English Edition Nº 38

Pg. 7 | Security Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed that drug kingpin Walid Makled will be extradited to Venezuela and not the US

FRIDAY  November 19, 2010  No. 38  Bs. 1  Caracas

Pg. 8 | Opinion

Gregory Elich explains the danger of how climate changes may effect us sooner than we expect

ENGLISH EDITION The artillery of ideas

Venezuela: housing a priority

The Chavez administration is guaranteeing housing rights to homebuyers suffering from fraud and real estate scams

Thousands arrested for drug trafficking in 2010

In response to mass real estate scams perpetuated by several private corporations that have affected thousands of innocent homebuyers, the Venezuelan government is guaranteeing property rights and ensuring that victims get justice. Dozens of fraudulent real estate companies have been expropriated in recent weeks after their billion-dollar scams were exposed by government investigators working together with those affected. All homes purchased are being handed over to their rightful owners.

Nicaragua and Costa Rica in conflict

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Central America is once again on the brink of armed conflict, as border tensions between Nicaragua and Costa Rica are causing regional concern. The OAS called on both nations to stand down their troops, presently posed on the border, but Nicaragua holds firm to an International Court of Justice decision confirming the disputed territory rests on the Nicaraguan side. Costa Rica authorized thousands of US troops and warships to have full access to its territory.

Impact

US Congress hosts anti-ALBA event US representatives sponsored a meeting attacking Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Cuba.

Politics

Regional budget debated The Federal Governing Council met this week to determine funding for regional governments and projects.

Social Justice

Government provides free computers for kids A joint venture with Portugal is guaranteeing laptops for school children in Venezuela.

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Venezuela has Latin America’s best income distribution

enezuela has the best income distribution of Latin America, per the latest Gini coefficient index, informed President of the National Institute of Statistics (INE), Elias Eljuri.

During a press conference, Eljuri explained that Venezuela “continues improving income distribution according to the 2010 Gini coefficient, which was reduced to 0.389; the lowest in Latin America. It has dropped from 0.49 and not even one Latin American country is under 0.4”.

Venezuela’s Minister of Planning and Finances, Jorge Giordani,

and the President of the Central Bank of Venezuela, Nelson Merentes, also joined Eljuri during the press conference.

The Venezuelan official said the Latin American countries showing a similar Gini coefficient index stood between 0.43 and 0.44.

Brazil’s Gini coefficient was 0.59, while Chile reports 0.52. All the countries of the region are at least 0.10 points above Venezuela, explained the INE President.

“Before President Chavez was elected in 1998, 20% of the population kept 53.4% of the wealth.

That figure has been reduced to 44.8%, which represents an increase of income for the poorest sectors and the middle class.

There has been an important redistribution of income”.

Additionally, Eljuri considered as positive the decreasing tendency of the informal unemployment rate, which “has dropped from 51% to 43%, while formal employment continues increasing from 49.9% to 56%. This means that employment quality in Venezuela has improved”.

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ver 10,800 people have been arrested during 2010 for drug trafficking-related crimes in 8,290 operations conducted around the country by members of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB), the Criminal, Penal and Scientific Forensic Police (CICPC), the Bolivarian National Police (PNB), the Bolivarian Service of National Intelligence (SEBIN) and regional and municipal police departments.

According to figures of seizures and detainees for drug-trafficking in Venezuela from January 1 to November 12 published by the National Anti-Drug Office (ONA), out of the total number of detainees, 10,497 were Venezuelans and 138 were foreigners, including 17 kingpins extradited by the government to nations such as Colombia and the US, where outstanding arrest warrants were issued.

Additionally, 60 tons of drugs have been seized in different operations conducted around the country, which includes the seizure of three tons of marihuana carried out last weekend in the state of Carabobo (Northern central coast) in a joint operation of the CICPC and ONA. During the past year, Venezuela has substantially improved counter-narcotics efforts, despite the massive drug production and trafficking in neighboring Colombia, the largest producer of cocaine in the world.

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IMPACT

The artillery of ideas

US Congress hosts event against ALBA countries

Members of the extreme Latin American rightwing, many of who have participated in coups d’etat and acts of destabilization and terrorism, held a meeting last Wednesday in Washington with high-level representatives of the US Congress.

The event is evidence of an escalation in US aggression toward the region

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he new conference room in the US Congressional Visitors Center hosted a meeting titled “Danger in the Andes: Threats to Democracy, Human Rights, and Inter-American Security”, last Wednesday, November 17.

The subjects discussed during this spectacle hosted by the US Congress evidence an escalation in aggression against countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua – all members of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) - and included “debates” centered around three primary questions: Are democracy and human rights in danger under the “21st Century Socialism” of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia?

Does the ALBA Alliance of Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua constitute a threat to US interests and interAmerican security?

Is current US policy toward the region equipped to respond to the erosion of democracy and the pernicious influence of such hostile actors as Iran, foreign and domestic terrorist groups, and narcotics traffickers?

The event was sponsored by the US Congress and counted on the participation of those who head the House Foreign Affairs Committees, including Elliot Engel, New York democrat, and current chairman of the House

Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere; Connie Mack, Florida republican and incoming chairman of the same committee; Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Florida republican and soon to be chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee; and Ron Klein, Florida democrat and member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere.

The presence of democrats as well as republicans at this event opposing ALBA nations is clear evidence that Washington’s aggressive policies towards Latin America are bipartisan and official state policy of the United States government.

Members of the Latin American extreme rightwing participated in Wednesday’s event, alongside these congressional representatives, as “experts” on what they consider to be a “threat” to their regional influence and power.

From Venezuela, Guillermo Zuloaga, president of Venezuela’s Fox News affiliate, Globovision, a rabid anti-Chavez television station, gave a speech calling on Washington to respond to the “threat” posed against US interests by the government of Hugo Chavez. Zuloaga fled justice earlier this year after he was indicted by a Venezuelan court for money laundering, fraud and illegal speculation of consumer goods.

He has since requested refuge in the US and has stated he will not return to Venezuela to face the charges against him.

From Bolivia, members of the separatist terrorist groups in Santa Cruz, such as Luis Nuñez, the president of the Santa Cruz Civic Committee and Javier ElHage, representing the nefarious Human Rights Foundation, Bolivia Chapter, participated in the event, calling for a more strident policy against the government of Evo Morales. Despite its noble name, The Human Rights Foundation is an organization created by a Venezuelan anti-Chavez activist, Thor Halvorssen, which is dedicated to attacking the government of Hugo Chávez and has called for US military intervention in Venezuela.

Alejandro Aguirre, president of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), an entity run by media owners from Latin America, also participated in the event, reinforcing ties between mass media and right-wing politics in the region. Other notable participants included former USAID director for Latin America, Jose Cardenas; ex-US Drug Czar, John Walters; Joel Hirst from the powerful Council on Foreign Relations, a “shadow” government in Washington; Otto Reich, former US Ambassador to Venezuela (who freed terrorist Orlando Bo-

sch from a Venezuelan prison cell in 1989) and ex-Sub-Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs during the 2002 coup d’etat in Venezuela; and Roger Noriega, also a former Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs under the George W. Bush government and a former US Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS).

All of these people have a history of hostility and aggression against the government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and have promoted, supported and financed coups d’etats in Venezuela, Bolivia, Honduras and Ecuador over the past decade, as well as perpetual attempts to undermine peace and stability in Cuba.

Representatives from neocon parties and organizations in Ecuador were also present, such as rightwing attorney Edgar Teran, and congressional representative Enrique Herreria. Former president and coup leader Lucio Guitierrez, implicated in last month’s attempt to overthrow and assassinate Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa, was a star guest at Wednesday’s political gala. Guitierrez also ca lled on US officials to take a firmer stance against the “threat of socialism of the XXI century in Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela”.

Additional sponsors of this hostile event included FUNDA­ PREFC, a Venezuelan organiza-

tion based in Miami, created by a self-exiled Venezuelan lawyer, Yuri Lopez Perez, who defends the Caracas police commissioners sentenced for multiple homicides that occurred during the April 2002 coup d’etat in Venezuela.

Several conservative think tanks from Washington and Miami also were present at the gathering.

The InterAmerican Institute for Democracy, founded in Miami by Argentine Guillermo Lousteau Heguy, whose board members include the Cuban terrorists Carlos Alberto Montaner and Armando Valladares, was another sponsor.

Curiously, this Institute held an event titled “Breakfast with Lucio Guitierrez” on September 23, 2010, just one week before the attempted coup d’etat against President Rafael Correa in Ecuador that was led by Guitierrez himself.

Other hosts included US organizations such as The Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Center for Security Policy and the Hudson Institute; four right-wing “think tanks” which have dedicated themselves to attacking Venezuela during most recent years, publishing “reports” on the alleged “threats” from the Hugo Chávez government, and channeling millions of dollars to destabilizing sectors within the Venezuelan opposition.

At the conclusion of Wednesday’s meeting, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen declared that Washington “should work closer with regional allies to confront the danger against democracy in Venezuela” and other countries, such as Boliva and Ecuador. Representative Connie Mack went further in his call to action, remarking, “Now that republicans have a majority in Congress…we should confront Hugo Chavez directly”.

This event is proof that following the US legislative elections of November 2, during which reactionary republicans obtained a resounding congressional majority, Washington’s policies toward Latin America will be far more aggressive and dangerous in the months to come.

T/ Eva Golinger (with translation by Machatera)

INTERNATIONAL

The artillery of ideas

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Border dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica raises regional tensions Venezuela gave support to its close ally Nicaragua last week in the Central American country’s border dispute with Costa Rica, which has caused tension and concern in the region

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he Costa Rican government of President Laura Chinchilla has accused Nicaragua of crossing the border with troops and brought the complaint before the Organization of American States (OAS) last week.

The OAS debated a resolution on Friday intended to help resolve the quarrel, which passed by 22-2, with only Nicaragua and Venezuela voting against the outcome, which called on Nicaragua to “withdraw” its armed forces from the border region.

The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) backed the position taken by the government of President Hugo Chavez in support of Nicaragua in the dispute.

PSUV political spokesman Carlos Escarra declared this week, “The OAS runs the risk of disappearing as happened at the beginning of the century to the League of Nations”. The OAS has come under fire over the past year after its failure to resolve the crisis caused by the coup d’etat in Honduras in June 2009. After that incident,

many in the region saw the OAS as a mere lameduck organization subordinate to Washington, and not representative of regional interests.

CAUSE OF TENSION Nicaragua has been dredging along the San Juan River, which is a disputed border territory. Costa Rica asked the Nicaraguan government of Daniel Ortega to stop its work in the area, claiming the Nicaraguans were violating Costa Rican sovereignty.

Dredging is an activity undertaken in shallow waters to keep them navigable for vessels. Sand and sediment is scraped up from the sea or riverbed and moved to a different location.

Last month, Costa Rica released a statement declaring, “As a result of the dredging activities in the San Juan River, Nicaragua is staking claims to Costa Rican sovereignty, a consequence of the installation of machinery and the deposit of sediment in our national territory”.

The area also encompasses Calero Island, which is claimed by Costa Rica. The Costan Rican government has warned that Nicaragua allegedly stationed troops on the island in a provocative manner, effectively invading Costa Rican territory. In reaction, Costa Rica sent it’s own forces to the area.

Nicaragua’s response to the accusations was clear and unambiguous.

President Daniel Ortega reacted to the allegations, affirming, “The government of reconciliation and national unity expresses it most energetic protest regarding the continuous violations by troops from the Costa Rican armed forces into Nicaraguan territory. The government of

Nicaragua demands that events like thes don’t happen again”.

Ortega also said that any military activity in the area on the part of Nicaragua was specifically related to counter-narcotics efforts.

The Nicaraguan President also railed against the OAS, proclaiming the regional entity was losing credibility and that he had little faith in its ability to act impartially. He threatened to withdraw his country from the institution.

OAS INTERVENTION The OAS resolution passed last Friday called for the withdrawal of troops from both countries from the area and for a binational commision to be formed by November 27th in order to encourage dialogue for a negotiated settlement.

Costa Rican ambassador Rene Castro praised the resolution and said that the OAS message had been “very clear”.

Castro’s Nicaraguan counterpart, Denis Moncada, rejected the decision, re c a l l i n g that the

OAS has no jurisdiction to intervene in border disputes.

“Really, the resolution has no validity, it has no basis or regulatory sustainability. The OAS supposedly promotes institutionality, but suddenly in its own house, it does something that has no basis and is not right”.

Managua also pointed out that in 2009, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled against Costa Rica in the dispute awarding Nicaragua jurisdiction over the area in the San Juan River.

In the ICJ ruling, Costa Rica was permitted to use the waters for commercial purposes, but Nicaragua was awarded full sovereignty.

The Nicaragua-Costa Rica border was drawn along the San Juan River and agreed upon by both nations in the Treaty of Canas-Jerez in 1858.

Nicaragua claims that due to geographic changes, the mouth of the river has moved northwards so that the real border is further south from its orginal point.

The dredging activity is, according to Nicaragua, an attempt to rectify this geological shift.

PEACEFUL? Costa Rica has sought to present itself as the peaceful party to the dispute and has made much of the fact that it has no national military.

But Costa Rica does have a national police and security force,

which has been sent to the area to confront the Nicaraguan troops.

Also, earlier this year in July, the Costan Rican government entered into a military agreement with the United States to allow up to 7,000 uniformed US marines and 64 warships into Costan Rican territory.

The arrangement caused concern throughout the region, but particularly in Central America, where the US has played a major role in civil wars and destabilization attempts throughout the past century.

On Tuesday, Nicaraguan students and teachers mobilized for a demonstration in support of the positions taken by President Ortega.

National University Council leader Freddy Franco explained, “We are going to tell President Ortega that we are with him and that we are with our army in defense of the sovereign rights of Nicaragua”.

“Costa Rica has taken an intransigent and provocative position so Nicaragua must respond by firmly defending our national sovereignty”, he added.

In Costa Rica, the Socialist Workers’ Party (POS) spoke out firmly against its government’s position, but also had critical words for the Nicaraguan President.

The POS statement claimed the dispute was being engineered by Costa Rica, using nationalistic language in an attempt to distract Costa Ricans from the difficult domestic sitution the government is facing.

The Chinchilla administration is coming under attack for corruption and failure to follow through on campaign promises, according to the POS. The POS also said the Costa Rican government was being used

by Washington, which sought to destabilize the government of Nicaragua through the vehicle of the OAS. But the POS also criticized Nicaragua for responding to Costa Rica’s provocations in a manner that would encourage further regional intervention by raising tensions and generating unnecessary nationalistic sentiment among the Costan Rican people.

T/ Steven Mather P/ Agencies

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economy

The artillery of ideas

Housing rights a priority for Chavez Protecting the Venezuelan people from the endemic real estate scams that have plagued the South American nation remained a top priority for President Hugo Chavez during his weekly television program, Alo Presidente, last Sunday

reports that Domingo Plaz was a founding member of the USfunded opposition organization Sumate, which played a key role in the Venezuelan opposition’s 2002 coup d’etat that left 17 people dead and hundreds wounded.

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uring his 367th broadcast, Chavez reaffirmed the creation of a Situation Room in the presidential palace, Miraflores, to attend to citizens victimized by private construction companies and ensure that he personally is made aware of every complaint lodged with the new office.

“We have to use all the power of the state to prevent these criminals from cheating [home buyers]”, he exclaimed. “Beginning tomorrow [Monday], I want to receive all of the complaints, however small they may be”.

The fight against real estate fraud has surged to the top of the government’s agenda after Chavez declared it his personal responsibility to deal with Venezuela’s current housing shortage.

Although much of the housing deficit has affected lower class residents of the shantytowns that surround the capital of Caracas

and other major cities, the Chavez administration has also made it a point to protect the interests of middle class citizens who have fallen victim to the corruption rampant in the nation’s housing market.

Private construction companies and real estate agents, many times working in collusion with organized mafias, have employed a variety of mechanisms to prey on homebuyers, including delaying construction projects in order to justify prices hikes.

PRIVATE PROPERTY PROTECTED Three weeks ago, the government announced the expropriation and occupation of a series of paralyzed housing development projects in order to ensure their completion and deliver the homes to their buyers.

“We have to have justice here, and businesses with inactive machinery that have cheated the people must be confiscated.

We have to apply a strong hand to these mafias”, President Chavez announced in ref-

erence to the professional criminals behind much of the fraud.

The Venezuelan head of state called on his Ministers and government officials to work together to protect homebuyers and ensure that justice is carried out.

“We have to put together a proactive strategy with all the branches of the state to establish penal responsibility…We can’t allow [these mafias] to continue to do whatever they please…We’re going to create multi-disciplinary teams which will include the National Guard to protect the people”, he affirmed.

OPPOSITION, MEDIA IN CAHOOTS According to Rafael Matos, a victim of a real-estate scam carried out by the construction company Cumberland in the state of Trujillo, the owners of the fraudulent business are also the owners of important media outlets such

as the daily newspaper Los Andes and various radio stations.

“They’re very powerful people and it’s difficult to fight against them. For this reason we’ve come here to look for a solution. We’re fighting for our rights”, Matos informed the President and the public during the broadcast on Sunday.

Matos recognized the efforts on the part of the Chavez administration to confront the issue through the government’s consumer protection agency, Indepabis.

“We’ve been fighting since 2008 for them to give us our homes.

We’ve gone to different agencies and through Indepabis, we’ve been able to register complaints and they’ve helped us a lot”, he said.

For his part, President Chavez accused the country’s conservative opposition for being behind many of the scams.

Referring to a specific housing development expropriated by the government in the state of Miranda, Chavez pointed out the relationship between unscrupulous construction companies and members of the wealthy Venezuelan business class.

“While the homebuyers… were fighting to recover the homes that they had paid for and that the construction company Urbania 2007 had tried to rob from them…one of the main shareholders of this construction company [Domingo Plaz], was enjoying a bullfight in a luxurious amphitheater in France”, Chavez said while displaying a photo.

The news agency Agencias Venezolana de Noticias (AVN)

COMING TO THE AID OF VICTIMS As part of the Chavez administration’s response to the widespread fraud in the private housing market, on Sunday the Venezuelan government delivered the first seventeen homes to families cheated by the real estate firm Blancoveca in the state of Carabobo.

Communicating via satellite, the coordinator of Indepabis in Carabobo, Iramaru Herrera, referred to the act as an important measure to provide closure for families who have been waiting for years for their homes to be built.

“Today we’re carrying out justice with these first families who for years suffered irregularities on behalf of the private construction company Blancoveca. The Venezuelan government is guaranteeing people’s private property and their legitimate right to have dignified housing”, Herrera affirmed.

Mirlene Mendoza, one of the beneficiaries of the new homes, expressed her gratitude for the government’s initiative.

“I’m very happy because today, finally, I’m receiving my home. It’s a house for which my family and I have been waiting five years and for which we had paid a down payment to the private business Blancoveca”, she explained.

Apart from the delivery of new homes, Chavez also announced during his program the creation of a 500-million bolivar ($116.7 million USD) fund to finish housing projects for families scammed by real estate firms.

The additional funds will offer preferential loans to individuals to complete outstanding works such as kitchens and flooring.

“I want to help you so that we can give you the keys and you don’t have to wait another year to move in”, Chavez said of the funding. “With the resources from the Bicentennial Fund, we’re going to evaluate and give credits as personal loans”, he confirmed.

T/ Edward Ellis P/ Presidential Press

integration

The artillery of ideas

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Venezuela: Opposition and government regional leaders meet to discuss budget D

uring its first annual plenary session held last Monday, the Venezuelan government’s Federal Governing Council (CFG) met to discuss the methods and the manner in which national financial resources will be disbursed to the country’s distinct localities over the course of 2011.

The CFG is the constitutionally established mechanism charged with providing funding to municipal and state governing bodies and is composed of members of the executive branch with the open participation of governors and mayors throughout the country.

According to Venezuelan Vice President and head of the CFG, Elias Jaua, every elected official from the nation’s local governments has a voice within the plenary.

“Every governor in the country has a right to take part in the plenary session and here all the governors, including those who are in opposition to the revolutionary project [of the Chavez government], have been present”, he said.

Likewise, Jaua said, “There is a representative for each mayorship. Everyone is present”.

Although Venezuela’s political system has been decentralized over the years, national revenues, derived mainly from the country’s petroleum industry,

are administered at the federal level and subsequently directed towards local governments.

The law has established that funds need to be focused on approved projects that serve the interests of the country and work in consonance with the nation’s overall productive development strategy, Development Plan “Simon Bolivar”.

According to Jaua, funding priorities will be given to projects that address the necessities of underserved populations throughout the country’s different regions. “[Priorities] can be seen from the territorial point of view, but also from the point of view of social indicators, where the majority of the population live in

conditions of poverty, as is the case in the most populated shantytowns in Caracas and other cities in country as well as in regions where there hasn’t been any kind of investment throughout the history of the country”, he explained.

Jaua emphasized that the project proposals of local mayors and governors for 2011 need to be

submitted in the next two weeks to be considered.

“In the next 15 days, they should present their annual investment plan to the Secretary General of the government so that they can be considered and approved. From this approval, then, the disbursement of resources can be begin for the 2011 fiscal year”, he affirmed.

Once the proposals have been approved and disbursed, the Vice President explained, the carrying out of projects is obligatory.

“Over the course of the year, regional offices and inspectors will be verifying the fulfillment of all projects and making sure that resources provided are being used for the projects approved in the annual investment plan. This way there will be a guarantee that resources are being directed within the framework of the Development Plan ‘Simon Bolivar’”, he said.

Jaua also mentioned the creation of sanctions for non-compliant officials.

“We have also created a mechanism of penalization for those governors, mayors or members of community groups that don’t carry out projects that have been presented, approved and financed”, he declared, assuring that those who misue funds will be sanctioned.

T/ Edward Ellis

Venezuelan regions prepare for elections December 5th

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ue to term expiration, death, or abandonment, 1,761,961 Venezuelans and foreign residents will be able to vote in 11 mayoral elections and for the governors of Guarico and Amazonas on December 5th.

Among the opposition candidates for mayor in the important city of Maracaibo, Zulia is Eveling Trejo de Rosales, wife of former governor and mayor Manuel Rosales, presidential candidate in 2006 who fled the country following corruption charges.

Rosales, who won as mayor of Maracaibo in 2008, fled to Peru in April last year, after being indicted for mass fraud, corruption and

money laundering. Subsequently, the Municipal Council of Maracaibo named opposition leader Daniel Ponne as the interim mayor.

Legislator Mario Isea from Zulia claimed that under opposition leadership, the city of Maracaibo had been “abandoned” and that essential services were in a terrible state. He explained that city police forces were inactive and 300 firefighters had been let go “unfairly”. He accused the opposition of diverting resources from wages and services to fund their candidate’s electoral campaign.

Now Rosales’ wife Eveling Trejo de Rosales is the opposition candidate for the seat. According

to PSUV leader Henry Ramirez, her husband “ordered” that she be the candidate.

Even though the opposition held primaries, Ramirez told press Trejo was only elected because of the “personal economic project that [Manuel] Rosales set up in Zulia and a ferocious media campaign”.

The PSUV candidate for the position, Gian Carlo Di Martino, has been Mayor of Maracaibo on two occasions in the past.

Despite the irregular electoral date for these specific regions, all mayors will be elected for complete four-year periods, though the National Electoral Council

(CNE) has said that they should eventually return to the national schedule. The last mayoral and governor elections were in 2008.

Late last month the PSUV announced its candidates for the two governors. For the state of Guarico, where former governor Willian Lara was killed in a tragic car accident in September, current director of the University Romulo Gallegos, Luis Gallardo will run.

In Amazonas, where elections weren’t held in 2008 due to irregularities, current legislator Egildo Palau will contest for the PSUV. This week, the PSUV raised money for its electoral campaign by encouraging its membership

to donate “one day’s salary for the revolution”.

Candidate’s political campaigning will begin on November 23rd and end December 2nd, for a total period of 10 days.

According to the law, the same people who were randomly selected to run the voting booths for the parliamentary elections in September, will also work at the booths on December 5th. The next nationwide elections will be in 2012, when the presidential, gubernatorial and mayoral terms are up.

T/ Tamara Pearson

www.venezuelanalysis.com

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SOCIAL JUSTICE

The artillery of ideas

Venezuela: Government program provides free computers for school children

ith an investment of more than 700 million bolivars ($162.7 million USD), the Venezuelan government is moving forward on a plan to provide every first and second grade student in the country with a mini-laptop computer to enhance their academic curriculum and technological literacy.

The plan, named after Venezuela’s national park, Canaima, was launched during the 2009-2010 school year and has already delivered more than 228 thousand computers to children in public schools.

The goal of the program is to reach 525 thousand units distributed by the end of this year.

“These computers belong to the children”, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said during his weekly television broadcast, Alo Presidente, on Sunday. “Every child who enters first grade in Venezuela in the public school system should receive a computer as part of their supplies”.

Plan Canaima has come about through an agreement signed between the Venezuelan government and the Portuguese company JP Sa Couto that manufactures the educational technology.

The computers utilize Venezuelan software and an agreement exists between the Chavez

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government and JP Sa Couto to construct a factory in the South American country for the production of its own mini-laptops.

All Plan Canaima computers are provided free of charge for the children and include materials that strengthen the academic curriculum in disciplines such as history, language, mathematics and the social sciences.

During the television broadcast on Sunday, children from a pub-

lic school in the state of Miranda were in attendance to receive their computers and instruction on their use.

Also in attendance was Jenifer Gil, Education Minister, who explained the two basic stages of Plan Canaima.

According to the minister, first grade students are to become familiar with the computers through Canaima I, using them only in school, while second

graders are allowed to take them home for further study under the program Canaima II. COMPUTERS FOR ALL GRADES During a radio interview on Monday, Gil indicated that the government’s intention is to eventually be able to provide all primary students with a computer that can be upgraded with new didactic materials as the students advance through primary grades.

“The President has shown a will to carry out this program progressively. Everyone, including those in indigenous and rural communities, is going to have their Canaima [computer] as we begin to produce our own”, she explained.

Gil also mentioned that the program will not be exclusive to public schools and that students who attend more privileged private institutions will also have the opportunity to participate in the program.

“The government is diversifying and democratizing access to new technologies, fulfilling a constitutional principle with respect to social inclusion in quality education”, she affirmed.

For his part, Chavez reminded his viewers on Sunday that such a program can only exist in an educational system that functions under the tenets of socialism.

“In the capitalist system, children are destined towards poverty. This Canaima program is only possible in socialism. Capitalism produces computers and many things but it converts everything into a commodity”.

T/ Edward Ellis P/ Presidential Press

CNE to regulate political party funding

he Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE), together with other public institutions, is formulating regulations to impose sanctions against political parties that lack transparency in funds used in electoral campaigns.

Likewise, the electoral organ is drafting a campaign finance bill that would prevent the use of illicit resources during electoral campaign processes.

On Tuesday, CNE President Tibisay Lucena hosted the II InterInstitutional Meeting on Financing of Political Organizations and Electoral Campaigns, held in Caracas.

She commented that over 80% of political parties participating in the legislative elections on September 26 accounted for campaign funds. Nevertheless, the CNE considers it necessary to implement

measures to assure transparency in campaign financing.

CNE Director Vicente Diaz announced that the campaign financing law would include sanctions against political parties that do not register funding sources according to regulations.

According to Diaz, the CNE is conducting administrative investigations into political parties that participated in the last elections and did not disclose their finances within the period of time established.

Diaz said that the CNE is working to protect the State from a penetration of illicit money coming from corruption, use of public resources or foreign financing, drug trafficking and money laundering activities.

“A political party using those kind of resources will end up allowing

these financial viruses to contaminate and penetrate every structure [of the system], thus weakening the basis of democracy”, he explained.

INTER-INSTITUTIONAL MEETING ON CAMPAIGN FINANCING The II Inter-Institutional Meeting on Financing of Political Organizations and Electoral Cam-

paigns was aimed at creating spaces to share experiences and improve methods to make transparency and accountability in campaign funding more effective, Lucena explained.

The meeting also facilitated the creation of links with other public institutions to carry out investigations regarding politi-

cal party and electoral campaign financing sources.

Diaz added that the goal of these inter-institutional meetings is to obtain knowledge and skills to investigate financing of political organizations so as to strengthen an integrated system in the struggle against electoral irregularities.

During the last electoral process in September, several local NGOs denounced illegal funding from international agencies, including the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the International Republican Institute (IRI), to candidates and campaigns that oppose the government of Hugo Chavez.

T/ Venezuelan News Agency P/ Alberto Corro

SECURITY

The artillery of ideas

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No 38 • Friday, November 19, 2010 | |

Accused venezuelan drug trafficker Makled to be extradited to Venezuela, not US

his week, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos confirmed his intention to extradite accused Venezuelan drug trafficker Walid Makled-Garcia to Venezuela, a promise he made to his Venezuelan counterpart during bilateral talks held earlier this month in Caracas.

Walid Makled-Garcia was detained on August 19th in the Colombian border town of Cucuta and is currently being held at the Combita Maximum Security Prison in the Colombian state of Boyaca.

Makled is accused of drug trafficking and other crimes by both Venezuela and the United States, and his fate has become a point of contention between the two countries.

According to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, attempts to extradite Makled to the US are politically motivated. “The empire’s game here is to offer who knows how many opportunities to this man, including protection, so that he may begin to vomit out all he wants against Venezuela and the president”, said Chavez.

Meanwhile, US Congressman Connie Mack accused the State Department of not doing enough to secure Makled’s extradition to the United States. “The unacceptable transfer of drug kingpin Makled-Garcia and his vital information to Venezuela instead of the US would mark a devastating loss for the Drug Enforcement Administration, the combined fight against drug trafficking, and the security of the entire region”, Mack said in an interview with the Miami Herald published on Tuesday.

“If we could get Makled here, I think he could provide a lot of evidence about the Venezuelan government’s involvement in narcotrafficking”, affirmed Mack, who is the Florida-based ranking member of the Congressional Subcommittee for the Western Hemisphere.

TO VENEZUELA, AS PROMISED “I gave my word to Chavez, and as soon as all the judicial workings are done the extradition to Venezuela will take place. I am a man of my word”, said Colombian President Juan Santos during a televised address to the Colombian people on Tuesday in which he discussed his first 100 days in office.

“When we captured [Makled], Venezuela’s request for extradition came long before the US request.

Venezuela’s petition is not only related to drug trafficking but also to other crimes”, affirmed Santos.

Makled, also known as “El Turco” or “The Turk”, faces charges in Venezuela for drug trafficking, money laundering and involvement in three separate murders, including those of two Venezuelan journalists who were investigating his economic assets and possible ties to the drug trade.

According to BBC News, the Makled family owns and operates a number of warehouses, a transportation firm, and the rights to storage units in Puerto Cabello – Venezuela’s most important international port.

Walid Makled himself owned and operated the commercial airliner, Aeropostal Airlines, until the Venezuelan government seized the firm earlier this month as part of its anti-drug trafficking efforts.

The Makled family made national headlines in 2008 when brothers Abdala and Alex were arrested for possession of over 400 kilos of cocaine found at one of their estates. At the time of the arrests, Abdala was mayoral candidate for the city of Valencia, Venezuela’s 3rd largest city with a population of over 1.5 million.

Walid Makled went into hiding and only reappeared in mid-August after his arrest by Colombian authorities.

MAKLED’S ACCUSATIONS In statements made after his arrest, Makled accused a number of high-ranking members of the Venezuelan government of participating in his illegal networks, including the director of Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office (ONA), Nestor Reverol, as well as Army General Henry Rangel Silva, recently promoted to Commander in Chief by President Chavez.

“If I’m a drug trafficker, all of those people who worked with me are also drug traffickers…

Many people ate from these companies; putting it simply, people from high-up in the government”, Makled stated.

During a recent trip to Havana, President Chavez accused the US of seeking to “use” the Makled case to take Venezuela “to an international criminal court”.

“This same Makled has said that he has all the information he needs to allow the US to intervene [in Venezuela] just like it did in Panama to take Noriega. That is the dream of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie, and the empire is looking for whatever card it can pull”, affirmed Chavez in refer-

ence to former Panamanian President Manuel Noriega who was overthrown during the 1989 US invasion of Panama.

After the invasion, Noriega was captured and flown to the US, charged with drug trafficking, racketeering and money laundering and spent almost 20 years in prison before being extradited to France on similar charges.

According to Chavez, “[Makled] has with great ease given himself the assignment of declaring that he is a victim of persecution, that he has financed the electoral campaigns of President Chavez, that he has financed generals, governors, ministers”.

“If he says he has financed someone, let him prove it, but while he faces justice. It’s all the more reason we are interested in having the Colombian government and authorities fulfill their commitment [to extradite Makled to Venezuela]”, affirmed Chavez.

EXTRADITION TO THE US On November 4th, a federal court in Manhattan, New York, indicted Makled on one count of conspiracy to import cocaine to the US. A DEA report published in September cites evidence that Makled coordinated the trafficking of several tons of cocaine from Venezuela to the US between 2006 and 2010.

In 2009, the US government classified Makled as one of the world’s most significant drug kingpins under the US Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act, citing his participation three years earlier in the transporting of 5 tons of cocaine from Venezuela to Mexico using a DC-9 private airplane.

According to Vanda FelbabBrown, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, Venezuela’s 2005 decision to cut ties with the DEA has made it easier for narcotics to move through Venezuelan territory.

A White House memorandum released in September included Venezuela in a list of “major illicit drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries for the fiscal year 2011”, yet no evidence was shown to support that claim.

The US presented Venezuela’s anti-drug efforts in a positive light during the early years of the Chavez administration, when Venezuela was collaborating with the DEA. But since Venezuela severed ties with the DEA in 2005 based on evidence that the agency was spying and engaging in sabotage, the US government has repeatedly classified the Venezuelan government’s anti-drug program as a failure.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office reports an increase of both drug-related detentions and illegal drugs confiscated since it stopped collaborating with the US anti-drug agencies. According to the ONA, during the 2002-2005 period and with DEA support, a total of 6,836 people were arrested on drug-related charges and 202,562 kilos of illegal drugs confiscated. During the 2006-2009 period, and after ties were severed with the DEA, a total of 22,833 people were detained on drug-related charges and 233,326 kilos of illegal drugs interdicted.

According to ONA’s statistics, Venezuelan security agencies seized over 55 tons of drugs in the first 10 months of 2010, which puts the government on track to surpass its drug interdiction record for 2009.

T/ Juan Reardon www.venezuelanalysis.com

FRIDAY  November 19, 2010  No. 38 Bs. 1  Caracas

ENGLISH EDITION The artillery of ideas

A publication of the Fundacion Correo del Orinoco Editor-in-Chief | Eva Golinger • Graphic Design | Alexander Uzcátegui, Jameson Jiménez • Press | Fundación Imprenta de la Cultura

OPINION

I

Earth’s unthinkable future

magine a future where temperatures have increased to the point where as much as half of the Earth’s landmass has become uninhabitable, where to remain outdoors for several hours would be a sentence of death. Could that be what climate change has in store for our planet thousands of years from now? Not according a recent study. That fate could arrive much sooner.

Climatologists Steven Sherwood and Matthew Huber examined the projected impact of climate-induced heat stress on the human population. Although people can tolerate a wide range of temperatures, this is not the case for peak heat stress. There is a limit to how long one can survive if the body becomes too hot. In order to maintain a normal core body temperature, skin temperature cannot exceed 35°C for longer than a few hours at a time. Sweating brings down skin temperature in a hot climate, but it is much less effective in humid conditions. Temperature, therefore, is insufficient on its own for measuring survivability. That is better determined by “wet bulb temperature”, that is, temperature as recorded by a mercury thermometer enveloped in a wet cloth.

Current wet bulb temperatures almost never exceed 30 to 31°C anywhere on the globe. But this is set to change in the decades to come. A skin temperature reaching 37 to 38°C is likely to prove lethal, “even for acclimated and fit individuals”, so “sufficiently long periods” with a skin temperature above 35 °C are expected “to be intolerable”. And at any temperature above that, remarks Chris Byrne, a specialist in human thermoregulation, “we switch from a state where we’re losing heat from the skin to the environment to one where the environment imposes a heat load through the skin. There’s no doubt that if those conditions arise, you’re probably looking at a lethal situation for the vast majority of the population”.

What would it take to bring about such conditions? According to Sherwood and Huber, “a global-mean warming” of around 7°C “would create small zones where metabolic heat dissipation would for the first time become impossible”. A shift of around 11 to 12°C, and these zones would expand “to encompass most of today’s human population. This likely overestimates what could practically be tolerated: Our limit applies to a person out of the sun, in gale-

force winds, doused with water, wearing no clothing, and not working”.

Threatening temperatures are likely to arrive surprisingly soon. The MIT Integrated Global System Model, which is based on more sophisticated parameters, projects median surface temperatures to increase by 4.1 to 5.1°C by the year 2100.

In some regions, temperatures would range higher. That is only 90 years away. Yet conditions will continue to worsen, and sometime in the 22nd century there may be pockets where wet bulb temperatures start to approach the danger point. In three centuries’ time, major areas of the planet may become unlivable.

The rise in temperatures will surely have an impact on work that is performed out-

doors. “Periods of net heat storage can be endured, though only for a few hours and with ample time needed for recovery”, report Sherwood and Huber. The first regions to be affected are those already facing the highest levels of heat stress today, such as parts of Africa or India. Once wet bulb temperatures surpass the level of lethality, populations could only survive by either migrating to ever fewer regions enjoying more moderate weather, or by ensconcing themselves permanently in air-conditioned surroundings. Nonstop air conditioning, however, would be unaffordable for many. Farm animals, too, would have to be kept in air-conditioned buildings. Alarmingly, an extended power outage could result in large-scale deaths.

In realistic terms, then, migration would be the only viable option. But what would be the effect in livable regions where the resources would be inadequate to support a mass influx of people? This would be all the more problematic in that increasing temperatures are going to bring frequent drought and drier conditions leading to a reduction in agricultural production.

Sherwood and Huber’s study has revealed a “pretty devastating” scenario, says Patrick Kinney, director of the climate and health program at Columbia University. “It’s a much more serious and catastrophic outcome than people have identified before in the context of heatrelated mortality. It seems to be based on sound reasoning, and good models and data. People have already thought about ill-health effects of climate change, but nobody that I know of has considered a threshold above which it basically becomes impossible for people to live”.

“We need to think about how to ensure that a large fraction of the fossil fuels are simply left in the ground”, urges Sherwood. “That’s going to take a change in direction that many people are not yet seriously taking on board”.

That change in direction is not likely to come in the foreseeable future; certainly not in time to forestall the outcome projected by Sherwood and Huber. It is the developed capitalist nations that are best positioned economically and technologically to address the issue of climate change, and it is those very same nations that are least inclined to do so.

Corporate profit remains sacrosanct in the West, and no policy can be effected which would lead to even a mild reduction in the bottom line. In a social system where consideration of human needs is peripheral, given a choice between serving the wealthy or cherishing the planet, future generations stand no chance.

The short-term interests of the powerful always prevail.

If the West continues to feed the self-absorbed greed of the wealthy, it is all of humanity that will ultimately pay the price.

- Gregory Elich Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Korea Truth Commission. He is the author of the book Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit.