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Venezuela Investigating Opposition Politician's Death, US Interfering
Source: Telesur TV
The U.S. has again interferred in domestic affairs following the death of opposition politician Luis Manuel Diaz, while government leaders have rejected “defamation” around the case.
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"I have asked the authorities to convene a press conference once they have accurate information in order to let people know the facts,” Maduro said Thursday. The Venezuelan leader said however that preliminary investigations point to the murder, which occurred while Diaz was at a campaign event for the Democratic Action party, may have been carried out by criminal groups whom Diaz had dealings with.
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United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) leader Jorge Rodriguez also announced on Thursday that his party would take legal action against the leader of opposition party Democratic Action, Henry Ramos Allup, for defamation. Within minutes of the murder, Allup blamed the PSUV.
“Luis Manuel Diaz was unfortunately well known for his long record of criminal activity in the start of Guarico. He was the last member of a criminal gang called the Plateados (silver plated), which was involved in extorsion, contract killings, and kidnapping in that state,” Rodriguez said.
“(Diaz’s) involvement in that gang was known to everyone … as were his links to trade union mafias in the construction industry, which were in dispute with the mayor of Chaguaramas, who certainly isn’t a member of the PSUV. In fact, Mayor Giovany Salazar, who was fighting with this man, Luis Diaz, for control of those union mafias, is a member of another opposition party, Justice First.”
Finally, on Thursday the U.S. State Department issued a statement condemning the killing of Diaz, something it has never done following the murders of hundreds of indigenous activists, rural leaders, and pro-government unionists, as well as various PSUV leaders, such as legislator Robert Serra last year.
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Read more: http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Maduro-Addresses-the-Killing-of-Venezuelan-Opposition-Leader-20151126-0012.html
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Who Is Dying in Venezuela? A Revealing NYT Correction
By Peter Hart
Mar 26 2014
Venezuelan opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez has an op-ed in the New York Times today (3/26/14). Given that he is currently being held in a military prison, the piece is notable. But the most revealing part might be a correction that appears at the end:
Correction: March 26, 2014
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the more than 30 people killed in the political demonstrations in Venezuela since February 4 were protesters. That number includes security forces and civilians, not only protesters.
So the op-ed currently reads, "Over 30 people, including security forces and civilians, have died in the demonstrations." In the original, those deaths were all considered to be on the protesters' side: "More than 1,500 protesters have been detained, more than 30 have been killed." If you have been relying on US media to follow the Venezuela story, or relying on Venezuelan opposition sources, you'd probably have the mistaken idea that the violence was basically all happening on one side–which might explain how this error got into the Times.
Jake Johnston of the Center for Economic & Policy Research (CEPR) has been keeping track of the deaths attributed to the protests ("Venezuela: Who Are They and How Did They Die?"
, and a similar effort by Ewan Roberston can be found at Venezuelanalysis.com. The latter finds pro-government and anti-government deaths about equal (nine on both sides), with a dozen deaths of civilians with no apparent political affiliation–numbers that basically line up with Johnston's.
The presence of the protest barricades appears to be the most common cause of deaths: individuals shot while attempting to clear the opposition street blockades, automobile accidents caused by the presence of the barricades, and several incidents attributed to the opposition stringing razor wire across streets near the barricades. The most recent reported death was a pregnant woman who was shot while walking towards a barricade (AP, 3/24/14). She was not participating in the protest on either side.
Some analysts have pointed out the most recent protests reveal a fundamental split within the Venezuelan opposition, between those who believe in defeating Maduro and his party by democratic means and those–like Lopez–who favor street confrontations with the goal removing Maduro from office. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that he would want to conceal the fact that the protests have been responsible for many of the deaths he would prefer to blame on the government.
http://www.fair.org/blog/2014/03/26/who-is-dying-in-venezuela-a-revealing-nyt-correction/
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Weekend Edition March 14-16, 2014
John Kerry: the Belligerent Diplomat
Behind the Lies About Venezuela’s Protests
by GARRY LEECH
US Secretary of State John Kerry recently called on the Venezuelan government to end the “terror campaign against its own citizens.” Kerry’s words are just the latest in US and mainstream media efforts to portray the month-long protests in Venezuela as peaceful popular demonstrations against an authoritarian regime that has resorted to repression to quell the uprisings. As a result, the Venezuelan government, as Kerry’s statement illustrates, is being blamed for most of the 28 deaths that have occurred. But is this portrayal accurate? A closer look at the reality on the ground paints a very different picture. From the beginning, the protesters have been armed, have conducted widespread arson and have been intent on achieving the unconstitutional overthrow of a democratically-elected government.
The protests in Venezuela have primarily occurred in middle and upper class neighborhoods in seven cities across the country. Most of these neighborhoods are governed by opposition mayors who support the protesters. In fact, protests of any sort have only occurred in 18 of the country’s 335 municipalities during the past month. This context is important because the media has created the impression that the protests constitute some sort of peaceful popular uprising against the government of President Nicolas Maduro. In reality, it is a relatively small number of people in opposition strongholds who have taken to the streets while the overwhelming majority of Venezuelans, particularly in the poorer barrios, continue to go about their daily lives unaffected by the disruptions.
From the first days of the protests in early February many of the demonstrators at the improvised street blockades in Merida and Tachira were armed with handguns. The first weekend of protests in Merida saw balaclava-clad protesters boarding buses and wielding guns as they forced passengers to disembark. Protesters were also observed throwing shrapnel at passing motorists. That same weekend, three protesters held a journalist at gunpoint and threatened to kill her. Meanwhile, protesters in Tachira beat another journalist with a lead pipe. Throughout the past month, protesters have also used petrol bombs against government targets. The principal targets have been government-run health clinics and food markets, resulting in more than $1.5 million in damage to these symbols of the revolution in the first two weeks of protests.
In one particularly heinous act of violence, 29-year-old motorcycle rider Santiago Enrique Pedroza was decapitated at a street blockade when he rode through a steel wire stretched across the road at neck height. This tactic was apparently inspired by the tweets of retired army general Angel Vivas, who is allied with the opposition. Vivas promoted the use of wire at blockades to “neutralize” motorcyclists who were members of community collectives that supported the government. The day before the decapitation, he tweeted, “In order to neutralize criminal hordes on motorbikes, one must place nylon string or galvanized wire across the street, at a height of 1.2 meters.” The general tweeted recommendations for other tactics, including “to render armored vehicles of the dictatorship useless, Molotov cocktails should be thrown under the motor, to burn belts and hoses, they become inoperative.” The government ordered the arrest of Vivas the day after the decapitation.
More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/14/behind-the-lies-about-venezuelas-protests/
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Leopoldo López Is Not Venezuela’s Savior
Despite US support, the revolutionary has only succeeded in pushing like-minded opposition leaders far, far away.
By Greg Grandin
Yesterday 11:58 am
Roberto Lovato has just published a great investigative essay in Foreign Policy on Leopoldo López, the jailed darling of Venezuela’s opposition. López is celebrated in the US press as a cross between Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. He is handsome, like King, and, like Gandhi, occasionally shirtless. Newsweek blushes over López’s “twinkling chocolate-colored eyes and high cheekbones.” He is, apparently, a “revolutionary who has it all”: an “attractive and supportive wife, two children who get along with each other and impossibly adorable Labrador puppies.” Everything except a revolution.
Drawing on WikiLeaked cables, Lovato reveals how López over the years has been handled by the US embassy in Caracas. (Roberto told me that 15 minutes after a colleague of his posted the FP article on social media, someone from the US embassy e-mailed and said, “You should really come to me when it comes to Venezuela.”) Despite this support, though, López remains a divisive figure within Venezuela, and Lovato’s piece helps explain why the opposition can’t get its act together, despite opportunities offered by serious economic problems and rampant corruption.
A few years ago, not long after Hugo Chávez’s March 2013 death and the razor-thin election of Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, López was at the center of a middle-class putsch attempt, protests that resulted in numerous deaths. It was as if all the rich, white gentry from LA’s Beverly Park started building barricades and stringing steel wire from lamppost to lamppost to decapitate motorcycle taxi drivers (as what happened to Venezuelan Elvis Durán), with the US media reporting on events as if it were Selma 1965.
Following these protests, López was arrested “on charges of arson, public incitement, and conspiracy.” His arrest got international attention, but, Lovato writes, “López’s trial has proceeded largely without fanfare…. López’s court dates in Caracas have generally attracted only small groups of supporters outside the courthouse, led by Lilian Tintori, López’s wife. Other key opposition leaders have stayed away, though they routinely voice support for López’s release. A recent campaign by his party, Voluntad Popular, to convene an assembly to rewrite the constitution and reorganize the government attracted criticism, with the leader of a rival opposition party calling for ‘responsibility and maturity’ and one opposition governor calling for an end to ‘anarchy or guarimbas,’ the street barricades that were the preferred tactic of López’s youthful followers.”
López’s claim to lead the Venezuelan opposition rests on his insistence that he had nothing to do with the failed April 2002 coup against Chávez. But Lovato nicely shows this insistence to be a lie. Then mayor of a rich Caracas municipality, López was everywhere those April days, rallying crowds, appearing on TV. His “most controversial episode,” as Lovato describes it, was leading a crowd to surround the house where a Chávez minister was laying low, picking up a megaphone to charge the minister with murder: “Justice will be imposed,” López said. López’s anti-Chavistas beat the minister in the street and then kidnapped him. López, in other words, is a thug. Ted Cruz with a mob.
More:
http://www.thenation.com/article/leopoldo-lopez-is-not-venezuelas-savior/
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Miles de firmas lo respaldan
Doctor
Alí Rodríguez Araque
Secretary General UNASUR
Dear Secretary General:
Please receive our respectful, Bolivarian, revolutionary, patriotic and anti-imperialist greeting. Please make this greeting extensive to people working together with you in your important assignment in benefit of peace and the sovereignty of the South-American nations.
Currently in Venezuela, ultra-right-wing groups have developed an extreme and way to protest against the State and the Venezuelan people called “guarimba”. A guarimba is a lock-down sector of the city or neighbourhood. “Guarimba-people” or “guarimberos” block roads using different kinds of materials (barricades) and then proceed to control access of people and vehicles to such neighborhoods.
As part of the control they exercise, they proceed to charge a fee (in Bolivares), every time someone attempts to enter or exit the guarimba area. They not only control access, they specially target people using red-colour clothing, and even red-colour cars assuming they are Chavez's sympathizer (chavista). “Guarimbas” are a display of a dangerous lack of tolerance in Venezuela.
Under slogans such like “It is not a crime to think differently” they verbally and physically attack anyone they think may be a “chavista.” Their ideology is radically anti-socialist, anti-communist, and pro-USA. They demand “freedom” by denying freedom to others. They shout they are hungry but they burn-down trucks delivering food and food-storage places. They manifest not to have “freedom of expression” while being close-minded to other ways of thinking. They lay claim to not having security while committing criminal acts, including assassinations, and violent aggressions against civilians and security forces.
“Guarimberos” enjoy international support, including mainstream mass-media. Well-known artists, and politicians have expressed their support to the “guarimberos” in a very well organized international campaign of propaganda against the constitutional authorities of the country. This campaign has achieved such unbelievable distortions that they call “dictators” to free-elected authorities, who are exercising important restraints in dealing with guarimbas.
Current Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, is not only a convinced democrat, and a recently elected President with less than a year in power. Former President Jimmy Carter called the Venezuelan electoral system “the most perfect of the world.” Additionally, the Venezuelan constitution opens the possibility to a middle term referendum on his presidency. It seems crazy to think that some people around the world are supporting the deposition of an elected president, and in fact subjecting the Venezuelan people to a so called soft coup, to assassinations, and other types of human rights violations because Venezuela is practicing elevated forms of participatory democracy, which can set a bad example for other subjected countries.
In spite of a strong propaganda campaign talking about human-rights violations, it is the Venezuelan police force and civilians opposed to guarimbas who have suffered most of the deaths and injuries.
“Guarimberos” enjoy the services of a powerful buffet of lawyers. They also take advantage of weaknesses in the legal system where opposition judges can grant them freedom with ease should police capture them.
“Guarimberos” receive daily payments and armed protection from Colombian mercenaries. But they receive more than money, they have been subjected to a psychological campaign, which makes them believe that Cuba is damnation for the continent, and that to be subjected to USA's power is the only way to development and happiness. They march with the US flag and with an upside-down Venezuelan flag.
The propaganda campaign states that “guarimberos” are students. It is true, students do participate in protests, including pacific marches in support of guarimbas and demanding a change of government. Instead, “guarimberos” are criminals, period. They use the term “student” as a way of softening criminal acts, for public opinion sake. They attempt to present criminal acts as acts of revelry carried out by crazy youth to make their crimes more palatable. They have in fact among other crimes burned-down fifteen universities; several libraries; and natural forests. They have cut more than five thousand trees that they use to barricade neighbourhoods; and with no mercy they burn and kill cats and dogs in bonfires.
More:
https://nacla.org/article/how-venezuela%E2%80%99s-right-discovered-human-rights
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