Introduction

On Sunday 22 May Spanish-language Windsor/Canada-based radio program Cayapa broadcast a program discussing the social and political changes underway in Venezuela, in the context of a recent solidarity brigade to the country by activists from the English-speaking world, and the country’s growing worker control movement. This article provides an overview of the program in English, followed by a translation of my report to the program about the worker control movement in Venezuela, particularly in the Guayana region in the east of the country. You can listen to the full program here.

Discussing the Revolution

The program, hosted by freelance journalist Alex Utrera, took interviews from several members of the recent Australia Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN) solidarity brigade to Venezuela, which ran between 25 April to 5 May last month. The brigade comprised activists, journalists, and students, which between them represented Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Scotland, and the United States. The brigade visited various examples of Venezuela’s growing infrastructure of social services as well as examples of popular participation and commmunity organisation which form part of Venezuela’s “Bolivarion Revolution”. The brigade also visited some of the country’s new institutions such as the headquarters of ALBA (Alliance for the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas), an international Latin America alliance founded by Cuba and Venezuela which seeks to promote regional integration and development based on alternative values to neoliberalism and ‘free trade’, and BanMujer, the government institution which provides credits and services to women in order to help them form cooperatives and achieve a greater level of independence and self-determination in Venezuelan society. Importantly, the brigade also visited the city of Puerto Ordaz in the east of Venezuela, to discover more about the worker control movement in that part of the country, both as part of “Plan Socialist Guyana” in the region’s nationalised industries, and other independent examples such as the Grafitos del Orinoco factory.

In amongst the interviews, the program also played a range of music from Venezuela and Latin America which reflect the “roch wind” of social change and revolution which have been blowing through the continent for the last decade, providing an appropriate context to the topics being discussed. The first interview was with Alejandro Rodriguez, who acted as one of the translators on the brigade, and gave an introduction to what the brigade was and what had been seen. It had been stressed during the brigade by participants that the aim was not only to see for ourselves the reality of Venezuelan society and report back our impressions as a counter to the distortions of the mass media (such as Fox news or the British BBC), but also to learn the lessons of the Venezuelan struggle for our own movements in our own countries.

The second interview was with Mexican Lulu Garcia Larque, who reported on changes to the situation for women in Venezuela. She outlined how there had been many improvements for women in Venezuela, in line with the social gains made by the general population, however she reported that women continue being a more vulnerable group in Venezuelan society. In this context she mentioned the importance of the increase in access to services such as health, and the increase in centres dealing with information and services on reproductive rights and promoting the health of mothers and babies. She also opined on the difference between the social, political and economic situation of Venezuela with other countries such as her native Mexico, stating that: “access to health, education and the right to participate doesn’t exist for many other Latin Americans, for example in Mexico, where the economy is deteriorating, government decisions are not made in order to benefit the poor, and people don’t have the same rights of expression as in Venezuela”. Finally, commenting on the social progress in general and gains for women in particular in Venezuela, Lula concluded by stating her belief that ”the next generation are going to build another world”.

The final interview was with Alexis Ardarfio, who helps organise the social and political activities of the iron extraction company Ferrominero in Guayana and is also an activist of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). Alexis also played a key role in organising the Puerto Ordaz section of the brigade. Alexis mentioned the importance of having activists from other countries coming to see Venezuela for themselves, particularly the worker control movement in Guayana. He stated that in this movement “we are creating a new model of industrial organisation - a model of popular participation in industrial production, production of quality and effectiveness, in order to resolve societal and human problems, for example in producing resources for Gran Mision Vivienda (the Venezuelan government’s current effort to provide housing for everyone in the nation by building 2 million homes by 2017)…in this vein, the best manner of [solving humanity's problems] is with worker control.” Alexis also invited anyone interested in finding out more about Venezuela and the revolutionary process to contact him with questions. His email and articles on worker control can be found on the Aporrea website here.

Interview: Impressions of Worker Control in Venezuela

The final interview of the program was with myself, where Alex asked me to report on what the brigade had seen of the worker control movement in the Guayana region of Venezuela.

As I am in the process of preparing a fuller article on the topic, I felt it would be useful to include a translation here of my initial report and observations. For more information in english about the worker control movement in Venezuela, there are several articles available on Venezuelanalysis.com among other sources, including an article about the recent national conference of the worker control movement here.

Alex: Ewan, can you tell us what is worker control?

Ewan: Well, that is the great debate going on in Venezuela at the moment, on that question exactly. However generally, the idea is that workers should have control over the decisions in a company or workplace, and so the company, the production, and all of the decisions, are under the control of the workers…and this is a democratic idea, that all the workers have an equal role in the process of taking decisions about [the running of] a factory or workplace: that, basically, is worker control.

Alex: Ewan, you visited various factories [in the Guayana region of Venezuela], how was your experience of these factories?

Ewan: We [the brigade] had two distinct experiences. The first was of the nationalised basic insdustries that form part of the regional production plan called “Plan Socialist Guayana”, particularly SIDOR and Ferrominero, the steel production and iron ore extraction companies. In these companies, as part of Plan Socialist Guayana, they are developing a strategy to implement worker control…this process is at the stage called “sensibilizacion”, which is to say, a stage of debate and education with the participation of the workers on how to implement worker control. Thus, this is an important stage because it is with the participation of the workers, in a debate about what form worker control should take, however it is not at the stage of the actual implementation of worker control…so this experience was of a debate about how to implement worker control in factories with over 1,000 workers [SIDOR has over 10,000 workers for example].

The other example we experienced was a visit to a factory called “Grafitos del Orinico” [which produces products important for the production of steel in SIDOR, and was taken over by its workers  after an 8-month occupation and struggle against the former owners], which is a factory with 54 workers. The system in this factory is one is which every worker has a vote and an equal role, and [the decision making body] of the factory is the assembly of all the workers: all the decisions about the running of the factory, including finance (and what to pay themselves), are made in the assembly…thus this is a revolutionary and democratic idea, because it is a new model of organisation, of how to manage a factory…and so for us, this example was very, very interesting.

Alex: And can you tell us a little of what is the difference between a factory which has worker control and one that doesn’t?

Ewan: Basically, for me the difference is one between exploitation and oppression, and freedom and emancipation…in the factories with worker control, the workers have control over their lives, they can take decisions about their life in the workplace, decisions about their life, their work, and they can develop themselves as human beings…[this is because] the aim is worker control is not to make profits for the owner, but the human development of the workers and to help the community, thus the wealth created by the workers above what is needed for a dignified life goes to the community, for schools and childrens services in the area, and to help the community generally. Thus it is a different conception of how to imagine and organise production: is the aim of production to create profits for the boss, or for the wellbeing of the workers and the social development of the community and society? Therefore, this is the difference: one is a democratic model, opposed to a [heirarchical] capitalist model of oppression and exploitation, which aims not to make money for the boss but to the human and education development of the workers, and to help the community as well. Those are the most important differences in my opinion.

Thus, this is the most revolutionary idea, because it is the union of socialism and democracy…but to realise this in the entire Venezuela economy is, in my opinion, going to require a revolution within a revolution, because in order to conquer the spaces of popular power necessary for this process, you need to fight, or course, against the bosses and capitalism, but also against those sections of the revolution which are the most reformist, the bureaucracy…however there is a possibility, a possible future for humanity: worker control offers a future [path] for humanity: but it is an idea which must be struggled for, and is going to require a struggle to be realised. Thus it is possible, but it is a struggle, a struggle for humanity.

Alex: And finally Ewan, what is the impact of the implementation of this first phase of education and debate toward worker control in Venezuela: is it creating an impact on the average worker? What are the possibilities?

Ewan: In Plan Socialist Guayana in the “sensibilizacion” stage, the possibility [of full worker control] definitly exists, but something very important for this is the future of the proposition for a new Organic Law of Trabajo [an Organic Law is the highest form of law in Venezuela, and is rooted in and given the same weight as the constitution]. In this law, which is being debated and promoted by various sections of the labour movement, workers councils, the PCV (Communist Party of Venezuela) and sections of the PSUV, is a proposition for a new legal status for workers councils…another clause in the law is for paid time during the work day for the political and educational activities of workers: thus this law contains powerful proposals for workers struggling for worker’s control in all of the factories and workplaces of Venezuela, and so it is very important…and to be fair, Chavez stated during the giant May Day march in Caracas that he thought this law should be passed in the country’s National Assembly.

Aside from this, workers can still struggle to implement worker control and bring sovereignty to the workers, giving real democracy to the workplace…if workers have success with this, then yes, it is possible that there can be worker control in the factories [and workplaces] of Venezuela: thus it is important to investigate and understand the process of changes underway in Venezuela in this moment, particularly the movement toward worker control, because the examples of worker control, for example in Merida with the nationalised milk company Enlaces, with Grafitos del Orinoco, with Invepal [worker run paper factory in Maracay], and others, are important in my opinion because they offer another model to organis the workplace, along democratic lines, and thus understanding this process is important for all humans, all of humanity. Therefore in my opinion it is a good idea for all people to understand this process, what is happening at the moment, and learn the lessons the struggles in our countries as well.

Conclusion

Both the AVSN solidarity brigade, and the reportage of Cayapa radio show highlight the importance of investigating and understanding the changes underway in Venezuelan society and politics today. To date, the successes and possibilities of the country’s popular movements, and the social gains promoted by the current government, throw into sharp relief the poverty of the view that “there is no alternative” to the way humanity is organised and relates to itself, and is a counter to the demoralisation and apathy that this perspective encourges among those who would look to seek to build an alternative. Thus understanding, supporting, and learning from movements such as the worker control movement in Venezuela are important for showing us not just that “another world is possible”: but what that world could look like and how we can get there. To that end, in the coming weeks I will be publishing more of my (and other’s) investigations about the worker control movement in Venezuela, and indeed more about the social and political changes underway in Venezuelan society in general.

For any further questions or discussion about this topic, please leave a comment here or contact me on my blog.

NO! Hugo Chavez is going down the line of filtering Venezuela’s internet! The parliament has passed the law on filtering any messages which have incement or hateful material (politically or religious).
This seems like a fabulous idea at first, but it is the opposite. Developing countries like Venezuela need freedom of access to all information on the internet. Chavez states that:

“We aren’t eliminating the internet here, or censoring it.What we’re doing is protecting ourselves against crimes, against cybercrimes,”

Now Chavez, I’m a fan, but WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?

Fighting Cybercrime. Chavez Style.

I understand his fear that the general opinion of him on the internet is pretty low, but this is not what the country needs. Look at North Korea and China! Clearly someone needs to get their internet know-how on. I mean, of course he’s going to get slated in Youtube comments or god forbid, Daily Mail comments. And of course, his people will see all the mental stuff that he supposedly done but didn’t. (You know, cause the papers keep lying about him). But really, it will NOT be detrimental to his country’s socialist development if they can access the whole internet, because everyone knows that the key to socialism is free education, freedom of information, and a platform to express yourself. The Internet can easily facilitate that.

Wide access to the Internet will vastly aid primary, secondary and tertiary education for the whole country. Children can play and learn, while adults use it as a tool to their careers. The Internet makes it easier to organise movements and action, while it also acts as a place for people to put out ideas and get a sort of ‘rough copy’ of the reaction they’ll get in real life.

Yes, when it comes to Internet security, you are always at risk, but that is a thing that can only be solved by education folk. Not shutting them away from the rest of the world. Yes, you are almost always being watched by the various governments, but there isn’t any clean cut way around that. Personal vigilance will help though, but no one can learn this if they don’t have any access to this type of material.

So what I’m saying is, that’s a huge FAIL from Chavez. I’m disappointed.

Allo Presidente!!

It’s no secret that me, Lydia, loves Hugo Chavez. Although, it seems that there is massively split opinions of Chavez on the left in Scotland.

However, Chavez just keeps doing cool shit that no one can deny is totally fucking awesome.  In Venezuela right now, horrible flooding has claimed the lives of over a dozen citizens and has forced over 30,000 Venezuelans to flee.

Chavez has been markedly criticised for failing to produce housing for the people of Venezuela, but Chavez’s rebuttal blames his predecessors’ profit-oriented manner of producing housing has made that difficult for him. So disenchanted, the people living on the hillside of Antimano (Werstern Caracas) refused to relocate. They demanded that Chavez come to them. So he did.

Chavez went to the flood-ravaged hill and said something. (Try to imagine one of the things David Cameron is LEAST LIKELY to say to homeless folk in Scotland’s City Centres?)

Chavez opened his palace up to those who had lost their homes to the flood. Not just for today, not just for a week, for the whole year.

“I have a proposal for you families: stay here for a year,”

The Palace

Now forgive me, but I think that is fucking sweet. Chavez decides to have an office in his palace converted into small apartments for the families and situated them near his presidential kitchen, where there is enough food and cooking supplies for over 20 families. As if that wasn’t cool enough, Chavez also offered space within Venezuela’s military hub, Tiuna Fort, meaning that he would have to temporarily vacate several buildings of their military officers to make space for the homeless.

Now, you’d think that charity could not be criticised. A columnist in newspaper Tal Cual had this to say about public acts of charity:

“ it can also be demagogic, exhibitionist and when taken to its extreme, truly grotesque and tacky.”

I think that people who attack Chevez forget something. Chavez does not have a hell of a lot to work with. People in this country pooh-pooh his extensions of great personal kindness to the people of his country as simple media-service. I don’t believe that it is true. Chavez is trying to build socialism in a country where there is fuck-all. The whole country was simply a massive capitalist regime, hence the astronomical inflation in the last decades. Chavez is prevented from giving the people free housing  because of the powerful industry of real-estate which is sitting on so much money. Chavez cannot wave a magic wand and declare “Socialism”. His government must work democratically, casting votes to make decisions, and unfortunately quite a lot of Venezuela will not want free housing as they are brainwashed (As most of our own country is!) by the illusion of success that Capitalism  propagates so well. This in turn means that Chavez cannot make the changes he wants to make and then his people become disillusioned. This is a vicious cycle. Chavez must turn to personal deeds which do not require any kind of vote or consensus. Chavez must offer his people the hand of a civilian to a civilian to show his great kindness. This is why he publically allows people to come live in his palace and famously last year had a Christmas event where he bought lots of toys and sold them for knock-down prices. Chavez wants Venezuela to get better, but he cannot do it without support. His opposition brutally tears apart everything he does, calling him false and accusing him of selfishness.

Sure, he has his own TV show. But he sings fucking songs on it and plays guitar and answers questions. I’m sorry, but that’s fucking cool. If it’s a first foot in for the reconstruction of Venezuela, then so be it.  Chavez is not a dictator. Chavez is a man who is trying his best for a country with little hope and he is working to build a better world with only two bricks. There are folk who make out like Chavez took over by force, which he did do ONCE, but failed and stood in elections – and won! Venezuela trust Chavez with their country. They trust his ideology and they love him as a figure. Acts like giving up your own palace space will make people love you, and Chavez does need that, what with the recent decline of his vote percentage in the previous elections. Chavez needs more people to trust him before he can start to rebuild a country where so many are so devoid of hope or trust for their leaders. When Chavez has the trust of the people he can truly start to make changes.

Also, he has a little bird with the same hat as him. OH MY GOD.

President Chavez casting his vote

Sunday saw a key test of the strength of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, with elections to the National Assembly.

The opposition to the revolution, which is composed of the middle and bosses classes who are angry about losing their monopoly over Venezuela’s wealth and political power, and who are funded by US imperialism, had a big push for the elections. For the first time since President Chavez was elected in 1998, they seemed to have got their act together a bit. For years, they have been bitterly squabbling amongst themselves, as they tried to come to terms with the fact that the poor majority of Venezuelans had no interest in their right wing politics any more. In the last Assembly elections in 2005, they knew they didn’t have a chance in hell of getting anywhere, and so pretended there was a chance of fraud and refused to participate.

As a result, for the last five years the National Assembly has been almost entirely dominated by supporters of the revolution. Having over two thirds of the parliament allowed the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and their allies to pass laws quickly, appoint officials to national positions, and generally not really have to care what the US puppets in the opposition thought.

But this time around, knowing that international observers and anyone with any common sense knows that Venezuela is ultra-democratic, and allegations of vote rigging would just look stupid, they got together to finally put together a united slate for the elections, the Democratic Unity Roundtable or MUD.

Given that last time they didn’t stand at all, winning anything would have been an advance for them. Internationally the media built up MUD, claiming they were set to win big. But realistically, everyone knew the revolution still has the support of the majority. The big question was, would PSUV be able to win a two thirds majority (110 seats)?

In the end the tally left the socialists just short of what they needed to retain a ’supermajority.’ But they still have an overwhelming majority of the seats, with PSUV having won 95 seats so far (three have still to declare), giving it 58% of the seats. MUD won 62 seats, or 39%, while the Fatherland For All party (which is pro-revolution but not part of PSUV) won 2. Under Venezuela’s revolutionary constitution 3 seats are reserved for representatives of indigenous peoples, and those that took them are part of neither side.

The make up of the newly elected assembly

This means that the government will still be able to pass normal laws and are still in control of the assembly, but it leaves more scope for the opposition to slow things down, force the government to negotiate with them, and generally make a nuisance of themselves. Laws that relate to issues in the revolutionary constitution have to be passed by two thirds majority, so that will now be more difficult. And the assembly also appoints positions such as the Supreme Court and the Electoral Council, which the opposition will now have some say in.

Socialists in Venezuela were still celebrating the victory, even if it wasn’t as strong as they would have liked. As President Chavez put it himself on Twitter: “The election was a solid victory, sufficient to continue deepening democratic and Bolivarian socialism. We must continue strengthening the revolution!”

He added at a press conference: “Nothing extraordinary happened. Something extraordinary would have been if we won 130 deputies, extraordinary would have been if we lost the majority.”

When you compare the support the government to other countries, especially the US or UK, it enjoys an unbelievably high level of popularity, considering how long they have been in power, and how difficult the economic circumstances are. Nevertheless, the election didn’t give the socialists as good as a result as they have often enjoyed in other electoral tests. There’s several reasons for that. The video below goes into a lot of them, but I’ll try and outline them briefly as well:

- The economic situtation for Venezuela has been difficult, as it has for every country. The economy shrank last year, as did most other countries in Latin America. However, this problem has been vastly overstated by the anti-government media, both in Venezuela and abroad.

- There’s been a big problem with electricity shortages over the last few months. Venezuela depends on hydroelectric dams for most of its electricity (which is a good thing, there’s almost no fossil fuel input), and there’s been a severe drought (at least in part due to climate change) that has affected their ability to generate energy. On top of that, during the years that electricity was privatised before the revolution, the private companies put very little investment in, meaning that the grid is outdated and over taxed. The solution that workers are fighting for to this problem is expanding socialism and workers’ control in the electricity industry.

- A major corruption scandal was discovered this year, involving bosses at the state owned food company PDVAL. State food companies sell food at prices much lower than in the normal supermarket, to allow the poor to have access to healthy, nutritious food. But it turned out that some bosses had been hoarding food in order to make more money for themselves. Although there’s an ongoing vigorous investigation, it obviously reflects badly on the government.

- General dissatisfaction that change isn’t happening fast enough, and that social problems such as rampant crime remain major issues. The revolutionaries are divided between the radical, pro-socialist and direct democracy advocates, and those who are more “pragmatic” and “moderate”. For example, although the government has been trying to promote ‘communal councils’, which are organisations of direct democratic self rule at a local level, many local politicians and mayors see them as a threat to their authority, and are trying to block their work. The opposition has not done anything particularly new in the last couple of years, but some of the failings of the revolutionary government have left some people disenchanted, and less willing to turn up and vote socialist.

Venzuelan voters show the ink on their fingers, which signifies they've voted

The solution to all of the problems facing Venezuela is, of course, deepening the revolution and expanding the construction of socialism. This article has a lot of concrete suggestions of ways to go about that. But what’s been farcical has been watching MUD and their international pals try and claim that the socialist election victory was in fact a rejection of the revolution.

“Here it is very clear, Venezuela said no to Cuban-style communism, Venezuela said yes to the path of democratic construction and now we have the legitimacy of vote of the citizenry, we are the representatives of the people,” said María Corina Machado, who was elected deputy of Miranda state.

MUD tried to claim they had won the majority of the popular vote, something that was actually total bollocks based on counting the Fatherland For All deputies as members of the opposition, but which was faithfully reported in the international media.

In fact, comparing the opposition’s performance this time around to the last election isn’t really comparing like for like, because last time they didn’t stand. If you compare their results this time to the last election they actually participated in (2000), they actually lost 20 seats! New revolutionary deputy Roy Chaderton called their claims a “media farce”.

“They can celebrate whatever they want, but it is striking that they are celebrating when they have obtained 20 fewer seats than the last time when they had deputies in the National Assembly,” he said. “The reality is that, compared to the elections for the 2000-2005 session, they have 20 fewer deputies elected, and the government has won enough support to elect 3 more deputies than what it had in that period.”

“In the case of the National Assembly, it’s good that the opposition are now part of it, that’s where they should be, but they withdrew in 2005, hours before the beginning of the electoral process, to try to delegitimize it, and, besides, hoping that the [US] Marines would do their dirty work to replace President Chávez,” he emphasized.

Chaderton explained that “between 2005 and 2010, as they didn’t participate and withdrew for the negative motives that I explained, they can now claim that their representation has increased 6,600%, but all that is part of the media farce, corrupt deals, fake news to mislead the national and international public opinion, with the complicity, of course, of the international Far Right.”

Taking a look at the British media, it seems that they are either very confused about what’s going on, or in fact just tools of this right wing propaganda campaign against Venezuela. The latter is surely the case for Rupert Murdoch owned Sky News, who seemed all mixed up about the results, talking about “massive gains” for the opposition. Although their article has been fixed now, a picture caption down the page originally claimed that PSUV hadn’t won a majority!

Even worse is the coverage of the supposedly left wing Guardian newspaper. I’m a great fan of their site, and it’s my main non-socialist place I go to check on the news, but consistently the information they give readers on Venezuela is utter pish and propaganda. This week they saw fit, just after the government won a election internationally verified as completely democratic, to run a poll in which the majority of their daft readers voted that Chavez is a dictator!

Full of nonsense: opposition demonstrators

What this proves is that the supposedly impartial western media, including the BBC and the Guardian, are hopelessly compromised when it comes to reporting Venezuela. Venezuela is the country on Earth today that has put socialism back on the agenda of the human race, and offered a beacon of hope to people struggling all over the world. Faced with that kind of threat, the international ruling class are going to make sure all of their media outlets are pumping out the maximum anti-socialist propaganda they can. If you want to get the real low down on what’s going on in Venezuela, the best source is the excellent Venezuela Analysis site. And of course, when important stuff is happening, you can also count on this blog to give you full coverage!

Bonus: Check out former Cuban President Fidel Castro’s message ahead of the elections: “I would not fail to vote as a sacred duty: whatever time it is, before the rain, when it’s raining, or after the rain, as long as there is a polling station open. If I were Venezuelan, even under thunder and lightning, I would fight to the limit to make September 26 a great victory.”

There’s a full state by state breakdown of the results here.

Global outrage at Israel's brutal attack on the Gaza aid flotilla

When Israel announced that they were holding their own inquiry into their massacre of aid activists on the Gaza Flotilla, which happened at the end of May, it wasn’t a massive surprise when their ‘impartial panel’ proved to be a total sham. As we reported at the time, Israel predictably hand-picked a panel mostly consisting of retired Israeli generals, some Canadian military hack with a dodgy human rights record, and David Trimble, Ulster Unionist politician and renowned bigot and sectarian knobhead.

But you’d maybe expect that, for all its faults, the United Nations, an international body which is kind of meant to be as impartial as they come, would manage slightly better on this front. Somehow, however,  and quite incredibly, the UN have managed to top all of Israel’s shameless whitewashing – they’ve only gone and picked Alvaro fucking Uribe as the vice-chair of their ‘independent’ panel of inquiry into the attacks. Uribe is the outgoing President of Colombia, famous for his friendly, diplomatic and impartial bouts of killing trade unionist, funding right-wing guerillas and being best pals with some of the world’s most notorious drugs barons, at least when he’s not too busy stoking up war with his neighbours and receiving billions in aid from the United States, that is!

Israel has been in the news the past couple of days for practically provoking a war with Lebanon following military excursions which skirted the Lebanese border, leaving five dead – including a civilian journalist – when things spilled over into gunfire a few days ago. As it happens, Colombia has also been in the news for much the similar (without any killing… yet), constantly accusing neighbouring Venezuela, and the left-wing government of Hugo Chavez, of harbouring left-wing guerillas who form one side in the relatively low-intensity civil war that’s been going on in the country for decades. Although there’s absolutely no evidence that this is the case – all Uribe has been able to offer is a couple of dodgy photos from a few years ago that were probably taken in Ecuador anyway (which Colombia illegally invaded in 2008 on the same justification). Chavez has quite understandably been getting a bit unnerved at these persistent threats emanating from Colombia, given that it’s no secret that the US government would quite like to bump him off and a proxy war through Colombia is probably their best bet for doing so now, after their countless failures to depose Chavez domestically and halt the ongoing revolution .

Uribe and Bush share a joke about how many commies they killed last week

Uribe’s regime in Colombia have consistently failed to investigate reports of systematic torture, human rights abuses and extra-judicial murder in the country. Invariably, these have been against the left-wing opposition – including the now infamous cases of Coca Cola bottling plant workers who faced execution by paramilitary death squads because they’d tried to fight for better wages and conditions, or even just been a member of a trade union. It’s crazy that the UN thinks a man who has well documented links to fascist paramilitaries, cocaine trafficking and mass abuses of human rights in his own country is possibly capable of impartially investigating a massacre of civilians abroad.

And for the inquiry to be announced  in the same week that the UN Secretary General was summoned by the Venezuelan government over serious concerns about a Colombian attack is just taking the piss, and whether intentional or otherwise, sends a clear endorsement to Colombia’s US-sponsored imperialist warmongering. An MEP from the United Left party in Spain, Willy Meyer, has already slammed the decision as like “like leaving a fox to guard the chickens”, adding that Uribe presides over a country with “the largest mass grave in Latin America”.

Don’t hold your breath for the inquiry’s results!

We think Chavez is cool, and not just because he is obviously a pirate.

In a stunning victory for the working classes in both Scotland and Venezuela, and much to the chagrin of the imperialist pigdogs that control the media, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has announced that he is to employ 200 new staff members to help him deal with the daily deluge of twitter @replies he is getting from the Scottish Socialist Youth. Already there’s been a clear positive response, with Chavez commenting on our blog, “jajajaj chicos, ¡que diversión!” (‘hahaha guys, very funny!’). Sources point to a soon-to-be-announced extension of the Bolivarian Revolution to Scotland. It is set to begin with the Maryhill branch of the Scottish Socialist Party declaring independence from the unionist swine in Westminster and becoming officially annexed to Venezuela. The rest of Scotland will soon follow suit, and join the international struggle. A twitterquake will follow, with #SSYbloginitiatesworldsocialism becoming the top trending topic, EVER!

Nah, only joking, he’s not got back to us yet… But it is true – Hugo Chavez’s twitter account is now such a popular forum for Venezuelans attempting to voice their grassroots concerns to President Chavez that he has employed 200 people to help him sort through all of their comments and requests, replying to as many as they can. It’s been hugely popular, with his followers set to hit the 1 million mark by the end of this month.

It’s not been without trouble for the President, who says that over 18% of the comments he gets are just pure abuse. But he takes it in good spirit, tweeting back jokes to people that think sending Hugo a nasty twitter message is going to break the Revolution’s spirit!

Far from being a waste of money and staff time, clearly Chavez is taking the internet seriously and agrees with SSY that it will be one of the major battlegrounds in the struggle between ideas that will shape the 21st century. It’s also an easy and simple way for Venezuelans to directly petition their government, and for the government to keep in touch with the basic concerns (in 140 characters) of the people. He’s using social networking websites to cut through bureaucracy and allow people to directly hold the President to account, and we applaud him for doing so. He has created a fund to address the problems the people of Venezuela face that they have contacted him to ask for help with – mostly related to housing and health, so it’s already having a real impact on the lives of Venezuelans that otherwise would still be feeling alienated from the political process.

So SSY decided to get in on the act and send Hugo some greetings from Scotland, and the link to this here humble blog. We wrote

@chavezcandanga ¡Saludos desde Escocia! le invitamos a Hugo Chavez pasar por ssy.org.uk ¡Que viva la revolución socialista internacional!

I see u, spoiling Doctor Who over twitter.

Which says “Greetings from Scotland! We invite Hugo Chavez to check out ssy.org.uk. Long live the international socialist revolution!”. One of the drawbacks of twitter is that you must fit each message in to 140 characters of less, so although we’d have loved to have said more we were a bit limited for space. But we are FULLY confident that Hugo will receive our message and be so bowled over by our witty, irreverent yet SERIOUS take on socialism and politics that he will set the wheels in motion for the Venezuelan-Scottish superstate of dreams.

Our hope is that young socialists in Venezuela will be able to use our blog as a source of information about the socialist struggle here in Scotland and the UK, and we’d love to get updates from comrades involved in the struggle in Venezuela about what affects their lives.

SSY would also love to invite the PSUV (the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, of which Chavez is the leader) to send some young members along to our socialist summer camp this August, where they could learn about socialism from a Scottish perspective and share their experiences of living in a socialist country and the pressures they face from the capitalist forces that regularly attempt to undermine the Bolivarian Revolution and other progressive movements in South America. ¡Que viva la revolución socialista internacional!

The Venezuelan government has attempted to ban Family Guy because they think it promotes Marijuana use. Cable TV stations which don’t stop airing the show will be given hefty fines.

Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami said the programme should be pulled from the airwaves after being outraged by a recent episode in which the show’s characters started a campaign to legalise the drug. You can see the episode in question here.

Venezuela’s radical government has a lot of support amongst socialists, but there’s a lot of controversy about TV.  Cable television stations are used as a front to undermine the government and their radical policies, leading to attempts to ban the cable TV companies altogether and set up state-owned TV. It’s a question of priorities – should people or companies with offensive views still have a right to freedom of speech?

(In November last year, a revolutionary Venezuelan band called La Redonda visited Scotland and were keen to meet other young socialists – several SSY members met up with the band to discuss various issues, and the whole meeting was filmed on shown on Avila TV, Venezuela’s radical stated owned TV station.)

Anyway, I’m sure you all know that Leftfield is definitely in favour of freeing the weed and supports Family Guy in the struggle.

If Family Guy should be banned for anything, it should be for its treatment of domestic violence and rape – they make so many ‘jokes’ about violence against women that they’re practically promoting it.