back to their constitution.”

The gall and arrogance of this statement seems to go unreported, as he just assumes  the U.S. right to enforce regime change. In addition to this, the Trump administration has hit Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro with financial sanctions. Of course, Saudi kings get no such red card.

Here, in the U.K., we have Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, accusing Mr. Maduro of behaving like a “dictator of an evil regime.” All this when Boris has an actual dictator of an evil  regime, called Saudi Arabia, he is willing and happy to sell billions of pounds worth of arms to. Thus, ensuring that 600,000 Yeminis in 2017 will contract cholera, add to the  10,000 Yeminis civilians already  murdered, and it can continue to successfully oppress its people.

Then the usual suspect on the of the Labour right,  like MP Angela Smith, work hand in glove with the Murdoch press, as she told the Times newspaper that she hoped “that my party leadership will as soon as possible condemn what’s happening in the country and call for the release of opposition party political prisoners.”

We see all this and  the  media reporting  that what’s happening Venezuela will chart a predictable trajectory of “concerning” followed by “unacceptable” and then eventually “something must be done”. We’ve heard the same kind of memes about the invasion and toppling of Libya and Iraq, but there  seems to be a convenient “media amnesia” about the outcome of these “concerns”.

The way Venezuela is being reported contains a kind of coded language in the build-up to violent western supported or organized regime change. It’s the public getting groomed with the idea of regime change  as events get portrayed as “inventible” and “the only just solation to a terrible crisis”; yet this narrative that eventually concludes “something must be done” is off bounds for tyrannical states that our governments support. Well, it’s even more than off bounds; it has never been allowed to be build up into that kind of crescendo of inescapable action.

All this reveals  the mainstream media and the political establishment’s ability to hold two completely contradictorily narratives simultaneously and report on them as if neither had anything to do with each other. Even if you buy the western propaganda model that Maduro is acting like an evil dictator, why should that be a problem? I can list numerous Gulf state regimes and another’s around the world that are, in fact evil dictatorships, and no one pays attention. Crickey! They even attend our royal weddings.  Concerns of democracy, human rights, and its political prisoners must make for an awkward wedding party conversation.

As Saudi Arabia is just the most grotesque and blatant example of this hypocrisy, as it’s a regime that’s so barbaric and so deplorable, yet it’s so fawned over and so welcomed by the political establishment. This is then reinforced in the way media reports on each respectively with reverent terms, such as King and Monarchs, for Saudi rulers, who are in fact brutal dictators and tyrants. Yet, democratically elected Venezuelan presidents like Chavez and Maduro are routinely labelled as “dictators,” “autocrats,” and “oppressors.”

In Trumps gushing speech in Saudi Arabia only a few months ago, he states:

“We are not here to lecture—we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship. Instead, we are here to offer partnership—based on shared interests and values —to pursue a better future for us all.”

Of course, the sentiment “We are not here to lecture—we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be…” doesn’t extend to Venezuelans, and the reasons why are obvious, as it’s revealed in the second sentence in the word “partnership.”

For the global mafia Don U.S.A., the rules of “partnerships” are simple: play ball, buy our arms, and be open to our economic interests, and you can do as you please in your own country; you can behead, torture, imprison, and murder whoever and how many people you want.

Yet, don’t pay ball, go against  U.S. interests, and by hook or crook, we will bring you down. We will overthrow your government, assassinate your leaders, sanction you into the dark ages or simply invade and bomb you to smithereens.

I have stated in previous articles that if ISIS suddenly becomes open to U.S. economic interests, it would be rebranded, armed, and supported.  Do you want to know what a barbaric ISIS caliphate with U.S. support looks like? Well, look no further than Saudi Arabia; it’s simply a posh version of ISIS whose medieval monarchy is happy to collude with the U.S. for their own psychopathic gains.

That plain and simple fact is not reported on, questioned or challenged, as it works against the interests that corporate and the establishment media represents. In reality, it shatters the most obvious of illusion that is curated and cultivated on the mainstream media every day. The truth that our state and corporate centres of power that rule over our lives are amoral and sociopathic institutions, that are willing to condone and conduct industrial levels of murder in the pursuit of profit and power

If the concerns about the Venezuelan democracy were true, they would be way down the list of “problem the nations” we must tend to, while Saudi Arabia would be top of that list. So, the next time you see a BBC report on how bad things are in Venezuela, try think back when  the BBC showed the same concern for the citizens of Saudi Arabia or any other of the horrible regimes our government supports. Then, observe whenever it reports on the like of the Saudi monarchs that the pundits, MPs, or military generals brought on to convince the public that “something must be done” get conveniently left out—which is convenient, indeed.

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