News

"Will the Australian government allow Australians to make up their own mind about the ideas, policies and actions of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez?" Kiraz Janicke, member of the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network (AVSN) nNational Coordinating Committee asked today.

13th Feb 2007

Today during parliamentary question time Australian Treasurer Peter Costello attacked signatories to the invitation to Hugo Chavez to visit Australia. Costello criticised signatories for inviting a leader who has "called the US president a genocidal killer and who went to the UN General Assembly and called the President of the United States the devil".
Now is the time to sign our invitation and welcome the man Costello hates!

Wednesday, Jan 31, 2007. By Gregory Wilpert. enezuelanalysis.com

Venezuela’s National Assembly passed a so-called “enabling law” today, which will allow President Chavez to pass laws by decree in eleven different areas for a period of 18 months. Chavez had asked for the enabling law earlier this month, saying it is needed to accelerate the process of transforming Venezuela’s state and economy into “21st century socialism.”

Below is an article that appeared on in the Feb 5th Daily Telegraph on the invitation from Australian solidarity groups to Chavez to visit Australia.

"Dictator in waiting, beloved of the Left" By Michelle Cazzulino. Daily Telegraph, Tues 6 Feb, 2007

With his loathing of the Bush administration and regular appearances in Human Rights Watch reports, Hugo Chavez is variously described as a pin-up boy for the Left or a power-crazed bully whose increasingly autocratic actions represent a danger to his country.

Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007
By: Liza Figueroa-Clark – Venezuelanalysis.com

Caracas, January 24, 2007 (venezuelanalysis.com)— Marcela Máspero, a National Coordinator for the pro-government union federation UNT (National Worker’s Union), announced yesterday that workers of the private opposition-aligned Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV) station were working on a proposal to manage the station themselves, before the channel’s concession to broadcast on public airwaves expires in May.

Thursday, Jan 25, 2007
By: Venezuelanalysis.com

Caracas, January 25, 2007 (venezuelanalysis.com)— Venezuela’s National Statistics Institute released its unemployment data yesterday, saying that unemployment had dropped to 8.4% in December 2006, which is 0.5% lower than the same month in 2005. Also, the quality of jobs improved, in that formal sector employment rose from 52.0% to 55.5% in the same time period. This means that 364,589 new jobs were created in 2006 for a total of 11.3 million employed in Venezuela.

26 January 2007. By Duncan Meerding

Whether you admire him or hate him, Venezuela’s recently re-elected president, Hugo Chavez, is starting to attract a lot of attention in Australia, and around the world. The man who calls US President George Bush “the devil”, and the “new socialism for the 21st century” that he and his government are creating in Venezuela, are stirring hope in the hearts of many people — and fear in a few.

25 January 2007. By Stuart Munckton

“In my country, a surgery like that costs [US]$8,000”, said Roberto Andrade from El Salvador about the operation he received in Cuba that removed cataracts from both his eyes, completely free of charge, according to a January 10 Miami Herald article. “I make $12 a day. I would never, ever, be able to save that much.”

Australia Venezuela Solidarity Network
PRESS RELEASE

Chavez is welcome here!
Greg Barns invited to meet Venezuelan Charge D'Affairs

The president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, has been invited to visit Australia this year by the Australian-Venezuela Solidarity Network. The organization has been circulating a petition to gather names in support of the visit, which was attacked by Greg Barns in Monday’s edition of the Mercury as ‘pompous’ and ‘nauseating’.

To read the Hobart Mercury Article
CLICK HERE

January 20, 2007

Leftists are flocking to see a country being transformed, writes Rory Carroll in Caracas

TO SCEPTICS, they are naive Westerners who would not recognise
communist tyranny if it expropriated their sandals.

"Malodorous, left-wing, US and European peace creeps armed with Mom's credit card and brand new Birkenstocks," sneered the American Thinker, a right-wing magazine.