Tag: Venezuela

Anti-Capitalist Meetup: The Cooperative Movement vs Capitalist Domination in the Global Economy

By Geminijen

I’ve been running around to various left conferences this spring and summer and everywhere I go the cooperative movement is touted as the potential savior of the global economy. Admittedly, cooperatives are only “a grain of sand on the beach” (to use a summer metaphor)when one views the entire global economy. At this point it is also not clear that the interest in a cooperative economy is not just a desperate hope that something  – anything – can save us from total economic catastrophe as capitalism seems to be in its last throes with levels of inequality that cannot be sustained.

Do cooperatives really have the potential to be a transition to another more fully progressive economic form that can replace capitalism? Or is it – as cooperatives generally have been – a temporary safety valve during depressions which disappear or are assimilated over time or a capitalist reform as capitalism regains its footing (i.e., the mines in England, the paper plants in the Northwest United States, the electric cooperatives in the Southwest United States).

Since the cooperative movement is currently the fastest growing movement for systemic economic change it deserves an overview of what it is and where its going –which I will attempt to do, in a very limited way.

I will briefly comment on the recent changes in the cooperative movement in:

1) Venezuela which has attempted to use coops as part of its transition to socialism;

2) In the Mondragon cooperative network which applies the cooperative principles in the capitalist system;

3) In the United States because it is in the belly of the beast of capitalism and as such has special problems, and

4) In Cuba which is using cooperatives to transition away from a fully socialist economy to a more mixed economy. (I will write a separate article on cooperatives in Asia or Africa as BRIC countries have unique problems, although India has a highly developed cooperative economy and China has the most cooperatives in the world.)

Anti-Capitalist Meetup: Venezuela – A”Threat” to US Imperialism by Geminijen

In Memory of Eduardo Galeano, 1940-2015.

At the 2009 Summit of the Americas, Hugo Chavez gave Barack Obama a copy of Galeano’s book Open Veins of Latin America which details the United State’s military aggression, economic exploitation and political coups or “regime changes” in Latin America.

In the 2012 Summit of the Americas, Obama’s reception by Latin American nations was noticeably cool – primarily because the United States refused to end its 50 year boycott of Cuba.

So at the 2015 Summit of the Americas, Obama walked in with a smile on his face and a proposal for a rapprochement with Cuba in one hand, and, in the other, his newly minted Executive Order 2015 which placed sanctions for human rights abuses on several  Venezuelan military leaders and  government officials. Under his emergency powers, Obama declared Venezuela a “threat to the United State’s national security.”

What was Obama thinking? Did he think people wouldn’t notice the bait and switch as he tried to appease Cuba and the Latin American nations while at the same time he applied the same old cold war tactics to isolate Venezuela as the more recent example of a Latin American country standing up to US imperialism? (To make matters worse, these particular military officers and judicial officials are those that many Bolivarians see as the most active in preventing a highly publicized attempt to destabilize the Venezuela government in February 2014 to set it up for another coup.)

The unanimous demand from the Latin American nations to repeal the sanctions against Venezuela show how disconnected Obama and the United States government are from changes in the balance of power in the Americas in the last decade. This includes  the failure of the United States to maintain its neoliberal hegemony and the rise of a left liberal block of nations (i.e., Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Argentina, and Brazil among others).

Admittedly, much of the loss of US hegemony in Latin America is due to the United States over-extending itself in brutal and unsuccessful oil wars in the Middle East and Asia, but much of the impetus of this new left leaning block is due to the influence of the Bolivarian “21st century socialist revolution” of Venezuela. Beginning with the election of Hugo Chavez in the late 1990s and the drafting of a “socialist” constitution, Venezuela has been instrumental in establishing several inter-regional support groups such as ALBA, UNISUR and CELAC which exclude the United States.  The new left liberal block of nations has also benefited by Venezuela’s generous sharing of its oil wealth with its neighbors.

So even though most will scoff at the idea that Venezuela is a real military threat to the United States (given the size and nuclear capability and the fact that Venezuela recently reduced its military by an unheard of 34%), the spread of an ideology that challenges the United States’ right to exploit and impoverish its southern neighbors could be sufficient reason to consider Venezuela a “threat” to United States’ ideology of imperialism; thus causing the US to resort to its age old practice of “regime change.”

Seems Like We’ve Heard This Tune Before

For the past 150 years, the United States has treated Latin American as its own personal backyard to exploit.  Most of the exploitation has been accomplished through economic dominance and the support of right-wing dictatorships.  However, if we look at those countries that experienced actual “regime changes” involving military coups,  we can count, just since World War II,  a minimum of 11 countries (and I’m sure I’ve missed some) where the United States was either directly or indirectly involved with military regime changes in the Americas– either to protect specific multinational corporate interests or change regimes that promoted an ideology that was more generally in conflict with Capitalist interests (communism/socialism, nationalism, liberation theology): Guatemala 1954, Cuba1959, The Dominican Republic – 1961, Brazil – 1964, Chile – 1970-73, Argentina – 1976, Nicaragua – 1981-90, Panama 1989, Venezuela 2002, Haiti – 2004, and Honduras – 2009.

To learn some more about a recently published secret report that documents the United States plans for achieving regime change in Venezuela follow the discussion below …

In memory of Hugo who?

It seems that he’s already not even a memory in this part of the hemisphere.  But Venezuela is well remembered . . . . “Venezuela boasts the world’s largest oil reserves.”

And so, I guess, it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to read:

CARACAS, March 17, 2013 (Reuters) – Venezuela’s acting president urged U.S. President Barack Obama to stop what he called a plot by the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency to kill his opposition rival and trigger a coup ahead of an April 14 election.

Nicolas Maduro said the plan was to blame his opponent’s murder on the OPEC nation’s government and to “fill Venezuelans with hate” as they prepare to vote following the death of socialist leader Hugo Chavez.

Maduro first mentioned a plot against his rival, Henrique Capriles, last week. He blamed it on former Bush administration officials Roger Noriega and Otto Reich. Both rejected the claim as untrue, outrageous and defamatory.

“I call on President Obama – Roger Noriega, Otto Reich, officials at the Pentagon and at the CIA are behind a plan to assassinate the right-wing presidential candidate to create chaos,” Maduro said in a TV interview broadcast on Sunday. . . . .

Of course, the United States State Department denied those charges as to a plot to cause harm to anyone in Venezuela.

Maduro, a 50-year-old former bus driver and union leader who is Chavez’s preferred successor as president, said the aim of the plan was to set off a coup and that his information came from “a very good source.” . . . .

During his [Chavez] 14 years in power, the former soldier often denounced U.S. plots against him and his “revolution.” Critics dismissed those claims as a smokescreen to keep voters focused on a sense of “imperialist” threat. . . . . .

Capriles, who kicked off the opposition’s bid to drum up support with big rallies in the provinces over the weekend, said Maduro would be to blame if anything happened to him.(emphasis mine)

Anti-Capitalist Meet-Up: Did Chavez and Maduro Evict the U.S. From Its Own Backyard? by Justina

Following the ideals of his hero, Simon Bolivar, President Hugo Chávez Friás long had a grand vision of a Bolivarian unity among the countries of South America, Central America, and the Caribbean.  His  long serving foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro, now acting president of Venezuela, was the person who brought that vision to material reality.  In so doing, they may have walked off with some prime real estate — the U.S.’s own backyard.

As a reported two million people lined the streets to accompany the body of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chávez Friás, to the Military Academy in Caracas where likely millions more stood in line for hours, if not days, to view his face one last time. Fifty-four international delegations, political leaders and heads of state arrived in Venezuela to attend the official state ceremony for the deceased president, 15 of whose countries had declared official days of mourning for him at home.  They were greeted by then vice president and now Acting President Nicolas Maduro.

The South, Central American and Caribbean countries in attendance gave witness to the impact the Chavez Administration has had on forging unity among them.

Representatives of the more than 33 countries belonging to MERCOSUR, UNOSUR, ALBA and CELAC appeared and credited Chavez’s vision and energy with establishing the equivalent of a new regional union, modeled after the European Union, south of the U.S. border, in what the U.S. formerly regarded as virtually its own territory.

 photo chavezfuneral_zps594f098c.jpg

Mitt And His Fellow Vulture Capitalists See Venezuela As a Threat: It Is. by Justina

The likely Republican presidential candidate and quintessential vulture capitalist, Mitt Romney, chided President Obama for not being sufficiently fearful of Venezuela’s socialist president, Hugo Chávez Friás last week.  In the conservative Daily Telegraph Mitt is quoted as saying:

“The idea that this nation, this president, doesn’t pose a national security threat is simply naive and an extraordinary admission on the part of this president to be completely out of touch with what is happening in Latin America,” Romney said of Chavez in an  interview Wednesday with Fox News.

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Yes, socialist Venezuela, the country which was recently ranked the 5th happiest in the world, following four social democratic countries, presents a threat to Mitt’s vulture business model and his support base, who largely come from the 92,000 wealthy individuals who sequester their wealth in “tax havens” such as Switzerland the Cayman Islands. (See rt. com  for its report on “The Price of Off Shore Revisited”.

After President Chavez was elected to office in 1998, Venezuela has had currency controls in place to prevent its national wealth from being looted and sent to extra-territorial banks, a model which defeats the efforts of would-be off shore tax evaders in Venezuela.  Other countries have allowed themselves to be systematically raped of their needed tax revenues.

Venezuela also jailed its criminal banksters for speculating with their depositors money.  Here, Mitt, you would likely be in jail for creating tax-evading investment vehicles in the Cayman Islands.  No, socialist Venezuela, under President Chavez, is definitely not a vulture-capitalist friendly country.  That is why it is now thriving.

DREAM Now Letters to Barack Obama: Carlos A Roa, Jr.

Originally posted on Citizen Orange.

The “DREAM Now Series: Letters to Barack Obama” is a social media campaign that launched Monday, July 19, to underscore the urgent need to pass the DREAM Act. The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act, S. 729, would help tens of thousands of young people, American in all but paperwork, to earn legal status, provided they graduate from U.S. high schools, have good moral character, and complete either two years of college or military service.  With broader comprehensive immigration reform stuck in partisan gridlock, the time is now for the White House and Congress to step up and pass the DREAM Act!

Dear Mr. President,

My name is Carlos and I’m a 23 year old undocumented immigrant from Caracas, Venezuela.  I want to legalize my immigration status in this country through the passage of DREAM Act this year.  For too long have I lived in the U.S. without papers.  It has been over 20 years, now.  I want to legalize my immigration status in order to fulfill my dreams of becoming a young professional in architecture.

Wild Wild Left Radio #74 World Colonization by Force

Tonight, July 30th at 6PM Eastern Time, WWL Radio!!!!!

Gottlieb and Diane G. are live and in color (or is that off color?) on WWL radio Friday night at 6pm Eastern Time to guide you through Current Events taken from a Wildly Left Prospective.

Hear the Unreported & Under Reported Headlines stories you should be paying attention to, from US Politics, to the farthest reaches of the Earth by the WWL coalition of subversion: undermining the PTB by speaking Truth to Power!!!!

Tonight we will continue our discussion from last week on the tool of Racism, a very real and rising tool. We will also speak to the ridiculous counter-racism claims, and paranoid accusations that always seem to stop truth being told.

They say all war is Class War, and the numbers certainly belie that domestically… but tonight we will also be forging ahead to the larger Foreign Policy – and clarify just how our enemies are created: Fear and “isms” to one end: Make colonies of those who do not serve Western Interests.

Of course, its not all gloom and doom, there are plenty of idiots to satire in this weeks headlines… and you know us. So we shall!

******

Be heard by joining in our live chat, or calling in! Spread the message by telling your friends to listen in or sending them the podcasts!

Please join us for the only “out there where the buses don’t run” LEFT perspective on the breaking news!

Controversy? We face it. Cutting Edge? We step over it. Revolutions start with information, and The Wild Wild Left Radio brings you the best in information and op/eds from a position that others on the Left fear to tread.

Call In!

Join Diane and Gottlieb every Friday at 6pm EDT on Wild Wild Left Radio, via BlogtalkRadio, for News from the Real Left. No hand-wringing, no PC, just straight talk from reality based politics.

WWL Radio: Free Speech in Practice.

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The live chat link will go live around 5:20.. found at the bottom of the show page, or by clicking the link below!

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21st-Century Socialism: two books by Marta Harnecker

Book Reviews:

Marta Harnecker: “Latin America and Twenty-First Century Socialism: Inventing to Avoid Mistakes.”  Monthly Review 62:3 (July-August 2010), 3-78.

—.  Rebuilding the Left.  London and New York: Zed Books, 2007.

In this oh-so-brief review I shall try to convey a sense of what counts as “21st century socialism” in the ferment of leftist governance that can currently be found in certain parts of Latin America (e.g. Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador).

(Crossposted to Orange)

No light bulb will shine, no wheel will move, without the permission of the workers of this world.

Original article, by Jutta Schmitt – University of Los Andes (ULA) senior lecturer in political sciences, via In Defence of Marxism:

Alan Woods held a meeting with workers and students last night (November 19) in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of The Andes in Merida (Venezuela), to talk about the systemic crisis of capitalism on a world wide scale.

Mexico, Israel, US, Exceptionalism

An off hand comment, intended as infantile bathroom humor by a male coworker:

“Ah, man. My coat’s going to smell like a sewer. Luis is in the bathroom taking a dump, and he always stinks it up.”

I cringed a little, grossed out, but keeping my work game face on said, “Luis partied last night, maybe too much tipping..” making the universal glass tipping motion toward him.

“No,” he said straight faced. “Too much beans and salsa, you know all that Mexican food.”



I gave him that sidelong look, you know the one I mean, that long suffering look of Mothers everywhere for when their kids say really stupid shit. Not irritated so much as tired.

“Luis isn’t Mexican. He is Venezuelan.”

He grinned his goofy apologetic grin, shrugged and smiled at his own stupidity, “Venezuela, Mexico, like I would know the difference, they’re all the same to me. They all speak Spanish.”

He walked away too quickly in his lolling gate, almost bouncing like a cartoon character, for me to point out the very obvious. More on that later.

Jesus, it almost tied together my two separate essays I have on hold.

The lack of cultural and geographic understanding and why tribal pure states will no longer work. Sounds strange but the source is the same. Intentional ignorance.

Constitutional Change in Latin America vs. American Imperialist Propaganda

Latin America’s Document-Driven Revolutions” is an interesting article at the Washington Post – interesting because of the subject and because of how ripe it is with pro-American imperialism propaganda with no sense of irony.

From the introductory paragraph:

Once a product of armed rebellion, the revolution in Latin America today is taking place on paper in the form of new constitutions, a mostly peaceful process influenced by the work of European legal scholars who have played a behind-the-scenes role in drafting the populist documents.

The U.S. has long meddled in Latin America and has backed those violent means of change. While Europeans have opted to contribute to a more peaceful path. Of course, Europe has a violent history in Latin America too… it goes back a bit father than the Monroe Doctrine.

What was done?

No to coups! No to U.S. Imperialism! – HOV London organises protests

Original article, by Niklas Albin Svensson , vial Socialist Appeal (UK):

Yesterday John McDonnell MP explained why US imperialism is so concerned about developments in Bolivia and Venezuela: “What the US is terrified of is the prospect that socialism will catch light all across the Americas, so of course it has to go on the attack. But it is exactly for this moment that solidarity campaigns exist.” He explained that, “what is happening is not a personal attack on Morales or Chavez but an attack on the seeds of socialism that they are spreading.”

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