Here and Nicaragua too. Local money-men and fixers for US should be made examples of. If they don't like it they can move to Miami with the other gusanos, it gonna be underwater soon enough.kidoftheblackhole wrote: ↑Sun Aug 05, 2018 8:52 pmIt is vital that this provocation be dealt with brutally, thoroughly, and swiftly. The plotters and assassins will try again (and again) but leaving the door open even a crack will only embolden them (and their rhetoric has already tilted in that direction)
Venezuela
Re: Venezuela
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Venezuela
Venezuelans March in Support of Maduro After Failed Attack
Published 6 August 2018 (19 hours 3 minutes ago)
The march started at the center of Caracas and end at the Miraflores government palace, where President Maduro will give a speech.
Venezuelans started gathering Monday to march in support of President Nicolás Maduro, after a failed drone attack against him during a speech at a military parade.
The march in support of the president was convened by the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and will depart from the center of Caracas to end at the Miraflores government palace, where Maduro will give a speech.
Supporters wearing t-shirts emblazoned with Maduro's face massed in Caracas Monday, with the president due to address the crowd from the Miraflores palace in the afternoon.
"Us workers are here to support the president. Nothing like that had ever happened on live television before, there is no justification for this attack against the president," said Melanie Diaz, 40, who works at the Food Ministry.
The vice president of the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), Tania Diaz, called on her compatriots to attend. "Monday of popular march in support of our president and in repudiation of the failed assassination attempt that sought to plunge us into a spiral of violence," he said on Twitter.
Messages and statements of support and solidarity from World leaders, governments, and intellectuals continued pouring in Monday as they condemned the assassination attempt against Venezuela's President Maduro.
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/ ... -0009.html
Published 6 August 2018 (19 hours 3 minutes ago)
The march started at the center of Caracas and end at the Miraflores government palace, where President Maduro will give a speech.
Venezuelans started gathering Monday to march in support of President Nicolás Maduro, after a failed drone attack against him during a speech at a military parade.
The march in support of the president was convened by the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and will depart from the center of Caracas to end at the Miraflores government palace, where Maduro will give a speech.
Supporters wearing t-shirts emblazoned with Maduro's face massed in Caracas Monday, with the president due to address the crowd from the Miraflores palace in the afternoon.
"Us workers are here to support the president. Nothing like that had ever happened on live television before, there is no justification for this attack against the president," said Melanie Diaz, 40, who works at the Food Ministry.
The vice president of the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), Tania Diaz, called on her compatriots to attend. "Monday of popular march in support of our president and in repudiation of the failed assassination attempt that sought to plunge us into a spiral of violence," he said on Twitter.
Messages and statements of support and solidarity from World leaders, governments, and intellectuals continued pouring in Monday as they condemned the assassination attempt against Venezuela's President Maduro.
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/ ... -0009.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Venezuela
The Politics of Food in Venezuela
by Ana Felicien, Christina Schiavoni and Liccia Romero
(Jun 01, 2018)
Topics: Agriculture , Ecology , Movements
Places: Americas , Venezuela
Overview of food and nutrition security in Latin America and the Caribbean
Photo credit: "overview of food and nutrition security in Latin America and the Caribbean," FAO, 2017 (p. 26).
Ana Felicien is a researcher at the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research and a founding member of the Semillas del Pueblo (Seeds of the People) movement. Christina M. Schiavoni is a food sovereignty activist and doctoral researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. Liccia Romero is a professor of ecology at the University of the Andes in Mérida, Venezuela, and a founding member of Mano a Mano–Intercambio Agroecológico (Hand to Hand–Agroecological Exchange).
Few countries and political processes have been subject to such scrutiny, yet so generally misunderstood, as Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution.1 This is particularly true today, as the international media paints an image of absolute devastation in the country, wrought by failed policies and government mismanagement. At the same time, the three national elections of 2017 demonstrated a strong show of support for the continuation of the revolution under its current leadership. This seeming paradox, we are told, can only be attributed to government tendencies of co-optation and clientelism, along with a closing of democratic space. Such messages are reproduced many times over, both in the media and in certain intellectual circles.2
A benefit of the intense attention paid to Venezuela is that a recurring narrative can be identified, which goes basically as follows. The central character is Hugo Chávez Frías, a strong-armed political leader who enjoyed the double advantage of personal charisma and high oil prices over the course of his presidency from 1999 through 2012. In 2013, Chávez died, and the following year global oil prices plunged. Amid the perfect storm of the loss of Chávez, the collapse in oil prices, and the government’s misguided policies, Venezuela has steadily slid into a state of economic and political disintegration, with food and other necessities growing scarce, in turn sparking social unrest as people take to the streets. The government, headed by Chávez’s less charismatic successor, Nicolás Maduro, is going to desperate lengths to hang onto power, becoming increasingly authoritarian in the process, while maintaining the populist rhetoric of Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution.
However, this dominant narrative does not capture the complexities of what is happening in Venezuela today. There are significant holes in the account, which raise important questions: who are “the people” at the center of this analysis? What, if any, are the different impacts of present challenges on various sectors of society? How should the Venezuelan state be understood, and where and how does the role of capital figure? By focusing on the politics of food as a key area in which the country’s broader politics are playing out—particularly by looking at recent shortages and food lines, as well as what have been presented as “food riots”—a multitude of issues can be better understood. Often-ignored matters of race, class, gender, and geography demand special attention.
We will begin by looking to the past to situate present trends in their proper context. By homing in on the dynamics around Venezuela’s most highly consumed staple foods, we can gain insight into the current conjuncture, particularly the recent food shortages. Some of the main drivers of the shortages come from forces opposing the Bolivarian Revolution, which are increasingly gaining ground within the state. We will then discuss responses to the shortages by the government and popular forces.
Historical Continuities of Extraction
A nuanced understanding of contemporary Venezuela requires going back not to Chávez’s election in 1999, but centuries earlier, to the period of colonization and the inception of interrelated patterns of extraction and social differentiation that continue today. While much has been written on “extractivism” as a key feature of Latin America’s “pink tide” countries, including Venezuela, it is imperative to understand present patterns of extraction as part of a much longer historical continuity dating back to Spanish colonization from the sixteenth into the nineteenth centuries. During this period, a “tropical plantation economy based on slave labor” gave rise to a powerful agroexportation complex, through which cacao and later coffee were supplied to Europe and Mexico.3 A key feature of this complex was the two-part plantation-conuco system, in which the enslaved and, later, low-wage labor forces of the colonial haciendas depended on family and communal plots (conucos) for subsistence.
Venezuela was among the first countries in the region to achieve independence, but in the early nineteenth century, most social and economic structures established under colonization were little altered. These included patterns of food consumption, extending from the plantation-conuco system to the culinary habits that the colonial elite brought over from Europe. This dietary differentiation was intricately linked with issues of identity and domination, serving to maintain European descendants’ sense of superiority over the indigenous, Afro-descendent, and mestizo majority. One Spanish general remarked that he could “handle anything on this earth except for those wretched corn cakes they call arepas, that have only been made for stomachs of blacks and ostriches.”4 But even as they disdained indigenous foodways, European elites depended on them, as indigenous knowledge proved essential for the adaptation of European crops to tropical agroecosystems, and food from conucos served as a vital source of sustenance, particularly during war. The plantation economy and the hacienda system lasted for another century after independence.
In 1929, the U.S. stock market crash and the associated collapse in agricultural commodity prices, together with the rise of oil in Venezuela as an export commodity, spelled the end of the agroexportation period, as several new patterns rapidly emerged. One was a flight of capital from agriculture to the emerging petroleum industry, with oil concessions going mostly to the same wealthy families that had dominated the agroexport complex.5 This was accompanied by mass migration out of rural areas, through mutually reinforcing processes of proletarianization and urbanization, and a subsequent surge in urban poverty, with insufficient employment and infrastructure to absorb these new urban workers. The development of the petroleum sector thus further concentrated wealth among the elite while fostering a “surplus population” of urban poor, but also gave rise to a middle class of professional workers. In response to these changes, owners of the former agroexport complex were able to take advantage of its existing infrastructure, an influx of oil dollars, and the new purchasing power of Venezuela’s emerging middle class to shift from exporting to importing food. Over time, these practices developed into a powerful agro-food import and distribution complex.6
Petroleum also broke the plantation-conuco system, rupturing existing patterns of production and consumption. To fill this void, the government in 1936 initiated an agricultural modernization program, funded by petroleum dollars and designed to replace imports of highly consumed foods in the growing urban centers. The push for modernization was part and parcel of the Green Revolution then sweeping much of the global South, part of an anticommunist Cold War strategy among the United States and allies. In Venezuela, the process was ushered in by U.S. “missionary capitalist” to Latin America and godfather to the Green Revolution, Nelson Rockefeller. As the home of Standard Oil’s most profitable regional affiliate, the country held a special significance for Rockefeller, who made Venezuela his home away from home, even establishing his own hacienda.7
Venezuela’s agricultural modernization program melded industrial production and white supremacy, manifested in efforts aimed at blanqueamiento, or “whitening.” This was reflected, for instance, in the Law of Immigration and Colonization of 1936, which facilitated the entrance of white Europeans into Venezuela, intended, in the words of agricultural minister Alberto Adriani, to help Venezuela “diversify its agriculture; develop new industries and perfect existing ones; and contribute to the improvement of its race and the elevation of its culture.”8 Towards these ends, the law supported the formation of aptly named colonias agrícolas (agricultural colonies) of European immigrants on some of the country’s most productive agricultural land, several of which still exist today.
The modernization agenda also introduced another kind of colonization in the form of Venezuela’s first chain of supermarkets, CADA, founded in 1948 and spearheaded by Rockefeller, together with the Venezuelan government. Further solidifying the connections between food consumption, identity, and social status, supermarkets allowed the emerging middle class to enjoy a taste of food elitism, literally and figuratively. This was part of a broader program of modern state-building designed to turn Venezuela into a “reliable US ally with…a solid middle-class electorate.”9 By many accounts, these efforts succeeded, and Venezuela by the late twentieth century was commonly regarded as “one of the developing world’s success stories, an oil-rich democracy that was seen as a model for economic growth and political stability in the region.”10 However, “oil never fully transformed Venezuela, but rather it created the illusion of modernity in a country where high levels of inequality persisted.”11 Indeed, the predominant narratives routinely fail to mention that at the start of the Bolivarian Revolution, more than half of the population was living in poverty, with hunger levels higher than those of today.12
Another Side of History
A glance at recent history challenges the depiction of pre-Chávez Venezuela as a model democracy and bastion of stability in a tumultuous region. One particularly revealing episode occurred in 1989, when IMF-prescribed structural adjustment policies proved the final straw for an increasingly fed-up population, sparking the Caracazo, or “explosion of Caracas,” in which hundreds of thousands of people from the hillside barrios flooded the center of the capital in a massive popular uprising that rapidly spread across the country.13 The military was ordered to open fire on civilians, yielding a death toll officially in the hundreds but believed to be in the thousands—yet the social revolt unleashed by the Caracazo would not be contained.
This brings us to another side of history: every event described above occurred amid tension, and sometimes open conflict, between the elite and the “others” whom they attempted to subjugate and exploit, while never fully succeeding. As recognized by numerous historical accounts, the indigenous peoples, African descendants, and mestizos who make up the majority of Venezuelans have long been a defiant lot, from Afro-descendent rebellions and indigenous uprisings to more covert forms of resistance. Such resistance from below was pivotal to the fall of colonization, once independence leader Simon Bolivar understood the importance of enslaved and indigenous peoples to the struggle for independence, and continued into peasant struggles over land post-independence, and later through the struggles of guerillas, students, workers, and women, among other “others,” during the period of democratization. The rise of Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution can be understood as a direct continuation of the Caracazo and the rebellions before it, through which “the popular sectors…came to assume their own political representation.”14
Inequities around food were among the immediate causes of the Caracazo, as the poor endured long lines to access basic goods, while middle-class merchants hoarded these goods to speculate on rising prices in the face of inflation, and the elite carried on with their day-to-day food habits largely unaffected—all striking parallels with the present situation. Just before and after the Caracazo, headlines such as “Prices of Sugar, Cereals, and Oils Go Up” and “Distressed Multitudes in Search of Food” abounded in the national press, while the New York Times reported “shortages of items like coffee, salt, flour, cooking oil and other basic products.”15 This reflected growing tensions around food access, disproportionately impacting the poor and showing that Venezuela’s “modernized” food system, based on importation, industrial agriculture, and supermarkets, as championed by Rockefeller, did not in fact serve the interests of the majority. This in turn implied the dual, if at times divergent, tasks at the start of the Bolivarian Revolution: addressing the immediate material needs of the more than half of the population living in poverty, while working to shift the historical patterns that had caused deep disparities in Venezuela’s food system.
The importance of food and agriculture was reflected in Venezuela’s new national constitution, drafted through a participatory constituent assembly process and passed by popular referendum in 1999. The constitution guarantees food security for all citizens, “through the promotion of sustainable agriculture as a strategic basis for integrated rural development.”16 In response to this popular mandate, a variety of state-sponsored initiatives have been established, in tandem with citizen efforts, under the banner of “food sovereignty.” Fundamental to these have been processes of agrarian reform, which have combined land redistribution with a wide variety of rural development programs, including in education, housing, health care, and media and communications. Fishing communities have benefited from similar programs, and from the banning of industrial trawling off the Venezuelan coast.17 These rural initiatives have been complemented by a range of largely urban food access programs, reaching schools, workplaces, and households.18 Equally important to food sovereignty efforts are diverse forms of popular organization, from local communal councils and regional comunas to farmers’ and fishers’ councils, that have helped to broaden popular participation in the food system.19
Such programs have seen both important gains and limitations. Perhaps most notably, Venezuela surpassed the first Millennium Development Goal of cutting hunger in half by 2015, as recognized by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.20 From 2008 to 2011, hunger was dramatically reduced, affecting an average of 3.1 percent of the population.21 Yet such advances, sponsored by oil revenues from Venezuela’s nationalized petroleum industry, came largely from a reinforcement of the agroimport complex, not from alternative systems. In addition, efforts toward agrarian reform in the countryside also received significant investment, but remained largely separate from food security programs. While some important inroads were made in connecting the two initiatives, the Chávez years saw no lasting rupture in the historic power of those who controlled the agrifood system. Thus, more food programs for the poor meant more food imports, which further consolidated the import complex, reinforced through multiple mechanisms of the state. Among these mechanisms was the granting of dollars from oil revenues to private enterprises, at highly subsidized rates, for imports of food and other goods deemed essential. This means that over the course of the Bolivarian Revolution, state funds, while going toward many social programs, have also flowed into the private food import complex, amounting to major subsidies for the most powerful companies.22 The direct and indirect beneficiaries of this system have little incentive to alter it.
https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/th ... venezuela/
Much more at link
by Ana Felicien, Christina Schiavoni and Liccia Romero
(Jun 01, 2018)
Topics: Agriculture , Ecology , Movements
Places: Americas , Venezuela
Overview of food and nutrition security in Latin America and the Caribbean
Photo credit: "overview of food and nutrition security in Latin America and the Caribbean," FAO, 2017 (p. 26).
Ana Felicien is a researcher at the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Research and a founding member of the Semillas del Pueblo (Seeds of the People) movement. Christina M. Schiavoni is a food sovereignty activist and doctoral researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. Liccia Romero is a professor of ecology at the University of the Andes in Mérida, Venezuela, and a founding member of Mano a Mano–Intercambio Agroecológico (Hand to Hand–Agroecological Exchange).
Few countries and political processes have been subject to such scrutiny, yet so generally misunderstood, as Venezuela and the Bolivarian Revolution.1 This is particularly true today, as the international media paints an image of absolute devastation in the country, wrought by failed policies and government mismanagement. At the same time, the three national elections of 2017 demonstrated a strong show of support for the continuation of the revolution under its current leadership. This seeming paradox, we are told, can only be attributed to government tendencies of co-optation and clientelism, along with a closing of democratic space. Such messages are reproduced many times over, both in the media and in certain intellectual circles.2
A benefit of the intense attention paid to Venezuela is that a recurring narrative can be identified, which goes basically as follows. The central character is Hugo Chávez Frías, a strong-armed political leader who enjoyed the double advantage of personal charisma and high oil prices over the course of his presidency from 1999 through 2012. In 2013, Chávez died, and the following year global oil prices plunged. Amid the perfect storm of the loss of Chávez, the collapse in oil prices, and the government’s misguided policies, Venezuela has steadily slid into a state of economic and political disintegration, with food and other necessities growing scarce, in turn sparking social unrest as people take to the streets. The government, headed by Chávez’s less charismatic successor, Nicolás Maduro, is going to desperate lengths to hang onto power, becoming increasingly authoritarian in the process, while maintaining the populist rhetoric of Chávez’s Bolivarian Revolution.
However, this dominant narrative does not capture the complexities of what is happening in Venezuela today. There are significant holes in the account, which raise important questions: who are “the people” at the center of this analysis? What, if any, are the different impacts of present challenges on various sectors of society? How should the Venezuelan state be understood, and where and how does the role of capital figure? By focusing on the politics of food as a key area in which the country’s broader politics are playing out—particularly by looking at recent shortages and food lines, as well as what have been presented as “food riots”—a multitude of issues can be better understood. Often-ignored matters of race, class, gender, and geography demand special attention.
We will begin by looking to the past to situate present trends in their proper context. By homing in on the dynamics around Venezuela’s most highly consumed staple foods, we can gain insight into the current conjuncture, particularly the recent food shortages. Some of the main drivers of the shortages come from forces opposing the Bolivarian Revolution, which are increasingly gaining ground within the state. We will then discuss responses to the shortages by the government and popular forces.
Historical Continuities of Extraction
A nuanced understanding of contemporary Venezuela requires going back not to Chávez’s election in 1999, but centuries earlier, to the period of colonization and the inception of interrelated patterns of extraction and social differentiation that continue today. While much has been written on “extractivism” as a key feature of Latin America’s “pink tide” countries, including Venezuela, it is imperative to understand present patterns of extraction as part of a much longer historical continuity dating back to Spanish colonization from the sixteenth into the nineteenth centuries. During this period, a “tropical plantation economy based on slave labor” gave rise to a powerful agroexportation complex, through which cacao and later coffee were supplied to Europe and Mexico.3 A key feature of this complex was the two-part plantation-conuco system, in which the enslaved and, later, low-wage labor forces of the colonial haciendas depended on family and communal plots (conucos) for subsistence.
Venezuela was among the first countries in the region to achieve independence, but in the early nineteenth century, most social and economic structures established under colonization were little altered. These included patterns of food consumption, extending from the plantation-conuco system to the culinary habits that the colonial elite brought over from Europe. This dietary differentiation was intricately linked with issues of identity and domination, serving to maintain European descendants’ sense of superiority over the indigenous, Afro-descendent, and mestizo majority. One Spanish general remarked that he could “handle anything on this earth except for those wretched corn cakes they call arepas, that have only been made for stomachs of blacks and ostriches.”4 But even as they disdained indigenous foodways, European elites depended on them, as indigenous knowledge proved essential for the adaptation of European crops to tropical agroecosystems, and food from conucos served as a vital source of sustenance, particularly during war. The plantation economy and the hacienda system lasted for another century after independence.
In 1929, the U.S. stock market crash and the associated collapse in agricultural commodity prices, together with the rise of oil in Venezuela as an export commodity, spelled the end of the agroexportation period, as several new patterns rapidly emerged. One was a flight of capital from agriculture to the emerging petroleum industry, with oil concessions going mostly to the same wealthy families that had dominated the agroexport complex.5 This was accompanied by mass migration out of rural areas, through mutually reinforcing processes of proletarianization and urbanization, and a subsequent surge in urban poverty, with insufficient employment and infrastructure to absorb these new urban workers. The development of the petroleum sector thus further concentrated wealth among the elite while fostering a “surplus population” of urban poor, but also gave rise to a middle class of professional workers. In response to these changes, owners of the former agroexport complex were able to take advantage of its existing infrastructure, an influx of oil dollars, and the new purchasing power of Venezuela’s emerging middle class to shift from exporting to importing food. Over time, these practices developed into a powerful agro-food import and distribution complex.6
Petroleum also broke the plantation-conuco system, rupturing existing patterns of production and consumption. To fill this void, the government in 1936 initiated an agricultural modernization program, funded by petroleum dollars and designed to replace imports of highly consumed foods in the growing urban centers. The push for modernization was part and parcel of the Green Revolution then sweeping much of the global South, part of an anticommunist Cold War strategy among the United States and allies. In Venezuela, the process was ushered in by U.S. “missionary capitalist” to Latin America and godfather to the Green Revolution, Nelson Rockefeller. As the home of Standard Oil’s most profitable regional affiliate, the country held a special significance for Rockefeller, who made Venezuela his home away from home, even establishing his own hacienda.7
Venezuela’s agricultural modernization program melded industrial production and white supremacy, manifested in efforts aimed at blanqueamiento, or “whitening.” This was reflected, for instance, in the Law of Immigration and Colonization of 1936, which facilitated the entrance of white Europeans into Venezuela, intended, in the words of agricultural minister Alberto Adriani, to help Venezuela “diversify its agriculture; develop new industries and perfect existing ones; and contribute to the improvement of its race and the elevation of its culture.”8 Towards these ends, the law supported the formation of aptly named colonias agrícolas (agricultural colonies) of European immigrants on some of the country’s most productive agricultural land, several of which still exist today.
The modernization agenda also introduced another kind of colonization in the form of Venezuela’s first chain of supermarkets, CADA, founded in 1948 and spearheaded by Rockefeller, together with the Venezuelan government. Further solidifying the connections between food consumption, identity, and social status, supermarkets allowed the emerging middle class to enjoy a taste of food elitism, literally and figuratively. This was part of a broader program of modern state-building designed to turn Venezuela into a “reliable US ally with…a solid middle-class electorate.”9 By many accounts, these efforts succeeded, and Venezuela by the late twentieth century was commonly regarded as “one of the developing world’s success stories, an oil-rich democracy that was seen as a model for economic growth and political stability in the region.”10 However, “oil never fully transformed Venezuela, but rather it created the illusion of modernity in a country where high levels of inequality persisted.”11 Indeed, the predominant narratives routinely fail to mention that at the start of the Bolivarian Revolution, more than half of the population was living in poverty, with hunger levels higher than those of today.12
Another Side of History
A glance at recent history challenges the depiction of pre-Chávez Venezuela as a model democracy and bastion of stability in a tumultuous region. One particularly revealing episode occurred in 1989, when IMF-prescribed structural adjustment policies proved the final straw for an increasingly fed-up population, sparking the Caracazo, or “explosion of Caracas,” in which hundreds of thousands of people from the hillside barrios flooded the center of the capital in a massive popular uprising that rapidly spread across the country.13 The military was ordered to open fire on civilians, yielding a death toll officially in the hundreds but believed to be in the thousands—yet the social revolt unleashed by the Caracazo would not be contained.
This brings us to another side of history: every event described above occurred amid tension, and sometimes open conflict, between the elite and the “others” whom they attempted to subjugate and exploit, while never fully succeeding. As recognized by numerous historical accounts, the indigenous peoples, African descendants, and mestizos who make up the majority of Venezuelans have long been a defiant lot, from Afro-descendent rebellions and indigenous uprisings to more covert forms of resistance. Such resistance from below was pivotal to the fall of colonization, once independence leader Simon Bolivar understood the importance of enslaved and indigenous peoples to the struggle for independence, and continued into peasant struggles over land post-independence, and later through the struggles of guerillas, students, workers, and women, among other “others,” during the period of democratization. The rise of Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution can be understood as a direct continuation of the Caracazo and the rebellions before it, through which “the popular sectors…came to assume their own political representation.”14
Inequities around food were among the immediate causes of the Caracazo, as the poor endured long lines to access basic goods, while middle-class merchants hoarded these goods to speculate on rising prices in the face of inflation, and the elite carried on with their day-to-day food habits largely unaffected—all striking parallels with the present situation. Just before and after the Caracazo, headlines such as “Prices of Sugar, Cereals, and Oils Go Up” and “Distressed Multitudes in Search of Food” abounded in the national press, while the New York Times reported “shortages of items like coffee, salt, flour, cooking oil and other basic products.”15 This reflected growing tensions around food access, disproportionately impacting the poor and showing that Venezuela’s “modernized” food system, based on importation, industrial agriculture, and supermarkets, as championed by Rockefeller, did not in fact serve the interests of the majority. This in turn implied the dual, if at times divergent, tasks at the start of the Bolivarian Revolution: addressing the immediate material needs of the more than half of the population living in poverty, while working to shift the historical patterns that had caused deep disparities in Venezuela’s food system.
The importance of food and agriculture was reflected in Venezuela’s new national constitution, drafted through a participatory constituent assembly process and passed by popular referendum in 1999. The constitution guarantees food security for all citizens, “through the promotion of sustainable agriculture as a strategic basis for integrated rural development.”16 In response to this popular mandate, a variety of state-sponsored initiatives have been established, in tandem with citizen efforts, under the banner of “food sovereignty.” Fundamental to these have been processes of agrarian reform, which have combined land redistribution with a wide variety of rural development programs, including in education, housing, health care, and media and communications. Fishing communities have benefited from similar programs, and from the banning of industrial trawling off the Venezuelan coast.17 These rural initiatives have been complemented by a range of largely urban food access programs, reaching schools, workplaces, and households.18 Equally important to food sovereignty efforts are diverse forms of popular organization, from local communal councils and regional comunas to farmers’ and fishers’ councils, that have helped to broaden popular participation in the food system.19
Such programs have seen both important gains and limitations. Perhaps most notably, Venezuela surpassed the first Millennium Development Goal of cutting hunger in half by 2015, as recognized by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.20 From 2008 to 2011, hunger was dramatically reduced, affecting an average of 3.1 percent of the population.21 Yet such advances, sponsored by oil revenues from Venezuela’s nationalized petroleum industry, came largely from a reinforcement of the agroimport complex, not from alternative systems. In addition, efforts toward agrarian reform in the countryside also received significant investment, but remained largely separate from food security programs. While some important inroads were made in connecting the two initiatives, the Chávez years saw no lasting rupture in the historic power of those who controlled the agrifood system. Thus, more food programs for the poor meant more food imports, which further consolidated the import complex, reinforced through multiple mechanisms of the state. Among these mechanisms was the granting of dollars from oil revenues to private enterprises, at highly subsidized rates, for imports of food and other goods deemed essential. This means that over the course of the Bolivarian Revolution, state funds, while going toward many social programs, have also flowed into the private food import complex, amounting to major subsidies for the most powerful companies.22 The direct and indirect beneficiaries of this system have little incentive to alter it.
https://monthlyreview.org/2018/06/01/th ... venezuela/
Much more at link
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Venezuela
Venezuela: 19 People Linked to Maduro Assassination Attempt
Published 8 August 2018
19 identified persons directly involved in the failed attempt against President Maduro.
Venezuelan Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, announced Wednesday that 19 individuals have been identified as being directly involved in the failed assassination attempt against the country's President Nicolás Maduro.
Two persons, who managed to escape authorities, among the group have also been identified and evidence linking them to the plot has been uncovered.
According to Saab, the first drone used in the attack was a modified DJI branded drone while the other was of an unknown origin. Both appeared to have been operated from a black vehicle, manned by the operators, who have since been apprehended.
Saab also detailed evidence linking Raider Ruso and former Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) colonel Oswaldo Garcia, who are located in Colombia and the United States respectively, to the attack.
"The Public Ministry will send requests to the United States and Colombia for their cooperation to extradite those involved in this act... For this reason, we are calling on the incoming government of Colombia to deliver these criminals to Venezuela," Saad said while explaining the agreements Venezuela has with both countries.
He also congratulated the Public Ministry and other government officials for their response to the incident while chiding those linked to the act.
"In Venezuela, those who want to win political spaces must do it with ideas, with proposals not with this type of acts," he said.
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/ ... -0013.html
*********************
Nicolas Maduro Presents Evidence of Assassination Attempt
Published 7 August 2018 (21 hours 29 minutes ago)
"I am going to show evidence and testimony. Our people want justice against terrorism. Justice," Maduro said concluding his statement.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro presented forceful evidence incriminating the government of Colombia in the failed assassination perpetrated against him on Saturday in the capital Caracas.
"I inform the people of Venezuela that we continue to work on the investigations into assassination attempt in a degree of frustration, and in the next few hours I will be presenting strong evidence of the links that the Colombian oligarchy has with the events on Avenida Bolivar," the president had previously said in a video posted on his official Twitter account early Tuesday.
Also, the president said that the executors of the plan received training in the city of Chinacotá, department of Santander in Colombian territory.
“It is clear and there is sufficient proof of the participation of the Colombian government of the outgoing Juan Manuel Santos. We have the location, the names of the place in Chinacota Norte de Santander where they trained, the assassins, the terrorists, all in the coming hours.
In this regard, the Venezuelan head of state confirmed that all those involved in the terrorist act have already been captured.
Minister for Internal Relations, Justice and Peace, Néstor Reverol noted that one of those involved has an arrest warrant for his involvement in the attack on Fort Paramacay base in 2017, while another was held in prison in connection to the 2014 violent anti-government protests known as guarimbas.
"I am going to show evidence and testimony. Our people want justice against terrorism. Justice," Maduro said concluding his statement.
Step by step: evidence of the assassination attempt
-A drone was located in the business center Cipreses by the group number 2, referred to as “group BRAVO.” It was manipulated from the 10th floor by a terrorist group trained in the Colombian town of Chinacota, in the northern province of Santander.
-The terrorists made preparatory observations ahead of the attempt on the July 24 parade in the state of Carabobo, yet did not eventually launch the attack then because of a lack of preparation, just as they eventually canceled on July 5 on the celebration of the Independence.
-They were confirmed that the public event on Aug.4 would take place on Avenida Bolivar in the afternoon, instead of the Avenida Los Proceres, and brought a drone to this location —the one the military officials identified and technological teams neutralized.
-They lifted the drone above all the structures of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, but it was then disturbed in its trajectory by technological equipment —used in order to inhibit signals. Meanwhile, the first group activated the second drone.
-They had planned to use two drones, one that would explode with a pentrite chemical component, while the second one was meant to draw the attention somewhere else by crashing against a building called Don Eduardo, exploding with a C4 component.
-Maduro reported that he was immediately told there was an attack going on and tried to organize immediately the evacuation in a bid to preserve the security of the crowd.
-Ten minutes later, Maduro received a call from the Armed Forces' General saying they had caught two people with drone command equipment that seemed to be involved in the attack, then a few minutes later they caught others. “People's intelligence allowed the quick apprehension of these terrorists.”
-Identified terrorists include: Rayder Russo, resident of Colombia, and Osman Delgado, resident of the United States.
-More raids are being carried out in order to arrest other groups involved in the consummation of the attack.
-The masterminds of the attack are people who participated in the 2017 violent demonstrations in Venezuela.
-The people involved in the attack were offered US50 million and residency in the United States.
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/ ... -0009.html
Published 8 August 2018
19 identified persons directly involved in the failed attempt against President Maduro.
Venezuelan Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, announced Wednesday that 19 individuals have been identified as being directly involved in the failed assassination attempt against the country's President Nicolás Maduro.
Two persons, who managed to escape authorities, among the group have also been identified and evidence linking them to the plot has been uncovered.
According to Saab, the first drone used in the attack was a modified DJI branded drone while the other was of an unknown origin. Both appeared to have been operated from a black vehicle, manned by the operators, who have since been apprehended.
Saab also detailed evidence linking Raider Ruso and former Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) colonel Oswaldo Garcia, who are located in Colombia and the United States respectively, to the attack.
"The Public Ministry will send requests to the United States and Colombia for their cooperation to extradite those involved in this act... For this reason, we are calling on the incoming government of Colombia to deliver these criminals to Venezuela," Saad said while explaining the agreements Venezuela has with both countries.
He also congratulated the Public Ministry and other government officials for their response to the incident while chiding those linked to the act.
"In Venezuela, those who want to win political spaces must do it with ideas, with proposals not with this type of acts," he said.
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/ ... -0013.html
*********************
Nicolas Maduro Presents Evidence of Assassination Attempt
Published 7 August 2018 (21 hours 29 minutes ago)
"I am going to show evidence and testimony. Our people want justice against terrorism. Justice," Maduro said concluding his statement.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro presented forceful evidence incriminating the government of Colombia in the failed assassination perpetrated against him on Saturday in the capital Caracas.
"I inform the people of Venezuela that we continue to work on the investigations into assassination attempt in a degree of frustration, and in the next few hours I will be presenting strong evidence of the links that the Colombian oligarchy has with the events on Avenida Bolivar," the president had previously said in a video posted on his official Twitter account early Tuesday.
Also, the president said that the executors of the plan received training in the city of Chinacotá, department of Santander in Colombian territory.
“It is clear and there is sufficient proof of the participation of the Colombian government of the outgoing Juan Manuel Santos. We have the location, the names of the place in Chinacota Norte de Santander where they trained, the assassins, the terrorists, all in the coming hours.
In this regard, the Venezuelan head of state confirmed that all those involved in the terrorist act have already been captured.
Minister for Internal Relations, Justice and Peace, Néstor Reverol noted that one of those involved has an arrest warrant for his involvement in the attack on Fort Paramacay base in 2017, while another was held in prison in connection to the 2014 violent anti-government protests known as guarimbas.
"I am going to show evidence and testimony. Our people want justice against terrorism. Justice," Maduro said concluding his statement.
Step by step: evidence of the assassination attempt
-A drone was located in the business center Cipreses by the group number 2, referred to as “group BRAVO.” It was manipulated from the 10th floor by a terrorist group trained in the Colombian town of Chinacota, in the northern province of Santander.
-The terrorists made preparatory observations ahead of the attempt on the July 24 parade in the state of Carabobo, yet did not eventually launch the attack then because of a lack of preparation, just as they eventually canceled on July 5 on the celebration of the Independence.
-They were confirmed that the public event on Aug.4 would take place on Avenida Bolivar in the afternoon, instead of the Avenida Los Proceres, and brought a drone to this location —the one the military officials identified and technological teams neutralized.
-They lifted the drone above all the structures of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, but it was then disturbed in its trajectory by technological equipment —used in order to inhibit signals. Meanwhile, the first group activated the second drone.
-They had planned to use two drones, one that would explode with a pentrite chemical component, while the second one was meant to draw the attention somewhere else by crashing against a building called Don Eduardo, exploding with a C4 component.
-Maduro reported that he was immediately told there was an attack going on and tried to organize immediately the evacuation in a bid to preserve the security of the crowd.
-Ten minutes later, Maduro received a call from the Armed Forces' General saying they had caught two people with drone command equipment that seemed to be involved in the attack, then a few minutes later they caught others. “People's intelligence allowed the quick apprehension of these terrorists.”
-Identified terrorists include: Rayder Russo, resident of Colombia, and Osman Delgado, resident of the United States.
-More raids are being carried out in order to arrest other groups involved in the consummation of the attack.
-The masterminds of the attack are people who participated in the 2017 violent demonstrations in Venezuela.
-The people involved in the attack were offered US50 million and residency in the United States.
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/ ... -0009.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Venezuela
CIA elements involved in Maduro assassination attempt: Expert
Sun Aug 5, 2018 06:04PM
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in the attempted assassination of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, says counter-terrorism expert Scott Bennett.
The incident took place on Saturday night, while Maduro was giving a speech at a military event in the capital Caracas. The televised broadcast was cut short when an explosion was heard and others on the podium suddenly looked upwards, startled.
Maduro blamed Colombia for the attack, saying later on, "I have no doubt that the name (Colombian President) Juan Manuel Santos is behind this attack."
Hours after the attack, US National Security Adviser John Bolton rushed to deny any US involvement.
"I can say unequivocally there is no US government involvement in this at all," he told Fox News.
Bennet, a former US Army psychological warfare officer, told Press TV that the attack was just another move by the CIA to further the agency’s agenda of political wars in the region.
“I think the more we look into this we are going to see this was in fact a terrorist attempt by certain actors within the CIA, within Colombia, the extreme right that were targeting Maduro,” Bennett said Sunday.
“This, as it comes out, will be just another confirmation that the US CIA is a rogue element, is a rogue intelligence operation that is trying to push the United States into reckless political wars,” he added.
The analyst said it was possible that the attack on a US political envoy in Bangladesh on the same day was a “false flag” by the CIA to make a distraction from the assassination attempt against Maduro.
US officials said Sunday night that armed men had attacked a convoy of cars carrying US Ambassador to Banglade Marcia Bernicat and her security team in the capital Dhaka. She escaped the attack unharmed.
PressTV-'No US involvement in drone attack against Maduro'
A senior White House official denies the United States was behind an assassination attempt on the Venezuelan president.
“As Maduro begins to expose the players, the origin of them, the methodology …. the more he is going to find direct ties back to this CIA intelligence community and the rogue elements the US has used to try and Venezuela,” Bennett said.
Bennett said the drone’s signatures and its flight path as well as the bank accounts and the financial trails of those involved in the attack were some of the key details that could help Caracas get to the bottom of the matter.
“So it’s a very sad day but perhaps it’s also a great day because it’s one of the trumpets of freedom that the rest of the world can start hearing and respond to by rejecting such acts of terrorism,” he concluded.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/08/ ... -Venezuela
The notion that the CIA is "rogue" is absurd. The CIA is the purest expression of the sociopathy of the ruling class.
Sun Aug 5, 2018 06:04PM
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was involved in the attempted assassination of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, says counter-terrorism expert Scott Bennett.
The incident took place on Saturday night, while Maduro was giving a speech at a military event in the capital Caracas. The televised broadcast was cut short when an explosion was heard and others on the podium suddenly looked upwards, startled.
Maduro blamed Colombia for the attack, saying later on, "I have no doubt that the name (Colombian President) Juan Manuel Santos is behind this attack."
Hours after the attack, US National Security Adviser John Bolton rushed to deny any US involvement.
"I can say unequivocally there is no US government involvement in this at all," he told Fox News.
Bennet, a former US Army psychological warfare officer, told Press TV that the attack was just another move by the CIA to further the agency’s agenda of political wars in the region.
“I think the more we look into this we are going to see this was in fact a terrorist attempt by certain actors within the CIA, within Colombia, the extreme right that were targeting Maduro,” Bennett said Sunday.
“This, as it comes out, will be just another confirmation that the US CIA is a rogue element, is a rogue intelligence operation that is trying to push the United States into reckless political wars,” he added.
The analyst said it was possible that the attack on a US political envoy in Bangladesh on the same day was a “false flag” by the CIA to make a distraction from the assassination attempt against Maduro.
US officials said Sunday night that armed men had attacked a convoy of cars carrying US Ambassador to Banglade Marcia Bernicat and her security team in the capital Dhaka. She escaped the attack unharmed.
PressTV-'No US involvement in drone attack against Maduro'
A senior White House official denies the United States was behind an assassination attempt on the Venezuelan president.
“As Maduro begins to expose the players, the origin of them, the methodology …. the more he is going to find direct ties back to this CIA intelligence community and the rogue elements the US has used to try and Venezuela,” Bennett said.
Bennett said the drone’s signatures and its flight path as well as the bank accounts and the financial trails of those involved in the attack were some of the key details that could help Caracas get to the bottom of the matter.
“So it’s a very sad day but perhaps it’s also a great day because it’s one of the trumpets of freedom that the rest of the world can start hearing and respond to by rejecting such acts of terrorism,” he concluded.
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/08/ ... -Venezuela
The notion that the CIA is "rogue" is absurd. The CIA is the purest expression of the sociopathy of the ruling class.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Venezuela
Failed assassination attempt against President Nicolás Maduro (special report)
Like an electric shock, the assassination attempt of yesterday's afternoon, August 4th, with the evident traumatic aftermath that embodies an event of such nature, seemed to make us become aware of the critical space and time in the history of the Homeland where our lives are at stake. Also, we do it through the life of Maduro.
AGOSTO 5 DE 2018, 11:23 AM
The facts already known about the operation
In the middle of the multitudinous activity at the Bolívar Avenue in Caracas, on the occasion of the 81th anniversary of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB by its Spanish acronym), two drones charged with explosive material exploded close to the presidential platform, when the President was preparing himself to close his speech for all those present.
Due to the magnitude of the explosion, the national television network was cut. The security staff implemented maneuvers of deployment and security protocols, which were duly activated, to protect the life of the Head of State.
Minutes later, in the light of the confusion, the Minister for Communication and Information, Jorge Rodríguez, confirmed that it was an attack and that President Maduro and the civil and military high ranking officials of the Venezuelan State, who were on the platform, resulted unharmed. Seven military officials were harmed due to the explosions, who have already received medical treatment.
According to official versions, drones fell after the explosion and it was confirmed the existence of explosive material. "Extra official" sources provided by an opposition journalist, named Roman Camacho, reaffirmed that the explosive device contained C4 explosives.
Minutes later, a group called Soldados de Franelas, (Solders in T-shirts) related to the now extinct paramilitary group of the former officer Óscar Pérez, who, by the end of last year, performed several armed attacks against civil and military institutions of the country and claimed the responsibilityt for the attack on social networks.
This credit eliminated the idea of a "self-attack" or an "isolated explosion" in a building near the Bolivar Avenue, as some social network and international media operators, such as the Associated Press, had tried to diffuse to distract attention and cover up responsibilities.
The gang led by Óscar Pérez was dismantled through a serious confrontation with the security forces early this year near the Venezuelan capital, specifically in El Junquito. However, the return of one of its members indicates that the paramilitary card against Venezuela also remains on the table.
By the end of the night, President Nicolás Maduro addressed the country to relate the events occurred and stressed that the perpetrators of the attack were under arrest. The first inquiry, according to the Head of State, produced the linkage of Bogotá and Miami, in other words, the outgoing President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos and operators based in Florida.
Symbolic and material aspects: timing, body language and logic of the ceremony
The assassination attempt also showed a specific and symbolic violence connotation aimed at important political entities related to the stability of the country and the State. The nature of the ceremony at the Bolivar Avenue, as well as the persons who were at the presidential platform, also describe the selection of the right moment to perform the attack.
The ceremony commemorates the 81th anniversary of the GNB, military body responsible for the internal order. Last year, during the color revolution, the GNB was a key element to neutralize the paramilitary progress of the guarimba and its logistical infrastructure.
Attacking the President precisely in that ceremony and not in other one implies the symbolic exhibition of the military body as vulnerable and unable to respond. It was supposed to put again in the public speech, through a (failed) commotion act at a large scale, the issue of violent confrontation which was dismantled by the National Constituent Assembly a year ago.
However, the attempt failed as well as what was supposed to take place if the goal aiming at affecting the President was achieved: a considerable amount of critical opinion via propaganda to generate chaos, the fact of taking advantage of the situation to massively diffuse a supposed uprising. Also, the use of propaganda from external powers and the solution of "solving" the "lack of authority" through a measure from an external force (probably a military one), or at least the proposal of this kind of measure as the unique mechanism to "stabilize" the nation, thus imposing the presidential sash to one of the large amount of persons that aspire to become the next president of Venezuela.
Just thinking on the worst scenario, and considering that yesterday's event was probably the worst one, helps us to be prepared for possible attacks in this extreme danger zone in which we have just entered.
A symbolic and important fact: the ceremony was attended by the Head of State, the military high command and the representatives of the Venezuelan public powers. The human representation of the Venezuelan State was in the same stage. In the moment of the attack, the assassination attempt showed its real purpose: to murder the State and the representatives of the narrow border between peace and war.
The Bolívar Avenue has a set of features (open space, large buildings and its surroundings, etc.) that offered advantages to perform the attempt with regard to the manipulation of drones which could reach the target by exploiting some zones of the security system. However, the fact that this attack was performed during a national television network shows the intention of making this assassination eternal in the memory of the people and in the contemporary history of the country. They not only sought to murder him but also to diffuse this event through a national television network.
In the political field, the body language sometimes expresses more than speeches. In this sense, the reaction of President Maduro was remarkable before an extremist situation: in the moment of the explosion, he was peaceful; he was willing to continue his speech in spite of the fact he could be murdered. If this event served as a precedent to analyze the magnitude of the action of operators of the warfare against Venezuela, it is also useful to appreciate the determination of Maduro and his strength when death was near.
Paramilitarization of politics, modernization of violence and qualitative improvements since "Golpe azul" (Blue Coup)
Through the failed "Golpe azul" (Blue Coup), a new kind of political violence is clearly implemented in the Venezuelan politics, in which the weapon factor plays a significant role. From that moment, the internal conspiracy in the military field found convergence points (supported from abroad). The most insane side of the Venezuelan opposition and the American and Colombian financial supply was planning anti-political agendas. In this context, Julio Borges and Antonio Ledezma were notable as operators of such dirty warfare.
Through this plan of bombing the Miraflores Palace and murder President Maduro until now, an operative transformation, a development of capacities and a professionalization of methods can be appreciated, which are increasing in the political life of the country. A great example of this was not only the readiness level in urban warfare of the Guarimbas’ operators in 2014 and 2017 but also the emergence of a local version of the Islamic State. It is the case of Oscar Perez and his gang with a sophisticated sense of irregular violence, through attacks against civil and military institutions.
From the case of Daktari farm in 2004 to all plans of assassination dismantled by the Venezuelan security body and Oscar Perez, the trace of the Colombian paramilitary is present. Only the change in its way of execution is clearly notable, but also in the selection of its focal point.
In the absence of the conditions for an open warfare under Colombian orders, the treatment or the way of reaching the goal is adapted.
The material evidence of this modernization is precisely the use of an explosive drone. This mechanism represents one of the mortal innovations regarding the war resources of the Islamic State, due to the tactic and financial advantages it has for murdering more effectively.
Such mechanism has been imported and adapted by the drug trafficking world, which has been notoriously used by mexicans.
The use of this instrument describes not only a level of expertise and preparation related to a kind of professional violence, but also put the trace of the operation in the hands of paramilitary operators who are the import sector of the terrorism's innovations.
At this point, the anecdote turns strategic. A shock like the yesterday’s one is a representation of something more serious: the paramilitary phenomenon as a strategy to change the peaceful and democratic nature of the Venezuelan people. Also, the expansion of the failed Colombian State is related to it.
Bogotá-Miami: Operation Centre
A report by the Bloomberg finance specialist, published in June, confirmed what we know since the "Golpe Azul" (Blue Coup): Colombia has served as a base for operation, financing and coordination of coup-mongering plans (and assassination) against Venezuela.
This time, it was called "Constitution Operation" and it had been planned in Bogota, with Colombian and financial military support. The objective was to kidnap Maduro and prosecute him. Although it does not mention the institution, it is not necessary to be smart to know it could be the "Supreme Court of Justice in exile", whereby the Colombian Congress uses for meeting and specifically to "judge Maduro."
The approach that has been presented in 2018 is one where high American and Colombian officials openly push to force a coup d'état in Venezuela, thus promoting it sometimes as a form of amnesty, and as a way to "restore the democracy" that the Venezuelan opposition could not restore.
Bloomberg publication clearly describes the role of the Colombian Government in the planning and coordination of this strategy, but also certifies, with equal clarity, its support to the warfare against Venezuela (contraband, attack on currency, paramilitaries, etc.).
The following sequence speaks for itself: after remaining silent for months, the self-exiled Julio Borges, as we know, likes coups d’état situations, reappeared in social networks to predict that the fall of Maduro was close. At the same time, President Juan Manuel Santos also warned the imminent end of Maduro.
Two irrefutable evidences of some kind of involvement, or at least fully aware, of a kind of public support with premeditation, with regard to the event perpetrated yesterday, because only an assassination attempt is the closest thing to their prophecies.
Both speeches, as well as the report by Bloomberg and the intense calls of US officials addressed to the Venezuelan military throughout 2018, should also be considered as strategies to soften public opinion, the collective imagination, with the aim of forcing the population to naturalize a violent response or a fact of shock in the short term. Preparing the minds of the country to accept that something tragic is to come is accompanied, in this case, by a strategy of forced and artificial consent, where people accept a misfortune as a logical and predicted event.
President Maduro also pointed to the state of La Florida, crib of chronic people who like to sanction Venezuela (Marco Rubio, Ileana Ros, etc.), but also of dirty warfare operators who self-exiled there. As the case of Jose Antonio Colina, who was protected by Marco Rubio and entertainer of the diaspora in Miami, who became famous for having placed bombs in the Spanish embassy and at the CNE in 2003, and more recently for sending devices to equip the violent groups who participated in the Guarimbas.
The Economic Recovery Plan: the accelerator
The Plan for Economic Recovery, designed by President Maduro and his government team, has been presented as a comprehensive strategy to attack the serious focal points of the economic warfare and return stability to the country.
The Plan implies a reorganization of the monetary and foreign exchange policies, a reorganization of the subsidy to gasoline and a decriminalization (through the derogation of the Law against Foreign Exchange Crime) in the foreign currency market to decrease the influence of the parallel dollar indicators in the formation of the price system.
These measures show a series of economic interests that will be affected, especially those related to gasoline. Indeed, it is only a binational matter.
Important regions of the Colombian eastern, their political elites related to the drug trafficking and paramilitaries, even their economic and business fields, depend on the plundering of the Venezuelan fuels to maintain an artificial State which has a false economic sovereignty.
With regard to the measures proposed by Maduro, the question is not only a change of the rules of the game, which would disable the serious focal points of the economic warfare, in other words, the total loss of political capital of the opposition and the United States, but also the own primary subsistence of a para-economic system that, at the other side of the border, lives from the cannibalism of our fuel.
Indeed, this factor further strengthens the participation of the Colombian side since the change those regions might experience as a result of regularization of the gasoline market imposes a new focus of stability to the coming Colombian government, who establishes as a State policy to overthrow Maduro to maintain the current order of the situation.
The strategic danger zone and the stage of economic post-sanction conflict
From a formal perspective, in other words, from a legal and political perspective, the United States, the great leader of the warfare against Venezuela, has reached its own limits.
Imposing sanctions implies to strengthen Maduro, according to his own think-tanks, or encourage a conflict with investors and enterprises interested in maintaining tolerable relations with Venezuela. Taking action based on the military perspective is not an option either in the current situation. This is the reason why the outsourcing of transactions against the Venezuelan economy and security from Colombia, under paramilitary, diplomatic, trade and financial mechanisms is strengthened.
At an international level, the OAS has debated a lot about the Venezuela issue (as well as the Lima Group). Overcoming the situation by bringing Maduro to the Supreme Court of Justice in exile or to the International Criminal Court is not a measure able to interrupt the economic plan of recovery. With regard to the national opposition, it is the same situation: a country that has a lot of conflicts does not consider it as a reference.
In this sense, it seems we are undoubtedly entering in a danger zone where sanctions serve as points of negotiation and economic dismantling. It is no the final solution in spite of the fact that the permanent pursuit of mixing the chaos the financial blockade generates with a new violent modality that benefits the opposition in the political field. In this sense Colombia, awaiting the new government of Ivan Duque, wants to assume the leadership that did not succeed inside the country.
The formal power has already progressed until the legal limits allow it. This implies that, in the strategic danger zone, the coming attacks will be aimed at the crime, assassination of political representatives, the intensification of the economic collapse, other factors of the dirty warfare and the extra-political strategies.
The image of the attack was consistent and synthesizes the new upsurge scenario that began after May 20th, where the Venezuelan situation is imprinted with a sense of total insecurity, where all the fields (the political, institutional, economic, human ones) of the society are at risk, suspended in terms of constitutionally enshrined rights, in terms of what has been politically conquered; where, also, the new modalities of social death implanted against Venezuela, through the financial blockade (among other crimes), pose to become massive and natural to our social metabolism.
If the economic recovery plan seeks a cessation of that process, we must undermine it. If the sanctions and international pressure cannot achieved it; if we cannot put the population against the government, we must murder the leader. This is the reasoning that led them to kill Patrice Lumumba, Omar Torrijos and others. "If I cannot have control on you, I will kill you".
Killing in these terms, implies, most importantly, to fracture a society and break it forever. This is what they were seeking yesterday. However, they failed again.
http://misionverdad.com/mv-in-english/f ... ial-report
Like an electric shock, the assassination attempt of yesterday's afternoon, August 4th, with the evident traumatic aftermath that embodies an event of such nature, seemed to make us become aware of the critical space and time in the history of the Homeland where our lives are at stake. Also, we do it through the life of Maduro.
AGOSTO 5 DE 2018, 11:23 AM
The facts already known about the operation
In the middle of the multitudinous activity at the Bolívar Avenue in Caracas, on the occasion of the 81th anniversary of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB by its Spanish acronym), two drones charged with explosive material exploded close to the presidential platform, when the President was preparing himself to close his speech for all those present.
Due to the magnitude of the explosion, the national television network was cut. The security staff implemented maneuvers of deployment and security protocols, which were duly activated, to protect the life of the Head of State.
Minutes later, in the light of the confusion, the Minister for Communication and Information, Jorge Rodríguez, confirmed that it was an attack and that President Maduro and the civil and military high ranking officials of the Venezuelan State, who were on the platform, resulted unharmed. Seven military officials were harmed due to the explosions, who have already received medical treatment.
According to official versions, drones fell after the explosion and it was confirmed the existence of explosive material. "Extra official" sources provided by an opposition journalist, named Roman Camacho, reaffirmed that the explosive device contained C4 explosives.
Minutes later, a group called Soldados de Franelas, (Solders in T-shirts) related to the now extinct paramilitary group of the former officer Óscar Pérez, who, by the end of last year, performed several armed attacks against civil and military institutions of the country and claimed the responsibilityt for the attack on social networks.
This credit eliminated the idea of a "self-attack" or an "isolated explosion" in a building near the Bolivar Avenue, as some social network and international media operators, such as the Associated Press, had tried to diffuse to distract attention and cover up responsibilities.
The gang led by Óscar Pérez was dismantled through a serious confrontation with the security forces early this year near the Venezuelan capital, specifically in El Junquito. However, the return of one of its members indicates that the paramilitary card against Venezuela also remains on the table.
By the end of the night, President Nicolás Maduro addressed the country to relate the events occurred and stressed that the perpetrators of the attack were under arrest. The first inquiry, according to the Head of State, produced the linkage of Bogotá and Miami, in other words, the outgoing President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos and operators based in Florida.
Symbolic and material aspects: timing, body language and logic of the ceremony
The assassination attempt also showed a specific and symbolic violence connotation aimed at important political entities related to the stability of the country and the State. The nature of the ceremony at the Bolivar Avenue, as well as the persons who were at the presidential platform, also describe the selection of the right moment to perform the attack.
The ceremony commemorates the 81th anniversary of the GNB, military body responsible for the internal order. Last year, during the color revolution, the GNB was a key element to neutralize the paramilitary progress of the guarimba and its logistical infrastructure.
Attacking the President precisely in that ceremony and not in other one implies the symbolic exhibition of the military body as vulnerable and unable to respond. It was supposed to put again in the public speech, through a (failed) commotion act at a large scale, the issue of violent confrontation which was dismantled by the National Constituent Assembly a year ago.
However, the attempt failed as well as what was supposed to take place if the goal aiming at affecting the President was achieved: a considerable amount of critical opinion via propaganda to generate chaos, the fact of taking advantage of the situation to massively diffuse a supposed uprising. Also, the use of propaganda from external powers and the solution of "solving" the "lack of authority" through a measure from an external force (probably a military one), or at least the proposal of this kind of measure as the unique mechanism to "stabilize" the nation, thus imposing the presidential sash to one of the large amount of persons that aspire to become the next president of Venezuela.
Just thinking on the worst scenario, and considering that yesterday's event was probably the worst one, helps us to be prepared for possible attacks in this extreme danger zone in which we have just entered.
A symbolic and important fact: the ceremony was attended by the Head of State, the military high command and the representatives of the Venezuelan public powers. The human representation of the Venezuelan State was in the same stage. In the moment of the attack, the assassination attempt showed its real purpose: to murder the State and the representatives of the narrow border between peace and war.
The Bolívar Avenue has a set of features (open space, large buildings and its surroundings, etc.) that offered advantages to perform the attempt with regard to the manipulation of drones which could reach the target by exploiting some zones of the security system. However, the fact that this attack was performed during a national television network shows the intention of making this assassination eternal in the memory of the people and in the contemporary history of the country. They not only sought to murder him but also to diffuse this event through a national television network.
In the political field, the body language sometimes expresses more than speeches. In this sense, the reaction of President Maduro was remarkable before an extremist situation: in the moment of the explosion, he was peaceful; he was willing to continue his speech in spite of the fact he could be murdered. If this event served as a precedent to analyze the magnitude of the action of operators of the warfare against Venezuela, it is also useful to appreciate the determination of Maduro and his strength when death was near.
Paramilitarization of politics, modernization of violence and qualitative improvements since "Golpe azul" (Blue Coup)
Through the failed "Golpe azul" (Blue Coup), a new kind of political violence is clearly implemented in the Venezuelan politics, in which the weapon factor plays a significant role. From that moment, the internal conspiracy in the military field found convergence points (supported from abroad). The most insane side of the Venezuelan opposition and the American and Colombian financial supply was planning anti-political agendas. In this context, Julio Borges and Antonio Ledezma were notable as operators of such dirty warfare.
Through this plan of bombing the Miraflores Palace and murder President Maduro until now, an operative transformation, a development of capacities and a professionalization of methods can be appreciated, which are increasing in the political life of the country. A great example of this was not only the readiness level in urban warfare of the Guarimbas’ operators in 2014 and 2017 but also the emergence of a local version of the Islamic State. It is the case of Oscar Perez and his gang with a sophisticated sense of irregular violence, through attacks against civil and military institutions.
From the case of Daktari farm in 2004 to all plans of assassination dismantled by the Venezuelan security body and Oscar Perez, the trace of the Colombian paramilitary is present. Only the change in its way of execution is clearly notable, but also in the selection of its focal point.
In the absence of the conditions for an open warfare under Colombian orders, the treatment or the way of reaching the goal is adapted.
The material evidence of this modernization is precisely the use of an explosive drone. This mechanism represents one of the mortal innovations regarding the war resources of the Islamic State, due to the tactic and financial advantages it has for murdering more effectively.
Such mechanism has been imported and adapted by the drug trafficking world, which has been notoriously used by mexicans.
The use of this instrument describes not only a level of expertise and preparation related to a kind of professional violence, but also put the trace of the operation in the hands of paramilitary operators who are the import sector of the terrorism's innovations.
At this point, the anecdote turns strategic. A shock like the yesterday’s one is a representation of something more serious: the paramilitary phenomenon as a strategy to change the peaceful and democratic nature of the Venezuelan people. Also, the expansion of the failed Colombian State is related to it.
Bogotá-Miami: Operation Centre
A report by the Bloomberg finance specialist, published in June, confirmed what we know since the "Golpe Azul" (Blue Coup): Colombia has served as a base for operation, financing and coordination of coup-mongering plans (and assassination) against Venezuela.
This time, it was called "Constitution Operation" and it had been planned in Bogota, with Colombian and financial military support. The objective was to kidnap Maduro and prosecute him. Although it does not mention the institution, it is not necessary to be smart to know it could be the "Supreme Court of Justice in exile", whereby the Colombian Congress uses for meeting and specifically to "judge Maduro."
The approach that has been presented in 2018 is one where high American and Colombian officials openly push to force a coup d'état in Venezuela, thus promoting it sometimes as a form of amnesty, and as a way to "restore the democracy" that the Venezuelan opposition could not restore.
Bloomberg publication clearly describes the role of the Colombian Government in the planning and coordination of this strategy, but also certifies, with equal clarity, its support to the warfare against Venezuela (contraband, attack on currency, paramilitaries, etc.).
The following sequence speaks for itself: after remaining silent for months, the self-exiled Julio Borges, as we know, likes coups d’état situations, reappeared in social networks to predict that the fall of Maduro was close. At the same time, President Juan Manuel Santos also warned the imminent end of Maduro.
Two irrefutable evidences of some kind of involvement, or at least fully aware, of a kind of public support with premeditation, with regard to the event perpetrated yesterday, because only an assassination attempt is the closest thing to their prophecies.
Both speeches, as well as the report by Bloomberg and the intense calls of US officials addressed to the Venezuelan military throughout 2018, should also be considered as strategies to soften public opinion, the collective imagination, with the aim of forcing the population to naturalize a violent response or a fact of shock in the short term. Preparing the minds of the country to accept that something tragic is to come is accompanied, in this case, by a strategy of forced and artificial consent, where people accept a misfortune as a logical and predicted event.
President Maduro also pointed to the state of La Florida, crib of chronic people who like to sanction Venezuela (Marco Rubio, Ileana Ros, etc.), but also of dirty warfare operators who self-exiled there. As the case of Jose Antonio Colina, who was protected by Marco Rubio and entertainer of the diaspora in Miami, who became famous for having placed bombs in the Spanish embassy and at the CNE in 2003, and more recently for sending devices to equip the violent groups who participated in the Guarimbas.
The Economic Recovery Plan: the accelerator
The Plan for Economic Recovery, designed by President Maduro and his government team, has been presented as a comprehensive strategy to attack the serious focal points of the economic warfare and return stability to the country.
The Plan implies a reorganization of the monetary and foreign exchange policies, a reorganization of the subsidy to gasoline and a decriminalization (through the derogation of the Law against Foreign Exchange Crime) in the foreign currency market to decrease the influence of the parallel dollar indicators in the formation of the price system.
These measures show a series of economic interests that will be affected, especially those related to gasoline. Indeed, it is only a binational matter.
Important regions of the Colombian eastern, their political elites related to the drug trafficking and paramilitaries, even their economic and business fields, depend on the plundering of the Venezuelan fuels to maintain an artificial State which has a false economic sovereignty.
With regard to the measures proposed by Maduro, the question is not only a change of the rules of the game, which would disable the serious focal points of the economic warfare, in other words, the total loss of political capital of the opposition and the United States, but also the own primary subsistence of a para-economic system that, at the other side of the border, lives from the cannibalism of our fuel.
Indeed, this factor further strengthens the participation of the Colombian side since the change those regions might experience as a result of regularization of the gasoline market imposes a new focus of stability to the coming Colombian government, who establishes as a State policy to overthrow Maduro to maintain the current order of the situation.
The strategic danger zone and the stage of economic post-sanction conflict
From a formal perspective, in other words, from a legal and political perspective, the United States, the great leader of the warfare against Venezuela, has reached its own limits.
Imposing sanctions implies to strengthen Maduro, according to his own think-tanks, or encourage a conflict with investors and enterprises interested in maintaining tolerable relations with Venezuela. Taking action based on the military perspective is not an option either in the current situation. This is the reason why the outsourcing of transactions against the Venezuelan economy and security from Colombia, under paramilitary, diplomatic, trade and financial mechanisms is strengthened.
At an international level, the OAS has debated a lot about the Venezuela issue (as well as the Lima Group). Overcoming the situation by bringing Maduro to the Supreme Court of Justice in exile or to the International Criminal Court is not a measure able to interrupt the economic plan of recovery. With regard to the national opposition, it is the same situation: a country that has a lot of conflicts does not consider it as a reference.
In this sense, it seems we are undoubtedly entering in a danger zone where sanctions serve as points of negotiation and economic dismantling. It is no the final solution in spite of the fact that the permanent pursuit of mixing the chaos the financial blockade generates with a new violent modality that benefits the opposition in the political field. In this sense Colombia, awaiting the new government of Ivan Duque, wants to assume the leadership that did not succeed inside the country.
The formal power has already progressed until the legal limits allow it. This implies that, in the strategic danger zone, the coming attacks will be aimed at the crime, assassination of political representatives, the intensification of the economic collapse, other factors of the dirty warfare and the extra-political strategies.
The image of the attack was consistent and synthesizes the new upsurge scenario that began after May 20th, where the Venezuelan situation is imprinted with a sense of total insecurity, where all the fields (the political, institutional, economic, human ones) of the society are at risk, suspended in terms of constitutionally enshrined rights, in terms of what has been politically conquered; where, also, the new modalities of social death implanted against Venezuela, through the financial blockade (among other crimes), pose to become massive and natural to our social metabolism.
If the economic recovery plan seeks a cessation of that process, we must undermine it. If the sanctions and international pressure cannot achieved it; if we cannot put the population against the government, we must murder the leader. This is the reasoning that led them to kill Patrice Lumumba, Omar Torrijos and others. "If I cannot have control on you, I will kill you".
Killing in these terms, implies, most importantly, to fracture a society and break it forever. This is what they were seeking yesterday. However, they failed again.
http://misionverdad.com/mv-in-english/f ... ial-report
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Venezuela
Exdiputated Requesens gives more evidence of attack on new video
This is the second video in which the ex-deputy offers details of the operation that sought to assassinate President Nicolás Maduro. | Photo: Twitter
Published 11 August 2018 (14 hours 13 minutes ago)
Juan Requesens again involved Julio Borges, assuring that he passed him the contact of Alexander Russo, the facilitator of operations on the border with Colombia.
The president of Venezuela , Nicolás Maduro , showed a new audiovisual record on Saturday in which the former opposition member Juan Requesens is seen giving more details of his participation in the failed attack against the president and involving, once again, the former president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, Julio Borges .
In the video, Requesens reveals that, after Borges sent him his number, he maintained contact with Rayder Alexander Russo , accused by the investigations as the facilitator of operations at the border that allowed, among other things, the entry into Colombia of the indicated as coordinator of the assassination in degree of frustration, Juan Carlos Monasterios.
"Alexander was a contact that Julio ( Borges ) gave me.When I went to Juan Monasterios, through text messaging, I put him in touch with Colombian migration, Alexander was the person who confirmed to me that he had already past, "says Requesens .
"As Juan Monstaerios had a Venezuelan number, after it happened there was no way to contact him, this person, Alexander , I do not know who he is, I do not know him physically, he only had his contact and with him I confirmed that Juan Monasterios was on the side of Colombia " , adds in the video, which also shows the cell phone of the former deputy with the number of Russo saved as "contact Borges ."
On Friday, August 10, the Venezuelan Minister of Communication , Jorge Rodríguez, showed a first record of Juan Requesens , arrested on Tuesday 7, in which he involved the former president of the National Assembly, Julio Borges , in the planning of the attack against Nicolás Mature , happened last Saturday, August 4, a week ago.
https://www.telesurtv.net/news/nuevo-vi ... -0029.html
Google Translator
This is the second video in which the ex-deputy offers details of the operation that sought to assassinate President Nicolás Maduro. | Photo: Twitter
Published 11 August 2018 (14 hours 13 minutes ago)
Juan Requesens again involved Julio Borges, assuring that he passed him the contact of Alexander Russo, the facilitator of operations on the border with Colombia.
The president of Venezuela , Nicolás Maduro , showed a new audiovisual record on Saturday in which the former opposition member Juan Requesens is seen giving more details of his participation in the failed attack against the president and involving, once again, the former president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, Julio Borges .
In the video, Requesens reveals that, after Borges sent him his number, he maintained contact with Rayder Alexander Russo , accused by the investigations as the facilitator of operations at the border that allowed, among other things, the entry into Colombia of the indicated as coordinator of the assassination in degree of frustration, Juan Carlos Monasterios.
"Alexander was a contact that Julio ( Borges ) gave me.When I went to Juan Monasterios, through text messaging, I put him in touch with Colombian migration, Alexander was the person who confirmed to me that he had already past, "says Requesens .
"As Juan Monstaerios had a Venezuelan number, after it happened there was no way to contact him, this person, Alexander , I do not know who he is, I do not know him physically, he only had his contact and with him I confirmed that Juan Monasterios was on the side of Colombia " , adds in the video, which also shows the cell phone of the former deputy with the number of Russo saved as "contact Borges ."
On Friday, August 10, the Venezuelan Minister of Communication , Jorge Rodríguez, showed a first record of Juan Requesens , arrested on Tuesday 7, in which he involved the former president of the National Assembly, Julio Borges , in the planning of the attack against Nicolás Mature , happened last Saturday, August 4, a week ago.
https://www.telesurtv.net/news/nuevo-vi ... -0029.html
Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Venezuela
Reinaldo Iturriza: Chavismo and Its Singularities
Well-known Venezuelan writer and theorist, Reinaldo Iturriza, addresses some of the key challenges that Chavismo is facing today in this Venezuelanalysis interview.
Reinaldo Iturriza. (Nelson González Leal)
By Reinaldo Iturriza and Cira Pascual Marquina – Venezuelanalysis
Aug 13th 2018 at 6.10pm
https://venezuelanalysis.com/NZwL
Reinaldo Iturriza has engaged with the Chavista project in a wide range of roles, from participation to critical and creative reflection. He is a blogger acclaimed by Hugo Chávez, the author of the book El chavismo salvaje (Wild Chavismo) and former Minister of the Communes and of Culture. At present, Iturriza is completing a book called Caribes while working in the National Center of History and as a communal agricultural worker in Lara state. In this interview for Venezuelanalysis, he addresses some of the most difficult questions facing Chavismo today. These include the dialectic between internal democracy and leadership in the PSUV party, the rural comuneros that are facing off with the regional oligarchy and its allies in the government, and the perception of Chavismo internationally.
Hegemonic historiography interprets history as developing linearly, implicitly looking for continuities. By contrast, your reading of the Chavista phenomenon points to singularities and ruptures. Can you explain this to us?
This is indeed a key point. Conservative historiography makes an enormous effort to demonstrate Chavismo’s kinship with the most “backward” elements of Venezuela’s political tradition. Internationally, there has certainly been an attempt to dispel the phenomenon by relating it to the “populism” said to be characteristic, once more, of “backward” countries. It focuses attention on the figure of the leader and relegates the popular classes to the background. Tacitly, the latter are considered incapable of political activity and the same goes for our countries too, which are presented as predisposed toward disorder, irrationality and violence. How often one hears this kind of opinion! However, the uniqueness of Chavismo consists, among other things, precisely in popular protagonism. Chavismo is the result of an extraordinary process of forming a political subject that has its origin in the 1990s, due to a set of historical circumstances. Moreover, Chávez’s leadership is itself inconceivable without that popular upsurge. Chávez is a purely popular construct: the result of a process and not the other way around. His leadership has to do with his resonance with the people, his translating the desires and aspirations of the popular subject.
Then, of course, it is surely possible to point to relations of continuity with the political culture Acción Democrática [a right-wing political party that ruled alongside COPEI for many decades as part of the so-called Punto Fijo Pact]. This culture was clientelist, based on the logic of representation, and relegated the popular classes to a subordinate role, allowing “participation” only through traditional political forms (parties, unions, etc.), and privileging corporativism. The most conservative tendencies in Chavismo feel very comfortable reproducing these same practices, but, again, that is not what defines the nature of Chavismo. What is new in Chavismo is precisely everything that breaks with the old culture, giving birth to a new one: the Chavista subject is essentially Venezuela’s majority population, that has historically been invisible, marginalized, which feels a deep distrust of traditional forms of organization, and which wagers on the logic of direct participation and spaces of self-government. Ignoring this leads to all kinds of errors regarding the Bolivarian Revolution.
Direct, participative democracy in action. (La Tinta)
The IV PSUV Congress (July 28‐30) concluded recently and the debates were intense, even difficult at times. The most trying debate focused on the topic of internal democracy in the party, which has millions of members. One PSUV tendency proposed proclaiming Nicolas Maduro as president of the party and also argued that (given the difficult conditions generated by imperialist aggression) he should personally select the PSUV’s national leadership. Another tendency wanted the party’s national leadership to be elected by the bases while maintaining Maduro as party president. The first proposal held the day. Thinking creatively about the present and the past, what type of party do you think is needed to build socialism in the twenty-first century? Obviously, the question of democracy (and debate among equals) is key, but it is also important that communal projects should have autonomy.
First of all, I consider it correct that the IV PSUV Congress decided to ratify Nicolás Maduro as party president. Chavismo’s unity turns on recognizing the President’s leadership, not the other way around. Second, it’s urgent to renew the party's national leadership. The best way to do it would have been to appeal to the party’s bases, to cast one’s lot with the bases. I do not agree at all with the idea that more democracy generates disunity. It is a fallacious argument. Too often, the Chavista political class decides not to pay attention to the popular masses’ deep discontent with the political class in general, Chavista and anti‐Chavista, considering them to be disconnected from reality, without real knowledge of the problems that the population has to face every day. There is a very severe crisis of political mediation, between the party direction and its bases, that must be faced with courage and audacity. Among other things, a party of twenty-first-century socialism must be one that is willing to do so. We have already had too many mid- and high-ranking politicians who ask the people to make sacrifices that they themselves are not willing to make. Instead, they take advantage of the positions they occupy to obtain benefits, perks, and privileges.
Today it seems as if the rural areas are where the struggle against the despotism of capital (and a part of the bureaucracy) is most active. Examples of such struggles include El Maizal commune [in Lara state] , the resistance in the Sur de Lago [in Zulia state] and the Admirable Campesino March: the protesting peasant farmers who recently walked from interior regions to the capital to make themselves heard. Why do you think that the rural areas are now the most active and mobilized regions in this political process that, until recently, was focused on urban zones, especially in the poor barrios?
In each of the foci of rural struggle, organized popular-class movements are confronting the regional oligarchy and powers-that-be, who undoubtedly think that they are in a position to “restore” their power in the countryside. The popular movements are also confronting the aberrant alliance of a part of the state forces (bureaucrats, police, military personnel, judges, etc.) with these same regional power groups. It is simply unacceptable that this alliance should take place in a situation where, in fact, we are called upon to dedicate all our efforts on using arable land and must give all the support needed to the real subject of revolutionary politics (peasants and comuneros, small and medium producers). For it is among the latter that the revolutionary government continues to operate and hold sway.
In fact, what would really be strange is if the rural situation today did not generate a popular response! The meeting of the peasants and comuneros with the President, and particularly everything they said during the time they had the opportunity to speak (in a national television broadcast), is one of the most important political events of recent times. I believe one could say that the majority of the country felt represented in their words: in their criticisms and demands. What we heard there is the same political clarity found in the people of El Maizal and other communes, in the people in Sur del Lago, and in general in all those who are aware that, in order to overcome this historical crisis, we will have to be able to produce what we eat.
In the international context, some sectors of the the Left say that they are neither with Chavismo nor with its enemies, neither with imperialism nor the Bolivarian government. In truth, that is a false dilemma, since there is a third option: grassroots Chavismo. The latter is of course closer to the government, or at least is willing to form a front with the government to face down imperialism (at the same time as it expresses sometimes quite strong differences with the ruling bloc).
It seems to me that this is the typical position of those who idealize power relations. Despite all the disagreements one might have with the government, it is absolutely clear that anti-Chavismo is simply not an option. Those sectors of the Left, which you just mentioned, like to flaunt their right not to choose. But when you live in a society like ours, where we are trying to carry out a revolution -- with both its wonders and its failures -- and in which it is not an option to be governed by the criminals who ruled in the past (the same people who are recurring to absolutely all forms of struggle to defeat us, including assassination), then that “neither-nor” position looks a lot like imposture: ”My position is not to take a position.” Frankly, however, one can go light on such people. They will understand, when they do their own revolution. When imperialism tries to suffocate them, they will come to understand that the only option is to breathe.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13996
Well-known Venezuelan writer and theorist, Reinaldo Iturriza, addresses some of the key challenges that Chavismo is facing today in this Venezuelanalysis interview.
Reinaldo Iturriza. (Nelson González Leal)
By Reinaldo Iturriza and Cira Pascual Marquina – Venezuelanalysis
Aug 13th 2018 at 6.10pm
https://venezuelanalysis.com/NZwL
Reinaldo Iturriza has engaged with the Chavista project in a wide range of roles, from participation to critical and creative reflection. He is a blogger acclaimed by Hugo Chávez, the author of the book El chavismo salvaje (Wild Chavismo) and former Minister of the Communes and of Culture. At present, Iturriza is completing a book called Caribes while working in the National Center of History and as a communal agricultural worker in Lara state. In this interview for Venezuelanalysis, he addresses some of the most difficult questions facing Chavismo today. These include the dialectic between internal democracy and leadership in the PSUV party, the rural comuneros that are facing off with the regional oligarchy and its allies in the government, and the perception of Chavismo internationally.
Hegemonic historiography interprets history as developing linearly, implicitly looking for continuities. By contrast, your reading of the Chavista phenomenon points to singularities and ruptures. Can you explain this to us?
This is indeed a key point. Conservative historiography makes an enormous effort to demonstrate Chavismo’s kinship with the most “backward” elements of Venezuela’s political tradition. Internationally, there has certainly been an attempt to dispel the phenomenon by relating it to the “populism” said to be characteristic, once more, of “backward” countries. It focuses attention on the figure of the leader and relegates the popular classes to the background. Tacitly, the latter are considered incapable of political activity and the same goes for our countries too, which are presented as predisposed toward disorder, irrationality and violence. How often one hears this kind of opinion! However, the uniqueness of Chavismo consists, among other things, precisely in popular protagonism. Chavismo is the result of an extraordinary process of forming a political subject that has its origin in the 1990s, due to a set of historical circumstances. Moreover, Chávez’s leadership is itself inconceivable without that popular upsurge. Chávez is a purely popular construct: the result of a process and not the other way around. His leadership has to do with his resonance with the people, his translating the desires and aspirations of the popular subject.
Then, of course, it is surely possible to point to relations of continuity with the political culture Acción Democrática [a right-wing political party that ruled alongside COPEI for many decades as part of the so-called Punto Fijo Pact]. This culture was clientelist, based on the logic of representation, and relegated the popular classes to a subordinate role, allowing “participation” only through traditional political forms (parties, unions, etc.), and privileging corporativism. The most conservative tendencies in Chavismo feel very comfortable reproducing these same practices, but, again, that is not what defines the nature of Chavismo. What is new in Chavismo is precisely everything that breaks with the old culture, giving birth to a new one: the Chavista subject is essentially Venezuela’s majority population, that has historically been invisible, marginalized, which feels a deep distrust of traditional forms of organization, and which wagers on the logic of direct participation and spaces of self-government. Ignoring this leads to all kinds of errors regarding the Bolivarian Revolution.
Direct, participative democracy in action. (La Tinta)
The IV PSUV Congress (July 28‐30) concluded recently and the debates were intense, even difficult at times. The most trying debate focused on the topic of internal democracy in the party, which has millions of members. One PSUV tendency proposed proclaiming Nicolas Maduro as president of the party and also argued that (given the difficult conditions generated by imperialist aggression) he should personally select the PSUV’s national leadership. Another tendency wanted the party’s national leadership to be elected by the bases while maintaining Maduro as party president. The first proposal held the day. Thinking creatively about the present and the past, what type of party do you think is needed to build socialism in the twenty-first century? Obviously, the question of democracy (and debate among equals) is key, but it is also important that communal projects should have autonomy.
First of all, I consider it correct that the IV PSUV Congress decided to ratify Nicolás Maduro as party president. Chavismo’s unity turns on recognizing the President’s leadership, not the other way around. Second, it’s urgent to renew the party's national leadership. The best way to do it would have been to appeal to the party’s bases, to cast one’s lot with the bases. I do not agree at all with the idea that more democracy generates disunity. It is a fallacious argument. Too often, the Chavista political class decides not to pay attention to the popular masses’ deep discontent with the political class in general, Chavista and anti‐Chavista, considering them to be disconnected from reality, without real knowledge of the problems that the population has to face every day. There is a very severe crisis of political mediation, between the party direction and its bases, that must be faced with courage and audacity. Among other things, a party of twenty-first-century socialism must be one that is willing to do so. We have already had too many mid- and high-ranking politicians who ask the people to make sacrifices that they themselves are not willing to make. Instead, they take advantage of the positions they occupy to obtain benefits, perks, and privileges.
Today it seems as if the rural areas are where the struggle against the despotism of capital (and a part of the bureaucracy) is most active. Examples of such struggles include El Maizal commune [in Lara state] , the resistance in the Sur de Lago [in Zulia state] and the Admirable Campesino March: the protesting peasant farmers who recently walked from interior regions to the capital to make themselves heard. Why do you think that the rural areas are now the most active and mobilized regions in this political process that, until recently, was focused on urban zones, especially in the poor barrios?
In each of the foci of rural struggle, organized popular-class movements are confronting the regional oligarchy and powers-that-be, who undoubtedly think that they are in a position to “restore” their power in the countryside. The popular movements are also confronting the aberrant alliance of a part of the state forces (bureaucrats, police, military personnel, judges, etc.) with these same regional power groups. It is simply unacceptable that this alliance should take place in a situation where, in fact, we are called upon to dedicate all our efforts on using arable land and must give all the support needed to the real subject of revolutionary politics (peasants and comuneros, small and medium producers). For it is among the latter that the revolutionary government continues to operate and hold sway.
In fact, what would really be strange is if the rural situation today did not generate a popular response! The meeting of the peasants and comuneros with the President, and particularly everything they said during the time they had the opportunity to speak (in a national television broadcast), is one of the most important political events of recent times. I believe one could say that the majority of the country felt represented in their words: in their criticisms and demands. What we heard there is the same political clarity found in the people of El Maizal and other communes, in the people in Sur del Lago, and in general in all those who are aware that, in order to overcome this historical crisis, we will have to be able to produce what we eat.
In the international context, some sectors of the the Left say that they are neither with Chavismo nor with its enemies, neither with imperialism nor the Bolivarian government. In truth, that is a false dilemma, since there is a third option: grassroots Chavismo. The latter is of course closer to the government, or at least is willing to form a front with the government to face down imperialism (at the same time as it expresses sometimes quite strong differences with the ruling bloc).
It seems to me that this is the typical position of those who idealize power relations. Despite all the disagreements one might have with the government, it is absolutely clear that anti-Chavismo is simply not an option. Those sectors of the Left, which you just mentioned, like to flaunt their right not to choose. But when you live in a society like ours, where we are trying to carry out a revolution -- with both its wonders and its failures -- and in which it is not an option to be governed by the criminals who ruled in the past (the same people who are recurring to absolutely all forms of struggle to defeat us, including assassination), then that “neither-nor” position looks a lot like imposture: ”My position is not to take a position.” Frankly, however, one can go light on such people. They will understand, when they do their own revolution. When imperialism tries to suffocate them, they will come to understand that the only option is to breathe.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/13996
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Venezuela
Venezuela's Monetary Revolution Vis-a-Vis Economic Sanctions
By: Nino Pagliccia
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro holds a bank note of the new national currency, the 'Bolivar Soberano' (Sovereign Bolivar). | Photo: Reuters
Published 8 August 2018
It is encouraging to see that a new campaign is taking shape "to end U.S. and Canada sanctions against Venezuela," writes Nino Pagliccia.
Venezuela has undergone many challenges in the last 20 years since Hugo Chavez was elected president and continued after his death in 2013. The main reason is that Venezuela has taken seriously the internationally recognized right to be sovereign and establish its own social model. Violence has never been part of the model. However, violence has been the reaction of those who do not want to change the status quo despite the people's majority democratic electoral choice.
The new social model chosen by Venezuela has been widely called the Bolivarian Revolution. It is a revolution that is still under construction. In fact, having defused the rampant right-wing violence, and with Nicolas Maduro as the re-elected president as of May 20, Venezuela continues building an unequivocal socialist anti-imperialist society by strengthening its Bolivarian Revolution. It is succeeding socially and politically by retaining considerable popular support, while it's struggling economically because of foreign-induced hyperinflation, crippling sanctions and the U.S.-led financial blockade.
Monetary Revolution in Venezuela
On July 25, President Maduro announced a series of economic measures that many were expecting following the creation of the crypto currency, the Petro, in March. The most relevant announcement was that on August 20 Venezuela will put in circulation a new currency, the Sovereign Bolivar (Bolivar Soberano, BsS), that will reduce by five zeros the current value of the Strong Bolivar (Bolivar Fuerte, BsF). The referential value of the BsS will be linked to the Petro, whose value is pegged to the price of a barrel of oil. To give substance to this action, the state oil company PDVSA – with the largest oil reserves in the world – will transfer a large oil field in the Orinoco Belt, with almost 30,000 million barrels of oil, to the Venezuelan Central Bank.
Undoubtedly, this sent shockwaves through the world monetary and financial system in what may be dubbed a 'monetary revolution' that signals the beginning of a possible trend to drop the U.S. dollar as a reference, and the expansion of the use of crypto currencies. Iran has already suggested it might take a similar path. Also, Russia and China are already building their gold reserves to back up their currency and they may welcome Venezuela's move since they have economic interests in Venezuelan oil.
It is still too soon to understand the full implications of this monetary revolution, also considering that we do not know the details of the monetary conversion. We do know its stated intentions, which are to stabilize the currency; stop capital flight, increase production and encourage international investment, all leading to economic recovery. We also know there was a pre-emptive reaction in March when the United States announced sanctions to forbid U.S. citizens and businesses from doing any transactions in Petros.
But the difficulty of predicting any real impact on the Venezuelan economy is also due to a great extent to the level of trust from Venezuelans. Maduro was quite aware of this when he said: "I ask for your confidence, I ask for your support, beyond ideologies and political positions, because Venezuela needs this change."
Surely, we know the political reasons "Venezuela needs this change." In a sentence, the United States is using all its power to produce another type of change in Venezuela – regime change – in order to have imperial control over it by creating economic havoc.
U.S. Financial System & Economic Sanctions
Military threats such as the ones already used against Venezuela under the pretext of alleged humanitarian crisis can be quite a strong disincentive on the economy. However, even with its military might, U.S. imperialism could not survive or spread without the financial system that keeps track of global capital.
If the military industrial complex, armies and banking institutions can be seen as the hardware of the U.S. imperial machine, the U.S.-based financial system is the software that operates the day-to-day operations of policing trade, competitors and governments to ensure the generation and protection of wealth for the empire through financial monopoly.
The policing of all financial transactions by the United States was facilitated when the gold standard was dropped by the Nixon administration and the dollar became the new monetary standard. But we need to keep in mind that the dollar also has a psychological value based on the trust people put on it. We could say it's largely a paper 'crypto' currency, whose value is manipulated by the U.S. financial system and enforced by military power.
In fact, part of the policing process is punishing all those deemed to challenge any aspect of U.S. power. And that's when sanctions and financial blockade come into the picture. The United States has used sanctions and financial blockade regularly as instruments of intervention.
A recent report titled 'To Whom And Why Does The United States Impose Sanctions?' – about some of the countries affected by this perverse strategy – states: "Beyond the rhetoric that justifies it in the name of 'democracy,' sanctions are an instrument of war, designed to make people suffer in order to bend sovereign states."
The same report further states: "In Latin America, during the post-war period, economic sanctions have been an instrument of intervention and interference, used to 'punish,' extort and destabilize governments that posed some kind of obstacle to the expansion of U.S. interests."
To those who believe this is an exaggeration, we remind them of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's reaction to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children as a result of sanctions: "We think the price was worth it." And paraphrasing Canadian author Stephen Gowans: "Sanctions overall have killed more people than the nuclear bombs used by the United States."
Another report, drafted by Venezuela's Ministry for Foreign Relations, titled 'Sanctions And Blockade: Aggression To The Bolivarian Republic Of Venezuela,' refers more specifically to that country. The report presents "arguments and facts that demonstrate the existence – since 2014 – of a hostile and aggressive policy undertaken by the United States of America towards Venezuela. This policy is expressed with particular intensity in the adoption of unilateral and coercive measures (sanctions) aiming at affecting the economic and political stability of Venezuelan democracy, within a framework that looks to achieve the overthrowing of the constitutional government."
Concluding Remarks
At the time of writing, a failed attempt on the life of President Nicolas Maduro was carried out on August 4 while he was delivering a speech to a gathering of the Bolivarian National Guard. Preliminary official information reports that the security forces immediately began investigations and that several of the material authors of the attack have been captured, together with part of the evidence of the attack. The effective initial investigation made it absolutely clear that this is a conspiracy against the life of the president, employing an act qualified as terrorism.
The government of Venezuela is convinced that this attack desperately sought to stop the implementation of the new measures for economic recovery announced by the Maduro administration that are to be launched on August 20. These measures are meant to be effective responses to the country's crisis that will bring stability, prosperity to all citizens and hopefully peace.
The Maduro government is doing everything possible to tackle the foreign-induced economic crisis by announcing what can be called a 'monetary revolution' with a new currency linked to a crypto currency pegged to the price of oil, while at the same time preserving its ongoing revolution, the socialist Bolivarian Revolution.
We do not know what the ultimate impact will be on the economy because there are too many factors involved. Some observers are skeptical about a positive impact and even call on the government to implement other economic measures that might include a compromise of its socialist principles. Others consider any compromise a myopic approach – no matter what the short-term intentions might be – that will play to the interests of the United States.
We should not doubt for a moment that any attempt to liberalize the Venezuelan economy under the banner of Bolivarian Revolution will not be allowed to succeed, as more liberal policies are not allowed to succeed in Nicaragua under the banner of Sandinismo. The United States will never give up its goal of regime change. The almost 60-year-old blockade of Cuba is another point in case, despite the recent cautious introduction of 'market economy' elements in the country.
Disillusioned Venezuelans and the international community of experts, analysts, observers and activists – indeed all who care about a sovereign Venezuela and a more just world community – should turn their gaze on and reject the real intentions of the United States as the world power, and vociferously call on other nations to a more radical rebellion of the oppressed. The rapid success of this rebellion lies on the strength of unity and solidarity.
We do know the devastating impact of economic sanctions on the population, and stopping the human suffering needs to be the focus of our attention.
It is encouraging to see that a new campaign is taking shape "to end U.S. and Canada sanctions against Venezuela." An initial subscription to the campaign gathered dozens of signatures from the United States and Canada.
This is precisely what Venezuela needs from the international community.
Nino Pagliccia is a Venezuelan-Canadian activist and writer based in Vancouver, Canada. He writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas and is editor of 'Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations.'
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/opini ... -0023.html
By: Nino Pagliccia
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro holds a bank note of the new national currency, the 'Bolivar Soberano' (Sovereign Bolivar). | Photo: Reuters
Published 8 August 2018
It is encouraging to see that a new campaign is taking shape "to end U.S. and Canada sanctions against Venezuela," writes Nino Pagliccia.
Venezuela has undergone many challenges in the last 20 years since Hugo Chavez was elected president and continued after his death in 2013. The main reason is that Venezuela has taken seriously the internationally recognized right to be sovereign and establish its own social model. Violence has never been part of the model. However, violence has been the reaction of those who do not want to change the status quo despite the people's majority democratic electoral choice.
The new social model chosen by Venezuela has been widely called the Bolivarian Revolution. It is a revolution that is still under construction. In fact, having defused the rampant right-wing violence, and with Nicolas Maduro as the re-elected president as of May 20, Venezuela continues building an unequivocal socialist anti-imperialist society by strengthening its Bolivarian Revolution. It is succeeding socially and politically by retaining considerable popular support, while it's struggling economically because of foreign-induced hyperinflation, crippling sanctions and the U.S.-led financial blockade.
Monetary Revolution in Venezuela
On July 25, President Maduro announced a series of economic measures that many were expecting following the creation of the crypto currency, the Petro, in March. The most relevant announcement was that on August 20 Venezuela will put in circulation a new currency, the Sovereign Bolivar (Bolivar Soberano, BsS), that will reduce by five zeros the current value of the Strong Bolivar (Bolivar Fuerte, BsF). The referential value of the BsS will be linked to the Petro, whose value is pegged to the price of a barrel of oil. To give substance to this action, the state oil company PDVSA – with the largest oil reserves in the world – will transfer a large oil field in the Orinoco Belt, with almost 30,000 million barrels of oil, to the Venezuelan Central Bank.
Undoubtedly, this sent shockwaves through the world monetary and financial system in what may be dubbed a 'monetary revolution' that signals the beginning of a possible trend to drop the U.S. dollar as a reference, and the expansion of the use of crypto currencies. Iran has already suggested it might take a similar path. Also, Russia and China are already building their gold reserves to back up their currency and they may welcome Venezuela's move since they have economic interests in Venezuelan oil.
It is still too soon to understand the full implications of this monetary revolution, also considering that we do not know the details of the monetary conversion. We do know its stated intentions, which are to stabilize the currency; stop capital flight, increase production and encourage international investment, all leading to economic recovery. We also know there was a pre-emptive reaction in March when the United States announced sanctions to forbid U.S. citizens and businesses from doing any transactions in Petros.
But the difficulty of predicting any real impact on the Venezuelan economy is also due to a great extent to the level of trust from Venezuelans. Maduro was quite aware of this when he said: "I ask for your confidence, I ask for your support, beyond ideologies and political positions, because Venezuela needs this change."
Surely, we know the political reasons "Venezuela needs this change." In a sentence, the United States is using all its power to produce another type of change in Venezuela – regime change – in order to have imperial control over it by creating economic havoc.
U.S. Financial System & Economic Sanctions
Military threats such as the ones already used against Venezuela under the pretext of alleged humanitarian crisis can be quite a strong disincentive on the economy. However, even with its military might, U.S. imperialism could not survive or spread without the financial system that keeps track of global capital.
If the military industrial complex, armies and banking institutions can be seen as the hardware of the U.S. imperial machine, the U.S.-based financial system is the software that operates the day-to-day operations of policing trade, competitors and governments to ensure the generation and protection of wealth for the empire through financial monopoly.
The policing of all financial transactions by the United States was facilitated when the gold standard was dropped by the Nixon administration and the dollar became the new monetary standard. But we need to keep in mind that the dollar also has a psychological value based on the trust people put on it. We could say it's largely a paper 'crypto' currency, whose value is manipulated by the U.S. financial system and enforced by military power.
In fact, part of the policing process is punishing all those deemed to challenge any aspect of U.S. power. And that's when sanctions and financial blockade come into the picture. The United States has used sanctions and financial blockade regularly as instruments of intervention.
A recent report titled 'To Whom And Why Does The United States Impose Sanctions?' – about some of the countries affected by this perverse strategy – states: "Beyond the rhetoric that justifies it in the name of 'democracy,' sanctions are an instrument of war, designed to make people suffer in order to bend sovereign states."
The same report further states: "In Latin America, during the post-war period, economic sanctions have been an instrument of intervention and interference, used to 'punish,' extort and destabilize governments that posed some kind of obstacle to the expansion of U.S. interests."
To those who believe this is an exaggeration, we remind them of former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's reaction to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children as a result of sanctions: "We think the price was worth it." And paraphrasing Canadian author Stephen Gowans: "Sanctions overall have killed more people than the nuclear bombs used by the United States."
Another report, drafted by Venezuela's Ministry for Foreign Relations, titled 'Sanctions And Blockade: Aggression To The Bolivarian Republic Of Venezuela,' refers more specifically to that country. The report presents "arguments and facts that demonstrate the existence – since 2014 – of a hostile and aggressive policy undertaken by the United States of America towards Venezuela. This policy is expressed with particular intensity in the adoption of unilateral and coercive measures (sanctions) aiming at affecting the economic and political stability of Venezuelan democracy, within a framework that looks to achieve the overthrowing of the constitutional government."
Concluding Remarks
At the time of writing, a failed attempt on the life of President Nicolas Maduro was carried out on August 4 while he was delivering a speech to a gathering of the Bolivarian National Guard. Preliminary official information reports that the security forces immediately began investigations and that several of the material authors of the attack have been captured, together with part of the evidence of the attack. The effective initial investigation made it absolutely clear that this is a conspiracy against the life of the president, employing an act qualified as terrorism.
The government of Venezuela is convinced that this attack desperately sought to stop the implementation of the new measures for economic recovery announced by the Maduro administration that are to be launched on August 20. These measures are meant to be effective responses to the country's crisis that will bring stability, prosperity to all citizens and hopefully peace.
The Maduro government is doing everything possible to tackle the foreign-induced economic crisis by announcing what can be called a 'monetary revolution' with a new currency linked to a crypto currency pegged to the price of oil, while at the same time preserving its ongoing revolution, the socialist Bolivarian Revolution.
We do not know what the ultimate impact will be on the economy because there are too many factors involved. Some observers are skeptical about a positive impact and even call on the government to implement other economic measures that might include a compromise of its socialist principles. Others consider any compromise a myopic approach – no matter what the short-term intentions might be – that will play to the interests of the United States.
We should not doubt for a moment that any attempt to liberalize the Venezuelan economy under the banner of Bolivarian Revolution will not be allowed to succeed, as more liberal policies are not allowed to succeed in Nicaragua under the banner of Sandinismo. The United States will never give up its goal of regime change. The almost 60-year-old blockade of Cuba is another point in case, despite the recent cautious introduction of 'market economy' elements in the country.
Disillusioned Venezuelans and the international community of experts, analysts, observers and activists – indeed all who care about a sovereign Venezuela and a more just world community – should turn their gaze on and reject the real intentions of the United States as the world power, and vociferously call on other nations to a more radical rebellion of the oppressed. The rapid success of this rebellion lies on the strength of unity and solidarity.
We do know the devastating impact of economic sanctions on the population, and stopping the human suffering needs to be the focus of our attention.
It is encouraging to see that a new campaign is taking shape "to end U.S. and Canada sanctions against Venezuela." An initial subscription to the campaign gathered dozens of signatures from the United States and Canada.
This is precisely what Venezuela needs from the international community.
Nino Pagliccia is a Venezuelan-Canadian activist and writer based in Vancouver, Canada. He writes about international relations with a focus on the Americas and is editor of 'Cuba Solidarity in Canada – Five Decades of People-to-People Foreign Relations.'
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/opini ... -0023.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."
Re: Venezuela
Venezuela Denounces US Coup Plotting After NYT Report
According to a report by the New York Times, United States officials have been meeting with Venezuelan coup plotters for over a year.
Sep 10th 2018 at 10.22am
https://venezuelanalysis.com/NZ5w
us_venezuela_coup_plot.jpg_1718483346_1.jpg
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Venezuela with a "military option" in August 2017. (Reuters)
Venezuela's foreign minister reiterated his condemnation of the United States for seeking an intervention and supporting military conspiracies, following a report that members of the US government have been meeting with Venezuelan military officers who were actively plotting to oust democratically elected president Nicolas Maduro since mid-2017.
"Venezuela reiterates its denouncement and condemns the continuing aggressions that the U.S. government has directly promoted against the constitutional President @NicolasMaduro, democratically elected and re-elected by a wide electoral margin in May this year," Jorge Arreaza wrote on Twitter Sunday, a day after the New York Times report came out.
A day earlier Arreza also directly addressed the report and slammed the U.S. for meeting with coup plotters against Maduro. "We denounce the intervention plans and support for military conspirators by the government of the United States against Venezuela," he wrote on Twitter on Saturday. "Even in U.S. media, the crass evidence is coming to light."
Ernesto Londoño and Nicholas Casey, writers for the renowned New York Times, published a report Saturday detailing the exchanges between U.S. officials and Venezuela coup plotters. According to their account, the “secret” meetings were compiled from interviews with 11 “current and former” U.S. officials and a former Venezuelan commander, speaking under condition of anonymity.
Through the interviews, the writers were able to gather that conversations began after Trump declared in August 2017 that the U.S. had a “military option” for Venezuela, which “encouraged rebellious Venezuelan military officers to reach out to Washington.”
During the first meetings, one of the attendees allegedly told U.S. officials they could convince small groups within the Venezuelan military to plot against the Maduro government.
Aside from confirming what the Venezuelan government has repeatedly warned against, namely the active plotting against the Maduro government by “political opposition” and U.S. participation, Londoño and Casey also revealed that the U.S. designated a career diplomat to attend the conversations, listen and report on them.
A senior U.S. administration official who also spoke to the reporters under the condition of anonymity said the Trump administration had considered dispatching a veteran Central Intelligence Agency official, Juan Cruz, but later decided “it would be more prudent to send a career diplomat instead.”
The NY Times article claims that “in the fall of 2017, the diplomat reported that the Venezuelans didn’t appear to have a detailed plan and had shown up at the encounter hoping the Americans would offer guidance or ideas.”
However, the officers had explicitly “asked the U.S. to supply them with encrypted radios, citing the need to communicate securely, as they developed a plan to install a transitional government to run the country until elections could be held.” Londoño and Casey report U.S. officials did not provide material support, and “the plans unravelled after a recent crackdown that led to the arrest of dozens of the plotters.”
On August 4, during the Bolivarian National Armed Forces 81st-anniversary celebrations, two drones packed with C4 exploded in an attempt to assassinate president Maduro, several other government officials and guest. Over 40 people, including opposition legislator Julio Borges and retired colonel Oswaldo Garcia, have been linked to the attack.
The current state of the relation and collaboration between U.S. and Venezuelan officials to topple Maduro is unknown.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14040
According to a report by the New York Times, United States officials have been meeting with Venezuelan coup plotters for over a year.
Sep 10th 2018 at 10.22am
https://venezuelanalysis.com/NZ5w
us_venezuela_coup_plot.jpg_1718483346_1.jpg
U.S. President Donald Trump threatened Venezuela with a "military option" in August 2017. (Reuters)
Venezuela's foreign minister reiterated his condemnation of the United States for seeking an intervention and supporting military conspiracies, following a report that members of the US government have been meeting with Venezuelan military officers who were actively plotting to oust democratically elected president Nicolas Maduro since mid-2017.
"Venezuela reiterates its denouncement and condemns the continuing aggressions that the U.S. government has directly promoted against the constitutional President @NicolasMaduro, democratically elected and re-elected by a wide electoral margin in May this year," Jorge Arreaza wrote on Twitter Sunday, a day after the New York Times report came out.
A day earlier Arreza also directly addressed the report and slammed the U.S. for meeting with coup plotters against Maduro. "We denounce the intervention plans and support for military conspirators by the government of the United States against Venezuela," he wrote on Twitter on Saturday. "Even in U.S. media, the crass evidence is coming to light."
Ernesto Londoño and Nicholas Casey, writers for the renowned New York Times, published a report Saturday detailing the exchanges between U.S. officials and Venezuela coup plotters. According to their account, the “secret” meetings were compiled from interviews with 11 “current and former” U.S. officials and a former Venezuelan commander, speaking under condition of anonymity.
Through the interviews, the writers were able to gather that conversations began after Trump declared in August 2017 that the U.S. had a “military option” for Venezuela, which “encouraged rebellious Venezuelan military officers to reach out to Washington.”
During the first meetings, one of the attendees allegedly told U.S. officials they could convince small groups within the Venezuelan military to plot against the Maduro government.
Aside from confirming what the Venezuelan government has repeatedly warned against, namely the active plotting against the Maduro government by “political opposition” and U.S. participation, Londoño and Casey also revealed that the U.S. designated a career diplomat to attend the conversations, listen and report on them.
A senior U.S. administration official who also spoke to the reporters under the condition of anonymity said the Trump administration had considered dispatching a veteran Central Intelligence Agency official, Juan Cruz, but later decided “it would be more prudent to send a career diplomat instead.”
The NY Times article claims that “in the fall of 2017, the diplomat reported that the Venezuelans didn’t appear to have a detailed plan and had shown up at the encounter hoping the Americans would offer guidance or ideas.”
However, the officers had explicitly “asked the U.S. to supply them with encrypted radios, citing the need to communicate securely, as they developed a plan to install a transitional government to run the country until elections could be held.” Londoño and Casey report U.S. officials did not provide material support, and “the plans unravelled after a recent crackdown that led to the arrest of dozens of the plotters.”
On August 4, during the Bolivarian National Armed Forces 81st-anniversary celebrations, two drones packed with C4 exploded in an attempt to assassinate president Maduro, several other government officials and guest. Over 40 people, including opposition legislator Julio Borges and retired colonel Oswaldo Garcia, have been linked to the attack.
The current state of the relation and collaboration between U.S. and Venezuelan officials to topple Maduro is unknown.
https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/14040
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."