Saturday, July 17, 2004
Another positive social indicator under Chavez
According to Thursday's edition of Ultimas Noticias infant mortality has dropped sharply during President Chavez's tenure. The rates by year are:
1998 (before Chavez) 23.9
1999 (Chavez takes office) 19.1
2000 17.7
2001 17.7
2002 18.2
Clearly the mortality rate has dropped significantly under President Chavez. This results from increased health care expenditures as well as inovative health care programs such as Barrio Adentro which provide free health care who were formally denied it.
|
Some candor from Bloomberg
Leave it to Bloomberg news service to write one of the best and most informative articles on the referendum process under way in Venezuela. In fact it is so good it deserves to be reproduced here:
July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuela's opposition opened a monthlong campaign period leading up to an Aug. 15 referendum to recall President Hugo Chavez, blaming him in television and radio ads for unemployment, crime and political polarization.
With media advertising restricted by the National Electoral Council, the opposition is counting on about 400,000 volunteers to contact at least half the nation's 12 million registered voters during the 30-day campaign, as they seek to stem Chavez's growing support, opposition leaders said.
``The problem for the opposition is that most of their strengths are negative rather than positive,'' said Dr. Julia Buxton, a professor of political science at the U.K.'s Kingston University. ``They need to channel negative feelings about Chavez into positive support for the opposition.''
Opposition leaders such as Jesus Torrealba of the Democratic Coordinator say the referendum is a chance to stop Venezuela from sliding into dictatorship and to boost private investment in an economy 5 percent smaller than when Chavez took office in 1999. Chavez, who makes his views known in a 4-hour radio and television show most weekends, says ``oligarchs'' and ``squalid people'' seek a return to power to take away benefits the poor have won from his ``revolutionary'' government.
``We're frank when we talk to people,'' Torrealba said. ``Things were done very poorly in this country in the past, but in the last five years these bad things have been made even worse.''
Chavez's popularity has surged in recent opinion polls after government spending on health, education and public works more than doubled to 13.5 trillion bolivars ($7.04 billion) in the first four months of this year from the same period in 2003.
Venezuela's benchmark 9 1/4 percent bond maturing in 2027 rose 1.50 cents on the dollar to a two-month high of 89.60 cents on the dollar, lowering the yield to 10.44 percent, according to J.P. Morgan at 5:00 p.m. New York time. The bond's price has risen 13.35 cents since May 10.
Missions
Programs the government calls `Missions'' have given Chavez strong boost, said Robert Bottome, an analyst with research company Veneconomy in Caracas. There are Missions offering literacy courses while one placed about 10,000 Cuban doctors in poor neighborhoods for free medical care. `Mission Identity' gave citizenship in the last three months to about 216,000 foreign nationals living in Venezuela.
``Chavez is touching all the right buttons with his slogans and message, and the missions have a lot to do with it,'' Bottome said.
The Missions are so popular that after Chavez said they'd be scrapped if the recall succeeded, the opposition promised to keep them running.
``The positive aspects of the missions must continue, perhaps with a few changes,'' radio talk show host and Democratic Coordinator leader Elias Santana said in an interview. ``For example, putting doctors in the communities was a positive idea but maybe they should be Venezuelan and not Cuban.''
Campaign Ads
Chavez says the opposition represents the upper and middle classes affiliated with the parties that ruled Venezuela since democracy was reinstated in 1958 until 1999.
``They will never come back,'' Chavez said in a televised speech yesterday in Caracas, dressed in a red shirt bearing the phrase `A battle for hope.'
As of today, the electoral council will allow each side to air six 30-second advertisements per television station per day, and ten 30-second radio spots per station per day, along with a daily page or half-page ad in each of the country's newspapers. The council will fund the entire media campaign,
Recent polls show Chavez, 49, gaining support as the economy pulls out of recession.
Rising Popularity
In a poll released last week, 54.5 percent of registered voters favored recalling Chavez compared with 65.8 percent in favor in March. The poll, by Consultores 21 and funded by seven private companies, had margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.
A separate poll last month by Washington-based Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc., paid for by RCTV television station, also showed Chavez gaining.
Recalling Chavez requires at least 3.76 million votes and a majority of votes cast. The electoral council said last month opposition groups collected more than the 2.4 million signatures required to trigger the referendum.
The economy's performance under Chavez may dominate the vote if the opposition can pin him with the blame for it, said Vilati Meschoulam, an analyst with HSBC Securities in New York.
The economy shrank 8.9 percent in 2002 and 9.4 percent last year before rebounding 30 percent in the first quarter. Unemployment fell to 15.6 percent in March from a record high of 21 percent in February 2003.
Chavez has also been unable to reduce one of the highest crime rates in Latin America. Murders in Caracas, a capital with about four million residents, jumped 10 percent last year to 2,265, police said. Caracas had the third-highest murder rate of any city in the Americas between 1999 and 2003, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.
Opposition leaders, some of whom call Chavez a communist, will argue during the campaign that they seek to unite the country after five years of such bitter political fighting, Torrealba said.
'Not Negotiable'
``Chavez has tried to divide the country into patriots and oligarchs, revolutionaries and traitors while we want national reconciliation among all Venezuelans,'' Torrealba said in an interview.''
``There will be no reconciliation with the enemy,'' Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said in a speech earlier this month. ``The revolution is not negotiable.''
|
July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Venezuela's opposition opened a monthlong campaign period leading up to an Aug. 15 referendum to recall President Hugo Chavez, blaming him in television and radio ads for unemployment, crime and political polarization.
With media advertising restricted by the National Electoral Council, the opposition is counting on about 400,000 volunteers to contact at least half the nation's 12 million registered voters during the 30-day campaign, as they seek to stem Chavez's growing support, opposition leaders said.
``The problem for the opposition is that most of their strengths are negative rather than positive,'' said Dr. Julia Buxton, a professor of political science at the U.K.'s Kingston University. ``They need to channel negative feelings about Chavez into positive support for the opposition.''
Opposition leaders such as Jesus Torrealba of the Democratic Coordinator say the referendum is a chance to stop Venezuela from sliding into dictatorship and to boost private investment in an economy 5 percent smaller than when Chavez took office in 1999. Chavez, who makes his views known in a 4-hour radio and television show most weekends, says ``oligarchs'' and ``squalid people'' seek a return to power to take away benefits the poor have won from his ``revolutionary'' government.
``We're frank when we talk to people,'' Torrealba said. ``Things were done very poorly in this country in the past, but in the last five years these bad things have been made even worse.''
Chavez's popularity has surged in recent opinion polls after government spending on health, education and public works more than doubled to 13.5 trillion bolivars ($7.04 billion) in the first four months of this year from the same period in 2003.
Venezuela's benchmark 9 1/4 percent bond maturing in 2027 rose 1.50 cents on the dollar to a two-month high of 89.60 cents on the dollar, lowering the yield to 10.44 percent, according to J.P. Morgan at 5:00 p.m. New York time. The bond's price has risen 13.35 cents since May 10.
Missions
Programs the government calls `Missions'' have given Chavez strong boost, said Robert Bottome, an analyst with research company Veneconomy in Caracas. There are Missions offering literacy courses while one placed about 10,000 Cuban doctors in poor neighborhoods for free medical care. `Mission Identity' gave citizenship in the last three months to about 216,000 foreign nationals living in Venezuela.
``Chavez is touching all the right buttons with his slogans and message, and the missions have a lot to do with it,'' Bottome said.
The Missions are so popular that after Chavez said they'd be scrapped if the recall succeeded, the opposition promised to keep them running.
``The positive aspects of the missions must continue, perhaps with a few changes,'' radio talk show host and Democratic Coordinator leader Elias Santana said in an interview. ``For example, putting doctors in the communities was a positive idea but maybe they should be Venezuelan and not Cuban.''
Campaign Ads
Chavez says the opposition represents the upper and middle classes affiliated with the parties that ruled Venezuela since democracy was reinstated in 1958 until 1999.
``They will never come back,'' Chavez said in a televised speech yesterday in Caracas, dressed in a red shirt bearing the phrase `A battle for hope.'
As of today, the electoral council will allow each side to air six 30-second advertisements per television station per day, and ten 30-second radio spots per station per day, along with a daily page or half-page ad in each of the country's newspapers. The council will fund the entire media campaign,
Recent polls show Chavez, 49, gaining support as the economy pulls out of recession.
Rising Popularity
In a poll released last week, 54.5 percent of registered voters favored recalling Chavez compared with 65.8 percent in favor in March. The poll, by Consultores 21 and funded by seven private companies, had margin of error of 2.5 percentage points.
A separate poll last month by Washington-based Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research Inc., paid for by RCTV television station, also showed Chavez gaining.
Recalling Chavez requires at least 3.76 million votes and a majority of votes cast. The electoral council said last month opposition groups collected more than the 2.4 million signatures required to trigger the referendum.
The economy's performance under Chavez may dominate the vote if the opposition can pin him with the blame for it, said Vilati Meschoulam, an analyst with HSBC Securities in New York.
The economy shrank 8.9 percent in 2002 and 9.4 percent last year before rebounding 30 percent in the first quarter. Unemployment fell to 15.6 percent in March from a record high of 21 percent in February 2003.
Chavez has also been unable to reduce one of the highest crime rates in Latin America. Murders in Caracas, a capital with about four million residents, jumped 10 percent last year to 2,265, police said. Caracas had the third-highest murder rate of any city in the Americas between 1999 and 2003, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.
Opposition leaders, some of whom call Chavez a communist, will argue during the campaign that they seek to unite the country after five years of such bitter political fighting, Torrealba said.
'Not Negotiable'
``Chavez has tried to divide the country into patriots and oligarchs, revolutionaries and traitors while we want national reconciliation among all Venezuelans,'' Torrealba said in an interview.''
``There will be no reconciliation with the enemy,'' Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel said in a speech earlier this month. ``The revolution is not negotiable.''
|
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Some religious extremists are better than others
The right wing in the U.S. has been raising a hue and cry about the alledged religious fanaticism amongst the "Islamofascists" fighting the U.S. The extent to which religion really effects all of this is open to debate. But what is not really open to debate is that there are religious fanatics on all sides of this. And the religious fantacism of the Jews and Christians certainly rivals anything the muslims have. Witness some quotes from todays front page article in the Wall Street Journal entitled "Sharon Feels Wrath of Israeli Settlers He Long Supported":
"Members of the far right have stepped up verbal attacks no the Sharon plan. In early July, a leading Jewish rabbi sai that under Jewish law, anyone who gives away Israeli land - in which he included the West Bank and Gaza strip - faces the death penalty". Similar comments preceded the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, by an ultra-nationalist associated with the settler camp.
For the moment, Mr. Bratt [a West Bank settler] says, violence isn't warranted, and working within Israeli's democracy is the most effective path. If Mr. Sharon persists, he says, many settlers won't feel bound by Isreal's laws. He says violent struggle to secure the land he lives on isn't just an option but an obligation.
'This is a battle between the believers [in God] and the nonbelievers,' he said, as his children bounced around his living room in Yakir on a recent morning. 'I believe that no one has the authority, not the government, not the military, not even the Israeli majority, to take our land from us. Only He can do that ' Mr. Bratt said, gesturing toward the sky."
"This is a battle between the believers and the nonbelievers". So now we are hearing this from muslims, christians, and jews. I have to say though, I think their real enemy is each other, not "non-believers". So couldn't they jut leave us non-believers out of it?
|
"Members of the far right have stepped up verbal attacks no the Sharon plan. In early July, a leading Jewish rabbi sai that under Jewish law, anyone who gives away Israeli land - in which he included the West Bank and Gaza strip - faces the death penalty". Similar comments preceded the assassination of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, by an ultra-nationalist associated with the settler camp.
For the moment, Mr. Bratt [a West Bank settler] says, violence isn't warranted, and working within Israeli's democracy is the most effective path. If Mr. Sharon persists, he says, many settlers won't feel bound by Isreal's laws. He says violent struggle to secure the land he lives on isn't just an option but an obligation.
'This is a battle between the believers [in God] and the nonbelievers,' he said, as his children bounced around his living room in Yakir on a recent morning. 'I believe that no one has the authority, not the government, not the military, not even the Israeli majority, to take our land from us. Only He can do that ' Mr. Bratt said, gesturing toward the sky."
"This is a battle between the believers and the nonbelievers". So now we are hearing this from muslims, christians, and jews. I have to say though, I think their real enemy is each other, not "non-believers". So couldn't they jut leave us non-believers out of it?
|
Construction activity takes off
In yet another sign of the Venezuelan economies astounding recovery from last years opposition induced depression Ultimas Noticias reported that construction activity was up by 30% in the first half of the year.
So this can be added to the strong first quarter GDP numbers, falling unemployment, skyrocketing auto sales, etc. as yet one more indication of Venezuela's rapidly growing economy.
|
So this can be added to the strong first quarter GDP numbers, falling unemployment, skyrocketing auto sales, etc. as yet one more indication of Venezuela's rapidly growing economy.
|
Talk about having cheek
For months and months the opposition to President Chavez have been demanding a referendum on his rule. And it is their right to demand a referendum as the constitution of Venezuela has a clause detailing when and how a referendum can be called. And indeed there will be referendum on President Chavez's rule come August 15th.
Well now it turns out that if the opposition wins the referendum and comes to power one of the first things it will do is try to abolish the referendum clause of the constitution. Yes, you heard right. After availing themselves of a very democratic clause in the Venezuelan constitution, the right to revoke the mandates of office holders, they will immediately turn around and get rid of that right.
So the opposition can revoke but it cannot be revoked!!!!
Clearly let another unmasking of the opposition undemocratic nature.
|
Well now it turns out that if the opposition wins the referendum and comes to power one of the first things it will do is try to abolish the referendum clause of the constitution. Yes, you heard right. After availing themselves of a very democratic clause in the Venezuelan constitution, the right to revoke the mandates of office holders, they will immediately turn around and get rid of that right.
So the opposition can revoke but it cannot be revoked!!!!
Clearly let another unmasking of the opposition undemocratic nature.
|
