Massa Media Facilitates Trump’s Criminal Aggression against Venezuela

From [HERE] Eighty years after the Nuremberg Trials prosecuted Nazi leaders for criminal aggression against nations, the Trump administration is blatantly doing the same against Venezuela. Yet there is not a word of condemnation in the U.S. media or among European allies.

In the past two months, more than 80 people have been killed by U.S. air strikes on over 20 civilian boats in the waters off the Latin American country. The Trump administration has provided no evidence to back up claims that these killings were carried out against alleged drug traffickers. They are extrajudicial executions, or murder.

This week, Trump has designated the Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro as the head of a foreign terrorist organization, an alleged narcotics cartel that is supposedly flooding the U.S. with drugs. Again, no evidence is provided. Venezuela dismissed the allegations as a ridiculous lie whose ulterior motive is the illegal use of U.S. military force for regime change in Caracas.

The pretext of combating the illicit drug trade should be seen as transparent. The largest deployment of U.S. military force in the Caribbean since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is in itself a demonstration that the real agenda is not about interdicting drugs.

Venezuela’s role in narcotics trafficking to the United States is not significant compared with other Latin American countries, according to the UN’s Office on Drugs and Crime. Colombia and Peru are more important as cocaine sources. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has denoted Mexico as the biggest source of illicit fentanyl, which is responsible for most American overdose deaths.

The bigger picture is, of course, the objective to get rid of a socialist government in Venezuela and for the U.S. to gain control of the country’s vast oil reserves, the largest known reserves on the planet. Allied to that major reason is the desire in Washington to stymie China’s legitimate growing strategic partnerships across Latin America. As Donald Ramotar, the former president of Guyana, and other observers pointed out in a recent roundtable discussion sponsored by the Schiller Institute, the United States is flexing its muscles in its presumed “backyard” to try to restore its failing global power.

This should be obvious, as it is criminal. The United Nations Charter explicitly outlaws every aspect of Trump’s conduct towards Venezuela. Article 2:3 mandates that all disputes must be settled through peaceful means. Article 2:4 prohibits the use or threat of military force.

In other words, the Trump administration is clearly engaging in criminal aggression, the very conduct that the UN Charter was established in 1945 to banish after the horrific experience of Nazi crimes against peace that resulted in World War II. [MORE]