A Few Facts about the Case of Judge Afiuni
Some of my friends in the US and internationally have had some concerns about recent events in Venezuela. From here in Venezuela, however, it seems there may be some misinformation, something common, of course, in mass media. One of these issues is the case of Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni, who was indicted for corruption and placed in detention for her illegal actions and abuse of her judicial power. Despite the fact that the US government and other international “human rights defenders” claim Venezuela has a terrible problem with judicial corruption, when authorities act against such malaise, then the government is accused of “cracking down on dissent” or being “authoritarian”.
Ironically, Judge Afiuni has claimed to be innocent and a political prisoner of President Chavez.
Afiuni was judging a financier named Eligio Cedeño who was involved in several corruption cases. He was initially charged with embezzlement of millions of dollars from banking institutions, essentially stealing the money from customers. Another charge against him was that he and an accomplice deceived CADIVI, our office of currency control, by ostensibly buying computers for almost US $30 million but bringing only empty containers to the country. The financier’s accomplice was arrested in Panama more than a year and half ago, and after being turned over to the authorities of Venezuela confessed the whole scheme. His lawyers delayed the trial with legal maneuvers, until about six months ago, when Judge Afiuni herself walked Mr. Cedeño out of the courtroom and escorted him with two other employees of her court to the internal parking lot for judges, where Cedeño boarded a motorcycle that was let into the lot by Afiuni’s instruction.
Then Afiuni returned to the courtroom to write the ruling with the decision to liberate Cedeño and afterwards she sat down and said loud and clear that she would sit where she was to wait for the suspension letter to arrive from her superiors.
The usual legal practice is that whenever an inmate is freed by ruling of a judge, he is taken back to prison where he waits for the arrival of the release order signed by the judge, something that usually happens in a matter of one or two hours. This was violated by Afiuni to be sure Cedeño would get away.
The judge, suspected of a felony, was suspended pending further investigation, and usually, in the corrupt system, nobody ever got sanctioned because in cases of bribery people released simply flee to another country to enjoy the money they’ve stolen stashed in some bank account of a family member, like to Miami, USA, for example, where Cedeño went. This explains the approach of Afiuni, but this time things worked out differently because she was arrested and held to trial for bribery.
MY REFLECTION
I have to say that I find it strange for people abroad concerned with justice and Venezuelan progress, to defend people like Judge Afiuni. I think she deserves to have the same treatment as any other citizen who is judged for similar reasons and is under custody because a serious and probable flight risk exists. Afiuni already has privileges, including originally being in a fairly comfortable cell with TV and a laptop (and Twitter), and enjoying visits at times no other inmate is allowed. Now she is in house arrest, where she enjoys all the comforts of home.
Since Afiuni knows the judicial position she is in, she keeps on playing the card of being a political prisoner, which of course she is not. We have no news of Afiuni being a political partisan of any group or defender of any ideology. Simply, Afiuni was a judge who received a payoff for the release of Cedeño and now is eager to part the country and enjoy the money.
If we had had a violent Revolution we could fight corruption with violent means, but since our Revolution follows a democratic and peaceful path, we can only put the felons in jail. To forego that option would be to forego law, on the one hand, and open the door to further violations on the other.
By Fernando Vegas Torrealba | Correo del Orinoco International | July 8th 2011Fernando Vegas Torrealba is a Venezuelan Supreme Court Justice.
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/widely-ignored-facts-on-chomskys-criminal-victims-of-authoritarianism/

I really don't like any of the people involved. I can see what Chomsky might be trying to do and I don't agree with it, but the rest of the articles in that paper seem like total government propganda. Every article is about how great Chavez and the Venezuelan government are. It reminds me of the Soviet Union.
A major difference between the Soviet Union and Venezuela would be that while Venezuela has a pro-government newspaper, the Correo del Orinoco, it also has a vibrant multitude of anti-government media which actually constitute the vast majority of radio, television and newsprint in Venezuela.
On top of that, Correo del Orinoco is only a year or two old whereas the Chavez regime is much older. The Bolivarian movement prevailed in many elections despite having only one major radio outlet competing with a panopoly of hostile media owned by a hostile class.
But, your point is taken nonetheless. It might be better for the international audience to get a less partisan alternative media from Venezuela. If only they had the endless budget that the US state dept. has.
I’ve read four of Chomsky’s books, and I totally agree with most of what he writes, but Chomsky is dead wrong about the Venezuelan judge María Lourdes Afiuni.
Chomsky’s defense of Afiuni is understandable, since Chomsky is a self-avowed Zionist Jew, as is Eligio Cedeño, the banker and media mogul that Judge Afiuni personally helped to escape to Miami, in flagrant violation of court procedure and Venezuelan law. Cedeño-the-Jew stole millions from his own bank customers, and violated Venezuela’s law against simultaneously owning controlling interests in banks and media outlets. He is the worst kind of cum, as is that little bitch, Judge Afiuni, who now wants to escape to Miami. I suspect that Afiuni herself is a Jew. Chomsky wants her released from house arrest.
(Yet another Jew is Henrique Capriles Radonski, who will be Hugo Chavez’ main challenger for the 2012 presidential election. Radonski is a rich capitalist creep who claims that his grandparents were holo-hoax “survivors”).
Yes, I like Chomsky’s books, but I ignore his frequent descents into garbage. For example, he criticizes Israel, but defends the Israel lobby. He never misses an opportunity to blast the Nazis, and he calls everyone he disagrees with a “fascist.”
Chomsky opposes imperialism (as I do) but as a Jew he also opposes Goy nationalism and fascism, since these represent Goy solidarity. Contrary to Chomsky, and most of the confused Goy masses, fascism does not represent tyranny or militarism. Instead, fascism means, “united we stand, divided we fall.” It is symbolized by its traditional image of sticks bundled together – an image that is prominently displayed everywhere in Washington DC, including both houses of Congress.
Fascism is anti-tyranny. It is anti-elitist. It champions unity between government and the people. It opposes American-style plutocracy and elitism. It opposes the globalism and the hyper-materialism of Jews and finance-capitalists.
Since Jews control the mass media, they have brainwashed the Goy masses into totally misunderstanding the term “fascism.” And since Jews control the banks, Jews are globalists who denounce all forms of non-Jewish solidarity as “fascist.” The only fascism that Jews favor is Jewish fascism, i.e. Jewish solidarity.
Rich elitists are not fascists. Nor are finance capitalists, who – like Jews – are globalists who oppose all forms of genuine nationalism.
Communists ostensibly favor a unity between government and the masses, as fascists do, but Communists are not fascists, since Communists reject nationalism. Communists are internationalists (i.e. gobalists) just like Jews and finance capitalists. That’s why some Jews favored Communism until the Hungarian uprising of 1956, in which the masses rose against Jewish and Soviet control. After that, most of the world’s Jews sided with finance capitalists.
Chomsky himself is a capitalist. He denounces militarism and imperialism, but he avoids discussing finance capitalism, which is the engine of today’s imperialism. Finance capitalism is false capitalism, since it does not favor fair markets. It wants “free markets,” in which finance capitalists are free to create monopolies, and free to move capital anywhere in the world at the expense of the masses. It is “neo-liberal,” meaning it wants zero government regulation for Wall Street, and total government regulation for the masses.
Regarding the newspaper Correo del Orinoco (The Orinoco Mail), “Infinite” condemns it because, “Every article is about how great Chavez and the Venezuelan government are. It reminds me of the Soviet Union.”
First, Correo del Orinoco is a project of Eva Golinger, an attorney who is unabashedly pro-Chavez. Second, Soviet control of the Russian media was no different from Jewish / Capitalist / corporate control of today’s mass media, which is radically pro-war, pro-elitist, pro-Jew, and pro-finance capitalist.
I’m amused by people who denounce the Western mass media on one hand, while also denouncing alternative media sources as “like the Soviet Union.” Such thinking helps keep the masses enslaved by Jews and globalists.
Incidentally, Venzuela is not communist or socialist. Its current constitution (which Chavez helped to write) expressly requires that Venezuela remain a mixture of socialism and capitalism. Hence Chavez and his followers use the term "Bolivarianism," which is anti-imperialist. Chavez has never declared war on another nation.
Rich elitists in Venezuela remain arch-capitalists. They own every broadcast media outlet except the state channel, and they use those outets to blast Chavez 24/7.
The system I personally favor is National Socialism such as we saw in Third Reich Germany, or Juan Peron's Argentina. The USA overthew Peron immediately after overthrowing Allende of Chile, who was a Jew, but a left-leaning Jew.
I've watched the documentary and seen the info about how the corporate media in Venezuela participated in the coup attempt in 2002 and what not. I don't trust corporate or government power so I don't know which I really think is better. Chavez is a Marxist. I definitely don't agree with all of Marxism and consider myself an individualist not a collectivist. & Chavez is an admirer of Lenin. Leftists will respond that the corporate oligarchs are worse but to me they're both equally bad.
And far as this Heydrich person goes, if I'm being denounced by a self-proclaimed fascist I guess I'm on the right track. Also 'Chomsky doesn't talk about finance capitalism', what? Have you ever watched one of his speeches about the economy, he talks about it all the time. Veneuzeulan socialism is the same as fascism and it's good because of this? You have some confused, strange ideas.
@Heydrich - Where did you get the idea that Allende was Jewish? Allende was considered anti-semitic by many and when at university was reputed to have written in his dissertation that "The Hebrews are well-known committers of certain types of crimes including: fraud, deceit, defamation, but most notably usury."
@Infinite - Even though they had some similarities, fascism and national socialism simply can't be equated the way you have done. Heydrich has said that he favours national socialism, which doesn't make him a fascist.
Individualist or collectivist?
None of us nor any nation are all one or the other. We all are driven by both motivations, they are inherent within our natures.
As it turns out, the US state sector of the economy is a greater percentage than the current state sector in Venezuela. The main difference being that the US state sector is engaged in militarism while the Venezuelan state sector engages in oil and gas production.
Thank you for your comments, Sullivan. I never call someone a Jew unless I know for a fact that he or she is a Jew. If I am not sure, I say so.
Salavador Allende’s mother, Laura Gossens Uribe, was Jewish. By orthodox Jewish law, if your mother is Jewish, then you are a Jew. (An exception is Karaite Jews, who go with patrilineal descent. Also, some secular and non-religious Jews adopt a bilineal view. Israel goes with matrilineal descent. The child of a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother may immigrate to Israel, but will be registered in official documents as a non-Jew.)
Allende’s Jewish ancentry was well-known in Chile, and Jews did well under his presidency. As a youth he sent a letter of protest to Adolf Hitler after the Jewish false flag event known as Kristallnacht. As president in 1972 he asked the Simon Wiesenthal Center ask the Chilean Supreme Court to extradite former SS Colonel Walter Rauff from Chile to Germany.
The absurd charge of anti-Semitism appeared in the book “Salvador Allende: Anti-Semitism and Euthanasia” by Victor Farías, a Chilean-born teacher at the Latin America Institute of the Free University of Berlin. In his book, Farías falsely claims that Allende held racist, homophobic and anti-semitic views. The truth is that Allende once quoted some lines from Cesare Lombroso (an Italian Jew who believed in eugenics) to condemn those lines.
Allende was not a Communist per se, but he had close ties to the Chilean Communist party, and he occasionally criticized foreign capitalist Jews who attacked him. One of those foreign Jews, Henry Kissinger, orchestrated the coup against Allende.
More information:
http://nlp.cs.nyu.edu/meyers/controversial-wikipedia-corpus/english-html/main/main_0691.html
“Infinite” writes, “And far as this Heydrich person goes, if I'm being denounced by a self-proclaimed fascist I guess I'm on the right track.”
Evidently you accept the standard (and false) Jewish definition of the term “fascist.” That’s okay. It takes many years for some of us to free ourselves from brainwashing. Perhaps you only skimmed my comments without paying attention to them. That’s okay.
Also in my comments, I said Chomsky avoids discussing finance capitalism. Chomsky does indeed mention finance capitalism on occasion, but he does not delve into it. If I am incorrect, please share some web links to show why.
I do not say that Chomsky defends finance capitalism. In my view he is so wrapped up in denouncing militarism and imperialism that he overlooks finance capitalism as an engine of ths evil.
I did NOT say that Veneuzeulan (sic) socialism is the same as fascism. I said the only South American leader I considered fascist was Juan Peron, who remains popular among many Argentinians to this day.
“Infinite” writes, “You have some confused, strange ideas.” Lacking an argument, “Infinite” resorts to simple dismissals that amount to ad hominem attacks. No surprise there. The main person I address my comments to is Sullivan, whose views I agree with.
Sullivan writes, “Heydrich has said that he favors national socialism, which doesn't make him a fascist.”
To clarify, I am indeed a fascist, along the lines of people like Oswald Mosely, who the British imprisoned for the duration of WW II for his anti-war views. Most people’s understanding of “fascism” is false, and has been imposed on them by Jews, Communists, and finance capitalists, all of which oppose the true meaning of fascism, which is authentic national solidarity.
I repeat again that the symbols of fascism (in its original, true sense) are found everywhere in Washington DC, and in the government buildings of many capitol cities of U.S. states. They were put there before the Spanish-American war, which was America's first step toward becoming an imperial plutocracy. Even today, both the House and the Senate have huge sculptures of fasces on the wall behind the dais.
Fascism originally meant, “United we stand; divided we fall.” Jews and finance capitalists twist this around, and project their own evil onto it. They say fascism means tyranny. Not so. Plutocracy and Zionism mean tyranny. Fascism opposes this. Meanwhile Communists oppose fascism because it is nationalist, while communists are internationalists (i.e. globalists), as are Jews and finance capitalists.
This is not mere word play. I’m saying the masses have been brainwashed. The masses have even been brainwashed to think that finance capitalism is capitalism. True capitalism entails fair markets with open honest competition. False, finance capitalism seeks monopolies, and uses governments to checkmate competition. So-called “free markets” are not the same as fair markets. Max Kesier says (and I agree) that genuine capitalism finally died when the Bretton Woods agreement died in 1971. Since then, the West has embarked on a path of finance capitalism, which uses debt as a weapon, and paper profits as its goal.
Incidentally, National Socialism includes many aspects of both capitalism and socialism. It is a Third Way. And yes, it is fascist in the original true meaning of the term. Mussolini was a fascist on the domestic front, but an imperialist on the foreign front (e.g. Libya and Ethiopia), which I condemn.