Fresh Off Worldwide Attention for Joining Obama’s Book Collection, Uruguayan Author Eduardo Galeano Returns with “Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone”

[We spend the hour with one of Latin America’s most acclaimed writers, Eduardo Galeano. The Uruguayan novelist and journalist recently made headlines around the world when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave President Obama a copy of Galeano’s classic work, The Open Veins of Latin America. Eduardo Galeano’s latest book is Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone. We speak to Galeano about his reaction to the Chavez-Obama book exchange, media and politics in Latin America, his assessment of Obama, and more.]

Fresh Off Worldwide Attention for Joining Obama’s Book Collection, Uruguayan Author Eduardo Galeano Returns with “Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone”

May 28th 2009, by Democracy Now!

Guest:
Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer and journalist. He is one of the most celebrated writers in Latin America. He is author of many books, including Open Veins of Latin America and the trilogy Memory of Fire. His latest book is titled Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone.

JUAN GONZALEZ: We’re joined today for the hour by one of Latin America’s most acclaimed writers, Eduardo Galeano. The Uruguayan novelist and journalist made headlines last month when Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez gave President Barack Obama a copy of one of Galeano’s books during a brief encounter at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago. The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent soon shot to near the top of the bestseller list.
Hugo Chavez later told reporters, quote, “This book is a monument in our Latin American history. It allows us to learn history, and we have to build on this history.”
Since its publication in 1971, The Open Veins of Latin America has sold over a million copies worldwide, despite being banned in the 1970s by the military governments in Chile, Argentina and Uruguay.

(click here to view entire interview)

Chavez Calls on Workers to Push for Workplace Democracy in Venezuela

[President Chavez recently announced a series of new nationalisations, but he also stressed the need for workers' control, planning and socialism. What now needs to be done is to act on these words and the only force that can do that is the working class.]

Chavez Calls on Workers to Push for Workplace Democracy in Venezuela

May 28th 2009, by Hermann Albrecht - In Defence of Marxism

At a recent gathering in the State of Guayana President Chavez announced a series of new nationalisations, but he also stressed the need for workers' control, planning and socialism. What now needs to be done is to act on these words and the only force that can do that is the working class. Otherwise all the good proposals can be buried by the myriad of reformists and bureaucrats who infest the movement.

On Thursday, May 21, at a workshop with the workers of the basic industries in the state of Guayana, President Chavez announced the nationalisation of the following iron briquette and steel companies: Orinoco Iron, Venezolana de Prerreducidos of Caroní (VENPRECAR), Materiales Siderúrgicos (MATESI), and the Complejo Siderúrgico de Guayana (COMSIGUA), as well as Tubos de Acero de Venezuela (TAVSA) and Cerámicas Carabobo.

He also confirmed the collective bargaining agreement of CVG Ferrominera and spoke of the creation of an industrial steelworks complex, indicating that, "These companies must be placed under workers' control; that's how it has to be." He continued, "let's start the process of nationalisation in order to create this industrial complex," adding that these measures should have been taken a long time ago.

(click here to view entire article)

Latin America’s Pro-Capitalist Elite Hold Anti-Chávez Conference in Venezuela

[Hundreds of right-wing political leaders and representatives of pro-capitalist think tanks from across the world gathered in Venezuela's luxurious Caracas Palace Hotel this week for an exclusive event titled "International Conference for Freedom and Democracy: The Latin American Challenge."]

Latin America’s Pro-Capitalist Elite Hold Anti-Chávez Conference in Venezuela

May 29th 2009, by James Suggett – Venezuelanalysis.com

Mérida, May 29th 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) -- Hundreds of right-wing political leaders and representatives of pro-capitalist think tanks from across the world gathered in Venezuela's luxurious Caracas Palace Hotel this week for an exclusive event titled "International Conference for Freedom and Democracy: The Latin American Challenge."

A major theme of the conference was how to put an end to the political changes been carried out by President Hugo Chávez and a wave of other progressive presidents who have been elected across the region over the past ten years.

Peruvian author and former Peruvian presidential candidate Mario Vargas Llosa, one of the high profile keynote speakers at the event, framed the Chávez government as the chief obstacle to the progress of capitalist free markets in the region.

(click here to view entire article)

Challenges and Possibilities: Learning from ALBA and the Bank of the South

[At the same time capitalism’s credibility as an engine of development (in both free-market and state-directed forms) is being weakened, the governments of a number of South American countries are working to advance new regional initiatives that have the potential to promote and strengthen socialist-inspired development alternatives-the most important are the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) and the Bank of the South. Although these two initiatives do not have the explicit mission of promoting socialist transformation, they are critically important because they concretize the existence of alternatives to capitalist growth strategies and, in the case of ALBA, offer support to governments that are themselves pursuing a socialist-inspired process of transformation.]

Challenges and Possibilities: Learning from ALBA and the Bank of the South

May 22nd 2009, by Martin Hart-Landsberg - International Debt Observatory

This is a time of great challenges and also great possibilities. The first decade of the 21st century may well mark an important turning point in the international struggle to supplant capitalism.

For decades the great majority of third world governments have followed neoliberal policies despite the failure of those policies to deliver their promised export-led growth. As a consequence, anti-neoliberal political movements have grown in strength throughout Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. While an important political development, the emancipatory potential of those movements has remained limited, in large part, because of their focus on neoliberalism as the primary impediment to progress. More specifically, many participating activists and academics continue to draw a sharp distinction between neoliberalism and capitalism; while they strongly oppose the former, they remain largely unwilling to reject the latter.

Most tend to blame the development failures of their respective nations on government policies (often implemented under pressure) that liberalized, deregulated, and privatized economic activity. They believe that the East Asian experience of high-speed, export-led growth and industrial transformation demonstrates that active state intervention and direction of economic activity can produce successful capitalist development. Therefore, they have often directed their efforts at enhancing the state capacities of their respective countries in an attempt to recreate East Asian economic successes.

However, we are now at a point where it may be possible to win a strong majority of these activists and intellectuals to an anti-capitalist perspective, a critical change if we are succeed in building the movement clarity and strength necessary to advance a socialist alternative. One reason is that the exploitative and contradictory nature of the East Asian growth strategy is becoming clearer. Ever more intense intra-regional competition has begun to undermine East Asia’s past social and economic gains and generate worker resistance. Perhaps even more dramatic, the region’s export-led growth strategy has finally run up against its own limits, as an ever deepening global economic crisis triggered by imbalances in the U.S. economy has thrown East Asian economies into their own downward economic spiral.

(click here to view entire article)

Globovisón: The Loose Cannon of Venezuelan Media

[Venezuela’s socialist national project is well underway and making ever more significant strides, in spite of an entrenched, privileged minority in opposition, relentlessly spurred on by the corporate media and its vociferous attacks.]

Globovisón: The Loose Cannon of Venezuelan Media

May 2oth 2009, by Carlos Ruiz - VenCentral

In their classic 1988 book Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky demonstrated how corporate media select topics, place emphasis, set boundaries, ask questions and shape content in accordance with broad capitalist imperatives. It’s a largely unconscious process driven by conformist human beings, and infinitely more effective than the heavy-handed methods of past communist regimes.

During the 20th century, ballooning marketing budgets played a crucial role in the marginalization, and ultimate extinction of influential labor-based/progressive media. Today’s mass media subservience to elite power structures is an inevitable consequence of the pursuit of profit. Advertising revenues continue to flow to any given publication, radio or TV station on the condition that its reporting and general content supports a business-friendly status quo.

(click here to view entire article)

Arabs’ New Favourite Leader: Hugo Chávez!?!

[The Venezuelan leader blew away all others as Arabs' favorite world leader in this week's University of Maryland and Zogby International's 2009 Annual Arab Public Opinion Survey.]

Arabs’ New Favorite Leader: Hugo Chávez!?!

May 20th 2009, by Matthew Clark - Christian Science Monitor

That’s right. The colorful Latin leftist has some serious crossover appeal.

He’s now huge – or, as Donald Trump would say, “uuuuuge” – in the Middle East.

So big that he’s surpassed the usual favorites: Osama bin Laden, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedenejad. At least that’s the result of this week’s University of Maryland and Zogby International’s 2009 Annual Arab Public Opinion Survey. (President Obama didn’t place, although George W. Bush still did quite well in the “worst world leaders” category, as Foreign Policy points out.)

It may seem surprising, but a quick look back Mr. Chávez’s statements and visits over the past few years reveal why he’s now a hero for the “Arab Street,” earning nicknames like “Chávez of Arabia.”

(click here to view entire article)

Documentary: Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas

[Watch the first part of the documentary, Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas, by Michael Fox and Silvia Leindecker, below. The documentary's website (http://www.beyondelections.com/) has links to watch the movie in English, Spanish or Portuguese and information about how to buy a copy of it. Click here to watch the remaining parts of the documentary.]