All the “stories” published in the English speaking corporate media about food shortages and other problems in Venezuela completely miss the point. Yet they are intended to do so with the objective of discrediting the Maduro government as being inept and incompetent as it is “socialist”… or to be more accurate, heading in that direction.

The corporate media controlled by the international capitalist class would never laud Venezuela for doing a good job to eradicate poverty under a socialist banner, for example, or take care of and educate its population. If it did, I, for one, would have to question what the government was doing and look at its policies under a microscope.

To give readers an idea of how Venezuela is reported in the corporate media we just have to look at a study carried out by the University of West England on the BBC coverage of Venezuela from 1998 – 2008. This paragraph from the study sums it all up:

The researchers looked at 304 BBC reports published between 1998 and 2008 and found that only 3 of those articles mentioned any of the positive policies introduced by the Chavez administration. The BBC has failed to report adequately on any of the democratic initiatives, human rights legislation, food programmes, healthcare initiatives, or poverty reduction programmes. Mission Robinson, the greatest literacy programme in human history received only a passing mention.

Need we say more? And the situation has not improved in any meaningful way since 2008. The negative press, TV, and radio campaign boosted by social media comments is unprecedented in the history of the modern media multiplex.

Thus, it is no wonder that the toilet roll shortage a few months ago and the hoarding and contraband of basic subsidized food stuffs are blown out of all proportion as if there were a looming famine here. The fact is that 31% of the population is obese or at least overweight; there are lines outside both private and state supermarkets as people have money in their pockets to buy food and lots of it … not because there are no products, as the media would have you believe.

The population has risen from 22 million to just under 30 million this year in a few short years, so it is hardly surprising that more food is needed, both home produced and imported. In fact, Venezuela only imports 30% of the food it consumes these days (excluding wheat which is not sown here) which is a vast improvement over the 65% - 70% imported 20 years ago. However, the same false figures are still bandied about and one would think that all the fertile land is barren.

In fact, the eradication of hunger in Venezuela has been so successful that last year the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organization (FAO) awarded Venezuela with a special honor for being the country that had done most to defeat hunger this century. Instead the media wrote extensively and mockingly about the toilet roll shortage!!

No mention is made that poverty has declined to around 19% and absolute poverty to 5.5% since the oil industry and bosses lock-out of 2002 – 2003 when poverty reached 55% and absolute poverty 23%.

Great Housing Mission

After the devastating floods in late 2010, President Chávez launched the Great Housing Mission with the aim of giving a roof over the head of people who had lost everything in the deluge. This Mission aims at overcoming the housing shortage that has been a bane for at least a century in Venezuela. The target is to build 3 million homes by the beginning of 2019.

The Mission started operating in April 2011 as in early August this year family dwelling number 600,000 was given to a family, fittingly enough, in Chávez’s home town of Sabaneta in Barinas state.

The houses are literally “given” to families, but they are not allowed to sell them for profit. Some families will pay for their homes with very easy payments and other families that do not wish to move from their communities will be included in the house renovation mission “Barrio Nuevo Barrio Tricolor”. In this Mission the communities work together and participate with professionals to improve their homes and habitat and so gradually clear slum areas from around the cities and towns. Materials are provided free of charge by the Ministry of Housing & Habitat.

Other Social Missions

In total there are 35 social missions from education to health: from housing to animal care; from tree planting to caring for single mothers; from rehabilitating alcohol and drug down and outs to preparing young people for university. Needless to say, it is the historically excluded that participate and benefit from these missions but they are treated as being “invisible” by the private media, both at home and abroad, so as to give credence to the media campaign against Venezuela as some sort of “failed state”.

In terms of higher education 32 new universities have been inaugurated since 1999 and the student population has ballooned from around 600,000 privileged middle class kids to more than 2,700,000 students from all social strata. Education in Venezuela is free of charge from pre-school all the way up to post-graduate education. – unless you want to study at a private university.

Pensions for senior citizens were just over 300,000 in 1999 when Chávez came to power – now there are almost 3,000,000 – and all receiving the equivalent of the minimum wage with yearly raises in line with workers.

Health care is free-of-charge with 600 Rehabilitation Centers built and 550 Integral Diagnostic Clinics now completed in just five years. Before Chávez came to power there are around 20 doctors per 100,000 inhabitants and now this ratio is 80+ per 100,000.

The above are just a few examples of how Venezuela has been transformed by social policies funded by oil revenues in just 15 years, after more than 500 years of unbridled exploitation since the Spanish conquest and the draining of oil revenues for the US and into the coffers of the local oligarchs in the last 100 years. No wonder the type of government here is unpopular with the Neocons and banksters that control the global economy.

Economic War

After an attempt to overthrow President Chávez in 2002 – 2003 by sabotaging the oil industry, the economic war against Venezuela started in earnest again in November 2012 with speculation, hoarding, contraband of products to Colombia, an attack on the integrity of the local currency and the consequent difficulties in obtaining basic food stuffs at fair prices.

The political opposition and their financiers are in this economic attack for the long haul. Elections for the National Assembly are not due until December 2015 so it is likely that speculation and its bastard sister, hoarding, will continue with the objective of blaming the government for the lack of basic subsidized products on the shelves. However, if you go to street hawkers you can always find these products at three or four times the regulated price. The corruption in the distribution system is to blame as the government has not succeeded in getting to grips with it yet.

Other elements of the economic war that affect mainly the middle classes are the absence of new cars in the country which have all “vanished” and almost insurmountable difficulties in buying an international airline ticket. Ticket prices have increased by 10 to 15 fold in local currency and also in dollars. An example is that from neighboring Colombia you can fly to Miami for US$500 round trip; try and do the same from Venezuela and you could be paying US$3,000!

As usual the government is blamed for these problems when in fact all the auto manufacturers and airlines have effectively cartelized their offers making life rather complex for the middle classes that sometimes think that they should live up to US standards and the rest of the country should be confined to the slums.

Political impasse in the Opposition

Last week the General Secretary of the opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Table (MUD) Guillermo Aveledo resigned throwing the opposition into chaos. The reasons for his resignation are not completely clear but it is alleged that he was subject to attacks from the extreme right factions of the opposition that does not want dialogue with Maduro but wants him overthrown – i.e. another “democratic” coup d´état as in 2002.

The opposition may be in chaos, characterized by infighting, but the fact is that they still have plenty of voters that have been marshaled by the unrelenting media campaign against the government, as everyone looks forward to the next national elections for the Assembly in late 2015.

Despite all the successful social missions that are up and running, the Maduro government has to get inflation, speculation and contraband under control so that people’s daily lives are simplified. Remember that the negative factors are always blamed by the media on the government when it is the opposition cohorts actively causing these problems while feathering their own nest.

One solution may be to completely radicalize the economy and make a huge push to socialize it in short order as attempts at creating democratic socialism in Venezuela have proven to be very slow. Capitalism continues to rule the mindset of the business class and is constantly sabotaging fair price mechanisms put in place for ALL Venezuelans.

The other measures that need to be taken are to speed up the justice system, which is painfully slow, and gives the impression that criminals can get away with anything. Impunity is gradually prejudicing the Bolivarian Revolution as the laws exist to combat the ills of the country but are not applied efficiently or rigorously.

To conclude – while all the above issues have to be dealt with internally, the attacks on Venezuela continue mounting from the US State Department. Secretary of State Kerry and his minions appear to enjoy meddling in Venezuelan internal affairs but the support the country enjoys from Russia, China and neighboring countries in America has made it difficult to provoke or undermine the Maduro government to any great degree.

This is the price a country has to pay to ensure its independence away from the neoliberal hell being suffered n Europe and the US. But with the world’s biggest proven oil reserves of almost 300 billion recoverable barrels just five days cruise away from US refineries in the south it is doubtful that there will be any let-up either economically or politically this year, or even next, of the pressure endured by President Madura and his executive team.

MORE ANALYSIS AND ESSAYS BY
AXIS OF LOGIC COLUMNIST, ARTURO ROSALES

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