Everyone Wants Peace Until They Get Hit With The War Propaganda.
Caitlin Johnstone, Jan 15, 2026, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/everyone-wants-peace-until-they-get?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=184610045&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Everyone’s anti-war until the war propaganda starts.
Every normal person will tell you they want peace and abhor mass-scale violence. Then the mass media start doing what they always do and churning out stories about atrocities in an empire-targeted nation, and all of a sudden people find themselves supporting airstrikes on that nation’s capital, and believing they came to that position all on their own.
This happens because most people are unaware that the western news media do not exist to report the news. They exist to administer propaganda on behalf of the western empire.
Our news outlets. Our search engines. Our social media algorithms. Our most prominent online information resources. Our mainstream podcasts and Youtube pundits. Our AI chatbots. They’re all rigged by the rich and powerful to manipulate our understanding of the world. And most of us have no idea this is even occurring.
Propaganda is very effective if you don’t know it’s happening to you. That’s why westerners are far more propagandized than the populations of nations with overtly authoritarian governments. In a nation with strict speech laws and press regulation people know the state media they’re being fed is government propaganda, whereas westerners are so propagandized they don’t even KNOW they’re propagandized.
There’s an old joke that goes like this:
A Soviet and an American are on an airplane seated next to each other.
“Why are you flying to the US?” asks the American.
“To study American propaganda,” replies the Soviet.
“What American propaganda?” asks the American.
“Exactly,” the Soviet replies.
The mass-scale psychological manipulation worms its way into western minds without their having any idea that it’s happening. Then all of a sudden you’ve got Trump supporters who just spent ten years proudly proclaiming that their man is going to end all the wars and bring about world peace enthusiastically cheerleading for decapitation strikes in Tehran. They think they came up with the idea all on their own, but in reality they were skillfully manipulated into that position by the most powerful people in the world.
You see it over and over again. People’s natural, healthy impulse to support peace and oppose mass murder gets hacked and reversed by the mass-scale psychological manipulation of the most sophisticated propaganda machine that has ever existed. From cradle to grave they are attacking our innate goodness and working to twist us toward evil and abusiveness.
We think we live in a free society, but in reality we live in a mind-controlled dystopia where people are systematically psychologically conditioned to support the world’s ugliest agendas driven by the most powerful and depraved individuals on our planet. The more you think about it, the creepier it gets.
But, again, propaganda only works if you don’t know it’s happening to you. The more people understand that our view of world events is being aggressively manipulated by our rulers, the less effective these propaganda operations will become. All we have to do is help our fellow citizens and netizens wake up to the fact that that’s what’s going on. Once they lose the ability to manipulate the way we think, speak, act and vote, the possibility of a free and healthy world is just a click away.
Aftermath of the Bondi massacre
14 January 2026 AIMN Editorial By Antony Loewenstein, https://theaimn.net/aftermath-of-the-bondi-massacre/
Welcome to 2026.
The year has started with a US invasion and kidnapping in Venezuela, ongoing Israeli killings in Gaza, surging violence in the West Bank, huge protests in Iran against its repressive regime, ongoing carnage in Sudan and seemingly never-ending attempts to silence Palestinian voices who dare to criticise Israel.
It’s hard not to feel despair at the state of the world and those forces pushing us towards greater division and violence.
After the horrific anti-Semitic terror attack at Bondi Beach in December, Australia witnessed within hours a highly distasteful and co-ordinated attempt to politicise the massacre by many in the mainstream media and pro-Israel lobby.
Apparently it was the fault of the pro-Palestine marches since 7 October 2023 and criticism of the Jewish state’s actions in Gaza and beyond. There was no evidence for this, more a pre-determined vibe that joined dots that didn’t exist.
It was all deeply cynical and must be rejected by sane people everywhere. Anti-Semitism is an ancient disease and will be fought vigorously. Talking about Israeli war crimes and genocide in Palestine is NOT anti-semitic (as much as many want to claim that it is).
(For a reasoned and compelling examination of anti-Semitism, what it is and what it certainly is not, I recently read this fantastic
book on the subject, On Anti-Semitism: A Word in History by historian Mark Mazower).
Now is the time for sober and reasoned conversations about Palestine, free speech and the egregious attempts to shrink the public space for honest debate.
What needs to be repeated ad nauseam: Israeli criminality, live-streamed to our phones for 2+ years, plus the Zionist lobby’s insistence on curtailing free speech is leading to way more anti-Semitism in the wider community. That’s the conversation that’s rarely had.
It’s a period where most in the mainstream media have shown themselves to be utterly unwilling, unable or ignorant of the threat of the far-right, the growing collusionbetween Israel and global fascism and Big Tech oligarchy.
Corporate media won’t save us.
Independent media and voices have never been more important………………………..
Since the Bondi terror attack, I’ve spoken out extensively about the weaponisation of Jewish trauma in the service of draconian and racist policies + ideas.
I recently launched The Antony Loewenstein Podcast, a weekly show with comments and interviews on issues of the day. It’s available on YouTube, Spotify and Apple. I’m also now on TikTok.
Genocide isn’t a mistake. Which is why the media can’t tell you the truth about Gaza.
9 January 2026, https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2026-01-09/genocide-isnt-mistake-gaza/
A new film about Hind Rajab’s murder points to a deeply sick Israeli society, driven into the darkest of places by a racist ideology that says Jewish lives count, Palestinian lives don’t
The Voice of Hind Rajab, a devastating dramatised retelling of Israel’s slow-motion murder of a five-year-old in Gaza, arrives in UK cinemas next week. Please take the opportunity to see it. The vast majority of Americans were denied such an opportunity when it was released there last month.
Here’s what happened to the film in the US, via New York Times columnist M Gessen:
The Voice of Hind Rajab had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in September and took the Grand Jury Prize, the second-highest honor. A few days later, it was screened to great acclaim at the Toronto International Film Festival.
High-profile US distribution companies came calling. But then, the producers Odessa Rae and Elizabeth Woodward told me, one by one the companies peeled off.
In the end, Woodward, who has a small distribution company, put together something akin to self-distribution. The movie opens in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday. Elsewhere in the world this film, shortlisted for the Oscar for best foreign movie, has major distributors – but not in the United States or Israel. That’s a kind of coordination, too.
That may be the nearest you will hear the New York Times admitting to an Israel lobby and its extraordinary power to shape the West’s cultural and information landscape.
It is almost impossible to get serious criticism of the Israeli state, which (falsely) claims to represent the Jewish people, anywhere near mainstream US culture, even when it takes the form of a critically acclaimed movie, backed by Brad Pitt and Joaquin Phoenix, that received a record 23-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival.
For decades, pro-Israel lobby groups have dedicated their efforts to telling us that antisemitism is rampant across the West and takes the form of opposition of Israel – a message endlessly amplified by the western media.
Note this: the “antisemitism” threat just so happens to have grown precisely in line with the realisation among an ever-widening section of western publics that Israel is operating a system of apartheid rule over Palestinians and is now committing genocide in Gaza.
The role of the lobby, so readily given a platform by the establishment media, is to conflate any resulting increase in criticism of Israel with an increase in antisemitism. The solution, it hardly needs pointing out, is to shut down criticism of Israel to reduce antisemitism.
With this logic dominant among the professional class in the West – in fact, with it serving as the price of admission to that class – it is presumably easy to warn off film distribution executives from allowing into US cinemas a film that bears witness to Israel’s killing of a five-year-old.
Hind Rajab’s murder, of course, was nothing exceptional. Tens of thousands of other children in Gaza have suffered similar fates at the hands of the Israeli army over the past 27 months, though their horrifying experiences have not been turned into a movie.
Like anyone trying to get more real information about Israel into the mainstream, I have direct experience of these difficulties myself. As a journalist at the Guardian 30 years ago, I found that my new-found interest in the Israel-Palestine issue after I had completed a masters in Middle East studies propelled me headlong into conflict with senior editors. It was an experience I had never had before, and one I was totally unprepared for.
What disorientated me at the time was that my editors were barely concerned whether a story about Israel was true or not, or whether it was interesting or not. Or whether I could make a good case based on reliable sources. It soon became clear to me that the yardstick they were employing was whether my proposed piece would undermine Israel’s moral case for being considered a self-declared “Jewish and democratic state”.
Note that the Guardian was and is exceptional compared to the rest of the British media in permitting trenchant criticism of Israel. But that criticism was, nonetheless, highly circumscribed. The paper made a clear distinction between Israel’s occupation, which it regarded largely as an unwarranted, criminal enterprise, and Israel’s status as a self-professed Jewish state.
Israel’s “Jewishness” was treated as a moral, unquestionable necessity and a safeguard against antisemitism.
In practice, this meant I could submit articles exposing the crimes Israel was committing in Palestinian areas under occupation, but only in so far as those related to the inevitable problems Israel had enforcing its “security” in the inherently insecure environment produced by its army illegally occupying another people.
Such articles were allowed on condition they did not conflict with the paper’s core editorial premise that, were Israel to leave the occupied territories and return to its internationally recognised borders, all would be well.
No articles were allowed – whether reports from the occupied territories or from inside Israel – that indicated there were inherent problems with the notion of Israel as a Jewish state, or questioned the assumption that a state defining itself in ethno-religious terms could also be a democracy.
This was the unspoken editorial formula:
Articles suggesting that the occupied territories were a gangrenous limb that needed amputating – ok.- Articles suggesting that the illegal occupation was a natural outgrowth of a highly militarised state, driven by an expansionist ideology of Jewish supremacy that necessarily dehumanises Palestinians – not ok.
That is the reason the Guardian, like so many others, has struggled to come to terms with Israel’s genocide in Gaza over the past two years.
Genocide, and the overwhelming support for it among Israeli Jews, hints at a sickness within the Israeli state itself and the ideology of Zionism. That dark underbelly of ethnic nationalism cannot simply be amputated, like a gangrenous toe. The whole body politic is infected. A holistic, root-and-branch solution is needed, as it was with apartheid South Africa. A process of decolonisation must be instituted, a programme of truth and reconciliation is required.
These are the reasons why the Voice of Hind Rajab did not make it into US cinemas. Because the Israeli army’s hail of bullets into the car containing Hind and her family, the Israeli army’s long delaying tactics before allowing an ambulance to tend to Hind, and the Israeli strike on the ambulance after its route had been approved – none of that can be explained by a mistake, or even a series of mistakes.
Similarly, Israel’s murder of tens of thousands of children like Hind, and the starvation of the rest, cannot be explained by a mistake.
These aren’t mistakes. Genocide isn’t a mistake. It is evidence of a deeply sick society, driven into the darkest of places by a racist ideology that says Jewish lives count and Palestinian lives don’t.
“Another Monroe Doctrine”: Journalists Warn U.S. Strikes on Venezuela Signal a New Era of Intervention
By Joshua Scheer, January 5, 2026, https://scheerpost.com/2026/01/05/another-monroe-doctrine-journalists-warn-u-s-strikes-on-venezuela-signal-a-new-era-of-intervention/
ith reporting from the streets of Caracas and analysis from Vijay Prashad, BreakThrough News breaks down what’s unfolding in Venezuela — from local resistance to the United States’ emerging new Monroe Doctrine.
Venezuelan journalist Andreína Chávez Alava, reporting from Caracas, describes the aftermath of the U.S. strikes and the capture of President Maduro. According to her reporting, local communities are organizing, following guidance from authorities, and preparing to “resist in the streets” in a show of solidarity. Chávez characterizes the attack as “an illegal U.S. bombing against a civilian population” and frames it as part of a broader effort to force regime change and assert control over Venezuela’s political direction and oil resources. She also warns that the operation may mark the opening phase of a wider U.S. campaign in Latin America, referring to it as “another Monroe Doctrine,” and says she intends to “continue denouncing by every means necessary” what she views as an assault on Venezuela.
In an interview from Caracas, Venezuelan journalist Andrea Nach Chavez describes the aftermath of a pre-dawn U.S. military attack on Venezuela, reporting that strikes hit multiple locations, including residential areas—contradicting Washington’s claim that only military targets were struck. Chavez asserts that President Nicolás Maduro has been kidnapped by the United States, rejecting U.S. narratives of an arrest or lawful capture and calling for proof of life and his immediate return.
Chavez reports that crowds have gathered in the streets of Caracas, not in celebration—as some Western outlets have suggested—but in solidarity and outrage, denouncing the attack as an illegal act of war and a renewed attempt at regime change aimed at seizing control of Venezuela’s oil resources. She dismisses U.S. claims about democracy promotion and drug trafficking as long-standing pretexts for intervention.
The interview also addresses what Chavez describes as a coordinated campaign of psychological warfare and misinformation, particularly on social media, contrasting it with the Venezuelan government’s insistence that Maduro remains the country’s legitimate president and its call for popular and institutional resistance.
Contrary to portrayals of chaos, Chavez describes a population responding with calm vigilance: businesses largely closed, communities checking on one another, and people focused on securing essentials rather than celebrating political upheaval. She emphasizes that years of U.S. sanctions—especially the devastating measures imposed in 2017–2018 that crippled the oil industry and triggered a humanitarian crisis—have hardened Venezuela’s capacity for resilience and self-organization.
Chavez points to community-based food distribution programs and renewed domestic production as evidence that Venezuela has become less vulnerable to external pressure. She concludes by stressing the strength of the civilian-military alliance and the necessity of international solidarity from Latin America and the Global South, warning that the current assault signals a broader U.S. interventionist strategy rooted in a revived Monroe Doctrine. The interviewer underscores the critical role of independent and community journalists in countering Western media narratives and documenting events on the ground.
Vijay Prashad, Executive Director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, offers his analysis of the U.S. strikes on Venezuela and the capture of President Maduro. In his view, the operation is driven by Washington’s long‑standing interest in controlling Venezuela’s oil reserves and weakening the Bolivarian Revolution. Prashad describes what he calls the “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, placing the current actions within a broader historical pattern of U.S. intervention in Latin America. He also warns that Trump’s recent claim that the United States will “run Venezuela” could lead to what he characterizes as “a worse fiasco than Iraq.”
Prashad interprets Trump’s remarks not merely as bluster but as an implicit admission that Washington lacks a viable civilian proxy capable of governing Venezuela. He points to the political weakness and internal divisions of the U.S.-backed opposition—particularly the inability of figures like María Corina Machado to consolidate power—as well as the reconvening of Venezuela’s National Assembly, which complicates U.S. plans for a clean political handover.
Drawing on Trump’s past criticisms of the Iraq War, Prashad recalls Trump’s argument that the U.S. should have directly seized Iraq’s oil to finance the occupation. He notes that the legal groundwork for U.S. intervention in Venezuela predates Trump, tracing it to a 2015 Obama-era executive order that declared Venezuela a national security threat—an order Trump has expanded and weaponized.
While skeptical of the U.S. capacity to directly govern Venezuela—given catastrophic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan—Prashad warns that Trump’s rhetoric cannot be dismissed as harmless. Even limited intervention, he argues, could result in a debacle surpassing previous U.S. military disasters.
The discussion situates recent U.S. military strikes and electronic warfare operations in the Caribbean within a broader strategic doctrine. Prashad explains that Trump’s national security strategy revives the Monroe Doctrine, asserting unilateral U.S. dominance over the Western Hemisphere—a doctrine he describes as updated through a “Trump corollary” that justifies intervention by any means necessary. He likens recent operations to the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, suggesting a similar strategy of overwhelming force combined with symbolic spectacle.
Prashad further argues that Venezuela is only one node in a larger destabilization strategy aimed at isolating Nicaragua and Cuba, while facilitating a regional political shift. He points to the decline of Latin America’s “pink tide” governments and the rise of an “angry tide” of right-wing regimes, warning that upcoming elections in countries like Brazil and Colombia could further consolidate this shift.
Addressing economic justifications for intervention, Prashad rebuts claims—such as those made by Stephen Miller—that Venezuelan oil constitutes stolen “American wealth.” He explains that the Chávez government did not nationalize oil outright, but instead asserted greater state control over surplus extraction through the 2001 hydrocarbons law. The framing of Venezuelan oil as inherently American, he notes, has long been central to U.S. policy, reinforced by figures like Rex Tillerson, the former ExxonMobil CEO and Trump’s secretary of state.
Prashad emphasizes that U.S. interest in Venezuela is not driven by domestic energy needs—since the U.S. is a major oil exporter—but by the desire to control global energy flows and prevent oil revenues from supporting left-wing governments or international solidarity efforts, such as aid to Haiti.
In closing, Prashad offers a personal reflection on President Maduro, describing him as a reluctant leader who inherited a historic crisis rather than seeking power. He cautions against sections of the left abandoning Maduro without reckoning with the broader structures of imperial power at play. The discussion concludes with a call to engage with Tricontinental’s research on hyperimperialism and the shifting political terrain of Latin America and the Global South.
Whitewashing U.S. barbarism by smearing Russia and China
Finian Cunningham, January 10, 2026, https://strategic-culture.su/news/2026/01/10/whitewashing-us-barbarism-by-smearing-russia-and-china/
The Western media are doing what they usually do: minimizing and covering up the criminal aggression of the United States.
Trump’s blatantly illegal military attack on Venezuela, the kidnapping of its president, the murder of foreign nationals, and theft of the country’s vast oil resources are not being called out for the litany of grave crimes that such actions constitute. The aggression that the U.S. has carried out is the Nuremberg standard of “supreme crime”.
Yet the U.S. and European corporate-controlled news media fail to report or comment on all this. Britain’s BBC has banned its journalists from using the word “kidnap”.
Instead of a forthright condemnation of Trump’s multiple violations of the UN Charter and international law, the Western media have sought to distract with spurious smearing of Russia and China.
The New York Times, the US so-called paper of record, claimed: “President Trump’s audacious nighttime raid in Venezuela sent a message: If you’re strong enough, you can attack a country, topple its leader and perhaps get access to the resources you’re after. The leaders of China and Russia, who have long shared a vision that divides the world into spheres of influence dominated by major powers, will be drawing their own conclusions.”
How’s that for diversion of public attention? The United States has just committed war crimes and brought the whole international order into disrepute in the most flagrant way, and yet the New York Times endeavors to focus concern on what Russia and China might allegedly do.
The Daily Beast and the Guardian both used the line, “the Putinization of US foreign policy.”
They claim that Trump is now “emulating” Russian President Vladimir Putin.
These Western media outlets are trying to minimize U.S. criminality by making a false equivalence with Russia and China.
So, it is postulated, Trump is repeating what Russia’s Putin has done in Ukraine, while China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is now going to follow through with an invasion of Taiwan.
The Western media distortion is contradicted by Moscow and Beijing, vehemently condemning U.S. aggression towards Venezuela and the violation of the UN Charter.
The only person Trump is emulating is every previous U.S. president. All of them have repeatedly invaded countries in Latin America and all around the world to overthrow governments and steal natural resources.
The criminal record of the United States is incomparable with that of any other nation. Since the Second World War alone, the U.S. has launched regime-change operations in as many as 100 foreign nations and waged countless illegal wars and proxy conflicts on every continent.
During the past eight decades of this “American exceptionalism” of mayhem and barbarism, the Western media have covered up the criminality by peddling pretexts such as the Cold War, defending the free world from communism, protecting human rights, promoting democracy, eliminating weapons of mass destruction, and so on.
The prelude to the latest aggression against Venezuela involved five months of the U.S. and Western media laundering Trump’s absurd claims about combating narcoterrorism. Now that the criminal aggression has taken place, the baseless war propaganda has been dutifully dropped as Trump boasts of taking over the country’s oil industry.
The naked imperialism of the United States stands exposed for the whole world to see. But instead of shouting that the emperor has no clothes, the servile Western media must distract from their own propaganda complicity by diverting the narrative to claim that Trump is emulating Putin and Xi, or that Russia and China are supposedly relishing the prospect of an alleged free hand in their “spheres of influence”.
This is sheer conjuring by the Western media. Russia is involved in Ukraine because of a proxy war that the U.S.-led NATO bloc has provoked over several decades. As for China, Taiwan is a sovereign part of its territory under international law. Tensions have been incited by relentless U.S. interference in China’s internal affairs, primarily by selling massive weapons shipments to Taiwan.
Moscow and Beijing have repeatedly advocated respect for the UN Charter and a peaceful multipolar world order based on abiding by international law.
It is the United States and its lackey Western partners who have corroded international law and unleashed chaos by pursuing their imperialist objectives and violating countries at will.
Trump is essentially no different from every other preceding U.S. president in his presumption that might is right and resort to gunboat diplomacy. Previous presidents were politically obliged to use cynical pretexts to cover up the criminality. And the Western media, as a controlled propaganda system, always obliged with peddling the cover stories.
Trump is fast-moving to open barbarism and dispensing with fig leaf excuses. It’s raw imperialist violence. The lackey media are in a quandary. The ugly truth is obvious. But they can’t report that. So a conjuring trick is used to cover their abject complicity. Smear Russia and China.
Finian Cunningham is coauthor of Killing Democracy: Western Imperialism’s Legacy of Regime Change and Media Manipulation
Bombshell: A Story of Truth in the Face of Censorship
Elizabeth Smith, NTI 6th Jan 2026 https://www.nti.org/risky-business/bombshell-a-story-of-truth-in-the-face-of-censorship/
What does it take to reveal truth in the face of censorship? A fascinating new PBS documentary, Bombshell, tells the story of the U.S. government’s efforts to cover up the impact of the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the journalists who witnessed the devastation and spoke up.
Bombshell provides a detailed account of the U.S. government’s campaign to sanitize the reality of the widespread death and destruction caused by the first use of a nuclear weapon in war, including by constructing a narrative that the bombings allowed for a humane exit from World War II.
Initially, when President Truman announced the Hiroshima bombing to the American people, he reported that the bomb had been dropped on a military target. In fact, the bomb had intentionally targeted the center of the city, not a military base on its outskirts, to maximize the psychological impact on civilians. Tens of thousands of people were killed instantly and by the end of the year, as many more succumbed to radiation poisoning, as many as 140,000 were dead.
In the early months that followed the August bombings of Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki, the U.S. military downplayed the human impact of the bombs with journalists, especially the devastating—and indiscriminate—effects of nuclear radiation.
The racial politics of the time also shaped who was heard, as a small set of journalists attempted to report the truth. In Autumn 1945, when Japanese and Japanese-American journalists like Yoshito Matsushige and Leslie Nakashima tried to describe what they and their families had experienced, U.S. officials labeled their work as propaganda and actively attempted to discredit them. Around the same time, Black intellectuals like Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston were among the first to express outrage at the bombings; they saw Japanese civilians as fellow people of color and sought to humanize their suffering, questioning whether the United States would have committed an atrocity of this scale on a European country. Mainstream news sources sidelined their work.
Eventually, the truth began to take root. Charles Loeb, a well-regarded Black journalist with a medical background, was one of the first American journalists to write about the effects of radiation, drawing on his medical training to understand the abnormalities he had witnessed. Later, The New Yorker asked John Hersey to report on the impact of the bombings. When he decided to shift focus towards the human toll of the bombs, it became clear that one article could not do justice to the lives impacted. The New Yorker ultimately devoted an entire issue to Hersey’s reporting, marking the first coverage of the bombs’ human impacts in mainstream media and resulting in the seminal book titled simply, Hiroshima.
Bombshell lays bare the power of narratives—and counter narratives. It shows, with infuriating and heartbreaking precision, how misinformation about the bombings influenced public opinion.
It also is a testament to the essential role of journalism, the importance of listening to those with different perspectives, and the need to pay attention to those who challenge prevailing narratives. Otherwise, we overlook history’s most crucial lessons.
The Media’s Role in Manufacturing Consent in US-Venezuela Relations
This matters because Australia is rehearsing for bigger targets. The propaganda model deployed against Venezuela, demonisation, economic warfare disguised as humanitarian concern, manufactured democratic pretexts for intervention, is being retrofitted for China. The patterns are identical; only the scale differs.
Venezuela is the laboratory. The techniques perfected there, demonisation, selective omission, ideological framing, strategic amnesia, are being scaled up for larger targets: China, Russia, Iran, any country that challenges United States dominance.
THE INVISIBLE BLOCKADE: How Media Made Economic Warfare Disappear
The Vanishing Act
In February 2019, millions watched in horror as Venezuelan security forces appeared to torch trucks carrying humanitarian aid on the Colombian border. CNN’s cameras were on hand to capture the flames. For The New York Times, it was proof of Maduro’s “cruelty.” Politicians from Marco Rubio to Nancy Pelosi cited the incident as proof that intervention was needed. Video analysis later contradicted that narrative.
The story just was not true. But the lie was given a long run. Weeks later, the New York Times quietly admitted the fire was started by an opposition protester’s Molotov cocktail; a single paragraph buried deep in a longer piece. The original story, complete with inflammatory images, had already done its work: manufacturing consent for economic strangulation that would kill tens of thousands.
Mainstream reporting of Venezuela is the story of how consent gets manufactured in 2025. Forget naff Soviet style propaganda. Instead, train your eyes on a bee dance of selective coverage, ideological framing and strategic amnesia.
Venezuela wins a golden globe for best propaganda show of the 21st century: convincing most of us that United States economic warfare does not exist.
The Crime That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Ask any Aussie what is happening in Venezuela. Chances are you will get a rehearsed answer: socialist dictatorship, economic collapse, humanitarian crisis. Raise the role of United States sanctions and you will often get silence.
In Caracas, you could not miss it. From 2017 to 2020, Washington imposed more than 350 unilateral coercive measures against Venezuela. The Trump administration bragged about a “maximum pressure” campaign, as if it were running a fracking operation and not ruining the lives of millions of innocent bystanders. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the United States was targeting Venezuela’s oil sector “to prevent further diverting of Venezuela’s assets by Maduro.”
The message to Caracas was clear: “We are going to starve your people until they revolt and overthrow the government.” Trump’s crew echoes a Latin dictatorship with its junta of elite billionaires, corporate and military figures such as John Kelly and James Mattis. Trumpism is populist braggadocio and bluff.
The same men must know that they have blood on their hands. A 2019 study by economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs at the Center for Economic and Policy Research estimated that United States sanctions caused around 40,000 deaths between 2017 and 2018 alone. The authors described the measures as collective punishment. Former United Nations Special Rapporteur Idriss Jazairy called such sanctions “crimes against humanity.”
United Nations expert Alfred de Zayas, who visited Venezuela, called the sanctions “economic warfare” and recommended that the International Criminal Court investigate United States officials for possible crimes against humanity. He likened modern sanctions to medieval sieges.
You did not read much of that in the Sydney Morning Herald, did you?
The Propaganda Model in Action
Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman’s Manufacturing Consent outlines filters through which media coverage passes: ownership, advertising, sourcing, flak and ideology. Venezuela’s coverage demonstrates every single one.
Ownership filter: corporate media outlets have material interests in maintaining the neoliberal economic order Venezuela challenged. When Hugo Chávez increased royalties, nationalised key assets and used oil revenues for social programs rather than shareholder profits, he made powerful enemies. Coverage shifted from sceptical to openly hostile.
Sourcing filter: a 2018 FAIR study of United States media coverage found that stories on Venezuela mostly quoted United States officials and opposition figures. Government representatives were largely invisible. International observers who validated aspects of Venezuelan elections rarely appeared. Economists like Weisbrot who questioned the sanctions narrative were pushed to marginal outlets.
Instead, audiences were fed Marco Rubio, Elliott Abrams of Iran Contra fame and Juan Guaidó, a hack who declared himself Venezuela’s president with United States backing.
The flak machine: journalists who deviated from the script faced immediate pushback. When Abby Martin or Max Blumenthal reported from Venezuela and challenged mainstream narratives, they were smeared as “Maduro apologists” or “useful idiots.” The example kept most other reporters in line.
Ideological filter: the anti socialist smear was mandatory. Every story about Venezuelan food shortages led with “socialist mismanagement.” There was little mention that Saudi Arabia, a United States ally, was simultaneously creating mass starvation in Yemen through a blockade that killed hundreds of thousands.
The framing is not about humanitarian concern. It is about ideology.
The Guaidó Gambit
Nothing demonstrates consent manufacturing quite like the Juan Guaidó affair.
On 23 January 2019, this political unknown swore himself in as “interim president” on a Caracas street. Within minutes, the United States, Canada and major Latin American governments recognised him. Corporate media followed at breakneck speed, describing him as Venezuela’s interim president, without quotation marks.
Unfortunately for the narrative, the facts were less convenient. Guaidó’s party had boycotted the previous presidential election. His constitutional claim was dubious. His “interim presidency” had no control of government, no command of the armed forces, no democratic mandate. He was a US-backed figure on standby for regime change.
For two years, Guaidó staged photo opportunities while much of the media treated his fantasy regime as real. He appointed “ambassadors” to empty buildings. He fronted a “humanitarian aid” push that former senior United States officials later admitted was a regime change ploy. He even backed a failed mercenary invasion, a Bay of Pigs style debacle, that landed with a resounding thud in May 2020.
Then something amazing. Guaidó disappears off-stage. No post mortems examined how spectacularly the media was gulled. No accountability for presenting a ludicrously inept United States puppet as a democratic leader. Just sudden, collective amnesia.
By 2023, even much of the opposition had jilted Guaidó. The sanctions stayed, nevertheless, grinding millions into poverty. And seven million into exile.
The Australian Complicity
Australia has been a keen player in US myth. The Morrison government, which itself blurred fact and fiction, recognised Guaidó and joined the Lima Group, a United States orchestrated coalition promoting regime change. At the United Nations, Australia reliably lined up with Washington against Caracas.
And our media? Lockstep, lickspittle compliance.
The ABC, our “independent” public broadcaster, mostly echoed US narratives. SBS, with its multicultural mission, rarely interviewed Venezuelans who support their government, although millions do, despite everything. Murdoch outlets adored a military tattoo and beat the skins off their intervention drum kit.
When Venezuela held presidential elections in July 2024, The Australian and its claque called them fraudulent, even before votes were counted. Opposition claims of victory were reported as fact. Government claims were “disputed.” The opposition refused to present precinct level evidence to Venezuela’s electoral council, but that got scant coverage.
The ABC, our “independent” public broadcaster, mostly echoed US narratives. SBS, with its multicultural mission, rarely interviewed Venezuelans who support their government, although millions do, despite everything. Murdoch outlets adored a military tattoo and beat the skins off their intervention drum kit.
When Venezuela held presidential elections in July 2024, The Australian and its claque called them fraudulent, even before votes were counted. Opposition claims of victory were reported as fact. Government claims were “disputed.” The opposition refused to present precinct level evidence to Venezuela’s electoral council, but that got scant coverage.
International observers, including the Carter Center, raised concerns about pre-election conditions but did not declare the vote fraudulent. Nuance vanishes in translation.
This matters because Australia is rehearsing for bigger targets. The propaganda model deployed against Venezuela, demonisation, economic warfare disguised as humanitarian concern, manufactured democratic pretexts for intervention, is being retrofitted for China. The patterns are identical; only the scale differs.
The Invisible Blockade
The most extraordinary achievement of this propaganda campaign is rendering economic warfare invisible.
United States sanctions do not just prohibit American companies from trading with Venezuela. They impose secondary sanctions on any company worldwide that does business with Venezuela’s oil sector, central bank or state enterprises. This blocks Venezuela from:
- Importing medicine and medical equipment
- Accessing international financial systems for humanitarian purchases
- Selling oil to finance imports
- Receiving spare parts for refineries and infrastructure
- Engaging in normal international commerce
When a Venezuelan child dies because hospitals cannot get dialysis equipment, that is not “socialist failure.” That is economic strangulation by the world’s dominant power. US officials admit that sanctions should cause enough suffering to trigger political change.
Yet media coverage presents Venezuela’s crisis as self inflicted, the inevitable result of Chavista economic policies and corruption. Sanctions are mentioned, if at all, as afterthoughts; minor irritants rather than a central driver of collapse.
This inversion of cause and effect is propaganda at its most sophisticated. It does not require outright lying, just selective emphasis. Mention sanctions late. Lead with empty supermarket shelves. Quote opposition politicians blaming socialism. Ignore United Nations experts describing collective punishment. Repeat.
The result is that we support sanctions without understanding that we are supporting collective punishment of civilians for political ends.
The Double Standard
Ideological filtering is highlighted by comparing coverage of Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia is an absolute monarchy. There are no competitive national elections. Women gained the right to drive only in 2017. Political dissidents are imprisoned, tortured or murdered. Journalist Jamal Khashoggi was dismembered with a bone saw. The Saudi led coalition has inflicted a catastrophic war on Yemen that has killed hundreds of thousands through violence and starvation.
Yet Saudi Arabia remains a close United States ally. Australian media do not call for sanctions. The ABC does not run rolling segments on Saudi humanitarian disasters. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is often treated as a moderniser, not a dictator.
Venezuela, by contrast, holds regular elections; flawed and contested, certainly, but elections nonetheless. International observers have repeatedly validated Venezuelan electoral processes as technically sound, even while questioning campaign conditions. Venezuela has not invaded neighbours or created famines abroad.
But Venezuela challenged neoliberal orthodoxy and United States dominance over its oil. That is the unforgivable heresy.
Or take Honduras, where a United States backed government emerged from a coup, presides over extreme violence and corruption, and fuels migration through poverty. United States aid continues. Media attention is minimal. No sanctions. No serious calls for intervention.
Humanitarian concern is theatre. The metric that matters is compliance with United States interests.
What Gets Memory Holed
Propaganda does not just create false narratives. It makes inconvenient facts disappear. A short list of what Australian coverage of Venezuela tends to omit:
The achievements: between 1999 and 2012, poverty fell from 50 per cent to 25 per cent. Extreme poverty dropped from 20 per cent to 7 per cent. Infant mortality declined markedly. Malnutrition fell sharply. University enrolment went up. Literacy programs reached millions. Venezuela had one of Latin America’s lower levels of income inequality.
Those gains are now being reversed; primarily due to sanctions, oil price collapse and economic warfare, not the social programs that created them.
The coup attempts: Venezuela has endured repeated United States linked coup efforts. A 2002 coup briefly overthrew Chávez before mass mobilisation restored him. Opposition violence in 2014 and 2017 killed dozens. The 2020 mercenary incursion involved former United States special forces personnel. These are not conspiracy theories; United States officials have openly discussed regime change plans.
The oil price context: Venezuela’s economy relies on oil. When prices collapsed from more than 100 United States dollars a barrel in 2014 to under 30 dollars in 2016, the economy tanked, as any petrostate would. Norway, with stronger institutions, would struggle with that volatility. Yet media present Venezuela’s crisis as purely ideological.
The sanctions timeline: the economic crisis accelerated dramatically after comprehensive sanctions in 2017. Obama era sanctions were limited. Trump era sanctions moved into full economic warfare. The timing is hard to ignore unless you are corporate media.
The alternative: Venezuela has offered to negotiate, to hold elections with international supervision, to accept mediation. The United States repeatedly insists on Maduro’s resignation as a precondition. When Mexico and Uruguay proposed dialogue in 2019, the US and the Lima Group rejected it. The goal was never democracy; it was regime change.
The Propaganda Ecosystem
Modern consent manufacturing is more sophisticated than George Orwell imagined. It does not require central coordination or formal censorship. It emerges from institutional incentives, ideological assumptions and career pressures.
Journalists covering Venezuela face structural pressures:
- Editors favour stories that fit existing narratives
- Contradicting United States government claims invites flak from powerful sources
- Career advancement comes from staying in institutional good graces
- Departing from mainstream consensus risks being labelled “biased”
- Stories that challenge dominant frames are buried or spiked
The result is self censorship that does not require overt control. Journalists internalise the pressures and avoid stories that might cause trouble. Editors spike pieces that challenge core assumptions. The spectrum of acceptable opinion narrows to a sliver.
Social media accelerates this dynamic. Nuanced analysis of sanctions demands sustained attention and complex thinking. “Dictator starves his people” fits neatly into a post. The dopamine driven attention economy marginalises the kind of deep reading needed to understand economic warfare.
Add “fact checkers” funded by the same foundations prosecuting the information war, and dissent becomes “misinformation” in a self-reinforcing knowledge ecosystem.
Why This Matters for Australia
You might think Venezuela is distant and irrelevant to Australian concerns. You would be wrong on both counts.
First, Australia is practising. The propaganda model deployed against Venezuela, demonising leadership, emphasising enemy crimes while ignoring allied atrocities, masking economic warfare as humanitarian concern, is being prepared for larger targets.
Coverage of China already shows the same patterns. Replace “Maduro” with “Xi” and “socialism” with “authoritarianism” and you have the same playbook. The difference is that Venezuela cannot fight back. China can. The stakes are far higher.
Second, Australia is complicit. Our government joined the regime change coalition. Our media helped manufacture consent for economic warfare against civilians. Our citizens were persuaded to support policies that have killed thousands of Venezuelans, often without realising those policies exist.
That moral corrosion matters. If we can be convinced to support collective punishment in Venezuela, what will we not support? Where does it end?
Third, this reveals our media’s subordination to United States interests. The speed with which Australian outlets adopted Washington’s framing, the uniformity of coverage, the lack of critical distance, all suggest a serious sovereignty problem. Not sovereignty over resources or territory, but over the information ecosystem that shapes public understanding.
When Australian media cannot or will not challenge United States propaganda, we are not really independent. We are a province of empire, feeding our citizens pre digested narratives manufactured offshore.
The Resistance to Knowing
Perhaps the most depressing aspect of propaganda is how resistant people become to counter evidence. Present Australians with facts about sanctions causing Venezuelan deaths and watch the mental gymnastics.
“Maduro could end the sanctions by stepping down.” So collective punishment of civilians is acceptable if the goal is regime change?
“The economy was already failing.” True, and then sanctions made it catastrophically worse. That is the point.
“Venezuelans are fleeing.” Largely due to economic collapse driven in part by sanctions. Also, why is there no matching call for regime change in Honduras, which generates far more refugees per capita?
“It is about democracy.” Then why do we support Saudi Arabia, Egypt and dozens of other autocracies?
The resistance is not about evidence; it is about identity. Accepting that United States and Australian policy deliberately starves civilians requires confronting uncomfortable truths about our democracies, our media and ourselves. It is easier to cling to stories about dictators and failed socialism.
This is how propaganda succeeds. Not mainly by convincing people of lies, but by making the truth psychologically unbearable.
The Path Forward
So what is to be done?
For journalists: break the pack. The Guaidó debacle showed that challenging official narratives does not just serve truth; it protects professional credibility. Reporters who questioned the regime change fantasy now look prescient. Those who amplified it look like stenographers.
Demand evidence for government claims. Apply consistent standards across countries. Interview diverse sources, including people who challenge Western narratives. Remember that the job is to afflict the comfortable, not manufacture consent for economic warfare.
For media consumers: develop propaganda literacy. When every outlet says the same thing using the same framing, that is not validation; it is synchronisation. Seek alternative sources. Read United Nations reports. Follow independent journalists who have actually visited Venezuela, not desk bound opinion writers recycling State Department talking points.
Ask the questions media outlets avoid. Who benefits from this narrative? What is being omitted? Are we applying consistent standards? What would coverage look like if ideological positions were reversed?
For citizens: demand accountability. Australia joined a regime change coalition that killed thousands through economic warfare. That happened in our name. Our government recognised a “president” who never won the presidency. Our media cheered it on. None of this has been reckoned with.
Write to politicians. Challenge media outlets. Support independent journalism. Refuse the memory hole. Because Venezuela is practice. The same model will be deployed against larger targets, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Conclusion: The Test We Are Failing
Venezuela represents a test of democratic societies’ capacity for independent thought in the face of sophisticated propaganda. We are failing spectacularly.
A superpower has spent years waging economic warfare against a smaller country that dared to challenge neoliberal orthodoxy. That warfare has killed tens of thousands of civilians, displaced millions more and caused immense suffering. It violates international law and basic morality.
Financial software
Yet most Australians do not even know it is happening. They have been told that Venezuela’s crisis is self inflicted, the inevitable result of socialist economics. They have been trained to support collective punishment without recognising it as such.
That is the triumph of manufactured consent. Not crude lies, but sophisticated narrative construction that makes economic warfare invisible, transforms victims into villains and converts citizens into unwitting accomplices.
Herman and Chomsky wrote Manufacturing Consent in 1988, documenting how media serve power. Decades later, the model is more sophisticated, more effective and more dangerous. The digital information ecosystem has not liberated us. It has created new mechanisms for propaganda.
Venezuela is the laboratory. The techniques perfected there, demonisation, selective omission, ideological framing, strategic amnesia, are being scaled up for larger targets: China, Russia, Iran, any country that challenges United States dominance.
The question is whether we will recognise the pattern before it is too late. Will we demand independent journalism and honest accounting of our governments’ actions? Or will we continue sleepwalking into support for economic warfare, regime change and potentially catastrophic conflicts, never quite realising we have been played?
The invisible blockade around Venezuela is not just physical. It is cognitive. And the most dangerous walls are the ones we cannot see.
This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES
Editorial Boards Cheer Trump Doctrine in Venezuela.
Even now we’re still asking: Why? Why is the US taking such drastic military action? Is it to “take back” our oil? To deport Venezuelans en masse? To fight drug trafficking? To send a message to Cuba?
Perhaps this cloud of justifications just conceals the truth—there is no real reason. Trump seems to be doing this because he can.
FAIR, Ari Paul, 6 Jan26
“……………………………. ‘Hemispheric hygiene’
The Wall Street Journal editorial board (1/3/26) called the abductions “an act of hemispheric hygiene,” a dehumanizing comparison of Venezuela’s leaders to germs needing to be cleansed.
For the Journal, the abductions were justified because they weren’t just a blow to Venezuela, but to the rest of America’s official enemies. “The dictator was also part of the axis of US adversaries that includes Russia, China, Cuba and Iran,” it said. It called Maduro’s “capture…a demonstration of Mr. Trump’s declaration to keep America’s enemies from spreading chaos in the Western Hemisphere.” It amplified Trump’s own rhetoric of adding on to the Roosevelt Corollary, saying “It’s the ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine” ”—a nod to the long-standing imperial notion that the US more or less owns the Western Hemisphere.
The next day, the Journal editorial board (1/4/26) even seemed upset that the Trump administration didn’t go far enough in Venezuela, worrying that it left the socialist regime in place, whose “new leaders rely so much on aid from Cuba, Russia, China and Iran.” “Despite Mr. Trump’s vow that the US will ‘run the country,’ there is no one on the ground to do so,” the paper complained, thus reducing “the US ability to persuade the regime.”
The Washington Post board (1/3/26) took a similar view to the Journal. “This is a major victory for American interests,” it wrote. “Just hours before, supportive Chinese officials held a chummy meeting with Maduro, who had also been propped up by Russia, Cuba and Iran.”
The Post, which has moved steadily to the right since Trump’s inauguration a year ago, seemed to endorse extreme “might makes right” militarism. “Maduro’s removal sends an important message to tin-pot dictators in Latin America and the world: Trump follows through,” the board wrote. (Really? Did we miss when Trump “followed through” on his promise to end the Ukraine War within 24 hours? Or to take back the Panama Canal? Or make Canada the 51st state?) It belittled Democratic President Joe Biden, who “offered sanctions relief to Venezuela, and Maduro responded to that show of weakness by stealing an election.”
Like the Journal, the Post board (1/4/26) followed up a day later to push Trump to take a more active role in Venezuela’s future. It worried about his decision to leave in place “dyed-in-the-wool Chavista” Delcy Rodriguez and other “hard-liners” in Maduro’s administration.
The Post chided Trump for dismissing the idea of installing opposition leader María Corina Machado, who it deemed a worthy partner in imperial prospects: “She has a strong record of standing for democracy and free markets, and she’s committed to doing lucrative business with the US.” As with the Journal, the assumption that it’s up to the US to choose Venezuela’s leadership went unquestioned.
‘Fueled economic and political disruption’
The New York Times editorial board (1/3/26), on the other hand, condemned the abductions, saying Trump’s attack “represents a dangerous and illegal approach to America’s place in the world.”
But the board only did so after the requisite vilifying, asserting that “few people will feel any sympathy for Mr. Maduro. He is undemocratic and repressive, and has destabilized the Western Hemisphere in recent years.”
You’re writing from the country that has spent the past four months blowing up small craft in the Caribbean, and you think it’s Maduro who has “destabilized the Western Hemisphere”?
Even as CBS News content czar Bari Weiss spiked a 60 Minutes piece about the plight of Venezuelan migrants under the administration’s brutal round-ups, the Times editorial blamed Maduro alone for the humanitarian crisis at hand. “He has fueled economic and political disruption throughout the region by instigating an exodus of nearly 8 million migrants,” the editorial said. As is typical in US commentary on Venezuela (FAIR.org, 2/6/19), the word “sanctions” does not appear in the editorial, though US strictures have fueled an economic collapse three times worse than the Great Depression.
And it comes after the Times opinion page gave space calling for regime change in Venezuela. “Washington should approach dismantling the Maduro regime as we would any criminal enterprise,” wrote Jimmy Story (New York Times, 12/26/25), a former US ambassador to Venezuela. Right-wing Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote a piece simply headlined “The Case for Overthrowing Maduro” (11/17/25).
The Times didn’t mention the recent seizures of ships carrying Venezuelan oil (BBC, 12/21/25; Houston Public Media, 12/22/25)—or the issue of Venezuela’s oil at all, though even the paper’s own news section (1/3/25) admitted that oil was “central” to the kidnapping. “They stole our oil,” Trump dubiously claimed in his public address, bragging that the door to the country was now open to have “very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars…and start making money for the country.”
These are glaring oversights by the Times board, even if it ultimately waved its finger at the administration for its military action. Contrast this to the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle (1/3/26), which serves a huge portion of the energy sector:
Even now we’re still asking: Why? Why is the US taking such drastic military action? Is it to “take back” our oil? To deport Venezuelans en masse? To fight drug trafficking? To send a message to Cuba?
Perhaps this cloud of justifications just conceals the truth—there is no real reason. Trump seems to be doing this because he can.
‘Not a guarantee’
Elsewhere in the press, the operation against Maduro won support from editorial boards that also reserved the right to say “I told you so.” “Maduro Had to Be Removed,” said the Dallas Morning News editorial board (1/3/26) in its headline, adding in the subhead, “But the US Cannot ‘Run’ Venezuela.”
And the Miami Herald editorial board (1/3/26), which serves a large anti-socialist Latin American population, said that while Maduro out of power was “obviously cause for enormous joy,” this was “not a guarantee for democracy.” “Is Trump’s true interest to see democracy in Venezuela,” it asked, “or to install a new leader who’s more friendly to the US and its interests in the nation’s oil reserves?”
The Chicago Tribune editorial board (1/5/25) heaped paragraphs of praise on the Maduro mission—”we don’t lament Maduro’s exit for a moment”—and scoffed at “left-wing mayors” who “howled in protest at the weekend actions.” But it saw a moral dilemma:
What moral authority does the US now have if, say, China, removes the Taiwanese leadership, deeming it incompatible with Chinese interests? Not much. And this action surely weakens the moral argument against Vladimir Putin, though Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is now hoping Russia’s leader is the next authoritarian Trump takes out.
The New York Times editorial board (12/21/89) said something similar 36 years ago, when the US invaded Panama. While justifying the invasion, it asked, “What kind of precedent does the invasion set for potential Soviet action in Eastern Europe?”
Perhaps rather than worrying that US behavior will encourage some other country to behave lawlessly, US papers could be more concerned about their own country’s lawlessness. By kidnapping a foreign head of state, the Trump administration is saying that international law doesn’t apply to the United States. That’s a sentiment most American editorialists are all too ready to applaud—despite the danger it poses for Americans, and for the world. https://fair.org/home/editorial-boards-cheer-trump-doctrine-in-venezuela/
The Venezuela Playbook: How Australian Media Sold Us Another War
4 January 2026 David Tyler AIM Extra , https://theaimn.net/the-venezuela-playbook-how-australian-media-sold-us-another-war/
Part One: The Anatomy of an Imperial Project
“Venezuelan strongman Maduro seized in daring US operation.”
That’s how our ABC led its coverage when American forces stormed Caracas in January. Over at The Australian, it was “Narcoterrorist-in-chief finally brought to justice,” a newly-minted international crime, ingeniously linking two scourges, drugs and terror.
The Sydney Morning Herald went with the risible “Democracy’s long-delayed victory in Venezuela.”
Not one dare say that what we’d just witnessed was an illegal military invasion of a sovereign nation. Dear SMH, how is the invasion democratic? Not one asked why Australian media were suddenly experts on Venezuelan “narcoterrorism”, a freshly-pressed grape of wrath? Or brand-new imperial panic button.
And not a soul bothered to note that we’ve seen this movie before, frame for frame, lie for lie.
Welcome to the second level of contempt: not just the violence itself, in which we all through our membership of various organisations failed the people of Venezuela, but the propaganda about the propaganda, served up by our own trusted news sources.
It’s as if we’re too dim to remember Iraq’s WMDs or Libya’s “humanitarian intervention.” They’re counting on our goldfish memories, our inability to hold a pattern in our heads long enough to shout: “Hang about, haven’t we been down this path before?”
Narcoterrorism: The Empire’s Latest New Designer Label
Every imperial adventure needs its signature scare. Saddam had (invisible) WMDs that could strike London in 45 minutes. John Howard, hadn’t actually seen them but he was prepared to lie that proof existed. Gaddafi was about to massacre Benghazi. Assad gassed his own people (some of which was true, conveniently omitting our backing of jihadists fighting him). Now Maduro runs a “narcoterrorist state”, a portmanteau phrase that fuses two reliable panic buttons into one handy package.
If he could remember his earlier phrase, Trump would doubtless call Venezuela a shithole country.
But let’s be clear, we are being sold a smash and grab raid. Cool. Maduro had it coming. It’s Marketing 101 for illegal invasion. Drugs? Terrifying. Terrorism? Even worse. Mash them up and you’ve got a villain so vile that international law is just a mere technicality. Far-fetched? It’s a hoot. The United States; the world’s largest consumer of cocaine, its biggest market and architect of the catastrophic “War on Drugs”, now poses as global sheriff, with just a whiff of the crusader against narcotics? Hilarious.
But the crusader copy writes itself. And our media newshounds are selling it with a straight face.
It’s not the drugs. It’s the oil. Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest heavy sour crude oil reserves. Bigger than Saudi Arabia. Bigger than Iraq. And unlike those compliant petrostates, Venezuela has had the temerity to suggest that its oil might benefit Venezuelans rather than Exxon-Mobil shareholders.
That’s the real crime. The drugs are just the marketing.
Our media know this. They’re not stupid, just complicit. When The Australianquotes “Western intelligence sources” on Maduro’s drug empire, they’re parroting CIA talking points. When the ABC describes Venezuela as a “failed state,” they skip over how it got that way. And when they mention sanctions at all, it’s as a footnote, “pressure for reform”, not as the economic siege warfare it actually is.
But always check your oil. A reality check: Venezuela’s Orinoco Belt contains extra‑heavy, sulphur‑laden crude that’s expensive and technically finicky to extract and refine. CNN reports that gulf refineries in Texas and Louisiana are already tooled up for this dirty work—cheaper than retro-fitting to deal with local shale oil.
Despite Venezuela needing $58 billion for infrastructure upgrades, refining Venezuelan oil remains cheaper long-term due to low production costs and refinery optimisation. This could stabilise US diesel amid tight global supply, potentially dropping American refining costs 10-20% versus Saudi or Canadian alternatives.
Economic Strangulation as Prelude to Invasion
Since 2017, Washington has waged silent war on Venezuela, strangling its economy with a sadistic deliberation that would make any medieval besiegers green with envy. To be fair, corruption in Caracas and mismanagement helped. But billions in Venezuelan funds were frozen. Oil exports blocked. Access to global financial markets cut. Ships intercepted. Assets seized. The whole machinery of dollar dominance weaponised against a country whose real offence is daring to chart its own course.
The arithmetic of empire is written in bodies. Forty thousand preventable deaths from sanctions-induced medicine shortages by 2024, according to Physicians for Human Rights. Three hundred thousand Venezuelans with cancer, diabetes, HIV at risk of death because medical supplies can’t get through the blockade. Maternal mortality at 125 deaths per 100,000 live births. A population where 75% collectively lost an average of over 8 kilograms to hunger. Seven point six million people, nearly a quarter of the population, driven into exile, generating the largest displacement crisis in Latin American history.
UN human rights experts have condemned these sanctions as collective punishment, noting that unilateral coercive measures enforced through armed blockades violate international law. Human Rights Watch criticised the sanctions for lacking humanitarian exemptions. In 2025, UN rapporteurs called US actions “collective punishment,” violating international law by inducing suffering without UN Security Council approval. They are, in plain English, economic warfare against civilians.
Now Australian media perform their best trick: they report the humanitarian crisis while erasing its primary cause. Venezuela is “collapsing under Maduro’s mismanagement,” we’re told. True enough; the man couldn’t run a chook raffle. But the sanctions turbo-charged a crisis into a catastrophe, and that’s the bit that gets memory-holed. It’s like reporting on a bushfire while forgetting to mention the arsonist.
It’s America’s classic neocon playbook. Throttle the economy. Wait for the suffering to mount. Blame the government. Present military intervention as mercy. Rinse and repeat. We did this to Iraq. We did this to Libya. We did this to Syria. And now, with barely a change in script, we’re doing it to Venezuela while the ABC and its fellow travellers play their assigned role: cheerleaders for the latest passage in a very old US game play.
From Sanctions to Shock and Awe: The Long Con
The January military assault isn’t some sudden eruption. It is the logical endpoint of a strategy perfected over generations. The USA has been toppling Latin American governments since before most of us were born.
Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz in 1954, was overthrown for daring to redistribute land owned by United Fruit Company. Chile’s Allende was sent packing in 1973, because socialism and copper don’t mix (from Washington’s perspective). Panama’s Manuel Noriega in 1989.
Yes it’s the same narcotics pretext, when a former CIA asset outlived his usefulness. Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Haiti: the list reads like a greatest hits of manufactured regime change.
Each time, the script is identical. Step one: demonise the target government. (Check: Maduro’s been “dictator” and “strongman” in our papers for years, never mind that he’s been elected multiple times under international observation.) Step two: manufacture or exploit a crisis. (Check: sanctions created the crisis, now presented as evidence of governmental failure.) Step three: present military action as the only solution. (Check: “No choice but to act,” as the Pentagon spokesman put it, parroted faithfully by our lot.)
The “kidnapping” of Maduro; let’s call it what it is, not “arrest”, represents peak imperial theatre. A sitting president of a sovereign nation, indicted by a US court on charges of narcoterrorism and having guns and stuff, (the real charge sheet is preposterous), seized in a military raid that violated every principle of international law, paraded before cameras like a trophy buck.
Legal scholars and a UN Secretary-General have warned this sets a catastrophic precedent. Without Security Council authorisation, without credible self-defence claims, this is simply illegal. An act of war.
But watch how Australian media runs with it: as if it were a police procedural, not an invasion. “Wanted man captured.” “Fugitive seized.” The language of law enforcement, not the language of international aggression. This is propaganda by omission, the most insidious kind.
Australian Complicity: Our Shame
Australia isn’t some innocent bystander tutting from the sidelines. We’re up to our necks in this.
Check our UN voting record on Venezuela: lockstep with Washington, backing every condemnatory resolution, every sanctions package, every diplomatic manoeuvre designed to isolate Caracas. We’ve imposed our own sanctions; targeting oil, gold, and individual officials, all while the Australian press trumpet this as righteous punishment of corruption rather than a lethal punching-down in economic warfare.
Not spelled out: Through Five Eyes intelligence sharing, we’re part of the machinery that provided targeting data for the Caracas raid. Our Pine Gap facility, that polite lie of “joint defence,” played a role in communications and surveillance. We’re not just cheer-leading; we’re materially enabling the US.
And the media? They’re the propaganda arm of this operation, whether they admit it or not. When The Australian runs pieces about Venezuela’s “criminal regime” sourced entirely to the US State Department and the CIA-backed opposition, that’s just stenography, not journalism.
When the ABC describes Maduro as “widely regarded as illegitimate” without noting that “widely” means “by Western governments who want his oil,” that’s editorialising posing as fact.
Compare the coverage to Saudi Arabia, for example, a real autocracy that dismembers journalists, starves Yemen, and funds extremism globally. The press might tut occasionally, but there’s no drumbeat for regime change, no breathless coverage of Saudi “crimes against humanity,” no earnest panels discussing whether we have a “responsibility to protect” Yemeni children from starvation.
Why? Because the Saudis play ball with Western oil interests. Venezuela doesn’t. That’s the difference, and our media know it.
This is the second level of contempt I feel: they think we’re mugs. They think we won’t notice the pattern. They think we can’t hold two ideas together long enough to ask: “Hang on, didn’t they sell us this same pig in a poke before?”
The Oil They’re Not Talking About
Let’s cut through the smoke: this is about oil. Always has been, always will be.
Venezuela holds roughly 300 billion barrels of reserves; the largest in the world. After years of sanctions crippled Russian oil exports following Ukraine, and with OPEC playing hard to get on production increases, those reserves are irresistible to Washington. Add China’s deepening energy partnerships with Venezuela; Belt and Road investments, oil-for-loans deals, and you get the strategic picture.
Maduro’s great sin isn’t drugs or authoritarianism (Washington has backed far worse). It’s keeping Venezuela’s oil revenues at home instead of letting them flow north to Houston. It’s partnering with Beijing instead of bowing to the Monroe Doctrine. It’s being an example, however flawed, of resource nationalism in a region where the US prefers compliant client states.
The press mention the oil in passing, if at all. It’s treated as context, not cause. But follow the money, follow the barrels, and the whole “narcoterrorism” narrative reveals itself as window dressing for a very old-fashioned resource grab.
Chevron, notably, got a sanctions exemption in 2022 to restart Venezuelan operations. Funny how the “criminal narco-state” is fine for doing business with when it suits corporate interests, but requires military intervention when it doesn’t play ball politically.
The Human Cost: What They Won’t Count
And now, in the January strikes: at least 40 dead in the initial assault, Venezuelan and Cuban military personnel alongside civilians. An apartment block in Catia La Mar with its exterior wall blown off, one confirmed dead, others seriously injured. “Unspecified” casualties—that bureaucratic language that erases individual lives. The Venezuelan government is still counting bodies while the American press celebrates “liberation.”
Add to that the 115 people killed in the boat strikes from August through December 2025, fishermen and alleged traffickers alike, all part of the same operation. Governments and families of those killed say many were civilians, primarily fishers. The Pentagon insists they were all “narco-terrorists.” The bodies can’t argue back.
But this is developing information, casualties still being tallied. What we know for certain: Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez confirmed deaths among both military and civilians. Trump confirmed two US soldiers injured. One US helicopter was hit but remained flyable. The 30-minute assault involved over 150 aircraft striking military bases, ports, communication facilities, and yes, civilian areas too.
Resistance: The Story They’re Burying
Here’s what should terrify the Pentagon but won’t make the ABC news: Venezuela isn’t collapsing in grateful relief. The Bolivarian militia, whether 1.6 million or government claims of eight million, represents a genuine popular defence force. Millions of Venezuelans, whatever they think of Maduro’s economic management, won’t thank the Americans for bombing their capital and kidnapping their president.
Across Latin America, governments from Mexico to Argentina have condemned the invasion. Not because they love Maduro; many don’t, but because they recognise the precedent: if Washington can do this to Venezuela, it can do it to anyone. Regional solidarity isn’t about personality; it’s about sovereignty.
China and Russia have issued sharp condemnations. They’ve got skin in the game: billions in loans and infrastructure investments that a US-installed puppet government might default on. This isn’t ideological—it’s the emerging reality of a multi-polar world where US military adventurism faces actual push-back.
And in the streets, from Caracas to Mexico City, from Barcelona to Sydney; protests are building. Not because protesters are Maduro fans, but because they’re sick of watching the same imperial playbook run again and again while their media gaslight them about “liberation” and “democracy promotion.”
The press is busting a gut to ignore or minimise this resistance.
Can’t have the narrative complicated by inconvenient facts like Latin American solidarity or popular opposition to invasion. Better to focus on the “drama” of Maduro’s capture, the “terrorism” charges, the grateful (CIA-vetted) Venezuelan exiles welcoming “freedom.”
Lest We Forget
What ought to enrage us: the utter contempt for our minds. They genuinely believe we won’t remember.
Colin Powell’s vial of “anthrax” at the UN, the aluminium tubes, the mobile weapons labs lies. Or Libya, where “protecting civilians” became regime change and now boasts open-air slave markets. Syria’s Assad was gassing his people (true) so we’d better arm the jihadists (catastrophic).
Won’t remember that every single time, the pattern is identical: demonisation, sanctions, crisis, intervention. And every single time, our media play their part in manufacturing consent.
The difference now? They’re not even trying that hard. The “narcoterrorism” frame is lazy; transparently so. But they’re banking on our scattered attention being too fragmented to notice. They’re counting on the dopamine hit of outrage at the “dictator” overwhelming any critical thought about whether invading a sovereign nation might be, you know, illegal and catastrophic.
This is what I mean by the second level of contempt. The violence itself is bad enough. But being propagandised about it by our own media, who know better but do it anyway? That’s the deepest cut.
What Comes Next
The US may have captured Maduro, but they haven’t captured Venezuela. Guerrilla resistance, regional backlash, and international condemnation are already brewing. This may not be the clean victory our media are selling. It could be messy, bloody, protracted; another forever war to add to the collection.
But then our media could “both-sides” Gaza. Australia is complicit. Our government will back it. Our media will sell it. And most of us will scroll past, troubled but not troubled enough to actually do anything.
Unless we start holding the pattern in our heads. Unless we start asking the questions our media won’t: Who benefits? What’s being omitted? Where have we seen this before?
The anatomy of an imperial project isn’t complicated. It’s the same operation, over and over. The only variable is whether we’re awake enough to recognise it.
Time to wake up.
[To be continued in Part Two: The Media’s Role in Manufacturing Consent
This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES
In 2025, The Israeli Army Was The ‘Worst Enemy Of Journalists’
Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter, 19 Dec 25
“The Israeli army is the worst enemy of journalists,” according to a year-end analysis of attacks on global press freedom from Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
RSF stated in their 2025 report [PDF], “Over the last 12 months, the Israeli army has been responsible for nearly half (43%) of all journalists killed worldwide.” Military forces specifically targeted 29 media professionals.
To emphasize this staggering statistic, RSF highlighted a double-tap strike on Gaza’s Nasser Hospital that occurred on August 25, 2025. Israeli forces targeted the part of the hospital that was known to “house a workspace for journalists.”
Reuters photojournalist Hossam al-Masri was killed. Mariam Abu Daqqa, a freelance journalist who was contracted by the Associated Press, arrived at the scene to “report on rescue operations.” Eight minutes after the first strike, Abu Daqqa and Al Jazeera photojournalist Mohamed Salama were killed.
The double-tap strike, a war crime, also killed Moaz Abu Taha a journalist contracted by NBC, and Abu Aziz, a freelance journalist who contributed reporting to Middle East Eye.
As of December 19, 2025, at least 260 journalists have been killed by Israeli military forces carrying out an ethnic cleansing campaign against the people of Gaza. Military operations began in October 2023 following an attack by Hamas operatives, which the Israeli government knew about a year before it occurred but did not prevent.
In RSF’s report on 2025, Claudia Sheinbaum’s “failure to protect journalists” in Mexico and Russian drone attacks on reporters in Ukraine were described as the next biggest cause of deaths.
Nine media professionals were killed in Mexico, and three journalists in Ukraine were killed by Russia. Yet compared to Mexico and Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Israeli army killed more than twice as many journalists.
Sixty-seven journalists in 22 countries were specifically targeted due to their work as media professionals……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..https://thedissenter.org/in-2025-the-israeli-army-was-the-worst-enemy-of-journalists/
Israel Propagandists Are Uniformly Spouting The Exact Same Line About The Bondi Shooting.
they’re using a tragic mass shooting as a political cudgel against people who believe Palestinians are human beings. This is just one more cynical manipulation aimed at protecting Israel from criticism so that it can inflict more violence and suffering upon the world.
Caitlin Johnstone, Dec 17, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/israel-propagandists-are-uniformly?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=181835001&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Looks like some kind of memo went out or something, because pro-Israel outlets and individuals are all loudly amplifying one specific talking point about the Bondi Beach shooting.
Here are some examples:
“Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like”
~ Bret Stephens, New York Times
“The Intifada Comes to Bondi Beach”
~ David Frum, The Atlantic
“The Intifada Comes to Australia”
~ Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal
“Shooting at Bondi Beach is what a globalized intifada looks like”
~ Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post
“The Intifada Comes to Australia”
~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Free Press
“Welcome to the global intifada”
~ David Harsanyi, Washington Examiner
“Palestinian propaganda has globalized the intifada”
~ Zachary Faria, Washington Examiner
“Bondi Beach massacre is what globalizing the intifada looks like”
~ Vivian Bercovici, National Post
“Chanting ‘globalise the intifada’ leads to Bondi Beach”
~ Danny Cohen, The Telegraph
“I have a simple question for leftists after the antisemitic shooting in Australia. What do you think ‘globalize the intifada’ means?”
~ US Senator Ted Cruz
“That attack in Sydney is exactly what it means to ‘globalize intifada.’ We saw the actual application of the globalization of intifada in Sydney.”
~ New York City Mayor Eric Adams
“These are the results of the anti-Semitic rampage in the streets of Australia over the past two years, with the anti-Semitic and inciting calls of ‘Globalise the Intifada’ that were realized today.”
~ Gideon Sa’ar, Foreign Minister of Israel
“When you refuse to condemn and only ‘discourage’ use of the term ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ you help facilitate (not cause) the thinking that leads to Bondi Beach.”
~ Former US antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt (addressing New York City Mayor Elect Zohran Mamdani)
“What on earth do you think globalise the intifada means? And can’t people see the link between that kind of rhetoric and attacks on Jewish people as Jewish people? Because that’s what really struck at the heart of Jewish people in our country today — an attack on Jewish people organising around Hannukah, coming together as Jewish people.”
~ UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting
“Why is it still allowed? What is the meaning of globalise the intifada? I’ll tell you the meaning… it’s what happened on Bondi Beach yesterday.”
~ Ephraim Mirvis, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom
“Calls to ‘globalise the intifada’ and chants of ‘from the river to the sea’ are not abstract or rhetorical slogans. They are explicit calls for violence, and they carry deadly consequences. What we are witnessing is the inevitable outcome of sustained radicalisation that has been allowed to fester under the guise of protest.”
~ Israeli embassy in the UK
“This is what happens when you ‘globalize the intifada.’”
~ Newsweek editors
“This was not an isolated act of violence — it was the culmination of ‘globalise the intifada’ rhetoric that has been building around the world since October 7.”
~ Yoni Bashan, The Times
“For those who’ve been marching these past few years demanding to ‘globalise the intifada’ this is a barbarous anti-Semitic consequence of their pro-Islamist stupidity.”
~ Former BBC anchor Andrew Neil
“When people call to ‘globalise the intifada’, this is what they are calling for: dead Jews, terrorism and families shattered forever.”
~ Campaign Against Antisemitism spokesperson
“Taking a stand against antisemitism after Bondi Beach should begin with an unequivocal recognition that ‘intifada’ rhetoric is hate speech.”
~ The Bulwark’s Cathy Young
“It would be great if those who have been shouting ‘Global Intifada’ would revisit that phrase right now. It is not a ‘harmless left wing slogan.’ It is a call to blame — and kill — Jews who have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the Israeli government.”
~ Spiritual guru and former US presidential candidate Marianne Williamson
Of course, these outlets and individuals do not actually care about the phrase “globalize the intifada”. If pro-Palestine activists had never chanted that slogan, pro-Israel spinmeisters would be focusing on a different line today. They are not trying to stop chants which they perceive as dangerous, they are trying to stomp out criticism of Israel’s genocidal atrocities.
As The Intercept’s Natasha Lennard wrote regarding the aforementioned Bret Stephens piece, “It’s all done in the name of fighting antisemitism by conflating the worst kinds of violent anti-Jewish bigotry, like what we saw in Bondi Beach, with any criticisms of Israel and its actions. To so much as say Palestinians ought to have basic human rights, in this view, becomes a deadly attack on Jewish safety.”
The term “intifada” means to “shake off” and “rise up”, and as Middle East Eye’s Craig Birckhead-Morton and Yasmin Zainab Bergemann explained last year, intifadas have historically included nonviolent resistance. Saying “globalize the intifada” isn’t calling for people to massacre Jewish civilians around the world, it’s advocating resistance to the power structure which incinerated Gaza and continues to inflict abuse upon Palestinians and any other population which doesn’t bow to the interests of the empire.
And the people scaremongering about this phrase know this. They’re fully aware that they’re using a tragic mass shooting as a political cudgel against people who believe Palestinians are human beings. This is just one more cynical manipulation aimed at protecting Israel from criticism so that it can inflict more violence and suffering upon the world.
As Em Hilton wrote for the Israeli outlet +972, “It is obscene how quickly the right has seized on this horror to advance an Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian agenda. And it is disgusting to see Israel’s politicians almost gleeful at the opportunity to distract from their genocidal onslaught in Gaza by using our pain and grief as a political weapon.”
Using the Slain: Israel Exploits the Bondi Beach Shootings
17 December 2025 Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/using-the-slain-israel-exploits-the-bondi-beach-shootings/
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rarely passes an opportunity to comment upon the way Jews in other countries are treated. While the manic hatred directed against Jews remains one of history’s grotesque legacies, opportunism in the Netanyahu government is a ready instinct. With a customary sense of perversion, Netanyahu has managed to mangle Israeli policy, his own political destiny and the interests of Jews in a terrible, terrifying mix. The broad stroke charge of antisemitism is the front name of this venture, and it conveniently presents itself whenever Israeli policy requires an alibi when pursuing particularly unsavoury policies: massacre, starvation and dispossession of Gazans; the continued destruction and intended eradication of a functional Palestinian entity; efforts to prevent criticism of its settler policies in other countries.The slaughter of 15 people enjoying the festivities of Hanukkah on Sydney’s famed Bondi Beach by the father-son duo of Sajid and Naveed Akram, presented a political opportunity. Having already accused Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of being a “weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews” earlier in the year, Netanyahu readied another verbal lashing. In prickly remarks made at a government meeting in Dimona, the Israeli PM accused his Australian counterpart of being a leader who had “replaced weakness and appeasement with more appeasement.” His “call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire.” It had rewarded “Hamas terrorists” and emboldened “those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets.”
Other Israeli politicians also decided that an unmeasured though monstrous antisemitism stalked the island continent, spawning the Bondi killings. “We felt and experienced the intense antisemitism directed against the Jewish community in Australia,” claimed Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer. Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli thought it appropriate to send “a delegation of experts in emergency response” to Australia, promising to “stand with the Jewish community in this difficult time and to ensure that we, as the State of Israel, are giving them everything within our ability.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar had a list of lecturing points for his Australian counterpart, Penny Wong. There had to be, he stated with a teacherly certitude, “a real change in the public atmosphere.” This required culling phrases and expressions that had been expressed on behalf of the Palestinian cause in public debate and protest. “Call such as ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ ‘From the River to the Sea Palestine Will be Free,’ and ‘Death to the IDF’ are not legitimate, are not part of the freedom of speech, inevitably lead to what we witnessed today.”
In Australia, the acceptance of such positions, and the watering down of the Palestinian cause, was rapidly normalised. A procession line of commentators proceeded to state begrudgingly that Israeli government policy could be criticised only to demonstrate how slim such latitude was. This firm, excruciating delineation was offered by Jeremy Leibler of the Zionist Federation of Australia: “Australians can criticise Israeli government policy, Israelis do it loudly and fiercely themselves. But delegitimising Israel’s right to exist, or slipping into a moral equivalence between a liberal democracy defending its citizens and a terrorist organisation that targets civilians, is something else entirely.”
Leibler’s semantic technique is important here, forcibly linking those who claim Israel has no right to exist to critics of Israel’s policy of self-defence after October 7, 2023 that has left 68,000 Palestinians dead, Gaza pulverised and an enclave on life support. At the instigation of South Africa, it is a policy that is being scrutinised by the International Court of Justice as being potentially genocidal. It is a policy that has been deemed genocidal by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory along with a clutch of notable human rights organisations, including the Israeli outfit B’Tselem. Arrest warrants have also been issued by the International Criminal Court for Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, citing alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Establishment voices from a long moribund press class are also of the view that not enough has been done by the Albanese government to combat a supposedly mad blight of antisemitism, seemingly unique from the other jostling hatreds. (Islamophobia, anyone?) The massacre, according to the unevidenced observation of veteran journalist Michelle Grattan, was “the horrific culmination of the antisemitism epidemic that has spread like wildfire in Australia.”
She noted, with grave disapproval, the failure to “formally” respond to the combative strategy proposed by the antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal, one that openly accepts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s stifling definition of antisemitism. Any official embrace of that definition – a point made by that definition’s originator, Kenneth Stern – would be a fashioned spear against free speech, censoring genuine criticism of Israeli policies. The Jerusalem Declaration, by way of contrast, notes that hostility to the Israeli state “could be an expression of an antisemitic animus, or it could be a reaction to a human rights violation, or it could be the emotion that a Palestinian feels on account of their experience at the hands of the state.”
Like most journalists wedded to the holy writ press brief and arid political interview, Grattan shows no sign of having been to a single protest condemning the murderous death toll in Gaza, or any gathering advancing the validity of Palestinian self-determination. Woolly-headed, she freely speculates. “Most of us did not recognise this fact, but this anti-Jewish sentiment must have been embedded in sections of the Australian community – the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 was the spark that lit the conflagration.” Her travesty of an effort to understand the attacks in Bondi becomes evident in cod assessments of various protest marches and demonstrations across Australian university campuses. Without even a suggestion of evidence, she claims that “university encampments” proved “intimidating for Jewish students and staff.” Those Jewish students and staff more than willing to engage in those encampments mysteriously warrant no mention. Efforts on the part of cloddish university managers to harass, suspend and censor students expressing pro-Palestinian causes don’t seem to interest Grattan either.
With laziness, she snacks on the propagandistic samples provided by Israel’s publicity relations buffet, referring to unspecified “others” who believed that the Albanese government’s recognition of a Palestinian state stoked local antisemitism. Foreign Minister Wong’s failure to “visit the sites of the 2023 atrocities when she went to Israel early last year was much criticised in the Jewish community.”
Thus far, Israeli propagandists have shamelessly badgered their opponents down under into accepting a streaky narrative that would fail to survive judicial, let alone historical scrutiny.The agenda is clear enough: the inoculation of Israel against international opprobrium. Much will now depend on Albanese’s fortitude, if he, and his ministers, can find it.
Ahmed Al Ahmed’s actions showed what moral clarity looks like — the commentary around him showed media bias.
Eli Federman, 19 Dec 25, https://www.abc.net.au/religion/bondi-hero-ahmed-al-ahmed-moral-clarity-media-bias/106162284
My roommate in rabbinical school Rabbi Yaakov Levitan signed his last Facebook message to me with the words “peace and love brother”. He lived that way as a Jewish community leader in Sydney. Terrorists on Bondi Beach murdered him as he was spreading light at a Chanukah gathering. In the chaos, Australian civilian Ahmed Al Ahmed ran toward one of the gunmen, tackled him and wrestled away his weapon, saving lives. He took two bullets and is in critical but stable condition. He is a hero.
But the media’s fixation on his Syrian and Muslim identity reveals an implicit bias that this kind of heroism — especially the kind that saves Jewish lives — is not to be expected from a Muslim.
Major outlets led with Ahmed’s religion before describing his courage. Headlines repeatedly framed him as a “Muslim man” who stopped a shooter, as if his faith explained the story rather than his actions. Some reports highlighted his Syrian background in the opening lines, treating that identity as the headline and his bravery as a footnote.
Such framing matters. The Islamophobia implicit here does not lie in the praise. It lies in the assumption. The coverage assumes that a Muslim risking his life to save Jews defies expectation. It treats decency as anomalous when it comes from a Muslim man. When goodness from Muslims becomes newsworthy because of who they are, not what they do, the media confesses how low its baseline expectations have fallen.
The reaction went further. Commentators and viral posts tried to erase Ahmed’s identity altogether. Some insisted he could not be Muslim. Others claimed he must be Christian. Several outlets reported on this reaction, amplifying the idea that Muslim heroism required explanation or denial. Still others highlighted online attacks branding Ahmed a “traitor” for saving Jews, again focussing on his faith as a problem rather than his courage as the point.
These narratives do real damage. They reinforce the idea that Muslim morality and Jewish safety stand in tension. They are wrong.
Recent history proves it. On 7 October 2023, Hamas carried out the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Amid the carnage, Arab and Bedouin Muslims risked their lives to save Jewish civilians under fire. Four Bedouin men from Rahat pulled 30 to 40 Jews out of danger near Kibbutz Be’eri while bullets flew. They asked no questions. They acted.
Surveys after the attack showed that large majorities of Arab Israelis, Muslim and Druze rejected the attacks and backed rescue and volunteer efforts. Much of the media coverage barely mentioned those findings because they disrupted the simple story line.
At the same time, honesty requires clarity. Antisemitism has surged worldwide, and Muslim leadership too often fails to condemn it clearly, publicly and consistently. Silence creates moral fog. When Jews hear hesitation instead of unequivocal rejection of Jew-hatred, trust is eroded and extremists gain ground. This is not a uniquely Muslim failure. Antisemitism infects many ideologies, religions, and political movements. Everyone must do more.
Ahmed did not issue a statement. He did not hedge. He acted. He showed what moral clarity looks like in real time. He affirmed, without words, that Jewish lives matter. He should not be the exception. He should be the rule.
Ahmed’s bravery does not erase antisemitism. It does not remove armed guards from synagogues. It does not bring my friend Yaakov back. But it does set a standard. If we want a world where such courage becomes ordinary, every community must raise its expectations. Muslim leaders must condemn antisemitism without caveat. Jewish communities must resist judging entire populations by their worst voices. And the media must stop treating Muslim decency as an anomaly and start treating it as normal.
Ahmed Al Ahmed did what any decent human being should hope to do. The tragedy is that his courage felt unexpected. It should not have. May Ahmed’s courage stand as the rule, not the exception.
Eli Federman has written for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Reuters and other media outlets on society, religion and media bias.
New York Times Wants The US Military Built Up For War With China.
Caitlin Johnstone, Dec 10, 2025, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/new-york-times-wants-the-us-military?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=181225843&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Just as the United States hits its first official trillion-dollar annual military budget, the New York Times editorial board has published an article which argues that the US is going to need to increase military funding to prepare for a major war with China.
The article is titled “Overmatched: Why the U.S. Military Must Reinvent Itself,” and to be clear it is an editorial, not an op-ed, meaning it represents the position of the newspaper itself rather than solely that of the authors.
This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows that The New York Times has supported every American war throughout its entire history, because The New York Times is a war propaganda firm disguised as a news outlet. But it is surprising how brazen they are about it in this particular case.
The article opens with graphics I saw one commenter describe as “Mussolini-core” because of their conspicuously fascistic aesthetic, accompanied by three lines of text in all-caps which reads as follows:
“AMERICA’S MILITARY HAS DEFENDED THE FREE WORLD FOR 80 YEARS.
OUR DOMINANCE IS FADING.
RIVALS KNOW THIS AND ARE BUILDING TO DEFEAT US.”
The narrative that the US war machine has “defended the free world” during its period of post-world war global dominance is itself insane empire propaganda. Washington has abused, tyrannized and starved the world at levels unrivaled by any other power during that period while spearheading the theft of hundreds of trillions of dollars from the global south via imperialist extraction. The US empire has not been defending any “free world”, it has been actively obstructing its emergence.
The actual text of the article opens with another whopper, with the first sentence reading, “President Xi Jinping of China has ordered his armed forces to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027.”
This is straight-up state propaganda. The New York Times editorial board is here uncritically parroting a completely unsubstantiated claim the US intelligence cartel has been making for years, which Xi Jinping explicitly denies. While it is Beijing’s official position that Taiwan will eventually be reunited with the mainland, not one shred of evidence has ever been presented to the public for the 2027 timeline. It’s a US government assertion being reported as verified fact by the nation’s “paper of record”.
And it doesn’t get any better from there. The Times cites a Pentagon assessment that the US would lose a hot war with China over Taiwan as evidence of “a decades-long decline in America’s ability to win a long war with a major power,” arguing that this is a major problem because “a strong America has been crucial to a world in which freedom and prosperity are far more common than at nearly any other point in human history.”
“This is the first of a series of editorials examining what’s gone wrong with the U.S. military — technologically, bureaucratically, culturally, politically and strategically — and how we can create a relevant and effective force that can deter wars whenever possible and win them wherever necessary,” The New York Times tells us.
The Times argues that the US needs to reshape its military to defeat China in a war, or to win a war with Russia if they attack a NATO member, saying “Evidence suggests that Moscow may already be testing ways to do this, including by cutting the undersea cables on which NATO forces depend.”
The “evidence” the Times cites for this claim is a hyperlink to a January article titled “Norway Seizes Russian-Crewed Ship Suspected of Cutting an Undersea Cable,” completely ignoring the fact that Norway released that ship shortly thereafter when it was unable to find any evidence linking it to the event, and completely ignoring reports that US and European intelligence had concluded that the undersea cable damage was the result of an accident rather than sabotage.
And then, of course, comes the call for more military funding.
“In the short term, the transformation of the American military may require additional spending, primarily to rebuild our industrial base. As a share of the economy, defense spending today — about 3.4 percent of G.D.P. — remains near its lowest level in more than 80 years, even after Mr. Trump’s recent increases,” the Times writes, adding that US allies should also be pressured to ramp up spending on the war machine.
“A more secure world will almost certainly require more military commitment from allies like Canada, Japan and Europe, which have long relied on American taxpayers to bankroll their protection,” the authors write, saying “China’s industrial capacity can only be met by pooling the resources of allies and partners around the world to balance and contain Beijing’s increasing influence.”
Of course the idea that perhaps the United States should avoid fighting a hot war with China right off the coast of its own mainland never enters the discussion. The suggestion that it’s insane to support waging full-scale wars with nuclear-armed great powers to secure US planetary domination never comes up. It’s just taken as a given that pouring wealth and resources into preparations for a nuclear-age world war is the only normal option on the table.
But that’s the New York Times for you. It’s been run by the same family since the late 1800s and it’s been advancing the information interests of rich and powerful imperialists ever since. It’s a militarist smut rag that somehow found its way into unearned respectability, and it deserves to be treated as such. The sooner it ceases to exist, the better.
Earth’s Greatest Enemy, the second feature film project by Abby Martin, is a groundbreaking anti-imperialist environmental documentary.
Exempt from international climate agreements and rarely scrutinized in mainstream reporting, the Pentagon is the world’s single largest institutional polluter—spewing carbon, contaminating water, and scarring landscapes across the globe. Combining investigative journalism, striking visuals, and stories from impacted communities, this film challenges audiences to rethink the hidden costs of a global military empire and its planetary consequences. Provocative, urgent, and eye-opening, this is a documentary that will change how you see both the military and environmentalism. https://earthsgreatestenemy.com/
1 This Month
10 March A LIVE WEBINAR THE REAL EFFECTS OF NUCLEAR POWER
What the Industry Isn’t Telling Us
1:00 PM Mountain, 2 pm Central, 3 pm Eastern. Live on the Keepers of the Water Facebook page
18 March Webinar @ 1 PM EST: An Assessment of SMR Projects: The Case of Canada
register for the zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_o8BIIOUvQ2ONJR1nta65DQ#/registration
of the week – STOP SMALL MODULAR REACTORS IN CANADA
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