Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby conniption » Mon Apr 15, 2013 5:05 am

Times of India

Image
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Venezuelan acting President Nicolás Maduro celebrates next to his wife Cilia Flores after knowing the election results in Caracas.

Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president
Apr 15, 2013
50 Comments

SAO PAULO: In a bitterly fought election, Venezuela on Sunday voted for Hugo Chavez once again as it elected his political heir, Nicolas Maduro, as the new president. In the polls that opened with the sounds of firecrackers and trumpets at 6 am and closed more than 12 hours later, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela leader defeated Henrique Capriles Radonski, the joint candidate of several opposition parties by a margin of less than 2% votes. Maduro defeated the opposition candidate by only about 300,000 votes. While Maduro got 50.66% of votes, Capriles took 49.07% of the ballots in a tighter-than-expected vote. Announcing the result, the president of the national election commission, Tibisay Lucena, said the result is "irreversible".

As soon as the election result was announced, the streets of Caracas were jammed by millions of supporters of Nicolas Maduro. In his victory speech, Maduro promised to carry on Chavez's policies. But the opposition candidate said he won't accept election result without recount. This was Capriles' second consecutive defeat in presidential election in less than a year. In October 2012, he ran against Chavez and lost by more than 10 percent votes. As compared to last election, when 80% of the 19 million voters cast their ballot, this time the voting percentage was a shade lower at 78.71%.

Earlier, Capriles had alleged that there was a plan to try and change the results of the South American nation's presidential election. "We alert the country and the world of the intention to try and change the will expressed by the people," he said in a Twitter message.

By not electing Capriles once again, a pro-US governor of Miranda state who promised to turn Venezuela into a more business-friendly economy, the majority of poor and working-class Venezuelans seem to have made it clear that they don't want the oil-rich country to return to its pre-Chavez past. With Maduro all set to move into the presidential palace for a six-year term, Chavismo is likely to be the country's guiding philosophy till 2019, though the slim margin of victory may now force Maduro to pay more attention to the concerns of middle-class Venezuelans.

But in a clear sign that relations between Venezuela and the US are not likely to improve soon, Maduro said on Sunday that his government would provide "new direct evidence" of US intervention in his country. "There are always difficulties with the United States because they are always plotting," he said after casting his vote on Sunday. "Tomorrow (Monday) we will present new direct evidence of intervention in the domestic situation of Venezuela by US embassy officials," he added. On Friday, the Venezuelan government had captured a group of Colombian "insurrectionists seeking to destabilize the country". Colombia is the only pro-US regime in the South American continent which is dominated by left-wing governments.

Hugo Chavez had nominated Maduro, 50, a former bus driver and union leader who is a known follower of Sathya Sai Baba of Puttaparathi, as his successor in December before flying to Cuba for emergency cancer treatment that he never recovered from. This election, triggered by Chavez's death on March 5, was not just about electing a new president, it was projected by both the sides as a referendum on Chavismo, a mixture of strong social welfare policies at home and foreign policy initiatives aimed at creating an anti-US group in the Latin American region. During the campaign, while Maduro promised to deepen Chavez's "21st Century Socialism", Capriles, the son of a Jewish builder, touted a Brazil-style model that mixes pro-business policies with heavy state spending on the poor. But Capriles got a major shock last week when former Brazilian President Lula, who is credited for turning his country into one of the world's hottest emerging economies, issued a television advertisement in support of Maduro and trashed Capriles and his "right-wing politics".

Though opinion polls had given a clear lead to Maduro from the beginning of the campaign soon after Chavez's death, in recent days, some polls suggested a narrowing of the lead. This led to a frenzied speculation in the western media if Venezuela was on the cusp of a change. In December when Chavez appointed Maduro as his successor, several western experts had expressed doubts about his ability to fill in the huge vacuum left behind by the former president who was even seen by some of the country's poor as the "Second Jesus".

But in a short span of 40 days, Maduro fashioned himself after Chavez as he blew kisses in the air and addressed the crowds with passion. On Friday, the last day of the campaign, Maduro appeared on a stage with parakeets - a political symbol since he was mocked for claiming the spirit of Chavez visited him in the form of a bird. He sang along to a video-projection of Chavez singing the national anthem in the rain during his last campaign appearance in October, flooded the streets of the capital with hundreds of thousands of red-shirted supporters and was joined on stage by the Argentine football legend Diego Maradona and Adan Chavez, brother of the former president. It was one of Venezuela's largest ever rallies. "I'll be the president of the poor, the humble, of those in need, of the children," Maduro told the crowd of three million people jamming the streets of Caracas.

Hugo Chavez has been dead for more than a month, but this election was all about his legacy. By invoking his name throughout the campaign, Maduro convinced the Chavez supporters that he will not deviate from Chavismo. Venezuela under Maduro is also likely to continue Chavez's foreign policies. Spelling out his agenda in an article in the British newspaper Guardian on Saturday, Maduro wrote: "We have also worked to transform the region: to unite the countries of Latin America and work together to address the causes and symptoms of poverty. Venezuela was central to the creation of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), aimed at promoting social and economic development and political co-operation."

"Latin America today is experiencing a profound political and social renaissance - a second independence - after decades of surrendering its sovereignty and freedom to global powers and transnational interests. Under my presidency, Venezuela will continue supporting this regional transformation and building a new form of socialism for our times. With the support of progressive people from every continent, we're confident Venezuela can give a new impetus to the struggle for a more equitable, just and peaceful world," he wrote.

The result appears to be good news for several Latin American countries like Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua which have benefited from Venezuela's oil wealth, but it's bad news for those western companies which have been eyeing the petroleum business in the country with the largest proven reserve of crude oil in the whole world.
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby NeonLX » Mon Apr 15, 2013 9:46 am

I'll bet Capriles wishes there were more Diebold voting machines throughout Venezuala.

Wonder how long it will take Maduro to come down with cancer or sump'n?
America is a fucked society because there is no room for essential human dignity. Its all about what you have, not who you are.--Joe Hillshoist
User avatar
NeonLX
 
Posts: 2293
Joined: Sat Aug 11, 2007 9:11 am
Location: Enemy Occupied Territory
Blog: View Blog (1)

Re: Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Apr 15, 2013 1:50 pm

Cheating, stealing this for "Chavez Dies."
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
User avatar
JackRiddler
 
Posts: 15983
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:59 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby conniption » Fri Apr 26, 2013 3:20 pm

Axis of Logic

Critical Analysis
Claims of Fraud in Venezuela: The Fake Evidence of Henrique Capriles
By Chris Carlson.
Venezuela Analysis
Apr 21, 2013


Immediately after Nicolas Maduro was elected to the presidency of Venezuela last Sunday, opposition candidate Henrique Capriles refused to acknowledge the results of the election, and claimed that the government had committed fraud. In what follows, I will list all of the alleged evidence of fraud cited by Capriles, and explain why every single example is either demonstrably false, or extremely implausible.
Continued


_______


[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/22/united-states-contempt-venezuelan-democracy]guardian

The United States shows its contempt for Venezuelan democracy
Washington's clumsy efforts to de-legitimise Venezuela's election mark a escalation of its push for regime change

Mark Weisbrot
22 April 2013

comments (243)

While most of the news on Venezuela in the week since the 14 April presidential election focused on the efforts of losing candidate Henrique Capriles to challenge the results, another campaign, based in Washington, was quite revealing – and the two were most definitely related. Without Washington's strong support – the first time it had refused to recognise a Venezuelan election result – it is unlikely that Capriles would have joined the hardcore elements of his camp in pretending that the election was stolen.

Washington's efforts to de-legitimise the election mark a significant escalation of US efforts at regime change in Venezuela. Not since its involvement in the 2002 military coup has the US government done this much to promote open conflict in Venezuela. When the White House first announced on Monday that a 100% audit of the votes was "an important, prudent and necessary step", this was not a genuine effort to promote a recount.

continued


_______


guardian

Venezuela threatens opposition leader with jail over protest violence

Protests called by Henrique Capriles blamed for nine deaths as US man detained, accused of trying to destabilise Venezuela

Virginia Lopez in Caracas and Jonathan Watts
25 April 2013

comments (188)

The fallout from Venezuela's disputed presidential election continued to spread this week as the government of Nicolás Maduro threatened to jail the opposition candidate and arrested an American filmmaker accused of working for US intelligence.
continued
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby Jerky » Fri Apr 26, 2013 3:23 pm

Capriles?

(Sp-TOOEY)

Lock the fucker up and throw away the key.
User avatar
Jerky
 
Posts: 2240
Joined: Fri Apr 22, 2005 6:28 pm
Location: Toronto, ON
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby conniption » Sat Apr 27, 2013 6:57 pm

Axis of Logic


Boston and Venezuela: Terrorism There and Here
By James Petras
Axis of Logic
Saturday, Apr 27, 2013


Editor's Note: While much of the Left Media has become lost in whether or not the two Chechen youths were the real Boston Bombers and in the internal politics of the April 14 presidential election in Venezuela, James Petras opens a window to the far more important issue. His penetrating insight into what lies behind the terrorist attacks by Chechens in Boston and by the thugs of Henrique Capriles Radonski in Venezuela brings fresh understanding of the service of terrorism in both countries. - Les Blough in Venezuela


Image
Terrorists bombs kill
and maim in Boston


Image
Opposition terrorists kill
and maim in Venezuela


Introduction

Two major terrorists’ attacks took place almost simultaneously: in Boston, two Chechen terrorists set off bombs during the annual Boston Marathon killing three people and injuring 170; in Venezuela, terrorist-supporters of defeated presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles, assassinated 8 and injured 70 supporters of victorious Socialist Party candidate Nicolas Maduro, in the course of firebombing 8 health clinics and several Party offices and homes. In the case of Boston, the terrorist spree resulted in one further fatality - one of the perpetrators; in Venezuela, some of the terrorists are under arrest but their political mentors are still free and active – in fact they are now presented as ‘victims of repression’ by the US media.

By examining the context, politics, government responses and mass media treatment of these terrorist acts we can gain insight into the larger meaning of terrorism and how it reflects, not merely the hypocrisy of the US government and mass media, but the underlying politics that encourages terrorism.

Context of Terrorism: From Chechnya to Boston: A Dangerous Game

Chechnya has been an armed battleground for over two decades pitting the secular Russian State against local Muslim fundamentalist separatists. Washington, fresh from arming and financing Muslim jihadis in a successful war against the secular Soviet-backed Afghan regime in the 1980’s, expanded its aid program into Central Asian and Caucasian Muslim regions of the former Soviet Union. Russian military might ultimately defeated the Chechen warlords but many of their armed followers fled to other countries, joining armed, extremist, Islamist groups in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and later Egypt, Libya and now Syria. While accepting Western, especially US arms, to fight secular adversaries of the US Empire, the jihadis’ ultimate goal has been a clerical (Islamic) regime. Washington and the Europeans have played a dangerous game: using Muslim fundamentalists as shock troops to defeat secular nationalists, while planning to dump them in favor of neo-liberal ‘moderate’ Muslim or secular client regimes afterwards.

This cynical policy has backfired everywhere – including in the US. Fundamentalists in Afghanistan took state power after the Soviets pulled out. They opposed the US, which invaded Afghanistan after the attacks of September 11, 2001, and have successfully engaged in a 12 year war of attrition with Washington and NATO, spawning powerful allies in Pakistan and elsewhere. Taliban-controlled areas of Afghanistan serve as training bases and a ‘beacon’ for terrorists the world over. The US invasion of Iraq and overthrow of President Saddam Hussein led to ten years of Al Qaeda and related-clerical terrorism in Iraq, wiping out the entire secular society. In the case of Libya and Syria, NATO and Gulf State arms have greatly expanded the arsenals of terrorist fundamentalists in North and Sub-Sahara Africa and the Middle East. Western-sponsored fundamentalist terrorists were directly related to the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington and there is little doubt that the recent actions of the Chechen bombers in Boston are products of this latest upsurge of NATO-backed fundamentalist advances in North Africa and the Middle East. But against all the evidence to the contrary, Chechen terrorists are viewed by the White House as “freedom fighters” engaged in liberating their country from the secular Russians … Perhaps after the Boston terror attack, that appraisal will change.

Venezuela: Presenting Terrorism as “Peaceful Dissent”

The candidate of the US backed and financed opposition, Henrique Capriles, has lived up to his reputation for violent politics. In the run-up to his failed candidacy in the Venezuelan presidential election on April 15, his followers sabotaged power lines causing frequent national blackouts. His supporters among the elite hoarded basic consumer items, causing shortages, and repeatedly threatened violence if the election went against them. With over 100 international observers from the United Nations, European Commission and the Jimmy Carter Center there to certify the Venezuelan elections, Capriles and his inner circle unleashed their street gangs, who proceeded to target Socialist voters, campaign workers, health clinics, newly-built low-income housing projects and Cuban doctors and nurses.

The “white terror” resulted in 8 deaths and 70 injuries. Over 135 right-wing street thugs were arrested and 90 were charged with felonies, conspiracy to commit murder and destroy public property. Capriles, violent political credentials go back at least a decade earlier when he played a major role in the bloody coup which briefly overthrew President Hugo Chavez in 2002. Capriles led a gang of armed thugs and assaulted the Cuban embassy, ‘arresting’ legitimate Cabinet ministers who had taken refuge. After a combined military and popular mass movement restored President Chavez, Capriles was placed under arrest for violence and treason. The courageous Venezuelan Attorney General, Danilo Anderson, was in the process of prosecuting Capriles and several hundred of his terrorist supporters when he was assassinated by a car bomb – planted by supporters of the failed coup.

Though Capriles electoral propaganda was given a face-lift – he even called himself a candidate of the “center-left” and a supporter of several of President Chavez’s “social missions”, his close ties with terrorist operatives were revealed by his call for violent action as soon as his electoral defeat was announced. His thinly veiled threat to organize a “mass march” and seize the headquarters of the electoral offices was only called off when the government ordered the National Guard and the Armed Forces on high alert. Clearly Capriles’ terror tactics were only pulled back in the face of greater force. When the legal order decided to defend democracy and not yield to terrorist blackmail, Capriles temporarily suspended violent activity and regrouped his forces, allowing the legal-electoral face of his movement to come to the fore.

Responses to Terror: Boston and Venezuela

In response to the terrorist incident in Boston, the local, state and federal police were mobilized and literally shut down the entire city and its transport networks and went on a comprehensive and massive ‘manhunt’: the mass media and the entire population were transformed into tools of a police state investigation. Entire blocks and neighborhoods were scoured as thousands of heavily armed police and security forces went house to house, room to room, dumpster to dumpster looking for a wounded 19 year old college freshman. A terror alert was raised for the entire country ad overseas police networks and intelligence agencies were involved in the search for the terrorist assassins. The media and the government constantly showed photos of the victims, emphasizing their horrific injuries and the gross criminality of the act: it was unthinkable to discuss any political dimensions to the act – it was presented, pure and simple, as an act of political terror directed at ‘cowering the American people and their elected government’. Every government official demanded that anyone, even remotely linked, to the crime or criminals face the full force of the law.

On the other hand and coinciding with the attack in Boston, when the Venezuelan oppositionist terrorists launched their violent assault on the citizens and public institutions they were given unconditional support by the Obama regime, which claimed the killers were really ‘democrats seeking to uphold free elections’.

Secretary of State Kerry refused to recognize the electoral victory of President Maduro. Despite the carnage, the Venezuelan government did not declare martial law: at most the National Guard and loyalist police upheld the law and arrested several dozen protestors and terrorists; many of the former – not directly linked to violence - were quickly released. Moreover, despite the internationally certified elections by over 100 observers, the Maduro government conceded the chief demand for an electoral recount – in the hope of averting further right-wing bloodshed.

US Media Response

All the major Western news agencies, including the principle ‘respectable’ print media (Financial Times, New York Times and Washington Post) converted the Venezuelan political assassins into ‘peaceful protestors’ who were victimized for attempting to register their dissent. In other words, Washington and the entire media came out in full force in favor of political terror perpetrated against an adversarial democratic government, while invoking a near-martial law state for a brutal, but limited, act of terror in the US. Washington apparently does not make the connection between its support of terrorism abroad and its spread to the US.

The US media has blocked out discussion of the ties between Chechen terrorist front groups, based in the US and UK, and leading US neoconservatives and Zionists, including Rudolph Giuliani, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adleman, Elliott Abrams, Midge

Dector, Frank Gaffney and R. James Woolsey – all leading members of the self-styled ‘American Committee for Peace in Chechnya’ (re-named Committee for Peace in the Caucasus after the horrific Beslan school massacre). These Washington luminaries are all full-throated supporters of the ‘war on terror’ or should we say supporters of ‘terror and war’ (“Chechen Terrorists and the Neocons” by former FBI official Coleen Rowley 4/19/13).

The headquarters and nerve center for many ‘exile’ Chechen leaders, long sought by Russian authorities for mass terrorist activities, is Boston, Massachusetts – the site of the bombing – another ‘fact’ thus far ignored by the FBI and the Justice Department, perhaps because of long-standing and on-going working relations in organizing terrorist incidents aimed at destabilizing Russia.

Former Presidential candidate and New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, after the bombing, stated that Chechens ‘were only focused (sic) on Russia’ and not on the US (his Chechens perhaps). Interpol and US intelligence Agencies are well aware that Chechen militants have been involved in several Al Qaeda terrorist groups throughout South and Central Asia as well as the Middle East. The Russian government’s specific inquiries regarding any number of suspected Chechen terrorists or fronts have been given short shrift – apparently including the activities of one Tamerlan Tsarnaev, recently deceased.(As a historical aside (and perhaps not unrelated), the Boston-based FBI was notorious from the 1970’s through the 1990’s for protecting a brutal gangster hit man, James ‘Whitey’ Bulger, as a privileged informant, while he murdered dozens of individuals in the New England area.)

The Deeper Meaning of the War on Terrorism

US support for Venezuelan terrorists and their political leader, Henrique Capriles, is part of a complex multi-track policy combining the exploitation of electoral processes and the clandestine funding of NGO’s for “grass roots” agitation of local grievances, together with support for ‘direct action’ including ‘trial runs’ of political violence against the symbols and institutions of social democracy. The versatile Capriles is the perfect candidate to run in elections while orchestrating terror. Past US experience with political terror in Latin America has had a boomerang effect – as evident in the Miami-based Cuban terrorist engagement with numerous bombings, gun-running and drug trafficking within the USA, especially the 1976 car bombing assassination of the exile Chilean Minister Orlando Letelier and an American associate on Embassy Row in the heart of Washington, DC – an action never characterized as ‘terrorism’ because of official US ties to the perpetrators.

Despite financial, political and military links between Washington and terrorists, especially fundamentalists, the latter retain their organizational autonomy and follow their own political-cultural agenda, which in most cases is hostile to the US. As far as the Chechens, the Afghans and the Al Qaeda Syrians today are concerned, the US is a tactical ally to be discarded on the road to establishing independent fundamentalist states. We should add the scores of Boston victims to the thousands of US citizens killed in New York, Washington, Libya, Afghanistan and elsewhere by former fundamentalist allies of the US.

By siding with terrorists and their political spokespeople and refusing to recognize the validity of the elections in Venezuela, the Obama regime has totally alienated itself from all of South America and the Caribbean. By supporting violent assaults against democratic institutions in Venezuela, the White House is signaling to its clients in opposition to the governments of Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador – that violent assaults against independent democratic governments is an acceptable road to restoring the neo-liberal order and US centered ‘regional integration’.

Conclusion

Washington has demonstrated no consistent opposition to terrorism – it depends on the political goals of the terrorists and on the target adversaries. In one of the two recent cases – the US government declared virtual “martial law” on Boston to kill or capture two terrorists who had attacked US citizens in a single locale; whereas in the case of Venezuela, the Obama regime has given political and material support to terrorists in order to subvert the entire constitutional order and electoral regime.

Because of the long-standing and deep ties between the US State Department, prominent neo-con leaders and Zionist notables with Chechen terrorists, we cannot expect a thorough investigation which would surely embarrass or threaten the careers of the major US officials who have long-term working relations with such criminals.

The White House will escalate and widen its support for the same Venezuelan terrorists who have sabotaged the electrical power system, the food supply and the constitutional electoral process of that country. Terror, in that context, serves as its launch pad for a full scale assault against the past decade’s social advances under the late President Hugo Chavez. Meanwhile, in order to cover-up the Chechen-Washington working alliance, the Boston Marathon bombing will be reduced to an isolated act by two misguided youths, lead astray by an anonymous fundamentalist website – their actions reduced to ‘religious fundamentalism’. And despite an economy in crisis, tens of billions of more dollars will be allocated to expand the police state at home, citing its effectiveness and efficiency in the aftermath of the bombings while secretly sending more millions to foment ‘democratic’ terror…in Venezuela.


© Copyright 2013 by AxisofLogic.com

This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article in its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you!
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby conniption » Mon Nov 11, 2013 7:47 am

Axis of Logic

Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
Documented: US Coup Plan for Venezuela 2013

By Les Blough and Arturo Rosales.
Axis of Logic.

Thursday, Nov 7, 2013


It will come as no surprise to most Axis of Logic readers that there has been a Rolling Coup against the government of Venezuela since former President Chavez was first elected 14 years ago in 1998. The US-backed coup attempt in April, 2002 followed by the managers' lockout of the nation's petroleum industry in 2002-2003 are well-known throughout the world. Since then there have been weekly acts of sabotage of the country's infrastructure and food supply along with acts of violence and assassinations. On a regular basis we have been reporting ongoing efforts to overthrow the democratically elected government and to destabilize Venezuela since Axis of Logic was first launched over 10 years ago. This report however stands out with yesterday's revelation of a document by RT News in Spanish. Because of it's import and critical bearing on the future of Venezuela and all Latin American countries, we have translated it into English for Axis of Logic readers.

Background

(For the unfamiliar) - Throughout the years, the opposition forces in Venezuela have been in disarray with infighting for power amongst their various political parties and in 2005 they abstained from voting in the parliamentary elections altogether and lost all the deputies seats to the chavista parties. It was a tactic that failed miserably. In 2008 they attempted to unite by forming Mesa de Unidad Democratica (MUD) but the divisions and conflicts within their ranks only increased when Primero Justicia (First Justice) took control of MUD alienating other political opposition parties. Increasingly frustrated with their inability to win an election democratically, they stepped up their attempts to overthrow the government by other means. After President Chavez trounced their candidate for president, Capriles Radonski in October 2012 and they failed to gain control of the National Assembly (congress), the opposition stoked their fires of what we call the "Rolling Coup."

When Capriles Radonski suffered his second defeat by Nicolas Maduro on April 14 of this year, he claimed election fraud and the heads of the opposition refused to recognize Maduro as president. Likewise, the United States was the only country in the world who would not acknowledge his presidency. On April 15, the day after the election, Radonski called for members of the opposition to go to the streets and incite riots which resulted in 9 Chavistas being murdered execution style, one of them a 9 year old child and others being wounded.

Increased Attacks for Destabilization

Since then treasonous acts by the US-backed opposition are commonplace. Assassination plots against President Maduro revealed and foiled; the US blocked President Maduro from flying over Puerto Rico on his recent trip to China; threats were made against his life, preventing him from delivering his first speech as head of state at the UN General Assembly in October; since around August 1 of this year the opposition has increased their attacks on the Venezuelan infrastructure, electrical system and food supply & distribution systems. This increase in attacks is occurring in context with the December 8 elections when 335 mayors of towns and cities will be elected across the country. Over the last 3 months electricity to swaths of Venezuela have been cut by saboteurs and basic foods and other household products have been hoarded or destroyed to give the appearance of shortages. We are now experiencing this on a daily basis.

Yesterday the secret document was made public by the Venezuelan government and published in RT News with commentary by Eva Golinger. The document explains in detail, the sources and careful planning behind the Rolling Coup. Titled, Plan Estratégico Venezuela (Strategic Plan Venezuela), the plan outlines objectives, goals and methods and identifies the December 8 elections as the enemy's target for destroying the country. The plan was prepared in a meeting on June 13, 2013 with leaders of the Venezuelan opposition and representatives of the following 4 organizations:

> Fundación Internacionalismo Democrático of former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez,

> Fundación Centro de Pensamiento Primero Colombia (The Center of Thought Foundation - Colombia First)

> and the US firm, FTI Consulting (Forensic Technologies International), headquartered in West Palm Beach, Florida, FTI Consulting employs more than 4,000 professionals in 24 countries across six continents with a Latin American division.

> USAID - The United States Agency for International Development for Latin America

Image
Mark Feierstein, Head of USAID for Latin America

Three key opposition leaders involved are Maria Corina Machado and Julio Borges, both members of the Venezuelan National Assembly; Juan José (J.J.) Rendón Delgado, a psychologist, political strategist and expert in psychological warfare and Ramón Guillermo Avelado, the president of MUD.

Mark Feierstein, responsible for USAID, the US Agency for International Development for Latin America also participated in Plan Estratégico Venezuela for the destabilization of the country.

Image
Maria Corina Machado, Member of the National Assembly

Image
Jorge Borges, Member of the National Assembly

Image
Juan José (J.J.) Rendón Delgado, Psychologist and expert in psychological warfare.

Image
Ramón Guillermo Avelado, Politician and Executive Secretary of Mesa de Unidad Demorcratica (MUD)

Image
Alvaro Uribe, former president of Colombia is a central figure not only in the development of this plan but in many attempts to sabotage and overthrow the Venezuelan government from the earliest days when President Chavez was first elected 14 years ago.

Rather than describing the evidence against those who would overthrow the Venezuelan government and instead of providing the reader with excerpts from the document, we decided to translate it into English for you to read and form your own conclusions. We have also been preparing an article that lists well documented, specific attacks and the government's response in Maduro Fights Back, a detailed report which will be featured next week on Axis of Logic.

-Les Blough in Venezuela



Image

Plan Estratégico Venezuela
13 de junio de 2013

(Translated by Axis of Logic)


Democracy in Latin America has suffered a setback and is kidnapped by populist governments that prohibit, violate and intimidated the liberal thinking, freedom of expression and human rights in the region.

El Centro de Pensamiento Primero Colombia (The Center of Thought First Colombia) supports free and open discussion of the liberal thought in Latin America to disarm the expanded threat in the region with the violation of Human Rights and of the Popular Will.

By such facts in conjunction with the FTI Consulting and with the Fundacion Internacionalismo Democratico (Foundation Democratic Internationalism), we work to restore democracy in Latin America that has been aggrieved by the pseudo-progressive regimes led by Venezuela.

The Venezuelan Strategic Plan, agreed with worthy representatives of the opposition to the government of Nicolas Maduro, and is geared toward these objectives with the strong and constant support of several leading personalities in work to return Venezuela to true democracy and independence that has been held hostage by more than 14 years.

Time

We have 185 days to reach the goals set for Venezuelan Strategic Plan and to execute the action designed to achieve the objective.

Scope

In the entire territory of the Republic of Venezuela, to all the sectors of Venezuelan citizenship and to all the government and administrative institutions of the country.

Actions

> To refine the confrontational speech and complainant, Henrique Capriles. That is more fresh and attractive but at the same time to show resolution and consistency in its lines. Clearly establish the motto "We are a better alternative."To generate excitement with short messages but ones that reach greater numbers of people, returning to the social problems, causing social discontent. To increase the problems with shortages of basic products of the food basket.

> To maintain and increase the sabotage that affect services to the population particularly to the electrical system, that allows for blaming the government for alleged inefficiencies and negligence.

> To support the normalization of US-Venezuelan relations. This, will dilute the campaign of the government on the interference of the United States and justify the direct contact between our related forces.

> To create crisis situations in the streets to facilitate the intervention by the United States and NATO forces, with the support of the government of Colombia. When possible, the violence must cause deaths and injuries. Encourage hunger strikes of several days, mass mobilizations, problems in universities and other sectors of society already identified as governmental institutions.

> To move all available forces to compile a dossier of disrepute and weakening of the government that will give greater credibility to the opposition. With the support of the United States government, manipulate the involvement of the government and senior officials with drug trafficking and money laundering.

> To enhance the actions of lobbying governments in Latin America, mainly in those countries that may be more sensitive to the pressures of our allies, namely Colombia, Peru, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay, Costa Rica Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico and Honduras. At the same time depressing the governments of countries allied to the regime, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua generating discredit in both regions.

> To increase the supply of financial funds that Venezuelan opposition receives, aiming to reach at least 55% of the mayors in the municipal elections.

> To maintain and increase the campaign against Cuban interference; to affect the main social missions and diminish popular support for the government. To especially treat the presence of Cuban soldiers in the Venezuelan Armed Forces.

> To prepare and disseminate printed and audiovisual materials that expand the matrices of opinion in our interest, with the slogan, "We are a better alternative." In addition to identify and reattribute identified problems that point to the opposition. Hire journalists and reporters from 9 international media: CNN, The New York Times, The New York Post, Reuters, AP, EFE, The Miami Herald, Time, BBC, and Venezuela’s Clarín, ABC, among others. To these ends make the necessary contacts with the Foreign Press Association in Caracas.

> To promote the pronouncements of opinon leaders and personalities around the world who identify with the feeling of our plans and actions in favor of Venezuela.

> To extend the image of a severe crisis in Venezuela to more external media and possible countries as a means of managing international public opinion.

> To work from now on in the formulation of the legal conditions necessary for a future institutional transition in Venezuela.

> To coordinate the specific tasks that run the representatives of the Mesa de Unidad Demorcratica (MUD)* in the United States, in alliance with the opposition forces against the Castro regime that lie in that country. To strengthen the work of the mayor of the City of Doral [Florida], its mayor, Luigi Boria, and the Organización de Venezolanos Perseguidos Políticos en el Exilio (Organization of Persecuted Venezuelans in Exile - VEPPEX), with the support of the congressmen and senators of Cuban origin and the Cuban American National Foundation, among other organizations that support our Strategic Plan.

*NOTE: Mesa de Unidad Demorcratica or "MUD" is the alliance of oppositin political parties in Venezuela

> To contact military groups, active and retired who have already been identified; to extend the campaign to delegitimize the government’s prestige within the [Venezuelan] Armed Forces under the principle that the Armed Forces must take on the role of guarantor of democracy in Venezuela. We must achieve, by any means, the reestablishment of the constitution. It is vital to prepare the military for that from a scenario of crisis and social unrest championing insurrection against the government, or at least support of a foreign intervention or a civil uprising.

Purpose

The objectives posed in the present plan is essentially to target the municipal scheduled for 8 December, at the same time they include the gradual accelerated wearing down of the management of the government by providing the supreme triumph of the opposition in that event, but it will be much better if this can be achieved earlier [before December 8 Mayoral Elections]


Source for Plan Estratégico Venezuela (in Spanish): RT News

Many thanks to Axis of Logic Columnist, Arturo Rosales for contributing to this report.


*

theguardian
Monday 30 September 2013
US diplomats expelled from Venezuela for conspiring with 'extreme right'


*
theguardian
Tuesday 1 October 2013
Venezuela dispute: US expels three diplomats in retaliation
Venezuelan chargé d'affaires and two more junior officials given 48 hours to leave the US


*

Times of India

Maduro government 'occupies' Venezuela electronics chain
Reuters | Nov 10, 2013

CARACAS: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's socialist government "occupied" a chain of electronics stores on Saturday in a high-profile crackdown on what it views as price-gouging hobbling the country's economy.

Authorities arrested various managers of the five-store, 500-employee Daka chain, sent soldiers into the shops and forced the company to start selling products at cheaper prices.

That brought crowds of bargain-hunters to Daka outlets and sparked looting at one store in the central city of Valencia.

"Inflation's killing us. I'm not sure if this was the right way, but something had to be done," said Carlos Rangel, 37, among about 500 people queuing outside a Daka store in Caracas. "I think it's right to make people sell things at fair prices."

Maduro, who accuses rich businessmen and right-wing political foes backed by Washington of waging an economic "war" against him, said the occupation of Daka was simply the "tip of the iceberg" in a nationwide drive against speculators.

In a speech to the nation on Saturday evening, he condemned the looting reported in Valencia but said it was an isolated incident and the real criminals were unscrupulous businessmen exploiting Venezuelans with unjustified price hikes.

"The ones who have looted Venezuela are you, bourgeois parasites," Maduro said, accusing Daka of raising some prices of products beyond 1,000 percent of cost.

He showed particular astonishment at a washing-machine on sale for 54,000 bolivars ($8,571 at the official exchange rate of 6.3 to the dollar).

"We're going to comb the whole nation in the next few days. This robbery of the people has to stop," Maduro said.

"You've not seen anything."

Illustrating that point, Maduro said government communications experts were blocking a clutch of websites that publish the illegal black-market price of the dollar. "They're going off the air!" he exclaimed, to applause from supporters.

Minutes after his announcement, however, some of the sites could still be seen by a Reuters reporter in Venezuela.

Maduro's move against Daka, after weeks of warnings of a pre-Christmas push against private businesses to keep prices down, recalled the sweeping and often theatrical takeovers during the 14-year government of his predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

The late president frequently took the nation by surprise announcing expropriations on live TV. He used soldiers to secure oil fields, power stations, supermarkets and other targets while nationalizing large swathes of Venezuela's economy.

But Maduro, who took over in April after Chavez's death from cancer, has stopped short of any more of the outright nationalizations that characterized his mentor's rule.

ELECTIONS COMING

Economic officials were fanning across Venezuela on Saturday, entering Daka and other privately-owned shops to check prices in a pre-Christmas offensive by the government.

At Daka's flagship store in Caracas, soldiers organized hundreds of people into queues, making lists before calling them in one-by-one. Rangel had waited overnight with various relatives and was hoping to find a cheap TV.

In Valencia, Twitter users posted images of people running out of the Daka shop with TVs and boxes of goods.

Critics say Venezuela's runaway inflation - the annual rate is now 54 percent, the highest since Chavez came to power in 1999 - is due to economic mismanagement and the failure of socialist policies rather than unscrupulous retailers.

Opponents say excessive government controls and persecution of the private sector are to blame for shortages of basic goods ranging from flour to toilet paper, and for price distortions and corruption caused by a black-market currency rate nearly 10 times higher than the official price.

"This ridiculous show they've mounted with Daka is a not-very-subtle warning to us all," said one Venezuelan businessman who imports electronic goods and is an opposition supporter.

Under price controls set up a decade ago, the state sells a limited amount of dollars at 6.3 bolivars, but given the short supply, some importers complain they are forced into a black market where the price is nearly tenfold higher.

"Because they don't allow me to buy dollars at the official rate of 6.3, I have to buy goods with black market dollars at about 60 bolivars, so how can I be expected to sell things at a loss? Can my children eat with that?" said the businessman, who asked not to be identified.

Maduro retains support from large sections of the population, particularly the poor who benefit from massive state welfare programs and who remain loyal to Chavez's dying exhortation to support his chosen successor.

But the economic problems - in an OPEC country with the world's largest oil reserves - have begun weighing on Maduro's popularity, which dropped 10 points in recent months to 41 percent according to a recent survey by pollster Datanalisis.

The economy is the No. 1 issue going into local elections next month that are Maduro's first test at the polls since narrowly beating opposition leader Henrique Capriles in the April presidential vote to replace Chavez.

Capriles is trying to cast the December 8 nationwide municipal elections as a referendum on Maduro.

"Never in our history have we had anyone so incompetent in Miraflores," Capriles tweeted on Saturday, referring to the presidential palace. "Everything Maduro does means more destruction of the economy and investor flight."

Many economists are predicting a devaluation of Venezuela's bolivar currency after the elections, perhaps in early 2014, but senior officials have repeatedly denied that.

"Venezuela's immense resource base means it is not on the verge of collapse or default," David Smilde, a sociology professor at the University of Georgia who has studied Venezuela for 20 years, said in a recent blog on the economy.

"But it is sliding into serious economic dysfunction and that could seriously undercut Chavismo's viability as a democratically supported political project."

Daka officials could not be reached for comment.
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby conniption » Sat Feb 14, 2015 10:53 pm

nsnbc
(embedded links)

Published On: Sat, Feb 14th, 2015

Assassination and Coup Plot in Venezuela foiled: Maduro

A coup, including the assassination of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and other top-government officials by civilian and military conspirators has reportedly been foiled. The would be coup d’état plotters had reportedly ties to the United States.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro appeared on the state-owned English language television channel Telesur English on Thursday, saying that the coup plotters planned on assassinating him and other top officials and that participants in the planned coup had been paid in U.S. dollars. Preparations had already been made to install a de facto government, added Maduro.

Image
The coup involved plans to assassinate Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro (TeleSUR)

The coup plans reportedly involved attempts to assassinate Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro and other top-government officials and public servants. (TeleSUR)

Maduro noted that a “transitional government” and a government program had already been lined up, to come into effect once the coup plan had successfully been carried out.

The coup plan reportedly included bombings of the Miaflores Presidential Palace, the Telesur office in Caracas, as well as assassinations of President Maduro and other high-ranking officials.

Besides the Presidential Palace and Telesur, the list of targets reportedly also included the headquarters of Venezuela’s Military Intelligence Service (DIM), the Plaza Venezuela, the Zona Rental Metro Station in the center of the capital Caracas, the Ministry of Defense, the Caracas West Municipality Building, the office of Venezuela’s Public Prosecutor, as well as high-ranking government officials and public servants. The coup should have been accomplished by February 13.

In his televised address, President Maduro explained that a video of masked military officials who were speaking out against the government had been recorded. The video was allegedly to be released after the planned assassinations.

Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez reassured the people of Venezuela via his Twitter account that the armed forces of Venezuela remain loyal to the constitutional government, stating that:

“The Bolivarian National Armed Forces remain resolute in their democratic beliefs and reject coup schemes that threaten the peace in the republic.”


Maduro, for his part, said that one of the suspects was already under surveillance and had been suspected of plotting against the government during last year’s violent demonstrations, but was not charged.

The coup plan reportedly contained four stages, including an economic assault on the country, creating international debate around a supposed humanitarian crisis, a political coup involving officials who would turn against the government, and finally a military coup that would lead to the installation of the transitional government and its program.

German Embassy_Caracas_VenezuelaMaduro noted that the coup was scheduled to coincide with anti-government demonstrations planned for the one-year anniversary of the start of the violent protests on February 12, 2014.

Maduro also noted that at least one of the plotters had received a visa for the United States for the case that the coup would fail and the plotters had to go underground and escape.

On February 5, 2015, the German Embassy in Venezuela warned German nationals in Venezuela that the Embassy is extremely worried about the current situation in the country and advises German residents to take a number of “precautions in the face of the crisis”.

General Vivas_VA_Venezuela (Photo - screen shot)The statement was signed by German Chargé d’Affairs Dr. Jörg Polster and suggests that German diplomats and intelligence services may have had knowledge about the possibility of a U.S.-backed coup d’état.

The exact names of the plotters have not yet been disclosed and no independent verification has yet been provided.

It is, however, noteworthy that retired general Angel Vivas called for the establishment of resistance units and that leading opposition members called for the establishment of a “transitional government”.

Venezuela_regime change_Feb 2015_VA_(El Universal)Up to the alleged planned coup the retired Venezuelan military general Angel Vivas released several videos via Youtube, calling on Venezuelans to form local resistance units, including armed units which could fight the government.

Vivas called on the people and the resistance to prepare themselves “for a war to the death”.

Leading members of Venezuela’s opposition, earlier this week, released a statement that amounted to a demand for regime change and the establishment of a transitional government.

Among the members and signatories of the group were Maria Corina Machado, Leopoldo Lopez, and Antonio Ledezma. It is so far uncertain and it remains unverified whether any of the above were directly involved in the alleged coup plans, even though circumstantial evidence could strongly suggest that they were involved in planning a coup.
_____

F/AK – nsnbc 14.02.2015


~
~

From Axis of Logic:

Axis of Logic

Venezuelan Guarimbas: 11 Things the Media Didn't Tell You

By Tamara Pearson, Ryan Mallett-Outtrim
teleSUR

Thursday, Feb 12, 2015

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.

continued...


&


Axis of Logic

The U.S. Covert War on Venezuela in 2015
The US Covert War on Venezuela in 2015 – Diary: Feb 11

By Arturo Rosales writing from Caracas

Friday, Feb 13, 2015

América Alonso, representative of hypermarkets Makro that has just introduced biometric finger printing to prevent resellers from purchasing many products and selling them on at higher prices, noted various aspects of the lines and the economic war in Venezuela.

Alonso, who can hardly be called a “chavista or supporter of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV)”, stated that “30% of the people in the lines are those that really need the products. Others are buying in almost panic mode. One of the problems is that if you buy a kilo of detergent here at Bs.30 and sell it on at Bs.350, then there is no better business than that”.

continued...


&

Axis of Logic

Venezuela gives details of thwarted coup
By Staff Writers
teleSUR
Friday, Feb 13, 2015

Image
Diosdado Cabello provided details Thursday night about the coup attempt. |\Photo: teleSUR

The teleSUR Caracas headquarters was one of the strategic areas the alleged coup plotters planned to attack.

Venezuelan National Assembly head Diosdado Cabello revealed the details Thursday night of what the government says was a “thwarted coup.” His public announcement followed one earlier by President Nicolas Maduro.

Cabello and Maduro said the plan was financed from the U.S. and was to be carried out early Thursday during the anniversary of the start of the violent opposition blockades last year and marches today by the country’s youth. People were allegedly going to be killed during the marches, while strategic targets would have been bombed in an attempt to overthrow the Maduro government.

continued...
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby conniption » Tue Feb 17, 2015 5:13 pm

counterpunch

February 17, 2015

A Slow-Motion Coup
Venezuela vs. a “Common Enemy”

by JOHN PILGER and MICHAEL ALBERT

Albert: Why would the U.S. want venezuela’s government overthrown?

Pilger: There are straightforward principles and dynamics at work here. Washington wants to get rid of the Venezuelan government because it is independent of US designs for the region and because Venezuela has the greatest proven oil reserves in the world and uses its oil revenue to improve the quality of ordinary lives. Venezuela remains a source of inspiration for social reform in a continent ravaged by an historically rapacious US. An Oxfam report once famously described the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua as ‘the threat of a good example’. That has been true in Venezuela since Hugo Chavez won his first election. The ‘threat’ of Venezuela is greater, of course, because it is not tiny and weak; it is rich and influential and regarded as such by China. The remarkable change in fortunes for millions of people in Latin America is at the heart of US hostility. The US has been the undeclared enemy of social progress in Latin America for two centuries. It doesn’t matter who has been in the White House: Barack Obama or Teddy Roosevelt; the US will not tolerate countries with governments and cultures that put the needs of their own people first and refuse to promote or succumb to US demands and pressures. A reformist social democracy with a capitalist base – such as Venezuela – is not excused by the rulers of the world. What is inexcusable is Venezuela’s political independence; only complete deference is acceptable. The ‘survival’ of Chavista Venezuela is a testament to the support of ordinary Venezuelans for their elected government – that was clear to me when I was last there. Venezuela’s weakness is that the political ‘opposition’ — those I would call the ‘East Caracas Mob’ – represent powerful interests who have been allowed to retain critical economic power. Only when that power is diminished will Venezuela shake off the constant menace of foreign-backed, often criminal subversion. No society should have to deal with that, year in, year out.

Albert: What methods has the U.S. already used and would you anticipate their using to unseat the Bolivarians?

Pilger: There are the usual crop of quislings and spies; they come and go with their media theatre of fake revelations, but the principal enemy is the media. You may recall the Venezuelan admiral who was one of the coup-plotters against Chavez in 2002, boasting during his brief tenure in power, ‘Our secret weapon was the media’. The Venezuelan media, especially television, were active participants in that coup, lying that supporters of the government were firing into a crowd of protestors from a bridge. False images and headlines went around the world. The New York Times joined in, welcoming the overthrow of a democratic ‘anti-American’ government; it usually does. Something similar happened in Caracas last year when vicious right-wing mobs were lauded as ‘peaceful protestors’ who were being ‘repressed’. This was undoubtedly the start of a Washington-backed ‘colour revolution’ openly backed by the likes of the National Endowment for Democracy – a user-friendly CIA clone. It was uncannily like the coup that Washington successfully staged in Ukraine last year. As in Kiev, in Venezuela the ‘peaceful protestors’ set fire to government buildings and deployed snipers and were lauded by western politicians and the western media. The strategy is almost certainly to push the Maduro government to the right and so alienate its popular base. Depicting the government as dictatorial and incompetent has long been an article of bad faith among journalists and broadcasters in Venezuela and in the US, the UK and Europe. One recent US ‘story’ was that of a ‘US scientist jailed for trying to help Venezuela build bombs’. The implication was that Venezuela was harbouring ‘nuclear terrorists’. In fact, the disgruntled nuclear physicist had no connection whatsoever with Venezuela.

All this is reminiscent of the unrelenting attacks on Chávez, each with that peculiar malice reserved for dissenters from the west’s ‘one true way’. In 2006, Britain’s Channel 4 News effectively accused the Venezuelan president of plotting to make nuclear weapons with Iran, an absurd fantasy. The Washington correspondent, Jonathan Rugman, sneered at policies to eradicate poverty and presented Chávez as a sinister buffoon, while allowing Donald Rumsfeld, a war criminal, to liken Chavez to Hitler, unchallenged. The BBC is no different. Researchers at the University of the West of England in the UK studied the BBC’s systematic bias in reporting Venezuela over a ten-year period. They looked at 304 BBC reports and found that only three of these referred to any of the positive policies of the government. For the BBC, Venezuela’s democratic initiatives, human rights legislation, food programmes, healthcare initiatives and poverty reduction programmes did not exist. Mission Robinson, the greatest literacy programme in human history, received barely a passing mention. This virulent censorship by omission complements outright fabrications such as accusations that the Venezuelan government are a bunch of drug-dealers. None of this is new; look at the way Cuba has been misrepresented – and assaulted – over the years. Reporters Without Borders has just issued its worldwide ranking of nations based on their claims to a free press. The US is ranked 49th, behind Malta, Niger, Burkino Faso and El Salvador.

Albert: Why might now be a prime time, internationally, for pushing toward a coup? If the primary problem is Venezuela being an example that could spread, is the emergence of a receptive audience for that example in Europe adding to the u.s. response?

Pilger: It’s important to understand that Washington is ruled by true extremists, once known inside the Beltway as ‘the crazies’. This has been true since before 9/11. A few are outright fascists. Asserting US dominance is their undisguised game and, as the events in Ukraine demonstrate, they are prepared to risk a nuclear war with Russia. These people should be the common enemy of all sane human beings. In Venezuela, they want a coup so that they can roll-back of some of the world’s most important social reforms – such as in Bolivia and Ecuador. They’ve already crushed the hopes of ordinary people in Honduras. The current conspiracy between the US and Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil is meant to achieve something more spectacular in Venezuela, and Russia.

Albert: What do you think the best approach might be to warding off U.S. machinations, and those of domestic Venezuelan elites as well, for the Bolivarians?

Pilger: The majority people of Venezuela, and their government, need to tell the world the truth about the attacks on their country. There is a stirring across the world, and many people are listening. They don’t want perpetual instability, perpetual poverty, perpetual war, perpetual rule by the few. And they identify the principal enemy; look at the international polling surveys that ask which country presents the greatest danger to humanity. The majority of people overwhelmingly point to the US, and to its numerous campaigns of terror and subversion.

Albert: What do you think is the immediate responsibility of leftists outside Venezuela, and particularly in the U.S.

Pilger: That begs a question: who are these ‘leftists’? Are they the millions of liberal North Americans seduced by the specious rise of Obama and silenced by his criminalising of freedom of information and dissent? Are they those who believe what they are told by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the BBC? It’s an important question. ‘Leftist’ has never been a more disputed and misappropriated term. My sense is that people who live on the edge and struggle against US-backed forces in Latin America understood the true meaning of the word, just as they identify a common enemy. If we share their principles, and a modicum of their courage, we should take direct action in our own countries, starting, I would suggest, with the propagandists in the media. Yes, it’s our responsibility, and it has never been more urgent.
_______
Michael Albert interviewed John Pilger for the Latin American TV Network TeleSur.
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby Nordic » Tue Feb 17, 2015 5:39 pm

Did this attempted coup get reported at all in the US media?

I'm kind of off the "news" grid for the US, so I don't really have a feel for it.

Amazing it didn't. Good that it failed. Again.

Fuck the US.

Image
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
Nordic
 
Posts: 14230
Joined: Fri Nov 10, 2006 3:36 am
Location: California USA
Blog: View Blog (6)

Re: Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby Pele'sDaughter » Tue Feb 17, 2015 6:26 pm

Don't believe anything they say.
And at the same time,
Don't believe that they say anything without a reason.
---Immanuel Kant
User avatar
Pele'sDaughter
 
Posts: 1917
Joined: Thu Sep 13, 2007 11:45 am
Location: Texas
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby conniption » Tue Mar 03, 2015 2:53 am

Voltaire Network

The United States, Germany, Canada, Israel and the United Kingdom launched "Operation Jericho"

Obama failed his coup in Venezuela

by Thierry Meyssan

Once again, the Obama administration has tried to force the change of a political regime that resists it. On February 12, an Academi (formerly Blackwater) plane disguised as an aircraft of the Venezuelan army was supposed to bomb the presidential palace and kill President Nicolas Maduro. The plotters had planned to place former MP María Corina Machado in power and have her immediately acclaimed by former Latin American presidents.

24 February 2015

Image
President Obama with his advisor for Latin America, Ricardo Zuñiga, and the National Security Advisor Susan Rice.
© White House


President Obama had given a warning. In his new doctrine of Defence (National Security Strategy), he wrote: "We stand with citizens whose full exercise of democracy is in danger, as the Venezuelans." Yet, Venezuela is, since the adoption of the 1999 constitution, one of the most democratic countries in the world. This sentence presaged the worst to prevent it from continuing its path to independence and wealth redistribution.

It was on February 6, 2015. Washington was finishing developing the plan for the overthrow of the democratic institutions of Venezuela. The coup was planned for February 12.

"Operation Jericho" was supervised by the National Security Council (NSC), under the authority of Ricardo Zuñiga. This "diplomat" is the grandson of the homonymous president of the Honduran National Party who organized the coups of 1963 and 1972 in favor of General López Arellano. He directed the CIA station in Havana (2009-11), where he recruited and financed agents to form the opposition to Fidel Castro while negotiating the resumption of diplomatic relations with Cuba (finally concluded in 2014).

As always in this type of operation, Washington is careful to not appear involved in the events it leads. The CIA works through supposedly non-governmental organizations to organize coup leaders: the National Endowment for Democracy and its two pseudopods of the right (the International Republican Institute) and left (the National Democratic Institute) Freedom House and the International Center for Non-Profit Law. In addition, the United States always seeks allies to outsource parts of the coup, in this case at least Germany (responsible for the protection of NATO nationals during the coup), Canada (responsible for controlling the civilian international airport in Caracas), Israel (responsible for the assassination of Chavez personalities) and the UK (in charge of the propaganda coup). Finally, they mobilize their political networks that are ready to recognize the coup: Washington Senator Marco Rubio, former Chile president, Sebastián Piñera, in Colombia former Presidents Alvaro Uribe and Andres Pastrana, in Mexico the former presidents Felipe Calderón and Vicente Fox, in Spain the former President of the Government José María Aznar.

To justify the coup, the White House had encouraged large Venezuelan companies to warehouse rather than distribute essential commodities. The idea was to cause queues at the shops, and to infiltrate agents into the crowd to cause riots. In reality, though there had been supply problems in January-February and queues in front of stores, never did Venezuelans attack shops.

To strengthen its economic action, on December 18, 2014, President Obama signed a law imposing new sanctions against Venezuela and several of its leaders. Officially, this was to punish individuals who had suppressed student protests. In fact, since the beginning of the year, Washington was paying four times the medium salary income - to gangs so that they would attack the police. The pseudo-students had thus killed 43 people in a few months and spread terror in the streets of the capital.

Military action was overseen by General Thomas W. Geary, from SOUTHCOM in Miami, and Rebecca Chavez, from the Pentagon, and outsourced to a private army, Academi (formerly Blackwater); a company now administered by Admiral Bobby R. Inman (former head of the NSA) and John Ashcroft (the former Attorney General of the Bush administration). A Super Tucano, registered N314TG, purchased by the Virginia firm in 2008 to assassinate Raul Reyes, the No. 2 man in the Colombian FARC, was to be disguised as an airplane of the Venezuelan army. It was supposed to bomb the Miraflores presidential palace and other targets from a pre-determined dozen, including the Ministry of Defence, the management of Intelligence at the ALBA, Telesur television channel. The plane, being parked in Colombia, the operational headquarters of "Jericho" had been installed at the US Embassy in Bogota with the participation of the Ambassador, Kevin Whitaker and his deputy, Benjamin Ziff.

Image

Some senior officers, active or retired, had registered in advance a message to the nation in which they announced the takeover of power in order to restore order. They were scheduled to subscribe to the transition plan, published on February 12 in the morning by El Nacional and drafted by the US State Department. A new government would have been formed, led by former MP María Corina Machado.

Image
The coup was supposed to place Corina Machado in power María. On January 26, she hosted her main foreign accomplices in Caracas.

María Corina Machado was the president of Súmate, the association that organized and lost the recall referendum against Hugo Chávez Frias, in 2004, already with money from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the French advertising services of Jacques Seguela. Despite her defeat, she was received with honor by President George W. Bush in the Oval Office, May 31, 2005. Elected representative of Miranda state in 2011, she suddenly appeared on 21 March 2014 as Chief of the Panamanian delegation to the Organization of American States (OAS). She was immediately dismissed from her duties as a member for violation of sections 149 and 191 of the Constitution.

To facilitate the coordination of the coup, María Corina Machado organized a symposium in Caracas on January 26, "Citizen Power and Democracy today", which was attended by most of the Venezuelan and foreign personalities involved.

Image

No luck, Venezuelan Military Intelligence watched personalities suspected of hatching a previous plot to assassinate President Maduro. Last May, the Caracas prosecutor had accused María Corina Machado, Henrique Salas Römer, governor, former diplomat Diego Arria, lawyer Gustavo Tarre Birceño, Eligio Cedeño, banker and businessman Pedro M. Burelli, but they challenged emails, claiming they had been falsified by Military Intelligence. Of course, they were all in cahoots.

By tracking these conspirators, Military Intelligence discovered "Operation Jericho". On the night of February 11, the main leaders of the plot and a Mossad agent were arrested and aviation security was enhanced. Others were rounded up on the 12th. On the 20th, confessions obtained permitted the arrest of an accomplice, the mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma.

Image
The Mayor of Caracas, Antonio Ledezma, was the liaison officer with Israel. He secretly went to Tel Aviv, May 18, 2012 to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman. He represented the head of the Venezuelan opposition, Henrique Capriles Radonski.

President Nicolas Maduro immediately intervened on television to denounce the conspirators. Meanwhile in Washington, the spokesman for the State Department was joking with journalists who remembered the coup in Honduras organized by Obama in 2009 - for Latin America - or, more recently, the attempted coup in Macedonia in January, 2015 - for the rest of the world -, stating: "These charges, like all previous ones, are ridiculous. It is a matter of long-standing policy: the United States does not support political transitions through unconstitutional means. Political transitions must be democratic, constitutional, peaceful and legal. We have seen repeatedly that the Venezuelan government is trying to divert attention from its own actions by accusing the United States or other members of the international community of responsibility for the events in Venezuela. These efforts reflect a lack of seriousness on the part of the Government of Venezuela to cope with the serious situation it faces. »

For Venezuelans the failed coup poses a serious question: how do we keep democracy alive, if the main opposition leaders are in jail for the crimes they were about to commit against democracy?

For those who think, wrongly, that the United States has changed, that it is no longer an imperialist power and that now it defends democracy in the world, "Operation Jericho" provides endless food for thought.

The United States against Venezuela

- In 2002, the United States organized a coup against elected President Hugo Chavez Frias [1], then they murdered the judge in charge of the investigation, Danilo Anderson [2].

- In 2007, they tried to change the regime by organizing a "color revolution" with Trotskyist groups. [3]

- In 2014, they seemed to give up their goal and supported anarchist groups to vandalize and destabilize the country, it is the Guarimba [4].


Thierry Meyssan

Translation
Roger Lagassé



[1] « Opération manquée au Venezuela », par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 18 mai 2002.

[2] « Notre ami Danilo Anderson assassiné à Caracas », Réseau Voltaire, 19 novembre 2004. “The CIA behind Danilo Anderson’s Murder?”, by Marcelo Larrea. “FBI and CIA identified as helping Plan Venezuelan Prosecutor’s Murder”, by Alessandro Parma, Voltaire Network, 1 December 2004 and 11 November 2005.

[3] « Venezuela : conclusion d’une année déterminante », par Romain Migus, Réseau Voltaire, 10 octobre 2008. “The Albert Einstein Institution: non-violence according to the CIA”, by Thierry Meyssan, and Gene Sharp’s answer, Voltaire Network, 4 January 2005.

[4] “US against Venezuela: Cold War Goes Hot”, by Nil Nikandrov, Strategic Culture Foundation (Russia), Voltaire Network, 8 March 2014. «Las “guarimbas” de Venezuela: derecha embozada», por Martín Esparza Flores, Contralínea (México), Red Voltaire , 28 de abril de 2014.
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby Searcher08 » Tue Mar 03, 2015 11:36 am

Amount of coverage on the MSM? Nil. Bibi's man in Venezuela?! This is in 'The Onion' territory.
User avatar
Searcher08
 
Posts: 5887
Joined: Thu Dec 20, 2007 10:21 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Mar 09, 2015 11:24 pm


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9AcrvknLEU

The Dirty Hand of the National Endowment for Democracy

By Eva Golinger
Source: Postcards from the Edge
April 26, 2014

Anti-government protests in Venezuela that seek regime change have been led by several individuals and organizations with close ties to the US government. Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado- two of the public leaders behind the violent protests that started in February – have long histories as collaborators, grantees and agents of Washington. The National Endowment for Democracy “NED” and the US Agency for International Development (USAID) have channeled multi-million dollar funding to Lopez’s political parties Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, and Machado’s NGO Sumate and her electoral campaigns.

These Washington agencies have also filtered more than $14 million to opposition groups in Venezuela between 2013 and 2014, including funding for their political campaigns in 2013 and for the current anti-government protests in 2014. This continues the pattern of financing from the US government to anti-Chavez groups in Venezuela since 2001, when millions of dollars were given to organizations from so-called “civil society” to execute a coup d’etat against President Chavez in April 2002. After their failure days later, USAID opened an Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) in Caracas to, together with the NED, inject more than $100 million in efforts to undermine the Chavez government and reinforce the opposition during the following 8 years.

At the beginning of 2011, after being publically exposed for its grave violations of Venezuelan law and sovereignty, the OTI closed its doors inVenezuela and USAID operations were transferred to its offices in the US. The flow of money to anti-government groups didn’t stop, despite the enactment by Venezuela’s National Assembly of the Law of Political Sovereignty and NationalSelf-Determination at the end of 2010, which outright prohibits foreign funding of political groups in the country. US agencies and the Venezuelan groups that receive their money continue to violate the law with impunity. In the Obama Administration’s Foreign Operations Budgets, between $5-6 million have been included to fund opposition groups in Venezuela through USAID since 2012.

The NED, a “foundation” created by Congress in 1983 to essentially do the CIA’s work overtly, has been one of the principal financiers of destabilization in Venezuela throughout the Chavez administration and now against President Maduro. According to NED’s 2013 annual report, the agency channeled more than $2.3 million to Venezuelan opposition groups and projects. Within that figure, $1,787,300 went directly to anti-government groups within Venezuela, while another $590,000 was distributed to regional organizations that work with and fund the Venezuelan opposition. More than $300,000 was directed towards efforts to develop a new generation of youth leaders to oppose Maduro’s government politically.

One of the groups funded by NED to specifically work with youth is FORMA (http://www.forma.org.ve), an organization led by Cesar Briceño and tied to Venezuelan banker Oscar Garcia Mendoza. Garcia Mendoza runs the Banco Venezolano de Credito, a Venezuelan bank that has served as the filter for the flow of dollars from NED and USAID to opposition groups in Venezuela, including Sumate, CEDICE, Sin Mordaza, Observatorio Venezolano de Prisiones and FORMA, amongst others.

Another significant part of NED funds in Venezuela from 2013-2014 was given to groups and initiatives that work in media and run the campaign to discredit the government of President Maduro. Some of the more active media organizations outwardly opposed to Maduro and receiving NED funds include Espacio Publico, Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS), Sin Mordaza and GALI. Throughout the past year, an unprecedented media war has been waged against the Venezuelan government and President Maduro directly, which has intensified during the past few months of protests.

In direct violation of Venezuelan law, NED also funded the opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Table (MUD), via the US International Republican Institute (IRI), with $100,000 to “share lessons learned with [anti-government groups] in Nicaragua, Argentina and Bolivia…and allow for the adaption of the Venezuelan experience in these countries”. Regarding this initiative, the NED 2013 annual report specifically states its aim: “To develop the ability of political and civil society actors from Nicaragua, Argentina and Bolivia to work on national, issue-based agendas for their respective countries using lessons learned and best practices from successful Venezuelan counterparts. The Institute will facilitate an exchange of experiences between the Venezuelan Democratic Unity Roundtable and counterparts in Bolivia, Nicaragua and Argentina. IRI will bring these actors together through a series of tailored activities that will allow for the adaptation of the Venezuelan experience in these countries.”

IRI has helped to build right-wing opposition parties Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, and has worked with the anti-government coaltion in Venezuela since before the 2002 coup d’etat against Chavez. In fact, IRI’s president at that time, George Folsom, outwardly applauded the coup and celebrated IRI’s role in a pressrelease claiming, “The Institute has served as a bridge between the nation’s political parties and all civil society groups to help Venezuelans forge a new democratic future…”

Detailed in a report published by the Spanish institute FRIDE in 2010, international agencies that fund the Venezuelan opposition violate currency control laws in order to get their dollars to the recipients. Also confirmed in the FRIDE report was the fact that the majority of international agencies, with the exception of the European Commission, are bringing in foreign money and changing it on the black market, in clear violation of Venezuelan law. In some cases, as the FRIDE analysis reports, the agencies open bank accounts abroad for the Venezuelan groups or they bring them the money in hard cash. The US Embassy in Caracas could also use the diplomatic pouch to bring large quantities of unaccounted dollars and euros into the country that are later handed over illegally to anti-government groups in Venezuela.

What is clear is that the US government continues to feed efforts to destabilize Venezuela in clear violation of law. Stronger legal measures and enforcement may be necessary to ensure the sovereignty and defense of Venezuela’s democracy.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
User avatar
seemslikeadream
 
Posts: 32090
Joined: Wed Apr 27, 2005 11:28 pm
Location: into the black
Blog: View Blog (83)

Re: Venezuela votes for Chavez, elects Maduro as president

Postby conniption » Fri Mar 13, 2015 7:08 am

MoA
(embedded links)

March 12, 2015

The "Most Outlandish" Empire Semantics

The government of the Unites States (GDP US$ 16,768,100 million) declares that the situation in Venezuela (GDP US$ 371,339 million):

... constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States


This, the White House says, requires to:

... declare a national emergency to deal with that threat


"Why," ask the Venezuelans, including the U.S. sponsored opposition, "do you think we are an unusual and extraordinary threat which requires you to declare a national emergency?

"We do not believe for a moment that you are an unusual and extraordinary threat which requires us to declare a national emergency", is the answer:

Officials in Washington said that declaring Venezuela a national security threat was largely a formality.


"A formality?" ask Venezuelans. "Why is it a formality to see us as an unusual and extraordinary threat to your national security? That does not make sense. What's next? Will it be a simply a formality to kill us?"

"It is formality needed to be able to sanction some of your government officials," an anonymous U.S. senior official explains. "To do so the law requires that we declare you to be an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security which requires us to declare a national emergency."

"But we ain't no such threat. You yourself says so. So why would you sanction our officials when you yourself say that there is no real basis for this? On what legal grounds are you acting? Why these sanctions?"

"Because the the situation in Venezuela ... constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States which requires us to declare a national emergency to deal with that threat."

"That is like declaring war on us. That does not make sense".

"Well, it's just a formality."

---

On might have hoped that the above would be the "most outlandish" nonsense the U.S. government could produce. But that is not yet the case.

The Venezuelan President Maduro responded in the National Assembly:
“The aggression and the threat of the government of the United States is the greatest threat that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, our country, has ever received,” he said to applause, [...] “Let’s close ranks like a single fist of men and women. We want peace.”

He spoke of past American military interventions in Latin America and warned that the United States was preparing an invasion and a naval blockade of Venezuela.

“For human rights, they are preparing to invade us,” he said, ...


During the last 125 years the U.S. intervened in South America at least 56 times through military or intelligence operations. This ever intervening country is the same country that just declared Venezuela to be an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States that requires to declare a national emergency.

It is certainly not outlandish for Maduro to believe that such a declaration will be followed by one of those continued interventions. Especially not when disguised U.S. officials travel around Venezuela and distribute money to opposition parties. Maduro is not alone in seeing the threat of another U.S. intervention. All South American nations have condemned the U.S. declaration and even pro-American opposition politicians in Venezuela were outraged about it.

But for the ever anonymous U.S. officials it is the victim of their outlandish exaggerations that doth protest too much:

“It’s remarkable that the [Venezuelan] government can say the most outlandish things about the U.S. government — what is this, the 16th or 17th coup attempt that we’re doing? And now we’re invading?” the official said. “The shelf life of all of these accusations is what, a day or two? Even the dullest of media consumers is going to see that there is no invasion.”


Noting the U.S. doublespeak in this whole affair it advise to be very careful in believing that "there is no invasion" claim.

Posted by b on March 12, 2015 at 11:01 AM


~
RT

‘Undemocratic, interventionist’: Bolivia lashes out at Obama for Venezuela sanctions

Published time: March 13, 2015

Image
Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and Bolivia's President Evo Morales (Reuters)

Bolivia’s Foreign Ministry has joined a chorus of condemnation over US sanctions on Venezuela. A statement called on the US to “abandon its interventionist practices,” shortly after the rest of Latin America bonded in defense of Caracas.

Setting off the Latin outcry was US President Barack Obama’s decision to label Venezuela a ‘national security threat’ in early March, something President Nicolas Maduro countered by saying that Obama had taken it upon himself to “defeat” and “control” the country.

La Paz is striking back at Washington in defense of Caracas, after Bolivian President Evo Morales earlier this week signaled his support for Maduro. In a Thursday document the Foreign Ministry expressed its “regret” at Obama’s stance, saying “Bolivia rejects these interventionist actions of the US government to violate the sovereignty and self-determination of the Venezuelan people. These undemocratic actions of President Barack Obama threaten the peace and security of all countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“Bolivia reiterates its full support for the legitimate government of brother Nicolas Maduro, a president democratically elected by his people, and pledge our solidarity to the Venezuelan people in this unfair and difficult time in which democracy is again trying to be sacrificed to serve foreign interests,” the document also read.

Some of the loudest criticism in Latin America came from Cuba, which questioned Obama’s decision-making wisdom. Calling the president’s actions “arbitrary and aggressive,” its Foreign Ministry also issued a statement.

“How is Venezuela a threat to the United States? Thousands of kilometers away, without strategic weapons and without the resources … to conspire against the US constitutional order; the [White House] declaration has little credibility,” Cuban newspaper Granma cited the document as saying.

Similar outrage was heard from Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who took to Facebook to voice his objections, calling the US sanctions “a bad joke, which reminds us of the darkest hour of our America, when we received invasions and dictatorships imposed by imperialism.”

Offering its “full support” to Maduro, Correa reiterated that such actions will not stand with Latin America “in the 21st century.”

Meanwhile, Secretary-General of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) Ernesto Samper said this week that the body rejects “any attempt at internal or external interference that attempts to disrupt the democratic process in Venezuela.”

The 12-nation bloc has agreed to hold a high-level meeting on March 14 in Quito, Ecuador, to discuss how to go about responding the new measures. The ad hoc meeting was announced urgently by Correa shortly after Obama’s remarks on how Venezuela is a threat to the US. Like other Latin-American partners, Correa sees this as a move to isolate Caracas and finish the job that the opposition could not.

The nations are also part of the anti-imperialist ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America) group of Latin American and Caribbean nations, which earlier said that the move by Obama “constitutes an unprecedented aggression against that country and thus our region.

Read more Maduro accuses Joe Biden of ‘bloody coup’ in Venezuela

“This aggression violates every principle of international law which governs relationships between states, treating every state as equal and sovereign.”

Washington and Caracas have been at odds since Venezuela's iconic former leader Hugo Chavez came to power in 2000. The two had not had full diplomatic representation since 2008.

The country had recently grappled with heavy unrest, which was quelled. Later in February the president announced victory over the alleged US-sponsored coup, which he says was masterminded by Vice-President Joe Biden himself – the first time an accusation of such gravity was made to a crowd of thousands and on national television.
conniption
 
Posts: 2480
Joined: Sun Nov 11, 2012 10:01 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Next

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 39 guests