Study Linking US Sanctions to Venezuelan Deaths Buried by Reuters for Over a Month view post on FAIR.org By Joe Emersberger Reuters (5/22/19) attributes the idea that US sanctions are causing a health crisis in Venezuela to Venezuelan Health Minister Carlos Alvarado. I emailed Stephanie Nebehay of Reuters on May 22 about her article, “Venezuela Turns to Russia, Cuba, China in Health Crisis” (5/22/19). Her article depicted the impact of US sanctions as an allegation that Venezuelan government officials are alone in making. The article stated: The opposition blames [medical shortages] on economic incompetence and corruption by the leftist movement in power for two decades, but [President Nicolás] Maduro says US economic sanctions are the cause. I asked why the piece made no mention of a study (CEPR, 4/25/19) released a month earlier by economists Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs, which directly linked US sanctions to 40,000 deaths in Venezuela since August of 2017. Her reply to me on May 23 was quite telling: I was not aware of that study, but am now and will bear in mind. It would indeed have been impossible for a Reuters reporter to be aware of the study if they depended only on Reuters articles to keep informed. The news agency hadn’t mentioned the study since it was released, never mind written an article about it. I asked a contact I have at Reuters about this, and he was also surprised that Reuters hadn’t even mentioned the study. He suggested I query some of Reuters’ Venezuela-based reporters, which I did a few days later. In my email to them, I passed along a list of news articles since August 2017, when Trump first dramatically intensified economic sanctions, that described worsening economic conditions. I also noted that though the Sachs/Weisbrot study was ignored by Reuters, it had been intensely debated in public by Venezuelan opposition economists (i.e., the kind of people Reuters and other Western media actually pay attention to on Venezuela). CEPR compared oil production in Venezuela and neighboring Colombia to illustrate the impact of US sanctions. The Brookings Institution published a few rebuttals to the study (here and here), which I also pointed out to Reuters.  The objections Brookings made were essentially already addressed by Weisbrot and Sachs in response to other critics. On June 9, Reuters finally mentioned the study, at the end of an article by Nebehay, who is based in Geneva: One study in April, co-authored by US economists Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot, blamed sanctions for causing more deaths and disproportionately hitting the most vulnerable. “We find that the sanctions have inflicted, and increasingly inflict, very serious harm to human life and health, including an estimated more than 40,000 deaths from 2017–2018,” they said, arguing they were illegal under international law. Nevertheless, since the day Nebehay replied to me, Reuters has continued to portray the severe impact of US sanctions as an allegation that only Maduro and other Venezuelan officials have made. It was even done by Reuters in an article published June 10, the day after the wire service finally mentioned the study: The government of President Nicolás Maduro says Venezuela’s economic problems are caused by US sanctions that have crippled the OPEC member’s export earnings and blocked it from borrowing from abroad. Reuters (6/1/19) treats the idea that US sanctions are responsible for deaths in Venezuela as an allegation made by Maduro–placing it after the statement, “The opposition has blamed their deaths on President Nicolás Maduro, whose socialist administration has presided over the collapse of the once-wealthy nation’s economy and severe reductions in healthcare spending.” Other instances of Reuters representing the idea that US sanctions work as they are intended to do—in other words, that they hurt the Venezuelan economy—as an allegation made by Maduro or his government: “He [President Maduro] says the country’s economic problems are the result of an ‘economic war’ led by his political adversaries with the help of Washington.” (5/23/19) “Maduro, who maintains control over state institutions, calls Guaidó a puppet of Washington and blames US sanctions for a hyperinflationary economic meltdown and humanitarian crisis.” (5/26/19; repeated almost verbatim, 5/28/19) “Maduro’s government, however, says US-imposed sanctions were responsible for the children’s deaths, by freezing funds allocated to buy medicine and send the children to Italy for treatment under the 2010 agreement.” (6/1/19) “Maduro blames the situation on an ‘economic war’ waged by his political adversaries as well as US sanctions that have hobbled the oil industry and prevented his government from borrowing abroad.” (6/7/19) “Maduro says Venezuela is victim of an ‘economic war’ led by the opposition with the help of Washington, which has levied several rounds of sanctions against his government.” (6/7/19) Two recent articles by Reuters, however, stated the obvious about the most recent US sanctions that were implemented in 2019: “Venezuela is in the midst of a years-long economic and humanitarian crisis that has deepened since the United States imposed sanctions on the country’s oil industry in January as part of an effort to oust Socialist President Nicolás Maduro in favor of opposition leader Juan Guaidó.” (6/7/19) “Venezuela’s oil exports dropped 17 percent in May because of the sanctions.” (6/6/19) But the study Reuters belatedly mentioned shows that US sanctions have been devastating to Venezuela’s economy, and seriously aggravating the humanitarian crisis, since August 2017. Apologists for Trump always rush to say that Venezuela’s depression began years before Trump’s sanctions—as if that made it acceptable to deliberately worsen a humanitarian crisis. To tweak an analogy Caitlin Johnstone used, think of a defense attorney saying, “Your Honor, I will show that the victim was already in intensive care when my client began to assault him.” Moreover, as Steve Ellner recently discussed, US support for an insurrectionist opposition in Venezuela goes back over a decade before the crisis, and was a factor in causing it. Economic sanctions Obama introduced in 2015 were also harmful—Weisbrot (The Hill, 11/6/16) in 2016 called them “ugly and belligerent enough to keep many investors from investing in Venezuela and to raise the country’s cost of borrowing”—even before Trump’s dramatic escalation of economic warfare that they paved the way for. Putting aside a study by prominent US economists, the “Maduro says” formulation is also inexcusable because US Sen. Marco Rubio, who has been widely reported as a major influence on Trump’s Venezuela policy, gleefully tweeted on May 16 that Maduro “can’t access funds to rebuild electric grid.” Rubio didn’t pretend he was referring to an imaginary electric grid used exclusively by Maduro. Reuters(5/30/19) has itself referred to Rubio as the “leading voice in the crafting of President Donald Trump’s Venezuela policy,” in a lengthy piece about US sanctions that said absolutely nothing about their impact on the general population, implying throughout that sanctions only impacted Maduro and other officials. (“Being blacklisted also crimps the lifestyle of Venezuelan officials’ families,” Reuters reported.) My fellow FAIR contributor, Alan MacLeod, interviewed many Venezuela-based journalists for his book Bad News From Venezuela. He wrote last year (FAIR.org,  5/24/18): Media copy and paste from news organizations like Reuters and Associated Press, which themselves employ many cheaper local journalists. In Venezuela, these journalists are not neutral actors, but come from the highly partisan local media, affiliated with the opposition, leading to a situation where Western newsrooms see themselves as an ideological spearhead against Maduro, “the resistance” to the government. Even worse than being the “resistance” to Maduro is that Reuters has often made itself the “assistance” to politicians like Rubio, who are vicious enough to celebrate the economic strangulation of millions of people. Reuters may carry on as if it had never reported the study by Weisbrot and Sachs. Western media outlets are perfectly willing to ignore their own reporting when it suits powerful interests (Extra! Update, 10/02). It is therefore up to all of us to not be passive consumers of news, and continually bear in mind that the news we are getting about official enemies may be less than half the story. You can send a message to Reuters here (or via Twitter: @Reuters). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Featured image: Reuters depiction (6/7/19) of Venezuelan refugees. (photo: Pilar Olivares/Reuters)

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Margaret Talbot | Trump, Barr, and the Rule of Law

07 May 19 We Are in Unnecessary Financial Trouble We are scratching and clawing to make our budget every month because we cannot get 1% of our subscribers to contribute to our fundraising appeals. Waiting until the situation is dire really defeats the purpose. Be a hero, toss something in the hat. Marc Ash Founder, Reader Supported News Sure, I'll make a donation! Update My Monthly Donation If you would prefer to send a check: Reader Supported News PO Box 2043 Citrus Hts CA 95611

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Margaret Talbot | Trump, Barr, and the Rule of Law 

Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker
Talbot writes: "If there is one thing that Attorney General William Barr's testimony in the Senate last week made abundantly clear, it's that he is fine with acting less like the chief law-enforcement officer of the United States and more like the personal lawyer for a tantrum-prone client named Donald Trump."
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Prosecutors outlined three main areas in which they said the president's conduct warranted criminal charges, including his efforts to fire Mueller and to falsify evidence about that effort. (photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Trump Would Face Obstruction Charges if He Wasn't President, Hundreds of Prosecutors Say
Tom McCarthy, Guardian UK
McCarthy writes: "Hundreds of former federal prosecutors - and counting - signed an open letter published on Monday expressing their belief that Donald Trump would have faced 'multiple felony charges of obstruction of justice' if he were not president."
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Erik Prince. (photo: DN!)

Ex-Blackwater CEO Erik Prince Makes a Comeback Under Trump Selling Mercenary Armies Around the World
Democracy Now!
Excerpt: "The Intercept takes a look at Prince's latest actions, including his pitch to privatize the war in Afghanistan, his creation of a mercenary army for the United Arab Emirates, a history of mismanaged projects that have soured his relationships with leaders around the world and his comeback, made possible with the help of the Trump administration."
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Voters at a polling precinct. (photo: Getty Images)

Democrats Plan New Push on Election Security, Voting Rights
David Lightman, Bryan Lowry and Lesley Clark, McClatchy DC
Excerpt: "Democratic leaders are launching a more aggressive push this month that could widen their probe of possible voter suppression into states other than those now under scrutiny."
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Howard Zinn. (photo: Francisco Seco/AP)

How Karl Marx Predicted Our World Today
Howard Zinn, In These Times
Zinn writes: "The time is right for a new appraisal of Marx because ignoramuses and sh*theads [...] on all parts of the ideological spectrum have distorted his ideas in ridiculous ways."
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The two reporters, Kyaw Soe Oo, 29, and Wa Lone, 33, were convicted in September and sentenced to seven years in jail. (photo: Thein Zaw/AP)

Reuters Journalists Who Reported on Rohingya Freed From Myanmar Jail
Al Jazeera
Excerpt: "Two Reuters journalists, jailed in Myanmar after being convicted of breaking the Official Secrets Act, have been freed after more than 500 days behind bars."
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A worker's hands injured by long hours of coffee harvesting. (photo: Lilo Clareto/Reporter Brasil)

Slave Labor Found at Second Starbucks-Certified Brazilian Coffee Farm
Daniel Camargos, Mongabay and Repórter Brasil
Camargos writes: "Starbucks and Nestlé-controlled brand Nespresso - both of whom had quality certified the farm - said they would stop sourcing coffee there. The [...] came after the publication of the government's April 'Dirty List' of employers - those caught with labor conditions analogous to slavery."
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CLG: Israeli officers disguised as Arabs burst into West Bank hospital, kill Palestinian, Paris shooting: Several killed and injured after 'Kalashnikov and grenade attacks' across French capital, Lebanon mourns 44 killed in Beirut bombings

 News Updates from CLG
13 November 2015

http://www.legitgov.org/
All links are here:http://www.legitgov.org/#breaking_news

 

Previous edition: Russia to top UK govt's new security threat list - media

 

Breaking: Army on Streets of France After Paris Shootings and 'Several Explosions' --Police say 100 Hostages Taken --Death Toll Rises to 35 --President Hollande Evacuated, taken to 'safe location' (MSNBC, wires) | 13 Nov 2015 | Dozens Dead In Paris Shootings and Blasts --Hostages are taken at a concert theatre as a number of attacks take place across the French capital. At least 30 people have been killed and around 100 others are being held hostage following a series of attacks in Paris on Friday night. Police say there have been multiple shootings and two explosions across the French capital.

 

Breaking: Paris shooting: Several killed and injured after 'Kalashnikov and grenade attacks' across French capital --Many people killed after several shootings and explosions across central Paris - live updates| 13 Nov 2015 | --'Several killed' after 'Kalashnikov attack' --Explosions heard outside Stade de France --Multiple attack sites across the French capital --Reports of suicide attacks and hostages taken 21:42 --'20 dead' French police union is now reporting 20 dead. It is still not clear how many of the attack sites are still active. According to the Alliance police union, there were two "suicide attacks" outside the Stade de France, where the France-Germany friendly is still underway. The explosions took place outside the stadium at gate D and H. Several believed dead.

 

Lebanon mourns 44 killed in Beirut bombings | 13 Nov 2015 | Lebanon on Friday mourned 44 people killed in a Hezbollah bastion in south Beirut in a twin bombing claimed by the Islamic State [I-CIA-SIS] group, the bloodiest such attack in years. The Red Cross said at least 239 people were wounded, several in critical condition, in the blasts that hit a busy shopping street in Burj al-Barajneh, a neighbourhood where the Shiite Hezbollah movement allied to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is popular.

 

U.S. drone strike targeted 'Jihadi John,' Briton linked to hostage beheadings --'Jihadi John' not confirmed killed | 12 Nov 2015 | The U.S. military launched a drone strike Thursday targeting "Jihadi John," the masked Islamic State terrorist who [allegedly] beheaded several Western hostages in Syria and came to symbolize the brutality of the militant group, U.S. officials said. But the Pentagon is still working to determine whether the strike actually killed the militant, Briton Mohammed Emwazi. Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook said the strike took place around the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Islamic State's de facto capital.

 

'Are you really journalists?' Moscow slams Reuters for biased bombshell on Syria | 13 Nov 2015 | Moscow has condemned Reuters for its "exclusive" report which ignored a detailed statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry, in favor of the narrative predetermined by a "draft document" coming from an unnamed source and comments by anonymous officials. In its "exclusive" story published on November 10, Reuters claimed it had obtained a "draft" of Russia's plan for a "constitutional reform process of up to 18 months," prepared for the multilateral talks on Syria this week. The Reuters News Agency requested a comment from the Foreign Ministry, which it was given, but then decided to ignore it in their report.

 

'Assured unacceptable damage': Russian TV accidentally leaks secret 'nuclear torpedo' design --Sub apparently designed to bypass NATO radars and any existing missile defense systems | 12 Nov 2015 | The Kremlin has confirmed "some secret data" was accidentally leaked when Russian TV stations broadcast material apparently showing blueprints from a nuclear torpedo, designed to be used against enemy coastal installations. During President Vladimir Putin's meeting with military officials in Sochi, where the development of Russia's military capabilities were being discussed, a number of TV crews were able to capture footage of a paper that was certainly not meant for public viewing. The presentation slide titled "Ocean Multipurpose System: Status-6" showed some drawings of a new nuclear submarine weapons system.

 

Israeli officers disguised as Arabs burst into West Bank hospital, kill Palestinian | 12 Nov 2015 | Israeli security service operatives infiltrated a hospital in the Palestinian West Bank on Thursday, killing a bystander while attempting to detain a suspect who allegedly carried out a stabbing, local sources say. Jehad Shawar, director of Al Ahly Hospital in the West Bank city of Hebron, told Palestinian radio around 30 men arrived at the scene in two vans and entered the hospital building with a person pretending to be pregnant, Reuters reports. The Israeli forces infiltrated the hospital to arrest a Palestinian named Abdallah Azzam al-Shalalda, 27, who allegedly stabbed an Israeli settler near Hebron two weeks ago.

 

MPs debate citizenship anti-terror bill | 12 Nov 2015 | Federal MPs have begun debating draft laws stripping dual national terrorism suspects of Australian citizenship. Labor immigration spokesman Richard Marles says the opposition will support the anti-terrorism bill. While revoking citizenship is a sensitive issue, the bill deals with legitimate national security issues about those who take up arms with a foreign army against the nation, he told parliament on Thursday.

 

UK government warned over new counter-terrorism legislation --Plan to ban non-violent extremists | 12 Nov 2015 | British Muslims must be at the heart of the creation of new counter-terrorism legislation if it is to be effective, one of the UK's largest Islamic organisations has warned. The challenge to the government was laid down by the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) at a conference in central London on Thursday, aimed at formulating a response to tackling extremism and terrorism from the Muslim community. One of the MCB's biggest areas of concern is the plan to ban non-violent extremists, a particularly sensitive subject for the organisation, whose members feel sidelined by successive governments who believed the MCB harbours unpalatable viewpoints.

 

Toronto: East end given iodine pills as nuclear disaster precaution --200,000 Greater Toronto Area (GTA) homes and businesses have just received pills to 'protect them' from radiation | 10 Nov 2015 | If you live in Durham Region or Scarborough, you may have just been mailed a package of pills in a calming sky blue box. Those pills are meant to protect you in the event of a nuclear disaster -- a disaster on which you would be on the frontlines, living within a sensitive 10km zone surrounding the Pickering and Darlington Nuclear Generating Stations. 200,000 homes and businesses have just received potassium iodide (KI) pills in a $1.5 million OPG-funded project that is being run in conjunction with Durham Region and the City of Toronto. Also known as RadBlock, the pills prevent the thyroid gland from absorbing radioactive iodine, thus reducing the risk of thyroid cancer in the aftermath of a nuclear disaster.

 

Secret Service officer arrested, charged with crimes against children - report | 12 Nov 2015 | Federal and state authorities have charged a uniformed Secret Service officer from Maryland with sending obscene images and texts to someone he thought was a young Delaware girl, sometimes sending online communications while on duty at the White House. Unbeknownst to Lee Robert Moore, 37, the person he thought was a 14-year-old girl was actually an undercover Delaware police officer. According to a complaint unsealed Thursday in federal court in Wilmington, Moore surrendered to Maryland State Police on Monday after being placed on administrative leave last week.

 

New Haven police to seize unlocked property from cars in East Rock area - for 'safekeeping' | 01 Nov 2015 | If your computer is missing from your unlocked car, it may not be an opportunistic thief who snatched it. That important electronic device could be in the New Haven police property room, retrieved by your local walking beat officer. Stymied as to what to do to get residents to take seriously repeated police warnings to lock their vehicles and not leave valuables in them, Lt. Herbert Sharp said they are going to try something new in his policing district. Sharp, manager for the East Rock neighborhood, said confiscating goods that are invitations to thieves is one of the six exceptions in Connecticut law to the requirement for a search warrant. "It's called a caretaker," he said of the initiative he wants to implement this month.

 

Supreme Court Accepts Texas Abortion Law Case | 13 Nov 2015 | The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear a challenge to a Texas law that would leave the state with about 10 abortion clinics, down from more than 40. The court has not heard a major abortion case since 2007, and the new case has the potential to affect millions of women and to revise the constitutional principles governing abortion rights. "Texas is the second-most-populous state in the nation -- home to 5.4 million women of reproductive age," abortion providers challenging the law wrote in their briefurging the court to hear the case. The case concerns two parts of a state law that imposes strict requirements on abortion providers.

 

Ben Carson's book is full of plagiarism and could be pulled from shelves | 11 Nov 2015 | Ben Carson has yet another problem in the honesty department. After a week in which many of the claims he's made in his books about his personal life in his various books have been exposed as phony, the issue has been compounded by the fact that long sections of one of the books have been copied and pasted from other people's work. The issue is serious enough that the publishing house is now being forced to reconsider the books based on their apparent plagiarism. Carson's 2012 book, America the Beautiful, contains instances of plagiarism from at least three different sources, including one conservative website and two books written by other authors. The irony here may be that in his book, Carson admits that he was caught plagiarizing other people's work in a similar manner while he was in college.

 

The Coddling of the American Mind |Sept. 2015| Something strange is happening at America's colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense...Two terms have risen quickly from obscurity into common campus parlance. Microaggressions are small actions or word choices that seem on their face to have no malicious intent but that are thought of as a kind of violence nonetheless. For example, by some campus guidelines, it is a microaggression to ask an Asian American or Latino American "Where were you born?," because this implies that he or she is not a real American. Trigger warnings are alerts that professors are expected to issue if something in a course might cause a strong emotional response. For example, some students have called for warnings that Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart describes racial violence and that F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby portrays misogyny and physical abuse, so that students who have been previously victimized by racism or domestic violence can choose to avoid these works, which they believe might "trigger" a recurrence of past trauma.

 

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