United Towards a Common Future
Indigenous Leaders Affirm their Priorities

By Fiona Meyer Cook  | Cuzco (Pérou) | 25 July 2006 | Alia2 | The struggle against neo liberalism, and towards self determination, were two of the key priorities named by indigenous leaders during the 1st Congress of the Andean Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations, which took place in the historic sanctuary of Cusco, July 15-17.

Can We Live Without Conventions?

By Leonardo Boff | Caracas (Venezuela) | 11 July 2006 | Alia2 | Philosopher Ludwig Wittgestein used to teach that our communication is nothing more than a great game of words. There is no direct relation between words and things. The words are arbitrarily invented. Their meaning is the result of conventions: everything depends on how we use them. And the conventions are established from arbitrary bases.

Step Back Renews Women’s Drive to Move Forward in Venezuela

By Humberto Márquez  | Caracas (Venezuela) | 3 July 2006 | Alia2 | A recent Supreme Court ruling that undermines the safety of domestic violence victims has galvanised activists in Venezuela, who vow to step up the fight against a scourge that the country’s advanced gender-equality laws have so far failed to eradicate.

Chavez Opens Venezuelan Film Studio to Counter Hollywood

By Pablo Navarrete | Caracas (Venezuela) | 3 July 2006 | Alia2 | Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez inaugurated a new film studio complex aimed at challenging what he called “Hollywood’s cultural dictatorship”.

Is Latin America Really Turning Left?

By James Petras | Caracas (Venezuela) | 24 June 2006 | Alia2 | A new series of social and national polarities in the WesternHemisphere has dominated political life over the past few years. Atthe beginning of the new millennium the national confrontation was between Cuba and the US/EU, and the social confrontations between therural/indian and urban/unemployed movements and a continent-widecollection of neo-liberal regimes.

Biodiversity and The Future of Life

By Leonardo Boff | La Forteresse (Brésil) | 12 April 2006 | Alia2 |

Bid to give AIDS drugs to poor nations lag

By Alexander G. Higgins | Caracas (Venezuela) | 4 April 2006 | Alia2 | The United Nations’ attempt to put 3 million HIV-infected people around the world on antiretroviral drugs by last year fell far short of its goal, but it saved hundreds of thousands of lives nonetheless, the U.N. health agency said Tuesday.

"Reflect circles" of adults cooperate to tackle development projects

Caracas (Venezuela) | 31 March 2006 | Alia2 | In the middle of this settlement on the southern edge of Johannesburg, a place where poverty and sickness often squeeze out hope and plans, a group of women sit in a circle, recording their goals for the year.

A New Ethics Needed to Save Life on Earth

By Mario Osava | Caracas (Venezuela) | 29 March 2006 | Alia2 | Affect, care, cooperation and responsibility are the four central principles of a new ethics that humanity urgently needs to adopt, in order to avoid becoming extinct as "a victim of itself," Leonardo Boff, one of the founders of liberation theology, said Thursday.

Venezuela’s Sexual Revolution Within the Revolution

By Maurice Farrell , Rachel Evans  | Caracas (Venezuela) | 29 March 2006 | Alia2 | At the January World Social Forum in Caracas, Green Left Weekly’s Rachel Evans and Maurice Farrell caught up with Ricardo Hung from the Alianza Lambda gay-rights organisation and Moises Rivera Lopez, the coordinator of the Sexual Riverside Network for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) community.

Chavez Slams Bush as “Coward, murderer”

By Jim McIlroy , Coral Wynter  | Caracas (Venezuela) | 29 March 2006 | Alia2 | Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez has rejected recent attacks by the US administration on his government, and slammed President George W. Bush as a “coward, murderer and responsible for genocide,” in an outspoken talk on his weekly TV program, Aló Presidente, on March 19.

Loads with transgenic products will have definitive identification in 2012.

By Maurício Thuswohl | La Forteresse (Brésil) | 24 March 2006 | Alia2 | If it is taken into account that since the first Meeting of the Parties of the Cartagena Protocol (MOP-1), held in 2004, that discussion was blocked due to the different positions among countries, the agreement reached at the MOP-3, that was held this week in Curitiba, represents a victory. Countries that at the beginning of the event defended the “might contain”, such as New Zealand, Colombia Peru and Paraguay were some of the few supporting the agreement.

A Night at the WSF: Speeches as Spectacle in Chavez’s Venezuela

By Alex Holland | Caracas (Venezuela) | 2 February 2006 | Alia2 | Venezuelans love a spectacle. They love watching one. They love creating one. Their fanatical passion for baseball is an example of this. The crowd, the stadium, and the audience in the street create a mass energy that has to be seen to be believed

A Loud, Multicoloured ’No’ to Imperialism and War

By Humberto Márquez  | Caracas (Venezuela) | 31 January 2006 | Alia2 | Although the sixth World Social Forum grants equal importance to all of the myriad workshops, seminars and other activities taking place this week in the Venezuelan capital and to all of the participating civil society groups and figures, that has not kept some personalities from standing out, like U.S. peace activist Cindy Sheehan, whose soldier son Casey was killed in Iraq.

Small and Earnest Alternative Social Forum in Venezuela

Caracas (Venezuela) | 31 January 2006 | Alia2 | An Alternative Social Forum, or ASF, set up in protest against the World Social Forum is quietly taking place in Caracas now. One of its organisers, Esteban Mejiaz said, “We have created a space outside the forum where a more critical debate about Venezuela can take place.”

WSF Talks Latin American Integration

By Alex Holland | Caracas (Venezuela) | 31 January 2006 | Alia2 | On Wednesday night one of the first Co-organised activities of the WSF took place with “New Paths of Latin American Integration” as its theme.

Creative Disintegration?

By Leonardo Boff | Caracas (Venezuela) | 26 January 2006 | Alia2 | I am neither a prophet, nor a prophet’s son. I am the son of an elementary school teacher and an illiterate mother. But as a theologian, I was taught to always consider history «sub specie aeternitatis», this is, from the perspective of eternity, as manifested in Scriptures that narrate the history of a people of reference, the Judeo-Christian people; and also under ethical criteria that aid or impede the creation of the human city.

The first phase of the World Social Forum (WSF)

Caracas (Venezuela) | 26 January 2006 | Alia2 | The first phase of the World Social Forum (WSF), which ended Monday in the Malian capital of Bamako, created a focus on "Afrocentric" issues that was missing in previous forums, said coordinator Mamadou Goita

Venezuela Launches Social Mission Aimed at Helping the Most Vulnerable

Caracas (Venezuela) | 18 January 2006 | Alia2 | Saturday, the Venezuelan government made good on its Christmas eve promise to launch a new social mission dedicated to empowering traditionally excluded groups, reports the Venezuelan government’s Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias.

Venezuela’s Coffee Conundrum

By Simone Baribeau | Caracas (Venezuela) | 18 January 2006 | Alia2 | A North American coming to Caracas is liable to think there’s a coffee shortage in the best of times. To those who are accustomed to a 12 oz. “tall” cup of joe being the smallest available size, the immensely popular Venezuelan cafecito, smaller than your average shot of tequila, seems an anomaly. But these coffees, which cost Bs 300—about 15 cents—are, for many Venezuelans of all income levels, a daily treat.

Venezuela’s Main Airport-Capital Artery Closed

By Gregory Wilpert  | Caracas (Venezuela) | 17 January 2006 | Alia2 | The main artery that carries traffic from Caracas to the country’s main airport and to one of the country’s main ports, La Guaira, had to be closed indefinitely today because one of the artery’s bridges could collapse. The closure of the freeway will increase the time it takes to get to the airport by at least one hour, using alternate routes through the mountains that separate Caracas from Venezuela’s northern coast.

Delegation of Prominent U.S. Progressive Leaders Visits Venezuela

By Gregory Wilpert  | Caracas (Venezuela) | 17 January 2006 | Alia2 | The singer, actor, and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte visited Venezuela this week, leading a delegation of 13 other prominent activists from the U.S. During their visit, the delegation toured the complex of cooperatives, known as the Endogenous Development Nucleus Fabricio Ojeda, visited with ministers, Venezuelan community leaders, opposition leaders, and Venezuela’s President Chavez.

Telesur is Constructing Another View

By Florencia Copley | Caracas (Venezuela) | 17 December 2005 | Alia2 | The initiative of Telesur Communications, born in the Bolivarian government of Hugo Chávez with the support of Cuba, Argentina and Uruguay, and the enthusiasm of the Latin American people, involves much more than a far-ranging television company. Telesur is working toward the construction of another view, its own view, a much-needed collective view.

Chavez Los Tiene Locos (Chavez Drives them Crazy):
A First-Hand Impression of the Venezuelan Opposition

By Alessandro Parma | Caracas (Venezuela) | 30 November 2005 | Alia2 | “Chavez is like Boves, he wants to kill everybody with a house and give everything they own to the thieving blacks!” said my landlady’s son, Ale, who was wide-eyed and leaning forward in his wicker chair. We sat on a large, plush balcony with a wide, open view of the Caracas nightline. The twinkling lights of a barrio made a great orange mass in the distant darkness behind him.

International Governance of Media and Communication: for people, for profit or for power?

By ean O’Siochru | Caracas (Venezuela) | 24 November 2005 | Alia2 | Governance of media and communication in society can be for people, for profit or for power. Depending on the nature of the governance, media and communication can be instruments.

Culture and Politics - A Tale of Two Venezuelan Suburbs

By Margarita Windisch | Caracas (Venezuela) | 24 November 2005 | Alia2 | Three months after the takeover of the local metropolitan police station by the poor community of 23 Enero, in the west of Caracas, the place is as busy as a beehive. The Coordinadora Simon Bolivar (CSB), a militant grassroots community organisation, has been instrumental in involving members of the barrio (neighbourhood) in transforming the derelict old police station into the pride and joy of the poor suburb.

America’s New Enemy

By John Pilger | Caracas (Venezuela) | 18 November 2005 | Alia2 | I was dropped at Paradiso, the last middle-class area before La Vega barrio, which spills into a ravine as if by the force of gravity. Storms were forecast and people were anxious, remembering the mudslides of 1999 that took 20,000 lives. "Why are you here?" asked the man sitting opposite me in the packed jeep-bus that chugged up the hill.

Author José Saramago joins with Greenpeace to save ancient forests

Caracas (Venezuela) | 18 November 2005 | Alia2 | Greenpeace commended the efforts of 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature winner, José Saramago, and several of his publishing houses today for joining the Greenpeace Book Campaign and printing the Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese, Italian, French and Catalan editions of his new novel on paper not sourced from ancient forest destruction.

Foot Soldiers Of The Venezuelan Revolution

By Kiraz Janicke  | Caracas (Venezuela) | 14 November 2005 | Alia2 | While young people are playing a leading role in many spheres of Venezuela’s Bolivarian revolution, particularly in the social missions, a myriad of political organisations exist among revolutionary youth, reflecting many different ideas and currents of thought.

Venezuela’s Path

By Michael Albert | Caracas (Venezuela) | 9 November 2005 | Alia2 | Going to Venezuela? There are beautiful waterfalls and mountains. There is rich surf, sand, and sun. But nowadays the biggest attraction is revolution.