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Vol. 9
No. 39…Dedicated
to the Dialogue on Race…September 29, 2006
Intuit’s Vibe
Requiem for America: Wake Up American
World Citizens!
By Mankh (Walter E.
Harris III)
Many will not be able
to read this
And most simply
won’t.
The civil war has
been exported (again.)
The red and blue are
battling with Iraq and other foreign turfs.
Don’t kid yourselves,
The two Americas are
at least a dozen–
Republican, Democrat,
neither, other,
Hispanic, Latino,
White, Mexican American,
African American,
Arab American,
American Indian,
Asian American,
Fill In The Blank
Americans…
It’s all done with
sleight of hand and demographics,
b/c the minorities
combined
will soon be (if they
aren’t already) the majority!
Yet, many are numb
and number,
numbered and branded
like animals,
many have grown
complacent…
many quietly do the
work.
The war on drugs is
more about
pharmaceuticals than healing,
the educational
system more about
a pacifier in the
mouth than pacifists,
the homicide numbers
another (un)civil war.
This tripping of
tongue is a mixed metaphor
not a metered foot
from my mouth,
and metaphors mixed
are my placebo
for
media-sad-news-world.
By the way, your
Indians are not your Indians,
they were here so
long before you...
so long before that
cameo appearance
on the cold hard
street of fame called Hollywood.
Shut your loud
obnoxious voice and take a rest.
Quiem!
Quies!
Quiet!
America… hear
whispering in the pines
many tongues talking
from one mouth...
many quietly do the work.
Devil in the Details
After calling George W. Bush a devil, Venezuela
President Hugo Chavez offered the congregation at Mount Olivet Baptist Church
in Harlem and other needy US citizens 100 million gallons of subsidized oil.
The offer received warm applause and created warm feelings toward Chavez,
especially among those struggling to pay energy bills.
This was not the first time Chavez has offered to
spread the wealth generated by his country's most valued resource and the
current high price of oil. While Hugo's oil gifts have been warmly received by
poor people in the US and other countries, the US federal government has been
less than receptive. Each blames the other for the situation. Tensions between
the two countries have grown since the failed US-supported coup and the US'
ongoing support of anti-Chavez groups inside and outside of Venezuela.
As Greg Palast points out, it is not the oil.
Venezuela is the fourth largest exporter of oil to the US (June 2006), which
imported more than a million barrels a day from that country, or less than
one-tenth of US oil imports. The US could replace this amount of oil from
alternative sources. It cannot, however, replace the petrodollars that fail to
find their way into US Treasury Bills and other US dollar-denominated assets.
According to Palast and others, this is the cash -- the petrodollars--that
funds multiple wars on credit when the nation is so deeply in debt.
It is the petro-dollars, where they are stored
and how they are used, that are the devil in the details, we must examine when
looking at US-Venezuela relations. For more on US-Venezuela relations, read
Greg Palast's interview with Hugo Chavez at www.gregpalast.com.
Hugo Rafael Chávez
Frías
Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías was born July 28, 1954
in the town of Sabaneta, Barinas, Venezuela. He is second son of
schoolteachers, Elena Frías de and Hugo de los Reyes Chávez. The Chávez family
was not wealthy; they sold bananas and sowed corn to make ends meet. Hugo and
his older brother lived with their paternal grandmother, Rosa Inés Chávez, so
they could complete their education. Very active, Hugo painted, sang, wrote and
played baseball.
Chávez enrolled at the Venezuelan Academy of
Military Sciences at age seventeen, earning a degree in engineering (1975). He
pursued graduate studies at Caracas' Simón Bolívar University, but left without
a degree. Inspired by the 19th-century Pan-American philosophies of Simon
Bolívar, Chávez and fellow activists developed a left-nationalist doctrine
called "Bolivarianism." Influenced by the teachings of various
socialist and communist leaders, including Peruvian Juan Velasco, Chávez
established the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement in 1982.
Chávez began his 17 year military career during
this time. He rose through the ranks, holding command, and staff positions to
become a lieutenant colonel. Teaching at the Military Academy of Venezuela,
Chávez's fiery lecturing style and unusually radical critique of Venezuelan
government and society inspired his peers and students.
Amidst growing anger at economic austerity
measures, Chavez led an attempt to overthrow the government of President Carlos
Andres Perez in February 1992. He spent two years in prison before being
granted a pardon. Following his release, he relaunched his party as the Fifth
Republic Movement (MVR) and made the transition from soldier to politician.
Like 67% of the people, the charismatic populist is a mulatto (African, Spanish
and Indigenous descent). Leading the leftist Patriotic Pole alliance and
promising a peaceful social revolution, he won 34% of the seats in the National
Congress and was elected president in 1998 with 56% of the votes-the largest
majority in four decades.
Chavez took office with a mandate to reverse
Venezuela's economic decline and strengthen the role of the state in the
economy on February 2, 1999. He ended the privatization of Venezuela's state
holdings, took control of economic matters, and cut oil production to raise oil
prices. The constituent assembly wrote a new constitution granting the
president increased powers, a 6-year term of office and weakened the
legislature and judiciary. Addressing poverty amongst the landless poor, Chavez
acted to redistribute the wealth of the rich elite, took measures against
corruption, criticized the traditional oligarchy, and made more funds available
for social programs.
Opposition supported by strikes and
demonstrations increased following Chávez's reelection in 2000 after he started
the privatization of Venezuela's social security system, aluminum industry, and
the oil sector. This led to a short-lived coup in April and a prolonged strike
by oil workers late in 2002. Briefly overthrown by military and corporate
interests in the US- sponsored coup, Chávez was returned to power when massive demonstrations
followed.
Chávez launched several Bolivarian Missions;
their goals are to combat disease, illiteracy, malnutrition, poverty, and other
social ills. In his personal life he is married and has five children, three
girls and two boys. His wife works as a public official also; she was elected
in 2000. He also enjoys going home, where his father is currently the mayor.
Disgruntled feels: Rovian! As if Karl Rove, political strategist
and brain behind Bush, pulled their strings, mainstream media reported on a
leaked National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). It said what we knew - the US is
creating enemies, call them jihadists, terrorists or guerillas. But, 'we are
fighting them over there,' whispers the media fear mongers. We'll never know who
leaked the memo because the Bush regime will never expose the brain behind the
scheme to heat up the political debate on national security, the supposed GOP
strong suit. Running around like headless ducks, Democrats fell for it again.
And, to sweeten the deal for the sheep, the price of gasoline at the pump is
falling, just in time for the November elections! How Rovian!
Disgruntled says: Beginning with
Afghanistan, the US entered wars of aggression based on the commission of
terrorist acts by non-state actors. Thousands have died. The UN's failure to
stop these acts and others by member states, including genocide in Darfur,
shows the UN is weak. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and others support
reforms that include enlarging the UN Security Council to make it more
representative of the international community and eliminating the veto of its
permanent five members - US, Russia, China, France and Great Britain -- a move
aimed at ending the free ride given international bad actors.
Disgruntled wants to know: Parents,
families and loved ones of those killed and maimed in the War on Terror might
well have been taken aback when George W. Bush described the Iraq war as
"a comma in the march of history." Iraq is the central front in war
on terror, according to Bush. One may ask, will Bush unleash more horror and
warfare so great as to render Iraq insignificant by comparison?
Shadow of the
Liberator
By Richard Gott
Heather Rogers reviewed In the Shadow of the
Liberator: Hugo Chavez and the Transformation of Venezuela. According to
Rogers, there is a huge social experiment underway in Venezuela and few on the
American left seem to be paying attention. Author Richard Gott offers a very
different picture of the Bolivarian revolution of Hugo Chavez than what is
presented in the US media.
For instance, Venezuela's military buys fresh
vegetables and meat in the countryside and trucks them to poor neighborhoods
for sale at subsidized markets. New state run pharmacies sell medicine at a 30%
discount. The government provides breakfast and lunch to children at school,
which helped boost enrollment by one million over last year. These are just a
few of the social reforms began since the election of the left-leaning
president Hugo Chavez. It all began with the rewriting of the Constitution
which now includes such provisions as civil rights for Venezuela's indigenous
population.
Chavez is also rooting out corruption and graft
within the government by restructuring bodies ranging from the Judiciary to the
Constituent Assembly. Since leaving prison in 1994, Chavez has worked with both
military and civilians to build a new political party, the Fifth Republic
Movement (MVR) which was inspired by Simon Bolivar, the 19th century liberator
of South America.
The rise to power began with the insane 1989
Caracazo -- city-wide riots and looting by urban poor triggered by IMF required
price increases. The rage behind this eruption had brewed for generations, and
with 80% of the population living in poverty, it was an opportunity for Chavez
and his people to demand change. Chavez built on the popular unrest amongst
poor and lower ranks of the military.
Chavez's government is composed of more than the
military. His ministers include Ali Rodriquez, a former Marxist guerrilla and
labor lawyer. Rodriquez is Minister of Energy and Mines, which is in charge of
the nation's oil industry. Chavez's Minister of Development, Jorge Giordani, an
economist and University professor, is responsible for planning the
revitalization of the country's rural economy. His ministry works to provide
affordable housing and sustainable jobs. The government is constructing
cooperative farming communities for families. The goal is to replace shanty
towns on the steep hills surrounding Caracas. Mud slides killed 15,000 people
in 1999.
In 2003, Chavez launched "Mission
Robinson" to provide free literacy programs for more than 1.5 million
illiterate adults. On October 12, 2003, he initiated "Mission
Guaicaipuro," a program to protect the livelihood, religion, land, culture
and rights of Venezuela's indigenous peoples. He launched "Mission
Sucre" to provide free higher education to the two million adults that had
not completed their elementary-level education. In November 2003, he announced
"Mission Ribas" with the promise of remedial education and diplomas
for millions of high school dropouts.
Economic growth picked up markedly in 2004,
reaching double-digit growth and a 9.3% growth rate for 2005. Chavez also
expanded his land redistribution and social welfare programs by authorizing and
funding a multitude of new "Bolivarian Missions" to construct, fund,
and refurbish public health care facilities nationwide. Venezuela is jointly
establishing with Cuba a second tuition-free medical school that would provide
medical training to more than 100,000 physicians who would pledge to work in
the poorest communities of the Global South. He announced that the project
would run for the next decade, and that the new school would include at least
30,000 new places for poor students from both Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Bush Administration considers Chavez
provocatively dangerous and autocratically undemocratic. Chávez offers alternative
models of economic development to the Washington Consensus and advocates
cooperation among the world's poor nations, especially those in Latin America.
Chavez supports Iran's right to develop nuclear power, while President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad and other Middle Eastern leaders are backing Venezuela's bid for a
rotating seat on the U.N. Security Council -- the Bush administration supports
Guatemala.
The Devil’s Recipe
(Excerpts from UN Speech)
By Hugo Chavez
"Representatives of the governments of the
world, good morning. First, I would like to invite you, very respectfully, to
those who have not read this book, to read it. (Noam Chomsky's 'Hegemony or
Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States.') It's an excellent
book to help us understand what has been happening in the world throughout the
20th century, and what's happening now, and the greatest threat looming over
our planet.
The hegemonic pretensions of the American empire are placing at risk the very survival of the human species. We continue to warn you about this danger and we appeal to the people of the United States and the world to halt this threat, which is like a sword hanging over our heads. I had considered reading from this book, but, for the sake of time, I will just leave it as a recommendation.
It reads easily, it is a very good book. It
appears in English, in Russian, in Arabic, in German. I think that the first
people who should read this book are our brothers and sisters in the United States,
because their threat is right in their own house. The devil himself is right in
the house. And, yesterday, the devil came here; it smells of sulfur still
today.
Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this
rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as
the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world.
I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze
yesterday's statement made by the president of the US. As the spokesman of
imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current
pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world. An
Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a
title: "The Devil's Recipe."
As Chomsky says here, clearly and in depth, the
American empire is doing all it can to consolidate its system of domination. We
cannot allow world dictatorship to be consolidated.
They say they want to impose a democratic model.
But that's their democratic model. It's the false democracy of elites, and, I
would say, a very original democracy that's imposed by weapons and bombs and
firing weapons. What a strange democracy. Aristotle might not recognize
it...What type of democracy do you impose with marines and bombs?
The president of the US said, and I'm quoting,
"Anywhere you look, you hear extremists telling you can escape from
poverty and recover your dignity through violence, terror and martyrdom."
Wherever he looks, he sees extremists. And you, my brother -- he looks at your
color, and he says, oh, there's an extremist. Evo Morales, the worthy president
of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him. The imperialists see extremists
everywhere. It's not that we are extremists. It's that the world is waking up.
It's waking up all over. And people are standing up.
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls
Email EvPeters8@aol.com War Criminal at Bay...By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts...Beguiled by neo-conservatives, who told him that the virtuous goals of the US empire justified any means, and misled by an incompetent Attorney General, who told him the President of the US is above the law, Bush was deceived into committing war crimes under Article 3 of the Geneva Convention and the US War Crimes Act of 1996. Bush is now desperately trying to save himself by having the US Congress retroactively repeal both Article 3 and US law.
Email blue_meanie_9@yahoo.com
While the NAM (Non-Aligned Movement)
presidential summit meets in Cuba, news reports on FOX and CNN spotlighted
billboards which mock President George Bush. One billboard shows Bush as an
"assassin" with bloody, vampire teeth, while others compare the U.S.
president to Adolph Hitler.
Email www.CommonDreams.org America's Moral
Decline and the Rise of False Christianity...By Karen Horst Cobb...The lust for
money, dominance and military power is at the core of America's moral decline.
It is imperative that church leaders and laity boldly proclaim that violence,
torture, hostage taking, conquests of land and resources are actions Christians
can never condone. Killing for Christ is an abomination leaving us with
blood-stained hands and darkness in our hearts! Every church must be a peace
church or it will be a state church, then it will be no church at all.
Email www.guardian.co.uk The US government has
been accused of trying to undermine the Chavez government by funding groups via
its main international aid agency. Millions of dollars have been provided in a
"pro-democracy program" that Chavez supporters claim is a covert
attempt to bankroll an opposition to defeat the government. The money is being
provided by the US Agency for International Development through its Office of
Transition Initiatives.
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