There Was a Boat. That Was the Only True Part.
This was what the President of the United States initially lied:
“Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere. The strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States. The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action. No U.S. Forces were harmed in this strike. Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE! Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!!!!!!!!!”
How was this dishonest? Let me count the ways.
- “Kinetic strike” is just a euphemism for murder. The above words accompanied a video of people in a small boat being blown up. You don’t see the blood spurting out of their bodies, as you might in an unacceptable murder objected to by Trump. You see a cool flash of light of the sort you’ve been conditioned by countless movies, television shows, and news broadcasts to ooh and aah at. But it’s just killing people.
- There is no legal basis for the U.S. military to circle a giant chunk of the Earth’s surface and declare it the “responsibility” of a portion of that military named “SOUTHCOM.” This was at least 1,000 miles away from the United States, and therefore a job for a department of “defense,” only with the usual hypocrisy, even if there had been some sort of attack on anything — it’s a good thing the department is back to being one of “war.”
- Nobody has publicly identified the people or identified them as drug dealers or as members of a particular gang.
- Nobody has publicly established that there exists a gang engaged in “narcoterrorism” — that is, in dealing drugs and in terrorism. The most likely scenario for that happening will be city cops busting U.S. National Guard occupiers selling illegal substances to each other.
- There is no way to define terrorism so as not to include the act of blowing up a boat and threatening to blow up more. Labeling the victims terrorists, even if true, cannot change that.
- There is no public evidence that the president of Venezuela is in charge of the alleged gang.
- There is no public evidence that the supposed gang of the president of Venezuela has done “mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere.”
- The boat was not “heading to the United States.” The U.S. Secretary of State said it was headed to Trinidad & Tobago and then “corrected” his statement to agree with Trump’s. His initial statement was more plausible for such a small boat. We later learned that the people on the boat had apparently become aware of the drone or drones above them and reversed course, so that at the time of their murder, they were headed in the opposite direction of wherever they had been headed at first.
- It is highly unlikely that “No U.S. Forces were harmed in this strike.” The U.S. Air Force has long made clear that PTSD and moral injury are far more common among “drone pilots” who watch their targets on a screen than among airborne pilots.
- Trump’s video did not show what we later learned were multiple strikes on the same little boat, which would have looked less wrath-of-God cool than a single bolt of MAGAnite.
- Bragging about something on social media implies that it is legal, acceptable, and admirable. Reuters’ comical straight-faced “analysis” went like this: “Some experts questioned whether the decision to summarily kill people merely on suspicion of smuggling drugs violated international law. Trafficking in an illegal substance is not normally considered a capital offence.” In fact, murdering people violates international and national laws. Past U.S. presidents having done something does not legalize it. Even advocates for worldwide drone murder sprees have always maintained that it is only through the magic of being part of a war that such murders become totally admirable non-murders. If something were a “capital offense,” a president would still not get to be judge, jury, and executioner with no indictment or trial — not legally.
- Drug dealing is not warmaking, and immigrating is not militarily invading. When someone like Senator Chris Murphy says that those who were killed on the boat may have been members of a drug cartel or may have been civilians, he is selling snake oil. Drug dealers are civilians.*
- Threatening more of the same is a crime under international and national laws as well, starting with the United Nations Charter.
- When someone like Senator Chris Murphy says the big damage here is the setback for the war on drugs, he is obscuring our view of the mass murder just committed by Trump.
- When the same senator says that blowing up boats would be legal if Congress had authorized it, he is pushing the lie that Congress has the power to overrule international law. It does not. War — and murder apart from war — are both equally illegal with or without the approval of the United States Congress. Yes, I am listing responses to Trump’s dishonesty as part of it, but he could count on just these non-responses.
- There is no world in which such a small boat contained enough drugs even for a single Republican National Convention, and there is no boat large enough that blowing it up could distract even Trump’s own followers from their obsession with Epstein.
Sign the petition against war on Venezuela here.
*Well, not some of the U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan, for example, but most drug dealers.
This was what the President of the United States initially lied:
“Earlier this morning, on my Orders, U.S. Military Forces conducted a kinetic strike against positively identified Tren de Aragua Narcoterrorists in the SOUTHCOM area of responsibility. TDA is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization, operating under the control of Nicolas Maduro, responsible for mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere. The strike occurred while the terrorists were at sea in International waters transporting illegal narcotics, heading to the United States. The strike resulted in 11 terrorists killed in action. No U.S. Forces were harmed in this strike. Please let this serve as notice to anybody even thinking about bringing drugs into the United States of America. BEWARE! Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!!!!!!!!!”
How was this dishonest? Let me count the ways.
- “Kinetic strike” is just a euphemism for murder. The above words accompanied a video of people in a small boat being blown up. You don’t see the blood spurting out of their bodies, as you might in an unacceptable murder objected to by Trump. You see a cool flash of light of the sort you’ve been conditioned by countless movies, television shows, and news broadcasts to ooh and aah at. But it’s just killing people.
- There is no legal basis for the U.S. military to circle a giant chunk of the Earth’s surface and declare it the “responsibility” of a portion of that military named “SOUTHCOM.” This was at least 1,000 miles away from the United States, and therefore a job for a department of “defense,” only with the usual hypocrisy, even if there had been some sort of attack on anything — it’s a good thing the department is back to being one of “war.”
- Nobody has publicly identified the people or identified them as drug dealers or as members of a particular gang.
- Nobody has publicly established that there exists a gang engaged in “narcoterrorism” — that is, in dealing drugs and in terrorism. The most likely scenario for that happening will be city cops busting U.S. National Guard occupiers selling illegal substances to each other.
- There is no way to define terrorism so as not to include the act of blowing up a boat and threatening to blow up more. Labeling the victims terrorists, even if true, cannot change that.
- There is no public evidence that the president of Venezuela is in charge of the alleged gang.
- There is no public evidence that the supposed gang of the president of Venezuela has done “mass murder, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and acts of violence and terror across the United States and Western Hemisphere.”
- The boat was not “heading to the United States.” The U.S. Secretary of State said it was headed to Trinidad & Tobago and then “corrected” his statement to agree with Trump’s. His initial statement was more plausible for such a small boat. We later learned that the people on the boat had apparently become aware of the drone or drones above them and reversed course, so that at the time of their murder, they were headed in the opposite direction of wherever they had been headed at first.
- It is highly unlikely that “No U.S. Forces were harmed in this strike.” The U.S. Air Force has long made clear that PTSD and moral injury are far more common among “drone pilots” who watch their targets on a screen than among airborne pilots.
- Trump’s video did not show what we later learned were multiple strikes on the same little boat, which would have looked less wrath-of-God cool than a single bolt of MAGAnite.
- Bragging about something on social media implies that it is legal, acceptable, and admirable. Reuters’ comical straight-faced “analysis” went like this: “Some experts questioned whether the decision to summarily kill people merely on suspicion of smuggling drugs violated international law. Trafficking in an illegal substance is not normally considered a capital offence.” In fact, murdering people violates international and national laws. Past U.S. presidents having done something does not legalize it. Even advocates for worldwide drone murder sprees have always maintained that it is only through the magic of being part of a war that such murders become totally admirable non-murders. If something were a “capital offense,” a president would still not get to be judge, jury, and executioner with no indictment or trial — not legally.
- Drug dealing is not warmaking, and immigrating is not militarily invading. When someone like Senator Chris Murphy says that those who were killed on the boat may have been members of a drug cartel or may have been civilians, he is selling snake oil. Drug dealers are civilians.*
- Threatening more of the same is a crime under international and national laws as well, starting with the United Nations Charter.
- When someone like Senator Chris Murphy says the big damage here is the setback for the war on drugs, he is obscuring our view of the mass murder just committed by Trump.
- When the same senator says that blowing up boats would be legal if Congress had authorized it, he is pushing the lie that Congress has the power to overrule international law. It does not. War — and murder apart from war — are both equally illegal with or without the approval of the United States Congress. Yes, I am listing responses to Trump’s dishonesty as part of it, but he could count on just these non-responses.
- There is no world in which such a small boat contained enough drugs even for a single Republican National Convention, and there is no boat large enough that blowing it up could distract even Trump’s own followers from their obsession with Epstein.
Sign the petition against war on Venezuela here.
*Well, not some of the U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan, for example, but most drug dealers.
Washington Projects Its Drug Problem onto
Latin America: Narco-State Myth Used to
Attack Venezuela
A big Cadillac limo with Jersey plates was parked down the block. Few locals in East Harlem even owned cars, let alone new ones. Curious, I asked the street kids what’s up. They casually explained that the mafioso comes weekly to collect their drug money. Later, I found a playground, which served as a veritable narcotics flea market each night. If a blanquito from the suburbs and some third graders could uncover the illicit trade, I wondered why the officials – who plastered the city with “keep New York drug free” signs – couldn’t do the same.
That was in the late 1960s, and I am still wondering why the US – the world’s largest consumer of narcotics, the biggest money launderer of illicit drug money, and the leading weaponry supplier to the cartels – hasn’t resolved these problems.
One thing is clear: the drug issue is projected onto Latin America. White House spokesperson Anna Kelly warned of “evil narco terrorists [trying] to poison our homeland.” Drug interdiction has been weaponized as an excuse to impose imperial domination, most notably against Venezuela.
Since Hugo Chávez was elected Venezuela’s president in 1998 and initiated the Bolivarian Revolution – a movement that catalyzed the Pink Tide in Latin America and galvanized a counter-hegemonic wave internationally – Washington has tried to crush it. In 2015, then-US President Barack Obama accused Venezuela of being an “extraordinary threat” to US national security when, in fact, the opposite was the case; the US threatened Venezuela.
Obama imposed unilateral coercive measures – euphemistically called “sanctions.” Each subsequent administration renewed and, to varying degrees, intensified the sanctions, which are illegal under international law, in a bipartisan effort. But the imperial objective of regime change was thwarted by the political leadership of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in concert with the country’s people and in firm alliance with their military.
Now that draconian sanctions have “failed” to achieve regime change, President Trump dispatched an armada of warships, F-35 stealth aircraft, and thousands of troops to increase the pressure.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro responded: “What Washington wants is to control Venezuela’s wealth [including the world’s largest oil reserves]. That is the reason why the US deployed warships, aircraft, missiles, and a nuclear submarine near Venezuelan coasts under the pretext of fighting drug trafficking.”
Maduro maintains his country is free of drug production and processing, citing reports from the United Nations, the European Union, and even the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). The Venezuelan president could have also referenced the findings of Trump’s own security agencies absolving him from the charge of directing the Tren de Aragua drug cartel.
And, speaking of collusion with drug cartels, Maduro could have commented on the DEA itself, which was expelled from Venezuela in 2005 for espionage. Regardless, the DEA has continued to secretly build drug trafficking cases against Venezuela’s leaders in knowing violation of international law, according to an Associated Press report.
Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez highlights that the DEA “has known connections with the drug trafficking world.” For example, an investigation by the US Department of Justice revealed that at least ten DEA agents in Colombia participated in repeated “sex parties” with prostitutes paid for by local drug cartels. In 2022, the DEA quietly removed its Mexico chief for maintaining improper contacts with cartels. This underscores a troubling pattern: DEA presence tends to coincide with major drug activity, but does not eliminate it.
The US “is not interested in addressing the serious public health problem its citizens face due to high drug use,” Maduro reminds us. He points out that drug trafficking profits remain in the US banking system. In fact, illicit narcotics are a major US industry. Research by the US Army-funded RAND Corporation reveals that narcotics rank alongside pharmaceuticals and oil/gas as top US commodities.
The former head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Pino Arlacchi commented: “I was in Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil but I have never been to Venezuela; there was simply no need.” He added: “The Venezuelan government’s cooperation in the fight against drug trafficking was one of the best in South America; It can be compared only to Cuba’s impeccable record. This fact, in Trump’s delusional narrative of ‘Venezuela as a narco-state’, sounds like geopolitically motivated slander.” The UN 2025 World Drug Report, from the organization he led, tells a story opposite to that spread by the Trump administration.
According to Arlaachi, if any Latin American country should be targeted, it is US-allied Ecuador, now the world’s leading cocaine exporter using banana boats owned by the family of Trump’s buddy, right-wing President Daniel Naboa.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum notes that if any “alliance” exists with cartels, it lies “in the US gun shops,” highlighting how Yankee firearms fuel cartel violence. She urges Washington to look inward at its own drug demand and lax enforcement. If the US truly wanted to curb fentanyl, “they can combat the sale of narcotics on the streets of their main cities… and [stop] the money laundering” tied to the trade – steps “they don’t do.”
The resounding message from Latin America is that blaming them alone for the drug problem is misleading – the US’s own appetite for drugs and history of interventionism are key contributors. Solutions call for shared responsibilities and cooperative relationships.
US policy under Trump, which confounds terrorism with criminal activity, is a cover for projecting military domination. Claiming the prerogative to unilaterally intervene in the sovereign territories of neighboring states to fight cartels or murdering a boat’s crew in the Caribbean are not solutions. Latin American leaders are turning the spotlight back on Washington. They point to US gun policies, consumer demand, and ulterior motives behind Washington’s renewed “war on drugs,” such as the current regime-change offensive against Venezuela. The drug problem won’t be solved by scapegoating Latin America when the US has yet to address root causes at home.
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