Venezuela

[blindpig]

Humanism: absolute dictatorship

The Cayapo

5 Sep 2024 , 10:40 am .



A fear is running through the interstices of the imperial capitalist world, giving us goosebumps: the appearance of Chavismo. All the imperial corporations, from the manufacturers of underwear and panties to those of artificial intelligence, together with kings, religions, puppet rulers of all kinds, intelligence agencies, professionals, sellers of take-and-place shows, athletes, influencers, thugs, torturers, left and right, radical and lukewarm, trade unionists, delusional and decadent politicians from the old regimes, diplomats, CIA agents, deputies and congressmen from all parliaments, stew-makers of the world, academics, intellectual prostitutes, mercenaries of the word and art, from the south and from the north, from the east and the west, all with their mantras and their chacras, have conspired in a holy Nazi-fascist-humano-terrorist pack against Chavismo.

Although this is not the communist manifesto written in 1848, it is the harsh and irrefutable reality, 176 years later, when the world was supposed to be one of overwhelming happiness under capitalism where we would all be rich. The truth is that never before has there been such a great cruelty as that which is now occurring against the government and the Chavista people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

The events that occurred on July 28, 2024 and the following days will be recorded as a historic date in the world calendar. The plot set up by financial-speculative capital to overthrow the government and lead us to a civil war has no parallel with coups d'état or overthrows of governments in the world. Here all the recipes and manuals there are and will be were applied, nothing was left to chance, everything was coldly calculated: science, technology, religious, natural and synthetic drugs, all the means of brain manipulation, all the institutions, pollsters, puppet governments, the UN, the IOC, the OAS, ancient Europe, the International Criminal Court, bankers, political ideologies, the left, the right, progressivism with its shaky presidents, NGOs, foundations, ex-presidents, traitors and even an industry of criminal trains from Aragua, Llano and Wilexis in Petare. There was no mercenary who did not sell himself, be they journalists, social communicators, influencers of all kinds, actors, minstrels and even singing mummies.

The social classes, from the highest world bourgeoisie to the local criminals, were seized by a hallucination, where they saw themselves in their dark, drugged minds as a feverish crowd shouting through the streets “Death to the Chavistas and their dictator!” while dragging bloody corpses like drug trophies, in the middle of a criminal coven. But they woke up from their horrendous hallucinogenic nightmare when they were surprised to find that their master, the all-powerful financial-speculative capital, had been cleanly defeated all along by the courage, patience and bravery of the Chavistas, led by those without pedigree or rancid surnames.

Yes, on June 28th the masks, poses and behaviour fell; now it is our turn to speak in the middle of the street, we all know who is who, gesture, language or thing. Whoever says that he is deceived is because he is deceiving himself, or he is trying to fool others in the name of his interests.

Now we Chavistas need to talk about politics, regardless of age or sex, because the enslaved majorities need to explain politics to each other; not to criticize politicians, the government, Chavez, Maduro, the opposition, corruption. We must get out of this labyrinthine mess in which the government has always been sold to us as a red rag, guilty of all evils. We need to understand the government as a political instrument, which should lead us to radically replace the current system of exploitation and disgrace that enslaves us; to discuss the politics of the territory and of the people. People, territory and politics must go hand in hand so that we can all act, because we need truths that we can grasp and control over reality in order to feel fully part of this historical process that is occurring today.

We must generate a whirlwind that massively promotes living thought, abandoning the pamphlets of the left, right and progressives that equally subjugate us. Whoever wants to, should study Marx, Lenin, Chavez, Fidel, but the most important thing is to study reality collectively, because our comrades cannot guide us there. We are on the real battlefield, the owners are real with real interests. Politics is a new, different exercise every day. We must ask ourselves: What are ours? And we must produce that answer collectively, no one can provide it to us.

It is not enough to die by the thousands on the battlefields. Slaves, in political contradiction, need to live by the millions to create, in a movement of separation and encounter, authentic and substantial currents of Venezuelan thought that make it possible to replace the current system of exploitation, where the culture of the people and for the people can germinate.

In the custom of capitalist culture the worst is nested to maintain the power of the owners and hide their intentions, in each plan they carry out only their interests are present, based on the disgusting bourgeois tolerance of "I allow you until I can screw you."

We must study the current opposition and its origins in Venezuela. Who are its leaders, to which social class do they belong? And we talk about those on the right, left, or progressive, of any ultra or center. What thought are they affiliated with, what do they adore, what do they protect, what do they aspire to, why do they not have their own thoughts, why do they even imitate the way of walking of the powerful foreigner, why do they not love the territory, why do they hate us, what is the origin of their fears, why are their resources always the product of theft and crime, why can they not be the opposition to the Chavista government, what makes them permanent agents of the foreign owners, why, being so studied, do they crawl shamelessly and without pride behind the masters who use them and throw them away like a used condom?

And this study cannot be dispatched with the traditional, overused packages, like an ideological brain plug, which does not allow us to think. On the contrary, it must be a study in motion, with names, surnames, origins, ideologies, principles, convictions, facts, places, results, time, organizations of all kinds, local and foreign, resources, national and foreign relations, and we should not wait for the government to give it to us as an ideological capsule three times a day, but we must seek those answers ourselves, not as individuals, but organized in an active collective. This is not the time for parrots, it is a beautiful time for collective creation and invention.

At this time we cannot become preachers, trying to convince the defeated of their mistake, because they are in a time of neurosis and depression, and what we will do is to strengthen the illness. We must arm ourselves with calm, quiet, concrete arguments, propositions, to explain to ourselves what has happened.

It is time to strengthen ourselves, to unite, those of us who were in active offensive, when the stragglers, beaten down by the hurricane of the networks, tried to tie us to the wagon of habit and stillness. It is time to explain to ourselves the historical importance of those millions who decided to cross the furious waters of discouragement, with only the heart and the mind as supplies.

What is happening is a setup that is almost a hundred years old. It began in the 1930s, when corporations realized that they were the ultimate owners of the world and states became obstacles that prevented big capital from getting rid of the overproduction of merchandise, especially labor. With the first and second world wars, they eliminated about a hundred million people, but immediately the explosion of merchandise-people exceeded any estimate.

The great Nazi-fascist-human-terrorist experiment is a product of this situation. Humans, with millimetric precision, managed to put on a great show to hide the true criminal that is the powerful humanist elite, elevating humanism to maximum degrees of cruelty against the species. But they sell us slaves the idea that the human master is a paragon of virtues, a cotton ball, and not the essential, substantial criminals who are, by interests and knowledge of the cause, the true truth.

The doctrine on which this class is based is the complete freedom of the superior being, above all others, that is why they are the ones who lead democracies, dictatorships, the UN, the OAS, they all profess humanism, they eat like humanists, they throw like humanists. The Nazi-fascissist-humano-terrorist is their highest phase. We slaves must know that we are not human, that we are people-merchandise, that humans use us to accumulate their profits. That is why they do not care about infecting us with viruses, launching pandemics into us, narcotizing us through the networks and other means.

The problem we slaves have is that there are slaves, whether educated or not, who are ashamed of knowing they are slaves and try to hide their condition, as if the owner did not know. This stupid slave who believes himself to be human will always bear the burden and will die of disappointment. We are not human, because we cannot afford to sit down to eat, drink and travel whenever we want, but there are those who break their backs and prostitute themselves trying to live the movie that the media of brain manipulation present to us, repeating themselves as behavior.

We may have a house, food, clothes, but we always long for that beyond that depresses us, that illusion of seeing ourselves rich, in the company of the king in the magazine Hola ! and we get owl eyes when we see him killing elephants, because we would like to be that king, because we have the illusion of being human. However, despite the continuous depressions, which we kill with hot dogs and hamburgers saturated with fat, our brain does not allow us to think (because we have it covered with real and ideological consumption) that we cannot act as humans, for the simple reason that we are slaves. We do not understand as a stupid middle class aspiring to the ungraspable that if, in reality, we sell the apartment, the car and Chucho's shoes, and we spend all our money on a trip to Africa to kill an elephant, we will end up in prison or shot, because we are not and do not have the riches of the stupid king.

We may wish in our dark instincts to go to the island of pedophilia to fuck boys and girls, but we would still end up in Tocorón. If we were human we would be on the island, because that is what the old millionaires do, where they are not considered rapists, or pederasts or pedophiles as in the middle class neighborhoods or developments, where the morality and decency of the believing middle class prevails, who do not care if anyone is murdered in front of their face, as long as they are well, as long as their illusion of being rich is maintained.

It is surprising how without any shame they go from “Let’s burn Chavistas!” to “I love you, forgive me, mana, I didn’t mean that.” On Tuesday, July 30, they went from “We have to kill those country-dwelling Chavistas” to polls about which candy is the tastiest, and “look, we have to take care of our mental health, faggot.”

But the root of ignorance is that we do not know, or we act like fools to hide the undeniable, that we are slaves. We all believe the fairy tale that we are human, because that is what they hammered into us in schools, high schools, universities, where they cut off our ability to think like people with their own brains.

We are people manipulated by humans, people who do not disappear because they are created by capitalism in these conditions, and it does not matter if we are squalid or Chavistas, capitalism does not distinguish ideologies, it uses them all to its advantage. And until we understand that the human is a concept, we will continue to believe that governments are shit, we will continue to be fanaticized by the Nazi-fascission-human-terrorist pamphlet, because it is humans who created Hitler, because fascism and Nazism did not exist before. Can we not think of it? Or have we heard the concept of human, fascism, Nazism before? No, humans promoted all forms of submission, theft and crime that have been known on the planet for millennia, carried out by any culture. The idea of ​​the end justifies the means, the sacred principle of the power of humans, validates all their contumacy against life in the Nazi-fascission-human-terrorist.

Humans have used dictatorship, democracy, fascism, Nazism and all the isms they wanted to subjugate the slave. The problem is that we as people have to understand what humans are and what these human elites are, whether they are academic, artistic, business, whatever they want us to call them. They are a mob constituted as a system that functions independently of any government on the planet.

Another thing we need to study is why everyone throws stones at governments, including their officials. There is no beloved government on the planet, that only happens in fairy tales, but never in reality, and why don't people like governments and they like Elon Musk? He is a criminal, murderer, thief, swindler, who knows what he is doing, who made his millions by stealing, killing, destroying rivers, mountains and people, leaving millions of people in misery, but beyond concepts or beliefs, Elon Musk is human like Zuckerberg, the Rockefellers, the Baruchs and the Rothschilds: they are human, not stupid believers like us.

We do not like governments, whatever their colour, because they are a repressive apparatus that in times past invented power for its own protection. This has been demonstrated throughout the world and all those fighters who have tried to replace capitalism from the governments have been turned into monsters by the enormous propaganda and ideological machinery of the corporations that dominate the planet.

Even if we don't understand it, we are slaves, regardless of our degree, our academy, our profession, our art. We are manipulated slaves. We have to pay attention to the origin of things: Who has interests, who wants to destroy nation-states, why do they want to destroy them? Why did they put it in our heads that governments were bad? Why do we see leftist slaves and right-wing anti-government slaves? How can we explain that overnight the communist party supports the Nazi-fascist-humano-terrorist and accuses the Chavistas of being Latin American Zionists?

We are clear that we are doing politics, that the people, we slaves, will not live in the future. It is an elementary equation, so why then insist on perpetuating the slaves that we are? Because in the hypothetical case that the government could give everyone a car and a house and we could all eat in big restaurants with big salaries, we would get used to the fact that this is how it is and we would demand more, because we no longer want to eat in Venezuela, but we will want to dine in Germany, England, Paris, smelling glamorously the stench of shit from the Seine. Therein lies the crux of the concrete discussion, the real problem. We satisfy the misery that we are or we think of replacing the existing mode of production.

How long will we continue to blame the people, ignorance, the government? No, there is a human elite here that rules the world as it pleases and is deciding what to do with us slaves. That is the real inter-capitalist war that is being planned, or do we see large majorities or organized parties somewhere on the planet proposing a culture different from capitalism? No, everyone wants growth, development, civilization, democracy, freedom, equality, everyone wants this capitalist culture, at most they want to reform some laws because they believe that we need more freedom, more culture, education, equality and justice, as if capitalism were not fair, egalitarian, educational, libertarian with humans. What we slaves must know is that, to do so, they need us.

Humanism is an absolute dictatorship that has reached levels of impressive monstrosity, of “If you don’t agree to give me your resources, I’ll bomb you.” Or are Libya, Gaza, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Venezuela not enough demonstrations? We slaves must understand that the dictatorship of humans cannot be replaced with the same ideas of humans.

The physical ideas of humans cannot be replaced by socialism, by communism, by religiously offering a happy world to slaves. They can only be replaced by ideas that can be made physical: architecture, food, shoes, art, entertainment, work, clothing, production, acquisition and promotion of knowledge, in a territory to which one can belong and a people who love and respect the territory, with a political framework determined by a mode of production that we all decide and in which we are all integral parts.

That is the truth, do we say it or not? We are going to wait for a real bloodbath, because if they haven't screwed us now, they will learn and find a way with that army of slaves who are at middle-class aspiration levels. They already know how to narcotize us through the networks and turn us into neurotics, they have that control, and if today they couldn't because they haven't discovered the Chavista and Caribbean method of doing politics, they will soon discover it, because for that they have their laboratories, their brain tanks and intellectual slaves willing to sell themselves for whatever it takes to give them the information, to find out in depth how Chavismo does politics. And if they haven't screwed us in these twenty-five years, we must always remember that the owners need to screw us because they don't tolerate rebellious slaves.

We slaves are obliged to eat, learn, sleep, throw, party with politics, to see reality politically, not as the illusion, the manual and the pamphlet say it is reality. Let us be clear about what capitalism is, and let us not confuse one more plate of food with socialism. Chavismo is obliged to create its own politics, it has a method and has demonstrated it, but it has to develop it and offer it to the great majority; to convert the great majority into political capacity, into action, into organization, not into desire, into something other than continuing to be aspiring slaves. We have to go in that direction, but let us not continue offering villas and castles because the only ones who have villas and castles are humans, and they can take them away whenever they want, according to their needs. Capitalism never gives anything, it takes everything away. We slaves must choose between the illusion, the chimera, the hope of being free, equal and fraternal, within the impossible framework of capitalism, or we force ourselves to create another way of producing that generates another culture, that replaces Nazi-fascisionist-humano-terrorism.

https://misionverdad.com/chavismo/el-hu ... a-absoluta

The political turnaround of Edmundo González's letter
Sep 5, 2024 , 3:05 pm .


Edmundo González Urrutia, former presidential candidate (Photo: Miguel Gutiérrez / EFE)

From Edmundo González Urrutia's letter to the Attorney General of the Republic, political elements emerge whose signals suggest that there is a possible change in the situation in the Venezuelan opposition universe and, therefore, in the scenario of general conflict.

Faced with a disruptive agenda that continues to be raised from extreme polarization, which ignores the electoral results of June 28 and points to a coup d'état disguised as a "transition", in the midst of an international context full of weaknesses in the face of the attempt to reissue a Guaidó 2.0 project, and with María Corina Machado diluted in her capacity for social traction and mobilization, the letter signed by former presidential candidate Edmundo González represents a change that puts new variables on the national political board.

1. Recognition of institutionality
In his letter, González indicates that he had not appeared before the summons of the Public Prosecutor's Office because, in his opinion, there are no grounds to support them, a matter that "is not at all due to ignorance of the jurisdictional institutionality provided for in the Constitution."

In this way, for the first time publicly, González Urrutia recognizes Venezuelan institutions, against the current of the insurrectional semantics and the absolute lack of recognition of the Venezuelan State that María Corina Machado has always promoted, and with greater enthusiasm after July 28.

EGU letter.jpg

The publication of the letter could be understood as a first act of relative independence from María Corina Machado, who since the registration of the former ambassador's presidential candidacy before the National Electoral Council (CNE) had projected him as a political extension of her figure and approaches.

After the letter, this effect of indistinction between the two, used to the extreme during the electoral campaign, seems to diminish considerably.

An example of this was that González did not sign the CNE document that required the candidates to recognize the official results of June 28. Later, he signed a letter, together with Machado, in which he was declared "president-elect" and made an open call for a military coup; and then, in another public document, he presented himself as a presidential candidate alone.

In terms of discourse, the recognition of the institutions contradicts María Corina's agenda and places González on a path of apparent moderation, where his fabricated stature as "president-elect" and supposed leader of the "transition" is diluted.

2. Uncheck the digital publication of the "minutes"
Added to the above is what was stated by his lawyer, José Antonio Haro, when he assured that the former candidate "had nothing to do" with the publication of the "minutes" - this element is also present in the letter - on the website resultadosconvzla.com , which is why he had been summoned by the Public Prosecutor's Office because it implies a series of crimes.

Among them, González could be charged with six: publication and maintenance of resultadosconvzla.com, usurpation of functions, forgery of public documents, instigation to disobedience of laws, computer crimes, criminal association and conspiracy.

However, González has endorsed the results published on the website, the main source supporting Machado's narrative of alleged fraud.

Legally distancing oneself from the maneuver devised by the representative of Vente Venezuela says a lot about the legitimacy of the "records," since it suggests the fact that the former candidate himself is not aware of his apparent and unproven electoral victory.

Knowing that all of this constitutes imputable crimes, Edmundo González would seek to absolve himself of any legal responsibility for the disclosure of the minutes. How will the "international community" respond if it relies on a flawed act to condition the United States to take greater measures of force against Venezuela?

3. Do you advocate moderation?
The candidacy of Edmundo González was imposed due to the negotiations that took place within the Democratic Unitary Platform after the disqualification of María Corina Machado and, subsequently, the blocking of the attempt to register Corina Yoris as a substitute.

Edmundo's candidacy was as a delegation, and his campaign was based more on the figure of Machado than on that of the former ambassador himself. González, by his nature and career, responds to the traditional political circles of the Venezuelan opposition, represented mainly by Manuel Rosales. This sector has been in a state of digital civil war with the orbit of Vente Venezuela for several years, with a wide trail of disputes and clashes in public opinion.

This traditional opposition, which perceived the period that began with Machado's rise in the primaries and ended with the coup maneuver of the "acts" after June 28 as a tactical defeat, would be looking for a space to recompose itself after, more than a month after the electoral controversy, María Corina Machado has not managed to reaffirm herself as a figure of force with the capacity for collective command over the increasingly broad universe of oppositions.

To what extent does this move by the former candidate not have its origin in the pressures from Rosales' sector to open floodgates and spaces for dialogue with President Maduro? To what extent does this not contribute to lowering the decibels of the confrontation in order to, precisely, enable this possible scenario?

This is not a far-fetched hypothesis, given that Machado's regime change agenda, since the publication of the letter, is not being supported in the public discourse by the person who supposedly swept away Chavismo politically and electorally on July 28.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/el-v ... o-gonzalez

Google Translator

*****

President Maduro to Meet With Presidents Lula, Petro, and AMLO (+Interventionism)
September 5, 2024


Photo composition showing, from left to right, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva, and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Photo: RedRadioVE.

The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, has arranged for a virtual meeting with his counterparts from Colombia, Gustavo Petro; Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; and Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The meeting was announced this Tuesday, September 3, by the Colombian minister of foreign affairs, Luis Gilberto Murillo, who stated that the meeting between the four leaders will be to establish positions on Venezuela, in light of the multiple attacks that the extreme right has perpetrated in recent days.

“The meeting aims to express their positions,” Murillo said, “to have a dialogue within diplomatic confidentiality to find solutions and determine their fundamental positions. What they do not want is to limit the possibility of mediation or facilitation.”

The Colombian foreign minister said that during this meeting, President Maduro and his counterparts from Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil will help promote mediation, given that the situation in Venezuela has repercussions throughout the region.

He added that Colombia, Mexico, and Brazil currently hold the same position, but it is necessary to move forward in solutions “that allow political peace” in the South American nation. However, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has distanced himself in recent weeks from some of the more interventionist statements that have been signed by Lula and Petro regarding the results of the sovereign and democratic elections of Venezuela.

Murillo added that any final action or agreement must respect Venezuela’s sovereignty and autonomy. These will therefore be the fundamental principles in the discussion between the leaders.

After the presidential elections held on July 28, the authorities of Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil issued a joint statement in which they indicated that the only entity in charge of presenting the results of the elections is the National Electoral Council (CNE), in accordance with the Venezuelan constitution.

In the statement, they called on “the country’s political and social actors to exercise maximum caution in demonstrations and public events,” so as to avoid destabilizing circumstances. However, Presidents Lula and Petro went on to take postures more aligned with Washington’s imperial interventionist narrative of questioning the legitimacy of the Venezuelan presidential election’s results.



Edmundo González arrest warrant
A few hours after Murillo’s statement, the governments of Brazil and Colombia released a statement interfering in the internal affairs and the sovereign decisions of the Venezuelan judiciary, regarding the issuance of an arrest warrant against former far-right opposition candidate Edmundo González.

“Brazil and Colombia express deep concern over the arrest warrant issued on September 2 by a Venezuelan court against presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia,” reads the statement. “This judicial measure seriously undermines the commitments assumed by the Venezuelan government under the Barbados Agreements, in which the government and the opposition reaffirmed their commitment to strengthen democracy and promote a culture of tolerance and coexistence.”

It is not clear yet how this new statement will influence the announced meeting between President Maduro and his counterparts from Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil. However, it was evident once again that the Mexican president assumed a less interventionist approach that his Colombian and Brazilian counterparts interfering in a sovereign decision of the Venezuelan judiciary, which was made alongside publicly detailed evidence of former candidate González showing a clear and blatant disregard for Venezuelan rule of law.

https://orinocotribune.com/president-ma ... entionism/

[blindpig]

Like a parrot without a tail

The Cayapo

20 Sep 2024 , 11:05 am .



God is dead! [...] And we killed him! How can we, murderers among murderers, console ourselves! The most sacred, the most powerful thing that has ever existed in the world has stained our knife with its blood. Who will wash away this stain of blood? What water will purify us? [...] The enormity of this act, is it not too great for us?

Friedrich Nietzsche

We, the slaves in contradiction, inhabitants of this mine, also in argument, do not join the guilt of the European elites, since we have not killed any myth. Therefore, we do not need to purify ourselves, nor wash away any blood, because we have never stabbed any divinity, and unlike complaining, feeling alone and guilty like Mr. Friedrich Nietzsche, we rejoice and give a stimulus to the thought that is not yet expressed as an idea and much less made physical.

Today we could, without a doubt, taking Mr. Nietzsche's words as an incentive, say: humanistic thought is dead. Let the new and future generations jump for joy, because ideas and languages ​​do not emerge from nothing; it is time to start inventing. We are life in constant disappearance and birth, thinking of itself without gods or masters in this Caribbean territory.

The species finds itself, at this moment of deterioration and death of human thought, like a parrot without a tail, stumbling in inertia, because it suffers from the absence of a thought that guides or coordinates it in harmony. The detachment of its individual-ego parts becomes carcinogenic in its actions, pretending that as a part they are indispensable, when it is quite the opposite: the only indispensable thing is life, and as a body that it is, the species and the individuals are fortunately expendable. Otherwise, we would cease to exist.

The species, sick with humanism, needs to understand what makes us alive in order to cure ourselves of what has stopped, of what we have been accustomed to for millennia. If necessary, we will contaminate death itself with life in order to be born as a collective body, recognizing ourselves in others. We are obliged to think of a new mode of production where knowledge is at the service of the people and not of the dominant elites, as is the case today.

We need to create a way of thinking based on the idea of ​​living in fullness, but as long as we are defending traditional thinking, we cannot create. To see the existence of this species from the individual as its center is to not understand it. The species is a body, it is the whole, where the individual is a dispensable part, believing that it is the other way around.

Uncle Ramón Chacín used to say: “Forgive me, but forgive me your ignorance.” The advantage that we slaves have is that we are not wise, unlike what exists, which is sustained by wisdom, which only serves in contradiction to warn us that we should not repeat the custom. Those who know are willing to give up their death for death itself, and thereby contribute to destroying life in the name of remaining still, ruminating on their misfortunes.

When a thought has died, its physical, institutional and ideological derivatives continue to function by inertia, repeating themselves endlessly, until, in the case of conceptual cultures, another thought is created that can replace the existing one. But this does not happen normally, peacefully, because custom does not accept the new, since it sees it as its enemy. And we are not talking about what is to die and what is to be born; it is about inventing something different that is not bolted to any dying person whose death is awaited in order to be able to invent. The flower will never germinate in the corpse.

The think tanks of capitalism exist to create mechanisms that can defend the power, but if they repeat it so much in the academy, no matter how much they rack their brains, they will repeat the same pamphlets disguised as something new. The problem with the wise is that they no longer need to learn anything, they are choked with wisdom, and in politics, the wise are only useful for saying how things were before, but they are not of interest in resolving the new as a political issue, since no matter how wise we are, we cannot know what is new.

Neither the wise nor the learned can read the future. The new has its own signs, codes that they will not know how to handle. By the time the problem of how today's youth was contaminated in the world of networks is studied, that will have already happened, and only the stench of that death will remain in the brains of analysts, because that is a design that corresponds to a plan in motion with predetermined interests. If we do not study the origin of things, we will always be assimilating the consequences. The networks screwed the kids, how do we save the kids from the networks? The conclusion is not how we cure them, because there we would be stuck curing people, while more people get sick and it becomes a vicious cycle.

The problem is, it is a problem. We have to think about how to prevent them from continuing to contaminate. This cannot be cured. What we have to find out is how to disconnect ourselves, if we can disconnect, or if we can invent other networks or if networks are not necessary, or if these networks can be used. The analysis has to be done now, because the essential problem is that networks are a weapon of war, a means of controlling brains, which perfectly guides the obligation of mass consumption, making it impossible to disconnect the capitalist network of production and commerce, which truly shapes people's behavior in real life. And we are not talking about networks as monsters, but as weapons, used by the owners to maintain and strengthen their interests.

These are not new networks, nor a counterweight to the networks, but we have to invent a productive system different from this one. If we slaves in contradiction do not generate an idea capable of exciting us and committing us, that is through collective effort, that replaces the current productive system with one that we can control, then power will always win the war. We must create the mechanisms that make possible the encounter and rehabilitation as a collective body, because the controls of capitalist power are not found in this territory.

Maduro has the thread of things, we are not going to tell him anything that he does not already know. The problem is long-term. What is the political generation that will sustain all this effort that an entire population has made, where are the new cadres who understand politics from that perspective and not politics as consumption? Because that is where the most serious problem lies: who will replace the great politicians. Because until Chavez and Maduro politics was studied in the street, in the reality of the facts. Only the magical-religious design policies based on utopias or religious hopes.

Knowing how to play the game in negotiations that take place on the street, because in the end it is a criminal act, they are mafias with which you have to negotiate here and there; knowing which cards to play, how far you go with this one, how far you walk with the other, and that is not learned in a book, or by watching mafia movies. That is learned in the street by feeling your way, by pushing and pulling. The pranes who run capitalism are humans who were born from war, cheating, plundering, crime, and although we see them as cacaítas with their coats, ties and slow speech, they are thugs and criminals.

Chavismo has created a method to overcome the difficulties that the custom of the owners places on a daily basis. We understand that this same method must be applied to outline the dream of building a country with deep roots. Where we all understand, learn to sow a country, but also learn that the reason for sowing is a political act. For whom do we sow, who eats, who sows, how long will this war last?

Because if we don't know this and we believe that we will defeat the imperialists in five, ten, twenty years, we are screwed. Because we don't know what the hell we are doing, because it is not true that we are going to eliminate a system from one day to the next. It is a problem that several generations of politicians have to discuss and analyze, so that we understand the need to conceive a country far from the capitalist perspective, far from the pamphlet of the left or the right, arms of the same humanist body.

The hackneyed discourse and the great campaign so that slaves, whatever their age, do not accept politics, but rather see it as something discredited that will cause us harm, that annoys, that bothers, without interest or incentive, that we do not see it as a tool in the daily routine of life, has given great results to the owners of big financial-speculative capital. It is a very well orchestrated tale since the seventies by all the means of dissemination of propaganda and disinformation that capitalism controls throughout the world.

The system has us wrapped up and drugged with its politics through the different media, amalgamated today in the networks, exploiting our brains with the idea of ​​consumption and taking it to overdose levels, to the point of using us as mercenaries for a miserable salary to attack ourselves, for example, the case of the elections that took place on July 28, 2024 in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

If politics is not important, it is not interesting, why does the bourgeoisie encourage its young people to participate as protagonists in politics? Why did they take Capriles, Maria Corina, Guevara, Smolanski, and all that phalanx to the United States, Mexico, Europe, supported by the great Zionist, fascist, Nazi, and Western foundations, where they were encouraged and trained to defend their interests? The bourgeoisie does not invest money in vain; they invested money in these people because they have clear interests.

While we slaves do not have clear interests, the slave does not know to which class he belongs, to which social sector he belongs, but lives in the illusion of being the owner. We slaves do not know that for the first time in history we have a government that gives us the opportunity to participate in politics.

The son of a slave is compulsively disciplined, via family, school, university, barracks, to work in the barracks, the church, the factory, the office, the show, consuming everything that the networks offer him. If the system disciplines the kids for that, let us imagine those kids disciplined in the politics of building a country from trades, arts, talents, professions and knowledge; let us imagine them acting as politicians. But the advice that runs is that we let the children make their own decisions, as if they were born in a world invented by them.

Chávez, Maduro, Diosdado, the Rodríguez family; the majority of our political leadership; descendants of working people; let us see the role they have played, what they have faced, what they have built and the tragedy they have prevented us from having during these long years of war in this country, being a small group that is doing politics, big politics; not the politics of plunder, not the politics of traditional surrender, of selling out the country, of groveling to foreigners, which is practiced by both those on the left and those on the right.

Let us envision that the process pays attention to the investment in political training of the majority of young slaves in different branches, that they develop politics in different trades, whether in cybernetics, propaganda, engineering, architecture, sowing, breeding, construction, that young people are trained with knowledge of the cause of why they do what they do, with a political vision of what the territory is, who it is, why it exists, which would also be like the questions. A policy under which concept, under which premise.

That would lead us to think about what it means to do politics. Politics, that wonderful art that has only been used by power in history, based on the method of the end justifying the means, where everything goes, no matter how much you kill, how much you steal, how much you destroy, as long as the objective is achieved. How would it be if young slaves developed policies based on not stealing or killing, not destroying, but building, forming, creating, inventing a country outside the concept of a mine? Then we would be talking about two radically different political designs, two different tactics and strategies, which have to do with two different objectives and plans, and the young can perfectly join that, because in the end, if the bourgeoisie manages to convince its young people not to go around giving their all with drugs, to stop hanging around in discotheques, because they understand that their interests are in danger, well, we slaves have to understand that we have no other interest than to amputate the chains.

But, beyond that, by cutting our own chains, we can build a country and a people in this territory that accepts itself, values ​​itself, and loves itself. These are two different political designs, but we must invest in that and not with pamphlets, not with slogans, not with old books, because for the times ahead, old books are of no use to young people. Reality is the great book from which we must study, it is the only open book from which we can drink and acquire knowledge, but better yet, create knowledge and transmit it.

We must study and act, everything is on the table. The classes, the production system, the ideologies, the means of control and submission, the political and ideological instruments that make it possible for young slaves to join the illusion that they can be bourgeois. Nothing is outside, everything can be rummaged through, dissected, discarded or absorbed, to build something different. It is time to abandon those illusions that we can all plunder the territory, as the owners have always told us; that it belongs to all of us, that Venezuela is the great country, of beautiful women, the plains soul and all the other stupid things they tell us, to hide the great mine that corporations suck up daily, from oil, water and above all people. With that confusing discourse that we all have the right to wealth, they hide from us that in capitalism no slave has rights, but to die working for foreign corporations.

It is about interests in the same territory, where we must decide whether it belongs to us or belongs to us, and from that understanding make a political decision with clearly defined interests. It is not a question of division, it is a question of interests. What are the interests of the slaves and what are the interests of the masters. If the slave thinks the same way as the master thinks, he is in accordance with the interests of the master; if he aspires to live like the master, if he wants to have what the master has, if he wants to travel like the master, if he wants to dress like the master, to have the latest telephone number of the master, then he is a slave with the vision of a master; in any case, with the illusion and hope of a master, because he will never be a master; even if he works and declares himself pro-government, he will always, in his inner ethics, defend his illusion of being a master and the time will come when he does not see his illusion crowned in the government and he will quickly react against it. Or hasn't this already happened with Ramírez, Luisa Ortega, Tareck El Aissami, Navarro, Barreto...?

We must study, like Chávez, Maduro, Diosdado, the Rodríguez brothers, who were educated and became politicians, and we are not talking about studying to repeat Chávez, Diosdado or Maduro, but to understand that together we must educate ourselves today, in today's conditions, guided by their example.

Chávez and Maduro trained themselves in some way. There is the example of Chávez and his grandmother, which is intracultural data, but there is also the data from the military academy. But the grandmother does not train him to be president, the military academy does not train him to be president, but to serve the country as a soldier, which means serving the interests of the masters. The question is a little question: How does this guy train himself in an army, breaking the principles of this invading army? How did the guy get out of the production chain? Because that is how he ends up doing politics: violating the precepts of that army, which denied the possibility of doing politics to the soldier, whether he was a general or whatever. Even to get promoted he had to pay homage to the Senate mobsters for promotion, and face what Orlando Urdaneta says in a video, "the military are whores, they are our whores," and that idiot is nothing more than a second-rate actor, who in his illusion of being a slave, eager to be a master, gets into the role of owner, arrogating to himself the right to whip the table.

How does Chavez manage to violate all those rules in his brain, how does he confront his slave contradiction in order to abandon the illusion of the honey of power? Because he violates them in his brain, because he keeps saying “at your command, command”, he keeps behaving like a military man at the service of the great imperial capitalist power, even though he believes he is at the service of the country, until he makes a political decision, takes a political decision and rises up. Times have changed and we can no longer expect Chavez, Maduros and Diosdados, the Godfathers or Rodriguez to emerge. Back then politics still made sense for some young slaves, but now it makes no sense at all. So to be mistaken in believing that with a pamphlet speech the young slaves will be convinced that they should do politics is a vain illusion. We must invest in building policies, just as the bourgeoisie is investing in carrying out its policies.

There are people who say: American education is crap, yes, in general: it is crap. But when we analyze it, universities are designed solely and exclusively to attract specifically those who need to be attracted to their politics and from there come the Democrats, the Republicans who support the political system, and from there come those from NASA, those who are going to command those who sweep. That is a policy, whether we agree with it or not. But what is ours as slaves? We need to be trained as slaves in a contradictory process to stop being slaves and become politicians, with knowledge of the cause for which we fight, which is not ideological, which is not guided. We have to create spaces and invest in that, because the traditional school, the high school, the university and the factory train us as slaves, but not as politicians who understand that this country must be built exactly from reality.

We should not write for young people as sheep-like beings whose ideas are chewed up, but for thinking people, who like to use their brain not only to consume but to challenge themselves, to question themselves collectively, feeling that they belong to a wonderful body that is the species. Who are we, what do we do, what should we do in this territory, what is true, what is reality, what is illusion, what is mirage, who controls us, what are their interests? People who can be analyzed from various angles outside the consumer bubble in which capitalism keeps us. People who can question their condition as slaves and link each question to production, economy, history, geography, engineering, art, sowing, food, footwear, clothing, territory, where we live, because all are topics to be studied for a political design of the country, understanding that nothing can escape politics.

If we, the slaves that we are, zombified in the networks, are spoken to in a straightforward manner, without cheap pamphlets, without demagogic offers, we are sure that we can understand that there is the possibility of another world, which is not the world that is sold to us through the networks. All conversation must be raised without condemnation; let us talk about real things, possible to build, to do together. It also raises a method for the training issue and the method cannot be “the end justifies the means.” The design of political training and the acquisition of the political method to do the things that must be done from now on must radically change.

If we take stock of the war imposed on Venezuela by the capitalist empire for twenty-five years, we will realize that the owners have applied all forms of struggle, legal and illegal, clandestine and semi-clandestine, political, military, covert, undercover and open, all combined or separately. They have used all kinds of organizations, whether left-wing or right-wing parties, NGOs, foundations, unions, terrorist cells like the Comanditos. They have attacked us with all kinds of weapons, whether intellectual with academia, science and technology in all their forms and ways; with propaganda, advertising and ideology, all of this using the means of idiotization, whether newspapers, networks, TV, radio, separately and combined; these means have been used to affect the mind, religions, psychology, and all kinds of scientific superstition, which serves to reinforce their imaginary against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

He has not remained in the holy world on his pedestal, all have been thrown into the arena to confront us; call them academics, scientists, professionals, clowns, ministers, influential people, bishops, dignitaries, progressives, communists, socialists, Zionists, fascists, Nazis, sheep presidents and ex-presidents, high-quality swindlers, all of them paid by the corporations of financial-speculative capital to, in exchange, keep the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela under siege.

We can win many battles, and this has already been proven, but we will definitely not win the war with pamphlets or borrowed or brilliant brains of individuals; we will win it when a significant majority of slaves dedicate themselves to thinking in an organized way about another way of living, other than the known one.

https://misionverdad.com/chavismo/como- ... o-sin-rabo

Google Translator

[blindpig]

The sponsors of the coup that never stops against Venezuela
Roman Cuesta

23 Sep 2024 , 10:31 am .


The famous mercenary Erik Prince has made an offer to the US government and the ultra-right Corinist party to carry out a surgical coup in Venezuela and capture or eliminate the president and his closest collaborators (Photo: Diario Red)

As I compose this piece, the threat of another armed intervention hangs over the heads of Venezuelans. The famous mercenary Erik Prince (Blackwater), after making statements at the end of July in which he threatened Nicolás Maduro, started a few days ago a countdown whose end "will mark a definitive change" in the Caribbean country.

Prince is said to have made an offer to the US government and the Corinista ultra-right - provided they agreed on the amount of the reward - to carry out a surgical strike in Venezuela and capture or eliminate the president and his closest collaborators.

It could be a neo-fascist bluff committed by Elon and his gang of super-rich to sow uncertainty and anxiety among the Venezuelan people... or another coup d'état like the one carried out by Juan Guaidó, the Venezuelan general Cliver Antonio Alcalá Cordones, the mercenary Jordan Goudreau (Silvercorp) and Juan José Rendón. An operation named Gedeón and "backed" by a contract of 213 million dollars, signed in October 2019 and which tried to be executed, without success, in May 2020, a month after María Corina Machado was designated by Atlas Network and its networks of influence as the successor of the failed Guaidó.



In the last few hours, the Venezuelan government announced the seizure of more than 400 pistols and assault rifles and the arrest of several individuals, including an American citizen who is an active member of the Navy SEALs and two Spaniards who are identified as CNI agents. And in this struggle for the narrative, the discovery of the intervention of the supposed Spanish agents could seem like a "timely move", but it would not be the first time that our spies have contacted the Venezuelan far right at the dawn of a coup.

In the coup against Hugo Chávez's government in 2002, the Spanish embassy in Caracas and its head Manuel Viturro de la Torre —under the orders of José María Aznar— played an active role in supporting the self-proclaimed Pedro Francisco Carmona Estanga. While the president-elect remained kidnapped, Viturro and the American ambassador Charles Shapiro were the only diplomats who met with the coup leader on April 13, 2002.

Curiously, Carmona, who served as president of the Venezuelan employers' association (Fedecámaras), was in Madrid in the days leading up to the coup, invited by the CEOE, and his agenda included a meeting with the then Foreign Minister Joseph Piqué —April 9—, which was ultimately cancelled and precipitated Carmona's return to Caracas... there were two days left until the coup.

Cambio 16 published at that time that, during his stay in Madrid, the aforementioned maintained contacts with members of the Spanish intelligence service of the time, the Cesid.

María Corina Machado was one of the signatories of the "Act of Constitution of the Government of Democratic Transition and National Unity", also known as the "Carmona Decree", which sought to provide legal coverage for a de facto coup that eliminated the current Constitution with a stroke of the pen and dissolved the Supreme Court of Justice, the Attorney General's Office, the Ombudsman's Office, the National Electoral Council and the National Assembly.

At that time, the coup leader Pedro Carmona Estanga was the director of Química Venoso, owned by Isaac Pérez Recao, one of the main promoters of the 2002 coup, and went so far as to organize an armed group with elements of the extreme right, operationally directed by Rear Admiral Carlos Molina Tamayo, appointed by Carmona as head of the Military House during his brief mandate.

After the coup, the Recao family went into exile in our country, where they had been doing business since 2014 through Jesús Javier Vadillo Gutiérrez, an expert in national and international tax planning, commercial law, business restructuring, M&A taxation and international tax planning, from the Prolaw firm.

In exile, and in business, they were accompanied by Rear Admiral Carlos Molina Tamayo, with whom the Recao family shared interests in the company Alphastar Trading España sl.

The Venezuelan capital moved through companies linked to the firm Asap Corporate Services sl, the same one that created Samos Servicios y Gestiones for Oleguer Pujol or Cornalata Servicios y Gestion sl, better known as Haya Real Estate sa, where José María Aznar Botella landed or who managed the interests of Lorenzo Alejandro Mendoza Giménez, Venezuelan businessman and president of Empresas Polar.



Jesús Javier Vadillo Gutiérrez also represents, in our country, the Venezuelan Roger Swidorowicz, awarded by Ayuso with a succulent contract of 5.6 million euros for medical supplies, involved in a curious controversy due to the alleged confusion between Swidorowicz's company Siga Dental Inc, the one that actually won the contract, and another with the same name located in Granada.

The last company in which Swidorowicz appears, in Panama, is called Inversiones ac Portafolios SA and its board of directors includes two other Venezuelan businessmen, César Miguel Alfonzo González and Diego Rodrigo Cordido Gasperi.

César Miguel Alfonzo González, curiously, is linked to the Recao through another Spanish company in which Vadillo is involved, Cesky Investments sl, with a capital of 1,264,805.00 euros.



Vadillo Gutiérrez is a patron of the Pablo Horstmann Foundation, where he met the former Minister of Justice of Aznar's PP, José María Michavila, and Ana Fornieles Cañadas, who in 2015 was part of the Ciudadanos candidacy for the Alcobendas City Council; Ana Fornieles was one of Alvise Pérez's hooligans who participated in the hate campaign against Podemos MP Martina Velarde.

In 2007, Michavila founded the foundation ALAS for Aid to Children in Latin America together with Shakira, Alejandro Sanz, Miguel Bosé, Juanes and a large group of Latin American artists. Many of these artists participated in Venezuela Aid Live, a musical event organized in 2019 by the Venezuelan far right, accompanied by an alleged operation to bring humanitarian aid into Venezuela, which would take place through the international bridges of La Tiendita and Simón Bolívar in San Antonio del Táchira and Ureña in the Border State of Táchira, an event that concealed the umpteenth attempt to destabilize the Maduro government.

Vadillo's exclusive cast of clients includes Pedro Campos Calvo Sotelo , a businessman and sailor, close friend of the emeritus and host on his getaways around Spain.

This incomplete and succinct review of three of the episodes involving the Venezuelan far right serves to demonstrate that it has never been a democratic option for Venezuela, and to confirm how it has taken advantage of each election to instigate violence and force a change in what they call the regime; on each occasion contemplating US military intervention and hiring mercenaries to achieve its objectives.

It also serves to demonstrate how our country has been a refuge for the capital of the Venezuelan extractive-coup elite, whose trail of blood can be followed back to the "Little Caracas" of the Recao, Capriles , López or Ledezma families , to name a few.

Atlas Network, Aznar, Maria Corina
This latest episode of hybrid war against Venezuela began to be planned in early 2020; at that time, the masterminds behind the perpetual coup had written off Juan Guaidó and appointed María Corina Machado as the self-proclaimed president's successor.

She, who was already part of the cabal of far-right groups that created the Madrid Charter, sponsored by Vox, received the final endorsement in April of that same year at a ceremony of the International Foundation for Freedom - one of the neoliberal chiringuitos of the Atlas Network - officiated by José María Aznar and Vargas Llosa. The Iron Lady of the Caribbean appeared among the first 10 "swords" who signed the manifesto so that "the pandemic is not a pretext for authoritarianism."

In May, a month after being appointed Guaidó's successor, Operation Gedeón was carried out.



From that moment on, Machado became a regular at promotional events organized by the libertarian transnational, accompanied by the intellectual authors of the strategy against communism, participating in conferences, colloquia and other meetings that positioned her and helped raise funds.

One of the Atlas Network platforms linked to Vente Venezuela and María Corina is the Latin American Liberal Network (Relial). Pedro Alejandro Urruchurtu Noselli, a member of the board of directors of said organization, is the coordinator of international affairs for the party in question, who had already been accused in 2023 of "treason", "criminal association", "conspiracy" and "money laundering" for working for the interests of another country in the territorial dispute over the Essequibo between Venezuela and Guyana, a campaign financed by the oil company ExxonMobil, a US company that provides juicy capital to the Atlas Network.

Also involved in that plot was Roberto Abdul-Hadi Casanova Gazan, president of Súmate, the organization founded by María Corina Machado that appears to be involved in the publication of the alleged minutes supporting Edmundo González Urrutia's victory in the recently held presidential elections.

Urruchurtu is one of the opposition members who have taken refuge in the Argentine embassy in Caracas.

From that manifesto, sponsored by Aznar and which designated María Corina as leader, we can recall the ideological and financial godfathers of the invention, among the "signatories" of the document:

The former coup mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, the also coup leader Leopoldo López Gil and his mother Antonieta Mendoza de López form the trio that grants ideological and strategic continuity to María Corina's positioning.



Among the businessmen who signed the manifesto is Rafael Alfonzo, president of the Center for the Dissemination of Economic Knowledge (Cedice), a platform belonging to the Atlas Network. Alfonzo was also president of the Chamber of Industrialists of Caracas, of Cavidea and of Conindustria, among other Venezuelan business organizations.



Oscar Garcia Mendoza, a Venezuelan banker suspected of providing cover for the financing of Vente Venezuela: " Payments are made through his accounts at Cayman National Bank and Trust and his financial institution in Miami, Novopayment Bank, to maintain the operations of the leader Maria Corina Machado, the PanAmPost portal and its employees Orlando Avendaño and Jovel Alvarez. Although Cayman National Bank and Trust does not have much publicity, it handles significant amounts of capital, such as the accounts of Empresas Polar, to pay its employees' bonuses abroad."

Marcel Granier Haydon, president of Radio Caracas Television, implicated in the 2002 coup against Chávez.

Guillermo Zuloaga was the owner, principal partner and president of Globovisión, accused in 2002 of supporting the coup d'état by distorting the truth and promoting a "destabilizing" agenda, one of the pioneering networks in articulating hate and disinformation campaigns in Venezuela. In 2009 it still served as a platform for disseminating statements by the Center for the Dissemination of Economic Knowledge (Cedice) against the policies of Hugo Chávez's government; and finally, Carlos Zuloaga, son of the former, who shares membership in the Mont Pelerin Society with Brad Lips, executive director of Atlas Network .



We can conclude that María Corina Machado and her particular "Tamames", Edmundo González Urrutia, are the product of the same neoliberal laboratory from which Ayuso, Cayetana or Javier Milei emerged, among others illuminated by the torch of freedom.

We can also see that the coup and dirty war strategies implemented in Latin America by this network of organizations, financed by the U.S. State Department, have never contemplated a democratic solution to the Venezuelan "issue," but rather, on the contrary, have used the democratic voting processes to try to destabilize the system by denouncing continuous frauds - which have never been proven, by the way - and whose only intention is to sow doubt, confusion and chaos with a view to perpetrating yet another coup d'état.

We will continue to report.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/los- ... -venezuela

The recomposition of governance in Venezuela after 28J
Sep 24, 2024 , 4:58 pm .


President Nicolás Maduro during the celebration of the 16th anniversary of the JPSUV (Photo: Presidential Press)

A government's ability to preserve order in the face of destabilizing events is a crucial indicator of its political and institutional strength.

The case of Venezuela is no exception. A failed coup d'état with elements of terrorism and organized crime in the context of the presidential election of June 28, which included the introduction of foreign weapons and mercenaries, put to the test, as in other episodes of conspiracy, the capacity of the government to resist and maintain control.

Although the situation still presents risks that require constant attention, a general examination sheds light on the elements that show that the government of Nicolás Maduro, reelected on July 28, has managed to maintain governability in the face of the complex set of threats looming over the country.

Normalization of the social plane
The speed with which everyday life in Venezuela returned to normal after the post-election events remains a testament to the responsiveness of the country's security forces. In addition, the population at large remained oblivious to attempts to precipitate a collective insurrection, and showed a rejection of violent protests and acts of vandalism.

In the first 72 hours following the incidents of July 29 and 30, a progressive de-escalation of the conflict was observed, accentuated by the neutralization of criminal actors such as the Aragua Train. The week after the election, despite the virulence of the first days, passed without significant episodes of violence, amid a progressive recovery in the commercial and transport sectors .

Economic activity in August and so far in September has continued uninterrupted, operating normally and with a booming tourist sector during the holidays. In August, five million people travelled , according to the Ministry of Tourism, which represents a growth of 4% compared to last year.

The political activity of the Chavista rank and file has developed normally, without any perceived atmosphere of hostility or persecution towards its members for their party affiliation. The organizations are active, organizing themselves in assemblies throughout the country to generate proposals that will be presented at the National Congress of the Historical Bloc, an event that seeks to reflect on and debate the political and historical model of the country with a view to thirty years.

Similarly, schools are preparing to reopen, an important symbol of the normalisation of family and educational life.

The security measures implemented allowed the population to maintain their normal routines, which guaranteed an environment of social tranquility and public order.

economic stability
Recent figures indicate that President Nicolás Maduro has managed to consolidate his economic recovery policy, a crucial factor for the country's functioning even in the midst of events of violence and destabilization.

The data speak for themselves about the strength and resilience of this strategy:

The share of foreign currency in bank deposits decreased by 29.44% in the first half of 2024, an indicator that exchange rate stability is contributing to de-dollarization.

In August, Seniat collected more than 51 billion bolivars, a figure that exceeds the 318,625 million bolivars accumulated in 2024. The commerce, industry and services sectors were the main contributors.

The Venezuelan banking sector experienced 21% growth in the first half of 2024, according to government data , and economic growth of more than 10% is anticipated by the end of the year.

The Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) reported an increase in GDP of 8.78% during the second quarter of 2024, marking 13 consecutive quarters of growth.

Recovery of the oil industry
The Venezuelan oil industry has been able to adapt and overcome the difficulties imposed by illegal US sanctions, which has included the application of innovative strategies to overcome obstacles in the areas of trade and logistics.

This new attempt to delegitimize — and overthrow — President Maduro's government has failed to overshadow the consolidation phase of the recovery cycle observed in the Venezuelan energy sector.

Crude oil production has increased by 33% over the past 22 months, reaching 922,000 barrels per day at the end of August. Secondary sources of information from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) also report figures with an upward trend, with an increase of 28% compared to the levels of 22 months ago.

Growth in production translates into a significant increase in exports. PDVSA trade reports indicate that crude oil shipments reached an average of 767 thousand barrels per day at the end of the second quarter of 2024, representing an increase of 23% compared to November 2022.

Particularly notable is the fact that, following the license granted to Chevron, exports to the United States have increased almost sixfold since January 2023, reaching an average of 230,000 barrels per day in August. This growth places Venezuela as the fifth largest supplier of crude oil to the US market, a milestone that was achieved in June 2024.

The impact is not limited to that particular market. Venezuela ranked ninth among the largest crude oil exporters to India in the first quarter of the current fiscal year 2024-2025 (April-June), according to official sources from the Indian Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas told the Business Standard newspaper.

Dynamic relations with the multipolar world and the BRICS axis
Finally, it is important to highlight how Venezuela, in its quest to contribute to the creation of a new global order, has the resources to confront the siege of the United States and its allies by establishing strategic relations with the multipolar world.

The support of the Global South, which includes 89% of the countries that recognized the June 28 election results, is a key factor in this process.

Asia, Africa, part of Latin America and the Caribbean expressed their support for Venezuelan institutions and the legitimacy of the electoral process.

In August, President Maduro received an invitation from Vladimir Putin to attend the BRICS summit in Kazan in October.

This week, during the UN General Assembly in New York, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil Pinto met with his counterparts from China and India . The People's Republic of China reaffirmed its support for Venezuela in the defense of its sovereignty and economic development, while India expressed its willingness to strengthen bilateral relations, especially in the context of the BRICS.

Venezuela's intention to join the platform and the New Development Bank presents important opportunities for the country. The bloc promotes the BRICS Bridge payment system , which seeks to reduce dependence on the dollar and facilitate transactions in national currencies.

This initiative includes a payment platform based on digital and blockchain technologies , which would boost intraregional trade. By integrating these proposals, Venezuela could strengthen its trade and investments with other members, thereby increasing its participation in a global economy that is expected to reach 33.6% of world production by 2028.

The strategic alignment established by President Maduro's government with countries that share interests in cooperation and respect for sovereignty, as opposed to traditional power dynamics, provides Venezuela with a broader space for action and strengthens its response capacity to counteract the pressures that threaten the nation's stability.

The concrete reality in the country demonstrates the capacity of the Venezuelan government to contain destabilizing events, which has prevented the strategic compromise of the State's institutions. This achievement is reinforced by the convergence of interests: private sectors, international actors and the citizens themselves are in a basic consensus for normalization and recovery.

These interrelated elements form the foundation on which the dismantling of the regime change agenda rests.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/una- ... a-post-28j

Google Translator

******

‘Ya Casi Venezuela’ Signifies a Crossroads for the Opposition
September 25, 2024


Silhouette of men in military gear. File photo.

By Misión Verdad – Sep 24, 2024

With a campaign of intrigue on social media launched on September 16, the US businessman and founder of the infamous mercenary company Blackwater, Erik Prince, promoted a plan to raise funds to prepare an eventual armed invasion of Venezuela and the overthrow of its authorities. Although Prince has not fully claimed responsibility for the campaign, he has been one of its most prominent spokespersons.

According to some sources, the initiative “Ya Casi Venezuela” led by Prince has already raised more than $1 million through private donations.

In his announcement about the campaign, he explained, “Your contributions will be directed to strategic actions aimed at restoring legitimately elected institutions and representatives, returning justice and guaranteeing a transcendental change in Venezuela.”

One of the main promoters of regime change from abroad, an individual accused of crimes against humanity, former Venezuelan police commissioner Iván Simonovis distanced himself from the initiative and claimed that he has nothing to do with the collection of money to finance the overthrow of the Venezuelan government. However, Simonovis himself had previously indicated that the campaign precisely had “regime change” as its main objective and that there was no doubt about his participation.

María Corina Machado at the crossroads
For the coordinator of the far-right opposition party Vente Venezuela, María Corina Machado, “Ya Casi Venezuela” implies a strategic dilemma because its support for an armed action in Venezuelan territory would have consequences on the support that she has from some less extreme opposition sectors.

On the one hand, her eventual disengagement from an escalation of aggression and war confrontation—branded as “strategic actions” by the Ya Casi Venezuela website—would result in criticism from extremist sectors that do not recognize the Venezuelan institutions in order to grab power by any means.

Moreover, total or relative support for the initiative would expose her to the possibility of being accused of treason, which would worsen her already limited capacity for political and media action.

The calls for street demonstrations made by Machado have lost their initial impact after the presidential election on July 28. In addition, the departure from the country of her imposed candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, left opposition leaders bewildered, who, like her, have not been able to establish a solid position on the matter.

Furthermore, on social media it is evident that Machado’s discursive stagnation has started to create a situation among opposition sympathizers that oscillates between hopelessness and the urgency to delegate any “solution” to third parties, such as Prince.



The contradictions of the path of violence
The fragmentation of the opposition has been a constant since its primary elections, evident through the designation of the candidate to replace a disqualified María Corina Machado and the post-electoral violence that she led.

While Machado has claimed that the fight of extreme anti-Chavismo is “accelerating on various levels,” other opposition leaders such as Manuel Rosales, governor of the state of Zulia, have continued with their administrative duties.

Other opposition figures issue statements from within or outside the country, but always without any discursive or tactical line, consistent with a political discretion and under the veil of “calmness and sanity.”

Meanwhile, Machado is fading away in public opinion, an effect that is transferred to not only her own party but also to all sectors of the opposition. The Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), the coalition that publicly supports her, has chosen to support the narrative that González’s departure from Venezuela is part of a “strategy” to remove the re-elected President Nicolás Maduro from power.

A possible violent coup led by Erik Prince, based on the Ya Casi Venezuela initiative, has created unease among the opposition leadership and exposes even more the internal games of a sector without a stable leadership.

It is clear that González’s departure left a trail of contradictions and movements on the political chessboard that involve the Justice First party, with the resignation of Henrique Capriles from its leadership as well as that of Eudoro González who facilitated the flight of González to Spain.

The balance of forces that the far-right opposition had accumulated until July 28 after having opted for an electoral route has become negative. Today, without a clear political strategy and with a possible mercenary adventure, which also involves money from a unknown sources, the opposition is again confusing and disorienting its members, followers and political support bases.

Below, the opposition base is losing its political bearings in the face of an unclear initiative that has once again raised hopes in the most radical segment. Above, the party leaders find themselves forced to take definite positions on the proposal.

In the meantime, President Maduro is establishing new lines of governance through the consolidation of social and economic policies that have assured the country its current scenario of stability. In this way, he has been strengthening an ever-growing cycle of normalization in the various spheres of national life after the violence during July 29-31 and the first week of August.

Given this scenario, for the opposition universe, Ya Casi Venezuela brings more negative effects than positive ones. It is a new complication that adds to the panorama of disorientation caused by the flight of Edmundo González and the inertia of María Corina Machado, forced to use social media as her only space for political action, with the fragility and lack of forcefulness that this entails.

https://orinocotribune.com/ya-casi-vene ... pposition/

[blindpig]

Venezuela Captures 19 Foreigners Involved in Mercenary Plot (+CIA, CNI & Interpol)
October 19, 2024


Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello at a press conference in Caracas, October 17, announcing the capture of a new group of mercenaries lined to the CIA and Spain's CNI. Photo: MPPIJP.

Venezuelan security agencies have arrested 19 mercenaries, including three Americans, two Colombians, one Peruvian, one Bolivian, and one Lebanese national involved in a far-right coup plot. One of US nationals had infiltrated religious groups, another hacked classified files from the Bank of Venezuela, while the third one was a paramedic, reported the minister of the Interior, Justice and Peace, Diosdado Cabello.

The minister reported the news of the capture of this new group of mercenaries on Thursday, October 17, adding that the detainees were linked with the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the CIA, the National Intelligence Center (CNI) of Spain, and criminal gangs. He also reported that 71 weapons were seized from the detainees.

One of the detainees is Jonathan Pagán González, a US national, originally from Puerto Rico, who had the task of infiltrating religious groups.

In a press conference, Minister Cabello denounced Spain’s CNI for “introducing mercenaries and weapons into Venezuela, establishing contact with criminal gangs to attack strategic infrastructure in the country, plotting to assassinate leaders of the Revolution, harming our people and, ultimately, deposing the revolutionary government.”



The most recent revelations made by Diosdado Cabello come 33 days after the Venezuelan government announced that it had dismantled part of a terrorist plot whose objective was the assassination of President Nicolás Maduro, Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, and other government officials. On September 14, Cabello stated that “the CIA is at the head of this operation” and that it was working together with Spain’s CNI. At that time, the active Navy SEAL Wilbert Joseph Castañeda, working with the CIA, was captured, in addition to the CNI’s José María Basoa Valdovinos and Andrés Martínez Adasme. A Czech mercenary had been arrested as well.

Cabello mentioned on Thursday that the detainees tried to disassociate themselves from the coup plot by claiming that they had found romatic partners in Venezuela. “It is the recipe [alibi] that they had been given,” the minister commented. He further noted that the US mercenaries are of Latino origin and that they speak Spanish very well.

The mercenary group includes several Americans
Cabello presented a chart with an account of the links of those captured with the CIA, the DEA and the CNI as well as with criminal gangs that operate in Venezuela. The list of those arrested includes several US nationals.

US national Jonathan Pagán González, who had the task of infiltrating religious groups, was arrested in an operation in Zulia state, after someone offered to issue him a Venezuelan identity card. “We are tailing all those in the operation—when he arrived he was arrested and he confessed all his links with destabilizing plans with terrorist groups,” Minister Cabello said.

He added that there is a powerful group from Zulia state behind this individual. “They know who these mercenaries are,” he commented.

“When the mercenary was arrested, we also captured a police chief from there, from the state of Zulia, who was offered between 500,000 and a million dollars to return this gentleman so that he would not be captured and would not be handed over to justice, that they would free him,” Cabello said.

“There are a number of detainees together with” Jonathan Pagán González.

Cabello went on to say that Pagán has “very serious ties in the state of Zulia, plotting to attack the president of the republic and Delcy Rodríguez, and other Chavista leaders.”

The mercenary’s cover was a church. “It is how imperialism is operating, recruiting,” Cabello said.



Another detainee of US nationality, Gregory David Werber, a hacker, “was given the mission to carry out cyber sabotage against the technological structure of Venezuela,” Cabello said. He added that photos of the work that the mercenary was doing were found on his cell phone. Among them, there were hacked classified files belonging to the Bank of Venezuela.

Werber has a Venezuelan partner named Kriscarly Yainelet Castro Carmona, who has links to criminal gangs in Venezuela. Cabello pointed out that this pattern is reccurrent among many of those captured, in this plot as well as the earlier ones.

The third US national arrested is David Guttenberg Guillaume. “His mission was to provide healthcare assistance in cases of injuries in the terrorist activities that they were going to launch. He too has a Venezuelan ‘girlfriend,'” Cabello reported.







Colombian recruiters captured
Cabello also presented details of the captured Colombian mercenaries. Among them is Manuel Alejandro Tique Chaves, whom he described as a “paramilitary recruiter.” He added that Tique is asscoaited with so-called NGOs.

Cabello also referred to the arrest of Arlei Danilo Espitai Lara, “a paramilitary commander, paramilitary recruiter.” He reported that the trio of Venezuelans who were captured in Apure state were brought by this Colombian national.





A Bolivian-American was to attack the refineries
Jorge Marcelo Vargas, a dual citizen of US and Bolivia, was also among the arrested. He had taken several photographs of the El Palito refinery in Puerto Cabello and the Cardón refinery in Falcón state. The images were extracted from his cell phone.

The detainee declared that “he came to take photos to find the easiest way to access the refineries in Venezuela for a terrorist attack.”







A Lebanese man with ties to Colombia
Another foreign detainee was Said Awada, of Lebanese nationality. He said that he had come to Venezuela to find a girlfriend. He is linked to the Colombian detainee, Arlei Danilo Espitai Lara.



Cabello stressed that the human rights of all the foreign detainees, as well as the Venezuelan ones, are being respected.

More than 12 Venezuelans detained
Cabello also reported the arrest of 12 Venezuelans involved in the terrorist plot planned by US and Spanish intelligence agencies and Colombian mercenaries.

The minister added that there are other Venezuelans detained linked to criminal gangs, but he did not provide further details.

Ex-cops linked to Simonovis
In the plans against Venezuela, a group of ex-policemen linked to the fugitive Iván Simonovis, “who was bringing weapons to Venezuela,” is involved.

Among them, Cabello mentioned Jean Carlos Michel Ramírez, currently residing in Florida, and Mauricio Andrade Santa María, who is an active member of the US Army. Both are Venezuelan and are fugitives.

Two other Venezuelans from that group have already been arrested, namely, Leonardo Atilio Micalitti Henrández and Argenis José Mavares Alcalá.

In that operation, carried out on September 15, in which the two were captured, 24 disassembled rifles had been seized. “The rifles are brought in parts and here they were assembled, put together and delivered to the terrorist groups,” Cabello explained, showing some of the weapons.

He further stated, “There is evidence of a larger number of rifles that were sent in parts. We are looking for those rifles, that weaponry, to neutralize any attempt that the far-right may make.”

The former police officers delivered weapons to a gang of seven people of Venezuelan nationality, who are already detained. The detainees are Carlos Alberto Infante, Neomar Jesús Páez, José Rafael Odreman Fajardo, Ana Isabel Moreno (a CICPC official), FANB Captain Argenis Rafael Rincón Martínez, Ricky Rafael Zapata de los Santos, and Pedro Gerardo Gutiérrez.

“This group operated for the delivery of weapons to gangs such as the Tren del Llano, the Tren de Aragua, and other gangs,” Cabello added.









Three other Venezuelans linked to the CIA operative
Three individuals who entered Venezuela through the state of Apure were also arrested. The trio is of Venezuelan nationality and is linked to Wilbert Joseph Castañeda, the active US military official, member of the Navy SEAL and a CIA operative, captured on September 1 of this year.

Those arrested are Vakeny José Díaz Rodríguez, Joel Manuel González Moreno, and Randy Alexander González González.



Weapons seized in Zulia and Aragua
Diosdado Cabello also reported that Venezuelan authorities seized 71 weapons of war in various recent operations.

He reported that on September 15, a day after his first press conference on the mercenary plot, a stash of weapons was seized in Zulia state. “They are US-made rifles, AK type. They are made by an US company, Century Arm, which manufactures AK rifles in the United States,” Cabello stated. “Those weapons are normally used to destabilize countries.”

He added that an individual, alias David, associated with those weapons, is yet to be captured, whom he described as “the person in charge of sending the weapons via Ivan Simonovis.”

“We have arrested people linked to violence in Colombia who have acted as recruiters of Colombians to come to Venezuela as terrorists, mercenaries,” he added.



He said that after the seizures on September 15, the security agencies were deployed in the area, and “we received information that the groups operating in the Aragua Valleys, associated with the Tren de Aragua and Tren del Llano, were carrying out an operation in the Tejerías area.”

In response, officials from the Scientific, Penal and Criminal Investigations Corps (CICPC) carried out an operation to seize “33 rifles that had been stolen from our Bolivarian National Armed Force.”

Cabello reported that those weapons were found in the possession of the gang of the seven detainees mentioned above. “There was a confrontation there and unfortunately a CICPC official died, several members of the gang were captured, some fell in combat, others were wounded, I mean from the gang of criminals,” he said.

Cabello noted that this criminal group is known as the Jason Comino gang and operates in Las Tejerías area. Its leader was Jeison Arráez Escobar, who was arrested. “Another group of Venezuelans was detained” for their association with the criminal organization and mercenaries.



Simonovis, an arms dealer
Cabello complained that Iván Simonovis is acting as a coordinator of arms trafficking for these groups. “Iván Simonovis has become the mercenary for arms sales, an arms dealer, not only for Venezuela but for other parts of the world,” he noted. “Recently some weapons were seized in Bolivia, and all of them were traced back to Iván Simonovis.”

He added that Simonovis is protected by the US government because “he has been an agent of the empire” for a very long time.

He said that the United States uses the DEA, the CIA and the CNI as operational agents to attack Venezuela, and in Colombia has the support of Álvaro Uribe Vélez and Venezuelan fugitives, such as Iván Simonovis, Carlos Vecchio, and Julio Borges, as well as that of María Corina Machado.

Interpol statement
Minister Cabello also read a statement sent by Interpol on October 7, regarding the illegal smuggling of firearms from the United States. Cabello said that the US authorities are aware of the shipment of weapons to Venezuela and it looks like they are trying to cover their tracks and identify the seized weapons.

“One wonders if Interpol is playing offside. Is the United States government washing its hands? They know that these weapons are here,” Cabello said, noting that the Interpol letter is an evidence against those claiming that the seized weapons, now numbering over 500, are a fabrication.



He added that the weapons belong to the firm Don’t Tread On Me. The brand bears the flag designed by Christopher Gadsden in 1775, which is a symbol of the far right. He said that the traffickers were hired by the National Intelligence Centre of Spain.



Investigation continues
Minister Cabello informed the public that law enforcement agencies continue working to dismantle all destabilization attempts against Venezuela.

https://orinocotribune.com/venezuela-ca ... -interpol/

President Maduro: Far-Right Venezuelan Politician María Corina Machado Flees to Spain
October 18, 2024


Far-right opposition politician María Corina Machado with a Venezuelan flag at a rally, on August 28, 2024, in Caracas. Photo: Juan Barreto/AFP/File photo.

The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, stated that the far-right opposition politician María Corina Machado had fled to Spain. “The old man [referring to former opposition candidate Edmundo González] left a month ago, and the Sayona [referring to María Corina Machado] also left,” Maduro said. “She fled, she first sent someone very close to her ahead, she waited, and got to her hideout somewhere in Spain.”

The statement, made during an official event this Wednesday, October 16, came minutes after the head of parliament, Jorge Rodríguez, reported that the opposition politician was “hiding in an embassy.” Machado has not appeared in public since August and has only posted videos and interviews through social media. Earlier this month, the far-right opposition leader said she had no plans to leave Venezuela.

In August, the Attorney General’s Office had opened a criminal investigation against Machado and González for the alleged commission of the crimes of usurpation of functions, dissemination of false information to cause unrest, incitement to disobedience of the law, insurrection, criminal association, and conspiracy.

On the same day as President Maduro’s statement, Machado denied that she had fled Venezuela. “Venezuelans know that I am here in Venezuela, the people know it and Nicolás Maduro knows it too,” Machado said in an interview with the far-right Miami-based television channel EVTV. “What’s happening is that they are desperate to know where I am and I am not going to give them that pleasure.”

González, the former presidential candidate of the far-right opposition Democratic Unitary Platform, fled Venezuela and arrived in Madrid on September 8 as a “political asylum seeker,” after the Venezuelan government granted him safe conduct. Caracas said it granted the document “for the sake of tranquility and political peace” in the country.

Venezuela held presidential elections on July 28, in which President Maduro obtained 51.95% of the votes, while González, his closest contender, obtained 43.18% of the votes, according to the National Electoral Council (CNE). The results were ratified by the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) on August 22, and official requests were made for the CNE to publish the results in the Electoral Gazette, something that some Chavista officials have said was done, but has not been publicly released or seen.

The far-right coalition Unitary Platform rejected the results and released falsified CNE voting records that supposedly “proved” that González was the winner of the elections. It should be noted that when these “records” were called into question, they refused to provide evidence to the TSJ.

https://orinocotribune.com/president-ma ... -to-spain/

Whitewashing Imperialism: The Western ‘Left’ and Venezuela
October 18, 2024


Anti-Imperialist Mural in Caracas. Photo: AFP.

By Lucas Koerner and Ricardo Vaz – Oct 7, 2024

VA members Lucas Koerner and Ricardo Vaz tackle disingenuous ‘left’ critiques that echo imperialist regime-change propaganda against Venezuela.

Every time Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution is faced with renewed threats to its survival, a stratum of US-based intellectuals is always ready with ‘left’ critiques that deliberately obscure the permanent imperialist siege against the country.

In the six weeks since the disputed July 28 elections, Venezuela has once again seen deadly violence, ramped-up US-led intervention including further sanctions, as well as defensive maneuvers from the Maduro government and allied popular movements.

Writing for New Left Review and The Nation, respectively, Gabriel Hetland and Alejandro Velasco present the contentious post-electoral panorama as the result of essentially endogenous factors – namely, Maduro’s ‘increasingly neoliberal, and even rightwing, policies,’ including ‘austerity, corruption, repression, and dollarization’ – in which US hybrid warfare is at best epiphenomenal. They urge the international left to ‘resis[t] apologism for Maduro’ and accept the victory of a fascist-led opposition movement.

Both academics are no strangers to this opportunistic exercise in methodological nationalism. Back in 2017 and 2019, as the Trump administration and its local neocolonial allies dramatically escalated the regime-change offensive to ‘maximum pressure,’ Velasco as NACLA (North American Congress on Latin America) executive editor published Hetland’s articles bashing the Maduro government’s ‘authoritarianism’ and assigning it equal, if not principal, blame for the crisis. Steve Ellner has characterised this position as the ‘plague on both your houses’ approach.

Hetland’s and Velasco’s articles belong to a broader genre of deeply disingenuous ‘left’ critique emanating from the global North, which has periodically attacked Southern governments and anti-systemic movements targeted by Washington, including Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Zimbabwe, China, Cuba, Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua, among others.

Imperialism as afterthought
Velasco is quite transparent in downplaying the political and economic impact of US sanctions:

To be sure, US sanctions have exacerbated Venezuela’s crisis. But they are not its cause nor do they explain why sectors loyal to the government for 25 years turned away from it at the polls. Instead it is the combination of austerity, corruption, repression, and dollarization under Maduro, all of it hitting Chavismo’s historic bases of support, that for the first time swung the presidency to the opposition.

Such minimisation is abjectly dishonest, as even stridently anti-Chavista economist Francisco Rodríguez – hardly a man of the left – estimates that

approximately half of the decline in GDP observed in Venezuela between 2012 and 2020 can be attributed to politically-induced causes, including economic sanctions, the loss of access to external funding sources, and the politically induced toxification of relations with the Venezuelan economy.

This admittedly conservative estimate does not, moreover, consider the impact of post-2014 Obama sanctions, including the designation of Venezuela as an ‘unusual and extraordinary threat,’ which at the time Rodríguez equated with a de facto financial embargo on the country. Hetland likewise fails to interrogate the politically overdetermining character of US economic warfare, only to later admit on social media that he ‘forgot’ to mention that ‘sanctions are an egregious violation of an election being “free and fair.”’

This apparent afterthought is precisely the crux of the issue: Venezuelans went to the polls on July 28 with an imperialist pistol pressed firmly against their skulls. Any analysis of the latest election, let alone the history of post-Chávez period, that fails to properly account for how US imperialism has conditioned and sharpened every aspect of the Bolivarian Revolution’s internal contradictions is fundamentally misleading. Still, for Velasco and Hetland, such context is essentially parenthetical, with little bearing on the election itself.

It is true that the Maduro government has since 2018 implemented an orthodox economic liberalisation package premised on benefits for private capital alongside freezing wages, credit and public spending in order to curb inflation and attract investment. Though these policies have delivered sustained, if modest, economic recovery and lowered inflation to decade-lows, they have also deepened social inequalities, and alongside high-profile corruption scandals, brewed popular resentment over old and newly amassed fortunes.

The Maduro government’s embrace of economic liberalisation indeed represents an ideological retreat. But it only came about after years of incessant US-led hybrid warfare – ranging from media disinformation and financing of NGOs to insurrectionary street violence (guarimbas) and murderous sanctions – aimed at blocking pathways for revolutionary advance and chipping away at Venezuelan expanded state organs, especially the social missions and communal councils, that helped anchor the government and ruling party among the racialised working masses.

Put bluntly, the Maduro administration is running a war economy, devoid of instruments for sustained planning and repeatedly forced to pick from a menu of ‘bad’ options effectively circumscribed by sanctions designed to inflict collective punishment and undermine national sovereignty. The country’s energy sector offers clear examples, such as US transnational Chevron taking over operations and sales in joint ventures despite being a minority partner. Recent natural gas deals likewise evidence Caracas’ weak bargaining position, with state oil company PDVSA denied stakes and reduced to merely collecting taxes and royalties in deals with foreign partners. To present the government’s economic policies in a vacuum, or otherwise downplay the world-systemic context that overdetermines them, is beyond deceptive.

Fascism and the Chavista grassroots
It is the height of political duplicity to pretend that the consummation of the imperialist regime change campaign would be at all conducive to the revitalisation of Chavismo, or the Venezuelan left more generally. Rather, this position belies the whitewashing of the fascist menace represented by Maria Corina Machado, who has been quite open about her agenda of exterminating Chavismo.

Hetland and Velasco stress the largely ‘spontaneous’ character of the post-electoral protests that broke out in many popular areas, but they are silent regarding the renewed political violence targeting Chavista activists, including the assassination of two local leaders – Isabel Gil, 74, and Mayauris Silva, 49, ominously recalling the 2014 and 2017 guarimbas.

Venezuelan social movements rightly regard this threat as existential and continue to firmly stand with the Maduro government, notwithstanding their internal critiques of its contradictions and missteps, as well as ever-present tensions with state institutions.

Elections are, in the words of El Panal 2021 Commune spokesperson Robert Longa, ‘just one tactical moment in our broader struggle’ to forge new territorialised relations of production and popular self-governance as the foundation for socialist transition. In the face of a white supremacist empire that increasingly resolves its crises through genocidal war, ‘Maduro is safeguarding peace, which is crucial for the communes to accumulate force and advance toward emancipation.’ For the organised bases of Chavismo, the only path forward at present is to continue building up their capacities with the aim of shifting the overall direction of the revolution in a more radical direction. The Venezuelan state thus remains a contested field where bottom-up movements wield a level of influence that they would never have under a right-wing government.

Over the past six years, Venezuelan rural movements, with a long history of struggles for land, have achieved significant gains in the Venezuelan countryside. The 2018 ‘Admirable March’ saw hundreds of campesinos and revolutionary allies march for more than 400 kilometres to demand answers from the Venezuelan state in a mobilisation that sparked enthusiasm and solidarity across Chavismo. As a result, the National Land Institute has addressed more than 90 percent of the land disputes raised by the organisers in favor of small peasant collectives. Though the campesino movement protests that certain state policies including privatised access to inputs and machinery benefits agribusinesses, regular demonstrations have secured favorable government responses in terms of securing fuel supplies and setting fair crop prices for small-scale producers.

Popular power organisations have also made strides amid highly adverse conditions to open up greater political space, as more recently evidenced by the appointment of Ángel Prado as Communes Minister. Prado is the first ever communard minister, bringing with him a wealth of organising experience as a key leader of the flagship El Maizal Commune and of the Communard Union. He has openly talked about grassroots movements playing a bigger role in shaping economic policy and promoted the state funding of democratically-chosen local projects. Though the space occupied by popular power remains undoubtedly limited, their militancy and clarity regarding the present challenges show that Chávez’s socialist horizon has hardly vanished.

Internationalist responsibility
Yet rather than support these really-existing grassroots revolutionary forces against US imperialism, US-based academics like Hetland and Velasco make abstract calls for ‘resisting apologism for Maduro’ and ‘defending the people who were once Chavismo’s core.’ They demand the Maduro government cede power to a fascist-led opposition hellbent on Chavismo’s annihilation, potentially endangering the lives of thousands of Chavista organisers like Gil and Silva.

But they predictably place no demands on the US Empire, ‘the greatest purveyor of violence’ against the Venezuelan people and the peoples of the global South as a whole. Their animus is instead reserved for a besieged leader of a state strategically aligned with anti-systemic international actors from Cuba and Zimbabwe to Palestine and Iran. Regardless of its retreats and concessions, and the necessary debate surrounding how far they should go, the Maduro administration is nonetheless immeasurably more democratic than the fascist regime in Washington currently engaged in a colonial holocaust in Gaza on top of countless other crimes against working people across the globe.

Just as in Libya, Syria, and today in Palestine and Lebanon, there is no middle ground between US imperialism and the counter-systemic states and movements that are targeted for destruction.

The choice for the international left is clear.

https://orinocotribune.com/whitewashing ... venezuela/

*****

Lula, Venezuela and realpolitik
18 Oct 2024 , 2:31 pm .


The Brazilian president, who criticized the European Union for recognizing Juan Guaidó, has the challenge of not falling into the same error (Photo: Archive)

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has proposed not recognizing the victory of his Venezuelan counterpart, Nicolás Maduro, after the presidential election on July 28. In various statements, the president has distanced himself from the Venezuelan government, thereby indirectly supporting the fabricated narrative to ignore the result of the elections.

However, a panoramic view of his position allows us to see the scope of his position regarding Venezuela and the dimensions it would encompass.

Beyond their statements are the historical ties and areas of bilateral cooperation and interest, the dismantling of which could be complex for various reasons. These range from political coincidences to general border and economic issues, where the logic of mutual benefit prevails.

Lula, 2023: "It's the beginning of Maduro's return"
During President Maduro's visit to Brasilia in May 2023, both leaders signed strategic cooperation agreements, along with a broad joint declaration to promote bilateral relations and strengthen development between the two countries. As is known, diplomatic ties had deteriorated during the administration of the far-right Jair Bolsonaro.

The aforementioned agreements were set out in an extensive agenda of 55 specific points, which included various topics of common interest in the political, economic, financial, social, humanitarian, environmental, diplomatic, food, security, health and energy fields.

Other social issues, such as the fight against racism, discrimination, human rights and equality policies for women and sexual diversity, were part of the joint objectives, which went beyond the bilateral and were part of an attempt to relaunch initiatives of sovereignty and social justice in the region.

A notable point of what Lula called "the beginning of Maduro's return" to the regional level is the creation of a binational program for the sustainable development of the common Amazon border, which includes the electrical reconnection of northern Brazil.

In August of that year, in the framework of the Amazon Summit held between the 8th and 9th in Brazil for the first time in 14 years, Venezuela warned about the voracity of the pharmaceutical and food multinationals that concentrate global markets and generate immense inequalities. This was stated by the executive vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, representing President Maduro, who could not attend due to health problems.

Although Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname and Venezuela, as member countries, did not set common goals on key issues such as the fight against deforestation, a turning point was established in the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) with a view to advancing issues of defense and sovereignty over the natural resources of the basin.

The maneuvers that await Lula
In his statements after July 28, Lula also did not endorse the candidate of a sector of the opposition, Edmundo González Urrutia, as the supposed winner. However, his position raised some questions regarding the development of the bilateral relationship, although the Brazilian president ruled out breaking diplomatic ties. Certain elements indicate that the Brazilian leader will have to maneuver diplomatically to ensure ties between the two countries.

Politically, the Brazilian president, who in May 2023 criticized the European Union (EU) for illegally recognizing Juan Guaidó, has the challenge of not falling into the same error as Brussels. Defining the relationship with Venezuela based on the "fraud" narrative promoted by the United States and the EU would entrap him as much as the defunct Lima Group, which sought to dismantle regional integration initiatives by serving as a platform for the "divide and conquer" intention hatched in Washington.

For the Brazilian president, Venezuela is one of the few members of CELAC that he can count on to make solid progress in his strategic vision of development in Latin America, which, as he said at the summit in January 2023, "must go step by step with the reduction of inequality."

Brazil's leadership in the region depends on cooperation with its 10 neighbors, one of the Amazonian country's aspirations that is mediated by the search for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. In this sense, programmatic coincidences with the Bolivarian Government are essential for the reactivation of spaces such as Celac or Unasur.

Trade relations between the two countries have been based on the agri-food sector. Almost 40% of Venezuela's exports to Brazil in 2022 consisted of fertilizers, which is an advantage for the Brazilian agribusiness, which is a key sector of its economy. In addition, the Venezuelan Caribbean remains an attractive route from a logistical and commercial point of view for the export of its products to the United States.

The question remains as to whether realpolitik would lead Lula to be pragmatic again and opt for respect for Venezuela's internal affairs. His dilemmas , which have already been analyzed in depth by Misión Verdad , increase with the evolution of the global geopolitical reality.

Or opportunities in energy
Another challenge for Lula is to expand levels of energy cooperation with Venezuela. At the meeting in May 2023, Venezuela ratified its commitment to provide security in the supply of electricity to the Brazilian state of Roraima by reconnecting the infrastructure that has existed since the late 1990s. This was disabled in 2019 by political decision of then-President Jair Bolsonaro, who was a promoter of the Lima Group.

In addition, the Brazilian state-owned Petrobras is a shareholder (36%) of the joint venture Petrowayuu, together with Petróleos de Venezuela and the American Williams International Oil & Gas (4%). The company, founded in 2006 and operating in the La Concepción field (Zulia), began the reactivation of eight wells last April within the framework of the oil production recovery plan carried out by the Venezuelan hydrocarbon industry. The 214 km2 field represents a business opportunity and a strengthening of the energy exchange between both countries.

Brazil's incorporation into OPEC+, which began last January, gives it a strategic role in the region, as it is the second country to join the organization and one of the ten main producers in the world. In this space, cooperation with Venezuela is mandatory.

The deepening of energy alliances with Venezuela could promote investment projects in favor of energy integration that guarantee the increase in the added value of crude oil and gas, with the production of petrochemical products necessary for the sustainability of the development of Latin America and the Caribbean.

The energy integration model that Commander Hugo Chávez and Lula aimed for during the Brazilian president's first term included elements such as "solidarity between populations, the sovereign right to manage the rate of exploitation of non-renewable and exhaustible natural resources, regional integration in search of complementarity between nations and the balanced use of resources in the development of their peoples." This sovereign vision constitutes a pillar of the Caracas-Brasilia relationship.

In addition to what has already been stated, the electoral result in the United States will be crucial for the Brazilian president's view and approach towards Venezuela. An eventual victory of former President Trump would imply a greater urgency to project his leadership in the region, given the symbiosis of Bolsonarism with the magnate. For this, Venezuela is fundamental in the equation.

For Lula, the dilemmas regarding Venezuela remain alive. He must keep abreast of what is happening in the world — and within Brazil — in order to take definitive positions and take advantage of the opportunities he has. They may not be the same between now and next January 10. Realpolitik will impose the limits of his actions.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/lu ... realpolitk

Google Translator

[blindpig]

The mercenary agenda does not stop in the search to detonate the swarming
18 Oct 2024 , 5:01 pm .


Passports of the American mercenaries captured by Venezuelan security forces (Photo: Rosana Silva)

On October 17, Minister of the Interior, Justice and Peace Diosdado Cabello presented a summary of the latest actions of the Venezuelan government in dismantling terrorist plans against the country.

During a press conference , Cabello addressed the arrest of a group of 19 mercenaries hired in the United States and Europe, who attempted to infiltrate a significant arsenal of weapons, most of which has already been seized by the authorities.

In an effort to neutralize the threat, an active search is underway for an additional shipment still in circulation.

Among the findings is the seizure of 71 high-caliber AK-type weapons , manufactured in the United States by the company Century Arms, which are added to the 400 seized in September. This arsenal includes 24 assault rifles, introduced by the state of Zulia in parts and assembled locally.

Behind this trafficking network is Iván Simonovis, former commissioner of the Metropolitan Police of Caracas and spokesman for the " Almost Venezuela " campaign, which is linked to Erik Prince, an American businessman and founder of the mercenary company Blackwater. Simonovis coordinates the transfer of weapons from the United States to Venezuela and other destinations, including Bolivia.

The investigation has led authorities to identify several former police officers linked to Simonovis , including Michell Ramírez, Mauricio Andrade, Leonardo Micalitti and Argenis Alcalá. According to the Minister, these individuals participated in the entry of weapons into the country to assemble them and deliver them to terrorist groups.

The arrest of Jonathan Pagan González, a US citizen who was tasked with infiltrating religious organizations in Zulia, was reported.

Cabello referred to an American hacker arrested during the operation, Gregory David Werber, and highlighted his intention to carry out acts of cyber sabotage against Venezuela's technological infrastructure. He also mentioned the capture of an American-Bolivian mercenary, Jorge Marcelo Vargas, who was taking photographs of oil refineries in the state of Falcón.

attack plan with international seal
The evidence presented again implicates Spain's National Intelligence Centre (CNI), with the active collaboration of the CIA and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of the United States, in the organisation of the mercenary raid.

These individuals, who entered the country under the false identity of tourists, are American, Peruvian, Colombian, Czech, Lebanese and Venezuelan citizens.

The objective of this group was to attack strategic points, assassinate political leaders and generate a climate of chaos and violence. The operation involved key figures of the anti-Chavez movement —in addition to Simonovis— such as Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Carlos Vecchio, María Corina Machado and Julio Borges.

Minister Cabello presented a statement from Interpol dated October 7 alerting about the smuggling of firearms from the United States to Venezuela, confirming that the U.S. authorities were aware of this trafficking network.

Connection with criminal groups
The investigation reveals the convergence between international actors and local criminal groups. The seized weapons were destined for criminal organizations such as the Tren del Llano and the Tren de Aragua, with the purpose of carrying out terrorist actions.

As part of the operations to dismantle this plan, during an operation in Las Tejerías, 33 rifles were captured that had been stolen from the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB), where the authorities confronted gangs operating in the valleys of Aragua.

Minister Cabello stressed that the dismantling of these irregular groups is in full swing, with the arrest of several of their members and the elimination of some during clashes with law enforcement forces.

LINK WITH SWARMING
The combination of mercenaries, criminal groups, arms trafficking and elements of cyberwarfare could be included within the swarming tactic promoted by María Corina Machado as part of the agenda for regime change in the country.

This tactic, characterized by its decentralized nature and focus on targeted violence, seeks to harass its target from multiple fronts and through various forms of sabotage. According to the document "Swarming on the Battlefield: Past, Present and Future", by author Sean J. A. Edwards, published by RAND in 2000, its effectiveness depends on a unified and highly coordinated leadership, as well as a deep knowledge of the terrain and the ability to evade the control of the adversary.

Although these fundamental elements are weakened, the attempt to strengthen the armed dimension of destabilization in Venezuela within this approach persists, and they seek to detonate it with brute force.

The operations to dismantle mercenary groups, interrupt arms supply routes and neutralize "sleeper cells" of the Tren de Aragua and the Tren del Llano demonstrate the government's ability to anticipate and dismantle such maneuvers.

Furthermore, as Misión Verdad raised in a previous analysis , the weakening of the leadership around María Corina Machado has significantly limited the relevance of the "citizen" factor in the swarming plan .

Added to this panorama is the discredit of the "Almost Venezuela" campaign and, in general terms, a demobilization in support for the narrative of electoral fraud, nationally and internationally speaking.

Under these circumstances, the dismantling of mercenary actions highlights how the CIA, the CNI, the DEA and other entities participating in the war against Venezuela are increasing anxiety and frustration in the face of the consolidation of peace and political, social and economic normality in the country, elements that dilute the objective and subjective conditions for regime change.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/la-a ... l-swarming

Google Translator

******

‘The Commune Is Nothing New Here’: The Rio Cataniapo Commune
Posted by Internationalist 360° on October 19, 2024
Chris Gilbert, Cira Pascual Marquina


Rio Cataniapo coverLas Pavas inhabitants in the Cataniapo River. (Rome Arrieche)

A socialist commune in the Venezuelan Amazon draws inspiration from the collective practices of its Indigenous members.

Early in the last decade a set of communities along the Cataniapo River started to organize themselves to protect the river’s ecosystem and bolster their agricultural and handicraft production. A few years later, in response to Chávez’s call to build socialist communes, 15 community councils in the area came together to form the Rio Cataniapo Commune.

Today, approximately 1500 people participate in the Río Cataniapo Comune. They come from various ethnic backgrounds, but the majority identify as Indigenous and some still practice common ownership of land. The backbone of the commune’s food economy is yuca, which is used for casabe [flatbread], mañoco [flour], and catara (spicy sauce). The yuca is grown with traditional methods in small “conuco” plots alongside sugarcane, auyama [pumpkin], topocho [small plantain], corn, and cacao. A growing handicraft economy focuses on producing mamure baskets and furniture.

The commune includes Indigenous communities with people from the Huo̧ttö̧ja̧, Kurripako, Baré, Jivi, and Yeral nations, alongside smaller non-indigenous or “criollo” communities. In this three-part series, members of Rio Cataniapo will discuss the commune’s roots in traditional Indigenous organization, their local economy, and the impact of US sanctions on daily life.

[Note: In various interviews, participants spoke in their Indigenous language, relying on community translators to render their statements in Spanish.]


Antonio Ponare is a campesino and sculptor and is part of the “Unión” Communal Council | Daniel Jiménez is one of the founders of the Río Cataniapo Commune | Enrique Martínez is head of an UBCH and part of the Las Pavas Communal Council | José Javier Estévez is Capitán of El Limonal, a communal council that is part of the Río Cataniapo Commune | Luis Jiménez is part of the Cucurital 2 Communal Council | Moraima Martínez is a spokesperson for the La Unión Communal Council | Trina Dagama is education spokesperson for the La Unión Communal Council | Wilmer Curumi is Productive Economy Spokesperson and part of the Las Pavas Communal Council | Yosuino Flor is part of the Cucurital 1 community in the Rio Cataniapo Comune. (Rome Arrieche)

THE PRESENT AND THE PAST

Enrique Martínez: The idea of the commune is not foreign to the Indigenous peoples of Amazonas. I am Huo̧ttö̧ja̧, and for my people, sharing what we have and living in a community is synonymous with life. We have our self-government, our justice system, and our legitimate authorities based on our traditions: the Council of Elders, the Cacique [generally hereditary], the Capitán [most often elected], and the Shaman.

Before Western culture penetrated our communities, thus generating processes of cultural erosion, the Huo̧ttö̧ja̧ people lived collectively in large churuatas [communal homes covered by palm leaves]. The churuata was the place where they hung their Huärįsą [hammocks]. It was also the space where many rituals and ceremonies took place and the seat of the Council of Elders.

The sabarí [non-Indigenous people] like to divide the land, but our land was, and continues to be here in Las Pavas, collectively owned. It is recognized as collective property by the Venezuelan state.

We are Christians, but preserving our culture and language is important because words tell stories. It is also important that we maintain our legitimate authorities; they can be traced many generations back, and they are the ones that shed light on what to do and how to organize work.

This does not mean, however, that we don’t want the things modernity has brought, from electricity to zinc roofs: we want a better life. In short, while we aren’t the dream community of some anthropologists – who want to find people living in a bubble – we respect our elders, our “living books,” who tell us the stories of our ancestors.

Wilmer Curumí: We are Huo̧ttö̧ja̧, and we have always organized in local governments or self-governments: we are the ones who decide what we will do and how we will solve our problems. We are not keen on outsiders telling us how to organize.

That is why we don’t see communal forms of organization as something that comes from the outside. It’s not a sabarí idea; it is the basis for the organization of many Indigenous peoples.

However, since we are also a commune registered by the Venezuelan state, we have expectations: we self-organize and we decide, but we also give and should receive.

Enrique Martínez: We began to call ourselves a commune when Chávez started to talk about communes… or perhaps it was a bit later, around 2012, because news reaches the Amazonas region late.

I think one of the virtues of the communes, as Chávez thought of them, is that they bring together the social and the productive spheres. The commune does not separate one from the other, which is good because people should not split life from production. The sabarí viewpoint separates the two. We want to bring them back together.

Self-government, which lies at the heart of the Huo̧ttö̧ja̧ way of life, cannot be separated from the conuco that feeds our community or the river that nourishes the conuco. In other words, the commune is popular power plus self-sustenance. But to fully achieve this goal, we need support.


Cataniapo River (Rome Arrieche)

NATURE AND COMMUNITY

Luis Jiménez: Our commune has two defining features. First, geographically, it follows the course of the Cataniapo River, which we protect because it supplies water to the conucos and brings us fish. We also swim in it on hot afternoons, and we clean our clothes and wash the dishes on its banks. Additionally, the river supplies water to our brothers and sisters in Puerto Ayacucho [Amazonas state capital], so we also care for it with their lives in our hearts.

Second, our commune is a multiethnic community where criollos like myself live alongside Huo̧ttö̧ja̧, Kurripako, and Jivi peoples, although there are communities that are exclusively inhabited by one Indigenous group.

Ours is an agriculture-based commune. The agriculture in our communities is conuco-based: we don’t use agrochemicals and we reforest along the river margins to ensure sustainability. The Cataniapo is a natural preserve by decree, but more importantly, it is the river that brings life to our communities and that’s why we have to care for it.

Antonio Ponare: In the Indigenous way of life, there are two pillars: caring for nature, because she is the one that gives us life and sustenance, and sharing what we have, which is the same as caring for the community.

Being united and coming together is so important for us that we call our communal council here “La Unión” [The Union].

The ancestors did not divide the land into parcels, and in fact, the land in Las Pavas [one of the commune’s 15 communal councils] is still collective. Here in La Unión, the land is privately held, but we share much of what we have with our neighbors: at harvest time, we make a sancocho [communal stew] to share the earth’s bounty and help each other with fieldwork when needed.

The conucos in the commune are diversified, but the core product is yuca and its derivatives: casabe, mañoco, and catara.

Wilmer Curumí: The sabarí built a wall between the community and nature, but we don’t want that wall to be there. We must protect the rivers and the trees because they give us the water we drink and the shelter we need. I think that little by little the sabarí are beginning to understand this: the Amazon is the “world’s lung,” and our rivers feed one of the most important hydrographic watersheds on the planet. Devastation of nature cannot go on. Future generations cannot be condemned to live in scorched earth.

Sometimes we wonder if the sabarí realized it too late. We have been caring for the Cataniapo River since we made our home on its banks: it gives us fish and quenches our thirst. Caring for a river is not the task of one person; it’s the task of the community.

The Indigenous communities are the true conservationist guardians who protect Cataniapo. Neither overfishing, nor deforestation, nor agrochemicals are allowed on the river’s margins.

Moraima Martínez: The Indigenous cosmovision – their way of being in the world, organizing, and decision-making – was important in the making of the Cataniapo River Commune. The Indigenous relationship with nature is different and more respectful, and they have a much more collective conception of life. This, of course, feeds into our organization in a positive way: we have weekly assemblies, which is – I think – a far more regular practice than in criollo communes. After the assemblies, those who attend return to their communities to inform of the decisions.

Communication is very efficient at the Cataniapo River Commune. This has a lot to do with the tradition of ringing a bell, which is still used in many Indigenous communities.

Yosuino Flor: I am Kurripako, and I live in a small Kurripako community. In our community, when important news arrives or when there is a meeting, we bang on the bell, and we all come together to hear the news.

We also have the tradition of vaira dapasiaca depina [“sharing,” in Kurripako], which is when we gather to share a meal and talk. Unfortunately, due to economic constraints, this tradition is weaker now. However, during celebrations, we still sit together around a table – everyone brings what they can and we share.

José Javier Estévez: I’m the only non-Indigenous capitán in an Indigenous community here. I’m from Calabozo, Guárico state, but I came here to visit my uncle years ago. It was here that I met my partner and began to live in El Limonal, one of the communal councils in the Río Cataniapo Comune.

Things weren’t easy back then in El Limonal. The criollos were slowly encroaching on the territory, cutting down the forest, and our community wanted to put an end to it. Since I speak Spanish, I was able to establish a dialogue among the parties, and we were able to solve the crisis.

Years later, the community’s capitán got sick and called an assembly. When I arrived, he had already spoken to the community and said: “Javier, I’m old and can no longer be captain. You have done good work for our community, and we respect you. We want you to be the community’s capitán.” Since then, I’ve been the capitán of El Limonal.

In El Limonal, we all meet to solve problems and plan, but I am the one who attends the communal assemblies, often walking for an hour or more each way. When I return, I ring the bell, we drink yucuta [cassava-based drink], and I report back to the community. The cacique also intervenes in these meetings; he gives important advice.

The people in my community are Yeral, Kurripako, and Huo̧ttö̧ja̧. Arguably, I’m the link with other communal councils and the criollo community, but I don’t govern El Limonal: the community governs itself.


Cucurital 1 is a Currupaco communal council. (Rome Arrieche)

CHÁVEZ AND THE COMMUNE

Daniel Jiménez: In his first “Aló Presidente Teórico,” Chávez talked about Simón Rodríguez’s concept of “toparquía,” the government in the territory. This idea was a real inspiration for Comandante Chávez.

He also emphasized that the committees in a communal council and a commune – the housing committee, the water committee, the health committee, etc. – are the institutions of the pueblo and can best address the needs of the people.

Today, It could seem impossible that ministries would ever disappear, but the confederation of communes – or the communal state, as some call it – must dismantle all the existing structures of power and domination inherited from the 4th Republic [1958-99]. Institutions like the parliament or ministries will become obsolete and will be replaced by a confederation of communes. This will require creativity, hard work, and guáramo [a Venezuelan term for boldness or courage], but we have all the requisites to achieve this.

Trina Dagama: Creativity is very important for a commune. President Maduro – to whom Hugo Chávez passed the baton and who has been ratified three times by the Venezuelan pueblo – always says: “the struggle continues.” He’s right. God gave many, diverse abilities to us, and we’ve put them to use in the conuco and within our communal councils.

Daniel Jiménez: Chávez’s most integral legacy is the commune. We’ve come to realize that the Kurripako and Huo̧ttö̧ja̧ peoples – and likely most Indigenous groups in Amazonas – have been living communally for many generations.

In his “Strike at the Helm” speech, Chávez stated that we need to work toward self-government in the territories. The practice of gathering in a community to address problems collectively should not be done in an atomistic way. It should expand and the communes should evolve into a confederation where constituent power becomes real power.

Chávez told us to advance quickly. He even scolded his ministers for their apparent lack of interest in the communes. In Rio Cataniapo, we’ve been working hard for more than ten years to build our commune. However, it hasn’t been easy. The US-led blockade has made all organizational processes more challenging, and in the hardest of times, we had to focus on ensuring our families’ sustenance. Moreover, state institutions haven’t always been supportive, but we celebrate the fact that a transformation is underway – the communes are returning to center stage in Venezuelan politics.

Nevertheless, there’s still a long way to go, because the social property dimension of most communes is usually either very weak or non-existent. A true communal economy doesn’t materialize with the stroke of a magic wand. Rio Cataniapo is a well-organized commune, a bastion of Chavismo. On July 28, President Maduro won the election by a landslide here. Yet we lack communal means of production. This limits our potential as a commune.


Hybrid houses are common in the Rio Cataniapo Commune. (Rome Arrieche)

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/10/ ... o-commune/

******

The Bolivarian Revolution: 25 years fighting imperialism

Why the people voted President Nicolás Maduro and his PSUV government back into power.


Much noise has been made in western media about stolen elections and unpopular, dictatorial leaders in Venezuela, but the truth is that broad swathes of the masses are fully engaged with the anti-imperialist and revolutionary process taking place under the leadership of the Chavista government, and their future prospects are looking rosier by the day as the imperialists’ genocidal sanctions are steadily defeated.
Proletarian writers

Monday 21 October 2024

Twenty-five years have passed since Hugo Chávez initiated Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution in February 1999. Twenty-five years of PSUV (United Socialist party) governments working to improve the economic, social and cultural conditions of the masses.

Twenty-five years of participatory democracy; of empowering people to transform society on the road to socialism. Twenty-five years during which the people of Venezuela have clearly expressed their support for the Bolivarian process at 28 out of a total of 30 electoral opportunities.

Twenty-five years of the revolutionary government defeating the efforts of US imperialism and its allies to destroy this process through sanctions, a failed coup d’etat, and even the creation of a fake ‘parallel’ government (complete with self-appointed alternative ‘president’ to act as its figurehead).

Twenty-five years of economic warfare, including genocidal blockades, forced isolation from the world market, and acts of assassination, invasion and terrorism. In short, 25 years of the Bolivarian Revolution staunchly defending itself against the open hostility and non-stop aggression of the imperialists and their compradors in the local oligarchy.

This July, it became clear that powerful forces continue trying to shatter a model of governance that aims to benefit the people of Venezuela and which has been chosen by them, seeking to replace it with one that will facilitate the looting of the country’s resources for the benefit of imperial corporations and their handful of super-rich local stooges.

During the presidential elections, the future of the Bolivarian Revolution was once again at stake. But the brave people of Venezuela have learned many lessons from the dark days of hyperinflation and ‘marimbas’ in the streets. They have learned that when the far-right opposition, headed by stooges such as Juan Guaidó and Maria Corina Machado, were travelling around the globe asking for ever more sanctions to be placed on their own people, President Nicolás Maduro and the PSUV leadership never stopped working to resolve the problems created by such economic aggression – with the people and for the people.

The latest attempts by US imperialism to bring about regime change have demonstrated once again the resilience of the Venezuelan people and their Bolivarian government. Their firm opposition to imperialist attempts to turn Venezuela back into a compliant colony are supported by several important pillars of the revolutionary process, which act together to enable the people to express their will.

The most important of these are: participatory democracy; the leading role of the PSUV; the union between the Venezuelan masses the armed and police forces; the role played by friendly countries; and the success of the ‘Plan de la Patria 2019-25’.

Participatory democracy
Before 1998, the main feature of political life in Venezuela was the ruling class’s role in perpetuating colonial subordination to US imperialism, which benefited US multinationals first and a tiny minority of local bourgeois second. Known as the Fourth Republic, this regime presented a façade of democracy based on the western liberal values for dependent countries, which kept the mass of the people underdeveloped, uneducated and outside of political life.

The election of Comandante Hugo Chávez as president effected a qualitative change in the life of the Venezuelan people, ushering in a socialist-leaning popular administration that aimed to found the republic on an entirely new basis. Dubbing this process the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ (named after the 19th-century anti-colonial liberation leader Simón Bolívar), President Chávez announced his government’s intention of creating a genuinely participatory democracy and of building an independent, self-reliant, multiethnic and multicultural society.

The Bolivarian constitution guaranteed the rights of the people to be involved in decision-making by introducing new mechanisms of participation such as open assemblies, referendums, and the power to remove government officials.

The desire to build a genuinely popular power (poder popular) in the country has led to the creation of new decision-making processes far beyond the established practices of bourgeois parliamentary ‘representation’. New types of parliaments and elections have been supplemented by other forms of mass involvement in the running of society. Working people are organised in cooperatives, in socially-run production companies, in local communities and communal councils, and all have been given the power to take control over growing aspects of their lives and destinies.

Participatory democracy is stablished as a constitutional political right in article 62 of the Bolivarian constitution as follows: “The participation of the people in forming, carrying out and controlling the management of public affairs is the necessary way of achieving the involvement to ensure their complete development, both individual and collective. It is the obligation of the State and the duty of society to facilitate the generation of optimum conditions for putting this into practice.”

The building blocks of the participatory democracy include:

Referenda, allowing the people to impose their will over existing laws and those who hold public office.
Local and communal councils, which evaluate proposals for community projects and develop a municipal plan.
Social audit controls, under which citizens have the right to request a financial and non-financial audit of any public office.
Citizens’ assemblies, which are decision-making bodies whose decisions are binding.
Civil society involvement in government.
Cooperatives.
As an example, elections took place on 25 August to select priority projects for 4,505 communal circuits, which comprise 49,000 communal councils, with the participation of approximately 1.5 million communal spokespersons.

As President Chavez stressed in his speech ‘El golpe de Timon’, this model embodies the popular people’s power under the slogan ‘Comuna o Nada’ (Commune or Nothing), and it has generated the real social change that is at the heart of the Bolivarian process, making the country far stronger in the face of challenges from within and without.

The leading role of the PSUV
The guiding force behind all these developments has been the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

Launched by Hugo Chávez in 2006, the process of creating this mass popular party involved participation by nearly six million aspiring militants, convened in thousands of meetings nationwide. It included the organisation of ‘socialist battalions‘ to debate constitutional reform, and the election of 1,681 delegates to the party’s founding congress in March 2008.

At this congress, delegates representing 1.2 million active members adopted a platform defined as “democratic, anti-imperialist and anticapitalist”, electing Hugo Chávez as the party’s president.

After the congress, the real work began, as the party worked to raise the political consciousness and social participation of workers, peasants, students and professionals. With varied levels of political experience, and coming from a range of social and cultural backgrounds, party members were given a basic training in history, economics and politics, as well as in the key differences between capitalism and socialism.

The ideological foundations of the PSUV are described in the party’s founding document, the Red Book (El Libro Rojo), which says:

“The party will strive to train its militants in ‘El arbol de las Tres Raíces’ (The Tree of the Three Roots) – the thought and actions of Simón Bolívar, Simón Rodríguez and Ezequiel Zamora – and will critically rescue the historical experiences of socialism, adopting as a guide the thought and action of Latin-American and world revolutionaries and socialists … who have contributed to the struggle for social transformation, for a world of equity and social justice …

“It will be based on the contributions of scientific socialism and Marxism as a philosophy of praxis, a tool for the critical analysis of reality and a guide for revolutionary action. Bolivarian socialism will respond to creative praxis, to the free exercise of the will and desires of the Venezuelan people. It will not be a ‘copy or a replica’, to use José Carlos Mariátegui’s expression, but a ‘heroic creation’.

“Our socialism recognises the diversity of our origins, and values the indigenous, European and African roots that gave birth to our great South American nation. It incorporates the doctrine of Simón Bolívar, particularly his anti-imperialist vision and his proposal on the need for the union of American countries, Simón Rodríguez’s struggle for liberating, popular education for all, and Ezequiel Zamora’s struggle for the social ownership of land, his confrontation with the oligarchic powers and his programme of social protection. Likewise, it assumes civil-military union as one of its fundamental characteristics.”

An institute for socialist studies was formed and named in honour of Simón Rodriguez (1769-1854), the philosopher mentor of Simón Bolívar (Sistema de Formacion Socialista Simón Rodriguez), bringing a popular socialist education to party activists and cadres.

As the last 25 years have shown, fighting imperialism and building socialism are not easy tasks. They require an organisation that helps people to struggle in adverse conditions, which enables them to understand and see through the propaganda of their class enemies, and which helps develop workers into committed revolutionaries.

In the communities, in the streets, in the countryside, supporting the policies that make the Bolivarian Revolution possible, the PSUV has played this vital leadership role. At the same time, it has worked to build a broader unity with all political and social sectors that are aligned with the Bolivarian project through the formation of the Gran Polo Patriótico Simón Bolívar.

Union between the Venezuelan people and their armed forces
Following the 19th-century wars of independence from Spain, Latin America’s armed forces were redirected towards defending the privileges of imperialist-aligned oligarchs and local bourgeois – a process that was reinforced and intensified after the USA established its ‘School of the Americas’ in 1946.

Run by the CIA, this notorious institution (rebranded as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation in 2001) trained more than 60,000 military officers to work under the direction of their US masters in introducing approved techniques of political repression, torture, murder and the control of “internal enemies” (ie, in suppressing communists and trade unionists).

From the beginning, President Chávez and the Bolivarian leadership were aware that building a socialist society would require armed forces of a different type. They would need to build an army that could work with the people in defence of the country’s independence and sovereignty; in defence of the new Bolivarian constitution; and in defence of the country’s resources and the people’s welfare. In essence, they needed an army capable of working against imperialism and for the people.

A failed coup by imperialist-backed forces in 2002 accelerated the process of this military transformation, which emphasised the need for a professionalism rooted in anti-imperialist and socialist ideals. The resulting Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana (FANB) was built with a new officer class drawn from the revolution’s adherents and a new geopolitical alignment. In place of subservience to US military structures and US economic interests, the new military worked in cooperation with partner countries, most notably with Russia.

The unity that Chávez dreamed of between the armed forces and the masses has become a reality. The FANB has greatly contributed to the success of many social programmes, known as ‘Bolivarian missions’, and have bravely defended the country’s democratic institutions and borders against the plots of US agents, whom the people refer to as “imperial lackeys”.

Following the plan laid out by Comandante Chavez, the civil-military union incorporates not only the country’s military but also national police force (Policía Nacional Bolivariana). The new, patriotic PNB was created in 2009 as part of the Bolivarian project, and this civil-military-police union thus merges all the people of the country, both in and out of uniform, in the defence of sovereignty and internal security against imperialist attack.

On 5 July 2024, at a national parade marking the 213th anniversary of Venezuelan independence, FANB soldiers, heirs of the Venezuelan revolutionary pioneers, chanted as they marched: “Somos socialistas, antiimperialistas y tambien Chavistas!” (No translation required!)

The role of friendly countries: Iran, China, Russia
Before the rise of Hugo Chávez to power, Iran’s relationship with Venezuela had been confined within the framework of Opec (Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries). But as a result of the USA’s hostility to the Bolivarian project, President Chávez made his first official visit to Iran in 2001, aiming to develop a more meaningful relationship with a fellow oil-producing country that had endured decades of imperialist hostility on all fronts – military, economic, propaganda and diplomatic.

The failed coup attempt in 2002 helped to accelerate this process. Under the guidance of presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Chávez, the relationship moved to a different level, as ties of all kind began to flourish. Dozens of high-level official visits took place, bilateral trade treaties were signed, and cooperation in areas such oil exploration and the petrochemical industries was initiated.

After Comrade Chávez’s death, cooperation continued to develop under the leadership of the new president Nicolás Maduro and his Iranian counterparts, presidents Hasan Rohani (2013-21) and Ebrahim Raisi (2021-24). The two countries derived mutual benefit from this development of their relationship, especially given the ratcheting up of unilateral economic sanctions by US president Donald Trump’s regime.

As President Raisi pointed out in August 2021: “Iran and Venezuela have common interests and enemies … we have always shown that, with resistance and wisdom, we can thwart the plots of the US and world imperialism.”

Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China has been a key partner of Venezuela since the start of the Bolivarian Revolution. Cooperation began to grow significantly at that time, and Chávez made six trips to Beijing during his presidency. This has developed to a higher level during the last decade under President Maduro, who has visited China 11 times.

The China-Venezuela relationship has a long-term perspective, and hundreds of agreements have been signed in areas as diverse as agriculture, tourism, oil and technology. China has always supported Venezuela’s efforts to defend itself from external interference, and in 2023 the relationship was upgraded to an “all-weather strategic partnership”.
While the above partnerships have provided vital economic opportunities for a country that the USA has been doing its best to crush with economic warfare, Venezuela’s most significant geopolitical ally throughout has been Russia.

Cooperation between the two countries began 20 years ago with the provision of military equipment by Russia, but the relationship has since developed to embrace many other areas of economic and strategic importance. Today, Venezuela has more than 300 joint projects with Russia in a range of fields, including energy, infrastructure, agriculture, medicine, education and culture.

During his most recent visit to Caracas in February 2024, Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov praised Venezuela for its contribution to the rising multipolar order and added: “We are aware of the interest of our Venezuelan friends in rapprochement with Brics. As chair of the association this year, Russia will contribute to this.”

In fact, technical commissions from both countries are working together for further association and Venezuela has been invited to the much-anticipated 16th Brics summit, taking place from 22-24 October 2024 in the eastern city of Kazan.

Venezuela’s miracle
The United States, that most active enforcer of unilateral and extraterritorial economic sanctions, has long used economic warfare to try to destroy governments or organisations that stand in the way of its global domination.

These coercive measures have been backed up by the power of European finance capital, which has in most cases fallen in line and cooperated in enforcing measures aimed at excluding the targeted bodies from access to world banks and markets. None of these upholders of ‘civilised values’ balk at implementing a form of collective punishment whose objective is to starve entire populations into submission.

In 2015, US president Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13692, which declared the Bolivarian Republic to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States”. From that moment on, the war against the Venezuelan people was waged with renewed ferocity.

Financial institutions took the lead by restricting access to international credit and by closing accounts held abroad by Venezuela’s central bank. This in turn increased interest rates on Venezuela’s international loans, and corporate media backed up this economic assault with a local and international campaign to demonise the Chavista government and present all economic difficulties as stemming from ‘incompetence’ and ‘socialism’.

With sanctions wreaking havoc and energy prices falling in 2014, Venezuela’s oil industry, the country’s main source of revenue, broke down, resulting in the near total collapse of the economy. Annual inflation reached 63,000 percent in 2018, the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) declined precipitously, and since Venezuela was largely dependent on imports to feed its population (now cut off by US sanctions), this inevitably led to drastic shortages.

The deadly impact of the USA’s coercive sanctions resulted in 100,000 unnecessary deaths, 22 percent of them children under the age of five, and left more than 300,000 patients unable to access proper medical care. This in turn led to an unprecedented migration of Venezuelans, many of them doctors, nurses and teachers. (See Venezuelanalysis, A War Without Bombs, September 2023, for a vivid account of the impact of US sanctions.)

Today, after years of triple-digit inflation, the United Nations development programme (UNDP) has reported that inflation is expected to come down to 30 percent in 2024. I predicts also that domestic aggregate demand will grow by 3.2 percent, with increases in private consumption (2.5 percent), public spending (6.2 percent) and capital formation (14.9 percent). Even the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recognised the success of Venezuelan economic policies, projecting a GDP increase of 4.2 percent in 2024.

Some financial commentators talk about a ‘Venezuelan miracle’, but the reality is quite different. These economic improvements, despite the continuing pressure of genocidal sanctions, are the result of the successful implementation of a comprehensive plan to diversify the economy, the ‘Plan de la Patria (Plan for the Homeland) 2019-25’.

This plan was proposed in 2018, during the peak of Venezuela’s troubles, and was worked out with the support and experience of Iran, China and Russia. A really revolutionary feature of the plan is one that has echoes of socialist planning: 3.4 million people discussed its details in more than 34,000 public meetings, deepening and developing new forms of a budding participatory democracy as the masses joined in the hopeful and empowering process of planning for their own future.

The plan outlined five major objectives:

To defend, expand and consolidate that most precious asset: national independence.
To continue building Bolivarian socialism of the 21st century in Venezuela, as an alternative to the savage model of capitalism, ensuring the greatest level of social security, political stability and happiness for the people.
To turn Venezuela into a socially, economically and politically powerful country, among the other great rising powers of Latin America and the Caribbean, thus guaranteeing the formation of a zone of peace in Nuestra (Our) America.
To contribute to the development of a new international order, helping to shape a multicentric and multipolar world and to guarantee peace.
To contribute to the preservation of life on the planet.
Rather than being a generic wordy document destined only for the shelf, the Plan de la Patria was a plan for action. From the five overarching aims listed above, 32 broad national objectives were elaborated, and these were further broken down into 173 detailed strategic goals. At the most granular level, 731 generic and 1,859 specific concrete activities were identified – to be carried out by, and for the benefit of, the Venezuelan people.

The main measures of the economic recovery programme were:

The stimulation of national production to achieve food self-sufficiency via a system of credits and financing to diversify and increase production. This action has been so successful that today 96 percent of the food consumed in Venezuela is produced domestically.
An increase in tax revenues. The improvement of the economy has indeed brought about a year-on-year increase of 100 percent between the first half of 2023 and the same period in 2024.
The boosting of non-traditional exports, to be achieved through fiscal and credit measures to diversify the country’s trade base and lessen its oil dependency.
Support for entrepreneurs. The government has expanded investment opportunities in projects of different sizes and scope, with the aim of developing national entrepreneurship in Venezuela (the number of new entrepreneurs is estimated at one million, and 60,000 new brands of locally produced products have been registered since 2018).
By implementing this plan, the government has managed drastically to reduce inflation (in the period June-August 2024, monthly inflation was 1 percent, 0.7 percent and 1.4 percent), strengthened the value of the local Bolivar against the dollar, and reported 12 consecutive quarters of economic growth, reporting a quarterly growth this year of 8.4 percent (Q1) and 8.7 percent (Q2). As a result, the government estimates that GDP will grow by around 8 percent for the whole of 2024.

When we consider that these figures have been achieved in the midst of a global economic crisis and under conditions of extreme economic warfare, we can see what a giant step forward they really represent. By contrast, even the most optimistic assessments of the UK’s economic performance in 2023 put GDP growth no higher than 0.3 percent, while the truth is that the economy is actually in a deep recession and the official figures highly massaged to avoid having to admit this fact.

While many challenges clearly remain to be overcome in Venezuela and the revolutionary process is far from complete, it is clear that the Chavista PSUV government remains a people-oriented and socialist-leaning one, and that staunch anti-imperialist values are at the heart of everything it does both domestically and on the world stage.

We congratulate the Venezuelan people on having defended their sovereignty for 25 years and wish them success in achieving their goals of peace, prosperity and socialism in the next quarter century!

https://thecommunists.org/2024/10/21/ne ... perialism/

[blindpig]

Why Brazil opposes Venezuela's entry into the BRICS
23 Oct 2024 , 12:10 pm .


Brazilian government advisor for international affairs, former foreign minister Celso Amorim, with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Photo: Reuters)

On Monday, October 21, it was learned that Brazil opposed Venezuela's entry into the BRICS group, in the context of the bloc's 16th Summit in the city of Kazan, Russia, an event to which President Nicolás Maduro was invited by the Russian president himself, Vladimir Putin, at the beginning of August.

The information was given by the Brazilian government's advisor for international affairs, former foreign minister Celso Amorim. The instruction to veto Caracas's possible accession came from Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva .

In Latin America, in addition to Bolivia, Cuba and Nicaragua, Venezuela had submitted a formal request to join the alliance of emerging economies. Among all the applicants, Venezuela is the country that has gathered the greatest consensus for its entry after strengthening its cooperative relations with the most important members of the bloc, mainly with Russia and China.

Amorim argued that this is not a question of "moral or political judgement". "The BRICS have countries that practice certain types of regimes, and other types of regimes, the question is whether they have the capacity, due to their political weight and capacity for relations, to contribute to a more peaceful world," he said.

The advisor's statement was marked by ambiguity. On the one hand, he points out that the Kazan Summit should not have a rigid rule for integrating future partners, since, in his opinion, it should be open to States that promote development and changes in global governance. But, at the same time, he publicly announces that he does not support Venezuela's entry.

However, this stance is in line with the increasingly hostile attitude that Lula's government has maintained towards Venezuela in recent months, after it did not recognize the results of the June 28 elections in which President Nicolás Maduro was re-elected.

Although Brazil initially tried to move within a framework of relative neutrality , seeking to establish itself as a mediator in the post-electoral conflict, it has gradually become more aligned with the position of Washington and Brussels, which openly recognize Edmundo González as the supposed winner of the day.

Causes and reasons
The first thing to note is that last year Lula himself was open to the expansion of the BRICS and the inclusion of Venezuela. Amorim's statement, in this regard, represents an aggressive change of position that deteriorates the Caracas-Brasilia relationship.

"I am in favor of Venezuela joining the BRICS. We will meet soon and we have to evaluate several requests for integration," Lula said in May, adding that "the new geopolitics is characterized by two elements: the unity of our America in diversity and the role of the BRICS, which is emerging as the great magnet for countries that want cooperation."

It is worth remembering that last year, Brazil also pushed for Argentina's entry into the bloc, but once Javier Milei came to power, the application for membership in the bloc was terminated.

Strategically, Brazil is interested in maintaining its position as the only Latin American member of the BRICS, a position that allows it to avoid geopolitical counterweights and, at the same time, protect its monopoly on the conduct of regional affairs from the rest of the powers in the bloc.

In fact, the proposal to include Argentina was based on the premise that Brasilia would manage the timing and scope of Buenos Aires' accession, and would position it as the little brother of the Brazilian giant within the alliance.

But with Venezuela, different logics and tensions operate.

According to the geopolitical conception of Planalto and Itamaraty, Venezuela's participation in the BRICS would shift the geopolitical axis of the region and the bloc too much towards multipolarity, due to the strengthening of ties with Russia and China. This would weaken Lula and Amorim's approach to preserving Brazil's strategic ties with Washington and Brussels, while safeguarding economic ties with the BRICS.

In this sense, Venezuela could become an uncomfortable ally within the group, which could not be controlled like Argentina and which would encourage a strengthening of multipolarity against the current of Brazilian foreign policy, marked by an emphasis on ties with the West.

The existential conflict between Caracas and Washington, which could deepen after the US presidential elections in November, would mean that Brazil would have to support its Venezuelan partner in the BRICS in opposition to Washington.

Since both are part of the group, Brazil would be obliged to maintain an active political and economic relationship with Venezuela, and thus challenge the illegal sanctions and the narrative of ignoring the presidency of Nicolás Maduro promoted by the White House and the State Department.

Lula and Amorim have read these potential dilemmas, which is why they have decided to oppose Venezuela's incorporation in order to reduce any political cost that would imply twisting or complicating the relationship with the US.

In the face of such opposition, the Brazilian president and his main advisor on international affairs claim that their vision is more Eurocentric than multipolar, and that the BRICS are an instrument for economic purposes rather than a geopolitical gamble determined to build a new global order, a horizon towards which Venezuela is heading, and which it actively promotes.

This clash of visions and the non-negotiable points of Brazilian foreign policy with the United States explain the latest Brazilian grievance against Venezuela.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/po ... -los-brics

I dunno, I suspect a deal was made to allow Lula to assume office without the generals moving in.

This is how Venezuela defeated Brazil's boycott attempt at the BRICS
25 Oct 2024 , 6:01 pm .


Russian President Vladimir Putin considers his Venezuelan counterpart Nicolas Maduro a "reliable partner" (Photo: Archive)

Venezuela's participation in the XVI BRICS Summit was marked by the attendance of its president, Nicolás Maduro, the first leader of the country to participate in a meeting of heads of state of the bloc.

On Wednesday 23rd and Thursday 24th, the leader held various bilateral meetings of great importance and participated in the plenary sessions of the Outreach/Brics Plus format held in the city of Kazan.

The Russian president invited his Venezuelan counterpart last August and the two held a meeting on the first day of the event, in which Putin showed his support for the Caribbean country's desire to raise its participation status within the alliance.

Venezuela obtained a positive balance because the different activities developed were a continuation of the multipolar paradigm of its diplomacy and of bilateral agendas that have been built and expanded for decades, a scheme that allowed it to overcome Brazil's attempt to hinder its participation in the summit.

“...in favor of equality in the world”
Neither the onslaught of illegal sanctions nor the deliberate aggressions of the American and European elite have prevented Russia from advancing towards the multipolar bloc. Venezuela, which maintains its aspiration to continue deepening its relationship with the alliance, has developed exchanges with the Eurasian power, whose leadership is central within the BRICS.

During the meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart, Putin stressed that "the volume of bilateral trade is also growing, numerous projects have been launched in the sectors of energy, pharmaceuticals, transport and new technologies."

The Venezuelan president's attendance, described as a "surprise" by some media, also allowed him to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, to whom he let it be known that China has in Venezuela "a sincere friend," and stressed that both nations "are defending the same causes (...) the cause of a shared destiny for humanity."

Venezuela is the only Latin American country with which China maintains an All-Weather, All-Tough Strategic Partnership, signed on September 13, 2023. Last June, Executive Vice President and Minister of Petroleum, Delcy Rodríguez, highlighted that both countries have "more than 531 projects in 17 high-level joint commissions held with the impetus of Commander Hugo Chávez and, later, President Nicolás Maduro."

The Chinese president responded to his Venezuelan counterpart: "We are friends made of iron, of steel, and we will always keep in touch."

Expansion, progress and new challenges in multipolar diplomacy
As with the leaders of Russia and China, the XVI BRICS Summit served as a space to expand already consolidated relations and advance other strategic ties.

An example of this was the meeting between the Venezuelan president and the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who stated that in recent years relations have improved in many areas and that they will continue to take measures to continue advancing in cooperation.

Last May, the IV Meeting of the Binational High-Level Joint Commission was held. It is estimated that, by the end of 2024, trade between Venezuela and Turkey will reach 800 million dollars, according to the president of the International Center for Productive Investments (CIIP), Alex Saab.

This goal was confirmed by President Maduro who, during the meeting, emphasized the new stage of economic relations that will begin in the first quarter of 2025.


The close relationship between Presidents Maduro and Erdogan has played a fundamental role in Venezuela's economic recovery due to the growth of bilateral trade (Photo: Archive)

The pivot country in the Eurasian region has played a fundamental role in Venezuela's economic recovery due to the growth of mutual trade. In 2021, trade reached 850 million dollars, a figure that far exceeded the 150 million dollars recorded in 2019.

Erdogan said Israel's increasing aggression threatens peace and security not only in West Asia but in the entire world, so the international community must take urgent and effective measures to stop Tel Aviv.

During the meeting with Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, progress was made on ways to strengthen trade and political cooperation between the nations, which consolidates a strategic relationship within the context of a new multipolar geopolitics. The Belarusian leader expressed his admiration for Maduro's leadership, and also his confidence in Venezuela's ability to achieve victories on an international scale.


Lukashenko expressed confidence in Venezuela's ability to achieve victories on an international scale (Photo: Press)

Last July, Venezuela and Belarus reactivated a roadmap for high-level strategic cooperation for the next 10 years. In a meeting with the Prime Minister of the Slavic country, Roman Golovchenko, the Vice President for Planning, Ricardo Menendez, stressed that the markets and productive capacities of Belarus "will have in Venezuela a platform, a horizon of expansion for all of our America based on the development of our peoples."

During the meeting, President Maduro stressed the importance of the alliance between both countries, emphasizing cooperation and mutual respect, a formula that moves away from economic impositions and coercive sanctions.

On the other hand, the vision of the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed Ali, coincides with that of President Maduro in the defense of multilateralism, peace, respect, cooperation and integration of the peoples of the world, which was demonstrated from the first exchange held on Wednesday between both leaders.

Ethiopia's geographical position in the so-called Horn of Africa favours connectivity with the rest of the region, trade and global economic integration, as well as efforts to build development infrastructure.

Boldness to Rebuild the Multilateral System and De-Dollarize Global Finance
Venezuela's voice denouncing the genocide against the Palestinian people was heard during the meeting with its president, Mahmoud Abbas. Venezuelan leader Maduro, who called for defending the right to life in that nation, said that "the cause of the Palestinian people is the cause of Venezuela."

Relations between the two countries celebrated their 15th anniversary last April, which was commemorated by the Venezuelan government along with a call to stop war crimes and crimes against humanity against the population of Gaza and the West Bank by Israel.

On Thursday, the second day of the summit, plenary sessions were held in Outreach/Brics Plus format. From there, President Maduro condemned the UN's inaction in the face of the Israeli genocide in Gaza and Lebanon, calling for the re-foundation of the system of this organization through a "practical and bold" plan.

A more extensive review of President Nicolás Maduro's speech is available here .

On the second day, Iranian President Masud Pezeshkian said in a meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart that members of the BRICS group and other countries can deepen their ties "regardless of the unilateralism and totalitarianism of Western countries" and "establish a new order in the world."


Presidents Maduro and Pezeshkian agreed that countries must “establish a new order in the world” (Photo: Archive)

The Venezuelan president, for his part, said that "the actions of Americans and Westerners in various regions today reflect a worrying reproduction of neo-Nazi and neo-fascist dynamics, while Zionism embodies a resurgence of Nazism and fascism on the global stage."

Both leaders agreed to deepen their relations, which, in the energy field, have made steady and firm progress following the visit to Caracas in June 2023 by the late President Ebrahim Raisi.

In addition, in the context of the bilateral strategic alliance, there are frequent meetings of both Venezuelan delegations traveling to Tehran and Iranians visiting Caracas for technological exchange and the development of energy security issues.

Maduro also held a meeting with Bolivian President Luis Arce, who said on his social media: "We reaffirm our revolutionary struggle for unity and cooperation between our countries, at a time when imperialist interests seek to weaken democracy and the social achievements of our people."

The Venezuelan president stressed that both countries "are nations united by a deep history, under the principles of brotherhood conceived by our father, Liberator, Simon Bolivar; from the BRICS we emerge towards development and prosperity."

Since Arce's visit to Caracas in April 2023, within the framework of the Third Bolivia-Venezuela Integration Commission, some 13 cooperation agreements have been signed in the areas of energy and oil, gas, education, culture, health, mining, among others, which were reviewed in Kazan.

With Vietnam, Venezuela is establishing a joint venture for glass production, as well as agreements on agriculture, a Memorandum of Understanding with PDVSA and new plans for the development of technological and telecommunications capabilities in Venezuela. These ties were reviewed by the executive vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, in a meeting with the ambassador of that country days before the summit.

The meeting with the Prime Minister of Vietnam, Pham Minh Cinh, served to review the map of cooperation and the status of these agreements, as well as to increase economic, commercial and investment ties.

During the plenary sessions of the Outreach/BRICS Plus format, the Venezuelan president insisted on the implementation of a basket of currencies that combines the strengths of the superpowers with the right to have their own currency in each of our countries; we must find practical solutions to the problems of development.

Venezuela, which has been besieged by illegal sanctions from the United States and the European Union to achieve regime change, has proposed a new payment system "to replace those systems that have been used as weapons of aggression," in Maduro's words.

Lula and Amorim failed in their objective
At the end of the event, during the press conference to present the results of the summit, President Putin confirmed his recognition of the legitimacy of the government led by President Maduro and wished it success. He added that he sees Venezuela's entry into the BRICS as possible if all the countries in the group approve it and clarified that, on this issue, the positions of Russia and Brazil do not coincide.

In order for the Bolivarian Republic to be admitted into the alliance of countries, the consent of all its members is required, as required by the rules of the association, and without unanimity, there can be no action on admission, the Russian leader explained.

Venezuela has participated in multiple forums and high-level meetings within the BRICS and also promotes actions in favor of a new financial architecture. It also seeks democratization in the participation of countries in the different multilateral spaces, which strongly involves it with the values ​​and goals of the BRICS group, and strengthens the strategic cooperation frameworks with the key nations of the group.

These are the key elements to understand that, beyond Brazil's veto, Venezuela has an active presence on the platform and participates regularly in its activities, situations that reflect a close relationship, as demonstrated by the Venezuelan president's attendance at the summit in Kazan. In this sense, Lula and Amorin did not achieve their objective.

The fact that Brazil opposes Venezuela's participation is a breaking point with the nature of the BRICS and its main postulates. In this sense, through its foreign ministry, the national government described Brazil's decision to veto its entry into the economic bloc as a "hostile gesture" and considered that it reproduces the policy of sanctions applied against the country. Misión Verdad has analyzed the possible motivations for this position by the Lula administration, as well as its implications .

The statement, published last Thursday by the Bolivarian Government, states that the countries that participated in the summit supported and backed Venezuela's integration into this organization. However, Brazil tried to impose a unilateral criterion in a space created precisely for cooperation and complementarity.

It should be remembered that the Amazonian country and India, which are less distant from the Western orbit, have maintained a cautious position regarding the accession of new members since the meeting of foreign ministers held in June. At that meeting, it was decided to "take a break" from new admissions, so they have been negotiating categories of partner countries as previous stages to full membership. However, openly, spokespersons of the Brazilian delegation such as Lula's special advisor, Celso Amorim, made negative comments regarding Venezuela's entry.

An example of how the strategic need for multipolarity prevails over disagreements is the meeting, within the framework of the summit, between the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, and the President of China, Xi Jinping, in which a historic border agreement was reached to end a four-year confrontation involving tens of thousands of their soldiers in the mountainous region of Ladakh.

In his speech, the Venezuelan president insisted on boldness in unblocking issues such as the global financial architecture and the genocidal onslaught of the State of Israel. This contrasted with Lula's positioning on Venezuela, which generated friction in the bloc and whose results will be measured in this new stage, both for the BRICS and for bilateral relations.

Brazil's stance did not prevent Venezuela's relations with emerging powers such as Russia, China, India, Turkey, Iran, among others, from emerging stronger from the summit. This was demonstrated by the words of their presidents, but also by the actions taken, and to be taken, in the field of international cooperation.

New steps in terms of relations and the relaunching of others place Venezuela on a strategic level where commercial and cooperation opportunities are expanded in different areas that would benefit the population. Based on this, Maduro stated through his Telegram account that "we have been in the BRICS for 200 years, now we are building a powerful economic agenda, with a policy that unifies humanity. In that sense, I say that we have been in the BRICS for many years."

The device forged in Washington to isolate the national government after June 28 —and to which Brazil has joined with its veto— has not generated the desired effect, neither against Venezuela nor against its strategic allies.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/as ... -los-brics

Google Translator

******

Venezuelan Agroecological Collective Resists Sanctions With Food Sovereignty
October 25, 2024


Venezuelans visiting the Conuquera Fair in Caracas. Photo: AFGJ.

By William Camacaro and Natalia Burdyńska Schuurman

Earlier this month, on October 5, the Feria Conuquera celebrated a decade of existence. The celebrations took place in the Sucre de Los Caobos park in Caracas, Venezuela.

Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ) has fostered a close bond with this agroecological collective working to advance food sovereignty in the midst of a U.S. blockade that for years has severely strangulated Venezuela’s economy. Together with our dear founder, the late Chuck Kaufman, we’ve worked in solidarity with this group of frontline resisters.

Feria Conuquera was founded in the years during which the anti-transgenic movement in Venezuela gave a beautiful battle from the grassroots to draft a law that would protect autochthonous seeds native to the agroindustry. A symbol of Venezuela’s agroecological movements, the organization is committed to promoting equality, justice and respect for Mother Earth.

Today the organization hosts fairs on the first Saturday of each month, where local producers bring healthy food and products, artisanal and free of agrotoxins, directly from the hands of their producers to the population of greater Caracas. Approximately 40 small producers meet to offer agricultural products, processed foods, plants, herbal medicine, artenia and more. One can hear live music, socializing and political discussions about Venezuelan social reality, such as alternative medicine, climate change, sustainability, sanctions and food security.



AFGJ congratulates our friends at the Feria Conuquera for ten years of struggle and life in spite of a brutal imperial blockade comprising over 900 illegal unilateral coercive measures designed to destabilize Venezuela’s economy, one of the most harmful effects of which has been the creation of food insecurity. We congratulate the Venezuelan people for their commendable advancements in the establishment of food sovereignty, evident in the country’s shift from 80% dependence on food imports to nearly complete food self-sufficiency today.

There is so much to celebrate for all that has been bravely achieved under the most difficult conditions Venezuela has faced in its history since the establishment of its independence.

Congratulations: the struggle continues, and a better world is possible.

https://orinocotribune.com/venezuelan-a ... vereignty/

[blindpig]

One hundred billion dollars and they didn't bring it down

The Cayapo

30 Oct 2024 , 12:05 pm .


This new attempt to overthrow the government and throw the country into chaos forces us to analyze reality (Photo: El Cayapo)

Since April 11, 2002, we have discovered that the war will not stop until we are different. That peaceful coexistence is not possible between slaves and slave owners, especially when we slaves become aware of our interests.\

Corporations, not counting what is not lied about and remains in the shadows, have spent almost five times the country's budget in 2024 to destroy the State. That's five years of budgets, and these gentlemen haven't even had a scratch on their head. That gives us the dimension of what they want to steal.

Who reveals the miserable existence
From 1998 until today, there have been many coups and battles and one continuous war. The global region's confusion-mongers, with their repeater antennas in every territory or mine, give it many names, many actors, many definitions, many epithets, but the unquestionable truth is that there is only one enemy and it is capitalism in each of its variants, imposing a war on the world to continue stealing, sorry, earning, but without investing.

It is not a hybrid war, a fifth or last generation war, a multifactorial or mini or maxifactorial war, a dirty, holy, preventive, cold, conventional or unconventional war, a sexual, cybernetic, electronic, digital, computer, communicational war; it is war, the same old war, the one that seeks loot, the one that kills, the one that steals, the one that plunders and makes the richest rich.

The intellectuals or technocrats of any ism take pleasure in giving it names, competing to see who is more creative when it comes to naming each coup, each crime, each pillage, but none of them contribute in their in-depth analysis how we can collectively end the war that affects us every day, how war was turned into a world system to obtain greater loot, and today it is called capitalism or capitalist empire. Each one Cartesianly analyzes what will provide their selfish plate of food; each one will feel sorry for the victims; they will shout until they are tired "genocide, crime, murder." Each one will collect their share of blood and sleep peacefully until the next march or post on X, or banner or podcast, without realizing their own mess.

Who in the us
As long as we continue to defend our unions, the siege of the transnationals, which do have a clear objective in this country, will advance against us. As long as we do not understand that trying to solve the problems of capitalism will only keep us in capitalism, we will lose the war because the real and mentally needy, in their drug addiction, do not care about the country but about their needs, and each one tries to pull the bait for his own sardine, weakening us all and strengthening the real enemy.

No union is at the service of the country, we all, knowingly or through ignorance, provide great services to those who claim to be the harmers. We all, without realizing it, attack the government, because of the pamphlet we carry in our brains that all government is bad. We do not understand, not even some government officials, incited by the mining culture and corrupt businessmen, that there is a war beyond the borders and that this war affects us because its objective is the free appropriation of the resources we have to live on; that the government we have up to now has not given any signs of wanting to harm us, as was the policy of the previous ones that protected foreign interests without any shame, handing over resources for crumbs that enriched local elites and impoverished the country as a whole. When we talk about unions, we also talk about selfish individuals who believe that the only problems that exist are their own.

Who has always swallowed us up
According to the government's position, the continued coup in Venezuela makes perfect sense, since ExxonMobil asked itself: How are we going to lose the largest energy reserve on the planet? In fact, they invested in Guyana because they believed that by using the puppet Guyanese government to take the Essequibo from Venezuela they would achieve the objective of positioning themselves in the territory and from there set up a beachhead, but they failed. They could not screw us over immediately, but they continue to try, because extracting oil from Guyana is in five years and in Venezuela it is in six months. As far as we know, ExxonMobil has invested a pittance of 100 billion dollars to overthrow the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, with individuals like Elon Musk joining in with a billion, not counting the low-down investment of those looking to make a buck in the fight.

ExxonMobil, we must remember, is the main plaintiff against Venezuela and the reason why CITGO is being taken away from us, because it is the one that is leading the lawsuits against the expropriations that the Venezuelan government made in 2006-2007. That whole group of corporations cannot do business with Venezuela, because they are suing the Venezuelan State. And not only can they not, they do not want to; they want the resource for free.

That is what explains the attempted coup d'état of July 28, 2024, frustrated by the government. Behind the coup, we can name many executors and accomplices, from the United States government, through England, the European Union, the UN, the OAS, Lula, Petro, the governments of Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, regardless of the names or ideologies they claim to lead, plus the host of second, third and last category agents, up to Edmundo, María Corina, Leopoldo, Ledezma, Guaidó, who are the crawling crumb-seekers, but truly those who are behind the loot are not them: they are ExxonMobil, Cristalex, financial-speculative capital, and that tail is stuck by minor businessmen who become financiers of terrorist operations, carried out by politicians and mercenaries turned traitors who keep terrorism alive in the territory.

They don't insist out of stupidity but out of interest
We must remember 1989 as the corollary of a global plan by financial-speculative capital to eliminate the State and establish chaos controlled by corporations, a plan that was interrupted three years later by the military insurrection of 4F led by Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías. From then on, a new process began that brought about the paralysis of the bourgeois plan in practice and the development of the plan proposed by the 4F insurgents, which led to the assumption of the State by electoral means. It was then that the war imposed by the bourgeoisie broke out.

Since 1998, the intentions and the facts have shown that the bourgeoisie or the corporations do not want a traditional government in the country, but rather to create chaos through civil war in order to obtain resources under conditions of low investment and greater profit. This is what explains the lack of respect for the new Constitution, which they have burned, trampled, and broken. They maintain their original plan: to destroy the State. Until now they have not given up on their violent coup plans to overthrow the government; the times they have taken the electoral route, it is to protect their true intentions and coup actions with that legal cloak. Anyone who makes an analysis from 1998 until today will realize what we are saying.

A simple example is enough. They were able to take political control of this country in 2015, as a result of the fatigue that any government generates. They won with a campaign banner, company strikes, shortages throughout the country, sabotage of public services, sanctions, the blockade, impoverished international relations and the promise that everything will improve, "if I win, everything will fall into place," "this will be the last line." It was a perfect storm and they won hands down.

In January 2016, they assumed the National Assembly and only had to wait six months to choose the electoral power because it was expiring. In December 2016 there were elections for mayors and governors, with the electoral and legislative power on their side. They had to take the governorships and the mayoralties and they won almost all of them by a landslide. In March-April 2017, some members of the Supreme Court of Justice ceased their functions by law and with that they obtained the majority in the court. They would control three of the five powers in the country, and all the governorships and all the mayoralties. With this national emboldening, the road to Miraflores was paved, but they decided to continue the war until today: riots, invasions, frustrated assassination attempts, self-proclamation of the mequetrefe and other terrorist actions, dismantled by the civil-military union.

July 28, 2024 was the deadline for the development of the plan of plans to once again try to overthrow the government and lead us to civil war. A very well-crafted plan, where they linked the legal and illegal forms of struggle, terrorist and electoral, where they had all the national and international political resources, from the right, the left, progressive and retro; the military, technological, cybernetic and electronic resources, ministers, all the world's propaganda capacity; all the networks bought hundreds of insipid and mercenary influencers, and even witches; they used everything they had in the bag, but they couldn't. For example, the Comanditos: that went beyond electoral propaganda; what they were really organizing were the criminal gangs, and with that they intended great chaos.

They fought on July 29, 2024, in the surroundings of Miraflores; they killed 27 people in various places around the country. It was a massive plan, they had strength, they had the drive, they tried to control airports. It was a long-term plan, it was not just a three-day plan. The security forces captured and continue to capture Spaniards, gringos, Czechs and other nationalities, and a lot of military equipment, rifles, grenades, ammunition, among others. They believed that they had crowned the cover of the military plan with the anticipated story of fraud. They did not have electoral machinery, because they took it upon themselves to destroy it so that they would not create a distraction, diverting resources towards the electoral; that is why they spread the argument of the spontaneous vote, which does not need machinery, because popular discontent would turn towards the vote against the government.

While it is true that nobody wants governments, spontaneous nobody does not overthrow the government or mobilize, unless he is led by a large machinery. Example: Chavez in 1998. Even they discouraged their people. Those leaflets directed at the military plan scared more than one person. "Whether we win or not, we are going to Miraflores."

Two months after these events, the owners of financial-speculative capital, in spite of traditional politicians, continue with their subversive plans by the usual fast and violent means. But why? For the simple reason that time is not on their side in the framework of world geopolitics, their plans are increasingly hampered, the thesis of multipolarity is gaining popularity every day, and the BRICS are becoming stronger as a robust mechanism, capable of solving problems and interacting on equal terms in the international environment, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is becoming increasingly important strategically, in the concert of the nations of the world, with its resources: we are talking about the largest oil reserve on the planet, gas, coltan, gold, water and a territory strategically located on a continent that has to do with the Caribbean and South America, that is, for them, disorganizing Venezuela and creating chaos in the Caribbean and Latin America is their triumph.

But in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela there is a strong government that has dismantled the terrorist plan of financial-speculative capital; this government has had the same plan for 25 years, and nowhere does it indicate that it is heading towards chaos. The plan indicates stabilization.

Who will look out with amazement in their eyes
This new attempt to overthrow the government and throw the country into chaos forces us to analyze reality.

There are many who are feverishly in the mines of humanism who truly believe that under capitalism we will be allowed to progress and become civilized as Europe did, if we work with discipline and build ourselves up as a power within no matter how many years or centuries. In any case, nothing is easy, they say, because Europe lasted about seven hundred years to become what it is today: another bankruptcy of capitalism in its imperial stage.

This proposal seems laudable, but there is always a but. First of all, the Europeans went on a rampage to invade the cultures of the Mediterranean, the Arabs, the Persians, the Slavs and even the Chinese. They looted for two hundred years, all in the name of God and his holy war. They were able to accumulate great wealth that allowed them to finance great scientific, artistic and productive experiments, but not only that, but in Europe itself, using guns, kicks and kung fu, they evicted the peasants from the land and under military discipline turned them into modern slaves called workers, all of which was documented by the reformers and thinkers of the time.

But, in addition, with that stolen money and knowledge, they were able to finance trips to the American, African and Asian continents, where they plundered not only the resources that they would later exchange for riches, but above all the energy-people, which allowed them the great accumulation of capital that today recognizes them as people who have never broken a plate, with their refined salons, with their amazing meals, with their exquisite art, with their calm and exact word, of course very poorly imitated from the plundered cultures, but with the European human mantle, which sanctifies everything while hiding the crime.

We ask then, assuming that we decide to embrace the brilliant proposal of progress and economic power, who are we going to invade? Because in this whole tale of Europe as a power, nowhere have we seen that Europe sold energy, gold, coltan, oil, spices, fruits, rare earths, uranium, water to anyone, but even more so, it was never a colony of anyone to become the power that it is, and much less the United States, its spoiled child, which was not really a colony, but the great experiment of capitalism on American soil, where they practiced with the original inhabitants exactly the same as their European ancestors did, but with more cruelty and viciousness, because those were not humans with defensive capacity.

But going further, we have never seen European scientists, intellectuals, artists, professionals betray their homeland, nor have we ever seen them come to study in these colonies or mines to later become the talkers of these governments to overthrow their own governments, or to sell the idea that they are inferior to the inhabitants of the colonies or mines where they studied, as we see every day with the lords of the mining elites who send their children to study in Europe and then come to these lands as colonial or mining representatives, forcing the inhabitants through schools, high schools, universities, museums, cultural complexes, to behave like Europeans. We have seen European scholars come to study us in order to make us inferior, to inventory our resources and then steal them from us. But let us suppose that we succeed in doing so so as not to spoil anyone's party and be called pessimists; We will make every effort to end up bankrupt like Europe today and its libertarian child, the United States.

Who will emerge outside of old ideas
The school, a slave-training apparatus on various levels, which was born in Europe as a barracks for blind obedience and discipline in the learning of trades, was linked to the industrial revolution, and since then the reformers of this system have written a lot of literature to turn schools into centers for free people, to the point that they have brought to it all the stupid or grandiose ideas that have ever occurred, and up to now this rubbish continues to function and destroy brains in all its forms, continues to indoctrinate people, castrating the capacity for thought, without anyone realizing that inside it is impossible to change anything unless a philosophical bonfire is lit and destroys the ankylosed, petrified walls of the school concept, and then one can understand the need to create another mode of production that generates its own knowledge and its own transmission mechanisms that replace the current mode of production and the school as its transmission mechanism.

The school cannot be free because it is an institution, an instrument, a tool, that serves the libertarian purposes of capitalism. It is the instrument that enslaves, through knowledge, the slaves who make the freedom of the capitalist mode of production possible.

That is why all the pamphlets on the free, liberating school, the liberation of the oppressed, the pedagogy of liberation, transformative pedagogy, critical liberating pedagogy, education as a practice of freedom, educating in individual freedom, free pedagogy and, to top off the gruesome outbursts, "God's Pedagogy: an Education for Freedom"; god and freedom, terms or concepts that are opposed because freedom as action, as fact, is the opposite of god on earth, which in turn was the instrument of the warlords in the feudal era to subdue the species; and likewise, capitalism continues to use it for the same purpose; and like these, thousands of linguistic devices, to hide the true function of the school, which is none other than to train slaves to feed the immense apparatus of capitalist production in the world.

Gentlemen, the school cannot be reformed except to increase efficiency in its task.

Corollary of the immediate
While the beast, all over the world, bares its menacing fangs and wallows in the blood and detritus of corpses, the cowardice of the unthinking swirls around them, crying out not to be eaten, not knowing that they are next. Only thought will separate us from the beast and make us together. We have been in combat for 25 years, winning battles, but we need to think about how to win the war by abandoning the concept of the enemy.

https://misionverdad.com/chavismo/cien- ... o-tumbaron

[blindpig]

The Function of the Compatible Left Seen in its Attacks on the Venezuelan Revolution
Posted by Internationalist 360° on November 3, 2024
Stansfield Smith


“Compatible left” was a term used by the CIA to describe those on the left it has deemed compatible with maintaining imperialist world rule. This left has dominated the US left since the end of World War II, in large part a result of government operations repressing the communist or anti-imperialist left. Historically, this compatible left that the CIA worked to cultivate rejects actually existing socialism and formed a “third camp” or “plague on both houses” left between capitalist and socialist countries. Providing a “respectable” alternative to the anti-imperialists, it used its progressive flavor to lure in radical youth, activists, workers, and intellectuals.

The CIA is correctly seen as a ruthless organization that overthrows democratic governments considered a threat to US domination. But this overlooks the CIA’s “gentler” work: underwriting and encouraging a compatible left, one which looks to the Democratic Party for political leadership. The CIA has secretly funded and managed a wide range of these groups and individuals. It sought to drive a wedge between the anti-imperialist left and the compromising “democratic socialist” left it found could serve the needs of US imperialism.

Today, the US national security state continues this work to undermine the anti-imperialist left and build up a faux left that subscribes to the “lesser evil” of the Democratic Party. Corporate foundations, such as the Rockefeller, Ford, Open Society, and Tides foundations, continue to funnel CIA money to progressive causes critical of actual anti-imperialism.

This liberal left has taken many different forms over the years. A century ago, its proponents included Karl Kautsky and Social Democracy with their condemnations of the Bolshevik revolution. In the US after World War II, they were dubbed “State Department socialists,” those who fight for social reforms at home, but whose international politics harmonize with government foreign policy positions, particularly under Democratic administrations. The CIA funded “Western Marxism,” a non-communist left and helped it grow in stature. Herbert Marcuse, who worked with the Office of Strategic Services, and later the State Department, may be the most renowned of this group. The Frankfurt School was another, also CIA supported.

Ten years ago, compatible leftists often described themselves as anti anti-imperialists and launched virulent attacks on those speaking out against US intervention in Qaddafi’s Libya and Assad’s Syria. They dropped that self-designation, though, as it too obviously revealed where they stood. Today this compatible left is most easily identified with the Democratic Party-DSA milieu, the Squad, Bernie Sanders, Jacobin, In These Times, and The Nation.

The US rulers foster these “left” gatekeepers as boundary markers for “respectable” left views. In the 60s the term used was “responsible.” This left is used to undermine and marginalize the anti-war or anti-imperialist movement. It calls out “from the left” real or concocted human rights issues in countries the US targets, so help legitimize US propaganda campaigns, becoming witting or unwitting conveyor belts for them into our movement. As a result, this compatible left has much greater access to foundation funding and to progressive media than anti-imperialists. They are much more likely to be employed by universities, NGOs, progressive thinktanks, and to appear on mainstream and liberal-left news.

Recent Compatible Left Attacks on Venezuela

Lucas Koerner and Ricardo Vaz:

“Every time Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution is faced with renewed threats to its survival, a stratum of U.S.-based intellectuals is always ready with ‘left’ critiques that deliberately obscure the permanent imperialist siege against the country.”

Koerner and Vaz illustrated this type with Gabriel Hetland in New Left Review and Alejandro Velasco in The Nation. Hetland and Velasco capitulate to the US State Department position rejecting the electoral victory of Nicolas Maduro. They urge us to “‘resist apologism for Maduro’ and accept the victory of a fascist-led opposition movement.” Another of this type is Fred Fuentes, who once defended Bolivian President Evo Morales’ Movement for Socialism from the same type of attack.

Velasco was the executive editor for NACLA from 2015-2021, whose Board Chair Program Director is Thomas Kruse of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The Nation, which published Hetland, receives hundreds of thousands a year in corporate foundation funding.

The US coup operation planned for the Venezuelan presidential election last July 28 was to culminate in the hacking and disruption of the vote count, with the defeated far right party of Maria Machado declaring themselves the winner. This was to be followed by guarimbas (chaos, destruction, and murders in the streets) and then military intervention to crush the Chavista movement. The US-backed operation has been exposed by numerous writers, including Francisco Dominguez, Leonardo Flores, Roger Harris, Maria Paez Victor, Stansfield Smith, Nino Pagliccia, Alfred de Zayas, National Lawyers Guild(and here), Arnold August, Edward Hunt, Luigino Bracci Roa, and others. Needless to say, the Hetland-Velasco type avoid addressing the realities these anti-imperialists present.

The US empire regularly cooks up human rights horror stories that this compatible left then feeds us, like this latest iteration of Chavista electoral fraud. The empire also concocted stories of “killing of students in Nicaragua in 2018, Qaddafi’s plans for mass rape and murder in Libya, Hamas mass killing and rape of civilians on October 7, Chinese genocide in Xinjiang, Iran’s killing of Mahsa Amin in 2022, Evo Morales stealing an election in 2019, Cuba’s repression of mass protests in 2021, Russia’s “unprovoked” intervention into Ukraine, Syria’s Assad chemical weapons attack on his own people, Venezuela’s President Maduro fixing the [2018] elections, Chavez’ supporters killing protestors in 2002, and on and on. The only truth to these stories is that the US corporate media constantly lie to us to win support for their interventions.”

The Hetland-Velasco compatible left type functions as a conveyor belt for this US “regime change” propaganda into the progressive and anti-war movement. Koerner and Vaz themselves noted similar compatible left campaigns against Libya, Syria Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Zimbabwe, China, Cuba, Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua, among others. To that can be added Russia, North Korea, Hamas, and Hezbollah.

“This approach [by the Hetland-Velasco type] of criticizing leaderships of countries targeted for overthrow, not imperialist aggression, and not building movements against intervention, is too common among progressives today. It portrays an elementary lack of anti-imperialist consciousness.”

The actual work of anti-imperialists requires exposing the US empire’s continuous interventionist actions and provocations, and consequent high costs we pay at home. It requires equipping people with this information and organizing working people against the domestic and foreign damage of the empire’s interference and interventions. Working people are still largely unaware of the toll of US coup attempts, terrorist actions, corporate arm-twisting of foreign leaders, the empire’s weaponizing international banking and finance, the effects of US “sanctions” and blockades, the use of NGOs as regime change tools, or the scope of corporate media disinformation. In short, all the US rulers’ behind-the-scenes activities that Julian Assange and Wikileaks brought to light. This, not critiquing victimized countries’ real or concocted human rights abuses or their responses to US aggression, is anti-imperialist work.

Fred Fuentes, while the compatible left type today, had an anti-imperialist past when covering the MAS leadership in Bolivia, even taking on the very type he has become. Back in 2014 he explained:

The challenges Bolivia faces cannot be simply reduced to a question of [present day] imperialist ‘meddling’: they are a direct result of centuries of colonialism and imperialist oppression, which have entrenched Bolivia in its role within the world economy as a dependent raw commodity exporter….The main way we can help Bolivia’s social movements is still by winning over working people in the North to a position of solidarity with Bolivia. And the best way to do this is not to simply oppose “imperialist meddling” but to build an international movement against the imperialist system… explaining why, as long as imperialism exists, Bolivia’s process of change will undoubtedly continue to face tremendous obstacles and dangers.” (“Bad Left Government” versus “Good Left Social Movements”? , Latin America’s Radical Left, pp. 120, 121)

Today, Fuentes sings the Hetland-Velasco tune, claiming President Maduro and the Chavistas stole the election – the same position as the Venezuelan fascist right, the US State Department, and the CIA.

The Compatible Left Role in US Elections

We find this compatible left especially active in US presidential season. They tell us it’s vital for the left to vote for the genocidal Biden-Harris regime to save “democracy” from the “fascist” Trump. They may throw out there that the two parties are run by corporate America, that we need our own party. But they only say this to emphasize that this election is different, the most significant of our lifetimes, given the looming fascist danger.

Translated, they are saying no time is a good time for a labor party. Every election is the wrong time. Every election vote Democratic. Never try to build a third party. In election season their “lesser evil” rhetoric morphs into voting the Democratic ticket as actually a positive good. The Nation condemns President Maduro and endorses Kamala, finding her “worthy of our votes and our support.” Worse still, this type excuses, even covers up the constant rightward shift of the Democrats while exaggerating that shift in the Republicans, the same way the Hetland-Velasco-Fuentes type covers up US-sponsored election stealing regime change while making evidence-free fraud allegations against the Chavistas.

This faux left assures the Democrats that you can commit genocide for over a year, you can march humanity towards nuclear war with Russia, you can continue to neglect the needs of the people at home, and we will still harangue the left milieu to vote for you. That tells the Democrats they can keep moving to the right, they can ignore our protests against their inhumane policies, and they can still count on our votes. Their function is to sabotage the building of an independent working class political movement, just as they sabotage the anti-imperialist solidarity movement.

The compatible left attacks not just those defending other countries’ national liberation against the US empire, but also attacks our own fight for national liberation against this corporate ruling class at home.

In building the anti-imperialist working class movement, a key opponent we face is this liberal-left Fifth Column, though this is not so apparent in these times of relative social peace.

This conveyor belt of imperialist propaganda into the working class movement does possess decent “cred” in the left milieu, so earns a hearing here (as Democracy Now illustrates), something traditional bourgeois analysts and talking heads do not possess.

When the class struggle does heat up here, this type will be one final weapon the rulers will use against us before they actually resort to genuine fascist rule. We saw this with the Social Democrats and the Mensheviks in World War I and its aftermath. Regardless of the bluster the compatible left makes today about fighting “fascism,” the role they played then was essential for the rise of fascism in Italy and Germany. As the CIA recognizes, the compatible left plays a vital role in their “regime change” propaganda, and in obstructing the building of an anti-imperialist movement of working people in the US.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2024/11/ ... evolution/

******

What will happen to the political-party system in Venezuela?
28 Oct 2024 , 3:00 pm .


The parliamentary benches and Chavista and opposition parties have formed working groups to discuss the new legislative initiatives (Photo: Ultimas Noticias)

The National Assembly of Venezuela (AN), together with the majority of the country's political parties, continue to hold working meetings and discussions in order to reform a set of laws that regulate political and electoral activities in the country.

Both the parties involved and the participating benches in the initiative represent the plurality that encompasses Chavismo and the opposition, despite the notable absence of some groups that have electoral cards and that make up the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), since this block decided not to form part of the proposal.

Among the texts under discussion are the Organic Law on Electoral Processes and the Law on Political Parties, Public Meetings and Demonstrations. However, the need to address legislation on specific matters has emerged in the deliberations, such as the financing of parties and groups of voters. This was stated by Jorge Rodríguez, president of the AN.

"Dialogue between parties" is the name given to this working mechanism between parliamentarians and the political parties. However, its discussions have opened up to a stage of consultations and contributions from various sectors of society.

"Political parties, organisations, social movements, academics, universities, community councils, in other words, everyone can give their input and opinion," said the speaker of parliament.

Rodríguez announced that through intensive work by the teams they hope to present the new legal instruments by December 15.

All of this arises from needs that have accumulated over the last few years, especially due to the vulnerabilities of the political system and the ecosystem of parties that operate in the country.

Venezuela has dealt with ongoing regime change operations, led by political subjects, elected officials and parties that have taken advantage of the guarantees of the political system to perpetrate unconstitutional acts. The list of examples is very long, but among the most relevant cases we can mention:

In 2002, various party leaders, governors, mayors and deputies had open roles in the April coup d'état.
During the color revolutions ( guarimbas ) of 2014 and 2017, various political leaders participated as organizers of street political violence.
The opposition deputies elected for the 2015-2020 period in the AN committed contempt of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), promoted the institutional coup , formalized the request for foreign sanctions against the country and illegally swore in the then deputy Juan Guaidó as "interim president" with external support, coordination and encouragement.
Party leaders plotted failed rebellions such as " Operation Freedom " in April 2019 and actions with mercenaries and paramilitaries, such as " Operation Gedeón " in 2020.
Despite this chain of events, these political parties and many of their leaders remain active in Venezuelan political life, some have even been elected to office due to loopholes in current laws.

Discussion axes
Breaking down the elements, the needs and points that are part of the discussion sessions can be analysed as follows.

a) A party system tied to political reality

Rodríguez explained that the Political Parties Act was drafted in 1965 and, despite having been reformed in 2010, it still contains some "obsolete, unclear, inconclusive and even deceitful elements, which are why certain people read the laws not to respect them but to see how to circumvent them and how to sneak in."

The regularization of political organizations must go through a process of adaptation of methods and authorization of cards. He added that there is "a cemetery of political parties in the National Electoral Council" and even people who are "owners" of a party with whom they traffic, "like selling a card."

The weaknesses that exist in the national political system are noticeable from several phenomena. One of them is that a part of the opposition is represented in a non-formalized block, the PUD, but they participate in the electoral field under a card of a defunct coalition called the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD).

Another phenomenon is the case of the organization Vente Venezuela, publicly called a "political party," although in the legal sphere it has never formalized its registration with the National Electoral Council (CNE).

The new laws would be designed to create mechanisms for the electoral offer and political card system to be representative of real political dynamics and, in addition, to be adjusted to new formalization parameters.

b) Regulate the operation of organizations and their leaders

In Venezuela, there is a phenomenon in which various parties and leaders act in the "grey zone" of politics, using practices that go beyond and beyond the legal boundaries. In these cases, crimes such as terrorism, street violence and hatred are promoted or carried out under the umbrella of the political freedoms enjoyed by political-party organizations.

Jorge Rodriguez explained that some leaders "have gone so far as to claim fascism as a form of political participation." He stressed that every time there is an election in Venezuela, a wave of violence breaks out and "they go out into the streets to kill people" if they do not win.

According to Rodríguez and other deputies of the Chavista bench, the factors that tend to place themselves outside the political framework should not enjoy the rights and guarantees that the framework itself offers.

This suggests that new laws could establish mechanisms to expand penalties and the list of political, administrative and judicial violations to disqualify or prosecute, where necessary, actors and organizations that engage in certain practices.

Venezuelan electoral rules would also be adjusted in accordance with other new statutes, such as the Law against Fascism, Neofascism and Similar Expressions.

In Venezuela, phenomena have been reproduced in which various agents of the Venezuelan opposition have had open participation in completed coups d'état, failed coups d'état, sedition, hate crimes and apologies for neo-fascism and classism , but many have remained in the ring and have been elected to positions.

One of the most common frauds against the Constitution is the exercise of "politics" by subjects who have promoted sanctions and interventions against the country. These actions could be considered as acts of treason against the country in the Venezuelan Penal Code.

But the judicialisation of all political actors who have engaged in these practices entails several problems. The context demands alternative mechanisms, such as other forms of penalisation of leaders and parties, who could be excluded from political eligibility.

c) Update the legal framework according to new political realities

Rodríguez emphasized that legislative tasks go far beyond regulating political actors.

He said that the mechanisms for popular consultation, as well as the territorial organization for the distribution of positions, must also be regulated and legislated.

Proposals have emerged in the debate for the use of digital voting tools for popular consultations or "online referendums", either to exercise info-government or for various types of referendums, given that new technologies for personal use have not been integrated into the dynamics of the exercise of voting.

Other proposals that have emerged include gender parity for representative positions, a review of the system for allocating elected candidates by electoral quotient (number of representative positions per electoral district), a double electoral round, and the criteria for constructing a permanent electoral register.

In this debate, proposals have been put forward for the nomination of candidates to the National Assembly by sectors, given that the composition of seats in parliament is based solely on territorial modalities, without considering sectoral realities.

The new laws will certainly contemplate mechanisms for the development of partisan activity in the country, since there are current phenomena that are not even mentioned in current laws. One of them is the use of social networks and political-electoral propaganda mechanisms in the digital spectrum, which lack effective regulations within these legal frameworks.

The new rules that will govern the life of parties and organizations will likely emphasize degrading the ambiguity of the work of some Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) in Venezuela, in accordance with the letter of the new Law on Supervision, Regularization, Action and Financing of Non-Governmental Organizations and Related Organizations.

Various NGOs have functioned as mechanisms for indirect financing of parties, political leaders or other instances of direct and temporary action. But in addition, it could be considered that some of them actually function as public opinion builders and are subsidiaries of various political parties, using practices that are widespread and have not been regulated.

Although elections have been held in Venezuela almost every year, this does not mean that the country has consistently updated its legal system to govern the electoral system, parties and political participation.

There are topics of interest, methodologies, regulations and experiences that have not been deployed due to the legislative backlog in this matter. The discussion organized by the National Assembly will most likely be the opportunity to inject new elements into the ways of doing politics with this set of instruments.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/que- ... -venezuela

[blindpig]

The Implications for Venezuela of Marco Rubio’s Appointment as US Secretary of State
November 14, 2024


Featured Image: Senator Marco Rubio Photo: AP/J. Scott Applewhite.

In a move that will strengthen the “hawks” within the White House and the Pentagon, Donald Trump named Senator Marco Rubio as his new Secretary of State. Rubio, a staunch critic of the government of Nicolás Maduro, is seen by many as the face of the US’s hardline policy towards Latin America.

In an interview with Sputnik, political analyst Kendrick Figueredo shared his reflections on what this appointment could mean for relations between Venezuela and the United States.

“This appointment of Rubio is one more example of the erratic situation of Yankee imperialism,” commented Figueredo, who considers that Rubio’s election is not a simple political move but a sign of an “even stronger attack against our Revolution, against Cuba and Nicaragua, and against North American unity.”

Rubio, known for his uncompromising stance towards leftist governments in the region, represents, according to the analyst, “the postulates of John Quincy Adams in their most modern and dangerous version.”

A contradictory agenda and a brutalized society
Although Trump has promised a pragmatic approach to his policies, the appointment of Rubio, along with figures such as Congressman Michael Waltz for Homeland Security and Rick Scott in Congress, raises doubts about the real direction of his administration. “In its current phase of hegemonic decline, fascism is once again riding on the expectations and illusions of alienated American society,” says Figueredo.

He explains that this policy of confrontation and war is actually a way of diverting attention from internal problems and keeping a “brutalized” society entertained with a narrative of “Hollywood ultranationalism.”

The analyst adds that figures such as Rubio have found support among people in the US, not because of their political proposals, but because “they represent a way out of the threats to the ‘American Dream.'” In Figueredo’s words, Rubio’s appointment would be a nod to “the most heartfelt fears” of US society, which he describes as “discontent and frustrations that the establishment has known how to capitalize on.”



Foreign minister of imperial decadence
Figueredo also questioned Rubio’s relationships and ties:

“Marco Rubio… is Orlando Cicilia’s brother-in-law, a convicted and confessed drug trafficker,” explains Figueredo, who noted that Rubio, in his role as leader of the Venezuelan opposition abroad, has resorted to dubious strategies and alliances.

According to the analyst, Rubio embodies “the typical gusano bully character” and described him as “the ‘Tony Montana’ of Parliament,” referring to the character from the film Scarface.

For Figueredo, Rubio represents the union of several dark interests (“financial capital, terrorist groups, drug trafficking, and Zionism”) in a dangerous alliance that, in his opinion, threatens not only Venezuela but the entire Latin American region. “He is the chancellor of imperial decline,” the analyst concludes, stressing that Rubio embodies the most negative values ​​of US foreign policy.

Rubio’s operators in Venezuela
Figueredo was categorical in pointing out that the Venezuelan right has always collaborated closely with Rubio and other members of the anti-Venezuelan lobby in the United States, especially Senator Rick Scott, to attack the Bolivarian Revolution and promote “unilateral coercive measures, the theft of assets such as CITGO, and terrorist actions.”

Furthermore, the analyst mentioned that the Republican has always had support from figures from the Venezuelan far-right such as María Corina Machado, Leopoldo López, and Juan Guaidó, among others.

“They are gringos from the shore whose purpose seems to be to turn our country into another star on the US flag,” added Figueredo.

The continuity of US strategy
Looking ahead, Kendrick Figueredo expressed his conviction that the resistance of the Venezuelan people will be key to confront any attack that may arise from Rubio’s leadership in US foreign policy.

Given the possible insistence of the United States and Europe on a strategy of regime change in Venezuela, the analyst is confident that the population will once again take to the streets to reaffirm its support for the President Nicolás Maduro.

“I am convinced that on January 10, the entire world will witness the capacity of Venezuelans to mobilize and, with it, their conviction that permanent street action is the guarantee to preserve peace,” he said.

Figueredo was also critical of the position of the European Union, which, in his opinion, “marches in the rearguard of US politics in a shameful position of subordination.”

He referred to Karl Marx’s famous phrase about the repetition of history, indicating that any attempt to promote a new opposition figure in Venezuela would only be “a farce” compared to previous attempts.

Rubio’s appointment will mean an intensification of pressure on Venezuela and other Latin American countries that maintain independence in global geopolitics. Kendrick Figueredo concluded his analysis with a call for resistance and unity, pointing out that the threat Rubio represents is not only political but an attempt to subdue the region under the interests of a faction that seeks to restore US hegemony in the hemisphere.

“That world is today in a Gramscian bind, hence the danger of its monsters who, like the mafia, kill,” he concluded, reaffirming his conviction that the resistance and awareness of the people will be essential in this possible new stage of confrontation.

https://orinocotribune.com/the-implicat ... -of-state/

[blindpig]

To understand the problem in PDVSA

The Cayapo

16 Nov 2024 , 12:04 pm .


All oil corporations are behind the destruction of PDVSA (Photo: El Cayapo)

We cannot speak of failure when nothing has been attempted, when we have only copied and imitated. Studying the past so as not to repeat ourselves is our duty.

There are people who, when they do not immediately find solutions to the problems that frighten us, echo the supposed and honest anti-corruption fighters without knowing their true intentions in the political sphere. Many times these innocent people, without knowledge of the facts, spread the poison to the four winds without understanding the damage they cause to themselves and to all those affected in general.

Anti-corruption is not a solution, on the contrary, it is an anchor to misery. Today, the anti-corruptionists are drooling, they are in a trance, they have a continuous, accelerated orgasm, and they pray that it never ends. The anti-corruptionists do not want solutions, they only want to criticize, they rejoice in the pain of others, and if you ask them for solutions, they bring out the worn-out card that the best, the most capable, the experts, the educated, the unblemished honest, are needed, willing to sacrifice themselves for their task, and this in the case that they have no interest in the position, because if they do, they immediately insinuate themselves as the great saviors, shouting it from the rooftops.

The anti-corruption figures group together with the envious, the incapable, the mediocre, the critics, who seek to sow discord in order to occupy the position they criticize with fury. Normally they gather in small brotherhoods, partisan sects, in corners, in medicine cabinets or take refuge in the networks, in the media of disinformation, to launch their poisoned darts full of irresponsibility, which allows them to pressure and obtain the juicy position where they immediately form a web of protection, until a larger or different mafia takes away their loot.

But do we know of any anti-corruption activists who have designed a plan to get to the bottom of the so-called corruption? Have you seen them present a book with a set of ideas that thoroughly analyzes the real causes of this or that criticized situation? Never. Of course, they fill books and books with cases of corruption, they cite Bolívar, Cristo and now Chávez as threatening cudgels against corruption, pointing them out as the champions of anti-corruption, hiding the fact that in their time all of them were accused of being corrupt and murdered by the same brutalized herd that, today as yesterday, shout in their outrage “Death to the corrupt!”

These gentlemen swarm in the different parties, whether right or left, communist or anarchist, chavista, utopian or religious. They feed the legends, the mysteries, of acts of corruption; they are experts and gain a reputation for honesty by living corruptly by criticizing corruption, and until they prove the opposite of their banal and corrupt existence, they do not deserve to be taken into account in the search for real solutions to the causes that generate poverty. Ultimately, the action of the anti-corruption only seeks to maintain capitalism by cleaning up its filth from time to time.

To understand the PDVSA problem, let us ask ourselves some questions: Who founded it, why was it founded, when was it founded, what interests did it obey, whose plans were those, why did the transnationals put Gómez in power and removed Castro, why did they stage a coup against Medina, why did they remove Pérez Jiménez from power, why did they want to overthrow Chávez, why did they assassinate him, what role did the AD-COPEY leadership play since 1942 in this whole transnational mafia racket that controls the oil business and all other businesses in the world, why do the transnational oil companies pursue the Bolivarian government with such ferocity, inciting their political, intellectual, academic, professional, hater, ignorant and climbing dogs, who do the work of unclogging the drain so that the wealth continues to flow comfortably to the centers of foreign power?

When the first oil corporation set foot on this territory, it already had a drill and a seesaw on its back, ready to steal our oil, but it did not only bring these technological tools. With it, it created an army, an academy, professions, architecture, art, a school, a high school, a university; all with American study manuals; ways, uses and customs that they ordinarily imposed through their Rotary clubs, Lions clubs, baseball, chewing gum, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, cigarettes, radio, television, movies; their oil fields, where they imposed their ordinary customs on the workers who repeated and blended into these miseries imposed by the routine of work.

It was a complete silent invasion. To do so, they had the invaluable service of the elites who even offered to serve as buyers of oil concessions. The rest is well known: Venezuela went from being a European colony to being a colony of oil and commercial corporations, with the aftertaste of the elites who saw their profits grow as a result of the crumbs dropped by the corporations, and not from their effort and productive work.

From then on, the corporations became the bosses of this oil mine, their designs were carried out to the letter and anyone who opposed their dictatorship was, at the very least, subjected to public ridicule. Government leaders who opposed them or attempted acts of sovereignty were overthrown, removed from government or simply murdered. We have the case of Castro, Medina Angarita, Pérez Jiménez or Chávez, who was murdered on the orders of the oil companies.

For 86 years, the oil companies ruled this mine dictatorially, imposing business, military, professional, artistic, academic, educational, and political doctrine. Let us look at the textbooks, and even those that talk about conuco, ecology, or permaculture, where they cite American or European researchers, and even today there is no question about agroindustry as a consumer of the agricultural budget, a ruiner of the soil, and a poisoner of people and animals, much less what has to do with extraction techniques, trade, or administration of oil and its petrochemical derivatives.

Corporations have agents at all levels. Since the 1940s, they have controlled companies, political parties, the State and all other organizations that work in Venezuelan territory, which blindly obey the transnational mandate. No one dares to question the holy grail of American doctrines, achieved in less than a hundred years.

PDVSA was founded and managed by managers trained and at the service of the various corporations that have always stolen oil, using the same mafia techniques used by the corporations. In fact, the only presidents who have managed to half-discover the insides of the monster and force it reluctantly to obey government directives have not belonged to its payroll, but have been politicians infiltrated by the process, for example Commander Ali Rodriguez Araque.

With the so-called oil conversion in 1971, the transnationals that had always stolen oil from Venezuela, with the complicity of the internal elites, robbed the nation by selling it useless scrap from the oil industry at the price of new ones. But the worst thing was that with the so-called nationalization that occurred in 1976 under the sell-out government of Carlos Andrés Pérez, the transnationals recovered the entire oil industry with the privatization of PDVSA. Hence the famous oil opening.

PDVSA is the offspring of the most abject crime against the country that anyone could have imagined. This company already has the syndrome of surrendering to foreigners in its core. PDVSA's culture is not even remotely favorable to Venezuelan interests. No president, director or manager sees PDVSA as a Venezuelan interest, but rather as a springboard to climb positions in foreign oil corporations, the true owners of oil and its marketing in the world. For example, Mr. Rafael Ramírez, being a seasoned ultra-leftist militant, ends up being a member of the transnationals, which explains why he has never been sanctioned.

PDVSA was the puppet show used by the oil corporations to steal all our oil and gas resources. It was a play set up in three acts: oil conversion in 1971, nationalization in 1976 and oil opening, which began in 1992 just after 20 years of the conversion and PDVSA was working at full speed, but with a campaign by the corporations and their internal agents that it was poorly managed by the State. An attempt at looting that was stopped by Chavez in 1999.

None of its presidents, with the usual exceptions, obeyed the interests of the nation; they all lent themselves to the show of robbing the country right under our noses. If it weren't for Chavez's appearance on the scene, the play would have had a happy ending for the transnationals, with great applause and cheers from the public, including us Venezuelans, who would have realized the scam when we left the theater, but there would be nothing to do but the same old thing: repeat that the government, the politicians and corruption have us screwed and continue to stew in bitterness, and repeat the same story: we are very rich, but poorly managed.

The problem we Venezuelans have with the oil industry, and in general with the territory and resources, is that we do not feel that we are an integral part of it, there is no emotional relationship of belonging to this territory. The mining culture imposed first by feudal Europe and now by capitalist corporations, keeps us as slave owners, behaving like foreign plunderers, even though we have nothing. This is so true that we plunder music, crafts, dances, poetry, songs of peasants and fishermen as a means of justifying the daily meal, without realizing that in this selfish gesture we detach from its possible transcendental substance what can, in the future, make us a country; a tree with strong roots and permanently fresh fruits.

The problem with Pequiven, PDVSA and the other state industries is that they belong to concepts devised by foreigners based on their interests. Each screw, each machine, each procedure is a product of the capitalist method, which we do not control at all. High-level managerial or technical training is not the product of Venezuelan knowledge but of foreign knowledge. Therefore, the causes and consequences go beyond the official who sells himself, who even feels proud of his act. In that sense, the questions should cover a broader spectrum, and it is not a problem of Chavismo, it is more a problem of how this industry was conceived as a tool for extraction in this territory invaded and plundered by capitalism.

An industry that must be rethought within the framework of the contradiction that this process has generated, and that includes the political training of its personnel who feel like foreigners, even though they were born in this territory. And for this, pamphlets about socialism, revolution, commitment to the homeland or death are not enough, but rather the introduction of new paradigms where belonging to the country is above belonging to a company, where we behave like foreigners, putting foreign interests before those of the country. It is not enough to send technicians to other countries so that they acquire more skills, if they do not first politically understand what the company is for and who it must serve above all.

The design of the company belongs to the invader; its technology, location, administration and even how dividends are distributed. It is not an integrated industry. Downstream or upstream does not exist. On the contrary, its operation will always be favorable to the marketing and profits of foreign corporations. The design is intentionally segmented so that everything works separately and at the same time nothing can work if only one of the parts fails. But, in addition, this scheme allows the company to always be tied to the corporations, since the technological assistance agreements tie us to their service companies. The most immediate case is that of Tellechea, which in turn reminds us of the oil strike of 2002, where plants could not be started due to the control that the North American company maintained over PDVSA and its brain.

The struggle taught us at that time that we could function alone in the future, if we tried with the training and knowledge of workers charged with fervor for the land they inhabit. But at that time, no one thought of analyzing the experience expressed in the book April Horses, testimonies of the workers of the El Palito refinery , to take advantage of the war against us; we repeated the story 22 years later, without an oil strike.

Another example is petrochemicals in Venezuela. It is not a national necessity, but rather one of the agro-industrial corporations that promoted the green revolution of the 1960s. Few of their products were for use in the country, and that is why fertilizer and chemicals were removed from here and we were left with environmental liabilities. Petrochemicals were never thought of as a necessity for “development,” but simply as one of the links in the chain of exploitation and extraction of the mine that once again favors the transnationals of the capitalist empire. The fact that officials sell themselves for half a bowl of soup is only an anecdotal and miserable aspect of the history of the oil industry in Venezuela.

Designing and conceiving a country begins with our interest. Until now, the country we have obeys the invader's design. PDVSA and its current situation is only a consequence. Why did the presidents of PDVSA not go to jail before Chavez? Because for the invader that was not a necessity, because the moles worked and still work waging war on the industry. That is, they obeyed the country from within, without the need for blackmail, extortion, coercion or sabotage.

Over the past 25 years, the hatred that we have seen materialize in sanctions, coups, assassinations, assassinations, invasions, blockades and their derivatives, carried out by corporations and their internal allies, is the result of the policies implemented by the government against the intention of stealing our oil. That is why we have seen that almost all the presidents that the government has put in place at PDVSA have gone to prison, because it is not state policy to steal resources or hand them over to foreigners. But that is not enough, it is necessary to go deeper into the oil culture, the true cause of the thefts and the submissive behavior of its high officials.

We must never forget that PDVSA was about to be sold in the 1990s through the oil opening, that the Orinoco Oil Belt was sold as a bituminous belt (that is, it was not oil but a by-product, yes, the largest oil reserve on the planet). It is as if we did not remember the surnames of the presidents of PDVSA before Chavez and at the beginning of his government; let us review where they studied and for whom they worked before PDVSA existed or before they joined PDVSA, where they were trained, and there we will find the keys to why they are sold for two cents and a penny.

All the oil corporations are behind the destruction of PDVSA, our only corporation (and one of the largest and most important in the oil and gas industry globally), and they know that by destroying it they would also do the same to the government and take over the country. With the oil strike we got rid of 20 thousand privileged, self-righteous technocrats and replaced them with others of the same ilk. We got rid of presidents, directors and managers who had sold out to the oil transnationals, and we have replaced them with the same ones.

But it is not about criticizing but rather analyzing why it happened. For example, no one can blame the political leadership, Maduro, Chavez, for the behavior of these characters. We cannot blame technology, science, for the facts, but rather the lack of thought, of collectively assuming the productive, economic, cultural, academic, artistic situation; information, science, everything has been used to prevent this mine from becoming a fully-fledged country.

This forces us to understand how to take on the problem of production, how to deal with the problem of factories, how to manage them, how managers are trained, what is the political design and objective that motivates them. The slogans of independence, development and other developmentalist tricks, which are stuck in the language, are not enough. Real action is required, without fear. There are countries where ways are invented to evade the control of big capital without having to go through the filters imposed by the dynamics of capitalist industry, and this is only possible when there are criteria of belonging, when the actions and languages ​​that express this control are abandoned.

We cannot be a country if we continue to uphold the sociological, academic, technocratic, and scientific languages ​​that end up expressing the capitalist dynamic in the control of PDVSA and other industries, and in the policy that the State carries out. It is not the best, the unions, the honest, the meritocratic; it is politics and the interests behind it that will define whether these companies and this State serve or not the interests that we have.

Corporations only think about their own interests and do not care who they kill, destroy or steal from. Let us not continue to give strength to the story that PDVSA, the State and other companies and institutions are nests of rats, because we will only be benefiting the enemies of this country.

Let us fearlessly go to the heart of the problem. An invading culture has inhabited us for five hundred years and reproduces like a virus, because it has its environmental conditions for this to happen. From kindergarten, school, university, and all the other institutions and media, art or architecture, everything that exists in the mining framework that we inhabit keeps us busy stealing from each other, while the foreign owners keep the biggest slice.

https://misionverdad.com/chavismo/para- ... a-en-pdvsa

Google Translator