Chavez, oil and liberation from imperialism

18 March 2013. A World to Win News Service. The following article by Raymond Lotta appeared in the 1 July 2007 issue of Revolution, newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. (revcom.us) During the almost six years between when it was written and the recent death of Hugo Chavez, high oil prices allowed the Venezuelan government to continue carrying out extensive social "missions", reduce poverty rates and subsidize other governments that the U.S. scorns. But there has been no basic change in the economic and social structure of Venezuela, or its dependency on the imperialist-controlled world oil market. Caracas is still a city of slums. This article retains its importance and relevance as an analysis of why what Chavez set out to accomplish could not – and has not – lead to a break with the imperialist system and its devastating impact on the people of the world as well as Venezuela. We have omitted the footnotes. The article appearing in this issue focuses on Venezuela's oil economy. We start here because oil has been so central to Venezuela's historical domination by imperialism and to Venezuela's economic-social development, and because oil figures centrally in Hugo Chavez's programme to reclaim sovereignty and change Venezuelan society. During his electoral campaign for president in 1998, Hugo Chavez took on the old elite this way: "Oil is a geopolitical weapon, and these imbeciles who govern us don't realize the power of an oil-producing country." He expressed his strategic thinking about oil in a 2006 interview: "We are today implementing a strategic programme called the Oil Sowing Plan: using oil wealth so Venezuela can become an agricultural country, a tourist destination, an industrialized country with a diversified economy. We are investing billions of dollars in the infrastructure: power generators using thermal energy, a large railway, roads, highways, new towns, new universities, new schools, recuperating land, building tractors, and giving loans to farmers. One day we won't have any more oil, but that will be in the twenty-second century. Venezuela has oil for another 200 years." Chavez has spoken often about weaning Venezuela away from excessive dependence on the oil sector. But as the above statements and concrete policy underscore, oil will continue for some time, certainly for the medium term, to be the backbone of the economy and the keystone of Venezuela's foreign policy. What kind of resource? There is no question that Venezuela is rich in oil. Venezuela possesses the largest conventional oil reserves in the Western hemisphere (more than three times the proven reserves in the U.S.); has trillions of cubic feet of natural gas; and has, by some estimates, untapped reserves in the Orinoco belt of the country that may exceed those of Saudi Arabia. Nor is there any question that oil revenues can grow astronomically: the price of oil is approaching near-historic highs, in the range of U.S. $65 per barrel. [It was at about $93 as of mid-March 2013.] But why is oil as a sphere of investment and as a "petrodollar" financial instrument "black gold"? Oil has become a source of productive and monetary wealth within a certain set of social-production relations. The growth and contemporary expansion of world capitalism has produced a profit-based agro-industrial structure that relies heavily and disproportionately on a non-renewable resource, oil, as an essential economic input whose world price has impacted production costs, profits, and competitive advantage. In the post-World War 2 period, new oil-based and oil-related industries like auto, petrochemicals, and plastics, arose. Moreover, the exploration, extraction, refining, and marketing of oil form a highly profitable sector of the world economy. An historical trajectory of oil-fuelled development under world capitalism has been ruinous of human lives and planetary ecology. The production and consumption patterns of the advanced capitalist countries – where 25 percent of the world's population lives but which consume 75 percent of the world's resources – are now culminating in a global climate crisis. A just and rational world economy would neither be organized around a social structure of exploitation and inequality nor be based on this kind of non-sustainable technical-resource foundation. Oil has also become a weapon in world politics. This too is a function of imperialism. Power relations are integral to imperialism. Control over resources yields geo-economic advantage and geo-political domination – in which some powers gain privileged and monopolistic access to resources and the ability to control other economies and states. Oil has been an object of imperialist rivalry, collusion, and conquest, including through local proxy wars. Oil has been a means of propping up and controlling neocolonial regimes awash in oil revenues and corruption, like Nigeria. The modern, imperialist global military machine runs on oil. Oil and Venezuela Venezuela has played a certain historical role in the imperialist international division of labour: as a strategic exporter of oil. And the economic pillar of the modern Venezuelan state system has been the extraction of rents from oil companies, the charge for allowing them to pump oil out of the ground. Over the last half century, oil income has both lubricated a certain kind of growth and development in Venezuela and locked Venezuela in to an international oil economy dominated by Western imperialism. Oil, with its booms and busts, reshaped the economic geography of the country. Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela, more than doubled in size between 1920 and 1936, and doubled again between 1936 and 1950. Then it tripled between 1950 and 1971. The oil economy gave rise to a new middle class dependent on the state and disbursement of oil revenues, while shantytowns of the rural poor spread through and literally seeped into the muddy slopes of western Caracas. Today, almost 90 percent of Venezuela's population lives in the cities and half of the population of Caracas lives in poverty. One measure of oil's distorting effects on the economic and social structure of Venezuela has been the vast growth of the "informal economy" in the cities: the urban self-employed (like peddlers and street merchants) and workers who perform unregistered or "off-the-books" labour and services. Oil has produced and perpetuated a developmental trajectory marked by great economic and social gaps: between the productivity of the petroleum sector and the productivity of the non-petroleum sectors; between the development of the rural and urban areas; and between rich and poor, in the cities and in the countryside. Let's step back. From 1958 to 1998, Venezuela earned some $300 billion in oil revenues. What has this meant for the masses of people in Venezuela, and what kind of development has resulted from subordination to the dynamics of the world imperialist economy and the world oil industry within that? The production of oil has actually stifled any significant industrial diversification. Much of the new infrastructure built between the 1960s and 1980s is decaying for lack of maintenance. Floods and mudslides, aggravated by uncontrolled urbanization, have washed away towns. Health hazards stalk the shantytowns in which 60 percent of Venezuela's urban population lives. The number of people living in official poverty nearly doubled between 1984 and 1995; and, today, more than half of Venezuela's working population works in the precarious informal economy. Hugo Chavez has decried the oligarchic oil economy with its corruption, patronage, and extremes of glittering wealth and grinding poverty. He has spoken of the need to revive the peasant economy. But can a different form of oil economy produce a just and viable alternative to the neo-liberal economic model and lead to socialism? And just how different will such an economy be if it requires the massive infusion of foreign investment capital and a gamble in a game of oil markets? A programme racked with contradictions Chavez has pinned the success of his programme of social equity and diversification of the economy on oil revenues. His main economic order of business, as he repeatedly states, is "sowing the petroleum". This is a phrase and programme that has been part of Venezuela's populist-nationalist politics and discourse since the mid-1930s: the government is to assert greater control over oil revenues, use oil wealth to promote development, and allow more people to share in the oil bounty. Chavez is counting on high and rising oil prices to undergird vast increases in government spending, a growing state presence in the economy, and subsidized prices for certain domestic products (mainly gasoline but also imported consumer goods, including food). In 2004, $1.7 billion of the state oil company's $15 billion budget was allocated to fund social programs; soon thereafter it went to $4 billion a year. Chavez, after having restructured the management of the state oil company, is moving along three tracks to maximize oil revenues to make good on his program. He is seeking to expand oil production. He is seeking to increase state ownership and the government's share of earnings, royalties, and taxes deriving from foreign-based activity in the hydrocarbon sector (oil, natural gas, and coal). And he is seeking out new markets for oil, both to absorb expanded output and as a cushion against possible U.S. pressure and retaliation. These are not simply technical tools of economic management; they are bound up with a capitalist logic, and are fraught with the contradictions of dependent, imperialist-led development. On the first track, the strategic twenty-five year Plan Siembra Petrolera (Oil Sowing Plan), in its first phase for 2005-2012, calls for an increase in production from current levels (2006 estimates range from 2.8-3.3 million barrels a day) to 5.8 million barrels of oil per day in 2012. In the gas industry, similar large-scale development is also planned. The Venezuelan state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) estimated in 2006 that this phase of the expansion plan requires some $75 billion to finance new investment. Where is this money coming from? Most will come from the state oil company. Some 25 to 30 percent is expected from external, private sources: borrowings from banks, offset by anticipated oil earnings, and investments by the foreign oil companies operating in Venezuela. Chavez is counting on increased output from the so-called Orinoco Petroleum Belt, a region in the centre of the country that has been the site of major investments by the state oil company and foreign operators, like Exxon-Mobil, ConocoPhillips, and France's Total SA. Since the 1990s these imperialist transnationals have invested more than $17 billion, which may have grown in value to $30 billion. The extraction and processing of this extra-heavy crude oil requires expensive investment in heavy machinery, treatment, and storage complexes. Partial processing of this oil on the spot, to make it liquid enough to flow in pipes, produces enormous amounts of waste material. There is a sharp contradiction. On the one hand, the state must extract financial resources from the oil industry to underwrite its development and social spending plans (and, increasingly, to meet rising popular expectations and shore up the political base of the Chavez regime). On the other hand, the state must invest to maintain the competitiveness of the oil industry as a capitalist enterprise in the international capitalist market. Again, there is great tension here. In the last two years, social programmes have absorbed a larger share of the state oil company's budget than has spending on maintenance and new oil capacity. This social spending by the government puts strains on needed investments in the oil sector. To say investments are "needed" is not to make some pure technical statement; rather, investments are "needed" from the standpoint of an oil-exporting economy and the dictates of the world market –improving efficiency and compensating for possible price declines with expanded output. Because Venezuela's wells are so old, output declines 23 percent a year, and so it is necessary to drill new wells just to maintain capacity. There is a pull exerted by competition on the world market, intensified by low levels of investment in Venezuela's oil sector relative to other oil-producing countries, to upgrade and expand the industry, and maintain profitability. If foreign investment comes forth to finance a major share of Plan Siembra, this investment carries with it real control and puts real leverage in the hands of those foreign investors. This is important to bear in mind. Venezuela is not unusual in having formal sovereignty over its oil. Some three-quarters of the world's oil and gas reserves and half of global output are controlled by national state oil companies like Saudi Aramco, Kuwait Petroleum, and the Algerian state company. But the national-state oil companies rely on international finance, work through international trade and marketing channels, and collaborate with the large, Western-based transnational oil companies, like Exxon-Mobil. These transnational corporations and their service company networks have strong competitive advantage: in scale, reach, and core managerial and technological competences, financial capabilities, support by the Western imperialist governments, and the ability to pull up stakes in a country like Venezuela. In terms of the second track: higher tax and royalty payments. In April 2006, Chavez announced his intention to increase PDVSA's share in major projects to 60 percent from 40 percent. The Chavez government is creating new forms of joint ventures (what are now called "mixed companies") with Shell, Chevron, British Petroleum, and others. Oil resources and oil profits are jointly owned in the form of single new enterprises – only now, the Venezuelan government obtains a higher proportion of profits than it had previously, while the foreign oil companies, with heavy investments, benefit from current high oil prices and prospect of profitable new oil fields. At the same time, the government has negotiated with the 22 foreign companies operating in Venezuela to agree to a new tax law that is being enforced retroactively. On 1 May 2007, Chavez made good on his ultimatum to the foreign companies that they accept a larger share of ownership by the Venezuelan government or cease operations. Chavez may be a tough negotiator (and did succeed in getting a larger slice of rising oil revenues from companies who want to stay put in order to recoup the value of their investments and make huge profits). At the same time, to keep these projects alive, to go forward with expansion plans, Chavez must reach some kind of understanding with foreign capital, as these firms are providing essential finance and technology. So the threat of takeover was sweetened with a commitment to compensate the firms. The third track of the oil programme is to restructure Venezuela's external trade relations away from dependence on the U.S. as a market and source of investment capital and technical expertise. Venezuela accounts for some 12 percent of the U.S.'s daily oil imports, and plays a certain strategic role in the U.S. ability to project power in the world. But the other side of the equation is more telling, illustrating an aspect of Venezuela's structural dependency: that 12 percent share of U.S. oil imports accounted for by Venezuela represents 60 percent of Venezuela's total production! In seeking to diversify markets, Chavez has opened negotiations with China and has plans to sell Venezuelan oil to China, the world's second-largest energy consumer, and to India as well. But there are high costs of servicing these markets. Venezuela does not have a Pacific port, and large tankers cannot make it through the Panama Canal. So Venezuela would need to construct pipeline through Colombia in order to ship the oil. But shipment to Asia is costly, owing to the long distances involved. Further, China does not have adequate capacity to refine Venezuela's sulfur-rich crude. China is investing substantial sums to increase that capacity, but China is also exploring for oil and gas closer to its shores in the South China Sea and angling as well for deals in the Caspian Sea region. The U.S. connection is a difficult knot for Chavez to cut, especially if oil is to be the centrepiece of development. There is the close proximity of the U.S. market and low transportation costs. There are the refineries in the U.S. adapted to processing Venezuela's oil. And the U.S. continues to be Venezuela's most important trading partner (U.S.-Venezuela trade actually rose 36 percent in 2006). These are among the pressures operating on Chavez to maintain stable economic relations with the U.S., even if the U.S. has other plans. Part of Chavez's strategy for diversification involves inviting foreign companies from outside the traditional circle of the big Western oil majors to invest in Venezuela's petroleum industry and to participate in his plan for a continental gas pipeline project stretching from Venezuela down to Argentina. These form part of Chavez's efforts to create more multilateral investment and trade links. Chavez is courting companies from India, China, Russia, and elsewhere. Chavez hails investment plans in Latin America as anti-U.S. regional integration. But whether in Venezuela or elsewhere in Latin America, the essence of these projects is: investment by capitalist firms... according to capitalist methods of exploitation... to be measured by capitalist criteria of profitability. These projects have enormous social consequences for local populations, including dislocation of indigenous peoples. And they have enormous environmental consequences. Chavez must assure long-standing Western and new investors of a relatively stable business-receptive environment. It is revealing that the Chavez regime has designated the oil sector a "strategic industry." The state-appointed management tightly controls this sector (and the oil industry is one where worker co-participation is forbidden). One critical-minded supporter of Chavez has observed, "the joint ventures provide a reality check to those used to only a diet of Chavez speeches... [B]ut in the current circumstances, paradoxically, a Faustian pact with foreign capital may be necessary to keep the forces of imperialism [U.S. pressure and intervention] off Venezuela's back." This captures much of the "best-case" thinking about Chavez's oil-based strategy of development. But this "best-case" thinking rests on a misunderstanding of imperialism. As desirous of genuine social change as many Chavez supporters are, that cold-water splash of "reality check" is worth pursuing further. Modern-day enclave development Imperialism manifests itself not simply through economic bullying or military threat and intervention – and U.S. military action against Venezuela is by no means "off the table". It is also expressed through the structure and functioning of the world economy and the existing economic and social structure of Venezuela, which reflects and reinforces dependency on oil and subordination to the world market. Chavez is perpetuating a form of export-led growth centred on the oil industry. The irrationality of an economy so geared to oil is expressed in the fact that only 20 percent of Venezuela's total oil production enters into the domestic economy. It is expressed in the fact that while Venezuela's state oil company (PDVSA) is the country's single largest employer, with about 45,000 on its payroll, employment in the oil sector accounts for less than 1 percent of Venezuela's total work force. It is expressed in the fact that, despite high oil prices and earnings, official unemployment in Venezuela has ranged from 8 to 15 percent in the Chavez years, with the poverty rate at 30 percent at the start of 2007. [It was at 27.4 in July 2012.] This is a profoundly distorted economy: today, the oil sector accounts, and this has been a long-standing pattern, for about one-third of Venezuela's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 50 percent of the government's revenue, and 80 percent of Venezuela's export earnings. As one of the world's top oil producers, Venezuela is a top emitter of CO2 emissions in Latin America and has the region's highest per capita rate of carbon emissions. The oil-export economy induces a form of "enclave" development. Such development responds to external sources of economic dynamism: the world oil market, conditions of demand in the major imperialist and regional economies, the rhythm and direction of world capital flows, etc. And such capital-intensive mono-export development is a barrier to integrated, all-around agricultural and industrial development in the exporting country. Here it is necessary to elaborate on two related aspects of dependent development: lopsidedness and heightened exposure and vulnerability to the world market. In the oppressed nations, the oil sector requires massive investment in advanced equipment and technology. These technology demands are met disproportionately from outside the economy – much of the advanced technology required by the oil sector is either imported, requiring that foreign exchange be generated to pay for imported capital goods, or obtained through the joint ventures (the foreign oil and oil-service companies involved, like Halliburton, provide the technology in-house or purchase it on the world market). Moreover, much of this technology cannot be widely diffused and adopted throughout the economy to revolutionize social production. This is so for two reasons. First, much of the specialized oil-drilling and oil-engineering technology is not appropriate to overall conditions of social-economic development. Second, even where some of this technology could have useful direct and indirect spin-off applications, there does not exist a broad-based industrial structure to which the benefits could accrue – exactly because the oil focus has constrained broader development. The oil sector is not significantly stimulating new demand for locally produced industrial products, nor is it resulting in a rising socially useful skills level of the overall work force. You do not have a process of agricultural and industrial development unfolding that strengthens local capacity to innovate and adapt technology. These are consequences of enclave-like, oil-based development. Under Chavez, PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company, has been seeking agreements with foreign oil companies requiring as a condition of entry that they source (obtain) more oil-service supplies locally. But as oil resources are depleted, and as the extraction and processing of Venezuela's heavy crude and sulfur-rich oil grows more challenging, new technology requirements appear. And as these requirements are met with even more specialized and sophisticated technology, the technology gaps between the oil sector and the rest of the economy are reproduced on a new level. Meanwhile, the huge port, pipeline facilities, and other infrastructure investments to facilitate the exploration, extraction, and shipment of oil and coal are often out of scale to the needs of the overall economy – again, since they serve these more self-contained, outward-oriented investment projects, like the Orinoco Petroleum Belt plans. As mentioned earlier, the oil sector overall accounts for a very small fraction of total employment. Chevron's huge $3.8 billion investment in the Orinoco Petroleum Belt initially will have created 6,000 jobs – upon completion, the project will only need 700 permanent employees. These are phenomena of the enclave-like character of oil-based development. But here is the rub: the overall agro-industrial structure is profoundly influenced and skewed by the oil sector. There is heightened unevenness as between the productivity and wage levels and technological dynamism of a modern oil sector and other segments of the economy, and, as will be discussed shortly, the oil industry has negative feedback effects on domestic agriculture and food production. At the same time, the build-up of the state-capitalist oil sector strengthens class interests and class forces that have a strong stake in maintaining the dominant macro-economic structure. To develop an agricultural base that could meet the food needs of society, provide rural employment, and develop through mutually reinforcing links with an integrated and balanced industrial structure would require a) a very different allocation and prioritization of resources serving the needs of the now exploited and oppressed, and b) a break with the economic logic, structure of options, and pressures of the local and world capitalist market system (what Marxists call the law of value). Pressures and constraints of the world economy This brings us to the second aspect of oil-dependent development. The oil sector is a principal contact point with the world economy. It transmits world prices and aligns currency rates. It imposes competitive world efficiencies on the Venezuelan economy: the oil sector must operate at certain levels of productivity, which dictates investments and regimes of efficient exploitation of workers. And fluctuations in the international oil market are transmitted to the Venezuelan economy. What are some of the implications and effects of this? Oil exports have generated a high exchange rate that makes local products, agrarian or industrial, uncompetitive on international and domestic markets. Windfall oil export prices weaken the incentives to develop peasant-based agriculture. A strong currency, with strong purchasing power, makes it "cost-efficient" to import goods, like food, that can be more cheaply produced overseas than domestically. This has contributed to a shift of labour out of agricultural production and local manufacturing into service and commercial sectors and, most especially, into the "informal economy" (of street merchants and irregularly employed workers with few social protections). Agriculture's share of Venezuela's GDP declined from 50 percent in 1960 to about 6 percent when Chavez took office in 1998. Venezuela has traditionally imported about 75 to 80 percent of its food from abroad, despite its rich soil and water sources. This is the logic of world capitalism, and it continues to impede sustainable agricultural development and food security in Venezuela. These are the workings of market forces, acting through the medium of an internationally traded and strategic commodity, oil, and its effect on exchange rates. The Chavez administration has benefited from a five-fold increase of oil prices in the years since he came to power. These prices have held fast for some time and have enabled the regime to expand and underwrite social programs. There is no question that these programs have brought certain benefits to the poor: some improvements, though limited, in health care, access to food, some public works, expanded social security, and cheaper electricity, etc. And the Venezuelan economy, stimulated by oil demand, has enjoyed very high rates of growth over the last three years. But two things must be emphasized. First, Chavez is gambling on continued high oil prices and demand. Oil has to sell above $30 a barrel to make the expanded investments in the extra-heavy oil that Chavez has embarked upon profitable. A plunge in oil's price would have devastating consequences for foreign investors, PDVSA, and the state treasury. Chavez is trying to stabilize production and prices at profitable levels. Despite the surging oil revenues, the government has had to borrow heavily from Venezuelan banks to cover a large and growing deficit (the government deficit is expected to reach 5 percent of gross domestic product in 2007). Some of this government borrowing is driven by the decision to compensate foreign oil companies for a larger government share of their operations. (Chavez is not expropriating the oil companies but rather working out deals with them in order to ride the oil markets.) Middle-class and luxury consumption patterns have gone along with an imperialist-dependent oil economy; consumer spending is sky-rocketing and consumer debt growing as oil revenues have grown. In the "oil windfall" atmosphere, domestic and foreign banks have enjoyed an incredible earnings boom, a rate of return of 33 percent in 2006 that was described by an international banking journal as "the envy of the banking world". Much is made of Chavez's attempt to solidify a stronger price front in OPEC. But the oil market is subject to all kinds of economic uncertainties and geopolitical developments. Importantly, OPEC is not a unitary, self-determining price setter. "Spot" markets and the speculative "futures" markets based in New York, London, and Singapore now play a key role in determining oil prices. There are oil-producing countries outside of OPEC, like Russia, whose oil production and marketing influence world prices. There is global competition among the existing oil regions of the world. Oil is a cyclical industry subject to world economic conditions. Just nine years ago, Venezuelan oil was selling for about $10 to $12 a barrel (compared to today's price of $60 plus). In terms of geopolitics, the U.S. would not welcome any shift in OPEC power away from Saudi Arabia to Venezuela. (The imperial bargain with the Saudi princes and Gulf sheikdoms: they ensure a stable oil supply, and the U.S. provides the "neighborhood" with military protection.) Further, through "regime change" and closer working relations with producers in the Caspian Basin and in Africa, the U.S. and Great Britain have been seeking greater control over supply conditions. Second, the Chavez regime has done little to lessen the economy's dependence on oil, to diversify Venezuela's industrial base, or to significantly expand agricultural production. "Sowing the petroleum" has mainly involved the financing and expansion of the social programmes. Indeed, if we take something like food, the constraints and contradictions become more apparent. One of the most celebrated of Chavez's "missions" (the social campaigns and funding that address health, education, housing, food, etc.) is Mission Mercal. Its stated strategic objective is national food security. This programme is providing low-cost food to sections of the poor (and to broader urban strata) through a network of markets, supply depots, and distribution-nutrition centres. This would be an important emergency and back-up measure in a genuine revolutionary society. But this is not a real food security program; rather it is redistributive, a form of rationing and price subsidy. It is not part of a larger project to radically reorient the economy away from external dependence: on oil and food imports. It is not part of a socialist project to forge a whole new structural foundation of balanced and integrated agricultural-industrial development that can provide for the livelihood and food needs of society. In fact, Mission Mercal relies on imports and purchases from the same transnational firms that have traditionally dominated Venezuela's food sector. This is a continuing expression of Venezuela's lack of internal economic integration. Here, as with other initiatives, a major downturn or collapse in world oil prices would ramify widely and destructively through the economy and seriously endanger this kind of social programme. From the perspective of making a genuine socialist revolution in an oppressed nation, there is a pressing task to move quickly and decisively to free society from food dependency and the colossal distortion by imperialism of agricultural and food systems. The imperialists will attack, they will boycott, and they will try, literally… to starve you. A sympathetic treatment of the "Bolivarian revolution" summarized that "international oil markets continue to be the single most influential factor in determining the prospects for Venezuela's political economy." Chavez may rail against the IMF, but how does this represent an alternative to neoliberalism, which prescribes in part that a country specialize in its "comparative advantage" in the international division of labour, maximize export earnings, import cheap food, and harness revenues for development? Conclusion: Oil's social price under imperialism and the alternative Oil is not a "treasure" to grab hold of. Oil-rich countries, from Venezuela to Iran to Algeria to Indonesia, have seen export booms produce inequality and social misery. Government budgets bulging with petrodollars have come crashing down (as Venezuela's did in the late 1980s and early 1990s). In Nigeria, there is the "technological achievement" of foreign capital building an infrastructure that can extract oil from a waterlogged equatorial forest – while adjoining villages are without power or clean water. When more nationalist regimes have replaced old elites that functioned as local client-watchdogs for imperialism, as happened in Iran in the 1950s, the U.S. has not hesitated to move against them. The flow of "black gold" must not be disrupted for long. The extraction of oil and more oil, based on exploitation of labour power and the realization of value through the international circuits of capital, historically enmeshed and continues to enmesh the population of Venezuela in a global network of commodity relations in which social and human development hangs in the balance of an unequal structure of world production and trade… and the movement of prices on the world market. A genuine socialist revolution is not about striving for a more equitable distribution of oil revenues, or trying to strengthen regional trade and oil blocs that only further exploitation of people and despoliation of nature, or demanding that the major oil companies "recognize their ethical and social responsibilities" (yes, you can go to ChevronTexaco's website and learn about the educational and health programs they are setting up in Venezuela). The point is this: the modern oil economy is not a neutral set of production and technical coefficients. Export-oriented oil production is a relation to the world imperialist economy, a rope of control and dependence, a rope tightly constricting the creative capacities of the masses of people. And that rope must be cut through a revolution that overthrows the old order and state power. When the proletariat and the masses of people seize power in the oppressed societies, the goal cannot be to take over and reprogram a lopsided oil-based economy that warps development and that subjects society and economy to the destructive imperatives of the world system. Rather, a revolution must do away with the very foundations of such an economy in order to break the grip of imperialist control and to overcome the distortions of imperialist-led development. In place of the old economy, a liberating new one must be built: an economy whose foundation must be agriculture, an economy with a diversified and decentralized industry serving agriculture and broad developmental needs. Only by constructing this kind of economy can basic social needs be met and relative self-sufficiency achieved in a world dominated by imperialism. What would be the role of oil in a country like Venezuela, with extensive petroleum reserves, if a genuine socialist revolution took place? There would need to be a radical reorientation away from oil's historically dominant position in the structure and functioning of the economy. This calls for a decisive break with export-oriented, oil-based development. Oil would still play some role in the economy, but this would be quantitatively and qualitatively different. Concerted and coordinated society-wide efforts would be made to greatly reduce dependency on oil as an energy source. Society would move towards more ecologically sound alternatives, especially as oil is currently extracted, refined, transported, etc., but fundamentally in developing a renewable energy foundation of growth. The social-economic calculus would no longer be one of maximizing production or maximizing returns but rather developing a just, rational, and ecologically sustainable economy based on the conscious activism of the masses and serving the liberation of society and humanity as a whole. Socialist economic development must serve the goal of overcoming the great differences between town and country, between agriculture and industry, and between mental and manual labour. Socialist economic development must enable a revolutionary society to stand up to imperialism and aid the advance of revolution elsewhere in the world. None of this is possible without a new revolutionary state power that can lead this process forward and mobilize the masses to remake all of society. Developing this kind of economy is a complicated task, and the elimination of huge inflows of petroleum income, along with the economic, political, and military pressures of imperialism, will further complicate this task. But the elimination of petro-dependency and the petro-state, and the adoption of other revolutionary economic and social measures, will open whole new possibilities for creating a truly liberating economy. In addition, socialist state power above all is state power exercised by a class – the proletariat – that aims to eliminate all classes, all exploitative systems of production, all oppressive social relations and institutions; and all the ideas and values that reflect and reinforce the division of society into classes. The socialist state's programme at any given time must embody the communist project of moving humanity, through ever-more conscious struggle and transformation, in this direction. Under Hugo Chavez, Venezuela remains locked tightly into the global economy, and Chavez's programme turns on the market value of the oil resource. Even if this programme provides some short-term improvement in the conditions of the masses, it cannot be sustained and cannot lead to a world beyond imperialism. And rather than represent the proletariat, Hugo Chavez personifies a section of the Venezuelan capitalist class and radicalized petty-bourgeoisie that bridles at the inequities caused by foreign domination but that cannot conceive of rupturing out of the imperialist-conditioned dominance of oil in the motion and development of the Venezuelan economy.

Capitalism, the sex trade and the oppression of women

11 March 2013. A World to Win News Service. This year on 8 March, International Women's Day, as thousands of women were marching in central London to protest violence against women, a woman was performing a protest dance in Underground station where she had been harassed and molested. At the same time a woman in prison was writing a poem to recite her story, saying that her main "crime" was that she was a woman. On this day women in India continued to protest the gang rape of Amanat, an act so brutal it shocked the world. Women in Argentina were outraged at traffickers of women and their backers in the justice system. Women in Sudan are fighting child marriage. Women in Pakistan and Kurdistan are fighting against honour killings. Women in Turkey are standing against increasing violence and anti-abortion laws. Women in Iran are fighting state violence and the Islamic laws intended to drive women out of various social activities. Women in Afghanistan are fighting both the backward rule of the U.S.-backed fundamentalists and the Taliban. It was reported that over 1,500 actions took place in the U.S. to protest discrimination and violence against women. Violence against women has taken many different forms. One form that gravely threatens the lives and status of the women in a world scale is the trafficking of woman. This trade in women's bodies has the following particularities: (1) Despite its very long history, in recent decades it has greatly increased in most countries of the world. This growth is shocking and a threat for every young woman and teenage girl in today's world. (2) Despite its history, it is not rooted in any particular culture, tradition, religion or country. It is a fairly new phenomenon in terms of its current scale, rising in tandem with the globalization of capitalism. (3) It is not only a form of violence in its own right, but also an important source of "supply" fostering other forms of violence and the degradation of women, such as sex slavery, prostitution and pornography. (4) The so-called sex industry generates billions of dollars for the imperialist world economy. It has become an integral part of world capitalism and its functioning, both economically and ideologically. (5) Despite gestures of opposition by ruling class representatives, the scale of this trade and the associated phenomena highlight the connection between modern class society and imperialism and one of the most terrifying forms of violence against women. At the end of the nineteenth century and the turn of the twentieth, as capitalism entered its highest stage, imperialism, the trafficking of the women became a noticeable social problem that led to international agreements to "prevent the procuration of women and girls for immoral purposes abroad." In the U.S. it led to the passing of the Mann Act of in 1910, a law that "forbids transporting a person across state or international lines for prostitution or other immoral purposes".(www.protectionproject.org). Did these international agreements and laws suppress the trafficking of women? Reality shows that such trafficking has been increasing throughout the twentieth century, including in the post-World War 2 economic boom in some countries. Since the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the surge in globalisation, it has been growing exponentially. Despite the statements and laws against it, sex trafficking is growing on an unprecedented scale. Women and children are kidnapped from poor regions of the world, transported from their villages and towns and sold at auction to dealers in human beings to supply the so-called sex-industry in the U.S. and Europe, Australia, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and other well-off countries where there is a big market for it. Apart from those who are kidnapped, there are those who are tricked into the sex trade by the promise of employment abroad as a waitress, nanny or other unskilled job. The desperation of their families often blinds them to the life of agony and misery that waits them. The woman's travel to the destination is arranged by organised gangs with international connections. When she is taken to the employer (slave owner), she is told she will be held until she reimburses her travel expenses, an amount that she simply cannot pay. She now realises the reality behind the promises but it is far too late. She is threatened in various forms with harm to her family back home, then beaten, raped or gang raped, drugged and in many cases addicted to make any resistance or thought of escape impossible. There are other ways to lure young girls into sex trafficking, such as false marriage proposals by supposed boyfriends or through social networks. In some cases children are sold by parents or relatives for a small amount of money because of extreme poverty. The United Nations estimates that every year between 700,000 and 4 million women and children are trafficked around the world for purposes of forced prostitution, labour and other forms of exploitation. South and South-East Asian countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Nepal, Bangladesh, Thailand and India are the worst effected regions. Millions of female children and teenage girls are sold or trafficked internally within the country or to a more well-off country in the West or elsewhere. The number of prostitutes in Cambodia during the 1980s was estimated at about 1,000. In recent years there are an estimated 55,000 women and children working as sex slaves. More than a third are under the age of 18. Cambodia’s sex trade generates half a billion dollars a year. There is no doubt that war has been an influencing factor in the rising number of rapes, gang rapes, sex assaults and kidnapping of women and girls for sex slavery in countries like Congo. The arrival of 15, 000 UN "Peace Keepers" in Cambodia in the 1990s boosted the trade in women, but the problem has grown far worse even after the end of the war there. Every year more than 50,000 women and children (a total of 750,000 over the last decade) are trafficked into the U.S. from nearly 50 countries around the world, including Mexico, Honduras, Latvia, Korea, Japan, Cameroon, Taiwan, India and Vietnam. According to a BBC report: "Tenancingo is a Mexican town built on sex trafficking – with little alternative employment, it's become the only way to make money. Young women from across Mexico are duped into becoming sex slaves by wealthy men living in grand homes, offering them work or even marriage. Needing money for their families, the women discover too late they're being sold into prostitution, often in the U.S. One Mexican charity estimates there are 1,000 traffickers in Tenancingo, out of a total population of 10,000." According to the same report, ""Maria' was 17 years old when she was lured to Mexico with promises of a new life. Instead she was forced into prostitution and sold from one bar to another. For those women trafficked in Mexico, the capital, Mexico City, is a central hub. From there, many are smuggled to the US, or exploited in border towns and tourist resorts." The victims brought from Mexico to the U.S. are as young as 14. They may be forced to have sex with as many as 130 men per week in a trailer park. What has ensured that this trafficking can continue is the complicity of the police and officials at the highest level, including in the justice system. This complicity with traffickers has been revealed in many cases over the last decades. Allegations have been brought against top Montenegrin government officials for their complicity in the forced prostitution, illegal detention, rape and torture of a 28-year old Moldovan woman, Svetlana. Six high-ranking government officials and the country's Deputy State Prosecutor, Zoran Piperovic, were among them. (www.protectionproject.org) A recent case in Argentina is another example. When police did not help a mother named Susana Trimarco whose young daughter Marita Veron had been kidnapped, she started going from one brothel to another to look for her daughter herself. She was threatened but she continued until she found evidence that her daughter had been kidnapped. After a decade-long crusade she brought to court 13 of the kidnappers who had sold Marita to traffickers who forced her into prostitution. She was threatened if she did not abandon the case but she refused. After the courts cleared the kidnappers, people became outraged and waged a mass protest last December. Out of the estimated 10,0000 Latin American women trafficked across the Mexican borders into the U.S. per year, 47 prosecutions took place in 2010 and only four traffickers were convicted. In the U.S., with so-called tough laws against trafficking, more than 50,000 women were trafficked across the country's borders in 2009-10. Yet there were only 103 human trafficking cases prosecuted and 141 people convicted. Let's look at a sex offender in the UK and the government's response. After the death of Sir Jimmy Savile, a long-time and well-known presenter for BBC, he was revealed to have been a very active sex offender throughout his lifetime. Using his position at the BBC and charities to contact young girls, he raped and assaulted hundreds of girls and young women – so many that the real number is not known. BBC officials and the police ignored numerous tip-offs and turned a blind eye to his behaviour. Most of the victims did not dare make a public accusation against such a "respected" and well-protected public figure. When some did, nothing happened. The system is in reality fomenting sex abuse and trafficking. The sex trade and the capitalist system In fact this issue of the sex trade or the so-called sex industry has concentrated many of the contradictions of this rotten and exploitive system. (1) Women and their bodies have become a commodity to be bought and sold. (2) Trading women as sex slaves for prostitution and pornography has become a growing branch of the world capitalist economy, pouring tens of billions of dollars a year into the broader economy. For example, the income from the "sex industry" composes 5 percent of the total national income of Holland. According to a BBC report, the human trafficking industry generates $32 billion annually on a global scale. (3) In its international division of labour, imperialism has assigned some countries to produce "sex tourism" and prostitutes to be "consumed" in more well-off countries. The tourist industry in many South-east Asian countries revolves around prostitution. Hundreds of thousands of youth and teenagers in those countries are forced into prostitution. More than 20 percent of economic activities in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines involve prostitution. It is estimated that prostitution brings around four billion dollars in annual income to Thailand, Brazil, Cuba, Russia, Kenya and many other countries. This situation intersects with pressures from the IMF and World Bank for some of these countries to expand their tourist economy. Many of those working for travel agencies, hotels and clubs, bars and airlines actually owe their jobs to the use of women and children as tourist attractions. (4) This trade has ensured the profitability and continuity of the sex industry as well as the oppression of women. The worth of a woman's life is given an economic evaluation: A transaction involving ten, thirty or fifty dollars is worth more than her whole life. The money is more important than she is, and by paying it a man can do whatever he wants with her. In sum, the trade in women has increasingly become an integral part of capitalism and its patriarchal social system. It is consistent with the system both economically and ideologically. Efforts to crack down on this trade have not changed that situation, which has become worse. The problem is not the corruption of a few officials. The problem is the whole system where everything is organised based on profit and male supremacy. Patriarchy has been an important and integral part of all exploitative systems, but the capitalist system not only has not eliminated this oppression, it has promoted terrifying forms in which it continues.

"On Hugo Chavez: Four points of orientation"

11 March 2013. A World to Win News Service. The death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been the occasion for an avalanche of vilification from official and unofficial representatives of U.S. foreign policy and the media. These reactionaries cannot be allowed to politically define the moment according to their outlook and interests. At the same time, people around the world who are sick of American and other imperialist domination are posing questions about what Chavez did in Venezuela. Is it a model for the kind of change that is possible in today's world? Or does it represent an approach that cannot really break from imperialist-led exploitation? What kind of revolution is really required and possible in a country like Venezuela? Following are excerpts from an article entitled "Hugo Chavez: Four points of orientation" that appeared the issue number 298 of Revolution, newspaper of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA. We will reprint more material on these questions in future issues of our news service. 1. U.S. imperialism has dominated Venezuela. Throughout the 20th century, the U.S. dominated Venezuela's economy. It gave military and political support to the ruling regimes that represented the interests of the wealthy landed, industrial, and financial elites. Oil was a critical factor. Venezuela had emerged as a major oil producer in the world, and U.S. oil companies were heavily involved in Venezuela's oil sector. In 1989 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed a vicious austerity plan on Venezuela. The masses took to the streets in militant protest. The government responded with bloody repression, murdering at least 3,000 people. 2. Hugo Chavez was a thorn in the side of U.S. imperialism. Hugo Chavez came to office in 1998 against a backdrop of massive corruption, autocratic rule, and subordination to imperialism. He said that the resources of Venezuela belong to the Venezuelan people, and that oil revenues should be used to improve social welfare. He called for a foreign policy that would stand up to the U.S. For these and other reasons, Hugo Chavez commanded considerable popular support. For these reasons, Hugo Chavez also became a thorn in the side of U.S. imperialism. In April 2002, the CIA backed a coup against Chavez. And throughout Chavez's presidency, U.S. government aid agencies and military attaches, and U.S. private foundations and media outlets, have worked to build up anti-Chavez forces in Venezuela. 3. Hugo Chavez did not stand for genuine revolution and genuine socialism. A real revolution in an oppressed third world country like Venezuela requires a two-fold break. There must be a radical break with the political economy of imperialism. And there must be a radical social revolution, a radical break with traditional relations and ideas. This was neither the programme nor outlook of Hugo Chavez. Venezuela remained dependent for revenues on the world oil economy, which is dominated by imperialism. It remained dependent on the world market, which is dominated by imperialist agro-business, for its food. Under Chavez, there was improvement in literacy and health care, but there was no fundamental change in the class and social structure of society. Agriculture is still dominated by an oligarchy of rich landowners. In the cities, the poor remain locked into slums. Women remain subordinated and degraded. Abortion is banned in Venezuela. 4. U.S. imperialism has no right to meddle or intervene. Any and all attempts by the U.S. to destabilize, or plot against, the Venezuelan government must be resolutely opposed. We in the U.S. have a special responsibility to act on that understanding.

PAPST BENEDIKT XVI IST ZURÜCK GETRETEN

Hintergründe und Analysen beschäftigen die Presse seit vielen Tagen. Die Enthüllung der Wahrheit lag eigentlich auf der Hand! Benedikt ist damit dem Dilemma, das schon Dietrich Kittner (Friede seiner Asche) vortrug und das der “Stellvertreter Gottes auf Erden“ nicht zu lösen in der Lage war, entkommen. Wird sich sein Nachfolger der bisher unerledigten leidigen Angelegenheit annehmen? Wird Anbetracht der Bedrohlichkeit einerseits, für die Gläubigen und andererseits, für die als unverzichtbar geltenden Messerituale, sich überhaupt noch ein Kandidat finden lassen? Doch lesen Sie selbst, hier die vor längerer Zeit von Dietrich K. vorgetragen Probleme: Papst Benedikt XVI. hat heute zu einem unlängst in Aachen durchgeführten umweltkritischen Feldversuch Stellung genommen. Demzufolge überschreiten während katholischer Gottesdienste in Kirchen gemessene, durch erhöhten Weihrauchausstoß verursachte Feinstaubbelastungen die EU-Grenzwerte erheblich. Für den öffentlichen Straßenverkehr sehen die Europanormen einen maximalen Anteil von 50 Mikrogramm pro Kubikmeter im Tagesdurchschnitt als gerade noch zulässig vor. Die katholischen Messe-Meßwerte betragen mit 220 Mikrogramm jedoch das über 4-Fache des Erlaubten. In seiner heute in Rom veröffentlichten Enzyklika Sanctum habemus odorem wendet sich das Kirchenoberhaupt entschieden gegen Forderungen von Gläubigen, zunächst nur in Domen, später auch in Dorfkirchen und Kapellen Nichtweihraucherzonen einzurichten. Gerade noch tolerierbar sei die Anregung des Kinderschutzbundes, minderjährige Ministranten mit Atemschutzmasken auszurüsten, meinte der Papst. Für gänzlich inakzeptabel sieht Benedikt XVI. Lösungsvorschläge an, die Bischöfe und Priester verpflichten würden, vor Beginn der Handlung den Gläubigen laut und deutlich eine Warnbotschaft zu verlesen, der zufolge übersteigerter Weihrauchkonsum zu gefährlichen Lungenerkrankungen führen kann. Rom weigert sich auch kategorisch, über Kirchenportalen die Hinweistafel anbringen zu lassen: „Weihrauchatmen kann tödlich enden.“ happy days @all ali www.alfredmente.de ___________________________________________________________________ attac-D: die unmoderierte Attac-Diskussionsliste Die hier vorgetragenen Meinungen stammen oft (aber nicht immer!) von Personen, die sich Attac verbunden fühlen. Kein Beitrag hier ist als offizielle Stellungnahme von Attac zu werten -- selbst, wenn er unwidersprochen bleibt (Don't feed the trolls!). Mehr dazu: http://www.attac-netzwerk.de/kommunikation/mailinglisten/listennetiquette

Selbstmord eines Arbeitslosen: Auf dem Abschiedsbrief stand "Harz IV"

Ein arbeitsloser Mann aus Nordrhein-Westfalen hat offenbar Selbstmord begangen, weil er von der Hartz-IV-Reform betroffen war. Darauf deutet ein Zettel hin, der neben der Leiche gefunden wurde. Frankfurt am Main - Die Polizei in Höxter bestätigte auf Anfrage, dass sich der 54-Jährige im Keller eines Hauses erhängt hatte. Bei ihm habe ein Papier gelegen, auf das mit falscher Orthografie das Wort "Harz IV" geschrieben worden war. Der Suizidfall sei bereits am Dienstag bearbeitet worden. Einem Bericht der Zeitung "Junge Welt" zufolge war der langzeitarbeitslose Familienvater von der Anfang Januar eingeführten Arbeitsmarktreform betroffen. Er sei deshalb in eine verzweifelte Lage gekommen, schreibt die Zeitung in ihrer Samstagausgabe unter Berufung auf die Familie des Mannes. Ein Polizeisprecher konnte den Bericht nicht bestätigen. Es sei reine Spekulation, dass eine wirtschaftliche Notlage Grund für den Selbstmord gewesen sei. Weitere Ermittlungen werde es nicht geben, weil keinerlei Verdacht auf Fremdverschulden vorliege.

Girls and boys being disorderly together – doing the Harlem Shake in Tunisia and Egypt

4 March 2013. A World to Win News Service. The electro-dance Harlem Shake may mean different things to different people, but in Tunisia and Egypt it has become a fun, daring and sometimes dangerous challenge to the social and moral order. For a few days at the end of February youth from throughout Tunisian society took to performing this dance, sometimes secretly and in small groups, sometimes in large crowds, and posting the videos on YouTube and other social networks. Shaking their bodies and heads madly, exuberantly thrusting their arms and legs and generally going wild to the same tune as millions of their peers around the globe, they wear everything imaginable: big brightly-coloured wigs, all kinds of masks (including the Occupy/Guy Fawkes face), mock full Islamic coverings or only their underwear. Sometimes the movements are sexual, sometimes not, but usually there are boys and girls dancing together. Tunisian flags fly alongside strings of balloons, feathers and more outrageous decorations. The venues are varied: elite arts and humanities schools, universities where Islamists and students clash regularly, secondary schools in housing estates (projects), football fields, the capital's main shopping mall, other coastal cities, and the streets of Sidi Bouzid, the impoverished town in the interior where the Arab Spring began. The original dance was invented by a Harlem man nicknamed Al B. and a new version went viral on Youtube in February. People all over the world have filmed themselves doing the Shake and posted the videos online. Islamists hate it and label it offensive to their religious beliefs involving the obligatory covering of the body and separation of the sexes. This is not how they think women should act. They also condemn the Shake as a "dance for Western criminals", presumably referring to the residents of the New York ghetto known worldwide as a symbol of Black culture. The dance's enemies include not just the self-proclaimed Salafist Islamists but also the "mainstream" Islamists of the governing Ennahda party and "secular liberals" such as Tunisia's minister of education. He is a member of the Ettakarol party whose presence in the government (and holding of the presidency) supposedly guarantees people's rights not to be forced to live according to religious dictates. The police have attacked and arrested people for publicly dancing the Shake. After dozens of school videos were posted in the space of a few days, the minister ordered an investigation, with the implication that people would be punished. More than 9,000 would-be dancers signed up for a mass solidarity Shake the next day, but the actual turnout was small. At least some non-Islamist media outlets expressed relief that youth had not pushed harder on the kind of issue – is it OK for girls and boys to have fun together? – many self-described secularists would rather avoid. They fear the very polarization that the Islamists seek, especially in the run-up to elections. In Sidi Bouzid a small group of students put up a clip of themselves doing the Shake in an indoor location (maybe a school boys bathroom) and all wearing masks. When the authorities at the secondary school forbid them from holding a big public performance with boys and girls together, the kids went out into the street and danced there. (Search Harlem Shake Sidi Bouzid on Youtube.) They were attacked by Islamists. The next day the attackers returned, driving the dancers back inside the school. The police, who like the Islamists were targeted by violent protests last December, did not intervene. The Shake quickly spread to Cairo. There, too, it became an act of defiance to the Islamization of society that even the liberals are going along with, as did the supposedly secular Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes that youth and other people brought down two years ago. It started with the posting of a video of Egyptians doing the Shake in front of the national symbol, the Giza pyramid. Police announced the arrest of four Cairo students for dancing in their underwear. About 70 people gathered in front of the headquarters of the Islamic Brotherhood, which now runs the government. Last December protesters tried to burn down the building, and the riot police came out to protect it. This time youth danced and chanted "Down with the guide", referring to the Brotherhood's leader. Some were disguised as Brotherhood members, others as Mickey Mouse.

Film review: 5 broken cameras

4 March 2013. A World to Win News Service. 5 Broken Cameras, the first Palestinian documentary nominated for an Oscar, gives an overwhelming depiction of the injustice and brutality on a massive scale against the residents of a village called Bilin in the West Bank. Israeli settlers exude entitlement as they move into new apartments on the hilltops surrounding Bilin, settlements on land stolen from Belin farmers. Not only are Belin's inhabitants viciously assaulted and oppressed but even the olive trees that are supposedly left to them are burned by brazen settlers or uprooted by the army using armoured construction machinery. Starting in 2005 and filming over a period of five years with a succession of five cameras destroyed one after another by Israeli soldiers or settlers, Emad Burnat, a farmer turned amateur filmmaker, documented the protests against the land seizures by the Israeli government and the wall under construction that occupies and will separate them from their farmland. Despite great personal risk, he continued filming from a sense of moral obligation to his people and the desire to make the world aware of the struggle to save their land. In 2009 Burnat enlisted the aid of Israeli activist and filmmaker Guy Davidi to help make the film. The film won many prizes worldwide, in Europe and in the U.S. at the Sundance Film Festival. That this documentary did not win an Oscar is not surprising in a climate where the reactionary feature film Argo received the award for the best picture of the year. Despite having an official invitation to attend the Academy Awards ceremony, when Emad Burnat, his wife and youngest son Gibreel landed in Los Angeles, they were detained and almost deported by U.S. immigration officials until filmmaker Michael Moore intervened and called in Academy lawyers. The film is told in five episodes, each one corresponding to the life span of a camera. The growth over five years of his newborn son Gibreel is juxtaposed with the village struggle lead by Emad's two best friends. Both are determined and all are brave. Gradually we come to understand the complex thinking of many village residents as they evolve through this experience. We get to know a number of them quite well. This film is not just a collection of footage; it has a powerful dramatic rhythm and character development. One of the villagers, Phil, a tall man affectionately called the elephant by the children, uses humour to keep up the morale and unity of the resisting villagers in the face of humiliations, tear gas and rubber and live bullets. He often emphasis that these particular protests are non-violent and appeals to the Israeli soldiers on the basis of their humanity. “We are all cousins,” he tells them. Yet the soldiers relentless carry out orders in the fulfilment of an Israeli strategy designed to wear down the villagers' will to resist through attrition – the breaking of bones and faces, the destruction of homes, and from time to time the taking of lives. The army does not seek to kill everyone, but to demonstrate that the price for refusing to submit is higher than anyone can stand to pay. Phil's non-violence and attempts to find common ground with the soldiers does not change that. The struggle affects Emad's son Gibreel greatly. As a toddler, some of his first words are army, fence and bullet. Despite his deep concern for Gibreel's safety, Emad says the best way to protect his son is for him to understand how the world really is and the vulnerability of human lives. When one of Gibreel's favourite adults is killed by the soldiers, he is deeply disturbed and asks his father why the soldiers act the way they do, and especially, what can be done about it. The audience can't help asking themselves the same question. In 5 Broken Cameras, you witness the soldiers coming to the village in the night and arresting 12 and 13 year-olds and hauling them off to prison amid protests from the families and international activists who support their struggle, including some Israelis. During the protests, one by one each of Emad's brothers are arrested. Then one evening the soldiers come for Emad. They tell him to stop filming, that he is in a closed military area. That closed military area, he replies, is his own home. He goes to prison for three weeks and is put under house arrest in another building for two months. Towards the end of the film, Emad is almost killed in a truck accident and survives because he is treated in an Israeli hospital. For him, this treatment is not a favour but a reminder that under the occupation the Palestinians have almost nothing of their own, not even good medical facilities. When he returns home after a long recuperation, his wife Saroya (unfortunately the only woman in the film whose character is developed) is concerned that he will be killed and asks him to give up filming and stay with her and their four children. But he cannot stop. His filming is the act of resistance that allows him to heal the wounds of oppression, humiliation and injustice that he and other Palestinians endure daily throughout their lives under Israeli occupation. When you see what the Palestinians are up against, you can understand why struggle goes up and down and why the question of how their oppression could be ended is so important. It's not surprising that some people get discouraged. What's more impressive is that this discouragement is so often overcome. You see how the Israelis themselves propel Palestinians into action against them again and again. Watching the film you are filled with the feeling that all of Palestine is a prison. You see the birds soaring in the sky in tremendous liberty. But on the ground every move by the Palestinians is confined in an ever more constricted space. Then in the course of resistance you are arrested and taken to an another restricted space – a prison within a prison. There are almost 5,000 Palestinians in prison right now. About twenty percent of the population have been imprisoned since 1967, some 600,000 held for a week or more, which means that most families have been affected. Many prisoners are never charged. An Israeli military court can order suspects detained indefinitely under a procedure called administrative detention, subject to renewal every six months, without trial. Some prisoners are children. In late February hundreds of Palestinian youth and others clashed with Israeli soldiers in the climax of a months-long wave of demonstrations in support of four prisoners on hunger strike. The prisoners demanded that they be either put on trial or released. On one day, nine Palestinians were injured, one critically, when settlers fired live rounds in clashes near Nablus. As two hunger strikers neared death, the action was called off, at least temporarily, Arafat Jaradat, a 30 year old father of two children, was arrested for allegedly throwing stones at an Israeli military vehicle. After five days in prison he died under suspicious circumstances. Israeli officials claim he had a heart attack, but the Palestinian pathologist who attended the autopsy of the prisoner said his heart showed no signs of that, but there broken bones and serious bruises on Jaradat's body. Kameel Sabbagh, a lawyer who attended Jaradat's last hearing, said he had advised the Israeli judge that his client had been tortured and should be examined by the prison doctor. According to Sabbagh, this did not happen. "He had serious pains in his back and other parts of his body because he was being beaten up and hanged for many long hours while he was being investigated," Sabbagh told the Ma'an news agency. His notes from the court hearing describe his client as "extremely afraid" of returning to his cell. With the death of Jaradat, outraged Palestinians poured again into the streets. This is the reality in Palestine and 5 Broken Cameras is no fiction. It is a moving work of art.