USA-CIA-NED principal financiers of destabilization in Venezuela

Destabilization campaign continues in Venezuela

by Asad Ismi
JUNE 1, 2014

Since February, continuing protests, many of them violent, against the socialist government of President Nicolás Maduro have claimed more than 40 lives in Venezuela and injured more than 800 people. Most were victims of opposition supporters who have also set fire to universities, public buildings and bus stations – even the buses themselves have been burned. The scale of the protests has decreased since the start of April when the government and opposition leaders held talks to end the conflict. Much of the unrest had until then taken place in richer neighbourhoods, led by students attending private schools. But recently demonstrations have been restricted to opposition strongholds, such as Táchira state on the Colombian border. The protesters cite high inflation, and shortages of food and other goods as the source of their frustration. The latter is almost certainly the result of hording by opposition-owned and controlled distribution chains.

The demonstrations have been carried out by right wing political parties opposed to the Maduro government’s progressive program. Backing these parties, and several of the NGOs organizing protests, is the United States, which has been trying to overthrow the Venezuelan government since 2002 – the year former President Hugo Chavez, now deceased, was briefly removed in a CIA-orchestrated military coup. Since 1998, Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution has significantly redistributed wealth from the rich to the poor majority in Venezuela, bringing them free medical care and education, as well as subsidized food and housing, land reform and grassroots participatory democracy in the form of communal councils.


On the continental level, Chavez was the most prominent leader of the Latin American Revolution, or Pink Tide, which integrated and united left-leaning countries economically and politically, and substantially weakened U.S. influence in the region. For example, the former Venezuelan leader helped create several new Pan-American political, economic and development agencies, including the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA), Bank of the South (Banco del sur), Telesur (Television network of the South) and PetroSur, a co-operative energy venture between several Latin American states. The idea behind all of these is to develop an entirely new socialist-oriented continental economy, one that does not function according to capitalist market rules but rather responds to the development needs of the Latin American people.

Such revolutionary domestic and regional policies have incurred the wrath of Washington and the Venezuelan elite, which has lost 18 out of 19 elections since the very popular Chavez first took office. The Venezuelan electoral process under Chavez and Maduro has been called “the best in the world” by ex-U.S. President Jimmy Carter after observing the 2013 presidential elections. Chavez’s death that year transferred his popularity to Maduro, his chosen successor, who continues to win elections, compelling the opposition to resort once again to widespread violence to try to overthrow the government. At stake for the U.S. is control of Venezuela’s enormous mineral wealth. The country is estimated to have the world’s largest oil reserves.
President Maduro calls the protests “the revolt of the rich.” Asked by a Guardian U.K. reporter in April whether his government should accept responsibility for some of the killings, he proposed that 95 per cent of protest-related deaths were the fault of “right wing extremist groups” at the barricades. Maduro mentioned three motorcyclists who were beheaded by a wire strung across the road by protesters. In the same exclusive Guardian interview, Maduro, a former bus driver and unionist, emphasized the considerable increases in social services and reduction in inequality over the last 15 years.

“When I was a union leader there wasn’t a single programme to protect the education, health, housing and salaries of the workers,” he said. “It was the reign of savage capitalism. Today in Venezuela, the working class is in power: it’s the country where the rich protest and the poor celebrate their social well-being.”

Now Venezuela is facing an “unconventional war that the U.S. has perfected over the last decades” in a string of coups spanning from Brazil in the 1960s to Honduras very recently, continued Maduro. He told the Guardian that Venezuela’s opposition aims at “paralyzing the main cities of the country, copying badly what happened in Kiev, where the main roads in the cities were blocked off, until they made governability impossible, which led to the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine.


“They try to increase economic problems through an economic war to cut the supplies of basic goods and boost an artificial inflation…to create social discontent and violence, to portray a country in flames, which could lead them to justify international isolation and even foreign intervention,” he said.

Such tactics mirror those used by the CIA in Chile in 1973 to overthrow the elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. At the time, U.S. President Richard Nixon specifically instructed the CIA to make the Chilean economy “scream.” When this was not enough to unseat Allende, the Chilean military stepped in to finish the job. This option is not open to the U.S. in Venezuela where the military showed its loyalty in 2002 by returning Chavez to power. Washington is reduced to funding an ineffectual and violent political opposition that can neither win elections nor sustain large-scale demonstrations.

On April 23, Eva Golinger, an award-winning Venezuelan journalist and author of The Chavez Code, wrote on her Postcards from the Revolution blog:

Anti-government protests in Venezuela that seek regime change have been led by several individuals and organizations with close ties to the U.S. government. Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado, two of the public leaders behind the violent protests, have long histories as collaborators, grantees and agents of Washington. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have channelled multi-million dollar funding to Lopez’s political parties Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, and Machado’s non-government organization (NGO) Sumate and her electoral campaigns.

Golinger described the NED as a foundation created by the U.S. Congress in 1983 “to essentially do the CIA’s work overtly.” The NED has been “one of the principal financiers of destabilization in Venezuela” throughout the Chavez and Maduro administrations, she said.

The NED and USAID have given more than $14 million to opposition groups in Venezuela in the past year, including funding for political campaigns in 2013 and the current protests. Since 2001, the U.S. government has given anti-Chavez and anti-Maduro groups more than $100 million to undermine and overthrow both progressive governments, including financing the 2002 coup, added Golinger. All this despite the fact the Venezuelan National Assembly passed the Law of Political Sovereignty and National Self-Determination in 2010, which is supposed to ban foreign funding of political groups in the country.

Golinger explained that the NED directly violated this law by funding the opposition coalition Democratic Unity Table (MUD) through the U.S. International Republican Institute (IRI), with $100,000 going to share lessons learned with anti-government groups
in Nicaragua, Argentina and Bolivia, and “allow for the adaption of the Venezuelan experience in these countries.” (The reference to the IRI project has been removed from the NED website but is still accessible as a cached page.)

Between 2013 and 2014, NED funds were also given to media groups that “run the campaign to discredit the government of President Maduro,” wrote Golinger. “Throughout the past year, an unprecedented media war has been waged against the Venezuelan government and President Maduro directly, which has intensified during the past few months of protests.”

This media war has been fanned by the Western mainstream press, which has re-broadcast images from Twitter that were actually from Egypt and Syria while claiming these came from Venezuela. The mainstream media has also shown Venezuelan state security forces that were disbanded two years ago. But unbiased accounts can be found. On April 8, reporting from Caracas, Guardian U.K. editor and columnist Seumas Milne wrote:

What are portrayed as peaceful protests have all the hallmarks of an anti-democratic rebellion, shot through with class privilege and racism. Overwhelmingly middle class and confined to wealthy white areas, the protests have now shrunk to firebombings and ritual fights with the police, while parts of the opposition have agreed to peace talks.

Milne said it is “hardly surprising” that President Maduro compares the situation in his country to Ukraine, where there is also evidence of U.S.- backed destabilization (see my article in the April 2014 Monitor). “The U.S. claim that this is an unfounded ‘excuse’ is absurd,” he wrote. “Evidence for the U.S. subversion of Venezuela—from the 2002 coup through WikiLeaks-revealed cables outlining U.S. plans to ‘penetrate’, ‘isolate’ and ‘divide’ the Venezuelan government, to continuing large-scale funding of opposition groups—is voluminous.”
Right-wing demonstration,Venezuela
Right-wing demonstration,Toronto

“We are witnessing in Venezuela the attempt by the undemocratic opposition to get by force what they could not attain through the ballot box: their hands on the government and control of the petroleum revenues,” said Venezuelan-Canadian sociologist Dr. María Páez Victor in an interview. “The revolution is not in the street protest, it is with the revolutionary Bolivarian Government that still has the solid support of its people and its loyal armed forces. It is here to stay – it is the oligarchs and the United States and Canada that have turned their backs on democracy and history.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Canadian government has enthusiastically joined the U.S. in being hostile to Maduro, blaming him for the protests and, in March, suspending Air Canada’s flights to Venezuela. Machado, one of the two main opposition leaders in Venezuela, who has refused to negotiate with President Maduro and has incited violence in Venezuela during the protests, visited Canada in May. As reported by The Media Co-Op, she spoke to about 60 “staunch opposition supporters” at an event in Toronto organized by the Canadian Council for the Americas, which took place at the offices of law firm Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP. Machado was also granted a private meeting in Ottawa with John Baird, Canada’s minister of foreign affairs.

“It is utterly shocking that this terrorist … is being received by the foreign minister of Canada,” commented Dr. Páez Victor.
Asad Ismi is the CCPA Monitor’s international affairs correspondent.

https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/latin-american-revolution-part-xxiii

Change the economic system, not the climate

Venezuela, capitalism and climate change
by Caleb Maupin - An opinion piece -

The problem of global climate change is distressing almost everyone. While a small minority may deny its existence, or question reports on its causes among the scientific community, it is universally recognized as a serious cause for concern.

The super-hurricanes over the last decade are closely linked to rising temperatures of sea water, and this is just a small taste of what may lie ahead. Something must be done, the question is what?

The responses of governments around the world to the environmental crisis, and its catastrophic weather events, have varied. Various treaties have been signed. Various international conferences have been convened to discuss the issue. A great deal of research has been conducted, and many different plans for changing the relationship of humans to the ecosystem have been proposed.

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela has just announced its plan to fight climate change.
Claudia Salerno, Vice Minister for North America at the Venezuelan Mission to the United Nations, explained her country's proposals fight climate change at a special meeting with the press May 30. She summed up the plan saying: "Venezuela's contribution is to change the system, not the climate."

As Salerno laid out the details of the plan, it became clear that the Venezuelan government is aware of what so many environmentalists in the United States cannot bring themselves to say. The failure of governments around the world to address the unfolding ecological crisis is caused by one thing: profits. The changes that desperately must be made to human civilization to stop the climate crisis all cut into the ability of billionaires to make money. They require that restrictions and regulations be implemented. "Our economies are damaging the environment," Salerno declared.



What Venezuela protects the environment
Salerno talked of how the Bolivarian constitution protects the environment. Though Venezuela produces a great deal of oil, 70 percent of the country’s energy is hydroelectric. Venezuela invests $500 million per year into alternative energy. Already, the Bolivarian government has replaced 155 million inefficient light bulbs with newly developed eco-friendly ones. A program to replace other household appliances with more eco-friendly ones is in the works.

A total of 58 million hectares of forest in Venezuela are protected, and a mass program of reforestation is being carried out. The Venezuelan government has created a massive public transit system, and is the in process of expanding it. Plans specifically include connecting the countryside with the cities, and breaking down the division between the rural and urban parts of the country. Public transportation is much cleaner, much more efficient, and much better for the global environment.

To fight climate change must be "beyond the government
A mass movement of public awareness must be created. The Venezuelan plan to fight climate change, as articulated by Salerno, includes expanding participatory democracy, and involving everyday Venezuelans in actively changing the economy and the culture. They include providing more free education, because "When you educate people, they pollute less."

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is the product of massive struggles
Hugo Chavez began the process after being democratically elected, but almost immediately he faced an attempted coup by "opposition" forces aligned with the United States. After a mass uprising of everyday Venezuelans, and rank-and-file soldiers, the coup was pushed back and Chavez returned to power. Chavez built a mass movement of trade unions, community assemblies and others who backed his presidency and supported his policies. With a new constitution, Venezuela is now seizing the property of foreign capitalists, and promoting worker cooperatives. Chavez successor, Nicolas Maduro seeks to continue the "Bolivarian Process" begun by Chavez and the mass popular movement behind him. Their goal is the creation of a socialist society, and the debate goes on each day about how to reach this end.

The wealthy capitalists in Venezuela, and their allies in the United States and Britain, are seeking to overturn the Venezuelan government. US media demonizes Maduro and the United Socialist Party, calling them "dictators" despite their record of legitimately winning elections by large margins. The Venezuelan "opposition" has grown increasingly violent, burning buildings and rioting, all while being supported by the United States.



Venezuelan officials have stressed that these massive efforts are "not enough." They want to be part of a global conversation about creating a long-term plan to combat the climate crisis, and to ensure safety and security for future generations. Salerno called for a "revolution within the UN" to allow programs to be implemented on an international level. Venezuela hopes that a legally binding agreement can be established to fight climate change, and all states can be obligated to take certain measures.

If the economy continues to be structured as it currently is, under the command of a small group of western bankers on Wall Street, in London, and in Berlin and Frankfurt, things will not change. Venezuela, moving toward socialism with its "Bolivarian Process" is leading the world in fighting climate change. It has taken great measures within its own borders, and it hoping to pull other countries along the road of ecological security. It should be no surprise that such sweeping measures toward building a better future for the planet by restructuring the economy, come from a country that has broken out of Wall Street’s control.

Changing things from the bottom up
As China leads the world in green technology, and Cuba is being praised for its urban gardens and energy efficiency, why should anyone continue to think that Wall Street has the answer to the climate crisis? Commercials about "beyond petroleum" and marketing gimmicks about "organic" and "ecofriendly" products will not save us.



Salerno described the process in Venezuela as "changing things from the bottom up." Such changes are only possible with the overturning of the current economic set up, where billionaires lead us toward war, poverty and climate disaster.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Caleb Maupin is a political analyst who lives in New York City, and is an activist with the International Action Center and Workers World Party. He was part of the Occupy Wall Street movement

http://rt.com/op-edge/163316-venezuela-capitalism-climate-change-environment/

Is Venezuela a dictatorship?

Venezuela: Questions about Democracy and a Free Press
by James D. Cockcroft

First question: If Venezuela's government is a dictatorship, why have there been 18 elections in 15 years under the late president Hugo Chávez Frías (d. 2013) and his democratically elected successor Nicolás Maduro?

Why is it that according to many international observers Venezuela's democratic elections are, in the words of ex-president Jimmy Carter, "the best in the world"?

If the government violates constitutionally guaranteed freedom of the press, then why does it permit the 80% of the mass media controlled by wealthy capitalists to call for its violent overthrow? Why does it allow the same media to use photographs from other countries of police clubbing demonstrators in order to allege a "repression of peaceful protests" in Venezuela?

Why does the Maduro administration put up with the media's duplicitous claim that the protests of the mid-February to early May period of 2014 are carried out by a majority of Venezuela's students when only a tiny minority of the nation's 2.6 million university students take part -- their main leaders paid or coached by foreigners from the US Embassy, the US Agency for International Development (AID), and the U.S.-funded nongovernmental organization National Endowment for Democracy (NED)? Why is so little attention paid to the media's assertions that the demands of this minority of pro-private education Venezuelan students are the same as those of the far larger numbers of non-violent students calling for democracy and free universal public education in Chile, Mexico, or Quebec? Why do the media not report that, in early May 2014, students accounted for only 7% of the 180 persons still under arrest for acts of violence in Venezuela, many of the rest being paramilitaries, snipers (francotiradores), mercenaries, private military contractors, street thugs, and drug traffickers?

Why, above all, do the mass media describe the protests as nationwide, multi-racial, and multi-class, when in fact they take place in only 5% of the municipalities and in largely white, affluent neighborhoods? Why do they never report that Venezuela is not a white nation but a heavily mestizo one with a distinguished African and indigenous heritage? Could that possibly be a reason behind the political opposition's attacks on the dark-skinned Chávez and Maduro?

Why do the mass media champion the two leaders of the protests -- Leopoldo López and María Corina Machado -- and not report how they have repeatedly instructed their supporters to "forget elections" and "set the streets on fire" in order to drive Maduro from office? Why do they not report how in the mid-February to end-April period of 2014 the "democratic opposition" was responsible for 20,000 acts of violence, almost all the 41 deaths, and more than 500 wounded? Why are there no reports about how the government's opponents poisoned the city of Merida's water supply and burned or destroyed public health and dental clinics, election offices, university premises, government offices, metro stations, buses, automobiles, a daycare center, public schools, community radio and TV stations, state-funded low-cost markets, electrical installations, and forests?

Why don't the media point out that most of Venezuela's inflation and shortages -- of basic consumer goods -- are caused by the capitalists' hoarding and intentional reduction of production and by smuggling? Why don't they mention the following important news items?

• the economy's improvement in 2014
• the past year's increase in Venezuelans' consumption of goods
• a rapid loss of support for the opposition accompanied by a big increase in Maduro's popularity during the protests
• massive pro-government and pro-peace rallies like the May Day one of over a million people in Caracas
• discovery of huge arsenals of high-powered weapons in opposition strongholds
• new national police force community programs and prison reforms introduced to reduce crime
• The Armed Forces' declaration of support for the constitutional government and condemnation of the coup d'état attempt in late March 2014 by three Air Force generals.

NEWS FLASH #1:
The mass media of disinformation serve as political agents in ongoing attempts at reversing Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution. These attempts actually succeeded for 48 hours in 2002 when the leaders of a US-backed coup d'état removed all elected officials, killed or arrested countless revolutionary leaders, and took President Chávez prisoner. The main opposition leaders of 2014 took part in that earlier coup. (There is also a small, ineffective left-wing opposition.)

To be sure, the right-wing opposition is complex. López does not attend the Dialogue peace talks initiated by President Maduro, whereas the twice-defeated presidential candidate Henrique Capriles does. Nor does López accept the government's National Peace Plan, Commission of Truth, or new Human Rights Council, yet Capriles does. However, López and Capriles remain united on the ultimate goal: to topple the government and eradicate root and branch the Bolivarian Revolution.

NEWS FLASH #2: It's a revolution!
The majority of Venezuelans are carrying out a very original revolution, one that is peaceful, democratic, participatory, anti-imperialist, and internationalist. Theirs is an historic fight against neoliberalism and for peace and democracy. This revolutionary process is by no means perfect, but it is real, and that is why the government is so demonized by counterrevolutionary voices.

The Bolivarian Revolution is an extremely complex one. For example, there exist different tendencies inside the 7-million strong PSUV -- United Socialist Party of Venezuela. Moreover, some poor people and even some non-wealthy students oppose the government -- mainly because of its problems of corruption and bureaucratic inefficiencies which Presidents Chávez and now Maduro so often have acknowledged. But the Revolution's 15-year trajectory, however uneven (sometimes with two steps forward and one step backward), continues to be, on balance, a deepening one toward social and world peace; dialogue; correction of problems; self-criticism; more revolutionary measures to benefit the masses; and international solidarity.

Actually, the extension of this deepening trajectory is spelled out in amazing detail in Chávez's six-year "Plan de la Patria 2013-2019" (at blog.chavez.org.ve/programa-patria-venezuela-2013-2019, the Spanish original being much more reliable than inadequate online English translations).

The ninety-page Plan, which President Maduro has promised to carry out and is beginning to implement, was developed in consultation with Venezuela's social movements and even incorporated contributions from opposition sectors. The Plan's long-term goal is not to give capitalism a human face, but rather to replace capitalism with a participatory socialism specific to Venezuela, one based on the social movements, a communal state, and the nation's expanding 40,000 communal councils that, despite occasional failures, do for the most part decide democratically on social programs and implement "participatory budgets."

Envisioning not a centralized socialist state but a decentralized communal state (quite original this part), the six-year Plan lays out concrete steps to overcome corruption, bureaucratism, clientelism, and problems of economic production and distribution. It includes measures to meet the needs of small businesses and implement the rights of social minorities, as well as ways to reduce the problems and distortions caused by an economy based on oil rent. It calls for more workers' control and social movements' and poor peoples' participation. In addition, it discusses achieving an "eco-socialist culture"; world peace; and preservation of Mother Earth and humanity. It concludes emphatically on a note of social activism and open-mindedness "to continue walking the path of Socialism, under the maxim left us in Antonio Machado's poetry: Travelers, there is no path, paths are made by walking."

Ironically, the Bolivarian Revolution has benefited some of the bourgeoisie -- a few people even refer to a "Boliburguesía" (Bolivarian bourgeoisie, an oxymoron). Venezuela's big bourgeoisie still controls two thirds of the economy but it is politically weak in comparison with other social forces and economically weak in comparison with the powerful magnates of foreign capital upon whom it depends for its survival. It is a "vendepatria" bourgeoisie quite willing to kill -- the way Chile's and Argentina's and most of the Latin American and Caribbean bourgeoisies did in the 1970s and 1980s and Venezuela's did in those "dirty war" years too -- including the massacre of the massive uprising of the anti-neoliberal "Caracazo" in 1989, an uprising that Venezuela's revolutionaries see as a triggering event of the current Bolivarian Revolution.

The Bolivarian Revolution's ongoing reforms often violate capitalist norms, as in the introduction of controls over prices, profits, and costs of goods; the seizure of large landed estates and some key banks and corporations; the acceptance of takeovers of some workplaces by workers; the frequent hikes in the minimum wage; the use of oil revenues to benefit the masses; and the many laws and actions to improve health, education, social security and pensions, along with other measures to combat poverty, bourgeois privileges, and neo-liberalism's privatization schemes.

Key accomplishments of the Bolivarian revolutionary process to date include:

• a transformation of popular political culture -- people feel like they finally have a say
• the largest decline in poverty in Latin America, according to the World Bank
• Latin America's lowest social inequality index
• radical extensions and increases in the minimum wage and pensions, including for workers in the informal economy
• elimination of illiteracy and hunger (the UN's FAO has named its world hunger eradication campaign "Hugo Chávez")
• free public health care for all, with the assistance of 30,000 Cuban doctors who have treated 11 million people and against whom protesters in February and March of 2014 carried out 162 attacks, almost burning two of them alive
• free public education, with free computers for school children and many other students and with 1 of every 3 Venezuelans in a population of 30 million now enrolled from grade school through post-graduate university -- the fifth highest percentage in the world
• transformation of international relations and debates through actions building Latin American integration and economic relations based on human solidarity
• Venezuela is unique in that it has reached almost all the goals of the millennium.

News Flash #3: The US and Canada are backing a counterrevolution.
With an eye on the world's biggest oil reserves in Venezuela, US Secretary of State John Kerry has called Latin America "our backyard," apparently unaware of the "change of epoch" taking place just outside his back door. The US has funded Venezuela's rightist opposition with $14 million in the past year and $100 million in the last 8 years. US intervention in Venezuela includes the use of known terrorists from the Cuban mafia in Miami and Colombia's paramilitaries (while the US imprisoned the anti-terrorist Cuban Five for long terms --see www.thecuban5.org). The US continues to threaten Venezuela with economic sanctions.

Canada has followed the US lead, supporting the ultra-right, neo-fascist forces in Venezuela. Canada's 3 major political parties in Parliament voted a resolution for "peace" that held President Maduro responsible for the violence. Air Canada suspended flights to Venezuela. As Edward Snowden has revealed, Canada cooperates with the US National Security Agency (NSA) in electronic espionage to disrupt Venezuela and Cuba and monitor Canadian and US protesters. Canada's new ambassador to Venezuela, Ben Roswell, is an expert on digital communication who served previously in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Egypt.

The US and Canada are increasingly isolated in their claim that Venezuela is not a democracy. All the members of the Organization of American States (OAS), except for the US, Canada, and Panama, and all the members of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), have voted to defend Venezuela's existing democracy against foreign intervention and the attempts to break the constitutional order.

Final question: What can we in North America do?
We can intensify our campaign against US and Canadian intervention and ask the US and Canadian governments to stand publicly with Venezuela's people and their elected government and to express dismay at the repeated use of violence by some members of the Venezuelan opposition to obtain what was denied them at the ballot box.

We can build on the last fifteen years' international protests against the North's interventionism, including the tear-gassed marches at the presidential summit of the Americas in Quebec 2001 and Chávez's role there as a solitary presidential voice against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), as well as Chávez's and Fidel Castro's leading roles in the FTAA's defeat four years later and in the creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Spanish acronym CELAC) that excludes the US and Canada; Petrocaribe; UNASUR; and the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America - Peoples' Trade Treaty (Spanish acronym ALBA-TCP).

But acts of human solidarity and for peace -- domestically and internationally -- must be ones of critical, not unqualified, support; ones to build unity; and above all, ones to listen and learn from one another, or to paraphrase the poet Machado, paths are made by walking and talking together.
________________________________________
Jim Cockcroft, a frequent public speaker on Venezuela and Latin America, is an award-winning author of 50 books whose latest book for Monthly Review Press is Mexico's Revolution Then and Now. An Honorary Editor of Latin American Perspectives, he is also a poet, a member of various international tribunals of civil society, and a founder of the Collectif des mouvements sociaux québécois amis de la CELAC y de ALBA-TCP. This article is based on his talk at an educational on Venezuela and Ukraine conducted May 3, 2014, at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAMhttp://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/cockcroft310514.html