Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Vice-president Istúriz blames a conspiracy policy for low oil prices

Venezuelan Vice-president Aristóbilo Isturiz presented yesterday his annual report (Memoria y Cuenta) to the opposition dominated National Assembly.

Isturiz told the assembly that the recent collapse of oil prices is no accident, but part of a “conspiracy policy” of the United States against oil producing countries.

He also said that last year Venezuela had suffered from an “induced scarcity” of basic products, for which he blamed smuggling, the hoarding of subsidized products, an attack against the Venezuelan currency, and industrial sabotage.  

Venezuelan Birthers active again

Opposition leaders claiming that Nicolás Maduro was really born in Colombia and not in Venezuela, and therefore is unfit for the post of President, have been again active in recent months.

The claims include suggestions that the Venezuelan government has been conspiring to erase the evidence of the president’s alleged real birth place.

In March 2015, the National Assembly deputy Walter Márquez reported the findings of his investigations in Colombia. Márquez said that Maduro’s birth certificate in Venezuela was a forged document, and that the president had also lied about the birth place of his mother, claiming that she was born in Rubio (Venezuela), when she was really born in Cúcuta (Colombia).

This week, opposition leader Pablo Medina declared that the death certificate of Maduro’s mother is also a forgery. He also claimed that registration book, where he claims should be the “real” birth certificate of the president showing that he was born in Colombia, has mysteriously disappeared from its archive in La Candelaria, Caracas. 

Saturday, February 20, 2016

The Ungrateful Victims of Conspiracy Theories

The Agencia Venezolana de Noticias (AVN) has published an opinion piece by Hermán Mena Cifuentes titled “Lilian, la desagradecida.” Lilian Tintori is the wife of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo López.

According to Mena Cifuentes, Tintori and López are not the victims of a judicial process marred by irregularities, but instead are the conspiring victims of the “demon of ingratitude.” Tintori, says Mena Cifuentes, “has forgotten the favor Nicolas Maduro did to her by saving the life of her husband, and has become the protagonist of a smear campaign, which in the name of the Empire and its lackeys, has been put forth as part of a Fourth Generation War unleashed against the Bolivarian Revolution.”

In August 2015, president Maduro himself first proposed the idea that he had really saved Leopoldo López’s life by imprisoning him, because other opposition leaders such as Maria Corina Machado, Antonio Ledezma, and Henrique Capirles, were plotting with Colombian ex-president Álvaro Uribe to bring into the country “paramilitary operatives” to murder López. The aim of that conspiracy, according to Maduro, was to “stir chaos in the country.”

“Why did they want to kill Leopoldo López? To blame the Bolivarian Revolution,” Maduro said.

Tintori, for her part, recently declared that the government has been using drones to spy on her. “Last night a drone overflew my home and filmed through my windows. Violating my intimacy and my family’s,” wrote Tintori on Twitter on February 8.      

Tuesday, February 9, 2016

Zika virus is an imperialist conspiracy

Epidemics are one of the favorite themes of conspiracy theories. Sometimes these theories become dangerous and can even hamper medial relief efforts. Several conspiracy theories about the origin and transmission of the Zika virus can be now found in the internet.

Here is a recent piece published in the web site Apporrea.org titled “Zika: a bomb against the South.” The main argument of the author is that the Zika virus is part of a plot to destroy the south’s coming “demographic bonus,” and thus to keep it as a dependent territory.

Because the link between the Zika virus and microcephalia has not been conclusively proven, and the symptoms from the virus rarely become more serious than those of a normal flu, the author concludes that the emergency around Zika is a scam created by the Empire. The author recommends “patriotic governments and sovereign people to not recognize the Zika humanitarian crisis that the imperialists want to impose.”

Aporrea however is an independent chavista web portal and not an official media of the Venezuelan government. No Venezuelan government official is known to have publically subscribed to this theory. 

Saturday, January 30, 2016

Naomi Campbell or Sean Penn behind Chávez’s death

Theories about Chávez’s death, usually claiming that he was murdered, have been common in Venezuela since his passing in 2013. Government officials have repeatedly claimed that the president was murdered by his enemies, possibly by “The Empire” through an unspecified form of “inoculated cancer.” Anti-government theorists prefer to blame Cuban secret services for the alleged murder.

Yesterday journalist Miguel Salazar, author of the popular column Las Verdades de Miguel, proposed a theory which rapidly became viral in social media: Salazar is suspicious of the motives actor Sean Penn and model Naomi Campbell might have had for their contacts with president Chávez.

Salazar suggests there is a need to look into “the ease with which potential ‘infiltrators’ (infiltrados) could get close to Chávez.” He has no evidence that Penn or Campbell could have poisoned Chavez, but reminds his readers that the actor recently made headlines by “handing over” Mexican drug capo El Chapo to the authorities. Whereas the Campbell becomes a suspect for Salazar because “she is not known to have had any other political public appearances different form her meeting with Chávez in 2007.” Salazar finishes his note with a comparison between Campbell and the WWI famous spy Mata Hari.

Here is the text in Spanish of part of Salazar’s column:

¿Quién mató a Chávez? Los detalles del veneno elegido eran fieles, así como los síntomas que provocaba una sobredosis, la facilidad para conseguirlos en el mercado, la dificultad para ser detectados y la eficacia de los antídotos. Los venenos de Agatha Christie. Cada día que pasa, son más confusos los pormenores que rodearon tanto la agonía como el deceso de Chávez. No en vano cobra fuerza que el controversia! líder venezolano fue asesinado a “cuenta gotas“. El caso se torna más complejo por la comparecencia no sólo de los dirigentes cubanos, sino también de los venezolanos que estuvieron cerca de su lecho de enfermo. Todavía no están claras las intenciones de presentar a Chávez vivito y coleando cuando estaba moribundo, a menos que los autores de esa estrategia anhelaran un milagro. Sólo así se explica la publicación de la foto de Chávez acostado leyendo el Granma, o la afirmación de que leía y rubricaba documentos y cantaba joropos. Habría que llegar al fondo del silencio de algunos funcionarios que tras su muerte (aunque no eran de sus afectos) terminaron ocupando otros importantes espacios.
¿Qué saben? ¿Quién te mató Chávez? Es una interrogante que toma fuerza en la conciencia popular no resignada a las explicaciones que hasta ahora se han dado. Como dato importante no se conoce el contenido de la autopsia, por lo que no se puede decir a ciencia exacta cuáles fueron las causas de su muerte. El destino seguido por el exjefe de Estado se ha convertido en un verdadero acertijo, a quien nadie en las altas esferas quiere referirse. Los detalles relacionados con su fallecimiento no pueden obviarse cuando se indaga sobre la facilidad que tenían los potenciales “infiltrados” de acercarse al hoy extinto exjefe de Estado. Por ejemplo, en esta larga historia que puede seducir a los lectores, resaltan los nombres de Sean Penn y Naomi Campbell, entre otros.
Sean Penn vio recientemente su nombre en los cintillos de prensa tras la captura del Chapo Guzmán. Los “malintencionados” repiten que el productor de cine entregó al capo de la droga mexicana. Mientras Campbell, por su volátil e iracundo carácter es conocida como el facsímil de Mike Tyson en el mundo del modelaje. Ambos estuvieron muy cercanos a Chávez antes de conocerse su “enfermedad“. Además de los reiterados escándalos judiciales en que se vio envuelta, a Naomi Campbell no se le conoce otra aparición política distinta a su encuentro con Chávez en 2007, que no sea el episodio cuando en agosto de 2011 declaró como testigo en la Corte Penal Internacional de La Haya en el proceso contra el expresidente de Liberia, Charles Taylor, por el comercio ilícito de Diamantes de Sangre durante la guerra civil de Sierra Leona. Si Arthur Conan Doyle, a través de Sherlock Holmes hubiera conocido a Naomi Campbell, seguramente habría dicho de ella: Es siempre la mujer… a sus ojos, ella eclipsa y domina a todo su sexo. Y no es que sintiera nada parecido al amor. El era la máquina de observar y razonar más perfecta que ha conocido el mundo; pero como amante no habría sabido qué hacer.
Ahora, ¿además de Sean Penn, cuál fue el interés que motivó a Naomi Campbell a acercarse a Chávez?, vale la interrogante porque no en vano la historia a menudo no es ajena a figuras como Margaretha Geertruida Zelle (Mata Hari), aquella famosa bailarina, actriz y espía, condenada a muerte por espionaje y ejecutada por fusilamiento en 1917, durante la 1 Guerra Mundial. Amo a los militares. Los he amado siempre y prefiero ser la amante de un oficial pobre que de un banquero rico, llegó a decir en el proceso donde fue condenada a muerte. En cuanto a Chávez, su deceso se va convirtiendo en un misterio con el paso de los años. El rumor popular indica que el crimen perfecto es aquel que nunca se descubre pero, según los criminólogos (fieles a sus principios de sabuesos): El crimen perfecto no existe, lo que existen son las investigaciones imperfectas. Por cierto, no olvidemos que el ex Presidente fue una esponja para atraer infiltrados.