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2012    

 

Some of the more popular pages

Venezuela

After Venezuela’s elections: defeat for the right, challenges for the left

At the beginning of October, much of the world’s media descended on Caracas hoping to report on the end of an authoritarian regime. “Too close to call” was the refrain on almost every network. Market analysts at places like Barclay’s Capital urged investors to pile into Venezuelan debt on the assumption of an opposition victory. Months earlier Robert Zoellick, then still head of the World Bank, revelled in the certainty that Chavez’ days were numbered. Better still, Chavez’ defeat would put a stop to Venezuela’s subsidies to Cuba and Nicaragua and spell the end for those ’regimes’ too, bringing “an opportunity to make the Western Hemisphere the first democratic hemisphere”. When those pictures came out a week before the poll, of tens of thousands at the final opposition rally, it seemed they might be right. Many of us had forgotten that the Venezuelan opposition turned out dozens of equally massive rallies and marches back in 2002 to 2004. Even among left activists there were more and more of us mumbling about whether there was really much to save in the Bolivarian revolution.

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China

Bureaucratic capitalist?

Terry Conway interviewed Au Loong Yu, the author of the forthcoming book China’s Rise Strength and Fragility (Resistance Books, IIRE, Merlin Press) for Socialist Resistance

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Russia

A balance sheet of the December movement

On the occasion of the elections to the State Duma on December 4, thanks to Internet and with information provided by thousands of voluntary observers, Russian society has been able to take the measure of the massive vote-rigging to the advantage of the party led by Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev, United Russia. The protest meeting organized on December 5 was the starting point for a movement of protest against the present political system, a movement which is still accelerating. On December 10, massive mobilizations “For honest elections” organized by opposition groups coming from different political tendencies took place in Moscow and in almost all the big cities of Russia.

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