Venezuela - Chronology of the Strike that Wasn't

["Ralph Johansen" <michele@xxxxxxxx>]

The Narco News Bulletin    December 22, 2002 | Issue #26

Christmas Comes Early in Caracas, Venezuela
Chronology of the Strike that Wasn't
By Al Giordano
December 22, 2002

Kind Reader:

 If at any time during December 2002 you were led to believe that a
"strike" occurred in Venezuela, and if you got the impression that said
"strike" was popular, national, or general, or that it would topple the
democratically-elected government of President Hugo Chavez, somebody lied
to you.

Juan Forero of the New York Times lied to you when he claimed there was a
"grueling national strike." T. Christian Miller of the Los Angeles Times
lied to you when he claimed there was "a nationwide shutdown now." Nancy
San Martin of the Miami Herald lied to you when she claimed that, "the
strike expanded Monday." Andy Webb-Vidal of the Financial Times of London
lied to you when he claimed that Venezuela was "a country on the verge of
collapse." That smarmy Brit weasel Phil Gunson, interviewed on National
Public Radio, lied to you when he said, "uh, first of all it's not really
fair to, to, uh, to call it a coup attempt."

NPR to Gunson: "What's it like on the streets today?"

Gunson to NPR: "Well, I haven't been out on the streets very much."

All of these "desk reporters" and others like them, copying from each
other and from a corrupt Commercial Media in Venezuela (instead of doing
real reporting by interviewing real people and wearing out their own
precious shoe leather) tried to portray a series of orchestrated media
stunts and some isolated acts of sabotage by the former ruling class as a
massive nationwide action with popular support. It wasn't. It was an
"imagined strike," simulated, invented -- a fantasy repeated daily over
three weeks so often that many people began to believe that it was reality
-- the pinnacle example of everything that is wrong with "pack journalism"
in this day and age.

I repeat:
 The "strike" never happened. There was conflict. There were marches.
There was even eco-terrorism. Some events worth reporting did happen, but
they were not reported honestly by the Pinocchios of the Commercial Media.

What did happen cannot honestly be called a "strike" (or a "general
strike," or a "national strike") or anything like it. The events of
December have been no more or less than the same group of people -- mainly
from the upper classes --  marching around obediently for Commercial Media
led spectacles, that have been marching around for the past year. The size
of their protests has not increased since those of a year ago. I say to
them, "keep marching around, it's a free country." And the fact that
they've been able to march around daily in so many circles without being
arrested or repressed is evidence that Venezuela is, by any nation's
standard, a very free and tolerant country.

These people, the same people marching since a year ago without any
significant additions to their ranks, are playing make-believe; they're
not playing firemen or astronauts or beauty pageant contestants like
normal kids; from their little pink bubble, they call themselves
"strikers." And a few particularly elite ones call themselves
"journalists."

They've been acting like children in a very literal way: Asking for Mommy
Bush or Daddy Military to trash their Constitution and remove, by force, the
president twice elected by their country's majority.

They have cynically --  and led by oligarchs of Commercial Media who write
the script --  tried to provoke the conditions for a coup d'etat.

They have every right to play-act and discover their "inner spoiled brat."
But they are not, by any reasonable definition, having a "national
strike."

This critique goes far beyond matters of semantics and how one defines a
"strike." Without question, the professional simulators of the Commercial
Media sat at their desks, or in their hotel rooms, took dictation from the
rich and powerful from Caracas to Washington, and phoned it in.

In the isolated instances in which these simulators did interview "real
people," they were often led around by the nose-ring by political
consultants and other spin-doctors to give "credibility" to staged
"stories." (Think I'm kidding? See Narco News Associate Publisher Dan
Feder's analysis of the day --  last Monday --  that the NYT's Forero and
the LAT's Miller, in this country of 24 million people, amazingly ended up
interviewing the same two "real people" for their stories.)

But where there is smoke, there is at least some fire. Something happened
in Venezuela this month. So what did happen? We now recount for you, kind
reader, the facts available to working reporters, but avoided by squalid
desk reporters.

DAY ONE, DECEMBER 2ND:    A FAILED "STRIKE" ATTEMPT

For weeks prior to December 2nd, the Commercial Media in Venezuela (and
the lazy English-language media correspondents who take dictation from it)
could barely contain their gleeful anticipation of yet another effort --
the fourth in a year (the other three also failed, although April's came
too close for comfort) --  to depose a democratically elected government.

When we say "democratically elected government," we are on very firm
ground: In six elections over just four years, the Venezuelan People have
gone to the ballot box and voted, again and again and again and again and
again, for President Hugo Chavez, his allies in Congress, and in favor of
referenda supporting his policies and the Bolivarian Constitution of 1999:
the most democratic, pro-Human Rights, and pro-freedom, Magna Carta in all
America. (What? Forero and Miller didn't tell you that?)

The former ruling class --  having lost those six elections in four years
--  announced what it called a "general strike" to begin on December 2nd.
The goal of the "strike": To depose President Chavez. First they said they
wanted a non-binding referendum on Chavez's presidency. Then they said
they wanted a binding vote. Then they said August would not be soon
enough. In recent days, their leader, corrupt union boss Carlos Ortega (a
leader of the April coup attempt) told reporters that the goal is no
longer a vote; he wants Chavez to resign, period.

The organizers of this so-called "strike" are the very same collection of
slimy forces that backed the April coup d'etat and Dictator-for-a-Day
Pedro Carmona, who, once in power, abolished the Supreme Court, the
Congress, shut down Community TV and Radio Stations, assassinated 50
political activists, and nullified the Constitution. Carmona also freed
the sniper-assassins who had fired shots from rooftops on April 11th into
crowds of people, creating the pretext for what was, back then, a military
coup. (Stay tuned for our upcoming report about the undisclosed
conflicts-of-interest of one of the foreign reporters that helped to
create this pretext last April.)

That the same forces --  the national chamber of commerce, the corrupt oil
executives' union bosses, and the dishonest commercial media in Venezuela
--  were behind this latest "coup in strike's clothing" should have been
the first hint to the simulating foreign correspondents -- Juan Forero and
T. Christian Miller (the Mary-Kate and Ashley of El Hatillo), Nancy San
Martin, and the English mercenaries Andrew Webb-Vidal and Phil Gunson,
cowering from behind their desks, among others --  that the effort was
doomed to fail.

By the night of the first day of the "strike," after reviewing the real
facts, Narco News reached this conclusion: The "strike" was, we reported,
"an abject failure, limited to wealthy neighborhoods while the great
majority of Venezuelans work and shop today in open defiance of the strike
call."

That's how it began, and that is how it has continued, for three weeks.
This thing was a non-starter from the get-go.

Yet, you would hardly be able to believe it, listening to the shrieking of
the Commercial Media. Ivan Roman of the Orlando Sentinel (he's a rookie at
covering Venezuela for English-language newspapers, but give him time: his
work reads like a CIA press release) claimed, on December 4th, that,
"Tensions escalated in Venezuela as the opposition took its general strike
to the streets." Ahem. They "took it to the streets" because their
"strike" wasn't succeeding in the shops and workplaces. A march is not a
strike. Hello?

The para-journalist Phil Gunson (one day in the Miami Herald, another in
the Christian Science Monitor, another in the St. Petersburg Times) wrote
in the Herald that the "strike" had not yet hit Venezuela's major economic
sector --  oil --  but that "it would." On the second day, he took
dictation:
  "Although there were problems at some (oil) refineries, gas plants and
loading docks, due to the absence of personnel, sources said it would be
several days before the situation became critical." Translation: "Nothing
is happening. But something will happen. Thus speaks Langley."

Kind reader, you have to learn to read between the lines.

Despite all the efforts by the Gunsons, the Foreros, the Millers (and the
other coup plotters of April and December), and the rest to give
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to vampires, the "strike" was not a strike on
Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four or Day NineteenÉ In fact, it has
never been a "strike." Have I mentioned that there was no strike this
month in Venezuela?

During these days, the leaders of the "strike" that never happened called
repeatedly on the Venezuelan Armed Forces to force the elected government
out by violence and force.

The military, purged since last April of 400 officials who tried the first
coup d'etat, told the coup plotters to fuck off. Thus, the first door
slammed on December's coup plot. The soldiers --  and this is also
unprecedented and good news for Latin America --  said, "no, we prefer
democracy."

With their Daddy figure, the Armed Forces, unwilling to play the coup
game, all that was left then for the "Strike of the Spoiled Brats" to do
was to appeal to Mama:
  The United States government and its Au Pair, Cesar Gaviria,
secretary-general of the Organization of American States (OAS). The entire
show of recent days has been a desperate effort to create conditions --
with the theatrical support of Gaviria -- that would allow military
intervention by the United States and whatever Soldiers of Fortune can be
hired to rip a democracy from a people's hands.

Twelve days ago we called on Gaviria to get the hell out of Venezuela.
Five days ago, the Permanent Council of his own Organization of American
states rebuked him, and, in doing so, rejected a major Washington proposal
(to force "early elections") for the first time in OAS history.

Yesterday, finally, Gaviria finally got out of Dodge. Hasta la vista,
baby!

Poor Cesar: Limping back from his luxury lodgings in Caracas with no peace
agreement in hand and the deserved comeuppance by his own organization is
not going to help the Washington-backed campaign to implant Gaviria to
succeed Kofi Annan at the helm of the United Nations. (Horrors! After what
Gaviria did to Colombia, imagine what he could do to the Middle East!)

For peace to Venezuela, Gaviria did not bring. He only brought lies and
confusion. Gaviria's presence merely delayed the day --  the wonderful day
that has now arrived --  in which the whole world realizes that the Strike
that Wasn't has failed to steal Christmas. Is it any wonder that the day
after Gaviria left down was the precise day that peace and calm returned
to Caracas?

snip

Gaviria, with his dishonest quotes to the media and his stalling tactics
to give oxygen to the Strike That Wasn't did cause a lot of problems in
Venezuela. Mainly, in direct contradiction to his purported reason for
being there, he delayed many solutions that are now, finally, occurring.

Most --  like getting the oil flowing to 100 percent capacity again - will
be fixed in a matter of weeks.

Others --  like the losses in human life --  are the permanent
consequences of Cesar Gaviria's duet with the simulating Commercial Media.

DAY FOUR, DECEMBER 6TH:     THE GUNMAN FROM PORTUGAL

Historic memory of April's coup is important for understanding the
mentality of the same coup-mongers today. Last April 11th, suspicious
shots rang out from rooftops during a clash of pro and con demonstrators.
Nineteen human lives --  the majority of them supporters of the
democratically elected government of Venezuela --  were extinguished.

As we will report in greater detail this week, one of the "reporters"
(Phil Gunson) that helped create the false impression that these shots
came from one side of the conflict --  the Chavez side --  helped bring
about a series of events based on knowingly false impressions that was
used to justify a military coup d'etat, and all the human misery it
entailed.

But for various hours beginning April 11th the coup-plotters had
succeeded, and they want to return to their jackbooted utopia when
Dictator-for-a-Day Pedro Carmona ruled by decree. So if you're political
infants like the make-believe "strikers," what do you do?

You try to repeat the same script!

The script was played out on Friday, December 6th, in Altamira Plaza, home
base of the pro-coup forces.

On that date, around 6 p.m., "opposition leader" Carlos Ortega was holding
his nightly press conference covered live on Globovision TV, a key coup
supporter. There --  again, this was live, folks --  he was asked by a
supposed reporter about gunshots that had just been fired in Altamira
Plaza.

Reporters:
 here's a chronological lead worth following; Venezuelan citizen Valentin
Herrera later told the Cuban daily Granma that the timing of the live TV
question was bizarre because it came before the shots had been fired.

I don't know if that chronology accurately reflects the what happened or
not, but I do know that when statements like that, which are damaging to
the "opposition," are demonstrably false, the Foreros, the Millers, the
Gunsons and the other simulators are all over them like a cheap suit.
Their silence on that --  and other --  disturbing facts about the
violence of December 6th leads me to wonder.

There are some important facts, however, that we have been able to
confirm, and they directly contradict the Commercial Media's rush to blame
the shooting on Chavez and his supporters:
  Shots were fired that evening at Altamira Plaza, the base of the
coup-mongers, against innocent civilians, this time all on the opposition
side. Three people were assassinated and 28 wounded. That's a lot of shots
fired purportedly by one gunman, but facts are slow -- even two weeks
later - to dribble out of the opposition-controlled Municipal Police, the
first on the scene.

A shooter was apprehended. His ID had the name of "Joao de Gouveia," a
Portuguese citizen. I put the name in quotation marks because it now
appears that either there are two "Joao de Gouveias" of Portuguese descent
in Caracas (not a common Venezuelan name), or that the shooter was using a
skillfully forged ID of the sort that intelligence agencies are so
talented at creating. (Days later, members of the opposition chased, beat
to a pulp, and nearly lynched the other de Gouveia, a simple working man,
also of Portuguese descent, but who has lived 20 years in Caracas, even
though the shooter was --  and is -- still in jail. But this does give us
a glimpse into the irrationality of the opposition forces and the results
of the constant Commercial Media Psy-War upon their behavior in Caracas
this month.)

As reported above, Ortega was already on live TV, and without receiving
any facts, he immediately blamed the shooting on Chavez, calling the
president an assassin.

Ex-General Enrique Medina Gomez --  one of the April coup leaders relieved
from his post, and at that moment in Altamira Plaza --  also blamed the
shooting on Chavez and called on the Armed Forces, also via live TV, to
remove the President from office. In other words, he called not for
"elections," but for the opposition's real goal: a coup d'etat.

The plot gets even more bizarre: Within a few hours of the shooting,
Globovision claimed to have a "home video" made by a citizen, that showed
the shooter "de Gouveia" next to the car of a pro-Chavez official. The
video had the date and time: Thursday, December 5th, at 2:17 a.m. The
video, according to correspondents who had seen it, taken in darkness, was
fuzzy, but had someone with a clear resemblance to the shooter --  a
red-haired, white-skinned man --  standing at 5 feet and six inches tall.

The shooter "de Gouveia," however, stands at 5 feet and nine inches tall.

Globovision has not publicly made the "home video" available for
independent analysis by all sides.

With this strange "proof" the Commercial Media thereby concluded that the
shooter was from the Chavez camp (as if the Chavez forces would have had
any motive at all to repeat the horrible pro-coup script of April 11th).

But the chronology that placed "de Gouveia" in Caracas at 2:17 a.m.
December 5th doesn't add up, and here's why: The tall red-headed "de
Gouveia" arrived in Caracas from Funchal on the Portuguese Island of
Madeira --  160 miles off the coast of Africa --  at 4:30 p.m. later that
same day --  14 hours later than the alleged "home video" had been taken.
When the Venezuelan government made the immigration forms public that
showed this fact, it was accused of inventing it. But days later --  in a
story not touched by the US or British correspondents, but covered in the
Portuguese press --  the Portuguese airlines TAP-Air Portugal confirmed
that the man with the ID that said "Joao de Gouveia" had been on its
flight to Venezuela that day.

Do the math, kind reader:
  According to the TAP-Air Portugal website, there is a Thursday direct
flight lasting 7 hours and 25 minutes from Funchal (at 12:15 Madeira
Island time) to Caracas (at 4:15 Caracas time).

But the only flights from Caracas to Funchal on Thursdays make two stops
--  Porto and Lisbon, Portugal --  and last 12 hours and 35 minutes.

Even using a direct flight on his own chartered jet, it would still have
been mathematically impossible for "de Gouveia" or anybody to have been in
Caracas at 2:17 a.m., gone to the airport and flown to Funchal and then
turn around immediately and fly back to Caracas in just 14 hours!
Mathematically, the shooter "de Gouveia" could not have been the same
person in the Globovision "home video."

Does Globovision correct that evil distortion? Of course it does not.

The profile of the "de Gouveia" in custody also has the mark of what some
reporters have called a "deranged" individual: a classic "patsy," unable
to pull off such a stunt by himself. The opposition will soon enough join
in the change of portrayal of this shooter from that of a professional
government hit-man to that of a crazy: On a video, "de Gouveia" did say
that the same pro-coup General Medina Gomez had paid him to shoot at his
own crowd: That video was not aired by Commercial TV stations in
Venezuela.

There was an interesting story here for U.S. and British correspondents to
investigate and report on. They chose not to do so.

snip

MID-DECEMBER:  THE OIL SECTOR SABOTAGE

There was, this month, one sector of oil company executives that claimed
they were on "strike," but who in fact have spent this month actively
working to lock-out rank-and-file employees and, according to their own
public statements, to facilitate the sabotage, including eco-terrorism, of
oil facilities.

According to public records at the Venezuela Secretary of Mining and
Energy (MEM, in its Spanish initials), these were the annual salaries of
the 22 major oil "strike" leaders, including their bonuses, paid
vacations, and other benefits, at the trough of the state-owned oil
company, Petroleum of Venezuela, or PdVSA:
Edgar Paredes makes 837 million bolivars a year ($643,000 U.S. dollars).

The lowest paid of these 22 ringleaders, Luis Ram'rez, makes 310 million
bolivars a year ($238,000 U.S. dollars).

The highest paid, Karl Mazeika, makes 990 million bolivars a year
($761,000).

Full article at http://www.narconews.com/Issue26/article571.html




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