The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 26

May 20, 2013 — Sabina Becker

Hey! Remember how the Venezuelan opposition used to snipe at Chavecito for being a former military officer, calling him a “dictator”, even though he was democratically elected (and re-elected, and so on, and so on) as a civilian? Remember how they used to squall under his extremely lenient rule about all the “censorship” and “repression” there was not? Remember how ironic that was? Well, get ready, because here comes Rafael Poleo — opposition propagandist, media owner, soi-disant “journalist”, and all-around poor excuse for a human being, laying a big steaming pile of smelly brown irony all over the place:

poleo-dirty-war

So what does that mean? Let me translate:

Dirty War

General Videla was not a soldier who sold food. He was born of a breed of warriors that began with the independence of the Republic of Argentina. When his country was on the verge of falling into the hands of Montonero and ERP terrorists, he took on the tremendous responsibility of leading the dirty war which the terrorists were winning. General Videla won that dirty war by applying the hard formulas of his military office. Who knows what would have happened if the military had lost that war. (During a meeting of the Socialist International in Caracas in 1975, [Rómulo] Betancourt said that military men don’t always take power because of ambition and avarice, but because often they are rescuing it from the river where the politicians let it fall. When Betancourt died, the brave generals who defeated Russo-Cuban intervention under his command asked for permission to wear their old uniforms. Thus attired, they were the ones to carry the casket and bury the great man.)

This bit of diarrhea was occasioned by the recent death of the ex-dictator of Argentina, ex-general Jorge Rafael Videla. In it, the irony-impaired Rafael Poleo not only praises a real, unelected, antidemocratic military dictator and human rights abuser, he shits all over the grave of an elected, humanistic and extremely popular socialist president.

One of the first things Chavecito did when he came to power in 1999 was send the army out to help the people, not to repress them. Under Plan Bolívar, soldiers sold food at affordable prices in poor neighborhoods. This pissed off the well-to-do shopkeepers, the same who had occasioned the Caracazo ten years earlier by hoarding food and then telling those same poor folks that there wasn’t any. And when those poor Venezuelans put the dirty lie to that by breaking into the back rooms where the hoarded food was being kept to be sold at inflated prices, and simply taking it, the then-president, Carlos Andrés Pérez, sent the army out to repress them. The death toll from those five days of rioting and repression was in the thousands.

It was this that spurred Chavecito and his Bolivarian army buddies to rise up against CAP three years later, after a clandestine recruitment drive that drew disgruntled officers from all branches of the Venezuelan military. None of them could bear the shame of being repressors in a nominally democratic country, under a presumably elected president.

Bolívar once said: “Cursed is the soldier who turns his weapons on his own people.” The 1992 uprising, despite its failure, was meant to expiate that curse. As was Plan Bolívar, in which the military was placed at the service of the people, rather than as mere bodyguards to capitalists and their political lackeys.

And the Argentine junta were nothing if not bodyguards to the international capitalists. Under them, Argentina became Milton Friedman’s wet dream, and the corpses of 30,000 “disappeared” dissidents a small price to pay for free-market “reforms”. The bulk of that repression took place under General Videla’s iron fist. Never elected, never under the faintest illusion of being a democrat, the pious hypocrite Videla did not “rescue” Argentina from the socialist Montoneros and the ERP; he turned it into a human slaughterhouse. There was literally no atrocity of which he and his torturers, repressors and co-conspirators were not guilty.

And in the end, Videla proved Bolívar’s axiom correct. He died accursed, on the floor of the washroom of his cell in the Marcos Paz penitentiary, a convicted murderer, baby-thief and criminal against humanity. His death was as undignified as can be imagined; he was stricken with diarrhea and on his way to the toilet at the time. Karma took a flying dump all over his dogma.

And this is the man Rafael Poleo chose to praise and eulogize. Along with the long-dead, unlamented Rómulo Betancourt, who stole his way to power via the reviled Punto Fijo pact, and who waged a dirty war of his own against Venezuelan leftists, who had been shut out of participation in the elections, and some of whom had taken to the hills as guerrillas, after the fashion of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Venezuelan leftists disappeared, were tortured and killed, and thrown in the sea, more than ten years before the Argentine junta seized power, with Videla as de facto “president” (note the quotes). One corpse, that of PCV director Alberto Lovera, washed up on the beach at Puerto La Cruz, badly bloated and disfigured, but with chains still attached:

alberto-lovera-dead

That was in 1965, seven years after the last military dictator of Venezuela was deposed. And Lovera’s death, along with hundreds of others, was a direct legacy of Rómulo Betancourt, the so-called “Father of Venezuelan democracy”. Betancourt, like all the other Punto Fijo Pact beneficiaries, was only nominally a democrat, and only nominally elected. And he, like all of them, knew it…and took extreme measures to make sure that no serious challenges to his leadership could ever come from the left. There was literally nothing that they would not stoop to, from Betancourt on down, in the name of preserving a “free market” capitalist “democracy” (again, note the quotes).

This is what Rafael Poleo was praising and eulogizing when he called Betancourt a “great man” and his hated, crooked military yes-men “brave generals”. This ugliness, this rot, this repression, this medieval torture.

And yet he probably would not hesitate to ascribe all these horrors and more to Chavecito, who was out of uniform for five full years at the time of his first election of many, with a clear majority and a popular mandate. Never mind that Chavecito never did anything of the sort, and indeed went to great lengths to undo the damage that Betancourt and his successors had done. Not to mention that he helped Néstor Kirchner, and later his widow, Cristina Fernández, rescue Argentina from the clutches of the IMF…the same that was all too enthused about General Videla and his ilk.

The mind boggles, does it not?

Posted in Crapaganda Whores, Cuba, Libre (de los Yanquis), Don't Cry For Argentina, Fascism Without Swastikas, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Karma 1, Dogma 0. No Comments »

Rafael Correa connects the dots

April 29, 2013 — Sabina Becker

correa-cnn

The crapaganda mafia of the North American media aren’t known for their honesty in reporting on Latin America. It takes nothing less than an interview with a Bolivarian head of state to set the record straight, and even then, who knows how much of this they may have censored, because it cuts awfully close to the bone:

The president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, gave an interview on CNN’s Spanish-language channel, in which he alerted the public to constant destabilization efforts taking place against progressive governments throughout Latin America.

Correa made the remark after journalist Ana Pastor asked him about the political situation in Venezuela, where ex-candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski refuses to accept defeat following the the presidential elections of April 14, in which Nicolás Maduro won with 50.78% of the vote.

“Every day, we confront destabilization processes [in the region]. There is permanent putschism, don’t be fooled,” said the Ecuadorian president, whom Pastor interviewed on April 20, while Correa was on a tour of Europe.

Correa listed the coups d’état, failed and successful, which have occurred during the 21st century. They began in April 2002, against the government of Hugo Chávez, and continued in Bolivia, against Evo Morales, in 2008. Both coups failed.

In 2009, the putschists succeeded in toppling Zelaya in Honduras. In 2010 they tried to topple Correa without success, and most recently, there was a successful coup in Paraguay, in 2012, against Fernando Lugo.

“Four of those cases were governments of the Bolivarian Alliance for the People of Our America (ALBA), and all five were progressive. Do you believe that’s a coincidence? When will we see such an attempt on the governments of the right?” Correa asked.

Correa concluded that the defeated ex-candidate [Capriles] “is a putschist, and so are all the Venezuelan right. Look at the role Capriles played in 2002 in the coup against Chávez.”

At that time, Capriles led the assault on the Cuban embassy in Caracas, and supported the dismantling of the Venezuelan institutions [as per the Carmona Decree].

Correa reiterated that there have always been plans to destabilize Venezuela’s democracy, in spite of the transparency of the National Electoral Council (CNE) and all the other institutions in the land.

“We have no reason to doubt the results released by the CNE. Venezuela has one of the most modern electoral systems in the world, all electronic, and for that reason, it’s a bit absurd to do a recount of the votes. It was a free, transparent, democratic process, and there is a winner, and now it’s time for everyone to unite behind him,” Correa said.

Correa said that his Venezuelan counterpart is “an extremely capable, patriotic, hardworking and honest man.”

“The Maduro government is based on Bolivarian principles, the same line as Hugo Chávez. So in that, there is much in common, and with Ecuador too, because we are inspired by similar principles,” Correa added.

Translation mine.

So there you go. This is why Latin American governments (even that of Mexican right-winger Enrique Peña Nieto) have stepped up to recognize the Maduro presidency, while the US (and, even more shamefully, Canada) are still pretending it was too close to call, or some such — and therefore, not deigning to recognize a freely and fairly elected leader. They’d rather “recognize” a putschist who did this:

…because that putschist attacked the embassy of a country the US has had no luck in destabilizing and reeling back into its sphere of influence, ever since the failed attack on the Bay of Pigs.

Frankly, Capriles should have been in jail, and declared permanently ineligible to run for office. But Chavecito’s irrepressible confidence in his democratic government and social programs was such that they could afford to let him run loose and trip over himself, I guess. And Maduro is just as confident, with just as much cause. The election result has borne that out. Some fucking dictatorship, eh?

Meanwhile, Rafael Correa has also connected some dots that the major media (who overwhelmingly toot the horn for right-wing candidates) will never touch: Why has there never been a coup against a right-wing government, much less a successful one? That’s simple: the US doesn’t back that kind. The last actual one that happened was Chavecito’s failed military uprising of 1992. And it landed Chavecito in jail for a couple of years. When he emerged again, in 1994, he was such a popular folk hero that he didn’t have to try for another rebellion. He had only to run for office, and he won.

Which is something that you will never see a Capriles Radonski do, even though he has powerful media connections in his own family, plus the entire crapaganda apparatus of the corporate media at home and in North America, working day and night to try to push the bullshit narrative that he is the popular one. Sorry, Majunche, you ain’t got the juice. The people know it; the other presidents know it; the world knows it.

How much longer before the crapagandarati get that message…and actually report it?

Posted in All About Evo, Canadian Counterpunch, Crapaganda Whores, Cuba, Libre (de los Yanquis), Ecuadorable As Can Be, Fascism Without Swastikas, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Mexican Standoffs, Not Hiding in Honduras, Paraguay, Uruguay, Spooks, The United States of Amnesia. 1 Comment »

Dear AP: You suck, too.

April 26, 2013 — Sabina Becker

Ahem…a little mood music, maestro:

Further to last night’s (now amended) piece on how badly Reuters gets Venezuela wrong, it looks like the Associated Press (or Dissociated Press, as I prefer to call them) is no better. Aporrea columnist Ivana Cardinale takes them to task:

Miguel Rodríguez Torres, the new minister of Interior Relations and Justice, informed the country on Thursday morning of the capture of a US citizen named Timothy Hallett Tracy.

According to the minister, Tracy is linked to a right-wing conspiracy against Venezuela, and its objective was to lead us into a civil war and so provoke immediate intervention on the part of a foreign power. He added that he has documents and videos as proof.

The US daily, The Washington Post, immediately published an article from the Associated Press agency, which should really be called the Associated Pentagon, since many of us know that it is the propaganda arm of the Pentagon. In it, the family of the detainee says that he is an “innocent filmmaker”, who is in Venezuela to make a documentary.

According to the detainee’s father, his son is a graduate of Georgetown University, who majored in English, and has been “filming” for the past year in Venezuela.

The AP article indicates that the gringo detainee made a documentary in 2009 called “American Harmony”, and another documentary, recently filmed, called “Under Siege”, for the Discovery Channel. Both documentaries were directed and produced by one Aengus James, not Timothy Tracy. Once more, AP lies. The name of Timothy Hallett Tracy appears nowhere on the Internet in connection to the filming of one or both of the documentaries.

I searched the Internet for information on him, and the only thing that appeared was his detention in Venezuela. As for the rest, no information on Tracy anywhere. Nothing on documentaries or films by this US citizen. If he is a filmmaker, as they say, there would be information on the Web over his work, and as I said, it does not exist.

The strange thing is that “Under Siege” was broadcast in the US one month ago, in March, by the Discovery Channel. If we take AP at its word that Timothy Hallett Tracy filmed that documentary, how could Tracy, who according to his father, has been filming in Venezuela for the past year, be making films in two different countries at the same time?

These little details betray an intent to conceal. It is evident that this is a CIA operation in Venezuela which uses the AP news agency to publish false information over Tracy, claiming him to be producer and director of two documentaries which in reality were made by Aengus James.

500 videos were seized in the raid. The AP agency says that Tracy was detained twice in Venezuela before April 14 and let go. What AP doesn’t say is that Timothy Hallett Tracy belongs to an intelligence agency, has been trained in these matters, received foreign financing, which was later passed on to young Venezuelans hungry for dollars, who came from the extreme right wing, with the objective to generate violent incidents and provoke a civil war.

Translation mine.

BTW, I looked up Aengus James. He is a real person, and he is a real filmmaker. He’s on Twitter. Here’s an interview he gave about his film, American Harmony, which is a documentary on barbershop quartets. He doesn’t look much like Tim Tracy. If I had to guess at his politics, from his tweets (which reference Paul Krugman), I would say he’s a liberal Democrat — hardly the sort of guy who’d want to hang out with a bunch of overt fascists like JAVU. His work doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that would inspire the CIA to tap him as a front man for one of their operations, either. And I don’t think he’d be at all impressed to hear that his films have been attributed by an agency as big and prominent as the AP to this Tim Tracy guy.

So, AP, what the hell is your explanation for all this? And please, make it a good one. I can hardly wait to hear how you got these two guys so badly mixed up.

Posted in Crapaganda Whores, Fascism Without Swastikas, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Newspeak is Nospeak, Spooks, The United States of Amnesia. Comments Off »

Dear Reuters: Is this enough proof for you?

April 26, 2013 — Sabina Becker

timothy-hallet

Dear Reuters: You fail so hard at journalism…

Venezuela has detained an American citizen it says was financing opposition student demonstrations after this month’s disputed presidential election, the latest in a flurry of accusations over last week’s post-vote violence.

Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez said Timothy Hallet Tracy had been seeking to destabilize the country on behalf of an unnamed U.S. intelligence agency after President Nicolas Maduro’s narrow presidential victory.

“We detected the presence of an American who began developing close relations with these (students),” said Rodriguez in a press conference. “His actions clearly show training as an intelligence agent, there can be no doubt about it. He knows how to work in clandestine operations.”

Rodriguez said Tracy, 35, from Michigan, had received financing from a foreign non-profit organization and had redirected those funds toward student organizations. The ultimate aim was to provoke “civil war,” he said.

A U.S. embassy official had no immediate comment.

The government has given scant evidence for a flurry of headline-grabbing accusations ranging from an assassination plot against Maduro to alleged sabotage of the electricity grid.

…because this is the real story, and your version is laughable even on the surface of it:

The minister for Interior Relations, Justice and Peace, Miguel Rodríguez Torres, informed on Thursday of the capture of a US citizen, Timothy Hallett Tracy, linked to a conspiracy of the far-right against Venezuelan democracy.

The actions of Timothy Hallett Tracy are related to groups of the far right who are attempting to destabilize the country with attacks in the street following the presidential elections of April 14.

The minister stated that the objective of the plan is to generate chaos throughout the country with the creation of a violent post-election scenario in order to make it ungovernable.

“it is important to inform the people over situations which are occurring; we will show the motivations and connections they have in order to develop a series of events which we have been living through ever since the night after the elections of April 14,” said Rodríguez Torres, in a press conference.

The minister stated that as of October, November and December of 2012, the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN) had been conducting investigations into an operation called “April Connection”.

“All the indicators we have been gathering indicated that we would arrive at election day with complete normality, but following the release of the results by the National Electoral Council (CNE), there was to be a non-recognition on the part of the right-wing candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski,” Rodríguez Torres explained.

He added that during the investigations they managed to detect a person of US origin, who had formed close relations with right-wing youth who were members of the so-called “Operation Sovereignty”.

“When we detected this relationship, we began to conduct surveillance and stakeouts, and we saw how this man was able to infiltrate revolutionary groups to gain their protection, but had intimate relations with the extreme right wing,” Rodríguez Torres said. He commented that it is presumed that this US citizen belonged to an intelligence organization, and had received financing from various foreign NGOs.

Rodríguez Torres explained that the objective of Operation April Connection was to generate mobilizations following the release of the results of the presidential vote, and to conduct a civil war.

“Their objective was that, to lead us into a civil war, and we have the documents proving that they exchanged [information] amongst themselves by way of some [computer] chips, which a messenger brought from the Plaza La Castellana to the home of the ‘gringo’,” Rodríguez Torres said.

He informed that, according to this right-wing sector, the idea was to launch a civil war in Venezuela and thus immediately provoke intervention from a foreign power.

“These were their desired ends, and they continue to be. We have more than 500 videos which we seized during a raid. We asked ourselves: Do the ordinary householders who voted for the opposition want a civil war, or do the Venezuelan taxi drivers want that? We are sure that nobody in this land, independent of their position, wants that, except these extremist groups, directed by extremists of the parties of the right who do want civil war,” he added.

During his press conference, the minister showed a video in which it is evident that retired general Antonio Rivero is passing instructions to guarimberos [insurrectionary right-wing demonstrators, presumably "students"] in the upper class district of Altamira, telling them how to create disturbances.

All the proofs seized during the raid, which took place on Wednesday night, were brought to the appropriate authorities.

Rodríguez Torres said that, thanks to the work of intelligence agents, the national government was able to act in time to continue to guarantee peace for the people of Venezuela.

“The President of the Republic, Nicolás Maduro, has emphasized that in this country, we will always go the way of peace and coexistence. That has to be an effort made by all Venezuelans, independent of their ideological and political posture. We must reject and isolate these fascist factors who live among us, and who are trying to get us Venezuelans to hate and kill one another. We cannot allow that,” he insisted.

Translation mine.

BTW, O Reuters gurus, I have your “scant evidence” right here. And, spoiler alert, it ain’t so “scant”:

You’ll have to wait till the 6:50 mark or thereabouts, but yeah, the proof is there, and yeah, it’s substantial. Video evidence that Tim Tracy has been meeting with the druggy, drinky, dollar-hungry JAVU punks (whose terrorist manifesto I’ve already translated and discussed here.) That’s one of 500 videos shot by the perps themselves, all taken into custody by the SEBIN agents as evidence of their plot. JAVU and Tracy are, in short, thoroughly fucked. As is a certain ex-general who also appears in the video, advising the punks on how to organize:

Ah yes, the peaceful, democratic Venezuelan opposition. So credible. And their gringo spook candy-man. So innocent. Meanwhile, there’s about 500 videos, all shot by themselves, to attest the opposite.

Yeah, that’s “scant” evidence, all right.

Hey, Reuters? Maybe you should learn some Spanish. And maybe learn journalism too, while you’re at it. At the very least, try learning how not to sleep through a fucking press conference. Okay?

Note: This entry has been amended following release of a longer, better version of last night’s Aporrea story.

Posted in Crapaganda Whores, Fascism Without Swastikas, Fine Young Cannibals, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Newspeak is Nospeak, Schadenfreude, Spooks, The United States of Amnesia. 6 Comments »

Once again, shoddy journalism from the Schloppenheimer

April 24, 2013 — Sabina Becker

schloppenheimer

If you ever wonder why I don’t think very highly of Andrés Oppenheimer, the Miami Horrid’s little scribbler of untruths and inanities on all things Venezuela, maybe this will provide you some clues. He is, among other things, a rude and disingenuous little shit:

Venezuelan deputy and now chargé d’affaires to the United States, Calixto Ortega, debunked the false accusations of Argentine journalist Andrés Oppenheimer against the revolutionary government and President Nicolás Maduro.

“You made statements which don’t correspond to reality, maybe you’re misinformed,” said the parliamentarian, addressing Oppenheimer.

Oppenheimer, upon being “blown away” by Ortega, cut the interviewee’s audio, and made excuses, saying: “A public apology to Venezuelan deputy Calixto Ortega for Skype being down when we were talking.”

The video was shown by the host of VTV’s “Dossier”, Walter Martínez, who commented: “How nice — another worthy example of the garbage of Fox News and CNN, that Señor Oppenheimer.”

Translation mine.

Here’s the video of that:

See, this is why journalism is going downhill in the Northern Hemisphere. They don’t have enough people like Walter Martínez, who is honest and courteous, and never makes excuses…because he never HAS to. Instead, we up here get a whole slew of drecky Schloppenheimers.

And that, gentle reader, is why you won’t know shit about Venezuela as long as you trust the media up here.

Posted in Crapaganda Whores, Huguito Chavecito, Newspeak is Nospeak, The United States of Amnesia. Comments Off »

Headline Howler: The blame in Spain falls mainly on the…Egyptians?

April 19, 2013 — Sabina Becker

spanish-bad-reporter

Spanish crap-media outlet ABC.es has failed again in its efforts to smear Bolivarianism. This time, their Venezuela “correspondent” (read: HACK) has tried to pass off a rather famous picture of an Egyptian woman being abused by soldiers in Cairo as a brawl in Venezuela. And captioned it, very punnily…and of course, got it all wrong. Not surprisingly, the page is now down. Too bad the blush on the crap reporter’s cheeks has yet to fade.

(And really, she’s a fine one to talk about “pure fascism”, coming as she does from a country which, to its great detriment, has an unelected monarch and a fascist prime minister who routinely sends the police and the army out to suppress protests. Projection appears to be a universal trait on the far right and among its lousy “journalists”, no matter where they’re from.)

Posted in Crapaganda Whores, EuroPeons, Fascism Without Swastikas, Headline Howlers, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Rivers in Egypt, Schadenfreude, Under the Name of Spain. Comments Off »

Understanding the Venezuelan election: Two vital perspectives

April 19, 2013 — Sabina Becker

tranquilo-nicolas

“Don’t worry, Nicolás, don’t worry, Venezuela — we already know where the coups come from.”

The commentariat at Aporrea is full of theories and denunciations about how the hell Henrique “Majunche” Capriles Radonski could have picked up, or picked off, so many votes in such a short time, despite the commanding lead Nicolás Maduro had going in. I’ve found a couple of articles that resonated especially with me. Here’s the first, from Antonio Aponte’s regular column, Un Grano de Maíz (A Kernel of Corn):

Keys to Understanding What’s Going On

The reality, already difficult in itself to decipher, is becoming all the more so through the work of the media who, far from being a means of communication, have transformed themselves into veritable cannons in this war that our country is now suffering.

The first key: The oligarchy has a weak leadership. Capriles, we all know, as it has been proven, does not defend the votes; he is afraid of getting deeply involved. They received the orders of the gringo embassy to “not recognize” the result and they have not been able to justify the pretension. It is evident that the ballot-box thing is an excuse, and now they dare to ask for a new election. If the CNE audits all the ballots, they will look for another alibi to continue with their destabilization plans.

Second key: The counterrevolution is not homogeneous. Several different tendencies are united by foreign orders and allowances, by hatred of Chavismo, and a deep disdain for the lowly. They show descrepancies over how to truncate the Revolution, never in the necessity for doing so. They diverge over the timing of aggression, not over aggression itself.

Third key: The Caprilistas have a great contradiction. They want to sail the seas of sensitivity and at the same time they are splashing around in the miasmas of fascist aggression. If Nicolás [Maduro] stands up to them, they’ll run in terror seeking shelter in the Constitution; if they see a sign of weakness in us, they’ll advance.

The most decided ones want to crush us; they have been working for years to stimulate hatred and fear in their base, which is now demanding violent measures. Whoever doesn’t feed the fascist beast with violence runs the risk of losing their lead.

Fourth key: Amid the counterrevolution there is a fight going on for the leadership, which will be decided in the hours to come. The currents are slyly measuring themselves in practice. The destiny of each is in the pots they bang, and in the marches they are able to convoke.

Another key: While this is happening, the social contradictions are continuing to tighten, and the unreality created by the oligarchic media is trying to substitute itself for society.

The TV screen functions as intermediary between the directors and the people. The organization presents itself as an instrument of true communication, so that the masses hypnotized by the screen substitute for organized society, the basis of true human communication: looking each other in the eyes, speaking face to face, receiving a message directly from the leaders. Technology seeks to substitute itself for the genuine communication of the soul.

Social organization is important: Every organism, however small, must be a centre of human coexistence which communicates with other organisms in a manner which transmits and receives information without technological mediation. Communication is a human phenomenon, and technology must only be its supporter.

Now the true communication is confined to small groups. We have returned to tribal communication. Only in an organized society, in socialism, can there be communication.

Translation mine.

And here’s another, called “How they stole two million of our votes”, by Andrea Coa:

In spite of the surveys, which have been demonstrated to be scientifically exact, giving Maduro a victory with a reasonable margin, we have seen that there exists the certain possibility of a bourgeois candidate overriding the government, starting a bloody repression against the revolutionary Bolivarian Chavista movement.

It was between 2:00 and 4:00 in the afternoon on the 14th when, in the electoral system, the element which made the difference was activated, in order to produce a fraudulent bourgeois victory which would leave the people, who had voted mainly for their legitimate candidate, Nicolás Maduro, with their mouths hanging open and the bitter taste which we who have been victims of a scam know all too well.

If anyone had said, a few days earlier, that the most powerful enemy was the smallest, and that it would be at work inside the voting machines, nobody would have believed me, but in this moment, it is the answer to the question which the people have been asking:

“How could they do it?”

Between two and four in the afternoon, the charge began — or the activation of a virus in the voting machine system, which took votes away from Maduro in an imperceptible manner, and transferred them to the bourgeois candidate [Capriles], in the same way that some computer “worms” steal money from the banks penny by penny, accumulating great fortunes before being found out. The plan was that the bourgeois would win the elections by surprise, with eight million votes. They calculated that he would keep the six million he won in October, and would not need more, since the electoral rolls would be the same as they were then. But the denunciations of fraud that the right uttered affect their own voters, and many of them abstained, so that Capriles only legitimately obtained a little more than five million votes, while we Chavistas remained loyal, and Maduro kept the votes that had gone to Chávez. The final result was the triumph of Maduro by a slim margin, which surprised those who had hatched and applied a “perfect” plan.

Our blind confidence in our automated system is a weakness, because imperialism counts on technological means to injure it, and yesterday, they proved it.

He whose family bought him the presidency of the national congress had the security of knowing that the empire had prepared for him a triumph forged by the hands of unscrupulous hackers, by way of the technology of the moment, directed at elements which were, until now, impenetrable: the system of voting machines; meanwhile the armed forces and Bolivarian intelligence were busy with the guarimbas and the threats. The cyber-attack on the Twitter accounts of President Maduro and other high-ranking personages of the government were an element of distraction (the imperial hackers could not resist the temptation to sign their work) while the plan of altering the election results was under way. It was conceived by the empire in order to take control of our natural resources with minimal cost, relying on a puppet government which would hand it all over on a silver platter. From there, as well, came the attack on CANTV [Venezuela's national telephone service], probably from a satellite.

The love of the people for Chávez, the awareness that our survival as a nation is at stake, and the future of our descendants, made certain that we all went to vote, so that the right, many of whom thought there would be fraud, abstained. [...] The vote margin was as predicted in the polls, and this difference was so great that even with two million votes subtracted, Nicolás Maduro still won. [...]

The empire killed Chávez, precisely to set in motion the second part of the plan, which was a fraudulent triumph, which would be achieved while disqualifying the CNE [...]

Should this plan fail, there would still be Plan B: crying “fraud”.

The proposal that the vote be audited 100% was made believing that it would not be accepted, but the empire never makes a stitch without a thimble. It is almost certain that the “mission impossible” of connecting what is in the boxes with the altered results could already have been completed. Imperial “intelligence” has the resources for that. However, revolutionary hackers can, if allowed to examine the software in minute detail, determine the manner in which the attack occurred. And the digital fingerprints on the ballots in favor of the bourgeois which are in the boxes, could be a surprise in that many do not correspond to the voters. The right wing don’t want everything examined in minute detail, so even though the plan seems perfect, there are always chinks in the armor.

Even though Plan A did not succeed, since the people kept their promise to Chávez and Maduro won in spite of the cyber-attack against our elections, which robbed us of two million votes, Plan B remains in play. The non-recognition of the electoral result is part of the destabilization plan, aimed at justifying on an international level the climate of violence which they have set in motion, with the aim of converting Venezuela into a Syria, or a Libya, which they want to sack via a massacre already planned, against the heads of the revolution and the organized people.

The menace which hangs over us is more dangerous than ever, the hyena is wounded and is not about to lose the prey. Now, the job is for the Bolivarian government’s intelligence service. The people understand, and for that reason the psychic environment on Monday following the victory was one of alertness and not of euphoria. The people know that the direct confrontation is about to begin, and must be stopped.

At this moment the head of the Revolution, embodied in Nicolás Maduro, must remain serene and trust his intuition. He is protected by God, but he is not immortal, and at this moment, he is the target of the most powerful, unscrupulous and lethal empire known to Earth. However, this empire is not invincible, and is in the midst of an internal crisis which has weakened it. [...]

The empire likes direct, violent confrontation, because that’s where they have experience and greater strength. But we prefer to build in peace, with all the peace we can get, this pilot plan for the future of humanity [...]

Taking a moment to recognize the reality and trusting intuition to mark the correct path is the first piece of advice; the second is to maintain the unity of the collective government, which must be well armored, even though for this to happen, we will have to dispense with anyone who could be vacillating.

The third recommendation is to keep the election promises, which won’t be easy because the boycott will grow in an effort to impede it.

The people will continue to do their part.

Again, translation mine.

So now we have a clearer picture of what’s going on. It’s much the same as what happened 11 years ago, almost to the day, with the exception that the president the oligarchy and its imperial overlords tried to topple then, is now physically gone (due to “natural” causes, or something plausibly deniable as such), and the circumstance to be shrouded in chaos and confusion is an election, rather than an anti-government protest come to a bloody and sudden head. But the players, with a few exceptions are the same: We have the putschist Capriles, then mayor of Baruta, now governor of Miranda, who stormed the Cuban embassy then, and is storming the electoral authority now. In both instances, he’s claiming that the Cubans are hiding some illegitimacy or other on the part of the Bolivarian government; then, it was Chavista officials, now, allegedly, it’s ballot boxes full of evidence of supposed fraud. The fact that there is no illegitimacy and no fraud is being obscured by hacking, by violence, and by murder.

The excuse, then as now, is that the opposition members who are committing the crimes, have been “driven” to it by an illegitimate defeat. Of course, that’s a lie. And while the opposition keeps shifting the goalposts, the ball has a funny way of still finding its own way in. The people know what happened; they know who they voted for, and it’s not the Majunche. They know full well what his real plan is, and all his tap-dancing and pretending to be more Chavista than Chávez, more Bolivarian than Bolívar, can’t hide the fact that he is an arch-conservative privatizer, an imperial puppet, and a corporatist stooge. He will not do what the people want; he will do what foreign capital wants.

Not for nothing do a lot of Chavistas refer to him as CAPriles, alluding to CAP (Carlos Andrés Pérez), who was elected in the late 1980s to kick the IMF to the curb, and who instead turned right around and kissed its boots. And got kicked to the curb himself, as a final result, after Chávez and friends led a failed uprising against him. Even as Chavecito was cooling his army boots in jail, the people and the process were at work, and the result spoke for itself: CAP was impeached, Chavecito pardoned and freed, and a few years later, there was an overwhelming electoral victory for the Bolivarians, with Chávez at the helm.

That same electoral victory has been repeated time and again, with only one small setback since then. And last Sunday it was repeated once more, this time with his “son”, Maduro, standing in for the great leader. It’s as though Chavecito never died, and indeed, he never did. The fact that the same villains are still using the same tricks they tried on him (and failed) proves that he’s as much a force to be reckoned with as ever; more so, in fact, since now, a hacking of the election computers was necessary in order to create the appearance of a much narrower margin of victory (and a correspondingly greater semblance of a possible fraud) than the last time around.

The empire thought that with Chávez out of the way, it would be easy sailing, but Maduro proved that to be bullshit. Loyalty is rock-solid among Chavistas, and it is highly unlikely that any of them would have voluntarily turncoated to the same man their beloved president called a coward, a majunche and a pig just a few months ago. I call bullshit on any analysis that claims he ran a strong campaign. His campaign was weak sauce. He could not win their votes by pretending to suddenly be a better Chavista than Chávez himself, or a better Bolivarian than Bolívar. So he relied, predictably, on the tools of empire, and they came through, partway.

Two million stolen votes is a lot, but it still wasn’t enough to defeat Maduro. And dozens of countries have signalled that they will not be falling for the lie either. It doesn’t matter a damn what the State Dept. says. The world knows the truth, and major leaders from all over the region, as well as overseas, are on their way to Caracas as I write. And the CNE? They have just announced that they will audit the vote 100%. Don’t be too surprised if they find evidence of fraud along the way…on the part of Capriles & Co.

And in the meantime, among the people, the cordura counselled by Aponte and Coa will prevail. The provocations, as severe and murderous as they are, will not budge the Bolivarians. They’ve been through it all before, many times, and they know the pattern as well as any schoolchild knows a fire drill. Even the growing pile of martyrs from this latest assault — eight, so far — will only serve to strengthen their resolve. They may seem poor, but they are many…and they are seasoned fighters, intelligent and loyal. If anyone in the oligarchy, the international corporatocracy, or the imperial State Dept. thinks that they can steamroll the will of these people, they are in for one hell of a shock.

Posted in Crapaganda Whores, Fascism Without Swastikas, Filthy Stinking Rich, Fine Young Cannibals, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Isn't That Illegal?, Spooks, The United States of Amnesia. 2 Comments »

Headline Howler: It’s always opposite day at The Economist

April 17, 2013 — Sabina Becker

economist-bad-covers

Ugh, how disgraceful. Don’t you people hire fact-checkers anymore? It’s not like you don’t have the cash…although at this rate, you may soon lose so much readership that you end up in serious financial trouble. Here, let me fix that for you:

economist-fixed-covers

Much better!

Posted in Crapaganda Whores, Filthy Stinking Rich, Headline Howlers, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?, Merry Old England, Newspeak is Nospeak, No Good Deed Goes Unpunished, Socialism is Good for Capitalism!. 1 Comment »

The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 18

April 16, 2013 — Sabina Becker

rctv-fraud-twitpic

Photo tweeted by opposition TV channel RCTV, showing supposed incineration of Sunday’s election materials. Only it’s not from Sunday…

Hidey-ho, good readers! And welcome to another chapter of VenOpIronía, in which everything old is suddenly new again. And in which black is white, day is night, wrong is right, and truth is shite. And in which someone is committing a fraud in order to accuse somebody else of committing a fraud. Here’s the story:

From Web pages such as La Patilla, and from Twitter and Facebook accounts from such communication media as RCTV, members of the opposition are divulging photos of the destruction of electoral materials, dating to August 21, 2012, and September 19, 2010, but presented as if they had been taken today. This intensified after Wilmer Azuaje, ex-deputy from Barinas, tweeted some photos of supposed electoral materials found today along a public roadway in Barinas.

La Patilla published the photos, showing that the ballot papers, strangely, hadn’t been folded.

From that moment on, social network users of the opposition began spreading, via Facebook and Twitter, numerous photos of electoral materials being incinerated.

But information specialist Feijoo Jiménez and other Twitter users showed us that the images tweeted come from the CNE [National Electoral Council of Venezuela] web page and from media revealing that the dates of the burnings had been from 2010 and 2012. This is the CNE photo gallery in which the 2010 event appears.

The same event was published by such different media as the opposition newspaper El Universal, and the Chavista paper, CiudadCCS. The item from El Universal, dating to September 18, appears here.

We believe that the publication of false photos is being used by radical sectors of the opposition to whip up their supporters, convince them of a supposed fraud with the votes, and to follow the line dictated by the anti-Chavista candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski, who is calling on his followers to gather on Tuesday and Wednesday at the CNE offices to demand a recount of the votes. In a press conference on Monday, Capriles assured that there had indeed been destruction of electoral materials. “We can’t lose the materials. Our desires is that tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, or today, this conflict will be resolved,” he said.

Translation mine. Links as in original. Don’t be too surprised if the ones from La Patilla, El Universal or Wilmer Azuaje’s tweeter go dead quickly; since the fraud has now been found out, it’s only a matter of time before the perpetrators try to cover their naked butts. Luckily, Aporrea included some screen-grabs of their handiwork:

el-universal-incineration

El Universal web page from 2010, showing old ballot boxes being incinerated. This is common, official, post-electoral practice, as you can see in these individual shots:

soldier-incinerating-votes

A soldier pours gasoline on old ballot boxes in bags, which are about to be incinerated. If this were a case of furtive destruction of incriminating materials, why would he be doing it by day, and in uniform?

firefighter-overseeing-incineration

A firefighter oversees the incineration. Again, note that it’s broad daylight, and he’s in full uniform, making no effort to hide what he is doing. Would he be doing this if it were a fraud?

la-patilla-unfolded-ballots

La Patilla photo of supposed electoral material by a roadside, showing ballots not folded as they would have been had they been cast as actual votes*. Folding ballots before casting them is common practice in Venezuela, as it is here in Canada. No word on what a box of unfolded ballots is doing by the roadside where it just happened to be stumbled on by a rabid anti-Chavista!

And finally, there’s this:

cne-gallery

A screenshot of the CNE official page, showing thumbnails of the shots of the soldier and the firefighter doing their jobs during a routine incineration at a previous event. Could the RCTV twitpic have come from a gallery like this? Wouldn’t surprise me if it had. RCTV is well known for falsifying things in order to paint a dire picture of Bolivarian Venezuela…

Look, oppos, I can understand the losing side in any close race wanting a recount. I’m for it in this case myself, if only to prove that Nicolás Maduro didn’t win by as narrow a margin as is currently claimed (remember, he had a huge lead.) But if this is the way you’re gonna go about it, you’re only setting yourselves up for another big failure. You’re already looking not only like fascists, but like fools. Go the official route and make the demand legally, or STFU.

*PS: The individual who spread this photo has been identified and arrested. Story from Aporrea:

The person who passed off images of electoral material from the 2010 election as that of April 14 has been detained.

So says press chief Jorge Galindo, of the Ministry of the Interior and Justice, via his Twitter account, @JorgeGalindoMIJ:

“The individual who published an image of electoral materials from 2010 with the intent to destabilize has been detained.”

The detainee’s name is Andrés Rondón Sayago and he is an employee of security for a private TV station, adds Galindo. He appeared today in court, Galindo also announced.

Translation mine.

Posted in Crapaganda Whores, Fascism Without Swastikas, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?. 6 Comments »

The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 9

March 27, 2013 — Sabina Becker

censorship-worst-thing

Good morning! And welcome to the latest edition of VenOpIronía, in which we find out that the Venezuelan opposition is now so Bolivarian, so very Chavista, that it is now doing exactly what it always (falsely) accused the Bolivarian, Chavista government of doing. Guess what that is…

Not asking questions of the right-wing candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski, is apparently the principal requisite which the media who wish to cover him must fulfill during press conferences given by the presidential aspirant in various parts of the country.

So says the newspaper, Diario El Tiempo de Trujillo, which was allowed at a press conference on Tuesday on the condition that they not ask questions of the candidate.

With a communiqué signed by the president of the paper’s editorial staff, José Luis Mazzari Velasco, and published on a full page of the paper, they announced their decision ot to cover the activity, owing to the fact that “they invited us to a press conference where we were not allowed to ask questions.”

For the paper, the right-wing candidate’s activities inhibit freedom of expression.

On March 13, the minister for Communication and Information, Ernesto Villegas, denounced the censorship of Capriles Radonski and his campaign command of the journalists and press crews of the Bolivarian System of Communication and Information (SIBCI), who were impeded from covering the event.

It bears remembering that this was not only a veto, but an aggression as well. Last May, the VTV correspondent in the state of Guárico, Giovannina Guillén, was assaulted by Capriles’s bodyguards while covering his campaign in that state.

That same month, the VTV correspondent for Barinas, Janeth Suárez, and her camera crew were also assaulted by Capriles’s men on a campaign stop in that state.

In January of this year, journalist Pedro Carvajalino denounced an assault upon himself, again by Capriles’s bodyguards and by those of Metropolitan Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma, before the Supreme Court (TSJ).

Translation mine.

Yes, that’s right, kiddies…they’re censoring the news now. Cero Chavismo en pantalla, as they used to say during the coup of ’02. No Chavismo on TV, or in the papers, or anywhere. Only in this case, the “Chavismo” is Majunchismo. And the censorship is the equivalent of an own goal in soccer.

Boy, at this rate, they’ll have that dead guy and his bus driver beat in no time!

Posted in Crapaganda Whores, Fascism Without Swastikas, Huguito Chavecito, Isn't It Ironic?. 1 Comment »
« Older posts «
»