The artillery of ideasENGLISH EDITIONFRIDAY October 29, 2010 No. 35 Bs. 1 CaraCas

Strengthening ties with PortugalPresident Hugo Chavez visited Portugal on the last stop during his 11-day tri-continental tour through seven nations. Agreements were signed between both nations to increase trade in the areas of technology, housing and transportation. Venezuela and Portugal share long-term historic ties that have been strengthened and expanded during the Chavez administration.

Pg. 7 | Health alert Pg. 8 | Special report

InternationalWorld rejects US blockade against Cuba187 nations voted in the UN to demand the US end the blockade against Cuba. Only the US and Israel voted to maintain the criminal policy.

Social JusticeVenezuela reduces unemploymentDespite the world financial crisis, Venezuela’s economic policies are creating jobs.

Free HIV medications for patientsThe Venezuelan government has guaranteed access to treatments for HIV-positive citizens.

The birth of a multipolar worldPresident Chavez’s 11-day tri-continental tour through seven countries

has resulted in 69 agreements that will advance Venezuela’s development and strengthen strategic relations.

New accords for housing, energy development, technological transfer, agricultural imports and exports and economic growth were forged by the Venezuelan head of state during this important international trip. Venezuela’s foreign policy

based on cooperation, integration and solidarity is changing the balance of world power and creating a new model founded on principles of equality, sovereignty and social justice.

Region mourns Kirchner’s passing

Venezuela celebrates 5th year as territory free of IlliteracyOn Thursday, October 28th,

Venezuela celebrated the five-year anniversary of its dec-laration as a territory “free of il-literacy”, made by the United Na-tions Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2005.

Through Mission Robinson, a social literacy program, more than 1,500,000 Venezuelans have learned how to read and write.

Mission Robinson is divided in three phases. The first phase is aimed at eradicating illiteracy, while the second stage seeks to

guarantee primary education for those excluded from the tradi-tional education system. The third phase is dedicated to spreading and promoting the ongoing habit of reading.

“This is not just a little achieve-ment. For Venezuela it is very important, and not only because the world is recognizing us, but because it represents a develop-ment for our country and our people. This level of awareness and consciousness of people, and what is happening in the country with growing participa-

tion and people’s power, is the product of an educational pro-cess. The people have taken back their lives through knowledge”, stated President of the Samuel Robinson Foundation, Marisol Calzadilla.

Mission Robinson has contrib-uted to the universalization of education. The social program has also become one of the princi-pal tools allowing the Venezuelan government to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals.

T/ YVKE

The spectacular Caracas MetroCable system was selected for a special exhibit on transformational architecture at New York’s Museum of Modern Art

A severe cholera outbreak in Haiti is once again bringing the already desperate nation to the point of catastrophe. Venezuela is providing aid

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez regretted the death

of former Argentine President and Secretary General of the Union of South American Na-tions (Unasur), Nestor Kirch-ner on Wednesday, and sent a message of condolence to Ar-gentine President Cristina Fer-nandez, also Kirchner’s wife.

On his Twitter account, Pres-ident Chavez expressed early Wednesday morning, “My dear Cristina. What sadness! What a great loss for Argenti-na and Our America! Long live Kirchner forever!”

On Thursday, Chavez and other regional heads of state traveled to Buenos Aires for the funeral services, accompa-nying President Fernandez in her grief.

Kirchner died on Wednes-day from a heart attack after undergoing urgent surgery for a heart condition in southern Argentina.

Nestor Carlos Kirchner Os-toic was born in Rio Gallegos, capital city of Santa Cruz prov-ince, in the Argentine Patago-nia, on February 25, 1950.

During his political career, he was Mayor of Rio Gallegos (1987-1991); Governor of the Santa Cruz Province (1991-2003); President of Argentina (2003-2007); Congressman (2009-2010); Secretary General of Unasur and President of the Partido Justicial-ista until his death.

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IMPACT|2| No 35 • Friday, October 29, 2010 The artillery of ideas

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returned to Caracas on

Sunday after an 11-day diplomatic tour that included stops in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Iran, Syria, Libya and Portugal. “Everything has been done with the interests of the Venezuelan homeland at heart”, stated Chávez in reference to the 69 bilateral agreements signed in the fields of energy, agriculture, trade, transport, science, industry, tech-nology and housing.

“The world has changed. It’s no longer what it was ten years ago. And in this new, multipolar world, the Venezuelan homeland and Bolivarian Revolution have begun to play a fundamental role now recognized in all four cardi-nal points of the planet”, Chávez said upon arrival at Maiquetía In-ternational Airport.

Portugal and libya agreements

On the final leg of his seven-nation tour, Chavez signed agree-ments with Portugal worth a total of $1.4 billion USD. Deals include plans for Portugal to build and sell 12,500 prefabricated homes, two ships for the transportation of asphalt as well as smaller pas-senger vessels to Venezuela. Also, Venezuela and Portugal are to develop joint renewable energy projects with the support of Por-tuguese wind and solar energy expertise and technologies.

During his stop in Portugal on the weekend, President Chavez also signed an agreement con-solidating Venezuela’s Canaima Program which distributes mass-produced laptop computers to el-ementary school children.

On site at one of Portugal’s JP Sa Couto laptop computer factories, Chavez announced the purchase of an additional 1.5 million laptops as well as plans to install a Canaima

Venezuela: A foreign policy for sovereignty and independence

President Chavez returned to Venezuela on Sunday after signing 69 bilateral agreements with seven nations during a two-week tri-continental tour

production plant in Venezuela.“Over there [in Venezuela] we

need something similar, because we have several million elemen-tary school kids and beyond them, we have the entire Latin American market”, said Chavez in reference to the computer factory. To date, over 875,000 laptop computers have been distributed to Venezu-elan kids through this program.

Venezuela and the North Af-rican nation of Libya signed ten bilateral agreements, including the establishment of the Vene-zuela-Libya Investment Fund that will manage $1 billion USD for agricultural and industrial investments.

“Each one of us will put 500 million dollars for investments here [Libya], there [Venezuela], as well as for investments in other third party nations, such as the ALBA countries, others of Latin America, Africa and elsewhere in the world”, said President Chavez in reference to the invest-ment fund.

tour maKes HeadlinesWhile abroad, a number of the

agreements signed by President Chavez and his counterparts made international headlines, including plans with Russia to build Venezuela’s first nuclear-powered energy plant, a frame-

work for Venezuela to provide oil supplies to Belarus through Ukranian pipelines without inter-ruption “for the next 200 years”, and initial details regarding Ven-ezuela’s state-owned oil compa-ny PDVSA investing $780 million USD in Iranian natural gas fields.

US President Barack Obama commented on Venezuela’s de-velopment of a peaceful nuclear energy program, stating that Washington had no problem with such a program so long as Ven-ezuela acted responsibly towards its neighbors and “obeyed” inter-national regulations. In response, the Venezuelan President assert-ed that his US counterpart was “sowing doubts” as to Venezu-ela’s peaceful intentions.

Following up on Obama’s statements, US State Department spokesperson Phillip Crowley told reporters that Venezuela’s plans to develop nuclear energy, “is something [the United States] will observe very very closely”.

Regarding Venezuela-Iran en-ergy cooperation, Crowley stated that Washington “will watch to see if any of these deals amount to anything and if they do, whether they constitute a violation of UN Security Council resolutions and sanctions against Iran”.

“It is hard for me to see how Chavez’s current travels can be

seen as constructive”, Crowley concluded, with a tint of cynicism.

baCK in VeneZuelaOn his return to Venezuela on

Sunday, President Chavez made public statements highlighting a number of important agreements to improve housing and trade in Venezuela.

With respect to housing, the Venezuelan leader mentioned Russian financing for the con-struction of 7,000 homes in the proposed Socialist City of Tiuna, while Belarus is expected to build over 4,000 apartments in the Ven-ezuelan state of Aragua and Iran has committed to helping build over 10,000 housing units.

Further, as cited above, Venezu-ela will also purchase from Portu-gal a total of 12,500 prefabricated homes. According to government figures, Venezuela has a housing shortage of 2 million.

In trade, President Chavez em-phasized deals made to diversify the Venezuelan economy. The Venezuelan head of state dis-cussed a 100 million dollar initia-tive between Venezuela and Syr-ia in which “socio-productive” projects in both countries are to be funded, as well as the one billion dollar collaboration with Libya to stimulate agro-industri-al development.

He also spoke of agreements reached for exporting cacao, cof-fee and other agricultural crops to markets in Europe, Asia and Africa. These agreements, said Chavez, serve, “to break the per-verse model that has been im-posed on us for over 100 years, the model of petroleum mono-production”.

“Each year the impacts will be greater and more relevant…We have been working on this for years, developing an entire network, a new financial system. We are not the International Mon-etary Fund, not the World Bank, but little by little we’re moving forward”, he said during a live televised address to the nation on Monday night.

boliVarian Foreign PoliCyIn written reflections pub-

lished on Sunday, President Chavez said that while each agreement signed was intended to, “dignify the lives of all Ven-ezuelans” he insisted that they also amount to, “the birth of a new model in which we [the South] understand and support each other in the international arena”.

Chavez’s written remarks re-ferred to what he considers an ever-changing, multi-polar world in which Venezuela’s role contin-ues to grow. Referring to changes in Venezuela’s foreign policy un-der his administration, Chávez wrote:

“This international tour was another illuminating confir-mation that Venezuela exists. Today we are not at the point of just establishing relations to survive: Venezuela is now on the offensive, establishing rela-tionships so as to accelerate the fall of imperialism’s hegemony and to guarantee the bright coming of a world in peace and equilibrium…”

“For this reason, the more they attack me, the more I’ll go to Teh-ran, the more I’ll go to Minsk, the more I’ll go to Damascus, to ratify that we are and will continue to be free”.

T/ Juan Reardon www.Venezuelanalysis.com

analysis No 35 • Friday, October 29, 2010 |3|The artillery of ideas

The most influential ideologue of the twentieth century in the

United States, Henry Kissinger, declared during the 1970s regard-ing the expansion of socialism in the region, “If the US can’t control Latin America, how can it domi-nate the world?” Today, Kissing-er’s concern has returned to tor-ment the US and imperial forces, but this time, their conspiring fist can’t seem to silence the awaken-ing of nations in Revolution.

The US desperation during those years to subordinate coun-tries in its “backyard” led to a series of coup d’etats, brutal dic-tatorships, sabotages, political assassinations, mass torture and disappearances, and the imple-mentation of neoliberal, capital-ist models that caused the worst misery, exclusion, poverty and alienation known in the region throughout history.

Under the limited US vision, strategies and tactics of aggression achieved their goal by the end of the century, and in almost all Latin American nations, with the excep-tion of Revolutionary Cuba, sub-servient governments were put in place, hailing the US-imposed eco-nomic and political model of neo-liberal representative democracy.

When a revolutionary Venezue-lan soldier, Hugo Chavez, led a re-bellion against the criminal, mur-derous and corrupt government of Carlos Andres Perez – a close ally of Washington – on February 4, 1992, the US underestimated him. A secret document from the Department of State, now declas-sified, commented on the event, stating “The coup attempt appears to have been the work of a group of mid level army officers…There is no indication of popular sup-port for the coup plotters…”

Venezuela: from “backyard” to multipolar worldA successful tour of 7 countries in three continents made by President Hugo Chavez has produced 69 new agreements that will strengthen national development and consolidate the most powerful defense against imperial aggression: the union of nations and peoples

At the same time, the US gov-ernment recognized from its own surveys conducted in secret in Venezuela, “The incentive to follow support for Carlos An-dres Perez is small; a recent poll showed him enjoying less than 20% of the electorate’s support…” In other words, the people did not support the neoliberal model imposed on their nation.

Another secret report from March 10, 1992 revealed Washing-ton’s true concern regarding the popular uprisings in Venezuela, “A successful coup in Venezuela would be a serious blow to US in-terests in the hemisphere. Despite the short term negative impact on the poor and the middle class, we believe Carlos Andres Perez’s (CAP) economic policies are ex-actly what are needed to reform the Venezuelan economy…CAP’s overthrow would send a chilling message to the region about the viability of implementing eco-nomic reform.” [*Although the US classified the action as a “coup”, Hugo Chavez called it a “popular rebellion against a dictatorship disguised as democracy”].

Paraphrasing Kissinger, if the US couldn’t control Venezuela, how could it control the region? The principal US concern was not whether poverty would increase and the middle class would disap-pear, but rather whether the neolib-eral model would be implemented, at any cost, because this would be the only guarantee of permanent US domination in the region.

When Hugo Chavez won office in Venezuela in 1998, Washington didn’t know what to do. The of-ficial policy was “wait and see” before acting. Imperial interests tried to “buy” the recently elect-ed Venezuelan President several times, but their temptations didn’t

bear fruit: Venezuela had chosen an irreversible path towards in-dependence, sovereignty, dignity and revolution.

With the first changes – consti-tutional reform, a raise in oil prices and the rescue of OPEC – power-ful interests were affected and US control over Venezuela decreased. The voice of Hugo Chavez began to be heard throughout the region, resonating with a rebellious song that inspired restless people’s movements.

PERMANENT AGGRESSIONSoon after, actions were initi-

ated to try and neutralize what Washington had believed impos-sible: an anti-imperialist, socialist revolution in the XXI century, just south of the border.

A wave of aggressions struck Venezuela – the coup in April 2002, an oil strike and economic sabotage, assassination attempts, subversion, multimillion-dollar funding to opposition groups, elections meddling and a bru-tal psychological war executed through mass media – but they didn’t achieve their objective and revolutionary forces began to rise throughout the continent.

The birth of the Bolivarian Al-liance of the Americans (ALBA) in 2004 opened the path towards a new foreign policy based on co-operation, integration and solidar-ity. Relations between sister na-tions in the region began to grow, strengthening the ties between states that shared a collective vi-sion for humanity, and building a new economic model of commerce and trade that promoted mutual benefits and development.

ALBA TO A MULTIPOLAR WORLDFrom ALBA, the Union of South

American Nations (Unasur) was

born with the objective of forging regional trade and creating a con-tinental bloc of power capable of confronting world challenges.

As the Revolution in Venezuela grew, US aggression increased. In 2005, Washington launched an international campaign to “iso-late the Venezuelan government” and classify it as a “rogue state”. “Hugo Chavez is a negative force in the region”, declared Secre-tary of State Condoleezza Rice in January 2005, beginning the bom-bardment of lies about Venezuela before world opinion that hasn’t ceased to date.

One year later, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld com-pared President Chavez to Hitler, and together with the Director of National Intelligence, John Ne-groponte, they denominated Ven-ezuela the “largest threat to US interests in the region”. That year Venezuela was placed on a list of nations “not fully collaborat-ing with the war on terror” and a US-imposed sanction prohibited the sale of defense equipment with US technology to the South American nation.

Chavez, recognizing the at-tempt to debilitate his armed forces, sought out other partners who weren’t subjected to US domination. Russia was the first country to offer to replace Ven-ezuela’s military supplies.

For the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union, a Latin American nation began to build ties with Russia, without US in-volvement. The initial purchase of defense equipment opened the door to a new commercial and strategic relationship between Venezuela and Russia, thanks to the US embargo.

After Russia, Venezuela began to build relations with China, Be-larus, Iran, Japan, Syria, Libya, India and other African, Asian and European nations. Chavez’s foreign policy initiated a radical transformation in the region and put Venezuela on the world map. “It was about radically changing the rules of the game: we wanted to relate to the world and not just one part of it. In reality, we were just learning how to walk with our own feet on the international stage. Don’t forget that before, we didn’t have our own foreign policy. Our foreign policy was di-rected by Washington”, explains President Chavez.

CHANGING THE BALANCE OF POWER

Chavez’s tour to Russia, Be-larus, Ukraine, Iran, Syria, Libya and Portugal, from October 13-24, 2010, is a sign of a new mul-tipolar world on the horizon. Of the 69 agreements signed with these nations, Venezuela will have numerous valuable benefits, including the construction of tens of thousands of homes for Ven-ezuelan people, agricultural de-velopment, economic growth, en-ergy production, new industries, diverse exports and strategic, bal-anced relations with other nations – all for the maximum benefit of the people of Venezuela.

Not one of the 69 agreements contains exploitative elements that could cause disadvantage for Venezuela. The foreign policy of the Chavez government doesn’t permit exploitation or capitalist contamination that could harm the South American nation.

For example, in Belarus, Ven-ezuela won’t just buy heavy cargo mining trucks and public trans-port vehicles, but also will create joint ventures with Belarussian companies to establish factories in Venezuelan territory, assuring technological transfer which will aid in the diversification of Vene-zuela’s industries and the creation of jobs for the Venezuelan people.

IN A MULTIPOLAR WORLD, THERE CAN BE NO EMPIRE

“Venezuela must objey”, de-clared President Obama in refer-ence to the agreement with Rus-sia to develop nuclear energy for peaceful use. “We are moni-toring the agreements between Venezuela and Iran to see if they violate the sanctions”, announced Philip Crowley, State Department spokesman, as though Washing-ton was still the world police.

The desperate tone eminat-ing from the White House is the product of its weakening global power – the Empire’s time is up and a new multipolar world has been born. Kissinger’s nightmare has come true – the US can’t dom-inate Latin America anymore, and much less the world. The revolu-tionary Venezuelan soldier they once underestimated has become a symbol of resistance against US hegemony, and is inspiring mil-lions who seek a better world.

T/ Eva Golinger

integration|4| No 35 • Friday, October 29, 2010 The artillery of ideas

Venezuela and Portugal Strengthen TiesNew agreements were reached between the two nations to supply Venezuela with high-tech ferries for public transportation, as well as other nautical vehicles and computers for Venezuela’s school children

Culminating an 11 day visit to ally countries in Asia, Africa

and Europe, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez met with his Portu-guese counterpart Jose Socrates last Sunday, signing accords in areas of education technology, energy and transportation.

Among the agreements solidi-fied during his visit are the con-struction of two cargo ships for Venezuela’s transport of asphalt and Portugal’s supply of mini-laptop computers for an educa-tional program of the Chavez government.

“It’s a great day for relations between our two countries”, said Prime Minister Socrates who recog-nized the “historic friendship” that exists between the two nations.

According to Socrates, Venezu-ela’s purchase of more than 1 bil-lion euros worth of Portuguese products represents “a contribu-tion to the economy and employ-ment” for the financially embat-tled nation.

For his part, Chavez expressed his contentment with the out-come of his visit and referred to the strengthening of relations with countries such as Portugal as essential in order to overcome the global economic crisis.

“We have to take advantage of our friendship and our similarities in order to increase economic trade and confront the challenges of this century”, Chavez explained.

FERRIES, SHIPS AND LAPTOPSUpon arriving in Portugal in the

city of Oporto, Chavez visited the Viana do Castelo shipyards which, in accordance with the agreements signed between the two countries, will construct two cargo ships for the transport of asphalt.

“We will have a great fleet”, Chavez said of the ships, which will form part of the state oil com-pany PDVSA’s naval division.

According to reports, the con-struction of the ships will cost ap-proximately 130 million euros, the financing of which will be made available through the Portuguese bank, Espiritu Santo.

An agreement was also signed for Portugal to provide Venezuela with 1.5 million new mini-laptop computers over the next three years for use in the government’s educational program known as Canaima.

Canaima seeks to provide every Venezuelan grammar school stu-dent with a laptop computer, an initiative that will complement the children’s academic curriculum.

The computers, which are al-ready beginning to be used by some students, contain multi-me-dia educational programs in the areas of culture, language, social sciences, history, and science and technology.

“The content of Canaima is marvelous because it forms part of a liberation process that can only be achieved through edu-cation”, Chavez said about the program. “Our objective is that in a short time, every Venezuelan child that enrolls in first grade has a computer”, he stated.

GROWING RELATIONSThe accords signed on Sunday

mark a steady growth in the eco-nomic activity between Portugal and Venezuela in recent years.

According to President Chavez, trade with the European nation has grown exponentially.

“Commercial trade was al-most nothing”, said the Venezu-elan head of state during a press conference. “It was at 17 million euros [in 2007]. In 2009 we’ve reached more than 200 mil-lion euros. Look at how we’ve

multiplied [trade] more than 10 times. This just indicates the great potential that we have”, he remarked.

Chavez’s visit marks the sixth meeting that he has had with his Portuguese counterpart in the past three years.

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Socrates visited Venezuela where he signed 19 agreements in areas of energy, housing and goods and services.

With respect to last Sunday’s encounter, other agreements signed between the two nations include the evaluation of future infrastructure projects for the storage of crude in Portugal and the establishment of a mixed pub-lic-private business for the lique-faction and transport of natural gas.

A commitment was also made to study future cooperation in the sectors of food and agriculture.

Affirming the mutually ben-eficial relationship that the two countries continue to develop, President Chavez expressed his gratitude to Prime Minister So-crates for the transparency and clarity of the new agreements.

“The open door that Portugal offers to Venezuela has allowed us to arrive at the level of alliance which we have been arriving at in terms of the economic, social, and political relations reflected in this new set of agreements”, he stated.

T/ Edward EllisP/ Presidential Press

Nuclear reactor in Venezuela

to have strictly peaceful purposes

The Ambassador of Russia to Venezuela, Vladimir

Zaemsky, ratified this Tuesday that the nuclear reactor, which will be built in the South American country, will have strictly peaceful purposes.

“Building a reactor and an atomic bomb are two very dif-ferent things”, assured Am-bassador Zaemsky during a local television interview.

After emphasizing that Ven-ezuela has the full right to di-versify energy sources, the dip-lomat explained that nuclear energy with peaceful purposes will be very useful for the coun-try, most of all to develop state-of-the-art technology allowing the optimization of food and pharmaceutical production.

“The use of nuclear energy can be really useful to solve peo-ple’s needs”, he underscored.

In order to keep moving to-ward full energy sovereignty, President Hugo Chavez signed an agreement with his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, to build a nuclear plant with peaceful purposes in Venezue-lan territory, aimed at diversify-ing energy sources and reducing the dependence on fossil fuels.

Ambassador Zaemsky explained that the accord reached between Caracas and Moscow is just a framework agreement and it still needs to define certain details.

“Venezuela will decide how many reactors [are going to be built], what kind of plant will be constructed and in what timeframe. The use of nuclear energy requires many things, such as the training of opera-tions staff”, he commented.

Zaemsky affirmed that Rus-sia has close ties with the Inter-national Atomic Energy Agen-cy (IAEA) and any agreement endorsed with other countries in this area will abide by in-ternational law. Moreover, he commented that thanks to the peaceful use of nuclear energy, Russia has developed nucleo-electric plants, which generate 16% of their electric energy.

T/ Venezuelan News Agency

INTERNATIONAL No 35 • Friday, October 29, 2010 |5|The artillery of ideas

World Nations Reject US Blockade Against Cuba

A decades-old US policy towards Cuba was once again rejected by the majority of countries around the world, yet the US refuses to lift the damaging blockade

Member states of the United Nations General Assem-

bly voted overwhelmingly on Tuesday to end the economic blockade that the United States has imposed against the island nation of Cuba, causing wide-spread hardship for the citizens of the Caribbean country for nearly 50 years.

The final vote tally was 187 in favor of lifting the blockade, with only the United States and Israel voting against the motion.

The Marshall Islands, Microne-sia, and Palau abstained from the vote.

This is the 19th time that the UN General Assembly has voted to end the economic sanctions, which many around the world consider to be a clear violation of human rights and have cost the impoverished na-tion an estimated 751 billion USD.

Venezuela’s representative to the United Nations, Jorge Valero, referred to the measure, which the United States implemented in 1962 to derail the Cuban Revolu-tion as “a denial of a UN member state’s right to development”.

“The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela rejects this aggresion against the Cuban people which goes against the peaceful coexis-tence of nations and international legality”, Valero said during the General Assembly session.

According to the Venezuelan representative, the blockade “has a direct impact on the Cuban pop-ulation”, especially on children unable to receive needed medi-cation for diseases like lukemia due to the restrictions on imports caused by the policy.

The embargo, Valero said, also “blocks the arrival of construc-tion materials which doesn’t per-mit the improvement of buildings affected by natural disasters and creates losses of millions of dol-lars for Cuba’s basic industries”.

In addition to limiting Cuba’s ability to import, the measure also prevents the country from being able to export products to the United States or conduct business with financial insitu-tions linked to the North Ameri-can nation.

Cuba’s Foreign Minister, Bruno Rodriguez, declared the blockade to have “no ethical nor legal” basis and critized Wash-ington for its continued refusal to change its cold war policy to-wards the nation.

WASHINGTON: NO CHANGERodriguez commented that

although the Obama adminstra-tion declared a new beginning in terms of Washington’s relations with Cuba, nothing has changed,

and there has been no flexibility in the United States stance regard-ing the blockade.

For his part, Representative Valero coincided with the Cuban Foreign Minister, critizing the United States for its continued intransigence in the face of inter-national opinion.

“The government of the Unit-ed State continues to ignore the voice of the people of the world who are demanding an end to the genocidal policies that violate the most essential human rights”, Valero declared.

The nearly unanimous vote against the blockade, the Vene-zuelan official stated, represents the will of UN member states “to respect the sovereignty and free determination of people and condemn the threats to political independence that come from states incompatible with the principle of the United Nations Charter”.

T/ Edward Ellis

Venezuela: Leading the Battle Against Poverty

A new report released by the Organization

of American States (OEA) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has cited Venezu-ela as one Latin America’s most advanced countries with respect to the fight against poverty and in-equality in the region.

The report, entitled “Our Democracy”, ana-lyzes the current socio-political situation in 18 Latin American countries and provides statistical information on a range of social and economic in-dicators in the region for the period 1999 – 2008.

According to the study, Venezuela has seen a re-duction in poverty from 49.4% in 1999 to 27.6% in 2008, translating to a diminution of 44% while the average for the region is 24.4%

Last week, President Hugo Chavez made refer-ence to the new findings, stating that Venezuela “is three steps ahead of the chaos. During the past decade, the country has worked tirelessly to end the subordination of power that only belonged to the interests of the bourgeoisie”.

The report also high-lights the fact that home-lessness in the country has been reduced from 21.7% to 9.9% while the average for the region is 12.9%.

In terms of inequality as measured by the GINI co-efficient, Venezuela is the leader in Latin America with a decrease of 17.9%, 5 times the region’s aver-age of 3.9%.

“This is why the wealthy hate us, because we’re concerned with benefiting the average person”, Chavez said of the report’s findings on Sunday.

T/ EE

SOCIAL JUSTICE|6| No 35• Friday, October 29, 2010 The artillery of ideas

Venezuelan unemployment rate dropsThe president of the Venezu-

elan National Statistics Insti-tute (INE), Elias Eljuri, reported last week that unemployment in Venezuela fell to 8.4% for the month of September, a difference of 1.2 points from the previous month.

According to Eljuri, the dimi-nution represents a clear sign that the Venezuelan economy is in full recovery from a recession that had affected the nation due to the global financial crisis.

The official commented that the nation’s recovery has come “independent of the dictatorship of financial bodies like the Inter-national Monetary Fund and the World Bank” and that the new numbers are the result of Venezu-ela’s “orientation towards an eco-nomic and social policy designed to decrease the unemployment rate”.

Although unemployment fig-ures had been on the rise in Ven-ezuela since May, the most recent figure of 8.4% is 0.1 point less than September of last year and Eljuri is confident that the num-ber will be reduced to 7% by the end of the year.

Upon reporting the findings, the

INE president pointed out that un-employment before Hugo Chavez took office in 1999 was over 16% and that in the last 11 years, close to 3.4 million people have been in-corporated in the job market.

“The Venezuelan economy, between 1999 and 2010 was not only able to absorb the totality of

the economically active popula-tion for this period – more than three million people – but it was also able to absorb 400 thousand people who were unemployed, to arrive at a figure of close to 3.4 million people incorporated in the job market”, Eljuri explained.

Despite a high percentage of workers in the Venezuelan econo-my that still labor in the informal sector, the head of the statistics in-stitute also pointed out that there has been an increase in 8 percent-age points in the formal sector job market bringing the total for-mal employment to 56.4% of the workforce.

Dario Vivas, Vice President of the Venezuelan National Assem-bly, attributed the advancements in employment to the efforts of the Chavez administration to im-prove the standards of living for the population.

“This indicates that we’re improving because we’re do-ing things in order to better the quality of life for Venezuelans. There’s more labor stability and the government is honoring commitments that it has with different sectors”, Vivas said during a television program last week.

According to the National As-sembly’s Vice President, Venezu-ela’s decrease in unemployment contrasts starkly with the num-bers emanating from the United States and Europe where “levels of unemployment have grown at alarming rates”.

Unemployment in the United States is currently at 9.5% while in some countries of Europe, such as Spain, it has reached as high as 20%.

T/ Edward Ellis

Venezuela to guarantee access to HIV medicationsStarting next year, the Venezu-

elan government will guaran-tee antiretroviral medication to people with HIV, and will expand the use of a Cuban-made medi-cine to treat diabetic foot ulcers nation-wide, according to recent announcements by the Venezu-elan Health Ministry.

Venezuela’s HIV-positive pa-tients “will have their treatment guaranteed next year; we have made preparations to acquire the medicines and cover the whole population free of charge”, said Venezuelan Health Minister Eu-genia Sader in an interview with the state television station VTV last week.

Marbelys Hernandez, who manages the Health Ministry’s AIDS program, said that next month the ministry will begin to use a new HIV test that produces results in one hour. Hernandez made the announcement during the 9th Venezuelan Conference on Infectious Diseases in mid-October.

Also this month, Venezuela participated in a meeting of Latin American Parliament representa-tives in Panama to discuss pub-lic policy on the prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS. The meeting was sponsored by the United Nations Development Program.

Venezuela does not have a law governing HIV and AIDS policy, but the National Assembly is dis-cussing the possibility of incor-porating articles on the diseases, including treatment for HIV-pos-itive prisoners, into the nation’s Health Law, according to Legisla-tor Marelis Perez, who participat-ed in the Panama meeting.

Non-governmental organiza-tions in Venezuela have repeat-edly complained of the lack of access to antiretroviral medi-cines. On Monday, Jhonatan Ro-driguez of the Stop VIH Orga-nization told the press the drug known inside the US as Abacavir and outside the US as Kivexa is often not available in hospitals and pharmacies.

“People with HIV have been confronted with four shortages [of medicines] so far this year in Venezuela”, said Rodriguez. “To this, we add the arbitrary changes in treatment plans by people who do not have the attributes or the competence to do so, and the scar-city of condoms distributed free of charge”, the activist added.

The Venezuelan government launched a publicity campaign aimed at public education about HIV and AIDS prevention and treatment in 2005. Free condom distribution was part of the cam-paign, but did not continue after

HIV-positive people in Venezu-ela. 35,512 of them are currently receiving antiretroviral drugs, including 950 children. Most of those with the virus are between the ages of 25 and 45.

According to a recent study by Doctor Alejandro Risquez that was presented at the Venezuelan Conference on Infectious Diseas-es this month, in Venezuela five people per day, or 1,825 people per year, die from AIDS.

HIV, or human immunodefi-ciency virus, leads to the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), a deadly disease that weakens the immune system. There are treatments that reduce the effects of HIV and AIDS, but there is no cure.

DIABETIC FOOT ULCERSVenezuela also plans to expand

the use of Heberprot-P, a Cuban medicine that has produced posi-tive results in curing diabetic foot ulcer patients.

Currently, Heberprot-P is used in 15 Venezuelan states, and Venezuela’s goal is to expand its use to all 24 states, according to Doctor Loyda Gafaro de Val-era, who coordinates the Health Ministry’s Endocrine-Metabolic Health Program.

Since 2008, when the drug was first used in Venezuela, 12,500

Venezuelans who suffer from dia-betic foot ulcers have been treated with Heberprot-P, and only 96 of them ended up needing amputa-tions – a number that might have tripled if it were not for the use of the drug, Gafaro de Valera said.

The doctor said there are cur-rently 100,000 patients in Venezu-ela who need the treatment, which is provided though a bi-national cooperation accord between Ven-ezuela and Cuba that includes Cuban doctors who administer the treatment free of charge in lo-cal public clinics.

Gafaro de Valera made the re-marks during the International Congress on Biotechnology, which was held in Havana, Cuba last week and hosted 139 inter-national participants from 33 countries, along with 300 Cuban participants.

According to IPS, Heberprot-P was invented by the Cuban Cen-ter for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology and has been used to treat more than 18,000 patients. The drug is approved for use in Argentina, Algeria, Venezuela, and Uruguay, and awaits approval in Mexico, the United States, South Africa, Aus-tralia, and India.

T/ James Suggett www.Venezuelanalysis.com

the campaign ended toward the end of 2005.

According to government fig-ures, there are as many as 56,500

HEALTH ALERT No 35 • Friday, October 29, 2010 |7|The artillery of ideas

The natural vulnerability of Hai-ti and its precarious position

on the margins of global capitalism have exposed its population to yet another potential catastrophe this week as a cholera outbreak threat-ened the population.

Some 295 people have died as a result of the disease in the Ca-ribbean country and 3,612 are in-fected, according to World Health Organization data released on Tuesday.

The United Nations still fears a much bigger death toll, possibly in the tens of thousands.

This comes only nine months after the devastating January earthquake, which rated seven on the Richter scale and killed over 300,000 Haitians.

VENEZUELA SENDS AIDOn Tuesday, the Venezuelan gov-

ernment sent a team from its Min-istry of Health along with 10,000 doses of medication, 4,500 intrave-nous drips and rehydration tablets to Haiti to help battle against the disease’s spread and relieve the symptoms of those at risk.

The team from the Health Min-istry was planning to assess the situation on arrival with the goal of subsequently sending a spe-cialist medical group to attend to victims.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez referred to the Haitian crisis on Monday, “Here is our air force, our revolutionary air force, and our government reaching out to our Haitian brothers and sis-ters and people in need, people exploited by savage capitalism and by imperialism”.

Venezuela’s contribution is part of a regional effort coordinated by the Union of South American Na-tions (Unasur), a political and dip-lomatic multilateral regional body.

The rotating president of the Un-asur Health Council, Ecuadorean Health Minister David Chiriboga, announced, “each country has committed to send Ecuador a list of the resources and medical supplies to contribute to Haiti so that this could all be given to the Haitian Health Minister with the objective of prioritizing necessities”.

Dr Michel Thieren added, “the next news will be when geo-graphically, new pockets of the epidemic emerge, in Port-au-Prince or elsewhere”.

Despite the positive regional response to the cholera outbreak,

Haiti: On the verge of catastrophe

Dr Thiere said that cholera is likely to “settle” in Haiti over the coming months even if the death toll doesn’t increase significantly from the current figure.

This is the first time cholera has been seen in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1991, when an outbreak occurred in Peru.

Most cases have been found in the rural region of Artibonite, about 60 miles north of the capital Port-au-Prince.

Cholera spreads through con-taminated water supplies, causes chronic diarreah and can kill with-in a matter of hours if not treated.

DISEASE SPREADINGOne of the biggest worries is

that cholera might spread to the sprawling refugee camps located in and around Port-au-Prince, set up after the earthquake earlier this year.

The camps hold around 1.5 mil-lion people and the conditions are terrible.

There is little running wa-ter and massive overcrowding means that if the cholera reaches the camps, then it will be almost impossible to contain.

Fears increased last Sunday when five people were discov-

ered infected in campsites, but the patients were quickly isolated and treated and the UN said that the cases did not mean the disease had reached the camps.

Around 75 percent of people with cholera don’t suffer from the symp-toms at all but act as carriers, mak-ing its spread difficult to contain.

The cure is simple provided the disease is diagnosed quickly. Rehydration tablets or drinking purified water mixed with water and sugar are all that is needed in standard cases.

Mainstream media organiza-tions have reported the serious dangers that the refugee camps pose for a spread of cholera, giv-en the conditions there.

One question they don’t seem to ask is why the conditions are still terrible nine months after the earthquake occurred.

At the time, the disaster left bodies piled high in the streets. The United Nations described Port-au-Prince horrifyingly as a “tomb”, which was a lethal com-bination of decomposing bodies, with no water, electricity, sanita-tion or food supplies - a paradise for cholera to spread.

The presence of a long-term Cu-ban medical team of over 400 doc-

tors that arrived long before the earthquake was accompanied by Venezuelans shortly afterwards, who provided relief alongside other teams and organizations from around the world.

Venezuela also cancelled Haiti’s debt immediately after the tragic earthquake.

The initial international re-sponse to the crisis in Janaury, led by the US, was militaristic and frightening.

The French government public-ly attacked the US miltary, accus-ing it of turning away aid at the Port-au-Prince airport so that its military build up could continue.

Some $5.3 billion USD in aid was promised by countries across the globe in the wake of the di-saster, but most of the funds have not come through.

On October 6, former US presi-dent Bill Clinton, who is now co-chairperson of the commis-sion overseeing Haiti’s alleged reconstruction, had to acknowl-edge that only $732 million, or less than 14% of the funds, had reached Haitians.

The United States leads the world in its shortfall. Not one cent of its supposed $1.15 billion share has been paid to Haiti.

This will undoubtedly add to the devastation the cholera out-break will cause if it spreads to the refugee camps around Port-au-Prince.

The so-called international development budgets from de-veloped countries are being cut in the global economic crisis, so international help for Haiti is unlikely to move beyond the rhe-torical to the material.

Haiti is a victim of its location on a geographical fault line that makes it vulnerable to earth-quakes. Hispanola, the island Haiti shares with Dominican Republic, is also in the path of hurricanes, as are many other Caribbean islands.

But Haiti is also the poorest country in the western Hemi-sphere, according to the World Bank, and one of the poorest in the world.

The Caribbean nation also has a long history of colonialism and occupation.

Haiti was the first country of African people to free itself through an anti-colonial slave re-bellion from French rule in 1804, led by Touissant l’Ouverture.

T/ Steven MatherP/ Agencies

Caracas MetroCable on exhibit in New York’s Museum of Modern Art

The artillery of ideasENGLISH EDITIONFRIDAY October 29, 2010 No. 35 Bs. 1 CaraCas

A publication of the Fundacion Correo del OrinocoEditor-in-Chief | Eva Golinger • Graphic Design | Arturo Cazal, Pablo Valduciel L., Alexander Uzcátegui, Jameson Jiménez • Press | Fundación Imprenta de la Cultura

SPECIAL REPORT

The innovative MetroCable inaugurated this year by the

Chavez government in the neigh-borhood of San Agustin was selec-ted as part of an exhibit at MOMA focusing on extraordinary archi-tectural projects to improve social conditions and transform lives

The hills surrounding the city center of Caracas have long been the sites of barrios, informal sett-lements populated by a steady influx of poor, rural migrants. It is estimated that about sixty per-cent of the city’s five million inha-bitants live in such communities, but due to their illegal status the-se areas have never been forma-lly connected with public transit or other civic services. The result has been a seemingly inexorable social divide between the two parts of the city.

In 2003 architects Alfredo Bri-llembourg and Hubert Klump-ner, founding partners of Urban-Think Tank, made a proposal to the city to build a cable car system linking two barrios with Caracas’s public transit system. The plan, the result of site sur-veys, community workshops, and

other on-the-ground fieldwork by the architects, centers on the cable car system but calls for “plug-in” buildings—structures attached to each station housing cultural and recreational programs—as well as other, smaller-scale interven-tions close by.

The idea was a radi-

cal departure from official plan-ning strategy, which sought to gradually link the barrios to the rest of the city by creating new

surface streets. The construc-tion of roadways in the barrios would entail the loss of many dwellings; the cable car system intrudes minimally and selecti-vely into the existing fabric.

President Hugo Chavez perso-nally embraced the plan and

set up a joint venture

in May 2006 between the state and an Austrian gondola engi-neer to begin implementing it. The city’s first completed cable car line, with five stations, serves the barrio San Agustin; regular service began in January 2010.

Some elements of the highly po-liticized project have been altered or not yet realized, but the project will continue to contribute to gra-dual changes in Caracas’s social structure; Urban-Think Tank has set a new precedent for develop-ment in the informal city.

The exhibition will be on view from October 3, 2010, through January 3, 2011 at the New York Museum of Modern Art. Concen-trating on a group of architects who confront inequality by using the tools of design, Small Sca-le, Big Change will examine the ways these architects engage with local, social, economic, and politi-cal circumstances to develop po-sitive architectural interventions that begin with an understanding of and deference to a community.

T/ Urban-Think TankP/ Iwan Baan