Let's Debunk The NY Times' Anti-Venezuela Vomit

New Article: This will only take a moment.

by Lee Camp

It’s time to yet again decode / debunk / defenestrate the pro-war garbage pumped out by the New York Times. This time they’re trying to make sure the US invades Venezuela. Apparently just blowing up fishermen in the Caribbean is not enough for the bloodthirsty clowns worthy of starring in Stephen King’s It. They want a full-blown disaster like the US invasion of Iraq.

Let’s pick apart just a portion of the propaganda in their opinion piece “The Case for Overthrowing Maduro” (which many argue is actually a case for canceling your New York Times subscription). Professional word salad vomiter Bret Stephens starts out by saying:

“Is there a vital American interest at stake? There is, and it’s not just the one the administration keeps talking about: drugs. Not that there’s much doubt that the regime is deeply implicated in the drug trade, even if there are questions about whether Maduro runs an actual cartel.”

This is the warmongers realizing that their stated reason for trying to destroy the sovereign nation of VZ is not winning over tons of Americans. In fact only 17% of Americans want the US military to overthrow Maduro, which is a breathtaking failure of the Propaganda Industrial Complex (PIC) to get the US public in line behind their vampiric imperial aims.

So the NY Times starts out by saying, “Yeah, the justification for this horror show isn’t working at all but it isn’t important anymore and we have a new reason we’re trying out and the old one was totally real anyway and ignore your lying eyes.” Stephens says the drug charges are of course true anyway — even though they totally aren’t. Even the DEA admitted:

“…about 8% of U.S.-bound cocaine departed through a ‘Caribbean corridor,’ primarily from Venezuela. …[And] Drug traffickers in South America do not produce or traffic fentanyl.”

So zero fentanyl comes through VZ and practically no cocaine comes through VZ and other reporting shows that even less than 8% of the cocaine is actually produced in VZ. So VZ has as much to do with the drug trade as my great aunt does. (She dabbles but it’s just a hobby.)

Adding insult to injury, the former green beret behind the failed Venezuela invasion plot during the first Trump White House has stated recently that the CIA engineered the so-called ‘Cartel de los Soles’ decades ago. The Cartel of The Suns is the pretend totally-made-up cartel that Maduro supposedly heads. (The US and the CIA love playing pretend times.)

So what is this new reason why the NY Times says the US must invade VZ?

“…the larger challenge posed by Maduro’s regime is that it is both an importer and exporter of instability.”

This line of thought should make everyone choke on their coffee. The US or the US media calling any other country an “exporter of instability” is akin to Steve Bannon calling another human “problematic” or Prince Andrew calling someone “sleazy”.

The US is by far the greatest cause of instability in the world. The US has been at war 93% of the years it has existed — 230 of 247 years.

And believe it or not, those numbers don’t even begin to include the endless list of CIA coup’ings, assassinations, color revolutions, economic wars, etc.

Stephens then tries to justify this woefully unhinged statement by saying:

“An importer, because the regime’s close economic and strategic ties to China, Russia and Iran give America’s enemies a significant foothold in the Americas…”

Ummm, please point to the time China or Russia or Iran has launched an assault on the US from their nonexistent bases in Venezuela. Oh, you can’t? Why is that? Could it be because they don’t do that type of thing? Could it also be because the US has over 800 military bases outside of the US while other countries have nowhere NEAR that number. In fact, Russia has fewer than 20 and China has - wait for it - one.

(Don’t forget, folks, bad-guy countries have “regimes” while good-guy countries like the US and Israel have “democratically elected leaders.” No matter how long Netanyahu or Trump or Zelensky stays in power, they never have a regime. They just have democracy and freedom and sunshine and unicorn farts.)

Somehow not yet shamed into slamming his laptop shut, setting fire to it and throwing it out a window, Stephens next writes:

“An exporter, because the regime’s catastrophic misgovernance has generated a mass exodus of refugees and migrants…”

Whether his “mass exodus” claim is true or not, he likely knows any VZ immigration has nothing to do with misgovernance. Any suffering of the Venezuelan people is completely and 100% due to America’s economic war on VZ. Decades of sanctions have made it nearly impossible for VZ to make use of their vast resources. I mean, they have the most oil in the world for fuck’s sake.

Chart by Al Jazeera

The US has carefully and strategically made sure Venezuela can’t make use of it. This has caused hard economic times and in fact a lot of death. As reported in Venezuela Analysis:

“Former UN Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas estimated over 100,000 deaths as a result of sanctions by early 2020.”

Anyone who doesn’t regularly sniff snake repellent knows that:

Trump has admitted the US wants to steal VZ’s oil.

John Bolton has admitted the US wants to steal VZ’s oil.

Elliot Abrams has admitted the US wants to steal VZ oil.

But as I’ve mentioned many times (and others have steadfastly avoided mentioning), there are two main reasons the US has been trying to coup VZ since Hugo Chavez first came to power:

1. If allowed to extract and export its oil, the country of Venezuela would become immensely wealthy and powerful. The US cannot abide a successful, powerful socialist state. It would make our collapsing cut-throat capitalist hellscape look really sad by comparison.

2. The US cannot allow a large petro-state to pump oil outside of the petrodollar. This would be an existential threat to the US and our currency, which we print with reckless abandon.

So sure, the US would love to steal VZ’s oil, but outside of that, the US empire is largely fine with simply barring VZ from extracting/selling their oil. As long as the parasitic US elites can keep that stasis, they don’t have to worry about VZ adding to the movement away from US dollar hegemony.

There’s loads more propaganda in that short NY Times column, but I’m trying to keep my lunch down at the moment. Even just the small bit I’ve debunked here shows how desperate the NY Times, and the US empire in general, is to create even more war, this time against a small peaceful country to our south.