Venezuela Graduates 6700 Professionals from Low-Income Backgrounds

By Tamara Pearson

Mérida, October 24, 2008 (venezuelanalysis.com)-- Almost 6,000 Venezuelan university students recently graduated through the government's scholarship program, and a further 700 doctors will graduate at the end of this year, significantly filling the shortage of professionals previously experienced by Venezuela.

On Wednesday 5,949 students who participated in the scholarship program known as Mission Sucre graduated in areas of administration (1,478 students), computing (1,205), social communication (247), agricultural production (95), environmental management (604), and social management for local development (2,235).

Mission Sucre is a program for including low-income Venezuelans in university level education, directed by the Ministry of Education, and created five years ago with the aim to municipalize university education.Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez attended the graduation of the second finishing group of Mission Sucre students in Caracas together with simultaneous graduation events around the country. Mission Sucre currently has 527,134 students and there are also 108,000 applicants registered to enroll in the Mission.

In his speech, Chavez described these students as forming part of the army to construct Venezuelan Socialism. He said the numbers were significant as indicators of the possibility of professional development that Venezuelan's have. He added that although Venezuela still hasn't come out of the bog it was put in by previous governments, for many years it has started to come out of this situation, and therefore he urged the new graduates to be motors of the revolution and the new country that Venezuelans must construct.

On this, Juan Carlos Pimentel, one of the graduating students, said that Venezuela needs professionals with much social sensibility, and that Mission Sucre students are in contact with social reality, "and we want to put our preparation and knowledge at the service of the nation."He added that education is "so the people have the tools to advance, without education we are week and the objects of manipulation and of the media war."Chavez encouraged all the students to continue studying, because consciousness comes from knowledge, so "it is very important that the Bolivarian and socialist education model continue growing and expanding itself and improving in quality."

Of the BsF 177.5 billion (US$82.5 billion) assigned to the 2009 budget, BsF 41.5 billion (US$19.3 billion) have been assigned to education, an 18.2% increase from last year. Of this, the Ministry of Education will receive BsF 25 billion (US$11.6 billion), and the Ministry of Superior Education has been assigned BsF 11 billion (US$5.1 billion). Also, 700 community medicine doctors will graduate from the National Experimental University Romulo Gallegos at the end of the year.

The minister for health, Jesus Mantilla, said, "Chavez has put a program of integral community medicine in progress that is the formation of the integral doctor in the communities. At the moment there are around 30,000 [doctors], including the pre-meds, measures that we have adopted to be able to fill this deficit of doctors that there was at a national level."

He said that under previous governments there were very few university places for doctors, and that this situation has dramatically turned around. In total, he said, there are 2,285 Venezuelan doctors across the country and next year 4,000 more doctors will be able to practice.

Rich polluters stand to rake in $3 billion

Marian Wilkinson, October 20, SMH

A NEW report estimates the Rudd Government could hand almost $3 billion to some of the richest companies in Australia in free carbon pollution permits when its scheme to cut greenhouse gases begins in 2010.

The report released by the Australian Conservation Foundation found much of the assistance, an estimated $825 million, would go to big aluminium producers, including Rio Tinto in Australia and Britain, the American company Alcoa, the Norwegian company Norsk Hydro and the Australian company Alumina Ltd. Other beneficiaries would be the Chinese trading company CITIC, says the report, which was produced by the financial advisory company, Innovest. If the Government also agrees to protect the export coal industry, almost half the assistance could go to foreign companies including the Swiss giant Xstrata, the Japanese Mitsubishi company and the British Anglo American coal company. BHP Billiton, could also be given up to $340 million worth of permits, the report finds.

The value of the permits is based on production figures from the companies and on the proposals in the Government's green paper on its carbon pollution reduction scheme, which was released by the Minister for Climate Change, Penny Wong, this year.

Under the plan, the Government will require most businesses producing greenhouse gases to obtain permits to pollute. The Government plans to limit the number of permits, forcing companies to cut back greenhouse gas emissions. The initial cost of permits is expected to be about $20 per tonne of greenhouse gas. Companies with permits will be allowed to freely trade them on a carbon market.

But the Government has promised to protect key industries, such as aluminium, steel and cement, by giving them 30 per cent of permits free. These are industries facing competition from countries that do not have similar schemes to cut greenhouse gases. The industries have argued they could be forced to close or cut operations and investments if they are not compensated.

In its submission to the green paper last month, Rio Tinto argued Australia's major competitors in the supply of aluminium, coal and iron ore are from countries that "are unlikely to introduce comparable climate change policies in the medium term". It said the scheme risked disadvantaging key export industries and delivering "no net gain to the environment".

But environmentalists argue these "trade-exposed industries" are owned by highly profitable companies who could receive windfall profits from the free permits. They want the Government to carefully assess requests for free permits to determine whether they are justified.

The Australian Conservation Foundation is the first group to try to quantify the value of free permits to industries.

"This analysis shows the compensation arrangements proposed in the green paper are far too generous to big polluters and overseas interests," said the foundation's climate change manager, Tony Mohr. "The amount being given away to the big polluters is more than the total federal budget spend on climate change and the environment."

The Government is also proposing compensating the domestic coal-fired power generators under the scheme, which could cost another $900 million.

Data from The Climate Group also shows greenhouse gas emissions from power stations and transport in NSW are less than last year's figures.

Who's Australia's worst environment minister?

Trent Hawkins, 11 October 2008, Green Left Weekly

On September 15, Resistance kicked off our competition to determine who is Australia’s worst environment minister. Resistance members in Melbourne headed down to 50 Lonsdale Street to present Gavin Jennings, Victoria’s environment minister, with the illustrious award of Australia’s Worst Environment Minister.

In Victoria, we are pretty convinced that Jennings is in the top running for the award. Our friendly minister has spent the past months happily supporting his fellow ministers’ wonderfully unsustainable projects.

These include water minister Tim Holdings’ plans to solve the state’s water crisis: a $3 billion desalination plant, which recent studies show may be one of the most polluting in the world, and a pipeline to direct water away from the dying Murray-Darling River system and into Melbourne.

Tim Flannery has seen through the government’s spin on the pipeline project, labelling it “bullshit” at a September 23 public forum at RMIT University.

Jennings has also excelled in the promotion of new coal-fired power stations, hoping he can get away with it by describing the facility to be built in the LaTrobe Valley, a “clean coal” facility.

Unfortunately, what the media fail to mention is that this plant will produce the same emissions as a black coal facility in New South Wales. Clean indeed!

So we are fairly convinced that the Victorian environment minister (and, ironically, also innovation minister) is the worst of the lot, but, looking at the interstate competition, he may have a run for his money.

Andrew McNamara, Queensland’s sustainability, climate change and innovation minister, is overseeing a massive expansion of the coal industry and the state government is investing $300 million into “clean coal” research and development.

South Australian Premier Mike Rann, who doubles as sustainability and climate change minister, has approved the expansion of BHP’s Roxby Downs uranium mine, requiring 120 million extra litres of water daily, at no cost.

Michelle O’Byrne, Tasmanian environment minister, hardly needs a mention for her support for the Gunns' pulp mill.

But what of our newest entrants in the competition, NSW’s Carmel Tebbutt and Western Australia’s Donna Faragher? Despite the popular campaign against electricity privatisation in NSW — which helped bring down ex-premier Morris Iemma — Tebbutt hasn’t indicated the plan will change.

Perhaps the one to watch though is Faragher, whose colleagues in the Liberal Party moved within days of winning government to announce that WA is now open for business to the uranium industry. On September 16, BHP announced it will seek to mine the state’s biggest deposit in Yeelirrie, worth $9 billion.

Last but definitely not least is the federal environmental crusading team: Penny Wong and Peter Garrett. Wong summed up her opinion on climate change when she said her aim was to “ensure that the reduction of greenhouse gases occurs at lowest cost possible to the economy”.

What followed was an Emissions Trading Scheme that gave out free permits to pollute to big business and ensured any real changes would occur well after the Arctic ice-sheet became a distant memory.

And we can only wonder at how Garrett, who rubber-stamped Gunns’ pulp mill even before being elected, can sleep while the Earth is burning and his own government does nothing.

So it seems all the ministers are in the running. Cast your vote now. More importantly, get active in Resistance to stop these climate criminals and give them a clear ultimatum: act in the interests of the planet or pack your bags and collect your new shiny award on your way out of here.