The promise of 21st century socialism was the development of a new radical democracy and the construction of a new kind of state, responsive to and representative of the mass base of the revolution, the working class, the poor and the indigenous peoples. Instead the relationship between the Bolivarian state and the people is one of dependency in which resources, far from providing the means to achieve an increasing level of autonomy and initiative at the grassroots, have been used to forge new networks of power within the state and to reinforce centralism. It is true that there have been occasions when Chavez has restrained the bureaucracy—the excesses of the intelligence and counter-intelligence law are one example. But by and large occasional moves against elements of the bureaucracy have had more to do with internal power politics than with any fundamental challenge to the structures themselves.
(...) If it was the case that the referendum vote in 2007 was an expression of the gathering discontent and frustration of the Chavista base, the 2008 results are, it seems, the expression of similar, still unresolved, feelings. Diosdado did not convince the rank and file of the PSUV, nor did Silva. Yet those grassroots members had been unable to influence the party they had joined so enthusiastically in the preceding year and a half. The PSUV has 5.7 million members; fewer than half that number voted for the party’s candidates.
(...) The telephone and electricity companies were nationalised last year, and a major milk producer was nationalised as the problem of food supplies and deliberately created shortages became more serious. In each case, however, nationalisation involved the state purchasing firms at market prices and with considerable compensation. So while the Alcasa experiment suggested a very different kind of nationalisation, under workers’ control, the state takeovers seem more consonant with a burgeoning state capitalism.
(...) The movements of Venezuela have a history of mass mobilisation and a high degree of political engagement. The level of political preparedness and education, however, is low and rhetoric has replaced genuine critical debate, as the recent election campaign so clearly and poignantly showed. The instrument of that political coordination cannot, in my view, be the PSUV. Its purpose was entirely electoral and the discourse of participation proved to be hollow. Nonetheless, it is the people who joined the party and built its base organisations who will drive the revolutionary project forward.
(...) Chavez’s response to the elections has been to reopen the question of his re-election after 2012 (the constitution currently forbids that) and has launched a campaign to win the amendment to the constitution. At a time when there should be sober and critical discussion of the implications of the 23 November, an honest assessment of the nature of the PSUV and the beginnings of a “revolution within the revolution”, the whole public debate will once again be centred on the character and future of Hugo Chavez. He is an extraordinary individual. But revolutions are the expression of collective liberation, of the moment when vast numbers of the excluded become the conscious shapers of their own destiny. How to achieve that, how to accelerate the redistribution of wealth and how to create the long promised democracy from below are the critical issues. The campaign for re-election will divert attention from those issues, silence criticism and harden the existing structures, which have already done so much damage to the Bolivarian revolution.
Showing posts with label hugo chavez. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hugo chavez. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
marxism/resistance mp3's, part I
robin hood, judy cook (1993): judy cook tries to distinguish between three robin hood narratives: the ruling-class'/hollywood attempt to co-opt robin hood as a disenchanted noble who only wants a better king, the other attempt to portray him as a lawless and aimless bandit, and the third--the one she advocates--which is to put him in the context of the horribly oppressive world in which he matured (roughly by the 1200s you see the first references to robin hood in various literature)--a world in which armed banditry was a terribly attractive form of social entrepreneurship, if you like (freedom from serfdom, etc.). she makes the important, if somewhat stale point, that we couldn't have expected a lenin, insofar as there was no class ready to take over the administration of society (but that's all a bit formulaic, even if also obviously true).
bolivia, andy brown (2008): brown details the revolutionary insurrection from 2003-2005, which came on the back end of two decades of solidly neo-liberal policy ("bolivia as lab-rat for neo-liberalism"). it marked the decisive defeat of national and transnational elite. he asked the question of how to characterize the movement, whether indigenous or national-popular; settled on a developed conception of the former, i think, in the sense that the movement would have been impossible without the contribution of the indigenous campesinos--they were decisive (here some instructive history about how the traditional left in bolivia, in the 50s and 60s, neglected the indigenous movements; this created an opening for their co-option by the military, and thus the downfall of the first revolution). brown is relatively dismissive of what evo morales had accomplished thus far, identifying three key policy areas in which he has not been nearly as radical as the insurrection which took him to power (hydrocarbons--better terms, but not nationalization, land reform--only unused land, which does hurt elite interested in keeping land for speculative purposes, and the constituent assembly--quite insufficient, failing to transcend liberal logic of representation). in sum: the "first revolution of the 21st century," perhaps, but all that energy is, as of now, being only uneasily represented by evo morales in power.
simon bolivar, andy brown (2007): interesting observations about the man's thoroughly liberal commitments (which he "picked up" in Europe). some discussion over how representative he was of the elites' desires around him, which was torn between staying tied to the bourbon monarchy in spain and emulating revolutions on the mainland/to the north. bolivar's liberalism, brown argues, co-existed uneasily with his belief in the paramount importance of a highly centralized state (perhaps this was pragmatic, though), and the danger that he would be caught up in the military, almost bonapartist logic of his own rebellion. nonetheless, he was a believer in racial equality, though the new republics did not emancipate the slaves immediately. all in all, the way in which the contemporary bolivarian republics lay claim to his legacy is, of course, strategic, in the sense that he can only ever represent the bourgeois liberal in his revolutionary role.
who really ended slavery, robin blackburn and weymann bennet (2007): excellent antidote to the official propagandizing around the 200th anniversary of abolition, which celebrates the role of william wilberforce without ever theorizing the context in which this legislation occurred. primarily, blackburn and bennet emphasize that the oligarchical elite in britain were assailed by the revolutionary specter of (a) slave rebellion and resistance in british colonies in the Caribbean, given the fact that in the 1790s slaves in haiti had successfully launched their rebellion; (b) the general rebellions in europe (french revolution, of course) and the american colonies, where a "social contract" was being pursued that exposed the british oligarchy for the reactionary form of government it was (excessively limited franchise, etc.); (c) the explicit anti-slavery agitation of quakers and even working-classes at home, who had launched one of the first mass campaigns against the slave trade. in sum, their hand was forced--they needed to stave off the specter that was haunting their lands (and then, don't forget, they re-wrote this history and deployed it in the civilizing mission--cue leopold and that rubbish).
a people's history of the british empire, john newsinger (2006): the thesis of the talk was simple--"brutality" was a central part of the civilizing mission, throughout. john insisted on the importance of understanding Empire not on the basis of the pretext it provides for its invasions and occupations, but on the objective basis of actual material causes that explain this intervention, the simple barbarity that has always ensued. there are a few examples of this, that are memorable in the worst way: prisoners in the revolting jamaican colonies in 1865 being used as target practice for the new enfield rifle, the obliteration of canton in the second opium war (the fallujah of that war), britain announcing its imminent withdrawal from its seventy-year occupation in egypt on some sixty occasions, the horrors of the suppression of the mau mau rebellion in kenya where some 130 people were hung from the same tree (this is the 1950s, remember).
robin hood, judy cook (1993): judy cook tries to distinguish between three robin hood narratives: the ruling-class'/hollywood attempt to co-opt robin hood as a disenchanted noble who only wants a better king, the other attempt to portray him as a lawless and aimless bandit, and the third--the one she advocates--which is to put him in the context of the horribly oppressive world in which he matured (roughly by the 1200s you see the first references to robin hood in various literature)--a world in which armed banditry was a terribly attractive form of social entrepreneurship, if you like (freedom from serfdom, etc.). she makes the important, if somewhat stale point, that we couldn't have expected a lenin, insofar as there was no class ready to take over the administration of society (but that's all a bit formulaic, even if also obviously true).
bolivia, andy brown (2008): brown details the revolutionary insurrection from 2003-2005, which came on the back end of two decades of solidly neo-liberal policy ("bolivia as lab-rat for neo-liberalism"). it marked the decisive defeat of national and transnational elite. he asked the question of how to characterize the movement, whether indigenous or national-popular; settled on a developed conception of the former, i think, in the sense that the movement would have been impossible without the contribution of the indigenous campesinos--they were decisive (here some instructive history about how the traditional left in bolivia, in the 50s and 60s, neglected the indigenous movements; this created an opening for their co-option by the military, and thus the downfall of the first revolution). brown is relatively dismissive of what evo morales had accomplished thus far, identifying three key policy areas in which he has not been nearly as radical as the insurrection which took him to power (hydrocarbons--better terms, but not nationalization, land reform--only unused land, which does hurt elite interested in keeping land for speculative purposes, and the constituent assembly--quite insufficient, failing to transcend liberal logic of representation). in sum: the "first revolution of the 21st century," perhaps, but all that energy is, as of now, being only uneasily represented by evo morales in power.
simon bolivar, andy brown (2007): interesting observations about the man's thoroughly liberal commitments (which he "picked up" in Europe). some discussion over how representative he was of the elites' desires around him, which was torn between staying tied to the bourbon monarchy in spain and emulating revolutions on the mainland/to the north. bolivar's liberalism, brown argues, co-existed uneasily with his belief in the paramount importance of a highly centralized state (perhaps this was pragmatic, though), and the danger that he would be caught up in the military, almost bonapartist logic of his own rebellion. nonetheless, he was a believer in racial equality, though the new republics did not emancipate the slaves immediately. all in all, the way in which the contemporary bolivarian republics lay claim to his legacy is, of course, strategic, in the sense that he can only ever represent the bourgeois liberal in his revolutionary role.
who really ended slavery, robin blackburn and weymann bennet (2007): excellent antidote to the official propagandizing around the 200th anniversary of abolition, which celebrates the role of william wilberforce without ever theorizing the context in which this legislation occurred. primarily, blackburn and bennet emphasize that the oligarchical elite in britain were assailed by the revolutionary specter of (a) slave rebellion and resistance in british colonies in the Caribbean, given the fact that in the 1790s slaves in haiti had successfully launched their rebellion; (b) the general rebellions in europe (french revolution, of course) and the american colonies, where a "social contract" was being pursued that exposed the british oligarchy for the reactionary form of government it was (excessively limited franchise, etc.); (c) the explicit anti-slavery agitation of quakers and even working-classes at home, who had launched one of the first mass campaigns against the slave trade. in sum, their hand was forced--they needed to stave off the specter that was haunting their lands (and then, don't forget, they re-wrote this history and deployed it in the civilizing mission--cue leopold and that rubbish).
a people's history of the british empire, john newsinger (2006): the thesis of the talk was simple--"brutality" was a central part of the civilizing mission, throughout. john insisted on the importance of understanding Empire not on the basis of the pretext it provides for its invasions and occupations, but on the objective basis of actual material causes that explain this intervention, the simple barbarity that has always ensued. there are a few examples of this, that are memorable in the worst way: prisoners in the revolting jamaican colonies in 1865 being used as target practice for the new enfield rifle, the obliteration of canton in the second opium war (the fallujah of that war), britain announcing its imminent withdrawal from its seventy-year occupation in egypt on some sixty occasions, the horrors of the suppression of the mau mau rebellion in kenya where some 130 people were hung from the same tree (this is the 1950s, remember).
Thursday, May 29, 2008
The credibility of Transparency International, a global "non-partisan" organisation which "promotes transparency in elections, in public administration, in procurement and in business", is on the line. Their latest report on Venezuela, which was produced after months of research, is factually inaccurate in almost every respect. TI say that they "stand by their report" and stand by the person who compiled the data, an anti-Chávez activist who backed the 2002 military coup against democracy.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
trade unions and socialism in venezuela (interview with orlando chirino, april 2007):
(...) [on chavez' announcement of the PSUV] What is most worrying is that the president ended up by doing exactly what he criticized. He criticized the political cannibalism that characterizes the organizations of the Left, but then he went on to say that anyone who does not share his views is a counterrevolutionary. I think this is a serious mistake, because far from encouraging debate it closes it down and encourages the sectarianism that the president has said he is anxious to fight.
(...) The president says, for example, that the reformists are a danger—and I agree. And yet it is my view that the program the president is putting forward rests on a reformist conception, and that there is no perspective for a break with the logic of capital. Let me explain. After the great neoliberal offensive of the 1990s, we are seeing again multimillion-dollar investments by international capital in strategic sectors of the economy such as oil, mining, coal, construction, and infrastructural projects. International consortia from China, Russia, and Iran are exploiting our workers more than ever. I don’t believe that some multinationals are better than others. They are all essentially concerned with monopolizing production and trade, exploiting workers, pillaging the natural resources of nations and intervening politically in the economic decision-making processes of those countries. This strikes at the heart of the kind of economic model we are building.
(...) The president represents investment by the multinationals as a step forward. I see it as mortgaging the revolution.
(...) [this is relevant - because it has now been nationalized - what does that tell us?] Equally worrying is the president’s announcement that Sidor [a major steel company] will not be nationalized because it is being run by “good capitalists.” In fact, this company was privatized under the Fourth Republic and is owned by a multinational consortium headed by Techint of Argentina.
(...) [W]e wonder when we began to speak of “good” and “bad” capitalists?’
(...) The president is currently making a lot of public references to China. We would ask him not to do that, because capitalism was restored in China a number of years ago, and today it is the country where the working class is most exploited. They are modern-day slaves, led by a rotten party that calls itself communist, but is in fact completely subject to the multinationals. To cap it all, the Chinese have just introduced into the constitution the right to private property. China is hardly a good example.
(...) [tension between state- and public- in state/public-ownership of means of production] Another important issue is the role of social classes in this revolution. You don’t have to refer to Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Trotsky to know that the only way to overturn capitalism, a system in which a minority imposes its will on the majority, is that the working class and the people—we who are the majority and the producers—take the lead in expropriating the enterprises and place them under our control. In that sense, what we mean by socialism is very simply stated. Yet that is becoming more and more difficult in Venezuela. We workers are not in that position, even in the key sectors of the economy, to contemplate even joint management, let alone workers control. The government will not consider the possibility of co-management in strategic sectors.
(...) This suggests that the government’s program does not include expropriation, and nor will the PSUV’s. But if this doesn’t happen, we will not be moving toward socialism, but only toward some kind of state capitalism with a developmentalist perspective. This leaves private property untouched, and means that capitalist exploitation and the accumulation of profit by a very few will continue.
(...) [on trade union autonomy]THIS IS a really important issue. The president can’t change history and argue that those of us who are fighting for the independence of the trade-union movement have somehow been “poisoned” by the experience of the Fourth Republic. On the contrary, trade union autonomy is the key antidote to bureaucratization; that’s why the revolution was saved in 2002 and 2003, and as long as it continues it will be the key safeguard of the revolution.
(...) [and this doesn't mean their de-politicization - it means their unwillingness to submit to power] For forty years the Venezuelan trade-union movement lived through its worst period, because workers were puppets in the games played by the old parties (Copei and AD) and the bosses’ organizations. Venezuelans still remember how AD (Democratic Action) decided the fate of workers, bought and sold contracts, and worked with the government to control the unions and the CTV. We should remember that the bosses’ strike of 2002–03 was led by CTV and Fedecámaras (the bosses’ organization) working hand in hand. The raison d’être of the new UNT union is exactly the opposite: to fight for trade union autonomy, and organize the workers to fight against any attempt to submit them to political control or give in to compromises.
(...) [eschewing universal representation, even as has claimed status of universal subject]The president has to understand that because of what we call the class instinct, and the levels of class and revolutionary consciousness, as well as because of their relationship with the bosses, the behavior of workers is different from that of peasants, communities, or students.
(...) The worst thing about the president’s comments, however, is the suggestion that by fighting for the independence of the working-class movement we are playing a counterrevolutionary role. That is not true. With other comrades we have built a national trade-union current that as well as fighting against bureaucracy and for socialism, is most committed to a fierce defense of trade-union autonomy. The second congress of the UNT was proof of what I am arguing. What happened there was not just about five different factions or currents fighting or some leaders squabbling with others because we have personal disagreements, and President Chávez is wrong to describe it that way. In fact, for the last two years “the mother of all battles” has been under way between two conceptions—on the one hand those who want to tie the trade unions to the government, and on the other, those of us who are fighting for the sovereignty and independence of the trade-union movement.
(...) As PST-La Chispa (Workers’ Socialist Party) we are proud to have been the first political organization to support Hugo Chávez’s presidential candidacy. He will remember the first meetings we organized in the La Quizanda district of Valencia and with the textile workers of Aragua. So our history is unimpeachable.
(...) We are at the forefront of the struggle against the CTV, we supported the creation of the FBT (Bolivarian Workers’ Front), and we are enthusiastically behind the UNT. We joined the best activists in resisting the coup of April 11, 2002, and we were centrally involved in the recovery of the oil industry during the bosses’ lockout of 2002–03. Our record is an extremely honorable one.
(...) THE PRESIDENT has tried to use Rosa Luxemburg’s writings to support his arguments against trade-union independence—but we have to see her positions in the particular political and historical context in which she put them forward. When she discussed the question of trade-union autonomy she was referring to the German Social Democratic Party and arguing against syndicalist and bureaucratic tendencies within the unions. As a Trotskyist I have to recognize that Trotsky was wrong when he argued that the trade unions in Russia should not be autonomous shortly after the Bolshevik victory. Luckily, Lenin participated in the debate and he argued for autonomy. Trotsky’s arguments had real force, given that this was the time of the war economy, when there was hunger, civil war, physical assaults against working-class and trade-union leaders, and a confrontation with the holy alliance of the imperialist counterrevolution. Yet even so he was wrong while Lenin was right.
(...) And there is another issue related to autonomy. The FBT and the Labor Ministry allege that the UNT is not fulfilling its historic role and should therefore disappear. At the same time they are talking about setting up parallel structures and putting forward a series of proposals that will decimate the trade-union movement. It is crucial that these proposals are seriously and carefully discussed by the working class.
(...) It is because we are independent that day in and day out we are able to fearlessly express our views on the errors—sometimes the appalling errors—that the government is committing. Public-sector workers cannot be left waiting for twenty-seven months for their contract to be negotiated. And it seems that the oil workers will face a similar fate. The key question is whether it is right to struggle for the independence of the trade union, and whether our exposure of these issues makes us counterrevolutionaries.
(...) Of course this is not just about trade-union autonomy. It is also about the relationship between the PSUV and the government. Will all PSUV members be obliged to support the decisions of the government and its bureaucrats? Will the new party be more than just an appendage of the government?
(...) For me this is the key question. How is the PSUV being built? I want to express my solidarity with thousands of my compatriots who went to Caracas to take part in the event and who were not only excluded, but mistreated and beaten in the bargain. On television we saw governors, mayors, and deputies who do not have mass support occupying the first rows. There were bosses and bureaucrats present who have defended the bosses, and a number of people who have been accused of corruption and the defense of policies that did not reflect the interests of the people. That is why there is so much discontent—because people know that this process has begun in a very questionable way.
(...) [on the PSUV] WE HAVE to recognize that the people have placed great hopes in it; indeed, it is seen by many as a real political victory over the leaderships of the old parties like the MVR, PPT, Podemos, and all those other organizations that for years have fed a tiny group of fat bureaucrats while the majority grew thinner by the day. However, I must say to you that the way it has been presented by President Chávez will not succeed in bringing in the real class fighters, the honest revolutionaries working within the trade-union movement. And that is why we insist on taking part in this debate. We have a view of how to build a revolutionary party in Venezuela, which is imperative if the struggle for a revolutionary process is to continue and develop to the point where it can seize from the capitalists their economic, political, and military power. Until now, we have seen nothing of that in the discussion about the PSUV.
(...) [on chavez' announcement of the PSUV] What is most worrying is that the president ended up by doing exactly what he criticized. He criticized the political cannibalism that characterizes the organizations of the Left, but then he went on to say that anyone who does not share his views is a counterrevolutionary. I think this is a serious mistake, because far from encouraging debate it closes it down and encourages the sectarianism that the president has said he is anxious to fight.
(...) The president says, for example, that the reformists are a danger—and I agree. And yet it is my view that the program the president is putting forward rests on a reformist conception, and that there is no perspective for a break with the logic of capital. Let me explain. After the great neoliberal offensive of the 1990s, we are seeing again multimillion-dollar investments by international capital in strategic sectors of the economy such as oil, mining, coal, construction, and infrastructural projects. International consortia from China, Russia, and Iran are exploiting our workers more than ever. I don’t believe that some multinationals are better than others. They are all essentially concerned with monopolizing production and trade, exploiting workers, pillaging the natural resources of nations and intervening politically in the economic decision-making processes of those countries. This strikes at the heart of the kind of economic model we are building.
(...) The president represents investment by the multinationals as a step forward. I see it as mortgaging the revolution.
(...) [this is relevant - because it has now been nationalized - what does that tell us?] Equally worrying is the president’s announcement that Sidor [a major steel company] will not be nationalized because it is being run by “good capitalists.” In fact, this company was privatized under the Fourth Republic and is owned by a multinational consortium headed by Techint of Argentina.
(...) [W]e wonder when we began to speak of “good” and “bad” capitalists?’
(...) The president is currently making a lot of public references to China. We would ask him not to do that, because capitalism was restored in China a number of years ago, and today it is the country where the working class is most exploited. They are modern-day slaves, led by a rotten party that calls itself communist, but is in fact completely subject to the multinationals. To cap it all, the Chinese have just introduced into the constitution the right to private property. China is hardly a good example.
(...) [tension between state- and public- in state/public-ownership of means of production] Another important issue is the role of social classes in this revolution. You don’t have to refer to Marx, Engels, Lenin, or Trotsky to know that the only way to overturn capitalism, a system in which a minority imposes its will on the majority, is that the working class and the people—we who are the majority and the producers—take the lead in expropriating the enterprises and place them under our control. In that sense, what we mean by socialism is very simply stated. Yet that is becoming more and more difficult in Venezuela. We workers are not in that position, even in the key sectors of the economy, to contemplate even joint management, let alone workers control. The government will not consider the possibility of co-management in strategic sectors.
(...) This suggests that the government’s program does not include expropriation, and nor will the PSUV’s. But if this doesn’t happen, we will not be moving toward socialism, but only toward some kind of state capitalism with a developmentalist perspective. This leaves private property untouched, and means that capitalist exploitation and the accumulation of profit by a very few will continue.
(...) [on trade union autonomy]THIS IS a really important issue. The president can’t change history and argue that those of us who are fighting for the independence of the trade-union movement have somehow been “poisoned” by the experience of the Fourth Republic. On the contrary, trade union autonomy is the key antidote to bureaucratization; that’s why the revolution was saved in 2002 and 2003, and as long as it continues it will be the key safeguard of the revolution.
(...) [and this doesn't mean their de-politicization - it means their unwillingness to submit to power] For forty years the Venezuelan trade-union movement lived through its worst period, because workers were puppets in the games played by the old parties (Copei and AD) and the bosses’ organizations. Venezuelans still remember how AD (Democratic Action) decided the fate of workers, bought and sold contracts, and worked with the government to control the unions and the CTV. We should remember that the bosses’ strike of 2002–03 was led by CTV and Fedecámaras (the bosses’ organization) working hand in hand. The raison d’être of the new UNT union is exactly the opposite: to fight for trade union autonomy, and organize the workers to fight against any attempt to submit them to political control or give in to compromises.
(...) [eschewing universal representation, even as has claimed status of universal subject]The president has to understand that because of what we call the class instinct, and the levels of class and revolutionary consciousness, as well as because of their relationship with the bosses, the behavior of workers is different from that of peasants, communities, or students.
(...) The worst thing about the president’s comments, however, is the suggestion that by fighting for the independence of the working-class movement we are playing a counterrevolutionary role. That is not true. With other comrades we have built a national trade-union current that as well as fighting against bureaucracy and for socialism, is most committed to a fierce defense of trade-union autonomy. The second congress of the UNT was proof of what I am arguing. What happened there was not just about five different factions or currents fighting or some leaders squabbling with others because we have personal disagreements, and President Chávez is wrong to describe it that way. In fact, for the last two years “the mother of all battles” has been under way between two conceptions—on the one hand those who want to tie the trade unions to the government, and on the other, those of us who are fighting for the sovereignty and independence of the trade-union movement.
(...) As PST-La Chispa (Workers’ Socialist Party) we are proud to have been the first political organization to support Hugo Chávez’s presidential candidacy. He will remember the first meetings we organized in the La Quizanda district of Valencia and with the textile workers of Aragua. So our history is unimpeachable.
(...) We are at the forefront of the struggle against the CTV, we supported the creation of the FBT (Bolivarian Workers’ Front), and we are enthusiastically behind the UNT. We joined the best activists in resisting the coup of April 11, 2002, and we were centrally involved in the recovery of the oil industry during the bosses’ lockout of 2002–03. Our record is an extremely honorable one.
(...) THE PRESIDENT has tried to use Rosa Luxemburg’s writings to support his arguments against trade-union independence—but we have to see her positions in the particular political and historical context in which she put them forward. When she discussed the question of trade-union autonomy she was referring to the German Social Democratic Party and arguing against syndicalist and bureaucratic tendencies within the unions. As a Trotskyist I have to recognize that Trotsky was wrong when he argued that the trade unions in Russia should not be autonomous shortly after the Bolshevik victory. Luckily, Lenin participated in the debate and he argued for autonomy. Trotsky’s arguments had real force, given that this was the time of the war economy, when there was hunger, civil war, physical assaults against working-class and trade-union leaders, and a confrontation with the holy alliance of the imperialist counterrevolution. Yet even so he was wrong while Lenin was right.
(...) And there is another issue related to autonomy. The FBT and the Labor Ministry allege that the UNT is not fulfilling its historic role and should therefore disappear. At the same time they are talking about setting up parallel structures and putting forward a series of proposals that will decimate the trade-union movement. It is crucial that these proposals are seriously and carefully discussed by the working class.
(...) It is because we are independent that day in and day out we are able to fearlessly express our views on the errors—sometimes the appalling errors—that the government is committing. Public-sector workers cannot be left waiting for twenty-seven months for their contract to be negotiated. And it seems that the oil workers will face a similar fate. The key question is whether it is right to struggle for the independence of the trade union, and whether our exposure of these issues makes us counterrevolutionaries.
(...) Of course this is not just about trade-union autonomy. It is also about the relationship between the PSUV and the government. Will all PSUV members be obliged to support the decisions of the government and its bureaucrats? Will the new party be more than just an appendage of the government?
(...) For me this is the key question. How is the PSUV being built? I want to express my solidarity with thousands of my compatriots who went to Caracas to take part in the event and who were not only excluded, but mistreated and beaten in the bargain. On television we saw governors, mayors, and deputies who do not have mass support occupying the first rows. There were bosses and bureaucrats present who have defended the bosses, and a number of people who have been accused of corruption and the defense of policies that did not reflect the interests of the people. That is why there is so much discontent—because people know that this process has begun in a very questionable way.
(...) [on the PSUV] WE HAVE to recognize that the people have placed great hopes in it; indeed, it is seen by many as a real political victory over the leaderships of the old parties like the MVR, PPT, Podemos, and all those other organizations that for years have fed a tiny group of fat bureaucrats while the majority grew thinner by the day. However, I must say to you that the way it has been presented by President Chávez will not succeed in bringing in the real class fighters, the honest revolutionaries working within the trade-union movement. And that is why we insist on taking part in this debate. We have a view of how to build a revolutionary party in Venezuela, which is imperative if the struggle for a revolutionary process is to continue and develop to the point where it can seize from the capitalists their economic, political, and military power. Until now, we have seen nothing of that in the discussion about the PSUV.
venezuelan steel nationalization (April 2008, Green Left Weekly):
(...) Sidor was privatised in 1997, one year before Chavez was elected. The major share-holder has been an Argentinean-controlled conglomerate Techint. Since privatisation, the workforce has been slashed from around 15,000 to just over 5000 and the company has used contract labour in violation of a government decree banning the practice.
(...) [not fully beholden to state interests; in the sense that there was opposition to the chavistas, which chavez realized] The move to re-nationalise Sidor came after more than a year of intense struggle by the Sidor workers, together with the people of Guayana, against not just Sidor management but also the policies of the local “Chavista” governor, Fransisco Rangel Gomez, and the labour minister Jose Ramon Rivero — both of whom have been accused of anti-worker actions.
(...) The move comes as part of a “second wave” of nationalisations being carried out by the Chavez government, following the recent nationalisation of Venezuela’s cement industry (nearly 40 factories), several milk producing plants and the subsequent takeover of 32 large farms. These moves are part of government efforts to recuperate control over food production and the construction industry — both of which play a crucial role in national development.
(...) The labour movement has been electrified by the Sidor victory. In another victory, which reflects the struggle within the pro-Chavez camp between more right-wing sections and those seeking to deepen the revolution, Rivero has been replaced as labour minister, presumably due to his bad role in the Sidor dispute, as well as his public support for splitting the pro-Chavez National Union of Workers (UNT) and creating a new federation.
------
from Stalin Borges, UNT National Coordinator:
(...) [interpretation of what was being demanded] This decision by the Chavez government, justly interpreting the demand raised by the workers and people of Guyana (and won by the colossal struggle of the Sidor workers and the revolutionary people of Guyana with the support of people from across the country) changes the political conjuncture following the defeat of Chavez’s proposed constitutional reforms in the December 2 referendum.
(...) [concretizing the interests of Capital] The majority of Sidor shares were owned by a corporation comprised of capital from a range of countries including Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela. The Argentinean and Brazilian interests were closely tied to the governments of those two countries, and the Venezuelan interests were tied to key families of the Venezuelan oligarchy.
(...) [what can chavez do? listen to the workers] The will of the Sidor workers is to manage production and the administration of the company. They will present a written proposal for how the new Sidor should function. Implementing the policies supported by the majority of Sidor workers would be, beyond speeches, a clear demonstration by Chavez and the government that they do want to embark on the path of socialism.
(...) [again, chavez has not been infallible] Workers have seen that it is possible to take away control of a company from a powerful transnational and that this company can be administered by its workers with good results. They have seen it is possible to change the course of the government — and even of Chavez himself — regarding some of its mistaken policies.
(...) We need to take up the call made by Chavez for the working class to assume its protagonist role in the Bolivarian revolution.
(...) For a while now, [rivero] has acted in favour of the bosses and the bureaucrats, favouring the plans of the right wing within and outside the Bolivarian process. His last move was to decree a new union confederation to split the UNT. This problem was resolved when Chavez, interpreting the sentiment of workers against Rivero, removed him from his position.
(...) It is urgently needed to convoke a meeting of all the currents within the UNT and the revolution in order to begin to take firm steps towards a necessary regroupment and unification of a working class leadership — one that is democratic, pluralist, and independent of the state. Let the workers, the grassroots unions and their natural leaders be the ones who define the steps towards the reorganisation of the UNT — without excluding any current that supports the revolution.
(...) The mobilisation of the working class — involving the UNT, the social movements and the battalions of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) — is the only guarantee to successfully confronting the right-wing opposition, as well as the betrayal of the “endogenous right” within Chavismo.
(...) Sidor was privatised in 1997, one year before Chavez was elected. The major share-holder has been an Argentinean-controlled conglomerate Techint. Since privatisation, the workforce has been slashed from around 15,000 to just over 5000 and the company has used contract labour in violation of a government decree banning the practice.
(...) [not fully beholden to state interests; in the sense that there was opposition to the chavistas, which chavez realized] The move to re-nationalise Sidor came after more than a year of intense struggle by the Sidor workers, together with the people of Guayana, against not just Sidor management but also the policies of the local “Chavista” governor, Fransisco Rangel Gomez, and the labour minister Jose Ramon Rivero — both of whom have been accused of anti-worker actions.
(...) The move comes as part of a “second wave” of nationalisations being carried out by the Chavez government, following the recent nationalisation of Venezuela’s cement industry (nearly 40 factories), several milk producing plants and the subsequent takeover of 32 large farms. These moves are part of government efforts to recuperate control over food production and the construction industry — both of which play a crucial role in national development.
(...) The labour movement has been electrified by the Sidor victory. In another victory, which reflects the struggle within the pro-Chavez camp between more right-wing sections and those seeking to deepen the revolution, Rivero has been replaced as labour minister, presumably due to his bad role in the Sidor dispute, as well as his public support for splitting the pro-Chavez National Union of Workers (UNT) and creating a new federation.
------
from Stalin Borges, UNT National Coordinator:
(...) [interpretation of what was being demanded] This decision by the Chavez government, justly interpreting the demand raised by the workers and people of Guyana (and won by the colossal struggle of the Sidor workers and the revolutionary people of Guyana with the support of people from across the country) changes the political conjuncture following the defeat of Chavez’s proposed constitutional reforms in the December 2 referendum.
(...) [concretizing the interests of Capital] The majority of Sidor shares were owned by a corporation comprised of capital from a range of countries including Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela. The Argentinean and Brazilian interests were closely tied to the governments of those two countries, and the Venezuelan interests were tied to key families of the Venezuelan oligarchy.
(...) [what can chavez do? listen to the workers] The will of the Sidor workers is to manage production and the administration of the company. They will present a written proposal for how the new Sidor should function. Implementing the policies supported by the majority of Sidor workers would be, beyond speeches, a clear demonstration by Chavez and the government that they do want to embark on the path of socialism.
(...) [again, chavez has not been infallible] Workers have seen that it is possible to take away control of a company from a powerful transnational and that this company can be administered by its workers with good results. They have seen it is possible to change the course of the government — and even of Chavez himself — regarding some of its mistaken policies.
(...) We need to take up the call made by Chavez for the working class to assume its protagonist role in the Bolivarian revolution.
(...) For a while now, [rivero] has acted in favour of the bosses and the bureaucrats, favouring the plans of the right wing within and outside the Bolivarian process. His last move was to decree a new union confederation to split the UNT. This problem was resolved when Chavez, interpreting the sentiment of workers against Rivero, removed him from his position.
(...) It is urgently needed to convoke a meeting of all the currents within the UNT and the revolution in order to begin to take firm steps towards a necessary regroupment and unification of a working class leadership — one that is democratic, pluralist, and independent of the state. Let the workers, the grassroots unions and their natural leaders be the ones who define the steps towards the reorganisation of the UNT — without excluding any current that supports the revolution.
(...) The mobilisation of the working class — involving the UNT, the social movements and the battalions of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) — is the only guarantee to successfully confronting the right-wing opposition, as well as the betrayal of the “endogenous right” within Chavismo.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Friday, August 24, 2007
reading arendt in caracas:
I did want to write this piece, but I had to remind myself (and now you, my reader) where my short-term observation post was located--that is, in and around predominantly anti-Chavista groups. My Observatorio hosts were all anti-Chavista to one degree or another, ranging from disillusioned former Chavistas to academics with ties to European center-left groups like the British Euston Manifesto signers. My association with the Observatorio was complicated by the fact that they had accepted an offer from the US Embassy's speaker's program to fund my visit. Although no pressure was put on me, the Embassy, of course, would have been glad to hear the word "totalitarian" applied to Chávez. Some of the anti-Chavista Observatorio members would also have been glad for Chávez to be called totalitarian, but they would not have wanted to be thought pro- American or in the Embassy's embrace, even though they are critics of the blanket anti-Americanism that is key to Chávez's rhetoric.
I did want to write this piece, but I had to remind myself (and now you, my reader) where my short-term observation post was located--that is, in and around predominantly anti-Chavista groups. My Observatorio hosts were all anti-Chavista to one degree or another, ranging from disillusioned former Chavistas to academics with ties to European center-left groups like the British Euston Manifesto signers. My association with the Observatorio was complicated by the fact that they had accepted an offer from the US Embassy's speaker's program to fund my visit. Although no pressure was put on me, the Embassy, of course, would have been glad to hear the word "totalitarian" applied to Chávez. Some of the anti-Chavista Observatorio members would also have been glad for Chávez to be called totalitarian, but they would not have wanted to be thought pro- American or in the Embassy's embrace, even though they are critics of the blanket anti-Americanism that is key to Chávez's rhetoric.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
america and venezuela: constitutional worlds apart:
----------America-----------
Although imperfect, no country anywhere is closer to a model democracy than Venezuela under President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias. In contrast, none is a more shameless failure than America, but it was true long before the age of George W. Bush. The difference under his regime is that the mask is off revealing a repressive state masquerading as a democratic republic. This article compares the constitutional laws of each country and how they're implemented. The result shows world's apart differences between these two nominally democratic states - one that's real, impressive and improving and the other that's mostly pretense and under George Bush lawless, corrupted, in tatters, and morally depraved.
(...) The Constitution falls far short of a "masterpiece of political architecture," but it's even worse than that. It was the product of very ordinary scheming politicians (not the Mt. Rushmore types they're portrayed as in history books) and their friends crafting the law of the land to serve themselves while leaving out the greater public that was nowhere in sight in 1787 Philadelphia. Unlike the Venezuelan Constitution, discussed below, "The People" were never consulted or even considered, and nothing in the end was put to a vote beyond the state legislative bodies that had to ratify it. In contrast to popular myth, the framers crafted a Constitution that didn't constrain or fetter the federal government nor did they create a government of limited powers.
(...) The Constitution can easily be read in 30 minutes or less and just as easily be misunderstood. The opening Preamble contains its sole myth referring to "We the people of the United States of America." The only people who mattered were white male property owners. All others nowhere entered the picture, then or mostly since, proving democracy operatively is little more than a fantasy. But try explaining that to people today thinking otherwise because that's all they were taught from the beginning to believe.
(...) Popular myth aside, the 55 delegates who met in Philadelphia from May to September, 1787 were very ordinary self-serving, privileged, property-owning white men. They weren't extraordinarily learned, profound in their thinking or in any way special. Only 25 attended college (that was pretty rudimentary at the time), and Washington never got beyond the fifth grade.
(...) The delegates came to Philadelphia in May, 1887, assembled, did their work, sent it to the states, and left in a despondent mood. They disliked the final product, some could barely tolerate it, yet 39 of the 55 attendees knowingly signed a document they believed flawed while we today extoll it like it came down from Mt. Sinai. The whole process we call a first-class historical event was, in fact, an entirely routine uninspiring political caucus producing no "prodigies of statecraft, no wonders of political (judgment), no vaulting philosophies, no Promethean vistas." Contradicting everything we've been "indoctrinated from ears to toes" to believe, the notion that the Constitution is "a document of salvation....a magic talisman," or a gift to the common man is pure fantasy.
(...) The constitutional convention ended September 17, 1787 "in an atmosphere verging on glumness." Of the 55 attending delegates, 39 signed as a pro forma exercise before sending it to the states with power to accept or reject it. Again, "The People" were nowhere in sight in Philadelphia or at the state level where the real tussle began before the founders could declare victory.
(...) Key to understanding the American system is that "government is completely autonomous, detached, (and) in a realm of its own" with its "main interest (being) economic (for the privileged) at all times."
(...) With or without this power, Lundberg makes a powerful case overall that the constitutional story comes down to a question of money and money arrangement - who gets it, how, why, when, where, what for, and under what conditions. Also addressed is who the law leaves out. The story has nothing whatever to do with guaranteeing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (Jefferson's Orwellian language meaning property); establishing justice; upholding the rule of law equitably for everyone; promoting the general welfare; or securing the blessings of freedom for "The People" unconsidered, unimportant and ignored by the three branches of government serving monied and property interests only, of which they are a part.
(...) Lundberg's theme is clear and unequivocal. Under US constitutional law, the President is the most powerful political official on earth, bar none under any other system of government. "The office he holds is inherently imperial," regardless of the occupant or how he governs, and the Constitution confers this on him. Unlike the British model, with the executive as a collectivity, the US system "is absolutely unique, and dangerously vulnerable" with one man in charge fully able to exploit his position. "The American President (stands) midway between a collective executive and an absolute dictator (and in times of war like now) becomes, in fact, quite constitutionally, a full-fledged dictator." Disturbingly, the public hasn't a clue about what's going on.
(...) Further, it's pure myth that the government is constrained by limited powers. Quite the opposite is true "which at the point of execution (resides in) one man," the President. In addition, "Until the American electorate creates effective political parties (which it never has done), Congress....will always be pretty much under (Presidents') thumb(s)." Under the "American constitutional system (the President) is very much a de facto king," and under George Bush a corrupted, devious, criminal and dangerous one.
(...) In sum from the above, the US system of constitutional law is full of flaws and faults. "The People" were deliberately and willfully left out of the process proving the Constitution doesn't recognize democracy in America in spite of the commonly held view it does. In addition, the President, at his own discretion, can usurp dictatorial powers and end republican government by a stroke of his pen. That should awaken everyone to the clear and present danger that any time, for any reason, the President of the United States can declare a state of emergency, suspend the law of the land and rule by decree.
---------Venezuela------------
(...) [Chavez] established a model humanistic participatory social democracy, unimaginable in the US, providing real (not imagined) checks and balances in the nation's five branches of government. They comprise the executive, legislative and judicial ones plus two others. One is the independent national electoral council that regulates and handles state and civil society organization electoral procedures to assure they conform to the law requiring free, fair and open elections. The other is a citizen or public power branch functioning as a unique institution. It lets ordinary people serve as ombudsmen to assure the other government branches comply with constitutionally-mandated requirements. This branch includes the attorney general, the defender of the people, and the comptroller general.
(...) Articles 71 - 74 establish four types of popular national referenda never imagined or held in America outside the local or state level where they're often non-binding. The US is one of only five major democracies never to have permitted this type citizen participation. In Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, the practice is mandated by law and institutionalized to give people at the grass roots a say in running their government.
(...) Chavez also wants other changes to strengthen the nation's participatory democracy at the grassroots. He stresses "one of the central ideas is my proposal to open, at the constitutional level, the roads to accelerate the transfer of power to the people" in an "Explosion of Communal (or popular) Power." It's already there in more than 26,000 democratically functioning grassroots communal councils. They're government-sanctioned, funded, operating throughout the country, and may double in number and be strengthened further under proposed constitutional changes. Chavez wants "Popular (people) Power" to be a "State Power" along with the Legislature, Executive, Judicial, Citizen and Electoral ones and considers this constitutional change the most important one of all. If it happens, various sovereign powers and duties now handled at the federal, state and municipal levels will be transfered to local communal, worker, campesino, student and other councils. This will strengthen Venezuela's bedrock participatory democracy making it even more unique and impressive than it already is.
----------America-----------
Although imperfect, no country anywhere is closer to a model democracy than Venezuela under President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias. In contrast, none is a more shameless failure than America, but it was true long before the age of George W. Bush. The difference under his regime is that the mask is off revealing a repressive state masquerading as a democratic republic. This article compares the constitutional laws of each country and how they're implemented. The result shows world's apart differences between these two nominally democratic states - one that's real, impressive and improving and the other that's mostly pretense and under George Bush lawless, corrupted, in tatters, and morally depraved.
(...) The Constitution falls far short of a "masterpiece of political architecture," but it's even worse than that. It was the product of very ordinary scheming politicians (not the Mt. Rushmore types they're portrayed as in history books) and their friends crafting the law of the land to serve themselves while leaving out the greater public that was nowhere in sight in 1787 Philadelphia. Unlike the Venezuelan Constitution, discussed below, "The People" were never consulted or even considered, and nothing in the end was put to a vote beyond the state legislative bodies that had to ratify it. In contrast to popular myth, the framers crafted a Constitution that didn't constrain or fetter the federal government nor did they create a government of limited powers.
(...) The Constitution can easily be read in 30 minutes or less and just as easily be misunderstood. The opening Preamble contains its sole myth referring to "We the people of the United States of America." The only people who mattered were white male property owners. All others nowhere entered the picture, then or mostly since, proving democracy operatively is little more than a fantasy. But try explaining that to people today thinking otherwise because that's all they were taught from the beginning to believe.
(...) Popular myth aside, the 55 delegates who met in Philadelphia from May to September, 1787 were very ordinary self-serving, privileged, property-owning white men. They weren't extraordinarily learned, profound in their thinking or in any way special. Only 25 attended college (that was pretty rudimentary at the time), and Washington never got beyond the fifth grade.
(...) The delegates came to Philadelphia in May, 1887, assembled, did their work, sent it to the states, and left in a despondent mood. They disliked the final product, some could barely tolerate it, yet 39 of the 55 attendees knowingly signed a document they believed flawed while we today extoll it like it came down from Mt. Sinai. The whole process we call a first-class historical event was, in fact, an entirely routine uninspiring political caucus producing no "prodigies of statecraft, no wonders of political (judgment), no vaulting philosophies, no Promethean vistas." Contradicting everything we've been "indoctrinated from ears to toes" to believe, the notion that the Constitution is "a document of salvation....a magic talisman," or a gift to the common man is pure fantasy.
(...) The constitutional convention ended September 17, 1787 "in an atmosphere verging on glumness." Of the 55 attending delegates, 39 signed as a pro forma exercise before sending it to the states with power to accept or reject it. Again, "The People" were nowhere in sight in Philadelphia or at the state level where the real tussle began before the founders could declare victory.
(...) Key to understanding the American system is that "government is completely autonomous, detached, (and) in a realm of its own" with its "main interest (being) economic (for the privileged) at all times."
(...) With or without this power, Lundberg makes a powerful case overall that the constitutional story comes down to a question of money and money arrangement - who gets it, how, why, when, where, what for, and under what conditions. Also addressed is who the law leaves out. The story has nothing whatever to do with guaranteeing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (Jefferson's Orwellian language meaning property); establishing justice; upholding the rule of law equitably for everyone; promoting the general welfare; or securing the blessings of freedom for "The People" unconsidered, unimportant and ignored by the three branches of government serving monied and property interests only, of which they are a part.
(...) Lundberg's theme is clear and unequivocal. Under US constitutional law, the President is the most powerful political official on earth, bar none under any other system of government. "The office he holds is inherently imperial," regardless of the occupant or how he governs, and the Constitution confers this on him. Unlike the British model, with the executive as a collectivity, the US system "is absolutely unique, and dangerously vulnerable" with one man in charge fully able to exploit his position. "The American President (stands) midway between a collective executive and an absolute dictator (and in times of war like now) becomes, in fact, quite constitutionally, a full-fledged dictator." Disturbingly, the public hasn't a clue about what's going on.
(...) Further, it's pure myth that the government is constrained by limited powers. Quite the opposite is true "which at the point of execution (resides in) one man," the President. In addition, "Until the American electorate creates effective political parties (which it never has done), Congress....will always be pretty much under (Presidents') thumb(s)." Under the "American constitutional system (the President) is very much a de facto king," and under George Bush a corrupted, devious, criminal and dangerous one.
(...) In sum from the above, the US system of constitutional law is full of flaws and faults. "The People" were deliberately and willfully left out of the process proving the Constitution doesn't recognize democracy in America in spite of the commonly held view it does. In addition, the President, at his own discretion, can usurp dictatorial powers and end republican government by a stroke of his pen. That should awaken everyone to the clear and present danger that any time, for any reason, the President of the United States can declare a state of emergency, suspend the law of the land and rule by decree.
---------Venezuela------------
(...) [Chavez] established a model humanistic participatory social democracy, unimaginable in the US, providing real (not imagined) checks and balances in the nation's five branches of government. They comprise the executive, legislative and judicial ones plus two others. One is the independent national electoral council that regulates and handles state and civil society organization electoral procedures to assure they conform to the law requiring free, fair and open elections. The other is a citizen or public power branch functioning as a unique institution. It lets ordinary people serve as ombudsmen to assure the other government branches comply with constitutionally-mandated requirements. This branch includes the attorney general, the defender of the people, and the comptroller general.
(...) Articles 71 - 74 establish four types of popular national referenda never imagined or held in America outside the local or state level where they're often non-binding. The US is one of only five major democracies never to have permitted this type citizen participation. In Venezuela under Hugo Chavez, the practice is mandated by law and institutionalized to give people at the grass roots a say in running their government.
(...) Chavez also wants other changes to strengthen the nation's participatory democracy at the grassroots. He stresses "one of the central ideas is my proposal to open, at the constitutional level, the roads to accelerate the transfer of power to the people" in an "Explosion of Communal (or popular) Power." It's already there in more than 26,000 democratically functioning grassroots communal councils. They're government-sanctioned, funded, operating throughout the country, and may double in number and be strengthened further under proposed constitutional changes. Chavez wants "Popular (people) Power" to be a "State Power" along with the Legislature, Executive, Judicial, Citizen and Electoral ones and considers this constitutional change the most important one of all. If it happens, various sovereign powers and duties now handled at the federal, state and municipal levels will be transfered to local communal, worker, campesino, student and other councils. This will strengthen Venezuela's bedrock participatory democracy making it even more unique and impressive than it already is.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
hugo chavez:
In this regard, Chávez’s sense of balance is outstanding. This is the reason why he has become into a reference in many poor countries.
Has not Venezuela been refounded on a new base, legitimated by a new constitution that guarantees people’s participation in the social changes, always within the most painstaking respect of democracy and liberties? (1)
Has the government not given back the dignity to five million poor people?
Has it not recovered for the public the state owned oil company PDVSA?
Has it not de-privatized and given back the main telecommunication company to people, as well as the electric company of Caracas?
Has it not nationalized the Orinoco oil fields?
Finally, has it not assigned part of its oil income to obtain autonomy before the international financial institutions and to finance social programs?
• More than three million hectares of land have been distributed among peasants.
• Millions of children and adults have been taught to read and write.
• Thousands of medical centers have been settled in the popular suborns.
• Thousands low-income people with eye diseases have been operated for free.
• Basic food products have been subsidized and offered to poor people at a low price, 42% less than in the market.
• The weekly working hours have been reduced from 44 to 36 and the minimum wage was about 204 euros per month (the highest in Latin America after Costa Rica).
In this regard, Chávez’s sense of balance is outstanding. This is the reason why he has become into a reference in many poor countries.
Has not Venezuela been refounded on a new base, legitimated by a new constitution that guarantees people’s participation in the social changes, always within the most painstaking respect of democracy and liberties? (1)
Has the government not given back the dignity to five million poor people?
Has it not recovered for the public the state owned oil company PDVSA?
Has it not de-privatized and given back the main telecommunication company to people, as well as the electric company of Caracas?
Has it not nationalized the Orinoco oil fields?
Finally, has it not assigned part of its oil income to obtain autonomy before the international financial institutions and to finance social programs?
• More than three million hectares of land have been distributed among peasants.
• Millions of children and adults have been taught to read and write.
• Thousands of medical centers have been settled in the popular suborns.
• Thousands low-income people with eye diseases have been operated for free.
• Basic food products have been subsidized and offered to poor people at a low price, 42% less than in the market.
• The weekly working hours have been reduced from 44 to 36 and the minimum wage was about 204 euros per month (the highest in Latin America after Costa Rica).
Sunday, June 24, 2007
FOX News and Venezuela:
Perhaps ironically FOX News should be applauded for giving so much coverage to Venezuela - not necessarily a "popular" story. But unfortunately the highest-rated network so thoroughly butchered the truth, that it is not surprising that many Chavez supporters are becoming conspiracy theorists vis-à-vis the US media. In segment after segment, FOX News anchors, along with its main correspondent Adam Housley, told falsehood after falsehood. The issue here has nothing to do with condemning or supporting Hugo Chavez, nor his actions regarding RCTV . This is about how FOX News spread demonstrably false information on several occasions over the course of a week. The manipulation of fact was so extreme, that one has to wonder if it was deliberate.
(...) FOX News viewers, who are not ordinarily connected to Venezuelan news, would likely believe that there is no longer any "opposition" media in that country - or at the most, perhaps one "small cable network" called Globovision. They would think this because FOX's correspondent in Caracas told them this falsehood over and over again. On May 28th, during "Your World" with host David Asman, Adam Housley said that Chavez was "taking over just about every [media outlet] in Venezuela" and added that RCTV was just "the latest." In fact, RCTV is the only media outlet that can arguably said to have been "taken over." The other stations - Televen, Venevision, and Globovision - continue to be privately owned and broadcast opposition voices (though the first two regularly balance them with government spokesmen as well). But this reality didn't stop Housley from saying on the next day's program that RCTV was "the last private and large television station here in the country that was critical of the Chavez administration." If Housely would have just turned on the other stations in the morning (or Globovision at any time of the day) he would have seen opposition members criticizing the Chavez administration. Housley went on to repeat this false characterization of the Venezuelan media landscape on Neil Cavuto's show as well as "Hannity and Colmes."
(...) In a very frustrating exchange on the June 1st broadcast of "Your World" with Neil Cavuto, Charles Barron, a councilman from New York City tried to explain some of these facts, but was rudely told by Housley that he was "full of baloney." After being introduced by Cavuto as "someone who is right there," - thus giving the correspondent undeserved credibility - Housley addressed Barron's contentions: "[Barron] says that there are three private television stations in this country that currently operate. He is absolutely wrong." Well, Barron was absolutely right, and it only takes about thirty seconds of internet research to confirm this (go to www.globovision.com, www.televen.com, and www.venevision.net). Housley then went on to say that Chavez "has shut down the media all across the country." He didn't give any specific examples, probably because to my knowledge, there aren't any.
(...) Perhaps the FOX show with the worst record of "balance" and misinformation in regards to the RCTV issue was "Hannity and Colmes." In four consecutive segments on Venezuela over the course of a week, the guest "experts" were Maria Conchita Alonso, Otto Reich, Roger Noriega, and Alonso again [3]. Alonso is an actress and anti-Chavez activist who admitted on the first segment that she doesn't even follow politics. Otto Reich is a strident anti-Castro and anti-Chavez former member of the Reagan and Bush II administrations. Roger Noriega was recently Bush II's Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Only the liberal Colmes offered any sort of counterpoint, but even he said right from the start that he could no longer defend Chavez for what he described as shutting down the media. In segments that were extraordinary in their removal from reality, Reich claimed that Chavez would likely order the military to kill the protestors, as Reich claimed he has done in the past, and Noriega explained to Hannity that the media is so controlled by Hugo Chavez that Venezuelans can't even see images of the protests. Alonso went on a rant about how defeated presidential candidate Manuel Rosales was in cahoots with Chavez. She also claimed that Venezuela is cursed with racial animosity that would confuse anyone who actually lives in the largely mestizo country, and went on to say that Chavez owns 65% of the media to which Hannity falsely added "Now he owns it all" [4]. Only the first of these statements has any remote basis in fact, and that is only if you accept a declaration of martial law as being equal to an order to kill protestors [5].
(...) Perhaps the most frustrating aspect to this story is realizing that FOX is the most highly rated news station, and yet its hosts and reporters seem unable to do the most basic research. Many of the hosts and correspondents of FOX repeated ad nauseum that Chavez is a "dictator" (Hannity prefers the phrase "brutal dictator") even though he was democratically elected in December by 63% of the people in an election certified by international observers, including the European Union and the Organization of American States [6]. Claims by some prominent members of the Opposition that there was indeed fraud should be respected and reported, but until the claim is backed up with demonstrable evidence, Fox News shouldn't be treating this as the accepted truth. The hosts also constantly asserted that there is hardly any media left in Venezuela that is critical of Chavez, when the reality is that one can turn on the television every day to at least three different stations on the public airwaves and find dissent. Furthermore, most of the major dailies take a strong anti-Chavez editorial line.
Perhaps ironically FOX News should be applauded for giving so much coverage to Venezuela - not necessarily a "popular" story. But unfortunately the highest-rated network so thoroughly butchered the truth, that it is not surprising that many Chavez supporters are becoming conspiracy theorists vis-à-vis the US media. In segment after segment, FOX News anchors, along with its main correspondent Adam Housley, told falsehood after falsehood. The issue here has nothing to do with condemning or supporting Hugo Chavez, nor his actions regarding RCTV . This is about how FOX News spread demonstrably false information on several occasions over the course of a week. The manipulation of fact was so extreme, that one has to wonder if it was deliberate.
(...) FOX News viewers, who are not ordinarily connected to Venezuelan news, would likely believe that there is no longer any "opposition" media in that country - or at the most, perhaps one "small cable network" called Globovision. They would think this because FOX's correspondent in Caracas told them this falsehood over and over again. On May 28th, during "Your World" with host David Asman, Adam Housley said that Chavez was "taking over just about every [media outlet] in Venezuela" and added that RCTV was just "the latest." In fact, RCTV is the only media outlet that can arguably said to have been "taken over." The other stations - Televen, Venevision, and Globovision - continue to be privately owned and broadcast opposition voices (though the first two regularly balance them with government spokesmen as well). But this reality didn't stop Housley from saying on the next day's program that RCTV was "the last private and large television station here in the country that was critical of the Chavez administration." If Housely would have just turned on the other stations in the morning (or Globovision at any time of the day) he would have seen opposition members criticizing the Chavez administration. Housley went on to repeat this false characterization of the Venezuelan media landscape on Neil Cavuto's show as well as "Hannity and Colmes."
(...) In a very frustrating exchange on the June 1st broadcast of "Your World" with Neil Cavuto, Charles Barron, a councilman from New York City tried to explain some of these facts, but was rudely told by Housley that he was "full of baloney." After being introduced by Cavuto as "someone who is right there," - thus giving the correspondent undeserved credibility - Housley addressed Barron's contentions: "[Barron] says that there are three private television stations in this country that currently operate. He is absolutely wrong." Well, Barron was absolutely right, and it only takes about thirty seconds of internet research to confirm this (go to www.globovision.com, www.televen.com, and www.venevision.net). Housley then went on to say that Chavez "has shut down the media all across the country." He didn't give any specific examples, probably because to my knowledge, there aren't any.
(...) Perhaps the FOX show with the worst record of "balance" and misinformation in regards to the RCTV issue was "Hannity and Colmes." In four consecutive segments on Venezuela over the course of a week, the guest "experts" were Maria Conchita Alonso, Otto Reich, Roger Noriega, and Alonso again [3]. Alonso is an actress and anti-Chavez activist who admitted on the first segment that she doesn't even follow politics. Otto Reich is a strident anti-Castro and anti-Chavez former member of the Reagan and Bush II administrations. Roger Noriega was recently Bush II's Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs. Only the liberal Colmes offered any sort of counterpoint, but even he said right from the start that he could no longer defend Chavez for what he described as shutting down the media. In segments that were extraordinary in their removal from reality, Reich claimed that Chavez would likely order the military to kill the protestors, as Reich claimed he has done in the past, and Noriega explained to Hannity that the media is so controlled by Hugo Chavez that Venezuelans can't even see images of the protests. Alonso went on a rant about how defeated presidential candidate Manuel Rosales was in cahoots with Chavez. She also claimed that Venezuela is cursed with racial animosity that would confuse anyone who actually lives in the largely mestizo country, and went on to say that Chavez owns 65% of the media to which Hannity falsely added "Now he owns it all" [4]. Only the first of these statements has any remote basis in fact, and that is only if you accept a declaration of martial law as being equal to an order to kill protestors [5].
(...) Perhaps the most frustrating aspect to this story is realizing that FOX is the most highly rated news station, and yet its hosts and reporters seem unable to do the most basic research. Many of the hosts and correspondents of FOX repeated ad nauseum that Chavez is a "dictator" (Hannity prefers the phrase "brutal dictator") even though he was democratically elected in December by 63% of the people in an election certified by international observers, including the European Union and the Organization of American States [6]. Claims by some prominent members of the Opposition that there was indeed fraud should be respected and reported, but until the claim is backed up with demonstrable evidence, Fox News shouldn't be treating this as the accepted truth. The hosts also constantly asserted that there is hardly any media left in Venezuela that is critical of Chavez, when the reality is that one can turn on the television every day to at least three different stations on the public airwaves and find dissent. Furthermore, most of the major dailies take a strong anti-Chavez editorial line.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
chavez, democracy, and RCTV:
When RCTV's licence to use the free-to-air Channel 2 expired on May 27, the concession was awarded to a new independently produced station, Venezuelan Social Television (TVes), to provide a national space for those previously excluded from the media. This has been used as the latest pretext for an escalating assault against the revolutionary government and people of Venezuela. An international media war has been launched to create the mirage of a democratic protest movement mobilising against the supposed authoritarian, anti-democratic Chavez government. Anti-Venezuela resolutions have been passed by US Congress, the European Union and the right-wing-controlled Brazilian senate.
(...) "Only 140 days have passed" since the new government's inauguration, Chavez explained, yet a "new period has started up, accelerating the process of revolutionary transformation". He pointed to the recuperation of state control over the oil fields in the Orinoco Belt, the re-nationalisation of the telecommunications company CANTV and six electricity companies, as well as the mammoth turnout to register interest in the new united socialist party, the PSUV (by that day, 4.7 million people had registered, reaching more than 5 million by the end of the following day when registrations closed).
(...) Drawing on the "great Italian revolutionary thinker Antonio Gramsci", Chavez outlined why this process has encountered the reaction of imperialism. Referring to Gramsci's thesis — "a truly historic crisis occurs when there is something that is dying, but has not finished dying, and at the same time there is something that is being born but which also hasn't finished being born" — Chavez explained that already by the 1980s, "Venezuela had entered into a historic crisis … [today] we are in the epicentre of the crisis".
(...) For Chavez, the Fourth Republic represented the rule of the "US empire and its lackeys here in Venezuela, the oligarchy, the bourgeoisie, the class that dominated Venezuela for 200 years". This is the same class, he stressed, "that betrayed [Simon] Bolivar, that killed [Jose Antonio de] Sucre, that murdered [Ezequiel] Zamora", all prominent leaders of Venezuela's 200 years of struggle for independence.
(...) According to Gramsci, the superstructure of the dominant historic bloc has two levels, the political society — "the institutions of the state" — and the civil society, consisting of economic and private institutions, specifically the church, media and education system, which are used by the ruling class "to spread among the social and popular classes its dominant ideology".
(...) Chavez noted that one of the "great contradictions" in Venezuelan society today existed between these two factors. "We have been coming along liberating the state", said Chavez. "Bourgeois civil society used to control" the Venezuelan state, government, legislative and judicial power, state companies, government banks, and the national budget, but "they have been losing all of that". Elucidating the battles that lay ahead for the Venezuelan masses, Chavez said that the bourgeoisie was retreating into its last remaining refuges in the media, church and education system.
When RCTV's licence to use the free-to-air Channel 2 expired on May 27, the concession was awarded to a new independently produced station, Venezuelan Social Television (TVes), to provide a national space for those previously excluded from the media. This has been used as the latest pretext for an escalating assault against the revolutionary government and people of Venezuela. An international media war has been launched to create the mirage of a democratic protest movement mobilising against the supposed authoritarian, anti-democratic Chavez government. Anti-Venezuela resolutions have been passed by US Congress, the European Union and the right-wing-controlled Brazilian senate.
(...) "Only 140 days have passed" since the new government's inauguration, Chavez explained, yet a "new period has started up, accelerating the process of revolutionary transformation". He pointed to the recuperation of state control over the oil fields in the Orinoco Belt, the re-nationalisation of the telecommunications company CANTV and six electricity companies, as well as the mammoth turnout to register interest in the new united socialist party, the PSUV (by that day, 4.7 million people had registered, reaching more than 5 million by the end of the following day when registrations closed).
(...) Drawing on the "great Italian revolutionary thinker Antonio Gramsci", Chavez outlined why this process has encountered the reaction of imperialism. Referring to Gramsci's thesis — "a truly historic crisis occurs when there is something that is dying, but has not finished dying, and at the same time there is something that is being born but which also hasn't finished being born" — Chavez explained that already by the 1980s, "Venezuela had entered into a historic crisis … [today] we are in the epicentre of the crisis".
(...) For Chavez, the Fourth Republic represented the rule of the "US empire and its lackeys here in Venezuela, the oligarchy, the bourgeoisie, the class that dominated Venezuela for 200 years". This is the same class, he stressed, "that betrayed [Simon] Bolivar, that killed [Jose Antonio de] Sucre, that murdered [Ezequiel] Zamora", all prominent leaders of Venezuela's 200 years of struggle for independence.
(...) According to Gramsci, the superstructure of the dominant historic bloc has two levels, the political society — "the institutions of the state" — and the civil society, consisting of economic and private institutions, specifically the church, media and education system, which are used by the ruling class "to spread among the social and popular classes its dominant ideology".
(...) Chavez noted that one of the "great contradictions" in Venezuelan society today existed between these two factors. "We have been coming along liberating the state", said Chavez. "Bourgeois civil society used to control" the Venezuelan state, government, legislative and judicial power, state companies, government banks, and the national budget, but "they have been losing all of that". Elucidating the battles that lay ahead for the Venezuelan masses, Chavez said that the bourgeoisie was retreating into its last remaining refuges in the media, church and education system.
Thursday, June 7, 2007
supporting venezuela's decision to not renew RCTV's license:
This is why we respect CONATEL's (The National Telecommunication Commission of Venezuela) decision to not renew the broadcast license of the private television channel Radio Caracas (RCTV) which was taken in complete accordance with Venezuelan domestic legislation and international standards. Far from being an argument in favour of renewing its license to broadcast, the biased manner in which RCTV used this frequency for 53 years was an invitation to find an alternative use for it. Besides, RCTV still has the option to continue broadcasting on cable and satellite, if it so wishes.
(...) The Venezuelan government’s fair decision not to renew RCTV’s broadcast licence can be explained by what RCTV did during the April 2002 coup d’état in Venezuela –to wit, giving airtime to the coup backers, distorting the facts and ignoring acts which were an attack on freedom of expression. The events RCTV ignored included the violent take-over of the state TV station, thus silencing and disrespecting its journalists (RCTV also ignored the people’s reaction to the massacre in the streets). What the station did during the coup also permits us to understand why, today as yesterday, right-wing forces all over the world are closing ranks with the Venezuelan right.
(...) Democratising the media is something our democracies have yet to do. The information given out abroad about Venezuela and President Chávez clearly demonstrates the manipulation of information that affects all of our peoples. We unflinchingly defend our peoples’ freedom of expression and their right to be informed but we do not confuse this with the freedom of media companies --and the political and economic conglomerates who are their allies-- to manipulate information to suit their interests and aims.
This is why we respect CONATEL's (The National Telecommunication Commission of Venezuela) decision to not renew the broadcast license of the private television channel Radio Caracas (RCTV) which was taken in complete accordance with Venezuelan domestic legislation and international standards. Far from being an argument in favour of renewing its license to broadcast, the biased manner in which RCTV used this frequency for 53 years was an invitation to find an alternative use for it. Besides, RCTV still has the option to continue broadcasting on cable and satellite, if it so wishes.
(...) The Venezuelan government’s fair decision not to renew RCTV’s broadcast licence can be explained by what RCTV did during the April 2002 coup d’état in Venezuela –to wit, giving airtime to the coup backers, distorting the facts and ignoring acts which were an attack on freedom of expression. The events RCTV ignored included the violent take-over of the state TV station, thus silencing and disrespecting its journalists (RCTV also ignored the people’s reaction to the massacre in the streets). What the station did during the coup also permits us to understand why, today as yesterday, right-wing forces all over the world are closing ranks with the Venezuelan right.
(...) Democratising the media is something our democracies have yet to do. The information given out abroad about Venezuela and President Chávez clearly demonstrates the manipulation of information that affects all of our peoples. We unflinchingly defend our peoples’ freedom of expression and their right to be informed but we do not confuse this with the freedom of media companies --and the political and economic conglomerates who are their allies-- to manipulate information to suit their interests and aims.
co-operatives in venezuela:
To end poverty, put poor people in charge of their livelihood. A co-op boom turns the jobless into worker/owners.
(...) At Manos Amigas, members voted to work eight hours a day, five days a week, and to pay themselves minimum wage, or around $200 a month. They also receive a bonus at the end of the year, depending on the cooperative’s yearly profits. As is the norm under the 2001 Venezuelan Cooperative Law, a president, secretary, and treasurer are elected yearly. The co-op holds a general assembly once a month, and decisions are made by consensus or by majority. “No one is boss, everyone is part of the team,” said one member.
(...) Manos Amigas is just one of the 8,000 cooperatives, or worker-collectives, formed by the nearly 300,000 graduates of the Vuelvan Caras cooperative job-training program since it began in 2004. It is also just one of the 181,000 cooperatives officially registered in Venezuela as of the end of last year—an astonishing figure that puts the South American nation at the top of the list of countries in the world with the most cooperatives.
(...) Over 99 percent of Venezuela’s cooperatives have registered since President Hugo Chávez Frias took office in 1999. The cooperative boom is key to the shift by the Venezuelan government towards an economy based on the inclusion of traditionally excluded sectors of society and the promotion of alternative business models as part of its drive towards what Chávez calls “socialism of the 21st century.”
(...) At the time that President Chávez was elected in 1998, poverty had been on a slow but constant rise since the middle half of the century. The consolidation of lands into a few hands had displaced farmers who migrated in large numbers to the cities in search of work. As a result, Venezuela became the most urbanized country in Latin America; its capital, Caracas, is surrounded by poor barrios that house almost half of its population of nearly 5 million in substandard conditions. The implantation of neoliberal policies during the 1990s only aggravated the situation by privatizing state-owned businesses, and cutting subsidies and social spending. Inflation skyrocketed and zeros piled on to the end of the national currency, the Bolivar.
(...) Chávez decreed the Special Law of Cooperative Associations in 2001, which made it easier to form cooperatives, and, in the words of former Cooperative Superintendent (SUNACOOP) Carlos Molina, “transformed cooperatives into a fundamental tool of social inclusion.”
(...) The Venezuelan government began promoting the creation of co-ops by prioritizing them for government contracts, offering grants and loans with little or no interest, and eliminating income tax requirements for co-ops. Cooperative numbers immediately began to grow.
(...) Unfortunately, the reality of the cooperative boom is not without its problems. According to last fall’s first Venezuelan Cooperative Census, less than 40 percent of the cooperatives registered at the time were actually functioning. Many of the discrepancies come from businesses that registered and either never got off the ground or failed to comply with the cooperative law. In rare cases, so-called “ghost cooperatives” registered and received loans from the government before disappearing with the cash. Venezuelan cooperative totals are growing at hundreds per week, and former SUNACOOP director Molina verified last year that they have no hope of being able to audit them all.
(...) Unlike the Chávez government cooperatives, CECOSESOLA has no elected officers or management team. Decisions are made by consensus in meetings that take up a major portion of the work week. Associates rotate through different jobs, and each is expected to take full responsibility—in front of their work mates when necessary—for the choices they make.
(...) Establishing CECOSESOLA was not easy. During the 1970s, co-op members were labeled subversives, the cooperative was infiltrated by agents from the Venezuelan secret service, and their transportation bus co-op was shut down and looted by the local government for offering services so reasonable that private bus companies couldn’t compete. The struggle drove the co-op into a decade and a half of bankruptcy, from which many members thought they could not escape.
(...) “It’s a huge success,” says Angel Ortiz, the only male member of Manos Amigas. “We were workers for others, we were employees, but today we are business people, and we are not only producing for the state, but for our community.”
(...) Nevertheless, Venezuela is banking heavily on these democratic businesses, which already account for 6 percent of Venezuela’s workforce. There is no doubt that the cooperatives are changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, who, only a few years ago, didn’t believe they could find a job—not to mention run their own business.
To end poverty, put poor people in charge of their livelihood. A co-op boom turns the jobless into worker/owners.
(...) At Manos Amigas, members voted to work eight hours a day, five days a week, and to pay themselves minimum wage, or around $200 a month. They also receive a bonus at the end of the year, depending on the cooperative’s yearly profits. As is the norm under the 2001 Venezuelan Cooperative Law, a president, secretary, and treasurer are elected yearly. The co-op holds a general assembly once a month, and decisions are made by consensus or by majority. “No one is boss, everyone is part of the team,” said one member.
(...) Manos Amigas is just one of the 8,000 cooperatives, or worker-collectives, formed by the nearly 300,000 graduates of the Vuelvan Caras cooperative job-training program since it began in 2004. It is also just one of the 181,000 cooperatives officially registered in Venezuela as of the end of last year—an astonishing figure that puts the South American nation at the top of the list of countries in the world with the most cooperatives.
(...) Over 99 percent of Venezuela’s cooperatives have registered since President Hugo Chávez Frias took office in 1999. The cooperative boom is key to the shift by the Venezuelan government towards an economy based on the inclusion of traditionally excluded sectors of society and the promotion of alternative business models as part of its drive towards what Chávez calls “socialism of the 21st century.”
(...) At the time that President Chávez was elected in 1998, poverty had been on a slow but constant rise since the middle half of the century. The consolidation of lands into a few hands had displaced farmers who migrated in large numbers to the cities in search of work. As a result, Venezuela became the most urbanized country in Latin America; its capital, Caracas, is surrounded by poor barrios that house almost half of its population of nearly 5 million in substandard conditions. The implantation of neoliberal policies during the 1990s only aggravated the situation by privatizing state-owned businesses, and cutting subsidies and social spending. Inflation skyrocketed and zeros piled on to the end of the national currency, the Bolivar.
(...) Chávez decreed the Special Law of Cooperative Associations in 2001, which made it easier to form cooperatives, and, in the words of former Cooperative Superintendent (SUNACOOP) Carlos Molina, “transformed cooperatives into a fundamental tool of social inclusion.”
(...) The Venezuelan government began promoting the creation of co-ops by prioritizing them for government contracts, offering grants and loans with little or no interest, and eliminating income tax requirements for co-ops. Cooperative numbers immediately began to grow.
(...) Unfortunately, the reality of the cooperative boom is not without its problems. According to last fall’s first Venezuelan Cooperative Census, less than 40 percent of the cooperatives registered at the time were actually functioning. Many of the discrepancies come from businesses that registered and either never got off the ground or failed to comply with the cooperative law. In rare cases, so-called “ghost cooperatives” registered and received loans from the government before disappearing with the cash. Venezuelan cooperative totals are growing at hundreds per week, and former SUNACOOP director Molina verified last year that they have no hope of being able to audit them all.
(...) Unlike the Chávez government cooperatives, CECOSESOLA has no elected officers or management team. Decisions are made by consensus in meetings that take up a major portion of the work week. Associates rotate through different jobs, and each is expected to take full responsibility—in front of their work mates when necessary—for the choices they make.
(...) Establishing CECOSESOLA was not easy. During the 1970s, co-op members were labeled subversives, the cooperative was infiltrated by agents from the Venezuelan secret service, and their transportation bus co-op was shut down and looted by the local government for offering services so reasonable that private bus companies couldn’t compete. The struggle drove the co-op into a decade and a half of bankruptcy, from which many members thought they could not escape.
(...) “It’s a huge success,” says Angel Ortiz, the only male member of Manos Amigas. “We were workers for others, we were employees, but today we are business people, and we are not only producing for the state, but for our community.”
(...) Nevertheless, Venezuela is banking heavily on these democratic businesses, which already account for 6 percent of Venezuela’s workforce. There is no doubt that the cooperatives are changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, who, only a few years ago, didn’t believe they could find a job—not to mention run their own business.
Sunday, May 6, 2007
excellent article on venezuela:
RCTV, together with three other private media corporations (Globovision, Venevision and Televen), which together control some 90% of the TV market, played a leading role in instigating and supporting the 47-hour coup. These private stations, owned by anti-Chavez billionaires and businessmen, have led an unceasing anti-Chavez campaign since the day he was elected. During the coup, they cooperated in suppressing any news that might portray the putsch in a bad light. So, for example, when hundreds of thousands of Chavez supporters took to the streets on April 13 demanding that Chavez be restored, the corporate media stations chose to ignore them and instead broadcast old movies and cartoons.
(...) Another example of blatant falsification from the corporate media stations occurred during the protests in the run-up to the coup. The media channels showed footage of Chavistas shooting from a bridge at unseen targets off the screen, and repeatedly claimed that they were firing at "unarmed opposition demonstrators" (without showing any actual footage of these "unarmed demonstrators", of course). In fact, those protestors on the bridge were themselves being shot at from nearby buildings and there were no "unarmed demonstrators" nearby for them to shoot at.
(...) Could you even imagine a situation whereby CNN or FOX News openly supported an armed putsch against the U.S. government and over four years later were still permitted to broadcast over the public airways, with basically the same people in charge? The very idea is laughable.
(...) The editors of Media Lens, a British-based media watchdog, have detailed at length the ridicule and scorn poured on Chavez by the mainstream press. They point out that the media finds itself unable to mention Chavez without prefixing his name with either "strongman" , "controversial left-wing president" , "extreme left-winger" , "controversial leader" , "outspoken" , "aggressively populist", "left-wing firebrand" , "international revolutionary firebrand" , "maverick" , "virulently anti-American" , etc. etc.
(...) Can you imagine The Guardian or the BBC introducing Tony Blair as "controversial leader Tony Blair", or George Bush as "virulently anti-Venezuelan George Bush"?
(...) For more on the "cartoonisation", ridicule and smearing of Chavez by the mainstream British press (including what John Pilger called "one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen"), see here, here, here and here.
(...) [a labor mp:] That was a novel place for Venezuela, because it had previously attracted little interest in terms of its history or politics, other than as the birthplace of Simon Bolivar, although that is fairly important. According to people to whom I spoke at the Foreign Office, Venezuela was never considered an attractive diplomatic posting. The usual take was that Venezuela was an oil-rich country run by a white, Americanised elite, with nearly 70 per cent. of its 24 million people living on the edge of hunger and poverty...
(...) Given Opposition and US claims about Chavez's democratic legitimacy, it is interesting to note that he had faced the electorate eight times in six years by the end of 2004—a record that has been matched nowhere else in Latin America and which none of us would like to match...
(...) The domestic impact of Chavez's politics is clear. After the dramatic rise in oil prices in 2002 following the failed coup, the Venezuelan Government invested more than $3 billion in social policy reforms in 2005. A series of social investment programmes called missions cover such matters as pre-school education, primary education and literacy, secondary education, vocational worker training, primary health care in the most deprived neighbourhoods and a food distribution programme that covers 60 per cent. of the population. It is estimated that just over 1 million people have acquired literacy skills as a result of those programmes. The poorest in that country have access to medical assistance for the first time ever, thanks partly to the 17,000 medics provided by Cuba."
(...) [article begins again] That the U.S. knew about the April 2002 coup weeks in advance and gave it the go-ahead is also deemed unworthy of mention.
(...) e's referring to Chavez' comparison of Bush to Hitler, of course, and not to any of the many examples of similarly overblown Western rhetoric:
RCTV, together with three other private media corporations (Globovision, Venevision and Televen), which together control some 90% of the TV market, played a leading role in instigating and supporting the 47-hour coup. These private stations, owned by anti-Chavez billionaires and businessmen, have led an unceasing anti-Chavez campaign since the day he was elected. During the coup, they cooperated in suppressing any news that might portray the putsch in a bad light. So, for example, when hundreds of thousands of Chavez supporters took to the streets on April 13 demanding that Chavez be restored, the corporate media stations chose to ignore them and instead broadcast old movies and cartoons.
(...) Another example of blatant falsification from the corporate media stations occurred during the protests in the run-up to the coup. The media channels showed footage of Chavistas shooting from a bridge at unseen targets off the screen, and repeatedly claimed that they were firing at "unarmed opposition demonstrators" (without showing any actual footage of these "unarmed demonstrators", of course). In fact, those protestors on the bridge were themselves being shot at from nearby buildings and there were no "unarmed demonstrators" nearby for them to shoot at.
(...) Could you even imagine a situation whereby CNN or FOX News openly supported an armed putsch against the U.S. government and over four years later were still permitted to broadcast over the public airways, with basically the same people in charge? The very idea is laughable.
(...) The editors of Media Lens, a British-based media watchdog, have detailed at length the ridicule and scorn poured on Chavez by the mainstream press. They point out that the media finds itself unable to mention Chavez without prefixing his name with either "strongman" , "controversial left-wing president" , "extreme left-winger" , "controversial leader" , "outspoken" , "aggressively populist", "left-wing firebrand" , "international revolutionary firebrand" , "maverick" , "virulently anti-American" , etc. etc.
(...) Can you imagine The Guardian or the BBC introducing Tony Blair as "controversial leader Tony Blair", or George Bush as "virulently anti-Venezuelan George Bush"?
(...) For more on the "cartoonisation", ridicule and smearing of Chavez by the mainstream British press (including what John Pilger called "one of the worst, most distorted pieces of journalism I have ever seen"), see here, here, here and here.
(...) [a labor mp:] That was a novel place for Venezuela, because it had previously attracted little interest in terms of its history or politics, other than as the birthplace of Simon Bolivar, although that is fairly important. According to people to whom I spoke at the Foreign Office, Venezuela was never considered an attractive diplomatic posting. The usual take was that Venezuela was an oil-rich country run by a white, Americanised elite, with nearly 70 per cent. of its 24 million people living on the edge of hunger and poverty...
(...) Given Opposition and US claims about Chavez's democratic legitimacy, it is interesting to note that he had faced the electorate eight times in six years by the end of 2004—a record that has been matched nowhere else in Latin America and which none of us would like to match...
(...) The domestic impact of Chavez's politics is clear. After the dramatic rise in oil prices in 2002 following the failed coup, the Venezuelan Government invested more than $3 billion in social policy reforms in 2005. A series of social investment programmes called missions cover such matters as pre-school education, primary education and literacy, secondary education, vocational worker training, primary health care in the most deprived neighbourhoods and a food distribution programme that covers 60 per cent. of the population. It is estimated that just over 1 million people have acquired literacy skills as a result of those programmes. The poorest in that country have access to medical assistance for the first time ever, thanks partly to the 17,000 medics provided by Cuba."
(...) [article begins again] That the U.S. knew about the April 2002 coup weeks in advance and gave it the go-ahead is also deemed unworthy of mention.
(...) e's referring to Chavez' comparison of Bush to Hitler, of course, and not to any of the many examples of similarly overblown Western rhetoric:
Rumsfeld likens Venezuela’s Chavez to Hitler
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11159503/
Robertson apologizes for assassination call
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/08/24/robertson.chavez/
Germany likens Ahmadinejad to Hitler
http://archive.gulfnews.com/indepth/irancrisis/more_stories/10016391.html
Newt Gingrich: Iran’s President is the New Hitler
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/1/25/100038.shtml
Israel should not shy away from threatening to kill Iran's Ahmadinejad
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3390265,00.html
Sen. Voinovich: Ahmadinejad 'Hitler-like'
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2006/9/19/135836.shtml
Ahmadinejad – Another Hitler
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/20345.html
(...) To give just one example of the brutality inflicted upon the people of Nicaragua by the U.S.-backed Contra death squads, an American priest living in Nicaragua described 'the Contras going into a town, shooting it up, killing people, taking a fourteen-year-old girl, raping her, slitting her throat, cutting her head off and putting it on a pole to intimidate the rest of the population.'Olmert compares Ahmadinejad to Hitler
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3245121,00.html
walden bello on wsf:
Porto Alegre was meant to be a counterpoint to “Davos,” the annual event in a resort town in the Swiss Alps where the world’s most powerful business and political figures congregated annually to spot and assess the latest trends in global affairs. Indeed, the highlight of the first WSF was a televised transcontinental debate between George Soros and other figures in Davos with representatives of social movements gathered in Porto Alegre.
(...) Porto Alegre represented the transfer to the South of the center of gravity of that movement. Proclaimed as an “open space,” the WSF became a magnet for global networks focused on different issues, from war to globalization to communalism to racism to gender oppression to alternatives. Regional versions of the WSF were spun off, the most important being the European Social Forum and the African Social Forum; and in scores of cities throughout the world, local social fora were held and institutionalized.
(...) [3 reasons] First, it represents a space — both physical and temporal — for this diverse movement to meet, network, and, quite simply, to feel and affirm itself. Second, it is a retreat during which the movement gathers its energies and charts the directions of its continuing drive to confront and roll back the processes, institutions, and structures of global capitalism. Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, underlined this function when she told a Porto Alegre audience in January 2002 that the need of the moment was “less civil society and more civil disobedience.” Third, the WSF provides a site and space for the movement to elaborate, discuss, and debate the vision, values, and institutions of an alternative world order built on a real community of interests. The WSF is, indeed, a macrocosm of so many smaller but equally significant enterprises carried out throughout the world by millions who have told the reformists, the cynics, and the “realists” to move aside because, indeed, another world is possible…and necessary.
(...) The central principle of the organizing approach of the new movement is that getting to the desired objective is not worth it if the methods violate democratic process, if democratic goals are reached via authoritarian means. Perhaps Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas best expressed the organizing bias of the new movements: “The movement has no future if its future is military. If the EZLN [Zapatistas] perpetuates itself as an armed military structure, it is headed for failure. Failure as an alternative set of ideas, an alternative attitude to the world. The worst that could happen to it apart from that, would be for it to come to power and install itself there as a revolutionary army.” The WSF shares this perspective.
(...) [criticism] The WSF has, however, not been exempt from criticism, even from its own ranks. One in particular appears to have merit. This is the charge that the WSF as an institution is unanchored in actual global political struggles, and this is turning it into an annual festival with limited social impact. There is, in my view, a not insignificant truth to this. Many of the founders of the WSF have interpreted the “open space” concept in a liberal fashion, that is, for the WSF not to explicit endorse any political position or particular struggle, though its constituent groups are free to do so. Others have disagreed, saying the idea of an “open space” should be interpreted in a partisan fashion, as explicitly promoting some views over others and as openly taking sides in key global struggles. In this view, the WSF is under an illusion that it can stand above the fray, and this will lead to its becoming some sort of neutral forum, where discussion will increasingly be isolated from action. The energy of civil society networks derives from their being engaged in political struggles, say proponents of this perspective. The reason that the WSF was so exciting in its early years was because of its affective impact: it provided an opportunity to recreate and reaffirm solidarity against injustice, against war, and for a world that was not subjected to the rule of empire and capital. The WSF’s not taking a stand on the Iraq War, on the Palestine issue, and on the WTO is said to be making it less relevant and less inspiring to many of the networks it had brought together.
(...) This is why the 6th WSF held in Caracas in January 2006 was so bracing and reinvigorating: it inserted some 50,000 delegates into the storm center of an ongoing struggle against empire, where they mingled with militant Venezuelans, mostly the poor, engaged in a process of social transformation, while observing other Venezuelans, mostly the elite and middle class, engaged in bitter opposition. Caracas was an exhilarating reality check. This is also the reason why the Seventh WSF held in Nairobi was so disappointing, since its politics was so diluted and big business interests linked to the Kenyan ruling elite were so brazen in commercializing it. Even Petrobras, the Brazilian state corporation that is a leading exploiter of the natural resource wealth of Latin America, was busy trumpeting itself as a friend of the Forum. There was a strong sense of going backward rather than forward in Nairobi.
(...) Hugo Chavez captured the essence of the conjuncture when he warned delegates in January 2006 about the danger of the WSF becoming simply a forum of ideas with no agenda for action. He told participants that they had no choice but to address the question of power: “We must have a strategy of ‘counter-power.’ We, the social movements and political movements, must be able to move into spaces of power at the local, national, and regional level.”
(...) Developing a strategy of counter-power or counter-hegemony need not mean lapsing back into the old hierarchical and centralized modes of organizing characteristic of the old left. Such a strategy can, in fact, be best advanced through the multilevel and horizontal networking that the movements and organizations represented in the WSF have excelled in advancing their particular struggles. Articulating their struggles in action will mean forging a common strategy while drawing strength from and respecting diversity.
Porto Alegre was meant to be a counterpoint to “Davos,” the annual event in a resort town in the Swiss Alps where the world’s most powerful business and political figures congregated annually to spot and assess the latest trends in global affairs. Indeed, the highlight of the first WSF was a televised transcontinental debate between George Soros and other figures in Davos with representatives of social movements gathered in Porto Alegre.
(...) Porto Alegre represented the transfer to the South of the center of gravity of that movement. Proclaimed as an “open space,” the WSF became a magnet for global networks focused on different issues, from war to globalization to communalism to racism to gender oppression to alternatives. Regional versions of the WSF were spun off, the most important being the European Social Forum and the African Social Forum; and in scores of cities throughout the world, local social fora were held and institutionalized.
(...) [3 reasons] First, it represents a space — both physical and temporal — for this diverse movement to meet, network, and, quite simply, to feel and affirm itself. Second, it is a retreat during which the movement gathers its energies and charts the directions of its continuing drive to confront and roll back the processes, institutions, and structures of global capitalism. Naomi Klein, author of No Logo, underlined this function when she told a Porto Alegre audience in January 2002 that the need of the moment was “less civil society and more civil disobedience.” Third, the WSF provides a site and space for the movement to elaborate, discuss, and debate the vision, values, and institutions of an alternative world order built on a real community of interests. The WSF is, indeed, a macrocosm of so many smaller but equally significant enterprises carried out throughout the world by millions who have told the reformists, the cynics, and the “realists” to move aside because, indeed, another world is possible…and necessary.
(...) The central principle of the organizing approach of the new movement is that getting to the desired objective is not worth it if the methods violate democratic process, if democratic goals are reached via authoritarian means. Perhaps Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas best expressed the organizing bias of the new movements: “The movement has no future if its future is military. If the EZLN [Zapatistas] perpetuates itself as an armed military structure, it is headed for failure. Failure as an alternative set of ideas, an alternative attitude to the world. The worst that could happen to it apart from that, would be for it to come to power and install itself there as a revolutionary army.” The WSF shares this perspective.
(...) [criticism] The WSF has, however, not been exempt from criticism, even from its own ranks. One in particular appears to have merit. This is the charge that the WSF as an institution is unanchored in actual global political struggles, and this is turning it into an annual festival with limited social impact. There is, in my view, a not insignificant truth to this. Many of the founders of the WSF have interpreted the “open space” concept in a liberal fashion, that is, for the WSF not to explicit endorse any political position or particular struggle, though its constituent groups are free to do so. Others have disagreed, saying the idea of an “open space” should be interpreted in a partisan fashion, as explicitly promoting some views over others and as openly taking sides in key global struggles. In this view, the WSF is under an illusion that it can stand above the fray, and this will lead to its becoming some sort of neutral forum, where discussion will increasingly be isolated from action. The energy of civil society networks derives from their being engaged in political struggles, say proponents of this perspective. The reason that the WSF was so exciting in its early years was because of its affective impact: it provided an opportunity to recreate and reaffirm solidarity against injustice, against war, and for a world that was not subjected to the rule of empire and capital. The WSF’s not taking a stand on the Iraq War, on the Palestine issue, and on the WTO is said to be making it less relevant and less inspiring to many of the networks it had brought together.
(...) This is why the 6th WSF held in Caracas in January 2006 was so bracing and reinvigorating: it inserted some 50,000 delegates into the storm center of an ongoing struggle against empire, where they mingled with militant Venezuelans, mostly the poor, engaged in a process of social transformation, while observing other Venezuelans, mostly the elite and middle class, engaged in bitter opposition. Caracas was an exhilarating reality check. This is also the reason why the Seventh WSF held in Nairobi was so disappointing, since its politics was so diluted and big business interests linked to the Kenyan ruling elite were so brazen in commercializing it. Even Petrobras, the Brazilian state corporation that is a leading exploiter of the natural resource wealth of Latin America, was busy trumpeting itself as a friend of the Forum. There was a strong sense of going backward rather than forward in Nairobi.
(...) Hugo Chavez captured the essence of the conjuncture when he warned delegates in January 2006 about the danger of the WSF becoming simply a forum of ideas with no agenda for action. He told participants that they had no choice but to address the question of power: “We must have a strategy of ‘counter-power.’ We, the social movements and political movements, must be able to move into spaces of power at the local, national, and regional level.”
(...) Developing a strategy of counter-power or counter-hegemony need not mean lapsing back into the old hierarchical and centralized modes of organizing characteristic of the old left. Such a strategy can, in fact, be best advanced through the multilevel and horizontal networking that the movements and organizations represented in the WSF have excelled in advancing their particular struggles. Articulating their struggles in action will mean forging a common strategy while drawing strength from and respecting diversity.
courting the monster:
Under the apparently hopeful belief that it was all a misunderstanding, that the United States was not really intent upon crushing them and their movements for social change, the Guatemalan foreign minister in 1954, President Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana in 1961, and Maurice Bishop, leader of Grenada, in 1983 all made their appeals to be left in peace, Jagan doing so at the White House in a talk with President John F. Kennedy.(1) All were crushed anyhow. In 1961, Che Guevara offered a Kennedy aide several important Cuban concessions if Washington would call off the dogs of war. To no avail.(2)
(...) In 2002, before the coup in Venezuela that ousted Hugo Chavez, some of the plotters went to Washington to get a green light from the Bush administration. Chavez learned of this visit and was so distressed by it that he sent officials from his government to plead his own case in Washington. The success of this endeavor can be judged by the fact that the coup took place soon thereafter.(3)
(...) Shortly before the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, informed Washington, through a Lebanese-American businessman, that they wanted the United States to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts and "2000 FBI agents" to conduct a search. The Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. The Iraqis, moreover, pledged to hold UN-supervised free elections; surely free elections is something the United States believes in, the Iraqis reasoned, and will be moved by. They also offered full support for any US plan in the Arab-Israeli peace process. "If this is about oil," said the intelligence official, "we will talk about US oil concessions." These proposals were portrayed by the Iraqi officials as having the approval of President Saddam Hussein.(4) The United States completely ignored these overtures.
(...) In 1945 and 1946, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh wrote at least eight letters to US President Harry Truman and the State Department asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French. He wrote that world peace was being endangered by French efforts to reconquer Indochina and he requested that "the four powers" (US, Soviet Union, China, and Great Britain) intervene in order to mediate a fair settlement and bring the Indochinese issue before the United Nations.(5) This was a remarkable repeat of history. In 1919, at the Versailles Peace Conference following the First World War, Ho Chi Minh had appealed to US Secretary of State Robert Lansing (uncle of Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles, whom Lansing appointed to the US delegation) for America's help in achieving basic civil liberties and an improvement in the living conditions for the colonial subjects of French Indochina. His plea was ignored.(6) His pleas following the Second World War were likewise ignored, with consequences for Vietnam, the rest of Indochina, and the United States we all know only too well. Ho Chi Minh's pleas were ignored because he was, after all, some sort of communist; yet he and his Vietminh followers had in fact been long-time admirers of the United States. Ho trusted the United States more than he did the Soviet Union and reportedly had a picture of George Washington and a copy of the American Declaration of Independence on his desk. According to a former American intelligence officer, Ho sought his advice on framing the Vietminh's own declaration of independence. The actual declaration of 1945 begins: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."(7)
Under the apparently hopeful belief that it was all a misunderstanding, that the United States was not really intent upon crushing them and their movements for social change, the Guatemalan foreign minister in 1954, President Cheddi Jagan of British Guiana in 1961, and Maurice Bishop, leader of Grenada, in 1983 all made their appeals to be left in peace, Jagan doing so at the White House in a talk with President John F. Kennedy.(1) All were crushed anyhow. In 1961, Che Guevara offered a Kennedy aide several important Cuban concessions if Washington would call off the dogs of war. To no avail.(2)
(...) In 2002, before the coup in Venezuela that ousted Hugo Chavez, some of the plotters went to Washington to get a green light from the Bush administration. Chavez learned of this visit and was so distressed by it that he sent officials from his government to plead his own case in Washington. The success of this endeavor can be judged by the fact that the coup took place soon thereafter.(3)
(...) Shortly before the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, informed Washington, through a Lebanese-American businessman, that they wanted the United States to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, and they offered to allow American troops and experts and "2000 FBI agents" to conduct a search. The Iraqis also offered to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 who was being held in Baghdad. The Iraqis, moreover, pledged to hold UN-supervised free elections; surely free elections is something the United States believes in, the Iraqis reasoned, and will be moved by. They also offered full support for any US plan in the Arab-Israeli peace process. "If this is about oil," said the intelligence official, "we will talk about US oil concessions." These proposals were portrayed by the Iraqi officials as having the approval of President Saddam Hussein.(4) The United States completely ignored these overtures.
(...) In 1945 and 1946, Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh wrote at least eight letters to US President Harry Truman and the State Department asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French. He wrote that world peace was being endangered by French efforts to reconquer Indochina and he requested that "the four powers" (US, Soviet Union, China, and Great Britain) intervene in order to mediate a fair settlement and bring the Indochinese issue before the United Nations.(5) This was a remarkable repeat of history. In 1919, at the Versailles Peace Conference following the First World War, Ho Chi Minh had appealed to US Secretary of State Robert Lansing (uncle of Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles, whom Lansing appointed to the US delegation) for America's help in achieving basic civil liberties and an improvement in the living conditions for the colonial subjects of French Indochina. His plea was ignored.(6) His pleas following the Second World War were likewise ignored, with consequences for Vietnam, the rest of Indochina, and the United States we all know only too well. Ho Chi Minh's pleas were ignored because he was, after all, some sort of communist; yet he and his Vietminh followers had in fact been long-time admirers of the United States. Ho trusted the United States more than he did the Soviet Union and reportedly had a picture of George Washington and a copy of the American Declaration of Independence on his desk. According to a former American intelligence officer, Ho sought his advice on framing the Vietminh's own declaration of independence. The actual declaration of 1945 begins: "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."(7)
chavez and oil:
The Times went on to claim this action would undermine Venezuela's growth hinting Big Oil's threat to leave might get Chavez to back down enough to get them to stay. It never happened as this writer suggested April 12 in an article titled "Wall Street Journal and New York Times Attack journalism." The article made it clear oil exploration and production in Venezuela is so profitable that even with a smaller share of the profits US, European and other Big Oil investors wouldn't dream of leaving. Whine plenty, leave, not likely, and now we know they won't.
(...) Hugo Chavez, in fact, is a self-proclaimed social democrat charting his own independent course toward progressive "21st century socialism" along the lines Latin American expert James Petras calls the "pragmatic left" in contrast to the more "radical left" of Colombia's FARC guerrillas; elements of "teachers and peasant-indigenous movements in Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas in Mexico;" many "small Marxist groups in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and elsewhere;" and Venezuela's "peasant and barrio movements," among others. Other Latin American leaders Petras calls "pragmatic" leftists include Bolivia's Evo Morales, Cuba's Castro and many "large electoral parties and major peasant and trade unions in Central and South America" including Mexico's PRD party, El Salvador's FMLN, Chile's Communist Party, "the majority in Peruvian (Ollanta) Humala's parliamentary party;" and others including "the great majority of left Latin American intellectuals."
(...) Hugo Chavez offers them a new choice having announced in March he intends creating a Bank of the South social democratic alternative to the repressive neoliberal Washington Consensus IMF-World Bank model. So far Bolivia and Argentina have agreed to be part of it with Chavez hoping other Latin countries will join as well by contributing 10% of their capital reserves for this enterprise he hopes will be operating by summer.
(...) Additional parts of Chavez's plan involve forging stronger ties to other oil importing nations like China to reduce Venezuela's dependency on a hostile US. He also announced April 29 the nation hopes to gradually sell its seven US-based Citgo refineries replacing them with a new Latin American-based network in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Dominica. It's part of his plan to provide the region a stable oil supply and 100% of the energy needs for Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) members and Haiti.
(...) Further, Journal writers take aim at PDVSA demeaning it as a state-run company claiming it has "little focus" because Chavez turned it into a "poverty-alleviation ministry." As a result, the Journal says it became inefficient and its production fell from 3.1 million barrels a day when Chavez first took office in 1999 to 2.4 million barrels a day now according to US government Energy Information Administration (EIA) figures that look to have been cooked to bring them down. They're disputable with differing ones coming from alternate sources including the 2006 CIA World Factbook listing Venezuela's daily production at slightly under 3.1 million daily barrels, around the same figure PDVSA reported then including extra-heavy crude from Orinoco belt production. In May, 2006, Venezuelan Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Raphael Ramirez indicated the International Energy Agency (IEA) recognized the nation's daily oil production at over 3 million daily barrels while the government reports it now at 3.3 million compared to 2.6 million or less claimed by international oil analysts and EIA deliberately understating oil output the way Washington and the West distort everything positive about Venezuela under Hugo Chavez.
(...) All it can say, with a heavy-handed dose of sour grapes, is that "Mixing oil and politics may not help Mr. Chavez in the long run" as he'll need "private companies' expertise to develop the heavy crude in the Orinoco region" without ever conceding he already has it and a long line of takers ready to step in if any now there foolishly leave. They won't, but don't expect to see that opinion reported anywhere in the Wall Street Journal as they'd then have to admit everything they wrote earlier was false and misleading. They don't have to. You just read it here.
The Times went on to claim this action would undermine Venezuela's growth hinting Big Oil's threat to leave might get Chavez to back down enough to get them to stay. It never happened as this writer suggested April 12 in an article titled "Wall Street Journal and New York Times Attack journalism." The article made it clear oil exploration and production in Venezuela is so profitable that even with a smaller share of the profits US, European and other Big Oil investors wouldn't dream of leaving. Whine plenty, leave, not likely, and now we know they won't.
(...) Hugo Chavez, in fact, is a self-proclaimed social democrat charting his own independent course toward progressive "21st century socialism" along the lines Latin American expert James Petras calls the "pragmatic left" in contrast to the more "radical left" of Colombia's FARC guerrillas; elements of "teachers and peasant-indigenous movements in Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas in Mexico;" many "small Marxist groups in Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and elsewhere;" and Venezuela's "peasant and barrio movements," among others. Other Latin American leaders Petras calls "pragmatic" leftists include Bolivia's Evo Morales, Cuba's Castro and many "large electoral parties and major peasant and trade unions in Central and South America" including Mexico's PRD party, El Salvador's FMLN, Chile's Communist Party, "the majority in Peruvian (Ollanta) Humala's parliamentary party;" and others including "the great majority of left Latin American intellectuals."
(...) Hugo Chavez offers them a new choice having announced in March he intends creating a Bank of the South social democratic alternative to the repressive neoliberal Washington Consensus IMF-World Bank model. So far Bolivia and Argentina have agreed to be part of it with Chavez hoping other Latin countries will join as well by contributing 10% of their capital reserves for this enterprise he hopes will be operating by summer.
(...) Additional parts of Chavez's plan involve forging stronger ties to other oil importing nations like China to reduce Venezuela's dependency on a hostile US. He also announced April 29 the nation hopes to gradually sell its seven US-based Citgo refineries replacing them with a new Latin American-based network in Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Dominica. It's part of his plan to provide the region a stable oil supply and 100% of the energy needs for Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) members and Haiti.
(...) Further, Journal writers take aim at PDVSA demeaning it as a state-run company claiming it has "little focus" because Chavez turned it into a "poverty-alleviation ministry." As a result, the Journal says it became inefficient and its production fell from 3.1 million barrels a day when Chavez first took office in 1999 to 2.4 million barrels a day now according to US government Energy Information Administration (EIA) figures that look to have been cooked to bring them down. They're disputable with differing ones coming from alternate sources including the 2006 CIA World Factbook listing Venezuela's daily production at slightly under 3.1 million daily barrels, around the same figure PDVSA reported then including extra-heavy crude from Orinoco belt production. In May, 2006, Venezuelan Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Raphael Ramirez indicated the International Energy Agency (IEA) recognized the nation's daily oil production at over 3 million daily barrels while the government reports it now at 3.3 million compared to 2.6 million or less claimed by international oil analysts and EIA deliberately understating oil output the way Washington and the West distort everything positive about Venezuela under Hugo Chavez.
(...) All it can say, with a heavy-handed dose of sour grapes, is that "Mixing oil and politics may not help Mr. Chavez in the long run" as he'll need "private companies' expertise to develop the heavy crude in the Orinoco region" without ever conceding he already has it and a long line of takers ready to step in if any now there foolishly leave. They won't, but don't expect to see that opinion reported anywhere in the Wall Street Journal as they'd then have to admit everything they wrote earlier was false and misleading. They don't have to. You just read it here.
Friday, May 4, 2007
world bank, imf in latin america:
Other countries may follow. President Rafael Correa of Ecuador announced last week that it was kicking the World Bank's representative out of the country. It was an unprecedented action, which President Correa punctuated by stating that "we will not stand for extortion by this international bureaucracy." In 2005, the World Bank withheld a previously approved $100 million loan to Ecuador to try to force the government to use windfall oil revenues for debt repayment, rather than the government's choice of social spending.
(...) Over the last 25 years Latin America has had its worst long-term economic growth performance in more than a century.
(...) On April 12, 2002, just hours after Venezuela's democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup, the IMF stated publicly that it was "ready to assist the new administration [of Pedro Carmona] in whatever manner they find suitable." This instantaneous show of financial support for a newly installed dictatorship - one which immediately dissolved the country's constitution, general assembly, and Supreme Court - was unprecedented in the IMF's history. Typically the IMF does not react so quickly, even to an elected government. It is no wonder that this move was seen in Venezuela and elsewhere as an attempt by the IMF to support the coup itself.
(...) The scandal over Paul Wolfowitz's leadership at the World Bank, which is about to topple the Bank's most unwanted president ever, is just the tip of the iceberg. Last month the IMF's Independent Evaluation Office stated that since 1999, nearly three-quarters of aid to the poor countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are not being spent. Rather, at the IMF's request, it is being used to pay off debt and accumulate reserves. This is a terrible thing to do to some of the poorest countries in the world, who desperately need to spend this money on such pressing needs as the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
(...) Whether this will spur reform that can actually change the colonial relationship that these institutions maintain with their borrowers remains to be seen. More likely, they will simply continue to become less relevant to the developing world, as has happened drastically over the last decade.
Other countries may follow. President Rafael Correa of Ecuador announced last week that it was kicking the World Bank's representative out of the country. It was an unprecedented action, which President Correa punctuated by stating that "we will not stand for extortion by this international bureaucracy." In 2005, the World Bank withheld a previously approved $100 million loan to Ecuador to try to force the government to use windfall oil revenues for debt repayment, rather than the government's choice of social spending.
(...) Over the last 25 years Latin America has had its worst long-term economic growth performance in more than a century.
(...) On April 12, 2002, just hours after Venezuela's democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup, the IMF stated publicly that it was "ready to assist the new administration [of Pedro Carmona] in whatever manner they find suitable." This instantaneous show of financial support for a newly installed dictatorship - one which immediately dissolved the country's constitution, general assembly, and Supreme Court - was unprecedented in the IMF's history. Typically the IMF does not react so quickly, even to an elected government. It is no wonder that this move was seen in Venezuela and elsewhere as an attempt by the IMF to support the coup itself.
(...) The scandal over Paul Wolfowitz's leadership at the World Bank, which is about to topple the Bank's most unwanted president ever, is just the tip of the iceberg. Last month the IMF's Independent Evaluation Office stated that since 1999, nearly three-quarters of aid to the poor countries of Sub-Saharan Africa are not being spent. Rather, at the IMF's request, it is being used to pay off debt and accumulate reserves. This is a terrible thing to do to some of the poorest countries in the world, who desperately need to spend this money on such pressing needs as the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
(...) Whether this will spur reform that can actually change the colonial relationship that these institutions maintain with their borrowers remains to be seen. More likely, they will simply continue to become less relevant to the developing world, as has happened drastically over the last decade.
Thursday, May 3, 2007
chavez [populist?]:
The first morning here I attended a meeting called by one of the currents in the National Union of Workers (UNT) to discuss the formation of Bolivarian Councils of Workers, more commonly dubbed workers' councils. Describing the nature of the discussion over these councils, Marcela Maspero, a national coordinator of the UNT, said that the councils had to be "political organisations of the working class, based on direct democracy and control over production." They had to play the role of "eradicating capitalist exploitation, and transforming relations of production in order to create socialised ownership over the means of production." Although these councils have only just begun to appear in a handful of companies, an intense debate at both the governmental and grassroots levels is unfolding over their nature and role.
(...) In the social sphere, Chávez has called for "an explosion in communal power," urging the rapid construction of Communal Councils. These councils are based on the coming together of 200-400 families in urban areas, even less in rural areas, in order to plan and execute projects for the benefit of the community. In some areas, this has already progressed to the point where discussions have begun on the need to establish federations of Communal Councils, in order to tackle larger projects. There are now more than 19,000 Communal Councils. In essence, the aim of the Communal Councils is for power to reside in the communities. This has led to some cases where these councils have come into conflict with the existing state structures, where those who currently hold power fear losing it — a constant battle the revolution encounters as it comes up against the structures of the old state bureaucracy.
(...) Next, the new joiners will be divided up into basic cells of 200 people based on territorial divisions, universities and factories. Out of each, a spokesperson will be elected to participate in the founding congress. No quotas have been set aside for party officials, nor will anyone automatically secure a place in the congress. Even Chávez will have to be elected by his local cell if he is to participate in the conference.
The first morning here I attended a meeting called by one of the currents in the National Union of Workers (UNT) to discuss the formation of Bolivarian Councils of Workers, more commonly dubbed workers' councils. Describing the nature of the discussion over these councils, Marcela Maspero, a national coordinator of the UNT, said that the councils had to be "political organisations of the working class, based on direct democracy and control over production." They had to play the role of "eradicating capitalist exploitation, and transforming relations of production in order to create socialised ownership over the means of production." Although these councils have only just begun to appear in a handful of companies, an intense debate at both the governmental and grassroots levels is unfolding over their nature and role.
(...) In the social sphere, Chávez has called for "an explosion in communal power," urging the rapid construction of Communal Councils. These councils are based on the coming together of 200-400 families in urban areas, even less in rural areas, in order to plan and execute projects for the benefit of the community. In some areas, this has already progressed to the point where discussions have begun on the need to establish federations of Communal Councils, in order to tackle larger projects. There are now more than 19,000 Communal Councils. In essence, the aim of the Communal Councils is for power to reside in the communities. This has led to some cases where these councils have come into conflict with the existing state structures, where those who currently hold power fear losing it — a constant battle the revolution encounters as it comes up against the structures of the old state bureaucracy.
(...) Next, the new joiners will be divided up into basic cells of 200 people based on territorial divisions, universities and factories. Out of each, a spokesperson will be elected to participate in the founding congress. No quotas have been set aside for party officials, nor will anyone automatically secure a place in the congress. Even Chávez will have to be elected by his local cell if he is to participate in the conference.
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