Caracas, Venezuela – “A PSUV victory is the most important present for Commander Hugo Chavez. Today, July 28, is the anniversary of his birthday, the same day as the popular triumph of the people,” says international observer Diakaridia Diakita, the president of the youth of the Yelema party in the Republic of Mali. PSUV stands for the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.

Over 800 international observers from around the world are in Venezuela to observe the historic elections between the Chavista PSUV leader Nicolás Maduro and the opposition pro-imperialism parties.

The main opposition candidate is Edmundo Gonzalez, who supports the privatization of the oil companies, schools, healthcare, and the removal of social programs that former President Chavez started.

These international observers come from unions, left parties, newspapers, and organizations from around the world. The grandson of Nelson Mandela, Nkosi Zwelivelile, is also observing this important election. Observers talk about the importance of this election for Venezuela, Latin America and the world.

Observers from Africa, Latin America, Europe, North America, Asia, Australia, and all over the world will be monitoring today’s election.

“Venezuela has been strangled by sanctions for over a decade. This election will show us if Maduro has been able to lead his country to persevere, or if smear campaigns and national betrayal of the opposition will bring the country back down into vassal status. The fate of Venezuela rests on July 28,” says Ahmed Eltouny, the former cochair of the Green Party in the U.S.

Booker Omole, the vice president of the Communist Party of Kenya, says, “I am here in Caracas to attend this very important event of the revolutionary history of Venezuela. Particularly, the Communist Party of Kenya is an internationalist organization, and we support the Bolivarian Revolution. Also, there are certain commonalities between the Venezuelan revolution and the ongoing processes in Kenya, which is still a neocolonial entity.”

Omole continued, “In 1989, in Caracas and major cities in Venezuela, there was a social explosion in the streets, where the IMF and World Bank had imposed austerity measures, the anti-people policies. In Kenya today, the masses and the working class are also resisting. We have seen millions of people pouring into the streets to resist the puppet regime that is sponsored by the USA imperialism. This reminds of similarities where the IMF has designed policies, particularly here in Venezuela, that took ten years after the social explosion for the Bolivarian revolution to materialize. Hugo Chavez still lives among us, not only here in Caracas, but also in Kenya.”

#CaracasVZ #Venezuela #Caracas #Venezuela #Maduro #NicolasMaduro #Elections #VZElection #HugoChavez #PSUV #Chavista #EdmundoGonzalez #Mali #DiakaridiaDiakita #GreenParty #Kenya #IMF #WorldBank #Kenya #BookerOmole #HastaLaVictoriaSiempre

The island country has had a woeful bout with liberalization in its policies. Liberalization entails reduced governmental economic regulation and a higher influence of private companies and foreign entities on the economy of Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka was the first country in South Asia to have universal suffrage and it was also the first country to attempt economic liberalization. Liberalization was seen as the pathway towards nation building as attempts were made to replicate the successes of countries like Singapore, an open economy removed from state intervention.

In this process of liberalization, the country opened its doors to the International Monetary Fund first in 1965; the enacting of the IMF intervention would come into effect in 1988 as a structural adjustment. Liberalization of this country took place during the Civil War which started in 1983, initiated by violent pogroms of the minority Tamil population inhabiting the northern Provinces of Jaffna, Killinochchi, Mannar, etc. by the larger Sinhalese majority. The Civil War would come to an end in 2009 and by this time Sri Lanka had accepted 15 IMF loans.

In 2008, with the global financial crisis, there was an impetus to invest in emerging markets like Sri Lanka, which brought foreign finance capital into the country. After an initial boom in the economy, with the country’s GDP rising to 8%, the bubble of growth burst and led to economic slowdown. By 2016, Sri Lanka went for another IMF loan, its 16th and final one to date. This got the snowball rolling and ultimately culminated into the situation we see today of perpetual debt-entrapment and economic collapse.

The COVID-19 pandemic which took hold of the entire globe had a terrible effect, particularly in the countries like Sri Lanka. Major disruptions came to the informal sector. The tourism industry, which is the center of the main foreign earnings, came to a standstill; exports of cash crops like tea, rubber and coconut came to a halt, and a bulk of remittances from migrant workers slowed down as well. This was compounded with the poor planning of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government, which initiated tax cuts for the tourism industry and other corporations at the beginning of the pandemic, benefitting a small segment of the population while the large portions of the working people in the country suffered heavily.

The neoliberal policies affected the agrarian sector as well, since state investment into agriculture decreased, leading to foreign dependency on imports and reducing self-sufficiency. During the pandemic and the emerging food crisis, people left the urban areas and moved back to the villages to cultivate fallow land and subsist. The economic failure in this sector came when the Rajapaksa government announced the banning chemical fertilizer subsidies, leading to crop failure. This, along with reduced foreign exchange, led to lower imports and ultimately food shortages.

In the midst of this crisis, the JVP (Janata Vimukthi Perumana) the largest communist party of Sri Lanka, has emerged as the face of these massive protests across the country, the largest in the country’s history, demanding that the Rajapaksa government listen to the people’s demands.

On April 17 the JVP announced a three-day protest and people’s march. People from all walks of life participated in these protests. These massive protests have also seen repression from the side of the government: military personnel and police have jailed, arrested and injured many. A curfew and shoot-on-sight order has been established by the government as well. Despite the unrest, the people’s demands will not be quelled by the violence from the Rajapaksa government.

#SriLanka #Asia #IMF

The International League of People’s Struggle (ILPS) – Asia Pacific strongly condemns the ongoing repression of the people’s legitimate right to assemble and protest by the Indonesian government and police against people’s organizations who are now in Bali, Indonesia for the People’s Global Conference against the IMF-WB meeting.

The cancellation of the permit to hold the PGC – for the second time – that is, for sure, due to pressure by the authorities is a blatant repressive action. Moreover, the overkill presence of police and civilian agents in hotels where international activists are staying, text blasts warning people of the PGC, and harassments against activists are clear intimidation moves to stop any show of resistance to the ongoing meeting of the IMF-WB.

The people have a right to protest.

As an instrument of imperialists, chiefly the United States, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have, for decades, imposed policies to many underdeveloped countries that kept their economies poor and tied to imperialist interests. The IMF-WB have been twin international finance institutions that championed neoliberalism to enable imperialists to plunder countries, corner resources, and feed superprofits to multinational and transnational companies.

The current meeting of the IMF-WB in Bali will not depart from such path and instead, will intensify profit-making of imperialists and giant businesses in the name of their brand of development that tramples on rights and even cost people’s lives.

The repressive moves by the Indonesian authorities to stifle protest and exposition of the IMF-WB’s true agenda shows its allegiance to imperialists and neoliberal economics. It is not the interest of the Indonesian people or the poor people of the world that they are upholding.

ILPS – Asia Pacific joins the clamor of hundreds of people’s organizations to let the People’s Global Conference be held, allow for the legitimate protests to be conducted, and let the people speak of the tragedies that IMF-WB policies have heaped upon them.

Defend people’s rights! Shut down IMF-WB! Down with imperialism! Long live international solidarity!

#Indonesia #Bali #PeoplesStruggles #IMF #WorldBank #ILPS

The US government has again launched a massive bombing campaign against a sovereign country. Today as we gather here, hundreds of bombs and missiles are raining down on the people of Yugoslavia.

The US government portrays this as a humanitarian gesture on behalf of the Albanian population of Kosovo. This is a lie that is used to justify this bombing campaign and which serves to conceal the real issues behind US intervention.

Yugoslavia, like Iraq, is in a region of strategic interest to the Pentagon and large corporations that want to dominate it. The US attack on Yugoslavia is motivated by the same lust for super profits that has driven Washington to war in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq and to carry out more than 200 other military interventions around the world.

Is it really possible that the Pentagon is motivated by humanitarian concerns? Wasn't it just three weeks ago that Clinton, when in Guatemala, had to admit that the US government was involved in the war against the Guatemalan people that killed over 200,000 people?

Now, just what interests are in Yugoslavia? First, it is rich in minerals and ore deposits, major oil companies are looking for oil. The big oil companies see it as a possible gateway for pipelines to transport oil from newly-discovered Caspian Sea oil fields into Europe for export. This is really what is being fought out today in Yugoslavia.

The big economic powers represented by NATO are competing with each other over who can control and dominate not just the resources of Yugoslavia and its key trade routes, but this is also a competition for influence through Eastern Europe and the other states once in the USSR.

Washington today is working hand in hand with the other powers in NATO, but at the same time these governments have competing interests. Clinton's mad dash to plant both feet in Yugoslavia before the other big powers can maneuver their way in, may explain why he has moved so fast with so little support.

The people of the Balkans must be free to decide their own destiny. In fact, 400 years of ethnic conflict in the Balkans is not what stands behind the current crisis, but rather the intervention of outside powers.

Beginning in the 1980s, the IMF and Western powers intervened in Yugoslavia in a way that maximized tensions within the federal republic system. By the mid 1980s Yugoslavia was burdened with enormous debt, and the IMF ordered austerity measures that lead each of the constituent parts of Yugoslavia to look for an independent way out of the morass.

The IMF ordered the Yugoslav central government to stop making transfer payments to the separate republics and pay money on the debt. The glue that held together the federation came apart.

Western countries then recognized the internal borders of Yugoslavia as so-called “international borders,” despite the fact that they represented internal gerrymandered borders to maintain internal political equilibrium, not historically separate borders. The fuse was lit.

It is the height of hypocrisy for the US today to feign horrified outrage over events in Kosovo, when in 1995, the US, as the New York Times reported recently, “looked the other way” when the Croatian government drove 200,000 Serbs living in the Krajina region of Croatia out of their homes. Why? Because the “ethnic cleansing” of those people fit into US strategic policy at the time.

US-led NATO intervention today intends to complete the destruction of Yugoslavia and complete the transformation of the region into a series of weak mini-states that are nothing more than protectorates and pieces on the chess board of big power politics.

None of this is in the interests of the vast majority of the people of the US or Yugoslavia or anywhere else in the world. The people of Yugoslavia must be left alone to determine their own future.

#MinneapolisMN #Yugoslavia #IMF #Statement #NATO #Europe

Join tens of thousands in Washington DC on Saturday, September 29 to say:

• No to Plan Colombia
• No to the FTAA (Free Trade Area of the Americas)
• U.S. Bases out of Vieques and all of Latin America & the Caribbean
• Close the School of the Americas / WHISC
• Stop the Direct Assault Against People of Color and the Poor in the Americas through the Phony War on Drugs

The U.S. government is continuing its legacy of intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean by imposing pro-corporate, anti-people economic policies, by providing military aid and training to repressive governments, and attempting to crush any movements that support alternative models. We must stop these policies and stand in solidarity with our sisters and brothers throughout the Americas. They are at the forefront of opposition to these policies, and are creating alternatives that place human need above corporate greed.

The U.S. government is using its armed forces to push through economic policies that only serve to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. This war system works hand in hand with the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). The U.S. government is using the production of narcotics in the southern part of the American continent as an excuse to militarize the Americas. There are currently military bases in Cuba, Ecuador, and Puerto Rico and a strong military presence in Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Peru.

Current U.S. policy towards Colombia is a failed policy which is inflaming a violent conflict and contributing to increased human rights abuses. We call for an end to all military aid to Colombia and for an end to U.S. funding of fumigation in Colombia and the Andean region. We recognize that U.S.-funded fumigation of coca crops is destroying critical biodiversity throughout the Amazon region and is creating health and food security crises among the local populations. At the same time – with the excuses of the “drug war”, and “illegal” immigration – the U.S. has militarized its border with Mexico. It is also increasingly militarizing the police forces in urban and rural areas and is brutalizing the people of color who live there. We know that all this repression has the same root and the same purpose: to maintain U.S. economic control, and to concentrate wealth in even fewer hands.

Challenges to this anti-people model – especially those rising from democratic processes and civil society – are a tremendous threat to U.S. control in the region. We support the peaceful resolution of differences in our personal lives, in our communities, in our nation and in the world. We condemn the actions of the United States government that increase economic and social inequality, undermine democratic institutions, and fund police and military violence.

We uphold the right to self-determination and national sovereignty. The nations and peoples of the hemisphere have the right to pursue self-government free of external military and economic pressures.

We who live in the United States must realize the responsibility of the U.S. government in creating and maintaining inequality in the Americas. We must work to end all U.S. military aid and training to the region, to stop the blockade of Cuba, to end the continued colonial exploitation of Puerto Rico and its use as a giant military base from which invasions to other countries are rehearsed. We must say no to the U.S. viewing and using other countries as their backyard.

We propose alternatives to the pro-company, anti-people economic model – alternatives that overcome repressive structures in our own countries, as well as the existence of the same structures elsewhere. We propose alternatives that include real community building, fair economics, and self-determination. Therefore, we oppose the so-called “war on drugs”, Presidential fast track authority in trade negotiations, and NAFTA- style Free Trade Agreements between the U.S. and the other countries of the Americas.

We call on people of conscience around the world to join us on September 29 in our protest against U.S. military and economic intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean. We are organizing a massive protest in Washington D.C. as part of the week of action against the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. We call for people to organize local demonstrations on the same day. We are also coordinating with movements throughout Latin America and the Caribbean to make this an International Day of Action Against U.S. Military and Economic Intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Signed:

• Nicaragua Network
• CISPES(Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador)
• NISGUA(Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala)
• Colombia Action Network
• Witness for Peace
• Latinos and Latinas for Social Change
• Chicago Nicaragua Solidarity Committee
• Guatemala Human Rights Commission – USA
• Rights Action

Stop U.S. Intervention in Colombia

The Colombia Action Network (CAN) is a national network of local activist groups fighting to stop U.S. intervention in Colombia and supporting progressive forces working for social justice within Colombia. We encourage everyone to use our activist resources and take up our campaigns. Resources, background info and up-to-date information is available on our website. Get in touch with us!

Colombia Action Network

www.actioncolombia.org

actioncolombia@hotmail.com

612-872-0944

#WashingtonDC #AntiwarMovement #Colombia #Cuba #ElSalvador #Honduras #Americas #Bolivia #IMF #Statement #FTAA #freeTrade #PlanColombia #WorldBank #InternationalBank #SchoolOfTheAmericas

Today, Argentina's economy is in a deep depression, a legacy of the last ten years of free market economic policies. One third of Argentina's workers are without jobs and prices have gone up 37% since the beginning of the year. Many of the unemployed are trying to make ends meet through peddling, barter, scavenging at garbage dumps or crime. But, at more than a hundred companies, workers have seized the business when it tried to close down or when it stopped paying wages. While these new collectives employ only 2% of workers with jobs in Argentina, they are growing rapidly as thousands of businesses declare bankruptcy or simply close down.

Crisis Spreads to Brazil and Uruguay

During the 1990's, Argentina was the poster child for the free-market economic policies of the United States and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

However, the Argentine government's policies of privatization, free trade, and fixing the value of the peso at one U.S. dollar led to foreign takeovers of banks and businesses, a flood of imports and massive debts. After four years of recession, last December, Argentina's government had to default on its debts, devalue the peso and freeze bank accounts. Since then, the peso has lost almost three quarters of its value.

The crisis in Argentina has spread to Uruguay, with which it shares a border. The Uruguayan peso has lost half its value this year, unemployment has risen to more than 15% and inflation is almost 40%. In August, the Uruguayan government followed Argentina by shutting down the nation's banks to stop depositors from pulling their money out. While the government was able to reopen the banks after getting more loans from the United States and the IMF, it is planning severe cutbacks in healthcare and other government services to try to pay down the ever-mounting debt.

But what worries Wall Street the most is that the economic crisis is spreading to Brazil. Big U.S. banks have loaned more than $25 billion to Brazilian businesses and governments. Worried that the growing crisis will force Brazil to default on these loans, the United States is backing a $30 billion loan by the IMF to Brazil. Another purpose of the loan is to force the next president of Brazil to follow U.S. and IMF economic policies. They want Brazil to keep interest rates high to attract more foreign capital, and to cut government spending and raise taxes to pay back foreign loans. But it is these policies of high interest rates and government austerity that contributed to the crisis in the first place!

When a recession hit the United States last year, the U.S. government cut interest rates, increased spending and cut taxes in an attempt to bolster the economy. But today, the IMF is telling Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay to do the opposite – while short-term interest rates are 1.75% here in the U.S., they are 17.5% in Brazil. In fact, if the IMF imposed the same conditions on the U.S. that it the IMF is imposing on Brazil, the U.S. government would have cut spending and hike taxes by about $250 billion! How would we in the U.S. feel if the IMF imposed these conditions on the United States, leading to cuts in government services, higher taxes, growing unemployment and the bankruptcy of many small and medium-sized businesses? Taking more loans from the IMF just pushes a country further into debt. And when Argentina mentioned the possibility of not repaying the IMF, the IMF threatened to cut off international humanitarian aid to the country.

The people of Uruguay and Brazil are rejecting these free market policies, along with the resulting economic turmoil and government austerity. In Uruguay, workers and opposition parties are organizing strikes and other mass protests. In Brazil, much of the attention is focused on the presidential elections, where the front-runner is the Workers Party candidate da Silva. While da Silva has a strong record as a trade-union leader and as an opponent of Brazil's past military government, he is also trying to win over Wall Street and the Brazilian business community. Da Silva chose a conservative vice-presidential running mate and says that he may continue much of the current government policies of privatization, limiting government spending and high interest rates. Thus, no matter who wins the election in October, the struggle of the Brazilian people is bound to continue.

Underlying the growing economic instability in Latin America is a crisis of overproduction on a world scale. In the hopes of getting the lion's share of profits, big corporations expanded their capacity to produce goods and services. But there is a problem – people do not have the money to buy what they have produced. The result is layoffs and poverty. The economic and political life of Latin America is dominated by the United States – across the continent, a vast people's movement is coming into being to challenge this domination and the crisis it brings with it.

#SanJoseCA #Analysis #Americas #capitalistCrisis #interestRates #IMF #daSilva #worldwideEconomicCrisis