6 June, 2007

Some 50 young students were posing this Sunday before the cameras of Globovision Television, in the Venezuelan capital. They were all glamorous and well dressed, but they were sitting on the pavement, with their mouths covered by adhesive tape, and their hands in surgical gloves. At a given signal, they would all raise their arms, while a reporter said, "This peaceful protest can be understood anywhere in the world, since it uses common language of freedom and non-violence."

With a story told like that, an unaware, misinformed or manipulated TV viewer in Paris, Madrid, Brasilia or New York, could end up supporting the students´ protest. But if we told them three truths, their perception of this scene would definitely change. 1) Globovision is a fascist TV Channel, which assumes the role of an opposition political party. 2) There is irrefutable evidence about the CIA involvement behind the recent demonstrations that have taken place in Caracas. 3) If the adhesive tapes was to be removed form the students mouths and they were given a microphone for them to talk, we would find out that the students do not have arguments of their own to back their demands.

It is obvious that we are witnessing another attempt at a coup, or what the seasoned politician Jose Vicente Rangel has described as a "continued coup." In his recent denunciation last Saturday, after the impressive march of supporters that took to the streets of Caracas, President Hugo Chavez warned that "agents at Washington’s service are trying to spearhead one of those colored revolutions between quotation marks, (…) In Ukraine, for example, it worked and did not work, because what that country is living now is a situation of total lack of governance. That White House strategy, of the so called smooth coups, or colored revolutions, as some people prefer to call them in some parts of the world, have a relative success, but here, we are going to obliterate it…"

"The Symbols —said Chavez— are the same: the black shirts, the flags in reverse. Can´t you see the show they are staging for which they use some young kids? When the media arrive, above all, when it is the foreign press, they all run and kneel down before the police who are not doing anything against then, they kneel down and then raise their hands. It is a staged show, so that the images are seen around the world. This is the same procedure they used in countries whose governments were not subordinated to Washington, this is what they are trying to do here, using some media outlets, playing with the emotions of some Venezuelans."

"OPTOR", code word for the Coup.

It was the sovereign decision of the Venezuelan government to not renew RCTV´s license RCTV, this has been the excuse used by the counter revolution to activate its new destabilizing plan, a new link of the "continued coup", which began in April of 2002. First it was the media conflict under the pretext of "defending freedom of speech." The "sudden" students’ demonstrations followed, and last, the involvement of well-known journalists and actors of private media in attempts to mobilize Venezuelans to take to the streets against Chavez.

The strategy used could not go by unnoticed: they used the opposition leadership in public and private universities (let us recall whose historic privilege it has been to access higher education in Venezuela) and they dispatched the students to the streets, taking care that they did not appear to be linked to the unpopular opposition parties. But they missed one very enlightening element: in one of the marches in favour of RCTV, Bowen Rosten, CIA Director for Latin America, surrounded by other agents, was spotted (and photographed). His visit to Caracas and his presence with the opposition is not mere chance. Those days, massive emails, pamphlets, and paintings on the streets carried the word "OPTOR", which in Serbian language means "RESISTANCE."

In order to understand the origin of "OPTOR" it is important to remember that it was Gene Sharp, from the Albert Einstein Institute in the United States, who conducted a research several decades ago about the possibility of toppling governments by "non-violent" means, disguised coup d´etat methods applied by the CIA as of 1989 in Eastern European countries. It´s most successful experiment was probably the one used in Serbia against Slobodan Milosevic, turning Gene Sharp and his team into the star tool for the expansionist imperial strategy.

It was Gene Sharp who worked as an advisor to the Venezuelan opposition during the Recall Referendum, he was the one who led the organization "Sumate" during the marches of August of 2004,and he was the one who instigated the implementation of a technique that had worked in other parts of the world; crying foul and accusing the government of electoral fraud and hence, destabilizing the country. This time, the script is quite clear: the opposition leadership has taken the rearguard; one TV station (Globovision) has taken the leadership of the opposition; the students have become the "vanguard" on the streets, the protests are being presented systematically as "peaceful" and "non-violent" demonstrations and the main argument is that "the closure of RCTV is a most serious attack against Venezuelan freedom of speech and democracy."

It is obvious that there is a blatant dramatization of the political fact; the emotional reinforcement of the student protest is achieved through the "victimizing" of some artists and journalists, which are flooding the TV screens with tears, nostalgia and moving images. The country, according to the new strategy to overthrow Chavez is a great soap opera, which every day gets to its most expected chapter. There is a search for escalation of the crisis, so that some bloody events take place that will justify an international uproar against the Bolivarian government. While all this occurs within the country, three former Panamanian presidents (Mireya Moscoso, Guillermo Endara, and Ernesto Perez Balladares) are lobbying to obtain a condemnation of Venezuela in the General Assembly of the OAS, which is taking place this week in the Panamanian capital, hence achieving the continental isolation of Chavez and his red revolution.

December 28, 2006, President Hugo Chávez announced the decision of the State not to renew the license to the consortium of companies 1BC (operator of the channel RCTV, among other media). That sovereign decision was criticized immediately by the United States. Immediately, the republican legislator Connie Mack (a ferocious anti-Cuban politician) urged Bush to take real measures to break this growing threat in our patio, and she suggested beginning direct television transmissions to Venezuela, just as they do with the poorly’named Radio and TV Martí.

For five months, the debate over RCTV was tinted with a media strategy that colleague Ernesto Navarrese, a journalist of TELESUR, identifies as the myths and the facts: "It wanted to demonstrate that the Government didn't renew the concession to RCTV because of its criticism of President Chávez. The truth is that 80 percent of the channels of TV and radio stations open in Venezuela belong to the private sector, the same thing happens with the 118 newspapers of regional and national coverage; they all enjoy the freedom to report, to analyze and to express opinions without interference. Most expressed in a strident way their opposition to the government and they do so without any threat or consequences. No newspaper, television channel or radio station has been closed for its political views or for opposing President Chavez. Equally, no journalist has been put in prison or punished for doing his job."

For those who don't know the truth or don't want to recognize it, here are a few facts about RCTV. In 1976 it was closed for three days by the government of Carlos Andres Perez. The reason? For diffusing false and tendentious news. In 1980, the government of Luis Herrera Campins ordered its closing for 36 hours for "sensationalist programming, dismal scenes and related to not very edifying fact." In 1981, the same Government closed it for 24 hours for transmitting scenes considered "pornographic." In 1984, it was admonished for ridiculing "in a humiliating manner" President Herrera Campins and his wife. In 1991, the Supreme Court of Justice ordered it to suspend a program. All of this happened before the election of President Cháavez, but nobody came out onto the street in defense of RCTV and of the transnational interests that it represents.

What is being defended today by a minority is not the right to freedom of expression, but the interests of an oligarchy. They are trying to maintain at all costs the "Granier Doctrine", according to which when an economic group accedes to a concession of the bandwidth, for its favors to the government of the day, that concession is for life, and its non renewal on the part of a democratic government, that doesn't negotiate its sovereignty, is "an attack on freedom."

This Sunday, during an interview on the television program that the former vice-president Jose Vicente Rangel chairs, the respected journalist and director of the newspaper Ultimas Noticias, Eleazar Díaz Rangel, assured that "there is no other country in Latin America where it is possible to exercise journalism, for information as for opinion, as in Venezuela." Nevertheless, Díaz Rangel also asserted that what directs the information in the press, radio and television is not the truth, as should happen in the exercise of professional journalism, but managerial political interests": The fundamental thing is not to inform the truth, but to be in the service of politics."

It is not by accident that while the CIA organized the movement of students onto the streets of Caracas, several important newspapers in Latin America were linked in the publication of an accusation (special dossier) against President Chávez. It is evident that the imperialistic plan foresaw an international strategy that has been able to involve some incautious or uncommitted people. With the manipulation of international public opinion everything is easier, according to the strategy of Gene Sharp, the strategist behind the colored revolutions.

In this play, once again, the CNN chain has played its role as mis’informer. By sending Harris Whitbeck to Caracas (a well-known correspondent for Latin America and in countries in conflict, who had already during the previous days and amid the " brief" coup of Carmona, in April 2002, reflected the events partially, distorting the facts against the Bolivarian Revolution), the director of the channel assuredly lit a red light to its television audience": if Whitbeck is there it is because Venezuela is at war." In a random way, they have placed on their webpage a survey that asks surfers: Has Venezuelan democracy been damaged by the government's decision to close a private TV channel? And they use the results as "scientific" data that proves the dictatorial road of Chavez.

Clearly, the strategists of the colored revolutions chose a bad reason to start their macabre plan. The lie, amen of the hefty international campaign, will fade in the same way the signal of RCTV faded, a TV company that believed in party politics that sowed false values to Venezuelan society, which called for the assassination of the president, and opened their space to mediocrity, banality and pornography. It is not for something like that that a people decides to change the color of its Revolution. In Venezuela it is still red.