Thursday, June 27, 2013

Venezuela: clash between conspirators at the heart of the bourgeois opposition

A tapped conversation between MUD deputy María Corina Machado and a close friend, the historian Germán Carrera Damas, illustrates how leading sectors of the opposition are conspiring with the USA to precipitate a crisis leading to a coup or civil war.

The tape, made public by the ruling party PSUV in TV, shows that Machado feels displaced within the MUD by Secretary General R.G. Aveledo and that there are some serious differences between both about the international and national strategy to follow, including it seems the strategy of de-stablization of Venezuela a so called "coup" or "self-coup". The particulars are not too clear so judge yourselves but my impression is that Aveledo wants to trigger a crisis and promote a coup, while Machado, while very extremist herself, seems more interested in diplomatically isolating Venezuela instead. But it's hard to discern the details. Judge yourselves because I have transcribed all the relevant discussion (essentially a nervous monologue by Machado) below:




Translation:

MCM: I am seeing that of Henrique Capriles, who has taken some firm stands but who when retracted on that Wednesday 17 gave us a horrible signal. If you say that you were robbed the election, then you are elect president, right?

GCD: Right.

MCM: If you are elect president...

GCD: ... either you act as such or you are admitting that yours has been, don't know, a fall a...

MCM: No, and then another thing: the reaction of Guillermo Aveledo to the meeting of Jaua and [US Senator John] Kerry seems to me so terrible. Let's see: which was the answer? "It is marvelous that relations are reestablished because we want Venezuela to have relations with all countries"...

GCD: No, please, not that.

MCM: But didn't you see what he declared?

GCD: I saw it, I saw it, I saw it. I was almost crying. I said: well, this people...

MCM: Also more untimely it could not have been. I feel outrage also because I should have gone earlier to the Department of State, I should... you know? We should have done other things. One has to meet with the key actors, bringing them key information, let the Congress react! So it can be that here it's happening what is happening in Venezuela and the people doesn't know because the Department of State don't think this is severe. Or because it does not have the slightest idea of what to do with Chávez and Chavismo. They are very scared: they fear that I go and meet with the Department of State, with the senators, or with people who may have influence, and set up a radical line, as they describe me: "non-dialogging confrontations" (nervous laugh) "not electoral"...

GCD: Great, right?

MCM: How? Now, I learned that Ramón Guillermo Aveledo has told... Yes, sir, Ramón Guillermo Aveledo has told the Department of State that the only way to exit this is to provoke and deepen a crisis. A coup d'etat or a self-coup because... Or a process of screwing and domestication in which a system of total social control is generated.

GCD: He's putting himself under the shadow of the Empire, isn't he? ... Ramón Guillermo?

MCM: Yes, sir. And not just Ramón Guillermo but the group which surrounds Capriles asked him... Then I tell you, doc, it is very hard. Because I for example went to Washington and Ramón Guillermo goes next week. And he decided to go after a conversation with me because, what's the matter?, he doesn't want me to be in charge of the international area, and he said already at the Board that a requirement, an element... a honor point for him to preserve, for him to be the Secretary General of the MUD is that the coordination of everything international remains in his hands. So he wants both hats, just as you hear it: they want to kick me out!

GCD: But that's disrespectful!

MCM: No, no, disrespectful! And then look: I think that there have been many achievements in these times but you have to acknowledge that these achievements of today are product of the work done before... and that the context changed. I... don't know, yes... surely the context changed. That's what we have, what he says, the things he says. I listened to him and I said... I didn't imagine the meanness and pettiness in a man whom I have respected so much always, didn't I? This...

GCD: Listen: this you're telling me I have got stuck inside.

MCM: It gave me...

GCD: He gave me that impression as well.

MCM: ... there's people who say he's a misogynist, I wish he was misogynist, I wish he was misogynist!  But I believe it is worse than that: he has a strategy different to what I represent. He thinks it is dangerous to have me as a free electron, legitimated, saying what I want and also saying that in the name of the Board of Unity. Because we have to raise the political cost to these vagabonds, beginning by the Gringos and following by the Colombians and the Brazilians. Well, those got the record prize, I mean the Nobel, the Oscar.

GCD: But you have to bite your tongue, hear?

MCM: No, I know, but I have so much inside that I am relieving with you. Now, what I do with Ramón Guillermo?

GCD: Dribble him, as they do in football.

MCM: I think I could gain some time but I don't see... I mean: advancing my stuff... but I don't see easy that I could keep a whole parallel structure and that Ramón Guillermo approves it. Because he sees me with... That is... Because he has a huge blackmail capability. Look, doc, one last thing: with the military issue and what we commented of the coup that already happened...

GCD: Yes.

MCM: Do you think that I should insist on that matter?

GCD: I think so.

MCM: I have an email... you, I have to open for you a hotmail. A hotmail is a safe mail, very safe, encrypted. It is very easy to open and there we could send each other safe information.

GCD: Ah, good, I'd like that very much.

MCM: The last thing I want is someone watching me sending that mail.

GCD: Why?

MCM: Because I don't want to appear as if I would be undermining, conspiring against Henrique. I don't want.

GCD: Against what regime?

MCM: Against Henrique Capriles!

GCD: Ah, against Henrique.

MCM: But in any case I am conspiring with you...

GCD: You don't know how good it feels seeing you, doc, truly...

MCM: I see that at least I'm being useful to you to sort up your thoughts (laughs). 

14 comments:

  1. First of all:

    you don't say what she later declared: the regime only showed bits of the recording, not the whole thing. She said they have manipulated it. But let's imagine they didn't...what do you say about the long recording we had of Mario Silva? Nothing?

    Now, look at this:
    http://diariodecaracas.com/politica/gobierno-publica-satirica-portada-del-chiguire-bipolar-en-libro-historia-venezuela

    The regime is producing text books for our pupils with a lot of falsified history and just repugnant propaganda. In one of the books the Chavistas even had the chutzpah to use a fake picture from Chigüire Bipolar, a satyr site. In that picture everybody in Venezuela was praising Chávez for his 1992 coup...a bloody coup where Chávez murdered, among others, a little girl and quite some other innocent people...supposedly because of the killings that took place 2 years earlier (the Caracazo).

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    Replies
    1. I find incredible that you compare such, almost funny, incident with the most grave and apparently founded accusations of high treason that float over the MUD camarilla. You are just trying to divert the attention.

      By the way, someone should tell Capriles that putting oneself and the information he tries to convey before the main source of light will not favor him at all in TV or photos. Unless he wants to appear as "the invisible man".

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    2. Maju,

      If Aveledo really said that, it could be treason but before he is sued for treason you would first need to take the whole Boligarchs to trial for that.

      With whom do you think Mario Silva was talking? With a Cuban agent. That is treason. The security system in Venezuela is now controlled mostly by the Castro brothers - Cubans, treason even if they are not your dear enemies - on one side and Cabello, on the other (same stuff).

      So, don't come to tell us what is treason. Venezuela is more a beggar than it was ever before. It still depends on the USA - for the money - but it is managed completely by the Castro camarilla plus the Russian weapons exporters plus the Chinese
      companies.

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    3. I have no idea of who is Mario Silva nor what he talked about nor with. You have provided no sources that I could check.

      But anyhow, we are talking here of people who are clearly conspiring with foreign agents (USA, Colombia) in order to sink the country into a civil war or coup situation and even, it seems, purchasing weapons (not just some kalashnikovs but war airplanes!) for that eventuality. It's not Machado talking with Kerry this is what I think, blah blah, but growing evidence of active high treason.

      Admit it: you are a damn fascist who do not care what your long abandoned Venezuelan People thinks or feels about the political situation. You wouldn't care in the USA tomorrow launched an outright attack against your country. You are yourself a traitor: a double traitor against your motherland and against your people and its democratically expressed (once and again) wishes.

      Spare me. Go write in some Nazi forum. Please!

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    4. Maju, it's clear the people who currently keep repeating "Nazi Nazi" are the Nazis themselves. The ones who keep repeating "Fascist fascists" are the most fascist.
      The people who keep talking about "traitors of motherland" ARE the fascists, chauvinists. You are excited about "patria"? And you call people Nazi and fascist? Sorry, man, but I am a citizen of the world.

      The story about the planes is rubbish.
      Use arguments. Your conspiracy theories are baseless.

      There is very little difference between the franquistas and the people who support Chavismo

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  2. Here you have the what the "patriots" (of the Castro brothers)
    have produced in Venezuela:

    http://el-carabobeno.com/portada/articulo/61752/ministro-rodrguez-recomend-a-maduro-difundir-cifras-sobre-delincuencia

    In 1998 the murder rate was less than a third of what we have now. Go, go: chant "patria, patria"...fascism someone?

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  3. You are simply repetitive and annoying, Kepler: you keep repeating the same junk and you are not even able to provide sources for your rantings, much less the explanation I asked you long ago about violent crime in Venezuela. I don't care about the shallow claims, I want to know the depths, the scabrous details: who is killing who and why.

    There are only three reasons for violent crime: (1) psycho-emotional disturbance, (2) economic need or greed and (3) political reasons. So you tell me, if you are even able to articulate your discourse, which are the causes in Venezuela because AFAIK, there is no particular economic need, there is no or very little political armed groups and I don't want to think your country is simply full of machista psychopaths, because it's probably not the case either. So what are you babbling about? Data, facts and well pondered analysis.

    I don't care about the Castro brothers: they are rather good guys and the political liberties in Cuba, measured by many parameters are clearly above many other countries, notably Spain (where torture and police ultra-violence, as well as political persecution happen almost on daily basis). Cuba is fine.

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    Replies
    1. Maju, have you ever gone out of Bilbao, apart from your visit to Brussels, I believe, once? Because a lot of my friends have been to Cuba and they have seen how people are cajoled by the thugs of the Castro mafia.
      Half the population doesn't work but are told to intimidate the other half if they carry out some protest. Some of them do, some don't, but life is miserable. The USA has done a very stupid error by carrying out that embargo. It should lift it because people will see the embargo is not the cause of Cuba's misery but Castros incompetence. If it weren't because of Venezuela's petrodollars and the money sent by Cubans in the USA Cuba's regime would have collapsed ages ago. It will collapse in a few years.

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    2. As for crime: I thought several times about writing on the causes, but I thought as you only believe in conspiracy theories...

      As the minister "explained" in the link I sent before, they stopped publishing murder rates and full murder numbers at national level, which is what counts. And now the minister wants to publish them because "there is a 5% of improvement". Since when? Since he is in charge (a couple of months). For how long? I suppose as long as it remains the same. But he doesn't say the murder rate NATIONWIDE has more than tripled since 1998.
      The last data the government published was at United Nations' 7th UNODC report. You can check that out.

      http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/data-and-analysis/Seventh-United-Nations-Survey-on-Crime-Trends-and-the-Operations-of-Criminal-Justice-Systems.html

      But because you prefer conspiracy theories, you better read what Ramonet wrote in Le Monde Diplomatique. He said in a huge article with no real sources that the dramatic increase in the murder rate has been because the US's secret services are infiltrating Venezuela's barrios and stuff.
      You will love that.

      Your beloved caudillo Hugo Chávez also said people commit crimes because they need to steal to buy medicine for their children. He said that, among other times, during an interview with the BBC in 2005 (you can
      find the transcript somewhere on the Web).

      Crime and specially violent crime is much more difficult to explain and it is rubbish to explain it with "a link, please".

      You would need to analyse everything that is happening in Venezuela.

      The ones in power right now are the military, who have always been particularly corrupt. Their low ranking guys sell weapons all the time.
      Some of the higher ones are deep into cocaine trafficking. There are some reports on that from El País, which, I know, is not your cup of tea.
      Cocaine consumption has sky-rocketed in Venezuela and cocaine trade is a huge problem. If you don't see 20 people murdered in one event like in Mexico it is because there are no big cartel wars: the military control a lot of (like in Mexico a few years back) and the rest is killing by tiny bands or by individuals. Still, the sum of all those individual killings add up to many more murders than Mexico, which has several times Venezuela's population.

      You keep using the statistics others use in Wikipedia and only about cities. I have read this argument several times from a couple of Chavistas who write in Aporrea. That is a silly parameter. A couple of cities do not make the country.

      They put the cities they have any information about.
      It's rubbish. You MUST take into account the whole country. What's your problem with that?

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    3. Just one case where you can see how much data is missing: I have all the data for murders for a region, greater Valencia and Carabobo. The murder rate in some municipios there is higher than in Caracas. There are several cities there.
      Every month we get the list of murders for the region.
      We get stuff like this and in more detail:
      http://www.notitarde.com/Sucesos/720-homicidios-en-primeros-cinco-meses-del-ano-2013-en-Carabobo/2013/06/01/194922

      And that region has a city of more than one million people, Valencia. And it does not appear in your wonderful Wikipedia as a dangerous city.
      And there are a couple of tiny cities nearby, like Los Guayos with almost 100000 voters and mostly Chavistas
      http://www.cne.gob.ve/resultado_presidencial_2013/r/1/reg_071100.html
      , ).
      Voters are not the same as inhabitants, but they can be a better reference than the census, which has been an absolute mess since the milicos are in power and there aren't even detailed results (the few results they have are full of inconsistencies).

      Los Guayos gets about 100 murders per year. You won't even find it as a city in most Wikipedia lists. Cities such as Barquisimeto are not less dangerous. According to Chavismo, almost 100% of Venezuelans are registered to vote so the almost 100 000 voters are supposed to be people of 18 years old or older.

      Venezuela has undergone a huge population explosion in the last 40 years and that with little urban planning (particularly in the last 14 years)
      so you will have a hard time trying to get information from public entities about how many inhabitants this or that city has. The best you can get are the electoral records and from there projections to the people who are not voting.


      There are many reasons in Venezuela for the mess:

      1) the weapons I mentioned
      2) the drug trafficking
      3) the absolute incompetence of ministers (we have got one minister of Justice per year since Chávez came to power, something we didn't see before, ministers are changed like in a game: this year minister X does justice, then commerce, then tourism, then sports)
      4) there IS MORE SOCIAL INJUSTICE. Boligarcs show off their petrodollars like never before but real jobs are less and less. People do get imported chicken from the US or the EU 'at socialist prices' and those who go to the militias get some dosh for this or that, but basically most Venezuelans have been transformed into beggars
      5) according to a very controversial psychiatrist who died many years ago, Herrera Luque, there is a strong element of psychopathy in Venezuela. He prophesied back then that the potential for violence in Venezuela was huge and that one day we would have this. Still, I don't buy his stuff completely. Perhaps it's worth studying his ideas further but I am not the one to do so. He talked about the founder effect and genetics back in the day.

      Out of 100 murders, 97 go now unpunished.

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    4. Almost all the guys who are now directing something were before Chávez either part of the Acción Democrática machinery (like Aristóbulo Istúriz), military men like Chávez or landowner-milico Ramón Rodríguez Chacín (planned the Masacre del Amparo) or some of the worst students or worst professionals in every single area (like Elías Jaua or Tareck El Aissami, who really had a very notorious record as mafiosi at their universities).

      OK, adiós. That's all. I won't comment further, you like your discussions like Castro does: none.

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    5. Vale, you have told your rubbish and I do not have the time and patience to even bother reading it.

      I know that here police tortures systematically and in Cuba they don't, I know that here police systematically charges against the population with extreme violence, while in Cuba they don't, I know that here people may be and are often pushed to extreme need and, way too often suicide or violent revenge crimes, and in Cuba that doesn't happen ever.

      Cuba is not perfect but it's clearly much better than this or the USA for the bulk of the population.

      "... you better read what Ramonet wrote in Le Monde Diplomatique. He said in a huge article with no real sources that the dramatic increase in the murder rate has been because the US's secret services are infiltrating Venezuela's barrios and stuff".

      I'm not fan of Ramonet (too social-democrat for my taste) but it's plausible that the DEA, the top narco mafia worldwide, especially in America (both continents), is playing with that to some extent. It would not surprise me the least.

      Whatever the case violence MUST have causes. At least Ramonet is proposing a plausible cause. Let's see yours:

      "the drug trafficking"

      AFAIK Venezuela is not notable in this aspect.

      "the absolute incompetence of ministers"

      Hmmm, maybe. Anyhow isn't police and public order largely competency of the various states?

      "... there IS MORE SOCIAL INJUSTICE"...

      Really? I thought that there was at least a welfare state now in Venezuela, am I wrong? This did not exist before nor will exist if the MUD (what an acronym!) ever wins. They will just apply Merkel-nomics and destroy it all, leading to an even more radical revolution.

      ... "there is a strong element of psychopathy in Venezuela"...

      I doubt it but, if so, then your country has no remedy.

      "Out of 100 murders, 97 go now unpunished".

      If true (probably inflated), that's really a serious problem. Why does it happen? Is police that incompetent? Is there a pact of silence that make witness not to speak? It is very strange to say the least.

      Delete
  4. For example: Wikipedia ranks (2011) Caracas pretty badly, with only five cities (war areas excluded) above it: San Pedro Sula (Honduras, where most crime is political murder of farmers and journalists by landowners), Ciudad Juárez (narco mafia and US arms trade), Maceió (Brazil), Acapulco and Tegucigalpa.

    So even Caracas, which is the worst performing city in Venezuela in this aspect, is not as bad. People still go to Acapulco for vacation in spite of some incidents.

    The second most dangerous Venezuelan city is Ciudad Guayana but it's far behind, ranking 19th, while Barquisimeto ranks 24th, with levels similar to Detroit or San Juan de Puerto Rico.

    There are no more Venezuelan cities in the 50 worst ranked cities in the World.

    Instead:
    · Honduras: 2 (both very high ranked)
    · Mexico: 9 (all very high ranked)
    · Brazil: 13
    · Colombia: 5
    · USA: 3
    · South Africa: 4
    · Other (all Central American or Caribbean, except Mosul): 6

    I'm not too trusting of this list because places like Nigeria, India, Pakistan do not show up, and they probably should. It seems a bit too focused in America.

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  5. I am trying to tell you the statistics on cities are not even worth taking. They assume there are well defined notions of city borders in Venezuela and that statistics are kept that correspond to such borders. That is not the case, specially with the urban chaos we have.
    I have worked a lot in Wikipedia Spanish (English is the same) trying to correct inconsistencies in very basic data and I have to say it is still a mess.

    Look: even the statistics of the Venezuelan INE are a disaster.
    Take Carabobo (yes, funny name): that's the state where Valencia is.
    Here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carabobo
    you have that Carabobo has 2.2 million people. In another page you have Valencia, which definitely does NOT go over the border, with a similar population (as if there weren't other cities like Guacara or Puerto Cabello and many other villages and smaller cities)
    and you have that "Valencia" has even more people here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_Venezuela

    What borders do they use? And from where does the data about those "city" borders come ultimately?

    And it is difficult. Venezuela has undergone a population explosion in the last decades. It was 15 million people in 1980 and it went to 24 million people in 2000, twenty years later. In the period of 1990 to 1998 it saw oil prices plummet. The

    Municipios, estados or, better still, the whole country, should be taken to
    calculate rates, at least for Venezuela.

    Look: every month we get the murders for Carabobo.
    Here one example:
    desarrollosostenibleparavenezuela.blogspot.be/search/label/crimen en Venezuela
    I have verified many times the information by checking random periods and the list of names of the murdered (yes, that appears in Venezuelan newspapers).
    I have a couple of friends who are doctors and who have had to deal with the mortuaries and they confirm me those numbers are legit (by the way: they are not posh people who don't like treating the poor, they work in public hospitals and one of them was Chavista for some years, came from the poorest Caracas barrio and studied for free, like everyone else could, like Chávez's brothers did)

    The highest hike was between 2000 and 2004. I didn't put them there because I don't have the data per municipio anymore, only for the whole lot, and I wanted to show the evolution also across municipios. Still, crime has kept rising in different regions. Even if it stops now: the murder rate is more than 3 times what it was when Chavismo came to power.


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