The Shortwave Report 10/20/17 Listen Globally! (tags)
A weekly 30 minute review of international news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio and the internet. With times, frequencies, and websites for listening at home. 3 files- Highest quality broadcast, regular broadcast, and slow-modem streaming. Spanish National Radio, NHK Japan, Radio Havana Cuba, and Sputnik Radio.
President Hugo Chávez, backed by South American Presidents, Condemns the Attack on Libya (tags)
"Oppressed people around the world have only recently begun to unite in opposition to empire as awareness of the horror grows. In North Africa and the Middle East it began as a revolt against US backed dictators in Tunisia, then Egypt and spread to Bahrain, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. In South America the rebellion grew out of the Bolivarian Revolution, spreading over the last decade from Venezuela to other Latin American states. Tonight, behind President Chavez' condemnation of the monster on VTV, Venezuela National Radio and TeleSur, Venezuelans have gathered en masse in Caracas and at the US and French embassies to declare their rebellion against the imperial war on the sovereign state of Libya."
responsible banking
The Shortwave Report 10/01 Listen Globally! (tags)
A weekly 30 minute review of news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio and the internet. With times, frequencies, and websites for listening at home. 2 files- broadcast and slow-modem streaming. Free to rebroadcast. China, Germany, Cuba, and Russia.
Leftist Union Leaders Assassinated in Venezuela (tags)
On November 27, three leftist union leaders in the Venezuelan state of Aragua – Richard Gallardo, Luis Hernández and Carlos Requena – were gunned down by an assassin. The murder came hours after the unionists had led a workers occupation of a Colombian-owned milk plant which had been brutally broken up by state police. All three were leaders of the UNT (National Workers Union) and of the USI (Socialist Left Unity), a party which has opposed attempts by the government of Hugo Chávez to impose state control of labor, and has fought the rightist opposition backed by imperialism. They may have been murdered by assassins hired by the Colombian company, by elements connected to the police of outgoing state governor, a former Chávez ally, or by supporters of a current official of the governing United Socialist Party. In any case, despite Chávez’ socialist rhetoric, the reality of the bourgeois Bolivarian “revolution” in Venezuela today is that leftist unionists are murdered while the forces of capitalist state repression back up the bosses. While many leftists have called on the Chávez government to investigate, Trotskyists call for organizing workers defense guards and imposing workers control of production. Venezuela today is stuck at a crossroads. Building a Bolshevik-type workers party based on Trotsky’s program of permanent revolution is key.
Venezuela: The economic tug of war between revolution and counter-revolution (tags)
A recent report from Datanalisis (1) [the Venezuelan statistical service] revealed what already many people knew and suffered from. Scarcity of basic foodstuff is becoming intolerable. This study established that milk, beef and sugar have become very difficult to find. Other products like chicken, cooking oil, cheese, sardines and black beans are also very scarce. The analysts who compiled the report interviewed 800 people in some 60 different shops, supermarkets and markets, both in the private sector and the public distribution network, Mercal. 73,3% of the places visited had no milk powder for sale. 51,7% no longer had refined sugar, 40% had no cooking oil, and 26,7% no black beans, a basic staple in Venezuela. Two thirds of the shoppers declared that they experienced food scarcity to one degree or another in the shops where they usually buy. Queues of a few hours, sometimes up to four hours, to buy some milk are no longer the exception. This is reminiscent of the situation in Chile when wholesale economic sabotage was used against the left-wing Popular Unity government of the 1970s. Without giving in to the panic stories and exaggerated reports of the right-wing media, we must understand that this is a serious situation. The bosses have even threatened to extend this situation into the first quarter of 2008, especially because of the uncertainties related to the questions of private property included in the new constitutional reform. They are grabbing the revolution by its throat.
Venezuela: another coupe in the works? (tags)
On Monday, November 5th, the campaign for the constitutional reform referendum in Venezuela was stepped up with the call by retired general Baduel for a NO vote. General Baduel was a close collaborator of Chávez and remained loyal to him during the April 2002 military coup which briefly ousted him. In July of this year he resigned from his position as Defence Minister and retired from active military office. His attacks on the constitutional reform are part of a concerted campaign by the ruling class to prevent it from being approved in a referendum which will take place on December 2nd. The amendments to the 1999 Venezuelan revolution were announced by Chávez after his election victory in December 2006 with the stated aim of bringing the Constitution into line with "Socialism of the 21st century". They were then formally proposed by Chávez in July, discussed throughout the country and passed with a whole series of modifications and additions by the National Assembly on November 2nd.
America and Venezuela - Constitutional Worlds Apart (tags)
Real democracy in Venezuela compared to the fake kind here.
Caracas discusses Leon Trotsky on the anniversary of his assassination (tags)
Permanent REvolution