http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/732/37924 16 November 2007

Local battalions of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) have been meeting every weekend since August, aiming to organise the 5.7 million aspiring members who enrolled between April and June to join the party-in-formation. Spokespeople and heads of commissions elected by the more than 14,000 battalions have gone on to form socialist circumscriptions, grouping 10 battalions in a given local area, to elect delegates to the party’s founding congress. (Keep reading…)

Special to Canadian Dimension, October 10, 2007

The October Revolution of 1917 was the most influential political event of the twentieth century. But since history is written by the victors, it is not well known that October was the opening shot of a vast and powerful challenge to capitalism that swept the industrial world and had echoes in the colonial countries. Between 1918 and 1921 union membership and days lost in strikes everywhere reached new heights, while the ranks of the revolutionary wing of the socialist movement swelled. (Keep reading…)

October 05, 2007

Gallup corroborates what we have known all along given Hugo Chavez’s popularity: most Venezuelans love socialism, because it serves them better than capitalism. (Keep reading…)

Progresso Weekly September 27 - October 3, 2007

In September 1960, Fidel Castro founded the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) for the purpose of combating the wave of bombings and sabotage coursing through in the country. Today, 47 years later, the CDRs, which bring together millions of Cubans, are immersed in the debates called for by the Communist Party of Cuba to help the Cuban process move forward. “Unless reforms are made, we’ll lose everything,” Jorge said to me as we left the CDR meeting in his building, in the Vedado neighborhood, following an analysis of the July 26 speech by the acting president of Cuba, Army Gen. Raúl Castro. What reforms was he talking about? (Keep reading…)

Prensa Latina August 27, 2007

Parties and movements of the Left of Latin America and the Caribbean were invited today by the Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez, to have a meeting in 2008 to create an international organization. (Keep reading…)

July 12, 2007. http://www.kaosenlared.net/noticia.php?id_noticia=24223 Translated by Dana Lubow

We Cubans associate the Special Period with the worst economic crisis of the revolutionary phase: it is synonymous with scarcity, food shortages, blackouts, bicycles as transportation, houses in deplorable, almost irreversible condition, little television transmission, the disappearance of numerous newspapers, reductions of print runs of major newspapers, a drastic reduction of most leisure options for the populace, constant siren alerts in the face of possible imperialist aggression, massive mobilizations to dig tunnels, evacuation exercises, training of territorial militias and other similar actions. (Keep reading…)

Znet July 27, 2005

In capitalism, owners together with about a fifth of the population who have highly empowered work decide what is produced, by what means, and with what distribution. Nearly four fifths of the population does largely rote labor, suffers inferior incomes, obeys orders, and endures boredom, all imposed from above. As John Lennon put it, “As soon as you’re born they make you feel small, by giving you no time instead of it all.” (Keep reading…)

Rabble.ca May 25, 2007

Building Power through participatory democracy was the major theme of an extraordinary conference held recently at Ryerson University. Eight speakers from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Venezuela gave conference delegates an inside view of the transformative processes taking place in their countries. (Keep reading…)

Mnthly Review April, 2007

An Old Essay

Seventeen years ago, in 1990, I began an essay with a poem of Bertolt Brecht. It was a poem about a man in Europe in the Middle Ages who put on “things that looked like wings,” climbed to the roof of a church, and tried to fly. He crashed, and the bishop who passed by said, “No one will ever fly.”* (Keep reading…)

Special to Canadian Dimension March 7, 2007

Not long ago, in the face of mounting opposition, George W. Bush’s government of crazed zealots announced a military “surge” in Iraq. An additional 21,000 troops were committed to today’s deepest sinkhole for American Empire, and Bush dared the Democrats to stop him. (Keep reading…)