The Venezuela Coup, 20 Years Later

Dan Beeton

Center for Economic and Policy Research | April 12, 2022

On April 11, 2002, Venezuela’s democratically elected government, headed by Hugo Chávez Frías, was ousted in a military coup d’etat. Then, dramatically, two days later, the coup was overturned by a mass mobilization of Venezuelans. They demanded the restoration of democracy and the return of a government that appeared to be making good on its commitment to redistribute Venezuela’s oil wealth to benefit the country’s most marginalized sectors. These events led to lasting ramifications not just for Venezuela, but for Latin America and the Caribbean as a whole, paving the way for a “pink tide” of progressive movements that took power democratically throughout the region. In many cases, similar power struggles ensued, pitting left-leaning governments supporting economic and social gains for the poor, the working class, and marginalized communities, against powerful factions of society seeking, generally, to maintain a status quo that has served to benefit mostly a small number of elites and foreign interests while exploiting and repressing the majority population.

Venezuela’s Great Housing Mission achieves major milestone of delivering 4 million homes

 Peoples Dispatch | April 10, 2022

On April 7, the government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro celebrated the delivery of 4 million homes to citizens as part of the Great Housing Mission of Venezuela (GMVV). Photo: Nicolás Maduro/Twitter

On April 7, the socialist government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro celebrated the delivery of a record 4 million homes to its citizens as part of a social housing program called the Great Housing Mission of Venezuela (GMVV). During a joint radio and television broadcast, President Maduro emphasized that the handing over of the 4 million homes was a “historic” event and a “world record.” “Nothing and no one is going to stop us,” he added.

The GMVV’s 4 millionth house was handed over in the “Bicentennial Battle of Bomboná” urban development, located in the Sotillo municipality in Anzoátegui state by Governor Luis Marcano. During the telecast, Governor Marcano proudly reported that “those who today inhabit these 200 homes were working on its construction.”

Alex Saab, a diplomat without immunity. Webinar, Apr 26 at 3pm ET / 12pm PT #Free Alex Saab.

Alliance for Global Justice | April 12, 2022

This webinar includes the latest updates on the case. We will be joined by Camilla Fabri Saab, wife of Alex Saab

Presenters include:

– Alfred de Zayas, former rapporteur on Venezuela for United Nations Human Rights Council

– Suzanne Adely, President of the National Lawyers Guild

– Oscar Lopez Rivera, former Puerto Rican political prisoner and Honorary Chair of the Free Alex Saab Campaign

– Jaribu Hill, human rights attorney and founder of the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights Organizers’ Conference

Register now >

Alex Saab is a Venezuelan diplomat who is imprisoned in a United States federal court in Miami, Florida, his arrest is a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The only crime that the Venezuelan diplomat has committed has been to evade the illegal sanctions imposed on the Venezuelan people by the United States.

Alex Saab was appointed as Venezuela’s special envoy in 2018, he was detained by order of the US on June 12, 2020. He was traveling from Caracas to Tehran when his plane made a stop to refuel in Cabo Verde. Saab had in his possession his diplomatic passport and other documents revealing his diplomatic mission.

He had been on a mission to procure humanitarian supplies of basic food, fuel and medicine for Venezuela from Iran in international trade, and while he was on that mission he was arrested, at an extremely critical moment when the pandemic was hitting South America very hard.

Join us and learn the latest details of the Alex Saab case.

Free Alex Saab Campaign supporters include:

Alliance for Global Justice, Task Force on the Americas, International Action Center, Chicago ALBA Solidarity, Asociación Americana de Juristas, The Canada Files, National Lawyers Guild International Committee, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Friends of Latin America, Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox, All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (GC), Friends of Irish Freedom, Cuba Inside Out, Massachusetts Peace Action, Popular Resistance, United National AntiWar Coalition, Chicago Anti-War Coalition, Fire This Time Movement for Social Justice, Frente Hugo Chavez para la Defensa de los Pueblos- Canada, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, International Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal, Code Pink, AntiConquista, Orinoco Tribune, Alberto Lovera Bolivarian Circle, Center for Political Education, La Troika, Committees of Correspondence or Democracy & Socialism, Winnipeg Venezuela Peace Committee, Louis Riel Bolivarian Circle Toronto, Center for Global Studies – Purdue Northwest, African Awareness Association, Southsiders for Peace (Chicago), Just Peace Advocates, Committee to Stop FBI Repression, Samidoun NY/NJ, La Voz de los de Abajo, Sanctions Kill Coalition, US Peace Council, Pacific NW Latin America and Caribbean Task Force, LELO/A Legacy of Equality Leadership and Organizing, Portland Central America Solidarity Committee, Rochester Committee on Latin America, Casa Baltimore/Limay, Solidarity Committee of the Americas (Women Against Military Madness), Frente Independentista Boricua, Hostos Community College Puerto Rican Student Organization, El Maestro, Inc., NY Free Puerto Rico movement, Círculo Bolivariano de Miami Negra Hipólita, La Peña del Bronx, Struggle/La Lucha, Haiti Liberte, PECOA, Fuerza de la Revolución, Holyrood Episcopal Church ~ Iglesia Santa Cruz, National Boricua Human Rights Network, International US-Cuba Normalization Conference Coalition, NY—NJ Cuba Si Coalition, Family Action Network Movement, Fuerza de la Revolucion, Iglesia Santa Cruz, Holyrod Chuch, Padre Luis Barrios, Pro Libertad

If your organization would like to join this campaign, please email us at william@AFGJ.org

To join the campaign as an individual, please sign on here

Andreas Malm introduces Verso’s new free ebook, Property Will Cost Us the Earth

“There can be only one accurate description of the situation: out of control.”

Andreas Malm

Andreas Malm’s book How to Blow Up a Pipeline, with its call for the environmental movement to start sabotaging fossil fuel infrastructure to save our planet, has sparked a vibrant discussion on the left about direct action tactics and eco-sabotage to address the climate crisis.

Verso has put together a free, downloadable ebook, Property Will Cost Us the Earth, of essays from activists and writers around the world grappling with the idea of direct action and eco-sabotage, survey climate activism around the world, and argue for the necessity of building a fighting global movement against capitalism and its fossil fuel regime.

Moving from Mozambique, the Niger Delta, and the coal mines of India to the forests of Ecuador and the watersheds of North America, Property Will Cost Us the Earth details the global scale of climate devastation as well as active struggles around the world to halt further extraction. From this come tactical and strategic questions: how can local direct actions relate to political work forcing states to end reliance on oil, coal, and gas? What kind of protest movement can we build that reflects the urgency of our moment? What does a direct action–based movement require from those on the frontlines of struggle?

With contributions from: Alyssa Battistoni, James Butler, João Camargo, Jen Deerinwater, Ben Ehrenreich, Madeline ffitch, Frente Nacional Anti-Minero (Ecuador), Bue Rübner Hansen, Siihasin Hope, Tara Houska, Jessie Kindig, Benjamin Kunkel, Anabela Lemos and Erika Mendes from Justiça Ambiental! (Mozambique), Andreas Malm, M.O.T.H. Collective, Vanessa Nakate and Amy Goodman, Brototi Roy, Andrea Sempértegui, Richard Seymour, and Adam Tooze.

Andreas Malm’s introduction is reprinted below.

Record malnutrition: Africa’s Sahel region to have over 6 million wasted children in 2022, warn UN agencies

Over 900,000 young lives can be at risk in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal

Madhumita Paul

Down To Earth | April 14, 2022

Around 6.3 million children in the 6-59 months age group will suffer wasting in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal in 2022, a new report warned. 

Over 1.4 million of these children in these six countries in Africa’s Sahel region will suffer severe wasting, United Nations agencies said in the report published March 2022. 

The number of children under five experiencing acute malnutrition will be the highest in 2022 for the region, the paper by West and Central Africa Regional Nutrition Working Group showed. 

Women are under-represented in economics globally

They occupy fewer top positions at leading economics institutions than men, and are more likely to leave the profession early.

Brittney J. Miller

Nature | April 14, 2022

An all-male panel at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum in Russia in 2018.Credit: Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty

Women occupy roughly one in three junior academic positions in economics and just one in four senior positions, according to an analysis of gender equality at the field’s top research institutions.

Most previous surveys examining equality in economics have focused on individual countries. Emmanuelle Auriol, an economist at the Toulouse School of Economics in France, and her colleagues compared gender representation around much of the world, although their data set includes few institutions in Africa or southeast Asia. The findings are published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences¹ this month.

Almost 5 million refugees in eastern Africa in need of support: UN

Gap between resources and needs has grown along with rise in migrant population

Madhumita Paul

Down To Earth | April 14, 2022

In Eastern Africa, the number of refugees has nearly tripled in the past 10 years to almost 5 million, including 300,000 new refugees last year alone, the United Nations agencies said in a joint statement. 

Along with the number of refugees in need of support, the gap between resources and needs has also grown. More than 70 per cent refugees do not get a full ration due to funding shortfalls, the statement said. Conflict, climate shocks and COVID-19, combined with spiraling costs of food and fuel, is behind this crisis, it added. 

“Stretched humanitarian resources have forced aid groups to slash food rations, putting more and more children below the age of five at the risk of stunting and wasting,” said Clementine Nkweta-Salami, regional bureau director, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, East, Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes.

Good while it lasted – I: 6th mass extinction underway, courtesy humans

Earth is losing species at an unprecedented rate; This marks the beginning of the Anthropocene Epoch, a self-aggrandising nomenclature that highlights our disproportionate and irreversible impacts on the surroundings

Richard Mahapatra

Down To Earth | April 11, 2022

This is the first part in a four-part series. 

My growing-up years on the banks of the Mahanadi — one of the planet’s oldest rivers, flowing for the last 160 million years through the land we now call Odisha — offered more ecological and geological experiences than I would encounter later in life. As I jog my memory, it becomes clear that our lives were marked, in fact, dictated, by ecological indicators.

Every tree, every creature, even the speed and direction of the wind, declared the arrival and departure of something.

When the dragonflies swarmed around in September, we rejoiced at the arrival of the winter festival season. In the post-monsoon season, around every puddle of water, or wetland, they had their merry world. Just before this, when the damselflies flew around our house, it was time for the monsoon.

Russia-Ukraine crisis highlights Africa’s need to diversify its wheat sources

by Mandira Bagwandeen, Noncedo Vutula

Down To Earth | April 14, 2022

The war between Russia and Ukraine has highlighted just how much of the world’s wheat supply relies on these two countries. For instance, a recently released UN report shows a sample of 25 African countries that rely on wheat imports from Russia or Ukraine. Of this group, 21 import most of their wheat from Russia.

Between 2018 and 2020, Africa imported $3.7 billion in wheat (32 per cent of the continent’s total wheat imports) from Russia and another $1.4 billion from Ukraine (12 per cent of the continent’s wheat imports).

It’s crucial that African countries diversify their wheat sources for two key reasons.

Asian fault lines of Biden’s war on Russia

M. K. Bhadrakumar

Indian Punchline | April 11, 2022

As relations with Tokyo sour, Moscow beefs up the coastal defence systems on the Kuril Islands that Japan claims as its own

The tremors of the United States’ tensions with Russia playing out in Europe are being felt in different ways already in Asia. The hypothesis of Ukraine being in Europe and the conflict being all about European security is delusional.

From Kazakhstan to Myanmar, from Solomon Islands to the Kuril Islands, from North Korea to Cambodia, from China to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, the fault lines are appearing.

To be sure, extra-regional powers had a hand in the failed colour revolution recently to overthrow the established government in Kazakhstan, a hotly contested geopolitical landmass two-thirds the size of India, bordering both China and Russia, Washington’s sworn adversaries. Thanks to swift Russian intervention, supported by China, a regime change was averted.