page 7 | Culture
page 8 | Opinion
Venezuela hosts Expo Tattoo 2012 with famed “Vampire Woman”
US democracy promotion is a recipe for regime change around the world
Friday | February 3, 2012 | Nº 100 | Caracas
US candidates attack Venezuela Fidel Castro rightly called the US republican primary race a “competition of idiocies and ignorance”. The principal candidates have been lashing out at Latin American governments, debating the timing of Castro’s death and claiming they would oust Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez from power. The candidates have been courting extreme rightwing groups in Florida, appealing to their staunch anti-Cuban and antiVenezuelan agendas, while demonstrating their lack of statism. | page 3
ENGLISH EDITION The artillery of ideas
Venezuela: Building a state of law & social justice Judicial reform has been an area of major concern in the South American country known for impunity This week’s Venezuela’s judicial year got a kick start as President Hugo Chavez called for major reforms in the legal system during the inaugural ceremony. “We are pioneers; we are the vanguard for the inventors of new worlds...we have to be careful with the previous paradigm of bourgeois justice, where only the poor are seen to commit crimes and the rich are not”, declared the Venezuelan President, urging reforms in the nation’s penal code. Venezuela’s judicial system has been notorious for its corruption and extreme bureaucracy. Major reforms would be a very welcome change for most Venezuelans. | page 5
Economy
Venezuela repatriates gold The last of Venezuela’s gold reserves arrived this week & will remain in country. | page 4 Security
Anti-terrorism law passed The Venezuelan parliament passed a law to combat organized crime and terrorism.| page 5 Integration
World Social Forum supports Venezuela The Bolivarian Revolution was viewed as an example for a “better world”.| page 6
Music making Venezuela proud
Argentina condemns British warship deployment to Malvinas
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he Government of Argentina condemned the decision of Great Britain to deploy one of its most powerful and modern warships, the destroyer HMS Dauntless, to the Malvinas Islands (also known as Falkland Islands). The action was considered an attempt to try to militarize the conflict in the region. Buenos Aires called on London to use diplomacy and not weap-
ons to achieve a solution over disputes regarding sovereignty in the area. “International organizations and democratic countries have to work day after day to prevent armed conflicts and replace them with civilized negotiations for the solution of conflicts”, read an official statement issued by the Argentine Foreign Affairs Ministry.
The document also highlighted that the United Kingdom, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, has continuously rejected any resolution by the UN to solve this conflict in a negotiated manner, which increases “the risk of war”. Furthermore, the official statement, in reference to the visit of Prince William to the disputed territory, read: “The Argentine people regret that the royal heir
Venezuelan director Gustavo Dudamel had to return to the stage three times to please the deafening applauses from over 2,000 attendants during the performance of Gustav Mahler’s Symphony Nº7 by the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra. The concert took place at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. “Precision” was one of the most repeated words among attendants, delighted by the performance of Venezuelan musicians. The Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra’s tour in Los Angeles will end on Saturday February 4 with a concert in the Shrine Auditorium together with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. They will play Mahler’s Symphony Nº8 and under the direction of Gustavo Dudamel.
of Britain is coming here wearing the uniform of the conqueror and not with the wisdom of a statesman who works in the service of peace and dialogue between nations”. The Malvinas Islands are 480 kms away from Argentina’s coast and over 12,000 kms away from London. The Islands have been occupied by Great Britain since 1883 and the dispute for the sovereignty in the area was cause for an armed conflict between the two countries in 1982.
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The artillery of ideas
Chavez: Food production and gun control priorities of national security in 2012 For the second consecutive week, the question of agricultural development and food security in Venezuela took center stage during President Hugo Chavez's 378th edition of his weekly television program, Alo Presidente T/ COI P/ Presidential Press
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roadcasting from the state of Barinas in the western plains of the country, Chavez highlighted the need last Sunday to push forward with a re-prioritization of domestic food production and announced the creation of a new federal agency to take up the issue. The new Executive Board for the Grand Mission Agro Venezuela follows on the founding of the government’s latest agrarian program, inaugurated in January last year, to further expand the South American country’s agricultural potential by putting abandoned lands to use and providing small farmers with the necessary resources to cultivate staple foods. Thus far, more than 600,000 workers have enrolled in Mission Agro Venezuela in order to receive technical assistance from the national government as well as have access to the low interest credits offered for agricultural development by public banks. BANKS TO FUND EFFORTS While visiting the Social Property Unit Ezequiel Zamora in the state of Barinas on Sunday, Chavez called on private banks inside the country to also play their part in advancing the nation’s food security by providing financing for the cultivation of under-utilized lands. “Banks of Venezuela, public and private, either you provide real financing for agricultural production as you must, or we’ll take measures...In the first place,
the public banks are responsible for being out in front on this. If the private banks don’t want to fulfill what the constitution and the laws say, then I have no problem in nationalizing them”, he declared. With respect to the new management authority announced during his broadcast, the Venezuelan head of state informed that he himself will head the agency followed by a network of national and local officials, small farmers, security forces and community council members. Venezuelan Vice President, Elias Jaua, will also assume the Vice Presidency of the Executive Board as well as serve as the country’s new Minister for Agriculture and Land after the department’s former head, Juan Carlos Loyo, stepped down recently for medical reasons. The first order of business, Jaua reported last weekend, will be “to immediately plan the winter cycle to determine how many hectares we’re going to cultivate in each region”.
“The objective is to fine tune and focus our strategic plans, such as the plan for cattle and the plan for rice and corn, in order to know with exactitude the moment in which we’ll achieve the stability of production and food security with respect to these products”, the Vice President said. AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT A PRIORITY Created by a popular referendum in 1999, Article 307 of Venezuela’s constitution mandates the break up of what is known in Latin America as the latifundio – land estates of vast tracts of unproductive land dominated by a small sector of the population and largely blamed by agrarian experts for the prevalence of underdevelopment in the region. In 2001, the Chavez administration accelerated this constitutional mandate by passing the Land Law, legislation that facilitates the transformation of uncultivated and illegally held farmlands into productive units through the redistribution of parcels to small farmers.
Since that time, a variety of social organizations have arisen to reclaim lands with the assistance of the nation’s Ministry of Agriculture and Land as well as the National Land Institute (INTI). The goal, as stated by officials, has been to transform some of the most fertile lands in the continent into a source for food security for the nation, diminishing the high levels of dependency on imports that Venezuela continues to suffer as a result of its oil economy. These policies have had a positive impact on the cultivation of staples in the country, Chavez pointed out last Sunday, citing production gains in important crops such as black beans, banana, oranges, onions, and rice in 2011. Food consumption per kilo per individual has also seen an important increase since Chavez took office in 1998 with rice consumption rising by 79 percent, red meat incrementing by 57 percent and chicken intake more than tripling. But more needs to be done, Chavez explained, to ensure
that Venezuelans have access to domestically grown food products. Part of this has to do with animal husbandry and a growth in the number of cattle in the country, the socialist leader affirmed. Currently, only five percent of all cattle in the country are under public control but with a new focus on meat production in the context of Mission Agro Venezuela, “we’ll have some 20 million heads of cattle by the end of 2012”, he stated. In this sense, the Socialist Property Unit Ezequiel Zamora in Barinas serves as an example for the nation with more than 2,400 heads of cattle being raised with the assistance of a team of 60 highly trained engineers and husbandry experts. “If we continue to multiply the animal reproduction techniques that we’re applying... the cattle ranchers will help us elevate the quantity and quality of meat in Venezuela”, explained Rafael Vera, Coordinator of the property unit. A NEW MISSION FOR SECURITY & DISARMAMENT In a separate revelation made during his broadcast, Chavez discussed the planning of a new social program to address the question of insecurity and disarmament in the country. “Disarmament is a measure to achieve peace and public safety”, the Venezuelan President said as he urged citizens to join the fight against violent crime at home and on the streets. “Many people believe that by having a gun in the house they’re safe, but it’s the opposite. We don’t need to have guns in our homes. We need to create this consciousness because we’ve been raised with values to the contrary”, he stated. Details on the strategies to be employed by the new security mission are currently being examined by his administration, Chavez informed, and will soon be made available to the population at large.
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The artillery of ideas T/ Rachael Boothroyd for COI P/ Agencies
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n a bid to secure the Cuban and Venezuelan expat vote in Florida last week, Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich managed to conjure up the kind of anti-leftist propaganda that wouldn’t have been out of place in one of Ronald Reagan’s anti-Soviet Union speeches. For the beneďŹ t of Florida’s staunch anti-Castro lobby, multimillionaire Romney and Time Magazine’s Man of the Year “Newtâ€? Gingrich managed to engage in one of the most unashamed populist manoeuvers the campaign has seen so far. Speaking from the presidential debates in South Florida, Romney began by denouncing former Cuban President Fidel Castro and current Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s inuence in the Latin American region as “a true threat for our continentâ€? and stated that he would “punish those who are followingâ€? these two leaders should he become president. Not to be outdone in the Cold War mentality stakes, Gingrich countered with a gem of his own, stating that the Obama administration had been “embarrassed by Chavezâ€? and that the US government “mustâ€? implement a non-military strategy to force the leftist president from ofďŹ ce. Following this brazen incitation of a policy of interventionism against a democratically elected government, Newt then spent the rest of the week schmoozing with Cuban hardliners, complete with an “Operation Mongoose Cuban Readiness Forceâ€? cap, before making a whistle stop tour of Florida International University in the hope of sealing the deal. Paying homage to Cold War veterans Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, combined with the unusual choice of Pope John Paul II, the presidential hopeful gave an insight into what would be in store for Latin America under a Republican government: “You look at how the three of them brought moral pressure, psychological pressure, information pressure, economic pressure, covert assistance. Things like solidarity were being propped (up) by lots of sourcesâ€?, he said. Veering away from direct military intervention and charitably embracing “democracy promotionâ€? abroad, Gingrich openly suggested that the US should engi-
Newt vs. Mitt: Uncle Sam’s manifest destiny wins votes in Florida neer a “Cuban springâ€? to oust the “Castro brothersâ€?, before turning his line of ďŹ re once again towards Venezuela’s Chavez. “I think we need to say calmly and pleasantly to ChĂĄvez. We know who you are. We believe what you say. And therefore we regard you as a mortal enemy of the United Statesâ€?. Interestingly, Gingrich doesn’t have any concrete suggestions per se which could reveal what a Republican government’s foreign policy might actually look like in reality, and aside from his innovative suggestion to establish a permanent US colony on the moon, he is running his political campaign in Florida based solely on his intense hatred for the “satanic communismâ€? of Cuba and now Venezuela. Yet the lack of a coherent political program doesn’t seem to have caused him many setbacks in Florida. Indeed, it seems that whipping up as many attacks as possible against the Latin American “redsâ€? has proved to be a winning, if not original, tactic. OBAMA’S “SOFTâ€? APPROACH With ofďŹ cial rhetoric now being the only thing differentiating Obama’s foreign policy from that of the Republicans, it appears that the latter’s strategy is to ramp up anti-socialist propaganda to the max whilst depicting the current president as some kind of US ver-
sion of John Lennon. The result being somewhat akin to the kind of paranoid jingoism that you would expect to hear at a US Patriot’s Meeting chaired by Glenn Beck. It is surely now only a matter of time before we hear Romney claiming that “Castro eats babiesâ€? whilst aunting a copy of the Monroe Doctrine. Yet, despite the soft approach which Obama’s rivals accuse him of, the US president’s foreign policy in Latin America has been even more intrusive than his predecessor. In short, he may not talk the Republicans’ talk, but he can certainly walk the walk. Promising a “new directionâ€? during his presidential campaign, many voters had high hopes for a Jimmy Carter-style non-interventionist approach abroad, with at least a minimal degree of respect for human rights. In reality, Obama’s stance towards Latin America has been business as usual. It is of course markets, access to cheap natural resources and preserving US hegemony that make American foreign policy go round, not trivial things like respect for national sovereignty or democracy, which are useless concepts once you have succeeded in shoring up the Liberal vote. In the past 5 years, the Obama administration has; given its blessing to the Lobo government in Honduras following the oust-
ing of President Manual Zelaya in 2009, even though elections were reportedly fraudulent, blocked any initiative to address the crisis in Honduras from a regional perspective within the OAS, turned a blind eye to state repression in both Honduras and Colombia, implemented sanctions against Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, expelled the Venezuelan consul in Miami, channelled millions of dollars in “aidâ€? to opposition groups in Venezuela and Cuba, stepped up its military presence in Colombia with 7 new military bases and continued to perpetrate grave human rights abuses against the Colombian populace through the maintenance of the now totally discredited US “War on Drugsâ€?. Yet, however misleading Gingrich’s and Romney’s analysis of Obama might be, and however ridiculous their pronouncements on Latin America might seem, they unfortunately cannot be dismissed as the ravings of a small fringe group: the Miami anti-Castro lobby has inuence, inuence which it has used on more than one occasion to try and shape US foreign policy under the Obama administration. Members of Florida’s hard right have played highly signiďŹ cant roles in some of Obama’s most controversial foreign policy decisions, particularly CubanAmerican House Foreign Affairs Committee ranking Republican,
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Ros-Lehtinen is a staunch anti-Castro activist and also belongs to both the Cuban-American Lobby and the Congressional Cuban Democracy Caucus - organizations aimed at speeding up Cuba’s “transition to democracyâ€? by any means. Not only did Ros-Lehtinen meet with the Micheletti led Honduran de-facto government following the coup in 2009 and offer support for the illegitimate regime, but she also put pressure on Obama to recognize Micheletti whilst accusing the president of adopting a “myopic, Zelaya-centric approachâ€? to the coup. Ros-Lehtinen was also one of the four congress members to send a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in December 2011, recommending the removal of the Venezuelan consul in Miami in reference to unsubstantiated accusations made against the diplomat in an Univision documentary in 2008. The State Department happily obliged earlier this month. Fellow Republican and member of the Congressional Cuban Democracy Caucus, Connie Mack, has also played a decisive role in the government’s position towards the Chavez government. The Florida representative has consistently demanded that Venezuela be placed on the US “State Sponsors of Terrorismâ€? list, and was inuential in engineering the Obama administration sanctions against PDVSA in 2011. In March last year, Mack also called on the US government to “put an endâ€? to the Chavez administration. Whilst Obama pays lip service to democracy while simultaneously throwing millions of dollars at the Venezuelan opposition, it seems that the Republicans’ only strategy is to slip back into a McCarthyist time warp. Evidently neither of the two Republican candidates is capable of constructing a political program that can respond to some of the profound transformations currently sweeping the Latin American continent and prefer to resort to a campaign based on naked oppression and threats of interventionism more reminiscent of the Monroe Doctrine. With typical arrogance, these Cold War dinosaurs have failed to realize the magnitude of the changes taking place just South of the Border, which has moved on from 1989 to an era where the creation of Latin American unity and 21st century socialism represents the new regional political paradigm.
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Economic sovereignty: Venezuela repatriates gold reserves T/ COI P/ Presidential Press
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s part of the Chavez administration’s drive for greater financial security and economic sovereignty, 14 tons of Venezuela’s gold reserves once held outside the nation were brought back home last Monday, concluding the government’s plan to repatriate 160 tons of the precious metal from foreign banks. The shipment arrived at the Simon Bolivar International Airport in Maiquetia in the afternoon and was subsequently escorted by more than 300 soldiers to the vaults of the nation’s Central Bank in downtown Caracas. “Nearly 14 tons of monetary gold is in this repatriated lot. There are 28 containers of 500 kilos each with a value of close to $70 million”, said the President of Venezuela’s Central Bank (BCV), Nelson Merentes. With a worth of some $9 billion, the 160 tons now brought back to Venezuela represent part of the 360 total tons of gold held by the government with a value of $18 billion. Although he did not offer details, Merentes reported that while the South American nation’s Central Bank has “totally secure vaults”, a portion of Venezuela’s gold reserves will continue to be held abroad “in order to be able to carry out certain operations”. “We’re leaving sufficient quantities outside the country and we’re bringing back the monetary gold that doesn’t need to be there”, he revealed. STRENGTHENING ECONOMIC INDEPENDENCE According to President of the BCV, the now repatriated gold bars were illegally taken out of the South American nation between 1989 and 1992 as “a guarantee of payment in order to have access to different international institutions” such as the International Monetary Fund. Then president Carlos Andres Perez shipped Venezuela’s gold
reserves to foreign centers in Europe and the United States clandestinely in a move that for many in the current government epitomized the era of neoliberalism in the country. In the wake of the recent financial crisis afflicting the United States and Europe, however, that policy was reversed by President Hugo Chavez who took the decision to insulate the
Venezuela announces “irrevocable” withdrawal from arbitration body T/ Ewan Robertson www.venezuelanalysis.com
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he Venezuelan government has announced Venezuela’s “irrevocable” withdrawal from the World Bank affiliated arbitration body the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). According to an official statement released by Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry last week, the move has been taken on the grounds of defending national sovereignty and “to protect the right of the Venezuelan people
to decide the strategic orientation of the social and economic life of the nation”. The communication criticizes the ICSID for being biased toward transnational corporations, citing that of the 234 cases handled by the arbitration body during its history, 232 were decided in favor of transnationals. The statement also declares the illegitimacy of the Washingtonbased arbitration body to decide on disputes between the Venezuelan government and transnational corporations, given that the Venezuelan constitution sti-
pulates that such activities are to be “decided by the tribunals of the [Bolivarian] Republic, in conformity with its laws”. On January 8, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez first announced the intention to leave the ICSID and his government’s refusal to accept the body’s decisions. The comments followed US oil giant Exxon Mobil’s move to bring a case to the body seeking more compensation from Venezuela’s nationalization of its operations in the Orinoco Oil Belt in 2007. In early January the Parisbased International Chamber
country from economic tumult by recovering its deposits from foreign banks. On November 25, 2011, the first shipment of gold arrived to Venezuelan shores and was met with enthusiastic crowds who celebrated the nation’s move towards economic sovereignty during the year of the country’s independence bicentennial. That same emotion was present with the arrival of the final lot on Monday. “This gold has an owner who is the Venezuelan people”, affirmed BCV Director Jose Kahn during an interview with state television. For Kahn, the move marks an important part of the Chavez administration’s consolidation of a new economic vision for the country that includes working with Latin American partners and freeing itself from the mandates of the world’s traditional financial centers. “The people of UNASUR [Union of South American Nations] should repatriate our monetary reserves and create a strong group which will allow us to utilize these international reserves for our own economic growth and social development”, he declared.
of Commerce (ICC) awarded Exxon $907 million for the cases, ten times less than what the company had originally sought. Oil and energy minister Rafael Ramirez commented on Tuesday that new oil projects in Venezuela would not be subject to international arbitration, and that Venezuela’s withdrawal from the ICSID was because Venezuela’s public affairs “cannot be submitted to outside jurisdiction”. Under ICSID rules there is a 6-month period before a country can leave the body after formally renouncing its membership. The governments of Bolivia and Ecuador also left the ICSID in 2007 and 2009 respectively.
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The artillery of ideas
Venezuela’s Chavez: We must create a new state of law and social justice T/ COI P/ Presidential Press
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his past Monday Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced that his government would make reforming the country’s penal code a priority in the upcoming year. Speaking from the Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice’s official inauguration of the 20122013 legal year, Chavez urged legislators within the judicial body to begin the transformation of the nation’s penal code in order to create the new “social state of law and justice”. “How many years have we been talking about reforming the penal code and the procedural penal code? We cannot waste another year, the time is now, we have to carry out a profound reform of our legal apparatus”, he said. Reform of the penal code in Venezuela has been at the center of a major debate for a number of years, with some arguing that the legal document contains certain articles that contradict the progressive Bolivarian Constitution ratified by popular vote in 1999. During his speech Chavez impressed upon legislators the importance of amending the penal code for the continuance of the
Revolution, and emphasized that the newly amended code should posses a revolutionary character. “We are pioneers; we are the vanguard for the inventors of new worlds...we have to be careful with the previous paradigm of bourgeois justice, where only the poor are seen to commit crimes and the rich are not”, urged the head of state. In further comments, Chavez said that he was prepared to carry out the reforms via the Enabling Law power that he was granted by the Venezuelan National Assembly in December 2010, following a period of heavy rains that left thousands homeless. The enabling authority currently allows the executive to by-
pass the National Assembly and approve urgent legal decrees relating to important transformative policies. The Enabling Law was initially granted for 18 months and is due to expire in June this year. STATE COUNSEL As well as addressing the issue of penal code reform, the Venezuelan President also revealed that he would sign a law this Tuesday allowing for the creation of a “State Counsel” to address the problem of delinquency in the country. The State Counsel is an advisory body set out in the 1999 constitution and is designed to recommend policies to the Venezuelan head of state that are deemed to
Venezuelan Parliament reforms law against organized crime & terrorism T/ AVN
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n Tuesday, Venezuela’s National Assembly passed a reform of the law against organized crime with the favorable vote of socialist lawmakers. The Supreme Tribunal of Justice will determine the constitutional and organic character of the law, which includes 89 articles and seeks to “prevent, investigate, pursue and punish” organized crime and the financing of terro-
rism, as well as reinforce the safety policies of the Venezuelan state. “This law already existed. We are incorporating 25 new articles and reforming over 30 more articles to increase sentences for organized crime”, explained lawmaker Andres Mendez. Mendez accused opposition legislators of delaying the discussion and preventing the passage of a “strong law” to fight terrorism that is “neces-
sary for domestic order, security and peace of the homeland”. Opposition lawmakers left Parliament during the discussion to delay the law’s passage. “We have held a debate with quorum, although the opposition sectors have decided to try to prevent us from achieving quorum”, said National Assembly Vice President Aristobulo Isturiz. Ninety-two legislators remained in the session, most of them
be in the national interest. Although the constitutional legal basis for the Counsel has existed for the past 12 years, it has not been activated up until now. According to guidelines provided in the Venezuelan constitution, the Counsel would be presided over by the Vice-President and would include another five members who would be designated by the national executive. The creation of the Counsel will contribute to a series of other recent government initiatives aimed at addressing levels of crime and insecurity. As well as having deployed a newly trained “humanist” police force in 2010, the Chavez administration also announced the formation of a new Criminal Investigation Service and Security Mission last month. Once signed by the President, the State Counsel law will be sent to the Supreme Court of Justice where the decree will be legally formalized. NEW ATTORNEY GENERAL NAMED Following the unexpected death of acting Attorney General, Carlos Escarra, last week, Chavez officially named Venezuelan politician and lawyer Cilia Flores as the Republic’s new Attorney General. Flores is a respected figure within the PSUV government
from the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). TERRORIST ATTACKS According to the reformed law, terrorist acts include the “perturbation or interruption of water supply, electricity or another fundamental natural resource, intended to endanger human lives”. A terrorist attack is described as an act “aimed at seriously intimidating a population; obliging governments or an international organization to carry out an action, or abstain from acting; seriously destabilizing the fundamental constitutional political, economic or social structures of the country or an international organization”.
(United Socialist Party of Venezuela) and has years of legal experience. Following the unsuccessful 1992 attempt to overthrow the second administration of Carlos Andres Perez by a group of young military officers, Flores became involved in defending the soldiers who had taken part in the rebellion. The attorney was also on the legal team that secured Chavez’s freedom following the two years he spent in prison as a result of his role in the uprising and she was President of the Venezuelan National Assembly from 2006-2011. Speaking of the 1992 uprising from the Supreme Court’s inauguration, Chavez objected to the labelling of the event as a “military coup” and instead described it as a “revolution of the military’s youth” which had come out in defense of the Venezuelan people. “Venezuela was on the floor, exploited, plundered, humiliated, our people humiliated, impoverished, hungry, living on top of a sea of riches and the bourgeoisie governing for 10, 20, 30 years, and 100 years under the subordination of Yankee imperialism...Those who want to can condemn me, but history will absolve me”, concluded the President.
Actions considered as terrorist attacks under the new law also include: Attacks against life and physical integrity; Kidnapping and taking hostages; causing severe destruction of government or private or state-owned facilities, transportation systems, or infrastructure, including information systems, that can endanger human lives or cause economic damage; Fabricating, possessing, obtaining, transporting or supplying weapons and explosives; Releasing substances that cause fires, flooding or explosions to endanger human lives; Seizing aircrafts, ships or other mass transportation systems or transportation goods.
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NoÊ£ääÊU Friday, February 3, 2012
World Social Forum supports Venezuela’s Revolution
T/ COI P/ Agencies
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enezuela’s socialist revolution was both highlighted and defended this weekend as the global summit of social, economic, and environmental justice movements known as the World Social Forum (WSF) came to a close. With some 40,000 activists gathered to discuss anti-capitalist alternatives to the world economic crisis, participants stressed the importance of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution and the leadership role played by President Hugo Chavez in proving that “another world is possible”. “GREEN CAPITALISM” VS. DEMOCRACY & SOCIALISM Having convened their forum in the context of Rio+20 – the United Nations (UN) summit on “sustainable development” to be held in Rio de Janeiro later this year – those gathered at the 2012 World Social Forum largely focused their discussions on the current debate between “green capitalism” and the wide array of grassroots justice initiatives that make up democratic alternatives including Venezuela’s Bolivarian Socialism.
According to Venezuelan sociologist Edgardo Lander, professor at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) and participant in last week’s WSF, “the Rio+20 conference is to be held at a time of profound crises for capitalism, a time in which the severe problems of limited growth and the destruction of life-producing conditions on the planet have become evermore obvious”. “Capitalism is attempting to reinvent itself with a new, green façade”, Lander said. “Green capitalism”, he explained, “is nothing more than a repetition of fictitious promises of market mechanisms and technological fixes, promises that do nothing to alter relations of power, nothing to change the logic of capital accumulation nor the profound social inequalities that exist today”. The Bolivarian Revolution, argued Lander, demonstrates that “if we don’t address social inequality, we don’t resolve anything”. According to Joao Pedro Stedile, of Brazil’s Landless Worker Movement (MST), “green capitalism” is nothing more than “international capi-
tal looking to protect itself and prepare for a future period of renewed accumulation”. Transnational corporations, explained Stedile, “understand the great lucrative potential of natural resources – including land, water, and oil, among others” which is why they ignore the “resolutions of international institutions such as the UN” as well as the environmental protections enacted by national governments, “whose role and authority have been weakened as a result of neo-liberal globalization”. According to economist Marcos Arruda, Coordinator of the Institute for Alternative Policies in the Southern Cone, most national governments today are limited by the “globalized capitalist economy” and thus “lack the political will to take on commitments to reduce carbon emissions, greenhouse gases, and deforestation, anything that would imply the obligation to produce concrete results”. In response to these limitations, social forum participants have begun organizing a “Peoples’ Assembly” and global day of action against capitalism and in defense of social, economic, and environmental justice. Scheduled for June
The artillery of ideas 5th, the international protest is set to coincide with the Rio+20 summit. THE VENEZUELAN EXAMPLE In addition to the limited “room to maneuver” granted to national governments by neo-liberalism’s grasp on local economies, WSF participants also questioned the failure of many social movements to have significant impacts on national policies. In contrast, the success of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution was cited by renowned author and intellectual Ignacio Ramonet to illustrate how new relationships between movements and leaders are needed to consolidate the “other world that is possible” proposed by the WSF. Speaking to Argentina’s Pagina 12 from the halls of the WSF, Ramonet addressed the need for organized social movements worldwide to coalesce – within each specific country – around political programs and “leaders” that can help turn grassroots proposals into national projects. “No one expresses social suffering better than a social movement”, explained Ramonet, “but if steps aren’t taken towards a political program all large crises end up serving the interests of the extreme right – which tends to show up in the form of movements and antisystem parties that promise radical, demagogical, transformative change”. For this reason, argued Ramonet, progressive social movements “must possess the vocation to engage in (national) politics”, such as is the case of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution. Referring to the first election of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (1998) and the birth of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Republic (1999), Ramonet explained that “the political crisis that ended” Venezuela’s Fourth Republic (1958-1998) would not have resulted in profound change without “Chavez’s leadership”. The aforementioned “crisis”, which involved the birth of numerous armed guerrilla movements (throughout the 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s), a popular rebellion met with fierce government repression (the Caracazo, 1989), and the failed military uprising led by Hugo Rafael
Chavez Frias (1992), ended with a constitutional assembly that drafted the country’s current carta magna (1999), approved by the Venezuelan people in a national vote (1999). Asking if “such changes would have been possible without Chavez and all that he represents?” Ramonet said he asked himself the same question when considering the changes underway “with Ecuador and Correa, Bolivia and Evo, Brazil and Lula, Argentina and Kirchner”. “Currently many social movements reject the idea of leadership…a type of infantile illness within social movements which will end when leaders arise and movements reach their adolescence, or maturity”, he remarked. “I’m not talking about saviors”, explained Ramonet, “but democratic leaders that can understand said social movements, helping them to find solutions”. “HANDS OFF VENEZUELA” Apart from the overall support for and interest in the Bolivarian Revolution shared by those in Porto Alegre, specific steps were also taken to defend Venezuela’s socialist alternative during the social forum. The Social Movement Assembly of the Bolivarian Alternative for the People’s of the Americas (ALBA), for example, launched a coordinated effort to defend Venezuela in the runup to presidential elections to be held later this year. According to Osvaldo Leon, spokesperson for the Latin American Information Agency (ALAI) and WSF participant, grassroots movements from across the Americas used the forum to plan a campaign “to combat the great offensive currently being waged by the United States against Venezuela”. “Largely a media offensive”, explained Leon, “this offensive is aimed at creating the conditions to impede a new victory” for President Chavez in presidential elections scheduled for October 7, 2012. The Social Movement Assembly, affirmed Leon, “will be carrying out actions to ensure the US keeps its hands off Venezuela, thus allowing the Venezuelan people to freely decide on the future of their country in upcoming elections”.
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NoÊ£ääÊU Friday, February 3, 2012
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Daring body art comes to Venezuela in 2012 Expo Tattoo T/ Agencies P/ Agencies
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ver 200 tattoo artists from some ten countries gathered in the Venezuelan capital Caracas for the second annual Venezuelan Tattoo Expo. Showing off their skills, exhibitors demonstrated their crafts which included under-skin implants and piercings. The Venezuelan Expo Tattoo event saw tattoos being taken to a whole new level, with hundreds of artists showcasing their skills. However, it was the event’s special guest Maria Hose Cristerna, also dubbed as the “Vampire Woman”, who grabbed the spotlight at the second annual exhibition event held in the capital city of Caracas. The 35-yearold is herself a work of art, with almost 100 percent of her body covered in tattoos. She also has prosthetic fangs, fluorescent eyes and titanium horn implants in her forehead.
The mother of four and former lawyer took to body art as a form of self-expression after suffering years of domestic abuse from a previous marriage, according to previous interviews. “The horns I have are a symbol of strength and were implanted without anaesthetic. I had the fangs done because I loved vampires as a little girl and I changed the color of my eyes so they were how I really wanted them to be”, Cristerna said. The Expo, which ended Sunday, also saw many tattoo enthusiasts taking their body art to the extreme, with some hooked to pulley suspensions through clasps in their chests. The Chavez administration has encouraged Venezuela’s cultural ministry to support a wide range of diverse artistic expressions. The annual Expo Tattoo is a result of this support. Here’s a look at some of the striking pictures of the world-famous Vampire Woman and other tattoo aficionados.
Friday | February 3, 2012 | Nº 100 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve
ENGLISH EDITION The artillery of ideas
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have to laugh when I see the International Republican Institute (IRI) described by the international media as an "organization that promotes democracy". The IRI is in the news lately because Egypt's military government has put some of its members on a "nofly" list and thereby trapped them in the country, facing investigation and possible trial. I am wondering just how credulous these journalists and editors are: if I were to describe the Center for Economic and Policy Research as "a magical organization that transforms scrap metal into gold", would that become CEPR's standard description in the news? The IRI is an international arm of the US Republican party, so anyone with the stomach to watch the Republican presidential debates might doubt whether this would be a "democracy-promotion" organization. But a look at some of their recent adventures is enough to set the record straight: in 2004, the IRI played a major role in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Haiti. In 2002, the head of the IRI publicly celebrated the short-lived military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government of Venezuela. The IRI was also working with organizations and individuals that were involved in the coup. In 2005, the IRI was involved in an effort to promote changes in Brazil's electoral laws that would weaken the governing Workers party of then President Lula da Silva. Most recently, in 2009, there was a military coup against the democratically elected government of Honduras. The Obama administration did everything it could to help the coup succeed, and supported "elections" in November of 2009 to legitimize the coup government. The rest of the world – including even the Organization of American States (OAS), under pressure from South American
democracies – refused to send observers. This was because of the political repression during the campaign period: police violence, raiding of independent media, and the forced exile of political opponents – including the country's democratically elected president. But the IRI and the National Democratic Institute (NDI) – its Democratic party-linked counterpart – went there to legitimate the "election". But don't take my word for why they chose to participate. Here is what the USAID, part of the US State Department and the major funder of IRI and NDI activities, had to say about their role in Honduras: "The absence of the OAS and other recognized international observation groups made NDI and IRI's assessment/ observation processes more meaningful in the eyes of the international community. The recognition of a free, fair and transparent electoral process provided a strong argument to support the new government. […] The international "assessment" conducted by NDI and the "observation" conducted by IRI, even if they did not fulfill accepted standards, partially achieved the sought-after impact". Who knows what the IRI is doing in Egypt? But we know what the US government has done there: supported a brutal dictatorship for decades right up to the point where mass protests made it clear that Washington could not stop Mubarak's ouster by a real, popular, democratic movement last year.
The IRI and NDI are core grantees of the National Endowment for Democracy, an organization that conducts activities "much of [which]" the "CIA used to fund covertly", as the Washington Post reported when the Endowment was being created in the early 1980s. These organizations will sometimes support democracy, but often do not, or are even against it. This is not because they are inherently evil, but because of the position of the United States in the world. The United States government, more than any other in the world, is running an empire. By their nature, empires are about power and control over other people in distant lands. These goals will generally conflict with many people's aspirations for democracy and national self-determination. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the Middle East, where the US government's policy of collaboration with Israel's denial of Palestinian national rights has put it at odds with populations throughout the region. As a result, Washington fears democracy in many countries because it will inevitably lead to more governments taking the side of the Palestinians, and opposing other US ambitions in the region, such as its desire for military bases and alliances. Even in Iraq, where Washington brags about having toppled a dictatorship, the people had to fight the occupying authorities for the right to hold national elections, and then to kick US troops out of the country.
This creates a vicious cycle in which hated and often repressive governments are supportive of US foreign policy, and these governments receive US support, increasing regional animosity toward the United States. In some cases, it also leads to terrorist attacks against US institutions or citizens, which is then used by our leaders to justify long or endless wars (for example, Iraq and Afghanistan). A poll of Arab public opinion by the University of Maryland and Zogby International, which included Egypt, asked respondents to "name two countries that are the biggest threat to you": 88% named the United States, and 77% named Israel; only 9% chose Iran. Another ugly side-effect of US government-sponsored "democracy-promotion" is that it helps governments that want to repress authentic, national, pro-democracy movements. Most of the repressive governments in the Middle East and North Africa have tried to delegitimize their opponents with the taint of association with Washington, in most cases falsely. In Egypt, before the raids on foreign organizations, the government arrested youth activists associated with the April 6th movement, and other activists. Here in Washington, there seems to be little awareness that "pro-democracy" groups funded by the US government might have a credibility problem in most of the world. But this is true – even when these groups aren't actively opposing democracy. Their funding would be a good target for budget cuts.