{"id":173,"date":"2020-11-28T18:54:35","date_gmt":"2020-11-28T18:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=127838"},"modified":"2020-11-28T18:54:35","modified_gmt":"2020-11-28T18:54:35","slug":"canadian-media-refuses-to-publish-op-ed-by-venezuelan-foreign-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/11\/28\/canadian-media-refuses-to-publish-op-ed-by-venezuelan-foreign-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"Canadian Media Refuses to Publish Op-ed by Venezuelan Foreign Minister"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>Despite claims to objectivity and fairness, when it comes to Canadian interference in other countries\u2019 domestic affairs, there\u2019s long been only one side to the story reported in the dominant media.<\/p>\n

Even so, the pro-Ottawa slant on Venezuela is shocking.<\/p>\n

Recently Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza published<\/a> an op-ed titled \u201cRegime Change with a Human (Rights) Face: Trudeau\u2019s Venezuela Policy\u201d. The commentary notes, \u201cRelations between Venezuela and Canada are currently at their worst point. Although previous Canadian governments did not hide their dislike for our policies aimed at reclaiming sovereignty over our natural resources and prioritizing social policies, none had so actively imitated the U.S. regime change policy as much as the current Trudeau Administration.\u201d Arreaza criticized Canadian sanctions on Venezuela and noted that \u201cCanada was the only country in the world that specifically forbade Venezuelan diplomatic missions\u201d from allowing Venezuelans to vote during the May 2018 election. Venezuela\u2019s former vice president also invited Foreign Minister Fran\u00e7ois-Philippe Champagne to meet to discuss restarting diplomatic relations.<\/p>\n

Few saw Arreaza\u2019s op-ed since it was published in The Canada Files, an upstart left-wing website. But, the article was submitted to a number of major daily papers. Apparently, the Globe and Mail<\/em>, Toronto Star<\/em> and others didn\u2019t consider criticism by the foreign minister of a country of 30 million, that\u2019s had diplomatic relations with Canada for seven decades, important enough to offer their readers. Blind to the irony, they would likely justify their decision on the grounds that Venezuela\u2019s government is authoritarian and suppresses oppositional voices!<\/p>\n

In September lawyer Andrew Dekany published a long article arguing that Canada\u2019s first round of sanctions on Venezuela contravened Canadian law. Licensed to practice in Ontario, Dekany wrote that the August 2017 sanctions weren\u2019t in accordance with Canadian legislation stating that international sanctions be adopted only as part of international alliances. As such, the Trump administration aided the Trudeau government by creating the US-Canada \u201cAssociation Concerning the Situation in Venezuela\u201d to conform to the existing sanctions legislation. In a Venezuela Analysis article titled \u201cDo Canadian<\/a> Sanctions Against Venezuela Violate Canadian Law?\u201d, Dekany writes, \u201cthere is no reason for Canada to \u2018create\u2019 this association but for its desire to help the U.S. out [by sanctioning Venezuela], having failed to persuade the one obvious organization (Organization of American States) which it had democratically joined to, among other things, act in such a way.\u201d I couldn\u2019t find any mention of Dekany\u2019s arguments in any major Canadian media. (The Toronto Sun<\/a> published an op-ed on the subject by Dekany in 2017.)<\/p>\n

An April 2019 Center for Economic and Policy Research report<\/a> written by prominent economists Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot concluded that 40,000 Venezuelans may have died in 2017 and 2018 as a result of US sanctions. The intensity of the US sanctions, as well as their impact on Venezuelans\u2019 ability to eat and access medicine, has grown significantly since then. A search of Canadian Newsstand, Toronto Star and Globe and Mail elicited two mentions of Sachs and Weisbrot\u2019s findings (A Halifax Chronicle-Herald story titled \u201cFour million Venezuelans have fled crisis: UN\u201d mentioned it at the bottom of the story and an op-ed in the Hill Times by Canadian Foreign Policy Institute director Bianca Mugyenyi.)<\/p>\n

Since the fall of<\/a> 2017 Canadian taxpayers have been paying a hardline pro-corporate, pro-Washington, former diplomat hundreds of thousands of dollars to coordinate the Liberal government\u2019s bid to oust Venezuela\u2019s government. There\u2019s been total silence in the dominant media about Allan Culham\u2019s role as Special Advisor on Venezuela.<\/p>\n

As Arreaza pointed out in his op-ed, the Trudeau government\u2019s Venezuela policy took a sharply belligerent turn after Donald Trump became president and Chrystia Freeland replaced St\u00e9phane Dion as foreign affairs minister. In reaction to Freeland\u2019s January 2017 appointment an official at the US embassy in Ottawa claimed Justin Trudeau appointed her to promote the interests of Washington. In July 2019 researcher Jay Watts disclosed a dispatch from the US embassy in Ottawa to the State Department in Washington entitled \u201cCanada Adopts \u2018America First\u2019 Foreign Policy<\/a>.\u201d Uncovered through a freedom of information request, the largely redacted cable also notes that Trudeau\u2019s government would be \u201cPrioritizing U.S. Relations, ASAP.\u201d Despite all kinds of fawning coverage of Freeland, the dominant media has completely ignored the US cable.<\/p>\n

In A Propaganda System<\/em><\/a>: How Canada\u2019s Government, Corporations, Media and Academia Sell War and Exploitation I detail extreme media bias in favour of power on topics ranging from Haiti to Palestine, investment agreements to the mining industry. Considering the pattern, the Venezuelan coverage is not surprising.<\/p>\n

But, the growth of left and international media, as well as social media bubbles, makes it is easy to forget how few Canadians are actually receiving this critical information. Canadian media rejecting a commentary by the foreign minister of a country of 30 million is a reminder of just how biased foreign policy coverage is.<\/p>\n

This article was posted on Saturday, November 28th, 2020 at 10:54am and is filed under Canada<\/a>, Censorship<\/a>, Media<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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