Venezuelan Elections: a Choice and Not an Echo Introduction On October 7th, Venezuelan voters will decide whether to support incumbent President Hugo Chavez or opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. The voters will choose between two polar opposite programs and social systems: Chavez calls for the expansion of public ownership of the means of production and consumption, an increase in social spending for welfare programs, greater popular participation in local decision-making, an independent foreign policy based on greater Latin American integration, increases in progressive taxation, the defense of free public health and educational programs and the defense of public ownership of oil production. In contrast Capriles Radonski represents the parties and elite who support the privatization of public enterprises, oppose the existing public health and educational and social welfare programs and favor neo-liberal policies designed to subsidize and expand the role and control of foreign and local private capital.
Category: Head Stories
In his September 23, 2012 speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the United States and its allies to define clear red lines for the Iranian nuclear program, emphasizing that Iran will reach the threshold at which it could manufacture a nuclear bomb by mid 2013. A deep scrutiny of the past and of present events and trends tells a different story. After Iraq’s defeat in the 1990 war in Kuwait, Israeli officials focused on the Iranian nuclear program as the main threat to Israel security. At first they alleged that Iran had bought nuclear weapon components from the former Soviet Republics. Then they put aside that argument and stressed that Iran was seeking to acquire nuclear weapons, and would reach that target within a few years and requested that the U.S. and EU to do everything possible to prevent Tehran from achieving that goal. Israel had sufficient influence in the U.S. to see sanctions imposed on the Iranian oil industry in mid the 1990s.
The recent passage of a resolution by the Turkish parliament to authorize cross-border retaliatory military action against Syria after a recent barrage of mortar rounds from Syria into Turkey is a sign that Turkey, working with NATO’s neoconservative Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is hoping to invoke for the second time in its history the NATO collective security authorization, Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty that stipulates an act of aggression against one NATO member is an attack on all. The first time Article 5 was invoked after the 9/11 attacks on the United States… Rasmussen is the perfect facilitator to engineer NATO action in Syria. He was a leading cheerleader for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, including the shedding Danish military blood in the senseless military operations.
CARACAS, VENEZUELA — President Hugo Chavez won re-election on Sunday, defeating challenger Henrique Capriles, Venezuela’s electoral council said. With most votes counted, Chavez had more than 54 percent of the vote, and Capriles had 45 percent, National Electoral Council president Tibisay Lucena said. She said 81 percent of the nearly 19 million registered voters cast ballots. It was Chavez’s third re-election victory in nearly 14 years in office. The victory gives Chavez another six-year term to cement his legacy and press more forcefully for a transition to socialism in the country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Fireworks exploded in downtown Caracas, and Chavez’s supporters celebrated waving flags and jumping for joy outside the presidential palace. Chavez won more than 7.4 million votes, beating Capriles by more than 1.2 million votes, Lucena said.
“The socialist revolution will not be stopped by anyone because it has become the people.” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez There’s no better time to read Cindy Sheehan’s heartfelt and galvanizing new book “Revolution, A Love Story” than today, just hours before Venezuela’s presidential elections. The author provides a riveting summary of Latin American history dating back to the Conquistadors focusing particular attention on Washington’s myriad interventions and the rise of the region’s second greatest protagonist, Hugo Chavez. Sheehan–who is a self-confessed Chavez admirer–opines that the charismatic Venezuelan leader “like Simon Bolivar before him, not only dreams of a united Latin America, but is showing the way.” Regrettably, the United States has repeatedly tried to derail Chavez’s reform agenda by funding anti-Chavez groups via non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that pretend to be working for human rights or democracy promotion.
The case against the Zionist Power Configuration is based on the open record of publications, speeches, articles, interviews and sources available to the general public (and any interested reader). Many facts and data are drawn from Zionist and Israeli sources as well as mainstream publications and writings by critical journalists and analysts.1 We do not privilege the statements by Jews, whether they are critics or supporters of the State of Israel, as most “progressive” writers do. The pursuit of truth is not an “ethnic science”, an approach that smacks of Nazi and Zionist racial theories. Indeed, nothing reveals the extreme Zionist power or cultural hegemony over the debate on Israel and American Zionism so much as the constant reliance, reference and citation of the “Jewish” authorship of critical articles, even when publications by non-Jews are better documented, of earlier publication, and better argued.
According to U.S. officials, Israel is training and supporting Iranian terrorists who are trying to topple the Iranian government. Those Israeli-funded terrorists have faked documents to falsely indicate that Iran is building a nuclear bomb. 1 Israel has admitted to previous use of false flag attacks to justify war against Middle Eastern nations. For example, Israel admits that an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this).
The US should not forget the aggressive past of Japan, especially the attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941, which partly was the result of Washington’s tolerance of Japanese expansionism. China’s influence is increasing in the Asia-Pacific region and even the rest of the world, while the US’ is declining. This is a relatively long-term but inevitable trend, which the US finds very uncomfortable to accept. The change in the balance of power will gradually erode the supremacy of the US and other countries’ confidence in America’s might. This realization seems to be giving American politicians and policymakers sleepless nights. … China issued a white paper on the Diaoyu Islands on Tuesday so that the international community would better understand Beijing’s stance on the Diaoyu Islands dispute. This is especially important because of the United Nations General Assembly session underway in New York.
USAID Openly Meddles in Sovereign Nations’ Domestic Affairs, Sponsoring NGOs and Protest Activities Intended to Destabilize Legitimate Governments Which Are Unfavorable from Washington’s Perspective The ejection of USAID from Russia was a long-awaited and welcome development. Moscow has repeatedly warned its US partners via an array of channels of communication that the tendency of USAID to interfere with Russia’s domestic affairs was unacceptable and, particularly, that the radicalism of its pet NGOs in the Caucasus would not be tolerated. When, on October 1, the decision made by the Russian leadership takes effect, the Moscow-based USAID staff which has been stubbornly ignoring the signals will have to pack and relocate to other countries facing allegations of authoritarian rule… In Latin America, USAID has long earned a reputation of an organization whose offices are, in fact, intelligence centers scheming to undermine legitimate governments in a number of the continent’s countries. The truth that USAID hosts CIA and US Defense Intelligence Agency operatives is not deeply hidden, as those seem to have played a role in every Latin American coup, providing financial, technical, and ideological support to respective oppositions.
The Queen of Corporate-Fascist Faux “Democracy”: Aung San Suu Kyi Goes to Washington and Exposes US “Democracy Promotion” as Corporate-Fascist Racket Key Points: Aung San Suu Kyi and her movement are creations of Western corporate-financier interests. Suu Kyi has recently received a series of suspect “awards” from corporate-financier sponsored institutions. Awarding institutions represent the antithesis of Suu Kyi’s alleged ideals of “democracy,” “freedom,” and “human rights.” Suu Kyi’s movement has been recently exposed as genocidal bigots, which is perhaps the reason the US has staged this latest PR “awards” blitz. Nothing could say “democracy” and “humanitarianism” less than big-oil’s Chevron, Exxon, BP, ConocoPhillips, or international financier criminals like Deutsche Bank, Blackstone, Barclays, Citigroup, or perhaps defense contractors and war profiteers EADS, General Dynamics, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Nazi collaborators IBM. Professional propagandists like News Corporations (Fox News), Bloomberg, and Reuters, as well as public relations firms like Edelman, who make the vast criminal conspiracies of the above mentioned possible, also constitute the antithesis of “democracy promotion.”