OAS Head Luis Almagro's 'Dear Friend' Leopoldo Lopez
OAS Head Luis Almagro's 'Dear Friend' Leopoldo Lopez
By Joe Emersberger with Foreward by Les Blough
Tuesday, Aug 30, 2016
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Washington's 15 year assault on Venezuela opens, closes, and reopens on a number of different fronts including the attack on the bolivar, the Venezuelan currency; the economic war with the current tactics of hoarding, dumping and smuggling food and other essential products out of the country; stopping or cutting down production by opposition controlled industries; paying common street thugs to murder and create violence; high profile assassinations of police, military officers and politicians by US/Uribe-supported Colombia paramilitaries; violent attacks on government institutions and government buildings; infiltration and bribery of officials; sabotage of the infrastructure, cutting off electricity, gas and water to homes and business and the current coup attempt remove President Nicolas Maduro from office either by means of a referendum or by another violent coup-attempt; and a direct attack on the Maduro government by Luis Almagro, current Secretary General of the US-dominated Organization of American States.
Another current attack by the US "Human Rights Groups" and the corporate media centers around Leopoldo Lopez. In the article below, Joe Emersberger provides a gripping account of another tactic within Washington's overall strategy for regime change: portraying a violent criminal and coup-organizer as a victim of the state. Leopoldo Lopez is the wealthy son of a wealthy opposition family who was finally arrested - far too late - given a fair trial and convicted of numerous crimes against the people of Venezuela which Emersberger accurately describes in detail. Lopez is now serving a 13-year sentence where he "languishes" in a well-protected comfortable prison cell and serves as a "political prisoner" and a cause célèbre for the media war against the Venezuelan government. Throughout my city, large murals appear on buildings and walls crying out for his release. Each time I pass one in my car, he breaks my heart. Meanwhile, his wife travels the US and Europe begging governments and corporate media to help free her husband. Venezuelans know them as “Ken & Barb.”
Lopez was born into a wealthy family of media moguls, his father an executive at El Nacional, a rabid opposition newspaper with nationwide circulation. His mother is Vice President of the opposition media conglomerate, Cisneros Group which is run by Gustavo Cisneros, one of the world's richest men with a net worth pegged at $4 billion by Forbes (2014). Like Lopez, he was educated in the US. Born in Caracas, he holds citizenships in Venezuela, US and Dominican Republic. He was a key opposition force in the short-lived 2002 coup in Venezuela but now finds refuge in Dominican Republic. Between 2009-2013 he donated $1 million to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The Cisneros Group has diversified from entertainment and digital media into real estate investment, tourism and consumer product companies, reaching 550 million Spanish and Portuguese-speaking consumers in the Americas and Europe, and providing media content to more than 100 countries. Leopoldo Lopez' family history includes a long list of former members of the Venezuelan oligarchy including the country's first president, a Secretary of Agriculture, a Minister of Education and 2 medical doctors, the founders of the Centro Medico of San Bernardino, a wealthy enclave in Caracas. These are people who like Leopoldo Lopez never lost their wealth but chafe at the loss of their control of the government with the advent of the Bolivarian Revolution in 1999.
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With this training and preparation he emerged as the golden boy of the US as they funded the opposition for regime change in Venezuela. According to an article published in The Mall, the Hun School student newspaper (since removed from the internet) a fellow student described him as being, "very good at getting people psyched ... I am sure these qualities will help him lead Venezuela out of the third world some day.” The article noted that Lopez planned to attend graduate school, and then eventually "return to his country where he hopes to go into politics and improve Venezuela." Lopez is then quoted, “Being away from home created an awakening of the responsibility I have towards the people of my country. I belong to one percent of the privileged people, and achieving a good education will hopefully enable me to do something to help my country.” That was in 1989, 10 years before Hugo Chavez Frias was elected president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, and before Kenyon College and Harvard University where his grooming was completed for re-entry into Venezuela as a counter-revolutionary.
More:
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_75031.shtml
