27 July 2009
I have been reading, with much despair and a deal of consternation, the torrent of ‘analysis’ coming out of ‘left’ field about which, if any, side to support in the ongoing struggles in Iran and, at the end of the day, a good deal more is revealed about the ‘left’ in the West than the situation in Iran.
The Renegade Economist goes to New York to hear Dr. Michael Hudson’s views on the state of the US Economy.
http://widgets.vodpod.com/w/video_embed/Groupvideo.3051682
26 July, 2009 — VHeadline
UPDATE NEWS: Confirming prevailing rumors of a conspiracy and possible coup attempt(s), Chavez confidante, US-Venezuelan lawyer Eva Golinger has (Sunday midday) qualified earlier statements to VHeadline insisting that “nothing is different than usual here … there are constantly plans to undermine and destabilize Venezuela and the revolution … I denounce them everyday. We are not right now undergoing a coup … Chavez did comment on the rumors yesterday (…) and discounted them. There were rumors floating around two days ago about a coup. This does not discount the constant attempts to sabotage the revolution. Let me make that clear!”
VHeadline wishes to make it clear that we have reported rumors of possible conspiracy and coup which have caused a flurry of concern expressed by pro-Chavez readers of VHeadline.com from across Venezuela.
We have NOT reported that any coup as being underway … nor, indeed, did we make any similar assertion in our exclusive report just two months before the April 11, 2002 coup d’etat by would-be dictator Pedro Carmona Estanga.
As we have done now, we have simply reported the facts and our analysis of what is happening in Venezuela to alert to the fact that, as Eva Golinger herself admits they are: “the usual plans to overthrow Chavez. But no present movement per se. There were rumors of a bunch of ministry changes and military changes due to some kind of conspiracy, but it was controlled, as far as I know. There were major changes in the intel agencies (not necessarily for the better) but we will see. But in terms of electricity issues, I know of no problems in Caracas or elsewhere, and no, my line is not privileged and I live in the center of the city, not in the rich part!”
VHeadline Venezuela News
See the following for background:
Venezula: Rumor may herald things to come given mighty interests in our troubled region! By Jutta Schmitt
BREAKING NEWS: Venezuela is beset this weekend by rumors of a possible conspiracy or coup
27 July 2009
I have been reading, with much despair and a deal of consternation, the torrent of ‘analysis’ coming out of ‘left’ field about which, if any, side to support in the ongoing struggles in Iran and, at the end of the day, a good deal more is revealed about the ‘left’ in the West than the situation in Iran.
27 July, 2009 – www.FreeGaza.org
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” – Desmond Tutu
We live in an era defined by its brutality. Our challenge is whether to accept this – or to take the risks necessary to transform our world commons in beloved community.
A year ago this August, forty-four ordinary people from seventeen different countries sailed to Gaza in two, small wooden boats. We did what the world would not do – we broke through the siege of Gaza. Over the last year the Free Gaza Movement has organized seven more voyages, successfully arriving to Gaza on five separate occasions. Ours remain the only international ships to reach the Gaza Strip in over forty-two years.
In the Middle-East, the struggle for justice is an uncertain endeavour in the best of times. On all sides human rights workers are beset with difficulties and distress. The Arab states are tyrannies, their peoples subject to secret police, arbitrary arrest, torture, and oppression. Within their societies, the Arab world is equally fractured by ethnic and class tensions, poverty, and political stagnation. From the outside, from the West, the Middle-East faces both open and covert acts of intimidation, intervention, economic destabilization, and even war, invasion, and mass killings.
26 July, 2009 — MRZine – Monthly Review
[I do not normally publish unattributed material but I felt this was worth ‘throwing into the mix’. Since then I have found out that it’s written by Yoshie F., whoever that is. The Ed.]
“8,000 people at the event in Paris, 4,000 in Stockholm, 3,000 in Amsterdam, more than 2,500 in Washington DC, 2,500 in New York, 2,000 in London. . . ,” says United4Iran.org, the sponsor of the global day of action on 25 July 2009. The low numbers1 (in marked contrast to the high turnouts of protests against Israel’s recent assault on Gaza) suggest that few non-Iranian leftists bothered to show up.
While a number of leftists have made impassioned pleas for solidarity with Iran’s Green Movement, (throwing themselves into an obligatory intra-left battle royal that has, alas, eclipsed any battle against the illegitimate authority of unelected clerics in Iran), most leftists still appear to find it — how shall we put it? — on balance inadvisable to join such protests against the Iranian government as United4Iran’s, devoid as they are of an anti-imperialist point of unity emphasizing “Hands Off Iran” as much as — nay more than — criticisms of the Iranian government.
It should be also noted that international leftists were evidently unmoved by an offer of free “Free Iran” t-shirts courtesy of American Apparel. We find that most meritorious. Let it never be said that international leftists fail to valiantly resist hipster capitalism.
By the way, it has also come to our attention that a notorious unrepentant Marxist and self-appointed scourge of “flunkies for Ahmadinejad” apparently refused to attend any of the United for Iran protests, curtly dismissing the whole Dutch-linked2 enterprise as “Darfur-like crapola.”
26 July, 2009
Caracas – On July 22, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez again declared his complete support for the proposal by industrial workers for a new model of production based on workers’ control.
This push from Chavez, part of the socialist revolution, aims at transforming Venezuela’s basic industry. However, it faces resistance from within the state bureaucracy and the revolutionary movement.
Presenting his government’s “Plan Socialist Guayana 2009-2019”, Chavez said the state-owned companies in basic industry have to be transformed into “socialist companies”.
The plan was the result of several weeks of intense discussion among revolutionary workers from the Venezuelan Corporation of Guayana (CVG). The CVG includes 15 state-owned companies in the industrial Guayana region involved in steel, iron ore, mineral and aluminium production.
26 July, 2009 — VHeadline
University of Los Andes (ULA) senior lecturer in political sciences, Jutta Schmitt writes: Two days ago, on July 24 (Bolívar’s birthday and national holiday in Venezuela) a cellphone text message circulated nationwide that reached me in the afternoon hours and that read: “Desmontaron plan conspirativo de la fuerza aerea contra el proceso revolucionario. Detenido ex jefe de la DIM. ¡Alerta! ¡Ruédalo!” (translation: Conspiracy plan of the air force against the revolutionary process dismantled. Ex chief of Military Intelligence arrested. Alert. Pass it on.)
(See, BREAKING NEWS: Venezuela is beset this weekend by rumors of a possible conspiracy or coup)
When asking the person I got it from for the original source of this message, she said she had received it earlier that day from her sister, who, in turn, got it from somebody in Caracas. As one has to be extremely careful with this kind of messages we checked back with a common friend and government insider in Caracas, who has a sound, critical attitude towards what is going on in the administration but who nevertheless keeps fighting to eradicate the vices and bad practices.
With regard to the specific moment this kind of message appears, I would say it’s “embedded” in the re-inforcement of a general campaign to weaken leftist-reformist governments in the region and to break the chain of events that point to an alternative shaping of the politico-economic landscape.
I am thinking of the implications of ALBA, specifically the launching of its own monetary system with a common currency, the Sucre, which — apart from being a powerful message to the North — is a remarkable intent to give a concrete response to the international financial crisis.
Also, I am thinking of the issue of the re-thinking of intellectual and industrial property rights within the ALBA framework in order to break the criminal monopoly of the big pharmaceutical giants, under the premise that public health is not only a human right but a matter of “national” (or regional) security, which has the big pharmaceutical companies screaming and who have reportedly backed the recent coup in Honduras.
In any case, and what I’m trying to say here is: that there is, of course, a big picture that provides the context for analysing the whens and whys of rumors of the kind above mentioned.
A rumor is not only such, but may, indeed, announce things to come given the mighty interests involved in our troubled region.
With all the problems, vices and malpractices existent in the current administration I still consider President Chavez as the very centerpiece for change in Venezuela and Latin America, and all those who are tirelessly working to make it happen, against all odds.
Jutta Schmitt
jutta@franzlee.org
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25 July, 2009 — Palestine Think Tank
Accusations of conspiracy to murder continue to reverberate across the Palestinian arena, threatening to break the Fatah movement in two, writes Khaled Amayreh in the West Bank
Farouk Kaddumi’s recent bombshell accusations that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and his aide, former Gaza strongman Mohamed Dahlan, had connived with Israel to murder late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat continue to reverberate throughout the Palestinian arena.
The allegations made by the second highest-ranking leader of the Fatah organisation during an impromptu press conference in Amman last week, have overshadowed the Hamas-Fatah rift and even the standoff over Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank. The increasingly ugly showdown between Fatah’s two divergent camps is already polarising the group at all levels, including the grassroots level, with activists pointing fingers of accusation at either Kaddumi or Abbas.
23 July, 2009 — Global Research – Stop NATO
US Military: After Iraq, Latin America
On June 29 US President Barack Obama hosted his Colombian counterpart Alvaro Uribe at the White House and weeks later it was announced that the Pentagon plans to deploy troops to five air and naval bases in Colombia, the largest recipient of American military assistance in Latin America and the third largest in the world, having received over $5 billion from the Pentagon since the launching of Plan Colombia nine years ago.
Six months before the Obama-Uribe meeting outgoing US President George W. Bush bestowed the US’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom, on Uribe as well as on former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Australian Prime Minister John Howard.
A press account of the time expressed both shock and indignation at the White House’s honoring of Uribe in writing that “Despite extra-judicial killings, paramilitaries and murdered unionists, Colombia’s President Uribe has won the US’s highest honor for human rights.” [1]
The New Dark Age 