Communal Census promotes grassroots democracy Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was in attendance last Saturday for the launch of a new census initiative that seeks to catalogue the South American nation’s various grassroots organizations. Communal Census 2013 has been created to bolster local democracy through the systematization of the nation’s community councils and the umbrella organizations, known as the communes, to which they belong. page 2
Analysis
Opinion
Pinochet’s Policies Still Rankle in Chile, 40 years after coup page 7
US Wars: the biggest lie
page 8
Friday, September 13, 2013 | Nº 175 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve ENGLISH EDITION/The artillery of ideas
Venezuelans march against fascism, remember coup against Allende
International
Venezuela out of IACHR The withdrawal from the Inter-American Court was based on its biased actions. page 3 Politics
Venezuela vitalizes health system A series of new initiatives and funds are improving the free public health system. page 5
Thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets on Wednesday to commemorate 40 years since the brutal US-backed coup d’etat overthrew the elected socialist government of Salvador Allende in Chile, resulting in his death. The march was part of a week-long international gathering in the South American nation against fascism and political violence. Participants came from across Latin America and the world to hear speakers such as distinguished writer Eduardo Galeano and French journalist Ignacio Ramonet. The event also shed light of Venezuela’s current battles against an undemocratic and often violent right-wing opposition. Pg. 4
Social Justice
ALBA sends humanitarian aid to Syria A plane full of tons of aid left Venezuela this week to help refugees in Lebanon and Syria. page 6
Eduardo Galeano Honored in Caracas Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro awarded on Wednesday the Simon Rodriguez Award to distinguished Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano, who is visiting the country. Upon receiving the award Galeano said: “It is a great honor for me to receive this award with the name of Simon Rodriguez, who was called as ‘El Loco’ Rodriguez for the first half of the nineteenth century. This ‘crazy’ man was able to create the first Latin American educational revolution that is still only half done today, but he was the prophet and he worked hard to implement educational change during the years he lived”. Galeano, born in 1940 in Montevideo, Uruguay, is considered one of the most prominent Latin American writers. Memories of Fire (1986) and The Open Veins of Latin America (1971) are his best known books, translated into twenty languages.
INTERNATIONAL Venezuelan films making headlines in Toronto Film Festival This year’s Toronto International Film Festival, which runs through September 15, includes screenings of two Venezuelan films: “Bad Hair”, a gritty coming-of-age drama; and “The Liberator”, a historical feature about the life and struggle of the founding father Simon Bolivar. The first of these, “Bad Hair”, is being shown on Friday the 13th. The film is “provocative and gripping”, according to a review on Indiewire, and “may just be this year’s festival foreign sleeper hit”. The film deals with the highly charged issues of race, sexuality, and the body. In a manner that is “bold and intelligently perceptive”, it tells the story of “a boy who doesn’t fit society’s conventional mold within gender roles, especially not in the world of his already overwhelmed and weary mother, who suspects that her son – who has distinct tastes and flair – has begun to show signs of homosexuality”. Its star, Samuel Lange, is just 9 years old. The second Venezuelan film at TIFF 2013, “The Liberator”, is also being shown on Friday the 13th. It stars Edgar Ramirez, who has been in Hollywood blockbusters Zero Dark Thirty and The Bourne Ultimatum, and portrays some crucial moments in the life of the Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar. “The Liberator,” according to a writeup on the TIFF website, is “enthralling,” and “serves as both an epic of struggle and a cinematic history lesson.” Both of these movies were produced at Villa del Cine (Cinema City) with support from the government of Venezuela.
2 Impact | . s Friday, September 13, 2013
The artillery of ideas
Venezuela undertakes grassroots census to advance participatory democracy T/ COI P/ Presidential Press
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enezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was in attendance last Saturday for the launch of a new census initiative that seeks to catalogue the South American nation’s various grassroots organizations. Communal Census 2013, the head of state informed, has been created to bolster local democracy through the systematization of the nation’s community councils and the umbrella organizations, known as the communes, to which they belong. “Venezuela is on its way towards the consolidation of true democracy - communal democracy - in which the organized people carry out the revolution”, the former bus driver and union leader asserted during a visit to a registration center in the state of Aragua. Officials report that more than 31,000 neighborhood community councils inscribed in the initiative over the weekend as did more than one thousand communes and 16,000 grassroots movements. The information collected, authorities stated, will be used to better organize and address the needs of each community, improve access to government funding platforms, and transfer greater political power to local organizations. By avoiding excessive bureaucracy and streamlining grassroots development projects, Maduro commented that Venezuela has the potential to refine and improve upon the participatory democracy founded by former President Hugo Chavez. Key to this success is the strengthening of the nation’s communes that, promoted by the late Chavez, form the organizational base to move political and economic power into the hands of everyday citizens. “The day in which millions of Venezuelans are organized in communes is the day that this country will have the most complete democracy that has ever been seen here and in the world”, President Maduro said. To accelerate the process, the 50 year-old urged members
of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) to make house calls and visit remote communities that may not have access to the more than eight hundred registration points established over the weekend. According to Reinaldo Iturriza, Minister of Communes for the Maduro administration, the weekend’s inscriptions are an indication of the growing strength of the nation’s popular democracy and the steps being achieved to move the country closer to socialism. “[The census] is a reaffirmation of what the Venezuelan constitution has outlined. It is participatory and protagonist democracy that is as alive as ever despite the opinions of some detractors. There are 1,150 communes and the number continues to grow en route to the consolidation of Bolivarian socialism”, the minister stated. For those participating in the inscription, the weekend served as an opportunity to combine forces and push forward an agenda of popular power. “This census is about taking into account all the forces and the different expressions
of popular organizing in all of its dimensions, whether registered or not”, said Gerardo Rojas, a government worker in the Midwest state of Lara where 80 registration points were set up in schools and public spaces across the state. In the Andean state of Trujillo, 58 centers where erected where activists from all over the region participated to advance the census. Luis La Rosa, a government representative in the city of Valera, noted that an important aspect of the registration lies in creating greater efficiency for local organizations to design and implement community projects.
“The process of simplification has already begun. Part of this census is to know what problems the community councils may be facing in order to register, which is not the overall goal. [The overall goal] is rather to begin a process of self-government with our communities organized and able to govern themselves”, he confirmed.
‘WE HAVE TO BE BETTER’ At a separate event earlier on Saturday, President Maduro spoke of the need for Venezuelans to take greater responsibility in addressing the most pressing issues facing the nation.
Specifically, the first-term President pointed to the need to improve economic productivity and to fight crime through community organizing. “We have to be organizing ourselves better and building socialism”, he said. Maduro’s comments came as the head of state inaugurated a door-to-door food delivery program that provides basic staples to seniors and the disabled. The measure is an outgrowth of the government’s Mission Mercal, which sells subsidized food products through a network of publicly-run distribution points and small shops. While in the state of Miranda, the Venezuelan President mentioned the high rates of violent crime that continue to plague the OPEC member state and urged residents to take the lead in public safety campaigns. “If we want to live in a community at peace, what do we have to do? Organize ourselves, my countrymen and women, to build socialist communes which should be territories free from violence and hunger where the people have the right to live together”, he declared. The head of state also took aim at illicit business practices such as price speculation and hoarding, which have damaged the Venezuelan economy and affected the government’s ability to ensure affordable access to basic products for all. Maduro promised greater penalties when dealing with crooked businesses and appealed to the nation’s communes to fight against the rampant corruption that has led to a shortage of some commodities in the country. “I’m going to be stricter”, he said, explaining that the Venezuelan Armed Forces have been instructed to work with consumer protection agencies in enforcing the nation’s price controls and cracking down on hoarding. At the same time, Maduro reasserted his willingness to work with the private sector and invited honest businessmen and women to continue collaborating with the government to boost production and assist in the economic development of the nation. “I’m calling on all the business people who want to live in this country...and to Venezuelans also. You need to act according to the law and not be swayed by a campaign of speculation and hoarding”, he affirmed.
The artillery of ideas
. s Friday, September 13, 2013
Venezuela withdraws from “biased” OAS Commission of Human Rights T/ Paul Dobson
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omplying with the decision of late President Chávez, the Venezuelan government formally withdrew from the Inter-American Commission and Court of Human (IACHR) rights this week, ending 44 years of involvement, and accusing it of have degenerated into a mere “arm of imperialism to attack Venezuela”. “The time of the IACHR is over, and that was the best decision that our Commander (Chavez) could have taken”, stated Maduro. The Commission, part of the Organization of American States, of which Venezuela continues to be a member, has “sadly degenerated”, according to Maduro. It “is on its knees to the US State Department… it’s a reality which we have to say crudely, the IACHR responds to the interests of the US State Department”. It has converted into “an instrument for the persecution of progressive governments… While we are here, we won’t let anyone dishonor Venezuela”, defied the recently elected President. Even though the US exerts extensive control over the IACHR and houses the Commission in Washington, the United States is not a member or signatory of the OAS human rights entities. The US has refused to recognize its jurisdiction in order to avoid claims against the government for human rights abuses. In 2002, the IACHR instantly recognized the de-facto illegal government of Pedro Carmona, leader of the civil-military coup d’état against Chavez, and this, according to Maduro, “is reason enough for everyone to leave it”. They furthermore ruled in favor of two Venezuelan terrorists, currently hiding in Miami, and hunted by the Venezuelan judicial system, for planting bombs in the Spanish and Colombian Embassies in Caracas in 2003. “These people live in Miami and are protected by the government of the US”, explained Maduro. Foreign minister, Elias Jaua, told press that “so long as there is no integral transformation of the system of Inter-American Human Rights, Venezuela will not return to it”. “It is evident that the ICHR is hijacked by a political sector of our country. It’s tied down by certain interests. Why has it never defended the rights of the poor people?” asked Jaua. “It is regrettable that it doesn’t protect human rights as it should”, he explained, citing numerous viola-
tions of the rights of the poor people of Venezuela previous to 1999, when Chavez was first elected, which never saw the light of day in the IACHR. It wasn’t until after Chavez was in office that the IACHR turned its interest to Venezuela. Venezuelan legislator Deputy Yul Jabour, who promoted a motion in the National Assembly supporting the government’s withdrawal, explained that the IACHR is “an organism which was created to promote and defend human rights in our continent, and which in practice has been hijacked in defense of the interests of multinationals and corporations”. The decision to withdraw from the international body, which today hides under the tarpaulin of ‘human rights defenders’, received vehement criticism from the opposition, especially
by losing presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles. “I consider it to be a gigantic step backwards… it hits our democracy hard”, stated the man responsible for the death of 11 citizens after his electoral loss in April. Capriles’ lawyers took advantage of the public attention on the IACHR to submit a 250 document one day before the formal withdrawal, which supposedly “proves” the fraudulent nature of the past elections in April. “We are asking that they oblige the Venezuelan State to re-establish the violated rights by annulling and repeating those elections, which were fraudulent”, claimed Capriles’ representative Ramon Medina in Washington. “Furthermore, that they establish conditions according to the American Convention of Human Rights and the
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InterAmerican Democratic Charter so that the electoral processes are fair and just”. Despite Venezuela’s withdrawal, the IACHR can still pronounce verdicts on cases submitted before the withdrawal, and issue informative declarations regarding Venezuela thereafter. “We have said so, that if justice doesn’t work (in Venezuela), then we will go to international instruments to defend not my rights, but the rights of the Venezuelan people”, claimed Capriles. “Everyone knows that on April 14th we won the elections convincingly. I am defending the rights of the people who voted massively for a change in the country”. The Venezuelan High Supreme Court ruled the very same document submitted by the Capriles to the IACHR as “inadmissible” on August 7th, and declared that it would not be reviewing the electoral results due to a lack of concrete evidence of irregularities in the material submitted by the opposition. Venezuela’s Electoral Council, which oversees all elections in the country, had already done a complete audit of the elections results, with international observers, and deemed them authentic. Venezuela’s opposition often claim that all anti-government activists found guilty of breaking the law are “political prisoners” regardless of the law they may have broken. Most recently, the opposition rallied behind legislator Richard Mardo, who was found guilty and confessed to large scale corruption, claiming that he was a “persecuted political prisoner”. As international attention focuses on Syria, and what appears to be yet another foreign intervention based on a US definition of “justice” and “human rights”, President Maduro called out the opposition’s appeals to Washington. “Now they pretend to not recognize the Venezuela electoral system. Ramon Medina, the right hand of the great fascist (Capriles) has got himself involved in dangerous things. He went today to the IACHR to submit a document saying that there was fraud here”. “What does the IACHR have to do with the sovereign and autonomous actions in our country? So they make a decision, I don’t know when, and they say that I’m not the President of the Republic… please! Why? To justify what? An invasion maybe?” He also highlighted the contradiction within the opposition’s stance, by maintaining that the electoral system is not fair, yet presenting a complete list of candidates for the upcoming local elections, and calling on their supporters to turn out to vote. “It’s contradictory: they are inscribing candidates and at the same time submitting documents to the world saying that here there is fraud”, elaborated President Maduro.
4 Politics | . s Friday, September 13, 2013
The artillery of ideas
Caracas commemorates Salvador Allende & the Chilean coup, hosts anti-fascist encounter
presidential candidate Henrique Capriles this past April. As the iconic thick rimmed glasses of the late President Allende sprung up in murals all around Caracas, Bernardo Castañeda, President of the Chilean Socialist Party in Venezuela, reminded us that the date should not be forgotten. “This date must be remembered each year because fascism is still alive. We have to be alert and have revolutionary political consciousness”. Venezuelan Vice President Jorge Arreaza also paid homage to Allende, who led the first socialist project to come to power through a bourgeois democrat-
ic system. “The lessons which Chile left us, which Allende left us, the lessons of that historic moment have generated in us a consciousness”. President Maduro proclaimed, “Allende lives, the struggle goes on! Allende was left without friends, without comrades during the crucial moment of life or death - this won’t happen to us... The people, popular power, will assure that Chile won’t be repeated here in Venezuela”. “The best response of the people to so much evil from a fascist minority”, he went on, “is what we have done last Saturday and Sunday with the Communes… Fascism is defeated with work and concrete advances in the construction of Popular Power”. Vladimira Moreno, spokeswoman for the Communist Party of Venezuela, which held additional commemorative acts, drew parallels between the hand of the US in ousting President Allende, and the actions of the US government in Venezuela since Chavez first won office in 1998. “Today we have enough elements that show that the coup d’état against President Allende and against President Chavez were directed by the CIA”. Only last week evidence was presented by Venezuelan authorities of US-backed attempts to assassinate President Maduro, as well as the sabotage that caused the explosion in the Amuay refinery last year, causing countless deaths.
The President reiterated the need to be alert and share information in order to head-off contrived interruptions to the power grid or any other strategic industries. “There needs to an organized and articulated vanguard that can provide the people with the media necessary to detect conspiring groups” he insisted. The blackout in early September left 19 states and the capital of Caracas without power for some three hours. President Maduro has repeatedly asserted that the outage was the product of political actors whose intent is to discredit his government. “It’s evident that behind this is the hand of those who want to weaken the homeland”, he said following the collapse. “I’m asking for the help of all electricity workers and the people to arrive at a new era in the fight to insulate the electric system from sabotage”, he asserted. According to the Minister of Electricity, Jesse Chacon, a
breakdown in one of the main lines that transports power from the Guri damn, which provides 60 percent of the country’s electricity, was responsible for the outage. “We have begun an investigation regarding the origin of the problem”, Chacon said after the event. Venezuela, one of the largest per capita consumer of power in Latin America, has invested millions in its electricity infrastructure since a drought in 2010 forced the government to implement programmed power cuts. President Maduro expressed his indignation over last week’s event, lashing out at the country’s opposition for carrying out politics “based on conspiracy and evil” with the aim of “harming the country”. “Go out into the streets. Visit homes and talk with the people. Don’t attack the economy, infrastructure, and electricity only later to say that this government is not doing its job”, he demanded.
T/ Paul Dobson P/ Presidential Press
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ed by President Maduro, Caracas hosted the first International Anti-Fascist Encounter this week, commemorating 40 years since the US-backed military coup d’état that ousted democraticallyelected socialist President Salvador Allende in Chile in 1973. In attendance at the Antifascist Encounter, taking place from September 11-15, are artists, political and social leaders, and intellectuals from around the world. These include the daughter of President Allende, Maria Isabel Allende, and comrades who worked alongside him before his untimely death during the coup. As a consequence of the UScoup in Chile, it is estimated that over 40,000 leftist activists, writers, students and artists disappeared or were killed in the years that followed under the dictator General Augusto Pinochet. Declassified documents from US government agencies analyzed by investigative reporters have evidenced the role of both the US and British governments, under Richard Nixon and Margaret Thatcher, in the coup against Allende and the multiple human rights abuses of the Pinochet dictatorship during the years that followed. “Today starts a grand world anti-fascist session in our nation”, stated President Maduro via his Twitter account, “Welcome intellectuals, artists, leaders of the world who bring light with them”. The program for the encounter started with a great antifascist march, under the slogan “Now and Forever Allende” from the Salvador Allende Square in Caracas, to the Llaguno bridge, where numerous Venezuelans died in the brief coup d’état against President Chavez in Venezuela in 2002. Later, in Jose Marti Square in downtown Caracas, an exhibit dedicated to the five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters who have been illegally held in the US for 15 years was unveiled. On Thursday two forums were held, entitled ‘Fascist Ideology: social, political and economic models’ and ‘The History of Fascism in Europe: concrete experiences in Ger-
many, Italy, Spain, Russia, Belarus and Poland’. In the evening a concert paid homage to the Cuban Five. On Friday, more events were held, including a forum on the topic of ‘Expressions of Fascism in Latin America: concrete experiences in Paraguay, Honduras and Venezuela’, followed by another focusing on Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay and Argentina. Over the weekend on Saturday and Sunday, Caracas will host an “antifascist camp” in one of the major parks, Parque Los Caobos, which will combine cultural events and political activities.
President Maduro reminded those at the encounter that fascism today is still alive and threatening the democratic peoples of the world. “Fascism is an old mortal illness which can relapse, like all old viruses”. The encounter coincides with the commemoration of the ousting of Salvador Allende, and pays a timely reminder to the people of Venezuela of the continuing threat of fascism in the country. For many, the wound of the defeated coup d’état of 2002 is still open, and more recently, that of the assassination of 11 chavista activists after the electoral defeat of opposition
Venezuelan government expresses resolve to confront sabotage
T/ COI P/ A gencies
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he socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro pledged to improve and protect the nation’s electric power infrastructure last week after a blackout left more than 70 percent of the South
American nation without electricity. In a meeting with his executive staff, Maduro called on the Venezuelan people to stand against extremist groups of the right-wing opposition who through sabotage are attempting to sow discontent in the population.
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The artillery of ideas
Venezuelan Government announces initiatives to improve public health system T/ Ewan Robertson P/ Presidential Press
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n Monday Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced a series of measures aimed at improving public healthcare delivery in Venezuela. Policies include refurbishing hospitals, improving the supply of medical materials to health centers, and increasing doctors’ pay. Speaking on public television from the city of Barquisimeto, Lara state, Maduro officially inaugurated the new “Greater Health Staff” body, which groups together all government officials responsible for health planning and delivery. The body will liaise with doctors, nurses and local health committees to design and implement policies to improve the South American country’s public healthcare system. Vice President Jorge Arreaza will head the organization, with other members including the minister for health, the vice president of the social area, the minister for science and technology, and the president of the Venezuelan Social Security Institute (IVSS). Maduro exhorted the Greater Health Staff grouping to “make the use of resources and consolidation of the public health system ever more efficient”. A second task of the grouping is to ensure the adequate supply of materials, parts and equipment to health centers. This includes overseeing the creation of a publicly-owned Corporation of Technological Services for Medical Equipment, which will coordinate with the national and international private sector. “Here not a single [medical machine] piece or component should be lacking”, emphasized the Venezuelan President. The announcement comes after some doctors’ groups warned that public health centers were experiencing insufficient supply of medical materials and equipment. At the time, Health Minster Isabel Iturria said that any “difficulties” in Venezuela’s public health system would be addressed by the government. On Monday, Nicolas Maduro reminded viewers of the Bolivarian government’s record
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bolivars ($12.7 million) to undertake an extra 8,000 elective surgeries over the next three months in order to reduce waiting times in certain non-emergency procedures. “It’s about taking advantage of idle shifts in surgical theatres during evenings and weekends,” explained Health Minister Isabel Iturria. In addition, almost 100 million bolivars ($15.9 million) was approved for the refurbishment of around 90 hospitals, medical centers and doctors’ surgeries in the public health system in Lara state.
DOCTOR PAY RISE
expanded, while health indicators such as infant mortality improved noticeably. “The Bolivarian revolution is the only guarantee for the development of the National Public Health System”, Maduro argued.
HOSPITAL “MICRO MISSIONS”
on health under the presidency of Hugo Chavez. With Cuban support, from 2003 the number of doctors and clinics in the public health system greatly
A second set of measures had to do with improving the infrastructure and service of the nation’s public hospitals, incorporating them more fully into the public health system. President Maduro announced that the government would establish special hospital programs, called “micro mis-
sions”, where teams of health and administration specialists will operate in individual hospitals to resolve problems and optimize hospital functioning. The micro missions will work in eleven hospitals initially, to be extended thereafter. The Venezuelan President asked hospital workers, nurses and doctors to support the micro missions and help ensure their success. “Let’s begin a new life in the hospital system, with love, discipline, dedication and capacity”, he exhorted. An additional micro mission will be implemented in the area of surgical operations. The government is to invest 80 million
Nicolas Maduro highlighted his government’s commitment to improving the labor conditions of health professionals in the public system, and invited health workers to a “profound ethical reflection” over commitment to public healthcare and helping to solve problems in the sector. The Venezuelan President made headlines by awarding public sector doctors a 75% pay rise – 50% now and 25% from January 1, 2014. Night shift pay will also be increased, and doctors will gain special access to housing through the government’s mass housing construction program. Furthermore, Maduro called for the training of up to 60,000 community doctors by 2019, and invited Latin American doctors trained through the VenezuelaCuba Comprehensive Community Medicine (MIC) program to come to the country and “serve the people of Venezuela”. When Hugo Chavez came to power in 1998 there were around 18 doctors per 1000 inhabitants in Venezuela. By 2012 this number had risen to 58 per 1000 inhabitants.
Amuay is part of the Paraguana Refining Center, one of the world’s largest refineries. Upon presenting the report in Caracas, Ramirez was accompanied by several deputies
from the National Assembly, leaders of the oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), oil industry workers from around the country and members of the media.
Oil Minister: Amuay explosion was a deliberate act of sabotage T/ AVN P/ Agencies
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enezuela’s Oil and Mining Minister Rafael Ramirez presented on Monday the results of an investigation which found that the explosion that caused 42 deaths on August 25, 2012, at the Amuay refinery on the Paraguana Peninsula in the state of Falcon was the product of a deliberate act of sabotage. “We have demonstrated elements to bring us to the con-
clusion, without any doubt, that it was a deliberate act of sabotage which produced pollution and an explosion that had such terrible consequences for the people and for the country”, he said at an event to deliver details about the report on the scientific investigation produced by a committee formed to determine the causes of the tragic event. Ramirez explained that the sabotage occurred in a storage tank in block 23 that contained materials derived from oil processing.
6 Social Justice | . s Friday, September 13, 2013
The artillery of ideas
Venezuelan State guarantees human rights protections for the people T/ AVN P/ Agencies
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enezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said Tuesday that Venezuela’s withdrawal from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) does not affect the protection of the Venezuelan people in this area, given there was never any support from the international entity. “The greatest guarantee of the protection of human rights in Venezuela today is the Venezuelan state”, Jaua said in a press conference. He recalled that, previous to the Bolivarian Revolution, a repressive neoliberal state promoted the systematic violation of the rights of Venezuelans, a situation has changed dramatically in the last 14 years. “Unfortunately, the Venezuelan people never had international protection and tutelage on the issue of human rights”, he said, enumerating cases of violations of basic rights committed by past governments that never were taken up or responded to by the IACHR, which is under the Organization of American States. “The best guarantee of the human rights of the Venezuelan people is the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the Venezuelan laws and justice system that we’re building”, the minister emphasized. He said that in the last 14 years, the Citizen’s Branch of government – including the Office of the Public Prosecutor and the Human Rights Ombudsman – has undertaken indispensable actions against members of state security forces, both civilian and military, that violated human rights. Jaua argued that during the presidency of Hugo Chavez, and now under President Nicolas Maduro, the government has undertaken a struggle to protect and defend human rights for all Venezuelans. “Like never before in our history have we developed a system of economic, social and cultural rights as we have done under the Bolivarian Revolution”, he said. Jaua recalled that Venezuela is a newly elected member of the United Nations Human
Rights Council, it recently ratified the human rights protocol of the Southern Common Market (Mercosur), and it is working to build a human rights protection body as part of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) that Venezuelans can access. “We’re going to keep working to ensure that the Venezuelan people, and not powerful corporate sectors, not the corrupt or the terrorists, can have a system of international protection they can access and be treated swiftly and promptly”, he said.
WITHDRAWAL FROM THE COURT Speaking at the headquarters of Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry, Jaua said that the sovereign decision to withdraw from the IACHR ‘s response to actions that this body has taken that overstepped its jurisdiction. “We’re not getting out of the Inter-American Court because our citizens have accessed it, but because it admits cases even before the domestic channels have been exhausted as is required under the Inter-American Convention on Human Rights. We’re getting out of the court because it has failed to
be impartial against corrupt people and terrorists, ones that aren’t even in the country. They’re fugitives from Venezuelan justice”, he said. Jaua reiterated that Venezuela’s denunciation of the IACHR has no negative consequences for the country, which remains a member of the Organization of American States and will remain in from compliance with the principles established by that body. “We have only withdrawn from one of its subsystems”, Jaua said, arguing that states should offer human rights guarantees at home through their own state agencies. He recalled the IACHR decision in favor of Venezuelan politician will pull the Lopez who was barred from holding public office by the Comptroller General of Venezuela due to his engagement and corruption, as well as the IACHR’s recognition of the de facto government of Pedro Carmona, who seized power in the 2002 coup d’état against President Chavez.
IGNORED CASES Meahwhile, Jaua lamented the failure of the IACHR to make pronouncements regarding massacres that have occurred in Venezuela in the past, such as the 1982 Cantaura massacre,
in which 400 members of the Air Force and National Guard bombed a guerrilla encampment in the state of Anzoategui. In the case of the Yumare massacre in 1986, which also went ignored by the IACHR, nine social leaders were captured and assassinated by the secret police based on orders by Henry Lopez Sisco. The foreign minister also remembered the more than 50 students assassinated and “disappeared” by Metropolitan Police in Caracas between 1990 and 1991; the farmers in Yumare in the state of Yaracuy that were brutally repressed by the National Guard 27 years ago; the workers of the steel company Sidor that were beaten by leaders of the secret police; and the many people that were tortured and disappeared by the terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, who is a fugitive from Venezuelan law sheltered in the United States. “One year later there has no acknowledgement by the InterAmerican Commission nor the Court, of the undaunted efforts by our brother countries Ecuador and Bolivia to promote the transformation of the InterAmerican system of human rights”, he said. Finally, Jaua thanked the member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) for a resolution last Saturday highlighting the IACHR’s aggressions against the Venezuelan people and government through declarations, resolutions and rulings degrading the sovereignty of the nation.
Venezuela and ALBA to send humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees T/ Tamara Pearson
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enezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced that a Bolivarian National Armed Forces plane was sent carrying humanitarian aid to Syrian refugees in Beirut, Lebanon. The initiative came out of a resolution from the political council of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) meeting in Caracas last weekend. The plane will bring blankets, medicine, and food. “Alba has decided to send planes with humanitarian help, given the grave situation of Syrians in Lebanon, to whom no one is providing in
any help”, Venezuelan foreign minster Elias Jaua said. The ALBA resolution rejected any intervention or military action in Syria. It stated that, “ALBA will send planes loaded with life while the United States hopes to send planes loaded with bombs that cause death and destruction”. “It’s the least that we can do as a testimony to active solidarity, from the love of the peoples of Latin America and especially those participating in ALBA... a testimony to our deep commitment to peace and life for ...Syria”, Jaua said. According to Telesur’s reporter in Damascus, Hisham Wannous, the Syrian people
appreciate the ALBA’s humanitarian help. “The people of Syria have ratified that the regional bloc has stayed by their side, providing help and support”, he said. Wannous said that at least seven million Syrians have felt the need to flee their homes since the civil war began, five million of those “moving to secure places within the ter-
ritory and the rest crossing the borders to seek refuge in neighboring countries”. Hundreds in Venezuela participated in the “praying and fasting for peace” called for by Pope Francisco last Saturday. President Maduro also revealed he had received no response to the letter he sent to Barack Obama a week ago, calling for peace.
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The artillery of ideas
Pinochet’s policies still rankle in Chile T/ Marianela Jarroud -IPS P/ IPS
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eptember 11, 1973 marked the start in Chile of a dictatorship that was synonymous with cruelty. But above and beyond the human rights violations, the reforms ushered in by the regime of General Augusto Pinochet continue to mark today’s Chile – a country of dynamic economic growth but a fragmented society. Two of these reforms, in the spheres of politics and education, are among the targets of the massive student movement and sectors of the left, which are seeking to dismantle them and consider them key campaign issues for the November general elections. “These are two essential areas, because they have an impact on the democratic character of Chilean society”, said Pedro Milos, a history professor at the private Alberto Hurtado University. “The Chilean path to socialism” that the government of democratically elected Salvador Allende (1970-1973) attempted to follow before he was overthrown by Pinochet’s bloody coup, was systematically squelched by the dictator through a constitution that is still in effect today. Ruling with an iron fist, Pinochet (1973-1990) introduced free-market policies, privatised and decentralised essential services that had been provided free of cost by the state, such as healthcare and education, and was a pioneer in putting pension funds in the hands of private companies. At the time the educational reforms began to be adopted in 1981, 78 percent of primary and secondary school students were in the public education system, while the rest went to private schools. But public education was whittled down, with schools transferred to the jurisdiction of municipal governments and the creation of state-subsidized private schools, with the subventions depending on the number of students they managed to attract. The proportion of students in municipal schools had fallen to 57.8 percent by the return to democracy in 1990, and to 37.5 percent in 2012, due to the marked decline in the quality of education in these schools.
“The worst thing was the municipalization of primary and middle schools”, Pilar Mella, a 57-year-old secretary, explained. “The municipalities with the most money dedicate more funds to education, giving rise to high levels of inequality”. In 1971, during the Allende administration, the immense majority of students attended public schools. And when they completed 12 years of primary and secondary education, they went to the university free of charge and without the need for pre-college remedial courses. Those were times of tuition-free public education of the same quality at all levels – a demand that is today expressed loud and clear on the streets of Chile by students who were not even born yet when the 1973 coup happened, and most of whom are not affiliated with any of the traditional political parties. By the time the Pinochet regime had introduced all of its changes, tuition-free public
universities were a thing of the past. And to enter university, students must now take admission exams – where poor students find themselves at a disadvantage due to the lower quality schools they have attended. “What the dictatorship did was transform education into just another merchandise”, the president of the University of Chile Student Federation, Andres Fielbaum, told IPS. And the democratic governments that have ruled Chile since 1990 “continued to strengthen that model”, he said. The centre-left Coalition of Parties for Democracy, which governed the country from 1990 to 2010, “invented shared financing, which means that each person buys the education they can afford, and created state-backed loans (to pay for university studies) which threw the banks into the banquet of education”, he said. In modern societies, Milos argued, “educational systems
are what make it possible to generate higher levels of equality and opportunities, and possibilities of social and political participation”. It’s not a question of Chileans not studying. Coverage has grown, to 99.7 percent in primary education, 87.7 percent in secondary education, and 36.3 percent at university level. But 44 percent of young people between the ages of 15 and 29 do not complete secondary school. And 25 percent of high school drop-outs neither work nor study – the fourth highest proportion among the countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the so-called rich countries’ club. Moreover, in Chile, families directly finance over 70 percent of the cost of tertiary education, with the state covering just 22 percent – far below the OECD average of 68 percent public funding.
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Under pressure from the student protests that have been raging since 2006, governments have introduced a number of changes in education, but without going to the core of the matter – inequality. Paulina Jimenez, a 22-year-old political science student, says “today’s crisis originated in the political reforms of the dictatorship, especially the crisis of representation that has triggered, and has been expressed by, the student movement”. Exactly seven years after the coup, on September 11, 1980, Pinochet had voters approve a new constitution in a rigged plebiscite, with no voter lists. That constitution and the laws it gave rise to put in place “a political system and redistribution of power in society that is not exactly compatible with the essential characteristics of a democratic system”, Milos said. The most emblematic aspect is the so-called “binomial” electoral system. Under that system, only two senators and two deputies are elected for each district. This favours the two large alliances – the Coalition of Parties for Democracy and the right-wing Coalition for Change, which is now in government. The smaller forces, regardless of how many votes they earn, are excluded. “That keeps the diversity of society and its social and political interests from being represented in parliament, the depository of popular sovereignty”, Milos argued. The constitution was reformed many times since 1989, to eliminate the most irksome aspects, such as the lifetime and designated senators, including former commanders of the armed forces. But it continues to guide political life. The dictatorship put hurdles in the way of major changes, such as the elimination of the binomial system, which require supermajorities in Congress that have never been achieved since 1990. But the demands of the youth movement are gaining strength – a movement “that was born from having grown up in a country that we clearly do not like, that is unjust and segregated, but also from having grown up without the traumas and the dead that are the burden carried by many of our parents”, Fielbaum said. “We aren’t afraid of politics or of dissent, because we know that it is the way we will build a different country”, he added. “And that is where our conviction for definitively eradicating Pinochet’s legacy is born”.
Friday, September 13, 2013 | Nº 175 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve
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T/ John Pilger
Opinion
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From Hiroshima to Syria, the enemy whose name we dare not speak
n my wall is the front page of Daily Express of September 5, 1945 and the words: “I write this as a warning to the world”. So began Wilfred Burchett’s report from Hiroshima. It was the scoop of the century. For his lone, perilous journey that defied the US occupation authorities, Burchett was pilloried, not least by his embedded colleagues. He warned that an act of premeditated mass murder on an epic scale had launched a new era of terror. Almost every day now, he is vindicated. The intrinsic criminality of the atomic bombing is borne out in the US National Archives and by the subsequent decades of militarism camouflaged as democracy. The Syria psychodrama exemplifies this. Yet again, we are held hostage to the prospect of a terrorism whose nature and history even the most liberal critics still deny. The great unmentionable is that humanity’s most dangerous enemy resides across the Atlantic. John Kerry’s farce and Barack Obama’s pirouettes are temporary. Russia’s peace deal over chemical weapons will, in time, be treated with the contempt that all militarists reserve for diplomacy. With Al-Qaida now among its allies, and US-armed coupmasters secure in Cairo, the US intends to crush the last independent states in the Middle East: Syria first, then Iran. “This operation [in Syria]”, said the former French foreign minister Roland Dumas in June, “goes way back. It was prepared, pre-conceived and planned”. When the public is “psychologically scarred”, as the Channel 4 reporter Jonathan Rugman described the British people’s overwhelming hostility to an attack on Syria, reinforcing the unmentionable is made urgent. Whether or not Bashar al-Assad or the “rebels” used gas in the suburbs of Damascus, it is the US not Syria that is the world’s most prolific user of these terrible weapons. In 1970, the Senate reported, “The US has dumped on Vietnam a quantity of toxic chemical (dioxin) amounting to six pounds per head of population”. This was Operation Hades, later renamed the friendlier Operation Rand Hand: the source of what Vietnamese doctors call a “cycle of foetal catastrophe”. I have seen generations of young children with their familiar, monstrous deformities. John Kerry, with his own blood-soaked war
The biggest lie
With Al-Qaida now among its allies, and US-armed coupmasters secure in Cairo, the US intends to crush the last independent states in the Middle East: Syria first, then Iran. record, will remember them. I have seen them in Iraq, too, where the US used depleted uranium and white phosphorous, as did the Israelis in Gaza, raining it down on UN schools and hospitals. No Obama “red line” for them. No showdown psychodrama for them.
The repetitive debate about whether “we” should “take action” against selected dictators (i.e. cheer on the US and its acolytes in yet another aerial killing spree) is part of our brainwashing. Richard Falk, emeritus professor of international law and UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, describes it as “a self-righteous, one-way, legal/moral screen [with] positive images of Western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted political violence”. This “is so widely accepted as to be virtually unchallengeable”. It is the biggest lie: the product of “liberal realists” in AngloAmerican politics, scholarship and the media who ordain themselves as the world’s crisis man-
agers, rather than the cause of a crisis. Stripping humanity from the study of nations and congealing it with jargon that serves western power designs, they mark “failed”, “rogue” or “evil” states for “humanitarian intervention”. An attack on Syria or Iran or any other US “demon” would draw on a fashionable variant, “Responsibility to Protect”, or R2P, whose lectern-trotting zealot is the former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans, cochair of a “Global Center”, based in New York. Evans and his generously funded lobbyists play a vital propaganda role in urging the “international community” to attack countries where “the Security Council rejects a proposal or fails to deal with it in a reasonable time”.
Evans has form. He appears in my 1994 film Death of a Nation, which revealed the scale of genocide in East Timor. Canberra’s smiling man is raising his champagne glass in a toast to his Indonesian equivalent as they fly over East Timor in an Australian aircraft, having just signed a treaty that pirated the oil and gas of the stricken country below where Indonesia’s tyrant, Suharto, killed or starved a third of the population. Under the “weak” Obama, militarism has risen perhaps as never before. With not a single tank on the White House lawn, a military coup has taken place in Washington. In 2008, while his liberal devotees dried their eyes, Obama accepted the entire Pentagon of his predecessor, George Bush: its wars and war crimes. As the constitution is replaced by an emerging police state, those who destroyed Iraq with shock and awe, and piled up the rubble in Afghanistan and reduced Libya to a Hobbesian nightmare, are ascendant across the US administration. Behind their beribboned façade, more former US soldiers are killing themselves than are dying on battlefields. Last year, 6,500 veterans took their own lives. Put out more flags. The historian Norman Pollack calls this “liberal fascism”. “For goose-steppers”, he wrote, “substitute the seemingly more innocuous militarisation of the total culture. And for the bombastic leader, we have the reformer manqué, blithely at work, planning and executing assassination, smiling all the while”. Every Tuesday, the “humanitarian” Obama personally oversees a worldwide terror network of drones that “bugsplat” people, their rescuers and mourners. In the west’s comfort zones, the first black leader of the land of slavery still feels good, as if his very existence represents a social advance, regardless of his trail of blood. This obeisance to a symbol has all but destroyed the US anti-war movement: Obama’s singular achievement. In Britain, the distractions of the fakery of image and identity politics have not quite succeeded. A stirring has begun, though people of conscience should hurry. The judges at Nuremberg were succinct: “Individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity”. The ordinary people of Syria, and countless others, and our own self respect, deserve nothing less now.