The World Federation of Trade Unions -WFTU-, international organization representing 90 million unionized workers in 126 countries worldwide and represented to the International Labor Organization (ILO), the United Nations (UN), UNESCO and FAO, closely committed to the advancement of the peoplses in search of the society they deserve, since the very beginning has been in solidarity with the people of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela against imperialist interference.
Throughout the 70 years of its existence, the WFTU has expressed solidarity with the struggles of the Venezuelan people and the peoples of Latin America against political and military interference of imperialism. We repeat our rejection to the Executive Order issued by the President of the United States against the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in which aggressive and absurd way, this country qualifies as a “threat to US national security.â€
Today, we reaffirm our solidarity and support for the Venezuelan people and their democratically elected government. The WFTU supports the initiative of Venezuelan and international mass organizations for an International Day of World Solidarity with Venezuela on 19 April 2015. The international solidarity will launch a clear, forceful and immediate message that Venezuela is not alone in defending its sovereignty, peace and democratic gains, but is accompanied by all the class oriented , anti-imperialist, democratic, popular and revolutionary forces of the world.
In the context of practical solidarity with the people of Venezuela and the world’s peoples against imperialist maneuvers, the FSM has already called International Trade Union Conference in Brussels – Belgium this June 1-2, 2015, themed “The embargoes, blockades and sanctions of the US, NATO and the EU are a blow to the rights of workers†who will discuss the response of the workers of the world to the maneuvers of imperialism.
The FSM, consistent with one of its principles; full respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of all peoples to decide for themselves about their present and future demands to end now the imperialist interference against Venezuela.
Statement by COSATU Public Service Unions, 24 March 2015
The seven COSATU Public Service unions, namely, NEHAWU, SADTU, POPCRU, DENOSA, SAMA, SASAWU and PAWUSA together with other unions admitted in the Public Service Co-ordinating Bargaining Council (PSCBC) submitted demands to the employer on 30th September 2015. Our demands included, amongst others:
• 15% salary increase for all employees
• A single-term agreement
• R3000.00 housing allowance in the absence of a Government Employees Housing Scheme (GEHS) which must be delinked from each spouse employed in the public service
• 10 leave working days for parents with children with disabilities
• Bursary Scheme for government employees’ children
These negotiations have been very slow as a result of employer delaying tactics. The current agreement expires on the 31 March 2015 therefore we are left with literally 6 (six) days to its expiry.
The parties at the PSCBC agreed during the pre-negotiations process that the base from which the negotiations will start from will be 5,8%, based on the year-on-year CPI of the 2013/14 Financial Year. The employer tabled their opening bid as 5% increase which was against the spirit of the pre-negotiations meeting. Labour rejected their initial offer on the basis that the employer was reneging on the undertaking of the pre-negotiations process. They later came with a proposal of 5,8% salary increase across the board for the Financial year 2015/16 within a multi-term agreement of 3 (three) years.
On the 3rd of March 2015, labour moved from 15% salary increase across the board to a 10% increase and moved from R3000.00 housing allowance to R1500.00. We were shocked and disturbed when the employer reversed its offer to 4,8% claiming that it was a projected average CPI for the 2015/16 financial year.
After much delay from the employer the negotiations came to a halt in the early hours of Monday, 23 March 2015. The meeting went on until 02h30 in the morning with Labour insisting on negotiating for a better deal, an approach that was met with an arrogant and intransigent attitude of the employer. The employer came back and increased their meagre 4,8% offer with a shameful 0,2 to make it 5% for the current Financial Year and CPI plus 0,5% in the following two Financial Years. Labour rejected that offer.
It was then agreed in Council that the employer must go back to its principals for a revised and a better offer as Labour is still on 10% increase across the board. Parties to the PSCBC will meet again on Wednesday, 25 March 2015 to continue with the negotiations.
It must be noted that Labour is fully committed to engage the employer seven days a week until the settlement is reached. At the same time, as Labour, we will be engaging with our members to comprehensively engage with them on what is transpiring in the negotiations.
We further call on government to show the same commitment to this process.
Completing their mission with revolutionary and medical ethics
THE Cuban medical brigade is a united team. Recently, the tension has been reduced, and suitcases packed for their return home. The tranquil city of Monrovia, is not the same one they experienced during the first days of their stay. The hustle and bustle of the market along the main roads signals, paradoxically, calm.
Members of the Cuban medical brigade combating Ebola in West Africa. Photo: Ronald Hernández
I talk to doctors and nurses, and tell them what they already know: In Cuba we are following you and waiting for your return. But they resist being called heroes, perhaps because they genuinely are. The day Cuba announced its decision to join the fight against Ebola, which was in reality the decision of their people, of these men, to travel to Africa’s danger zones, where the Ebola epidemic was concentrated, we Cubans became a single family. We regard them as our own, like fathers, brother or sons, and were always concerned for their health, for the patients they saved, and of those they lost. I have spoken to almost all of them, and they are all so different, but alike in one aspect. These men are Cubans of the Revolution. I want to share with you the testimony of 63 year old Dr. Leonardo Fernández, intensive therapy and internal medicine specialist, MSc graduate in emergency medicine and intensive care, and assistant professor at the MedicalSciencesUniversity in Guantánamo, In his own words…
“My family is used to it, as I have already completed various missions, but we also share the same values. It’s a small and totally revolutionary family: my wife, two children, an aunt and two uncles. My wife is retired, my daughter is a clinical laboratory graduate, and has completed a mission in Venezuela; my son is an ambulance driver. A small, but very united family.
WITH FEAR, BUT ALSO COURAGE
“I believe in the youth. Why not! The youth is change, revolution. I tell my youngest compañeros: I can’t think like you, I grew up in a different time, in a different era, with other needs, now there are other perspectives, more facilities. The youth is change. We have to form values, principles. The majority of the brigade members are young people. We are only four or five senior members. They have been very brave, above all the nurses, and have worked with great intensity, with fear, we all felt a great sense of fear, before leaving, and here… and we still feel it, because even up until the last day, that little creature can infect us. With fear, but also with courage. I believe the training we received in Cuba was excellent, decisive, I would say, since we were told from the very beginning the reality of the situation. They told us what we would be facing and the risks we would run, we were given all this information in Cuba. I greatly appreciate the training offered by the WHO, but that which we received in Cuba, in the Medical Collaboration Central Unit and the Pedro Kourà Institute of Tropical Medicine was exceptional.
So, we left knowing what was to come, knowing the risks, physiologically and technically prepared for the task ahead. This was fundamental. And later, the General’s (Raúl Castro) farewell filled everyone with strength.â€
TRAGEDY AND SOLIDARITY
Dr. Leonardo Fernández. Photo: Enrique Ubieta Gómez
“When we arrived, we found a country, a city, deserted. There were hardly any cars or people on the streets, there was no one. Even in the hotel where we ate lunch and dinner, there were only Cubans and three UN representatives. And now, I tell you, what a difference! … So, one leaves with this little bit of pride: knowing that I did something so that this city is once again full of people. People greet us in the street, when we go out to eat or shopping, they treat us with great affection. The cars in the road stop to allow the Cubans to cross.
“We witnessed the birth of this unit. We were frightened the first week, but as time went by, we had to put a stop to these fears, because they wanted us to do more than had been requested of us. We saw entire families die, children left alone, the mother, father and three little brothers all died, terrible…But we also saw others who survived Ebola, who after recovering, gathered together and adopted orphaned children. There is no better reward for us than to see the solidarity of Liberians with each other. We came as volunteers, and at no time in Cuba did they talk to us about rewards. At my hospital they arrived and asked who was willing to go, and told us that we might not return, and I raised my hand. No one told us: We are going to pay you so much, or we are going to give you such and such a thing. This is what the majority of people believe.â€
FEELING LIKE A HERO?
“Look, the media impact of this mission, the information which has been disseminated via Facebook, via the internet, has made some believe that we have done something extraordinary, which makes us heroes. I believe that we have completed a task, with revolutionary and medical ethics. How is it different from those working in the Brazilian jungle? How is it different from those in the Venezuelan jungle, working alone in indigenous communities for months? How is it different from those serving in African villages? I have been lucky enough to have experienced another part of Africa. I lived, for example, in the capital of Mozambique, working in a provincial intensive therapy center, but I had colleagues who were living on the border, in the jungle, in temperatures reaching 48 degrees… What’s the difference? The difference is that this was a high-profile international mission, which received the importance it deserved. It’s true that you have to have courage to say I’m going, and I am going to fight it, that’s undeniable, but it was just another task.
“We don’t need rewards, the acknowledgement of our willingness to be here is enough, and that our people speak of us is the greatest recognition. If something material comes at some point, it is welcome, as we still have needs, but I don’t believe I deserve it, that they are obliged to give me something. The Five were in prison for 16 years and at no time did they think of this sort of thing.
“The people need individuals who lead by example. I have had the good fortune, the personal privilege of having spoken with Vilma, with Raúl himself, perhaps he doesn’t even remember, as I was a doctor on a convoy with them. I have spoken with Fidel three or four times, like I am speaking to you now. They are true heroes, and I don’t see them speaking of their heroism, their bravery. In order to gain respect you don’t have to feel or believe yourself to be a hero. What I would like people to recognize is that I am a true revolutionary, firm in my principles. That is enough. And there are many such people in Cuba, very many. Those who everyday, get up at 12:00 am to make the bread that I am going to eat in the morning, those who cut sugarcane for decades, so that we would have food, they are without a doubt, heroes.
I RAISED MY HAND AND LATER ASKED WHY…                        Â
“I served on a mission in Nicaragua in 1979, one month after the triumph of their Revolution. They triumphed on July 19, and on August 17 the first Cuban brigade arrived. I stayed there until 1981, in Puerto Cabezas, on the Atlantic coast. Imagine, I was the doctor assigned by Daniel Ortega to Fagoth, the leader of the counterrevolution on the Atlantic coast. I was very emotional during the Alba meeting, as Daniel gave me a hug at the end. Nicaragua was where I really became a revolutionary. When I was 17 years old, you couldn’t listen to a Beatles song, or go to a bar, or be in the streets late at night. And despite the fact that my family had been affiliated with the July 26 Movement, that my father and sister had been in the Sierra, I was a rebel, and I didn’t understand. I liked rock music and had longhair. But I had been educated in the principles of the Revolution and one day they told me: there is this situation, I raised my hand and began. I learned to value Cuba. Being outside of Cuba, I learned to value the Revolution. Afterwards, I never signed up for collaborative missions, it seemed absurd to me, until Fidel calld upon doctors to go to the United States, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. We were selected among the first 150. Later the brigade grew to 1,500. In the end we didn’t go to the United States, for various reasons, but Fidel spoke at the Ciudad Deportiva, a moment I still remember. But then the earthquake in Pakistan occurred and the floods in Mexico and Guatemala. The brigade was divided up. I went to Pakistan, with the first group, the majority military doctors and some civilians with specific experience in these types of events. At that time, Bruno RodrÃguez, inquired as to my willingness to go directly to East Timor. I was one of those who said “Here we are,†I raised my hand thinking I wouldn’t be chosen as I was getting ready to return to Cuba, and I was selected. I was in East Timor for two years. Later came the earthquake in Haiti and they asked for volunteers. On that occasion I raised my hand and later wondered why.
Well, this was on the 10th and on the 11th or 12th we were in Haiti, and I led the brigade’s intensive therapy unit. On my return, as a reward, they told me that I needed to participate in a “collaboration†effort, as all the missions I had served on had been for wars, or disasters and so I spent three years in Mozambique.
“A little later this epidemic took hold, I had heard of Ebola, I know Africa, I had treated hemorrhagic fevers in Mozambique, and I raised my hand, and here I am. Nothing special, right? This is life. While I have strength and they accept me, I will go where I am needed.â€
Iran and Russia have called on Saudi Arabia to halt airstrikes on Yemen as supporters of Yemen’s ruling Houthi militants stage demonstrations throughout the country, protesting against the Saudi-led military intervention.
Speaking to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Russia’s Vladimir Putin called for an “immediate cessation of military activities” in Yemen and increased efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis, the Kremlin said in a statement on Thursday.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said that military operations against Yemen will only lead to further destabilization of the region, which has fallen under Houthi control after an onslaught of increased violence in recent months.
“We demand an immediate stop to the Saudi military operations in Yemen,†he said in an interview with Iran’s Arabic-language al-Alam news network on Thursday. “We will spare no effort to contain the crisis in Yemen.â€
Iran is suspected of providing supplies and training to the Houthi rebels, but Tehran has publicly denied these claims.
A United Arab Emirates official, however, expressed concerns about Iran’s influence in Yemen.
“The strategic change in the region benefits Iran and we cannot be silent about the fact that the Houthis carry their banner,” UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Mohammed Gargash tweeted on Thursday.
Lebanon’s Hezbollah has decried Saudi intervention as “unjust aggression.†The Shiite group urged Saudi Arabia and its allies to cease the strikes immediately.
“This adventure, [which] lacks wisdom and legal and legitimate justification and which is led by Saudi Arabia, is taking the region towards increased tension and dangers for the future and the present of the region,” the group said in a statement.
Followers of the Houthi movement demonstrate to show support to the movement in Yemen’s northwestern city of Saada March 26, 2015. (Reuters / Naiyf Rahma)
Saudi-led strikes, launched early Thursday morning, targeted the country’s capital Sanaa as well as a southern base. Following the strikes, a Houthi revolutionary committee called for mass rallies to stir up public support for a military response to the Saudi intervention.
“We will react against Saudi oppression in all ways we are capable…Yemeni blood is not cheap. Saudi has announced war in Yemen,†said Ali Al Kohom, a member of the Houthi Political Council.
Houthi leadership has also maintained that the country is ready to ward of Saudi aggression without help from Tehran.
“Yemeni people are prepared to face this aggression without any foreign interference,” Houthi politburo official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti told Reuters.
Meanwhile, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini has said that a military response will not solve the crisis in Yemen, and urged all parties to act “responsibly.â€
“I’m convinced that military action is not a solution,†she said. “At this critical juncture, all regional actors should act responsibly and constructively to create as a matter of urgency the conditions for a return to negotiations.â€
International intervention in Yemen is likely to result in “the rise of sectarian strife and prolonged civil unrest,†political analyst Ibrahim Alloush told RT. Casting doubt on the possibility of a ground invasion in Yemen, Alloush said that such a move would end in a “war of attrition†because of Yemen’s geographic and demographic “complexities.”
He also noted that Saudi Arabia’s own stability is at stake because the airstrikes target those with connections back in the Gulf kingdom.
Though Washington is not involved directly in the operation, the White House has authorized “logistical and intelligence support.â€
Yemen’s ousted President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi left the country’s southern city of Aden on Thursday, where he had been holing up since fleeing Houthi custody in February. Saudi state TV said he has arrived in the Saudi capital Riyadh and will later head to Egypt under Saudi protection, where he is expected to attend an Arab summit on Saturday.
An escalating conflict in Yemen could bode badly for global oil supplies, as oil prices spiked more than four percent on Thursday.
 http://www.avn.info.ve/contenido/three-million-signatures-demand-repeal-obama039s-decree
Caracas, 25 Mar. AVN.- Three million signatures have already been collected since last Thursday, as part of the campaign Venezuela is not a threat, but a hope, to demand the repeal of the decree issued by the United States government, which termed the Venezuelan nation “an extraordinary and unusual threat.”
In his weekly program In Touch with Maduro, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro welcomed the strong mobilization of the Venezuelan people across the country to collect signatures, as it shows the consciousness of the people.
“Venezuela is not a threat to the people of the United States, we are a land of peace, this is the biggest threat that Venezuela has received in its history,” the president said from the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas.
In addition, the head of state thanked the members of the revolutionary bloc before the National Assembly (AN), who approved an agreement in support of the campaign to demand the repeal of US Decree.
The agreement, proposed by socialist lawmaker Blanca Eekhout, was approved in ordinary session by the revolutionary bench and with the dissenting vote of parliamentarians from the coalition of opposition parties MUD, who refused to sign the document in defense of national sovereignty.
In this regard, the Head of State said that opposition deputies of the National Assembly (AN) are in favor of imperial interests as never before, as evidenced by their refusal to endorse the agreement.
“I feel ashamed for opposition deputies because only three of them signed, the parliamentary fraction of Primero Justicia party left the National Assembly, but they did sign the decree of Carmona (which eliminated all public authorities in April 2002), their gaze expressed hatred because they are the fifth column of peace in Venezuela,” he said.
Furthermore, the first lady, Cilia Flores signed her name for peace in Venezuela, demanding the repeal of the executive order issued by President Barack Obama.
It is expected that 10 million signatures are collected before the 7th Summit of the Americas, scheduled for 10 and 11 April in Panama, to be handed over to President Obama.
Libya, Syria, Yemen: Sectarian conflict threatens entire Middle East
