The Czechoslovakia Velvet Revolution and Venezuela

The Agencia Venezolana de Noticias has published an article under the title “A Manipulation Campaign that Forged a Coup in Czechoslovakia 25 years ago”.

The unnamed author claims that “the so called Velvet Revolution” was but a coup d’état that used “manipulation and deceit to generate a panic campaign.”

The “show” staged by the plotters against the communist State mainly used young people and students as cannon fodder.

Through lies, including a staged murder, the plotters achieved the fall of the government and the rise to power of the “ultra-rightist” Václav Havel.

Behind this “Velvet Revolution” was the United States selling its expansionist policies as non-violent struggles against “supposed communist totalitarianism.”

The tactic was denominated “the soft coup” (according to the article the term was invented by Gene Sharp), and continues to be used today by the United States against “countries opposed to the interests of Washington: Syria, Libya, China, Ecuador, Georgia, and Ukraine among others.”

 “Venezuela is also in the list of targets of the Washington recipe,” ends the article, “Venezuela is one of the richest nations in bio-diversity, oil, minerals, and water. This is why in the last years, facing a sobering and independent State, the United States has used the Venezuelan right-wing to put an end to the Bolivarian Revolution through different means. Coups d’état, economic and media wars, and ‘non-violent and color protests’ – such as the one in Czechoslovakia – are all part of these practices that use young people to reach their aims: to take hold of the wealth of the people.”

Here is the complete text in Spanish as published by AVN:

Campaña de manipulaciones fraguó golpe en Chescoslovaquia hace 25 años

Caracas, 17 Nov. AVN.- Manipulaciones y engaño, elementos primordiales para dirigir y generar una campaña de pánico, fueron las artimañas usadas para construir los fundamentos que a la postre levantarían un golpe contra el Estado comunista en Checoslovaquia. Caras jóvenes serían las utilizadas como estrategia para lograr dicho fin, la acción fue denominada Revolución de Terciopelo, hoy también conocida como las Revoluciones de Colores o el Golpe Suave.

En noviembre de 1989 factores políticos opuestos al Partido Comunista de la República Checoslovaca generaron las condiciones para el desmoronamiento del orden comunista establecido, utilizaron a estudiantes y una campaña de supuesta represión policial para lograr su cometido. El show tomaría su escena final en la Plaza San Venceslao de Praga, el 17 de noviembre de ese año.

Ese día, un mitin fue convocado en la Plaza San Venceslao de Praga con la supuesta intención de recordar la clausura de las escuelas superiores por los nazis. Paradójicamente, en ese lugar, los mismos que condenaban las acciones de los nazis, comenzaron a gritar consignas anticomunistas y, minutos más tarde, comenzó a regarse el rumor de una presunta represión en contra de los allí asistentes.

La mentira llegó hasta la difusión de un asesinato, que pese a que fue posteriormente desmentida, generó un levantamiento de grupos contra las supuestas acciones de la policía, lo que terminó en la caída del gobierno comunista, que terminaría con el ultraderechista Václav Havel en el poder.

Havel es hoy recordado por impulsar el ingreso de su país a la Unión Europea (UE) y la Organización del Tratado para el Atlántico Norte (Otan).

La denominada Revolución de Terciopelo fue parte de las estrategias de las revoluciones de colores impulsada por Estados Unidos (EEUU) en el este de Europa, la misma se vendió como una "lucha social no violenta" contra el supuesto totalitarismo comunista y dedicada a la "exportación de la democracia", no es mas que la aplicación de una política expansionista a través del control geopolítico para administrar la dinámica económica mundial.

Hoy, EEUU continúa esa metodología de golpe suave -ideada por el estadounidense Gene Sharp- dirigida a destruir a todo aquel país, cuyos pueblos y gobiernos (especialmente los comunistas y socialistas) que se oponen a los planes de dominación mundial estadounidense, entre ellos Venezuela.

El método ha sido utilizado en cantidades de países opuestos a los intereses de Washington, Siria, Libia, China, Ecuador, Georgia, Ucrania, entre muchos otros. En Georgia, por ejemplo, comenzaron con manifestaciones supuestamente populares y espontáneas contra la "violencia". Esa misma receta se aplicó recientemente en Ucrania, la cual culminaría en un golpe de Estado perpetrado contra el presidente constitucional Víktor Yanukóvich, el 22 de febrero de este 2014.

Tras el derrocamiento fraguado por EEUU con apoya de la derecha ucraniana provocó que un gran número de ucranianos saliera a las calles para rechazar el gobierno de facto y exigir el restablecimiento del gobierno legítimo.

Posteriormente, las autoridades que tomaron el poder reprimieron a miles de ciudadanos que manifestaban su rechazo a los golpistas, operación arreció luego que el empresario y derechista Petro Poroshenko asumiera la presidencia, en junio pasado, al intensificar el envío de tropas militares en el sureste de Ucrania, en especial en Donetsk y Lugansk, regiones que declararon su autonomía de ese país mediante referendos.

Para EEUU, Ucrania representa un país estratégico para sus intereses, pues representa las puertas de Rusia, país que tiene las mayores reservas de gas del mundo y es además una potencia petrolera, lo que le es apetecible a la Casa Blanca.

Venezuela también está en la lista de los blancos de la receta de Washington. Venezuela es una de las naciones más ricas en biodiversidad, petróleo, minerales y agua. Es por ello que en los últimos años, frente a un Estado soberano e independiente, EEUU, utilizando a la derecha venezolana, ha intentado por diferentes vías dar al traste con la Revolución Bolivariana.

Golpe de Estados, guerra económica y mediáticas, así como "manifestaciones no violentas y de colores" -como las utilizadas en Checoslovaquia- son parte de esas prácticas, en las que se utilizan a jóvenes, para alcanzar sus intereses: adueñarse de las riquezas de los pueblos.

© AVN - 2014

The Lorent Saleh Videos

The series of videos of the now jailed student leader Lorent Gómez Saleh is the closest Interior Minister Rodríguez Torres has come to showing evidence of somebody actually conspiring against the Venezuelan government.

In the videos Saleh makes claims of contacts with the Colombian Army and of plans to buy weapons, including sniper rifles and explosives, to use them in the “armed struggle” against the Venezuelan government. Part of Saleh’s bizarre plan, according to his own declarations in one of the videos, was the violent occupation of Táchira State’s “banks and liquor stores.”

The government is now in the process of linking Saleh with opposition leaders. Minister Rodríguez Torres and National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello explained this week that they are convinced the videos are evidence of a wider conspiracy by the opposition to destabilize the country.

Cabello declared: “We have stopped a conspiracy plot very well planned by the right. (…) The opposition knows nothing of love and care. The revolutionaries will always defend the legacy and the love of Chávez. The opposition continues to conspire through different forms of irrational struggle against the constitutional government. (…) Today we are again revealing to the country the intentions of a terrorist and irresponsible right. The opposition has made a fool of us all with its conspiracies and now they tried to destabilize [the country] using Saleh.”

Rodríguez Torres said he will soon show another video revealing “all the dark side, all the connections of Álvaro Uribe with drug trafficking, with the paramilitaries, with crime.”

Opposition leaders have rejected links with Lorent Saleh. Mayor of Caracas Antonio Ledezma admitted he had met Saleh before, but denied this meant he knew about his plans. “If these things are true they are indefensible. Who could defend something so removed from common sense? We are far from [supporting] terrorist and coup plans,” Ledezma declared. 

The opposition will hit the Venezuelan people with starvation

The President of the National Assembly and Vice-president of the Socialist Party (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, declared today that the opposition’s critiques of the announced plan to control consumption through the use of fingerprint machines in markets (captahuellas), is evidence that “they will try to hit the people with starvation.”

According to Cabello the opposition has systematically “underestimated” the claims by the government that there is an Economic War against the country.

For Cabello the reason the opposition critiques the government’s measures, it’s because these measures benefit the people: “If the controls to prevent smuggling hurt the bourgeoisie, it’s because they benefit the people. We need to go out to the streets and raise the awareness of the people, this is not just any war; it’s a war to put an end to the Bolivarian Revolution.”

He also made reference to the opposition street protests at the beginning of the year. This is how the press note published by the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias informs of the declarations by Cabello. Note how the protests are framed (by AVN, before the quote by Cabello) as terrorist acts by the extreme right to promote a foreign intervention. Also interesting is the fact that, according to AVN, Cabello considers “to promote the resignation of a Head of State,” a terrorist crime. Here is the extract form AVN:

During the interview, Cabello made reference to the attacks by terrorist groups linked to the extreme right, during the first months of 2014, with the purpose of affecting the constitutional order and of promoting a foreign intervention in the internal matters of Venezuela.

“What do we do with those who tried to burn preschools with children inside? Do we find logical, as a country, as fathers of Venezuelan children, that someone could be capable of burning a university, or a school with children inside, just because he want to overthrow the president?” considered Cabello, who also noted that the percentage of students that participated in the protests was very low.

Cabello pointed out that no amnesty law is being considered for the citizens that participated in these terrorist acts, because to promote the resignation of a head of state is a crime.

“We cannot close our eyes to this,” reaffirmed the president of the National Assembly.

(Image El Universal)

Rodríguez Torres: we respected human rights even when dealing with extreme Right conspiracy

Yesterday during the Regional Meeting of UNASUR in Caracas to discuss human rights and citizen’s security, Venezuela’s Interior and Justice Minister, Miguel Rodríguez Torres explained that in the previous regimes the intelligence police service (then called DISIP) “was an institution outside of the law. They did everything they wanted with the human rights of Venezuelans. The DISIP was involved in the banishment of people, torture, and the murdering of many Venezuelans for political reasons.”

Instead, according to the Minister, the current Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia (SEBIN) is an institution that upholds human rights. The proof of this is the way in which the SEBIN and the National Guard dealt with the opposition protests at the beginning of this year: “We broke the guarimbas [street barricades]. It was three months of a conspiracy on the streets by the extreme Right that wanted to reach power by violent means, and we did this with a maximum respect to human rights, and whenever and officer incurred in any violation, we proceeded immediately. We have several officers that are facing trials for the use of fire arms of for having mistreated Venezuelans,” said Rodríguez Torres.

Five officers of SEBIN stand accused of having fired live rounds at protesters on 12 February in La Candelaria, Caracas, killing one person and injuring several others. The SEBIN has repeatedly been accused, by the opposition and human rights NGOs, of human rights violations.

(Rodríguez Torres. Image AVN)

Bolivarian National Guard: The most sublime representation of the People

During the 77 anniversary of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) commemoration ceremony, president Maduro praised the role of the GNB in the repression of the violent opposition protests in February this year, and alerted that the “fascist right” is preparing new conspiracies.

“The GNB [during the protests] acted in strict accordance to its new doctrine, to the Constitution, and acted to safeguard the peace of the Republic. They paid no attention to the insults, provocations, harassment, and attacks prepared by the laboratories of psychological warfare of the right without a Fatherland [apátrida]. Of the pro-imperialist oligarchy,” Maduro told the officers.

He added that it was important for the military to study thoroughly the “crimes of the fascist right” committed in February, so as to learn “how they planned and deployed, and to discover the secrets that allowed them to plot this malevolent and perverse conspiracy against the peace of our Fatherland.”

He also warned that “when Hugo Chávez passed away, all conspiracies broke loose,” and that the right continues to conspire in Venezuela using “methods of nonconventional warfare. There are groups of the ultra-right that continue to prepare new stabs against the country.” But he assured that the conspirators will “be faced by the National Guard and the people who want to live in peace. [The NGB] will dissipate and punish the terrorists, the guarimberos.”

According to the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias, during the ceremony “President Nicolás Maduro granted the Military Medal General López Contreras to the officers of the GNB that were wounded while defending the Venezuelan people from the violence unleashed by sectors of the extreme right last February.”

Minister of Defense, Carmen Meléndez, also praised the GNB and called it “the most sublime representation of the People in uniform.”

(Image from AVN)

Luisa Ortega Díaz is convinced that there is a magnicidio plot

Today, Attorney General Luisa Ortega Díaz told reporter José Vicente Rangel in an interview that she has no doubt that there is a plot (conjura) to kill President Maduro.

“Undoubtedly there is a national and international plot against the Venezuelan State, the plot includes the assassination of the President of the Republic, a magnicidio, and attacks against [government] institutions. (…) We are investigating and we still have not reached the bottom of this problem because it is much more serious than revealed by the [initial] investigations, but we will continue investigating and taking measures,” said Ortega Díaz.

She linked the alleged plot against the government with the street protests of the last months, calling them “terrorist acts executed by ultra-rightist groups.”

Ortega Díaz also called on the central government to strengthen its “media defenses.” “This has to be a State policy,” she remarked, “because the [media] attack against Venezuela has been fierce.”  

Change the Constitution to defeat conspiracy

In a televised interview the president of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, explained journalist José Vicente Rangel how a coup d’état is preceded by a conspiracy period: “The conspiracy is a phase previous to the coup. The Venezuelan opposition, and this is something they themselves have admitted, are interested in the economic and security instability of the country, but are incapable of generating their own project-"

According to Cabello the conspiracy is following a well-established plot. First the opposition takes advantage of criminal events, such as the murder of the Venezuelan actress Mónica Spear, on January 6, and “from that moment on starts the [violence] surge,” this was followed by the appeal by opposition leaders on January 23 for street protests, and then the beginning of the violent protests on February 12.

The next phase of the plot includes terrorist acts and the “selective murder” of chavista leaders. Cabello again repeated the official theory that the murder of Eliécer Otaiza was an “uncommon murder in this country (…), when one observes [other] murder cases, [other] profiles, one finds something odd [with the Otaiza case], and therefore there is the fear that the opposition is now in this phase [of selective murders.]”

Surprisingly Cabello also claimed that the opposition has links with military sectors, which according to him include officers of the Air Force and the National Guard, who form part of a group called Front for the Moral Reserve of the Guard and that was already investigated in 2002.

After the interview José Vicente Rangel argued that, given the revelations made by Cabello, it has now become necessary to “reinforce the defense capabilities of the State against the subversion by the opposition.”

In order to do this Rangel suggested that it may be necessary to reform the Constitution, or to create a special law to deal with subversive action “such as those executed [by the opposition] during the months of February, March, and April, and to face the preparation of the new offensive, which is already under way.”

Rodríguez Torres and the super-marijuana

Camps set up by students in several plazas of Caracas were raided early this morning by the National Guard and the Policía Nacional Bolivariana. Interior Minister Rodríguez Torres reported that 243 students have been arrested in the raids and that “drugs, weapons, explosives, mortars, and tear gas grenades,” had been found.

Yesterday before the raids, in an interview for Venevision, Rodríguez Torres warned that the parents of the students participating in the protest camps should be concerned because “drugs such as cripy, perico, or the super-marijuana” are being freely handed out to the students.

The Minister has said before that student protesters are being given drugs in order to overexcite them [exaltarles los ánimos.]

“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