The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 17

[Catherina]

Hello, and welcome to the latest ironic chapter in the ongoing chronicles of the “peaceful” Venezuelan opposition. Just as predicted, the fascist thugs of JAVU & Co. have decided to try for another big push at destabilization. But of course, they’re going to try to blame this on the bus driver who won the election fair and square:

In the best fashion of the burning of the Reichstag in 1933 by the hordes of Hitler, the fascist hordes of Capriles have begun to set fire to various Integral Diagnostic Centres (CDIs), party offices of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Petrocasas, and homes of PSUV activists, among other acts of vandalism.

In Táchira, Chavista activist Henry Rangel Aroza was assassinated, according to the state governor Vielma Mora.

In Miranda, opposition hordes murdered a Chavista, Luis Ponce.

In La Limonera, in the Caracas municipality of Baruta, another revolutionary activist was killed in attacks perpetrated by pro-Capriles hordes.

In Palo Verde, in eastern Caracas, a CDI was set on fire.

In Oropeza and Trapichito de Guarenas, oppositionists attacked another CDI and the Cuban doctors on staff.

The order to attack the CDIs came from opposition journalist Nelson Bocaranda, who ordered his 1.2 million followers to attack CDIs on the pretext that the Cuban medics were hiding boxes of ballots.

According to denunciations by locals, the Baruta police are putting on red T-shirts (similar to those worn by PSUV members) to kill people and lay the blame on Chavistas.

Petrocasas have been set on fire in Flor Amarillo, Maracay, along with CDIs and Mercal offices, by fascist hordes led by Richard Mardo, according to Mario Silva, host of VTV’s show, La Hojilla.

In La Trigaleña, more than 150 persons broke into a CDI, according to Governor Ameliach, who has deployed an anti-coup operation.

In San Cristóbal, they burned the PSUV office building, attacked various community TV and radio stations. They also caused the death of a PSUV militant in Santa Ana, Henry Rangel, as well as attacking CDIs, Mercal markets, and homes of PSUV activists in various parts of Táchira, according to the governor.

In Anzoátegui they burned the PSUV office in Barcelona, then motorcyclists rode through town, firing guns. CDIs and Simoncitos (children's daycare/kindergarten centres) were also attacked. Aristóbulo Istúriz blamed Capriles Radoski for all these acts.

...

http://www.sabinabecker.com/2013/04/the-ironies-of-the-venezuelan-opposition-part-17.html

[Dawson Leery]

1. Remember, Maduro's final lead in the polls was 8-10%

Yes, his lead fell from 20-25% at the start of the campaign. Still, the final results were much closer than the final polls stated.
This suggests that Cap riles had his Katherine Harris' and Ken Blackwell's in place. Sadly for he, and Goldman Sachs, the Harris' and Blackwell's of Venezuela are not as intelligent as their US's equivalents.

[naaman fletcher]

3. Are you suggesting that Capriles rigged the vote?

Sorry, read up about the Venezuelan election system. Jimmy Carter said it was the best in the world. There is no way to rig the vote.

[Marksman_91]

8. It's amazing how they actually fall in their own trap.

Suggesting that the opposition rigged it? With what? It's kind of obvious now that the CNE is an arm of the government. Hell, the government itself is the one with the most resources and capacities to rig the election, and they'd sure find out if the opposition did rig it, and so far, nobody, even from the regime, has claimed that the opposition rigged these elections.

[joshcryer]

12. We'd have had two recounts by now had Capriles won by the same margin.

We'd have people on this very forum demanding a third.

[Mika]

2. Also ...

Also ironic — and this is on a personal note — I actually agree with Capriles on one key point. Let there be a manual recount! I bet if they did that, it would turn out that Nicolás Maduro won a great many votes more than he initially appeared to have done. It’s already irreversible that he is president, but I was surprised that his double-digit margin over Capriles had shrunk so dramatically in just one day, from close to 20% to something like just 2%. I have a lot of trouble believing that so many loyal Chavistas could have turncoated from a proven leader like Maduro to a fucking majunche like Capriles. If there is fraud in this election, it will turn out to have been in Majunche Capriles’s favor. So let there be a recount, and let there be especially close scrutiny of all the places where Capriles came out ahead

[joshcryer]

5. That is definitely the greatest irony.

I'm seeing more and more chavistas calling for the audit / recount.

They're not understanding Maduro / the CNEs position on not counting.

[Peace Patriot]

9. I wondered about that plunge, too--from 20% to 2% in one week.

ALL reputable polls were giving Maduro a 10% to 20% lead just a week ago. It seems like not enough happened in the interim to explain such a drop.

Maybe the cumulative effect of the Corporate Media's egregiously dishonest campaign against Chavez, for over a decade, and then against Maduro since Chavez's death, finally kicked in and rattled some Venezuelan voters' brains--though they seemed to be immune to it only a few months ago, when Chavez won the presidential election by a comfortable margin (though not as high as usual) and, in addition, his party unseated so many rightwing governors.

I was also toying with the idea that Maduro hasn't proven himself yet--especially with that iconic presidential model, Chavez, only recently gone. Perhaps a few percentage of voters were feeling uneasy for that and other reasons, including the rightwing's coup threats. The latter would seem likely to fire up chavista voters, but uncertainty and unease can have the opposite effect--cause some voters to stay home; might even cause a few voters to vote against their own inclination and interests, possibly thinking that, if Capriles wins, there won't be a coup or unrest and violence???

However, after thinking about the details of Venezuela's election system--which stacks up as incredibly far superior to our own--I don't think the answer lay there. Also, all the monitoring international elections groups found no significant irregularities and have certified the election.

Another thought: I have said that Venezuela's election system is virtually unriggable--and I stand by the facts that led me to that conclusion. They have been publicly recognized by none other than Jimmy Carter. But we need to bear in mind that U.S. secret agencies--and, these days, I must add, private corporate "dirty tricksters" as well--have A LOT OF experience rigging elections and billions and billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars with which to buy top technology expertise. If this is what occurred--that malefactors found a way around Venezuela's election safeguards--one question is, why didn't they use that capability last fall, on Chavez? It could be because they knew he was dying--why waste a new election fixing technology on him? Better to save it for the chaos they intended to produce around the special election.

Another question: If such expertise exists and was used to create a magical drop in Maduro's support, of 10% to 20%, in one week's time, by rigging the election results, why didn't they just go ahead and (s)elect Capriles? Possible answer: There are some malefactors in this world whose goal might BE chaos--not an orderly transition, and a slow, Reaganish dismantling of Venezuela's "New Deal" by Capriles, with Venezuela's democracy in tact, and a Capriles victory reversible in the next election--but, rather, they have a chaos scenario in mind, possibly with Capriles not even in the picture (remember Maduro's announcement that Capriles was the target of an assassination plot?), and they have some OTHER figure, someone more in their control, who would come forward and take charge, in the midst of riots, murders, burned health clinics, all economic guns blasting from every direction, a paralyzed government and so forth.

If this is the case--if the GOAL was a very close election and chaos, and if "dark actors" found a way to produce that situation (by heavily shaving Maduro's mandate)--a recount will not likely find it out. A 100% recount will likely come up with the same numbers.

You rightfully point out some puzzling things--but, given the level of deviousness that I've seen here, in our elections, and the evidence for U.S.-rigged elections in Honduras, Haiti, Iraq, Afghanistan, probably Mexico '05 and other places--I don't think that giving in to this shibboleth issue--a 100% recount--will settle ANYTHING. It will instead be used to foment further violence and chaos.

Venezuela's system--"the best in the world"--produced a winner, by a 1.6% margin. That's a solid, though not overwhelming, victory. Why prolong this crisis for months? Why do it in the hope of turning up a few more votes for Maduro? The outcome is not going to change significantly or at all. IF the vote was rigged to be close--to produce all this violence--I think we can be fairly sure that it has been done untraceably, and the recount process will have only one effect: more unrest, more violence.

ALSO, it is interesting that the U.S. government and Capriles said exactly the same thing: "100% recount." It's a bitter, bitter irony, to me, that no such thing is possible in the United States, where half the states do not have ballots and CANNOT BE audited or recounted, and all of it is run on 'TRADE SECRET' code--code that the public is forbidden to review (and that is furthermore largely owned and controlled by one, private, far-rightwing connected corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold). The U.S. calling for a "100% recount"? What a joke!

But it's certainly a telling phrase--coming out of the mouths that it came out of. It strikes me as similar to the shibboleth phrase, "constitutional crisis," used in Honduras, and then again in Paraguay, in both cases as cover for rightwing coup d'etats. It's a strategic phrase--an empty phrase, a propaganda phrase--the kind of phrase that comes out of the CIA's literary basement.

Venezuela's system has the best safeguards against fraudulent results in the world. "100% recount" seems intended to besmirch that system, to slander Venezuela's democracy, and to ride over the top of truly vicious rightwing violence like a flag. Health clinics! How low can you get? Burning health clinics for a "100% recount"! Burning poor peoples' houses! This is NOT a democratic demand! And I think that Maduro, and the CNE, and all of Latin America are right to reject it. They know how these U.S. strategies work--they've lived through so many. THEY are rejecting "100 recount" and we should respect their judgement.

Again, I don't think a recount would uncover the rigging mechanism, if Maduro was in fact robbed of his mandate. It would have been designed to overcome a well-safeguarded system leaving no trace. To pursue it, at the moment anyway, would more than likely feed into an unfolding destabilization/overthrow plot. Better to go with the given result, and to quietly investigate the possibility of high tech black ops that could not just shave mandates but reverse future elections.

[joshcryer]

10. Maduro did a *LOT* of crazy things in that week PP.

You don't understand that when someone acts that way people don't trust them.

I think even the Spanish speakers here would have to agree with me that Maduro's verbiage and speeches come off extremely untrustworthy.

Why would they, if they had the ability to steal the votes, allow themselves to lose?

[Peace Patriot]

21. If the rigging goal was not to elect Capriles but to produce chaos,

destabilization and seizing control amidst the carnage, then a close vote, but with Maduro just squeaking through, is one way to do it.

I'm just guessing here--but based on a close study of CIA/transglobal corporate behavior, and also Bushwhack behavior in Iraq and other places. (Sheer chaos was clearly a conscious Rumsfeldian strategy in Iraq, for instance.) I think Maduro's steep support drop from the polls to the vote, in one week's time, is peculiar, and nothing that I know about, that happened over that week, accounts for it.

And now that I think about it, if I were Rumsfeld (Gawd forbid!) or someone of his ilk, one of the things I would have been doing over the last half decade, was developing the technology to overcome Venezuela's election safeguards.

It is not implausible--but it is just a guess.

Yes, if such a capability exists, it does raise the question: Why didn't they just (s)elect Capriles? --as I said, IF that was the goal. But consider this: The ability to rig OUR elections is blatantly obvious; so, why didn't this far rightwing corporation, ES&S/Diebold, (s)elect McCain or Romney?

I think the answer to that is cunning--quite clever but evil intelligence at work. They needed a hiatus during which our people would be made to forget the horrors of the Bush Junta. And they needed a shackled "progressive" president, on whom everything would be blamed--so that, if and when the food riots start here, Obama takes the rap, not those bloody THIEVES who destroyed our economy, among other heinous crimes. This points to a Jeb scenario--creating the conditions for Bush Junta II.

As for Capriles, maybe they didn't think he was "up" to being their Pinochet. They've got someone else they're grooming for that dreadful role--and they're thinking longer term, and moving their pieces around in a "dark" chess game. Maybe Capriles is just a pawn on their board--someone whose nonsense about election irregularities (and what he's said about it really is nonsense) is convenient for fomenting unrest, violence and unhealable wounds. It's hard to believe that he is independent, given this echo in Washington DC ("100 recount&quot and given what we know about USAID funding/training of the rightwing in LatAm and in Venezuela--but he may not be their first choice for what THEY really have in mind and he may not know this (though he may be starting to figure it out).

If the goal is to smash Venezuelan democracy, so that no "New Deal" can ever arise there again, then an orderly Capriles administration, in an orderly and still democratic country, was never part of the game.

Speculation? Yes. But I think we DO need to understand that there ARE "dark actors" in the world, with billions and billions of dollars to spend on such projects, and they totally and viscerally hate Venezuela precisely FOR its democracy. I don't think this is a wild speculation. It's just an effort to think through the unaccountable closeness of the election.

Maduro didn't say or do anything to warrant it. His suggestion that Chavez was poisoned? I expect that half the world thinks the same thing. Should a president say that, without laying out some evidence? No, probably not. But neither was Chavez a temperate speaker--and Venezuelans forgave him almost the exact same item (poisoning of Simon Bolivia; exhumation of his body!). Personally, I think it may have been a CIA "dirty trick" (planting some intel in the intel stream for Maduro to stumble over), but, weighed against their "New Deal," it just doesn't amount to much, from Venezuelan voters' point of view, and, as I said, probably a whole lot of Venezuelans suspect it's true! True or not, that is a mourning behavior--looking for some cause for such a young president to die--and the outpouring of mourning for Chavez was overwhelming. Would they blame Maduro for such a slipup, when so many were suffering grief? Change their vote because of it? That many voters? It doesn't wash.

And that goes for the couple of other things that the rightwing tried to make hay of. It just doesn't add up that so many people would change their votes for such trivial reasons.

It's possible the pre-election polls were wrong--though they've never been so off before--and certainly not all of them at the same time. It's possible that Capriles convinced some voters to change their votes--but that many? That's what gets me. If it had been a 5% switch, say, it would be more plausible. But 10% to 20%? Not plausible. Needs explanation.

[joshcryer]

22. Except, there is no destabilization.

And the government could've said they'd count the votes at any time thus nutering the opposition as they have now done.

I am unconvinced they would allow themselves to lose by such a small margin if they were capable of gaming "the best voting system in the world."

(No pre-election poll in Venezuela has ever been right on more than one race in the past decade.)

[Judi Lynn]

13. Appreciated reading the points you targeted.

Cleary the opposition meant to signal the majority of Venezuelans who elected Hugo Chavez originally just how "democratically" they identify with them, that they can trust any candidate the opposition would send up to run against the progressive candidate.

They sent the word that when they get their candidate into the presidency the less fortunate can kiss their asses goodbye, the oligarchs are grabbing the country back from the people.

[Mika]

14. US policy on the Caribbean and Latin America ...

To sum up, our policy must always be to support
the weaker against the stronger, until we have
obtained the extermination of them both
From: The Breckenridge Memorandum

http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/bmemo.htm

[Catherina]

16. That ranks right up there with

"…the United States would seem to be destined by fate to plague the Americas with miseries in the name of freedom."

- Simon Bolivar

[Peace Patriot]

20. Wow! What a great quote by Simon Bolivar! Thanks! nt

[Judi Lynn]

24. Funny, it sounds so recent, hard to believe it was written in 1897, isn't it?

Look how far our country has come since 1897! So impressive!

We witnessed a moon landing, computers were invented, more wars than we can count, woohooo, hooray for the war industry, so many private prisons now, so many getting rich investing in private prison corporations, etc., etc., etc.

And to think our government has been supporting these social perverts all this time in their effort to overturn the election, and get their dweeb candidate entrenched in the Presidency so he can start ripping apart all the progress the people have been celebrating and appreciating since 1999.

Everyone knows what's going on. Hired liars and sociopaths aren't going to fool anyone here at D.U.

Thanks for the blast from the past which sounds like the present, Mika. Who on earth would have imagined time has stood still for over 100 years in our foreign policy?

[BlueToTheBone]

4. I wish you all well.

The neo-liberals were never liberal...mostly Koch hacks.

[Catherina]

6. ransacked hospitals & a medicine factory, smashed public schools, wrecked public transport network

...

In Merida riots broke out. On Monday I took a desperate phone call from a young CNE official who said they were trapped and “terrified” by the baying crowds outside. In desperation some were arming themselves with the legs from their desks. It took heavily armed National Guard to disperse the mob.

Later clashes erupted between the Caprilistas and Chavez supporters arriving from the poorer areas – Chavistas. For two hours the air was thick with flying bottles, stones and smoke bombs before National Guard, taking pistol shots from the Caprilistas, moved in.

In a day of violence that had some media pundits warning there was a coup underway, Capriles supporters across the country ransacked hospitals and a medicine factory, smashed public schools, wrecked public transport networks and torched the offices of Maduro’s socialist party. At least seven people were killed, including hospital patients, and scores wounded.

...

A group of hardline Caprilistas barricaded themselves into a private hospital and a school, taking potshots with their pistols.

...

Stones and smoke bombs were launched at the buildings, motorbikes belonging to the Caprilistas torched. Riot police among the Chavez supporters took turns hurling rocks and shooting into the buildings. For more than an hour the air was thick with smoke and gunfire before the young men were flushed out and handcuffed. They turned out to be students from the city’s wealthy private university.

...

A 20-year-old medicine student at the city’s University Los Andes explained why she supported trashing the government-subsidised trams used by low-paid workers. “They’re a waste of government money – our money,” she said. “We just don’t like those people coming up here where we live. Ok, Chavez built the tram system but it wasn’t with his money, it was with ours.”

...

http://www.camdennewjournal.com/news/2013/apr/letter-venezuela-after-chavez-country-brink-all-out-showdown-between-two-halves-its-so

[Marksman_91]

7. A text-only article doesn't really get you far nowadays

Hell, even just plain old photographs don't necessarily tell the truth. Authentic video footage is what most people believe now. And this article failed to show even still images of the incidents it talks about.

[joshcryer]

11. It's written by Castro lackey Leo Garib.

And I'm sure that Catherina would be against the Oakland protesters affecting the Oakland subway system. The overlap between their views and the right wing is astounding.

(I have no reason to disbelieve that some protesters "trashed" the tram system, they didn't sabotage it, probably made a mess, like protesters tend to do, big deal.)

edit: as far as "taking pot shots"? That's everyday life in the barrios. I do not believe that Leo had proof either way it was chavistas or opposition. Given that about 20% of the opposition is not from the barrios, a point often made on these forums (because Capriles closed the 10 point gap making the poor his majority supporters), I think it is more likely they were chavista.

[killbotfactory]

15. Clinics attacked in Venezuela vote violence

Angry mobs burned clinics in Valencia and other cities on Monday night and early Tuesday, destroying property and harassing doctors during a melee of political violence that left seven people dead and dozens injured.

Demonstrators also vandalised offices of the governing Socialist Party, the home of Tibisay Lucena, head of Venezuela's election authority and other institutions connected to the state

...

Attacks on clinics with Cuban doctors were apparently sparked by a tweet from opposition journalist Nelson Bocaranda who claimed that Cubans working in a Centre of Interior Diagnosis (CDI) were concealing ballot boxes and preventing Venezuelans from looking inside.

The tweet, which has been deleted, is thought to have inspired mobs to launch attacks on health centres.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2013/04/20134177162851301.html

[Catherina]

17. More fine reporting by Chris Arsenault, who's on the ground in Caracas n/t

[sabrina 1]

18. They really are getting desperate now. This is bad. But they are also exposing themselves for

who they really are. I hope the entire region acts against this and supports the rightful government of Venezuela. I am hopeful that enough work has been done to educate people about the history of the far right and their Western backers, that the people will not tolerate this again.

Shameful!

[Catherina]

19. I hope so too though we already know we can't count on Honduras

Since we orchestrated and abetted a coup d'etat there to make sure we had an operational base. And the Falklands which you know they'll use as a NATO base. How dumb do the old colonizers think Latin Americans are?


Speaking of Honduras, how's your Spanish?

“Henrique Capriles es un enemigo de la unidad latinoamericana”—Manuel Zelaya Rosales

Henrique Capriles is an enemy of Latin American Unity —President Zelaya

[jgrujanob]

23. The truth. Plain and simple.

Alright. Let's just stop for a second and cut the BS. Everybody talking about Caprilistas or Chavistas or Maduristas and fail to ignore the facts before so eagerly summoning conspiracy theories against the opposition whose sole crime in this was to believe in this countries now ailing (and dishonest) democratic institutions.

The facts:

-There are more than 39 different voting centers in which Maduro claimed 100% of the votes. That my friends is proof that is well documented and there for anyone to see. Heres the link for one of those: http://www.cne.gob.ve/resultado_presidencial_2013/pp/2/reg_210803003.html

That by itself is sufficient reason to believe that the elections where vulnerated at some point. I would assume this didn't happen during the data transmission or the automated portion of the process but that it had more to do with the part in which humans are involved.
The fact that this happened means that something fishy went on this time and that in spite of what Jimmy Carter might have said there has to be an exhaustive audit to determine the problems.

-There are still to this day, more than 600 thousand registered voters in the system that are officially deceased. There are reports of people going to there voting centers and finding out that their deceased grandparents had voted.

-The biometric component of the voting process was a joke. It's false that your finger print was the only way that the voting machine coul be activated so that only you could vote. I have friends who didn't get the opportunity to vote because somebody had stolen their identity and voted for them. Go figure...

So, Capriles has just formally but firmly requested an audit to check and see where these irregularities happened. And what a surprise... The government doesn't want it to go through. And now threaten to put him in jail. Does anyone see whats going on here?

What surprises me even more is how chavistas are dumbstruck as to how or why their popularity went downhill.
It's easy: Chavez is not a god. He did not save Venezuela from the imperialist, evildoers. I guess he just had some good intentions, knew that getting the poor to vote for him would work in his favor (considering there are a lot of poor people here (duh)) and probably some degree of common sense so that he could take advantage of the fact that we are neck deep in oil here. That's it.

What happened you say? Easy. The economic policies were doomed to eventually fail considering they never had any prospects of creating a solid, productive, industrial and independent economy. They based their policies on the distribution of oil riches to the needy in one way or another. From a moral point of view this is good. From a sustainability and viability point of view this was just not going to hold up forever. Easy to see.

So it tanked, the economy is almost in paralisis now, people wonder why, the chavistas blame everybody, they themselves enjoyed really nice corruption spells and they just cant see themselves doing anything else with their lives if they weren't running the government (considering that if they couldn't make this country work (the country with the largest oil reserves on earth)) they surely wouldn't be good at running anything else once they've left office. So some of them fear their "post government lives" and others (the ones in highers ranks amongst them) fear jailtime for all the corruption theyve incurred in.
Thats why they hold on to power even if it means lying to the country and the world about what really goes on and what really happened on April 14th. It's called survival.
The poor Maduro character has to take the fall for Chavez economic failures because now is when this bubble is gonna really burst with the "Great Glorified COmandante" all gone. And he had to be the poster boy for this whole show these vile characters have put for the world to see. Including being willing to commit an electoral fraude and violate the most sacred of the peoples rights: democracy.

It's no secret to me. The famous legacy CHavez left is nothing than a polarized, economic stagnated country in which there are more violent crimes than countries that are at war in other parts of the world. He centralized government powers and made these institutions obey him and now his incompetent gabinet members so that they do whatever they want, eliminate political foes and now (the new low) steal the elections and lie to the citizens like we didnt see anything.
What a legacy indeed. All hail the great dictator! Lets not kid ourselves. Half the population despise what he did.

[naaman fletcher]

25. of course

the problem is that it takes a few years for the destruction of the economy to appear in the statistics, that is why Capriles should just shut up and let Maduro take the fall when the economy grinds to a halt this year. The economy is going to implode anyway. If Capriles had won he would have just taken the blame. Let Maduro take it (although of course the Chavistas here will blame the CIA for sabotaging the economy anyway).

[BethanyQuartz]

26. So basically they're carrying out a terror campaign all over Venezuela

And the US supports it. Go figure.