[R-P] (Inglés) La huelga que nunca existió

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

No todos los medios yanquis odian a América Latina. He aquí un 
ejemplo:

The Narco News Bulletin3
December 23, 2002 | Issue #26

narconews.com - Reporting on the Drug War and Democracy from Latin 
America

Christmas Comes Early in Caracas, Venezuela
Chronology of the Strike that Wasn't


By Al Giordano
December 22, 2002


Kind Reader: If at any time during December 2002 you were led to 
believe that a "strike" occurred in Venezuela, and if you got the 
impression that said "strike" was popular, national, or general, or 
that it would topple the democratically-elected government of 
President Hugo Chávez, somebody lied to you.

Juan Forero of the New York Times lied to you when he claimed there 
was a "grueling national strike." T. Christian Miller of the Los 
Angeles Times lied to you when he claimed there was "a nationwide 
shutdown now." Nancy San Martin of the Miami Herald lied to you when 
she claimed that, "the strike expanded Monday." Andy Webb-Vidal of 
the Financial Times of London lied to you when he claimed that 
Venezuela was "a country on the verge of collapse." That smarmy Brit 
weasel Phil Gunson, interviewed on National Public Radio, lied to you 
when he said, "uh, first of all it's not really fair to, to, uh, to 
call it a coup attempt."

NPR to Gunson: "What's it like on the streets today?"

Gunson to NPR: "Well, I haven't been out on the streets very much."

All of these "desk reporters" and others like them, copying from each 
other and from a corrupt Commercial Media in Venezuela (instead of 
doing real reporting by interviewing real people and wearing out 
their own precious shoe leather) tried to portray a series of 
orchestrated media stunts and some isolated acts of sabotage by the 
former ruling class as a massive nationwide action with popular 
support. It wasn't. It was an "imagined strike," simulated, invented -
 a fantasy repeated daily over three weeks so often that many people 
began to believe that it was reality - the pinnacle example of 
everything that is wrong with "pack journalism" in this day and
age.

I repeat: The "strike" never happened. There was conflict. There were
marches. There was even eco-terrorism. Some events worth reporting 
did happen, but they were not reported honestly by the Pinocchios of 
the Commercial Media.

What did happen cannot honestly be called a "strike" (or a "general 
strike," or a "national strike") or anything like it. The events of 
December have been no more or less than the same group of people - 
mainly from the upper classes - marching around obediently for 
Commercial Media led spectacles, that have been marching around for 
the past year. The size of their protests has not increased since 
those of a year ago. I say to them, "keep marching around, it's a 
free country." And the fact that they've been able to march
around daily in so many circles without being arrested or repressed 
is evidence that Venezuela is, by any nation's standard, a very free 
and tolerant country.

These people, the same people marching since a year ago without any
significant additions to their ranks, are playing make-believe; 
they're not playing firemen or astronauts or beauty pageant 
contestants like normal kids; from their little pink bubble, they 
call themselves "strikers." And a few particularly elite ones call 
themselves "journalists."

They've been acting like children in a very literal way: Asking for 
Mommy Bush or Daddy Military to trash their Constitution and remove, 
by force, the president twice elected by their country's majority. 
They have cynically - and led by oligarchs of Commercial Media who 
write the script - tried to provoke the conditions for a coup d'etat.

They have every right to play-act and discover their "inner spoiled 
brat." But they are not, by any reasonable definition, having a 
"national strike."

This critique goes far beyond matters of semantics and how one 
defines a "strike." Without question, the professional simulators of 
the Commercial Media sat at their desks, or in their hotel rooms, 
took dictation from the rich and powerful from Caracas to Washington, 
and phoned it in.

In the isolated instances in which these simulators did interview 
"real people," they were often led around by the nose-ring by 
political consultants and other spin-doctors to give "credibility" to 
staged  "stories." (Think I'm kidding? See Narco News Associate 
Publisher Dan Feder's analysis of the day that the NYT's Forero and 
the LAT's Miller, in this country of 24 million people, amazingly 
ended up interviewing the same two "real people" for their stories.)

But where there is smoke, there is at least some fire. Something 
happened in Venezuela this month. So what did happen?

We now recount for you, kind reader, the facts available to working
reporters, but avoided by squalid desk reporters.


Day One, December 2nd:
A Failed "Strike" Attempt


For weeks prior to December 2nd, the Commercial Media in Venezuela 
(and the lazy English-language media correspondents who take 
dictation from it) could barely contain their gleeful anticipation of 
yet another effort - the fourth in a year (the other three also 
failed, although April's came too close for comfort) - to depose a 
democratically elected government. 

When we say "democratically elected government," we are on very firm 
ground: In six elections over just four years, the Venezuelan People 
have gone to the ballot box and voted, again and again and again and 
again and again, for President Hugo Chávez, his allies in Congress, 
and in favor of referenda supporting his policies and the Bolivarian 
Constitution of 1999: the most democratic, pro-Human Rights, and pro-
freedom, Magna Carta in all América. (What? Forero and Miller didn't 
tell you that?)

The former ruling class - having lost those six elections in four 
years - announced what it called a "general strike" to begin on 
December 2nd. The goal of the "strike": To depose President Chávez. 
First they said they wanted a non-binding referendum on Chavez's 
presidency. Then they said they wanted a binding vote. Then they said 
August would not be soon enough. In recent days, their leader, 
corrupt union boss Carlos Ortega (a leader of the April coup attempt) 
told reporters that the goal is no longer a vote; he wants Chavez to 
resign, period.

The organizers of this so-called "strike" are the very same 
collection of slimy forces that backed the April coup d'etat and 
Dictator-for-a-Day Pedro Carmona, who, once in power, abolished the 
Supreme Court, the Congress, shut down Community TV and Radio 
Stations, assassinated 50 political activists, and nullified the 
Constitution. Carmona also freed the sniper-assassins who
had fired shots from rooftops on April 11th into crowds of people, 
creating the pretext for what was, back then, a military coup. (Stay 
tuned for our upcoming report about the undisclosed conflicts-of-
interest of one of the foreign reporters that helped to create this 
pretext last April.)

That the same forces - the national chamber of commerce, the corrupt 
oil executives' union bosses, and the dishonest commercial media in 
Venezuela - were behind this latest "coup in strike's clothing" 
should have been the first hint to the simulating foreign 
correspondents - Juan Forero and T. Christian Miller (the Mary-Kate 
and Ashley of El Hatillo), Nancy San Martin, and the English 
mercenaries Andrew Webb-Vidal and Phil Gunson, cowering from
behind their desks, among others - that the effort was doomed to 
fail.

By the night of the first day of the "strike," after reviewing the 
real facts, Narco News reached this conclusion: The "strike" was, we 
reported, "an abject failure, limited to wealthy neighborhoods while 
the great majority of Venezuelans work and shop today in open 
defiance of the strike call."

That's how it began, and that is how it has continued, for three 
weeks. This thing was a non-starter from the get-go.

Yet, you would hardly be able to believe it, listening to the 
shrieking of the Commercial Media. Ivan Roman of the Orlando Sentinel 
(he's a rookie at covering Venezuela for English-language newspapers, 
but give him time: his work reads like a CIA press release) claimed, 
on December 4th, that, "Tensions escalated in Venezuela as the 
opposition took its general strike to the streets." Ahem. They "took 
it to the streets" because their "strike" wasn't succeeding in the 
shops and workplaces. A march is not a strike. Hello?

The para-journalist Phil Gunson (one day in the Miami Herald, another 
in the Christian Science Monitor, another in the St. Petersburg 
Times) wrote in the Herald that the "strike" had not yet hit 
Venezuela's major economic sector -oil- but that "it would." On the 
second day, he took dictation:

"Although there were problems at some (oil) refineries, gas plants 
and loading docks, due to the absence of personnel, sources said it 
would be several days before the situation became critical."

Translation: "Nothing is happening. But something will happen. Thus 
speaks Langley."

Kind reader, you have to learn to read between the lines.

Despite all the efforts by the Gunsons, the Foreros, the Millers (and 
the other coup plotters of April and December), and the rest to give
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to vampires, the "strike" was not a 
strike on Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four or Day Nineteen. In 
fact, it has never been a "strike." Have I mentioned that there was 
no strike this month in Venezuela?

During these days, the leaders of the "strike" that never happened 
called repeatedly on the Venezuelan Armed Forces to force the elected 
government out by violence and force.

The military, purged since last April of 400 officials who tried the 
first coup d'etat, told the coup plotters to fuck off. Thus, the 
first door slammed on December's coup plot. The soldiers - and this 
is also unprecedented and good news for Latin America - said, "no, we 
prefer democracy."

With their Daddy figure, the Armed Forces, unwilling to play the coup 
game, all that was left then for the "Strike of the Spoiled Brats" to 
do was to appeal to Mamá: The United States government and its Au 
Pair, Cesar Gaviria, secretary-general of the Organization of 
American States (OAS). The entire show of recent days has been a 
desperate effort to create conditions - with the theatrical support 
of Gaviria - that would allow military intervention by the United 
States and whatever Soldiers of Fortune can be hired to rip a
democracy from a people's hands.

Twelve days ago we called on Gaviria to get the hell out of 
Venezuela.

Five days ago, the Permanent Council of his own Organization of 
American states rebuked him, and, in doing so, rejected a major 
Washington proposal (to force "early elections") for the first time 
in OAS history.

Yesterday, finally, Gaviria finally got out of Dodge. ¡Hasta la 
vista, baby! 

Poor Cesar: Limping back from his luxury lodgings in Caracas with no 
peace agreement in hand and the deserved comeuppance by his own 
organization is not going to help the Washington-backed campaign to 
implant Gaviria to succeed Kofi Annan at the helm of the United 
Nations. (Horrors! After what Gaviria did to Colombia, imagine what 
he could do to the Middle East!) 

For peace to Venezuela, Gaviria did not bring. He only brought lies 
and confusion. Gaviria's presence merely delayed the day - the 
wonderful day that has now arrived - in which the whole world 
realizes that the Strike that Wasn't has failed to steal Christmas. 
Is it any wonder that the day after Gaviria left down was the precise 
day that peace and calm returned to Caracas?

They may not have gas in all the pumps, but every Who down in 
Whooville is singing. One can just imagine Little Cesar in his hotel 
suite, covering his ears while packing his bags: "Oh the noise, oh 
the Noise, oh the Noise! Noise! Noise! Noise! That's the one thing he 
hated! The NOISE! NOISE! NOISE! NOISE!"

Gaviria, with his dishonest quotes to the media and his stalling 
tactics to give oxygen to the Strike That Wasn't did cause a lot of 
problems in Venezuela. Mainly, in direct contradiction to his 
purported reason for being there, he delayed many solutions that are 
now, finally, occurring. Most -like getting the oil flowing to 100 
percent capacity again- will be fixed in a matter of weeks.

Others - like the losses in human life - are the permanent 
consequences of Cesar Gaviria's duet with the simulating Commercial 
Media.


Day Four, December 6th:
The Gunman from Portugal


Historic memory of April's coup is important for understanding the 
mentality of the same coup-mongers today. Last April 11th, suspicious 
shots rang out from rooftops during a clash of pro and con 
demonstrators. Nineteen human lives - the majority of them supporters 
of the democratically elected government of Venezuela - were 
extinguished.

As we will report in greater detail this week, one of the "reporters" 
(Phil Gunson) that helped create the false impression that these 
shots came from one side of the conflict - the Chávez side - helped 
bring about a series of events based on knowingly false impressions 
that was used to justify a military coup d'etat, and all the human 
misery it entailed.

But for various hours beginning April 11th the coup-plotters had 
succeeded, and they want to return to their jackbooted utopia when 
Dictator-for-a-Day Pedro Carmona ruled by decree. So if you're 
political infants like the make-believe "strikers," what do you do? 
You try to repeat the same script!

The script was played out on Friday, December 6th, in Altamira Plaza, 
home base of the pro-coup forces.

On that date, around 6 p.m., "opposition leader" Carlos Ortega was 
holding his nightly press conference covered live on Globovision TV, 
a key coup supporter. There - again, this was live, folks - he was 
asked by a supposed reporter about gunshots that had just been fired 
in Altamira Plaza. 

Reporters: here's a chronological lead worth following; Venezuelan 
citizen Valentin Herrera later told the Cuban daily Granma that the 
timing of the live TV question was bizarre because it came before the 
shots had been fired.

I don't know if that chronology accurately reflects the what happened 
or not, but I do know that when statements like that, which are 
damaging to the "opposition," are demonstrably false, the Foreros, 
the Millers, the Gunsons and the other simulators are all over them 
like a cheap suit. Their silence on that - and other - disturbing 
facts about the violence of December 6th leads me to wonder.

There are some important facts, however, that we have been able to 
confirm, and they directly contradict the Commercial Media's rush to 
blame the shooting on Chávez and his supporters:

Shots were fired that evening at Altamira Plaza, the base of the
coup-mongers, against innocent civilians, this time all on the 
opposition side. Three people were assassinated and 28 wounded. 
That's a lot of shots fired purportedly by one gunman, but facts are 
slow - even two weeks later - to dribble out of the opposition-
controlled Municipal Police, the first on the scene.

A shooter was apprehended. His ID had the name of "Joao de Gouveia," 
a Portuguese citizen. I put the name in quotation marks because it 
now appears that either there are two "Joao de Gouveias" of 
Portuguese descent in Caracas (not a common Venezuelan name), or that 
the shooter was using a skillfully forged ID of the sort that 
intelligence agencies are so talented at creating. (Days later, 
members of the opposition chased, beat to a pulp,
and nearly lynched the other de Gouveia, a simple working man, also 
of Portuguese descent, but who has lived 20 years in Caracas, even 
though the shooter was - and is - still in jail. But this does give 
us a glimpse into the irrationality of the opposition forces and the 
results of the constant Commercial Media Psy-War upon their behavior 
in Caracas this month.)

As reported above, Ortega was already on live TV, and without 
receiving any facts, he immediately blamed the shooting on Chávez, 
calling the president an assassin.

Ex-General Enrique Medina Gómez - one of the April coup leaders 
relieved from his post, and at that moment in Altamira Plaza - also 
blamed the shooting on Chávez and called on the Armed Forces, also 
via live TV, to remove the President from office. In other words, he 
called not for "elections," but for the opposition's real goal: a 
coup d'etat.

The plot gets even more bizarre: Within a few hours of the shooting,
Globovision claimed to have a "home video" made by a citizen, that 
showed the shooter "de Gouveia" next to the car of a pro-Chávez 
official. The video had the date and time: Thursday, December 5th, at 
2:17 a.m. The video, according to correspondents who had seen it, 
taken in darkness, was fuzzy, but had someone with a clear 
resemblance to the shooter - a red-haired, white-skinned man - 
standing at 5 feet and six inches tall.

The shooter "de Gouveia," however, stands at 5 feet and nine inches 
tall. 

Globovision has not publicly made the "home video" available for 
independent analysis by all sides.

With this strange "proof" the Commercial Media thereby concluded that 
the shooter was from the Chávez camp (as if the Chávez forces would 
have had any motive at all to repeat the horrible pro-coup script of 
April 11th).

But the chronology that placed "de Gouveia" in Caracas at 2:17 a.m. 
December 5th doesn't add up, and here's why: The tall red-headed "de 
Gouveia" arrived in Caracas from Funchal on the Portuguese Island of 
Madeira - 160 miles off the coast of Africa - at 4:30 p.m. later that 
same day - 14 hours later than the alleged "home video" had been 
taken. When the Venezuelan government made the immigration forms 
public that showed this fact, it was accused of inventing it. But 
days later - in a story not touched by the US or British 
correspondents, but covered in the Portuguese press - the Portuguese
airlines TAP-Air Portugal confirmed that the man with the ID that 
said "Joao de Gouveia" had been on its flight to Venezuela that day.

Do the math, kind reader: According to the TAP-Air Portugal website, 
there is a Thursday direct flight lasting 7 hours and 25 minutes from 
Funchal (at 12:15 Madeira Island time) to Caracas (at 4:15 Caracas 
time).

But the only flights from Caracas to Funchal on Thursdays make two 
stops -Porto and Lisbon, Portugal- and last 12 hours and 35 minutes.

Even using a direct flight on his own chartered jet, it would still 
have been mathematically impossible for "de Gouveia" or anybody to 
have been in Caracas at 2:17 a.m., gone to the airport and flown to 
Funchal and then turn around immediately and fly back to Caracas in 
just 14 hours! Mathematically, the shooter "de Gouveia" could not 
have been the same person in the Globovision "home video."

Does Globovision correct that evil distortion? Of course it does not.

The profile of the "de Gouveia" in custody also has the mark of what 
some reporters have called a "deranged" individual: a classic 
"patsy," unable to pull off such a stunt by himself. The opposition 
will soon enough join in the change of portrayal of this shooter from 
that of a professional government hit-man to that of a crazy: On a 
video, "de Gouveia" did say that the same pro-coup General Medina 
Gómez had paid him to shoot at his own crowd: That video was not 
aired by Commercial TV stations in Venezuela. 

There was an interesting story here for U.S. and British 
correspondents to investigate and report on. They chose not to do so. 
British correspondent Phil Gunson, in a December 18 letter to Narco 
News complaining of our report about simulation by the Associated 
Press, complained that "the fact that one or two government spokesmen 
have claimed that gouveia was paid by the opposition doesn't turn it 
into a 'credible theory' - especially when the only impartial 
evidence we have (including that from gouveia's former
landlords) suggests he had links with the government."

Gunson, of course, is mongering rumor here without citing a single
documented or searchable fact to back up his rumor, since he has not
reported anything of the sort in his own published work, which would 
bring a higher level of scrutiny and accountability to his claims. 
Former landlords? Nobody is even sure who this tall red-haired 
shooter is or if he previously did live in Venezuela; there's pretty 
good evidence he's not the other Joao de Gouveia who has been there 
for 20 years. Which "landlords," for which "de Gouveia," is Gunson 
referring to? And why doesn't he investigate and publish his results 
instead of confining his conspiracy theory to a letter to Narco
News?

Well, Gunson's been caught at more serious ethical violations for a
journalist: We've sent him a list of questions with some of that 
information and told him that we'll be publishing the questions - 
hopefully with his answers, which we have offered to publish 
uncensored and in full - in the week to come.

Of course, events, day by day, have turned so fast in Venezuela that 
there's been little follow-up by Commercial Media on this or other 
key stories.

What is uncontested about the December 6th shooter, though, is that 
the Chávez government has him imprisoned him while the investigation 
continues -unlike what happened with the April 11th snipers who were 
inexplicably allowed to walk free by Dictator-for-a-Day Carmona's 
coup.


Mid-December:
The Oil Sector Sabotage


There was, this month, one sector of oil company executives that 
claimed they were on "strike," but who in fact have spent this month 
actively working to lock-out rank-and-file employees and, according 
to their own public statements, to facilitate the sabotage, including 
eco-terrorism, of oil facilities.

According to public records at the Venezuela Secretary of Mining and 
Energy (MEM, in its Spanish initials), these were the annual salaries 
of the 22 major oil "strike" leaders, including their bonuses, paid 
vacations, and other benefits, at the trough of the state-owned oil 
company, Petroleum of Venezuela, or PdVSA:

Edgar Paredes makes 837 million bolivars a year ($643,000 U.S. 
dollars). 

The lowest paid of these 22 ringleaders, Luis Ramírez, makes 310 
million bolivars a year ($238,000 U.S. dollars).

The highest paid, Karl Mazeika, makes 990 million bolivars a year
($761,000).

The average annual salary of these 22 "strike" leaders is $426,000 
U.S. dollars a year; almost 100 times the per capita income of the 
average Venezuelan citizen of $4,760 dollars per year. In the 
Venezuelan economy, $426,000 gives somebody more buying power than 
people who make millions of dollars a year in the United States.

Check out the rest of their salaries in the Venezuelan currency of 
Bolivars (at 1,300 bolivars to the dollar), here they are, the annual 
booties of the oppressed "vanguard" of The Strike That Wasn't:

Luis Andrés Rojas: 688 million
Vincenzo Paglione: 979 million
Raúl Alemán: 687 million
Horacio Medina: 320 million
Juan Fernández: 399 million
Edgar Rasquin: 668 million
Rogelio Lozada: 410 million
Luis Matheus: 533 million
Carlos Machado: 542 million
Iván Crespo: 498 million
Luis Aray: 530 million
Andrés Riera: 508 million
Maria Lizardo: 444 million
Armando Izquierdo: 501 million
Luis Pacheco: 542 million
Gabriel García: 322 million
Francisco Bustillos: 643 million
Salvador Arrieta: 596 million
Armando Acosta: 471 million

Each of these oil executives, of course, had their own team of highly-
paid middle managers underneath them: controlling the paperwork, the 
computers, the hiring and firing, and all other aspects of the 
company.

In recent weeks, they locked out the workers, and installed their own 
men at key strategic points where sabotage has been committed to 
facilities under their watch.

The "opposition" complains about graffiti on the wall of a Commercial 
TV station and calls it "vandalism" or "violence." These guys, 
meanwhile, have presided over the destruction of pumps, pipelines, 
tankers and other ships, trucks, and other key points in the flow of 
oil from the ground to the consumer, including to the United States.

If they had tried anything like this inside the United States, we 
would see the White House calling them terrorists, locking them up in 
Guantanamo Bay, and suing them for the millions of dollars of losses 
that they have caused. Some of the members of the "oil-igarchy" have 
made public statements that some oil supplies have been contaminated, 
and some facilities have been booby-trapped to cause environmental 
disaster if they are re-started.

Between the oil drilling facility and the gas pump there are many 
stops along the road. Shut down or sabotage one of those points, and 
you shut down the entire pipeline. That has certainly happened at 
various points. But to hear the U.S. and British press 
correspondents, the language of distortion always uses these events 
to claim that there is somehow universal compliance with the strike 
at every point in the pipeline. That is not the case, nor has it been 
the case at any point during December 2002.

As the government is now firing these petrol-terrorists and retaking 
tankers and other facilities, it has had to bring in licensed foreign 
inspectors to make sure that environmental disaster doesn't occur 
once the facilities are inevitably re-started, and to make sure that 
the oil that is sent to the U.S. and elsewhere meets safety and 
quality standards. Thus, the delays and the shortages in certain 
regions: but none of the true facts reveal anything close to a 
"strike" or "work stoppage" by the eco-terrorists who claimed to
be rank-and-file oil workers.

Even with so much sabotage, five tankers have already left for the 
United States with crude oil. Hundreds of tanker-trucks have been 
shipping gasoline to service stations all over Venezuela.

It's going to take a few more weeks to restore the situation to 
normal; that will happen sometime in early 2003.

But what is unforgivable by the U.S. and British correspondents, like 
the corrupt Commercial Media in Venezuela, is how they abused the 
facts of these delays, withheld the true reasons for them from the 
readers, to create the false impression that there was a "strike" 
(when there was nor is none), that it was "growing" (when it was 
not), and that the problems "increased" (when they did not) for the 
democratically elected government.

When the final history is written of December 2002, it will be known 
as the month that the Venezuelan democracy took its oil industry back 
from a clique of over-paid and corrupt coup-plotters after the 
executives tried to sabotage it. (Just as April 2002 is now 
remembered as the month that the people brought the Armed Forces back 
under democratic control; a fact that is underscored by the events of 
December, in which the military, now purged of most of its "School of 
the Americas" trained terrorists from previous administrations, has 
behaved in an exemplary manner.)

To repeat: In April, the problem of military coup was solved by a 
creative popular movement and its democratically elected leaders; in 
December, the last gasp of elitist control of a nation's oil has 
played itself out and the petrol-terrorists have been sent packing.

Also in December 2002, for the first time in history, the nations of 
the entire hemisphere stood up to the United States executive branch 
through the Organization of American States Permanent Council. There 
were still games being played by the OAS secretary general Cesar 
Gaviria and by the White House in continued efforts to destabilize 
democracy in Venezuela, but they now have much less maneuvering room 
today than they had a month ago or ever before. As reported: Gaviria 
has already run from the scene of the crime. And come January, with 
Brazil and Ecuador inaugurating popular presidents smart and savvy 
enough to stand up to foreign intervention, this is already not 
Bush's father's América.

This is history in the making. In the middle of the simulated "War on
Terrorism" and its Twin Tower, the "War on Drugs," being used by 
cynical Power to get its way on every front, a grassroots democracy 
movement in Venezuela, related to similar movements throughout our 
América, has beaten the empire's advances.


Venezuela and América in 2003
What's in store?


With the Armed Forces and the oil industry returning to their 
rightful owners - the Venezuelan people, through their democratic 
electoral choices - and the maneuvering room for foreign intervention 
now more limited than ever, the pro-coup and anti-democracy forces 
still have one major weapon: The Commercial Media, within and without 
Venezuela. 

Unless the Commercial Media surprises us with some kind of Glasnost 
("Glass House") policy of its own (Gustavo Cisneros as Mikhail 
Gorbachev? That would improve TV ratings!), the battle will now move 
to the final obstacle to Authentic Democracy: The Media.

That's why, kind readers, it is so very important that you and I act 
now to hold the Commercial Media simulators of 2002 accountable. We 
must make sure the world knows who cannot be trusted, whose 
credibility should be questioned loudly, who should forever be 
reminded of their crimes of December 2002, and why. In the coming 
weeks, I urge all readers, all fellow and sister Authentic 
Journalists, to work hard to analyze the events of December 2002: to 
name the names of the professional simulators, and document their 
knowing falsehoods: to limit their maneuvering room to ever try to 
steal anybody's Christmas again. And I'm not a religious person, but
I do think that real workers should be able to rest at least for this 
week 
each year.

The agenda for 2003 is clear: We must continue to break the 
information 
blockades by developing our own better routes of Community Media, 
working together throughout the globe.

It is Sunday, December 22, and we've just survived, again, the 
darkest day 
of the year in the Northern Hemisphere from Caracas to Washington. I 
just got off the phone with our colleagues at Catia TV - the cutting-
edge 
Community TV station in Caracas - and the mood is joyful.

Our colleagues report that all is calm in Caracas. That although on 
Friday, 
coup leader Carlos Ortega announced a march toward the presidential 
palace at Miraflores to provoke a violent confrontation as his last 
gasp 
coup attempt, that nobody marched on Saturday and nobody is marching 
today. 

The streets and malls are filled not with protesters, but with 
shoppers, 
many of whom are only strolling, perhaps window-shopping, holding 
hands 
with their loved ones, showing great dignity and grace in the face of 
the 
economic damage the upper-class tantrum caused. Kitchens are 
beginning to 
enjoy the warmth and scent of holiday meals. Kids are playing "soccer 
games for peace" throughout the country and have announced that 
everyone is welcome except for anyone on any side who wants to hijack 
the event to make speeches.

Of course, our colleagues are at their watchtowers in the newsrooms
throughout the Venezuelan Community Media stations, vacation plans
cancelled, like ours at Narco News, we're all remaining vigilant, 
monitoring 
every possible trick or trap by those who tried to steal Christmas in 
2002. We're not complaining: Like Christmas, the beach will still be 
here in 2003, somewhere in a country called América, that after the 
Battle of December 2002, is an América more free.

Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro en fibertel.com.ar

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"Aquel que no está orgulloso de su origen no valdrá nunca 
nada porque empieza por depreciarse a sí mismo".
Pedro Albizu Campos, compatriota puertorriqueño de todos 
los latinoamericanos.
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