The artillery of ideasENGLISH EDITIONFRIDAY | October 1st, 2010 | No. 31 | Bs. 1 | CARACAS

Housing a top priorityThis week President Hugo Chavez announced new plans to accelerate solutions for Venezuela’s housing problem. Recent heavy rains have led to the destruction of numerous homes in poor communities, causing the deaths of over a dozen people. Chavez said he will use special funds to ensure the housing crisis is resolved expeditiously.

Pg. 7 | Investigation Pg. 8 | Opinion

PoliticsVoting process was smoothThe National Elections Council (CNE) lauded the participatory and civil voting process last Sunday in Venezuela.

PoliticsNormal electoral structure in VenezuelaDespite claims of gerrymandering, Venezuelan law requires equal and representative distribution of voting circuits.

PoliticsOpposition loss, Chavez winThe outcome of the Venezuelan legislative elections has different interpretations in Venezuela’s polarized society.

Elections specialSunday’s legislative elections in Venezuela celebrated an extraordinary

voter turnout at over 67%. Pro-Chavez PSUV party won a solid majority of seats in the National Assembly

Although both sides claim victory, the PSUV party took 98 seats in parliament, while the opposition coalition won 65. A third, independent party won two seats. The win stands as the largest majority any one party has had in Venezuelan

history and evidences strong support for Chavez’s policies after more than a decade. Opposition parties boycotted the last elections in 2005, losing their presence in the legislature. Now, they’re back.

ggggg || ppppppCuban leader Fidel Castro explains that oil is really what external forces are after in Venezuela

gg gggSpecial report on terrorist plans and plots against Venezuela and Cuba and the capture of terrorist Francisco Chavez Abarca

Young Venezuelan Conducts Baltimore

Orchestra

From October 14 to 16 at 8pm, 17-year-old Ven-

ezuelan Ilyich Rivas will conduct the Baltimore Sym-phony Orchestra to give life to a program that includes works by Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Gustav Mahler, and Dmitri Shostakovich.

Rivas, recognized today as one of the most promis-ing young orchestral con-ductors in the world, will head one of the country’s leading symphony orches-tras, directed by Marin Alsop, the fi rst woman to head a major American or-chestra.

“Ilych is enthusiastic, re-spectful, focused, and pas-sionate”, she said, referring to the Venezuelan musician

Born in Venezuela’s An-dean city of San Cristobal in 1993 from a family of musicians, Rivas, despite his young age, already has had a well-recognized career. He is currently as-sistant director of the Balti-more Symphony Orchestra and was recently awarded the Bruno Walter Memorial Foundation Award Nomi-nees in the United States and the 2010 Julius Baer Prize in the Verbier Festival in Switzerland. He was also nominated as “Artist of the Month” by the magazine Musical America.

Coup Attempt in EcuadorAs we go to press, a coup at-

tempt is underway against the government of President Rafael Correa. On Thursday morning, groups of police forces rebelled and took over key stra-tegic sites in Quito, Ecuador’s capital. President Correa imme-diately went to the military base occupied by the police leading the protest to work out a solution to the situation. The police pro-testing claimed a new law passed on Wednesday regarding pub-lic offi cials would reduce their benefi ts. Nonetheless, President

Correa affi rmed that his govern-ment has actually doubled police wages over the past four years. The law would not cut benefi ts but rather restructure them.

The law was used as an excuse to justify the police protest. But other forces are behind the chaos, attempting to provoke a coup led by former president Lucio Guitier-rez, who was impeached by popu-lar revolt in Ecuador in 2005.

“This is a coup attempt led by Lucio Guitierrez”, denounced Cor-rea on Thursday afternoon via tele-phone. Correa was attacked by the

police forces with tear gas. He was hospitalized shortly after. As of 1pm Thursday, police forces were attempting to access his hospital room to possibly assassinate him.

Thousands of supporters fi lled Quito’s streets, gathering around the presidential palace, backing Correa and rejecting the coup attempt. Countries throughout the region expressed support for Correa and condemned the destabilization. USAID channels millions annually into political groups against Correa that could be behind the coup attempt.

IMPACT|2| No 31 • Friday, October 1st, 2010 The artillery of ideas

Chavez: Housing Solutions a Top PriorityOne of the major problems facing the Venezuelan government is the lack of affordable, safe housing for the nation’s growing population. The Chavez administration is pursuing several different strategies to ensure homes are available for all

Providing decent and afford-able housing for the nation’s

population will be one of the top priorities for the government as the newly elected National As-sembly begins to take shape, Ven-ezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced last Monday.

“I’m going to work with the other branches of government, governors and private businesses to solve this problem of housing”, the Venezuelan head of state said during a press conference at the presidential palace Mirafl ores.

Chavez referred to the question of housing as a problem for the state and expressed his willing-ness to take the issue to the “presi-dential level” in order to guarantee high quality homes at low prices.

Accordingly, the Venezuelan president reported that $1 billion USD of a new credit line granted by China will be directed towards the project.

Earlier this year, China granted Venezuela a record-setting $20 billion in credit.

Much of the problem of housing in Venezuela revolves around the informal homes that have sprung up on the outskirts of the capital Caracas and other major cities.

These barrios are host to a high-ly dense population and in the case of Caracas, a seismic zone, the homes are precariously built on the hillsides with practically no oversight.

Last week, at least 14 people were killed when heavy rains led to the collapse of poorly con-structed homes in the capital.

The government has made efforts to legally recognize the homes of barrio residents through the grant-ing of land titles, but the structures themselves continue to be a sprawl-ing and vulnerable patchwork of improvised living arrangements.

Chavez said on Monday that he would ask the National Assembly to pass a Special Housing Law

to deal with the issue. Referring to the government owned and operated industries, the Venezu-elan head of state called for unity and solidarity in confronting the housing problem.

“We have the cement factory and [the steel company] Sidor. We’re going to see how we can bring the price of materials down”, he said.

MORE EFFORTS NEEDEDLast month, the government in-

augurated a pipe recycling plant in the state of Anzoategui, which uses discarded materials from oil exploitation to create structures for affordable homes.

In 2008, the government launched the Petrocasa program, which provides low cost housing made of the plastics derived from the oil industry.

Yet, despite these attempts to address the issue, the question of housing continues to exist as a ma-jor challenge for the government, particularly since the price of building materials increases and the population continues to grow.

News agency EFE reports that Venezuela’s current housing defi -cit is around two million and sta-tistics from the private association, the Venezuelan Chamber of Con-struction, put the number of hous-es constructed in 2009 at 98,000.

According to the organization, the Venezuelan government would need to construct 200,000 houses annually to overcome the shortage.

On Monday, Chavez announced the $1 billion to be invested in the government’s new housing ini-tiative should provide “at least 25 thousand homes”.

The Venezuelan President also asked for a commission to be es-tablished to study the possibility of using the urban lands currently occupied by golf courses for the creation of neighborhoods.

T/ Edward EllisP/ Presidential Press

Good Living, Living with DignityWith the objective of mak-

ing basic commodities accessible to ordinary families, late last week, the Venezuelan government launched a new type of credit card which resi-dents can use to purchase items in the country’s state-run su-permarkets.

The Good Living Card pro-vides low interest credit to clients of government owned banks to facilitate food and ap-pliance purchases in the state’s Bicentennial Markets and the Mercal social program.

According to offi cials, the in-terest rate being offered to card users is 50% less than tradition-al credit cards.

“These cards are liberating be-cause the poor who live from pay-check to paycheck are never given loans or credit”, President Hugo Chavez said during the launch of the initiative last Friday.

Apart from basic food com-modities, affordable appliances will also be available for purchase with the card. The appliances are the product of a government ac-cord with the Chinese company Haier, which has supplied the Venezuelan population with items such as refrigerators and washing machines at a very reduced price.

Chavez revealed at the event that the new card’s name is de-rived from South America’s in-digenous heritage.

“We’ve taken inspiration from the indigenous of Bolivia and Peru”, Chavez exclaimed during the ceremony at the presidential palace Mirafl ores. “For thousands of years, the indigenous have had this code: Good living, and living with dignity and decorum”, the Venezuelan President declared.

Users of the Good Living Card will have a percentage of their debt subtracted from their monthly in-come over a defi ned time period.

For purchases made at the gov-ernment run Bicentennial food markets, a period of 24 months will be granted for debt payment.

AFFORDABLE TOURISM Another card has also been

designed specifi cally for tourism where cardholders will be able to solicit credit up to three times their monthly salary for packages organized through the Toursim Ministry.

Tourism Minister, Alejandro Fleming, informed on Friday that packages for the popular destina-tions of Canaima, Merida, Mor-rocoy, and Margarita Island are ready for the public.

The packages include airfare, food and lodging. As an example of prices, a three-day trip to Mar-garita Island will be offered to the public for 1.290 bolivars ($300).

Although the prices being offered are considerably lower than what is available through private agencies,

President Chavez asked for a fur-ther reduction in expenses to make the packages more accessible.

“We need to look for a way to lower the costs of this pro-gram”, he implored.

Minister Fleming mentioned that, different from the Good Living Card for purchases at the state-run supermarkets, the card used for tourism would allow customers a lapse of 36 months to pay their debt.

The program seeks to stimu-late the national tourism indus-try and encourage Venezuelans to visit and get to know differ-ent areas of their country.

T/ EE

ANALYSIS No 31 • Friday, October 1st, 2010 |3|The artillery of ideas

President Hugo Chavez’s party, PSUV, achieved a landslide vic-

tory this past Sunday, September 26 in the nation’s legislative elec-tions, winning 98 seats out of 165 in the parliament. The coalition of opposition parties, grouped under the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), won 65 seats, while a third party, PPT, took two.

On a national level, the PSUV won in 56 out of 87 circuits, and 18 states out of 24, including the cap-ital district, Caracas. PSUV also won 7 seats on the Latin Ameri-can Parliament (Parlatino), while MUD took fi ve. Out of the votes tallied nationally 5,422,040 went to PSUV and 5,320,175 were for MUD parties.

In all scenarios, PSUV won. It’s an impressive achievement for a political party formed just three years ago, and demonstrates PSUV is the primary political force in the country. With 98 deputies in the National Assembly, PSUV has an absolute majority, followed in second place by opposition party Accion Democratica (AD), which won 22 seats. The other 43 seats in parliament are divided between 9 different political parties.

But despite the victory of PSUV in the elections, some key areas were lost to opposition forces, such as in the state of Anzoategui, a solid Chavez-supporting region. Opposition sweeps in the states of Tachira and Zulia, while not su-prising, merit analysis.

INTERNAL ERRORSThis year was one of the most

diffi cult for the Chavez adminis-tration since it came to power in 1999. Electrical energy problems caused by a severe drought dur-ing the fi rst semester of the year almost plummeted the nation into collapse. If the government

A Win for US Interference Although it is undeniably true that the winner of Venezuela’s legislative elections last Sunday was the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which sealed a solid and absolute majority in the new National Assembly, there was also another winner: US interference

hadn’t implemented a nationwide electricity-rationing plan, the situ-ation would have been unbear-able. Nonetheless, entire regions in Venezuela were without regu-lar electricity and water service for months, and this had a major impact on the daily lives of Ven-ezuelans. Even though the prin-cipal cause of the energy problem was not the government’s fault, Chavez still took the blame.

The global fi nancial crisis had its impact on Venezuela, forcing oil prices to drop and the country’s budget to decrease. Eleven Ven-ezuelan banks were intervened by the state to save customer savings and prevent a bad situation from becoming even worse. The ma-jority of these private banks were either nationalized or liquidated, some for corruption or fi nancial irregularities. If the Chavez ad-ministration hadn’t intervened, millions of Venezuelans would have lost all their savings and the social crisis would have been un-imaginable.

Infl ation and speculation en-couraged by private enterprise also had a major effect on the daily lives of Venezuelans. Prices of basic consumer products sky-rocketed to unaffordable rates. If the state hadn’t expropriated several chains of supermarkets in-volved in speculation and turned them into a nationwide chain of state-run stores selling products at affordable and accessible prices, millions of Venezuelans would have been without basic food sup-plies. But the problems of specu-lation and infl ation persist, and instead of recognizing the partial responsibility of private enterprise sabotaging the economy, and con-sumers willingly paying hiked up prices, the media and others blame

Chavez. Despite the government’s ef-

forts to solve these diffi cult and complex problems, the manipua-tion perpetuated through mass media, nationally and internation-ally, ignored the reality and exag-gerated the negative, infl uencing voters’ decisions at the polls.

There have also been some very real problems this year, such as the discovery of several tons of decomposed food items in con-tainers owned by the state food program, PDVAL. Despite an in-vestigation into the matter and the detention of those involved, the media exploited the incident to pin corruption and ineffi ciency on the government. On a regional level, numerous elected offi cials have failed to follow through on key policies. Others have been consumed by corruption, bureau-cracy or incompetence, ignoring the constituents who elected them and causing people to feel aban-doned, betrayed and forgotten.

A ferocious international media campaign against the Chavez ad-ministration has attempted to link the government with terrorism, drug traffi cking, authoritarianism and human rights violations, with little, if any, alternative viewpoints. And nationally, the majority-owned private media ran fear cam-paigns about communism, corrup-tion and dictatorships, in the style of US Cold War propaganda.

This context heavily infl uenced the elections last Sunday and the decisions of voters. The miracle may be not that the opposition won 65 seats, but rather that the PSUV achieved 98. The sound support for President Chavez and his policies demonstrated through this vote evidences a majority in the country still backs his Bolivar-

ian Revolution, despite imperfec-tions, ineffi ciencies and failures.

EXTERNAL FACTORSAnother important factor in-

fl uencing these elections was the multimillion-dollar support the opposition campaign received from US agencies, such as USAID, National Endowment for Democ-racy (NED), International Repub-lican Institute (IRI) and National Democratic Institute (NDI). These agencies, backing the opposition to Chavez for years, achieved a ma-jor result; their most loyal agents won top seats in parliament.

During the past eight years, US agencies have been working hard to strengthen opposition forces and help them return to power in Venezuela. The result of Sunday’s elections is their most important victory to date.

Efforts backed by US agencies to destabilize Venezuela and force Chavez’s removal from power have not succeeded since the 2002 coup d’etat. Since then, economic sabotages and numerous electoral interventions had failed to pro-duce favorable results for the op-position.

2010The key strategic aid and mil-

lions in campaign funding from US and other international agen-cies – in clear violation of Venezu-elan law – helped bring opposition forces together under the MUD co-alition and select candidates most likely to win.

IRI and NDI set up “campaign schools” and workshops to train candidates and help them develop the right messages to infl uence voters. US funding helped design campaign propaganda, most of it directed against Chavez. Almost none of the opposition candidates presented alternative policies to at-tract voters. Their entire campaign was about the threat of “commu-nism” if Chavez stays in power.

The political parties that won the most votes in the elections were Primero Justicia, Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT), AD and Copei – including winning entire states, such as Zulia (UNT) and Tachira (Copei), both strategic regions bordering Colombia of key inter-est to US policy.

Two of these parties, Primero Justicia and UNT were created un-der 10 years ago with US funding and strategic advice. Their work

with them over the decade has fi -nally paid off.

The funding and advising in-vested in one particular candidate, Maria Corina Machado, helped her get the most votes of any candi-date on a national level. Machado, founder of the US-funded opposi-tion group Sumate, was the only Venezuelan to be publicly received by President George W. Bush in the White House (with a photo op) throughout his presidency.

The discourse of “communism vs. capitalism” was the pillar of Machado’s campaign, and her baby-kissing, plastered-smile style was clearly made in USA.

The brutal international media campaign against the Chavez gov-ernment, primarily in CNN, FOX News, the New York Times and the Washington Post also had a heavy impact on the elections. For weeks, all the news about Venezu-ela was related to unsubstantiated claims linking Chavez to “terror-ism”, “drug traffi cking” and even “nuclear weapons”.

The US government is pleased. They never thought the opposi-tion would win a majority in the National Assembly, but they did believe that PSUV could achieve a solid two-thirds majority. Their ob-jective was to impede Chavez sup-porters from achieving the com-fortable two-thirds majority, which would have neutralized opposition forces in parliament and rendered them powerless. They won.

Although the PSUV has an ab-solute majority, the presence of US-funded and backed deputies in Venezuela’s legislative body will cause unrest. They won’t be able to roll back any of Chavez’s policies, but they will be able to use this platform to strengthen ties with external allies and prepare their strategy for the 2012 presi-dential elections.

US interference triumphed this time around in Venezuela. The most loyal agents of the US gov-ernment are now in key positions in Venezuela, where they can cre-ate obstacles and challenges for the Chavez government. Now these individuals, many of whom partic-ipated in the 2002 coup and subse-quent destabilization attempts, can continue with their anti-Chavez agenda, acting with the legitimacy of being representatives of Venezu-ela’s National Assembly.

T/ Eva Golinger

POLITICS|4| No 31 • Friday, October 1st, 2010 The artillery of ideas

From 8 am to 6 pm, the more than 12 thousand polling plac-

es, where Venezuelans chose the lawmakers who will represent them in the country’s national legislative body, the National Assembly, bustled with activity. Only minor inconveniences were reported.

Where small problems did oc-cur, they were quickly dealt with by the nation’s independent Na-tional Electoral Council (CNE), the body in charge of managing the electoral process.

“The CNE has demonstrated its capacity to respond in the face of contingency situations because in the great majority of cases, the problems had been foreseen in order to guarantee that the entire electorate can vote”, said CNE Vice President, Sandra Oblitas on Sunday.

Nearly 150 thousand citizens chosen at random carried out the operations of the voting centers and more than 230 thousand ob-servers from the nation’s different political parties and organizations oversaw the smooth functioning of the process.

“The electoral system is the synthesis of the efforts of 11 years of revolution, so that the [past] fraud, which made a mockery of the people’s will, comes to an end”, declared Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro after casting his vote.

“The people are conscious and educated”, he exclaimed, “They have culture and education and for this reason, they vote con-sciously to determine ways to im-prove our nation”.

Venezuelan Elections: Historic Participation, Smooth Process

Showing the world the healthy state of their country’s democracy and the current government’s respect for the popular will, millions of Venezuelan citizens exercised their right to vote last Sunday in an electoral process marked by effi ciency and transparency

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made clear from the be-ginning that the process would be free of fraud. While voting on Sunday, he reiterated that point. “Every vote will be respected here”, announced Venezuela’s head of state. “From our side, no-body can say that there are fraud-ulent intentions”.

Referring to the electronic vot-ing machines utilized in the pro-cess, which leave each voter with a paper record, Chavez explained that Venezuela’s electoral infra-structure is one of the most ad-vanced on earth.

“A voting system like this one, which has been authenticated and audited by global experts, doesn’t

exist anywhere else on the planet. There is no possibility of fraud”, he declared.

MASSIVE PARTICIPATIONAccording to the offi cial num-

bers of the CNE, voter turnout reached over 66% on Sunday, the largest participation in legislative elections in Venezuelan history.

The results of the elections, which saw supporters of President Chavez win a majority of legisla-tive seats, have not been contested by opposition groups, though some have tried to manipulate the interpretation of the results.

Out of the 165 National Assem-bly seats in play, Chavez’s Parti-do Socialista Unido de Venezu-ela (PSUV), managed to secure 98 posts while opposition parties won 67 seats. This is the largest victory won for any political party in the history of Venezuela’s democracy.

For the past fi ve years, supporters of President Chavez have enjoyed complete control of the National Assembly thanks to an opposition boycott of elections in 2005.

Venezuela has now seen some 14 electoral processes over the past eleven years during Hugo Chavez’s presidency.

These contests have included presidential elections and recall referendums, the creation of a new constitution, modifi cations to that constitution, local and regional elections, and three na-tional legislative elections.

According to Foreign Minister Maduro, Venezuela’s bustling de-mocracy is one of the most impor-tant achievements of the Chavez government. “Never before in the political history of the country had the people been consulted in the form of referendum”, he recalled. “Now, it’s a constitutional right”.

Young people have also been engaging more in the politi-cal process, CNE representative Tania D’Amelio reported.

CNE numbers reveal that the gap between the number of young people in the country aged 18-30 and the number of registered vot-ers for this age group has been reduced by nearly 50%.

Out of nearly six million young people in Venezuela, fi ve million are registered to vote.

D’Amelio said that this fact, together with the growth in the number of voting centers across the country, represents part of the CNE’s focus on community outreach.

“The policy of the CNE is to bring the Electoral Branch [of the state] closer to the communities, because ultimately it’s the com-munities that participate in the process”, she explained.

Unlike the United States where voting takes place on a work-day and long lines prevent some people from being able to exercise their universal right to suffrage, Venezuela holds elections on a Sunday and nearly every busi-ness is closed for the day

The lines to vote are normally quick moving and process is gen-erally swift.

Frank Arellano, a recently grad-uated history student from the University of the Andes in Merida, said his total voting time from ar-rival to the polling place to exiting was approximately 15 minutes.

“Everything was very well or-ganized. When I arrived, I joined the line until my number was called. Everything took place in a very orderly manner”.

Over 250 thousand members of the armed forces who form part of the government’s electoral se-curity body, Plan Republic, were posted nationwide to ensure safety and calmness throughout the day.

The sale of alcohol had also been banned from the Friday be-fore the elections to minimize any potential problems.

According to Major General Henry Rangel Silva, Plan Repub-lic was carried out with “total normality” and no situation oc-curred that would have merited the use of public force.

Vladimir Acosta, an interna-tional analyst referred to Venezu-ela’s electoral process as “truly participatory” and “exceptional”.

With more than two thirds of registered voters turning out, Acosta called Sunday’s elections, “truly amazing and positive, espe-cially when one compares it to the electoral processes of the past”.

T/ Edward EllisP/ Agencies

POLITICS No 31 • Friday, October 1st, 2010 |5|The artillery of ideas

In Venezuela’s National Assem-bly elections on Sunday, oppo-

nents of President Hugo Chavez won approximately 20 fewer seats than they held during the 2000-2005 legislative term, while the pro-Chavez camp grew by several seats, Deputy-Elect Roy Chaderton said on Monday.

Chaderton said the opposition was setting up a “media farce” by comparing Sunday’s results only to those of the 2005 election, which the opposition boycotted, and thus reporting that that opposition drastically increased its presence in the National Assembly.

During the 2000-2005 legisla-tive term, which was marked by an array of party splits and shift-ing alliances, pro-Chavez parties held between 83 and 92 seats at any given time, while opposition parties held between 73 and 82 seats, out of a total of 165.

According to the offi cial results of Sunday’s election released by the National Electoral Council, Chavez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won 98 seats, while the opposition coalition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) won 65 seats. The center-left Fatherland for All (PPT) par-ty, a former Chavez ally that split with the PSUV, won two seats.

Both PSUV and MUD offi cials reported non-offi cial results on Monday. President Chavez said in a press conference that the PSUV and its allies won 98 seats. MUD leader Ramón Aveledo said MUD candidates received 52% of the total number of votes cast nation-wide. President Chavez refuted this claim, reporting that the PSUV and its allies received 5,422,040 votes and the MUD re-ceived 5,320,175 votes.

Offi cially, the PSUV won the majority of the seats in 17 of Ven-ezuela’s 23 states. This included sweeping victories in the rural states of Apure, Barinas, Guar-ico, Cojedes, Lara, Portuguesa, Vargas, and Yaracuy; and strong victories in the major industrial states of Bolivar and Carabobo. The PSUV also won seven seats in the Capital District, compared to three for the MUD.

In Miranda state, where part of metropolitan Caracas is located, the PSUV and the MUD each won six seats, with the MUD defeating

Venezuelan Elections: Socialists Advance, Opposition Loses Ground Compared to 2000 Elections

the PSUV by a mere 741 votes out of a total of 968,947. The two were also tied with three seats each in Sucre state. In the sparsely popu-lated and heavily forested Amazo-nas state, the PSUV won one seat, while the PPT won 2 seats and the MUD did not win any seats.

The MUD swept the border states of Tachira and Zulia, as well as Anzoátegui and the island state of Nueva Esparta.

CONTRASTING INTERPRETATIONSAccording to an unoffi cial Ven-

ezuelanalysis calculation, approx-imately 10% of the 110 deputies who were elected as individuals were women.

Having won a majority of the National Assembly, the PSUV will be able to control the passage

of ordinary laws and most other functions of the legislative body. However, the PSUV did not win a large enough majority to con-trol the passage of organic laws, enabling laws that give decree power to the President, and some appointments to other branches of the government.

On Monday, MUD offi cials claimed victory in the elections, based mainly on their claim to have won the majority of the to-tal votes cast on Sunday, which is inaccurate.

US-backed candidate, María Corina Machado, who was elect-ed deputy of Miranda state, said the vote showed Venezuela’s disapproval of President Hugo Chavez’s presidency and its proj-ect of 21st Century Socialism,

which the opposition says is emu-lating Cuba’s communist system.

“It’s very clear, Venezuela said no to Cuban-style communism, Venezuela said yes to the path of democratic construction and now we have the legitimacy of vote of the citizenry, we are the rep-resentatives of the people”, said Machado.

The PSUV also celebrated what it considered to be a victory. Vice President Elias Jaua, who is a PSUV offi cial, said, “The revolution can count on a comfortable majority in the National Assembly... Few governments on our continent can count on such a comfortable ma-jority of just one party”.

“The opposition does not have any possibility, with this num-ber of deputies, of reversing the legislative processes that have been implemented or activating destabilizing mechanisms, such as revoking public powers or impeaching the President”, ex-plained Jaua.

PSUV Campaign Chief Aris-tobulo Isturiz expressed disap-pointment that the goal of 110 seats was not reached. However, he said this should not distract from the “truly decisive victory” won by the PSUV, which “reaf-fi rms us as the primary political force in our country”.

“We achieved our objective in the sense of being able to guaran-

tee the defense of President Hugo Chavez and the policies of the revolutionary government, and we won suffi cient seats to propel structural changes during this next era of the construction of so-cialism”, proclaimed Isturiz.

Isturiz, who was elected deputy in the Capital District on Monday, called on the PSUV “to unite more than ever, to strengthen ourselves because this is a long struggle, it’s a daily struggle, it’s a never end-ing battle and our new legislators will be an important force in the construction of socialism”.

In the early morning hours on Monday, President Chavez, through his Twitter account, called the election “a solid vic-tory, suffi cient to continue deep-ening democratic and Bolivar-ian socialism”. He added, “We must continue strengthening the revolution!”

In a press conference on Mon-day night, Chavez said the next phase of his government would include “the acceleration of pro-grams within our new historical, political, social, and technological project”.

Chavez said the results re-fl ected what was predicted by recent polls and analysis, and as such, “nothing extraordinary happened. Something extraordi-nary would have been if we had won 130 deputies, extraordinary would have been if we lost the majority”.

Polls over the past year consis-tently showed the PSUV’s popu-larity as a political party hovering in the mid-30th percentile, with op-position parties much weaker, and a large undecided population.

Meanwhile, the approval rat-ing for Chavez’s presidency re-mained high at around 55% or 60%. This appears to have im-pacted the PSUV’s electoral cam-paign, which de-emphasized in-dividual candidacies and framed the election as a vote of approval or disapproval of Chavez’s pres-idency. MUD candidates also focused on weaknesses of the Chavez government, such as ris-ing crime and corruption, and made few if any policy proposals of their own.

T/ James Suggettwww.venezuelanalysis.com

POLITICS|6| No 31• Friday, October 1st, 2010 The artillery of ideas

CNE: Venezuelan Electoral Districts Drawn by Standard Method

In response to accusations by the opposition that the elector-

al districts were gerrymandered to favor the governing party in Sunday’s National Assembly elec-tions, Venezuela’s National Elec-toral Council (CNE) explained on Tuesday that the districts were de-fi ned according to a standard legal method that was not designed to benefi t any particular party.

Opposition leaders have ac-cused the government of draw-ing electoral districts in a way that over-represents rural areas, which are strongholds of the United Socialist Party of Venezu-ela (PSUV), and under-represents major urban centers where sup-porters of the opposition Demo-cratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) are concentrated.

While a fi nal offi cial vote tally for Sunday’s elections is not yet available, unoffi cial estimates indicate that the PSUV and the MUD were virtually tied in terms of total votes received, while the PSUV won 98 seats in the Na-tional Assembly and the MUD won 65.

In an interview with Telesur on Tuesday, CNE director Socorro Hernandez said the discrepancy between the total votes and the number of seats won by each party occurred by chance. “The districts were not changed in favor of anyone. They are in ac-cordance with the Electoral Pro-cesses Law”.

According to Venezuela’s elec-toral system, some National Assembly seats are contested nominally, meaning individual candidates compete and the one who receives the most votes wins. Other seats are contested by po-litical parties, which are granted candidates proportional to the amount of votes they receive. In Sunday’s elections, 110 represen-tatives were elected nominally and 52 were elected by political party. The fi nal three go to elected indigenous legislators.

Hernandez acknowledged the system has the potential for a degree of disproportional repre-sentation, and she said both the PSUV and the MUD had benefi t-ted from this in Sunday’s election.

She pointed out that the PSUV received at least 40% of the votes in the states of Zulia, Anzoategui, Nueva Esparta, and Tachira, but the opposition won a total of 27 seats in those states compared to seven for the PSUV.

“Are these cases of favoritism for the Democratic Unity Round-table (MUD)? No. The method defi ned it that way”, Hernández said. “The results should be re-viewed and compared to the law. It is the method which everybody must abide by”.

This method mandates that there be a minimum of three legislators per state, Hernandez explained. The total number of legislators for any given legisla-tive term varies in proportion to the population of the country. The number of legislators who will be nominally elected is de-termined by dividing the total number of residents in any given district by 1.1% of the national population.

T/ James Suggettwww.venezuelanalysis.com

Sunday’s election for 165 repre-sentatives in the National As-

sembly is signifi cant but unlikely to bring about major change in Venezuela, despite the opposition having done better than expect-ed. The pro-government United Socialist Party won 98 seats, with 65 for the opposition Democratic Unity, and two for the indepen-dent Patria Para Todos (PPT).

As expected, most of the in-ternational press and its sources hailed the results as a “major blow” to President Chavez, pav-ing the way for his possible re-moval in the presidential election in 2012. But this is exaggerated.

The vote was widely seen as a referendum on Chavez, and it would indeed be quite an anomaly in the history of electoral politics if the government did not lose some support after a recession last year that continued into at least the fi rst quarter of this year. Chavez’s pop-ularity has always gone up and

Venezuelan Elections: This Was About Participationdown with the economy, reaching a low during the last recession of 2002-2003, despite the fact that it was caused by an opposition oil strike. His approval rating has fall-en from 60 percent in early 2009 to 46 percent last month.

For comparison, President Obama’s approval rating has fall-en from 68 percent in April of last year to 45 percent this month, and his party is expected to take big losses in the November Congres-sional elections here, with some pollsters forecasting a loss of the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives. And this is despite the fact that he clearly inherited the country’s economic problems from his predecessor.

It is not clear why anyone would expect Venezuela to be ex-empt from the normal workings of electoral politics. The opposi-tion has most of the income and wealth of the country, and most of the media as well. They have

no problem getting their message out, even if the government - mostly through Chavez - also has a big megaphone. Obama also faces a strong right-wing media, with Fox News now one of the most popular sources for cover-age of the fall elections, but there is much less of an opposition me-dia in the United States than in Venezuela.

NO MAJOR CHANGESMuch has been made of the op-

position’s winning more than a third of the National Assembly, thus being able to block some important legislation that would “deepen the revolution.” This importance of this result it also greatly exaggerated.

In reality, the government’s having a less than two-thirds ma-jority is unlikely to make much difference. The pace at which it adopts socialist reforms has been limited much more by adminis-

trative capacity than by politics. The Financial Times recently added up the value of industries nationalized by the Chavez gov-ernment. Outside of oil, it came to less than 8 percent of GDP over the last fi ve years. Venezuela still has a long way to go before the state has as much a role in the economy as it does in, for exam-ple, France.

On the positive side, the most interesting result of this election is that the opposition participat-ed, has accepted the results, and now has a bloc of representatives that can participate in a parlia-mentary democracy. If it chooses to do so, this could be an advance for Venezuelan democracy, which has been undermined by an anti-democratic opposition for more than a decade.

As opposition leader Teodoro Petkoff has noted, the opposition pursued a strategy of “military takeover” for the fi rst four years,

which included a military coup and a devastating oil strike that crippled the economy. In 2004, the opposition went the elec-toral route and tried to remove President Chavez through a ref-erendum; they failed and then promptly refused to recognize the result, despite its certifi ca-tion by international observers such as the Carter Center and the OAS.

They then boycotted the last National Assembly election in 2005, hoping to portray the gov-ernment as a “dictatorship”, and leaving them without representa-tion for the last fi ve years. This newly elected parliamentary bloc could potentially draw the oppo-sition into real political participa-tion. If that happens, it would be a signifi cant advance for a coun-try that has been too politically polarized for too long.

T/ Mark Weisbrot

INVESTIGATION No 31 • Friday, October 1st, 2010 |7|The artillery of ideas

The most notorious and dan-gerous Latin American ter-

rorist, Luis Posada Carriles, is still residing freely in the United States where he’s only being ac-cused of immigration violations, despite his record of bombings and assassinations in different nations throughout the past 40 years. However, the detention last July 1st of one of his accomplices, Salvadoran Francisco Chavez Abarca, alias El Panzon, must cause concern for Posada because of what this man knows and what he has done.

Wanted by INTERPOL, Chavez Abarca was trying to get into Ven-ezuela. “What for”, asked Presi-dent Hugo Chavez, denouncing the capture of this terrorist before TV cameras in Venezuela.

Now, the terrorist has con-fessed: he wanted to reproduce in Venezuela a similar sinister plan that had “results” in Cuba in the 1990s, when a string of violent actions against hotels in the island nation, aimed at dis-couraging tourism, caused one fatality, several injured and great devastation. The Miami right-wing ex-pat Cubans, sponsored by various US administrations, intended for the violence to destroy the Cuban revolution, which since 1959 has endured numerous criminal conspiracies aimed at its obliteration.

Chavez Abarca was a major piece. He not only set up three of those explosive devices set in Cuba in the 1990s, but also hired Central American mercenaries for similar missions. Last July, 13 years later, he resurfaced in Caracas, near the onset of the campaign for the legislative elections held this past September 26 in Venezuela. The person behind his plans to under-take criminal actions and destabi-lize Venezuela was the same: Luis Posada Carriles.

Transferred to Havana under an INTERPOL red alert to face the charges brought against him, Chavez Abarca has spared no de-tails during the investigation and confi rmed that in both countries the terrorists and the plans are quite the same.

According to his own confes-sion, months before his arrival at Maiquetia airport, he had received instructions from the

Special Report

Under the Sign of Terror

Cuban American National Foun-dation (CANF) and Posada to de-stabilize Venezuela.

They were excited over the coup d’etat that brought down President Manuel Zelaya in Hon-duras, last June 29, 2009, and toyed with the idea of a success-ful plot against Venezuela. They believed if Chavez was toppled, “the left would be weakened be-cause Venezuela was the country with the highest economic capac-ity” in Latin America.

Chavez Abarca confessed that during various meetings, his counterparts brought up the need to pursue violent and destabiliz-ing actions in Venezuela to try infl uencing the result of the elec-tions. These included arranging demonstrations, burning tires, assaulting National Assembly candidates and even attacking President Hugo Chávez.

CLOSING THE CIRCLEThe onset of the investigation

that will put Chavez Abarca on

trial in Havana is not only shed-ding light on dirty plans for Ven-ezuela, but is also enabling the continuation of the 1999 trials against Salvadoran mercenary Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon and Gua-temalans Maria Elena Gonzalez Meza, Nader Kalam Musalam Barakat and Jazid Ivan Fernandez Mendoza, the people he recruited to sow terror in Cuba.

Chavez Abarca’s actions against Cuba were part of the escalation of criminal actions carried out in the second half of the 1990s, when the type of terrorism that has characterized the anti-Cuban policy pursued by the US and the Miami Mafi a materialized in a wave of brutal actions against Cuban tourist facilities.

Such actions would have the additional effect of selling to the world the image of a restless and combative opposition. The bomb blasts and arsons, which were the main features of sabotage in Cuba in the 1960s, were replaced by le-thal devices that the terrorists assembled themselves before set-ting them up in places with high concentration of tourists. Such devices could be programmed several days in advance.

They only needed a simple pocket calculator, a watch, a detonator, some wires and C-4, a powerful explosive looking like Plasticine, introduced in Cuba by the criminals in apparently harm-less toothpaste tubes and fl asks of deodorant or shampoo. Actually, some of those C-4 caches seized could have blown up two air-planes.

THE POSADA CONNECTIONAround the year 1995, Chavez

Abarca met Posada at the Moldtrock car workshop owned by Jose Ramon San Feliu in El Salvador. San Feliu was close to Posada Carriles, and just like his father, Ramon San Feliu Mayoral, he had close links to the Salva-doran rightwing party ARENA.

In that fi rst meeting, Posada proposed to bring explosives into Cuba, but later “he showed me ev-erything, how to make a bomb”, confessed Chavez Abarca.

“He took care of tickets, the ac-commodation, everything. I only had to give him my passport”, he said, adding, “he told me to stuff the explosives in a pair of boots”.

“He paid $2,000 for every bomb blast”, said Chavez Abarca. The Salvadoran set up three but only one of them exploded. Still, the devastation at the Hotel Melia Cohiba nightclub earned him con-gratulations from Posada. “They wanted Cuba to be included in the list of countries ‘dangerous’ for tourists”.

“I don’t have good memories of Posada”, he admitted, “He treats people as if they were expendable objects”.

SUBVERSION AND TERRORISM The story is well known: a

young Italian tourist, Fabio Di Celmo, lost his life and various people were wounded during that wave of terrorism.

The victory of the Cuban Revo-lution on January 1, 1959, drove US hegemony in Latin American to a crisis.

Washington could not accept a different social system that tran-scended the scenarios of the de-cision-making centers of power. This is perhaps the premise to understand why subversion and terrorism were incorporated into US policy against Cuba.

It’s no secret that after the fi asco of Bay of Pigs, in April 1961, the White House was forced to deal with a new reality: the Island could not be crushed through domestic or external coups d’etats backed by propaganda campaigns.

So Washington fostered intel-ligence operations against Cuba, establishing rings of agents to car-ry out espionage, terrorism, sabo-tage and subversive propaganda and to systematically develop smear campaigns to discredit Cuba’s policies. They also tried to create social and economic condi-tions in the country conducive to a counterrevolutionary political climate.

The United States then tried to isolate the Cuban Revolution diplomatically through an instru-ment of economic warfare aimed to thwart social development: the blockade. Washington helped fabricate, through covert means, groups of so-called “dissidents” to provide the image of a domes-tic political opposition as an al-ternative to the revolution before international public opinion.

A number of terrorist groups sponsored by the CIA have played a key role in this dirty war against Cuba since 1959. Many tried to assassinate Fidel Castro, hundreds of times, but their ev-ery plan has been dismantled and defeated.

T/ Deisy Francis Mexidor and Marina Menendez

Washington could not accept a different

social system that transcended the scenarios of the decision-making centers of power.

This is perhaps the premise to understand

why subversion and terrorism were incorporated into US policy against Cuba.

The artillery of ideasENGLISH EDITIONFRIDAY | October 1st, 2010 | No. 31| Bs. 1 | CARACAS

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

OPINION

What They Want is Venezuela’s OilIn his latest refl ection, Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro referred to the outcomes of parliamentary elections in Venezuela. Today, the Bolivarian Revolution has the Executive Power, a large majority in the parliament and a party capable of mobilizing millions of combatants in favor of socialism, he also pointed out

Yesterday, I wrote about what I would do if I were Venezue-

lan. I explained that it is the poor people who suffer the most from natural catastrophes and I gave the reasons why. Later I added: “…where imperialism rules and the opportunistic oligarchy re-ceive the greater portion of the national goods and services, the masses have nothing to gain or lose. The empire doesn’t give a damn about the elections…in the United States, even during presi-dential elections, less than 50 per-cent of registered voters turn out to vote”.

Today I would add that, even when they are voting for the en-tire House of Representatives, a part of the Senate and other im-portant positions, voter turnout in the United States is no greater.

I asked, why then do they em-ploy their enormous media re-sources to try to drown the Revo-lutionary Bolivarian Government of Venezuela in a sea of lies and slander? What they really want is Venezuela’s oil.

We’ve all seen during these elections, a group of bastards who, together with the merce-naries from the local print, radio

EDITOR’S NOTEA third coup d’etat is underway

against a nation member of the Bolivarian Alliance of the Americas (ALBA), a Latin American bloc of nations that opposes US hegemony in the region and has created new mechanisms for trade and integra-tion based on principles of solidari-ty and independence from imperial powers. In 2002, a coup d’etat by opposition forces backed by Was-hington briefl y ousted Hugo Chavez from power in Venezuela. The coup was defeated by the people of Ve-nezuela during a popular uprising rejecting the attempt to destroy de-mocracy. Chavez returned to power two days later. Since then, Venezuela has suffered numerous destabiliza-tion attempts, economic sabotages, psychological warfare –both natio-nally and internationally– electoral intervention, assassination attempts against President Chavez, and a vicious international campaign to portray Venezuela as a dictatorship. This past weekend, opposition for-ces, funded and supported by US agencies, regained key seats in the nation’s legislature; a platform from where they can intensify their efforts to provoke regime change.

In June 2009, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown in a coup d’etat backed by the Oba-ma Administration and promoted by military and right wing forces in Honduras. Since then, Honduras has never recovered its democracy. Ze-laya remains in exile. Now, Ecuador is victim of a coup against President Rafael Correa, an outspoken, solid re-volutionary who ousted the US mili-tary base from his nation last year and has taken a fi rm stance against the US capitalist economic model imposed in his nation years ago. Security forces have risen up against his government, backed by political organizations fun-ded by USAID and the National En-dowment for Democracy.

An emergency meeting has been convened by ALBA and UNASUR nations in Argentina late Thursday night. President Correa’s life was in danger Thursday, as he remained se-questered by coup forces.

Another coup against ALBA at-tempts to impede Latin American liberation and integration, but the people remain defi ant, with dignity.

and television press, have gone so far as to attempt to eliminate free-dom of the press in Venezuela.

The enemy did achieve part of its objective: to stop the Boliva-rian Government from obtaining a two-thirds majority in parliament.

Perhaps the empire believes it has achieved a great victory.

I believe the exact opposite: the

September 26th election results represent a victory for the Boli-varian Revolution and its leader Hugo Chavez Frias.

During these parliamentary elections the participation of the electorate rose to a record 66.45 percent. The empire, with its vast resources, was unable to hold back the PSUV, which won 98 of the 165

seats. The most important result is the increased number of young people, women and other proven militants who were elected.

Today, the Bolivarian Revolu-tion has the Executive Power, a large majority in the parliament and a party capable of mobilizing millions of combatants in favor of socialism.

The United States only has the support of fragments of parties in Venezuela, united out of their fear of the revolution and out of material greed.

This time they could not resort to a coup d’êtat in Venezuela as they did with Allende in Chi-le and in other counties in Our America.

The armed forces of this frater-nal country both promote and are a part of the Revolution. They are educated in the spirit and example of the Liberator, and it was their ranks that nurtured the current leaders who began this process.

Such a union of forces is invinci-ble; a fact that becomes much clearer with half a century of experience.

Fidel Castro Ruz September 27, 2010 3:24 a.m.