Maduro’s iron hand

In a speech to a crowd of supporters in Yaracuy, shown on television cadena, president Maduro promised to a apply his “iron hand” on conspirators he claims have been plotting a coup against his government:

“To whoever is conspiring [conspiradera], to whoever is involved in plots [conjuras], we will apply an iron fist, holding the Constitution. It doesn’t matter what his name is, whoever he is, it is enough of this conspiring and coups d’état. (…) It’s over, you’re this or you’re something else [son moluscos o son mariscos], either you come to the legal path or you conspirators will all go to jail.”

Maduro also sent president Obama a warning: “President Obama, the time has come for you to rectify your mistaken policy against Venezuela, which the right to defend itself, which is anti-imperialist because we were born fighting against the Spanish empire. (…) I will not accept one more offence from the United States.” 

He directly accused the United States embassy in Caracas of financing and supporting “all the plans of the economic war, every day calling on business owners and military officers, every day sabotaging our Fatherland.”

Finally, Maduro accused “the Colombian oligarchy” of “financing and practicing a media war campaign to try to drag Venezuela into a social and political war.” Specifically he mentioned the newspaper El Tiempo, the weekly Semana, and the radio station Caracol –all owned by the “Colombian oligarchy,” explains the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias- of “everyday talking trash about Venezuela.”

Here is a complete report by the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias:

Venezuela mantiene firmes sus valores antiimperialistas guiada por el pueblo y la Constitución

Caracas, 23 Feb. AVN.- Ante las continuas agresiones e injerencias del Gobierno de Estados Unidos contra Venezuela, la nación se mantiene firme en sus valores antiimperialistas, fundamentados en el mandato del pueblo, el cumplimiento de los principios de la Constitución y los objetivos del Plan de la Patria, subrayó este lunes el presidente de la República, Nicolás Maduro.

En cadena nacional de radio y televisión, desde el estado Yaracuy, donde el pueblo masivamente salió a las calles a manifestar su respaldo al Gobierno revolucionario, el Jefe de Estado emplazó a su par de Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, a rectificar de manera temprana su errada política contra el país, caracterizada por la injerencismo y el apoyo a acciones desestabilizadoras promovidas por la ultraderecha venezolana.

"Presidente Obama: ha llegado la hora de que usted rectifique, de manera temprana, su equivocada, errada y derrotada política contra Venezuela y contra la Revolución de (Simón) Bolívar y de (Hugo) Chávez", expresó Maduro, quien también instó a Obama a reordenar sus relaciones diplomáticas con Venezuela, sobre la base del respeto a la soberanía nacional.

El presidente Maduro ratificó que Venezuela no aceptará que se impongan parámetros desde Estados Unidos, ni permitirá intromisiones desde la embajada norteamericana, ligada a los planes desestabilizadores de la extrema derecha. 

En ese sentido, recordó que el Gobierno estadounidense ha hecho 45 declaraciones injerencistas contra Venezuela. "La élite que gobierna los Estados Unidos ha tomado la decisión de concentrar todo su fuego, todo su poder, para acabar la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, destruir la Revolución y derrocar el gobierno popular y constitucional que yo presido", puntualizó Maduro.

El Mandatario nacional consideró inaceptables las declaraciones del portavoz de la Casa Blanca, Josh Earnest, quien este viernes dijo que el Gobierno de Barack Obama usaría "herramientas que encaucen al Gobierno de Venezuela en la dirección que ellos creen debe dirigirse".

Pese a los sistemáticos ataques del imperio norteamericano, el país está listo para tener las mejores relaciones con Estados Unidos en términos de respeto, por lo que Maduro solicitó el cese de las sanciones, las agresiones y las amenazas del Gobierno estadounidense contra Venezuela.

"Que nadie se meta con Venezuela. Venezuela se respeta (...) Ni una ofensa más voy a aceptar, ni una más del imperialismo estadounidense", sentenció, al tiempo que comentó que mientras la Revolución Bolivariana está concentrada trabajando, la embajada norteamericana financia y apoya "todos los planes de la guerra económica, todos los días llamando a los empresarios y militares, todos los días saboteando a nuestra patria".

En este sentido, reiteró su llamado al pueblo venezolano a defender la patria ante las pretensiones injerencistas de gobiernos como el de Estados Unidos y los planes violentos de la derecha. "Llamo a toda Venezuela, más allá de las diferencias ideológicas o políticas que pudiera haber, a que defendamos nuestra patria como quien defiende a sus propios hijos o nietos, con amor, con dignidad, con coraje y con valentía".

Campaña de desprestigio

El presidente Maduro, además, advirtió este lunes que las campañas mediáticas promovidas desde el extranjero contra Venezuela buscan generar una guerra social en la nación.

Uno de los factores que promueven este ataque es la oligarquía de Colombia, que mantiene una campaña de desprecio y odio contra Venezuela y por ello "financia y hace una guerra mediática para ver si le mete a Venezuela también una guerra social y una guerra política".

Medios de comunicación social como el periódico El Tiempo, Radio Caracol y la revista Semana, pertenecientes a la oligarquía neogranadina, "todos los días hablan basura sobre Venezuela", refirió Maduro, quien agregó que "así lo hicieron contra Bolívar, hace 200 años, y así lo hicieron contra (Hugo) Chávez también".

Ante estas circunstancias, pidió al pueblo de Colombia que se convierta en defensor activo de la verdad y la democracia. "Basta de mentiras y de manipulaciones desde Bogotá", acotó.

El Presidente, igualmente, solicitó el apoyo de los Gobiernos y pueblos del mundo para las acciones políticas y diplomáticas que la República Bolivariana de Venezuela tenga que tomar para defender su paz y su integridad, en el marco del respeto. "Este es el pueblo que derrotó y derrotaría, si le toca, a los imperios más poderosos", sostuvo. 

Seguir el ejemplo de Yaracuy

La tarde de este lunes, el presidente de la República, Nicolás Maduro, agradeció el respaldo del pueblo de Yaracuy, que colmó las calles para manifestar su respaldo a la Revolución Bolivariana, así como su repudio a las injerencias de Estados Unidos en los asuntos internos de Venezuela.

Una de las voceras juveniles, Génesis Rodríguez, indicó durante la concentración que el mandatario nacional cuenta con el respaldo de los movimientos sociales, partidos políticos y jóvenes organizados.

"Aquí está la demostración que usted no está solo, que hay un pueblo consciente de que irá con usted en defensa de la patria soberana", manifestó en nombre de la multitud de pueblo que se concentró en las calles de San Felipe, capital de Yaracuy. 

Por su parte, Deivis Ocanto, vocero de la clase trabajadora, también expresó su apoyo al Gobierno revolucionario. "Toda la clase trabajadora del estado Yaracuy se pronuncia en este mismo momento contra la injerencia yanqui", dijo, mientras exigió respeto para Venezuela.

Garantizó que los trabajadores seguirán en sus puestos de trabajo para asegurar la producción y el abastecimiento. "Aquí estamos todos los sectores, toda la clase trabajadora de Yaracuy representada en nuestra central de trabajadores y nos resteamos con nuestro presidente obrero, Nicolás Maduro", subrayó.

Ante el respaldo demostrado en esta movilización, que se efectuó entre el municipio Independencia y San Felipe, el presidente Maduro destacó la importancia del pueblo de Yaracuy en la construcción de la democracia y de independencia de Venezuela.

"Yaracuy es territorio de patriota, de gente trabajadora, noble, es la tierra de la diosa Yara, de nuestra gran María Lionza que nos bendice con su amor. Yaracuy con estas montañas del sorte, de Aroa, es una tierra que toda la vida, que en mil, dos mil años fue tierra de trabajo, de espiritualidad profunda. Yaracuy ha sido y es epicentro de rebeldía histórica. De aquí surgió Andresote con sus negros cimarrones, con ideas de igualdad", expresó.

Ante la movilización del pueblo yaracuyano en apoyo al Gobierno revolucionario, Maduro llamó a toda Venezuela, a sus gobernadores y alcaldes a seguir el ejemplo de Yaracuy y realizar movilizaciones populares en contra del imperialismo y en defensa de la paz y la soberanía nacional.

"Tremenda marcha de dignidad. Marcha antiimperialista del pueblo de Bolívar. Un río humano que el pueblo le dice: 'Yankee go home'. Y le dice a la oligarquía que más nunca volverán. Un río de pueblo. Y le dice a toda América Latina que Bolívar vive en el canto, en la lucha del pueblo de Venezuela".

 AVN 23/02/2015 20:32

All the imperialist wars…

Venezuelan Foreign Minister, Delcy Rodriguez, has confirmed that the country will take legal actions against what it calls an “international media campaign” to justify a coup d’état and a foreign intervention:

“All the imperialist wars have been preceded by media campaigns similar to this one, by giving false positives with the aim of presenting to the world a justification for interventions. We have been denouncing this situation and we will take it to international levels, legal and diplomatic,” said Rodríguez. 

International Financial World Blockade against Venezuela

In an interview in Telesur yesterday, president Maduro warned of “an international plan to finish off Venezuela.” 

According to Maduro, the economic crisis the country is facing is not due to the government’s policies, but to “an imperialist plan to destroy the Bolivarian Revolution.”

These “difficulties [faced] by Venezuela come not from natural causes, they are [designed] to generate social irritation (…) the collapse of an independent Venezuela in the twenty first century. (…) They respond to imperialist sectors that think they can do to us what they did to Allende,” explained Maduro.

The imperialist plot against Venezuela would include, according to the president, an “international financial blockade” of the country.

Maduro sees evidence of this plan in the fact that “international risk evaluation agencies are putting Venezuela as one of the riskiest countries in the world.” This, said Maduro, “does not respond to economic financial logic, instead it responds to a strategy.”  As a result of the strategy “Venezuela today is facing impossible conditions to access credit lines.”

Maduro also informed that his government is in the process of revising relations with the United States because, he explained, interventionism by the US embassy in Caracas is “becoming intolerable.”

“I am evaluating our relations with the United States. (…) At the right time, I will justly explain to our Fatherland the actions I am being forced to take to defend the dignity, the peace, and the Constitution. (…) I have plenty of information of the interventionism by the United States embassy. (…) They [the US] are trapped by their failed policy of trying to destabilize Venezuela and of keeping operators in the political and financial areas, moving around and doing things against the Venezuelan Government, this is all regrettable,” lamented Maduro.

(Image Telesur)

Who killed Robert Serra?

On Wednesday night PSUV National Assembly representative, Robert Serra and his assistant Maria Herrera, were found murdered inside their house in La Pastora, Caracas.

Reactions from government officials were at first cautious: Interior Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres declared that investigations were under way and asked for patience. The president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, and the Mayor of Libertador, Jorge Rodríguez, both asked chavistas to remain calm, trust the authorities, and let the police investigation follow its course.

But other government officials began pointing to “political motives” and blaming the opposition for the crime almost the moment it was made public. The second vice-president of the National Assembly, Blanca Eekhout (@blancaePSUV) tweeted that same night: “Coward and murderer bourgeoisie, today they again spills the blood of young patriots.” In a press conference early Thursday, Eekhout again blamed the “fascists” for the murder: “The fascist murderers that want to sow fear and despair are very wrong. The best antidote for fear is the deep faith, courage, valor, and strength of our people.”

PSUV deputy Eduardo Piñate also hinted at the responsibility of the opposition: “We appreciate the condolences by the opposition, but we also tell them that they are responsible, in one way or another, that things like this are happening in Venezuela, because the sicariato is imported from Colombia, through Gómez Saleh, and all that importation has been made in order to destabilize and demoralize the revolutionary lines.”

The Secretary General of UNASUR, Ernesto Samper (@ernestosamperp), added fuel to the Colombian infiltration theory by tweeting: “The murder of the young deputy Robert Serra in Venezuela is a worrying sign of the infiltration of Colombian paramilitarism.”

A few hours after his first cautions declarations, Minister Rodríguez Torres revealed the first results of a police investigation which he qualified as “based on the principles of maximum experience in criminal investigation.” The results of this investigation, said the Minister, showed that “The death [of Serra] was the product of a macabre assignment. (…) We are in the presence of an intentional homicide, planned and executed with great precision,” he added.

Also on Thursday president Maduro declared that sicarios were behind the murders and that “the investigations are advancing more than we can reveal at this moment. The criminalistics evidence is in line for the identification of the material authors of the crimes. At this time, after talking to the Interior Minister Rodríguez Torres, I can say that we are near hitting hard a band of sicarios.”

But by Friday Maduro decided it was time to directly point the finger at the “intellectual authors” of the crimes, which according to him could include Colombian ex-president Álvaro Uribe acting with a “criminal band created in Miami and protected by the gringo Empire.”

Maduro also argued that the local “ultra-right” is trying to create and “opinion matrix” linking the murder of Serra to common crime. But that, he explained, “is part of their calculations.” Maduro’s interpretation is that, because government security forces had “detained several persons between Monday and Wednesday who were planning to burn cities such as Valencia and Maracay,” the “fascist minds” had changed theirs plans to the selective killing of government officials. “Fascism decided to kill Robert Serra. This is a terrorist escalation that they have been planning for a long time,” he said.

The president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, also went beyond his first cautionary remarks and on Friday declared that the crime was a message sent to intimidate the chavista people and the revolution. Cabello argued that this was no common crime, but that instead “here [we are facing] fascism acting against the Bolivarian Revolution and the people. (…) We are in the presence of a crime committed by political sicariato. It is a message to frighten our young people so as to keep them off the streets. It is the same historical format used by the right and by Imperialism to make our heroes go into hiding. They did it with Miranda [Venezuelan independence hero].”

Cabello insisted that nothing happens by chance, and as an example he made a reference to the “inoculated cancer” theory about Chávez death: “The fascist right hides everything behind common crimes. But the numbers don’t add up statistically ¿why are all the dead chavista [leaders]? That’s the same thing as all the presidents of Latina America of the left having cancer. That is not [statistically] possible.”

(Image El Universal)   

The US is developing a “species of chaos” to generate distress

In his TV show today José Vicente Rangel asked the new Foreign Minister and ex-Oil Minister, Rafael Ramirez, about the “permanent thread to the revolution posed by powerful internal and external enemies.”

Ramirez assured that his main duty in his new post is to do whatever is necessary to “defended the sovereignty [of the country] at any cost because we cannot allow the United States to continue to openly intervene in the internal matters of the country”

“There are sector of the extreme right in our country, linked by tutelage to North America, linked to great economic interests, which continue to bet on violence. Our government and our people have defeated all their attempts. President Nicolás Maduro has not had so far a single day of truce. We have been under a permanent state of siege, with violence on the streets, through the so called guarimbas, with the violence generated by the Economic War, and they are permanently trying to generate a situation of chaos and distress in our country. (...) We will activate the support of the international community (…) to spread the truth to the world and denounce the development, from the United States, of a species of chaos [in Venezuela],” added the Minister.

Anti-imperialism, the highest stage of the Bolivarian Revolution

The III Party Congress of the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) ended on 31 June with the expected show of unity and support for Maduro’s leadership. The Congress was also an occasion for a display of revolutionary rhetoric, especially around a central issue for the Latin American left: anti-imperialism.

A rich source for this rhetoric is the official preliminary document presented to the Congress by the “Ideological and Programmatic Commission” and published in the PSUV web site.

 

In a classic Leninist analysis of the current world situation, the document claims that Capitalism has “reached its limits of metabolic reproduction,” among other reasons, because of the “internationalization of capital imposes the weakening of the National State.” The world is conceived as a zero sum conflict between the “block of traditionally capitalist countries and the emerging countries.”

This conflict is the result of the need of raw materials by the “capitalist countries” as they have “dematerialized their real economies through financial speculation in the energy sector.” Latin America is at the center stage of this conflict because of its biodiversity and its huge oil reserves.

In the case of Venezuela, Imperialism is closely linked to the country’s internal class structure: the bourgeoisie being little more than the local agents and beneficiary of foreign interests. Venezuela’s oil resources have particular importance in this narrative; in the past the oil rent of the country was “stolen, almost entirely, by international financial circuits,” but Chávez changed all that and accomplished the “re-direction” of the oil rent to benefit the people, mainly through his misiones (social programs).

The outlook for Capitalism if bleak, according to the document, because “in its current imperialist phase, it has reached its structural limits of development, its unfolding generates unsustainable contradictions due to the crisis that corrodes it.”

However, it is precisely because of this internal crisis that Capitalism displays more openly its current imperialist phase: “the logic of the capital (…) forces the empire to resort to war as an anti-crisis mechanism, putting the rest of humanity in danger.” In this context the “Imperialist States” also turn to the establishment of an institutional framework, such as the IMF, World Bank, and the World Commerce Organization, to serve their aim of global expansion and exploitation.

Imperialism is perceived as the biggest threat to the final success of the Bolivarian Revolution. The PSUV therefore considers the Revolution is defined by what it calls its anti-imperialist character: “It is impossible to deploy a development plan directed by the great interests of the Nation, the Venezuelan people, and the Great Fatherland, without first restricting and then abolishing the imperialist domination which is exploiting humanity; the United States, the imperialist corporations, and the local bourgeoisie that depends of imperialism.”

Right after its Congress, the PSUV also published a document numbering the main decisions achieved at the event. The document, titled “Compromise of the Cuartel de la Montaña” (the final resting place of Chávez), also emphasizes in several places the need to stress the anti-imperialist character of the Party and the link between the enemy within and the United States.

For example, it claims that the violent events after the April 2013 presidential elections, and the opposition protests which started in February this year, are the direct result of the actions of a “fascist right” that is acting under the orders of the United States. It therefore urges for a “complete rejection, and continued denunciation and combat, at all places, against the terrorist violence of the fascist right, without fatherland [apátrida], and lackey of the North American imperialism that, through its strategy of On-going Coup and Economic War produced in April 2013 the death of 11 compatriots, and between February and May 2014, under the coupist plan denominated ‘La Salida,’ (…) the loss of 48 human lives…”

As the US imposes visa restrictions on Venezuelan officials, and before it considers other sanctions, it is important to understand that any such actions will be framed by the Venezuelan government as confirmation of imperialism. Sanctions, no matter how specific and targeted, will feed into the conspiracy rhetoric that by now has become the official discourse of the government.

     

Carvajal’s arrest in Aruba plotted by Uribe and the Empire

The arrest in Aruba of General Hugo Carvajal was plotted by Colombian ex-president Álvaro Uribe, according to president Maduro.

After Carvajal’s release Maduro declared that the general had been arrested using a “false file put together during the government of Alvaro Uribe, as we will prove in the next days. It was all a false positive organized by the mafia boss Uribe.”

Thursday will be the day, according to Maduro, in which evidence will be released of a plot to “ambush our compañero, with the aim of smearing the reputation of the events which are taking place in our continent, and to blackmail the military of our country.”

General Carvajal is a retired general who has been accuse by the US treasury of drug trafficking and of adding the Colombian FARC. He was appointed Venezuelan Council to Aruba and arrested there on 23 July before receiving diplomatic recognition by the island authorities. He was released on 27 July on a court order from the Netherlands stating the Carvajal enjoyed diplomatic immunity. Aruba’s attorney general denounced however that the island had suffered “economic and military” pressures from Venezuela.

During the commemorations of 60 birthday of Hugo Chávez on 28 July, Maduro reminded followers of the day 60 years ago that had witness the birth “of a prophet that came to break with time and to open a new historical era,” and also of “the battles we have had to fight; the attacks from imperialism and its lackeys around the world, that have tried to defeat the moral and political force of the Bolivarian Revolution, as they have tried to do against general Hugo Carvajal.”

“Insurrectional Conspiracy”: Rodríguez Torres provides more theories but no evidence

President Maduro had announced two days ago that today Interior, Justice and Peace Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres, would reveal the evidence of coup d’état plans by the opposition against the Venezuelan government.

Moments ago, in a press conference Minister Rodríguez Torres gave details of “a plan of insurrectional conspiracy with the clear aim of overthrowing the legitimate government of the country, [a plan] that adheres to the permanent strategic objective of the State Department of the United States.”

Rodríguez Torres did not provide any evidence to sustain his claims. However he did give new details of the plot by the United States already denounced by President Maduro. According to him Venezuela is under attack on at least two fronts: drug trafficking and Human Rights. These two fronts are used to create an environment that would make acceptable a military intervention in the country.

On the Human Rights front, Rodríguez Torres explained that unspecified “US institutions” and NGOs “compile manipulated information in order to try to make the world believe that in Venezuela human rights are permanently violated.” On the other, “drug trafficking” front, “they name high Venezuelan government officials as implicated in financing terrorism and drug smuggling activities with the aim of making Venezuela appear as a rogue State.”

Short of evidence, Rodríguez Torres reminded the audience of the several times he has alerted of this plot, for example he again accused student and opposition leaders of having met last year in México to plan the recent protests in Venezuela. He also again recalled the arrest of the US national Timothy Allen on charges of being a CIA agent in April 2013. A long list of the usual suspects of conspiring against the country was also provided: Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Vilca Fernández, Lorent Saleh, Julio Rivas (JAVU), Carlos Vecchio, María Corina Machado, David smolansky, Gustavo Tovar Arroyo, Leopoldo López, Eligio Cedeño, José Antonio Colina, Gene Sharp, Pedro Burelli, Gustavo Tovar Arroyo, Daniel Ceballos, Lester Toledo, and Freddy Guevara. He also said that there are 58 foreign nationals detained so far accused of being mercenaries. He warned that the murder of chavista leader Eliézer Otaiza "was not casual," just as Maduro had suggested two days ago.

Rodríguez Torres finally explained the aims of these attacks on the country: “In the first place, a political-strategic objective is to halt the continental propagation of the Bolivarian Ideal, this is something fundamental for the United States and [in the second place] to gain control of the Orinoco Petro-belt, the biggest in the planet.”

Image by El Universal