Charles
Redvers, de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel dat eerder
op Creative Commons werd geplaatst, stelt in zijn schrijven dat de
‘opstand’ in Nicaragua die moest leiden tot een coup tegen de
socialistische regering Ortega, als een soufflé is ingezakt. De
bevolking staat, zoals bij de laatste verkiezingen, voor het grootste
deel achter Ortega.
Redvers
stelt dat de oppositie, die zich eerder meermaals liet fêteren in de
VS, met claims kwam, die het volk aan het twijfelen brachten, daar deze claims eenvoudigweg te fantastisch waren en men er simpel doorheen kon
prikken vanwege de eigen ervaringen met de Ortega regering……
Zo
klopt er van het genoemde aantal doden geen bal en wat geen westerse
regulier medium vertelde: een groot aantal van de doden waren
aanhangers van Ortega en politiepersoneel, waar de laatsten soms op
vreselijke manieren werden vermoord……
Over
de berichtgeving in de reguliere westerse media gesproken, deze was
voor het overgrote deel ronduit vals te noemen, waar de meeste
‘journalisten/correspondenten’ niet eens vanuit Nicaragua
berichtten/berichten……. Zoals de zwaar gekleurde berichtgeving van Koopman op Radio1, die je het best kan zien als grootlobbyist voor VS ingrijpen…..* Nog steeds berichten dit soort correspondenten en journalisten over Nicaragua als dat het land in één grote chaos is gedompeld, terwijl het gewone dagelijkse leven al lang is teruggekeerd in Nicaragua……. Ook wordt Nicaragua afgeschilderd als een land waar de misdaad welig tiert, terwijl het land tot april dit jaar het op één na veiligste land van Zuid-Amerika was…..
Al
een aantal jaren is de VS bezig de sociale golf in te dammen die
Latijns Amerika overspoelde met mensen als Chavez van Venezuela en
Lula da Silva in Brazilie. Het geijkte recept: eerst een niet
welgevallige regering onder druk zetten en als dat niet lukt een economische
oorlog tegen het land ontketenen, waar de VS haar macht zo misbruikt
dat zelfs bedrijven uit Europa geen handel meer durven te drijven met
nu bedrijven in Nicaragua, maar zoals eerder al gebeurde in Venezuela (waar de VS
voorlopig ook geen poot aan de grond krijgt, al is de NAVO nu in
buurland Columbia en reken maar dat men broedt op een plan om de
regering Maduro omver te werpen……..)
Vandaar
ook alle leugens die de wereld in worden geholpen door de CIA, NSA,
Pentagon, politici en uiteraard de reguliere (massa-) media over de
situtatie in landen als Venezuela, Nicaragua en Bolivia (met de
socialistische president Evo Morales).
Niets
nieuws, daar de VS een geschiedenis heeft met het omverwerpen van
regimes in Latijns Amerika, waar geen middelen worden geschuwd en een
mensenleven niet veel meer waard is dan dat van een malaria
mug…….. Of anders gezegd: de VS baadt in het bloed van mensen uit
Latijns Amerika……
Opvallend
ook: over een grote pro-Ortega demonstratie in Nicaragua, waar men vervolging eiste voor moorden begaan door ‘de oppositie’, werd niet
eens bericht in de reguliere westerse media, nee de leugens worden
keer op keer herhaald….
Lees
het volgende artikel van Redvers met veel verwijzingen, waarin hij een aantal leugens
feilloos doorprikt, voorts stelt Redvers dat Nicaragua het wel moeilijk heeft en wellicht te maken zal krijgen met sancties van de VS, echter deze sancties zijn al lang een feit, ook al werd dit (nog) niet officieel uitgesproken door de VS, zo worden winkelketens met een VS achtergrond al niet meer bevoorraad, zoals de VS dit o.a. eerder deed met dit soort ketens in Venezuela:
Nicaragua’s
Failed Coup: What You’re Not Being Told
August
13, 2018 at 8:22 am
Written
by Open
Democracy
While
the international pressure continues, by mid-July it became clear
that, for the time being at least, the opposition in Nicaragua no
longer has sufficient local support to achieve its goal.
(OD Op-ed) — For
three months Daniel Ortega and his government in Nicaragua were under
intense pressure to resign – from protesters and opposition groups,
from local media and from right-wing politicians in the US. But by
mid-July it became clear that, despite persistent images of
near-collapse painted by the international press, the country appears
to be returning to something close to normality. How did a protest
that seemed so strong when it began, lose momentum so quickly?
Daniel
Ortega has been in power since 2007, in the last election won 72% of
the vote and until recently was running high in independent opinion
polls. Despite this, a casual reader of the national and
international media would get the impression that he’s deeply
despised.
In
Open Democracy, the international protest group SOS
Nicaragua calls
him a “tyrant hell-bent on the bloody repression of the nation.”
His local detractors agree. For example, on July 10 Vilma Núñez, a
longstanding opponent of Ortega’s who was originally his ally, told
the BBC that he is rolling out an “extermination plan” for
Nicaragua.
When
rebels briefly held one of Nicaragua’s cities a few weeks ago,
their leaders said they had ended “eleven years of repression”.
SOS Nicaragua even claims that Ortega is a “more hated and more
long-lived tyrant than Nicaragua’s former dictator” (Anastasio
Somoza and his family, who ruled Nicaragua ruthlessly for more than
40 years).
A
casual glance at social media will show that plenty of people share
these views, and at the peak of the opposition’s popularity they
clearly had considerable traction. But the opposition’s first
mistake might have been its overblown rhetoric, as people began to
question whether it squared with their own perceptions.
For
example, until April this year, Nicaragua was the second safest
country in Latin America despite also being one of the poorest. Its
police were renowned for their community-based methods in which
(unlike in the “northern triangle” countries of Honduras, El
Salvador and Guatemala) killings by police officers were a rarity.
Drugs-related crime was at a minimum and the violent gangs found in
neighbouring countries didn’t exist.
Of
course the police weren’t perfect, but people could safely report
problems such as domestic violence without expecting a violent
response from police themselves. Yet the same police are now labelled
“assassins” by the opposition and blamed for the majority of the
deaths since the protests started.
No
one has questioned how a force with a record of limited violence was
transformed overnight into ruthless murderers, supposedly capable of
torture and even of killing children.
That
there have been violent deaths in the past three months is not in
doubt.
Bloomberg repeated
the claim from
local human rights groups that 448 had died by the end of July.
However, a detailed analysis of those reported in the first two
months of the crisis showed how the numbers were being manipulated.
By then nearly 300 deaths had been recorded by the two main human
rights organisations or by the Inter-American Human Rights
Commission.
A
claim made right from the beginning by the protesters was that they
were either unarmed or at best had only homemade weapons to
protect themselves. Again, the international media were convinced.
But local people could see otherwise.
A case-by-case
analysis showed
that of those listed only about 120 were definitely attributable to
the protests, with many unrelated to the events or having unclear
causes, or involved bystanders or resulted from double-counting.
Of course, the exaggerated picture is still held in many people’s
minds (only the other day someone told my wife that “hundreds of
students have been killed”), but many others have gradually
realised that no massacre
has in fact occurred.
In
an important respect the opposition succeeded. They created what The
Guardian calls
“a widespread and growing consensus within the international
community that Nicaragua’s government is in fact largely
responsible for the bloodshed.” While human rights NGOs repeat the
message that the police and security forces (in Amnesty
International’s words)
“shoot to kill”, the people themselves mostly know otherwise.
Whatever the provenance of the deaths in the April protests, recent
victims have often been government supporters or the police
themselves.
In
an analytic
interview,
Nils McCune explained to journalist Max Blumenthal how the opposition
violence grew and Sandinistas were persecuted. Examples include a
little reported incident on July 12, in which opposition gunmen
killed four police and a schoolteacher in the small town of Morrito,
kidnapping nine others.
On
July 15, protesters captured a policeman from Jinotepe while he was
on his way home, tortured him and burnt his body. Of the deaths
verified in the analysis above, about half are of government
officials, police or Sandinista supporters. On August 4 there was a
massive march in Managua of government supporters calling for justice
for these deaths, which are little reported internationally.
A
claim made right from the beginning by the protesters was that they
were either unarmed or at best had only
homemade weapons to protect themselves.
Again, the international media were convinced. But local people could
see otherwise. The dangerous homemade mortars were soon being
supplemented by more serious weapons. In the places where the
protesters rested control of the streets, AK47s and other arms were
being carried openly.
This
was not surprising, as what started as mainly a student protest
quickly changed to one in which trouble-makers were recruited from
outside. There were reports from various cities of youths being paid
to man the barricades; in some cases, more serious criminals became
involved.
One
of the student leaders of the protest, Harley Morales, admitted on
June 10 that they had lost touch with what was happening on the
streets. It was increasingly clear to local people that the coup
attempt was leading to danger and insecurity of a kind they hadn’t
experienced for years.
An
initially successful element of the opposition’s campaign was
building road blocks (“tranques”) on city streets and on the
country’s half-dozen main highways. At one point the country was
effectively paralysed and the government was forced to demand the
lifting of the tranques before it would continue with the “national
dialogue” aimed at resolving the crisis (hosted by Catholic bishops
and involving both opposition and government supporters).
If
the opposition had been sensible, it would have taken the government
at its word, lifted the blockades and insisted that the dialogue
proceed at pace. But either it was hooked on the power that the
blockades had given it, or it couldn’t control those who were
manning them. As well as simply being intimidating for local people
to cross and very disruptive for local businesses, by this stage the
tranques were the main focus of violence.
They
quickly turned from being an opposition asset to being the main
reason why people wanted a quick return to “normality” (a plea
frequently heard in the streets). In the space of only a week or two,
the opposition lost perhaps the best chance it had to influence the
outcome of the crisis. When police and paramilitaries finally moved
in to clear the tranques, people were out celebrating
in Leon, Carazo and Masaya.
Another
area in which the opposition wasted its initial gains was in use of
social media. The starting point for the crisis was a forest fire in
one of the country’s remote reserves. The opposition accused the
government of ignoring the fire and turning down offers of help to
fight it. By the time these were shown to be false, attention had
moved on to a much more inflammatory issue, reforms to the social
security system.
The
strength and pace of the protests were fuelled by a stream of real
and fake news, principally via Facebook. Of course government
supporters were doing the same, but the opposition proved far more
effective.
Again,
there were distorted messages both about the reforms themselves and
the subsequent protests. In perhaps the first example of mass
manipulation of social media in Nicaragua since smartphones became
widely available a couple of years ago, the strength and pace of the
protests were fuelled by a stream of real and fake news, principally
via Facebook. Of course government supporters were doing the same,
but the opposition proved far more effective.
Any
death was of a protester. Scenes were staged of tearful students
uttering their “last messages” while under fire or people
“confessing” to doing the government’s dirty work. While
manipulation by the government side was more obvious and less
sophisticated, many people became sceptical about what they saw on
their phones and began to place more trust in their own experiences.
As
the opposition became more desperate, social media took a turn for
the worse, with instructions to track down and kill government
“toads” (“zapos”), leading to the victimising and even
torturing of
government workers and supporters. The intolerance has spread
to the US and Europe, with SOS Nicaragua members shouting down anyone
speaking about Nicaragua who does not support their line (as happened
in early August in San
Francisco).
Yet
another opposition tactic that misfired was in calling strikes. That
these came about was due to big business, which for long was happy to
live with the Ortega government but was called to action by the US
ambassador in March, when she told
them they
needed to get involved in politics. From day one they supported the
opposition, even at the cost of their own businesses.
But
Nicaragua is unique in Latin America in having only modest reliance
on big firms. Thanks both to the nature of its economy and support
from the Ortega government, small businesses, artesan workshops,
co-ops and small farmers have grown in number.
What’s
known as the “popular economy” contributes 64% of national
income, far higher than is the case with Nicaragua’s neighbours. As
well as being strangled by the tranques, small businesses couldn’t
cope with strikes. Some observed them (perhaps under threat) but many
did not, and the opposition lost other potential allies.
The
protest marches, tranques and strikes were all aimed at putting
pressure on the government, with the (televised) national dialogue as
the public platform. Here, the opposition not only missed its best
chance to secure reforms but its attacks misfired in other ways. It
had only one argument, repeatedly put forward, that the government
was responsible for all the deaths that were happening and must
resign forthwith.
In
other words, it didn’t really want dialogue at all. A belligerence
that found approval among its hard-core supporters was simply
off-putting to the majority of people who desperately wanted a
negotiated outcome that would end the violence. The national dialogue
now receives little attention, in part because the government has
regained control of the streets but also because it is obvious that
the opposition were using it only to insult and criticise, with no
real intention of engaging properly.
Furthermore,
instead of the Catholic church staying to one side as mediators,
their priests have again and again been found to support the
protests, so their role as neutral actors in the dialogue is no
longer credible, if it ever was.
By
aligning itself with the right wing of the US Republican party
through its well-publicised trips to Washington and Miami, and its
acceptance of US government finance, the opposition points to a
change of political direction for Nicaragua which would be anathema
to most Sandinistas and even to many of its own supporters.
By
having to speak publicly in the dialogue, the opposition has also
exposed other weaknesses. While it is united in wanting Ortega to go,
it is divided on tactics and even more fundamentally in its politics.
Whatever one thinks of the Ortega government, it can be seen to have
taken the country in a certain direction and to have accumulated many
social achievements during its eleven years in power.
What
would happen to these? Even on the issue that ostensibly began the
protests, the national social security fund, the opposition offers no
clear alternative. Worse, by aligning itself with the right wing of
the US Republican party through its well-publicised trips to
Washington and Miami, and its acceptance of US government finance
(detailed by the Grayzone
Project),
the opposition points to a change of political direction for
Nicaragua which would be anathema to most Sandinistas and even to
many of its own supporters.
There
is a paradox here, because a tactic which backfired in Nicaragua may
yet serve the opposition’s cause internationally and damage both
Nicaragua and the Ortega government in a different way. While for the
Trump administration Nicaragua is hardly a priority, there is
long-running resentment about the success of Sandinista governments
within the US establishment, awoken by the recent protests.
The
same establishment also sees an opportunity to attack an ally of
Venezuela’s. It has been working hard in bodies like the
Organisation of American States, aided by its new allies in the
region, to restrict Nicaragua’s support to the small number of
Latin American countries that refuse to play the US game. While the
OAS/OEA can take few concrete steps itself, it is contributing to an
image of Nicaragua among US lawmakers that may allow sanctions to be
imposed that could be very damaging to its economy and hence to its
people.
As
a result of all the opposition’s mistakes, and of the government’s
concerted action to regain control, Nicaragua’s real situation has
shifted markedly in the few weeks since mid-July. But international
commentators are failing to keep up. The New York Times, Huffington
Post, Guardian and other media continue to talk about
the tyranny, or the
mounting political violence,
or (in the case of Huffpost) even the
rise of fascism in
Nicaragua.
In
Open Democracy, José Zepeda claims that
“the majority of the Nicaraguan people have turned their backs on
[Ortega]”. In Canada, the Ottawa Citizen talked about
Nicaragua imploding.
But most of these correspondents are not in the country. In practice
the violence has slowed almost to a halt, Nicaraguan cities are clear
of barricades and normal life is being resumed. The prevailing
feeling is one of relief, and better-informed commentators have begun
to conclude that the
attempted coup has failed.
Of
course there are enormous challenges, and huge potential pitfalls for
a government now having to repair the country’s infrastructure with
reduced tax revenues, scarce international investment and near-zero
tourism, as well as facing open hostility from its neighbours and
possible economic sanctions by the United States. But in terms of the
strength of its core support among Nicaraguan people, Daniel Ortega’s
government may even be stronger now than it was before the crisis
began.
By Charles
Redvers / Creative
Commons / Open
Democracy / Report
a typo
===================================
* Edwin Koopman die zich godbetert journalist en analist durft te noemen, werkt zowel voor Trouw, de VPRO en Clingendael (Clingendael is een lobbyorgaan voor de VS, de NAVO en het militair-industrieel complex)….. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! Nee, echt een ‘geheel onafhankelijk journalist’ die Koopman…..
Zie ook:
‘VS vermoordde meer dan 20 miljoen mensen sinds het einde van WOII……..‘
‘VS buitenlandbeleid sinds WOII: een lange lijst van staatsgrepen en oorlogen……….‘
‘List of wars involving the United States‘
‘CIA 70 jaar: 70 jaar moorden, martelen, coups plegen, nazi’s beschermen, media manipulatie enz. enz………‘
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