Setting the Record Straight on Venezuela and Hugo Chavez
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Announcing Venezuela's first and only english language newspaper
Caracas, 22 January 2010 |
This Friday, Venezuela celebrates the launching of its first and only English language newspaper, the Correo del Orinoco International.
While in the past other English-language publications have existed, none remain in circulation today, and no others have been created during the Bolivarian Revolution.
Editor-in-Chief Eva Golinger explained:
"This will be the first newspaper of its kind in Venezuela.
We will produce news and information for an international audience, but from the Venezuelan perspective.
Most of the news that¹s out there in English comes from international news agencies that report with a biased perspective and tend to ignore important human interest stories that paint a positive picture of the Chávez government."
"Our most important mission is to combat the massive media manipulation and information blockade against Venezuela and to inform the international community about many incredible events taking place daily inside Venezuela that rarely receive attention from the corporate medial."
The original Correo del Orinoco was founded by Venezuela¹s liberator, Simón Bolívar on June 27, 1818.
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It served as a principal source of information during the time of independence and the creation of the Venezuelan Republic.
Bolívar encouraged writing and reporting as a form of "artillery", termed by him as the "Artillery of Ideas".
One hundred ninety one years later, the Correo del Orinoco in Spanish was relaunched as part of the Venezuelan people's effort to combat corporate media misreporting and disinformation campaigns against the Venezuelan government and the Bolivarian Revolution, nationally and internationally.
Today, the Correo del Orinoco is a widely-read and referenced daily paper, reporting on political, social, economic, judicial, cultural and international events of importance to the Venezuelan people, with a balanced and informative tone.
In times of Simón Bolívar, the Correo del Orinoco was published not only in Spanish, but also occasionally in English and French.
Today this tradition is continued with the creation of the first foreign language version of the Correo del Orinoco International, a weekly paper in English for distribution nationally and internationally. "Issues and stories of how social and economic justice are being built in Venezuela today will be our priority", added the editor, Eva Golinger.
The Correo del Orinoco International will be available in print this Friday, January 22, and next Friday, January 29, as a free insert in the Spanish-language daily edition.
The English-language paper will be formally launched later as a separate publication and then will be available every Friday at newstands across Venezuela.
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International distribution of the print edition is a future goal, but initially, it will be available in digital format on the Spanish-language website.
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Olé Molé!There are some places in the world worth saving? |
Venezuela: Mass organisation, unity increases as revolution deepens
Federico Fuentes 21 March 2009 “This government is here to protect the people, not the bourgeoisie or the rich”
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on February 28, as he orders soldiers to take over two rice-processing plants owned by Venezuelan food and drink giant Empresas Polar.
The move was made in order to ensure that the company was producing products subjected to the government-imposed price controls that aim to protect the poor from the affects of global price rises and inflation.
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Under Venezuelan law, companies that can produce basic goods regulated by price controls must guarantee that 70-95% of their products are of the regulated type.
“They’ve refused 100 times to process the typical rice that Venezuelans eat”, said Chavez.
“If they don’t take me seriously, I’ll expropriate the plants and turn them into social property.”
Four days later, Chavez announced the expropriation of a rice-processing plant owned by US food giant Cargill after it was revealed the company was attempting to subvert the price controls.
Moving against capital
In the following period, “Venezuela’s National Institute of Lands (INTI) [took] public ownership of more than 5000 hectares of land claimed by wealthy families and multi-national corporations and is reviewing tens of thousands more hectares across the nation”, Venezuelanalysis.com reported on March 11.
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This includes the March 5 expropriation of 1500 hectares of a tree farm owned by Ireland’s Smurfit Kappa. The government has pledged to move away from eucalyptus trees, which were drying up the land, and turn the land over to cooperatives for sustainable agriculture.
On March 14, Chavez decreed a new fishing law, banning industrial trawl-fishing within Venezuela’s territorial waters.
“Trawling fishing destroys the sea, destroys marine species and benefits a minority. This is destructive capitalism”, explained Chavez on his weekly TV show, Alo Presidente the following day.
Venezuelanalysis.com reported on March 17 that the government will invest US$32 million to convert or decommission trawling boats, as well as to development fish-processing plants.
“Thirty trawling ships will be expropriated, Chavez said, due to the refusal of their owners to cooperate with the plans to adapt the boats to uses compliant with the new fishing regulations.”
Small-scale fisherpeople will have access to the converted boats.
Anti-crisis measures
This latest wave of radical measures by the Chavez government should be seen in the context of the ongoing process of nationalisations since early 2006, the onset of the global economic and food crises and the February 15 referendum victory.
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The government has re-nationalised privatised industries such as electricity, telecommunications and steel. Cement companies, milk producing factories and one of Venezuela’s major banks have either been, ore are in negotiations to be, nationalised.
Unlike the state interventions currently being undertaken in the imperialist centres, the aim of these moves is not to bail out bankrupt capitalists, but to help shift production towards meeting people’s needs — in service provisions (phone lines, electricity, banking) and production of essential goods (concrete, steel for housing and factories, and food).
Last July, the government made strong signals that its next targets would be two strategic sectors previously barely touched — food and finance.
The day after announcing the planned government buyout of Banco de Venezuela (which, once completed, will give the government control over close to 20% of the banking sector), Chavez issued 26 decrees, a number of which increase government and community control over food storage and distribution — and allow the state to jail company owners for hoarding.
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Moves aimed at increasing government control over food production come amid soaring world food prices and 30% inflation within Venezuela — which is still dependent on imports for 70% of its food supply.
The government also faces an ongoing campaign of food speculation and hoarding carried out by the capitalist food producers and distributors in order to destabilise the anti-capitalist government.
With oil prices plummeting by almost $100 per barrel from a high of more than US$140 last year, the government is tightening the screws. Oil accounts for 93% of the government’s export revenue and around half of its national budget.
The government has already announced the restructuring of its ministries, merging a number of them in order to cut down on bureaucracy.
The Chavez government is making it very clear that it will be the capitalists, not the people, who will pay for the mess that the capitalist system has created.
“I have entrusted myself with putting the foot down on the accelerator of the revolution, of the social and economic transformation of Venezuela”, Chavez explained on March 8.
Mandate for socialism
These latest moves follow the government’s victory in the February 15 referendum.
Officially, the referendum concerned whether to amend the constitution and remove limits on the number of times elected officials could stand for re-election. At stake was the possibility of Chavez standing for re-election in 2012.
In the context of the intense class struggle, it became a referendum on the socialist project pushed by Chavez.
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Addressing tens of thousands of supporters from the balcony of the presidential palace after the victory, Chavez noted that those that had voted “yes” had “voted for socialism, voted for the revolution”.
The referendum was proposed by Chavez as a “counter-offensive” against the opposition following the November 23 regional elections.
Candidates from Chavez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won the overwhelming majority of governorships and mayoralties.
However, opposition victories in key states on the Colombian border (where there is growing right-wing paramilitary activity) and the Greater Caracas mayoralty were viewed as important gains for the counter-revolution.
Opposition governors and mayors began to use their new positions to attack community organisations and the pro-poor social missions.
The rapid mobilisation to defeat these attacks by the poor and working people was converted into the formation of 100,000 “Yes committees” to campaign in the referendum, in poor communities, workplaces and universities across the country.
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These committees were the backbone of the successful referendum campaign.
Organising for revolution
The latest measures will undoubtedly intensify the class conflict in Venezuela.
An example of this conflict has resulted from the government’s program of land reform, aimed at ending the domination over agriculture by a small minority of large landowners.
Previous attempts by the government to redistribute land have resulted in a violent counter-offensive by large landowners that has resulted in the murder of more than 200 peasants since the land reform law of 2001.
On March 9, land reform activist Mauricio Sanchez was murdered in Zulia, two weeks after campesino activist Nelson Lopez was shot dead in Yaracuy.
Increasingly, trade unionists have also been the target of violent repression when struggling for their rights. On January 29, two workers at Mitsubishi plant were killed by police during an industrial dispute — sparking protests and the arrest of a number of police.
Several peasant organisations are seeking to unite their forces in support of government measures and against repression. The PSUV leadership has also called for a restructuring of the party to better organise the masses for the coming battles.
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Launched after Chavez’s 2006 re-election to help accelerate the revolutionary process, the PSUV brought together a range of revolutionary forces as well as opportunist and corrupt layers.
On March 6, the national leadership of the PSUV made public a series of decisions aimed at deepening participation and democracy in the party.
This includes a recruitment drive to sign up new militants, a clean out of the current membership lists, the reactivation of the grassroots socialist battalions and the organisation of an extraordinary congress for August to deepen discussion over the party’s program and principles.
Building on the success of the “yes” campaign, the PSUV will move to consolidate national mass fronts of workers, peasants, women and students — along with converting the “yes committees” into ongoing “socialist committees”.
From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #788 25 March 2009.
Click here for Green Left Weekly
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Olé Molé!A government and people not controlled by the Illuminati
Psssst! A few more countries are freeing themselves from the yoke in this place they call Latin America
Ism's — Communism, Neo-Fascism, Neo-Socialism — not what the planet needs.
To survive what is coming — each adult individual must master and take control of their own destiny.
Each adult individual must begin to take control of their surrounding environment.
Kewe |
February 21, 2008
Look Out Florida, Here They Come!
By Patrick Irelan
Land and Food in Venezuela |
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L ast week, the Los Angeles Times gleefully reported that a crowd in Sabaneta, Venezuela, had looted a food warehouse belonging to the state-owned Mercal grocery-store chain.
Mercal sells its food to the poor at reduced prices The LAT found it amusing that Sabaneta is President Hugo Chávez's hometown.
The newspaper claimed that recent food shortages are the result of governmental price controls.
The government claims the shortages are the result of illegal hoarding by distributors and the increased buying power of the nation's poorest citizens.
This event quickly lost its comedic value at the LAT when Indecu, Venezuela's consumer protection agency, discovered half a ton of powdered milk and an equal amount of chicken that a private health clinic in Caracas had diverted from delivery to Mercal.
Jesus Benavides, an administrator for Indecu, didn't find this example of illegal hoarding all that funny.
He hopes to collect steep fines from the "upscale Caracas Policlinica Metropolitana" health clinic. (Reuters, Feb. 18, 2008)
Although food shortages in Venezuela sometimes occur at Mercal stores, they don't necessarily occur in other grocery stores at the same time.
In an article that appeared in the Guardian Unlimited on February 17, Calvin Tucker said that he recently arrived in Caracas, where he shopped at a "typical Caracas supermarket in an upmarket part of town.
The only product we could not find was milk, which is being hoarded and illegally exported to Colombia by producers and distributors in an attempt to bust government price controls on basic foodstuffs."
The food in that store would sell at prices higher than one would find in a Mercal store.
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When Chevez took office fifty-five percent of the people in Venezuela lived in poverty, and the country imported 70 percent of its food.
When Hugo Chávez took office after his election in 1998, his government inherited two fundamental problems related to food production and distribution.
Fifty-five percent of the people lived in poverty, and the country imported 70 percent of its food.
Since those early days, Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution has reduced the number of impoverished citizens from 55 to 34 percent, thereby increasing the demand for food.
The national government has also dealt aggressively with the problem of food shortages.
Because previous governments had relied on food imports, President Chávez had to continue that policy while also setting out to achieve food self-sufficiency.
Anyone who lives in the United States will find it almost impossible to learn anything about these efforts in the mainstream press.
After reporting the latest heartbreak in Hollywood, our newspapers and television news programs have no space or time to report on a new irrigation system in one part of Venezuela or an improved milk-processing plant in another.
New irrigation system in the state of Guarico
To learn about events like these, you have to find a news source such as Venezuelanalysis.com, a website operated by five individuals who hope to make their site "the primary resource for information and analysis on Venezuela in the English language."
It may be safe to say that this group does not have a budget anything like that of the Los Angeles Times.
On January 14 of this year, Venezuelanalysis.com reported that President Chávez had inaugurated the first stage of a new irrigation system in the state of Guarico.
"The day will come when Venezuela reaches total agricultural independence," Chávez said.
The new system now irrigates 9,900 acres.
Once it has been fully constructed, the total number of acres irrigated will rise to 79,000.
Local farmers will produce food crops for their own consumption and for sale to city dwellers.
The reservoir will also benefit "local fishermen who fish in the reservoir that supplies the irrigation system."
This type of small-scale commercial fishing will provide another way in which Venezuela can achieve food independence.
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On January 21, President Chávez inaugurated a milk-processing plant and an agro-industrial plant. Together, these will help Venezuela attain self-sufficiency in milk and meat production.
By themselves, these projects will not relieve the country of its need to import food.
But these are not the only projects.
Dozens of others are going into production all over Venezuela.
One of the many problems that now limits food soverignty in Venezuela is the unused farmland on the country's large plantations.
Many of these feudal remnants of Spanish colonialism have been handed down from generation to generation for 400 years.
Other large estates were purchased more recently by wealthy immigrant families from Cuba, Spain, and Portugal.
These plantations create at least two problems related to food shortages.
They encourage one-crop agriculture, and they let good farmland lie fallow for decades.
For estates that match these characteristics, the government supports land reform that benefits a landless peasantry living in poverty throughout rural Venezuela.
New York Times spinning its tales
The twin goals of land reform are to reduce poverty and increase food production.
Simon Romero of the New York Times gave this account of how land reform occurs in the state of Yaracuy:
The squatters arrive before dawn with machetes and rifles, surround the well-ordered rows of sugar cane and threaten to kill anyone who interferes.
Then they light a match to the crops and declare the land their own.
The reader quickly sees that the old plantation is nothing like it used to be.
In the vocabulary of Simon Romero, the rural poor are not farmers or even peasants.
They're 'squatters,' a term that reduces them to the level of human society that justifies any evil you want to inflict.
The worst evil recently inflicted is murder.
Romero says the number of 'squatters' recently murdered throughout Venezuela totals 160.
Eight wealthy landowners, he says, have been killed in Yaracuy.
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For those who have survived the violence of the feudal barons, the Chávez government has built farm villages for peasants who have never before enjoyed the luxury of decent housing.
The people of the villages have schools, libraries, radio stations, free Internet service, and other amenities. (New York Times, May 17, 2007)
New York Times doesn't mention everyone has free healthcare — not important to you who live in U.S.
Although Romero doesn't mention it, everyone has free healthcare, often provided by Cuban-trained doctors.
The peasants who manage to acquire land without getting killed are free to produce corn, manioe, beans, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, livestock, or whatever else is appropriate to their soil and climate.
They can put aside what they need for their families and sell the surplus to fill the grocery stores of the cities.
The government avoids land reform for those owners who farm the land in ways that benefit society.
One-crop agriculture is not one of those ways.
In Yaracuy State, most of the plantation owners instruct their farmhands to plant and harvest only sugar cane.
Sugar is a cash crop.
The object of this kind of agriculture is to make money, lots of it.
Planting vegetables don't make land barons any money
The idea of planting vegetables strikes these land barons as useless.
They want cash, not tomatoes.
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If they don't like the the amount they get for their sugar, they can simply take some or all of their land out of production for as long as they wish.
Unused farmland will never reduce food shortages.
This type of agriculture depletes the soil of nutrients and requires the yearly application of expensive fertilizer.
In the past, the sugar was sold on the open market, which meant that it might go to Caracas, or it might go to a foreign country.
Single-crop agriculture is one of the reasons why countries like Venezuela have food shortages.
Clever newspaper reporters for the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times are unlikely to ever understand or report this.
Once the peasants have obtained land, they require credit in order to buy seed, machinery, and other items needed to plant their crops.
Venezuelan banks have traditionally resisted the idea of granting loans to people with small-farm operations.
To solve this problem, the Venezuelan government pressured local banks until they agreed to make loans available to peasant farmers.
And what happens to the old land barons who lose their feudal estates?
What about those who left Cuba and bought sugar plantations in Venezuela?
Don't worry.
They all managed to put enough money in bank accounts somewhere.
Where will they go?
Where do they always go?
Almost 200,000 rich Venezuelans have already moved there.
Watch out, Florida. |
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How to create a confrontation between two nations: Tying the loose ends
February 21st 2008 by Eduardo Dimas Progreso Weekly ... But that's a secondary issue.
In reality, support from the State Department is part of the White House's plans to destabilize and destroy the Bolivarian Revolution headed by President Hugo Chávez.
To prove this, I will ask you to tie some not-so-loose ends.
In his last "Hello, President" for January, Chávez said: "I alert the world about the following.
The U.S. empire is creating the conditions to generate an armed conflict between Colombia and Venezuela."
The Venezuelan leader was not talking just to talk.
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The preparations for a conflict between the two countries are very evident.
First, the chief of the U.S. armed forces' Southern Command, visited Colombia.
That same week, on Jan. 19, 2008 in Bogotá, Drug Enforcement Administration chief John P. Walters accused Chávez of having become "a great facilitator of cocaine trafficking to Europe and other parts of the hemisphere."
In other words, according to Mr. Walters, the Venezuelan government is part of the traffic in drugs, even though the United Nations and other international organizations say exactly the opposite.
On Jan. 24, 2008, Colombia's Minister of Defense, Juan Manuel Santos, declared that at least three chiefs of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) live in Venezuela.
He gave no details.
At the same time, Colombia's Vice President, Francisco Santos, accused the mayor of Maracaibo, Gian Carlo Di Martino, of furnishing weapons to the Colombian guerrillas, specifically the National Liberation Army (ELN), on the basis of a video that appears to be false.
For his part, Di Martino denounced "the plot that reveals a plan by the United States and the Colombian government to unleash a process of destabilization on the Venezuelan border."
Almost simultaneously, the Colombian intelligence services accused the Venezuelan government of delivering weapons and munitions to the FARC and the ELN. The U.S. State Department had formulated similar accusations in the past.
The message is obvious: the Venezuelan government protects the drug traffickers and the "terrorists."
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What's most interesting in all those accusations is that they are made without presenting any proof.
As it happened with Iraq and now with Iran, it is a way to prepare national and international public opinion, to discredit Hugo Chávez and to create a suitable environment to start a war between two Latin American nations.
These accusations are echoed by the main U.S. and European media and the press throughout Latin America.
They grandly forget the proven links between the Central Intelligence Agency and drug trafficking.
If this is not a conspiracy by the highest levels of world and regional oligarchy, it's the closest thing to one, in my opinion.
Something that has drawn the attention of observers is the fact that the famous march of Feb. 4 against the FARC became, in some Colombian public squares, an act of repudiation against Hugo Chávez and Venezuela.
The objective is obvious: to create an anti-Venezuelan, anti-Chávez sentiment among Colombians that could justify any action.
To the above, add the internal campaign to destabilize the Bolivarian Revolution.
More than 150,000 tons of food were removed from Venezuela through the border with Colombia.
Meanwhile, the opposition media promoted hoarding of foodstuffs to create an artificial shortage and stir the population into anger.
If that reminds you of Salvador Allende's Chile, you're not far off the truth.
The rumors about internal problems within the ranks of the Bolivarian Revolution are numerous.
One states that President Chávez is a drug addict and needs to cure himself.
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Those rumors come regularly from abroad, from the Empire's think tanks, and are spread by its allies in Venezuela and the rest of the world.
Apparently, it's a new version of Operation Pincers, intended to keep the Constitutional referendum of Dec. 2 from succeeding.
On one hand, an internal crisis is created; on the other, an aggression inside Venezuelan territory is prepared.
In this sense, it is opportune to note the presence on the Venezuela-Colombia border (2,200 kilometers long) of Colombian paramilitary groups, linked to the Colombian military high command, that act in coordination with Venezuelan land-holders.
An unspecified number of revolutionary, peasant and labor leaders have been murdered in that region.
Those groups could provoke an incident that might "justify" a confrontation between the two countries.
Needless to say, Colombia would receive total support from the White House, which is interested in quashing the Bolivarian Revolution, which today is the principal force of the process of Latin American integration, the struggle against neoliberalism and the true independence of Latin America.
In recent days, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega declared that he hoped that the Colombian people would prevent a confrontation between the two countries and defined Colombia as a country occupied by the United States.
The Venezuelan side should also do all it can to prevent a confrontation.
That's because a war between the two countries would be a harsh blow for the process of integration of Latin America.
You don't have to be a fortune teller to realize that a chasm would split the regional governments, because some would support Colombia and the United States, others would back Venezuela.
In the end, the big losers would be the Latin American people.
I believe that today, more than ever, common sense must prevail.
Our people must not play the game of the imperial and oligarchic interests.
They must not be tricked by provocations and must make it very clear that the cost of a military adventure against Venezuela would be unpayable from every standpoint.
Empires are usually more dangerous in decadence than while in full power.
In the case of Venezuela, there is a dual situation that is not at all convenient for the imperial interests.
On one hand, Venezuela is a great producer of crude oil.
On the other, it heads the process of integration, independence and social justice in Latin America.
Venezuela is an obstacle to the Empire's desire to control Latin America's wealth and markets.
Therefore, the Empire will do everything possible to eliminate that obstacle, no matter how much blood is spilled.
Only if the progressive peoples and governments of Latin America (which so far have not taken a stand) join in common cause, can that awful intent be prevented.
I invite you to meditate.
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Source: Progreso Weekly |
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