Thousands of Venezuelans Support Chavez
Caracas, Jan 24 (Prensa Latina) Thousands of people rallied this weekend to the support of President Hugo Chavez and national sovereignty in Caracas, according to Monday commentaries of the Venezuelan media.
Near the Palacio Miraflores (executive headquarters), representatives of all social organizations gathered to back the position of President´s Chavez government on the dispute with Colombia, related to the case of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia top officer Rodrigo Granda.
Even the forces of the opposition supported Chavez, as Union party leader Francisco Arias Cardenas, defeated by the current Venezuelan statesman in the 2000 elections, participated in the 7-mile march ending at Miraflores.
Arias Cardenas told press that political and social bodies should unite to defend national sovereignty from the Colombian administration blunder and outrage.
Addressing participants, Hugo Chavez ratified his government´s anti-imperialist nature, and held the US responsible for promoting the crisis with Colombia.
Meanwhile in Colombia, most influential newspapers headlined the Caracas decision to freeze diplomatic relations with Bogota if President Alvaro Uribe continued without publicly acknowledging its error to kidnap the FARC leader.
"Hugo Chavez threatens to suspend relations provided that Colombia does not recognize its mistake," El Tiempo daily published.
According to El Tiempo, if Colombia did not apologize, the neigboring country will close borders, reduce trade to the minimum and suspend the Trans-Caribbean gas pipeline functioning.
Other local papers such as El Nuevo Siglo, El Espectadora and El Pais widely covered the Venezuelan assessment that the hands of Washington were behind the dispute.
"I am sure where that provocation has come from: It has come from Washington, not from Bogota," it cites the Venezuelan president.
Caracas denounced that Colombian officials bribed several Venezuelan army officers to kidnap Granda on December 13 and deliver him to Bogota authorities in their border city of Culcuta.
The Uribe administration accused Chavez of the alleged harboring FARC guerrillas and said Colombia had a right to hunt down ``narcoterrorists.""
Caracas asked for evidence to take actions against anay responsable in that eventual case.
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Eve of World Social Forum in Porto Alegre
Rio de Janeiro, Jan 24 (Prensa Latina) The World Social Forum of Porto Alegre, Brazil, will shortly open to receive 150,000 people from around the world to discuss 11 main issues.
Organizers said this year´s forum will be a complete challenge because it is aimed at connecting theory and practice.
Most of the eleven themes for this year´s forum have a strong humanitarian focus, and there is a distinctly large indigenous presence, working for the rights and recognition of indigenous cultures and peoples.
The event has become a window for political reflection with the participation of important figures of current social and political thinking.
Some internationally-recognized participants include Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and Cuban Parliament President Ricardo Alarcón.
Other important contributors are Portuguese writer and Nobel Prize Winner in Literature José Saramago, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano as well as Peace Nobel prizewinners, sociologists, theologians and ecologists.
The World Social Forum is an open world event where progressive people meet to debate and formulate plans to build a society not dominated by capital or imperialism. While much of the world (corporate) media focuses on the World Economic Forum taking place January 26-30 in Davos, Switzerland, a world forum of quite another type will celebrate its fifth assembly January 27-31 in Porto Alegre.
Since the first World Social Forum in January 2001 proclaiming "Another World Is Possible," and incidentally starting the global struggle against the Free Trade Area of the Americas FTAA, the Porto Alegre forum has become a permanent process of seeking and building alternatives on an international scale.
An international coalition could be born from the Porto Alegre meetings to unite people´s potential to fight inequality, poverty, illiteracy, birth infant mortality, discrimination, neoliberal globalization and injustice in general under a new dynamic of action.
(From Prensa Latina)
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