"We will continue to push for a revolution that is NOT a paper tiger, much less run by desk pilots and megaphones!"

VHeadline editor & publisher Roy S. Carson writes: In an editorial in this weekend's edition of the controversial political news magazine 'Las Verdades de Miguel' (Miguel's Truths), publishing director Jose Lopez highlights the disturbing fact that President Chavez Frias' government is seeking to quash media outlets that criticize an increasingly warped version of what is a socialist society.

Lopez says: "Genuine socialism encourages citizens to be self-critical ... it recognizes critique as an essential element towards progress, rather than to have a stagnation or regression, as has happened in so many revolutionary processes."

Particular outrage is engendered over the crassly inept and unprofessional treatment of 'Las Verdades' staff by a serious of 'stupidos' in the government administration who are so thin-skinned that they simply write off the prestigious political publication as 'Las Mentiras de Miguel' (Miguel's Lies) because they cannot come with any other excuse for the 'revolutionary' administration's descent into corruption and ineptitudes.

Were the idiotic name-calling the only part of the current scenario, one could easily brush the governmental department morons off like so many flies on a dung-heap but, as Lopez points out, the ministerial and (Chavez) party political buffoons have become so convinced of their own arrogant self-importance (sin verguenzas-those without shame!) and impunity, that they think that, where they fail utterly with insults and threats, they can use physical violence to underline their assumption that they are right and everyone else is wrong.

Lopez says "We are now facing an intractable situation, but we will continue our struggle for the freedom, where necessary, to criticize 'the process' -- despite the entrenched attitudes of those who oppose us -- I speak for an editorial group that has endured these problems -- we share the journalistic experience and will continue to so so with the same character and spirit that we have espoused since we began publication."

"It should NOT be a diabolical sin for us, editorially, to criticize those in government or in the ruling party. What happened was that a marketing executive, as a routine part of his job, responded to a query about advertising in 'Las Verdades,' but was seriously mistreated by government officials, who didn't just stop at excoriating him and our publication for printing the truth (about how Chavez' Bolivarian Revolution is going off the rails!)!"

"It was a set-up, and, very obviously, they were upset by the truths we printed in Las Verdades ... but is that any reason why our staff, any employee should be set-upon, verbally abused? And then, as if the insults were not enough, to be physically abused ... this is also what happened to one of our photojournalists. They were punched, kicked, pushed and shoved around by government/party officials for doing their jobs! This is disgraceful!"

Of course, it's nothing new as President Hugo Chavez Frias' 'Bolivarian Revolution' spirals out of control through corruption and mis-management from the top down. The President's violent rhetoric incites and encourages his often mindless acolytes to take him at his word and put the brutalities into action, fearing nothing since they are convinced they have the President's carte blanche blessing to brutalize anyone they come across who does not immediately submit to the party line. It's dangerous!

Las Verdades director Lopez says the only explanation for the absurd situation in which the President claims there is freedom of expression and a free press in Venezuela, yet all of this happens routinely in confrontation with dissenting media, is that the administration has become inebriated with power.

"Power is power ... the net result of these abuses is that it is risky to take photographs, report what is actually happening ... it prevents us from doing our work properly when our physical integrity is routinely violated with impunity. While it is Christian to turn the other cheek, we are finding our rights taken away and each time we have raised our voice in protest, the reaction has been a spate of threats and faceless blackmail. It has become so endemic in the administration ... the task is made more difficult to honor the truth, but we have proved that it is not impossible! We have the support of our readers and our commitment to them prevents us from giving in to any outside interests that would diminish our responsibility to tell the truth!"

"The President of the Republic (Chavez) and his party officials incessantly call for humility but he should extend this proclamation to the leadership of his own partisans. He (Chavez) knows the perversions of such arrogance ... he knows that arrogance is not an effective tool in the hands of a revolutionary. What happened recently to our employees is just one event among many ... mistreatment and abuse of power is simply the lowest of the low!"

Lopez says that an Orwellian policy of "Death to The Facts" was decreed in a Council of Ministers in mid-2005.

"The murder weapon was the abolition of any formal government advertising. Effectively it means the government favors publications that it can control and leaves all others, especially the media that dares to criticize, entirely out in the cold ... it's nothing new for us at 'Las Verdades' since they have attempted to strangle us many times before and we have already reached issue number 226 (almost 5 years of publication) and the country already knows enough about our successes in publishing the truth to the extent that we enjoy a credibility that we could not even imagine when we started out ... in reality it has given us a stronger backbone in journalism ... as a group of communicators, we will continue to keep the Venezuelan public in a state of permanent mobilization to face ain infinity where we do not know what will happen or how far it (the governmental decay) will reach!"

"But how do we get there? What must we do? We do NOT want our staff to be forced to hide their credentials as journalists when they cover official events. But we're NOT willing to have them submit to such humiliation and, anyway, we would be making concession to the arrogance of government officials who have no conscience. It is a strange kind of revolutionary who feels he must threaten the media, but he doesn't frighten us ... we will continue doing our job."

"Blackmail by withholding advertising is just as bad as the lynching that became such a common practice under the Fourth Republican. What they're doing now is a similar trickle-down effect they learned either by inheritance or contagion (from past administrations). For our part, we will continue committing 'the political sin" of having a critical ethos ... we will remain free to hold out heads very high with each Friday's edition, which will continue to monitor the pulse and temperature of the conscience of Venezuela the country. Revolutionary zeal must be freed from duplicity ... there is no other way!"

"We will continue to push for a revolution that is NOT a paper tiger, much less run by desk pilots and megaphones ... our opposition (to government insults, threats and thuggery!) comes from their own paranoid entrenchment and, not surprisingly, it takes on value from Las Verdades' attitude to a reality that is fraught with risk for the peace and tranquility of the Venezuelan people."

"That's why we have support from newsstands across the country, from people who
are very much displeased with what is happening. Our success is word-of-mouth,
citizen-to-citizen ... an invaluable editorial capital that remains our best publicity ... free from government blackmail."

VHeadline Venezuela News can attest to the veracity of Las Verdades de Miguel director Jose Lopez assertions inasmuch as we have ourselves suffered from the same exclusions. A number of years ago, VHeadline was to have been used as the excellent advertising platform for Venezuelan export industries, tourism etc., that it undoubtedly was and it. After a series of unfulfilled ministerial promises, a deal was finally struck with the then Vice Minister of Communications & Information (MinCI) Yuri Pimentel -- who had assured us of his long-standing zeal as a revolutionary for at least the previous 25 years.

We had had, however, to pull the plug on the deal when Pimentel -- who has since gone on to make a complete mess of state-owned Venezolana de Television (VTV) -- demanded that we should sign a contract with MinCI that would effectively have signed away editorial control of VHeadline to him and the Venezuelan government.

While another English-language news website lays claim to being independent of government, it is widely known that they succumbed to an "arrangement" ... while we at VHeadline were arrogantly accused of 'Chantajes' (Blackmail) in an official statement issued by Pimentel to the national newswire Venpres (now ABN) for our adamant refusal to compromise our editorial freedoms.

With personal pride, I can today reveal that, during a meeting in London less than a year ago, MinCI Minister Andres Izarra, then president of South America's TeleSUR -- who I had publicly defended against irrational accusations of having blood on his hands for an alleged incident during the April 2002 USA-backed coup d'etat -- conceded to VHeadline news editor Patrick J. Donoghue and myself that we had "upset some people" by NOT surrendering our editorial autonomy and control for shekels of silver...

That is why we continue to state that VHeadline is free of political affiliations other than an intense desire to support Venezuela democracy, Constitutionality and the Rule of Law.

And, that is why we are also exploiting our fullest editorial freedoms -- like Verdades de Miguel -- to bring the unadulterated truth to our readers around the world, of how President Hugo Chavez Frias' Bolivarian Revolution is lurching inexorably out of control, because of crass revolutionary arrogance, unprofessional ineptitudes and blatant corruption that he, Chavez, had pledged himself ten years ago to purge.

The evidence is all around for everyone to see. Unfortunately, there are many thousands who have been whipped into religious fanaticism by the President's forceful and often hate-filled rhetoric.

The November 23 local and regional elections could be a watershed ... the current dilemma is in which direction the tide will turn.

Will the grassroots decencies of the Venezuelan people win the original revolution or will the corruption-saturated government administration turn that dream into a veritable nightmare?

In FIFTEEN DAYS time we should know one way ... or the other!

Roy S. Carson
vheadline@gmail.com

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Venezuela is facing the most difficult period of its history with honest reporters crippled by sectarianism on top of rampant corruption within the administration and beyond, aided and abetted by criminal forces in the US and Spanish governments which cannot accept the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people to decide over their own future.

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