The artillery of ideasENGLISH EDITIONFRIDAY November 19, 2010 No. 38 Bs. 1 CaraCas

Nicaragua and Costa Rica in conflict Central America is onceagain 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.

Pg. 7 | Security Pg. 8 | Opinion

ImpactUS Congress hostsanti-ALBA event US representatives sponsored a meeting attacking Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuadorand Cuba.

PoliticsRegional budget debatedThe Federal Governing Council met this weekto determine fundingfor regional governmentsand projects.

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

In response to mass real estate scams perpetuated by several private corporations that have affected thousandsof 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.

Venezuela has Latin America’s best income distributionVenezuela has the best in-

come distribution of Latin America, per the latest Gini co-efficient index, informed Presi-dent 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 Me-rentes, also joined Eljuri during the press conference.

The Venezuelan official said the Latin American countries showing a similar Gini coeffi-cient 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 popu-lation kept 53.4% of the wealth.

That figure has been reduced to 44.8%, which represents an increase of income for the poor-est sectors and the middle class. There has been an important re-distribution of income”.

Additionally, Eljuri considered as positive the decreasing ten-dency of the informal unemploy-ment rate, which “has dropped from 51% to 43%, while formal employment continues increas-ing from 49.9% to 56%. This means that employment quality in Venezuela has improved”.

T/ AVN

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

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santosconfirmed that drug kingpin Walid Makledwill be extradited to Venezuela and not the US

Venezuela: housing a priority Thousands arrested for drug trafficking

in 2010

Over 10,800 people have been arrested during 2010 for

drug trafficking-related crimes in 8,290 operations conducted around the country by mem-bers of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB), the Criminal, Pe-nal and Scientific Forensic Police (CICPC), the Bolivarian Nation-al Police (PNB), the Bolivarian Service of National Intelligence (SEBIN) and regional and mu-nicipal police departments.According to figures of seizures and detainees for drug-traffick-ing 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 Ven-ezuelans and 138 were foreign-ers, including 17 kingpins ex-tradited by the government to nations such as Colombia and the US, where outstanding ar-rest 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 mari-huana carried out last weekend in the state of Carabobo (North-ern central coast) in a joint oper-ation of the CICPC and ONA.During the past year, Venezu-ela has substantially improved counter-narcotics efforts, despite the massive drug production and trafficking in neighboring Colombia, the largest producer of cocaine in the world.

Social JusticeGovernment provides free computers for kidsA joint venture withPortugal is guaranteeing laptops for schoolchildren in Venezuela.

IMPACT|2| No 38 • Friday, November 19, 2010 The artillery of ideas

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

The 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 dur-ing this spectacle hosted by the US Congress evidence an escala-tion in aggression against coun-tries 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, Ecua-dor and Nicaragua constitute a threat to US interests and inter-American 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

US Congress hosts eventagainst ALBA countries

Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere; Con-nie 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 Af-fairs Subcommittee on the West-ern Hemisphere.

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

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

From Venezuela, Guillermo Zuloaga, president of Venezu-ela’s Fox News affiliate, Globovi-sion, a rabid anti-Chavez televi-sion station, gave a speech calling on Washington to respond to the “threat” posed against US inter-ests by the government of Hugo Chavez. Zuloaga fled justice ear-lier 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 El-Hage, representing the nefarious Human Rights Foundation, Bo-livia Chapter, participated in the event, calling for a more strident policy against the government of Evo Morales. Despite its noble name, The Human Rights Foun-dation is an organization created by a Venezuelan anti-Chavez ac-tivist, Thor Halvorssen, which is dedicated to attacking the gov-ernment of Hugo Chávez and has called for US military interven-tion in Venezuela.

Alejandro Aguirre, president of the Inter-American Press As-sociation (IAPA), an entity run by media owners from Latin Ameri-ca, also participated in the event, reinforcing ties between mass media and right-wing politics in the region. Other notable par-ticipants included former USAID director for Latin America, Jose Cardenas; ex-US Drug Czar, John Walters; Joel Hirst from the pow-erful Council on Foreign Rela-tions, 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 Af-fairs under the George W. Bush government and a former US Ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS).

All of these people have a his-tory of hostility and aggression against the government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and have promoted, supported and fi-nanced coups d’etats in Venezu-ela, Bolivia, Honduras and Ecua-dor over the past decade, as well as perpetual attempts to under-mine peace and stability in Cuba.

Representatives from neocon parties and organizations in Ec-uador 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 Ec-uadorean 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 social-ism 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 in-clude the Cuban terrorists Carlos Alberto Montaner and Armando Valladares, was another sponsor. Curiously, this Institute held an event titled “Breakfast with Lu-cio Guitierrez” on September 23, 2010, just one week before the at-tempted coup d’etat against Presi-dent Rafael Correa in Ecuador that was led by Guitierrez himself.

Other hosts included US orga-nizations 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 “re-ports” on the alleged “threats” from the Hugo Chávez govern-ment, and channeling millions of dollars to destabilizing sectors within the Venezuelan opposition.

At the conclusion of Wednes-day’s meeting, Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen declared that Washington “should work closer with regional allies to confront the danger against democracy in Ven-ezuela” and other countries, such as Boliva and Ecuador. Represen-tative 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 follow-ing the US legislative elections of November 2, during which reac-tionary republicans obtained a resounding congressional major-ity, 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 No 38 • Friday, November 19, 2010 |3|The artillery of ideas

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

The Costa Rican government of President Laura Chinchilla

has accused Nicaragua of cross-ing 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 re-solve the quarrel, which passed by 22-2, with only Nicaragua and Venezuela voting against the out-come, which called on Nicaragua to “withdraw” its armed forces from the border region.

The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) backed the po-sition taken by the government of President Hugo Chavez in sup-port of Nicaragua in the dispute.

PSUV political spokesman Car-los Escarra declared this week, “The OAS runs the risk of disap-pearing as happened at the begin-ning of the century to the League of Nations”. The OAS has come un-der 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,

Border dispute between Nicaraguaand Costa Rica raises regional tensions

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

CAUSE OF TENSIONNicaragua has been dredging

along the San Juan River, which is a disputed border territory. Costa Rica asked the Nicaraguan gov-ernment of Daniel Ortega to stop its work in the area, claiming the Nicaraguans were violating Costa Rican sovereignty.

Dredging is an activity under-taken 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 sedi-ment in our national territory”.

The area also encompasses Cale-ro Island, which is claimed by Cos-ta Rica. The Costan Rican govern-ment has warned that Nicaragua allegedly stationed troops on the island in a provocative manner, ef-fectively invading Costa Rican ter-ritory. 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, affirm-ing, “The government of reconcilia-tion and national unity expresses it most energetic protest regarding the continuous violations by troops from the Costa Rican armed forces into Nica-raguan territory. The government of

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

Ortega also said that any mili-tary activity in the area on the part of Nicaragua was specifically re-lated to counter-narcotics efforts.

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

OAS INTERVENTIONThe OAS resolution passed last Friday called for the with-drawal of troops from both countries from

the area and for a bina-tional commision to be formed by November 27th in order to encour-age dialogue for a nego-

tiated settlement.Costa Rican am-

bassador Rene Castro praised the resolu-tion and said that the OAS message had been “very clear”.

Castro’s Nicara-guan counter-

part, Denis Moncada,

rejected the d e c i s i o n , reca l l ing

that the

OAS has no jurisdiction to inter-vene in border disputes.

“Really, the resolution has no validity, it has no basis or regula-tory sustainability. The OAS sup-posedly 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 Ni-caragua 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 Nicara-gua was awarded full sovereignty.

The Nicaragua-Costa Rica bor-der was drawn along the San Juan River and agreed upon by both nations in the Treaty of Ca-nas-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, ac-cording 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 na-tional 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 war-ships into Costan Rican territory. The arrangement caused concern throughout the region, but particu-larly in Central America, where the US has played a major role in civil wars and destabilization attempts throughout the past century.

On Tuesday, Nicaraguan stu-dents and teachers mobilized for a demonstration in support of the positions taken by Presi-dent Ortega.

National University Council leader Freddy Franco explained, “We are going to tell President Or-tega 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 in-transigent and provocative posi-tion so Nicaragua must respond by firmly defending our national sovereignty”, he added.

In Costa Rica, the Socialist Work-ers’ 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 dis-tract Costa Ricans from the dif-ficult domestic sitution the gov-ernment is facing.

The Chinchilla administration is coming under attack for corrup-tion and failure to follow through on campaign promises, according to the POS.

The POS also said the Costa Ri-can 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 Ni-caragua for responding to Costa Rica’s provocations in a manner that would encourage further re-gional intervention by raising ten-sions and generating unnecessary nationalistic sentiment among the Costan Rican people.

T/ Steven MatherP/ Agencies

economy|4| No 38 • Friday, November 19, 2010 The artillery of ideas

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

During his 367th broadcast, Chavez reaffirmed the cre-

ation 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 pow-er of the state to prevent these criminals from cheating [home buyers]”, he exclaimed. “Begin-ning 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 Vene-zuela’s current housing shortage.

Although much of the hous-ing deficit has affected lower class residents of the shantytowns that surround the capital of Caracas

Housing rights a priority for Chavez

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

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

PRIVATE PROPERTY PROTECTEDThree weeks ago, the govern-

ment announced the expropria-tion and occupation of a series of paralyzed housing develop-ment projects in order to ensure their completion and deliver the homes to their buyers.

“We have to have justice here, and businesses with inactive machin-ery that have cheated the people must be confiscated. We have to ap-ply 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 gov-ernment officials to work togeth-er to protect homebuyers and en-sure that justice is carried out.

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

OPPOSITION, MEDIA IN CAHOOTSAccording to Rafael Matos, a

victim of a real-estate scam car-ried out by the construction com-pany Cumberland in the state of Trujillo, the owners of the fraudu-lent business are also the owners of important media outlets such

as the daily newspaper Los An-des 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 in-formed the President and the public during the broadcast on Sunday.

Matos recognized the efforts on the part of the Chavez administra-tion to confront the issue through the government’s consumer pro-tection 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 conserva-tive opposition for being behind many of the scams.

Referring to a specific hous-ing development expropriated by the government in the state of Miranda, Chavez pointed out the relationship between unscrupu-lous construction companies and members of the wealthy Venezu-elan business class.

“While the homebuyers…were fighting to recover the homes that they had paid for and that the construction com-pany Urbania 2007 had tried to rob from them…one of the main shareholders of this construc-

tion 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)

reports that Domingo Plaz was a founding member of the US-funded 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.

COMING TO THE AID OF VICTIMSAs part of the Chavez ad-

ministration’s response to the widespread fraud in the private housing market, on Sunday the Venezuelan government deliv-ered 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 Cara-bobo, 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 jus-tice with these first families who for years suffered irregularities on behalf of the private construction company Blancoveca. The Venezu-elan 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 hous-ing 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 go-ing to evaluate and give credits as personal loans”, he confirmed.

T/ Edward EllisP/ Presidential Press

integration No 38 • Friday, November 19, 2010 |5|The artillery of ideas

Due to term expiration, death, or abandonment, 1,761,961

Venezuelans and foreign resi-dents will be able to vote in 11 mayoral elections and for the governors of Guarico and Ama-zonas on December 5th.

Among the opposition candi-dates for mayor in the important city of Maracaibo, Zulia is Evel-ing Trejo de Rosales, wife of for-mer governor and mayor Manuel Rosales, presidential candidate in 2006 who fled the country follow-ing corruption charges.

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

During its first annual ple-nary session held last

Monday, the Venezuelan gov-ernment’s Federal Governing Council (CFG) met to discuss the methods and the manner in which national financial re-sources 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 munici-pal and state governing bodies and is composed of members of the ex-ecutive branch with the open par-ticipation 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 coun-try has a right to take part in the plenary session and here all the governors, including those who are in opposition to the revolu-tionary project [of the Chavez government], have been pres-ent”, he said.

Likewise, Jaua said, “There is a representative for each mayor-ship. Everyone is present”.

Although Venezuela’s politi-cal system has been decentral-ized over the years, national rev-enues, derived mainly from the country’s petroleum industry,

Venezuelan regions prepare for elections December 5thmoney laundering. Subsequently, the Municipal Council of Maraca-ibo named opposition leader Dan-iel Ponne as the interim mayor.

Legislator Mario Isea from Zu-lia claimed that under opposition leadership, the city of Maracaibo had been “abandoned” and that essential services were in a ter-rible state. He explained that city police forces were inactive and 300 firefighters had been let go “unfairly”. He accused the oppo-sition 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 be-cause of the “personal economic project that [Manuel] Rosales set up in Zulia and a ferocious me-dia campaign”.

The PSUV candidate for the po-sition, 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 com-plete 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 an-nounced 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 irreg-ularities, 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 campaign-ing 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 se-lected 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 presiden-tial, gubernatorial and mayoral terms are up.

T/ Tamara Pearsonwww.venezuelanalysis.com

Venezuela: Opposition and governmentregional leaders meet to discuss budget

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

The law has established that funds need to be focused on ap-proved projects that serve the in-terests of the country and work in consonance with the nation’s overall productive development strategy, Development Plan “Si-mon Bolivar”.

According to Jaua, funding priorities will be given to proj-ects that address the necessi-ties of underserved populations throughout the country’s differ-ent regions.

“[Priorities] can be seen from the territorial point of view, but also from the point of view of social indicators, where the ma-jority of the population live in

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

Jaua emphasized that the proj-ect 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 disburse-ment 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, re-gional offices and inspectors will be verifying the fulfillment of all projects and making sure that re-sources provided are being used for the projects approved in the annual investment plan. This way there will be a guarantee that re-sources are being directed within the framework of the Development Plan ‘Simon Bolivar’”, he said.

Jaua also mentioned the cre-ation of sanctions for non-compli-ant officials.

“We have also created a mecha-nism 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

SOCIAL JUSTICE|6| No 38• Friday, November 19, 2010 The artillery of ideas

With an investment of more than 700 million bolivars

($162.7 million USD), the Venezue-lan government is moving forward on a plan to provide every first and second grade student in the coun-try with a mini-laptop computer to enhance their academic curriculum and technological literacy.

The plan, named after Venezu-ela’s national park, Canaima, was launched during the 2009-2010 school year and has already deliv-ered more than 228 thousand com-puters to children in public schools.

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

“These computers belong to the children”, Venezuelan Presi-dent Hugo Chavez said during his weekly television broadcast, Alo Presidente, on Sunday. “Ev-ery 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 govern-ment and the Portuguese compa-ny JP Sa Couto that manufactures the educational technology.

The computers utilize Ven-ezuelan software and an agree-ment exists between the Chavez

The Venezuelan National Elec-toral 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 il-licit resources during electoral campaign processes.

On Tuesday, CNE President Ti-bisay Lucena hosted the II Inter-Institutional Meeting on Financing of Political Organizations and Elec-toral Campaigns, held in Caracas.

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

CNE to regulate political party fundingmeasures to assure transparency in campaign financing.

CNE Director Vicente Diaz an-nounced that the campaign fi-nancing law would include sanc-tions against political parties that do not register funding sources according to regulations.

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

Diaz said that the CNE is work-ing to protect the State from a penetration of illicit money com-ing from corruption, use of pub-lic resources or foreign financing, drug trafficking and money laun-dering activities.

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

these financial viruses to contami-nate 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 Meet-ing on Financing of Political Or-ganizations and Electoral Cam-

paigns was aimed at creating spaces to share experiences and improve methods to make trans-parency 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 strug-gle 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 Na-tional Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the International Re-publican Institute (IRI), to candi-dates and campaigns that oppose the government of Hugo Chavez.

T/ Venezuelan News AgencyP/ Alberto Corro

Venezuela: Government program providesfree computers for school children

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

All Plan Canaima computers are provided free of charge for the children and include materi-als 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 ex-plained 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 GRADESDuring a radio interview on

Monday, Gil indicated that the government’s intention is to even-tually be able to provide all pri-mary 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, includ-ing 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 pri-vate institutions will also have the opportunity to participate in the program.

“The government is diversify-ing and democratizing access to new technologies, fulfilling a con-stitutional principle with respect to social inclusion in quality edu-cation”, 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, chil-dren are destined towards pover-ty. This Canaima program is only possible in socialism. Capitalism produces computers and many things but it converts everything into a commodity”.

T/ Edward EllisP/ Presidential Press

SECURITY No 38 • Friday, November 19, 2010 |7|The artillery of ideas

This week, Colombian Presi-dent Juan Manuel Santos con-

firmed his intention to extradite accused Venezuelan drug traf-ficker Walid Makled-Garcia to Venezuela, a promise he made to his Venezuelan counterpart dur-ing bilateral talks held earlier this month in Caracas.

Walid Makled-Garcia was de-tained on August 19th in the Co-lombian 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 traffick-ing and other crimes by both Ven-ezuela and the United States, and his fate has become a point of con-tention between the two countries.

According to Venezuelan Presi-dent Hugo Chavez, attempts to extradite Makled to the US are po-litically 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 unaccept-able transfer of drug kingpin Mak-led-Garcia and his vital informa-tion to Venezuela instead of the US would mark a devastating loss for the Drug Enforcement Adminis-tration, the combined fight against drug trafficking, and the security of the entire region”, Mack said in an interview with the Miami Her-ald published on Tuesday.

“If we could get Makled here, I think he could provide a lot of evi-dence about the Venezuelan gov-ernment’s involvement in narco-trafficking”, affirmed Mack, who is the Florida-based ranking member of the Congressional Subcommit-tee 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 Venezu-ela will take place. I am a man of my word”, said Colombian Presi-dent Juan Santos during a televised address to the Colombian people on Tuesday in which he discussed his first 100 days in office.

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

“When we captured [Makled], Venezuela’s request for extradition came long before the US request. Venezuela’s petition is not only re-lated to drug trafficking but also to other crimes”, affirmed Santos.

Makled, also known as “El Tur-co” or “The Turk”, faces charges in Venezuela for drug trafficking, money laundering and involve-ment in three separate murders, including those of two Venezu-elan journalists who were inves-tigating 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 trans-portation firm, and the rights to storage units in Puerto Cabello – Venezuela’s most important in-ternational port.

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

The Makled family made na-tional 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-Au-gust after his arrest by Colombian authorities.

MAKLED’S ACCUSATIONSIn statements made after his ar-

rest, Makled accused a number of high-ranking members of the Ven-ezuelan government of participat-ing in his illegal networks, includ-ing the director of Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office (ONA), Nestor Reverol, as well as Army General Henry Rangel Silva, re-cently 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 com-panies; 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 in-ternational criminal court”.

“This same Makled has said that he has all the information he needs to allow the US to inter-vene [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 Presi-dent 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 launder-ing and spent almost 20 years in prison before being extradited to France on similar charges.

According to Chavez, “[Mak-led] has with great ease given himself the assignment of declar-ing that he is a victim of perse-cution, that he has financed the electoral campaigns of President Chavez, that he has financed gen-erals, 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 govern-ment and authorities fulfill their commitment [to extradite Makled to Venezuela]”, affirmed Chavez.

EXTRADITION TO THE USOn 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 Venezu-ela to Mexico using a DC-9 pri-vate airplane.

According to Vanda Felbab-Brown, a fellow at the Brookings Institute, Venezuela’s 2005 deci-sion 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 il-licit 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 Venezu-ela 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 Ven-ezuelan government’s anti-drug program as a failure.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s Na-tional Anti-Drug Office reports an increase of both drug-related detentions and illegal drugs confiscated since it stopped col-laborating 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-re-lated 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 re-cord for 2009.

T/ Juan Reardonwww.venezuelanalysis.com

The artillery of ideasENGLISH EDITIONFRIDAY November 19, 2010 No. 38 Bs. 1 CaraCas

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

OPINION

Imagine 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 cli-mate change has in store for our planet thousands of years from now? Not accor-ding 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. The-re 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. Swea-ting brings down skin temperature in a hot climate, but it is much less effective in hu-mid conditions. Temperature, therefore, is insufficient on its own for measuring survi-vability. That is better determined by “wet bulb temperature”, that is, temperature as recorded by a mercury thermometer enve-loped 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 rea-ching 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 spe-cialist 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 me-tabolic 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 po-pulation. 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 In-tegrated 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 ran-ge higher. That is only 90 years away. Yet conditions will continue to worsen, and so-metime in the 22nd century there may be pockets where wet bulb temperatures start to approach the danger point. In three cen-turies’ 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 to-day, 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 re-vealed a “pretty devastating” scenario, says Patrick Kinney, director of the cli-mate and health program at Columbia University. “It’s a much more serious and catastrophic outcome than people have identified before in the context of heat-related 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 beco-mes 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 Sherwo-od. “That’s going to take a change in direc-tion 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 projec-ted by Sherwood and Huber. It is the de-veloped capitalist nations that are best po-sitioned 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 reduc-tion in the bottom line. In a social system where consideration of human needs is peripheral, given a choice between ser-ving the wealthy or cherishing the pla-net, future generations stand no chance. The short-term interests of the powerful always prevail.

If the West continues to feed the self-ab-sorbed greed of the wealthy, it is all of hu-manity that will ultimately pay the price.

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

Earth’s unthinkable future