Oscar Heck: You wake up at 5 a.m. to eat, have a cup 'o tea, shave shower and all the rest ... getting ready to take the train!

VHeadline commentarist Oscar Heck writes: This is the type of media tactic which is used by the pro-USA corporate mass media ... aimed at innocent readers who will believe everything without question, without cross-checking, without cynicism. They are mostly all too busy making a living, paying bills, and above all paying interest and taxes.

The UK Guardian published an article entitled, "Threat of war as Venezuela and Ecuador order troops to Colombian border," at around 21:00 (Venezuela time) on Tuesday, March 4, 2008, and dated March 5, 2008. Twenty-one hours, Venezuela time, on March 4, 2008 would put that at about 01:30 London time, March 5, 2008.

Working overtime, are we? Why?

So ... you are a Brit ... and you wake up at 5 a.m. to eat, have a cup 'o tea, shave shower and all the rest ... getting ready to take the train into London from say, Guildford ... and maybe you live near Guildford Cathedral on top of the hill ... on Stag Hill ... and maybe you are friends with reverend Victor Stock. Well, anyway, you have to get up early, get ready and hop down to the train station and get on that over-crowded train ... again, as usual ... only a one hour trip, you say to yourself ... and then you take the subway for another 20 minutes or so.

You open a newspaper as see the headline, "Threat of war as Venezuela and Ecuador order troops to Colombian border," and your heart skips a beat ... and your mouth sort of goes dry ... and you decide to crowd around the canteen and order a juice while you try to read the paper, squashed like just another sardine in just another cattle-car.

The train keeps up its fast and swaying pace as you read, here and there, jumping from line to line ... "Venezuelan and Ecuadorean troops deployed on Colombia's frontier last night as South America's military and diplomatic crisis escalated into a dangerous showdown between President Hugo Chávez and Colombia's US-backed government ... The Colombian government said Chávez received money from the drug-funded guerrillas in 1992 when he was an impoverished coup-monger with political ambitions and that recently, now a self-styled socialist revolutionary at the helm of an oil power, he gave the rebels $300m ... Colombia's vice president, Francisco Santos, dropped another bombshell at a UN disarmament meeting in Geneva when he said the laptops also revealed the guerrillas were negotiating to obtain radioactive material ... Despite a recent arms build-up Venezuela's army is puny compared to the US-equipped, war-seasoned Colombian armed forces. Another deterrent to hostilities breaking out is cross-border trade worth $6bn annually, much of it Colombian food imports on which Venezuela depends ..."

You must tell the people at the office, "You know there is going to be a war in Venezuela and Colombia?"

You feel satisfied to "know" this "fact" ... and you probably proud that you heard it first, even though you were half a sleep and the train ride kept jerking you around making it difficult to read every detail. You say to yourself that you will read the article in detail later ... but you never do.

Meanwhile I am in Caracas, and I read that same article, before you wake up that morning.

There is no war here, there is not even talk of war.

The Guardian knows that ... but you don't.

You are too busy to verify the veracity of such an article ... and you have to take the train back to Guildford, as usual ... and stop off for an ale or two at The Five and Lime.

And life goes on.

Oscar Heck
oscarheck111@yahoo.com