Venezuela

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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Fri Feb 26, 2021 2:01 pm

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USES OF VENEZUELAN MIGRATION IN COLOMBIA FOR DISPOSSESSION AND INTERFERENCE
Maria Fernanda Barreto

25 Feb 2021 , 11:12 am .

Any action that improves the situation of migrant populations is plausible, however, that recognition should not be a veil that prevents us from seeing what is hidden behind these measures, even more so when the government that takes them is characterized by being profoundly exclusive and violating of the human rights of its own population.

Therefore, it must be said that President Nicolás Maduro was very successful in stating at the last international press conference that the temporary regularization statute for Venezuelan migration in Colombia, announced by his counterpart Iván Duque, has a lot to do with a need to cleaning up the image of the Uribe government, which days ago had aroused global outrage by declaring that it would not vaccinate the migrant population of Venezuelan origin who was illegally established in Colombia.

In addition, the party and representatives of the Colombian government under the leadership of Álvaro Uribe Vélez openly closed ranks with Donald Trump during the last electoral process in the United States, which generated the urgent need for actions that showed the will to approach the president's speech Joe Biden, immigration policy being one of the main controversies between Trump and the new US president.

Duque now offers the Venezuelan population what, as the Argentine intellectual Atilio Borón denounces , he is not even capable of guaranteeing for the Colombian people.

THE TENDENTIOUS USE OF FIGURES AND CATEGORIES
Undeniably, as the UN Special Rapporteur, Alena Douhan, pointed out in her preliminary report , the impact of the pressure exerted on Venezuela, especially since 2014, has generated a situation of violation of the fundamental rights of the population. which, among other things, has led to unprecedented emigration for a country used to receiving large migrations and not the other way around.

However, these figures are increased, manipulated, distorted and handled with very little rigor by NGOs (non-governmental organizations, almost all linked to USAID), by governments that publicly oppose the Bolivarian Revolution and even by multinational organizations such as UNHCR, for what is worth stopping for a moment in them.

The UN says that 5.4 million people have left Venezuela, for which they are already publicly requesting no less than 1,440 million dollars for NGOs and institutions of what they call host countries and multilateral organizations in 2021.

The question then is how these figures are obtained, according to which the country would look visibly diminished in population terms.

According to the Regional Platform for Interagency Coordination that was established in accordance with the request of the Secretary General of the United Nations to the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees of the UN) and the IOM (International Organization for Migration, organization of the UN) on April 12, 2018, to direct and coordinate the response to refugees and migrants from Venezuela, this figure of 5 million 478 thousand 477 migrants of Venezuelan origin, "represents the sum of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers Venezuelans reported by host governments. It does not necessarily imply individual identification or registration of each individual, and includes a degree of estimation, according to the statistical data processing methodology used byeach government ”.

This is very important to know because the countries that report most of the data on Venezuelan migration handled by the IOM and UNHCR are the countries that have joined in the so-called Lima Group, whose actions against Venezuela and the intention they have made public to overthrowing the Bolivarian government are reasons enough to seriously question the objectivity of the information they offer to these organizations.

Thus, it is not surprising that, according to their own report of the data provided by those governments to this same platform, only 2 million 467 thousand 675 people of Venezuelan origin established in their countries can be declared as certainly counted, although they clarify that this number "It may include in some countries residence permits not currently in force and duplications or triplications of cases (a person with more than one permit granted)." So actually, they may be even less.

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IOM and UNHCR staff greet a group of refugees from El Salvador and Honduras who arrived in Brazil in 2019 (Photo: IOM)

The rest, the almost 3 million that add to that figure, are only statistical approximations. That is, they are not scientifically verifiable.

But also in that same report the undeniable truth is clarified that once again the country in South America with the highest number of emigrants, and second in the entire region, is not Venezuela but Colombia. This is what the latest IOM report says , according to which more people have left Mexico and Colombia than Venezuela. However, only Venezuela has a special dedication to the report, challenging its objectivity.

National and international public opinion gives in to the scandal raised by these figures because they are offered out of context, they become part of a tendentious political discourse and, of course, media corporations are lining up to speak of Venezuelan emigration as a crisis of global dimensions. When the only objectively striking thing about the emigration of Venezuelans is that it is novel but, in reality, its figures are not the highest in the region and are even lower than those of Colombia.

For example, according to the latest IOM report called "World Migration Report 2020 ", the countries in the world with the highest number of internally displaced persons due to violence and conflicts are the Syrian Arab Republic with 6.1 million people , Colombia with 5.8 million and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with 3.1 million.

This is closely related to the departure from the country of millions of Colombians who have emigrated to border countries, especially Venezuela, as victims of forced displacement. The images of peasants crossing the border with Venezuela along the trails, on foot with few things, their sons and daughters and the occasional domestic animal, with their hearts broken by the murder of relatives, sexual abuse and torture of groups paramilitaries to expel them from their territory, are part of the collective memory of the Venezuelan populations bordering Colombia.

Coming to Venezuela for decades has meant saving lives for many and many, and after Hugo Chávez's triumph in 1999 it has also meant an encounter with lost hope.

After a decade of work on the Colombian-Venezuelan border, and having been born in Colombia and migrated to Venezuela in my childhood, I can affirm that while Venezuelan migration is mainly economic, Colombian migration is a mix between economic migration and forced displacement by the war that should, it does, set off the alarms of all multilateral organizations that have a real interest in defending human rights.

On the contrary, the harsh reality that the Colombian people are experiencing is purposely made invisible by the media corporations that legitimize the violence of the Colombian oligarchy, distracting attention without any objective, but political-ideological, support towards Venezuelan migration.

This does not mean that Venezuelan migration is served with dignity in the countries where it arrives, nor does it mean that the millions of dollars that have managed to move with the excuse of protecting it really meet the objective.

Support was not even given to those who decided to return to the country in the midst of the pandemic. And here appears another of the important contradictions in the published figures.

Despite the fact that the UN itself registered until August 2020 more than 72 thousand Venezuelans who returned to the country as a result of the pandemic, Migración Colombia reported that just through its borders about 140 thousand people returned to Venezuela, and this would have to add more than 23 thousand who have returned by air thanks to the Plan Vuelta a la Patria , and although the borders of the entire world began to close as of February 2020, the supposed figure of Venezuelan migration was increased from 4.5 million at the beginning of 2020 to 5.4 at the beginning of the current year, without any explanation.

Even the "virtual ambassador" of the United States to Venezuela trilled from his office in Bogotá that in reality it would be almost 6 million people whom he does not classify as migrants but as "expelled by the regime."


At the same time that the Colombian Migration Office published in January 2021 that the Venezuelan population in its territory had decreased by 2.35% in 2020 . They don't give sums and subtractions because the numbers emerge from inaccurate calculations and vulgar comments.

Regarding the refugee crisis, two things should be said: first, although refugee requests from Venezuela were very rare in the 20th century, talking about a refugee crisis is extremely exaggerated. According to the UN, until February 2021 there were 798,128 refugee requests from people born in Venezuela and only 143,665 of this number had been granted refuge.

We highlight that Colombia has only granted refuge to 425 people of Venezuelan origin, which contrasts with the thousands of shelters that Venezuela has granted to refugees of Colombian origin, without raising a global scandal, as President Maduro also highlighted. Chile, for example, whose political exiles arrived in large numbers in Venezuela in the late 1970s, has only granted asylum to 17.

Obviously, both the migration policy and the manipulated figures that are disseminated are not defined by the peoples in this case of Colombia and Chile, but by their governments, both openly aligned with the United States and disrespectful of Venezuelan sovereignty.

To finish comparing figures from the source that is supposed to be the most authoritative on the matter, that is, UNHCR , only until 2018 there were 25.9 million refugees in the world, Syria being the first country of origin of these people with 6 , 7 million, followed by Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar and Somalia, but the headlines are occupied by Venezuela.

Finally, it should be noted that, although the UN itself constantly makes public calls not to confuse the category "migration" with "refuge", its own representatives in the region have misused the terms when it comes to Venezuela, adding to the media war against the country.

In conclusion, it is not possible to cover the sun with a finger and hide that the Venezuelan emigration of the last five years has been unprecedented for the country. But this is the consequence of an economic and psychological pressure directed from the United States against Venezuela that is also unprecedented in history.

The truth is that the majority of Venezuelan migration is what is commonly called economic migration that does not flee from an armed conflict as it does with a large part of the Colombian population that has arrived in Venezuela for more than five decades. Even though in countries such as Spain, the United States and Colombia, the signature of a refugee application has been required from many of these people as the only possibility to enter.

The sources of the figures, which are the countries themselves, offer very uncertain numbers and different figures can even be found in the same periods from different UN agencies, which makes it extremely difficult to pin down the reality on the subject.

In the case of the figures offered by the Colombian government, there is no doubt that they are, more than imprecise and manipulated, false, as we evidenced two years ago : the number of Venezuelans in Colombia corresponds to the exact sum of people from Venezuela who have entered Colombia since 1991, that is, none of them died, returned or later went to another country.

In addition, according to that same office, 56% of that number is only an estimate that cannot be endorsed, and 75% are of economically active age, which can be very lucrative for any economy.

To all this should be added the number of people considered migrants who are actually sons and daughters of Colombians who migrated to Venezuela and who today have the right to claim their Colombian nationality, but that the government of Iván Duque has delayed the process and hinted at the possibility of suspending it despite the fact that it would violate the political constitution of Colombia, going once again to the tired ghost of Castro-Chavism .

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Juan Francisco Espinosa, Director of Migration Colombia (Photo: Migration Colombia)

BUSINESS ROUNDS FOR VENEZUELAN MIGRATION
The billions of dollars that have been allocated by different mechanisms to the care of Venezuelan migration in the world are not reflected in actions of real attention to the needs of that population. Where they are is a mystery; The only thing that is clear is that they are not in the hands of the migrants who have left Venezuela.

The money that the Regional Interagency Coordination Platform (also known as "Response to Venezuelans" or "R4V", created in 2018) requests, for this year, 1 million 440 million dollars, which would be distributed among 101 NGOs, 16 agencies from the UN and 42 other organizations not specified; 641 million are requested by Colombia for 45 NGOs and 12 UN agencies.

A more than curious fact that borders on impudence and calls into question the seriousness of that request is that the resources planned by this platform for Colombia with the supposed purpose of protecting Venezuelan migration, expressly include in their document nothing less than the attention to 845 thousand Colombians and Colombians who have returned to their own country.

To this must be added that, already in May 2020, the European Union (EU) organized an " International Conference of Donor Countries " to, according to its declarations, support Venezuelan migrants and the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean that welcome. In this event, 2,544 million euros were finally committed between donations and loans. Event that, by the way, was opened by Josep Borrell (top diplomatic representative of the EU) clarifying that there are discrepancies around the real figures of this migration.

But the truth is that much of that money has not reached its destination, it is not known for sure if they have remained in the financial institutions, nor is it known who has been indebted with those loans, or how it has really been executed. that it has reached its destination, because basically those who execute them only make statements but do not present public accounts. Therefore, the peoples of the countries that have offered donations in this event should be the first to demand an audit of the execution of the money that belongs to them, in addition to examining who uses the figure of donations for tax evasion.

According to the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) created by the G7 to develop policies against money laundering, non-profit organizations are particularly vulnerable to being used to hide or conceal the clandestine diversion of funds and legitimize capital, and that is Another reason why these types of activities attract so many donors.

It is not yet known where or which of the agreed resources were executed, which loans were made, who are their creditors, which financial entities they processed, or where the resources that did reach NGOs and other international institutions ended up, but now a new wheel of business about Venezuelan migration has been convened for next June of this year.

What the handling of the Venezuelan migration figures shows, the use that has been made of it as part of a media war against the Bolivarian Revolution and the huge amount of resources that have been moved around it, is that in this The hybrid war that the United States is leading against Venezuela is not only prevented from managing its own resources, but its assets abroad are stolen, and as if this were not enough, now the resources of other countries are also stolen in the name of an alleged international solidarity with the Venezuelan migration that seems more like a conspiracy to commit a crime .

https://misionverdad.com/investigacione ... injerencia

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A welcomed article. The '5M refugees' always seemed too high, obvious propaganda. This is good work.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Fri Mar 05, 2021 1:45 pm

Hugo Chavez: Now and Forever
Commander Hugo Chavez, Venezuela.

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Commander Hugo Chavez, Venezuela. | Photo: Twitter/ @UrbanNathalia

Published 4 March 2021 (10 hours 40 minutes ago)

The following analysis explains how Hugo Chavez became a Bolivarian legend.

CHAVEZ: FOR NOW AND FOREVER | 1995-1998

During the last years of the XX century, the world witnessed the advance of ethnoreligious fundamentalism and the inclement imposition of savage neoliberalism. These phenomena, which began to manifest themselves with great force after the fall of the Socialist Bloc and the emergence of a unipolar world, are expressed in acts of terrorism concentrated in the USA's territory and interests and macroeconomic application adjustment plans in Latin America and Europe.

Terrorism Made in the USA

In 1995, white supremacist Timothy McVeigh exploded a truck bomb that destroyed a large part of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. This episode, which left 168 people dead and more than 600 injured, became the largest attack of its kind perpetrated on U.S. soil since the first attack on the Twin Towers in New York two years earlier. Extremism does not stop. During the summer of 1996, a Christian fanatic named Eric Rudolph detonated a backpack of explosives in Atlanta's Centennial Olympic Park. The XXVI Olympic Games were being held in that city. That year, a device exploded in a residential complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, where U.S. military personnel stayed. Three months later, on September 26, Taliban paramilitary forces seized the city of Kabul and established the government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

This escalation reached a peak in 1998 with the simultaneous attack on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. This operation was organized by members of the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda, whose founder, Osama bin Laden, had been trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as part of the program to support guerrilla groups opposing Soviet incursions in the Middle East between 1978 and 1989.

Transatlantic Neoliberalism

In the 1990s, the application of the neoliberal doctrine in Latin American and European economies also took off with violence. In 1995, Carlos Menem and Alberto Fujimori were reelected as presidents of Argentina and Peru, respectively. Both governments, faithful followers of the Washington Consensus's recommendations, continued the State's economic dismantling policies, which had already begun five years earlier. Strategic sectors such as electric power, hydrocarbons, communications, and agricultural production were handed over to transnational consortiums and conglomerates.

The anti-state onslaught also found partners in the Old Continent. At the end of the decade, the European Union reported an increase in revenues from public sector sales. These figures corresponded to the Portuguese government's announcements in 1996 when it presented a national privatization plan starting with Telecom and Cimpor (telecommunications and cement). That same year, José María Aznar, leader of the conservative right-wing Popular Party, won the Spanish presidential elections and headed an administration that, in only two years, negotiated away 43 public enterprises in a process marked by clientelism, undervaluation of assets, and fraudulent awarding of concessions.

Denationalization vs. Constituent

As for Venezuela, during the second government of Rafael Caldera (1994 - 1999), the final adjustments are made for the country's intensive denationalization. In his first message to Congress, on March 10, 1995, the last ruler of "Punto Fijoism" informed the Nation that "The opening of strategic associations in oil matters is already submitted, in accordance with the law, to the Legislative Chambers. " In other words, PDVSA had already been negotiated. On April 15, 1996, Caldera announced to the country the Venezuela Agenda, which repeated the neoliberal formula of the Great Turnaround presented by Carlos Andres Perez in 1989 and which paved the way for an agreement with the IMF.

In 1997, PDVSA's President, Luis Giusti, announced to the country the decision to eliminate Corpoven, Lagoven, and Maraven to "rationalize costs." At the same time, a shareholders' meeting decided to definitively liquidate Venezolana Internacional de Aviación, Sociedad Anónima (VIASA), which had been privatized since 1991. This induced bankruptcy left more than 100 people unemployed.

The situation worsened with the Organic Labor Law (LOT) approval published in the Extraordinary Official Gazette No. 5,152 of June 19, 1997. Its content stipulates the elimination of the retroactive calculation of workers' social benefits. This legal framework, which invalidates labor seniority and opens the way to the suppression of public social security, is the product of an unconsulted agreement reached by a leadership made up of the Central Office of Coordination and Planning of the Presidency of the Republic (Cordiplan), Fedecámaras and the Venezuelan Workers' Central (CTV).

By 1998, U.S., Canadian, and Japanese investors had already participated in the auction of oil fields. They carried out inspections in gas and gold deposits in the east and south of the country. Protests by students, teachers, and doctors became increasingly frequent among many other unions and organizations, reflecting the generalized social discontent and the ineffectiveness of a dying government system.

Between 1995 and 1998, the ruling class programs the Nation's main resources' surrender, social exclusion rises to alarming levels, and the "partyocracy" continuously fragments after four decades in power. During this period, Commander Hugo Chávez strengthens the national structure of the Movimiento Bolivariano Revolucionario 200 (MBR- 200), formulates an anti-liberal program synthesized in the Agenda Alternativa Bolivariana, and creates the Movimiento V República, as the political party that electorally drives the Bolivarian Revolution and manages to channel "...that avalanche that was unleashed by Venezuela, and which was nothing else but the awakening of the constituent power of the people."

For now... none. Constituent Assembly now!

Commander Chávez is released from Yare prison and immediately assumes the crucial mission of cohesion of the MBR-200 throughout the national territory and re-launching its political activity. His objectives were to foster the will for change in the majorities and to give optimism to a people that "...was once again claiming its right to dream and, even more, its obligation to fight for the dream. Thus, at that moment, the idea of political utopia returned to the national mind. In other words: the desire for a new country with more justice and less corruption began to exist in the collective imagination".

Under the slogan Hope is in the streets, Chávez travels through villages, towns, and cities, speaking in squares throughout the country, giving speeches in public events, and making statements in press conferences and radio programs. Between March and June 1994, he undertakes the Hundred Days Tour, the first of the tours through the people's living spaces. Later, invited by social organizations, political personalities, and academic institutions, he visits Colombia, Panama, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, and Cuba between July and December of that year. In the land of José Martí, he meets Commander Fidel Castro for the first time. He establishes with him a relationship of friendship and revolutionary commitment, which would define the historical time to come.

At that time, Fidel leads a solitary struggle against neoliberal aggression. The Cuban people represent a worthy bastion of socialism in Our America and the world, at a time marked by the intensification of the economic blockade imposed by the U.S. in 1962. In his closing speech at the homage ceremony given to the leader of MBR-200, which was organized in the auditorium of the University of Havana, on December 14, 1994, Comandante Fidel defines, with these words, the political potential he sees in Comandante Chávez: "What is certain is that a great popular commotion is occurring in Venezuela, and the prestige and support for that group of officers and soldiers led by Hugo Chávez grew like foam."

Soon Chávez's face and message begin to be recognized, inside and outside Venezuela. In 1995, a political and media offensive was unleashed against him, which would never cease. His visits, contacts, and postures assumed during his trip through Latin America, turn him into an object of attacks that point him out, on the one hand, as a member of international communism and, on the other hand, as the leader of a Grandcolombian guerrilla movement.

In this context, on February 25, a contingent of the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) attacked a Marine Infantry river post located in Cararabo, a border town in Apure state, killing eight Venezuelan soldiers and wounding five others. Colombian authorities and press were quick to link Chavez to the events. Even the President of Colombia, Ernesto Samper, participates in this ambush and publicly affirms that the Commander is linked to the ELN's actions and held meetings with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Soon after, Chávez returns to Bogotá, faces the situation before the Colombian media, places himself at the order of the authorities of the Court Martial and the Ministry of Defense to be investigated, and informs public opinion that there is no reliable evidence to support such accusations.

During this year, Chávez positions himself as a future political leader. The MBR-200 begins to receive offers from leftist parties seeking to establish alliances and define joint candidacies before the 1995 regional elections. However, the Commander says that the "... Venezuelan people have awakened, it is no longer easy to deceive them; and forces are being organized that will to make another country possible...". Decided not to participate in the elections, which he considers "illegal and illegitimate." Although, Commander Francisco Arias Cardenas, one of the leading figures of the MBR-200, finally accepts the support of La Causa R (LCR) for the governorship of the State of Zulia, in its majority, the revolutionary Bolivarian forces remain united and call for "active abstention," under a slogan that will resonate and mark the path in the following years: "For now...for none. Constituent Assembly now!"

A proposal to get out of the labyrinth

Since January 1996, the harassment and imprisonment of MBR-200 militants had increased. The Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services (Disip) was the Caldera government's force to sustain fierce persecution against university professors, professionals, students, cultural leaders, and popular leaders who sympathized with the Bolivarian cause.

In the following months, the National Congress discussed the Oil Opening contract. Alí Rodríguez Araque, deputy for LCR, denounced the unconstitutional nature of the negotiation, which compromised the royalties received by the State for production and raised the scenario of Venezuela's exit from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC); an entity that is seen as a stumbling block for the interests of the transnationals that would come to control PDVSA.

Despite the police siege, Comandante Chávez does not stop. He begins to write "La columna patriota" in the newspaper La Razón, where he outlines his political reflections, economic analysis, and opinions on national and international events. Also, he keeps moving and travels around the country, presenting in forums, workshops, seminars and discussions, the Bolivarian Alternative Agenda (AAB), which "...breaks with the neoliberal foundation, rebels against it; demolishes the narrow and black walls of the unilateral, fragmentary and reductionist vision, to look around and perceive reality in all its magnitude, through a humanistic, integral, holistic and ecological approach".

This action program identifies two national problem areas: poverty and denationalization. 1) "To raise in the short term the level and quality of life of the Venezuelan population above the basic threshold, constituted by the set of their physical needs (food, health, housing), social needs (security, integration, equality, freedom), cultural needs (education, sports, recreation, creativity), political needs (participation, protagonism)" "To contribute to the vindication of our national independence and the reaffirmation of our sovereignty."

Comandante Chávez takes his proposal to the VI Forum of São Paulo, which gathered the leading organizations of the Latin American left, in the city of San Salvador, between September 26 and 29, 1996. From his participation in this encounter, which positions him in the international left's political scenario, the tendentious press links Chávez with an alleged purchase of arms in Central America and the organization of another military rebellion. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although the MBR-200 emerges as a force to take power by armed means, fourteen years after its creation, it has become a political organization, which brings together the ideas and expectations of a whole collective. The plans are no longer aimed at a violent resolution of a situation of injustice but rather at the common construction of the possible Homeland, based on popular participation. This is what Chávez affirms, four years after February 4, 1992, when he confirms that "...we have a proposal to get out of the labyrinth, that is what we have called it, a Bolivarian Alternative Agenda that must begin with a call for a referendum. Today we must ask Venezuelans if they want Caldera to continue governing or not, a referendum, and if they want a Constituent Assembly or not, that is the peaceful solution that can prevent us from what you were saying, a situation of uncertainty, a social explosion again, that is our proposal".

The construction of a new Republic, the "V Republic."

During 1997, Caldera's ministerial cabinet, in agreement with the political leadership of the Venezuelan Workers' Central and the national economic interests grouped in Fedecámaras, fulfilled a good part of the financial commitments acquired with the IMF and the World Bank. The deepening of the Venezuela Agenda is still in progress. It is concretely expressed in acute labor insecurity, the government's refusal to consider a fair salary remuneration, and the imposition of strong increases in public services' tariffs.

In this pre-electoral year, the political parties seek to rearrange themselves through pacts that become empty and ephemeral. In the National Congress, A.D. and Convergencia joined forces to counteract the so-called Triple Alliance, formed by Copei, LCR, and the Movement towards Socialism (MAS), and internal tensions and quarrels also surfaced, resulting in a wave of division. From AD, Apertura arose, led by Carlos Andrés Pérez and Renovación, headed by Claudio Fermín. On the other hand, LCR split, giving rise to Patria Para Todos (PPT), led by Pablo Medina and Aristóbulo Istúriz.

As to the popular movement led by Chávez, it is worth mentioning that "When we arrived in 1997, there was not a state in Venezuela where there was no MBR-200 command". Given this panorama, a change of strategy is approaching. Although Bolivarian cadres remained active in the Armed Forces, vigilance had become more extreme, and many were performing duties in isolated border posts. After exchanging impressions, evaluating logistical availability, and weighing operational capacities, the Commander concludes "...that it was not possible, in the short term, to launch, with any possibility of success, a new military operation of the 4-F type, or civic-military as that of November 27. " In addition to this, the MBR-200 contracts an opinion survey, made from more than 100,000 consultations throughout Venezuela, whose results indicate that Chávez's presidential candidacy has an approximate acceptance of 55%.

Considering these factors, the Comandante decides to give the MBR-200 an electoral character without abandoning the objective of revolutionizing the hegemonic structures of power through the Constituent Power. This proposal encounters strong opposition among militants and leaders who follow Chávez; however, after intense days of debate and reflection, on April 19, 1997, in a National Assembly summoned in Valencia, the V Republic Movement (MVR) is born, which chooses Chávez as a candidate for the 1998 presidential elections.

Thus begins the "massive tactical offensive " of the Bolivarian Revolution. The MVR is erected to transfer decision-making to the people and channel the creation of a participative and protagonist democracy. With the registration of the new political party, which is formalized before the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) on July 30 of that year, "A leadership of the new century begins to take shape and will bring with it the realization of dreams and hopes..." From then on, Chávez sets in motion the set of strategies that will give the floor to the deep transformation of Venezuelan society, through the "...construction of a new Republic, the "V Republic," that is to say, a new political system (...) through the 1999 Constituent Assembly, after taking power by means of the vote in 1998."

Venezuela, we might as well say, has entered the 21st century.

In 1998 the last elections of the IV Republic took place. The two-party adeco-copeyano system, which had dominated for more than three decades, was shaken for the first time with Caldera's victory in 1993. On that occasion, the founder of Copei separates from his party and creates Convergencia, an inorganic organization based on Christian democracy, which functions as his electoral platform to forge a popularly known coalition as the chiripero.

Stripped of the Presidency, A.D. and Copei took refuge in the Parliament and managed to participate in the negotiations of the Oil Opening in 1996 and approve the disastrous labor legislation of 1997. In 1998, the modification of the Organic Law of Suffrage and Political Participation, which stipulates the division of that year's elections, is endorsed. The regional and parliamentary elections would take place in November. The presidential elections would be held in December. With this maneuver, the two-party adeco-copeyano, the MAS and LCR, seek to assure spaces in governorships, mayorships, and seats because they have not yet defined who their candidates for the first mandate of the Republic will be.

As the campaign begins, three independent options emerge 1)
Irene Sáez, who served as Mayor of the municipality of Chacao since 1992 and represented the organization Integración, Renovación, Nueva Esperanza (Irene); 2) Henrique Salas Römer, former Governor of Carabobo from 1990 - 1996 and founder of Proyecto Venezuela and 3) Commander Hugo Chávez, leader of the MVR. As the months go by, Copei and LCR gave their support to Irene. Meanwhile, A.D. launches Luis Alfaro Ucero, Governor of Monagas between 1965 - 1968, Congress member on several occasions, and General Secretary of his party.

On his part, Chávez succeeds in organizing "...a vast popular movement;
With this support, the MVR agglutinates the left in the Polo Patriotico and, on November 8, becomes the second political force in Congress, with 35 deputies and 8 senators. It also managed to win the governorship of Barinas and contributed to the victory in Anzoátegui, Aragua, Guárico, Lara, Vargas, and Zulia.

When December arrives, the Commander is positioned as the first option in most of the polls. His inevitable take-off causes havoc in the partycracy, which seeks to rearrange its cards. The Copeyanos and Adecos, abandon Irene and Alfaro Ucero, respectively, to join forces with Salas Römer. This last-minute move, which is due to desperation and not to political calculation, intends to stop the overwhelming advance of the MVR. In this regard, two days before the presidential election, Chávez affirms the following: "I believe that the rotten leaderships of A.D. and Copei are doing a last service to Venezuela, they have torn off Mr. Salas' mask, if he had one, for some Venezuelan sectors. They have thrown it to the floor".

Finally, on December 6, the popular victory is consummated. Commander Hugo Chávez is elected as the new President of the Republic of Venezuela, with 3,673,685 votes, representing 56.20% of the national electorate. The end of the IV Republic arrives without a single act of violence, and the floodgates of the Concrete Utopia outlined by the Commander in the Blue Book are opened. The Constituent Assembly and the Simón Bolívar National Project find the ground cleared for the Homeland sowing, which has waited so many years to be reborn. Undoubtedly, another time is beginning for the people, and the path of History is widening, along which the majorities will now walk.

Thus announces Commander Chávez in the speech he delivers in front of the Teresa Carreño Theater in Caracas, a few moments after knowing the decision of the Venezuelan people: "Let us all unite, and we will be invincible. I call you. Let us now open the road to the new Venezuela. I repeat, compatriots, here from the depths of my soul, my gratitude. I am full of love. And from now on, count on me forever, with greater vigor, with greater dedication, you have begun to write the pages of the new century. Venezuela, we could well say it, has entered the 21st century.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Hug ... -0027.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Mon Mar 08, 2021 12:57 pm

Joe Biden is expected to make modifications to the roadmap against Chavismo this year. (Photo: Reuters)
THE FATE OF THE VENEZUELAN OPPOSITION IS ON THE TABLE IN THE OVAL OFFICE

Franco Vielma

6 Mar 2021 , 10:58 am .

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Joe Biden is expected to make modifications to the roadmap against Chavismo this year. (Photo: Reuters)

The upcoming political scenario, scheduled this year within the elections for governors and mayors in Venezuela, supposes a set of possibilities beyond the election to these positions.

For the political picture in the Caribbean country, the possibility of a distention that could bring with it important repercussions is in dispute. It consists of the partial or total return to the electoral arena of parties and leaders of the Venezuelan opposition that have excluded themselves from the last parliamentary elections.

But beyond them, the possibility of an election with these participants could greatly undermine the declaration that in Venezuela "there are no free elections," which is one of the critical nodes on which the coercive and unilateral measures applied are built against the country.

Although the United States and the European Union (EU) have proposed to dispute the presidential office in an extemporaneous manner, the upcoming elections will be key to discerning the evolution of political scenarios.

THE ABSTENTIONIST OPPOSITION, UP FOR DISCUSSION
Recently Andrés Velásquez, leader of the Causa R party, reported that "interim president" Juan Guaidó asked sectors of the opposition to meet in order to discuss whether or not to attend regional and municipal elections. Velásquez pointed out that participation is already under debate in the Unit, but they have not reached a decision.

"On the basis of President Guaidó himself, we are going to start a debate related to this issue and for which, personally, I hope that we will have a final decision as soon as possible," he said at a press conference, from Caracas, accompanied by Delsa Solórzano , Freddy Guevara and Biagio Pilieri.

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Velasquez, Solorzano and Guevara, during the announcement of discussion of going to elections (Photo: AFP / Getty Images)

For her part, the leader of the Encuentro Ciudadano party, Delsa Solórzano, assured that the objective is to achieve free elections, with conditions and to restore legality to political parties "that their colors, symbols and cards are returned to their legitimate authorities ".

Prior to these announcements, which had been preceded by sustained refusals from Guaidó himself to attend an election "called by Chavismo," a visit took place by a delegation from the Kingdom of Norway, which, we recall, had mediated between Chavismo and the Guaidó-affiliated opposition in 2019.

At the beginning of February, President Nicolás Maduro made public the approach with said delegation to discuss "matters of a political-diplomatic nature", without giving further details.

On the other hand, former deputy Juan Guaidó confirmed that he had met with said delegation for "routine" reasons, without offering further clues.

Subsequently, Chavismo, from its current position of absolute leadership in the national parliament, invited the opponents in the Hemicycle and with opposition factors outside the parliament in a behind-the-scenes position, a new cycle of nominations for a new election of the country's electoral authorities.

Undoubtedly, there are behind the scenes of the opposition movements that point with more and more consistency that the abstentionists of this political sector can throw themselves into the electoral arena partially or totally.

It could be considered that in fact it is the new realities and the political gravitations on Venezuela, which are pushing the abstentionist opponents to approach the electoral arena.

Considering that, in the absence of some parties and leaders in the December 6 elections, it is a fact that a new opposition has emerged, captivating some followers of the defunct Democratic Unity Table and 4G (Popular Will, First Justice, Democratic Action and A New Time) breaking through with its own political denomination and identity.

The abstention that largely marked the followers of anti-Chavez, has exposed a political capital that remains captive and that could participate favorably for the 4G parties if they go to a search for regional and municipal positions.

It should be added that, in addition to the economic wear and tear that the country has suffered as a result of the blockade that has been electorally resignified in the apathy and abstention registered last December, it is evident that the opponents now see a picture of possible political fertility in a critical mass that it remains apathetic, disappointed, and relegated from participating in elections for multiple reasons, including not finding electoral representation.

But the element that most pushes them to go to elections and with it, contribute even if they do not intend to unblock the internal political framework, has been the persistence of Chavismo in power and the failed agenda of the fake government of Guaidó and the blockade. These strategies, highlighted and questioned today in their evident failure, have clear features in the weakening of the consensus that boosted them.

The EU no longer recognizes Guaidó as "interim president", additionally the change of command in Washington could recalibrate its strategy by stripping it of the so-called "cessation of usurpation" to go to "free elections", but with President Maduro in office , de facto disabling the political end of the existence of Guaidó's "position".

It is also evident that the end of the parliamentary cycle on which Guaidó's “presidency” was held, ended up relegating him even more from the international scene and this has been clearly demonstrated in the withdrawal of support for the parallel diplomatic structure in several countries.

Although recently the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had a phone call with Guaidó and called him "interim president", the change of pace of the Biden Administration has been evident regarding Venezuela. Until now and at least in the narrative and communicational scene, it does not have the same impetus that the Trump Administration had and will surely implement the siege of Chavismo from a more discreet and intelligent position, since all these possibilities are crossed by a loss of the interest in Venezuela given the momentary absence of an electoral dispute on US soil that includes the state of Florida as a key piece.

WILL THERE BE THE "BLESSING" OF WASHINGTON?
It is evident that Venezuelan anti-Chavistas are increasingly being forced by circumstances to abort the agenda of self-exclusion from the Venezuelan electoral arena.

It remains on the part of its leaders who are determined to participate, withstand the internal and external pressures that seek to force them to stay on the abstentionist shipwreck agenda, but more importantly for them it is still to give channel and viability to a return to the polls without the called "cessation of usurpation", which was consolidated as a political mantra and narrative bet very difficult to maneuver now that it has failed.

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The National Assembly in the act of swearing in to the new Nominations Committee for electoral authorities (Photo: AN Press)

But the denominator and key factor for his electoral return to be credible is the possibility of having the support of the United States or not for his attendance at an election, a scenario today, extremely difficult to foresee.

It should be understood with all this, that the Venezuelan opposition forces are now dealing with multidirectional pressures because of assuming themselves as second-level operators in politics after the Trump Administration took the leadership and the task in their hands of dethroning Chavismo, without achieving it. This is a question that leaves an enormous cost paid by the Venezuelan opponents, it is worth saying.

For them, the pressures now even come from the EU, considering that this instance recently issued a battery of coercive measures against Chavista and opposition officials and leaders, classifying the opponents as "officials of the Maduro regime", for only having participated in the parliamentary elections. Although this measure is understood as exclusive to those referred to in that list of sanctions, the truth is that it is clearly extensive and intimidating those in the anti-Chavez regime who are considering attending elections this year, imposing new pressure on them and blocking the internal political picture.

The scenarios envisaged this year do not seem linear at all. They are intricate and complex due to the multiplicity of actors and interests committed and involved.

One possible scenario is that the lack of unanimity or the pressures on the anti-Chavistas today on the side of abstention, relapse further deepening the divisions in those forces. This means that some of the abstentionists return to the ring and others stay out. In this scenario, which could be one of the worst, it implies that the United States and its allies would not recognize those elections and the blockade on the country would continue intact.

It also implies that the abstentionist sectors will be smaller and smaller, away from internal politics and will be exclusive operators from the external front, making the fight against Chavismo through political channels unfeasible.

The fate of the abstentionist opponents, and with it a key part of the political stalemate in Venezuela, is not defined in Caracas but in Washington. The new US government has not yet left clear and definitive signs of its approach to Venezuela on the open scene.

It is necessary to clarify, the reference to that the destinies of the opposition are in the hands of the Oval Office, is merely symbolic. The current US president may not even be in the physical and mental faculties to decide these courses (but this is another matter), therefore, this surely is not literally on his desk. In reality, it would be defining itself behind the scenes of bureaucracy, lobbying and strategic analysis, hallmarks of the Democrats in power and their sinuous strategies.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/el-d ... icina-oval

Google Translator

Besides desperation, the anti-Chavistas also must see opportunity in the slackening of left unity and public's disappointments in the government, results of the torturous means required to avoid collapse in the face of Yankee aggression. Perhaps a leftward thrust is in order to bolster the ranks?
As history monotonously shows, appeasement get's ya nowhere except the grave. The final paragraph does show a keen understanding of US politics.
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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Thu Mar 11, 2021 3:08 pm

The Crisis and the Venezuelan Working Class: A Conversation with Pedro Eusse
A political bureau member of the Communist Party of Venezuela talks about the current situation of the working class.

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Pedro Eusse joined the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) in 1979 when he was just 17 and working in a chicken factory. Now, Eusse is a member of the party’s political bureau and charged with coordinating worker and trade union issues. Eusse is also the General Coordinator of the Cruz Villegas Class-conscious Workers’ Current and of the National Front of Struggle of the Working Class (FNLCT). In this interview, Eusse talks to us about the working class struggles in today’s Venezuela.

When analyzing Venezuela’s crisis from a left perspective, there is a tendency to talk about the sanctions and the blockade as the only causes of its current crisis. The PCV has a more complex understanding of the situation. What can you tell us about the party’s position on this issue?

Indeed, the economic and social problems that Venezuelan people face now did not begin with the US blockade and the sanctions, although the latter have worked to deepen the crisis. Venezuela’s inflationary spiral began in 2013, and with that, the purchasing power of salaries began to shrink. This made for a difficult situation for workers and people in general.

There is another factor that is key to understanding the crisis: the deterioration of public enterprises did not begin with the blockade either. Early in Nicolás Maduro’s government, there were massive layoffs in some state enterprises and neglect of maintenance.

To give you two examples, large scale layoffs were carried out in state-owned sugar mills. This came hard on the heels of an executive decree liquidating the Corporación Venezolana del Azúcar [state sugar processing corporation] in 2014.

That same year there was a gradual dismantling of Abastos Bicentenario [state-owned supermarket chain]. Then it was decreed that this supermarket chain, which President Chávez had nationalized, would be “transformed,” which really meant privatized, as eventually happened. Abastos Bicentenario was a key link in the public supply network that had become very important for the people, particularly in the context of what the government called “the economic war."

At the time of the layoffs – the first step in the privatization process – it was particularly important to have a state-owned mass distribution network so that people could escape the tyranny of the capitalist market. Instead, the government opted for privatizing it.

The government carried out this “dismantling” process in a deliberate manner. Remember, all this happened before sanctions.

To that we should add that during the early years of Maduro’s presidency, he prioritized paying foreign debt. At the same time as the economy was suffering due to the fall in oil prices and the drop in oil production, enormous amounts of money were being paid out to the international financial system [debt service]. This, of course, had a huge impact on the state’s economic capacity.

However, the deepest roots of the crisis are really in the exhaustion of the dependent capitalist and rentier economic model, which Chávez did not transform.

To be sure, when the crisis hit, the bourgeois state passed the burden onto the most vulnerable people: wage earners and pensioners.

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Left: PDVSA workers protest in Zulia state for living wages (Tal Cual). Right: PDVSA workers demand health coverage. (Archives)

So, you argue that the crisis really began around 2013, which was a few years before the financial sanctions kicked in?

That's right. The financial sanctions began in mid-2017, and then came the oil embargo in early 2019. That amounts to an approximately five-year crisis period before they take place.

That is why claiming that the coercive measures are the sole cause of the crisis is dishonest or at least not the whole story. Of course, with the blockade, the economic situation worsened. However, it is also true that the economic policies that the state implemented as early as 2013 reduced its capacity to face the crisis and address the needs of the people.

They administered the crisis in a way aimed at protecting the capitalist sectors. Further, the government’s objective of attracting foreign investment also affected the popular economy. To achieve that goal [protecting capitalists], one of the policies was devaluing the labor force. In other words, wages were destroyed and social benefits and other acquired rights were dismantled, thus dismantling the social security framework.

This is a very perverse mechanism from a revolutionary point of view.

What are the day-to-day conditions of working men and women in Venezuela?

The purchasing power of active workers, retired people, and pensioners has been pulverized. This is especially true in the public sector since most private sector employees get supplements to the minimum wage with bonuses paid in dollars.

The devaluation of the salary began with the phenomenon of hyperinflation. Then came the president’s decision to either freeze collective bargaining agreements or modify their clauses. Memorandum 2792, signed by Minister [Eduardo] Piñate in October 2018, made this policy formal. This document eliminates collective bargaining agreements in the context of the Plan for Economic Recovery, Growth and Prosperity, which aimed to cheapen the cost of the labor force and turn Venezuela into an attractive market for foreign investment.

The cheapening of labor hit public sector workers particularly hard for the following reason: when the crisis took hold, there was massive migration. Of course, the loss of skilled labor did not suit the private sector, so they began to supplement the salary with bonuses paid in dollars. The bonuses help capitalists retain workers, but they also have a long-term impact: social benefits such as retirement or unemployment [calculated in relation to the salary] vanish.

In fact, there has been a rapid destruction of formal labor relations: the achievements of the working class – won through historical struggles – began to disappear in 2013.

We are also concerned about matters of health and safety at work. Medical coverage is gone while maintenance in many workplaces is precarious. This exposes workers to very dangerous conditions. In short, we are facing the devaluation of work; labor flexibilization and deregulation; loss of medical coverage; and the annihilation of social security and other acquired rights.

The flexibilization of labor conditions happened first not by decree, but through the state’s decision not to intervene in the affairs of the capitalists. Many companies are replacing permanent workers with precarious ones. For example, the Polar Group [the largest Venezuelan food conglomerate] laid off some three thousand workers. And, although many obtained reinstatement orders, Polar did not comply and replaced them with non-contracted workers without rights.

Of course, the trigger for the current situation was Memorandum 2792, but there was also a fraudulent interpretation of Article 148 of the Organic Labor Law. The article says that when a company faces economic difficulties, a protection committee can be established to agree upon conditions that will make it possible for the entity to keep its doors open. This has been used by many powerful companies such as Coca-Cola, Inlaca, and Mondelez [former Kraft Foods].

Through the use of Memorandum 2792 and the reinterpretation of Article 148, these companies suspended most of their personnel. After that, they proceeded to hire temporary workers who have no acquired rights, thus reducing costs while obtaining juicy profits.

Additionally, Ministry of Labor practices facilitate these sorts of actions: it is common for corrupt ministry officials to receive money to accept employers’ fraudulent and illegal actions in relation to their workers.

Some say that the neoliberal governments of Carlos Andrés Pérez [1989-1993] and Rafael Caldera [1994-1999] were not able to go this far. That may be true, but the issue here is not only the government: capitalists impose conditions on the government, and the government yields. To ride out the crisis, capitalists are imposing their approach: destroying rights, wages, and social benefits.

Is the working class doing anything to express its dissent?

Yes, workers are fighting back. Last year PDVSA workers, whose collective contract evaporated with Memorandum 2792, were out on the street demanding better working conditions. Whereas these public-sector wages were around three or four dollars a month, private-sector oil workers received bonuses in dollars. PDVSA workers also demanded that their medical coverage be reinstated. However, these protests receded due to the promise of a new collective agreement.

The hotspot now is in the state-owned basic industries in Guayana [Bolivar state], particularly SIDOR and Ferrominera. There are a large number of non-active employees in these enterprises: workers who don’t go to work because the employer told them they should stay home. Then came an unfair decision: active personnel are to receive bonuses but non-active workers are cut out, which has caused a sort of social explosion in Guayana.

The pandemic has been used to justify many things. Here I’m not only talking about salary discrimination. Minimally staffing at the basic industries in Guayana leads to overexploitation and an increase in occupational risks and accidents.

All this goes hand in hand with the government’s obvious intention of privatizing state enterprises including the basic industries. Private capital is much more likely to invest in enterprises with fewer existing employees and with the option of hiring new workers in precarious conditions.

Finally, the government is creating favorable circumstances for privatizations not only with its labor policies, but also by passing the Anti-blockade Law [October 2020] and other legislation that opens the doors to opaque deals, exempts taxes for investors, etc.

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Left: SIDOR workers protest (Izquierda Diario). Right: SIDOR workers hold a sign that reads “Diosdado, we don’t want socialists with a Hummer nor communists with a Rolex. We believe in the worker’s revolution.

Are the workers’ protests forcing the government to reconsider its policies?

The demonstrations are very important, but they are somewhat disorganized: at the moment there is no unified leadership and there is no collective plan for carrying out the struggle. Additionally, when protests happen, workers face dismissals and criminalization, which makes organization harder.

The state’s tactic when it comes to working-class struggle is to repress and/or identify those protesting as sympathizers of the opposition. It also tries to divide the struggle by creating spaces of bargaining with the management.

Given these dire circumstances, it is urgent to bring together the different struggles and build a unified but diverse revolutionary front.

The PCV and other organizations are now doing a campaign for a living wage. What can you tell us about this initiative? Does it just claim that wages should be higher or is there a strategy to achieve the goal?

Yes, we are currently working in the context of what you call a “campaign” for living wages. However, our proposal is an integral one. It is not enough to demand wage increases; it is necessary to outline a plan to make living wages viable. In fact, our end goal is not just wage increases. We are pushing for a change in the government’s overall economic and labor policies.

When people demand living wages, the government says: “It is not possible to raise wages because of the blockade.” To that, we argue that, far from becoming an excuse, the blockade should mobilize the government so that workers have minimum conditions to survive its devastating effects.

At the root of the problem is the government’s commitment to the capitalist sectors of the economy, who are making huge profits in dollars and are not paying taxes! Venezuela is one of the countries with the lowest tax burden on the rich in the continent. The current arrangement comes from the neoliberal 1990s Caldera government. With this in mind, one important step toward living wages would be to tax the rich and corporations, both national and foreign.

Regarding international corporations, we must eliminate the clauses against double taxation in our legislation [these clauses allow foreign corporations to not pay income taxes in Venezuela]. This is a country under a blockade and capitalists don’t pay taxes!

Instead, the government is moving toward privatizations, arguing that state enterprises are inefficient. Indeed, quite a few enterprises came to a halt, but people should understand that what “failed” was not worker control. The state enterprises were practically all under government administration, both military and civilian. For years, the government allocated enormous resources to these companies and many of the administrators got rich during their tenure. This is a well-known fact. So we propose that all public enterprise administrators be investigated, and the state should confiscate the assets of those administrators whose wealth is the result of corruption.

Finally, we propose that rather than handing public enterprises over to the private sector, a new democratic management model should be put in place: workers, the government, and the neighboring community (campesinos, communes, associated producers, etc.) should collectively run the enterprises...

Again, it is important to highlight here that what failed was the state’s management of public enterprises, not the capacity of society to manage its assets in a democratic manner.

In synthesis, we propose the following: tax the bourgeoisie and the corporations, locate embezzled resources and return them to the state coffers, and promote a democratic management of the state-owned companies. These steps, if combined with other economic policies such as planning, are sure to improve the state’s productive apparatus.

This is a time that demands working-class unity and independence. A movement subordinated to the state will not be able to struggle successfully.

It is time to take the next step and direct our own collective struggles for a living wage, for collective bargaining rights, for collective contracts, and for the right to strike. But our goals must go beyond that: we must conquer spaces of democracy within the workplace in a process aimed at recovering state-owned enterprises while confronting capital.

https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/15136
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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Mon Mar 22, 2021 1:43 pm

Venezuelan Women Endure the “Sanctions” with Their Bodies
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 19, 2021
Carmen Navas Reyes, Laura Franco

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Venezuelans protest against the US-imposed blockade.

Carmen Navas Reyes and Laura Franco respond to the article published in the New York Times which attempts to speak about the problems facing Venezuelan women without mentioning the economic and financial blockade imposed on the country

On February 20, the New York Times published an article titled “Venezuelan Women Lose Access to Contraception, and Control of Their Lives.” This article attempts to distort reality, as it completely ignores the siege and aggressions the Venezuelan people currently subjected to.

For greater context, we should note that in 2012, Venezuela granted completely free access to safe and quality contraceptives, reaching a coverage of 22.16% in the national public health system. Access was nearly universal both due to the purchasing power of Venezuelans at the time and because both private and public health networks were subsidized up to 70% by the government, with funds guaranteed by the country’s foreign income.

This reality changed abruptly in 2014 with the formal beginning of aggression that took the form of economic warfare and the application of unilateral coercive measures (UCMs) against Venezuela. One of the negative effects that occurred early on was precisely the shortage of contraceptives and their elevated prices. The result: a loss of autonomy over our sexuality, limiting the capacity for prevention and family planning. This led to increases in a variety of indicators such as teen pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections and maternal mortality, which we condemn as collateral damage of the sanctions.

The State Department always insists that the sanctions are not against the Venezuelan people, but rather they target high-level officials in the government. But the reality is that no Venezuelan is spared from being affected firsthand by this type of warfare, regardless of their social status. This is acknowledged by those that support the government as well as opposition factions. The world should know that the United States has not tried to “save democracy” in Venezuela. The predominant interest so far – and we hope this changes with the new Democratic administration – has been to appropriate the country’s resources and sources of wealth, to eliminate the collective worldview of the ideas of socialism and liberation, to eradicate chavismo and thereby strip us of our sovereignty.

The unilateral coercive measures, erroneously called “sanctions”, therefore constitute a form of warfare, a silent crime and assuredly a crime against humanity, as it is defined by the United Nations. The UCMs are designed to destroy, to cause physical as well as psychological injuries. They are applied in a discriminatory and contemptuous manner; they are aimed at changing the will of the people through a form of violence.

These attacks are constant, generalized and systematic against a civilian population, and they are the policy of a country that is superior economically and militarily. This constitutes a disproportionate attack on said population, and as such, it is a flagrant violation of human rights. Since the proliferation of the UCMs, the Venezuelan state has experienced an intentional freezing of its bank accounts throughout the world. They have blocked transactions and confiscated public goods that belong to every Venezuelan. Suppliers receive direct orders to not deal with Venezuela, and others engage in overcompliance out of fear being affected.

Venezuelan women condemn how US empire has openly been the main driver of the hybrid war against the Venezuelan people. Since 2014, the US has applied over 150 UCMs that not only affect the sexual and reproductive rights of women, they also have made it difficult, and at times impossible, to access food, medicine, medical care, clean water, hygiene, public transport, electricity, and telephone and internet services (see U.N. Special Rapporteur Alena Douhan’s report). There is no doubt that the blockade and sanctions have caused harm and suffering to the Venezuelan population, and this harm is immeasurable in the case of women and children. The sanctions and blockade have not only been maintained during the pandemic, they have expanded.

The last major popular mobilization in Venezuela was a feminist rally on March 8, 2020. Thousands of us came onto the streets to defend the rights we gained thanks to the Bolivarian Revolution and its historic leader Hugo Chávez. We took to the streets to denounce the sanctions and criminal blockade, but also to press for our feminist struggles and demands, which not only includes the legalization of abortion (which was abandoned by the opposition-controlled National Assembly of 2015-2020), but also the right to live well and not face the threat of dying in imperialist wars and invasions.

For Venezuelan women, defending the Bolivarian Revolution is a principle that cannot be relinquished, because although imperfect, it is an example of humanist politics. In Venezuela, with practically negative income, the government continues to prioritize social investment and applies measures to help the poorest face the ravages of war. It is understood that this is the only possible response to the blockade.

In the middle of a pandemic, exemplary public policies have been implemented to prevent coronavirus contagion and deaths, guaranteeing medical treatment, employment and salaries, among others. When we compare this reality with the one experienced by women in capitalist countries, there is greater awareness of the struggle being waged.

In Venezuela, popular feminism is a dynamic and demanding force. On March 4-6, we organized a national and international online gathering called Todas Venezuela (Everyone Venezuela) to debate, analyze and propose actions regarding our right to health, life, recreation, a productive economy, the right to abortion, marriage equality, feminist and anti-patriarchal spirituality, equal political participation, and how we are affected by sanctions and the blockade.

All of this is possible because we live in a country where participatory democracy is a daily exercise of consciousness and action by the vast majority. We invite Julie Turkwetiz and Isayen Herrera, authors of the aforementioned article, to meet with us, cover this activity and interview women who are on the front lines of resisting the blockade and sanctions.

Finally, we would like to invite the international community to reject the aggressions and threats against Venezuela. Expressions of solidarity and sisterhood are of vital importance. Venezuelan women are not inclined to renounce our rights, the ones we were only able to reach, sustain and deepen during the revolution.

Carmen Navas Reyes and Laura Franco work at the Simon Bolivar Institute for Peace and Solidarity Among the Peoples in Venezuela.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/03/ ... ir-bodies/
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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Sat Mar 27, 2021 2:04 pm

FANB neutralizes another attack in Apure

For Barry cartaya
March 26, 2021

Tension grows on the Colombian-Venezuelan border by the state of Apure , where since last Sunday, March 21, 2021, an irregular situation was registered due to the presence of armed groups in Colombian territory that intended to establish themselves on the Venezuelan side and were repelled by the Armed Forces Nacional Bolivariana (FANB) , in a forceful way, which this Monday neutralizes another attack.

The confirmation was given via Twitter by the deputy minister of services of the Ministry of Defense, Érika Coromoto Virgüez Oviedo.


The deployment of the FANB has been permanent and strategic throughout this week in the José Antonio Páez municipality. That is why each of the aggressions that are promoted from Colombia with impunity in its territory is neutralized.

All this framed in the Bolivarian Shield Exercises Supreme Commander Hugo Chávez, which began on March 5.

“ The FANB's surgical actions to repel Colombian armed groups were carried out against illegal camps outside urban areas. The tactical operations of the Bolivarian Shield were effective in defense of national sovereignty «.

CEOFANB steps up deployment

The operational strategic commander, Admiral in Chief Remigio Ceballos , confirmed via Twitter " that several terrorists were neutralized when they tried to attack a border post ".

He also said " we continue to give heavy blows to Colombian irregular criminal groups fleeing to Colombia and no one stops them ."
Official information has been given via social networks while Colombian media and journalists have intensified the asymmetric war.


These media factors obviate that Venezuela always neutralizes conspiratorial and criminal operations.

Manipulations, omissions, lies and half-truths have reigned on the subject of the attacks in troubled territory.

Meanwhile, the Minister for Defense, Vladimir Padrino López , wrote: “ Go ahead! We do not eat with threats from criminals , drug traffickers or terrorists. Our thing is to act «.

New aggression

After the two officers killed and a criminal killed on the first day, this Thursday 5 terrorists were killed. The events occurred in the El Rigal sector, Urdaneta parish of the José Antonio Páez municipality, Apure state.

Similarly, the permanent deployment of troops to combat irregular groups was announced. The head of state of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro , responded in a paragraph during the balance of the covid-19 last Sunday.

" Zero tolerance for irregular groups ", that was the forceful statement of the president before the news of the confrontation.


While that is happening from Caracas, in Bogotá they have only criticized an alleged excess on the part of the FANB, despite its endless history of false positives and irresponsibility.

The National Assembly of Venezuela and other spokesmen have ratified their support for the FANB and have criticized Colombian criminality.

With this action, everything that seeks to undermine the Colombian government and the narco-state that has been installed is neutralized .

https://redradiove.com/fanb-neutraliza- ... -en-apure/

*******************************************

What Happens in Apure: Venezuela's Sovereign Defense and Colombia's Disguised Aggression
For Carlos Arellán
March 25, 2021

With what happens in the Apure state , it is verified that politicians do not govern from Colombia ; but a race of bureaucrats who could well be more useful if they dedicate themselves to writing novels of magical realism.

While Venezuela has defended itself since last Sunday from the penetration of Colombian terrorist groups, from Bogotá they pretend an overactive consternation at the forcefulness with which our military neutralizes the blows of their internal violence.

The operation to defend Venezuelan sovereignty has highlighted two things: the Bolivarian determination to protect its territory; and in counterpart the acrobatic talent of Colombia to contradict itself without removing make-up.

The Duque government, after stating ad nauseam that Venezuela was a supposed FARC free camp; Now he is concerned that Venezuela will "defend itself a lot" once its irregular groups crossed the border.

Colombian manipulation

One of the Venezuelan officials to warn and highlight this overactive Colombian consternation was the Minister of Communication Freddy Ñáñez , who after highlighting Bogota's concern "for the humanitarian effects of the military operation on the civilian population," reminded them that strangely the The same government that normalizes the execution of minors in military operations and that dispatched the scandal with the lapidary justification that those killed were "war machines.

At the same time Ñáñez put on the table the suspicious coincidence with which Colombia and the Southern Command are concerned . The Minister states that both actors "have established a theater of operations in the broad common border to attack Venezuela."

The authorities of our country maintain that the aggression of Colombian irregular groups, with the apparent facade of being "dissidents from the FARC" , is a "false positive" maneuver .

Caracas denounces that it is an irregular and malicious export of the Colombian internal conflict to our country to justify an attack on Venezuela with the installation of the story that "such would be the presence of guerrilla groups , that our country would have lost control of the territory."

Ñáñez compared the incursion of Colombian terrorist groups into the Apure with the failed mercenary invasion of Gideón almost a year ago.

A hybrid war

Meanwhile, the General-in-Chief, Vladimir Padrino López, highlighted that the FANB's sovereign defense operation is fighting a group with the facade of guerrillas. Those who intend to settle in our territory and build a drug trafficking structure that is functional for the Colombian state and the United States to continue attacking our country.

At the same time, what happens in Apure is a new episode of a hybrid war. One that is not only measured in the real theater of operations but also in the media; who is stronger to impose his story.

The victory over the narco-terrorist groups in Colombia will only be complete if, in addition to defeating them by force, public opinion is convinced that Venezuela is assisted by the reason that this entire operation is an ambush manipulated with lies.

https://redradiove.com/lo-que-sucede-en ... -colombia/

********************************************

Colombia admits irregular actions in Apure, but what plans is it hiding?
For Jose Manuel Blanco Diaz
March 26, 2021

The Ombudsman of Colombia, Carlos Camargo , admitted that the situation of displaced persons that maintains a group of families residing in Venezuela, in a shelter in the municipality of Arauquita, is a consequence of the action of Colombian irregular groups in Apure.

In that sense, he issued statements when visiting the border area with the town of La Victoria, Apure state. There, this week there have been combats between the Bolivarian National Armed Forces and armed criminal organizations from the New Granada nation.

Similarly, the official reported that the families who fled Venezuelan territory have expressed their own concerns about the emergency situation. He commented that they moved and left their relatives on the Venezuelan side , where they had to abandon their homes and many houses were incinerated.

«They left many relatives there. As a result of intimidation and intimidation by the irregular forces , they are here in the municipality of Arauquita, ”said Camargo.

More than just a fight
The operation carried out by the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) in the town of La Victoria, Apure state, immediately became the object of a manipulation campaign by international national media corporations.

For this reason, initially the attempt to disqualify the Venezuelan government tried to associate it as an ally to "a wing" of Colombian irregular groups ; adverse to the one who faced the Venezuelan military forces.

On the other hand, the media, both in Colombia and Venezuela, spread the opinion matrix that seeks to place the FANB as the perpetrator of "good families"; that live in the hurried area of ​​El Ripial .

For this reason, the Public Ministry announced the opening of the necessary procedures to corroborate the correct development of the operations undertaken by the security forces; before the incursion of irregular groups from Colombian territory, in the state of Apure .

False positives and interventionism

Similarly, the Venezuelan Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino López , reflected through a message on social networks. It highlights the curious absence of police agencies or military forces of the Colombian government in their corresponding jurisdiction; which shows the abandonment of the border by Iván Duque.


Meanwhile, President Nicolás Maduro denounced that “one of the things that Venezuela faces every day are laboratories financed from the United States and Colombia; to mount false positives against Venezuela , try to distort reality and create conditions to justify imperialist interventionism.

Finally, he said that there is a permanent campaign through social networks, as a platform for the dissemination of signals. Like those who constantly also broadcast spokespersons for the international right, such as the Colombian president.

https://redradiove.com/colombia-admite- ... es-oculta/

All above Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Mon Mar 29, 2021 1:15 pm

WHAT YOUNG PEOPLE?

The Cayapo Image

Image
Venezuelan youth must work to build a culture different from the current one (Photo: Archive)

14 Feb 2021 , 8:14 am .

When we talk about young people, we generally refer to a generational conglomerate that does not exceed thirty in years, but when we ask "which young people? Which young people?", We find, for example, the white hands with bare buttocks, now mutating into high-flying thieves, with excellence and category, all recognized young opponents of the government, but even more opponents of all kinds of change that means touching their privileges and fighting alongside their class equals for what they have to fight and they may die for what they stand for, which is their class privilege.

The problem that we have to discuss with the poor is that, a boy being poor, joins the bourgeois discourse through the nike, the flannel, the fashion, the twitter, the facebook. How is it that we end up desiring and having the discourse, manners and customs of the young bourgeoisie? The questions are these, among many others. What is the role of poor young people at this time? Because the bourgeoisie have it very clear: they have seen white hands buttocks, defending what they have to defend, their interests; They are defending their cars to go out and kill on the highway, kill each other with drugs of all kinds, screw people and not go to jail: that is the young bourgeois who lives in this country.

Before Chávez came to the government, had these boys been seen in the streets demonstrating against or in favor of something? Never. Have we seen them involved in politics in this country? One or another rarity. It was not even known if these young people existed. The only way to see them was through those who washed and ironed, gardeners, drivers and those of us who did not have access to those rich houses or schools, we saw them imitated by actors in the movies. But it is enough that an 89, a 4F occurred and Chávez appeared on the scene, and a set of timid changes began where, for example, laws that are supposed to be for everyone would be applied.

But when they can no longer play drugged to kill and kill themselves on the highways every so often because they can go to jail, then they realized that a government led by a black man was forbidding them to go out with cars. against the current on the highway to kill people, that is, their entertainment, their extreme sports, and they felt that their freedom, their equality, their fraternity and their democracy were forbidding them, they could no longer exercise it as usual, "is what that we have always done, "said the bourgeoisie.

Then the bourgeois carajito came out en masse (little by little as they are and their four middle-class jalabolas and the poor mercenaries bought almost for free) for the first time to carry out the work that parents used to pay their middle-class butlers ( professionals, academics, professional politicians, trade unionists, priests, and eeee… students!). The carajito in a second of peo realized thousands of years of exploitation that his class had exercised on the planet, by a thousand routes or modes of production, he did not need propaganda and ideology to understand that they were losing what by habit was the exercise of power, which they consider is natural.

"Overnight that little bit of Indians, those blacks, pelabolas, speaking freely about politics in the streets of my city, going out on my television stations, speaking on my radios, writing for my newspapers, demanding rights that we do not give them. We have given, proposing laws, wanting to impose restrictions on my power, it was like an illumination, my dad was right, one of these days you will not realize it but those feet on the ground will rise up and they will want to take away our wealth, that and nothing else ".

The class conscience: what explains the clairvoyance of these young people, their fury, and the white hands began, copied from Europe, paid by the CIA, whatever (because in the end "capital has no country", as it should not have proletarian internationalism; that is also class consciousness), but there are the guys doing politics and trying to direct what they think naturally belongs to them.

The question is: When, the carajitos from the neighborhoods, the carajitos from the countryside, the ones who really pull escardilla; not the one who is disguised as a progeny and a leftist, but that boy son of a worker and peasant who carries 500 years of exploitation on his back; He is going to say, I too am going to exercise the task that I have to bury the bourgeoisie so that exploitation is no longer a stigma in the life of the species, that is my great task, to build other facts, my time has come? When is it that we poor young people will build another discourse that allows us to name and name ourselves? What are the steps that are being taken to promote this idea, where are the propaganda barracks for the promotion of the new idea that adapts to these times?

Since it is not possible to confront the bourgeoisie with the old discursive schemes, with the old organizational methods that are supremely known to them, and to which they already have tried successful responses with painful results for the poor.

Because we need that the discourses that we generate from Chavismo are not ideological discourses, without flesh and bones, that do not connect with reality, discourses loaded with empty slogans, repetitions, clichés, we need a discourse that talks about the truth of things, their depth, its why: a discourse, but more than a discourse, a way and a custom, an ethics, some facts, that can give answers to the three realities in which the species moves.

The question, always the question on the surface of the brain: What is to be done? What does another culture mean? How is socialism built? How do you think, who should think? When should it be done? How is the planet, why is it the way it is? How do you study reality? Why are high levels of crime in the upper echelons of society (bankers, businessmen, industrialists, academics, intellectuals, artists, athletes, politicians, civil servants, judges, prosecutors, lawyers or professionals of all laya, armed estates?

This is not to say that there are no exceptions to this rule; in short, everything that is sold as a value or model in society, how is it that these criminal models cross the desires of young people, regardless of which side we are on.

If poor young people do not ask ourselves all this and many other things, but rather we believe the story that since we are young we have the right, we will end up like our grandparents and parents, slaves of the Goicoechea of ​​always.

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Yon Goicoechea, member of Voluntad Popular (Photo: File)

Where were those young people who are willing to steal whatever and whatever and whoever, disguised as Chavistas, educated? Where did that family, that school, that university, that church come from? Those young people who do not have the pain of the country, who do not realize their own tragedy, because if their actions are successful, the whole world will know where it came from, because even the oldest fortunes the cabuya leads us to their crime and original theft.

We poor young people must find out the truth, we must know that we are subjected to war by the bourgeoisie, because as a class they refuse to change their living conditions because they are comfortable, they are fine as they are; We must know that we are immersed in a war that has always been imposed on us because the subsistence conditions of the bourgeoisie go through the elimination of an important portion of the species, because the mode of production that sustains it is collapsed and the only way out afloat, they believe, is seizing as always all the resources of the Earth, imposing an absolute dictatorship, leading to total slavery to the great majority.

But their fear, their hunger and their ignorance do not allow them to understand that those same actions lead to their disappearance, but in catastrophic conditions, because the destruction capacity installed on the planet is highly effective. Although they have been told in a thousand ways, they do not want to recognize or accept it and stubbornly refuse to change, and only we poor people, whether we are workers, peasants, old, black, young, women, children, we need to end the conditions that make exploitation possible, and if poor young people do not position ourselves as the spearhead and guide of the class to which we belong (as the young bourgeoisie are already doing, who speak and practice politics because they have to defend their interests and they will not calmly accept to lose their privileges and comforts),

That is why poor young people are obliged to discuss, talk, eat, dream about politics as a tool of life (let's not do like the middle class, who claim to be Chavista and spend their time criticizing the bare buttocks because they defend their interests: It is not open to criticism, what can be criticized is that we waste time criticizing the enemy because he exercises his real right).

Ultimately, poor young people have an urgent task: to create the conditions that make it possible to bury capitalism and prefigure the other society where, as Marx said, classes no longer exist.

THE BEAN DISH AND THE YOUNG
The term youth has served for any demagoguery, in the interest of the ruling elites, "in this historical world" as Juancho Polo Valencia said. From the first wars for the bean dish, the young people were offered villas and castles with such, and the conquest of this or that hill or castle or river crossing or sea crossing. Young people were called heroes, martyrs, sacrifices. An individual imaginary was built for young people in which, for the use and usufruct of others, it is well worth losing their lives.

Young people were used for centuries, in the name of any god, to commit the greatest crimes against other young people who also fought for another god or sometimes none. Young people were used to cross seas, rivers, oceans, mountain ranges, jungles, deserts, to loot, murder entire peoples and subdue millions of young people in the name of freedom, democracy and equality. Millions of young people were led by the interests of the elites to die on the battlefields, in the name of the homeland and its sacrosanct interests of the elites that govern them and take advantage of their internal borders.

Young people were also taken to the battlefields in the name of utopias, chimeras, illusions or hopes for which millions also died, and at the end of that tragedy, a return to the daily life of power and all the honeys and miseries that it entails.

But in all these events, the young people who fought on one side or another, who defended or invaded, all those who participated in the heat of battle, were always the poor young people without their own destiny or fortune, but not the ones who led all these events. bloody tragedies.

In the end the victors, that is to say the powerful elites of always, will speak badly of the young people, as has happened during all times, until a new war where they will need them again.

Young people, that potential force, can be directed against anyone, without being aware of the damage it can cause, as they use us as soldiers at the service of any powerful entity, but this force could also be at the service of itself. as long as they understand its value, but youth are not culturally innocent, and that has been demonstrated by the rich young people who, without ever having participated in the control of the State directly, quickly as soon as the events of the process that we live in Venezuela explode were arranged to fight for their class and their interests. But should this always be the case? Isn't there a way in which we young people can overcome that condition of being used by old powerful elites, to maintain the mode and custom of dominance?

This is what forces us to think like ourselves together, to analyze the house that we dream not as individuals but as a community, but not only the house: the cultural relations, the imaginary, the way of working, the poem, everything that we are going to build, we have to think of it as an exploited class, because we have to conceive the future. If not, we will be weather vanes, any blade of straw that the wind blows around and we will only live to satisfy miseries, needs, tied to the chariot of capitalism, in the illusion that one day we will be masters.

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(Photo: File)

We cannot build the future based on needs but based on the knowledge and planning that we make of it; sustained in the knowledge that we are the poor, no matter how many salaries we have more than the other slaves, or what position we occupy on the scale of exploitation.

In the future we must be clear that our organized action must lead to sustaining another culture with other relationships in which we will be others, because we will be obliged to draw another way of producing where nobody appropriates the sweats of others, where nobody has to justify hypocritically the destruction of forests, rivers, seas, wetlands, to accumulate wealth.

It is true that in humanistic chaos, life is turned into a haphazard bustle, we end up already old, having friends, more by dismissal than for cultural reasons, they are generally very few; But if we think to design a culture for the friend and we replace this enemy world, then we no longer need to live in mistrust and making an extra effort to have friends or be friends.

To be friends, moralizing speeches, religious preaching or political demagogy are not necessary, no, it is required that we conscientiously build a productive model that makes possible the existence of that culture in harmony with that intention and that we must consecrate life. Just as in these 15 thousand years the culture of the enemy was built.

That must be an ethic, because ethics does not come in a bottle that we buy at the pharmacy, no; ethics is built. Currently the entire humanist system is made for crime, theft and its derivations, we do not decide if we are thieves or not, if we cheat, if we lie, that is decided by the prevailing culture, because all its structures and imaginaries are installed to reproduce the competitive system of all against all. But the interesting thing is that it blames each one of us for that decision and its consequences.

A culture is conceivable where ethics is radically different from humanist culture, where being supportive, honest, respectful, is not a personal decision or risk, but rather a cultural becoming, a duty to be cultural that surrounds us, completely bodily and mentally, because If we have a cultural ethic not to lie, to respect, to be with the other, the other, then that contradiction does not become our fault, double standards, it does not make the body sick, because it is not necessary.

At present we must be aware of respect, we must know that by respecting ourselves we respect others, but we do not do it out of a culture of respect but out of fear, out of distrust, to avoid being screwed up and all that morality we have as a bargaining chip .

In this time of collapse of the humanist culture we must fight to think, create, design, a culture where we are an integral part of a whole, know ourselves as universal, by the simple fact of existing as a way of life, not by the power of knowledge or by the force that it imposes on reason.

A culture where we know who we are, not because they name us but because we name ourselves and we name ourselves, a culture where we will value ourselves with others, contributing all our capacities to others, where we do not go to others like today, to steal them, to squeeze them, We have to go with the others to surrender what we are in our entirety, because affections are an energy that, like the others, cannot be accumulated, because it damages us, or damages us; it is the body that delivers the affections, it is not the word, the word is whatever is said.

How does the body deliver affections? Through making a meal, sweeping a house, planting a bush, dreaming the existence of life globally, feeling part of it, helping the other who is screwed.

Now, if we are cheats, if we charge for each act, then we turn the affections into a commercial fact, which are the affections with which we interact every day in this social framework, in this humanistic culture, everyone, my love, the little kiss, good morning, good afternoon, please, expressing the language of the diplomatic hypocrisy of the offices; language that we turn into true, with which we substitute the real affections of doing, even believing and accepting its sale, its commercialization as a daily act; seeking to obtain from the other something that we need from him, but there is no freshness in the affections, we do not give them detachedly.

We are going together to design the future that does not exist, it is the greatest and most dazzling adventure that any people have ever lived, it is the opportunity to eliminate forever 15 thousand years of tragedy from the memory of the species. We as a people, and fundamentally the young people of this time, have had to live what were formerly called the exact times, where everything is conspired for the disappearance of the existing culture and the possibility of creating something different, to design a future .

Right now we are in the middle of a great debacle of this culture, of humanistic civilization, we have a great opportunity to build another culture, because we are living in the exact time, with the support of a government that takes the whip from our back.

We have to put it together, we cannot do it like crazy, we have to design it, think about it, imagine the houses, every day in the world, we must have a discussion about the house, about food, illness, knowing the body, not as a fact religious, ideological or commercial, but because we must know the body, to heal ourselves.

WE ARE ENEMIES

Let's not hope that the one next to us is a friend, we don't believe that, because we are all enemies, because this warrior culture builds us as enemies, the exaltation of war is everywhere in the cities.

One of the great tasks then is to build friendship, as the poet Aquiles Nazoa said "the most beautiful invention"; We must learn to respect, to speak clearly, we must be with people so that people can be with us, we must make an effort to work so that as people we are consciously one with everyone.

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Part of Achilles Nazoa's "Credo" (Photo: Archive)

Friendship takes years to build; Not an enemy, because we already have one, we are culturally, it takes a lot of investment to be friends, the fierceness with which people behave is violent.

From a very young age we have to create and sustain politics as an ethic that strengthens friendship, as a condition of living; as culture; It is necessary for this to constitute a mode of production in harmony with this idea; The other thing is to continue being enemies, which are based on "the end justifies the means", we use others and then we throw them away and thus we behave like the majority of businessmen and politicians who are destroying the world to satisfy their miseries.

We were dreamed of as slaves in the manifest destiny of the bourgeoisie, because for that class to carry out its plans it always required and still requires our slavery, because it is a class that has never worked, unless it is called work to the administration of the looting of the surplus value that for centuries has been stolen from the poor who are the only ones who produce.

We poor young people must go together, to build ourselves emotionally, intellectually, where we ethically value everyone and not the cultural individuality that we are today, in humanist culture; We cannot be guided by those who lie to achieve their ends, because they applaud us and we appear on television, then I will be like him, then it is easy, we lie and that's it, but we remain like liars on the street. The liar on television has an aesthetic, he is a catirito or a white man presentable to the elites to be bought in the market, whether he is black or Indian, woman or man, and we must also learn that: who is our class, who He is our equal, and that is the everyday discussion of the world.

Young people need to build ourselves intellectually, and we are not intellectual because we read books, no, we are intellectual because we process, generate and create thought from studying the reality that surrounds us and its circumstances, thereby seeking that it ceases to be what it is for build the different. In our case, constituting ourselves intellectually involves designing learning, creation, experimentation and dissemination from the perspective of joint work based on a great objective, to build in this mining territory a country to which we can belong, and that takes years, it is done together , we have our whole life ahead of us.

It depends on us if we decide to take the facts by the horns, or go after the tail of the bourgeoisie to see what bone they throw at us or that the avalanche takes us ahead, we are the ones who decide, but we must decide it conscientiously because nobody can us take tied to a place, we must ask and question that every day, not let ourselves be sent blindly or out of necessity, we cannot be fooled, we must know the task, we must learn it. If we have to make arepas: how do we make them, how many are we, we must grind, we must knead it, we must understand the whole process, control it, how many people work for that, because everyone has to eat, those everyday things are what we have to learn and that is where the politics of life are put together.

If we decide to be Chavistas, we are supposed to study Chávez's precepts. Did he dedicate himself to living for him? No, he dedicated himself to living for others, the ethical act of the individual, that has to be our behavior towards others, we have to build ourselves as a generation that ethically builds friendship as a future possibility of life, to be kind to nature so that the enemy does not continue to exist. War is eliminated by building another culture, because war is a cultural fact.

Everything is armed for war, we must build something other than for war, we must prepare ourselves not to be compulsive consumers of everything there is and more, but to be the collective intellectual who designs and builds the new culture, the new production apparatus, but we must discipline ourselves and study, and it is not to read that pile of books; if this is the case of Venezuela, why did this misadventure occur? Who ruled? Why did the Europeans invade these territories? What were their interests? Real living facts must be learned, because the history they teach us at school is a lie, because in this process we have to build memory, from the perspective of this class that we are, since we name and name ourselves; we meet today, why do we meet today, it is noted, a diary is kept;

We cannot leave life to chance, because we are a way of life that has the ability to discern, to think. The powerful culture has denied us to the great enslaved majorities throughout its history the possibility of thinking, it has kept us as a fearful, ignorant and hungry horde, in the idea that we should only satisfy those needs within the framework of what exists, and at most claim claims, which in the end we always pay ourselves, because we are the only ones who produce wealth.

Young people, permanent state of the species, life time where all energies flourish in the body, if we allow ourselves to be governed by forces that we do not control, if we do not understand who we are, what to decide to do, when, how, where, with whom to do it We will always be destined to repeat ourselves like broken records, and our strength used for the worst interests that have ruled this planet.

We young people today have a living example, a handful of young people who on February 4, 1992, who decided to take matters into their own hands and even today fight to avoid a monstrous civil war as the ruling elites of the world have wanted for twenty-nine years, and these young people put all their energies to avoid it and even today they continue stubbornly committed to doing so, in them their ethics, their commitment, their tenacity, their perseverance.

Young people of today must decide whether we continue to be the consummate conspirators or we climb up and build our own epic, decide whether we must remain tied to the bandwagon of capitalist tragedy in the name of their selfish consumption or if we jump.

This amazing time will not be repeated, its actors are unique and unique. If we are left to ask for the satisfaction of needs and we do not understand the facts globally, we will have lost a wonderful opportunity to radically replace the current culture, let us not continue asking and criticizing as the usual idiots do, let's rise above the difficulties, we will overcome the defects that bind us to slavery, to imitation, let's not repeat the intellectuals who settle for being academy numbers, circus feeders, justifiers of what exists or prize seekers, we are poor young people with the possibility of creating an original thought in this universe.

https://misionverdad.com/opinion/cuales-jovenes

Google Translator(though I should like to see a competent human translation. Powerful stuff, even filtered thru the machine. Are young Amerikans capable of such clarity? Perhaps nothing short of the loss of advantage with which imperialism has bribed us can lead to that, I dunno.)
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Tue Mar 30, 2021 1:27 pm

COLOMBIA, ARMED GROUPS AND FIGHTING ON THE BORDER: ANALYSIS BEYOND APURE
29 Mar 2021 , 2:02 pm .

The Colombian-Venezuelan border is heating up again with the latest war events involving irregular criminal groups from Colombia and the security forces of the Bolivarian Republic, and like any high point of conflict, it is being oversaturated with information and cross narratives that are worth It is worth analyzing because they show an informative treatment forged according to certain hybrid warfare tactics.

We must start by stringing together some events reported in the media or broadcast by the main actors in the conflict in order to understand the context in which the news attacks are inserted and, above all, have before our eyes the widest possible panorama of the focus. border that breaks into Venezuela today.

THE OBJECTIVE OF OPERATION BOLIVARIAN SHIELD 2021

The first thing to mention is that since February, Operation Bolivarian Shield 2021 had been prepared in Venezuela within the framework of the joint military exercises "Supreme Commander Hugo Chávez Frías 2021", activated by the Strategic Operational Command of the Force. National Bolivarian Army (CEOFANB) in early March in order to "increase the operational readiness of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, combat and expel internal and external threats and Colombian armed groups that may be found in the nation."

They are military maneuvers that include the four components of the FANB (Bolivarian Army, Bolivarian Army of Venezuela, Bolivarian Military Aviation and Bolivarian National Guard), the Bolivarian Militia and other security organizations of the Venezuelan State in the territorial space that brings together the eight Strategic Regions of Integral Defense (REDI), the 28 Operational Zones of Integral Defense (ZODI) and 99 Areas of Integral Defense of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

It is not the first time that the CEOFANB's Bolivarian Shield Operation has been deployed in the border regions of Venezuela, when in February, March and April 2020 the exercises were carried out in different phases, in addition to this type of instruction among the various components The country's security companies had encountered the Angostura Bicentennial Civil-Military Operation 2019 (February of that year), the Simón Bolívar 2019 Liberation Campaign Joint Action Exercise (July-August of that year) and the Venezuela Sovereignty and Peace Exercise 2019 ( September of that year).

At present, and at the close of this special analysis, the operation is in a state of combat. President Nicolás Maduro assured that before the Venezuelan authorities began military procedures on the Colombian-Venezuelan border, intelligence and counterintelligence work was carried out with which it was possible to locate the threats that serve as the objective of the exercises.

But since February there had been results of Operation Bolivarian Shield 2021: on February 12, the FANB dismantled eight camps, destroyed eight landing narcopists and seized an aircraft with false license plates, solar panels, uniforms and war material in the Pedro Camejo municipality of del Apure state. Ultimas Noticias reported that "during two weeks there were clashes between the State security forces and the subversive groups present in the Pedro Camejo municipality area," so that combat situations were already taking place in the ZODI Apure before the events. of this month, a fact to take into account due to the over-informative treatment of the confrontations that occur in the present.

But shortly before, although in another geographical point in Venezuela, Operation Jiwi 2021 also took place within the framework of Operation Bolivarian Shield. On February 5, there were clashes with a cell of irregular groups from Colombia in three sectors in the vicinity of Puerto Ayacucho, capital of Amazonas state, after it was located by means of patrolling and searching by units of the CEOFANB.

We can consider that the Venezuelan military sector has been carrying out exercises and operations for months that account for an important criminal activity by non-state armed groups that cross the porosity of the Colombian border to reach Venezuelan territory for various purposes, the most important related to the trafficking of illicit substances.

Generally, the south of the Venezuelan border does not have the same media foci as the west, since Táchira and Zulia serve as the main migratory arteries through which large Colombian cities can be reached more easily, and vice versa. The departments of Arauca and Vichada border the Apure state, both geographically integrated by the plains of the Orinoquía. The jungle density does not make these border points so busy, except for the characteristic populations of the region, those that make up the "social frontier" and the "economic frontier", characterized by being historically integrated into the violent conflict of half a century in Colombia. .


"The general balance [of Operation Bolivarian Shield 2021 in its Apure chapter] so far shows six neutralized terrorists, 27 suspects placed under the command of the Military Court No. 14 for control, and another 12 detained yesterday (Friday 26 March), "said G / J Vladimir Padrino López, Venezuelan Defense Minister, at an international press conference on Saturday 27 .

The minister pointed out that during the operation, weapons, grenades, ammunition, explosives, military clothing, vehicles, drug packages and technological equipment with information related to the activities of the Colombian irregular group were also seized.

He also regretted the loss of two Venezuelan officers killed and more than 20 injured by firearms during the fighting.

The tactics used by Colombian irregular groups, characteristics of the narcoculture so widely disseminated by television and the corporate media, which include the position of antipersonnel mines in the vicinity of the camps where they operated their industry are striking. the execution of psychological warfare campaigns on the population of the invaded territory through social networks and WhatsApp chains in order to spread social panic, recruit local operators and try to inoculate an anti-government sentiment through fake newsand other infwarfare mechanisms (such as the hoax of the "false positives" carried out by the Venezuelan forces, which will be amplified by the government of Iván Duque and Team Guaidó, and which we will comment on later); and the attack on public institutions and infrastructures (CORPOELEC, SENIAT and PDVSA) with heavy and explosive weapons.

The trace of the Colombian conflict can also be noted in the criminal use of people displaced by drug trafficking and the confrontations as human shields to cross from the Venezuelan side to the neighbor, a tactic classified as a war crime according to the Rome Statute .

The announced results show the objective of the military operations, with G / J Padrino López being the denouncing state spokesperson of the political actors that promote the criminal scheme that is in the process of insertion in the Colombian-Venezuelan border. The Venezuelan State's fight against Los Rastrojos and other non-state actors related to drug trafficking and various criminal activities in the west of the country is an immediate precedent for the actions carried out by the FANB and other national security institutions, taking into account the profound The relationship between the Colombian drug trafficker, the State today presided over by Iván Duque, the Mexican cartels and the Drug Control Administration (DEA), an agency of the United States Department of Justice.

During the press conference, the G / J Padrino López reported that the focus at this time is in the south of the country due to the indications that indicate the intelligence analysis, military counterintelligence and the facts. This year, on January 21, January 30, February 21 and March 10, aircraft and shipments of illicit substances were neutralized, among other drug trafficking tools, as has already been mentioned in this report, in the context of Operation Bolivarian Shield 2021.

These elements make up an anti-narcotics operation framework of the Venezuelan State, without losing sight of the factor of drug trafficking whose market functions as a "lubricant" for its economy. It is about nipping a "criminal corridor on the border" in the bud, as stated in a statement signed by the same Venezuelan Minister of Defense published on Saturday the 27th.

The theater of operations encompasses an approximate total of 10,000 square kilometers, in a geographic triangle in the south of Apure state, between El Nula, La Victoria and Guasdualito, being the second leading town in Colombian insurgency and counterinsurgency operations in its adjacencies.

Image
Area where Operation Bolivarian Shield 2021 takes action (Photo: Image capture)

It should be noted in this report that the approach used by the Venezuelan authorities in counterinsurgency operations combines the traditional "enemy-centric", oriented toward total destruction by enemy force, with the "contemporary, population-centered" raises the protection of populations and the recovery of state legitimacy over the territorial space. Military use is univocally contemplated on criminal armed groups and the protection of fundamental human rights by the State in the aforementioned theater of operations.

There is, then, a decisive decision and action by the Venezuelan State to directly hit the foreign irregular groups that invade the Apure state, while simultaneously indirectly hitting the drug trafficking structure of Colombia. Apure-Arauca is a strategic corridor because it is geographically flat for air shipments to Mexico. The latest drug plane shootings have come from that route. And that is not a coincidence.

THE COLOMBIAN NARCO, THE SINALOA CARTEL AND THE DEA

In the aforementioned statement issued by the Ministry of People's Power for Defense, an explanation of the causes of recent violent events in Apure state is offered:

"This situation of violence that is affecting our states bordering the New Granada nation is the result of the total abandonment of its borders for decades by the authorities of that country , which is suffering from an armed conflict , whose origin lies in social inequality. , the injustice and the blind exercise of the power of a rancid oligarchy subordinated to imperial lines (the black women are ours) ".

We highlight the fact that there is an abandonment, we would say with satisfaction, of the Colombian State to ensure the fundamental human rights of the populations of its borders, a consent that has a positive impact on the criminal economy that structurally runs through Colombia. The very exposure of the border area on the Colombian side to the circuit of non-state armed groups is an agreement that seems to be established between the State and national and transnational para-economic actors.

In itself, the balance of the armed conflict that has plagued Colombia for more than half a century, in territorial and economic terms, consists of the imposition of a narco-state clearly supervised by the United States government, which outsources its economic and financial operations through the non-state armed groups that make up the current panorama after the signing of the Peace Accords in Havana in 2016. What some analysts identify as an "abandonment" of the territories previously occupied by the extinct FARC army, now undermined by numerous armed groups of different denominations of origin, and of course expanded through the tactic of violent displacement of rural communities throughout the country in conjunction with the implementation of the narcoeconomy,it can be seen as a plan to build a much more efficient framework that conceals the business that really "lubricates" the Colombian economy, the main reason for the jealous protectorate of the DEA and the US military.

This has had an impact on a highly unequal Colombia , where, for example, the caudillismo imposed by the figure of Álvaro Uribe Vélez and his crimes with impunity is stronger than the evidence against him presented before the judicial courts and the media. The Secretary General of the United Nations (UN), Antonio Guterres, reported that the outbreak of violence in Colombia has displaced or confined 13,422 people (almost half of them minors) in 2021 alone, a grim fact. of the current situation of the formerly New Granada country.

The important thing to mention here is that the development of the conflict attracted transnational forces that, attracted by the functioning of para-economic power, are inserted as actors of capital importance in said context, modifying it towards a modification of the regional division scheme of drug trafficking, in which Cocaine production is carried out in Colombia, from where it is extracted and transferred by predominantly Mexican cartels to the United States, the main consumer of illicit drugs in the world, passing through countries such as Venezuela, Panama, Honduras, among other nodal points of Central America, North America and the Caribbean.

The presence of the Mexican drug trafficker is key to understanding the current structure of Colombian drug trafficking. According to the presidential advisor for Colombian national security, Rafael Guarín, interviewed by Reuters , four cartels from Mexico control the purchase and trafficking of cocaine in Colombia: "Mexicans are the main buyers of the supply of coca that is produced in Colombia. Mexicans are primarily responsible for buying, trafficking and selling in the United States. "

"The role that they basically fulfill here (in Colombia) is to send emissaries and negotiators and also individuals who verify the quality of the narcotics that leave Venezuela or that leave the Pacific or northern Ecuador to Central America and the market. from the United States, "the official explained, which confirms the fact that the Colombian State has intelligence elements on the situation at the border, with Colombian-Mexican drug trafficking operators as protagonists.

The Sinaloa Cartel is the most active in drug trafficking in Colombia with links in different regions of the country with different criminal groups, dissidents and remnants of the FARC and the Gulf Clan, as can be proven with a detailed search on the web. They even report the uses of the emissaries of the Mexican cartels, who verify the weight and purity of drugs that leave Colombia, coordinate shipments abroad by sea or air, and in some areas finance the planting of coca leaves. The Colombian production of illicit substances maintains a "pragmatic relationship", very convenient financially, with Mexican drug dealers.

As such, the largest presence of the Sinaloa Cartel in southern Colombia takes place in the municipality of Tumaco, which is part of the department of Nariño, bordering Ecuador. Tumaco is, according to the 2020 report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the municipality with the most hectares dedicated to coca crops in Colombia, a country considered the world's leading producer of cocaine.

The Indepaz report on the presence of armed groups in Colombia published in October 2020 allegedly states that the Sinaloa Cartel is financing the expansion of the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces in the department of Córdoba and areas of Catatumbo (which includes the departments of Santander, Norte de Santander, part of Cesar and the border with Venezuela) and, in addition, negotiates directly with Front 1 alias "Gentil Duarte", leader of a large group of FARC dissidents that, it should be noted, does not represent all the FARC dissidents. It is not the same to recognize "Gentil Duarte" in La Segunda Marquetalia, a dissidence led by "Iván Márquez", "Jesús Santrich", "El Paisa", etc.,

Indepaz assures that "Gentil Duarte" "has managed to expand from Guaviare, which is its main area of ​​influence, to the north of the country by controlling the production of coca base in departments such as Meta and Arauca. Macarena, it is established that Duarte would be the only supplier of coca base in that area of ​​the country. "

But the Mexican cartel in question has direct connections to the Colombian presidential power. On October 20, 2020, the web portal La Nueva Prensa published 49 photos in which Álvaro Uribe and Iván Duque are portrayed with the pilot Samuel David Niño Cataño, identified as "the late Colombian pilot of the Sinaloa Cartel and at the same time a trusted aviator of the electoral campaigns of Álvaro Uribe for the Senate and Iván Duque for the presidency, he has, without merit, two contracts with the Administrative Department of Civil Aeronautics of Colombia ".

In addition, the Sinaloa Cartel itself not only does business with the State and different armed groups in Colombia and Mexico, it also maintains a perennial dialogue with the DEA in an effort to coordinate and cooperate in sensitive areas within the global drug trafficking industry, such as It is demonstrated in an investigation published last year by this rostrum. We said:

"More revealing is the investigation by Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández on the DEA's contracts with Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada for the Sinaloa Cartel to monopolize the market for illicit substances in exchange for information and seizure of the businesses of rival cartels in Mexico and the United States. Hernández's findings question the legitimacy of the main US anti-drug agency, which seems to have the Zambada more as an ally and partner than as an enemy. "

In this investigation we cite an interview by El Confidencial de España with Juan Pablo Escobar, son of Pablo Escobar, leader of the famous Medellín Cartel, who confessed :

"In all honesty, we must tell how my father came to obtain such an amount of power and money. It is, without a doubt, thanks to the alliances. He sent 92 thousand kilos of cocaine to the DEA for three years and bagged 700 and million dollars, which allowed him to buy wills, bandits, finance terrorism and causes for his own benefit. My father's literal words were: "We ended up working with those who persecuted us." Of course, a rooster does not crow. The same thing happens today , 23 years later ".

That is why it is not surprising that Minister G / J Padrino López has affirmed that the DEA is involved in the plot that involves drug trafficking groups in southern Colombia, with the Sinaloa Cartel being one of the main sponsors of the prevailing criminal economy there. . In a recently published statement from the Central Command of the Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) they recall that "the DEA is the one who must explain to the world, to be (sic) the promoter of relations with the Cartels within their old practice of 'controlled shipments ', where they incriminate and prosecute people who themselves involve in such activities; in addition, they end up keeping the merchandise, which they then negotiate with other buyers. "

The analysis published by the Bolívar y Zamora Revolutionary Current (CRBZ) ensures that the Venezuelan military forces are fighting the 10 Martín Villa Front of the FARC dissidents. It is worth reviewing what the Indepaz report mentions about this cell:

"Front 10 Martín Villa (named after Martín Villa, one of the oldest men in the guerrilla who died in 2016), is present in Arauca in conjunction with Front 1 of Gentil Duarte and would be commanded by Noé Suárez Rojas aliases' Germán Briceño Suárez 'or' Grannobles' since 2018 when the group was restructured, its task would be the financial and logistics for meetings on the border with Venezuela. While the articulation with Front 1 would be Jorge Eliécer Jiménez, alias' Jerónimo 'or' Arturo 'seeking to clear the drug trafficking routes that lead from Arauca to Venezuela. "

A quick investigation from open sources shows that the front commanded by "Gentil Duarte" has recently been bombed in Guaviare , and although the person in question was not on the site despite the intelligence gathered by the Colombian authorities, it is possible that it has had to migrate further to the border with Venezuela, specifically stomping in Apure to consolidate a settlement that would allow it to expand, resume or test new operations. This is a hypothesis of cause, but without a doubt, as seen in the press and official communications, the Colombian State has well specified "Duarte."

On the other hand, alias "Arturo" from Frente 10 is currently under trial in Colombia and maintains direct communications with the relevant government institutions. It is noteworthy that the CRBZ communicates about the existence of information regarding an agreement between the Colombian State and "Arturo", when the latter is being processed and monitored by the authorities of the neighboring country and reported, from the scene of the events, its incidence in the fighting in Apure. The terrorist tactics that we mentioned above are consistent with the procedures of this sector of the FARC dissidents, to which even a massacre that occurred in August 2020 measures in the Arauca municipality is attributed .

The 33rd Front of another group of FARC dissidents, more related to the components that make up La Segunda Marquetalia, affirms that the actions of the Martín Villa Front are due to a plan of the Colombian oligarchy, well related to the DEA and the de facto power. in the country.


The narco-criminal armed group that involves non-state Colombian armed groups (including dissidents from the FARC and other important criminal gangs in Colombia), the Sinaloa Cartel and the DEA has articulated a dynamic between both sides of the "historical conflict", with management of the border area, which is being fought by the CEOFANB at least since last year, when Venezuela faced irregular groups at the same point that today summons us in November of last year .


Other data that confirm that all these factors converge in the same hurried plot, in addition to the seizure of 460 panelas of cocaine and two aircraft at the end of February by the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB), are the arrest in January of four partners of the Sinaloa Cartel , from which the Venezuelan State has probably collected information on its operations in the thousands of kilometers of border between Colombia and Venezuela. Not forgetting that in February a captain in active reserve was also captured for the attempt to obtain information from the SUKHOI-30 MK2 strategic platform of the Bolivarian Military Aviation (AMB), data that would be provided to an official attached to the National Intelligence Directorate (DNI) of Colombia, who would have bribed the Venezuelan.

Let us remember that the Colombian DNI, according to the testimony of Yacsy Álvarez , logistics operator of the failed Operation Gedeón 2020 in Colombia, knew all the details of the armed incursion that had as its main objective the head of President Nicolás Maduro. It does not seem strange, then, that the DNI, the DEA and the CIA are linked to armed narco-paramilitary structures on the Colombian border to attack Venezuela, as G / J Padrino López denounced during the international press conference.

A NEW R2P CAMPAIGN

After recounting the events and understanding them in a context and situation that is deeper than what is apparent at first glance, with the expansion of the Colombian conflict to the sides of Apure, we now analyze the campaign that the government of Iván Duque has been carrying out and the anti-Chavez media to criminalize, delegitimize and undermine the actions of Operation Bolivarian Shield 2021 and fit it as one more piece in the file of alleged human rights violations by the Bolivarian Government.

Said file must be formed to specify the activation of the R2P mechanism (Responsibility to Protect), a doctrine that is not solidly enshrined in international law, however, it is a corollary of principles that have emanated from the security doctrine and the projection of US hegemony and that have been diluted in treaties and documents emanating from international institutions, including the UN system itself, to enshrine forceful actions by the international community in the face of eventualities and crises in a given country.

The introduction of this doctrine by the Americans has taken place through their influence in the UN Security Council, therefore, that would be the only body empowered to validate certain actions on countries, in full congruence with the endorsed law and that gives meaning to the Security Council itself.

This principle assumes the sense of "responsibility" that prompts countries to take part in internal situations in other countries. Juan Guaidó, in September of last year, concluded a parallel intervention in the framework of the 75th General Assembly of the United Nations, being the main actor on a stage prepared to give appearance to the "formal" request, as he refers to it. , of the R2P for Venezuela.

Guaidó reappears the same statement , but this time evoking Operation Bolivarian Shield 2021 as an imposition of acts that violate the human rights of the residents in the geographic triangulation of El Nula, La Victoria and Guasdualito in the Apure state.

The Colombian government says that almost 5,000 Venezuelan migrants have fled Apure due to the fighting, and blames Venezuela for "the serious humanitarian effects on civil society" as a result of the CEOFANB operation. This "fact" is only a necessary piece of information to make a "call to the international community" and put the focus on Venezuela, once again.


But this number of displaced people sounds more like a daily situation in the Colombian reality: on Sunday, March 28, the Colombian Ombudsman's Office reported that more than 2,000 people have left the town of El Plateado, in the troubled department of Cauca (southwest) , due to clashes between non-state armed groups that have occurred since last Friday the 26th. For now, the information treatment on the events in Apure-Arauca is amplified and highly viral, while what is currently happening in the depths of Cauca is almost entirely invisible through the media and propaganda associated with the Colombian establishment. Venezuelan and western in general.

It is about generating a psychological operation ( psyop) on a large scale to try to sell the version that the government of Nicolás Maduro attacks the unarmed civilian population. Although it is true that the conflict on the Colombian-Venezuelan border is generating collateral damage in the theater of operations, a contrasting reality has been reported to that published by anti-Chavista Colombian and Venezuelan media and politicians, in which the Venezuelan State acts to protect the population of the adverse effects on them of these operations. Human rights teams are acting to assist civilians and to accompany those affected. It has been reported that the mayor of the Páez municipality, José María Romero, is present at the scene of the events, conducting tours and holding meetings and assemblies with the community in a hurry.people are returning "from Colombia to Venezuela.

Indeed, the mayor of Arauquita (the closest Colombian entity to La Victoria, where most of the clashes take place on the Venezuelan side) reported that people had arrived seeking refuge and declared that, as of Wednesday, March 25, he had not received any injuries and "We have received many older adults with pathologies that require medical attention."

In this way, with the affected populations in between, the armed confrontation between Colombian criminal groups and the Venezuelan forces is incorporated into the record of the "humanitarian crisis", a narrative that victimizes the government of Iván Duque and all the focus is placed on the FARC (when it comes to a sector of the dissidents of the extinct guerrilla, clearly committed to narcoeconomic operations), clouding the narco-criminal relationship of the specific objectives of Operation Bolivarian Shield 2021. The deployment of the forces of the Ministries of Interior and Defense to Arauquita this Sunday 28, when before it was territory "abandoned" by the State and controlled by structural criminals with impunity for government actions,It is one more example of the staging that is intended to be installed to justify R2P against Venezuela.


The intention is clear: to create a critical mass of softening , according to the Sharp manual , that generates opinion matrices focused on the escalation of the conflict in Apure and the promotion of discontent and discomfort that it generates. But the intentions that the anti-Chavista agenda seems to want to mark on this specific case should not necessarily reach a safe harbor.

A series of informative inconsistencies reported by La Tabla via Twitter also show that the reports on the site, from the Colombian side especially, contribute to the R2P file through a mediocre mechanism but widely used by western mediocracy: explains the journalism site of investigation that "the tweets and content published on social networks by certain spokespersons are disseminated by the mainstream media, making the version initially" leaked "by intelligence services to" well-informed "propagandists, none of whom is close to the conflict area ". We recommend reading the entire thread:


Related to everything done and said by the Colombian State, the manager of Borders of Colombia spoke with El Espectador and said:

"The magnitude of this crisis is a bit uncertain, because ultimately everything will depend on the intensity of the confrontations on the other side of the border. What it does mean for Colombia is a humanitarian crisis that has to be treated on an emergency basis. We are attending to it, but we have no intention of interfering in that conflict that is taking place a little due to the permissiveness that the Maduro regime had with the FARC dissidents. "

The transfer of responsibilities, media manipulation and what Minister Padrino López called "the politicization of events", which can be summed up in infoguerra and psyop , are the recipes of Colombian state officials in the informative treatment of the conflict in Apure. It is true that the resolution of the circumstantial problem "will depend on the intensity of the confrontations," but the structural issue would remain intact and has nothing to do with the alleged "permissiveness that the Maduro regime had with the FARC dissidents." but with the first-hand action of the Colombian State in the violent historical conflict that it has experienced for decades.

The "humanitarian crisis" again has a turn in the imperial chapter against Venezuela. That the government of Nicolás Maduro resists the main factors of the Colombian conflict invading Venezuelan territory has a lot to do with preserving sovereignty and peace as a matter of primary state order and very little with the violation of the most fundamental human rights in the country.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/colo ... a-de-apure

Google Translator

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"They cry and ask for forgiveness": This is the behavior of irregular groups on the border
For Daniela jimenez
March 29, 2021

The Minister for Defense, Vladimir Padrino López , revealed through his Twitter account how Colombian irregular groups moved by drug trafficking react on the border with Venezuela and against whom the Bolivarian National Armed Forces ( FANB ) have had clashes during the last days from the territory of the Apure state in defense of sovereignty and against the attempts to establish criminal practices in Venezuelan lands.

“Colombian irregular groups attack us with explosives and long weapons . They continue to instill terror in the population and believe that by harassing military bases they will intimidate us ”; Indian. In turn, he ratified that these criminal cells return to Colombian lands with "protection" from the Government of Iván Duque; indicated by the Venezuelan Executive to provide logistical and financial support to drug trafficking and paramilitary organizations.

How do they react?
Padrino reiterated that members of these violent groups “are cowards. When they are captured they cry and ask for forgiveness , they accuse each other and betray each other. They are a strange species of chameleonic and heartless mercenaries , moved by drug trafficking who intend to do here what they do in Colombia. They wont be able!".
In this same context, the Defense Minister presented an official statement from the FANB last Saturday . In the text, it establishes a position on the commitment of the military institution and its obligation to expel from the national territory any group outside the law.

The document states that it is imperative “to remind the international community that the aforementioned groups are sponsored by the Colombian government; and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Reason why, their incursions into the Venezuelan geographic space should be considered as an aggression sponsored by Iván Duque » .

He declared that these gangs waiting at the border are engaged in extortion, kidnapping, human trafficking, sexual exploitation of girls and adolescents, smuggling and illegal mining, among other crimes, according to the statement that can be read in its entirety HERE .


Failed state?

Given the events that occurred, the military man has indicated that the media manipulation on the issue seeks to sow the matrix of a failed state . The purpose is to force a regime change under their doctrine and based on them, direct all their artillery on Venezuela. The reality is that the Venezuelan State in its full exercise of sovereignty expelled irregular groups from that country to Colombia, thus demonstrating that it exercises authority over its territory.

Quite the contrary, it happens with the Colombian State, since there are areas in New Granada controlled and governed entirely by paramilitaries, others by drug traffickers and some by guerrillas. Not to mention in depth the ravages that violence has left on the civilian population, displaced people, selective assassinations and thousands of innocent victims of a war that seems to have no end.


What Venezuela protects the FARC?

The Venezuelan government has been the target of external accusations from those who assure that dissident groups of the former Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) are protected . However, now, since the action taken by the Venezuelan military institution to expel irregular groups that entered the state of Apure, the opposition spokesperson inside and outside the country, accuses the Bolivarian government of attacking selectively against "dissidents" of guerrilla groups. Making it clear that the argument for the protection of FARC guerrillas by the Venezuelan State is untenable.

The FANB has made it clear that these are drug trafficking sectors trying to undermine sovereignty . They have even placed antipersonnel mines that endanger the life of the population and the peace of the Republic.

https://redradiove.com/lloran-y-piden-p ... -frontera/
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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Sat Apr 03, 2021 1:41 pm

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Four FundaREDES ‘Candid Activists’ Detained in Apure State
April 2, 2021

On March 31, Venezuelan NGO FundaREDES denounced the arrest of two of its members in Apure state, and of two journalists from the Colombian channel NTN24 by the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB).

The opposition activist Javier Tarazona is promoting a smear campaign on social media, referring to the “forced disappearance” of four Venezuelans for allegedly “documenting the violation of human rights in the area” by Venezuelan military deployed to defend Venezuelan sovereignty.

These claims are contradicted by the fact that, while claiming a missing persons case, organizations like the National Union of Press Workers already know where the “activists” and journalists are. According to the union, the four are in El Fuerte Sorocaima [station], of the 92nd Brigade, in Guasdualito, Apure state.

Trending topic makers
One of the NTN24 journalists arrested was Luis Gonzalo Pérez, the same one who in February 2019 announced the incredible story that the Venezuelan Guard and police had set fire to Guaidó’s “humanitarian aid” trucks with a “tear gas bomb.”



However, videos on social media networks and the presence of Telesur in the area invalidated that version of the supposed “incendiary” potential of tear gas canisters, and revealed that it was right wingers from Colombia who set fire to the trucks. This situation revealed two things: the bad intentions of Colombian media outlets, and that the trucks allegedly loaded with food and medicine were actually carrying barricade supplies.

In this case of the arrest of journalists and activists, Tarazona, who presents himself as a regular defender of citizen’s causes, intends to manufacture a narrative about the “deliberate” intention of Venezuela to silence the truth regarding events in Apure state.

Dangerous coincidences
The insistence of the director of FundaREDES’ narrative, who is Venezuelan, coincides suspiciously with the trend pushed by Colombian media. Through stories, analysts and testimonies, they hammer out this narrative of a heartless “Maduro Guard” that arrived in La Victoria killing innocent people, looting homes, and framing innocent civilians as guerrillas—something than in Colombia they sadly know very well how to do.


Even the maneuver of transferring to Venezuelan public opinion, and accusing the FANB of exercising the harmful and proven tradition of the Colombian authorities of forging false positives, is striking.

Tarazona in his videos “warns” that the Venezuelan military authorities most likely want to make a “false positive” with the two FundaREDES activists and two journalists from the Colombian channel NTN24, as the Venezuelan Army would have done —in his peculiar imagination— already with a family in El Ripial, who they purportedly presented as guerrillas.

At the service of “su merced“
Regarding the political interests that motivate the FundaREDES NGO and its director, there is evidence on social media networks that reveal their services to the Colombian government. In 2018, after he delivered a report on alleged human rights violations in Venezuela—ammunition that serves to fuel the constant attacks on Venezuela from Bogotá—Tarazona posed for a photo with Iván Duque.

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He would also have delivered similar documents to former deputy Juan Guaidó, whom his organization recognizes as “interim president.” These two subtleties, at the very least, provide an account of which side Tarazona operates on, politically, and to which interests this “activist” responds.

Both digital and conventional media have been promoting narratives that favor foreign intervention. In the case of NTN24 and its reporter Luis Gonzalo Pérez they have done so by spreading fanciful theories of a heartless government that burns humanitarian aid with tear gas canisters, and now Tarazona is weaving a story that the Venezuelan military forces violate the human rights of civilians, deliberately omitting that they are defending Venezuela’s sovereignty and are the victims of the neighboring country’s narco-terrorism.

Call for foreign interference
From his accounts on social media networks, Tarazona has called for the intervention of international organizations, exactly as was done by criminal groups through WhatsApp voice recordings at the beginning of the conflict in Apure.

This storytelling technique, which for some seems like a game without dangerous consequences, is a tool of war. With similar strategies of manipulations, lies, or half-truths disseminated in the media, the intensification of political and financial pressure against sovereign nations or material attacks have been promoted, causing victims.


Reviewing Colombian media content from the other side of the border, we realize that they are the propaganda arm of the paramilitary groups and the interests of Bogotá.

Although we Venezuelans may be aware that the FANB has regained control of the area, Colombian press reports are aimed at the international audience, foreign governments, and multilateral organizations, employing media manipulation to try to justify and increase the pressure against Venezuela.



Featured image: Four NGO Fundaredes ‘activist” detained by Venezuelan authorities in Apure state. Photo courtesy of RedRadioVE.

(RedRadioVE) by Carlos Arellan

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

https://orinocotribune.com/four-fundare ... ure-state/
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Re: Venezuela

Post by blindpig » Wed Apr 07, 2021 1:00 pm

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Corpses in Black Bags? More Fake News from Venezuelan Anti-Chavista Healthcare Personnel and Students

April 6, 2021 Jose Manuel Blanco Diaz

Groups connected to healthcare personnel from Venezuela’s extreme right staged another attempt at fake news this Tuesday, April 6, mounting a demonstration with black bags tied up to appear as human corpses at the Hospital Clínico Universitario in Caracas.

Morbidly presenting the supposed corpses, the anti-Chavista healthcare personnel tried to capitalize on the anxiety of Venezuela’s population in the midst of a second COVID-19 wave to rally people against the government, but many considered the objective was not accomplished.

The aforementioned healthcare center is one of those that provides specialized care to patients infected with COVID-19. Intensive care spaces and treatment has been enabled and equipped in this regard.

The promoters of the “demonstration” were identified as students of the Faculty of Medicine in the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) on whose campus the hospital operates. The group spoke through social media networks. Their spokesmen asserted that the reason for the “protest” was the alleged death of 430 healthcare professionals due to the pandemic.

However, another group of people (apparently workers and managers of the hospital morgue), decided to reveal that the packages, wrapped as if they were dead bodies, were actually stuffed with paper.

http://twitter.com/i/status/1379572899699437569

Commitment to health

Venezuela is one of the Latin American countries with the best containment of the COVID-19 virus, despite currently going through the second wave of infections, with the arrival of the “Bolsonaro” variant of the coronavirus, as President Maduro calls it.

On the other hand, the Chavista government constantly maneuvers to overcome the restrictions of the blockade imposed by the White House and Europe, against the financial and productive system of the Caribbean nation. As a result, it has managed to equip medical care centers with the support of friendly countries such as Russia, China, Cuba and Turkey, among others.

In this regard, the authorities have announced and applied special biosecurity measures similar to those implemented at the beginning of the pandemic, exactly one year ago. “We are on high alert because we have two variants that came from Brazil,” the Venezuelan president reiterated.

Similarly, the country remains in a constant battle against the generation of fake news that occurs when international media take images such as those published at this hospital and launch campaigns to disparage the actions of the state, demoralize the people, and generate anxiety.


Featured image: morbid Anti-Chavista protest organized by healthcare personnel using black bags. Photo courtesy of RedRadioVE.

(RedRadioVE) by Jose Manuel Blanco Diaz, with Orinoco Tribune content

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

https://orinocotribune.com/corpses-in-b ... -students/
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