Obama created ISIS

According to chavista TV presenter Miguel angel Pérez Pirela, experts he has had access to claim that the group known ISIS, now controlling parts of Syria and Iraq, is a creation of U.S. president Barack Obama.

In this video produced by TELESUR, Pérez Pirela provides no evidence for the claim, which he repeats three times, nor does he reveal who the experts quoted are. But he affirms that the U.S. “needs constant wars,” the war against ISIS is the latest expression of this need.

“Who can believe that Obama is really going to fight a group he created himself?” asks Pérez Pirela in his final comment.

The Costa Rica terrorist plot

President Maduro is on his way to Costa Rica for a meeting of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. He is however concerned because he has information about a “group of terrorists in Costa Rica, who have arrived there in order to threaten me.”

Maduro gave no further details about the nature of the threats the terrorist group has made. But he assured that “we have taken all the [necessary] security measures and the government of Costa Rica is providing us with full support [on this issue].”

Costa Rica’s Foreign Minister Manuel González has denied security threats ahead of the meeting: “we have not determined the existence of any particular risk to the integrity or life of any of our visitors,” said González. 

Maduro salutes at a meeting of the Popular-Military Command against the Economic War before leaving for Costa Rica. Image AVN

Freddy Bernal: Murder of Serra was an act of terrorism

Former Caracas Mayor and National Assembly representative PSUV insisted on the government’s version that the assassination of Robert Serra was politically motivated and an act of terrorism. He even knows how long it took to plan the murder: exactly two months.

“The murder of Robert Serra was planned for two months. The attackers found the weak points of [Serra’s] security team and that allowed a foreign actor to have access [to him],” declared Bernal.

Serra was murdered with viciousness [saña] and this fact, according to Bernal, constitutes evidence that the crime had the purpose of causing terror: “I am almost sure that the assassination of Robert Serra was a premeditated act to cause terror.”

Bernal also warned that acts like this could happen again in the future and indirectly blamed the opposition for the crime: “I ask the serious opposition that, no matter what our political differences might be, we don’t kill each other.”

He also said that Colombian ex-president Álvaro Uribe is “obsessed with Venezuela” and that he was looking to “generate political links” with the Venezuelan opposition, especially with Leopoldo López and Henrique Capriles.

According to Bernal this “whole lobby” also includes president Obama who is, for his part, obsessed with jailed opposition leader Leopoldo López: “Because Obama has so many problems in the world, he has Leopoldo López in his mind.”

(Image El Universal)

Rodríguez Torres is convinced that the opposition knew about Lorent Saleh

Interior Minister Rodríguez Torres declared yesterday that he is “sure that all the Venezuelan right had knowledge of the terrorist plans by Lorent Gómez Saleh.”

Rodriguez Torres did not provide any evidence for this claim during a televised interview with José Vicente Rangel, but explained that he was convinced the opposition new of the plans because “It is the highest phase of the struggle of Venezuela’s fascism, it is something that goes beyond the guarimbas. That is where the actions of the right were aiming at.”

According to the Minister the opposition was planning a “surprise” after the violent protest in the beginning of this year: “I believe this was the surprise they were planning, they were going to [unleash] armed terrorist cells.”

“A serious opposition, one that acts politically and that really wanted to become an option for the country, would have immediately rejected the terrorist plans by Gómez Saleh. But we haven’t seen this. I am sure that all of the opposition knows what he [Saleh] was up to,” reiterated Rodríguez Torres.

Opposition leaders have rejects having links with Lorent Saleh or knowledge of his plans. 

“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

What motivates the opposition?

In the official narrative of recent protests in Venezuela, these are not driven by legitimate grievances. Instead the opposition is guided by obscure anti-patriotic motives. According to President Maduro “They [the opposition] do not accept that Venezuela for the first time owns its natural resources, that it is absolutely independent and sovereign, and dos not ask or accepts advice from anybody in this world.”

As the opposition is incapable of accepting this newly won national independence, it resort to repeated coup attempts in order to regain power and hand the nation’s natural resources to the Empire. Maduro explains: “They tried to do it during February, March, and April, and they are trying to do it again now. They have vanguard groups of crazy people that don’t care that we won the elections, and that want to create chaos and fish in troubled waters. (…) [Behind these groups] are the imperial sectors that want to lay their hands on Venezuela and put an end to the example of the Bolivarian Revolution, and they want to take the oil from our fatherland, and also put the economies of China and India on their knees by [taking] their energy [sources].”

The disgruntled opposition, according to Maduro, is acting according to a plan already practiced in Ukraine: “The same thing happen in Ukraine. A group of Nazi terrorists toppled a democratic government. How did they do it? Well they hired from 3,000 to 4,000 mercenaries that collapsed the Ukraine capital and this led to the overthrow of Yanukóvich (…) and then they handed power to Ukraine’s ultra-multi-millionaires.”

The President has announced that tomorrow (May 2), Interior, Justice and Peace Minister, Miguel Rodriguez Torres, will present a detailed report of the evidence of a coup d’état gathered by Venezuelan intelligence services. Maduro advanced that the group behind the coup includes “two very heavy narcos,” one US citizen, and one person of Arab origin named Jayssam Mokded Mokded. He also mentioned again “El Aviador” as leader of the group, and added that “some opposition actors are very nervous, (…) they know that he is a key figure and that they have been training him for more than four years for terrorism.”   

Financing terrorism

A group of PSUV National Assembly representatives, including Juan Carlos Alemán, Pedro Carreño and Tania Díaz, have handed to the Public Prosecutor’s office a document with “proofs” of the funding of “violent and terrorist acts” by Oscar García Mendoza, Rafael Alfonzo, Maria Corina Machado, Diego Arria, and Otto Reich.

By “violent and terrorist acts” the deputies refer to the opposition protests of the last two months.

The evidence the deputies is presenting is based on e-mails and text messages, they claim, were written by the conspirators. Alemán explained that “We have input that has been given to us which includes e-mails and text messages. All this has been handed [to the public prosecutor] and is being revised. (…) In the documents the funding mechanisms can be seen: the whole façade of funding with the aim of disqualifying the government.”

Alemán also explained that the accusation against the conspirators is based on the law which prohibits foreign funding for internal political groups, and that they could face charges for “treason to the Fatherland, conspiracy, and association to commit crimes.”

 (Image from El Universal webpage)