Information Terrorism

Press and TV offer imagination striking reports: buses and cars burning, barricades and people in masks throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at police and snipers taking their aims. This time it’s not Ukraine but fashionable city areas in Venezuela. Western media presented the events as «people’s protests» bringing the Maduro’s regime on the verge of collapse and expediting the restoration of «real democracy». Law enforcement agencies need to do their utmost to stand firm against provocations and prevent the emergence of maidans in Caracas, Maracaibo, San-Cristobal and other large cities.

Students coming from middle class families and Columbian paramilitaries, who have infiltrated their ranks, make up the main striking force. Colombians are seasoned warriors with the experience of fighting FARC and ELN guerilla groups. Criminals also joined the fray. Unrest lasted for around a month with the death toll of 30, predominantly policemen and Maduro supporters.

The dwellers of rich quarters suffered most. They got stray bullets, waves of tear gas and clouds of black smoke from burning tires and garbage. They also use spooks to scare Maduro supporters. Human-like dummies in red «Bolivarian» shirts are hung on street lamps and hand-rails of footbridges, the writings say «that’s what we’ll do with Chavistas after the victory». The lists of home addresses and phone numbers of Maduro supporters are disseminated through Internet. It entails phone terrorism, «we know all about you and which school your children go!» Political violence in restaurants, cafes and movie theatres is on the rise. Prominent journalists, writers, actors and other people faithful to the government become victims of attacks.

The coup attempt in Venezuela made independent observers talk about the wave of terrorism launched by information agencies, first of all: Associated Press, United Press, Reuters, France Press and Spanish EFE… They don’t shy away from outright falsifications presenting photos made some time ago in Chile and Egypt as testimony to the atrocities committed by Venezuelan police.

Many Latin American outlets reproduce daily their reports in various forms. It makes «established» newspapers, magazines, TV channels and radio stations from Mexico to Chile be ideologically unified.

The owners of media outlets united into the Miami-based Inter American Press Association (IAPA; Spanish: Sociedad Interamericana de Prensa, SIP) are published in large editions. They are part of coordinated activities to attack the governments of the countries that try to pursue independent policies. Independent leaders come under harsh criticism. Hugo Chavez was the main target for nine years. After his early death the Western agencies redirected their attacks against the leaders of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) – Raul Castro, Nicolas Maduro, Evo Morales, Daniel Ortega and Rafael Correa. Special operations are also aimed against presidents of Brazil and Argentina Dilma Rousseff and Cristina Kirchner, former President of Brazil Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as well as a number of politicians from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Uruguay and Peru.

President of Ecuador Correa has gone through drawn-out trial proceedings to make those who are guilty of dissipating slander in Ecuadorian media be brought to justice. Upon Correa’s initiative the parliament approved the bill on impartial media coverage. It took little time for SIP to start accusing him of violating freedom of press, hindering the work of journalists and introducing censorship.

The fact of SIP’s activities being aligned with the CIA is corroborated by regular introduction into editions of a special page with the information selected to «expose repressive activities of Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela». That’s how Western information agencies interpreted the efforts by Bolivarian government aimed at neutralization of another conspiracy organized by US special services if February-March 2014. Let me note that the scale of Obama’s subversive activities is unprecedented for the contemporary Latin America.

CIA and military intelligence operatives acting under embassy cover are not the only ones to destabilize ALBA, Brazil and Argentina, they are joined by those who work as press attachés and press officers. They direct propaganda activities, define the subversive future missions and make adopt the experience of color revolutions and the Maidan in Kiev to local conditions. Press – attaché offices monitor journalists who promote the theses which afterwards are presented as Latin American point of view. There are journalists working under supervision in almost all large outlets, like, for instance, Reforma and Milenio in Mexico, Diario and El Deber in Bolivia, Clarin and Nacion in Argentina and Mercurio and Tercera in Chile. In Venezuela Universal and Nacional newspapers are put on the CIA payroll to make them thrive in recent days.

In pure numbers Venezuela has many more private media outlets than any other Latin America nation (the accusations against the Maduro government related to clamp down on freedom of press have no foundation). A larger part of these outlets serve as a podium for opposition. Opposition newspapers and TV channels don’t shy away from instigating tensions and call for the overthrow of the government. They also use Internet for subversive activities.

At present three leading Latin American media holdings - Chilean Mercurio, Argentinian Clarin and Brazilian Globo - have unleashed a new information war against the Maduro government under the slogan «We are all Venezuela. There is no democracy without freedom of speech». Around hundreds of newspapers and TV channels are involved in the conspiracy, something unheard of before. All these media outlets kept silent in the days of Pinochet, Videla and Stroessner dictatorships, like if they were blind those days and now they can see.

Dr. Fernando Buen Abad Dominguez, philosopher, intellectual and Mexican writer, believes the information offensive launched by the United States against Latin America is a serious threat. According to him, «press lynching has no historic parallels, it’s mass production». He thinks that «What we need is to create a systemized information and communications net. Media is used as a weapon against democratic projects and staging coups like in Venezuela. The time is propitious for holding a regional summit on media. The whole continent should come up with proposals on how to counter the threat at state level as well as by creating alternative public media outlets».