System of People’s Protection for Peace

President Maduro approved yesterday a Law of National Security which, according to him, creates a Sistema de Protección Popular para la Paz.

The system will directly answer to the President’s office and is based on “the labor class, intelligence teams, and control systems.” It includes four subsystems (for peace, popular power, protection, and operations) and will be headed by a Comandante, yet to be appointed.

The creation of this new People’s Protection System has become necessary, explained Maduro, in order to fight against the “terrorism and para-militarism orchestrated by the right.”

The Agencia Venezolana de Noticas quotes president Maduro: “through this instance, the ‘para-military threat that has come to our country because of the right-wing,’ and that is made visible through crimes such as the murder of the Deputy Robert Serra, committed on October 1, and the violent actions promoted by sectors of the ultra-right during the first semester of the year, which produced more than 40 murders.”

Subversive plan “The Exit” According to AVN

The Agencia Venezolana de Noticias has published in English a piece entitled “Subversive plan ‘The Exit’ released in the US month before its application.” The article is based on a report by Últimas Noticias published yesterday which carries a video of Leopoldo López explaining in October 2013 to a group of supporters in Miami his strategy to remove Maduro from power.

In the video López does not speak of the possibility of a coup or even of violent protests to overthrow Maduro. He does claim that previous elections were stolen from the opposition and questions if the opposition should assume the “attitude proper to a democratic system” which, according to López, implies preparing for future elections.

However the article by AVN, following Últimas Noticas, claims that López was in truth explaining his “Putschist plan ‘The Exit’” to the “the subversive organization VEPPEX, or Politically Persecuted Venezuelans in Exile.”

This is how AVN explains “The Exit” (La Salida):

Through "The Exit" or "Solution," subversive groups used violence and terrorism to cause unrest in the country, resulting in 43 deaths, attempts against the life of children and workers, as well as hindered the right of free passage with mortal devices such as wires in major roads.

AVN also links the plan to the “Economic War” denounced repeatedly by Maduro:

The plan was carried out between February and June 2014 simultaneously with an economic war characterized by smuggling, hoarding and overpricing of staple goods, with the open target of overthrowing the Nicolas Maduro Administration.

The article ends with the assertion that López was forced to hand himself to the authorities seeking protection from a plan by “right-wing leaders to attempt” against his life:

Simultaneously to "The Exit," intelligence corps found out a plan devised within right-wing leaders to attempt against Lopez, situation that made him surrender to the Public Ministry.

Diosdado Cabello: the opposition wants to sabotage Christmas!

For the President of the National Assembly and vice-president of PSUV, Diosdado Cabello, “[i]t has become evident that the right represents and organization for the overthrowing the government, they are foreign coup mongers.”

Cabello revealed several “right-wing” conspiracies yesterday in his TV show Con el Mazo Dando:

He referred to the SOS campaign during the opposition protests at the beginning of this year. Many international artists called for solidarity with the protestors by holding signs which read “Venezuela SOS”. Cabello believes that the fact that a similar campaign has not been staged by those same artist in solidarity with the 43 student missing in Mexico is evidence that the Venezuelan campaign was a “paid media campaign.”

“Many artists expressed their solidarity with the Venezuelan opposition in February, but for them in Mexico, where the State made 43 students disappear, nothing is happening. For Maria Conchita [Alonso] Mexico does not exist. That’s because there are no dollars, there is no SOS [campaign],” argued Cabello.

He also informed that on November 10 opposition leaders José Narváez (MUD secretary in Nueva Esparta), Alfredo Díaz (Mayor of Mariño municipality), Jhonny Rajal (Coordinator of Primero Justicia in Nueva Esparta), and Bautista Mata (of Voluntad Popular), met at the Commerce Chamber of Nueva Esparta State.

According to Cabello the purpose of the meeting was to coordinate “actions to provoke scarcity of Christmas products and thus generate chaos during month of December in the insular territory [Margarita island in Nueva Esparta State], by paralyzing transport and commerce.

They want to sabotage our Christmas!” claimed Cabello.

Jaua: Capriles will travel to meet the international ultra-right wing

The Minister for the Communes, Elias Jaua, claims that the Governor of Miranda and opposition Henrique Capriles will travel this month to Spain and to Miami in order “receive instructions and financial oxygen to continue the destabilization campaign against Venezuela’s democracy.”

Jaua mentioned Roger Noriega as one of the “ultra-rightists” Capriles will meet during his trip.

“It’s a lie that Capriles is one of the more moderates of the opposition,” said the Minister, “he is part of the game being played to interrupt democracy, part of the plan of destabilization against our Fatherland.”

Jaua is especially concerned that Capriles could be using Miranda State’s public resources to finance his travels and conspiracies against the government: “We have decided, the National Government, the Parliament, the Regional Parliament [of Miranda], the regional deputies, the city mayors of Miranda, and the Popular Power, to begin a process of debate on the use of resources that have been constitutionally transferred to the State of Miranda, and we will ask Carpiles for an explanations of his travels,” warned he, and added, “we will battle to stop Capriles from using his post of Governor to further his personal interests and his ambition and obsession to become the president.”

(The Agencia Venezolana de Noticias exceptionally publishes images of opposition leaders to illustrate negative comments. This is a rare case of an image of Capriles taken from AVN.) 

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.

Coup d’état and the creation of a new special brigade

Interior, Justice and Peace Minister, Miguel Rodriguez Torres has revealed that the coup d’état he and other officials have been denouncing, “has been defeated by the national willpower.” 

According to Rodriguez Torres: “It is a method of coup d’état that does not imply the active participation of the Armed Forces. It has been proven around the world that this model of coup [created] by Gene Sharp, uses other strategies to overthrow governments.”

The Minister also announced that he will soon create a brigade to fight what he called “groups that generate violence”. “We are ready to activate next week, with President Nicolás Maduro, a special brigade to deal with this issue. (…) This will be a brigade that will fight against the groups that generate violence,” he declared in an interview for TELESUR yesterday.

Rodríguez Torres gave few details about the new brigade: it will be staffed by approximately 150 agents and will deal ostensibly with issues related to organize crime such as extortion, sicariato, and drug trafficking.

However the press note by the Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias frames the declarations by the Minister in a way that leave little doubt about the real purpose of this new special brigade. According to AVN:

"Since February Venezuela has faced the terrorist acts of ultra-rightists groups that have left 42 dead, hundreds injured, and destruction in public and private institutions, in their effort to overthrow the constitutional Government of Nicolás Maduro.

"58 foreign nationals have been detained for being involved in the acts. Some of them, as has been denounced by Rodríguez Torres, have links with the Colombian ex-President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, and with the paramilitary and drug traffickers of that country." 

They will attack our soldiers and steal their weapons

Interior, Peace and Justice Minister, Miguel Rodríguez Torres added yesterday an important new piece of information on the conspiracy by the “extreme right” which he has decoded (descifrada according to the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias.)

The Minister participated in the President’s radio show “En contacto con Maduro”, and told his host that the conspirators are activating a new violent phase of their plan, which would consist in “attacks against our soldiers [centinelas] of the Bolivarian Armed Forces in order to steal their weapons and then use those weapons against the soldiers and the people.” 

Rodríguez Torres also explained how he has come about this new of information: “through intelligence work, specialized units, and the denunciations made by the Venezuelan people.” But he added that anti-conspiracy work is still needed in order to make the task of informants more effective: “we have to make available more lines of communication so that the people can make their denunciations. We all need to work together so that we can dismantle these residual fascist groups that are still around and that are now turning into insurgent groups.”

Acts of vandalism and the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias

The following two paragraphs are part of the article published yesterday by the public Agencia Venezolana de Noticias (AVN), “Ejecutivo suma esfuerzos para acabar con el rentismo y construir Nuevo modelo productivo:”

Since the end of last year anti-chavista sectors began an economic war, speculating with the prices of products and propitiating scarcity. Therefore the Bolivarian Government led an economic offensive in order to protect the economy of Venezuelans.

Since February radical groups of the right have perpetrated acts of vandalism with the aim of generating a climate of instability in the country. Because of this, the Executive called diverse sectors to a National Peace Conference to work for the pacification of the Venezuelan Territory.

Note that in these paragraphs AVN is not quoting the opinion of government officials or of government supporters, instead it is stating incontrovertible facts about the recent events in Venezuela.

Miami’s ultra-right mobilizes strange groups to kill López

President Maduro explained the strange circumstances surrounding the arrest of opposition leader Leopoldo López yesterday.

After being taken away from the rally of supporters in a military armored vehicle, López was transferred later to a Jeep and driven to the Fiscalía to be imputed of a series of violation which, according to Maduro, include “sedition and violation of the Constitution.” He was then driven off to a jail outside Caracas. The conductor of the Jeep carrying López was no other than Diosdado Cabello, President of the National Assembly.

“At this moment the compañero Diosdado Cabello is driving the car that is taking Leopoldo López to a jail outside Caracas,” said Maduro. He argued that this “extreme measure” had to be taken because Lopez’s life was in danger: “We have information that the ultra-right, the most ultra-right of Miami and Venezuela, after our orders to arrest López, have mobilized strange groups to look for him and kill him in order to create a political crisis and to drag Venezuela into a civil war.”