Stripping The New York Times

By Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein

Many years ago, I decided not to read or listen to the enemy’s media anymore. During the coup d’état against Commander Chávez in April 2002, I was outside Venezuela, and from a distance, I was able to perceive the way the transnational media “reported” on the event. I became aware that, far from providing information, they are in fact devices of disinformation and psychological warfare aimed at maintaining imperial power and domination.

I’ve never consulted them again, except when I need to resort to them to combat a lie or false information. I haven’t needed them to be well-informed, and above all, to be educated about reality. I respect those who say they must read them to know “how the enemy thinks.” I believe there are other ways to do so. Many of those who manage to “know how the enemy thinks” become blind propagandists for it when they repeat the same information without critical analysis.

Now, I wanted to know how the New York Times (NYT) reports on the latest episode of imperial psychological warfare against Venezuela. This media outlet, which claims to be liberal and, because it is close to the Democratic Party of the United States, has contradictions with the current administration, is nothing more than one of the main tools of disinformation for imperial despotism and has always been a powerful instrument in the hands of the enemy to confront Venezuela. Its handling of information reveals its intention to use elements of the international situation to attack Trump and his record from an internal perspective of politics.

These days, the NYT has published two articles on the issue of ships in the Caribbean. The first, written on August 22 by journalists Charlie Savage, Helene Cooper, and Eric Schmitt, offers a Washington-based analysis of Venezuela and the boat situation under the interrogative title: “Is the Trump administration preparing for a military confrontation with Venezuela?”

The article begins by acknowledging that it is the United States government which “is escalating tensions with Venezuela and its president, Nicolás Maduro”, with the apparent goal of creating “conditions that could trigger a military confrontation.” To make this claim, they argue the “significant buildup of US naval forces,” without presenting any evidence of this. They echo the British news agency Reuters, which is the one that spread this news. By not presenting evidence while announcing a terrorist military operation, they are concealing the “other operation,” a psychological and also terrorist one that has sought to keep Venezuela and all of Latin America on edge for more than a week.

The journalists themselves claim that this mobilization is supported by a secret directive from President Trump “instructing the Pentagon to use military force against some drug cartels in Latin America that his government has labeled ‘terrorist’ organizations.”

The article’s authors acknowledge that the United States government “has increased belligerent rhetoric about combating drug cartels and has labeled Maduro as the leader of a terrorist cartel,” adding that “this raises the question of whether the ultimate goal is simply to counter the flow of drug-smuggling vessels or a possible war seeking regime change.” Clearly, they advance what appears to be the most likely hypothesis.

Although they suggest this is not an anti-drug operation, but rather an attempt to intimidate Venezuela and, if possible, invade it, they do not confirm this. However, previous actions carried out by Washington over many years suggest that the United States has not the slightest interest in fighting drugs. Many reasons support this:

1. The United States has never intended to eliminate drug trafficking within its territory. They can’t, because they need that trafficking. For two fundamental reasons: First, it keeps young people stupid and controlled, preventing them from thinking of or playing a leading role in transforming a society that oppresses and crushes them. And second, because the vast resources generated by drug trafficking circulate through the United States financial system and support its economy.
2. After the arms business, the energy industry, and the pharmaceutical industry, the drug industry ranks fourth in the US economy. To regulate it, in 1973 they created an institution, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), with the goal of controlling, organizing, and distributing narcotics, so that the “business” wouldn’t get out of hand. When they discovered that the connections between drug trafficking and their financial system were leading them to expose the country’s big capital, Washington abandoned the practice forever. That is why, in 1982, they canceled Operation Greenback, which had that objective. Its leader: DEA chief George Bush, who, thanks to his merits, became president of his country.
3. As Mexican journalist Jorge Esquivel has demonstrated in his numerous books, no US administration has ever proposed to investigate drug trafficking networks within the United States. On the contrary, the cartels operating within the country launder money, control routes, and operate with total impunity, under the complicit eye of the DEA and the support of the banks, which are never investigated.
4. The world’s largest producer and exporter of chemical precursors that transform coca into cocaine is the United States (90% according to that country’s Congressional Research Service). They have never controlled this industry. Doing so on their own territory is much easier than mobilizing ships and planes, starting wars, and poisoning the fields, jungles, and rivers of producing countries with glyphosate. The CIA itself has reported that exports to Latin America of hydrochloric acid, potassium permanganate, acetone, sulfuric acid, and ether, among other substances, far exceed their legal uses. Why don’t they control it?
5. According to the United Nations itself, Venezuela is neither a producer nor an exporter of drugs to the United States or any other country. The figures are clear to see.
6. 87% of drugs exported from South America to the United States are shipped via the Pacific Ocean, while only 5% are shipped via the Caribbean.
7. In this case, the New York Times journalists themselves state that: “Navy warships will attack ships operated by drug cartels transporting fentanyl to the United States, […] but they have not said how they will do it.”

The New York Times’s assertions imply several things that need to be listed:

1. Creating the conditions for a military confrontation against Venezuela is something that every US president has considered over the past 26 years. It should be remembered that they organized a coup against President Chávez back in 2002. Since then, they have used an arsenal of instruments, including: coup attempts, the fabrication of a president and the creation of an artificial government, a sea invasion, a land invasion, an opposition alliance with Colombian paramilitary groups and drug traffickers, an opposition alliance with organized crime groups within the country, economic sabotage, terrorist attacks against electrical and oil facilities, an assassination attempt on President Maduro, an attempt to fracture the armed forces, the creation of an international organization (the Lima Group) to overthrow a government (the only time in history that an international organization has been created for terrorist purposes), election sabotage, blockades on the purchase of food and medicine, sanctions against the oil industry… and we could go on. This wasn’t invented by Trump or Marco Rubio; it’s a hallmark of the United States’ imperial behavior since its existence as an independent nation.
2. The NYT echoes the accusation that the Venezuelan government operates like a drug cartel, yet they have never been able to present any evidence to support this claim.
3. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s response to a question about the naval movements and whether her administration was considering sending forces into Venezuelan territory was vague. She responded by calling Maduro illegitimate, as if Washington can universally assign that status.
4. The Pentagon, the agency responsible for the operation, declined to comment publicly on the details of the deployment.
5. Marco Rubio himself alluded to the issue, also in a diffuse manner, but not from his institutional X, but from his personal one.

In short, neither the White House, the State Department, nor the Department of Defense have said anything concrete on the matter. Is it so secret that they can’t even address it? Or is it a gigantic bluff intended to generate pressure and weaken Venezuela through sinister psychological operations solely to fuel Marco Rubio’s psychopathic hatred?

It turns out that the ultra-modern super ships of the US Navy that shamelessly fled the Red Sea after the Yemeni attacks are now fleeing Hurricane Erin in the Caribbean. In an effort to maintain the tense situation, three announcements have already been made about the ships’ arrival: the first on August 14, the second on the 18th, and the last recently, on the 25th. It’s worth clarifying that the second is the “came back” after fleeing Erin. Evidence shows that the “invincible” US Marines can only fight under optimal conditions. If attacked, like in the Red Sea, they flee, and if there’s a hurricane, they do too… and it’s best not to mention Vietnam and Afghanistan. If we’re talking about escapes, those have been truly monumental.

The New York Times journalists, with an obvious intention to provoke panic, go wild, showing off the powerful armament these ships possess, but they quote a Pentagon official who says that deploying destroyers and submarines carrying surface-to-air missiles that “can conduct anti-aircraft and anti-submarine warfare and shoot down ballistic missiles” […] from drug cartels, would be like “bringing a howitzer to a knife fight.”

The article then launches into a long legal diatribe about the legality and validity of US imperialist actions, pointing out that if they attacked Venezuela, they would be outside the law. As if the United States had ever been concerned about this. Are indiscriminate deportations legal? Is supporting genocide and supplying weapons and financial and logistical support to the country that commits it legal?

The NYT says that: “It remains unclear what criteria or rules of engagement the [US] government is considering for any operation using armed force,” mentioning that recent events have occurred that “invite comparisons with the provocative conditions that preceded two major US military episodes in the second half of the 20th century. It refers to the invasion of Vietnam after the fake Gulf of Tonkin incident and the invasion of Panama in 1989.

I remind the NYT journalists of other cases in which the United States resorted to lies or avoided taking measures to prevent war or terrorist acts with the clear objective of attacking other countries or having the “justification” to do so: the explosion of the Battleship Maine in Havana Bay in 1898, the invasion of the Philippines that same year, the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 that they did not prevent when they could have done so only in order to have the justification to enter the Second World War, the invasion of Grenada in 1983, the invasion of Iraq in 2003 after the “little bottle” that General Colin Powell showed at the UN and the invasion of Libya after creating a false scenario of alleged actions by leader Gaddafi against his people.

To fabricate the idea that the Venezuelan government and its president are tied to drug trafficking is not unusual; it’s the United States’ natural way of acting over its 250 years of existence. The lie is in keeping with its thinking and its regime. Thus, al-Golani was a terrorist for whom they were demanding $10 million for his head until he decided to subordinate himself to Washington and, miraculously, ceased to be a terrorist. The tens of thousands of people killed by this individual were quickly forgotten by Washington, which now presents him as a champion of democracy. The truth is that Washington’s characterizations have little importance.

The way these guys write is so aberrant that they even claim: “It is unclear how the government interprets national and international law regarding the scope and limits of its ability to use force against alleged gang members.” They are referring to the Tren de Aragua, a criminal organization that has already been eliminated in Venezuela. In other words, the NYT accepts that the law is interpreted according to the interests of the current government.

The New York Times continues: “One question is whether he wants the military to use wartime standards even though Congress hasn’t authorized any armed conflict, or simply add more muscle to operations still governed by law enforcement rules. Soldiers on a battlefield can kill enemy combatants even if they aren’t a threat at the time. But police, on the other hand, arrest criminals who pose no threat; summarily killing them would be homicide.”

At the heart of the matter, the real truth is—as the NYT also points out—Marco Rubio’s designation of drug cartels as “terrorist” groups allows the United States to “use other elements of American power—intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, whatever—to attack these groups.” That is, if Marco Rubio decides tomorrow that France is a terrorist group based on statements Washington considers “anti-Semitic,” Paris is vulnerable to the United States using “other elements of American power—intelligence agencies, the Department of Defense, whatever—against it.”

It doesn’t seem serious to accept that all these actions, which not only violate international law but also U.S. domestic law, are broadcast with complete complacency. Incredibly, the NYT needed three people to say that. It seems one alone isn’t enough.

I was going to comment on the second New York Times article written by “journalist” Julie Turkewitz, reporting from Bogotá, who, without having set foot in Venezuela, mentions a certain “Pedro Martínez, 52, a driver in the city of Carabobo, near the country’s northern coast.” I couldn’t continue. If this swindler doesn’t even know that Carabobo isn’t a city but a state in the country, it’s pointless to continue; it sounds fake to me. If she’s lying about that, what can we expect from her political “analyses”? I don’t know if this Pedro Martínez exists; it’s the least of it. It seems like an article written by an AI. But they’re so arrogant and overbearing that they assume the public is obliged to swallow their fabrications and that they’re allowed to say whatever they want to justify their despicable actions. It’s evident that this press acts like a modern-day Goebbels.