Green Venezuela

Green Party Principal Speaker, Derek Wall, argues that capitalism is ecologically unsustainable and that Venezuela’s green policies should be applauded.

“One car each? Our planet won't stand that - that model of capitalism, extreme individualism and consumerist egotism. The destructive so-called developmentalism destroying the planet is, quite frankly, a thing of stupidity - una cosa de tontos.” -President Hugo Chavez

Classic Interview with Hugo Chavez

By Greg Palast

The Progressive, July 2006

You’d think George Bush would get down on his knees and kiss Hugo Chávez’s behind. Not only has Chávez delivered cheap oil to the Bronx and other poor communities in the United States. And not only did he offer to bring aid to the victims of Katrina. In my interview with the president of Venezuela on March 28, he made Bush the following astonishing offer: Chávez would drop the price of oil to $50 a barrel, “not too high, a fair price,” he said—a third less than the $75 a barrel for oil recently posted on the spot market. That would bring down the price at the pump by about a buck, from $3 to $2 a gallon.

But our President has basically told Chávez to take his cheaper oil and stick it up his pipeline. Before I explain why Bush has done so, let me explain why Chávez has the power to pull it off—and the method in the seeming madness of his “take-my-oil-please!” deal. [more]

No more voom-voom!

By Hugo Chavez
The Drawbridge, Issue 2, Summer 2006

During my recent visit to London, I discovered that Mayor Livingstone has put a tax, a charge, on motorists which, in my opinion, is a wise measure. Why?

Whenever I visit either a world capital or a major city, I make a survey; a survey of cars. You know, a president is like a prisoner: you get off the plane - welcome, welcome, welcome - shuffled into a car, voom, straight to the hotel, you get to see the streets, jump out, into a room, wait, you have ten more minutes, off you go, voom, you've arrived. From one place directly to the next, and then in the evening back to the hotel, and that's it. You end up like a prisoner being taken from place to place in voom-voom fashion.

So, what do I do? I look out and I count the other cars, across the world, in New York, in Washington, in Vienna. In every big city it seems that 96% of vehicles on the streets are standing in long lines like worms, going at the speed of a morrocoy, of a tortoise, burning who knows how many litres per kilometre because they're barely moving. They're stuck, and they can't turn the engine off because they'd only have to restart it yet again. And they're only trying to travel three or five kilometres within the same city. Again, in 96% of vehicles, vehicles for six people or the smallest ones for four, you see only one person travelling: the one behind the wheel. And this vehicle is three metres long by two wide, roughly speaking. This is the extreme of capitalist individualism. Everyone wants to have a car and drive around the streets like an idiot: alone in their car, burning litres and litres of fuel, contaminating the atmosphere.

Atenco Struggle Documentary

Mourners carry body of young student Alexis Benhumea killed by the Mexican police. Photo: D.R. Erwin Slim

Synopsis (from the Canal 6 de Julio website):

This video analyzes the events in San Salvador Atenco, Mexico during the first days of May, 2006 and denounces the violation of the civilian population’s human rights by state and federal police forces. The documentary deconstructs the mass media’s operating methods, which were responsible for creating a climate of fear and an information blockade on the events in San Salvador Atenco, in the midst of an especially delicate situation: the 2006 presidential elections in Mexico.

NOTE: While an English-language version has not yet been released (but will be posted here as well as soon as it becomes available), the images in this 47-minute documentary speak for themselves. Much of the violence in Atenco was captured by television cameras, but few outside of Mexico have seen this footage. The filmmakers present not only the in-the-street shots of police savagely beating “anything that moved,” but also clips of the commercial news anchors flagrantly calling out for more repression of the popular movement from the state. Combined with Canal 6 de Julio and Promedios’ own work investigating the scene in Atenco and interviewing many of the townspeople, this is a powerful document of a turning point in Mexican history.

WARNING: Some segments of this film are exceedingly violent.

Download video here.

The Venezuelan Economy Takes Off

In Venezuela, Oil Sows Emancipation
by Luciano Wexell Severo
Originally published in Rebelion on 12 March 2006

The data just released by the Banco Central de Venezuela (BCV) confirm that the Venezuelan economy grew at a cumulative 10.2 percent between the fourth quarter of 2004 and the fourth quarter of 2005. This is the ninth consecutive increase since the last quarter of 2003. Overall, in 2005, the gross domestic product (GDP) grew at 9.3 percent.

Just like in the previous eight quarters, the strong increase was fundamentally driven by activities not related to oil: civil construction (28.3 percent), domestic trade (19.9 percent), transportation (10.6 percent), and manufacturing (8.5 percent). The oil sector had an increase of only 2.7 percent. According to a report by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), the unemployment rate in December 2005 was 8.9 percent, two percentage points below the rate in the same period of 2004. In absolute terms, this means 266,000 additional jobs. Last year, the inflation rate reached 14.4 percent, but that was below the 19.2 percent rate in 2004. The nominal interest rate went down to 14.8 percent.

Chavez takes London

A Discourse of Third World Hope: Chavez Takes London
By HUGH O'SHAUGHNESSY, counterpunch.org

Relentlessly Chávez continued, hour after hour on Sunday afternoon, May 14, in the drab auditorium of Camden Town Hall in London, the Spanish words tumbling out like some verbal tsunami or chaotic linguistic volcano. Socialism; Fidel; the Bolivarian Revolution; Evo Morales; democracy; more money spent on Venezuelan schools; don't dare invade Iran or you'll get the price of oil rising to $100 a barrel; human rights; Richard Gott; globalization; hope; capitalism; Jesus Christ; George Boosh; the ultimate selfishness of one person trying to drive a car in a traffic jam when he could get to his destination more quickly on foot.

On the platform a score of MPs and activists maneuvered their chairs so as to be seen to be close to the newly arrived star. After two hours of non-stop oratory the President of Venezuela, constitutionally elected, friend of the poor, still popular with his voters and the most powerful politician in South America, took breath. He paused and reminded Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London and chairman of the meeting, that Ken had promised him all the time he wanted. Said Ken genially, "I was thinking you were only half way through".

The Threat of a Decent Society

Chávez is a threat because he offers the alternative of a decent society

Venezuela's president is using oil revenues to liberate the poor - no wonder his enemies want to overthrow him

John Pilger
Saturday May 13, 2006, The Guardian

I have spent the past three weeks filming in the hillside barrios of Caracas, in streets and breeze-block houses that defy gravity and torrential rain and emerge at night like fireflies in the fog. Caracas is said to be one of the world's toughest cities, yet I have known no fear; the poorest have welcomed my colleagues and me with a warmth characteristic of ordinary Venezuelans but also with the unmistakable confidence of a people who know that change is possible and who, in their everyday lives, are reclaiming noble concepts long emptied of their meaning in the west: "reform", "popular democracy", "equity", "social justice" and, yes, "freedom".

The Op-Ed Assassination of Hugo Chávez

By: Justin Delacour - FAIR

(The original version of this article appeared in the December 2005 issue of Extra!, the magazine of the U.S. media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (http://www.fair.org/). The article has been slightly revised, however it stands as a powerful rebuke to the corporate North American media slant against Chavez and the Bolivarian Revolution.)

After televangelist Pat Robertson first publicly called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez Frias (700 Club, 8/22/05), the editors of several major U.S. newspapers were quick to denounce his outrageous incitement to violence. However, in criticizing the conservative televangelist, the U.S. prestige press overlooked its own highly antagonistic treatment of Venezuela's president, which has surely contributed to the heated political climate in which Robertson makes such threats.

Riding High with Hugo Chavez

By MIKE WHITNEY, Counterpunch.org, February 13, 2006

Hugo Chavez’s meteoric rise on the world stage has as much to do with his defiance of Washington as it does with his leadership of a hemispheric revolution. At great personal risk, Chavez has consistently lashed out against his witless-nemesis, George Bush, and the coterie of sycophants who do his bidding.