April 26, 2013

Venezuelan Government gives 1,196 homes in four regions

LONG LIVE THE BOLIVARIAN REVOLUTION!

April 26, 2013

News from the Backyard: Indigenous Communities and Land Grabs in Guatemala

“Sons and Daughters of the Earth”: Indigenous Communities and Land Grabs in Guatemala
Written by Alberto Alonso-Fradejas
Thursday, 11 April 2013

In the last ten years, the expansion of corporate sugarcane and oil palm plantations in northern Guatemala has encroached on the lands of Maya Q’eqchi’ indigenous people—many of whom fled to this region during the country’s 36-year genocidal war. These plantations have already displaced hundreds of families—even entire communities—leading to increased poverty, hunger, unemployment, and landlessness in the region. The companies grabbing land are controlled by European-descendent Guatemalan oligarchs who are benefitting from rising global commodity prices for food, animal feed, and fuel (biodiesel and ethanol). In the face of violent expulsion and incorporation into an exploitative system, peasant families are struggling to access land and defend their resources as the basis of their collective identity as Q'eqchi' peoples or R'al Ch'och ("sons and daughters of the earth&quot .

...

The benefits of this export boom are highly concentrated. Only 14 companies—owned by 14 oligarchic families—make up the powerful Sugar Producers’ Guild (ASAZGUA), with control of over 80 percent of the country’s sugar plantations and 100 percent of the sugar mills. Five companies control all of the country’s ethanol production and eight families make up the influential Oil Palm Growers’ Guild (GREPALMA), which controls 98 percent of the harvested oil palm and 100 percent of the palm oil mills.



The power of these wealthy families has been spurred by large investments from multilateral lending agencies. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) has allotted US$150 million to finance “sugar and bioenergy companies and exporters especially in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, El Salvador and north-eastern Brazil.” The Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI) provided US$20 million for highly controversial land deals for sugarcane agribusiness in Guatemala’s Polochic Valley. The loan was approved on the basis of a single socio-environmental impact assessment report developed by the agribusiness industry itself.

...

Legal Land Grabbing?

Debt plays a major role in the supposedly voluntary displacement of indigenous peasants. The private, individual property rights promoted by the World Bank in the 1990s may have given peasants’ access to bank credit, but annual interest rates of up to 26 percent led many to lose the land they had used as collateral. The system of individual land ownership also transformed once-sustainable collective Q’eqchi’ farming practices, making them dependent on external inputs for fertility. In a region with poor, rocky soils, this often means buying an increasing amount of expensive chemical fertilizers and falling further into debt.

These land deals are often accompanied by violent evictions and other coercive practices. Peasants who refuse to sell at non-negotiable prices are harassed; lands are enclosed within large plantations; and access rights are closed off, even to visiting government officials. Dozens of villages have been reduced to a small cluster of houses; and in at least four cases, entire villages—including houses, schools and churches—were gobbled up completely by plantations.

...

Alberto Alonso-Fradejas (fradejas@iss.nl) is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, Netherlands. This article is an excerpt from “Sons and daughters of the Earth: Indigenous communities and land grabs in Guatemala”, Land and Sovereignty in the Americas Briefing Series, published by Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy in partnership with the Transnational Institute. The full brief is available for free download at: https://www.foodfirst.org/en/Land+grabs+in+Guatemala

Additional Resources:

Peasant Union Committee (Comité de Unidad Campesina, CUC): www.cuc.org.gt

Website/blog about the case of Guatemala’s Polochic Valley: http://valledelpolochic.wordpress.com/documentos/

Documentary films:

“Aj Ral Ch´och: Sons of the Earth” (Spanish and Q’eqchi’ with English subtitles) by IDEAR-CONGCOOP and Caracol Producciones:



“Evictions in the Polochic Valley” (Spanish and Q’eqchi’ with English subtitles) by IDEAR-CONGCOOP and Caracol Producciones:

(I placed this video at the top of the thread)

https://www.foodfirst.org/en/Land+grabs+in+Guatemala

April 26, 2013

Venezuelan President Calls for Dialogue With Private Sector, “Special Economic Zones” and...

Venezuelan President Calls for Dialogue With Private Sector, “Special Economic Zones” and Streamlined Currency Exchange

By Ryan Mallett-Outtrim

Mérida, 26th April 2013 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – The Venezuelan government hopes to encourage more foreign investment and a better relationship with the business community, President Nicolas Maduro stated yesterday.

Announcing the creation of a “National Savings Fund for Foreign Exchange”, Maduro said the government hopes to make currency exchange easier not only for businesses, but also “travellers, students” and Venezuelans living abroad.

In a meeting with business leaders in Zulia state, Maduro indicated that changes to current currency controls are needed to “overcome the parallel dollar”.

He also invited the private sector to work more with the government to contribute to the “development of the productive forces and the country's economy”, and announced plans to create “Special Economic Zones” in some regions. These zones would be granted special tax conditions, as well as other incentives to encourage foreign investment. Although he gave few details, Maduro indicated that they would be modeled on those that developed during China's trade liberalisation of the 1980's.

Maduro stated that more details will be announced soon, and Finance Minister Nelson Merentes will hold a series of meetings with business leaders across the country from 2 May. The meetings will focus on issues related to currency exchange, though Maduro also stated that the government will prioritise tackling inflation.

“We are in a transition process towards building a socialist economic model that merits the promotion of a special plan of a productive economic revolution, and that includes the participation of different sectors,” he said.

Maduro described the private sector as having the financial and political freedom to participate in an “economic revolution” to raise productivity and self sustainability.

“We have a strong and powerful domestic market with purchasing capacity, because we have a population with job security, good income and strong wages...Now we need a production system to respond to this,” he said.

Published on Apr 26th 2013 at 12.23pm

This work is licensed under a Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Creative Commons license

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/8858

April 26, 2013

The New Yorker Should Ignore Jon Lee Anderson and Issue a Correction on Venezuela

The New Yorker Should Ignore Jon Lee Anderson and Issue a Correction on Venezuela

By Keane Bhatt- NACLA, April 26th 2013
Manufacturing Contempt

As a result of many dozens—possibly hundreds—of messages from readers over the past few weeks that criticized The New Yorker’s inaccurate coverage of Venezuela, reporter Jon Lee Anderson issued a response in an online post on April 23. This marks the first time the magazine has publicly addressed its controversial and erroneous labeling of Venezuela as one of the world’s most “socially unequal” countries (I highlighted the error in mid-March).


Anderson's "Slumlord" in the New Yorker contained numerous factual errors (FAIR.org)

Although Anderson deprives his readers of the opportunity to evaluate his critics’ arguments (he offered no hyperlinks to either of my two articles on the subject, nor to posts by Corey Robin, Jim Naureckas, and others), he is clearly writing in response to those assertions.

To his credit, Anderson unequivocally admits two of his three errors: regarding Venezuela’s homicides, he acknowledges that he falsely wrote “that Venezuela had the highest homicide rate in Latin America. Actually, Honduras has the top rate.” Anderson proceeds to explain why Venezuela’s high homicide rate is nevertheless a grave problem—a position none of his critics, myself included, dispute.

The importance of this error rests instead in its revelation of a media culture under the influence of the consistent demonization of a country deemed an official U.S. enemy. This culture certainly played a role in allowing Anderson’s obvious falsehood to remain uncorrected for five months—five months after I first wrote about it, one month after I directly and publicly confronted Anderson about the error, and even then, days after I wrote another article urging readers to demand a correction.

While The New Yorker has dedicated literally no articles to U.S. ally Honduras since its current leader Porfirio Lobo came to power in repressive, sham elections held under a military dictatorship, Anderson was allowed to assert that Venezuela—a country with half the per capita homicides of Honduras—was Latin America’s leader in murders. One might reasonably suspect that a claim on The New Yorker’s website asserting that the United States had a higher homicide rate than Bolivia (Bolivia’s rate is actually over two times as high), would be retracted more expeditiously.

Anderson’s explanation for his second error—claiming that Chávez came to office through a coup d’etat rather than a free and fair election—further lays bare the corrupting effects of the generalized vilification of Chávez on basic journalistic standards of accuracy.

Anderson writes that despite his gaffe, he obviously knew Chávez “gained the Presidency by winning an election in 1998,” as he had “interviewed Chávez a number of times, travelled with him, and came to know him fairly well.” For Anderson to write such an egregious misstatement, then, and have it pass through what is likely the most rigorous fact-checking process in the industry, exposes a pervasive ideology under which he and his many editors and fact-checkers operate. As Jim Naureckas of Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting wrote, “It's like writing a long profile on Gerald Ford that refers to that time when he was elected president.”

Finally, Anderson offers a desperate attempt to justify his third factual error, stating:

A number of letters I’ve received dispute, out of context, my reference to “the same Venezuela as ever: one of the world’s most oil-rich but socially unequal countries”; several cite an economic statistic known as the Gini coefficient—a measure of income inequality.

Notice that Anderson never tells his readers what Venezuela’s Gini coefficient actually is. According to the United Nations, Venezuela’s Gini, at 0.397, makes it the least unequal country in Latin America and squarely in the middle range of the rest of the world. Only by sidestepping this brutal empirical obstacle can Anderson attempt to lay out his case. He carries on by reposting three paragraphs of his original essay, which in no way mitigate the falsity of his original claim, for “context.” Anderson finally concludes by offering a novel justification for his error:

In terms of some of the components of social inequality, notably income and education, Chávez had some real achievements. (Income is what’s captured by the Gini coefficient, although that statistic has its own limitations, some particular to Venezuela.) But in housing and violence, his record was woefully insufficient. Those social factors are intimately related, to each other and to the question of equality.

A quick recap is in order before unpacking Anderson’s argument. Readers may remember that he first responded to evidence on income inequality by proclaiming, on Twitter, his agnosticism toward empirical data. Next, a senior editor at the magazine justified Anderson’s contention by arguing that Venezuela was one of the most unequal amongst other oil-rich countries—a point I debunked. Now, Anderson has settled on a definition of social inequality that minimizes Venezuela’s high educational and income equality in favor of high homicide rates and unequal housing.

But simply saying that Chávez’s record “was woefully insufficient” on housing and violence does not naturally equate to Venezuela’s standing as a world leader in social inequality. Anderson must rely on comparative international statistics to justify his position, but fails to do so.

While Venezuela’s homicide rate is high by international standards and a significant social ill, this alone does not necessarily make the country more socially unequal than another country with a lower homicide rate. Are Venezuelan homicides more skewed toward low-income residents than those in Costa Rica? Or Haiti? Are Venezuelan murders more targeted at women or ethnic minorities than those in Mexico or Guatemala? And given that the high homicide rate directly affects far fewer than one in a thousand Venezuelans annually, how could this statistic possibly outweigh the effect of massive income-inequality and poverty reductions? If he is solely basing his argument on murder rates, Anderson has no credible explanation as to why Venezuela is one of the world’s most socially unequal countries.

Anderson also doesn't offer statistics showing that housing is more unequal in Venezuela than anywhere else. That’s because it’s not.

Out of the 91 countries for which the United Nations has available data, Venezuela is 61st in terms of the percentage of its urban population living in slums. That is to say, two-thirds of the world’s countries with available data have larger percentages of their urban citizens living as slum dwellers. In the Western Hemisphere, this includes Guayana, Honduras, Peru, Anguilla, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Belize, Bolivia, Jamaica, and Haiti. (click to enlarge) It is also worth mentioning that this data was taken from 2005, when the percentage of Venezuela’s urban population living in poverty and extreme poverty was at 37%. By 2010, according to the United Nations, it had been cut by a quarter, to 28% (p. 43). Furthermore, 2005 predates a massive governmental push in 2011 to build affordable housing. Earlier this year, Venezuela’s Housing Commission chair asserted that “in the years 2011 and 2012, the Bolivarian government together with the people reached the goal of building 350,000 homes.”

It appears, then, that Anderson has discovered a new definition of “social inequality” that has eluded economists and sociologists worldwide—one that systematically downplays Venezuela’s educational and income equality while emphasizing a high frequency of murders and a rate of slum-dwelling that is low by international standards.

While one can applaud Jon Lee Anderson for finally acknowledging the value of social indicators and statistical data, he and his magazine cannot be allowed to define “social inequality” any way they see fit. No social scientist analyzing the available data could argue, like Anderson, that Venezuela is one of the world’s most socially unequal countries. While semantics games may be expedient in avoiding a necessary correction, readers should let The New Yorker’s editor David Remnick (david_remnick@newyorker.com) know that a retraction of Anderson’s claim is long overdue.


Source: NACLA

This work is licensed under a Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Creative Commons license

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/8859

April 26, 2013

Terrorism and destabilization in Venezuela, all you can eat…

Terrorism and destabilization in Venezuela, all you can eat…
April 10, 2013 — Sabina Becker

Venezuelan justice minister Néstor Reverol plays back audio of some highly incriminating phone calls between members of the Salvadoran terror cell that attempted to disrupt next Sunday’s presidential election. Here’s the story]:




And let’s hope they and Majunche are also wetting their pants over this incriminating info-dump about their little buddies in the bogus opposition “student” group, JAVU:




...

As you can see, JAVU embodies the ironies of the “opposition youth” to the fullest. They talk about a government not respecting the constitution: WHICH constitution? The old, invalid one of 1961, which was scrapped in favor of the democratically written and ratified Bolivarian constitution of 1999? The Bolivarian constitution, promulgated by the same government these punks refuse to recognize as legitimate, even though it’s been elected, re-elected, and ratified by the people, as well as former US president Jimmy Carter himself?

...

Most intriguing of all is the allusion to their contacts within the media, the church, and the armed forces (notice how they don’t use the correct formal term of reference, which would be the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, or FANB for short.) In other words, the opposition media, the Roman Catholic hierarchy, and a certain sector of the Venezuelan armed forces is either covertly or overtly putschist, and not prepared to recognize the election results even when Jimmy Carter certifies them as free and fair. This is beyond disgusting; it is downright disturbing. It means that the same factions who tried to overthrow Chavecito in 2002-3 are still at it. They just don’t know when to call it a day and give in to democratic will. It would utterly demoralize them and rob their already meaningless lives of all purpose if they did. They would rather dedicate themselves to destruction than to construction. (Notice how they offer no plans whatsoever to build up the nation after they’re done wrecking it. That’s because they’re criminally incapable of making any.)

...

http://www.sabinabecker.com/2013/04/terrorism-and-destabilization-in-venezuela-all-you-can-eat.html

April 26, 2013

Mining and logging companies ‘leaving all of Chile without water’

Mining and logging companies ‘leaving all of Chile without water’
April 25, 2013


Chile’s government told to stop allowing firms to exhaust water sources with little regard for local people

More than 100 environmental, social and indigenous organizations protested in the Chilean capital, Santiago, this week to demand that the state regain control of the management of water, which was privatized by the then dictatorship in 1981.

...

The demonstrators delivered a letter to President Sebastián Piñera, complaining that the water shortages affecting local communities were due not only to persistent drought but to structural problems in the policies governing the exploitation of natural resources.

“We have discovered that there is water in Chile, but that the wall that separates it from us is called ‘profit’ and was built by the (1981) water code, the constitution, international agreements like the binational mining treaty (with Argentina) and, fundamentally, the imposition of a culture where it is seen as normal for the water that falls from the sky to have owners,” the letter says.

...

The movement is fighting for the repeal of the water code, adopted by the 1973-90 dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which made water private property by granting the state the right to grant water use rights to companies free of charge and in perpetuity. The code allows water use rights to be bought, sold or leased, without taking into consideration local priorities for water use, the organisations complain.

...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/2013/apr/24/mining-logging-chile-without-water

April 26, 2013

Groups demand U.S. recognize Venezuela gov’t

Groups demand U.S. recognize Venezuela gov’t
By Cheryl LaBash on April 24, 2013

U.S.-based organizations swiftly denounced U.S. intervention against the election of President Nicolás Maduro Moro in Venezuela and mobilized. Weekend actions in New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco demanded that the U.S. recognize the new Maduro government and end its subversion and destabilization of the Bolivarian Revolution. Violent attacks on health clinics and Cuban doctors working in Venezuela and murders of Maduro supporters were also condemned.

Supporting Maduro’s inauguration on April 19, defenders of Venezuelan sovereignty in New York City chanted outside the Venezuelan Consulate, “Chavez, presente! Maduro presidente!” The combined forces of the Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle, International Action Center, HondurasUSAResistencia, IFCO/Pastors for Peace, July 26 Coalition, Casa de las Americas, FMLN, La Peña del Bronx, May 1st Coalition, Fuerza de la Revolucion, People’s Power Assembly, Alianza Paiz de Ecuador, People’s Power Movement, International Concerned Friends & Family of Mumia, ProLibertad and the Popular Education Project to Free the Cuban 5 outnumbered the right wing 30-to-1. They were able to push back the rightists who had been harassing Bolivarian representatives.

Also on April 19, the International Action Centerissued a bilingual online petition to the Obama administration and the media demanding recognition of President Maduro and opposing the right-wing coup threat. Sign on at iacenter.org.

An e-letter to Secretary of State John Kerry signed by 47 U.S. and international organizations also demanded that the U.S. recognize the Venezuelan elections. Kerry had just reiterated U.S. imperialism’s 1823 Monroe Doctrine view of Latin America as the “backyard of the United States,” negating its sovereignty. School of the Americas Watch also initiated an online petition to Kerry.

On April 18, the United Electrical Workers’ union faxed a letter to Kerry. The UE’s international director was among 130 people from the U.S. who monitored the April 14 election. She also observed the October election of now-deceased President Hugo Chávez.

The letter, signed by the three-officer union leadership, stated: “The U.S.’ call for a full recount fails to recognize the integrity of the Venezuelan electoral system and only serves to promote conflict and to further undermine the credibility of the United States. Given the sordid history of the United States in undermining democracy in Latin America, the wisest course would be to follow the lead of Latin American governments that are demonstrating broad regional support for Venezuela’s democratic institutions.”

Articles copyright 1995-2013 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

http://www.workers.org/2013/04/24/groups-demand-u-s-recognize-venezuela-govt/

April 26, 2013

Venezuela opposition to boycott vote audit / demand a new presidential vote

Lol! He's certifiable.

April 26, 2013

FARC-EP Thanks U.S. Congressmen for Supporting Peace Talks

FARC-EP Thanks U.S. Congressmen for Supporting Peace Talks

Havana, Apr 25 (Prensa Latina) The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) expressed their thanks here today to U.S. congressional representatives for supporting the peace process that seeks to end the armed conflict that has lasted more than half a century.

...


They also mentioned their request to raise any possible agreement in Havana to the rank of Special Agreement, to which the rules of international humanitarian law would be applied, to be incorporated constitutionally and thereby legitimize the status of peace as a right and duty of all Colombians.

The guerrilla acknowledged U.S. congressional concern with respect to victims of the conflict, with emphasis on the more than five million people displaced by the slaughter of members of the Patriotic Union (the party that emerged in 1985 after several guerrilla fronts were demobilized) and the more than three thousand extra-judicial executions that occurred during the government of Alvaro Uribe (2002-2010).

Among the congressmen that were sent the letter, are James MacGovern, Janice D. Schakowsky, Joseph R. Pitts and John Lewis.

...

http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1349571&Itemid=1

April 26, 2013

Venezuelan Government Accuses Capriles of Making “Impossible” Demands

Venezuelan Government Accuses Capriles of Making “Impossible” Demands
By Chris Carlson


Maracaibo, April 25th, 2013 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Opposition leader Henrique Capriles claimed yesterday that the presidential elections were “stolen”, and demanded further audit measures that the Venezuelan government has said are “impossible”.

Capriles made the statements during a press conference on Wednesday in which he gave the government an ultimatum regarding the audit.

“The truth is that you stole the elections, that’s the truth. You stole the elections and now you have to explain that to the country and the world,” he said.

Capriles demanded that the National Electoral Council (CNE) begin the auditing process immediately, and said his campaign will refuse to wait any longer.

“That is what we are demanding. We will give you until tomorrow,” he said, though he did not say what would happen if the CNE did not respond.

However, the CNE had already said last week that it would announce the beginning of the audit this week, and was expected to make an announcement today.

The Capriles campaign went on to demand a series of additional audit measures that are not included in the audit that has been approved by the CNE. His campaign representative Roberto Picón said that in addition to a complete audit of the electoral machines and the paper ballots, they are also demanding access to the electoral registry, the fingerprint system and a verification of each individual voter.

“We are asking for complete access to the electoral registry, not only to count how many people voted but also to audit all of the details, to audit the people that voted to see if there are dead people who voted, or foreigners, or duplicates, and to see if there are fake fingerprints,” said Picón.

He further said that they are demanding the CNE validate every individual fingerprint in the system, comparing each fingerprint to every other to assure none are duplicated, validate every person’s signature on the day of the elections and that they provide proof that none of the electoral data has been altered since the elections last week.

“If it doesn’t include the electoral registry, then it is not an audit. We won’t accept a shoddy audit,” said Capriles.

Various government officials have responded to these demands, saying they would be impossible to meet, and that the Capriles campaign knows it.

“They are making requests to the CNE that are absolutely impossible to grant. They are asking that every fingerprint and every signature of the almost 15 million people who participated in the electoral process be verified,” said Calixo Ortega.

“This would take like 5 years to verify, because it takes hours to verify a single fingerprint or signature, and there are 15 million that would have to be verified,” he said.

“It appears that they are purposely making requests that cannot be granted so that they can later say that the CNE has denied their request,” he explained.

Maduro’s campaign manager Jorge Rodgriguez also responded to Capriles, accusing him of attempting to create more violence in the country.

“Now Capriles says the elections were stolen. Where is the proof? Where is a single piece of evidence of that? If you can’t show any evidence, then it didn’t happen,” said Rodriguez.

Rodriguez also accused Capriles of attempting to generate more violence in the country.

“What are you doing giving the government an ultimatum like that? You have already left a cemetery in your wake with 9 fellow Venezuelans dead from the violence you created,” he said.

Capriles has yet to present any evidence of fraud in the April 14th elections. In the days following the elections, he mentioned various examples that were all promptly shown to be false.

Venezuela’s electoral council is expected to announce the timeframe of the auditing process today or tomorrow. It is unlikely that the additional measures being demanded by the Capriles campaign will be included in the audit.

Published on Apr 25th 2013 at 9.18pm

This work is licensed under a Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives Creative Commons license

http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/8837