If you read this ABN news summary and compare it to the focus of the corporate press all over the world, you would think that there were two different countries being reported.

According to Chávez and based on official stats, households in poverty in the first semester of 1196 were 70.8%. 39.6% of all house holds were in deep poverty in the same period.

Now, 13 years later overall poverty is just 26% and deep poverty 7.3% and the population has increased by 7 - 8 million people in the same period.
The Human Development Index (HDI) is now .844 (country of high human development. In 1996 this was around .75. Readers will appreciate that these stats move slowly and are reported with a delay of around 2 years by the UN.

These are the issues which are NEVER -NEVER - mentioned by the US-backed opposition in Venezuela or the corporate media. They focus on the lies selected by the CIA, NED and USAID.

Now, opposition readers who reply to this comment will say that this is Chávez propaganda. No. these are FACTS from independent bodies such as ECLAC and the UN. What those people diffuse is propaganda against your own fellow Venezuelans.

Oh, I forgot, poor Venezuelans are somehow inferior to the monied middle classes. Believe it or not readers, this is the absolute truth in terms of the ongoing social racism in Venezuela which is fed every day in the 85% of the privat media which is still controlled by the opposition, despite all the corporate media stories which claim that the government controls the media in Venezuela and suppresses freedom of expression.

Ramón Santiago in Caracas