latin america
By Laurent Carasso
February 2010 -- This report will not attempt a detailed survey of the world but will try to stress what is most significant, what, in our view, should come under a common understanding of events and tasks. On many regional situations, the comrades will broadly enrich the discussion through their interventions.
(I) The world situation is marked by crisis
For the first time in history, this crisis is located is explained by capitalist globalisation. No territory is immune. All the economic, social and political factors are interrelated worldwide. The economic crisis is not a conjunctural crisis. This is a systemic, structural crisis: this is the most serious crisis since 1929. The United States has lost 35% of its financial wealth and the Euro zone 25%. And, when governments speak of “emerging from crisis” we do not agree. There may be short-term recoveries, related to policies in support of activity in this or that country, but the countries of the centre -- the USA and Europe -- are not emerging from crisis. The explosion of public debt in southern Europe -- in Greece, Spain -- and the banking and financial uncertainty demonstrate the instability of the situation and a new phase of the crisis, at least in Europe.
The crisis is not over!
Official announcement for the II International Conference “Bolivar, Lincoln and Marti in the ‘ALMA’ of our America” to be held in Caracas, Venezuela, November 17 to 20, 2010, within the framework of the bicentennial of the independence o
Bolivia creates a new opportunity for climate talks that failed at Copenhagen
By Pablo Solón Romero
March 19, 2010 -- http://pwccc.wordpress.com/ -- In the aftermath of the Copenhagen climate conference, those who defended the widely condemned outcome tended to talk about it as a “step in the right direction”. This was always a tendentious argument, given that tackling climate change cannot be addressed by half measures. We can’t make compromises with nature.
Bolivia, however, believed that Copenhagen marked a backwards step, undoing the work built on since the climate talks in Kyoto. That is why, against strong pressure from industrialised countries, we and other developing nations refused to sign the Copenhagen Accord and why we are hosting an international meeting on climate change in Cochabamba, Bolivia, from April 19 to 22, 2010. In the words of the Tuvalu negotiator, we were not prepared to “betray our people for 30 pieces of silver”.
Venezuela: New moves to build workers' power; Revolution in the electricity industry
By Federico Fuentes, Caracas
March 22, 2010 -- The free, sovereign and independent homeland of our dreams will only come true if we radicalise the process and speed up the transition to socialism”, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez wrote in his March 14 weekly column “Chavez Lines”.
The Venezuelan government has launched a number of initiatives in recent weeks aimed to tackle threats to the revolutionary process — including from elements within the pro-Chavez camp that seek to undermine plans to deepen the revolution.
Central to this are new measures aimed at speeding up the transfer of power to organised communities.
Chavez wrote in his February 21 column: “The time has come for communities to assume the powers of state, which will lead administratively to the total transformation of the Venezuelan state and socially to the real exercise of sovereignty by society through communal powers.”
Participatory democracy
The previous day, Chavez announced the creation of the federal government council in front of thousands of armed peasants that are part of the newly created peasant battalions in the Bolivarian militia.
Venezuela: neue Schritte für den Aufbau der Volksmacht
Federico Fuentes, Green Left Weekly
22.März 2010
„Die freie, souveräne und unabhängige Heimat unserer Träume wird nur wahr werden, wenn wir den Prozess radikalisieren und den Übergang zum Sozialismus beschleunigen“, schrieb der venezolanische Präsident am 14.März in seiner Kolumne „Las Lineas de Chavez“.
Die venezolanische Regierung hat in den letzten Wochen mehrere Initiativen gestartet, um Gefährdungen des revolutionären Prozesses zu bewältigen – einschliesslich solche, die vom Pro-Chavez Lager ausgehen und versuchen, Pläne zur Vertiefung der Revolution zu untergraben.
Zentral dabei sind neue Massnahmen die darauf abzielen, die Übergabe der Macht an organisierte Comunidades zu beschleunigen.
`For Venezuela, there is no going back’: A discussion with Federico Fuentes and Kiraz Janicke
By Ali Mustafa
March 23, 2010 -- As Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution enters a new decade of struggle and defiantly advances towards its goal of “21st century socialism”, serious challenges to the future of the process emerging from both inside and outside the country still abound. As a result, key questions surrounding Venezuela's mounting tensions with the West, the role played by its fiery and outspoken leader Hugo Chavez and the future of the process itself remain as relevant today as ever before. Australian-based journalists and long-time Venezuela solidarity activists Federico Fuentes and Kiraz Janicke have been carefully following Venezuela's ongoing political transformation for several years now, countering mainstream media spin and providing invaluable on-the-ground coverage and analysis about the process as it unfolds. I had the fortunate opportunity to sit down and speak with them in Toronto before they returned to Caracas, following a 10-day solidarity tour of Canada.
* * *
Venezuela: Revolution steht vor entscheidenden Auseinandersetzungen
von Federico Fuentes, Caracas
23.02.2010 — Green Left Weekly — Am venezolanischen Horizont drohen entscheidende Kämpfe zwischen den Kräften der Revolution und denen der Konterrevolution.
Der Wahlkampf vor den Parlamentswahlen (am 26. September) wird wichtige Entscheidungen zwischen den Anhängern des sozialistischen Präsidenten Hugo Chavez und der rechten, von der Opposition unterstützten Opposition bringen. Diese Kämpfe sind Teil des Klassenkampfes zwischen der armen Mehrheit in Venezuela und der kapitalistischen Elite. Ausgetragen wird der Kampf aber eher auf der Straße als an den Wahlurnen.
In diesem Jahr kam es bislang zu einer Eskalation der faschistischen Demonstrationen gewalttätiger oppositioneller Studentengruppen. Auch kommt es weiter zu Mordanschlägen gegen Gewerkschafter und Bauernführer - durch rechte paramilitärische Gruppierungen. Die Kampagnen in den Privatmedien, die das Bild einer zerfallenden, krisengebeutelten Regierung zeichnen, die bald weichen werde, nehmen zu.
Am 29. Januar warnte Chavez: "Falls sie eine extrem gewaltsame Offensive einleiten werden, die es zu unserer Pflicht macht, harte Maßnahmen zu ergreifen - was ich ihnen nicht raten möchte - wird unsere Reaktion sie auslöschen".
Women in the Venezuelan revolution: `We’re not invisible but invincible'
Pielrroc Montenegro.
By ABN (Venezuelan news agency), translated by Tamara Pearson
Caracas, March 8, 2010 (ABN/Venezuelanalysis.com) – “I’m a woman with a new life since the Bolivarian Revolution knocked on my door”, said Pielrroc Montenegro, Maracaiban[i] by birth and Andean by tradition, with eyes full of nostalgia and gratitude. She described herself as a “dignified mother of the neighbourhood” since the mission of that name[ii] enabled her to realise one of her dreams: enrol in university.
Years ago, Pielrroc didn’t think much of it when, barely aware of its existence, she signed up with Mission Ribas [high school-level education program]. When she was young she had been forced to leave high school just one year before finishing it.
Le « Venezuela » devant une bataille critique
mardi 2 mars 2010, par
Texte publié le 20 février 2010 sur le site
de Green Left Weekly.
Traduction de David Mandel
Press-toi à gauche -- Des batailles décisives entre les forces de la révolution et de la contre-révolution se dessinent à l’horizon au Venezuela. La campagne menant aux élections à l’Assemblée nationale le 26 septembre sera une bataille critique entre les partisans du président socialiste Hugo Chavez et l’opposition de droite, appuyée par les E-U. Mais ces batailles, qui font partie de la lutte de classe entre la majorité pauvre et l’élite capitaliste, vont se dérouler plus dans les rues que dans les urnes.
Bolivia: Women a driving force in the revolutionary process
By Lisa Macdonald
March 3, 2010 -- In January, Bolivia’s left-wing President Evo Morales began his second term by appointing a new cabinet in which women are equally represented for the first time. Morales, Bolivia’s first president from the nation’s long-oppressed Indigenous majority, is leading a revolutionary process of transformation. The 10 women ministers are from a wide range of backgrounds, and three of them are Indigenous.
Introducing the new ministers, Morales said: “My great dream has come true — half the cabinet seats are held by women. This is a homage to my mother, my sister and my daughter.”
In the December 6, 2010, national elections, in which there was the highest-ever voter participation in Bolivia, Morales and his Movement towards Socialism (MAS) party won a resounding victory. Morales was re-elected with a record 64.2% of the vote and the MAS secured the two-thirds majority in the Senate needed to pass legislation to advance its pro-people program.
Cuba, the corporate media and the suicide of Orlando Zapata Tamayo
By Salim Lamrani
March 4, 2010 -- On February 23, 2010, Cuban inmate Orlando Zapata Tamayo died after 83 days on hunger strike. He was 42. This is the first such incident in Cuba since inmate Pedro Luis Boitel died in 1972 under similar conditions. The corporate media put the tragic incident on front pages and emphasised the plight of Cuban prisoners.[1]
Zapata's dramatic exit sparked a justifiable global uproar. The Cuban prisoner's case undeniably fosters sympathy and a sense of solidarity with a person who expressed his despair and malaise in prison, carrying out his hunger strike to the ultimate consequence. The heartfelt emotion aroused by his case is quite respectable. In contrast, the manipulation of Tamayo's death and of the grief of his family and friends by the corporate media for political purposes violates the basic principles of journalistic ethics.
Haiti Emergency Relief Fund: `Haiti needs solidarity, not charity'
