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Judi Lynn

(160,592 posts)
Thu Mar 27, 2014, 05:56 AM Mar 2014

The Strategy of the Venezuelan Opposition

The Strategy of the Venezuelan Opposition
and How it Works

Steve Ellner

The strategy and tactics of the Venezuelan opposition is a replay of events that took place leading up to the coup against Hugo Chávez on April 11, 2002 and is similar (although in some ways quite different) from the script that has been used in the Ukraine and elsewhere. The blatant distortions and in some cases lies of the media (CNN in Spanish playing a lead role) represent an essential element in the strategy.

There are two main groups that the opposition has mobilized and from all appearances the two act in coordination even though their style, and even social background, differs from one another. One group is non-violent and the other engages in acts of aggression in some cases endangering lives.

On the one hand, students and other young people carry out protests which the media and the opposition deceptively call “peaceful.” These mobilizations involve to a disproportionate extent students from private universities and operate almost exclusively in wealthy areas whose mayors (and in some cases governors) belong to the opposition. The protests are not legal, even though many of the protesters are convinced (or have been convinced by their leaders) that they are exercising the constitutional right of dissent. However, nearly all of these protests take over main avenues and highways in urban areas, typically forcing traffic to a halt and then having to pass through just one lane. It often takes hours for cars to pass through these points. In most cases the protesters consist of between 15 and 80 people, and in a few cases over one hundred.

The second group sets up barricades using garbage bags, trees, boulders and barbed wire. In addition, they have dispersed oil on roads in some cases causing fatal accidents. For an excellent description of these actions in the city of Merida near the Colombian border where the violence has been most intense, see the article by Miguel Tinker Salas, who resided there over the last month: “What is happening in Venezuela?”

More:
http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/957.php

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Judi Lynn

(160,592 posts)
5. Very useful material. Especially interesting this paragraph:
Thu Mar 27, 2014, 07:47 PM
Mar 2014
HRW's own report is accompanied by a photograph of what is claimed to be “a tank in San Cristobal”. The “tank”, was a statue that had been moved into the middle of the road and vandalized by opposition protesters.

Epic silliness, isn't it? For chrissakes. They should realize so many people see through them by now.
 

juxtaposed

(2,778 posts)
7. the sad thing is they don't, in a matter of weeks this will be the next fight for freedom, we will
Thu Mar 27, 2014, 09:06 PM
Mar 2014

all watch as this government crumbles to the works of fuck the poor and screw your environment ppl. We will see thousands of deaths, murders, killings...and for what ????? Fucking Stock Holders on wall street.
This is real and we are doing it!
Everyone should know.

hack89

(39,171 posts)
2. Anything to not talk about the economic mismanagement that is really driving the unrest
Thu Mar 27, 2014, 12:12 PM
Mar 2014

how about an article on VZ's currency regulations and how they have hamstrung the economy?

 

juxtaposed

(2,778 posts)
3. do you have a link? anything will do, mismanagement of an economy is subjective from what your
Thu Mar 27, 2014, 07:31 PM
Mar 2014

source or perspective is.

Judi Lynn

(160,592 posts)
4. Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness. Post that link, why not?
Thu Mar 27, 2014, 07:41 PM
Mar 2014

Don't tell me to do it for you. Thanks.

Judi Lynn

(160,592 posts)
6. Information regarding the Eisenhower Foundation which has assisted the opposition,
Thu Mar 27, 2014, 08:31 PM
Mar 2014

referred to occasionally in articles posted in this forum:


Soft and Undercover Coups d’État

The Albert Einstein Institution: non-violence according to the CIA

by Thierry Meyssan

Non violence as a political action technique can be used for anything. During the 1980s, NATO drew its attention on its possible use to organize the Resistance in Europe after the invasion of the Red Army. It’s been 15 years since CIA began using it to overthrow inflexible governments without provoking international outrage, and its ideological façade is philosopher Gene Sharp’s Albert Einstein Institution. Voltaire Network reveals its amazing activity, from Lithuania to Serbia, Venezuela and Ukraine.


Unknown to the public, Gene Sharp formulated a theory on non violence as a political weapon. Also he first helped NATO and then CIA train the leaders of the soft coups of the last 15 years. Since the 50s, Gene Sharp studied Henry D. Thoreau and Mohandas K. Gandhi’s theory of civil disobedience. For these authors, obedience and disobedience were religious and moral matters, not political ones. However, to preach had political consequences; what could be considered an aim could be perceived as a mean. Civil disobedience can be considered then as a political, even military, action technique.

In 1983, Sharp designed the Non Violent Sanctions Program in the Center for International Affairs of Harvard University where he did some social sciences studies on the possible use of civil disobedience by Western Europe population in case of a military invasion carried out by the troops of the Warsaw Pact. At the same time, he founded in Boston the Albert Einstein Institution with the double purpose of financing his own researches and applying his own models to specific situations. In 1985, he published a book titled "Making Europe Unconquerable " [1] whose second edition included a preface by George Kennan, the Father of the Cold War. In 1987, the association was funded by the U.S. Institute for Peace and hosted seminars to instruct its allies on defense based on civil disobedience. General Fricaud-Chagnaud, on his part, introduced his "civil deterrence" concept at the Foundation of National Defense Studies. [2]

General Edward B Atkeson, seconded by the US Army to the Director of the CIA, [3] integrates the institute into the apparatus of the US stay-behind network interfering in the affairs of allied states. Focusing on the morality of the means of action avoids debate on the legitimacy of the action. Non-violence, accepted as good in itself and an integral part of democracy, facilitates whitewashing of covert actions which are intrinsically non-democratic.

In 1989, when the Albert Institution became well known, Gene Sharp began to advice anticommunist movements. He participated in the establishment of Burma’s Democratic Alliance - a coalition of notable anticommunists that quickly joined the military government - and Taiwan’s Progressive Democratic Party - which favored the independence of the island from communist China, something U.S. officially opposed. He also unified the Tibetan opposition under Dalai Lama and tried to form a dissident group within PLO so that Palestinian nationalists would stop terrorism [4] (he made the necessary arrangements with Colonel Reuven Gal, [5] director of the Psychological Action division of the Israeli armed forces, to train them secretly in the American Embassy in Tel Aviv).

More:
http://www.voltairenet.org/article30032.html
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