The presidential election victory of Hugo Chavez is a vital component in the continuation of the Bolivarian revolution, which has now been under way for 13 years.A defeat would have resulted in a massive attack on the working class of Venezuela.

Last month occurred the ninth anniversary of the coup against President Hugo Chavez. This event was a major turning point in the Bolivarian revolution that began with the election of Hugo Chavez to the presidency in 1998. Within 48 hours of the coup, people’s power was able to mobilise and, in alliance with sections of the army, to force the reinstatement of Chavez.

Brigade dates: April 25-May 4, 2011
Registration deadline: February 28, 2011

John Cleary was an active member of the Builders Labourers Federation in the 1970s before becoming an electrician, delegate and member of the Electrical Trades Union. He was an ETU organiser for 12 years until 2001. Since then he has been active in solidarity with Venezuela and Colombia, including organising and participating in seven solidarity brigades to Venezuela.

“It is very clear: Venezuela said no to Cuban-like communism”, declared Maria Corina Machado, the main spokesperson for Venezuela’s opposition Democratic Unity Alliance (MUD), shortly after the September 26 nation-wide elections to the country’s 165-seat national parliament.

Binghamton, New York State – The following is an abridged version of an article first published on August 8 (on James Petras’ website). Since then, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and newly-inaugurated right-wing Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos have restored diplomatic relations between their two countries.

On September 26 the people of Venezuela will again head to the polls, to vote for the 165-member National Assembly.

Caracas – A revealing report published in May 2010 by the FRIDE Institute, a Spanish think tank, prepared with funding from the World Movement for Democracy (a project of the US-based National Endowment for Democracy, NED), has disclosed that international agencies are funding the Venezuelan opposition with a whopping US$40-50 million annually.

In the midst of the highest inflation in seven years, on May 7 Venezuela’s revolutionary working people’s government escalated a campaign against price and currency speculators. President Hugo Chavez declared that his government would create an “export-import corporation to take over middle-class management of the people’s resources”.

On April 13, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stood before hundreds of thousands of supporters on Bolivar Avenue in Caracas and declared that this date would be commemorated each year as the “Day of the Bolivarian National Militia, the People in Arms and the April Revolution”.

On March 11 a Reuters article headlined “Venezuela Murder-rate Quadrupled Under Chavez: NGO” was carried by major corporate media outfits including Yahoo!7 News, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Before representatives of the grassroots communal councils from across Venezuela assembled in Ezequiel Zamora Park in the capital Caracas, President Hugo Chavez enacted the Organic Law on the Federal Government Council on February 20, which he said will “further open the door to advancing in the distribution of power in the hands of the people, and to achieving a more efficient and

Amsterdam – There is growing tension between Venezuela and the Netherlands over the US use of airfields on the Dutch Caribbean islands Curacao and Aruba for aggression against Venezuela. These small islands, some 80km off the Venezuelan coast, are part of the Caribbean segment of the former Dutch colonial empire and still part of the Netherlands.

Inside the revolution: a journey into the heart of Venezuela
Directed by Pablo Navarrete
65 minutes
Alborado Films 2009
Available at http://alborada.net/

“How much longer are we going to allow transnational companies to come here to speculate with our prices?” asked Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on January 17, announcing the expropriation of the large Exitos department store chain–three-quarters owned by the French company Casino Guichard Perrachon, with a minority share owned by the Colombian company Exito SA – on his weekly TV

During an International Meeting of Left-wing Political Parties, attended by members of 55 political organisations from 31 countries held in Caracas on November 19-21, 2009, Hugo Chavez, the central leader of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and president of the country’s revolutionary working people’s government, proposed the formation of a new, fifth international as

The Real Venezuela: Making Socialism in the 21st Century
By Iain Bruce
Pluto Books (2008), 240 pages (pb), $52

“Don’t make the mistake, President Obama, of ordering an overt aggression against Venezuela utilising Colombia … We are ready for anything, and Venezuela will never, never be a Yankee colony again”, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stated on November 8, in the wake of the Obama administration’s signing on October 30 of a 10-year accord with Colombia for a joint military build-up.

“We are destroying our planet. We need to realise that and we need to act”, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez told the 64th General Assembly of the United Nations in his September 24 speech. “The effects of this climate change are now visible … These are scientific facts. There are … studies by NASA [showing] a 0.8 degree increase in temperature in the last 30 years.

On September 23, Venezuelan revolutionary socialist youth leader Heryck Rangel spoke via telephone to Direct Action. In August, Rangel made a speaking tour of Australia at the invitation of the Revolutionary Socialist Party and the university-based Cuba-Venezuela Solidarity Clubs.

“We do not want war, we hate it. But we must prepare for it”, explained Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez on August 16 in response to plans to increase numbers of US bases around his country, which has confirmed the continuation of US threats of aggression from the Bush to the Obama administrations.

Members of the Venezuelan parliament passed the Organic Education Law on August 14.

The corporate media’s recent focus on the global economic crisis has all but eclipsed a much greater crisis – global climate change and the general destruction of the world’s environment. But if the environment “goes bust”, the implications for humanity and millions of plant and animal species are well known and horrifying.

The revolutionary socialist government of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on July 9 proposed a reform to democratise the media and stop the corporate media endlessly campaigning to violently overthrow the elected government.

Some revolutionary socialists remain convinced that no revolution has taken place and that the government of President Hugo Chavez is substituting ‘socialism from above’ in place of grassroots working-class struggle.