3 more deaths in Venezuela as both sides march

[Zorro]

Source: AP

Three more people were reported killed in Venezuela's political unrest as both supporters and opponents of President Nicolas Maduro took to the streets in new shows of force Saturday.

A man identified as Jesus Orlando Labrador died from a gunshot wound in the chest Saturday in the southwestern city of Merida, Mayor Carlos Garcia told The Associated Press. He said it happened when a suspected group of hard-line government supporters began shooting at anti-government protesters.

Another victim, Argenis Hernandez, was shot in the stomach Friday by an angry motorist as he and other protesters manned a barricade on a highway outside Valencia, Venezuela's third-largest city and a major focal point of protests against Maduro. He died at a hospital before dawn Saturday, local officials said.

In San Cristobal, the city where the wave of unrest began, bus driver Wilfredo Rey was fatally shot Friday night after a group of Maduro supporters roared into an anti-government neighborhood on motorcycles and began firing indiscriminately, said Sergio Vergara, who has headed the local government since Mayor Daniel Ceballos, an outspoken critic of the president, was arrested last week on charges of fomenting violence.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/3-more-deaths-venezuela-both-sides-march-002745219.html

[Archae]

1. Donchu know?

All the shooters are true VN patriots, and the victims are all fascists hired by the CIA!

[MADem]

2. Those colectivos are murderers. They arrested the daughter of the Italian consul, too...

Some sights of the day:








:large

[7962]

3. Now you know all those people are paid by the CIA & the Koch brothers, right?

[MADem]

4. The colectivos?

Or all of those people pictured?

That would be a hell of a lot of checks! They'd better pay them in dollars because the bolivars are worth nothing.

This is a student-led movement. It has nothing to do with CIA or Koch. It's funny, though, how people explain away the dwindling enthusiasm for Maduro's counter-demonstrations with that refrain, over and over again.

Amazing how the "CIA" can control a bunch of college kids who just want

--an end to crime (it was an attempted rape on a campus that got them angry in the first place)...

--an end to wholesale murder....

--an end to censorship...

--an end to shortages, scarcities and rationing...

--an end to rampant inflation...

--an end to brutality and fear....

--an end to VZ's wealth being given away cheap instead of spent on infrastructure at home...

Only those who can't see how these kids aren't all about "the politicians," but all about "the nation" will keep pushing the Maduro themes!

[Archae]

5. You keep forgetting.

"Maduro can do no wrong."

[MADem]

6. Heh heh...

He sure thinks so...but his latest attempt at a "counter demonstration" was a bit of a fail. Thin crowd, unenthusiastic...!

[7962]

7. You got that right!

[fasttense]

8. So sad to see the right wing propaganda

being swallowed hook, line and sinker. Amazing how easily lies become truth when enough money backs it.

You can be absolutely sure that when the rich elite are in charge again, they will not allow protests like these.

[uncommonlink]

9. So all those protesters are in the streets because of RW propaganda,

and not because of food shortages, high inflation, high crime rates?
All those people are that gullible?

[fasttense]

10. Here is a little reality

Remember how powerful the teabaggers were? Remember how they protested against getting decent health care for themselves?

It seems with enough money and media connections, people can be easily fooled. Just look at how easily Hitler came to power.

But not only are these protests causing deaths and disruptions, Colombia has attacked the Venezuelan border.

"The starting point for this conflict is in the invasion of paramilitary forces from Colombia, supported by the Obama Government and the reactionary ex-Colombian president Uribe, and allied with the reactionary right wing of the Mesa de Unidad (Venezuela) namely the Primera Justicia and Voluntad Popular parties, who together currently control the state of Táchira. These forces are now attempting to move into Merida and Zulia state and plan to move further east as control is gained towards Caracas thereby unleashing chaos, road blockages leading to further food and goods shortages. Such action aims to create an environment that lead to the overthrow or transition of the Maduro Government and Chavism, which in such circumstances could create the conditions for civil war."

They are more concerned with gaining personal power than they are for the welfare of the country.

So why don't we see fancy pictures of the border attacks? It's not something the rich elite want you to focus on.

[7962]

12. Please provide a reputable link for this claim, as well as a link to statements by Maduro on this.

Why dont we see pictures of the border attacks? The "rich elite" control the state media now? I'm sure Maduro would be raving daily about this and putting all the blame on the US. And where is the VZ military? They dont respond to "invasions" of their own country?

[uncommonlink]

13. It's pretty much bullspit.

Maduro's losing control of the country, even his base is protesting the conditions in the country and his supporters have to defend him with wild, unsubstantiated allegations.

[7962]

14. Yes, I'm still waiting for the proof. I guess we'll both be waiting.....

[MADem]

21. What's astounding is that the Maduro propaganda machine, which controls all the media, cannot

"catapult the propaganda."

The crime, the shortages, the censorship--it's affecting even the long-term Chavistas. They're defecting, some covertly, others, less so.



http://instagram.com/p/l3bagERDsn/
20 hours ago
Hoy el gocho se subió a la tarima y el señor se quito su camisa del psuv para unirse a nosotros #22m #plazadelarepublica

[MADem]

16. The "teabaggers" are twenty people with thirty portapotties.

You just can't explain that the demonstrations in the streets by the estudiantil movement outshines the few lame government counter-efforts by a factor of twenty or more.

Maduro has a problem--and it's HOME GROWN, like it or not.

Here's how Maduro takes to the streets....



And here's how the students and their supporters do it:

[MADem]

15. Yeah, here's some "propaganda" for you....

http://www.lapatilla.com/site/2014/03/22/las-fotos-aereas-de-la-marcha-por-la-libertad-en-caracas/

Nothing to see here....move along!

[fasttense]

17. So when the rich elite capitalist take over Venezuela again

Do you really think they are going to allow any protests at all? Do you really think they will give a crap about anything but their money?

So very sad to see so many manipulated by so few with huge amounts of US money.

These tactics are inspired by the “Gene Sharp” protocol.

Venezuela enjoy what remains of your free country. You wont have it for long once the US has finished playing with it.

http://www.caribbeannewsnow.com/headline-Commentary%3A-The-real-meaning-of-the-protests-in-Venezuela-20370.html

[hack89]

19. Maduro is ruling under emergency decree powers

That enable him to bypass every elected official in VZ. They are destroying their own democracy without US help.

[MADem]

23. Listen to you, with your old-school binary assumptions!!!

The "leaders" of this movement are not the 20 or 30 opposition groups -- though the western press keeps covering "Capriles" or even the imprisoned "Lopez" like they are the story. They are NOT the story. They are NOT driving this movement. They are FOLLOWING the emerging leadership, and that leadership is young and energetic and they aren't going to sit down because scolds like you tell them to.

The story is kids like Juan Requesens--he still lives with his parents, he's a student leader, and he makes more sense than ANY of the politicians--THIS is the type of person who is getting everyone in MASSIVE numbers out in the street..... the GNB, the State Police, the colectivos...they've murdered others, but if they don't kill this kid he'll be president one day.



Keep looking the wrong way, though. You're singing an old tired song, and everyone save you has moved on to a new tune.

It doesn't matter what anyone thinks save the people of VZ. And day by day, they become angrier and angrier that a country with so much treasure cannot keep milk, diapers, flour, toilet paper, and soap on the supermarket shelves. And after standing in line for three hours to get what little is available, the people have to risk being robbed of their frigging GROCERIES as they try to make their way home. That inflation is out of control. That crime, and MURDER, are out of control. Never mind the oppression and censorship, BASIC needs are not being met.

[Zorra]

18. Yeah, sad to see posters on this left leaning website rooting for Venezuela's fascist teabaggers

to overthrow the leftist democratic government of Venezuela.

There's no doubt that this protest/coup attempt is being fueled and led by Venezuela's RW extremist opposition, and there's no doubt that these protests are continuing for one reason only: To overthrow the government of Venezuela. Most of the protest activity is being participated in by RW protesters from the wealthier areas, and the protests are occurring in these more affluent areas.

Maduro has repeatedly asked the Opposition to engage in talks, and they always refuse, because they don't want to talk, they want to overthrow the government.

If they keep their bullshit up, Maduro will have no choice but to jail thousands of them.

Western media is all owned by wealthy RW 1% capitalists who can't stand the idea of a country not being under the thumb of the 1%. Every article they print is one sided, totally in favor of the RW coup. They want the government of Venezuela to be overthrown.

The Truth about Venezuela: A Revolt of the Well-off, Not a 'Terror Campaign'

Images forge reality, granting a power to television and video and even still photographs that can burrow deep into people’s consciousness without them even knowing it. I thought that I, too, was immune to the repetitious portrayals of Venezuela as a failed state in the throes of a popular rebellion. But I wasn’t prepared for what I saw in Caracas this month: how little of daily life appeared to be affected by the protests, the normality that prevailed in the vast majority of the city. I, too, had been taken in by media imagery.

Major media outlets have already reported that Venezuela’s poor have not joined the right-wing opposition protests, but that is an understatement: it’s not just the poor who are abstaining – in Caracas, it’s almost everyone outside of a few rich areas like Altamira, where small groups of protesters engage in nightly battles with security forces, throwing rocks and firebombs and running from tear gas.

Walking from the working-class neighborhood of Sabana Grande to the city center, there was no sign that Venezuela is in the grip of a “crisis” that requires intervention from the Organization of American States (OAS), no matter what John Kerry tells you. The metro also ran very well, although I couldn’t get off at Alta Mira station, where the rebels had set up their base of operations until their eviction this week.
snip---
Travel provides little more than a reality check, of course, and I visited Caracas mainly to gather data on the economy. But I came away skeptical of the narrative, reported daily in the media, that increasing shortages of basic foods and consumer goods are a serious motivation for the protests. The people who are most inconvenienced by those shortages are, of course, the poor and working classes. But the residents of Los Palos Grandes and Altamira, where I saw real protests happening – they have servants to stand in line for what they need, and they have the income and storage space to accumulate some inventory.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10511

Venezuela: It’s the Opposition That’s Anti-Democratic

1. Just because there’s people in the streets doesn’t mean they’re on our side. We live in the era of the protester, and violent protest has become a media spectacle par excellence. In the wake of Tahrir and Occupy, we have somehow been conditioned to automatically feel sympathy for all men and women taking to the streets and facing down lines of riot police. Now there’s a YouTube clip floating around the web of a Venezuelan girl with an obnoxious upper-class American accent recounting the story of Venezuela’s heroic student uprising against an “illegitimate government”. At first sight, the video — which garnered over 2 million views so far — seems to neatly fit the narrative of the global uprisings. But anyone with even the slightest inkling to do some fact-checking or background research will quickly discover that the protests in Venezuela are nothing like Occupy or the Chilean student movement. You wouldn’t sympathize with a nationalist insurrection in Kiev or a royalist rebellion in Thailand. So why side with the US-funded right-wing opposition in Venezuela?

2. The protests in Venezuela are orchestrated by the right-wing oligarchy. Let’s get the facts straight: plenty of Venezuelans are taking to the streets with legitimate grievances about violent crime, high inflation and food shortages — and there is no doubt that the Venezuelan riot police are indeed behaving violently towards many of these protesters. All police brutality should be roundly condemned. The people of Venezuela should be allowed to freely express their indignation in public without fear of repression. But it bears emphasizing in this respect that at least two of the protesters’ main grievances have been deliberately escalated by the oligarchic elite itself: through extensivehoarding and smuggling of consumer products (giving rise to shortages and fueling price inflation) and massive speculation on the foreign currency market (pushing down the Bolívar and feeding into further inflation). This is precisely the type of economic warfare that the US-backed Chilean opposition drew upon prior to the overthrow of Salvador Allende in 1973.

Moreover, even though the protests initially began as a student mobilization on Venezuela’s national Youth Day (February 12), they have in the past week become effectively subsumed under the leadership of the most right-wing section of the opposition alliance, Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), led by Maria Corina Machado and Leopoldo López. As the firebrand leaders of the most anti-democratic faction of the oligarchic elite, López and Machado have been actively calling for the overthrow of Nicolas Maduro’s democratically-elected government and have urged the continuation of violent protest until he resigns. In the last 15 years, these people have shown themselves to be intent on restoring their class privilege at any costs, even if it requires casualties among the general population. They are deliberately fueling violence and social unrest in order to delegitimize and oust the government.

5. The right-wing opposition is itself thoroughly anti-democratic.The really dangerous forces in Venezuela right now are not inside the “illegitimate government” but in the thoroughly anti-democratic right-wing segment of the opposition. A quick glance at the two opposition leaders — Maria Corina Machado and Leopoldo López — reveals enough. Both were original signatories of the infamous 2002 Carmona Decree, which temporarily dissolved the Chávez government following an attempted coup d’étât by the oligarchic elite and right-wing elements in the military. López, meanwhile, orchestrated the violent clashes in front of the Presidential Palace, which led to dozens of deaths and provided the pretext for the coup. During the coup, López even personally participated in the unconstitutional arrest (i.e., kidnapping) of Interior Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/10389

[hack89]

20. Maduro is ruling with emergency decree powers

That allow him to rule by decree. Let's talk about who is undemocratic here.

[Archae]

22. Of course. Maduro says he's "socialist" so he gets a free pass.

The "Rule By Decree" group.

Castro, (either one,) Maduro, and Mugabe.

Think it's only a coincidence these three are all good buddies?

[MADem]

25. Remember, a late lamented beloved was AhmadiNejad of Iran.

Rohani isn't nearly so cozy!

[Zorra]

26. I suspect Obama would do the same if US Teabaggers were trying to overthrow

our government.

At least, I hope he would.

[hack89]

27. He can't. The Constitution forbids it.

Besides, Maduro has had those powers since well before the demonstrations started.

[MADem]

24. VENEZUELANALYSIS is a blatant propaganda rag.

It's like quoting The Daily Caller for favorable comments about the Tea Party.

Fail.