I examine the propaganda about starvation in North Korea and Venezuela, two nations targeted for regime change, which is being rationalized by starvation propaganda, serving to justify military intervention(ie death and destruction).

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South Korean propaganda demonizing North Korea, seen here squeezing the puke out of South Korea....monsters!

The purpose of war propaganda is in the first instance to make the "enemy" look like monsters, sub-humans who deserve to be killed. The second use is to sustain and intensify the hatred which must be manufactured to make human beings able to kill strangers who have done them no wrong with perfect moral certainty.

Those who would start wars and commit mass murder, needless to say, are willing to tell lies (propaganda) to justify and execute their lust for death and destruction.

In recent months, two nations which have been targeted for "regime change",---Venezuela and North Korea (neither of which has invaded anyone), have seen hysterical headlines about mass starvation, proving, no doubt, that socialism never works and that the West (the US) must intervene (as in Libya) to prevent a humanitarian crisis, taking out the leaders and replacing them with leaders friendly to the US and its corporate interests, in order to "save the people" from starvation.

I will start with North Korea, where the media frequently claims the people are starving to death. This claim serves to rationalize the intention (if not for those pesky nukes which deter attack) regime change based on the same lie that was used to destroy the most developed and richest nation in Africa, Libya, where a "humanitarian crisis" was manufactured to justify a war which led, indeed, to a humanitarian crisis.

NORTH KOREA

On a regular basis, the media informs us that North Korea's people are starving to death. Here is Newsweek, complete with images of starving children: "

NORTH KOREA'S KIM JONG UN IS STARVING HIS PEOPLE TO PAY FOR NUCLEAR WEAPONS

BY CRISTINA SILVA ON 3/23/17"

Here is Breitbart, Trump's favorite source of news:

North Korea Warns Starving Population: Famine Is Coming

Here is another from metro:

Kim Jong Un visits pig farm while people in North Korea starve

And here is the report by one of the most respected scholars on North Korea, debunking this propaganda lie, which I am calling Starvation Propaganda since several recent wars have been rationalized by "humanitarian crisis:"

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N Korea and the myth of starvation...has long ceased to be a fact of life in North Korea, writes Andrei Lankov, a professor of Korean Studies at Kookmin University, Seoul. He is the author of "The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia". He is clearly no apologist for North Korea.

"One of the most commonly cited cliches is that North Korea is a "destitute, starving country". Once upon a time, such a description was all too sadly correct: In the late 1990s, North Korea suffered a major famine that, according to the most recent research, led to between 500,000 and 600,000 deaths. However, starvation has long since ceased to be a fact of life in North Korea.

Admittedly, until quite recently, many major news outlets worldwide ran stories every autumn that cited international aid agencies saying that the country was on the brink of a massive famine once again. These perennially predicted famines never transpired, but the stories continued to be released at regular intervals, nonetheless.

In the last year or two, though, such predictions have disappeared. This year, North Korea enjoyed an exceptionally good harvest, which for the first time in more than two decades will be sufficient to feed the country's entire population."

click here

The grain harvest in 2013 was 5.03 million tons; enough to feed the nation; in 2015/16, it was 5.42 million tons, according to the World Food Program.

"MoA and FAO both forecast the production of 2016 summer crops on government-managed lands at around 363,000 metric tons, 35 percent higher than the 2015 summer harvest."

North Korean children

There is some malnutrition, just as in the richest nation in history, in North Korea, which has had slow but steady economic growth in the last decade. click here

Starvation propaganda is like war propaganda; it is meant to paint a false but compelling picture to influence the gullible and justify military aggression disguised as humanitarian rescue.

VENEZUELA

The starvation propaganda is in full swing. Here is a headline from the Independent.co.uk:

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'We're living in the end of times': StarvingVenezuelans giving away children to survive

"A baby boy was recently found abandoned inside a bag in capital Caracas and a malnourished one-year-old boy was found in a cardboard box in Ciudad Guayana in recent months."

Here's another from Hotair: "

Yes, the people of Venezuela are literally starving to death"

Here is another which gives away the motive for this kind of propaganda (regime change: remember when Iraq was killing babies in Kuwait, remember when Saddam was poised to nuke the US?):

Venezuelans Now On A Forced Starvation Diet -- Tha nks , Socialism "

The reality is that Venezuelans overeat, ranking 26th of 191 nations for obesity, with over 30% being obese, just below the US. The horrific headlines about Venezuelans losing weight is actually good news! It is also a fact that during WWII, when food was rationed, Americans lost weight and were healthier than before or since.

And here is the data from the World Bank:

prevalence of undernourishment in Venezuela...

1993 14%

2015 5%.

Since the Socialists won power, malnutrition in Venezuela is down radically: "

Venezuela reduced malnutrition in children by 62% in 13 years. That was 2012. but in 2013, the media was ablaze with starving Venezuelans. "The New York Times and Bloomberg both describe food scarcity levels as "chronic". CNN has reported that toilet paper, along with "basic goods and foodstuffs...have been disappearing from store shelves since earlier this year", while according to USA Today, "[c]ooking oil, milk, chicken and other staples are often in short supply at supermarkets"." 9 months ago, the Nation wrote " Venezuelans are not dying, or starving, or looting en masse. "
But there is a crisis, as opposition protests, often violent, and destabilization from Washington have wreaked havoc as well. .thenation.com/article/why-is-venezuela-in-crisis/

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Add to that the Saudi oil price war which crippled the Venezuelan economy, which ought to be among the wealthiest in the world since it has the MOST oil reserves of any nation on earth and ranks 8th in gas. As oil prices have risen 30% in the last year, and Saudi Arabia has caved in, it will not be long before Venezuela takes its place, barring a US-led "regime change," as one of the richest nations on earth.

With an estimated 298 billion barrels of untapped oil, worth 30 trillion at today's depressed prices, rising demand and exhaustion of supply will only make Venezuela richer in the future: the question is.....to whom will this wealth go, the people of Venezuela or the oil companies behind the push for regime change?

What has this to do with Trump? He has escalated the campaign of protests and economic sabotage and propaganda, clearly aiming at regime change, despite campaign promises. His Secy of State was CEO of Exxon, which for decades ripped off Venezuela by taking almost all the profits from its oil. Chavez stopped that and so they murdered him, as many believe, with the CIA doing what it has been documented to have done tens of thousands of times (50 attempted assassinations of leaders and 25,000-40,000 assassinations in Operation Phoenix in Vietnam): taking out an unwanted leader, the Deep State solution to regime change.

The reason for the economic crisis is external: oligarchs are hoarding food, the CIA is sabotaging the economy, and the oil price war deprived the most oil-rich nation on earth of the revenue needed to support its food programs for the poor as they had previously. No one is starving. It's a lie, part of the soft war to take down the Socialist government, which has reduced malnutrition over 50% and if not crippled by external forces, would be advancing towards becoming one of the wealthiest nations on earth. For a socialist nation to become wealthy is not permitted, for "socialism always fails," so if it does not, it must be made to fail, by whatever means necessary from assassination to economic sabotage to war, just as in Libya, another prosperous socialist nation. Socialism MUST fail!

Trump's Secy of State is former Exxon CEO, Rex Tillerson, who has special reason to use the starvation propaganda to escalate the campaign to replace the sociaists with the old oligarchs so that Exxon can once again siphon off the immense wealth of Venezuela into their own greedy pockets, at the expense of the Venezuelan people. If that happens, as in Libya, we will again see real starvation, as in the days before the socialists nationalized much of the oil inventory and used it to help the poor.

""In 2007, Venezuela tried to buy majority stakes in all oil ventures within its borders. Although most corporations accepted the deals offered by the government, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips rejected them. When the government offered to pay ExxonMobil the book value for its assets, the company asked for what IT considered the market value. As a result of the disagreement, Chavez sent state oil workers, along with members of the military, to seize ExxonMobil facilities that May. Today, the CEO of Exxon is Secretary of State, biding his time to get revenge and take back what Exxon once controlled.

ExxonMobil had transferred its Venezuelan holdings to a subsidiary based in the Netherlands. And so ExxonMobil sought international arbitration based on a bilateral investment treaty between the Netherlands and Venezuela, within the World Bank's International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes.

In October 2014, ICSID ordered Venezuela to compensate ExxonMobil for $1.6 billion. Because ExxonMobil had requested nearly $15 billion, Venezuela claimed a victory." wash post

That 1.6 billion order has now been annulled, and Tillerson and his boss (or is it the other way around?) are pissed. It's time to claim a fake humanitarian crisis, as in Libya, and take down those goddamned socialists who dared to take back the natural resources of Venezuela from the Exxon and other predators. It's time to put our SOBs back into power.

The CIA is conducting economic sabotage, vile propaganda with the cooperation of the media, and assassinations, which is its normal operating model, in order to give back to Exxon what it once stole and then lost. Trump is the servant not only of corporate fascism but of the Deep State which offers a menu of covert wars, sabotage, and political murders, as well as violent street protests, as in Ukraine, to allow further looting of the riches of this beleaguered nation.

And so it rolls......those who would commit war crimes will first promote propaganda to justify their crimes and give them a fake legitimacy based on humanitarian compassion for the starving victims of regimes the US, the West, The Deep State (increasingly similar entities) wish to replace with vassals obedient to Washington.

Meanwhile, in South Sudan, due to war and famine, millions ARE starving. The US, through USAID (also used as a front for the CIA in proxy wars) gave in 2016, 830,310,000 in food aid for the 5.8 million needing assistance, or about 25 cents per starving person a day. This money is also used for shelter and other needs, so the amount for food is even less...... while rich US corporations such as oil and drugs got 220 billion in subsidies each year.

The UN reports that fossil fuel companies get over 5 trillion a year in subsidies, counting externalized costs. A Guardian investigation found that the world's largest oil companies are getting huge subsidies promoted by politicians who get large contributions from them. For instance, a proposed Shell refinery in Pennsylvania is getting a 1.6 billion (ie twice what 5.8 million starving Sudanese are getting) in a state subsidy in a deal struck in 2012, when the company made a profit of 26.8 Billion. Exxon is getting 119 million from Louisiana, which started in 2011, when the firm made 40 Billion in profits.

To add insult to injury, the fossil fuel corporations are being subsidized by the trillions, in exchange for millions in contributions to politicians, to exacerbate global warming (which Exxon scientist in the 70's found was caused by fossil fuel production), which is hurting poor nations like South Sudan the most.

"the president of the World Bank called for the subsidies to be scrapped immediately as poorer nations were feeling "the boot of climate change on their neck" click here

USAID

"Although it is technically an independent agency, USAID operates subject to the foreign policy guidance of the President, Secretary of State, and the National Security Council ....1970s USAID has maintained "a close working relationship with the CIA, and Agency officers often operated abroad under USAID cover." Wikipedia

US/Western war on Libya, based on a fake humanitarian crisis, created a real one: the once richest and most developed nation in Africa, with 99% literacy, is now a ravaged war zone of militia, ISIS, and corrupt government forces.

tradingeconomics reports that in 2010,per capita income in Libya was $12,000 ((and with free education, healthcare, and other benefits); today it is under $6000, creating suffering and hardship unknown prior to the "humanitarian intervention" by the West.

Today, foreign oil companies, Russian, Chinese, Dutch, and the US, are taking huge profits out of Libya while the people collapse into poverty after being the wealthiest and most egalitarian nation in Africa and with the highest ranking in Human Development (human rights, women's rights, education, healthcare, etc). What was Libya's sin: it was independent and debt free and working on its own currency reform...and so there was no way for the West to enslave it. In order to enslave Libya, and loot its resources. In order to loot Libya, a once prosperous nation, it had to be destroyed.

Likewise, North Korea and Venezuela are free of US hegemony, and so they have become targets of "regime change" based on "humanitarian grounds," based on the Big Lie that the people are starving. Thus Starvation propaganda is the new form of War Propaganda, justifying the CIA to intervene disguised as USAID and if all else fails, direct annihilation.

Unlike North Korea, which is protected by its small arsenal of nukes, Venezuela has no military might and so if the protests, assassination, smears, economic sabotage, and violent protests do not work, the US will, as John Perkins stated it in Confessions of an Economic Hitman, "send in the jackals" and the jackboots. With Tillerson, burned by Chavez, has his way, Exxon will march back into Venezuela with troop preceding.

We spend trillions on wars justified by fake humanitarian crises but cannot even come up with money to feed the starving millions in REAL humanitarian crisis. There is only one evil greater than doing harm, and that is doing harm under the pretense of helping. "We had to destroy the village to save the village." Dante in his Inferno places Treachery at the deepest level, for it combines violence with fraud.

The media, whose legitimate role is to expose these propaganda lies, instead serves as the mouthpiece for the propaganda campaign, both serving the corporate fascism of which it is a part and ringing up profits with yellow journalism. The motto of Starvation propaganda ought to be: if they are not starving, we will make them starve!

It is our duty to confront the lies and expose the venal motivation which hides behind such glaring headlines and such phony efforts to rescue the victims of fake humanitarian crises. In this effort, we will be ridiculed and scorned, but unless we expose the lies that are leading to ever increasing wars, soon there will be nothing but war, death, and destruction. And only the bankers who fund wars, the energy cartels who find in wars their chief consumers, and the weapons makers who provide the tools of destruction--along with their media and political shills--will benefit while the rest of humanity pays the price for believing them and refusing to stop them.

To destroy nations and commit war crimes under the pretense of humanitarian crisis and "saving" the starving people, is the lowest form of evil, which Dante placed at the very bottom of the rungs of hell, violence justified by fraud: treachery. The starvation propaganda so common in our compliant media is promoting his kind of treachery, evil disguised as charity, destruction masquerading as rescue work. We can begin to end it by stop believing the propaganda lies and demanding the that not only our government but our media speak the truth. It will be up to us to force them to do that, for as long as we are silent, our silence will be complicity in death.

(Article changed on April 26, 2017 at 17:41)

(Article changed on April 26, 2017 at 20:15)

Authors Bio:

retired, working radical egalitarian/libertarian socialist old school independent, vegan, survivor