The NYT Gives Venezuelan Insurrectionist Featured Op-Ed Space

by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)

Yon Goicoechea was imprisoned for leading student-organized street violence against Bolivarian social democracy.

In August 2016, he was arrested with explosives and detonators in his possession. Maduro government official Diosdada Cabello said "(t)his man was trained by North American imperialism for years."

In 2008, the right-wing CATO Institute awarded him the so-called Milton Friedman Liberty Prize - for serving imperialist anti-democratic interests it failed to explain.

Goicoechea led anti-Bolivarian student movement street violence, aiming to replace social democracy with fascist tyranny. 

He received a right-wing Cato Institute $500,000 award at a Waldorf-Astoria, NY $500-a-plate dinner. Prominent hard-right corporate and government officials attended.

Extremist students and other anti-democratic government opponents in Venezuela are funded by the CIA, the misnamed National Endowment for Democracy, and other imperial US interests.

Goicoechea is part of the country's criminal class - in prison where he belongs. The Times disgracefully gave him feature op-ed space to lie to its readers - part of the broadsheet's campaign to transform Venezuela into a US vassal state, its world's largest oil reserves a geopolitical prize Washington covets.

Goicoechea: "I am in prison because I want freedom for my country."

Fact: He's imprisoned for violent insurrectionist actions, aiming to topple President Maduro's democratically elected government. 

Fact: He wants freedom abolished, not preserved. He's no "political prisoner," far from it. He complained about deplorable prison conditions. If he respected law and order instead of polar opposite behavior, he wouldn't be there.

Goicoechea: "I…hoped that one day I would use everything I had learned to rebuild my country."

Fact: He wants its model social democracy destroyed, not preserved and strengthened.

Goicoechea: "We just want what so many other people around the world take for granted: free elections, good governance, free expression, judicial independence, personal security and a modicum of economic liberty."

Fact: Venezuelans have all of the above except personal security - because of street thugs like himself.

Goicoechea: "(A)n armed minority has managed to impose a regime of fear, corruption and blood."

Fact: US-supported extremists are responsible for violence and chaos. He's one of the insurrectionist leaders, a traitor to his country.

Goicoechea: "…I'm here for a just cause. My sacrifice and that of others like me will change millions of lives."

Fact: Right-wing insurrectionists like himself support policies benefitting privileged Venezuelans exclusively - at the expense of most others.

His op-ed deplorably tried justifying the unjustifiable. He's in prison where he belongs.

VISIT MY NEW WEB SITE: stephenlendman.org (Home - Stephen Lendman). Contact at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

My newest book as editor and contributor is titled "Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.