The ironies of the Venezuelan opposition, part 17

[Peace Patriot]

21. If the rigging goal was not to elect Capriles but to produce chaos,

destabilization and seizing control amidst the carnage, then a close vote, but with Maduro just squeaking through, is one way to do it.

I'm just guessing here--but based on a close study of CIA/transglobal corporate behavior, and also Bushwhack behavior in Iraq and other places. (Sheer chaos was clearly a conscious Rumsfeldian strategy in Iraq, for instance.) I think Maduro's steep support drop from the polls to the vote, in one week's time, is peculiar, and nothing that I know about, that happened over that week, accounts for it.

And now that I think about it, if I were Rumsfeld (Gawd forbid!) or someone of his ilk, one of the things I would have been doing over the last half decade, was developing the technology to overcome Venezuela's election safeguards.

It is not implausible--but it is just a guess.

Yes, if such a capability exists, it does raise the question: Why didn't they just (s)elect Capriles? --as I said, IF that was the goal. But consider this: The ability to rig OUR elections is blatantly obvious; so, why didn't this far rightwing corporation, ES&S/Diebold, (s)elect McCain or Romney?

I think the answer to that is cunning--quite clever but evil intelligence at work. They needed a hiatus during which our people would be made to forget the horrors of the Bush Junta. And they needed a shackled "progressive" president, on whom everything would be blamed--so that, if and when the food riots start here, Obama takes the rap, not those bloody THIEVES who destroyed our economy, among other heinous crimes. This points to a Jeb scenario--creating the conditions for Bush Junta II.

As for Capriles, maybe they didn't think he was "up" to being their Pinochet. They've got someone else they're grooming for that dreadful role--and they're thinking longer term, and moving their pieces around in a "dark" chess game. Maybe Capriles is just a pawn on their board--someone whose nonsense about election irregularities (and what he's said about it really is nonsense) is convenient for fomenting unrest, violence and unhealable wounds. It's hard to believe that he is independent, given this echo in Washington DC ("100 recount&quot and given what we know about USAID funding/training of the rightwing in LatAm and in Venezuela--but he may not be their first choice for what THEY really have in mind and he may not know this (though he may be starting to figure it out).

If the goal is to smash Venezuelan democracy, so that no "New Deal" can ever arise there again, then an orderly Capriles administration, in an orderly and still democratic country, was never part of the game.

Speculation? Yes. But I think we DO need to understand that there ARE "dark actors" in the world, with billions and billions of dollars to spend on such projects, and they totally and viscerally hate Venezuela precisely FOR its democracy. I don't think this is a wild speculation. It's just an effort to think through the unaccountable closeness of the election.

Maduro didn't say or do anything to warrant it. His suggestion that Chavez was poisoned? I expect that half the world thinks the same thing. Should a president say that, without laying out some evidence? No, probably not. But neither was Chavez a temperate speaker--and Venezuelans forgave him almost the exact same item (poisoning of Simon Bolivia; exhumation of his body!). Personally, I think it may have been a CIA "dirty trick" (planting some intel in the intel stream for Maduro to stumble over), but, weighed against their "New Deal," it just doesn't amount to much, from Venezuelan voters' point of view, and, as I said, probably a whole lot of Venezuelans suspect it's true! True or not, that is a mourning behavior--looking for some cause for such a young president to die--and the outpouring of mourning for Chavez was overwhelming. Would they blame Maduro for such a slipup, when so many were suffering grief? Change their vote because of it? That many voters? It doesn't wash.

And that goes for the couple of other things that the rightwing tried to make hay of. It just doesn't add up that so many people would change their votes for such trivial reasons.

It's possible the pre-election polls were wrong--though they've never been so off before--and certainly not all of them at the same time. It's possible that Capriles convinced some voters to change their votes--but that many? That's what gets me. If it had been a 5% switch, say, it would be more plausible. But 10% to 20%? Not plausible. Needs explanation.