Five days after the nation voted, the elected members of Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly are preparing to take their seats on Friday.
After weeks of imperialist threats and opposition violence, the elections for the Constituent Assembly (ANC) in Venezuela took place on July 30th. The result was a massive turnout of over 8 million voters, around 41% of the electorate, which gave chavismo a much-needed shot in the arm. The western media reacted by trying to dispute the number and sticking even closer to the narrative being pushed by the opposition and the US State Department. With the opposition scrambling and US authorities bringing more sanctions and threats, it is now chavismo that has the political initiative. The Constituent Assembly will not solve everything by itself, but it is a tremendous opportunity to push the Bolivarian Revolution forward.
Even before the National Election Council had announced the results of Sunday’s Constituent Assembly elections in Venezuela, the opposition and western imperialism had already declared there had been massive fraud and that they would not recognise the legitimacy of the Assembly. Since then, they have piled up pressure on all fronts. What is to be done?
These were not normal elections, but rather an important battle in the offensive which the oligarchy and western imperialism have unleashed over the last four months against the Bolivarian Revolution. Not only did the opposition declare that they would boycott the elections, they also attempted to physically prevent the vote from going ahead. On Sunday, July 30, there were barricades impeding people’s passage, attacks on polling stations, destruction of polling material and machines, armed attacks against polling stations including the assassination of a National Guard protecting one in La Grita (Mérida), bomb attacks against national guards, etc. By the end of the day between 10 and 15 had been people killed, including a Constituent Assembly candidate in Bolivar.
Venezuela is now super-charged with struggle for democracy as propertied interests and imperialism are mounting a campaign against the Venezuelan people’s initiative to determine their political arrangement.
Now, there is a news report by the mainstream media (MSM) that bombs are being prepared by a group of protesters in their struggle for “democracy”. The group is also planning to begin guerrilla war in the country.Read More »
Debt is a big burden of US citizens. The burden appears unbearable.
Recent media reports from the U.S. said:
A couple caught in ‘financial spiral’ jumped to their deaths in Murray Hill on July 28, 2017.
Citing law enforcement sources the media reports said:
A pair of Manhattan parents claiming financial woes jumped to their deaths early Friday — leaving double suicide notes pleading that their two kids be cared for.
The bodies of 53-year-old chiropractor Glenn Scarpelli and his wife, 50-year-old, Patricia Colant, were found in the middle of the street on 33rd Street between Park and Madison avenues in Murray Hill after the pair jumped from the ninth-floor window of a 17-story corner office building on Madison Avenue at about 5:45 a.m., police said.Read More »
Forty-one years ago I was a young organizer for the United Farm Workers in the Coachella Valley, helping agricultural laborers win union elections and negotiate contracts. Suspicion of growers was a survival attitude. I was beaten by the son of one rancher in a vineyard, while trying to talk to people sitting in the vines on their lunch hour. When I met with workers in another field, my old Plymouth Valiant convertible was filled with fertilizer and its tires slashed.
By those standards, I could see that HMS Ranch Management, which manages day-to-day operations for ranch owners, was different. I’m sure Ole Fogh-Andersen, who ran the company, would have preferred that the laborers he employed voted against the union. But when they did vote for it in 1976, he sat down and negotiated. It took quite a while – he was no pushover. But Ruth Shy, a former nun who taught the virtues of patience and persistence, got most of our union committee’s demands into the agreement. I did the field job of keeping everyone on board.Read More »
The splintering of the powerful Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) into warring camps—with Qatar, supported by Turkey and Iran, on one side, and Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), supported by Egypt, on the other—has less to do with disagreements over foreign policy and religion than with internal political and economic developments in the Middle East. The ostensible rationale the GCC gave on June 4 for breaking relations with Qatar and placing the tiny country under a blockade is that Doha is aiding “terrorist’ organizations. The real reasons are considerably more complex, particularly among the major players.
Middle East journalist Patrick Cockburn once described the Syrian civil war as a three-dimensional chess game with five players and no rules. In the case of the Qatar crisis, the players have doubled and abandoned the symmetry of the chessboard for “Go,” Mahjong, and Bridge.Read More »
Kenyans, like other citizens elsewhere in Africa, demand and hope for “free and fair” elections. But the key issue is that Kenya is still a neo-colony. In these circumstances elections, whatever the outcome, will not fundamentally change the material conditions of life the people. The struggle against neocolonialism must continue.
I limit my contribution to making some general observations of a theoretical nature. That, hopefully, would provide a broader historical and global perspective to the forthcoming elections in Kenya on issues of electoral politics and state policies.
Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame will stage sham elections this week to keep himself in power for another term. He has already arranged to stay in office until 2034, if he chooses. Those who challenge the vote count often wind up dead, or in prison, like Victoire Ingabire – which is fine with Washington, Kagame’s major backer.
Rwandans will go to the polls to elect a president on August 4, but asking whether General Paul Kagame will win is like asking whether bears shit in the woods. I nevertheless asked David Himbara, author of Kagame’s Economic Mirage and Kagame’s Killing Fields, just to get this conversation started.
“He is not on the platform, but he is very close to us, sharing the necessary values to face the challenges of now and tomorrow,” stated Minister of Culture Abel Prieto on inaugurating the photographic exhibition Fidel: An Intimate Portrait in Havana’s Casa del Alba Cultural this August 1st.
On the upper floor of the institution, Alex Castro presented just over a dozen images captured through his lens, which depict significant moments of meetings over the last decade between the leader of the Cuban Revolution and political and cultural personalities.Read More »
Journal of People 