NVUSA Home
Bibliography
Global
Sept. 11
Webliography
gMoses
Academic
Home
American
Nonviolence
Syllabus
Mail to:
Greg Moses
|
Nonviolence USA:
A website for scholarship
in the theory and practice of nonviolence
in the USA.
NVUSA Global Hotspot:
Return to Global Index
Resources for nonviolent approaches to global conflicts.
Hot Spot! Venezuela
- Venezuelan Women to the Venezuelan People and to the World in General
Instituto Nacional de la Mujer de Venezuela
(Jan., 2003?) via email
Women are aware that the dark forces seeking to return our country to dictatorship are the same forces that, in the past, kept us oppressed in family, society and in government, and now, together with the people of Venezuela, we strongly support the constitutionally elected president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez Frmas, because his government for the first time, has made the need to end exclusion a state policy, has included in the Constitution demands women have been making for a long time, and because his government defends our sovereignty and has returned to us pride in being Venezuelans.
Venezuelan women thank the Armed Forces, who have maintained values of patriotism and loyalty, have defended and continue to defend the people, and who have shown that they can wear their uniforms with honour. We owe to them enormous gratitude for the lives and futures of our children.
Women denounce as traitors and enemies of the country all those who want to kill by hunger, lack of energy, lack of medicines, lack of elementary services, their own fellow citizens, and those who want to destroy the minds of their fellow citizens through psychological terrorism. No political interest or miserly material interest can justify the attempt to assassinate a people. How can anyone call himself a democrat as he is trying to use hunger to kill his fellow citizens? What kind of government will be installed by a minority that uses terrorism, hunger, racism and violence to achieve its ends? We call on all decent women to oppose the macabre machinations of those who are trying to destroy our country and people.
- Venezuelan Women to the Venezuelan People and to the World in General
Instituto Nacional de la Mujer de Venezuela
(Jan., 2003?) via email
Women are aware that the dark forces seeking to return our country to dictatorship are the same forces that, in the past, kept us oppressed in family, society and in government, and now, together with the people of Venezuela, we strongly support the constitutionally elected president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez Frmas, because his government for the first time, has made the need to end exclusion a state policy, has included in the Constitution demands women have been making for a long time, and because his government defends our sovereignty and has returned to us pride in being Venezuelans.
Venezuelan women thank the Armed Forces, who have maintained values of patriotism and loyalty, have defended and continue to defend the people, and who have shown that they can wear their uniforms with honour. We owe to them enormous gratitude for the lives and futures of our children.
Women denounce as traitors and enemies of the country all those who want to kill by hunger, lack of energy, lack of medicines, lack of elementary services, their own fellow citizens, and those who want to destroy the minds of their fellow citizens through psychological terrorism. No political interest or miserly material interest can justify the attempt to assassinate a people. How can anyone call himself a democrat as he is trying to use hunger to kill his fellow citizens? What kind of government will be installed by a minority that uses terrorism, hunger, racism and violence to achieve its ends? We call on all decent women to oppose the macabre machinations of those who are trying to destroy our country and people.
- Venezuelan Majority Takes to the Streets, Coup Plotters Hide
Al Giordano (Dec. 10, 2002) Narco News Bulletin
These are the hours of immediate history.
As in Eastern Europe 13 years ago, the final defeat of dictatorial power in Venezuela came last night at the doors of its “control rooms” – the TV stations.
On Monday night, the Venezuelan majority - unwilling to allow an upper-class economic coup d’etat that poses dishonestly as a “strike” to unseat its democratically elected government - took to the streets on a scale only seen once before in the nation’s modern history; as they had last April, when they turned back a military coup d’etat.
By early Tuesday morning the masses had every Commercial TV station in the nation surrounded. Their weapons were nonviolent and theatrical: pots, pans, fireworks and thousands of defiant but smiling faces. .
- A Tale of Two Coups
Greg Palast (July 1, 2002) New Internationalist Magazine via Truthout
Most telling were Chavez's laws to which Carmona and coup leaders objected. The prime evil was the Ley De Tierras, the new land law which promised to give unused land to the landless, in particular, properties held out of production by the big plantation owners for more than two years. But Chavez's tenure would not have been threatened had he not also taken on the international petroleum giants. Chavez's crimes against the oil industry's interests included passing a law that doubled the royalty taxes paid by ExxonMobil and other oil operators from about 16 per cent to roughly 30 per cent on new finds. He had also moved to take control of the state oil company PDVSA - nominally owned by the government, but in fact in thrall to the foreign operators.
Chavez had almost single-handedly rebuilt the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) by committing Venezuela to adhere to its OPEC sales quotas, causing world oil prices to double to over $20 per barrel. It was this oil money which paid for the 'bricks and milk' programme and put Chavez head to head against ExxonMobil, the number-one extractor of Venezuelan oil.
- The Masses vs. The Media
Al Giordano (June 5, 2002) Narco News
The grand sweeping act of the masses on April 13, 2002 in Venezuela to take the microphone away from the monopoly and thus collapse the absolute power of the Media is the single most historic act so far of the 21st century....
The poor and working and creative majority in Venezuela revealed to the world: The masses do not need to be educated, do not need to hear one more fact or report or snippet of "information." The masses don't need the TV news or the daily paper or my next article or your next documentary or even cyberspace: they (we!) already know it is bullshit. Media is about moneymaking and control of public opinion. Media is a power trip. And everybody except the most deluded cyborgs and oligarchs that live off that milking machine knows it already.
- Opec chief warned Chavez about coup
Greg Palast (May 13, 2002) Guardian
The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, had advance warning of last month's coup attempt against him from the secretary general of Opec, Ali Rodriguez, allowing him to prepare an extraordinary plan which saved both his government and his life, an investigation has revealed....
Mr Chavez told Newsnight: "I have written proof of the time of the entries and exits of two US military officers into the headquarters of the coup plotters - their names, whom they met with, what they said - proof on video and on still photographs."
|