Behind the Bo Xilai trial - a battle for the future of China

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The polarization of rich and poor is the backward culture of slave owners, feudal lords and capitalists, while common prosperity is the people’s just and advanced culture. The Western culture from the British bourgeois revolution in 1640 has had a history of more than 370 years. They often championed the slogans of “freedom, democracy, equality, and fraternity.” However, they have never mentioned “common prosperity”—a topic that concerns the fundamental interests of the vast majority of humanity. Only the communists, with their down-to-earth materialist courage and selfless spirit, write “common prosperity” on their own flag. As comrade Hu Jintao proclaimed at the CCP’s 90th anniversary conference, we must steadfastly pursue the path of common prosperity! We firmly believe, sooner or later, the whole humanity will take on the road of common prosperity.

These are the words of former Chongqing party boss Bo Xilai before his recent expulsion from the Chinese Communist Party and the announcement that he would face justice for corruption and abuse of power. You will not have read these words anywhere in the western media because our corporate media is not interested in enlightening us about Bo's ideology or political practice. On the contrary, the message we are being fed constantly is that China's road to capitalism is near completion - and irreversible and that Bo was an ambitious opportunist. (Remember everyone - There Is No Alternative.)

While these charges against Bo may have substance, are we to believe that Bo was unique in China in using his office for personal or family benefit? Surely, the example of Chongqing as an alternative to the onward march of capitalism in China - and within the CCP - is the real reason for his downfall. In the upcoming congress starting on 8 November, a new leadership will be annointed. The congress includes representatives of China's new class of billionaires. The net worth of those attending is reported to be an eye-watering $98 billion - contrasted with the paltry $7 billion worth of the US Congress and senior US officials. It seems that China's new leadership are likely to pursue a fully fledged turn to capitalism, with the new bourgeoise likely to produce 'liberal' figures who will support a turn to liberal democracy, the figleaf for full-blown neoliberalism the world over. Any attempt to resist such a process is painted by CCP 'reformers' as a desire to return to Maoism and the Cultural Revolution.

The following extract is from an essential analysis of the Chongqing model in the context of China's reform process and the struggle for the country's future from the Monthly Review.

Previously a municipality of Sichuan province, Chongqing gained provincial jurisdiction status in 1997. With a huge rural population (70 percent of 32 million in 2010) and a rugged geography in China’s southwest interior, Chongqing is a microcosm of China. It not only faces some of the country’s most profound socioeconomic challenges but also manifests all the pitfalls of neoliberal capitalist reintegration, including a criminalized economy. In late 2007, Bo, who had gained local governance experience first in the city of Dalian and then in Liaoning province prior to becoming China’s Minister of Commerce in 2003, was sent to lead Chongqing as its party secretary.
Chongqing still prides itself as China’s wartime capital and a center of global anti-fascist struggles between 1937 and 1946. It was turned “red” by literally soaking in the blood of Communist martyrs in the fierce struggles between the Communists and the Nationalists around the time of the PRC’s founding in 1949. Later, Chongqing was built into one of China’s Cold War–era major inland military-industrial bases. This cultivated a strong working class, who had been on the forefront of anti-privatization struggles until the mid–2000s. As China’s newly established metropolis during the reform era, Chongqing shouldered some of the heaviest social dislocations burdening China’s post-Mao development and modernization, with not only the resettlements of Three Gorges Dam migrants but also the care of the elderly and the children left behind in depressed rural villages by migrant workers moving to the coastal regions. Partly because of this, since 1997 the central authorities have given Chongqing more leeway to experiment with integrating urban and rural development. Bo, an ambitious, charismatic, and strong-willed “red princeling” (he is the son of a revolutionary leader) who had a significant power base among China’s political and military elites, was trying to reclaim China’s revolutionary legacies to win popular support in a bid to return to Beijing for a higher political office. This particular configuration of socio-historical, geopolitical, as well as biographical forces gave rise to the Chongqing Model.4
The model’s cornerstones were an enlarged public sector and a focus on social welfare.5 As an August 8, 2012 Foreign Policy article put it, it was “a daring experiment in using state policy and state resources to advance the interests of ordinary people, while maintaining the role of the party and state.”6 Specifically, the local state significantly enlarged its role in the economy through the creation of eight major investment firms that operated as marketized entities but served the purpose of equitable development. Similarly, a state investment firm, rather than private capital, took control of the massive “poor assets” of more than 1,160 state-owned enterprises from the Mao era, restructured them, and developed them into viable businesses. As a result, Chongqing’s state-owned assets grew exponentially. Chongqing took aggressive steps in bridging the urban-rural gap, enabling as many as 3.22 million rural migrants to settle in the city with urban citizenship entitlements in employment, retirement pensions, public rental housing, children’s education, and health care. Beginning in 2009, under a program known as 10 Points on People’s Livelihood, Chongqing spent more than half of all government expenditures on improving public welfare, particularly the livelihoods of workers and farmers.
In these ways, Chongqing put into practice the CCP’s slogan of pursuing people-centered development. In fact, there was nothing radical in these policies—if they were measured against official rhetoric. The effort to strengthen the public sector, for example, remains consistent with China’s constitutional commitment to build a “socialist” system based on the primacy of public ownership. Rather than oppose capitalist reintegration, Chongqing aggressively courted global capital. For example, in a plan to build Chongqing into Asia’s largest manufacturing center for notebook computers, transnational corporations from HP to Acer were attracted to establish operations there. Bo’s leadership even lured the super-exploitative IT manufacturer Foxconn to relocate 200,000 of its 500,000 Shenzhen jobs to Chongqing.7 However, there was a key difference. In Shenzhen, Foxconn was allowed to disembed itself from society by forcing workers to live in factory-supplied, military-barrack-style dorms. In contrast, Chongqing provided cheap public rental housing to Foxconn workers. This allowed it to break away from the “global labor arbitrage” pattern and re-embed transnational capital in society.8 Meanwhile, in an effort to solve the employment problem, Chongqing implemented a massive microenterprise program to support rural migrants and university graduates to establish businesses in the urban areas. In short, as Philip Huang observed, the Chongqing Model attempted to find a way that allows the complementary growth of state, transnational, and domestic private sectors in a mixed economy.9

Waving the Flag of Common Prosperity

Meanwhile, Bo, in a move that was highly counterintuitive to liberal expectations for political liberalization, reinvigorated the Maoist practice of mass line political communication in an attempt to reign in the CCP bureaucracy and capture the hearts and minds of Chongqing’s residents. The core concept is “common prosperity.” In a 2011 speech, Bo, citing Hu Jintao, argued that “common prosperity” is what defines the “advanced direction” of a communist culture:

The polarization of rich and poor is the backward culture of slave owners, feudal lords and capitalists, while common prosperity is the people’s just and advanced culture. The Western culture from the British bourgeois revolution in 1640 has had a history of more than 370 years. They often championed the slogans of “freedom, democracy, equality, and fraternity.” However, they have never mentioned “common prosperity”—a topic that concerns the fundamental interests of the vast majority of humanity. Only the communists, with their down-to-earth materialist courage and selfless spirit, write “common prosperity” on their own flag. As comrade Hu Jintao proclaimed at the CCP’s 90th anniversary conference, we must steadfastly pursue the path of common prosperity! We firmly believe, sooner or later, the whole humanity will take on the road of common prosperity.10

Furthermore, Bo argued that “common prosperity” is not just an ideal or an end point; rather it is the motivating force that runs through the entire developmental process. Just as neoliberal reformers have selectively cited Deng to justify class polarization, Bo cited the Deng who warned against the danger of the reform taking on the “evil path” of capitalism if it had created social polarization and engendered a new capitalist class. Bo even modified Deng’s developmental doctrine to argue that “the people’s livelihood is the ironclad truth.” Against those who continued to espouse the neoliberal “trickle down” theory by pitting “making the cake” against “dividing the cake,” Bo insisted that these two aims can be mutually reinforcing. Most significantly, he argued that the CCP could not wait for too long before dealing with the problem of social polarization, because then vested interests would be too powerful and it would be no longer possible to make any change. Speaking to the central leadership’s overriding concern with social harmony, Bo maintained that it was not the result of “control”; rather, only common prosperity would serve as the soil that nurtures the fruits of social harmony.11

The Coast of the Moon - a first chapter short story

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Little one, you are still only a seed inside me, but one day you will come out from your home in my belly, from the place between my legs, and you will breath in the air and feel the wind off the sea on your face. I will feed and protect you little one. The world is a place of danger, and you must be ready.

Your coming into the world will not be like mine. My mother said before I was born, death and hunger were strangers, but since I was born they have come to join us like ghosts of the old ones who come back to take life from their children. She does not blame me, yet she says I brought something bad with me when I came into the world. The day I was born, the Lady of the Waves took my father’s mother and sister when they were washing by the shore. She came in a mighty wall of water and pulled them under, like pebbles. My father says my coming caused his sorrow. All he does is eat the warm sap of the qamak, which he keeps in a shell until it is strong enough to make him drowsy, and then he sleeps all day.

We will leave this place soon but there is work to do yet. The fisher boy brings me the back of a great turtle. He made a bed of palms inside the turtle back, and bound to it some branches of the yeheb tree. He tells me that the soul of the turtle is very old and knows all the ways of the sea, and that she has left her shell as a gift for us so we will never go under the waves. I love this fisher boy and I love the soul of the turtle. She was so kind to leave us her shell.

You will never see our home in the dunes, little one. I will take you across the Sea of Blood, to a place where there is no death or hunger and we can make a new home in the floating island beyond. The Lady of the Waves may try to take us to her cave under the sea. She took my father’s mother and sister and so she knows our family well and may have a taste for our kin. But she will have to overcome the spirit of the turtle and the Moon, who is my husband and who will guide us to safety. He will make a path for us through the waves with the light from his fingers. They say the rain over there is pure and falls often, the trees grow tall and the fruit is so heavy it lands at your feet and the bees fly to you and drop honeycomb on your tongue. Just as it was here in the time before the White Rain. How do I know this? Because the Painted Grandmother told me and she can see where the eagles fly.


The Moon my husband

I live with my mother, who looks like me but is older and her skin is tough like the bark of the tree, and my father, who is old and lazy. We live near the Long Lake where the water is green and warm and where all kinds of fish live. This has been the home of the people since the Stars first led us here among the palms and the white sands and gave us the fish to eat and the palms to build our homes and the rocks to shelter us from the Sun’s eye and the dunes to hide us from the hyenas and lions.

One night a few suns ago, the Moon came to me in the night. He crept into our home when all were asleep. The Moon said he had been watching me for some days. I did not know what he wanted. I was afraid. Why have you come to me, I asked him? ‘I see you looking at me every night, and as I grow brighter, I see you more clearly and I see you are looking at me too.’ What do you want, I asked the Moon. The Moon said he had made me bleed when he came before during winter. It was true that I had begun to bleed once every moon when the nights were long and cold. Now it is summer and the sand is hot and the lizard puts up its fan all day long to cool itself, while the Sun’s eye beats down on all who stand under her for longer than a spider takes to crawl under a stone. The Painted Grandmother told me the Sun is God’s right eye, and the Moon his Left so it must be true.

The Moon said he makes all the women shed their blood every time he returns so that they know he is their master. He said he can stop them bleeding too – by giving them a child or making them barren. The Moon said he could have any woman he wanted, and on the night he is full he comes and gives his seed to the girl he likes the most. Tonight he chose me. I said I was faster and stronger than the other girls, and he would have to catch me. I once ran faster than a wild ass that chased me and the Painted Grandmother said I had a Panther as my shadow. I will not chase you said the Moon and just then I felt the juice in my belly rise to my mouth. Very well, you can make love to me, I told him, but only if you tell me a secret. What do you want to know the Moon asked? I did not know why I said this, then I said: ‘Tell me, why did the White Rain come and why did my brother die?’

I will tell you why the White Rain came, but I cannot tell you why your brother died. Many moons past, the Sun become angry and she grew very hot and she cried tears of ash, which covered the Earth.

Why was she angry, I asked?

Because she fell in love with a man, who was very strong and handsome. He asked her the secret of making fire and she gave it to him. She warned him to use it with great care but the man did not listen. He set fire to a blackwood tree and the flames from the fire rose up to heaven and burnt the eye of the Sun. So the Sun cried tears of ash, which covered the earth.

The Painted Grandmother once told me another story about the White Rain, that a man set fire to a bush and it burnt the backside of the sun, and the Sun pissed ash on the earth to kill all the People. The Moon said I should not fear for my brother as he was now under the Earth with all the other people who had gone there and that he was happy with lots to eat and a wife to keep him warm at night. I felt happy for my brother as I had not gone to the place we had left him on a high rock and asked if he needed any more food or water for a long time.

The Moon stood over me and with the white light that shone from him he covered my body. I felt afraid no more. My mother had told me this day would come and so I was ready. When he touched me I had to hold my breath because it stung like running across the hot rocks at midday. After that I could feel nothing. He left me telling me that I would have a daughter when he returned in the month of fasting. I did not know how many Moons this was, except that it was a lot.


Tears of Ash

One day when I was very young the rain turned white and bitter to the taste. The world changed and life for the people grew hard. Before there was plenty, and after we never had enough to eat. Since the White Rain came, the fruit and the trees began to die. The hunters used to come home after three days with antelope or ostrich meat for all the people to eat. Now they would go for seven days and nights and return empty handed. Any game they find they eat before they return. They only brought us bones and skin. The old ones and the babies grow weak and ill. Some die.

Because there is not enough food, the elders told some of the people they could not stay in the dunes and would have to move further up the beach. The Tattooed Grandmother put on her scorpion mask and she danced with her painted stick. Whoever she touched had to leave the dunes and never return. They wept and cried and then took their things and climbed down the dunes and walked along the shore until we could see them no more. I asked my mother where would they go. To another place where there was still fruit and birds and fish, she said. Can we go with them, I asked. But this made her angry and she sent me away.

My mother said to me that many men would try to make love to me, as my breasts had grown full, and all the men had seen them. Even One Eye with One Arm said ‘girl, you have full breasts, like the fruit of the fig tree when it is ripe.’ I told him he was too old and ugly for me, like a lame hyena, and he laughed an old man’s laugh.



My Brother the Termite Hunter

I am hungry sister, let’s find some termites to eat.

Since the white rain we eat more termites because there are more of them, and there is less of all the other things we used to eat, like fish, and fufu and sweet roots. The termites have no eyes and live in their great towers near the trees. Some of their towers are as tall as the boabab tree. The towers belong to the termite queen who makes them with her magic song. She rules over the termites and when she dies, the termites leave the tower forever. After they leave we find mongoose and spineback living in the empty towers. The termites mostly stay near the trees because they like to eat wood. We have to walk some way from the sand dunes to reach the trees where the termites live. To hunt termites we take two sticks, a big one to hit the mound with and a small twig with leaves on to collect the termites as they come out of a hole in the mound.

First of all my brother calls out to the termite queen, ‘O lady of the tower, for what we are about to do may you forgive us, but you have many children and we are hungry so we must eat a few of them.’ He looks at me and says that the termite queen is happy for us to begin our work. Then my brother scrapes a hole near the base of the tower with the sharp end of the stick, he hits the tower, boom, boom, boom. He keeps doing this until the termites begin to come out of the hole and walk along the twig. Then it is my job to collect them in a coconut husk. I feel my brother likes to do this as it makes him feel useful, and I like it also, although I do not really like to eat termites, as I think they are lizard food and that people should eat catfish, mango and lizard meat. My mother tells me of the old days when there was plenty of kudu to eat, for they ran wild and in large herds. Now they are rare.

Once we get the termites back to the dunes, we bake them on a small fire until they are crispy and smokey. Everybody comes and eats some. My brother looks happy. My father does not eat the termites as he is usually asleep and he never seems to be hungry. I think it is because he is already dead but does not know it. His body is like those you will see when a person dies and they place their body in a pit.

Sometimes instead of hunting termites, we hunt for lizards. They are harder to catch and there are less of them but their flesh is sweet. My brother made me laugh by acting a fool and he could also become angry and make me afraid. He was angry at Swift Spear for saying he would never be a good hunter when he saw him crying after a fall. But mostly he was angry at my father for being drunk on the qamak juice.

I did not cry when my brother died because just the day before he had been cruel toward me. He told me to go away and leave him alone, then he pulled my hair. Before I asked the Sun to punish him I went to my father and told him what my brother had said. But my father did nothing and told me to go away and stop with my childish ways and false claims against my brother. I did not see why my father would not believe me and this made me sad.

That night my brother began to moan in his sleep and begged me and my mother to help him. My mother looked at him and she found the cause of his pain in his foot. He had been bitten by the spider that eats birds. My father found the bird eater outside in the dune and he killed it with a stick. Then he went back to sleep. My mother sucked at the poison in my brother’s foot all night long, while my brother moaned until he had no more strength. The brave hunters came to see and they cried because they knew that a boy could not survive the bite of the spider that eats birds.

The Painted Grandmother came to him and she danced and used all her songs to protect my brother and keep Death away from him. She put on her scorpion mask and she threw dirt on him, which she had taken from the place where the dead go, to draw out the evil spirit that had entered him. She said that my brother had been fooled by a spider demon, which used magic to make him believe it was his friend and so he was not ready to fight it or run away. And so the earth took him.

I knew something the painted grandmother did not. The Moon had punished my brother for his cruelty toward me.

When my brother was gone we took him out into the dunes and placed him high up, placing stones around him and over him. Then we prayed for him so that he would be happy in the land of the dead. My brother had dreamed to be the Keeper of the Honey. Now it never could be. The keeper of the honey was an old man. He came to where my brother lay and he placed a piece of honeycomb on top the stones. I went to the trees and took my brother’s termite sticks and gathered up as many termites as I could find and brought them to the dune for him. ‘You did me wrong brother. I bring these termites because you are my blood and I do not want you to think that I have no feelings for you. I was angry but now I am not. I forgive you.’

When the night came all the food that had been placed there, the cactus fruit, aloe, dried flesh of reedbuck, was eaten by the people. They only left the honeycomb for my brother for it would be all he needed where he was going. The taste in my mouth was bitter and I wanted it to stay that way. All I could taste was the termites and my own tears.

At times I did not know whether I had been right to ask the Moon to revenge me for the time my brother pulled my hair and sent me away. One day I told my mother what I had said to the Moon before my brother died. I was afraid because I knew my mother loved my brother, that she loved him more than her own life. But the people say that no one knows how long their time is but that the Earth knows and she will take you without warning. You may shed tears but the earth will take them too and quench her thirst with them.


The Giant’s Back


Behind the dunes the river runs to the White Lake. First it passes through the swamp where many birds used to be before they flew away with the white rain. Some parts of the river cannot be passed because there are thick reeds along the banks. In these parts the hippos and river dragons live. The hippos do not like the people and they will kill you if you swim there. You can see there foot prints on the mud and you know then that they are near. The river dragons do not bother the people because they are lazy and they only move to catch fish or birds. They do sometimes eat children if they are foolish enough to come too close.

In the dunes it is cold at night and we sleep under the bamboo with the skins of animals to keep us warm. At night you can hear the frogs croaking in the reeds and the ducks laughing in the dark. Sometimes I can hear the owl calling out to the Moon asking that he shine light on a water rat so the owl can catch him, or I hear the baboons playing and fighting.

Beyond the swamp is the Giant’s Back, which rises up to the stars and is so long that no person has ever found its end. The Giant lay down and went to sleep in the time before the people. His back rises black and straight towards the sky. When a great hunter dies, the other hunters take his body up to the Giant’s Back and climb to the top and they leave him there, placing stones around him to stop the vultures eating him.

The painted grandmother told me that the world beyond the Giant’s Back is a desert where nothing can live. She said that when she has had enough of this world she will find the crack in the ribs of the Giant’s Back and she will pass into the land of death. In that place the wind blows hot and the water is bitter to the taste and full of grit, and no plants or flowers grow. Everywhere you walk the stones burn your feet and are sharp and cruel. In that place the dead still live and, as the painted grandmother is so old, she says that all her family and all her dead lovers will be there waiting for her. ‘But first I will have to teach you what I know, for you are soon to be a woman. I will take my stick and I will mark your skin so that you can take my magic when I am gone.’

The painted grandmother keeps all her magic on her body, her arms, legs and face. There is no part of her that does not have its own quarter of the world and its many secrets. Secrets of the beasts she kept in her belly, of the birds and spiders in her chest, of the earth and demons in her feet, of the trees and plants in her legs, of the sea and rivers on her back, and the stars and sky on one arm and the Sun and Moon on the other, of the ancestors and the spirits on her face and neck. ‘Yes, before I die I will show you. It will take 50 moons to paint the secrets of the world on to you. Only the strongest woman can take the secrets of the painted grandmother.' I am strong enough, I said. 'Good, but first you must bring forth this child in your belly.’


…….

Dreams of escape from a crowded world

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Ever since I visited Iceland, I had a yearning for landscapes empty of human habitation. I no longer enjoy big cities like I used to. I live in south-east England, the mostly densely populated part of the UK, which is number 25 in the list of countries by population density. The UK is just behind Vietnam is density terms. As i discovered when I moved from London to Brighton, I felt my stress levels reduce even as the high buildings and police sirens were replaced by the sense of light and space afforded by the sea and the generally smaller scale of architecture and the city. In the life of human beings our typical group size was not larger than 150 until about 11,000 years ago. Large cities with more than 100,000 populations are probably not older than 5000 years. Rome is believed to be the first city to grow to 1 million - perhaps the first megapolis. Today, there are over 300 cities in the world that boast a population in excess of 1 million.

When I drove through the Icelandic wilderness, I was moved by the sensation of an unspoiled human-free environment that for our ancestors would have been their birthright. I get the same feeling in the Scottish highlands where human impact is minimal. The words that sums up my feeling is 'peace' and 'freedom'.

It was only in 2005 that the majority of the human population became urban dwelling, as rapid urbanisation across the globe finally made urban as against rural existence the norm for the human species.

In the British isles, the happiest people according to a recent survey live on the Scottish islands. These are sparsely populated with beautiful vistas of the sea and unspoiled nature. This to me is central to human happiness - living by the sea and close to the countryside is good for our mental well-being, even though some people are happiest in big cities. Some thrive on stress, but as a recent article explained:

Living in an urban environment is long known to be a risk factor for psychiatric diseases such as major depression or schizophrenia. This is true even though infrastructure, socioeconomic conditions, nutrition and health care services are clearly better in cities than in rural areas. Higher stress exposure and higher stress vulnerability seem to play a crucial role. Social stress may be the most important factor for the increased risk of mental disorders in urban areas. It may be experienced as social evaluative threat, or as chronic social stress, both of which are likely to occur as a direct consequence of high population densities in cities. As for the impact on mental health, social stress seems to outweigh other urban stressors such as pollution or noise.

Living in crowded areas is associated with increased social stress, since the environment becomes less controllable for the individual. Social disparities also become much more prominent in cities and can impose stress on the individual. Further, disturbance of chronobiological rhythmsis is more frequent in cities than in rural areas and has a negative influence on mental health and beyond. A recent meta-analysis showed that urban dwellers have a 20 per cent higher risk of developing anxiety disorders, and a 40 per cent higher risk of developing mood disorders. For schizophrenia, double the risk has been shown, with a 'dose-response' relationship for urban exposure and disease risk. Longitudinal studies on patients with schizophrenia indicate that it is urban living and upbringing per se, rather than other epidemiological variables, that increase the risk for mental disorders.

So I have put together this list of sparsely populated states and territories. Of course the reality is that many countries are combinations of inhospitable desert or tundra with a few densely populated urban centres. Some are poor and many, if not most, resource rich. I have not included some of the smaller islands and city states such as Lichtenstein or Monaco. These tend to have dense populations, mostly of rich tax exiles.  

Countries with world's lowest population densities

1  Mongolia

2  Western Sahara

3  French Guiana

4. Namibia

5. Iceland

6  Suriname

7. Mauritania

8. Australia

9. Botswana

10. Guyana

11. Libya

12. Canada

13. Gabon

14. Kazakhstan

15. Central African Republic

16. Russia

17. Oman

18. Chad

19. Bolivia

20. Turkmenistan

21. Mali

22. Republic of the Congo

23. South Sudan

24. Saudi Arabia

   25. Niger

Countries with highest population densities

1. Singapore

2. Hong Kong

2. Bahrain

3. Malta

4. Maldives

5. Bangladesh

6. Palestinian territories

⁷  Taiwan

8. Barbados

9. Mauritius

10. South Korea

11. Netherlands

12. Rwanda

13. Lebanon

14. Puerto Rico

15. India

16. Haiti

17. Israel

18. Belgium

19. Japan

20. Sri Lanka

21. Philippines

22. El Salvador

23. Burundi

24. Vietnam

25. United Kingdom

Behind Venezuela's crime wave - police and Colombian narcos

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Eight million Venezuelans have voted to give Chavez another term to continue the Bolivarian revolution. Six million voted against, in a record turnout election that defied misleading reports in western media of a tight race. The number one concern of Venezuelans in recent years has been violent crime. Le Monde Diplomatique correspondent Maurice Lemoine wrote perceptively about this two years ago and identified three central problems. Police corruption and disorganisation - police are responsible for a significant part of the crimewave; Colombian narcos moving their business to Venezuela and bringing violence with it - is it a coincidence that as Colombia's crime rate falls, Venezuela's rises; and, paradoxically, rising living standards.

A new national police service is being created in Venezuela to replace the badly trained and semi-criminal old police forces. But prisons are still a violent nightmare (reforms are also underway), and murder and insecurity are worryingly prevalent. Some see a conspiracy at work to bring crime to the country, others a government failing to recognise that poverty reduction alone does not reduce crime in a culture of license and impunity. Criminals and narcos do it because the repressive hand of the pre-Chavez police force has to some extent been lifted. Torture and executions was the traditional way of dealing with criminals. In some parts of the country that may still be the case. When I lived in Venezuela in the mid-90s violence and guns were everywhere. Dealing with this problem is going to be one of the biggest challenges of the next presidential term.

Lemoine writes:

The poverty rate has fallen from around 60% to 23% over the last decade, and extreme poverty from 25% to 5%, but crime has soared. The government may have fallen into the trap of blaming violence on poverty alone: it has channelled all its energies into accelerated social programmes focusing on health, education and food (with some success) but has neglected insecurity, which was supposed to go away as conditions improved.
As in almost every Latin American country, the police are part of the problem, rather than the solution. “The difficulty,” said Soraya El Aschkar of the General Police Council, “is that we have not one police force but 135.” In federal, decentralised Venezuela, every governor and mayor has his own security force. There are no common rules, even on training, which is often entrusted to former members of the armed forces who create institutions that are more military than professional.

Then there are the narcos:

...thanks to the collusion of some elements of the police and the national guard, the Colombian drug trade is not only using Venezuela as a staging post on the way to the US or Africa but has also strengthened its hold on Caracas.
The scale of operations is huge. Marginalised youths are recruited with the offer of low price or even free (at first) cocaine. “We have seen a significant rise in consumption,” said a member of parliament, “and the indicators suggest a worrying number of teenagers are involved.” Once hooked, they burgle, rob, assault and kill to fund their drug habit. They become dealers but end up getting shot when they can’t pay their suppliers on time. They form gangs and fight for control of entire districts. “The turf wars between these imported networks,” I was told, “produce a lot of bodies, which is something the newspapers love.”
Could this simply be a natural result of the growth of international crime, which also affects Brazil and Central America, especially Mexico? Possibly.
The opposition and the media rejoice every time the US and Colombia claim (based on the testimony of supposed former guerrillas, whose identities are carefully concealed) that the leaders of the Colombian narcoguerrillas are in Venezuela. Yet they keep quiet about the revelations of Rafael García, former head of information technology at Colombia’s administrative security department (DAS, the intelligence arm of the president’s office). He does not hide his identity. Now in prison, García has revealed links between the DAS and extreme rightwing paramilitary organisations (the principals in the drug trade). He also claims that the former director of the DAS, Jorge Noguera, met paramilitaries and Venezuelan opposition leaders to plan the destabilisation of the Venezuelan government, and the assassination of Chávez.

It has long been known that paramilitary groups were present in the Venezuelan border states of Táchira, Apure and Zulia. In 2008 Últimas Noticias reported that the former head of the directorate of intelligence and prevention services (Disip), Eliézer Otaiza, had claimed around 20,000 Colombian paramilitaries were based in Venezuela and were involved in kidnappings, contract killings and drug trafficking. The Venezuelan press has said nothing on the issue, but on 31 January 2009 El Espectador, published in Bogotá, had the headline “The Black Eagles have flown to Venezuela” . The journalist Enrique Vivas reported that such groups controlled almost everything in Táchira, and even offered life insurance (except to members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, several of whom were assassinated this February and March).
With the collusion of the Zulia state police (controlled by opposition governors) the paramilitaries have, through violence or money lending, taken control of parts of Maracaibo and of local trade and small business in Las Playitas. I was told: “The authorities in Zulia organise a lot of‘peasant rallies’. Loads of them come over from Colombia – and don’t go back.”
In the state of Barinas, further into the Venezuelan interior, a resident told me: “We have never had so many Colombians. They buy up property and rent it out. When people have problems, they offer financial help. They behave like the narcos in Brazil. Violent crime has shot up to the kind of levels they have in Caracas.” I asked if the criminals might be Venezuelan, and how was it possible to distinguish between criminals and paramilitaries? “In the past, the Colombians never came here. They used to go to Caracas to find work. We never saw contract killings, massacres or kidnappings on this scale.”

PNAC and 9/11 gang are back - working for Mitt Romney

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Beyond the superficial performance analysis of the presidential debate, the grim truth of who advises Mitt Romney on foreign policy is where the money is. To know how Romneyworld would be run, watch a Terminator movie, or perhaps Taken 2. His team are like a Dick Cheney and Binyamin Netanyahu wet dream - and a nightmare for world peace.

Dov Zakheim is just one of the most prominent of the neoconservative and zionist men in black who are advising Mitt Romney on foreign policy. One of them is Cofer Black, one of the founders of the notorious Blackwater mercenary outfit that left a trail of destruction in Iraq. One of the main funders is Zionist casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. Another, Walid Phares, a Lebanese Christian academic, has come

 under fire from Muslim campaign groups and academics for his close involvement with right-wing Christian militia groups during the Lebanese civil war. A number of Romney's team are Israeli dual citizens, thanks to an anomaly of US politics that allow people whose loyalty is actually to Israel to determine America's foreign policy. (Strange, the uproar over President Obama's claim to US citizenship has not been matched by any disquiet over the number of dual citizenship Israelis who run the US foreign policy establishment). Michael Chertoff, dual citizen, was head of homeland security from 2004 to 2009 and made millions from new airport security technology arising from 9/11. Prior to that in 2001, Chertoff was the head of the criminal division of the Department of Justice, and oversaw the FBI investigation of 9/11 and collection of evidence, effectively allowing the destruction of most forensic evidence from the attack sites. Chertoff is one of Mitt's boys now. He also ensured that less than 10 weeks after they were taken into custody, 120 Mossad suspects arrested after 9/11 were released and sent to Israel on minor visa violations.

After Bush’s election, Donald Rumsfeld appointed Rabbi Dov Zakheim, dual citizen, to serve as his undersecretary for defense –financial comptroller, a post from which Zakheim oversaw Pentagon spending in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and the onset of the “war on terror.” Zakheim remained as comptroller until 2004, overseeing three defense budgets, each totaling more than $300 billion, and implementing six wartime supplementary budget requests.
According to Rightweb, Zakheim served as the Defense Department's chief financial officer during the 2003 efforts to streamline the department's spending procedures to reflect Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s vision of a 21st-century military. Critics say some of the reforms removed congressional oversight and accountability from the defense budget. During Zakheim's tenure, the Defense Department's Inspector General found that the Pentagon could not properly account for more than $1 trillion of spent funds. Shall we say that again - more than $1 trillion disappeared on Zakheim's watch.
According to some 9/11 truth advocates Veterans Today and Iran's Press TV, Zakheim is the prime suspect in the 'inside job' of 9/11. Zakheim was one of the authors of the Project for a New American Century paper from 2000: Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century. It contained the prophetic words:

... Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor.

That new Pearl Harbour duly arrived on 9/11. Zakheim was appointed Comptroller General at the Pentagon
in May 2001; from 1997-2001, Zakheim was also CEO of SPC International, a subsidiary of System Planning Corporation (SPC), a high-technology analytical firm that among other things specialised in remote control of aircraft, developing technology used in drones. SPC was connected to the World Trade Centre from as far back as 1993. Tridata, a subsidiary of Systems Planning Corporation, was in charge of the investigation after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. Systems Planning Corporation, according to their official website, specializes in many areas of defense technology production and manufacture, including a system developed by their Radar Physics Group called the Flight Termination System, or FTS. This highly sophisticated war-game technology allows the control of several 'drones' from a remote location, on varying frequencies, and has a range of several hundred miles. This technology can be used on many different types of aircraft, including large passenger jets.
There were a large number of terrorist drills planned for 9/11 including at least one that involved the hijacking of aircraft to be used as weapons to attack Washington and New York. If this strangely coincidental anti-terror drill was actually part of the 9/11 plot, using remote control guidance systems, Zakheim was in pole position to oversee it. And it could explain where some of that $1 trillion went. (If that sounds far-fetched, remember Operation Northwood, proposed by the CIA in 1962 as a false flag involving hijacking planes and setting off bombs in order to justify war with Cuba. More sinister perhaps than Northwoods itself, is the fact that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the plan, but President Kennedy turned it down.)
If Romney is elected, all Binyamin Netanyahu's dreams will come true at once. His recent antics at the UN with cartoons of atomic bombs to illustrate the Iranian threat somehow suggest desperation or fear of a Romney defeat, and he has apparently postponed Armaggeddon until 2013.

Uri Avnery: Of Bombs and Comics

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By Uri Avnery

October 06, 2012 "Information Clearing House" - My first reaction to Binyamin Netanyahu’s exhibition of comics at the UN General Assembly was shame.

Shame that the supreme elected representative of my country would stoop to such a primitive rhetorical device, bordering on the childish.

(One Israeli commentator suggested putting him on a rug with a lot of paper and Indian ink, and letting him play to his heart’s content.)

He was speaking to a half-empty chamber (Israeli TV was careful not to show the entire hall during the speech), and the audience consisted of second-grade diplomats, but these were still educated people. Even Netanyahu must have realized that they would despise this display. But Netanyahu was not talking to them at all. He was talking to the Jewish audience at home and in the US.

THIS AUDIENCE was proud of him. He succeeded in touching their deepest emotions.

To understand this, one must recall the historical memories. Jews were a small, powerless community everywhere. They were completely dependent on the Gentile ruler.

Whenever their situation was in danger, the Jews chose the most prominent person among them to plead their cause before the emperor, king or prince. When this “pleader” (Shtadlan in Hebrew) was successful and the danger was averted, he won the gratitude of the whole community. In some cases, he would be remembered for generations, like the mythical Mordecai in the Book of Esther.

Netanyahu fulfilled this function. He went to the very center of Gentile power, today’s equivalent of the Persian Emperor, and pleaded the case of the Jews threatened with annihilation by the current heir of Haman the Evil (same Book of Esther).

And what an idea of genius to exhibit the drawing of the Bomb! It was reproduced on the front pages of hundreds of newspapers and on TV news programs around the world, including the New York Times!

For Netanyahu this was “the Speech of his Life”. To be precise, as one TV commentator dryly pointed out, it was the 8th Speech of his Life at the General Assembly.

His popularity soared to new heights. Moses himself, the supreme pleader at the court of Pharaoh, could not have done better.

BUT THE crux of the matter was hidden somewhere between the torrents of words.

The “inevitable” attack on Iran’s nuclear installations to prevent the Second Holocaust was postponed to next spring or summer. After blustering for months that the deadly attack was imminent, any minute now, no minute to spare, it disappeared into the mist of the future.

Why? What happened?

Well, one reason was the polls indicating that Barack Obama would be reelected. Netanyahu had doggedly staked all his cards on Mitt Romney, his ideological clone. But Netanyahu is also a True Believer in polls. It seems that Netanyahu's advisors convinced him to hedge his bet. The evil Obama might win, in spite of the Sheldon Adelson millions. Especially now, after George Soros has staked his millions on the incumbent.

Netanyahu had the brilliant idea of attacking Iran just before the US elections, hoping that the hands of all American politicians would be tied. Who would dare to restrain Israel at such a time? Who would refuse help to Israel when the Iranians counter-attacked?

But like so many of Netanyahu’s brilliant ideas, this one, too, flopped. Obama has told Netanyahu in no uncertain terms: No attack on Iran before the elections. Or else…

THE NEXT President of the United States of America – whoever that may be – will tell Netanyahu the same after the elections.

As I have said before (excuse me for quoting myself again), a military attack on Iran is out of the question. The price is intolerably high. The geographic, economic and military facts all conspire to prevent it. The Strait of Hormuz would be shut, the world economy would collapse, a long and devastating war would ensue.

Even if Mitt Romney were in power, surrounded by a crowd of neocons, it would not change these facts one bit.

Obama’s case is very much strengthened by the economic news coming out of Iran. The international sanctions have had amazing results. The skeptics – led by Netanyahu – are in disarray.

Contrary to the anti-islamic caricature, Iran is a normal country, with a normal middle-class and citizens with a high political awareness. They know that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a fool and if he had really wanted to produce a nuclear bomb, would he have made all these idiotic speeches about Israel and/or the Holocaust? Shouldn’t he have kept his mouth shut and worked hard at it? But since he is about to go away anyhow, no need to make a revolution just now.

The practical upshot: Sorry, no war.

THE WHOLE affair brings up again the Walt-Mearsheimer controversy. Does Israel control US policy? Does the tail wag the dog?

To a very large extent, that is undoubtedly the case. Enough to follow the present election campaign and perceive how both candidates treat the Israeli government obsequiously, competing to outdo the other with words of flattery and support.

Jewish votes play an important role in swing states, and Jewish money plays a huge role in financing both candidates. (O tempora, o mores! Once there was a Jewish joke: A Polish nobleman threatens his neighboring nobleman: “If you hit my Jew, I shall hit your Jew!” Now one Jewish billionaire threatens another Jewish billionaire: If you give a million to your Goy, I shall give a million to my Goy!”)

The Obama administration’s Middle East policy staff is manned by Zionist Jews, down to the US ambassador in Tel Aviv, who speaks better Hebrew than Avigdor Lieberman. Dennis Ross, the grave digger of Middle East peace, seems to be everywhere. Romney’s neocons, too, are mostly Jews.

Jews have a huge influence – up to a point. This point is extremely significant.

There was a minor illustration: Jonathan Pollard, the American-Jewish spy, was sent to prison for life. Many people (including myself) consider this penalty unduly harsh. Yet no American Jew dared to protest, AIPAC kept quiet and no American president was swayed by Israeli calls for clemency. The US security establishment said No, and No it was.

The war on Iran is a million times more important. It concerns vital American interests. The American military opposes it (as does the Israeli military). Everybody in Washington DC knows that this is no side issue. It touches the very basis of American power in the world.

And lo and behold, the US says NO to Israel. The President says coolly that in matters of vital security interests, no foreign country can order the US Commander in Chief to draw red lines and commit himself to a war. Especially not with the help of a comic-book drawing.

Israelis are astounded. What? We, the country of God’s chosen people, are foreigners? Just like other foreigners?

This is a very important lesson. When things really come to a head, the dog is still the dog and the tail is still the tail.

SO WHAT about Netanyahu’s Iran commitment?

Recently I was asked by a foreign journalist if Netanyahu could survive the elimination of the “military option” against Iran, after talking for months about nothing else. What about the Iranian Hitler? What about the coming Holocaust?

I told him not to worry. Netanyahu can easily get out of it by claiming that the whole thing was really a ruse to get the world to impose tougher sanctions on Iran.

But was it?

People of influence in Israel are divided.

The first camp worries that our Prime Minister is really off his rocker. That he is obsessed with Iran, perhaps clinically unbalanced, that Iran has become an idée fixe.

The other camp believes that the whole thing was, right from the beginning, a hoax to divert attention from the one issue that really matters: Peace with Palestine.

In this he has been hugely successful. For months now, Palestine has been missing from the agenda of Israel and the entire world. Palestine? Peace? What Palestine, What peace? And while the world stares at Iran like a hypnotized rabbit at a snake, settlements are enlarged and the occupation deepened, and we are sailing proudly towards disaster.

And that is not at all a comic book story.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli journalist, writer and peace activist

www.avnery-news.co.il

Eric Hobsbawm and my grandfather

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Eric Hobsbawm, who died this week, was Britain's greatest marxist historian and one of my favourite writers. He was on the Gramscian wing of the British Communist party, rather than an uncritical follower of the Soviet Union. Gramsci's theory of hegemony, and the efforts of Italian communists to come to power under democracy after 1945, held a lot more relevant lessons for British communists than the grim struggle for power in Russia. At the same time Hobsbawm did not renounce his support for the Soviet Union, which ultimately defeated the nazis at the cost of 26 million lives. He was an emigre from nazi Germany who ended by studying at Cambridge and becoming a standout historian of his generation.

My grandfather Alan Paterson was also at Cambridge in the early 30s, finishing his studies a year or two before Hobsbawm began his. Cambridge University in the 1930s produced a whole generation of influential left-wingers, including the Cambridge spies. In fact my grandfather attended Cambridge in the same years as Kim Philby, the most notorious of the Cambridge Three. My grandfather's background was similarly privileged to those of Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and Donald Maclean. The Soviet Union allegedly recruited 40 spies at Cambridge. My grandfather's political trajectory followed theirs up to a point, as it did for many thinking sons and daughters of the British bourgeoisie in those years. He visited Nazi Germany in 1933, as well as Fascist Italy and later the Soviet Union. I have yet to read that section of the diaries - I hope it is reported in full, although he has a habit of tearing out some of the most interesting sections, something he did at a later date during the war when there was a fear of nazi invasion. Initially he travelled mostly to takle part in international golf tournaments, but as his diaries reveal, he was increasingly inclined to a socialist view of the world, if not at that point marxist. He practised law, stood as a Labour counciller and ultimately became a farmer. I am currently transcribing his diaries which I hope to publish at some point.

Below is an excellent obituary of Hobsbawm from the Morning Star online:

Eric Hobsbawm, who died on Monday aged 95, stood unchallenged as the foremost historian in the Marxist tradition not just in Britain but internationally.
He was also an active Communist for most of his life and closely involved in the key debates which defined the history of the left in Britain during the 20th century.
Born in Alexandria to Jewish parents of British-Austrian nationality in 1917, he was orphaned as a child and then brought up by an uncle in Berlin.
There he witnessed the nazi rise to power at first hand and participated in resistance activities as a member of a communist youth organisation.
Moving to school in Britain in 1934, he secured a scholarship to King's College, Cambridge, in 1935 and quickly became involved in the wider intellectual and organisational activities of the university's Communist Party branch. He served during the second world war in the engineers and army educational corps.
After the war he lectured at Birkbeck College in London from 1947 until his retirement in 1982 and held a fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, between 1949 and 1955.
He held visiting chairs in the United States from the 1960s and became president of Birkbeck College in 2002.
As a historian Hobsbawm was a central figure among those who transformed British history writing in the 1940s and '50s and for at least three decades broke the dominance of those who had hitherto made history speak for the existing order.
Along with Christopher Hill, Donna Torr, George Thomson, Rodney Hilton, Victor Kiernan, EP Thompson and other members of the Communist Party Historians Group, Hobsbawm laid out a new agenda.
This was interdisciplinary, insisted that society had to analysed as a whole and drew on the approach of the French historians of the Annales school, Georges Lefebre and Marc Bloch, both deeply influenced by Marx.
In 1952 Hobsbawm with other members of the Historians Group founded the journal Past and Present and a little later the Society for the Study of Labour History. The sophistication of their analysis forced mainstream historical journals to engage on fields of battle defined in Marxist terms.
Hobsbawm himself did so particularly in three areas.
He redefined the European crisis of the 17th century in economic, demographic and political terms as a clash between feudalism and capitalism.
He provided statistical support for Marx's view that the initial phase of industrial growth was at the expense of working-class living standards and hence challenged the dominant academic orthodoxy which insisted that industrialisation improved living standards.
Hobsbawm also produced detailed studies which vindicated Lenin's explanation of the reformism of Britain's labour movement in terms of a labour aristocracy sustained on the profits of empire.
Regis professors were lured out of their ivory towers - often returning battered and discredited.
These debates took Marxist assumptions on the class-driven character of social change to the heart of history teaching in schools and universities.
Hobsbawm followed this up in the 1960s and '70s with brilliantly accessible histories of Britain, Europe and the world over the past three centuries that defined the historical understanding of a generation.
It is rare for a scholar of Hosbawm's stature to be so accessible in their writing and teaching. Many of us will remember this for many years to come.
At the same time Hobsbawm was closely involved in the politics of the Communist Party. Along with EP Thompson and John Saville, he was among those who demanded changes in inner-party democracy and a departure from democratic centralism in the wake of the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and its denunciation of Stalin. He did not, however, leave the Communist Party.
In the '60s and '70s he developed links with those in the Italian Communist Party who saw themselves as developing a strategy for socialism that was quite distinct from - and to a large extent posed against - that of the Soviet Union.
In 1977 he published The Italian Road to Socialism based on a long interview with Giorgio Napolitano, then international secretary of the Italian party and today president of Italy.
In 1978 he gave a lecture at Marx House in London that was subsequently published in the Communist Party monthly Marxism Today as The Forward March of Labour Halted.
Writing at the time when the trade union movement was at the peak of its strength - and the left highly influential within it - Hobsbawm argued that the manual working class was in numerical decline and that the character of its politics was inherently economistic, trapped within the bounds of self-interested wage bargaining, and that consequently the left had to look in future to broader alliances and social movements.
This lecture became an iconic text for that wing within the Communist Party that sought to steer it away from class politics and to challenge key elements of Marxism.
While Hobsbawm never fully endorsed this endeavour, he actively supported the transformation of Marxism Today into its flagship journal and was a very frequent contributor. He continued to be so until 1991, by which time the Communist Party of Great Britain under the control of this wing had expelled virtually all opponents and then voted itself out of existence.
The same tendency subsequently provided important ideological support for those within the Labour Party calling for a realignment away from the trade union movement and the creation of new Labour.
Although Hobsbawm supported Neil Kinnock's remoulding of the Labour Party and was honoured by Tony Blair he subsequently spoke out against new Labour, its alignment with US policies and, very firmly, against the invasion of Iraq.
In his final years Hobsbawm continued his role - to use his own phrase - as a "public intellectual."
He refused all invitations to unilaterally condemn the Soviet Union and instead asserted its historic role in the defeat of fascism.
He indicated his concern at the manipulation of "identity politics" and in particular the divisive use of nationalism and national mythology. He showed his exasperation at the abandonment by most contemporary historians of any attempt to understand overall processes of social change.
Internationally, his writings have become an intellectual beacon for those seeking an understanding of human development in Marxist terms, particularly in Latin America and the Indian subcontinent.
While in Britain his death marks the end of that generation of communist historians who transformed history-writing, his continuing influence as a humanist and historian is assured.

Hit piece on Chavez ignores economic data

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Rory Carrol's latest Chavez hit piece ahead of the presidential election carries the utterly loaded headline 'Strongman's last stand'. Clearly there are huge problems relating to security, crime and public infrastructure in the country - I can't comment on these as I have not been there since 2006. I don't believe you can ever know what is really happening in a country from thousands of miles away. 

A murder rate of 15,000+ is terrifying. I've encountered criminals in uniform myself while in Caracas - eyes of killers and looking for a chance to steal. This is an old problem that seems to have got worse, perhaps fuelled by political polarisation and hostility in certain state institutions to the government. The truth is there are no utopias in the world, whatever the political colour of a regime. What is certain is that the West would like to see the back of Chavez - but his loyal supporters are likely to deny that outcome come election day (if polls are to be believed).

Trying to summarise the situation is difficult for any commentator but at least this one - who comments on Carrol's piece - doesn't rely on anecdotes and focuses on economic data, which is not as bad as Carrol paints:

Carrol paints a rather controversial and very partial view of the Venezuelan economy. He fails to grasp some of the complexities involved in an analysis of its problems and of its benefits.

Let us begin with the 2003 oil strike, which caused an extremely severe recession, with a loss of 29 percent of GDP. However, even after the strike was over, analysts predicted a dire future and a slow, difficult recovery. International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts repeatedly underestimated GDP growth by a gigantic 10.6, 6.8, and 5.8 percentage points for the years 2004-2006.1 Instead, the recovery was very rapid and the economy grew at a record pace over the next five years, with real GDP nearly doubling from the end of the oil strike (first quarter 2003) through the fourth quarter of 2008.

When oil prices collapsed in the fourth quarter of 2008, many analysts concluded that Venezuela’s day of reckoning had finally come. A recession began in the first quarter of 2009, and forecasts remained dire well beyond the beginning of the recovery in the second quarter of 2010. In 2011, the Venezuelan economy defied most forecasts by growing 4.2 percent, and is up 5.6 percent for the first half of 2012.

Venezuela’s economy went into recession in the first quarter of 2009, which lasted for five quarters, until the second quarter of 2010. International oil prices had dropped precipitously in the fourth quarter of 2008, falling by 50 percent (from $118 to $58 a barrel). Although at first glance the recession appears as though it was part of an inevitable “oil boom and bust,” this was not the case. Although most of the countries in the Western Hemisphere experienced recessions during the 2008- 2009 world economic crisis and recession, many did not, and it was possible to mitigate the recession or even avoid it altogether with counter-cyclical macroeconomic policy. Venezuela was in a position to do so, since it had a low public debt (and most importantly, low foreign public debt) when oil prices began to fall, and could have borrowed and spent as much as necessary in order to keep the economy growing.

But government spending was pro-cyclical as the economy slowed and fell into recession, and then during the recession. There was a jump in spending in the second quarter of 2010, as the economy emerged from recession. In 2011, government spending boosted and consolidated the recovery.

The Venezuelan economy has now grown for nine consecutive quarters – beginning with the second quarter of 2010; and the current quarter, which ends at the end of September, and will also show positive growth. Although this recovery has gotten a boost from increased government spending, it has been relatively broad-based throughout various sectors. In 2011, utilities, construction, transportation, commerce and repairs, communications, finance and insurance, and mining all grew faster than overall GDP (4.2 percent). Manufacturing, which makes up about 14 percent of GDP, grew somewhat less, at 3.8 percent.

For 2012, the economy grew 5.6 percent in the first half of the year, as compared with the first half of 2011. Here growth was led by construction, which expanded by 22.5 percent over the first half of 2011, due to the government’s program to build housing and alleviate a national housing shortage. In 2011, there were about 147,000 houses built under this program, with two-thirds built by the public sector and one-third from the private sector. Some 200,000 are planned for this year, with over 50 percent of these having been built by September.2 These are large numbers relative to Venezuela’s population; a comparable number for Venezuela’s 2011 construction in the U.S. would be more than 1.6 million homes, or two and half times the number of houses actually built in the U.S. in that year.

Venezuela still has a relatively low debt burden. The most common measure of debt is the ratio of debt to GDP.3 By this measure, the IMF reports Venezuela’s public debt for 2011 as 45.5 percent of GDP.4 Central government debt is just 25.1 percent of GDP; the IMF number includes other public entities, most importantly PDVSA, the national oil company. This is still a relatively low level of public debt – the European Union, for example, has a debt of about 82.5 percent of GDP.

Finally, this growth has inevitably led to a large reduction in poverty and extreme poverty, as well as numerous other gains in health care and education due to increases in social spending. And as high as Venezuela’s 22 percent annual rate of inflation has been (since 1998), it was much worse (34 percent) in the pre-Chávez years.

In short - I do not feel that Rory is much of an economist. For you to have a broader view of the positives and negatives of the Venezuelan economy, one must get into the nitty gritty. This is a shame, as a really productive discussion of this issue would be beneficial in wrenching us from the shackles of monetarist dogma.