Coup d’état plans for today

The coup d’état predicted by the Venezuelan government for September 1 failed to materialized. Government officials claim this is because they have averted the coup by arresting several opposition leaders and dismantling what it says were “paramilitary camps” with links to the opposition.

Coup plans are still active and adapting to circumstances, according to officials. The opposition has called for new nationwide protests for today to push for a recall referendum against president Maduro. Opposition followers are to gather in front of regional offices of the elections ruling body CNE until 2:00pm and then disperse peacefully. The government is again claiming that the protest is part of a coup d’état plan by the opposition.

The head of the intelligence police SEBIN, Gustavo González López, says that today’s coup attempt is part of a plot denominated “Plan 7S.”

The opposition leaders arrested before September 1, Selson Guarate, Daniel Ceballos, Carlos Melo, Yon Goicochea, and Lester Toledo (still not arrested), were named by González López as leaders of the “conspiracy plans and terrorist acts” for September 1, but that would be “reedited” today. Also, according to González López, part of the plot is ex-president of Colombia, Álvaro Uribe.

The coup narrative is back

Ahead of today’s opposition march, the government has reedited its coup d’état narrative. “In Venezuela we have to stop the coup d’état which is ongoing, I am calling the National Guard of the people, and the security forces to be on their guards in order to guarantee the peace and the right to live,” declared President Maduro yesterday.

The pro-government Telesur news channel explains: “From September 1 to December 31 Venezuelans will mobilize to reject the violent acts planned by the right-wing of the country, framed by the new Condor Plan in Latin America.”  

As usual, the government is accusing the “Empire” of being behind what it says is the local opposition’s coup plans.

Some new elements in this new “revelation” of a coup plot:

- Crackdown on Vountad Popular: Including the arrest of several leaders of the party and the harassment of its followers. (See my detailed account in the WOLA bolg.)

- Air gun conspiracy: A couple was detained on August 29 in Carabobo. Douglas Rico, chief of the investigative police body CICPC, declared that they carried in their car “four imitation air gun rifles and one imitation hand gun.” This is the government’s explanation: The couple planned to dress as National Guards and fire with their air guns at the opposition crowd at today’s march. Then they would scape and a second military clad group would fire live rounds at the people. This second group is still at large, according to Rico. The aim of this plot would be to produce a massacre and to blame the National Guard and the National Bolivarian Police for it. No explanation was provided by Rico as to why the air gun prelude to the real massacre would be necessary for the massacre plot.

-Discourse Analysis: President Maduro has said he will name a commission of “national and international legal experts, psychiatrists, linguists, and sociologists,” to “analyze” the discourse the president of the National Assembly Henry Ramos Allup. The ultimate end of the analysis will be to start a law suit against the opposition leader for “spearheading a hate campaign and for promoting violence in Venezuela.”

-Guns at school: The government is claiming that the opposition is storing weapons in the campus of the private Jesuit Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (UCAB). The first to make the accusation was PSUV’s vice-president Diosdado Cabello. But the claim has been repeated by the Minister of Interior Nestor Reverol as part of his revelations of a “destabilizing plot for September 1.”

Definite evidence of Chavez’s assassination will surface soon

In an essay commemorating the 62nd anniversary of Chavez’s birth, Argentinian author Atilio Borón says he is convinced the late president was assassinated. Borón claims that because of his achievements Chávez became “public enemy number 1 for the Empire.”

“That’s why they killed him, as is slowly being confirmed by the complex puzzle of evidence supporting this hypothesis. It won’t be long before we have concrete and definite evidence of this magnicidio. We know where the intellectual perpetrators live, we know the motives behind their vile decision, and we also know that Chavez’s death is inscribed in the long list of popular leaders assassinated in the five continents by the ‘serial murders’ in Washington.”

Borón has often subscribed to the thesis that Chávez was “inoculated” with cancer by his enemies. His own contribution to the theory is the idea that the CIA has been developing technology to inoculate cancer cells or to generate heart attacks in its enemies since the 70s which could be transmitted using a microphone. In an interview in August 2015, Borón said that “with the technological advances that there have been, I have no doubt that this people [the CIA] could have developed a vector to generate cancerogenic processes trough malign cells. (…) A trustworthy scientific source confessed to me that there are methods for activating radioactive processes of malign cells contained in a microphone, that could have been placed in front of the Head of State and that could have been activated by some sort of remote control to introduce the lethal microscopic particles.”

Non-conventional warfare trending topic

The hashtag #GuerraNoConvencional is number one Twitter trending topic today in Venezuela. Among much re-twitted items are four infographics explaining what the Venezuelan government says is a non-conventional warfare being waged against the country by its enemies.

The seven phases of the non-conventional warfare are described in the first infographic. In the first phase, the resistance (the opposition), with the support of the United States “conducts the psychological preparation of the population against the stablished government.” Following phases are conducted by Special Forces of the United States infiltrated in the country. They train “resistance cadres” which will conduct the final phases of “minimum combat” (I think they mean guarimba street protest by this.)

The second infographic explains several aspects and actors of the non-conventional warfare. “Imperialism” seems to be the dominant figure here. It coordinates everything form Colombian paramilitaries, infiltrated by “sectors of the national ultra-right” in order to commit crimes and terrorist actions, to local scarcity of basic products and sabotage of the electric grid. Included in this vast conspiracy controlled by the Empire are CNN and the “Bogota-Madrid-Miami axis.”

Infographics 3 and 4 deal specifically with the economic war. Parasitic business are linked to inflation and hoarding. Also, fracking and the black market dollar are thrown into the conspiracy equation. “Venezuela is the victim of a plan to internally sabotage the production and distribution of regulated food product,” is explained in the last picture.

    

These four images summarize a conspiracy of truly vast proportions, linking local and international actors of enormous power, capable of producing inflation, scarcity of basic product, street protests, electric blackouts, and common crime.     

Economic war: more power to the military

There is only one way, according to president Maduro, to defeat the economic waged by the Empire and its local lackeys against Venezuela, by giving almost total powers over the economy to the military.

“The time has come, military brothers” said Maduro yesterday, “the time has come, compatriots, to win the unconventional war, by using production, work, peace, and the establishment of a new social and economic order, based on the culture of work and with one objective: solidarity, coexistence, peace, social happiness, in one word, socialism.”

This new order, explained the president, “is a virtuous system which will replace the savage and capitalist chaos imposed by parasitic factors of commercial capitalism, which have done so much harm to our people and our country.”

To lead in the construction of this new order, Maduro has named the Minister of Defense, general Vladimir Padrino López, as the commander of the new Great Mission for Sovereign and Secure Supply, which will be in charge of all matters related to production and supply in the country. Padrino López has been granted powers to make economic decisions in “real time”, and will respond solely to the also new Presidential Military Command, headed by Maduro.