Hands Off Venezuela

Official statement of the Venezuelan Ministry of People's Power for Foreign Affairs rejecting US sanctions imposed on Venezuela

Official statement of the Venezuelan Ministry of People's Power for Foreign Affairs rejecting US sanctions imposed on Venezuela:

Check out the latest newsletter, featuring news and analysis from Venezuela. Articles include:

• Tories throw Libya lies at Venezuela - Hague uses Libya conflict to attack Chavez while imperialist powers prepare for war
• British workers, migrant workers - one class, one fight!  The UK's Latin American Coalistion against Cuts (COLACOR)
• Sanitatios Maracay nationalised at last
• Union leaders jailed? Not so simple...
• Imperialist intervention continues in Venezuela
• Media watch: opposition media compare Chavez to Hitler, yet again

Download the newsletter here (PDF).

The election is over and after a decade of trying to undermine Venezuelan democracy, the right have given President Hugo Chavez a much-needed kick up the backside. The Bolivarian revolution is not under threat, but the opposition - almost extinct a few years ago - is making a comeback.

We provide here links to the official results of the National Assembly elections on S26 in Venezuela as well as links to different articles analysing them. For basic information, see also the Hands Off Venezuela newsletter produced immediately after the election results were announced.

We travelled to Caracas in July 2010 to see how the Bolivarian revolution was progressing. Of everything we saw, we found the degree of community level organisation the most impressive. Since 2006, thousands of communal councils have been set up by Venezuelans.  The size of the communal councils can range from 150 families in cities to 10 families in rural areas. Following the tradition of social movements in Venezuela, communal councils are set up to deal with local problems such as schools, roads and cultural-political activities.

Real News Network senior editor, Paul Jay, interviews Gregory Wilpert on the Venezuelan elections. Video and transcript

A new edition of the Hands Off Venezuela newsletter has been produced in relation to the developing crisis between the two sister countries, Colombia and Venezuela.

Venezuela's election is not until September, but the international campaign to delegitimise the government has already begun

The media campaign then spread world-wide to the BBC, CNN, Fox News and of course the internet was flooded with this explosive story. As usual, the finger of guilt was pointed at Venezuela and President Chávez in particular.

The Canadian minister responsible for the Americas recently made a short stop in Venezuela. While there, Peter Kent took the opportunity to express the Canadian government’s concerns over the “shrinking democratic space” in Venezuela.

Eva Golinger breaks down the Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community to show how President Obama's administration now formally views Venezuela as a threat in the same class as Al Qa’ida.  

Not many Londoners can be happy as they grope through the frozen murkiness of the commute to their first days back at work after the winter break. Adding to their misery is London's mayor, Boris Johnson, who has made their journey much more expensive with huge fare rises.

President Hugo Chavez on Monday said that Petrocaribe, Venezuela's cut-rate regional energy alliance, will forgive quake-stricken Haiti's debt, AFP reported.

On Saturday, Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) temporarily closed six national cable television channels for failure to comply with the country’s Law on Social Responsibility in Radio and Television.

At the First Extraordinary Congress of the PSUV, which began in November last year and finishes this April, one can clearly sense a growing anger of the delegates and members against the reformists and bureaucrats in the party, as well as a thirst for the ideas of marxism. We publish here an interview with comrade Katy Jaimes, delegate to the Congress for the Chacao municipality of Miranda State, who lays heavy stress upon the need to organise a left in the party.

On Thursday, Venezuela’s National Tele- communications Commission released a list of cable television companies that will be subject to the Law on Social Responsibility in Radio and Television.

Venezuela sent its first aid airplane to Haiti, a Bolivarian National Armed Force's Hercules C-130, with a fifty-strong advance humanitarian aid team on board.

The government of the Netherlands recently granted the US military use of its islands in the Caribbean, with the excuse that this is to help in the “war against drugs”. In reality, this is a direct threat to the Chavez government in Venezuela.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez revealed on his Sunday television and radio program, Aló Presidente, that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), also known as drones, have illegally entered Venezuela’s airspace during the past several days. “A few days ago, one of these military planes penetrated Venezuela as far as Fort Mara,” a Venezuelan military fort in the State of Zulia, bordering Colombia.

At a public meeting organized by various trade union, political organizations, and solidarity campaigns (including Hands Off Venezuela), more than 3,000 people in Copenhagen heard President Hugo Chávez correctly point out that a socialist revolution is the only solution to the problems of humanity.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called for the formation of a “Fifth International” of left parties and social movements to confront the challenge posed by the global crisis of capitalism.

All true revolutionaries in Venezuela insist that the only solution to the current imperialist threat is socialism. On November 15, 2009, on the occasion of the elections for the delegates of the congress of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) President Hugo Chavez Frias again confirmed this urgent endeavor. At this decisive stage of the Bolivarian Revolution, the development of the 'young' Marx from the critique of religion to  criticism of the State, of the bourgeois revolution, to the defense of human, proletarian emancipation, is very educative indeed.

The last time I had the opportunity to speak in Caracas—at long-distance that time—was about a year ago, right after the UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) meeting in Santiago in September 2008. That meeting was called "with the purpose of considering the situation in the Republic of Bolivia," after an uprising backed by the traditional elites who had lost power in the impressive democratic elections of 2005.

Since Chavez came to presidency, Venezuela’s economy has grown to fulfil the increasing demand for human dignity. More people are able to access the country’s economic wealth and, at the same time, Venezuela has opened its markets to China and other significant manufacturing leaders. Today, more poor people are able to buy very cheap Chinese fans, refrigerators and TV sets as the least material possessions that many treasure in land where it is hotter each year, and where public runs until 10-11pm.

Mérida, September 2^nd 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) -This week, the Socialist Workers Front within the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) began the formation of worker "patrols," or local units, to function together with the party's neighborhood based patrols. Also, the party announced that it will host the ‘First International Meeting of Leftist Parties' in early October.

(Morning Star, Wednesday September 17 2008) Exactly 35 years after a CIA-orchestrated coup brought down Salvador Allende's socialist government in Chile, the political climate in Latin America is boiling over and now threatens to explode.