Venezuela propaganda jumps the shark

You know we are approaching some sort of climax when reporting goes full stupid.

As a U.S.-backed effort to overthrow Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro continues,U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said late Wednesday that Hezbollah “has active cells” in Venezuela—a claim that was immediately scrutinized and compared with the second Bush administration’s lies to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Hezbollah, a political and militant Shi’ite Muslim group based in Lebanon, has been on the U.S. State Department’s “Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations” list since 1997. In the interview with Fox Business, Pompeo, who previously served as President Donald Trump’s CIA director, also charged that Iran and Cuba are strongly influencing the country.

“The Cubans invaded Venezuela. The Cubans have been controlling the security apparatus, protecting Maduro, and destroying the way of life for the Venezuelan people for an awfully long time,” he said. “People don’t recognize that Hezbollah has active cells—the Iranians are impacting the people of Venezuela and throughout South America. We have an obligation to take down that risk for America.”

Let's not forget the story of Maduro blocking aid coming over that bridge to his starving people.

Despite dozens of media outlets giving the impression (and sometimes explicitly saying) that the Venezuelan government shut down an otherwise functioning pathway into the country, the bridge in question hasn’t been open for years.

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 noted, have been in place since at least 2016. According to La Opinion (2/5/16), after its initial construction in 2015, the bridge has never been open to traffic. How can Maduro, as the BBC suggested, “reopen” a bridge that was never open?

The reality is BBC 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.

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Alligator Ed's picture

Guaranteed Neocon plot which will make El Trumpo "presidential". He can become even more presidential by launching a pre-emptive strike against day care centers because they are educating future generations of Chavistas.

Where is Ché when you need him?

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dystopian's picture

Hezbollah in Venezuela?????? Tell me another good one Pompous Pompeo. I told my wife that
Hezbollah was in Venezuela and she immediately called BS on me. Said I was full of it. She know better than this crap. You would think many to most would see through this, considering Iraq. Yet the media is in lockstep selling every bit of shit fast as they can fabricate it to manufacture consent for another US backed coup! When will it end? When will we ever learn? Just like with Iraq. And Syria. And Lybia. And Iran. and Afghanistan. And North Korea, and China, Viet Nam, Chile, stop me any time...
edited to add: and Russia Russia Russia

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We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.
Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.
both - Albert Einstein

@dystopian

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

enhydra lutris's picture

@UntimelyRippd affectation, mon, from da lion of Judah. Asshole has the wrong continent.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Pluto's Republic's picture

@dystopian

...about giving up its nukes. As soon as they are gone, we will overthrow their leaders and crush the North Koreans so fast they won't know what hit them. Install our puppet regime with a fake democracy. It will become our Ukraine of the East, bordering China and Russia both. Bring in the NATO Missiles....

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____________________

The political system is what it is because the People are who they are. — Plato
OzoneTom's picture

@Pluto's Republic
Kim knows how we rewarded Gaddafi for giving-up his country's weapons.

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get greedy and pretty often overplay theirs hands. And this is a great example.

Best laugh of the week.

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What obvious laughable bullshit!

Do even moron Trump voters believe this?

WARNING! The Pope is a Hezbollah agent!

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

travelerxxx's picture

@The Voice In the Wilderness

Do even moron Trump voters believe this?

Sadly, the ones I work with believe it 100%. They just want an excuse to go kill - apparently his one will do nicely.

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divineorder's picture

Dems. Fckers.

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.

enhydra lutris's picture

and no doubt swallowed readily by great numbers of the same old blocs of the citizenry.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

CNN and MSNBC have been showing an empty supermarket. Last week I saw an NBC reporter in a fully stocked supermarket and at an outdoor market with all kinds of produce. He was explaining the rate of inflation. Strange, they don't show the real starving people of Yemen.

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It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. Carl Sagan