ENGLISH EDITION/The artillery of ideas INTERNATIONALFriday, May 17, 2013 | Nº 158 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve

Nicolas Maduro:a President for the workers

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro met with the workers of a socialist brick factory last Saturday in the central state of Miranda as part of his government’s push to boost productive enterprises and expand grassroots democracy around the South American na-tion. During a “popular assembly”, Maduro praised the workers of the February 27 brick factory, a joint enterprise founded with Venezuelan and Belarusian capital, for their pro-ductivity and contribution to nation’s holistic development plan. page2

FAO praises Venezuela’s commitment to food security

T/ AVN

On Monday, the United Na-tions Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) repre-sentative in Venezuela, Mar-celo Resende, praised “the behavior, positions and com-mitment of the government of Venezuela in the area of food and nutritional securi-ty, not only in terms of rheto-ric, but as a comprehensive component of its policy of in-ternational cooperation”.

A press release published by the FAO notes that Re-sende highlighted a quote by Venezuelan President Nico-las Maduro, who, during his swearing-in ceremony on April 19, said: “FAO ambas-sador, in my government we will continue with Chavez’s legacy: ‘zero hunger.’ We will do what needs to be done”.

Last week President Ma-duro toured Uruguay, Ar-gentina and Brazil, all mem-ber countries of the Common Market of the South (Merco-sur), where he signed new accords related to food and nutritional security.

“This demonstrates the Venezuelan government’s commitment to the topic and strengthens cooperation in the matter”, Resende said.

Moreover, he highlighted “the strengthening of tech-nical capacity for the devel-opment of agriculture in the country, as well as the sup-portive commercial trade in food between sister nations”.

“The agreements under-taken by the government prioritize food sovereignty through two methods: im-proving domestic agricul-ture production by promot-ing an exchange of technical expertise with neighboring countries; and promoting fair and supportive inter-national trade of food from family and small [farmers]”, the press release stated.

Venezuela & China fortify ties

Venezuela and the People’s Republic of China took a further step forward in strengthening their bilateral relations last Monday when Vice President Li Yuancho visited the Caribbean country as part of his recent tour of South America. Four new accords were signed between the governments of Caracas and Beijing during the visit involving hydrocarbon, petrochemical, telecommunication and mineral development in Venezuela. page 3

Integration

Mercosur AdvancesPresident Nicolas Maduro underscored the importance for Venezuela of his recent South America trip. page 3

Economy

Economic warFood shortages in Venezuela are due to sabotage from private companies, says government. page 4

Interview

Muslim in Venezuela

Venezuela’s muslim community speaks out about the nation’s diversity. page 6

Protest New York Times Bias

A group of prominent US academics including Noam Chomsky are calling on the New York Ti-mes to improve its coverage of Venezuela by using less biased language, outlined in a petition to the newspaper’s public editor on Tuesday.

The petition laments the NYT’s disproportionately negative portrayal of the late President Hugo Chavez and the country in general.

It states that despite the fact that Venezuela is a democracy, “In the past four years, the NYT has referred to Chavez as an “autocrat”, “despot”, “au-thoritarian ruler” and a “caudillo” in its news cove-rage. When opinion pieces are included, the NYT has published at least fifteen separate articles employing such language, depicting Chavez as a “dictator” or “strongman”.

The petition points out that Venezuela has held numerous and fair elections in recent years, and that observers including former President Jimmy Carter have praised Venezuela’s elections as “the best in the world”.

“We urge you to examine this disparity in coverage and language use”, the academics conclude.

Analysis

The real importanceof Maduro’s victory in Venezuela page 7

Opinion

Obama’s legacy: secrecy, drones, prisons & kill lists page 8

The artillery of ideas2 Impact | Friday, May 17, 2013

T/ COIP/ Presidential Press

Venezuelan President Ni-colas Maduro met with the workers of a socialist

brick factory last Saturday in the central state of Miranda as part of his government’s push to boost productive enterprises and expand grassroots democ-racy around the South Ameri-can nation.

The gathering marked the closure of 10 days of meetings in Miranda that saw high ranking officials dialogue with activ-ists, residents and workers over how to improve government ef-ficiency at the local level.

During a “popular assembly”, Maduro praised the workers of the February 27 brick factory, a joint enterprise founded with Venezuelan and Belarusian capital, for their productivity and contribution to nation’s ho-listic development plan.

The factory, named after the date in 1989 when major cit-ies around Venezuela rose up against the neoliberal austerity measures imposed by the Inter-national Monetary Fund, has contributed over a million boli-vars ($160,000) in 2012 profits to the government’s Socialist Ef-ficiency national development fund.

“[The monetary contribution] is a product of the efforts that all of us workers have made

Venezuelan government expands presencein Miranda, approves new public works

to maintain this factory”, said Mirla Echeverria, the manager of quality control at the plant which employs 228.

President Maduro informed that the funds received would be directed towards new schools, medical centers and “public works for the homeland”.

In addition to funding other programs, the bricks produced in the February 27 factory are supplying the government’s Mission Housing Venezuela, a far-reaching social program that has constructed over 200,000 new homes for low in-come residents since its incep-tion in 2011.

Production capacity of the plant is currently 25 million bricks a year, a number that will increase by an additional 15 mil-lion as a result of greater state fi-nancing approved by the Maduro administration on Saturday.

Of the increased public funds, $34 million will provide the fac-tory with new machinery and the ability to amplify its pro-duction to meet the needs of the government’s housing push.

President Maduro referred to the February 27 facility as “one of the miracles left by Co-mandante Hugo Chavez here on earth” and hailed the prog-ress being made in the con-struction sector as a result of similar initiatives.

“This is possible because [for-mer] President Hugo Chavez left

a perfect system of collection and distribution of resources at different levels to finance our works”, the successor of the re-cently deceased socialist leader asserted.

The Venezuelan head of state commented that it is through concrete, productive enterpris-es that government supporters are combating the violence re-cently employed by right-wing activists in the country.

“We’re defeating fascism by constructing factories, hospi-tals, strengthening education for children. We’re defeating their hatred with love”, he declared.

COMMITMENT TO MIRANDAAs part of his visit, Maduro

signed a document called the Miranda Commitment that ar-ticulates his administration’s dedication to improving living standards for residents of the central state.

The document is the product of the different governmen-tal work groups that, through street assemblies and work-shops devised an extensive plan to tackle the problems of insecurity, public health, and education in the region.

“Each minister, each govern-mental team, each municipal-ity knows what the tasks are in their respective areas”, Maduro said of the document, which outlines 135 directives.

Miranda is currently gov-erned by opposition leader Henrique Capriles, the losing candidate in the nation’s presi-dential elections on April 14th, held after the passing of Hugo Chavez.

Since his electoral defeat, the head of the Justice First political party has been orchestrating an international campaign to not recognize the popular vote that resulted in Maduro’s victory.

Critics of the Miranda Gover-nor have accused that Capriles’ campaign to sully the national government has led him to abandon his legal duties in his state.

TRANSPORTATION& OTHER SERVICES

Maduro’s government re-inforced his commitment to Miranda by allocating more than $2 billion to the con-struction of new mass transit projects that will cover parts of the capital Caracas that share territory with the cen-tral state.

The works will include cable cars to join outlining areas with downtown, additional metro lines, and the construction of a railway to link Caracas with the suburban region of Guatire in Miranda.

Environmental Minister Dante Rivas, also present for Saturday’s meeting, reported that waste collection in the shantytowns of Petare, one of Latin American’s largest slums, is a priority for the so-cialist government.

“We are committed to clean-ing all of Petare in the coming weeks and we’re going to con-vert it into a healthy and eco-logical city”, Rivas said.

As a result of the govern-ment’s Plan of Immediate Ac-tion, 780 tons of solid waste were already been removed for the streets of the barrio.

Rivas informed that 130 com-munity workers and 30 dump trucks with be deployed to car-ry out further mass sanitation efforts.

GUARANTEEING SAFETYWith respect to security,

President Maduro affirmed the assistance of the country’s armed forces in helping to com-bat the crime that continues to afflict the impoverished neigh-borhoods of Miranda.

“Our special plan Secure Homeland begins on Monday. It’s the plan of the National Bolivarian Armed Forces tak-ing to the streets to protect the people, all of the people, as a civic-military union”, the head of state declared.

Some three thousand secu-rity officers will be put at the disposition of the plan in the two areas of Miranda that have become the “most dangerous in the country”, Maduro said.

Following its work in Miran-da, the security strategy will be expanded to other parts of Ca-racas to ramp up public safety and assist community mem-bers by guaranteeing access to basic services, the Venezuelan president explained.

The artillery of ideasFriday, May 17, 2013 | Integration 3

T/ COIP/ Presidential Press

Venezuela and the People’s Republic of China took a further step forward in

strengthening their bilateral relations last Monday when Vice President Li Yuancho vis-ited the Caribbean country as part of his recent tour of South America.

“We have come to amplify our political similarities as well as our areas of cooperation, recip-rocal benefit, and shared prof-its”, said VP Li upon arriving at the Presidential Palace of Mira-flores in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas.

Li was met by President Ni-colas Maduro and his execu-tive cabinet in order to advance projects that will “satisfy the essential needs of our people”, wrote Venezuela’s second-in-command, Vice President Jorge Arreaza via his Twitter account.

Four new accords were inked between the governments of Caracas and Beijing during the visit involving hydrocarbon, petrochemical, telecommunica-tion and mineral development in Venezuela.

Importantly, the two allies agreed to a proposal for the construction of a new port in the central state of Carabobo near Venezuela’s Pequiven

Venezuela-China relationsgrow following VP’s visit

chemical plant that forms part of the nation’s publicly owned oil company Pdvsa.

A contract outlining the fi-nancing of the project by the Import and Export Bank of Chi-na was signed by the two lead-ers in order to define the terms of the port’s construction.

“Our industry will have a new maritime port to provide services to the ammonium and urea [Pequiven] plant. As such, we will continue to project growth in our petrochemical [sector]”, the Venezuelan Presi-dent said.

Further agreements were penned that will tighten Ven-ezuela-China collaboration in telecommunications and tech-nology, including the manu-facture of cellular phones and circuitry for computers.

“This visit has been very fruitful. We will never forget the loving support that Chi-na gave to our Comandante [Chavez]. We will be loyal to the work that has been done”, Maduro said after the dialogue.

Chinese-Venezuelan relations have been growing steadily since 1999, when the President Hugo Chavez began to imple-ment a new foreign policy for the South American country that seeks to expand trade part-ners internationally and move away from dependency on the United States.

This policy shift is slated to continue under the Maduro gov-ernment following the former Foreign Minister of the Chavez administration’s victory in Ven-ezuela’s April 14th elections.

According to the recently-elected President, his country’s relationship with China is “a strategic alliance for shared de-velopment which began at zero and now passes $10 billion in commercial trade”.

Apart from trade, Maduro also informed that intellectual exchanges form an essential part of the alliance.

As such, a group of 50 Ven-ezuelans will be sent to China to study economic initiatives in key areas “to encourage develop-ment of [our] productive forces”.

Members of the United So-cialist Party of Venezuela will also travel to the Asian nation to receive social and political training from members of the Chinese Communist Party.

The move is meant to pro-mote dialogue and fortify the push for a new breed of social-ism in the OPEC member na-tion following the example set by Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez.

“We are convinced that So-cialism of the 21st Century is the path to social, economic, educational, cultural, human and holistic prosperity in Ven-ezuela”, Maduro declared.

T/ COIP/ Presidential Press

During an exclusive interview with Telesur last Sunday,

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro underscored the eco-nomic advances that will ben-efit the Caribbean nation as a result of his recent tour to Ar-gentina, Uruguay and Brazil.

The socialist President’s vis-it to the member nations of the Common Market of the South (Mercosur) alliance yielded 51 new trade pacts that, accord-ing to the head of state, will triple Venezuela’s productive capacity.

Key among the accords are deals that will see Venezuela strengthen its agricultural and food processing infrastructure.

“This tour has succeeded in advancing our cooperation so that Venezuela becomes a country that produces its own food, guarantees stability and food security from Venezuelan land”, Maduro said during the interview.

The comments came as Venezuelans face shortages of certain basic products, which the president has attributed to private sector hoarding and “sabotage from the Venezu-elan bourgeoisie”.

In order to combat the scar-cities and panic shopping that exacerbates the situa-tion, Maduro announced new government initiatives that will assist in the distribution of products like corn flour, a Venezuelan staple, to super-markets around the nation.

Part of these measures will include addressing the failure of the company Empresas Po-lar, the largest food supplier in Venezuela, to adequately en-sure the distribution of staple products in the country.

“[Empresas] Polar had its warehouses full on Friday and didn’t distribute during the

Maduro highlights Mercosuradvances, food security initiatives

weekend”, Maduro said, add-ing that the head of the com-pany, Lorenzo Mendoza, “has no excuses” for withholding basic commodities.

In addition to the food secu-rity measures, the Venezuelan government signed a series of agreements that will increase energy, technology and media cooperation between Merco-sur members.

These include pacts that will see collaboration on the manu-facturing of electric transform-ers with Uruguay and the con-struction, with Argentina, of 200 new factories that will fur-ther the presence of agricultur-al machinery in Venezuelan.

Argentina will also pro-vide technological assistance necessary for the diffusion of digital television in the Carib-bean nation.

Maduro pointed out that trade pacts between his coun-try and Mercosur members currently total $11 billion in activity, with Brazil repre-senting the greatest commer-cial partner at $6 billion.

The head of state’s meeting with his Brazilian counter-part Dilma Roussef on May 9th advanced this relationship by laying the groundwork for the construction in Venezuela of a coke processing plant and a fertilizer factory.

The fertilizer factory will be built by the Brazilian firm Odebrecht and will have the capacity to process 1.5 million tons of urea a year.

“Mercosur is one of the emerging regions of the new world. Together we’re the fifth largest economy in the world and by the end of this decade we’ll be the fourth”, Maduro said of the growing alliance.

“What binds us is a relation-ship of brotherhood and the our concern for the future of all of our nations’ people”, he affirmed.

The artillery of ideas4 Economy | Friday, May 17, 2013

T/ Chris CarlsonP/ Presidential Press

During a speech on Satur-day, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro blamed

food shortages on an “economic war” from the Venezuelan pri-vate sector, and assured the government is taking measures to resolve the issue.

Shortages of basic food items have been felt across the coun-try in recent months, with Ven-ezuela’s Central Bank reporting for the month of April the high-est level of shortages since 2009.

Economists cite a lack of for-eign exchange, price controls, and a fiscal deficit as the pri-mary causes for the shortages, while the government cites high levels of consumption and economic sabotage from Ven-ezuela’s private sector.

“We have many indicators that [Venezuela’s largest food company] Polar has been re-ducing their production and hoarding products in order to create scarcity”, said Maduro on Saturday.

Maduro demanded to know why the company has been re-ducing their production and publicly called on the owner of the company, Lorenzo Mendoza, to a meeting with him on Tues-day to explain the situation.

“He has to demonstrate that they are producing in line with the law and the constitution, because otherwise we will take firm action”, he said.

The government has sought to resolve some shortages by increasing food imports from Mercosur countries like Brazil.

Food Minister Felix Osorio assured on Saturday that Ven-ezuela would be financing the import of 700,000 tons of food from Mercosur countries in the coming days.

President Maduro’s recent visit to several Mercosur coun-tries included the signing of several agreements to import food from within the trade block, as well as to acquire aid in improving Venezuela’s do-mestic production.

“Our goal is to produce the food that we consume and transform Venezuela into an ex-porting powerhouse. To do that we are going to try new models and methods of production with the help of Brazil”, said Maduro while in Brazil on Thursday.

Venezuela’s President Maduro assures foodshortages are due to “economic warfare”

Maduro announced that Bra-zil would help Venezuela set up various food and fertilizer plants in Venezuela, but in the short term Venezuela will im-port a greater amount of food from its southern neighbor.

DISAPPEARING DOLLARSOpposition representatives

assure the shortages are due to a lack of foreign exchange,

a product of excessive spend-ing in 2012 that left the govern-ment without enough dollars to meet the growing demand for imports.

But the government claims that the dollars that are ap-proved for food imports are being stolen by private sector speculation.

“The government has to be very careful and evaluate how

many millions of dollars are be-ing given to the private sector to import food because we are confronting an economic war”, said Maduro.

“It is painful to give the country’s foreign exchange to a group of shameless compa-nies that steal people’s mon-ey”, he said.

Government officials said that there would be dialogue

with the Venezuelan private sector in order to combat the problem.

Representatives from the pri-vate sector point to government price controls and the bureau-cracy that surrounds currency exchange controls as the root of the problem.

The government has said it is working to speed up the pro-cess for companies to access the foreign exchange they need to import goods.

“We are going to discuss the problem of foreign exchange and price controls this week and we hope to give a report to President Maduro on the mea-sures needed to resolve this problem”, said Food Minister Felix Osorio.

The Venezuelan government maintains price controls on a range of basic goods in order to assure the poorest sectors can afford them.

Many of these prices have not been adjusted for more than a year, creating complaints from the private sector that claim it is increasingly unfeasible to produce the regulated goods.

The price controls in Venezu-ela also have created a problem of smuggling food into neigh-boring Colombia where it can fetch higher prices.

Minister Osorio assured, how-ever, that the problem would be solved in the coming months.

“We will be resolving the problem in less than 60 days. A dialogue has been opened with the private sector”, he said.

T/ Paul DobsonP/ Agencies

Venezuelan President Nico-las Maduro and his cabinet

unveiled numerous measures to address one of the issues which is considered to have ac-counted for an increased vote for opposition forces in the re-cent elections: food shortages. Measures were unveiled to ad-dress the problem both in the immediate, medium, and long term.

President Maduro explained that his cabinet has “made a superior plan to continue ad-vancing… with a combination of economic actions which we are working through, many of which are already on their way, we are going to see economic growth and a control of infla-tion, as well as the full stocking of (food) products in the second semester of this year”.

Government addresses falteringfood production levels

In recent months Venezuelans have seen a sharp increase in food shortages on market shelves, in-cluding vital goods such as cook-ing oil, flour, margarine, toilet paper, toothpaste, and milk. The government has repeatedly cited stockpiling and artificially cre-ated shortages, caused by the private sector, which continues to dominate food production, and which is tightly allied to the political opposition that ex-ploits such problems. Numerous private warehouses have been found full with such products, stockpiled for months, while ob-vious shortages on the shelves have hit the population.

Minister for Alimentation, Felix Osorio, announced this week that 760,000 tons of basic food products will arrive from Brazil and Argentina to rein-force the alimentary reserve stocks of the nation, which cur-rently sit at 20,000 tons.

The products, which include cooking oil, powdered milk, meat, tuna, sugar, and flour, and cost the government over $600 million, will contribute to the stated goal of raising the current reserves of food prod-ucts to 2.3 million tons, which is equivalent to 3 months of consumption.

Increasing such reserves will allow Venezuela to feed it’s population regardless of future cases of economic sabotage or decreased production levels, stockpiling, or artificially cre-ated shortages.

Vice President Jorge Arreaza also unveiled numerous eco-nomic measures that will stim-ulate agricultural production “for the coming years”. Such measures include the invest-ment of $317 million to finance production of over 1,000 hect-ares of vegetables and a large state subsidy to sugar produc-ers worth $122 million.

The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Na-tions (FAO) recently commend-ed Venezuela on its agricultural policies and advances made in combatting hunger.

The artillery of ideasFriday, May 17, 2013 | Politics 5

T/ Ryan Mallett-OuttrimP/ Presidential Press

Venezuela’s growing rela-tionship with China isn’t just commercial- it’s also

a cornerstone of the struggle against US imperialism.

After meeting with Vice President Jorge Arreaza, on Monday Chinese Vice Presi-dent Li Yuanchao told the press that his government re-mains committed to increas-ing cooperation with Caracas.

During Li’s visit, a number of new agreements were signed between Venezuela and China; mostly in the areas of energy and technology.

Petroleos de Venezuela (Pd-vsa) and the Export-Import Bank of China agreed to pur-sue the development of a new industrial port in Carabobo state, while the Ministry for Science and Technology signed a series of new deals with Chi-nese telecommunications com-pany Huawei.

Chinese experts will also provide economic advice to Venezuelan officials looking to raise productivity.

During his visit, Li also pro-posed a four-point plan for de-veloping bilateral relations in the long term.

According to Chinese state news agency Xinhua, Li urged for greater cooperation in stra-tegic areas such as energy, ag-riculture, construction and technology. He also spoke of the need for more cultural and political exchange between the two countries, as well as a greater focus from Beijing on regional stability and the interests of the developing world.

Li’s proposal reflects Chinese global ambitions. Through-out much of the global south, China is becoming an increas-ingly significant player. No-where is this more apparent than in Africa, where Chinese investment mushroomed over the last decade; according to Africa observer Chris Alden, China overtook the US as the continent’s largest trade part-ner in 2009.

“China’s engagement with Africa is arguably the most momentous development in the continent over the last de-

Sino-Venezuelan relations:not business as usual

cade”, according to the spokes-person in Kenya’s Chinese Embassy, Shifan Wu.

However, while China has benefited from increased trade

with Africa, in recent years Beijing has become more vo-cal of the need for greater rep-resentation of developing na-tions in international bodies.

T/ Eugenio Martinez

One month ago Venezuelans went to the polls to elect a

president after Hugo Chavez’s untimely death. Nicolas Ma-duro, Chavez’s chosen suc-cessor, and his opponent, Henrique Capriles, had spent 34 days campaigning as they attempted to woo voters and guide Venezuela’s future.

Maduro, representing the Chavista movement, was ex-pected to win easily, and few anticipated that his margin of victory would be a narrow 1.83%.

The slim margin propelled Capriles on a quest for lost votes, a crusade to try and prove electoral irregulari-ties and cast doubt on the outcome.

Venezuela employs one of the most technologically ad-

Venezuela’s election system holdsup as a model for the world

Not only is China support-ing African voices in the inter-national arena (The new $200 million African Union head-quarters in Addis Ababa was entirely funded with Chinese cash), but it’s also backing re-gional alternatives to US hege-mony in Latin America.

When the Community of Latin American and Caribbe-an States (CELAC) was found-ed in December 2011, former Chinese president Hu Jintao was the first head of state from outside the hemisphere to con-gratulate the organization’s founders.

According to a 2012 study from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, Latin America is drawing more Chinese investment than ever before. Since 2008, Chinese investment in the region has surpassed that of the World Bank, Inter-American Bank and US Import-Export bank combined; Venezuela being one of the largest recipients.

China’s increasing invest-ment in Latin America, and support for regional alterna-tives to US dominated bodies like the Organization of Amer-ican States (OAS) is evidently perceived by Washington as a threat to its hegemony.

Since announcing its “pivot to Asia” last year, the Obama administration has undertak-en to transfer 10% of its naval assets from the Atlantic to the Pacific. When he announced the pivot, then US Defense Sec-

vanced verifiable voting sys-tems in the world, designed to protect voters from fraud and tampering and ensure the ac-curacy of the vote count. Ac-curacy and integrity are guar-anteed from the minute voters walk into the polls to the point where a final tally is revealed.

The system Venezuela uses has some of the most advanced and voter-friendly security features in modern elections. Voters use a touch-sensitive electronic pad to make and con-firm their choices. After confir-mation, the electronic vote is encrypted and randomly stored in the machine’s memories. Voters audit their own vote by reviewing a printed receipt that they then place into a physical ballot box.

At the end of Election Day, each voting machine com-putes and prints an official

tally, called a precinct count. It transmits an electronic copy of the precinct count to the serv-ers in the National Electoral Council’s central facility, where overall totals are computed.

By mutual agreement be-tween the contenders, 52.98% of the ballot boxes are chosen at random, opened, and their tal-lies compared with the corre-sponding precinct counts. This audit step ensures that no vote manipulation has occurred at the polling place. The extent of this audit, the widest in au-tomatic elections, leaves little room for questioning.

The series of tests before, during, and after a Venezu-elan election is thorough and intense, conducted in the pres-ence of election officials and po-litical parties to ensure proper functionality and full confi-dence in the system. When it comes to elections, Venezuela has become a highly advanced nation of auditors, with the most advanced audit tools at its disposal and a voting process

that is as transparent as any in the world.

Even though the election to succeed Chavez was an-nounced with only 34 days to campaign and organize the election mechanics, the Na-tional Electoral Council and Smartmatic, the company that developed the highly-so-phisticated voting machines and the technology support-ing them, managed to perform more than 12 audits on the vot-ing platform, many in front of both Capriles’ and Maduro’s representatives.

Like any candidate who suffers a narrow defeat at the polls, Mr. Capriles is entitled to keep his dream alive. He can continue trying to prove that somehow the outcome was affected by a corrupt electoral ecosystem. In a na-tion of auditors and entirely transparent election mechan-ics, that quest is certainly his right, but his chance of chang-ing the election’s outcome is very slim.

retary Leon Panetta denied that the policy was “some kind of challenge to China”, though China’s defense white paper (released last month) indicates Beijing isn’t convinced.

The pivot will put six US aircraft carrier battle groups on China’s doorstep- not ex-actly a placating overture. The policy indicates that the Obama administration views China’s rise as a threat- and rightly so.

As the Embassy of Venezuela in China stated last June, both China and Venezuela “oppose imperialism, hegemony and colonialism... and encourage multi-polarity”.

However, as US Secretary of State John Kerry indicated last month, Washington con-tinues to view Latin America as its “backyard”, rather than as a region charting its own destiny.

Just like Kerry’s vocabulary, Washington’s treatment of its southern neighbors remains mired in imperialist notions of superiority and righteousness; a stark comparison to Beijing’s calls for multi-polarity.

For now, China is beginning to pose threat to imperialist hegemony in Latin America. As President Nicolas Maduro stated, “relations between China and Venezuela are ... on equal terms”.

For a continent that has been subjugated by colonialism for five centuries, this isn’t busi-ness as usual.

The artillery of ideas6 Interview | Friday, May 17, 2013

T/ Jody McintyreP/ Agencies

The Sheikh Al-Ibrahim Mosque, situated across the road from a Lebanese

church in the Caracas neigh-borhood of Colegio de Ingeneri-os, is the second largest in Latin America. The dome and mina-ret tower way above surround-ing buildings, visible against the sky from miles away. For Muslims, the Friday midday prayer is obligatory to be held in congregation, and many hundreds gather at the Caracas mosque to listen to the khutbah, or weekly lecture, before pray-ing together. Muslims are still a small minority in terms of the Venezuelan population, but the Chavez government’s, and now Maduro’s international policies have often touched issues of major importance to Muslims across the world.

I am sitting with Ahmed at the bottom of the steps which lead up to the mosque itself, and he is eager to talk. “I have a story to tell”, he says, grinning enthusiastically, running his fingers through a full beard. “My mother’s family are from Venezuela, and my father’s are originally from Iran, but me... I’m Venezuelan! My grandpar-ents were in the war of indepen-dence here, which always fills me with pride”.

There is much more to Ahmed’s story than I had first expected. He spent the years of his early adulthood working in the Venezuelan navy, but wants to go back further.

“I remember, during the ca-racazo”, Ahmed begins, “I was 18 years old. I know how old I was because at that time I was secretary of the Youth of the Venezuelan Communist Party. We were struggling for the edu-cation of the people. This isn’t a joke or a lie, because at that time there was little possibility of studying, and it was difficult to get access to a job.

However, we were living in a country that had been exploit-ing petroleum resources since the 1960s. They called us Ven-ezuela Saudita. I will never understand how, at that time, this country had a debt with the IMF. They said it was to “oxygenate” the economy. In fact, all the basic companies were being sold off; Veneluz, Cantv, as well as the air com-pany Conviasa. International companies were coming and taking the petroleum for a very cheap price. It was like a gift back then. But the govern-ment wasn’t investing in agri-culture or health. So, the ca-racazo happened because of an

An interview with Venezuela’smuslim communityeconomic crash. There were people profiting, yes, but only a select group, a sector who had studied at the Central Univer-sity of Venezuela or outside the country. Poor people just had to accept it; we didn’t have the right to be recognized. So, a critical point arrived”.

I meet a man I have known as Rafik at the La Bandera metro station, and we travel together to a shopping mall situated just off of Avenida Los Proceres. “This used to be exclusively for people in the military”, he tells me, “but now, it’s open to every-one”. Rafik goes to the mosque every single evening, despite his old age and the distance he has to travel. “Of course I do”, he says, by way of explanation, “I see it as a gift from God”.

We sit down in a restaurant to speak, and within minutes, I can see tears falling from the eyes of Rafik, or Rafael as he was born. He has to pause for long periods on several occasions, as he is overwhelmed with the emotion that comes from reflecting on an eventful life.

“My name is Jose Rafael Or-tez”, he begins, “I’m from Cara-cas, and I’m 69 years old.

Four years after I was born, in 1948, we were living under the government of Marcos Perez Jimenez. Venezuela was a country of potential. In 1958, when he was defeated, Ven-ezuela was on the path to be a country free of the oppressions of other countries. It was sup-posed to be the arrival of par-ticipatory democracy, when AD and Copei took possession of the country. It was a very strong change for the people with little resources. The people in eco-nomic power took everything from the country.

I served two years in the mili-tary service, from ’64 to ’66. We were with the guerrillas, trying to paralyze the government of Raul Leoni. There were many conflicts in the mountains.

From 1968 until 1997 I was living in the United States. In those years I didn’t pay much attention to Venezuelan poli-tics, because I was working and trying to live. But when

I returned to Venezuela, and started working here as an English teacher, I met up with Chavez, and I felt that he was a great man. A person with good intentions for the coun-try and its citizens. When he was elected in 1998, I was in the US again, but I came back for his inauguration. Many of his efforts were for the people who didn’t have re-sources, or education. In the past, it was difficult to go out and buy trousers, or a pair of shoes. The people of the field might just have a second-hand pair, because it cost too much otherwise. President Chavez brought things people never had before.

President Chavez worked for peace, but President Obama in the US doesn’t appear to have done the same. There are many examples of this; in his first mandate, he promised to close Guantanamo Bay, but he never achieved that. The US have launched so many wars in recent years, and Obama has done nothing to stop this mad-

ness. The Empire always wants to make situations worse, and even my own country is an ex-ample of this. They attacked Chavez for his entire fourteen years in power, simply for the fact that he didn’t deliver the Venezuela they desired. The continent of Africa is another example, where there is such richness, but also such misery, because some of the leaders have been bought by the North American economic power. There is a small group there who never see the poverty of their people.

The opposition in Venezuela, in their majority, are the chil-dren of the people of those who had a lot of economic power. That is why the majority of us, the people, voted for Maduro, so that we can continue living in a better way”.

Ahmed also feels that the rise of the Chavista movement signalled a profound change in Venezuelan politics. “All of the governments before Chavez were repressive and excluded us”, Ahmed tells me. “So when Chavez arrived, he began to get rid of the old politics. The enemy is much bigger than Capriles. We are fighting against a huge mon-ster, the beast of neo-liberal-ism, and Capriles is just one tentacle.

There’s a great call in the world where people are saying, ‘we have the right to self-deter-mination’. Twenty-first centu-ry socialism is about universal, humanistic principles. In fact, more than being a President, Chavez was a history profes-sor. He spoke about how our independence was won; who were our heroes; who was Boli-var? In the sense of believing in peace, and believing in equal-ity, there are similarities with the principles of Islam. In fact, it was Simon Bolivar himself who once said:

‘It would be better, I think, for South America to adopt the Qu’ran rather than the United States form of government’”.

“In 1999, when I returned to Venezuela”, Rafik tells me, “I met a woman who was a mu-sic teacher, and who is now my wife. We met a friend of hers, a Muslim man from Pakistan. The same year I met another Pakistani man called Said, and he gave me a book which I read. I went to the mosque dur-ing Ramadan, and it appeared to me to be something different to other religions. I met many Muslims there, I read the Qu’ran, and it was sincere... truthful. That same year, 1999, I became Muslim. Thanks to God, I became Muslim”.

The artillery of ideas Friday, May 17, 2013 | Analysis 7

T/ Asa CusackP/ Agencies

This weekend the legacy of Hugo Chavez has been raked over the coals one

last time, but the same old stats on poverty, inflation, and crime miss the real story. Chavez’s success is as much about how the poor feel about their place in society as it is about improvements in their material conditions. Accord-ing to pollster Oscar Schemel, these days “it’s not enough to present a discourse offering food and employment; people want dignity”. Depictions of Chavez supporters as wacky, warm-blooded stooges over-look this factor, yet it under-pins the remarkable longevity of Chavismo, most recently reflected in the victory of Ni-colas Maduro.

INSIDE THE BARRIO, OUTSIDE SOCIETY

To really understand the im-pact of Chavez’s election in 1999 we have to go back in time. The former missionary Charles Hardy spent eight years in the pre-Chavez barrios (shanty-towns), and his memoir Cowboy in Caracas provides a striking account of what life was like for Venezuela’s majority urban poor. It’s a grim picture of every-day humiliations like throwing parcels of excrement down the hillside, mounting tension as water trucks fail to materialise, and shoot-to-kill repression of unrest. Within the barrios the state was an absence or a threat;

within the state the barrios, en-tirely absent from official maps, didn’t even exist.

Under Chavez the barri-os were charted and formalized, the title deeds going to their in-habitants. While problems with basic services persist, they are reduced, and crucially there ex-ists the will to tackle them. One lesser-known social program (Barrio Tricolor) beautified poor areas by repainting houses in the colors of the Venezuelan flag. Past governments liked to pre-tend the barrios didn’t exist. On the other hand, Chavez said, “we know there are problems, but these are your homes and they are nothing to be ashamed of”.

CULTURE, EDUCATION& ASPIRATION

Just as Chavez made it ac-ceptable to live in a barrio in-stead of the gilded-cage apart-ment blocks preferred by the wealthy, his own unlikely as-cent validated “Venezuelan-ness” itself.

In pre-Chavez Venezuela as in wider Latin America, model states and societies were to be found across the pond in Eu-rope or across the Rio Grande in America. The more western ideas, diplomas, brands, and af-fectations you could get your hands on, the better you were doing. For the same reason, the barrios were seen as a third-world urban stain, whereas grand boulevards and futuris-tic skyways represented prog-ress; they now make Caracas a sprawling, gridlocked hell. Poli-tics was dominated by nice men

in suits who cordially agreed to share power at every election, in line with the terms of their pact (of Punto Fijo, 1958). This was no place for a poor, afro-indigenous soldier with a habit of getting angry about things or breaking into llanera folk songs. And yet, in 1999 there he was slipping on the presidential sash.

This in itself would be enough to make Chavez a folk hero and inspiration, but there is more to it. Aside from revelling in Ven-ezuelan culture and reviling cultural imperialism, he was committed to nurturing intel-lectual development and politi-cal consciousness.

The bizarre antics and fiery speeches that made it into the foreign press were less common than his musings on whatever philosophical, historical, or liter-ary text he happened to be read-ing (for he was always reading something). In a country that’s not afraid of a bit of self-aggran-dizement, he explored and ex-plained without condescension. Articles about Chavez routine-ly fixate on his fixation with The Great Liberator, Simon Bolivar, but he was equally fond of Boli-var’s Rousseau-loving tutor, Si-mon Rodriguez, and it showed.

It is a commonplace to note that illiteracy was taken to the verge of extinction by another social program, Mision Robin-son. Less well-known is the fact that in Latin America books are prohibitively expensive, and lit-eracy will only do you so much good if you can’t afford a book. Successive Chavez administra-tions used subsidies and state

publishing houses to democra-tize access to the materials of culture and education. Taking from my shelf comparable texts purchased in Venezuela and Ec-uador, I find that the Venezuelan one cost less than $1.50, the Ecua-dorian one nearly $8. This is not unrepresentative, and Ecuador’s lower GDP per capita makes the real difference even starker.

In a society more accustomed to hyper-consumerism and rum-ba (partying), Chavez tried to provide the example, the encour-agement, and the means for peo-ple to educate themselves.

Babette’s Feast with the Refu-gees at the State Oil Company

One bizarre moment from my time in Venezuela illustrates per-fectly these changes in the state’s posture towards the disadvan-taged, from distance and disdain to acceptance and advancement.

Before Chavez, the state oil company Pdvsa operated as a “state within a state”, run for their own benefit by the econom-ic, managerial, and technical elites that populated its impos-ing headquarters in Caracas. As any old article will tell you, after the top brass were removed for orchestrating a strike that wiped billions off the country’s GDP, Chavez made Pdvsa the executor of wide-ranging social program that have greatly improved health and education.

But devastating floods in late 2010 revealed that the shift was cultural as well as operational. With thousands made home-less the Pdvsa HQ - like other government buildings, includ-ing the presidential palace -

was turned into a temporary shelter. State institutions that would once have gone to great lengths to intimidate through studied cultural distance were put into the service of the most vulnerable. Beyond putting a roof over refugees’ heads, they hosted meetings, workshops, and cultural events.

And so it was that after in-terviewing some oil official or other I found myself in a cavern-ous Pdvsa auditorium watching foreign-language cinema with as ragtag a sample of Venezuelan society as you could hope to see. With the best equipment money can buy, in plush surroundings once reserved for well-oiled ex-ecutives, I sat down with a low-ranking soldier, an old man or two, and a handful of riotous, track-suited refugees to watch the Franco-Danish rumination on sensuality Babette’s Feast.

And so what? Did the screen-ing change their lives? Perhaps not, but it was not a one-off and it certainly had more impact than no screening at all. More signifi-cant than the event itself was the fact that the state considered this audience worthy of access not only to “high culture”, but also to the literal corridors of power. Symbolically it was saying “the arts and institutions from which you were excluded are yours and you are worthy of them”. This is fundamental to the socio-polit-ical inclusion that really could make a difference long-term. It would have been inconceivable before Chavez.

TROPICALISMO,RATIONALITY & DIGNITY

The foreign media have re-mained blind to these changes, simply supplementing the usual “populist buys votes of the poor” line with a new “Maduro plays up spirituality to Chavez-obsessed electorate” trope that trivializes support for Maduro while ap-pearing to explain it: “Y’know, it’s those wacky, warm-blooded, and irrational - if not downright stupid - Venezuelans!”

The prosaic reality, in Venezu-ela as in every other country, is that political affiliation is a fuzzy mix of self-interest, ideology, and emotion. After years of being tol-erated at best, at worst ignored, is it any wonder that Venezuela’s poor revere the first president to care about them and give them confidence in themselves?

As a presumably serious, cold-blooded, rational European - atheist, educated, and entirely disinterested too - I’m also glad that Chavez’s project will con-tinue. Whatever the faults of Chavez, Maduro, and their party, they have been a vast improve-ment on the bad old days.

Babette’s feast with the refugees at Pdvsa:The real importance of Maduro’s victory in Venezuela

Editor-in-Chief Graphic Design Pablo Valduciel L. - Aimara Aguilera - Audra Ramones

INTERNATIONAL Friday, May 17, 2013 | Nº 158 | Caracas | www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve

T/ Alyssa Rohricht

On Monday, the Associated Press revealed the US De-partment of Justice used

subpoenas to obtain phone re-cords of its editors and report-ers from April and May 2012. The records were obtained due to the investigation and sup-posed leak to the AP last year that the CIA had ”thwarted an ambitious plot by al-Qaeda’s af-filiate in Yemen to destroy a US-bound airliner using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniver-sary of the killing of Osama bin Laden”. The piece also notes that AP had received informa-tion regarding the thwarted plot the week previous to pub-lishing, but had agreed per re-quests by the White House and the CIA to hold the information because the “sensitive intel-ligence operation” was still in progress.

The story was co-written by re-porters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman along with contribu-tions from Kimberly Dozier, Ei-leen Sullivan and Alan Fram. They, along with their editor, Ted Bridis, had both their per-sonal and work phone records seized from April-May 2012, in

Obama’s legacy

Secrecy, drones, prisons and kill listsaddition to general AP office numbers.

But who could be sur-prised? From the very start of Obama’s presidency, he and his administration have managed to take the Bush-era attack on civil liberties and not just continue them, but in many cases, significantly expand them. The AP phone records story, while certainly significant, is not the first time the Obama administration has acted above the law.

What is clear is that Obama’s legacy is shaping up to be one rife with assaults on civil liber-ties, government secrecy, and broken promises. Here are my top ten:

1. National Defense Authori-zation Act or NDAA: Signed into law by Obama, it authorizes the U.S. government to carry out “counter-terrorism” domesti-cally and detain INDEFINITE-LY and WITHOUT TRIAL any US citizen who is suspected of any sort of suspicious activity that could be deemed terrorism or supporting terrorism.

2. Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan: Both US citizens. Both killed in Yemen by a US drone strike on September 30th, 2011. Anwar al-Awlaki was specifical-

ly targeted on Obama’s kill list. Neither was officially charged. Neither given a trial. Neither convicted of any crime.

3. Abdulrahman al-Awlaki: Just two weeks after al-Awlaki and Khan were killed, al-Awla-ki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrah-man al-Awlaki, was also killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.

4. Foreign Intelligence Sur-veillance Act (FISA): In 2008, then-Senator Obama voted for FISA, which allows for warrant-less wiretapping of internation-al communications by the NSA. In December of 2012, Obama ex-tended it for another five years.

5. Patriot Act: In May, 2011, Obama renewed much of the Pa-triot Act, including wiretaps and the “lone wolf” provision which allows government surveillance of individuals even if they are not known to be affiliated with a terrorist organization.

6. Drone Strikes: During Bush’s presidency, there were about 45 drone strikes in Paki-stan. During Obama’s first year as president, there were 53. Un-der Obama’s presidency, drone strikes also expanded to Yemen.

7. Whistleblowers: The Obama administration has charged more people under the Espio-nage Act than all past presi-

dents…combined. Six have been charged under the law thus far: Thomas Drake, former senior executive at the NSA, Shamai K. Leibowitz, former FBI trans-lator, Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, a nuclear proliferation specialist, former CIA agent John Kiriak-ou, Jeffrey Sterling, former CIA officer, and…

8. Bradley Manning: Pfc Brad-ley Manning, the sixth in the list of those charged under the Es-pionage Act, has now spent over three years in jail without trial for releasing classified docu-ments to the website Wikileaks. The documents he released ex-posed lies and corruption by US government officials, killings of civilians, torture in Iraq, drone strike cover-ups, and abuse of children by US government con-tractors abroad. They included the Collateral Murder video, showing a US Apache helicop-ter gunning down over a dozen people in Baghdad in 2007, in-cluding civilians and two Reu-ter’s employees, photojournal-ist Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver Saeed Chmagh. Also re-leased were the Iraq War Logs, chronicling reports from 2004-2009 of thousands of cases of prisoner torture and abuse filed against coalition forces in Iraq.

In addition, the War Logs add-ed 15,000 civilian deaths to the known body count, totalling over 150,000 people, of which about 80% were civilian.

9. Spying on Muslim Commu-nities: Under the Obama admin-istration, the NYPD and the CIA have joined together to spy on communities of Muslims in the US using “human mapping” or racial and religious profiling, and in 2011, AP reported the use of “mosque crawlers” or infor-mants used to monitor sermons and other areas where groups of Muslims are known to frequent.

10. Guantanamo Bay: Dur-ing Obama’s first campaign for the presidency, he promised to close down Guantanamo Bay, a promise he quickly aban-doned. Now, further contro-versy is surrounding the prison as prisoners, some who have been detained for over a decade and many who have even been cleared for release, have gone on hunger strike. Of the 166 prison-ers at Guantanamo, at least 130 are refusing to eat as part of a hunger strike that began this February. At least 20 prisoners are being force-fed, which the United Nations Human Rights Commission considers torture.

This list is by no means ex-haustive. I didn’t mention the 11th anniversary that oc-curred last October of Opera-tion Enduring Freedom, mark-ing over a decade of involvement in Afghanistan. I didn’t mention the past six years of fighting terror in Somalia. I didn’t men-tion that we have been drop-ping drones on Pakistan for the past nine years. Then of course, there is the War on Drugs in Latin America – a war that we have been waging to no end for decades, costing the US billions of dollars and an untold number of lives. I didn’t mention that we are militarily involved in an estimated 60% of the world’s na-tions. I didn’t mention Obama’s record deportations of illegal immigrants that far exceeds the Bush-era deportations. And these things will continue be-cause we ignore them. The right is distracted by the govern-ment “coming for their guns.” The left is complacent because a Democrat is in office. Mean-while, our government contin-ues to act as if it is above the rule of law. If Obama’s legacy is one of secrecy, egregious as-saults on civil liberties, and drone strikes around the world, our legacy is one of ignorance, stupidity and complacency. I’m still not sure which is worse.

Opinion