Venezuela seizes 2.6 tons of cocaine bound for Honduras

Venezuela seizes 2.6 tons of cocaine that were bound for Honduras

Venezuelan authorities seized a cache of more than 2.6 tons of cocaine in the port of Maracaibo, Zulia state (northwest) border with Colombia, which were hidden in a container that had Honduras as a destination, said the Ministry of the Interior .


Photo: Image courtesy of the April 25, approved for release by the Ministry of Interior and Justice of Venezuela, showing part of the 2.6 tons of drugs seized in an operation by the authorities, which was shown to the press in Caracas (Venezuela) . EFE


"This seizure of 2,694 kilos of cocaine exactly deals a blow to international drug trafficking, the shipment was specially packaged in an attempt to evade detection," he told reporters Venezuelan Interior Minister, Miguel Rodriguez.

...

He said the shipment of cocaine was seized after the National Guard (military police) received information about the cache and proceeded to use special X-ray equipment that detected that the container's contents were not the recycled plastic indicated on the records.

....

Two Venezuelans were arrested in this bust, the customs agent in charge of the customs paperwork and the operations manager of Global Service Maritime C.A. that was in charge of the shipment.

http://www.que.es/ultimas-noticias/sucesos/201304260210-venezuela-incauta-toneladas-cocaina-tenian-efe.html

Venezuelan Attorney General: Opposition Violence After Elections Left 9 Deaths and 78 Injured

Venezuelan Attorney General: Opposition Violence After Elections Left 9 Deaths and 78 Injured

By Agencia Venezolana de Noticias (AVN)

April 24, 2013.- Venezuelan Attorney General, Luisa Ortega Díaz, informed that the violent events which took place between April 15 and 16 de abril, after the general election, left 9 deaths and 78 injured.

In a press conference, Ms. Diaz provided a summary of the investigation that her office is conducting about the violent events.

She explained that these events originated as a result of irresponsible calls of some political actors to act against persons and institutions in the country, including the Comprehensive Diagnostic Centers (CDI), Food Markets (Mercal), Food Producer and Distributor (PDVAL) and locations of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

“On April 14 the elections to elect the President of the Republic were held in Venezuela, and after the governing body (National Electoral Council) issued the results, there were calls made through some media and networks like Twitter and others, by direct and subliminal messages, encouraging citizens to take street actions. Hostile actions and contrary to the law, which led a sector of the public to attack another sector of the population," Ortega Diaz recalled.

According to the statement presented by the Attorney General, in the area called La Limonera, Baruta municipality, Miranda state, two deaths occurred when a group of people linked to the opposition, in a hostile and violent manner, hindered the free vehicular traffic.

"En ese momento iba transitando un grupo de personas afectas al chavismo y este grupo de oposición, desde un vehículo, procedió a efectuar algunos disparos con armas de fuego, que impactaron a dos personas, que fueron Luis Ponce Ordóñez y Rosa Inés del Valle Reyes", precisó, al tiempo que indicó que por este caso está privado de libertad una persona, por el delito de homicidio calificado por motivos innobles.

"At that time, there was a group of people linked to the Chavez Government (chavistas) passing and the opposition group, from a vehicle, proceeded to fire gun shots, which hit two people, who were identified as Luis Ponce Ordonez and Rosa Inés Kings Valley," she said, while indicating that in this case, there is a person under custody for the crime of aggravated homicide by non-noble motives.

In the parrish named Antonio Borjas Romero of the Maracaibo municipality, Zulia state, two children died, 11 and 12 year old.

"It was in the parish Antonio Romero, where a group of Chavez supporters celebrated the victory of Nicolas Maduro after the presidential elections of April 14. This celebration was hit by a 350cc truck, in an action of hatred, because not only attacked the celebration, but the person backed up the vehicle and rammed against the crowd again, leaving a toll of two dead people," said Luisa Ortega Diaz.

She explained that in this case, the 350 truck has been retained by pólice, and there is a capture order to apprehend the responsible criminals.

La fiscal general de la República, además, añadió que en la entidad zuliana falleció el ciudadano Johan Antonio Hernández Acosta, específicamente en la avenida principal del Barrio La Música, donde fue arrollado por un vehículo con características que hacen presumir que era de oposición.

The Attorney General also added that in the state of Zulia the citizen Johan Antonio Hernández Acosta died, specifically in the main street of the Barrio La Musica, where he was hit by a vehicle with features which presumably correspond to opposition supporters.

In Zulia also there was the death of Mr. Luis Eduardo Garcia Polanco, who died around the National Electoral Council (CNE), in Maracaibo, which was besieged by right wing opposition supporters.

In Sucre state one person was killed, identified as Joseph Bastardo Ender, while Táchira state recorded the murder of Henry Rangel La Rosa, who was shot when he celebrated the triumph of Nicolas Maduro in the presidential elections of April 14.

"He got shot by a group of motorcyclists, which according to the testimony, could be supporters of the opposition. In this case three people were arrested: Jesus Antonio Galvis, who was charged with the crime of murder, and two others who were charged with the offense of facilitating the crime of qualified homicide, Joel Antonio Contrestas and Jose Omar Leon, " she said.

Also in Táchira, Keber Guevara died, who was an officer of the National Bolivarian Police (PNB).

"These are the nine deaths that we have across the country, and certainly, are related to events that occurred subsequent to the pronouncement of electoral council that triggered these violent acts," said the prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz.

Published on Apr 25th 2013 at 11.30am

This work is licensed under a Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Creative Commons license

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/8830

Defending Rio Blanco: Three Weeks of the Lenca Community Roadblock (Honduras)

Defending Rio Blanco: Three Weeks of the Lenca Community Roadblock


It is now evening and dark at the patch of earth where Rio Blanco community members have gathered to defend their territory from companies that seek to privatize and profit from the Gualcarque river. Children talk and giggle as they as they tell jokes in the dark at the edge of the woods where they will soon fall asleep. The adults, however, are alert and vigilant for whatever might occur, given the threats they are facing. Many gather around the open fire where the coffee is boiling. A group of them will stay awake all night to watch over the camp that prevents access to the Agua Zarca Hydroelectric Project, where private companies have started construction to build a dam.



The Indigenous Lenca community of Rio Blanco is isolated and hard to reach. Few vehicles travel the winding dirt roads to arrive here and horses are the preferred mode of transportation within the community. Community members survive by growing corn, beans, bananas of all sizes, yucca, coffee, and other crops. They have lived on this land for generations and wisely steward it; certain sections are designated for growing food while a large area of forest is carefully protected to preserve their water sources. By preventing deforestation they do indeed have water to use for living, drinking, and growing food. Now, however, companies want to restrict their access to the Gualcarque River by privatizing it with a dam to generate profit for wealthy, powerful Honduras and foreign investors.

The powerful interests behind the Agua Zarca Project include the Honduran Bank FICOHSA, whose president is Camilo Atala, an extremely powerful businessman identified as one of the “intellectual authors and financers of the (2009 SOA-graduate led) coup d’etat.” Just months after the coup, the Honduran National Congress passed a General Water Law enabling the country’s water resources to be concessioned to third parties. At the same time, FICOHSA paid Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton, to lobby Washington on behalf of the repressive, post-coup regime led by the former president of the Congress. The project has international investors from several countries and a Chinese state company, SINOHYDRO, has been contracted to work on the project. To round it out, the World Bank and Central American Bank for Economic Integration are involved.

...



However, the project continued to move forward. Construction began, destroying community members’ crops that they depend on to eat. The community of Rio Blanco had had enough. On April 1, 2013, they began to block the dirt entrance to the Agua Zarca project to demand its withdrawal from their territory. They subsequently gave the company 72 hours to leave, which it failed to do. Instead, community members have received death threats and there is constant surveillance of the community and members of COPINH. They have also faced harassment and have noticed hitmen arriving in the region. On April 12th at 6:30am, they were evicted by police patrols, including riot police, who dumped out their drinking water and removed their banners, sleeping pads, and supplies. They couldn’t remove the people, however, who were on their own land after all, and their presence continued.

...

http://www.soaw.org/about-us/equipo-sur/263-stories-from-honduras/4096-rioblanco2#_edn1

Iranian-Sponsored Narco-Terrorism in Venezuela (soooo predictable that it's right on cue)

Iranian-Sponsored Narco-Terrorism in Venezuela: How Will Maduro Respond?

By Paul D. Shinkman
Apr 24, 2013

New Venezuelan president at a crossroads for burgeoning threat to U.S.


A Venezuelan National Guard soldier next to a cocaine processing laboratory near the Colombian border.

At a conference earlier this month, top U.S. military officers identified what they thought would be the top threats to the U.S. as it draws down from protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gen. James Amos, commandant of the Marine Corps, was unequivocal about a largely unreported danger:

"Narco-terrorism just on our south border: [it is] yet to be seen just how that is going to play out in our own nation, but it is an issue and it is something that our nation is going to have to deal with."

This alliance with Iran uses established drug trade routes from countries in South and Central America to penetrate North American borders, all under a banner of mutual malevolence toward the U.S.

....

"Each of the Bolivarian states has lifted visa requirements for Iranian citizens, thereby erasing any public record of the Iranian citizens that come and go to these countries," wrote Farah of countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia and Panama.

....

Read more meatless, unsubstantiated crap here: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/04/24/iranian-sponsored-narco-terrorism-in-venezuela-how-will-maduro-respond

Capriles issues 24 hour ultimatum over "stolen" votes

25 April 2013 Last updated at 04:13 GMT

Venezuela's Henrique Capriles issues ultimatum over vote audit

Venezuelan opposition candidate Henrique Capriles has threatened to take action over disputed votes he claims were "stolen" by Nicolas Maduro's government.


Henrique Capriles told a news conference he would not accept a "joke audit" of the election results

Mr Capriles demanded details of an audit of the vote the electoral council says it will carry out.

Mr Capriles said the council had a "deadline" of Thursday, but did not specify what action he would take.

...

He repeated his accusations that Mr Maduro had manipulated poll results, telling a news conference: "The truth - and it is as big as our country is wide - is that you stole the election. That is the truth. "You stole this electoral process, and you have to explain that to this country and to the world."

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Prisons Minister Iris Varela, meanwhile, has said a jail cell awaits Mr Capriles.

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-22289588

Sunday April 21, 2013
Capriles Campaign Manager: We never said we won the elections


Antichavista command director, Carlos Ocariz, said the opposition never said that their candidate had achieved electoral victory this April 14 (Photo: File)


Antichavista campaign director and current mayor of Sucre (west of Caracas), Carlos Ocariz, said in an interview for print Venezuelan opposition never said that their candidate had achieved electoral victory this April 14.

"We've never said that the candidate Henrique Capriles won," he reiterated. The opposition leader said that the statements of its leadership, after the announcement of the first electoral bulletin led to President Nicolas Maduro winner with 50.66% of the total votes counted for a total of 7,505,338 votes were intended to request an audit. "We believe that if the voting process had not submitted the alleged irregularities, the result would have been different."

However, the former presidential candidate antichavista, went to the country and told it to openly ignore the April 14 election results issued by the CNE. "We demand that every vote is recounted, because based on the work of our campaign headquarters, we have a different result than was announced tonight."

...

http://www.telesurtv.net/articulos/2013/04/20/comando-antichavista-nunca-hemos-dicho-que-ganamos-las-elecciones-9931.html

Chronicle of a lie foretold: or, how I failed to stop Spain’s rightwing press from intervening in...

Chronicle of a lie foretold: or, how I failed to stop Spain’s rightwing press from intervening in the 2013 Venezuelan presidential election

Asa K Cusack 22 April 2013

I replied to individual tweets with my concerns. But I have 50 followers; they had hundreds of thousands. I was like a cartoon character plugging holes in my boat as the water rose around my ankles.

On the eve of Sunday’s presidential election in Venezuela, a damning story appeared about the corrupt relationship between the left-wing candidate Nicolas Maduro and Latin American sporting icon Diego Maradona. The right-wing Spanish newspaper ABC ran the story, and it spread like wildfire across the internet, reaching millions in Venezuela during elections that Maduro won by less than 300,000 votes. The only problem is that the story was a complete fabrication and ABC knew it.



It all started with a piece on the ABC news website (above) on Friday April 12, two days before Sunday’s election, claiming that Diego Maradona had been paid two million dollars to support Maduro during the final rallies of his campaign. This went unnoticed at first, but on Saturday it began to gain traction. Since I research and report on Venezuelan politics I happened to be on Twitter when the story really started to take off in the early evening, with Venezuela’s most popular newspaper Ultimas Noticias tweeting it to 860,000 followers at 7:41pm.

It struck me as strange. Maradona is a leftist by conviction; he has a tattoo of Ché Guevara on his right shoulder; he hobnobs with Fidel Castro for fun; why would he need to be paid to support Maduro? I also knew this story could do major damage. Venezuelans are mobilophiles and on the day before a crucial election everybody would be rooted to Twitter, Facebook, and news websites. The country’s most trusted newspaper, Ultimas Noticias, had already validated the story by republishing it and tweeting it to nearly one million people in a country with only 19 million registered voters. And the story itself had mass appeal: corruption, politics, celebrity, and Latin American football, all rolled into one!

Tracing the story back, I found that ABC was citing The Guardian as its source, though it provided no link to their original report. Googling the Guardian piece brought up nothing, which seemed impossible if it really existed. Searching by site and date to make sure, I found only two articles; neither contained this accusation.

At 8:35pm I cautiously started to question the accusation on Twitter. I tweeted the Guardian in an effort to establish whether there ever had been any such story, and to warn them that their name was being abused by ABC. I tweeted Ultimas Noticias telling them to double-check the story, hoping they could quickly correct their earlier tweet. I even tweeted Maradona himself. No response.

Taking a new tack, at 8:50pm I decided to seek clarification from ABC via the story’s own comments section. I posted a question via Disqus (as used by The Independent) asking for the original source, and the comment went up on the site. The next time I checked back it was gone.

Increasingly certain that the story was false, I tried to alert the Venezuelan government via the communications minister Ernesto Villegas, state TV channel Telesur, and government news agency AVN. Even if they couldn’t halt the spread of the story, I figured, they could at least deny it. No one responed.

In the meantime more major media had picked up the story. Venezuela’s equivalent of the Financial Times, El Mundo, had tweeted it (175,000 followers), as had Latin American news network NTN24 (430,000) and prominent opposition supporter [link:http://|José Rafael Marquina] (473,000), amongst many others. The genie was out of the bottle. At 10:16pm I tweeted to no one in particular:

“Watching unstoppable propagation of apparently false #Venezuela story about #Maduro paying $2m for Maradona support; alarming how easy it is”

The story was also flying high on Facebook, appearing at one point on the main page of salsa superstar Willie Colon (who has 500,000 likes). And it had now reached the rest of Latin America through innumerable reproductions on innumerable websites; search for "Maduro Maradona" on Google Venezuela and you’ll see. Even Clarín, the newspaper of record in Maradona’s own Argentina, had republished the story. Worse, more and more respectable papers began to refer to each other’s versions of the ABC story instead of to the ABC story itself – “Clarín, ABC, El Mundo, and The Guardian confirm Maradona was paid $2m to support Maduro!” – insulating the vacuum at its core from public scrutiny.

I replied to individual tweets with my concerns. But I have 50 followers; they had hundreds of thousands. I was like a cartoon character plugging holes in my boat as the water rose around my ankles. My last card was to get western Venezuela supporters involved, so I fired off tweets to Owen Jones, Eva Golinger, and the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign. Nada. Defeated, I quoted Winston Churchill and went to bed: "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on"

On the morning of the election, I found that the lie had continued to prosper. After making a few final attempts to let people know, I gave up. At the time I, like everyone else, expected a Maduro landslide. The Maradona story was irritating, but I didn’t expect it to be significant. I was wrong. In the end Maduro won by less than two percent, giving the opposition the chance to use concocted fraud allegations to undermine his legitimacy both at home and abroad.

The impact of this one fabricated story is impossible to gauge, but I saw with my own eyes that many thousands were receiving it, reading it, and sharing it. Some will follow more than one of the Twitter accounts mentioned above and others will have been away from Twitter, but the numbers are still staggering. And they exclude the unquantifiables: Facebook, internet searches, normal news browsing, word of mouth, and the Venezuelan’s weapon of choice Blackberry messenger. The accusation will surely have galvanised opponents: “let’s get this crook out!” And it could easily have swayed some of the hundreds of thousands who chose to stay at home this time, or the 700,000 who switched allegiances after voting for Chávez in December. Control of the largest oil reserves in the world rests on this election; deliberate interference in it is no small matter.

So was this deliberate? Where did the accusation come from in the first place? And who’s to blame? The short answer: ABC.

First, ABC is virulently right-wing and has perhaps the most violent record of attacking the Chávez government of any foreign media outlet; quite an accolade. In recent months alone they have claimed that a comatose Chávez was to have his life-support turned off, that he was preparing "a network of armed commandos" for an opposition win, and that he was linked to drug-trafficking. On April 19 ABC’s Caracas correspondent Ludmila Vinogradoff even tried to pass off photos of police repression in Egypt as evidence of a Maduro crackdown in Venezuela. They have motive and a bad track record.

Second, ABC knew the story was false on the same day it was published, even promising to remove it at that point (12 April). One conscientious Argentine tabloid, Perfil, had taken the two minutes required to shake the story’s foundations and immediately confirmed with ABC that no underlying Guardian article existed. This was two days before the election, yet the story remained online throughout the build-up and on election day itself. Then there was my own notification via the comments section, which was hastily erased. Early on 17 April I even called the ABC Sports Desk myself to enquire about the story’s original source; they acknowledged that it was false and said that they would take it down. As of 21 April, it remains online with 3600 Facebook shares plus 1700 tweets (and counting). These figures include only the original article and not the hundreds of derivative versions all over the internet, many of which have impressive sharing stats of their own.

But where did the accusation come from in the first place?

Perfil were able to trace it back as far as the young Colombian football blogger and law student Salvatore Marcenaro. In their version, he tweeted it to 90,000 followers on April 11 with no substantiation, the accusation then being broadcast further afield by a right-wing radio presenter in Argentina. But Marcenaro struck me as an unlikely fantasist or slanderer. His tweet history reveals that he is partial to Chávez’s nemesis, former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, but his real passion is clearly football. For him Maradona was the draw, not Maduro.

Unlike Perfil, I managed to make contact with Marcenaro, who revealed that he first heard the accusation from Palermonline, the news blog of a well-heeled district of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Palermonline had published the original story late on 10 April, the same day that Maradona arrived in Venezuela. I wrote to the site’s editor, Pablo Rubin, seeking clarification, but received no reply. Instead, the story was hurriedly removed (screengrab below).



Of course, neither Rubin nor ABC was alone in conspiring to inflate this empty story beyond all proportions, and this is the most depressing part of the whole affair. There was no reason to believe the story was grounded in fact; the sources turned out to be non-existent or weak, the premise illogical and the motives for spreading a false story at this time obvious. Yet regional media unquestioningly peddled it around the continent. The Venezuelan opposition, meanwhile, consumed it and regurgitated it with alacrity. In Venezuelan politics the truth is too often immaterial; “give me a useful lie any day!”

Much as foreign commentators like to trumpet the role of social media in the Arab Spring, this account shows that they can be abused just as forcefully in states where spring is but a distant and unpleasant memory. The same commentators can be trusted to blather on about “institutions” until the cows come home, but if no one respects the rules of this game or any other, then everybody loses.

Asa K Cusack is a PhD candidate in the University of Sheffield's Politics department, specialising in Latin American and Caribbean political economy.

This article is published under a Creative Commons licence.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/asa-k-cusack/chronicle-of-lie-foretold-or-how-i-failed-to-stop-spain%E2%80%99s-rightwing-press-from-interven

GM salmon's global HQ – 1,500m high in the Panamanian rainforest

GM salmon's global HQ – 1,500m high in the Panamanian rainforest

Supersized genetically modified salmon grown fast and fat and after years of wrangling, are ready for market – but is the market ready for them? And why is the firm hidden away in Panama?

Suzanne Goldenberg
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 April 2013 14.34 BST


AquaBounty's GM salmon fish farm in Bajo Mono, near Boquete, western Panama. Photograph: Sheena Rossiter/Avaaz

It is hard to think of a more unlikely setting for genetic experimentation or for raising salmon: a rundown shed at a secretive location in the Panamanian rainforest miles inland and 1,500m above sea level.

But the facility, which is owned by an American company AquaBounty Technologies, stands on the verge of delivering the first genetically modified food animal – a fast-growing salmon – to supermarkets and dinner tables.

The US government this week enters the final stages of its deliberations on whether to allow commercial production of the GM fish, with a public consultation on the issue ending on Friday . Separately, a committee in Congress on Monday took up a bill that would outlaw GM salmon entirely – essentially destroying AquaBounty's commercial prospects in America. If approved, the salmon could be the first of some 30 other species of GM fish under development, including tilapia and trout. Researchers are also working to bring GM cows, chickens and pigs to market.

...


Aquabounty's GM salmon fish farm in Boquete, Panama Photo: Sheena Rossiter

...

"They tried many countries but they were afraid to start something new," Lauri said. After multiple refusals, the company eventually turned to Panama, where the project won a warm welcome from government officials. Lauri said officials had few concerns about the potential health and environmental risks of growing GM salmon in Panama. "We were not afraid of something new," he said.


A genetically modified salmon, rear, and a non-genetically modified salmon, foreground. Photograph: AP

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/apr/24/genetically-modified-salmon-aquabounty-panama-united-states

Venezuela Faces a Soft War

Venezuela Faces a Soft War

By David Segarra – Rebelion, April 24th 2013

The night after the elections, unknown groups deploy across Venezuela. Hospitals are attacked. Leftwing party headquarters are set on fire. Graffiti appears threatening the death of Bolivarian activists. Journalists are shot at and injured. Armed groups take advantage of the darkness to attack neighbourhood groups which have come out to defend their houses, schools, and hospitals. Eight Chavistas (translator: now, 9) all of them from the lower classes, are killed by gunshot. This happens the day after the rightwing loses the elections. Only two countries doubt Nicolas Maduro’s victory: Spain, and the United States. (Translator: Spain later recognised the results).

The fact is, Venezuela poses the greatest petroleum reserves in the world. In the twentieth century four presidents tried to put natural resources and petroleum under national control. All four suffered coup d’états lead by an alliance between foreign powers and local elites. All four lost power, but the fourth, Hugo Chavez, managed to reverse the coup in 2002 thanks to the massive rebellion of the popular classes in alliance with nationalist sectors of the army. Spain and the United States lost control of the biggest source of petroleum. But they had another option; just a year later they invaded Iraq. Empower themselves with Iraqi petroleum would mean the destruction of the Arabic nation, a million deaths, and unimaginable suffering. Venezuela could live ten years of peace thanks to the strength of the Venezuelan people and the Iraqi resistance.

During the eleven years that have since passed, Venezuela has rebuilt its nation, that five centuries of colonialism had reduced to extreme poverty, extreme insecurity (crime), and extreme chaos. The creation of public health and education, as well as the struggle against poverty have been the key battles. Today Venezuela doesn’t look at all like what it did ten years ago. The 80% poverty rate has reduced to 40% at the most (Translator: around 26%). There’s health and public education. And the most important thing; the invisible majority today have recovered their pride, identity, and power over their lives. There are however, enormous problems that are being confronted with the creation of new participative democracy, where the citizenship can participate through communal councils, open assemblies, and in that way make decisions about their own communities. At the same time, the conventional democratic system of parties continues. It’s a system that combines traditional western politics and popular assembly experiences.

Over the last eleven years Venezuela has promoted the alliance of Latin American nations and created a new geopolitical reality. Before a unipolar world where the United States had predicted the end of history and its ultimate control, a multipolar world appears where power is shared by different regions of the world. Venezuela leads the building and consolidation of the Latin American bloc. Between the coup of 2002 and 2013 leftwing nationalist movements have been winning elections across the continent, creating a new reality and new alliances. The ALBA, UNASUR, CELAC and others which visualise the new independence appear. As a result of the coup in Paraguay in 2012, Venezuela orchestrates a daring diplomatic manoeuvre and enters Mercosur. Together with Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, they become the fifth largest economy. Along the way, Haiti and Honduras have fallen in other coup d’états.

With the death of Chavez, the United States, Spain, and other Venezuelan elites see their chance. A lightening attack is necessary. New elections to elect a new president are called. The country is in emotional shock. The Bolivarian candidate is Nicolas Maduro Moros, from the popular bases, ex-driver, unionist, and leftwing activist. He accompanied Chavez for over twenty years. He was minister for foreign affairs and participated in the design of the new political architecture of Latin America. Facing him is Henrique Capriles Radonski, son of two of the richest families, owners of the main chain of newspapers and cinemas. Lawyer, trained in private national and international universities. In 2002 they already confronted each other when Capriles lead a coup d’état and Maduro had to go into hiding. But its 2013 and democracy seems to be consolidated in Venezuela.

Since 1998 anti-Chavista discourse has been that the “primates” and “hoards” had taken power, lead by the “red gorilla”. The extremeness of the colonial, racist, and classist narrative made them lose election after election. National and popular pride was gradually consolidated in the face of the discourse based attacks of the Venezuelan elite. But in 2007 the anti-Chavista strategy changed radically. They realise that Venezuela has changed. The popular classes have become aware of themselves and can’t be returned to their cages. So there begins an extraordinary process that will culminate in 2013. The stateless elites take on a Bolivarian narrative. They recover the use of the national flag, the figure of Bolivar, and the constitution. They begin a process of penetration of the popular barrios, the favelas that they had insulted and feared so much. All the media analysts have been able to see how their publicity changed from just showing white people to systematically using people with dark skin behind the anti-Chavista leaders. Which, of course continue to be all white and upper class.

With the change in discourse there is a change in strategy. The elites start to read Sun Tzu and Lakoff (Translator: an ancient Chinese military strategist and George Lakoff, a US linguist who also wrote the book ‘Moral Politics’) The boxing ring strategy, of brutal and head on confrontation disappears. Their foreign advisors convince them that they have to be patient and intelligent. The attack now will be multifaceted, slow, and won’t seek to destroy the government militarily, but rather wear it down slowly. The multitude strategy is begun: attacking all over the place, without a face, without protagonists, without shape or identification. The anti-Chavista leadership will systematically deny all connection with the rumours, the psychological war, or the violent attacks.

All Venezuelan elections are held under unidentified attacks that affect all aspects of daily life. Large companies hide their food in order to produce discomfort in the population. They even hoard intimate hygiene products, sacred things for women. They begin to sabotage the electrical system, which affects the tranquillity of the popular barrios. Financial engineers attack the economy, manipulating the price of the dollar. The majority of the media only report bad news. The private media has 90% of the Venezuelan audience. The government has to face the odyssey of reconstructing a nation and at the same time respond to attacks from all sides. Without any apparent connection, the attack on the economy and public services, the bad news put out by the mass media, and the secret war of the networks, consolidate the world view of the Venezuelan elite, who now present themselves as neo-Bolivarians, neo-nationalists, and quasi neo-socialists. The skill of the opposition is based on presenting themselves as the inheritors of the best of Chavez. The elites seemed to have learned their lesson: yes, its necessary to respect the poor classes and defend the country. But we are the elites that will do this historical task better than the actual poor classes. At the end of it all, Maduro was just a bus driver. Maduro isn’t Chavez. We are Chavez, they are on the verge of saying in a turnaround of Machiavellian cynicism.

But the attack, invisible to the eyes of the state and the government, doesn’t just come from the streets or the press. It’s an anonymous and mass one that hits and penetrates hearts and minds. It goes to mobile telephone screens through social networks. Creating a narrative and a complete conceptual and closed framework that is reinforced by the mainstream media and the declarations of opposition leaders. During the last weeks and including today there is a huge operation of psychological war against Venezuela. The objective: generate the most amount of hate and frustration possibly within the anti-Chavista opposition masses. The instrument: dozens of anonymous sources that generate thousands of false messages daily and arrive by Blackberry, Twitter, and Facebook. In real time the government and thousands of Bolivarian cyber-activists try to undo each lie and all the farce, but they work by reacting, by defending themselves. The initiative, the capacity for surprise, the guerrilla attack is in hands of the imperialist forces. From Bogota and Miami a massive attack on the psychology of millions of Venezuelans is led. Every minute there are new rumours, new false photos of violence, new calls for insurrection, that have managed to generate a climate of hysteria in millions of Venezuelans. These campaigns are exactly the same that they used in Europe in the thirties against the Jews, in the fifties against the communists, or against the Chile of Allende. It’s about creating panic, without any basis, and hate in the face of the possibility- never concretised – of the indicated enemy attacking us. The aim of psychological war is to close the receptors in on themselves. Make them immune to reality and the truth, creating a closed world that only exists virtually. But that creates a total authenticity. Even some of the fashionable artists support the rumours and the campaign. Maybe consciously, maybe unconsciously. It doesn’t matter. The important thing is to convert each citizen into a carrier and mobilise of the campaign of hate.

This is combined with the real attack, in the streets, by unknown shock groups, who have tried to plant panic among the Chavistas. And also the psychological war towards the Chavistas, towards those who put out rumours of a coup and persecution in order to create a climate of panic and giving up.

The objective of this battle of the minds that we are going through isn’t to win. It’s to plant the seed of hate and permanent mobilisation among the anti-Chavistas. And confusion and demoralisation among the Chavistas. With two scenarios: civil confrontation and chaos and electoral defeat of the Bolivarian forces. The strategy of tension.

This episode shows us that wars and battles are fought in the streets and the farms, but also fundamentally in minds and hearts.

Some, and we know who they are, have read Goebbels and Sun Tzu well and have launched they attacks against Venezuela.

The elites who have governed Venezuela for 500 years are desperate to return to power.

But the Venezuela of 2013 isn’t what it was in 2002, when it had just defeated a coup. Now Venezuela is infinitely stronger, as much at a internal level as at an external one. Latin America, Brazil, China, and Russia aren’t any old small thing. The Venezuelan people aren’t any small thing. The Venezuelan army isn’t any small thing. And Venezuela, like the revolutionaries of history, is master in the art of war of Sun Tzu, of Bolivar, and of Chavez.

Translation by Tamara Pearson for Venezuelanalysis.com
Source: Rebelion

This work is licensed under a Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Creative Commons license

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/8813

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