Portside

Another challenge facing us is to be capable of explaining the difficulties that the country is facing to the people. There are those who think that it is not necessary to tell the people about the problems, because they might get depressed. I believe the opposite, our people are sufficiently intelligent to understand and to buckle up their belts when necessary,

Yet strangely missing from the narrative of the Venezuelan opposition’s peaceful march to victory over a cruel dictatorship was the small detail of the murder of a Venezuelan police officer by demonstrators Wednesday evening.

The factory, now controlled by the workers, can provide 20 percent of the national demand for hard-to-find personal hygiene products.

Petro-states are different from other countries because the fates of their governing institutions are so deeply woven into the boom-and-bust cycles of the international petroleum economy. Now, one thing is finally clear: the business model for these corporatized states is busted. The most basic assumption behind their operation -- that global oil demand will continue to outpace world petroleum supplies and ensure high prices into the foreseeable future -- no longer holds

I believe that these challenges, missions and tasks can be comprised of and developed in two principal parts: 1) Defend the Bolivarian government HOWEVER NECESSARY AND AT ALL COST. 2) The creation and/or strengthening of communal/people’s self-sustainable structures at the margins of the state.

Increasing surveillance on the leadership of PDVSA, the most important company in a South American nation seen as hostile to U.S. corporate interests, was a priority for the undisclosed NSA division to which the analyst reported. “Plainly speaking,” the analyst writes, they “wanted PDVSA information at the highest possible levels of the corporation – namely, the president and members of the Board of Directors.”

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Inflation, devaluation of the local currency and falling oil prices have marked the Venezuelan economy in recent years. To better understand the situation, Granma interviewed Alfredo Serrano Mancilla, PhD Economist, director of the Latin American Strategic Center of Geopolitics (CELAG), and author of the book, The Economic Thought of Hugo Chávez.