Skip to main content

The first-hand truth about Venezuela contrary to the Western media propaganda

A detailed breakdown from the Attorney General's Office, which has recently been increasingly at odds with the government of President Maduro, shows that of the 73 people that died, 11 were the responsibility of state security forces, 21 of them has been attributed to the opposition, 13 due to looting, and two due to government civilian protests, and 26 are still under investigation. One of the victims of the protests was Orlando Figuera, who was burned alive last month when opposition demonstrators accused him of being a thief or a Chavista. He died from his wounds last Monday.


Empire Files host Abby Martin just returned from Venezuela where she saw first hand how violent opposition protesters attempt to intimidate reporters and thereby give a false impression of what is happening. Martin spoke to Sharmini Peries and The Real News about her experience.

Martin described the brutality of the right-wing protesters against journalists who want only to transfer an objective picture of what's going on in the country. She describes the unprecedented violence by these protesters against Chavistas and journalists, even from Reuters.

She also describes how these anti-government protesters are painted as peaceful, democracy-loving freedom fighters, something that we saw in Ukraine, Syria, and elsewhere by the same US-funded organizations with the assistance of the Western mainstream media propaganda.

Martin also referred to Orlando Figuera, another Afro-Venezuelan who was burned alive last month when opposition demonstrators accused him of being a thief or a Chavista. He died from his wounds last Monday.

The Western media mouthpieces are doing their job, which is propaganda as usual. The recipe is known. You present the half truth, with a big overdose of exaggeration. The establishment parrots are demonizing Socialism, but they won't ever tell you about the money that the US is spending, feeding the Right-Wing groups and opposition to proceed in provocative operations, in order to create instability. They won't tell you about the financial war conducted through the oil prices, manipulated by the Saudis, the close US ally.

Martin's key points:

I was going there as a fiercely independent, investigative journalist with the show produced completely independently from teleSUR, to tell exactly the reality that I was seeing, and I even told teleSUR management that I was going to report exactly what the truth was that I uncovered. So when we went there, I was very surprised to see that the reality was vastly different than what we are being told. I mean, you hear all these horrific stories from on the ground, amidst these protests, and you keep hearing 60 dead, Maduro kills 60 protestors, Maduro's forces. And what you realize when you get there is, the country is pretty much split in two. It's heavily divided between Chavistas and the opposition, and of course, amidst such economic, such a horrible economic crisis, people are going to have really strong opinions, but there are certainly huge marches on the ground on both sides.

Tens of thousands of people marching for the government, for the opposition, and these are peaceful marches, jubilant atmosphere. Things are very calm, and then what you realize is, when you see these violent statistics and casualties and the death toll that's rising, and the harsh quote unquote "repression" from government forces, it's not happening at these marches. It's happening at something called guarimbas. It's a sustained blockade that a small contingent of protestors create to provoke a response from government officials, so we actually followed one of these guarimbas one night. We were almost attacked just simply for being there. We got accosted by a hyped-up group of protestors who were saying, "What are you? Who are you with?", demanding to see our press credentials, and I was scared for my life, knowing that if we admitted that we were from teleSUR, we could have gotten lynched, burned alive, beaten to death by the mobs that you see happening all too often, so we, of course, said that we were independent journalists, that we were from America, and then they immediately said, "Okay, great. We can use you, essentially, for propaganda." They said, "Do not film anything that we do. Just film what the government does to us."

It's not as easy as that when you have hundreds of death threats coming and you have to take it seriously, especially when these people do act on it there, and there are teleSUR journalists risking their lives to still be on the ground at these protests, and now have a target on their back. It started off on Twitter, of course, Instagram, Facebook, which are all manageable until it translates into real life. So you see this actually being translated into real life, where now we're getting harassed in person by the same people who are inciting people to lynch us, so we have to have security now.

We're talking about these protestors that have attacked hospitals, burned down government buildings. They burned down the Housing Ministry, which has provided 1.6 million homes for poor people over the last decade. Political assassinations, directly assassinating Chavistas, attacking communes. We visited one building that was, all the windows were broken. It was just simply an art commune that gave out free dance lessons and music lessons to local kids. It's kind of sick when you see on the front lines what is being attacked and why, what is the political motivation behind these lynch mobs.

Before I get into the story that happened to us and what's going on to journalists, you mentioned that young man, Orlando Figuera, that was burned alive. This is the third Afro-Venezuelan who has been lynched, attacked by a mob during these protests, black, and the clip with his family being interviewed, and even him before he tragically died from his severe burns. He said that they said, "Hey, black guy, are you a Chavista?" And they threw a Molotov cocktail on him.

They have pulled bus drivers out of the buses and torched the buses. They, throwing explosives at people, so it is just quite astounding not only is that happening, but then when you look at what happens to journalists there. Before we went, of course, we heard even Reuters journalists had been attacked by these people, but we know how dangerous it is to be a state-run journalist there, which is why we didn't say that we were openly with teleSUR.

But we didn't know how bad it was until after we were there on the ground reporting, because once the photos came out that we were there and started circulating and tying us back to teleSUR, then things got really, really bad. A complete fake propaganda campaign, we basically became the center of a fake news viral campaign in Venezuela started and fomented by major opposition leaders, and the media, major academics there, that were propagating a theory that Mike and I were actually spies infiltrating the protest to collect intelligence for the GNB, the Venezuelan intelligence services, based on absolutely nothing, based on me doing my job as a journalist going there and actually trying to get the truth, to cover all sides. I mean, I put my life on the line. We all put our lives on the line to get this story from these people creating these barricades, and the peaceful marches on all sides, average Venezuelan from the streets.

The clear assault on the press is from the opposition who doesn't want you to report the truth. They put up free press as this beacon, but they don't want you to report anything that contradicts their narrative, even when it's completely proven by the Attorney General herself, who was even at odds with Maduro, as you mentioned.

So when we dare to bring up the fact that the opposition was responsible for half the deaths, because half of the story's been omitted by the Western media and these human rights watch organizations, we became subjected to a lynch mob. Not only was this fake news perpetrated around about us, but it incited hundreds of death threats, actual lynch threats. I've never been subjected to actual lynch threats before, and it was just all the same thing. "Lynch them. Lynch them. Burn them. Throw Molotov cocktails on them. We know what to do to infiltrators. Do to them what we've done to the other infiltrators," saying like, "Burn them alive." If we were still there, we would have a target on our back, and we've seen that play out in the wake of us leaving, where a teleSUR journalist actually just got attacked with Molotov cocktails, nails, and shot in the back by opposition protestors when she was clearly marked press and standing with cameramen. This is not the first time journalists have been attacked. Someone else from Globovisión was doused with gasoline and luckily escaped before they were burned alive.

If this was happening to journalists in any other part of the world, there would be a huge outcry from international watchdogs, but unfortunately, because it's Venezuela, and because the U.S. empire wants regime change there, this is completely obfuscated, and in fact, these people are painted as peaceful, democracy-loving freedom fighters, and it makes me sick, because I see the same thing played out in Ukraine, Syria, time and again, and I was there. We risked our lives and were getting a lynch mob incited against us, and there's not a peep from these people. Instead, you see Ken Roth from Human Rights Watch actually calling for a violent coup and has the audacity to just completely marginalize the real situation.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Oct. 7 Reports Implode: Beheaded Babies, NY Times Scandal, & More

Glenn Greenwald    

Πώς ο Γκρίνμπεργκ μπορεί να θάψει το καθεστώς Μητσοτάκη

του system failure    Είναι ξεκάθαρο ότι η αναμφίβολη πρωτοκαθεδρία του καθεστώτος Μητσοτάκη οφείλεται σχεδόν αποκλειστικά σε μια άκρως επιθετική επικοινωνιακή εκστρατεία που είχε καταφέρει μέχρι στιγμής να κρύβει κάτω από το χαλί (τουλάχιστον ως ένα βαθμό) τον αυταρχισμό και τη διαφθορά του καθεστώτος, καθώς και τις καταστροφικές πολιτικές που εφαρμόζει.  Και δεν είναι πλέον μυστικό, ότι ο άνθρωπος-κλειδί πίσω από αυτή την εκστρατεία είναι ο Αμερικανός δημοσιοσχετίστας, Σταν Γκρίνμπεργκ .    Όμως καθώς το καθεστώς επαναπαύθηκε στις δάφνες της νίκης των τελευταίων βουλευτικών εκλογών, τα μεγάλα προβλήματα συνέχισαν να συσσωρεύονται και φάνηκε ότι το καθεστώς είτε δεν ήθελε, είτε δεν μπόρεσε να τα αντιμετωπίσει. Έτσι, είδαμε σε σύντομο χρονικό διάστημα να έρχονται τα πρώτα σημαντικά πλήγματα στην πρωτοκαθεδρία του, μέσα από τα αποτελέσματα των δημοτικών και περιφερειακών εκλογών. Παρόλα αυτά, η αλαζονεία των καθεστωτικών στελεχών παρέμεινε αμετάβλητη, καθώς θεώρησαν ότι η τραγωδία των Τ

Zionist and US imperialist criminals are about to grab the natural gas off shore Gaza

globinfo freexchange   As the genocide against Palestinians of Gaza is about to be completed with an act of unprecedented brutality by the Zionists and butcher Netanyahu through the bombardment of about 1.4 million civilians in Rafah, it seems that they have already set their next primary goal. Which, in short, is to grab the natural gas resources off shore Gaza, together with their US imperialist buddies whose contribution to the genocide has been undoubtedly critical.     As already reported , in 2007, Hamas came to power and Israel launched an offensive on Gaza Strip, leaving behind 1,400 dead Palestinians, but taking with it the gas fields. Within a year, Israel announced the discovery of the Leviathan natural gas field, which did include Gaza's riches, valued at 453 billion dollars. But Gazans have been denied around 47 billion dollars in revenue. As for Tel Aviv, it's gunning to become a new hub. At that moment in time, that is 2022, Russian oil and gas were sanctioned.

Israel’s Descent Into Madness & the Holocaust Comparison

BreakThrough News   Rania Khalek was joined by Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany and associate professor at Koc University in Istanbul, to discuss Israel’s descent into genocidal fascism. Prof. Amar addresses whether it’s useful to make Holocaust and Nazi comparisons and the real reason behind the West’s unshakeable loyalty attitude when it comes to Israel’s barbarism.   

Neocon Queen Victoria Nuland Ends Her Reign: Exposing a Catastrophic Career

Glenn Greenwald    

The Shadowy, Intelligence-Linked Group Driving the US Towards War With Iran

"United Against Nuclear Iran does not miss an opportunity to try to bring the United States closer to a military conflict with Iran. And on the other side of the equation, they also have worked very hard to oppose efforts to de-escalate the U.S.-Iran relationship."   by Alan Macleod   Part 7 - A Lesson From History   The history of Iran has been intimately intertwined with the United States since at least 1953 when Washington orchestrated a successful coup against Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Mosaddegh had refused U.S. demands to stamp out Communist influences in his country and had nationalized the nation’s oil. The U.S. installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a puppet ruler. An unpopular and authoritarian ruler, the Shah was overthrown in the Revolution of 1979. Since then, it has become a target for regime change, and its nuclear program is something of an obsession in the West. Often orchestrated by UANI officials while they were in government, the U.S. has carried

Το σκάσιμο της φούσκας Μητσοτάκη με νέα επίσημη χρεοκοπία και οριστικό τέλος της μεταπολίτευσης

του system failure   Τα αποτελέσματα των εκλογών της 25ης Ιουνίου ήταν λίγο-πολύ αναμενόμενα όσον αφορά τις πρώτες θέσεις με βάση και τα αποτελέσματα της πρώτης κάλπης του Μαίου. Αν συμπεριλάβουμε και το ποσοστό της αναμενόμενης αποχής, δεν μας έδωσαν κάποια ιδιαίτερη έκπληξη. Αυτό όμως που φαίνεται να αιφνιδίασε ακόμα και το συστημικό κατεστημένο, είναι η είσοδος των δύο υπερσυντηρητικών, ακροδεξιών κομμάτων Νίκη και Σπαρτιάτες, με το τελευταίο να έχει ξεκάθαρες διασυνδέσεις με τον πρώην Χρυσαυγίτη, Ηλία Κασιδιάρη. Παρά τη μεγάλη νίκη Μητσοτάκη, οι μιντιακοί ινστρούχτορες της καθεστωτικής προπαγάνδας εμφανίστηκαν σε γενικές γραμμές "μουδιασμένοι" και αυτό οφείλεται στο γεγονός ότι το συστημικό κατεστημένο (δηλαδή τα μεγάλα οικονομικά συμφέροντα που ελέγχουν και το σύνολο των μεγάλων ΜΜΕ πανελλαδικής εμβέλειας), πέτυχε μόνο έναν από τους τέσσερις μεγάλους στόχους που είχε θέσει εξ'αρχής. Μιλώντας με ποδοσφαιρικούς όρους, ουσιαστικά έχασε με σκορ 3-1.   Ο μεγάλος στόχος πο

Study Finds Media Giants New York Times, CNN, and Fox News Pushing for US War in Yemen

by Alan Macleod  Part 2 - Biased Reporting MintPress conducted a study of four leading American outlets: The New York Times , CNN, Fox News and NBC News. Together, these outlets often set the agenda for the rest of the media system and could be said to be a reasonable representation of the corporate media spectrum as a whole. Using the search term “Yemen” in the Dow Jones Factiva global news database, the fifteen most recent relevant articles from each outlet were read and studied, giving a total sample of 60 articles. All articles were published in January 2024 or December 2023. The study found the media wildly distorted reality, presenting a skewed picture that aided U.S. imperial ambitions. For one, every article in the study (60 out of 60) used the word “Houthis” rather than “Ansar Allah” to describe the movement which took part in the Yemeni Revolution of 2011 and rose up against the government in 2014, taking control of the capital Sanaa, becoming the new de facto government. Ma

The truth about Alexei Navalny

Glenn Greenwald / Dangerous Ideas with Lee Camp / The Hill /  

Israel Carries Out Most Sadistic Massacre, Opens Fire On Gaza Aid Convoy

Richard Medhurst