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With a brutal blockade still on, working antiques like these
prove the resiliency of the Cuban people.
SPECIAL FROM FAIR: STEVE RENDALL ON
The Repeatedly Re-Elected Autocrat —Painting Chávez as a 'would-be dictator' [12.06]
Hugo Chávez never had a chance with the U.S. press. Shortly after his first electoral victory in 1998, New York Times Latin America reporter Larry Rohter (12/20/98) summed up his victory thusly:
"All across Latin America, presidents and party leaders are looking over their shoulders. With his landslide victory in Venezuela’s presidential election on December 6, Hugo Chávez has revived an all-too-familiar specter that the region’s ruling elite thought they had safely interred: that of the populist demagogue, the authoritarian man on horseback known as the caudillo."
It hasn't improved since. Read the rest of Rendall's indictment here.
RICHARD GOTT WRITING ON THE GUARDIAN (UK)—
CHAVEZ IN CHARGE [2.2.07]
Hugo Chávez is a man in a hurry, and this week's decision by the Venezuelan national assembly to grant him additional powers foreshadows the radical changes that are in the pipeline. President for the past eight years, Chávez has only just begun to scratch the surface of the gigantic revolutionary project that lies ahead. [READ MORE]
 THE VULTURES ARE ALREADY CIRCLING HIGH ABOVE, WAITING FOR FIDEL'S DEPARTURE FROM THE SCENE. But turning the clock back in Cuba may prove harder than they expect. Comment by Monthly Review's editors (10.06)
LOUIS PROYECT and LUIS RUMBAUT take exception to NACLA's piece on Cuba authored by liberal critic Daniela Spenser.
[READ MORE]
THE TRUTH ABOUT CUBA By Marce Cameron. (Green Leaf Weekly, Australia) If Cuba was such a prison, as US propaganda has it, with millions wishing to escape to the "free world"—why would Pres. Castro be so willing to send tens of thousands of teachers and doctors around the world with few preconditions? Why his offer to send 1500 physicians to Louisiana to help with the Katrina disaster? Isn't he afraid of defectors embarrassing the revolution? [READ MORE ]
U.S. OFFENSIVE IN LATIN AMERICA: Coups, Retreats, and Radicalization (2002) By James Petras (CJ DIGEST-Monthly Review) We are in a period characterized by a U.S. military-political offensive, military coups (or attempted coups), mass direct action, political polarization, and new forms of social representation. There are no uniform results—the gains and losses resulting from the U.S. offensive cannot be measured by counting the votes of presidents and the assent of loyal generals. The advancing social movements and popular insurgency have unmasked the imperial plunder and have toppled client regimes, but the political consequences have not been decisive....[READ MORE] ]
There are those in the anti-capitalist movement who are content with simply calling for the reform of capitalism, as if you can transform a man-eating lion into a vegetarian. For them, all we need to do is simply lessen the burden on the down-trodden masses, instead of removing the burden altogether. The capitalist system must be more "humane", "fairer", "gentler", less capitalistic! They are like the liberal-reformists of the past who wanted to change the system bit by bit, then eventually in a hundred years time everything would be for the better. But as R.H. Tawney once put it, "you can peel an onion layer by layer, but you can't skin a live tiger claw by claw."
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GOOD THINGS HAPPENING IN VENEZUELA By Michael Parenti. Even before I arrived in Venezuela for a recent visit, I encountered the great class divide that besets that country. On my connecting flight from Miami to Caracas, I found myself seated next to an attractive, exquisitely dressed Venezuelan woman. Judging from her prosperous aspect, I anticipated that she would take the first opportunity to hold forth against President Hugo Chavez. Unfortunately, I was right. [READ MORE ]
HURRICANE CHAVEZ HITS THE MONROE DOCTRINE HEAD ON By Tom Barry. President Hugo Chavez adeptly leverages Venezuela's oil wealth to forge an array of regional alliances that leave the United States out in the cold, U.S. Venezuela tensions are heating up. Boosted by the rising prices of oil and the deepening regional anger over U.S. imperial arrogance, Chavez has proved able not only to construct a counter-hegemonic constituency in Venezuela among the country's poor majority but also to piece together a regional network that is challenging U.S. political and economic dominance. Uncle Sam is becoming the odd man out in the hemisphere claimed as U.S. domain since the early 19 th century.[READ MORE ]
ALAN WOODS INTERVIEWS ADAN CHAVEZ By Alan Woods. On Monday April 18th, Adan Chavez, a leader of the Bolivarian movement, elder brother of the President and currently Venezuelan Ambassador in Cuba, invitedAlan Woods, a leading British Trostkyite, to have breakfast with him in La Casona, the traditional residence of Venezuelan presidents. He took the chance to conduct a brief interview with him. [READ MORE]
WHO IS PAT ROBERTSON? MEET THE JOVIAL FACE OF CHRISTO-FASCISM By Josh Lucker. You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war, and I don't think any oil shipments will stop." - Pat Robertson. This was the statement made by Pat Robertson referring to the democratically elected President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, on the 700 Club on August 26th. This should hardly be surprising for anyone familiar with the ravings of this self-important religious demagogue .[READ MORE]
SOCIALISM OR BARBARISM By Rob Sewell. More than a decade ago, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall, the strategists of Capital launched an unprecedented ideological offensive against socialism and Marxism. For them, capitalism had won. However, what had collapsed was not socialism, but a system of bureaucratic rule, i.e., Stalinism. Nevertheless, this ferocious offensive had the effect of starting an ideological stampede to the right within the working class movement internationally. The left-reformists switched sides, like a man changing his shirt, to become rightwing attorneys for capitalism. In Russia and Eastern Europe former "Communists" transformed themselves into capitalists. Since that time, the political pendulum has swung far to the right, epitomised by the victory of Blairism in Britain and of neo-Conservatism in the United States. [READ MORE]
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS UNMASKED AS RIGHTWING SHILL By Diana Barahona. From the beginning, RSF has made Cuba its No. 1 target. Allegedly founded to advocate freedom of the press around the world and to help journalists under attack, the organization has called Cuba "the world's biggest prison for journalists." It even gives the country a lower ranking on its press freedom index than countries where journalists routinely have been killed, such as Colombia, Peru and Mexico. [READ MORE]
VENEZUELA: ON THE EVE OF YET ANOTHER UNITED STATES ATTEMPTED MILITARY COUP? By Franz J. T. Lee. It's becoming an open secret that paramilitary forces, stationed in Colombia and hired by the US administration, are already in Venezuela with the declared objectives to assassinate President Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias, and to bring about another military coup. These CIA death squads claim to have had regular incursions into Venezuelan territory, that they are supplying arms to oppositional groups and that they are in direct contact with some Venezuelan rebellious military units.
An interview with General Raul Baduel commander of the Venezuelan army By Heinz Dieterich. It is certainly not mere coincidence that the US now has military bases in the Dutch Antilles – Curaçao and Aruba. Like the other huge oil companies including British Petroleum and the United States oil giants, the Anglo Dutch oil multinational Shell would love a free hand in a privatized Venezuelan oil industry. It goes without saying that European Union foreign policy prioritizes European energy needs. This fact probably does much to explain why European mainstream media resolutely refuse to report the facts of political and economic events in the country, [READ MORE]
"Hugo Chavez is crazy!" By Greg Palast. An incisive study of how the American media do their best to assassinate the character of a genuine leader of the people. What esle is new? [READ MORE]
SPECIAL! Why is Cuba bashing so fashionable in some "progressive" circles?–––––––––––––––––––––
As George W. Bush and his camarilla make stealthy plans to topple Pres. Hugo Chavez and, in passing, flattening Cuba under some outrageous pretext, the liberal ranks (perhaps as expected) register more and more defections to the objective counter-revolutionary camp. They couldn't have picked a worst time to starch their virtuous petticoats, or kneel at the altar of their neurotic and unrealistic perfectionism, but then again, the actual fate of a heroic revolution has never been the first consideration for such armchair revolutionists and backseat drivers. Join the debate with Richard Levins, James Petras and other revolutionary intellectuals sorting out the charges and innuendoes, and the credentials of some of the more prominent fingerpointers.
THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE INTELLECTUALS: CUBA, THE U.S. AND HUMAN RIGHTS By James Petras. The role of the intellectuals is to clarify the major issues and define the major threats to peace, social justice, national independence and freedom in each historical period as well as to identify and support the principal defenders of the same principles. Intellectuals have a responsibility to distinguish between the defensive measures taken by countries and peoples under imperial attack and the offensive methods of imperial powers bent on conquest. [READ MORE]
PROGRESSIVE CUBA-BASHING By Richard Levins . Why are so many progressives and liberals taken in by even the most outrageous falsehoods about Cuba? Why do they often accept uncritically the line of the Miami and Washington reactionaries about Cuba when they doubt almost everything else from these sources? Possibly some are tired of nay-saying all the conventional wisdoms. They do not want toappear "hard-line" or "ideological," and rejecting Cuba is a cheap and easy way of being a little more mainstream. [READ MORE ]
THE TARGET IS CUBA By Alan Woods. On May 1, Fidel Castro denounced the United States before a million marchers in Havana. The Cuban leader also denounced the European Union as a mafia allied with Washington, and went on to criticise some Latin American governments, namely Mexico and Peru. Castro accused the two countries of joining the herd of hypocrites who voted to condemn Cuba at last month's meeting of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. Mexico was, he declared, now a mere pawn of the United States, its prestige and influence gained in Latin America and the world... turned to ashes. [READ MORE]
CUBA: EXECUTIONS AND REPRESSION, A CLASS POINT OF VIEW By Alan Woods and Roberto Sarti. " The formal charge against most of the defendants was that of "crimes against the independence or territorial integrity of the state." There was a lot of evidence that proved beyond any doubt that most of these oppositionists had received large amounts of money from the US government through James Cason, the chief officer of the US Interests Section in Havana - the United States' de facto embassy. This fact has never been denied by Powell or by any other of the US spokesmen. In fact all this information is easily available on US government web sites." [READ MORE]
ARGUMENTS ADVANCED BY CUBA'S CRITICS
JOANNE LANDY ON JAMES PETRAS
THE CPD STATEMENT ACCUSING CUBA OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS
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