1). “Imperialism’s Non-Stop War Against Venezuela”, Aug 7, 2024, Brian Becker & Manolo De Los Santos discuss the election and ongoing struggle in Venezuela, The Socialist Program / Breakthrough News, duration of video 1:02:07, at < https://www.youtube.com/watch?
2). “Walz With Bashir + Venezuela Coup 6.0”, Abby Martin and Mike Prysner discuss the recent Venezuelan Election, Empire Files, duration of audio 34:22, at < https://soundcloud.com/empire-
3). “On Elections and Collective Emancipation: A Conversation with Robert Longa: (A key cadre from El Panal Commune discusses US interventionism and Venezuela’s participative and protagonistic democracy)”, Aug 9, 2024, Robert Longa, Venezuelanalysis, at < https://venezuelanalysis.com/
4). “An Attempted Coup By Any Other Name…”, Aug 1, 2024, Maria Páez Victor, Orinoco Tribune, at < https://orinocotribune.com/an-
5). “Cyber warfare is at the center of the new coup attempt against Venezuela”, Aug 06, 2024, Misión Verdad, MROnline, at < https://mronline.org/2024/08/
6). “Mercenary Group Blackwater Boss Wants $100 Million to Assassinate President Maduro”, Aug 02, 2024, Victoria Torres, Orinoco Tribune, at < https://orinocotribune.com/
~~ recommended by dmorista ~~
Introduction by dmorista: It is blatantly hypocritical for the ruling class of the U.S.to criticize the Elections in Venezuela. This is considering that they are unable to conduct honest elections and fairly register people to vote, particularly in the giant wedge of ultra-reactionary and fascist controlled states that extend from Florida up through Texas, Missouri, to the Dakotas, and which has legions of heavily armed paramilitaries and vigilantes always lurking around
The U.S. Ruling Class and their Corporate Controlled media, in the U.S. and other societies of The West, have been working assiduously to overthrow the Socialist friendly government of Venezuela from the first moment that Hugo Chavez took power. This has been visible in a variety of attacks, covert mostly, against the Chavez and later the Maduro Governments. Of course this type of activity is hardly new, the hard-line elements of the U.S. Ruling Class have viciously and violently attacked every attempt by people in the U.S. itself, and in foreign lands, to throw off the Capitalist Yoke.
U.S. sponsored interventions against revolutionary movements go back to at least 1918 when the U.S. sent two “expeditionary forces” to the nascent Soviet Union. One numbering around 5,000, composed largely of immigrants and first generation men of Polish and Ukrainian ethnicity was sent to Arkhangelsk in Northern European Russia, arriving there on September 4, 1918 over two months before the end of WW I, on November 11, 1918. The other, with nearly 8,000 troops, was sent to the Pacific Coast to Vladivostok at the same time. The Capitalist powers, most of whom were exhausted by WW I, were unable to mobilize the necessary forces needed reimpose Capitalism and the Czarist Regime in the Soviet Union; their great achievement was to make sure that the Civil War that followed the Bolshevik takeover was as vicious and murderous as possible. Not really all that different from what we see now in Venezuela. (See, “Polar Bear Expedition History”, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, n.d., Anon, at < https://bentley.umich.edu/
All these videos and articles posted here look at what is going on in Venezuela, with a different lens and viewpoint than is seen in the dominant Corporate Controlled Media of the Capitalist West. Generally we never see any reference to the fact that Venezuela has the largest Oil Reserves on Earth and the 8th largest Natural Gas Reserves. Nor are the various coups d'etat, or murderous death-squad and counter-revolutionary campaigns waged against places like Chile, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Cuba ever mentioned.
The U.S. has sent significant naval forces to sail around in the Caribbean Sea offshore of Venezuela, fomented all kinds of disorder and attacks on working people, cooperated with wealthy Venezuelans who still own large segments of the Venezuelan economy and most of the media outlets, and supported pretenders like Juan Guaido to whom the U.S. rulers gave significant Venezuelan resources in the U.S. confiscated by the U.S. Government. Most notably this concerns the fate of Citgo, the Venezuelan owned oil company that marketed Venezuelan oil in the U.S. Also there is the question of the 32 tons of Gold, owned by the Venezuelan Government and stored at the Bank of England, that the British Capitalist State stole using a compliant court and the flimsy excuse that Juan Guaido was the legal President of Venezuela. The value of that Gold was estimated at $1.95 Billion in 2022. (See, “Holding Venezuelan Gold in the Bank of England is a Robbery”, Aug 4, 2022, Telesur, at < https://www.telesurenglish.
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Please click on this link to listen to the Soundcloud:
https://soundcloud.com/empire-files/walzwithbashir
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On Elections and Collective Emancipation: A Conversation with Robert Longa - Venezuelanalysis
The Alexis Vive Patriotic Force is a Chavista and Guevarist organization in the heart of the 23 de Enero barrio in Caracas, where it has carefully built the El Panal Commune. It began this project even before communes became part of the official discourse, relying on hard work and grassroots organizing. Today El Panal has a thriving economy centered on social property. In this interview, communal spokesperson and Alexis Vive founder Robert Longa responds to our questions about Venezuela’s participative and protagonistic democracy and about the recent presidential elections that took place in a context of imperialist and fascist aggression.
Before we discuss the recent presidential elections, could you give us an overview of Venezuela’s democratic project as you understand it?
The 20th century ignited the rebel flame of insurgent movements across Latin America, a phenomenon Régis Debray famously theorized as “foquismo,” attempting to capture the essence of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara’s guerrilla tactics in the Sierra Maestra. The strategy spread like wildfire through Nuestra América. That era, however, also saw the first attempt to move toward socialism within the constraints of liberal democracy, with Chile’s Popular Unity government [1970-73].
Yet, this democratic experiment was brutally cut short by Pinochet’s fascist coup in 1973, which was backed by US imperialism. The experience left our continent with a bitter aftertaste: the establishment would not respect the rules of its own game – bourgeois democracy – when the outcome went against its interests!
Later, in 1989, the Soviet bloc began to crumble, and some proclaimed the “end of history.” Shortly after, however, a new wave of resistance swept across Latin America, challenging the neoliberal order. In 1992, Hugo Chávez and other red-beret-clad officers – heirs of the 1989 popular insurrection – stormed history. Two years later, in 1994, the EZLN issued its inspiring “First Declaration from the Lacandan Jungle” in Mexico. Meanwhile, in the mid to late 90s, the Argentinian Piquetero movement emerged forcefully while the Indigenous peoples of Bolivia organized their combative resistance to neoliberalism.
These movements and many others were evidence of a resurgent popular resistance – proof that history was far from over! Latin America was standing tall once again, but its movements had not yet gained enough force to deal a real blow to the system. Instead, they were collective expressions of discontent.
However, there was a process of accumulation underway, and Chávez’s election triumph in 1998 was one of our early victories. Chávez was followed by Evo Morales, Néstor Kirchner, Rafael Correa, and Luiz Inácio “Lula” Da Silva coming to power via democratic processes. These men were not isolated phenomena but rather the political expressions of vibrant and robust social movements that had been gaining momentum across the continent.
Interestingly, according to Venezuelan journalist Domingo Alberto Rangel, Madeleine Albright, who was Secretary of State in the early days of this era, viewed the changes sweeping the continent as a necessary revitalization for the system. Even though figures like Lucio Gutiérrez in Ecuador and Ollanta Humala in Perú did fit this narrative, Albright’s overall assessment missed the mark. The deeper, more transformative nature of some of the processes of change went far beyond mere adjustments to the status quo.
As the first decade of the 21st century began to unfold, Chávez – who initially embraced Anthony Giddens’ “Third Way” – and the Bolivarian Revolution underwent a rapid and profound radicalization. In 2001, Chávez introduced 49 Enabling Laws, which included important steps like the nationalization of hydrocarbon resources and a radical land reform.
By 2004, the Bolivarian Process had declared itself anti-imperialist and, by 2006, socialist. And how was all this done? Democratically, but with a democracy that is not just formal but can open new paths, because it’s truly connected to the people and not to the interests of a few.
All these initiatives were promoted within the framework of Venezuela’s constitution and were ratified by regular elections. And yet, imperialism did everything it could to overthrow Chávez. Why?
Indeed, every step toward sovereignty and substantive democracy was met with violence: a coup in 2002, the oil sabotage of 2002-2003, the Daktari Paramilitary Operation in 2004, along with continual efforts to disrupt both Venezuela’s economy and its electoral processes.
In other words, once US imperialism realized the Bolivarian Revolution’s commitment to sovereignty, it applied every strategy from their multiform warfare playbook, short of outright military invasion. Yet, none of this made Chávez retreat. Instead, each attack was met with a counterpunch by the left.
For the Alexis Vive Patriotic Force, Chávez represents in early 21st century Latin America what Lenin embodied for many revolutionary movements in 1917: an anti-imperialist leader who reactivated the socialist project with force, with a strategy and, most importantly, with the people.
Additionally, Chávez promoted Latin American integration, a legacy passed down from [independence hero] Simón Bolívar. Of course, it wasn’t just Chávez; it was the pueblo that had committed to participatory and protagonistic democracy – a conception that exceeds the limits of liberal democracy – who pushed this movement forward.
I am emphasizing participatory and protagonistic democracy, because it is key as we think about the July 28 elections, which is one moment in a much larger project that is not limited to the election of our president (or representatives, governors, or majors), but goes far beyond the framework of liberal democracy.
Moreover, the elections on July 28th must be understood from a class perspective, something that some of our purported friends around the world seem to be forgetting. As Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto: “The history of humanity is the history of class struggle, of the poor against the rich.”
The Venezuelan bourgeoisie, represented by Edmundo González and María Corina Machado, want us to remain their servile chauffeurs and domestic workers. They envision a world where we are mere commodities. Meanwhile, the bosses of González and Machado in the US seek to continue bleeding Venezuela – and Latin America in general – just as the Spanish did in Potosí.
You’ve mentioned that Venezuela’s formal democracy – including, of course, the July 28 presidential election – is not the most important part of the complex whole that is the Bolivarian process. Could you elaborate on this idea?
Electoral processes are just one tactical moment in our broader struggle. For the Bolivarian project to continue, it was crucial for Nicolás Maduro to win, and he won. But the true foundation of our democracy lies in its participatory and protagonistic nature. This means that the construction of popular power is essential, and the communal assembly – what we in El Panal call the “patriotic assembly” – is actually the highest democratic authority for us.
In a recent speech, President Maduro mentioned that he is the one holding back the forces of violent revolution. He was right: if we had to face a fascist with a chainsaw [a reference to Javier Milei] in the presidency, I know that revolutionary violence would emerge.
Maduro is safeguarding peace, which is crucial for the communes to accumulate force and advance toward emancipation. Of course, for us, true emancipation comes only through the commune, which has little to do with the bourgeois democracy that takes us to the ballot box.
We worked tirelessly to secure Maduro’s victory, and we are very happy with the outcome. Moreover, we are fully committed to defending this victory against the local fascists and US imperialism.
But they should remember that if there were an attempt to overthrow our government, a popular insurrection would follow, one that would be joined by members of the military. Nobody should take this lightly.
How did El Panal Commune organize people both before and after the elections?
During the campaign, our organization met frequently, and we organized assemblies and other activities in the commune. These include an operations center that tracked media and social media trends while mapping the commune’s territory in terms of its strengths and weaknesses as a way of defending the revolution.
We also went door-to-door to get out the vote. We made calls to thousands of people to explain the importance of the election to them. Now, in the post-electoral process, we are doing our part in defending the revolution, as we always do.
However, for a revolutionary organization, conjunctures should not be approached with spontaneity; they should be strategically leveraged. Lenin was right when he emphasized this in What Is to Be Done? This electoral and post-electoral period is precisely such a moment for us at the Fuerza Patriótica Alexis Vive.
Who will change our country? It won’t be the guarimbas [fascist street protests], it won’t be the terrorists serving imperialist interests, and it will not be the sanctions. While winning elections is a precondition, it is the organized pueblo who will bring about the necessary changes.
As the elections drew near, we held many debates in which we consistently emphasized both that the government must address the legitimate demands of the people who suffer the consequences of the economic war against Venezuela, and also that we, the communards, are the ones called upon to transform the world!
As the US attempts to overthrow the Venezuelan government, it’s useful to take stock of the historical moment. Do you think that US imperialism is in decline?
Imperialism now is like a wounded hyena desperately hunting for prey, which makes it all the more dangerous. This desperation is evident in the proxy war it is carrying out against Russia, its direct involvement in the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza, and its attempting to foster a larger conflict in the Middle East. Meanwhile, imperialism hasn’t forgotten its strategic “pivot” to Asia, where its military deployment is large and growing every day.
Although the US is losing ground in the world, this doesn’t make it any less dangerous, or guarantee its collapse. What does that mean for us in Venezuela? Our country holds the world’s largest oil reserves, and a tanker ship departing from our coast takes five days to deliver hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil to the US as compared to the 45 days that a tanker takes to reach the US from the Middle East.
Additionally, we have vast natural gas reserves and an abundance of highly coveted minerals, including rare earth elements. Finally, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, and Ecuador have large extensions of the Amazon forest within our frontiers, and imperialism has already indicated that they want it to themselves by claiming it as a “reserve for all of humanity.”
What does all of this mean? We live in an increasingly dangerous world, where traditional warfare persists but is not the only method of imperialist aggression. In their desperation, imperialism will resort to biological warfare, orchestrated famines, and genocides.
They are on a permanent and systemic offensive against the wretched of the earth. This is, no doubt, dangerous, but it also presents an opportunity for the peoples of the world to unite.
The National Electoral Council reported that Nicolás Maduro won 51% of the vote. This is significant, especially considering that these elections were far from “free and fair,” with the main opposition candidate, Edmundo González, backed by a still tremendously powerful US imperialism, while Maduro has had to navigate nearly a decade of brutal sanctions.
However, this should also be a moment for a reckoning since Chavismo has lost some ground perceptually when compared to the 2018 presidential elections. What do you think are the implications?
Indeed, every revolutionary process must undergo moments of reckoning, and I believe we’re capable of doing so. But I also think it’s worth highlighting that our president has transformed into a true leader during the course of this electoral process. What do I mean by this? Maduro has been Venezuela’s elected president since 2013. However, he, along with the Venezuelan people, experienced a truly traumatic event – the assassination of Comandante Chávez – which brought Maduro to the presidency at an unexpected time.
From the moment he took office, the attacks intensified, and Maduro had to preside over a nation that was both grieving and under a growing imperialist siege.
Nicolás Maduro didn’t come from the Sierra Maestra, nor did he lead a civic-military insurrection. Our president came from a political career that took him from the National Assembly to being Chávez’s minister of foreign affairs.
Maduro has faced unprecedented challenges: he has been blackmailed on an international scale but nevertheless guided the country through its worst crisis, which was generated by the brutal US blockade. Maduro and the pueblo have endured the guarimbas, blackouts, drone attacks, and even an attempted paramilitary invasion. Yet, he has not wavered. This is extraordinary. I would argue that now Maduro the president has also become Maduro the leader of the Bolivarian Process.
He has forged his leadership with “nervios de acero” [nerves of steel], as he himself would say. We are now entering the third phase of the Bolivarian Revolution, where we hope to witness the displacement of existing social relations in favor of the full emergence of the communal model, and we hope to do it in lockstep with our president. In that sense, initiatives such as the communal consultations are a promising first step.
We must move from resistance to emancipation. If we do this, I’m sure that Chavismo will reap 10 million votes in the next presidential election.
To wrap up, I’d like to hear a brief reflection on the role of the communes in Chávez’s strategic vision for the revolution.
Commune or Nothing! This was Comandante Chávez’s final call in his “Strike at the Helm” [2012] speech, where he emphasized that the commune is not just an institution or a specific place. The commune represents a model that must become the body and soul of our revolution. For Chávez, there is no distance between the commune and the socialist project. Without the commune, the Bolivarian Revolution would lose its direction and 21st-century socialism would lack a distinctive identity.
Our revolution is deeply rooted in Latin America, in the América Morena [*] that draws strength from its history. But our revolution is also grounded in the present and committed to changing everything that needs to be changed [an allusion to Fidel’s definition of revolution] on the path to full emancipation. We have a long road ahead, but if the road is communal, the future will be bright.
NOTE
[*] “América Morena” represents a conceptual and ideological effort to acknowledge and celebrate the diverse cultural and racial identity of Latin America, rooted in the region’s history of colonization, resistance, and cultural diversity.
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An Attempted Coup By Any Other Name…
By Maria Páez Victor – Aug 1, 2024
“We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”
Elon Musk, 25 July 2020, Twitter
Once again, as in 2002, Venezuela has been the victim of a combined media and diplomatic coup attempt, but this time with the added element of organized crime and a cyber-attack.
Millions of eligible voters cast their electronic ballots before the presence of more than 635 international witnesses including electoral experts of the United Nations, the African Union, and electoral staff of 65 countries. How many international witnesses are allowed for the USA or Canadian elections? None.
Nicolás Maduro was re-elected with 51.2% of votes (5,150,092 votes), and the far-right candidate Edmundo González lost with 44.2% of votes (4,445,978 votes). The other 8 opposition leaders received 4.6% of the total votes cast. This is the statistically irreversible results given out by the constitutional Electoral Authority (CNE) on election day, 28 July 2024, having examined and audited 80% of the votes. These results were audited 16 times.
However, the rest of the 20% votes have not yet (at the writing of this article) been released because of a massive cyber-attack. The elements of the electronic system that transmit the results to the central point were hacked over a hundred times in a most sophisticated manner that was traced to North Macedonia.
The Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, named as responsible for this cyber-attack: Lester Toledo, Leopoldo López, and M. Corina Machado. Furthermore, President Maduro implicated Elon Musk, considering him a far-right fanatic who has the technology to pull an attack like this and has many times denigrated Venezuela. It is alleged that Musk supported the supposed “humanitarian” invasion of Venezuela through Colombia in 2019. He famously said “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” Musk must desire Venezuela’s lithium, apart from its oil and gold.
Ironically, in the USA there is no constitutional or other law that demands that election results be declared on Election Day. In fact, in that supposed beacon of democracy, for much of the 19th Century it took days if not weeks for the winner to be declared.” And much more recently:
- In 2000, Bush won the presidency over Al Gore with only 537 votes; there was a delay of 37 days before the results were released and was ultimately decided by the US Supreme Court.
- In 2021, Biden won over Trump with 51.3% of votes, (almost exactly as Maduro has won now), Trump obtaining 46.8%. There was a delay of 4 days before the final results were given out and only certified by the Electoral College after 33 days. Trump launched 63 lawsuits contesting the results and still insists they were bogus.
Yet today, like a pack of vicious hyenas, the fascist far right – and not so far right – nations and NGOs are howling for Venezuela to release the detailed results immediately. The implication being that there is some sort of fraud or hidden trick. They DEMAND that the Electoral Authority (CNE) release the remaining votes, which the world should know are not little pieces of paper in a cardboard box. In Venezuela the vote is done electronically, the paper trail is only an added security measure to show that someone has duly voted.
President Maduro has formally asked the Venezuelan Supreme Court to settle any discrepancy about the vote, just as George Bush asked of the US Supreme Court in 2020.
Many of us who analyze the Venezuelan situation predicted it earlier: the far right, fascist group led by M. Corina Machado and her puppet candidate in Edmundo Gonzalez, had no electoral intention. Clue: unlike other candidates from the opposition, they refused to sign the agreement among candidates to respect the results and reject any violence after the results came in. Because that is exactly what they planned. Even before the results were in Machado was telling her formidable social media networks that Gonzalez had overwhelmingly won the election.
We wondered why Machado insisted on traveling the country to campaign. Now the Attorney General has found out why: under the cover of campaigning, she was paying off bands of real criminals she grouped in what she called “comanditos’ (little commands). These were common criminals trained in Colombia, with the help of the Colombian narco ex-presidents of Alvaro Uribe and Duque, and gangs of organized crime, who were paid up to $150 a day to burst on to the scene the day after the elections. There was a clear plan with strategic targets laid out for every “comandito”. It was also discovered that a great number of them were trained terrorists who arrived in Venezuela under the cover of Venezuelans migrants who were returned by plane from the USA.
Images have been flashed these past few days around the world of individuals setting fires and burning tires who are portrayed invariably as “the people” rejecting the fraud of the elections. In fact, “the people”, whether Chavistas or anti-Chavistas, peaceful people in the great majority, were snug in their homes, having nothing to do with this terrorism. What did these supposed freedom fighters do? They looted, burned and destroyed stores, schools, clinics, food warehouses, plazas, electricity plants, PSUV headquarters, police stations, water plants, and destroyed statues.
They injured 77 members of the police and armed forces, killing one officer by a bullet to his neck, not to mention the many social leaders dragged out of their homes and assaulted. In each area they had lists of the social community leaders identified with Bolivarianism, attacked and set fire to their houses and physically beat them up, women included, threatening to kill them and anyone in the town that supported the government. The government has set a special fund to help these victims.
These criminals had a specific plan. They were trained, armed, and received part of their pay in drugs. The blood tests done on every one of those caught show the presence of drugs. In certain areas they combined with organized bands of narco-paramilitary. The overall plan was to knock out the electricity supply to 10 states, create chaos, attack and march to Miraflores (the main government house) and capture or kill the president and prepare the way for foreign intervention.
How do we know all this? Firstly, because the terrorists are being rounded up, alive, without killing any one of them and they are talking. The terrorists aren’t fighting for any ideology or democracy, they are craven cowards that assault defenseless people, but when caught, fall on their knees crying and telling everything they know to the authorities. And because today:
- There are security cameras everywhere, and it seems everybody has a phone camera to catch their horrible deeds.
- There is a real Attorney General, not a vile traitor as before.
- There are now anti-terrorist laws that were previously missing to enable such violence to be dealt with through the courts.
There is a great difference today from the street violence of 2015 y 2017, “guarimbas” images of which were flashed around the world to convey that Venezuela was in chaos and should be “intervened”. At that time, Venezuelans watched disgusted and astounded as the violent criminals were never arrested for assaults, arson and deaths. The then Attorney General, Luisa Ortega, who spent years destroying the institution, gave strict orders that these street criminals were not to be arrested because they were “exercising their democratic right”. It turned out she was a mercenary traitor piling up millions of dollars the CIA gave her and is now living in great luxury in the USA where she fled when her crimes were discovered.
Following these events the National Assembly passed modern anti-terrorist laws that now include these heinous crimes against the peace, which the Constitution did not have when it was first written in 1999. Now there will be no impunity; so far there are 1,062 arrested who will go to trial. They are confessing readily with practically no promptings. It is to the great credit of the Venezuelan police and military that they have not caught these terrorists by shooting them – as it might happen in other countries which will remain nameless. No bodies, no dead terrorists: all captured alive up to now.
What would the governments of the USA, Canada or Europe do if bands of armed people set fires, assaulted and shot officials and members of the public, and terrorized their towns and cities? For sure they would be caught in a heartbeat and could very well end up being shot on sight.
President Maduro has said: we have seen this film before. The Bolivarian government under Chávez and Maduro has had since 1999, had 31 elections, and always the extreme right opposition has yelled fraud. That is, they recognize the elections when they have gained places in the National Assembly, state governments and mayoralties. Very convenient: if they win, the elections are legitimate, if they lose, they are a fraud. This has happened over and over again but the international media never seem to pick up on this or do not want to.
We are in the presence of an attempt of the international fascist far right and the CIA to overthrow the government of Venezuela with a massive disinformation and denigration campaign to justify illegal sanctions and foreign intervention in the country.
The checkered past and crimes of Machado, poster girl of the far right, is never mentioned, her involvement in coups, her promotion of street violence in the past, her asking the USA for sanctions and military invasion against Venezuela, and right now, her collaboration with criminal gangs and narco-paramilitary groups are never mentioned. Her puppet, Edmundo González, was involved in the logistics and financing of the death squads in El Salvador’s civil war. Their hands are tainted with blood.
But this is another universe from the one in 2015 and 2017. Venezuela is strong and prepared. Its economy has diversified and grown, despite the sanctions. It no longer depends exclusively on the US oil market – the whole world wants its oil. Even the USA needs Venezuelan oil for its refineries in Louisiana and Texas to keep the price of gasoline down in a crucial presidential election year.
The spectre that arises for the West is that their chickens have come home to roost: after decades of denigrating and harming Venezuela with a vicious hybrid war, Venezuela has turned to the East for its friends and allies. Russia and China have stood by Venezuela and its electoral process; Turkey, Iran, India, OPEC, and soon the Non-Aligned nations will also rally to its side as it is made clear that the purpose of the far right was not to win an election but to provoke a coup. And the “piéce de resistance” is that the BRIC, considering Venezuela a strategic partner, is poised to welcome it as a full member. This will open many more opportunities for Venezuelan development than Europe, the USA and Canada have done and who have treated Venezuela so badly for so long.
Let us rejoice in the triumph of the Venezuelan people and may they live in peace, secure in their own sovereignty.
Notes:
(1) CNN, “Why the delayed election results prove the system is adequately working”, 4 Nov. 2020
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election
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Cyber warfare is at the center of the new coup attempt against Venezuela | MR Online
By Misión Verdad (Posted Aug 06, 2024)
Attacks on the Venezuelan electoral system have reached the terrain of cyberwarfare, according to the complaints made by President Nicolás Maduro, the authorities of the National Electoral Council (CNE), and the Attorney General’s Office (MP).
The president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, issued a second electoral bulletin on August 2 at noon, where he also reported that there are still signs of massive computer attacks from different parts of the world against the CNE and the Venezuelan state-owned telecommunications companies, which has delayed the transmission of the voting minutes and the announcement of electoral results.
These cyberattacks have been accompanied by the burning of CNE offices in various states and centers for the transmission and reception of computations, causing damage to the electoral infrastructure.
Investigations are ongoing and will be broadened after President Maduro introduced an electoral contentions appeal before the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ).
However, with the information available up to now, it is possible to tie up loose ends regarding the depth and dimension of this aspect of the hybrid war against Venezuela in the context of a new regime change operation.
Epicenter of cyberattacks
According to the graphs and data published by computer expert Kenny Ossa on July 29, Venezuela was one of the countries that suffered the highest number of cyberattacks in the world.
The map of Ziwit HTTPCS shows that on the election and post-election days, Venezuela was the 39th most “cyberattacked” country in the world.
On July 29 at around 7:55 p.m., the real-time Kaspersky map found Venezuela in 46th place among the countries that have suffered the highest number of cyberattacks in the world, out of 200.
Ossa called attention to “the evident increase” of botnets that “are impacting Venezuela.” He explained that a hive of bots was being maliciously operated in the Venezuelan cyber atmosphere amid the election.
In another post, the computer expert mentioned that there was “a peak of malicious IP addresses between 12:00 and 3:00 p.m. on July 28 (6,154 IPs) and 29 (4,714 IPs).” He added that these were “IPs for command and control of botnets, spam, DDoS attacks, etc.” The data is taken from Ziwit’s HTTPCS.
On the morning of July 29, President Maduro reported that there was intense malicious activity of bots in favor of far-right opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia and a cyberattack against the CNE transmission system, which caused the slowdown in the counting of votes and transmission of election results.
This cyberattack created a breeding ground for DDoS attacks on websites of some Venezuelan institutions, including that of the CNE, making these websites inaccessible.
Side fact: Misión Verdad’s website was hacked on the morning of election day, so it was unavailable for a few hours. Regular readers of the website can attest to this.
The objective of these swarm attacks can vary, but they often intend to steal confidential information and cause damage to the target’s infrastructure.
The Ministry of Science and Technology explains that “a bot attack is a type of cyberattack that uses automated scripts to disrupt a site, steal data, make fraudulent purchases, or perform other malicious actions. These attacks can be deployed against various targets, such as websites, servers, APIs, and other endpoints.”
All this indicates that Venezuela was indeed saturated with cyberattacks. In addition, there was an attempted electoral blackout: a scenario that requires a high level of security and seriousness in an era where the cyber domain dominates and is of critical and daily use.
A technician’s explanation
It should be highlighted that the reported attack against the CNE system targeted the transmission of data. This does not affect the content of the data since the security mechanisms guarantee its integrity. The results transmitted cannot be altered, but the attack affected the transmission of information.
The delay caused has been remarkable since, according to IT specialist and external auditor of the CNE Victor Theoktisto, the attacks “reduced the connections in such a way that they were rarely completed successfully, slowing down the whole counting process.”
In conversation with Sputnik, Theoktisto explained that “communication between the voting machines and the Totalization Center is based on a WAN [Wide Area Network] provided by the Venezuelan national telephone operator through the telecommunications network that transmits telephone line data [Dial-up], Metro Ethernet, and GSM service or via satellite in remote areas.”
“The transmission network used is exclusive for the electoral process and does not use the Internet,” he added. “All this is extremely secure and encrypted, making it impossible to alter the transmitted data.”
Since the CNE has a system to back up the vote, possesses all the electoral minutes that, as stated in the first bulletin of July 29 at dawn, certify that Nicolás Maduro won the presidential election.
As for the transmission system, the specialist supports President Maduro’s request to the Council of State and the National Defense Council on July 30 to shield the integral security of the electoral technological domain. “Obviously, it will be necessary to use alternative equipment and protocols with greater redundancies to avoid a repetition, including more drastic measures to preserve the security of the transmissions,” Theoktisto commented.
Although Venezuela has an electoral system shielded against frauds of any kind, unlike, for example, the United States and the United Kingdom, the vulnerable flank (transmission system) was undoubtedly attacked with partial success, a technical detail that has been key to the present coup scenario led by María Corina Machado.
Origin of the cyberattacks: North Macedonia
Venezuelan authorities reported that the cyberattacks came from North Macedonia, a country located in the Balkan peninsula, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since 2020, and a candidate to join the European Union (EU) since 2005 after splitting from Yugoslavia in 1991.
It is one of the countries that, for a good part of the 20th century, was in the European socialist orbit and is now part of the multinational military organization led by the United States.
In recent years, the refreshed ties between North Macedonia and the United States have consolidated a bilateral relationship of such magnitude that USAID has dozens of active programs throughout the country. The U.S. embassy in the capital, Skopje, also maintains close relations with state and private institutions alike, in addition to close military ties.
Both countries share intelligence information and have a joint program in cybersecurity matters, a collaboration that began in 2018 and is overseen by the U.S. Cyber Command.
It is worth mentioning that in February, a new commander took charge of that branch of the Pentagon, General Timothy Haugh, who is also in charge of the National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. institution overseeing the cyber domain and whose espionage scandals and malicious activities have gone beyond the limits of its own country.
Haugh announced in April that the U.S. military’s Cyber Command has worked in some 20 countries in the past year under a “proactive approach” and in a secretive manner, including North Macedonia.
North Macedonia’s cyber activity, under U.S. tutelage, is mainly focused on an anti-Russia agenda within the context of the war in Ukraine and Donbass. The agenda was prepared by the experts of the Cyber Command during the Trump era.
Another side fact that is not minor: the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) maintained (or still maintains) a clandestine detention center (black site) in Skopje, a secret prison financially assisted and run by the U.S. spy agency. This collaboration became known in a report published in 2007, evidencing the close ties between North Macedonia and the United States.
As a NATO member, North Macedonia’s military structure is integrated into NATO. Its request to join the EU has also been accompanied by military adjustments according to the delimitations of European legislation.
The Venezuelan authorities’ accusation was not against the government of North Macedonia. It was only alleged that the cyberattacks came from the country. According to the Kaspersky Cybermap, malicious cyber activity from North Macedonia increased significantly on July 28, peaked on July 29, and exhibited a stable trend in the following days.
These data broaden the perspective on the cyberattack against the CNE, an attempt to throw the electoral system into chaos to benefit the coup agenda of Machado & Co.
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Mercenary Group Blackwater Boss Wants $100 Million to Assassinate President Maduro
Erick Prince, the owner of the largest private military company in the world, Blackwater, has claimed that mercenaries would be ready to assassinate Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, National Assembly Deputy Diosdado Cabello, and other high-profile members of the Venezuelan government or the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) provided the US authorities raise “the bounties to $100m each on these already wanted criminals.”
Tagging US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on his X post, the US empire’s assassin for hire wrote that if they elevated the bounties on the heads of President Maduro and other leaders of Venezuela, they could “sit back and watch the magic happen.”
The mercenary boss went on to add that the US regime can pay the assassins “from frozen regime money already in US banks,” referring to the Venezuelan State assets abroad seized by the US and its allies.
The permanent representative of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to the United Nations, Samuel Moncada, stated in response, “In Venezuela, our fight is against global fascism and the vast majority of our people are willing to fight for our independence.”
In 2019, then US President Donald Trump put a bounty of $15 million on President Maduro’s head. The question arises, what if the roles were reversed and Venezuela were to put a price on the head of a US president or politician?
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