page 6 | Analysis
page 8 | Opinion
Venezuela rejects aggression against Syria, calls for peaceful solution
US & arab protests are rooted in latin american revolutions
Friday | November 25, 2011 | Nº 91 | Caracas
Students rally for the revolution Thousands of students marched on Caracas last Monday to celebrate National University Student’s Day and express their support for education and political advances during the Bolivarian Revolution. The students also voiced proposals for new laws relating to youth and education in order to further their participation in the nation’s political process. The jubiliant youth were received by President Hugo Chavez at the Miraflores presidential palace at the culmination of Monday’s march, in a showing of the productive relationship between his administration and the national student movement. | page 2
ENGLISH EDITION The artillery of ideas
Body art revolutionizes artistic expression in Venezuela The VI World Body Art Festival held in Caracas brought color, diversity and creativity to the South American nation As part of efforts to advance cultural awareness, participation and expression, the Venezuelan government hosted the VI World Body Art Festival in the nation’s capital, bringing together artists from around the world. Despite Venezuela’s socially-conservative culture, the body art festival evidences the creative influence the Bolivarian Revolution has had on the nation, providing for new opportunities of expression and artistic development. The festival also emphasizes the major transformation undertaken in Caracas, revitalizing outdoor spaces and offering residents different venues for cultural entertainment. | page 7
Politics
Bogus complaint against Chavez to the ICC An opposition presidential candidate brought a frivolous claim to the International Criminal Court. | page 3 Integration
Latin american community advances Regional integration to expand with the Community of Latin American & Caribbean States. | page 4 Security
Youth march against violence in Caracas The People’s Guard was created to secure streets & protect against crime. | page 5
Activists press closure of US military training school T/ Agencies
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housands of activists on Saturday marched on the controversial training base for soldiers from Latin American militaries formerly known as the School of the Americas, at Fort Benning, Georgia, to demand its closure. “The figure that we have now, very conservative, is
more than 4,000 people in Fort Benning Road, the main entrance to the military base”, Hendrik Voss, spokesman for the School of Americas Watch (SOAW), told AFP. The institute, which each year trains hundreds of soldiers sent over from Latin America military, has renamed itself the “Western Hemisphere
Institute for Security Cooperation”, or whinsec. The activists called on President Barack Obama to close the school, which they argue costs US taxpayers millions of dollars that, they point out, “could be used to improve or build more public schools in the United States”. Actor and supporter Martin Sheen, who addressed the crowd at Fort Benning on Sunday, said in a statement released by the activist group before traveling to Georgia that it was
300,000 new jobs in Venezuela annually
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n Venezuela, 3.6 million jobs have been created under the administration of President Chavez. These figures show that employment policies in Venezuela are now generating 300,000 new jobs each year. Economist Jose Gregorio Piña explained in an interview Monday that claims of rising unemployment by right-wing sectors do not match the reality in Venezuela. “The national government has been improving the quality of new jobs. This is measured through the formality index which today reaches 60 percent”, Piña said. Even though more job creation is needed, Piña said, the unemployment rate in Venezuela has fallen from 16% when President Chavez took office in 1999 to its current rate of 8% thanks to the policies implemented by the Bolivarian Government. In 1999, 75 percent of Venezuelan workers earned minimum wage, while today the number is down to 21 percent. This demonstrates that the quality of available employment has risen and it will continue to do so, thanks to “Mision Saber y Trabajo” (a social policy aimed at the creation of new jobs by combining training and work).
“from numerous acts of courage that human history has been shaped”, in a call for solidarity with the effort. Seeking to emulate the ongoing “occupy” movement in the United States, where groups have camped out in New York, Washington and in major cities across the country, SOAW said the weekend rally at Fort Benning aimed “to transform Fort Benning from a place that trains assassins into a place of memory and nonviolent resistance”.
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2 | Impact
NoÊ £ÊUÊFriday, November 25, 2011
The artillery of ideas
Venezuelan students celebrate advances in education & social policies While students in nations such as Colombia, Chile and Mexico struggle against the state for free public education, Venezuela’s youth praised the support they’ve received from the Chavez administration T/ COI P/ Presidential Press
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sea of red moved through the streets of Venezuela's capital last Monday as tens of thousands of youth celebrated National Student Day by demonstrating their backing for the social policies of Hugo Chavez and calling for a deepening of the country's socialist revolution. The march started at the National University of the Arts (Unearte) in downtown Caracas and ended at the Presidential Palace of Miraflores where students from all over the country presented a document spelling out their loyalty to Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution while citing the need for wider social changes. The Bicentennial Declaration, the product of a year-long drafting process that included the participation of more than 16 thousand students, argues for a strengthening of the progressive values that guide Venezuela's social transformation while appealing for greater inclusion of traditionally excluded communities such as LGBT groups and residents with disabilities. Through the formation of the Great Patriotic Pole (GPP), a coalition of grassroots organizations that support the Chavez presidency and his re-election bid in 2012, the declaration also calls for change to go beyond next December's electoral contest. The GPP should "become a powerful organizational tool that supersedes political parties and electoral spaces, making its central focus the social organizations which comprise it", the statement reads.
Students who participated in the national congress that formulated the declaration also expressed their demands to ensure the openness of Venezuela's public university system into the future. "Just as the constitution states, the university must create all the necessary instruments to impede exclusion and permit the massive incorporation of all Venezuelans who desire to study for a profession... The university must be profoundly linked to the people and must create mechanisms to allow the community to participate in its management", the document stipulates. Upon receiving the students at the presidential process, the Venezuelan head of state addressed the enthusiastic crowd, praising their leadership role in the historic transformations gripping the Caribbean country "You all are becoming the mothers and fathers of the very Revolution that gave birth to you", he said. During his speech, Chavez spoke of the need to work towards an electoral victory in December of 2012, permitting a further strengthening of the Bolivarian movement in the face of a weakening conservative opposition. "After winning the elections, there will be a new stage. From 2013 to 2019 we'll deepen the so-
cialist revolution. Socialism, socialism and more socialism! We have to deepen the struggle and beat the vices of the past that still persist inside us - the violence, insecurity, inequality, corruption, selfishness and individualism. There's still a lot of this", he asserted. The leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela also implored the student movement to continue its course of organization and struggle, confronting challenges and maintaining its goal of a more just society. "I'm asking you from deep in my heart to not tire and to not abandon the unity and the continuity of the student movement, regardless of what difficulties arise. You all have the great possibility of making
real in Venezuela what has never been made real in the world - the message of Christ and the dream of Bolivar together, a nation of justice and equality", he said. COMMITMENT TO EDUCATION Venezuela ranks fifth in world standings with respect to university matriculation, increasing higher education enrollment by more than 100 percent from 1998 to 2008, according to Unesco. All residents attending public institutions enjoy free tuition and many benefit from a variety of scholarship programs that include free transportation, stipends and student housing. New institutions have also arisen over the past 12 years
including the Bolivarian University of Venezuela which seeks to provide greater opportunities to previously excluded populations by taking higher education to remote areas and matching curriculums with local needs. The same is true of Mission Sucre, one of three government educational programs, or missions, which seek to re-incorporate students who for a variety of reasons were forced to abandon their studies. The reading and writing program, Mission Robinson, has wiped out illiteracy in the Caribbean country while dropout rates for grammar schools have diminished considerably owing to the government's lunch programs being implemented with the help of the National Nutrition Institute. School supplies have also been more readily available. This year the government has distributed more than 900 thousand mini-laptop computers to students as well as providing pupils with over 12 million free textbooks. The government's scholastic markets, set up around the country during the months of September and October, have also provided tremendous savings to parents on a number of items ranging from notebooks to uniforms. "There is a policy of investing in education given the fact that the Venezuelan state has been clear in the idea that liberation will only be achieved through the democratization of knowledge", said Antonio Gonzalez, National Coordinator of Bolivarian Students said during the activities on Monday. SEEDS OF DEMOCRACY Venezuela's National Student Day is held every year in honor of the students from the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) who participated in a hunger strike against the dictatorship of Marcos Perez Jimenez on November 21, 1957. The strike was violently repressed by authorities and led to the closure of various universities around the country. At the same time, the strike marked an important shift in the politics of the country and would eventually lead to the civil-military coup of January 23, 1958 that overthrew the Jimenez dictatorship.
NoÊ £ÊUÊFriday, November 25, 2011
The artillery of ideas
Politics
Protests against student’s expulsion from Venezuela’s Central University Kevin Avila, an outspoken student activist who supports President Chavez was expelled by the public university’s anti-Chavez Dean T/ COI P/ Agencies
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s part of the activities undertaken in celebration of National Student Day, a number of representatives from universities around the country delivered a document to the nation's Attorney General's Office last Sunday soliciting an investigation into the expulsion of a student leader from Venezuela's Central University (UCV) last week. Kevin Avila was suspended from Venezuela's largest and most prestigious university on Thursday after UCV authorities accused him of participating in vaguely defined acts of violence. Avila, a prominent pro-government student activist, has
rejected the charges and accused the opposition-aligned UCV administration of political persecution in its attempt to prevent the leader from running in December's student elections. "They say that I offended university authorities for demanding that they take action with
respect to insecurity (on campus). I challenge the University Council to show me the proof and tell me the reasons for my expulsion. I maintain my innocence", Avila said on Monday. For his part, Venezuelan head of state Hugo Chavez expressed his solidarity with the student
leader on Monday during a rally at the presidential palace of Miraflores. "They expelled Kevin Avila because he told the truth about Venezuela's Central University... Long live Kevin and long live freedom of thought and the courage that you (Kevin Avila) have", the President said. The UCV, like all major public universities in Venezuela, receives its financing from the national government but operates under complete autonomy from state institutions. This arrangement has led to a questioning by many of the accounting practices of the university which some accuse of corruption and financial malfeasance. Politically, many of the country's oldest universities such as the UCV and the University of the Andes (ULA), have been dominated by conservative administrations with direct links to the nation's right-wing opposition. In the Andean city of Merida and in the capital of Caracas,
Opposition candidate makes frivolous complaint against Chavez in International Criminal Court T/ COI
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embers of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) questioned the “ethical and moral integrity” of Diego Arria, the opposition’s pre-presidential candidate who used a recent television appearance to announce an outlandish plan to take Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to the International Criminal Court (ICC) on baseless charges. Arria, who worked for neoliberal President Carlos Andres Perez (1989-1993) in the aftermath of fierce government repression of popular protests, claims that “violent language” and “the elimination (expropriation) of properties”, among other things,
“is part of a systematic state policy aimed at violating Human Rights or, in other words, committing crimes against humanity”. In response to Arria’s media-backed filing of court papers on Monday, PSUV lawmaker Hector Navarro explained that his party “will lose no sleep over a man like him (Arria)” and explained that the opposition’s most elderly candidate “lacks any and all credibility” since he knowingly “participated in the murderous government of Carlos Andres Perez, serving as its representative within international institutions (the UN)” during the second and most repressive Perez administration (1989-1993).
Navarro added that Arria “has no credibility whatsoever, no ethics, and no moral capacity to go about making charges since he himself has had multiple charges brought against him for the violation of Human Rights” during his time in the Perez government. Arria was Venezuela’s top diplomat at the UN at a time when most Venezuelans were still struggling to understand the magnitude of government repression unleashed in response to the ‘Caracazo,’ a popular uprising provoked by the neo-liberal reforms of then President Carlos Andres Perez. The February 1989 ‘Caracazo,’ in which thousands of people took to the streets in opposition to Perez’s pro-capital reforms, was met by fierce gover-
nment repression that left over 3,000 civilians killed. While the exact number of people killed or wounded is difficult to determine, mass graves continue to be uncovered to this day. According to German Saltron, Venezuela’s current representative to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (Iachr), “Diego Arria is one of those personalities who, alongside Carlos Andres Perez, violated Human Rights in Venezuela during the entire IV Republic (1958-1998)”. Arria claims to have organized a team of Venezuelan lawyers, “a group of European specialists”, and a numb er of “victims” to help prepare a case against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
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3| university authorities consistently slam the government over budget shortfalls while at the same time refusing to reveal their spending records to federal agencies. In many cases, university administrations turn a blind eye to the violent anti-government protests perpetrated by opposition student groups which regularly block traffic and wreak havoc in the cities where they take place. Kevin Avila reiterated on Monday his commitment to change the reactionary practices of some universities and informed that the progressive student movement is seeking more than just a clarification of his case by the Venezuelan Attorney General's Office. "The intention is to submit this document to solicit the opening of an investigation into the decisions of the University Council, not only regarding my expulsion but also issues such as the suspension of university activities and other matters of concern to the student community", he said. The UCV was closed temporarily by university authorities last week after acts of vandalism on Tuesday included the torching of two vehicles assigned to the Dean and Vice Dean. Classes resumed last Monday.
Speaking to right-wing daily El Universal, Arria recently gloated “the complaints alone fill up 600 pages”. However, the allegations contain no clear evidence linking President Chavez to any crimes. Asked about the timing of his anti-Chavez positioning, Arria affirmed his being in the middle of an opposition primary is “a collateral benefit” for him and his campaign team. “I couldn’t keep quiet just because I’m a candidate”, he said, claiming he didn’t invite the other opposition candidates to participate in the process because it “would have it made a political act, which of course it’s not”. In 2003, anti-Chavez groups attempted to bring the Venezuelan President before the ICC alleging he was responsible for the April 2002 coup d’etat against his own government. The claim was quickly dismissed as frivolous by the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo.
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4 | Integration
NoÊ £ÊUÊFriday, November 25, 2011
The artillery of ideas
Venezuela to host founding summit of Celac Integration Bloc T/ COI P/ Agencies
will of the governments in the region and the great political consciousness of our peoples”, Maduro said. “Celac’s moment is now because the conditions have matured. We have a continent that is more awake, more independent, that acts with greater liberty”, he said.
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he guiding principles of the upcoming summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) will be to “consolidate the independence of our countries, respect the sovereignty and right to self-determination of our peoples, and declare our region a great zone of peace and integral development”, according to Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro. Maduro made the comments during 40-minute interview on the public television station, Venezolana de Television (VTV ). The summit is scheduled to take place on December 2-3 in Caracas, Venezuela. It was previously scheduled for July 5-6, marking the 200th anniversary of Venezuela’s independence, but was postponed when President Hugo Chavez underwent emergency surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. Maduro said Celac’s 33 member countries have five major topics to discuss at the summit: The formal establishment of Celac as an organization, including its decision-making process and political structure; energy independence and a common energy policy for the 21st Century; social development, including food, health, and education policies; environmental development and the prevention of climate change; and the world economic crisis and its consequences, as well as independence from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In the short term, the organization will focus on social programs that address the most urgent and concrete needs of their populations, while in the medium term, it will promote multilateral collaboration to expand regional infrastructure, according to Maduro. STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY Maduro described Celac as “a current that advances toward union in political, ideological, and cultural diversity, but rooted
in the common identity of Latin America and the Caribbean”. Noting that Celac includes governments with both left and right leanings, Maduro commented, “It is the region’s strength that, in ideological diversity, its leaders have placed integration and union as the supreme objectives, and this demonstrates the region can advance toward its objectives in a dynamic democratic debate”. Maduro also assured Vene zuela’s solidarity with Puerto Rico, which Venezuela considers a potential member of Celac. “The organization will be waiting for our Puerto Rican brothers to take the step of independence [from the United States]”, he said. Celac represents the culmination of a series of regional integration efforts that began more than a century ago. Several economic and political integration organizations exist currently, including the Community of Andean Nations, the Common Market of the South, the Caribbean Community, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), PetroCaribe, and the Union of South American Nations (Unasur). Maduro said these existing organizations are “processes that share the same historical current moving toward unity in diversity”, and each one “res-
ponded to a distinct historical moment”. Celac will not formally replace any of them, but will act as “the mother organization that gathers them together and allows for the diversity of organisms and proposals and ways of thinking can be developed and consolidated”. CELAC’S HISTORICAL MOMENT Celac was born during the aftermath of the US-backed military coup d’etat in Honduras, which deposed President Manuel Zelaya, a proponent of regional integration and of alternatives to the US-imposed neoliberal economic model, and later installed a pro-US president through elections ridden with human rights violations and repression of popular protests. Celac intentionally excludes the United States and poses an alternative to the US-dominated Organization of American States, which condoned US interventions in Latin America during the 20th Century. When asked if the US will attempt to sabotage the formation of Celac, Maduro stated, “Historically it has been so... there are no reasons to think otherwise”. However, the minister said current conditions permit the countries in the region to effectively resist US domination. “Today there are certain very favorable circumstances, which are the great political
THE BOLIVARIAN PROJECT Many Venezuelan government officials have referred to Celac as the continuance of the regional integration efforts heralded by independence hero Simon Bolivar in the early 19th Century. Bolivar organized the Panama Congress in 1826 with the goal of pulling together nascent independent Latin American republics into a single bloc, but the conference was weakened by the absence of several delegations. In the ensuing years, local elites struggled amongst each other for power and the region remained divided in separate nations. Meanwhile, the US developed its Monroe Doctrine, which painted Latin America as a zone of US hegemony, laying the basis for dozens of interventions and outright overthrows of popular governments across the region. This policy of “impeded our peoples from re-taking the path of independence, of prosperity, of peaceful and electoral political construction”, according to Maduro. “Today, we are arriving at a special moment in our history where the progressive, democratic, patriotic, transformative, revolutionary, diverse forces of the continent have been able to place on the region’s agenda a fundamental point: Advancing toward a project of unity”, Maduro said during last week’s interview. The summit will host 33 countries representing 597 million people – more than 8.5% of the world population – and cover 21.4 million square kilometers touching the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. Many of the region’s leaders have already put their own unique proposals on the table. Ecuadorian President Rafael
Correa said he will propose the creation of a Human Rights Commission – “a new commission that addresses the issue of Human Rights from Latin America’s own perspective”, according to the Ecuadorian Foreign Relations Ministry. The new commission will serve as an alternative to the OAS’s Inter-American Human Rights Commission. “Celac in a way is assuming some roles that the OAS has not been able to assume precisely because it has been managed under the tutelage of the United States for so long”, the ministry said in a statement. Uruguayan Foreign Relations Minister Luis Almagro said his and President Jose Mujica’s objective at the summit will be “to strengthen Celac’s work, so that it may constitute a valid interlocutor of Latin American and Caribbean countries in the international arena”. Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman emphasized, “Even just the fact of having achieved unity among all the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean is in itself something that will be recorded in history”, adding that “the inclusion of the Caribbean is a fundamental piece in the process of recuperating a region that had been divided”. In an interview with AVN, author and intellectual Atilio Boron referred to Celac as “one of the most important initiatives taken on a wide scale in Latin America in a long time”. “To be able to count on having an organization without the US and Canada is a guarantee to the process of emancipation and of liberation to which almost all the governments of Latin America are committed”, Boron said. More than 400 media outlets have applied for accreditation to cover the event. It will be the bloc’s third major summit since its founding in February 2010 at a summit in Mexico. Meanwhile, the Latin American Union of News Agencies will be holding a summit in Montevideo, Uruguay this week in which state-owned news outlets will discuss their role in public communications. Participants in the meeting include Cuba’s Prensa Latina, Mexico’s NotiMex, Paraguay’s IPP, Venezuela’s AVN, Bolivia’s ABI, Ecuador’s Andes, Brazil’s EBC, and Guatemala’s AGN. The organization formed last June.
NoÊ £ÊUÊFriday, November 25, 2011
The artillery of ideas
Security
Youth march against violence in Caracas T/ COI P/ Agencies
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housands of Venezuelan youth took to the streets of Caracas last week Friday to demonstrate their desire for peace and support government measures calling for an end to the use of firearms in the streets of the South American country. The mobilization was spearheaded by the National Security University (UNES) and joined by primary and secondary students from more than 60 schools under the banner of "a safe and peaceful society". "We're marching for peace, for conflict resolution, for mediation in every school, on every street, and in every neighborhood. We're putting our faith in peace", said Soraya El Achkar, Rector of the UNES, an educational institution founded in 2009 to train Venezuela's new National Bolivarian Police force. According to El Achkar, "the formula to eradicate violence in the country is through peaceful conflict resolution and not by the use of arms". Friday's march began at the metro station Gato Negro and ended in the Perez Bonalde Plaza where residents from the surrounding areas of Catia, Anitmano, and Petare participated in the call for an end to the violence. "With this mobilization, we're saying to the entire world that we're not afraid to confront the violence. We're going to beat it with creativity, peace, love, dialogue and the recovery of public spaces for the population", said Pablo Fernandez, Secretary of the Chavez administration's
Presidential Commission on Disarmament. The news agency EFE reports that an estimated 10 to 15 million firearms are under civilian possession in Venezuela and that 98 percent of homicides in the country are the result of the same. Venezuelan authorities, meanwhile, have informed that between the period of 2003 and 2011, more than 250,000 illegal firearms have been confiscated and destroyed by security forces inside the country. Edwin Rojas, Vice Minister of Interior Policy and Juridical Security, expressed the government's hope to see more than 130,000 arms decommissioned this year, a number which would represent a record for the South American country, showing "the effectiveness of the policies suggested by the Presidential Commission on Disarmament created by President Chavez in May".
Current laws in Venezuela permit for the licensed possession of firearms by civilians, but new legislation being formulated in community discussions via the presidential commission aims to tighten gun control measures. Lawmakers expect a new disarmament law to come before the country's National Assembly for approval sometime next year. Although gun control is a primary concern for the government, many working on the disarmament commission recognize the fact that crime in Venezuela is not only a question of policing, but rather of wider social issues. "The problem of violence is a societal problem.We're here giving our support because we understand that we need to put an end to the culture of violence. This is a project that won't take place overnight, but we're taking key steps", said Congressman Freddy Bernal at the march on Friday.
In addition to the participation of the Presidential Commission and the UNES, Friday's action also saw the involvement of the NGO Red de Apoyo por la Justicia y Paz and more than 50 other human rights institutions and organizations. THE PEOPLE’S GUARD In a separate security development, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez approved the deployment of National Guard soldiers last Thursday to further bolster public safety in the nation's capital and surrounding areas. More than 1,500 special command soldiers have been assigned to the states of Miranda, Vargas and the Capital District as part of the government's Bicentennial Security Program, created in March 2009. The goal of the deployment is to increase the presence of security forces and assist community members by carrying out small
Unasur to create regional anti-drug observatory T/ Telesur
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ver the weekend, delegates from the member countries of the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) agreed to create a regional observatory to fight drug trafficking. The regional group discussed plans for the observatory, which is to be created in the next 6 months, during a meeting of the South American Council on the
Global Drug Problem in the city of La Paz, Bolivia. In a statement, the Council said it had formed working groups on the different thematic issues contained under its Regional Action Plan, as well as recommendations for how to develop policies to harmonize anti-drug legislation among countries. “We seek to approve laws in our countries by 2012 that allow the resources seized from illicit
activities to be used in the fight against drugs”. Bolivia’s vice minister of social defense, Felipe Caceres, said “We want to complement the international community” in anti-drug efforts, “but within a framework of dignity and sovereignty”. “The best message for the international community is that the fight against illegal drug trafficking cannot be done by
one country alone or even regionally, but rather, through an integral global solution in the framework of shared responsibilities”, he said. Caceres made clear that the South American block will continue to comply with the resolutions of the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission of the Organization of American States (OAS) and the United Nations Narcotics
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5| scale law enforcement duties, such as illegal substance control and traffic monitoring. "We're in direct contact with the members of the community council who are collaborating with us and giving us information on the problems that they're facing so that we can help them solve them", said Lieutenant Ricardo Vasquez, working in the Caracas neighborhood of La Bombilla. In its first 3 days of operation, the People’s Guard closed down 19 liquor stores operating at illegal hours in the Capital District, cracking down on disorderly behavior and strengthening traffic safety. "Within these first 72 hours of operation, we've already gained the confidence of the people", said William Ramos, Second Commander of the People's Guard on Sunday, pointing out the collaborative nature of the force's methods. "The repression [of previous governments] has come to an end. We're working with our communities and we've been applauded by the people for it", Ramos said. During an appearance on the television program Dando y Dando, Commander of the People's Guard Miguel Landino informed that the states of Lara, Zulia, and Carabobo will be next to receive the additional forces and that the program's overall goal is to cover the entire national territory. "This is a job of social articulation in which the National Guard alongside the community are moving ahead with educational activities and we're going to be there for the population in order to push forward with the peace and security that the people are demanding", Landino said on Friday.
Control Board, as well as other agreements to which member countries belong. For his part, the Bolivian representative to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (Unodc), Cesar Guedes, applauded the decision to “create mechanisms for regional coordination”, an issue he said “has not been given enough importance”. Unasur is a regional group that includes Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Guyana, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay and Venezuela.
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6 | International
NoÊ £ÊUÊFriday, November 25, 2011
The artillery of ideas
Venezuela supports Syria’s sovereignty, opposes aggression T/ COI P/ Agencies
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ver the weekend the Venezuelan government reiterated its support of Syrian efforts to resolve ongoing internal strife instigated by the U.S., Europe, and their allies in the Arab League. Following suit, the Federation of Arab-Venezuelan Entities issued its own statement condemning Arab state attempts to isolate Syria and praising Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad for his willingness to hold an “ample national dialogue” aimed at reforming the country’s political, social, and economic institutions. Both comments came after the 22-member Arab League suspended Syria’s membership last week, backing US and European efforts to criminalize the Al-Assad government as it seeks to put an end to violent attacks by armed members of the country’s opposition. PEACE & INDEPENDENCE Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro affirmed that Caracas supports “all efforts by the Syrian government to reestablish tranquility and maintain independence, peace, and stability for the Syrian people”. According to Maduro, “every thing seems to indicate” that extremist members of the Syrian opposition, “armed and fed” by outside forces, have now launched a coordinated series of military actions aimed at toppling the Syrian government. This “initial scheme”, he said, looks a great deal like the run-up to NATO’s recent war against Libya. The Al-Assad government, Maduro affirmed, is doing everything possible “to guarantee stability and peace” and is supported by the vast majority of Syrians who “want peace, reject interventionism, and repudiate those organizations currently seeking civil war”. Venezuela’s Foreign Minister reminded the press of the “brutal assassination” of Libyan
leader Muammar Gaddafi and said that recent threats against both Syria and Iran are signs of the “madness driving imperialist forces”. Speaking to supporters at a mass rally last week, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez affirmed that the US and its European allies “have begun steadily increasing the offensive against Syria, infiltrating terrorists so as to generate violence, blood, and death just as they did in Libya”. The NATO war against Libya and new threats against Syria and Iran, said Chavez, “are part of a profound crisis that has converted itself into a great threat to the people of the world”. TARGET SYRIA Unlike others in the region, Syria’s government responded to recent opposition demands by opening up a “national debate” and implementing several popular reforms, including, for example, a new law paving the way for greater participation by multiple political parties, the decentralization of budgeting to increase communitybased economic planning, and
the holding of parliamentary elections in February 2012. Hardliners of the Syrian opposition based in neighboring Turkey, backed by the US, Europe, and more recently the Arab League, have rejected these reforms and called for Al-Assad to step down. Meanwhile, mass rallies calling for “national unity” and a respect for “Syrian sovereignty” have been repeatedly held since violence first began some eight months ago. While some blame widespread violence in the country on government security forces, concrete evidence and the recent Libyan experience suggest a more complicated effort to oust the Al-Assad government and install the pro-Western “Syrian National Council” (SNC), an opposition grouping founded in Istanbul, Turkey, this past September. Unconfirmed reports place the death toll in Syria associated to this year’s political violence at somewhere near 3,500 killed, a third of which (1,100) are said to belong to the country’s police or military forces. Said to be “concerned” about said violence, the Arab League last week voted to suspend
Syria from the organization and called on the Al-Assad government to halt all actions against the opposition. In response, the Syrian government said it would welcome Arab League observers to help end the violence but would also continue doing “everything necessary” to bring an end to violent attacks against state security forces. On Sunday, for example, masked gunmen in Damascus fired rockets into the national headquarters of the ruling Ba’ath Party. The US, Europe, and numerous conservative Arab League governments have called for Al-Assad to step down, backing the demands of the so-called “Syrian National Council”, something Russia, China, and Venezuela strongly oppose. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov affirmed that foreign positioning against the Al-Assad government “looks like a political provocation on an international scale”. “When the Arab League urges to stop the violence and start dialogues, Western countries and some countries in the
region call for the opposition to avoid such dialogues with Bashar al-Assad”, Lavrov affirmed, saying it reminded him of “the Libyan tragedy”. Speaking to CNN on Sunday, former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice affirmed that an end to the Al-Assad government would be “a great thing” and said the Obama administration should consider providing “more assistance” to the Syrian opposition. France is known to have been supporting the SNC since its inception and British Foreign Secretary William Hague met with members of the SNC early this week. Internationally, the NATO-backed government in Libya is the only state to officially recognize the SNC as a replacement to Al-Assad. DECLARATION OF CONDEMNATION In response to the Arab League’s suspension of Syria, the Federation of Arab-Venezuelan Entities (FEARAB) released a statement calling the decision “the highest degree of political hypocrisy” and a “clear violation of international law”. “In all the constitutions found around the world”, the statement continued, “the permitting of or supporting interventions into the internal affairs of one’s own country, especially military interventions, is considered the highest form of treason”. As such, “The Federation congratulates the progressive members of the (Syrian) opposition who reject all forms of intervention into the internal affairs of the country. We hold the highest regard and respect for them and their decision to put patriotism above any other secondary interests”, the statement read. The organization, representing the Arab diaspora in Venezuela, called on all Syrians to focus their efforts on “national reconciliation and halting the imperial conspiracy aimed at weakening and striking Syria both politically and economically so as to divide its territory and distance it from the great support it provides to just causes and movements for national liberation in the region”. According to their website [www.fearabvenezuela.org], Fearab supports all people and governments who “pursue peace and the respect for Human Rights as the only way for human beings to live alongside one another”.
NoÊ £ÊUÊFriday, Friday, November 25, 2011
The artillery of ideas
Culture
World meeting of body art transforms humans into art in Venezuela Artists used paint, ornaments and glitter to transform the human body into artwork at a festival in Venezuela, showing off designs that ranged from pure fantasy to indigenous myths T/ COI, with reporting by Jorge Rueda P/ Agencies
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ast weekend's annual World Meeting of Body Art included body painting, tattoo art, performances and workshops. Fifty-two artists from 18 countries shared their creations at the gathering in Caracas, joining about 2,000 Venezuelans, organizers from the Ministry of Culture said. Participants had their bodies painted in bright hues from orange to lime green. Vines appeared to wind down the shoulders of one woman, and a man posed as a statue with his skin painted to look like marble. "The body is a canvas with infinite possibilities", Venezue-
lan artist Ivan Hernandez Rojas said. "I think it's fascinating that colors, clothing, makeup, masks, wigs, combs ... and accessories allow the human being to change from one identity to another". The festival, which began Thursday and ended Sunday, included participants from various Latin American countries as well as others who traveled from the Japan, Luxembourg, Poland, South Africa, Australia, the United States and Austria, among other nations. One presentation by Venezuelan David Aranguren and eleven other artists focused on the mythology of the country's Warao indigenous group, who live in the Orinoco River Delta. Actors' bodies were painted and adorned with leaves and feathers, and they played parts such as the wind and the "crocodile god". The World Meeting of Body Art is in its sixth year. The initiative has been sponsored by Venezuela’s Ministry of Culture under the Chavez administration as a way of exploring and celebrating diverse forms of expression.
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ENGLISH EDITION The artillery of ideas
Friday | November 25, 2011 | Nº 91 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve
A publication of the Fundacion Correo del OrinocoÊUÊ ` Ì À ivÊEva GolingerÊUÊ À>« VÊ ià } ÊAlexander Uzcátegui, Jameson JiménezÊUÊ*ÀiÃÃÊFundación Imprenta de la Cultura
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T
he Occupy Wall Street protests spreading across the United States have finally garnered the attention of national and international public opinion. The prolonged economic crisis and exclusionary political structure have propelled thousands of people in the United States to step out of their comfort zones, take to the streets and demand change. Brutal police repression in response to peaceful demonstrations in cities throughout the US has made international headlines, evidencing the hipocrisy of a government quick to accuse and criticize others for human rights violations, while perpetuating the same, if not worse, nasty behavior at home. Many analysts and commentators have attributed the protests in the US to the so-called “Arab Spring” taking place in Tunisia, Egypt and other Middle Eastern and African nations. The movements in the US and Arab world have shared similar tactics and characteristics, including the use of social media such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to mobilize demonstrations and publicize protest activities and state repression. The protagonists of these revolts have been primarily young people and those outraged and disgruntled at systems that have failed them and left millions impoverished with no opportunities. In Spain and Chile, similar demonstrations have taken place since the beginning of 2011, led by thousands of youth and students protesting unfair and unequal political and economic systems. The demands of all these protests, from the Arab World, to Europe to the United States, have included basic rights such as free education, dignified jobs, housing, healthcare and more inclusion and participation in politics and government. Less representation, more participation – these are the cries of the “indignados” rising up around the world. What few have noted, or have intentionally omitted, is how the peoples of Latin America arose at the beginning of this century, with demands and
US & arab protests rooted in latin american revolutions
dreams identical to those protesting today in the US, Europe and Arab nations, and were able to take power democratically and begin re-building their nations. The influence of the twenty-first century revolutions in Latin America on the Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring cannot be underestimated. INSPIRATION SOUTH OF THE BORDER Slogans, chants and comments by Occupy Wall Street protestors calling for an end to corporate rule and demanding more equitable public spending and opportunities for the majority (the 99%) are familiar to those heard throughout Venezuela in the 1990s, when privatization overtook the oilwealthy nation, multinationals ruled and the people were relegated to shantytowns. Decades of exclusion, repression and mismanagement of government and resources in Venezuela led the people (the 99%) to revolt in 1989 against
an administration quickly selling their nation to the highest buyer. The “Caracazo” on February 27, 1989, was a mass popular uprising in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, against privatization and globalization; against corporatocracy. The government, led by then President Carlos Andres Perez, responded with brutal repression. Over 3,000 were violently killed by state authorities. Bodies were hurled into mass graves and left to rot. But the brutality of state violence did not stop the Venezuelan majority. Throughout the 1990s, the people began to organize their frustrations into a nationwide coalition seeking to break free of the two-party “representative” system that had ruled for decades. As the economy faltered, banks collapsed, politicians embezzled and stole what they could and tried to sell the rest, the people mobilized. In 1998, a new president was elected by this grassroots move-
ment, ending the reign of corporate rule guised as democracy. The new government, led by Hugo Chavez, promised a complete transformation of the system. It would be deconstructed and rebuilt by the people. Democracy would no longer be “representative”, it would be participatory. There would be a redistribution of public resources to ensure the 99% were included. Healthcare and education would be free, universal and accessible to all. A new constitution would be drafted and ratified by the people, to reflect the needs, dreams and realities of today’s society. People would govern on a grassroots level through community councils and assemblies, which would control local resources and provide community members with decision-making power over how resources should be used. Community, alternative and public media would proliferate and be encouraged by the state, in order to broaden access and ensure all voices were heard.
Foreign debts would be ended and relationships with international financial institutions terminated. Important strategic resources would be nationalized and taken back from multinational corporations and placed under worker control. Public enterprises would become worker-run and owned. Foreign policy would be based on sovereignty and respect for other nations, with an emphasis on integration, cooperation and solidarity instead of exploitation, competition and domination. This is not a utopia, this is the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. It has taken years to build and there are still decades to go and many problems and difficulties to overcome, but the people of Venezuela, the 99%, were able to take power democratically and transform their nation. In 2005, the indigenous peoples of Bolivia won power through democratic elections, after centuries of exclusion, colonialism and domination by a minority ruling class. They rose up and mobilized against the racist, corporatocracy ruling their nation and took it back. Under the presidency of Evo Morales, the nation’s first indigenous head of state, a new constitution was drafted and ratified by the people in national referendum and major social transformations have been taking place to implement a system of social justice. In Ecuador, after years of political and economic turmoil, revolts, coup d’etats and several ousted presidents, the people elected Rafael Correa and the Citizen’s Revolution came to power in 2007. Freeing the nation from the reigns of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, reviving the economy and transferring power to the people are actions that are transforming Ecuador into a sovereign, dignified nation. While all of these Latin American revolutions are still in process, their emphasis on grassroots nation-building, people’s power, social justice and true sovereignty have clearly inspired others around the world to fight for change in their own nations.