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Critics of Venezuela’s socialist president, Hugo Chavez, “finally feel vindicated (again)”, Venezuelanalysis.com editor Gregory Wilpert wrote in a February 6 comment piece. “The Venezuelan dictatorship that they have been predicting for the past eight years has, according to them, finally come to pass — for the sixth or so time.”
Nepalese PM Girija Prasad Koirala has vowed to amend the country’s constitution to meet the key demands of Madheshi protesters from the country’s southern plains, BBC News reported on February 8. He pledged to introduce a federal system of governance and more representation of the southern plains in the parliament.
The United States is planning what will be a catastrophic attack on Iran. For the Bush cabal, the attack will be a way of “buying time” for its disaster in Iraq. In announcing what he called a “surge” of US troops in Iraq, George W. Bush identified Iran as his real target. “We will interrupt the flow of support [to the insurgency in Iraq] from Iran and Syria”, he said. “And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”
Second Sydney Latin America Film Festival
Chauvel Cinema, Paddington
Seymour Centre, Darlington and Club Marconi, Bossley Park
February 22-March 4 http://www.sydneylatinofilmfestival.org
Radio Gratis
Independent. Local. Queer.
<http://www.radiogratisonline.org>
EM>Ratbag Radio Network

(07) 3333 1805,
Environmental Principles and Policies: An Interdisciplinary Approach
By Sharon Beder
UNSW Press, 2006
336 pages, $54.95 (pb)
Forever Lenin: The Secret Story of a Mummy — The adventures of Lenin's embalmed body throughout the 20th century reflect the history of the Soviet Union. SBS, Friday, February 16, 2.30pm. Saddam's Road to Hell — A Kurdish doctor searches for
As with other environmental issues, Australia’s water crisis has reached such an extent that mainstream media and politicians are being forced to abandon their traditional policy of denial. However, true to form, politicians are proposing solutions that are a mixture of the half-hearted, the irrelevant and the destructive. In common with the debates on global warming and Third World poverty, there is an underlying assumption that the water crisis can be overcome by the very thing that created it — the market economy.
STRONG>Neshan
The Australian international exhibition of the badge, the logo and the coat of arms
Pine Street Creative Arts Centre, Chippendale
June 5-9
Hobart Resistance organiser Mel Barnes took part in the Australia-Venezuela Solidarity Network brigade to Venezuela in December, to see the revolutionary process for herself. The brigade was timed to coincide with the presidential election in which President Hugo Chavez won another landslide victory as people voted to deepen the Bolivarian revolution.
The release of the fourth assessment report by UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on February 2, and the dire predictions in it of the impact of global warming on Australia, was seized on by PM John Howard to push his “solutions” to global warming. These have less to do with saving the environment than protecting corporate profits, with the main prongs being defence of the coal mining companies and support for an expanded nuclear industry.