Philippine Leftists launch election campaign to take on traditional politicians (tags)
At a one-day assembly of more than 500 delegates on November 28, the militant socialist Party of the Laboring Masses (PLM - Partido Lakas ng Masa) introduced its candidates for national elections scheduled for May 13 next year.
Ecuador, Venezuela: Danger South of the Borde (tags)
"The reason there is a bizarre attempt to pretend that this coup attempt never happened, is to hope that people won’t ask who might have benefited from such an action. A quick examination of the actions of President Correa sheds considerable light on that. In 2006, working with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Correa moved to increase state control over oil production in the country.[9] In 2008, he announced that Ecuador would not pay several billions of its more than $10 billion foreign debt, calling it “illegitimate.”[10] In 2009, he refused to renew the lease of the U.S. military airbase in Manta, saying that “the only way the US could keep their military base in Ecuador, is if Ecuador were allowed to have one of its own in Florida.”[11] In 2009, he officially brought Ecuador into ALBA – the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas led by Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia. When a country increases state control, challenges illegitimate foreign debt, pushes the U.S. military out of the country and joins a regional alliance with Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba – it is clear that the forces that would benefit from a coup would be: a) corporate interests inside Ecuador; b) International Financial Institutions; and c) the United States and its allies. There is another reason why the right-wing, corporate elite and the imperialist countries might have an incentive to minimize what happened September 30. There is now a shamefully long list of recent coup attempts in Latin America and the Caribbean – four of them against members of ALBA."
Internet revolution in Venezuela and No Going Back (tags)
"There's an Australian journalist and documentary film-maker, John Pilger, who said that, 'What you're seeing is really an unprecedented propaganda campaign that's being waged against the Chavez government' – FF: It's a media war – KJ: It really is a media war. And I think if you go to Venezuela and see what the media says, this will become clear immediately. You often hear the claim that there is no freedom of speech and so on, but internally in Venezuela there are more than 50 daily newspapers and about 45 of those newspapers support the opposition and are constantly attacking the government everyday – including having front page headlines calling for the military overthrow of the government... Then you have those 4 newspapers that support the Bolivarian process; and then you have one newspaper that, you know, presents itself as being neutral. So, on the level of the print media, the opposition to the government is overwhelmingly dominant... A lot of the television stations are extremely hostile as well. The other important aspect to note is that, as a result of the Bolivarian process, you actually have a massive explosion of community media in Venezuela, in particular community radio stations in the Barrios...but also a number of community television stations and other independent media websites and so on. So this is like the first time where a lot of the grassroots groups and Venezuelan poor are actually getting to participate themselves in the production of the their own media; whereas prior to the Chavez government, they didn't have a voice in politics or the media."
INOPERANCIA, INFILTRACIÓN Y FRACASO DE FERNANDO LUGO (tags)
¿Quien puede confiar en un cura con hijos?
Honduras: Anti-Chavez ‘free speech’ warriors linked to coup (tags)
"This is because, for the IAPA, there was no coup. Its July 14 statement said the democratically elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was simply “stood down” — not kidnapped and dumped in a different country by balaclava-clad soldiers. And if anyone can recognise a dictatorship, it is the IAPA. After all, as it points out, the IAPA has been fighting off dictatorships “for a long time” — in the form of the Chavez administration. Ironically, the only time in Venezuela that a TV channel was taken off air, constitutional rights suspended, and journalists arrested and assaulted since Chavez’s 1998 election was during the two days when he was removed from power in a short-lived coup in April 2002. "