Venezuelan Guarimbas: 11 Things the Media Didn't Tell You
Venezuelan Guarimbas: 11 Things the Media Didn't Tell You
By Tamara Pearson, Ryan Mallett-Outtrim, teleSUR
Thursday, Feb 12, 2015
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Destroying a Metro Bus station - Photo: Alba Ciudad
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At one year since the violence opposition barricades in Venezuela that aimed to bring down the democratically elected government, teleSUR reviews 11 things the media kept secret.
One year ago, three people were killed in unrest in Caracas, sparking international interest in a wave of violence that had gripped Venezuela. Across the country on February 12, 2014, anti-government groups took to the streets to roll out a carefully prepared campaign for “la salida” – “the exit” from the elected government of President Nicolas Maduro. While the international media relied heavily on opposition-aligned private Venezuelan media outlets and anti-government groups for information on the rapidly changing situation, we - Ryan and Tamara - were on the ground everyday watching the unrest evolve, speaking to ordinary Venezuelans and getting the real story from the streets. While the international media described a spontaneous, peaceful protest movement that was quashed by repressive security forces, we saw something completely different. We drew conclusions based on what we could see on the ground, and burned the midnight oil researching our way through the fog of war to get to the tangible truth. Looking back on the unrest a year later, this is what “la salida” really was, what the media doesn't want you to know.
1. Despite constant harassment and attacks, the national guard were peaceful
(Ryan) As the unrest heated up in February, international human rights groups decried what they claimed was mass repression against peaceful protesters. On social media, photographs were proffered as evidence of widespread abuses. Most of the photos later turned out to be lifted from protests elsewhere in the world, such as Egypt, Ukraine and Yemen. While the government has acknowledged numerous cases of misconduct by police and the national guard (GNB) and arrested those allegedly responsible, the majority of security forces that did their jobs well were largely ignored. The hundreds of GNB personnel that spent weeks guarding social missions and media outlets while enduring verbal abuse and physical attacks from guarimberos, or violent barricaders, went largely ignored. This wasn’t an accident, as activist Luigino Bracci explained in February 2014. In an article published online he said he regularly saw guarimberos in Caracas using a time tested tactic of goading GNB troops for hours on end, filming their targets in a “coordinated effort.”
“If the guard makes a mistake and represses someone who is insulting him, in just minutes the video is doing the rounds of Youtube, it will be seen by millions of people and will form part of multimedia material that arrives at international chains such as CNN, NTN24 Caracol and others,” he explained.
Yet these brief snippets aren't representative of the general conduct of the GNB. For example, in the second week of March 2014, El Nacional newspaper and opposition politicians spread a story of how the GNB supposedly repressed a peaceful protest in Lara state's National Poli-technical Experimental University. Luckily for the GNB involved, a local independent journalist filmed the entire confrontation. The video shows the GNB negotiating with guarimberos, before giving them a short workshop on human rights and releasing them.
More:
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_69350.shtml
= new reply since forum marked as read
with all the brutality (and then some) used to break up demos way across the world in Iran, using the same nasty tactics. This is a classic move; they use it frequently:
One of the injured protesters who arrived at the hospital was Génesis Carmona, a 22-year old student, who had been shot in the head. According to a student who was near Carmona during the protest, a group of armed civilians who had arrived on motorcycles, some of them wearing red shirts, opened fire and hit Carmona. The student carried Carmona on a motorcycle to a hospital.172 According to the doctor who treated her,Carmona arrived to the emergency room with a bullet lodged in her head, which had fractured her cranium and caused severe brain injuries. Carmona died of the head wound the following day.
...Despite pictures published in social networks showing armed civilians allegedly pointing shotguns towards demonstrators, Justice Minister Miguel Rodríguez Torres said on February 19 that Carmona had “died from a bullet that came from the protesters’ own
ranks.”
http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/venezuela0514_ForUpload_0.pdf
There are other witnesses who have told HRW the same thing. Yeah, sure--nothing to see here, move along, citizen! Don't believe your own lying eyes!
"The Big Lie" that the sweet faced and smiling (not) operatives of Maduro are innocent, and a bunch of young students in hipster clothing, barely out of their teens, were responsible for the violence, is LUDICROUS. Who is saying this? Only the agency with an interest in covering up the truth--there are no witnesses who agree with him.
Propagandists can't overcome the video evidence--and there's enough of it to horrify the world. Maduro's agents had guns, but the students had cellphone cameras.
It's not the first or only time they've tried to blame the victims--funny how we don't put up with that in USA, but it's "OK" if the stooge named by a dead, cancer-ridden dictator (and did he actually name him, or did Raul?) abuses authority, tears down the Constitution of the dead dictator that the acolytes seemed to like, and yet they still stick with the guy? What's up with that?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/27/venezuela-intelligence-agents-arrested-murder-protesters
Venezuelan intelligence agents arrested over killing of protesters
Five more agents from Bolivarian National Intelligence Service held on suspicion of shooting two protesters in Caracas clashes
But oh, they'd never do anything like that...why, they're PEACEFUL...
and had to drive a bus to buy necessities.
Democrats don't "look down" on people who had to work for a living as young adults. Quite the contrary: the Democratic Party has ALWAYS been associated with the working class.
Your idea of coming here to a Democratic message board to hoot with glee regarding some leftist's low paying job in his young adulthood doesn't earn ANY respect. Despicable.
At least he wasn't as lazy as to resort to sitting on his colossal fat ass, whiling away is idle, idle hours invading someone else's message board to attack leftists.
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I encourage them, as I have for ages, to not give up looking until they know they have broken through to the truth.
Once they have broken through the propaganda, it will change their entire perspective, and they'll never take every thing that is shoved down their throats again.
Truth takes longer to find, as it has been so deeply hidden, and so widely denied by the military/industrial/political/corporate monsters running the show.
Best wishes to those who don't give up. Hi, humans! 
